Authors: Katharine Kerr
“There you are!” Calonderiel was half laughing, half afraid. “By the Dark Sun, I’ve drunk myself half-blind! I didn’t see you, and here you were so close by that I nearly tripped over you! Must’ve drunk too much, that’s what it is.”
“I’ve never known you to pass on a skin of mead un-tasted, no.” Rhodry realized that he was cold-sick and shaking. “Uh, did you see that woman who was here just now?”
“Woman? No, I didn’t even see you, much less some female. Who was she?”
“The woman we saw earlier, when we were talking with the king and his son. The one little Faren called strange.”
“Oh, her.” Calonderiel burped profoundly. “Hope I didn’t interrupt anything, er, important.”
“Not in the least, my friend, not in the least. Huh, I wonder if Faren has a touch of the second sight or suchlike. We should have Aderyn take a look at the lad the next time we meet up with the old man.”
“I thought the Wise One would be here already, as a matter of fact. Um, why are you talking in Deverrian?”
“Am I? Well, I’m sorry.” He switched back easily to his adopted tongue. “That woman was speaking it, you see.”
“What woman?”
“The one you didn’t see. Don’t worry about it. Let’s get back to camp, shall we?”
When he went to sleep that night, Rhodry was glad that he shared a tent with a warband. Somehow he would have felt in danger if he’d been off by himself.
Close to dawn the entire camp woke in a swirl of yelling and cursing from the herd-guards. Rhodry pulled on his trousers and boots, then dashed outside, slipping on his shirt in the chilly night, to find the rest of the warband running for the herd of horses to the east of the encampment. From the snatches of shouted conversation he could figure out that something had panicked the stock.
By the time they reached the grazing ground, the mounted herders had rounded up most of the runaways. Rhodry found a horse that knew him, swung up bareback, and riding with just a halter joined the hunt for the others. Although he lacked the full night vision of the People, he could see far better than the average human in the dark, and certainly well enough to hunt for horses in moonlight. He found four mares and their half-grown colts, herded them into a little group, and brought them back just as the sky was turning gray in the east with the tardy autumn dawn. Riding out among the assembled herds were three of the women, counting up the stock with a call or a pat for every animal. Rhodry turned his mares into the milling mass, then found Calonderiel, mounted on his golden stallion off to one side, and rode up beside him.
“What was all this about?”
“Cursed if I know.” Calonderiel shrugged eloquently.
“One of the boys told me that all of a sudden, the herd just went mad: neighing and rearing, kicking out at something. He said he could just barely see shapes moving, doglike shapes, but then they vanished. Some of the Wildfolk, I suppose, up to their rotten infuriating pranks. They know there’s naught we can do to them, blast them, and they probably thought it a fine jest to see us all riding round yelling our heads off.”
Rhodry saw no reason to disagree, especially since there was no particular harm done. Once the sun was up and the herds all counted, only three horses were still missing, and their tracks, heading off in three separate directions, were perfectly clear. Rhodry got himself some breakfast, then set off after one of the stragglers.
He tracked the lost horse all that morning, until finally, close to noon, he found the miscreant, a blood-bay gelding with a black mane and tail, peacefully grazing beside a narrow river. Clucking under his breath, holding out a nose bag of oats, Rhodry circled round to approach him from the front. The gelding rolled a wary eye, then spotted the nose bag and trotted over, shoving his nose right in and allowing Rhodry to attach a lead rope to his halter with no trouble at all.
“Well, at least you decided to wait for me, eh? I think I’ll have a bit of a meal of my own, and then we’ll go home.”
Rhodry unsaddled the horse he’d brought with him, let him roll, and tethered him out to rest while he ate griddle bread and cheese from his saddlebags and watched the river flow through its grassy banks. He’d just finished eating when he happened to glance upstream and saw something that brought him to his feet with an oath. About a quarter of a mile away stood a thicket of hazels: absolutely nothing unusual in that, no, except that he’d seen no such thing when he first rode up. For a moment he debated the question, but in the end, he was sure as sure that he’d looked that way and seen nothing but the long green swell of grass stretching out to the horizon. Again, he debated; then curiosity got the better of him, and he strode off for a look.
When he got close, the thicket certainly seemed ordinary enough, a wild tangle of stunted trees and shoots, but someone was sitting among them on what seemed to be a
rather anomalous oak stump, and while the day was breezy, the hazels stood unmoving. In the warm sun he felt his blood run cold. Hand on the hilt of his silver dagger, he stopped walking and peered in among the shadows. The seated figure rose and hobbled to meet him, an old, old woman, all bent-backed and dressed in drab browns, leaning on a stick, her white hair escaping in wisps from her black head scarf. She paused a few feet away and looked up at him with rheumy eyes.
“Good morrow, silver dagger.” She spoke in Deverrian. “You’re a long, long way from the lands of men.”
“And so are you, good dame.”
“I’ve come looking for my daughter. They’ve stolen her, you see. I’ve looked and I’ve looked, but I can’t find her anywhere in my own country. They’ve stolen her away, my baby, my only daughter, and now they’re going to bury her alive. Oh, they’re weaving her a winding sheet, they are, and they’ll bury her alive.”
“What? Who will?”
She merely looked up at him with a little smile, too calculated, somehow, to be daft. The wind lifted his hair; the hazels never shivered nor swayed. With his heart pounding like a wild thing, Rhodry began to back away.
“Where are you going, silver dagger?” Her voice was all soft and wheedling. “I’ve got a hire for you.”
She strode after, suddenly younger, swelling up tall and strong, and now she was wearing a green hunting tunic and a pair of doeskin boots, and her hair was the color of honey, and her eyes like beaten gold. Rhodry yelped, staggering along backward, afraid to turn his back on her to run. Out of sheer warrior’s instinct and nothing more he drew his sword. The moment that the bright steel flashed in the sunlight she howled in rage and disappeared, flickering out like a blown candle.
Rhodry broke into a cold sweat. For a moment he merely stood beside the river and shook; then he turned and shamelessly ran for the horses. With clumsy shaking hands he saddled his gray, grabbed the lead rope of the bay gelding, then mounted and rode out at a fast trot. All the long way back to camp he wished for a good road and a gallop. And yet, when he saw the camp and, in particular, the other men in the warband, his fear seemed not only
shameful but foolish, and he told no one what had happened. In fact, the more he thought about the incident, the more unreal it seemed, until finally he convinced himself that he’d fallen asleep in the warm sun and dreamt the whole thing.
Two days later, on the last afternoon of the alardan, Oldana died. Rhodry was walking among the tents when he heard Enabrilia start keening. The high-pitched shriek cut through the noise of the camp like a knife and sobbed on and on. One at a time, other voices joined in, wailing and gasping. Rhodry turned and ran for Oldana’s tent, shoved his way through the sobbing mob at the door, and ducked inside. Her hair down and disheveled, Enabrilia was clawing at her own face with her nails while two of her women friends grabbed at her hands to make her stop. Oldana lay on a pile of blankets, her arms thrown wide, her unseeing eyes still open. She had been ill so long that her face seemed, at first, no colder, no paler than before, but her mouth hung slack, her lips flaccid. Huddled in the curve of the tent wall little Faren stood staring and silent, watching his elder brother mourn without truly understanding a thing. Rhodry gathered the pair up and led them out of the tent. In a time of mourning, boys belonged with the men while the women cared for the dead.
Outside, other women were assembling at the tent while the men hurried through the camp, extinguishing every fire as they went. They gathered near the horse herd, where Oldana’s brother, Wylenteriel, met Rhodry and took his nephews with a murmur of thanks for the banadar’s second in command. Rhodry found Calonderiel swearing under his breath with every foul oath he knew.
“She was so wretchedly young to die! I don’t understand the gods sometimes, I really don’t!”
“Who can?” Rhodry said with a shrug. “I’m heartsick, too, but I’m worried about her sons more. Where’s their father?”
“Up north somewhere with his herds, last anyone saw him. The boys will fare better with their uncle anyway, if you ask my opinion and not that anyone did.” The banadar looked briefly sour. “With luck we’ll run into their father down at the winter camps. The alardan will break up tonight, and we’ll be heading east.”
“East?”
“To the death ground. That’s right, you’ve never been there before, have you? We’re close enough to take her there for the burning, in this cool weather and all.”
Rhodry felt oddly troubled. The sacred death ground lay right on the Eldidd border, not more than a hundred miles from Aberwyn, where once he’d ruled as gwerbret, not far at all from the place he’d always considered home.
“What’s wrong with you?” Calonderiel said. “You look pale.”
“Do I? Ah, well, it’s a sad thing, when one of the People dies so young. We’d best call for the ceremony to end the alardan. The sooner we get moving, the better.”
The women sprinkled Oldana’s corpse with spices and covered it with dried flowers before they wrapped it round with white linen. They cut a white horse out of the herd to drag the travois that would carry her to the resting place of her ancestors, and when the alar left the rest of the gathering behind for their sad journey east, that horse led the line of march, with Rhodry and Calonderiel riding alongside. The boys, as much confused as grief-struck, traveled far back at the rear with their uncle and grandmother. Out of simple decency the king and the young prince came with them, and their alar, of course, as well, to dignify the eventual ceremony with their presence.
It took them two full days and part of a third to reach the Lake of the Leaping Trout. During that time they ate food left from the alardan feasting, and slept cold at night, too, because no one could light a fire until Oldana’s soul was safely on its way to the world beyond. Slowly the grasslands began to rise, until by the third dawn they saw ahead of them rolling grassy downs that were almost hills. Finally, just after a noon gray with the promise of winter, they came to the last crest. Far down the green slope lay the silver lake, a long finger of water caught in a narrow valley pointing southeast to northwest. To the north a thick forest spread along the valley floor, the dark pines standing in such orderly rows that obviously they were no natural growth, but all along the north shore lay an open meadow. Calonderiel turned to Rhodry and gestured at the forest with a wide sweep of his arm.
“Well, there it is. The death ground of my ancestors, and
of yours as well. Your father’s father was set free and his ashes scattered among those trees, though I think your grandmother died too far out on the grass to be brought here.”
When they rode down to the lake, Rhodry realized that the meadow area was laid out as a proper campground: there were stone fire pits at regular intervals and small sheds, too, for keeping firewood dry and food safe from prowling animals. The alar rushed to set up their tents against the darkening sky and tether the horses securely as well, just in case there should be thunder in the night. As the early evening was setting in, Calonderiel fetched Rhodry.
“Let’s go take a look at the firewood. The women tell me that we’d better do the ceremony tonight.”
They crossed the neatly tended boundary of the forest into the dark and spicy-scented corridors of trees. In a clearing, not ten yards in, stood a structure of dry-walled stone and rough-cut timber about thirty feet long. Inside they found it stacked with cut wood, a fortune in fuel out on the grasslands.
“Good,” Calonderiel said. “Fetch the others. Let’s get this over with before the rain hits.”
But as if in sympathy with their loss, the rain held off. The wind rose instead, driving the clouds away and letting the stars shine through. Close to midnight the alar burned Oldana’s body to send her soul free to the gods. Rhodry stood well back toward the edge of the weeping crowd. Although he’d traveled with the Westfolk long enough to witness several cremations, still they disturbed him, used as he was to burying his kin and friends in the hidden dark of the earth with things they’d loved in life tucked round them. He found himself moving slowly backward, almost without thinking, easing himself out of the crowd, taking a step here, allowing someone to stand in front of him there, until at last he stood alone, some distance away.
The night wind lashed at the lake and howled round the trees like another mourner. Rhodry shivered with grief as much as the cold, because she had indeed been so young, and so very beautiful. Although he’d never known her well, he would miss her presence in the alar. Among the Westfolk, that last remnant of a race hovering on the edge of
extinction, where the loss of any individual was a tragedy, the death of a woman who might have borne more children was an appalling blow of fate. In the center of the crowd the women howled in a burst of keening that the men answered, half a chant, half a sob. Rhodry turned and ran, plunged into the silent camp, raced through the tents and out the other side, ran and ran along the lakeshore until at last he tripped and went sprawling. For a long time he lay in the tall grass and gasped for breath. When he sat up the fire was far away, a golden flower blooming on the horizon. The wind-struck water lapped and murmured nearby.
“You coward,” he said to himself, and in Deverrian. “You’d best get back.”