Aloren (29 page)

***

What happened next is almost impossible to describe.  I remember it as an illogical dream: a tangle of color, like a burst of sun through deep water. 

I was standing on a terrace of stone at the bottom of the pool, and I could breathe as well as if the water had been air.  The dead boy wasn’t in my arms.  He was standing with his back to me, holding something that glowed brighter than his pendant, so bright I could see all the sides of the pool and the surface shimmering high above.

It shifted in his hand, lengthened, changed into a flaming bird that spread great wings.  A spray like molten metal came off his hands and hair.  He glowed and stretched like a burning leaf.   

I stared.  “You’re supposed to be dead.  What are you doing?” 

“Making a door.”  He reached and took a skein of something–a fabric that tugged on my hair, and the light, and the silken feel of water on my skin, and my very thoughts––and he wound it up with another. I was thinking and feeling in double.

“Isn’t that what humans do?” I said, and marveled at how rich my voice sounded.   

The air right in front of him was a more vivid blue than I had ever seen.  “I know why the river stopped flowing,” he said, reminding me unpleasantly of one of my brother
s
–
–
Mordan.  “The djain clawed the old door up.  So the water couldn’t get through.”

“Why?”

“Made the Girelden angry and stupid, didn’t it?”

“Jackass.”

He ignored me, just kept winding together the same strange stuff.  I could see it now: the door he was making.  It looked like a circle of daylight growing brighter and brighter through layers of glass.  I couldn’t fathom how he had learned to do it.

At last he finished and stepped away, and the golden bird shrank, become a key in his hand.  It was made of flame, like the bird.  “Where did you get that?”  I was inexplicably jealous, as though the thing should have been mine.  

He looked at me like I was crazy. “You gave it to me.”  He stuck the key into the middle of the door.  It melted and fire spread over the blue glass, turned the door a blinding white. 

The pendant glowed at his chest.  He slipped the chain off.  Then he pushed aside the blue glass and threads and skeins until there was nothing.  The door was open.  Shapes and colors shone through, but my eyes were too dazzled to really see them and my head too stupid to make sense of them. 

He pondered the pendant for a moment, then tossed the thing through the door.  Chain, bottle, and soul.   

The door puckered and bulged, as though under the weight of some great force on the other side.  There was a second of stillness.  The blinding light dimmed. 

I heard a roar like the sea, and the boy pulled together enough sense to move out of the way.  Water came through the door, a green flood of it, pushing the old, stale water back.  It slammed into me, warm, as though it had just come from high summer. 

It tore me from the bottom, ripped ice people from the shore, and cast us about like leaves in a whirlwind.  The current dragged me back to the bottom, and I grabbed a knob in the bedrock.  The pressure pounded in my ears.  I looked up.  A huge, winged thing of ice came down over me, just missing my head.  It slammed into the rock, knocking shards of ice away. 

I felt a faraway pain and looked down––my finger was caught beneath it.

It ground over my hand, crushing it against the bedrock, and I screamed, I’m sure, but the sound was lost.  The current swept the thing away.  I went with it, then was suddenly yanked back: my little finger was jammed in a crack in the bedrock.

I couldn’t pull it out. 

I looked around.  The boy was standing out of the way of the current, just to the side of his door, looking in.  His head was black against the green, his hair a wild sunburst.

“You’re not going through that door,” I said.

Somehow he heard me.  He looked at me and his face was full of longing. 

I jerked and jerked, but couldn’t pull my finger from the crack.  “You’re not going through,” I yelled.  That door would be the end of him, and I couldn’t bear it. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t bear it.  He dragged himself over the threshold, and the water tore around him. 

“Ah, shit,” I said, looking up. 

I saw a glint: a knife sliding down the stone; the one that had broken the ice.  With never a thought I stopped its progress and cut through my finger. 

Blood curled around me.  I made my way wildly forward and grabbed his shirt. He didn’t struggle and I pulled us into the upsurge.

A swell carried us to the eastern side of the pool.  I grabbed hold of an ice woman standing secure in the shallows, and lodged us between her spread arms.  The boy was comatose, or dead, as he should have been.  I didn’t wonder at it, but dragged myself into the shallows and pulled him after.

I lay for a while on a shelf of shale, back warmed by the water.  The boy drew breath beside me.  Not dead, then.  I remembered his name. 

The sky had cleared above the thundering water and shone with a million stars.  I crouched over him.  “You’re a crazy idiot,” I told him, in case he could hear me.  Frozen hair snapped from my cheek and lips.  “The djain’s gone.”  I glanced around to make sure of it, and stared.

The hilt of Andrei’s dagger stood out from my ice-mother’s breast.  Before this, the banks of the pool glistened—not with snow.

Asters. They were growing alongside us, waving beneath the water. White, big as a man’s palm, lacy like the frost.  They sang like harp strings when I plucked them. 

Liskara found me there.  She sneezed around Andrei’s face, and I pulled the cloth away from his chest.  The wound was ghastly––grey and star-shaped, the tip of its longest arm reaching beneath his chin.  Won by planting the dagger into the wrong woman.

“God.  Look at you.”  I screwed up my face and made it wet again.  “Ruined.  Good for nothing.  I hope you never wake up.”  The tears came faster, freezing on my face.

Finally I rubbed the ice off my arms and gathered more asters.  Asters that looked as though they could heal anything. On a whim I pressed one into his wound and pulled his shirt over it.  Then I stood up and rummaged through Liskara’s bags for dry clothes, kindling and the tinderbox, singing aloud to keep my stiff fingers moving.

Fire colored the bank and I dragged Andrei from the warm water.  Before his wet wrappings froze I stripped him perilously close to the flames.  Then I gave him a new aster and wrapped him in a dry cloak. 

I took a stone from the fire, rolled it in a blanket and placed it beside him under the cloak.  I broke the clothes from my own body, rubbed savagely at my chest, and wrapped my aching left hand, which had begun to ooze clear and red.  Then I put a blanket over Liskara.  I slipped under the wool and pressed myself into her flank.

The horse’s side moved against my naked skin, in and out with loud blows; and I thought and thought, and couldn’t think the feeling out of my head.

Thirty

Liskara knelt so that I might drag Andrei across her back and secure him there with several lengths of rope. 

In this way we rushed south with the river, and when sandy Pemrenia swallowed the horizon, the thaw came, and the thrushes, too, with their throaty warbles.  I did with Andrei what I could––put rags full of stock and mash in his mouth and forced him to swallow––and curious little balls of palendry sprouts appeared in the oddest places: high atop stone cairns, suspended by thread from trees.  I suspected it had something to do with the river saebel.

If palendries were an antidote to as fierce a poison as bandorescroll I figured it couldn’t hurt to put them in Andrei.  So I boiled them, and spooned the tea into his mouth, and then poured the rest across his chest.

It must have worked some, because the grey star on his chest began to fade.  Or maybe it was the asters.  For fear he would stop his breathing and according to some dictate of my subconscious mind, I replaced the ice aster over his wound with a fresh one from my pocket after each time I bathed him.  I wasn’t worried about running out––they took up less space than eider down and I’d packed as many as I could into my pockets.

On a mild day I heard the thunder of falls.  It drew nearer and nearer, and then Liskara and I were standing over the foamy beginnings of the Grennan, looking across to Norembry.  She was clothed grey with early spring. 

We came to the old ferry landing––busily operating now––and I threw a blanket over Andrei so he looked part of the horse’s baggage, and paid the fee to cross.

The other side rang with the clamor of a farrier.  When Liskara was re-shod, we walked along the river, and the spirits of cottonwood, willow, and birch woke and sang where the water shone.

***

The time drew near, perilously near, to my five-year limit.  Andrei began to stir––quick little twitches in his fingers and under his eyelids.  This didn’t do much to make me feel better; I was nervous and grew more so as the days ran out.  I tried coaxing Liskara faster, but she was old and carrying a load, and plodded like a lame donkey. 

Whenever I saw folk walking toward us on the road I put blankets over Andrei so I looked like a girl bringing goods to market.  I would ask the date, and they would reply with a sidelong glance I was too harried to care about. 

And then no one came for a long stretch of time.  I lost track of the days.  I’d been scraping marks on a piece of bark, but one day it slipped from my fingers and under Liskara’s hoof in the rain; and I tried in vain to make out what I’d written on the tatters.  Now and then a tree or stone or bluff looked familiar, and I hoped I was drawing near.  But the river was so completely different now I couldn’t trust my judgment.

There came a colder, blowing day, and the feeling in my gut was of ends and beginnings.  Anxious almost to tears, I called for my brothers every hour, wondering what it might feel like to go mad, tugging Liskara along.

It was by chance that Floy found me a half-mile upriver from the meeting place. 

It was twilight, and raining.  I heard her chips and took no notice, assuming she was just another bird filling herself full of thistle seeds along the banks.  But she burst into song unnatural for a sparrow when she caught sight of Liskara clopping up the path.  I dropped the leads and ran, and she slammed into my head. 

“I’ve got them,” I cried before she could ask. “I’ve got them––like giant snowflakes!  They’re a marvel.”  For a moment she held me in her arms and her hair flooded my mouth.  Then she was sitting on my shoulder, congratulating me on learning to speak again.  “Where are the boys?” I asked.  “What d’ye suppose would happen if you touched one?” 

“It’s the last day,” she said.  My knees near gave out.  “Didn’t you know it?  Probably not, the way you were
walking
.  We looked for you, but we gave up––we thought you’d never come.” 

A gust of wind blew into my back.  The skin on my neck prickled.  “Try an aster,” I said.

“Not until your brothers have a chance.  You have the tunics?”

“In the saddlebag.”

“Let’s go find the boys,” she said.  “They’re hanging about where I said I’d meet you, and God and the Lady, Reyna, when that river started flowing again––Oh, and the funniest thing happened in Cwdro last month.  You’ll be interested to know, I’m sure, because it’s to do with Fillegal’s brigands––What happened to your finger?” 

She stopped talking and looked over my shoulder.  I was reminded of Leode just out of his birdcage.

Neither of the two patrolmen riding over the crest of the hill was Herist.  Nevertheless, I jumped and swung a leg over the horse’s back.  I shoved Andrei’s head to the side, and kicked her into a run.  The men reacted quickly––one disappearing back the way he had come and the other following us, his green and grey surcoat rippling past the new foliage.

“Why’d you run?” called Floy from the air.  “You’re suspect, now.”

I spurred Liskara faster, flattening myself against her back.  “You didn’t say he was here.”

“Why should I have to?”  She sped next to my head, batting wings against my ear.  “This is where he saw you last. The Ombenelva are giving him the squeeze.”

“Oh God, Floy.”

“He’s already slowing,” said Floy.  I didn’t look behind to see.  “Knows he oughtn’t to risk a false alarm.”

I hugged tighter with my calves. “Why?” 

She struggled to keep within earshot, clawing at my hair.  And then she was swept away behind me, and I heard faintly: “Oh, Machenan.  Oh sweet Machenan.” 

I looked over my aching shoulders and saw the troop of cavalry spreading over the crest, casting long shadows in the late sun.

I kicked harder at Liskara.  She pulled her neck forward and flattened her ears, jibbed when the path tangled and broke around rocks and roots.  I heard metal clank against a stone, and I felt the slight imbalance in her strides.  My heart skipped a beat.  She’d thrown a shoe. 

I thought to ride her down the bank, but they were certain to follow us across the river, and Liskara had to carry us both.

As if reading my thoughts, she slowed to a walk, blowing, lifting her feet resentfully.  “Force her, Reyna,” said Floy.  “We must keep on.”  We had reached the top of a steep incline and the horse trembled under my legs.  “You must force her.”

“They would’ve caught up!”  Liskara balked under my legs.  “They would’ve pried me off her corpse.”  My hope fell apart where it had taken such effort to piece together, and tears wet my cheeks.

“Get off,” said Floy. “Run, you idiot.”

Dust billowed around me when the first soldier brought his horse to a stop beside us.  He grabbed Liskara’s leads.

I jumped from the horse, saddlebag underarm, and scrambled toward the underbrush. I felt a hand around my calf, a knife at my neck. The others came swiftly, over the path and around Liskara, and the horse backed into the trees.  Men stood at her shoulder and neck, and the slate scarp dropped to the river just behind us.  Two of them cut Andrei from his bonds; and as they tied my wrists I saw no black cuirasses or foreign faces. I wondered where Herist was.

And then his long face was up against mine, and his shaking hands tightened around my neck.  “Where is it, you bleeding pustule?  Have you got it on you somewhere?”  He’d a month’s growth of hair on his chin, and the wind blew the stench of liquor across my face.

He ripped away my outer wraps and pulled the knickers off my legs.  I watched from another man’s grip as his hand found the pockets, and I cried out, and a gust of wind pushed into my back.  He ripped out the asters and they blew away like bits of spider silk. The broach’s silver wings flashed and I sank to my knees.

I knelt in the wet grass for some time and would say nothing.  He forced three of my fingers out of joint.  “Gone,” I screamed.  “Gone, gone, gone.”

***

The sun sank and everything moved in a dark blur, and next I knew we were in a low, octagonal tent with rows of cots. 

The soldiers dumped Andrei across one of them, and Herist grabbed Andrei’s hair and joggled his head.  Then he ordered the men out, all except the medic.

This was a skinny, jumpy man who bent over Andrei, examining him.  He looked up after a while, rubbing his whiskers. 

“Well?” said Herist.

“He’s dead. May as well be.”

“He’s sleeping,” I said, and Herist pushed a thumb into my neck.

“Comatose,” said the medic.

“Dead,” said Herist.  “Bitten by a poisonous little spider.”  He dropped me into a chair.  “And we’ll pull her legs off one by one until she tells us where she hid her little sac.”

“It’s
gone
.”  My crooked fingers shook. 

He rammed my head back, and the chair fell over.  The dirt stuck to my wet face.  I wondered how my blood could be so hot and my sweat so cold.

A wind blew in and Gershom ducked through the door flap.  Herist’s voice was like a whip-crack.  “I said no interruptions.” 

He fell silent when he saw the Ombenelvan soldier behind Gershom, face glowing gold in the lamplight.

“Sir,” said Gershom, “they’re discontent with the brigands.” 

Herist said to the Ombenelvan man: “Kill all of them if you like.”

The man ran a hand over his mustache.  “A month ago my commander requested that you provide him with an oblation.”  He spoke slowly, with patience.  “That is all my commander requested.  You have failed.”

“I have provided eighteen of them, convicted in a martial court.”

“They speak a strange language.  They don’t belong to you, nor to your country, nor your army.  They belong to no one.  Outlanders, rubbish.  They answer to nothing but rocks and trees.”  His accent cut through the tent.  “We want a criminal.”

“If you think,” said Herist, stepping close to the man, “that I would keep and feed a criminal all through the winter for the sake of your pigshit god––”

“You speak blasphemy.”  The man showed all his white teeth.  “The scent of your burning flesh will please Orshinq.”

“You daren’t.”  Sweat shone on Herist’s forehead.  Big as he was, the Ombenelvan man was much bigger.  “Your government sold you to me.”

The Ombenelvan man laughed. “I do not think the transaction was completed, Master Herist.  Here we outnumber you five to one––”  He stopped abruptly, and I followed the line of his eyes all the way down to my arm.  I was propped half-up on my elbow.

“A traitor’s mark,” said the Ombenelvan man.  I hid my forearm, my scar, under my stomach.

“You can’t use her.”  Herist ripped his overcoat off, threw it on a chair.   

“She is a traitor, you say it again and again, ‘Watch for the traitor gone north.’”

“She’s killed the heir apparent.  Her business is with me.” 

“A murderess now, you say, killer of the heir apparent?”  The Ombenelvan man walked over, grabbed my arm, and pulled me to my knees.  He turned my arm over and traced a finger along the old scar.  His breath was rank.  I gagged and he smiled at me.  “What crime is more monstrous?  Give her to us, Master Herist, and maybe we won’t burn your flesh for Orshinq and take your men from you.”

He released my arm and I slid back down to the floor.  He turned and left, his breath still stinking the air.  Gershom stayed by the door, wringing his hands like a woman. Herist stared at me.

“What use is she?” he said.  “Could I flame her tongue into wagging?”  He sneered, but his hands shook.  I took no comfort in his terror.  “Gershom,” he said to his man, “take her to the pen to wait well I think what to do.  Have Esperow prepare a pyre.  We’ll burn the boy.”

“And if he should wake?”

“What better way to make sure he doesn’t?”

“Commander,” Gershom kept on bravely, “he took off with the thing––”

Herist gave a hysterical bark of laughter. “You think he’ll be more forthcoming than the girl?  He’s too much trouble.  I want him dead.”

***

“We haven’t enough wood,” said Esperow to Gershom, who dragged me behind him. 

The green and grey of Herist’s garrison spread over the side of a hill overlooking the river.  Beyond this a dark sea of Ombenelvan tents disappeared into the twilight.  The Ombenelvan man had spoken truly: his fellows vastly outnumbered Herist’s.  A few points of fire twinkled here and there in the purple––not many, though, because of the damp.  The ground under my feet was mud; spurts of rain blew against my face.

“There were to have been three people burned for that ceremony,” said Gershom.  “Now there’s only one.  That would leave us enough wood, I should think.”

“It’s wet.”  Esperow was small, old, with a couple strings of hair still on his head.  “Some shitbrain set it out too early, and it rained all yesterday.  All last week.  And it’s raining now.” 

We walked over another large hill, half-covered in yew.  The Cheldony was below us, murmuring sweetly.  There was a large rock jutting from the side of the hill, and we came directly under it.  Upright logs had been jammed into a cave-like recess, right next to each other, like a palisade wall.