Aloren (7 page)

“You are one, aren’t you?”  Floy flew to my shoulder and hid herself in my hair.  I sat next to the envoy and soon forgot what a nitwit he was; the pages were were full of intriguing passages, such as:

‘She’s desperate to reach Virnraya, and I think I know why.  I think I know more than I ought, though most of it’s guesswork. She took me on later, but I know she did it.  There’s guilt in her eyes, and it increases ten-fold when she holds, even looks at the boy.  She’s anxious. Everyone in Merstig, Neridona, the whole country, believes the Ravyina and her boy were torn apart by beasts.  Except the Ravyir.  He won’t believe it. They think he’s gone in the head, but he knows.’

Or,
‘The Ravyir is searching for us.  She’s frightened.  I can tell by her horrible pinched face.  Not as frightened as I am of her––that she’ll mark me out as dangerous, think this journal is more than medicinal simples, find someone who knows Rielde.  

‘We’ve reached Dirlan, and the duke received us––I don’t know why.  I’ve never seen the ocean before and neither has baby, so I stood him on the wall and he laughed.   We’ve decided it’s too big for us. 

‘I wonder what she has in mind.  She can’t want him dead.  She could have done it a long time before, and I’m still here.’
 

Hoary read on, unfazed.  He didn’t seem to understand. 

***

The next day it rained torrents, and I locked the journal, Emry (who couldn’t bear to be separated from her mother’s book), Floy, a candle, and myself into the larder for a private discussion.

“He was the king’s son,” I said, “of Lorila––the one eaten by wild animals!  But he wasn’t really, because someone took him away.  That’s who she’s talking about, the lost king’s son.”

“Doubt it,” said Floy. “And who cares, anyway?”

“It’s your country.”

“Noremb
ry’s
my country.”

“Come on, Floy, don’t you remember anything?”

“I was a year old.  The baby’s dead, long dead––and good riddance.  Royals are batshit crazy.”

“I’m royal.”

“Case in point.”

“Where’s your sense of intrigue?”

“Lost it along with my arms and legs.”

“Emry,” I said aloud.  “Did you know your mother was a prince’s wetnurse?”

“I’m a prince?” said Emry.

“No.  Stupid hill.”  Water leaked from the ceiling onto my head.  “Going to get everything moldy.”

“And we’ve no proof,” twaddled Floy.  “No proof she’s telling the truth, or the boy was royal––”

I ignored her––she was only a pot girl, after all, and I began flipping through the book.  I felt a lump in the bottom of the spine. 

I tore the moldy leather, dug into it with my finger, felt something.  I pulled out a piece of silver.  Floy tangled herself in burlap.

It was a dragonfly broach, wide as my little finger.  The wings had clusters of strange circles, like characters from a beautiful language.  Two diamonds shone on the tips of its wings, and its abdomen was hollow, wrapped around by delicate, angular legs.  The head was stamped with a tiny pickaxe.  It glittered in the candlelight. 

“Ooh, might’nt I hold it?” said Emry.

“Emry.”  We jumped at Marna’s voice.  “Emry, what is it you feel you must hold before giving the dog his scraps?  Is Aloren in there?”

“Does Marna know?” I whispered.  “About the book?”

“Hurry out.  He’s nipping my ankles.”

“No, no, she doesn’t,” said Emry.  She obviously wanted to keep it that way.

I blew the candle out and put a sack of potatoes over the book, and we piled out with the broach hidden in my hand.  “We were playing at being princes,” Emry told her aunt.

“What I wouldn’t give to be a prince.”  Marna shoved the puppy away and peered into the larder.  “I want that hole stuffed up.”

“It’s pouring.”  I held the silver tighter.

“I wouldn’t care if it was raining stars, miss high-airs.  I won’t hold with moldy potatoes.”

I hid the broach under a stone in the kitchen, and ran outside to patch the hole.  

***

Later that afternoon, Floy and I found a telling passage.

“Here,” I said, “she mentions it here:

‘We’ve just met with Dravadha Broteldu.  He’s why we’re in Virnraya, I think.  Baby has a Dravadha broach pinning his wraps together.  And she must’ve gave Dravadha a commission a good month back; when we arrived he’d something already made for her, some bit of jewelry that fits right into the broach.’

“There’s a pickaxe on it, remember?” I said to Floy.  “That’s Dravadha’s emblem.”

“He forges his silver with magic,” said Floy.  

“I know.”

“Well, is there anything magical about that broach?”

“Maybe.  How’m I supposed to know?” 

I flipped to a section nearer the back.  ‘
I was terrified.  Sore tired of being scared.  I hadn’t any choice.  If I’d stayed longer it would have been obvious I’m with child.  It knocks against my heart to abandon that child for my own. 

‘I stole the broach.  But that’s nothing to stealing a baby.  And what else could I have done, going all the way to the tip of the Daynens?  I shall try not to pawn it unless starvation proves the only other road.  I am almost doing her a favor––the boy has no longer a means of identification.  She still has the other piece, the specially made piece, and it was more important, I believe, to her at least––’

That was enough for me.  I took the broach up to Hoary’s room and thrust the thing under his nose.  He’d just returned from his walk.  He was sitting in a chair next to the hearth, cloak flung over the fire screen.

“It’s true,” I said.  “Animals never killed the crown prince of Lorila.  You could find him and fix Lorila, then come back here with a great many soldiers and Aclunese fire artillery.”

“What is it?”  He took it from me and held it up to his failing eyes.

“A Dravadha broach.”

He sat up straighter.  “Dear me.”

“It was lodged in the book.”  I showed him the tear in the spine, and read him the passage.

He sat back, folded his hands in front of him.  “I thought that book was nonsense.” 

“But the broach––”

“Oh, yes, it belonged to someone very important, I’m sure.”

He was awfully hard-nosed, but I kept going: “You’d have to look for the other piece of it, to find the boy.”

“We don’t know what we’re looking
for
.  Wait.”  He squinted at the wings.  “There’s something written here.  In Simargh.”  He held the thing up to the window. 

The Simargh were said to be marvelous winged beings made all of light.  “Can you read it?” I said.  “What’s it say?”  He held up his hand for silence.

It took him a time to decipher; even with his eyeglass the filigree was miniscule.  “I carry between colors.”  He smiled.  “Maybe it
was
made to carry something.” 

“What’s it really say?” I said, sliding my hand around the back of the chair.  I felt I wasn’t hearing it in full, as if Rielde were a defective language.

“
Nain e gaev pirnon mireir.
” 

The last bit caught my ear.  I whispered it softly a couple of times.  “Pirnon mireir.” 

My intonation went down and up.  A musical phrase ran through my head, neatly fitted with words:
The ice aster throws high her gossamer skirts on the brow of the Pirnon Mireir
.

Eight

Halfway out the door I turned and asked, “What’s the Pirnon Mireir, Hoar—Master Envoy?”

“Between?  Colors?  I don’t know of any such thing.  You’re better suited asking a Simargh.”

“Mordan,” I exclaimed aloud.  “Where’s that know-all tell-all idiot when you need him?”  Without building up his fire I threw myself down the stairs to tell Floy.

Floy was as excited as I, but did a better job containing it.  “Be patient,” she said.  “We’ve a week left to our new moon.”

Hoary drew a detailed sketch of the broach––he was quite a good draftsman––and gave it back to Emry and me to hide, saying he didn’t need something so valuable on the road.

He become fascinated with Emry’s mother’s journal. One morning he made the mistake of helping Emry with her reading when Marna was in rather than out. The ground had frosted in the night and I’d gone down to the cellar to check the crocks. 

When I came back up Hoary and Marna were yelling. Emry sat hunched on the bench, looking as though she’d like to sink into the floor.  “You know what became of her mother?” said Marna. “Unwed, with child. Ill to her death.”

I stepped back into the kitchen and watched from the doorway.

“You think learning her letters killed her?” Hoary shut the journal with a clap. “Patently ridiculous, madam.”

“Discontent killed her. She could’ve been happy, but she had to
know
things.”

“My good woman, certainly you know things, too. You delivered a baby just last week.”

“That’s different.” She folded her arms.  “I’m still here, aren’t I? How long have you been teaching her?”

“I?  You’ve blamed the wrong man.  Probably taught herself.”

I ran my sweaty palms down my skirts, waiting for Emry to spill.  She only looked at the floor, face red as a beetroot.  I could have kissed her.

“Then who does that
thing
belong to?” Marna pointed to the journal with a trembling finger.

“Emry,” said Padlimaird Crescentnet, who’d just come in the front door.  He’d a keen nose for arguments.  “It was your sister’s book, Mrs. Nydderwaic.  And Emry’s been busy reading it for all of six years.  Maybe seven.” 

Marna saw me in the doorway.  Immediately, and as an indication the envoys had worn out their welcome, she ordered me gather up their belongings and dump them in the street. 

There was a snap in the air, and the aspens shook gold from their branches as the Benmar humans walked south down the road with their winter cloaks at hand.  Emry’s mother’s journal went with them. 

“Floy.”  I looked after the travelers until the trees swallowed them.  “If it weren’t for Marna d’you think they might have stayed and helped?”

“If it weren’t for Marna they wouldn’t have spent a day here,” said Floy from my shoulder, thinking of the palendries.

“That ale,” I said.  “Probably keeps the whole village happy and stupid with it.”

***

She was hanging about the kitchen that evening, asking how she might learn to un-read.  After she left the room for bed, I stood over the cistern, wiping a dish.  Marna came up behind and ripped the broach from my pocket. 

“Aghast,” she said in a hushed voice.  “What’s this?  Came it from them human devils?” 

She rapped me with her knuckles; the broach stuck out from her fingers and tore into my arm. 

“A thief!”  She glowered over me, and I held my bleeding arm, watching her fists.  “I suppose it’s my own fault listening to that human dotard, but it’s time the girl got her comeuppance.  Well?”  She flew at me and I ducked beneath a chop-block.  “What’s her excuse?” 

“Someone else did it.” My stomach squeezed and I tasted bile.

She threw her head back and snorted.  “How much more have you got in your pillowcase?” 

I don’t have a pillow, you old toad. 
I was sweating and dizzy.  The word would spread––I’d be drummed from the village with a missing hand––and a great deal of help that would be for the weaving of tunics!  I didn’t understand the justice of it; I’d done everything in my power to please her, but she grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the door. 

Wille shot through it.  He ran into the wall, knocking down a shelf of earthenware. 

He shook dust out of his hair and said to Marna, “The village is being raided, ma’am.  They say inns are a prime target, so you may want to clear out.”  He looked at me.  I was trembling uncontrollably.  “What’s wrong with her?” 

But Marna was already upstairs, and judging from the noise, hiding her valuables.

Wille patted me on the head.  He ran into the common room shouting, “Brigands!  Brigands!” 

Floy flew through the door and slammed into a sack of flour.  I pulled her upright, and she cried, “Run!  Get moving, they’re almost here.” 

The message sank in.  I skidded out the door, the sparrow banging into my neck. I ran hard down the hill, fleabane and yarrow slicing into my legs.  The sun sank behind blowing clouds, and I made toward the cowshed to collect my saddlebag. 

I saw them at the bottom of the hill, mowing down the fences, drumming through the pumpkins.  A cold wind blew and my skin pricked––I remembered the flaming arrows, the smoke.  I’d never seen men like these, with chests bare and shining with torchlight, and hair like cobwebs. 

“Reyna,” sang Floy.  They rode closer––I saw the flash of teeth and eyes. 

The ground groaned; I ran behind a heap of thatching bracken next to the cowshed.  Someone threw a torch and the bracken caught fire.  It seared a hole through my skirts.  I rubbed it out in the dirt and crept into the shed. 

I stayed clear of the mad, lowing cow.  I put my fist in a hole in the wall, dug out the saddlebag, and heard someone sniffling.

She was up in the haymow.  I couldn’t guess why she’d chosen the haymow.

“Emry,” I said, “you’ll roast like a peahen on a spit.”  She only sobbed louder, so I pulled her down, not very gently, and dragged her out the door. 

The inn was burning at the top, and I couldn’t very well send her back into it.  I took her hand, and we raced through the north field to the pond, tripping on tufts of reaped hay.  Halfway there the clouds thinned and parted: Floy wasn’t flying any longer.  She ran, making tracks in the frost.  Emry stared.  “It’s just a ghost,” I said, tugging her along. 

The pond was lit with orange and rent with noise.  Floy and I waded into the flowerbed, arms outstretched.  “Ouch!”  I glared at my thumb.

“What?”

“Gentians don’t––oh––”  I’d brushed a nettle.  “Come and help,” I hissed at Emry.  She stood looking on, half-dead with fear. 

I wrapped my hands in my apron and pulled my nettles.  My insides churned; I knelt in the dirt.  I clenched my teeth and ripped them free.  It felt like a kick in the chest.  “Must it hurt this much?”  I ripped more from the ground and cried out. 

I jumped near out of my skin when more hands joined in: Tem and Arin, both very Elde in the starlight.

“God!”  Tem gathered gentian stems, his back bowed and shuddering.  “It hurts so!” We bit our tongues until the saddlebag bulged.  Tem’s movements grew frantic.  “Hurry.”  He pushed us towards the forest.  “The other half is riding through the pasture; they’ll be here soon.”

“There’s another half?”  I ripped free the last stalk of gentians.

“Stop.”  Tem bowled me over.

“It doesn’t seem like enough, though,” said Arin.  I wondered if he had gone mad, then saw he was looking at the flower heads in the bag.  “It’s enough for a scarf.  Like as not, for five tunics they’ll need to cover the hills.”

They were supposed to cover the hills?

“Do you have the letter things, Reyna?” said Tem.  I ran to an oak on the opposite bank and pulled an inkwell and parchment from a knothole.  The quill wasn’t there.

“Where is it?”  I looked around the roots and into the water.

“Don’t be dumb,” said Arin, who had come with me.  “If it wasn’t an iron feather it’s long gone.”  Then he took me by the hand, and I took Emry by the hand, and we ran after Floy with Tem in the rear. 

We were splashing across Carder’s Ford in the tall bottom woods, when torchlight shone through the beeches east of us.  A line of it stretched down a ridge not far from the ford.  It moved in our direction. 

Floy slid on the wet shingle. “Which half is
this?
”  There was an absence of underbrush.  We had nowhere to hide.

“Oy!”  Tem beckoned and slipped between the beeches and oaks on the opposite side of the stream.  He was an eerie sight, now an egret, now a boy, shifting in the shadow and light; and we stumbled after him.  We hadn’t gone far when a big bald hill stood in our way.  I saw the bone-white stones in its foot, half concealed by ferns, and the black between them.

“It’s the barrow, Tem, the ford’s barrow.  You don’t mean to go in there?”

“It isn’t a barrow.”  He stood just outside the entrance, his left arm feathered and in shadow.  I peered into the dark.

“But––”

“Quickly now.  We need you.”  He pointed to his feathers.  Arin had to use all his strength to push Emry and me inside, and Floy hesitated before she followed. 

In the dark beneath the hill the birds sat on my shoulders, and I stumbled along, banging my feet.   Emry held my hand in a tight, wet grip. 

“Keep up,” I told her, “and you won’t get eaten by ghouls.”  As we walked, the passage sloped down and widened, and the dust became wet, collecting between my toes.  The air was musty and thick and we pushed through it like a curtain. 

The place wasn’t a barrow, but a tunnel, arching higher than I wished to reach, worn into waves by subterranean streams that surprised us unpleasantly now and again.  No barrow, but haunted nonetheless. 

My palms brushed runes in the rock, stories that soaked into my skin with the dampness: Coronets of stars and sea-spray, and a saebel king, crowned with laurel and holly, moonlight in his eyes.  A field of red flowers at the foot of a sand dune.  An ice-woman with a dagger in her breast.  A bridge of gold stretching across an abyss, and over it coming a girl, a hart, and a light.  The light was a pinprick that grew and kept growing, and then I saw Emry’s dirty face, and stepped into the outside air.

We were in a huge, square tower––we’d gone backwards through what must have been its escape route.  The walls leaned drunkenly to one side, looking ready to collapse.  The roof already had, blocking the entrance with a pile of rubble. 

In the corner was a rope ladder leading to a loft of wooden beams that should have rotted away long ago.  Nobody noticed this.  Nor did we notice the barrels in the corners, or the characters, neither old, nor runic, scratched into the chalky walls. 

“Look who it is,” said Mordan.  I put my hands over Emry’s ears.  “And a good thing, too.  Felt like my chest was being wrenched to pieces.”  Leode, looking more wan than usual, grinned and clapped his hands.

“It was the last of the flowers,” I said, and looked round me.  “How on earth did you find this place?”

“We’re birds most of the time,” Leode said.  Mordan went straight to business. 

“You might as well be kept up to date, so here’s the bad news.”

“Wait,” I said, “Emry––” 

I pulled her into the corner under the loft.  I sat next to her and sang a song about a girl who heard a nightingale singing with her dead mother’s voice.  Emry was asleep before I’d finished. 

I’d half a mind to go to sleep next to her, but I walked back to where the boys and Floy had gathered.  Mordan shook me awake.  “Uncle Ederach hasn’t been crowned King or even made Regent.” 

“The Queen has a son,” said Tem.

“Oh,” I said.  “Is he a half brother?”

“He’s a poisonous little toad,” said Arin.

“You’d become fast friends,” I said.  “What’s the good news?”

“What good news?” said Mordan sadly.  

I leaned forward.  “I’ve got some.”

“What?” Leode leaned in with me.  I sang the first line of Mother’s ice aster song. 

Tem started to laugh.  Mordan’s eyes grew wide, and the moss sprang green beneath their feet.

“That’s only the first line,” crowed Tem.  “How many verses are there?” he asked Mordan.  “Seven?  Eight?”

“Find out, shall we?”  Mordan began to sing in his funny, half-grown voice:

   On the brow of the Pirnon Mireir.

She laces her slippers and dances a waltz,

   And she weaves her a door in the air.

Could she weave herself through, she would find a sweet land

   Filled with noon-tides of nectar and cream

But the key and the door and the door and the key––”

He tilted his head.  “How’s the rest go?”

Tem shook his head, sang,

“But the door wants a key, and the key will not show

   Till she walks neath the water in dream.

“How’s the next bit start?”  He was looking at Arin.

“Don’t know,” said Arin, looking up at the stars.  “I was six.”

“You were singing it in the bath well after you were six,” said Tem.

“Underwater,” said Mordan, “so loud I could hear it.”

I started laughing.

“Now I’m definitely not telling,” said Arin.

“It’s a matter of life or death, Arin,” said Tem.

Arin easily had the best voice of all of us.  But he could howl like a dog when he wanted, and he did so now:

“Before she was gowned in her petals of white,

   Aster dreamed herself out through her door,

Now were she to dance all her fragrance away,

   She would weave herself entrance no more.

She floats free of the earth, just a crafter of doors

   For the feet standing stark in the ground,

Ever weighting a warp round the runaway pain

   From a hurt that cries nary a sound.”

“No ear does she have, nor a mouth that can scream

   To fill suffering’s silent appeal,

But she’ll dance and she’ll bleed and she’ll dream out a key

   For the door she has sworn to unseal.

She courts weft with her shuttle and measures her stride,

   Then sets out to envelop the earth.

All her unfolding florets, her sorrow and stem

   Can’t begin to encompass its girth.

She weaves light with a fire that shows in her step,

   And shines out through the snow and despair,

But the demons have slipped through a much larger door,

   And they scheme to indict and impair

All the sweet thoughts above, all the gladness and joy

   That she spins into delicate strands.

Though no hope for her dance, Aster spins out the whole,

   Making warmth with her feathery hands.”

“Thank you,” said Tem.  “What have we learned?” 

“She’s white,” said Leode, “she floats free of the ground, and she hasn’t ears or a mouth, and she lives under the stars.”

“Which is true of a lot of flowers,” said Mordan.

“Alright, Mordan,” I said.  “What’s the Pirnon Mireir?”

“I don’t know.”

We all stared at him.

“It’s Simargh,” said Mordan.