Authors: Pamela Freeman
T
HE FIRST TIME
the demon spoke to us, I was just two months out from my seventeenth birthday, from our birthday, my twin’s and mine. We were sitting around a table at an inn, the Wide-Mouthed Jug, in Sandalwood, and it’d been a good day for both of us, Ber and me.
We were feeling like men: there was silver in our pockets and a good day’s work behind us. And there was no one at home to worry over us, for Mam took our comings and goings with never a hair turned, and our da, what used to worry himself over us, he was dead two months gone.
We just wanted a drink, and maybe a few light words with a pretty girl. Ber found one, pretty enough but a bit wild-looking, with a wolf skin around her shoulder. He took her hand. Then he started foaming at the mouth and spouting demon words, and fainted away afterward. I thought he was dead. My heart stopped its beating for one long space and then I saw his breath bubble the foam on his lips, and it started again with a heavy thump.
When he opened his eyes, they were cloudy, and he remembered nothing. “I was holding your hand,” he said to the girl, “and then I was lying on the bench. What happened?”
But I had to take him out of the inn and back to our caravan before I could tell him, for the innkeeper wanted us and the girl out, and she weren’t a woman to argue with.
We never saw the girl again. Sometimes, when Ber talks about it all, sometimes I think she’s what he thinks on most, even now, like it was her who called up the demon in him.
But I don’t think so.
The hardest part, I think, was the way it changed Mam.
She used to be free and easy, never caring where we were or what we were up to, and we’d come home and tell her all about it, whatever it was, and she’d scold us and laugh at us and there’d be no trouble at all. It was Da who worried about us. How that man could worry! From the time we was just walking, he’d take us with him on his tinker rounds, and he’d have us walk ahead of him, “Where I can keep an eye on you.” He kept lookout for strange dogs and strange men, for sharp rocks at our feet and snakes in the grass.
He didn’t even teach us tinkering till we were nearly thirteen. Then he’d make us do everything twice and three times, and over again under his eye, before he’d let us do it on our own. And Mam would shake her head and laugh at him. He wouldn’t hear of us going off on the Road by ourselves, though he had broken from his family when he was fifteen, and married only two years later.
On our seventeenth birthday, around the fire after dinner, we pushed him on it, pushed him for our share of the profits for the summer, for we’d worked long hours and made as much as he.
“Just give us that, Da,” I said. “Give us our silver for the summer and we’ll be off together.”
“I will not!” Da said. “I wouldn’t if I could and I can’t, anyway — I’ve spent it already on a nice caravan. It’ll sleep all of us, snug and sound. I’m picking it up tomorrow from Oswald the Bodger.”
Ber and I looked at each other.
“You had no right to do that,” Ber said.
“No right at all,” I agreed.
“’Twere our silver, just as much as yours.”
“You should have asked us both, and Mam, too, before you did a thing like that.”
“It won’t stop us,” said Ber. “We’ll go anyway, with no silver behind us, and trust to luck we’ll get work before winter.”
“Aye,” I said. “We’ll go tomorrow.”
“No!” Da shouted, jumping to his feet. “You’re too young, you’re too flighty — the first stranger you meet you’ll be fleeced by, I can just see it happening. You’re no more fit to be on the Road than when you were babies. I’ve taken care of you all your lives and I tell you I’m not going to stop now —”
But stop he did, with a look of wild surprise on his face, and he fell down at our feet, the breath gone from his body, tears in his eyes, just like that, dead.
At first, it wasn’t so bad. Once the first shock of the grief and the guilt were done, Mam was strong enough. For there was a load of guilt, for all of us, no doubt of that. But after the first time the demon spoke through Ber, she changed. And maybe I did, too.
It was the not knowing when it would happen. Anytime of the day or night — no telling. But it was always in company, so we got out of the habit of going to inns, Ber and I, and we didn’t linger with our customers to chat no more.
We knew what they said — “Not like their father, those boys. Why, Griff’d have you there all day, talking about those two, and now they don’t give you the time of day . . .”
But we were good tinkers, Ber and I, so we didn’t lose much custom by it, and we explained the demon away as fits, to them that asked. Maybe we even got more custom — people coming to take a look at the possessed man.
Mam kept a close eye on us, now, and wanted us home in the fire circle by dark; though the demon came in the daytime, too, so what difference that made I don’t know. She fussed over Ber, though she used to treat us two so alike, sometimes we joked she couldn’t tell us apart. Now it was like I was older, more responsible. And I did it myself, too, like he had a mortal illness and I had to tend to him.
Yet he was no different in himself, nervier, maybe, but sometimes I think it was Mam and I made him so. He had no memory of it, see, no memory of the fire growing dark and the air growing cold, of the hair standing up on your neck, and the flesh crawling on your bones . . . as that thing used him, used his mouth and his tongue and his eyes . . .
It never did us any harm direct. When it spoke, it spoke only warnings. Sometimes we didn’t even understand what it said, but whoever we were with understood all right. I’ve seen grown men go white and run from the room at a single word. It might be a name, or a place, and once in Fiton, it were just, “twelve silver pieces,” and an old man, white-haired and rheumy-eyed, shuffled out of the inn like Death herself were after him. She caught him later that night, we heard, when he hanged himself in his own barn. We don’t go back to Fiton now.
It went on like that for two years. I was thinking about leaving, about just plain running somewhere, anywhere I didn’t have to watch Ber every second. But how could I leave him? Or Mam? He was half of my heart’s blood, and she was the other. So I thought,
Next time it comes, I’m going to talk to it, ask it to leave us alone. Beg with it. Bargain with it, need be.
For we’d never had the courage to speak to it directly. It was too hard, it using Ber’s voice, and always so calm and reasonable, even when it was accusing some poor soul of murder, or worse. I couldn’t bear to look at him when he was foaming at the mouth and blank-eyed. But I had to. Mam was withering away, not eating, not smiling. She’d be sick, come winter, I knew.
So I was waiting, on edge, all that summer. We worked our way through Pless and Carlion, down the Long Valley to Margarie, then made north to Freewater as the leaves started turning. All that time the demon was quiet, and we kept ourselves to ourselves. It was a beautiful summer — hot days and cooler nights — and autumn came in on a whisper of cold in the early mornings, such that one day we woke to find Ros, our mare, had her winter coat and we hadn’t even noticed.
Now we had the caravan, we didn’t need to winter over in a town, but this year I wanted to because Mam was looking so thin and frail.
“Back me up,” I said to Ber. “She’ll get sick otherwise for sure.”
He was uneasy with the idea. “Freewater’s a big place. Lot of people.” He was worried about the demon coming. And I saw he was more pained by it all than I’d known, feeling set apart, like, and not safe for others to be around.
“It’ll be all right, twin,” I said. “You do no harm, and never could.”
“Not I, but it.”
I hugged him, feeling suddenly that I knew what Da felt when he worrited after us. “What will happen, will happen. And might be there’s a stonecaster in Freewater can tell us what it is.”
That cheered him, and me too, for it was a good idea and I should have had it before.
So we found a barn on the outskirts of Freewater, and the farmer let us use it and draw water from his well. Ber and I set Mam up good, and that first night we chopped her wood and fetched her water and sat down for dinner with her, and it was like it always had been, she was bright and laughing for once. It was like a gift, and it decided me to act then and there.
“We’re going into Freewater,” I told her straight after dinner, while she was putting the plates away. “We’re going to a stonecaster to see what they say about this thing.”
She went pale, standing there, and Ber had to take the plate out of her hand lest she drop it, but she nodded and sat down. “Aye. It’s time and past time to face it.” But her eyes filled with tears. And the room grew cold. “Oh, gods, preserve us,” Mam whispered.
Ber stood up, blank-eyed, shivering, and the light faded. My gorge were rising, like it always did, but this time I stood and faced the demon, eye to eye.
“Do not go to the stonecaster,” it said.
“What do you want with us? Why do you come? Why are you tormenting us like this?” I had a hundred questions, but I could barely force myself to speak.
It tilted Ber’s head, and on his face was puzzlement; it was the first feeling it had ever shown. It seemed to search for words, where words had always come easily before.
“I help,” it said finally.
“You steal my brother’s body and call that helping?”
“I . . . warn. Danger comes, I tell you.”
Anger was taking me over; I could feel it, and I knew I had to hold it back or any damage I did would be to Ber. “Why us? Why follow us? Leave us alone! Let us go our own road.”
“No!” it howled, foam coming out Ber’s mouth. “I’ve taken care of you all your lives and I tell you I’m not going to stop now — not now, not yet —”
“Griff,” Mam said, so quiet, so gentle it would break your heart. “Griff, you’re dead, love. Time to let go. Time to say goodbye.”
It shook Ber’s head, shook his whole body. “No, no, no, no . . .”
“They’re grown men, love.” Mam touched Ber’s face, looked into his blank eyes. “They can look after themselves.”
I was shaking, too, finally hearing Da’s voice underneath Ber’s. But he wasn’t listening to Mam. “Can’t you see what you’re doing to us, Da?” I said. “You think you’re protecting us, but you’re sucking the life out of us all, not just Ber.”
“I’d never hurt —”
“Every time it hurts! You’ve got no right. You never had no right to hold on to us. It killed you trying. Let go — for pity’s sake!”
“Let go, love,” said Mam.
“Love —” it whispered.
“Aye,” she said, “aye, I know you do.”
He turned Ber’s head to look at her, and for a moment he was truly there, looking out of Ber’s eyes — my old da, stubborn as ever.
“Love —” he said again, then Ber’s eyes closed and he fell over.
Seems to me I watched my da die twice, and both times I killed him. I went to the stonecaster after, and she picked Guilt out, and Death and Love — all lying facedown. But faceup were New Beginnings and the blank stone, which means the future’s open-ended, and anything could happen from here on in.
T
HE GODS
had
led him to Connay, Saker decided as he listened to the high, perfect voice of the woman singing. The inn crowd didn’t care about her perfection; they banged their tankards on the table in time to the insistent drum and tapped their feet to the flute. After a couple of verses they were shouting out the chorus with smoke-roughened voices.
And Acton laughed!
Yes, he laughed!
He laughed and killed them all!
Verse after verse, the song went through Acton’s exploits on the battlefield; a litany of murder, thought Saker, a canticle of death. Then he realized what he was hearing: a map.
When they took a break he fought his way to the small stage. “How many of the old songs do you know?” he asked the flautist.
The flautist was a man of middle years, with intense black eyes. “I know all of them,” he said matter-of-factly, using a kerchief to clean the spit out of the flute.
The gods
were
leading him!
“My name is Penda,” Saker said. It was a name he used whenever he pretended to be one of Acton’s people, the name of one of Acton’s companions in Death Pass. Penda was the last one through the pass, just as Saker was the last of the old blood, undiluted. It was a little irony he carried around with him. “I am a student of the old times. I would like to learn the songs, to write them down.”
The man shook his head decidedly. “No. The songs must be passed from mouth to ear — never written. If you don’t promise this, I cannot help you.”
Saker recognized the tone in his voice: absolute certainty. Gold wouldn’t change his mind. Nothing would. “Could I write down some of the things the songs talk about? Names, places, what was done there? A history?” he asked.
The man looked uncertain. The singer came and placed a hand on his arm and his hand went up automatically to cover it gently. They smiled at one another, the unbidden smile of long-time lovers, more a softening around the eyes than anything else. Husband and wife, Saker thought.
“The songs
are
the history,” the man said finally, and made to turn away.
“But how many people know the songs?” Saker asked, desperation flaring. “How many people have you taught?”
The flautist paused, some pain flickering on his face. “My son. But . . .”
“But he has left the Road,” the woman said, “as he needed to. We are teaching Cypress, here.” She gestured to the drummer. Even concentrating on the flautist as Saker was, he noticed the gracefulness of her hand movement, her beauty. Her features matched the beauty of her voice. “It will do no harm for him to write down the names and places, Rowan,” she said.
The man hesitated. “It’s not the tradition.”
“But he’s one of us,” the woman said. “One of the old blood.”
Saker felt himself pale. How could she know? He had dyed his hair red-brown, his eyes were hazel: he looked exactly like any other descendant from the second wave of Acton’s invasion.
She smiled at him with pity. “The old blood recognizes itself,” she said. “You are driven to find out what happened in the time past.”
He nodded.
“I see it. It gives you no peace. Perhaps when you know the total, you will find a way to peace. Help him, Rowan.”
She moved away and bent over to talk to the drummer, Cypress.
“If Swallow wants to help you, you’ll be helped — one way or another,” the man said. “I will tell you the songs and you may write your history. But, Penda, there are many songs and we must travel. You will have to come with us.”
Saker nodded. “Of course, of course. And I can pay you —”
“Good,” the drummer broke in. “You can start by buying a round of drinks!”