Chains of Gold (6 page)

Wild lads, youths and lads, the lot of them riding on the Naga, down to the strand where the glain lie, the blue stone snake eggs of the great serpent in the sea. I smiled at the thought of such riding, wondered if anyone had ever seen them, had ever thought them a vision. But to find the glain, the talisman of seers, and never be let to set foot on the strand even to pick one up—my smile left me. So there was no magic in Arlen's steed any more, because it had set foot on a shore.

Arlen had fallen silent.

“Were they cruel to you?” I blurted to keep him talking, and instantly I could have bitten my tongue. It was a tactless question. But it made him stir.

“Sometimes.” His voice sounded distant. “There were many ordeals, torments. We had to be tough—and they were always pitting us against each other, placing us on our mettle, so that we would vie for the honor—” He stopped.

The honor of being slaughtered. He was not yet ready to speak of that. “Tell me about your family,” I said.

“I have none.” He sounded amused, and warmer, closer. “No more than the Gwyneda do. The oracle gives them a new name when they come to the Sacred Isle, and after that they have none other, and to their families they are as if dead.”

“Well,” I remarked, “for me that would have been the one good thing about being a white-robe.”

“Daughter of Rahv. Yes.” He understood. “But do you not have a mother?” he asked me.

“She died somehow when I was younger. I do not remember that she was sick, and everyone has always been very vague about it.” I shrugged. “I think Father killed her because she did not give him sons.”

There was silence. I had stopped shivering and forgotten the cold; I felt quite comfortable.

“But you have a mother among the Gwyneda,” I said presently.

“Perhaps. But I do not know which one it might be; none of us do. It was said that the white-robes do not know themselves, though I cannot see how that could be—but none of them ever gave a sign.”

I kept silence, hoping he would go on of his own accord, and in a moment he did.

“There were always a few extra of us, a few more than might be needed for the ceremonials, I mean, though some died of fever and the like, and some were pockmarked or whatnot and—were sent away, I know not how, disappeared. For they were unpleasing to the goddess.” He took a deep breath. “I was going to say, my mother might not have been a white-robe. But if she was, I always hoped she was one of the kind ones. Lonn and I—” He stopped with a choking sound.

He had been about to speak of Erta, I felt sure, but that meant speaking of Lonn. Speak of Lonn, I urged him inwardly, it will do you good. Grief turns to venom, unspoken. But I could not say such things to him, for I did not yet know him well. Instead, I kissed his face, since it lay close to mine. He shook his head rapidly, and his whole body tightened into a knot.

“Mother of torments, Rae, the pain!” he cried, panting. “Ai, why did you have to warm me?”

I thought he meant the pain of limbs coming to life, and so I suppose he did, in a way. I rubbed his shoulders to ease him, thought of reaching down to rub the calves of his legs. But then all in a rush between gasps of agony he began speaking of Lonn, none too connectedly.

“I could have gone, slipped away so easily—but no, then I had to stay and be with—Rae, the torment!” His arms were tightening around me, too tight, constricting. “I thought I was brave, but now I know better. That was why I wanted to go first, winterking, so I would not have to see—what he did not want to see—oh, no, Lonn, Lonn!” The name came out in a terrible cry, and his arms were crushing me, but I would not cry out, not then, not for anything. By far the worse pain was his, then.

“He would have been next,” I whispered, with a small shock of comprehension. “Summerking.…”

“In a six-month. Yes.” He went limp, releasing me, and lay beside me gasping or sobbing—the darkness shielded him, and I could tell nothing about him in that blackness unless he spoke to me. I needed his touch.

“Arl?”

His hand found mine, and he quieted.

“Are you all right?”

He did not answer me except by drawing me close to him again, gently this time. “Rae,” he murmured, “how can I be so in love with you and still so heartsore?”

I brought the viands out of the placket of my robe. “Here,” I said. “Eat.”

He sighed, letting go of sorrow for the time, and sat up and nibbled at what I gave him. After a moment he ate ravenously and I sat beside him and ate as well; we were both hard put to stop and save some food for the morrow. Then Arlen went up to the entry and fetched the saddle pad, put it down to ease the hard, stony floor for us. We lay on it with the blanket doubled over us, close together for warmth, and exhausted as we were, immediately we slept.…

“Lonn?” It was a panicky voice, calling. “Lonn!”

I awoke to a feeling of cold and struggle. All was pitch blackness, as before, and Arlen was thrashing about beside me, half out of our bed, sitting up and letting in the chill. “Lonn! Rae?” he called in the same panicky way, and I reached over to touch him before realizing that he was still asleep; I was still half asleep myself. As soon as my fingers touched his arm he turned and seized me with such force that I cried out. But then he came to himself and pulled me to him more gently, held me with the passion of fear still in him.

“I am sorry, very sorry!” he exclaimed. “Have I hurt you? I thought—”

“It was a dream,” I told him.

“I know. It is all very confused. I thought—Lonn was taking you from me, for he was the sacred king and his was the bride right. I saw him in all that unearthly beauty that was his at the last.…”

Mischief was in me, because I had been awakened so abruptly. “Did I go with him willingly?” I teased, and Arlen let go of fear with a laugh.

“No indeed, you did not!” I felt rather than saw his smile. “Moreover, I am a fool even to dream such a thing. Lonn would never—Rae, I may never again know such a loyal and honorable friend.”

Sorrow was in his voice, but he spoke the name without tears, and for that I was thankful. He burrowed down beside me in our bed, pulled the blanket over us again.

“Ai, Rae,” he murmured to me, “this has been both the worst and the best day of my life.”

We made love. It was not much like that first incredible lovemaking, this time, for the glamour of magic no longer filled us, we were tired, and our situation was awkward, all constraint of cloth and fumbling in darkness. But I think, if anything, I cherished this time the more. It was us cleaving to each other, not winterking and sacred bride but us, Arlen and Cerilla, Rae, making a bond in the midst of adversity. Making a babe. I knew that, even then.

A peculiar thing happened as he lay atop me and within me. Something moved within that dark underground chamber of ours, a breath, a stirring, as if earth herself had breathed a small sigh around us or through us, the most gentle of exhalations. I felt it, that stirring, as if something were alive around me or in me, but it was a waft so small, so gentle, that it did not frighten me. I merely noted it with mild puzzlement.

“Did you feel that?” I asked Arlen.

“As if something just walked across my grave. Yes. The storm must still be blowing.” He kissed me tenderly and extricated himself from me with care, rolling over to lie beside me.

“I thought you used the saddle to block the entry,” I said.

“I did! But not entirely; we need air. Indeed, it is a very good thing that this cist faces northward and the wind has scoured it for us. Else it would be too stale for us to breathe, down here.”

But the storm was not still blowing. Not some several minutes later, at any rate, when we had clothed ourselves and ascended. We no longer found our dark shelter oppressive but thought of it as a warm haven, a womb; we gladly would have stayed longer. But we could not tarry where Rahv might so easily find us.

Glow of pale winter light greeted us as we ascended the passage, afternoon light, and we came out into the white hush that often follows a snowstorm. The Naga flowed black between white shimmering banks where great trees, oak and ash and elm, stood with heads bowed under an icy burden, very still. Nothing moved anywhere, not even a raven; the only sound was the lapping water against the stonework that formed the shore of the crannog.

And a sort of bumping, very soft, very insistent. Our eyes found the source of it at once, and, unthinking, we took a few steps toward it—

A strange vessel, a sort of wicker basket floating like a boat, had come to rest against the stonework, held there by the current, and in it lay—a severed human head. Lonn's head. I recognized it at once even though the eye sockets stared up at me empty and hideous. By his brown hair lay a bloody, pathetic something else that I did not identify, for I was vomiting—hours later, I realized it was his genitals. Arlen made a retching sound, turned, and ran for the yew grove that flanked the cist, snatching up saddle and bridle on his way. He could not be gone quickly enough from this place now, nor could I. Hastily I crawled back inside the barrow to bring out our food and the blankets.

It took us longer than we had thought to be off, because Arlen had forgotten about the saddle pad and had to come back for it. So I stood for a while with my back to the bloody thing in the water, noticing other things, whatever met my eyes, to keep my mind from knowing what I had seen. I studied the stones at the entry to the cenotaph—there were some very old carvings on them, spirals, and after a while I realized that they might have been intended for coiled snakes, as they had a sort of triangular thickening at the center end, like an asp's head. I considered this very carefully. And I contemplated our horse. No longer the glorious animal that had left the Sacred Isle with us, it looked like any farmer's sturdy horse, a splotched gray suitable for the pulling of a plow, standing and stamping with cold and switching its tail, heavy-headed and sulky. Arlen's saddle looked too grand on it, but Arlen himself appeared none too grand, pale and unkempt, and I expect I looked no better.

Arlen had to fasten the reins back onto the bridle, since he had used them as a surcingle for the blanket, and he was making a botch of the job in his hurry, swearing under his breath, in a temper. I did not offer to help him, for that might merely have vexed him the more. By the time he had all ready at last—it took only a few minutes but seemed far longer—he was in a state somewhat beyond either panic or temper and nearer the realms of madness. He hurled me, rather than helped me, onto the horse's rump, and he sent the creature leaping off the crannog into the water and plunging across the ford, slipping and stumbling on rocks and ice; the river had frozen for several feet out from the shoreline, and the steed broke through at each jump, cutting its legs. When we made land at last, we were off at full gallop, breakneck fashion, over ditches and bushes and whatever lay in our way, and I hung on, too proud or stubborn to protest even though the horse's leaps nearly sent me flying. Only after the horse was in a lather did Arlen seem to notice what he was doing, and he soothed the frightened creature and slowed it to a walk.

“There,” he murmured, “There, there, Bucca.” I had not known the horse had a name. I cautiously loosened my grip on Arlen's waist, and we rode on in silence for a while.

“Rae,” Arlen said presently without turning around, “I am ashamed.”

I kept silence. Men were entitled to their furies, in my experience, but that did not mean I had to enjoy them.

“Poor Bucca. I ought to get down and tend to his legs, but I have to keep him moving for a while or he'll take a chill.”

“But he's bleeding,” I said. I could see the red smears on the snow.

“Horses have quantities of blood in them.”

“So do sacred kings,” I retorted, more sharply than I had meant to. Arlen stiffened and did not reply.

The day was far spent, for we had slept through half of it, and we rode through most of the rest without speaking again. Bucca ceased to bleed and walked stolidly. We passed out of the towering woodlands that flanked the Naga, found the beginning of pastureland and settled places, stone-walled hilltop garths. For concealment, we kept to the folds between the rounded uplands, folds where streams ran to hide Bucca's hoofprints. Shadows began to deepen, purple on the snow. Not until then did Arlen voice what was troubling us both.

“That thing in the Naga,” he said. “It chills me.”

I gave him a small squeeze to show I had heard. I, also, felt my flesh crawl at the memory.

“I feel as if it is going to follow me forever.”

That note of wild despair in his voice—I could tell he was going to take mothering. Fittingly so, he who had never had any.

“I never want to see that river again,” he burst out.

“Very well,” I said, meaning it. “But have you any idea where we are going?”

“None. Anywhere, so long as it is away from the Catena.”

We rode on at random into the Secular Lands.

FIVE

The land lay between long mounds of sand and loose rock, very long; from a promontory one could see them looping and wriggling across the moors for miles. Eskers, they were called, and no one could understand where they had come from. Some said they were the garth walls of giant men in times long past, and others that they were the nests of serpents, huge serpents, in the beginning days before such creatures had dwindled. And why might it not be so, if one is to believe in the immensity of the glycon that lives in the deep? Some eskers were longer and wider than others, and the narrower ones often attached themselves to the larger, like babes suckling at a mother, if serpents suckled in those forgotten times. But sometimes their nests contained boulders as well as pebbles and sand, and that puzzled me.

They formed boundaries of a sort between the demesnes and petty kingdoms, of which there were many. Once in every day's journey, or sometimes more often, there arose a square tower stronghold or a round keep on a mound, stony symbol of some lord's bid for power. We did not seek refuge or hospitality at any of them, for the lords were mostly in league with my father or else under his thumb. I knew of some few who were his rivals, worthy to challenge him, and we could have sought them out—but then I would have been a piece in a game of power again, a whelp to be traded, and I wanted no more of that. Arlen and I, we wanted only peace and a place to lay our heads.