Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 (15 page)

"But
Deepvale is on the other side of Greenvale!"

"Here
it is, and at Mad Oak, but by the time you get to Ashgrove or Bell Hill,
Greenvale is gone, and Deepvale is next to Longvale."

Breaker
turned and peered through the trees on the other side, over the ridgetop, and
was relieved to see the Eastern Cliffs were still where they ought to be, two
valleys away.

"I
thought all Barokan was
...
there's
Shadowvale, and Longvale, and Greenvale, and Deepvale, and Ravenvale, and so on
to the sea, lined up nice and neat."

The
guide snorted. "No," he said. "The ridges are just in this area,
where the land jams up against the northern wall of the Eastern Cliffs, and
only the first two are nice and neat. The farther you go from the cliffs the
more the ridges wiggle and split. That's why Longvale is
long,
you see—it's between
the two long, straight ridges. Even so, it doesn't go on forever; I've never
been to the northwest end, but I've been to the southeast, where it empties
into the Midlands. If you think Greenvale over there is broad, you should see
the Midlands! Flat as a table, almost, and fifty miles across, maybe more!
Some of the towns there ar
e
so close they share their boundary shrines—you can step from one to the next
with nothing between. And beyond the Midlands are the southern hills, and the
western marshes—Barokan is
big,
my boy."

"Have
you seen all of it, then?"

"No.
Didn't I just say I'd never been to the far end of Longvale? And I've never
been into the southern hills, or beyond the nearest edges of the marshes. I've
never seen the sea, or the islands, or been up the path to the clifftops—I
didn't catch these
ara
feathers myself, I bou
ght them from a Winterhome trader. I know half a
dozen safe routes around Longvale where I work, from Bell Hill to Valleymouth,
and I've traveled a little in the Midlands with someone else leading the way,
but that's all." "Oh. But
..."

"We
turn here," the guide interrupted. "And the
ler
in
this next stretch like it quiet, so if you have any more questions they'll just
have to wait. Watch your footing; the stones like to slip out from under your
feet and make you stumble."

Breaker
fell silent, but found himself staring through the trees at the lake, and thus
distracted he quickly discovered that the guide's warning had been apt. When
the two of them passed the boundary shrine into Greenwater he was still wiping
the dust from the seat of his pants.

 
Greenwater was arranged along the lakeshore, with every house and
workshop facing the water. The village did have a central structure Breaker
took for a pavilion, like the one in Mad Oak, but instead of being built into
the ridge it stood on wooden pili
ngs in the lake. There were docks and boats
along the water, as well, and then a broad clear area, and then the houses in
three parallel rows. Above that were the orchards and gardens and vineyards,
stopping abruptly at the boundary. There were no broad fields in the river
bottom—but then, there was no river bottom, but a lakeshore.

Breaker had expected
to see many different places in the world, but he had not expected one so
different to be so close, less than a day's journey from Mad Oak. He stared at
th
e
unfamiliar surroundings as he followed the guide down the slope and into the
village.

People working in the
vineyards and gardens glanced up from their labors as the pair approached; some
then turned back to their duties, while others stared at the stran
ger the guide had
brought.

Breaker found it
uncomfortable to be the object of such scrutiny; for that matter, he found it
unsettling simply to see so many unfamiliar faces. These people were still
people, with the same sort of eyes and hair and skin he was
accustomed to, but
their clothing was slightly odd—the colors seemed darker than they should be,
and the sleeves were neither the full wrist-length sleeves of winter nor the
short, loose sleeves of summer, but tighter than they should be and reaching to
just below the elbow.

And there were so many of them, without a
single face he recognized!

The guide did not speak, but led Breaker down
the slope; Breaker followed silently, for fear that so much as a single word
might violate the demands of the local
ler
and bring
misfortune down on him. He stayed close to the guide, for while the man was a
foreigner, and neither kith nor kin, he at least was someone Breaker had
spoken
to before.

When they crossed the boundary Breaker felt
the transition clearly—the air became softer and more welcoming. At the same
time, though, it was not the air of home; this was not Mad Oak, and he did not
belong here as he had there. This place was not his own, it was merely not
hostile.

The guide seemed to
straighten a bit when they
were within the town's limits; despite his
earlier claims to dislike people and be at home in the wild, he, too, clearly
felt more comfortable here.

Together the two of
them passed the vineyards, then the orchards, and the gardens, and one by one
the thre
e
rows of houses, and Breaker began to wonder whether the guide intended to
march directly into the lake—was some sort of ritual ablution required? But in
the open space below the houses the guide turned aside and headed for the plank
walk leading out to the pavilion.

Breaker followed,
noticing that the earth beneath his feet had a slightly peculiar feel to it,
packed hard, but with a faint sponginess. He looked down at the black soil, and
when he looked up again there was a woman walking out from the pav
ilion to greet them.

She was stark naked.

He stumbled, and barely caught himself before
falling. His mouth opened, but at the last instant he caught himself and did
not speak. He glanced at the guide.

The guide seemed utterly undisturbed by this
apparition, and somewhere in the back of Breaker's mind old stories and rumors
bubbled up, and he remembered that he had heard, often accompanied by
adolescent giggling, that in some places the
ler
required their
priests to perform various rites in the nude.

And yes, Greenwater was said to be such a
place—it went with the story about the priests living underwater, since
clothing would scarcely be practical in an aquatic environment, and would have
fallen away when they transformed into fish.

Maybe they really did
tu
rn
into fish, after all—he hadn't actually asked about that.

More likely, though,
the nudity was just something the
ler
required.
There were far more lurid and unsettling tales of priestcraft in more distant
lands, of blood sacrifices and horrific rituals
, but those were all just rumors from afar;
Greenwater was merely said to keep their priesthood as naked and submerged as
the fish in the lake—sometimes literally as the fish in the lake.

It appeared that
however exaggerated the guide might say the storie
s were, they were
based on truth.

With this, he finally
noticed a few details of the woman's appearance other than her lack of
clothing—for example, that her waist-length black hair was dripping wet, and
that there were green marks on the skin of her face
and arms, marks that
probably had some priestly significance, like the embroidery on the priests'
garments back in Mad Oak. And while she was still young and slim enough to be
attractive, she was not a mere girl; she had filled out, and begun to show the
effects of time. Breaker judged her to be at least a decade older than his own
nineteen years, perhaps as much as twice his age.

The guide led Breaker
on, until the two men stood at the end of the wooden walkway; there he stopped
and knelt. Breaker hastily
followed his example.

The naked woman walked up to the very last
plank to be over water instead of soil, and stopped as well, about twelve feet
from where the guide waited.

"Oh, glorious bridge between human and
spirit, grant us entry to your realm," the guide called out.

"Say first who you are," the woman
replied, in a startlingly deep voice.

"I am the traveler known to you as the
Longvale Guide, who the spirits recognize by a name that begins Kopol,"
the guide answered.

Then for a moment no one spoke.

Then the guide cast an angry sideways glance
at Breaker, and the nude priestess said, "And you?"

"Ah," Breaker said. "Oh. I am
...
I am the Chosen Swordsman."

It was clear from her expression that that
was not sufficient, and he hastily added, "The
ler
call me by a name beginning with Erren." He grimaced slightly,
wondering whether it had been wise to give even that tiny fragment of his true
name; in Mad Oak true names were not used in ordinary conversation. Breaker
had heard that other towns were less stric
t, that in some places people actually called
each other by their true names as casually as the people of Mad Oak used
nicknames, but back home no one but the priests or the visiting wizards would
ever have dared ask for even a syllable of it, and even they would never ask it
in so public a setting.

But then, this woman
was
a priestess!

It was hard to think of anyone but Priest,
Elder Priestess, and Younger Priestess as priests, though. He had never met any
others before.

In any case, his answer seemed to satisfy her.
"Then let me ask the spirits if you are welcome here," she said. She
turned to face the pavilion and the lake.

That view had its points of interest, Breaker
thought, but overall he preferred the front.

Then he reprimanded himself for thinking such
a thing about a
priestess,
and one from somewhere other than Mad Oak, at that.

The priestess called out something in a
language that was nothing Breaker had ever heard before, and as she finished a
bird cried out somewhere, and a series of splashes sounded from the lake;
reflected sunlight sparkled across the priestess's gleaming black hair.

Then she turned
around again. "Well," she said, "that takes care of the
formalities. Come on, then, you two, and tell me why the Swordsman has come to
Greenwater."
She beckoned.

The guide got to his feet and stepped up onto
the walkway; Breaker followed. The priestess waited until they were almost
close enough to touch, then turned and strolled toward the pavilion.

It felt very odd, to be walking so close to a
naked woman in front of all the world like this. Everyone in town, looking down
from their homes or fields, could see Breaker, the guide, and the priestess
walking out across the lake.

Then they stepped
into the pavilion, where the priestess led the way throu
gh various rooms to
a verandah overlooking the lake, on the far side from the village.

This pavilion was
very different from the one in Mad Oak; in fact, Breaker was not entirely sure
"pavilion" was the proper name for it after all. He saw no dance
floor,
no storerooms; there was no reassuringly solid stone, nor fireplaces.
Everything was built of wood and oilcloth, and the seams in the floor were so
wide that he could catch glimpses of moving water through them, and hear the
faint splashing of the lake against the pylons. Rooms and corridors opened into
one another in confusing fashion, and it was not at all clear what most of them
were for.

And the whole thing smelled of fish, rather
than woodsmoke and beer.

There were other people present in the
building, Breaker glimpsed at least half a dozen, but they vanished at the approach
of the priestess and the travelers, quickly slipping into other rooms and
closing the doors behind themselves— clearly they did not want to be around the
threesome, but he could not tell whether they were avoiding the strangers or
their own priestess.

The
ler
were moving around
him as well, he could sense them; they did not seem as bashful as the humans.

Once the little party had reached the
verandah the priestess settled into a large wooden chair, and gestured for the
others to find themselves seats. There were half a dozen similar chairs, and a
wooden bench along one wall; Breaker settled gingerly into one of the chairs.

The priestess smiled
at him, then turned to the guide. "
I didn't expect you back so soon,
Kopol."

The guide shrugged. "He wanted to come
to Greenwater," he said, jerking a thumb at Breaker, "and I was in no
hurry to reach Ashgrove or Bell Hill."

"So you're only here to guide him?"

"That's right. I'll be taking him as far
as Valleymouth, unless his plans change."

She nodded, and turned her attention to
Breaker. "And you're the new Swordsman? One of the Chosen Heroes?"

"Yes." He wanted to say more, and
not sound like an idiot, but he couldn't think what to add.

"So why have you come to Greenwater? Why
are you bound for Valleymouth?"

Breaker stared at her face helplessly for a
few seconds, then swallowed.

"I'm not entirely sure," he said.
"I wanted
...
you see,
I...
I take my responsibilities seriously.
If I am to judge whether or not the Wizard Lord should be slain, then don't I
need to see more of Barokan than my own hometown? Shouldn't I try to see him
and judge his character for myself? What if he is truly an evil man, but has
simply not had occasion to direct his evil at Mad Oak? The Old Swordsman said I
must travel, to learn more of the world, and so I am traveling."