The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  I am trying, she thought. I will try.

  They shared a bed, of course. They had not the money to waste on two rooms, and besides the warmth was welcome. But Scillia had never been a quiet sleeper, always claiming more than her half of any pallet. Even as a small child, she would travel about the mattress, forcing Jenna or Carum to get up and seek a bed elsewhere. In those early days there had been no nursemaids, no tutors, no one else to take charge of a child at night but the parents.

  Lying by Scillia’s unquiet body, Jenna remembered those times with an uncommon longing. How easy it had been to be a mother to a child who adored her unconditionally. And—she thought almost bitterly—queen to a kingdom full of people who felt the same.

  Enough! she told herself fiercely, grabbing back part of the coverlet from Scillia who had somehow managed to twist the entire thing around herself without ever waking. Stretch your feet according to your blanket. Jenna snorted at the thought; it so particularly suited the situation.

  She did not have an easy night, all things considered, with dark dreams, old feet, aching leg, and a daughter who did not lie easy. On waking, Jenna was as tired as if she had not slept at all.

  They took the long way around, through small villages, skirting the edge of the deep and unmapped western woods. They could have ridden the great King’s Road that ran north and south, but Jenna knew instinctively that would not have suited Scillia’s need for a hard and long search. So she told Scillia nothing about the route, talking instead of woodcraft each time they slowed or stopped.

  She showed Scillia the kinds of wintered-over plants that could still be used for food, like wake robin which, boiled down till the acrid taste was gone, served a nutritious if bland turnip meal. Like the hard fruit of trees—butternut and chestnut, “That is,” she cautioned, “if the squirrels have spared any.”

  And she showed Scillia how to read the tracks that crisscrossed the path: the difference between wood rat and squirrel, the long lope of wolf, the longer of hunting cat, the deep scratches on trees that bespoke bear.

  Scillia listened like a child with a beloved tutor, storing away information for hours on end. Occasionally she asked Jenna to repeat something just explained, or pointed with pride to tracks or fruit or roots she could now name. She seemed to forget nothing.

  She proved an apt pupil in the Eye-Mind game as well, remembering much of what she had seen hours later. Long lists of things she recalled with ease. Jenna knew that kind of recall was now beyond her own reckoning.

  Only once did Scillia complain, and it was to say baldly, “I should have been taught this before.”

  “I had hoped,” Jenna answered simply, “that you would never need it.”

  “You hoped, rather, to keep your time in the woods for yourself,” Scillia answered.

  Jenna had no response. Indeed, she greatly feared that Scillia might be right.

  They stopped at another inn, this one filled with a wedding party and many cheerily drunk soldiers. The captain of the men recognized Jenna at once. He made her a deep bow and she shook her head at him, a warning that she wished to remain unremarked. But once Scillia was abed, all the covers twisted around her, Jenna went downstairs and called the captain to her with a quiet nod.

  When he came over, she said quietly, “I have a message for the king.”

  “I will take it myself, Anna,” he said.

  “There is nothing written. I give this to you mouth to ear, and so it must be delivered. Tell him that Jenna and Sil are well and on the mother road together. He will pay you handsomely for that one sentence.”

  “My queen, I do it for the honor alone.” He bowed his head. “Do you need a guard?”

  “Have I ever?”

  “You look …” he hesitated,” … well-traveled.”

  She laughed. “Like the scruff of a mongrel, you mean?”

  “Never that, Anna,” he said, but joined in her laughter, adding, “I have seen you worse.”

  “And that was …?”

  “At Bear’s Run,” he said, naming the great battle at which so many of Jenna’s troops had fallen, yet was a victory nonetheless. “You know, of course, it is but an hour’s ride from here.”

  So close, Jenna thought. “You must have been a mere boy there,” she said.

  “And you a mere girl,” he added graciously.

  “War is a great ager,” Jenna said. “And kingship worse yet. Good night, good captain.” She started to leave, then turned back. “There is one other thing you can do for me.”

  “Name it, my queen.”

  “A man lies on the road by a great line of elder pine in the southern woods, two days ride from here. He will be by an ash that has been struck down across the road. The tree may have been pushed off by now, to let carts go by; the man has a deep sword slash in his right leg and will not have moved on his own. He may even be dead of blood loss. Bury him if he is there, else bring him to the king. He laid hands on the king’s daughter and would have done worse than that.”

  The captain nodded, his face dark and disturbed. “Were there others?”

  “There are always others,” Jenna said. “Two of them. They are dead. If he has not put them in the ground, take a moment to do so.”

  “My lady, I ask again: Do you need a guard?”

  “Did I at the ash tree?”

  “You walk with a slight limp.”

  “But I walk. You cannot say the same for the men I left there. My daughter and I would ride alone.”

  “I will go at once, Anna.”

  “The dead have a long patience,” she answered him. “Go in the morning.” She turned and went up the unlit stairs, not looking back. She was glad she was far enough from firelight and candlelight that Skada had not appeared. At the moment, her dark sister’s wit would have been too much to bear.

  The door to her room creaked when she opened it, but Scillia lay too deep in sleep to waken. Jenna lay down on the bit of bed left her and, even without a blanket for warmth, she was almost instantly asleep.

  The trip to M’dorah took longer than Jenna had anticipated, for when at the morning meal she casually mentioned that they were close to the site of the Battle of Bear’s Run, Scillia—all unaccountably—wanted to see it. Jenna had not been back to the site since the battle thirteen years earlier, and when they came to the field she was shocked to see how small a place it was.

  “I had remembered a vast plain,” she said quietly. “And the bodies … and all the blood.” She shivered.

  “Father often told us of the battle,” Scillia said.

  Surprised, Jenna turned to look at her. “What did he say of it?”

  “He said many good men and women died here.”

  Jenna did not say anything more, but dismounted and walked toward a stand of trees, their branches so overhanging they brushed the withered grass. A cold wind puzzled through the clearing, delivering a sharp shock between the shoulder blades. Jenna shivered again. Suddenly she recalled Alta’s words to her in the grove so long ago: Remembering is what you must do most of all.

  And she had spent the last fifteen years trying to forget.

  “Forgive me, Alta,” Jenna whispered, staring into the shadows behind the trembling branches and seeing figures that were not there.

  “Mother.”

  She thought she heard the grunting cough of an old bear.

  “Mother!”

  She thought she heard the scream of a woman warrior riding into battle.

  “Mother, please!”

  She thought she heard the thin, mewling cry of a child.

  “Mother, you are frightening me. What is it?”

  Jenna shook her head and turned. Smiling ruefully, she said, “Ghosts.”

  Scillia held out her hand. “There is nothing there but some trees. And an overgrown field.”

  Jenna took the hand. “There are ghosts here all right. And one of them is you.”

  “Now you are really frightening me. I am very much alive, mother. How can
I be a ghost?”

  Jenna pulled her around the trees. Behind them were two high mounds covered with coarse wintered-over grass. “Those are the common graves,” she said. “One for the men—boys, really—and women who fought with us. And the other for the Garuns and their allies who fought against us.”

  “Which is which, mother?”

  “I no longer know,” Jenna admitted. “Is that not a horrid epitaph? I no longer know.” She sighed. “But if you look between those two mounds, you will find something more.”

  “What will I find? Scillia asked.

  “Go—and then come back and tell me what is there.”

  “Not ghosts, mother.”

  Jenna smiled at her. “Not for you, perhaps. Now go. I cannot.”

  “Cannot?”

  “Cannot. Will not. It is the same.”

  Scillia raised an eyebrow at that and when no more admission was forthcoming, turned and disappeared between the mounds.

  Jenna looked away, staring instead at the sky where an eagle was hunting on set wings, gliding over the meadow without a sound. She was glad it was not yet winter’s end. She didn’t think she could have borne visiting the place with spring running riotously green and dozens of birds singing from the branches.

  “Mother.” Scillia was standing not three feet away, a puzzled expression on her face.

  “And what did you find?”

  “Two graves with markers. One of them has a crown on it and Gorum’s name. That was father’s brother. Why have we never come here before?”

  Jenna stared at the ground as if she might discover answers there. “Because of the ghosts. And because we wanted you to be children of the peace, not inheritors of the war. Though your father does manage to come once a year, in the fall. He is always especially solemn afterwards.”

  “Who is in the other grave? The one marked with a goddess sign.”

  “Iluna. This is where she fell, under this tree. I killed the man who killed her, and took you from her back.”

  Scillia put her hand on Jenna’s. “So it is her ghost you cannot face.”

  “And Gorum’s and all the men and women, boys and girls who died here.”

  “But you said my ghost was here, too. What did you mean?”

  “Because here died your old life. I took you from dead Iluna and strapped you on my own back. I can hear you crying still.”

  Scillia drew her hand away. “We have further to go. And probably more ghosts to meet. Are you willing?.” She started toward the horses.

  “You will not find the woman who abandoned you.”

  “I know that.” Scillia’s voice floated back to her in the cold air. “But I will sit atop M’dorah and see the world as Iluna saw it. Perhaps then I will be ready to go back home.”

  Jenna sighed. She thought she’d done it quietly, but Scillia heard and turned.

  “You do not have to come along.”

  “I am your dark sister,” Jenna said, smiling a little. “I must go where you go.”

  “Mother!”

  “Besides, how can I not go when I know what you will find there?”

  “And what do you think I will find?”

  “Nothing. You will find nothing. It all burned down over thirteen years ago.”

  It was Scillia’s turn to sigh. She brushed a stray hair from her face. “Even ash is something, mother, as you have found tracking me.”

  Jenna smiled and did not point out that there would hardly be ash left after years of scouring winds and rain. “How smart you have become in one short journey.”

  “It is because I finally had a teacher worthy of the lesson,” Scillia said, smiling back.

  Jenna’s face flushed with embarrassment, and she opened her arms. Scillia rushed in and they embraced mother to daughter, sister to sister, almost—Jenna thought—friend to friend.

  They foraged for lunch. Jenna showed Scillia an odd grey mass, like a mushroom, that grew on a dead tree. With a bit of added journeycake crumbles, it cooked up to a bland porridge. And she pointed out which green roots to boil for a gingery tea.

  “Quite filling,” Jenna said when they had finished.

  “Makes up in bulk what it lacks in taste,” Scillia said. But she did not say it with anger or even as a complaint. It was, Jenna thought with relief, merely an observation.

  They sat for a while in companionable silence while a green finch serenaded them from one of the trees.

  “Mother,” Scillia said at last. “I have been thinking.”

  Jenna did not mean to, but she set her shoulders, waiting for an outburst. “About …?”

  “About having a dark sister. I mean—a real dark sister.”

  “Not a mother as a dark sister, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want one?”

  “I am not certain.”

  “Once gotten, never given away.”

  “That is why I am not certain. You and Skada do not always …”

  “Always?”

  “Agree.”

  “No more than you and your brothers.”

  “That is different.”

  “Yes. Different. But the same.”

  Scillia sighed.

  “I am not even certain I could tell you how to call up a dark sister, now that the hames are gone. There is a period of training, you know. An entire ritual, involving special breathing, prayers. And the help of the hame sisters around you.” She did not mention that she had called up Skada at a time of tragedy and despair, when she was alone and surrounded by the dead.

  Scillia looked at her sharply. “There is still Selden Hame.”

  “But as you pointed out, only old women live there now. One can only call up a dark sister as a girl newly turned woman. They may not remember all the parts of the ritual. You saw how badly we stumbled on the Bearing ceremony.”

  Scillia got a sour look on her face.

  “And not all who call are answered.”

  “I thought …”

  “Then you thought wrong.” Jenna stood. “There was a girl at Selden Hame when I was a girl who tried and failed.” She paused, remembering. “It was awful.”

  “But if I really want to try?”

  Jenna reached a hand to Scillia and pulled her up. “Then I will help you, of course. After all, I am your mother.”

  They stayed the night at the battlefield, building a large campfire next to one of the mounds. They ate what was nearly the last of their provisions and made a thin soup slightly flavored with winter roots.

  Scillia sat a long time by Iluna’s grave, but Jenna remained close to the fire, not for the warmth but for Skada’s companionship. Skada, however, was notably silent, so much so that Jenna was forced, at last, to comment on it.

  “No words of wisdom, sister?” she asked. “No bitter commentary?”

  “For once you have done everything right,” said Skada.

  “To have come so far for such small praise.”

  “Far indeed,” Skada said. “But will you know when it is far enough?”

  “Far enough for what?”

  “Far enough to cut the leading strings.”

  Jenna shook her head, “She has cut them herself.”

  Skada shook her head at the same time. “And tied them up again, more firmly than before. The knots may be different, but the string pulls the same.”

  “And would you have had me let her fight three men, be raped, sliced open, and die unshriven?”

  “Those are not the strings I am talking about, and well you know …” but the fire burned low and Skada was gone.

  “… it,” Jenna said, finishing her dark sister’s sentence.

  She did not get up to stoke the coals again until just before laying down next to her sleeping daughter. Then she turned her back to the flames so as not to have to see Skada again, though she could feel her close behind.

  They left camp at first light and Jenna, at least, did not look back at the field. She knew that they still had a few good hour
s’ ride to the forests near M’dorah. And then they would have to leave the horses and pack in through a tangle before coming to the M’doran plain.

  Weather luck was with them at least. Though they were now well in the north and west, signs of spring—early and welcome—were everywhere. Jenna pointed out small, curling ferns shoving through the earth by the roots of some of the larger trees. And a green finch sang to its mate from the branch of an oak. Above them the sky was still the bleached bone color of late winter, but the ground held a different promise. Jenna always believed earth before sky.

  As they rode along, Jenna thought about what Skada had said at the campfire. Have I pulled the string tighter? she wondered. Have I encouraged Scillia to knot it up again? Surely she had given Scillia plenty of leeway to go on alone. Alta’s wounds! I even offered to make her a map. And they had been getting along beautifully until Skada’s thoughtless words had set this trap between them. Now, Jenna thought angrily, I shall have to watch every word and every gesture.

  She was still fretting when they reached a fork in the road, and she knew it to be the turning to M’dorah. Dismounting and leading the horses off the path, Jenna hid them in a small copse, hobbling them loosely. Then she showed Scillia how to take what they would need for rest of the day.

  “And blankets for warmth.”

  “It is coming spring, mother. I saw the ferns. And heard the bird singing.”

  “That was a green finch,” Jenna said. “All early signs. Don’t you remember:

  “When you hear the green finch sing,

  Heralding the first of spring,

  Do not shed your heavy cotte,

  Winter’s reign is over—”

  “NOT!” Scillia filled in the final line. “I thought that was but a nursery rhyme.”

  “Some of those rhymes began in the farmyard and field; they were only later brought into the nursery,” said Jenna. “Do not be too quick to dismiss what you hear growing up. In the Hame we had many such rhymes to memorize. Besides, M’dorah is a high place and so it will be colder than down here.”