Shiloh

by Helena Sorensen

  Six

  Linden Lake looked like a hole in the earth. Those who had seen it often wondered if there was any bottom to it. Its dark depths seemed to have no end. Tall trees surrounded the water, growing up to its very edge. Their branches stretched in every direction, as if in hopes of finding some weak shaft of light to nourish them. Their gnarled roots snaked down into the water, drinking deeply.

  Yet Linden Lake was a pleasant, homey place to Abner and his family. It was just a short walk to the south of their cottage. They came here to bathe. They came to haul the water they would use for cooking and cleaning and drinking. And they came to practice. In years past, father and son had spent many a happy hour in a small glade not far from the water’s edge, where a target was nailed to a tree. It was just a scrap of leather, marked in the center with a chalky white circle, and it would have been nearly useless were it not for the torches that burned on either side. The torches, made from sturdy branches wrapped in strips of oiled cloth, provided enough light for an archer to perfect his aim from twenty paces or so. As targets go, it wasn’t much. But then, in Shiloh, the keenest eye could see no more than twenty paces distant at midday in high summer. If something hunted a man from any greater distance, it would not be his eyes that told him so.

  “Just use the tips o’ yer fingers, Simeon.”

  Abner and Amos had invited Simeon to join them for “target practice.” They all knew it was a pretense. Abner was a great marksman, a great hunter. He was brave and wise and seasoned, and he’d taught his son all he knew. Within a few years, Amos’s strength would match his skill, and he would be as great an archer as his father. The boy was a natural, and there were few who could remember seeing him without his quiver and bow over his shoulder or his leather guard fastened to his left forearm.

  Simeon had never had a teacher or a weapon with which to practice. More than once, he’d gone hunting with Abner and Amos, following along empty-handed, looking lost when the time came to make a shot.

  “Be sure the white feather is up.” Abner reached out and rotated the arrow a bit, then refitted it to the string. He looked down at Simeon’s thin, pale arm, shaking under the strain of holding his new bow parallel to the ground, and marveled at the boy’s determination. He’d carved Simeon’s bow from the branch of a yew tree, being careful to make it as flexible and lightweight as possible. Still, Simeon could hardly keep it in the air long enough to rest an arrow on the string and grip its end with his right hand. But the boy’s pale, silver-blue eyes were fixed on the target, and he made no complaint.

  “Once more . . . just the tips o’ yer fingers . . . that’s right. Now bring the string up ta yer nose . . . good —”

  Suddenly, the arrow flew from the bow with a twang, sailing far to the left of the target. Simeon hung his head. “I’ll never get it right.”

  “’Course ya will, Sim. Just keep yer right hand at yer chin and move it back along yer jaw as ya pluck the string. Then the arrow will fly straight and true. Watch.” Abner moved quickly through dozens of tiny steps that flowed together into one graceful, fluid motion. Simeon watched in awe as the arrow sliced through the air and stuck fast in the trunk of the tree.

  “You’ll get it soon enough, m’ boy,” Abner said, reaching down to tousle Simeon’s yellow-white hair. Simeon beamed back at him. He’d never been called “m’ boy” by anyone. He decided to try again.

  Slowly, with great care, he picked up the bow and moved through each step just as Abner had shown him. He pulled the string with all his strength, holding the bow as steady as his frail arms could manage, aiming directly between the two torches Abner had set up on either side of the tree. Then he let go. The arrow grazed the left side of the trunk and landed in a bush just beyond it.

  From behind Simeon and Abner there was a cheer. “Nice shot, Sim! Wonder what Ferlin would think o’ that, eh?”

  Simeon laughed softly, knowing Amos could have made a better shot with his eyes closed. Amos, who had slain the wolf; Amos, who breathed fire into the heart of the enemy; Amos, whose tunics were marked with the blood of his kills; Amos, whose neck was adorned with the claw of the Shadow Cat; that Amos was his friend.

  Abner guided Simeon to a fallen log and drew an oiled cloth from the leather pouch that hung on his belt. The mark of the Fire Clan was branded into the pouch, though no red-gold edanna sparkled at its center. Unlike the mosaic in Market Circle, these three tongues of flame met only in a charred, black point. The brand on Amos’s arm guard looked nearly identical to the one on the pouch.

  It was custom in Shiloh for men to wear the sign of their clan at all times. Poorer men branded the sign into belts, pouches, quivers, or arm guards. Wealthier men wore the sign of their clan, delicately shaped in iron, on leather cords around their necks. The heads of the clans, wealthiest and most powerful of men, wore belts fashioned from bright edanna, on which the sign of their clan was worked over and over. That red-gold metal, nearly as valuable as fire itself, flashed like flame whenever it caught the light.

  “The oil keeps water from gettin’ inta the wood,” Abner explained. Simeon nodded, observing Abner’s movements as he ran the oiled cloth back and forth along the bow.

  “You give it a try.” Abner handed over the cloth, and Simeon set to work.

  “Abner?” he asked, “Who gave ya that pouch?”

  Abner glanced down, lifting the leather pouch slightly from his belt. “’Twas a gift from my father, when I came of age.”

  Amos approached the fallen log, carrying several recovered arrows in one hand and a torch in the other. He piled the arrows on the ground, then thrust the end of the torch into the dirt a few paces from the log. Simeon caught another glimpse of his arm guard in the flickering firelight as Amos sat down to clean the arrows.

  “Why do ya wear the clan sign when ya haven’t come of age?” he asked Amos.

  “This is Da’s guard. He says I need it more than him,” Amos responded, glancing at his father with a half smile. “One day my arm will be tough enough I won’t need it anymore, like Da.”

  “Some hunters wear their guards ta their deaths, Amos,” Abner said. “It’s no sign o’ toughness not ta wear one.” He winked at his son.

  “I bet you’ll wear the Fire Sign ‘round yer neck, Sim, yer ma bein’ magistrate an’ all,” Amos said.

  Simeon stopped his work on the bow, leaning it gently against the log, and contemplated his feet. He was keenly aware that no heirloom would ever come down from his father.

  Abner tried to reassure him. “I’m sure yer ma has some family token set aside fer ya. No need ta worry.”

  The words were no consolation to Simeon. He knew of no such token, and for the first time in his life, he wished his mother had never been. He wished he’d been born to Abner and Wynn. He wished that Amos were his brother and that he, too, wore an arm guard with the clan sign emblazoned so confidently into its surface. More than that, he wished he were strong and tall and dark, with brown hair and eyes, and that he’d never heard of Penelope, Giver of Dreams. He wished he’d been born without the fear, like Amos.

  But he hadn’t. He could not exchange his yellow-white hair or his pale blue eyes. He could not unmake his fair skin, light as a tallow candle. He would always know the feeling of fear, cold and blue in his belly.

  He put on a brave smile and lied, “Perhaps she has.” Then, standing and gathering his quiver and bow, he changed the subject. “Is it true Grosvenor’s arm guard was made o’ dragon skin?”

  “Aye! He cut it from Sirius himself!” Amos answered, scooping up his own things and lifting the torch high into the air.

  “Nay, boys. I’ve heard the tale told many ways,” Abner broke in. “Some say it was ’is cloak he fashioned out o’ the dragon’s skin, while others swear it was the handle of ’is bow he wrapped in Sirius’s black scales.”

  “Grosvenor took the dragon’s eye as well,” Amos ad
ded, relishing the gory details of the epic tale. “It glowed blue in ’is hand fer a thousand days.” He looked at Simeon with brows raised and eyes wide.

  “What did ’e do with the eye?” Simeon asked.

  Abner and Amos both paused. They were uncertain about that part of the legend.

  Finally, Amos said, “Perhaps ’e passed it down ta yer ma, Sim. That’ll be yer heirloom . . . the eye o’ the dragon!” He punched his friend lightly on the arm, and Simeon laughed.

  “Yer mad as they say, Amos . . . maybe madder.”

  Amos pretended offense, taking another swing at Simeon. This time, though, Simeon ducked out of the way and took off running toward the cottage, while Amos followed in hot pursuit. Abner stayed behind, walking at his steady pace and carrying the other torch through the feeble gray light. He watched the boys as they played and fought. He smiled and chuckled at their antics. But all through that journey home, a sense of deep foreboding grew in him. It grew with every stride toward the cottage, sinking cold claws into his heart.

  Under his breath, he whispered, “May the light shine upon you both,” and even as he repeated the familiar phrase, he knew that it would not.

  Seven

  Jada had heard the story of Riannon’s Betrayal more times than she could count. It was the most ancient tale of their people, telling how Ulff, Lord of Shadows captured the wild wind to be his wife, how she betrayed him and fled with their daughter, Miri, and how Ulff drowned his daughter in the river, staining the water black with her blood. Riannon, the wild, unpredictable, unfaithful wife, he bound in chains forever.

  They never said it as such, but most men of Shiloh believed that all women were Riannon. They feared the capricious, inconstant nature of woman and determined to rule her with a heavy hand. It was not uncommon for men to capture wives from other clans. No law forbade the practice, so long as the girl had come of age. A man need only nail a branch of belladonna over his door and carry his wife across the threshold to make the marriage binding. The deadly nightshade sent a clear message: “Death will find you if you leave this place without consent.” Most girls understood this reality from a very early age. It was not only the beasts of Shadow that hunted them. For many, men would hunt them as well. And though no eye could see the chains that bound them, most would waste away in captivity, just like Riannon.

  It was not surprising, then, that Jada had never married. As the only child of the former magistrate, she had never feared abduction. No man would dare such a thing, for he would risk war between the clans, and that had not happened in centuries. Jada’s unique position, too, provided her with everything she needed. She lived comfortably in the hall, collecting a small tax from the villagers to feed herself and her son. And her word was obeyed, if grudgingly. The role of magistrate had always passed from father to son, and it irked the people of Emmerich that Jada’s mother had only borne a daughter.

  She let out a weary sigh, sinking into a chair beside the fire. There was some truth in what they said. Surely no woman alive could relish the punishment of liars and slanderers that was written in the four eternal laws of Shiloh. Payment for stealing a man’s name was made in flesh, and it was the lash that collected that flesh. Jada’s eyes flickered to the hooks above the mantelpiece where the lash was kept. Its iron shaft, wrapped in leather, was suspended horizontally against the gray stones, and the light of the fire flashed off the tiny shards of glass laced into the leather cords that hung from the whip’s end. She closed her eyes against the memory of dark blood oozing down flayed backs and placed a hand to her forehead. She rubbed her temples, circling again and again, in hopes of easing the tension that lay always just under the surface of her skin.

  “Evenin’, Ma.”

  Jada looked up to see her son standing in the doorway. “Come and sit with me, Sim,” she said.

  She saw the smile in the boy’s eyes as he came to sit in a smaller carven chair beside her. She’d seen that look much more often these days. Simeon seemed to have some newfound radiance, and her relief at her son’s happiness was shadowed only by her fear of his choice of friend. If only it had been another boy, she thought. One of Payne’s sons, perhaps, or the boy Turner, who lives on the far end of the village. Anyone but Amos.

  “What’ve ya got there?” she asked, hoping that her face revealed neither her exhaustion nor her fear.

  “It’s a yew bow,” Simeon said with scarcely-concealed delight. “’Twas a gift from Abner. He’s teachin’ me ta shoot.”

  Perhaps it was good that Simeon was learning to hunt. Jada could hardly imagine her tender son taking on the role of magistrate. The people wouldn’t allow it. To accept the leadership of a woman came hard enough for them. They would never follow the council of a Dreamer. Besides, Simeon was not Jada’s natural-born son. Since he had come to her, he’d been the brightest, loveliest thing in her world. She remembered watching him sit with a faraway look in his bright, pale eyes. It was as if the boy had wandered the world in thought and pondered its greatest mysteries from the very moment of his birth. Of course, that was only before he learned to talk. When the boy found his voice, he had no end of questions for his mother. “What’s leather, Ma?” “Where does fire come from, Ma?” “Ma, why is the river black?”

  Simeon was kind-hearted as well, often bringing her shiny stones from the riverbank or some fragile flower struggling for life on the edge of the village. No, the iron will and flinty determination required of a magistrate were not qualities her gentle boy possessed, and Jada was comforted by the inescapable fact that the office would be taken up by another family at her death.

  Jada’s eyes took in her son’s appearance as he sat oiling his new bow. She noticed that his wool trousers were a bit short at the ankles, and his leather boots showed signs that his toes were pressing against the edges. Even his tunic looked snug at the shoulders.

  “You’re growin’, Simeon . . . taller every day. We’ll have ta have ya fitted fer some new clothes.”

  He looked down with resignation at his thin, frail legs and arms. “I’ll never be as tall as Amos,” he said.

  “Ya don’t know that. Ya might grow taller, in the end. You’ve many years o’ growin’ still ta do, Sim.” She wanted to tell him he would be tall like his father, that his muscles would grow strong and his heart would grow stronger, but she had no such certainties.

  “Maybe.” Simeon stopped his work on the bow and laid it across his legs. “Ma, do ya think I could have an arm guard?” He hesitated a moment, then rushed on ahead. “It’s just that, if I’m goin’ ta be shootin’ an’ all, I need somethin’ ta protect my arm. The bowstring can snap pretty hard, see, and . . .” He trailed off and fell silent.

  The look that came into his eyes at that moment, the moment when he lost the sparkle of hope and anticipation that had burned in him just seconds before, broke his mother’s heart. She had seen that look of resignation far too many times, when the light had died in her son’s face, and a veil had seemed to fall over him. In one awful sweeping vision, she saw Simeon pierced with an arrow, attacked by a Shadow Wolf, and bloodied by the claws of a cat. Freezing dread tore at her heart as she imagined her son roaming the vast darkness of the Whispering Wood. If only it had been another boy, she thought again. Any other boy. And then, she pushed it all aside.

  “Aye,” she said. “We could get ya an arm guard on the next market day.”

  A bright smile lit Simeon’s face, and his mother’s heart ached with joy and pain as he wrapped his thin arms around her neck and kissed her hair.

  Jada’s throat was too tight to speak, but Simeon whispered, “Love ya, Ma.” He lifted his bow and hung it over his shoulder, as if he were embarking on the Great Hunt there and then, and, still grinning, he went to his cot.

  Eight

  The edges of the Whispering Wood were hardly frightening. Soft grass spotted with low shrubs carpeted the ground beneath the cover o
f numberless scattered trees. Just a few paces inside the wood, however, the undergrowth rose up to meet the tightly woven branches of the ancient trees. Vines half as thick as a man wound their way from earth to sky, crossing over one another and forming tangled nets of Shadow. Mist rose from who-knows-where, leaving the hard lines of ground and tree indistinct and indiscernible from more than a few paces.

  There were many legends about the Whispering Wood. It was here that Grosvenor spoke with the white tree, here that he received the famed White Bow. Through this wood the Lost Clan had journeyed, and none could tell whether they had ever reached the other side. Here, too, Mariah was said to have wandered, searching and mourning for her daughter, Imogen. There were even some who claimed that shifters waited in the wood, disguised in some form or another.

  Then there were the wolves. The Whispering Wood was thick with them. They seemed to move in on the mist, silent, stealthy, stalking their prey. They lurked in thickets in a hundred corners of the forest, waiting, waiting, always waiting, their eyes burning like embers. Only the Hunter’s Paths provided any hope of venturing into the wood unharmed. The much-traveled trails cut through the gloom from half a dozen entrance points, leading hunters to sheltered meadows in the heart of the wood where deer and elk often grazed.

  When he could avoid it, Abner never hunted this deep in the Whispering Wood. But their stews had been thin this winter, more potatoes than anything else, and their supply of candles had been thinner. If Abner could bring home a large kill today, the meat would sustain his family through the spring, and the skin could be traded for a good stock of tallow candles.