The Hedgewitch Queen

by Lilith Saintcrow

  The hedgewitch charm to light a fire produced a small flame I coaxed into life with handfuls of pinon needles. I soon had a small but respectable blaze crackling merrily away, and the smell of it—clean, without the reek of burning human flesh—was enough to bring fresh tears to my eyes.

  I could not find a comfortable space to lie on, and it was cold and damp, yet I did manage to catch broken snatches of sleep, waking to put more of my small supply of wood on the fire.

  I have spent many sleepless nights since, but that was one of the worst. I started nervously, bolt-upright, when an owl’s soft cry echoed in the darkness. Every slight sound I heard made me think of stalking men with bright swords, coming to make certain.

  After the owl, I huddled with my knees drawn up, staring into the fire and thinking on Tristan. I would have given the Aryx to d’Orlaans without demur and wished him joy of it, if he could have produced my Captain from the darkness.

  When false dawn began to paint the trees with cold gray, I doused the fire and was on my way, nerve-racked, stiff, and chilled clear through. The chill faded slightly as I walked south, again judging by the moss on the trees. There were hedgewitch charms for marking a path in the forest, but I could recall little of them.

  And I did not wish my trail marked.

  About midmorning, I began to see how silence and solitude could be, as Diodiorin of Scythandra stated, a balm for a troubled soul—or, as Euphorin of Thebim argued, could drive a person mad. I did not have to worry about assuming a pleasing expression or keeping my thoughts from showing, or about the length of my dress and the cut of my bodice, as I would have at Court. I did not have to worry for the Aryx or the safety of a few men mad enough to swear service to me. I had nothing to worry for but my bare survival, which was chancy enough.

  Yet solitude also means nothing to distract the mind from chewing at problems as a dog will at a bone.

  Where was Tristan? Who had razed the village? How did I think I could reach Arcenne without a horse or even a waterskin? Had the Guard been slain in a pitched battle and di Narborre’s troops come to level the place daring to shelter them? That seemed most likely. But then, where was Risaine—and Adersahl? I had not seen either of them among the…

  Say it, Vianne. The dead. You did not see them among the dead.

  I was bone-weary and stumbling by afternoon, impelled forward more by will than by any real desire to continue. I stopped under a pinon tree and slid down to sit between two great roots, leaning against the rough trunk. I closed my eyes for what felt a mere moment, and when I opened them again the purple of dusk filtered through the trees, and I was thirsty.

  There was no water nearby, but—thank the gods—there was a hollisa bush. A handful of the tart, not-quite-ripe berries cut the edge of my thirsty hunger, and I cast about for deadwood to use as fuel.

  I found very little, but I dragged what I could to the pinon tree and spent a few moments making a fire. Thanks to Risiane’s tender care I did not feel fevered, though my eyes watered fiercely and my strength ran away like water.

  The Aryx pulsed against my chest, and of a sudden, as I was feeding fallen wood to the small hedge-charmed blaze, I was startled into thin, unhealthy laughter.

  The Great Seal of Arquitaine, awake and active, the source of all Court sorcery by the grace of the Blessed—and I dared not use it. Oh yes, a fine Queen, standing idly by while a whole village of children, women, and old men were assassinated. I was even powerless to give them a decent burial.

  All the royalty in the world is worth naught in the face of catastrophe.

  My merriment sounded strange as it rose sharp and mocking, echoing through the trees. I laughed until I feared the sound of it, clutching the trunk of the pinon tree, my eyes streaming, my braid torn free and mussed, covered in soot.

  You are mad, Vianne. Mad.

  Mad I might be, alive I was still. But for how long?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The next day I found such luck I could hardly credit it. Just past the brightest part of afternoon, I found a meadow and six goats.

  It may not seem much of an event, but it froze me in place, stock-still and blinking, wary of leaving the shelter of the trees. The meadow lay dappled with sunshine, spring flowers carpeting its knee-high grass, and I heard the tinkle of a bell before the flock came into sight, driven by a dark-eyed boy in rough homespun with a long hazel switch he used to prod the wiry-haired creatures into motion.

  I stared as if seeing a Court spectacular, then hastily made certain the Aryx was pushed below Tinan di Rocham’s shirt. He would not like the condition tis in now.

  I stared at the small peasant boy with his mop of gingery-dark hair and coppery skin.

  Where there was a young boy and a flock of goats, there had to be a steading nearby—or another bandit village? Perhaps. I had little choice.

  I waited for the boy to notice me, but he did not. He merely prodded the goats about and then, satisfied, flung himself down on a small rise in the high grass. One of the goats wore a collar with a tiny bell, the source of a merry tinkling.

  I had just relieved myself behind a tam tree, so I was relatively comfortable, if still hungry. I watched as the boy appeared to fall into a deep slumber in the sunlight. I stayed in the shade, watching as the flock browsed its well-mannered way through the meadow. The boy seemed supremely unconcerned.

  Now I was to solve the problem of how to approach him.

  I cleared my throat with a small mannerly noise, moving out from the shelter of the darker trees. The boy did not stir. I forged ahead, fighting the urge to plunge back into the forest. Who would have thought the Shirlstrienne so full of people? Or am I in the Alpeis now?

  I reached what I judged was a safe distance from the boy and cleared my throat again.

  Nothing. He appeared asleep.

  I tried it again, and then managed to speak. “Sieur?”

  The boy’s dark eyes drifted open.

  For a moment we remained so, one battered noblewoman in men’s clothing and one small dark-skinned goatherd boy.

  “Cor,” the boy said finally, “you doan look li’ no demieri di sorce.”

  A wild braying laugh nearly choked me. If he thought me mad he might hesitate to render aid. “That is because I am not one. Please, can you tell me, is there a steading or a town nearby?”

  * * *

  I do not know whether to call it chance or luck that I met Avier in that meadow. I do know he took a great risk in bringing me to his family’s wagons.

  Avier’s people were R’mini, traveling tinkers and hedgewitches famed for their red-brown hair and their skill in mending, be it pots and pans or wheels and cogs. The R’mini have traveled through Etharial, from Far Rus to Arquitaine to Tiberia, and mayhap even as far as Tifrimat, since anyone can remember. With their bright-painted wagons and large, patient horses or sleek oxen, they were a welcome sight in the depth of winter when amusement was hard to come by—though there are those who accuse them of bringing disease and ill-luck in their train wherever they roam.

  I do not know why d’Arquitaines fear a wandering people so much. Mayhap because the Angoulême and his Companions had wandered before finding a home, and we fear to travel again. Who can guess?

  I was brought to their headman, Avier’s uncle, after the women had finished poking and prodding at me. Adersahl’s dagger I surrendered to them with no demur. After all, I thought it unlikely they were loyal to d’Orlaans. And I could hardly blame them—I would have taken away my dagger, too.

  Avier’s uncle Tozmil sat on a small, decorated wooden stool by the fire. His wife, a lean dark woman dressed in the bright reds and golds R’mini women favoured, gilt coins dripping from her cap of bright meshwork, leaned against him. His daughters whispered and pointed from behind their mother, and the rest of the R’mini pressed close.

  “Who are you?” Tozmil asked, after making a number of odd gestures. I did not know whether to laugh or weep. I found later his armwaving and finger-j
abbing was meant to make me vanish in a puff of smoke if I was demieri di sorce.

  The R’mini are cautious of such things.

  “My name is Vianne.” I had decided prudence was best. “I have become separated from my traveling companions. I must reach Arcenne, in the mountains, good sieur, and I—”

  “You stink of smoke,” he interrupted briskly. “Are you banditti?”

  I did not have to feign the start that gave me. “No, of course not.” I sounded indignant. I wished suddenly for Tristan, or Risaine, or anyone. At least with my Captain I had some chance at guessing what he would do with me. “If you cannot help me, I will go on my way. I will not be the cause of trouble to you or your wagons, sieur Tozmil.”

  Tozmil’s dark eyes sparkled. I did not know it then, but twas exactly the right thing to say. R’mini are often shunned and driven out of towns, and they sometimes feel a kinship with others similarly hounded. Yet for all that, they have a fierce pride, and those who come to them humbly are not oft well-received. “And how will you reach Arzjhen alone, V’na?” His accent mangled both my name and the name of the town. “You have no water, no wagon, no horse. Bad luck.”

  If you only knew how much luck I have had, both good and ill. I dug in my pocket while his eyes narrowed, and fished out my emerald ear-drops. “I have means to pay for passage.” I opened my hand to show the glitter of gems. “These are all I have left of my life, sieur Tozmil. If you will help me reach Arcenne I will gift you these, and there may well be other reward as well.”

  He examined my face, and his wife leaned down to whisper in his ear. He nodded, slowly. Then his gaze left me and traveled in a slow arc over the rest of his troupe—perhaps thirty people, young and old. There were several children.

  I tried not to think on it.

  The silence stretched. I sought to keep my hand from trembling.

  “Very well,” Tozmil said. “Keep your gauds, we don’ steal from th’ poor. But you travel with us, you travel as R’mini, and you wear a woman’s skirts. We’ll have no g’ji g’jai in our wagons.”

  I nodded wearily, feeling filthy and very, very tired. “I could not agree more, sieur. If I could have been wearing skirts this past month, I would have much preferred it.”

  He stared at me for another long moment, then his wife laughed, tossing her head back. It was the high-pitched giggle that R’mini women use among themselves, a sign of cameraderie, though I did not yet know it.

  At the sound of the women’s laughter, it was as if I had passed some manner of test, for Tozmil clapped his hands and his daughters came forward, laughing and tossing liquid streams of their strange language back and forth, drawing me away. I tried to press my ear-drops on them, but they refused, shaking their heads. They exclaimed over my hair and my strange skin, so different from theirs, and I was at that moment made a lowly member of R’mini Tosh Tozmil’hai Jan.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They thought me slow and stupid until they found I was simply unused to the work of going from place to place in their wagons. I did all they asked of me with good grace, whether it was scrubbing dishes and pots with soapsand or learning to wash clothes in streams. I was grateful for the chance to sleep among people, and further grateful that they asked no questions once Tozmil accepted me as a traveling member.

  Very soon they found I was a hedgewitch, so I was set to helping Tozmil’s wife, Jaryana, the physicker of the troupe. The R’mini have their own form of hedgewitchery, and set I myself to learning as we traveled through the Shirlstrienne and the Alpeis, following a path I doubt I would ever be able to find again. The R’mini have their own secret highways and signs, even in the dark tangle of the haunted Alpeis, and the g’ji—as they call us—are hard-pressed to travel them without R’mini guides.

  I have studied hedgewitchery most of my life, but I daresay I learned more in two months of travel with Jaryana than I had from all my books and even Drumiera’s careful tutelage. Jaryana was a fierce teacher, given to sting-slapping my hand if I looked about to add the wrong herb to a tisane or paste, but she was kind in her own way. It had been her voice tipping the balance toward allowing to me travel with them, and her eagle eye was the reason I did not fall prey to a forced wedding with one of the R’mini men. They have a custom among them—does an unmarried man want a girl past menarche, if he can force or persuade her to stay a night in his wagon he can claim her as a bride. I slept in Tozmil’s wagon or by his fire, and more than once Jaryana’s sharp tongue drove a R’mini man away from where I worked.

  I did my best not to notice.

  Avier was often away with his goats, but he seemed fascinated by my strangeness and would follow me about after he brought the herd back from their grazing. More than once someone mocked him for it, but he made proud answer, as if he had found an exotic pet in the forest and could not stay away.

  They did not ask me about the Aryx, though they all must have caught glimpses of it. Indeed, I wondered what I could have said. The longer we traveled, the closer to towns we drew, and the more nervous I became. They guessed, in their quick way, that I was likely hunted, and a danger to them.

  The R’mini wandered through the Alpeis for the last of the spring and the beginning of summer, the men hunting, the women gathering herbs, spring roots, and other things. I had no say in our route, and they saw no reason to hurry me to Arcenne. Many herbs and other valuable things are found by the R’mini in the forests and wild places, and their wandering is often along a route that would fair drive anyone direct-minded to distraction. I do not know if they sought to shake pursuit, or if they simply disdained to hurry, since anyone looking for one lone woman could certainly not be bothered to spend so long on our twisting trail. More than once I tried to tell Jaryana there might be some danger in harboring me, but she gave the notion short shrift.

  The guest is sacred, she sniffed, each time. We hold to the Law.

  Their Law is strict in some ways, lax in others. A woman’s virtue is guarded with a vengeance, since their inheritance passes through the male line instead of through the mother as Arquitaine deems right and proper. For all that, R’mini women have sharp tongues and a fierce spirit. No few of them carry short curving daggers, and hedgewitchery runs deep in them. Their Law does not give a woman lee to speak to strangers, but if she kills during a bloodfeud or to avenge her honor she is not seen as criminal. She may divorce a man by locking a wagon’s doors, but then she will have to bargain for horses or oxen to pull said wagon—for the man is entitled to take those. Unless other women judge her sloughing of a Consort as warranted, and grant the use of other beasts, she may be abandoned, or forced to make her way with another jan, as their traveling family-groups are called.

  They exercise their peculiar sorcery constantly, even the youngest of them, and it shows. They are skilled with horses and metal, and they carry news and goods from town to town. They are dour with strangers, though they chatter constantly among themselves and have a song for every event, it seems. Some travel into Damar, past Polia and Pruzia, as far as Rus, even. I have heard tell some tread roads that lead them to Torkai or Tifrimat, past the dragons that guard the edge of the world. Some even take ship and brave the Girdle off Arquitaine’s north coast, seeking a way past the howling storms and into the fabled Westron Isles.

  But that I have not seen for myself, yet.

  We finally slipped free of the Alpeis and emerged on the south-and-eastron edge of the Shirlstrienne, looking down at the Siguerre Road from a high bluff. It was strange to feel the wagon wheels rolling on paving stones, and even stranger to be perched in the back of a R’mini wagon drawing step by slow step closer to Arcenne through civilized country.

  If I had not had so much work to do, I might have fretted myself into impatient exhaustion. As it was, I was kept busy from morn to nightfall, and oft ate my supper silently among the laughing, catcalling R’mini. After eating, they would often sing and drink their fiery rhuma liquor, and sometimes the unmarried girls would dance
. There were courtship dances too, and dances that told stories. It reminded me of Court—there were rules of behavior, and one had to keep one’s eyes and ears open. I merely watched from the shadows, wrapped in one of Jaryana’s old black shawls, my hair braided in two loops over my ears and a third braid down my back as the R’mini women do. I wore none of their thin, fluted gold jewelry, and felt like a gosling among the swanlike grace of the R’mini girls. Their skirts reached only their ankles, but since they are generally taller than I, mine draggled. I wore my garden-boots instead of supple R’mini sandals, a loose much-embroidered blouse, and a tight red sash wound several times around my waist.

  It was obvious I was none of theirs, but I took pains not to remind them.

  Jaryana often sat close as I watched the women dance, and asked me a question or two. I found myself telling her more than I intended, sometimes by my silences and sometimes by the way I chose to answer a seemingly-innocent query. She knew I was a g’ji noblewoman, and she knew as well that I thought often of a man.

  She also knew of my nightmares.

  The R’mini never remarked on the fact that I often woke sweating and terrified, shaking and unsure if I had cried out. I dreamed of Lisele, and of Tristan lying broken and bloody on the Shirlstrienne floor. I dreamed of the bandit village, of wandering from burning house to burning house, the bodies crumpled on the ground. I dreamed of blood on my hands, of sickish, rotting stench, of the clash of metal and the armored slippery backs of eels. Jaryana oft mixed me a sleeping-draught, but even the strongest potions of R’mini hedgewitchery were no match for my dreams.

  The first night on the Siguerre Road, the R’mini camped in a sloping meadow on the other side of the wall of the Shirlstrienne, and I was eating my supper quietly and alone. I usually sat on the tail-step of Tozmil’s wagon, watching the rest as they gathered about their communal fire.