The Rising Scythe

by S G Dunster

  “He’s a priest,” Thessaly protested, outrage in her whisper.

  “That can mean much or little.” Loredan sobered suddenly. “Thessaly, you put too much stock in others’ virtue.”

  Thessaly’s brows rose. “You are worried. Not just funning.”

  “Not about this priest,” Loredan replied. “I trust in his virtue. Or actually, I trust fully in yours, and that’s enough.” His gold eyes probed hers. “I worry rather that you trust too much in virtue, and expect it to be in all you meet. That promises will always be kept, and intentions made clear. My dear.” He touched her shoulder—a glancing brush, but it was as tender as a kiss, “for your own sake, and for mine—you must learn to imagine there’s a seed in each person you meet. Something dark. Something hidden. And until you learn what seed it is they carry, you must trust not a word they say, not a promise they make.”

  Thessaly shivered. Her emotions ran cold.

  Loredan’s expression, his face, was utterly serious.

  Was this the way he viewed the world? What a skeptical way to think.

  It was a revelation. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. “Everyone has a tendency to some particular evil, I agree,” she said. “But is it fair to condemn? Isn’t that the purpose of living—growth, and overcoming? If I condemn others for the darkness in them,” she swallowed, lowering her voice to barely a whisper, moving closer to him so he, and no one else, would hear, “how am I to ever forgive what I now carry inside myself?”

  “Your intentions are pure, Thessaly, no matter what you carry. What I ask you is to be wary of intentions. Secrets, desires. These are not things many come clean about.” His eyes turned up slightly at the corners and wrinkled as he gave her a small smile. “You forgive me. I worry and have become overly serious. It’s only that you will be so very alone out here. Safe from war, but perhaps not from . . .” he shrugged.

  Thessaly frowned, waiting for him to finish. “From what?” she asked.

  “Who can know?” Loredan replied and lifted his glass in a toast. “Let’s not spoil our last hours for a long while together with a continuation of my feeble blathering. I’ve worried you. I can see that. I apologize.”

  Thessaly smiled. “All men worry over women,” she said. “You, like Papa, forget the size of the seeds inside me, both light and dark. Loredan,” her voice and expression became earnest, almost pleading, “I can take care of myself.” She hesitated, remembering all that had happened, and saw the thought reflected in his face. She had done many things in the last several weeks that would seem rash, childish to those who did not see what went on inside her.

  If they could see what went on inside her, though, would they be reassured or frightened? She broke away from his gaze and stirred the steamed turnips on her plate—seasoned with rich, wholesome broth. Beef, she thought. Lots of beef here, sheep, cows. No cream sauces. Not a great deal of pepper or cloves, either. It tasted plain, and also wonderful. Simple. She hadn’t realized how all those spices of the court food, and even on board her father’s ship, had been sparking through her floes, igniting movements in her flesh and fire magicks. This simple food soothed.

  “I will do well here, dear Loredan,” she said, putting a hand on his beaded cuff. “Please put your energy toward learning the trade, and not to me. If anything, it’s those around me who you should be worried over.”

  He smiled at her. “But I worry over you most, my dear. And that is the burden of care you must accept. Where one loves, one worries. Woman or man. Shall you worry over me, out on the tempests of the Indies, around the savage horn of the Cape of Storms?”

  A moment of lurching doubt hit her in the gut as she thought about it. No, she did not worry about Loredan. Was that a sign she did not care for him as she should?

  Seeing her face, he laughed. “Your father is an excellent sailor. You have been used all your life to seeing him sail away on seas and into storms. You’ve got the courage any sailor’s wife needs, and the expectation of danger and adventure as well. The fact you do not pine gives me comfort, la mia dia.”

  La Mia Dia. Goddess. Thessaly blinked, and managed a smile, covering her confusion. Loredan felt deeply for her. Why was she so pasty in comparison?

  It was because her heart was elsewhere. Not in any person, she told herself. But in her magicks. Once she learned her magicks and tamed them, she could think of love.

  One mountain at a time, she told herself, and smiled at Loredan as he brought her knuckles to his lips and kissed her swiftly, strongly, no lingering or lovemaking.

  Refreshing as a crisp apple, his attentions to her, Thessaly thought. He treated her as a colleague, as someone to be met on even ground, and he did not try to persuade her. He was simple and beautiful.

  I am lucky, she thought. For beauty and style alone, any woman in Europe would call me lucky in my choice of husband. And to be treated in such a way, too, brings the desires of my own heart into play.

  After the meal ended, Guzal, Rosalie, Thessaly, Loredan, Waintree, and Antonio walked along the neat-laid cobbles of the main road in the village, passing a raised stone cross near the shore where a few women were huddled, aprons full of early spring greens and onions. They spoke in a strange flood of words. Thessaly picked out some syllables she recognized, but it was oddly garbled, interspersed with things she didn’t understand. The word “cheat” was used a lot.

  “A wooly cheat for a grunting cheat of your litter last,” she thought she made out as they came near, and then the women all stilled, watching the newcomers pass through. They had features similar to the ones she’d noticed at the island abbey. Pale skin, dark hair. Fierce brows, firm chins, jutting noses and broad cheeks. Some of them were pale-eyed, and their gazes followed until Thessaly and her companions had passed. Then conversation started up again, quieter than before.

  The shopkeepers came out to greet them as they approached the small shops, waving cheerfully. “I’ve new lengths of wool weave,” a man with silver hair that stood up in curls all over his head called. He was portly, with a pleasant face.

  “We shall look,” Rosalie declared, and skipped inside the small shop.

  There, they found Henri, examining a length of woolen cloth unwound from a fat bolt hanging from the ceiling. “A tight, fine weave,” Waintree muttered, stepping up beside him. “But how is it processed? No French courts’ll be taking wool that’s been pissed upon.”

  “I supply alum,” Henri replied. “It’s done right here.”

  “And how do you make a profit, then?”

  Henri smiled. “His Holiness and I have a great many mutually beneficial arrangements.”

  Waintree chortled. “And as His Holiness has shares in an alum horde found right under his own holy city, you’re in gold. A blasphemer and a brigand. I see I’m leaving my daughter in good hands.” Waintree stepped away, letting the cloth fall back against the wall. “I like you more each minute, Holystoan. Now we’re all together, shall we drive up and give these DuCarnes an eye-over?”

  “Aye, Papa,” Rosalie declared. “Let us visit this mansion. I declare, I love this place already.”

  “Of course you do. You’d love a Berber’s tent would it place you in the path of fine handsome boys to sit with at supper.”

  “I said nearly the same at dinner,” Loredan put in, “and was chastened for it.” He gave Thessaly a laughing look, and Thessaly swatted his shoulder and passed by him, examining the bolts that hung down along the walls. They were nice, she thought. They smelled faintly of animal musk, and were soft, warm, and light to the touch.

  “Can we get some?” she asked Antonio, “before we move on to the mansion. We can have them sent to the room at the abbey.”

  “Whyever would you wish such rough woolen for?” Antonio returned.

  “I’d like garments made for rough work.”

  “You’ll be doing no rough work.”

  “What of falconing and riding? These woods seem to me wild. I’d like garments less fine that I don�
��t fret about muddying.”

  “Don’t worry over that. You’ve enough fabric for four maidens. Ride through the woods in ebon velvet. I don’t mean for anyone to forget who my daughter is.” He grasped her hand and squeezed it.

  He’s nervous, Thessaly thought. She let it go, but was determined to come back. She was planning on doing more than ride through these woods, especially after what she’d felt shipboard. There were odd things here. She could feel it like a shift in currents. There was mystery, and something deeper, richer.

  She’d felt that strange twinge, reaching out with her floes the night before. She was determined to find what the source of it was.

  And woods made good places to escape to, and would shelter her arts from others. She would need a great deal of practice if she was to master herself. She didn’t fancy doing it inside an abbey full of nuns and priests, when even a touch of holy water stung her.

  Forests, Thessaly thought, staring from the shop’s doorway at the hill that rose above the little village, and through it, to the dim suggestion of hills behind it, all rolling with thick dark trees and underbrush. Trees, the first cathedral of men.

  It shall be my place of worship, she decided. My true place, though I might kneel in chapels and over altars.

  As they left the shop, a deep gong of bells thrummed through the air, and the street was suddenly flooded with dusty men. Dark haired, pale skinned—quite pale. Pasty, she’d almost say, with smudged faces and worn clothing; The crowd of sweaty men made their way down the street like water in a sluice. “From the tin mines,” Henri stated. “There is one right here, just beyond the end of the street.” He pointed, and Thessaly saw a tall chimney of mortared stone rising above the trees. “The bell signals shift change. These men just coming out work during the daytime hours, and the next group of them start in the evening and work until dawn.”

  As they passed, the contrast of bright blue or light grey eyes through the dirt on their faces was startling. Thessaly couldn’t help but slow her gait and stare.

  The carriage awaited them at the abbey gates. They climbed in and continued through the crowd on wheels. The men parted for the vehicle, walking to the sides of the road. A few of them tipped their heads as the carriage passed through, but their shocking-blue gazes held a stillness, a sort of watching that was more than just seeing.

  Thessaly felt, with each pair of eyes that met hers for a moment, like she was being touched, deep inside. It was an annoyance, and a strange pleasure. Thessaly shivered and looked away from the window.

  The cobbled main road swept past the abbey, through the rest of the town and then wound through fields. A curved bridge crossed a small, green river bending into a bay just beyond. Past the bridge the road sloped upward, taking the foot of the steep bare hill where a tower of grey stone rose high above. Rosalie grabbed Thessaly’s hand and squeezed it, hard. It was the Tor.

  Dunne’s Tor was on a tall motte. The keep that crested it was tall, fat, very solidly built, and surrounded by a wall of wooden stakes. The hill sloped down to where the mansion lay in the bailey, all surrounded by another wall, this of stone, with a large gatehouse and portcullis.

  They were stopped there at the gated tower and questioned. Holystoan spoke only a few moments with the men. Then the carriage was let through past the wall, and the mansion came into view.

  “Oh,” Rosalie said, her voice slightly less enthusiastic this time.

  Thessaly agreed. It didn’t look like much in comparison to Castillo Sforza; it was a strong and simple two-story structure of beams and plaster, a dozen windows running the length of it on both stories. The roof was proper tile and not thatch like all the buildings in town save the abbey. Still, it was a great deal larger than any dwelling they’d seen in town other than the abbey. There were four chimneys poking up from the roof. The sweeping meadow of the bailey ran down at a hard slope to a marshy shore, where a cluster of docks stood, moored with a few small boats meant for shallow waters only.

  They passed by some outbuildings. Carriage house, Thessaly counted as they passed a two-story, squared building. Beyond it was a large, thatch-roof stable, and an ugly square building, plaster and lathe and thatch, that Thessaly assumed to be the servants’ quarters. Around back, for a vast acre, was a kitchen garden—neat rows that had been only recently planted, but Thessaly could feel the soft thrum of growing things there in the sun-warmed dirt. A few women bent, pulling weeds. One looked up, and a sudden shaft of light, reflecting off the white linen wrapped around her head, blinded Thessaly for a moment, dazzling her eyes. She blinked, and the woman was bent once again, busy in what looked to be a bed for pole beans—sticks jutted out, with strings connecting them.

  A nice cultivated green space surrounded the mansion itself. There were hedges of holly, oak trees, graceful trunks bare, crowns bunched with odd masses of brighter green vegetation. A couple of men worked there, stirring the ground around roots, adding manure.

  “Mistletoe,” Waintree said, pointing upward. “A wytching herb. Looks like they grow it here a purpose.”

  Thessaly looked up.

  Indeed, the clusters of small, pea-green leaves, contrasting with the silver-green of oak leaves, seemed to have massed far beyond a single season’s growth. Mistletoe killed the trees it dwelt in eventually.

  Perhaps the current owners did not care enough for the oaks to send men up with ladders.

  Or Waintree certainly could be right. Thessaly looked around at the gentle, cultivated landscape and slowly shook her head. Wouldn’t it be odd to find a teacher here, after all?

  What if?

  “It grows freely in oak,” Henri said. “It would be hard to cut it all out of the trees here. The birds spread it in their droppings. And as you said,” he gave Waintree a nod, “it’s held to be a sort of sacred thing among the locals—not just those who delve into wytcheries. It’s an old belief, old as the mines and monuments.”

  As they came into the gardens, there was a tingle of something—a cold, fluid energy, like a surface of water breaking over her.

  Her hopes stirring further, Thessaly closed her eyes and examined it with her inner sight.

  Sure enough, there was a faint glow around the trees—silver-tinged. Bound magicks, then. They joined together, these strange magicks, and extended around and over the Mansion and its immediate grounds, a great shimmering sort of bubble.

  Thessaly let loose her fetters of loose magicks—she wanted to see, not join.

  Instantly, the haze turned to something solid—a gleaming silver thing that reached high above and spread its way around the entire grounds and mansion. A bubble, indeed.

  It seemed to stream from those slender oaks, massed with mistletoe.

  The oaks, Thessaly realized, were spaced regularly all around the entire grounds.

  This is purposeful, Thessaly thought. Waintree has it right.

  There are magicks at work here. Someone has spelled this whole place for protection. From what?

  Excitement rose inside her, tugging at the other core of her magicks—the silver heat straining at her tethers. This meant that there was someone there. Someone who knew how to use floes.

  Someone who could teach her.

  But these trees are old, she told herself, trying to temper hope with caution. They were undoubtedly planted purposefully at one point, perhaps hundreds of years before. This spell, it could be old. A remnant from a caster long before.

  Steady, she told herself. Vinculum, she whispered to herself as they came to a stop by the mansion’s landing. Just for a moment she felt queer, like her floes caught on something, and then as the curse pulled powerfully and insistently, whatever it was let go of her floes so that they whiplashed through her, stinging her in a hundred places. She bit her lip, drawing blood, tasting it, red and salty in her mouth. She froze.

  What had that been? Something intentional? Some old working left behind, as with the trees?

  She remembered the pain she’d felt, touching on the s
lopes as they’d come into Minehead.

  There were strange things here in these forests that bore examining.

  And she would, she determined. She would ask Guzal to sew her a dress of those serviceable woolens she’d seen at the shop.

  She closed her eyes again briefly before they alighted, studying the flares of silver flame in the trees. They were lovely, comforting. In any case, it was something to study for itself.

  “Are you well?” Henri asked.

  Thessaly nodded. “Just . . . taking it in,” she said. “The air here is . . . pure.”

  He nodded, watching her a moment. “That it is,” he said, “and many thousand years it has been.”

  She stared at him. Had that been a clue?

  No. Henri knew what she was. He would speak plainly. He must mean literal purity of air, of soil, unsullied by humans like in the bigger cities.

  Antonio knocked on the door.

  They waited a moment or two before it opened. Thessaly immediately saw that the young man who answered was from the village. He had the same contrast of dark hair and pale complexion, the sharp and defined features and light-colored eyes. He seemed more filled in, less pasty, than the miners. His blue gaze bored into Thessaly, not just a prick—a probe, straight to her icy, fiery core. She felt, for a moment, as if someone had hit her in the solar plexus. He bowed and stood aside for them to walk in.

  Thessaly clutched her chest for a moment.

  What was this place?

  Was she starting to feel things more than she had? Was she imagining intent where there was none?

  She was coming to pieces, is what she was doing, she told herself. Calm down, girl. New things are overwhelming. Keep yourself in check and let this new place settle over you.

  Certainly, Thessaly thought as they entered, feeling a bit jittery, certainly that was magicks, though. Meant or not.

  Her hope rose again, tempered by worry. What were these odd people? Kernishmen. Bretons. They saw into you without apology. Without a word, they prodded or goped you as if you were a lumbering cow, Thessaly thought.