by Diane Duane
“Have you thought of something we haven’t tried already?”
Mariarta’s father’s face twisted. It hurt her to see how that particular expression, pained and helpless, brought out the look of weariness about his eyes. The last couple of years had dealt harshly with his looks and health, and more so with her mother’s. She had been trying to keep Mariarta’s father well and healthy as well as herself; the effort was showing.
Her father shook his head. “Not I. When even the monks at Mustér can’t find a plan among all their books—” He drank, frowning.
Mariarta knew that expression. “Then what? Tell me.”
Her father’s voice was reluctant. “I had thought of asking the people what they would think of moving the village.”
Mariarta was shocked. “The expense....” And the complications. How to explain to Tschamut’s landlords, the lordly Hapsburgs, that one of their sources of tax was just going to move elsewhere? If they approved—which seemed unlikely—it would be at so extortionate a price that only four, maybe five generations’ worth of tax would pay it off. Reiskeipf would be delighted.
“It could be done,” Mariarta’s father said. “Remember that house in Tamins? The one with the ghost in it that kept knocking things around.”
Mariarta thought. “They took the house down, didn’t they, and moved it a hundred yards to one side.”
“And the haunting stopped. This would be like that.”
“If they would let us take the houses—”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Mariarta considered: but Reiskeipf’s face intruded. She still remembered the argument her father had had with him last year. Her bab’s position was that the grass-penny should be reduced because the upper pasture was now useless. Reiskeipf’s position, which won, was that the pasture in question was useless because of the actions of someone native to Tschamut—so the tax would remain the same, and the village should consider itself lucky that the noble Rudolf von Hapsburg didn’t increase the tax because of damage done to his property. However, being an understanding landlord, he would give the tenants another year or two to repair the damage. After that, though—
And Reiskeipf had regarded Mariarta. She knew what offer he expected her father to make. To her surprise, her father had refused to make it, and had sent Reiskeipf off without his usual glass of vinars. Mariarta was unsure what had caused this change of heart.
“I don’t think they’ll let us take the houses,” Mariarta said slowly.
“Mati, we’ve got to try it. Or something else. People are getting restless, they say we’re doing nothing—”
The breeze coming in the window ruffled the papers, turned up a corner of one: under it on another parchment lay a patch of faded color, traced with fine dark lines. Mariarta gazed at it, then reached out to the map, pulling it free. “You told me that the Urseren council is meeting at the end of the month...”
“In Aultvitg,” said her bab. Mariarta traced with her finger the wobbling line of road that led from Ursera into the lower, northern country. Aultvitg was a town sited at the bottom of the southernmost of the lakes into which the Reuss emptied. The Ursern councilors alternated their meetings between Ursera at the southern extent of their domains and Aultvitg at the northern end.
“Let’s go to the council meeting, then,” Mariarta said.
“For what? And besides, we’ve been. They had no help for us.”
“They might have some now,” Mariarta said. “Bab, listen. We need to be seen to be doing something, you’ve said it yourself! If you’re seriously considering moving the town, you’re going to have to get the councillors’ help anyway. We would have to have somewhere to move to. You should talk it over with them.”
Her father eyed her suspiciously. “You’ve got other things on your mind, buobetta.”
Mariarta dropped her gaze to the table again. He’s withering here, like the alp. He looks far better when he doesn’t have to look at it every morning when he makes his rounds. Mummi sees it too, otherwise she wouldn’t push him to go away as she does— Aloud Mariarta said, “It seems to me I should be out of Reiskeipf’s sight for a while. No other way to manage that but to take me away. Eventually he’ll get wind of what you’re thinking, and be hot after you to—”
“Enough,” her father said, frowning. “You’re not to think about him. All the same—”
He went briefly silent. “Very well. It’s in fifteen days, that meeting. We’d have to leave after Massday next week. We’ll stay a night in Ursera...travel the rest of the way with some of the councilors. That is, if any of them are still in town with this nice weather. If I were them I’d have left already—you can never tell how long it’ll hold, this time of year.”
“I shouldn’t worry about that,” Mariarta said, glancing out the open window at the sunlight. “It’s going to be fair enough next week.”
“Yes,” her father said, smiling, but frowning too, “you never seem to have trouble telling what wind’s going to blow. You want to watch that, buobetta: bab Luregn—”
“I know,” Mariarta said. Bab Luregn’s attitude toward her had been cool the last couple of years, as the Bull’s malign influence began to spread toward the town. He did not come right out and say “stría”—for the Church had often enough declared that witches didn’t exist. But everyone knew that nonetheless there were people who used striegn, the dark sort of magic that could make cattle or other people fall sick with a look or a touch. Mariarta was careful to clearly pronounce the holy names in church, and she carefully took the holy Bread to show it did not scald her or make her ill.
“Never mind,” her father said. “I’ll tell your mummi that we’re going off on another journey. Two times in three years, now: she’ll think I’m tiring of her.”
Mariarta smiled, reached for another parchment. “A while to go before that. Now, bab: you wanted the count of the last old-summer cheeses?...”
***
Two days after the next Mass-day, they set out. Their preparations had been few: her father simply asked Flep for the loan of his horse, and sent to Selva to old Mang Lelias for the loan of another.
Mariarta’s own preparations were as prosaic. She had only the plain linens and grey wools of a mountain girl, with a ribbon or two for her hair, now quite long and shining black after the auburn of her childhood. She packed what she thought she would need, and sat by one of the pools of Rein one day, looking into it, straining to tell if people would think she was worth looking at.
That night, the night before they were due to leave, Mariarta found herself, in dream, sitting by that pool, gazing into the water. Not a breath of breeze troubled it. The pale glacier-tumble of stone at its bottom seemed darker for a change, so that she could see her face more clearly. Another face she saw as well, as if someone leaned over her shoulder, gazing into her reflection’s eyes. Mariarta shuddered deliciously at the feel of the breath on the back of her neck: warm, soft, the touch of the föhn at its gentlest, when it comes down the mountain in the late summer to stroke its fingers through the ripening corn and stir the leaves on the vines. She could not see clearly the face which gazed at her. Mariarta got an impression of grey eyes, and a cool expression in them: though the breath stirring her hair, and what seemed in the dream like the soft touch of fingers brushing the back of her neck, conveyed another message entirely. She stretched in slow pleasure in the dream, but did not dare to turn around to look her visitor—her wooer?—in the face.
Have you forgotten me, then?
Not in words, but through the touch, through the warm breath, came the sense of what was said. It was like when the wind whispered in her ear, but more intimate.
Mariarta shook her head. Never, she said.
But you do not come to be with me as you did. The touch wandered lower, stroking, gentle. It was warm here in the sunshine, and the stream murmured drowsily, murmured her name as she had heard the wind do: not in demand or promise, but soft-voiced, like a wooer inde
ed. Mariarta leaned back against the boulder, closed her eyes better to hear the voice, feel its sweet warm breath. Odd to lie here bare-skinned under the sun, but no one would disturb them. She had a protectress, someone hers alone.
Yours alone, said the other. Warmth breathed about her, the wind stroked her, and Mariarta moaned softly with the pleasure of it, the other’s closeness, the sweetness of being touched. It has been hard, I know. But you are almost ready for me. Soon there will be nothing you cannot have, nothing I will not do for you. Only wait, and be strong. I will be yours as you will be mine, wholly. Nothing will be denied you. Not this, or anything else. You will see.
Mariarta gasped at the feeling which began to fill her, like the wind, rising. The breath stirred warm about her face. Do not forget the best way to be with me, the other said. Remember the shooting. That was how we came to meet. That is how we will meet again, fully, this time. No more hints and promises. Power, and life. Remember it.
Mariarta lay helpless in the pleasure. One last long stroking: then silence, and the rush of the water turned suddenly into wind in the trees outside her window, in the light of the long twilight before dawn. She blinked, and pulled the covers close about her, cast forlorn on the shores of a dream of eternal summer, and suddenly cold.
***
There was nothing left to do in the morning but go. Nevertheless, her mother was in the kitchen wrapping food for them, more than they would need even if every inn between here and Aultvitg had been eaten bare. Mariarta wandered in, dressed and ready.
“What’s in the bag, dear?” her mother said.
“Nothing, just room for more food.” Mariarta picked up the smaller bags that already lay on the table, loading her own bag with them.
“Good, that’s the old cheese there, you can put that at the bottom. Ah, zaffermess, is that the biggest skin we have, Baia?”
“The other one’s wormholed.”
“Nuisance,” Mariarta’s mother said, handing Mariarta the smaller wineskin. “You two won’t have a drop to drink after the first day.”
“There’ll be plenty, mummi.” Mariarta took the skin. “Are we to take that bread too?”
“Yes. And sausages, the dried ones—there are ten of them, the ones your father likes—”
“And none left for us,” Onda Baia said under her breath.
“Buseruna, you old glutton!” Mariarta’s mother said, so sharply that Baia flinched. “Are you going to deny a little pleasure to a man going out into the dangers of the road—”
“We’ll be all right,” Mariarta said softly, and her mother paused in her hurrying to look across at her with that old soft look of understanding in her eyes. Mariarta could hear the thought on the sigh she breathed out, the way the wind might have whispered it to her: who knows what might happen to him out there? Or, while he’s gone, to me? These pains—
“It’s only a week to Aultvitg,” Mariarta said. “The same back, and only a few days of council in between.”
Her mother smiled, and said, “—without even some meat to comfort the poor empty stomach, Baia, how can you possibly—”
Mariarta smiled sadly, and went away to see about loading her horse.
An hour or so later, all the village was out in the street to see them off. Bab Luregn had come with his holy water sprinkler, and blessed them until they were half-soaked.
“Bring us an answer,” said Flep to Mariarta’s father.
Her father, looking fine in his linen shirt, simply nodded. “I don’t promise to bring back a troop of knights, or a Cardinal, but we’ll do what we can, Flep.”
He shook the reins and moved off. Mariarta went after him. Slowly they rode into the silence of the road, where nothing moved but dust-whirls in the wind, and nothing spoke but the föhn.
***
The first time they had done this trip, nearly a year ago now, Mariarta had been torn between agonies of excitement and dread. Everyone knew it was dangerous, sometimes fatal, to be “on the roads”: anything could happen. At the same time, it was a marvel to see something new every time you went around a curve: a vista of mountains, a beautiful woodland, someone else’s tended fields or alp.
The first night’s journey was the easiest. They stayed in Surrein, the next hamlet west, and spent an enjoyable evening with Sao Moser and the other two Surrein farmers, gossiping about the neighbors in Selva. The next day’s travel, though, was more interesting. Several hours of working their way down the Surrein pass road, length after length of stone-choked switchback, was nervewracking business even in summer. At last they came to the bottom of the hill, and in the valley before them lay Ursera.
It was a great town. The first time Mariarta had seen it, last year, she had thought that Roma must be like this—house after house, nearly a hundred of them, built of stone instead of wood, roofed in slate, and with streets paved with stone in two tracks, a binario, as wide apart as a cart’s wheels. Those streets were full of hundreds of people. They were rich, to judge by the houses—three, even four storeys high. It was three hours past noon when they rode in, and the town market was still in session: twenty traders, at least, were there. Mariarta saw great bolts of linens and colored wools, even silks; grain, and fruits of the northlands; meat in incredible amount and variety, poultry and pork and game and venison, even beef. That in particular still astonished her. To kill and eat a perfectly good cow that might have given you milk, or could have sired more that did—you might as well eat coin money.
They made their way, as they had before, to the Treis Retgs, which stood next to the banks of the Reuss, by the bridge leading to the upper part of town where the finest houses were. As Mariarta helped her father unload the horses for the waiting groom, she caught him looking up the street, past the bridge.
“Tgei, bab?”
“Nothing. Oh, well—”
He pointed with his chin. “See that white one there?”
She looked. The third house in the street was a fine high one, four stories, its windows all shuttered. “So?”
“That’s Reiskeipf’s.”
Mariarta raised her eyebrows. “It must be trouble to keep clean. All those stairs.”
“He has three fumegls for that.”
“Good for him, then. No, bab, I’ll take that,” she said hurriedly, and got her bag off the horse before he could. “There, is that the last one?”
Her father was looking at her sidewise, a sort of approving expression. “You said, not so long ago, that you would marry him.”
Mariarta frowned at him, right there out in front of everybody, as the groom took the horses away. “I said I would do what you wanted,” she said. “What do you want, bab?”
He grinned at her then. “Su, not even your mother seems able to get that out of me these days.” He glanced at the high white house, shook his head. “Come on, buobetta, let’s go see about some food.”
***
They went up the stone steps into the big slate-floored common room of the inn, and bespoke the innkeeper for beds and a roast hen, since he had such things. Mariarta’s mouth watered. At home no one would eat a chicken until it was literally on its last legs—what would you do for eggs, otherwise? But she had had one the last time, and the luxury had delighted her. Now she sat in a corner at one of the scrubbed, scarred wooden tables, with a clay cup of wine that one of the kitchen people poured her, gazing at the low sun shining from the white plaster of the walls, while her father stood talking to the innkeeper. More people were sitting in this one room than lived in all of Tschamut. It was unnerving, until you got used to it—all those eyes looking at you. Many of those eyes, among the men, dwelt on her at some length. Mariarta stared back with a slight frown, as her mother had advised her, until they dropped.
Her father came back to her after a few minutes. “Well, there’s only one of the councilors hasn’t left yet—that’s old Theo dil Cardinas from Realp. He caught a flux and won’t leave until tomorrow. Good enough for us: three in company’s better than two.
”
For a pleasant hour Mariarta and her father sat talking with people at adjoining tables, and drank wine. At the end of the hour their chicken arrived, and (not coincidentally, Mariarta suspected) so did Theo dil Cardinas, who sat with them and accepted a chicken leg, and began gossiping as if he had known them all his life. He was small, bald and thin, with a brown, incredibly wrinkled face and small bright eyes; a man dressed in sagging woolens that were surely too hot for this weather, and smelled it. His voice sounded like a chough’s creaking, and his laugh (which came often) sounded like a saw in a log. He seemed to have had a lot of wine, to judge by his breath as he leaned toward Mariarta to greet her, and she wondered if his prolonged stay here had more to do with the Treis Retgs’ cellar than any flux. But she was polite to him, for her father had let her know that this was one of the wisest men in Ursera when the mood struck him.
“Nothing new from your part of the world? Thought not,” said Theo, his eyes sharp on Mariarta’s father’s face as he said it. “Bad business, that.”
“Very bad. What news out by you?”
“Nothing much. Some trouble getting the hay harvest in—had a buttatsch running around by the Lieg alp. Caused no end of trouble.”
“Really?” her father said. Buttatschs were not as common as, say, chamois, but more common than brown bear. Some people claimed they were striadira done by annoyed gypsies or Tyrolians, others that they were roving spirits in bondage, looking for someone to say Masses for them. Whatever, they resembled a cowskin without the cow—a rolling, flapping bundle of flayed hide and udders. Some buttatschs glowed in the dark, and made weird threatening noises, or spoke to you in strange languages. People had died of the shock of seeing them, or had killed themselves running away. There were two kinds of buttatschs, the ordinary kind and the worse one, the buttatsch con egls, covered with glaring eyes as well as udders. Mariarta didn’t particularly want to see either.
