by Diane Duane
“I should hope so,” Mariarta said. She patted Grugni, which was looking at her thoughtfully. “Well, old friend?” she said.
Grugni grunted, nosed Mariarta in the old affectionate manner, and made for the door.
Inside her, Diun laughed, the laugh of a young girl set free of her chores and about to go on holiday. Mariarta, who had never had a holiday, smiled wryly and went after Grugni, out into the moonlight: alone, and in company...possibly forever.
THREE
L’aura ei il meglier luvrer.
The weather is the best worker.
(old folk saying)
They came out into warm wind, the noise of melting water running hard to the rivers, the sky that paler blue of gentling weather: spring. Standing at the mouth of the valley above Fiesch, hearing the merry crash of the melt-water racing toward the town’s mill-wheels, Mariarta was horrified.
“How long did you keep me in there!” she whispered. “I knew I shouldn’t have drunk that wine!”
Inside her, she felt eyebrows raised in great unconcern. You were outside time, as I told you, Diun Glinargiun said. The wine had nothing to do with it.
“But what year is it? Are the people who need me even alive any more?!”
Better find out, said Diun, and laughed.
“Come on,” Mariarta said to Grugni. They rode down the Fieschertal as far as the crags above the town, where Mariarta left Grugni. He went off to browse, and with some trepidation Mariarta took her pack and walked into the village.
People stared at her as she came, and there was recognition in the stares; that at least was a relief. Her worry kept being broken, though, by Diun’s wondering exclamations at everything she saw: the town’s wooden mill, the way house-eaves were carved, the stone fountain in the street where women were doing the washing. One would think you’d never seen a village before, Mariarta thought.
Diun didn’t answer, but there was the sound of laughter again, delighted laughter like a child’s. Mariarta smiled, resigned, and made her way to the town’s inn. At its door the innkeeper met her, half in tears, but laughing too, and took her by the hands. “Why, where have you been all the winter?” the woman cried. “We thought you would come back to tell us you were alive, at least!”
Only one winter, Mariarta thought, thank God!
Indeed! Glinargiun said, indignant.
“Alive, yes,” Mariarta said, “and thankful for it. No, I can’t stay: I’m in haste eastward. Ah, no—!”
The innkeeper pulled Mariarta inside, and gave her morning porridge, and scolded her for even thinking of going on. By the time the porridge-bowl was clean, Mariarta was surrounded by half the village, all waiting to hear her tale.
What am I going to tell them? Mariarta thought desperately.
The truth, for all I care, Diun said, lazy-sounding. But they clearly expect a tale of some kind, and I for one will be interested to hear what you invent....
Mariarta was no tale-spinner, so she told them the truth—as far as the marble house on the hill, and the opening of its door. Then, for all the expectant faces, she reached into her pack and brought out the old statue. The townspeople were awed. “I keep it with me,” Mariarta said, “and it guides me....” It was falsely true, and the townspeople stared at the statue, and looked relieved when Mariarta put it away.
“And after you came out of the mountain?” the innkeeper’s husband said.
“The weather was bad on the other side,” Mariarta said. “I had to stay a long time until I could cross back....”
“It’s true,” the innkeeper’s husband said, “there was terrible weather all winter. Great blizzards came, one after another, with lightnings in them. There haven’t been such storms of snow and thunder together in a long while....”
Your doing? Mariarta thought, rather severely, to Diun.
Not on purpose. But my surroundings echo my emotions. I was...annoyed, once or twice.
“I missed the worst of the weather,” Mariarta said. “But I must make my way quickly to the lake countries. Have you heard any news from there?”
“We only heard that their weather was as bad as ours.”
Mariarta nodded. It took an hour’s worth of thanking to get free and out onto the eastward-leading road. Grugni was waiting for her there.
When they were on their way, Diun said, They speak an uncouth tongue.
“Northern,” Mariarta said. “Our people call it tudestg, but the its own name for itself is deutsche. I know it well enough...”
But you don’t like it.
“It’s the oppressors’ tongue,” Mariarta said. “Anyone who doesn’t speak it is suspect, to them. Either a rebel, or a backward peasant.”
Diun laughed. When the tongue you speak is the child of the one spoken by the mightiest empire in the world as yet, she said, and their upstart language is just another offshoot of the one Thor’s scattered children speak. How odd the world becomes....
“You don’t know the half of it,” Mariarta said. “But you’ll find out soon enough.” She nudged the stag; he trotted into the woodland, making north and east for the Furka pass, and Realp, and after that, Altdorf.
***
It was a two days’ ride this time, for the weather in the Furka pass lay calm before them. Even swaddled in flesh like this, I can manage that much, Diun said scornfully. Though most of the power has passed to you now. You had best start practicing: you may find the wind more amenable to your requests than it has been....
Mariarta took this advice, finding that the goddess was right. All by herself Mariarta cleared the sky, leaving them in warm sunlight as they climbed, even though the weather had had other plans, and had been thinking of snow. “The doing is easier,” Mariarta said to Diun, gasping as Grugni carried her up the pass road. “But my body seems to be complaining more afterwards...”
Because the power is fully seated within you, Diun said. Don’t be misled by the complaints. I am you now, and you are the weather’s mistress, if you’ll just know yourself so: all the winds are in your hand...if you’ll only believe. Not that the weather doesn’t hold firm opinions of its own! It was made to do so. Who wants to have to manage it all the time? But know who gave it the power to have those opinions in the first place. The smile inside her was smug. And then change the opinions as you like.
“It’s just hard to believe....” Mariarta said. “After so long....”
It’s hard to believe anyone would jump into a crevasse in a glacier on a whim, either, but you seem to have managed. Diun was wry. Keep at it. Or give up now, and let me manage it—
Mariarta had her own ideas about that. Let the goddess become better than Mariarta at managing her power from within Mariarta’s body, and who knew what might follow?
Soft laughter echoed inside her. Mariarta set her teeth, and rode.
They came to Realp. The innkeeper told her that Theo had set out for the forest countries some weeks after Mariarta left. No word had come from him since, and no one expected any with the weather they’d had.... Mariarta thanked him, staying only the night, and rode on.
The next afternoon Mariarta rode down into the Ursera valley, within sight of Andermatt. She thought longingly of the Treis Retgs, of warmth and roast chicken and a bed with straw recently changed. But at the same time she felt uneasy, and wanted, irrationally, to hurry south.
Not my doing, Diun said from inside her. That is god-knowing you feel. Ignore it at your peril: it’s seldom wrong.
“What does it mean?” Mariarta said, looking at the town.
The goddess laughed. In all the gods’ time of owning it, even we never knew. It never gives reasons, only warnings. At any rate, I would listen, if I were you...
Mariarta laughed. “You are me!” She nudged Grugni northward, along the far side of the Reuss, and over the Devil’s Bridge.
After the Bridge, Grugni took to the heights. They passed Göschenen around nightfall, but once again, Mariarta felt reluctant to stop. They went northward still
, in the brief light of a moon growing toward first quarter. The sight of the narrow valleys on the west side of the river, and of the tiny towns, made Mariarta smile, for the memory of the Knight’s son of Attinghausen was wound up with them—that smile of his, the way he mispronounced the villages' names. All the memories of that journey with a knight and a bullcalf came back to be considered, and Glinargiun, at the back of Mariarta’s mind, might look cool and scornful as she pleased: Mariarta didn’t care.
Two hours before midnight, Diun said, If you drive your body like this all the time, it won’t last you long, immortality or not—
“Something’s going to happen,” Mariarta said. They were looking toward Ried village from the slope of the Rainen hill across the river.
What? said the goddess.
Mariarta thought about that, and found she hadn’t the slightest idea. “Something. We mustn’t be late for it...that’s all I can tell.”
Diun shrugged. We should stop, nonetheless, she said. If something’s going to happen, we—you—must be fit for it.
Mariarta consulted that niggling feeling and won from it a grudging agreement that it would be all right to stop here for the night. She dismounted and undid her pack and Grugni’s saddle, stowing it as usual in the lower branches of a handy tree. Grugni nudged her, then strolled off into the woods to browse and sleep. Mariarta shouldered her pack and walked down to Ried.
At the inn she found everything so quiet that she began to distrust the niggling feeling, no matter what Diun might say. No one had come north from the pass for some weeks, the innkeeper told her: the bad weather was just now breaking, and the first föhn was melting the snows in the high country. Mariarta steered the conversation to how sales were in the markets, in Altdorf for example?—and got what she had been hoping for: news that the bad weather had kept even the bailiffs and vogten quiet that winter. “Especially,” the innkeeper said, lowering his voice, “after that night they had at the Axenstein last year. Did you hear about that? Seems Gessler and some of the vogten made a plan to take some of the chief men hereabouts and stuff them into Kussnacht, or Hell maybe. Thought they’d be there by the mountain together one night. Well, no one knows where they were, but the vogten’s soldiers were in the Axenstein right enough, and an avalanche came off the mountain and killed the lot. People say it’s God’s punishment on them for these stealings and house-burnings and people’s eyes being put out. Wickedness it is, a good thing they’re punished for it—”
Mariarta could feel Diun, inside her, smiling with grim approval. “If they’ve been quiet,” Mariarta said to the innkeeper, “it could mean they’re planning....”
The innkeeper put his finger by his nose. “There may be others who’re planning too,” he said, taking the empty pitcher away.
Mariarta grew thoughtful. This time last year, it would have been an incautious man who spoke out loud to a stranger of the wickedness of governors and bailiffs. If this man was typical, then things had changed. Something might be about to happen....
Something is, Diun said, or so you tell me.
Mariarta was out of the inn early, and met Grugni in the woods on the Rainen hill. He danced about uneasily as Mariarta got the saddle back on. “What ails you?” she said, after his shifting from foot to foot made her fumble the girth-fastening for the third time.
The stag lowered his head to look into her eyes, and moaned, that uncertain sound that Mariarta had learned meant trouble. Inside her, Diun took note. They have senses neither gods nor mortals have: that’s the One’s gift to them. Something else it’s wise to pay mind to.
“That I knew already.” Mariarta mounted and made sure her bow was well stowed in her bag. Things might have changed in Altdorf...but it would be unwise to assume so without making sure.
An hour past dawn they forded the Bristenlobel stream and passed through the woods above Amsteg. By mid-morning, across the wide green fields on either side of the Reuss, Mariarta could see the rock of Schweinberg mountain, and Attinghausen castle cut sharp against a fair blue sky. “Now then,” she said to Grugni, “you go where where you went the last time, and have a good feed. I’ll be in town tonight.”
Grugni put his head against Mariarta’s, nuzzling her. He trotted up the meadow toward the Stockberg, looking back several times as he went.
Mariarta walked northward, pausing as she crossed the Schachen bridge. The town seemed peaceful—smoke rising from its chimneys as the noonmeal was got ready, a normal-looking traffic of people and carts and animals on the road’s far side.
Slowly Mariarta went into Altdorf. Within her, Diun Glinargiun gazed at everything, turning Mariarta’s head every now and then to look more carefully at a roof-cornice, a carving on a street-fountain, a woman’s face staring out a window. You’ll make me look like a hick just in from the country, Mariarta thought reprovingly, when everyone here knows I’ve been here plenty of times....
Uncaring, Diun smiled at Mariarta from the bottom of her soul. I shall look while I have a chance.
What’s that supposed to mean?
An unconcerned shrug. God-knowing. Mine, now.
Mariarta went to the marketplace. There was the pole, there was the hat and the bored soldiers. Even the peacock feather remained in the hat, which surprised Mariarta. She bowed to the damned thing, no more than she had to, and walked on by to a stall she knew, pausing to talk to old Andri the bell-saddler. His eyes got wide at the sight of her. “Mati! We thought you were dead—”
“Not yet: hush! Who’s ‘we?’”
“Why, Walter, and Theo and all—” Andri shook his head. “We thought they’d got you. Or something else had.”
“It did,” Mariarta said, smiling, “but I lived through it. How have things been?”
“Quiet enough. Everyone ignores that now, except to bow to it. Look, you wait—” He vanished behind another stall.
Mariarta leaned there, looking around. She let her eyes wander over the crowd, the people standing to one side or another, talking, gesticulating. Odd, and amusing in its way, how nearly every back in the place was turned on that pole. Mariarta glanced up the street past it, saw a bearded man with a child, looked away: and then back at the man, for here was a familiar face, though she couldn’t place it. Where have I seen him before? she wondered. Different clothes? Maybe without the beard—
She swallowed, then. That face had been clean-shaven, much younger. Instead of hunter’s tunic and leggings of brown linen and leather, he had worn leggings and tunic and cloak all in student’s black. Though later still she had seen him in herdsman’s dress, leaning on the stall door, looking at the silver bullcalf—
Tel. Wilhelm Tel, striding into the market, looking around with the interested expression of a man who hasn’t been to town for a while: a chamois skin on his shoulder, his crossbow slung over his shoulder on a leather belt, and holding a small boy by the hand. His son, Mariarta thought. The child’s resemblance to the young man his father had been was striking. Behind Tel, a tall brown-haired woman, his wife almost certainly, came along carrying a basket with cloth-wrapped cheeses inside it, looking about her warily. Mariarta saw Tel look at the pole with an expression much like her own that first time: incomprehension, unconcern. He walked by it, heading for the tanner’s stall.
The soldiers’ eyes fixed on him, and came alive with happy malice.
Mariarta went hot and cold as she had when Diun had first entered her: froze with terror, blazed with helpless rage at something about to happen, something she couldn’t see— My rush to get here, Mariarta thought in anguish. All folly. This wouldn’t have happened if I had been slower, met him on the road—
Hush! Diun said forcefully. This is god-knowing, as I said. Learn now how it works! Whatever it is, this is meant to happen. Ride the moment, guide it, don’t stand there moaning!
A hand clamped on her arm. She shook it off angrily and turned—only to see it was Theo. Mariarta gripped his arm too, whispered his name. She had no time for more, for Theo was s
taring past her, seeing what Mariarta had seen, what everyone else in the place was watching, horrified. “Oh, no,” Theo whispered, “what’s he doing here, didn’t he get the message not to—”
The soldiers made for Tel. His son, swinging happily from his father’s hand, was oblivious. His wife, behind him, saw the soldiers coming, blanched, opened her mouth. Before she could speak, Tel turned, saw the soldiers coming toward him, their spears leveled. He pushed his son away, dropped the chamois skin, and reached out to the nearest spear, with which the leading, incautious soldier was almost prodding him. Tel slapped the spearblade aside open-handed, caught the spear by the socket and pulled it out of the soldier’s grip. The man went sprawling. The second one lunged: Tel sidestepped, kicked the spear out of his hands. Other hands had it instantly—for the people in the marketplace had started to gather around Tel within a breath of the trouble starting.
The man who picked up the second spear was leveling it at the soldier who had dropped it. “No,” Tel said loudly; and that man lowered the spear, passing it back through the sudden crowd, where it vanished. Tel handed someone the first spear: it vanished the same way. The soldiers were on their knees, frozen in the act of getting to their feet, as they realized they were in the middle of an unfriendly crowd getting bigger every minute, with their weapons gone. And Tel still had his bow.
“No,” Tel said to the crowd, and gazed at the two men. “Now what makes you attack a man going peacably about his business?”
“That is the Governor’s hat,” one soldier said, sounding both sullen and frightened at the same time. “It’s his order that all men must bow to it, as symbol of his authority under the Emperor.”
Tel laughed, picked that soldier up by the collar, and set him on his feet. “Now listen,” he said. “I am a free man. I will kneel to God, and I’ll bow my head right enough to my liege lord the Emperor, or his legal representative, if I should see one of them go by. But I’m not bowing to an empty hat. You just tell your Governor that.”
