He walked for a long time before he fell. This, too, Gurd barely noticed. He simply lay there until he was able to rise again, forced to his numb feet by an instinct that would not let him rest, that knew he must keep moving to stay alive, but even more to do what he had sworn to do. Blood ran freely from deep scratches on his face and an even deeper gash in his thigh made by a sharp rock on the mountain. The icy wind kept his face from healing, and the jagged wound at his thigh reopened with every step. It festered, grew rancid and swollen, but Gurd paid no attention. His leggings and his frosted beard turned red.
Two days and nights passed in this way and he simply kept walking, never resting long enough to freeze to death, never eating unless he found a dead animal to gnaw at, scooping snow into his mouth sometimes for moisture. His feet and hands were grey with frostbite. Each time he fell, he hauled himself to his numb feet again, only to fall again, rise again. Then, finally, his body rebelled and he knew no more.
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For many cycles of the moon after Lief’s death, Larak feared that Zena, too, might die, not so much from her body’s ailments as from a sickness of the spirit. She had known that Zena and Lief cared deeply for each other, but she had not realized the strength of the bond that had formed between them, or how deeply Zena would be affected by its loss. Zena could not seem to get over her grief; worse, she blamed herself for Lief’s death. It was her fault that they had decided to walk the mountain route instead of traveling with the others, her fault that she had not realized how ill Lief was even when they started out. Nor had she known how badly Lief had been hurt, that the arrows had penetrated his back as well as his hand. She should have made him tell her that, should not have allowed herself to sleep, should have made certain he was warm, at least. Over and over, she berated herself, and to argue with her was useless.
Zena’s grim trek through the snow to find help had also taken a terrible toll. Her eyes took a long time to heal from the snow blindness, and her toes and fingers were so bad that Larak was afraid at first that she would lose them. But she did not, and as summer passed, her body slowly returned to health. Her spirit was harder to heal, and Larak began to wonder if she would ever fully recover, ever be the real Zena again.
Zena was not sure herself. If only she could find Lief and bring him back for burial, she thought despairingly, she might be able to recover and live again, but until the ice melted it was impossible to look, or even to tell where he lay, and the ice did not seem to be melting this year as it had in the past, at least not on the mountain where Lief rested.
If only she had not lost Teran, too! Oh how terribly she missed Teran right now. Why, why, had she lost both of them? If she could just find Teran, Zena thought, she might be able to bear the loss of Lief, even of his body.
And so she kept looking for any smallest sign of him. Day after day, she trudged up the hills as far as the ice would permit and stood staring at the summit, but she could not even see the ridges that had enclosed them during the storm. Snow had filled all the crevices and then frozen, leveling the terrain. Each day as she realized anew that her search was hopeless, she felt grief return, and guilt, as bitter and unyielding as before; each evening she stumbled down again, knowing that she would never see her beloved Lief again, knowing, too, that she would never cease to blame herself for his death.
She might never know why he had been attacked, either, and that too was her fault. Lief had been trying to tell her something that night; she remembered his lips at her ear, speaking to her, but she had been too deeply asleep to absorb the words. That knowledge was the most painful of all, that she had let Lief down doubly, by not knowing that he was wounded and near death, and by not listening when he tried to tell her why. Day and night, the question of who had killed him and why pounded at Zena’s exhausted mind. Sometimes a glimmer of an answer tried to make its way through the fog of memory but she could never grasp it.
Larak watched her and worried. She did not fret overmuch about finding answers to the mystery of Lief’s death, as others did; that would come in time. All she worried about was Zena, who was suffering so intensely.
“You must at least go to your Kyrie again,” she urged gently one day, hoping that to speak once more with the Goddess would help Zena.
To her surprise, Zena agreed and began to go to her Kyrie almost every day. Larak finally realized she went mostly because the Kyrie offered an excellent place from which to spot Lief, should the ice ever melt. Still, for Zena to go there was a start, she told herself hopefully. Surely, the Mother would find a way to reach her. And She did, though not in the way Larak had expected. It was not the voice of the Mother that finally pushed Zena to begin, finally, to recover. Instead, it was an urgent message from Runor, asking Zena to come at once.
**********************
When Gurd next came to his senses he was lying on an unfamiliar pallet. The walls of a hut rose around him, not his own hut but one he did not know. Terror filled him, the terror of a trapped animal. He must not be seen, must escape. He clawed at the coverings around him, tried to rise, but his legs would not hold him. It was as if his feet were not there.
A woman came into the hut and made noises at him that he could not decipher. Gurd cowered against the pallet, struggled to crawl away, but his hands felt useless too, and there was no strength in his body. He could not make it obey. How could he escape if he could not move?
The woman shook her head as she watched his effort. “You are hurt,” she said softly. “You must stay still. We will help you.”
Gurd’s heart thumped wildly with fear. Where was his knife? He must find it, use it to get away. But he had no knife. He had lost it on the mountain.
Kneeling beside him, the woman adjusted some bandages on his head. Her face horrified him. He had never seen a face so close before. It swam out of focus as he stared at it, repelled but fascinated. He had looked into the eyes of animals but never a person, except for that one time with the girl he had found.
Another face appeared above him and his body seemed to freeze. It was hers - the face of the old woman he wanted so badly to kill. Gurd shrank back. Helplessness assaulted him. He could not kill her when he could not move, could not even get away from her. Perhaps she knew he meant to kill her, so she would kill him first. He was powerless before her.
Cowering against the pallet, he stared at her, unable to look away. His terror was so great, his sensation of helplessness so intense that he could not breathe.
Sensing his panic, Runor moved away to regard him from a distance. She had never seen anyone so paralyzed with fear, only a cornered animal. And perhaps that was what he was, she thought, with an unexpected spurt of pity. She wondered who he was and how he had come here. His head was so swathed in bandages that it was impossible to tell.
The woman who was caring for him removed the bandages on one side of his face to rub in a soothing balm. Runor felt the hut whirl around her. She took a step back, then another, then her legs gave out and she sank to the floor of the hut, overcome by faintness and nausea. She knew now who he was… She had hoped never to see him or think of him again, never to think of what she had done to him in that moment of overwhelming rage… She had not even let the images of that appalling day come back to her mind… never had she allowed them…
Against her will she looked again, saw the hideous scars that disfigured the man’s face. The sight released the floodgates of memory, and the images poured into her, as unstoppable as the ice that had careened down the mountainside onto her village. She saw herself pulling Mordor against her all those years ago, felt her body fill with desire so intense she could hardly breathe. He was so young then, hardly more than a boy, tall and beautiful. Never had she desired a man as she had desired him. And how could she have known what he would become?
But she had known, Runor thought bitterly, and felt shame pour into her, hot and ugly. Even then she had known that she should not trust him, known that beneath the beauty, the
persuasive words, there was evil in his heart - the evil she had tried to kill when the flood had come. She had just blinded herself to it so she could satisfy her craving for him.
And all the time, Gurd had been watching them. That, she had not known, but Mordor had. Just after he had left her that last time, Gurd had run out of the trees and pounced on her, raped her. Mordor had told him he could; she had known that as inexorably as she knew the sun would rise, and disgust had given her strength. It was of little use. Gurd was heavy and thick, his arms and legs as strong as a bear’s, and she could not dislodge him.
When he had rolled away she had leaped to her feet, enraged, and flung the container of food that had been heating on the fire into his face. Then, noise had come from him, a throttled cry of pain like that of a mute animal caught in the jaws of a predator. The sound had never left her.
Korg had taken Mordor and the bear-like man away that day. She had not seen them again for many years, and when they returned, Mordor had become the Leader. There had been no recognition on his face when he saw her, as if his mind had erased all memory of their time together. He did not know who Rofina was either. Korg knew though. Korg knew everything, even about the rape and the hot liquid she had hurled into Gurd’s face. He never spoke of them directly, but she had understood. If she did not cease to act as wise woman for the tribe, did not stop speaking of the Goddess, he would tell Gurd to do to Rofina’s face what she had done to Gurd’s…
Covering her eyes with her hands so she could not see him again, Runor stumbled from the hut. She sat for a long time trying to calm her pounding heart, trying even harder to understand what Gurd’s presence in her village meant, why he had had not died with Korg and the Leader. Probably, she thought, he had lived because he was not in the village, as Korg and the Leader had been, but in the woods, in the hut he had built for them. The waters would not have got there so fast.
She had felt him there all through the years, had felt his eyes on her as he peered at her from the trees. The intensity of his hatred for her had seemed to scorch her body as she had scorched his face. He had never come close to her, though, never come into the village.
Gurd never came into any village, Niva had told her. He did not like people to see him. Runor flinched from the thought, but she was not surprised, considering what the burning liquid had done to his face. What she had done to his face. An image of Rofina’s face with similar damage came into her mind. She closed her eyes tightly to shut it out.
“Great Mother, what have You done?” she cried out, almost weeping now. “Why has he come here, to me, to my village?”
An unexpected answer surfaced, and Runor’s shoulders slumped. Was it possible that this was another task the Goddess had laid upon her in exchange for life, to make amends to this man as well as to Her?
If that was the case, it was not going to be easy, Runor thought with a return of her usual spirit. To feel the compassion she knew she should feel to please the Mother was difficult indeed. Gurd had caused her great pain, not just by raping her but by causing her to relinquish the role that had been entrusted to her by the Goddess and to allow Korg and the Leader to impose their beliefs on her village. As a result, she and her people had lived all those years in fear.
Runor sighed, recognizing that there was justice in the Mother’s demand. She had caused Gurd pain too, and not just from the burns. It could not have been easy to live with a face like that. If the Mother required her to make amends to him too before she died, she would do her best. She had not been kept alive just for her pleasure in watching Mara’s little ones grow, she reminded herself, but to settle her debts.
“Great Goddess, You do not make the last years of my life easy,” she said aloud, “but I suppose that is the price I must pay for my sins.”
Her complacency did not last. As the days passed and she found out more about Gurd, the price became higher, then higher still until it was higher than Runor could ever have imagined, higher than she thought she could bear.
First Wulf, the young man from Niva’s village, came to tell her that Durak and Pila had been found living in the hut that had been fixed for Rofina near the lake. That was welcome news, but hearing that Durak had been shot by an arrow was not.
“We were on our way to visit you, and we heard a woman screaming Durak’s name,” Wulf explained. “It was Pila. She had found him with an arrow in his chest up by the lake. They were living in the old hut near there. Durak was not dead though, and is recovering,” Wulf added quickly, seeing Runor’s shock.
“Do they know who shot the arrow?” Runor asked, and wondered if it was the same person who had shot Lief.
“Pila believes it was the man who abducted her,” Wulf answered. “She calls him the hooded man because he always has a hood over his face. That is because it is badly scarred, Durak says. The hooded man does not want anyone to see it.”
Runor felt a shock go through her body, as if she had been hit by lightning. The man whose face she had maimed was the man who had shot at Durak. Had he shot at Lief too, fired the arrow into his back that had killed him?
The certainty that it was so thudded into Runor. And that meant that she was the true cause of Lief’s tragic death. If she had not thrown the boiling liquid at Gurd, he might never have killed Lief or abducted Pila. Those tragedies had happened because of her, because of what she had done in that one unguarded moment.
Runor felt as if she had been punched hard in the belly. “Great Mother,” she murmured as an agony of remorse filled her, “how can one act, an act of rage and desperation, reap such unbearable consequences so many years later?”
Wulf knelt beside Runor, concerned by her sudden pallor. “Shall I get Mara?” he asked. “You are very pale.”
Runor looked first at her hand, the hand that had thrown the hot food; then she raised her eyes to the young man beside her. He looked so innocent, so free of the weighty burdens that lay so heavily on her shoulders. Once, she had been like that. Now, all she could feel was desolation, and bleak despair.
“I am all right,” she told Wulf wearily. “Tell me the rest of your story.”
“We helped Pila nurse Durak,” Wulf continued, “and he is recovering well. Pila is a healer, though none of us knew that when she was with us.”
Another shock pummeled Runor. Was it possible? For a woman so young to be a healer was unusual. She had known only one other, and that was Teran. Niva had said that Pila did not remember where she had come from, had been called Pila because she did not know her name…
Runor closed her eyes and wanted never to open them again. She was not just responsible for Lief’s death and the attempt on Durak’s life; it was because of her that Teran, beloved sister of Zena, had disappeared. Truly, it was not just Gurd to whom she must make amends; she must beg forgiveness from everyone, all the people she knew, but especially from Zena. What could she say to Zena, who had suffered two terrible losses because of her?
But was she right? She had to know. Runor forced a question through stiff lips. “Can you tell me what Pila looks like?”
Wulf answered readily. “She has large brown eyes and brown hair, and she is very determined, the most determined young woman I have ever known.”
Feeling as if the last of her strength had been drained from her, Runor nodded. She had expected the answer. It was as she had thought.
She forced herself to look at Wulf again. “When you return to the old hut,” she instructed, “ask Niva to come to me as soon as she can leave.”
Niva arrived some days later, and when they had greeted each other and Niva had received food and drink, Runor fired questions at her.
“What does Pila look like?” she asked first, wanting to be certain.
Obediently, Niva described Pila, not just the way she looked but her courage and determination. “She is a remarkably brave young woman,” Niva said. “No matter what happens to her she stays calm and makes it right again. And how she loves that child - and Durak. They are very h
appy together, those two.”
“Does Pila remember anything of her past?” Runor asked.
Niva shook her head. “She still cannot remember her past, but sometimes there is a look on her face, as if she has suddenly become someone else. I saw it when she was nursing Durak. Pila is a talented healer. She does not know where she learned the skills, but her hands, her mind, seem to know them still. When I asked her how she had learned such things, she was very confused.”
“Teran,” Runor said, trying not to let her pain show in her face. “All the time she was there, with you.”
Niva nodded. “Durak believes that,” she agreed. “But he does not press her to remember. Recently, though, I think she is trying.”
“Does Pila know what happened to her after she was taken?” Runor asked.
“Yes. She remembers well what happened after Gurd - she calls him the hooded man - hit her over the head and brought her to the Leader. He initiated her, though she was barely conscious. Then Gurd raped her, she said. Korg was very angry with them and made Gurd bring the girl to me. We gave her the name of Pila, since she had no other.”
Runor’s body slumped. So Gurd as well as the Leader had assaulted the girl. The knowledge pierced her. That, too, had happened because of her.
Niva’s voice interrupted. “When I realized Pila would have a child, I told the villagers that the Great Spirit had come to her. I did not want to say that both Gurd and the Leader had raped her. Korg did not want that either. The Leader had been so intoxicated that he did not remember what he had done, so he, too, believed the Great Spirit had come to Pila. And so we arranged the ceremony.”
Niva felt the familiar shame come into her. “Had Zena not saved the infant, I would have sacrificed the child of her twin sister, and all because of my pride,” she mourned. “Truly, the sin of pride is the worst, and we who presume to lead are the worst sinners. It is a hard burden to bear.”
Niva’s words sank into Runor like hot stones from the fire. They seared her, revealing a truth she had not permitted herself to see until now: that pride was the real reason she had never spoken of what she had done all those years ago. It was true that she had been afraid for Rofina, but she had been even more afraid for her reputation, had feared what others would think of her if they knew about Mordor, about how she had desired him, loved him, ignored all else because of that…
ICE BURIAL: The Oldest Human Murder Mystery (The Mother People Series Book 3) Page 31
