by Kate Elliott
As she scurried through camp, she prayed the pungent smell of earth and onions would not give away her secret good fortune. She was not big enough to fight off any but a smaller child, if it came to that.
“Settle down, now, children. Sit down. Sit down. My voice isn’t what it used to be, alas, but if you will all be quiet, I will tell you the tale of Helen.”
Anna paused despite knowing she ought to hurry right back to Matthias. With the aid of a stout walking stick, an old man shuffled forward and laboriously seated himself on a stool set down behind him by a girl. Many young children crowded ’round with gaunt faces upturned. She recognized him, just as she recognized the children: They, too, were refugees from Gent, the only ones who had escaped the Eika attack. No older children sat here; like Matthias, they had taken on the responsibilities of adults or been adopted by farmers to the west. They worked the tanneries and the armories, assisted the blacksmiths, chopped and hauled wood, built huts, broke virgin forestland to the plow, sowed and tended fields, and hauled water from the stream. It was children Anna’s age or younger who were set to watch over the very smallest ones, even those toddling babies whose nursing mothers had to spend all of their day working to make food and shelter.
The old man had been an honored guest at the mayor’s palace in Gent; he was a poet, so he said, accustomed to sing before nobles. Yet if this were true, why hadn’t the mayor of Gent taken him along when he had traded some part of the wealth he had salvaged from Gent to Mistress Gisela in exchange for her allowing him to set up housekeeping within the palisade wall of Steleshame? The old man had been left behind to fend for himself. Too crippled to work, he told tales in the hope of gaining a pittance of bread or the dregs from a cup of cider.
He cleared his throat to begin. His voice was far more robust than his elderly frame.
“‘This is a tale of war and a woman. Fated to be an exile not once but twice, first from her beloved Lassadaemon and then from her second home, red-gated Ilios, she suffered the wrath of cruel Mok, the majestic Queen of Heaven, and labored hard under the yoke of that great Queen’s fury. High Heaven willed that she walk the long path of adventure. But in the end she succeeded in founding her city, and thus in time out of these tribulations grew the high walls and noble empire of Dariya.’”
The poet hesitated, seeing his audience grow restless, then began again—this time without the stiff cadence that made the opening hard to follow. “Helen was heir to the throne of Lassadaemon. She had just come into her inheritance when usurpers arrived. Ai, ruthless Mernon and his brother Menlos marched with their terrible armies into the peaceful land and forced poor Helen to marry that foul chieftain, Menlos.”
“Were they like the Eika?” demanded a child.
“Oh, worse! Far worse! They came out of the tribe of Dorias, whose women consorted with the vile Bwrmen.” He coughed and surveyed the crowd, seeing that he had their attention. Anna liked the story much better told this way. “They made Helen a prisoner in her own palace while Mernon went off to conquer—well, never mind that. So Helen escaped and with her faithful servants fled to the sea, where they took ship. They set sail for Ilios, where her mother’s mother’s kin had settled many years before and built a fine, grand city with red gates and golden towers under the protection of bright Somorhas. But Mernon and Menlos prayed to cruel Mok, the pitiless Queen of Heaven, and since she was jealous of beautiful Somorhas, she cajoled her brother Sujandan, the God of the Sea, into sending storms to sink Helen’s ship. ‘How quickly night came, covering the sun! How the winds howled around them! How the waves rose and fell, first smothering the bow of the ship, then sinking so low that the very bottom of the sea was exposed!’”
Beyond the old man’s shoulder Anna could see the palisade and heavy gates of Steleshame proper. The gates were always shut, even during the day. Some in the camp grumbled that it was more to keep out the refugees than to guard against an Eika attack, for everyone in camp knew that within Steleshame they ate beans and bread every day, even the servants. Now, one of the gates to this haven of plenty opened, and five riders appeared. They rode out on the southeast track, along which part of the refugee’s settlement had sprawled.
The poet’s story—even as the storm-tossed ship ran aground on an island filled with monsters—could not compete with such an unusual event. Anna followed the others as they ran to line the road, hoping for news.
“Where are you going?” children shouted to the riders as they passed through the camp. “Are you leaving?”
“Nay,” shouted back a young woman outfitted in a boiled leather coat for armor, with a short spear braced against her stirrup and two long knives stuck in her belt. “We’re riding to the stronghold of Duchess Rotrudis, down to Osterburg where it’s said she holds court at Matthiasmass.”
“Will she come to rescue us?” demanded several children at once.
The other riders had gone on, but the young woman lingered, eyeing the crowd of children with a frown, shaking her head all the while. “I don’t know what she’ll do. But we must ask for help. More Eika scouts are sighted every day. More villages are burned. Their circle is growing wider. Soon they will engulf all of us. There are too many people here already. Mistress Gisela can’t support them all.”
Her comrades called to her and she urged her horse forward, leaving the camp behind.
Most of the children wandered back to the old poet and told him what the rider had said.
He snorted. “As if Mistress Gisela supports any but her own kin and servants, and those with coin to pay for food and protection. Alas that there is no biscop here to feed the poor.” Anna noticed all at once how thin he was. A film of white half-covered his left eye, and his hands had a constant small tremor.
“Who is Duchess Rotrudis?” she asked.
Trained as both listener and singer, he found her in the crowd and nodded toward her, acknowledging her question. “Rotrudis is duchess of Saony. She is the younger sister of King Henry. Alas that the Dragons fell. That was a terrible day.”
“Why hasn’t the king come to rescue us?” asked a boy.
“Nay, lad, you must recall that the world is a wide place and filled with danger. I have traveled over its many roads and paths. It takes months to get news from one place to another.” Seeing their expressions shift from hope to fear, he hurried on. “But I have no doubt King Henry knows of the fall of Gent and mourns it.”
“Then why doesn’t he come?”
He only shrugged. “The king may be anywhere. He may be marching on his way here now. How can we know?”
“Have you ever seen the king?” Anna asked.
He was surprised and perhaps taken aback by her question. “I have not,” he answered, voice shaking and cheeks flushed. “But I have sung before his son, the one who was captain of the Dragons.”
“Tell us more of the story,” said a child.
“Tell us something that happened to you, friend,” said Anna suddenly, knowing she ought to return to the tannery but not quite able to tear herself away.
“Something that happened to me,” he murmured.
“Yes! Yes!” cried the other children.
“You don’t want to hear more of the lay of Helen?”
“Did it happen to you?” asked Anna. “Were you on the ship?”
“Why, no, child,” he said, half chuckling. “It happened so long ago that—”
“You were a child then?”
“Nay, child. It happened long before Daisan received the Holy Word of God and preached the truth of the Unities, bringing Light to the Darkness. It happened long, long ago, before even the old stone walls you see in Steleshame were built.”
“I’ve never been inside Steleshame,” Anna pointed out. “And if it happened so long ago, how do you know it’s true?”
“Because it has been passed down from poet to poet, line for line, even written down by the ancient scribes so it would be remembered.” Then he smiled softly. Amazingly, he still had most of his
teeth, but perhaps a poet took better care of his mouth, knowing that his fortune rested there and in what he could recall from his mind. “But I’ll tell you a story that happened to me when I was a young man. Ai, Lady! Have you ever heard of the Alfar Mountains? Can you imagine, you children, mountains that are so high that they caress the heavens? That snow lies thick upon them even on the hottest summer’s day? These mountains you must cross if you wish to travel south from the kingdom of Wendar into the kingdom of Aosta. In Aosta you will find the holy city of Darre. That is where the skopos resides, she who is Mother over the Holy Church.”
“If the mountains are so high,” asked Anna, “then how can you get over them?”
“Hush, now,” he said querulously. “Let us proceed with no more questions. There are only a few paths over the mountains. So high do these tracks rise along the rugged ground that a man can reach up and touch the stars themselves at nightfall. But every step is dangerous. No matter how clear at dawn, each day may turn into one of blinding storm—even at midsummer, for summer is the only season when one may cross the mountains.
“Yet some few attempt the crossing late in the season. Some few, as I did, try it even as late as the month of Octumbre. My need was great—” He raised a hand, forestalling a question. “It had to do with a woman. You need ask no more than that! I was warned against attempting the crossing, but I was a rash youth. I thought I could do anything. And indeed, as I climbed, the weather held fair and I had no trouble …”
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper that still carried easily over the crowd. Every child hushed and leaned forward, mirroring him. “The blizzard hit without warning. It was the very middle of day, a fine day, a warm day, and between one footstep and the next I was engulfed in storm. I saw nothing but howling white wind before my eyes. The cold pierced me like a sword, and I staggered and fell to my knees.
“But I would not give up! Nay, not when she awaited me in distant Darre. I staggered forward, crawled when I could no longer walk, and yet the storm still raged about me. The cold blinded me, and I could not feel my feet. I stumbled, fell, and tumbled down a slope to my death.”
Here he paused again. Anna edged forward, hand tight over the bulge of onions. No one spoke.
“But alas, the fall hadn’t killed me. I tried to open my swollen eyes. As I groped forward, I felt grass under my hands. A stream ran not a man’s length from my body, and there I crawled and drank my fill of its clear water. I splashed it on my face and slowly I could see again. Above me, beyond the steep slope down which I had fallen, the storm still raged. A few flakes of snow drifted down on the breeze to wet my face. But in the vale it was as warm as springtime, with violets, and trees in bloom.”
“Where were you?” Anna demanded, unable to keep still.
But now memory made him look down. His old shoulders hunched, and he sighed heavily, as if sorry to have remembered this tale. “I never knew. Truly, it was a miracle I did not die that day. There was a ring of trees, mostly birch, and a little grassy meadow, but beyond that I never managed to go. A hut stood at the edge of the meadow. There I slept and recovered my strength. Every morning I would find food and drink outside the door, sweet bread, strong cider, a stew of beans, tart apples. But no matter how I tried to stay awake, I never could. I never saw what creature brought me the food. When I was strong enough, I knew it was time to leave, so I went.”
“Didn’t you ever find it again?” asked Anna. Other children nodded their heads, marveling at the thought of an enchanted place where food appeared miraculously each morning.
“Nay, though I traveled three times more over that pass. I searched, but the way was closed to me. Now I wonder sometimes if it was only a dream.”
“Could we take him in?” she demanded at dusk as she and Matthias feasted privately on onion stew and roasted eggs. “He’s just a frail old man. He can’t eat much, and he hasn’t anyone else to take care of him. There’s room for him to sleep here.” With the flap pulled down snug to protect them from wind and rain, their little lean-to did indeed have room for one more to sleep—just barely.
“But what good would he be to us, Anna?” Matthias had gulped down his portion more like a dog than a boy, eating the egg first and the stew after. Now he wiped the sides of the blackened pot clean with a dry hunk of bread he’d saved from his midday meal.
“We weren’t any good to Papa Otto!” she retorted. “Oh, Matthias, he knows the most wonderful stories.”
“But they’re not true.” Matthias licked the last crumbs off his lips and eyed the old pot with longing, wishing for more. Then he took Anna by the wrist and shook her. “They’re just tales he made up. He as good as admitted it was a dream—if the whole thing even happened at all! That’s how storytellers make their stories sound true, by pretending it happened to them.” He shook his head, grimacing, and let her go. “But you may as well bring the old man here to us, if he’s no other place to sleep. It’s true enough that Papa Otto and the other slaves in Gent helped us for no return. We should help others as we can. And anyway, if you have him to care for, maybe you won’t go wandering out into the woods and get yourself slaughtered by Eika!”
She frowned. “How do you know his stories aren’t true? You never saw such things or traveled so far.”
“Mountains high enough that their peaks touch the sky! Snow all the year round! Do you believe that?”
“Why shouldn’t I believe? All we’ve ever seen is Gent—and now Steleshame and a bit of forest.” She licked the last spot of egg from her lips. “I bet there’s all kinds of strange places just as fantastic as the stories the poet tells. You’ll see. I’ll bring him here tomorrow. I bet he’s been to places no one here has ever heard of. Poets have to do that, don’t they? Maybe he knows what the Eika lands look like. Maybe he’s seen the sea that Helen sailed across. Maybe he’s really traveled across the great mountains!”
Matthias only snorted and, as the last daylight faded, rolled up in his blanket. Exhausted by his day’s labor hauling ashes and water and lime, he quickly fell asleep.
Anna snuggled up against him, but she could not go to sleep as easily. Instead, she closed her eyes and dreamed of the wide world, of a place far from the filth of the camp and the lurking shadows of the Eika.
II
IN THE
SHADOW OF
THE MOUNTAINS
1
THE hawk spiraled far above, a speck against the three mountain peaks that dominated the view. It sank, then caught an updraft and rose, wings outstretched, into the depthless blue of the sky. Here, where human paths arched closest to the vast and impenetrable mystery of the heavens, Hanna could believe that anything was possible. She could believe that the distant bird, hovering high overhead, was no hawk at all but a man or woman wearing a bird’s shape—or else that it was a spirit, an angel disguised in plain feathers, surveying earth from the heights.
Or perhaps it was only a hawk, hunting for its supper.
A thin crest of breeze touched her ears, and she thought she heard the bird’s harsh call; its slow spiral did not alter. As she waited, the heavens shaded from the vivid blue of afternoon into the intense blue-gray of impending twilight. Shadow crept up the stark white peaks as the sun sank in the western sky.
Where had Wolfhere gone, and why was he taking so long to return?
The path wound farther up into heather and gorse, sidetracked by heaps of sharp boulders and the high shoulder of a cliff face. Beyond, the dirt track lost itself in a narrow defile. Wolfhere had bade her wait here while he walked on ahead, disappearing through the narrow gate of stone and crumbling cliff into the vale that lay beyond. Through the gap Hanna saw the rippling tops of trees, suggesting a cleft of land that ran lush with spring-fed plants. She had seen other such valleys in these mountains, sudden gorges and startlingly green vales half hidden by the jagged landscape. Beneath the scent of gorse she smelled cookfires and a distant whiff of the forge.
Why had Wolfhere wan
ted her to accompany him this far, and no farther?
“Stay here and watch,” he had said. “But on no account follow me and let no other follow me.”
What was he hiding? What other did he expect to follow them up here, on this goat track he called a path? She turned to look back the way they had come. At first she thought they had been following a goat track along the heights towering above the ancient paved road that marked St. Barnaria Pass. But no goat’s track sported a thin trail of wagon wheels, although how a wagon could possibly be dragged up here was more than she could imagine.
It was very strange.
A few steps back, an outcropping gave her a good view down onto the pass below. The road had been built during the old Dariyan Empire by their astoundingly clever engineers. In the hundreds of years since then, not even winter storms had washed it away, although many of its stones were cracked or upturned by the weight of snow, the thawing power of ice, or the simple strength of obstinate grass. Its resilience astonished her.
The hawk wafted lazily above. She blinked back tears as her gaze caught the edge of the sinking sun. Specks swam before her eyes; then she realized that two more birds had joined the first.
Her neck hurt from staring upward for so long, but in her seventeen or so years of life she had never imagined there might be a place like this. She knew the sea and the marsh, rivers and hills and the dark mat of forest. She had now seen the king’s court and the glittering parade of nobles on his progress. She had seen the Eika raiders and their fearsome dogs so close she could have spit on them.
But to see such mountains as these! The peaks were themselves presences, towering creatures hunched in sleep, their shoulders and bowed heads covered by drifts of snow deeper than anything Hanna had ever seen. Last winter she would have laughed at any poor soul foolish enough to suggest that she, Hanna, daughter of the innkeepers Birta and Hansal, would herself journey across those mountains wearing the badge of an Eagle. Last winter her mother and father had arranged for her betrothal to young Johan, freeholder and farmer, a man of simple tastes and no curiosity, his gaze fixed on the earth.
