The Book of Earth

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  She laid the guard out in the middle of the room, where he would be most visible from the doorway. She drew the bed curtains shut, opened the high casement window and knotted the torn sheet around the handle, draping it artfully over the sill. She took the pitcher, the washbasin, the kettle, anything that would break or make noise. She had planned to scream and tried, but could not. She prayed there was only the one man guarding her chamber so late at night. She stationed herself against the wall just to the side of the door and began flinging things to the floor.

  The door cracked open. The young duty-guard peered in cautiously, not wishing to follow his captain’s fate with regard to the baron’s daughter. He saw a large body sprawled in the darkened room, then the open casement with the sheet ruffled by the draft. Shouting, he shoved the door wide and sprang in.

  When he had bent over the corpse and his back was to her, Erde ducked silently around the doorjamb and ran for her life.

  * * *

  She used all the old back stairs, the narrowest unlit corridors learned in her childhood, where the wind whistled through the chinks in the stone and the people who worked the longest days slept the hardest. The sword at her back set her posture unnaturally straight, the way Fricca had always nagged her to stand. With no clear idea of where she was heading other than somewhere down the mountain toward the villages, she slipped through the dark warmth of the kitchens, past the yawning bakers already beginning their day. The herbal talisman that always hung over the bread ovens to bless the rising had been replaced by a large wooden crucifix. Erde let herself out the scullery entrance. The wind and damp cold hit her full in the face.

  How can it really be August, she wondered, wrapping her arms about her against the chill. Surely I have slept, and in my daze, it has become November.

  The thin dogs sleeping in the lee of the wood yard raised their heads with interest as she approached, but Erde spoke to them in the language of hands and put their minds at rest. She unpacked her cloak and wrapped it shawllike about her head and shoulders, as she’d seen the prentice boys do, then struck out boldly across the cobbled rear court toward the inner gate.

  The guards there were throwing dice and arguing. A mere passing prentice was hardly worth their notice when a month’s salary hung on the toss. Erde descended into the mud and ruts of the armory yard, head bent, her walk purposeful. Escape was beginning to seem ridiculously easy, when she rounded the corner of the forge and came face-to-face with the chicken-crone, hauling her basket of corn to the bird pen. The ragged ancient peered at her and waved her irritably out of the path. Erde drew her cloak closer and stepped aside to pass. Suddenly the crone snatched at the cloak, spilling corn into the icy mud and raising a piercing squawk as if wolves were in the hen coop.

  “Witch! Witch! Witch!” Her mad shriek echoed off the armory walls like a call to battle.

  Erde jerked herself free and ran, doubling back toward the stables. She still had a few moments of grace before anyone thought to take the cries of the chicken-crone seriously. She let herself into the long wooden shed nestled against the middle ring wall. Most times, she knew, the horse gate leading from the stables into the outer ring was left unguarded, the animals themselves being touchy enough to give alarm. But the great shadowy forms flared their velvet nostrils and let Erde pass. She found her own horse Micha, bade him farewell, and hurried on.

  Now there were the beginnings of commotion in the inner yard, and one gate left to pass, the massive Dragon Gate with its iron portcullis that was lowered every day at dusk. The wheel crank that raised it was inside the guardhouse, windowless but for an arrow slit that looked out on the gate. Its low entrance was barred by a door of rough planks. Erde put her eye to a crack.

  Three men on duty: two fast asleep, the third huddled by the smoking firepit, drinking and staring into the coals. Erde knew this one—Georg, a lank and flat-faced fellow who was often on duty when she took an early walk. He’d stall the morning raising of the portcullis in order to hold her in conversation, going on about the long night and his sad lot and the abuses of his superiors. He smiled at Erde a lot, though this did not tell her whether he was her friend.

  Back in the inner court, the dogs were barking. Soon the search would be on. Erde had no choice but to try and bluff it out. She gathered the cloak around her head, leaving as much of her boy’s clothing showing as seemed reasonable, then rapped manfully on the planks and stood back waiting by the gate.

  Inside, Georg fumbled about, rose, and looked out the door. Erde gestured to him casually to open up. He nodded grumpily and turned back inside. The crank rope groaned as the gate inched up. Past the folds of her hood, Erde could see George squinting at her through the arrow slit. A foot off the ground, the iron grille stopped.

  “Hey, boy, where you headed in this devil’s weather?”

  Erde was unsure whether it was better or worse that she could not answer him. She waved.

  He left the crank and came out toward her. “You might have a civil reply for your elder!”

  Erde shrugged, trying to look shy, even when he reached and grabbed a fold of her cloak. He frowned, rubbing the soft fabric between his fingers. “Who’d you steal this from, eh?” He snatched her hood back, stared a moment, then recognition came. “Well, well. If it ain’t the captain’s high-born whore. You don’t look so good without your hair.”

  He might as well have slapped her. Erde blinked back tears and set her jaw. She inclined her head proudly at the gate.

  Georg snorted. “You want out, your little ladyship? Little late for a walk isn’t it? What is it, a lovers’ tryst? The captain ain’t dead half a day and you’re lifting your skirts for another? Got used to getting a little, did you? My, I like a girl with spirit.”

  Erde scowled at him indignantly and put her finger to her lips.

  “Ssh, ssh, I know, don’t wake the castle!” He grinned, then seemed to get an idea, and moved closer. “Tell you what, missy. I’m happy to accommodate you if you do the same for me.”

  Erde made the mistake of letting hope show in her eyes.

  “Oh, that priest may say you’re hell-bait, but I ain’t afraid. I’ve always thought it’d be just fine to have a hot little witch-girl to snuggle up into when I come home. What d’ya say? You just give me some of what you gave the captain, and I’ll let you go wherever you want.” Georg folded his arms and smiled. “What d’ya say? It’s cold out here, so cold, and I got a joint needs warming.”

  Erde finally understood. She shrank back instinctively and tried to bolt. Georg lunged and pinned her against the iron gate. His heavy wine-breath reminded Erde sickeningly of her father. The alarm raised in the inner yard had moved on to the stables. Horses neighed and stomped, and guardsmen shouted orders. But Georg was too intent on pressing his hips into her and working his hands through the layers of her clothing. Erde had no voice to reason with him. She tried to shove him away.

  “Oh, like it rough, do you?” He grunted nastily, sucking at her neck and tearing at her breeches. “Is this how the captain gave it to you? Did he give it to you hard?”

  As his fingers groped for parts of her body that no man had ever touched, Erde knew another game had turned deadly serious. She hadn’t a chance of fighting him off. His weight pushing at her outlined the chill of Rainer’s sword against her back, and the shape of Alla’s dagger against her side. The reminder of Alla and what Alla had done to save her calmed Erde and told her what to do.

  She forced herself to relax against Georg’s body, to let his rough hands find her skin and thrust themselves impatiently between her legs. While he sighed and groaned and fumbled to loose his own ties, she eased the dagger out of its sheath, slid her arms up as if to embrace him, and rammed the slim blade into him as hard as she could.

  She felt the blood spurt, hot and reeking, and was glad it was too dark to see his face as he reeled back from her, clutching his neck, his thick hose sagging around his naked thighs. She held tight to the dagger until his spasms jerke
d it free, then shrugged her own clothes up around her and dropped to the ground to wedge herself into the cold mud until she could roll through the narrow space beneath the gate.

  Free of the mud and iron spikes, she stood shaking, fighting nausea but determined not to give up an ounce of precious nourishment. She could not flee to the villages now. She had just murdered one of their own.

  The wind tore up the mountain to stiffen her sodden clothing and hurl razor-edged sleet in her face. But to Erde, stumbling up the rocky path toward the uncertain shelter of the forest, it seemed only fitting that her body should be as numb as her heart.

  PART TWO

  The Journey into Peril

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  She ran until she was well out of the dim light cast by the gateway lanterns, ran until she could blend with the trees. Her feet found their way by memory. She knew every pothole and rock ledge between the castle walls and the forest. But the mud was deep and treacherous, and the windblown sleet like a barrage of tiny needles. Her boots were full of icy water by the time she reached the first dark firs.

  She halted there, gasping more from fear than lack of breath, and resettled her pack to ride her back more securely. A disorderly pursuit was forming in the stable yard. She heard men shouting and dogs barking, eager for the chase. The horses neighed and stomped, fearful of the wind and the dark. She had to think; she had to decide, and she had to do it quickly. Tor Alte’s half-dozen dependent villages were scattered among the alpine meadows a little way down the mountain. The biggest had its own parish church, and briefly she considered seeking sanctuary there. But she feared the long reach of Fra Guill. To take refuge in a church would be like walking right into his arms. She could not risk the villages now.

  Then where could she go? She had food and warm clothing, but she was wet through with rain and the guardsman’s blood. Her feet were already numb. Without shelter, she would freeze before morning. Time enough to worry about the long term when she’d found a place where she could light a fire without being discovered. Rainer’s sword was a weight on her back but a goad as well, and Erde would not abandon it on the mountainside the way his poor body had been.

  The baying and shouting in the castle yard grew louder and more organized. Numb as she was, Erde felt panic stir beneath her skin, like a torrent swirling below a fragile layer of ice. Only Alla’s instructions, murmured over and over in a soothing litany, kept her from bolting headlong into the night probably to brain herself on a low-hanging branch or fall off the nearest cliff. She guessed the riders would go first to the villages, so she headed upward into the trees, away from the path, away from the settled valleys, toward the caves above the tree line. Winter bears sometimes went to ground there but right then, she’d rather negotiate with a sleepy bear than with her father or Fra Guill.

  She recalled a cave she’d found with Rainer when they were children. Or perhaps the baroness had showed it to them, on one of the long hikes she’d favored in their company. It lay deep in a barren jumble of rock. Its narrow crack of an entrance seemed to lead nowhere, but actually it camouflaged a descent into a system of tunnels and caverns that burrowed much deeper into the mountain rock than they’d had the courage to explore. Erde struck out bravely in that direction. When the sounds of pursuit passed below her on the road and receded downward, she slowed a bit and began gathering bits of deadwood as she climbed, as much as she had strength to carry, bundling it under her sodden cloak in the hope it would be dry enough to burn by the time she reached her hiding place.

  It was near dawn when she got there, the thin gray light coming as sullen and cold as a morning in mid-December. It was oddly still, as if even the weather disdained this bare, unlovely height. The wind had died, and snow as fine as frost dusted the air. The cave was there as she remembered it, a jagged fissure like a sideways smile in a wind-smoothed rock that turned its back on Tor Alte and faced east. Toward the Russias, Erde thought, the home poor Alla will never see again. Suddenly her exhaustion seemed a weight too great to bear. She staggered through the slitted cave mouth and leaned against the rock wall to catch her breath. So easy to drop the load of wood that cramped her arms and bent her back, so easy to collapse right there in the entrance, cold and wet and shivering, where any pursuer could find her. But while Rainer’s sword lay cool and rigid along her spine, she could not even sit. Moving like a sleep-walker, she dug out one of Alla’s candles, then crept farther into the cave to take a look around.

  She passed through shallow chambers musty with old leaves and animal dung. She listened for the whisper of bats. Her small candle wavered fitfully, but without it throwing shadows all about, she would not have found the second narrow cleft hidden by an edge of rock. Pitch-black, with a cool stony draft that stirred her short-cropped hair and raised goose bumps on her skin. Her candle flickered, and she put up a hand to shield it. Her only refuge lay in that unexplored dark. Erde eased through the crack.

  The tunnel led downward, sharply at first and slippery with rubble. Erde followed it haltingly, hand to the rough wall, and felt rather than saw it level out, just before the wall beside her ended and the flickering circle of her candle flame vanished into darkness. She knew she had come into some sort of cavern. The long dying echo of her step told her the cavern was enormous. Raising the candle like a beacon as high as she could did not reveal a ceiling. But it tossed long shadows across treelike pillars of rock that reminded her of the great-hall of Tor Alte. Ahead in the darkness, something glimmered, like the flash of light off a living eye. Erde froze, then let herself breathe again. A still pool spread over the cavern floor. She had spied the reflection of her candle dancing across the dark water like a sprite. She would have stumbled right into its depths, had she not stopped short, fearing the approach of some one-eyed cave demon. When her heart ceased racing, she bent to touch the glassy surface. The water was numbingly cold and tasted earthy, like the fresh dirt of her grandmother’s grave. But she palmed it up eagerly, then walked around its shore and lit her fire in a dry high-vaulted side-chamber, where a tiny shard of gray daylight showed far above when she extinguished her candle.

  She unslung her pack and laid out her cloak. The dark stains of the guardsman’s blood drew a mottled map of her crime across the fine wool. It was cold in the cave, but Erde kicked the cloak away, unable to wear his death a moment longer. She unstrapped the sword and sank to the ground at last, holding it in her lap. She wasn’t ready to think about how deep in the earth she was now, how alone and how completely without a plan. She did allow herself to wonder if she’d been rash to run away, if the known evil was, finally, preferable to the unknown. But Alla had wanted her to go, had said she must go, to the king, yes, why not? As good a destination as any. But the king was in Erfurt, two hundred miles to the west, down in the lowlands.

  The thought of walking two hundred miles made Erde’s head ache. She let it loll back against the cavern wall and closed her eyes, her chill hands still cradling Rainer’s sword. She found herself imagining that the hilt was warm to her touch, as if someone else had been holding it. Warm enough to ease her shivering. She told herself it was Rainer himself, watching over her in spirit. She knew if she thought about it long enough, she could convince herself that he was actually there in the cave, and this was too eerie even for her, so she pushed the notion from her mind and accepted the uncanny warmth as an omen of his approval that his sword was with her. She built up the fire and steamed most of the damp from her shirt and leggings, but could get no more than halfway through a single apple before exhaustion finally claimed her.

  * * *

  She woke suddenly, as if from a tap on her shoulder, out of a restless sleep colored by vivid nightmares. She was stiff and sore and could not understand why her bed felt so sharp and hard. Then she remembered where she was, and why.

  Her small fire had burned out. The cavern was cold and no comforting sliver of daylight from above penetrated the hovering darkness. It was night, then, outside. She had slept throu
gh the entire day. Shivering, Erde felt for her cloak and wrapped it around herself, grateful just to be awake.

  Her father had raged through her dreams, touching her where a father shouldn’t and calling her by her mother’s name. Alla had died in flames again and again, and Erde saw Rainer bloodily cut down by the guardsmen’s blades, all the while staring at her with stunned, accusing eyes. Fra Guill had stalked her dreams as well, and the man she had murdered.

  Murdered. She let the realization settle in. She’d traded a man’s life for her own. She held herself very still, feeling the bloodied cloak close around her like a shroud, bringing her no warmth. She’d been better off before she’d slept, while numbness still dulled her conscience. It was always possible she hadn’t killed him, she told herself, but she knew she had. A man could not bleed such torrents and survive. She felt her stomach turn. This wasn’t right. Too many people were dying for her sake.

  Erde threw her head back to moan, and produced only raspy breath. Her voice. She’d forgotten. She pushed her breath up against her throat in frustrated gasps. If only she could howl her anguish, like the lunatic boy who lived in the stable yard, she’d never ask to speak human words again.

  As she struggled vainly to be heard, sounds from the outer cavern invaded her unwilling silence. Guilt and grief fled as Erde stilled to listen. She had not imagined it: soft steady splashes, and breathing. Something big was moving slowly through the shallow water, shuffling and snuffling, as a bear might do if it had been stirred from early hibernation by the smoke of her fire.