Age of War

by Michael J. Sullivan

  “Nice out, isn’t it?” He lay back on his elbows. They were off the apron, and he felt the wet soak into his sleeves. “What do you say we do this ev-we day?”

  Chewing, Roan looked around and nodded, but he wasn’t certain which question she was answering.

  “If you’d like, we could go fo’ a walk,” he ventured.

  “Can’t.” She pointed at the smithy and swallowed. “Have too much work.”

  “I thought Pe’sephone said she was astounded by how much you’d accomplished.”

  “Still behind.”

  “Says who?”

  “Me.”

  “But I’m only asking—”

  “I can’t,” she told him.

  Gifford was disappointed, even a little upset. He saw so little of her that he was slipping into his own depression. That was how he tried to rationalize everything afterward, but in truth he didn’t know why he’d said it. It just came out. “It’s like old Ivy is alive again.”

  Roan looked as if he’d hit her with the smithing hammer. She stared down at the food, at the sack it came in, and at the grease on her hands. “You talked to Padera, didn’t you?”

  Gifford had no idea what she meant. “I have talked to that old woman on many occasions.”

  Roan began to shake.

  Gifford felt his heart sink. He’d done something terrible. He’d hurt her somehow. “What’s wong, Woan?”

  “Don’t blame her. It wasn’t…” Roan began to cry.

  Gifford hated himself. He had no idea what he’d done, but nothing—nothing in the world—was worse than hurting Roan. He wanted to make it better, but didn’t know how because he didn’t know what he’d done. “Woan? What’s going on?”

  She got up then and ran back to the smithy, abandoning her apron, Gifford, and the warmth of the sun.

  * * *

  —

  The old woman was in the kitchen cutting mushrooms into a series of neat slices while a kettle boiled over the cook fire. “What do you want?” she asked as Gifford let himself in.

  “I just had a meal with Woan,” he said with an ominous tone in his voice.

  “Doubt that you just had a meal with Roan.” Padera scraped her choppings into her palm and tossed them into the pot. “If you ate with her, it would have been in the smithy, which had to have been hours ago given your lightning-fast travel speed. Or has love given you invisible wings?”

  Gifford was going to be polite. She was an old woman after all. He planned on being compassionate, easing his way to the point, but Padera was being her normal witch-self, and Gifford cut right to the dark meat. “Did you kill Ivy?”

  The thought had come to him on the walk from the fortress, which was just as long as Padera described. It had also given him ample time to ponder why Roan was so upset. Guilt. She blamed herself for Iver’s death because Padera had killed him on her behalf.

  The old woman had her back to him as she faced the fire. Padera was just as hunched over as ever, her true form hidden beneath layers of old wool. “By Ivy, do you mean Iver the Carver?”

  Gifford scowled. She knew whom he meant. “Yes.”

  “Why do you say that?” Her tone was controlled, even relaxed.

  Why not surprise? Why not outrage? Why not laughter? Why isn’t she asking if I’m making a joke?

  “I told you, I just had a meal with Woan. A meal that ended with Woan weeping.”

  “I would imagine any meal with you would end that way.”

  “You did it, didn’t you?” He hobbled to the table and looked at the pile of uncut mushrooms. “Was such a shock when he just died, when he went to sleep and failed to wake up. Did you poison him?”

  Padera silently prodded the fire.

  “How you find these mushwooms?” he asked. “We all new to this place, but you can locate mushwooms…and some mushwooms be poisonous.”

  Padera turned and peered with her one eye. “What are you saying?”

  “How old is you?”

  “How old are you,” she corrected him.

  “You know I can’t say that.”

  “If you can’t talk, you should keep your mouth shut.”

  “How old?” he persisted.

  “Don’t know—lost count.”

  “Uh-huh. You always say that when anyone asks, don’t you?”

  “What does my age have to do with this?”

  “You oldest in Dahl Wen.”

  “What of it, cripple-boy?” Her voice took on an edge.

  “So, maybe you not even fom Wen. Maybe you just showed up one day and have outlived all who knew that.”

  Padera shambled back to the table and sat down in front of her mushrooms. “And I suppose my husband, Melvin, and our sons, were imaginary?”

  “Maybe—I not met Melvin, not met sons.”

  “Because you’re a child.”

  “Most childwen outlive pawents.”

  “No, they don’t.” She looked almost sad, but it was hard to tell with that leathery melon face of hers. “Most people don’t live as long as I have.”

  “I’m thinking maybe no one lives as long as you.”

  Again, she gave him the squint. “What are you saying, gimp?”

  “I’m saying that maybe you don’t just look and act like a witch.”

  He saw the change in her face. A twitch, a grimace—brief but it was there. He’d touched a nerve.

  “All people say the name, use it when cussing. Just a name, not a god, so it’s safe. But what if it isn’t just a name? What if the witch is weal?”

  Padera’s malleable lips folded up into a smile. “So, you aren’t just accusing me of being a witch, you’re saying I’m the witch?”

  “All those tales have to begin someplace.”

  “What stories are those?”

  “That’s just it. All Elan knows the name, but no one knows what it means. I think you do.”

  She nodded. “Yes…I do.”

  This admission surprised him. For all his bluster and certainty, he had still been guessing. He’d even been glad Brin was gone. He had wanted to speak to Padera alone. If he’d really believed his own suspicions, he wouldn’t have walked into that witch’s den by himself. In retrospect, that might not have been the best idea. No one knew he was there.

  “So, was Ivy poisoned?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Padera picked up her knife. “Iver was a bad, bad man. No one knew that. No one except me…well, and Roan of course. He hurt her, but you already know that.”

  “All of Dahl Wen knows that.”

  “No. People suspect, but no one knows. Even I don’t know all of it.” She leaned back and fixed him with a one-eyed glare. “Did you know he killed Roan’s mother?”

  “Woan told me she died like mine, in childbiff.”

  “Assuming you mean childbirth, she tells everyone that; I think she’s getting to the point where she can almost believe it.”

  In the past, the look Padera fixed on him had been an eccentricity, but standing before that mushroom-strewn table, Gifford now found it frightening. Can she cast a hex with a look like that?

  “He had both of them to himself,” the old woman went on. “Roan and her mother Reanna—both slaves with no recourse. Everyone saw Iver as a great man, a pillar of the community because he was also careful and kept his depravity confined to the inside of his home. I lived the closest. I heard the screams, and I didn’t buy his explanations. I knew better. I’d seen his like before. Reanna tried to run. Roan was about nine, and Reanna was pregnant again. I think maybe she refused to give him another child, or perhaps Roan was starting to grow up, starting to look more like a woman, and Reanna knew what that meant. She wrapped Roan up and plotted to leave Rhen. Had no idea where to go, or how she’d live. Reanna was a slave, the only one in Rhen at the time. I
ver had bought her while at an auction in Dureya. Once she had been a Gula—a war trophy.”

  Padera sucked on her lips a moment. “She was his property, and Iver could do what he wanted. Never crossed Reanna’s mind that anyone might help. If she had come to me, things would have turned out different, but she was scared, and I was the last person she would trust. Like I said, I lived the closest, and Iver was a clever man. He told Reanna I was a witch, and that I would just as likely eat her as help her.”

  She gave Gifford a long accusing stare. “Iver caught up to them, and he beat Reanna to death while Roan watched. He took Roan on a trip and disposed of the body. When they got back, Iver told everyone Reanna had died in childbirth. They offered condolences, but he acted like he didn’t care because she had been just a slave. Folks thought he was in denial, that it was his way of dealing with grief. It wasn’t.”

  Gifford leaned on the table trying to remain calm. She’s just trying to get into my head. “So you weally the witch?”

  “The witch?”

  “You know what I mean.” Gifford couldn’t bring himself to say the name—even though there were no R sounds in it—he couldn’t say it, not standing so close.

  “You’re asking if I’m the Tetlin Witch?”

  He nodded.

  “What if I were? What would you do?”

  He didn’t say anything. He honestly didn’t know.

  “Would you call me out? Get the neighbors to tie me to some pile of last year’s firewood and burn me to death?”

  He still didn’t say anything. He’d never liked Padera. She’d always been cruel to him while being kind to everyone else, which was worse than if she’d been mean to everyone. She once tried to explain it as some sort of twisted tough love that filled him with guilt over his mother’s death. He’d believed her, but now he didn’t know what to think. If she really was the witch, who knew what she was up to. Still, he didn’t want to kill her. He didn’t even want to hurt her. If he were honest with himself, which for Gifford was usually a very painful experience, he’d have to admit he respected the old woman. He couldn’t even find fault in her killing Iver. Had he known what was happening, Gifford would have tried to kill the woodcarver himself.

  “That’s what they do to witches, you know.” Padera went back to cutting mushrooms.

  With nothing else to do or say, Gifford watched as those old hands chopped with generations of experience.

  “You want to know about the Tetlin Witch, so I’ll tell you. There was a terrible plague, a horrible sickness,” Padera said, her head down, focusing on her work. “Killed thousands. Wiped out whole communities. One woman, who had learned the art of herbs and roots from her mother, who had learned it from her mother before her, stretching all the way back to the Old Country—the one beyond the sea—discovered how to combat the illness. Only she wasn’t a chieftain, or a man, or even a mother. She had no standing in the community, and no one listened. No one trusted her. The plague came and killed everyone in the village of Tetlin—everyone but her. She went to other villages and tried to tell them how to survive. They didn’t listen, either, and each village she visited was wiped out by the plague shortly after her arrival. People got it into their heads that she wasn’t trying to stop the sickness; that, instead, she was causing it. She was a witch, they said. They hung her in a forest where she went to hide.”

  She sadly shook her head. “That, boy, is the real story of the Tetlin Witch. Not as spectacular as the others you’ve no doubt heard over cups in the lodge. And of course, the story didn’t end there because the Tetlin Witch wasn’t the only woman with a mind, with knowledge and skills. Women who refused to fit in, who didn’t act the way others thought they should, who embarrassed those in power with their wisdom or knowledge, they, too, were declared to be the Tetlin Witch. And we all know that the Tetlin Witch is evil. In some cases, these unfortunate women were merely driven away, but some—like that original wise woman from a little village named Tetlin—were killed. A lot of women have suffered—still suffer—for the crime of knowing what others don’t, or doing what others can’t. Turns out the Tetlin Witch is everywhere, and she—in all her forms—is the real plague.”

  Padera finished the last of her mushrooms and, scooping them into her hand, she looked at him with both eyes. “So, yes, Gifford, I am the Tetlin Witch, and the same goes for Reanna, Roan, Moya, Brin, Persephone, and Suri. Not to mention a great many more. So call the mobs to kill me or leave me alone. I don’t have time for your foolishness.”

  * * *

  —

  Gifford lived in Hopeless House at the end of the stone alley across the square from Roan’s cottage—the one she was supposed to share with Brin and Padera, but rarely visited. The name Hopeless House came from the fact that Gifford, Habet, Mathias, and Gelston lived there. The Cripple, the Slow, the Old, and the Unlucky all tucked neatly under one roof. Gifford was the one who named it, learning from experience it was better to stay out ahead of ridicule, to choose his own insults rather than leave it to others. Not that he thought people would choose worse, but if left to the public, then the mockery became one more thing done to him. This way, they could still laugh, but it was his joke.

  He found Tressa sitting on the porch steps when he came up the alley.

  She was an unofficial member of Hopeless House. The only reason Tressa wasn’t bunking with them was because she was a woman. Otherwise she’d fit right into their league of misery. Her unofficial Hopeless House title would have been the Hated.

  “How’s he doing?” Gifford asked.

  Tressa had a ceramic jug on her lap, hugging it to her chest. Her hair was a mess of snarls, and the sleeves on her dress were decorated with dingy brown stains. She looked up with a pair of sour lips that seemed a bit like Padera’s, only with teeth behind them.

  “I don’t know,” she said. Her voice had become raspy, just as worn as the rest of her. “Some days he seems better, you know? The old bastard gets my hopes up, and then the next day…” She spat between her feet. Tressa was a good spitter, better than Gifford. It was one of the things he admired about her. Gifford made a practice of finding something to admire about everyone. Not terribly hard, since for him the ability to stand straight was a source of awe.

  “I take it this is…the next day?”

  She looked over the top of the jug at him with a smirk. “Old bastard didn’t even know who I was. Just stared at me.”

  “I thought that was why you helped Gelston, what made him so appealing. Because he couldn’t wememba you.”

  She nodded, but it was a slow, sad nod. “I come over here every day. I feed him, bathe him, wash his clothes, clean his backside, and we talk. We talk for hours, he and I, about stupid stuff like hats and snowflakes and why the gods hate us. Sometimes he smiles when he sees me come in, but yesterday he…” Tressa sucked in an abrupt breath and held it with mashed lips. She stayed that way for a second, then let it out slowly, carefully. “Yesterday he rushed right over and gave me a…a hug.” She halted again, and swallowed twice. “A real tight, I-love-you kind of hug, you know?” She glanced at Gifford and shook her head. “Okay, so maybe you don’t know, but it was nice—real nice. Not romantic—nothing like that—just appreciation, love. I hadn’t been hugged like that in…” She looked up at the sky and took a few more deep breaths through her nose. “And then today—today it’s like that never happened. He’s a stranger again.”

  She hooked her thumb in the jug and tilted it up to her lips. “Want some?” Coming off the neck of the jug, her breath was an invisible cloud of fermented rye.

  “No thanks.”

  “It helps. Trust me, it helps.”

  “Thank you, but no.”

  Tressa nodded and wiped her mouth. She also deftly wiped her eyes, trying to clear the wetness on her lashes without him seeing. He pretended not to.

  “Did you manage t
o have your picnic?”

  He nodded.

  She stared. “Didn’t go well, huh?”

  “No.”

  “Any other man would have given up on her by now.”

  “If I was anyone else, I wouldn’t have to.”

  Tressa laughed. “Is that what you think? You think she’s the catch in this pairing? Roan would fit right in here at Hopeless House. I realize you love her and all, but honestly, that girl is messed up. She won’t even let you touch her, will she? Won’t let anyone. How’s that gonna work, do you think? I mean, even if you pull off some miracle and get her to marry you, what kind of marriage will that be when you can’t touch your own wife? For Mari’s sake, you can’t even hold hands, can you?”

  “Not without Woan scweaming.”

  Tressa shook her head and held the jug out to him again. “You sure?”

  He shook his head. “Woan has weasons.”

  “We all have our reasons.” Tressa took another pull from the jug. “Mari knows; we all have our reasons.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Pottery Man

  Heroes are those who refuse to create or become victims. I failed to see it then, but I lived among many heroes. I think maybe everyone does.

  —THE BOOK OF BRIN

  Balancing on the railing of the Spyrok balcony with her arms opened wide, Suri imagined she was flying. Wasn’t that hard. The world spread out below her, and the wind was so strong it watered her eyes. For the first time, she wished she had longer hair just so she could feel it blow.

  “Having fun?” Arion asked, but Suri heard, Are you insane? You’re scaring me to death!

  That was happening a lot. Suri had always received messages from Elan, from trees, the weather, and animals. What she had believed to be a mystic talent had actually been the Art, whispering. Intuition, premonition, a sense of oneness with the world were all the result of her gift for hearing the language of creation. Most people heard its call. Moments of unexplained dread before a tragedy, inexplicable coincidences, or a sense of destiny were all faint signals sent from Elan. No one was entirely deaf, but few had the ability to understand what they were told; fewer still could hold a conversation.