The Wild Road

by Jennifer Roberson

  She blinked. The world once more came into view. She looked again at the remains and felt nothing. She was somehow empty of feelings and full of knowledge.

  “Ilona—”

  She turned and looked straight into his eyes. “I won’t come back, this time.”

  He was clearly baffled. “What?”

  “I won’t come back this time.”

  He frowned down at her. “’Lona—”

  Ilona said distinctly, so no mistake could be made, “I am going to die.”

  BRODHI, ATOP THE gher platform, stared down at the body collapsed upon the steps. It lay face down, turned head resting on the middle step. Mouth and eyes were open. Blood flooded polished wood, ran in rivulets to the cobbles. But no more issued from the opened throat.

  “Brodhi, Sweet Mother—” It was Jorda, running across the square.

  Brodhi moved quickly. He leaped across the body, landed, ran five steps and planted his hands against Jorda’s shoulders. He stopped him completely, then shoved him back several off-balance steps.

  “No,” he said curtly. “Don’t go, Jorda. Leave it be. Don’t go near the body. They’ll kill you.”

  Jorda’s expression was horrified. “I told him—I did tell him . . . ‘Don’t stare,’ I said. ‘Don’t stare at them.’”

  Brodhi took his hands from the karavan-master’s shoulders. “He stinks of spirits.”

  “Oh, Mother!” Jorda clasped the top of his head with both hands. “I thought he understood. I told him. I spoke plain. I thought he understood not to stare at them!”

  “He probably did,” Brodhi said, “when you told him. But he was far gone in spirits. They addle a man’s wits.”

  Jorda scrubbed at his hair as if his scalp itched terribly. “I was moving the wagons to the inn . . . there.” He gestured briefly toward the wagons. “He was to meet me there after seeing the city. He was fascinated by the gher. I thought he might come here. But never this! Never this!” He appealed to Brodhi. “Why?”

  “That,” Brodhi remarked, “is what the farmsteader said. ‘I just want to know why.’ He died because he stared and because he dared to ask that question. He died because he was a fool.”

  Jorda swung around. He walked two paces, still clasping his head, then spun again to face Brodhi. He let his arms drop to his sides. “Will they allow me to claim the body?”

  “I’ll tend to it.” It was not what Brodhi wished to say or do, but he saw no sense in letting Jorda die as well. “Leave one of the wagons for me. Take the other and go back to the inn.”

  “Blessed Mother,” Jorda said, his voice cracking. “I did tell him.”

  Brodhi did not understand why the karavan-master, who barely knew the farmsteader, was so upset. Humans, it appeared, grieved even for strangers.

  “He did what you told him not to do,” Brodhi said sharply. “There’s no blame for you in this.”

  “He was my responsibility!”

  “On the journey, yes. But not here. Not here.” Brodhi paused. “Go now. Pray to your Mother to see him safely across the river, as your people say. I’ll find a shroud and wrap the body in it, put it in the wagon. Where is the inn?”

  Jorda told him.

  Brodhi said, “Go.”

  He watched as Jorda turned away and began to walk toward the wagons. His steps now were more certain, steadier, and his posture spoke of duties recollected. He was a karavan-master. He had seen worse, faced worse, than what had happened here.

  Brodhi turned. Two warriors flanked the farmsteader’s body. He glanced at them very briefly, then looked at the cobbles where blood had run. “They have rites,” he said to the two, trusting that Hecari did as well. “I’ll take him back to his people. The body should not be left to profane the warlord’s gher.”

  One of the warriors grunted. “Take. Send to its god.”

  Brodhi was faintly amused. Trust a Hecari to never even consider that the deity was a woman.

  The two warriors bent, took up the body by its arms, and flung it, head lolling, from the steps onto the cobbles.

  Brodhi looked at what once had been a man. “Fool,” he told the body. “What will your woman say when she learns of this?” He shook his head very slightly, mouth compressed. Dead humans, he thought, always looked so empty.

  Something fell lightly against his head. And again. Brodhi looked upward into a darkening sky. The Sancorran’s Mother of Moons, be she Maiden, Mother, or Grandmother, was not present.

  It had begun to rain.

  Epilogue

  DEMON SMILED. SHE sat outside the hut’s low door and watched the girl toddle around on unsteady legs. No longer an infant, was she. Demon’s memories, clouded as they were, suggested the girl would be accounted two years old, did she live in the human world.

  But she did not. She lived in Alisanos, and its magic was in her.

  The child’s hair remained flaxen, and her eyes, blue. But the pupils within them had changed. No longer round, they were slitted, like a cat’s. Like, too, a demon’s.

  Soft human flesh naked to the world.

  The child stretched her arms toward low-hanging boughs and shrieked, mouth stretched wide in a joyous grin. A strip of delicate golden down ran the length of her spine.

  She attempted to run toward the water that was, today, a streamlet. But she stumbled over exposed roots and fell hard onto her face.

  Demon expected her to scream, to begin crying, and stood to fetch her from the ground and comfort her as was necessary.

  But the girl neither cried nor screamed. She sat up, displaying a scrape on her chin, blood upon her mouth, and shouted in childish rage. Then she struck the root with the flat of one small hand.

  The root shriveled. Flaked away into dust.

  That pleased the child. She looked at Demon in utter delight, and laughed.

  Demon laughed back.

  Author’s Note

  When the film version of Lord of the Rings hit theaters, my reaction was that of a major portion of the world’s population: I waited in line to see it. Three times. And I hadn’t even read the books.

  I remember very clearly, at my third and final theater visitation, the reaction of two men who sat a row in front of me. At the conclusion they looked at each other, perplexed. As they spoke to one another, it became clear they had no idea that the film was the first in a trilogy. They believed the conclusion of the first movie was the conclusion, period. And they thought it was a really stupid way to end a movie.

  With that memory in mind, I say:

  This is not a trilogy.

  About the Author

  JENNIFER ROBERSON has written 25 novels, primarily fantasy, but also historicals, featuring a reinterpretation of the Robin Hood legend with emphasis on Marian and a Scottish historical novel about the Massacre of Glencoe, when the Campbells attempted to wipe out the MacDonalds. Other work includes a novel set in the Highlander TV universe, Scotland the Brave; three anthologies as editor; and a short story collection, Guinevere’s Truth and Other Tales. In a collaboration with Melanie Rawn and Kate Elliott, Roberson wrote the first section of The Golden Key, short-listed for the World Fantasy Award. The first of two new Sword-Dancer novels, Sword-Bound, will appear in February 2013.

  In 2011, Roberson left behind the snows of Flagstaff, Arizona and moved to Tucson, where she breeds and shows Cardigan Welsh Corgis and creates mosaic artwork.

 

 

 
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