Brenna heard another distant cheer from the stadium.
“I see we’re both right about Jesstin’s obstinance.” Theryn chuckled. Then her full lips parted, and she moved closer to Brenna. “All I’m asking of you is to keep an open mind in the days to come, young one, and an open heart.”
“Jess’s obstinance?” Brenna blinked, and Theryn came into focus again. “You mean that cheering’s for her? That bloody stupid wrestling match is still going on?”
“Evidently.” Theryn brushed two fingers down the side of Brenna’s face again. “We badly need your fresh perspective, my lovely young friend. You have such wisdom and such—Brenna?”
Theryn’s voice faded behind Brenna as she moved swiftly through the crowd. Irritation burned off some of her alcoholic haze, and she targeted the log stadium with swift certainty.
She crossed the footbridge over the river, not glancing at the women who walked with her in laughing groups of mixed races. Brenna kept her eyes fixed on the arched pines that marked the entrance to Tristaine’s arena.
It seemed most of the village had crowded up on the log risers that surrounded the fighting field, a rectangle of hard-packed dirt. Dozens of Amazons formed a large circle that marked the boundaries of the wrestling ring. Most held torches, flooding the fighters in gold light.
Brenna slipped quietly through the crowd, her annoyance increasing as she heard a thud of bodies and another raucous cheer split the chill night air. She spied two familiar forms, Vicar and Hakan, and tapped her way in between them to see into the ring. It was unfortunate timing.
The last cheer had come from this side of the circle, among Jess’s friends. Now Brenna heard a burst of shouting from the far end, just as her lover flew bodily through the air to crash hard into a watching throng of warriors at ringside.
Jess was helped to her feet with an edge of urgency as well as revelry. The crowded stadium fell almost silent between bouts of cheering. There was a tension in the air that Brenna felt clearly, even through the dazing effects of the cider.
Jess grinned at the warriors who righted her and shrugged off their hands, her eyes still locked on the opponent waiting across the ring. Patana had her hands braced on her knees, head lowered, pulling for breath. In spite of the chill in the night air, her short-cropped skull gleamed with sweat in the torchlight.
Jess’s face was just as damp, and Brenna saw a trembling fatigue in the long muscles of her legs. Her throat and shoulders were patched with angry red marks, and other harbingers of bruising stood out on her bare forearms. More alarming, Jess’s slow walk to the center of the ring revealed the minute limp that surfaced only when her old back injury was flaring.
Patana finally straightened, and if anything she looked worse than Jess. But Patana was not Brenna’s concern. Perhaps the cider fogged her reason, but not her bedrock resolve.
After the Clinic, Brenna would never stand by passively while Jess was hurt again.
She elbowed Hakan aside and would have stepped into the ring if Vicar hadn’t snatched her arm and pulled her back.
“Wait, little sister.” Hakan’s broad hand touched Brenna’s shoulder. “She knows what she’s doing.”
“Not even close,” Brenna retorted. “Look at her, Hakan! She’s been climbing mountains for days. She hasn’t slept. She’s exhausted!”
“Jess realizes all that.” Hakan’s tone was maddeningly patient. “Dyan trained her warriors to understand their limits and ration their reserves. Let Jess choose her moment.”
Brenna fumed. “Dyan trained Patana too, I assume?”
“Not from birth, as she did Jesstin.”
Brenna looked up at Vicar, who released her arm, her rugged face expressionless.
Then Vicar tensed, her gaze pinned on the fight. “There she goes!”
Brenna focused on the firelit center of the ring again, in time to see Jess’s spinning kick. And then Patana went flying. Arms and legs flailing wildly, she crashed into her small group of supporters, toppling them like leathered bowling pins.
The cheer was instantaneous and deafening, as it seemed the vast majority of the Amazons crowding the stadium were backing Jess. The roar crested as Patana climbed stiffly to her feet and raised one sullen hand to Jess to cede the match. Beside Brenna, the hoarse shouts of Vicar and Hakan blared in her ears like twin klaxons.
As Jess walked out of the ring toward them, her limp diminished, and her shoulders straightened. She acknowledged the roars of approval around her with a brief lift of her hand, then ambled on with the relaxed gait of a tall woman at ease in her body.
It was pure bravado, and Brenna knew it. Jess was ready to collapse. She whispered brand-new invectives under her breath about macha Amazon stoicism and realized her own knees were trembling. She locked them.
Brenna was not going to be distracted, either by her own worry or by Jess’s feral beauty, backlit by torchlight in a stadium resonating with cheers. There was romantic fixation, and then there was—
“Stupidity, Jesstin!” Brenna clenched Jess’s arm. “You’re going to be crippled tomorrow, you know that!”
“True,” Jess muttered, flinching beneath the backslapping con-gratulations of her sister warriors. “It had to be done, though, Bren.”
“I’ve been waitin’ too long to see someone humble that blusterin’ shrike, Stumpy!” Vicar’s brogue ran rampant as she tousled Jess’s hair. “Tristaine can go the way of bleedin’ Brigadoon now, mate. Vicar dies happy!”
“Let her breathe, adanin.” Hakan strong-armed the women who were starting to crowd in, and they pulled Jess to the side of the arena and the first tier of risers.
She sank down on the rough seat with a sigh, and Brenna sat beside her and lifted her hand to take her pulse. Vicar took off her own cape and tossed it around Jess’s gleaming shoulders.
“Anything crucial?” Brenna asked.
Jess shook her head. “I’m just beat.”
“Yes, slightly.” The pulse beneath Brenna’s fingers was rapid and rather faint.
Hakan rested her booted foot on a log riser. “The defeated party looks a bit played out too, Jesstin.”
Brenna picked out Patana on the other side of the stadium, surrounded by a small cluster of women. She recognized Myrine and Theryn among them. Theryn was tipping the warrior’s head back, checking her nose solicitously. She gave Patana’s shoulder a comforting pat, and then, as if sensing Brenna’s gaze, Theryn scanned the crowd and saw them.
Brenna felt Jess go still beside her. Theryn smiled and nodded graciously. Jess returned a courteous but formal gesture. Theryn’s gaze lingered on Brenna for a moment before she turned back to her followers.
“Myrine and Patana?” Jess was speaking shorthand. Her breathing was returning to normal, but her color still wasn’t good.
“They became adonai last spring.” Vicar’s tone was subdued. “Li and I have seen little of ‘Rine since.”
Jess nodded. “And Grythe?”
“Aye, Grythe is still with us, more’s the pity. Just not around tonight.” Vic sighed.
Then the shadows cleared from Jess’s eyes as Camryn flopped down beside them.
“That was very, very pretty, Jesstin!” Camryn was grinning, and she looked more like the teenager she was than Brenna had ever seen her. “Ky and I saw the end of it. She’s setting up to sing the Challenge. You were sincerely hot, Jess. You own Patana’s smelly butt now!”
“Speak of your sisters with respect, Camryn.” Jess sounded weary. “Have you seen our lady?”
“She’s getting ready for the Queen’s Council. Oh, hi.” Camryn seemed to notice Brenna sitting next to her for the first time and smiled at her. “Ky says to tell you she’s singing this Challenge right to you, Brenna.”
“Yeah?” Brenna raised her brows. “Okay. Thanks. I’m honored, as long as she doesn’t challenge me to sing back.”
The mood of the open stadium was changing now. Amazons were flocking in, filling the rows of log bleachers, and there was sti
ll a sense of jubilant excitement among them. But the long match and its dramatic finish had bled some of the frenzy from the Festival, leaving a warmer and calmer essence.
The fighting arena was clearing. Brenna saw a stream of women wearing beautiful pastel-streaked robes, which shimmered like silk, move single file toward the center of the ring. Camryn pointed at Kyla in a light, ornate chair carried by two larger women.
Kyla’s auburn hair fell in soft, shining waves to her shoulders. Her beautiful features were calm and alert, and she smiled thanks at her bearers after they set her down carefully in the center of the arena.
Jess nudged Brenna. “Lass, you’re ice.”
Brenna looked up at her and was lost for a pleasurable moment in her cerulean eyes. But when Jess lifted an arm to drape Vicar’s cape over Brenna’s shoulders as well as her own, Brenna leaned away.
“I’m still ticked at you for trying to kick me out of here, Jesstin.” Brenna paused, frowning. “I’m also really cold. But that doesn’t mean everything’s okay.”
“Understood, querida. We’ll fight later.” Jess’s dimple appeared.
Brenna slipped down to the tier below them and leaned back between Jess’s knees. She closed the thick cape around them both and rested her head against Jess’s waist with a gusting sigh. The sudden warmth was blissful.
Brenna’s gaze traveled the ebony sky overhead, picking out Tristaine’s guardian stars easily. Jess’s arms were solid around her, and she felt their hearts settle into their accustomed matching rhythm.
The buzz of noise in the stadium quieted, and Brenna returned her attention to the ring. Kyla had risen from her chair, and that simple movement had silenced six hundred Amazons.
After a moment of hushed expectation, Kyla began to sing. A complex melody flowed from her throat in a tone both darker and richer than her usual light soprano.
“This Festival celebrates the Amazons’ harvest when we lived on the plains.” Jess’s breath stirred Brenna’s hair. “It bids good-bye to the warmth and ease of summer. The Challenge Kyla sings is the call of Artemis to Her daughters, bidding them to have courage for the long winter ahead.”
The hewn-log arena should have dispersed Kyla’s lonely voice to the open sky, but the beauty and depth of her gift defied acoustics. Brenna felt gooseflesh that had nothing to do with the cold rise on her arms, as Kyla’s melody soared and floated.
Her singing had been silenced in the City Prison, and her music had not returned immediately when she was freed. Weeks of fresh mountain air and the company of her family had finally restored her voice, and Brenna often woke, pleasantly, to Kyla’s trilling song in the meadow near their camp. But the voice that emerged from their little sister now was fuller, more mature and resonant.
“What’s she saying now?” Brenna whispered.
“The Challenge is given in Tristaine’s mother tongue,” Jess replied. “Our Lady charges Her Amazons to honor each other and to protect all women from any power that would enslave them.”
Brenna felt a stillness take the crowd as they listened, a collective hush that connected them all to the girl in the center of the ring. There was sternness in Kyla’s voice and a bleak note of adult desolation. Then such loving fierceness in the swelling climax of her chant that Brenna shivered in Jess’s arms.
“Artemis ends Her Challenge by giving our clan Her blessing for the coming winter,” Jess whispered.
Kyla’s song ended in a fading note that echoed up the quiet bleachers. A sigh moved through the tiers of women, and then waves of applause swelled to embrace Kyla. She was radiant, her brown eyes large and still. Jess nudged Brenna and tipped her head toward Camryn, whose face glowed with love as she watched her adonai absorb the tribute. Brenna and Jess grinned at each other proudly.
Was life in Tristaine always so emotional, like being pre-menstrual, twenty-four seven? Brenna wondered. She had to smile even as tears threatened, and Kyla’s tiny white-robed form blurred around the edges. She wasn’t a sentimental person, at least she never had been. But she had dive-bombed through a dozen different feelings tonight, all of them stronger than anything she’d experienced in an entire year before she met Jess.
And Brenna was far from alone in this pleasant haze. The women around her were carrying on like the restored family they were. Just as the applause for Kyla’s Challenge tapered, Shann walked into the circle of torchlight, and the thunderous ovation convinced Brenna that living among Amazons indeed awakened the heart.
It wasn’t the mindless shrieking of City Youth Concerts, but a warm, welling wave of happiness given voice, and the applause and cheers bathed and soothed and invigorated Brenna in turns. Jess squeezed her, her eyes dancing as Shann reached Kyla.
The Amazon queen took Kyla’s hand and kissed her cheek, then gestured for her to sit in the waiting chair. Kyla looked toward Camryn and rolled her eyes, then settled herself gingerly. Shann looked up at the tiers of women surrounding her, and Brenna remembered, again, that she was more than their wise elder sister and had always been more.
“The winter sun rises soon over Tristaine.” Shann’s silk voice reached them clearly, as if she stood within hand’s reach. “And when Selene’s moon lights Her lodges again, the daughters of Artemis will have left for the southern meadows. Never to return to this valley.”
Shann even seemed taller now, Brenna marveled, and she moved with a regal grace as unconscious as it was riveting. Unlike Caster, Shann bore the mantle of leadership lightly on her slender shoulders, but the aura of command she wielded was undeniable.
“We’ll carry with us the ashes of our seven Mothers,” Shann continued. “Their spirits will continue to guide us, as they have guided Amazons for generations. They have traveled with us to new continents—from seaside, to plain, to mountain. Tristaine has fallen and been born again a dozen times in our written history.”
Shann bent gracefully and swept her hand across the packed dirt of the arena floor. She straightened, and black earth trickled from her fingers. Her voice was as intimate as warm wine.
“This land is not your mother, or your wife, or your adanin. This valley is not Tristaine. Tristaine sits beside you. She’ll sleep in your lodge tonight. She’ll walk at your side in the morning. She’ll fight by your side at dusk. And with Her, you’ll build our new home. Tristaine is our bond, sisters, the woman-spirit that connects us and makes us one clan.”
Brenna sighed softly and heard that sound echoed around her. A light brand of exalted warmth was sweeping the arena. It was mirrored in Camryn’s open face and in Vicar’s softened features. This public address was the Queen’s Council, Brenna remembered, but Shann could have been speaking to each of her women individually, in private trust.
“This land is precious to us because it nourishes and shelters our kindred. The daughters of Artemis have lived and died here for seven generations, so by our lights, this valley is holy ground. Our warriors are willing to die for this land.”
Shann’s lovely eyes hardened. “Our village will never fall into the hands of our enemies. You have your queen’s word, adanin.”
She brushed the black earth from her hands. “City-born or mountain-bred, the Amazons of Tristaine are sisters. We have thrived, while a hundred Cities crumbled to dust. The essence of Tristaine will flourish wherever Gaia leads us next. We follow Her path.”
Someone shouted approval, and that call was echoed, at first by single voices, then dozens. Brenna felt Jess’s arms tighten around her, and she was swept up in the rising applause, which crested in cheers and ringing war cries that shook the stadium.
Chapter Four
J’heika, rise.
Brenna’s head thudded in an unlovely rhythm, and her mouth felt coated with ash.
Wake up, little sister.
She tugged the fur over her shoulder and grasped at the fading remnants of sleep.
“Adanin.”
Long fingers brushed through her hair, and Brenna snorted awake. “Here. Sorry? What?”
“Sleep a bit longer, Bren.” Jess’s lips touched her forehead. “I won’t be gone long.”
“Whoa?” Brenna sat up, then bit her lip to keep from groaning.
“We’ll make that visit to Shann’s infirmary as soon as I get back, lass.” Jess’s smile was sympathetic. “She’s got an herbal concoction that might help your head.”
Oh, lordy. The thought. Brenna had to swallow twice to keep her gorge down. “Where you—?”
“Just a quick errand with Vicar.”
“I’m awake. I’m up.” Brenna tried to look alert. Light had only begun to filter into Jess’s lodge. She had a vague memory of coming to this small cabin after Shann’s address and falling onto a luxurious pile of quilts. “Is it a private errand?”
“No.” Jess hesitated for a moment. “Actually, you’re invited, if you want to join us.”
“I do.” Brenna gave the fur a sluggish kick and accepted Jess’s hand to help her up. She swayed once erect and felt strong arms encircle her waist. Her lover seemed to know this was not a romantic moment, and she supported Brenna quietly until she was steady.
“Good morning, lass.” Jess’s kiss on the top of her head was light and tender.
“Mrng.” Brenna cleared her sandpapered throat. Jess had built up the fire in the stone hearth before waking her, and the light tang of cedar smoke filled the air. The small lodge was remarkably cozy. Tristaine’s cabin-crafters must be wizards with natural sources of insulation.
She blinked through her spiked bangs at the neat interior of the cabin. Jess had earned her lodge with years of work with Tristaine’s horses, and her sisters had kept it pristine during her long months of captivity.
It was simply furnished with pieces hewn from white oak. The chairs were padded with quilts. Art covered the walls—pictures drawn by adult hands and childish ones— scenes of battle, lovemaking, and Tristaine’s river. Colorful masks of clay and plaster and wood adorned the support posts.
Battle for Tristaine Page 8
