Prince of the North

by Turtledove, Harry

  He jumped down from the wagon when Van reined in by the Sibyl’s dwelling. The door stood ajar, perhaps knocked open by the earthquake. Gerin ran inside.

  Had the quake not thrown pots from shelves and lamps from tables, the cottage would have reminded the Fox of one inhabited by a prosperous peasant. Tapestries enlivened whitewashed walls; the furniture looked better made than most. That hadn’t kept stools from falling down, though, or the clay oven in one corner of the cottage from cracking.

  The Sibyl lay on her bed, unconscious still, in the midst of chaos. As Gerin stepped toward her, the ground trembled beneath his feet once more. That was almost enough to send him fleeing out of the cottage in terror of offending Biton. But, he reasoned, earthquakes were not in the province of the farseeing god. Had he angered Biton, the deity would have shown his displeasure more directly.

  He stooped beside the Sibyl, who still wore the thin linen dress she’d had on in the chamber beneath the ruined temple. He wondered if his touch would bring her to herself. She stirred and muttered as he lifted her, but her eyes stayed closed. He hurried back out through the doorway.

  “Good thing the monsters are still battling in there,” Van said when he returned. “A wench in your arms is pleasant even if you’re not having her, but worthless to fight with.”

  “Scoffer,” Gerin said. But the rising noise of combat inside the temple precinct warned him he had no time to swap banter with Van. As gently as he could, he set the Sibyl in the back of the wagon. Again she muttered but did not wake. He took his seat beside Van, snatched up his bow and quiver once more. Nocking another arrow, he said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Right you are.” Van twitched the reins. The horses bolted ahead, glad to have an outlet for their fear. As the wagon rattled past a gap in the fence, a monster came through. Gerin shot it. It fell with a roar. Van pushed the horses up to a gallop. Skirting the burning town of Ikos, the wagon plunged into the old woods.

  V

  Not long after noon, the Sibyl came back to herself. By then, the travelers were more than halfway through the strange forest that guarded the road to Ikos. Gerin had expected trees fallen across that road, perhaps other signs of upheaval from the earthquake. He discovered none. As far as the woods were concerned, the temblor might never have happened.

  “Good,” Van said when he remarked on that. “Maybe the trees’ll swallow up those creatures, too, when they come swarming out of Ikos.”

  “Wouldn’t that be lovely?” Gerin said. “Likely too much to hope for, though, because—” He broke off as the wagon shifted under his fundament. It wasn’t as he’d first feared, yet another quake: rather, he found when he looked back into the bed of the wagon, the Sibyl had gone from lying to sitting up. He nodded to her. “Lady, I bid you good day.”

  Her eyes showed nothing but confusion. “You are the pair for whom I prophesied just now,” she said, her voice also halting. Though it suited her appearance well, hearing it once more gave Gerin a small shock: after Biton had spoken through her, he’d almost forgotten she had a voice of her own.

  “Not ‘just now,’” he said, wondering how he could let her know what had happened while she lay unconscious. “That was yesterday; you’ve been in Biton’s trance for more than a whole day.”

  “Impossible. It never takes me so,” she said angrily. But a moment later, she looked confused again. “Yet if you do not speak truth, why am I on the point of bursting? Halt a moment, I pray you.” Van reined in. The horses, glad of a breather, began nibbling grass by the side of the road.

  Gerin got down and went around to the back of the wagon. He held out a hand. “Here, lady, I’ll help you down so you can ease yourself.”

  She recoiled as if he’d proposed helping her down so he could ravish her. “Are you mad?” she demanded in a voice like winter. “I may have no contact whatever with any entire man. Were I to do so, I’d be Sibyl no longer.”

  The Fox sucked in a long breath. She hadn’t figured out how she’d got into the wagon. He could hardly blame her, but it didn’t make what he had to say come any easier: “Lady, I fear that to save your life I had to touch you. The gods know I’m sorry for it, but I saw no other way.” He repeated the oracular verse she had given him, and explained the morning’s horrors.

  The more he talked, the paler the Sibyl grew. “Lies,” she whispered. “It must be lies. You’ve ruined me, and now you seek to twist my own words against me and make me believe you did it for my own good?” Her head whipped around like a hunted animal’s; her eyes lit on the gold and ivory head of Oren the Builder. Gerin had thought she was already white as could be, but discovered he was wrong. “You—took this?” she demanded. “And the lord Biton did not strike you dead?”

  A flip answer came to Gerin’s mind; he stifled it before it passed his lips. “Lady, he did not. When I took it, it lay outside the bounds of the holy precinct. As I said, the earthquake knocked everything into confusion. The temple itself no longer stands. What happened to the chamber where you prophesied I could not say, but the quake must have knocked down the warded walls that kept those monsters from coming to the surface.”

  Van turned and said, “For all you know, Fox, it might have been the other way round. Remember the bits of mortar we saw at the base of those walls when Kinifor led us down to the lady? The things might have been trying for years to breach the magic that held ’em in check, and when they finally did it, that could’ve made the earth shake.”

  “You’re right; it could have happened so,” Gerin agreed. “But whichever way it was doesn’t matter.” He gave his attention back to the Sibyl. “Lady—have you a name, by the way?”

  She’d been listening to him and Van talk back and forth as if they were madmen whose madnesses by chance coincided. She snapped back to herself when the Fox asked her that question, but needed a moment to find an answer for it. At last she said, “I was called … Selatre. They took the name from me when I became Biton’s mouth, but I recall it was mine.” The bitter curve of her lips was anything but a smile. “I may as well wear it again, for thanks to you I’ll serve the god no more. If all you say is true, better you should have left me to die there.”

  “Lady … Selatre … I pray I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am, when I tell you the only things left alive in Ikos by sunset tonight will be the ones that came out from under Biton’s fane. How deep and wide the caves run, how many monsters there are—I know none of that. But I couldn’t leave you in your cottage to perish from their teeth and claws, not when the question I put to you was what made you swoon away,” Gerin said.

  Selatre said, “If you think saving me was a favor, you’re wrong. Lost, polluted … how can I hope to make my way in the world again, now that you’ve taken away my reason for being?”

  “You made your way in it before you were Sibyl,” Van said roughly. “And plenty of people go on living who’ve taken worse hurts than you. Go into the woods, water the ferns, and come back and we’ll feed you bread and sausage and ale. Things always look cheerier with food in your belly, and you must be hungry as a longtooth after sleeping the day around.”

  Selatre sniffed at the homely advice, but, perhaps because nothing better occurred to her, nodded after a moment. Gerin started to offer his hand again, but the first motion made her shrink back with such dismay that he stopped before it was well begun. Instead, he ostentatiously stepped away from the wagon and let her clamber down by herself.

  “What do we do if she tries to run to Ikos on her own?” he whispered to Van when she walked in among the bushes by the side of the road.

  “If the jade’s that foolish, let her go,” the outlander answered. “Me, I don’t think she is.”

  Gerin got out the food Van had promised the Sibyl. She took longer to come back than he’d expected, and he wondered if she had slipped away. The idea of pursuing her through the uncanny forest was far from appealing. But just when he was beginning to worry he might have to, she returned, her face unreadable.
He pointed to the meal he’d fixed from the travel supplies, but did not try to give it to her. If she didn’t want to be touched, that was her affair.

  She did manage a quiet word of thanks, then fell on bread and sausage and onions and ale as if she’d gone without food for ten or twenty days, not just one. She was still eating when, faintly, from far down the road to the west came a snarling roar that wasn’t bear or longtooth or wolf or any beast Gerin had heard before. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck prickled up even so.

  Van said, “That’s one of the things from the caves, if you ask me.”

  Selatre put down the piece of bread she’d been gnawing. “A terrible sound,” she said, shuddering. “I’ve heard it in my nightmares. Now, perhaps, I begin to believe you.”

  The innkeeper had said she seemed to be having evil dreams. That was this morning, Gerin thought, amazed. It seemed an age ago, in a different world. Given all that had changed between then and now, maybe it was.

  The Fox said, “We’ve seen monsters in our dreams, too—and seen them in the flesh today, in the temple compound.”

  “And if we don’t want to see more of them in the flesh, I think we’d better get rolling again,” Van said. “If I had to guess, I’d say they’re likely not after us in particular right now, just out exploring, finding out what aboveground is like after being down below so long. But if they come on us, I don’t think they’d stop with a cheery good day, if you take my meaning.”

  Gerin stood aside to let Selatre scramble into the wagon by herself. Getting her back to Fox Keep was going to be awkward if she thought any accidental bump the equivalent of a violation. Of course, if that was how she felt, she was already convinced he’d violated her, and he couldn’t do anything about it. He chewed on the inside of his lower lip. No time to worry about any of that now. Once they were safe away from Ikos would be soon enough.

  He said to Van, “I’ll drive for a while now. You can rest your head.”

  “It’s all right,” the outlander answered. “Since the ground started shaking, I haven’t hardly noticed my poor aching noodle.”

  “The same with me,” Gerin said. “It’s not the cure for a long night of drinking I’d choose, though.”

  “Nor I, Fox, nor I.” Van started to laugh, but broke off: another one of those snarling roars cut through the stillness of the woods. The outlander yanked on the reins, then reached around behind him into the wagon for the whip. He cracked it just above the horses’ backs. Gerin thought that was laying it on thick; the animals seemed alarmed enough to run hard just from the fierce sound of the roar.

  Selatre said, “Have a care, please. You almost touched me when you were groping back here.” She sat huddled in a far corner, as if certain Van had intended to grope her.

  “Lady—Selatre—we’re not out to do you harm or throw you down in the roadway and have you or anything of the sort.” The outlander sounded as if he were holding on to his patience with both hands. “For one thing, Gerin and I both prefer willing wenches. For another, or if you think I’m lying about the first, we could have had our way with you four times each before you woke up.”

  “I know that,” she answered quietly. “Any touch, though, pollutes me, not just a lewd one. Lord Gerin, I grant you meant well when you plucked me from my cottage, but I’d sooner you had not done it. To lose that sense of union with the god, to know he will never speak through me again because I am his pure vessel no more … life stretches long and empty ahead of me.”

  The Fox exhaled through his nose in impatient anger. “Lord Biton would have spoken through you no more whether we came to your dwelling or not. If we hadn’t, you’d have been monster fodder before another hour went by. And that, if you ask me, is a short and empty life, save perhaps when speaking about a monster’s belly, which would have been quite comfortably full.”

  He twisted around to see how Selatre took that. He didn’t want to flay her with words; after all, she was suddenly cast into a situation she’d never imagined and for which she’d never prepared. If he’d hit too hard, he was ready to backtrack and apologize.

  But, to his surprise, she returned the ghost of a smile. “Next to being devoured, I suppose rescue may be a better choice. Very well; I do not blame you for it—much.”

  “Lady, I thank you.” He could have—given his nature, he easily could have—freighted that with enough sarcasm to make it sting. This time, though, it came out sincere. The Sibyl—no, the ex-Sibyl—was trying to adjust; he could at least do the same.

  Shadows were lengthening when they came out of the haunted forest that surrounded Ikos and into woods like those in the rest of the northlands. The transition point was easy to spot: as soon as they returned to the normal woods, the earthquake showed its effects again, not least with a couple of toppled trees stretched across the roadway.

  Moving those trunks would have taken half a village of serfs. Van drove around them through the undergrowth. As he did so, he said, “Wouldn’t have wanted to try this back a ways. You go in there, who knows if you come out again?”

  “I like that,” Selatre said. “You were willing enough to send me off into those woods when I needed to make water. Did you hope you would be rid of me?”

  Van coughed and spluttered. “No, lady, nothing like that at all. If I thought of it at all, I thought you were holy enough to have nothing to fear.”

  “So I may have been, once,” Selatre said, gloom returning. “No more.”

  They rode on a while in silence after that. Eyeing the sinking sun, Gerin said, “We might do well to look for that spot after we came through the free peasant village. They won’t know what we’re about until we roll past them early tomorrow morning.”

  “If they’re not all downfallen from the quake,” Van added. “Only thing I worry about there, Captain—not counting the ghosts, for we’ve little to give ’em—is monsters on our trail.”

  “The ghosts will keep them from traveling at night.…” Gerin’s voice trailed away. “I hope,” he finished, realizing he had no way of knowing what—if anything—the ghosts could do to the horrid creatures from the caves.

  “We can’t go on traveling all night,” Van said. “Whether the ghosts let us or not, we’d ruin the horses, maybe kill ’em. So stopping’s still our best plan, and I think you picked a good place for it.”

  To the Fox’s admiration, Van recognized the little side road down which they’d turned a few nights before. Gerin recognized it, too—once he was on it. But the landmarks looked different coming west from the way they had going east, and he might well have driven right past the junction.

  The outlander got busy making a fire. Bow in hand, Gerin walked through the woods in search of a blood offering for the ghosts. When the light began to fade alarmingly before he’d found either bird or beast, he began turning over stones and pieces of bark. He grabbed a fat, long-tailed lizard before it could scuttle back into hiding. It twisted in his grasp and bit his finger hard enough to draw blood from him, but he held on and, swearing, carried the creature to camp.

  Van gave it a dubious look. “That’s the best you could come up with?” he asked, and made as if to get up himself. But the sun was down by then, and the ghosts beginning to haver. Scowling against their cries, he said, “Cut its throat, quick. It has to be better than nothing.”

  Gerin made the sacrifice, then flipped away the lizard’s writhing body. He peered down into the trench he’d dug. The blood seemed hardly enough to dampen the dirt at the bottom. He wondered if he should have kept hunting till he found a creature with more to give the ghosts.

  But in spite of the paltry offering, the night spirits seemed no more vicious than they had at other times when he’d camped in the open. Mildly puzzled but not inclined to complain at his good fortune, he pulled a sack of supplies from the back of the wagon. Selatre accepted the small loaf of hard-baked bread he held out to her, but was careful not to let her fingers brush his when she took it.

  He forgot to
be irked, exclaiming, “Lady, I wonder if the holiness you bring from Ikos—the last holiness left of Ikos, I fear—isn’t helping hold the ghosts at arm’s length.”

  “I am holy no more,” she answered bleakly.

  “You’re the Sibyl no more, true,” Gerin said, “but I wonder if the other is so. You didn’t abandon Biton; he chose to leave you. How could that be your fault?”

  She looked startled, and did not answer. She looked startled again when Gerin and Van drew straws to see who would take first watch and who second, but shook her head at her own foolishness. “Of course that’s needful here,” she said, half to herself. “Who would do it for you?”

  “We didn’t bring any temple guards along, that’s certain,” Van said. He got up and paced about; Gerin had won his choice, and decided to sleep through the first watch. The outlander went on, “Here, lady, you can take my blanket till I wake up the Fox; then I expect he’ll let you have his.”

  “You’re generous, both of you,” the Sibyl said, watching Gerin nod. Even so, she made sure she placed herself on the far side of the fire from him before she wrapped the checked square of wool around her and settled down for the night.

  Van needed to shake and prod and practically pummel Gerin before he’d wake. The outlander pointed over across the embers to Selatre. With a grin, he said, “She’s human enough—she snores.” The grin disappeared. “Now how am I supposed to wake her and get my blanket back without making her think I’ve got rape on my mind? That’s what she thinks of touching, plain enough.”

  “You can have mine if you like,” Gerin said.

  “Too small for my bulk; you know mine’s bigger than the usual,” Van said. “I’ll take it if I have to, but I’d really like to roll up in my own.”