The Outskirter's Secret

by Rosemary Kirstein

  Fletcher acquired a fantastic glower. “I lost the last one. Miserably.”

  “Exactly.”

  The tribes were camped on a slope. Rowan, Fletcher, and Averryl walked down among the paths of Kammeryn’s camp. They ended finally at the tribe’s fire pit, skewed from its usual position. Not far to the right lay another fire, apparently belonging to another tribe, and to the left lay four more, all arranged to form a short arc. There were open-sided cook tents near each fire, each tribe ranging out behind its cook tent in a widening wedge. Rowan instinctively surmised a completion of the arrangement: a single central open area ringed around by fires, with the avenues between tribes radiating like the spokes of a wheel. The steerswoman calculated that it would take twelve tribes to complete the circle.

  Averryl shook his head when Rowan commented. “No, that never happens. There are never twelve tribes near enough to each other to Rendezvous. The most I’ve ever heard of gathered is eight.”

  There was food at each fire pit, and all were apparently welcome to sample. Past the fires was a large flat area, where activities were in progress: dances with spinning sticks flung into the air, and impromptu groups of musicians with bone flutes, wooden clappers of various tones, banjos, and mandolins, the last amazingly constructed from the skulls of goblins.

  They paused to watch a wrestling match, where a pair of muscular women contested, first one pinned to stillness, then both suddenly writhing and twisting, and the other now pinned to stillness. When the match was won, Averryl gave Rowan and Fletcher a sidelong glance, then wandered over to speak to the winner, saying something to her that immediately caused her to laugh out loud with delight.

  Fletcher nudged Rowan; she nudged him back. Linking arms again, they left Averryl behind.

  After dinner, a more formal gathering took place. People arranged themselves about the open area, on all sides, taking advantage of the natural slope. And one by one, each tribe was called upon for a song, or a poem, or a tale.

  Rowan heard of a fierce battle for pasture; of a young warrior who presumed to court her own tribe’s seyoh; of a haunting, where the spirit of an uncast man killed his tribe’s goats, one by one, until his body was found and given proper rites.

  But when the Face People were called upon, they did not respond. There was an uncomfortable pause, and then Kammeryn’s tribe was called on, and Averryl delivered the tale of his rescue by Rowan and Bel.

  When he finished, someone spoke out of turn. “I will tell,” the voice called out. A small man approached from the back of the crowd and made his way down the slope to the center, walking stolidly, almost defiantly, as if to battle.

  There came a slow rising, murmur of surprise, and within it isolated pockets of sharp comment, clearly disapproving.

  “What’s wrong?” Rowan asked, but when the man reached his position, she saw him clearly for the first time. “That’s a Face Person.”

  He stood boldly in place, staring down each individual complaining group.

  “Will they try to stop him?” Rowan asked.

  “Don’t know.” Fletcher was squinting at the man. “That’s our friend from the alleyway.” The man they had seen, sitting alone, facing the Face People’s camp.

  When quiet came at last, the man announced, “This is for the one I love: Randa, Chensdotter, Luz.”

  “Should he say her names?”

  “She must be dead.”

  The man drew a long breath, as if to shout; instead, he sang: “Who has seen her,” he began in a harsh voice,

  “—Following the wind

  From end to end, long hills

  Winding, black and midnight, when her voice

  Comes shadowing down the sky? …”

  “That’s Einar’s song,” Rowan said quietly. ” ‘The Ghost Lover.’ “

  “One of Einar’s songs,” Fletcher corrected. “He wrote about a thousand.”

  The singer did not have a singer’s voice: it was rough-edged and unmelodic, needing to be forced from note to note. But the song itself, somehow, did not suffer. It acquired a color far different from that which Bel had given it. It was no longer a song of sweet, eerie longing; it was a hopeless plea, a cry of pain.

  “From where she stands to where I stand

  Is but a hand, a link, and a lock,

  But there are doors, mine poor for being

  Always wide—”

  Rowan thought it odd to hear of a door and a lock in a song sung by a tent-dwelling Outskirter. Tent entrances were sometimes loosely referred to as doors—but they had no locks.

  All known Outskirter history began with the days of Einar, the first to use poem and song, easily passed on to later generations. She wondered what events lay lost before Einar’s time.

  “I lose my days in days of days.

  I know my time by nights of yes or no,

  In going, stepping into dark,

  And standing, marking yes or no—”

  Bel’s home tribe believed that Einar, for the love of the ghost, never made love to a human woman, and thus left no descendants. Kammeryn’s tribe believed that Einar did take part in normal romantic intercourse, but that his unnatural relations with the spirit-woman drained the power of life from his seed. Rowan found both versions credible: Einar’s devotion to his mysterious love was utter, complete. Such an intensity could not exist without effect upon Einar himself, either emotional or physical. But Einar seemed not to care about the state of his soul, or, by implication, of his body. He only loved, totally; and hundreds of years later, the wiry, rough man now present held up that love for all to see, as the mirror of his own.

  ” … And she will tell me, when she speaks again: the cry

  Of stars, the sweet of light, the secret tongue of numbers.

  When last I sang she smiled, and I will sing again

  While all the world and winter rain complete,

  Until fleeing has no home but her words,

  Last known, last awaited, last spoken, last heard.”

  The song ended. There was silence. With no further ceremony, the small man immediately left the center, walked to the edge of the crowd, and vanished.

  Rowan and Fletcher walked slowly back to camp together. Without looking, she was sharply aware of him as a long angular form of bone and muscle moving quietly at her side. She had instinctively lengthened her stride; he had shortened his. Their steps matched.

  “He must have been a very strange man, Einar,” Rowan said at last, thinking aloud.

  “How’s that?”

  “His words work so oddly …” She struggled to express it. “They’re beautiful, but so …” She found a word, but it was very unsatisfactory. “So imprecise …”

  “You’re thinking like a steerswoman,” he told her. “Think with your heart.”

  She smiled. “People don’t think with their hearts.” But it was purely to her emotions that the song spoke. “You must have heard that song often. Do you understand it?”

  He thought. “No. I can’t deny it’s beautiful. But I can’t deny it makes little sense. ‘The secret tongue of numbers—’ ” He stopped short. “Ha!”

  “What is it?”

  He grinned down at her. “Tongue, language. You know the secret tongue of numbers, don’t you, steerswoman?”

  She was taken aback. “In fact, I do.” They resumed walking. “But Bel’s home tribe says it ‘the secret tang of numbers …”

  “Tang, tang,” he mused. “How do numbers taste, Rowan?”

  She did not hesitate. “Sharp.”

  They arrived at the tent. “Coming in?” he asked.

  She paused. “In a moment.”

  When he was gone, she reached into the pouch at her belt and removed a small object. She stood regarding it for a moment, then stooped to the ground once, rose again. She remained awhile, smiling to herself, alone within the fading sweet of light, awaiting the first cry of stars.

  At breakfast, Bel’s preoccupation was no longer in evidenc
e. “I see you’ve finished the new stanzas,” Rowan observed.

  Bel scooped bread gruel into her mouth with a folded slice of meat. “Done,” she said around the food.

  “What’s in them?”

  “You’ll hear tonight.”

  Rowan spotted Fletcher, standing off to one side of the fire pit, looking very puzzled. He caught sight of her, glanced about, and surreptitiously gestured to her. Bel noticed his behavior. “What’s Fletcher up to?”

  “I think,” Rowan said, setting down her bowl, “that he wants to speak to me, and alone.” Fletcher was now standing in pretended nonchalance, simultaneously gazing at the sky and trying to see if the steerswoman had caught his signal.

  When she reached him, he pulled her aside, out of sight behind one of the tents. “Here, come here, take a look at this.” He showed her what he held in his hand.

  A crudely carved bit of tanglebrush root. “Where did you find it?” the steerswoman asked.

  “On the ground. But look, don’t you see, it’s a dolphin!”

  Rowan examined it again. “It’s not a very good one …”

  He was agitated. “Yes, but it’s still a dolphin. Rowan, there’s probably not an Outskirter here who’s seen or even heard of dolphins.”

  “I see. And where did you find it, again?”

  “Just lying around.” He seemed to consider her altogether too slow. “Look, don’t you think it’s significant? A dolphin? Out here?”

  “I do indeed,” she said. “And where exactly did you find it?”

  Exasperated, he threw up his hands. “On the ground. Outside of the tent. No one around. But where did it come from?”

  “On the ground,” she clarified innocently, “by the entrance?”

  “Yes—”

  “Fletcher, in the Outskirts, there’s only one sort of thing that gets left by a tent entrance.”

  He dismissed the idea with a wave of one hand. “No, I thought of that, see; but no Outskirter would know about dolphins—” And he stopped, his mouth still open on his uncompleted sentence.

  “—and so that means that it wasn’t left by an Outskirter,” Rowan finished.

  “But,” he began, and several varieties of confusion and disbelief worked their way across his long face. Rowan watched until she could stand no more, then finally burst into laughter. “But,” Fletcher said again, looking from the object in his hand to her face, over and over.

  To stop laughing was impossible, and she laughed helplessly until she felt she needed support, found none from the tent beside her, and had to drop to a seat on the ground. Fletcher watched her, still gape-mouthed, and his disbelief slowly became amazement.

  “Fletcher, you fool,” she said finally, breathlessly, “you’re supposed to reject the first gifts. Then they improve. Now you’re stuck with just a rather bad wooden dolphin …”

  “But,” he managed again. Half of his mouth was shaping itself into a grin.

  “Oh, no, you don’t back out now! You picked it up, and you kept it. You’ll just have to face facts, and do your duty; although, as we say in the Inner Lands, I believe you’ve sold yourself cheaply …” She sat, hugging her knees, grinning, looking up at him.

  With a visible internal shift, he completely recovered his balance. “Sold myself cheaply, is it?” he declared, turning the dolphin over as if examining it for the first time, peering at it with one squinting eye. “Well. Well, we’ve got a saying in Alemeth that covers this, too, you know.”

  “And what’s that?”

  And he was down beside her, blue eyes inches away from her own, with a wise and canny look that did not quite cover the joy behind. In the space between their faces, he held up the carving: a crude, inartistic trinket, hurriedly made. He said, just before he kissed her, ” ‘You get what you pay for.’ “

  35

  That evening, Kammeryn’s entire tribe was present at the gathering for tales and songs. Warriors, mertutials, even the children, to the smallest who slept in its mother’s arms: over one hundred and thirty people, outnumbering all those who had chosen to attend from the other tribes.

  The others were puzzled, and there was a certain degree of glowering disapproval from the Face People present; but this was Rendezvous, at however unlikely a time, and no one believed that a threat was implied. Instead, a sense of anticipation appeared, grew, and slowly worked its way throughout the crowd: something important was about to happen.

  Kammeryn had given his people no specific instruction, but when his tribe was called on, they passed one name along themselves, as comment, request, announcement. The words were like audible flickers, flashing across and around the slope: “Bel should speak,” and “Bel has a good tale,” and “Let Bel through!”

  The Outskirter rose up from the seated ranks of other Outskirters and made her way to the fire’s side. She gazed once at the sky, thoughtfully, then turned it a second, sharper glance, as if calculating the amount of light left to the day, and the time it would take to recite her poem. Then she shifted her stance to that formal yet easy posture she assumed when performing, scanned the crowd, and began.

  Familiar now with the tale and the telling, Rowan watched the people, seeing more clearly the currents of emotion shown in their postures and their expressions. They listened first evaluatively, withholding judgment, waiting for Bel to earn their approval by her choice of story and her grace of language. This she did quickly, and they became rapt in the strange events surrounding the mysterious jewels.

  When Rowan’s own name was first mentioned, Bel made a broad gesture in the steerswoman’s direction; to the other tribes, Rowan, dressed as an Outskirter, was merely another stranger in a tribe of strangers. Fletcher was at her side, half-reclining, his shoulder against her knee; now he sat up, and there appeared between them a three-foot distance, leaving the steerswoman separate and clearly identified. Rowan sat a bit straighter herself and acknowledged with a nod the gazes turned in her direction.

  They turned to her at particular moments in the poem: puzzled, when first she was presented and defined; sympathetic, when the need for deceit required that Rowan resign from the Steerswomen; approving, when Rowan decided to abandon flight, to face and fight the wizards’ men pursuing her; and full of a strange, feral joy when Rowan, a helpless prisoner facing two wizards in the heart of their own fortress, reassumed her order, and from that moment on spoke only the truth, even to enemies. Truth was the rightful possession of every steerswoman; and despite the differences between their lives and hers, her ways and theirs, each person present came to understand this, and approve, for the sake of Rowan’s own form of honor.

  But it was Bel who won their fullest admiration: one of their own, who had crossed a distant, incomprehensible country, survived fantastic dangers, and returned with a tale for her people, and a warning.

  During the recitation, Rowan noted among Kammeryn’s people a number of comings and goings, certain shiftings of position. She had attributed this to the people’s familiarity with the events being related, assumed they felt no need to remain in place for the entire story. But halfway through the poem, Rowan recognized what had happened.

  They had shifted around her. Now, all around, sitting closer to each other than was either casual or comfortable, were the warriors of Kammeryn’s tribe, gathered together in a single body, with the steerswoman among them as one of their number. And slightly in front of Rowan, to her right, there was one empty seat in the heart of the warriors, awaiting the return of the teller of the tale.

  Bel reached the end of the poem as Rowan had first heard it; but now came the new stanzas.

  “The call will come one cruel day.

  Outskirters will answer force with anger,

  Meeting magic. The might of wizards

  Has never faced a fighter’s fury.

  Wizards’ words and warriors’ power

  Never yet stood strength to strength.

  “No one knows as a warrior knows

  That th
e heart of humankind is held

  By strength, by striving, striking down

  Any and all who stand against us.

  Foes and force, we do not fear them.

  No one knows as a warrior knows.”

  Bel began to move, to pace, walking slowly, and one hand with one pointing finger swept the crowd, indicating each and every individual Outskirter.

  “Who will hear,” she asked of them,

  “—or have the heart

  To stand beside me, to stay, and strike?

  Outskirters all now understand:

  War will come. With weapons wielded

  All as one must answer evil.”

  Bel dropped her arm and ceased pacing; and now it was only her face that challenged them.

  “The call will come, and I shall call it.

  The need will be known, by these three names—”

  —and she stood alone before them all: small, strong, wise, and unafraid. “I am Bel,” she said, “Margasdotter, Chanly.”

  36

  “The tale in your poem has stirred the warriors’ blood.” The old woman shifted. “This may not be a good thing. Now they’re eager to fight, but their seyohs have yet to decide if they may do so. You have caused us trouble.”

  “I am not causing trouble,” Bel replied. “I am telling you of trouble on its way. When trouble comes, warriors want to fight; that’s the way of things.”

  The tent was Kammeryn’s own; the persons present were the seyohs of the six tribes at Rendezvous. Rowan and Bel once again sat within a circle of Outskirters; but on this occasion, none of the surrounding faces were near Rowan’s age. The youngest person was a man of late middle years, nearly bald, with a beard braided to his waist. His right arm lay slack in his lap; at some time in the past, it had been rendered useless. The eldest person was a wizened woman, partially bald herself, with blind eyes gone blue-gray with cataracts. It was she who served as the meeting’s moderator.

  “If warriors look for trouble,” she pointed out, “and do not find it, they sometimes create it.”

  “They’ll find it,” Bel assured her.

  The blind woman tilted her chin up. “When?”