Exile's Children

by Angus Wells

  Rannach pushed the body away and looked toward the dead man’s mount. The lion-thing still moved, but its cries were softer now—pained mewlings rather than roars. He climbed to his feet and walked toward it.

  It was no pleasanter to observe close up than at a distance. It seemed to him an abomination, neither one true creature or another but some horrid amalgamation, as if some malign creator had taken the parts of several animals and worked them together in obscene parody of what was true. But it was a beast of some kind, and for all that he had wounded it unto death, still he felt a kind of sorrow for its suffering and thought of it as a horse hurt in battle. He lifted his hatchet and brought it down against the rolling skull.

  The thing coughed blood and ceased its mewling. Rannach went back to the fallen Breaker.

  The man lay on his back on the snow. Blood oozed from under the helmet, dark in contrast with the rose-colored armor. Rannach wondered how a Breaker’s face should look. Evil, he supposed, as weirdly distorted as the beasts they rode. He kicked the fallen figure, tapped the lolling head with his hatchet.

  It did not move, save to roll and flop in that manner that only the dead possess, so he reached down to find the fastenings and pull the helmet loose.

  He started back at what he saw, gasping, for he had revealed the face of a beautiful woman, her eyes wide as they stared sightlessly into the oblivion of the sky. Her hair was long and the color of honey, tumbling loose about perfect features, the bones delicate, the flesh smooth and soft and tan.

  Rannach stared at her awhile, then spat and wiped a hand over his face. He rose and found his bow, then went back to where Morrhyn waited.

  The Dreamer said, “Praise the Maker, I feared you were slain. I heard screaming …”

  “Her mount,” Rannach said. “I killed it.”

  “Her mount?”

  “Did your visions not tell you that?” Rannach said. “She was a woman!” He took his horse’s rein and shook his head. “I slew a woman, Morrhyn. A woman! What does that make me? Am I now a woman-killer? Am I now like Vachyr?”

  Morrhyn looked out from under the hood of his cape and fixed Rannach with the heat of his burning eyes. “She was a Breaker,” he said.

  “She was a woman!”

  Morrhyn nodded. “And did she plead with you? Did she ask your help? Ask you to aid her as you would a woman of the People?”

  Rannach shook his head and said, “No, she attacked me. She’d have taken my head were I not swifter.”

  “Then she was your enemy,” Morrhyn said. “Do you think women are weaker than men? I tell you, no. Listen! Would Arrhyna not fight were she called? Do you think your mother would not take up a blade to defend your father? Do the women of the People not take up arms to defend the clans?”

  Rannach nodded. “But not like that. Not all warlike.”

  “She was a Breaker,” Morrhyn said. “And they are not like us.” Save they be out other side, he thought. Was that not a part of my dreams? That the Breakers are that other side, like shadow to sunlight?

  “Even so.” Rannach swung astride the stallion. “I cannot enjoy killing a woman.”

  “Likely she’ll not be the last.” Morrhyn pointed a finger toward the river. “They’d take Ket-Ta-Witko and lay it waste, feed the People to their beasts—those who survive. So, do we go on? Or shall you mourn her and give her honorable burial, and we wait here until her comrades come for us?”

  Rannach looked at him out of troubled eyes. “Are you become so hard?” he asked.

  Morrhyn looked him back and answered, “Yes. Now take me to the Wintering Ground, else your conscience destroy the People.”

  They forded the river and nighted in the timber on the flatland beyond, then traversed the plain and rode toward the Commacht’s ancestral Wintering Ground. Morrhyn’s dreams spoke of no further danger along their way, but troubled him nonetheless, for they seemed to promise a homecoming that was somehow not there.

  He could not understand that, only advise Rannach that they continue onward. He wondered if the Breakers now owned larger magicks that clouded even the dreams the Maker sent him, or if the Maker himself denied that final promise.

  When they came to the Wintering Ground and found it empty, he felt very lost and very afraid.

  31 Until Death

  It was a simple ceremony, held in the church in the presence of those few servants Wyme granted leave from their duties. Benjamyn attended with Chryselle, and Dido looked on beaming as if it were her daughter who stood before the pastor. Flysse was radiant, and did she wear only her customary dirndl, still her smile and obvious happiness seemed to Arcole to clothe her in brilliance. He took her hand when the pastor nodded and set the plain brass ring—Dido’s gift—on her finger, repeating the vows. She answered in a firm, clear voice and with a slight shock he realized he was wed. It was a curious sensation, both exciting and somewhat alarming, and he hoped he did the right thing. Then Benjamyn declared they’d best return, and they went back through the snowbound streets, Flysse clutching Arcole’s arm all the way.

  Surprises awaited them in the mansion: Dido had prepared a small wedding cake and Wyme had decreed that the servants might each enjoy a mug of ale to toast the married couple. Flysse’s fellow maids teased her, and the male servants offered Arcole their congratulations. Then, to his amazement, Benjamyn announced they were spared all duties until the following morning and to a chorus of good wishes, and not a few lewd comments, the majordomo brought them to a room that was now theirs alone. Fleetingly, Arcole thought that this was in part why he had married Flysse. But as the door closed and she turned toward him, he forgot that reason and the pang of guilt the memory induced, aware only of her happiness and his own. Whatever motivations had once moved him, he knew now that he loved this woman, and that he truly wanted her for his wife. He opened his arms and she came into them, and this time when he began to unlace her bodice she offered no resistance but laughed and kissed him, and then, blushing somewhat, led him to the bed.

  Later, as they lay together, their arms entwined, Arcole knew that he had never been so happy. “I love you,” he murmured into her hair. “I love you.”

  Flysse turned so that her mouth was against his and, as he began to kiss her again, said, “And I love you.”

  David was elated at the news. Indeed, had it not betrayed his thief’s freedom, he would have shouted it at the sky as he sat atop Rupyrt’s Gahame’s roof. But that should have curtailed his clandestine lease on Grostheim’s night-dark streets and earned him punishment, so he stilled his eager tongue and only sat chortling at the thought of Arcole and Flysse wed. It was almost as much happiness as he could imagine. He threw back his head and laughed—softly—into the darkness.

  It was a wide night here, wider than any he’d seen in Evander, as if the sky were scraped clear of human grime so that all the stars shone through like promises. He could sit up here and imagine the country beyond the walls: it would be wide as the sky, and white with snow, the Restitution River glittering with ice-pack, and in the distance the forest edge, mysterious and—he frowned as he realized it—strangely enticing. That was most odd: he was a child of the city, a denizen of the streets and alleyways, accustomed to high walls and close rooftops, not that unknown country ’sieur Gahame named the wilderness. God knew, Grostheim was curious enough, with its buildings all of wood and its streets either split timber or plain dirt, not at all like Bantar; not at all like the world he had known, far away across the sea. Yet it seemed almost he felt … He could not put it properly in words; Arcole would know how, but Davyd had not had the time to discuss it with his friend and could only struggle to comprehend his inexplicable feelings. It was as if the wilderness called him. The notion of it, of a land all trees and hills with not a building around, no streets or roofs but only such countryside as he’d not the experience to imagine even, was terrifying. And simultaneously … he shook his head, frowning as the word took shape … appealing. Yes, that was it: appealing. As if he were
a child again, lonely, longing for the warmth of Aunt Dory’s embrace—save in his head, Aunt Dory was replaced by that strange country beyond Salvation’s boundaries. he dreamed of it, of sunlit trees and plashing streams all filled with fish, high hills and grassy plains—which was most odd, for he’d no knowledge of that place, nor any love of things bucolic. When Flysse had spoken of her childhood in Cudham he’d thought it curious she loved the land so well. Yet now … He drew his borrowed furs closer as he pondered the mystery.

  At first he’d thought not at all of the land beyond Grostheim’s walls, perfectly content to remain within the city. Indeed, he’d not been unhappy to remain confined within ’sieur Gahame’s enclave. The master was not unkind, and Davyd had, if anything, a greater degree of security than he’d ever known. He had listened to the older men—who’d accompanied the master on journeys inland—speak of the wilderness. They had seen the forests only at a distance, usually from the yard of a farm or the deck of a barge, but they spoke of it as a place of menace, of wild beasts and trackless ways, and Davyd had shivered with them and agreed that was no place for decent folk. He was grateful for Grostheim’s solid walls: they held out the unknown.

  Then, as the year progressed, he had grown more confident and more curious. Then, he had soon enough discovered, those skills that had earned him a living in Bantar could be put to use here.

  It was not difficult for a thief and a lockpick to find a way out of the warehouse.

  He had his corner; the four other indentured men occupied a shed in the yard. Sieur Gahame lived in a cottage built against the wall surrounding his property, which consisted of the warehouse and the yard, the buildings and the palisade wall. Davyd was the only one in the warehouse: and the fastenings of the windows and doors were easy to pick.

  He thought the inhabitants of Grostheim—the unbranded inhabitants, at least—assumed the rest too cowed to risk such venture, and that they were likely right. Surely his fellows in ’sieur Gahame’s enterprise were a docile lot, content with bed and board and those small luxuries the master allowed. Certainly, they made no complaint; rather, sang the master’s praises for the good food they got and the pint of ale come a Saturday night. Laurens and Godfry were even grateful for church of a Sunday. (Davyd was, to some extent, equally grateful for that devotional duty: he had realized the priest owned no magical talent and could not guess his own ability, and the visits afforded him his only chance to speak with Arcole and Flysse.) He supposed ’sieur Gahame was a good master. He supposed that was why no hexes were set about the property—that absence allowing his freedom—for why should contented slaves object to decent food and warm beds? And did they, where could they go? Grostheim was locked tight as any prison, and past its walls was only the larger prison that was Salvation.

  He was not sure why he objected, save the dreams woke something in him. Sieur Gahame treated him well enough: he was fed and clothed, slept dry and warm, and his future was surely more certain than it had been in Evander. He need only serve the master and earn his trust, and in time he would be allowed out past the walls of the Gahame property, even be allowed to accompany ’sieur Gahame on journeys inland—he was not sure he wanted that, but it should be a greater degree of freedom than most branded folk got. But he was not happy with his lot. He thought perhaps Arcole had sown some seed in him, unrecognized, that taught him better to object to the scar marking his cheek and the limitations of exile.

  That and, perhaps, the dreams.

  They had come more frequently since his discovery of the roof’s freedom, and stronger. Not all were benign. Indeed, there were some terrifying as those he’d known on board the Pride of the Lord; he huddled inside his furs as he thought of those.

  The dreams had begun this winter, as if in company to the influenza epidemic. He could not interpret them clearly, not decide whether they warned or promised. He was only sure that they alarmed him in ways he could not understand. Had his brief meetings with Arcole allowed the time, he would have discussed them, but the few short minutes stolen from church services did not allow, and Flysse was always there, close to Arcole, and she did not know, so he had only his own interpretation.

  And that was hard.

  Sometimes he dreamed of carnage, as if he floated in the sky, an unseen observer of the awful slaughter below. They were all bloody, human folk slain by faceless, formless beings, less shaped than shadows. In those it seemed the wilderness forest folk had told him of spewed-out monsters that came in the night to slay whatever—whoever—claimed the land. In those, he dreamed of fire and swords and insensate massacre. He saw women clubbed, or burned; men shot with arrows, or pricked all bloody with knives and lances.

  And were those horrid images not enough, the dreams were permeated with such a sense of naked hatred, of a palpable intention to murder and destroy, he was thankful when he woke that he slept alone in his warehouse corner, for he woke all sweaty and often as not screaming, and thought that had he been observed then surely he must be guessed for a dreamer.

  In some the forest was ominous: all dread and terror.

  In others it was benign.

  In some it called to him, as if the trees he had never seen beckoned, promising him hope and freedom, a life he had not known or imagined. Then it was as if a mother opened her arms to a lost son, and when he went into that embrace he woke smiling, comforted, and reassured. He dreamed of mountains, then; all tree-topped and craggy, and a place beyond where the sun shone on grass and rivers that ran blue, save where fat fish that he knew should be good to eat burst silver ripples across the surface. It was a landscape that filled him with a delight he could not, waking or asleep, comprehend.

  He had lived all his life in the close gray city of Bantar and knew nothing of blue rivers or grass: he could not understand the dream, nor much better the other in which Grostheim rang loud with screams and howling shadows paced the streets in wanton slaughter, and he could not know if he was a shadow or a victim, only that he was very afraid.

  He knew in the marrow of his bones, born of his talent’s certainty, that something was going to happen. But he could not say when, or what. He wanted to discuss it with Arcole and could not. It curdled his joy that his friends were wed, and tainted that pleasure with threat. And yet, as he huddled closer inside his borrowed furs, he could not help smiling still. Arcole and Flysse were wed: they were man and wife, and shared—so they had whispered this last Sunday—a room now. Small, they had said, but theirs alone; with a door they might lock and a window that afforded them a view of the stableyard: Governor Wyme was a God-fearing man and allowed his married servants a degree of privacy.

  Davyd thought of how much he should like to see his friends.

  He turned his eyes from the sky to the streets below. They were empty, churned mud and dirtied snow lit by infrequent lanterns and the random gleam of unshuttered windows, none abroad so late save prowling cats hunting the rats that belonged to every city.

  He thought of how he would like to speak with Arcole about his dreams. And if Arcole had married Flysse, then surely she must be privy to her husband’s knowledge, no?

  He surveyed the streets, an idea forming.

  “What are you doing?”

  Arcole said, “Nothing. I stole some paper and ink, eh? I’d not forget my penmanship. Shall you tell Wyme, or Benjamyn?”

  Flysse said, “No, of course I’d not,” sharply. “But you’re not writing.”

  Arcole said, “Then what?”

  Flysse drew her shawl closer around her and went to where her husband sat. They had a chair, of which she was proud, and Arcole had begged a barrel that served for a table. Those, and the trunk Dido had given them for their few clothes, were all the furniture they possessed apart from the bed. But though sparsely furnished and barely larger than a closet, the room was theirs.

  “I can write my name,” she said. “And some other letters.”

  Arcole turned from his “penmanship” and kissed her cheek. “Shall I teach you
more?” he asked.

  Flysse, “One day, perhaps. But now—what’s that?”

  He shrugged and said again, “Nothing.”

  Their single candle painted his face with shadow, and Flysse could not see his expression, but his evasive tone, the set of his shoulders as he hunched over his work—those she could interpret. It saddened her that he kept secrets.

  In all other respects he was an ideal husband, and these past weeks had been amongst the happiest Flysse could remember. She supposed that was a small happiness, to be content with a tiny room in another’s home, shared with the man she loved, who—of this Flysse was confident—loved her. She supposed it was a meager existence to one such as Arcole, whose tales of salons and ballrooms, of grand hotels and lavish parties, had amazed and delighted her. To him, she supposed, this room was not much more than a cell, the mansion a prison. She knew it grated on him, his indenture, and that he did his best to hide his resentment. With others he succeeded, but she was his wife and loved him—she knew him better. So when he scowled and only grunted in response to her voice, she told herself he would come eventually to acceptance and make the best of his lot, and did her best to cheer him. Usually she succeeded, for it seemed he took honest pleasure in her company. But sometimes … She frowned and stroked his hair.

  He had begun to steal, which most of the branded folk did in small ways such as Benjamyn and Chryselle and Dido chose to overlook. There was a scullion she knew sucked eggs and claimed them broken or addled; Nathanial was wont to sample the wine he served; most took their little tithe of food—one of the benefits of indenture to the governor. But Arcole stole the most unlikely things. Hidden beneath the boards of their room was paper, an inkpot, two pens with metal nibs he had labored to repair, and when Flysse asked him why, he answered only vaguely—that he’d not forget his penmanship, or that he intended to sketch her. But he never had, and while Flysse could write little more than her name, she knew what words looked like. She knew that the lines he drew were not words, save where he set his tiny squiggles down against a mark, and the sheet he labored over surely bore no resemblance to her. It hurt that he seemed not to trust her in this, whatever it was.