Frostflower and Thorn

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  The dog bounded forward and jumped up on Frostflower, planting his front paws on her shoulder, careful of the baby, while his tail swayed violently. Maldron came close behind, untwisting the leash, which was tangled between Dowl’s legs. When the farmer had the cord straight once more, he hooked the end to his silver belt, then stretched out his arms as if to take Starwind.

  Frostflower held the infant tighter. “He is mine, Reverence.”

  Maldron nodded. “So Inmara told us you claimed. But you cannot hold him during these rites.”

  The sorceress glanced beyond the priest to the old woman, who was taking things from her basket and arranging them on the rocks. Flask, goblet, and a kind of silver beaker stood ready. The woman found a niche for a small stone jar, set down her basket, and turned. She had a kind face.

  “We may trust Cradlelap to hold him,” said Maldron. “She has nursed my sons and daughters, and myself before them.”

  The old nurse smiled. Frostflower kissed Starwind on the forehead and permitted the farmer to take him from her arms. At once she bent and fondled Dowl’s head and neck passionately. She felt as if she were gambling with Starwind’s life and as if she were risking her own vow of prudence…yet what else could she do?

  Starwind began to cry when the farmer took him; but, once in Cradlelap’s arms, the infant quieted again. Now Maldron took Dowl by the leash and pulled him away from Frostflower. Patting him affectionately, he led him to one of the swordswomen, who touched her fist to her lips in a salute and then accepted the end of the leash, afterwards squatting and stroking the dog’s head.

  Frostflower knelt, closed her eyes, and tilted up her face. Again Maldron pushed back her hood; again she felt his fingers on the back of her head. For several heartbeats, while she inhaled slowly, nothing further happened. Then she felt his other hand touching her left cheek, finding it wet. Another pause, and a soft cloth wiped her cheeks dry.

  She waited, motionless, moderating her very breath. Surely Maldron should not require this much time? Too great delicacy, too much deliberate slowness, often brought about the very accidents a person was taking such pain to avoid.… He was chanting something in the occult language of the farmers’ rituals. She dared not look, dared not let her eyelids waver even a little. Her only hope lay in Maldron’s sincerity and her own humble submission to his foolish rites. Submission was not acquiescence. She was no more guilty of his superstition than were any of his other tools, the silver of his knife, or the wine in his goblet. His ceremonies would flow around her and leave her dry and undirtied while she knelt passively, unreceptively.…

  Was someone else moving close behind her? The thrums of stealthy footfalls, the stirrings of breath and body-warmed air at her back…two more, she thought. Warrior-acolytes, perhaps, hovering near to witness or assist in some arcane pretense. She must believe, incredible as it seemed, that Maldron would let her go with Starwind and Dowl after he had finished this ritual—she must believe it, or panic. But why did he chant so long?

  At last the point of his knife came to rest just above her right cheekbone—God, so close to her eye! Almost in the same instant, hands seized her arms and pulled them behind her.

  The knife was resting just above her cheek, on the surface of the skin, or slightly below the surface—she could not protest, could not pull against the hands that were now clamping metal gauntlets about her wrists. Ah, God! Their own movements might cause the knife to slip upwards, though she knelt unresisting.

  It was done. The clamps were fastened, the warriors removed their hands from her, Maldron completed his tiny slit and lifted his knife away. The sorceress felt a warm trickle start down her right cheek. “You need not have bound me,” she said.

  “I trusted to your meekness once before. Do not interrupt the rites a second time.”

  He began to chant again. Frostflower felt a stinging in the new wound—tears rolling down to mix with blood. She had lost the gamble. Maldron had deceived her.

  No doubt the gauntlets were made of copper. It was the metal farmers’ folk had learned to use against sorceri: unrusting, and strong enough to hold securely. All she could have done in the available time was thicken its layer of patina, and that would shorten her life without helping her escape.

  Maldron’s knife touched her other cheek, just above where it had left the scab yesterday. And again it rested there, while she fought down a desire to thrust her own eye onto the blade in anger and suspense. This time his warriors inserted a long, flattened rod between her upper arms and her back, fastening it in place with chains between shoulder and elbow. Elaborate precautions they were taking to secure her. It would not help the priest if he meant to take her virginity—another human was the easiest of all creatures to capture in its own time; and with the angry closeness of the touch, and the burst of power that might come to all persons in emergency, a skilled sorceron could add half a century to the attacker’s age between first touch and final loss of power. Their copper chains and bars could not save their priest.

  Breathing deeply, she tried to gather her reserves in readiness. She could begin to age him even now, while he touched her head. But not so quickly as in the ugly passion. And there was yet a hope that he did not mean…that he had some other reason for this binding—reassurance to his warriors, perhaps.

  He made his second slit—tears stung at once in the wound—and took away his knife. She opened her eyes. He was stirring the blade in a goblet held by one of his women; and beyond him two more were handling a long copper rod, forked at its visible end.

  Forked at its other end also—she knew it—she had never seen one before, but she had heard of them, the things farmers’ folk called sprunging-sticks. Her last hope gone, she panicked.

  “No!” She tried to get up.

  The farmer pushed on the top of her head and she fell forward. She struggled to bring her legs back under her, to lift her body straight again…if only she could rise, break through the circle—better to die with a spear through her stomach, better to die alone in the forest with arms copper-chained behind her—but the metal lay so heavy on her back…

  Maldron’s hand was on her head again, thumb and fingers gripping almost from temple to temple. The thin flesh over the skull, the skull bone itself, throbbed with the force of his grip. Slowly he turned her head to the left. “Do not interrupt the chant a third time.”

  His warriors were pushing down on the ends of the rod, crushing her breasts and lungs to the ground. They still feared her—she felt the quiverings of fear in the pressure they exerted—but she had harmed none of them yet, and they took courage from their priest.

  The point of his knife rested inside her left ear, touching, she thought, the bit of flesh and cartilage that guarded the passage to inner ear. A tiny pricking just inside the passage—the least movement, and her hearing would be punctured, her ear deafened.

  God! Maldron—treacherous farmer-priest, lover of pain and torture—I will wither you to the edge of senility, I will leave you just time enough to watch yourself dithering on the edge of your farmer’s grave, your farmer’s hellbog—

  So these were the thoughts, this the rage, that enabled her kind to blast their enemy in the last moment of power.

  Dowl was whining, scratching the ground with his paws. The sound came clearly to her right ear, pressed to the earth. Hearing in her left was clogged as though by water. Only moments ago, Maldron had stroked Dowl like a person with fellow-feeling for animals.

  If she withered him now? That would destroy her own powers, as surely as the thing he planned to do to her. Aye, it might frighten off his warriors…and leave her to die weighted down, perhaps unable even to rise. Could she trust the old nurse not to drop Starwind and run?

  They were drawing her legs apart, catching her ankles in the forks of the sprunging-stick.

  Why have I not aged him already? With my legs free, I might have had some hope.…

  He removed the knife, swished it, no doubt, through his goblet of win
e, turned her head to the other side, inserted the blade into her right ear, made his little stab. Slowness was no longer needed. Both her ankles were chained tightly in the forks of the sprunging-stick, held more than a stride apart by the length of copper.

  So easy it was to capture a sorceron. Yet they feared her still; after Maldron lifted his hands and stepped away, the warriors turned her over on her back and retreated at once, as if afraid she might spell-blast them even now. And if there were a storm cloud, or so much as a strong wind, even now she would not be so completely helpless. Aye, perhaps they had cause to fear.

  Maldron knelt astraddle her, taking her jaw in his left hand, pulling open her mouth. Her tongue—even that needed his “purification.”

  “Reverence,” she said, “I will harm no one—I swear it. Do not—”

  “Even if I trusted you,” he muttered, “my women would not. Put forth your tongue.”

  They were weighting the rods down, seemingly with pierced stones or metal. She could feel weights sliding onto the ends of the bar that pinioned her arms, weights being notched over the middle of the stick between her ankles. She had not realized farmers’ folk dreaded sorceri as much as this. Closing her eyes, she put the tip of her tongue between her lips.

  The knife pricked it, and involuntarily she drew it back, tasting the blood in her mouth. Maldron remained above her. After a moment he pulled apart the lids of her right eye. She saw the gold cup tilting above her, tried to blink as a dash of wine stung her eye, to be followed—thank God!—a heartbeat later by a sluice of pure water. The farmer did the same to her left eye, then washed her ears in turn with wine and water; but she hardly noticed it now. His warriors were ripping the garments from her lower body…black outer robe, undertunic…now only her light linen trousers remained.

  Maldron lifted her head and poured the last of the wine, and afterwards water, perhaps half a cupful, into her mouth. She swallowed thirstily, her throat working as if unconnected with her mind; but her stomach contracted as if to churn the stuff back up. Probably that would have amused the priest and his creatures.

  “You have done purifying me?” She spoke clumsily, her tongue stiff and pain-clogged. “Leave me, then. I will not spellcast you, any of you.”

  “From whom did you steal the infant?” said Maldron.

  Starwind—as she had feared. They were doing all this to her for Starwind’s sake.

  “I did not steal him. He is mine—given to me freely.”

  “Who are his parents?”

  “A warrior who did not want him. I think even she was not sure of the father.”

  “Who is this warrior?”

  What she had said so far could harm no one. To say more…

  “Thorn, was it?”

  He must already want the swordswoman for her defiance of him, her threats against his wife. “What would you do to her?”

  “What need I do to her? She has gone into the marshlands. The marshlands do not let two strangers a generation escape unguided.”

  The sorceress had tried to forget—Burningloaf, also, had told her Thorn was going into the marshlands. Perhaps she had hoped Thorn would change her plan…that tall, broad-shouldered woman, with her green eyes, browned skin, and free speech…sucked down into the marsh bogs…“He is Thorn’s child!” said Frostflower with a sob.

  Maldron shook his head. “Clopmule has told us of fighting with Thorn in Eldrommer’s unsuccessful raid against Arun, barely three hen’s-hatchings ago. She wore a tight belt then. She could not have given birth to this child since. The truth, sorceress.”

  To explain…it could not hurt Thorn now, but would it not endanger Starwind? Farmers prized children and lauded fertility—if Maldron could find no parents, he himself would care for the infant. But would not a farmer consider a sorcer-grown child to be a thing tainted and cursed somehow? A creature—ah, God!—to be destroyed?

  He kneaded her abdomen with one hand. “Who are the child’s parents, sorceress?”

  “A warrior who does not want him—a father who does not know of his birth. We do not lie, farmer!”

  He put his knife to the waist of her trousers, slit cord and seam, and ripped the cloth apart.

  “Torture me as you will, Reverence. I will not use my power—but do not take it!”

  He brushed his hand once over her bare abdomen. Come then, farmer-priest, she thought—touch me again—touch me firmly—come and let me blast you to the edge of your grave!

  But he rose and stepped away from her. “Bring the merchant.”

  One of his swordswomen saluted with fist to lips, and stepped behind the rocks.

  Frostflower had thought, at least, that Maldron was showing himself one priest who took his own risk in this. Why had she not withered him while he was touching her? Now she must age some common merchant…aye, some merchant, no doubt, who had sold his services for a high price. Yes, she could wither such a man. If only she could wither Maldron as well!

  The swordswoman returned, pulling a very young man by one arm. He walked stumblingly. Lifting her head a little, Frostflower saw that his ankles were hobbled. His hands remained behind him despite the warrior’s tugging. His face was almost white, the eyes dilated, the thin light-brown beard a pitiable attempt to hide his youth. She had seen him before, somewhere.

  The swordswoman drew her dagger and apparently cut the cord binding the young merchant’s hands. “Drop your trousers, cloth-peddler.”

  Instead, he began dazedly to rub his wrists, staring down at Frostflower not as if he recognized her, but as if she were some deadly viper. As she would be to him. He was so young…the forty or fifty added years which would have brought Maldron to his grave would leave this merchant still with time to doze in the sun and dandle small children on his knee…

  “Your trousers, Spendwell.” The warrior slashed his braided-silk belt with her knife, pulling his garment down to his knees. Immediately Frostflower stared up again at the merchant’s face.

  “Reverence,” he was stammering, “please—not me!”

  The sorceress drew a deep breath. “You are wise, young commoner. Touch me, and I add fifty years to your body’s age.”

  “And I will give you another fifty goldens for every year,” said the farmer. “You will serve the gods and their priest: a work of piety for which you will be well rewarded both here and in the Glorious Harvest.”

  “And you will go to your ‘Glorious Harvest’ fifty years the sooner!” cried Frostflower.

  “Reverence—I—I can’t! I—I’m impotent!”

  “Impotent?” said Maldron. “Did we not find you lying among your own merchandise with a dairywoman who seemed well satisfied?”

  “Reverence—I—I—a sorceress—”

  “Look at her, man! Her body is but a woman’s. And such a woman’s!” Maldron stooped and ripped apart Frostflower’s upper garments, laying her bare from neck to ankle. It was done so quickly that she only realized her lost chance when his fingers were no longer on her breasts, when he had stepped back again.

  “You see, man? Has she added a year to my age? Or can your clabbery dairy wench compare with her? Work quickly, and she will not age you so much as thirty years. Your name is Spendwell? Thirty years spent well, puncturing such a maidenhead as that.”

  Frostflower released a sob and let her head fall back. She heard one of the warriors say, “We’ll stiffen him up, Reverence.” When next she opened her eyes, she saw two of the swordswomen crouching down rubbing and massaging the young merchant. Quickly she looked again at his face. Yes, she must wither it—for the safety of the rest of her kind, she must show one more example of how much power remained in a sorceron even weighted down, naked, and unable to move. But she must not think of it too much, or she would pity the youth—he, too, was being forced.… She concentrated on trying to remember where she had seen him. A pale young man rolling down the stairs, shouting up in anger at a boisterous swordswoman, then bolting from her in fear… Spendwell had been Thorn’s lover in
Three Bridges! For a moment the recognition brought a kind of irrational relief; in the next instant came an irrational horror almost of incest added to shame, defilement, and loss.

  But he must still be withered. She closed her eyes, trying to ignore his expression of fear, and of lust aroused despite his terror. Thirty or fifty years…old age was not an injury. No, not when it came in its own time—but when the body’s age came in a moment, without the mind’s experience that should have grown gradually with it throughout the seasons…it might kill him, might drive him mad.

  And she, was she not close to madness?

  “Keep it up, you horny peddler!” shouted one of the warriors. A warm, heavy body fell on top of the sorceress. She opened her eyes, glimpsed his face close to hers—a face twisted beyond recognition, almost as disgusting as the hardness between—she closed her eyes at once, turning her face. But she had glimpsed something else in that instant—the terror beneath the lust. “Sorceress!” he whispered, fumbling at her breasts and pleading with her in the same moment, “forgive—do not spellcast me—I did not want…”

  She knew then that she could not hurt him. He was hurting her—hastily, clumsily—the pain was such that for a few moments she almost forgot it was also robbing her of her powers forever. She choked back a scream, tried to concentrate on the sweaty hairs of his chest—they must have torn off his tunic, too—also the pressure of his fingers on her arms—anything but her lower body…

  It was over with a haste as painful as the earlier prodding. He was off her, away from her, leaving her alone and naked, with no sense of relief, only of pain and shame and blood…had she bitten through her tongue? No, Maldron had cut it. She lay sobbing and exhausted, her mouth filling with the taste of blood, her nose with the slime she could not clear from it. Dowl was whining. The sound was almost as painful as her…she listened to the voices of the warriors.

  “Not one demon-damned gray hair!”