Frostflower and Thorn

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “A few sorceri have escaped after blasting their attackers,” said Yarn, “but only right afterwards, only if there were no more than two or three folk trying to recapture them. I have never heard of any others who were saved from the gibbet.”

  “Damn it, getting off the bloody gibbet should be worth something to her!” Next they’ll be telling me I shouldn’t have cut her down, thought Thorn.

  The weaver-woman sighed. “Those who escape to their retreats after losing their power are always pitiable men and women. They seem to age very quickly, and die soon.”

  “How do you know so much about them?” asked Spendwell.

  “Frostflower is not the only sorceron we have befriended,” said Yarn. “One of my own childhood friends went to join them.”

  “At first I let my wife keep up the friendship because I thought it would be better to be at peace with powers like theirs,” said Brightweave. “Now I know the sorceri for kindly, peaceable folk. If our daughter were to fall sick again—gods forbid!—I’d trust her to a sorceron before I’d trust her to a farmer’s own physician.”

  “Yes, but why the Hellbog do they shrivel up and die? Gods, I wouldn’t mind having a little power like that myself, but the rest of us don’t mope ourselves to death because we don’t have it.”

  The craftsman heaved his elbows onto the table and leaned forward. “Warrior, suppose you were to lose your hands?”

  “If it means to much to them,” said Spendwell, “why do they come out into the Tanglelands? Why not stay in their retreats where they’re safe?”

  “Why do I fight in raids and risk getting myself cut to pieces, merchant?” said Thorn. Brightweave had made his point. “Why do you go traveling from town to bloody town and risk losing everything to robbers?”

  “There is more to it than that.” Yarn moved her hand around the table in front of her as if she were drawing circles in the shadows. “They have a third power—a sort of ability to send their minds—their spirits—I don’t quite understand it—to other places. But they must spend some time in real travel among other folk before they can learn to do this. Frostflower was traveling in order to learn the third power.”

  Why would anyone who could grow a mess of vegetables in a few moments and grab a bolt of lightning to cook them want to send her brain off somewhere sightseeing? “And she queered her chances in order to get that bloody grub out of me,” said Thorn. “Look, you’re sure they all just mope away and die?”

  “I’ve heard of one who didn’t,” said the weaver. “Sometimes, you see, a pair of them will decide to marry and give up their powers so that they can have children. This young sorcerer, it seems, had already been considering mating with a sorceress. After the warriors forced him, he escaped and went back to her.”

  “That’s it, then!”

  “No,” said Yarn. “He already had a woman inclined to sacrifice her powers and bear children with him. Frostflower has no one.”

  “Impossible!” Spendwell sounded genuinely surprised. “You mean all those sorcerers—can’t they see what’s under their noses?”

  “There aren’t so many sorcerers as that, merchant,” replied the weaver.

  “And Frostflower would not ask any of them to give up his powers for her sake,” said his wife.

  “Then I’ll bloody well find one for her myself!”

  “She would not thank you, warrior. I have talked of it with her, before…all this happened.” Yarn rubbed her palm on the table. “Several years ago she felt much drawn to a sorcerer who came to her retreat to study with old Moonscar.”

  “And he wasn’t drawn to her?” said Spendwell.

  “He was, but each was more strongly drawn to the study of their powers. He returned to his own place in the western mountains, and neither of them has regretted their decision.”

  Thorn was not often jealous, but it seemed Frostflower had done a damn lot more confiding in the weaver-woman than in her. “How the Hellbog do you know all about it?”

  “My childhood friend. Silverflake she became when she went to the sorceri. She is at Windslope, Frostflower’s retreat. I met Frostflower there.”

  All right, that was a little better. The swordswoman had not realized Yarn was quite that long-standing a friend. But it did not solve Frost’s problem. “Look, is there any chance that maybe our horny merchant here put a baby into her?”

  “No,” said Yarn. “Her flow of blood was only ending the day she left us to go on to Three Bridges—the day before she met you, warrior.”

  Thorn sighed. One time only, and in those conditions…well, it would have been about as long a chance as throwing a perfect score at Falling Doubles on the first try. All the same, give Frost another little bugger to play with her tits and dirty its breechcloths for her to change, and maybe…

  “Thorn!” said Spendwell. “Maybe I could…try again?”

  “Smardon’s fleshhook! Try it and I’ll twist your balls off for you, merchant.”

  His head seemed to droop a little. “Just a thought,” he muttered. “If having a baby will bring her out of it…”

  “Not your baby, you turd.” Thorn turned her head in Yarn’s direction. “How do you know this idiot sorcerer hasn’t regretted it? What’s his name and where’s his retreat?”

  “He has developed the third power, swordswoman. He visits with old Moonscar and other sorceri in Windslope who also have it.”

  “Unh. Well, maybe Frost wouldn’t be able to stand even him touching her now anyway, any more than she could stand our slimy bastard of a—”

  “Thorn! I was forced into it, too!” His voice was quivering. “After all I’ve done tonight, I think I deserve—”

  “All right, forget it.” Maybe she was riding him a little too hard. “I’ll give you a good milking myself once this is over. The milking of your life.” Meanwhile, the warrior could see only one thing left to do. Maybe it would not be that much more dangerous, after all, than cutting over to the mountains and trying to haul some stupid sorcerer out of his bloody retreat.

  Besides, the brat was her own grub and the motherpricking farmer had no right taking it. Thorn stood up. “Get me that brown dye of yours, Spendwell. I’m going into Maldron’s Farm and bringing that damn baby back for her.”

  * * * *

  Brown hair did a surprising lot to make her look different. A red patch over her left eye helped, too. It also laid her open to attack on that side; but if warriors like Bloodrust and Dartglance used to get along with one good eye and a red patch over the other, then by the Warriors’ God, Thorn could do it, too, for a while.

  Her skin was already dark. Try to stain it any darker with dye or nut juice, and she would only draw attention. But she could go in with a dirty face. After playing around for a while, she made a fake scar across her left eyebrow and cheek, using some weavers’ glue that puckered up her skin. The scar was uncomfortable and would probably sting like Azkor’s claws to take off; but it stuck, it looked good as long as nobody got close enough to kiss, it would explain the eye patch, and it helped distort her appearance a little more. Spendwell, grumbling that the rescue had already cost him more than three silvers and he was not likely ever to collect the money from Thorn, provided some dark crimson- and purple-striped wool from the southlands; and Yarn and Small Spider set to work sewing it into tunic and trousers for the swordswoman.

  Her biggest worry was the gems in her weapons. Trying to get another set of blades in a hurry would stir up curiosity; besides, strange weapons never felt quite right. It always took a while for the hand and the weapon to get acquainted. This was going to be tricky business, and she would rather have dependable old Slicer and Stabber hanging at her belt. All the same, if Maldron or Inmara had gotten a good look at either of the jewels, or if that damn Clopmule, who already knew Slicer’s sheen-amber and Stabber’s garnet, was up and limping around again, they might screw the whole damn business.

  At last, adopting an idea of Small Spider’s, Thorn dipped both pommels in hot
wax and then pressed caps of blue cloth over the wax before it hardened. She had seen weirder pommel decorations: snakeskins, squirrels’ tails, even lizards’ heads and eagles’ claws. Sober little blue wool caps should not draw a second glance.

  She could not use Spendwell. Too bad, in a way—but Maldron would have been curious about what brought Spendwell back so soon to his Farm. Almost silly with relief, the cloth merchant headed south, after making a big show of loading eleven lengths of the weavers’ cloth into his wagon to let the town see what he had been doing in Brightweave’s house.

  “Stop in again on your way back north, you damn screwpicker, and find out what’s happened to me,” Thorn told him just before he left the house for the last time that day.

  “Don’t worry, swordswoman. You owe me three and a half silvers and a good tumble.” Then he added, tugging her sleeve, “You owe me the milking of my life. Make it back, you dirty-mouthed warrior.”

  Small Spider put her face to the window and watched the merchant drive away. Thorn went to sleep on the weaver’s bed. If she was going to be any help to anyone, she needed some rest now while she had the chance.

  She woke in the middle of the night, put on the crimson and purple clothes the weavers had finished for her, and ate a good dinner. When she thought about it, they had done a Hell of a lot in less than a day—finished her disguise, got Spendwell out of town, kept their looms going for the benefit of the neighbors, and still managed to have someone down beside Frostflower the whole time.

  The sorceress seemed to be asleep again. She was too pale and quiet for Thorn’s liking. The swordswoman would have been happier to see her awake and talking, cursing, sobbing, thrashing—anything to show she was still reluctant to give up. Well, Frost had always been a quiet one anyway. Too damn dignified. How could a person ever be sure whether she was eager about anything…except a stupid grub?

  The weaver-woman assured Thorn that Frostflower’s heartbeat was steadier and her breathing deeper now than earlier this afternoon. Warriors’ God! thought the swordswoman. Frost, if you’re going to decide to pull through without that bloody brat, I sure as Hellbog wish you could tell me so!

  But there was no way of asking the sorceress without waking her up and letting her know what Thorn was about to do.

  The warrior sneaked out of town in the dark, lay down in the middle of some bushes to roll and doze awhile and help take the look of newness off her clothes, and then swaggered into Three Bridges shortly after dawn. Three Bridges was a little farther from Maldron’s Farm, but she was more likely to find a suitable merchant here than in Frog-in-the-Millstone. Frog-in-the-Millstone was just another unwalled village, while Three Bridges had some ideas of rivaling Five Roads Crossing as the trade center of the northeast Tanglelands, and there was talk of enlarging the town walls.

  Avoiding the Golden Rye Inn, Thorn used one of the coppers Brightweave had loaned her to buy a decent breakfast at the Upturned Cup. She took her time with her beef, bread, and garlic-water, listening to a couple of stonecutters at a nearby table.

  “Azkor himself, all slimy and dripping from Hellbog.”

  “And never touched the guards, eh?”

  “Made the Quit-Sign, they did, and kept down out of his way.”

  “Unh. Well, Maldron’s warriors can thank the gods Azkor didn’t touch them as he went past.”

  “Came close enough. One of ‘em almost got his claw across her belly, and the wind it made ripped open her tunic and left a raw welt on the skin. But it wasn’t them the demon was after—it was the sorceress he came for.”

  Thorn half-turned her head. “What’s that you’re talking about, friend?”

  “The bloody sorceress Maldron hung up near the marshlands day before yesterday, warrior. Azkor came and took her that same night. Stretched up tall as the gibbet itself, he did, glowing in his own bog-light, and closed his big flabby chest around the bitch—just folded it around her like he was a big, empty, green bladder. And in the morning there was nothing left of her body except a little, shriveled-up thing with the skin gone dry as dead leaves, and when they touched it, it split open and a mess of rotten blood and bones spilled out, smelling like Hellbog itself.”

  Thorn repressed a chuckle and made the Quit-Sign with the stonecutters, all three touching left fist to forehead at almost the same time. “Well, I hope the farmer paid his women extra for guarding a hung sorceress all night,” said the warrior, turning back to her food.

  “It was a judgment on his Reverence for not stoning her,” said the second stonecutter. “I tell you, scorching a sorceron’s belly isn’t enough. They have to be filled up with stones, or the gods are angered.”

  “Shut up, Hardedge,” said his friend. “The priests know more about it than you do.”

  The stonecutters finished their meal and left. Thorn bought another cup of hot garlic-water, as a little added precaution against anyone getting close enough to see her scar was fake.

  So the berries had made Clist and Cutbone see Azkor, hey? A few spotted berries and a dummy hung up in place of a sorceress, and you had a new tale. What was Maldron thinking about it? That depended on whether his warriors had taken the dummy back to him or buried it right away—and on whether Clist and Cutbone actually believed Spendwell’s dummy was Frostfower’s body after the touch of a demon, or whether they had dumped the thing in the nearest bog and embroidered their story to cover up their own sloppy job of guarding.

  Finishing her breakfast, the warrior left the inn and began scouting the streets. Time was important. If she could not find a suitable merchant before afternoon, she would have to trust her disguise even further and go in like a strange swordswoman trying to hire her services to the farmer.

  The gods smiled, and Thorn found an old wine peddler named Purplefumes who planned to head north to Elvannon’s Farm, then circle around west and south to Five Roads Crossing, and back to Nedgebottom. Purplefumes had left his regular swordswoman in the flesh-mending house in Nedgebottom, with four broken ribs from a tavern brawl; and driving alone along the Roads-West Wheelpath to Straight Road North and up to Three Bridges had put him in a ready mood to hire the first fighting woman who said she was willing to ride along for two or three hen’s-hatchings until he could get his old warrior back.

  They rode out of Three Bridges by midmorning, and stopped at Frog-in-the-Millstone to sell wine to the town’s only tavern and eat an early dinner. “The gods smiling,” said Purplefumes, wiping his flabby mouth with a patched kerchief that had once been expensive, “we’ll have a good munching from Maldron. Always feeds us well whenever I come up with my almond-kissed and sweetmusk, he does. A glass or two of my sweetmusk wouldn’t hurt you now, Fleshfly.”

  That was a bad name, but Thorn had been in a self-punishing mood when she chose it. “You hired me to guard your bloody wines, not get drunk on them.”

  “Not so much worry in the daytime, not so close to Maldron’s Farm. My Cicatrice never screws up her lips at a glass or two of good wine.”

  “And your Cicatrice is lying in the Nedgebottom flesh-mending house with four cracked ribs from a tavern brawl.”

  The merchant shook his grizzled head. “For drinking Glant straw-yellow. I told her to stay away from the Roaring Gleeds. Bad inn. Keeper never could choose his wines. Thin Glant straw-yellow.”

  Thorn let him babble on through the meal about his wines, which kinds were drinkable and which kinds he would have been ashamed to stock. Wine was wine to her and all of it dangerous; but it was a good way to keep Purplefumes’ mind dithering instead of thinking.

  Maldron was a regular customer of the old man’s. That would get them in with no trouble. But these farmers who made a habit of feeding their favorite merchants almost always extended the courtesy of a table in the porch or outer garden to the merchants’ hired guards, and Thorn had no desire to sit around eating where Maldron or Inmara or maybe that cow Clopmule could scrutinize her. “I never eat a munching,” she said at last.

  Purplefum
es blinked. “You’d better eat one today, Fleshfly. There’s only one tavern in Gammer’s Oak and the food there is not good, not good at all. Wine’s excellent—he buys from me—but the food is not good.”

  “I’ve eaten plenty of bad food, but never between dinner and supper. I’ll sleep in the wagon.”

  “You’ll regret it.” The wine merchant slapped the table in perplexity, then cheered up. “Lady Inmara will pack you a basket. Lovely priestess, her Ladyship. Nothing she likes better than a little glass of almond-kissed. His Reverence always buys her three casks of it. Lady Enneald wouldn’t do it for you, not her. Snatty one she is—saving her priestesshood. Good tongue, though. Maldron buys her four casks of Southvines white and a bottle of slow amber every time I come north.”

  When they came in sight of Maldron’s wall, Thorn yawned and climbed back into the wagon, supposedly to begin her nap. No merchant was ever attacked by daylight within sight of a farmer’s walls; and Purplefumes was used to the idea that warriors were like cats in their sleeping habits, dozing off and waking up with equal ease at any time, so he did not question her.

  Maldron’s gate guards hailed Purplefumes by name, but did not question him as to where Cicatrice was. Apparently his usual swordswoman, also, had a habit of riding inside the wagon with the wine. All the better, especially since the old man neglected to mention to them that Cicatrice was wounded and he had a new warrior for the time being. If he kept on forgetting to mention that, Thorn’s cover was better than she deserved.

  Purplefumes tried to question Maldron’s women about the sorceress’ disappearance from the gibbet, but they were close-mouthed.

  “Body completely disappeared,” said one.

  “His Reverence peeled the guards yesterday morning,” said the other.

  “Eh? Sorry I missed that.”

  “You wouldn’t have seen it anyway, old Purplefumes. He did it in his own garden. Only the family and the raidleaders to watch it.”

  “Wasn’t all that bloody much to see, anyway,” added the second guard. “longest strip was hardly the length of a beanpod.”