Frostflower and Thorn

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Gods! Did he still hope, even now?…“Maldron, she will never be able to bear your penetration. If you force her, you will—”

  He threw the book to the ground and took his wife’s shoulders. “Have I been such a crude lover, Inmara?”

  Raes and Aeronu! If she could only accept his strength—willingly, responsively, as always before—and afterwards hold his head and give him comfort and the reassurances he needed that, when he went forth again, he would act in accordance with the will of the gods…but what she had left unsaid stiffened her arms and fingers…and there were the sorceress and the infant—Inmara must keep her wits and her will, must somehow prevent him from hunting them down again.

  “I will not force myself upon her,” he was saying. “But with time, with gentleness…and what of Thorn? Are we to leave that blaspheming wretch unpunished?”

  “Seize her later, husband!” Yes—let Thorn get Frostflower and little Terndasen to the mountains. The sorceress would keep the babe in her own retreat, and as for the warrior…“We will set spies to watch for her return, seize her when she comes back alone.”

  “And if she stays in the mountains? She has laid hands on you, Inmara. She has bruised you, stolen your child—are we to permit her escape? And the merchant? Are we to leave his treachery unpunished?”

  “Thorn must be forcing him.” The priestess moved closer to her husband, trying to embrace him. Over his shoulder, she saw the book where it lay on the ground, unrolling by jerks.

  Maldron had called the babe “your child.” A few moments before, he had called it “ours.” He did not know—Inmara had never told him—the truth about its birth, but he no longer intended to seek its parents. Believing it a natural, stolen child, he meant to keep it for himself and her…and perhaps for the sorceress also, as an offering to make her quiet and contented in her life as their caged, secret pet. “We cannot keep him,” she whispered. “Maldron, we cannot keep him. He is not ours, and the sorceress will never tell more than she has told already.”

  “Better that we should keep him than allow him to grow up among the sorceri. Inmara, it is an act of piety to keep him from their retreats!”

  Aye, and to hold him again…an image passed through her mind, of herself and Frostflower sitting together on this same bench, watching Terndasen take his first steps along the path through the spring herbs. Would that be so distasteful to the gods? Inmara had taken it upon herself to allow a sorcered child to live and grow up in the sorceress’ care—could it be so much worse to share in raising him?

  Ah, gods, they would make a priest of a sorcered child! A man of unnatural birth to lead the ceremonies and handle the holy things! Yet the blame would be hers alone, not Maldron’s—while if Maldron knew the manner of Terndasen’s birth, he must kill the child.

  Or perhaps he would let them go, allow them to reach the mountains. Yes—perhaps, for the sake of those few days the babe had been almost theirs, he would allow it to grow up, even though it became a sorcerer. But if he hunted them and caught them now, he would be guilty of keeping a child whom he thought to belong to other folk. Which of them was worth more to her: the husband she had loved and lived with so long, or the sorcered babe she had known only a few days? And then, if Maldron brought them back, the lie would remain between them always, hovering in her mind and body for the rest of their lives, threatening to force its way from her lips, or to surface in some chance remark of Frostflower’s. She saw Maldron learning the truth twenty years from now; she saw Terndasen as a tall young priest lying dead on the altar, bleeding from the silver knife that Justice had required her husband to drive, overlate, into their adopted son’s throat—

  “Maldron,” she whispered quickly, before the image could fade, “Frostflower told us the truth. He is Thorn’s own son, and he was sorcered out of her womb.”

  Maldron slowly released her, turned, and leaned forward, sitting with his face in his hands.

  If she had only had time to think, to determine whether he were the more likely to allow Terndasen to live among the sorceri, or to chase them all down and obliterate Frostflower’s sin…gods! that a woman could live fifteen years with a man and foretell so imperfectly what he would do! “Maldron,” she said timidly, “it was really nothing more than speeding the child’s growth. It could not have been so unnatural.”

  “What do we know of their sorcerous rites?”

  She sat rebuked, waiting. The book had unrolled to the circumference of a small cup, and was blowing back and forth slightly on the ground. The sticklike insect, or another like it, had returned to finish its hole between the parsley and thyme.

  At last Maldron lifted his head from his hands and sat upright again. “You do not think the warrior lied to you?”

  “I think she told the truth.” Inmara left the rest of her confession unspoken. Her husband would understand now, without her telling him, that she herself had given Thorn the child.

  “Yes. I suspected it.” He stood. “Even so, the sorceress has been punished enough.”

  “And the child? Maldron, the child?”

  “If he is a monster in the sight of the gods,” said the priest, “let the gods kill him before I bring him back to you.”

  He helped her to her feet and kissed her several times, in several places. “I must leave you. We will trap them between Gammer’s Oak and Duneron’s Farm. Wait for me—I’ll have the child in your arms again before morning.” He kissed her one last time. “Enneald may wait also, if she chooses.”

  When Maldron had left the garden, Inmara fled to the altar in the east wall, her own private alcove behind the peach trees. The wind was chill here in the shade, and she had left her short cape on the bench in the sun; she stood for a few moments shivering before her marble statues: her own old Ontaraec and Eltassru from childhood years, the Raes which had been her mother’s—all flanking Maldron’s own gift to her, the Tree with seven spheres in its branches, which was the nearest any human, even a priest, dared represent Great Jehandru, God of Justice.

  Maldron had given her the Jehandru which had been made for his grandmother Arrana, that priestess who was strong as any priest. Now Maldron was turning from the gods—refusing to act first as their instrument, defying them to do their own work if Maldron’s human will did not happen to coincide with the Justice of Jehandru.

  Inmara knelt, bending almost double, her right hand reaching up to hold the roots of Jehandru’s image in a grasp of supplication.

  CHAPTER 12

  The merchant had made a rattle of acorns, knotting them together in a bracelet that clicked when Frostflower shook it above the infant’s head. Starwind blinked and finally tried once to grab the acorns. Despite the rapid growth that had given him no time for normal experience in the womb, his mind seemed to be developing well.

  When had Spendwell found the chance to gather acorns and knot them together? Perhaps yesterday, at the weavers’ house; perhaps several days ago, while he waited for Thorn to meet him again. Frostflower had not quite been able to look at him long enough to ask; but she had been able to thank him, and even to accept the acorn rattle from his hand without jerking when their fingers touched. For that she was a little proud of herself.

  It was irrational that she needed so much conscious effort to overcome her revulsion for Spendwell, who was comparatively innocent, when the hatred she should have felt toward the priest who had forced them both had dissipated somehow of itself even while he was further torturing and tempting her.

  That last day, when Maldron had unbound her hands on the scaffold, lifted off her one, loose garment, and murmured, “It is still not too late”—even then she had felt no more anger, only shame, terror, and an unbearable grief.

  “You could not explain to them,” she had whispered, conscious of the wooden frame behind her, the swords and braziers in front of her, and the crowd of farmers’ folk beyond and below.

  “The rabble! I have all the reason a priest need give them ready on my tongue.”

&nbs
p; “If I could tell you his parents, do you think I would not have told you before now?” Her head bowed, her eyes closed, she had felt her hands twitch, as if wanting to hold him there a few moments longer between her nakedness and the eyes of the mob, as if he were her only protector instead of her chief executioner. One who had no friends within reach clung to the nearest enemy who spoke with a gentle voice.

  Then, afterwards…long afterwards as it had seemed, when he stood in front of her again, at the gibbet, his hands had felt gentle, feeling through the cloth of her sleeves to be sure the padding had not been displaced when his warriors adjusted the rope beneath her armpits. “You cannot now live as a free priestess,” he had whispered, “but you can live quietly and peacefully in a private corner of my hall.”

  Being clothed again, she could look up at him; but she could not speak. Vaguely she had realized that some passer-by, who could have looked at both of them and then traveled on to home and supper, might have seen as much to pity in Maldron’s face as in her own—perhaps more, since he was a farmer and she a sorceron, hated by all farmers’ folk. She had not pitied Maldron—she had pitied only herself; but she had not hated him, either. He had wiped the tears and perspiration of pain from her face, and held the cloth to her nose before stepping away so that his warriors could pull her off the ground and secure the rope. She had felt no gratitude to him—her face was wet again too quickly, and her nose choked and dripping; but his hand had been gentle, and she had remembered Inmara saying that he was a tender bedfellow…if such a thing could be.

  She could not remember feeling, even when she dangled on the gibbet, the eagerness for death that pain like hers was supposed to bring, nor the hope for afterdeath that, believing in the One God, she should have felt. She wondered if that was because Maldron had left her body that faint, unreasoning hope. The horror she had felt on learning she was to be neither stoned nor disemboweled, but hung whole, must have become an inability to desire death. She thought she had hung quietly, her struggle closed into her mind except when one of the guards struck her against the orders she had heard the priest give them. She had felt anger neither at them for striking her nor at him for leaving her alone with them. She had felt only fear—the fear one sometimes feels before falling asleep, magnified into terror by the certain knowledge that this time she would indeed fall asleep forever—and that vast, empty grief. In effect, she had died there on the gibbet, for she had reached no vision of hope.… She had finally, with a great effort, begun a trance exercise, but she did not know whether she had completed it or broken it off in fear, slipping at last into a natural unconsciousness preceding death. Her last recollections before awakening in the wagon with Thorn above her were of panic, pain, and increasing confusion.

  During that period of imprisonment and death, the more self-centered emotions had squeezed out of her all hatred for Maldron and his people; and she was so thoroughly drained that it would not come back, even now. But she had not seen Spendwell since before entering the farmer’s great hall, when there had still been room in her for the emotions of life and hope (although she had not believed it at the time). She had forgotten the merchant; and so her dislike for him must have lain dormant in some corner that escaped the purging, to come back now with life. Or with partial life. Spendwell was a constant reminder of what she had lost. Maldron’s tool though he had been, it was Spendwell’s flesh that had taken her power. His youth was a reminder, too, of her weakness. For the sake of other sorceri after her, she should have withered the merchant…and because she could not regret her mercy, Spendwell had even become a reflection of her own guilt.

  Well, all memories eventually grew dim. After a while, these thoughts of scaffold, sprunging-stick, and priests’ altar would no longer flash unbidden into her waking mind; a while after that, and she would die.

  The wagon jolted again. Thorn cursed and sat up, rubbing her head. “Straight Road North, hah! Some damn fool’s been digging rabbit traps all over the bloody pavement.”

  “It is smoother walking,” said Frostflower.

  “It’d be smoother riding, too, if the blasted merchant would use round wheels instead of rectangular ones. Gods, I wish we could see what’s going on outside. Feels like—Get your damn dog off me.”

  Odd, how the variations of infancy remained in the adult voice. Even having Starwind so short a time, and needing, for so much of that time, to quiet his sounds, Frostflower had begun to learn the difference between wails of anger or demand, cries that were simply testing the lungs for the joy of making noise, and fussy cries like muttered complaints. Thorn’s complaints now were the equivalent of Starwind’s fussy crying.

  “Dowl has been very careful to lie here beside me all the while you slept,” said Frostflower, speaking to the warrior much as she spoke to the baby when he merely fussed.

  “Unh? Just lonely, is he? I should’ve gone on pretending to be asleep. What’s your trouble, mutt? Brat pushing you out of her lap, hey? Well, all right, come on.”

  The swordswoman settled back against one of the tent posts, holding Dowl clumsily on her lap, rubbing his ears, and slapping his face away when he tried to lick hers. Frostflower chuckled. Thorn looked up with an inquiring grin, and Dowl managed to flick his tongue across her lips.

  “I was thinking,” said Frostflower, “that you would not have been able to sit with him so quietly when he was a pup.”

  “Quietly? Lick your own self, mutt. Get a mouthful of your own hair.” Thorn tried to push his nose down towards his leg, but he wiggled out from under her hand. “Oh, come here!” Space was cramped, and the warrior obviously had never played with a dog before; but Dowl seemed overjoyed to have won her at last.

  I have thought only of myself for too long, mused the sorceress. I have accepted their efforts for me without considering that none of them have ever stopped caring about their own survival. Thorn has run the greatest risks, and I have never noticed it in her face until now, when it is eased a little.

  Her own left eye hidden by the patch, Frostflower turned her head to see them better. Thorn and Dowl had begun a small tug-of-war with a knotted rag. The wagon jolted again, and Thorn let go. Dowl sat down suddenly, the rag all his and stuck in his teeth. Looking puzzled, he snapped his jaws a few times, then ducked his head to offer the cloth back to Thorn. It was good to see the warrior relaxing. Hoping to encourage the game, Frostflower chuckled again.

  “That’s what I like to hear,” said Thorn. “Score two. Warriors’ God, I wish I could be so lucky at dice.”

  * * * *

  From time to time during the day Spendwell’s whistling of a tune farmers’ folk called “Turnip Cake” warned the group inside of another traveler on the road. Then Thorn would stretch out under her blanket and Frostflower would call the dog to sit beside her and the baby until another tune told them their wagon was once more alone. All these other travelers either went on south or overtook and outdistanced them heading north without stopping to look inside Spendwell’s wagon; but Thorn’s restiveness often burst out after the danger was past. “Gods, I wish I could see what goes on out there! Watch them going by, not just lie here listening like a rotten fish with its fins bitten off! I feel like a roach in a damn trap.” Once, near midday, she asked, “Suppose we took to the woods, Frost? You think you could at least try to grow us some food again?”

  To attempt that would be to doubt the very source of her people’s power. If Thorn understood, thought Frostflower, she would stop tormenting me with such questions; perhaps I could make her understand how serious it would be by telling her it would displease our God almost as much as she believes threatening a priestess displeases her gods. But the comparison would be hard to explain, since the One God had made no Hellbog. Moreover, this was no time to remind Thorn of her own sin and fear of torment. Frostflower only smiled and shook her head slightly.

  They stopped for a while at midday. Thorn had wanted to eat cold dinners; but Spendwell insisted it would save no time in the long run, sin
ce if the donkeys did not have their midday rest they would walk more slowly in the afternoon. As long as the donkeys had to rest, Spendwell made a fire outside and cooked. However, he cooked only a stew of vegetables.

  They ate together inside the wagon. “You could have roasted a few slices of beef, too,” said Thorn, “as long as you had to build the damn fire.”

  Spendwell shoved one of the food baskets over to her. “You can eat your cooked meat cold as well as hot, warrior.”

  Thorn took out a brownish piece of cooked flesh still on its bone. In Elderbarren, three days south of Windslope, a townboy had stood at a safe distance from the sorceress and waved such a piece at her mockingly, saying it was the leg of a chicken. Hard to recognize it as such; but cold cooked meat did not stink so overpoweringly as hot, and the sorceress found she was once again able to see a friend eating flesh without losing all her own hunger.

  “You must not avoid cooking your usual food for my sake,” said Frostflower. “I can eat most vegetables raw as well as cooked. If others see you cooking no meat, they may ask questions.”

  “I’ll tell them I cook to suit myself.” Unlike the warrior, Spendwell did not reach into the basket of cold flesh. Frostflower smiled at him, wishing she could look into his eyes and smile more sincerely.

  * * * *

  While the sun was high, the tent cloth was a bright, almost luminous green inside; and the air grew uncomfortably warm. Thorn dozed, Starwind fussed, and Dowl panted for much of the afternoon. Now and again Spendwell’s whistle warned them to even greater stillness, and they heard some foot-traveler or wagoner pass them on one side or the other. The tent cloth had faded to somber green and the interior was dusky when Spendwell stopped again and climbed back into the wagon.

  “It’s too early to stop,” said Thorn.

  “Clouding up in the northwest,” said Spendwell. “I think we’ll be in a storm before morning.”