At the hill’s rocky crest, he lost the trail. On a guess more than by any sign, he vaulted a gap between two stone hummocks and bounded down the far side. There, on the right, came the scrabble of cloven hooves over rock. He angled toward the sound, letting the downhill course speed him along. Then he had to slow and negotiate an expanse of jagged, broken scree.
At the bottom there was no clue. A broad, sunny glade spread before him, grass-tufted but without discernible track. The prey might have entered the trees at any point along the farther side; to search for traces would cost time, enabling his quarry to rest or lose itself. He scanned the bright, blinding forest edge in vain.
Then came sharp trillings. A pair of birds fluttered from the trees, scared up by his quarry, no doubt. Breaking into a run, he headed straight for the source.
When next the buck paused to rest, sweat dripped from Conan’s damp, tossing mane, streaming down his heaving chest and his long, unobstructed flanks. He was winded, his heart hurling itself at his ribs like a frantic prisoner trying to escape from a barred cage. But his quarry had weakened too. As it sprang yet again to flight, it caromed sideways against a sapling, and its leaps through the foliage were more deliberate and less tight-sprung than before.
To be sure, Conan had doubts about the eventual confrontation. The buck’s antlers were keen weapons. Its neck muscles were massive, not to mention its granite-honed hooves and goat-like teeth. He almost wished that his quarry were a less worthy one, or that he had somehow fashioned a spear with which to harry and cripple it before closing in for the kill. Yet he had downed such creatures in the past with little more than sword and hatchet; surely he could do the same now with a club, a hand-ax, and a far keener hunger.
The animal mounted a stone ridge just ahead; its hind legs faltered and scrabbled pathetically at the top of its lunge. Conan could smell its desperation now, the rank, musky scent of its fear. He almost flung his club at the creature’s slender shanks as he clambered up close behind, but was himself delayed by the steepness of the rock. He felt exultation overcoming fatigue as he hurled himself after the buck where it passed out of sight over the rise.
From just ahead came a crunching sound accompanied by a quick, bleating gasp. Something large passed, signalled by a stirring of foliage and a flurrying of scattered leaves. Conan thought he also sensed a faint tremor of the earth under his bare soles, as of some great weight shifting.
When he pelted into the open space at the crest, it was empty. There was no quarry, no sign of it at all—except, across the faint trail underfoot, a spattering of blood. Red and rich, it glistened from the grass blades and dark loam in sufficient quantity to tell him that he need not chase his prey any farther.
But where had it gone? Wary, scanning the broken slopes around him, he saw no more blood on the nearby rocks, and no scuffs or drag marks across the turf. Could the buck have been carried off by some huge bird, he wondered? If a predator, how far had it stalked the prey—and, presumably, him?
Or was this the work of man? Some tree-sprung snare perhaps, that whisked its victim far out of sight? No. Sorcery? Mayhap.
No prey, no marks, not even a scent... except for the faint, coppery tincture of blood. And, of course, the smell of his own runneling sweat, mingled now with a faint odour, rank and distinctive, that he soon recognized: the smell of fear—his own, wholly in keeping with the sudden change of his status from hunter to hunted.
Fear. It would not do to let any stalking creature smell that scent on him, and mark it, and remember- it. He scanned the tree line carefully, wondering if something lurking in the forest might have paused to watch. Then he turned and jogged resolutely back toward the stream, to bathe himself.
V
Divinations
It was in the fourth year of her stay in Sodgrum hamlet, at the farmstead of Amulf the Good, that the child Tamsin regained her speech. Most fittingly, it occurred on her Naming Day, a high holy observance of the Sargossan church. Likely it would have been considered a sacred boon of Amalias, chief god of the Brythunians, if things had worked out differently.
In the years following her parents’ death, Tamsin had grown taller and straighter, but not yet ripe in a womanly way. She was exempted from day-long labours in bam, kitchen, and farm field that the other village children inured themselves to; doubtless this exemption was because of the kindliness of her foster father. Further, she was hardly of a temperament to ride, hunt, or play childish games during her long, idle days.
Thus she was spared the callused, sunburnt skin of most rural maidens, as well as their shambling, clog-footed gait. In her twelfth year, the child Tamsin remained a slim, ascetic-seeming maid whose flaxen hair had darkened to the deep-auburn hue of clotted blood. She dressed most often in long, flower-painted robes and flimsy slippers handed down from her stepmother. The latter parent remained during all those years a nervous invalid who seldom touched her foot to the floor.
“That wife of Amulf’s is not truly ill, but drunk on lotus potions,” some of the villagers would whisper. “Aye, and the fool is too deathly afraid of that little slut Tamsin to give her chores,” others agreed. Yet even so, it was seen that those who spoke against Amulf’s household tended to be stricken by neck boils and stomach cramps, and so the whispering was stilled.
Inherited garments, and coarse ribbons for binding up her long hair, remained Tamsin’s only affectations. All other adornments that came her way were lavished on the doll she carried unfailingly at her side. Oft-times the quaint effigy would make its appearance draped in garlands of herb and thistle, strings of beads carved from stone, wood, and bone, and more costly ornaments borrowed from the dowry chest of her ailing stepmother. Though others in the village at first ridiculed the doll, experience taught them to regard it with acceptance and subtle fear.
Lucky it was for young Tamsin, residing in such a remote, uncultured district, that she was not of a stolid or idle disposition. In spite of her lack of speech, she took a lively interest in the world around her—in the growth and uses of plants, the lore of animals both domestic and wild, the origins and mystic significance of stars, seasons, and elements, and the devious will of the gods as expressed in the daily affairs of mortals.
The child’s dearth of words was more than made up by her increased powers of observation. Scarcely an hour passed when she could not be found standing at a window or a doorway, before the fire, or in the cool shadow of some forest oak, her blank-faced doll clutched at her side. Mutely she would observe the unfolding patterns of natural life or the coarser rhythms of human play and work, and solemnly eavesdrop on the conversations of her elders. In time, the village folk accepted the slim orphan’s watchful habits; they even welcomed her presence, largely for the sobering, intimidating effect it had on their unruly children.
Tamsin’s principal ally in her quest for knowledge was old Urm, the local physician and spell-caster who attended the community’s needs. From her first days in the hamlet, the child was drawn to him, watching as he ministered to Amulf’s wife and paying frequent visits to his thatched hut at the bottom of the town path. Faintly, for hours on end, he could be heard muttering to her his magic lore, cantrips, and mnemonic rhymes, until it seemed that she must have absorbed every bit of his supernatural knowledge. The two of them—or rather the three, if one counted the child’s doll—often seemed inseparable, brewing up strange-hued fires in old Urm’s oven, catching odd fish and insects from streams and swamp-holes, and ranging the countryside to gather potent earths, herbs, and bones for his spells.
Whether Tamsin made utterances for Urm’s ears only, and so preserved the habit of speech, or whether they employed some more mystical means of communication, none could say. But it was clear that the girl learned much from the old witch-man, and that he was more a friend to her than any of her adopted family or age-mates.
Thus it was seen as one more stroke of tragedy in the child’s life, another baffling whim of the gods, when Urm’s hut caught fire and the
old physician perished in the blaze. Tamsin may have been with him when it started, or she may, through some premonition of doom, have come running to the scene. The nearest neighbour saw the cottage explode in flame; on approaching, he found the girl standing helpless in the blaze of firelight. Dry-eyed from the scorching heat, she stood watching expressionlessly, shielding the face of her beloved doll against her shoulder.
“It was the wicked lass that done it, don’t ye know?” one village crone was heard to gloat. “She sucked out all his wisdom like a leech, then roasted him in his own thatch, the old fool!” But that same winter the old woman was done to death by a pox and a quaking ague, and so once again gossip was stilled.
After the fire, little remained of the witch-man’s science and arcana. Touchingly—since the rest of the villagers hesitated to enter the blackened ring of his once-feared abode—it was Tamsin, with her doll tucked into the blouse of her robe, who was honoured to gather up Urm’s charred bones. These she laid most respectfully in a fragrant cedar chest to preserve his memory. The shrine was on display long afterward in the small magical dispensary that she established in the shed of Amulf’s cottage. One other relic of her predecessor—the tarnished and blackened copper reliquary locket Urm had worn around his neck—was henceforth seen dangling from the doll she always carried with her, another perpetual tribute to her mentor.
As it happened, the thaumaturgic skills conferred to her by the old man were sufficient for her to take up his duties in ministering to the town. When a farm wife needed a lung cure, Tamsin could mix up the stinging plaster, ably wielding the pestle in the blackened stone mortar salvaged from Urm’s ruined house. She would even apply the medicine to the sufferer’s back, working deftly one-handed, with the jingle and hiss of her gourd-doll substituting for the soothing incantations the old warlock would have intoned. Or, if a cottager required a weasel remedy for his poultry roost, she possessed all the necessary herbs and powders; she would hand over the poison bait with grave, silent assurance of its potency.
Her methods differed from Urm’s in one respect: in all such cases, to the villagers’ mumbled surprise, she would give the cure time to work before making a visit to collect payment. More particularly, in regard to her stepmother’s continuing malaise, her services were rendered without charge. Using only ingredients gathered from the local swamps, without the costly powders purchased from travelling vendors that her predecessor claimed to rely on, she simmered and fermented a new healing elixir. To everyone’s surprise, it quieted the poor woman’s plaints and maintained the peace of the household, at a saving that Amulf the Good found gratifying indeed.
Throughout the countless hamlets of the Brythunian hinterlands, the relation between such small rural practitioners and the Temple of Amalias and his pantheon of gods was an uncertain one. The great church laid claim, of course, to all the healing and divining powers that touched common mortals in daily life; whatever their talents, Amalias demanded his servants’ entire worship and fealty. But since the priests’ most vital and profitable concerns unfolded on the largest scale—that of wars and droughts, plagues and aristocratic marriages, and interpretation of the visions and deliriums of King Typhas when steeped in his cups—their priestly interests centred on the capital and the main district temples. The priests of Amalias were hardly so many and so humble as to have daily contact with low, common serfs and tenants of the remotest, backward districts.
Therefore the efforts of local shamans and healers were tolerated as being adequate for the ignorant denizens of forest and rural mud-bog, who were ever reluctant to let go of their old gods and superstitions. Some of these spell-casters made crude obeisance to the high church, using Amalias’s name in their chantings, or wearing rough imitations of the holy charms and symbols that adorned the Imperial priests and officers. Other practitioners did not yield even so far; in consequence, they might—when the need arose for a handy scapegoat or for some distraction from regional political problems—find themselves hanged or pilloried as witches by officers of the central church for their failure to conform.
What contact there was between the high church and the common herd took place during annual festivals, whose dates varied locally for the convenience of travelling priests, and similar ritual events. One such was Naming Day, when a circuit priest appointed a date to visit a locality, bless all the virgin children of a mature age, and name them in the registers of the church, thus permitting their marriage banns or sale to desirous nobles.
When such a day was announced in his district, Amulf the Good, revered as a pious man, submitted his stepdaughter Tamsin’s name for the ceremony, along with those of his elder children. Since the young girl did not yet speak, it was not likely done with her approval; yet the villagers observed that when the ritual was discussed, she showed no sign of displeasure at the action.
The head priest of the church district encompassing Sodgrum and half a hundred other wretched hamlets was one Epiminophas. His affected southern name, and his olive-oiled hair that crowned a somewhat chubby, tallow-faced countenance, proclaimed his desire to merge with the ruling elite of his country and church, who were mostly descended from noble Corinthian blood.
The demiuige Epiminophas paid scant attention to those faithful who dwelt out of hearing of the massive bronze bar-chime in his district temple at the provincial capital Yervash. As his tenure and prosperity increased, he certainly did not intend many more toilsome rides to local festivals. And yet, just lately, there had come to his ear a somewhat unusual rumour of a village healer more youthful than any before seen. A mere child, but skilled enough at nostrums and hocus-pocus to astound the bumpkins and enjoy local fame, and with talent and showmanship whispered of in a spreading circle of a dozen or more hamlets. On top of it all, Epiminophas heard with interest, she was a maiden... and one of exceptional, delicate beauty.
To the temple authorities, such a local sensation was a familiar issue—an opportunity to confront the self-styled holy man or prophetess and demand submission to the High God Amalias. Either the rural quack would kneel to church authority, thereby reaffirming his or her oafish admirers in their fealty to the high temple, or the trickster would refuse and be made an example of, thereby helping to accomplish much the same end. The story tended to play out over varying time periods, with greater or lesser soul-searching on the part of the upstart prophet. And depending on the depth of his or her self-delusion, it occasionally involved the regrettable eventuality of torture. In past cases where the witch was female and stubbornly recalcitrant, Epiminophas had nevertheless found cause to experience deep personal gratification from his holy work.
With this in mind, the plump demiurge made a point of appearing personally at the ritual site on Naming Day. He was borne thither on a gilded palanquin shouldered by eight acolytes, husky lads chosen and trained not just for burden-bearing, but for rough duty as bodyguards and riot troops.
The ritual was to be held at midday in the Abbas Dolmium, a holy place located centrally enough for families from all the villages of the district to hie themselves hence on foot. Though not the site of any permanent habitation-doubtless because of its deeply hallowed reputation—it resembled any other dolmium in the eastern kingdom. It stood high on the windswept fell above Abbas hamlet, a ring of massive, crudely chiselled pillars connected by crumbling stone lintels and covered by a low, conical roof of poles and rushes to keep out the icy sleets of the rocky height. Though its stony skeleton had been reared in a past aeon—likely, it was rumoured, by some faith older than the Imperial church—it was now part of the network of shrines and temples of the high cult of Amalias. As such, it made a suitable place for seasonal devotions and sacrifices.
The head priest was carried into the temple forecourt, passing amid a procession of virgins and their families just arriving from their long morning’s walk. Others, called from more distant hamlets, had spent the night in the sacred shelter of the temple, warmed by a fire of peat and bones laid at its centre. A lay
er of new green rushes had been stitched by the worshippers atop the damp thatching, and fresh-cut grass was strewn on the floor inside. Now the acolytes set to work erecting a brightly figured canopy at the altar end of the enclosure, behind which Epiminophas could don his second-finest robes and prepare the ritual.
The ceremony got under way smoothly. One by one the virgin boys and girls, clad in sackcloth or coarse linen, were brought forward to the altar by their elder relations, some going proudly, some in halting shyness. Their names were called and affirmed as they went to the altar; then their right hands were brought forward, clutched firmly by a cowled acolyte, and their forefingers slit by a sacred copper knife in Epiminophas’s skilled grip. The fresh blood that dripped into the altar basin was used by a second acolyte to pen their names onto the sacred scroll, thus affirming each child’s place in eternal slavery to almighty Amalias.
The witch-child, of course, was reserved for last. She arrived late, shortly after Epiminophas himself, but the looks and murmurs attending her appearance confirmed her reputation. Indeed, her wan, blank gaze made an eerie impression even on the arch-priest. As the girl’s cringing cousins and siblings were led awkwardly forward by the family’s moon-faced patriarch to receive their name-blessings, the deep, expectant silence proved how well the red-haired girl was known and feared by these ignorant clod-lumpers.
At last the little witch was brought to the gory, blood-crusted altar, which yet was scarce redder than the tangled coils of her hair. She did not wear the grey-white jerkin that was customary for the ritual; instead, Epiminophas saw, she affected a most garish attire. Her floor-length robe was of faded green, loose and oversized about her slender wrists and hands, with just a wedge of flat, pale breastbone visible at the neck. Even more outrageous was what she carried in the crook of her left arm: an ugly child’s-doll, grimy-looking and crudely made, yet clothed and adorned in tailored garments and ornaments—necklaces, wristbands, diadems, and badges, most of them garish in design, though a few were of middling value.
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