The Eye of Night

by Pauline J. Alama

  “Have a care, Halred,” said Father Anlaf. “There are more kinds of power than one, and not all are holy. Power may come from the gods, from hidden natures of things, or from ghosts of the unquiet dead and such unclean necromancy—”

  “Wherever it comes from, we will test it in holy rites,” Halred said. “The new moon will be time for the Rite of Increase. I mean to use Hwyn's voice for the ceremony.”

  “That ceremony needs more than singers,” said Anlaf. “If you hold a Rite of Increase, four men must bleed for the land. And where will you find four to bleed in these lean times, when none have strength to spare?”

  “If a stranger may ask,” I said, “what is this rite? It sounds like none we had at the monastery at Annelon.” It sounded, however, like the dark tales I had read about the ancient blood-rites in barbarous days; it unsettled me to find such customs still living.

  “It is an old rite of the Folc to wake the land from its sleeping and bring life to barren soil,” said Halred. “Traditionally the priesthoods of the Bright and Hidden Goddesses perform it together to invoke the seen and unseen powers that give life to the land. As I am all we have left of both priesthoods, I have brought my two acolytes into it; still, a fourth celebrant would fill out the holy number, and let us perform the rite as it was meant to be.

  “Four men of the Folc must give a bowlful of blood to the land,” she continued. “They must come forward willingly to make this sacrifice for the good of all, so Anlaf taunts me that I will not find four willing to give their blood in the rites I must lead.”

  “I bled last summer,” said a voice somewhere behind me, “and we were no better off for it.”

  I was skeptical, myself, and furthermore, the very sound of it made my flesh crawl. Those four bowls of blood, I knew, stood for the whole life-blood of one man sacrificed in harsher times to appease the gods.

  And yet this seemed the answer to our problems. “If that is what you need, then very well: I will bleed for the land,” I said. “If that is not enough to make us, for a little time, one with the Folc, maybe at least it will make the gods pity us more as we stagger away hungry and thristy over the hard hills.”

  But the end of my sentence was scarcely heard for Halred gasping “Jereth!” and Hwyn shouting “No!” right over my words.

  “Jereth, you've bled more than enough of late,” Hwyn said. “That bowlful might kill you! Halred, you must not listen to him. Take my blood instead; I can better spare it.”

  “No, Hwyn—” I began.

  Halred cut both of us short. “It's no use, Hwyn. The blood must come from weaponed-men, not women who bleed with each moon.”

  “Not when you've been traveling half starved as long as I have,” Hwyn muttered.

  Halred disregarded this. “Hwyn, even if I could accept your blood, it would not substitute. Jereth, my lad, you've put me between the horns of a dilemma. As healer, I should forbid you to offer yourself for bleeding. It won't kill you—gods willing—but it will weaken you more than I care to see, sick as you are. The new moon is only three nights away; you won't have time to gather your strength. But as priestess, I have no power to refuse what has been offered to the gods. You have already committed yourself; it is not mine to undo.”

  As I digested that inevitability, Halred spread her hands theatrically to address the full Assembly: “And if this bond of blood does not give Jereth the right to stay among us till he is strong enough to travel, then I might as well give up both priesthoods for despair of teaching you anything. What say you, my cousins, my neighbors?”

  “He is one of us,” said Drict, “and in fellowship, I offer myself to bleed at the Rite of Increase.”

  “And I,” said Paddon. “I offer myself in brotherhood, for the honor of the Folc not born of the Folc, few though we be.”

  “What say all the powers of the Folc?” called Guthlac, falling into ritual speech again, his deep voice ringing almost musically on the mountainside. “Priest of the Upright God, what say you?”

  Anlaf paused, regarding us with an abstracted air. At last he spoke: “Though I admire the spirit of the stranger who offers his blood in our rites, I do not agree that our priestess is bound to accept it. The stranger remains a stranger; he does not even mean to stay among us. Neither his blood nor the sorcerous voice of his companion are ours. I say, let them depart at once.”

  “Priestess of the Bright Goddess, what say you?”

  “Let them stay,” said Halred.

  “Voice of the Upside-Down God chosen by lot, what say you?”

  “Let them stay,” said Athel.

  “Priestess of the Hidden Goddess, what say you?”

  Halred said again, “Let them stay.”

  “Headwoman of the Folc, what say you?”

  Maethild hesitated, looking from Anlaf to Halred and back again, then, unnervingly, straight into my eyes. At last she nodded. “Very well. Let them stay.”

  “Elder of the Ashwood Clan, what say you?”

  “Let them stay,” said Aldworth, smiling at Halred as he did so.

  “Elder of the Linden Clan, what say you?”

  Edwach stood scowling a while. He's lost, I thought, and trying to work a way around it. At last he said, “I, too, offer myself to bleed at the Rite of Increase. Now let another of the Folc come forward, so we have no need of these strangers, and can bid them leave!”

  “No, Edwach,” said Halred, “that is not the way.”

  “You've had your turn—more than once,” Edwach said. “Let me speak now. I say we are better without them. Let them depart.”

  Of all the “powers,” there remained only Guthlac. He paused a while, surveying the crowd with cool gray eyes, his sense of ritual drama better than Edwach's or the priest's. All fell silent, awaiting his word. “As Elder of the Red Oak and Headman of the Folc,” he said slowly, “I say, shame on me if I stint food to one who has offered blood! Let the traveler Jereth stay—and though he entered through the Linden, let him be counted one of the Red Oak Clan. Hwyn, as acolyte to the priestess for the duration of the rite, should belong to no clan and stay with the priestess. The simpleton may accept my hospitality or any other's, as the gods please, for a fool is everyone's child.

  “So say I and so says the Folc under my headship. If any disagree, let brotherhood guard your tongue and stay your hand, for you have had your chance to speak. The Assembly is ended.”

  The throng slowly trickled away, but Halred remained to tend the fire until the last ember died. As we waited for her, Hwyn seized my arm with talon-hard fingers. “What a fright you gave me, offering yourself for the blood rite! Gods, Jereth, what have you done to yourself?”

  “I've won.” I grinned, feeling in command of my destiny for the first time since I could not say when.

  She looked at me curiously, scrutinizing my face as if she saw something there she had not seen before. “You seem so sure of yourself,” she said, “that I wonder whether you've seen something more clearly than I have, or ignored what I see.”

  “I know not,” I said, “but this is what I see: we had little to offer them but our secrets, which might have hurt as much as helped us. I have done what I could to gain a few days' rest without sacrificing our secrets or our quest.”

  “I know. It was a bold gambit,” she said. “And yet—Jereth, I am to act as one of the four celebrants of the rite, and I will not, I will refuse, if it means shedding your blood.”

  In fact, I had not thought of that possibility, and her distress, her real anguish caught me short. I caught her hands in mid-gesture and held them still. “Hwyn, gentle soul, don't worry so. I will not die of this, I promise. And I know you would not willingly hurt me. If it falls to you during the ceremony to—”

  “I will not!” she said again.

  “Will not what?” Halred, overhearing, raised her voice to carry over to us from where she sat watching the embers of the fire.

  “Mother Halred,” said Hwyn, “this ritual will not force me to draw blood f
rom Jereth, will it?”

  Halred raised her eyebrows. “No, child. That burden falls to me, as the only fully consecrated priestess in the village. And it is not a light one for me, either, I assure you. But at least you can rest easy that as a healer, I know how to mend what I must do.”

  “It will be all right,” I said, still buoyed up by the energy of decision.

  “With the gods' help, yes,” said Halred. “Now leave me in peace a little space as I make one last prayer over the embers.” We retreated a bit from the fire. Drict was off in a knot of Folc talking some distance away; shy of interrupting them and uncertain where to go, we sat on the grass to wait.

  “Excuse me,” said a man's voice beside me. I looked up and saw by the dying light a man who must be conspicuous among the Folc, but nowhere else: a compactly built man with sandy hair and pale, freckled skin.

  Though I had not seen him clearly before, I recognized his voice. “Paddon?”

  He nodded. “I wanted to meet you and welcome you. It's not always easy to be a stranger among the Folc—or an adopted countryman, even.”

  “Thank you for speaking on our behalf,” said Hwyn.

  He smiled. “I speak as I see fit, here among the Folc. That is why I stayed here, even though in some ways I will always be a stranger. But I think often of the country I was born in. They say you came from southward. Do you have any news of Kreyn?”

  “We passed through the city,” I said cautiously.

  “Is that cursed hypocrite Goldifer still queen?” he said, removing our cause for fear.

  “Alas, she is,” said Hwyn. “We were found lacking in reverence for her and fell afoul of her guards, who chased us into the hills and wounded Jereth. We might not have escaped but that chance brought us to the lair of an outlaw with even more reason to hate Her Resplendence than we had.”

  “What—Warfast the Firebrand?” Paddon said.

  “Yes, Warfast was his name,” Hwyn said.

  “He is still living, then—and still at his old games,” Paddon half smiled. “Is Wilgar still his right-hand man?”

  “There were two men with him, Wilgar and Lok,” Hwyn said.

  “And Lok will have been intoxicated with your fair friend.” Paddon gestured at Trenara with his head.

  “You know them well,” Hwyn said.

  “I was one of their band,” Paddon said. “I rose against Goldifer with them, leaving my home and my kinsmen when we lost the battle. I can never return to Kreyn now. And I can never return to Warfast, either—Wilgar has a short way with deserters. The gods know I miss my old comrades, but I could not stay with them any longer. They will never win, and I did not sacrifice all I had to become a mere highwayman. But I am glad the old fox is still alive, for all the danger he has courted these seven years. And he protected you?”

  “Yes,” Hwyn said.

  “I am glad. Perhaps outlawry has not changed him much, after all. He was always the sort of man who keeps to his code: the Law of Antir commands protection to supplicants, and so it must be, whatever the cost.”

  “He is not much changed, then,” Hwyn said. “And here, among the Folc, as well—”

  “The Folc keep to their code, and I honor them for it,” Paddon said, nodding. Then, softer, “And yet—here as any-where—the high-minded reasons are not the only ones. My Lord Guthlac of the Red Oak is a generous man, and it is his good nature to take in strays like you and me. But in your case, it also shames Edwach, who ought to have taken you in himself—and that is a fine sauce for Guthlac to digest his sacrifice. Nor should you take it for granted that Father Anlaf hates you; he has been arguing with Mother Halred so long that opposing her is only a habit.”

  “And Halred,” I said very quietly. “Edwach's hostility makes us dearer to her, doesn't it? What is it between them?”

  Paddon grinned. “The Folc say a priest has no clan or family; to say otherwise is forbidden. Ye t it is hard to conceal—indeed, they have both blurted it out by accident—”

  “Gods on the Wheel,” I whispered. “Are they brother and sister?”

  “You see clearly,” said Paddon.

  “What are you three whispering about?” Guthlac, Elder of the Red Oak, put a big hand on Paddon's shoulder—but he was smiling broadly.

  “Someone has to tell them the things everyone else has known since cradle days,” Paddon said.

  “Ah, Paddon, if you start that, you'll be here talking till harvest,” said Guthlac. “The night is brief enough without prolonging the Assembly. Let's bring the travelers inside and give them some rest.” He extended a hand to me. “Welcome to our family, Jereth. For a man distracted by illness you spoke boldly, and I think you will do us proud.”

  I clasped his hand gratefully.

  “And Hwyn, is it? You too showed a bold spirit. Give me your hand. You are of no clan, but you may as well come with us.”

  “Thank you. But as acolyte, I must lodge with the priestess, mustn't I?”

  “True enough. But while Jereth is ill, the healer will lodge where he does. She'll be along soon enough, I judge. As soon as the fire dies, we can be on our way.”

  He brought us to the house of the Red Oak Clan—a sheep paddock and barn with a stone house added on as an afterthought, it seemed, where the whole clan shared a great hall and a kitchen, with a small chamber at the end for the elder and his wife. Some of the household who had not gone to the Assembly were already bedded down on sheepskins on the floor of the great hall, scattered here and there like sleeping cats. Indeed, not all were sleeping; some of the sheepskins, wrapped around more than one body, moved in a suspicious rhythm. Taking my cue from my host, I trained my eyes to the way before me till we left the dark hall for the kitchen.

  There we were welcomed by Guthlac's wife, Girnhild, a woman well matched to him, with broad shoulders and big, workmanlike hands. Their daughter Godrun, a red-haired girl with intelligent eyes, gave us each a bowl of curds and a carefully rationed, precious mouthful of last autumn's ale. Between the ale, my ill-health, and the trying Assembly, I scarcely waited to be given a bedroll before sinking deep into slumber.

  9

  THE RITE OF INCREASE

  During the days that followed, I recovered my strength, resting in the Red Oak Clan's house while Hwyn milked goats, picked strawberries, joined in the hay-making, and generally tried as hard to prove herself worth her keep by labor as I had by offering to bleed for the Rite of Increase. Trenara followed wherever she went, and I saw little of my companions until the swift sunset brought all the laborers home for the brief summer night.

  Halred's ministrations continued: she would change my poultice, make me drink something nasty, grudgingly admit I was mending, and forbid me to stir farther than the privy. Notwithstanding her prohibitions, I began gradually mingling into the life of the Folc. Most were outdoors in the day, for all the Folc, from the Headman to toddling children, worked on the land or with the livestock. Even Halred spent part of each day among the flocks with a pot of salve for fleabites and sores. Nonetheless, the house and its courtyard were never quite empty; someone would always be there churning butter, setting cheeses, stirring a pot of last summer's oats and new peas in the kitchen, braiding baskets in the shade of the eaves, or fixing the roof.

  On my first day in the House of the Red Oak Clan, I was happy enough to sleep; on the second day, however, I stumbled to the kitchen, where a knot of women and girls were engaged in making cheese. They left off their gossiping to stare up at me where I stood in the doorway. “Sit down, traveler,” said Girnhild, pushing a sawn-log stool toward me, “or Mother Halred will be cross with me for tiring her patient.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I came to ask what I can do here. I'm not going to sleep away another day, and you must have some chore fit for an invalid—something even a very ignorant person can't spoil,” I added, for the things they were then doing were as mysterious to me as any mage's art.

  “Why, you can't be so very ignorant,” said Godrun. “What hav
e you done all your life?”

  I laughed. “Little of use here. I was a priest once, but no longer. And you already have enough priests here to keep on arguing till the gods call the world home for supper.”

  One of the older women—Wylf, they called her—laughed at that. “You've come to know them well already. But don't flatland priests work like other people?”

  “It depends what you call work,” I said. In theory, of course, all in the Tarvon Order worked in simple humility on the farms that fed us. In practice, we had the best libraries, schools, and scriptoria in all Swevnalond; most of us only dirtied our hands with ink. I had entered with the resolution to embrace the land, but I was found out for a quick and accurate copyist—a skill I had learned by the rod and lash, keeping my father's account ledgers. “I copied books in the monastery. Before that I was at sea. There's nothing much I can do that's of use here, except— well, you're land-folk, so you'll laugh at this, but at sea, any boy can mend a sail.”

  “Mending? With needle and thread?” one of the girls giggled, and I reddened, though in truth I still can't understand why it should be any funnier for a man to sew than to copy books or count coins.

  At any rate, the women did not laugh too much to find me all the mending they'd put off for more urgent tasks. So I set about making myself useful, all the while watching them at their strange tasks and learning from them. Their talk was full of the missing Folc—mostly young men who had gone off to seek their fortunes and not returned.

  “They go off seeking brides, but who's to come seeking us?” lamented a dark-haired woman of about twenty.

  “Small wonder if no outlanders come,” I said, “when a stranger must stand before the Assembly to be allowed a few days' stay.”

  “That wasn't always the way,” said Girnhild. “Paddon of Kreyn faced no Assembly. He came in harvest time, when an extra pair of hands is a godsend; no one even cared that he was an outlaw. We simply adopted him, and that was that.”