Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXVI

by Unknown

  Rowan stepped into the clear and scanned every direction, first quickly, then slowly and methodically. He beckoned Hyacinth to him. She obeyed, so shaky in the knees she could hardly walk.

  "Bind my hand, will you?" he asked.

  He held out his guard hand. Blood dripped from a slice on the side of the palm.

  Hyacinth fumbled as she fetched a washcloth from her uncle's pack and moistened it with water from her flask. Her hands were only slightly steadier as she cleaned the cut. The injury was small and she knew it would probably heal quickly, but she began to sob anyway, realizing if he had been just a little slower or a little less adept, he would have been hurt far worse.

  She wrapped a bandage around his hand and tied it off.

  "Well done," he said.

  The mare was agitated, trying to edge away despite its hobbles. Rowan took hold of the bridle and lowered the animal's head, forcing her to stillness. He murmured softly in her ear. When the beast had grown quieter, he handed off control to Hyacinth.

  The girl opened her mouth, but Rowan held a finger to his lips.

  Hyacinth swallowed the question she had been about to ask, and did her best to quiet her breathing.

  Rowan moved toward the campfire and stood in the midst of the clearing. He tilted his head this way and that, presenting his ears to every direction.

  The burly man's neck was still oozing. A red stain was expanding beneath him, the blood coming too fast for the soil to absorb it all. Hyacinth tried not to be aware of it.

  Finally her uncle relaxed. "I'd say that was all of them for now." He wiped his sword off on the burly man's tunic and restored it to its scabbard.

  Now that she knew the fight was truly over, the last of her fortitude drained away. Tears began pouring down her face.

  Rowan embraced her, letting her weep against his chest. She would have stayed there for an hour, but finally he moved her back to arm's length.

  "We need to get away from here."

  She nodded. She wanted very much to do exactly that. She stumbled over to the mare and groped for the saddle horn.

  "No, we will walk," her uncle said.

  "Sh-shouldn't we go as fast as possible?"

  "We might need to go fast later, and I want her as fresh as possible."

  They set out across open country, avoiding the road. Eventually they came to a creek. The water was no deeper than fetlock height in most places, and the streambed was mostly gravel. At last they climbed into the saddle and rode the mare down the channel. The water rinsed away the signs of their passage. They chose a sunny rock outcropping at which to clamber back onto land. Hyacinth glanced back before they slipped into the riparian brush and saw that the hoofprints were already beginning to evaporate.

  No matter how much she tried, she couldn't banish the images of the attackers sneaking into the camp. With every step—they were once more travelling on foot—she calculated how far she was from the spot, and the measure was never enough.

  * * * *

  At sunset they finally came to a farmholding that was not entirely a ruin. A few charred timbers and barrel staves jutted from the rubble where the barn had once been, but the farmhouse was standing. Weeds and wildflowers rose as high as the shuttered windows and the thatched roof was sagging, but the place was far more inviting than the midge-ridden bog they had just fought their way through. There was even a nice long verge of unharvested barley along the paddock for the mare to nibble.

  Rowan reconnoitered around the entire farmhouse in his usual cautious way. He was almost smiling as he came back around and pushed open the door. An owl burst from a hole in the thatch up near the crown, setting Hyacinth's heart to racing but having no apparent effect on her uncle. She followed him inside.

  Whatever rodents had escaped the owl had left their droppings all over the floor and sideboard, but the walls were still sound and the holes in the thatch above were minor. Enough firewood lay stacked in a corner to see them through the night.

  Rowan smiled. "More than this and we'd grow spoiled. Make it cozy for us while I see to the mare." He waved at the raised hearth in the center of the room.

  Hyacinth got the blaze going, but then found reasons to putter about outside, needing to be where she could see her uncle. He was giving the mare a thorough rubdown. The beast had coped with the full day of unrelenting travel without going lame, but she needed the care.

  Hyacinth drew up water from the well. The frayed rope groaned, barely strong enough to serve, and the bucket leaked, but she knew she was lucky to have the use of them. If they'd been in better condition the farmholders would have taken them as they had nearly every other portable item. She filled their camp kettle and set some porridge to simmering, but justified another session outside by investigating the garden next to the paddock. Gophers had thoroughly colonized the area, but before the twilight deepened too much for her to work, Hyacinth managed to harvest an armful of carrots and a pair of onions. She rinsed them off near the well.

  At some point in the domestic routine, she actually managed to concentrate upon the immediate moment, the first time all day that she had not dwelled on the danger they were in. Later, with the floor swept, the house warm, and a soothing fullness in her stomach, she could finally speak coherently.

  "Those weren't just highwaymen, were they? They were hunting us. Hunting you, I mean. Why?"

  Her uncle seemed to wilt. His expression was hard to read in the firelight, the departed farmsteaders having taken every last candle or lantern with them when they had left.

  He sighed. "They wanted the book."

  "The one you read every day?"

  "I have no other."

  The same could be said of almost anyone. Books were for schools, for monasteries, for the king's record houses. Or as in the case of those Hyacinth herself had read, the sitting room of the inn in which she had been raised. Few individuals possessed a book of their very own.

  "What is so unusual about it that men would die trying to steal it?"

  Rowan had been honing his sword when she had asked her question. He resumed running the whetstone along the blade. As his hesitation went on she became aware of how little she could do to force an answer from him. There he was with his corded strength and ease of movement and his glistening sword, and here was she, a stick of a twelve-year-old girl, her toughness limited to her knees and palms, callused by scullion chores.

  He spoke with a seriousness as deep as when he had informed her father he was taking her with him, rather than letting her be subject to his neglect.

  "The fewer who know what the book is, the better for everyone," Rowan said. "But you are to travel with me now, so it is only right that you should see for yourself."

  He put down his whetstone and sheathed his sword, his actions smooth as oil. From his saddlebag he removed the item of which they spoke. It was already familiar to her from a distance—bound in faded brown leather, the edges of its pages stained and chafed from handling.

  He cleared the remains of their meal from the broken stool they had used as their table. He lay the book down where the firelight was good enough to make out its features. It had no embellishments. No gold leaf on the spine. The leather was undyed. It struck Hyacinth as designed for travel and daily use, like a journal or book of meditations, small enough to fit in a large vest pocket. The title, tooled across the face by an unsubtle hand, said simply, "A Life." There was no author's name.

  "You can only read a short sample, and only as I direct. You will look only at the part I tell you to. Swear it."

  "I swear it. I will do exactly as you say."

  "It will be harder than you think," he warned, but he moved back. She knelt by the stool.

  She reached out and touched the volume. It was strangely warm. The flesh of her fingers and palms tingled, as if something were being drawn out of her. She wondered if she wanted to do this after all.

  "You will see one leaf, somewhere in the middle, that juts out a bit, not as well trimmed o
ff as the rest. Don't go past that. Choose a spot a few pages before it."

  She could see what he meant. Despite the obvious wear and tear on the outside surfaces, the binding was still tight, and the one loose leaf called attention to itself. She put her finger a few pages earlier and opened the book. It was so well crafted it lay flat and open with no need for her to hold the halves apart.

  Even in the weak light the words were clear and unmistakable, as if wrought by a scribe.

  Hyacinth huddled in the corner as the gravedressers finished their work, arms wrapped around her knees. She was required to witness the cleansing and shrouding, but down here, low on the stone floor, she was able to avoid confronting her mother's face straight on.

  Her mother really was dead. And that morning, her father really had appeared from his den down by the wharfs, nearly a stranger given how few times she had ever seen him in the course of her childhood, saying she must live with him now. To clean his house? To be hired out to sailors for...other purposes? Certainly it was not to see to her needs, but only to further his own.

  The gravedressers laid a pair of lilies crosswise over the heart that had stopped late the previous afternoon. Three times in as many years Hyacinth's mother had withstood the harbor fever, but not this year, not after it had already weakened her.

  The elder of the two attendants laid a hand gently on Hyacinth's head as she went out. They were not lingering to make sure Hyacinth stood up to examine their work, and say her farewell. They trusted her to do as ritual required.

  Hyacinth knew she would do so. In a little while. When she could remember how to make her legs work. Her mother deserved it, and Hyacinth would manage somehow.

  But all she could think of right then was what kind of poison to put in her father's porridge. Better to be a full orphan. Only then would there even be a possibility her own survival might come to something worthwhile.

  She slammed the book shut. "Who wrote this?" she demanded, her voice going shrill. "You? How could you know?"

  Hyacinth had told no one she had wanted to kill her father. By the time of the burial itself the urge had vanished into the fog of her grief. By now she had almost forgotten the incident completely. She was ashamed to have had the impulse.

  Her uncle took the book from the stool and set it in his lap. "I did not write it. I did not even read it. You alone know what it said. The book is different for everyone."

  "How can that be?"

  "No one really knows. The sorceress who created it died long ago. All I can tell you is, the words appear. If I am the reader, the book contains the story of my life, from birth to death. If you are the reader, it is your chronicle. If you had read the first few pages, you would have been reading about your time as a baby."

  She blinked. Gradually her heart ceased thundering against the inside of her sternum. The words on the page had left her feeling so naked it was hard to believe she had not been exposed.

  Her uncle ran his fingers across the leather cover. "Some men chase me so they can know the parts of their lives they have yet to live. Others are drawn by greed, intending to sell the book to the highest bidder. But the real problem is that more than one mage imagines he or she might be able to decipher the enchantment. They have ways of finding me."

  "How many times have you had close calls like this morning?"

  "Not many that close," he admitted. "I'm good with a blade, but the key to survival is not to let them catch up to begin with. I'm not used to travelling with a companion. We'll have to get you your own horse."

  "Why don't you just give them the book?"

  He tapped his chest. "As long as I keep it, I know it is not in the hands of someone who would use it wrongly."

  "If that's what you're worried about, why not just destroy it?"

  "Some have tried to do that very thing," he said. "I'll give you an idea what happened to them. Stand over there behind the woodpile."

  She did as he asked.

  "Now pay careful attention, and be prepared to duck if you need to."

  She nodded.

  He tossed the book onto the fire and retreated as fast as he could.

  Before the book could even begin to be scorched, it flew from the fire, spinning tornado-like in a circuit around the hearth, each page edge razoring the air. If Rowan had not backed away fast enough, his skin would have been flayed to ribbons.

  The book stopped whirling. It settled gently to the floor. When Rowan came forward to pick it up, Hyacinth gave a start, fearing would turn back into a weapon, but it showed no sign of that. Soon it was tucked away in the saddlebag.

  Rowan used a stick and a broken dinner platter to collect the embers the violence had left scattered over the earthern floor. Hyacinth came out from behind the woodpile.

  "There is probably some means to get around the protective charm, but I've never troubled myself to find out how. I've no wish to destroy the book," he said. "It's a work of art unlike any in the world."

  It was the worst thing he could have said. It left her feeling as sick as when she had watched the blood flowing from the burly man's neck. "If you don't get rid of it, if you don't destroy it, then we'll never be safe. I will never be safe."

  He reached out as if to squeeze her shoulder to comfort her, but she retreated. It was his bandaged hand—another reminder of the danger they were in.

  She should have stayed with her father.

  "I promise you it will be all right," he said.

  She didn't believe him. It was the sort of thing men said. She had thought her uncle was a better man than that.

  * * * *

  In the morning they departed along the overgrown lane that led past other abandoned farms. Eventually the lane merged with a dray track that showed signs of recent use. On the other side of a small creek, the route forked, Rowan paused to contemplate the choice.

  "That way," he said.

  Before long they spotted smoke rising from a chimney in the distance to their right, and then another such plume in the distance to their left. The breeze lavished them with the fragrance of new-cut hay.

  The road forked again. This time Rowan chose without hesitation, as if able to read some kind of roadmarker invisible to Hyacinth.

  The choice took them over a low wooded ridge into a valley of well-tilled fields. At midday they came to a large holding. They were met by a strapping farmer in a blacksmith apron, forge tongs in his grip, his equally strapping sons and five alert sheepdogs observing from near the house and barn.

  Rowan held up a copper eight-bit. "Good day," he called cheerfully. "May we buy some eggs and milk from you?"

  The man nodded. "For two of those, you can lunch with us as well."

  "Done," Rowan said.

  Throughout the meal, the man and his sons chatted amiably with Rowan, asking for news of the north. The food the goodwife placed on the table was filling and good—it was obvious how the men of the family had become so robust. Even the dogs were appealing in the way they begged for scraps. Yet Hyacinth stayed tense until the farm was an hour behind them.

  They stopped at a spring where the mare could drink her fill. Rowan washed out his bandage and cleaned his hand. The cut was healing well.

  He joined Hyacinth where she waited in the shade, her back propped against a smooth boulder. He chucked her fondly under the chin. "You see. Things are getting better already."

  She frowned. One good stopover. A nice meal. Some shade. It would take a lot more than that to make her feel better about having to always be on the run. But the full belly was soothing. Before long, she was dozing. When she woke, she found that her uncle was reading. When he saw that she had opened her eyes, he closed the book and returned it to the saddlebag.

  "Ready to go?"

  She nodded.

  Late in the afternoon they came to a river. They hesitated at the ford, knowing that if they crossed, there were not enough hours of sunshine left to dry their clothes. Hyacinth wanted to do it anyway if only to put another obstacl
e between them and whatever pursuers might be following.

  Around a bend in the stream came a barge. Its sail hung slack, useless while the wind was blowing over the prow. While a matron held the tiller, a trio of middle-aged men—her brothers, based on the similarity of their features to hers—strained at the poles, trying to further their progress upstream. All three were dripping sweat and their hair hung like mop strands.

  Rowan called out to them. "Current's running fast this season."

  "Aye," the woman called back. "Too much rain."

  An hour later, Rowan and Hyacinth and the mare were passengers, the barge making good headway, his manpower at a fourth pole more than enough to make up for the added weight.

  Hyacinth felt sure their throats would be slit that night as they lay anchored, but in fact, thanks to her state of exhaustion and the lulling effect of the river motion, she had as profound a night of sleep as she'd had since her mother died. And the breakfast the matron served was delicious. The woman had a trader's grasp of multiple styles of cooking and did not stint on portions, grateful as she was for Rowan's contribution to their progress.

  About noon of their third day on the barge, they pulled in at the wharf of a town. They helped the family unload about a quarter of their cargo of tobacco leaf and hempen ropes, and while the matron and her merchant client were occupied haggling with the dockmaster over the tariff, Rowan examined the town with the peculiar concentration Hyacinth had seen in him a dozen times in the past fortnight.

  "I believe we'll stay on the barge another few days," he said. "I'm sure we would be welcome."

  Hyacinth gazed longingly at the inn she had spotted tucked amid the warehouses. She could smell the familiar aroma of harvest pudding and ale. Drying linens were waving in the breeze on clotheslines in the alley.

  "It's not your mother's inn," Rowan said softly.

  "Will we ever stay somewhere like that?" she asked.

  "From time to time. But not 'til winter comes."

  She sighed.

  They continued along the river until the barge reached its furthest-upstream port of call. Rowan's muscles were not needed for the downstream run, so he and Hyacinth and the mare debarked amid warm thanks from their companions.