“I…think so.”
“Get started.”
He nodded, put one hand on each end of the screen, and closed his eyes. She turned back into the room, rolled up her sleeve, got the swaffling-stick and began to slap it noisily against her arm, meanwhile whistling between her teeth and bouncing on the bed to make the straw mattress rustle and the withies squeak.
“Game!” cried one of the dicing warriors. She sounded more nervous than joyful at her win.
“Game, Thorn!” repeated Eaglesight. “Will you—”
“Smardon gut you!” Thorn shouted. “I almost had him up!”
“All right, two more games,” said Eaglesight.
Thorn glanced around to see whether the noise had disturbed the sorcerer. He seemed to be deep in his concentration, or trance, or whatever it was. His fingers, though pale on the cold wood, were not trembling. Thorn returned to making diversionary noises, meanwhile looking around the room to see if there was anything useful they could take with them. She saw nothing except the windowfur, a good piece of drapery about two strides long, made of white rabbit skins sewn into a square. And the lamp, or the candles from the gods’ niches? She looked up at the statues and saw that one was the Great Giver of Justice and the other was the townmaster’s favorite, the many-mouthed God of Words. If they had been others, she might have robbed their niches and promised them four candles and a few drops of blood in repayment at her first safe opportunity. But she did not quite dare risk angering the Giver of Justice or even Master Youngwise’s favorite. Chances were that your favorite god or goddess took you for a favorite human, and Youngwise was shrewd enough without extra help from his god. As for the lamp, it was too likely to slosh its oil.
“Warrior!” whispered the sorcerer. “Shall I rot it entirely, or…?”
She went to examine the lattice. “Fine. Should be enough.” A good shove or two and the lattice ought to pop right out. The snow had been almost knee deep when Thorn plowed through it from the warriors’ barracks to the Townmasters’ Hall a while ago, and that was where the older drifts had been cleared away. “Go bounce on the bed a moment,” she went on, thrusting the swafflestick into his hands. “Moan, squeal, slap yourself, make some kind of noise that sounds good.”
He obeyed, choosing to groan. She put both hands on the lattice and shoved. The lattice made a muffled plopping as it hit a snow bank below the window.
Thorn took the lamp and leaned out. The old snow drift, with its deep layer of new fall, looked almost chest deep, and Back Mastershouse Street was deserted all the way from the lantern at the corner of Featherweavers’ Street to the one that marked the pissing-alley near the curve around the back edge of the barracks. The three lanterns between were unlit; Master Youngwise believed in saving oil on nights like this, claiming that cold and bad weather discouraged robbery in the streets. Thorn suspected bad lighting did almost as much as bad weather to keep honest folk inside, but tonight she blessed the old townmaster for his thrift.
Gathering up the windowfur in her left arm, she waved her right for the sorcerer to come. He came.
She pulled him up onto the window ledge with her, the rotted edges of pine splintering beneath their knees. Once there, he jumped first. She landed half a heartbeat after him.
“Here,” she said, shaking out the windowfur as they waded from the drift.
He shrank back. His sorcerous distaste for anything that came from dead animals. “Listen, you horsenut,” she whispered, “all you’ve got on is that damn black robe that shows up like a belly-mole in this snow—if you don’t sneeze us into the nightwarriors’ spears first. Now we’re going to go under this fur together, or—”
“I can keep up a wind,” he said, “to fill in our tracks.”
“Fine. You’ll do it from under this fur with me.”
He shuddered as she threw it around him, but, finding he could still keep up the wind to wipe out their tracks, he seemed to become a little reconciled to the touch of fur, maybe even to enjoy its warmth, and Thorn’s, as they plowed side by side through the snow. He has it a lot cozier than I do, she thought. He’s better off than he was a log-burning ago—now he’s even got some hope of living through all this. And I’m a bloody outlaw again! Twenty-four years an honest woman, and then outlawed twice in the same year, for a bloody sorceron both times!
CHAPTER 2
From this distance, the wall of Elvannon’s Farm looked barely taller than an infant’s hand. The open gates showed brightness beyond…but was the light within those ancient stone walls any clearer than that outside?
Here, at the start of the wheelpath, Frostflower shivered. Perhaps it was only from the mountain winds of earliest spring. Breathing deeply, she snatched the wind with her mind and directed it around her body, putting herself in the quiet center of a large, very gentle swirl of air.
Although a farmer-priest, Elvannon was a gentle man. So much Frostflower had known for most of her twenty-eight years. Twice or thrice a year sorceri would come down from Windslope to trade with Elvannon’s people; Frostflower had first come here with her parents when she was seven years old.
But always the trading was done in the field of wild grass between the edge of the wheelpath and the farmwalls.
Refolding the blanket across her arm, carrying it before her like a kind of safe-passage token, Frostflower approached Elvannon’s gates.
They were open—she assumed because it was day and no other priest was likely to raid Elvannon’s Farm, which was too poor and too far removed from the nearest neighbors. But when the watchgirl called in an interested voice, “One from the north,” a pair of spearwomen came out and stood in the opening.
“Sorceron!” said one, raising her spear. But her companion stopped her.
“We don’t…” (some words that did not reach Frostflower) “…at everything in a black robe, not up here.” Lounging on her weapon, the second warrior raised her voice and called to Frostflower, who had halted in the field, “Don’t worry about Quickshaft, sorceron. She’s new here—came up late last fall to get over a chest wound, and still skitterish as a damn sweat-bee.”
The sorceress walked toward them, keeping her head prudently lowered. Life must seem slow to Quickshaft this high in the edgelands, especially when Elvannon, who was known to support more warriors than he needed, put them to such token work as guarding his gates by daylight.
“Little early for trading, sorceron,” said the friendlier spearwoman, whom Frostflower recognized as Coarsecut, Elvannon’s chief warrior for more than thirty years. “Haven’t had any midlands merchants up here yet, not since meat-drying last fall.”
Frostflower had resolved to use a traditional greeting of farmers’ folk; but, despite long practice, she faltered a little. “All…gods guide your priest, and prosper his people.”
“Blasphemy!” cried Quickshaft, raising her spear again. Frostflower shrank back.
“Go stick your tongue in your navel, younghead,” said Coarsecut.
The watchgirl giggled in her tower. Quickshaft thumped the end of her spear on the ground, and Coarsecut grinned.
“Raidleader Coarsecut!” Frostflower lifted her head for the first time to look straight at the old guard.
At sight of her eyes, one blue and one brown, the midlands warrior thrust out her left hand in a gesture to ward off evil, and a low whistle came down from the watchtower. Even Coarsecut looked startled for a heartbeat before she grinned.
“Well, well, little Frostflower,” said Coarsecut. “We haven’t seen you for—must be five or six years. So you were traveling around the midlands, hey?”
“Last summer only. Before that I was secluded in preparation.”
“Secluded in your mountains? In preparation to travel? You’d do better to spend a few years in Elderbarren or All Roads South before heading into the rough countr
y,” Coarsecut remarked.
“Seclusion has been our custom for generations, and our ancestors must have had good reasons.” Frostflower smiled. “But I think, Raidleader, your plan has much to recommend it.”
“Relax, Quickshaft, they haven’t grown any wasps in our bellies yet,” Coarsecut told the fidgeting midlands woman. “Well, Frostflower, why did you come down this morning?”
Frostflower drew a deep breath. “I ask to speak with his Reverence.” She held out the blanket. “I have brought him a gift.”
“Poison!” cried Quickshaft. “You see, Farmkeeper? She wants to poison—”
“Demons’ farts!” The reaction was to the younger warrior. Returning to Frostflower, Coarsecut reached out and felt the blanket appreciatively. “Fine work, sorceress. Never could figure out how you people can spin wool as smooth as velvet. Why don’t you bring it back later in the summer when we can afford…a gift, you said?”
“Yes. For his Reverence. I—I would speak with him, as a…a friend.”
“She’ll poison him!” Quickshaft repeated. “Take the bloody thing and burn it!”
“Did Smardon squeeze your brain, or could he even find it? We don’t burn woolwork like this.”
“You aren’t going to let her speak with his Reverence?” Quickshaft demanded.
“That’s for his Reverence to decide,” said Coarsecut.
For a few heartbeats there was silence, as the younger spearwoman gaped and the older one seemed to enjoy her astonishment. Then Quickshaft said, “At least get the sprunging-stick and strip her first—”
“Azkor’s talons!” This time Coarsecut sounded more angry than amused. “We don’t have any sprunging-sticks here, you midlands bitch! We got one once from some clod of a merchant who didn’t have anything better to trade, and we melted it down for the copper. Besides, if that trinket-seller’s ballad was—”
“That trinket-seller’s ballad was lying nonsense!” said Quickshaft. “A sensible priest would have skinned his throat for singing it.”
“Please,” said Frostflower. “I will wait here outside, and I will speak with his Reverence through a copper screen if—”
“No, you won’t,” said Coarsecut. “You aren’t waiting here to inhale any more of this bloody lackbrain’s stinking breath. Come on, little Frostflower!”
“You’re taking her inside?” Quickshaft seemed genuinely dismayed. She stepped between the gateposts and stood with her legs planted wide and spear held sideways, blocking the way as if she intended to protect the dull edgelands farmer from the stupidity of his bumbling raidleader even though she thought none of them were worth feeling a nest of wasps in her belly or seeing her heart sucked out of her chest to spin in midair before her face.
Frostflower understood that the midlands warrior was admirable in her way—brave and unselfish. All this courage and selflessness called into action against a timid woman who had much more cause to fear the warrior’s weapon than the warrior had to fear her sorcery! Frostflower laughed until she bent over, hugging the blanket close to her ribs. When she straightened again, she saw that Coarsecut was laughing with her. So was the watchgirl—giggles mixed with whistles came down from the tower.
Quickshaft still stood in the gateway, looking angry and befuddled, but Coarsecut knocked her spear aside. “You midlands idiot, stop insulting our sorceri, or next time you come up here with a chest wound, we’ll send you on up to them for healing! Come on, sorceress—Shortlashes! Stone that youngster!”
The watchgirl had swung down from her low tower and darted away into the farm, apparently to alert Elvannon’s people. “Then tell ‘em, ‘Welcome!’” Coarsecut shouted after her, meanwhile waving for the sorceress to follow.
Frostflower had much reason for gratitude to Quickshaft. She had hardly dared think she might be taken inside to speak with the priest in his hall. Surely not even Coarsecut would have made such a decision on her own authority had she not been angered by the younger spearwoman. And the surface turmoil Quickshaft caused had helped distract Frostflower from the inner struggle of walking between a farmer’s gates.
“So tell me,” Coarsecut said as they walked, “what kind of troubles did you have in the midlands last summer? Was it you in the ballad, or someone else?”
“I have not heard the ballad.”
“Unh? Well, you probably ought to hear it. If it was you, you’ve got a right to know what the trinket-and-ballad merchants are singing about you, and if it was someone else, maybe it’ll teach you not to go wandering around in those bloody midlands again.”
They were approaching a grove of fruit trees, still bare but beginning to give off the feel of reawakening life. A few farmers’ folk were gathering near the orchard, peering down the wheelpath as if ready to hide among the small, gnarled tree trunks at the first sign of gale or skyfire. As Coarsecut sang in a voice few would have paid to hear, she held her weapon up by the middle of the shaft and twirled it round in circles to reassure them there was no danger. Once, when the spearwoman paused to grope for a line, a young fieldboy finished the verse for her.
Frostflower did not enjoy hearing the harsh song. But although it was disturbing to learn she had gained such a reputation among farmers’ folk, it was also somehow satisfying. Fortunately, the ballad named no one; but the fact that the sorceress in the song had mismatched eyes might as easily work for her future safety in the middle Tanglelands as against it.
On finishing, Coarsecut said with an apologetic grin, “I’d have sung you the priests’-hall version, but I know the barracks one better. Well, Frostflower, was it you or not?”
The sorceress nodded. The warrior stopped in the path and whistled. The fieldboy gave a soft whoop that might have been of either delight or dismay and scuttled back to the other followers. At the murmur which rose among them, Frostflower glanced around.
“Don’t worry,” said Coarsecut, stepping forward again. “That’s pride they’re mumbling, sorceress. And so it really was one of our own sorceri who earned herself a reputation down there?”
“The reputation, it seems, may be greater than the earning.…Raidleader, this ballad is no more than a shadow of the truth. I think whoever made it had no more idea than I had a year ago of what it is to be a farmer’s prisoner—I am surprised a merchant would sell this ballad to priests and farmers’ folk. You could not see the discrepancy between this underground prison room in the ballad, too cramped for sitting, standing, or reclining, finger-deep in muck, and the ways of your own Reverence?”
“Midlands priests,” said Coarsecut. “Not true, you say? Hellbog, if we can’t even trust the ballad-sellers, how can we know what’s going on more than a spear’s throw from our own walls? Of course, come to think of it, why do we want to know? What about the scaffolding—was that true?”
“Yes. That much…was accurate.” Frostflower lowered her gaze, thinking that the balladeer might have been in the crowd of onlookers that day. “But my friends cut me down that same night.”
“Well, the good gods prosper ‘em for that, anyway,” said Coarsecut. She seemed not to notice any incongruity in asking farmers’ gods to bless farmers’ folk for kindness shown to a sorceron.
We have kept aloof too long, thought Frostflower, her face aching with tears. Why did our visits farther than the trading-field stop in the time of Elvannon’s great-grandfather? Was it that they seemed unfriendly, or that we ourselves feared contamination from their beliefs?
“At that, you’re lucky you’re small, Frostflower,” Coarsecut went on. “Hang a big, solid old cow like me up for half a day with a rope beneath the armpits, and my arms would stagnate and rot off afterwards even if some friend cut me down. One reason I’m such an honest bitch. How about the sprunging, then?”
“Yes.” The balladeer had actually softened the details of the rape.
“Rea
lly stripped and didn’t lose your powers after all, hey?” The raidleader chuckled. “That’s the part makes that young midlands cow Quickshaft call it all a lie. She says no sorceron could keep power afterwards.”
“Yes, such as my powers are, I retained them.”
“And you really blasted that midlands priest in the end, hey?” Warriors sometimes spoke of their priests in a way no other farmers’ folk would have dared; but even Coarsecut lowered her voice to a murmur. “If I’d been you, sorceress, I’d have done it sooner!—Gods forgive me.”
“But I did not blast him! The priest’s own silver dagger drew the bolt before I knew I could still guide lightning through air and ground. I…would have saved him, had I known in time.”
“Unh? You’re a better gods’-pet than I am, then, sorceress or not.” Coarsecut touched her left fist perfunctorily to her forehead.
Frostflower imitated the gesture. Once she would have considered it blasphemous, but now she felt only a passing twinge of conscience, less than she had felt at mentioning the farmers’ gods in the formula of greeting. Does corruption grow so quickly and easily? she mused. Why, I have made the sign with more respect than Coarsecut! Aloud, she went on, “Nor did the lightning flash crimson and blue, with the sound of devils’ flutes instead of thunder, nor did it loop along the ground like a fiery snake.”
“No? Just plain lightning bolts, hey? Well, plenty to turn the battle for you, at that.…You know, sorceress, old Featherfingers—the farmerlings’ nurse, she came along with Lady Coarvedda—says her grandfather used to tell about a time when his mother’s priest was raided—I guess the land’s better in those western foothills—and a couple of their sorceri came down from the mountains and helped defend the farm.”
Frostflower shook her head. She had never heard of such a thing. Nevertheless, if it were to save a kindly disposed priest like Elvannon from losing his farm…“If his Reverence should ever be threatened,” said Frostflower, “you will send to tell us?”
Frostflower and Windbourne (Frostflower & Thorn) Page 2
