Chapter 8 The Painted Girl
The elders of the village kindly received them. They were given food and a place to sleep, and no questions until they wished to answer. They repaid their hosts with tumbling and juggling of dirks. Aeriel told the village children tales, forgetting all else, for a little while, in that dreamy serenity. It seemed they might linger as long as they liked.
Yet gradually, as Aeriel felt her strength returning, the peace and contentment of that Zambulean village trickled away. The maidens' rime came back to her. Time began to hang heavy. Orm beckoned. Aeriel knew she must be on her way again.
One hour she arose from where she sat. Her gargoyle lay dozing beside her staff. She gathered her things and whistled to Greyling. On the shady side of the village square, villagers stood grinding nutmegs into flour. Galnor and Nat sat nearby, juggling uncracked nuts. Aeriel went to them. She had put her traveling cloak on, slung her pack from one shoulder.
"I must go," she said. "I have stayed too long. " The daymonth was already a quarter gone.
Nat looked up, stopped juggling. "Where will you go?"
"Westward, toward Terrain. "
"You have kith there?"
Aeriel shook her head, refused to dwell on it. "I have no kith. Will you stay here?"
Galnor answered. "I have people to northward, my grandmother's kith. Nat and I will stay here a little, then go. "
Aeriel bent and kissed him, on the cheek, as was the custom at parting in Terrain, then Nat. "Good journey, then. "
But as she made to turn away, Nat pressed something into her hand. "Take this," she said.
Aeriel looked down, saw in her hand Nat's ivory-handled dirk. "I can't," she began, but the blue-skinned girl would not take it back.
"I took it off one of the Arlish bandits in Talis," she said. "He said he would give me a silver coin if I juggled a dozen spoons at once. I did, but he only laughed and gave me nothing. So I took it. But it is too large for my hand. It might fit yours. " Aeriel put it carefully away. She kissed the blue-skinned girl again, then went to find the elders of the village, to take her leave of them before she set out on the road.
She wandered westward across Zam-bul. Though the countryside was mountainous still, the hillcrests rose much lower than the high steeps of Bern. Sometimes she performed in exchange for food: tasteless, smooth beancheese, persimmons, coppery and tart, or coarse, sweet cakes of oakapple flour.
She passed rocky meadows of nibbling goats. Sometimes she saw beaters harvesting wild grain, or berry pickers, or goosegirls tending their flocks. Gleaners gathered deadwood from the holts. But nowhere did she pass any running streams.
The people seemed to draw all their water from wells. Watersellers stood at crossroads, offering dippers to travelers, for a price. Aeriel had to sing for drink as well as food.
Everywhere she stopped, Aeriel told her tales. The heron sat wooden upon her staff. The little dustshrimp ran along her arms when she played the bandolyn, to the villagers'
delight. They called the gargoyle her great grey dog.
The land continued very poor and dry, but nowhere ravaged, as had been the haunt woods of Bern. Then one hour when the daymonth was nearly three-quarters gone, she came upon a blackened hillside, the twigs of the bushes brittle and curled. The whole place smelled scorched.
Aeriel stood a moment, gazing at it. The gargoyle whined, pacing restlessly. Aeriel quieted it, then continued down the road and across the narrow vale. She asked a boy tending kid-goats on the opposite hillside what had caused the damage, and he, looking up from the wooden flute he was piping, shrugged.
"Angel slept there a few daymonths past. "
Aeriel felt a coldness glide along her back. "The darkangel of Bern ranges so far?"
But the boy shook his head. "Not Bern's. Our own. "
Aeriel shook her head, not understanding. "There is a darkangel on Zambul?" The boy nodded, indifferently. "But your land is fair," said Aeriel. "No blight twists the trees___"
The goatherd glanced across the vale. "There's blight. "
"But the whole heart of Bern - near half I saw - was blighted because of their darkangel. "
The boy laughed then, scornfully. "That's because theirs lies only in one spot, daymonth on daymonth, year after year. Lets his poison gather and spread. There's a stupid darkangel. Spoils his own hunting grounds. "
Aeriel began to speak, but the boy was looking off.
"Hardly anyone but thieves left in Bern now because of it. The babes die, they say, and the children die. And before another sixty years, there'll be no one left in Bern at all. "
"But," Aeriel started, "if you, too, have an ica-rus, how is it Zambul remains. . . ?"
"Whole?" the boy asked her. "Hale? Not half so whole or hale as it was before he came.
Fifty years he's been here. But he never lies in the same place twice - do you see? The taint can't take hold. "
The boy sat fingering his flute, not looking at her.
"And if the spot where he settles is blighted? In a year or two years, it begins to come back. Meantime we keep our kine away; none of us go there. So we don't die, as they do in Bern, or miscarry. "
Aeriel felt lost, too astonished to speak. She had thought Zambul was clean of the witch's sons. The gargoyle howled suddenly, and the boy's kids upon the hill started and bunched.
"Odds, hold your dog!" the goatherd cried.
Aeriel quieted the gargoyle, turned back to the boy. He had settled into his place again.
The kids nibbled at their scrub.
"But a darkangel must hunt," she said at last. "None of the people I have met here seem to move in fear or speak with loathing of the night. No walls surround the villages; no bolts are on the doors - how can your people feel safe?"
"Ah," the boy smiled, blowing a few sweet, shrill notes on his pipe. "It is because we treat with our darkangel. "
Aeriel knelt below him on the rough hillside. "How do you mean?"
"Wherever he has settled to wait out the day, the people thereabouts know it from the shriveling of the trees - and the stink of rot. So they cast lots, by household, and whatever house draws the bad lot must give one of its own to the vampyre by nightshade. Simple. "
Aeriel felt her throat closing. A little breeze traced against her cheek, but her chest was too tight to take any in. Greyling against her began to growl. She shook it to be still.
"The people of Zambul give up those of their households so willingly?" she asked.
The boy shrugged. "Some willingly, some not. What matter, as long as the angel leaves?
He has his fill and flies away, doesn't trouble the same place again for years. "
Aeriel shook her head. She felt hollow, and realized she had not eaten in a half dozen hours. "Who goes to the darkangel?" she asked the boy.
"Daughters," the goatherd told her, "sons. Newborn babes or criminals, strangers. No sick or moribund. No old people unless they are vigorous. But mostly the ones that fall to the icarus are slaves. "
Aeriel shook her head again, trying to quell the panic which rose within her. "Slaves? I have seen no slaves in Zambul. "
The boy looked up from his flute. "Haven't you? In all the towns you've played in? Half us common folk are debt-bound to the high ones. Have to buy water, don't we? And the rich ones own the wells. They're the ones with money to buy real slaves, too - rose-skinned ones out of Rani, or goldenskins of Avaric, or blue ones out of Bern. Whites ones, too, I suppose," he said suddenly, eyeing Aeriel again. "Where is it you are from?"
"Terrain," she said.
He laughed, tossing the hair out of his eyes. It lay yellow against his light green skin.
"Terrain," he said. "Then you know of slaves. "
Aeriel stood up. "Go on," she said. "You were telling me about the high ones and their slaves. "
"And the lots," the boy answered, smiling. "The bad ones seem to fall mostly to the r
ich, don't they? - I don't say how. What's it to them? They grumble, true, but they don't give up their daughters or sons, or even their good servants, do they? Just tie the surliest young oddskin to a tree near the blight where the angel lies, and go home again, leave that one to the dark. "
The light, dry wind brought the stench of the blasted hillside back for a moment then.
Aeriel felt dizzy. Her stomach clenched. She raised the hood of her traveling cloak against the sun.
The goatherd gave a sudden cry, started to his feet, staring at her. Aeriel glanced at herself, then back at the boy, who now cast his gaze back and forth over the hillside as if searching for something. He seemed to be looking straight through her.
Aeriel turned away and started down the slope. She did not understand what he was doing, and did not care. The gargoyle trotted after her. She heard the goatherd behind her cry out, "Sorceress!" and glancing back, she saw him hurriedly shooing his kid-goats uphill and away.
She found rosepears growing wild along the roadside farther on and filled the inner pocket of her robe with them, but their taste cloyed, noisome in her mouth. She ate them anyway. The dustshrimp took tidbits. Nothing was wrong with the fruit.
Aeriel sang for her supper in the next village she came to and had enough coin left to buy a small water flask, but she did not stay.
"If they do not scruple to give up their slaves to the dark," she thought, "how much easier simply to hand over some passing stranger?"
She traveled on, often raising the hood of her cloak. She played at bandolyn for her food and drink, but never again slept in any village. She passed more blighted hillsides. They seemed to come more closely together after a time, so that when Solstar hung low, perhaps three hours from setting, she found herself murmuring,
"I thought the boy said this darkangel never roosts long in one place - but that blasted heath we just skirted makes the third such we have passed in two hours' walking. "
She stroked the gargoyle's mangy fur, gazed off into the trees. They were walking along a wooded stretch.
"Well perhaps it does not like the fare it has received hereabouts, and so stays to extort better - "
Before she had even finished her words, she heard a creaking of laughter like a rusted hinge. Looking up, surprised, she saw an old woman standing just off the road, bent nearly double beneath a load of sticks.
"Well, maid," she called, "you have murmured truer than perhaps you know. All these lands belong to the majis. The bad lot fell to him three daymonths gone. "
Aeriel halted. "Did he refuse?"
"Refuse?" the old woman cried. "Pah. Never. Tried and tried, three times now going on four, to feed the winged fiend - only the angel is not satisfied. "
"Why is that?"
The bent woman heaved the bundle of sticks from her back and straightened a bit. "Have you any water about you, maid? Ah, how the gathering does make one dry. "
Aeriel handed her her flask, and the other drank greedily, then wiped her mouth upon her sleeve and handed the empty vessel back to Aeriel. She tugged peevishly at her bundle, as though it had suddenly become too heavy to lift.
"Don't trouble yourself," said Aeriel, balancing the load upon her hip. "Will you give me the tale?"
The gatherer's lined face cracked once more into a smile. "My cottage lies this way," she said. "I might as well talk upon the way as not. Come along. "
She hobbled off, and Aeriel followed. The gargoyle roamed through the trees ahead.
"It is almost four daymonths now since the birdman last took a soul - but that is not because the majis has failed. Three dawns running his people, returning to the spot, have found the silk cords cut and the offering gone.
"The birdman will not fly. Each daybreak, he settles in a new quarter of the majis' lands.
The majis is in a rage. It has never been heard of before, for the angel to spurn offerings that were healthy and young. The birdpriests say their god is displeased. The majis must offer someone nearer his heart - a different sort of sacrifice. "
"Priests," whispered Aeriel. "They have made a god of this icarus?"
The old woman shrugged. "When I was a young, we prayed to the Old Ones, but they never come into the world anymore. Shut away in their cities, while the world winds down. Pity they did not build it to last. " The gatherer sighed. "I think they must all be dead by now. "
Aeriel protested. "Ravenna is not dead. She lives - she must live. She promised to return. "
The other clicked her tongue against her teeth. "Our air bleeds off into the void. Rains do not fall; trade dwindles. News hardly moves between the kingdoms anymore. The majises rule and the rest of us slave to the waterdebt. " She clicked her tongue again. "I think Ravenna is overdue. "
Aeriel said nothing. The old gatherer sighed and shook her head.
"Even the spotted panther, Samalon. The last good god we had. "
"Samalon," said Aeriel. "Do you speak of Zambulon, the warden of this land?"
The old woman shook her head again. "I know nothing of that. I was just a girl. She is gone. A new god is on Zambul now, and his priests. " She began to laugh again suddenly, like a cartwheel squeaking. "Ah, the birdpriests say they know their god, but they are guessing. They know less in this matter of the majis than even I. "
"How so?" Aeriel shifted the bundle upon her hip. The twigs pricked her.
"Well," the old woman said, "there was a girl. I came upon her in the woods not two daymonths past, when my gathering kept me late abroad past Solset. She seemed quite breathless with running and with weeping, her wrists all bruised as though they had been bound. My hut was not far. I took her there, but she would not stay, she was in such fear.
"She told me she was a slave in the majis' house, had been intended for the darkangel, but a great monster had come out of the woods, chewed through her bindings and set her free.
I thought her mad. She ran away then, and would not come back to my calling.
"I went into my hut after, and barred the door. And sitting alone all fortnight, I remembered me how I had heard of the majis' offering the day-month before, but the angel spurned the gift. And I began to wonder then if perhaps it was this grey winged creature the girl had spoken of that had freed both offerings, not the angel's scorn. "
The old woman walked on a little while in silence then, but presently she resumed.
"Next daymonth, at my gathering, I came upon strange tracks in the woods - great pawprints like none I had ever seen before, and two huge feathers, all grey and mitey: far bigger than any bird's should be. And once I heard strange wauling, but it put me in such dread I left my bundle on the ground and went the other way as quickly as I might.
"In the late afternoon of the same daymonth, I ran into a traveler, who told me the majis'
offering had again been scorned, the vampyre's angry screams heard. He still roosted near, so the majis would have to offer yet a third time by evening if he did not wish to lose more land to blight.
"That fortnight, to be sure, I was home long before Solset, and barred my door. The next morning, just at daybreak, I went to a neighbor of mine to get the news, and she told me the strangest thing.
"She said a boy had run past her daughter's house not two hours into the night and, falling, had entangled himself in the vines making her fence. She went out with a torch to see what was the matter, but the boy only wailed and thrashed.
"She saw about one of his wrists a length of thick blue cord that had been chewed at - not cut, but damp and chewed. And the boy's clothes were not common flox, but tram, that silkier stuff they wear in great houses, even the servants.
"She went back into the house to get a hack to cut him loose, for she feared in his thrashing he would break an arm. But when she came out again, he had gotten free somehow and gone.
"So I told my neighbor what had befallen me two fortnights ago, and what I thought.
Then I went back
to my gathering, for I was late about my task that day, and slow as well, for I was deep in thought. Just put those down on the doorstep, my girl. I will put them where I want them in a bit. "
They had reached the old gatherer's cottage. Aeriel dropped the bundle where the other had bade, but though the woman offered food and a place to sleep, Aeriel would not stay.
She was desperate to be out of Zambul now, and she had no idea how far off lay the border of Terrain.
At length the old dame refilled her water flask and gave her a bran cake in thanks. Aeriel whistled the greyling to her side as she stepped from the trees onto the path once more.
The dust-shrimp nibbled its crumb of bran.
The road wound on through a long, broad valley, and presently the woods on either side fell away. The road forked, and Aeriel took the path that began to rise. Below her she caught glimpses of a town-She had no time to study it, for from around a bend ahead, she caught sound of voices and the tramp of feet. The air was very still, without a hint of wind. Aeriel had raised the hood of her traveling cloak to shield her eyes from the low sun's glare.
Around the bend came a small party of officials and soldiers. Aeriel stood off to let them pass. Not one of them so much as glanced at her. Dust rose behind them in a choking cloud. The foremost official was muttering seemingly more to himself than to the woman and man in white robes who flanked him.
"My best orchard - ruined, along with two fields and a meadow in four daymonths. I cannot afford it and the people up in arms. If the fiend does not take that to his heart" -
the man gave a slight jerk of his head over one shoulder, back up the road - "I cannot answer for what may come. "
"The angel," one of the white-robed people corrected gently. "The angel, majis. "
Aeriel caught no more of what they said, but she had noticed two things as the party passed by: that the priests wore collars of black feathers, and that the majis toyed nervously with something in both hands as he walked. She caught only a glimpse of it, a small metal key.
Aeriel stood gazing after the retreating figures, but the gargoyle pulled free of her suddenly and bounded up the road. Aeriel whistled, but the grey beast would not come back. With an effort, she started after it. The road began to climb rapidly.
Rounding a turn, she came upon an orchard suddenly, all blighted and spoiled, the leaves lying crisp upon the ground, the fruit shriveled, black upon the boughs. Solstar, very low in the east, cast long black shade. Aeriel heard screaming, then sobs.
The gargoyle dashed away through the bars of darkness and light. Aeriel began to follow, and nearly stumbled over a girl. She was dressed in fine garments; bangles upon her ankles gleamed. Her head and face were veiled but for the eyes. All her skin had been painted black, save little dots and swirls where the pale showed through.
It was she who had screamed. She was panting now, straining hard against a chain that held her to a tree. The metal of the shackles gashed her wrists. The bark of the trunk flaked away where the chain chafed it.
Aeriel threw back the hood of her traveling cloak and went toward her. The girl started, staring, shrank from her with a cry, then lost her footing in the leaves. She fell heavily, then struggled awkwardly to one knee.
"Spirit," the painted girl gasped at last, sinking again. Behind the tree, the chain had slipped: she could not rise. "Spirit, for the love of the old gods, help me. I must get free before Solstar sets. "
She began to struggle again. Aeriel cast off her pack, set down her staff and knelt. She took the chain between her hands and stared at it.
"I am no spirit," she said. "Only a traveler. I passed your father upon the road. "
The painted girl twisted her arms, trying to make her hands small enough to pass through the bands. "He is not my father," she spat. "I am a slave in his house. Can you free me?"
Her voice grew desperate again. "Oh, the Beast, Savingbeast - someone must have told him, or he would not have used a chain!"
Aeriel tugged with all her strength, then rested a moment and tugged again. "What do you know of a beast?"
"Someone told me the village talk, that a monster had come into Zambul to spoil the Bird's hunting. It would set me free, they said - but what beast can bite through chain?"
Aeriel pulled the ivory dirk from her robe. She pried at one of the links, then sawed at it.
The blade's tip snapped. Aeriel threw the dirk aside. "The links are welded shut," she said.
"Gods help me; gods help me," the painted girl sobbed. She cried out suddenly. "Even now - he wakes!"
Aeriel whirled, and abruptly, she saw. In the heart of the grove, thirty paces distant, stood a massive tree. Upon one branch crouched something dark.
It looked like a bundle of black velvet, as tall as Aeriel and nearly as great around. The blighted tree looked almost grey in comparison, for this thing threw back none of white Solstar's light. It was itself completely shadow. Not even heaven was so dark.
It was the black of a darkangel's wings. Aeriel felt the blood shrinking beneath her skin.
The painted girl tore at her chains. The folded wings upon the low tree limb were stirring.
"He wakes! He wakes!" the painted girl cried. Solstar behind them was half set away.
The bundle shuddered, paused, then stirred again. Layers of darkness unfolded from it like the petals of a huge night-blooming flower. The painted girl thrust her wrist into Aeriel's grasp.
"Break my hand," she cried. "Force it through. "
Aeriel found herself powerless to move. The unfolding of those wings fascinated her.
Two of the wings now were fully extended. Another pair poised half unfurled.
The darkangel was turned away - Aeriel realized that with a start. It was its back she watched, its face still hidden from the light. She came aware of someone's hands upon her. The painted girl had said something.
Aeriel shook her head dully, half turned to her. "Even broken, your hand would not pass through. "
"Cut it off, then!" screamed the girl.
Half the darkangel's wings were open now, and the others beginning to unfold. The girl was groping desperately for something among the leaves. Aeriel realized suddenly, like the lifting of a spell, in only a few minutes more Solstar would be set.
She turned, saw the painted girl snatching the dagger up, laying her wrist upon the ground and putting the broken blade to it. Aeriel stooped and caught her hand. "Hold,"
she told her. "I have thought of a way.
"Heron," she hissed, catching her staff. "Bird-on-a-Stick. Awake!"
The heron shivered, let out an outraged squawk, became flesh. "What is the matter?" she cried. "Why are you addressing me by ridiculous names?"
The white bird clutched the head of the staff in her toes, flapping for balance. Aeriel thrust her closer to the shackle about the painted girl's wrist.
"Can you pick a lock?" said Aeriel. "You unbarred the gate for us in Talis. Can you open that lock?"
The painted girl stared at the heron, her sobs choked into breathless gasps. The heron eyed the shackle's keyhole, began to tap it with her bill. The girl shrieked suddenly.
"He stands!"
Aeriel started, turned.
"Hold me steady," the heron snapped.
The vampyre stood upon the black branch now, its back still to the vanishing sun. The heron put her eye to the keyhole. The stink of rotten matter grew smothering. The icarus fanned and flexed its pinions. Aeriel wondered wildly where her gargoyle had gone, and where was the strange beast the old gatherer had spoken of?
Solstar sank lower, barely a fingernail above the hills. Oceanus peered, pale blue through the curled, black trees. She heard a scratching sound. The staff tipped in her hands. She saw the heron giving her neck an odd, lunging twist. The tip of her beak in the keyhole turned. The painted girl tore the shackle from her wrist.
Solstar set. The sky above turned
black as nothing. The orchard around them was drenched in shade. The vampyre upon the far tree turned, lit now with the ghostlight of Oceanus and the stars. Aeriel had only one glimpse of pale garments on a young man's form, a face savage with hunger, and blank, colorless eyes.
The painted girl screamed, bolted from Aeriel. Aeriel wheeled to follow, but the vampyre was already flying. The wind of its wings flattened her garments against her, billowed her hair. Aeriel threw herself flat to the ground, hoping it must miss her, wheel around for another try.
Even as she did so, the rhythm of its wings changed, steadied. It hovered now, above her in the air. Aeriel scrambled to her knees, caught up her staff. The icarus stooped. Aeriel swung - her staff struck nothing, for the witch's son had drawn back suddenly.
A form, two forms had leapt out of the grove. They sprang over Aeriel, Greyling clamping the darkangel's forearm in its teeth. The other beast, grey like the first, seized the vampyre's leg in its taloned paws. Two pairs of skinny wings thrashed upon its shoulders. A collar of brass encircled its throat.
"Catwing," gasped Aeriel. "Gargoyle, Cat-wing!"
The winged beast sank stump teeth into the vampyre's leg. The icarus screamed, inhumanly shrill, and shook its attackers off as though they were nothing. Greyling fell, but the winged beast recovered in the air, gaunt pinions straining. It seized one of the darkangel's wings.
Aeriel held to her side, gasping for breath. Her fall had knocked the wind from her.
Nearby, the greyling rolled, gibbering, gathered its fantastically bony limbs and sprang.
Someone was pulling at her. Aeriel staggered to her feet.
"Fly, fly!" the painted girl shouted.
Aeriel sprinted away with her into the trees. Cat snarls, yelping and birdlike screams rose in the distance behind them. The girl dragged her till Aeriel regained her stride, but then it was the girl who clung to Aeriel, gasping and stumbling.
They left the orchard suddenly, burst onto open ground. Earthlight washed around them, pale, pale blue. The stench of blight faded. Aeriel gulped the clean air. Her staff felt lighter suddenly. She stared at it, realized she had been carrying it, her pack as well. The heron launched off into the air, skimming ahead of them downslope, toward another vale.
"Follow," she cried. "I can find the best path," and sailed low, whiter than wood smoke in the pale earthshine.
A Gathering of Gargoyles Page 8
