by Diana Rivers
Several guardsmen swept round the corner at us as we guided our horses out of their way. I thought they might rush right past us. Indeed, they almost did so, when their leader called for a halt and for a torch to be lit.
He held it up to examine us. I squinted and cast my eyes down in the sudden bright light. “Well, what have we here?” he said, thrusting the torch so close I could feel its heat. “These two look to be local farm boys. Maybe they have some useful knowledge.” He turned to Pell. “Well, boy, we are hunting star-brats for the Zarn and hear there is a whole nest of them in some part of the Twisted Forest, somewhere near here if word be true. What can you tell us?”
Pell bobbed her head several times as if bowing, keeping her eyes averted as she spoke. She appeared to be painfully aware of her low station, as well as dazed and confused by this display of magnificence before her. “Well, Sir, yes, Sir, if I may speak, Sir,” she stammered with apparent difficulty, “I have heard such talk at the market, though I myself, of course, have never seen any of these creatures. It is said they have their lair high up in the hills near the ever-burning grotto, but none has the courage to go there. There are many dangers in that part of the forest.” She pointed in the opposite way from her shelter.
When the leader moved away it was my hope to see them all sweep off down the road that direction, but after a few minutes of hurried consultation with the others he turned back to us. I thought we were surely outsmarted when he said, “Since you seem to know so much, perhaps you can guide us there yourselves.”
Pell began to shake. “Oh, no Sir, please, Sir,” she said, almost groveling. “I have only heard rumors. I do not know the way. We never venture into that part of the forest. It is said that the trees there feed on flesh, even on men and horses, and that the paths lead into each other like a maze so that one cannot find a way to leave. God’s truth, good Sirs.”
“God’s truth, eh? If all die there, then who has lived to bring back these stories, and how can these star-brats survive there?
“They have unnatural powers, Sir. Some even say they are in league with the forest itself.”
“I think you are either lazy or afraid and so have just spewed out this mouthful of lies to us. Turn your horse around, boy, and show us the way to this flaming grotto you speak of.”
Pell began to blubber and stammer as if in terror, “Please, Sir, please do not make us go. It is said the ground there is unsteady and bubbles underfoot. It will mean our sure death and yours as well. Please let us pass, Sir, for already we are late for our work and our master will be very angry.”
The first man said sharply, “I think I smell some treason to the Zarn in this.” He rode forward as if to lay hold of Pell. I tensed in readiness, but another rode forward to block his way. “Lazy or lying or not, they are only two superstitious fools. They might well be more hindrance than help, especially mounted on those farm ponies that will wind much sooner than our sturdy horses.”
Just as I was feeling some hope from those words, one of them turned to me and said with malice, “And you, boy, what do you know of this? Are you always so silent? Are you voiceless or witless or what?”
“I...I...,” I stammered as my voice choked up and my face turned red. I could feel Pell in my head saying over and over stay calm, play dumb saying it soothingly as one calms or gentles a frightened animal. I slowed my breathing and let my eyes go out of focus, staring at the ground. I allowed my fear and my struggle with it to show. “I am not very bright, Sir,” I managed to mumble at last. “My cousin here is the one with the wits. He always speaks for us both. At home they tell me to be quiet when we go out, and that he will be smart enough for both of us. Excuse me, Sir. I am talking out of turn, Sir. They will be angry...now I have...” After that I let confusion and embarrassment overcome me altogether, not difficult to do as I lapsed back into speechlessness.
The men began to talk and laugh among themselves. Pointing at Pell, one of them said, “So this the wit of the pair? The talking brain?” The others all thought this a great joke as I had hoped they would. They seemed ready to let us go, seeing we were of so little use, when another of them said, “They have not a brain between the two of them. I wonder if they are really human. Perhaps they are only walking clay, mud-boys. I wonder if they would bleed on a sword point.” With a grin, he made as if to draw his sword.
Pell cringed visibly and said in a pleading, supplicating way, “Oh please Sir, permit us to go on. We will be beaten for being tardy and fined besides. We were to be there at dawn for the planting and now we are already late. Besides, it’s not safe to linger on this part of the road.”
I was tensed again, ready for anything, when one of the others called out, “Come, Thoron, let them be. There is nothing of worth to be gotten here. We are wasting time with these dimwits. You may as well ask questions of a horse or a pig.”
Bowing and muttering her thanks repeatedly, Pell backed up her horse to clear the road, with me beside her. As the guards spun around to leave, I saw the flash of Pell’s knife just for an instant, like the flash of light on water. Then it was gone and she thrust her hand in the pouch of her loose overshirt.
As we watched them ride off, she muttered, “Careless and stupid, unbelievably stupid to have let them come on us unawares. My old master would be ashamed of me. He would no doubt have threatened to cut off my fingers for such carelessness, or better yet, my useless ears. I thought at any moment we would be unmasked, or worse.”
“Pell, how could you have let that happen?” I asked reproachfully.
“How could you?” she asked back instantly. She had a funny little smile on her face.
It took a moment for the import of her question to sink in. “You knew?” She gave a slight nod. “It was a whole troop of them. After all, they did not drop from the sky on silent wings.”
“But that was so dangerous. How could you...? Why did you...?”
She shrugged, turning her hand palm up. “You said you wanted experience. Better to get it with both of us to deal with them than with you alone and surrounded. And now perhaps you will stay awake on the trail and not always trust your life to me. Besides, it was useful. We have learned far more from them then they have from us. They search for us too close to home. The time has come. Soon we will need to move.”
I was shivering, chilled with fear, but Pell slapped me playfully on the knee. “You did very well as my idiot cousin, very well indeed. It is a good part for you, full of possibilities. We should work on that some more.” They had hardly ridden off, and already she was jesting.
“Can we go now, Pell, or do we wait here for their return?”
“Let us ride up to that rise and see which way they go. Then I would be only too happy to ride fast for home.”
As we rode off, my fear dissipated. I thought of their smirking faces. Anger, that other wonderful new feeling, flared up in me. “Does it not hurt your pride to grovel and whine and plead before them?”
“No, not at all. I enjoy the game. I take pleasure in their contempt and their arrogance. It only sweetens the purse.”
“The what?”
She tapped her pouch, saying, “Later, when we are safe. That is the dessert. I trust you will have no scruples about it this time.” We had reached the high point in the road. Pell turned to watch their dust. “They are not turning off into the woods this time, but very soon, with more men and more pressure to find us, they will begin to do so. Now it is time to be off this road before that man of wits chances to discover his missing purse.”
We slipped off the road into one of Pell’s many little paths. As we rode home through the brightening dawn, I was so awake and alert for every sign that my ears ached from listening and my eyes burned from not blinking. The back of my neck prickled with fear, as if any at moment a hand might land there. At last, when there was a wide enough space, I rode up next to Pell.
“Pell, are you never afraid at all?”
“All the time, Tazzi. After all, I am no
t the one who rides along half asleep. But I have lived with it longer than you have and learned how to use it. Fear is not an enemy. It is a warning of danger, a signal. It is, in fact, a friend to keep you safe in a dangerous world. But it is a very powerful friend. You must keep it at your side as a friend, not let it ride you or drive you or take control. It will try. It is a friend that will test you often.
“You know how cats use their whiskers and snakes flick their tongues to tell them what is out there in the world? You must grow whiskers of fear at the nape of your neck where your eyes cannot be, and all up and down your back. Then the guardsmen cannot ride up on you that way. In truth, I think you left me to watch for us both, eh? I am sharp, but I am only human, Tazzi. You must learn to be your own eyes no matter who you ride with.”
I shivered again. I could not imagine making friends with that terrible new feeling that clenched my stomach and froze my will and drove me to mindless flight.
When we came in, Alyeeta and Maireth were already awake. Zenoria and Jhemar were there with them. They all looked up at us expectantly. Pell shook her head and tossed the purse on the table. I thought she would start telling our tale. Instead, she drew Jhemar aside. I heard her say, “Fastfire! They are using fastfire against us. We must find something that stops it.”
Jhemar was shaking her head with a very troubled look on her face. “Not much chance of that, Pell. Others have surely tried it before us.”
“Tell me, then, must we just let them go on burning us alive? Is that all we can do?” Pell was shouting now.
Jhemar went on shaking her head, looking down at the ground as if lost in thought. Suddenly she looked up again and grabbed Pell’s arm. “Wait! I remember playing with permegeant as a child. Once I put out our hearthfire with my little games. I gained myself a lot of trouble for it, I can tell you that. Perhaps with something added it could be of use to us in this.”
“Permegeant, eh? Then we must find some source of fastfire to work with. I wonder if...”
“Not possible! No one would do that for us.”
“The Wanderers, perhaps...?”
“The Wanderers least of all,” Jhemar said with finality.
Their voices lowered then, and so the rest was lost to me. As they were deep in conversation, it was left to me to recount the night’s happening. Zenoria picked up the purse and tossed it from hand to hand. The coins made a sort of music. Maireth was watching me intently. I could see fear and hatred flash back and forth across her face as I spoke of the guards. At the end of my telling, she said grimly, “Perhaps they were the same ones.”
***
The next night we had hardly gotten ourselves stationed when I sensed something on the road. Pell’s hoot was answered by another. Soon I heard the muffled sound of hooves that had been wrapped in rags and a voice whispering, “Pell, Pell.”
Pell made an answering hoot, and in an instant we were both out of our trees. There were four others besides Renaise, but we took no time for names. “We must go quickly,” Renaise said in a hoarse whisper. “We are so late because we have been trying to evade pursuit.”
“We met them on the road last night not far from here,” Pell whispered back. Marshlegs and Torvir slipped out of the woods to join us. As soon as we mounted, Pell led us off into the trees. It was a strange, silent ride. I could feel the fear of the others thick and heavy around me. When we reached the shelter, only Maireth was awake, with the lamp lit. She was sitting up against the wall. As we came in she drew the blanket up, almost covering her face. Her eyes above it stared out defiantly.
Renaise stopped in mid-step. “Who is that?” she asked suspiciously.
Maireth made no answer, but Pell spoke for her. “She is one of us. They tried to burn her to death in a barn. Her name is Maireth.”
I could make out the still forms of Jhemar and Zenoria sleeping in each other’s arms at the far edge of the shelter, but could not see Alyeeta. Suddenly Renaise sucked in her breath in fear and jumped back. A strange figure stepped out of the dark, a wild looking woman with black hair like a tangle of snakes and her eyes full of shadows.
Chapter Eleven
Alyeeta! Alyeeta! How to explain this Witch who was still very much a woman? This woman with the powers of a Witch? How to speak of my time with her, more demanding and intense even than my time with Pell, gentler and yet more brutal, time that stripped me down and turned me inside out, humbled me and gave me back to myself full of pride and power. Alyeeta, who taught me what I had refused to learn and made me glad of it and taught me much, much more besides.
Pell and Alyeeta—they sat up half the night arguing over me. I heard Pell say, “I thought to train her to be my second here. She has just begun to be of some use, and now you want to snatch her from me. And for what? For nothing! For nonsense! The shielding from pain, that I can understand, that is useful, though I think you could do that here in a day or so without taking her away. After all, there is much else she needs to learn here of mapping and tracking and woodcraft. She can hardly find her way through the woods by herself yet. But this reading and writing—of what use is that to our survival? What do we need with it?”
“I see that what you yourself do not already know is of no worth to you,” Alyeeta answered sharply. “Such is the ignorance and the arrogance of youth. There is so much more she can learn. She is too valuable to the future to be shut up here and wasted in this way.”
“And what future will there be if we cannot save ourselves now?”
“And what will that future be worth if you blight it now in your mindless impatience? I have not that much longer to live and a whole convent’s worth of knowledge to pass on, knowledge that you and your daughters and your daughters’ daughters will need in that future, knowledge that I cannot even write down to give you because none of you ignorant girls can read, as well as books and more books that are closed to you and so will be lost to the future. Later may be too late. I too have little time.” Alyeeta had a strange kind of hunger gnawing in her voice.
“Tazzi belongs here,” Pell answered, sounding both angry and frightened. “I found her and saved her. What right do you have to take her away from me? Besides, she does not want to learn this scribbling of yours and has already told you so.”
I felt ripped apart in this conflict and at last jumped up, shouting, “Stop! Enough! I will not have you fighting over me as if I were some trophy from the spring games that you each think yourselves entitled to take home.”
They both looked at me in amazement, then looked at each other and started to laugh, surprised and amused that the trophy had come alive and was speaking on its own.
Others in the shelter were muttering and grumbling in their sleep. Those two may have gone on the rest of the night with their argument, for all I knew. It did not cross my mind to speak for myself and so settle it all. Instead, I dragged my mat and blanket out into the woods, far enough away not to hear them. Even the Twisted Forest with the wind hissing through those unnatural branches was preferable to the grating of their voices. Even the sounds of owls and bats gave me more comfort. By morning, when I came back, it had all been decided. I was to ride away with Alyeeta.
“But who will care for Maireth?” I asked with concern.
“Renaise’s cousin Amelia,” Alyeeta told me, making it clear by her tone that everything had already been decided. “She was also the healer in her village and is glad to be of help here. I have shown her what needs doing. Besides, Maireth is out of danger and beginning to mend.” In this way was my fate decided.
I went to gather my few belongings, thinking as I did so that I had hardly met this Amelia and knew nothing of her healing skills. The rest of Renaise’s companions I met hurriedly just before Alyeeta rushed me out. She seemed to be afraid that Pell would change her mind.
As we left, Pell tried to draw Alyeeta a map of the way back. Alyeeta gave a snort of contempt or amusement. “No need for that. Even if I were taken from there with my eyes bound over I could
find my way home again. When the time comes that Alyeeta cannot find her own place in the world, then that is a sure sign to dig her grave, for then she is truly dead.”
Pell shrugged and turned to me. She pressed on me food and clothes and a pack for carrying them. In the doorway she gave me a rough kiss. When I was mounted, she slapped my leg and said, “Learn well everything you can, Tazzi. She is right that you can be more useful that way, and you were right that she can help us.”
Pell was my lover, yet she sent me off with no more than this, no mention of when we would meet again, no endearment, no words of missing me. It was clear she had no love for me, only for my usefulness, and so had bargained me off to a Witch. Well, she had warned me. For her part she had been honest. And still I had not been prepared for such coldness. I felt the pain of it deep between my legs and the blade of it in my heart. I missed Kara again as if the wound of that loss were fresh made. My only consolation was that Renaise was lying safe asleep in the shelter. She was not to be some terrible weight of guilt and fear always to be carried in my heart. Pell, of course, took no notice of my turmoil. She was already busy making plans with Zenoria for the care of the horses.
Jhemar was to ride with us to learn the way. At the very last moment, just as we were turning to leave, Maireth called out for us to wait. I thought her still sleeping and had not wanted to wake her. She came stumbling out of the shelter, leaning heavily on a stick, the first time I had seen her walk. With her painful, awkward gait she came to stand directly before me. “I know I have seemed ungrateful, but now I want to thank you before you leave, though of course there is really no way to thank you enough for all your care.” She looked me in the eyes for a long moment, then pressed something cool into my hand. Without another word to me she turned to Alyeeta and lifted Alyeeta’s hands from the reins, though she had to lean against the horse to do so. Holding the Witch’s hands in her still-bandaged ones, she kissed them both, saying, “Healing hands, hands of the Goddess.” Alyeeta’s eyes opened wide with surprise at this. With those words Maireth turned and hobbled back into the shelter, still with the aid of her stick. Alyeeta and I stared at each other in amazement. I knew the pain that little foray had cost her, as I could feel it’s echoes in my own body. My gift I did not look at then. I slipped it into my pocket for later when I was alone.
