by Diana Rivers
Then Lhiri said, “To Askarth who guided you there.” We all raised our mugs again with another shout. I had to force myself to keep steady.
“Where is Askarth?” Hereschell asked, looking around. “Did she not come back with you?”
“No, she has deserted us,” Nunyair said in her aggrieved way. “When we were escaping she stayed in my father’s house. Surely there was time enough to get through the gate. You said it took three days to close it. Why did she abandon us this way? Why did she leave me like this when she made a promise. She is no better than...”
Her unfair accusation made me so angry I burst out, “ She did not keep her promise to you for the only reason she, Askarth, would not keep a promise. She is no longer here to keep it.” The words had sprung out before I could stop myself.
“What?!” Nunyair shouted, turning on me. “What are you saying?” “Askarth is dead,” I said in a hard flat tone. The words had finally been spoken.
“What do you mean?” she screamed, “What do you know? You were with us when we left. I do not believe you. I think you hate me and are lying for your own spiteful reasons.”
I held out my hands, palms up, “Please, Nunyair, this is hard enough, do not make it worse. It is true I do not like you much, but I have no reason to lie to you, least of all about this, nor could I lie to you if I wished to for you would read me easily enough. I went back to help the others from the Great-House, that is how I know.”
“How was she killed? Tell me that, then I may believe you.”
“No,” I shouted desperately, but not before the sight of Askarth’s flaming fall leapt into my mind unshielded.
With a cry, Nunyair slumped forward. Lhiri howled in pain and put her arms up over her head. At Pell’s insistence I told in words all I had seen. “From her own house,” Pell said bitterly when I finished. “She was shot from her own house.”
We were all too shaken to go on eating. I put my arms on the table and my head down in my arms to cry. Suddenly I felt hands on my shoulders. I looked up through my tears to see Pell behind me. She bent forward and said softly in my ear, “I cannot forgive you for what you did that night after the raid, Tazzi. Some things are not forgivable, but perhaps we can put all that behind us now. Life is too short, our lives are too much at risk...” She left the rest unsaid. At least she would be speaking to me now.
A few days later Shalamith herself joined us at dinner, stepping slowly and carefully out of Alyeeta’s shelter. A cheer went up. Someone ran to get her a chair and cushion from the shelter as the rest of us were sitting on logs or stumps or on the ground. Someone else brought her a plate of food: bread, cheese, quillof. She did not eat much. She did not stay among us long. But much of her golden glow had come back. The sound of her voice was music in my blood.
***
Alyeeta tells me to write and keep writing, to tell it all. Easy enough for her to say. She is not the one struggling with this. How am I to tell of life in the camp for that next two weeks or so. With the best of wills, I can only write one thing at a time. But that is not how it happened. Everything there was happening all at once, everything everywhere and all the time. It was as if someone had set a giant pot on to boil and stuffed the fire under it with logs. And, of course, no matter what else was going on, women still had to be taught to ride, bodies still had to be trained and hardened with exercise, especially all those new ones from the city, the sick had to be cared for and all of us had to be fed.
As could have been expected, the peace of Alyeeta’s silencing did not last long in all that. At least Murghanth was not the one who broke it, I will say that for her. A few days after her quarrel with Pell, I had gone to the far edge of the clearing, heartsore over Irdris and wanting to be alone. I had taken Jhemar’s long, sharp-bladed troga with me to start clearing and cutting brush for some new shelters, grateful for the hot heavy work that left me sweating and panting and mindless for the moment. When I felt a presence at my shoulder, I turned, in no mood for talk. To my surprise Murghanth was standing there. From the closed and clouded look on her face I expected some angry words left over from that quarrel. Instead, she said quickly, “If you want, I will pull the brush away while you cut. It may go easier that way.” I also heard her say I have never been out of the city, never in my life. These things they do so easily I have never done before. Will I ever be able to learn? Is it safe to offer my help here? Will she laugh in my face? Will she think me a useless fool? Her lips were not moving, but with disturbing clarity I was hearing her thoughts.
I nodded and quickly gave her a reassuring smile, the best I could manage. “Thank you, Murghanth. This was growing wearisome.” I could feel her rush of relief all through my body. We worked for a long while in companionable silence, broken only by a few brief questions or an occasional instruction. By the time the meal bell rang, the shelter was already beginning to take shape.
Would that all the differences among us were so easily settled. Not so! Before, we Star-Born had been mostly Kourmairi, and more often than not, born of farm folk. Now we were all jumbled in together, Kourmairi and Shokarn and Munyairin, Wanderer and Potter and thief, Uppercaste and Sheezerti and slave, child of city and town and dirt-farm and drylands. Often we were not even able to share words with each other. We found ourselves suspicious of the differences. It seemed as if we had brought all the men’s old wars with us to fight out on each other. The pot on the fire boiled over many, many times, though never again right in front of Alyeeta’s doorway. That much at least we had learned. There was not a woman in the camp who had missed that lesson.
One morning, wearied by all the wrangling and confusion, I retreated to Alyeeta’s shelter in search of some peace, only to meet Alyeeta herself glowering just inside the doorway. “Star-brats,” she was muttering to herself, “they seem more like star-trash to me, not one clear space anywhere, not one moment of silence...”
I had often wondered if Alyeeta regretted sheltering us there. Stung by her tone I was foolish enough to ask, “Alyeeta, why did you choose to take up with us if you think us so worthless?”
She whirled on me as if she had just noticed my presence there. “Choose?!” she burst out, “Do you think it was my choice?” She rushed on with her voice rising and getting louder with each word, “You think if I had my way I would have chosen to play wet nurse to this mismatched litter of quarrelsome puppies? It might be easier to teach the spider to unspin her web or the eagle to come to earth and burrow in the ground like a mole than to bring this lot of rubbish through to womanhood and freedom. Sometimes the Goddess decides for us and that is all the choice we have.” I backed out quickly. The camp did not seem so bad after all.
To add to all this, Maireth had no wish to be second-in-command there. Her heart was elsewhere. She wanted to be in Pell’s old shelter caring for her ‘burned ones’ or, if that was not possible, then doing her healing there among us. Every day in the camp was a torture for her. She was not good at solving quarrels or passing on commands. Her skills lay elsewhere. After a while, without our even speaking of it, we worked out our own little ruse. Pell would give Maireth a command, and she would pass it on to me. Or if a disturbance broke out, she would “order” me to go and deal with it. In this way she went back to doing her chosen work while I resumed being second-in-command in fact if not in name. Pell surely must have noticed this arrangement, though if she did she kept her silence on it.
Soon I became so busy I had little time for myself. By not returning from Eezore with the others, I had lost my place in a shelter. Now I had no time to bother re-establishing one. It was easier to sleep in Alyeeta’s shelter. After a few days of that, Rishka came to claim me for some nights of passion. Then I drifted back to Alyeeta’s until Rishka came to look for me again. In this way I went back and forth between them as I had between Alyeeta and Pell. I had no fixed place of my own, but the days were so harried and crowded, it mattered little to me where I dropped my body down at night.
As Pell was oft
en away, either on the road or at one of the other gatherings, it was actually Renaise and myself who saw to the daily running of the camp. Sometimes we joked with each other as to which of us had the hardest job of it, for we both, in our own way, kept order there and each at moments must have thought the other had the easier task. It was hard to remember Renaise as she had once been, the timid serving-girl looking up to Pell with dog-eyes of devotion. Though she still shared Pell’s bed, I had seen her stand up to Pell in arguments and even win. Barrenaise the serving-girl had turned into Renaise, a commander in her own right, and sometimes chose interesting ways to do her work.
I was down by the stream one morning when I heard such an uproar I thought surely the camp must have been raided. I ran up breathlessly up to find Renaise and Kazouri in the center of a circle of angry women. There were stacks of belongings piled up in the clearing. Kazouri appeared to be standing guard over them. Renaise was up on the stump from which Pell had made her speech. With Kazouri translating into Shokarn, she was shouting, “Next time I am going to confiscate everything that does not fit in a woman’s pack or sack and is not being kept there, everything but her bedroll. We are going to have a clean camp and be ready to ride out of here at a moment’s notice. What if the Zarn’s guards came riding down on us and you had to leave fast, how would you do it? You would all be running around like fools, tripping on your own litter. If you have so many belongings or so little use for them that they are left lying about, perhaps they should belong to another. Listen closely now, you have a choice, pack it up, give it away, burn it or bury it. Do not leave it out! Tomorrow morning I am going to inspect with Kazouri’s help. Goddess save you if I find anything of yours. We will make a bonfire with it and you will be peeling potatoes for the next four days!”
There were roars of protest, especially from the Shokarn, but Kazouri bellowed even louder, “We are not arguing today! Today we are cleaning up this pigsty of a camp! Is that understood? Nothing left out! NOTHING!”
“Now pick up your things,” Renaise called out. She clapped her hands, Kazouri stepped out of the way, and there was a mad scramble. As clothes went flying, I saw my second tunic on the pile, the one I had left by the cook fire that day, so I found myself having to dive in with the others. Pell had been standing off to the side watching the scene with a grin. Now she was clapping wildly. “Good work!” she shouted to Renaise, “A much better speech than mine, Sister. Look how you inspired them all to action.” After that, in fear of Renaise’ morning raids, the camp had some order to it.
It had been an interesting show but there was little of use for me in it. Much as I might want to, I could not very well put women’s ill will and hurt feelings in piles and demand that they stuff them all in their packs and sacks or go and bury them. Day after day, I had to talk and listen and try to sort out their troubles one more time. In the long run, most of them would pay heed to my words and do what I said, all but Rishka, of course. Rishka was the only one who would not listen to me. We were too close, our own quarrel was too deep, too much of pride and pain and anger still tangled there. And she, of course, quarreled with almost everyone, but most especially with the Shokarn. From some perversity she favored Nunyair with her friendship, perhaps because they had escaped from Eezore together, but for the rest of the Shokarn she made life more difficult in whatever way she could. In particular she singled out Dorcaneesi who seemed the most sensitive and easily frightened of all of them.
I came on Dorca once right after one of Rishka’s attacks. She was looking alone and bewildered and close to tears. When she saw me she almost threw herself in my arms.
“Oh, Tazzi, she hates me so. What am I to do?”
I put an arm over her shoulder to guide her to some more private place under the trees. “Nothing, there is nothing to do. It will pass,” I assured her. “It is not just you, Dorca, believe me, she hates all the Shokarn.”
“But it is not my fault. I did not make the world as it is with Shokarn and Munyairin and Kourmairi set apart as enemies. Nor would I have chosen to. It is not my doing.”
I knew that was all true, yet seeing her fine clothes, I myself felt a sudden sting of envy for the comfortable life she had led up till now, the fine house, the food, the safety. Then I thought, what did it all matter? The edict made no distinction between us. Her fine clothes would soon be tattered, not being as practical for this life as our rough wear. She would have to trade them for something more suited to the road. As for her soft life, her hands and feet would soon be blistered. Camp life was harder for her than it could ever be for me. “Listen, Dorca, it is not any one’s doing,” I said as kindly as I could, “But men’s old wars have left some bitterness among us that is not yet settled. If you can stay strong at the center and not care so much what she says or thinks, the game will stop giving her pleasure. Then most likely it will end altogether.”
“But why would anyone get pleasure from another’s pain?”
“Because she has had more pain of her own than she knows how to carry,” I answered with sudden sharpness.
“I see,” Dorca said, abruptly pulling away from me and drawing herself up very straight, “I will not bother you with this again.”
“Dorca,” I said helplessly, “please, I am doing the best I can. If all the pain contained in this clearing was water, we would surely drown.” I wished she could have used that famous Shokarn arrogance on Rishka. It would certainly have worked better than any plea for forgiveness.
How much I missed Irdris, her calm and her gentleness, her kindness and her clarity. As another Shokarn from Eezore she might have been able to help Dorca. They might even have formed a bond between them. But Irdris was lost somewhere, swallowed up by the city and likely dead. There was no help to be had there.
The most gentling influence in the camp was Olna. Where she passed, women would turn and smile. Some would even reach out their hands to each other. Each time I saw that happen, it gave me a little chill—a shiver that ran up my spine. I liked Olna. How could one not like her? I suppose in some ways I even loved her. And yet she frightened me in a way none of the other Witches did. It was not her powers that frightened me. It was something else. It was as if she could see right into my soul. I suppose, at that time, I did not think mine wanted much looking into. I wondered that she did not frighten other women in that way, yet they all warmed to Olna’s charm. It was not a bright flashing charm like Shalamith’s. It came from a different place, dark and peaceful instead of all gold and shimmering. Even Rishka responded to that charm. When Olna stopped by her, I could see Rishka bend her head toward Olna. Her face would grow thoughtful when they talked or soften with pleasure if Olna smiled. I thought in some way she was changing Rishka, reaching through to some part of her that lay under all the bitterness and pain. Then something in my own heart—something very ugly—would tighten and harden. I could feel myself closing down when I should have felt grateful instead. Her presence there helped me in my work. She moved through the camp like healing waters. If we had had a dozen Olnas, there would have been no quarrels. Why, then, did she make me so uneasy?
I felt some of that same uneasiness when I watched Rishka and Nunyair together. Of all the Shokarn to have befriended, she certainly seemed to me like the very worst of them. Yes, Nunyair was right, I did not like her. I had no patience for her incessant complaints about the dirt, the flies, the bad smell, the heat, the crowding, as if none of the rest of us suffered from such things. No doubt everything was new and frightening to her, unaccustomed as she was to rough ways and rough living. She had perhaps been as much a prisoner of the Great-House as its heir and had been as suddenly thrust from her home and everything she knew as I had. Even so, I felt little sympathy for her. Her ways put me off. She was too grand for the rest of us. She had brought with her all of her Shokarn baggage of arrogance and contempt for others. Perhaps because they matched each other so well in that or perhaps because they had formed some sort of bond escaping the city together—for whate
ver reason—Rishka had taken that strange liking to her.
At least I had the sense to keep my silence on it. Rishka was even teaching Nunyair to ride, something I should have been very glad for. I certainly could not have done it. And Nunyair responded to Rishka differently than she did to the rest of us. She treated Rishka as an equal. The rest of us she treated as servants. Perhaps Rishka had told her that she herself was really a Muinyairin princess fallen on bad times among us.
When Pell came to say to me, “Now is the time for your gold coins, Tazzi. We are fast running out of everything and have far more needs than my big coat can furnish,” Nunyair’s treasure instantly came to mind. I told Pell how she and Lhiri had brought valuables out of the city.
Pell waited while I went to fetch the stash of coins I had guarded for so long. She took them from me with a grin. “How nice of the Commissioner to finance our venture here. It warms my heart to think of it,” she said, shaking them till they gave off a lively little tune before she dropped them into her pouch. Then, to my surprise, she added, “Come with me while I pay Nunyair a visit.”
Nunyair, when we finally found her, was in no mind to surrender her valuables to us. She stood there with her arms crossed and her head held high, glaring at Pell. “Those are mine, my inheritance from my father’s house,” she said angrily. Then she turned and snarled at me, “You had no right to tell her. What business was it of yours?”
Seeing her against the background of this rude camp with her still uncut blond hair snarled and tangled as if it had not been brushed for days, her fair skin streaked with soot and dirt and her fine clothes all torn and ragged, her Shokarn arrogance might have been amusing or even pathetic if it had not been so infuriating. I flushed with anger to the roots of my hair. And this was the one I risked my life for, I thought, it was in the saving of this piece of goods that Askarth had died.
Pell shrugged, looking more amused than angry. “Well ‘Lady,’ the rules of your father’s house make no matter to us here. Here we are not Shokarn and Kourmairi, mistress and slave, here we are all fugitives from the Zarn. Understand, Nunyair, there is a price on your Highborn head from one end of this land to the other. If you want to take shelter here with us then you will share what you have as we have shared with you. Otherwise, you are quite free to take your jewels and your gold and go out into the Zarn’s world on your own to seek your safety there. If that is what you choose, then you must do it now before you eat one more meal from our precious store of food that you refuse to contribute to.”
