IV: A Power to be Reckoned With

Teginau was more than a week behind her. She had kept assiduously to the wild, skirting sometimes miles out of her way to avoid human encounter. Only once did she dare a town, a full hungry day after her provisions had run out and spring foraging proved too scanty; one coil from the copper Padriag had given her, and their fair prices, filled her pack well, and a full stomach was remarkably soothing. She had not noticed the strange looks shot her way, at her darting green eyes and her wizard’s-braid pearled with oak catkins and leaf-litter, as she was busy concentrating on not bolting like a surprised fox. But that night the villagers put bowls of milk outside, bolted themselves in by bright firesides, and spun old tales of the power of the Piper in the Wild, and new ones of the stranger who was surely His latest catch.

A spring bubbled out into a small moss-wreathed pool. A dogwood petal, white as the Moon Boat, floated upon the wavering images of iris-blades and yellow narcissus. Crouched nearby, His back to a mighty tulip poplar, the Piper raised His flute and trilled a pensive fragment. The narcissus bowed.

He had long ago given up trying to keep the Lord of Winds in view. Kavin was a beguiling dancer, but hard to follow as He nosed through the flowers or around the trunks, eternally restless; and of course if He stopped, He faded at once and could not be seen at all, unless He spoke. There were few among the Great Ones who could tolerate this for long; Dagn was one.

“Well?” said the Air, slowing to trail His hand over the pool. The petal whirled.

Dagn lowered His flute and frowned. “What has been done, can never be wholly undone.”

“Yes.” He dived suddenly into a bramble-patch and came up with leaves in His silver hair.

Dagn’s tree-shadowed eyes paled to frost. “Do you miss the point? That hurts.”

“Pain happens.”

“Even to you?”

The Jester-god flashed him a white grin. “Even to Ges.”

Dagn made a small bow, not without a shiver. “Well, you’d know.” Kavin chuckled, and spread His arms and soared up into the budding branches, and looked then like a bird made of light. Death had no friends; the Jester alone could be said to have something like amity with the Silent One, known also, for no reason that Dagn could fathom, as the Father of Comedy.

Swooping near to earth, “Well?” Kavin asked again as he passed, trailing a flutter of leaves.

Dagn sighed. The girl was lovely, with eyes of her father’s kind, His favored folk, and the seduction proceeded so pleasantly. “It’s so important?”

“Important!” Kavin whirled, instantly angered. Leaf-litter whipped upwards in a tight spiral. “Let Hell take ‘importance’!” And then He laughed: thunder split the forest stillness, trees bowed low and birds fled for their nests. Several mighty clouds rushed up to hear their Master’s bidding. Grinning, Kavin waved them off, and they went back to rain on Lake Mórath and the Tarasforoth heights. To Dagn he smiled and murmured, “It’s interesting.”

Dagn glared skeptically. “The Spinner sent you?”

“No; Oraay.”

“What, is She jealous?”

“For all I know.”

“Or care,” Dagn grumbled. Kavin grinned, and took a run, leaped at a neighboring tree-bole and jumped sideways and up for the slender branch above Dagn’s head. He let himself dangle, first by his knees, then his heels, and swayed gently, craning back his head to look down at the Piper. His hair waved like silver seaweed. He reached down to tousle Dagn’s nut-brown curls, then dropped full on him, sending leaves and twigs flying from the floor and buffeting the narcissus to the ground. Regathering Himself, he danced off through the forest, giving the Piper a fleeting hope that He had gone entirely, before roaring back.

“Well?”

Dagn shrugged. “I shall see her again anyway.”

“No doubt; the Ceidha have always heard You. Well?”

The Piper looked at His flute. “As You will, Lord.”

“Thanks.”

And then He was gone; and for a peaceful hour the forest lay perfectly still, and Dagn played not.

On the night that the faintest sliver of the new moon first smiled tentatively from just above the sunset, she sat hunched over a small fire, toasting a bit of bannock twisted on a stick. She watched steadily as the light waned and the stars burned bright against the bosom of Night. She stood abruptly, and spread her arms wide, holding her stick aloft.

“I wished for power, and I was given power,” she intoned, in her best high-priestess imitation. Then she added under her breath, “Half-drowned in it, to be sure; had You noticed?” To the stars again she cried: “I ask now for the power to wield that power well and wisely! Hear me, all ye spirits of earth and air, fire and night!”

For several heartbeats she stood like a linden sapling reaching for the white stars. A small breeze rustled over the grass, curled about her thin ribs, pulled her hair playfully into her face, and was gone. No lightning split the heavens; no mountain heaved beneath her; not so much as a dog barked to answer her. Only the crescent Smile of Heaven gleamed more brightly as the darkness deepened. Rothesay dropped her arms with a snort. “Right.” Squatting, she resumed toasting her bannock. After a bare moment, she rose again and waved the pastry-twined stick like a wand at the dark sky. “It is said that the Great Ones bestow what it amuses Them to bestow. Very well: when I die, I get to be High Clowness of Heaven!” The Moon, at least, seemed entertained.

She returned sulkily to her small supper. The night passed very slowly.

The next evening, she looked out through the branches of a lilac bush in new leaf, across black fields at the walls of a town. Sferan-built, the stones and shapes declared; but the western Gate sported two clan roundels high on wooden staves above the gatehouse. Strings of blue-painted wooden beads and long white feathers hung from one, green and yellow beads and foxes’ tails from the other; the stretched hides in the centers were painted, the one with a flying hawk, the other with three fox heads. The fox token stood higher, and probably the hawk-folk would move on in another season of conquest. She clicked her tongue at how uncouth the banners looked, after the silken splendor of Dunwyrding of Tre-Uissig.

A few days back, she had forded the Osse, the northern border of the rich jewel of Aellicia. Unlike the Carolanth, Aellicia lay in peace, her cheery folk occupied only with the proper business of spring, reminding Rothesay poignantly of home. She did not know that this was the peace of the tyrant. The power of the warlord of Aellicia was not the least in Peria: he kept an iron order among his own thanes, being as swift and generous in reward as in revenge; and he had lately quelled Aellicia’s perennial struggling against the domination of southerly Maldan, by returning the compliment. Odhru of Dun Brean still claimed the title of high-king over the clans of Maldan; but Maldan bowed to Deorgard of Aellicia.

Rothesay saw only quiet fields, busy foxes and busier mice, nothing to drive her to rend the world to hapless bits. She had come to like the wild by day, among creatures with little better to do than eat; just this morning she had spent a few exhilarating hours sharing a slide with a tumble of otters, hurtling down the slope, the mud like silk over her naked skin, and alternately crashing into the cold river-pool in huge wings of spray, and trying to cut into it sleek as a knife. The otters, perhaps recognizing the smell of the Ceidha, accepted their overlarge playmate with aplomb, accepted the cakes she shared with joy, and whistled after her when she took her reluctant leave.

The piping farewell staggered her. A great void opened in the world, a grief as deep and hollow as the loss of her mother dropped her to her knees on the creek-bank. Tiny bluets and springing mint swirled sparkling together in a sudden rain of tears and she could not even name what was gone.

She fought the grief, groping to understand. Sitting in the mint, wiping her cheeks with a muddy hand, she searched wildly, and she found a name, a word that seemed to fit; of course, how silly: she was lonely.

The horrid events at the burning in Teginau bridged into unreality. All her years at Harrowater came into bright focus in the fairy light of homesickness. She had never had to be alone before, that she could recall; never, apart from the occasional night in Padriag’s loft—and that always with cats, ferrets and the like—slept apart from the puppy-pile in Anie’s cot. And how she missed Raian, and his joyful lordliness: she had not had a better friend and playmate since Mina died—though she had no wish to return to the imprisonment of his walled city. Lonely. Only natural. That was it. She splashed her face clean again and hurried on. She fought to ignore how working up the nerve to venture among humans again seemed rather to deepen the loss, than soothe it; that was silly.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Now this town presented itself, and night was coming on.

Night. What terrors the dark had held for her weeks ago scarcely troubled her now, though she was not sure whether to think she had worn fear out through overuse, or had become so acclimated to the sensation that a feeling of primordial horror now merely signified that it was bedtime. Ignorance of local lore helped: she would not spend a willing night back on Deorgan-hill, even now. As for natural hazards, Padriag had taught her enough of courtesy that it was not the wild folk that she feared, not even the lords of the local wild; and as for the rogues among them, there seemed to be fewer among wolves than among men. Not to mention, she thought, flexing her hands meditatively, she had become a hazardous character her—

Something moved, a vague grey puffball at the edge of sight that first glance failed to resolve; but the second glance launched her from under the bush as from a spearthrower’s chuck, so that she shuddered on nerveless feet long before the word ‘spider’ finished forming in her thought.

Not that the trip had been without a crawly visitor or two, nor yet her home, and certainly not Padriag’s. What of it? That one was here, now, and bore all the burden of her exile in its fat little body. Willing herself to calm, she ordered herself back under the bush; and glanced at the city walls instead, still orange in the light of the sunset. If she delayed, the gates would be shut, and she would be out here with the spider.

She hungered for friendly company; the town felt like a waiting cage. She looked back down at the lilac. The spider had reached the ground and was crawling toward her pack. Grabbing the pack, she flung it to her back and hurried across the broken ground for the gate, and shivered and squirmed at a whole bodyful of inexplicable tickles. I am bigger than anything that can ever happen to me. I am. Truly.

The gate stayed open and she relaxed, slowing to a more normal gait. Smells of fish and mud and wet rope swirled out in greeting, familiar and yet strange, lacking salt. Again, Sorche and Ges warded this westward door.

A beggar sat by the Deathlord’s image, leaning his back against the wall still warm from the day’s sunshine. A dark bandage covered one eye, and he pulled a black cloak close about him, but his bald head was bare and his leather hat lay by, invitingly upturned in the dust beside him. She could not see his hands, enfolded in the cloak, but the feet sticking a little too far out from his ungartered trews looked strong and sturdy, and she wondered what his tragedy had been, apart from the missing eye. Drawing level with him, she paused to break off half a coil of her copper, and drop it in the empty hat.

“A blessing on you, stranger,” she bade him, hoping he would eat tonight and not go hungry, and hoping that Thyrne’s husband Mat was being good to the sisters dumped in his household by Rothesay’s precipitous departure. She passed on, deep in childhood prayers for her family’s prosperity, and glad enough for herself for the patronage of the wizard; but she would rather be home and hungry, than well-fed and wandering.

Behind her, a surprised man with an eyepatch lifted the metal from his hat in two spidery fingers, as delicately as if it were a rare blossom; then looked up to grin at the surly gatekeeper, watching from his post above. That worthy shook his head disapprovingly, thinking that the benefactor in the little transaction below looked more in need of charity than the recipient; he vanished from view, descending stumpily with the sun, down the stairs within the wall to close his gate and lock up against the night. The queer-looking beggar-man had gone in that time; but the gatekeeper’s wide if shadowed view down the several alleys that converged on his post revealed no one but the charitable newcomer, glimpsed in a bit of torchlight far down the street. He muttered again to himself about the queerness of the world, and puffed back up to his little house.

Rothesay had the wild, scandalous notion to ask for a seat in the meadhall, as if she were indeed a man, however youthful. But the Geillari who had taken the river-city of Nancaras and named it instead Floodholding, had discovered the Sferan industry of the alehouse and inn. Traffic on the broad green back of the Nanfeill, the Deepflood, though barely a fragment of its old imperial volume, brought a lively trade to the new citizens, so long as the boatmen were able to enjoy their traditional comforts. Maybe one day the Geillari would press on, or perhaps the Sferiari upriver would strike back; but for now, there was profit in peace. Rothesay was directed to an old establishment of deep porches right on the waterfront.

The proprietor was a thin, sallow man, richly ornamented, but all in copper: the Floodholding Geillari had not yet decided what sort of status to accord one who sold hospitality. He began sullenly enough, but quickly sang an obsequious tune when his effeminate-looking customer flaunted a wizard’s tassel. Then a modest influx of regulars, riverboatmen as well as townsmen, kept his time full enough. Rothesay was glad: there was something slavish about him, undignified in a freeman.

Being early, she had been able to choose an obscure corner, dim and hopefully less than companionable: now here, she was nervous again, and though glad enough of the general company, she hoped to avoid it specifically. She rebuked herself for not having anticipated simple hazards such as conversation, planned to retire directly after supper, and drank her ale uneasily.

Ale: another folly. She knew better than to drink on an empty stomach, but while an early arrival provided a good seat selection, it meant supper would not be ready yet; and the proprietor had not even asked, but had served her a man’s horn promptly. She should wait; but she had little else to do with her hands. She watched the play of the locals, listened to their joking and merry bragging, slunk deeper into her corner when the plump serving-girl simpered and giggled and batted her golden lashes over the refilling of Rothesay’s ale. Rothesay pulled Calion’s old hat lower over her face to smother her entertainment. Maybe I should tell her I prefer boys? Contemplating the ruckus that would likely ensue if the girl betrayed any such confidence to the brawny boatmen quickly changed her mind, but she still chuckled into the ale-foam at the idea.

She wondered vaguely why it was so very bad for a man to love another man; but more than that, she wondered why these fellows here, for instance, would take it as a personal insult if they thought she was a he casting admiring glances their way. Other wrongs would be less virulently addressed: if they thought she was a thief, the drubbing they would mete out might be no less severe but it would be relatively impersonal, free of the indignation evoked by another man’s lust. She watched some of the more outrageous of them leer and grab at the serving-girl, who only laughed and dodged. Now, would they not be puzzled and annoyed if she wanted to beat them up as they would a man?

Mulling over this and other oddities of people, and dodging the girl’s flirtations, Rothesay moved through two pints of ale without ever seeing the bottom of her cup. Warm and comfortable, she discarded her cloak on the bench beside her, but kept the hat pulled down. The walls seemed less close, the ceiling not so threateningly low, as when she had come in. She was somewhere deep in an elaborate but wonderfully lucid exegesis on diplomacy between the sexes, when war broke out.

A fraternal war, she reflected, looking across at the conflict escalating from the two original combatants to include allies and would-be mediators alike. Then a higher authority joined in: the stout housewife stepped up, laying a sturdy broomstick about the shoulders of the miscreants smashing her crockery and tumbling the furniture about.

But the skull of an Aellician riverman is harder than the boulders of the stream, and his body tougher than twisted rope; and the old woman’s enthusiastic arguments had as much influence as a tiller in the rapids. More crockery smashed. The sallow innkeeper yelled and waved his hands.

Buoyed in dream, Rothesay looped her way over, removed the broom politely from the housewife, and applied it to the nearest meaty shoulder. The working end of the broom snapped off, and the man, turning, found a curiously deadly-looking stick waving swordlike under his nose. The broom-wielder lunged, dropping aim to a lower, more vital target, and the brawling boatman screamed and tripped himself in a confusion between flight and fortification.

Then the broken broomstick leaped and struck, stinging and biting in a wicked dance, as if it lived at the touch of elvish sorcery. From shoulder to buttock to back it flew; and twirled, vanished, and reappeared in a flash of pain across a thigh or an ear, chastising and not injuring with a fine accuracy of power Rothesay would not have credited had she been clear-headed enough to notice.

Her targets did. Half smarting, half affrighted by the witchy stick and its scarecrow master, the brawlers dropped their quarrel and fled for the street. Gratified, Rothesay watched them go, then turned to inspect her weapon with the care of a veteran.

The fog broke. For the fourth time, ordinary awareness returned, and she looked on the broomstick and screamed.

“Yaaaaah!”

She flung it down, and leaped away from its animated rebound. When it fell again, she pounced on it, stomped upon it with both feet, heedless of the thinness of her shoes. “Yaaaaah!”

A sudden bark of male laughter chilled her. She froze in mid-stomp and looked up.

Three of the most resplendent men she had ever seen, proclaimed nobles by their silks and their pride, and especially their swords, stood watching her. One was shadowed under the wide brim of a bright blue hat, but a quizzical grin shone through his beard. One, a stocky fellow with a mess of grey curls and an encouragingly sunny face, though he wrapped himself in a shimmering green cloak looked like a farmer playing at dress-up out of his lord’s wardrobe. And the third, rippling in blue satin, rocked in his black boots and laughed again.

Oh, hell, she thought dismally. Nobility again, jewel-colored trouble, as bully-like as Harrowater’s headman but multiplied according to the degree of their lordliness; and Sferan to boot. And the mood of this lot, suggested by the mirth of the one with wolf-pelt for hair, soothed her not at all; though there was an odd quality to the laughter that she could not pin down. Now, however, she groped from her half-stooped pose for the broomstick under her feet, and snatched it up across her chest as a talisman, at least, of protection.

“Now, what a prize are you?” The words were Sferan and, as far as she could tell, utterly unaccented. Wolf-hair stopped laughing to grin at her in some kind of disbelief. Fierce, sapphire-blue eyes glittered out of a brown weathered face, over a nose like an eagle’s beak; his dark moustache curled down around his infuriating grin till the point ends cleared his sharp jawline. She did not think he was particularly old, perhaps thirty, despite the iron greying of his dark hair; he lacked an inch or two against her, though he was far better-muscled—which counted for nothing against the dweomer that lay on her. But this was no hearthward, no house-carl she faced now. Some instinct warned her that any contest with this man was lost before it was begun, and she backed away from his menace unconsciously, her forest-dark eyes locked on his blue ones, as entranced as the sparrow before the snake. His grin widened slightly, as he raked her body slowly with a stare as though she were wearing nothing at all, and he liked what he saw.

Unfortunately for him, it was a ploy Rothesay knew all too well. The great lord’s boorishness served only to crack her shell of fear: she did not show her ire, but only straightened, and returned just the same sort of gaze—and displayed a flicker of disappointment at what she pretended to see. Meeting his eyes again, she was delighted to catch in them a glint of surprise. Then he swept off his plumed cap in a great, graceful bow, as much in mockery as respect.

“Will the Lady of the Deadly Broom honor us with her presence at dinner?” he invited silkily, gesturing towards a small table under the window.

As gladly as a lamb with wolves. She flushed hot with embarrassment at the acknowledgement of her gender. Now there was nothing for them but to take her for a loose woman, the loosest of women, and only one use to be made of her.

“ThankyoubutIhavetogonow,” she murmured hastily, stepped backward, and halted, thwarted: all her belongings were still in her dark, safe corner—beyond the men.

A touch on her shoulder startled her; she spun and struck. The beggar from the gate tumbled across the floor, acrobatically enough for one motivated by far more force than his own, finishing in an adroit crouch, five astonished yards away.

“—Lauren?” breathed one of the nobles behind her; but not the graceful rude one, who stepped on the end of the beggar’s fallen staff, making it snap up into his hand, and made of it an invitation of another sort.