In the Red Lord's Reach Read online

  "Ah… magic." He stroked her arm, her shoulder, her naked back. "Well, perhaps it was well then, that I came to you tonight. I've always been… resistant to the effects of magic."

  "How weak the magic of the south must be. You would never have resisted ours."

  "Has it worked so often for you?"

  "Of course. For me most of all, because it's in my blood."

  He laughed softly. "I would believe it was in your lips," he said, and he pulled her head down to his. "They've cast a spell on me." Her mouth was like warm silk against his own.

  "A different sort of spell," she whispered.

  "The best sort."

  She kissed him yet again. "But you would have come to me. You would have wanted me. Perhaps more, even, than you do now. Perhaps I shall use the magic anyway, to make you want me more."

  He slid his hand down her arm and twined his fingers in hers. "As you wish, sweet Zavia. Bring on your magical chains. I will wear them, so long as they give me freedom to play the lute. So long as they don't jangle against the strings."

  Her pale eyes gazed down into his. "You jest."

  He smiled at her. "A habit of mine, sweet Zavia—jesting."

  "You don't believe me."

  He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the fingers. "What must I believe? That there is magic in your blood? Do you mean to say that you're a witch, fair Zavia? You are very young, I think, to call the weather and command the hunt. I have heard that is what the witch of this land does."

  "She does indeed."

  "And her name, I have heard, is Kata."

  Zavia lifted her chin. "She is my mother. And I will be a witch after her. Already I am her acolyte."

  Alaric stroked the edge of her jaw with one finger. "And do you call the weather or command the hunt in her name?"

  "Not yet. But someday I will. In my own name."

  "You are very proud," he said softly. "It must be a fine thing, here in the north, to be a witch."

  "Of course."

  He slipped his fingers into her hair, to comb the glossy tresses, to let them slide like silken ribbons across the back of his hand. "Did you know, fair Zavia, that in the south, witches are feared, and even hated? That sometimes they are hunted down and killed because folk cannot rest easy feeling their power?"

  She frowned a trifle. "You know songs that tell of such things?"

  "I have seen it myself."

  The frown deepened, and she shook her head, but not so hard as to shake his hand away. "But why? Magic is so precious, so… useful."

  "Useful for good, and for evil. In the south they fear the evil more than they desire the good."

  "What fools they are."

  "I've often thought so myself." He curled a lock of hair about one finger and brushed her cheek with it. "And what magic do you know, O acolyte?"

  She lowered her eyes. "If truth be told, not really so much. But if I needed it, my mother would help. I don't doubt that."

  "Even to win me?"

  "An easy thing for her."

  "I've not seen this mother of yours yet, I think. Someone would have pointed her out to me, surely."

  "At calving time she visits all the fires, to heal the sick and cure the unlucky. You'll meet her when Simir's band is ready to start north."

  "I look forward to it."

  She cupped his chin in her hand and tipped his head back. "Will I need her help, my minstrel?"

  "Not you," he whispered, and pulled her tight to him once more.

  Part Four

  The Elixir Of Life

  THE NEXT MORNING, the first of the nomad bands left the calving grounds, though Alaric never saw them go. He spent most of the day in Zavia's tent, only leaving it for a brief, cold meal and a call or two of nature. Some of the time, in that leather-bound closeness, with the sun blotted out by the tight-laced hides and only the glow of the oil lamp to show him Zavia's face, he sang. Sad songs and merry ones he sang, softly, sweetly. But some of the time, most of the time, there was need for more than music between him and Zavia, and he pushed the lute aside. Daughter and acolyte to the witch, she had few duties during calving season, and no one to look after. No one but him.

  Each time he went out, he saw Gilo sitting by his father's fire. Once, their eyes met, just for an instant, across the whole breadth of the tent circle. Gilo dropped his first.

  Toward sunset, the smell of cooking venison, and Alaric's own sense of debt to the high chief, lured the new lovers out to the fire. The judging was obviously done for the day; Simir was laughing and casting knucklebones with half a dozen companions. When he saw Alaric, he gestured for some of them to move aside and make room on his carpet for the minstrel. They made room and to spare for two, and Zavia sat close beside him.

  No secrets in a nomad band, thought Alaric, and he answered Simir's welcoming smile with one of his own.

  Gilo was there, in the tight cluster of his brothers, on the far side of the flames. Their backs were turned.

  "A long day," Simir was saying as Alaric settled the lute on his knees. "Sometimes I think the calving makes my nomads as nervous as it does their deer. They fight at the slightest excuse, and every one expects me to side with him in his dispute. But tomorrow it ends, and I return to the lesser task of leading my own small band. Tomorrow, minstrel, we start north." He gave Alaric a long, piercing look. "You have not changed your mind about coming along?"

  Alaric glanced at Zavia, who was watching him with that small triumphant smile on her lips. "No, good Simir," he said firmly. "I have not changed my mind."

  Simir clapped him on the knee. "Then give us a song about travel, to give us spirit for the journey and to make the morning seem closer."

  Alaric obliged with a tale of merchant caravans crossing the great desert, and another of a voyage to a land of silver palaces under the sea. Both were fanciful stories, with as much of fable to them as of truth.

  When the last chord had died away, Simir said, "Well done, well done. And yet… I must complain, young minstrel. These are strange songs for the nomads of the north. What do we know of endless sand and blazing sun, or tropic oceans? Have you nothing suited to our winter snows? To our rootless life?"

  Alaric shook his head apologetically. "I fear not, sir. It is all so new to me. But I do hope to invent something soon."

  "Then sing another song of the mountains, like the one of yesterday, with the eaglet. Some of us, at least, know the mountains well."

  There were murmurs in the company at that.

  Alaric hesitated.

  "Surely you have such a song," said Simir, his voice coaxing. "You came to us out of the mountains. Surely you were inspired by the heights, the beauties, the dangers. Who could travel the mountains without feeling them speak to his heart? If I were a singer, I know they would inspire me."

  "You say you know them well," said Alaric.

  "I do. And so do some of these others."

  "I," said one graybeard. "I've been in the mountains." And a few other men nodded to his words.

  "The mountains are harsh," Alaric said.

  "Yes," said Simir. "Harsher even than the plains. Few here doubt that, minstrel."

  He took a deep breath. "I have a song for you, then. Of the beauties and the dangers of your mountains." And he closed his eyes as he bent to the lute.

  "The land is fair where the Red Lord reigns;

  My love is there, her heart in chains;

  Sometimes she sleeps, sometimes she weeps,

  Sometimes she drinks the wine of pain."

  It was not an easy song to sing, nor had it been easy to devise. It was a simple tale of a mother's loss, a father's grief, a daughter's death. A simple tale of people trapped, by their own resignation, in the power of a madman. In detail, a fiction, with no minstrel playing any part. Yet behind the words lay horrors real as the fire that reddened his eyelids; the very melody seemed to conjure up the Red Lord's evil smile, the smile that fed on human pain. Whether his eyes were closed or no, the s
ong made Alaric see again the woman, his fellow prisoner, tortured so near to death by her lord that she had begged for the mercy of oblivion. The lute strings sang under his fingers, but he felt again the yielding of her breastbone as he plunged his sword into her heart. And the greatest horror of all was that the Red Lord paid, and his people accepted that payment; in exchange for the blood of their own, he gave them security, and wine.

  It was a fearful song to sing, but they had asked for something of the mountains, and he had always known, since the first words had come to him among the heights, that he would have to sing it for someone, someday. By the final verse he was weeping, and no matter how deep he breathed, how hard he swallowed, his voice was unsteady.

  "If you would sleep in the Red Lord's reach,

  To raise your grain and lambs in peace,

  Give life for life, come pay the price,

  And you will find his wine is sweet."

  The company was very quiet when the song was done. There was no shuffling of bodies, no coughing, no whispering. Alaric opened his eyes, and his vision was blurred by tears. He swept them away with one hand. Someone was holding a cup of deer's-milk wine in front of him. Simir. He took it gratefully and drank.

  "So you know him," Simir said quietly.

  Alaric nodded.

  "Some of us wondered if you had passed that way. It's the easiest route through the mountains. The caravans always used to take it. Since he became their lord, of course, none have gotten farther than the valley."

  There were murmurs about the circle, nodding heads.

  "I was the lucky traveler," Alaric said, his voice steadying slowly. "I escaped. But not before I saw and heard… too much perhaps." He looked at Simir. "You are the bandits he protects them from?"

  "We were. Or rather, some of these men you see here were." He waved to include some who had nodded and were nodding again. "I was not. No. I was something quite different. I was a soldier of the Red Lord." He nodded slowly. "A long time ago."

  Alaric stared at him, speechless.

  "You are not the only one to escape the valley. There have been others. But you and I, we are the only ones to come north out of the mountains." He picked up his own cup and drank deep. Then he held it out to be refilled. "Your tale could almost be my own. Except that the one I lost was my wife. I was his man, heart and soul, until then. He was a great leader, he could wring the last dram of strength from a man, and he was wily to put the fox to shame. I was there the last time we had to turn the bandits back. The last time we took so many foreign prisoners." He drank again and then held the cup between his two big hands. "He had a way of making them last, minstrel. He could spin a prisoner's agony out for weeks. But when they were all gone, he would be restless, and eventually he would need to choose… a prisoner from among his own." He looked down into the cup. "As his man, I never thought about their little lives. They never mattered to me. Until he chose my darling."

  Like the barest breath of wind, Alaric sighed, "Simir." He glanced at the other listeners gathered round; they were rapt, though there was no surprise on any face. They had heard this tale before.

  "I tried to kill him, minstrel. He'll bear the mark of my knife on his throat forever. But he was the stronger. And I would have been his prisoner, too, except for my friends among the men. Perhaps they paid the price after I was gone." He shook his head. "When the youngsters offer themselves for the journey to the valley, I always warn them. I know he is still there. If he were dead, we would see the caravans again." He shook his head once more. "I would that none of them ever had to go."

  Alaric saw the pressure of Simir's hands on the cup, the whitening of the fingertips. And he felt a great kinship with the man, and with all of the others who sat so silent and near, who had gone to the valley of the Red Lord and understood the horror. But he could not help wondering, "Why do they go, Simir? To steal a few goats?"

  Simir looked at Alaric. "In the Red Lord's valley, we feared witches. We had none, but we feared them just the same. Here in the north, we have one, and we value her above all our other possessions. She is a woman of great wisdom, our Kata, and her greatest wisdom is a potion we call the Elixir of Life. It cures the uncurable. It prolongs health and strength. It has even been known to raise the dead."

  "A great potion indeed!"

  "But one of the herbs from which it is made grows only in the Red Lord's valley. And so someone must go there to harvest it."

  Alaric brushed one string of the lute with a finger, and the sound was low and sweet. "Life for life," he murmured.

  "It was not so before the Red Lord."

  "And that was… the whole of your banditry?"

  Simir set his cup down at last and flexed his fingers. "I won't say there have not been a few goats taken along the way. The young are… subject to temptation."

  "Then why not send someone older and wiser?"

  "The old and wise have families to look after."

  "The old and wise are overcautious!" That was Gilo's voice, loud and sudden enough to make all eyes turn to him. He stepped between his father and the fire and stood with his fists on his hips. He seemed very tall there, standing while so many others sat, and very straight. "Only the young have the courage to cross the mountains and steal from the Red Lord. The old and wise—are afraid."

  "For good reason," his father said mildly.

  "If they were not, they would strike at the Red Lord's valley. The time is right. Can he still be on his guard against us after all these years? No, we have lulled him with our restraint, and now we can pluck him like an overripe apricot. I would lead the fight, gladly. I would take him in my own hands, and I would not be satisfied with a scar on his neck, not I!" And he clenched his fists as if the Red Lord's throat were already between them.

  Simir looked up at his son, and then at the seated company. "It is good, I think, that the young do not make our decisions for us."

  "You think too highly of him, Father," Gilo said. "No man can stand undefeated forever."

  Simir nodded. "I hope you will remember that when you are high chief."

  Gilo looked from one face to another in the gathering. "How many years has it been since we last lost a harvester? Nine years. Nine long years since last the Red Lord heard of us. He doesn't know our strength. He doesn't know how hard we could strike." Then he glared down at Alaric. "Unless this one goes back to tell him."

  An indrawn breath, soft as the crackle of the fire, swept the company, though not all turned their eyes to Alaric.

  "What do we know of him?" Gilo demanded. "He could be the Red Lord's spy. He could go back the way he came some night, and then we would not carry surprise with us to the valley. He has seen us all, he has counted us. What do we know of him? Nothing!"

  Zavia sprang to her feet. "Gilo! You do this because of me! But if you would ever see me smile at you again, you'll stop now!"

  Gilo pointed at Alaric. "How has he passed through the valley when no one else has? He's the Red Lord's man, I tell you, come to spy on us!"

  "Gilo!" With a single stride she reached him, and with a backhand blow across the mouth, she rocked him. He caught her arms then, as the blood began to trickle from his lower lip, and his face was hard, the white teeth showing.

  "Enough!" cried Simir, and at his voice half a dozen men leaped up to separate the two. When they were well apart, though still glaring at each other, the high chief rose from his carpet. He was taller than his son, broader of shoulder, thicker of arm, and Gilo took a step back as his father came to him. "I will have no fighting at my fire," said Simir.

  "And no lies, either!" cried Zavia.

  Simir silenced her with a glance.

  Gilo straightened, lifting his head defiantly. "He is a stranger, Father. Why should we trust him?"

  Simir looked into his son's face. "You heard the song, but you did not listen. This is not the Red Lord's man. He understands the pain too well."

  "He could have left a hostage behind to guarantee his loyalt
y." He glanced at Zavia. "Someone he loved."

  "Then he is more a fool than you," said Simir, "not to realize there would be no hostage at his return."

  Gilo's mouth twisted sullenly. Blood was flowing freely from it now, and he wiped it with the back of one wrist. "Father, you like this minstrel too much."

  "I like whom I choose, and to what extent pleases me. We are all free to do that. It would be well for you to remember that, my son."

  Without replying, Gilo turned and stalked off, and his brothers hurried to follow him.

  After a moment, the high chief looked back at Alaric. "I think we could do with a happier song now, minstrel. And please, not one that tells of quarreling."

  Alaric brushed the lute strings lightly. Then his fingers hesitated. "Thank you for defending me, Simir," he said. "I swear to you, I am not a spy."

  Simir smiled. "Zavia's was the more vigorous defense, I thought," and he gestured for her to sit down again as he settled back in his own place. "He is young. Before he can be high chief after me, he will have to learn to judge folk by their hearts, and not by his own desires." He shrugged lightly. "But I was a fool at his age, so there is time." Picking up his cup once more, he toyed with it between his two big hands. "You know, minstrel, there is a part of me that wants what he wants—to lead a nomad army back to the valley, to break my old master, no matter what the cost. Yes." He looked into the fire, nodding, as if seeing the deed in those flames. "But there is the cost, you see. It would be far from easy. And they are my people, my care. I could not ask them for that price." Then he held his cup out and called for wine. "A happy song, minstrel," he said when he had drunk again. "Something to make us laugh."

  After the song there was venison stew to be passed around, and then more songs, while the sun sank below the horizon and the dance fire was kindled. It was the last night of dancing for the season, the last chance for young people of different bands to visit and to pair, and it was wilder and louder than ever before. Zavia teased Alaric into dancing with her for a little while, but soon enough they returned to Simir's circle. He sang again, then, but not for long.