In the Red Lord's Reach Page 23

  "Please. I am not ready."

  She looked at him long then, and at last she put the box away in its sack. "I cannot force you to learn," she murmured.

  He nodded, closing his eyes. "I'll know when the time comes."

  "Don't be a fool, my Alaric," he heard her whisper. "Don't let my magic slip away from you."

  Her magic, he thought as he drifted on the fringes of sleep. Her magic, real and delusion.

  He dreamed that he passed his hand over her fire, and the flames turned every color of the rainbow. And people came to him, men he had sparred with and women whose cooking he had tasted; they came to him and crowded all around, and their faces were colored as the flames, and they told him, over and over again, that he was the greatest witch of the north. But then, jostling its way through the crowd as if it were just another human being, came his lute, calling his name in a high, singing voice, and weeping, weeping, for all his abandoned songs.

  ****

  ZAVIA CAME TO see him at last. He was sitting up by then, on mounded cushions, though his ribs still ached if he moved too quickly or if he tried to stand. He had not caught the slightest glimpse of her since his wounding, not even during the times that he lay swinging on his litter between the deer.

  She knelt by his pallet, but scarcely half her attention was for him; she kept casting furtive glances at her mother on the other side of the fire. "How are you feeling, my Alaric?"

  He smiled at her. "Better, now that I see you."

  "I would have come sooner, but… it seemed wise to let you rest."

  He reached out and took her hand. "Sometimes a beloved face is better healing than rest."

  Her lips tightened, and so did her fingers on his. "Don't you think it's time he moved back to my tent, Mother?" she said. "He claims so much of you, here. I can look after him now."

  "No," said Kata. "He stays with me."

  She bent her head. "As you say," she murmured.

  Alaric looked past her shoulder, his eyes meeting Kata's. "May we have a little time alone together, Lady? There are things we wish to say, for no other ears than our own. Please. I know Simir would welcome your visit."

  Kata frowned slightly. "She will tire you."

  "I won't let her."

  "Mark me, any exercise will give you pain and slow your healing. You'll regret it."

  "We'll talk, no more. I promise."

  Her eyes narrowed. "So you'd drive me out of my own tent, would you?"

  "Lady, I would go myself, if I could."

  Kata rose to her feet, drawing a fur about her shoulders. "Very well," she said. "But she will tire you, even with mere talk. She shall not stay long." And she swept out of the tent, leaving the flap a trifle ajar behind her, so that a thin sifting of snow blew in.

  Zavia crawled to the opening and looked through it for a few heartbeats before lacing it fast. "How she hates me," she muttered. "Nothing I do pleases her. And everything you do does."

  "Not everything," Alaric said ruefully. "She wasn't pleased that I nearly killed myself."

  "You think not?" She scrambled back to his side. "Don't be a fool, Alaric. This pleases her more than anything else. Now she has you to herself, every day and every night. How much has she taught you in these days and nights of rest?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing?" Disbelief showed in her face. "But you are the new acolyte. You are the hope of her future." The words had a hard and bitter edge to them. "You are the one who pleases her more than the child of her body." Her fists clenched, and she looked down and away from him.

  He laid a hand on her knee. "You are her rightful acolyte, my Zavia. But I can't force her to teach you."

  "You could. By following Simir instead of her. Let him train you for chieftainship; he wants it as a starving man wants meat. You could be the next high chief, and I would be the next witch. We could work together for the good of the people, as Simir and Kata do now. Better!"

  Alaric stroked her knee, then sighed so deep that his chest ached. "Zavia, you think too far ahead. We have this winter to survive. Isn't it enough? No one knows what the future may bring."

  "You want to be her acolyte, don't you?"

  "She wants it. I'm not sure I want anything. Except, perhaps… my lute. I'd play you a song if I had it, and we could stop thinking about magic and chieftainship and even winter. A song about springtime and flowers and love. That's all I want."

  She looked at him once more. "Is it, truly?"

  "And you." He raised his hand from her knee and beckoned her to bend closer. "Come here, my Zavia. I've missed you."

  But instead of leaning toward him, she pushed herself to her feet. "I mustn't tire you. I have your lute safe. I'll see you get it." She took one sidelong step toward the entry.

  "Zavia, don't go. Stay with me till your mother comes."

  She shook her head. "I have work to do."

  "Then give me a kiss, at least, to help me heal."

  She turned from him to reach for the entry laces and, without looking back, said, "No. Later, when you come out of this tent. If you ever do."

  A gust of cold air marked her departure. Shortly afterward, Kata returned. She carried his lute.

  For the time he remained in Kata's tent, Zavia did not visit him again. But Simir did. As Alaric grew strong enough to sit up, to feed himself, even to stand—leaning on Kata's arm—for brief periods, the high chief would stop in three and four times a day when they were camped. Sometimes he brought food from his own pot for the healer and the invalid; sometimes he merely came to make some inquiry of Kata. Sometimes he even admitted that he was there just to see Alaric, and to listen to whatever slight song the minstrel had strength for. But Alaric fancied that when the high chief and his witch looked at each other, he could see the rivalry in their faces—the rivalry for him.

  What do I want? he wondered, after one of Simir's visits. He watched Kata at her fire; the leaves of that strange northern plant had dried hard and crisp above those flames, and now she was grinding them to powder. She had tried to intrigue him with some talk about the proper treatment of the leaves—not too much heat, or they would scorch and be ruined, not too much grinding, or the precious oils would escape into the air—but he had shaken his head and plucked at the lute to discourage her.

  "I am too much of a burden to you," he said. "Let one of Simir's circle look after my recovery. He'll be glad to have me in his tent."

  "You are no burden," she replied. "And you wouldn't get enough rest in his tent. You would sing too much. Leave off the lute, now, Alaric; your ribs must ache."

  He did leave off his plucking, but he kept the lute in his arms, a smooth but hollow comfort. What shall I do? he wondered. He thought of Kata's mystical stars and her shining web of power that encompassed the world. He thought of Simir, unflagging, leading his people on their great circuit of the north. He thought of Zavia, yearning, always yearning, for what her mother would not give. No matter what he chose, someone would be displeased.

  What shall I do?

  ****

  THE WINTER SEEMED to go on forever. Day by day, the period of sunlight shining wanly through the clouds was shorter. For a time, Alaric thought that, just as there had been no night at all in the far north, there might at last be no day on the snow-swept plain. But he was wrong; the day shrank and shrank, but reached a limit, poised there a while, and then began slowly to expand. Midwinter Day had passed.

  On one of those newly longer days, Alaric walked out of Kata's tent for the first time since his wounding. He did not walk far, only to Simir's fire, but he did it with just the slightest support from the high chief at one elbow and Grem at the other. Still, he was out of breath at the end of it, and his trembling legs ached almost as much as his ribs. Grem helped him to a mound of carpets near the flames and made certain he was well wrapped in his furs.

  There were men gathered about the fire whom Alaric would have expected to be hunting on such a fine day. They were talking to each other with much
animation, as if something unusual had just happened. Not, he thought, his own appearance, for they seemed to pay little attention to his hobbling journey.

  He looked questioningly at Simir.

  "A good day for you to be outside," said the high chief. "I thought perhaps you might still be too weak and would have to miss the ceremony."

  "Ceremony?"

  "Yes, on the first clear day after midwinter, we celebrate the sun's return. Now I must leave you here. Grem will fetch more furs and a hot drink if you get cold."

  "I'm comfortable," Alaric said.

  With a last nod, Simir strode back to Kata's tent and disappeared inside.

  Alaric watched the bustle grow steadily all around him. It was not the bustle of packing that he had seen so often. Indeed, it seemed to accomplish nothing at all; it was simply movement and noise, a restless excitement. Even Grem, assigned to look after him, could not sit still, but bobbed up and down constantly, hurrying off to talk to people, coming back with an apologetic smile on his face, and then hurrying away once more. Alaric caught fragments of passing conversations, but all that he could make out was a sort of universal concern over who would be next to whom. As if they were all going to line up, every person in the band, and they were trying to determine precedence.

  The sun stood at its low wintry noon when a hush fell upon the milling nomads, and all faces turned toward Kata's tent. Simir had emerged and was holding the entry flap aside, and every line of his body bespoke his respect for the woman who appeared there.

  It was Kata, of course, but a Kata transformed. Gone were her usual skirt and jerkin of fur-trimmed leather, gone her boots and even her armlets. She was dressed, instead, in nothing but a sleeveless shift of plain white wool. Her hair, freed of its plaits, fell loose to her waist, her only cloak. Her feet were bare. With a firm step, without a sign of shivering, she crossed the camp, passing Simir's fire, but sparing not a glance for Alaric sitting there. As she walked, the nomads fell in behind her, men, women, and children, silent and purposeful. As the tail of the crowd surged by, Grem helped Alaric to his feet, and they followed a few paces behind the rest.

  They did not go far, only just beyond the tents, where a wide circular space in the snow had been stamped flat. The nomads settled all around its rim, their seats the snow itself, no carpets here. Grem and Alaric squeezed between a gray-haired matron and a young woman with a baby in her arms.

  Kata stood in the center of the circle. When everyone was seated, she lifted her arms as if for silence, though there was no need for any such signal. No human voice had been raised, not even a child's cry; only the breeze whispered softly about the gathered band, bringing with it an occasional faint bawl from the distant herd. Still, she lifted her arms and waited. Alaric saw then that her eyes were glazed and staring, and that she did not look at anyone, but up into the sky, to the north, where the Pole Star would have shone, had the sky been dark.

  She spoke at last, her arms still upraised, and her voice was strong and ringing, as if she were giving commands. But her words were the words of a tale Alaric had never heard before:

  "Long ago, in the morning of time, the people lived in a warm and green place, where the sun had cared for them since first they opened their eyes. And life was sweet in that place, in the care of that good and generous sun. But the people were wanderers in their hearts, and at last they turned their backs on that green place, and on that good sun, and set out into the Great Night to find another home.

  "Their journey was long, for the darkness was vast, and homelands were as tiny and lost in it as flowers on the grassy plain. But the Pole Star had looked upon them in that darkness, and finding them worthy, he claimed them for his own, and guided them safe to this sun and this place. Yet when they came to their new home, it was not a land such as they had known before. No, it was a land strange and beautiful, a land where magic grew in every meadow, and flowed in every river, and breathed in the very wind. And foolishly, they destroyed that magic, and made the land over in the image of their old home, which they had left so far behind in the Great Night. And they were happy in their new home, not understanding what they had done.

  "But the Pole Star, who loved them in spite of their folly, preserved that magic in a few hidden places, and laid a net of his own power over land and sea, that the magic might be protected and perpetuated, forever living. And the Pole Star gave the knowledge of that magic to those who chose to dwell in his own favored domain, to hold and to use to ease their hardships. For they are wanderers, as the people were once wanderers every one, and the Pole Star has claimed them before all others. And the sign of that gift is the promise of the sun—that no matter how great the night grows, there will always be a dawn.

  "Now the sun pushes back the night, redeeming the land. Now we give the Pole Star our gift in return for his."

  At that, she ripped her shift top to bottom and cast it off to stand naked and pale in the center of the circle. The snow might have been grass beneath her feet, the cold wind a summer zephyr, for all the heed she paid them. Her whole attention was directed to the sky.

  Simir went to her then, and placed a short-bladed knife in one of her outstretched hands. Her fingers closed upon it, and she stood statue-still while Simir waited, silent, watching her. Then with a swift, graceful motion, she bent downward and slashed at her thigh. So sharp was the knife that at first not even a line snowed at the cut, but slowly the red blood began to well outward and trickle down her pale flesh; and as the first dark droplets reached the hard-packed snow, she slashed again, at the other thigh, and at her calves and her ankles, too, till the blood ran in narrow ribbons down both legs. Holding the knife high, then, she began a slow shuffling dance, and her feet smeared the redness from her veins over the pure white of winter.

  After watching her for some moments, Simir tossed his own clothes aside, and with another knife, he slashed his own legs. As the blood ran down his calves, he joined Kata in her dance.

  That was the signal for the rest. In twos and threes they stripped their clothes away and stepped into the circle to slash their legs and dance. Old men and young. Women with babes in their naked arms. Even children of five or six winters. There were the graybeards of Simir's circle; and there even Simir's cook. There were Lanri, and Oltavin, and Velet. There danced Zavia, straight and slim, as graceful as her mother. Only the youngest children stayed at the circle's edge, watching their elders with big, round eyes, watching them dance solemnly on the reddening snow. Only the youngest, and Alaric.

  They can't expect me to join, he told himself as Grem merged with the slowly wheeling throng. I'm not well enough to dance a dozen steps, let alone lose blood to the snow. He shivered at the thought of the cold wind against his naked flesh, the cold snow beneath his naked feet, the cold steel. But could I, he wondered, his eyes on Zavia, even if I were well?

  There was no signal to end the dance, but after a time that seemed impossibly long to Alaric, the participants began to drift outward, to find their clothing, and to become, once more, people who felt the winter wind. Soon Grem returned, smiling, as so many of the others were now smiling, as at some marvelous pleasure. He helped Alaric back to Simir's fire, where a thin stew had been left to warm over the low flames, and as they ate, Alaric could not keep his eyes from straying toward the dancing ground, where Kata still swayed and bled. She was the last remaining figure; after all the rest had put on their clothes and gone, she danced on, while Simir waited nearby, her shift hung over his arm.

  She stopped finally, and let the high chief wrap her in the meager cloth and lead her by the hand to her tent. A short time later, she sent word that Alaric might come back, and when he went in, he found her fully dressed and bent near the fire with her powders and potions. She dosed him, then, as she had not for some days, with the mild form of the Elixir of Life, the form without the sleep inducer.

  "You were out in the cold too long," she said.

  He had to smile. "I?"

  "You should
have gone into Simir's tent."

  "I was warm enough. I was wearing considerably more than you were."

  She cast some powder into the fire, and sweet smoke wafted up from it. "If you can stay away from the bears, perhaps next year you will be ready to join the Star Ceremony."

  He gave her a long look. "I'm not sure I'll ever be ready for it."

  "You might be surprised. Simir was a stranger, and he was ready the first year he came to us."

  "Simir is a much stronger man than I."

  She shook her head. "It is not a matter of strength. Didn't you see the children dancing? Do you think they are stronger than you? It is an ecstasy, my Alaric. When you have given yourself completely to the north, you'll understand it."

  "I have given myself to the north. I can't imagine how much more complete the giving can be."

  She smiled just a little. "Can't you?"

  He looked away from her. "Lady, my heart is here."

  "Your heart is scarcely enough, my Alaric. The north asks more of you than that. It is time, and past time, to begin your instruction."

  He sighed. "You have been kind to me. I am grateful, believe me. But… the life you offer doesn't seem to call me."

  "You must listen harder, then. This is the life you were made for." She took his chin in her hand and turned his face to hers. "Don't deny your nature, Alaric. The Pole Star has made you what you are, and brought you here for this."

  He saw the hunger in her eyes, as naked as her body had been during the Star Ceremony, and he understood well that she yearned for him as Zavia yearned for her magic. "Don't press me, lady, I beg you," he whispered.

  She held him then, with her gaze and her strong fingers. "Do not be afraid, my Alaric. You have much to learn, but you will do well, I know it."

  He tried to shake his head, but it scarcely moved, so firm was her grip. "It is not fear that holds me back; it is a dream. Surely you believe in the power of dreams."

  Her pale eyes were steady. "A witch can never discount the importance of dreams." Her hand released his chin, settled lightly on his shoulder. "Tell me of it."