Tyrant Trouble

CHAPTER 5

  In the morning we rode into the foothills to a grassy plateau. After Nance tied the horses near a clump of trees at a stream's edge, she led me to a cave-like shelter above the bank. Beyond the trees leaning out to shade the stream the land sloped upward, and in some distant past the stream must have been a river. Nance pushed aside a cover of broken tree limbs, and pulled out a long, peculiar bundle.

  Picking up one end, she said, “Catch the other end. Help me carry it.”

  The bundle was lighter than it looked. It was longer than I was tall by several times, and as large around as my arms could reach. After we hauled it from the cave and set it down on the grasslands, Nance knelt beside it to undo the fastenings. Her fingers plucked at the cords that bound the blanket wrapping. When she peeled away the dark outer layer, a mound of pale cloth shimmered in the sunlight. There was enough cloth to cover a tent but of a weight that rippled in the light breeze.

  Nance drew out a number of long thin poles that formed the core of the bundle and tied them together. They made an odd shaped frame, triangular, with one side much longer than the other two. As she worked, she chattered orders at me to “hold down that corner, there,” and “look out” and “grab that” and “hand me those.”

  “What is it?”

  “Cannot you see, daughter of a god? When Tarvik told me you flew over a mountain, I thought perhaps you knew my secret.”

  I knelt beside her and stared first at her, then at the frame. “What are you saying?”

  “Can you fly or can't you?”

  “Do I look like a bird?”

  “I can,” she said smugly.

  “You can what?”

  She waved her hands toward the billowing cloud of cloth and raised her chin. Pride glowed in her eyes. She said, “All those years in the temple, my life no freer than a slave's, I would have died of boredom if I kept my thoughts inside the walls. I stayed in that narrow courtyard and watched the only free things I could see, the birds, and envied them. Then one day I dropped a scarf and watched it blow about the yard in a gust of wind. And then I knew that I, too, could be free if I could learn to ride the wind.”

  “Only sea birds ride the wind.” And balloons and kites, but I wasn’t about to try to explain those things.

  “Sea birds and Nance. Come along.”

  We carried the cloth up an incline above the plateau. Nance shouted directions all the way, warning me to “hold that corner, don't let it catch the wind, keep down, take care,” until I was running out of patience.

  When she finally told me to stop and set it down carefully, I demanded, “What is this thing?”

  Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “My wings, of course.”

  “Wings?”

  “Yes, let me show you.”

  That suited me very well. It was a vast relief that she intended to show me with her own body and didn't grab my wrist and insist that now that I had learned to ride a horse, if poorly, I could also learn to fly.

  Her wings were a canopy of cloth held by a frame of long poles, pretty in its shimmering brightness as the breeze lifted and swayed it, reminding me of ships' sails. Or maybe parachutes.

  Nance positioned her wings with the point of the triangle aimed forward, above and in front of her, then wound her arms through a looped arrangement of straps hung beneath the wings. She stood for a long time turning from one side to another, feeling the wind fill and billow the cloth until it lifted one side into the air, listening to the slight flapping of its edges. She slipped her arms through the straps, her hands grasping a rod that crossed above her, and tilted herself and her wings toward the wind.

  I settled back on the hillside to watch, not really believing the thing would work. Nance pulled the front nose of her wing construction down slightly into the wind and ran as fast as she was able down the hill. To my everlasting awe, Nance and her wings rose slowly skyward and floated lazily out above the plateau.

  Yikes! The girl had built herself a hang glider.

  And she had figured out how to fly it. This child-sized girl could fly, her body angled back now so that one of the straps pulled into a tight position like a belt across her body and helped support her. Her flight was similar to sea gulls, circling slowly on a breeze above a sea of grassland.

  And what could I do with a hang glider? Didn't want to consider it because I tend to break out in a sweat if I have to climb a ladder. But Nance said flight made her free. If she taught me to use her glider, could it carry me out of this place?

  Nance circled slowly downward, the glider shining in the sunlight like a giant flower petal floating on a breeze, until she reached the earth. She crumpled to the grass and the glider collapsed above her. By the time I reached her, running, she had untangled herself from the cloth and stood by the contraption, grinning.

  “Now do you believe?” she cried.

  “I believe! I believe! Teach me to fly, Nance!”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I thought you would be afraid.”

  “Of course I am afraid. But I want to learn.”

  “You must understand how the wings work before you can control them. I began with a scarf, first limp, and then tied to a length of thread. That failed and I almost despaired, but what else was there to do all day? I added sticks to hold the cloth rigid in a frame, then cross-sticks to keep it from collapsing.”

  “Brilliant!”

  “I am the first! I made my small wings fly by tying them to a long string and pulling them rapidly across the courtyard, running until they caught the wind and rose.”

  Like a kite. “And no one saw you?”

  Nance laughed. “Once. And what a commotion followed! They could not see the string, only the wings, blue ones they were, and I had to think quickly of a tale of sending an offering of a blue bird to the Daughter. After that, I worked on my wings only when I was away from the temple, camping here alone. I found I could lift a small bundle of twigs suspended beneath the wings and that is when I began to think of lifting myself.”

  “So you needed only to make the, uh, wings larger?”

  “Making wings that fly when towed on a thread is quite different from making wings that fly when aimed at wind currents by my running body. It took me two years to go from one point to the next. But what else have I to do with my time? Come along, you may as well try.”

  Nance dragged the wings up the hill, walked around them and showed me how to check for any damage. She taught me to position them, grasp the bar properly, throw my weight to control their soar, and oh, a thousand other rules, all confusing and terrifying. Gliding was way down on the bottom of my to-do list, probably not there at all until now, but it might be a way out. At last she let me go and I ran down the hill. I felt the wind catch the contraption, lift a side, drop the other side. I hung on, not sure what to do, and then the whole contraption flipped and tossed me backwards, hard, onto the ground.

  Nance picked me up, brushed me off, ignored my cries of protest, and dragged me and the glider up the hill to try again. I had indeed found a way to end my days in these lands. I would be battered to death on a hillside. Nance laughed at me and continued to pick me up and send me running down the slope. Finally, I floated above the grasslands. My flight lasted only a few moments. Torn between fear and delight I was suspended in the sky.

  If for a few breaths I fancied myself a bird, the crash to earth ended that.

  “Landing is the hardest part,” Nance agreed as she untangled me and helped me to stand.

  She brushed me off, fussed over my cut knees, chattered bits of sympathy, but it was clear her real concern was for the contraption. When she was satisfied that my body was only bruised, not broken, she turned to her wings and carefully inspected every handspan of material.

  “Once I tried to fly with a small tear and the wind ripped it wide open. Now I check and mend everything each time I fly.”

  The cloth was cloud-light, impossibly fragile, felt like silk. “Where did this come from? Is it used for cloth
ing?”

  “No, it is altar cloth brought back by Kovat himself from his wars with the tribes beyond the lands of Thunder. He gives it as a gift to the Daughter of the Sun.”

  “Feels like silk. Silk, right. The Air Force used to make parachutes of silk. Does Kovat know you use it to make your wings?”

  Horror widened her eyes. “You must never tell him, Stargazer, or I swear, I will see you dead.”

  “Girlfriend, stop threatening me. Why should I want to harm you?”

  Her eyes brimmed with tears and her small chin quivered. “I - I am sorry, it is only - if my uncle knew -”

  “Doesn't anyone notice so many altar cloths are missing?”

  As quickly as the tears had come, they were gone and she was laughing. “I tell them that once the cloths are used on the altar, they become sacred. Sacred cloth cannot be washed. Therefore, when they become soiled from the candle drippings, they must be burned. They think I do the burning in the altar fire. And as often as I ask, Kovat provides me with new cloth.”

  “And he never suspects? Huh.”

  I tried a couple more runs, got a few feet off the ground, and maybe could have jumped that far, but Nance was a good kid. She did her best to build my ego after I collapsed in a heap beneath the billowing cloth.

  “Much better,” she cried, as she uncovered me. “We must roll them up now. See where the sun falls? We will camp tonight and fly again in the morning. But tomorrow, when the sun is halfway down, we must start back. We need to return to the city after darkness.”

  We made camp in the woods by the stream. Although we had cooked our noon meal, we ate our evening meal cold. Nance feared wandering hunters might see the light of our fire at night.

  “The shepherds do not come onto this plateau,” she explained. “They are afraid that the monsters and the lifedrainers will come down from the mountains. Still, hunters are less careful. They might follow game here.”

  “What monsters? What are lifedrainers?”

  The only monster I knew was Darryl.

  Lifedrainers, Nance said, were great hairy monsters with huge black wings, and they stole people and sucked the life out of them. In between appearances, they made themselves invisible. Worse yet, she assured me, they carried with them the seeds of fever that wiped out whole cities.

  “You have as much power as the ruler, if you can make shepherds and hunters believe those tales.”

  She shuddered. “They aren't my tales. I came to the plateau before I heard of them. I have seen no monsters, so I hope the tales are wrong, that there are none near here.”

  “Ah. I hope so, too. Nance, how high can the wings fly?”

  “High? Above the plain.”

  “But you can make them go up, like birds?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “High enough to fly over the mountain, Stargazer? No. They only sail on air currents. They will not lift you that much.”

  Guess I already knew that gliders could swoop out and down, but they didn't have engines, they weren't planes, and even if I had one with an engine, I had no idea where I was. What I needed more than height was direction. Bread crumb trails. Great big signs with arrows saying, “This way out.”

  “I would help you if I could.” She wrung her hands and tears trembled on her lashes. “I know how sad you must be, so far from your home. Does anyone search for you, do you think?”

  Well, yes, back in Seattle a troll would be wondering why I hadn't returned home. But search? Uh. He only left his basement to go to work. He'd see the lights on in my place and turn them off and he'd do it because he kept an eye on the place. What can I say, I am careless about forgetting to turn off water and lights, and I never remember to close windows. If it weren't for the troll, who cares a lot more about my house than he does about me, I'd have wet floors after every rain. Also, when I didn't return, he would fill my cat's dish.

  Don't think he actually cares about the cat, but he accepts it as part of the household, like a leaking faucet, and tends to it.

  The bank manager would now have a really good reason to guarantee me unemployment. The head of the Neighborhood Center would worry and ask around. And then she would decide I’d gone off on a trip and forgot to tell her. Hate to put it this way but truth is, my mother and her sisters have all skipped town more than once, usually to avoid a boyfriend or a bill collector.

  “Your friends might guess you are here.”

  That drugged lot around the picnic table? Unlikely that Roman and company even remembered I had been with them.

  In the morning my body ached in so many places I could barely help roll our bedding and carry the glider to the hill. I lay on its slope where the sun could warm me and watched Nance sail above the plateau. She gained only slight lift, she was right, nothing near what was needed to go up over the trees. There was no purpose in torturing my body to learn to control her glider. Instead I gazed at the forest. If I could master this business of controlling a horse and could find paths and avoid wild animals, perhaps I could discover a way back.

  While Nance soared, I wandered down to the edge of the woods, found a stream. Follow that, I thought, it flows downhill, must eventually lead me out of here.

  A rabbit crossed my path and disappeared. There was so much undergrowth, ferns, salal, and all the things that flourish in the damp shade beneath miles of Douglas fir. And then I saw something odd. Not a little rabbit. Who can really track a rabbit? My eyesight isn't that sharp.

  But while I stood in the clearing staring at the trees, a full grown deer stepped quietly onto the plain and no, it did not come out of the forest or the shadows, it simply appeared. I shaded my eyes and stared. It turned slowly, took a step and was gone. Not into shadows, not into forest, just gone.

  If I hadn't grown up with mages and all their tricks, I would have shrugged it off as my imagination. Instead I walked toward the place where the deer disappeared, an odd suspicion edging at my thoughts. I reached the end of the grass, continued on into the trees, did not turn, and yet, a half dozen steps into the forest I stepped out from the darkness into sunlight and was once again on the plain. Walking out of the forest.

  Across the grasslands, Nance waved at me.

  Okay, call me crazy. I was beginning to figure out why the hikers had remained in this land for fifteen years.

  We returned to the temple by starlight, riding down from the plateau and across low hills until we circled behind the city to the less used slopes. Nance knew every shadow. When we neared the temple, we slid off Black and Pacer and led them quietly around to the stable.

  Lor was watching for us. From the shaking of his hands when he pulled the blankets from the animals, it was clear he lived with terror every moment Nance was gone.

  Before we entered the temple through the secret doorway, he whispered, “My lady, the prince has come twice and knocked at the gates for you.”

  Nance stopped. “What was he told?”

  “That you were at prayer and would send for him when you wished to see him.”

  She flashed her smile at him. “I will send for Tarvik tomorrow.”

  After we finished our supper, Nance splashed a little water on her face and went to bed, still wearing the dirt and sweat of days of traveling with horses and nights of camping. I could not possibly sleep with the grime of the journey clinging to me. Right, Seattle built a reputation for grunge bands and people still remember, but trust me, sweat and grime were never what grunge referred to.

  In the courtyard I built up the cook fire, checked the bolt on the gate against the guards stationed outside it, and then warmed water in a large basin. I knelt over the basin and washed the dust out of my hair, then stripped and washed the rest of me, dipping a cloth into the water and scrubbing. I dearly missed the hot shower and scented soap at my own house. I cleaned my cuts, wincing when the water burned my skinned knees. I had barely pulled a fresh tunic over my head when a heavy rapping rattled the gate.

  I stared at the gate, unable to think what to do
. Nance slept. The guards would not allow any passerby to knock.

  “Who's there?”

  “Tarvik. Let me in, Stargazer.”

  I thought of refusing, considered the listening guards and decided that shouting at him through a closed gate would not add to my image as a keeper of the temple.

  After I opened the gate, then closed and bolted it behind him, I led Tarvik to the center of the courtyard beyond hearing of the guards. “Nance is asleep.”

  “I do not wish to see Nance.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I saw the smoke of your fire and knew you must no longer be at prayers. Why did Nance not send for me? Was she given my message?”

  I shrugged and turned away from him so that my face would be in shadow. “There's a lot of rituals and duties.”

  “I will beat that old man!” Tarvik cried.

  “Lor? He brought your message. Nance knows you have been here twice.”

  “Then I will beat Nance.”

  “Beat the priest of the Daughter?”

  In the glow from my fire, his pale face and hair shone. Slowly the deep frown softened. His gaze wandered over me, puzzled, searching. Reaching out his hand, he touched my hair.

  Surprised, he said, “Your hair is wet.”

  “I just washed it.”

  “Washed it?” He looked around the courtyard and saw the kettle hanging from the metal arch over the embers and the basin on the ground beside it. “What is all that for? I thought you must be cooking something.”

  “No. I heated water to bathe.”

  “At night? In the courtyard?”

  “Where do you bathe?”

  If there was a tub in the castle, I was going to demand one be placed in the temple.

  His eyes widened.

  “That's what you were doing when I saw you in the river!” he exclaimed. “I wondered why you ducked your head beneath the water.”

  “Tarvik, tell me you didn't come pounding on the gate to ask me how often I wash my hair, because that is creepy.”

  “No, but I will now. How often do you wash your hair?”

  “What! Why do you care?”

  He shrugged and said, “You have such long hair. It is very beautiful. It must take forever to get dry.”

  “And you came at night from the castle to discuss my hair?”

  “I often stop here to talk with Nance. There is no one to talk to at the castle, no one at all. Just guards and servants and slaves, and they have nothing to say even if they would talk.”

  Hard to believe. Lor seemed to know everything, and probably Tarvik's household had its gossip line, but out of his hearing. “I told you. Nance sleeps.”

  “Yes - yes - only it is not Nance - that is, I wish to talk with you tonight, Stargazer.”

  “About what?”

  “Just - just to talk.” He stood with his sturdy legs wide apart, his hips a bit forward and his shoulders back, his square chin jutted out. He reminded me of a child trying to decide whether to smile or fight. “I had a nursemaid when I was small. In the evenings she would sit with me and tell me stories. I suppose it is childish to think of, but she knew stories about everything, about gods and warriors and famous battles and heroes and the monsters who live in the western mountains, and, oh, all sorts of things. Do you know any stories?”

  “What, you want me to tell you a bedtime story?”

  He scowled at me for a moment, which was about as long as Tarvik could scowl, and then he grinned. “Yes, do that.”

  He slipped out of his cloak and wrapped it around my shoulders. And then, like Nance, he caught my hand and led me over to the fire. He sat down with his legs crossed yoga style, drawing me down beside him. I pulled my hand free and was about to tell him to stop grabbing me when he looked at me and smiled a very sweet, very boyish smile.

  “Are you warm enough?” he asked. When I nodded, he added, “Good, then tell me a story.”

  Did I know any stories? Of course I did! Movie plots, TV sci-fi shows, but all long enough to require way too much explanation and I was tired. Perhaps I could make up something short?

  “Umm. All right. Once upon a time there was a careless girl who forgot to check the battery on her cellphone.”

  “Explain the cellphone.”

  “Just something she carried and lost. And she had wandered off into the woods without a compass, really dumb.”

  “What is a compass?”

  “A magic thing that tells direction.”

  “Oh. Go on.”

  “So the careless girl got thoroughly lost until a boy found her and dragged her back to his castle, even though she told him loud and clear that she did not want to go with him. He had a nice little cousin who was dying of loneliness in a drafty stone mausoleum and wished for a friend. The careless girl sat around staring at the fire and wishing she had a hot shower. The spoiled boy was bored, bored, bored and didn't know what to wish for. And no one lived happily ever after.”

  When I stopped talking he looked perplexed. “That's the end? What does it mean?”

  “That I have told you a story and now it is time for you to leave.”

  He shook his head. “When my father returns to the castle, I do not know what he will think of you. He may not believe you are a priest of the Daughter. He may think you are merely from another tribe, and he might want to kill you. You do know that, yes?”

  “And you didn’t like the end of my story? Huh.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Tarvik, I am stuck here because you brought me here. If your father accepts me as a templekeeper, we’re good. If not, got an idea about how I can change his mind?”

  He leaned close to me, his face almost touching mine, and said softly, “That is what I wish to say to you. I will do what I can to help you. If he will not accept you as a priest, then I will ask him to give you to me.”

  “Do what!”

  He jumped up and stood over me, glaring. “I captured you! I have every right to claim you as my slave. Or perhaps you would rather be dead?”

  I had to use my hands to push myself up from where I was sitting. He moved so easily he made me feel clumsy, which added to my anger because I did not want to admire anything at all about the stupid brat. I pulled off his cloak, threw it at him and snapped, “Perhaps I would.”

  Tarvik's head jerked back as though I had slapped him. The fire's glow reflected off the gold ring in his ear and glittered in his narrowed eyes. “Have your own choice, Stargazer. Even a templekeeper cannot mock Kovat's son.”

  While I clamped my mouth shut over the retorts flooding my thoughts, he strode to the gates, stopped, stared hard at me and then demanded, “Your knees, what has happened to your knees?”

  My knees burned. The scrapes were all too visible in the dim light. I didn't think he'd buy a jest about long prayers.

  “Replacing candles in the ceiling holders is not simple. A fall from a bench set on a table is quite painful.”

  “You lie,” he said softly, opened the gate and left without glancing back at me.

  “I don't owe you the truth,” I said to the closed gates, because being Kovat's son didn't earn him any extra respect from me.

  Ah. That's because I hadn't met Kovat.