“Pynt,” Jenna began, “do not be hurt. That is no more than what A-ma has always said to you.”
“And you, Anna,” Mother Alta said, shifting slightly in her chair. “You must learn to listen more to the musings of your heart, to lengthen yourself by your own shadow. Heart and head working together is always the best way.”
“Mother, for the last time, I am not the Anna. I puzzled it over all this past night, praying to Alta for guidance. And …”
“And?” The old woman leaned forward in her chair.
“And I found no greatness in me. Only the memories of an ordinary childhood.”
“What do you think the Anna should have?” asked Mother Alta. “Thunder and lightning at her birth? An animal in the woods to nurse her?”
“Something,” Jenna begged. “Something out of the ordinary.”
“And would you recognize it, Jo-an-enna, if this something extraordinary happened to you? Or would you excuse it, lopping off the unwieldy parts to fit it into your ordinary life? Do not worry. When you and I are long in the Cave, there will be poets and storytellers who will gift you such a birth.”
Jenna looked down, unable to meet those marble eyes. She tried to concentrate on the priestess’ words, but there was an awful pain in her stomach, almost as if she were hungry. And an angry buzz in her ears. Then she realized the buzz came from the window. She glanced over at it.
Mother Alta, too, had stopped to listen.
Noting their attention, Pynt stood up and went over to the window, standing on tiptoe to see out.
“What is it, child?”
“A knot of men and horses, Mother, in front of the gate. They are shouting, though I cannot make out their words. The guards atop the gate are shouting back. One man is on a gray horse and …”
Carum leaped up and ran to the window. “Oh, the gods! Kingsmen! And that is the Bull himself. Now we’re for it.”
“The Bull,” said Pynt, “has a spear and is shaking it at the guards.”
“There’s something on the spear tip,” said Carum.
“I see it! I see it!” Pynt said excitedly. “Oh, Alta’s eyes!” She dropped down from the window and turned slowly, a strange look on her face. Then she found their packs where they had left them the night before, upended her own, dropping the contents on the floor. Pawing through her meager possessions, she gave a horrified cry.
“What is it, Marga?” asked Mother Alta.
Jenna ran over to the window slit herself. Tall enough to see out without straining, she stared at the scene below. “I see him. I see the Bull. What is it? Oh, Pynt, no!” She turned. “It is my light doll, Pynt. The one I gave you.”
Pynt’s voice was an agony. “I cannot find it, Jenna. It must have dropped from my pack.”
“When, Pynt, when?”
“I cannot remember. I had it … I had it when I was first trailing you. I slept with it in my arms.”
Jenna said nothing, remembering vividly how she had spent the night in the crotch of the tree with Pynt’s doll wrapped in her embrace.
“And I never took it out again, just jammed it on top of the pack. And then we met Carum and …” Pynt stopped, horror written all over her face. Putting her head in her hands, she shuddered.
Though Mother Alta’s eyes could not read Pynt’s face, she understood the sudden silence. “You remember, child.”
Pynt looked up. “In the fight with the Hound, I tripped over my pack and it spilled. I gathered everything up after we buried him. At least I thought I gathered everything up. I must have missed the doll in the fog.”
“Oh, you twist!” said Carum in disgust.
“Quiet, Longbow,” Darmina said. “She was fighting in your cause.”
Jenna took up the tale in a quiet voice. “We could not stand to sleep close to the grave and so we moved on a bit and did not look back in the morning.” She hesitated.
“Yes, that is what must have happened,” said Mother Alta, nodding. “Those men, Kingsmen, came upon Carum’s old trail and followed it to the site of the fight and the grave with its dreadful contents. And there was the doll nearby. Who but a young Altite would have a doll so deep in the woods? Surely not the boy they were seeking! We at Nill are the closest Hame, so of course they came here.”
“Mother, I am sorry …” Pynt began.
“There is no blame, daughter,” Mother Alta said. “No blame at all. You are simply playing out your part in the prophecy. What will be was written long before you were born.”
Pynt began to weep openly.
“Now listen to me, my children, it is clear there will be a battle. These men are in no mood to be cozened. And they are no fools. We must try to buy some time. In the daylight our forces are halved. And—”
Carum interrupted. “You don’t really mean the dark sisters aren’t here until night?”
Armina laughed. “Why do you men have such trouble believing that?”
“It is mere superstition. There are other tribes, down in the Dales, who believe that their mothers are filled by the god of the river and they give birth at the flood. And the Besarmians say that the son of their god comes down once a month in the shape of a bee to …”
“Darmina is no superstition. She is real. You saw her. You talked to her, you …”
“Children, we have no time for this. Carum will believe what he will. So it has been through the years. Men see and do not understand. Their minds belie their ears and eyes. Come, now, Armina, I need you to go down and tell Zeena to keep the gate closed no matter what. And bring the little ones here to me.” Mother Alta stopped and ran her curious hands across her eyes. As the door closed behind Armina, Mother Alta suddenly cried out, “Oh, that my blindness brought us to this place. If I had guessed earlier, I might have … I might have … I am old, my children. And blind. And helpless.” Two large tears ran down her cheeks. Then she looked up at them with her sightless eyes. “No—not so helpless. For the Anna is here. So the ending begins. But so, too, the beginning.”
Jenna and Pynt looked at each other, shaking their heads. Carum put his finger to his temple and touched it, nodding.
“Come here, Jo-an-enna,” commanded Mother Alta.
Jenna glanced at her companions once more, then moved closer to the priestess, who reached out to touch her hands.
“Listen carefully, for if this is indeed the end, you must understand what lies ahead. The prophecy says that you shall be queen and not queen, and that you shall carry three babies.”
“Mother, I am but thirteen years old,” Jenna said.
“And not yet to your woman time, I suspect,” Mother Alta said, cocking her head to one side as if listening for the sound of Jenna’s nod.
“Not yet,” Jenna whispered, blushing furiously.
“But if you are to be a queen, then you must know a king. I suspect your meeting with this young Garun princeling Longbow is no coincidence but further proof.”
“Mother,” Jenna whispered urgently, “he is but fifteen or so.” She took her hands away from the old woman’s and held them swiftly at her side.
Carum cleared his throat “I am seventeen, Jenna.”
“Does he look at you?”
Jenna was silent, embarrassed.
“You tell me so with your silence.”
“I am Alta’s own.”
The old woman chuckled. “So am I. So are we all here. Yet still there are babes in our cradles, and not all are fostered. The girls go down into the towns for long nights. The world turns ever and the sun goes east to west. Queen and not queen. What can that mean but that you will bear a king sons but not sit on the throne. Sometimes prophecies are easy to unriddle. Sometimes.”
“But the fight, Mother. What shall we do?”
“You shall get the boy from here. The Kingsmen must not find him at Alta’s door. Better that they not suspect you are the white one spoken of in their own prophecy, the one before whom Hound and Ox and Bear and Cat bow down. Take him from here, you and your dark si
ster.”
“Pynt? You mean Pynt is in the prophecy, too?” Jenna grabbed onto the old woman’s hands thankfully, almost tugging her from her seat.
But Mother Alta looked away, as if listening, and Jenna listened, too. The sounds outside were louder, angrier.
“Quick, my child, take this ring.” She slipped the great agate ring from her tiny bird-talon finger. It barely fitted on Jenna’s pinkie. “You must go from Hame to Hame to warn them. Say this: The time of endings is at hand. Say it to the Mothers. They will know what to do. Repeat it.”
In a little voice Jenna said, “The time of endings … oh, Mother Alta, I am not who you think I am.”
“Say it!”
She whispered, “The time of endings is at hand.”
“Good. There is a map of all the Hames. Can you read maps?”
“We both can,” said Pynt.
Mother Alta ignored her and spoke to Jenna alone. “Go to the mirror.” She gestured with her head to the great covered mirror. “Touch the goddess sign, turning it to the left. A small drawer will open and in it will be the map. Every Hame is outlined in red.”
It was Pynt who leaped up first, crossing to the mirror. A sliver of morning light touched the cover. She took off the cloth and stepped back, shocked at her own blanched reflection. Then she found the carved goddess sign and moved it to the left. There was a loud click and the sign leaped open, disclosing a little dark cubbyhole. Reaching in, she found a piece of parchment and removed it.
“I have it, Mother,” she said.
“Give it to the Anna.”
Pynt handed it to Jenna, who opened it. It was a map outlined in spidery black writing. The names of the seventeen Hames were in red. Jenna folded it back along the deep creases and slipped it into her tunic.
“Let no one else take it,” Mother Alta said. “No one.”
“Not even Pynt? You said she was my dark sister.”
“Only if you are dying. Only then.”
“Only then,” Jenna whispered, though she could not quite take it in. Dying? How could she think of it? Even when she had been fighting the Hound, she had not thought about the possibility of death, only what it might feel like to be wounded. “Only then,” she whispered.
“Now go.”
“What of you, Mother?”
“My children will care for me. And I care for them. So go now. The time grows short.”
Jenna nodded and started toward the door. “Alta’s blessings, Mother,” she said, looking over her shoulder. She signaled the others to her.
“Wait,” Carum said. “Armina said there was a secret passage. We could go out that way.”
“There is no such thing,” said Mother Alta. “Armina has these … little tales she likes to tell. Her own fancies.”
“So we have learned,” said Carum.
“Will we meet again, Mother?” asked Jenna.
“We will surely meet again in the Cave,” the old woman said. It was her only benediction.
Jenna turned and went out the door, the others following her. As they went down the stairs, the thread of Mother Alta’s reedy voice followed them to the first landing, singing the song of burial.
In the name of Alta’s cave,
The dark and lonely grave …
They met Armina on the landing. She was carrying an infant in each crooked arm and there were two little ones clinging to her jacket. Behind her trailed a dozen or so girls past the age of First Choosing, each holding a sleeping babe. Beyond them were five older girls and they, too, carried babes not quite at the toddling stage.
Jenna, Pynt, and Carum put their backs to the wall to let the processional pass.
Armina smiled. “The Mother wishes to bless them,” she said as she went by. “And to keep them from any fighting.”
The children were silent as they filed past the landing; one golden-haired little one in the arms of the next-to-last girl waved to them. Jenna waved back.
“I’ve never seen such quiet children,” remarked Carum.
“Alta’s babes are ever so,” said Pynt.
At the final turning, they came into the Great Hall, a high-ceilinged, light-filled room with great vaulted wooden ribs that held up the roof. Candelabra hung on long chains from the roof beams, swaying slightly.
The room was abuzz with women at work on weapons. A group of them squatted in a semicircle, honing knives rhythmically and chanting. Over to the side, in a small alcove hung with bows, a group of ten women was testing bowstrings and nocking arrows. They were speaking softly to one another, and one had thrown her head back and was laughing. By the great hearth, small knots of three and four women huddled together, talking intensely as they plaited ropes.
“We will be in a real battle this time,” Pynt remarked.
“Was the slaying of the Hound not real enough for you?” Jenna asked.
“You know what I mean, Jenna.”
“Well, I don’t,” Carum said. “Blood is blood.”
Pynt turned on him. “You do not know? I thought scholars knew everything. I mean sisters side by side, the way the ballads tell of it.” She began to recite the first lines of Krack’s Ride:
I sing the arrow’s song,
The eager, whistling flight,
I sing the sword’s sharp tune,
And sisters side by side …
“You are like that arrow,” said Carum. “Too eager.”
“What do you know of it, who loses his meager dinner over a killing?”
Jenna put her hand on Pynt’s shoulder. “He is right, Pynt. We should not be so eager for killing. Who knows—we may be the ones killed.”
“And what if we are?” asked Pynt. “Then we will go directly to Alta’s cave.” She glared at Carum.
“Where you will throw the bones over your shoulder for the Dogs of War, I suppose,” he countered.
“Shut up, scholar,” said Pynt. “I say only what we all say before a battle.”
“Then you say it because you are afraid. Not because you believe in the beauty of battles.”
“Of course we are all afraid,” Jenna said. “We would be stupid to be otherwise. And that is what all this bickering is about. But the battle is not ours. You both heard the Mother. We must get you away from here, Carum, and when you are safe, our task is to take a long route around to warn all the Hames.”
Pynt turned her head away and stared at the floor. “If it were our own Mother Alta, I would disobey her again. But this one is no Serpent Mouth, is she?”
“No, Pynt, she is not. And Carum cried us …”
“… merci, I know. But could we not get him to his refuge and hurry back here for the fight?”
Jenna shook her head.
“Then we will do what Mother Alta says. But still, I feel we will be in the thick of things and they will sing of us long after we are gone,” Pynt said.
Carum snorted. “You’d like that! The Battle of Pynt and White Jenna, accompanied by nose flute and tembala.”
“No, scholar, I think it will be called How the Dark Warrior Marga Saved a Princeling’s Insignificant Skin.”
“I will write one myself,” said Jenna, “though I have no gift for balladry, and I shall call it The Day Jenna Knocked Heads.”
Carum laughed and, to her surprise, Pynt laughed, too, and when Carum held out his hand, Pynt took it.
“But which way will we go?” Pynt asked.
As they were puzzling that over, a tall, long-nosed woman came over to them.
“I am Callilla,” she said, “the mother of Armina. There is a back door Mother Alta wishes you to know.”
On the landing, Armina turned to the little ones. She pursed her lips and whistled once, stopping them all.
“Soon Mother Alta will speak to you and you must listen without comment. What she says, you must do—as always. Big ones, help the little ones. There may be dark times ahead, and fearsome. But we are Alta’s own. We will not be afraid.” She nodded at them.
The girls nodded bac
k, solemnly.
Armina led them to the carved door and pushed it open with her foot. The children filed into the room in front of her. Then Armina entered and kicked the door shut behind.
“We are ready, Mother,” she said.
Mother Alta smiled at the children, who stood waiting for her command. She lifted her arms. “Sit, my babes, and I will tell you a story.”
They sat at her feet.
“Once, long ago, before you were born, the first Mother Alta of Nill’s Hame was told in a dream of a great battle to come. She dreamed that all the children were saved because they lived like little creatures in a warren. And so she had a secret tunnel built against that time.” She smiled again and put her finger against her lip.
Some of the littlest children imitated her gesture.
“Today is a special day,” said Mother Alta, “for we are going to find that secret tunnel. It will be your safe passage. Armina shall lead you there and there you shall wait. Food has been placed on shelves and you shall stay in your warren, eating when you are hungry, sleeping when you are not. Some of you shall be little rabbits, who shall it be?”
Only seven of the girls raised their hands.
“Good,” said Mother Alta, as if she had counted them with her sightless eyes. “And we need some little moles, too.”
Two girls raised cautious hands.
“And some little jumping mice?”
A host of other hands went up.
“And you older girls will be foxes and hedgehogs to keep the little ones in line. Do you understand?”
They nodded and she heard the movement of the air where they had agreed.
“When the food is gone, one by one the foxes shall emerge and check to see if all is safe. If it is not, return to the warren until you are called. One shall save you. You will know her by her white hair. She is the Anna, sent by Great Alta.”
“But, Mother,” piped one of the four-year-olds, the golden-haired child with the sunny face. “We have seen the Anna already. She was on the stairs.”
“You will see her again,” promised Mother Alta. “She will come for you with a sword of fire and a heart of flame.”
“Will you come, too?” persisted the child.
“The warren is only for little creatures.”