There was muttering in the ranks, and one of the men called out, “We can take what the other army has, that’s custom in war! Why do you refuse us what’s customary, General Wolf?”
Bard turned toward the voice and said harshly, “You’re allowed by custom to take their weapons, no more. Have any men in the opposing army been made your minions by force?”
There was a mutter of outrage at the notion.
“Then hands off these women, hear me? And while you’re at it, let me repeat what I told the soldier here.” He gestured toward the woman of the Sisterhood. “Any man who lays a hand on one of the Sisterhood who has fought beside us for the honor and strength of Asturias and the reign of King Alaric, shall be first gelded and then hanged, if I have to do it myself! Understand that, once and for all.”
But the woman in red flung herself at Bard’s feet.
“Won’t you punish the men who have outraged my sisters?”
Bard shook his head. “I’ve put a stop to it; but my men acted in ignorance, and I won’t punish them. No one else will touch a prisoner; but what’s done is done and I won’t give the women who fought against me the same kind of protection I give my own armies—or what’s the good of being in my armies at all? If the mercenaries in your Sisterhood want to swear allegiance to Asturias and fight alongside my armies, I’ll give them that protection; otherwise not. Although,” he added loudly, glancing around at the assembled men, “if anyone touches a prisoner except as custom allows, I’ll have him whipped and his pay stopped, is that clear?” The woman was about to say more, but he stopped her. “Enough, I said. No more fighting. Come on, men, break it up. Get about your business! Any more fighting and there’ll be whippings and broken heads tomorrow!”
Back in the commandeered house, the staff had finished their wine and were going to make their own arrangements. The red-haired girl, who reminded Paul elusively of Melisendra, put a cup into his hand and smiled.
“Here, my lord, finish your wine before you go.”
He raised his face to her and drank, sliding his arm about her waist. Her flirtatious smile made him understand; this was not an unwelcome advance, and he pulled her close. A hand fell on his shoulder, and Bard’s voice boomed out, “Let her be, Paul. She’s mine.”
Mentally Paul cursed, knowing he should have expected this. Already, on campaign, he had discovered that he and Bard had the same taste in women. Naturally enough, if they were the same man, they’d want the same thing in women, and it wasn’t the first time their eyes had fallen on the same camp follower or woman of pleasure in a fallen city. But it was the first time it had come to a direct confrontation. Paul thought, he owes me something for leading the charge, and his arm stayed stubbornly around the girl’s waist. This time, damn it, he would not give in!
“Oh, hell,” Bard said.
Paul realized that he was already drunk; also that the rest of the staff had gone, leaving them alone with the girl. He put a hand under the girl’s chin and asked, “Which of us do you want, wench?”
Her smile turned from one to the other. She had been drinking too. He could smell the sweet fruitiness of wine on her breath, and either the drink had heightened her perceptions or she had a trace of laran, for she said, “How can I choose between you when you are so much alike? Are you twin brothers, then? What is a poor girl to do when if she chooses one she’ll have to give up the other?”
“No need for that,” Paul said, as he swallowed the wine, realizing it was much stronger than what he had had before, and was consolidating his drunkenness. “There’s no need to prove one of us the better man this time, is there, brother?” He had never voiced this knowledge of their unconscious rivalry before this. And if Bard were somehow a hidden half of himself, was this not a way to come to terms with it?
The girl looked from one to the other of them, laughing, and turned to lead the way. “In here.”
Paul was just drunk enough to retain a merciless clarity. Bard made some show of flipping a coin. Paul wasn’t surprised—that kind of chance-choice was common in some very unlike cultures—but he stepped back, watching the clouded and elegant dance of bodies, Bard and the girl, his body and hers, as Bard sank down, pulling the girl atop him. Paul felt a momentary flicker of surprise—he would have pinned her down beneath his own body—but the thought was remote, dreamlike. He sank down beside them, his hands straying along her curving back, through the silken hair. She turned a little and her lips fastened on his even while she drew in a gasp of excitement as Bard entered her. She found a moment and a free hand to tease his manhood with her fingertips. Paul, embracing her, found that he had them both in his arms, but it didn’t seem to matter; it was dreamlike, nothing now seemed forbidden, and he knew their three bodies, enlaced, became a shifting dance. The woman’s softness seemed somehow only an excuse to savor himself, knowing Bard’s excitement and sharing it. It was dreamily perverse; he knew that when he took her, Bard, in full rapport now, shared the pleasure even as he had shared his twin’s. He never knew, never wanted to know, how long it lasted, or at what point, the girl forgotten, he found himself in Bard’s hard clasp, all softness gone now, a struggle almost to the death, locked together in what he could not isolate as either passion or hatred; and in a final sardonic flicker of apartness he wondered if this could be called, if they were actually the same man, sex or the ultimate masturbation, and then it did not matter whether the violent explosion was orgasm or death.
He woke alone, his head thundering. The girl was gone, nor did he ever set eyes on her again. She had meant nothing, she had only been the excuse for that violent confrontation with his dark twin, his other half, his half-known unknown other. He sluiced his face with the icy water in the bucket, and was still gasping with the shock of it when Bard came in.
“My orderly brought me a pitcher of hot jaco. If your head’s doing what mine is, you could use half of it,” he said. The stuff smelled like bitter chocolate, but the effect was about the same as extra-strong black coffee, and Paul was glad to get it. Bard poured himself another mug.
“I want to talk to you, Paolo. You know you saved the day yesterday. That damned harpy illusion is a new one, and the leroni weren’t prepared for it. It was so real! And you didn’t see it at all?”
“Only through your mind, as I told you.”
“So you’re immune to that kind of illusion,” Bard said. “I wish I dared confide in Master Gareth! He might be able to explain it. And among other things, it gives you an edge if you should have to lead the army some day. And the men will follow you; but you’ll have to be careful about the leroni, they’ll sense something strange about you.” He barked short laughter. “One good thing about Varzil’s God-forgotten Compact—we can fight without having those wretched corps of wizards along with us, if they ever decide to put the Compact into effect!”
“I thought you and Master Gareth were friends—that you depended on him!”
“True,” Bard said. “He’s known me since we were boys, my foster brothers and I. But I’d still be glad to dispense with his services and send him to spend a nice peaceful old age in a Tower! When this land is at peace again, perhaps Alaric will swear to the Compact after all. I don’t like my future subjects being bombed out of their homes, and down where they spread bonewater dust last year I hear the midwives report children being born without arms or legs or eyes, cleft palates, backbone sticking through the skin at their butts, things you don’t see twice in a year and there are dozens of them—got to be some connection! And men and women dying of thinned blood—and the worst of it is, it’s still dangerous to ride there. I suspect the land will be blasted for years, maybe a generation or two! There’s too much sorcery about!”
How, Paul wondered, had they managed, by mind-power, to make radioactive dust? For what Bard had described was certainly some kind of radiation product. Well, if laran could do the other things he knew it could do, it should be no very great trick to break down molecules into their component atoms, or to com
bine them into heavy radioactive elements.
He said wryly, “And to that kind of laran I should certainly not be immune!”
“No, I shouldn’t think so. Your mind may be immune, but your body’s no different from anyone else’s. But there are kinds of laran to which you would be immune and I’m not; and so I have a task for you. Serrais’s main strength is broken. I heard today that the Aillards, after the bombing of Hali, have sworn to the Compact, which means that all those lands down south on the plains of Valeron, twelve or thirteen kingdoms in all, will be ready for the taking. And so I have a task for you.” He frowned, staring at the floor. “I want you to go to the Lake of Silence and bring back Carlina. It is guarded by sorcery, but you won’t mind that. You can get through their defenses and ignore their illusions, and kidnap her, and bring her here.”
Paul asked, “Who is Carlina?” But he knew the answer before Bard spoke it.
“My wife.”
* * *
Chapter Four
« ^ »
Dawn was breaking over the Lake of Silence, and on the Holy Isle a long procession of women, each robed in black, each with a dark mantle covering her head and the sickle-shaped knife of the priestess hanging from her girdle, wound slowly down along the shore, from the beehive-shaped temple toward the houses where they dwelt.
The priestess Liriel, who had, in the world, been known as Carlina, daughter of King Ardrin, walked silently among them, a part of her mind still hearing the morning prayer;
“Thy night, Mother Avarra, gives way unto dawn and brightness of day. But unto thy darkness, O Mother, all things must one day return. As we do thy works of mercy in the light let us never forget that all light must vanish and only thy darkness remain at last…”
But as they turned into the large wattle-and-daub building which was the dining hall of the priestesses, Carlina’s mind turned to other things; for it was her turn to help in the hall. She hung her heavy dark mantle on a hook in the hallway and went into the big dark kitchen, where she wrapped herself in a big white pinafore apron, covering her black skirt and tunic, tied up her head in a white towel and fell to dishing up the porridge which had simmered all night in a big kettle over the fire. When all the porridge had been ladled into wooden bowls, she sliced long loaves of bread and set them out on a wooden tray, filled the small crocks with butter and honey which were placed at intervals along the breakfast table, and as the benches filled with black-clad forms, passed among them, pouring from pitchers of cold milk or hot bark tea. At breakfast talking was permitted, though the other meals were taken in the silence of meditation. The tables were loud with chattering and cheerful laughter, a daily respite from the solemnity imposed at most times upon the priestesses. They giggled and gossiped as any group of women might do anywhere in the kingdoms. Carlina finally finished serving and took her appointed place.
“—But there is a new king in Marenji now,” said one of the sisters at her left, speaking to a third, “—and it is not enough that they have to pay tribute to the king, but they have summoned every able-bodied man who can bear arms to fight against the Hasturs in the Lord General’s army. King Alaric is only a boy, they say, but the commander of his armies was once a famous bandit they called the Kilghard Wolf, and now he’s the Lord General. They say he’s a terror; he’s conquered Hammerfell and Sain Scarp, and the woman who came to bring leather for shoe soles, she told me that Serrais has fallen to him too. And now that he’s marching on the plains of Valeron, he’ll have all the Hundred Kingdoms raised against the Hasturs—”
“That seems to me impiety,” said Mother Luciella, who was—they said—old enough to remember the reign of the old Hastur kings. “Who is this Lord General? Is he not of the Hastur kindred at all?”
“No. They say he’s sworn to take the kingdom right out of Hastur hands,” said the first speaker, “and all the Hundred Kingdoms. He’s the king’s half-brother, and he’s the real ruler, whoever sits on the throne! Sister Liriel,” appealed the priestess, “didn’t you come from the court of Asturias? Do you know who this man could be, the one they call the Kilghard Wolf?”
Carlina was surprised into an unwary “yes,” before she recalled herself and said severely, “You know better than that, Sister Anya. Whatever I was before this, now I am only Sister Liriel, priestess of the Dark Mother.”
“Don’t be that way,” sulked Anya. “I thought you would be interested in news of your homeland, that perhaps you knew this general!”
It must be Bard, Carlina thought. There is no one else it could be. Aloud she said fiercely, “I have now no homeland but the Holy Isle,” and dug her spoon fiercely into her porridge.
… No. She had now no interest in what went on in the world beyond the Lake of Silence. She was no more, now, than priestess of Avarra, content to remain so for life.
“You may say so,” said Sister Anya, “but when those armed men came against the island half a year ago, it was for you they asked, and by your old name. Do you think Mother Ellinen did not know that once you were called Carlina?”
The sound of the name rubbed raw on already lacerated nerves. Carlina, Sister Liriel, rose angrily. “You know well that it is forbidden to speak the worldly name of anyone who has sought refuge here and been accepted under the mantle of the Mother! You have broken a rule of the temple. Now, as your senior, I command you to do appropriate penance!”
Anya stared at her, round-eyed. Before Carlina’s anger she dropped her head, then got out of her seat, kneeling on the cobblestone floor. “I humbly ask your pardon before us all, my sister. And I sentence myself to a half-day digging out the grass around the stones on the temple pathway, with no noon meal but bread and water. Will this suffice?”
Carlina knelt beside her. She said, “It is too harsh. Eat your proper food, little sister, and I will myself help you in digging the stones when I have done with my duties in the House of the Sick, for I was guilty, too, of losing my temper. But in the name of the Goddess, dear sister, I implore you, let the past be hidden under her mantle, and speak that name never again.”
“Be it so,” said Anya, rising, and she gathered up her porridge bowl and cup, carrying them to the kitchen.
Carlina, following with her own, tried self-consciously to smooth away the frown she could feel between her brows. The sound of the name she had laid aside—forever, she had hoped—had disturbed her more than she wanted to say, aroused emotions long since put aside. She had found peace here, companionship, useful work. Here she was happy. She had not, really, been troubled or frightened when Bard had come here with armed men; she had trusted in Avarra to protect her, and she was confident that the protection would hold true as it had done then. Her sisters would protect her; and the spells they had laid on the waters of the lake.
No, she had not been afraid. Let Bard seize all Asturias, all the Hundred Kingdoms, it was nothing to her, he was gone from her mind and from any meaning he might ever have had for her. She had been a young girl then; now she was a woman, a priestess of Avarra, and she was safe within the walls of her chosen place.
Sister Anya had gone to do the hard work on the stones of the path, which must be done but which could not be assigned to anyone and must wait until such time as someone saw fit to volunteer as penance for a broken rule or some real or fancied imperfection of conduct. Or, occasionally, as an outlet for superfluous energies. Carlina knew that she would welcome the hard physical work of pulling out the tightly knotted grass which was shifting the stones of the path, losing her anxieties in the strenuous and sweaty task of lifting and changing the stones and clearing the grass and thorns. But she was not yet free to seek that mind-soothing monotony; it was her day to tend the sick. She took off the pinafore and towel, laid her crockery for the young novices to wash, and went to her allotted work.
In the years since she had come to the Island of Silence, she had learned much of healing, and now was ranked as one of the most skillful healer-priestesses of the second rank. One day, she knew, s
he would be among the best, those entrusted with the training of others. It was only her youth which kept her, now, from that post. This was not vanity, it was merely a realistic awareness of the skills she had learned since she had come here, skills of which she had had no idea at home in Asturias, for no one at the court had ever troubled to coax them forth and teach their use.
First there was the minor routine of every day. A novice had burned her hand on the porridge kettle. Carlina dressed the burn with oil and gauze and gave her a little lecture about being mindful of what she was doing when she handled hot things. “Meditation is all very well,” she said severely, “but when you are handling hot vessels over the fire, that is not the time for prayerful contemplation. Your body belongs to the Goddess; it is your business to care for it as her property. Do you understand, Lori?” She brewed tea for one of the Mothers who suffered from headache and a young novice who was suffering from cramps, went to pay a visit to one of the very old priestesses who was slipping away mindlessly into a calm, painless death—she could do little for her except to stroke her hand, for the old woman could no longer see or recognize her—and gave some liniment to a priestess who worked in the dairy and had been stepped on by the clumsy foot of a dairy animal.
“Rub it with this, sister, and in future remember, the beast is too foolish to keep from stepping on your foot, so you must be sensible enough to keep your feet out of her way. And do not go to the dairy again for a day or two. Mother Allida will probably die today; you may sit by her and hold her hand and speak to her if she seems restless. She may grow lucid if the end is near. If she should, send at once for Mother Ellinen.”
Then she went to the Stranger’s House, where, twice in a tenday, she had been given the task of first seeing the sick who came to ask help of the priestesses of Avarra, usually after the village healer-women had failed to help them.