The Traders refrained from venturing far from the safety of shores. They came to barter for foray loot at the beginning of autumn, or at the Winter Feast, when more than one clan met in friendship. Obern had always been interested in their stories, and his interest had been encouraged by Snolli, who set him to record such tales as seemed to have an element of truth in them.
Now the survivors of the burning of Void were heading south, making their way into the very waters that had once been held so firmly against them. Obern knew as well as any that they would have to stop and gather food along the way. But between that desolate port they sought and here, where they battled an uneasy sea, lay the Bog, and of this, Outlanders knew little and had never striven to learn more. It was as if a blackness that was not a common dark curtained that waterlogged land from the clean world without.
He thought again about that winged thing that had been a shadow visible against the fire-painted sky. Why had it not pursued them when it had a clear opening?
Had it been that other, smaller, flying thing, the one that had vanished so abruptly that the lookouts swore it had never been there at all? Whatever the reason, it had not attacked. Not then. Nobody yet knew what it was, except that it had to be a sending from their enemies. He had asked Fritji about it.
Some of the sea clans had wave-readers; they did themselves. Some men, and women too, were born with special talents; all knew that. One could not turn away, scoffing, from the idea that there was much in the world that humankind did not yet understand. And though such with special gifts were few, they were encouraged to use what they had brought with them from the womb for the good of kin and clan. All wave-readers could set courses well enough for an expert mariner to follow in turn. Some could even foretell the coming of storms.
Fritji, wave-reader to Snolli, was one of these. And he had confirmed Obern's suspicions.
That shadowy thing—had it been some servant of the monster riders, or had it come from another source? One could only wait and see.
"No good."
Obern jumped a little, startled. Hengrid might have been answering his silent query. Characteristically, the armsman had spoken as in a riddle. "Eh? Finish your thought, Hengrid."
"No good ever came to them as wanted to try that coast. The pull lights would be out in a hurry any night, were we sighted close enough."
Nerves made Obern more than a little edgy. "So? And where would you have us dump ourselves and our goods then? Those before us have headed for the Fringe Isles.
Do you think there will be peace when a new hand-count of ships wants anchorage where two might hardly squeeze?"
Hengrid was well known to be a storm-screecher, one who always predicted doom.
At the same time, he was an axeman of note and had left plenty of the foe to board the Ship of Death behind them. Obern could not afford to dismiss him out of hand.
"There's the pull lights," Hengrid repeated vigorously, as one who would not accept anything but the worst.
Pull lights? Obern tried to remember. In his time of roving, he had never ventured into these southern waters. The many reefs and sandbank traps where sea and the great river emptying from the Bog made a muddled stir of meeting were wisely avoided. Yet, to reach the Ash-enkeep, they would have to risk near a surf-wet course.
Then he remembered about the pull lights. Those stories were little more than ghost tales these days.
Pull lights were what was meant by lights ashore that caught the eyes of the helmsman, somehow entrapping him and any others sighting them, so that the ship was swung directly into the death-path they marked.
Well, it should be easy to avoid such simple traps. The Bog-folk might be another matter. The Bog-folk had weapons wholly of their own. Yes, the Bale-Bog was a stink to spread o'er half the world at times. Obern took a deep breath of fresh sea wind to clear his thoughts away from unseen dangers. There were enough present perils to be watched for.
"Zazar hearth!" a voice called from outside.
Ashen took another mouthful of noodles. Let Kazi answer the call; the old woman liked feeling important.
Sure enough, Kazi was quick to reply. "Two within, one gone. The curtain be unlaced, Chief Kin."
Ashen stirred. Had Kazi gone entirely dimwitted? If Joal had been somehow moved to take the night count in person, he need only be answered.
"Hearth in ember."
Ashen relaxed a little. It was the Bog-folk's way of saying "All is well." Joal knew better than to question Zazar's household about their comings and goings.
She dropped the ladle into the soup pot and watched the curtain as it was shrugged aside by the headman's thick shoulder. Joal was no youngster who had not long carried his turtle shield, and all knew that he had little liking for the Wysen-wyf. Too many times had she defeated some cherished plan of his.
Now he was glaring straight at Ashen. "You took trails," he said, scowling, "for almost full sun length. Where went, and why?"
She nodded in a bare salute to his office, and her voice was clear and concise as she answered. "I do my mistress's bidding, Joal." It was a lie this time, but one he could not disprove.
"Zazar be not here to answer for you. You been seen near the way of Gulper. That land be closed to all kin. You go there, Old Ones know. Very bad."
Ashen heard a gasp from Kazi. It covered her own. She knew exactly where this story had come from. Tusser had used the same word, Gulper, as if it were the fell creature's name. Joal could not know about Gulper from any other source.
Tusser was alive.
Beyond that, even if Kazi did not believe in the Old Ones, who had not been observed in that section of the Bog supposedly theirs, she had a multitude of stories to embellish their dread acts. From her earliest childhood, Ashen had heard most of the tales. She realized that in her exploring, she must have strayed into one of the Old Ones' secret, perhaps sacred, places.
"I tell truth to my mistress, Kin Chief." Kazi seemed almost defiant.
"And where be Zazar?" Joal dug the point of his spear into the well- pounded earth and matted dried herbs, which served them for a flooring.
"Behind you, Joal!" Zazar's voice was waspish. "Striving to enter my own hearth past a lump without the manners of a slithcreep."
He shifted his weight quickly but she did not push past, waiting in obvious impatience for him to show proper respect.
Joal was disturbed enough to indeed forget formalities. "Where be you,
Wysen-wyf—fishing for Outlanders?"
She laughed. "So that old cry has been raised again, has it? And where do these
Outlanders come from? Eh? The few ways they can hope to come are well guarded, are they not?"
"They come!" He near spat out those words as he turned and blundered through the curtain folds. Zazar waited for a long moment.
Ashen scrambled to her feet hastily as Zazar turned toward her. She knew well that particular look.
She had been a fool, she knew it at once, to try to avert Zazar's wrath. Her head near snapped back as the Wysen-wyf slapped her cheek full force.
"You are totally empty-skulled." Zazar stood with both balled fists on her hips, looking the girl down and then up again. "Now listen, and listen well, you
Outland whelp. It will take very little, now that you are older, for Joal to order you to the feeding pool for the good of the kin. It is the oldest of all the First Laws—Bog-folk must not take Outlander women. If they do, it means death. I have seen Tusser and his foot-kissers talking behind their hands while'they watched you. To some men, that which is different is desirable—for a little while."
"They—they would be punished." Ashen said. She licked the corner of her mouth and tasted blood.
"Punished? Perhaps. Such actions have been known before. There are stories of
Outlander women who came looking for adventure in the Bog and found more than they could conveniently manage. And since such females were not seen again, they were just as conveniently forgotten. Outlander m
en, too." She spat. "You—where did you go this day?"
Ashen straightened her shoulders. This was, she knew, the time for truth-telling. But would the strange tale she had to tell be enough to divert the fullness of Zazar's rage?
With Zazar in this present mood, how much dare Ashen admit to? She gave a quick glance to where Kazi sat grinning, enjoying the girl's fall from the Wysen-wyf's good graces.
Seven
Once more, it was confirmed for Ashen that the Wysen-wyf could read minds. Quick as thought, Zazar turned on Kazi and pointed both forefingers. "Hold your tongue!" she said sharply.
This was one of her powers. When she set that order upon one, there was no hope of retelling anything heard. Ashen had known such gagging herself at times when
Zazar had welcomed cloaked and shadowed figures to the night hearth-fires. Those pointing forefingers stopped any speech thereafter. They almost stopped even the remembering of it.
However much the Bog-folk might hate and seek to destroy any Outlander venturing into their murky territory, there were those who came by stealth to Zazar. Some came through bravery or bravado. Some came through desperation. Some looked to be human kind, though Ashen never saw their faces. They were always muffled in the folds of large cowls or the hoods of their cloaks. And as for other things—some were not human at all, and these came not always of their own volition; rather, they were called.
The least frightening were the four-footed creatures that would appear at times through holes in the ground and squat before Zazar. Whatever communication passed between them and the woman who had summoned them was not to be heard, at least not by human ears, but that they reported, Ashen had no doubt.
Though she could never afterward speak of it, by listening quietly in the shadows, she heard the rumors and gossip of the outside world that the other visitors, those of humankind, brought with them. Their news seemed part of the price for Zazar's services. Thus Ashen's knowledge of the Outland was greater than that of most Bog-folk, although she could not share it with anyone because of Zazar's spell.
Now, she learned, the spell could work the other way as well.
"Speak!" She might have been fastened to the wall by those forefingers Zazar was pointing at her. Even as Kazi had been silenced, so did Ashen now need to answer. Swiftly she spilled out the adventures of the day.
Zazar waved her to sit down as she herself pulled forward a thick mat and settled cross-legged within the full warmth of the hearth. There she listened without comment or interruption to all Ashen had to tell.
The adventure on the hillock tumbled out quickly—the arrival of Tusser and his tagalongs, the rising of the giant lupper, the one they called Gulper. She left out nothing, neither the plans she knew Tusser had for her nor the wounding of
Gulper, nor die mad flight to get away. There was so much, and the girl told it swiftly. Then came the finding of the great stone monster and she began describing the writing on its mossy belly.
Zazar stopped her with an upheld hand. She reached behind her mat to one of the storage baskets and brought out a smooth strip of writing bark, clean of any previous note-taking. She tossed it to me girl. Knowing without any voiced order what Zazar wanted, Ashen took up a charred stick from the fire's edge and began with great care to inscribe the symbols she had set to memory. Twice she had to pause, thinking, until she was sure. Sometimes it seemed to her that for an instant or two, she was still in that clearing, the inscribed stone figure before her. When she had finished, she was certain that she had indeed emptied her memory as thoroughly as she could.
Zazar jerked the bark strip from her then. Reaching within the laced jerkin she wore, the Wysen-wyf brought out a stone somewhat similar to the guardian-stone
Ashen had depended upon this day, only this one was triangular in shape. She unfastened it from the cord, and using it pinched between thumb and forefinger, drew one point across each symbol on the writing bark. Somehow, Ashen was not surprised when the marks she had worked so hard to reproduce gleamed as if sparks followed the passage of the stone. When she had finished, the Wysen-wyf sat for a long time, or so it seemed to Ashen, looking at the now-bright marks.
Perhaps Zazar was also engaged in seeking some memory. Ashen dared not ask.
At length, Zazar tossed the bark into the fire and it blazed up. With narrowed eyes, she regarded Ashen, and the girl tensed. In the past, Zazar had looked at her in that way just before she brought a switch down on Ashen's shoulders.
At last, Zazar broke the silence. "What is done, is done. You, Outland whelp, are more than I have thought. Look you." She raised her forefinger in the air between them, moving it smoothly, and leaving on the air itself the faint but discernible outline of what was certainly a leaf. To Ashen's wonderment, this continued to hold a shadowy form as Zazar added another of a different shape, and yet another, until four such leaves hung there, dim but still visible enough to be named.
Ashen found herself naming them, aloud and with the certainty that she was right, not merely guessing. "Oak, Yew, Ash, and Rowan."
"No such trees ever grew in the Bog." Zazar snapped her fingers and the ghost leaves were gone. "You are of the Blood or you could not have seen them, nor known them without having seen them before. The old talent runs strong in you.
Never speak of it, not outside these walls. Knowledge of what you have done would set not only the Bog against you, but indeed, it would also bring outside hunters, keen for the kill among us."
"I have no wish—" Ashen began shakily.
"We may not wish at the hour the Weavers take up our threads, by chance or by intent." Zazar stared into the fire. The light, playing over her features, revealed the toll of age that had not been there before. "I have seen signs but until now, could not discover what they meant. Now I think I know. Heed you this. We are in a time of great change, when old Houses will fall and be forgotten and new ones shall arise. Heed this also, girl—you come from high blood. It could bring you to a throne. But if you are wise, you will not walk that way. You must, however, find a path out of the Bog lest you be discovered and die. And what can be given to you as a journey aid, that I shall find."
"Bog-folk—" Ashen's mouth suddenly felt dry. She knew that Joal, for one, would be cheered to see her bound and flung into the eating-pool.
"To each kind their own. Yet as the world changes, by the Weavers' patterning, we cannot know how or why. There is this, Ashen Deathdaughter, and it you must believe; you already walk under a shadow. Go carefully, lest you bring it down upon you."
In a far corner of the room, Ashen heard a faint scrabbling noise, of a kind she had heard before. Zazar looked in that direction. "Get you to sleep," she told
Ashen. "One of my little ones is on the way, and with it, you are to have no dealings."
Ysa was midway down the steep tower stairway when she heard her husband's furious shout, followed by the blast of what could only be one of the large chamber doors sent open with a force so great it struck against the corridor wall. She stood very still for a moment, letting her newfound senses go free, seeking—
He had discovered that the Rings were missing from his fingers. Her hands flew to her breast and clasped tightly together. She composed herself and erased all signs of fear from her face as she deliberately descended the next few steps.
The oil in the crescent lamps along the walls was low, some of the flames guttering; she hoped that in their dim light, the uneasiness she felt could not be noted.
"Siebert!" That roar of a call echoed down the corridor. Surely it was enough to rouse half the castle.
There was the sound of running feet, and shadows came hurrying into the corridor from the other end of the hall. The low light glinted on the steel of unsheathed blades.
She waited until the foremost of those runners came into full view. Siebert, the
Marshal of the Guard, a man sparing of words but always correct in action when she chanced to meet him, caught sight of her now as she deliberately moved fo
rward toward the door that stood wide open. He stopped, the point of his blade wavering downward.
A man uttered a sharp cry of pain as he crawled out into the corridor like a badly beaten animal. Rugen, the King's body-squire, was followed by the burly figure of his master, who kicked viciously at his unfortunate servant.
The King's night robe had a large rent in it, showing the obese upper part of his body, as if he had tried to tear free from its silken folds. His puffy features were hardly those of humankind but more those of some farm beast run amok. He had put on one boot, the better to kick his servant.
Now he lifted his head a little and brayed forth jangling laughter, drawing his foot back to kick Rugen again. Only then did he appear to become aware that there were others watching. His head, thatched with a bristle of graying black hair, turned a fraction so he could address the audience of his rage the better.