“No chances,” she insisted.
“You could fall in a ravine!”
She brought her hand up, holding the cat’s-eye crystal. “I see as well as in daylight.”
“You threaten your place on the Coven!”
Aoleyn shook her head emphatically, as much as she could against his iron grip. “The Usgar-righinn has no edicts against wandering the mountain in the night!”
“None. Other than good sense.”
“I am not afraid. It makes me stronger. Do you not wish that?”
He was trying to stay angry here, but Aoleyn knew that her appeal and promise of strength had walked around his fury. And the only lie she had told was that she had not been with an uamhas, but he never questioned the lie because no one could have gone that far up Fireach Speuer and returned before the night was half through.
The rest of her story had been true. She was going out in order to become stronger, for she had found secrets that not even the Coven, blinded by their old rituals and etiquette with the crystals, could hope to realize. She was indeed getting stronger.
But not for Tay Aillig’s benefit.
“You take care on your paths, we wouldn’t want you to come to harm,” Tay Aillig warned with a toothy grin and a brief tightening of her wrist. “And know that if your foolishness costs you your place in the Coven, you will be shunned by all men. And I will not marry you, but will take you often for my pleasure, and your pain.”
He let go of her chin and reversed his hand, using the back of his fingers to stroke her cheek … but so awkwardly, almost as if he had only heard that that was how lovers touched.
So clearly there was something out of sorts here, but Aoleyn couldn’t quite place it. It was as if there was no desire in the man beyond his hunger for power. Even with the threat he had issued, Aoleyn understood clearly that it was only half true, that he wouldn’t take her for his pleasure.
He would take her to punish her, to satisfy his anger, not any carnal desire.
She was quite relieved when he left, particularly when she realized that she was still wearing the ring she had fashioned of moonstone and malachite, and wound with wedstone threading.
If Mairen found out that Aoleyn had broken sacred crystals to get at the flakes within, it would cost Aoleyn more than a place among the Coven.
She intended to go back into the caverns beneath Craos’a’diad, perhaps the very next night, but not in the way that Mairen would send her there for her heresy.
28
WHEN YOU FEAR, CHARGE!
Talmadge crouched behind a tree, peering through a bush to watch the man standing in the stony shallows of the river. He appeared to be a few years younger than Talmadge, and not as tall, but he was clearly a Bearman, a man of Honce. And no one Talmadge wanted to fight with, the veteran frontiersman knew when the stranger stripped off his shirt. This one was a warrior, no doubt about it, with a torso thick with muscles but otherwise lean, and arms that looked as if they could break Talmadge in half. He moved with grace, too, and even when he reached back for something in his ample pack, his legs shifted subtly, perfectly, to keep him in balance, to keep him ready.
It wasn’t just the man himself that had Talmadge holding back cautiously: a most remarkable bow leaned on the pack, and a long sword, as well, and though the blade was hidden in a sheath, the handle and pommel spoke of incredible workmanship.
The man splashed himself quickly and repeatedly, then brought his cupped hands up to douse his head with the cold mountain water, rising and shaking vigorously.
“Are you planning to lie there all day and just watch me?” he asked then, turning to glance in Talmadge’s direction.
Talmadge reflexively ducked away, rolling onto his back to put himself fully behind the tree.
“As you wish,” came the call, and Talmadge knew he had been seen.
“I’ve some fine food to share,” the stranger offered.
After a few heartbeats, Talmadge dared peek around the other side of the tree. There stood the stranger, his shirt back on, holding a waterskin he had apparently just filled. Notably, he hadn’t retrieved his weapons, and he seemed wholly unconcerned with Talmadge.
A moment later, he glanced back, locking stares, and waved, winked, and smiled.
“I will leave you to your river, friend,” he called. “Though it seems big enough and deep enough. Surely, it’s filled with enough fish for us both, yes?”
Talmadge felt rather silly then. He climbed to his feet and moved out around the tree, toward the stranger, who smiled widely.
“Who are you who comes out so far from the tamed lands?” Talmadge asked.
“No farther than you,” the stranger replied.
“I’ve not seen you at Matinee.”
“Likely not, as I don’t even know what that is.”
Talmadge stopped his approach. “So’s my point,” he answered. “All who are out here from the land of Honce know of Matinee.”
The man looked down to regard himself and held out his hands in a shrug. “Not all, I expect.”
“Then you are new here,” said Talmadge.
“I’ve not been this far south in many years,” he replied. “And never on this side of the mountains.”
“Then I ask again. Who are you?”
“A…” The man paused, then gave a little snort.
“Is that a difficult question?”
The stranger chuckled. “No. It is just…” He sighed, gave a self-deprecating laugh, and straightened. “I am … Bryan Marrawee of Dundalis.”
“Marrawee? A strange name.”
“An alfar name,” the man said with a laugh.
Talmadge rocked back on his heels a bit. Elves? This stranger claimed a name from the elves?
“Alfar?” he echoed.
“Aye. Touel’alfar.”
Now it was Talmadge’s turn to snort, to which the stranger merely shrugged.
“It is as good a name as any,” he explained. “And so it is one I choose to wear.”
“And not the name your father gave you?”
“I did not know my father. Not really.”
“Your mother, then?”
The man who called himself Bryan Marrawee nodded.
“She gave you a name, and not an alfar name.”
“Yes, and no.”
“And?”
“It is not one I choose to wear.”
“I insist,” Talmadge said.
But the stranger simply laughed, then sighed, and began packing up his belongings.
“This is not a land for uninvited men who choose no proper introduction,” Talmadge warned.
The man looked up from his pack. “Pray tell me, who out here was ever invited? And now you would lay claim to the place?”
“I did not say that.”
“But you just built a wall of condition, yes? Tell you my name or … or what? Be banished? Do you intend to banish me?”
Talmadge licked his lips nervously. “I only wish to offer advice.”
“Offer your own name instead,” said Bryan.
“I am known as Talmadge.”
The man nodded. “Greetings, then, Talmadge. My offer of food stands.”
“Am I to trust a man who will not tell me his true name?”
“My true name is that which I choose to wear. And yes, you should trust me. I did not kill you where you lay by the tree, did I?”
Talmadge looked from the man, who was still twenty paces away, back to the tree, which was more than twenty paces back, then turned back with a doubtful expression to find Marrawee laughing and gathering up his things. He lifted his sword belt and began to strap it on.
“This would be a lot more pleasant if you simply trusted me,” Bryan said.
“I am not in the habit of walking up to strangers with my hands empty and open.”
“But I didn’t kill you.”
Again, Talmadge gave a doubting look—or started to, for Marrawee dived to the ground, into a roll, and c
ame up so easily and in steady balance to one knee, now with his bow in hand, and with his quiver right beside his hip, in easy reach. And by the time Talmadge had even realized the movement, or the quiver, Marrawee had drawn and knocked an arrow, a curious trio of feathers at its top separating as the shaft bent.
The blood drained from Talmadge’s face as that arrow shot off, sped right past him, so close that he could hear the hum of the fletching as it zipped by. Talmadge stumbled aside, then managed to get into a crouch that he might dive aside if necessary.
But Bryan had already set down the bow. Talmadge glanced back, and was strangely unsurprised to see the arrow sticking into the ground right where he had poked his head around the tree.
There was nothing to doubt, then.
“Are you coming along?” Bryan said, drawing Talmadge from his shock. “I am desperately hungry.”
* * *
The crying grew louder, along with denials, then pleas for mercy.
Innevah tried to block it out, for she understood what was happening in a tree-cave farther along the uamhas grove.
“No, I will, I will!” she heard, and it was just gibberish now, the poor girl’s voice breaking into shrieks of stinging pain.
“No, don’t!”
And the scream, probably the last one, to be followed by a night of unending sobbing, Innevah knew. The woman leaned back against the trunk of the pine tree that centered her residence, and closed her eyes, trying not to relive the experience.
For she, too, had had such a visit from a witch, twice before over the years.
The poor girl down the grove had become thick with the child of a rapist, half-Usgar. Down at the lake villages, when a woman caught in a raid and then released was found to be pregnant, the villagers accepted the fate and welcomed the child.
But not here. Not with the Usgar. Any child with half-Usgar and half-lakeman blood was an abomination that could never be allowed to draw breath. And thus the pregnant woman would be visited by the Coven witch overseeing the uamhas, now a vicious, sharp-featured and thin-haired woman named Caia. Caia took great pleasure in her duties, especially when those duties elicited screams like those coming down the grove this awful night.
Innevah almost laughed as she considered that; such an attitude certainly didn’t make Caia any worse than the others.
A noise behind her had the woman turning about. It was too dark for her to make out details, but she knew that the figure crawling toward her was Anice, the closest woman she could call a friend.
“They are monsters,” Anice said as she crawled up beside Innevah and wrapped the woman in a hug.
Innevah just squeezed her tighter and said not a word, for what might she say?
It was amazing that Innevah hadn’t been thrown from a cliff or into that awful chasm the Usgar thought the physical mouth of their demon god. She was not young and tender now, after all, and she knew of no other women who had been kept around to her age. When she had been brought here, a lifetime ago—eighteen years!—there had been a couple of uamhas women slightly older than she was now.
They were long dead.
Perhaps it was because of Bahdlahn, she mused. He was still alive, up on the mountain, working himself to death, no doubt. The vile Usgar probably used Innevah to keep Bahdlahn in line.
At that terrible moment, Innevah didn’t think that a good thing. Perhaps it would be better if Bahdlahn just ran off, even if he was killed in the attempt.
And yes, she would prefer death right then, she realized, when the heartbreaking sobs began from the poor young girl.
Those sobs cut straight to Innevah’s heart.
* * *
Talmadge watched the stranger, Bryan Marrawee, closely throughout dinner and afterward, as the man stretched out on a flat stone to regard the stars above. Bryan hadn’t asked many questions, nor had he offered many answers.
“So, you’ve never been west of the mountains,” Talmadge said after a long while of silence, trying to start a conversation. This region, northeast of Matinee, where the rivers flowed cold and strong out of the mountains, had become Talmadge’s favorite hunting ground over the last couple of years, since he had stopped going to the mountain plateau far in the west. He often went by the spot where Khotai had rescued him from the three thieves, past the grave of the fourth.
He could envision her so clearly, sliding in among them on her back, her legs working with devastating kicks.
A sad smile crossed the man’s face before he focused again on this most curious, and dangerous, stranger. Bryan lay back on the stone, smoking a long-stemmed pipe, blowing rings and watching the stars. The man had drawn his sword earlier to trim a log they used as a bench seat for their dinner. What warrior would use his sword for such a task?
But Bryan hadn’t cared at all, and he had no reason to, Talmadge came to understand, as that magnificent blade, gleaming and with not a speck of tarnish or a nick to be found, easily chopped the branches. Talmadge had no idea of what metal might be in that sword, but he knew that he’d never before seen its equal. Even Redshanks couldn’t claim such a blade.
“Far to the north,” Bryan answered. “West of them up there, in the lands known as the Barbican.”
“But not here?”
“I told you that earlier.”
“But now you’re here, and how far south will you—”
“I just buried my mother,” Bryan interrupted, cutting Talmadge short.
The frontiersman stuttered with that for a few moments, then said meekly, “I am sorry.”
Bryan shrugged. “She wasn’t that old, but I knew she’d die young. She went peacefully, and unafraid.”
“I lost my whole family some twenty years or so ago,” Talmadge said.
Bryan turned suddenly and sat up.
“She wasn’t old, but oh, the life she lived!” he began, suddenly perking up. “Her name was known throughout Honce-the-Bear, and carried into Alpinador, and even Behren. Not one in ten thousand folk could have lived a life as rich as hers. So full!”
“Then that is a good thing.”
“Aye, though I miss her every day.”
“It is good that you were close. Your memories—”
“She saved my life,” Bryan went on, staring down at his own feet dangling from the side of the stone. “Saved my soul, perhaps, though that one’s needing more than just saving, I fear.”
“So you’ve come here?”
He looked up curiously. “What? No. Well, yes, I suppose. I had to go somewhere, and this place seemed better than the other side of the mountains.”
“You’ve been there, though? To Honce-the-Bear?”
Bryan Marrawee laughed then, suddenly and from his belly, and Talmadge rocked back.
“Aye,” the other man said. “And if I had half the courage many believe, I’d go again, on bended knee. So might that I’m a coward, or might that I’m just not ready.”
“It was a difficult time in Honce?”
Bryan laughed.
“You were an outlaw?”
The man laughed harder. “My new friend, Talmadge, if only you knew.”
Talmadge rested back farther against the tree and tried to sort that out.
“And why are you here?” Bryan asked.
“I live here, all about these lands.”
“Why?”
It was a simple question, or was it? As he considered his answer, it occurred to Talmadge that the roads of his life had narrowed considerably, bordered by ghosts. He didn’t want to go back to the Wilderlands, or past them to Honce, but neither could he bring himself to go west any longer, to the place he had once loved.
A ghost had kept him from that mountain plateau before, and so now again, but this time, it was entirely different.
“A single word poses such a puzzle?” Bryan said, drawing Talmadge from his contemplations.
“What?”
“Why?”
Talmadge held up his hands in surrender. “It would seem that I am a b
igger coward than you.”
“Do tell.”
“I should be going west now, down this very river, and to a place I would have one day called home, perhaps,” Talmadge explained, speaking more to himself than to his companion. “But there I lost a woman I loved, taken by a monster…” His voice trailed away.
“To get the pearls?” Bryan asked, and Talmadge nodded—and then the man’s eyes opened wide indeed!
Bryan Marrawee laughed at him and hopped down from the stone. “A friend told me,” he said. “Of course, I know the tale of Talmadge. You are in the ballads, sir, called out in the songs of the bards.”
“What bards?” Talmadge stuttered.
“In the Wilderlands.”
“But you said you’d never been this far south in many years.”
Bryan shrugged. “I’ve not.”
“But your friend has?”
“It would seem so, and you know, those bards are not known to be secret-keepers. Quite the opposite, I am told.”
Talmadge scowled at the sarcasm.
“But fear not, secret Talmadge, for they probably got most of your tale wrong.” As he spoke, Bryan picked up his weapon belt and hitched it around his waist, then picked up that magnificent bow.
Talmadge shrank back. He was too far away to hope to get near the man in time to prevent a killing shot, and no, so suddenly once more, he had no idea of what this stranger intended.
“I’m to the river to fetch some water,” Bryan explained, wearing a smirk that told Talmadge he had seen the man’s uneasiness. “I’ve found a few rather large bears down there.” He held up the bow. “You can come if you wish.”
Talmadge, still flustered by the surprising revelation, didn’t immediately answer, and then just shook his head.
“You are welcome to stay the night in my camp,” Bryan told him. “We can cut you a pipe of your own.”
He gathered up the waterskin and started away.
Talmadge sat there for a long while, not knowing what to do. Part of him wanted to run off into the night, to be as far away from this dangerous, and potentially mad, stranger as quickly as possible.
He slowly rose, thinking to do just that, when he noted Bryan’s huge pack. He looked all around, then made for it, peering out beyond it to make sure that the man was nowhere about. He pulled open the ties and threw back the flap, fumbling about in the clothing and tightly wrapped foodstuffs.