“Will you give chase?” Talmadge asked, secretly, and ashamedly, hoping the answer would be no. The Usgar had gemstone magic and would obliterate any rescue party, he believed, but still, he understood the call of duty here, and so added, sincerely, “I will go and fight beside you.”
The Fasach Crann men and women shifted uncomfortably, looking to each other, and none replying, which in and of itself was all the answer Talmadge needed.
He looked back up at the mountain, the darkness creeping up its side now as the sun began to dip behind the western horizon, the beautiful images of shining autumn leaves replaced by a brooding shadow.
They couldn’t go in pursuit, Talmadge understood. They would be slaughtered to a man, to a woman.
“It is not so unlike the world I left behind,” he quietly mouthed.
“Gather him,” said a villager, the old gray-haired man from the beach. “Give the dead to Loch Beag. And now we can rest easy, for there will be no more raids this season.”
Talmadge turned on the man at those words, staring at him hard, wanting to remind him that he had come through that very morning with a warning—one this very same gray-hair had ignored. And indeed, a warning the man lying dead before him had ignored.
But again, to what end?
Talmadge merely nodded and rose from the body of the man named Huana’kal.
* * *
Long before the warriors returned from the raid, the remaining members of the Usgar tribe had moved the entire village to the sacred winter plateau. This was the secret of Usgar—the secret and the sacred—a private place of warmth and comfort in the midst of winter blizzards and freezing winds atop the towering peak known as Fireach Speuer.
In the summer months, on the lower slopes, the tents were arranged haphazardly, following the whims of each warrior’s desire for his morning view, his shelter from the rain, or whatever else he might choose. Up here, though, the Coven organized the layouts. Each of the women made sure that the tents sat in a tight, organized circle, all door flaps facing inward, sheltering each other from the relentless wind.
The day had been bright but was turning gray, a distinctly chill breeze blowing down from the north and carrying heavy clouds. With a potential storm brewing, the efforts to finish the camp increased to a frantic pace, and the child found herself more often underfoot than of any use. She tried to help, but the adults wouldn’t even slow down enough to give her instructions, and so the crone either did not notice or did not care when Aoleyn skipped away from the bustle of activity.
Just a few dozen strides from the tent ring grew the only real trees this high on the towering mountain, a brooding, densely packed stand of pines that stood only three times the height of the tallest men, but still created a wall of green.
Aoleyn glanced back before she slipped into the grove; because she was a girl, the place was not forbidden to her. Men were not allowed in here—ever! As far as Aoleyn could tell, this was the only thing for which or from which men were forbidden, whereas the women of Usgar were ordered about without recourse all the time.
Aoleyn had been in this place before, with the crone as her guide. She had never gone deep into the thick copse, just wandered about the boughs of the outermost trees. Now, though, she dared push through the branch tangles, often looking back, expecting that the crone would find her and slap her hard.
It was worth the risk, she decided, for she suddenly realized that she wanted to see the Crystal God. It lived in here. It gave power to the Crystal Maven and the dozen other witches of the Coven. Those who heard the god could make fire and lightning, and float off the ground—little Aoleyn wished that she could float, fly even!
Aoleyn had wondered about this excursion many times during the few days the warriors had been gone, and particularly when the encampment had been reset on the plateau beyond the grove. She wanted to meet the god, and planned to secretly visit Usgar often this winter, even against the wind and snows of a blizzard.
The grove was not large, no more than a couple of acres in all, but it was thick and the trees were not in neat rows, and often overlapped. One could easily get lost in here.
She plowed inward, but then stopped abruptly, in both movement and rebellious mirth, when she realized that she had come to the last line of trees. She bent and twisted, trying to peer through the thick boughs. She could tell that there was a small lea beyond, but couldn’t make out more than that, nothing distinct at least. The too-curious child chewed her lip, wondering how to proceed. Women were allowed into the grove, but only the Coven could pass through to Dail Usgar, the meadow of the Crystal God, and even they didn’t come often.
But Aoleyn wanted to meet this god and had come too far to simply turn about. She scanned the nearby trees for a proper perch, pushed past the pliable branches, and began to climb.
She realized almost immediately her mistake, though, and knew that the crone would know and that she would get into trouble, for the sap of the sticky trunk got on her hands and in her hair and on her clothes.
Her panic passed quickly, though, for what did it matter? She had barely begun her climb and the sap was already upon her. There was no escaping a whipping at this point, so there was nothing left to lose by continuing.
Up she went, her lithe form barely swaying the supple pine. She pulled herself through tight wedges. She cut her hand at one point, but just pressed it against the trunk, letting the thick sap stem the bleeding. She paid that hand so much heed in the next few climbs that it took her a long time to even realize that she was fully in view of the circular meadow.
And of Usgar, the Crystal God.
It protruded from the ground, an eight-sided obelisk, as tall and thick as the biggest warrior in the tribe, but angled to the side so that its end was no higher than Aoleyn’s head, had she been standing before it. Looking upon it, Aoleyn found that comparison—to a man—easy to come by, for the sacred crystal reminded her of a boy, of how a boy was different from a girl.
She hugged the trunk of the pine to secure herself, to protect herself from her own distraction, for the sight of the Crystal God did not disappoint. Nay, it overwhelmed her, filling her with a sense of magic and warmth that made her shiver.
There was life here, and power. Aoleyn thought of the blessed weapons—the magical crystalline tips of the spears—and how they must be children of this god.
The light reflecting off the leaning obelisk teased her with subtle hues. She didn’t know the difference between a reflection and an inner glow, of course, but somehow she understood the light to be coming from inside the crystal. When the sun peeked out from behind the heavy clouds, the light at the crystal did not much change. It was the god! She was seeing god! And she saw god then, too, in the glowing crystal tips of the warrior spears.
The breeze blew. Aoleyn closed her eyes and felt the warmth of Usgar, and in that moment, she fully understood why no snows could ever take hold in this meadow, and the sanctuary just beyond. No one could survive out on the high mountain in the winter, except for this blessing.
She could have spent the whole day up there, just basking in the warmth and marveling at the beauteous sight, but the blare of a distant horn alerted her.
The warriors were returning!
Aoleyn scrambled down from her perch and forgot all about the sap that covered the front of her clothing. She moved through the trees with purpose, exiting the copse at exactly the same spot where she had entered, a feat of navigation that would have impressed the crone had she known about it.
She glanced all around, spotting a high rocky outcropping not far to the side, and ran for it, nimbly scrambling across the stones. From her high vantage, the girl could see the entire landscape around her. The winter camp lay below and not far from her perch. Beyond it, the rocky slopes of the mountain rose and dived in a mesmerizing pattern, all the more so because they were partially covered in snow. Directly behind her, sheer cliffs led to the tip of the mountain, and there clouds gathered, warning of an appr
oaching storm—though, by the feel of the air, not a particularly bad one. To Aoleyn’s right, a trail wound up steeply to the higher ground, weaving between rows of broken stones and tumbled boulders. This led to another important place, Aoleyn remembered, to a hole in the mountain called Craos’a’diad, the Mouth of God, and she could see that up there, a light snow was already falling.
Aoleyn had seen that hole, so she was told, but her memories of the place were more based on words the crone kept telling her than anything direct. There, the tribe fed god so that god would be kind to them.
Yes, the child remembered that part. Remembered the screams.
She dismissed that part of her memory with a shudder, then, as only a child could, she turned her emotions completely around, and watched the dance of the snow for a bit, enjoying the whimsical flight of the light flakes as they made their way from cloud to land. Then she shook off that distraction as well, and focused on the events below. She wanted to be the first to actually see the returning war party—she thought she would be important if she became the herald to announce the return.
Even at her tender age, Aoleyn liked being important.
Almost as soon as she had turned back, the girl noted Tay Aillig leading his war party through a tumble of boulders not far below.
“Here! Here!” she cried out, loud as she could, and she stood straight on the high rocks and waved her arms frantically to gain attention, then pointed to the boulder tumble.
Yes, young Aoleyn felt very important in that moment, with so many eyes looking up to her for direction, and her crooked little smile nearly took in her ears. She basked in that pose for a long while, until Tay Aillig and his group came in full view of the camp itself and all attention turned from her. Then she scrambled back off the high perch and skipped her way back down to the tents, to watch the procession.
Most of the Usgar talked excitedly, greeting returning friends, taking the heavy packs of bounty that would need to be quickly sorted. Aoleyn saw the Crystal Maven and her witches rushing about near two stretchers that had been placed upon the ground, though there were too many legs moving all about and more than one witch kneeling at each stretcher for her to see anything important or exciting. She did understand that someone was badly hurt, though, given Mairen’s call for crystals thick with the gray wedstones, and also from the sheer volume of the frantic prayers of other witches.
The girl’s attention was stolen almost immediately, though, when she saw the slaves, an elderly couple and a group of children no older than her. She glanced around desperately, finally spotted the old crone, and rushed to the woman’s side, hugging her leg.
“They’re so ugly,” she whispered, and the crone laughed.
But even as she heard her words—that same litany of lakemen ugliness so often jeered about the Usgar encampments—Aoleyn had trouble reconciling those words, her words, with her thoughts.
She didn’t think the captured children handsome by any means, with their garish elongated skulls, but in her heart, that reality seemed far less important.
For she saw the eyes of the children.
She saw their fear, their very human fear.
She would feel the same, she knew.
The realization of that common bond, some shared sense of humanity that she was too young to understand, shook Aoleyn profoundly.
Finally she looked away, turning her gaze back to the stretchers. She noted the wounded Usgar man and knew him as Aghmor. He wasn’t a bad fellow, and she hoped that the witches would be able to help him.
But even that thought proved fleeting when Aoleyn noted the other person lying on a stretcher, a woman from the lake tribe.
“What is wrong with her?” she asked, not expecting an answer.
“She is fat with a lakeman’s piglet,” the old crone answered, and her tone, despite the derision, made Aoleyn recognize that the crone thought that a good thing.
But Aoleyn hugged the old woman’s leg tighter. On that one occasion when Aoleyn had seen Craos’a’diad was because of a pregnant woman whose baby had been born dead. All that woman did after was wail and throw herself about the ground. She wouldn’t eat and wouldn’t talk. The men decided she was cursed, and so they took her to the chasm and cast her in.
The girl hoped this woman’s child would not be born dead. Even though the woman was ugly and scary, Aoleyn did not want to see her cast into the chasm, too.
5
YOU ARE STUPID
The callousness of the Usgar women as they tended the slave jarred Aoleyn’s young sensibilities. The ugly long-headed lakewoman was obviously in agony—her screams echoed off the rocks all across the mountainside, but the Usgar attending her seemed more amused than concerned, even mimicking her cries in a mocking way.
“If your foul spawn’s ready and you’re not, then know we’ll be glad to let you die,” one witch told her repeatedly.
“We’ll cut it out!” another promised, and seemed happy to do so.
Aoleyn almost cried out aloud at that, but wisely bit back her sound. She wasn’t supposed to be here up in the pines overlooking a small clearing to the side of the circular meadow that held the crystalline manifestation of Usgar. She knew that she’d get whipped hard if she was caught, but she couldn’t resist. The cries had pulled her to this place. She had to see.
And from her vantage point, she did see, indeed, all of it, and heard all of it, and she didn’t want to anymore, but she simply could not tear herself away from the spectacle. Her black eyes rimmed with tears and she felt a sense of helplessness and sorrow that overwhelmed her. She had lost her own mother soon after her birth, she had been told, though the circumstances had never been explicitly explained to her. Looking at the long-headed lakewoman, at the obvious agony and the blood—so much blood!—Aoleyn figured the death of her mother must have had something to do with this painful process!
Often had the growing young girl wondered about her lost mother. She had never known her father, either, and no one would speak of him. She didn’t even know their names!
And now she saw, and heard the screams, and feared that her mother had died in agony.
She held there, clutching the tree trunk, staring at the bloody gash, then up to the slave woman’s face, which was flushed red, so red, as she gritted and groaned and cried out that she could not do this.
Aoleyn winced when a witch slapped the slave hard across the face, then grabbed her by the hair and yanked her elongated skull back so they could lock stares.
“Push, you fool. For all your worthless life,” the witch demanded. “Push, or I will cut it out of you!”
The level of cruelty in this most private of moments surely startled Aoleyn. She was but a child, but she could sense the sheer wrongness of it! Aoleyn knew that the women could be cruel—the crone’s bony hand had stung her enough times!—but this was different. This was a level of contempt and disgust, woman to woman, that Aoleyn had never considered before.
She tried to block out the uncomfortable reality and focus on the event at hand, and just in time, for she witnessed then the birth of a baby, a young boy, a new slave, and then saw, too, all the blood and gore that came with it.
One of the women cleaned the baby off and held him aloft for the others to see, and from her perch, Aoleyn got a good view. The child’s head had a bit of a cone, perhaps, but nothing like the ugly mother.
Perhaps the skull would grow, the girl mused, and she shook her head in denial of the notion that this little baby was cute, reminding herself that he would grow into one of the ugly lakemen, with a long and sloping forehead that allowed his hair to hang loosely far behind his ears and shoulders. Like his mother. Of all the strange head shapes that came from the various tribes, Aoleyn thought this version, the single long lump stretching the head back and up, to be the worst.
The women began cleaning up the area then, and roughly tossed the baby down upon the exhausted mother.
Aoleyn slipped down from the tree, thinking it wise to be l
ong gone from the scene.
* * *
Many weeks later, the winter snows had lessened and the wind carried less bite. The Usgar began talking of returning to the summer encampment with great excitement evident in every syllable. The raid had brought enough food to get them through the difficult winter, but they were anxious to hunt again, and to enjoy the taste of fresh meat and juicy berries and pears. Down below on the lower slopes, the snow was letting go its wintry grip.
And the Usgar were anxious to have a little room apart from each other, Aoleyn realized. Never before had she felt their winter encampment to be so cramped, but now, a year older and a year less dependent upon the others, she had begun to truly appreciate the boundaries between herself and those around her. Truly, the almost-four-year-old was coming to enjoy her time alone, and such moments were very rare up here, shockingly so! To venture away from the camp, a place warmed by the Crystal God, was to walk into the winter wind of the towering Fireach Speuer, and it took no time at all to recognize that the wind up here hurt! Even the trees could not grow up here, except around the magical lea. And beyond the camp, the snow lay as deep as those trees of the sacred grove were tall!
It wouldn’t take the wind long to freeze the blood solid in a wanderer’s limbs, or for the stinging snow carried on it to harden and kill the skin so that it cracked apart and felt as if it were on fire. And so the whole of the tribe, more than two hundred strong, had to exist in the small area about the grove, and the narrow pathways of magical warmth up to the Mouth of God—and half of those areas were denied to all but the witches or, in some instances, the warriors and older and venerated men.
The trail, called th’Way, up from the encampment to the Mouth of God, contained a long channel of towering, broken stones that groaned and moaned loudly and continually in the ceaseless wind. The angles of the obelisks as they had rooted in the ground had created a series of shallow, natural caves. They weren’t comfortable shelters, weren’t very protective from the wind or the blowing snow, and the stones sometimes grew so cold that they burned to the touch. Still, and perhaps because of this, these many natural alcoves served the tribe well as winter cells for the uamhas.