A Fray of Furies, page 4
part #2 of The Waking Worlds Series
She commanded her knocking knees to behave.
Her jaw muscles were wound too tight to greet the hammerman who held the door flap for her, but she managed a jerky nod.
Inside, the perpetual gloom was being resisted by braziers, set on the sunken floor. The longhouse was both dug-out and built-up, earthen banks and planted logs providing walls, backrests and seating for more than a score people.
Even with the hammerman outside enforcing entry, it was crowded. The whole tribe wanted to be here for this.
She relaxed slightly as the gloom relented to show her her father, seated at the far end, staring into a brazier. He was everything a Huntmaster ought to be. Big. Powerful. Imposing. Bearded, as so very few of the People were. He did not look up as she entered. But then, he didn’t have to.
A woman who turns her head to spy her prey; deserves to chase it the live-long day.
She smiled. Few of her father’s teachings rhymed so well.
Her relief was short lived. Her second-mother moved to whisper in an elder’s ear. She felt the woman’s attention prick her jugular.
Hastily, she wormed herself between two fat weavers and out of sight. The two stared at her in astonishment. As a woodswoman (and a witness) she was due a much higher seat.
She ignored them, glaring at all the moccasined toes. She could tell, by the openly appraising and judgmental looks cast her way, that Aunt Pollat had been busy. Her story had spread.
The chief banged on the brazier with the butt of his throwing axe, calling the meeting to order. A lifetime spent out on the ice had narrowed Warag’s gaze so his eyes showed only black. They were a bear’s eyes, capable of savage violence and the gentlest of care. Under their regard, the longhouse sputtered to silence.
“Now,” her father boomed, “what was so urgent I had to turn right around and ride back home?”
She knew him well enough to know he was not truly upset. Their northern borders were guarded by the Fleetlock and Windwinder tribes. The only threat came from the south. The city, for all its cancerous growth, tended to stick to warmer climes. Those who dared till the tribelands’ frozen soil were wont to starve – unless the People found them first. And it was the wrong season for raids from the lowly lowland tribes.
“Grave tidings, chief,” her second-mother said, rising. “Your own daughter brings word that the krin walk as men once more.”
The rumor, so bluntly stated, raised a breeze of indrawn breaths.
She fought to stifle her own surprise. She’d thought for sure Raylat would be doing her damnedest to discredit her.
Inexplicably, she found herself scanning the crowd for Bellem.
Now her father looked at her, solemn and silent. It was not a look she was used to and she squirmed beneath it.
“Where is the sifter?” her father demanded of the room at large. “He should be here to hear this and offer counsel.”
“A summons was sent,” rasped Elder Farn, at her father’s elbow. “The sifter sent word that we are not to wait proceedings on him. He will attend us at his convenience.”
“His convenience?” her father pondered darkly. “We’ll just see about that,” he declared, gathering himself to stand.
“My chief,” her second-mother forestalled, a hand on his thigh. “The sifter has labored the night long. But this is a millennia-old mystery. The Ancestors will not be rushed to answers. Might we not learn what we can, by our own means, here and now?”
Her father chewed his moustaches, looking none too pleased.
“You are right, wife,” he conceded at last, cupping her hand. “But if we must wait upon the sifter’s wisdom, I’d rather receive it when I’m rested. We will adjourn until the he can join us.”
Some among the elders nodded.
“Husband,” Raylat reminded, “we need not wait upon the sifter to hear testimony. By all accounts, your daughter did not sleep last night. I think it best you allow her to rid herself of this burden.”
She almost leapt up in outrage. Her lack of sleep had nothing to do with the krin! Patronizing pity rained down from all sides. She nearly spat her protest in the fat weaver’s eye. But, counter to Bellem’s claims, she did know what self-control meant. If she wanted the tribe to take her seriously, she needed to act the adult.
Her father turned his bear’s eyes on her, weighing.
“It is best,” her second-mother spurred, “to give a story up, before it can grow awry in the cage of recollection.”
More elders nodded this time.
Self-control be damned. She’d do this without being hounded.
She leapt to her feet, “I would speak.”
Elder Farn waved her forward, not gauging her father’s mood.
“Kassika, daughter of Esse, are you prepared to testify before the Blackwater Council?”
“I am,” she ground out.
Raylat looked suitably pleased.
“Then do so,” Elder Farn invited.
She took a deep breath, feeling the eyes and expectations of the tribe focus on her. The boasts lined up behind her teeth, unbidden. Her sense of her own story waxed, loomed larger, more glorious…
She happened to glance at her father.
An honest miss is better than a crooked shaft.
She let his gaze ground her. Just the two of them, the fire and the forest, as it once was. She told him all of it, not sparing her own embarrassment. How she’d made up her mind to go off alone. How citymen had surprised her. How she’d broken her bow… Every stumble and fall, all her doubt and desperation.
Though she was by no means a gifted storyteller, she felt the tribe hanging on her every word. Gasps and hisses sounded around her account of the krin, how she’d stood her ground and lost.
“When I woke,” she concluded, “the krin was gone. In its place lay a youth of perhaps sixteen summers. I waited out the night, gambling that it would not retake its killing shape when it woke. It seemed trapped in its man-skin – and simple in the head. I led it back to camp. Partway, the sifter found us and tricked the krin into unconsciousness. The Hunt brought us home.
“That is my testimony.”
The longhouse erupted. Men were on their feet, shouting at the chief and at cross purposes. Women leaned their heads together. Others sat back, musing darkly to themselves.
Into this din, the chief stood.
Those closest quickly reclaimed their seats. Those further away were pulled down by their sleeves. She gratefully wedged herself back between the two weavers. A fragile silence descended.
“These,” her father growled, “are grim tidings. More so than any that have come before me in my many years as chief.”
“It cannot be true!” someone dared from the gloom.
Raylat, breaking with proper decorum, shot to her feet.
“You would call my daughter a liar?” she demanded, shrugging off the chief’s restraining hand. She fairly radiated outrage.
“You all know her,” Raylat reprimanded the tribe. “She is contrary and stubborn and tactless. But she is true!”
This vehement, if back-handed, defense caught her off guard. Wide-eyed, she wondered if she’d seriously misjudged the woman. Perhaps they could learn to (not like but) tolerate one another?
“And she will prove it!” her second-mother crowed.
Eyes tracked Raylat’s knife as it tumbled in a lazy arc. It stuck, point first, in the dirt floor. Its hilt heeled over toward Kassika.
Dead silence reigned, as if the blade might rear up and bite someone. She stared at it, those assembled refocusing on her.
A blood oath? Is she serious?
They were deadly serious undertakings – emphasis on deadly. Enforced not only by the People in this life but by the Ancestors in the next. Chiefs were sworn in by way of blood oath. Another man might go his entire life without making one. And breaking one…
Banishment. Forever denied your tribe’s territory and the Ancestral Bridge. Your own kin would be honor-bound to put you down if you ever dared return.
And here she’d been thinking she’d judged her second-mother too harshly. The woman’s support was a sham. Raylat believed her story was false, that the sifter’s findings would condemn her. That’s why the woman had been pushing for her testimony. And if, by some miracle, the sifter bore her out? Well, then Raylat had simply been showing proper (zealous, some might say) support. She’d be forever lauded as Kassika’s staunchest ally. Any critique of hers would come over as a child’s ungrateful gripes.
Even so, the cunning bitch had snared her. There was no way she could refuse the blood oath now. It would be as good as recanting. She couldn’t even be seen to hesitate too long.
She plucked free the knife, wiping it on her thigh. Standing before her tribe, she raised her bare arms for all to see. The disapproving cast on her father’s face gave her a moment’s pause.
“I am Kassika Blackwater, daughter of Esse and Warag of the People,” she intoned. “Ancestors, witness the truth of my heritage…” blood welled from her palm. She clenched her fist so bright red ran between her fingers.
“By my blood and belonging,” she met her second-mother’s eyes, “I swear this to be truth: I bring a krin, clothed in man-skin.”
Fearing she’d aim high if she tossed the bloodied blade back, she kept it. Let her second-mother ask for it. The fat weavers scooched as far apart as their bulk allowed. One offered her a rag for her hand, nodding approval.
“A dangerous thing to say.”
All heads turned to the entrance. Who knew how long the sifter had been quietly observing the proceedings?
“My chief,” the wise man nodded, “there is something you should see…”
Chapter 2 – Burning Desires
Village of Hedrick
Genla Province
The Heli Empire
Her mother had named her Peat.
If burning had been the plan all along, she’d have preferred to be named after a tree. Something like ‘Ash’ or ‘Willow’. Never mind the fact she was neither blonde enough for the former nor slender enough for the latter. There was no way her mother could have known either of those beforehand, could she? She’d never have aspired to something fancy, like ‘Maple’ or ‘Hazel’. She was too bitter, for one, and too inflexible, for another. ‘Yew’ would have been a nice conversation starter – though introductions might have been a bit roundabout. And even though everything about her ran cross-grain and refused to take a polish, Beech would have been a misnomer.
But then, her mum had always been a bit funny.
That’s why they’d hanged her.
Her mother had once sat her down and explained about the gods, in her own, meandering way. How Helia was forever silent and how a host of others (whose names she didn’t know) were turned away. How prayer was good for the soul but not for the knees and – at the end of the day – which carried more water uphill?
But you didn’t live in the Empire and not pray to Helia. You especially didn’t not pray to Helia where others might see.
Oh, she’d prayed.
For the children to stop throwing rocks at their house. For their medicines to be received with smiles, not suspicion. For the village priest to talk to them instead of making warding signs at them.
As she’d gotten older, her prayers had grown more desperate.
That the village boys would leave her alone. That they’d stop chasing her through the woods. That her ragged breathing wouldn’t give her hiding place away…
She’d finally told her mother about that last one.
A week later, Tawdy Argonson’s mum found him dead in his bed, eyes bloodshot and lips foam-flecked. A curse, everyone agreed.
Her mother had been calm and collected when the mob arrived – so unlike her usual self. Only when it became clear they’d come for the daughter, not the mother, had she fought.
They’d strung her up from the old birch in the garden.
She blinked. A faint nimbus of dawn light leaked through the gap in the thatch. The rain had stopped: another unanswered prayer.
Toil soon resumed on the village green. She listened to the rattle and clunk of a bonfire being built. Her chains – hastily made things – gave the lie to her shivering.
Cold, she thought. Just the cold.
When her captors finally came for her, the clunky lock wouldn’t relinquish its hold. It was the only lock in the village and – as far as anyone knew – had never been used. The smith was called and the lock struck. The mayor grumbled at the delay.
She found it difficult to look in their eyes or even think their names. If she did, she’d have to acknowledge that people really did this – really did this! – to other people.
Her foot, maligned by her manacle, refused to take her weight. With her hands bound in the small of her back, she took the fall full on her chin. Callused hands tangled in her hair and shift, pulling her roughly to her feet.
The noonday light was blinding. It hid the first stone to hit her. She ducked her head beneath the deluge of curses and offal as she was dragged to the square. The slope of split logs and kindling smelled potently of pitch as she was herded up it.
They nicked her wrists, loosening her ties. The tingle of restored circulation had no time to set in before she was retied to the center pole. More ropes at her shoulders, middle and knees secured her to the waiting pyre.
A vicious slap stole her hearing, so she missed the opening lines of the mayor’s tirade. The balding lecher stalked up and down before the unlit pyre, exhorting the gathered villagers.
“…curse ended young Tawdy’s life…” he was saying, doing his best to make his shrill voice carry. She tried her best not to listen.
“…work of witches and pagan practitioners…”
“…a blight on our peace and prosperity…”
“…cannot hope to achieve Helia’s Grace!”
She wanted so badly to be somewhere else. To be someone else.
The village priest solemnly strode up to deliver a reading.
“…beware the witch...”
“…be thou stout of heart…”
“…suffer not the witch to live…”
The scripture book closed with a snap.
“Is there anyone here who would speak for her?” the mayor demanded. For the first time, she risked running her gaze over the silent crowd. Their fear and hostility made them appear alien. She was apart from them, she realized. She was other.
“Then how say you?”
“Witch!” they screamed.
“She’s a witch!”
“Burn her!”
The mayor turned to the men holding the torches, “Burn her.”
The first, tame wisps of smoke smelled like home. Like her mother, knitting before the fire. The thatch had leaked and the crooked chimney had let smoke into the single room…
She felt the memory twist sourly.
None from the village would fix it, so they’d had to make do.
And yet, whenever there’d been a difficult birth, the midwife had been quick to run up their garden path. The girls, desperate to have their ‘virgin’ wombs scoured, called on them in the dead of night. The farmer, who’d put a spade between his toes, had hobbled up himself. The child, whose fever refused to break, had been carried across their threshold by her father.
But if the rains failed to come, or a lamb wandered off, or bread failed to rise: it was them. Mothers bullied rebellious children with horror stories of the witches.
They were the stuff of nightmares.
She watched the sullenly smoldering flames grow, wondering where her fear had gone. She hadn’t noticed it go.
Something shifted in the woodpile and the flames pounced. Heat licked at her bare feet and flashed up her legs. She smelled burning cloth as the hem of her shift blackened and fluttered away like autumn leaves.
It didn’t hurt. Not like when she’d lifted the pewter pot from the boil when she was little. It was dream-like: the roar of the fire enfolded her, nuzzling her like her mother’s best quilt.
She laughed joyously as the heat set her hair to dancing.
Beyond the fiery shawl, the oblivious villagers cheered.
A memory came to her, unbidden: her mother, expounding on the properties of plants.
There was a flower. It bloomed in the springtime, up on the snowline, high above the village. It was exceedingly rare, for it only took root in ashen soil. Grey leaves on gnarled stems that bled red when cut. But the bud brought forth the most amazing bloom: brilliantly purple petals, its golden center lolling a scarlet tongue of pollen.
A few carefully imbibed petals brought on dreamless sleep. But even a grain or two of pollen produced such punishing nightmares no sane person would partake of it twice. Consume the whole flower? It was said you died in your sleep and lived on in your nightmares. Forever.
Haravera, it was called.
In the dead center of her, something stirred, questing up through the snow.
Haravera opened her brilliantly purple eyes, flecked by gold and bleeding scarlet. Only the mayor – who’d braved the furnace – was near enough to notice.
She met his eyes and his aroused smile sputtered out.
Under her attention, his fondest dreams and most fearsome nightmares bared their bellies for her inspection. And she knew him, far more deeply, far more intimately, than his crude claiming of her flesh had managed. And she judged.
“Burn,” she whispered.
The scream that clawed from him was a scrabbling beast, seeking escape. The village green stilled as uncertain eyes sought him out. His shriek tore loose, drawing the flames after it. Blackening like punk wood, the mayor burnt out, shedding ashen skin and glowing embers. It happened so fast, the tail-end of a hoarse wheeze still rose amid the tendrils of smoke.
For a moment only, silence reigned.
The priest fled first, robes hiked to his hips. The green erupted in cacophony and chaos.
She smiled at the sight.
“Burn,” she commanded.
* * *
Capital City of Tellar
Tellar Province
The Heli Empire
