Age of Myth (15 page)

Minna's head lifted. Her ears tilted toward the door.

Outside the growls grew louder, though the scratching had stopped. A yelp was cut short. A thunderous roar followed, making them all jump.

Another wolf cried out and then a third.

Suri startled everyone by shouting, “Don't be a stubborn fool, Char! Run!”

“What's going on?” Persephone asked, but Suri was too focused on the sounds beyond the door.

Another wolf yelped, and Suri got to her feet. So did Minna. Neither left the light of the green stone, but both stared fearfully at the closed entrance.

Silence. Not a sound from inside or out.

Suri's tattoos masked much of her expression, but tears ran down her cheeks. “You should have run, you stupid, stupid fool,” she whispered.

Persephone could hear her breathing as they waited. “Suri, what just—”

BOOM!

Each of them jumped as something powerful struck the stone door.

Raithe drew his sword again. It flashed green, reflecting the glow of the stone. Malcolm grabbed his spear, letting his blanket fall.

BOOM!

Dust and bits of rock flew.

They all got to their feet then.

“What is that?” Raithe asked.

“Grin,” Suri replied.

For the first time, Persephone saw unabashed fear on the girl's face.

“Can she get in?”

Suri hesitated, and everyone knew the answer before she replied, “On her hind legs, she's twice as tall as me.”

“Is there any way to brace the door?” Persephone asked.

Suri shook her head.

BOOM!

“Will it hold against the pounding?” Malcolm asked as another cloud of dust and stone chips flew from the wall.

“It
is
just a bear, right?” Persephone asked. “Why would she try to get in here?”

“She wants us for dinner, I think,” Raithe replied.

“But why? I'm pretty sure she just killed more than one wolf. Should have plenty of food already. More than she can possibly eat.”

BOOM!

Persephone felt the power of the blow shake the room. A small metal shield that she hadn't seen earlier fell off the wall. It rolled, wobbling faster and faster before coming to a noisy stop.

BOOM!

“Why would a bear ignore a feast to throw itself against a stone wall?” Malcolm asked.

They braced for the next attack. Instead, the roar came again.

They waited.

Silence.

Suri walked to the door, her cheeks still wet. She placed her hands against the stone.

They all waited.

Then Suri turned. “She's gone.”

There is an old clan saying: When a stranger comes to the door, always be generous because it might be a god in disguise. In my experience, gods do not use disguises. They are too arrogant.

—
T
HE
B
OOK OF
B
RIN

The next morning they found six dead wolves outside the rol. No sign of Grin the Brown, only the bodies and the blood spattered on the crevice's stone walls. Suri paused for several minutes beside the wolf with the burn mark on its fur.

The men kept their blankets but Persephone and Suri put the others back. Raithe also took the metal shield that had fallen during Grin's attack. Remarkably light, it was decorated with the same fancy circles and designs as those on the walls of the rol. Raithe offered to draw straws with Malcolm for it, but the ex-slave declined. He preferred the spear and needed both hands to wield it.

A morning mist filled the forest. In the days he and Malcolm had spent in the Crescent, Raithe had seen it many times, but the haze was still unnerving. There were no forests in Dureya, and the few trees that managed to grow were stunted, emaciated things. He'd grown up in open, rocky highlands of grass and lichen-covered stone, and it felt unnatural to be surrounded by trees and wrapped in fog. The haze further supported Raithe's belief that they were walking in a perilous world of guarded secrets and murky mysteries. Trees appeared and faded in the mist as if by choice—silent watchers, sentinels of spirits and gods. Caught early enough, the waking forest had no time to disguise itself into something mundane. This was a place of enchantments, a place where anything could happen.

Suri led them back through the falls and up to the ridge, taking time to explain where they had gone wrong. The mystic pointed at trees as if one could be distinguished from another. When she was done all three nodded, even though Raithe remained clueless. By the time they returned to the cascade, the mist was in full retreat and lingered only in isolated low-lying areas.

The men's bodies were gone. Persephone scanned the rocks with apprehensive eyes. Raithe created a mental list of who or what might have taken the men: spirits, more wolves, Grin the Brown, Wogan, or perhaps the inhabitants of the dahl. That last one troubled him, but his empty stomach concerned him more. He wanted to ask Persephone if she intended to make good on the promise of a meal, but he refrained. They hadn't spoken much that morning. The quiet of the wood demanded silence.

When at long last they cleared the tree line and returned to the open field, all of them except Suri gained a spring in their step. Once more the blue of a peerless sky stretched above, and the unhindered face of the sun shone down. The great wooden wall of Dahl Rhen crowned the hill of spring flowers. Wet grass soaked their legs as they climbed the slope where already Raithe could smell food. As they neared the top, a horn announced their approach.

“That's an
all clear,
right?” Raithe asked Persephone.

She nodded, holding the hem of her dress up and exposing sodden sandals speckled with bits of grass. “It would be two blasts for an alert and three for a call-to-arms threat.”

“Same as in Dureya,” he said.

Persephone nodded, smiling.

“I'm just so glad to be back. I don't think I've ever missed this place so much. It feels like I've been away for a year rather than only a day. A long and incredibly frightening year. I'm going to sleep well tonight.”

Suri stopped. “I expect you can find your way from here, ma'am?”

“Yes, Suri.” Persephone rolled her eyes. “I don't think I can get lost within sight of my home. But won't you please come in with us? The least I can do is get you a meal. You saved my life. You have to let me do that much.”

The girl hesitated, then glanced at Minna. “What do you think? Their food was pretty good.”

“Come. Eat. Spend the night,” Persephone told her. “You can leave fresh in the morning.”

The girl whispered to the wolf, “One more night won't make us touched, Minna. But if you see me wearing shoes, bite me.”

Raithe discovered that Dahl Rhen was nothing like Dahl Dureya. Inside, the village was huge and packed with roundhouses built with the luxury of logs sealed with daub. The thickly thatched roofs formed tall, cone-shaped peaks. Torches lined gravel paths that snaked between the homes, and a broad gravel avenue ran up the center of the village to the lodge and the common well. Filling gaps between dark-soil gardens were fire pits and woodpiles.

Woodpiles!

In Dureya, wood was more precious than metal. Here, the villagers burned it even though it wasn't night or winter. The series of vertical logs surrounding the village were crucial for protection, and even inside, wooden fences bordered gardens.
Probably the only way to keep the goats and pigs out.
Along with chickens, the animals wandered freely underfoot. Raithe checked Minna, but the wolf paid no attention to any of the livestock and stayed at the mystic's side.

Dominating everything was the lodge. The huge building sat in the middle of the dahl at the opposite end of the gravel pathway. Perched on a foundation of stone, the big wooden house was four times the size of Dureya's lodge. Squared beams braced the peaks and framed great doors. Pillars formed by binding together the trunks of six giant pine trees stood on either side of the porch.

On the left side of the path leading to the lodge, two braziers flanked a stone statue of a god. The sculpture stood only three feet tall and had vaguely human features dominated by large breasts and wide hips. Dureyans had their own gods, the Mynogan, who were actually three gods—the gods of war. Dahl Rhen's god looked friendlier.

There were more people there than Raithe had ever seen gathered in one place. As many as a hundred walked the pathways, worked the well, or tended gardens. Most were women and children. One of the few men he saw was a potter, a cripple who sat huddled over an odd spinning table, shaping wet clay.

A cripple?
Raithe pondered this.
How wealthy is this place that it can afford to feed a cripple?

His answer was visible in the healthy faces of those around him. In Dureya, those who survived the winter looked like skeletons. These men and women were downright pudgy. Well dressed, too. Done up in neatly tailored tunics, thick woolen leigh mors, and breckon mors large enough for double folds. Most of the clothes were dyed or patterned in one fashion or another, and Raithe felt embarrassed for his crude leather and thin checkered cloth. His shame was compounded by all the stares greeting them.

Raithe had expected looks. Everywhere he and Malcolm went there had been stares, but these were more pronounced. The people of Dahl Rhen dropped gourds filled with water and bundles of wood. One stared so hard that he walked into a fence post and nearly fell. Those working on roofs climbed down, and those swinging mattocks in the garden stopped. Everyone watched in shock as if the members of his group each had three heads and a tail. What surprised Raithe was that they weren't restricting their attention to Malcolm and himself. As Persephone led them up the gravel path toward the lodge, people stared at her most of all. And there were whispers, lots of whispers, her name muttered more than once.

They were nearly to the lodge's steps when a woman called from a roundhouse's doorway. “Seph!” She frantically motioned them closer. “Where have you been?”

Persephone gestured toward the woman. “Raithe, Malcolm, Suri, this is Sarah. The one I told you about. She's one of Rhen's best weavers. Her husband, Delwin, is—”

Sarah grabbed hold of Persephone's wrist and pulled her inside. The men and Suri followed. The roundhouse's wall was covered in paintings, and the room was filled with rich wool. A spinning wheel and a large loom dominated the space. Inside were two more people: a young woman working a spinning wheel and a girl beside her, carding wool. Both stopped their work the moment the group entered.

“What really happened? I don't believe it, any of it, not for a second.” Sarah wrung her hands as if strangling an invisible chicken.

“What are you talking about?” Persephone asked. “Sarah, what's wrong?”

Sarah, whose braided hair framed a kind but troubled face, glanced nervously at Raithe and Malcolm. She took hold of Persephone's hands. “Hegner has accused you of murdering Sackett and Adler.”

“What?”
Persephone's voice registered somewhere between a yell and a scream. “Hegner? Hegner is here! I thought he had run off.”

“He said you tried to kill him, too,” Sarah said. With another glance at Raithe and Malcolm she added, “And that you had help.”

Persephone seemed too dumbfounded to speak. She stared at each of them in shock.

“Why in the name of the Grand Mother of All couldn't you have killed The Stump, too?” the woman working the spinning wheel asked.

Long, black hair wreathed a face of high cheeks, a sensual mouth, and a delicate nose, all of which paled in comparison with her eyes—big, dark, deep, and intense. To look into them was to peer over the edge of a sheer drop. The woman wore a simple, thin dress, but draped over
her
curves, it came alive. Dureyan women were valued for strong backs rather than their looks, and even the most beautiful of them never looked this way. In legends, women like her would either lure men into disaster or raise them to fame. The dilemma for the would-be hero was determining which.

“Konniger is making me marry that cretin,” she announced, and scowled.

“Moya, please!” Sarah snapped.

Outside the open doorway, people gathered. They spoke quietly to one another and pointed to the group inside Sarah's roundhouse.

Persephone finally regained her composure. “I didn't kill anyone. Hegner attacked me! All three of them did.”

“That's not the story he's telling.”

“What possible reason would I have to—? I need to get this cleared up.” Persephone turned and walked out.

Raithe followed the others out even though he was as uncomfortable in crowds as he had been in the forest. Too many people were like too many trees. In Dureya, villages consisted of only a few families. But here, nearly two hundred people now gathered in front of the steps and more were spilling out of roundhouses.

All of them had the same rosy-cheeked, well-fed faces. Faces without pockmarks or the deep lines cut by blistering winds. Also missing were the scars, broken teeth, and severed fingers that a life of warfare bestowed. And not one carried a weapon. Instead, they held hollow gourds, chisels, and mallets. One fellow carried a basket of eggs.

Raithe expected Persephone to confront those just outside Sarah's house, but instead she pushed through them and marched down the broad pathway past the well and on up the steps of the lodge. At the top, she stopped, pivoted, and faced the people of the dahl.

She waited for a moment while the crowd gathered. Then in a loud voice she said, “Yesterday, Sackett, Adler, and Hegner tried to kill me in the forest.” She paused, probably for the full weight of the statement to settle in. “They chased me up a cascade, and Sackett and Adler both died when they slipped and fell on rocks. I don't know why they attacked me. They didn't—”

“That's not how Hegner tells it.” A stocky man stepped through the lodge's doorway behind Persephone. He wore the silver torc of leadership.

Raithe's first thought was that the man's beard was short for a leader, and he disliked the chieftain's eyes. They didn't seem even, the left one being slightly higher than the right. The only visible scar was a recent one, still pink and healing—hardly the mark of an experienced warrior. Walon, Dureya's chieftain, had a beard down to his chest, few teeth, and a face like beaten copper. That was the mark of experience, the sign of a survivor. The Rhen chieftain did have one thing no one in Dureya had. He carried an ax.

At the sight of it, Raithe pushed to the foot of the steps. This wasn't his clan, and this man wasn't his chieftain. Raithe didn't have a stake, other than a promised meal, in whatever dispute was about to start, but he had come to like Persephone. Undecided only a day before, he knew if there was a fight he'd back her.

Persephone turned to face her chieftain. “Then Hegner's a liar, Konniger.”

“Is he? If Sackett, Adler, and Hegner sought to kill you, why aren't you dead?” Konniger folded his arms and glared. “Do you expect anyone to believe two experienced hunters slipped and fell? Are you saying you had nothing to do with their deaths?”

Persephone opened her mouth to speak.

“Hegner!” Konniger called to the darkened interior of the lodge. “You were there—you're the one she's accusing—tell everyone what you witnessed.”

The one-handed man appeared from the shadows and stepped onto the porch. “We were out hunting and found her on the cascades with those two fellas there.” He pointed with his good hand at Raithe and Malcolm.

Eyes shifted toward them, and those closest inched away, which was fine by Raithe.

“We thought Persephone needed help. Him being Dureyan and all. Could have been in trouble. She must not have seen us yet because she kissed the big one.”

A woman sporting a circlet of flowers over braided hair also emerged from the lodge. She stood to the side and slightly behind Konniger. Hearing Hegner's words, she began shaking her head while looking at Persephone. “Reglan isn't dead a month and you're already carrying on with another man. Or were you seeing this lover
before
our chieftain died? Were you stealing away into the forest while your husband was out avenging your son?”

“You lousy, lying cul!” Moya burst out, and pushed forward. She might have reached the steps if Sarah and a few others hadn't caught her.

“Watch your mouth,” Konniger snapped.