B007IIXYQY EBOK (60 page)

I ask no favors and expect nothing, Sprite. Just take me into the well of souls.

She removed the dappled stallion’s halter and released him. Yesterday she had treated his wounds with poultices made from cloth she tore from her own clothing and soaked in terebinth resin. As she ministered to him, she’d decided to call him Berinhard—“brave as a bear.” She realized now she should not have named him—a name would bind him to her.

And sure enough he showed no inclination to leave her; he stood still, thin sides heaving, finely molded head proudly high as he watched her, large liquid eyes bright with concern.

“Berinhard,
go!”
But the horse stepped closer, a tender, willing presence unable to desert her.

“Go!” she cried again with less assuredness, thinking: This poor beast truly
is
mine. The perverse humor of the Fates—my one friend at the last is a horse.

She turned her back on him then and waded in, ignoring a flash of movement behind the alder tree and Berinhard’s sudden nervous snorting.

Let the Sprite watch. What does it matter?

She tripped on a root, splashing noisily to her hands and knees. Embarrassed, she looked up at the alder tree.

Cruel Sprite, you mock me.

Wind rattled the leaves, and she blushed at what surely was the water nixe’s soft laughter.

I will crawl to my death so you can’t do that again.

She sank beneath the surface and water invaded her nose, insulted her lungs, shifting from ice to fire in her chest. The bottom fell away; with a great effort she tried to force herself down. She opened her mouth, trying to drown more quickly. Her foot became entangled in grasses, holding her to the slimy bottom, and a bolt of panic passed through her. Endless caverns of horror opened in her mind. Body and lungs shrieked for air. Then all faded into soft, seductive peace and blackness.

Auriane felt a patient hand cleaning mud from her face. Human, or divine?

If this is death, she thought, it is remarkably close to life. I smell a pine fire and horse droppings, and I feel the sharp ache in the stomach that comes after vomiting. Surely ghosts know nothing of such things.

She opened her eyes barely and looked into eyes that regarded her with a familiar, irritating blend of mockery and affection.

Surely there would be no Decius in the afterworld. Wretched life still has me in its grip.

Decius!
she thought, jolted into greater wakefulness.
He lives!

She felt a dreamy, diffuse joy as she basked in that comfortably familiar presence, still too weak to fully open her eyes. He was her family now, and all her kin.

For long moments Auriane watched him through slitted eyes while he thought she still slept, feeling as if she were awash in pleasantly warm water. For some perverse reason her skin felt acutely sensitive, and that longing to taste with the whole body—that powerful impulse to press her body to his, always before stifled by fear—almost overwhelmed her then. She quivered like a dove held in his palm. This was a new sort of adventure altogether—the possibilities of the pleasures of the body, stripped of shame. And now that she was mother-cursed, who could judge her more?

And what are these mad thoughts? I came here to die, not to violate one more sacred law.

Decius realized she was watching him; gently he turned her face to his. “What is the matter with you?” he said softly, smiling. “I thought all barbarians could swim like rats in a wine-vat. Lucky for you
I
can swim.”

“I thought you were the Sprite of the spring.”

“Don’t try to flatter me. It won’t work.”

“You followed me. You spied on me.”

“You seemed to need it, wandering about without any weapons and leading a half-dead horse around…then taking a notion to go for a swim on a day when sane people would huddle round a fire.”

“I was not swimming, Decius.”

“I know that.
Why,
Auriane? You’ve utterly no reason to die—you’ve wild young blood in your veins yet. Would you have preferred your father taken by some wasting illness?”

She shut her eyes for a long time while tears escaped from beneath her lids.

“I am sorry, that was roughly said,” he amended, putting a too-tentative hand on her forehead, painfully aware he had little idea how to give comfort. It felt awkward as wielding a sword with the left hand.

“Decius,” she said finally, “how did you save yourself from sacrifice?”

Briefly he related the tale.

“Ah, my books! They were not so worthless after all, were they? Apologize for what you said! Did Sigwulf find his son?”

“I’ll never know. Thank all the gods your people are ignorant of our tongue. I take them near the fort and my countrymen cry, ‘Behold the traitor! Don’t let him get away,’ and your warriors think it’s a warm greeting. It did not go well, I’ll tell you. I kept my promise, though. I read to Sigwulf from the book of slave sales—moments before the cavalry came out. And then, Jove be thanked, your people ran in every direction and got in their way while I wheeled my horse about and galloped into the thickest part of the forest. How humorous it would have been if it were happening to someone else. Another gift of Fortuna for your old friend who survives every disaster. I did not realize how notorious I’ve become.”

He reached past her to turn a spitted hare he was roasting over the fire. “Now I know I can never go back,” he went on. “I’m here for all the days of my life. My story’s gotten worse and worse in the telling. They think I’ve trained a whole regiment of barbarians in the use of Roman arms.”

“Then you are an outcast like me.”

“Why should
you
be cast out? Auriane, you must
tell me why you did this.”

She shut her eyes and swiftly told him—it was easier than she expected, for she realized at once from his look he was not judging her as her own people would. Afterward she felt she’d been released from tight bonds; she did not mind that, at the end of her tale, her words made him angry.

“I knew you could be a fool sometimes, I never knew how much. First, let us go back to those five villages. Their destruction had nothing whatever to do with you or your unholiness, whatever
that
is. I told you before, the Emperor Vespasian’s son, Domitian, has slipped his tether and begun leading military expeditions on his own to—”

“I remember. It does not matter. If this Dim .. . Damation had not been the agent of my unholiness, something else would have, so your words change nothing.”

“This is ridiculous. Auriane, why can you not see a case can be made for yourself! Listen to me. You did not murder your father. Murder lies in
intent.”

“Intent?”

He frowned in concentration. “How to explain? Take the case of a man who has been robbed recently. He is still in an agitated state and so he…he kills a thief in the night, someone who has entered his sleeping chamber. But the dead man turns out to be his own brother, who entered in haste before servants could announce him. That man is innocent
before the gods—he killed a thief, not his brother.”

“No. He killed his brother.”

“But he did not
mean
to. Would you make him as guilty as a man who hunts his brother down?”

“Yes. The gods see that his brother is dead. And they made his life unholy by making him the cause.”

“You are beyond the reach of reason. You’re of nature, not of man. Anyone with a thimbleful of sense could see that Odberht
killed your father, not you.”

Auriane turned to him, growing very quiet, feeling the whole of her life drifted to a slow halt. Frowning, she whispered, “Decius. What are you saying?”

“Odberht. Your old enemy. He sold your father’s secret for a hundred longswords for his retinue and a hundred Thessalian horses. He led my people to that summit where your father died, Auriane. And since then, he’s as good as taken up residence at
Mogontiacum. The hide traders who came back with me could talk of little else. At a feast he got sloppily drunk and announced to everyone: ‘Only a hero can slay a hero,’ or some such gabble, and told them they were privileged to be looking upon the ‘true slayer of Baldemar.’ Now he’s gotten over his shyness about the whole thing and brags freely of it everywhere.”

“I’ve been away from the tale-bearers these last days,” she said with such tight restraint she made Decius sharply uneasy. He saw swift changes come into her eyes—flooding into them was that cold, potent rage, peculiarly Germanic, that was low burning but could thrive through years, through generations—a wrath that could be quenched only by fatal violence.
I’m a fool, me and my flapping tongue
, he thought, sensing he had somehow doomed her.

Though I’m not to be blamed when all is said and done, he reasoned; surely she would have learned of it soon enough.

He ventured, “You’ll have to help me with this, my dove, I’ve a bit of trouble thinking like a savage. Does this mean Baldemar has
two
murderers now, you and
him? Or are we going to be sensible now and say the courts have let you off, right and proper, and you can go on living, and now your people can turn their attentions to chasing down the true culprit?”

“You do not understand, Decius. My own
father
lies unquiet. He cannot even enter the Sky Hall. You did not grow up in the shadow of the Lightning Oak.”

“Undeniably, but I’ll try and overcome it, if you’ll try harder to make sense.”

“Decius, should I decide to live on,
nothing matters now but vengeance.
I can no more neglect this need than could I lie down and sleep with a limb pulled out of joint. And vengeance must be won by Baldemar’s nearest of kin, or our life runs out. Theudobald is aged. I do not know if any of Sisinand’s sons have the mettle to do it. Mother does not fight, nor can she bear a child to raise to do the deed. Only I am left. I must find Odberht and kill him beneath the sun with an honorable weapon of war—or my family will wither and have no hearth.”

“Very well, then. As we both know Odberht’s well protected and out of your reach, can we agree this is impossible? Let’s proceed now to what isn’t, like finding a warm dry place to sleep tonight.”

Abruptly she turned from him. “You’ve as much human feeling as a dead ox! Go back and join your fellow slaves marching all together.”

He smiled at this, then said, “You’ve not answered me—are
you
now innocent?”

To Decius she seemed to have come to a place shrouded in fog, and she squinted as though struggling to discern solid shapes there. “I am innocent,” she pronounced at last with gallant confidence, but her eyes said otherwise; the shame was too robust and had put down too many roots—Hertha’s seedling had developed into a mighty oak. She realized this was so and added, frowning, “But I do not
feel
innocent.”

“That artless honesty!” He bent down and gave her a lingering kiss. “I think that is what makes me your slave.”

Slowly, gently, he began unwinding the blanket, mumbling something about her clothes being dry now. She knew what his true purpose was, but she found herself pleasantly paralyzed, unwilling to stop him, caught up in this novel madness of following desire to its end without fear of condemnation.

When at last he freed her from the blanket, he looked most gently at her naked body. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

“As beautiful as I always thought…” he whispered with solemnity. Yet even now the barest trace of mocking humor flickered in his eyes. “…this form I never dared look upon, even though I suspected it would make Artemis weep, for having it is much akin to lying with the Chief Vestal beneath the eyes of the Emperor. You are mine. I know you want it so, am I not right?”

She shut her eyes and partly covered herself again, as if this were too much to bear, and shadowed dreams had shifted too quickly into reality. But she whispered “Yes,” rasping slightly as if the word hurt her throat. “I have known it done in hatred. I don’t want to die not knowing what it is to do it in…love.” A hundred fears advanced on her but the warm madness pushed them back. “I’ve no tribe and no law, so what does it matter?”

But still, Decius saw, she kept the blanket over her.

“When you are ready, then,” he said, caressing her cheek. He started to withdraw his hand but she caught it and held it.

Slowly she sat up; the blanket fell away. She was unnerved by her nakedness; inevitably it reminded her of the last time a man saw her unclad. Shivering a little in the cold, she drew him close. “But you know, there is a far, far older law…,” she said into his ear as she clung to him.

“Yes,” he mumbled while heatedly kissing her neck, “there is always an older law.”

“…the law of Fria, ancient even when Giants roamed the earth…. She is sometimes called the Great Lover, you know—she boasts of it, even—and she decrees the coupling of a man and a woman is
always
holy, provided both do it blithely and willingly.” She gave him a fast kiss, then drew away. “And who in this Middle-world cares who I join with, anyway, since a mother’s curse has left me”—she pressed her lips more bravely to his, feeling she ventured a little farther into deep water before she drew away—“nothing more than a wretched, wandering ghost still clothed in flesh?”