In the Ruins (77 page)

She settled down cross-legged and in those ruins nursed the babies as he babbled on, showing her each tool and speculating on its purpose, and in this manner fell into a reminiscence about the man he had apprenticed to when he was very young. He’d learned a few things, enough to appreciate the craft and the sorcery, but the old smith had died too early and the knowledge had been lost. That was when Rain had turned to flint-knapping and gained respect for skills honed over many years of practice.

So many had died.

But the days in exile were over, although the taste of dust was still fresh in her mouth. The suck of life is powerful. The babies were strong and sturdy, dark and fat. They were beautiful, and so was this world with its sere hills and secret winds, its changeable sky and restless sea. Even the breath of ancient burning had brought new life to this small corner, where bugs scurried in the cracks and a dusky green vine had grown in through the open window and announced its presence with a pair of perfect white flowers.

Every window is a gateway onto another place. She thought of the doorway woven by the Pale Sun Dog, and she wept a little, remembering the beauty of those glittering threads.

“It’ll be dusk soon,” he said, interrupting himself. “You’ll want to go back to the stones.” He took the sleeping babies from her and let her go.

Dawn and dusk were gateways, a passage between night and day. So was each footstep, which brought you farther from the place you started but closer to the place you hoped to reach.

The youngest of the blood knives was lurking by the village gate, and she fell in beside Secha, looking around with all the furtive nonsensicalness of a child playing at hide-and-seek. She was not much older than Secha’s own son, but she was a sleek and fine young woman who seemed years older, honed to a cutting edge that made young men stare. She was not at all the kind of woman Secha had any wish for a sweet lad like her own dear son to fall into lust
with, but otherwise she liked her far better than any of the older blood knives.

“They’re sour and bitter,” said the girl with a smirk, as if she had tasted Secha’s thoughts. “They want to go back to the temples and lick blood off their tongues. But I know you understood the magic of weaving, didn’t you?”

“No. But I could. If someone taught me its secrets.”

They crossed the ditch in silence except for the creak of planks beneath their feet.

“In the house of youth I was best in my cohort at calculating numbers,” the girl confessed without humility. “It was a great honor to my household when the sky counters brought a serpent skirt to the chief of our village. They tied the sash of apprenticeship over my shoulder and sent me out to serve with the army. But now I see something I want more.”

Secha nodded, and the girl looked at her and nodded, and that was all that needed to be said.

A pair of brawny mask warriors walked past, going toward the village, and the young woman tilted her chin and canted her shoulders and twitched a hip so that they flushed dark and pulled on their ears and hurried on, too intimidated to look back after her.

“Why do you do that?” Secha asked.

“Because I can.” Then she started, like a young hare. “Best they not see me with you,” she murmured, and shied off into the camp as swiftly as she could without running and drawing more attention to herself.

The blood knives were preparing to depart the camp in the company of Feather Cloak and a number of mask warriors, so Secha fell in at the end of the procession, unnoticed and undisturbed. Just beyond the encampment a path split off from the main road and curled up over a slope. Within a cradle of shallow hills stood the eleven stones that marked this circle. Ten stood as though newly raised while the eleventh had fallen off to one side where the hillside had caved in under it. The brambles and vines that had covered it had been cleared away in the last few days.

They waited somewhat back from the circle, since no
one wanted to get too close. No one knew quite what to expect, even though the dawns and dusks of the last six days had passed uneventfully. The young serpent skirt sidled out of the gathering shadows to join the other sky counters. She did not look once at Secha; her gaze was fixed on the dark stones.

The wind died. Twilight settled. Out here beyond the White Road, they rarely saw the sun, and tonight the entire sky was covered with a mantle of pale cloud. It was chilly. A pair of warriors breathed into their hands. Feather Cloak was tapping her foot, looking irritated and impatient. She had brought Little Beast with her—the rest of the hostages had been left behind in a pen—and her granddaughter stood perfectly still. The contrast was almost amusing. She was waiting. They all were waiting. Each in their own way.

It was entirely quiet. Distant sounds drifted on the wind: a goat’s complaint, chiming laughter, a snatch of song.

A faint melody ringing as out of the heavens tingled through her, seeping into flesh and bone. She gasped.

The crown flowered into a blossom of brilliant light, threads weaving and crossing, caught in the warp of the unseen stars and wefted through the stones. Led by Fox Mask, the mask warriors burst out of the gateway. They were laughing and howling and chattering and singing, burdened with tools and sacks and an iron kettle and a pair of cows and four horses and a herd of terrified sheep and one interested dog that everyone seemed to ignore although the animal was busily keeping the sheep in a tight group.

The blood knives cried out a brief poem, a song of praise, because there were six prisoners as well, bound and under close guard, one woman in long robes and five men, all struggling against the ropes that restrained them.

Last came Zuangua. He held an iron sword drawn behind the Pale Sun Dog, whose face was pale with weariness. Threads dissolved into a shower of sparks. These flares died, and suddenly it was dark.

“Silence!” cried Feather Cloak.

“Success!” barked Fox Mask in answer, and in reply they heard the weeping and curses of the prisoners.

Sparks bit, and oil lamps and reed tapers were lit. Light and shadow wove through the assembly.

Zuangua said, “Where is my Little Beast?”

Little Beast sprang forward and barreled into him. He patted her on the head as he might a favored dog. “Can I go with you next time, Uncle?” she demanded. “I’m old enough to be a shield bearer.”

Her speech was fluid and fluent, shockingly so, but they had gotten used to it; everyone agreed it was some gift of the blood or the taint of sorcery, inherited from her mother. Maybe she had been bitten by snakes.

“Old enough,” he agreed carelessly, and he looked at the blood knives as if daring them to try to wrest her from him.

But the priests stared avidly at the prisoners. The woman in long robes had begun chanting in a singsong voice that reminded Secha of the sky counters’ praying. It seemed she had power, because the other prisoners calmed and steadied, although by their flaring eyes and gritted teeth they were still as terrified as the bleating sheep. There was a short man with thick arms and massive shoulders; there was a youth little older than her own son; there was a man with blood on his tunic and another who limped from a wound, and the last was white-faced with shock although he was the tallest and plumpest among them.

“You can’t have all of them,” said Zuangua to the priests. “Those two—” He indicated the burly man and the youth. “—we took from their forging house. They’re blacksmiths.”

The priest-woman in her long robes looked toward the stone circle. The Pale Dog was leaning against one of the stones as though exhausted, his eyes closed and his breathing shallow. His mouth was parted, and his chin and jaw and lips moved ever so slightly, as if he were talking to himself in an undertone. Everything was pale in him, fair hair, fair skin, undyed linen tunic pallid against the night, and a gold circle hung on a necklace at his fair throat. The
dark stone framed him, highlighting his beauty and his cunning power, his strength and his shine.

The priest-woman cursed him. You didn’t need to understand the words to hear the power of her speech.

But if he heard her, he gave no sign. His eyes remained closed. He might have been sleeping, mumbling as dreamers do, except for the twitching of one little finger.

Zuangua had a mask after all, one tipped up on his head: he wore the visage of a dragon, proud and golden, just as he was.

“I have something to say,” he began, and Feather Cloak raised a hand to allow him to continue.

“He is a very evil man,” observed Zuangua as his warriors waved their hands in agreement. “He has lost even the love and loyalty for kinfolk that every person ought to have! He betrayed them all, without mercy.”

“Thus will humankind fall,” said Feather Cloak. “They are faithless each to the other.”

Secha spoke up. “Not all of them are. Liathano kept faith with your son, Sanglant.”

At the mention of those names, the Pale Dog’s jaw tightened, but he did not open his eyes. He had very good hearing.

“Your son kept faith with his father,” said Zuangua to Feather Cloak, “which I saw with my own eyes.” He grinned wickedly. “Even this ‘little beast’ who stands at my side seems to love me.”

The girl glanced at him, surprised at his words, then grinned. “You’ll teach me to fight!” she exclaimed.

“Beware the beast does not bite you in your time,” said Feather Cloak.

“I’d never bite him! I like him, and I
hate
you.”

Feather Cloak studied the girl. In truth, thought Secha, her disinterest in her only grandchild was no more unnatural than the pale sun hair’s disavowal of his kin. “I thought you hated this one called ‘Lord Hugh.”’

“I hate him! He’s a very bad man. He’ll cheat you if he can. He’ll kill you.”

Feather Cloak smiled, amused, perhaps, by the piping voice and passionate expression of the girl. “A fair warning,
Little Beast. He may try. He is not as strong or as clever as he thinks he is. What of the raid, Uncle?”

He indicated everything they had captured. “We walked between this crown and one that Sun Hair told us was far in the north. He called the place
Thersa
. We took the villagers by surprise. They could not fight us. It may be true that the Pale Dogs are many, that they have multitudes, and that we are few. But I tell you, it will be difficult for them to protect themselves against this manner of warfare.”

She raised both hands.

The wind came up just then, as though she had called it, and possibly she had. Or maybe it was just the night wind rising off the cooling ground. There was a hint of salt in that air, a fine hissing spray carried in from the sea. And another scent as well, a witching smell that made her ears itch.

The prisoners fell silent. The blood knives covered their faces and prayed. With a puzzled frown, Feather Cloak lowered her hands.

The Pale Sun Dog opened his eyes and, without letting his gaze rest even for an instant on the other Pale Dogs, he scanned the heavens and then the surrounding slopes, the tender grass in its pale splendor and the thorny shrubs that lay along the slopes as strands of darkness. A nightjar whirred. An owl who-whooed.

The night breeze was cool, teasing her hair, kissing her cheeks. That salt breath of the sea faded, and now after all it was only a common night, cloudy, cool, and filled with the crickling of nocturnal insects.

Feather Cloak spoke. “Among the Wendish there is a saying: ‘the
luck
of the
king
.’ If the
king’s
fortunes fail him, then no warrior will follow him. ‘
A prince without a retinue is no prince
,’ which means that without followers, he cannot rule. If we are not strong enough to defeat Sanglant and shatter his army, then we need only cause such devastation in his country that his people cry for a new feathered cloak—a new
regnant
—to save them. There are others who claim the right to lead. It matters not which one leads, or which one claims. Best if they fight among themselves,
because that will weaken them. Destroy Sanglant’s support, destroy the trust his people have in him, and you have destroyed him even if you have not killed him.”

“He is your son,” said Zuangua, looking a little disgusted.

“He turned his back on his mother’s kinfolk. He swore allegiance to the Pale Dogs. He can’t be trusted.”

Zuangua shrugged. “No one distrusts the Pale Dogs more than I do. Yet if your son can’t be trusted, then neither can this one. For it seems to me that he has done worse by turning his back on his kin and his kind, all and together. At least your son keeps faith with those he has sworn community with. This one is no kind of trustworthy ally.”

“I did not say I trusted him. But what he offers, we can use. We will learn as much as we can from him, and after we are done, we will kill him. We will let the blood knives have him, if they can bind him. We will kill all of the human sorcerers, those who know the secret of the crowns. Then the sorcery of the looms can never again be used against us. For this reason, I will accept his alliance.”

The blood knives nodded eagerly. The mask warriors stamped their feet and barked and howled and shrieked approval. The prisoners huddled close to the priest-woman in her long robes, and even she with her words of power looked afraid. The flickering light made a golden mask of Feather Cloak’s face.

Zuangua nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. We must kill all the human sorcerers. They are the most dangerous of all.”

Feather Cloak raised both hands, palms facing heaven, to allow the gods a glimpse into her soul. “I accept his offer of alliance. I offer him in turn the woman called Liathano.”

“What of a powerful offering for the gods?” demanded the blood knives. “What of your promise to us?”

“You can have her afterward,” said Feather Cloak, and she smiled mockingly at them. “If you can bind her.”

“This is a bad thing,” muttered Secha.

“To protect ourselves is a bad thing?”

“To seal an agreement on a lie is a bad thing.”

But Kansi-a-lari, The Impatient One, was Feather Cloak now.

“I have spoken,” she said irritably.