Season of Sacrifice (3 page)

Sartain turned and led the way to the strip of firm sand, still dark from the ocean’s tidal soaking. When a restless silence had once more fallen over the beach, he spoke. “My People,” he began, and then, with only a gull’s cry for competition, he stumbled through a few formulaic greetings, awkwardly daring to clap his hand on Duke Coren’s shoulder. “Your Grace,” Sartain continued with gruff modesty as he realized the presumption he had taken, “I would not bore you with an old fisherman’s words.” He looked about in embarrassment and gestured toward one of the People. “Maddock, stand forward and speak to the duke.”

Alana watched Maddock flow beside the Fisherman with a stoat’s grace, his teeth white against his dark skin and darker hair. Maddock was one of the few men among the People who had ever ventured beyond the Headland of Slaughter. Last year, he had journeyed inland to trade salt fish for precious iron and tin and to meet with the royal census takers, declaring how many men, women, and children lived beside the sea. Now, Maddock spoke for all those People, using flowery language to admit pride and gratitude.

Alana’s breath caught in her throat as she watched the young man proclaim the People’s hospitality. As if unconsciously, Maddock let the wind tug the edge of his cloak, flaring the fabric to accentuate his broad shoulders. The casual fist that he set against his hip was a subtle reminder of his strength, and Alana caught herself wondering for the hundredth time how his strong hands would feel against her flesh, against the naked skin of her back….

She shook her head in annoyance. Of course she thought of the young fisherman that way—he did everything he could to make every girl in the village pine for him. It was certainly no coincidence last summer that he had not finished his bath when the girls came to draw cooking water for the Midsummer Feast. He purposely used the village common to practice his fighting forms, wearing nothing more than his breeches as he swung about his smith-precious iron sword. He had his own reasons for tending the spitted lambs at the summer festivals, sweltering by the heat of the fire so that the flames drew out a glow on his bared chest.

Old Goody Glenna reveled in the attention all the girls paid to Maddock. Each day she found a new tale to tell, a story of the woe that had befallen some smitten slip of a girl when she accepted the sort of invitation that Maddock kept open. Alana, searching her knowledge from the Tree, knew that only a fraction of Goody Glenna’s stories were true. Nevertheless, the young woodsinger also knew that it was her duty to help keep the village girls in line.

She had intended to do just that, late last fall, when she had confronted Maddock for the first time since donning her woodsinger’s cloak. With a grin, the man had admitted every one of his faults, casting his dark blue eyes toward his feet with a child’s heart-stealing shame. Alana had caught herself wishing he would brush against her as he left the clearing or, better yet, that he would not leave at all….

Foolishness.

When Maddock finished his speech, Sartain invoked the traditional blessings of earth, fire, water, and air. With the Guardians’ names still hovering over the People and their guests, laughter broke out. The young twins, Maida and Reade, recommenced their game of tag, and a drum joined the flute’s rollicking voice, dancing amid the crash of waves.

After filing by the great iron cooking pots, Alana settled on a convenient outcrop of rock, a little removed from the crowds of boisterous people. She pulled her iron dagger from her waist, smiling at the rich present that her father had given her long before he met the Guardians of Water.

Now, Alana used the treasured blade to salute her father with the sea’s first harvest, carefully picking the flesh from a steaming pilchard. She was grateful that Sartain had led his early morning fishermen to such bounty—all of the People were tired of the salt fish that had sustained them for the winter.

Sartain was clearly in a celebratory mood as well, for he ordered the young men to break out a barrel of apple wine. As Alana looked over the rim of her earthenware cup, she noted that Coren and his followers did not partake of the sweet, cool stuff. Perhaps their inland palate was accustomed to finer drink. It was a failing in the man, she mused, but not a deadly one.

“Hmphhh! He does not deign to drink our apple wine! Perhaps m’lord would prefer mead from the king’s court!”

Alana did not need to turn about to chastise the complainer; she did not even need to listen to the woodsingers’ quiet murmurs at the back of her mind to identify the speaker. “Hush, Landon. I think, instead, that he is loathe to take something that we clearly hold so dear.” She set down her dagger and forced herself to face the lanky young man. While she knew that Landon’s long face
could
be pleasant, an ugly frown distorted his features now. A sea breeze chose that unfortunate moment to skip across his brow, stressing the fact that he had already lost the better part of his hair.

She frequently had to remind herself that Landon was only four years older than she. His cautious ways and his receding hairline lent him an aura of conservative seniority almost as great as Goody Glenna’s. There was a time when Alana had found his maturity compelling. Things had not gone well, though, since the winter solstice. The woodsinger delicately forced her thoughts away from a memory as prickly as the bavin she had just sung for Duke Coren.

Landon made that retreat easier as he grumbled, “I’m certain
you
would know about his thoughts, Alana. What secrets did he whisper to you by the Tree? Did you actually give him that woodstar you sang?”

“Were you
spying
on me, Landon? What I do with the Tree is no interest of yours!”

“The Tree belongs to all the People, Alana. Not to you, and certainly not to some cursed inlander. Look at him, the way the women wait on him! It’s not like he’s even eating the tidbits they offer.”

“You sound like a child! What has Coren ever done to you?”

“Ah, so now he is ‘Coren.’ Not ‘my lord’ and not ‘the duke,’ but simply Coren.”

“You know the People have never put much stock in titles! If I didn’t know better, I’d think that you were jealous.”

“Jealous? Not I, woodsinger. I am nothing but a humble tracker, interested only in the welfare of our People. I live only to serve, following game to feed our folk when the Guardians of Water are not kind.” His words were stewed in bitterness.

“You know that’s not what I meant, Landon.” If only she could take back the words she had spoken on the longest night of the year…. As she’d stared at his offering of mistletoe berries, she had been so certain that he would understand her. He
knew
that she was pledged to the Tree now, that as woodsinger she could have no husband.

Of course, Landon also knew the exceptions to the ancient rules. He knew that a married woman could keep her husband, keep her children, and still serve the Tree. He had argued that Alana should fight to change the old rules, should broaden them to include a maiden who had found her true love, but had not quite married before she was called to the Tree.

Alana had swallowed hard at the thoughts his arguments implied. She had averted her eyes from his mistletoe berries, from the confession that she had managed to ignore for months. Instead, she had chosen her words carefully, telling Landon that serving as woodsinger was a sacrifice. She must give up her freedom for the good of all the People. She must forfeit her decisions, so that she could offer up gratitude to the Tree that had watched over her since birth. She tried to explain that the Tree that had chosen her had plucked her from the black-rimmed pit of despair after her father was lost to the Guardians of Water.

When Landon had refused to accept Alana’s explanation of her duty to the Tree, she had been forced to point out that he was a hunter, a tracker, a man who lived his life looking
inland
, away from the Tree. Even if she had been inclined to overthrow generations of tradition, Alana had tried to say gently, she could not break the rules for him. She only just managed to avoid the true admission, the one that would have stung him beyond reason: Alana was not a smitten maid. She did not love Landon.

Now, the woodsinger took a deep breath to explain again. Before she could find the words, though, she was interrupted by a flurry of activity at the far end of the beach.

For an instant she could not discern individual shapes in the confusion. Then she saw that the People were running, screaming, flinging about trenchers of food. As Alana glanced reflexively at the cliff, at the Tree, she saw clouds of dust billowing from the steep path to the beach. Swirled into the dust, screaming as if in battle, were the inlanders’ great horses. The massive beasts were ridden by Coren’s men, by dark-liveried soldiers who bellowed at their mounts, even as they hurtled toward the beach.

The shouting would have been disturbing. The sight of war-horses caparisoned for battle would have been frightening. The thick-throated cries of Coren’s men would have been terrifying. But there was a greater horror coursing down the path to the beach.

There were dogs.

Dogs charged among the People, forcing grown men to step back in ingrained fear and revulsion. One mastiff ripped at Sartain’s sleeve, and Alana saw the fisherman pull back from the slavering jaws with his own snarl of disgust. The dogs were the People’s greatest nightmare, sprung to full life on the sandy beach.

Before the woodsinger could move, a high-pitched scream ripped through the melee. “The inlanders are taking my babies! They’re stealing the children!”

The anguish in the voice froze the People, and even as Alana recognized that Teresa was the source of the heartrending cries, she began to search the crowd for the twins. She found them before the others could react, but what she saw chilled her blood.

Maida was in the arms of Coren’s lieutenant, struggling like a fish caught in a net. Her little body twisted and pulled, and she thrashed her head about as if she were determined to break her own neck if she could not be free. One well-placed kick landed against the inlander’s armored solar plexus, but the man’s strong right arm merely tightened across the girl’s vulnerable throat. He transferred his fury to the soft flesh and tiny bones. Maida kicked one last time and then slumped in the soldier’s grasp.

Reade was tangled in Duke Coren’s own arms, struggling with the terror of a trapped coney. Coren’s beard jutted out like a broken tree limb, and his thin lips twisted in a snarl.

Before Alana could cry out, the duke raised a silver-chased dagger. The pommel was set with a heavy ruby that glinted across the beach, mirroring the bloody knife embroidered on Coren’s chest. With the smooth gesture of a man dispatching a stubborn fish, the duke brought the hilt down, smashing into the tender flesh behind the boy’s ear. Reade continued to struggle feebly, but the inlander had no trouble hoisting the child onto his huge destrier.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the terror was over. The People stared in ragged ranks as the soldiers swung up on their horses, leading their slavering dogs up the steep cliffside path. Teresa’s harsh sobs meshed with the waves, and a lone gull cried out as the inlanders rode off with the twins.

Alana gaped at the chaos around her.

Some of the People had run up the steep cliff path, following Coren’s soldiers, bellowing threats and shaking their fists. Their only weapons, though, were brands that they had grabbed from the cookfires and an occasional iron knife. The leader of the Men’s Council showed enough foresight to seize one of the gaffs from a fishing boat, but even he was defeated by the inlanders’ dogs, driven back down the cliff face to the frantic turmoil on the beach.

The vast majority of the People had been too afraid, too startled, too overwhelmed to even think about pursuing their attackers. They had scattered across the narrow beach like flotsam after a storm. Children screamed in terror; mothers sobbed. Men lunged savagely toward the cliff path, only to spin back toward the sea in impotent fear.

Dogs. Armor. Swords. Deceit. The inlanders could defeat the People without even trying.

“The Guardians have abandoned us!” Alana heard one young mother cry, and the words were taken up by others.

“Cursed us!”

“Destroyed us!”

The Spirit Council, at least, managed to respond to
that
threat. The quartet of soothsayers flowed together, rising up from the People’s ragged ranks as the cries of despair broke against the cliffside. As if they had planned a worship ceremony on this day of first harvest, the four councilors joined hands and began chanting the Creation Hymn.

The prayer told of the People’s place in the world, the People’s creation on the fifth day, after the Guardians of Earth and Air, after the Guardians of Fire and Water. The words were traditional, as comforting as a mother’s arms. As the councilors chanted, the People grew calm, bespelled by the fragile blanket of familiarity.

The Spirit Council chanted louder then, raising their joined hands above their heads and marching out into the breaking ocean, as if this were midsummer’s eve and the Festival of Cleansing. “And the Guardians of Water brought grief into the world, washing the world in salt, salt tears,” they chanted, their words sharpening as they walked into the swirling seawater.

The hymn served its purpose.

Children stopped their wailing, shocked into silence by the sight of four adults, chest deep in the ocean, by the tumble of familiar religious words. Grown women swallowed their keening, turning their attention to the councilors. Even the men looked to the Spirit Council, and a few raised ragged voices in the hymn. “And the People were created, molded from the earth, cast in the fire, washed in the water, and cooled in the air.”

“Molded from the earth,” repeated the Spirit Councilor who had devoted her life to the Guardians of Earth. Many of the People took up the chant: “Molded from the earth! Molded from the earth!” as if the words would protect them from soldiers brutal enough to use dogs against innocent folk.

“Cast in the fire,” cried the man who had pledged his life to the Fire Guardians. “Cast in the fire!” One woman’s voice rang out louder than the others, and Alana saw Teresa, the twins’ mother, stagger from the foot of the cliff toward the Spirit Council. “Cast in the fire,” the People echoed, desperate for restored order.

“Washed in the water.” The People gathered around Teresa, as if she were a bride being presented at her wedding ceremony, rather than a widow, bereft of her husband, newly stripped of her children. “Washed in the water! Washed in the water!”

“Cooled in the air!”

As if to mock the praying councilors, a huge wave rose up, breaking above the heads of all four soothsayers. Alana caught her breath as the wave crashed onto the beach, but when it sucked out to the open ocean, she saw that all four of the councilors had kept their feet. Kept their feet, yes, but not their grip on each other’s hands. The councilors stumbled into a rough square, fighting to stand on the shifting sand, to remain steady against the freezing, seething ocean.

Alana watched the Spirit Council, but she heard other voices in her head. She heard the woodsingers before her, telling the Tree of tragedies, of desperate, unexpected losses among the People. She heard about offerings made when ships were lost, when fishermen failed to return from the open sea. She heard about the gifts that were given to the Guardians to placate their primal forces, to encourage the Guardians to accept the People who stumbled in among them, all unready and unwilling.

So, with the Tree as her private teacher, Alana was hardly surprised when the Spirit Council shifted its chant from the Creation Hymn to the Song of Sacrifice. Two doves, they cried. Two newborn lambs! Sacrifices on the altar in the Sacred Grove would pave the Guardians’ path for the children. Blood would buy a safe road for the twins, smooth their passage to the Guardians’ world.

Alana watched in horror as the People spiraled into the Spirit Councilors’ chant, joining the councilors’ acceptance that the children were already lost to the People, were already sacrificed to the inlanders. “Two pure doves!” the foursome cried. “Two white doves! Offer them up for the children!”

“Two white doves!” rose a jagged cry from the beach, and Alana watched Teresa stumble away from the People clustered on the sand, staggering into the shallows and the center of the square formed by the four councilors. “Two white doves!”

“Two white lambs!” the councilors changed their chant. “Two white lambs!”

“Two white lambs!” Teresa cried, and her voice broke like a gull’s, shattered by despair and loss. A wave broke against her, stealing her breath with its icy spray, but she stiffened her spine against the deadly chill. She raised her arms above her head, letting the ocean snag the clammy white of her widow’s weeds like clotted foam. “My two white lambs!”

Alana shuddered against the hypnotic power that rolled in from the ocean, the force gathered by the Spirit Council as they knit together the People. She heard the voices in her own head, the other woodsingers who had watched other Spirit Councils join together in other times of crisis. She knew, the Tree knew, the other woodsingers knew that the Council could save the People. They would gather the People together, would turn them from one terrifying disaster back to the harsh reality of daily life on the Headland of Slaughter.

Alana took a step closer to the ocean, closer to the five people who braced their shuddering bodies against yet another frozen wave. She opened her mouth and filled her lungs, ready to cry out to the Guardians, ready to pray for the twins to be delivered safely to the Other World. Ready to admit that the twins were lost.

Before she could speak, though, Goody Glenna hobbled to her side, hissing just loud enough for the woodsinger to hear: “There’ll be time enough to flatter the Guardians after the children are recovered.” When Alana turned to her in shock, Glenna continued saltily, “Earth and air, fire and water—we can worry about placating the Guardians
after
we have our children back.”

Alana closed her mouth and opened it again, fumbling for words. For just a moment, she continued to cling to the web that the Spirit Councilors had spun, to the order and stability that they offered the People. Then, she realized the horror that had opened before her, the defeat that the People had been willing to accept.

Before Alana could form words, before she could still the Spirit Council, Goody Glenna stumbled down to the very edge of the water. The old woman planted her gnarled walking stick in sand that had grown stiff after the last wave, as if she were claiming the beach in the name of the treacherous crown.

Her action shocked the People into silence, and she called out in a natural break of the Spirit Council’s chant: “Three people, fisherman!”

It took a moment for Sartain Fisherman to step forward. “Goody?” he asked, and Alana could tell that he thought the old woman had gone mad.

“Order three people to follow the duke and win back the children.”

“But the Spirit Council—”

“The Spirit Council is rushing things, don’t you think? The children have not yet been sacrificed. They have not yet been called by the Guardians, by the Great Mother.”

“But Goody Glenna, you saw the soldiers! The duke…he had dogs!”

“And we have men! Men and women, strong fisherfolk.” Glenna glared at the Spirit Councilors, at the drenched Teresa. “We can get our children back.”

“Get them back? But how?”

“Three people,” the old woman repeated.

“Three!” Sartain blustered, looking out at the five adults who stood in the ocean, as if he were weighing relative power. “Goody Glenna, you can’t be serious! The inlanders used
dogs
.”

“I was here, fisherman.” Glenna ignored the people shivering in the swirling water, pointedly not acknowledging the callused hand that Sartain thrust toward them. “I saw what the inlanders did. They’re ruthless. They’re trained. We won’t defeat them by weapons. We must sneak after them and steal back our children.”

Glenna timed her pronouncement to end with the crash of another wave. Alana could not help but realize that the Spirit Councilors looked silly standing in the shallows, shivering, stumbling as the ocean sucked away from the beach. Teresa lowered her hands to her sides, gathering her arms about her belly and hugging her streaming widow’s weeds closer to her frail form.

Goody Glenna ladled out a healthy dose of her aged cynicism as she called out: “What are you doing there in the ocean? You’re going to catch your death of cold, all of you! Then we
will
need to sing the Song of Sacrifice.”

Teresa’s lips were the color of slate. The councilors were chilled as well; all five people had begun to shiver uncontrollably, with tremors that might have been mistaken for religious fervor, if another wave had not chosen that moment to break above their heads.

“Get out of there, fools!” Glenna snapped. The five soaked people stumbled meekly toward the shore. “Help them!” Glenna ordered the people nearest the water, and it took only a moment for warm cloaks to find their way around the councilors’ shoulders, around Teresa’s shivering form. “More cloaks! Build up the cooking fires! And bring them cups of apple wine! Now!”

The People rushed to comply.

Alana saw relief in the villagers’ faces as they followed orders, as they accomplished small tasks. Order was returning to their world. They knew how to warm sea-drenched folk. They knew how to save people from the ocean’s chill. They knew how to fight to survive.

Glenna waited until each of the five waterlogged people held a mug of apple wine, and then she turned back to Sartain. “You’re wasting time, fisherman. Time that could mean those children’s lives.”

Sartain spluttered, “Who would you send to rescue them, Goody Glenna?”

“A soldier, a tracker, and a healer, our best.” The old woman’s eyes flickered over the crowd. “Maddock, Landon, and Jobina.”

Alana bit back an exclamation of surprise. Certainly, Maddock was a logical choice—he was most familiar with the inland territories after his eastern journey the previous year. Landon, too, made sense; he could track a newborn lamb through spring storms. But Jobina?

Goody Glenna answered the woodsinger’s question before Alana could speak. “The men have the skills we need, and I would think of sending them alone. But Jobina is a healer, strong in her craft. And she knows the Songs of the Dead.”

That last admission chilled Alana, even as she recognized the logic of sending someone who could fight for the children’s souls, someone who could guide them to the Guardians’ world if the battle were lost.

All eyes turned to Jobina, who stood on the edge of the ocean, her loose skirts flirting dangerously with the waves that crashed on the pebbly sand. She had seen to it that the councilors’ cloaks were gathered close under their chattering chins; she was topping off the apple wine in the leather mug that Teresa barely managed to grasp in her shivering hands.

When the healer felt the People’s scrutiny, she inclined her head gracefully, her auburn hair shimmering like a curtain across her narrow features. “I am honored by your words, Goody Glenna, and by the Council’s faith in my abilities.” Her husky voice, however, did not quite capture the humility of her speech. The wind tugged at her blouse, slipping it free from one shoulder. The healer seemed oblivious to her exposed flesh, although Alana noticed that a number of the men paid closer attention to the woman.

“Such modesty,” Goody Glenna answered, and Jobina at least had the good grace to look abashed as she plucked at her blouse. “So.” Glenna turned to the fisherman. “We should send three to follow our children. And the woodsinger should sing a bavin, so that we may track their progress.”

“A bavin!” Alana exclaimed.

Goody Glenna snorted in annoyance. “Of course! We have to know how our people fare on the road.”

“But the bavins are for our
boats
!”

“They’re for our
need
. And we’ve never had a greater need than this.”

“But—” Alana began, thinking that she had only followed bavins out to sea, had only stretched the Tree’s awareness toward fishermen, toward the ocean and the Guardians of Water. Would the bavin even work if she cast her attention over land? Would the Guardians of Air and Earth support her questing eye?

Alana reflexively cast her question into the pool of the Tree’s knowledge, into the shimmering circles of thought that lay just beneath her own consciousness. She could feel the earlier woodsingers, awakened by the tumult of all that had happened on the beach. Alana plunged her question into their midst and almost reeled with the force of the replies.

“Stolen children?” whispered one ancient voice. “Like the stolen bull of Cumru?”

“Children!” remonstrated a younger voice. “Not animals, children!”

“Ah, like the time that madwoman Shinda took her daughter away from the People.”

“She took her daughter from her husband, Shinda did.”

“It wasn’t her husband, it was her father….”

The voices chased each other, circling around their ancient stories like rings on a tree stump. Alana felt the confusion of their histories break over her like a clammy ocean wave, and she staggered toward one of the rough boulders strewn upon the beach. There might be an answer in the People’s past, but she did not have the strength to find it. Not now. Not with the voices spinning out of control in her mind.