The Song of Andiene (20 page)

The raven pecked again, and the soil fell away from hollow nose and ridged teeth. It pecked again and drew a worm out through the clogged eye socket.

The wet moldy stench of the earth choked Ilbran. He looked up at the tall golden tree.
How could I have been so blind
?
Golden is the color of death
. The forest was watchfully still. He could hear the roaring of blood inside his head.

The vultures, with their dirty yellow feathers, circle over the rocks that shape the city of the dead. The golderlings … He shuddered, as he remembered the soft caress of their fur, as they snuggled close to him on that cold night.

The golden trees coiled around the clearing, branches of one tree interlocking with those of the next one. Golden is the color of those who feed on death. He looked at the trees and knew they had grown tall on the flesh of men and children. He clawed the dirt back into the hole and stamped it down.
Let the dead lie where they have lain.

There were many hours yet till his wife and daughter would return. Nothing to do, nothing to do but think and try to understand this world turned upside down. If she were one of the forest folk, why had she not killed him at once? What magic did she work, burying men in the ground? He knew of that only as a forbidden ritual, outlawed by the Laws of the Land. He thought of it with horror. A filthy thing, to rot underground away from the purifying sunlight.

He had been taught the law of the land well. “We will not sow; we will not plant; we will not set one stone above another. We will not delve into the earth, nor will we bury our dead in the earth. If we fail in this, let our children be born as strangers.”

He had never understood the meaning of that curse till now. His daughter—he had thought her gentle and sweet and wise beyond her years—like her mother. What could he expect of her, with half her bloodline born of dark corruption, and her birthright from him only mindless folly.

“Let our children be born as strangers.” He had said it countless times.

He could flee into the forest, alone. No, he would not! He had played the coward enough, in his life. The tangled threads were of his weaving. He would stay and try to unknot them, one way or another.

All that day he made plans and abandoned them. “Here I am. Here I will stay,” he had said. How many others had promised that, and kept their vow? Twenty-three lindel trees grew in the clearing.

He sat at the far end of the clearing, looking out into the forest. The sun lay low behind the trees. Malesa was beside him before he realized that she had returned. She had gone to the house, stepping silently, and changed her clothes. Though the evening was cool, she wore only a thin shift of thornfruit silk.

Her hair hung loose in spicy scented waves, shadowy black against her pale skin. “It is Festival night,” she said, explaining before he had time to ask a question. “Our child’s birthday is tomorrow.”

Her skin was soft; her voice was sweet. Her eyes sparkled with light and aliveness and invitation. One day earlier, he would have been filled with rapture. Now … he would have more gladly embraced a serpent. He turned his face aside, so she could not read his grief and fear.

“You look weary,” she said.

“I am very tired.” To his ears, his voice sounded hoarse and stilted, like the men of his dream, forcing their long-dead lips to shape human words.

“Come and drink a glass of wine with me.”

“I will … what of our little dove?”

“Asleep,” she said. “She walked long and far on the forest paths with me today. The thought of her naming excited her, and so she played hard, even when I rested. She sleeps soundly. I carried her home. That is why you did not hear us return.”

She had spoken more words in a minute than she would willingly have used in a whole day. Ilbran’s heart was filled with dread for his daughter, that such explanations were necessary, but he forced himself to walk slowly, to match his strides to his wife’s graceful steps.

In the outer room of their home, the child lay cuddled in a nest of furs. Ilbran bent over her. Her breathing was soft and regular; her skin was cool. Slowly, he walked after Malesa into the other room.

A night-crake and two grasskits lay on the table; she had had good luck with her snares. She poured out the wine into wooden cups, her back turned to him. “Here, my love, take it and drink,” she said. He did not try to read her eyes, for fear of what she would see in his.

“I thank you.” He took the cup and looked down into its depths. Thornfruit wine, flavored with bitter herbs, fragrant and sharp, no different from the first time that he had tasted it. “Here I am. Here I will stay,” he had vowed. All vows can be broken, but what is the price?

“See if our little one is well,” he said. “It is not like her to be so weary.”

For a moment, he saw the rare look of fear on Malesa’s face, then she smiled and went acquiescently, setting down her cup on the floor. As the leather flap of the door settled into place behind her, Ilbran seized her cup and changed it with his.

His wife’s pale skin was flushed and her eyes were bright, as she returned. She looked more childlike than ever. “She is well,” she said. “Only tired from long walking. We will name her tomorrow.”

Ilbran took up his cup that had been hers. It smelled the same, the heavy savory fragrance. He drained it to the dregs, sweet thick thornfruit wine.
As thick as blood
. His throat knotted, but he forced himself to swallow. Then Malesa smiled in joy, and took up her cup and drank the wine that she had brewed.

Ilbran felt no fear, but simple weariness. As he watched her, her face seemed to grow older, more tired, more pale.

“I will see how our little one is,” he said. She turned to watch him as he entered the other room, but made no move to stop him.

The child slept soundly—too soundly, he thought. When he shook her and picked her up out of her nest of furs, her head fell back limply in his arms. He listened to her breathing, easy and deep as before, but that did not calm his sudden terror.

He wanted to rush out to the other room, seize his wife, demand answers from her, but his frenzy was held in check by his fear. And so he walked out slowly, forcing himself to be silent if he could not speak calmly.

Malesa sat cross-legged on the floor as he had left her, her head drooping. She looked up as he entered, and blinked as if to clear her eyes. “Are you not weary, my love?” she asked.

“No. No,” he said.

“Does your head ache?” Her voice was almost pitiful in its bewilderment.

“No,” he said. He had fasted for a day; the wine did not help him to think clearly. Malesa tried to stand up, but cried out and crumpled to the floor. He carried her to their bed.

The fever rose fiercely in her. Though he held her in his arms, she did not know him. Her flesh felt as though it would scald his hands. She spoke of many men, and his heart was chilled to hear her say the names he had heard in his dream. Weyron, Larys, Ilberar, Maneron, Raneh. She remembered them all, but she did not grieve for them. So many of them, so long ago. She spoke of men living under the rule of kings dead for three hundred years.

“I waited too long,” she said at last. “He may have known. If I had lived three more lives, I could have spoken to the trees and they would have answered me.” A little later, she spoke again. “A life for a life, and you will not grow old. The gift must be given, and the price paid.” To whom she spoke, he did not know.

Then the heat in her body seemed to fail, for a brief time. The thin silk she wore was soaked with sweat. “Ilbran,” she said urgently. Her hand shook as it clawed at his wrist. “Get me sandray and helvuln, mix them in wine.”

He knew the names; they were healing herbs. He did not know if they would cure her, or merely ease her agony.

He knew nothing more than the names, and she had many jars of dried simples on her shelves. She had taught her daughter, but her daughter lay in a drugged sleep. She had taught him nothing, and now he was glad of it. He wiped her forehead with cool water, and waited by her side.

The heat in her body grew again, and her talk grew more and more wild. Screaming, she tried to fight off her enemies, warriors and minstrels and wanderers, all she had lived with, all who had loved her. Then the convulsions began, great racking ones. Her body bent backwards like a bow; her forearms twisted themselves until a bone snapped like a dry branch. Her screams tore at the air, and were answered by the baying of the forest creatures. Towards morning, she died.

Ilbran wrapped her body in the bedcovers, hiding her face. Surely she knew herbs that would give an easier death than this? He could not grieve for her death, or for his part in it, but he was sickened by grief for what she had never been.

His daughter still slept, but it had changed from a drugged sleep to a restful one. When he touched her, she opened her eyes and murmured something, and closed them again, her eyelashes lying long on her cheek, her face burrowed into the furs.

He went back to the other room and picked up the heavy burden of his wife’s body. An hour’s walk along the paths that led nowhere, there was a clearing with an outcropping of gray stone in the center, no safehold, but still a place set apart from the forest. He laid her on it, unwrapping the bedclothes from around her. The winter mist fell coldly on her upturned face.

He did not once look behind him as he returned home. He had never known her, Malesa of the forest, who had lived with twice twelve men, and slain them, all but one.

Chapter 14

Ilbran returned, an hour’s walk on the winding paths. When he looked at the golden lindel trees, he shuddered, and had to force himself to enter the clearing. But his daughter came running to meet him, wild with joy at his return. He knelt, and held her tight, and wept.

“Your mother is dead,” he said at last. She looked at him with dark uncomprehending eyes. He tried to speak gently to her, to tell her something she could understand, something that would not destroy her.

“She ate something she should not have,” he said. “Many things are not safe. You must be careful, always.”

“Will she come back, Daya?”

“No, love, never.”

His child sighed and cuddled closer to him. She did not understand, but that was best.

There was one thing that he must do, though the world shattered and fell around him. “This is your birthmonth,” he said to his daughter. “You were born when the stars were woven bright across the sky, the full of the month. You are six years old, now. Do you know what it is to be named?”

She repeated the words that he had taught her. He thought that his heart would break, with grief or laughter, as she recited, “I am a person now, not just a child. I have a name, a name of my own. I must work now, to gather food to feed myself.”

“That is correct,” Ilbran said. “You learned it well. But you are a very young person. One day you will name yourself, and then you will be true-grown. But now, love, I will name you Kare, which was my mother’s name. She was a good woman, gentle and brave and wise.”

There should have been more ceremony, since the naming of a first child was a great occasion, but he could not bear it.

What was he to do now? This place, this clearing was hateful to him, but he was still trapped. In seven years of searching he had never found a safehold.
I am like a dog thrown down a well
.
He swims for a while, and if he is strong, he can swim for a long time, but at last he drowns, without ever having had a chance to escape.

He looked around him. It was a rich land. Even a child, if she were wise in the ways of the forest, could survive alone. His mind was made up; he pulled his daughter closer to him. “Now, Kare, love, you must be brave. Tomorrow morning I am going away. I will be gone one day, and come back to you the next day. You know what to do to be safe; you know that you must not go outside at night.”

Those were words that she could understand better than any talk of death. She shrieked and wept. She beat at his arms with her fists, kicked at him with her feet. Ilbran held her close, so she could not hurt him or herself. “I must, Kare, I must,” he said, though his heart was torn with grief for the risk he was taking, the risk of leaving her to live alone.

At last she wept herself into silence. “Remember,” he said, “do not go into the forest. Ever. If I do not come back, do not go looking for me. You know how to gather the grain and cook the food; you can take care of yourself.”

He thought of something else, a more terrible thought of the ones that ate men’s souls and wore their bodies to lure others to destruction.

“Even when I come back, do not go to meet me. Let me come to you. Even if I call you, do not go to meet me. Do you understand?”

Though she did not understand, at least she remembered. He asked her again and again, till she could repeat it glibly. “I won’t go into the forest, Daya. I’ll wait here. I’ll wait till you come.” She was an obedient child. He could do no more.

The next morning, he rose early, stood watching her as she slept, then turned away, stepping softly so he would not wake her. The sun had not yet warmed the forest; the air burned his lungs with cold as he ran along the forest paths. He had made his decision the day before. He would travel the whole day long. It was his only chance. The safe way to travel was useless to him. He had tried it many times; on all these forest paths, there was no safehold in half a day’s journey.

If he found a shelter in a whole day’s traveling, it would guard him through the perilous night. In the morning, he could bind it to him with his blood, return and fetch his child, and so begin the long journey back to the sunlight and open plains.

If he found no shelter, the forest would take him. It was a fearful risk that might leave his child alone. To his mind it was worth it. At least, while the morning was young, he believed that it was worth it.

As the sun passed midday, his fear began to grow. The forest creatures gave no kind and simple death. Still, he ran and walked and ran again, though his lungs began to burn with every breath, and his steps faltered. If he turned back now, he would die, beyond the shadow of a doubt.