The Spirit Stone (47 page)

‘Oh yes. He told me all about it.’ Pir’s mouth twisted in distaste. ‘Having a slit cut into your—well, imph—manhood, and then a stone put into the cut, and all the rest of it. It makes me sick to think about it. But Vek told me that he has to become both male and female or the goddesses won’t accept him.’

‘Well, luckily for him, I can’t help him do it.’

‘I suppose it’s lucky. Sometimes I envy Vek. He’s lost his mach-fala, his home, his city—everything he ever had in life. But it doesn’t matter to him. He has his gods, and he’s determined to serve them. And he says that it’s enough.’

‘I used to feel that way. Once.’

‘But now you know the truth about your Alshandra.’

‘Yes. It’s a very bitter thing, that truth. I suppose I was happier with the lies, but truth is always better than falsehood.’

‘Is it?’ Pir frowned at the basket of needles. ‘I begin to wonder. Consider our rakzanir. Will they ever become Gel da’ Thae, true Gel da’ Thae, I mean, without Alshandra or someone like her to believe in? All they did before was fight among themselves. Now at least they’re fighting someone else.’

‘Oh yes. They’re planning on slaughtering the Ancients and taking their land. I don’t see where this is a step away from savagery.’

‘Ah. You’re quite right, now that I think of it. Um, well. Yes. Um.’ With a sigh Pir stood up. ‘Here’s the first basketful. I’ll cut more if you’ll take these back.’

That night Pir lit a bonfire in the ashy pit where Movrae had died. The men who’d stayed in camp gathered around, spears in hand, to welcome Vek into their ranks when the moment came. The ceremony itself was simple and short. Pir brought the boy forward and told him to kneel before the priestess. Sidro combed Vek’s hair with her fingers, found a bit long enough to braid, and tied into it one of Laz’s old charms that she’d discovered in the detritus on the cabin floor.

‘You have left the arms of your mother,’ she said. ‘Where will you stand in the ranks of men?’ She whispered under her breath. ‘Turn and look at Pir now.’

When Vek followed her order, Pir stepped forward. For the ceremony he’d washed himself to match his clean shirt and combed and re-braided his mane as well. It hung in a splendid cascade over one side of his head, revealing the close-cropped hair on the rest of it. In the leaping firelight his face gleamed like the charms tied into the braids. Long glints of light flew from his hunting knife when he drew it and held it point up.

‘Answer the truth,’ Pir said. ‘Or die.’

‘I will,’ Vek said. He smiled in such sweet delight that, Sidro assumed, he was seeing some deity behind the actual man.

‘Will you walk in the ranks of warriors?’ Pir said.

‘Never!’

One at a time, Pir named the choices a man might make at this ceremony. Vek answered ‘never’ to each on the brief list.

‘What then will you do?’ Pir finished.

‘Serve the goddesses and gods all my life,’ Vek said. His voice choked on tears although he kept smiling. ‘And die when they wish me to.’

‘So be it!’ Pir grabbed the boy’s left hand and scratched its back with the point of his knife. ‘Blood and fire have witnessed your vow.’

Vek raised his hand and let the blood run down his arm for all to see. The men in the surrounding circle lifted their spears and cried out, ‘Hai! Hai! Hai!’ Vek rose, still smiling as if he saw a thousand delights spread before him, and turned to Sidro.

‘Walk as a man from now on,’ she said. ‘Ride as a man always.’

Once again came the ancient chant, ‘Hai! Hai! Hai!’ Sidro stamped her foot three times, and the ceremony had ended.

Although she’d fretted enough about the ritual cut to bring a scrap of cloth for a bandage, Pir had managed to keep the scratch shallow. By the time Sidro examined it, the blood had already stopped running. She bound it up anyway to keep the ever-present camp dirt out of it, then sent Vek off with the rest of the men. Pir lingered with her at the fire.

‘Very nice,’ he said.

‘Thank you. I have this awful feeling I forgot a speech in the middle, but the ritual pleased Vek, and that’s the main thing.’

‘That speech was boring, anyway.’ Pir thought for a moment. ‘I don’t remember much about it. The priestess droned on about never betraying your mach-fala, but um well, he’s already done that, hasn’t he? Betrayed them, I mean, by having magic.’

‘Perhaps they’ve betrayed him, rather, by hating him for it.’

‘Ah.’ Pir looked at her sharply. ‘Hadn’t thought of it that way.’

Sidro met his glance, then forgot what she was about to say. She found herself wondering what it would be like to stroke his close-cropped hair, to run her fingers through the hair on his chest. He stared back at her, unsmiling, silent, but she knew that he too felt the sudden attraction between them, because his scent began to change. Horse mages, however, learned to control their scents. After that first unmistakable waft of sexual desire, his returned to the normal smell of a man who’s stood close to a fire on a warm night. He started to speak, swallowed the words, then turned and strode off. Sidro stayed where she was until two of the other men came back with shovels to smother the bonfire.

As she walked back to the cabin, she was wondering what her own scent had revealed.
It’s the ceremony,
she thought.
Somehow we worked magic together.
She’d never thought of the coming of age ritual as sorcery. As she mulled it over, she realized that Vek’s presence and his deep-rooted magical gifts had brought power into what was usually a mere social occasion. The power had caught her and Pir both unawares until that moment by the fire. That night she dreamt of the horse mage, but if he’d done the same about her, he gave no sign of it when she saw him in the morning.

Laz led the raiding party back into camp late that day. Whooping in triumph, the men who’d been left behind rushed to unload the booty from the packhorses. The raven landed at the cabin door, then hopped and fluttered his way inside to his perch. Sidro stayed outside, watching Pir collect the horses, until Laz strolled out in human form, dressed in the clean shirt and brigga she’d washed for him, his brown hair roughly combed, like feathers ruffled by the wind.

‘My thanks,’ he said, patting the linen over his chest. ‘But I could have washed it myself.’

‘It gave me something to do while you were gone,’ Sidro said. ‘I gather everything went well.’

‘Yes, it did. I managed to extort some linen cloth for you, by the by, from a fairly well-off woman who, or so the farmers told me, is the local miser and deserves it.’ He smiled with an odd twist to his mouth—covering not a lie but an apology. ‘I have a small spark of moral sense left, I suppose.’

‘Well, thank you. I have to admit that I need something to wear besides this shift. I don’t suppose you thought to steal me some needles and thread.’

Laz swore under his breath.

‘That means no, I take it,’ Sidro said. ‘Oh well, maybe you can find a peddlar in the woods and waylay him.’

‘Ah, a jest! Your good humour returns at last. I can whittle you a bone needle. This cloth looks like a very loose weave to me.’

‘That will do, most likely. I can pull some of its own threads or lace it with thongs.’

‘Good. But you know, I did see something very odd in the woods, though not a peddlar, alas. When I was flying home, I spotted a small party of our Gel da’ Thae compatriots, on foot, coming down from the north.’

‘You didn’t summon your men to rob them, too?’

‘I considered it. They were leading a mule that looked pretty well loaded down. But I recognized their leader, so I decided to leave them alone.’

‘What? Who was it?’

‘The Most Exalted Mother Grallezar, head of the Braemel town council.’

For a moment Sidro found it impossible to speak. ‘In the forest?’ she said at last. ‘Not on the Braemel Road?’

‘Stumbling around among the trees, yes. Hiding from someone, I’d say.’

‘Do you know what that must mean?’

‘Your holy fools have taken over Braemel.’

‘Just that. It pains me to admit this, but I’m horrified.’

Dallandra had learned of Braemel’s fate from Grallezar herself, when the Gel da’ Thae leader finally reached her mind to mind and begged her for help. With an escort of thirty mounted archers, Dallandra rode out to find her just below the cliffs at the forest verge. Her archers led extra horses, because Grallezar had warned her that two of her four loyal men were wounded, one badly from a spear thrust to the ribs, and the other with an arm broken in a good many places from a blow with a heavy club. When they saw the elven party approaching through the grass, the Gel da’ Thae stopped walking and merely stood, heads bowed, to wait. Grallezar herself could barely stand. She leaned against a laden mule who looked as weary as she did.

With a shout, the Westfolk men surrounded them, then dismounted and hurried forward to help the men. Dallandra swung down from her saddle and rushed to greet her friend. Like the average Horsekin woman, Grallezar was taller than many Deverry men, and as well-muscled, too, but at that moment she looked frail. The dust of her frantic journey smeared the green tattoos covering her face. Somewhere in the forest she’d lost the leather cap that usually protected her shaved head, which had sprouted a brownish stubble in compensation. Her dress, once the finest buckskin, had rips and stains all over it. When Dallandra put her arms around her in greeting, she could feel Grallezar trembling.

‘Thank every god you’re alive!’ Dallandra said.

‘I suppose I’m glad, for all the good it is,’ Grallezar said. ‘I left Braemel with over twenty loyal people and as many horses. These four men and the mule are all that survived.’

‘Ah, gods!’

‘We had to fight our way free,’ Grallezar went on. ‘We managed to kill all the attackers. May the Light be thanked, I can scry out those filthy priest-dogs. I saw them waiting for their soldiers to return. By the time they realized they weren’t coming back, we were long gone.’

‘I cannot tell you how glad I am that you escaped.’

‘Dalla, they were going to burn our books. Every scrap of the dweomerlore we’ve put together with so much work over so many years—they wanted to burn it all.’

‘And you with it, I suppose.’

Grallezar shrugged her own danger away. ‘We saved it, though.’ Her voice broke, but she steadied it again. ‘Every book I had I brought, and I had copies of everything.’ She turned to stroke the mule’s nose. ‘He’s carrying them all.’

‘Good. Let’s get you and your men back to camp so I can treat the wounded.’

When they reached the encampment, Dallandra took Grallezar to her own tent to eat and rest, then did what she could for the two injured men. Both would recover, as she told Grallezar later that day, when the Gel da’ Thae leader woke after a long afternoon’s sleep. Since they were alone, they could speak in the strange mixture of Elvish and the Horsekin tongue they’d developed on their various visits.

‘The army will camp here tonight, so we won’t have to move them immediately,’ Dallandra said. ‘We’re waiting for scouts to return.’

‘I see.’ Grallezar paused to rub her face with both hands. ‘Dalla, we’re really here, aren’t we? I’m not just dreaming this or meeting you on the astral or some such thing, am I?’

‘You’re not. You’re safe in my tent.’

Grallezar looked up with a long sigh. For a moment she stared out at nothing, then sighed again. ‘It’s an evil day indeed,’ she said, ‘when my city would open its gates to savage tribesmen.’

‘Is that what happened?’

‘Yes. The Alshandra people got themselves elected to the council, you see, then voted an alliance with the northerners—those are the people who settled Taenalapan. When I objected, they stirred up their mob against me.’ But Grallezar suddenly smiled, revealing her long teeth, filed into points like fangs. ‘My city may be lost to me, but I’ll pray that Zakh Gral pays the price for it. I hope to every god that your army razes it to ashes. I hope they kill every man in it.’

‘Oh, if they can, they will. Have no fear about that.’

Dallandra had some hard questions to ask Grallezar, but the leaders of the army were as eager to talk with her as she was. A page came with a polite summons and interrupted their talk. Dallandra accompanied her to Prince Voran’s peaked tent, where Gwerbret Ridvar, Prince Daralanteriel, Warleader Brel and Envoy Kov stood waiting. In the rising evening wind their banners, carried by the heralds who stood behind each man, snapped and fluttered with their devices, the gold wyvern, the red rose, Cengarn’s blazing sun, the dwarven axe. At the sight Grallezar caught Dallandra’s hand and squeezed it.

‘Courage!’ Dallandra murmured. ‘They won’t dare harm you, not with me here.’

Indeed, Prince Voran behaved like the flower of courtesy. He had his canvas stool brought for Lady Grallezar, as he called her, and a stoup of Bardek wine as well, which he personally handed to her. Yet Dallandra was aware of the other lords eyeing the Gel da’ Thae women with a mixture of awe and suspicion, the way they might view some huge Bardekian lion brought to them in a cage. Even Daralanteriel—Dallandra stored up a few choice words to say to him later.

Prince Voran knelt beside Grallezar’s chair with a friendly smile. Someone must have told him that she spoke a dialect of Deverrian, because he addressed her in that language. ‘My lady, if you’ve rested enough, it would gladden my heart if you’d tell us your tale.’

‘My thanks,’ Grallezar said. ‘It be a familiar tale, here in the Northlands, but no doubt not one you hear off to the east. Once there were six cities of Gel da’ Thae, though Taenalapan and Braemel were the largest. Now there be six towns ruled by Horsekin savages. Braemel, it were the last to fall to these loathsome dogs of priestesses and prophets. The price they did pay for those towns, it were high, a price of blood, not that these madmen count death as a peril.’

‘These savages,’ Voran said, ‘are they your northern tribes, then? We’ve heard about them.’

‘Some are, but their leaders, they be bred inside town walls as Gel da’ Thae. In the end they did prove themselves as brutal as any northerner, and all in the name of their goddess. This Alshandra poison, it did well up among the tribes, but then it did spread to the cities. One by one they fell to Alshandra’s people. Mine, it were the last. Their leaders did corrupt our troops and win them over.’