B007IIXYQY EBOK (55 page)

“But she disappeared in the deepest part of winter.”

“She died in the drifts, then, poor woman.”

“Someone would have uncovered her bones. Father…what if she is very much alive…and has betrayed us, willingly or unwillingly?”

He lifted her chin, smiling. “Your mind is in a fevered state this day! You fret overmuch. I suggest you begin at once with the mead—it’s the best medicine for that.”

She tried to smile and managed barely. It was the first time in memory that his thoughts did not dart down the same path as hers. For some reason, she thought uneasily, in this matter his acute sight is dimmed.

When Baldemar stood ready to mount his great black stallion, Athelinda went out and embraced him. From the door Auriane watched, not meaning to, caught up in the moment in spite of herself, in awe of the size of that love, its magnificence, its tenderness. With a sharp ache, she turned away.
Such tender passion will never be mine
. The god of war is all comfortless spirit, and Decius’ comfort is fraught with thorns.

As Baldemar vaulted onto the stallion and cantered out of the yard, she gripped the doorpost until her knuckles were white, so intense was her need to run after him and beg him not to go.

When the sun reached midheaven and the children had delivered all their catkins, they came together at the Village of the Boar and readied themselves for the grand procession of the Moon Hare. They chose by lot a maid of ten summers to lead the way over the hills; she wore a hare costume consisting of a gray woolen headdress with long cloth ears attached; this covered the shoulders and was open in front to expose the face. The children’s laughter floated like the tinkle of temple bells across the fields as they spilled down from the village, following the lead of the Hare, the ears of her costume nodding with her dancing walk. The long chain of children, with joined hands and lilies in their hair, followed no path; Auriane watched them pass along the edge of the flax field while newcomers ran up and joined them as they went on their way. If anyone asked where they were going they would say they journeyed to the moon, but the closest they came, she knew, was the peak above Marten River. She heard far-off shouts and knew they cried, “The Blessed One is risen! The light has come.” From nearer at hand she heard, “She brings the light! Life everlasting is on our heads.”

It was time to travel to the bonfires. Athelinda was directing the loading of the mead cask onto the cart. From across the yard Auriane heard furious scolding and came out to investigate. The angry shouts were Fredemund’s.

“Witless whelp, your mother should sell you into thralldom!”

Fredemund whirled around at Auriane’s approach, her small black eyes glowing fiercely, plump hands balled into fists. “This barn-bred simpleton let the cart-horse stray. How will we get our drink and meat up the hill? Athelinda should take a willow switch to her.”

Auriane saw that it was Sunia, daughter of one of Romilda’s provisions women, a spindling, negligible presence, narrow-faced and withdrawn, a maid not yet sixteen whose mother often beat her. Fredemund gripped Sunia tightly by the arm as though she might run away, which seemed unnecessary, for the maid drooped like an unwatered plant. Strings of dirty red-blond hair swung down limply in her face. Her gaze was clamped to the ground and Auriane saw she even breathed shallowly, as if she thought she did not deserve her share of air. When Sunia looked up and saw Auriane, in her face was the wild-eyed, lost look of one who expected no kindnesses.

Terror and shame. Does it not make us sisters?

Auriane approached slowly, so as not to frighten the her, hardly listening as Fredemund complained that Sunia had not tied the horse properly, and the beast had slipped off while grazing.

“Fredemund, leave her be.”

Fredemund stared, mouth agape. “You cannot mean that. A good beast is gone, taken to the deep forests for certain. A lax and slovenly maid like this—mercy will only encourage her.”

“I care nothing for your opinion of her, Fredemund. Go to my own pens and take a dray horse of mine, I’ve a roan with white feet that closely favors the one that got away. Athelinda will not hear of this, ever. And if you do not tell her, she won’t notice.”

Fredemund thrust out her lower lip and made a calculated guttural sound that meant
anyone can see you’ve lost your wits, but as I am a thrall and you are free, what can I do about it
?

“Nor will Sunia’s mother be told,” Auriane added firmly. “Now go!”

Fredemund stood a moment longer suspended in frustrated silence. Then, disgustedly, she released Sunia’s arm.

Sunia regarded Auriane first with happy amazement, then relief, and finally, unfettered love. The maid’s face was like clear water; all that lay beneath was easy to see. Now Auriane saw the wool of her brown plaid dress was eaten by moths in places—her mother was rich enough in land and could have provided better for her daughter.

Sunia inclined her head slightly, and whispered, “You are great and kind.” She turned to go, then looked at Auriane again, saying silently, eloquently, with round, pleading eyes—
I shall not forget this, ever.

“Sunia…” Auriane hesitated, unsure how to say what she meant to say. “If ever you are in a…a dire situation and dare not speak of it to anyone, you may come and tell it to me.”

The maid stood startled and wide-eyed a moment, considering this; then her eyes began to glisten and she spun round and darted off up the path to the village, stumbling in her ill-fitting shoes.

The Eastre fire on Axhead Hill had drawn hundreds of worshipers by the time Auriane and Athelinda arrived with their household. The multitudes were arrayed about the hilltop, awaiting the arrival of Thrusnelda and her priestesses, and the opening ceremonies. Auriane and Athelinda had a place of honor near the fire; near them were Sisinand and her children and the family of Witgern. The drowsy contentment Auriane felt among kinspeople and friends settled over her as always, but some inner part of her stood straight as a sentinel, alert to some obscure cataclysm gaining strength beyond her sight.

Out of silence the drummers came, and started pounding the skins of their long drums. They climbed the hillside in a file, wearing brilliantly dyed cloaks of red, the color of the fertile fullness of life; they were a scarlet serpent wending their way through the throng. When they reached the summit they formed a ring about the fire, never interrupting their dark, slow beat, a ponderous cadence that set every heart to its rhythm—it might have been the resonant footfalls of a distant regiment of giants. The beats were eerily echoed by the drummers about the bonfires on neighboring hills; it was as though the land lived, and beneath its furry hide was a great booming heart. This was the throb of all life, the kick of the fawn emerging from the womb, the rhythmic motion of serpents, the lapping of waves, the hard hammering of rain.
Death is life, death is life,
the drums seemed to insist. It is
difficult for us to understand, Athelinda had explained to Auriane when she was a child, so we must be shown it again and again.

A group of maids linked hands and streamed around the fire in a capering dance; they dispersed when they saw Thrusnelda and her priestesses approach.

Thrusnelda and her women moved with the drums; it was as though an invisible rope connected them and each beat drew them forward another step. Thrusnelda’s gentle, round face was closed, remote; Eastre dwelled in her then. In her right hand she carried an upraised torch—this identified her as She-who-brings-fire-into-Darkness, or Fria as Light Bearer. She was clad in a white robe that shimmered with silver; it was embroidered with signs that captured and held the magic of rebirth: an egg overlaid by plain crossed lines, and above this, a leaping hare. On her forehead hung a great silver disk representing the full moon.

Thrusnelda walked close to the fire; its gusts of heated air unfurled her cloak. She lifted her arms; then to the music of fire and drum she cried out, throwing her voice to the sky: “You are the Blessed One who rises in spring. Arise on this, the third day, and show us life manifest. They claim your mortal body broken and gone, a feast for crows, a dwelling place for worms. But the light cannot be extinguished. Show us your living face!” She tossed her torch into the blaze.

“Arise now, O Blessed One, on the day of your resurrection!”

Behind Thrusnelda came a priest carrying a live hare thrashing in a sack. He gave her the hare; she dispatched it with a silver knife and then flung it into the fire. A moment later a dove fluttered in delicate confusion, seeming to emerge from the fire; swiftly it ascended with the smoke. From all about came cries of amazement: The Blessed One himself was incarnate in that bird. Auriane had known since she was ten that the dove was concealed in one of the drummer’s cloaks, but still she did not think it an entirely ordinary bird, as she knew Decius would; it was infused with god-substance, and she was certain it knew and loved its worshipers below.

The young men then marked out a portion of the ground for the sword dance. And then the people formed into a long file, readying themselves to stand before the fire and see the Blessed One for themselves in the blaze. Witgern took a place immediately ahead of Auriane in the queue; she saw a gravely troubled look in his face. He carried no weapons, and their absence made him appear an unblooded youth full of boyish innocence and increased her desire to give comfort to him. When Witgern took his turn before the fire, part of his prayer carried to her.

“Preserve him for another nine years. Take my life before his!”

She imagined many of the Companions would make a similar prayer. What would they do when the inevitable occurred? The world would swiftly pull apart, then order itself around a new axis.

Auriane approached the fire. She stood before the hot, pulsing spirit of spring, looking long into the molten center of the blaze, hoping fervently to see the Blessed One’s face. Finally she gave it up with a small shrug of despair. And no sooner had she accepted failure than there came a long, sensuous, honeyed moment in which the world seemed to smooth out and sorrowing did not seem possible—the same sense that had overtaken her when she pried the stone from the hoof of Ramis’ white mare. She clung to it, but all too soon it passed on, and she was left with a feeling of abandonment, followed by aching longing. The memory of the mare shadowed her always; but for it she might have been able to lay aside entirely all thought of that long-ago encounter with Ramis.

She tossed in her pouch of herbs, praying for long life for all her family, dutifully naming every nephew and niece. Then she paused. She heard the thin wail of a horn—the warning cry for a raid—but it was obscured by a sudden noise of geese in the meadow below. She listened sharply, but a second horn cry never came.

First she sought Witgern, but he was laughing at a jest Romilda had made and she knew he probably hadn’t heard the horn. Then she found Athelinda, who waited her turn to approach the Eastre fire.

“Mother, did you hear it?”

“A horn? Yes. Someone is hunting or playing. Were it a raid we would hear it again.”

“I’m going to ride back to the hall to be certain all is well.”

“If you’d gotten properly drunk in the first place, you wouldn’t mull over such things as hunters calling one another with horns. Now sit there and—”

“Mother, I have a sense something is very wrong.”

“You should not go alone, then. Darkness comes.”

“I know how to ride through darkness. I will return before moonrise, I promise it.”

CHAPTER XIV

A
URIANE SET HER MARE AT A
flying gallop for the hall of Baldemar, meaning to arm herself, then ride to the knoll where Baldemar sacrificed alone. As she pulled her mount to a halt in the yard, she felt ever more strongly that something was fatally wrong.

She heard a disturbance in the horse sheds. Thieves, or wolves? Or elves, lured close by the silence?

Cautiously she approached, as if to a chasm’s edge. It was an evil dusk, seeming full of voices whispering warning. A malign wind, the exhalation of ghosts, blew dry straw across the empty yard with a sound like hissing serpents. She heard a flurry of alarmed neighs followed by a furious battering of hooves. Had a wild horse broken into the yard?

A tall stallion shot out into view from behind the stock sheds; the horse circled erratically in a loose, powerful gallop, tossing and shaking its bridled head, the long reins flapping free.

Baldemar’s black stallion.

The sight stopped heart and mind in place. Numbly she urged her mare forward and came around the horse sheds for a better look, her stomach knotting with sickness.

The stallion’s reins were knotted at the withers, so the horse hadn’t merely escaped and galloped home after being tied to a post or tree. Baldemar had fallen—or been taken—from the stallion’s back.

She did not consider summoning help; the others were too far off, and night came swiftly. She galloped back to the hall, dropped to the ground before the mare came to a halt, and bolted inside. From the weapons mounts on the wall she took three ash spears.

She leapt onto the bay once more and lashed the ends of the reins across the mare’s hindquarters, urging her mount to racing speed, not heeding rough ground or pathless places, knowing she must outrun the dark.