“She will be punished for the evil she has brought forth,” Sieur Jumery said, setting down the decanter. “Justice will out.”
For a swift moment, Gaultry was unclear who he was consigning to retribution—herself or Dervla.
Haute-Tielmark caught the same inflection. “Words of truth, good Sieur Justice. Where they be aptly applied.” Antagonism charged the air between the two men: the harsh, towering master of the western lands and the frail old man with his sly manners. As a contest of wills, it was decidedly unequal. In no more than a moment, the old man dropped his gaze. “A High Priestess set against her own Prince’s will.” His wrinkled hands arranged, and then rearranged, the decanter and two cups that were left on the table. “A melancholy day, when Tielmark comes to that.”
Sensing capitulation, the Duke’s smile deepened. “Words of truth,” he repeated. “The gods watch us, and justice will out. Great Twins protect us, that we bear no sin we might hesitate to present them.”
The old man would not look at him. “As Your Grace pleases.”
“Your guests have traveled a great distance,” the Duke said. “Tonight, however high Rios’s moon stands in the sky, they might be spared the bleak judgment of the Sword-god’s ways.” Plucking the decanter from the old man’s fingers, Haute-Tielmark sloshed himself a final refill. “These people must return safely to Princeport, and the sooner the better. The girl owes duty to Prince Benet—and her man is dire needed on my border. Tonight my men will guard their doors; tomorrow I will outfit them for travel and see them swiftly on their way.
“I would spare them more words tonight. By Benet High Prince’s name, be kind, good Sieur. I would beg that you accommodate myself and my own men this night, that I may more briskly complete my arrangements come morning.”
The old man’s shoulders slumped deeper. “My house is humble,” he said. “It has been many moons since we have supported so large a party of guests. But all will be done as you require.” Some deep strain had moved between the men—some deep warning. Gaultry could not conceive what battle they had played. She knew only that Sieur Jumery had been bested.
The Duke swung back his wine and set his goblet down, his hand steady despite the massive volume of alcohol he’d consumed. “I would have my men called to me.”
“So it please your Grace.” Sieur Jumery tugged at the bell pull by the mantel. Deep in the house, an answering bell resounded. The Duke’s men soon came tramping in from the stable. Like their master, they wore an odd assortment of riding leathers buckled on over finery. They shot Gaultry and Martin many curious looks as they accompanied them upstairs, through the moonlight of the window over the landing, and along the quiet upstairs halls to the rooms the old man had assigned them. Sieur Jumery, stony-faced, led the way, carrying the lantern.
“If it so pleases your Grace,” he said, “I would have you share the grand chamber over the court, along with the Stalkingman. My women have not had time to air another room.”
“I would not have you put out,” the Duke answered smoothly. As Gaultry opened the door to her room and stepped in alone, he arched a brow and smiled. “Not bedding together?” He turned to Martin and grinned, “See, now I’ll have all your news before it arrives at court.”
“Good night, Your Grace.” Gaultry pulled the door hastily to, her cheeks burning. What good were the chaste relations that Martin and she had so carefully maintained, if everyone already believed they were keeping consort?
Outside the door, the Duke’s guard noisily settled himself.
Across the room, the Sharif’s eyes were open, brimming with questions. Gaultry shook her head.
Go to sleep
, she told the woman.
Go back to sleep if you can. We have a surprise ally, and all is well
. She touched the Sharif gently on her bandaged shoulder.
I’ll try to explain in the morning.
In the morning, when they were out from under this harsh judging moon, and out of this strange house.
“Gautri.” The call invaded her dreams, once, twice; then again, more
urgently.
Wake up, Gautri.
Humid air filled the bedchamber’s predawn darkness, dampening the sheets and the covers. Gaultry rolled on her side, uncomfortable, and pushed the tamarin’s tail out of her face. She thought she had been having a bad dream—she was sure she’d been having a bad dream. The Sharif’s exhortation had broken its hold.
“What is it?” she groused, pushing sweaty tangles of hair from her face.
Aneitha.
“Great Twins.” Gaultry, unpleasantly, came fully awake. She had not given the big panther a moment’s thought since the debacle at the bridge. “What’s wrong?”
The Sharif understood Gaultry’s tone better than her words.
She fell into a black place, full of sharp sticks. She can’t climb out. She is giving herself to panic. Gautri, if you could hear her cries …
“Wonderful,” Gaultry said wearily. From the strained look on the woman’s face, there was only one thing to be done.
I’ll go and get her out myself. Just tell me where she is.
Her call is loud
. Carefully moving her arm, the Sharif pointed: westward, and a little north.
That’s where I hear her. She must be close. I couldn’t hear her otherwise.
Inside the old man’s hedges?
Gaultry asked.
The Sharif didn’t have an answer.
Tell her not to hurt herself while I look for her.
She will not listen to reason for long.
Which meant Gaultry had to hurry. She rose and splashed some water from the sideboard’s basin on her face. Behind her, the tamarin chirped. He was sitting on the chest at the foot of the bed, next to Gaultry’s neatly laid out boots and short-stockings.
“I’m glad one of us watched where Hesbain put these.” She shushed the little animal out of the way and picked up her stockings, which she had no memory of the woman having removed. “Now stay here while I attempt not to volunteer for the meat that breaks Aneitha’s fast.” The tamarin chittered and ran back to the Sharif’s pillow.
Be careful
, the Sharif told her, as Gaultry sheathed her knife in her belt.
The pit that trapped Aneitha is big enough to catch you too.
Gods in me, I’ll try
, Gaultry answered. She sketched the goddesses’ sign, and made for the door.
The duke’s sentry, a young soldier with rumpled, wheat-colored hair, was awake, and even something approaching alert, the moment she opened the door. He scrambled up, anxiously blinking. He looked tired and disheveled. “Lady Blas. Where are you going?” He fumbled with the ties on the front of his tunic, conscientiously attempting to tidy himself.
“Stay here,” Gaultry said. “Guard my companions. I’ll return shortly.” She walked hastily past and on down the hall. Company was the last thing she needed on her hunt for Aneitha.
Outside, the humid summer landscape was saturated with mist-filled light. The full moon, in descent but still well above the horizon, looked very small. It had lost its luminescence to the fast greying light of the dawn sky. Smoke from the kitchen chimney indicated that someone had risen to stoke the kitchen fires, but between the early hour and the midsummer holiday, the fields were unusually empty. Gaultry crossed a vacant, close-cropped paddock, heading in the direction the Sharif had indicated, then skirted a small orchard. At the far side of the first field beyond that she paused and took bearings.
From under its veil of morning dew, the heady moisture-rich scent of the soil rose all around her, refreshed and promise-filled. The field had been recently cut and the hay raked in. The hay stubble had a dense and healthy look, already with pale green shoots rising amid the darker, scythe-cut growth. This field at least would have yielded an excellent harvest of green-cut hay for the midsummer fair. If Sieur Jumery’s house
was slowly sinking into ruin, it was not because his land had failed.
The old man’s holdings were expansive. Gentle rolling hills, some wooded, some tilled, stretched far away to the blue horizon. The nearest outbuilding was more than a mile away, obscured by mist and indeterminate as either cottage or cowshed. Gaultry could not see any obvious hedge or marker that might indicate the limit of the old man’s holdings.
As dawn quickened, birds rose from their nests, creating a rousing cacophony. The sheer volume of happy waking songs made Gaultry doubt that Aneitha could be anywhere nearby, but she had to trust the Sharif’s judgment. Determined to relax and focus, to fall into the rhythm of the hunt, she made herself stand and listen.
Weeks had passed since she’d last hunted alone. So far from her home in Arleon Forest, many of the bird cries were unknown to her, and at first all she could hear was confused chattering. Then, in a pleasingly familiar outfolding, she began to recognize distinctive voices. A jay. A bevy of hedge-sparrows. Mixed in with the unknown bird cries were the songs she had heard in the deep of the forest since before she had learned to speak.
A vital warmth spread through Gaultry’s limbs, as though the dawn sun had already crested the horizon and touched her. Her ear began searching for harsh or disparate notes, something apart from the happy waking chatter. Her indecision and her concerns for her companions seemed suddenly far away. The land pressed on her, filling her lungs, her ears, her throat. She felt herself merging into her own element, as if the land spoke to her through all of her senses, pulling her ever deeper.
She bent and seized a clump of dirt. “Huntress Elianté,” she intoned, crumbling it, “I commit this hunt to you.”
The smells of the earth and the trees flooded her, and she listened ever more deeply. There was something there, something … Before she knew what had caught her attention, she’d turned toward a tall line of poplars. The trailing row of trees beckoned, three fields away, slightly over to her left, farther than she had imagined from the Sharif’s brief description. She fell into an even-paced jog, hurrying toward it.
High in the poplars’ branches, three crows perched. Beaks agape, their wings were unfolded in stiff black-feathered mantles.
Gaultry broke into a run.
After two fields, a thin mewling sound reached her and she knew she had guessed aright. She ran faster, stumbling over unkempt tussocks of
grass. She topped a mounded earth work, softened by years of scraping by plows, and came into one final field. The ground here was fallow and dense, unseeded and unplowed for two years or longer.
Beyond the poplars, an overgrown hedgerow blocked Gaultry’s way forward. From the twists of the land, it would not be the High Road that lay beyond it. It had the appearance of an ancient property line, long since overrun. Aneitha was trapped somewhere on the far side. The panther’s cries sounded bewildered and strained. “Shut up!” Gaultry called, searching for a gap. “I’ll be right through, so shut up!”
The cat, whether it heard her or not, continued to cry.
Gaultry stopped to catch her breath and gazed up at the crows. “Where’s the break in the hedge?” The hedgerow was heavily barbed with hawthorn and sloe, both shrubs densely-boughed, ancient, and bristling with inch-long spines. It would not be possible to force a way through. Craning in both directions along the hedge, she could not see a gap in either direction, or even a thin spot through which Aneitha might have squeezed her narrow feline body. She stared at the crows again. If only one would come near to her! Crows were possessed of a native curiosity that made them easy to ensnare with magic. If she trapped a crow and borrowed its spirit, she was sure it could lead her to a break in the hedge.
Sadly, Aneitha’s cries kept the birds wary.
She stared once again around the field, absorbing the possibilities. If the hedge was overgrown, the field was similarly wild. It had grown rife with sweet summer plants, still heavily laden with a veil of shining dew. A broad dark trail, the mark of her own passage, broke the silvered surface across the field’s center. She studied the field more closely. As well as her clumsy, obviously marked course, there was a multitude of more delicate trails. Places where rabbits had passed, or other small animals.
Thinking on the rabbits, she moved closer to the hedge. Rabbits would likely have created a hole somewhere. She wouldn’t need a spell to find that. She scanned the field for the most obvious tracks, and it was not long before the patterns revealed themselves. The most trafficked trails led to scattered burrows on the east edge of the field, but in two places those tracks crossed to the hedge for cover.
Gaultry found gaps at the hedgerow end of both of those trails. The first was hopelessly tiny. She was not even sure that it reached all the way through. The second tunneled through to an unwelcomingly small window of turf. If she was willing to crawl on her belly, it gave every appearance that it would take her through.
“Gods in me, Aneitha, how did you get yourself into this?” She studied the ground for signs that the cat might have used this hole itself. “You’ve been howling to the Sharif this whole damn time—why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
She lay down on her stomach, securing her dagger so she would not lose it somewhere in the hedge. The hole was so low she had to press her cheek to the earth start her entry, and it narrowed down so quickly that she had to back out and try again, this time with only one arm extended. She thrust herself unenthusiastically forward, more hemmed in and trapped with every inch. Twigs and thorns snarled in her hair and dragged painfully at her exposed ear. The hedge was little more than two yards wide, but it felt much broader. When her extended hand finally clawed at open air rather than thorns she could not help but release a small moan of relief.
Then, as she wriggled sufficiently free of the hedge to get a good look at what lay beyond, the sound died in her throat.
The hedge surrounded a narrow strip of land, far longer than it was wide. Unlike the fallow field outside the hedge, it was meticulously tended, the turf as smooth as the bowling field she had once seen in the palace gardens in Princeport. Before her stood two rough pillars of stone, between them, a bleached white table-stone with a bowl-like cavity carved into its surface.
Beyond the stones rose the long, gentle curve of an earthwork barrow, taking up most of the enclosed strip.
Gaultry scrambled the rest of the way out of the hedge. Brushing herself down, she nervously eyed the velvety green hump of the barrow. She had encountered such things often enough in the south, though seldom shrouded with the secrecy of this site. They were ancient remnants of the wandering tribes, the people who had inhabited Tielmark from before the time the land had yielded to Bissanty rule, deep in the mists of history. The tribes had worshipped all the Great Twelve, and spoken to them directly through Rhasan magic—the ancient mystical symbols that bound past to present, present to future, man to god, man to animal. Although the wanderers had lived without fixed borders, they had built massive earthworks and erected crude stone temples to the gods’ honor, testament to their strength. Gaultry, who had been touched three times in her life by true Rhasan magery, could not quite comprehend why a people who had commanded such strong magical powers had ever yielded to Bissanty rule, but that they had done so was a proven matter of history.
Some of the barrows and temples had been abandoned for centuries, others overbuilt. A few, places of great power, were still in use, their connection to the past unbroken. The temple of Emiera in Paddleways, the village nearest Gaultry’s home in Arleon Forest, had a crypt that dated to back to the wanderers. Other sites still were scoured and cleaned according to ancient cycles: seven years, twelve, twenty, fifty. Some even longer.
When she was a small child, a stone near her grandmother’s cottage had reached the summer of its ritual scouring. She had a hazy recollection of Tamsanne’s displeasure at the local farmwives’ intrusion on her forest demesnes. Her memory of the scouring itself was clearer: dirty water running down the rough sides of the stone as it emerged, coal-black, incised with a network of scarlike lines, from beneath two score years’ of forest debris.
Unlike that stone singleton, the stones before her had obviously been recently treated. The center stone was bleached and pale, the outriders bare of staining vegetation. The cavity in the center stone brimmed with dark reddish liquid. Gaultry recognized it: treated blood, mixed with herbs so it would not clot and thicken.
She would have to free Aneitha and retreat as quickly as possible. These places were not often sacrally interdicted, but casual visitors were seldom welcome.
Aneitha’s noise made her easy to find, along with the logic of the pit into which she had fallen. There was only one break in the hedge, on the far side from where Gaultry had entered. The pit had been positioned a little inside that entrance, where anyone who did not know it was there would blunder in. Gaultry moved cautiously closer. Dense turf covered the network of branches and straw that had been laid to cover the pit. From the state of the turf, it was evident that this trap had been constructed many years past. The point where the grass made the transition from pit-cover to solid ground was indistinguishable. She was not surprised Aneitha had been caught.