"I do not like failure. You will keep watch around the Lion's borderland." Jagiellon cleaned the cleaver on the victim's hair. "We will consult with Count Mindaug. He has been studying the magics of the West. He thinks I am unaware of this. Maybe he will know of some trap we can set."
The shaman nodded, and the Count was sent for, as servants cleared the mess away, moving with swift and fearful silence. As well they might: Any one of them might be next, if they drew attention to themselves. Until today, the dead woman had been a chambermaid.
The Count did indeed have an answer. A stray fact plucked out of a grimoire from the Ravenna region, from the southern margin of the sequence of lagoons and floodlands that had once stretched all the way from there to Grado in the north. Just off the southern margin of the ancient marshlands lay a grove of oak trees. The local people would go nowhere near the place. Local legend said a terrible rite had raised something there, something so evil that everyone for miles around found a reason to avoid the spot. It was a lonely and not very fertile area anyway, full of mosquitoes and malarial fevers. It lay not far from the causeway that led to Ravenna, and then onwards along the coast toward Venice.
"I will open the way," said Jagiellon. "Take a form to travel on land. See what, if anything, lies in this place."
The shaman nodded and stripped off his jacket with a tinkling of brass bells. The old body that lay underneath the leather was also tattooed. And considering the age of that lined face, the shaman's body was in remarkably good shape. Scrawny, yes; but sinewy tough under the tattoos.
The old man blurred into a feral-looking dog with yellow mangy fur, and yellow eyes, and yellower teeth. The dog slipped into the tunnel that Jagiellon had made.
Some hours later the shaman returned. "Some old beast of
kaos
make nest there. There are old magics which let it survive. It is very strong but nearly mindless. It exists just to feed, master."
Jagiellon's cold eyes seemed to glow. "Ideal."
"It cannot leave that place, master. It would die."
"No matter," said Jagiellon. "We will lead the priest and his companions to the beast, before they can reach the marshes. If it fails to kill them, it may at least drive them back. I want him away from Venice, and Marco Valdosta. There is something about that meeting that I do not like the feel of. Your birds will continue to watch and follow when Lopez moves."
First babies, the wise old midwives all said, were hard. Hard on the mother, hard on themselves. Issie evidently agreed with the wise old midwives of canalside, for the closer came the day that Maria was due, the more horrifying became the tales the old woman dragged out of her memory. Tales of birth-struggles that lasted for a week; of every possible complication; of girls that died and babies that died; of both that died together. And she had the unmitigated gall to bring in all the other foresters' wives to regale Maria with still more tales of birth-horrors, until Maria wondered why so many of them had gone through the ordeal not once, but six or eight times.
Maria had cause to thank all the saints together that Umberto was never around to listen to these stories, or if he was around when Issie began one of her tales, he was so used to ignoring her that he really didn't hear what she was saying.
As for Maria—well, Issie had been one of the people who had tried to frighten her with stories of ferocious wild beasts in the forest. The wild beasts had been no more ferocious than the occasional hare or deer, and by this time, Maria was disinclined to believe any of Issie's tales.
That didn't mean she wasn't prepared for a hard go; but her own mother had given birth and gone out to deliver a load the next day. Maria knew that
she
came of tough stock. She wasn't expecting much trouble, really.
She
still
wasn't expecting much trouble when the first pangs started, and the water broke—though
that
was a shock—and Issie chased Umberto out.
But then the real pains began. And after the first hour, Maria was vowing—between groans—that the next man who touched her with sex on his mind was going to draw back a bloody stump.
After the third hour, she knew that it wasn't going to be the stump of his
hand.
After the fifth hour, when the pains were continuous, wave after wave after wave, and her throat was hoarse, she couldn't think of anything but the pain.
There were women milling about everywhere, praying out loud—what were
they
doing there? She hadn't asked them to come! The air was hot and stifling, her hair and bedgown were absolutely plastered to her with sweat, and someone was burning some vile herb in the fireplace. And all she could do was bite on the rope they'd given her, and tear at the bedclothes and it went on and on and on—
And that was when
she
swept into the room.
She was a tall shape in a dark, draped dress, and all the praying women fell silent as she raked the room with eyes that gleamed in the firelight.
"Out,"
she said. And the women, the horrible, useless women, fled before her like chickens before a falcon, cackling in panic.
She flung the windows wide, threw something on the fire that chased the stink out with the scent of fir and rosemary, and came to the side of the bed.
She leaned over Maria, and the silver pentacle gleaming at her throat told Maria everything she needed to know.
"Strega,"
she gasped. But in recognition, not condemnation. After all, none of those women and all of their calling on saints and angels had helped her.
"Exactly so." The woman smiled, and placed a hand on Maria's forehead; then, sketched a sign in the air and murmured some words.
Suddenly, Maria was . . . there, but not there. Detached from her body and all the pain and the mess. Floating within her own head, dreamily watching, as the Strega helped her out of the bed and got her to walk, then rest, then walk again, a little. She was
there,
but she did not care, except in the most detached possible way. Her body strained and hurt, but
she
did not.
Issie's friends all huddled fearfully at the door, and the Strega cast them glances of contempt from time to time, but said nothing. "I should have come to you before," she murmured in Maria's ear, "But I did not know your time was near. Did you think that we would leave one who was a friend to us alone with a flock of chattering monkeys in her time? No."
Then she made Maria squat on a peculiar stool, and there was a moment when Maria was
back
in herself, fully, and shouting, and then the baby dropped into the woman's hands in three, hard heaves.
Maria went back into the dreamy state, and the woman got her into bed again and put her little girl in her arms, and with an imperious gesture, allowed the silly chickens back in again. And
they
cleaned the room, and Maria, and made everything pretty so that poor Umberto would not be horrified, and she stayed awake only long enough to look into her daughter's eyes and fall in love—and smile vaguely at her husband in reassurance when he came in.
The last thing she saw was the Strega woman, whose name she never learned, sketching a sign of blessing in the air and leaving as mysteriously as she had come.
In the night, the cliffs loomed dark and threatening. The air was still cold, the wind blowing from Albania. Here, in the craggy folds of the mountains, winter still held firm. And threading her way through the darkness came a woman. She disappeared into the cliff. A little later a second woman came threading her way along the narrow path. Later a third. And then, two more. Deep within the caves the chanting began.
Georgio Steplakis was a hill shepherd. He had thirty sheep, and twenty-two goats, and a hut in the hills. He could hear the chanting. He had absolutely no inclination to leave his pallet. Rumor among the shepherds was that the women shed all their clothes for the dancing in the glades.
Georgio had reason to know the truth of this story. He'd been curious enough, and not superstitious enough, to try for a closer look when he was younger. You could be really stupid when you were sixteen or so. He hadn't believed in the naiads either. Well, he'd learned. The rite was as old as these hills and before people had chanted and danced, the nonhumans had.
And it was a women thing. Men who intruded would regret it. Georgio sighed in remembrance. Sometimes it was worth doing something you knew you would regret. She had been very beautiful.
Her hair was silvered and as fine as the finest silken threads. If she'd been standing, the tresses would have reached down to her knees. She lay in the glade, naked but for that hair. Her skin was very, very white, as white as almond-milk. It was also very, very old. The breasts were wrinkled and empty. They sprawled sideways across her chest. The chest did not move. Her eyes, wide open and sightless, stared at the sky. Half of a peeled almond was still clutched in her wrinkled hand.
When the women who had come to tend the altar found her thus, a low moan went up. There was sadness. And there was fear.
Who would take the half-almond from the worn stone altar when the winter came?
The cold lord must have his bride. There would be no fertility without it.
They buried her with honor and according to the ancient tradition, in a fetal position, half-almond still in the old hand. She was buried with the others, beneath the dancing glade.
Once the glade had been much lower than it was now, and the grass had grown less green.
Over the spot she was buried the grass would grow greener. The earth here lay many cubits deep. And it had all come from the same source. Many, many burials over long years.
Many brides.
A shadow passed over the road in front of their mules; Lopez noticed that his mule flattened its ears at it. He looked up, and did not like what he saw. Those were blunt-winged hawks, not soarers.
Goshawks
, he thought. What were goshawks doing here? In his former life, Eneko had flown hawks against game, as every young nobleman did. Goshawks were used in forested lands, not open plains, because they could not soar aloft on thermal currents as the long-winged falcons or broad-winged buzzards could. So why were those two up there, laboring away?
"Do you see those two hawks up there, Francis?
The priest squinted. "Well, I can see two birds, Eneko. They're very high. Could be hawks, I suppose."
Eneko frowned. "This is the third day I've noticed them. Sometimes one, sometimes both."
Francis shrugged. "Well, there are always birds up there. Why do you think they're the same ones? We've done a fair number of leagues every day, Eneko, since we left Rome. We're already nearing Venice."
Lopez had actually opened his mouth to explain, when abruptly, explanations became superfluous.
Darkness fell on them as if someone had just clapped a giant kettle over the road. Flames leapt and roared in the sudden darkness, blocking the road ahead of them. The mules were terrified, bucking and cavorting as if there were caltrops under their saddles and venomous snakes under their feet.
Only sheer determination had kept Eneko in the saddle. Father Diego had been less lucky; but Eneko had dragged him up across the saddlebow like a very ungainly sack of grain.
"It is an illusion," shouted Francis over the wheezing and braying of the mules, and the near-curses of the riders.
Father Francis had refused to ride anyway, so he had, perhaps, the advantage of not trying to control a mount. But as Eneko managed to get his beast under a little more control, he could see the flames, too. This was one of the most difficult kinds of sending, a kind of vision from afar. Thus, too, it was difficult to combat. The foe was not proximal. It was no use to attack the vision, they had to reach the sender.
And to make something of this magnitude required truly unearthly strength. Abruptly Eneko realized, as he struggled with the wild-eyed mule, that there could only be one purpose in this exercise: To delay and thwart them on this, the first leg of their pilgrimage. Something wanted to prevent them going on, or at least to hold them up. Perhaps whatever or whoever this was—and it reeked of Chernobog—wanted them to band together and try to pursue and find it. What it didn't want was for them to continue on their way. Ergo: they must.
"Francis!" he shouted. "A cloth!"
Francis might not care to ride, but he at least knew what Eneko was calling for and why. There was no reason to use magic to settle the mules. It would be a waste of effort and less effective than a scarf, anyway.
He unknotted and pulled off the sash he wore in place of a belt or a rope about his robes and whipped it over the head and eyes of the nearest mule, which happened to be Eneko's. Once the mule's eyes were covered, it stopped bucking, and stood, shivering all over. That gave Eneko the leisure to rummage in his pack and pull out the cloth that had lately been home to bread and cheese. Francis gave the next mule the same treatment, and the next, until all of them were blindfolded and no longer fighting to escape the illusory dangers.
The only inconvenience was that now they all had to dismount and lead their mounts, as well as the pack animals. And the mules were balky, obstinate about going forward when they could not see. Mulish, in a word. But they were no longer terrified, which meant that they were no longer an actual hazard to their riders.
The four pilgrims advanced slowly, leading their mounts. All four of them were chanting—not magic, as such, but prayers; which were probably just as effective as sacred magic in this situation. In Eneko's case, given their proximity to Venice, he elected to pray to Saint Mark.
Now they waded through sights and sounds that were nauseating, rather than frightening. Chernobog had plainly realized that it no longer served to terrify the mules. Instead, it flung alternate visions of sacrifice and torture at them. Then, when that failed, sybaritic scenes and succubi.