Lady Cherusay's Daughter, Book I: The People

Towards midnight, the mood changed. Rothesay was sitting one out with the pretty lady, Terge, a witch of shadow-magics, clothed in same as if in a flowing gown, but she suckled her babe unhindered. They had been introduced by Rothesay’s last dance partner, a young gallant named Mardiel, who kissed her hand with the flair of a foreign prince and commanded her to the dance floor. He was sprightly and graceful, though at times he had to run to keep his place among the longer-legged people about him, for he was all of five years old. He escorted her here to “my lady Terge,” who was not his mother but his lady-love, bowed extravagantly, and vanished under the benches in search of imaginary foes.

Terge received his attentions with a grave courtesy that pleased Rothesay, but they had small chance to discuss the boy. The drums surged suddenly to still-greater dominance. If she had thought the party lively before, she was now shown that she had had no concept of life at all, that what had so far passed was staid and reserved, the essence of placidity.

The howling and yipping rose sevenfold. People clustered upon the length of the fire pit; Rothesay, feeling lifted up by the rushing tide of passion in the hall, rose effortlessly, stepped as if on air to join them. Rory and Kahan exploded into existence on either side of her, Rory ululating wildly and dancing with every step. Kahan looked the same as ever, except for a fire burning in his eyes; she sensed his rapture like a tautened harp string, and thought if she should touch him, she would feel him vibrate.

The fires had burned down to embers, hotter than the flames had been. Men with scarves over their faces worked the coals with long-handled rakes, spreading them smooth and even, pulling big chunks off to one side, inflaming the Runedaur as much as the coals. Across the pit, Nessian flung back his silvery head and bayed into the vaults. A cheer roared out and heads turned toward the dais.

Dav stood at the head of the pit, naked now but for a black knotted loincloth. His lean face blazed brighter than the coals before him, a terrible, joyous light that stole Rothesay’s breath and made her want to hide: surely no mortal could bear such ecstasy for long and live. In the thundering of the drums, he stepped out onto the coals, and danced.

Hard muscles rippled under his scarred skin as he tripped a Springtime hay upon the fire, light and sure and unscathed as Kavin’s holy wind. Midway down the firepit, lest any think his mastery stopped at his feet, he dived forward in a swift somersault and came up roaring with laughter, shaking glowing sparks from his dark hair. At the fire’s end he turned, stooped, and scooped up a double handful of embers and spilled them from his fingers like golden coins. His laughter echoed the shuddering drums, and he leaped at last to the cold floor.

Rothesay clapped her hands to her ears to protect them from the freshened storm of ecstatic lunatics around her. Runedaur crowded toward the head of the hall, gaily following one another down the searing path whose heat threatened her even from behind the line of masked fire-rakers. She caught a glimpse of Dav down at the end, seized in a black-satin bear hug by Master Leoff, and had the startling impression, before she was jostled out of view, that Dav responded with a kiss of equal ardor. Then it was her turn to be crushed in a powerful hug: Rory’s arms wrapped around her, lifted her clear of the floor, and something of his gay passion seemed to flow into her at the touch. Green eyes met gold in a moment’s ineffable communion. Then he screamed like a mountain cat, released her, and bounded into the fire.

The sudden flood of excitement she had felt ebbed away as suddenly, leaving her cold with terror before the menace of the coals. A lean hand took her shoulder; she felt emptiness behind her and backed into it hastily, gratefully. Other Runedaur flowed around her, shadowing her with their eagerness for a turn; they could have it and welcome. She drew a steadying breath, and discovered she was pressed snugly against a warm chest. She glanced at the hand on her shoulder. It was Kahan’s. And he was indeed vibrating.

She looked back into his eyes, but she did not understand what she saw there. Her first impression was of a mind so far removed from the formal walks of thought as to be no longer human. And then she thought, perhaps it was more human than she could understand. She wished, not for the first time, that she was not so tree-top tall. She longed to hide her face on his shoulder, but even on his, she would have to stoop, a bit.

Dav appeared at her elbow. Dismissed by his master’s nod, Kahan lifted her hand like a butterfly upon his own, kissed it lightly, and stepped to the head of the coals. Then he burst into a violent display of acrobatics, whipping his slender body through cartwheels, handsprings and flips all down the length of the pit. It was hard to believe a human could move so fast, still less the languorous Kahan. The Runedaur screamed approval; and Nessian then followed, elegance personified.

“Do I have to do that?” Rothesay asked in a small voice.

“Do you want to?”

She looked at Dav curiously. The fire in him was remote now, like a hearth-fire banked for the night; now he was the languid one, his passion spent, the memory of it lingering in a lazy half-smile, the sapphire eyes half-veiled. He had pretty lashes, she thought. Then she glanced back at the coals, and the joyous fire-dancers.

“No,” she answered slowly. “But I almost wish I did.”

“Good,” Dav purred, putting unexpected power into so soft a word. “Very good. You have some wisdom—psst! Look!”

She looked—and her heart stopped. Mardiel stood at the edge of the fire, both small fists raised high, and then he walked, to the rhythmic cheers of Colderwild. Halfway along, he began to run, and at once one of the rakers snatched him onto the side and hoisted him high. Rothesay glimpsed his victorious face just before he bent to examine a foot.

“Oh! Did he get burned?”

“Probably.”

Rothesay raised outraged hands to shake him, thought better of it, and merely waved them furiously. “You let that baby go out there, knowing he could get hurt?”

“I’ll risk crippling his body before I’ll risk crippling his spirit. Did you see his face? Whatever befalls him in life, though he may be destroyed, he will never be defeated! All we need to teach him now is some skill.” He laughed. “If it had been serious, we would have heard at once. What of it? Even I take a burn now and again.”

“But he’s just a baby!” she protested tenderly.

“The ‘normal’ world,” Dav muttered darkly. “It is ‘normal’ to refuse one’s own power, and, worse, to deny it to others, sometimes in the name of ‘love.’ Mardiel has power, but no skill. You have skill, and almost no power. Which will prove the quicker student?” He laughed again as her eyes flashed green indignation for being likened to an infant, and he stroked her cheek with an idle finger.

Liquid fire spilled from cheek to loins, even to feet and fingertips, that same gledelike pleasure at the Sternbridge stirred this time to flame. Her breath came short, and she stared dark-eyed at him, transfixed, terrified that he would touch her again, hoping that he would. Mindless lust in village louts was an enemy she knew and fled; erotic sensuality was a beguiling stranger whom she did not recognize either in Dav or herself, a stranger she would have followed like the Piper of Spring and discovered her mistake afterward. She stared at him, waiting for that frightening, thrilling call.

Dav permitted himself little amusement in her response. Whatever might be made of her, however she might serve his will, she was his now, he had accepted her, clothed her with the black mantle of his ancient family: it was intolerable that any one of that holy body be so much the puppet, answering to strings pulled by the fickle world. Padriag claimed to have taught her intellectual discipline; it must be Colderwild’s more arduous task to teach her the discipline of the soul. He shifted his mood and stroked her cheek again.

Rothesay blinked, the fleeting thrill of the first touch evaporating beyond recall, and wondered if she was supposed to think of the Master as a father or a brother.

Dav grunted. “You and Lacie can pack off to bed now. From here, the festivities go on beyond the interest of either of you.”

“What? Who?” She looked around blankly. The wild ecstasy still howling around them seemed to be coalescing, drawing in to some hotter fire that reminded her of something far away and yet recent, immediately past, a very nice feeling of—

“Lacie!” Dav barked.

A vision of silver and gold slipped from the roaring crowd to join them. She appeared to be twelve or thirteen, dark-eyed but with hair like barleycorn in sunshine, and clad in a simple silver shift that flowed about her developing womanhood quite scandalously. But Rothesay was suddenly glad. Company—the other inhabitant of the Silver Novitiates’ Chamber! “Hullo!”

Dav nodded. “Good night, babes.”

Lacie broke off her fascinated appraisal of Rothesay to glance about the hall knowingly. “Oh, right,” she agreed. She smiled at Dav. “Lightsolstice, maybe.”

Dav cocked an eyebrow. “Whenever you wish,” he said politely.

“As long as it isn’t you? No fear of that, O lord and master! I’d as lief bed with a rabid werewolf!” The girl delivered this archly, as if it were a telling blow.

Dav’s grin flashed. “Perhaps a more apt likeness than you could know, infant. Go on, now.”

“Ooh!” Worsted, Lacie, like Rothesay moments before, waved slim fists of aggravation in his face, spun on her heel, flounced away, stalked back, seized Rothesay’s sleeve, and flounced away again.

The two, having escaped giggling into their chamber from an escort of nearly a dozen goodly young men, stayed up later into the night over tea and cakes and the most nearly normal conversation Rothesay had had since home. Nearly, but not quite.

At home, young girls dreamed and talked of whom they hoped the priestesses would choose as husbands for them. The nuptial night itself, the coin of maidenhead paid for the stature of womanhood, was mystery reserved for the Anointing, the girls’ initiation like the boys’ Proving, and maidens anointed but not yet wed kept their ritual secrets from their younger sisters—apart from gruesome horror stories imparted with such relish that they could only be lies, or so the young ones hoped. And the married ones, however young, imparted no more than those wise and knowing looks that infuriated their former equals. Rothesay, still not yet come to menarche, had only the wild tales to go on. Lacie, Laciera, ignorant of this ignorance, blithely chattered on about her dreams for the demise of her maidenhood, plainly without virtue of marriage; and as the girls at home debated who they should most like for a husband, she argued over who at Colderwild would be best for a first lover. Despite her jibe earlier, she had not in fact ruled out Dav himself.

“The rub there, of course, is no matter how much you read, or play, you just do not know enough to interest him if you’re a virgin and he really does so hate to be bored. The town girls—” Rothesay supposed she meant nearby Dorchastir or Kavinsrae, “say I should go with Kahan, who is a sweetheart of the first water, but I was sort of planning on Lightsolstice and he’ll be in Windhome then.”

“Oh,” said Rothesay, wistfully trying to reconcile her image of a lovely young man with that of a ‘sweetheart’ who would deflower a young girl. And how would the town girls know anyway? She did not at all know how to play this game, so alien to Geillan propriety; Lacie’s simple enthusiasm baffled her. “Um, how about—Garrod seems nice,” she hedged.

“Garrod’s an angel,” Lacie agreed. “An angel with steel teeth, maybe. And so good-looking, I could kill him. He’s celibate.”

“What?”

“That’s what I say. What a waste! Don’t ask me why; it’s some philosophic thing. They all go through a spate of it sooner or later, but he’s been on it longer than most and I’d hate to waste my youth waiting for him to get over it. How about Nessian, though? You’ve met him—isn’t he so courtly?”

“Not to mention sixty!” Rothesay retorted, shocked. A girl was sometimes given to a much older man, especially if he was wealthy or important, but no one pretended that it was a desirable match.

Lacie gave her an arch look. “Tell him that. He’ll be complimented: he was sixty before I was born!”

Which made ‘well-preserved’ an understatement. Rothesay cast about for someone respectably closer to Lacie’s own age. If she fancied the Masters, “How about Leoff?”

Lacie shrieked and clapped her hands to her mouth, eyes dancing with horrified mirth. “Oh, no! Didn’t you know?”

“Know what?” Rothesay took the bait uneasily.

She lifted a fair and shining tress. “He’s my father!” She patted Rothesay’s hand in kindly compassion as she blushed deeply, and added generously, “You can have him, if you don’t mind he’s short.”

Most girls of Rothesay’s acquaintance, however randy they perceived other men to be, refused to believe their own fathers ever entertained the most fleeting thought about the process of begetting, still less offered them to girlfriends like toys. Before she could fumble any reply, though, Lacie went on thoughtfully, “But you’re virgin, too.” She looked her tall roommate over. “Bit old for that, aren’t you?”

Rothesay squirmed. “Um—who’s your mother?”

“Cusie—Cusiera. She’s a weaver in Dorchastir. She comes up here sometimes to work with Carialla.”

Rothesay shuddered. “Brave woman.”

“I know what you mean,” Lacie nodded, then yawned hugely. “Oh! I’m for bed, girl. Sorry to keep you up—morning’s going to come for you a lot earlier than for me, because they mean it, about ‘dawn,’ but it is nice to have company.”

As they undressed for bed, Rothesay asked carefully, “Your parents don’t live together?”

“Dorchastir’s her home, and she doesn’t want to leave it,” Lacie explained from inside her shift. Rothesay waited till she emerged.

“Why would she marry him, if she won’t live with him?”

“Marry! Never that! Runedaur don’t marry—well, not in the usual way. More like, you marry the Order, so you’re sort of married to everyone in it. Mama isn’t Runedaur, but—well, you’ll catch on.”

“Then Dav and Carialla aren’t—?”

Lacie screamed and laughed. “You do have a head for nightmare, don’t you? Go to sleep! Bad enough they have to share Colderwild, without being shackled together, too! Ooh!” She flung her pillow at Rothesay. “Good night!”

“Fetch the master.”

On the low couch, Asilay el-Seremay stirred slightly, and her eyelids fluttered. The dark, remote eyes of Nuassay Ceru, her kinswoman and first apprentice, darted to the little blonde slave kneeling on the carpet; the girl, startled out of daydream, leaped up and hurried to the door, heart in mouth: Nuassay, in her own interests, was an indifferent mistress, but in service to her teacher-cousin she struck swiftly and hard.

For all that, once she was out of sight and out of immediate reach, the girl ambled; passing a friend, they chatted, briefly, till a ranking chambermaid came in view; ordered to a new task, she excused herself, at once meek and smug, with the information that she was already on errand for Lady Nuassay. The chambermaid, knowing all too well the indolence of slaves, cuffed her anyway for good measure, but went on her own way and did not interfere. Thus Hautiger did not reach his lady’s sickbed for half an hour or more. But Nuassay, too, knew the ways of slaves: he arrived just about when she expected him, and Asilay was awake and aware and had already made a few private arrangements with her apprentice.

“Teginau,” Asilay croaked even as he pulled up the tasselled stool to sit by her. “She’s in Teginau!”

“Is, or was?” Hautiger frowned, taking her cold hand in his. “It’s been weeks, my love—”

Asilay tossed her head fretfully; Nuassay had already informed her of the dreadful loss of time. Her free hand moved feebly across her belly, seeking to soothe the agony of a wound that did not exist, not in flesh, not in her flesh. For reason of hazards like this, she did not shape-change, to dare the world in her own, altered, body, but instead borrowed the bodies of her ravens; else she would have died of that arrow, as the bird had died in the southern land.

She had almost died anyway, of the shock and power strained. That strain . . . she refused to despair. She would be long months recovering her powers, a setback, but no permanent loss; not that. A matter of months, nothing more, and meantime the girl was still to be found.

“Haukur,” she whispered. “Send Haukur. He can track—”

“That he can,” the baron murmured.