Blood Seed: Coin of Rulve Book One (19 page)

Anger surged through Sheft and he rushed toward the door. But he stopped before opening it. What was he going to do? Shout at him? Strike him? Argue with him while his mother’s body stiffened in her bed? Riah deserved better than that. 

He collected the eggs, then went to her side. She lay like an empty seed-pod, her hair askew on the pillow, her hands open. At the very least, he could sit watch with her in the tradition of Moro’s family. He washed her face, combed her hair, and wrapped her in her cloak. He spread a blanket before the hearth, laid her body there, and then placed two lit candles beside her.

Tarn returned empty-handed and glanced at the arrangement. Making no comment, he boiled the eggs for dinner, changed the sheets on his bed, and withdrew, quietly shutting the door. Sheft sank into the nodding chair. He stared at the serene candle flames until grief blurred them.

In the middle of the night, he woke from a vivid dream. Riah was gazing into a grey, winter sky. While he watched, her body fell away and her spirit moved into the lowering clouds. A whisper of words trailed behind her, like a sparkling drift of snow:
“The earth lies in frost, waiting for the low command: ‘Rise up now.’”

In the morning it was indeed snowing, but only lightly, and the yard was barely white when they carried Riah’s body to the wagon. He watched Tarn drive away. Then, carrying the flint box and an unlit torch, he trudged out to the deadlands. Ane’s grave was still a raw rectangle in the ground, and what was left of her scorched burial torch protruded from the cairn. He lit the torch he had brought and placed it beside Ane’s. 

The torch flared as a solitary light against the snow-flecked grey, and its smoke curled into the leaden sky. He returned home, following his own melting footprints, black against the white filigreed ground.

Sheft had been watching for it, dreading it, until two days later he saw it—a coil of smoke rising from the direction of Moro’s house. His heart sank. Mariat had come home from Ferce. For what he knew would be the last time, he took the familiar path through the fields.

In contrast to his own cold house, Moro’s cottage was warm and lamp-lit when he stepped inside. He’d always felt at home there, with people who were like family to him. But what he had to do would change all that.

They sat at the kitchen table and he told them of Riah’s death. He needed an iron will, but when Mariat came from her seat to embrace him, he found himself melting like wax. Moro reached over to grasp his shoulder when he heard of the cremation, and Sheft looked down at his hands while they gave him their sympathy and their memories. After a while, Mariat said it was time to take out the stitches from his arm. Sheft cast a meaningful look at Etane, who reminded his father of work that had to be done, immediately, in the barn. They left the two of them alone. 

“Roll up your sleeve,” she said, setting down a scissors and a bowl for the threads.

He did, then steeled himself for the first brush of her fingers. Her touches on his arm were gentle, but ice fled to them as if each were a wound. He sat rigidly as she clipped at the stitches, her head bent, her hands deft and warm.

He filled the time with looking at her. The subtle, gleaming colors in her brown hair, the practical set of her chin, her soft mouth, slightly pursed now in concentration. He took a deep breath of her, and she smelled like apples and clean, wind-dried sheets. She pulled out stitch after stitch, but the only pain was that of her nearness.

At length she sighed. “All done.”

His arm, though marked, was clean. She laid her hand lightly on the place, and it was like a brief blessing, too soon removed. 

He had to speak.

“Mariat, thank you. It—it seems I’m always thanking you.”
You were the only one who ever needed me, who could look into my eyes without flinching. You trusted me from the start. I could never thank you enough for that.

“And much deserved thanks it is.”

Her eyes shone with that teasing look he would hold in his heart and never forget. She took both his hands and everything welled up in him again. He could only move his thumbs over her fingers and stare helplessly as her look turned tender, at the gaze that did not turn away from him but waited upon him.

“You’ve been thinking about the spring,” she said.

He had to swallow the constriction in his throat before he could speak. “Very much,” he said. “All the time.”

“So we will leave right after the field-burn?”

He had gone over the words in his mind, many times over many hours, and now he wrenched them out. “Mariat, I must go alone.”

She only looked at him; but something, something alive and joyous, drained out of her face.

Oh God, what took the most courage? To admit his pollution and have her turn from him in horror, or free her for a normal life? What was compassionate? To let her believe they had a future together, or to kill the hope for it right now? He had to do what love demanded. He had to make an end. “From now on,” he said, “there can be no ‘we.’”

Her eyes slowly filled with liquid hurt. “Are you certain?”

So he wouldn’t see what he was doing to her, he lowered his head. “Yes.”

Her hands slipped out of his. “You tried to tell me this before I left for Ferce, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So was there never this ‘we’ between us? For you, I mean? For me it was—very real.”

He hadn’t planned for her questions, hadn’t planned for the almost imperceptible quaver in her voice, didn’t know he would be hacking at something beautiful, each word an ax-blow. “It wasn’t real,” he said woodenly.

“You said you loved me. That day by the creek.”

The pain in her voice moved like a knife-point across his spirikai. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t hurt her any more. His resolve was slipping away. “Oh, Mariat—” he began, leaning toward her. But then his eyes fell upon the bowl. It held the stitches she had taken out of him. The black threads lay there like obscene roots. What ran in his veins could never be denied, and he was finished with denials. With all his courage, with all his compassion for her, he dragged out the only answer he had left—a blatant lie. “I made a mistake,” he said.

Her sleeves rustled as she drew back. “Look at me and say you don’t love me.”

“Please, Mariat,” he begged. After going over and over it, after putting it off for too long, after finally assuring himself it was for her good, he had made his decision. But it had been made when her arm on the table wasn’t a hairsbreadth away from his, when he couldn’t feel the warmth from her skin.

“Say it—if you can.”

Rulve, help me! Say it!

But he couldn’t find the strength, couldn’t look at her again or deny his love for her anymore. Blindly he stood up, made his way to the door, and grabbed his jacket from the peg. “Good-bye,” he said in a strangled voice. He hesitated for an instant, took a long, heavy breath, and walked out.

The door banged shut against the warmth, and everything he had ever needed was left behind.

#   #   #

In the days that followed, he rose, ate, and worked like a carved figure. He refused to think about anything except what was directly in front of him and thrust aside split-second images of her warm eyes or the curve of her throat, over and over, many times in a day, before they could form the entire picture of one he must forget.

Now that Riah was gone, it took him and Tarn an inordinate amount of time to accomplish what had been taken for granted before. Dirty clothes had to be scrubbed, rinsed, and hung on the rack, where there never seemed to be enough room. No hot stew waited when they came in hungry and cold from outdoor chores. Neither of them knew where Riah had stored things, so they had to search for the salt, the paring knife, the needle and thread when a button popped off Tarn’s coat. With much less cooking going on, a chill crept into the walls, and honey congealed in the jar. They engaged in terse arguments about whose turn it was to feed the chickens, wash the dishes, sweep the floor, bring in water from the well.

At other times there was little to do. They would sit, not speaking, before the fire, and go early to bed. Or Sheft would work on the wooden bowl he was making as Etane and Leeza’s wedding gift. He sanded it as smooth as a river stone, carved an intricate row of wheat-stalks along the outer edge, and rubbed it with oil until it gleamed. But that was all he carved, and the box left from the market-fair lay abandoned in the barn.

The past he had known and the future he had once hoped for had slipped away. In exchange he had accepted an alien identity, a medallion engraved with enigmatic symbols, and a title in a foreign tongue. The toltyr hung heavy from his neck, an icy brand that marked him for failure, but he did not remove it. It belonged to him, and in reality he possessed nothing else.  

#   #   #

Mariat’s bouts of testiness had been giving Etane no peace, so he came one day over the frost-touched fields to speak to Sheft. He found him hauling bags of feed off the wagon and piling them in the barn.

Sheft had changed in the short time since he’d seen him last. Two lines were engraved between his eyebrows now, and the metallic eyes were like lead. He wore his sheepskin jacket, and there was a cord around his neck which Etane had never noticed before. Whatever hung from it was hidden inside his shirt. Etane noticed that Sheft stiffened when he saw him, his breath a cloud in the cold air of the barn.

“Don’t worry,” Etane said. “I haven’t come to beat the hell out of you. Although it may not be a bad idea, now that I think of it.”

Sheft dropped the bag he was carrying and sank down on it. He stared at the floor, looking utterly bereft. “I had to do it. Rulve help me, I had no other choice.”

Etane brought up one of the stools stored next to the paper-making screens and sat down in front of him. “I know you, Sheft. I know you believe you’re doing what’s best for my sister, and I respect you for it. But have you thought it all through?”

Sheft looked at him with a kind of tortured disbelief, and Etane winced. Of course he had thought about it. Knowing him, probably for weeks.

“So your father finally told you to leave, eh?”

Sheft sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d already decided that. And he’s not my father.” One foot scuffed at the bedraggled straw at his feet. “He told me just before the Rites. I don’t know who my father is.”

Etane remembered the rumors about Riah and her supposed activities in Ullar-Sent, but decided that was none of his business. “You’re not the only one around here like that. And your being somebody else’s son wouldn’t matter to Mariat.”

“Etane, you don’t understand.” Sheft was almost pleading with him. “I can’t explain it to you. There was no other way!”

“I guess it all really hinges on whether you love her or not.”

“Oh God!” Sheft groaned.

Etane saw the open anguish in his face and grasped him by the shoulder. “You don’t have to leave us.”

Sheft swallowed hard. “I’ll stay until after the field-burn. I want to do that for you and Leeza. You were my only friend, and I want to help you at your wedding.”

That was weeks away, and Etane saw in Sheft’s eyes what it would cost him to stay until then. He couldn’t bring himself to mention that Gwin had already come to call on Mariat, and that his father was encouraging his visits. “I’ll have the burn as soon as possible in Herb-Bearer, as soon as the fields dry out enough. Maybe you’ll come to your senses by then.”

Sheft’s whole body sagged, and it was obvious to Etane he wouldn’t change his mind. “How fares—your sister?” he asked in a dead voice.

Poor man, he couldn’t even say her name. He wanted to say, “She’s sad. What do you expect?” but he had already made too many hurtful blunders. “Mariat doesn’t talk much, just buries herself in work. Suddenly everything has to be scoured, or swept, or washed. She says it’s for the field-burn celebration and the wedding afterward. It’s driving me crazy, but that’s how she deals with it.”

He wanted to talk about Leeza and his stay with her family, about the games they played at their table, how Leeza’s cheeks turned pink when he teased her—but that definitely wouldn’t cheer up Sheft. “You know, in a perfect world, you and Mariat would have…well, anyway. Leeza’s oldest brother agreed to be my firstman, but believe me, Sheft, I wish it could be you.” 

“I know. I do too. But whenever I can, I’ll get out to your field and do some brush cutting. And I’m glad for you. Soon you’ll be a happily married man.”

Although Sheft tried to smile, he looked so miserable that Etane felt a wave of compassion for him. It was, however, mingled with exasperation. He didn’t know where this streak of stubborn nobility came from in Sheft—probably from those tales of knights his mother read to him long ago—but it would be his undoing. Such an attitude was causing suffering for both his sister and himself, and it was completely unnecessary. “I’ll join you out there when I can. Anyway, I’ve got to get back. It smells like snow is coming.”

He stopped at the barn door. “I’ve been in the village, and there’s something going on there. Lots of dark looks. But the odd thing is there’s no gossip. Nothing at Cloor’s, everyone suddenly busy when I stop at Rom’s, Blinor tight-lipped at the mill. No one’s saying much, but there are ugly rumors about people gathering in Ele’s house after the doors are shut for the night. It might mean nothing, but I’d stay clear of the village if I were you.”

And if I were you,
he thought as he headed home,
I’d also quit worrying about who wasn’t my father, and make up as fast as I could with the girl who still loves you.

That led him to think of Leeza, and other, much more pleasant, thoughts.

#   #   #

It was Candle, the month of the longest nights. Tarn disappeared for days at a time, going to Ferce and staying at the inn. A widow managed the place, the mother of two strong boys. Sheft pictured him in the bright warmth, surrounded by people and pipe smoke and noise. Tarn would no doubt marry again after he was gone, and the boys would help him run the fieldhold.

He missed Riah, the quiet presence he had taken for granted. Too late, he realized there were a host of questions he should have asked her. Should have asked Yarahe. The book of tales sat dusty on the mantle, and the only sounds at night were the forlorn wind in the chimney and the simmer of dying coals. It was then he felt the weight of the decision he had made, and the cost of what love demanded.

Candle crept into Hearth, and after splitting logs or shoveling ash out of the hearth, he took long walks in the deadlands, stopping to tend the two cairns. Several times he worked alone in Etane’s field, cutting brush and piling it away from where the firebreak furrows would be dug.

One cold day, he finished work and headed home, knowing that Tarn was gone again and the house would be empty. He walked with a bent head, seeing only his boots as they crunched methodically over the inch of snow on the ground. There was no wind, but he thought he heard again the far-off cries, the bereft voices raised in anguish.