Conan the Savage (9 page)

“The naming rite is over.”

“No, it is not,” she assured him with a compelling steadiness in her look. “There is one more.”

“One more?” Epiminophas shot a quick gaze around the crescent of gawking onlookers. He followed with a glance to his scribe, who frowned in the negative.

“—my friend,” Tamsin was saying. “Her name must be recorded too.”

The witch-girl’s meaning became obvious as she raised her unbloodied hand before her, holding forth her preposterous doll in all its garish finery. She shook it imperatively with a practised motion of her wrist.

“Ninga,” the word came then in a flat, rasping voice, one that blended eerily with the sibilant rattle of the dry gourd and the jingling of trinkets; it sounded as if the doll itself were talking. “Name me Ninga, please, Epiminophas!”

The demiuige had heard of witch-dolls being used in primitive magic, but they certainly had no place in the enlightened worship of Amalias. This pantomime struck him as moronic and shameless. And bandying his own name thus... why, it was nothing but a sly, sacrilegious jape.

“Ingrate,” Epiminophas began. “Lord Amalias did not grant you a tongue to mock him with!” He gathered breath for a fuller denunciation, yet stopped when Tamsin spoke once again in her own voice, soft and clear, but with an oddly compelling tone.

“We had best talk.” The gill’s eyes flicked to the bright red canopy that hung behind altar and priest, swaying slightly in the draft that blew in off the moor. “Alone,” I she added, “just the three of us—” and folded her grotesque fetish back into the crook of her arm.

On further reflection, Epiminophas saw the value of a parley. It might serve to intimidate this precocious child, who, as mad as she seemed, did not entirely lack sense. Or, else-wise, it might tempt her into further heresies and defilements that would justify a swift, spectacular punishment before the throng. At the very least, it would make him appear in control—a useful step after his authority had been so evidently shaken. a

Even so, the notion of granting the wench and her doll a solitary audience was an outrage. When Epiminophas led her behind the canopy, he was accompanied by four of his officers, including the scribe. As the girl departed, her unlucky relative Amulf the Good prostrated himself before the altar, quaking in obvious apprehension.

“Now see here, you young charlatan,” Epiminophas began, “you must render all due fealty to Amalias.” The priest spoke openly, trusting his acolytes to prevent anyone beyond the curtain from eavesdropping. “You can conduct a rich magical trade here in the provinces without paying a heavy tithe to the temple. We let the peasants follow their local heresies, within limits. ’Tis not as if you were setting up shop in Yervash, working in direct competition with the state church. That would be something else again.”

Epiminophas settled onto his folding stool, lowering himself to the maid’s level to give an appearance of reasonableness. “All we ask of you is superficial obedience and decent respect. Understand, child, we cannot grant the authority of the church to sustain your conjure tricks and illusions, such as naming that doll of yours in our sacred rolls—” He waved impatiently at the effigy still nestled under the girl’s arm. “That would be putting the plough before the horse, so to speak, making the servants of mighty Amalias subservient to you.”

The girl Tamsin regarded him as if in naive surprise. “You speak as one who lacks faith... not just in your own church law, but in all magic and holiness as it springs from the earth and air all around you.” The words themselves, Epiminophas thought, sprang amazingly glib and fluent from one who had been believed mute.

“Come, child,” the priest laughed. “Do you mean to tell me you believe in your own tricks and foolery—the mumbles and smoke-puffs you use to bedazzle the local bumpkins?—such as that doll, or your own supposed lack of speech?” He shook his head sagely. “If so, you are more innocent than I would guess.” His stare into her unblinking eyes bore an insinuation as well as a threat.

“Nay, think not to trick a trickster, child, nor mock those wiser and more cynical than yourself. The result could be most... painful. The benefits of respect, on the other hand, and proper submissiveness, could be great.” Leaving the hilt of his ceremonial knife, which hung sheathed on its copper chain around his waist, the priest’s beringed hand moved forward to caress young Tamsin’s green-robed shoulder.

“So,” came the sudden, rasping, rattling doll-voice in return, “you think our magic as false as your own?” Epiminophas, in spite of himself, recoiled from the leering witch-doll that was thrust up into his face. “Let us try a test!”

After Tamsin and the priests passed out of sight behind the vestry curtain, Amulf the Good prayed and grovelled before the altar. He feared the wrath of Amalias and the shame and harsh penances Tamsin and her peculiar ways might bring down on all their heads. Yet a part of him feared Tamsin even more. He hoped that father church would take her firmly in hand and curb her worrisome power over his family and his entire village.

Tamsin and the priest had not been behind the canopy long when a sort of hush occurred. The chirping and cooing of moor-birds from the thatched eaves ceased, and all the virgins and their families waiting in the Abbas Dolmium looked around in a sort of expectancy. Then the shaking began: soft waves in the hard-packed turf underfoot, building to deeper undulations that made the joints of the heavy lintel-stones grind and shift in their places.

The quaking might well have scattered the worshippers, except for the design of the place. They were more afraid of passing out through the massive, top-heavy stone columns that ringed the ancient temple than they were of the flimsy pole-and-straw roof falling in. Thus they cowered together at the centre of the stone circle. The kneeling Arnulf, and even the four waiting acolytes, rushed to join the throng as dust and straw sifted down onto their heads from the unsteady ceiling.

In moments it passed, the vibrations receding like the footsteps of some wayward titan. There came a brief, confused murmur. Then from behind the vestry curtain, one comer of which was now collapsed and trailing on the earthen floor, came the six who had retired there before the quake. Solemnly they resumed their places: the priest behind the altar, his acolytes at either side, and Tamsin standing respectfully before the red-rimmed stone. As Amulf hastened back to join her, he saw that her doll was clutched in the hand she now stretched commandingly over the altar. The old farmer knelt in mingled thankfulness and fear.

“Ninga,” the eerie, rasping voice proclaimed, and the priest affirmed it... “Ninga”... to the scribe, who bent over the altar, dipped his pen, and recorded the name on the sacred scroll before him.

The blood that dripped on the stone from the small, sewn fist, old Amulf saw, and likewise the entry it made on the scroll, were of deepest black. He also noticed, along with the others, that when Tamsin turned imperiously from the altar, the effigy at her side bore a new, bright ornament granted by Epiminophas. Chained about the doll’s neck, in its small copper sheath, was the sacrificial knife ritually worn by a High Priest of Amalias.

After Naming Day, the fame of Tamsin and her doll Ninga spread farther and faster. The two now bore the church’s blessing, firm and incontestable. Accordingly, they were called on to perform healings, hexings, exorcisms, and other priestly rituals, some involving long trips away from their home village.

Such was the demand for her magic, indeed, that Tamsin began to school her stepbrothers and stepsisters in the more rudimentary procedures that could be carried on while she and Ninga were away, such as child-purging, well-purifying, and pest-baiting. Young Arl, in particular, became known as an adept healer of livestock, while his youngest sister Hurda was found to be unequalled at causing cheese to ferment.

One highly portentous call for Tamsin’s services was from the elders of Phalander-town, who had sought throughout the land for the aid of a water-witch. The young woman had never, to anyone’s knowledge, tried out this skill; even so, it was thought to be one she certainly possessed. Therefore, summoned by a courier dispatched by the town fathers of Phalander, she and her doll were led off on donkey-back several days’ ride southward, lodging at the finest inns, performing small miracles along the way, and—though saying little—generally spreading her mystical reputation.

Phalander, as it happened, was the largest settlement Tamsin had yet seen, grander by far than Sodgrum and the puny hamlets of the northern district. It was no fortified city, though the interlinking walls of the rich estates high on the hillside formed a sort of defensive bastion. There was even a stone gate-arch reared across the main avenue, where it led down to the tradesmen’s stalls and the more humble dwellings at the foot of the hill.

The town fountain before the archway, however, yielded sparse and brackish draughts for shorter seasons of each passing year. The cisterns were near dry, and the rich citizens of Phalander were faced at last with abandoning their lavish villas and retiring to some neighbouring city far from their birthplace and landholdings.

“We have tried prayer, as commanded by the district temple at Yervash,” the grey-headed old burgomaster explained to Tamsin when they met at the inn. “Our local priest has blessed the well, as have the high church officers we import all the way from Sargossa.” He shook his head, clutching to his chest the gold-plated medallion of rank that dangled on a ribbon from his ermine-collared neck. “They all say it will pass in time, that mayhap it is divine punishment for some great sin of ours, and that our devotions and support of the temple must accordingly increase.” The old man looked across the inn table at his two fellow councillors, both of whom rasped bitter laughter from dry, elderly throats. “If you ask me, they seek payment without a guarantee of results.”

“Aye,” the balding city treasurer agreed, grinning through his gapped, discoloured teeth at the young girl and her spangled doll. “’Tis an ill investment to pour more of our commonwealth’s drachms into. That would scarcely be a bargain for us!”

“You, on the other hand, Tamsin,” the fat shire-reeve spoke up, “have a reputation for besting the temple authorities at their own game, so to speak. You have more magic in one of your pretty young fingers, I would wager, than a whole palanquin-load of their mumbling, droning priests.”

“Yes, in sooth,” the burgomaster said with an unctuous smile. “Therefore, young lady, if you... I mean, you and your idol there,” he added as a polite afterthought to the doll, “can achieve what these temple prelates have not, you stand to profit richly. Replenish our town spring to year-round flow, or conjure us up a new and ampler one, we pray you! We are prepared to reward you with the grand sum of—”

“Nay, that is enough!” the girl Tamsin declared in her new, fresh, resonant voice. “You complain of priests who wheedle for payment without giving you any result. It is my custom to resolve the problem first, then the matter of pay. Come, has your man brought what I requested?”

The city fathers, never indecently eager to talk of spending money, obeyed Tamsin’s stricture of silence. Immediately afterward, the courier appeared in the doorway with the object the young sorceress had requested.

“Here it is, young ma’am—a witching wand fresh-cut from good green ash.”

The rod was of the age-old, traditional kind: a crotched stick, slant-cut cleanly at each of its three ends. Taking the two angling limbs into her fair young hands in a curious over-handed grip, with her doll hugged beneath her arm at one side, Tamsin poised the stem out straight before her.

“Come,” she said, turning from the table and leading the way out the inn door.

Emerging into the town’s main street, she strode forward resolutely, her body young and straight under her blue-flowered robe. It was unclear whether she followed the lead of her divining rod; her steps, in any case, led to the town’s existing well, which lay broad and open, a stone-curbed trough under the noon sun. Looking into its bottom, observing the yellow-green deposits rimming stagnant puddles, and wrinkling her pert young nose at the rotten-egg stench, she made a declaration to the onlookers.

“This well is accursed. It is beyond saving.”

With her wand projecting before her, she turned indecisively... and set out this time with tentative steps. Her way led down the main thoroughfare from inn and fountain, through the narrowing of the street at the archway, and off the apron of cobbles onto a dusty, rutted road. Behind her came the council of elders. A crowd of townspeople rapidly gathered, with children frolicking and scampering along after.

“She leads us downhill,” one shopkeeper was heard to remark. “Unusual. The other diviners have always headed straight for the town heights.”

Without comment, Tamsin led her entourage along the dusty lane. Once among the poorer, unfenced dwellings, she left the road to amble through cottage gardens, sooty fireplaces, and poultry yards. Following the apparently supernatural promptings of her stick, she hopped ditches and picked her way through bramble patches, even leading the mob into the reeking, hide-covered shed of a protesting tanner.

Finally, in the dry, dusty wallow of a hog pen on the fringe of town, she called for silence. At the burgomaster’s order, the townsfolk pressed back from her, kicking and cuffing aside the snuffling swine. In rapt seriousness, the young witch roamed the enclosure, moving in ever-tightening circles, till at last she settled on a spot near the comer of an adjacent stone dwelling. There the protruding end of the ash wand bent straight down to earth in her firm grasp, curving with such force as to make the bark crack and split.

“What ho, here is the place!” Some of the villagers who had brought along picks and iron-bladed shovels immediately set to work.

It became a long, sweaty business in the midday heat. The soil just below the surface was hard-crusted. The men took turns digging, making the hole large enough for two diggers to wield spades or one to swing a pick, while the women raked aside the broken earth with hoes and brooms. The elders of Phalander looked on patiently, as if they had been through this a number of times before.