Finnikin of the Rock (17 page)

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"But I will. My mother told me the story often. About the queen deciding where to plant the tree."

"She searched the kingdom high and low for the perfect spot," Sir Topher said, smiling at the memory. "Drove us all insane. But she was with child. Her youngest, Isaboe. The child was never meant to be and the pregnancy was cursed with illness from the beginning. The queen was sure that if she planted the cherry blossom and made a dedication to both the goddess Lagrami and the goddess Sagrami, then the child would live."

Evanjalin nodded. "And although many Lumaterans were not happy with her decision to sacrifice to Sagrami, the queen found the perfect spot."

"A beautiful story, but I cannot see the connection," Trevanion said.

"There is only one cherry blossom tree in Lumatere. At least a day's ride from the palace, at the old cloister of Sagrami near the Sendecane border."

"But that cloister hasn't been used for centuries," Sir Topher said. "What are you suggesting, Evanjalin?"

"That during the five days of the unspeakable, the novices of Sagrami who lived at the edge of the Forest were taken to safety inside the kingdom walls through the east gate."

Sir Topher was shaking his head. "You are wrong, Evanjalin. The priestess of Sagrami was the first to be burned at the stake. She was captured along with Seranonna and three other mystics and healers."

"Then the novices would have been on their own," Finnikin said. "Surely the impostor's men would have attacked the cloister in the Forest first?"

"It would have been a slaughter," Trevanion said. "The oldest of the girls was no more than seventeen."

"And they had no one to turn to?" Finnikin asked.

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Sir Topher opened his mouth to reply and then stopped.

"Sir Topher?" Finnikin asked urgently.

"There may have been one," he said in a hushed tone. "Someone who had lived in the Forest cloister as a child. Tell me about the other who walks the sleep with you, Evanjalin. The one who is there for the child."

"Whoever it is, they have a great knowledge of the dark arts. I sense their connection with the dead. With spirits."

"Only Seranonna had such knowledge," Trevanion said.

"No, there was another," Sir Topher said. "One who was under Seranonna's instruction."

Trevanion frowned and then realization dawned on his face. "Tesadora? Seranonna's daughter?"

Sir Topher nodded. "Did you know her?"

"No, but Perri did. They were mortal enemies. It was one of the few stories Perri would tell me of his childhood in the River swamp. From a young age, his father taught him to inflict as much pain as possible on those they considered inferior."

"Was Perri ashamed?"

Trevanion sighed. "It was not a confession, just a fact. I remember his words. 'How different our childhoods, Trevanion. You sailed your raft down the River and collected tadpoles and eels, and I held down the heads of Forest Dwellers in swamp water to see how long they could stay under without breathing.'

"Perri told me Tesadora once stayed under for five minutes," Trevanion continued, "and still had enough breath inside her to spit in his face when it was over. His father thrashed him for allowing a Forest Dweller to get the better of him. So next time Perri made sure she didn't have enough strength to even stand. They were both twelve at the time. On opposing sides, but both victims of hate."

"By the time Tesadora was little older than you, Finnikin, she

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lived the life of a hermit in the Forest," Sir Topher said. "But she spent her childhood in the cloister of Sagrami, and apart from her mother, the novices were her only contact with the world."

"Were the Sagrami novices mystics?" Finnikin asked.

"Healers," Sir Topher answered. "The best apothecaries I have ever encountered. The herbs and plants they grew in the Forest cloister were spectacular. If the priest-king had them in the fever camps, half our people would still be alive."

Evanjalin leaned closer, her eyes alight. "The novices are now inside the kingdom walls, and they are hiding the young girls of Lumatere in the old cloister. And three days ago, the baker traveled in secret to see his daughter and picked cherry blossoms along the way."

"You have no proof of that," Finnikin said. "Even if Tesadora did survive and save the novices, do you think the impostor and his men would be so ignorant as to not work it out? Would they not have found their hiding place by now?"

"Perhaps they don't need to hide. No matter what the impostor king decreed when he put the Forest Dwellers to death, he would fear the wrath of the gods if he stormed a temple of Sagrami," Evanjalin said. "Remember, the novices worship a goddess that has cursed Lumatere, and the impostor king is just as much a prisoner of the curse as everyone else inside," she argued.

"And if the novices are the apothecaries I think they are, they could easily find a way of sending the girls close to death," Sir Topher said.

"These Lumaterans you speak of--the baker, the other fathers and mothers of the girls--are they worshippers of Sagrami?" Trevanion asked.

Evanjalin shook her head. "They worship Lagrami. Yet somehow both cloisters, Lagrami and Sagrami, are working together to protect the young girls of Lumatere."

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"How?"

She looked at them for a moment. "There are parts of this story ... all of you might find... difficult."

Finnikin stared at her in disbelief. "Evanjalin, Trevanion has spent seven years in the mines of Sorel. Sir Topher and I have seen everything there is to see in our travels."

"But there are some things ..."

"Evanjalin," Sir Topher said firmly. "Finnikin is right. There is nothing we cannot endure."

Evanjalin sighed. "The cook's apprentice who mourned his friend had blood on his mind the night she died. The impostor's guard dreamed of blood. Each time these girls 'die,' there are dreams or memories of blood. I believe they 'die' of the bleeding. They supposedly bleed to death. That's what the impostor's men and the rest of the kingdom think happens to the girls. Imagine. The impostor's men come to the home of a family who has just lost their daughter. They demand to see the dead child. There she lies. Still. Perhaps in the way Sir Topher has suggested, due to the cleverest apothecaries in the kingdom. The impostor's men demand to know what has taken place. They do not care for the dead girls or their families, but smell a conspiracy among the people. The women are clever. They begin to speak of the curse that visits young girls each month, for they know that the impostor and his men would pale with such talk of blood flowing from the loins of young girls like torrents of--"

Finnikin cleared his throat loudly. "I think I hear something... outside the cave," he mumbled, getting to his feet. But the look on Evanjalin's face stopped him from leaving.

"Blood!" Froi said, horrified. "Loins? Same loins you stick--"

"Froi!" Trevanion snapped.

"Flowing at times like a gutted pig," Evanjalin said.

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"Evanjalin!"

Evanjalin looked at Sir Topher and Trevanion, who suddenly seemed very interested in the contours of the cave walls.

"Did I not say that there would be parts of this story that might cause discomfort?" she said.

"It is not right for a young woman to speak of such things in the presence of men, Evanjalin," Sir Topher said firmly. "And perhaps you are clutching at straws, making such a connection."

"Am I?" she asked. "And what if I told you that I only walk the sleep during my own... time?"

Despite the flush in Sir Topher's cheeks, he held her gaze and after a moment nodded for her to continue.

"Perhaps the impostor king's men are led to believe that when a young girl experiences her first bleeding, she is also struck by a curse and bleeds to death. An unnatural occurrence, of course. But maybe they've been told that Seranonna's curse is responsible. Her way of punishing the children of Lagrami. In truth, the young girls live inside the old cloister of Sagrami in the northwest of the kingdom. One of the few places the impostor king and his men will not enter for fear of Seranonna's legacy."

"Do you believe all our people know that the girls live?" Trevanion asked.

She shook her head. "I cannot be sure who knows the truth. If we go by the baker's sleep, it is clear that the parents of the girls know. But I cannot be sure of the others. The cook's apprentice certainly grieved."

"But still we cannot be sure that Tesadora survived the days of the unspeakable or the impostor's punishment," Trevanion insisted.

She stared at him. "I have walked the sleep of one of the Sagrami novices, and her thoughts were on the day when one with a crown came to hide them."

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"Balthazar?"

"One with a crown is all I know."

"Could it be...Trevanion began, but he stopped himself and shook his head.

"Someone smuggled Tesadora and the novices into the kingdom prior to the curse."

"Someone with a crown?" Sir Topher said. "It does not make sense."

"And a blood curse does?" Trevanion asked.

"It makes all the sense in the world that the other who walks the sleep with us, who may be able to break the curse, is a blood relative of the very person who created it," Evanjalin said. "Seranonna's daughter."

"But Tesadora? Perri used to call her the serpent's handmaiden," Trevanion said.

"Coming from Perri the Savage, that is not good," Sir Topher mused.

"Perhaps she is exactly what is needed," Finnikin argued.

"Seranonna sent her to the north of the Forest as a child to live with the novices," Sir Topher explained. "To keep her out of harm's way from the other Forest Dwellers, who feared her. The Forest Dwellers claimed Tesadora was evil because her Forest blood was mixed with a Charynite's."

"Yet you don't communicate with Tesadora?" Trevanion asked Evanjalin.

She shook her head. "Only the child. The first time was when I was twelve years old and had a strange, wondrous dream. Now I believe it was the birth of the child. Somehow when my"--she hesitated and looked at Sir Topher--"first blood began to flow, the child's heart began to beat. I felt her in my arms."

"And you never walk the sleep at...other times?" Finnikin asked awkwardly.

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"Only once," she said, swallowing hard.

"Your blood flowed another way?" Sir Topher asked.

She nodded. "Two springs ago. And that night, I walked the sleep of Lady Beatriss and she whispered the words, The cloister of Sendecane.'"

"Why was your--" Then Finnikin realized and the word came out in a strangled tone. "Sarnak! Your blood was shed at the massacre of the exiles?"

She nodded.

"But how did you escape death, Evanjalin?" Sir Topher asked gently.

"Do you have a wound?" Trevanion said.

She opened up her shirt to reveal a patch of puckered tissue above her breast. It was an ugly scar, the wound poorly inflicted.

"They didn't even know how to deliver a clean kill," Finnikin muttered, unable to take his eyes off it.

"No, they were perfectionists," she said. "They were hunters. I could tell. I watched them. Their arrows went straight to the heart, their daggers in and out. Precise. Our people were on their knees, begging, and were cut down with their hands still raised and clenched together in prayer. Others ran. And got an arrow in the back. The hunters made sure that those shot in the back were turned around, and then they'd plunge a dagger into the heart."

"Yet your wound is the work of an amateur," Sir Topher said.

"Because I did not run and I did not beg. Wherever there was movement, the hunters attacked. Those were the exiles killed first. But I was a coward, you see. I couldn't turn my back. Could not bear the idea of the unknown. Of an arrow catching me by surprise. When those around me fell with an arrow to the heart,

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I knew the hunters would not return to check for their breathing. They returned only for those with an arrow in their back. So when one of our own collapsed at my feet with an arrow in his heart, I knew what I had to do."

"Sweet goddess of sorrow," Sir Topher gasped.

"Did you not play that game as a child?" she asked quietly. "Pretend death? It's what you do to survive. You play the games of make-believe."

Finnikin had played those games daily with the royal children. But there had been no pretending to take an arrow and plunge it into himself an inch above his heart. And no pretending to bite his tongue to keep his cries from piercing the air that was filled only with the grunts of satisfaction and retreating footsteps of men who had forgotten what it meant to be human. There was no pretending to grip the object embedded in his flesh with both hands, to tear it out of skin that was meant for soft kisses and caresses. There was no pretending to pick his way through family, searching the place for survivors. And no playing at walking two weeks barefoot to the cloister of Lagrami in godsforsaken Sendecane because a woman in his sleep whispered the command like a prayer.