Passion Play (9 page)

The old tales spoke of a dark void, filled with stars, which lay between this world of flesh and the magical plane called Anderswar. Except the stars were the souls of the dead, launched in flight to their next lives. It was part of what linked each soul to Toc, who had himself died and was reborn.
And what links us to Lir,
Therez thought.
She who grieved through the winter, thinking that her brother-lover was no more.

Were they grieving for her at home? Was her grandmother already part of that cloud?

I had no choice,
she told herself.
If I had stayed, I would be in Theodr Galt’s house even now. I would not see my mother and grandmother again, except for rare visits. Because a collector does not like to lend his possessions to others.

Even so, tears burned her eyes. Do not think about home or family, she told herself. Think about Brenn and Volker and the tumbler girls. Think about tomorrow and the next day, with a new life and a new name.
I’m not Therez any longer. I am Ilse. I can write my own future.

*  *  *

DAWN CAME EARLY,
announced with the rattle and crash of pans, and a steady monologue from the cook as he cursed his boys, the crew, and the uncooperative firewood. Therez sat up stiffly and rubbed her eyes. The sky was muddy gray, streaked with red from the still invisible sun. A large fire in the middle of the clearing sent up plumes of smoke and cinders. Scents of coffee and grilled meat filled the air.

Therez rubbed her scalp and briefly wished for a hot bath. What she got instead was a curt order from Brandt’s second to hurry with her breakfast or she’d get left behind.

Niko went off to rouse the other passengers. Therez joined the line for the latrines, and then to the stream, well opposite, where she made do with washing her face and hands in cold water. Her clothes already looked filthy. She brushed away the dirt, scrubbing out the worst stains, and finally gave up. Still shivering from the water, she untangled her braid with her fingers, shook out the dust, and rebraided it. No comb. No washcloth. What else had she forgotten?

Breakfast consisted of bread and grilled beef, with coffee to wash it down. Scolding her and all the other passengers, Ulf retrieved the mugs and plates and set his boys to washing, while he repacked his gear. By this hour, the caravan looked nearly ready to depart. The caravan master was making the rounds, barking out orders to hitch up those horses, fill in the latrine, move faster or he’d dock their wages. His gaze passed over Therez, before he stalked on to the next hapless member of his crew.

When Niko passed by again, Therez lifted a hand to catch his attention. “Excuse me.”

He swung around. “What, girl?”

“Do we have time for …?”

She meant to say
for bathing,
but Niko interrupted with a yelp of laughter. “Sure we have time, girl. Piss quick, or you get buried in the latrines.”

He strode away, leaving Therez flushed and stammering. Three of the crew grinned at her. Her cheeks burning, Therez caught up her bag and jogged back to the stream. A glance showed her that she was alone. She pulled off her tunic, unbuttoned her shirt partway, and splashed water over her face and neck and body. The cold water brought goose bumps to her skin. She gritted her teeth and scrubbed fast, hoping to finish before someone came by.

Loud hoofbeats made her jump and clutch her shirt together. One of the outriders, she told herself. Then a man called out, “Ho, caravan master!”

It was Váná Gersi, her father’s senior runner.

Therez ducked behind a screen of bushes. Gersi. Here. Within a day of her escape.
He must be checking with all the caravans,
she thought, as she rebuttoned her shirt with fumbling hands.
I have to hide. Run away. Before Brandt tells him about me.

She scanned the wilderness of trees and bracken and scrub extending away from camp. Now that her first panic had passed, it registered that she had no food and no shelter other than her blanket. What if she hid until the caravan left? She could follow the highway to the next village and find lodging there.

She slung her bag over her shoulder and turned around.

Volker stood just a few feet behind her. He was holding a pair of empty water buckets, and he was grinning. “Ilse. What’re you doing?”

Therez bit her lip. “I was thirsty.”

He continued to stare at her so pointedly that she glanced down. Half her shirt was unbuttoned; the other half was crooked. She flushed and turned to fix the buttons. Taking a quick step closer, Volker caught her hand. “Can I help?”

He kissed her on the lips, his other hand going to her breast. Therez pushed him away. “No.”

Volker wiped his mouth, no longer smiling. “You mean, not yet.”

He snatched up the buckets and stalked to the stream. Keeping his back to Therez, he refilled the buckets. When he swung around, she shied away, but he only muttered a warning not to be late and marched back to camp.

Therez let out a breath.

“Hey, girl.”

Alarik Brandt stood in the shadow of an oak tree. His smile was a bright flash against his dark face.

“Teasing my boys?” he asked. “Or didn’t he offer enough?”

She gulped down a breath. “I … I was thirsty.”

“As you say.” He nodded back at the camp. “Business with that rider is over. We’re heading out, with you or not. Coming?”

Still smiling, he tilted his hand, palm upward. It was an ambiguous gesture, one that might be equal parts invitation and demand. Her pulse gave an uncomfortable leap. Had he guessed that she was the reason for Váná Gersi’s search?
He doesn’t know,
Therez told herself.
He won’t unless I betray myself.
With her pulse still beating far too fast for comfort, she dropped her gaze to the ground and headed back toward camp. As she passed Brandt, she heard his soft laughter, felt his warm breath graze her neck. It took all her control not to run.

CHAPTER FOUR

GRADUALLY THEREZ RELAXED
into the pattern of her new life. She rose early and ate breakfast alone. She learned to do without warm water and regular bathing. She borrowed rags from Ulf, the cook, and hiding behind his wagon, she washed herself bit by bit. She learned how to scrub her clothes with sand and cold water, hanging them near the fire at night to dry.

Volker soon forgave her, as he put it, and joined her for supper, along with Brenn. The two brothers had made friends with the tumbler girls, and by the second week, they all spent their evenings together, trading stories while Therez listened. The girls did know magic, she discovered, and often delighted the caravan crew with their tricks. They traced silvery lines in the air. They called up brightly colored globes from nothing and sent them flying aloft, like soap bubbles. They made Volker’s hair stand on end, much to Brenn’s delight.

“I know about magic,” Volker told them afterward.

Lena, the older girl, laughed. “What kind of magic?”

He grinned. “Tricks. I could show you later.”

She shook her head, her eyes bright with glee. “No, thank you. I know your kind of tricks.”

Brenn rolled his eyes and exchanged a look with Therez. “The only tricks Volker knows are ones that get him into trouble. Now me, I wish I knew real magic, the kind mages study in Duenne. Like the magic they use to fight wars, or see into the past.”

“Then do it,” said a man’s voice. “Leave the road and find a teacher.”

It was the scholar Therez had seen the first day. Until now, the man had kept apart from the other passengers, reading his books. On the longer stops he sometimes walked beyond the camp perimeter, returning only after the campfires were banked.

“Do
you
know magic?” she asked.

In answer, he lifted a hand and curled his fingers, murmuring in a strange tongue. Erythandran, Therez realized with a rill of wonder, recognizing the words. But unlike her own poor attempt two weeks before, there was no doubt of magic’s presence. She felt a pressure against her skin and the faint tattoo of another pulse. The scholar spoke another phrase and a sharp green scent overlaid the camp smells of horse and wood smoke. It reminded her of hot sunlight, of fresh-cut hay and summer fields. When the scholar opened his fingers, a light bloomed within his cupped hand.

“Touch it,” he said to Therez.

Warily, she stood and approached him.

He was tall, with a bony face and the ruddy-brown coloring that marked the borderlands around Károví. The cuffs and hem of his robe were frayed, and the black dye had turned a rusty brown in places, but in his eyes she read assurance. At his gesture, she touched her fingertips to the light. Something tickled her skin. “Steady,” the man said. “Almost.”

He spoke another phrase in old Erythandran. Her fingers turned transparent. Where her blood flowed, threads of light gleamed.

Therez let her breath trickle out. Magic. Inside her. It was … it was far more wondrous than she could ever have imagined.

“Try it yourself,” he said. “Look at something tiny—a nail, a stone, a freckle. Good. Now breathe slowly. Find the point between inhale and exhale. When you think you’ve found it, repeat these words.”

Ei rûf ane gôtter. Komen mir de strôm.

The words rolled through her mind. Magic echoed against magic, and she sensed the possibilities unraveling from that one phrase. Healing. Fire. Illumination of the soul. If only she had known these words two weeks ago, when she bent over her dying grandmother.

Suddenly afraid, she plucked back her hand. “You must have studied for years.”

His mouth tilted in a wry smile. “Hardly. I know a little. I’m going to Duenne to learn more. Maybe you should join me, instead of working as a maid.”

“I can’t,” she said quickly.

“Why not?”

Therez opened her mouth, closed it. “I don’t know.”

And she didn’t. She no longer lived in her father’s household, where magic was not precisely forbidden, it was merely discouraged, labeled a useless distraction outside of a few practical applications.

Except it’s hard to break the habit of nearly sixteen years.

But the scholar was smiling, as though he had expected such an answer. “Maybe you should think about it,” he said. “We have a few more weeks ahead of us. Talk to me before you leave the caravan, and maybe I can find you a place in Duenne that better suits your talents.”

Therez stared after him as he walked back toward the main campfire, where Ulf was handing out coffee to the next perimeter watch. Magic. He thought she ought to study magic. The idea so distracted her that she didn’t hear what the others were saying until Brenn tugged on her arm. “You’re from Melnek. You must know.”

“What should I know?”

“About Károví’s King Leos—the man who traded his heart for magic. I thought all the people from the borderlands knew those stories.”

Therez shook her head. “They’re just folktales, Brenn. They’re not true history.”

“History!” Gabi laughed. “I’d rather have stories.”

They insisted until Therez finally relented and told them the folktales she had learned from her grandmother. How Lir and her consort (sometimes called Toc) had created a lake of fire called the Mantharah and, from it, the rest of this world. How Lir took a handful of fire from the Mantharah and squeezed hard to make a single white jewel, which she gave to the first emperor of Erythandra. How centuries later a traitor sent a thief to steal the jewel so he might take the throne himself. The emperor’s chief mage had used powerful magic to divide the jewel into three pieces, and hid them in three secret places within the palace. But in the latter days of the empire, a prince of Károví named Leos Dzavek had turned thief himself and took all three jewels so he could gain eternal life.

“The old kings never dared that,” Therez said. “Their priests would not allow it, saying that Toc himself had died and was reborn, and so no ordinary man should refuse what the gods themselves endured. But some claim that King Leos was the chief mage reborn. They say he bargained with Toc to win his life and the jewels as a mark of the god’s favor, so he would never have to die again.”

“Then the gods took back their favor,” Gabi said softly.

“Not the gods, but a wolf,” Therez said. “A giant wolf, who led King Leos through the paths of the dead. But this time, there was no bargain. This time, there was no victory. The wolf buried the jewels forever and King Leos returned without them.”

The crescent moon was sliding behind the trees when Therez finally said good night to her friends. She picked her way between the wagons until she reached Otto’s. A movement in the trees caught her attention. One of the caravan guards? The mysterious scholar?

Alarik Brandt emerged from the shadows. He held a short club in one hand. His other hand rested on his knife hilt. He paused and glanced at Therez. His teeth bared in a smile.