Season of Sacrifice (13 page)

The pain was more than he had imagined, more than he had ever felt, even the one time that Da had set a stripe across his bare bum with a grown-up leather belt. That was because Reade had called Maida a name, a filthy word that he’d heard Winder use. Mum had bit her own lip when Da hit him, and then it had all been over.
Maida
had started crying, and Da had looked sad before he shrugged his shoulders and left the cottage.

Now, Reade could not see the duke’s face, and the nobleman did not walk away after one blow. Donal tugged the golden sash hard, and Reade remembered that he had to say something, that he had to speak, or it wouldn’t be right. The punishment wouldn’t be good. The words got all mixed up with a sob in his throat. “All praise to the Seven Gods.”

There! Maida couldn’t call him a coward now! Maida couldn’t call him any names at all, not when she was standing behind Donal, with her golden robes pulled up nice and warm under her chin!

Before Reade was ready, there was another scream in the air. He didn’t mean to pull away, he didn’t mean to flinch, but he couldn’t help himself. The rein found him anyway, hot and sharp. Donal tugged hard, and Reade shouted, “All praise to the Seven Gods.”

Another scream, another slice, and he praised the gods again.

Maida’s mouth was open now. He could see her behind Donal. He could see her breathe in, see her get ready to say something. But if Maida admitted now that Reade’s ride was her fault, she would take away the power of the whipping. She would take away the brave thing that he had done, getting rid of his Great Mother. If Maida spoke now, she would make him a coward. She would be disappointed in him, and Mum would, and Da. Especially Da.

Reade heard the whip scream again, and he called out his words as fast as he could. One more slice, fast, before Maida could do anything, before she could speak, and Reade yelled as loud as he could, “All praise to the Seven Gods!”

And then it was over.

Duke Coren knelt in front of him. Reade was shivering so hard that he could not lift up his hands, but the duke managed to untie his wrists. Tears were hot on his cheeks, but Duke Coren wiped them away, using the golden sash. Gently, carefully, he helped Reade back into his robes. The fabric hurt where it touched his back, and the duke tied the sash very loosely around his waist.

Reade took a step forward, and he stumbled. His legs had turned to honey, flowing down the road. Duke Coren caught him before he could fall, holding on to him for a moment until he wasn’t shaking as hard. Reade opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t think of words, couldn’t think of anything at all to say. The duke nodded, though, as if he’d said something brilliant. “Aye, Sun-lord. You did well. You were very brave. When we stop for the night, I’ll rub ointment on your back, little man.”

Brave! Reade
was
brave! Even Duke Coren realized that! The duke swung up on his horse and waited as one of his soldiers helped Reade get settled at the front of the high saddle. Reade sat very straight, because it hurt to lean back against Duke Coren’s armor. It hurt, but the duke’s words were better than any salve.

“Little man,” the duke had called him. Not a boy. Not even Sun-lord. Little
man
.

Reade was brave. He was forgiven. And Duke Coren knew he was a man.

Alana gasped for breath, feeling each slash of Coren’s leather rein like a brand against her own flesh. She pressed herself against the Tree, trying to diffuse the blows through the oak’s thick bark. The wood, though, only amplified the pain—the pain and the startlement and the betrayal of a small boy who had never been so treated.

Parina’s journal had made it seem so simple—reach out through a bavin, save a dying infant. Reade, though, was no newborn, open and receptive to the woodsinger’s thoughts. Instead, he was a thinking, feeling child, confused about Duke Coren, about his mother, about his poor lost father. Whatever Alana’s good intentions, she had scarcely been able to plant the seed of rebellion, and it had taken all of her strength to force the boy to lean forward, to scream in the horse’s ear.

Now, the Tree resonated with the punishment that had resulted from her clumsy efforts. The boy’s pain and shock, spoken inside Alana’s mind, were overwhelming. He had never been beaten this way among the People. He had violated all sorts of rules, even rules set by Alana herself, and he had never been required to pay any real physical penalty. Things were different in the wide world, different once a child was carried beyond the Headland. Alana tried to make sense out of that world, out of the strange customs that she was observing. She tried to make sense out of the pain and the fury and the stinging brand of a lash across her back.

But even while the Tree showed her Reade’s pain, it magnified the boy’s growing determination. With horror, Alana sensed Reade’s vow that Coren would never be disappointed in him again. Reade was becoming less and less from the Headland, and more and more of whatever the duke wanted him to be. Rescuing the twins was more important now than it had ever been before.

Even as Alana swallowed her frustrated anger with the child, she heard someone approaching the Tree. Forcing her eyes open, she watched Goody Glenna struggle up the rise. Alana barely waited for the old woman to approach before she exclaimed, “Those old woodsingers don’t know what they’re talking about!”

“Which woodsingers?” The old woman lowered her head, wheezing for breath. “And what are they talking about?”

“The ones in my mind, Goody Glenna! The ones that you’ve told me to listen to. They come to me when I’m waking, when I’m sleeping, when I’m serving the Tree.”

“Aye. You’re a woodsinger. They’re supposed to come to you.”

“But they’re not supposed to tell me half-truths! They’re not supposed to tell me part of the story and leave me to discover the rest, when I’m playing with Reade and Maida’s lives!”

“I suspect they do the best they can,” Goody Glenna said wryly as she tried to straighten, resting a hand against the Tree’s trunk and sucking in a wheezing breath. “Well, what have they taught you?”

“Nothing! They haven’t shown me how to do anything except get poor Reade whipped! I had the power, but I didn’t know how to use it. Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Woodsingers warn woodsingers. You have all those voices inside your head, girl, not me. Learn what
they
have to tell you.” Alana harrumphed, and the old woman tilted her head, raising one eyebrow. “Besides, girl, I wasn’t certain what was possible, what you’d be able to work through the Tree. Sarira told me once, when we were both girls, that the ancient woodsingers could reach through their bavins, make people act, but she thought the skill had been lost. That was one reason she kept her knowledge to herself, afraid to admit how little was left to her.”

“Afraid!” Alana spluttered. “Goody Glenna, you have me playing with children’s lives, and I don’t know the first thing about what I’m doing!”

“The first thing? That’s easy, woodsinger. The first thing is the Tree. Listen to what it tells you. Go where it takes you.” The old woman shook her head, as if she were telling a child that fish swam in the sea. “Oh, and it’s not just children’s lives in your keeping, Alana. What do you see through the other bavin?”

For the first time since she had listened to Parina Woodsinger, Alana let herself think about the inky darkness, about the loss that surrounded Maddock’s woodstar. She clutched her arms about her, trying to hold in her fear, and she almost succeeded in keeping her voice from quavering. “Goody, I think they’re gone.”

“You
think
? What is that supposed to mean?”

“I lost Maddock. They were in the barn, and it caught fire, and someone threw a knife….”

“Did you see him die?”

“No! I couldn’t see anything! The bavin must have burned.”

“Fool!” Glenna spat the word, and Alana’s eyes blinked open as if the old woman had dashed cold water across her face. “Bavins don’t burn. Even
you
know that. It wasn’t fire that destroyed your vision.”

“Then what was it?”

“I’m not a woodsinger, now am I? I’m just an old woman who got up too early in the morning. Stand up, Alana. Use the Tree. Check on Maddock.”

“I can’t.” Having felt the power of Reade’s beating through the oak, Alana recoiled from the rescue party’s pain. Even if she succeeded where she had failed before, even if she managed to reach through to Maddock’s woodstar, would she have the strength to take on the pain that he had suffered in the attack on the barn? Could she handle the slashing and the cutting and the burning, seething pain?

“You don’t have a choice, woodsinger. Get to work.” Glenna sounded like she was ordering a woman to sweep her hearth, but then she added grudgingly, “Here. I brought you some bread. I thought you might want to stay with the Tree.”

Alana took the loaf without thinking. Before she could speak, she was startled by Goody Glenna turning back to the village. “Goody!” she called and then, when the older woman turned around, “I tell you, I can’t do this. I don’t know how.”

“You’re learning, Alana Woodsinger. You’re certainly learning.”

Alana bolted the still-warm bread, surprised by her ravenous hunger. Could Goody Glenna be right? Could there be some hope left for Maddock’s bavin?

The woodsinger circled the Tree to the invisible scar where she had sung the second woodstar. Knotting her hair against the wind’s prying fingers, she muttered another prayer to the Great Mother. She was so afraid that she would reach out and find nothing—an emptiness worse than the swirling ink that had driven her away before. How would death feel through a bavin? How would she recognize it, in her mind, in her body? Sighing, Alana mustered her thoughts and stretched across the miles, grasping for the bavin’s core.

She feared that she would fail. She feared that she would succeed.

The trio stared at the muddy field, ignoring the tender seedlings they had trampled. Maddock knew that he should dismount, that he should look about more closely at the clues in the earth, but the mere thought set his knee to throbbing once again. That morning had been the first that he could swing up on his gelding’s high back without visibly steeling himself first.

Of course, he reminded himself, he was lucky to have fallen when he had, back in the barn. The cursed iron dagger that had been aimed at his chest had sailed over his head, sheathing itself in one of the burning barn’s upright supports. A good handspan of the blade was swallowed by the wood before it came to a quivering halt, and Maddock knew that he would have been dead if he had not slipped, if Landon had not warned him.

He had scarcely had time to contemplate that fact, though, because the dagger had bitten to the heart of the burning post. For one instant, the weakened wood was whole, and then it was split in two, its fiery heart glowing orange before the air in the stifling barn fed its hunger. As the wood exploded into flame, Maddock was deafened by a monstrous crack. Men screamed around him, the wounded adding a note of horror to their moans. The bellowing cows reached a new frenzy as the roof crashed to the ground, covering the beasts with a cruel blanket of orange and yellow.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a heavy beam falling, and he whirled around. He did not move quickly enough, though, and the upright struck a glancing blow across the back of his head. In a heartbeat, he was submerged in an inky darkness, foul, like the shadows beneath a capsized boat. He fought for air, fought for breath, but it was easier to slip into the stinking darkness.

“Maddock!” The voice came from a distance, burbling as if through water. “Dammit, man!” He realized that Landon was calling to him, dragging him up from the cool, dark depths. “Maddock!”

He forced his eyes to open. He was still in the barn. The cursed heat was unbearable. Flames gnawed at his back.

Bogs and breakers! He could not make his screaming leg move. He could not force himself away from the fire, away from the burning death. Instead, he ordered his fingers to stretch for the sword at his feet. He’d fight off the villagers, even if he couldn’t escape the burning barn. He’d use the sword to prolong his life for another dozen breaths.

As the fire surged above him, he felt a strong shoulder beneath his arm, hoisting him up when he was unable to put his weight on his injured leg. He let himself be half carried, half dragged to the flaming doorway of what had once been a barn, and then there was a dash across open space, and a pain-crazed torture as he was made to crouch in the shadow of a distant wooden building.

Air. Blessed cool air. Night. Well-lit by a fully risen moon, a moon that was cold and distant and pearly white.

And outraged cries from villagers, bellows from the men and shrieks from the women. Maddock heard shouted commands, one deep voice demanding all available buckets, ordering a brigade to carry precious water to quench the flames that had begun to show at the barn’s door.

“Come on, then,” Landon hissed. “Before they realize we’ve escaped. I’m not going to carry you all the way to Smithcourt.” Landon’s voice was tight as he guided Maddock away from the inferno, away from the village. They stumbled through new-plowed fields without regard for sprouting crops. Jobina waited for them on the far edge of the plot, holding their restless horses.

Maddock remembered little of the next three days; he had passed in and out of a swirling midnight haze of unconsciousness. Landon had somehow gotten him up on his horse, he knew. The beast looked mangy, with its singed mane and charred remnants of a tail. The outlanders rode as if they were chased by the Guardians themselves, for the rest of that night and all the next day. Landon decided when they would rest, and which copse of trees would be their shelter. Landon decided what they would eat and when. Landon decided when they would pull up for the night, shivering, exhausted, and starving.

And Maddock gave way to the tracker in all things, and to Jobina as well. The healer’s compounds gradually worked their magic, and he found that he could breathe without coughing after the first day. He could place some weight on his bad leg in two days, and the throbbing behind his eyes had subsided to a dull ache by the third morning. By the fourth day from the hapless village, he was able to limp a few steps unassisted.

Each time they stopped, Jobina tended to him with her lips pressed tight, her flirty ministrations as dead as the lamb he had butchered in the clearing, a lifetime ago.

Shortly after noon on the seventh day, Landon pulled his horse to a sudden halt. The tracker drew to attention like a hunting cat, his grim face conveying an unexpected hint of excitement. Eyes glued to the field, he led the trio off the road, across the rutted furrows.

“They were here.” Landon shaded his eyes to squint along the horizon, and Maddock tried to make out what had caught the man’s attention. The earth was gouged and pitted, but it didn’t look any different from any other cursed field they’d ridden past. Maddock started to make a sly comment about the tracker’s vision, but he managed to swallow his frustration.

Landon nodded impassively, as if he’d heard the words Maddock did not speak. “Look how the earth is still moist at the bottom of these footprints. They can’t be more than a day ahead of us.”

“Not more than a day!” Maddock exploded. “We’ve been pushing ourselves until we can’t see straight, and we can do no better than that?”

“Apparently not.” Landon ran one hand through his thin hair, shrugging his narrow shoulders. He ignored Maddock’s implied criticism of his tracking. “The real question,” he mused, “is why they came into this field at all. If you look there”—he pointed at a mess of hoof-and boot-prints in the drying mud—“you can see that only one horse came this far from the road. One horse that carried a man and a child.”

Now that Landon was explaining, Maddock could just make out a child’s print in the mud, a surprisingly small shape cradled in the drying earth. “I’d say it was Reade,” the tracker continued. “Maida tends to shift from foot to foot when she’s standing in one place.”

“Look here!” The two men turned at the shout. Jobina was a few paces away, her gaze intent on a patch of muddy earth. Her hand was extended as if she were casting out a fishing net. Maddock could not see what her trembling fingers indicated, but Landon turned immediately, circling around the spot like a cat snuffling the burrow of its prey.

“Is that what I think it is?” Jobina asked.

“If you think it’s a Great Mother amulet.” Landon ignored the healer’s batting eyelashes, apparently unaware that she was enthralled by his tracking ability.

Maddock edged his horse closer to the woman. “I’m impressed that you spotted it,” he said chivalrously, and he warmed at the grateful smile that she shot in his direction. A twist in his words managed to condemn the tracker as well, for if the unskilled Jobina had found the little metal object, the trained Landon should have done at least as much.

The other man ignored him, though, lost in his intent inspection of the dark statuette. Landon circled around the amulet, viewing it from all angles, pointedly leaving a wide circle of undisturbed earth. Bogs and breakers! There were obviously no footsteps near the thing. The tracker’s care was absurd. Maddock sighed his impatience, but Landon still circled another two times before he finally strode forward and plucked the iron charm from the earth.

“I thought you were waiting for it to sprout.” Maddock sneered, but—as always—Landon refused to take offense.