Season of Sacrifice (23 page)

Forcing himself to focus, Maddock made out the cause of the commotion. The Avenger writhed on the spiked branch, impaled neatly on the same three thorns that had caught the rotting rabbit. As Maddock watched, the snake’s thrashing increased until the beast snagged her own skin, ripping her flesh in a frenzy to be free. As Maddock stared, the Avenger tore her neck from the branch, twisting enough to sink her fangs into her own tortured side.

The snake’s demise was as swift as the rabbit’s. The serpent’s venom ate her own flesh, boiling the meat into black corruption. Within seconds, the Avenger’s only remains were a streak of slime and her own vicious fangs, glinting through the cage like deep-ocean pearls.

Maddock tore his gaze away from the mess, managing to face High Priest Zeketh. As if he intended the motion, he raised his left hand, still grasping the crystal goblet. Just remembering to hold his tongue, he bowed deeply and set the cup in the High Priest’s waiting hands.

“Ah,” Zeketh said after settling the chalice on the mantel. Maddock read volumes of furious respect in the single word. The priest studied him through eyes that glistened like venom. “Killing the Avenger was a grievous wrong, Blackhand. The Mothersnake will not take well to your action. I’d execute you here and now, but you might still serve the Seven Gods. We still need venom—two more harvests at least. Fortunately for you, we have another of the Mothersnake’s spawn. You’ll meet the Destroyer tomorrow.”

Then, before Maddock could brace himself, Zeketh reached forward and twisted his golden chains, jerking the outlander upright so abruptly that Maddock thought his arms would be pulled from their sockets. The priest ignored his prisoner’s wordless exclamation, producing his iron key from some deep pocket and shutting the lock on Maddock’s manacles. Before the outlander could struggle, Zeketh forced him out of the snake’s room, back to the antechamber and the door at the bottom of the stairs.

Belatedly, the two soldiers sprang to attention, and even through the screen of his drugged, exhausted vision, Maddock realized that they had never expected to see a live prisoner emerge from the inner chamber. The older man recovered first, jumping forward as Zeketh growled, “Remember, men. You have not seen me, not here in Coren’s palace. It will be your lives if I hear otherwise.”

Both guards assented and bowed their necks, and then they chivvied Maddock up the twisting stairs. Zeketh disappeared back into the smoky dungeon room, shutting the door with an ominous thud.

Maddock could barely make his legs climb the endless steps. Why were the guards to pretend that they had not seen Zeketh? What had happened in that dungeon room? What did Zeketh want with the deadly poison? And what, in the name of all the Guardians, was the Mothersnake?

After a lifetime of climbing, Maddock was shoved into his chamber. “Cursed fool!” the older soldier spat. “Now we’ll have to stand guard the rest of the night. You!” the man snarled at his companion. “Keep an eye on him. I’m going to get our evening rations.”

The door slammed on the younger soldier’s protest, and Maddock sprawled on the floor, trying to catch his breath. What evil did Coren intend to work with the poison? Was he going to murder Bringham, or one of his other rivals? That made no sense—there were easier means of assassination. Perhaps he intended to make an example of Jobina and Landon, to execute them so that they became a hideous lesson to any who would rebel against the duke? No sense there, either. One twist of rope was all he needed to dispatch the rebel pursuers—a good executioner could teach many an object lesson without the showmanship of the Avenger’s poison.

Shivering, Maddock pulled himself to his knees and dragged his aching body across the small room. He was thirsty; his throat burned as if he had lived in the Avenger’s silver desert for decades.

He lifted the hammered metal to his lips before he smelled the metallic drug. Of course, the water would be tainted. With a prisoner’s certainty, Maddock knew that he could slake his thirst, he could drink, and awake tomorrow, and find another snake, the Destroyer. And, if he were strong enough, he’d find yet another serpent. And maybe even another, even the Mothersnake.

He had to escape. Now.

Maddock glanced at the glazed window. It was too narrow for a man. Besides, he knew how many steps he had climbed—the fall from this height would kill him. Nevertheless…If the sea only gave krill, then a fisherman used his tightest net.

Before he could question his own decision, before he could let his bone-shaking weariness win out, Maddock hefted the pitcher in his good hand. The first time he crashed it against the glass, the pane held. Realizing that the older guard might return at any minute, though, Maddock swung again, putting his full body weight behind the blow.

And as he swung, he bellowed, “In the name of all the Guardians!”

The glass shattered. Sparkling fragments caught at the late-afternoon sun, glinting like light on a tumbling wave. Maddock was too high in the tower to hear the glass hit the ground below, and he did not waste time listening. Instead, he leaped to the side of the door, setting his chained hands in front of him to protect himself from being crushed when the soldier came to stop his outcry, to silence the secret prisoner. All the time, he continued to cry out, hollering his words into the hinges that held the door fast.

He needed the guard to hear him, to be compelled to act, but he could not afford for any other assistance to arrive. He could not risk being liberated by one of Coren’s men who had journeyed to the Headland, who would recognize him as one of the People. He directed his words to the door: “Help! Up here! Look up! In the name of all the Guardians, help me!”

The wooden door slammed back on its hinges, and all of Maddock’s bracing was hardly enough to keep him from being stunned. He barely managed to step clear as the younger soldier tumbled into the cell, set off balance by his own force. “You lying bastard!” the man exclaimed. “You’re no cursed mute!”

The guard expected Maddock to be at the window; he thought his prisoner was calling out to the courtyard below. It took him only a moment to regain his footing, to realize that the door had not swung all the way back to the wall. That moment, though, was enough for Maddock, who brought his golden pitcher crashing down upon the guard’s head, putting all his weight, all his sick terror of the Avenger, behind the blow. The man crumpled to the floor like a child’s plaything.

Maddock closed the door to his prison room, panting hard as he stared at the soldier. He dared not waste time; the older guard should be returning soon, and someone might actually have been summoned by the falling glass, by Maddock’s bellows. Fumbling, he dug out the key to his chains. It took him longer to unlock the clasp than it had taken Zeketh, and then he had to find the strength to unwind the golden links. The yards of slippery samite were an even greater challenge to his trembling hands, and he was slick with sweat by the time he had finished. His belly turned as he saw that the wound across his palm still bled, that the snowy cloth was stained a brilliant crimson.

For an instant, Maddock contemplated escaping in his familiar garments, filthy though they were. Then, he realized that he might have need of further disguise. He paused for a moment to lift the bloodied samite to his teeth, and his head jerked back as he tore free a length to use as a bandage. He wrapped it around his palm several times, making sure to cover his wound completely.

After he was certain that he would not bleed over his new clothes, he turned back to the still-unconscious guard. It took almost all of his remaining strength to lift the man, to tug free the man’s trews. By the time Maddock jerked the soldier’s particolor doublet into place, he was breathing hard, snorting as if he’d run a footrace.

Still gasping for breath, Maddock hesitated when he saw his bavin dangling over the embroidered bloody knife that now decorated his chest. He dared not leave the woodstar, not when its presence would signal to Coren exactly who had lain inside this room. Instead, he muttered a prayer to the Guardians and tucked the bavin inside his soldierly doublet. The Guardians and the Great Mother had watched over him so far. He could only hope that his luck held.

When he stood, black streamers floated in front of his eyes, and he had to take several deep breaths to stay upright. Even as he told himself that he had no time, that the other soldier could return at any moment, that strangers could appear, Maddock could not remember how to make his legs move.

Shaking his head, he was nearly overwhelmed by a vision of snake-rotted flesh falling from bones. Resting one trembling hand over the bavin that was now hidden beneath his uniform, Maddock drew a deep breath.

The woodstar remained cool beneath his touch, but it steadied his thoughts, gave him an anchor as he drifted in his strange drugged sea. Ducking out of his cell, Maddock staggered down the castle corridor before he could think about how lost he was. How lost and alone and desperate….

Alana trudged along the road, wishing that she could mount her bay mare, that she could gallop up to the Smithcourt gates and be done with her long journey. Instead, she settled her fists into the small of her back, trying to stretch her exhausted muscles as she cautioned herself to patience. Just a little more patience…

She had ridden from Land’s End for days, crossing the restless land without incident. It was only as she’d neared Smithcourt that she’d realized she would need a disguise, some excuse for making her way into the city. Alana had watched through Maddock’s bavin, and she knew just how difficult it could be to gain entrance to Smithcourt. Even armed with the fisherman’s experience, she still had no password for the city gates.

Unable to solve the puzzle of breaching the Smithcourt walls, she had reached for the woodsingers in her mind, talking to them across the leagues.

“You could act like an evening companion for the guards,” one of the voices cooed. “Like Lila. She made her way in without problem.” Alana hoped that her distance from the woodsingers, the stretched thread of her thoughts through her bavin, would dull some of her sharp surprise. When she heard her sister woodsinger’s trilling laugh, though, she knew that her thoughts were just as clear as if she had spoken them in the same room.

“You could be a pilgrim,” another woodsinger suggested, “intent on honoring their Seven Gods.”

“You could be a madwoman.”

“You could be a widow, coming to the duke for justice. Justice for your slain husband.”

Alana grabbed at that suggestion. She
was
coming to Smithcourt for justice. She
was
coming to make demands of Duke Coren. A few more silent conversations with her sister woodsingers, and she had settled on her disguise: she would be exhausted, terrified, and pregnant.

When she wasn’t debating the woodsingers, Alana tried to keep track of Maddock. The fisherman’s thoughts, though, were elusive. He was still under the influence of whatever drug the soldiers had forced into him; his mind wandered into dark and twisting corridors where she was afraid to follow.

Time was running short.

Nevertheless, Alana wasted nearly a day watching various folk on the road before selecting a family of merchants to be her companions for the last, crucial leagues. The traders had a boisterous swarm of boys who ranged in size from sprouts to saplings. The father hunched miserably on the driver’s bench of a wagon loaded down with wooden goods—tables and chairs, ladders, and stools. Elspeth, the domineering mother, was pregnant herself, and she walked beside the wagon, shouting frequent instructions and admonitions to her brood. Kari, the youngest child and the only girl, walked beside Alana.

“What’s in your horse’s saddlebags?” Kari asked the question, as if she had not made the demand a dozen times that morning.

“Herbs.” Alana was tired of giving the same answer.

“What kind of herbs?”

“All kinds.”

“What do they do?”

“Help people who are sick.”

“Why did you bring them?”

“To sell at market.”

The child ran out of questions, and Alana relished the silence. She plodded on for more than a dozen steps before she became suspicious. When she looked back at the mare, she saw Kari’s hand deep in her saddlebags, rummaging around. “Don’t touch that!”

“I’m sorry,” Kari lisped immediately, offering up a grinning apology for the tenth time since dawn. Alana resisted the urge to wrap her fingers around the child’s neck. Was this how Goody Glenna felt when she trained the People’s children? Were Reade and Maida as inquisitive as this girl?

“Of course,” one of the woodsingers responded, speaking through Alana’s bavin.

“Maida could be even worse,” thought another distant woman.

“But neither of the twins was as bad as Sartain. When he was a boy…”

Alana shook her head, pulling away from the woodsingers’ chatter, not trusting herself to listen to the tales of Sartain Fisherman’s childhood. The woodsingers were so far away. No matter how much they cared about Alana, no matter how much they wanted her to succeed, they could not wholly understand the danger that she faced. Her sisters could not know the complete differentness of the land that Alana now crossed. They were loved and honored, but they could not help Alana as she now needed to be helped.

Looking up in time to catch Kari with her hands in the saddlebags yet again, Alana said through set teeth, “Leave my herbs alone!”

“Ach! Is my whelp of a daughter bothering you again?” Elspeth waddled up to the side of the wagon, breathing heavily as she rested her hands on her bulging belly. She grimaced at Alana. “Why do we let men do it to us, eh? Why do we let them stuff us full?” Elspeth took a deep breath, as if the air would settle the child inside her. “Go on, Kari. Run up ahead with your father. Leave us women to talk.”

Kari pouted, but she sprinted up to the front of the wagon, where her father was driving the team of spavined horses. Elspeth clicked her tongue. “Let her father watch her, that’s what I say. I’ve got enough on my mind, with this one coming at the next moon. Kari’s father can keep an eye on her for once, don’t you know. Only thing men
are
good for!”

Alana struggled to patch together a response from her limited knowledge of men, and Elspeth typically misinterpreted her silence. “Ach! There I go again, stepping in the dung! I’m sorry, Lani! I was forgetting all about your Ronan. How could I be so foolish, Lani?”

How could she be so
loud
? Alana thought. When the woodsinger had changed her name, she’d never imagined she would hear it wailed so often, or so plaintively.

“I
told
him,” Elspeth proclaimed, and it took Alana a moment to realize that the carpenter-woman was referring to her own husband, not Alana’s putative spouse. “I
told
him I was too far along with this one to come to Smithcourt, but he said that I had to come, that I could argue for a better price for our goods. You never can trust a man, now can you, dear?”

The woodsinger retreated into her own thoughts as Elspeth continued her recitation of woes. Alana was worried about Maddock. Over the past weeks, reaching through his bavin, she had come to know the man like a part of herself. She had lived his shame when he fled from the roadside inn. She had known his lust when he let himself be seduced by Lila.

Since he had confronted the Avenger, though, she had sensed almost nothing but confusion through his woodstar. Horror at the enemy’s tools, terror at his role in milking the snake…. But overwhelmingly, simple confusion. Alana wondered what drugs they had forced into his body, what they had fed him in his poisoned pitcher of water that could have left him so disoriented. She resisted the urge to raise her fingers to her bavin, to stretch back to the Tree and out again for Maddock, to see how he fared.

It was just as well that she did not touch the woodstar, because Elspeth was peering expectantly at her, apparently misinterpreting the effect of her constant chatter. “Well, tie me to the wagon! I haven’t been thinking at all, you poor thing. Lani, why didn’t you tell me to shut my fat mouth? Here I am bemoaning
my
troubles, and I haven’t given a thought to your own!”

Alana managed a demure smile, trying to look like a young, pregnant widow. She was helped by the quickening breeze, a gust of wind that tugged at her hair. As she brushed the strands from her face, she thought of Landon, of the tracker whose hair had blown in a similar wind, the last time she had seen him in the flesh. Landon, whom she had almost forgotten about on her desperate ride. Landon, with his poor, thinning hair…

How would their lives have been different, if she had accepted his mistletoe berries at midwinter? Would Duke Coren still have stolen the children if Alana had not paid him undue attention during his treacherous visit? If she had not accepted his evil gifts? Would she be sitting beside her own hearth, even now, safe and warm and filled with a true child, if she had accepted Landon’s intentions?

The wind whipped dust into her eyes and tears welled up without her bidding. “I’m sorry, Elspeth,” she choked out, forcing aside an image of the gawky, balding man who had loved her. “It’s just that I keep thinking of…Ronan. He was such a good man. If only I had told him about our little one that night, that night those outlanders came to our village….” Alana went on with her rehearsed story, ignoring the tears that streamed down her cheeks. For a moment at least, she truly believed her tale. “Burned he was, like a roasted chicken! It took him three days to die, and no one to tend him but me, as all the others rode after the outlanders!”

Alana saw the scene as if it had been real. She hugged her arms against her chest, and her bavin nestled warm against her skin, recalling the fire she spoke of, the fire her Landon had witnessed at the King’s Horse in the tiny village. The fire that Maddock had shown her, through his own bavin. Once again, her belly turned over, a queasy reminder of how far she was from home.

“Why do you talk funny?” Kari interrupted her dark recollection.

“What do you mean?” Alana choked out, forcing her mind back to the merchant’s wagon and wondering how the child could already be finished pestering her father.

“I mean, why do you say your words funny?” Kari turned to her mother, with every bit of the directness that Reade harnessed when he was focused on some new mischief. “Doesn’t she, Mum? Doesn’t she talk all strange like?”

“Kari!” Elspeth chided. “Don’t be rude.”

“But Mum—”

“Go walk with your brothers, Kari.”

“I just—”

“Kari!”

The child gave up her protest and darted around the wagon. Shrieks went up from five different voices, and Alana wondered what mischief the girl was working among her siblings. The woodsinger kept her eyes on the dusty road, hoping that she could avoid further questions.

“I’m sorry,” Elspeth puffed. “She hasn’t learned what’s right and what’s wrong. Her father spoils her entirely too much—her being the only girl, and all.” The women continued plodding beside the wagon for a few steps before she cast a sly look at Alana. “Still, your accent
is
a touch strange….”

Elspeth trailed off expectantly, and Alana swallowed a grimace. In the past three days, she had learned that the carpenter-woman would not be put off for long. Alana extemporized: “Years ago, I came from the west. I was only a little older than Kari. My parents left the coastland; they were afraid of the folk there.” She laughed and did not need to fake the nervous note behind her words. “I did not realize my speech still sounded of my past. My Ronan always told me he liked the way I spoke….”

Alana let her voice quaver on the last sentence, and Elspeth responded as expected, folding the woodsinger into a nest of acceptances and justifications. They walked a full mile in silence then, as Alana remembered the husband she had never had and the suitor she had rejected, a lifetime ago when she had been a girl among the People.

Later that afternoon, they crested a rise, and all of Smithcourt lay before them, glistening on its plain. “Cor, Mum! It’s beautiful!” Kari instinctively reached up for an adult’s hand against the city’s splayed riches. Alana stifled the urge to pull away from the sticky fingers when she turned out to be the nearest adult.

“Aye, that it is, little one.” Elspeth beamed up at Alana as she huffed to catch her breath. “I bet you never thought it would be that large, now did you?”

“Of course, I did,” Alana replied without thinking. She had seen the same view twice before, first through Reade’s bavin, then through Maddock’s. She realized her mistake as Elspeth looked at her queerly. “My Ronan told me, of course. He journeyed to the city many times.”

“Ach! Poor man, for all the good it did him. Well you just stay the course, Lani. By tomorrow eve, you’ll be requesting your audience with the duke. He’ll find justice for you. He’ll get you the wergild you deserve. A man’s life, and his wife expecting a little one—the duke will pay you your coin, and then he’ll refill his treasury come the spring, when he rides to punish those murdering outlanders!”

Alana shivered at the vindictive tone in the woman’s voice, hoping that her own horror would be mistaken for grief. What was she doing traveling with these people? What would happen if she were found out? How could she hope to succeed where Maddock, Landon, and Jobina had already failed?

The group swung back into action, Elspeth shouting harsh words to her husband until he got the horses moving in their traces. The road sloped down to the city, and the two rear animals leaned back on their haunches, straining wearily to slow their heavy load. As they reached the long plain before Smithcourt, they fell into an endless line of carts, some even shoddier than their own. Grocers, leatherworkers, cloth merchants—all brought their goods through Market Gate.

As Alana inched forward, she watched Elspeth ready the wagon for passage into town. The heavy woman worked side by side with her husband, lashing down goods, tugging at protective tarps. Her sons scampered over the load like squirrels, and Kari whined that she was too little to do the fun work. Once Alana reached up to tug a tarp into place, but Elspeth barked, “Leave that alone! You, in your condition!”

“But you—” Alana began.

“I’ve been working on wagons my entire life. Kari! Move your fingers if you don’t want to lose them! See here, Lani. I bore
that
brat while we were loading up for the spring market five years ago, and I walked to town while she was still looking for my dug to suckle.” Kari made a face as she ducked away from her mother’s swatting hand, and Alana blushed at the woman’s forthright words. Oblivious, Elspeth swore at a tight knot. “Lani, if you want to help, keep an eye on Kari. I won’t have anyone say that you lost your babe on account of us. If we can’t handle our load, we have no business coming to the city.”

Alana muttered a few more protests, but she already knew that she was not likely to win against Elspeth’s carefully orchestrated campaign. Swallowing a grimace, she fell back with Kari.