Season of Sacrifice (25 page)

“What can you do, lass?” Brant’s drunken eyes were appraising.

“More than you’ll have time to learn, soldier.” She darted her tongue between her lips and arched an eyebrow.

Brant chortled and leaned back on his rough bench. When he sighed, his hand fell onto Alana’s thigh, as if by accident. “I don’t need learning, lass. Not much learning at all.”

“Ach, we haven’t time now. You said your shift begins before the next bell.” Alana forced her fingers to cover his, to weave between them suggestively. She pouted a little as she looked up at him through her eyelashes. “If I could find a way to earn a sou or two, I could wait for you to finish your watch. Otherwise, I must leave Smithcourt with sunrise. I need to harvest the spring herbs before they flower.”

“You
are
an herb-witch, then. I knew it when I saw your satchel.”

“Not a witch.” She laughed. “I just know how to use a plant or two, how to break a fever, how to make a man…awaken. Nothing important.”

“Ach, lass, maybe nothing important to you.
I’d
give a pretty penny for that second potion, though.”

Alana let her Jobina-fingers travel along the man’s trews. “I don’t think you need my craft for
that
.”

Brant smiled slowly and shifted to give her fingers more room for play. “Nay, lass. Not now. Not knowing that I have a lonely night ahead of me. But when I return to the barracks—now, that’s another tale. When I’m needy and tired…” He dug into a pouch at his waist. “Would this coin buy what I want?”

The copper glinted dully in the tavern light, and Alana let a little of her true offense seep into her words. “You think to still your needs with a single copper coin?” She withdrew her roaming hands and crossed her arms over her insulted chest. She certainly didn’t intend to hold up her end of the bargain they were striking, but she was still insulted that the man thought that he could buy her for so little.

“Copper!” Brant pretended surprise. “I took out the wrong coin, lass, the wrong coin is all.” He burrowed deeper for another token, and managed to produce a small silver disk, along with a guttural chortle. “This is what I intended to find.”

Alana weighed her options. If she gave in too easily, he was likely to become suspicious. Yet she was about to run out of time; the hour was growing late. “I wasn’t playing games, soldier,” Alana finally spoke. “I need more than a man’s bed, or I’ll be leaving the city.”

“You’ll get more, lass, more than just a bed!” For one horrible instant, Alana thought that he
still
had misunderstood her; his fingers kneaded at her thigh as if he were mixing dough. But then he continued, “Come with me to the kitchens. You can help Cook with bread and the like, and then you can leave with me at noon. The barracks are quiet then.”

It was the safest passage into Coren’s palace that she was likely to arrange. She might contrive to slip away from the kitchen during her shift. And if she couldn’t, there was always the herb mixture in the flask beneath her homespun gown, the tincture she could feed to Brant and then escape.

Forbidding herself to dwell on the bargain Brant thought he was negotiating, the woodsinger reached for the soldier’s coin. The guard snapped it into her palm with a merchant’s greedy grin, and Alana barely remembered to smile as she tucked the silver into her bodice, making sure that it did not clink too hard against her herb flask. Brant followed the coin’s course, and he licked his lips like a dog. “We’d best be on our way, then,” he growled.

Alana let him help her to her feet, let him “steady” her as she left the close tavern. The night air cut through her shift like a reminder of all the risks she was taking. It did not take them long to get to Coren’s palace in the middle of Smithcourt, and then it was only a brief matter for Brant to spirit her past the guard, announcing that she’d been newly hired to work with Cook, to help finish the palace preparations for the Service, two days hence.

Two days. Alana almost cried out at that. She’d known the Service was approaching, whatever it was, whatever it entailed, but she had not realized how little time remained.

Well, no time like the present to set sail.

The palace kitchens were entirely new to Alana, because neither Maddock nor Reade had glimpsed them. Even if she had viewed the cavernous room through her fellow outlanders’ bavins, she would have been unprepared for the blast of heat as she crossed the threshold. A brawny-armed woman looked up as Brant ushered Alana into the dim room, and she nodded shortly at the soldier’s words before turning to the woodsinger. “Can you knead?”

“Aye.” Alana opted to disguise her accent behind a single word.

“Good enough. There’s the dough. His Grace prefers braided wreaths.” Alana stared at the mounds of dough, their slick surfaces like a crowd of perspiring faces.

“All right, then,” Brant crowed. “You’ll work here in the kitchens, and I’ll see you when my shift is done. Keep an eye on her, Cook. It’ll be my hide if she roams the hallways.”

Alana forced another Jobina-laugh from her pounding chest. Cook frowned and waddled back to an iron kettle that was suspended across the great hearth. Brant took advantage of the relative solitude to pull Alana close and snatch a kiss. “You mind your manners, girl. I’ll see you after my shift.”

The soldier frowned when she did not respond, and Alana forced herself to pay more attention. She needed to pretend that she desired his touch. She needed to act as if
he
were the reason she wanted to be in the kitchen. Not the dark hallways that crept away from the overheated room. Not the tantalizing nearness of other bavins, elsewhere in the palace. “Aye.” She rippled beneath his palms. “Make sure you’re not left standing too long.”

His eyes glinted, and he would have pulled her closer if Cook had not turned back. “I’ll mind how I’m standing, you vixen. I won’t even need your herbs.”

“Out of my kitchen, now,” Cook interrupted, before Alana could summon up further banter. “We’ve work to do.” Brant hastened away, and Alana settled into her sentence of hard labor.

By the time the sun rose, her shoulders ached from kneading. When the bells chimed for morning prayers, her eyes were gritty from lack of sleep. As the day’s full light pried into the small kitchen windows, she stumbled as she walked, finding convenient walls and benches to hold her upright. She was ordered to stir porridge, to keep the fires going, to move, move, move.

Alana Woodsinger accepted the commands, reminding herself of her mission. She needed to stay inside the palace. Even if Cook did not give her an opportunity to wander off, she’d manage to escape once Brant claimed her, once she’d given him her herbal brew. She was confident that she could find Maddock inside Coren’s stronghold; the bavin would show her the way. Together, they would find Landon and Jobina, and then the twins. They’d escape Smithcourt before the Service.

Three times during the day, Alana tried to reach out to Maddock’s bavin. Three times, she found a quiet corner, leaned against a wall. Three times, she clutched at the woodstar beneath her own blouse, extended her senses back to the Tree, pushed forward to find the man lost within the Palace.

But each time, she was unsuccessful. Each time, she was foiled by the fisherman’s confusion, by his cloudy thoughts, by his roiling anger and sorrow and shame. Maddock seemed to be gripped by some type of fever, by some raging illness, and Alana could not find a way to reach him, to tell him that help was near, to assure that all would be well.

Of course, all would not be well, if Alana were caught in the midst of her dangerous game. And so, when the woodsinger thought that she could not stand for another instant, she scrubbed the morning cookpots clean. When she was certain that her arms could not rise again, she turned a spit, roasting a tremendous joint of meat for His Grace’s evening table.

By the time Brant returned at the end of his shift, the woodsinger had charmed herself into a sort of dream. “There’s my girl!” the soldier exclaimed, and Alana scarcely caught herself from bursting into tears.

She almost did not notice as Brant guided her from the kitchen, barely feeling his paws about her waist as he bade her walk in front of him, up half a flight of narrow stairs. She squinted in brilliant sunlight as they crossed a narrow courtyard, only to be blinded when they ducked into a gloomy barracks building. Brant pulled her close as he opened a door, one identical to all the others that lined the dim corridor.

“Here’s what I call home,” he growled, kicking the door closed in a familiar gesture and settling the creaky bar across the oak.

Alana barely took in the rumpled mattress, the high and narrow flyspecked window. She forced herself to focus on Brant’s hands, on the increasingly urgent attention he paid to her bodice laces.

“Ho, there!” she cried, as his fingers slipped across the fabric. “Such a man!”

“Aye! ’Twas a long shift, but I stood my ground. I knew what awaited me in the end.”

“Then I must live up to my bargain.” She forced a laugh. “I told you I’d give you a potion, and I’ve got it here.” She dug out the dark bottle.

“You think I need some witch’s herbs to stand for you?”

“I can see that you do not.” She made her voice appreciative. “But I’ve never known a man to pass up an opportunity for heartswell.”

“Heartswell?” His interest was piqued.

“Come, soldier-man. Drink. I worked as a scullery maid the morning long. I’ll not have my reward delayed another minute.”

Brant grinned and took the bottle. He sniffed once and then raised the flask, saluting her. She watched him fill his mouth and swallow—once, twice, three times. When the bottle was empty, he tossed it onto the ground, flinging his head about and breathing as if he had swallowed fire. “There, pretty witch. I’ve drunk your potion.”

Alana held out her hand, gesturing for him to come to her. He obliged, with first one step, then another. The woodsinger, exhausted by her stint in the kitchen, was barely able to catch him before he crashed to the ground.

She dragged his great weight over to the bed, rolling him onto the coverlet with a great deal of grunting. More than once, she swore under her breath; she should have manipulated him to be nearer the pallet when he dropped.

Only when his head was turned to the side so that he did not strangle on his own copious drool did Alana pick up her discarded flask. She sniffed at it as the soldier had. No heartswell for him, alas. She had combined mare’s mane and nightdraught for fast, dreamless sleep, adding a healthy dash of thornbuck to force Brant to forget all that had happened. A dose of sweet honey to make the entire mess palatable, and…

The victim of her handiwork set to snoring. Alana glanced once more about the room, making sure that she left no incriminating evidence behind. Even as the cathedral bells tolled the first hour after noon, Alana Woodsinger slipped into the shadows outside the barracks, disappearing in Coren’s palace as she clutched at the bavin that marked her as an outlander and an intruder.

Alana woke slowly, dazed and disoriented as she sat up in total darkness. She shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair, leaning forward to spit a nasty taste from her mouth. By the time she stood, she had remembered where she was, and her resolve rushed back, firm and unshaken.

She had intended to seek out Maddock as soon as she left Brant’s quarters, but she had walked down only one corridor before she realized that she was too exhausted to help the warrior. The restorative powers of redshell could only last so long.

Changing her plans, she had sneaked higher into the tall tower in the center of the palace courtyard, the ominous building that hulked over the soldiers’ barracks. Scarcely able to keep her eyes open, she had stepped from a dark stairwell into a square room, just as guards’ voices rang out on the steps below. Tapestries hung on the walls of Alana’s hiding place, blocking out some of the stony chill and the sound of the men. Following her instincts and offering a quick prayer to all the Guardians, Alana had crossed the room to find a short, dark corridor, a hallway that ran the length of the tower.

A tiny storage room opened onto the middle of the hallway. She had to duck nearly double to clear the low door, and she could touch all four walls by reaching out her arms. Dust was thick on the floor, and a mouse’s desiccated corpse cracked beneath her foot, yielding up a musty smell of decay. This closet had not been used for years—decades perhaps—probably since the last time the palace itself had been under attack and the guards had needed an extra place to store weapons.

The woodsinger had collapsed in the dark, dusty room, scarcely staying awake long enough to push the low door closed behind her. With her last conscious thought, she had wedged her Great Mother amulet beneath the door, granting herself the illusion of peace and security.

Now, Alana retrieved the metal figurine. She muttered a prayer as she returned the amulet to its rightful place about her neck. The Great Mother had worked with the Guardians to keep her safe these many days and nights; they could not abandon her now. Putting her ear against the oaken door, Alana caught her breath, but she could hear no activity in the hallway. She eased the door open.

The corridor yawned before her, empty and dark. Alana blinked hard and realized that she must have slept for hours. Daylight had fled completely; meager starlight leaked through a window at the far end of the hallway. Fine, she told herself. Better to move under the cover of darkness anyway. Even if the night-time meant that the Service was another day closer.

As she had before, Alana reached out for Maddock’s thoughts. And as she had before, she recoiled from the swirling confusion that she found there, the unadulterated mess of emotions. Swallowing an oath that Goody Glenna would never have approved, Alana decided to take another tack into the storm.

Closing her fingers around her own bavin, she felt the gentle tug of the woodstar she had sung for Maddock. Not the fisherman, not the man that she sought to save, but rather, his bavin itself.

She let the Tree’s power pull her forward as she edged down the hallway, through the tapestried room, back to the staircase. As if she were summoning fishing boats back to port at the Headland, she let the Tree urge her toward its own heartwood, consciously setting aside any connection that the bavin had to an individual person, to a specific man, to the one fisherman to whom she had entrusted the morsel from the Tree.

She forbade herself to think about the dark corridors and the guards who might lurk in the shadows. Round and round she walked on spiral stairs, finding each step in the dark, letting her feet settle into the grooves of centuries. As her bavin warmed beneath her fingers, Alana realized that she was repeating Maddock’s steps, passing down the staircase to the stone room that had housed the Avenger.

She almost stopped then. She feared Zeketh, feared his secret chamber and whatever beast he had summoned to replace the venomous Avenger. There was something mysterious at work with the religious leader, some reason that his presence in Coren’s palace was meant to stay hidden. How hard would Coren and Zeketh work to protect their secret alliance? What punishment would they mete out if they found her tracing their steps, delving into their secrets?

But she’d already earned that punishment, by traveling all the way from Land’s End, by entering Smithcourt, by penetrating Coren’s palace security. Coren would kill her for being there, regardless of what secrets she discovered about the High Priest.

She forced herself onward.

For several heartbeats, she tried to convince herself that she was misinterpreting the bavin’s heat beneath her fingers. She must be caught up in remembering Maddock’s earlier passage. Surely the warrior would not return to the chamber where he had been tortured, where he had almost died?

Still, Alana was drawn forward by her woodstar, compelled down the stairs. She paused to dig her iron-precious knife out of her rucksack. Clutching her bavin with the feverish fingers of one hand, she leveled the blade in front of her eyes, pointing downward into the darkness.

Finally, she reached the bottom of the long, long staircase, stepping onto the stone floor. Before she could catch her breath, though, a claw darted out from the pitch darkness. Its clutch about her wrist was frozen, and she could not entirely swallow her scream as her bones were crushed by the cruel grip. Calling upon all the Guardians to give her strength, she tightened her grasp on her knife, ready to fight for her life. Planting her feet on the unseen flagstones, she ducked low and surged forward, knocking her bony shoulder into her assailant’s belly.

She heard a tremendous whuff of air, and the clutch on her wrist lessened so that she could pull back. She whirled for the stairs, determined to outrun her attacker, but she took only three steps before she was grabbed from behind. The knife skittered from her grasp as iron-hard hands threw her to the floor, and she struggled for breath against icy fingers that closed about her throat.

She gasped and choked, bucking against the flagstones as her fingers scrabbled against the hands that gripped her neck. She tried to swallow, but the pain was too great, and her screams were cut off by the tightening pressure against her windpipe. She scratched at her attacker’s arms, raking icy flesh that only responded by tightening the fingers around her throat. Red lights danced before Alana’s eyes in the darkness, and she kicked against the floor in panic. Her heart thundered in her ears, pounding like the most vicious ocean storm against the shoals of her consciousness.

Alana’s lungs turned to fire in her chest, and she struggled to pluck at her attacker’s hands. It became harder to remember, though, why she bothered, harder to remember what she fought for. A crimson wave crashed against the back of her eyes, and she thought of her father. Had he gasped for his last breath amid a scarlet sea? Had he fought to free his lungs, fought and lost and sank beneath the ocean surface? Was he waiting for her with the Guardians, even now?

The woodsinger’s struggles eased as she thought of her father, as she remembered his patient, wind-beaten eyes. He would guide her the last few steps. He would show her the way to the Guardians, the way from the People and the Tree.

The Tree.

Alana Woodsinger heard her sister woodsingers whispering in her mind. No, not whispering. Speaking aloud. Shouting. Ordering her to focus on her bavin, to concentrate on her woodstar. Obediently, Alana’s fingers grasped for her bavin, for the last woodstar that she had ever sung. She grasped, but she could not quite reach. Her fingers wanted to curl in on themselves, wanted to tremble against the stone.

“Fight, sister!”

“Stretch for your bavin!”

“Don’t leave us, Alana Woodsinger!”

Alana wanted to make the voices be quiet. She wanted her sisters to leave her alone, to let her sleep. She was so tired, and there they were, making their constant demands. Didn’t they remember that she had journeyed far? Didn’t they know that she had worked in the kitchens? Didn’t they understand that she needed…to…rest?

“Alana Woodsinger, this is not why the Tree chose you! It selected you because it knew you would fight for it. The Tree knew that you would love it and cherish it and give your last breath to be with it!”

Alana wanted to tell the nagging woodsinger that she was wrong. She tried to form words, tried to structure her argument, but she couldn’t. Not without the bavin. Not without the woodstar. She needed to grasp the prickly heartwood, needed to stretch her fingers to the Tree’s core. There it was, an arm’s length away…. One more handspan…

Her effort was rewarded by a brilliant arc of blue-red-brown-white light.

The spark leaped from her bavin, bearing all the woodsingers’ force in the darkened chamber. Even as Alana realized that she could breathe again, she felt her sisters’ strength flowing through her. All the power ensorcelled in the Tree’s endless rings blew down her bruised throat, surged into her flaming lungs. Alana gasped at the pain, drawing in more of the sweet, sweet air.

Choking and spluttering, Alana bucked from the stone floor, setting her attacker off balance. The woodstar about her neck burned with a brilliant fire, flickering with all the colors of the Guardians, lighting the chamber without being consumed.

Even as Alana gasped for air, her attacker drew back in surprise. The woodsinger managed to twist beneath his weight, to slide out from beneath the man. Spluttering against the throbbing pain in her throat, she scrambled for her blade, prepared now to fight for her life. She found the knife easily, cold iron sparkling in the multicolored light that continued to flow from her bavin.

Even as she lunged to stab her attacker, she glimpsed his face. She made out his wild eyes and unkempt hair; she heard the mad gurgle in his throat and smelled the acrid fear on his flesh.

“Maddock!” she gasped, scarcely able to ease the name past her bruised throat. A quick glance through her gleaming bavin confirmed her horrified discovery. Zeketh’s drugs had crazed the warrior, left him terrified and confused. Now, Maddock panted in the sudden brilliant light, unwanted tears streaming down his grimy cheeks. He raised one scabbed hand to shield his eyes, and Alana could see that he was weighing his course of action. She felt his confusion through her bavin, transmitted from his woodstar to the Tree to the bavin that swung from her own neck. She felt the animal terror of the trapped.

His stinking breath came harsh in the small chamber, and Alana remembered all that she had seen through her bavin along his long journey—the hopeful warrior who had boasted of saving the children. The would-be lover who had nearly fallen into Jobina’s sticky web of seduction. The man who had fled a roadside inn in terror and shame. The creature who stood before her, desperate and frightened and ready to kill.

Alana’s own breath rattled in her throat, and she could still feel Maddock’s fingers digging into her flesh. Her blood pulsed hot where his icy fingers had burned, and her head began to spin. “Maddock!” she croaked again, raising her bavin as a symbol of recognition. At the same time, she thought a prayer to the Guardians, begging them to let the warrior recognize her, begging them to let her spare his life.

He cringed at the sound of his name, but Alana forced herself to speak the two syllables one last time. She fought against the horror that pulsed through her rising bruises, the ancient fear of madness.

“Get back, fiend!” Maddock raised his hands in a warding gesture. The stark bavin light turned his hollow eyes into a skull’s dark sockets. “Get back to my nightmares and leave me be!” His voice broke on the last word, frantic, desperate, destroyed.

“Maddock, it’s me, Alana Woodsinger.” Her whisper was harsh in the dank room, but she made herself heard above her thundering heart. Before she could change her mind, she took Maddock’s hand, forced herself to grasp his ice-cold flesh. He struggled to fight free of her, writhing as if
she
were the nightmare creature.

Swallowing painfully, Alana reached out toward his bavin, trying to push comfort and awareness through the Tree and into the woodstar she had sung for him so long ago. The other woodsingers added to her thoughts, bolstering her strength along the relay. The man was too frightened, though, terrified by the voices of strange women in his mind, crazed by drugs and exhaustion and evil dreams.

Alana tightened her grip on his hand, but he started to fight her in earnest, started to throw her off with all the power of a warrior intent on saving himself from a mortal enemy. Alana ordered her sister woodsingers to desist, commanded them to drop out of the link that was forged through the Tree. Instead, she reached for the depths of the oak herself, plunging through her own burning bavin until it seemed that she stood beside the giant oak on the Headland.

She drilled into the rings of the People’s history and asked the Tree to carry her intention forward, to push her thoughts into Maddock’s awareness. Her journey was so sudden, her burrowing so complete, that for a moment she was almost consumed by the Tree. She was lifted from the world of Smithcourt’s stone dungeons, from the cage of distance and weariness and cold-forged iron blades. She collapsed into the oak’s green beauty, into its quiet, steady power. She breathed in the sea breeze, felt the loam settle around her roots. Sap beat strong in her veins, calming, soothing, deepening her rapport with the People, with the past. She felt the power of earth and air, fire and water.

She almost lost herself.

Almost, but not quite. Alana remembered not to linger in the Tree’s orderly rings. She did not permit herself to stay on the Headland, where the fresh wind blew, where she could swallow great draughts of air without the burning, blazing pain in her throat. Instead, she urged the Tree to send her thoughts forward, to leap across all the land with her emotions. She asked the Tree to reach for Maddock’s bavin with all its oaken strength, to thrust all her thoughts into his woodstar.

It took a moment, but the Tree complied. Alana felt her own assurance, her own comforting thoughts, her own power sear across the chasm of forest, fields, and city that separated her from the Tree. The giant oak bolstered her warm comfort, poured it into Maddock’s bavin. And, after a long moment when Alana did not dare to draw a rattling breath, she felt Maddock absorb the Tree’s spirit.