Season of Sacrifice (9 page)

Maddock reined his gelding into the yard of one building that was larger than most. He thought he recognized the tavern from his earlier trading mission inland, and he squinted to make out its swinging sign in the gloom. A horse glared at him with dramatic red eyes, its muscled neck arching beneath a golden crown. The King’s Horse, that was right. He had stayed there before, had met with the king’s census counter in the tavern’s common room.

Then, the King’s Horse had been a hospitable place, with excellent ale and a warm fire. Maddock looked around expectantly, for there had been grooms to service a weary rider’s mount. No servants appeared now, though, and Maddock was forced to loop his reins around a nearby post.

The heavy wooden door swung open on a room that filled the entire ground floor of the building. A roaring fire blazed on the huge hearth, and a score of men sat at rough wood tables, surrounded by tankards and trenchers. The heady aromas of hot bread and hearty stew mixed with pungent ale. Friendly shouts filled the air, and a number of voices fought for supremacy in the crowded room.

When the door flew open, though, all conversation stopped. Laughter died, and the fire flickered lower on the hearth. Maddock saw half a dozen men reach for daggers at their waists, and other fists shifted on heavy metal tankards.

Maddock’s own hand fell to the cross-hilt of his sword, and the motion brought more than a murmur from the crowd. There was a long, balancing moment, and then Jobina pushed past Maddock, her flame-colored hair striking a contrast with the pacifying tone in her voice.

“Good folk, we thank you for your greeting on this cold, wet night.” Maddock thought she might have been received like a queen for the gentleness of her words. “We come from Land’s End, seeking warm beds and supper for ourselves and our mounts.”

Her words produced openly hostile grumbling, and it was only with reluctance that the burly men at the front of the room gave way to a large, red-faced woman. She spat: “We’ve no rooms left.”

“No rooms?” Maddock began, indignation spiking his words, but Jobina laid a stilling hand on his arm.

“No rooms, good lady?” the healer countered. “We’ve ridden hard today, and had hoped that we might sleep in a bed. All of Land’s End has heard of the hospitality at the King’s Horse.”

A flash of fear crossed the woman’s crimson face, and she muttered through stiff lips, “There’re no rooms for you here.”

Jobina lowered her voice to a cajoling tone. “Perhaps we might stay in your stable then, good lady, any place that is warm and dry against the miserable rain on the road. We were forced to sleep last night in the fields, and we pray not do so again.”

The red-faced woman started to spit, “I told you—” but before she could finish, one of the brawny men rolled to her side. Carefully turning so that he could keep one eye on the travelers, he whispered something to the woman, his voice low enough that Maddock could not make out the words.

The woman pushed at her hair nervously, her eyes darting to each of the large men on her hearth before she framed a response to Maddock. “You can stay in the barn, then. If you’ve money, there’s hay for the horses, and we can probably find the butt end of a loaf or two for you.”

Her words were grudging, and Maddock started to answer with the bile that rose in his throat, but Jobina gentled him one last time. “Many thanks, good woman. We are grateful for your hospitality.” If the healer’s words shamed the innkeeper, the red-faced woman made no sign.

The only animals in the stable were two large workhorses and a pair of sleepy cows. Maddock swore as the wind slammed the door behind him. If there were empty stalls here, there must be empty tavern rooms to match. Before Maddock could grumble his complaint, though, Landon started to settle his horse for the night, lifting off its heavy saddlebags and uncinching its girth. Maddock swore fluently for another minute before following suit.

The horses were contentedly munching their hay by the time a man thrust open the barn door. While he stood on the threshold, his hairy hand ostentatiously resting on the hilt of a large iron dagger, a terrified woman dashed into the barn, almost tripping as she set a tray at Maddock’s feet. The pair were gone before anyone could speak, and Maddock swore anew when he saw that the innkeeper had been true to her word. The tray held nothing more than three dried crusts of bread and a short flagon of ale.

The three travelers made short work of the meager victuals, supplementing the food with their own dried goods. There was no making sense of the inland folk, Maddock grumbled as he pushed together a pallet of hay.

His belly no longer ached with hunger, though, and he ordered his muscles to relax, to release the tension in his arms and back and legs. He sighed and burrowed deeper into the hay, ignoring the prickle of dried grass that poked through his clothes. At least he was warm. And dry.

He was teetering on the cliff edge of sleep when the barn door crashed open like a thunderclap. Before he could leap to his feet, he was blinded by flaring torches, unable to see anything but murder reflecting off a dozen iron knives.

The men who had filled the common room looked even larger as they hulked in the barn’s shadows, dark faces contorted into terrifying grimaces as the leader brandished his torch. The first sweep of the flames, clearly intended to intimidate the outlanders, swung wide and caught at the loose straw dusting the floor of the barn.

A few wisps of fire skittered across the dirt floor, coming up against the wooden stalls, and Maddock found himself on his feet, clutching the edges of his blanket to his chest, as if the wool could protect him from those hungry tongues. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Jobina and Landon were also standing, and the healer had drawn her dagger. He was surprised to find his sword unsheathed, hefted with familiar ease, as if he had planned on fighting for his life on this cold, dark night.

“You misbegotten curs.” There was something slippery about the man’s words, and Maddock knew that this was the man who had spoken to the inn’s red-faced proprietress, the supposedly merciful villager who had gained them a bed for the night. “Coming amid good folk with blood on your hands.”

“I don’t know what you mean, good man.” Maddock tried to diffuse the tension. “My companions and I are merely traveling to Smithcourt, to see the world and offer our humble services to the king.”

“The king is dead, fool.” The man spat in the straw, targeting Maddock’s feet and missing by the barest of margins. He seemed oblivious to the snakes of fire eating their way through the manger. “And what sort of services would you offer, in any case? All three of you butchers?”

“We’re simple folk, from Land’s End. You’ve no right to question what my companions and I do on the high road!”

“It’s not the road we’re worried about, son. It’s what you do off the road!” The man’s words were like oil flung on the fire of his fellows’ rage. The seething knot of men surged forward, their ale-soaked anger matching the heat of the flames growing at Maddock’s back.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Maddock spluttered, and he would not have believed himself if he’d been on the other end of the torch.

“What was your plan, son? Did you figure to sharpen your blade on our beasts before you took our children?”

“Your children!” The accusation was so preposterous that Maddock actually laughed, even though adrenaline shook through his sword arm. “I don’t know anything about the children in this village. Listen! Some men, some evil men, came to my home. They traded with us as friends, but then they took our people, our own children, twins. My friends and I, we ride to save a little boy and girl.”

The reasonable explanation only kindled the maddened crowd. Steel flashed in the torchlight, and cries of “Traitor!” were mixed with “Murderer!” and “Liar!”

With a curious calm, Maddock realized that he was not likely to leave the barn alive. Glancing across at his companions, he saw that they had reached the same conclusion. He nodded once, and Jobina’s hand shifted awkwardly to grasp her dagger in something approximating an offensive stance. Sickened, Maddock realized that the woman had probably never used her blade as a weapon. She had treasured her smith-precious knife for healing, for cutting flesh in order to
save
men’s lives.

Landon was scarcely better trained. The tracker had not even thought to draw his borrowed blade. Instead, he had turned a fraction of his height closer to the stalls where their horses moved restlessly. As if in response, the animals nickered above the growing crackle of open flames.

“To Land’s End!” Maddock bellowed, and he plunged among the inland villagers before they could react. He leaped as far from his fellow outlanders as possible, trying to carve a path of escape for his companions and their mounts.

The villagers had not expected an outright attack, and Maddock had a better reach than the village leader. The brawny man reacted in surprise, parrying automatically with the most convenient weapon—his torch. Maddock heard the fire sweep toward him, and he reflexively knocked the brand away with his sword. The torch roared hungrily as it fell in the next stall, feasting on the manger’s dry straw. Maddock did not have time to worry about fire, though, because two of the burly villagers closed behind their leader, and the trio moved forward with a grim determination.

Maddock’s body settled into the familiar stance that he had practiced for so long on the village green. Raising his sword, his arms moved with the confidence of a learned response. Before Maddock could measure his actions, his attackers’ stocky leader was bellowing in frightened rage, staring at a stump that pumped crimson blood where his hand had been.

There was a deceptive pause while the villagers gaped in shock, then Maddock was besieged on all sides. He swung his sword as he was backed farther into the burning stall. Craning his neck, he could not see if Jobina and Landon fared any better.

The villagers’ blades could get nowhere near him, not past his singing curtain of sword strokes. He was tired, though, exhausted by long days on the road and poor sleep at night. The muscles in his shoulders protested each time he raised his heavy weapon. The heat from the fire behind him was abominable, and he began to cough as heavy black smoke billowed from the well-caught stalls. His chest heaved impotently to carry precious air into his lungs.

“Maddock, look out! To your left!” He began to whirl even before he identified Landon’s hoarse voice, but his foot slipped in a pool of blood. He came down hard on his knee, and pain shattered up his leg. Even the white flash of that agony, though, was not enough to block out the grimacing villager who stood before him—the villager who had just thrown the longest, sharpest dagger Maddock had ever seen.

Alana Woodsinger gasped for breath, struggling back to consciousness like a near-drowned fisherman. “Maddock!” she cried, and then she hurled her thoughts back toward his bavin, down the confusing paths of the Guardians of Earth and Air, toward the startling tangle of fire that threatened her grasp on his distant woodstar.

Even as an ache blossomed behind Alana’s eyes, she struggled to teach herself how to harness the Guardians of Fire. Water, she knew. Earth and Air, she had learned over the past fortnight. Fire, though, remained alien, threatening, terrifying in its destructive force. She caught a glimpse of how the element worked, how it danced above Air and Earth, how it set itself opposite Water, but she was unable to gather together the strains of that knowledge, unable to focus past her fear for Maddock’s life.

Frantically, she shoved her awareness back toward the Tree, past her woodsinger sisters to the smooth rings of oaken knowledge. She chased her thoughts around several circles, scrambling for a grip, trying to pry up an answer, to learn about the fourth element.

There was nothing there, though, nothing that would help her in this crisis. Rather, she found the burden of potential, the weighty knowledge that the Tree
could
come to know the Guardians of Fire,
might
yield up all its strength to those flaming beings. Could…Might…What good was that to Alana now? What good was that, as Maddock was threatened in a burning barn, halfway across the land?

She heard the hovering swarm of former woodsingers inside her mind, sensed their agitation at the edges of her consciousness. She shut them out, though, excluding them so that she could better concentrate on the horror at hand. What had happened to Maddock? To Landon and Jobina? Had all three of them been cut down? Were they, even now, engulfed in flame? Were they already dead?

Silence. Darkness. Nothingness.

Alana tried to remember how the bavin had felt inside her mind, how the woodstar’s power had spun its web across the land. Closing her eyes, however, and reaching for that pattern left her empty-handed, empty-minded. Each breath daggered through the pain that now pulsed beneath her skull. She could barely make out swirling clouds where the bavin should have been, like ocean water tainted by a squid’s desperate ink.

Against the darkness, she could see the flash of fire on iron, see the threat of the villager’s thrown knife. Panic overwhelmed her, and she hurled her body against the Tree, pressing against its rough bark with her hands, her cheek, as if she would crawl inside the trunk, as if she would become one with the ancient oak.

“Great Mother!” she gasped in despair. “Great Mother!” She tried to force her consciousness through the Tree, through the bavin to the trio of rescuers.

Children called on the Great Mother. Not grown women. Not woodsingers schooled to recognize the power of all the Guardians, of the complex world around them. Children, who were desperate and frightened and alone in the night.

“Great Mother!” Alana sobbed, and the sound brought back the last time she had called on the ancient goddess, when she had knelt on a sodden beach beside a bloated corpse that could not be her father, that had to be her father. The image made Alana retch, and she fell to her knees, trying to forget the stench, to forget the frozen finger of certainty that had walked down her spine as she identified the body from its carefully knotted rope belt.

She had lost so much. She had forgotten so much. She had failed to learn so much. She was so alone.

And now, to have lost Maddock and Landon and Jobina, as well….

“Great Mother,” she moaned again.

As if in response to her plea, the woodsingers’ voices stirred again in her mind, shifting beneath her throbbing pain. She let them speak to her now, now that there was no longer any way for her to reach across the land for Maddock’s bavin.

“The Great Mother won’t help, you know.”

“She can’t help you.”

“This is all beyond her. The Great Mother only
planted
the Tree. She watered it, and she spoke to it, but she never
knew
it. Not the way that we do.”

Alana interrupted the swirl of voices. “Leave me alone! If you don’t have anything useful to tell me, leave me alone!”

“Prithee, sistren,” said one of the woodsingers, her tone folded softly around ancient words. The voice was tight and small, as if it were encapsulated in one of the rings closest to the Tree’s oaken heart. The words were wrapped in long-lost sounds, guttural vowels and harsh consonants that scraped the back of the speaker’s throat. “Puir bairn such a strangething desireth, finding the spiritforce of a lost bavin. Such a strangething, but a strangething can be done. With the heartpower of the Tree. With the bonestrength of the fairsister.”

Alana was not certain that she could make out the individual words, the specific meaning of all those ancient sounds, but the overall sense was clear. There
was
a way for her to reach Maddock. There was a way to snare the distant bavin.

As if drowned in Alana’s shock, the swirl of woodsingers quieted. Alana, fighting to hear her own thoughts above her pounding heart, dared to speak to the one voice, to the most ancient woman she had ever heard in her woodsinger thoughts. “Thank you, sister,” she said gratefully.

“Thank not this puir vocet, fairsister woodsinger. Ye should not timewaste with fairsister thanks. Ye should trace the seekerswordsman. Thoughtgrasp his bavin.”

The ache behind Alana’s eyes as she focused on the slippery words was so sharp that she was certain she would retch again. She struggled, though, to pull meaning from the strange sounds, to twist the soft voice into a guiding rope. “I—I don’t know how to fight, how to, to thoughtgrasp. I can’t
reach
him. I can’t find Maddock. And even if I could, I don’t know how to help him.” Alana’s fear and frustration broke her voice, breaching the wall that had held back her tears. “I knew it was wrong for him to slaughter the lamb, but I couldn’t reach out to change what he was doing. I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t help!” Her entire body began to shudder as she sobbed, quivering in reaction to the pain that lanced behind her eyes, to her exhaustion, to her surrendering hope.

“Fairsister, ye have the puissance to changefate the woodstar.” The voice was slightly scornful, as if the ancient woodsinger could not believe Alana was so ignorant. “Vocet ye can be, like any fairsister. Thoughtwords can landbridge. Ye can thoughtspeak to the seekerswordsman. Make him bodyact. Make him bodysave himself.”

“How?” Alana was so surprised, she blurted the one syllable aloud.

“Thoughtgrasp the woodstar.”

“I don’t know what that means!”

“Mindcloak the woodstar. Spiritsend your thoughts.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying!” Alana wailed. The ancient woodsinger used words as if they were the People’s tongue, but the words made no sense. Alana could babble, too. She could throw together phrases and pretend that they were words. She could pretend that she had the powers of all the Guardians. She could pretend that she knew what she was doing, play-acting as the People’s woodsinger.

“Become a vocet, fairsister. Become a vocet for the Tree.”

Alana sensed that the other woodsinger was frustrated as well.

“What in the name of all the Guardians is a vocet?”

“A
vocet
,” the ancient woman repeated, as if by stressing the word all would be made clear.

Alana’s frustration leaked out as a wail. The other woodsinger visibly shrugged, and began to move away, back to the core of the Tree that had been her only home for time out of mind. Alana stumbled to her feet, reaching out a trembling hand as if she could stop a living, breathing woman from walking away. “Wait!” she cried. “I want to understand you! I want to learn!”

The other woodsinger lingered, floating just above the dark core that was the very center of the Tree’s essence. Alana went on desperately. “What is your name, fairsister? Let me read your journals, try to understand you that way!”

“Parina,” the voice whispered at last. “Parina Woodsinger.” The words faded away, sinking back into the unknowable depths of the Tree’s inner knowledge.

Alana stumbled down the path, rushing to her cottage. She built up her fire, almost smothering the banked coals as she piled on too much wood. Looking down, she saw that her hands were scratched, that her arms were bleeding. As if in a dream, she remembered surrendering to the Tree, pushing against its bark as if the pain would let her break through to Maddock and his fellows.

What did it matter, though, a little blood on her hands? She lit a reed lamp and threw herself at the wall of ancient journals, peering at their leather-bound covers. She did not need to study the newer volumes, the smooth, supple leather of Sarira Woodsinger’s life, or Sarira’s teacher, or that woman’s teacher. No. Alana needed the very oldest of the tomes, the most ancient, the most faded.

Alana shifted the heavy books, stretching to reach the back of the top-most shelf. At last, she found the one she wanted, small and cracked, and so dry that she thought the parchment pages would crumble to dust before she could carry it to the fireside. Nevertheless, she was able to make out scrawling words on the first page: Parina Woodsinger.

The woman had lived a long and productive life; she had filled page after parchment page with a scrawl that made spider webs look coarse. Parina was not the very first woodsinger, but she was the first to have written down her observations about the Tree. Parina had tended the oak when it was scarcely more than a sapling; the woodsinger had just been able to encircle the Tree with her arms when she began to serve it.

Hours passed, and still Alana read, trying to find the answer, searching desperately for some way to save Maddock. Three times, she returned to her shelves, stretching for other buried volumes, for more of Parina’s journals that had been pushed aside through the centuries.

After the first few hours, the woodsingers inside Alana’s mind slumbered, apparently exhausted by her passion. More than once, she thought that she would take a moment to sleep herself, or sneak a few breaths to splash cold water across her aching eyes. She would just take a brief break, chew on a few dried apples, stretch her aching back….

But every time she started to step away from the fireside, she was overwhelmed by the sense of loss that had capsized her at the Tree. For the first time, she realized what a hole a lost bavin created. It was one thing for a woodstar to lose its power gradually, to fade away as it aged outside the Tree. Alana was already accustomed to the light tug of decades-old bavins, to the whispery mental impression left by the dried-out husk of a completely faded woodstar.

The gap inside her thoughts now, though, was completely different. Maddock’s missing woodstar ached, like a rotten tooth. It dragged her back to the journals, over and over again, even as she longed to pull away.

Was this the pain a bavin left when it was lost at sea? Was this what Sarira Woodsinger had fought against as she stood on the Headland, trying to sing home Alana’s father, and the twins’ da, and the two other fisherman? Was this why Sarira had given her life, because she wanted to stop the ache inside her head, inside her heart?

For the first time, Alana began to understand how a woodsinger would risk almost anything to avoid the aching emptiness that spread through her now. A woodsinger would abandon food, abandon drink, abandon the health of her own fragile body, if she could keep from feeling this break with the Tree. Sarira had. Or at least she had tried.

Since donning her woodsinger’s cloak, Alana had avoided Sarira Woodsinger, avoided the woman who had let her father die at sea. In her heart, Alana knew that she was being unfair, that she was punishing the older woman for failing at an impossible task. Still, it had seemed that Alana had no choice. She could be angry with the woman who had failed to sing her father home, or she could be angry with her father, for venturing out too far, for staying out after a storm came up, for failing to find a way back to the Headland.

Flinching from the ache of Maddock’s lost bavin once again, Alana started to search her mind for Sarira Woodsinger, started to pull together a thought of peace. Before she could complete the action, though, she was ambushed by a memory of standing on the beach, breathing in the stink of her father’s bloated corpse. She remembered her growing anger as she counted the knots on his belt, her rage at being left alone, left behind.

Little Reade still felt that anger. Reade, who was even now selling his small soul to Coren. Reade, who needed to be rescued.

If Sarira Woodsinger had done her job properly, if she had sung home the four fishermen, Reade would be a different child, Alana’s da and Reade’s da and the other two men. Reade would not be so desperate for Coren’s approval. He would not seek out a father in a kidnapper, in an evil man. He might even have been brave enough to escape, to wrangle his way free from his captors.

And Alana? Her life would be different as well. If Sarira Woodsinger had not died on the Headland, Alana would be free. She might have found a husband. She might even now be sitting with him beside her hearth, heavy with their unborn child.

No, Alana was not yet ready to make her peace with Sarira Woodsinger.

Instead, she harnessed her anger and turned back to Parina Woodsinger’s journals. She forced her way through endless accounts of the Tree’s size, of its watering, of its progression through the seasons. Parina’s words were strange, odd combinations of familiar words and phrases, and Alana often had to stop to puzzle out their meaning. Some of the words were entirely new—“vocet” and “fairsister” and other, stranger words that Parina had not spoken inside Alana’s mind.

Twice, Alana dove back inside her thoughts, stretching toward the shadows where Parina had disappeared. She wanted the ancient woodsinger’s assistance, wanted to know where she should look in the ancient parchment volumes. The ghostly presence remained still, though, buried deep beneath the centuries and the circles of the Tree’s growth. Alana did not know if she had offended her sister woodsinger, or if Parina had merely exhausted herself by swimming to the surface of Alana’s thoughts, by pressing communication for as long as she had.