The Warrior's Tale (55 page)

'I made this bow myself,' she said. 'It took me five years, and I started when I was only ten. There was this man in our village who fascinated me.'

'A man
fascinated
you,' I joked. 'And weren't you the eager young stripling with desires beyond your years? No doubt you were perverted from your true nature not much later, just as so many priests and men would have it.'

She wrinkled her nose at me. 'As you know, as I've told you time and again, my village was created boring. Beyond midsummer festival, harvest home, and the winter solstice, the most exciting thing was to watch the turnips grow. All we had were farmers, the priest, a cheating shopman, and
...
this fellow. His name was Sollertiana, and he was a bowsmith.'

'Now I understand your fascination.'

'Not quite,' Corais said. 'Certainly there were the gleaming lengths of wood in his shop that slowly became singers of death, and the long rows of grey-goose-feathered shafts. But Sollertiana himself held me, not just for the stories he'd tell, nor for the customers that'd ride long distances from the city just to order one of his bows that would require a year or more's wait. I'd just begun to realize I wasn't like the other girls, and playing their little games of squeal and be chased and maybe let a boy put his little pigtail in me and wiggle it. Somehow I knew Sollertiana was different, too. When I was fifteen, after the bow was finished, I knew I'd been right, seeing him look out the scraped-skin window over his bench when a young lad strode past, recognizing the same longing I felt for one or two of the village maids.

'But where I had been able to find a little happiness, even though one claimed she'd been asleep and the other she'd been drunk, Sollertiana knew better than to indulge his passion. Our priest would've raised a mob to burn him and his home if there'd been any suspicion.'

She snorted. 'Of course that same priest also gave scant comfort when a woman was beaten by her husband, or even when a man thought he had the right to take all the women of his household, adult or babes, to wife. Priests!' Corais spat overside, then went on.

'Once a year Sollertiana went to Orissa to buy silk and peacock feathers, and I hope he found a measure of comfort there. I always wondered why, since he was what he was, he didn't move to the city. I asked him once, and he just said that he couldn't breathe when he couldn't see the sun's journey from dawn to dark, and in the city the buildings strangled him.' Corais shrugged. 'I see I've gone astray from my story. But that was why I felt a kinship with Sollertiana. Not only that he was different in his desires as was I, but he also showed me the way I must take. I knew I couldn't remain in that village and either be an old maid, or pretend passion for a man and have to spend my life under his sweaty grunts.

'This bow came from a bunch of three heavy, old red yew trunks that grew close enough to the sacred grove that they'd been permitted to reach great age, yet not close enough so that cutting them was sacrilege. When I told Sollertiana I wanted a bow, he looked at me for a long time. I expected him to just say "go away, child, I've got work to do", like most of the adults did. Instead, he nodded, and paid me no more mind. A week later, he took me to this grove and pointed out the yew trunk. He cut it down with a handsaw, taking over an hour at the task. He sawed the log carefully in two, and kept the half that had grown on the inside of the clump. It had no twigs or pins or knots to it. He took this cutting high in the hills, where a stream ran clear, and he tied the plank securely in the water.

'It sat there for three months, until some of the sap had been washed from it. Then he put it in a damp, dark shed, keeping it in the rafters above the ground for over a year. I wonder if he thought I'd forget about the wood, but I never did. Every day, I visited what would be "my" bow, and thought I could see it change and dry. I even dreamed once I could see a bow's sleekness hiding there. Li
ttl
e by
little
, Sollertiana moved it to drier places. The last year before we shaped it spent in the open wind and air under the eaves of his workshop.

'All the time it was drying Sollertiana was working with it, tapering it bit by bit after he'd
gently
peeled off the drying bark. Then he used a succession of rasps, broken glass, pumice stone and then powder to shape it. As it took form, he trusted me more and more to do the work. Finally, I held what almost looked like a bow in my hands. Then came the most dangerous part. He cut the wood into two billets, and I almost died, sure he'd ruined all our work. But he cleverly shaped, fitted and then glued the pieces together, and
...
it
was
a bow!

'He waxed and varnished the wood, and fitted these tips I'd carved from the horn of a stag I'd stalked and killed in the heart of the winter with another bow. Then it was mine.' Corais regarded the bow lovingly. 'It was the first thing I'd really ever owned, besides a couple of dolls my mother had given me that had been hers as a child.

'Not long after that, Sollertiana died, and I left for Orissa. And that was when we met.'

Corais stroked the bow once more. 'As much as I let myself dream about the future,' she said so softly I had to crane to hear her, 'which is foolish for a woman who deals in blood, I've always wanted to have a small shop like Sollertiana's one day. Making bows and fitting arrows to them. I'd probably never be as good as Sollertiana, but then I don't need very much. That's one thing soldiering teaches you.'

'Whe
re would you live?' I said quietl
y, not wanting to break into her dream. 'In a city?'

'No. I've seen enough of cities, between Orissa and Lycanth. Everybody thinks I'm a great one for the bright lights and all, but really I'm still the barefoot child in a frock with pigshit between her toes. I'd go to the country. Not in that damned village I came from. All I hope for them is a good sacking by three or four sets of barbarians. But somewhere people aren't so quick to look down their damned noses and make judgments.'

She sighed. 'Maybe it'll be that village you told me about, the one your mother came from where the girl on the panther saved them and they learned better. Maybe I'd be a good reminder of what they'd better not forget.'

I'd forgotten I'd once told her where my name came from, and realized yet again how little any of us really knew anyone else, knew what was important to them, what struck the sounding board in their soul.

'Maybe you'd come to visit,' Corais
said. 'You and whoever you settl
e down with, after we've all got too creaky-boned to play soldier. Now that'd be something, wouldn't it? The grand Antero lady, who'll probably be a duchess or something by then, coming to this little midden. We'd drink the tavern dry and try to corrupt any virgins still around.'

The sea blurred to my eyes a little, and I don't know why. 'I think I'd like that,' I managed. 'I think I'd like that a lot.'

'Anyway,' Corais said, and her voice went flat, 'that was where my bow came from
...
and what I used to dream.'

I came back to reality. 'Used to?'

Corais didn't say anything at all, but slowly shook her head from side to side. Her hand crept up and touched the bit of The Sarzana's robe she still wore tied around her upper arm. There was a smile, but not of humour, touching her lips.

I might've asked on, but there came a commotion from the bow, and I heard shouts: 'I caught one! Gods, I drew him to me!'

It was Gamelan, and a smile nearly split his face in two. I swear I could see a flash of merriment in his unseeing eyes as we hurried to him. One of his companions held a great flapping fish, some kind of cod I thought, high in the air, then dropped it to the deck and killed it.

'I could feel him out there, Rali,' and I wondered how he knew it was me standing in front of him, 'and I
drew
him, I could
feel
him. He'd come up from the deeps to feed, and I kept telling him the bit of cloth flashing in front of him was the sweetest morsel he could ever dream of, and then he took it in a great rush and he was mine.' His smile disappeared. 'Rali
...
is it coming back?'

'Yes,' I said firmly, forcing conviction into my voice, and trying to feel it in my soul. 'Of course it is.'

That night, I went to Gamelan in his cabin, and told him I thought we were sailing too close to the enemy to be as blind as we were. Like him, I had no great faith in the Konyan wizards, and needed more information. He tugged at his beard for a moment, muttered something about the risk being too great, caught himself and apologized.

He said, 'I don't know if the spells will work. Sending your spirit abroad is not the simplest of magics, and one not even a journeyman Evocator is recommended to undertake. But these are parlous times, and who's to say any more what can or cannot be done? What we need is a creature for you to shape yourself after. I hope you understand that you really don't become that creature - unless one of Janos Greycloak's theories is true, that we are all different manifestations of the same force. That's an idea I've grappled with, but it still puzzles me.'

'Why not just send my spirit out? That was how the Archon came on us. I'd rather be invisible than in some disguise.'

'The problem, my dear friend, with sending you as a pure spirit, assuming the spell would take and hold, is you are extremely vulnerable in such a form. No, it's better to give you the similitude of reality. Perhaps it's safer because the fact you're
real
binds you more closely to our world, and gives you strength. I don't know for sure, but that's my theory. It's better to worry about some sharp-eyed sailor spotting you as, say, a dolphin and reaching for a harpoon than to be sniffed out by a wizard like The Sarzana or the Archon. If they have the proper magical nets set out, your spirit would shine as clearly to them as a rising moon. A master sage, and both of them are that, could then cast a striking spell in seconds and snap that thread between you and your body. Then your doom would be to wander the worlds as if you were a ghost, never finding rest.'

I shivered, remembering how my poor brother Halab had been tricked into testing his talents to become an Evocator, and had been trapped and destroyed by Raveline of the Far Kingdoms. There'd been no body for the rites, not ever, and Halab's ghost had been laid to rest finally only after Amalric slew Raveline in a demon-haunted ruin.

I turned my mind away. 'What kind of creature, Gamelan? An albatross?' 'Never.'

I grinned, pretending injury. 'And why not? Wouldn't I make a sleek great bird? I've always fancied them, floating high above the world and the seas, only landing for sleep and to feed.'

'You fancy them
...
and so does every other beginning thaumaturge,' he said. 'Why not pull a banner hooked t
o your tail-feathers that says I
am rali
the spy
? We could save the time and trouble casting any protective spells to accompany you.'

I saw what he meant. However, after some further talk, we developed a plan that appeared a bit more subtle, and his two companions and I went out to procure the necessary items for the conjuration. I told Xia my intent, and she began to protest, then stopped. She hastily nodded, then could hold firm no more, and darted below to our cabin, sobbing. I didn't follow, for there was nothing I could do. Sometimes it's harder to love a soldier than be one.

I told Corais and Polillo little of what I was intending, but put them in charge of the Guard. It wasn't necessary to say any more about lines of succession. They were soldiers, so they knew. Polillo scowled, and started to say something, then clamped her lips closed. I knew she had probably intended to warn me to be careful of sorcery, that art she feared more than a regiment of enemy soldiers.

It was past midnight when we had the necessary bits and pieces together, which Gamelan said was good. That'd put 'me', or whatever it was that would be riding the spell, where The Sarzana's forces were supposed to be near dawn.

Gamelan had his tent set up on the foredeck, and guards surrounding it to keep away the curious. I'll go into some detail on this spell, since it's a good way to show magic sometimes takes damned near as much trouble as doing the job with 'real' labour. Part One of our spell was simply getting what Gamelan called my spirit, although he added that wasn't quite what it was, not the elemental soul the word implied, to travel a week or so sail's distance in a few hours.

'There's another thing apprentices don't realize,' he said. 'Mutter some words, and
pish,
you're a fish. And you prompdy expire because you're out of water. Or else you get dumped overside, and then have to swim for two weeks before you reach your goal. Sometimes,' he said, taking an injured tone, 'it sets my teeth on edge when people think magic can do
anything.

'The first part of your journey will be made on the wind. You'll be nearly as vulnerable as if you were a pure spirit, but not quite. Once you close on The Sarzana's stronghold, then our cunning plan will take effect. Or I hope it's cunning, anyway.'

He ordered me to strip bare, and coat myself with a salve I'd made earlier under his instructions. It made my skin burn, and Gamelan said that was one of its intents - to make the spirit want to walk free from the body. It was made of certain herbs, including vervain, ginger and hyssop and oils from his kit, plus some leather from one of the ship's now empty magical wind bags that had been ground to powder, intended to carry the essence of the wind and the spell that snared it. There were other things ground into the oil, things intended to aid the second stage of my journey.