Patricia Briggs (4 page)

Melly lived up to her legendary charity by settling me in front of a vast bowl of her husband's turnips.

“Here, child, keep busy with these if you like—or leave them. But your gram always said busy hands are life's great healers.” Then she shooed everyone else out of the room, closing the door behind her as she left.

I took out the first turnip and concentrated on skinning the whole thing without breaking the peel. Apples were easy, but turnips required real skill. Melly's knife was sharp, and it slid easily over the turnips. It required all of my attention and no thought, so it worked very well to take my mind off of what had happened—and what I feared was going to happen.

I
t was evening before the elders met. Earthquakes, raiders, ill omens notwithstanding, this was planting season, and a farmer worked in the fields from daybreak to twilight.

They planted the lord's fields first; then the villagers could attend to their own lands. This high in the mountains the seasons were too short for dawdling. The elders divided the land, which was held in common by the village, among families for farming. After the lord's tithe, the harvest of each field belonged to the man who farmed it.

The land rights passed from father to son. If a man had no sons, he adopted, or passed them to his daughter's husband. Father's land would go back to the village. The elders might wait a season for me to remarry, but the village could not afford to let cropland lie needlessly fallow. Next spring the elders would give it to a new holder or split it among those who held land already. With the lord's tithe on the harvest and half the land fallow each year to keep it healthy, the village was sometimes hard put to feed itself through the long winter months. There was no emergency so great it could call the men from the planting.

My knife slipped, and the turnip skin, which was half-peeled, broke in two. I sucked on my right thumb where I'd nicked it as I examined the turnip to make sure I hadn't bled on it. My knuckles ached where I'd beaten them against the trapdoor, and my left thumb was bruised from the cauldron handle. My right thumb had been uninjured until I'd assaulted it with the knife.

I went on with my thoughts, distracting myself from what happened this morning even if it meant thinking about what I had to do tonight.

The elders could have met, despite planting. There were a number of elders who weren't farmers. Albrin bred and trained horses and dogs. Cantier, the oldest, still went out with the young men to fish, though his wife often nagged at him to retire. I didn't know how old he really was, but his eldest son was older than my father. Tolleck, the new village priest, was an elder by virtue of the office—though he helped in the fields, too, sometimes. Merewich, the headman who presided over all of them, had been a shepherd until his joints became too twisted for the work.

For some things they would have been enough, but Albrin must have decided the earthquake, the disappearance of the river, and the blocked pass to Auberg, the village's major market, would require the whole council.

Sitting in the kitchen, I wondered what I would say to them. What if the magic I'd felt had only been the gathering earthquake? As time passed, the experience I'd had in the cellar became more and more dreamlike. But there were the visions. Visions such as I had never had before, coming one on top of the other.

My knife shook until I had to stop cutting for fear of doing more damage to my already abused thumb. I swallowed hard and sought the numbness that had protected me so far—but it was dissolving like morning mist.

Whether I addressed the council or not, I had already condemned myself as a mage. Kith wouldn't say anything, but there had been other people who heard my confession. The only way any good would come of my death would be if I could convince them of what I knew to be true.

Magic flowed though these mountains now as it had long ago. The wildlings who had lived when magic was bound were long gone. But I knew in my bones that Fallbrook's valley wasn't safe anymore. Not that it mattered to Daryn or my parents. Not that it mattered to me much, either—but I had a penance to make.

Melly bustled in and took the knife from me. “Sorry, my dear, but it's dark now and the council will be convening.”

“I don't hear anyone,” I said.

It was true. There should have been the sounds of heavy tables scraping across the inn's public room, where councils were held. The inn walls weren't so thick as to hide voices, and the inn sounded empty.

Melly stepped behind me, took my hair out of its braids, and began to brush it. “They've decided to hold the council out in the inn yard. You were out there when it happened, so I suppose you know old Silvertooth is blocking the highway to Auberg. The farmers are all going to be here to see what the council suggests about marketing the excess crops, and the fishermen will be there, too. Several of the village houses fell when the earthquake hit, and any number more will need work. Thank the One God the inn survived with little damage—though I'll have to have the innkeeper look at the window in the back bedroom. Add the raiders, and everyone in the village will be in attendance. The public room isn't large enough to house half of them.”

She rounded the front of me, took a wet cloth from a bowl, and scrubbed my face. “There, now. You still look like a woman who's lost her family, but now no one will be staring at you to see if they can see tear tracks. No one's business how you mourn, but your own.”

I looked at Melly, but I
saw
Albrin's man talking to a group of villagers.

Unnatural, the way she stood there, talking to us as if her menfolk weren't stretched out in the wagon beside us.

“Aren?” Melly said.

I nodded my head, focusing on her face, which was closer to my own than I remembered it being.

“Stand up, now.”

I did. She walked around me, hands on hips.

“We'll leave the dress as it is,” she decided with a nod. “No harm reminding them what you've been through. The hair made you look wild, but with it braided again and tidy, you look about fifteen.”

I felt a hundred and fifteen. She patted my shoulder lightly, and led me to the door.

“Best if you go out on your own,” she said. “So they know it's your own idea.”

Melly was right, the inn yard was crowded. My desire to address this mob was less than nothing. If Kith hadn't appeared just then to take my elbow, I think I would have walked right back to the safety of the kitchen.

The crowd parted to let us through, more frightened by Kith than moved by courtesy. With his cold eyes and hard face, he seemed more a dangerous stranger than a boy born and bred in Fallbrook. Well enough. I was frightened, too—though not of Kith.

The elders were still shuffling back and forth around the table when Kith set me on the far end of the bench; I would be heard first. The man who'd been sitting there scooted farther down without objection. Not even the woman who lost her place at the other end of the bench complained.

Kith stood to my left, resting one foot on the end of the bench. He folded his right arm across his chest, gripped his opposite shoulder, and closed his eyes. I wished I was calm enough to do that.

When I glanced at the elders' bench, I saw that Koret watched me thoughtfully. He was a big man with a bushy beard that I could remember being black as tar, though it was mostly iron gray now. Rumor had it that he had been a pirate until he was captured and enslaved by one of the southern kings. He escaped and turned up in Fall brook, looking for work. He married the daughter of the man who hired him, becoming a farmer: a part of the community. He was a soft-spoken man with a gentle manner. The only sign of his past was the scars that encircled his wrists. Scars that might have come from slave manacles. Or not.

When the elders had sorted themselves out, and the people who could not fit on the bench had been lined up in some sort of order, Merewich took the acorn that lay in the center of the table and therefore spoke first.

“I sent Talon to see what damage the earthquake did to the houses. Talon, how did you find the village?”

“Good, sir,” answered the smith from somewhere behind me. “Only a few of the houses in town took very much damage, and most of those were larger, two-story buildings. The worst I saw will take only a few days' work to mend.”

“Good,” said Merewich. “I trust the people in the outlying areas know to come to me with the damage they took. After the planting, I'll organize work crews to repair the worst of it.”

He set the acorn down and Koret took it up. “Most of us saw the mountain fall. I trust that someone has ridden out to see if the King's Highway, by some miracle, is still clear?”

“I did,” answered Wandel Silver-Tongue, stepping out of the crowd. He ran his harp-calloused fingers over his face tiredly. “As soon as it fell. You'd have to see it to believe it. Not even one of the king's sorcerers will have an easy time clearing it.”

“Anyone know if Wedding Pass is clear?” asked Koret after Wandel sat down.

There was a silence, then Albrin, at the far end of the table, stood. “I'll check in the morning. If not, there is a secondary pass over The Groom. Even if the highway is clear through Wedding Pass, though, there is nothing to the north except Beresford. The King's Highway ends there, and the only way from Beresford to Auberg is through here. Wedding Pass isn't going to help us get goods to market. With Silvertooth blocking the road, Auberg is a twelve-day journey over the next best path. I know of a few trails that are quicker, but they're nothing you want to take a wagon over.”

He sat down, and Koret set the acorn back on the table as the elders exchanged grim looks. Twelve days rather than two was fearfully long, especially with raiders in the valley. I didn't doubt that everyone in the village knew about the raiders by now.

I stood up, waiting to be recognized. Cantier took up the acorn and nodded at me sourly. “Might as well hear all the bad news at once. Tell us what you can about the brigands, Aren.”

I bowed my head and took a deep breath. I'd had all the time I needed to think while I worked in Melly's kitchen.

“Today my parents, my sister, her unborn child, and my husband were killed.” It sounded stark, and my throat froze with the truth that I spoke. I had to swallow hard to continue. “Without them I have no close blood relatives still living.”

I had to stop. If I cried now, it would ruin my credibility because they'd attribute anything I said to grief or hysteria. Several of the elders relaxed, probably thinking I was going to petition for help. Unlike falling mountains, helping their own was well within their experience.

“My grandmother, Father's mother, died last spring. She spent her life working as a healer, doing it better than most.” I looked at them. “I know you've heard stories about her—that she relied on more than her knowledge of herbs and splints to heal you. It was true. My grandmother was as fey as my brother—who died rather than become what the lord's bloodmage had decreed.”

Albrin blanched, and several other elders stiffened to alert—this was not usual talk for so public a place. Koret rubbed his beard thoughtfully, and old Merewich just nodded. It was hard to shock Merewich.

“So am I,” I said starkly.

Before I could say more, Cantier set the acorn back on the table with a snap. Koret, foreign-raised, snatched it up before the fisherman had quite let go.

“I expect you did not ask to meet with us here to be burned at the stake or pressed. Go on, child.”

Tension and terror had held me for so long that I had gotten used to it. Licking dry lips, I said, “Gram said many of us no longer remember much about how and why this land was settled, and no one wants to know anything about magic.”

Casually, Kith stretched; when he settled, his shoulder rested against mine. I concentrated on that touch and Koret's impassive face, ignoring the reactions of anyone else.

“Long and long ago, a king inherited a land full of too many people. To the west were the lands of the Black Duke; to the south was the sea; to the north was bitter cold; and to the east were wild lands. In the wild lands lived the magic creatures: trolls, goblins, dragons, and ghouls—things not conducive to human habitation. Wildlings.” I relaxed a little as I settled into the familiar cadence of Gram's story.

“So this king called upon his mages, and they set spells upon the magic of the last of the wild lands. Here. The king's mages bound the magic of this land as well as they could, and after them successive generations of wizards tied the threads of magic so tightly that, at last, there were no more wild lands in the world at all, no more wildlings—for they cannot live without magic. This binding allowed human mages no access to the magic either, but they had another way of gaining power.”

“Bloodmagic,” said Koret needlessly.

I nodded. “Those of us who choose not to use that path have little power. And what they—
we
—have, we hide. Bloodmages are rightly feared—” I looked up, and as I spoke the next words, I met the eyes of each elder in turn—“and any mage can decide to take that path. You have no guarantees that I won't: none other than my word.”

I paused, staring at Kith's boot. “Gram's talent was healing, but mine is the
sight
. This morning I could tell something bad was going to happen—but I thought it would be something…well, something like a storm or a twisted ankle. So I didn't say anything to Daryn when he left for the fields.”

I paused, then said rawly, “He is now dead because of it. I won't make that mistake again.

“While I hid from the raiders, I
saw
”—I added emphasis so that no one there could have any doubt how I got my information—“the raiders kill Daryn, my father, and Caulem. Then I
saw
something else. A bloodmage tore the bindings of the land away, and one of the aftereffects of his spell was the earthquake that toppled Silvertooth.”