The Storyteller and Other Tales Read online

  “I’ll see you again.”

  “We’re going east.”

  “So might I, someday, after I’ve learnt all I can here in the north.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. I want to know how this story ends.”

  “Too long a road for you,” Moth said.

  “I could keep you company on it, for a time.”

  Mikki rested his heavy muzzle atop Ulfleif’s head a moment. “Do so, wolfling.” He laughed, which shook her to her very bones. “I expect we’ll be easy enough to find, wherever we wander. For now, go home, before your sister fears you’re eaten.”

  Ulfleif nodded and turned away, though she headed up the crag. From there, she thought she could watch them going, but mist crept from the creek to swallow them, Ulfhild the King’s Sword first, then the bear. Ulfleif struck a chord from the lyre and sang for them anyway.

  He-Redeems

  The three of them lay together on the mat, a single blanket of undyed wool over them. Both the young men had an arm around the girl, and she clung to the one she faced, muffling her sobs against his chest. The other leaned over her, whispering anxiously.

  “Don’t cry, Barley. Don’t. It’s not so bad as all that.”

  “It is, it is. It’ll be a girl, I know it, and they’ll kill her. I wish it’d never happened. I wish I’d never gone with you. It’s wicked. It’s wicked, and now I’m the one to be punished.”

  “Babies aren’t punishment,” said He-Redeems into her hair. “They’re Skarritha’s blessing.”

  “Some blessing,” muttered the other man, First-Son. “Not for slaves. Especially not when there’s too many girls in the weaving hall already. You ever seen a baby smothered, He-Redeems, and the mother just saying it’s the will of the god and letting them? You talk about having seen demons when you were with our mistress, but it’s things like that should give you nightmares. That weaver, Pomegranate-Rain, who had a girl, last month? She never said anything, never cried, just lay there and let the women do it. I was plastering in the next room and the door was open. I saw.”

  Barley gulped on a sort of shrieking moan, trying still to keep quiet. He-Redeems reached over her to pinch First-Son, all he could manage without sitting up and starting a real fight, which would get all three of them beaten.

  “Tell Housekeeper and she’ll give you something to lose it,” said First-Son. His voice sounded cold, but He-Redeems knew his friend, and felt how tightly he held Barley, how he never left off stroking her hair.

  “It’s our baby. I don’t want to get rid of it. I don’t want them to smother her.”

  “If it’s a boy you’ll probably get to keep it,” He-Redeems said. “Look at First-Son. He was born right here in the palace.”

  “So was I.” Barley gulped a sob. “But they’re not keeping girls now. And it’ll be a girl, I know it.”

  “You can’t know,” First-Son said flatly. “Look, it’d be better if you just confessed to Housekeeper.”

  “I won’t. It’s my baby.”

  “If it’s a boy, even if he’s sent out to one of the estates, you’d still have him till he was four or five, and he’d still be in the Great Lady’s service,” He-Redeems said. “Pray for a boy. A son for us, by Skarritha’s mercy.”

  “Pray,” said First-Son. It might have been agreement, but it sounded like disgust. “Priest’s boy.”

  He-Redeems ignored that.

  “His or mine?” he asked after a bit.

  “How should I know?” Barley sniffed and turned over on her back, felt around until she had each by a hand, pressed them over her hipbones and stomach only slightly mounded. Another sniff. “Maybe it’ll look like both of you. It could. It’s all of ours.”

  First-Son snorted. “Pray to prevent that, He-Redeems, if you’re going to pray. A runty highlander like you.”

  “With your squint.”

  Barley giggled weakly, pulled their hands up to her small, high breasts.

  She was the first to fall asleep, and First-Son after her. He-Redeems leaned over them to kiss one, then the other. It was good just to lie and listen to them breathing, good to know they were there, an odd sort of family, but family nonetheless.

  He-Redeems didn’t remember much from his childhood in the highland village of Rock-Temple, before he came to Korthan. What he did remember was loneliness.

  His full name was He-Redeems-His-Father. In the month before he was born, his father lay deathly ill. His mother had made a bargain with the god, that if her man lived, she would dedicate the coming baby to the god’s service. His father had recovered, and He-Redeems had from his birth been set aside for great and merciful Skarritha. There had been little love to spare in the household for a child already lost to them. When the time of the Ten-Year Gift came around, and the chosen children were sent to Korthan from all the provinces, He-Redeems was among them, a voluntary Gift-Child, which was rare. Most mothers wept and poured ashes in their hair, mourning the lost child as though he were already dead, despite the honour done them. The Gift-Children were given to be slaves of the god and his Divine Daughter. Some were sent back out to the provinces to work on the estates of the Daughter and of the temples. Others served in the temples. A blessed few were even elevated to the priesthood and to virtual freedom.

  Others were chosen in secret rites by the hand of the god himself, to be branded on the chest with the god’s sign of the eclipsed sun. They trained to become thonor, the Hounds of Skarritha, the elite soldiers who served the Divine Daughter and through them, the will of the god. The thonor were the bravest, the most loyal, the greatest warriors of Korthan. They hunted out heretics who denied the truth of Skarritha’s supreme will. They brought to justice the apostates, who tried to turn back to the malevolent old gods, the nearly-forgotten Nine. And they were in the van when Korthan went to war.

  Some of the Gift-Children died on the altars of the public temples, the holiest of sacrifices, to be a pledge to Skarritha of Korthan’s continued devotion. He-Redeems remembered the smell of blood and a beautiful woman, beautiful like great Skarritha must have been when he took human form to rule Korthan in the flesh. She was dressed all in gold, with a knife in her hand.

  The dedicated children did not cry, and the other children, those who were appointed to be temple-slaves, He-Redeems among them, did not cry. They stood in a cluster just inside the sanctuary where only priests and those belonging to the temple could enter, between the pillars that reached up greater than cedars. They knew the holiness of the place, the sanctity of the rite. They knew they were in the presence of the divine. Or maybe they just did not understand at all. They were very young.

  When the next Ten-Year Gift came around, He-Redeems was in disgrace for some misdemeanour and so he had no leave to attend the ceremonies in the temple. He had been down in the cellars moving great wine jars all that month of penitence and celebration; he had discovered then that he was weak, sinful and undeserving of Skarritha’s mercy, because in the pit of his stomach he was relieved he would not watch the chosen Gift-Children die.

  Mostly what He-Redeems remembered of his boyhood was sweeping the floor of the great temple in Korthan, day after day after day. It was a good life. There was plenty to eat and drink, he was in Skarritha’s holy place, night and day, and he was only beaten when he deserved it. He thanked the god, morning and evening, for choosing him for this service, and felt honoured and humbled by it. But when he was thirteen or maybe fourteen, just at the end of that second Gift-Year, he brought wine to the chief of the priests, and stayed to pour it. The holy Divine Daughter of Skarritha was with him.

  She was the most beautiful of women. How could she be otherwise, born the near-immortal daughter of a god? Her body was graceful, rounded in smooth curves, her lips full and soft, her skin like honey, and her eyes a darker, richer honey, the kind that leaves a harsh tan
g of spice on the tongue. The lustrous night-dark fall of her hair was caught up in a golden web with pearls at every golden knot. He-Redeems remembered her from the sacrifice he had seen as a child, and for a moment he smelled the reek of the bowl of blood at the altar’s base. His hands shook, fearing that his unworthiness to serve in the presence of such holiness was only too evident. He felt her eyes on him, felt she knew his every secret doubt and fear. But that night, on his mat in the slaves’ hall beneath the temple, he knew for certain that he should be damned forever, for the thoughts that came into his head when he closed his eyes. The Divine Daughter was not a woman for the impure dreams of a slave.

  The next day he had been sent up to the Divine Daughter’s palace, to serve there.

  That seemed a lifetime ago now. When the chamberlain took He-Redeems before the Divine Daughter she had asked him his name, as if he were someone who mattered, and had laughed, such a beautiful chiming laugh. She called the traces of the provincial highland accent that still burred his tongue “charming”, and praised his manners.

  It was not only manners she admired in him. He still remembered the rush of panic, so that his vision glazed red and his ears rang and his knees could barely hold him, when she first reached from her couch and trailed a warm, slow hand down his chest. He thought she mocked his blasphemous desire, and that he was about to die.

  “Lie down with me,” she had ordered, with her own hands unknotting the cord that belted his plain white gown, and he had done so, lain down, or fallen, drowning in fear and ecstasy and the taste of her perfumed skin.

  He-Redeems would never have thought himself handsome, being a short, beardless highlander, but at that time the Daughter had a dozen handsome youths among her slaves — her boys, she called them, who served her in bed as well as out of it — and there he was among them. He never felt worthy of such attention, and was deeply humbled by it. The Great Lady of all Korthan could choose any lord, any priest, any officer she wanted. She did not need to demean herself with slaves. But she was the Great Lady. Nothing she could do would demean her. It was not his place to ponder the meaning of her actions. He had been born to serve Skarritha, the One, the greatest of all gods that ever had been. Service to the god lay in utter obedience to his Daughter, and in that alone.

  After a few years the Divine Daughter had lost interest in her boys. She made a captive rebel her lover, a yellow-eyed monster who claimed one of the Nine outcast deities as his mother, and the monster got her with child before he fled the city. It ought to have been a terrible thing, but it was not. She was holy. She could not sin.

  That had been during the last dry season. Now it rained, and the Daughter, when she left her bed at all, moved like some overladen raft, slow and heavy.

  Barley would grow like that soon, and there would be no hiding it. Poor little Barley, barely done being a child herself. He-Redeems kissed her forehead. Maybe it would look like her, all sharp bones and quick movements like a little bird. No matter who had gotten it, it was their child, part of all three of them, and if it was a boy, maybe it would grow up knowing them and being loved, as he had never been. That was a good thought to go to sleep on.

  First-Son, lying with his arm around Barley, his hand pressed between her body and He-Redeems, was breathing deeply and quietly, in time with the girl. He-Redeems let their mingled breathing draw him away. All would be as Skarritha willed.

  It was some time later that a gong woke him. He-Redeems sat up, confused and blinking in sudden light with the rest, and asked, “What is it?”

  “Don’t know,” said Barley, rubbing the gummy traces of tears from her face and grabbing his hand. “Where’s First-Son?”

  “Must have gone out to walk.”

  First-Son did that when he had trouble sleeping, which happened quite often. He went out and walked around the courtyard, he said, to look at the stars and settle his mind. He never learned to accept things as they came, to trust Skarritha.

  Four men held torches high, standing around the chamberlain himself, who was beating the gong.

  “Up, up,” he called again, as he had been calling for some time.

  They got up, some grumbling, some muttering questions of one another, groping for gowns and, the higher house-slaves at least, sandals.

  “The Great Lady is brought to bed,” the chamberlain announced. “We will assemble in the shrine and pray for her safe delivery.”

  The whispering grew more animated, and they began shuffling out. He-Redeems hurried Barley through the door between himself and another man. She darted away down the dark corridor to join the women coming from the female slaves’ hall. They weren’t supposed to bring women into the male hall, but it was often overlooked. Not on a night like tonight, when their prayers were so important.

  The slaves’ household shrine was a big, bare room, with friezes of Skarritha’s life as ruler of Korthan running around the walls. There was no altar for sacrifices, only a statue of the god as woman, looking very like the Divine Daughter, painted in the rich colours of life and dressed in a gown woven of gold. Lamps burned all around her feet, their wavering light making the gown seem to shimmer, as if stirred by the god’s breathing.

  They prayed, men on the right hand, women on the left, and each in private words. Voices muttered, whispered, broke in sudden impassioned pleading for the Great Lady’s safety. She was the Daughter of Skarritha. The god could mean no harm to come to his dearest daughter in this most perilous of passages, but there were ill-willed sorcerers, there was all the hate-filled power of the Nine ... surely the prayers of all her household would be some measure of protection. They prayed, the chamberlain foremost among them at the idol’s very feet. When he left to return to his vigil in the Great Lady’s apartments, they, in twos and threes, finished their own prayers and went back to their respective halls.

  He-Redeems was one of the last slaves to leave. He couldn’t sleep, though. He couldn’t get the Divine Daughter out of his thoughts. His heart ached for her, not for the Great Lady his mistress but for the woman whose body he had once known, the woman suffering now as woman.

  First-Son would say, at least no-one’s going to press a rag over her baby’s face until it turns blue, even if it is a girl.

  He hated hearing First-Son’s voice like that, shaping his own thoughts. He couldn’t think anything that wicked himself. But surely even First-Son would not say anything of the sort, not at such a time.

  Eventually He-Redeems dressed again and slipped out to the courtyard, to join First-Son.

  The Daughter’s palace was a two-storeyed building, surrounding the four sides of a great courtyard. A gallery ran all the way around, patrolled day and night by soldiers, and the flat roof was likewise guarded. There were always sorcerers to fear, and other evil men who did the will of the outcast Nine. A few torches burned on the gallery and the shadows of soldiers moved, but down in the yard, especially under the gallery overhang, it was impossible to see. He-Redeems began to walk, checking each pillar for a huddled, drowsing man. If First-Son had still been walking and fretting, he would surely have heard the stirring within and come to investigate. But a complete circuit of the courtyard did not find First-Son, and He-Redeems squatted down, back against a pillar before the door nearest the slaves’ halls, to wait. First-Son could not have left the palace; the only gate was closed and he had no leave to be out, so he was here somewhere, sitting silent and sullen in the dark, perhaps, unreconciled to Barley’s state. He would have to come back eventually.

  How long he sat He-Redeems was not certain. He dozed off and woke, feeling cold and damp, to the faintly greying sky that promised the dawn. The rents in the clouds were wider and the rain had stopped. He still could not see to the far side of the courtyard, except for the red blur of torches and the blackness of a guard passing before them, but then he did see movement, someone walking quickly from pillar to pillar under the galle
ry. He thought he recognized First-Son, and stood. The figure ducked out of sight, and then, after a moment, emerged, to come more slowly forward.

  “Oh, it’s you,” said First-Son, when they were close enough to touch. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Thinking,” said He-Redeems. “Praying.”

  “You pray as much as a priest.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. But everyone was praying tonight. Our mistress is in labour.”

  “Oh,” was all First-Son said to that.

  “We missed you.”

  “Who did?” First-Son demanded sharply.

  “Barley and I. When we woke up. I couldn’t sleep after, so I came out to find you, and I couldn’t.”

  “I went up to the roofs to look at the sky.”

  “In the rain?”

  First-Son shrugged.

  “And did that help?”

  “No,” said First-Son harshly. “It did not.”

  Away in the shadows of the gallery, He-Redeems thought he saw another figure moving, as quickly and furtively as his friend had, pillar to pillar. For a moment he felt a qualm of fear, that First-Son had slipped from bed to seek out another woman, but a suddenly-flaring torch above flashed on metal, the hilt of a sword high under an arm. It was only a guard.

  “We’ll go to the shrine to pray again. You’ll feel better then.”

  He-Redeems tugged the man’s sleeve, found his hand and led him towards the door. He looked back when First-Son paused to dabble his feet clean in a puddle. The guard was gone; he didn’t see where.

  In the shrine, a cluster of dancers and musicians prayed on the women’s side. First-Son made his own prayers, lips moving silently, and in silence they made their way down the stairs and along the dark corridor to the hall. They found their mat and settled down, comfortably back to back. First-Son fell asleep right away, but now it was He-Redeems who could not sleep. He remembered First-Son stirring the puddle with first one foot, then the other, scuffing the sides of his feet against the uneven bricks as if to scrape off mud.