Chapter Eleven
Caught in a beam of sunlight, a drop of water hung from the tip of a blade of grass, more beautiful than any diamond. Round, filled with shimmering life, the drop grew until its freedom was assured. It fell in a quivering sphere and broke over his forehead, cool and gently insistent.
Michael saw a glowing mist, golden above and blue to either side, surrounding a new droplet on the grass blade. He blinked and the mist resolved into sun half hidden by clouds. Tall green grass rose on all sides. For a moment, he felt no need to do anything but stare. Indeed, it seemed that all his life he had been nothing but a pair of eyes.
But soon he remembered his hands and they twitched. There was some reason he was reluctant to remember his body, and when he moved his legs the reason became clear: pain. His torso, as he lifted his head and looked down on it, was surprisingly clean. Rain had rinsed the mud from his jacket. He tried to sit up, then gritted his teeth and fell back.
Limb by limb, he took inventory until he was sure nothing was broken. Pulling back his jacket and shirt, he found a mass of welts on his side. His arms were heavily bruised, especially under his armpits, where he had been hoisted by the shadow. His teeth felt as if they were on fire. He vaguely remembered being slapped from the river, the hands rising from the water to pull him back...and the shadow with eyes like stars.
He stood, legs wobbly and vision spinning. The river lay about fifty yards beyond an embankment. He must have walked the distance; there was no sign in the unbent grass that the water had flowed so high as to carry him here. Or— the shadow had flung him clear.
Had he encountered another kind of Sidhe—an Umbral?
Shading his eyes against the cloudy glare, Michael looked from his elevated vantage across the plain. He stood on an island of grass in the yellow-green sea of mire. For as far as he could see there was nothing but the storm-soaked plain and the distant hills. No sign of Euterpe or Halftown; no sign of anyone.
It seemed he was the only living thing besides the grass.
Black curls of flood water still snaked from the low hills to the river. The river itself had returned to its channel, once more slow and sluggish.
Michael sat. River-borne, he must have come from upstream, and that was where he would return when he was strong enough.
His back prickled. He turned stiffly to look in the opposite direction. Less than a hundred yards beyond the grassy knoll, the Pact Lands came to an end. He had almost been washed onto the Blasted Plain.
The air beyond the border hung like smoke in a thick gray-orange haze. The river waters roiled muddy gray-blue right up to the demarcation, then flowed turgid yellow-green and sickly purple, like pus from a long-infected wound.
The Blasted Plain itself spread in an expanse of black, gray and brown boulders across glistening, powdery umber sand. Through the murky air, Michael could see tall curly twists of rock like broken strands of glue. The Blasted Plain was more than the sum of its parts, more living than dead, but nothing alive was visible: malevolent, made of things long buried, hard emotions long suppressed, mistakes covered over.
Death, despair, foulness and horror.
Michael shuddered. The shudder grew into tremors of delayed shock. He descended the knoll as quickly as his unstable legs allowed and began his march over the grassland, upriver to Euterpe and Halftown—or so he hoped—and away from the desolation of a war he could hardly imagine.
After a few minutes, he began to draw on reserves he had built up during the past weeks of training. He walked for the hour or so remaining until dark, then slept fitfully under the open night sky, and resumed at dawn.
He would not die. He would not starve.
He had survived; and in that simple fact, Michael found a dismaying, pleasurable pride.
Thick swaths of fog shouldered in over the plain, driven before the sun’s warmth. Michael followed the sandy river bank, crossed the shallow ox-bow where the river rippled and glittered over rocks and pebbles, and climbed another hill to get his bearings.
The roofs of Halftown clustered about two miles away like broken nut shells on a brown and gray cloth. He broke into a run along a trail of hard, clayey sand.
In Halftown, things seemed to be carrying on as usual. Several buildings had suffered rain and wind damage, and Lirg’s market courtyard had nearly been flattened, but the Breeds went about their business as if the commotion of the night before had been commonplace.
The hut of the Crane Women was unscathed. Nare squatted between two piles of animal bones, holding a long split stem of grass in her teeth and weaving reeds into a thick mat for sitting. Coom was nowhere to be seen. Spart, he discovered, had silently stolen close and walked behind him as he approached the mound.
Michael grinned at her over his shoulder. “Worried about me?” he asked. Spart’s eyes widened and she bared her black gums.
“It wasn’t you they were after, nor any human,” she said.
“I got that impression,” Michael said. He stopped before his house and lifted one foot to scrape mud from his shoe. “What happened?”
“There was a raid on the Breeds,” Spart said. She walked toward the door of the hut, her jaw working as if chewing cud. She did not seem glad to see him.
“I took care of myself,” he said defiantly, squaring his shoulders.
“You escaped Umbrals and Riverines.” She turned on the hard-packed dirt before the doorway. “They’re branches of the Sidhe who worship Adonna most fervently. Adonna needs Sidhe blood to do its work, but it cannot touch the pure Sidhe. So it comes for us. We’re adequate for its needs, and few care if a Breed is lost. You were lucky, man-child, not skilled.”
Michael looked between the two Crane Women, his face reddening. “I survived,” he said. “God damn it, I survived! I’m not just some piece of garbage everybody kicks around! I have my rights and I... I—” He was speechless. Spart shrugged and entered the hut. Nare cocked a glance at him, smiling around the stem in her teeth. She removed the stem and spat into the dirt.
“You survived, boy,” she said. “But you did not help anybody else. Three Breeds were taken last night, including Lirg of the line of Wis.”
Michael thought of the black face with freezing breath and eyes like stars. He shuddered violently, then straightened again and stuck out his jaw. “What will happen to them?”
“Adonna has its uses for them. We said that, boy. You don’t listen.”
Michael suddenly felt deathly exhausted and despondent. He had never lived in a place so cruel and unpredictable. The thought of continuing to struggle seemed to pull wool around his brain. He dropped loosely into a crouch before his hut and held his chin in his hands. “What about Eleuth?” he asked a few moments later.
“She was not taken,” Nare said. “She is only one-quarter Sidhe. Her uses would be limited.”
“Do they always attack on a night of Kaeli?”
“Not always. Often enough.”
“So why so you hold them out in the open?”
“We are still of the Sidhe,” Nare said. “We must keep the customs, even when it is dangerous.”
Michael pondered that for a time, and decided it didn’t really make sense. But he didn’t want to pursue that line of questioning. “I’m going to run now,” he said. Nare didn’t react. He wanted to get into Euterpe and talk with Savarin, find out what happened to the humans. At least with Savarin, he could ask questions and not be ridiculed.
He started off at a gentle lope, hoping to ease the exhaustion and funk from his body. As he approached Halftown again, he slowed. Glancing behind to see if he was watched, he took the path leading through the village.
Eleuth swept debris from the courtyard as Michael approached. She glanced at him without slowing her broom.
“I heard,” Michael said. “I’m sorry.”
“He serves the god now,” Eleuth said. Sad, her voice sounded even more beautiful.
“Are you going to work the market alone?”
“I’ll try,”
He opened his mouth, but decided he really had nothing to say. He bent down to pick up a piece of shingle.
“Throw it in the pile,” she said, poking the broom end at a neat stack of splintered boards.
“If I can help...”
She regarded him with a placid expression, though her cheeks were wet. He had never seen a Sidhe or a Breed cry before. Perhaps she could cry because she was three-quarters human.
“I mean, if there’s anything I can do...?” he said awkwardly.
She shook her head and continued sweeping. As he turned to walk away, she said, “Michael.”
“Yes?”
“I will take my rest later this day. May we visit then? I’ll be better.”
“Sure. I’ll be back by my place at—”
“No. Away from the Crane Women.”
That suited him. “I’ll meet you here.”
Though every muscle ached, it was the sort of pain he felt might be driven away by exercise. Once outside Halftown and on the road, he picked up his jogging pace as ache gave way to exertion.
Twice now his life had been threatened. Such things seemed to be expected in the Realm. The Crane Women, each time, had treated his horrible experiences as just another minor hurdle. Michael couldn’t accept that.
He wasn’t sure he could trust the Crane Women to help him to his goal; he knew he couldn’t trust Lamia. Even the humans had little altruistic interest in his fate; Savarin probably cared for Michael only so long as he gathered information. Only Eleuth accepted him for what he was, and desired his company.
He ran even faster.
Whatever else he thought about them, one thing was obvious: the Crane Women’s training was doing him no harm. He felt better, stronger; on Earth, he might have been laid up for a week after being roughed up and nearly drowning.
Euterpe had come through the storm with little damage. Some of the walls were water-stained, and one or two had been shored up after the dissolution of a few bricks, but little more. Obviously, what Nare had said was true: the Umbrals and Riverines had sought Breeds, not men.
Michael made his way through the streets, walking quickly to avoid curious onlookers. Even so, a gaggle of women dressed in muddy brown skirts and shawls, sitting on benches near the inn, tittered at him. He hunched his shoulders, shook his head to clear his thoughts and crossed a narrow, cheerless triangle adjacent to a large, low one-story ochre brick building.
No signs announced the fact, but Michael supposed this was the dreaded Yard. He circled the building and saw Savarin’s school on the opposite side, a square, low-roofed structure with a clumsy steeple rising over one corner. As he climbed the brick steps, he heard a high-pitched warbling wail from the depths of the Yard and the muffled slam of a heavy door.
Savarin stood near a wicker lectern in the empty single classroom, leafing through a small pile of gray papers. The teacher looked up, his eyes widening at the bruises on Michael’s face and the state of the boy’s clothing: muddy, grass-stained, shirt and jacket torn. “You look more like a savage every day,” Savarin said. “Was I right about last night—more than a storm?”
“A—what did you call it?—a raid.”
Savarin nodded, standing, circling Michael and touching his jacket solicitously. “Grazza, similar to the Arabic grazzu, you know. My God. I knew Halftown was hit—”
“Right in the middle of Kaeli,” Michael said. “They took three Breeds, including the market manager. How often do these raids happen?”
“Often enough to make me suspect Alyons cares little for the Breeds, and that the Pact does not fully apply to them. Yet they follow Sidhe customs—”
“He doesn’t give a damn for them,” Michael said, surprised by his anger. “I’d like to kill that son of a bitch.”
Savarin regarded Michael solemnly for a moment. “I hope your memory of the events was not affected.”
“I remember well enough,” Michael said. “The Crane Women even let me understand Cascar for a while.”
Savarin’s face betrayed almost comic envy. “Then tell,” he said. “Do tell all.”
For an hour and a half, Michael reconstructed the Kaeli and the events after. Savarin grabbed his sheaf of gray papers and scribbled notes frantically with a sharp stick of hardened charcoal. “Marvelous,” he said several times throughout. “Names I’ve never heard before, connections made! Marvelous!”
When Michael finished, Savarin said, “I suspect Adonna would have done with us all, Breed and human. But it acts very slowly. A god’s time must be different from ours. In its moment of hesitation, we might fit our entire history in the Realm...”
“What happens to the Breeds they took?”
“I’ve heard the Umbrals and Riverines share them in their temples. Work magic with them. I know little beyond that. Perhaps some are taken to the Irall.”
“What’s the Irall?”
“Adonna’s greatest temple, ruled by the Faer but accessible to all Sidhe. How many did you say were taken?”
“Three.”
“Then it might not be an even split. Perhaps the raiders had a tiff of their own, dividing the captives.”
Michael didn’t like the word, divide. It sounded entirely too accurate.
“As for Kaeli songs, I’ve heard some outlines before, but never so many details. A shame Lirg didn’t have time to tell more about Elme. I suspect some very important history is connected with her.” He put his notes on the lectern and sat beside Michael on the classroom’s front bench. “Questions are going around town. Why are you here, and why are you with the Crane Women and not your own kind? The townspeople resent you because they fear Alyon’ displeasure. Our position is precarious, and you introduce an element of uncertainty.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Michael asked.
“Perhaps.” Savarin smiled, then frowned as he inspected Michael’s bruises. “You should be resting, not up and about.”
“I’m fine. Tell me more about the Crane Women.” Come on, teacher, he thought. Teach. “Why are they so old...and how old are they?”
“I’m not positive,” Savarin said, “but I believe they date back to the time of Queen Elme herself. I’ve heard they’re Elme’s daughters, but that hasn’t been confirmed, and of course they’ll never tell. Sometimes the Sidhe send their priest initiates, or their most promising young warriors, across the Blasted Plain to the Crane Women for training.”
“Well, I’m no warrior and certainly no Sidhe. The Crane Women make me feel stupid. If the Sidhe hate humans and Breeds so much, why is Alyons supposed to be protecting us? Does he protect anybody, really?”
“Yes,” Savarin said, scratching his nose between two fingers. “Somewhat. Things here would be much worse without him, much as I hate saying it. But he loathes us. He makes sure we stay put, and between whatever protecting he does, he makes our lives miserable.”
“He wanted to kill me.”
“I’m sure you go contrary to everything he holds dear,” Savarin said, chuckling. “You are being treated in a most unusual way—like a Sidhe in many respects.”
Michael looked down at the hard-packed dirt floor. “I have a million questions, and nobody knows the answers, or will tell me if they do.”
“If the Crane Women haven’t told you by now,” Savarin said, “perhaps being ignorant is part of your training. Ignorance loves company.” He smiled. “I’ve someone I want you to meet...if you’re free, that is.”
“I’m free,” Michael said with a touch too much defiance.