Chapter III 
Chapter III
Summer Solstice
The Village: Summer 65–67
I
Early on a gray morning, clouds rolled in billowing waves over the escarpment, over Tagmeth on its island fastness, on down the river valley. Above, snatches of mist tangled in overhanging trees so that boughs dripped and cobwebs netted pearls of moisture. Below, stone walls and cliff faces trickled as if with tears. It was cool in the pre-dawn light, but with a louring sense of the day’s heat to come.
Within the mirk of the keep, the kitchen was preparing for breakfast. Benches and tables had already been moved away from the walls and the bakers were pulling fresh bread from the ovens. Jame stepped out into the courtyard, straightening her jacket with one hand, chewing on the heel of a warm, crusty loaf held in the other.
Voices within called after her: “Safe journey, commandant, safe journey.”
She acknowledged with a wave.
Horse-master Cheva waited for her at the door to the subterranean stable, holding her saddle wrapped in its pad against the damp.
“You checked Bel?” Jame asked.
“Of course. She’s sound. This will be a nice, quiet expedition, correct?”
“Only up into the hills for the solstice.”
Cheva already knew that. It would be a long time, though, before Jame lived down her nightmare ride to Gothregor on Summer’s Day.
She took the saddle, crossed the wards, and entered the island’s lower meadow with Jorin, the blind ounce, padding catlike at her side. Horses grazed there, dark shapes in the pre-dawn twilight. The Whinno-hir Bel-tairi ghosted out of the gloom. Jame stroked her silken neck, unmuffled the saddle, and slung it over her back on top of its pad. Like Death’s-head, Bel accepted no bit. Those few who rode her only did so with her consent.
Jame was pleased to be getting away without hindrance. Jorin might cling to her, but maybe her people finally trusted her enough to let her go off on her own again. So she thought at least until, with a chink of tack, Rue emerged from the keep leading her new favorite mount, the ugly little post pony that she had named Stubben.
“Take me with you,” she said.
It began to drizzle.
“Rue, that might not be a good idea.”
“Why not? I followed you to Tai-tastigon.”
“Yes, you did. I remember how you spoke about the natives near Min-drear, though. You might not like what you find in the hills.”
Rue blinked rain out of her eyes. “I wondered about your past in Tai-tastigon. A thief? A tavern dancer? Then I met your friends, and they were good people. Before, I wondered what it would be like to be bound to you. Afterward . . . lady, what happened outside Gothregor? You really scared me, falling into the water like that. I thought you had dropped dead. And then . . . then you nearly bound me. I would have welcomed it. Why didn’t you?”
Rue had begun to cry without realizing it. Her tears melted into the rain.
Jame felt helpless. Tori wanted to do away with all bindings, forever. Had either of them adequately considered how the Kendar would feel about that? But Rue didn’t understand the danger in which she had stood.
“I nearly hurt you,” Jame said to her, as close to the truth as she could bear to get. “Worse than you can imagine. That terrified me.”
“All Kendar, always, want to be bound. What are we alone? What am I?”
“I wouldn’t have you be anything less than what you are, and I value that.”
Rue wiped her face. “You do? I . . . I thought that, somehow, I had let you down. I wasn’t worthy. What was I supposed to think? You’ve hardly spoken to me since then.”
Jame realized with chagrin that this was true. They hadn’t even discussed what had happened by the creek. Every time she had looked at the girl, she had felt paralyzed with guilt. Had the other Kendar sensed her withdrawal? Was that why Brier had ignored Rue in the apartment the other day?
“I didn’t want to take advantage of you,” she said. “It never occurred to me that you might feel rejected. I’m an idiot.”
Rue blinked. “It wasn’t my fault? I didn’t presume?”
“Not at all. After Marc, I would have chosen you, but when Tori heard what I had nearly done, he forbade me to bind any more Kendar. I agreed. Maybe no one should associate with me anymore. Maybe I’m becoming too dangerous.”
Rue sniffled and snorted. “You’ve always been that. What, did you think none of us noticed?”
Jame smiled. “Marc did. He told me so. We need to start over again, you and I. Yes, come with me if you want. You might find other good people in the hills.”
II
The desultory rain lasted into mid-morning, to Jorin’s disgust, before the sun burned off the clouds. By then, they were well above the cataracts, riding under a canopy of dripping leaves. It was becoming hot. Jame lashed her jacket behind her saddle. So did Rue behind her own. Her pony gathered himself as if to kick, but Bel snorted him into sullen acquiescence.
Behave.
As Jame had promised Cheva, they were taking it by easy stages, as much to save Jorin’s paws as Bel’s legs. The tough little post pony, on the other hand, could have trotted the whole way in half the time. It was some twenty miles to Kithorn by the River Road and another one or two to the Merikit village. At a sedate walk, they passed Kithorn in the late afternoon.
Through the gatehouse, up the road, the keep’s courtyard stood open. Within milled a crowd of men in costume, rehearsing for the next day’s rites. There went the Falling Man bedecked in feathers; there, the Eaten One in a shimmering fish-skin cloak. The Merikit’s Earth Wife squatted in a corner, oh, so much less impressive than Mother Ragga herself. Where was Chingetai, who usually represented the Burnt Man? To one side of the inner gate, talking to a stranger in a pale robe.
The latter glanced toward the gate as Jame and Rue passed. His face in the shadow of his hood shifted from an obsequious smile to a smirk then back again, as quick as a lizard’s flickering tongue, as he returned his attention to the Merikit chieftain.
Jame rode on, disquieted. She knew most of the villagers. That man wasn’t one of them, and yet she almost thought that she knew him.
Dusk had settled when they came within sight of the Merikit village on top of its hill. The Silver rushed past to the east, joined at the hill’s foot by a stream descending from the northwest. Above was an earthen bulwark topped with a wooden palisade. Fire light shone between the trunks of the latter. Voices rang out within. Here, beyond the bridge across the Silver, was the gate and guards who stepped forward to take their mounts. These were war maids, Jame noted. The next day’s rites were divided between male and female participants, the latter obviously in charge of the village proper tonight.
Inside, the wooden walk echoed under their boots as it wound back and forth between sunken lodges crowned with paddocks and gardens. Light showed at the bottom of steps. Smoke drifted up through many vent holes along with the savory smell of cooking.
Rue looked curiously about as they went. She had met the Merikit when they had visited Tagmeth after the yackcarn hunt the previous autumn but had never before seen them at home or, for that matter, as anything except interlopers.
Near the top of the hill, just beyond the thatched roof of the communal hall, was the subterranean lodge of the Merikit queen, Gran Cyd. Torches lit the open space before it. Gold and silver gleamed in swirling patterns around its doorposts and lintel.
“Hello?” Jame called, descending the steps.
Women clad in bright woolens bustled up to her, laughing, all talking at once:
“Favorite!” “Come back to us at last!” “Welcome, welcome!”
Jame led Rue up to the golden chair where Gran Cyd sat, a smile on her generous lips and in her smoky green eyes. Rue gawked at her. When they had last met, the Merikit queen had worn a rough doe-skin shift, amber beads, and boots soiled from the hunt. Moreover, she had intruded on an injured Jame who, to Rue’s mind, should better have been left alone to rest. Her dress now was of purple wool shot with gold thread, her long red hair ornately braided. She extended a round, white arm and a be-ringed hand in gracious greeting.
Jame returned her salute. “May I present Rue? You have met before but not, I think, been properly introduced.”
Gran Cyd smiled at the Kendar. “My beloved’s friends are always welcome here.”
Jame had spoken in Merikit, the queen in Kens.
Rue blushed.
Gran Cyd turned, gesturing behind her. “Here is our daughter, Tirresian.”
The child tottered forward, grinning. She had an unruly mop of hair the color of pale smoke and Jame’s silver-gray eyes. The intelligence in the latter was startling in one so young. Rue had seen her before too, but had not realized who or what she was.
“Daughter?”
Jame gave a lop-sided smile, as if herself not quite sure what to think of this. “It’s complicated. When I first met the Merikit, they granted me male status, or rather their chief Chingetai did. He was trying to save face at the time. He has since regretted it, I think. But the Merikit women decided to play along. They get to decide who the fathers of their children are, you see. On one particular night, all of them credited me. This child was conceived then, and six others.”
“Your . . . daughters?”
“So they say.”
“Does the Highlord know?”
“About his . . . er . . . nieces? I haven’t yet dared to tell him.”
Rue looked down. Tirresian had toddled up to her and was holding up pudgy arms. “Me, me, me . . . ”
Without thinking, Rue picked her up. Tirresian pulled her nose and chortled.
“This is a girl?”
“We aren’t sure. Her name means ‘between.’ Such children are considered lucky, but Chingetai sees her as unnatural. That’s a problem.”
Women ran in and out, bearing dishes.
“The main feast is tomorrow, after the ceremonies,” said Gran Cyd. “Tonight, the men fend for themselves.”
One of the dish-bearers giggled as she lay a plate of smoked salmon at her mistress’s feet. “Chingetai claims that only women cook. Not all men agree. Let them forage for themselves and see.”
“And sleep in the rough!” another added.
A girl wandered in, looking disconsolate.
“Prid!” said Jame, going to meet her. “Rue, this is my lodge-wyf.”
“Your . . . what?”
“Well, that came rather as a surprise to me too. Somehow, I found myself linked to her as her housebond. The wyves own the lodges, also all property, also the children. We housebonds are only there by permission. I did mention that I was considered male, didn’t I? Anyway, I have sleeping privileges in Prid’s lodge. Prid, what’s wrong?”
The girl blinked and brushed tawny hair out of her eyes.
“Hatch,” she said, stifling a sob. “He’s going to Kithorn with the others where he’s supposed to defend his title as the Earth Wife’s Favorite again, but I don’t want him to. I don’t! He belongs to me.”
Rue took a guess, based on hill tribes she had known at home. “The Favorite’s virility is shared by the village at large, isn’t it?”
Prid gulped. “So everyone says, but he is mine!”
Jame patted her shoulder. “There, there. Maybe this time it will be different.”
The girl smiled though tears. “So he says. So let it be.”
They settled at Gran Cyd’s feet and ate. While dishes were presented to the queen first, she waved them on to her guests. Jorin flopped down beside Jame and begged for treats by tapping the back of her hand with a paw. The lodge filled with chattering, laughing women.
“How is it between you and Chingetai?” Jame asked under cover of the clatter. “At the autumnal equinox, there was some tension.”
Gran Cyd was holding Tirresian in her arms. She popped a morsel of fish into the child’s mouth and wiped her own long, white fingers on a clean cloth. A cloud seemed to flit across her face.
“We quarrel,” she said in a low voice. “It does not help that a shaman from his home tribe has come to visit him. The Noyat, as you know, have different ideas about a woman’s place in life.”
“Would this be a thin fellow in a pale robe?”
“Yes. You have seen him?”
“At Kithorn, talking to your consort.”
The memory made Jame frown. The Noyat not only considered men superior to women, but they also lived to the north, on the western shore of the Silverhead, under the shadow of the Barrier and Perimal Darkling. Her experiences with them had not been pleasant.
I know that man, she thought. But where from, and how?
That night she and Rue slept in Prid’s lodge, or tried to. For one thing, the Merikit men caroused outside the village walls with leaping bonfires, shouts, and hearty mugs of fermented fish piss. Also, Prid cried most of the night until Jame left her couch to comfort her. Jorin came, grumbling, to Rue and settled beside her with a huff. Fondling his tufted ears, Rue listened to the low voices across the room in the dark. Eventually, she slept.
In the morning, Jame took her around the village to introduce her to its inhabitants. All welcomed them. Many shared tidbits from their cooking for the evening’s feast. Others teased Jame about her role as a former Favorite—too good a joke, apparently, to let go.
“Nice people,” Rue admitted, grudgingly. “Those I knew at the High Keep were less friendly.”
“Noyat?”
“A different tribe, but with some of the same customs. We clashed with them, now and then, especially when they raided our cattle. These are really the folk who slaughtered Kithorn’s garrison?”
“Their fathers or grandfathers did, anyway, but it all turned out to be a misunderstanding.”
Rue snorted. “Some mistake, an entire Knorth cadet branch destroyed. That was Marc’s home. Well, if he can forgive them . . . ”
“He did, when he met Gran Cyd at Tagmeth.”
“Oh,” said Rue, impressed.
The women waited for their men’s departure. This came in the late afternoon, to the beat of drums outside the palisade.
Boom, wah, wah, boom . . .
Was it imagination that made the pulse seem more irregular than usual? How much had the men drunk the night before? Was the Noyat shaman still whispering in Chingetai’s ear?
Women gathered around their queen’s lodge as daylight faded and the full moon rose. Their own music rose in a skirl of pipes and tapped drums under flaring torches. To the left a bonfire ignited. Before it sat a skeletal form.
“Who is that?” asked Rue, staring.
“Granny Sits-by-the-fire. She’s a story-teller, older even than the Earth Wife. Every hearth is her home.”
The woman’s grinning jaws opened on fires within, showing red between her few remaining teeth.
“Hah’rum! Heed me, my children, for I tell truth even if I must lie to do so. In a village much like this one, long, long ago, there was an old woman who lived in a lodge . . . ”
“Ah, that story,” said Prid, settling beside Jame, Rue, and Jorin as they sat on a neighboring lodge-top.
Gran Cyd held up a sack. Out of it she took rag dolls and threw them at random into the audience, who snatched them out of the air and hurried down into the open space to take their parts in the ceremony.
“She took a housebond older even than herself but, oh, so distinguished that she humored him.”
One of the women brandished an obviously male doll. With it in the crook of her arm, she strutted back and forth before her queen, nose in the air. Her friends bowed to her, but snickered behind their hands.
“. . . thinks he’s so special . . .” “. . . a mighty warrior, yes, but one who chooses his foes carefully . . .” “. . . if he were only better in bed . . .”
Granny smirked. “For, you see, he was not only old but . . . ”
Horns and drums sounded, approaching: Wah, wah, boomph . . .
“Are they coming back so soon?” asked Rue, glancing over her shoulder.
“Strange,” said Jame. “What could have happened?”
The gates opened. Torches came down the walkways, many of them sputtering. Chingetai emerged on the plaza.
“You have cursed us!” he bellowed.
Jorin flinched. He didn’t like loud voices.
Gran Cyd stood forth. “Housebond,” she said. “These are our rites. You intrude.”
“No, you do! How else to explain this?”
He reached behind him and jerked out a tattered figure. It was Hatch, the red clothes of the Favorite in rags, his face swelling with bruises. Prid stifled a shriek half of horror, half of joy.
“Oh, you gave up the Favorite’s position! Now at last we can be together!”
Chingetai snarled at her. “You welcome that? He is disgraced!”
“I would say, rather, that he is freed,” said Gran Cyd.
“You don’t understand. He won. The Challenger ceded. But Hatch wouldn’t accept his victory.”
“He just fell down!” Hatch protested. “You told him to, or that creature at your elbow did.”
The Noyat shaman stood there, close enough to rub against the chieftain’s side. At this attack, he drew back. In the shadow of his hood, his thin lips twitched as if with amusement to see such children’s play.
“I do what my honor dictates,” said Hatch. He looked torn between pride and tears. “And it was Chingetai who beat me, not my rival.”
The women’s drums still beat, soft but persistent, marking time.
Tap, tap, tap . . .
“What story are you telling?” demanded Chingetai. “What secrets are here? F’ah, women’s mysteries, dark and dirty.”
The audience murmured, the women in protest, some of the men in agreement. Others among the latter looked uneasy, including the Merikit shaman Tungit, smeared white with ash, hung with goat udders, who had come up on Chingetai’s other side.
“Housebond,” said Gran Cyd, drawing herself up nearly as tall as her consort. “You forget yourself.”
“No, I have remembered. Women in my mother’s village knew their place.”
“Then why did your mother take refuge here? We welcomed her, and you, and your little sister.”
“Your filthy rites killed my sister! ‘The fish is caught’—oh, I remember that well. Then you fed her to that monstrous catfish.”
“She was chosen as the Ice Maiden on the vernal equinox, but that was a long time ago. It was also an honor. That ‘monster’ is one of our gods, the Eaten One.”
“It is still a monster!”
For a moment he looked near tears, then anger swelled again and he stomped like a bull about to charge. The Burnt Man’s charcoal, smeared over his bare, tattooed skin, rose in a murky cloud. Those nearest him coughed. He saw the male doll and snatched it out of its bearer’s arms.
“You mock us! Tell me this poppet’s role. I will play it myself and then we will see who wins your foolish contest.”
Gran Cyd sighed. “Must we play to win or lose? These are sacred stories. Would you have welcomed me at Kithorn?”
He glowered. “I didn’t welcome you at Tagmeth, but there you were.”
She stifled a giggle. “Yes, and your britches caught fire. Mother Ragga is late again. Granny . . . ?”
The eldritch figure by the bonfire grinned and bobbed her scarecrow’s head in assent.
“Then listen, beloved. You are my housebond, a famous warrior, but in this story, you are old . . . ”
“Never too old.” He made as if to seize her but she slipped through his grasp.
“Hah’rum!” said Granny. “Old we say, old you are. And so jealous that your lodge-wyf must slip out to find one younger.”
“Never!”
The queen dodged him again. He turned, but dropped the doll and grabbed his back in pain as it locked on him. “Witch! What are you doing to me?”
Granny cackled. “Only what the poppet represents, as the story retells. Was it not her right to choose a second housebond, or a third, or a fourth? The lodge was only yours on sufferance, after all.”
Women tossed ragdolls back to Gran Cyd and retreated to the sidelines. She returned them to fresh, eager hands for the next round. Jame found herself clutching the male poppet. Prid laughed.
“Oh well,” said Jame to Rue, and went down into the arena.
“Dance with me,” said Gran Cyd, and began to sway to the beat of the drum. The pipes picked up the rhythm, adding flourishes that set flight to her eloquent hands. Jame followed her lead. It was like a wind-blowing kantir, weightless except when feet hit the ground.
Stomp, stomp, stomp . . .
The audience started to clap, men and women both. Chingetai lurched after them, grimacing, more shrunken and decrepit by the moment, raging against his state. Then a fourth dancer floundered into their midst in a swirl of multicolored skirts.
“Am I late?” panted the Earth Wife. “Wheee!”
The lodge door slammed shut.
“Housebond!” the queen cried, and beat on it. “Come out, or let me in!”
“I won’t,” came Chingetai’s muffled voice from inside. While he no doubt meant to sound masterful, petulance was more his note. “By right of male dominance, this lodge is mine, mine, mine!”
“Oh, what a child. Housebond!” She dropped her tone to a play-actor’s wheedle. “Beloved, let me in. Our neighbors will see how you disrespect me. They will laugh at me, and that I cannot bear.”
The other players converged, brandishing their dolls at her. “Boo, boo! What, you can’t manage one mere man?”
Mother Ragga stepped forward with a wink. “D’you hear them?” she called, dropping her voice to a good approximation of Gran Cyd’s own. “There is a well nearby. Open, housebond, or I will drown myself in it.”
Gran Cyd raised her eyebrows at this. There was indeed a public well to the west of the lodge’s front. The Earth Wife tiptoed up to it with elaborate caution, picked up the bucket, and dropped it in.
“Ohhhh!” she squealed, artfully dropping her voice to indicate rapid descent.
Splash.
Chingetai scrabbled at the door, threw it open, and stumbled out. He looked ancient, his wispy hair white, his flesh shriveled beneath a sagging screen of tattoos.
“No, no!” he cried.
Cyd went to him. Her white arms cradled his spare bones and the flesh on them began to return at her touch.
Tap, tap, TAP! went the drums, then fell silent.
Granny disappeared in a bloom of fire.
The ceremony was over.
“I was old,” Chingetai sobbed, hands over his face. “I was weak. What happened to me?”
Gran Cyd held him. “Age before your time, beloved. I am sorry, but you must learn: It is dangerous to mock women’s rites.”
He thrust her away and stumbled to his feet, wiping his streaming nose, smearing soot and snot. “Bitch! Oh, you will suffer for this, and you too.” His attention had turned to Jame, and to the poppet in her arms.
“Don’t!” she cried as he snatched for it. “What would you do, tear it apart? Think!”
She threw the doll to Gran Cyd, who thrust it along with the other dolls back into her sack, which Mother Ragga took in charge.
“Think,” the latter echoed in a rumble that made the dust at her feet shiver.
Chingetai looked wildly about, but the Noyat shaman had disappeared and many of his followers would not meet his eyes.
“I will be avenged!” he howled, and stormed off.
Gran Cyd sighed. “Always, these scenes. Come. Shall we feast?”
Most of the village withdrew to the subterranean banquet hall where the women produced great platters of food and ale mugs began to pass freely. Jame noted some men who looked less than happy, and others who didn’t appear at all, including Chingetai. His act of rebellion, apparently, hadn’t entirely fallen flat. There was unfinished business here.
Prid and Hatch sat to one side, quietly talking. Long before the end, they rose and left together.
“Lady,” said Jame to Gran Cyd, “may we beg the hospitality of your lodge tonight? I think, under Prid’s roof, that we would only be in the way.”
The queen smiled at her. “One thing, then, at least, has come right. I wish my granddaughter joy, and you welcome.”
III
Jame, Rue, and Jorin left the next morning, to a round of female good wishes and a few covert male glares. They rode south through a bright summer’s day with Jorin bouncing ahead after every butterfly that Jame saw.
“You were right,” said Rue abruptly. “I like your friends—some more than others, agreed. Gran Cyd is . . . remarkable, the women likewise. Tirresian, Prid, your other family, I like them too. Ancestors know what your brother will think, though. When d’you mean to tell him?”
“Ah. How d’you think he will take it?”
Rue considered, frowning. “I don’t know the Highlord well,” she said. “I only knew a few Highborn before you, and you aren’t exactly typical, are you?”
Jame laughed. “Hardly.”
“Well, then, your brother isn’t either. You both think more like Kendar until . . . well, until you don’t. You both have enemies, and those have to be considered too. Also, responsibilities to the rest of us. What do I know? The Highlord might be more upset if you don’t tell him than if he finds out on his own, but how likely is that?”
“Not very. Why should he ever go above Tagmeth, or certainly above Kithorn? About not having bound you, though . . . ”
Jame paused to think.
“I was afraid that I would rob you of your will. Now, I wonder if I could. You’re as stubborn as ever. Remember, though, I’m not used to servants. Just stop following me everywhere. It gets on my nerves.”
IV
They reached Tagmeth at dusk on the 67th of Summer. Forewarned, Brier greeted them at the gate.
“There’s an urgent message from your brother,” she said.
Jame ran up to her quarters. There it was, a scrap of parchment on her desk, screwed up in Torisen’s usual impatient style.
“Come to Gothregor,” it read. “Now.”