CHAPTER II
Winter Solstice
Winter 65I
Four fantastic figures gamboled by torchlight in the snowy courtyard of ruined Kithorn.
One, short and stocky, wore a gaudy skirt and goat udders that slapped against his bare, sweating chest as he pirouetted about the square.
Another fluttered around him with black feathers sewn to every inch of his clothing, ruffled by the cold wind into cat’s-paw waves.
A third figure smeared all over in charcoal stalked them both on tiptoe with exaggerated caution.
Under their feet crawled the fourth, shrouded in the head-and-skin cape of a huge catfish.
The Burnt Man popped up in front of the Earth Wife (who shrieked) and shoved ”her” backward over the Eaten One’s scaly form while the Falling Man flapped in protest. Then they were all up again, panting smoky clouds, circling each other like carnival clowns.
Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.
Why are they playing the fool? wondered Jame from the snowy hollow outside the gatehouse where she crouched. Didn’t they know how dangerous it could be to mock the Four?
They weren’t drunk, she decided, watching their lurching, desperate sport. They were exhausted. It must be nearly dawn, the solstice night almost past. How long had they been cavorting, and for what audience?
Jame lowered herself in the depression and peered upward through the gatehouse. Something sat on the shattered tower of Kithorn, as if on a throne, something huge, defined against the moonless night sky only by the glowing fissures in his skin. Jame’s own skin crawled. The Burnt Man himself brooded over the shambling shamans below.
Well, whatever their game, she knew better than to disturb it.
She was about to push herself up to leave when a burnt, sizzling stick was thrust into the snow inches from her face. No, not a stick. A bone—more specifically the knobby end of a human humerus. Clumps of charred flesh clung to it near the shoulder, and to the half-skeletal body to which it was attached.
A blunt, blind head swung inches over her head as if questing. Fire had burned away its nose and sheared off its lips from yellow, snaggle teeth. The remaining flesh crackled and split as it moved, expelling waves of heat and a pyric stench. Other forms shuffled around the hollow in various stages of combustion.
The Burning Ones, thought Jame, trying not to breathe, holding very still. The Burnt Man’s hunting pack.
Their usual prey were kin-slayers. While they could neither see nor smell, they could track guilt.
Vant, she thought, and the ravaged head swung toward her.
“Huh!” it said, snorting out chunks of its own charred lungs.
The cadet’s death in the fire pit of Tentir still haunted her. As unpleasant as he had been, he hadn’t deserved such an end, nor should it interest the Burnt Man’s servants in her. Yes, Vant had been bone-kin, the grandson of her wretched uncle Greshan, but she hadn’t been there when he died. It wasn’t her fault . . . or was it? Vant would never have tackled her brother Torisen if he hadn’t thought that he was striking at her. She was the one whose very existence had driven him to such behavior, even though it was Tori whom he had nearly killed. For that matter, why had he been so clumsy? Rue had told her that it almost looked as if he had been pushed.
The Burning One cocked his head as if testing her thoughts. It doubted her innocence. She almost agreed.
Then a yelp in the square drew its attention. The creature swung about and shambled toward the gatehouse on the knobs of its truncated limbs, followed by the others.
Between their contorted, smoldering bodies, Jame saw that the shaman playing the Burnt Man had appropriated one of the torches that defined sacred space and had set it to the Earth Wife’s flaring skirt. Fire bloomed. The Earth Wife squealed and ran about the square trailing flames until the Falling Man tripped him. As he floundered on the ground, the Eaten One lumbered over on all fours and doused the flames with more watery vomit than seemed humanly possible.
Much more of this and none of them would survive.
Jame rose and backed away. When she was clear, she turned and ran.
Away from the torches, the night was very dark indeed, lit only by such stars as shone through a shifting overcast, and they were further dimmed by a gentle fall of snow. Shadows shifted from ink black to dusky blue, then back again. Faintly glimmering snow crunched and squeaked underfoot. Where was the damn village? Jame had counted on its lights to navigate, but not a candle illuminated the benighted landscape. She slipped and fell. The ground under her was unnaturally flat for hill country. No, not ground at all but rock-hard ice. She had strayed onto the frozen Silver. At least it would lead her upstream, so she followed it, if with some trepidation: the river was treacherous. Those who fell in seldom emerged nor could any boat sail on it for long.
River Snake, River Snake, sleep deep.I tread as softly as I can.
To her left, starlight shone briefly on snow-pillowed heights. Ah. The hill upon which the Merikit village was built.
Jame left the river and nearly fell into the pit that was the ruins of the maidens’ lodge. The previous Winter’s Eve, part of the yackcarn stampede had shattered its low roof and plunged into it, wreaking havoc. Apparently the Merikit were waiting for spring to begin repairs. However, that didn’t explain the sharp tang of pitch rising out of it.
Skirting the gaping cavity, Jame climbed. She knew she had reached the hilltop palisade when she ran into it nose first. Following its curve, she found the gate by touch. Inside, wooden walks echoed under her feet. Like the girls’ dwelling, most of the lodges were half sunken into the ground, marked only by long barrows of snow and smoke holes. Their entrances opened into the passageway under the boardwalk that connected the entire village.
Where was everyone?
Then soft voices reached her, and ahead she saw a large clot of shadows standing, their breath a halo around them. One turned.
“There you are at last,” it said in Merikit. “Hurry. Gran Cyd is waiting for you.”
Hands tugged at her sleeves, guiding her forward. She felt as much as saw that all were women, and here was their queen, recognizable by her regal height and by the faint glimmer of golden torques twisted around her wrists and neck.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said as they descended into Gran Cyd’s lodge. Without even starlight, one might as well have been stricken blind. “We started out before dawn, but I swear the colt lost his way more than once.”
“Huh.”
It could have been one of the Burning Ones passing judgment but softer, forgiving now that she had finally arrived.
“Stay there.”
Jame stopped. She could hear breathing all around her, from great, gusty snores to piping whistles, and she smelled rank fur. All breathed in unison, in and out, in and out. The rhythm of it tugged at her, catching her own breath. She swayed. It was a long time since her few snatched hours of dwar sleep the night before.
In and out, in and out . . .
A spark caught at a candle’s wick. Even such feeble light struck the eyes like a blow. Jame had the dazzled impression of Cyd’s strong, white arm encircling the flame and one of her dark red braids swinging perilously close to it.
They seemed to have descended into a cave, full of hibernating beasts. At her feet lay a pair of hedgehogs curled up together, whistling softly in their sleep. The ceiling was hung with stalactites and the crumpled forms of sleeping bats. To one side, a mountain of fur that, surely, was a cave bear snorted and briefly stirred. It didn’t greatly surprise Jame to see a familiar fireplace at the far side of the rocky chamber nor the untidy figure sprawled on its hearth, her toothless mouth loudly agape. The Earth Wife’s lodge turned up wherever it was needed and so did Mother Ragga, the Earth Wife herself.
Jame started toward the sleeper, picking her way, but Gran Cyd turned and stopped her with a gesture.
“She won’t wake until the dawn. Rouse her now and she might die.”
The earth, die?
“Who makes up these rules?” she had once asked Mother Ragga.
“They just are,” had come the implacable reply.
Something apparently governed even the Four, as haphazard as their actions seemed to be. Jame wondered what.
The candle flame danced. Cyd shielded it as a girl with long, tawny hair slipped down the stairs.
“They said that you had come!”
“Prid, the light.”
“Oh.” Prid shut the door quickly behind her.
“Why is everyone else standing in the dark?” asked Jame.
“Because it isn’t dawn yet, nor may it ever be.”
Jame considered this. It was still the solstice, the year’s longest night. That it fell during the dark of the moon helped her to understand. The Kencyrath went through something similar nine times a year, according to the lunar cycle—five nights with little or no light, made darker by the fear that the moon had been swallowed by the Shadows and would never return, heralding the end of their last sanctuary.
The Merikit girl shivered, hugging herself. “Suppose the sun never rises? Suppose we stay buried in the dark, in winter, forever?”
On this world, faith sometimes shaped reality. What if she was right? Winter forever . . .
Then Jame remembered something that the scrollsman Index had once told her. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you supposed to burn a log representing the Burnt Man to prevent that and to help the season turn? Index called it ‘burying winter’ or ‘burning the Burnt Man.’ ”
“We are supposed to, yes. You aren’t the only one who has kept us waiting.”
“Let me guess. The log is Chingetai’s responsibility.”
Once again, it seemed that the Merikit chief had thrown the rituals out of joint. The previous Summer’s Eve he had neglected his own borders in a bid to claim the entire Riverland. Jame had accidentally thwarted that by pocketing a Burnt Man’s bone. Then he had named her the Earth Wife’s Favorite and his own annual heir to try to save face. Despite that, he had attempted to cut her out of every ceremony since, often with calamitous results.
Mother Ragga found the whole situation funny; the Burnt Man, however, was not amused.
Think you can fool me? Not again. Never again.
Not that he was a friend—to anyone, as far as Jame could make out, except perhaps to the blind Arrin-ken known as the Dark Judge. Now there was a link between Rathillien and the Kencyrath that boded well for neither.
Meanwhile, the shamans were working themselves half to death to keep his smoldering attention diverted. How long could they last? Where in Perimal’s name was Chingetai?
Gran Cyd raised the candle, illuminating an expanse of furry sleepers.
“Gently, gently,” she said to her granddaughter, adding, to distract her, “One way or another, life goes on, yes, even into endless winter. Have you thought about what I said earlier? You are almost of an age to choose. Your mother was a master weaver, as the hangings in my lodge show. You loved working on the hand loom as a child. Now her lodge and great loom wait for you to become a woman.”
The girl tossed her head. “ ‘What want I with hearth or housebond? What is a lodge but an earthbound trap?’ ”
“Prid! I know that you watch the sacred mummeries even though they are forbidden to all womankind, but don’t quote them, especially not that one. Consider what happens in it.”
“Sorry, Gran, but you know that I only want to run free as a war maid.”
“But you don’t like to fight or to shed blood, even on the hunt. Moreover, ask your great-aunt Anku what she and the other so-called free women do day by day. Theirs is a job like any other, not an excuse never to grow up.”
Prid muttered something.
“What, child?”
“I said, grown-ups die.”
“So do we all, eventually; yes, like your mother.”
The door opened a crack.
“We see him!” someone hissed through it.
The animals stirred, then subsided. On the hearth the Earth Wife groaned and tossed.
Gran Cyd swept from the room with her candle, followed by Jame and Prid.
Outside, everyone was pointing uphill, toward the sparkle of torches that seemed to hover just above the tree line. The queen raised her light, a solitary beacon. One torch above waved in response. The others formed an inverted “V” that swayed back and forth. The clouds cleared. By starlight, Jame saw two lines of men tugging on thick ropes. Between them, a raw spire rose, dipped, and fell.
“Ah,” breathed the women.
“They’ve been a fortnight cutting and trimming that tree,” Prid whispered to Jame. “I hear that this year’s is three feet across and fifty feet long. Chingetai has made something special to make it go faster than usual.”
Upslope, the lines disintegrated and re-formed on either side of the tree trunk. Down the mountainside it came, bucking, gathering speed, to the sound of distant cheers.
“They’re riding it?” Jame asked.
“Yes! Isn’t it exciting?”
The word for it was stupid, Jame thought, but oddly stirring.
The log picked up speed. Flecks of light began to tumble off of it.
The women fell silent.
“Should it be coming straight toward the village?” Jame asked.
“No.” Gran Cyd peered uphill, shading her eyes from her candle’s light. “It looks as if they’ve lost the pilot rope to the skid.”
“And that’s not good.”
“Thirteen tons of lumber aimed straight down our throats? No.”
The erstwhile riders had grabbed the trailing lead ropes and were trying to slow the monstrous log’s descent, without success.
“Maybe the hill will turn it,” said Prid, beginning to sound nervous.
“You want to bet?” Jame stirred restlessly. It wasn’t in her nature to watch disasters unfold without lending a hand, yet what could she do?
“Damn,” she said, and took off at a run down through the village, calling for the rathorn colt as she went.
He answered her outside the gate, below the hill. Starlight shone on the cold white of his ivory, on his cresting mane and flowing tail. The ride north had been long and he was out of temper, not eager to be ridden again. Twin horns slashed at her, daring her to step into them. He wouldn’t hurt her on purpose, but accidents didn’t count. She lunged, caught the saddle horn, and pulled herself half onto his back. He took off at a gallop with her clinging to his side.
“You damn fool,” she hissed at him as she pulled herself upright. His ears flicked derisively and he bounded over a snowdrift, nearly dislodging her.
By now, the log was halfway down the mountain, a battering ram aimed straight for the front gate, with Merikit chasing it and Chingetai still grimly astride. It dipped and plowed up sheets of snow. As they came alongside, Jame saw that the butt was mounted on a metal skid with an attachment not unlike the prow of a boat but hinged to allow it to swing back and forth. Chingetai hadn’t lost the pilot rope after all, but neither could he lean out far enough to turn the log. That flaw apparently hadn’t occurred to him before.
“Throw it to me!” Jame shouted to him.
He snarled back at her through a mass of flying braids, right side for children sired, left for men killed. She would have to ask what a braided beard meant.
“Everything is under control. Go away!”
The colt would have liked nothing better. Flying snow hit him in the face, and the log yawed ominously. The stumps of lopped off branches glistened with an effusion of resin and perhaps with blood. How many hillmen had it crushed? Death’s-head squealed and bucked in protest. Jame scrambled back from his neck where he had tossed her.
“Throw it, now!”
The Merikit chief darted a chagrined glance at the rapidly approaching village.
“Here, dammit!”
Jame grabbed the rope as it whipped past, wrapped it around the saddle horn, and let Death’s-head plunge away to the left. Hooves skidded and the saddle girth groaned. It was like trying to shift the foundations of the world. The prow creaked over. It was turning, not much but hopefully enough. The hill loomed, then the ruins of the maidens’ lodge yawned before them. Jame cast off the rope. The log shot into the cavity headfirst and rammed into the far wall with an earth-shaking boom. Chingetai flew off and tumbled end over end into the adjacent ruins of the boys’ lodge.
Jame and the colt hurtled past. Now they were sliding on ice. The rathorn sat down, clearing a great swathe of snow with his rump. Jame fell off. Beneath her, something huge moved under the ice, dimly seen as giant scales sliding past. It bumped its frozen roof. Cracks radiated out under Jame’s hands. River Snake or Eaten One? Not waiting to find out, she scrambled to one shore, the colt to the other.
Before her was the log, jutting out of the pit but mostly in it. Again she smelled pitch. A moment later it ignited, wrapping the log in flames. Dazzled by the light, Jame thought she saw a gigantic form loom over it, over her.
“You,” it said, in a voice seared clean of all emotion except recognition.
Then it lowered itself limb by limb into the blazing trench, the Burnt Man reluctantly joining his effigy in the earth
The Burning Ones lined the far side of the pit, baying flame-mouthed after their master.
One stood among them, taller than they, silent. His gaze met Jame’s across the fiery abyss, and he smiled.
Vant.
They never found his body, Jame thought, trying to catch her breath.
He looked as she remembered him, except for the red light reflected in his eyes. Surely, though, he was dead. Well, so were his companions. But a Kencyr in such company? How could that be?
The Burnt Man and the Dark Judge.
The Earth Wife and her unlikely Favorite.
Rathillien and the Kencyrath.
It could happen, as it had before. Bonds were being forged, despite both. But Sweet Trinity . . . !
He raised his hands. The blunt, charred faces of the Burning Ones rose with the gesture, their cry cut short. All stared at her, crimson-eyed, as if taking note as they had been bidden. Then the fire flared and they were gone. With their lord in the ground, did they now follow a new master?
Voices called to her, making her start, and dark figures rushed out of the night to throw their arms around her. One was Prid, another Gran Cyd, and half a dozen other women besides.
“Well done,” said the queen, helping her to her feet. “We could do without our chief, but not without the father of our unborn children.”
Jame gazed in dismay at the assembled throng, who smiled back at her. Gran Cyd had promised that as the Earth Wife’s supposedly male Favorite, she would be credited with any babies conceived on Winter’s Eve, and here was the proof.
“Oh no,” she said. “Oh, Cyd, not you too.”