The Song of Andiene

CHAPTER 12



“The empty circle of waves, the bitter sea.” Syresh had heard the minstrels sing it. Easy to believe, as he gazed at the blank horizon, that there was no land to the west, no land to the east, that their raft would drive on and on over the never-ending sea.

But they reached the land at last. Syresh laughed with joy as he waded unsteadily ashore. He stooped to kiss the sand, and said: “If ever I set foot in a boat again, may I die the cruelest death that man can devise!”

Andiene looked around her with cool appraisal, judging the barren coast. “Where are we?”

“This is sea wasteland,” he said. “I think we are south of Oreja. If we strike inland, we should find a village soon.”

“A village … ” she said slowly.

Seeing her troubled look, he reassured her. “Do not worry, they will never have heard of you. And I have heard that in all these places their creed is to welcome strangers, to treat them as if they were their own kin.”

Her face brightened, and he knew that he had read her thoughts rightly. Strange that one who was strong and powerful, frighteningly so, could be so like a shy child. She had told him nothing of her life; he did not know how she had spent those seven years away from the paths of men. But he saw her power in little things, the lighting of fires, the current that had brought them to shore. He had never before seen the working of sorcery. In his heart, he gave credence to all the wild tales that he had ever heard.

Together they walked inland along a narrow trail that wound through the brush. There was no sign of a forest near, though lanara trees were scattered along the way. Instead, here and there, the brush thinned into patches of blaggorn stripped of its seeds, another sign that a village was near.

Andiene pulled fibers from the lanara bark, and braided them into a cord, as they walked along. When it was long and strong enough, she strung her ring on it, and knotted it around her neck, hiding it under her tunic. “I lost it once; I’ll not lose it again,” she said.

Syresh thought of the kingdom waiting for her, so many leagues to the north. She would need no ring to prove her royal birth. The very stones of the city would cry out to answer her claim. The bells would ring to answer her. But the gates were guarded well by Nahil’s men. “You need followers,” he said. “You should find warriors and counselors to defend you and advise you.”

“You have a sword,” she replied.

That silenced him. He had robbed the dead. His friend’s sword swung from his belt. It had been his first act done contrary to his will, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth. True, no one weighed down the dead with iron, but still, he had taken the sword as a murderer would steal from his victim. Liegeman and lord are equal in guilt, said the proverb. But in all the songs, to take such a vow of fealty was a thing of glory. Where will my honor lead me?

For the moment, it led him quietly after her. As they neared the village, the shouting was clear to be heard, the shrill sound of a woman screaming in anger, not in fear.

Syresh hung back and looked at Andiene questioningly. “Shall we turn aside? There will be other villages.”

“This one will serve me well enough. Come.” She had forgotten her timidity. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity.

The village was large, almost a town with its several flagstoned streets, but the noise led them easily to the central square, where a young woman stood tied to a post, glaring at the children who threw pebbles and clods of dirt at her, her eyes spitting fire at the townspeople who watched her and laughed. Her light-brown hair was braided and pinned around her head like a helmet. She wore the tunic and trousers of any traveler, man or woman.

The prisoner was fairer than the people in the square, fairer-skinned than Syresh or Andiene, of mixed southern blood, no doubt, pretty for her kind. A trickle of blood ran down her forehead. A lute and a traveler’s pack lay on the ground near her.

One of the townsmen crossed the square to speak to her. Whatever his words, he spoke them softly. Not so, her reply. Her discussion of his habits and character could have been heard five streets away.

The man’s face reddened like a slice of rare meat, and he scuttled away. Andiene listened wide-eyed. Syresh chuckled appreciatively and turned to a stocky plain-faced woman standing nearby. “What has she done?”

The woman eyed him up and down, and gave Andiene a suspicious stare. “A stranger like you. Came here and said she was a minstrel. Hit her lute strings, and croaked out a few tunes, and stole everything there was to steal. Stole my man’s trousers!” Her voice was filled with outrage. Then, seeing Syresh’s smirk, she added hastily, “Stole them off the drying tree. But after she took our headman’s gold chain—we caught her then. In her pack, she had something from every house in the town.”

“What will you do with her?” asked Andiene.

“She stays there all day, then a few cuts with the whip, and her hair tarred down to her head, and she’ll be chased on her way.” The woman’s thin lips tightened. “I thought it should have been branding—what they would do in the city—but my man was one of the fools that said ‘no’. Men are weak.”

The sentence seemed light to Syresh, too, but luckily it was none of his concern. The prisoner shouted an insult at the woman he was speaking to, a foul-mouthed comment on both her and her husband.

The woman gasped and tossed her head and stalked forward, the light of battle in her eyes. The girl spat at her, baring her teeth like a fighting courser.

“Look,” Syresh whispered. “See her claws? Those wide bracelets. Have you ever seen that?”

Andiene shook her head.

“When she closes her fist, the claws spring out between her fingers. They weld on each bracelet—so no one can take her weapons from her. Catlens, they call them, the wandering minstrels. The villagers must have bound her cunningly, so her claws cannot cut the ropes.” Then he was silent, watching and listening.

The village wife had no great command of words, but the minstrel had been stung by what she said. Insults flowed to her lips in return, describing the village woman’s appearance, health, habits, husband, children, parents, village, and race. Some of the things that she described were extremely unlikely to have ever taken place in a quiet country town. To judge by the woman’s face, full of bewilderment as well as outrage, she had never heard of some of the habits, customs, and attributes.

Syresh listened, and his grin grew still wider. She was nimbler with mind and tongue than any he had ever heard.

The village woman was overmatched. Tongue-tied and red with fury, she looked about her. No stones within reach. She snatched up the lute and contemptuously snapped its neck across her knee. Then she flung the shell onto the ground and stamped on it. Her foot went through it easily, but she had to snap the ribs, one by one, to free herself. Then, apparently satisfied, she limped back into the crowd.

That silenced the minstrel. Her head drooped. Andiene had been standing quietly at Syresh’s side. Now she stepped forward.

“Stay out of this,” Syresh said in sudden alarm. “Don’t meddle in their business.” He caught at her sleeve.

She shook his hand off impatiently. “Remember who is servant here,” she said as she walked forward, out into the open square.

Before any of the crowd could move, or say one word, she had drawn her dagger and cut the ropes that bound the minstrel. Then she turned and faced the people with a little smile, the secretive smile that Syresh had seen earlier.

The villagers murmured, and shuffled about, but to Syresh’s amazement, they did not challenge her. His hand was at his sword hilt, ready to defend her, but there was no need. She held the eyes of the crowd for a long quiet moment; then she turned, beckoned to Syresh, and walked away. The minstrel gave one grieving look to the fragments of her lute, quickly picked up her empty pack, and hurried after them. The crowd made no move to follow.

Syresh glanced back as they walked between the houses, following the lanes that led out of town. The minstrel-girl walked ten paces behind them, keeping her distance, but able to run and catch up to them if she wished to.

“Was that magic?” Syresh whispered.

Andiene’s smile was more human and youthful than it had been before. “No magic, or even the threat of it. I acted more confident than I felt. You with your sword and look of a mighty warrior were more of a threat.”

Syresh glanced at his sea-worn finery, still all that he had, and knew that she mocked him, though it was gentle mockery. And for all that she could say, he thought that there had been more magic in her facing-down of the townspeople than she was willing to acknowledge.

An hour before nightfall, they stopped and gathered blaggorn grain that grew by the roadside. It had not been harvested by the townspeople, for they had kept well to the law. “We will not gather the grain that lies within five paces of the roadside, for it belongs to the wayfarer.” In some places, they measured their paces with a short-legged child, but here they had left plenty for all who might pass.

Syresh killed a grasskit with a lucky stone-throw. He and Andiene stripped off a good meal’s worth of the flinty sea-coast blaggorn, though he did not know how they could cook it. Too hard to chew, and he could find no stones to grind it. The minstrel stood and watched them as if waiting to be invited closer. Syresh was careful not to glance in her direction. Finally, she stepped forward, grown weary of waiting.

“I have a kettle in my pack, if you would want to cook a stew?”

Syresh looked directly at her for the first time. “Was it one that none of the villagers could recognize as their own?”

She did not take offense. Indeed, her face lit up with amusement. “No, no, they took everything I had. What they did not recognize, they blamed on their own memories. As for the kettle, you almost tripped over it on the way out of town. Some careful housewife had set it outside to be scrubbed with sand.” She saw his look of annoyance, and laughed. “My name is Lenane.” Syresh looked at her and turned away.

“We would be glad to have you share our meal,” Andiene said, with courtesy enough for the two of them.

Lenane turned to her eagerly. “I can cook.”

“That is good,” Andiene said, though Syresh frowned.

Lenane took charge of the cooking with a sure hand, spreading the blaggorn kernels to parch in the bottom of the kettle, stirring them carefully. When they were done, she poured them out on a pile of clean leaves, and set the grasskit to stewing. While it simmered, she picked leaves and seeds from the wayside plants, huge handfuls of fleshy skyglass leaves, tiny torn-up bits of wise-man’s herb, the little triangular seed-pods of star’s line, all she could find. She talked as she worked, naming the herbs, not seeming to care if any listened or not. When the grasskit was done, she added her gleanings to the stew, and stirred the half-popped and expanded blaggorn into it.

It smelled more wonderful than anything Syresh could imagine, but he managed to say sourly, “I suppose you have serving bowls in your pack, too?”

Her grin of achievement widened. “Of course.” She delved in her pack, then brought out a nest of wooden bowls. “One, two, three, four … The fourth one would be for the unexpected guest.”

Syresh was wise enough to know that he was beaten. He ate in silence, the best meal he had ever tasted.

“There’s only one way to praise a cook, and you’ve said it already,” Lenane said as he turned the kettle upside down to pour the last drops of soup into his bowl. “But you two had the look of ones who had walked long on short rations. I have some thornfruit cakes, if you would like a sweet.” Her eyes danced with mischief, and she did not wait for questioning. The joke was too good to save. “Some good housewife had left them cooling on the windowsill.”

“I thank you for the gift,” Andiene said graciously.

Syresh looked at her in outrage. She might plan to be queen, but she had no wisdom to choose her companions, no more than a child not yet at her first Naming. “When I said that you should surround yourself with warriors and counselors, this was not what I meant,” he said in a biting undertone that easily reached the minstrel’s ears.

“Is that what gnaws on you?” Andiene’s voice was amused. “I keep my own counsel. And in any case, ‘a queen needs a cook as well as a counselor.’”

She turned to Lenane. “You are welcome to travel with us,” she said.

The minstrel spoke eagerly. “My name is Lenane, Sirenfil, Avellefile. Siren Rarsfil, Lenefile. Avelle Bairfil, Yvanelefile. Rars Silmononfil, Malesefile. Lene Mikelfil, Lenanefile. Bair Kallerfil, Mikelefile. Yvannele Desirinfil, Ynisefile … ”

Andiene looked puzzled. Syresh laughed and threw up his hands. “Enough, enough! We can tell you come from the forests well enough. No need to tire our ears with your bloodlines for twenty generations back. No one is meaning to marry you!”

Lenane turned red with humiliation. “Indeed, I had no thought of marriage or any other thing. But your lady saved me a whipping and maybe much more, and I wished to introduce myself with all honorableness. I did not think to be insulted by greensick courtiers in fool’s finery and beggar’s rags!”

“You call me names?” Syresh seized her wrist. “I am of noble blood, and I have served kings.”

“How many kings? You have the look of one who changes his coat with every summer!” That angered him more than she could have dreamed. His fingers tightened on her wrist. She tried to pull away, but his grip held fast.

“Let me go!” Her hands clenched into fists, and brazen claws sprang from between her fingers. With her free hand, she raked at his face. He ducked quickly enough to save his eye, but her claws sank deep into his cheek. Stunned, he reached his hand up to the side of his face and drew it away gloved in red.

“Enough!” said Andiene, and though she did not raise her voice, her tone had such fury and command in it that he turned to stare at her, and Lenane did likewise.

“Syresh, I told you before, you will serve me, or go back and drown yourself in the sea—or lose all claim to honor, if that would suit you more. I will choose what companions I want, whether it suits your notions of properness or not. The shore is less than one day’s journey back. Now is the time to decide.”

Syresh spoke painfully. “Forgive me, lady. I will serve you.”

“And you,” she said, turning to Lenane, “know that this man is my liegeman sworn, and I sworn to protect him. He had made no move to harm you. I’ll have no quarrels among my companions. I saved you from pain and shaming, at least. If you serve the same code, then make the same choice—either obey me or go back to the village, to take what punishment they will give you.”

Syresh saw the amazement and half-doubtful respect in the minstrel’s face. “I do not serve any code,” she began.

“Then choose some other path.”

Lenane shook her head. “Let me finish,” she said hastily. “I am not of noble blood, like your servant, to follow the nobleman’s code, but I will serve you, since you saved me. I’ll quarrel no more—if he does not touch me.”

Andiene nodded. “Good enough. There is sandray growing near. Pick some leaves and dress your comrade’s face with them.”

Syresh would have protested, but speech was too painful, and the look in Andiene’s eyes told him that his words would not be heard. He watched glumly as Lenane gathered sandray and crushed the hairy leaves to a juicy strong-smelling pulp.

She bound the blood-stopping and healing poultice on, using a whole leaf for a bandage, working competently, but not gently, and chuckling as she gummed it on with resin scraped from a lanara tree, another of its hundred uses.

“This will stick to your beard, what there is of it. Now if you do not speak or smile or eat for a sevennight, it might heal without a scar.”

“Enough of that,” said Andiene quickly. “They said you were a minstrel. Let us hear your singing.”

Syresh would have smiled if the bandage had allowed him. With two comrades at drawn swords, she may learn tact. It will serve her well when she regains her kingdom.

Lenane looked mournful. “What talent I have lies in my fingers, not my throat,” she said, “but I will sing you some songs you may not have heard. What sort of a song do you wish, my lady? One of magic, or bravery, or love?”

“Of magic, if you please,” said Andiene. Syresh was silent and grim.

“I will sing you a song of magic in the mountain forest,” Lenane said. “A song of love, too, in its way. This is the song of Carne’s Lover.”

She sang in a low husky speaking voice. What skill it had lay in the shaping of the phrases. Syresh had heard better singing in the king’s court, or in the mouth of ones singing for their meals in the market square, for that matter. He thought that she cooked better than she sang, but the pain of his torn face reminded him that such clever thoughts were better kept to himself.

Then the story gripped him as it told itself, hitching its way through the web of words. It was the story of Carne and her sister Yrase, and how Aren rode the forest and stayed with them through the burning summer. He courted them both, but he chose the oldest, jealous Yrase. Then gentle Carne grieved, and walked long hours in the forest, and soon her belly grew big with child. When it could not be hidden, she called Aren the father, though he denied it. Yrase did not believe him, nor did their mother, for there were no other men.

When Carne was near her time, her sister brewed deadly herbs and smiled as she gave them to Aren. Then she found Carne walking on the edge of the cliff and threw her over. And as she watched, one came from the forest who was furred and ran on all fours, but had a man’s face.

When he saw Carne lying dead, he howled so loud that the mountain rocks might have shattered. Then he took a knife, and cut a baby from her belly, a dark furred child, not of human kind. When he held it in his arms and breathed into its mouth, it cried and lived. And as he carried it back into the woods, he turned and called down curses on Carne’s kin, mother and sister both.

Andiene shivered. “Is that a true story?” she asked, as simply as a child.

“I do not know,” Lenane said. “In the north, the forest grows in the valleys between the mountains. He who sang it to me believed it. He said that he met wandering Yrase, and she told it to him. But I was raised in the forest—as your companion knows—” She gave Syresh a malicious look, then went on, speaking seriously. “I cannot believe that any common ground between us and them could be found. No room for love, no place for treaties, nothing but hate and war to the last man.”

“I have heard that the southerners have found room for treaties,” said Syresh, trying to hold his face motionless as he spoke. “That they have struck a filthy bargain.”

He had hoped to anger her, but her response was disappointing. “I have heard that too.” Her smile sparkled. “Do not worry, my kin left the southern woods long ago. I know no more of those things than you.” She was quiet for a moment. “Still, in the song, you must wonder. Because, whatever he was, he loved her.”

“Sing another song of magic,” said Andiene.

Lenane smiled with the compliment. “From your voices, you come from the Mareja. Are you loyal to the King?”

Andiene smiled grimly and did not answer. “No,” said Syresh. “If you wish to sing a song of sedition, it will please us well.”

“Then I will sing you a song of magic and sedition,” she said. “This is the song of Andiene, the last and least and greatest of the children of Ranes Reji.”

Her listeners were still, no movement, hardly even the sound of their breathing. She sang of that day of slaughter, of a king watching as his children and his children’s children were slain before his eyes. Then, the youngest spoke two short words, and the blood and bones of the soldiers were frozen. They watched helpless as she walked out untouched.

In the song that Lenane sang, the child walked out like the princess that she was, and the Festival crowds parted to let her pass, and so she went down to the sea-strand. She spoke one short word, and a silver boat came sailing in against the tide, no man at the helm, no oars, no sail. She knelt in it, and it sailed away.

Lenane was too intent on her song to glance at her listeners’ faces, or she would have seen looks to puzzle her greatly. She went on, singing of Nahil’s savagery, his fears, the burden of dread and death that lay on all the land. She ended with a promise: that one day Andiene would come and restore the true kingdom.

In the silence as she finished the night-birds called; the crickets sang. At last Syresh spoke, with no mockery in his tone. “You sang that well, my lady minstrel. Well enough to get you praise in a king’s palace—any king but one!”

“Oh, do not praise me. My fingers ache for the lute strings.”

“I praised you for the words, not the voice.”

She chuckled, and did not rise to the tempting bait. “Many in the Mareja believe those words, but it would be death there to sing or speak of it.”

“And you,” asked Andiene. “What do you believe?”

“I was in the city that day, but I saw nothing of it. Magic is stuff for the grizanes, the village herb-wives, the forest creatures,” Lenane said carelessly. “A gently-bred child of the royal house—what would she know of it?”

“Nothing,” said Andiene softly. “Nothing.”

They slept that night in an open field. The weather was clear, as always at the end of spring, giving the folk time to harvest blaggorn and dry the thornfruit. But Andiene seemed troubled, though she kept her plans to herself.

“What lies between us and the city of this land?” she asked Syresh, the next morning.

“Many leagues of plain and villages, or a few days travel north through the forest.”

“That choice is simple,” she said.

Lenane interrupted them. “Not as simple as you might think. Have either of you traveled through the forests?”

“I have,” said Syresh. “I went with Nahil’s men to fell the trees to build his flagship, this last spring.”

The minstrel looked amused. “How many of you did the villagers kill?”

“Only arrows shot from a distance and many threats and warnings. We came back unscathed.”

“All very well for you, but still it was not wise. The trees are not our friends, but they are not our enemies, either, if we treat them well. Your men came and went, but the trees’ anger will fall on those who must stay.”

“That may be as it may be,” said Syresh. It had been his first command, and he was proud of it. “I know the rules of traveling through the forest,” he said.

“Then we will go that way,” said Andiene. “I want to spend the summer in the palace of Oreja, not in some farmer’s cellar.”

Lenane looked doubtful, but she followed them as they turned and went north, their path running alongside the coastline instead of going far south and inland to circle the woods.

Whatever shadows had surrounded Andiene seemed to have lifted. She talked more, and smiled frequently. Syresh felt that he knew her better; he feared her less.

He kept a wary truce with Lenane. When they passed through the villages, he would turn and look at her. She followed them demurely, a few paces behind. He could not catch her in any wrongdoing, but it seemed to him that the pack she carried on her back grew heavier, bulkier as they traveled.

One night, she said to Andiene: “I could get you better clothes, and sandals to wear.”

“No,” said Andiene.

Syresh chuckled and thought of several sarcastic things to say, but reined in his tongue. His face was not yet healed.

“At least trim the cuffs, then,” Lenane said. Andiene stood obediently while the minstrel cut off the heavy cuffs at wrist and ankle. “No need to look more clownish than needful,” she said, with a sidelong glance at Syresh. “Besides, they could trip you. These clothes were made for one taller than you.”

“I know. I took them from a dead man.”

Lenane’s eyes widened. She looked at the other woman to see if there was some joke she had been too slow to catch. Then she was silent. For the rest of that evening, nothing that Syresh said could provoke her to sharp words.

But out on the open road, she talked constantly. She had a minstrel’s memory—Syresh was forced to admit that—and she spoke of everything but herself. Andiene drank in her talk of magic, love, history, and wars. She even listened greedily to the long genealogies stretching back more than nine centuries to the time when the people of the nine kingdoms, the Rejiseja, first entered the land.

Then there were no more villages as they traveled north, but the land was fair in the last weeks of spring. Though no fields of blaggorn or hedges of thornfruit grew on these plains so near the forest, flowers and shrubs bloomed and were covered with bees and butterflies. Sweet-snow and skyglass made bright mounds of blue and white at the side of their path.

Syresh did the hunting, and Andiene and Lenane laughed together at the sight of a soldier of the King reduced to throwing stones to try to kill grasskits for the evening meal.

Once or twice, when they could find no food, Andiene went off by herself and brought back grasskits. She would not let them see her hunting. Syresh suspected that she used some magic, too great a secret to be trusted to Lenane. He had not seen her use her powers since the minstrel joined them. They carried coals to start their fires. She had never given her name.

But Lenane asked no questions. They ate well, for there was blaggorn to be gleaned, though it grew far from the great fields that fed the cities. Here it grew one grassy plant at a time, stiffly holding up its stalks of dry-ripe black kernels that shattered easily from the thin stems. They gleaned it as they walked along, and Lenane gathered pot-herbs, seeming to know every kind of wayside weed that man could eat.

Travelers have other things to fear than starvation. In a week, they were at the edge of the forest.

The sight of it sobered Syresh’s spirits. Though that night they camped well out of its dark shadow, still he felt its presence.

“I did not want to go this way,” Lenane said once. “Especially not in company with one who has torn down the trees of the forest.” When she sang for them, she began with a riddle song.



Greenwood torn from living tree

Crieth out in witchery

Mother, they tear me!

Mother, they burn me!

Mother, hear my plea!



Paths are webbed with treachery

Souls are trapped within the tree

Mother, they tear me!

Mother, they burn me!

Mother, set me free!



Greenwood torn from living tree

Whispers to me warningly

Though they tear me …

Though they burn me …

Vengeance will come to me!



“Croak a merrier tune to us,” said Syresh, but no jester’s song would have lifted his spirits. In his dreams that night, a dragon loomed, old and cruel as the pitiless forest. It watched him, but did not speak. He felt the weight of its green glare upon him, even after he woke.

The forest lay dark before them; they reached its edge soon. “We have this map, for what it is worth,” Syresh said, as he looked doubtfully at the map that a villager had given him. Strings were knotted together like lace, and the knots were cunningly tied so they would not tighten. They slipped back and forth on the strings; if he was not careful, they would slide together in an unsolvable tangle.

Still, he spoke confidently. “We have enough food, dried meat and blaggorn, to keep us even if we do not find much to eat in the forest. But the safeholds are not always easy to find. We must find one by nightfall or risk our lives.” He glanced to Lenane for confirmation.

“We should camp here for a few days,” she said, not answering him directly.

“Why?”

“Have you not seen the stars, so clear, so bright? These forest creatures have more power then. Wait till the patterns break—then we may travel in safety.”

“What do you say, my lady?” Syresh asked.

Andiene regarded him. Her storm-gray eyes had the fierceness that he had seen when he first met her. “I told you before, I mean to spend the summer in the palace of Oreja. I will not sit here and do nothing while I wait for the omens to be right.”

Lenane looked from one to the other. “What is this talk of palaces?” she asked. Syresh suddenly saw himself and Andiene as they must seem to her. She knew nothing of them. She would see nothing but a pair of ragged wanderers.

“If I were wise, I would turn my steps to the south,” the minstrel said. “There is a city there, across the river, as good as any to the north.”

“If you are afraid, then you may leave us,” said Andiene.

“Did I say I was afraid? I have a feeling that if I live, there will be the bones of a fine song in your traveling.”

Syresh looked at Andiene. She was not afraid. When she looked at the forest, there was an eager light in her eyes. He felt that he knew what she was thinking—that her power would be enough to fight the forest creatures and win. For a moment, his fears betrayed him. Indeed, she is half-kin to them already.