The Song of Andiene

CHAPTER 13



In the forest, winter steps softly when it comes and when it goes. Ilbran lived joyfully, and scarcely noticed when the cold time came. Late that year, his child was born, a lusty strong girl, dark of hair and fair of skin like her mother.

Ilbran wiped her clean and dry, and swaddled her in soft cloths, and held her in his arms. “When it is time for her first naming, I will name her Kare,” he said, drunk with love and pride, forgetting that it is unwise to name children before their time, even in idle words.

His lady, Malesa, smiled and said no word. Her daughter had been born easily. Though he had trembled in dread, she had not been afraid. In that way, as in so many other ways, she was wise beyond her years.

When the spring of the year came, the land bloomed and fed them richly, blaggorn and thornfruit aplenty; then summer came. It was as cruel in the forest as in any other place, but the cellar that sheltered Malesa and Ilbran was dug deep into the cool earth. They lived, and their child too. And then Ilbran welcomed the healing rain of autumn and almost forgot the past in the joy of the present, as he saw his child take her first unsteady steps. So he watched the seasons come and the seasons go.

It was winter now, near to the time when he would name his daughter. Three summer-years and three winter-years had gone by.

Ilbran thought of the passing time as he gleaned the thornfruit blossoms, his hands guarded well by the heavy gloves that saved his flesh from the tearing thorns. Though it was tedious work, it gained a great luxury for them. King’s wives and children did not go clothed in thornfruit silk as his wife and daughter did.

Where there’s no water, we must drink wine. Lanara did not grow in the forest. He had found another way; he had tried and tested and learned how to do it. His hands had grown nimbler as the years went by, far from the sea and the heavy fish-filled nets.

The thornfruit flowers bloomed after every rain, from summer’s end to the middle of spring. There was one day, almost one hour alone, that the fragile petals could be gathered, after the fruit was set, before the petals shattered to the ground. Then, he crushed their edges together on the rocks; he washed the fabric in the stream and stretched it to dry sheer and strong, making garments finer than any festival robes that he had seen. The labor of it was a pleasure. Time must be spent at something, and time passed slowly under the shadow of the trees.

Ilbran shook his head in amazement. He had spent almost seven years in this narrow land. At first he had fretted and wished to leave. He would have taken Malesa with him to far lands, and seen the wonder in her dark eyes as she saw things she had known only from traveler’s tales, the wide blaggorn plains, the many colored cities, the endless sea.

When he talked of those things, she smiled and said nothing. And presently, she lay in his arms and there was no more talking.

And so six years and more had passed. Ilbran gathered their food. He made thornfruit silk. He watched as his wife crushed the thornfruit to make wine. He stole honey from the fierce black bees. When he walked the forest paths now, he went without fear, but with no false security either, knowing that to be without shelter at night meant cruel and certain death.

So, when he walked the winding ways, he followed them for half a day, then turned back to safety. He had never found the safehold, the way out of the forest. On this warm winter afternoon, he asked himself again what he would do if he found it.

He knew a part of the answer. He would mark its threshold with his blood, the ritual that he had learned, then return and try once more to persuade his lady, his wife, to leave.

It would not be easy. Her roots were set deeply into the land. But what would I do if she would not go? We have a child, and she cannot live her life seeing no one but her father and mother, live out her life under the shadow of the trees.

Suddenly, the sunny clearing did not seem a fair garden, but a dungeon. He did not see the flowers, the wide-petaled thornfruit blossoms promising a rich crop, bittery and sweet-snow bright and beautiful, the rich tassels of blaggorn, food for a family of many more than three. He looked beyond the clearing to the forest, dark suffocating leagues of it.

The trap had closed on him seven years before, and its jaws had never opened.

At that, he had been luckier than some. Ilbran rose and walked back inside their home. The walls were of thick stone, cut from the earth by men not bound by the law. It was a welcoming place, stored well with all their needs for winter and summer. And there in the corner, in its silver-mounted scabbard, was the sword he had never used, all that was left to remember one man who had misjudged the ways of the forest, and had died for it.

No one had dared their road in seven years. None might chance it for another seven.

Malesa was as content as any grasskit in its burrow. As she had said, she knew the ways of the forest. She was there now, leading her daughter along the many-branched paths.

She had grown more silent with the years. Only once had she spoken freely—the day that he first met her. After that, all had been said, or so he thought sometimes. He wondered if his daughter would ever have learned to speak, alone with her mother. A child must hear before it can talk.

But he had talked enough for two, told her all the stories of the wide world, all that a child could bear to hear. And now she chattered to him as freely as any songbird in autumn or spring.

That was not enough. He felt an aching need to speak to some stranger, hear some news of the world that he had been born into. He had misjudged his own nature. He was more restless than he would ever have guessed he would be.

Outside, the air had the misty brightness of winter. The sun was warm, but it was warmth that was hard to trust. Ilbran looked at the golden lindel tree, the tallest one, that stood by the doorway. It held its leaves in winter and summer, so he could not judge from it. On the forest trees, tiny buds were springing, forcing the old leaves to the ground.

Ilbran heard a shout of joy behind him as his daughter saw him and came running along the forest path, her dark hair flying out behind her. With every step she took, the herbs she had gathered spilled from her basket. He stooped and kissed her, and smoothed back her tangled hair, trying to comb it with his fingers.

“Here, little one, doveling, hold still. You have carried half the forest back with you in your hair.”

Malesa came to him more slowly, stepping along the path that curved beside the lindel trees. She smiled and leaned against him, but said nothing. He watched his daughter go running back along the path, gathering up the plants she had scattered. Jealousy stabbed him, as always, though he tried to hold it back. Never had Malesa let him go with her into the forest, yet she gladly took her daughter, and taught her all she knew.

“You teach her the plant lore young,” was all he said.

“No younger than I, when I first learned.”

“So many, many years ago,” he said, hoping to win a smile from her with his teasing, for as he told her, and the mirrored water must have shown her, she looked as barely grown from childhood as when he first saw her.

He won no smile from her, though. A strange look, almost of fear, came into her eyes and she studied his face intently. Then she shrugged herself loose from his arm, and stepped by him into the house.

Ilbran looked after her, but did not let himself be troubled. She had given him much joy, but he would never understand her moods and ways. The thornfruit flowers were all gathered. He turned to another work, gleaning the blaggorn, stripping the kernels from their stems, the meager second crop that ripened through the cool winter. He did what she had taught him. For every basketful, you throw a handful on the ground for a sacrifice.

“A sacrifice to whom?” he had asked.

She had smiled and remained silent, her usual response.

But he did what she advised, for she was wise in the ways of the land and the forest. That much he knew.

Still, she had never given him a charm to deafen him to the howling of the forest creatures. That night he could not sleep. It troubled him as it had not for years. They had never hunted him again, once those first nights of terror were over. But their song of death was ever present. “You are a stranger in our land,” it seemed to say. “One false step and you will be ours.”

Perhaps his ear had grown keener because his daughter would be named tomorrow. What kind of a life could she have, to grow up with the sound of evil in her ears? He listened with love to Malesa’s breathing, deep and slow by his side. This life was all she had known; she was not restless in it. She had grown to womanhood gentle and good—that was great fortune, and a sign of her strength—but still, he wanted a better life for his daughter.

Through his mind ran the same thought as always, never spoken for fear of grieving Malesa. Maybe I have gotten another child—daughter or son, I do not care.

He wondered if she thought the same, ever. She had never said a word to show it, but then, she thought and felt many things that were never voiced. She had lived alone for too long, and had learned the ways of silence.

He made his plans, half-waking, half-sleeping. If we were to have another child, then we would need to stay here longer, through the summer’s heat, at least. More time for me to find a safehold. The roads cannot stay shut forever. Kare will be seven, taller and stronger. Unlucky to name a child before her proper time. Unwise to love her even, but who is made with a heart of stone, to hold by those rules?

So Ilbran drifted into sleep, and dreamed a dream of horror. He stood in the forest clearing and it was bare of plants, of birds, of all its rich life. Only the spiral of silver-trunked lindel trees remained, standing golden in a dusty wasteland. To his troubled mind, they seemed like the coils of a serpent tightening itself on the clearing where he stood. He walked toward them, and with every step he took, the dust and ashes rose in choking clouds.

At last he stood by the farthest tree, the one closest to the forest. He waited, though he did not know why. The silence lay heavy on the earth. Then the coil of trees shimmered and changed, and in their places were men, gray-faced, with the look of death about them. Each held a child by the hand, a child with a ragged hole in her breast. He looked down the long curving line. All the same, all cold, all dead.

The first one took a stiff step forward. Though his flesh was whole, his clothing hung in rotten rags. His shadowed eyes looked through Ilbran into the forest. His lips writhed for a moment, then he spoke.

“I was Conar, a soldier of Reji Taulb. I lived with your lady for six years and got a daughter. I died of bitter poison, my daughter died of cold steel. Our bones lie under the lindel tree.”

Ilbran tried to speak, to question him, to wake from this horror. His lips were numb; his blood and bones were cold; he was held by chains more strong than any in Nahil’s dungeons.

The next man stepped forward. “My name is Larys, a gatherer of blaggorn on the wide plain. I lived with her six years and got a daughter … ”

The toll went on and on. More than twice ten stepped forward and spoke. The same story, relentlessly repeated. “I died of bitter poison, then she of cold steel.” The men were not the same, pale-haired northerners and dark southerners. The children were alike, dark eyes and hair, girl-children, all of them. They did not speak.

The last man stepped forward, the greatest horror of them all. No tree had grown where he stood. He was tall, fair-haired, his face twisted in agony. Ilbran tried to close his eyes, stop his ears—useless.

“My name is Ilbran; you should know me. I die tomorrow, and my daughter too.”

Then the ghostly parade vanished, and Ilbran woke. The voices still echoed in his ears, driving all reason from him.

“My name is Raneh, minstrel in many lands. My name is Weyron, exile from the red mountains.”

And Malesa was gone from the house, and their child too. Terror seized him for a moment, then died down. The child had gone with her mother many times before. “I died of bitter poison, then she of cold steel,” they had said. If his dream had any truth in it, then while he lived, his child was safe.

What truth could there be in it? The cold touch of the dream was still on him, but in the warmth of daylight, it had begun to fade.

Dreams serve desires, he said to himself. I wished to leave; I wished it more than I knew, and so I dreamed a dream of horror, that would make me take my child and flee.



And it was treachery to think such things of his wife, gentle and good and loving. But for all his thoughts, he still heard their voices. “I die tomorrow and my daughter with me.”

So he paced up and down, and argued with himself, and at last, as he knew he must, he walked out to where the spiral of lindel trees began. He looked up at the branches, the wide-fingered golden leaves. As the trees curved outward from the cottage, they were less tall. As though they were younger? No! All plants were stunted as they neared the forest’s edge.

The ground was soft with rain and easy to dig. He loosened it with a fallen branch and scooped the earth out with his hands. When he thought of the ancient prohibition, “You will not delve in the earth,” his only reply was: “If this is blasphemy, so be it.”

As Ilbran dug deeper and wider and found nothing, joy grew within him. Some people dream true, from their childhood, but he was not one of those. Why should he be such a fool to suppose that his nightmares were real? Full of shame and joyful weariness, he dug carefully around a root and did not break it. A raven alighted, where he had dug and gone on. He whistled to it. They were wise enough to be tamed, and he had seen few in the forest.

He whistled again and tossed it a crumb from his pocket. It turned to give him a knowing look from its yellow eye, then bent its head and pecked at the damp earth. Something white glimmered at the side of the hole, where the earth had fallen.

The raven pecked again, and the soil fell away from hollow nose and ridged teeth. It pecked again and drew a worm out through the clogged eye socket.

The wet moldy stench of the earth choked Ilbran. He looked up at the tall golden tree. How could I have been so blind? Golden is the color of death. The forest was watchfully still. He could hear the roaring of blood inside his head.

The vultures, with their dirty yellow feathers, circle over the rocks that shape the city of the dead. The golderlings … He shuddered, as he remembered the soft caress of their fur, as they snuggled close to him on that cold night.

The golden trees coiled around the clearing, branches of one tree interlocking with those of the next one. Golden is the color of those who feed on death. He looked at the trees and knew they had grown tall on the flesh of men and children. He clawed the dirt back into the hole and stamped it down. Let the dead lie where they have lain.

There were many hours yet till his wife and daughter would return. Nothing to do, nothing to do but think and try to understand this world turned upside down. If she were one of the forest folk, why had she not killed him at once? What magic did she work, burying men in the ground? He knew of that only as a forbidden ritual, outlawed by the Laws of the Land. He thought of it with horror. A filthy thing, to rot underground away from the purifying sunlight.

He had been taught the law of the land well. “We will not sow; we will not plant; we will not set one stone above another. We will not delve into the earth, nor will we bury our dead in the earth. If we fail in this, let our children be born as strangers.”

He had never understood the meaning of that curse till now. His daughter—he had thought her gentle and sweet and wise beyond her years—like her mother. What could he expect of her, with half her bloodline born of dark corruption, and her birthright from him only mindless folly.

“Let our children be born as strangers.” He had said it countless times.

He could flee into the forest, alone. No, he would not! He had played the coward enough, in his life. The tangled threads were of his weaving. He would stay and try to unknot them, one way or another.

All that day he made plans and abandoned them. “Here I am. Here I will stay,” he had said. How many others had promised that, and kept their vow? Twenty-three lindel trees grew in the clearing.

He sat at the far end of the clearing, looking out into the forest. The sun lay low behind the trees. Malesa was beside him before he realized that she had returned. She had gone to the house, stepping silently, and changed her clothes. Though the evening was cool, she wore only a thin shift of thornfruit silk.

Her hair hung loose in spicy scented waves, shadowy black against her pale skin. “It is Festival night,” she said, explaining before he had time to ask a question. “Our child’s birthday is tomorrow.”

Her skin was soft; her voice was sweet. Her eyes sparkled with light and aliveness and invitation. One day earlier, he would have been filled with rapture. Now … he would have more gladly embraced a serpent. He turned his face aside, so she could not read his grief and fear.

“You look weary,” she said.

“I am very tired.” To his ears, his voice sounded hoarse and stilted, like the men of his dream, forcing their long-dead lips to shape human words.

“Come and drink a glass of wine with me.”

“I will … what of our little dove?”

“Asleep,” she said. “She walked long and far on the forest paths with me today. The thought of her naming excited her, and so she played hard, even when I rested. She sleeps soundly. I carried her home. That is why you did not hear us return.”

She had spoken more words in a minute than she would willingly have used in a whole day. Ilbran’s heart was filled with dread for his daughter, that such explanations were necessary, but he forced himself to walk slowly, to match his strides to his wife’s graceful steps.

In the outer room of their home, the child lay cuddled in a nest of furs. Ilbran bent over her. Her breathing was soft and regular; her skin was cool. Slowly, he walked after Malesa into the other room.

A night-crake and two grasskits lay on the table; she had had good luck with her snares. She poured out the wine into wooden cups, her back turned to him. “Here, my love, take it and drink,” she said. He did not try to read her eyes, for fear of what she would see in his.

“I thank you.” He took the cup and looked down into its depths. Thornfruit wine, flavored with bitter herbs, fragrant and sharp, no different from the first time that he had tasted it. “Here I am. Here I will stay,” he had vowed. All vows can be broken, but what is the price?

“See if our little one is well,” he said. “It is not like her to be so weary.”

For a moment, he saw the rare look of fear on Malesa’s face, then she smiled and went acquiescently, setting down her cup on the floor. As the leather flap of the door settled into place behind her, Ilbran seized her cup and changed it with his.

His wife’s pale skin was flushed and her eyes were bright, as she returned. She looked more childlike than ever. “She is well,” she said. “Only tired from long walking. We will name her tomorrow.”

Ilbran took up his cup that had been hers. It smelled the same, the heavy savory fragrance. He drained it to the dregs, sweet thick thornfruit wine. As thick as blood. His throat knotted, but he forced himself to swallow. Then Malesa smiled in joy, and took up her cup and drank the wine that she had brewed.

Ilbran felt no fear, but simple weariness. As he watched her, her face seemed to grow older, more tired, more pale.

“I will see how our little one is,” he said. She turned to watch him as he entered the other room, but made no move to stop him.

The child slept soundly—too soundly, he thought. When he shook her and picked her up out of her nest of furs, her head fell back limply in his arms. He listened to her breathing, easy and deep as before, but that did not calm his sudden terror.

He wanted to rush out to the other room, seize his wife, demand answers from her, but his frenzy was held in check by his fear. And so he walked out slowly, forcing himself to be silent if he could not speak calmly.

Malesa sat cross-legged on the floor as he had left her, her head drooping. She looked up as he entered, and blinked as if to clear her eyes. “Are you not weary, my love?” she asked.

“No. No,” he said.

“Does your head ache?” Her voice was almost pitiful in its bewilderment.

“No,” he said. He had fasted for a day; the wine did not help him to think clearly. Malesa tried to stand up, but cried out and crumpled to the floor. He carried her to their bed.

The fever rose fiercely in her. Though he held her in his arms, she did not know him. Her flesh felt as though it would scald his hands. She spoke of many men, and his heart was chilled to hear her say the names he had heard in his dream. Weyron, Larys, Ilberar, Maneron, Raneh. She remembered them all, but she did not grieve for them. So many of them, so long ago. She spoke of men living under the rule of kings dead for three hundred years.

“I waited too long,” she said at last. “He may have known. If I had lived three more lives, I could have spoken to the trees and they would have answered me.” A little later, she spoke again. “A life for a life, and you will not grow old. The gift must be given, and the price paid.” To whom she spoke, he did not know.

Then the heat in her body seemed to fail, for a brief time. The thin silk she wore was soaked with sweat. “Ilbran,” she said urgently. Her hand shook as it clawed at his wrist. “Get me sandray and helvuln, mix them in wine.”

He knew the names; they were healing herbs. He did not know if they would cure her, or merely ease her agony.

He knew nothing more than the names, and she had many jars of dried simples on her shelves. She had taught her daughter, but her daughter lay in a drugged sleep. She had taught him nothing, and now he was glad of it. He wiped her forehead with cool water, and waited by her side.

The heat in her body grew again, and her talk grew more and more wild. Screaming, she tried to fight off her enemies, warriors and minstrels and wanderers, all she had lived with, all who had loved her. Then the convulsions began, great racking ones. Her body bent backwards like a bow; her forearms twisted themselves until a bone snapped like a dry branch. Her screams tore at the air, and were answered by the baying of the forest creatures. Towards morning, she died.

Ilbran wrapped her body in the bedcovers, hiding her face. Surely she knew herbs that would give an easier death than this? He could not grieve for her death, or for his part in it, but he was sickened by grief for what she had never been.

His daughter still slept, but it had changed from a drugged sleep to a restful one. When he touched her, she opened her eyes and murmured something, and closed them again, her eyelashes lying long on her cheek, her face burrowed into the furs.

He went back to the other room and picked up the heavy burden of his wife’s body. An hour’s walk along the paths that led nowhere, there was a clearing with an outcropping of gray stone in the center, no safehold, but still a place set apart from the forest. He laid her on it, unwrapping the bedclothes from around her. The winter mist fell coldly on her upturned face.

He did not once look behind him as he returned home. He had never known her, Malesa of the forest, who had lived with twice twelve men, and slain them, all but one.