And it was all real. Daylily, who had seen Death’s realm, found herself oddly able to accept it, and her racing heart calmed a little. This countryside was known to her, deep in her heart of hearts. It was like when she was a little girl, and her grandmother had shown her a lovely portrait hanging in the long gallery of Baron Middlecrescent’s home.
“Do you know who that is, child?”
“No, Grandmother.”
“That was me as a young maid. Was I not beautiful then? I was a free-spirited creature, full of life, full of hope, full of passion. But alas!” and the old woman’s voice had become heavy as old sin. “They always break us in the end.”
Remembering, Daylily gazed upon the untamed landscape around her. “They haven’t broken us,” she whispered. “Not yet!”
Sun Eagle stopped suddenly, poised for either fight or flight. Daylily watched him test the air, and then he turned to her with a terrible smile.
“I knew it,” he said. “I knew we must have returned for a reason! After all my searching, the Land has called me home.” His eyes flashed with something Daylily could not understand. “It needs us.”
It needs me!
Sun Eagle took her hand again and led her on through the jungle. “Come, Crescent Woman. Walk cautiously and take care not to be seen. You will prove yourself.”
“Prove myself?” Daylily did not try to free her hand, though part of her wished to. She followed Sun Eagle with the trusting simplicity of a child. “What do you mean?”
“You will fight,” said Sun Eagle without loosening his hold or slackening his pace. “You will fight.”
The countryside grew steadily more tame. She saw signs of cultivation, of furrowed fields. Sun Eagle continued sniffing the air, and whatever he smelled excited him. Then Daylily caught a scent for herself, a strong odor of smoke.
“There is a village near here,” Sun Eagle said. “Greenwell, it was called in my time. It belonged to Eldest Panther Master. But he must be dead long ago.”
Daylily saw the warrior reach up and finger a small bead worn on a cord at his throat, painted blue and white with some figure she could not discern. She did not have a moment to wonder about this, however, for they emerged from the fringes of the jungle and looked out upon the village, just as Sun Eagle had expected.
Daylily knew now where the smell of smoke had come from, for she saw dozens of little fires burning in stone circles, one outside the door of nearly every hut. A squalid, stinking, feeble sort of village, she thought, but well peopled. There were villagers moving about daily tasks, children running on many errands, and old mothers grinding meal by their firesides. She saw men making repairs and herders driving flocks of geese and goats and pigs.
Following a path down from the village came a line of strong-armed women, clad in rough cloths and skins, trailing little ones in their wake.
“There,” said Sun Eagle, pointing to a rock-lined pool of roiling water, a deep, ever-moving well. “The well of Greenwell.” And then he grimaced. “I thought I smelled her. The rivers are gone. Anything may creep from the Wood Between into the Land now. Even her.”
Daylily’s stomach heaved. She could pick out no distinct smell beyond the woodsmoke. Otherwise, all was a noisome blend of unwashed bodies, goat dung, and stinking mud wattle drying in summer heat. “Who?” she asked, her voice a little faint.
“Mama Greenteeth,” Sun Eagle replied. “Look.”
The women approaching the well stopped within a few yards of it, setting down their waterskins and bowing, facedown. Then, one at a time, they drew near the water, which churned with bubbling freshness. Daylily watched as one woman took a flat wafer from her pouch and crumbled it into the water. The crumbs sank and disappeared. Only then did the woman fill her skin and return the way she had come, two small children in tow, back up the path to the village.
Daylily frowned. “Superstition,” she said with the cold superiority of one who is beyond such nonsense.
But Sun Eagle replied, “Not superstition. Ritual. They must pay the tithe.”
“Tithe? What tithe? To whom?”
“Watch.”
One by one, each of the women performed the same odd trick. Some of the cakes were bigger than others, and it seemed to Daylily that those who offered them only took water in proportion to her gift.
Then Sun Eagle said, “Ah! Look there.”
He pointed, and Daylily searched out what he indicated. A tall girl, not yet a woman, came down the path leading a toddling child by the hand. She could not be the child’s mother; a sister, perhaps. But she toted a skin for water over one shoulder and tugged the little one, who was fractious and resisting.
Suddenly the little one plunged a hand into the pouch at the girl’s side and pulled out a wafer cake such as Daylily had seen given to the well. Even as the sister cried out, the child stuffed half the cake into his mouth. The rest fell in crumbles about their feet.