Into the Raging Mountains Page 2

  “Top of the eventide to you!” she cried.

  “And the rest of the nightfall to you as well,” came the reply.

  “For you, brave, strong Samton.” She reached over to the gray beast and offered a carrot, which was gladly accepted.

  Kind Rethendrel spoke, “Would that harvest had been better for the land of Onnadir as well. Happily, their seasonal misfortune allows me to make a greater profit on the little grain I have to offer. These bags of beans will be three times the usual price for at least the next sunsleep. I have sent my brothers and their loads to our neighbor’s capital to sell. Hopefully they will bring enough money to build onto our household again for the arrival of Gretsel’s little one.”

  Alizarin nodded, listening to the affairs of another. “Will there be any to help her bring forth?”

  “Ahh, yes. There is Urrdsa the nurserwife and my darlin’ Theress. We still have almost a mooncycle before the day of comeforth arrives and so must bustle about to be ready. I will need several days worth of your good breads when that time is upon us.”

  “You know with surety, Rethendrel that I will gladly provide sustenance for your home both before and after labor. You have always been honest with me and I know that I am blessed because of your constant assistance.”

  Rethendrel nodded. “Well, Samton and I must part with you then at this corner. May you find your home safe and all there blessed.” He waved happily in farewell.

  The green cart turned aside and the merchant went rumbling out of sight. Alizarin thought of her little shop, ready for the next rising sun, of her small cottage, and of the steadiness of the day, and fell to musing. Looking at her feet, singing slowly under her breath, she walked on.

  Shadows fell, blending into a blanket of coolness. Turning south outside of town, the well-worn pathway led off toward the newly cleared forest, no longer a dark, moist presence for her daily walk. Thankful for the sturdy shoes and warmth of her shawl, Alizarin looked up and found that she was almost home. She was physically tired each day’s end; it was the numbness of fulfilling and demanding work that she needed. Besides, in her heart she was content only when the bakery shelves were full and warm, stacked high with fresh wares.

  As she walked to the sturdy door, her ears strained to hear her mother’s voice welcoming her back. Only the movement of critters in the treetops, birds settling into warmed nests greeted her return. The unanswerable sorrow that consumed her threatened to rise as a wave and drown her broken heart. A sadness that knew no depth engulfed her as she reached for the doorhandle. Solitude would be her only companion and silence her only greeting.

  Entering into the two-room house, with simple care she closed the door, securing it. Placing her muslin bags of bread on the scarred and solid pine table, Alizarin bowed her head for a moment. Mother had always been there: to greet her, to talk to, to walk with, to teach her, to counsel. She couldn’t remember a day without her mother’s vibrant sungreeting and laughter filling the cottage.

  Oddly, one nightfall two cycles ago, after the fullness of harvest, Alizarin had come home after closing the shop late and found their shared home empty. Frantic, she had searched the house, the grounds and the papers. With chagrin, she had realized that her mother’s things were gone as well. Not even a note was left on the sturdy pine table.

  After two days of waiting anxiously, Alizarin had decided for sanity’s sake that her mother was gone on a minor personal errand. Having convinced herself of that make-believe excuse, on the third day she went to the Bakers’ Circle and opened the shop as they had always done, alone instead of together. Still, the same tasks needed doing. It was something to occupy her time, and every once in a while, it nudged a sweet memory.

  Every day she worked and pounded and laughed in the marketplace. Each nightfall she came home thinking that Trellista might call out to her from the depths of the cottage. Hope lasted each day until she opened the empty house in the darkening forest. Alizarin was beginning to forget the laughter in her mother’s eyes.

  Silence had greeted her again this eventide. She gathered the knives from the drawer and spread cool, pale-yellow butter on cut slices of goldenbread. Sitting on the stool, she put her elbows on the table and considered her life. Quiet and stable, simple and sure, she saw clearly that her lot would be the same every day until she died in her sleep alone and forgotten.

  Is it enough? Do I want more? Did she dream big dreams of travels and important things? No, she realized, no. She was content with the pattern of her life and that was going to have to suffice.

  Alizarin was started from her reverie by a plaintive cry from just outside her door. Jolted out of her introversion, the tired girl half-rose, hitting her knee on the underside of the table in her haste. Grabbing the dinner knife and a cloth, she hesitantly opened the latch. She swung the door on its hinges outward into the unrelenting pitch of nightfall.

  Just a few lengths from the doorway, where the firelight reflected dimly, she could just make out a huddled form wrapped in gray fabric tightly curled into itself, vaguely human. Her eyes could not focus from exhaustion. Disheveled gray hair peeked from the edge of the cloak.

  Surely, it is no one I know? Guilt washed over her at the smallness of the thought.

  Then, as the wounded sound grew, the injured thing turned to her. She looked in those eyes and suddenly knew their suffering. She recognized the pain and saw her mother’s eyes looking back at her. Her own eyes wide with astonishment, Alizarin met her mother’s trembling gaze, slitted in deep pain.

  “Mother!” she cried out, rushing to the huddled figure.

  After waiting so long, hoping so much, Mother has returned! Trellista was finally home! Thundering in her ears, her pulse quickened with joy. Finally, the separation was over. Finally, Alizarin’s heart was whole again!

  Her mother’s hands reached toward her shakily, grabbing at her shoulder and then lost their grip. Alizarin watched as if in someone else’s body as the hand fell slowly down her arm and was still. Uncertain, she looked at the dearly-loved, oft-missed face and saw the life ebbing away. Panic then struck hard against her loudly beating heart.

  With a sharp moan, the desperate woman gathered her mother’s frail body in her arms. Her burden weighed less than nothing, frail from loss of blood and starvation. Without much resistance at all, the daughter-turned-rescuer dragged the wounded prodigal into the warmth of their front room. It was still difficult to lift her limp form completely, so Alizarin half-pulled and half-carried the supine body to the brown-and-yellow braided rug by the firesplace.

  Her forehead sweat dripped into her eyes, rivulets that followed the pain and panic down to the creaking wooden planks. Helpless against the unknown, Alizarin struggled to comfort her mother’s agony. Competently and carefully, she opened the gray cloak and to her startled dismay, saw three gaping wounds, running deep in the shoulder, across the chest and through the stomach. The deep, festering wounds bled steadily.

  “Mother, what shall I do? Where have you been? What happened? Who did this? Tell me! Tell me. Oh Mother, I cannot bear it. Where have you been?”

  Her words became a repeating refrain of heartsong. She said them over and over again as if to stop the inevitable. Against her wishes and imploring words, Mother’s breathing slowed and then stopped.

  A wild shock spun out of her chest, rising in her throat like a flaming sword. Unable to stop herself, Alizarin started to cry a high, keening sound.

  Trellista’s eyes flew open and with recognizing love she gazed on her only daughter. Broken lips struggled to smile and gave up. Alizarin leaned in, desperate and ineffectual. Fading with the coming death, Trellista whispered, “Trust no one … this is for Him.” Trellista’s hands sought hers and pressed down, containing something.

  “No! No! Mother! No!” she cried.

  Silence was her reply.

  Silence was again her only companion. Deafening silence and shock filled the cottage. Abruptly there. Quickly gone. Her mind churned with que
stions.

  Alizarin stared at cold, brittle death.The still, gray form seemed to be carved of marble and granite. Alizarin dwelt there, within that moment, for a lifetime. Spinning as her mind had been at the unexpected arrival, now all thoughts halted, forlorn orphans in an abandoned village.

  Home was gone, taken. She could not breathe, and yet she must have for Alizarin could feel the hard floor, the soft rags, and the vanishing warmth of joy that cooled with each inhalation. In that moment, her heart stopped counting the forward movement of time. Something inside of her seized and died, again and again.

  Outside of time, outside of caring, she reached out with a shuddering heart and lovingly touched her mother’s still face. Familiarity filled her as well as sorrow as she caressed the stray locks back behind the delicate ear. A sparkle of light reflecting from the candle shone momentarily from the dull hair, a moment of brightness within a world gone gray.

  Curious, Alizarin reached into the tangled disarray and felt something hard and sharp. Something resisted her intrusion. Bending close, her fingertips revealed workmanship of precious metal. With care, she extricated a cold, metal brooch carved in elaborate curls, sinuous lines and with the diamond eyes of a serpent. Holding this peculiar jewelry, she looked to her mother’s face which had aged twenty cycles.

  Numb, the survivor sat there in deep pain and astonishment. It was unclear how much time passed as Alizarin breathed on, her muscles locked in denial. Then, turning away from the awful, unanswerable death, she stood up and walked stiffly to her little, tidy bed. Wrapping ice-cold shoulders in her worn, old shawl, she leaned over the peg on the wall and took the new cloak off the hanging hook.

  In deep distress, the orphan held the well-made cloth to her tear-filled eyes and cried. Little sobs became hiccups and then moans were replaced by anguished keening. Alizarin grieved. Shudders took the remaining strength from her body.

  Time stopped. Life had stopped.

  At some later moment, the new cloak was wet. She could sense that, damp against her cheek. Stunned and bereaved, Alizarin attempted to gather her common sense to face what waited in the other room, to do what had to be done. She held tightly to the soft folds of tear-stained cloak; it was still the best fabric she had to wrap the already ashen body. I will give this to Mother.

  It was nothing, and she had just lost everything.

  Turning around, the baker steadied her nerves to prepare the fragile and bruised body for burial. Glancing at the firesplace, she caught her breath and stumbled again. In disbelief, Alizarin stared.

  Stone on stone, the hearth was slick with blood, evidence of the terrible event. The rug and planked floor were black with it, but despite that ghastly remnant of death’s coming, there was nothing to be found within the cloak. The torn and battered body was gone!

  Running to the rug, kneeling in dumbfounded mystification, Alizarin grabbed the traveling cloak that lay in a puddle on the worn, wooden floor and held it up, as if the absent body was somehow a trick of the firelight. Soft as silk, the cloth rose easily with her hand. Only the nightfall air was within its folds. She had just dragged the fragile but real body into the house, all she had left of her mother, yet the pale corpse was gone. She looked around wildly, checking that there was no one in the room and that the outside door was still locked against the dark of nightfall.

  Something fell out of the folds of gray and bounced onto the yellow-brown rug. A stunning cornflower-blue sapphire as big as her thumb knuckle winked at her. Worth her pay as a baker for several seasons, its appearance was unthinkable, unexplainable. Where did Mother get such an expensive stone?

  She picked it up gingerly, holding it in her palm. Candlelight bounced off its partially polished face. She stared into the dreamy cloud of flawless-blue stone and of a moment, overcome with the entirety of what had transpired, she collapsed on the rug unconscious.

  Chapter Two

  Something Doesn’t Feel Right

  Clearly, it was going to be one of those days. Growing season’s burning suns brought a harsh dryness to the city walls. From sunrise to sunfall it cooked the inhabitants of Dressarna with the relentlessness of a frying stone. Salvation comes from the pouch, he thought as his fingers touched the canteen of rose ale. It had been chilled in the course of nightfall, but that surcease was long gone.

  He took another swig, feeling the heat retreat an eyelash within his blood. Relief, even if momentary, was still relief.

  Hard as the ancient stone against his back, Ilion refused to acknowledge either the wait or the heat. Each had a purpose; everything had a time. Leaving the sweat across his forehead while he pondered, a rare eddy of wind flittered past, cooling him with a caress. It was just another day, just another season, another cycle of need and desire.

  His clients’ needs were unending, which was exhausting and fulfilling at the same moment: exhausting in the pursuit of whatever fancies or whims struck the small minds of the wealthy, yet fulfilling in his pocket. Money granted power, power that abided with the sound of the spinning coins. Ilion conceded just last season that it was a temporary glee, the gathering of money, a bit of emptiness in his heartfire that only consumed and never retained its own heat. Still it is the life I have, the life I chose.

  Dressarna was fabled for its market, where goods from all the known world were hawked in public every day. The real trading began when the public market appeared to have run its course, in darkened bars, alleys, and smoky hidden rooms accessible only past fearsome, burly guards and carpet traps in the ancient, harbor harlot houses. But the rarest goods of all could be found only at the Thieves’ Auction, which was open only ten days each cycle. It was here that Ilion plied his trade.

  He waited within the high, ancient walls of Bira Tre, looking up at the old stonework of ages past. Nominally the Auction was a Guild secret, but all of Dressarna knew it took place under the great purple banners hanging from the Temple of Angels. The Auction attracted every sort of adventurer and scoundrel, but few could afford, or swindle, an invitation. The thieves of Dressarna were, after all, remarkably disinterested at getting less than their money’s worth for their clandestine labors.

  Across from his wide vantage point, Ilion’s steel-gray eyes saw without acknowledging the appearance of the traitor Jakor. There was no need and nothing to say to a man like that. Ilion’s shoulder blades still hurt from the wound of broken trust that friendship had inflicted—a dagger in the back, and over Kalina no less. Even though he would not see it, would not notice Jakor, the slight, cruel smile that curved at the edge of that poxed face still riled him. After all, Ilion was from the land of ire, the land of fire, the land of waste and burning and this, this was just another day following the desires of another client.

  Scrupulously avoiding any chance exchange with his old “friend” Jakor, Ilion scanned the gathered crowd, looking at his competition, a moving sea of brown and flashing metal. There was not an honest man in sight. Not even me.

  Honesty cost too much in a place like this. Not even the Guild’s fluttering purple ribbons, purchased by those who wanted to trade in Dressarna without interference, would protect a naïve mark at the Auction. The price of doing business always had grease come before greatness. This place was no different.

  As each lot was brought out into the viewing area, Ilion could see the reactions of bidders, discreet and determined though they were; the ebb and surge forward of interested parties could not be hidden. Only the cowled heads of the Thieves’ Guard remained impassive as they flanked the bidding area. Menacing and important, that group. Or at least they think so.

  A flash of blue, brilliant as the sky just after sunfall, flickered on the edge of his vision, right in front of the sealed iron gates of the Temple of Angels. A flicker of cornflower blue—that was unexpected. With a casual tilt of his well-covered head, Ilion took in the Kiran priests standing among the back of the packed crowds. Alone amidst barbarians, Ilion thought, shaking his head. They really should know better than to come to
such a treacherous place. Ilion knew the ropes and rules; he knew the ways and paths of the bidding, and more importantly the keeping of the sought after lots. Do the priests?

  Wisps of gray hair, cut close to a balding head gave away the age of the shorter one as did a slight sway to his posture and balance. The other … well, Ilion wanted to find some familiar features on the younger man, something of past friends and long-forgotten alliances. Jet-black hair and lowered eyes did not offer much from his vantage point.

  Still, the priests’ presence concerned him. Why were the holy men here? What had the powerful Thieves Guild acquired that would interest the devout to join in clandestine barter?

  Suddenly, the younger man looked up, looked directly up into Ilion’s unguarded gaze. Startled, he felt a blush cross his cheeks as he met a defiant glare. Fluid and swift, the cerulean and ocher robes of the man flared as a weapon was lifted and set against the dusty stones. A folding staff, no doubt.

  With some urgency, Ilion’s hands moved in concert. Gestures in the air, hidden from the gaze of almost everyone present, were directed at the fear and determination shining in the younger priest’s eyes. To be caught staring in this place, Ilion was chagrined. Perhaps it was getting on time to retire. A slip like that, an offense given for no reason at all, it was appalling.

  I am better than that! Ilion was furious with himself.

  The signs faded into the air, traces of gestures and wind. But the priest had seen them, or rather his older companion had. A restraining arm stopped the insulted man, a blue-clad arm. Wisdom shone in his succinct actions, a fluid grace that told Ilion more than words or adornments ever could, that the older priest was a master gatherer.

  Reassured, the youth sought confirmation of safety with a tiny movement that was answered. Ilion fell again into a posture of stoic passivity. His gaze returned to the ground and the feet of those Gogonats that surrounded the back entrance. An unnecessary crisis averted, Ilion’s mood was soured all the same.