Blood Seed: Coin of Rulve Book One (15 page)

In the dark of his loft, Sheft lay rigid on his mattress. He managed to put aside Tarn’s revelation, put aside the new accusations; but now, like a flock of persistent crows, thoughts of the Rites flapped and pecked.

Not only had his blood summoned Wask, but Wask had also summoned him.

Along with another voice.

It had called him like the bell in his dream, a mighty bell hidden under the ground, reverberating through the earth and into his bones and heart. It called him as Miramakamen said he had been called. It was as if good and evil had uttered the same command, had thrust questing tendrils out of the same seed.

Ice reaction gripped him and he couldn’t think clearly. What was happening to him? His life was breaking apart. The villagers twisted everything he did, believed him capable of the most cowardly of crimes. The only reality was the gash on his arm, which burned and throbbed. It seemed the last cut from the sickle had barely healed, and now here was another.

But in all his darkness, there was one bleak light. For him there would be no more Rites. In the early spring, right after Etane’s wedding, he would be gone.

#   #   #

The moonless night lay silent over the stony bank. With its curved brown nails, Wask ripped open the wool-covered skin and tore out the warm meat. After the last shred of flesh had been devoured and the last bone sucked dry, it chewed on the blood-soaked wool. With a final lick across its sticky fingers, it savored the last of the wild, sweet flavor.

Now it was certain. It had tasted the unique blood long ago, then lately in a wheat field, and again this night. The human it sought must have been among the others, within its grasp. Now it would find him.

Wask stalked into the river, melted into a black mist, and crossed. On the other side, the mist changed into a skin as dry and thin as a cloak made of old leaves. Wask hissed out a summons, and the night-beetles responded. Swarming like a turbid creek, they poured into its skin. Legs swelled, a torso formed, arms bulged. The beetle-man stood on the deserted road.

He swiveled his lumpy body to the south and put forth his senses. He detected nothing but a faint, repellent chill. The face turned north. There! The warmth of humans. Two of them, out on the open road and not far away.

The beetle-man stumped after them.

#   #   #

The next morning, the red sun still low over the deadlands, Parduka gathered her cloak around her and made her way over the frost-touched grass to the ceremonial site. She stood at the riverbank and scanned the other side. A chill rushed through her.

Across the Meera, almost at the water’s edge, lay the scattered bones of the sheep. They’d been picked clean, and the ribs curved like sly grins. She had never seen that before—never. Always the carcass had been dragged off somewhere, not left in plain sight. 

The Rites had been a disaster. Even at the beginning, her voice had quavered. On the dark side of the Meera, Wask had prowled back and forth just outside her vision, like a predator that smelled raw meat. She was barely able to keep it in check. Then that poor sheep. She swallowed and put her hand to her mouth, remembering how, all the while, the presence behind her back had become heavier, more impatient, and hungrier. Parduka rubbed her arms. They crawled with the image she could not get out of her mind: the ground alive with night-beetles.

The Rites were sliding away from her control. They had slipped from prevention, to placation, to some kind of grisly attraction. She had dreamed of appalling things in the night.

A discreet cough behind her made her whirl. Rom and Gwin stood there.

“Forgive us,” the blacksmith said. “We didn’t mean to startle you. But there is something you ought to know, priestess.”

“Yes?”

“It’s about the foreigner,” Gwin said. “And what he did at the market-fair in Ferce.”

“Five allegations came forward,” Rom said, “but all were summarily dismissed by Dorik. So we come to you, because we knew he wouldn’t listen to the sixth.”

“And why should I?”

“Because it is directly related to the goddess,” Gwin said.

So she listened in growing horror and could barely believe what she was hearing. The foreigner had committed a brazen sacrilege against Ele. He had committed the ultimate sin. Her only relief came with the realization that what had happened at the Rites was not her fault, but his. Because of what the foreigner had done, the goddess was beginning to exact her retribution, was beginning to withdraw her protection of the village from Wask.

“I’m sorry to burden you with this,” Gwin finished, “but something must be done.”

Before she could even think of how to respond, someone shouted her name. She turned to see the young farmer Temo and his mother frantically pounding on the doors of the House of Ele. They all hurried over.

“My father Greak is dead!” Temo cried. “Taken by the beetle-man.”

After comforting Greak’s family as best she could and after making arrangements for the cremation, Parduka escorted the poor man’s stricken wife and son out of Ele’s house. She shoved the thick oak doors shut, doors that seemed to get heavier every year, then drew the bolt. The goddess had not spoken to her for almost three months, ever since her failure regarding Dorik’s son-in-law, but now she must try again. The foreigner had committed an appalling crime, and Wask had killed again. The first action had led directly to the second, and she desperately needed Ele’s guidance.

Shivering, she walked through the empty hall of worship. The windowless stone walls harbored the cold, and her robe was too threadbare to keep off the chill. Parduka unlocked the small, high-ceilinged room at the back—the sacred Chamber of Ele. Like the hall, the room had no windows, only a smoke-hole in the roof. The few coals glowing in the fire pit cast only enough light to hint at the drawings of pregnant animals on the walls and barely touched the massive stone form that filled the room. 

Her knees protested, but she knelt on the hard-packed earth, touched it with palms and forehead, then reached into a small bowl beside her for a handful of dried herbs and incense. The mixture was expensive, but would convince the goddess of her need.

Parduka rubbed the offering between her hands and threw it on the remains of the fire. The coals hissed and released wisps of smoke into the gloom. She leaned over and breathed deeply. The smell seeped into her brain like a heady wine. It numbed her lips and the tips of her fingers. Her body relaxed, and the room took on a dreamy cast. Sitting back on her heels, she looked up at the goddess to whom she had given her life.

Shadows veiled Ele’s face and body. Only her pedestal and big, square toes, carved from pink marble veined with darker red, were visible.  

A joint creaked behind her. Parduka turned to see a scrawny old woman standing in the shadows. The wall showed through her filmy form, but her eyes stood out black and intense. It was her mother Basa, leaning on a staff and wearing a once-fine cloak that was now spotted with mold. The left side of her face drooped and her lips were twisted by the numbing stroke which had eventually killed her.

“You have failed,” she accused. “Ele is displeased and will not speak to you. You have failed to comply with her specific command, and now you come groveling for her help.”

“Yess, displeased,” hissed a voice behind her, where the faint image of an even older crone sat against the wall. She munched toothless gums, and her claw-like fingers picked at her ragged robe. The two drifted forward, to stand on either side of Parduka.

“You failed to convince the council in Redstar,” Basa informed her, “even after Wask attacked. Now another man is dead. Another wife is widowed. Another child has no father.”

“Now a foreigner walks free, unpunished for his crimes, and Wask walks in your streets.”

“I did what I could,” Parduka murmured. Her lips felt so thick it was hard to pronounce the words. “The council refused to—”

“The council! The council!” her mother screeched. “You have allowed it to leech power from this House. Ignore the council and form another!”

“Yess,” the crone intoned. “You must obey Ele. Only she can solve your problems. You must raise up a council that will restore the Rites.”

“When I was priestess here,” Basa said, “the Rites were powerful.”

“When I was priestess here,” the crone echoed, “they were rich with earth, dark with blood.” 

“The sacred Rites are being held at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in the wrong way! No wonder they are failing.”

The crone stirred, her robe rustling like a spider in dead leaves. “The old ways,” she insisted. “The village will be made clean, but you must go back to the old ways.”

“The Rites of the Dark Circle must be restored!” Basa struck her staff against a hearthstone, causing a trail of sparks to shoot up like fire-wraiths. “It has been too long. Too long since they were performed correctly. And now Ele’s people are paying the price.”

The room seemed to spin slowly and the two faces blurred. “Sacrificing a sheep is one thing,” Parduka muttered. “Doing what you ask is another.”

“It is not we who ask. It is Ele! She knows who Wask seeks.”

“It is one who mocks our traditions.”

“Who ambushes our men.”

“Who attacks our women.”

“Who molests our children.”

“Send the straw-head!” the crone cried. “Send the foreign straw-head!”

Parduka shrank away from their anger. “You live down there in the dark. Up here, I must contend with powerful men.”

“Tell them they must act like men. Tell them they must put aside womanish qualms. Tell them they must do their duty. Tell them!”

Parduka licked her lips. “What about Tarn? He won’t stand idly by.”

“Are you feeble-minded as well as cowardly?” Basa demanded. “Neither Tarn nor Dorik need know your plans. There are others to help you. Far more pious. Just as influential. This very day Rom handed you the hammer you need to forge change.”

“And don’t forget Gwin. He has always suspected, now he
knows
. For years he comes with offerings to Ele, yess. How often has the foreigner come?”

“Not once,” Parduka said. “Nor has the mother. She spreads heresy about some other god. At the Rites the foreigner hung back, made the shortest cut, tried brazenly to walk away with the sacred knife.”

Basa leaned closer. “He is anathema to Ele. You let the evil take root, and now it is full grown.”

Their voices went on, becoming whispers that wound around each other like braids of smoke, brushing across her cheeks, blaming, urging, becoming fainter and fainter until they were indistinguishable from the simmering of the coals.

Parduka pulled herself up from her sore knees and stumbled out of the chamber. Why was it left to her, an old woman, to save the village? Why couldn’t Ele choose one of the elders for this hard task? Her head was beginning to clear, and suddenly the answer came to her: Ele had done this very thing. Ele had chosen Rom.

An inner trembling told her she must eat. She turned to the left and pushed open the door to her cramped and chilly kitchen. A pot of thin chicken broth, dotted with circles of grease, hung from the cook-arm. As she bent to ladle the broth into a bowl, she thought she still heard their whispers, seething in the hearth.

“I hear you, Mother. I understand, Grandmother. This very night I will meet with Rom.”

#   #   #

That afternoon, Mariat made her way to Tarn’s house, her heart troubled. She hadn’t seen Sheft since he helped bury her mother. Riah stood over steaming tubs at the table, washing shirts. She glanced up as Mariat entered and then went back to her work. “Tarn went to Ferce to buy a rooster,” she said. “He may have to spend the night.”

“Where’s Sheft?”

Riah removed a shirt from the rinse water, wrung it out, and placed it on a towel. “I advise you to stay away from him.” 

Mariat stared in disbelief. “Why? Because of village gossip?” 

“I don’t want you to be hurt. I don’t want him to be hurt. No more hearts must be broken.”

“Sheft would never break my heart!”

“Not intentionally perhaps. But eventually. If you stay with him, it will happen. Your mother is gone, and I give you a mother’s advice. Find someone else.” She plunged a second shirt into the wash water.

“But Ane loved Sheft! And so do I.”

Riah looked up at that and assayed her for a long moment. “I see. But I know what will happen, Mariat.”

“No one can see the future,” she protested. “It’s in Rulve’s hands. I think you’re letting foolish gossip worry you far too much. It will soon be forgotten. None of it was true in the first place, and truth always wins out in the end.”

Riah returned to scrubbing a sleeve between her rough, red knuckles. “Truth is a hard, sharp thing,” she muttered, “with many cutting edges. It isn’t easily grasped.”

Mariat remembered that her aunt, as well as some of her older visitors, were often anxious and seemed to look for things to worry about. She had also noticed that many mothers feared to lose their only sons and wanted to keep them near throughout their old age. If marriage lay in the future, Riah should have no concern, for it was exactly as the adage had it: she would be gaining a daughter, not losing a son. 

“Thank you for caring about me,” Mariat said gently, “but not long ago a wise woman”—an old wise woman in a green and white tent—“advised me regarding your son. One of the things she said was to have courage and follow my heart. You did this exact thing, Riah, when you came all the way from Ullar-Sent to this foreign land. People in love do such things, no matter what the cost. So don’t worry about my heart. It will be fine.” 

Riah’s shoulders sagged. She wrung out the second shirt and dropped it into the rinse water. “Sheft is in the barn.” 

Mariat walked through the yard, her breath visible in the cold air. The old woman in Ferce had given her other advice regarding Sheft: “Leave whole the heart, or break it.” In other words, accept him the way he was and don’t try to change him. Easy enough to do, since she loved him.

Or, came the unbidden thought, did the old lady mean something else, not quite so easy?

It was quiet inside the barn. Sheft was on his knees, tightening the wheel of an old cart. He glanced up, quickly pulled down his rolled-up sleeve, and continued working.

She settled onto the straw beside him. “You’re going to
use
this old thing?” The cart had only a single central shaft that hitched it to the horse.

“For the chickens. During bitter cold spells, when we bring them into the barn.”

He wasn’t looking at her, and she sensed something was wrong. “The shaft is starting to crack, there in the middle.”

“My fa—Tarn says leave it alone.”

Mariat studied the side of his face, the tension in his jaw. “What is it, Sheft?”

For a moment he didn’t answer, but then sat back on his heels and looked at her. She was caught again by his eyes. They had become beautiful to her, but now they were brimming with so much pain they almost seemed to bleed. A muscle twitched in his throat, and he averted his gaze.

Something had happened to him. She remembered what she had glimpsed moments ago—a raw red cut on his arm.

The Rites. With her mother’s death, she had forgotten about them. Her father and brother were not required to attend this year, and they all spent the evening quietly together. But Sheft had been out last night. He had endured something she did not know, and was wounded. Very gently, she put her hand over his arm. 

He stiffened, but did not pull away. He just knelt there, staring at the ground and trembling under her touch. 

He was in need, and she loved him. She drew him close and pushed his pale head into the curve of her neck and shoulder.

Something in him cracked. His arms came tightly around her, and he shook with emotion.

“It’s all right, Sheft,” she murmured. “It’s all right, my darling.”

He didn’t answer. As if he were desperate, he clutched a handful of her hair.

A chill entered her heart. It was almost as if he were trying to say good-bye.