Blood Seed: Coin of Rulve Book One (29 page)

“Sure do.” He looked around with a grin. “And if I go back on my word, may I choke on my next gulp of ale.” Voy donned the cloak, and the men around him chuckled and clapped him on the back.

A yell turned Mariat’s head towards the barn. Gwin and several others, including a grim-looking Cloor, strode out. Gwin held a large wooden box in his hands, which rattled as he came forward. He threw its contents onto the ground in front of Sheft. “Are these your carvings?”

Beside her, Dorik stood to get a better view. 

Still kneeling on the ground, Sheft lifted his head and glanced at the pile, a jumble of wood in the shadows. He nodded.

Parduka swooped onto the carvings, snatched one up, and stared at it, grimacing. “This was made for
children
!” she cried. “For innocent children!” She turned and threw the object to Dorik.

He caught it, and Mariat saw he held one of Sheft’s toy mice. But it had been eerily altered. A black stone glittered in the eye socket.

“Turn it over,” Parduka demanded.

He did so, stiffened, then sank onto the wagon seat. 

The other side was even worse. The innocence of the toy’s pink ears and painted nose was slashed by a chiseled-out hole.

“Sacrilege!” Parduka screamed. “Unspeakable abomination!”

Mariat looked up, confused. What were they talking about? Sheft would never disfigure one of his carvings like this, but how could the priestess think it had anything to do with sacrilege?

“What’s going on?” Tarn asked from the doorstep. The crowd of men parted to let him make his way to the wagon. In the sudden silence, Dorik handed him the carving. 

Tarn looked down at it. “Oh god. Oh god Ul.” He dropped the figure and turned to clutch the wagon’s sideboard.

Sheft climbed to his feet, his face lined with pain. As he got a better look at what lay on the ground, a flush burned on his cheekbones. “I never did that!” he exclaimed. “And if I did, why would I leave it lying around? Can’t you see that someone planted it here?”

Parduka bent, seized the figure, and held it up in the torchlight. “This is proof of what Gwin saw. The foreigner used this object at the fair to lure a child into his clutches. A little boy not even from our village. He forced that child to watch while he gouged out the eye.”

Someone in the crowd gasped.

“Such sacrilege deserves death!” the priestess shouted.

“I didn’t,” Sheft cried. “I didn’t do—” His voice was drowned out by shouts.

“Blasphemer!”

“Filthy foreigner!”

Snarling and cursing, the crowd converged around Sheft.

But Parduka got there first. “Get back!” she cried, spreading her arms out in front of him. “We are restoring a sacred ceremony, not taking part in a slaughter!”

Rom joined her and shouted at the crowd. “We are the Council of At-Wysher and obedient servants of Ele. We must perform her Rites with proper procedure.” He turned to Dorik. “Now leave us. We have our witness, and you have your proof. Leave us to do justice and the will of the goddess.”

Cloor, his jaw tight, crossed the yard and climbed up beside Mariat. Dorik lowered himself onto the wagon seat. “None of you,” he said heavily, “will ever forget what you’ve decided to do here. Your days and nights, and the days and nights of your children, will be cursed with it. When you’ve had your fill of blood and darkness, when you’ve returned to your senses, then come back to the council and we will try to repair this.”

“We are the council now,” Rom retorted, “and nothing we do here shames us or our children. We are upholding Ele’s law and giving honor to the goddess who protects us. This is the beginning of a new time, a safer time, for everyone in our village.”

Dorik ran his eyes over the group. Mariat knew what he saw: eleven determined men and one old woman, the recipient of ancient power. Stone-faced, they all met his gaze. He clicked to the horse and pulled the wagon around.

“No!” Mariat lunged over his legs to grab the reins. “He hasn’t done anything wrong! Don’t leave him here.” 

Cloor yanked her hands away. “Get in the back. Your father needs you.” He pushed her off the bench, and she landed in a tangle of her skirt beside Moro on the wagon bed. 

She scrambled to her knees and looked back. Torches illuminated the yard, where only last night she and her beloved had vanquished the beetle-man. His jacket open, Sheft struggled in the hands of his shadowy captors, while one of them waved the carving in front of his eyes. The figures shifted, a circle closed with terrible finality, and she could no longer see the side of his face or the gleam of his hair. A turn in the road hid the light.

This could not be happening. Their life together had just begun. They were espoused. They were supposed to go on a journey together. She didn’t realize tears were running down her face until she tasted them on her lips.

“Mariat,” her father murmured, “don’t look back. Let it be.”

“Let it
be
?” she said in horror. “How can you even—”

“I know these people,” Dorik said from the driver’s seat. “In the morning they’ll realize what they’ve done, and will come crawling back in regret.” He shook his head slightly and sighed. “It could have been worse. What’s one man, if the whole village is saved?”

A horrible apprehension clutched at her heart. “What do you mean? What are they going to do?”

Dorik stared steadily at the road ahead and did not answer. None of the men answered.

A sudden rattle, loud in the quiet night behind them, startled her. It became the rhythmic beat of a pebble-gourd. They drove on, and the sound behind her faded into the growing distance between her and her own heart.

The wagon rattled away, and through a haze of pain, Sheft watched the pale oval of Mariat’s face recede into the dark. The others crowded around him and blocked his view, but when he tried to see her once more, she was gone.

But she was safe, no thanks at all to his unforgivable lack of resolve. He should have sent her away two days ago, as soon as he realized she was in the house. He should have shouted at her until she left him. But he had not. He had clutched at a dream and forced her into a nightmare.

His guards held him as one of the black-cloaked figures kept thrusting the obscene toy in front of him. “Get that away from me,” Sheft cried. “I had nothing to do with it.”

The man backhanded him across the mouth, so hard Sheft’s knees almost gave way. A realization hit him almost as harshly as the blow: it no longer mattered what he said or what he didn’t do. A line had been crossed, and not one of his making. Shaking, he pulled up ice to keep his lip from bleeding.

“He can’t walk far,” one of them remarked. 

“Put him on Moro’s nag,” Rom growled.

“Ele punished Moro by breaking his arm,” someone in the shadows said. “His family befriended this criminal, and now the son went and married a girl from Ferce.”

“Moro isn’t to blame,” Gwin put in. “His whole family was bewitched. They are good, solid people at heart, and it’s a shame what this foreigner did to them.” 

Gwin, Sheft realized, was trying to protect Mariat. In his own way, he cared about her, and that hurt. Or was it his own status he tried to protect? He didn’t know, hadn’t bothered to inform himself about what others wanted. Tarn’s remembered face, creased with faint distaste, floated out of the dark:
“You are too wrapped up in yourself to notice anyone or anything else.”

The men pulled their hoods up and suddenly became unreal figures, chins and noses appearing and disappearing in the torch-light, casting crooked shadows that jumped from tall to short and back again. Two of the black-cloaks led Surilla forward. They shoved Sheft onto the big mare’s back, a painful procedure that left him clutching the coarse mane with white-knuckled hands. The weather had changed and a cold wind fingered his hair. Shivering, he waited as the hooded figures took a position around him, their guttering torches level with his eyes. And then he saw it: the dark circle had been present all this time, and now it enclosed him.

Parduka pronounced the solemn invocation to Ele. The gourd rattled, shaking out its slow and deadly rhythm, and the group began their journey into the night. The restored Rites—and whatever they entailed—had begun.

High on the great horse, he rode completely exposed, with no hood to hide his hair, no, crowd in which to lose himself. As the accused pervert who preyed on women, the monster who corrupted children, the heretic who trampled on their holiest rite, he was the sole prisoner of the torch-lit circle as it dragged him through the dark. Surilla plodded over the barren fields, every step jogging Sheft’s broken rib. Ice reaction vied with dread, and at first he could not make out the terrain beyond the torchlight that dazzled his vision. The inner warning, which had been jangling for some time, suddenly shrilled loud and clear. With a jolt of terror, he knew exactly where they were going.

Oh God help me. Rulve, help me!

His plea went nowhere, only stayed on the surface of his fear like water pooling over rock-hard soil. He searched frantically for a means of escape. Surilla would respond to his vocal command, but not when the black-cloak had a firm hold on her lead. He envisioned himself sliding off her back and somehow dodging through the men who pressed closely around him. The thought of what that would do to his injuries rasped through his stomach like a thorny vine, but he had to try it.

He was gauging the distance to the ground when Blinor, close beside him, jammed his fist into his right side. Pain exploded, and he doubled over the horse’s mane with a gasp.

“I’m watching you,” the miller said. “Try something, filth, and I’ll go after your lady-friend. Sort of like this, you know?” The big teeth shone in a leer as he ground his thumb into Sheft’s side. “And I’ll enjoy every minute of it.”

Sheft swatted the hand away. “Leave her alone,” he said through a now swollen lip. “She has nothing to do with any of this.”

“Whether I leave her alone or not is entirely up to you.”

They left the open field and wound through brush. Long, deep chills ran through him, like the sibilance of the gourd. He fumbled for the toltyr around his neck, but Sokol had cut it away. A sense of betrayal rose up like a bitter flood. Just as the toltyr was becoming part of him, just as he was beginning to think he might have a destiny, it had been wrenched away. He’d lost, not so much his mother’s last gift or a pewter medallion that would give him courage, but the struggle to believe there was any meaning to his life.

The group came to a halt. Ice-reaction spun slowly inside his head, but he could make out, barely visible in the dark, the evil bulk of the K’meen Arûk. It crouched like a waiting predator. Two men dragged him off the horse and pulled his arms behind him, squeezing the gashes on his back into streaks of fire. They bound his wrists with a rope, hauled him toward the boulder where Parduka waited, then shoved him onto the ground and tied his ankles. He sat, each quick, short breath a stab of pain, and tried to his keep his back from rubbing against the rock. Silent figures gathered in a semi-circle in front of him, their dark eyes lit up like an encroaching pack of wolves. The fear that had been thrumming in his stomach climbed into his throat, swelling all the way.

Parduka stood over him, a hank of grey hair hanging over one cold eye. “Welcome, blasphemer, to the holy stone of Rûk.” With her gesture, the crowd formed a line in front of him. She withdrew the ritual knife from her belt and handed it to the first cloaked figure. 

His thumb testing the edge of the blade, the man looked down on him. With several swift moves, he pushed back his sleeve, cut his own arm, and smeared the blood in a rough swipe over Sheft’s cheek and mouth. With a grim smile, he wiped the knife clean on the front of the sheepskin jacket and turned away.

The next black-cloak squatted in front of him and spit in his face. He made the cut, rubbed the bloody wound into Sheft’s hair, then pulled his jacket open and cleaned the knife on the cloth strips that held the bandage in place.

In turn the others came, black hoods looming above him, the knife glinting, red lines welling. Shadowed figures smeared their blood on his cheek, across his eyes, on his chest. He tasted it on his mouth, felt it drying cold in his hair, smelled it sickly-sweet all over him.

Sokol held the knife in front of Sheft’s face, pulled his head back by the hair, then slowly wiped the blade along the side of his neck. Sheft stiffened, waiting for the sharp edge to turn, but instead the butcher kicked him, hard in the thigh.

“That’s for my step-daughter Ubela,” he said. “What Parduka will do is for me.”

“Sokol,” he croaked, “I never touched her.”

Another vicious kick, this time in the ribs. He gasped, and bright dots scattered over his vision. When he could see again, the last man was handing the knife to Parduka.

“Position him over the rock,” she commanded.

He bore down on his spirikai. Ice. He would need ice. More than he had, more than there was.

Hands jerked him upright, dragged him against the waist-high rock, and jammed his head sideways into the depression on top. A scummy film slimed against his cheek.

Someone behind him bent close to his ear, but spoke loudly enough for all to hear. “Lookey there, hayseed. Parduka’s hands are shaking. Remember what happened at the Rites? Remember how the sheep screamed? How it kicked?”

Nervous laughter spattered through the crowd.

“You don’t have to do this,” Sheft said, his mouth pressed against the rock. “Let me go, and you’ll never see me again.”

“You got that last part wrong,” a voice growled. “It’s you who’ll never see again.”

Their hands sought purchase against his stitched-up back as they pressed his chest and shoulders onto the rock. Every instinct screamed to slam ice into those that held him down, as he had with the beetle-man, but too much pain, too many vivid memories of the half-butchered sheep, shook his concentration. 

The priestess raised her hand, and in it the sharp spoon glinted.

His heart skipped, then hammered. He called out in a shaking voice to the one who seemed closest to his own age. “Temo! Don’t do this. It won’t bring your father back.”

“Shut your mouth,” someone snarled, “or you’ll lose your tongue as well.”

Parduka leaned over him. He struggled to twist away, but many hands gripped him in an iron vise.

“Bring the light closer,” Parduka directed. “Good. Steady now.”

The serrated edge of the spoon filled his sight, growing larger as it approached, a lethal eclipse that would cut out all light. He strained to see something around it—a star, a flame, anything he could remember in the coming blackness.

Cold metal pressed at the corner of his right eye. Blind white terror seized him. He squeezed his eyes shut, tight and hard.
Rulve help me!
Clenching his jaw, tightening his bound hands into fists, he fought to constrict his spirikai.

Her strong fingers pried his eyelid open.

At the touch, his terror shattered. Ice splintered out of his spirikai and he jammed it, hard, into Parduka’s hand.

#   #   #

Sudden cold bit into her palm. Parduka jerked her hand away. It was numb. She couldn’t feel her fingers. A memory flooded in: her mother’s eyes widening, her face twisting. The old woman had emitted an animal cry and fell to the ground. She lay there stiffly, drool dribbling from the corner of her mouth.

Ele, no! Not the paralyzing stroke. Not now. Not here, in front of them all. 

The icy chill crept up her wrist, and to her horror the spoon fell out of her useless fingers. Exclamations broke out around her.

“Again, priestess?” Sokol spat. “Another failure? Let me do it, if you can’t.” With his hand still pressed against the back of the foreigner’s neck, he bent to sweep up the spoon.

It signified her power and he must not take it. With her left hand, Parduka snatched it away. “No, you fool! I have not failed. I will not.” Under her cloak, she frantically rubbed her right hand against her thigh, and the warmth began flowing back.

It was not the paralyzing stroke. It was a sign. She had received a sign from Ele, who had stayed her hand. She looked at each of the faces, grotesque in the torchlight and surrounded by the dark. “At just this instant, Ele spoke to me! She spoke to me, and I trembled in her presence.” Parduka brandished the holy instrument like a sword. “In the midst of her ancient Rites, she has issued a direct command.”

Deep within, a crone’s voice warned her:
“Do not touch him again.”

#   #   #

They held him down as an argument whirled over his head. Parduka’s voice cut through it. “His eyes are diseased, as abhorrent to Ele as they are to us. On this night of all nights, they must not befoul the sacred bowl.”

“What about our vows?” someone asked. “I don’t want to lose all my cattle.”

“What about the restored Rites?”

Parduka stepped forward, the edge of her sleeve sweeping over his hair. “They shall be made perfect, even more pleasing to Ele and more satisfying to Wask. The command of the goddess is this: allow Wask himself to pluck out the foreigner’s eyes. At his leisure, throughout the night, let Wask feed on his flesh. It is Ele’s justice. This sheep”—she prodded his shoulder with the spoon—“will be given completely into the beetle-man’s will, for as long as it takes him to die.”

“What about the tradition?” Sokol shouted. “It demands that we offer him, bound and blind, to Wask.”

“But we can’t wade across the river!” a frightened voice cried. “Look, it’s risen from the storm. Oh, Ele, what are we going to do!”

“The Rites are failing!” someone wailed.

“They are not,” Parduka stated firmly. “In her wisdom, in spite of storm and flood, Ele has provided the means to complete her Rites: Moro’s horse. It will carry him across while we watch, safe on dry land.”

Murmuring in relief, the men let go of him and stepped back. Awkward with hands and feet bound, Sheft dragged himself off the K’meen Arûk and slid to his knees. He pressed his forehead against the rock, hearing his own quick breaths, then seeing them in the cold air. Stones on the ground flashed bright in torch-flame, and he saw them too, focused on the way tiny crystals within them winked in the light. As booted feet milled around him, he stared at the stones, each different, each indescribably beautiful.

Only last night, the ice had been like a club he could wield, like a rock he could throw, but now it had been only a shard. Now the toltyr was gone, Mariat was gone, and he had no strength left. The pounding of his heart slowed, but the trembling went on as he slid into a red fog of pain and ice-reaction.

“No criminal should go seeing to the beetle-man,” Sokol insisted. “It would be an insult.”

“Let’s get this over with!” Rom exclaimed. “Blindfold him, and that will fulfill the law.”

“It is indeed Ele’s express command,” Parduka said.