Conan the Savage (8 page)

Whether Tamsin made utterances for Urm’s ears only, and so preserved the habit of speech, or whether they employed some more mystical means of communication, none could say. But it was clear that the girl learned much from the old witch-man, and that he was more a friend to her than any of her adopted family or age-mates.

Thus it was seen as one more stroke of tragedy in the child’s life, another baffling whim of the gods, when Urm’s hut caught fire and the old physician perished in the blaze. Tamsin may have been with him when it started, or she may, through some premonition of doom, have come running to the scene. The nearest neighbour saw the cottage explode in flame; on approaching, he found the girl standing helpless in the blaze of firelight. Dry-eyed from the scorching heat, she stood watching expressionlessly, shielding the face of her beloved doll against her shoulder.

“It was the wicked lass that done it, don’t ye know?” one village crone was heard to gloat. “She sucked out all his wisdom like a leech, then roasted him in his own thatch, the old fool!” But that same winter the old woman was done to death by a pox and a quaking ague, and so once again gossip was stilled.

After the fire, little remained of the witch-man’s science and arcana. Touchingly—since the rest of the villagers hesitated to enter the blackened ring of his once-feared abode—it was Tamsin, with her doll tucked into the blouse of her robe, who was honoured to gather up Urm’s charred bones. These she laid most respectfully in a fragrant cedar chest to preserve his memory. The shrine was on display long afterward in the small magical dispensary that she established in the shed of Amulf’s cottage. One other relic of her predecessor—the tarnished and blackened copper reliquary locket Urm had worn around his neck—was henceforth seen dangling from the doll she always carried with her, another perpetual tribute to her mentor.

As it happened, the thaumaturgic skills conferred to her by the old man were sufficient for her to take up his duties in ministering to the town. When a farm wife needed a lung cure, Tamsin could mix up the stinging plaster, ably wielding the pestle in the blackened stone mortar salvaged from Urm’s ruined house. She would even apply the medicine to the sufferer’s back, working deftly one-handed, with the jingle and hiss of her gourd-doll substituting for the soothing incantations the old warlock would have intoned. Or, if a cottager required a weasel remedy for his poultry roost, she possessed all the necessary herbs and powders; she would hand over the poison bait with grave, silent assurance of its potency.

Her methods differed from Urm’s in one respect: in all such cases, to the villagers’ mumbled surprise, she would give the cure time to work before making a visit to collect payment. More particularly, in regard to her stepmother’s continuing malaise, her services were rendered without charge. Using only ingredients gathered from the local swamps, without the costly powders purchased from travelling vendors that her predecessor claimed to rely on, she simmered and fermented a new healing elixir. To everyone’s surprise, it quieted the poor woman’s plaints and maintained the peace of the household, at a saving that Amulf the Good found gratifying indeed.

Throughout the countless hamlets of the Brythunian hinterlands, the relation between such small rural practitioners and the Temple of Amalias and his pantheon of gods was an uncertain one. The great church laid claim, of course, to all the healing and divining powers that touched common mortals in daily life; whatever their talents, Amalias demanded his servants’ entire worship and fealty. But since the priests’ most vital and profitable concerns unfolded on the largest scale—that of wars and droughts, plagues and aristocratic marriages, and interpretation of the visions and deliriums of King Typhas when steeped in his cups—their priestly interests centred on the capital and the main district temples. The priests of Amalias were hardly so many and so humble as to have daily contact with low, common serfs and tenants of the remotest, backward districts.

Therefore the efforts of local shamans and healers were tolerated as being adequate for the ignorant denizens of forest and rural mud-bog, who were ever reluctant to let go of their old gods and superstitions. Some of these spell-casters made crude obeisance to the high church, using Amalias’s name in their chantings, or wearing rough imitations of the holy charms and symbols that adorned the Imperial priests and officers. Other practitioners did not yield even so far; in consequence, they might—when the need arose for a handy scapegoat or for some distraction from regional political problems—find themselves hanged or pilloried as witches by officers of the central church for their failure to conform.

What contact there was between the high church and the common herd took place during annual festivals, whose dates varied locally for the convenience of travelling priests, and similar ritual events. One such was Naming Day, when a circuit priest appointed a date to visit a locality, bless all the virgin children of a mature age, and name them in the registers of the church, thus permitting their marriage banns or sale to desirous nobles.

When such a day was announced in his district, Amulf the Good, revered as a pious man, submitted his stepdaughter Tamsin’s name for the ceremony, along with those of his elder children. Since the young girl did not yet speak, it was not likely done with her approval; yet the villagers observed that when the ritual was discussed, she showed no sign of displeasure at the action.

The head priest of the church district encompassing Sodgrum and half a hundred other wretched hamlets was one Epiminophas. His affected southern name, and his olive-oiled hair that crowned a somewhat chubby, tallow-faced countenance, proclaimed his desire to merge with the ruling elite of his country and church, who were mostly descended from noble Corinthian blood.

The demiuige Epiminophas paid scant attention to those faithful who dwelt out of hearing of the massive bronze bar-chime in his district temple at the provincial capital Yervash. As his tenure and prosperity increased, he certainly did not intend many more toilsome rides to local festivals. And yet, just lately, there had come to his ear a somewhat unusual rumour of a village healer more youthful than any before seen. A mere child, but skilled enough at nostrums and hocus-pocus to astound the bumpkins and enjoy local fame, and with talent and showmanship whispered of in a spreading circle of a dozen or more hamlets. On top of it all, Epiminophas heard with interest, she was a maiden... and one of exceptional, delicate beauty.

To the temple authorities, such a local sensation was a familiar issue—an opportunity to confront the self-styled holy man or prophetess and demand submission to the High God Amalias. Either the rural quack would kneel to church authority, thereby reaffirming his or her oafish admirers in their fealty to the high temple, or the trickster would refuse and be made an example of, thereby helping to accomplish much the same end. The story tended to play out over varying time periods, with greater or lesser soul-searching on the part of the upstart prophet. And depending on the depth of his or her self-delusion, it occasionally involved the regrettable eventuality of torture. In past cases where the witch was female and stubbornly recalcitrant, Epiminophas had nevertheless found cause to experience deep personal gratification from his holy work.

With this in mind, the plump demiurge made a point of appearing personally at the ritual site on Naming Day. He was borne thither on a gilded palanquin shouldered by eight acolytes, husky lads chosen and trained not just for burden-bearing, but for rough duty as bodyguards and riot troops.

The ritual was to be held at midday in the Abbas Dolmium, a holy place located centrally enough for families from all the villages of the district to hie themselves hence on foot. Though not the site of any permanent habitation-doubtless because of its deeply hallowed reputation—it resembled any other dolmium in the eastern kingdom. It stood high on the windswept fell above Abbas hamlet, a ring of massive, crudely chiselled pillars connected by crumbling stone lintels and covered by a low, conical roof of poles and rushes to keep out the icy sleets of the rocky height. Though its stony skeleton had been reared in a past aeon—likely, it was rumoured, by some faith older than the Imperial church—it was now part of the network of shrines and temples of the high cult of Amalias. As such, it made a suitable place for seasonal devotions and sacrifices.

The head priest was carried into the temple forecourt, passing amid a procession of virgins and their families just arriving from their long morning’s walk. Others, called from more distant hamlets, had spent the night in the sacred shelter of the temple, warmed by a fire of peat and bones laid at its centre. A layer of new green rushes had been stitched by the worshippers atop the damp thatching, and fresh-cut grass was strewn on the floor inside. Now the acolytes set to work erecting a brightly figured canopy at the altar end of the enclosure, behind which Epiminophas could don his second-finest robes and prepare the ritual.

The ceremony got under way smoothly. One by one the virgin boys and girls, clad in sackcloth or coarse linen, were brought forward to the altar by their elder relations, some going proudly, some in halting shyness. Their names were called and affirmed as they went to the altar; then their right hands were brought forward, clutched firmly by a cowled acolyte, and their forefingers slit by a sacred copper knife in Epiminophas’s skilled grip. The fresh blood that dripped into the altar basin was used by a second acolyte to pen their names onto the sacred scroll, thus affirming each child’s place in eternal slavery to almighty Amalias.

The witch-child, of course, was reserved for last. She arrived late, shortly after Epiminophas himself, but the looks and murmurs attending her appearance confirmed her reputation. Indeed, her wan, blank gaze made an eerie impression even on the arch-priest. As the girl’s cringing cousins and siblings were led awkwardly forward by the family’s moon-faced patriarch to receive their name-blessings, the deep, expectant silence proved how well the red-haired girl was known and feared by these ignorant clod-lumpers.

At last the little witch was brought to the gory, blood-crusted altar, which yet was scarce redder than the tangled coils of her hair. She did not wear the grey-white jerkin that was customary for the ritual; instead, Epiminophas saw, she affected a most garish attire. Her floor-length robe was of faded green, loose and oversized about her slender wrists and hands, with just a wedge of flat, pale breastbone visible at the neck. Even more outrageous was what she carried in the crook of her left arm: an ugly child’s-doll, grimy-looking and crudely made, yet clothed and adorned in tailored garments and ornaments—necklaces, wristbands, diadems, and badges, most of them garish in design, though a few were of middling value.

After a moment’s thought, Epiminophas determined not to challenge her trappings. The doll, it would appear, was a part of her wizardly show. If she chose to single herself out thus and aggrandize her meeting with the Imperial church, it could only redound to the temple’s greater credit as well as her own. If, on the other hand, the two sides ended in opposition, it would still magnify the church’s glory; only the charlatan’s downfall could be made any worse.

“Name, child?” the priest roundly intoned. During the long pause that followed, Epiminophas sternly surveyed the watchers for any mutterers and fidgeters; most of all, he regarded the sweating, apprehensive face of the stumble-footed fool they chose to call Amulf the Good.

“Your divinity,” the farm oaf ventured at last, “I will have to speak for my stepdaughter. Since the day her parents were slain, she has not uttered—”

“Tamsin,” a firm, clear voice interrupted him. “Record the name Tamsin.”

It was the girl. As she spoke, she extended her hand submissively over the altar. From the stir and murmur in the thatch-covered gallery, the priest could guess that something remarkable had happened. An instant later, he understood; she had been playing mute all these years, and had handed him a miracle.

“Tamsin—” he affected a weighty pause “—do you swear eternal obedience to the High God Amalias?” Epiminophas added the question as a further prod, to remove any doubt in the onlookers’ minds as to what had happened.

“I swear obedience to the High God.”

Again a sigh of wonder swept through the assembled worshippers; there was no question who had spoken. By the bell-like resonance of the child’s voice, it was hard to say that she had not been schooled in temple oratory the while. Yet Epiminophas knew better; here stood a gifted performer. At his nod, the girl’s extended arm was steadied by the waiting acolyte. The priest himself grasped her frail hand in one of his own, with her palm upraised, and brought the copper knife down to her fingertip.

Was it his imagination, or did the pale, soft skin begin to bead with thick, ruby drops even before the razored edge had touched it? Could the lass have palmed a blade somehow... or did she possess the power to will such stigmata? Or was it only the steady gaze of those green eyes, momentarily distracting him from his task?

“Tamsin, of Sodgrum hamlet.” He made the declaration less firmly and resoundingly than he would have liked. The hooded scribe bent forward, ritually dabbed his quill-point in the spot of fresh blood on the altar, then transcribed the name with a special flourish to the parchment resting on the nearby scroll-rack.

“May you live in Amalias’s blessing,” Epiminophas proclaimed. Hearing the sigh of gratification from the audience, he felt vaguely relieved that this youngster, vexingly pretty as she was, would now be leaving his sight.

But she did not turn away. Though the acolyte had released her arm, she continued to stand before the altar expectantly, fixing him with that green-lit stare.

“You can go, child,” he condescended quietly, glancing with meaning from Tamsin to her stepfather.

The farm dolt hovered nervously over the girl. Though obviously eager to leave, he seemed afraid to touch the little enchantress and guide her away. Epiminophas turned his gaze back to her, sternly.