ICE BURIAL: The Oldest Human Murder Mystery (The Mother People Series Book 3) (50 page)

Zena
’s throat tightened
as she look
e
d down at
Gurd
. Had this pitiable man who lived in a
perpetual state of terror
killed
Lief?
And if he
had
, what had impelled him to
commit such an appalling act
?

Runor seemed to read her thought. “Yes,” she said, “I believe he
is the man who
shot Lief
, though
I am not sure why.
”

She sighed. “
He
cannot
do more harm now
to anyone
.
He does not know it yet but he has lost his fingers and toes to the frost.
It would be very hard for him to
hold a knife or his bow
again
, or to fashion arrows for it.
I do not think he
will not wa
l
k again either.
The wound on his leg  fester
s
badly
, and his
body is hot with the
fever
that rages inside him.
It
gets worse each day, thoug
h we have tried to control it.
”

Moving very slowly, so as not to frighten Gurd further, she knelt beside him and
slip
p
ed the cloth on his face away
, so that the terrible scarring was visible to all of them. Gently, she applied
a soothing paste to his battered
skin
, then she covered
the scarred side of his face again.

“
That is why he
does not like
to be seen
,” she
said.
Zena
heard deep pain in her voice, and wondered what it meant.

“What happened to him
?
” Larak whispered, shocked.

“That is what I must tell you,” Runor said
, and
now
her voice trembled
.
“But first, he needs a potion to help with the pain.”

Pressing her hand to
Gurd’s
forehead, she felt the heat that emanated from him, then ran soothing fingers across the covered face. It seemed to
Zena
that the man relaxed a little.
She looked down at the t
errified
eyes, and knew
that
she too, could not wish him harm despite what he had done to Lief, to her. The realization brough
t
her a measure of peace.

A woman came with
the
potion, and Runor spooned it gently between Gurd’s lips. “It is
all
we
can do,
to try to keep him comfortable until he is gone,
” she
said
quietly.
“It will not be long now, I think.”

“How did he come here, and why?”
Durak
asked.

Runor shook her head. “We do not know.
He hears what we say but
he seems to
understand only a little, and he never speaks.
”

“That is because
the man who was
his father beat him on the throat when he was young,” Pila said
, surprising those who did not know.
“I heard Krone speak of it.”

Brulet nodded. “I heard
Krone say that
too
, and told the others the story
. His father was very cruel to him.”

Runor’s eyes clouded with pity. She had not known that. Would the knowledge have stayed her hand? She shook her head. She had been too angry to think.

“
So
he too became cruel.”
Niva
sighed.
“I wonder why he killed
Lief and tried to kill Durak,”
she said, voicing all their thoughts.

Unexpectedly, Mara
answered
.
“He loved the Leader,
so he might have hated anyone who harmed him.
I
saw them once together, near the hut they built
.
I had gone there
because
I wanted to know more about them. I
saw Gurd look up at the Leader
, and t
here was adoration his eyes
. And when the Leader looked back at him,
I saw kindness in
his
face
.
It may be that the Leader was the only man
who had ever been kind to Gurd.

“I saw his scarred face too, and I was afraid,” she added with a shu
d
der. “I was sure he would kill me if he
knew I had seen
it,
so I
stole away
.”

Zena
winced.
Lief had seen the scarred face
too, all
those years ago
. Was that why Gurd had killed him? It seemed a
pitifully inadequate
reason
to kill. But perhaps for a mute and unloved man who had never known kindness except from the Leader, it was enough. Probably too, Gurd had wanted to exact revenge on anyone who had contributed to the Leader’s downfall.
Durak had taken Rofina away from him, and Lief had helped her to save the infant. She would probably have
been next.
Lief must have realized that at the end, must have been trying to warn her tha
t even though Korg and the Leader were dead,
she was
still in danger
.

Durak’s urgent whisper interrupted her thought
s
.
“Look
! He heard us speaking of the
Leader
, and…” He  broke off, uncertain
how to describe
what
he saw
.

Zena
looked down again.
The
dying
man’s eyes were pleading
with them.
Did he want to hear more
of the Leader
?

Impulsively,
Zena
knelt down beside him. “The Leader cares very much for you
and he
is grateful for all you have done for him
,
”
s
he told the anguished man, and saw relief come into his face.

Pila knelt on his other side and felt his wrist.
“
H
e is very near death,” she
said softly.
“Have you anything of the Leader’s, a piece of clothing perhaps, that we could give him?
I think that would
comfort him
.
”

“I will go to the hut they lived in,” Mara
answered quickly.
“
S
ome of his clothing is
still
there.” Hular ran off with her, and soon they returned with a cloak, the one the Leader had worn when he spoke of the Great Spirit.

Zena
put the cloak in Gurd’s bandaged hands. He
clasped it eagerly, then he brought
it to his nose to smell it
. His
eyes lit
up
with
happiness
as he breathed it in.

W
hen he
looked up at them again
,
they saw
confusion in his
face
, as if he sensed that they wanted to help him
and
did not know what to make of kindness from anyone but the Leader.

His eyes shifted back to
Zena
’s
face, and he watched her expectantly,
waiting
to hear more of the Leader. But what else could she say? Did he know the Leader was dead? She could not tell him that.

Perhaps that
was not what Gurd
wanted to hear anyway, she realized. He
was dying
,
and what he needed
now
was the comfort of knowing that he would be with the Leader
again
soon.

“The Leader is
coming for
you
,
” she
said
slowly
and clearly
. “
He will be with you soon. You have only to wait, to close your eyes and wait,
and then you will be with
the Leader.
He is waiting for you.”

A kind of radiance came into Gurd’s
scarred face now,
and his lips moved as if he were trying to smile.
Then a great sigh escaped him
,
and he closed his eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY
SIX

Gurd died later that day. Wrapping him in the Leader’s cloak, they buried him beside the hut in the woods where they had lived together. When the brief ceremony was over, Runor led them back to the clearing. She looked so
agonized
that
Zena
wanted to take
the old wise one
into her arms
to
comfort her, but
Runor’s
closed face and
bowed shoulders kept her from doing it.

Runor began to speak
as soon as they were seated, as
if she could not wait now to get the words out
, be free of them
.
At first, her voice was low
and un
c
ertain
but as she talked it
took on the timbre of the
vibrant
woman she had been
when she had first
met
the tall
young man
with the pale hair and brilliant eyes
.

“He was called Mordor
then,” she told them. “It was a long
time ago, before Rofina was born. He and Korg and Gurd came to
our village
and
stayed here for almost a full cycle of the seasons.
They were
very young ,
Korg and Gurd only just past boyhood, Mordor a
young man
.

“
He
was
so beautiful
,
”
Runor
said wistfully, unable not to feel
again
the pull of
Mordor
, the magnetism
that had so charmed her
. “He drew me in,
with the hands that stroked m
e
,
with his
magnificent voice, for even then it was a joy to hear
, with the words of wisdom that were not really wisdom but seemed as if they were
, with words of love I believed though I should not have
, should have seen what he really was. But by then he had
pulled my heart into his. I loved him, desired him, could think of nothing but him. I wanted only the beautiful
young man
I saw
before me
, and I would not allow myself to see what lay behind th
e
beauty
, the resonant voice that made all seem well
.
”

“Korg was there, but we
seldom
saw him. He
w
ent to
a clearing
in the woods
w
here he
taught himself to dance
,
the wondrous dances you saw. He could twist in the air, almost fly sometimes. I watched
him sometimes
, though he did not see me.
I thought he
was fighting
demons in his dances, even when they were
beautiful to behold, so
gra
c
e
ful it was hard to believe he was merely a man. But
savagery
was
in
his dancing
,
too,
in the way he moved, in the expressions on his face. T
he desire to wound others
was strong in him
already.
But even more he wanted to control them. For that, he learned to use herbs.
I think he believed from the start that he could
make
people do as he wished wi
th his potions
, especially women.

“And
when he was not
in the woods studying his herbs, perfecting his dances, he
watched us, watched me. He knew all that was in my heart,
though I
knew
little
of
what was in
his.
He knew what was in his brother’s heart too, when I did not. That was his power.
I did not trust
Korg
even then
, dared not trust him. And yet, there was good in
him
too
.
I saw that many times.

“I seldom saw
Gurd
either
, though he was always nearby. He was a graceless boy, already as broad as he was
tall, who
stayed mostly in the woods, as if uncertain of his welcome.
He wanted only to serve Mordor, look after him,
to
make mead for him
and bring it to him
.
Mordor was
always
a lover of mead
who
drank more than he should. I thought
his need for it
would pass as he grew older. It did not.
”

Runor closed her eyes, thinking, assessing. “Was there
ever
goodness in
Mordor
or was he too twisted from the start?
” she asked aloud, though they all knew she did not expect an answer. “
I
though
t
then
that there was
. I was
captivated by his words of love, entranced by his vision of a world free of evil.”

A look of intense pain came into
Runor’s
face.
“
And all the time the evil was in his heart,
telling him to do things no man should do,
but I would not see it. Korg knew, though. He knew there were two Mordors; the one of the golden words, the one who committed unspeakable deeds.

“
Once, Mordor
spoke
of his mother
, of how s
he loved me
ad,
loved men even more.
She took t
he
m
into her hut and into her body, one after the other
. Her lust for them was so great that she wanted them day and night. She
shouted at her sons to leave her
so she could indulge in her pleasures. I
f they did not
leave
quickly enough
she dragged them into the woods
and made them walk in
circles
until they were lost,
then she
left them there to wander
alone
in
the darkness
, hungry and afraid
,
until finally they found their way back. She was the same with mead. She drank
that
day and night too, until she fell into a stupor. And when she awoke, she began her cycle again, the men, the drink…

“
Mordor hated her
, but Korg’s hatred was
stronger
, harsher
. He hated what
his mother
did, hated
the mead she drank, hated her lust for men most of all. In the end,
he came to hate all women, all
lust, all
mating.
But Mordor was
like his mother
. Even as
he hated her
, he did as she had done
.
He
drank as she did, mated as she did,
with every woman he saw.
This too I did not
believe
, or did not want to know.
I think he had probably mat
ed with every woman in the area
before I finally believed.

“
And then the
voices
began to come, the
voices
in his
mind
that told him
to
kill
witches lest all his people be destroyed.
They tormented him, made him do what no man should do, turned him into a man I did not know, a man no one should know. Then, even
I
was forced
to see the danger, the horrors that would come if the
voices
were
not controlled
.

“
And so Korg took him away
. He took
Gurd away too, but not before…”
Runor broke off abruptly, unable, or unwilling, to finish her thought.

Silence fell
then
, a silence so
charged with tension no one breathed until Runor spoke again. Now her voice was harsh with loathing, for the Leader, for herself.

“I had heard stories of what
Mordor
had done,
but
I did
n
ot believe
them
until
I saw for myself. I was visiting a friend in another village when a girl ran
into the clearing with her mother
seeking
safety.
She was hardly more than a child, and she was
terrified
,
unable to speak at first, she was
so frightened
.
When she
was calmer
she told us that Mordor
had raped her and called
her
a witch. She
had
felt his hands at her throat but then her mother came and screamed
, and Mo
r
dor ran.

“
The men set out to look for him
and bring him before the council
, but
I found him first
. He
had returned to our village and wa
s
outside
my hut, waiting for me
, as if nothing had happened
. I
could see no awareness of the terrible thing he had done on his face. Instead, he wanted just to go on as we had before.

I
was
outraged. I
told him that it was wrong and cruel
to take a girl
by force,
especially one who was no more than a child
. He looked at me and laughed
, and came closer to pull me down
by the fire, began to stroke me. When I resist
ed
,
would not let him draw me to the ground,
his face changed. I saw fury in it
because
I
did
not obey
him.
Dragging me down
by force
, he pinned
me
against the ground, jumped
on top of me
and
raped me
.
There was disdain in his eyes, and anger.
When
he had finished, he gestured to Gurd
, who had been watching us
from the trees
. Before I could even rise, Gurd
ran
over
and
raped me too.
He made no noise at all, not
even
a groan,
but when he rolled away, he was smiling
.
He had enjoyed what he had done.
”

Runor’s lips trembled as she said the next words. “
Rage possessed me
.
I
grabbed
the pot of food
heating
on the fire and threw it into Gurd’s face.
A
sound came from him
then
,
a
strangled sound
like th
at
made by
a
mute
animal
when it is
caught
by
a predator and cannot escape.
”

Someone stifled a gasp, then all was quiet again.
Runor was silent
, too,
gathering her strength.
Her listeners
waited, hardly breathing, until her voice came again.

“That
is how Gurd came by his scars
,” she said finally, sounding like Runor as she was today. “
And that is why Teran was hit over the head so hard she lost her memory, why she was abducted and raped, why Lief was killed, why Durak was attacked. All those things happened because I threw a pot of boiling liquid into Gurd’s face.
May the Goddess forgive me,
Zena
too. Especially
Zena
, for she has suffered most because of my unthinking act.
”

Zena
opened her mouth to speak, but Runor held up a restraining hand
. “I must finish now,” she said, “while I still have the strength.”