Lyrec (16 page)

Varenukha followed the last of his villagers up to the ridge. He took satisfaction in having silenced Alcemon, but thought that it might do for the baker to suffer some misfortune on the way back home. Perhaps one of those torches he carried would accidentally ignite, setting him on fire. An obvious rebuke from the gods. Yes. That might be necessary.

The trail emerged in a clearing, which ran along the top of the ridge in either direction. The villagers were gathered there, awaiting further orders from their priest.

Stars twinkled down on a valley that was like a bowl scooped out of the mountains. Directly across from them were peaks slowly being devoured by a thick ledge of cloud. It rolled ponderously toward them. By the time they reached the valley floor, the cloud would be where they stood now.

Varenukha caught up with the main body of villagers as they looked down into the valley.
 

The village lay directly below them. Barely a dozen lights shone to mark its location. Off to the left perhaps half a stey down the hillside, the starlight pinpointed the main bridge into the village and gave him a better account of their position. The priest moved through the group to lead them down. He smelled suddenly the sweet tang of mulcetta, and realized that the hillside below them was covered in mulcetta vines—endless rows as far as the eye could see. The plump berries on the nearest plants gleamed in the starlight. They grew on all the hillsides surrounding Ukobachia: the making of
mulcet
from the berries was the Kobachs’ primary source of income. That is, he thought, it was until tonight. The strong drink had even played a critical part in his plan. It was from one of his villagers who had poached the berries for years that he’d learned of this high path, used by the Kobachs to make the harvesting easier. Now he would follow it down between the rows of vines, to where a small rope bridge was strung across the river. The patrol on the main bridge, if there was one, would never even suspect an invading force knew about it. They wouldn’t know what had happened until it was too late.

Varenukha told his followers, “Sound no alarms. Do whatever’s necessary to ensure that. Remember your particular tasks and perform them swiftly, then make your way back to Trufege.”

Thirty-three heads all nodded in accord. Their questioning had ceased. Good.

He turned and they moved after him.

Once in the vines, the smell of mulcetta made their eyes water. The berries were sticky with juice. It rubbed onto their clothing, onto their skin. It would be days before the odor washed away; the stain might last forever.

Alcemon handed out most of his torches to his comrades as they passed. He was not supposed to do this until after they’d crossed the rope bridge, but only he and the priest knew that. They stumbled and shuffled down the narrow paths, through the overhanging vines. Alcemon went along sluggishly, lagging behind until the others in their zeal had all passed him by. Then he stepped off the path, and disappeared among the vines. He hid there, listening to his comrades move away. The air seemed to darken. Alcemon looked up to see the heavy cloud rolling across his view of the sky. It seemed scarcely higher than the top of the ridge.

He snuck back out on the path. The ridge where he had stood a few minutes before became hazy. It faded away as he watched. He’d planned to sneak back over it. Now he decided it might be wiser to spend the night among the vines. He couldn’t say why exactly, but he did not want to enter that cloud. With a shiver, he crept back into the shadows of the vines, making sure he could not be seen from above rather than below.

*****

The old man awoke with a start and reached over instinctively to hold and protect his wife. Her nightmare had awakened him: he had heard her calling his name.

His hand brushed against linen and emptiness. The bed, beside him, was empty. A pain entered his chest, as if a rib had snapped when he sat up and now pierced his lung and heart.

A dream. It had been a dream.

He put his palms against his forehead, covering a geometric tattoo etched there, and stared down at the floor. Anralys, he called silently to the goddess, why does the love you represent linger so long in this old soul? It has been nearly nine years, why don’t you let me forget? There are times when I lie here and think I can feel her me warmth beside me, can smell her and hear the soft snores she made. Sometimes her hair brushes my face, tickling, and I’ll shove it away and then realize it cannot be, and sit up to find that she is gone. Of course she’s gone. But if so, then why does she keep reappearing for me, Anralys? Powerful goddess, make me forget the pain of loss. Let me remember her in our daughter. New life, new hope. My Pavra.

The old man peered across the room to where his daughter slept on her bed of straw. So late in life his wife had borne her. Why had it happened that way? After twenty years of fruitlessness, why the sudden fatal bloom?

His name was Malchavik, a costumer by trade to the village of Ukobachia. He had lived a good and quiet life before Pavra’s birth, being no maker of laws or director of destinies. He fashioned only clothing, mostly boots and hats and richly embroidered apparel for festivals and weddings. Then his wife had discovered she was pregnant. Forty years old and pregnant. Other shocks followed in ascending progression. The time of birth neared and the midwives had told him calmly that the baby could not come out of its own. She would have to be opened up. He could still remember the acrid smell of their healing herbs and the peculiar odor of her blood that day. The women would not let him enter the room, even when his wife’s cries threatened to drive him mad. Someone—how odd that he could not recollect the person’s identity when all else stood out so clearly—took him out to the tavern and sat with him, buying his drinks, which he downed one after the other with barely enough time in between for a breath. He was calculatedly drunk by the time one of the women came to tell him that his wife, Pavra, had not survived. He had begun to laugh at this, tears pouring down his face—laughing and crying at the same time. What, the woman had asked, did he wish to name the child? All Malchavik had been able to say was his wife’s name, again and again and again.

Years followed of which he had no recollection. The money he’d saved went to keep him drunk and thoughtless. Later he learned that many people had tried to help him get control of himself, but that he defied them all. The women looked after his daughter all the while.
 

One day he’d awakened by the quay, stinking of fish, lying in muck, and somehow coldly sober. He had cried there alone for hours, despising himself for the wretched creature he was. And he had gone home, as simply as that, to a three year old daughter with blonde hair and pale blue eyes. Though her name was that of his wife, the child and mother were separate in his mind—as if his wife had died on the same night that a baby had been abandoned on his doorstep.

He returned to his work, lived his quiet life again, and devoted himself to raising his daughter. The village breathed a sigh of relief. They were magical, but they could not reach out to a man who had shut himself off.

In some deep recess of his mind he cursed the powers of his race for their inability to save his wife. He had stopped using his own the day she died, and never tried them again in the nine years that followed. However, there was a spark of wisdom in him that kept him from curbing his daughter’s use of hers. She appeared to have an instinct for reaching out to the source of magic for all Kobachs, for touching and shaping it. She had incredible potential, as he told anyone who would come by, and she needed no emblem written into her skin to prove this; but Malchavik was from an old family, as his wife had been, and he believed that the Kobachs should wear their heritage proudly. So he had etched upon her forehead a simple flower in dark blue lines. Pavra, his flower.

Seeing her asleep on her straw bed, his longing became. a terrible ache. It hurt to be with her just then, with his wife’s ghost so near. So without waking her, he dressed and stole out into the night.

The sky was overcast. A chill on the air awoke him. He decided to wander down to the river, there to sit and reminisce and talk to his wife’s spirit. From the dark side street he could see the quay ahead—the oddly geometrical lines of boats and barges moored there; poles pointing into the sky, waiting for someone to take them and use them. Two cats darted across his path and disappeared around a corner. He heard one of them growl. Beyond the back of the buildings, the path to the quay extended along the top of an artificial dike built to keep the quay accessible during the spring floods.

When he heard the sound, Malchavik had reached the middle of the dike. Like a large slab of tile shattering on stone—like that, but not that. He stopped and looked back at the sleeping village. Probably those stupid cats, he thought, but continued to survey and identify the darkness.

If clouds had not sealed in the valley so utterly, he might have seen the edge of the village and, farther down the river, the bridge much more clearly. He wondered if there was a storm brewing—the cloud cover was so thick. But the air did not smell right for rain.

He was about to turn back toward the quay when a light appeared. It was next to the first few buildings nearest the bridge, a small red glow that vanished for a second, then reappeared. Hot coals and someone moving around them. Who could possibly be up this late and cleaning out their hearth? Anyone else in Ukobachia might have probed in that direction to “hear” the person’s identity, but Malchavik had given that up. He set off toward the curious glow.

Before he had reached flat land again, the coals ignited. A bright flame rose up, bobbing about. A torch! Malchavik’s heart began to pound. He hurried along the path. A second torch ignited. Then the buildings were between him and the lights, and all he could see were insidious shadows. He would have headed straight for the light but, at the end of the alley ahead, three torch-bearing figures darted past. He called out to them and ran between the buildings and into the road. The figures disappeared into the darkness, and he was casting a long, wavering shadow. He swung about to find flames licking up the walls of two buildings.

The sight of the fire was so horrible that for a few precious moments he could not move or think what to do. Release came in the knowledge that someone had set the fires—the figures that had run past him. He bolted into the center of the road, shouting, “Up! Up! Fire! Assassins in the village, wake you all!” He sensed motion behind him, started to turn; his closed-off abilities, opening through panic, warned him of imminent danger, and he raised his arm to catch the thing coming at him, but only managed to slow it down. The club struck him above the ear and he crumpled to the ground.

Shouts, screams and the ringing of a bell all jumbled together in Malchavik’s half-conscious state. Some village was burning, but it was far removed from him and too much trouble to devote much time to. Something scraped near his head and he muttered, “Pavra,” and opened his eyes.

A bare foot pointed at him, light rippling over it. Fire. He was rolled onto his back and a voice called to him. A bearded face hung over him. He knew that face, if he could just put a name to it. He was drawn up to a sitting position. The face wore a look of terror. Why was the man afraid of him? Had he been drunk again? His eyes focused beyond the man, on flames shooting up as high as trees. Pavra…

“Pavra!” he wailed suddenly and wrestled to be free of the man’s grip. He twisted his head to see his shop and house—to see them shaped by fire. Throwing himself free, he tried to crawl along the ground, but the man with the beard stopped him and sat him up again.

“Malchavik, what happened?” The alarm bell stopped ringing then. Somewhere nearby, something crashed.

“Assassins…with torches, to kill us in our sleep.” He raised watering eyes to his house again. “Oh, gods, is she safe? Do you know if she got out?”

“It’s chaos, Malchavik. I haven’t any idea.” The bearded man released him and stood up. Malchavik concentrated past the fierce pain in his head and retrieved the man’s name. “Stachem,” he said, “help me up. Take me to my home.”

Stachem obeyed, helping him to his feet. The roof of the tailor shop fell in and a wall twisted and collapsed on top of it. “You have no home,” Stachem said.

Malchavik began to shiver. His voice whined in his throat. He closed his eyes and concentrated. From Stachem he borrowed strength and will, driving back the shock, erasing from the forefront of his thoughts the knowledge of his daughter’s fate. His lips parted, curled. “Come,” he ordered. His first steps were unsteady, but became surer as he went. Around him people ran in desperate panic. He sent his thoughts to some of them, and the calmness, the certainty, gave them control and direction. They lost their panic and followed him.

He choked from the smells that the smoke carried. His eyes stung. But he walked on, gaining strength from the growing circle of people around him.

There was only one place the assassins could go.

*****

Five figures stood in the center of the wide bridge. At either end, blocking them, were citizens of Ukobachia. All parties were armed, holding one another at bay with torches and clubs. At the far end were guards from the pass who’d come running at the first sign of fire. They had sealed off the bridge. Those at this end had seen the torch-wielding brigade from Trufege escaping and given chase. Only five members of that brigade had been forced by circumstance to use the main bridge. The rest had escaped on the rope bridge that had allowed them access to Ukobachia.

Malchavik and his collected citizens pushed through the guards. The five men on the bridge were strangers to him; but one was a priest, and Malchavik could tell that he was the leader.

The priest assumed from the audience who followed him that Malchavik must be a town leader, and addressed him patronizingly. “We’re passing through here on church business. It’s imperative you allow us continue to Trufege. We will sound the alarm there and have help sent to you.”