Arona was angry at him. She'd come around. She could no more stay away from Records House—or from him—than a horse could cease to run. He was the only one in the village she could talk to about things they both cared about; in time she'd come around. He had pushed her too far, too fast; he had known that while he was doing it. His accursed impatience! But a season or two of patient courtship should undo the harm. For he truly loved her, and if she had the sense the gods gave a goose, she knew it.
He yawned, stretched, and rubbed his sleepy eyes. Splashing cold water on his face, he went to inspect his new domain.
The rope on the records room door had been cut—again—and he knew whose work that was. No, she could never stay away from Records House. Several scrolls were missing. Not his private writings, and not the tiresome daily business of these farmwives and their crones, but the fascinating, obviously false, tales of heroism and invention, great deeds and desperate times, that she so loved. “Arona!” he called. “Arona?” He shook his head, combed his hair, ate a few bites, and set out for her mother's house.
Bethiah hadn't seen her. “Isn't she with you?” she asked, and plainly, believed. He strode down the path to the forge house, then broke into a run. None of her friends had the slightest idea where she was, but all thought she was with him. He broke into a cold sweat. “Arona!” he bellowed, running towards the caves. Several villagers followed him, with torches. There was no sign she was there, or had ever been there.
It was useless to ask the Witch; several villagers informed him that she had left the day before, as planned. “Didn't you know?” the eldest, Raula Mylenesdaughter, accused him.
Arona was gone, and half the village history with her. Oh, well, he thought, the tales were patently untrue anyway. Women ruling a town. Were-raiders defeated by an army of common men. Falcon Goddesses taking vengeance on mortals. The town was better off without such fantasies. Arona! he cried miserably. Why did you have to do this? If I'd had any notion how much these silly tales meant to you, I'd have given them to you as a gift. Come back to me, and let me make it up to you.
Thirteen
Toads
Share my fire?” The lone traveller who offered wistfully was roughly dressed, but as clean as a traveller could be on the road, and well-spoken. Gratefully Arona dismounted from the mule she had named Lennis, and approached the fire. She felt no sense of wrongness then, nor later as they talked. She spoke of her mission to Lormt, her and Egil's struggles for the recorder's office, and the decision of the elders. He spoke of his wife at home, his children, the daughters who were the light of his existence. She told tales, and they shared food and wine.
Then she took off her cap. His eyes widened. “A lass? Well! The gods have smiled on me beyond measure! I could use my bedroll warmed this night.” She shook her head and retreated; he brought forth a length of fine lace from his pack. “You won't find me ungenerous,” he coaxed.
“Thank you, but no,” she said firmly, retreating further, loosening the knife. He sprang at her, one hand on her throat, the other holding a dagger he had drawn faster than her eye could follow. “What are you if not a whore?” he snarled. “A robber's wench, lying in wait with your band to prey on such as I?”
“A traveller! I told you!” she cried, struggling to free her knife with one hand, driving her nails into his hand with the other. “You bid me share your fire, and now play the rutbeast and the bully with me? Oh, Lennis was right about your kind. Our miller,” she explained, “and never right about anything before. But, oh… .”
“If you didn't want this,” he asked, honestly bewildered, “why did you show me you were a lass? I thought it meant—what any man would have thought it meant. How old are you? And what's your real story?”
“Fourteen,” Arona choked out, “nearly fifteen, and this Egil I spoke of, he wanted—he tried—I ran away—”
The man retreated. “For that, I am sorry. But if you mean to keep on with this mad course, keep to your boy's disguise until you reach your aunt or whoever you are fleeing to.” He sheathed his knife and sat back down. “You need not fear me any more. I believe you, and, great gods, I have daughters.” He shook his head in pity. “Forced to choose between a lustful master and going unprotected on the road. So might it be for them if my ventures ever failed. What's your name?”
“Arona Bethiahsdaughter.” She sat down well away from him, but accepted the drink he offered as apology. Why did he look at her with such compassion? “Dame Witch, who rode with me a way, told me much, but,” her voice shook, “not the whole. But this is a land where little children play at self-defense.”
“The wars,” he agreed. “No, your Witch companion—it was prudent of you to take service with her. Brave lass!—is protected from what you have had to endure. Sleep now,” he said gently. “With your knife in your hand if need be. I will not harm you. But most other men—you do well to go armed.”
She slept, but warily, and woke still tired. From now on, she would ride only with women, or alone.
The rough, bearded men around the campfire chuckled as the youthful storyteller lowered a clear, unbroken voice dramatically. “… And the foxwolf cried out in amazement, ‘Sister? Why are you calling me Sister, you foolish little hen?’ And as she spoke,” the storyteller paused, “the hen ran out of the foxwolfs mouth, and got away. And never did the foxwolf get one bite of the little brown hen!”
The men chortled, and their children clapped and cheered. “More! More!” shouted a young maid from the family group that clustered to one side of the campground.
The storyteller called Aaron Bethiahson rose, bowed to the women and children, and emptied the last of the pack mule's burden into the saddlebags of the riding mule called Lennis. Ride with women or alone. What a fool's vow, in a land where men abounded on the roads, and no woman rode alone except as bait in a trap as the man had said! And those who rode with men had no say in anything and could not be dealt with, for which bile rose in Arona's throat every time.
The moon had waned and waxed again since she had left Riveredge Village. The broad valley of the river Es lay behind her, and the mountains wherein Lormt lay, ahead. Wearily, eagerly she looked back one last time at her first taste of the lands of the outsiders. Some had been kind, and some, cruel. Some drove her from their doors as a vagrant; others shared their last crust. All had been scarred by the bitter marks of war, their homes in ruins, their fields fallow, the very stones themselves tumbled and scorched by the enormous energies let loose the night of the Turning.
The bargain sealed with the caravan master, she fingered the copper and silver coins in wonder the next morning. Such small, plain things to be worth so much in trade! And such an elegant concept, in a land too big for simple barter. Coinage; mold-board plows; tame horses with metal rings upon their feet; people who lived by their trades alone and not as farmers; and the women Cousin Jommy's tales mentioned, who lived by letting men play the rutbeast with them. Men who practiced with her at the art of self-defense, thinking her a boy, who would never have taught the girls who needed it more.
Arona shivered, and fingered her butcher knife again. The mountains ahead, with their predators in fur, would be safer than the cultivated lands, with their predators in men's clothing. She scratched the old pack mule behind the ears one last time and patted her muzzle. “Goodbye, Raula,” she said. The mule's new owner smiled at her indulgently; Raula brayed loudly. The children laughed again, and the caravan moved west. Arona turned Lennis's nose to the northward path, into the mountains.
Several days she rode, eating lightly of her provisions, living off the forest as the sheepherders were taught to do. She sheltered from the rain in huts of green branches, covered with a tightly-woven blanket, and listened to the familiar sounds of the night woods alertly, but without fear. Then, in the bright blaze of midday, she heard muffled hoofbeats in the hills to her right.
This one place, the steep dropoff to her right and. the sheer cliffs to her left had broadened out
into a meadow, where cattle grazed and wildflowers bloomed knee-deep. At the back of the meadow, against the face of the cliff, a tumbledown log cabin stood. The porch rail alone was new, and long enough to tie several horses to.
She rode a slow mule and not a fast horse. Looking to the left and the right, she urged Lennis along the path with all speed. Ahead on the path the hills rose steep around her on both sides as the trail wound into a pass between two peaks. Turning around, she saw a dust cloud and picked out the vague shapes within. One, two, three mounted riders, far down the trail, and moving fast. She drew her knife.
She knew now she could give a good account of herself with the weapon, but the odds were great now. If only she'd brought a bow and some arrows! But, no, what use had a shortsighted maid for distance weapons? Better rely on her snares.
Dismounting quickly, she rummaged in the saddlebag for her rabbit snares, all the while casting terrified glances down the road to where the riders were gaining on her. She tied a snare between two white-barked willow trees, then jammed the others in her pocket and struck Lennis on the rump viciously. The mule brayed and headed down the path at a mule's fastest pace.
Arona's amulet began to hum. She took it in her hand as she ran down the path, desperately seeking a hiding place. If she could see one, any other person could, for her sight was short and most hunters’ sight was long. Dame Witch, she mentally prayed as she ducked off the path and into the trees. Power behind this amulet. Save me, and save the scrolls, or all this has been for nothing. Jonkara, Falcon Goddess, Avenger of Women, save me.
As she ran and searched, she attuned her mind to the amulet. It hummed louder, and began glowing softly, the scarlet of the mountain leaves in Falcon Moon. A deeper humming came from the sheer rock face ahead and to her left. The sound intensified, and became a rumbling like thunder. A huge slab of mountain granite slid back like a curtain, and a cave mouth gaped behind it. Lennis the mule plodded up beside her and brayed her rebellion at the musty, tangy air that came from within.
Arona edged closer and closer to the cave mouth. An eerie blue light that seemed partly too bright to be seen by human eyes shone deep inside. Outside, the bandits’ hoofbeats raced closer and closer. Only a moment she weighed her terror of the unknown against her certain fate if she lingered. She took a deep breath, and shoved her mule through the curtain of light, following swiftly before she changed her mind. Unless they were most unusual bandits, they would not follow her here.
She was in a huge vault, deep underground, lit by the same blue light that protected the cave. A faint, crisp smell touched her nostrils, as if the place were preternaturally clean. There was no visible source of either smell or light. The mule laid back her ears and would go no farther; with a sigh, Arona looked around for a place to tether her and found none.
Oh, Jonkara's droppings, I'll stay, a voice grumbled in her mind as plainly as her own breathing. It was a rough, steady, stubborn, ill-tempered voice, and long-familiar to her. In gratitude she thought back, Good mule! and walked down through the vault, staring about her in wonder.
Row upon row of pallets lined the vault. On each pallet was a living being, shielded by a cylindrical covering of the same light that protected the cave. Many of them were human; some were not. Most of the humans were men; some were women. She lingered long over one, a redheaded young woman in a sleek cloth-of-silver suit that fitted her like a second skin. The woman wore boots and a plain silver helmet and carried a long silver lance of odd shape that Arona knew, without being told, was a weapon of great power. The recorder frowned. Was it right to rouse such a powerful warrior and use such a great weapon against a pack of common thieves? As well kill a mouse with a meat cleaver!
She looked up and down the rows, noticing that some of the men looked like those very bandits she had left outside. When had it come to her that she must wake somebody here? And for what purpose?
It came to her then. Wake the one you need the most.
She stood among them, eyes closed, concentrating, and finally admitted, I don't know which one I need the most, but trust You to do so. For now she realized the cavern itself was sentient in some way she did not understand. Moreover, she could trust it. That caused her a moment's panic so intense she nearly lost control, for what better bait for a trap than that feeling of absolute trust?
The cavern seemed to laugh at her, a dry chuckle, and it directed her to a small side room where she could take care of her needs, wash her face, and drink from an artificial spring of cold, delicious water. Unfortunately, my supply of human food is quite limited, it advised her. The War That Sealed The East put a great burden on my facilities. This one seems a little less destructive. It sighed. Low-tech wars always are, but for disease, famine, and such things.
“Who, what are you?” she said out loud.
“A refuge.” The cavern seemed to be thinking. Then, by subtle shifts of the light around her, it led her to a pallet from which a frightening, repulsive creature was rising. The creature was short and squat, with grey lumpy skin. It was clad in some sort of harness and very little else. Arona's guts churned within her.
The creature rose and looked at her steadily through huge yellow eyes set far to either side of its head. Its wide lipless mouth moved, though the cavern gave her the sense of its words.
“Hello. I'm Krakoth, once recorder of Grimmerdale.”
Grimmerdale! The Daughters of Gunnora had tales about the Toad People, and Arona was now looking at one. Nay, conversing with one. Trying to keep the bile from her throat, she extended her hand. “Honored Dame Toad, I'm Arona, once Recorder of Riveredge Village.”
Krakoth blinked, upper and lower eyelids meeting. “Well met, Ape Woman.”
“Ape Woman!” Arona's fear gave way entirely to anger.
“You call me Dame Toad,” Krakoth pointed out: Arona realized then that they were speaking her own native language, and in that tongue, she had accepted the hideous being as people. Well? Was she not? The Toad Woman spoke, and practiced Arona's own trade.
“My apologies,” she managed to stammer. “It is the only name I know your people by.” But of course, if they had such a homely thing as a Recorder, they must have many of the other homely and familiar things of her own kind. Ape People, she thought, and suddenly laughed out loud at the picture of her relatives and neighbors in fur, with protruding muzzles and little stub tails. With it came a parallel picture of toad people herding sheep—what were a Toad Village's sheep?—and tending gardens, toad mothers and toad children… .
Krakoth chuckled. “That's the mammal way,” she pointed out. “Our tadlings fend for themselves until they are of an age to learn speech and civilized customs. Then we adults choose among them and take them into our houses as servants until they are old enough, or settled enough, to strike out on their own.”
Remembering certain women in her village, she ventured, “And I'll wager some of them are kept obedient, tending their foster parents long past adulthood and into old age.”
Ruefully, Krakoth answered “Quite right! All adults try it. But we have a tradition, that younglings as they come of age must rebel, often violently, against adults and all they stand for, for about a year. Then they are drafted into our army and lead a totally regimented life for two years. Upon discharge, they take their places among the adults and begin the cycle anew. But enough of that. How may we do business?”
Arona, finding the Toad Peoples’ rites of passage bizarre beyond human understanding, wrenched her thoughts away from contemplating them. “I have lost the road to Lormt and was beset by bandits. That's the need that drove me in here. If I have a deeper need, and the cavern seems to think so, it tells me you are the person to meet that. How you can get me past the bandits and back on the road, I don't know.”
“And what do you offer me in exchange for my help?” Krakoth asked with muted eagerness.
“What do you want?” Arona answered with the practicality of a trader.
Krakoth mused a while, the
n seemed to throw bargaining and haggling to the winds. “Are the people outside still as suspicious of non-ape life forms as they were the last time we met?”
Arona considered this. “The common person, yes. I don't know about the scholars. All, the tales they tell of your people are tales of fear.”
“We took one of your young adults for experimental purposes,” Krakoth admitted dryly. “It was bulging with young in the manner of mammals; the Gormvin decided to see if a few adaptations could be performed and a mindlink established between our races. None of us expected the—person—to react with such violence, nor to cling to the tadling despite all. What bargain did it make with its partner in this adventure, that the partner joined it in such a desperate deed? It did not seem wealthy.”
Arona nearly burst with disbelieving laughter and horror. Whoever or whatever the Gormvin were, they had so little understanding of human beings one could almost call them innocent, not evil. Were such deeds commonly performed among their own kind? Almost certainly they were.
It came to her then, with wry amusement, that as the ways of men were to her, so were the ways of toads to men. Was this the lesson Dame Cavern had to teach her? The cavern seemed to chuckle in agreement.
“So you want to understand human beings.”
“If you will. In return, I will give you a hand weapon and a mask of illusion. The weapon does not kill unless you deliberately set it so. It stuns the victim, who wakes up with a horrible sensation of pins and needles all over its body until full sensation returns. It is quite a deterrent to possible attack. Your people are not scientifically advanced enough to take it apart and discover its secret, or I would not trade it for so little; but I have others.”