These grooms were mostly young people around Garah’s age or a little older. I eventually managed to make one of them understand that even though I was coming in with the ala I had no prearranged place to put Apple. I told her he was well behaved and well used to other horses, but she took us to the transient’s stable where there was plenty of room. There was so much room in fact that she found him a stall with a space on either side. This showed me she was used to handling stallions. I knew Apple wouldn’t have given any trouble, but I was glad of the courtesy.
The floor was dry, and walls only slightly chewed. Apple headed straight for the manger. A young groom brought Apple the same turnips and carrots and armloads of fodder the other horses were having. He began to eat enthusiastically. She showed me the room where I could store Apple’s tack. Before I had quite settled Apple, Marchel appeared. She had taken off her helm and I could see that her hair was the color of damp straw. She leaned over the side of the stall.
“Magnificent, isn’t he?” she said. “Good appetite. He doesn’t even look terribly tired. And he’s a real fighter too. How old is he? A six-year-old?”
“Six, yes, he was four when my father brought him back from Caer Tanaga.”
“So you’ve only had him a couple of years? Any luck with foals yet?”
I straightened up, all my joints aching. “He was given to my father’s war-leader, Duncan, not to me. Duncan already had a greathorse of his own, though he was a gelding, being an unlucky color. Duncan came riding up out of the east twelve years back, and his was the only greathorse we had before my father brought those three back. Duncan did not want to change, so he gave Apple to his daughter Rudwen. The king had given my father and my brother each a mare. So last year we had two full-bred colts, each as pretty as their father, and this year one filly, paler in color but with a noble head. I was beginning to help train one of last year’s, by Apple out of my father’s mare Dauntless.” I looked away, I did not want to think where little Hero was now. Apple was eating happily. I leaned over and patted him, taking comfort from his warm presence. “He would have been mine when he was grown. Mostly I rode my brother’s mare, training, or Banner, who was a half-breed four-year-old that Duke Galba gave us as a colt. Apple had the run of our other mares as much as he would, the other stallions wouldn’t come near him, and my father was well pleased with the general improvement of the horses.”
“Anyone would be. But I didn’t mean to make you sad talking about your stock, which has been lost. Not that the Jarnsmen will get much good of them. Greathorses don’t do much good in twos and threes, you need a whole ala to be effective. Oh but he’s a lovely beast. I was just admiring him and wondering if my Spring would like him as much as I do. If ap Cathvan says it’s a good match, that is. He’ll know, and care. He spent an awful lot of time getting so many horses mannered and ready to be given away at the crowning, but he remembers them all. Some of the monks at Thansethan didn’t like Urdo doing that with the herd, not that they didn’t have enough left. They’ve been breeding horses there for a long time.”
“Are the monks there devotees of the Horse Mother, then?” I asked, putting one of my blankets over Apple’s back and making the Horse Mother’s sign. Marchel raised an eyebrow.
“They worship the White God, all of them, very devotedly. He watches over them well, and horses thrive in the pastures there.”
“I do not know the White God.”
Marchel looked up at me, frowning. “Where were you educated?” she asked.
I looked at her. “My mother taught all of us to read and write, and Duncan taught me fighting.”
She laughed. “Forgive me. You speak such excellent Vincan I had thought you must have been sent away somewhere to school and had it beaten into you. The way you fight too—your Duncan must have been a very good teacher. Well, some of the best armigers among us came straight from the country. That does make sense of you not knowing. Well, the priests of the White God teach reverence for all life. Many of us in the alae worship him. Thansethan is one of his greatest strongholds in Tir Tanagiri. Urdo was raised there, as you may know.”
“Is that why they let him have the horses?”
“They couldn’t very well say no after he’d used their horses to save the place from Goldpate and a group of Jarnish outlaws. Even the Jarnsmen usually have some respect for a place of worship, but not those wolfheads. Most of them were people who were bloodcursed already for kinslaying or other crimes. That was the first ever proper charge, Urdo leading a load of monks and pilgrims and loose horses downhill onto a group of the most bloodthirsty pirates who ever deserved to get trampled to pulp. My father told me there was nothing left of Goldpate but one of her yellow plaits.” Marchel laughed.
“Did he see it?”
“He was there in the guard of King Custennin. Thurrig was the first to speak up for the plan when Urdo suggested it, and he rode beside the kings in the charge.” She sounded rightly proud. “I wish I’d been there myself. I would have been except that I was still nursing my youngest.” She grinned. “If you’re finished here, do you want to come with me to the baths? It’ll be a couple of hours before dinner, and it would be good to get clean. My mother will probably be there with the children, she usually is at this time. You need to meet her anyway.”
“You have hot water enough for everyone?” I asked. At home we had a hot pool as part of the heating, but it could only hold four people at a time.
“It’s one of the best things about being in a town. You’ll see. Say what you like about lazy and decadent Vincans I have to grant that they got it absolutely right about plumbing.”
We walked together out of the stables. Many of the ala seemed to be going in the same direction, along a cobbled path that led away from the stables towards the main buildings of the town. It was fully night now and I could see it only as strange dark shapes. The place stank worse than anywhere I had ever been.
“I don’t suppose you would anyway,” Marchel said, as we walked along, “but I’ll mention it while we’re alone. It’s better to be careful what you say about the White God. A lot of people won’t like it otherwise.”
“I hope I have done nothing to suggest that I am ever impolite to the gods,” I said, uncertainly. “I only said I didn’t know about him. There are many gods in the world, I meant no discourtesy. How can anyone know them all?” Marchel bit back a laugh. I saw her shoulders shake.
“We followers of the White God know that there are no other gods, that he alone is the salvation of all mankind,” she said with conviction. This was the first time I had heard anything like this. At first it seemed simple nonsense, and then I thought that she, as a barbarian, had misunderstood. The gods are all around us. Even there in the middle of the city I could feel their influences—the Grey-Eyed Lady of Wisdom cast her cloak of protection around us and the cunning hand of the Lord Maker was evident in every stone. I did not even have to think or reach out for the threads that bound the world to know that it was so. Giving one’s allegiance to a god above all others was something many people did, but to do that was not to turn one’s back on the others.
“How can they say that the gods are not?” I asked. “I mean to give no offense, but they are everywhere.”
“They are not true gods. They are sometimes demons who have deluded the folk into worshiping them, but usually they are spirits of Earth, who can be brought to see the White God’s mercy and worship him. It is written that when the White God walked among us as a man he converted many such spirits and fought with many demons.”
“He walked among you as a man? I have heard of such things in old tales. Did you know him?” If I had heard this in daylight and outside I might have laughed, it was the strange looming buildings and shadows within those strange walls that made me lean towards her and speak eagerly.
“No, it was five hundred and fifty years ago in the East, in Sinea. He was God, you see, the Creator, he made the world and everything in it. But most of the world forgot
to worship him, and worshiped his servants instead, the little spirits. So he was born into the body of a man to remind us, to remind all that lives. He grew up and taught and walked among us. He died by stoning and rose up again forgiving his killers to become the Greater God, the One True God. All the world must worship him, people, animals, spirits. There are books, written by those who knew him well that tell all about his life and teachings.” She was quiet a moment, and I said nothing, for that seemed wisest. We walked along together for a while in silence until we came to a huge pillared arch with a guard on either side. The guards acknowledged Marchel, and we went in.
I had heard much about bathhouses, but never been in one before. I looked around me with interest. The hall was floored with marble. In the center, raised slightly and protected by a marble step, was set a circular mosaic of the Mother of the Waters. It was a splendid swirl of blue and white and gold, hardly cracked at all and with only a few missing tiles. I caught my breath. Marchel smiled at me.
“This is the Large Bathhouse of Caer Gloran. The Little Bathhouse isn’t much smaller, but it is reserved for the townspeople, and this one for the alae. That saves trouble. This one was designed by Decius Manicius, a Vincan architect of distinction. It is widely considered the best bathhouse on the island. Manicius also designed the walls of Caer Tanaga. It was built at the same time as that city, about three hundred years ago”—she looked at me sideways and winked, adding—“before any of my ancestors crossed the River Vonar. Come in here and leave your weapons, we keep Tanagan customs here.”
She led me into a room to my left which was stacked with an amazing assortment of axes, knives, and swords, long and short. There were wooden racks to hold them all. Shields were arranged around all the walls as decorations. An old man with one leg sat next to the door. He nodded at Marchel as she unbuckled her long ax, then grunted at me as I set down my sword and knife. I had never done this before—at home we kept weapons as was most convenient. Sometimes I wore my sword at my side and other times I did not pick it up from one practice session to the next. The feeling that I had fallen into an old Tanagan wonder tale was stronger than ever.
We went back through into the entrance hall. “Don’t be offended by Vigen,” Marchel said. “It’s not that he doesn’t talk, it’s that he can’t talk. They cut his tongue out, years ago.”
“The Jarns?” I asked. Marchel shook her head, grimacing. “One of the kings of the north. I think it may have been Angas’s father.”
We went into the room on the right, and there I began to feel that I had fallen into a Vincan tale instead. It was a changing room, floored with marble and lined with wooden benches. Some of the ala were there, taking off their clothes. Ap Cathvan waved at us. He had a scar on his side and ribs he must have got from a long knife rather than a sword or spear. Angas was just walking out through the far door, dropping a shirt on the floor as he went. A servant picked it up, calling something after him. His laugh echoed back to us. I copied Marchel and piled everything neatly out of the way on the bench. I was glad enough to take the leathers off.
“Is my lady mother here?” Marchel asked a servant, offhand, in Tanagan. The girl ducked her head as if fearing a blow and spoke without looking at Marchel’s face.
“The wife of Thurrig is in the baths,” the girl replied.
“With any luck at all she’ll have brought clean clothes,” Marchel called over her shoulder to me as we went through the next arch. I could hear sounds of splashing and talking. On the other side of the arch stretched a great pool, steam rising from it. It was full of people, swimming, playing, washing, and talking as the mood took them. On one side of it stretched a mosaic pavement, mended in so many places so that it was difficult to see what the picture had been, except that there were vines in it. On the other ran a thin strip of soil, out of which real vines grew, reaching up the walls towards the roof, which was not stone but thick panes of glass so that one could look up and see the stars. I had never seen vines before but I recognized them at once from designs on tapestries and in books. I stared at them, both strange and familiar.
“I have brought clean clothes, and it’s more than you deserve!” shouted up a deep voice from the water.
“My love!” said Marchel, surprise and delight clear in her voice. “When did you get back?” She straightened up onto her toes and dived headfirst into the pool, sending up a great plume of spray and surfacing beside a muscular man with long shaggy hair. Beside him in the water were a fair-skinned woman and two small boys. The woman was clearly by her face Marchel’s mother, and the two boys immediately began to try and drown Marchel, calling her Mother so frequently that there was no doubt who they were. She did not look back at me. I walked a little way along the pavement and lowered myself quietly into the water, which was there chest deep.
There is no pleasure like really large quantities of warm water. I immersed myself entirely, then lay there floating on the surface. It felt indescribably good on my bruised and aching body. For the first time since I had caught sight of the Jarns in the meadow I began to feel really warm inside. For some while I ignored everyone and everything and just lay there basking. It was warm and clean, and the water was gently flowing, moving along the pool, which curved away out of sight past a series of dolphin fountains. I gave sincere thanks to the Mother of the Waters and to the Lord Maker for the wonder this place was. I began to feel truly comfortable as I had not for days. If it had not been for the danger of falling asleep I would have stayed still for hours. As it was I joined some of the people of the ala who were swimming to and fro. Osvran gave me some harsh soap that left my hair and skin feeling scoured. We discussed the relative merits of oil and soap for cleanliness and comfort. After a while we went in a laughing crowd to the steam room and thence to the cold room, which had warm and cold waterfalls as well as the plunge. It was pure delight to come back again to the long warm stream in the glass-roofed room.
When we were all climbing out reluctantly to threats and promises of dinner, Marchel’s mother came up to me and bowed. In her hands she held what I recognized as a bunch of red grapes. There were some pictured in a threadbare tapestry in my father’s room at home, behind the head of a smilingly androgynous god. I bowed back. My companions went on towards the changing room. She was very short, hardly coming up to my armpit. She had delicate bones and looked extremely elegant even though she was draped in a drying cloth. She gestured to a servant, who gave another of the cloths to me. It was worn and rough and not quite dry.
“I am Amala, the wife of Thurrig,” she began. Her Vincan was very precise, each word sharply bitten off at the end. Although this was all the accent she had, it was highly distinctive. “I am in charge of the domestic arrangements of Urdo’s people here. My daughter should have brought you to me before. I hear from her that you are the daughter of Gwien of Derwen? And you will need something to wear to dinner because you have nothing but some armor you have fought in? She forgot about you, and has gone off now to get dry and cuddle with her husband—she expects to be forgiven for her lack of courtesy because she hasn’t seen him for a month.” Amala smiled, softening her words, and I smiled, too.
“There has been no failure of courtesy on your daughter’s part. I have been enjoying my bath exceedingly.”
“Good. But I should have spoken to you and told you that you have a place to sleep in barracks and your horse will be stabled with the others as long as you are here. No doubt Urdo will be sorting out what to do with you later.” Amala bowed again and presented me with the grapes. “We do not manage to grow many grapes here, but we do grow some. I believe these are the only vines on this island. We keep the grapes that ripen for visitors. That is the only thing I miss about Narlahena—there we had grapes enough for wine.” I took them and turned them awkwardly in my hand, bowing in reply. I felt big and clumsy compared with this woman. I picked one from the bunch and ate it. It was far sweeter than any plum or damson. It also made me aware how hungry I was, and my stomach ru
mbled loudly.
“It is almost time for dinner,” said Amala, laughing a little. “Come, let us find you clothes, and then I shall take you myself to the barracks, where you can leave your things and where you can sleep later. Then I’ll show you the way to dinner. Urdo will eat with the ala tonight, he always does after a battle. He will expect you to be there.” Amala patted my arm. “You will feel much better after a real meal.”
I followed her through the changing room. With a gesture from Amala one of the servants came up with a wicker basket containing clothing. There were several plain shifts and patterned overdresses, all clean and well woven of good linen. The overdresses were exquisitely embroidered. I would have been proud to have worn any of them, but it was immediately clear that even those which were nearly long enough were much too narrow across the shoulders. I think they must have belonged to Marchel or Enid.
Amala cut off my embarrassment before it was even clearly articulated. She had dressed while I was looking through the basket and now she looked more elegant than ever. I felt like a milk cow beside a deer.
“I can see I’d disgrace everyone in these leathers,” I said, looking at them. “But maybe I could borrow a tunic from Osvran? He’s about my height. Or I could just have some bread and go to sleep, I’m very tired.”
Amala shook her head. “None of this is a problem. Wait a moment.” I sat down on the bench. There were only a handful of people still in the changing room. Glyn of Clidar winked across at me. He had splashed me earlier in the steam room, and I had ducked him under the cold waterfall.
“You’ll be walking in to dinner with a fine silk cloak over your bare skin I don’t doubt. Good thing it’s not so drafty in the Hall at this time of year as when the icicles are rattling on the roof tiles.” He laughed.
“You’re a brave man, Glyn!” said one of the others. “Don’t you listen to him. She’ll fix you up something good. Amala always gets things sorted. I remember when there was no leather left at all, and we needed more harness, she had them begin tanning goat’s hides.” I smiled, and rubbed at my short hair with the cloth. It was almost dry already.