On Wings of Magic Read online

  He lost her in the woods and called “Arona? Arona!” with his heart beating ever faster. He pictured her lying helpless with a broken leg, or lost, or pinned under a tree, or with a wild animal holding her at bay.

  Another group came running down the path. A huge, muscular woman in an embroidered pink holiday gown grabbed him by the arm. “This way!” she shouted, dragging him along the path. “Hurry!”

  His lungs gasping for air and his throat raw, he wrenched himself free after a while and simply followed her. They came to a tall cliff he would never have approached during an earthquake, for fear of rockslides. The woman went straight to what he now saw was a cave mouth. Egil followed her deep inside.

  Then the trembling began in earnest, as if the whole mountain were shaking itself apart overhead. No, Egil decided, the entire mountain range. Blue light danced around the cave mouth, and the beasts outside howled as if in mortal terror. Strange lightning danced around Falcon Crag and laced through the peaks. A cold wind blew. At last, exhausted, Egil sat against the cave wall, his head between his knees, and let the storm rage while he slept.

  Arona sat on the battered hen cage, her back against the cold, rough stone of the cave wall. The hens, finding it dark, had mercifully fallen quiet. The cave wall shook under her back, but held. Near the cave mouth, a high-voiced stranger woman cried “It's stupid to hide in caves during an earthquake! We'll all be buried alive here!” Huana of the forge, who had thrown an epic fit when her daughter came back from roundup injured. How did Aunt Noriel endure it? She seemed proud of her tiny housemate's fierce temper! But with a chill of fear, Arona realized the woman was right. Good thing few others could understand her; the last thing they needed now was a panic in the caves.

  In her mind, as if someone nearby had spoken over the noise, came the words We will prevent that. The voice was utterly cool, utterly calm. Be still, now. She recognized the Witch called The Dissident.

  As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she looked toward the cave door. The faint blue lights she had thought came from Falcon Crag came from several hooded figures by the door. They danced in light, and light danced around them. Between Arona and the lights, Nelga Olwithsdaughter said in a shaky voice “What a—an adventurous coming-of-age. Nobody will ever forget this.”

  “Well!” Asta Lennisdaughter whined. “I don't think it's fair!” Asta was not invited to many parties, Arona reflected. She'd cherish the few she could attend.

  The noise started up again, louder than a thunderstorm, as if the entire mountain range were falling about them. The blue lights intensified, and a low humming filled the air. The sharp smell of a nearby lightning stroke hit Arona's nostrils. A dog barked in protest. She felt a large shoulder next to hers, and put out her hand for comfort. The hand that took hers was big, with stubby strong fingers, heavy calluses, and more hair than most women, but smooth-skinned.

  Then she felt its mate feeling for her breast. All comfort fled. She grabbed the hand and bent it back sharply as the storm raged outside them. “Ow!” a familiar voice yelped.

  She sighed and dropped the hand. “Oseberg Huanasdaughter,” she said in disgust. “Why are you always doing this?”

  “Some girls like it,” Oseberg said, hurt feelings in the strange accented voice.

  “Cousin Brithis,” Arona agreed, startled. Brithis Nathasdaughter had to pat every animal, cuddle every child, and touch every object. She felt suddenly hungry, and traced the hunger to the smell of food arising faintly from somewhere. She refolded her shawl, setting it behind her back, and tried to lean against the wall again. Outside, she heard a sharp crack, as if lightning had struck within the village. There was a sound as if the greatest houses in the village were shaking themselves apart, and the whole mountain shivered. A goat baaed and a baby cried thinly. Arona breathed in deeply, and caught the smell of terrified people and animals packed close, with odd smells of food.

  “How long will we be in here, does anybody know?” she called out suddenly.

  Oseberg nudged her. “I have a dish of stew here,” he whispered. “It was for the party. Have some.”

  Arona dipped in a tentative finger. “Your mother's? Delicious! She and Mistress Yelen should sell it as Mistress Gondrin does her ale, for many of us are too tired to cook at day's end. I know Aunt Noriel was.”

  Oseberg lowered his voice. “Arona. Mother says Aunt Noriel is probably a lover of women. Is that true?”

  Surprised, Arona said, “I think you're right. Despite her shyness, she truly likes people. Don't you think?”

  Oseberg fell silent. A cold blast of wind poured in the door, chilling everybody, followed by a searing blast of hot air. “I'm sorry about you missing the maidenhood party,” Arona whispered as they dipped further into the party food. “Did you have a good one in your time? Or are you of age yet?”

  “If I was of age, I'd have been made to fight in the army,” Oseberg whispered back. “That's where all the others are. We have nameday parties, though, and we come out dressed like adults when we're old enough. Leatrice put her hair up for her fifteenth. That means she's old enough to marry. Father was in no hurry to marry her off, though.”

  Arona had to ask what an army was, and marry, and marry off. Oseberg did his best to explain, but kept returning to, “You people don't marry?” while Arona tried to intuit the concept of self-defense in large groups. She dipped her fingers into the stew bowl and felt hot ceramics beneath them. The whole mountain shivered and a thin handful of women screamed. That caused several children to set up a howl. The Dissident's voice, as stern as Dame Birka's when she taught naughty girls, came to all their ears: Be still, for your very lives.

  The shaking seemed to go on forever. The cave was filled with an intense, glowing blue light that seemed to come from the rear. The sharp smell of ozone filled all their lungs. A hideous roar deafened them all, and went on for hours and hours. Then there was utter stillness. Children started to cry again.

  This quiet will not last, The Dissident's mindvoice told them all, sounding like their mother. Mistress Maris, you have time to call the village rolls.

  Arona could hear the relief in the recorder's voice as she called out, “Arona Bethiahsdaughter!”

  “Here,” Arona said, her voice shaking in the powerful stillness.

  One by one they answered, by family, the mothers first and children second, apprentices third, and strangers fourth, until all were accounted for. “Eina Parrasdaughter!”

  “I answer for her.” The calm, deep voice of Great-aunt Lorin.

  At last the roll was over. The recorder said then, “I think we should apologize to Nelga Olwithsdaughter, whose maidenhood party was ruined by this disaster. Sisters, let us share the food properly.”

  “Uh-oh.” Arona and Oseberg said to themselves, very quietly.

  “If the growing girls have left us any,” Dame Birka put in, and Arona felt like curling up into a tiny ball.

  Egil Bakerson was jammed against the wall between the oversized blacksmith, Mistress Noriel, and his friend Oseberg's mother Huana. He still held Dame Butthead's rope, and groaned when the frightened goat decorated his boots in barnyard style. When roll call came and he heard Arona's name, he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

  Brave girl! She didn't sound a bit hysterical. He thought to call out to her, to reassure her he was still here, but dared not interrupt the roll call. Organized, these women were, almost like an army. Well, they were Falconers’ women. When they came to his name, he called it out loud and clear, so Arona might hear him. And his mother and sisters and baby brother, too, of course.

  “Lisha Sigersdaughter!”

  “Elyshabet,” his mother corrected. Egil's eyes widened. She had always hated the long form of her name and never, in his memory, used it. His grandmother had, when she was angry with her daughter-in-law. Loud, clear “Elyshabet Sigersdaughter, of Elthea's Weavery.”

  “Hanna Lishasdaughter …”—a giggle—”… Hanna Elyshabetsdaughter of the Inf
irmary.”

  “Oseberg Huanasdaughter, apprentice blacksmith.”

  “Oseberg Morgathson!” Huana howled like a wounded dog.

  Arona sighed and thought of all the corrections she would have to make. Why couldn't these strangers know their names and stick to them like grown women?”

  “Soren Elyshabetsdaughter,” Mistress Maris called out, making her correction with no difficulty.

  “I answer for him,” Mistress Lisha said with sharp precision and dignity. No, not the witling Lennis and Loyse had called her. Shy, Arona decided, her face flooding hot at her part in that mistake.

  Slowly, into the silence, a low humming started again. The mountain started to vibrate again, and blue lights laced themselves across the cave door. In a flash of common yellow lightning from outside, Arona saw the face of the nearest Witch. She looked drained and aged. Sweat stained her plain robe, though it was a cold fall night.

  The noise intensified, and Oseberg nudged Arona again. “Arona,” he said in a low voice, sounding desperately serious. “Mother says Aunt Noriel has nothing to teach me about metal and I'm only with her to keep my hand in until I can find a real blacksmith for a master.”

  “Have you learned anything new from her?” Arona asked, growing mighty tired of Huana's opinions.

  “Well, sort of,” Oseberg confessed.

  “You do things one way in your village and we do things another way here,” Arona dismissed that. “Your mother has no use for our ways, but if you find them useful, keep them to you until you have your own forge. She's not a blacksmith, after all.”

  “She says neither is Aunt Noriel, but that isn't true,” Oseberg confessed. Perhaps he, too, was tired of his mother's opinions.

  “When you are Initiated,” Arona informed him, “you will not have to answer to her, only to your mistress or employer. You still owe her respect, but not obedience. Feel better?”

  Oseberg beamed and planted a big, wet kiss on her cheek. Then, “Oh. I'm sorry, Arona.”

  She patted Oseberg's hand. “Forgiven. This once.”

  The storm started again. People raced for the dungheap, the food, or to find their kindred. A babble of voices started to rise against the gathering hum. Huana started to complain again about the names given her children, and Yelen started chirping again about everything being for the best. Loyse heard Mistress Elyshabet and sniffed, “Well! She certainly deceived me!”

  Huana found Oseberg and took him by the ear, yammering at him. The cave began to sound like a family quarrel much multiplied. The blue lights flashed again, and one of the Witches sagged against her sisters, who held her up. One forced water down the fallen one's throat. The Dissident said something urgently to Dame Birka, who sighed and answered back. “Sisters and daughters!” Dame Birka called, in the loud voice she used to address village meetings. “Sisters and daughters!” Her announcement was echoed by a firm but weary-seeming mind-voice of The Dissident. Silence fell over the exhausted people. “How about a tale of brave women in ancient days, to keep up our spirits? Maris? Arona? Ofelis?”

  Ofelis Kemisdaughter, the ancient bard, shook her head unseen in the darkness. “My voice cracks with a long tale,” she said hoarsely. She had been among those elders dealing with the Witches beforehand. Maris also passed. After thinking a bit, Arona began an old tale of ancient days, then another, then another.

  Six

  Lormt Again

  Scholar Lady Nareth laid down the Falconer scroll and frowned, looking off into the distance. The tales seemed to be, not sober history, but fantastic legends of a land across the sea, where women ruled, and each clan had an animal protector. Yet, there were oddly compelling bits—Theora's tale for instance—that matched known facts. The script was ancient, and the parchment and ink seemed to be of great antiquity.

  The writer, if she translated correctly, was one Warina Falconlady, “written on the shores of exile, after all our men went mad.” A drop of water splotched the parchment. A tear? Or simply sea spray? The austere scholar read the tale again, across the gap of centuries, and trembled.

  Queen Theora and her once-loyal man, Langward, stood on the cliffs above the shore and from her last, besieged keep at Salzarat, watched with hot, angry tears as the last of the old Houses took sail with the Sulcar pirates. Behind her stood the man whom she had raised from nothing to the second highest office in the land.

  “Madam, be sensible,” Langward now said without inflection. “You will find nobody to join you in a mad last stand to preserve the rule of your whims.”

  “Whims!” she choked, remembering the hard thought and agonized balancing that had gone into each decision.

  “But if you choose the plainslord, you will still be Queen. I know you cherish the title and honor.”

  She stared at him, but he would not meet her eye. Did he count her as foolish as the ladies of the conqueror's court? Forever they squabbled over the fine points of precedence that depended on their husbands’ ranks. Nobody knew nor cared for their own worth, but only for their chastity or lack of it, their obedience, and their silence. Become as they? Indeed!

  “As Queen, I rule, a mother to my people, not their conqueror's pet slave,” she said firmly. “No.”

  “You would not like the other, Madam,” Langward said stolidly. “He offered you to me. As a favor.” As her hand flew to her long dagger, Guardian of the Queen's Honor, he reminded her, “You made me the same offer once.”

  “You refused, saying you would not be my lapdog. Well, I will not be yours. Are you oathbound to this man, then?”

  “No.” It was a flat statement.

  Theora looked at him a long second. “If you join me in my last stand, it will neither be death nor the impossibility you imagine. We have one recourse left—the old magic. The Goddess still stands by Her children. I know She is proscribed in this land and Her worship outlawed. This is the greatest outrage of all. Will you suffer it, Langward?”

  Langward looked up then, and raised one hand. An armed plainsman came in from behind the door, his face grimly triumphant. “You were right, Langward. I have heard enough.”

  Shock and rage took the Queen's reason and speech for a fleeting moment. Then, crying, “Langward, this is treason!” she plunged the Queen's Guardian blade into the man's traitorous heart. The plainsman drew his sword and advanced on her, more pleasure on his face than had a right to be there in the face of his accomplice's sudden execution—for murder it was none.

  “And you, woman,” he gloated, “by raising weapon to a man in the King's service, are guilty of treason both high and low, and will hang.”

  The window was too far to reach, or she would have jumped and cheated them of seeing a queen in chains on the gallows. She thought to rush his sword; something in his stance told her he was well prepared for this. Desperate and cornered, she cried, “Jonkara! Avenger of Women! Stay his hand and grant me vengeance on them and theirs, until one of their race learns again we are their mothers, not their cattle.”

  The plainsman's lunge slowed and halted. Langward's body, slowly toppling, ceased to fall. Theora could neither move nor speak. At last her thoughts froze as her motions did, and her last thought was a burst of bitter laughter as she recalled the old fairy tale about the sleeper awakened by the kiss of a princess. “I'll settle for a fishermaid, or even a Sulcar pirate lass,” she thought. Then her thoughts stopped altogether.

  It was several days before Scholar Lady Nareth summoned Arona. She said little but, “Whence comes this tale?”

  “It is one most ancient,” Arona said promptly, “attributed to Warina Falconlady, friend of the mother of my clan. Whether this is true, nobody can know for sure, but we have no reason to doubt it.”

  A true scholar's answer. Unaccountably dissatisfied, Lady Nareth dismissed the girl, and did not summon Arona into her presence for quite some time after that, while she continued reading.

  In those several days, the Falconer girl wandered around freely. She checked on her mule and watc
hed the stablehands at work. She explored the ancient, ruined complex, both the towers that stood and the towers that had fallen. She looked up at their lofty heights, and down at the tumbled stones, and wondered how they had been built. She learned the ways and hours of Lormt.

  Nobody bothered her in her austere stone cell, and nobody served her. Her first night there, she carried a full chamberpot through miles and miles of corridors before finding someone to tell her where the midden was. She did not starve only because, upon leaving Nareth's office, her guide-boy, as hungry as she, showed her the refectory.

  There was food of a sort at all hours, and Arona wondered what Lormt gave the cooks in exchange for their food. Or were they students and apprentices doing a tour of kitchen duty, as it would have been at home? But when she asked one, the cook only laughed and said, “Me, Mistress, one o’ them learnt women? Not for me.”

  Arona continued to prowl, ready to leave if anyone bid her go. None did; many an elderly scholar simply looked up, distracted, and grunted, or said with varying degrees of politeness, “What can I do for you?”

  She saw rack after rack of scrolls, many shelved carelessly or left out to gather dust. She saw a cat asleep on a pile of manuscripts, in a large scroll case. (But it was quite a small cat, neat and black and white, and Arona grew fond of her in due time.) The Falconer girl's hands itched to set each scroll back in its own place; slowly her mind began devising a system of places for them. She read a few, but found she was more curious about Lormt itself. Who founded it and for what reason? How was it fed and supplied and, once again, in exchange for what? How was the community governed, and what was its relationship to the scattered holdings roundabout? How were disputes settled, and what was counted mannerly or unmannerly among them? This she had to learn above all, for she had seen in her own village what strife had been caused simply by differing ideas of manners and decency.

  “Long, long ago, when he-women lived among us in peace and harmony across the sea,” Arona took up a long tale for the terrified villagers of Riveredge, hiding in a huge underground cave from the dire deeds above, “there lived a maiden of thirteen summers called Myrrha Foxlady, who was head of her family, because her mother was dead. She had two loyal he-sisters, older than she was, but she was family-head because she was the only daughter.