He thumped his middle with the flat of his hand. Life was not so bad. The fields bore as well as they ever did; no murrain had smote the flocks, nor sickness his people. No raiders threatened. Winter would be long, but winter was always long. The gods willing, almost all the clan would see the next spring. He had been through too many years where dearth and death displayed themselves long months in advance.
Then satisfaction leaked from him as if he were a cracked pot. There at the edge of a hayfield walked Skjaldvor and Kveldulf, not arm in arm but side by side, their heads close together. Kveldulf explained something with extravagant gestures he must have learned from the Videssians; no man of Halogaland would have been so unconstrained. Skjaldvor laughed, clapped her hands, nodded eagerly. Whatever point he’d made, she approved of it.
Or more likely, she just approves of Kveldulf, Skatval thought with bleak mirth. The chief wondered if she drew a distinction between the blue-robe’s doctrines and himself. He had his doubts. But what could he do? What could anyone do with a girl, once she turned into a woman?
He’d answered that question for himself back inside the temple. He did not like the conclusion he’d reached there, but found none better now.
“Tell me, Kveldulf,” Skjaldvor said, “how came you to reverence the Videssian god?” She stopped walking, cocked her head, and waited for his reply.
The light that filtered through the forest canopy overhead was clear, pale, almost colorless, like the gray-white trunks of the birch trees all around. The air tasted of moss and dew. When he paused too, Kveldulf felt quiet fold round him like a cloak. Somewhere far in the distance, he heard the low, purring trill of a crested tit. Otherwise, all was still. He could hear his own breath move in and out, and after a moment Skjaldvor’s as well.
As she looked at him, so he studied her. She was tall for a woman, the crown of her head reaching higher than his chin. Flowing gilt hair framed her face, a strong-chinned, proud-cheekboned visage which, along with the unshrinking gaze of her wide-set eyes, spoke volumes about the legendary stubbornness of the Halogai. She had, in fact, a close copy of her father’s features, though in her his harshness somehow grew fresh and lovely. But Kveldulf, unpracticed with either families or women, could not quite catch that.
He did know she made him nervous, and also knew he spent more time with her than he should. All of Skatval’s clansfolk had souls that wanted saving. Still, Kveldulf told himself, winning the chief’s daughter to the worship of the good god would greatly strengthen Phaos here. And she could have chosen nothing apter to ask him.
The years blew away as he looked back inside himself. “I was a lad yet, my beard not sprouted, sold as a house slave: Videssian spoil of war. I learned the Empire’s tongue fast enough to suit my master. He was far from the worst of men; he worked me hard, but he fed me well, and beat me no worse than I deserved.” The hairs of his mustache tickled his lips as they quirked into a wry smile. Remembering some of his pranks, he reckoned Zoïlos merciful now, though he hadn’t thought so at the time.
“How could you live—a slave?” Skjaldvor shuddered. “You come of free folk. Would you not liefer have lost your life than live in chains?”
“I wore no chains,” Kveldulf said.
“That may be worse,” she told him, scorn in her voice. “You stayed in slavery when you could have—should have—fled?” She turned her back on him. Her long wool skirt swirled around her, showing him for a moment her slim white ankles.
“How was I to flee?” he asked, doing his best to inform his voice with reason rather than wrath. “Skopentzana is far from Halogaland, and I was but a boy. And before long, I came to see my capture as a blessing, not the sorrow I had held it to be.”
Skjaldvor looked at him again, but with hands on her hips. “A blessing? Are you witstruck? To have to walk at the whim of another man’s will—I would die before I endured it.”
“As may be,” Kveldulf said soberly. A slave as lovely as Skjaldvor was all too likely to have to lie down at the whim of another man’s will. Zoïlos, fortunately, had not bought Kveldulf for that. He shook his head to dislodge the distracting carnal thought, went on: “But you asked of me how I found Phaos. Had I not been Zoilos’ slave, I doubt I should have. He often went out of morning, and one day I asked where. He told me he prayed at the chief temple in Skopentzana, and asked in turn if I cared to go there with him.”
“And you said aye?”
“I said aye.” Kveldulf laughed at his younger self. “It seemed easier than my usual morning drudgery. So he let me bathe, and gave me a shirt less shabby than most, and I walked behind him to the temple. We went inside. I had never smelt incense before. Then I looked up into the dome …”
His voice trailed away. Across a quarter of a century, he could still call up the awe he’d known, looking up into the golden dome and seeing Phaos stern in judgment, staring down at him—seemingly at him alone, though the temple was crowded—and weighing his worth. Then the priestly choir behind the altar lifted up its many-voiced voice in exaltation and praise of the lord with the great and good mind, and then—
Kveldulf remembered to speak: “I knew not whether I was still on earth or up in the heavens. I saw the holy men in the blue robes who lived with the good god every moment of every day of every year of their lives, and I knew I had to be of their number. Next morning, I asked Zoilos if I might go with him, not he me, and the morning after that, and the one after that. At first, when I was but shirking, he’d hoped me pious. Now, when I truly touched piety, he reckoned me a shirker. But I kept on; I was drunk with the good god. Once I found Phaos, I wished for nothing else. Well, not nothing; I wished for but one thing more.”
“What is that?” Skjaldvor leaned toward him. The silver chains that linked the two large brooches she wore on her breast clinked softly (the shape of those brooches reminded Kveldulf of nothing so much as twin tortoise shells). All at once he was conscious of how close she stood.
Nonetheless, he answered as he had intended: “I wished the good god might grant me the boon of leading my birthfolk out of Skotos’ darkness and into the light of Phaos. For those who die without knowing the lord with the great and good mind shall surely spend all eternity in the icepits of Skotos, a fate I wish on no man or woman, Videssian or Haloga, slave or free.”
“Oh.” Skjaldvor straightened. Where before her voice had been low and breathy, now it went oddly flat. She studied him again, as if wondering whether to go on. At last she did: “I thought perhaps you meant you wished you might enjoy all the pleasures of other men.”
Kveldulf felt himself grow hot, and knew his fair skin only made embarrassment more obvious. He looked to see if Skjaldvor also blushed. Though fairer even than he, she did not. She knew herself free to say what she would, act as she would. He stammered a little as he answered, “I may not, not without turning oathbreaker, and that I shall never do.”
“The more fool you, and the worse waste, for you are no mean man,” she said. “The other blue-robes are less stupid.”
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
“Do you not know? Can you not know, without being deaf and blind? Your fellows are far from passing all their nights alone and lonely in their tents.”
“Is it so?” Kveldulf said, but by her malicious satisfaction he knew it surely was. Sorrow pressed upon him but left him unsurprised. He bent his head, sketched the sun-circle over his heart. “All men may sin. I shall pray for them.”
She stared at him. “Is that all?”