He grinned at her, his pointed nose twitching as it always did when he was amused.
Serroi looked from him to her. “You know the Changer?”
“Since I was a little girl. He used to work on my father’s farm.”
Serroi looked amazed, then skeptical. “Work?”
“Uh-huh, helped with the planting, milked the cows, mowed, raked, ran the baler; we used to hoe weeds together and he’d tell me stories to make the rows pass faster… stories…” Her voice trailed off. “You called him Changer?”
“I know him as Coyote or Changer. He’s the one who brought us here, Hern and me.”
Magic Man winked at Julia. “Didn’t I tell you that you’d be all right, Little Gem?”
She smiled at him, feeling the old warmth come flooding back when she heard his pet name for her, then blinked at the sudden thought that all this might be only his scheming to bring the healer to her. She dismissed that at once as obvious nonsense, but there was still this little niggling question that wouldn’t go away.
Braddock came sauntering up the slope, a canteen dangling from one finger. “Julia,” he said, smiling his startling, youthening smile. “Here. You might want something to wash those sandwiches down with. Anoike’s saving you a place on one of the trucks. Better go find her, we’re about ready to jump.” He turned to Magic-Man-Coyote-Changer. “Anything special we need to do? If not, let’s move.
Priestess
She wanders about the shrine unable to settle at anything. At first she thinks it is the residue of excitement from the Turnfкte. It had been a subdued celebration, yet filled with joy and hope as it was meant to be. The Turn toward light and warmth. In the heart of winter a reminder of spring’s promise. A promise too, that the winter will one day be gone from their hearts.
Mardian is working on the painted pavement. He has shoveled out the snow and is scraping away at the black paint, wholly content with this tedious occupation as she had been when she cleaned the interior. She watches him awhile. He should have looked absurd, big tough male on his knees like a tie scrub-maid, but there is nothing ridiculous about him. Nor anything particularly different from before. As a soldier he’d committed his whole being to his profession in exactly this way. He doesn’t notice her. He wouldn’t have noticed a raging hauhau bull unless it started trampling him.
She goes back into the shrine, mops the kitchen floor, rearranges the things on the closet shelves. She cleans the grates and carries out the ashes, lays new fires. It is cold in the shrine, but she and the decsel have agreed that they should conserve the wood. On still, sunny days like this they will not light the fires until late afternoon. She washes her hands, takes the canvas she is working on into the Maiden chamber and sits on a cushion before the Maiden Face.
There is peace for her in this room, coming from many sources, her pleasure in the work of her hands, the smell of the aromatic oil in the votive lamps Mardian has installed on either side of the Face, the memory of the times She had touched her here and, above all, the comforting silence that surrounds her in here. The needle dances in and out of the canvas, drawing her after it, in and out; the slow growth of the design slows her into a tranquility much like Mardian’s as he scrapes at the paint. After a while she notices nothing but the growing of the pattern; she has forgotten everything else. The hours pass. The images take shape under her hands. The light dims until she is squinting, then brightens but she notices neither event; the chill in the room begins to warm away. A spark snaps out of the fire. She starts, looks around.
Mardian is sitting beside her,, waiting until she is ready to notice him. He has lit the fire and fetched a pair of candlelamps for her. She smiles at him.
He looks grave, uneasy-as if her itch has passed to him. “Word has come…” He coughs, looks away. “Floarin’s army is moving south. The Guards are summoned to join it.”
“All of them?”
“All but the Agli’s bodyguard.”
She drops the canvas. It lies in stiff folds over her knees. There is a pain in her like a long needle through her heart. She must do something, but for the moment she doesn’t know what. She looks down at the tapestry, the bright colors flash at her without shape or meaning. Slowly, automatically, she tucks the needle into the work, begins folding the canvas.
A fleeting scent of herbs and flowers.
She sets the tapestry aside, reaches out to Mardian. He takes her hand in his. Words come welling up in her: the summoning chant that is usually just a formality, opening each major fest. The words swell out of her, then out of him, his deeper voice supporting and reinforcing hers. They chant the words once-tentative, exploring. Twice-reaching out and out, asking. A third time-a demand that throbs out of them into earth and air.
Nilis falls silent, her throat raw with the force of that last repetition; Mardian sits silent, waiting. She withdraws her hand from his and gets clumsily to her feet. He stands beside her, again waiting. He is angry and disturbed, worse than she was earlier. She has an idea about what is bothering him and feels a great sadness for him.
They come. One by one, in pairs, in groups they come, Cymbankers and ties in from the tars for one reason or another. They fill the room, silent, made uneasy by the power that had drawn them here.
The candlelamps at her feet cutting her out of the darkness, touching Mardian, the Maiden face over her head, Nilis stands waiting for the words to come. She knows they will come. She is the Maiden’s tool for shaping this small bit of the Biserica’s defense. The scent of herbs and flowers fills the room. And the words come. She sings them out into the room’s waiting silence.
“Floarin’s army marches.”
A groan like a wind sweeping from man to woman to man:
“Floarin’s army marches to raze the Biserica, to ravage stone from stone, to gut the servants of the Maiden.”
A spreading silence broken suddenly by a woman’s sob:
“What is there for you, here or anywhere, if the Biserica falls? What is there for your daughters or your sons? Flogging, starving, misery, nothing. That is what waits them if the Biserica falls. You know it, each of you has tasted it.”
yes yes I have tasted it The words fly from man to woman to man yes yes I have tasted it
Mardian steps past Nilis, his face hard with the decision that will tear him from his deep contentment in this place. “I go south come morning, walking. Those who wish to join me should be in the Maiden Court at sunup with what food and weapons they can bring, be it sling or scythe. Those of you who know others of like mind, send word to them.” He moves back into the shadows.
As quietly as they had come, the summoned leave, one by one, in pairs, in groups.
When the Maiden Chamber is empty again, Nilis puts her hand on Mardian’s arm, wanting to comfort him, but not knowing how.
He starts when he feels the touch, looks at Nilis as if he is surprised to see her there, twists around to look up at the Face. “She gives and she takes away.”
The Magic Child
They stood on the city wall with much of the rest of Oras, merchant and beggar alike, watching the army move out-Coperic, small and inconspicuous in his dusty black tunic, and trousers, Rane and Tuli in the black dresses Rane stole from the Center south of here, their hair hidden under stiff white kerchiefs Coperic had given them.
The snow cleared suddenly from the rocky plain where the army was camped and off the Highroad as far as Tuli could see, as if some great unseen hand had scraped the plain clear, then drawn its forefinger along the road. Tuli shivered but not from the cold morning air. She’d seen snatches of norit power and seen it overcome, had seen scattered examples of the effect of Floarin’s acts, but it suddenly began to come clear to her what it was the Biserica faced, what it meant if the Biserica fell. No wonder Rane hadn’t bothered playing adventure games with her.