“You keep fussing about that. Slya’s waked other times, we know her moods, we’ve lived with her a thousand years and more.” She began hurrying through the lengthening shadows, taking care where she put her feet, jumping from rock to rock, flitting across grassy flats, sliding on slippery brown needles, keeping her balance by clutching at trees she scooted past, landing with running steps on the path that led from the high kilns down to the workshop.
When she reached the workshop, she ran up the steps, pushed the door open. “Immer, suppertime.”
No answer. Puzzled, she went inside, ran through the rooms. No one there. That was funny. She clattered down to the children, beginning to worry. Immer always worked until the light quit. Always.
The way to the Valley was broad and beaten down from here on, passing out of the trees at Lookwide Point then through a double switchback to end at the landing on the River. A cold knot in her stomach, Brann hurried along the road, but slowed as she came out of the trees, walked to the edge and looked down into the Valley. She could see most of it spread out before her, the River running down the middle, the scattered houses and workshops, the fields with crops, cows, sheep or horses in them, even the broad patch of bluish stone that was the Dance Ground with the Galarad Oak growing on the western side, the one Brann thought must be the biggest and oldest tree in all the world. There should have been children, playing on the white sand road and in between the houses. There should have been workers coming in from the fields, others standing by the workshops. There should have been old folk sitting on benches by the river to catch the last of the day’s heat, the first of the evening’s cool, chatting and telling stories, hands busy at small tasks. But there was none of that.
Soldiers were herding her folk onto the Dance Ground, where the Valley daughters were due to meet with the Yongala to dance the Mountain back to sleep. Brann ground her teeth together to stop her jaw from trembling, but the shake had gone deep into the bone. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear to see more. That’s why Slya’s restless, there’s no one to dance her pains away, she thought and felt a kind of relief. Easier to think of Slya than… Dance her pains away and ease her back to sleep. Yes.
yes. That’s it. Slya dreamed this and sent her children. She turned her head, opening her eyes when she was looking away from the Valley, gazed at Yaril and jaril. They are the Mountain’s children. Slya sent them. She clenched her hands into fists, the shaking wouldn’t stop, jerked her head around to look into the Valley again. Can’t see… got to get closer. Away from the road. Harrag’s Leap. Yes. That’s it. Where the mountains squeezed the Valley wasp-waisted, not far from the Dance Ground, was a vertical wall of granite Arth Slya folk called Harrag’s Leap after the smith who went crazy one day a few hundred years ago, swore he could fly and jumped off the cliff to prove it, Brann plunged back into the trees, running as fast as she could without falling. It wouldn’t be so good to break a leg up here; who’d ever come looking for her? Finally, breathing in great sucking gasps, she flung herself down on the flat top of the cliff and looked over the rim.
She was close enough to make out the faces of those crowding onto the Dance Ground, close enough to hear what was being said, but outside of a few orders from the soldiers, no one was saying much. They looked as bewildered as she felt. Why was this happening? Who would gain anything from bothering Arth Slya? Her mother was there, holding Ruan, looking angry and afraid. “Mama,” Brann breathed. Suddenly she wanted to be with her mother, she couldn’t bear being up here watching, she wanted to be down there with her uncles and cousins and aunts, kin by kind if not blood. Sobbing, she started to get up, but two pairs of hands held her where she was.
“You can’t do her any good if you get caught.” One of the children was speaking, she couldn’t tell which. “Think, Bramble, your mother’s probably rejoicing because you’re out here on the mountain, at least she knows you’re safe. Look, Bramlet, look close. Where are the children? Do you see Gingy or Shara? Do you see anyone your age or younger except for little Ruan in your mother’s arms?”
She shuddered, went limp. They let her go and she scanned the crowd below. Gunna, Barr, Amyra, Caith, a dozen other younglings, but they were all fifteen or more, past their Choice. Nobody younger. Except Ruan. And even as she watched, one of the tall black-haired invaders shoved his way to her mother, took Ruan from her, kicked her feet from under her when she fought to get her baby back, elbowed and slammed his way out of the crowd, drawing blood with the clawed back of his gauntlet.
And as she watched, Yaril and Jaril crowding close to her, holding her, the soldier carried Ruan to the Galarad Oak and he took her by the heels, and dashed her against the broad trunk, held her up, shook her, slammed her once again against the tree, harder, then tossed her on a heap of something Brann had missed before, the bodies of the Valley’s children.
She trembled. She couldn’t make a sound, she couldn’t cry, couldn’t anything, couldn’t even feel anger. She was numb. She kept looking for faces she knew. The old were gone like the children. The young and strong, they were all there, some with bandages on arms and legs, men and women alike, one or two sitting, heads on knees. None of the old ones. Yongala Cerdan wasn’t there. Ancient Uncle Gemar who made her sketchbooks wasn’t there. Eornis who shared her birthday, he wasn’t going to see his hundred after all. Lathan, Sindary, Fearlian, Frin, Tislish, Millo and on and on, a long litany of grief, a naming of the dead. She didn’t understand_ Why? What could they gain? Why? She watched soldiers going in and out of the houses, driving out anyone trying to hide, plundering the houses and workshops, destroying far more than they carried away. Why? What kind of men were these who could do such things? She watched a knot of them kicking and beating Uncle Cynoc who was Speaker this year, yelling to him about gold, where was Arth Slya’s gold. He tried to tell them they had it all, the bits Inar and Idadro and Migel had for inlaywork and decoration. They didn’t listen. When they got tired of beating him, one of the soldiers stuck a sword in him and left him bleeding, dying. She watched another knot of soldiers pulling some of the women, her mother among them, from the Dance Ground. The children tried to get her away, but she clutched at the rock and wouldn’t move, watched the things the invaders were doing to her mother and the others. She whimpered but wouldn’t look away from the devastation below, watched the deaths and worse, some of the acts so arbitrary and meaningless that they seemed unreal, so unreal she almost expected the bodies to stir and walk away when the play was over as they did in the magic battles at the equinoxes, battles that ended with all-night dances and cauldrons of mulled cider and a feast the next day. But these dead stayed dead, bloody dolls with all the life pressed out of them.
Night settled over the valley, obscuring much of what was still happening down there, doing nothing to block the sounds that came up the cliff to Brann. She listened, shuddering, as she’d watched, shuddering. Again the children tried to get her away from the cliff edge, but she wouldn’t move, and they couldn’t move her. All night she lay there listening even when there was no more to listen to, only a heavy silence.
Under her numbness resolve grew in her. There had to be a reason for what was happening. In her memory, a gilded, winged helmet, a blood-red cloak, a glittering figure moving through the drabber browns and blacks of the rest. He it was who by a nod had given consent to the use of her mother and the other women, who had supervised the looting of the houses and shops, who had stood by while her folk were roped together in groups of eight, then herded into the meeting hall to spend the night how they could. He knows, she thought, I have to make him tell me, somehow I have to make him tell me.