She wished she hadn’t spoken, for she knew the answer too well. He could have made a living from horse breeding. Pankolo had offered, several times, that spring when she first let him bed her. Majka had never raised the issue since.
“You must keep up with the music, come what may,” said Wren, seating himself again by the stove. “Will you play us one more tonight?”
Udi shrugged. Then, shyly, he began the first tune the mandolin’s owner had taught him. The melody was simple, haunting. Majka glanced at Wren and found him sitting oddly still.
When he finished, Udi rested the mandolin on his knees. “There’s words, but I never learned them,” he said.
“Many words,” said Wren. “It is a balladeer’s standard, known all across the Republic. I have heard the tale of Niseta the Beautiful set to that music. Niseta, who waited years for her lover’s return, knowing he still lived because he entered her dreams every new moon, and lay with her to sunrise, and she woke drenched with love.”
Udi squirmed in his chair. “The one I heard was about a goat.”
Majka lifted the wine jug, reached casually to take Wren’s cup from his hand. Casually! There was nothing casual about it. She let her fingers graze his own and the breath went out of her. She was not a selfish person; no one could accuse her of that. She filled the cup and pressed it back into his hand. Give me this night, God of mine. One night only. Let him stay.
“I have heard a much longer lyric as well,” said Wren. “It tells of an ancient clan who called themselves Ve’saqra, which means the Forever People.”
Majka froze.
“They were few in number but very proud,” the man continued. “Absurdly proud, one might say. They told themselves that their clan would never perish from the earth. But they failed to notice the earth changing around them. They were a woodland folk—warriors, hunters, trappers. They did not understand cities, or that a man could build armies from the peasants who came to cities like moths to a blaze. And they laughed when a certain warlord decreed that he was God’s will incarnate, and would rule over them.”
“Time you slept, Udi,” said Majka.
“Incarnate?” said her son.
“God’s will made flesh,” said Wren. “And it is true that heaven seemed to favor his soldiers. They conquered all the lowlands, from the Ilidron Coves to the pine barrens of the north. But the Forever People would not yield. They had strong men and swift horses, and above all they did not fear him. We are conquered first through fear, boy. I hope you will never forget that.”
“Did they fight?” asked Udi.
“Oh, yes.”
“And beat him in the end?”
Wren shook his head. “They lost their land, village by village. Half their men were slain, and the whole clan driven into exile. But even in exile they resisted. They seized an old castle and began to repair it, stone by stone. And the warlord ignored them. ‘Let them rot in those hills,’ he declared. And so within their rebuilt walls the Ve’saqra knew some years of peace. It was doomed from the start, however. The warlord had turned his back on them, yes, but only because he had developed a new fascination.”
Majka brought the jug down on the stove with a smack; droplets of wine flew and hissed. Udi did not even glance at her. “What fascination?” he asked.
“Sorcery,” said Wren. “He became the patron of conjurors, necromancers, priests of the Night Gods. He gathered them to his court, plied them with gifts, granted them titles and estates. Year by year they claimed more of his attention, and more of his gold.
“One day he found the royal coffers empty. Having already squeezed his own people dry, he sent a messenger to the hills where the Ve’saqra lived, demanding a tribute of men and gold. The man was met with jeers. If the wolf in his prime had not killed them, they said, why should they tremble if he crawls from his cave a last time, toothless and feeble, to howl at the moon? And to underscore the point they took the scroll case with the royal demands away from the messenger and stuffed it with horse dung, then sealed it and sent it back to the king.”
Udi’s jaw hung open. For a moment he struggled with himself; then he collapsed in laughter, shrill boyish peals. Majka gripped her chair. Horror had pounced on her again.
“Udi, to bed. We’re done with stories for tonight.”
“But the story’s not done,” cried Udi, instantly contained. “Let him finish, Mama. Then I’ll go.”
They bickered. Majka started counting to three. Udi whined as though his life depended on hearing the end of the tale, and in her fear Majka found herself imagining that it might be so. That, or the reverse.
“Get marching!”
“No!”
She pointed at the mandolin, “I’ll send your plaything back tomorrow. Just try me, you little runt.”
Tears sprang to Udi’s eyes. Majka swore, crossed her arms, turned away from the man and child. She was trembling; they would notice. She surrendered with a wave.
Wren looked down into his cup. “I’ve done wrong,” he said. “Forgive me.”
“Not fucking likely.”
“It’s just a story, Mama,” said Udi. “What happened? What did the king say to the people?”
The stranger shook his head. “Nothing.”
“You’re lying,” said Udi, forgetting himself entirely.
“No, I’m not,” said Wren. “The king sent no word to the Forever People. He called instead for his sorcerers, and told them it was time to prove their loyalty. And the sorcerers locked themselves in a tower for five days and nights, and a blood-red glow lit the tower windows. When it was done a great shriek went up from the tower, and half the sorcerers went mad and never recovered. But the curse was cast, and it fell upon the Ve’saqra and heated their bones like irons in the forge, and all eight thousand were scalded to death from within.”
Silence. Udi looked at Majka. She could find no face for him but rage.
“Is it true, Mama?”
She couldn’t speak. The man looked at Udi with a strange intensity.
“It is a legend, boy. Legends are never simply true or false. The Ve’saqra were real; there are ruins to prove it. And the warlord: he was very real. His descendants are men of power in our Republic today.”
Udi frowned. “But the curse wasn’t real.”
The stranger cocked his head slightly to one side.
“I misspoke in one regard. There were survivors. It seems the curse glanced off certain houses, just as a whirlwind may tear fifty homes to pieces and leave the fifty-first untouched. In the case of the Ve’saqra, about a hundred souls were spared.”
“Why?”
“I’ve just said I don’t know, Udi. No one does. It was four hundred years ago.”
“What did they do with the bodies?”
Majka looked at her son, appalled. The fascination in his voice.
“What indeed?” said Wren. “The bones went on burning, like white-hot coals. What does one do with such relics? And what if they go on blazing for centuries, reminders of infamy, proofs of an unthinkable crime?”
Majka seized Udi’s chin and turned it. Udi winced at her brutal grip, but one glance ended his whining: Majka’s face left him terrified. He rose and whispered goodnight.
A log cracked in the woodstove. The stranger sat like a statue, or a corpse. Majka listened to Udi’s feet ascending the stairs, the groan of the top step, the squeak of his bedroom door. Finally the latch clicked shut.
“I was sent here to kill you.”
Her mind seized. Don’t look towards the cellar. Don’t leap up or he’ll move like a snake again. Don’t laugh or scream or weep. Stay alive, stay alive.
“You can spare us,” she whispered. “Just take what you want, and go.”