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Relieved, Jaric summoned courage and struck out from the archway. Corley
followed, tense and
beginning to sweat. Thornbrakes and meadow grass had overgrown the trade road
beyond, muffling their passage to -a sibilant swish of undergrowth; dew
spangled their boots at each stride. Corley lifted Taen to his shoulders to
keep her blankets dry. Silent but for an occasional grunt of exertion, the
captain stayed close to
Jaric's side until the light of the clansmen's bonfires streaked their faces
like ceremonial paint. Close up, the smells of roasting meat and incense
mingled with the odors of sweat and the manure of horses. A bowed instrument
rasped arpeggios to the stamp of dancing feet. Ragged, painted, and scantily
clad in the furred skins of animals, the clansmen and their women spun like
shadows between a circle of torches lashed onto poles. Both sexes carried
steel. Daggers, short swords, and quoit rings gleamed from belts and shoulder
scabbards, and bone-hilted knives protruded from the tasseled fringes of boot
tops.
A stone's throw from the perimeter, Jaric tripped on a branch. Sticks snapped
beneath his feet as he scrambled to maintain balance. Corley grabbed his elbow
and steadied him, too late. By the fireside, a man whirled and broke away from
the dance. He spotted the intruders, pointed, and raised a yammering shout of
alarm. The music died as the revelers laid aside their instruments.
Corley froze between steps. "Use your whistle, boy." He pitched his words with
urgency, for the interlaced patterns of dancers unraveled like torn knotwork.
A fist-shaking mob coalesced around the first man. Shoulder to shoulder with
their husbands, women tossed braided hair over their lithely muscled backs.
Steel flashed in the torchlight as one clans-member after another drew knives.
Jaric raised the flute to his lips. He made no attempt to seek the stops, for
the Llondel demon by the ice cliffs had instructed him to sound the highest
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note on the scale. The crowd charged from the fireside with an eerie,
quavering scream, just as the boy drew breath and blew into the mouthpiece.
The flute sang out with a tone so pure it pierced the clamor like a needle
through cloth. The very air seemed to shatter. The note swelled, deepened,
raising resonant harmonics beyond the range of hearing.
Vibrations spread outward like wind, touching the living essence of plants and
livestock, and fraying the thoughts of men into patterns never meant for
mortal minds. The attacking hillfolk jumbled to a halt and fell silent, knives
forgotten in their hands; and like ripples settling from a stone tossed into
water, the seething hordes of the summerfair quivered and stilled and quieted.
Jaric lowered the flute, leaving the crisp snap of torch flames isolated in a
pool of silence. His head rang and his limbs trembled. Somehow he retained the
presence of mind to stumble forward. Trusting Corley to follow on his heels,
he entered the summerfair; and the torches burnished his hair like gold struck
by sunlight.
That moment an eldritch cry split the stillness. An ancient woman burst from
the mass of clansmen.
Clothed in garments of knotted leather, she raised fleshless arms and swayed
toward Jaric. Corley hung back as, in the singsong syntax of trance, the crone
raised her voice and spoke in the tongue of the clans. Her guttural syllables
chilled Jaric like the touch of winter ice. His step faltered, and he stopped,
alone within the ring of flame-light. He knew whom he faced. A year past he
had met this woman's counterpart in a backlands settlement called Gaire's
Main; the prophetic words spoken then still broke his sleep with nightmares.
As priestess of the spring on the isle of Tierl Enneth, the woman was crazed
through a lifetime dedicated to ritual dreams and oracular vision. Her word
superseded all law among the clans, and should she speak against them, very
likely he and Taen and Corley would perish at the hands of her maiden
initiates.
The woman uttered one last word and snapped her jaw shut. Beaded locks of hair
rattled around her shoulders as she stamped her foot, spun around, and ran to
the tailboard of a wagon piled high with wreathes of ceremonial flowers.
Nailed to the wagon's crosstree was the traditional offering to the blessed
Flame, a circlet braided from the fire-lilies which bloomed only at solstice.
Jaric held his breath as the priestess leaped, snatched, and landed bearing
the sacred circlet. Before he could move a muscle, the woman whirled.
For a single suspended instant, his frightened gaze locked with the blind
pearl-white of her eyes.
Then the priestess stamped again. She whispered in the common tongue of
Keithland, yet her words reached the boy as if she spoke in his ear. "Aye, so,
ye are the one." And she threw the wreath.
Orange, gold, and butter-yellow, the flowers fluttered through the air and
landed squarely on the crown of Jaric's head. The clansmen gasped. Though not
a man among them spoke, they knelt as one on the packed earth. Only Jaric and
Corley and the blind priestess remained on their feet in the torchlight.
Corley stepped swiftly to Jaric's side. "Best move on. The Lady has granted us
safe-conduct."
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