Children of Chaos

sixteen

FRENA WIGSON

spent another day in a blur of preparations for her dedication banquet. Replies to the invitations came flooding in—not that baked clay tablets could flood, but many of the responses were brought by runners, leggy youngsters capable of reciting astonishingly long messages verbatim. They did not exactly flood either, but they did trickle sweat onto floor tiles, for the rain had stopped and the heat was more insufferable than ever.

Food was arriving on groaning oxcarts. The beer was brewing, filling the entire residence with heady odors of yeast. Still more decisions had to be squeezed in between dress fittings and the uncountable little crises that ran everywhere like arpeggios on a dulcimer. Horth was nowhere to be seen. Although his days were always devoted to business, when Frena was at home he usually managed to share a meal with her—nibbling barley cakes and sipping ibex milk while she, like as not, gorged on goose in ginger or trout stuffed with oysters. That day she dined alone, while Vignor the storyteller chanted some of his ancient tales to keep her from brooding. She saw Master Pukar just once, in passing. He smiled and bowed. She nodded and swept on by. She would sooner trust a fireasp.

Still, every day ends. The time came when she could bolt the door on Inga and Lilin and the rest, on her father and his staff, on Pukar and the world. Exhausted, she rolled herself out like dough on her sleeping platform and closed her eyes. At that point the Problem leaped at her like a starving catbear.

The mother she had loved had belonged to the Old One and she herself had been promised to that goddess. Even without the previous night's vision, it should have been obvious that only divine aid could have brought a tiny baby through the Edgelands alive. For Paola's sake, Frena should honor that promise and make her dedication to Xaran, not the Twelve. But how could she manage it, and with so little time? Obviously her prayer had been heard. She had been shown the past. Tonight she must ask for guidance for the immediate future. Exhausted though she was, she had no trouble staying awake until the household slept.

Muffled in a dark robe, she felt safely invisible as she crept along the corridor on her pilgrimage. Her father was still at work, a sliver of light showing under his door. When she reached the archway out to the grass, she stopped to listen. Very far away she could hear the inevitable mating cats, yapping dogs, and drunken revelry from the sailors' hostels in Fishgut Alley. The house itself was a tomb. Bad thought! The stars that shone just now above Kyrn—the Wagon, Graben's Sword, Ishrop, and Ishniar—were almost never visible in muggy, canyon-bound Skjar. But nothing stirred nearby, and she had no excuse not to proceed.

She hurried through the gardens to the grave. She was of two minds about stripping, but in the end it seemed wisest not to dirty her robe, so she removed it and hung it on a branch. The cut on her shoulder had scabbed over, but she found a sharp flake—probably builders' marble—and scratched out a few drops of blood.

"Mother?" Feeling absurd whispering to earthworms, she was hard to remember how serious this was. There was none of the presence she had felt before. Last night had been mystery and sanctity. Tonight was pure farce. "Mother... Xaran ..." She had never spoken that name aloud before. It sent such a thrill of fear through her that, stubbornly, she repeated it.

"Most Holy Xaran, I will swear fealty to You at Your holy place if You will guide me. I will swear by blood and birth; death and the cold earth, if only You will show me how."

Somehow an appeal to Paola Apicella had become a prayer to the Mother of Lies, but there was no perceptible answer. Eventually Frena rose and returned to her room, feeling rather sheepish and reminding herself that the Old One spoke to her children in dreams. There might yet be an answer.

♦

Paola Apicella wore the chill of the night like a cloak of ice, but that was mostly because she was still so weak. She could not lift a full spadeful of dirt, only spoonfuls, and she could not have dug at all had the soil not been so loose. She shivered in the wind. The spade made tiny shuff... shuff... noises. She had come all alone, because the others would not have let her come at all, and they would not have known the right place to dig. She had let the Mother guide her, so she was sure.

Shuff ... shuff ... the air smelled of decay and death.

She had gone into labor just as the ice devils started driving off the herds and the men ran out to stop them. By the time her water broke, the men were all dead. By the time the long labor was over, the women and boys had finished burying them ... here, in a mass grave.

Shuff... shuff... They had told her the babe would not live, she should not name him. But she had named him after his father. She wanted him so much, and she had tried so hard. He had struggled, been a fighter, but it had done no good. The Mother had taken him back. Praise the Mother.

Shuff... The spade struck something soft, not a rock. Stavan's arm, perhaps. The hole was not very deep, but it would have to do. She paused to catch her breath, wipe her forehead. She was cold and yet sweating. She must finish this quickly.

She took up the little bundle, little Stav, unwrapped him enough for a last kiss, and then she knelt and laid him in his father's arms. She spoke a prayer to the Old One that She might care for them both. Then Paola filled in the hole and went back across the field to the village.

♦

The cottage was cold. She was hungry, for the outlanders had stripped the village of everything edible, even the dogs. She curled up on the that in the blanket that still bore Stavan's familiar scent. Her breasts ached with milk. No food in the village, no men, but that was not her concern. She was beyond caring.

She must have slept then, because she was awakened by deep male voices shouting in some unknown tongue. So the ice devils must have returned. They could not be looking for food this time.

Screaming, then more shouting, then the door of the hut being kicked open, flaming torches streaming fire in the dark... She cowered back in the far corner of her bedding, not afraid, just too hungry to care, too bereft. They yelled at her in their guttural tongue, then a smaller man spoke at her in Florengian with a twisted accent, talking about babies, about food.

♦

It had been a rich man's house, for it had stone walls, tiled floors, and solid furniture, but now it reeked of the ice devils, that repellent stink, half animal, half unwashed man. They put Paola in a room to wait, but there was a fire for light and warmth—hunger had made her so cold!—and one of them came back and thrust a bowl of gruel at her. She scooped it up with fingers and gulped it down, almost choking; it was lifesaving.

Then a woman screamed, angry male voices rumbled, more torches with oily flames poured into the room. Behind them came a man half naked, carrying a small package. He thrust it at Paola, almost threw it at her. Its shrill wails brought back the pain in her breasts. She pulled up her smock at once and put the babe to suck. The crying stopped and ripples of joy flowed through her. Not little Stav, but someone to love, to live for, to take her milk. Boy or girl? She had not thought to look.

She looked up and saw the woman in the doorway, staring. She was a Florengian, with milk-swollen breasts visible through a badly ripped dress. One side of her face was red and puffed; eye swelling, lips bruised, hair torn. The man barked something impatiently. He had bloody scratches near his eyes. She started forward, he caught her arm. Was she the mother or just another wet nurse now wanted for other duties?

The girl lifted her smock to let the woman see the babe sucking, and smiled to say that she would love and cherish it, be it boy or girl. For a moment they stared at each other, and then the woman's spirit seemed to crumble. She nodded resignedly. The man snarled and thrust her out the door ahead of him, impatient to do what he wanted; she went in silence, resisting no more. All that mattered was that the ice devils had given Paola a child to feed, so they would have to feed her also.

Praise the Old One, who had answered her prayer!