Then she did something. She pushed at him, and Hunger found himself rolling over to get his footing.
The trout darted out to the bright water then into shadows farther away. But he stopped himself. "No," he said. "Never again."
"You can fight me," she said. "But in the end, you will obey. It is your nature."
She pushed again, and Hunger found himself looking for a path up out of the riverbed. He took two steps and stopped.
She pushed again.
He took another few steps.
"It will cost you," Hunger said. "I will fight you every bit of the way."
There was a pause and he felt the first trickle of the pain. A trickle that grew into a raging fire. It hurt. It seared. It rose in him and consumed him in a soundless scream.
When Hunger regained his senses, he found himself still under the water, lying on a stretch of river stones somewhere down river. It took all his might, but he pushed himself up.
"Hu," he said. "Do you see? I can withstand your pain. Perhaps you will always beat me, but it will cost your attention and time. I will take that from you. I will force you to always think of me so you can think of nothing else."
There was a pause.
He felt her push.
He took a step, and then another. He tried to fight her.
But she flooded him with ease. He could trust her. She was good. And if he asked very carefully, with much obedience, she would release those he had so horribly imprisoned.
Hunger turned and climbed up the steep, slippery rocks of the bank of the river bed, up out of the water and into the sunshine. When his strength returned, he began to run along the banks, leaping between ma.s.sive boulders, back toward the Mother and her caves.
Hunger entered the warrens and smelled the Mother in the darkness. The warrens were full of her. She smelled of rock and sweet, clean magic.
She was smaller than he was, but quick and strong. He"d felt her sharp teeth and powerful hands. He"d seen her. She rarely left the caves, but she"d ventured forth with him a time or two, walking abroad in the night. He"d also seen her in the smallest of light that found its way into the depths from the mouth of the cave. She was pale. Pale as a mushroom. Pale as the moon.
He didn"t know what she was. She had two arms, two legs. A head. She had a muzzle; which the villagers did not. Her skin was covered with a fur. Smooth and soft as the small things he had eaten: the mice and squirrels, the rat.
His ease grew as he traveled deeper into the inky depths. Her powers were always stronger when she was close.
He felt along the walls as he walked, smelled the scent of rock and water and the strange beasts that lived in the bowels of this mountain. When he came to the carving that marked the hole leading to the lower chambers, he climbed down. Then it was up over a small slope and across a bridge that spanned the cold waters of the underground river.
He found her in the warm room, surrounded by her light. But now he considered that light as if for the first time. It wasn"t just light. It was-the word was "ribbons"-it was ribbons of light, ribbons flowing around her, circling her limbs. Living ribbons of light wriggling like the snake he"d eaten. And then he saw that her appearance was changed.
She no longer had a muzzle. Nor was she covered in soft fur.
The Mother was human. And beautiful. So stunning it took his breath away.
He wondered and marveled at the change. He looked closer at her. She looked like . . .
She looked like his wife. "Lovely?" he asked.
"Come here," she said.
The ribbons of light reached out to him and circled his arm, caressed his neck, wreathed his head. A continual shimmer.
"What do you want?" she asked.
He only wanted to be here with her. But deep in his mind he knew there was something else. And then the nightmare of his family struggled past her overwhelming beauty and stared him in the face. She"d asked him what he wanted.
"Freedom," he said.
She laughed.
"You need a servant," he said. "But you don"t need me. I will find you another, and you will give me this boon: you will dissolve this body and let me go."
"And the souls inside you?" she asked.
"Freedom," he said. Freedom for his children. For his wife.
Her face flickered like smoke and he saw her intent. Alarm shot through him. "No," he said and took a step back, but she grabbed him by the arm, and such was the power of her ease that his panic lost its grip. In the back of his mind, he knew he should run, but he could not.
She thrust her other hand into his sodden chest, reaching deep into him with that powerful hand, and grasped the part of him that held his family. With a yank she broke them free-his bright daughter, his handsome son, his admirable wife-and withdrew his monster"s heart.
With all his might, Hunger fought her ease and succeeded in grasping her hand. She held his heart and stomach all in one. It was a weave of willows that smelled of magic. He"d been there when she"d made these weaves; he himself had fetched the thin flexible willow branches she used for such weaving. They smelled of her magic. His body was packed with stomachs. Empty stomachs waiting to be filled. But this one was not empty. In this one Hunger could feel the souls of his family caught like moths in a wicker web.
The Mother pushed at him and yanked her hand away. "You stupid thing," she said. "I will devour them."
"No," he begged. "Please."
"Then help me prepare for the harvest. Bring me the ones that stink, all those that could fight against me. Bring me the young male that would be their leader. This is your duty. And when you have fulfilled that duty, you will receive the boon you seek."
The pull of her dazzling beauty and the desires for his family tugged against each other. He wanted to obey her. But he also knew she was lying. She would not keep her promise to free his loved ones.
Then something she just said sparked an idea in his mind. She had spoken of a harvest before, but he had not known then what the word meant. "What do you want to harvest? I am strong. I can serve you as the harvest master and you can let these go."
Her anger seemed to flow away at this offer and her countenance smiled upon him. "It has been too long since any in my family have handled humans. So facile."
This made no sense to Hunger, and he could not tell if she had been talking to him or herself.
"You do not understand," she said. "This herd of humans is mine. Mine by right. It was my mother"s before me and will produce for my daughters. But humans rebel against the natural order of things. It has ever been so. And if they would rebel against me, then think what they"d do if one such as yourself was set to watch over and harvest them. No, humans do best when one of their own sits at their head. Your place is to cull the herd. Nothing more."
A part of Hunger recoiled at this information. Harvesting humans? But not for flesh. No. She"d taught him to unravel things, and he knew what she wanted to harvest.
A wave of her ease washed over him. What did it matter what she wanted? Or if she lied. She was so beautiful. So kind.
His alarm faded away.
"They are hidden, the ones that stink. Hidden so even the Mother who stole this herd from my ancestors could not find them. But you have been created to root them out."
A word came to him for the ones that stink-sleth. That was their name. And he immediately knew where the men had taken one of them. He"d learned this not from following any scent trail, for the scent had ended in the fires. No, that knowledge had been one of the first things that had tumbled into him from Barg. Purity Sleth was going to be held in a stone cage in Whitecliff. He also knew that if he caught her, he could catch the rest of them because sleth would do anything to keep their secrets. They would hunt and kill their own to keep them quiet, which meant he could use Purity as bait.
"If I find them," he asked, "will you spare these?"
"Your kind is so weak. How you ever overpowered the Mothers I will never know."
"Will you spare them?"
"You have two nights," she said. She held up the stomach that contained his family. "If you fail, know that I and my daughters are hungry, and these firstlings will be prepared for our feast."
13.
Snare BLUE WOULDN"T LET Talen near the wound, so he watched as the dog licked until the bleeding stopped, knowing that if corruption set in and spread, they would have to put him down. He stroked Blue"s head. He could not believe Blue had been stabbed. He could not believe his family had run off a hammer of stinking Fir-Noy armsmen, which was both wonderful and terrible. It was wonderful because he couldn"t wait to tell the story in Koramtown; it was terrible because Da was wrong-those men would be back.
Talen stood and looked down at Blue. "There"s nothing else we can do for him."
"We can catch those hatchlings," Nettle said.
"Aye, that we can. And then rub it in the faces of those Fir-Noy."
Talen imagined how that would be and exited the barn. He and Nettle walked across the yard to the house and found Ke sitting at the table, propping himself up with his elbows. Da stood at the hearth, three large red onions roasting on a pile of embers there. A pot of porridge hung from a crane over a cooking fire. The fish they"d filleted earlier were sizzling in a yet another pan. Da poked at them with a knife. The ends of his beard braids were tucked into the collar of his tunic to keep them from getting into the fire or falling into the food.
"Shouldn"t River be back by now?" asked Talen.
Da swung the crane, and the pot of barley that hung from it, out of the hearth. "Don"t you worry about River. She"ll be fine."
Da was probably right. River could take care of herself. She might not be as strong as Ke, but she knew woodcraft. She had her bow. And, if it came to it, he doubted any but a dreadman could run her down.
Da lifted the pot off the crane with a hook and brought it to the table. He took off the lid and dropped a large spoonful into each of their bowls, then he put a small chunk of b.u.t.ter onto the top. They rarely ate their porridge in the sweet, Mungo style. "By the time you"ve eaten that, the fish and onions will be ready."
Talen turned to Ke. "What did you find?"
"I followed the armsmen to their mounts," said Ke. "Then I followed them to the edge of the forest. They"re headed out to Fir-Noy lands."
That could mean the armsmen had given up or were going to make an official complaint. But Talen doubted that was the case. Da had just humiliated a Hammer; that surely wouldn"t go unpunished. "They"re probably circling round or going to gather a mob," said Talen. He turned to Da. "We"re sitting here like a bunch of cattle."
"We"ll watch," said Da. "And it"s true somebody needs to go talk to the Bailiff, but it"s too late now. I don"t want anyone out past dark with the country full of imbeciles like those who showed up today. There"s nothing we else we can do at the moment."
But that wasn"t true. The armsmen weren"t the real threat. Sleth were. Talen looked at Nettle, who was chewing a huge mouthful of the porridge. They"d discussed their plans, but he didn"t want to blurt them out now. Da needed to first see the prints. Only then would he listen.
Da walked back to the hearth. He grabbed the small frying pan from the wall. He put a knife full of lard in it and stuck the pan next on the andiron above the coals. When the lard melted and began to sizzle, he produced a large brown egg from his pocket, cracked it, and dropped the contents into the pan.
"Where did you get that?" asked Ke.
"Mol," said Da. "I got half-a-dozen." He grinned. "And if you"re polite and grovel like a proper son, I might save you one for when you end your fast. But you must promise to help me. We"re going to be treating our four new ladies like fat Mokaddian city wives for the next few weeks. We"ll need gra.s.shoppers and sliced squash every day."
Da was so quick to get back to his meal that he was overlooking the obvious. "Da," said Talen. "There is something we can do right now. We can solve the root of the problem."
"You"re not going to reconcile Koramites with Fir-Noy," said Da and turned back to his pan. "We"re oil and water." He added a strip of fatback to his egg and let it all sizzle.
"I wasn"t talking about that. I"m talking about the hatchlings."
Ke groaned. "Och, here he goes again about a monster running about the woods wanting his pants to cover up its naked b.u.m-"
"They"ve got sleth caged in Whitecliff," said Talen, "and you seem to think the world is a safe as a pie bake."
"Perhaps the woman in Whitecliff isn"t as dangerous as you think," said Da. "What"s needed now are calm heads."
"I agree," said Talen. "And I am calm. But what you need to know is that not only did I see one of them, in broad daylight, but we"ve got its footprints in the yard."
Da and Ke followed Talen out to the footprints. The sun had sunk low, but there was still enough light to see by. In fact, the angle of the light made the track clearer. He led them to the one by the old sod-roofed house and then finally brought them to the one by the pig pen.
"That"s too small for Sammesh," said Talen. He put his foot next to it to make the point.
Ke stretched one of his ma.s.sive arms to scratch a spot on his back. "Looks like we"ve got ourselves a killer."
"Oh, come on," said Talen. "Look at it."
A horsefly landed on Da"s arm. He looked down at it, let it prepare to bite, then smacked the horsefly with the flat of his hand and let it fall to the dirt where he ground it with his foot. "That print could be anybody"s," said Da. "Could be one of the children that came with that tinker family. They were here just last week."
It could have been them. "But that doesn"t explain the sighting and my missing pants."
"Yes," said Da, "the missing pants that were under your bed."
"I saw something today," said Talen.
"I"m sure you did. But I"m also sure that your beating this morning has you rattled. Do you remember when you were a boy and saw the shadows of a number of og in the yard?"
Talen remembered. Their wagon had cast a shadow in the light of a full moon. And he"d been sure the creatures were in the yard ready to tear them all to pieces. Of course, Da had taken him by the hand, kicking and screaming, and forced him to face the fact that it was only moon shadows.
"I saw a leg," said Talen. "I don"t understand why you"re not concerned."
"Concerned?" said Da. "I"m mortally concerned, but not about hatchlings. n.o.body knows that the woman they"ve caged is sleth. There was no Seeker, no proving."
"What I heard," said Nettle, "was that she moved with unnatural speed."
"Things are perceived differently in battle. When your mind is tinged with fear, the foe"s strength and speed and ferocity are always exaggerated. But let"s a.s.sume the worst. Let"s a.s.sume she did move with power. She might have been wearing a weave. Did you think of that?"