Sword and Sorceress XXVII Read online

  She already had a few ideas for how that could be managed. She wanted to tell her father... but he wasn’t, of course. Wasn’t her father. Her father was a creature of Faerie with whom her mother had dallied and then turned to for help. Whose child she had kept from him, for as long as she could.

  Alina wanted to help the king anyhow... but that was just something she wanted. He had many advisers, after all. At least half of them understood the political landscape well enough for their advice to be useful. But none of them could save her country. None of them could bargain with a goblin.

  “Change the straw back,” she said, in the tone she usually reserved for impertinent ambassadors.

  “Come with me.” He held out a hand; it was overlarge, and gnarled, and his fingernails curved like claws. “Your mother misses you. She will teach you our ways, and in a few days, you will be able to transform the straw yourself. If you still care to.”

  Alina swallowed hard. This, she told herself, was where she could do the most good. Unless she plunged into the life of the fae, into love and passion and madness, and no longer cared about doing the most good.

  The thought terrified her, and at the same time it pulled at her. The pull seemed stronger than the fear.

  That was what the goblin was counting on. If you still care to. He’d said it as if it was a taunt.

  Her real father grinned at her, a grin wild with pure delight.

  She crossed the marble floor, step by steady step, and did not flinch as she took his hand. It felt cold and scaly and very strong. She half-turned, not meaning to, and looked at the king.

  Who was standing. Who was being restrained by one of the sorcerers.

  “Why?” he demanded. Speaking to the goblin. “Why do you want her?”

  “Which her?” the goblin said, and laughed. “Because I loved your queen, as you did not. And this one is my daughter. I love her too.”

  It was true, of course; the fae couldn’t lie. And she could hear the sheer intensity in his voice when he spoke of her mother, the fierceness of his passion. If the duke of Darmil had spoken to her like that, would she have considered his offer after all?

  Yet the goblin’s love had not kept him from leaving her mother in a marriage with a man she didn’t want, from bargaining with her for the fate of her child. The love of a fae would be possessive and selfish.

  Perhaps that was what her mother had liked about it. Her mother, who had never known love. Alina wondered what it would be like to be loved that fiercely, wanted that openly.

  The king shook off the high sorcerer’s grip. “Alina,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t. The gold is not important.”

  He knew that wasn’t true.

  “I’ll still care to,” she assured him, calmly and surely. She smiled.

  Then she turned and took the goblin’s other hand.

  #

  Three days after Princess Alina was kidnapped by the goblin in a spurt of smoke, all the straw in the castle storage rooms turned back to gold.

  Three weeks later, when the king was in his study examining a map—the map of the border between Ciern and Aimar—the door opened and the princess walked in, still wearing her heavy violet betrothal dress.

  The king looked up at the first creak and went very still. He looked older than he had three weeks ago, the wrinkles around his eyes deeper, his jaw sagging lower. He was silent for a space longer than he would once have been, before he said, “They let you leave?”

  “They couldn’t stop me,” Alina said, “once I knew their ways.”

  A longer silence. Then the king said, in a voice that sounded even more unsteady by contrast with hers, “And why—why did you come back? Your mother didn’t want to, once she knew their ways.”

  The silence was momentary but vast. Alina looked at her father, and knew she would never tell him of the time she had spent in the courts of the fae. Of the overwhelming force of their loves and passions, so wild and all-consuming that the tales of humans dying for faerie love made sense to her now. Of the warmth of her mother’s arms, satisfying a lack she hadn’t known she had.

  She would never tell him how close she had come to staying, once she knew their ways. Until she had come across her mother’s letter, and opened it, and read it again.

  You were nothing. Not when her mother had chosen to love one of the fae, or to lie with him, or to bear his child. Her mother had not loved her then, could not have loved her, because she didn’t yet exist.

  Which was why love, for all its power, had failed her. It had come too late to make a difference. But responsibility... responsibility was something you could feel for an unborn child. For a child not yet conceived. For the possibility of a child.

  Or for thousands of people she didn’t know.

  It is always that simple, to choose love.

  But it was the king who had chosen love. Her mother had simply been swept away by it.

  “Their ways are wild and fierce and free,” Alina said at last, knowing her father wouldn’t understand. “But our ways are real.”

  The king looked at her, his expression grave. She wondered, suddenly, if he did understand. If he had always known, as she now knew, what she was giving up and what she was choosing.

  “Besides,” Alina said after a moment, “I wanted to talk to you about Aimar. We will have to find another solution, now that I won’t be marrying their prince.”

  “Aimar,” the king said, after a long moment, “will be a problem.”

  “Perhaps,” Alina said. “I think I know how we might deal with them.”

  The king nodded and moved over. Alina lifted her hem, stepped over the bench, and sat beside him. She pulled the map closer.

  “I believe,” she said, “that if we build a bridge over the river here....”

  They bent their heads together to take a closer look, and remained that way for many hours, talking in low tones as the sky outside the window dimmed into dusk and then deepened into night.

  Mahrut’s Road

  by Nathan Crowder

  I love to read stories from non-European traditions. It’s always interesting to view the world from a different viewpoint, and to see gods created for other ways of life. Mahrut may be a difficult god to belong to, but life in his service is never dull.

  Currently living with his cat Shiva in the Bohemian wilds of Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood, Nathan Crowder works to create the stories that he would like to see in the world. Not content in a single genre, his published works span horror, science fiction, superheroes, clown noir, zombie westerns, urban sci-fi, and of course fantasy. “Mahrut’s Road” stemmed from his belief that the landscape of heroic fantasy needed more women heroes and less Euro-centric world-building. His fondness for curry might have played a pivotal role in this decision. He has staked out a corner of the internet at www.nathancrowder.com where he rambles about writing, social justice, pop culture, and fringe candy. He is also fond of Twitter where he appears as NateCrowder at a 140 characters a shot.

  ****

  As a child Siri Viraj wanted nothing more than to welcome the monsoon season with dance, to twirl in the temple courtyard with flowers in her hair. She would have been a dancer if not for the will of Mahrut, the Inside-Out God. A fever in her tenth year left the small but strong girl clinging to life and sent her on a silent journey on the Shadow Road. Siri finally awoke when the fever passed days later, reborn anew to unexplained visions and sudden fits of anger. The village elder knew the signs well. Mahrut, he of the red rage and madness, had staked his claim. Siri had been marked as one of his chosen.

  As soon as she could walk again, the young girl was sent from her parent’s home to the temple of the Inside-Out God. She took her oath to Mahrut and trained for years as a priest before being released into the world for a life of service to the community.

  In keeping with the tradition of the priesthood, Siri traveled Mahrut’s road without clear direction. Less than a year of service took her far from home. She traveled by foot
where possible, by river when necessary. For the past several months, a dugout canoe had been her chief means of travel, her twinned maces her only constant companions.

  Siri stuck close to the bank whenever possible, where the currents were less chaotic. Heavy, sweet–smelling blossoms on laden goma tree boughs brushed her cheek like a baby’s fist as she paddled down the slow-moving river. Siri lost herself in the sensation. Half-remembered dreams of dancing possessed her mind until the boat’s wooden hull thudded against a sunken log.

  The unexpected impact jostled the canoe, but months of practice navigating the swollen river kept her upright and dry. She shook a finger at the distracting blossoms. “You thought you had me there, Mahrut. I did not see through your disguise, but Siri Viraj is nimble like a dancer!”

  There was a sudden explosion of movement from the bushes along the bank, and Siri reached reflexively for the twin maces at her belt, almost losing the paddle to the river in the process. A child, no more than five years old, burst from behind the verdant depths of the undergrowth, and ran downstream. Her small voice shouted, “Hurry! Hurry! A priest arrives!” Shortly, Siri heard the cries of the child echoed by other, adult voices.

  Once around the river bend, she saw a small clutch of white, mud-walled huts and a humble, open-walled shrine without visible adornment. A crowd had gathered to see her approach. Siri watched as hope faded to grim acceptance once they recognized her colors and spotted the copper emblem of Mahrut around her neck. A community this size was too small to accommodate a priest of its own. They had to make do with whatever religious authority wandered through. Most of the twelve gods had traveling priests of some kind. With the exception of the temple masters in the City of Stone Faces, all of Mahrut’s priests were wanderers. The children of the Inside-Out God were tolerated, revered, held as blessed, but no one wanted them in their towns for long.

  Self-consciously, Siri touched the medallion against her breast, a head splitting open as a smaller face appeared within the skull. The people had gathered quickly at the sign of her approach. Their need for a priest was apparent on dozens of disappointed faces. She paddled the canoe to shore, and two young men stepped from the crowd to help drag it onto the pebbled bank.

  She pitched her voice to be heard above the murmur of the few dozen villagers. “Mahrut has guided me here.” It was the standard greeting of the priesthood. And it was as true a statement as she could make. No schedule, no conscious plan dictated the route Mahrut’s children took as they wandered the land. They let madness and rage guide their steps, trusting their patron to take them where they were needed. “Do you have need of a priest in this village? I would exchange sacred rites for a few days of food, and can sleep upon the floor of your shrine, if you permit me.”

  Siri tracked the gaze of several villagers to a tall, balding man with a hawkish nose. As village leaders went, he was younger than Siri was used to seeing. Few wrinkles and no gray in his thinning hair marked him as experienced. It made her wonder what hardship might have befallen the small community to trust their leadership to one so young. The leader motioned her towards the shrine with a resigned nod. The crowd parted to let her through.

  The life of a traveling priest was not an easy one. Mahrut rarely led his children to prosperous communities with their own priesthoods. Siri was accustomed to sparse accommodations, and most villages she visited maintained little more than a small shrine, open on three sides to the elements with a central fire pit to keep her warm in the frost season. This village was no different. She shrugged off her feathered cloak and left it on the worn stone to serve as her bed for later.

  She offered up a quick prayer to the Inside-Out God, the mantras tumbling off her lips as rote sounds that held more ritual than meaning. She did not need to raise her voice to be heard. Mahrut rode within her, nestled in the red-hot rage and madness at her core. She let the bows and supplications stretch out the sore muscles in her arms and back, wincing at the tightness. The village leader stayed outside, stoic in the shade of the shrine’s peaked roof, until Siri was done with her devotions. Once her final bow was completed, Siri turned and waited with a calm smile.

  “A demon has come to our village,” the elder said. This was not typically a claim one made without evidence. His voice did not shake with doubt.

  “A demon?” Siri reached into a pouch at her waist and pulled out a handful of spiced seeds. She pondered the declaration while feeding the seeds onto her mouth one at a time. “Has anyone seen this demon?”

  He shuffled his feet but lost none of his sincerity. “No. But every night since the new moon, he has entered our village and stolen a child in their sleep.”

  Siri nodded confidently. Her confidence was not echoed in the village elder. It might be a demon. It could be a man in the guise of a demon. It could be many things. But in Siri’s eyes, one thing was certain—this village had convinced itself that it was incapable of solving the problem on their own. No Justicars traveled this far afield from the City of Bright Birds, and they had no local clerics. This village would have to make do with what help they could get. Even if that help came in the form of a compact, and self-described “delicate little flower” such as herself. Like it or not, they were stuck with Siri Viraj.

  “Have food brought to me just before sunset,” she decided. “I will slay my hunger, and when this demon of yours comes, I will slay him as well. Until then, this priest has traveled far today, and she needs her sleep.”

  Without waiting for acknowledgement from the elder, Siri removed her burnished copper helm, quickly ruffled the sweat from her short, dark hair. She made a bed for herself on her feathered cloak. The smooth, twined light maces lay next to her hand, her shoulder crooked to provide a crude pillow for her head. The village elder crept out of the shrine as quietly as his sandals would permit, but he needn’t have bothered. The strange priest had slept in more chaotic places than the center of a small village. The madness helped. Chaos tended to reign behind her eyes, no matter what was happening around her. And her body knew it would need sleep for the task to which she had set herself.

  The smell of a simple but spicy curry coaxed Siri from sleep’s embrace. A young girl, reed thin and no more than eight summers old, was kneeling at the entrance to the shrine with a bowl of food. Siri rolled to a sitting position and held out her hand for the steaming bowl. The crude, clay dish contained a bed of rice covered with a pungent, yellow curry of bright vegetables and what she assumed to be bits of fish. The bowl was not much, but this was a poor village. She took what was offered and gave thanks in return.

  The village girl sat on her haunches and watched Siri eat, silent until the bowl was almost empty. “Are you really a priest of Mahrut?”

  Siri gazed at her visitor of the lip of the bowl. There was no fear in those young eyes, just a degree of skepticism that reminded the priest of her own youth. “What is your name? You do have one, don’t you?”

  “Mara,” the girl said, furrowing her brow. “Are you a real priest?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Mahrut talk to you?”

  Curious one, Siri thought. She wondered what age of children were being taken in the village, wondered if Mara might be next, wondered if Mara thought the same. “Maybe he’s talking to me now,” Siri said. She raised her eyebrow at the girl. She finished her meal and handed the bowl back. “The other children who have been taken—were they friends of yours?”

  “The demon took away my little brother Kempur two nights ago.”

  Ah, that’s it, Siri thought. It is not the madness that attracts this fledgling so much as the rage. She should have noticed the clenched fists sooner. The young priest stood in one, smooth motion, a dancer’s motion. She bent at the waist to collect her feathered cloak and fastened it around her throat. Siri looked at the sun, low in the sky above the goma trees. Sunset would be coming soon. Already long shadows covered much of the village. She tamped the copper helm with the boiled leather lining down upon her head. The twinn
ed maces were last, their smooth, tapered heads like slumbering, bronze blossoms. “Two nights ago, you say? Take me to where you live before the daylight is gone.”

  Mara took off at an eager trot and Siri had to break into a jog to keep up with the little legs. The girl’s family was near the edge of the village, a few huts from the river’s bank. A wooden sash hung broken in one window. Siri pointed towards the window with one mace. “Your brother, Kempur, he was through there?” No sooner than she saw Mara’s nod of confirmation, Siri was at the window, peering into the dim interior of the home. She could tell it was a richer family who lived there despite the small size of the home by the mud walls dividing the interior into a series of smaller rooms. Two rolled-up sleeping mats and a rattan chest occupied the cramped space, with a woven blanket covered the passage into what was likely the common living area. A similar room for the parents was likely on the other side of the house. Siri took it all in, nodded to herself, turned back to Mara.

  “Did you see your brother taken?”

  “No.” Mara’s face screwed up in a purple knot of anger. “I was learning needlework by the fire.”

  Siri didn’t waste time trying to comfort the girl. There was nothing she could say that her parents hadn’t likely already told her. Anyway, she was not that kind of priest. What could she say? That it wasn’t her fault? She knew, or should know that already. She couldn’t tell the child to let go of her anger over what had happened, not when rage and anger gave Mahrut strength; not when they gave Siri strength. “Sleep soundly tonight, little one,” she said. “Mahrut will walk the road of dreams with you.”

  Night came quickly. The sweet hum of fiddler beetles gave way to the swoop and flutter of the bats which fed on them. The white-ruffed nightbirds cooed their mating calls in the rushes, while a fearful village huddled within their homes. Siri shared the wide branch of a goma tree with a family of bushy-tailed shrews, blind to their antics as she watched the river’s edge below her. The soothing sound of the river against the bank threatened to pull her down into slumber, and she thanked Mahrut for the foresight of the afternoon’s nap.