Lynn Flewelling - The Oracle's Queen

Mahti’s first vision for this journey had been a river, and so it seemed, though his feet never left dry land. The trails he was drawn along led him east and north for the next two turnings of the moon.

For the first weeks he traveled through valleys he knew, following each one down from the peaks like the spring melt trickling down in little streams to swell the larger ones at the bottom, where the villages lay. He met with those he’d healed and those he’d bedded, and learned the names of children he’d fathered. Some begged him to stay, but the old ones who knew how to read the marks on his oo’lu gave him gifts of food that could be lightly carried and sang parting-forever songs when he moved on.

He soon left the valleys he knew, but Mahti was not lonely, for the ghost witch Lhel was often with him. She came into his dreams at night, telling him of the girl she’d shown him in that first vision. Her name was Tamír, and she’d been a boy until recently, sharing a body with her dead brother. Lhel had made that magic, with the Mother’s blessing, but she’d died before she could see the girl completely into womanhood. This, and the unhappy ghost of the boy, kept her own spirit earthbound. Like many witches, Lhel was at ease in spirit. That she stayed for love rather than for vengeance had made her a pagathi’shesh , a guardian spirit, rather than a noro’shesh , like the girl’s twin.

Lhel showed him that spirit, too, and he was fearsome, bound to Lhel and to his sister by rage. Playing his vision song, Mahti saw the spirit cords that bound them all together. They were very strong.

“I watch over her, but I wait for him,” Lhel confided, lying next to Mahti on his pallet in the darkness under an oak. “I will guide him on when he is ready to let go.”

“He hates you,” Mahti pointed out.

“As he must, but I love him,” she replied, resting her cold head on Mahti’s shoulder and wrapping her cold arms around him.

Lhel had been a beautiful woman, with her thick hair and ripe body. The marks of the goddess covered her skin like twig shadows on snow and her power still clung around her like a scent. She inflamed Mahti’s flesh as if she’d been a living woman. Because she was a pagath-i’shesh, he lay with her like a living woman under each full moon, but only then. By the full light of the Mother’s face they might make more guardian spirits together, who could be incarnated as great witches later on. Any other night risked making the souls of murderers and thieves. But she often lay with him, even without coupling, and he wished he’d known her in life.

She was also his guide, and in his dreams showed him rocks and trees to look for to keep him on the path he’d chosen. She told him of other people around the girl who had been a boy, showed him faces: a boy with brown, laughing eyes; a fair-haired southland warrior filled with love and sadness; the young oreskiri he’d seen in the first vision, who was filled with pain; and an old woman oreskiri with a face like flint. He would know the girl by these people, Lhel said.

The way grew harsher as he pushed ever east and north, and so did the people who lived there. They were still his own kind, but they lived too close to the southlanders to be generous or welcoming to a stranger heading in that direction. They showed him scant courtesy, just enough not to offend the Mother, and sent him on his way with silence and suspicious looks.

On and on he went, and the mountains shrank to hills. The Retha’noi villages grew smaller and meaner and farther between, then there were no villages at all, just the occasional camp of hunters or a lone witch.

Another two days and the hills gave way to forest and spring rushed up to meet him, even though at home he knew people would still be breaking ice on the water buckets in the morning. Here the grass was green and lusher than any meadow he’d known. The flowers were different, and even the birds. He knew from the old tales that he had at last reached the outlying lands of the southlanders.

The first ones he met were a family of wandering traders who’d had dealings with the Retha’noi and greeted him with respect in his own language. The patriarch’s name was Irman and he welcomed Mahti into their tent like kin and sat him at his side by the fire.

When they’d washed their hands and eaten together with his wife and sons and all their wives and children, Irman asked after hill people Mahti might know, then asked the nature of his journey.

“I’m seeking a girl who was once a boy,” Mahti told him.

Irman chuckled at that. “Can’t be many of those about. Where is she?”

“South.”

“South’s a big place in Skala. From where you’re sitting, it’s just about all south from here. Go north and you’ll soon find yourself in the Inner Sea.”

“That is why I must go south,” Mahti replied agreeably.

Irman shook his head. “South. All right then. Your kind has a way of getting where you need to go. You carry a fine oo’lu, too, I see, so you must be a witch.”

The man said it with respect, but Mahti caught an undercurrent of fear. “You people distrust my sort of magic, I’m told.”

“Like poison and necromancy. I don’t think you’ll get very far if people know what you are. I’ve seen some of the good you folk can work, but most Skalans would burn you without a second thought.”

Mahti considered this. Lhel had said nothing of such dangers.

“Do you speak Skalan?” Irman asked.

“Yes, I have learned it from a boy,” Mahti answered in that language. “Our people are learning it from traders, like you, so know to protect ourselves. I am told to say I am from Zengat, to fool them.”

At least that’s what he thought he said. Irman and the others stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“I am not saying the words?” he tried again.

“You’re getting a few of them, here and there,” Irman replied, wiping his eyes. “People will take you for simpleminded rather than Zengati, talking like that. And the Zengat aren’t exactly loved in Skala, either.”

So it would be harder than he thought, making his way in a place where no one liked or understood him. “If you will teach me to speak better, I will heal your ills and make good charms for you,” he said in his own language. He pointed over at one of Irman’s women with a big belly. “I will play blessings for the child.”

The young woman glared at him, muttering something in her own tongue.

Irman growled something at her, then gave Mahti an apologetic look. “Don’t mind Lia. She’s from the towns and doesn’t understand your folk the way we hill people do. I’ll take your healing on my animals, if you swear to me by your moon goddess you mean no harm.”

“By the Mother, I swear I work only good,” Mahti promised, pressing a hand to his heart and gripping his oo’lu.

He stayed three days in the forest with Irman and his clan, practicing his Skalan and laughing at himself and his people who’d thought they knew the language. In return, he healed a spavined ox and played the worms out of Irman’s goats. It scared his hosts a little, when the witch marks showed on his skin as he called his power, but Irman let him heal a rotten tooth all the same, then asked him to play over his old wife, who had a lump in her belly.

The old woman lay shivering on a blanket under the moon, while her whole clan looked on with a mix of wonder and concern. Mahti gently felt the swelling and found it hot and angry. This called for a deep healing, like the one he’d done for Teolin.

He drew Irman aside and tried to explain about playing the spirit out of the body in order to work there without disturbing it.