Mercedes Lackey - Kerowyn's Ride

Or maybe the problem that made her stomach churn was the thought of what could have happened if she’d actually gone to the cloisters. While not mages, the Sisters had a reputation for being able to uncover things people would rather have been left secret. What if Kero had gone, and the reputation was more than just kitchen gossip? What if the Sisters had found her out?

Father has had plenty to say about Grandmother. “The old witch” was the most civil thing he’s ever called her. What if he’d found out he had a young witch of his own?

He’d have birthed a litter of kittens, that’s what he’d have done. Then disowned me. It’s bad enough that I ride better than Lordan and train my own beasts; it’s worse that I hunt stag and boar with the men. It’s worse when I wear Lordan’s castoffs to ride. But if he ever found out about my apparently being witch-born, I think he’d throw me out of the Keep.

The mingled cooking odors still weren’t making her in the least hungry; she helped Cook decorate the next course with sprigs of watercress and other herbs, chewed a sprig of mint to cool her mouth and told her upset stomach to settle itself.

“What if” never changes anything, she reminded herself. He never did more than play with the idea, and he didn’t want to take the chance that Wendar couldn’t handle things. After all, the only thing Wendar has ever done was keep track of the books and manage the estate. There’s more to managing a Keep than doing the accounts. She set sprigs of cress with exaggerated care. Come to think of it, Wendar may have discouraged Father in the first place from sending me away. I suppose I can’t blame him, he has more than enough to do without having to run the Keep, too. That may be why Father kept saying that it wasn’t “convenient” for me to go.

Why did Mother have to die, anyway? she thought in sudden anger. Why should I have been left with all this on my hands ?

For a moment, she was actually angry at Lenore—then guilt for thinking that way made her flush, and she hid her confused blushes by getting a drink from the bucket of clean drinking water in the corner of the kitchen farthest from the ovens.

She stared down into the bucket for a moment, unhappy and disturbed. Why am I thinking things like that? It’s wrong; Mother didn’t mean to die like that. It wasn’t her fault, and she did the best she could to get me ready when she knew she wasn’t going to get better. She couldn’t have known Father wouldn’t hire anyone to help me.

And I guess it’s just as well I didn’t end up with the Sisters, and for more reasons than having witch-blood. They probably wouldn’t have approved of me either, hunting and hawking like a boy, out riding all the time. At least at home I’ve had chances to get away and enjoy myself; at the cloister I’d never have gotten out.

Agnetha’s Sheaves—how can anybody stand this without going mad? Kitchen to bower, bower to stillroom, stillroom back to kitchen. Potting, preserving, and drying; then spinning and weaving and sewing. Running after the servants like a tell-tale, making sure everybody does his job. Scrubbing and dusting and laundry; polishing and mending. Cooking and cooking and cooking. Brewing and baking. At least at home I can run outside and take a ride whenever it gets to be too much —

There was a sudden stillness beyond the kitchen door, and something about the silence made Kero raise her head and glance sharply at the open doorway.

Then the screaming began.

For one moment, she assumed that the disturbance was just something they’d all anticipated, but hoped to avoid. This could be an old feud erupting into new violence. Rathgar had, after all, invited many of his neighbors, including men who had long-standing disagreements with each other, though not with Rathgar himself. That was why all weapons were forbidden in the Hall, and not especially welcome within the Keep walls. Except for Rathgar’s men, of course. No one would have felt safe guarded by men armed only with flower garlands and headless pikes. Rathgar had anticipated that too much drink might awaken old grievances or create new ones, and rouse tempers to blows.

But after that fleeting thought, Kero somehow knew that this was something far more serious than a simple quarrel between two hot-tempered men, new grievance or old. Rathgar could handle either of those, and the noise was increasing, not abating.

And that same nebulous instinct told her that she’d better not go see what was wrong in person.

She braced herself against the wall with one hand, a hand of cold fear between her shoulder blades, and she realized that it was time to try something she had seldom dared attempt inside the Keep.

She closed her eyes, and opened her mind to the thoughts of those around her.

The walls she had forged about her mind had been wrought painfully over the years, and she didn’t drop them lightly, especially with so many people about. At first she had thought she was going mad with grief over her mother’s death, but chance reading had shown her otherwise. Her grandmother, the sorceress Kethry, had left several books with Lenore, and after her mother’s death, these had been given to Kero along with Lenore’s other personal possessions. Kero had never known what had prompted her to pick out that particular book, but she had blessed the choice as goddess-sent. The book had proved to her that the “voices” she had been hearing were really the strongest thoughts of those around her. More importantly to a confused young girl, the book had taught her how to block those voices out.

But now she was going to have to remove those comforting barriers, for at least a moment.

The clamor that flooded into her skull wasn’t precisely painful, but it was disorienting and exactly like being in a tiny room filled with twice the number of screaming, shouting people it was intended to hold.

Steady on—it’s just like being in the kitchen—

Her stomach lurched, and she clutched the wall behind her, as dizzy as if she’d been spun around like one of Lordan’s old toy tops.

Pain and fear made those thoughts pouring into her mind incoherent; she got brief glimpses of armed men, strangers in no lord’s colors—men who were filthy, ragged, and yet well-armed and armored. She was half-aware of the servants, babbling with terror, streaming through the door opposite her, but most of her mind was caught up in the tangled mental panic outside that door. And now she was “seeing” things, too, and she nearly threw up. The strangers were making a slaughterhouse of the Great Hall, cutting down not only those who resisted, but those who were simply in their way.

Their minds seized on hers and held it. She struggled to free herself from the confusion, wrenching her mind out of the desperate, unconscious clutching of theirs—and suddenly her thoughts brushed against something.

Something horrible.

There were no words for what she felt at that moment, as time stood frozen for her and she knew how a hunted rabbit must view a great, slavering hound. Whatever this was, it was cold, if a thought could be cold, cold as the slimy leeches living in the swampy fen below the cattle pastures. There was something sly about it, and filthy—not a physical filth, but a feeling that the mind behind these thoughts would never be contented with pleasures most folk considered normal. Kero couldn’t quite decipher them either; what she experienced was similar to what she had “heard” as her ability first appeared—as if she were listening to someone speaking too quietly for the exact words to be made out. There was only a sense of speech, not the meaning.