P. Hodgell - Honor's Paradox

So, although valued for their sexual potency, Favorites weren’t allowed to take life-mates during their tenure. Somehow, no one had thought to tell her that.

“Would she accept you?”

“What choice does she have? The maidens have cast her out. The war maids have refused her admittance. She can’t hide in her granddam’s lodge forever.”

Damnation. Had she saved Prid only to make her an outcast? Should everyone have to fight as hard as she herself had for a role in her own society? But wait. What place? Wasn’t she about to fail Tentir?

Hatch had escaped his fate once by clapping the ivy crown on her head and once by throwing himself at his opponent’s feet, just before the latter had been crushed by a lava bomb hurtled by the Burnt Man from an erupting volcano. Hatch couldn’t count on such a coincidence to save him again. He probably would have thrown the fight before now if he hadn’t felt compelled to explain.

“Listen,” she said, maneuvering to keep out of his reach. “Whatever happens next at Tentir, I have to give up the Favorite’s role. Events in the hills can’t depend on me anymore. D’you really want the Burnt Man breathing down your neck?”

“Just take the crown,” he urged, lunging at her again.

“Dammit,” said Jame, and flung herself under it at his feet.

Chingetai, on the steps of Kithorn’s stair, burst into applause.

Hatch threw the crown on the ground beside Jame and stomped on it. “She cheated!”

“Boy, you have no right to complain.”

Chingetai descended and thrust over a torch, which hit the next in line and the next. Smoke billowed out of the collapsing square, causing eyes to water and lungs to seize up. Briefly, one glimpsed the expanse of sacred space within, figured with the burning sigils of the Four like so many incandescent, heat-warped crevasses. Then all blurred. Out of the haze shuffled the Earth Wife.

Shamans passed behind her, dragging a goat. At the well’s lip, they hoisted it up and over. The animal’s terrified bleat echoed up the shaft all the way down. Then, briefly, the earth quivered. No need this time for any other scapegoat to feed the Snake.

“Dear son,” Ragga said, grabbing Hatch by the arm. He tried to wrench free, but could as easily have shifted Rathillien on its axis. “I present you to your father.”

This was called “fooling death.” The Burnt Man was supposed to accept his mate’s new lover and favorite as his son, which didn’t say much about his powers of perception.

“My son,” he echoed in an earth-shaking rumble. Both he and a looming black figure shot with red stood there, overlapping.

Their heads turned toward Jame. “My fool.”

“All right,” she said, coughing. “You needn’t rub it in.

Chingetai shook himself, shedding a black cloud of ash.

“Ah, what was I saying? My grandson-in-law.”

Jame felt her mouth drop open. “What?”

“Now that your duty to the Earth Wife has ended, it’s time that you settled down, and I have just the right lodge-wyf for you.”

The Earth Wife seized Jame and hustled her through the dispersing haze with Chingetai on their heels. On the other side, they found themselves in the village before the communal underground hall. Chingetai seized an astonished Prid and thrust her forward.

“Granddaughter, behold your new housebond!”

A great shout welcomed their appearence within the lodge. Row upon descending concentric row of faces turned up toward them, mead cups raised. All were women. At the door men fought, not very hard, to rescue the groom, but were driven back with showers of food on which to make their dinner. Jame and Prid were seated side by side, half stunned by the noise, with no idea what to say to each other.

“Bitter honey and sweet!” cried the women, raising their mugs. “Roast rabbit for a fruitful union!”

“No need to worry about that.” One of the women carrying Jame’s putative children stood up, sporting her round belly, followed by the rest. All looked well pleased with themselves as the hall rang with shouts of approval.

One hand on her own stomach, Gran Cyd saluted Jame. “To the Favorite’s success!”

“What?” asked Prid, seeing Jame’s expression.

“I’m not ready to be a father.”

Cyd gestured for her to rise and, when she did, rapped her smartly with a stick once on each shoulder, then sharply on the head.

“Ouch,” said Jame, as the crowd roared congratulations. “What was that for?”

“To seal the contract and to remind you that your new wyf is allowed to beat you only three times, with no larger a stick than this. If she does more than that, or if you complain to me more than thrice, the marriage is void.”

Jame caught Prid’s glance. They both looked hastily away, blushing. Jame drank deep, for something to do. She had once sworn never again to get drunk, but surely this was an exception. Her head began to swim.

At last the feast came to an end and they were led, with much discordant song and shouted advice, to the mouth of a lodge, down which they were thrust. Jame lost her footing on the stair and sprawled, cursing, at its foot. Finally, the racket above withdrew.

Jame looked about her, her ears still ringing. A fire had been set on the raised hearth and candles surrounded the better furnished of the two sleeping ledges. Otherwise, the lodge appeared to be long deserted, with dust thick around its edges and the musty smell of old tapestries. At the far end of the chamber hulked the spidery ruins of a large loom.

“Your mother’s?” she asked Prid.

“Yes.” The girl was shivering despite the warmth, thin arms wrapped around her. “I used to sit under it and watch the shuttle fly back and forth. My mother was the best weaver in the village. Gran’s walls are hung with her work. I haven’t been here since she died. It smells like, it smells . . .”

Her teeth chattered together.

“That was a long time ago,” said Jame, shaking her head to clear it. “I smell only history.”

Prid, roused, glared at her. “You don’t understand. That was where she lay. Alive. Dead. There was so much blood. I touched my baby brother’s fingers. So perfect. So still.”

“Clean deaths, then. Natural. My mother . . .”

“Yes?”

“She imploded, rather than touch me. I think she meant it for the best.”

“Oh.”

Jame gave her a wolf’s feral grin, all teeth. “You see, there are worse things, and more outlandish. Beware, if you take me as a model.”

Prid gulped. “I wanted to be a war maid like great-aunt Anku, but her way has also led to death.”

“In the end, all things do. Better to ask how to live. What will you do now, Prid?”

The girl gave a shaky laugh. “Keep lodge for you, apparently, and weave, if I can remember how, and try to be happy.”

“I’m not going to be here often. You could divorce me. Here’s a log, if you’d like to beat me over the head. I promise to complain loud and long.”

Prid shook her tawny mane. “I have no place else to go, except back to Gran Cyd, and I’m too old now for that. Married to you, I at least have the status of a lodge-wyf. Oh, but to live here alone . . . !”

Clinkers rattled down the smoke hole, followed by Hatch, who narrowly missed landing in the fire.

“You could have used the door,” said Jame.

The next moment he had barreled into her. She fell backward between the hearth and the bed, barely able in that confined space to raise her arms against his flailing fists. One caught her agonizingly in the eye. She countered with an elbow to his mouth that split his lip. Prid was shouting at them. Jame got a foot into Hatch’s groin and hoisted him sideways. He rolled into the fireplace on his back amid a fountain of sparks, some of which settled in his clothes and began to smolder there. Oblivious, he scrambled free and threw himself at her again. Candles flew.