Edith Pattou - Fire Arrow

When Brie had finished, the woman pointed to a pallet in a corner of the room. Brie crossed to it and, placing her quiver, bow, and pack next to her, was asleep almost as soon as her head reached the small woven pillow. Fara settled herself at Brie's shoulder.

When she woke, Brie saw that the woman's husband had returned. It turned out that he spoke a little Eirrenian, and using an awkward mixture of the two languages, Brie was able to convey her gratitude for their hospitality. Then she asked about Bricriu. The man nodded and described an abandoned hut some distance from the berry farmers that had been occupied by five men. They were Scathians, the man thought, and he said he had seen a man fitting Bricriu's description join them at the hut.

With barely suppressed excitement, Brie described her father's murderers, the three Scathians she sought. Though the berry farmer said he had not seen them up close, he said none of the men wore an eye-patch, but two of the Scathians roughly matched Brie's descriptions.

"We know not why they came here. But they did not bother us, and we did not bother them," the man said in broken Eirrenian.

"How long have they been here?"

"Many moon cycles. Five perhaps. But they are gone now. With the man with bad leg, they left."

Brie rose, her body tense. "When?"

"Two days maybe, they go."

"What direction?"

"To the center. To Maglu."

Shouldering her pack and quiver, Brie was already at the door when she remembered herself and tried to offer silver coins to the couple for their hospitality. But they would not take them.

Brie made her way on the wooden planking for some distance, passing through the farmholds of the berry farmers. Stretching on either side of her were vast tracts of brilliant yellow cymlu-berries floating in water. Brie could see the farmers wading through the berries in their black hip boots.

When the berry fields were behind her, Brie had to leave the walkway. She plunged regretfully back into the mud and water.

She knew Maglu when she came to it. It was different from the bogland she had been traveling through. This was a raised bog, with a carpet of peat and humus that floated on top of deep water. The mat of peat was thick, an arm's length deep in some places, and it easily supported a man's weight. Dwarf larch and spruce trees grew out of the mat, reaching no higher than Brie's shoulder. It was like a floating miniature forest.

Following Hanna's advice, Brie tied a blue scarf, the brightest bit of clothing she owned, to a cinnamon fern marking the place where she was entering the bog. As Brie stepped onto it, the mat tilted crazily, and when she walked between them the dwarf trees also tilted.

The bog stretched before her, a mosaic of trees, hillocks and hollows, ferns, sedges, mosses, and occasional pools of tea-colored water. She could dimly make out the shapes of the stones of memory in the distance, pushing their way up into the gray sky.

It was humid in the bog, and though the sun was not very hot, Brie quickly began to sweat. After her foot broke through the mat a few times, drenching her leg with bitter-cold water, she learned to recognize the signs of thin patches—standing pools of water and a lack of shrubs or trees.

When she had first entered Maglu, Brie had seen a few birds, a white-throated sparrow and a marsh hawk, but the deeper she journeyed, the less she saw of any kind of wildlife. The only sound she heard was the perpetual hum of midges and other insects.

***

The sorcerer Yldir was standing by the larger of the two stones of memory, his palm flat on the surface. She walked toward him, nervous. He was not as she had expected, wizened and elderly, but rather was erect and muscular, with broad powerful shoulders. He had long, burning copper hair tied back with a leather thong. As she drew closer, she saw his age on his face, not in lines or clefts, but in his eyes. They were brilliant and depthless and clear. Meeting his gaze was painful.

"Breo-Saight," he said, and his voice, too, surged with vitality. He somehow did not seem real to Brie. "Come. We will break bread. Then you will show me saeth-tan, the fire arrow."

Brie followed him meekly to a primitive one-room wooden hut. Indicating with a gesture that Brie should wait outside, Yldir stooped and entered the hut. He reappeared soon after with a thin loaf of bread.

"Missenbread," he explained. "Foul to the taste, but it strengthens." He sat cross-legged on the quaking mat, and Brie followed suit, facing him. Fara settled at Brie's side, alert. Yldir broke off a piece of the thin dry bread.

"The others are here. The time will come for meeting them."

Warily, Brie looked around her. It was late in the afternoon and a mist had come up, sending the dwarf trees into shadow against the murky sky.

"When I came here from the coast I sought quiet. The sea can be a noisy place. It teems with life. But there is life, too, in the bog. You have to look for it. Birth, decay, death—it is all here."

Brie sat before the Sea Dyak sorcerer, her legs crossed, eating bread that tasted of mold. Somewhere in the mist around them were perhaps six men, two of them her father's murderers, and yet she felt completely at ease, as though there were no other place she could be.

As she sat, chewing, all her senses became keener, and she was suddenly aware of the life of the bog. The bog turtle emerging from one hiding place and slowly making its way to another. The copper butterflies fluttering brown wings burnished with a purple gloss. There were damselflies and green frogs, spiders and bees and insect-eating plants that grew in abundance—butterwort and sundews—each carrying out the endless cycle of life, death, and decomposition.

Abruptly the Sea Dyak sorcerer spoke, seeking her eyes with his. "Your father was brave, but he made mistakes. They were not your mistakes. You were only one in Ramhar Forest, and it was necessary, " he said, laying a powerful, broad hand on her arm, "that you live."

Brie blinked back sudden tears.

Then he said, "May I see the arrow?" -

Brie began to reach for her quiver, but the sorcerer held up his hand with a small shake of his head.

Brie looked past Yldir and saw a Scathian materialize out of the fog. He was tall and had a yellowish cast to his eyes: Brie recognized the Scathian who was part morg. Once more she heard the clang of swords, smelled the stench of blood as it soaked into the roots of the trees in Ramhar Forest. A dull pounding thudded in her ears.

"So," Yldir said, rising. "They are here."

TEN

Yldir

Five others slowly appeared, with Bricriu in the lead. They formed a ring around the sorcerer and the girl. Bricriu grinned at Brie with broken teeth; his hollow eyes held a look of something like victory. And Brie understood now that he had led her here purposefully, slowing and waiting while her leg healed at the havotty, making his trail obvious so she could not fail to find him.

The thick-armed killer, who had tortured her father with a black spear, walked just behind Bricriu. Brie could see the black spear in his hand. He also carried a box strapped to his back. It was a worn, crudely made wooden box, as long and as wide as his back. The three remaining men were Scathians Brie had never seen before; all were large and brutal.

Yldir looked undisturbed. He had expected them. The Scathians would not meet his eyes, but one of the largest pulled a sword and advanced on the sorcerer. He got within a foot of Yldir, then the sorcerer held out his hand, palm up. On it were what looked to be three small black seeds. He tossed them at the feet of the Scathian. A fine gray dust burst from the seeds, wafting into the man's face. He coughed once, then toppled over, dead.

Bricriu let out a cry of fear and backed away, but the four remaining Scathians began to close in. Yldir squatted and struck his fist against the peat mat, bursting through the surface and thrusting his arm down until it was submerged to the shoulder. Quicker than thought, he withdrew his hand, which was caked in slimy black mud. Calmly he rolled the mud into a snakelike shape, his hands deft and almost invisible they moved so swiftly. The snake lengthened and became a rope of mud. With his powerful arms Yldir lifted it high and flicked it like a whip. It hit a Scathian at chest level with a wet, cracking sound and wound around his neck, growing tighter and tighter. The Scathian clawed at the slimy black thing, but he, too, was quickly dead.