Dave Duncan - Children of Chaos

"Most Holy Xaran, I will swear fealty to You at Your holy place if You will guide me. I will swear by blood and birth; death and the cold earth , if only You will show me how."

Somehow an appeal to Paola Apicella had become a prayer to the Mother of Lies, but there was no perceptible answer. Eventually Frena rose and returned to her room, feeling rather sheepish and reminding herself that the Old One spoke to her children in dreams. There might yet be an answer.

♦

Paola Apicella wore the chill of the night like a cloak of ice, but that was mostly because she was still so weak. She could not lift a full spadeful of dirt, only spoonfuls, and she could not have dug at all had the soil not been so loose. She shivered in the wind. The spade made tiny shuff... shuff... noises. She had come all alone, because the others would not have let her come at all, and they would not have known the right place to dig. She had let the Mother guide her, so she was sure .

Shuff ... shuff ... the air smelled of decay and death .

She had gone into labor just as the ice devils started driving off the herds and the men ran out to stop them. By the time her water broke, the men were all dead. By the time the long labor was over, the women and boys had finished burying them ... here, in a mass grave.

Shuff... shuff... They had told her the babe would not live, she should not name him. But she had named him after his father. She wanted him so much, and she had tried so hard. He had struggled, been a fighter, but it had done no good. The Mother had taken him back. Praise the Mother.

Shuff... The spade struck something soft, not a rock. Stavan's arm, perhaps. The hole was not very deep, but it would have to do. She paused to catch her breath, wipe her forehead. She was cold and yet sweating. She must finish this quickly .

She took up the little bundle, little Stav, unwrapped him enough for a last kiss, and then she knelt and laid him in his father's arms. She spoke a prayer to the Old One that She might care for them both. Then Paola filled in the hole and went back across the field to the village.

♦

The cottage was cold. She was hungry, for the outlanders had stripped the village of everything edible, even the dogs. She curled up on the that in the blanket that still bore Stavan's familiar scent. Her breasts ached with milk. No food in the village, no men, but that was not her concern. She was beyond caring.

She must have slept then, because she was awakened by deep male voices shouting in some unknown tongue. So the ice devils must have returned. They could not be looking for food this time.

Screaming, then more shouting, then the door of the hut being kicked open, flaming torches streaming fire in the dark... She cowered back in the far corner of her bedding, not afraid, just too hungry to care, too bereft. They yelled at her in their guttural tongue, then a smaller man spoke at her in Florengian with a twisted accent, talking about babies, about food.

♦

It had been a rich man's house, for it had stone walls, tiled floors, and solid furniture, but now it reeked of the ice devils, that repellent stink, half animal, half unwashed man. They put Paola in a room to wait, but there was a fire for light and warmth — hunger had made her so cold !— and one of them came back and thrust a bowl of gruel at her. She scooped it up with fingers and gulped it down, almost choking; it was lifesaving .

Then a woman screamed, angry male voices rumbled, more torches with oily flames poured into the room. Behind them came a man half naked, carrying a small package. He thrust it at Paola, almost threw it at her. Its shrill wails brought back the pain in her breasts. She pulled up her smock at once and put the babe to suck. The crying stopped and ripples of joy flowed through her. Not little Stav, but someone to love, to live for, to take her milk. Boy or girl? She had not thought to look.

She looked up and saw the woman in the doorway, staring. She was a Florengian, with milk-swollen breasts visible through a badly ripped dress. One side of her face was red and puffed; eye swelling, lips bruised, hair torn. The man barked something impatiently. He had bloody scratches near his eyes. She started forward, he caught her arm. Was she the mother or just another wet nurse now wanted for other duties ?

The girl lifted her smock to let the woman see the babe sucking, and smiled to say that she would love and cherish it, be it boy or girl. For a moment they stared at each other, and then the woman's spirit seemed to crumble. She nodded resignedly. The man snarled and thrust her out the door ahead of him, impatient to do what he wanted; she went in silence, resisting no more. All that mattered was that the ice devils had given Paola a child to feed, so they would have to feed her also.

Praise the Old One, who had answered her prayer !

seventeen

BENARD CELEBRE

was already hammering marble when the priests began their morning psalms. That was the last possible moment he could leave if he was to reach the palace at sunrise; keeping a Werist waiting was a sure road to unhappiness. Reluctantly he tossed maul and chisel into the shed, exchanged his smock for the new secondhand loincloth he had purchased with the copper Ingeld had given him, absentmindedly wiped his hands on it, weighted down the drape with the chunks of rock he used for that purpose, and set off at a trot.

In Benard's absence, Thod was supposed to help Sugthar the potter, which meant he would mostly ogle his adored Thilia.

Satrap Horold's orders that Benard visit the Whiterim quarry had seemed like deliverance from certain death at the time, but there had been no signs of Cutrath since then, so the matter no longer felt urgent. In fact, the trip was unnecessary. He could tell the priests what he needed and they would send word to the quarry master to cut the block and deliver it on the next spring flood.

Furthermore, Benard had started work on the third block of marble. If it could not be holy Weru, it must serve for another god. No sooner thought than realized—he had hardly begun to consider the matter when holy Anziel flooded him with inspiration. Never had he felt Her divine fire so strongly, as if the stone had become transparent and he saw the goddess Herself standing inside it, looking just as he had seen Hiddi that night at the temple. Without models or sketches or even guidelines on the block, he started cutting away everything that was not Hiddi to expose his statue of Anziel. Already he had the rough shape outlined. To leave it like that was agony; he was going to be thoroughly miserable every minute he was away from his work.

♦

Having gone around the long way rather than cut through the palace, he arrived breathless at the stable yard. Even there he kept a wary eye open for Werists, for they would not consider mere toe-tramping or sucker-punching covered by Horold's edict against violence.

A car and team stood ready, with the onagers being comforted by a young Nastrarian; their eyes were closed and the long ears drooped in bliss. The standard, workaday chariot was merely a battered wicker box on two wheels, lacking the fancy trimmings and webbed floor of vehicles driven by people like Ingeld. Benard had been taken on four chariot trips in his life and been sick to his stomach on all of them. The inside was already crowded with somebody's personal bindle and two plump wineskins. Wine could only mean that his driver and custodian was to be Flankleader Guthlagson, who seemed an odd choice, but would be more pleasant company than any other Werist. Being no admirer of the satrap's son, he had practically congratulated Benard on humiliating the lout so epochally.