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Authors: Pauline M. Ross
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always take guards with me, I’ll have a couple of engineers, too, and one of my Companions. I’ll take Marna this time, I think. Ever since… I mean, she spends so much time with the children, it will do her good to get away.”
“She’s the only mother left here now,” Jonnor said sombrely. “She feels responsible for all the motherless little ones. But you’ll be a mother one day.” He reached across the table and took her hand, looking into her eyes. “It will happen, you know that, don’t you? I – I’ve needed a little time, but… soon, I promise.”
Warmth flooded her whole body, and she smiled widely at him. “I… I’ll leave for the village today, then.”
~~~
Mia was not a fast rider like her sister, but she was competent on horseback, as every Karningholder had to be, since few villages were conveniently situated beside a paved road. Her horse was a placid mare, capable of long journeys at a steady amble, as Mia preferred.
It was unfortunate that every step of the journey south reminded her of Tella, and that dreadful day. She had been found to the north of the Karninghold, so what had happened? Had she changed her mind, or had she never intended to go to the village at all? Why did she write that odd letter the day before? Impossible to know. And then there were the figures Mia had seen in the funeral tower… She shook herself out of her reverie. It was no good brooding. She and Hurst had talked all round the problems many times, without resolution.
It was well into the afternoon before the group reached the village, where Mia spent at least two hours walking around the worst of the bogs, and hopping nimbly from one dry hummock to the next. The whole Karningplain was prone to such swamps, which appeared and disappeared from one season to the next, it seemed at random. A village could be perfectly dry for a generation, and then be swallowed whole within two or three years.
She left her advisors considering options, and rode with her guards and junior Companion, Marna, into the village itself. Like most such places, it was a sprawl of tyholds, their hedge-defined fields tended by a single family group, together with larger communal lands for grain. Dotted about were ramshackle patched wooden cottages and barns, set in a criss-crossing web of muddy dung-spattered lanes. Chickens, sheep and children skittered aside as the group passed by. In a cluster to one side were the stone buildings of stables, smithy, mill, water house and alehouse, and, a little apart, the Slave’s house. The guards went off to the alehouse for the evening, but Mia and Marna were to stay with the Slave.
As a child, Mia had always been terrified of the Karninghold Slave, a very elderly man with a dried-up face. When she read stories of ancient peoples who left their dead out to shrivel in the sun, she had no struggle imagining the result. The swirling robes, the shaven tattooed head, the incense and chanting had given her nightmares. It was only after she began spending half of each year with the scholars at the Ring at the age of ten and understood the ways of the Gods a little better that she began to take comfort from the ritual.
But Mia knew this village Slave well, and found her a much less formidable matter. She only shaved part of her head, for one thing, rarely wore the traditional hooded robes and was much more pragmatic. She had to be, living amongst the relative poverty of the villagers. She was both leader and friend, dispensing advice and instruction, comfort and punishment in equal measure. The Slave was the only literate person in the village, the only one able to summon help from the Karninghold, the only one with any knowledge of history and politics and science and the law, the only one with healing skills. Like all Slaves, she was not allowed to have children or marry, but lovers were tolerated.
Mia had met this particular Slave several times before, and she was the first who had ever explained to
“She’s the only mother left here now,” Jonnor said sombrely. “She feels responsible for all the motherless little ones. But you’ll be a mother one day.” He reached across the table and took her hand, looking into her eyes. “It will happen, you know that, don’t you? I – I’ve needed a little time, but… soon, I promise.”
Warmth flooded her whole body, and she smiled widely at him. “I… I’ll leave for the village today, then.”
~~~
Mia was not a fast rider like her sister, but she was competent on horseback, as every Karningholder had to be, since few villages were conveniently situated beside a paved road. Her horse was a placid mare, capable of long journeys at a steady amble, as Mia preferred.
It was unfortunate that every step of the journey south reminded her of Tella, and that dreadful day. She had been found to the north of the Karninghold, so what had happened? Had she changed her mind, or had she never intended to go to the village at all? Why did she write that odd letter the day before? Impossible to know. And then there were the figures Mia had seen in the funeral tower… She shook herself out of her reverie. It was no good brooding. She and Hurst had talked all round the problems many times, without resolution.
It was well into the afternoon before the group reached the village, where Mia spent at least two hours walking around the worst of the bogs, and hopping nimbly from one dry hummock to the next. The whole Karningplain was prone to such swamps, which appeared and disappeared from one season to the next, it seemed at random. A village could be perfectly dry for a generation, and then be swallowed whole within two or three years.
She left her advisors considering options, and rode with her guards and junior Companion, Marna, into the village itself. Like most such places, it was a sprawl of tyholds, their hedge-defined fields tended by a single family group, together with larger communal lands for grain. Dotted about were ramshackle patched wooden cottages and barns, set in a criss-crossing web of muddy dung-spattered lanes. Chickens, sheep and children skittered aside as the group passed by. In a cluster to one side were the stone buildings of stables, smithy, mill, water house and alehouse, and, a little apart, the Slave’s house. The guards went off to the alehouse for the evening, but Mia and Marna were to stay with the Slave.
As a child, Mia had always been terrified of the Karninghold Slave, a very elderly man with a dried-up face. When she read stories of ancient peoples who left their dead out to shrivel in the sun, she had no struggle imagining the result. The swirling robes, the shaven tattooed head, the incense and chanting had given her nightmares. It was only after she began spending half of each year with the scholars at the Ring at the age of ten and understood the ways of the Gods a little better that she began to take comfort from the ritual.
But Mia knew this village Slave well, and found her a much less formidable matter. She only shaved part of her head, for one thing, rarely wore the traditional hooded robes and was much more pragmatic. She had to be, living amongst the relative poverty of the villagers. She was both leader and friend, dispensing advice and instruction, comfort and punishment in equal measure. The Slave was the only literate person in the village, the only one able to summon help from the Karninghold, the only one with any knowledge of history and politics and science and the law, the only one with healing skills. Like all Slaves, she was not allowed to have children or marry, but lovers were tolerated.
Mia had met this particular Slave several times before, and she was the first who had ever explained to
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