Read Online The Very Best of Kate Elliott by Kate Elliott - Free Book Online
Authors: Kate Elliott
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before. Vayek and his warband had vanished.
Did the witch possess such powerful sorcery that she could pluck men from the present world and cast them into the spirit world?
No.
The carpet of burned grass had cooled; its ashy stubble had been disheveled by strong winds; green shoots had found the courage to poke their heads above the scorched ground. She dismounted, tossed the reins over her mount’s head. Her mare nipped one of the pack horses, who kicked; she separated the steppe horse and hobbled her, then trudged on aching feet back up into the stones. The soles of her boots were almost burned away. Her clothes shed flakes of soot. Her hands oozed blood from a score of hairline cuts. Her chest stung with each breath she inhaled.
There lay what remained of Edek, flesh eaten away by the unearthly fire and skeleton torn and scattered by beasts. Cut ropes lay in heaps at the base of three stones; the litter had been mauled by animals but was mostly intact. Their gear was gone, picked up to the last knife and bridle and leather bottle. The ashes of the campfire were ground into the earth. The wind gentled as dusk sighed down over them.
The moon shouldered up out of the east, round and bright, the full moon on which she was to have been wed. The moon could not lie. Half a month had passed since the night of the sword moon. The witch had woven a path between that time and this time, and they had ridden down it.
A whistle shrilled. Standing at the edge of the stones, Kereka saw the witch, standing now and waving to catch her attention. Trusting fool! It might well be easy to kill her and take the bearded man’s head while he was injured and weak, before the witch fully healed him, if he could be healed. She could then ride back to her mother’s tent and her father’s tribe and declare herself a man. She knew what to expect from a man’s life, just as she knew what a woman’s life entailed.
So what kind of life did these foreigners live, with their sorcery and their crossbows and the way they handed a shovel from one to the other, sharing the same work, maybe even sharing the same glory? It was a question for which she had no answer. Not yet.
She went back to the litter and grabbed the leather tow lines. Pulled them taut over her own shoulders and tugged. Like uncertainty, the burden was unwieldy, but she was stubborn and it was not too heavy for her to manage.
Could she trust a witch? Would a witch and a foreigner ever trust her?
Pulling the litter behind her, she walked across the charred earth and down through the tall grass to find out.
L EAF AND B RANCH
AND G RASS AND V INE
A HAND POUNDING ON her cottage door woke Anna, just as it had that terrible night almost three months ago. Jolting upright, she wiped a hand across her mouth as if to wipe away the taste of fear and grief but it did not go away. Beside her on the wide mattress, her two youngest children slept like the dead, and she was glad for it. No sense in cringing and stalling; the bad news would come whether now or at dawn, and she did not want the children to wake.
From the other room, where she had long slept with her husband, rose a murmur of voices: her daughter and her new husband waking to the summons.
She wrapped her well-worn bride’s shawl over her shift and padded to the barred door. Pointless to bar the door, really, since she had left the glass window unshuttered. The light of a full moon bathed the plank floor in a ghostly light, enough that she need not grope for a precious candle. By the measure of the shortened shadows, she knew it was barely past midnight.
She set a hand on the latch.“Who is there?”
“Anna, it is Joen. No trouble here, but I need you at once.”
Her brother’s familiar voice calmed the pounding clamor of her heart. She let him in just as the door into the other room opened and Hansi stuck his head out, holding a lit candle in one hand and his butchering knife in the other.
She said, “Holding a
Did the witch possess such powerful sorcery that she could pluck men from the present world and cast them into the spirit world?
No.
The carpet of burned grass had cooled; its ashy stubble had been disheveled by strong winds; green shoots had found the courage to poke their heads above the scorched ground. She dismounted, tossed the reins over her mount’s head. Her mare nipped one of the pack horses, who kicked; she separated the steppe horse and hobbled her, then trudged on aching feet back up into the stones. The soles of her boots were almost burned away. Her clothes shed flakes of soot. Her hands oozed blood from a score of hairline cuts. Her chest stung with each breath she inhaled.
There lay what remained of Edek, flesh eaten away by the unearthly fire and skeleton torn and scattered by beasts. Cut ropes lay in heaps at the base of three stones; the litter had been mauled by animals but was mostly intact. Their gear was gone, picked up to the last knife and bridle and leather bottle. The ashes of the campfire were ground into the earth. The wind gentled as dusk sighed down over them.
The moon shouldered up out of the east, round and bright, the full moon on which she was to have been wed. The moon could not lie. Half a month had passed since the night of the sword moon. The witch had woven a path between that time and this time, and they had ridden down it.
A whistle shrilled. Standing at the edge of the stones, Kereka saw the witch, standing now and waving to catch her attention. Trusting fool! It might well be easy to kill her and take the bearded man’s head while he was injured and weak, before the witch fully healed him, if he could be healed. She could then ride back to her mother’s tent and her father’s tribe and declare herself a man. She knew what to expect from a man’s life, just as she knew what a woman’s life entailed.
So what kind of life did these foreigners live, with their sorcery and their crossbows and the way they handed a shovel from one to the other, sharing the same work, maybe even sharing the same glory? It was a question for which she had no answer. Not yet.
She went back to the litter and grabbed the leather tow lines. Pulled them taut over her own shoulders and tugged. Like uncertainty, the burden was unwieldy, but she was stubborn and it was not too heavy for her to manage.
Could she trust a witch? Would a witch and a foreigner ever trust her?
Pulling the litter behind her, she walked across the charred earth and down through the tall grass to find out.
L EAF AND B RANCH
AND G RASS AND V INE
A HAND POUNDING ON her cottage door woke Anna, just as it had that terrible night almost three months ago. Jolting upright, she wiped a hand across her mouth as if to wipe away the taste of fear and grief but it did not go away. Beside her on the wide mattress, her two youngest children slept like the dead, and she was glad for it. No sense in cringing and stalling; the bad news would come whether now or at dawn, and she did not want the children to wake.
From the other room, where she had long slept with her husband, rose a murmur of voices: her daughter and her new husband waking to the summons.
She wrapped her well-worn bride’s shawl over her shift and padded to the barred door. Pointless to bar the door, really, since she had left the glass window unshuttered. The light of a full moon bathed the plank floor in a ghostly light, enough that she need not grope for a precious candle. By the measure of the shortened shadows, she knew it was barely past midnight.
She set a hand on the latch.“Who is there?”
“Anna, it is Joen. No trouble here, but I need you at once.”
Her brother’s familiar voice calmed the pounding clamor of her heart. She let him in just as the door into the other room opened and Hansi stuck his head out, holding a lit candle in one hand and his butchering knife in the other.
She said, “Holding a
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