She did not answer, instead walking away to an old willow weeping over the river. She sat down on a bed of moss between two outspread roots. She looked up at Voran and smiled, then leaned back against the trunk of the tree and beckoned to him.
He could never afterward recall exactly how it happened. Rather, the memories remained very clear, but as if belonging to someone else. Before he knew what he was doing, he had lain with the girl. After it was done, as the slow realization slithered into him, he lay between the outspread roots embracing her, caressing her. A drowsy slumber enticed him, and he fell asleep.
He dreamed that he saw the girl standing before him, but her face was unrecognizable through a mask of savage hatred. At her feet lay the carcass of some dead animal; a dagger was clenched in her fist. Blood dripped from its tip with insistent regularity. The animal was majestic, its fur spotted with bloody dirt. Its head, twisted grotesquely to the side, sported a pair of antlers still half-luminescent with gold. The white stag.
A wave of nausea throttled him awake. It was still early morning, and his mind felt muddled as if with wine, his limbs like cold fish. A scream of anguish. Mirnían.
Voran sprang to life and reached for his sword. It wasn’t there. He ran.
In front of the crooked hut, Mirnían stood on his knees, his face in his hands. He wailed in pain. His arms, hands, neck, everything was flaky-white, gouged with deep sores. Another wave of nausea checked Voran’s run. He knew the signs. Leprosy.
Standing over Mirnían, facing Voran, was something that had once been the beautiful red-head, now twisted and gnarled and wrapped in a hairy black cloak. Her curls were gone, replaced with rare wisps of grey. Her eyes were sunken and red, and a toothless leer replaced the former beauty. She leaned on a stone club that bore a sickening resemblance to a pestle, and she cackled, unable to restrain herself, hopping in place.
Voran tried to approach Mirnían, but found he was rooted to the ground. To his left, Leshaya— hackles raised and teeth bared—seemed also unable to move. The hag leered at Voran, as though challenging him to defy her, though he felt no more than a thing in her misshapen hands, to be thrown around and played with before being devoured.
“Oh, how delicious,” she cackled. “The sons of Vasyllia are no more than worms writhing in the mud.” She twitched her head side-to-side like a deranged crow.
“Voran,” Mirnían sounded like an old man. “Whatever you do, do not tell her anything. She tried to seduce me last night, thinking I would be amenable to talk. Keeps asking about our quest. I spurned her. Disgusting hag!” He spit on her. She danced around him, then struck him with the pestle across his face. He fell on the ground, his legs twisted underneath him, but did not cry out.
“Le-per! Le-per! So much for words, princeling.”
“You have no power over me, hag,” said Mirnían, blood flowing from his mouth as he tried to roll over. “Though you curse me with this leprosy, you will not stop us from completing our journey.”
“Well, well. There you are very wrong, princeling. My darling Voran is staying with me, probably for a long time. You see, Voran gave me the power over you all. Gave it willingly, too, the great-hearted warrior. He did not spurn me.”
Voran vomited. The hag turned to him, crouching, her head cocked sideways.
“You thought you could take your pleasure from my body,” she said, “and it would cost you nothing? You do have a high opinion of yourself, Voran, son of Otchigen.”
Mirnían’s face creased into disgust and fear.
“Voran? Is this true?”
Voran could not meet his eyes, but nodded once, curtly. Sabíana filled his mind, and the regret was like ten swords plunged one after another into his chest.
“What has Sabíana ever done to deserve you as her champion?” Mirnían scraped himself off the ground and crawled to Leshaya. She crouched to the ground and helped him up to her back with her jaws, as though he were no more than a cub. She trembled in fury. Voran could no longer contain himself.
“Yes, I am guilty!” he screamed. “I despise myself for it. Yet I am friend to the Sirin. Lyna loves me, and will intercede for me. She will not forsake you, Mirnían. Do not give up now!”
“What can I do?” Mirnían sounded as old as Dar Antomír. “I don’t believe your tales about the Sirin. I don’t claim to have heard their song, you madman. Now, I am a leper. The quest lies with you. I have no more strength. Leshaya, take me home to die in peace.”
“Yes, yes!” the hag squawked. “Go and die, pointless princeling.”
Leshaya looked at Voran, her eyes red and almost human. She looked like she was about to say something, but she only shook her head. In a moment, she and Mirnían were a blur racing back up the mountain.
“As for you, my delicious Voran, I won’t kill you yet. You’ll do slave duty for a while. And then I’ll eat you.”
The hag resumed her frenetic dance around Voran, punctuated with several blows from her pestle on his back and legs, just enough to hurt without breaking anything.
“Now, tell me. What were you looking for in the Lows of Aer?”
My beloved is like a cherry tree in the midst of the desert. I delight to sit in his shade. His fruit is a sweet taste on my lips. Take me away with you; let us hurry from this place. The bridal chamber awaits…
From “The Song of the Dar’s Beloved” (The Sayings, Book III, 2:7-9)
My beloved is like a cherry tree in the midst of the desert. I delight to sit in his shade. His fruit is a sweet taste on my lips. Take me away with you; let us hurry from this place. The bridal chamber awaits…
From “The Song of the Dar’s Beloved”
(The Sayings, Book III, 2:7-9)
Chapter 13
The Island
The sweat, mingled with the sting of sea-wind, burned Lebía’s eyes. Her fingernails were threatening to pop off with every thrust of her hand into the black soil. The hand-harrow was slowly transforming into lead. Her back reminded her, periodically, that if she did not straighten out soon, she would remain hunched over the ground forever.
It was exhilarating.
She had never felt this alive, this useful. All her life she was served, waited upon, coddled, and worried over. All her life she ached to help others, but her father’s assumed guilt branded her, and all Vasyllia shrank from her touch. Here in Ghavan, everyone needed to work, or everyone would starve. She never imagined something as innocent-sounding as preparing the soil for winter would be the hardest work of her life.
“Take a break, dear girl,” the voice was firm, despite the age of the speaker. Lebía secretly envied Otar Svetlomír his vigor. Though his nose looked like an old potato, though his eyes had more red in them than white, he labored over the soil longer than anyone else.
“I will not stop while you still work, Otar.”
“Oh, I stopped an hour ago, swanling.” His smile smoothed out the furrows in his forehead, making him look twenty years younger.
His young smile had been the first thing Lebía saw when the pilgrims arrived on Ghavan Isle. Even now, the events of their coming to this place were as fresh as if they happened yesterday. The disappearance of Voran, the coming of the white stag, the passage into the Lows of Aer, the waiting longboats on the shores of the Great Sea…
