Where is Risala? Would she think it was her duty to go on this voyage alone, if I refuse and Velindre is determined to go regardless? I truly believe all wizards are mad. Some just hide it better than others. Mad and perilous to know.
CHAPTER THREE
They would come for her. The old woman knew it. Not tomorrow, with the old man's death still a raw wound for the whole village. Perhaps not while the younger men recalled his stories of hunts long ago and still used the knives that he had shaped. But knives didn't last for ever.
The women would spare her what scraps they could. Until the weather turned hotter and drier and they must save what little they could forage for their hungry children. They would forget that she had helped them through the travail of bringing those children into the light.
She had no children left to offer her a grudging corner of their hut. Her daughters were all gone; some bright-eyed and willingly, others reluctantly bartered, one simply vanished, seized in some raid. She had never given the old man a son to stay in the village and hear his forefathers remembered in the lists of names recited by the painted men.
He had never reproached her for bearing only daughters. She turned away from the doorway of the hut to look back at the old man lying dead on the earthen floor, wrapped in hides. He had not beaten her. He had not given her up to be fodder for the beast, as some would have done. After all, he had not chosen her for his woman, not wooed her away from the maidens' dances beneath the eyes of the sky. She had just been his share when his raiding party had ransacked the village she could barely
recall, somewhere through the dark forest and beyond the green grassland.
She returned to the doorway, looking out into the rapidly darkening twilight. They would come for her. When they decided she offered the village nothing in return for whatever food and water she consumed. When the beast came, and the painted man demanded fodder for the creature, in return for his favour for the village. No one would risk his disfavour.
Should she just wait patiently? More than one old woman or old man had done so, in the long years she'd lived here. They had lived out their last days with full bellies and soft hides to sleep on. When he had come, the painted man, whichever one it had been, he had praised their courage and their devotion to their children in offering up this last good deed.
Others had chosen a quicker end to life's trials. Could she throw herself into the flames when they came to burn the hut around the old man? He had earned that much respect from the hunters — his body would not become fodder for the beast or be cast out into the forest to sate some lesser scavenger. Besides, the dwelling was dead now that he was dead and could never be lived in again.
What else could she do? She looked back once more at the old man lying still and lifeless in the gloom. He had been kind and he had been brave. He had hunted the great birds of the grasslands and the wily lizards of the muddy rivers. He had never returned empty-handed from the chase. He had never given in. Nor had she. He had taught her that much. She had fought to save him from the fever that had laid him low, cooling him with poultices and bringing gourd after gourd of water from the river, her burdened back aching from the long walk.
She fought back tears and despair. Was she just going to wait here until they ushered her out of the hut, their
eyes averted? They wouldn't want to see her weeping as they brought an ember from the communal hearth to fire the walls of woven lath and the parched grass thatch.
No. She would not. Her stiff knees and hips protested as she rose from the hides she had been sitting upon. Bending painfully, she picked up the topmost hide, a length she had scraped and soaked and oiled to a thin softness none of the other women in the village could match. She wrapped it around her desiccated nakedness, knotting the corners over one withered breast. Moving slowly around the hut, she amassed a small pile of prizes in the middle of the second hide, a thicker piece with scurrier's mottled fur still clinging to it in matted patches.
Her face fell as she considered a knife that the old man had made, the black stone rippling along the cutting edge. Some young hunter would have had his eye on that. He might even now be offering to help burn the hut, in hopes of finding that knife and keeping it for himself. If she took it with her, someone would know and they would pursue her. Such a treasure wasn't to be lost along with some useless old woman.
She could take the lump of black stone, though, half-used but still worth having. Together with the bent length of thick bone, battered with use. Her finely tapered digging stick, worn smooth and well fitted to her swollen-knuckled hand, was certainly of no interest to anyone else. Nor were the few scraps of hide, the skein of cord twisted from pounded bark and the best of the gourds she had diligently gathered throughout the long hot season. She and the old man had feasted on the soft flesh that was so much easier on their gums and remaining teeth. Then she had dried the carefully emptied husks and offered them to women tied to the village by their crawling and suckling children. The mothers had traded eggs that their older children had dug from the sandy banks of the river
or sometimes even a portion of the meat that their men had brought them.
Her stomach rumbled at the recollection of sweet, slippery liver, so much easier to chew. She was hungry. How could she leave with an empty belly? Would someone take pity on her if she joined the circle around the hearth? Perhaps. Perhaps they would come and burn the hut while she wasn't here. Perhaps the hunters had already decided who would keep her tied like a dog to a post of his hut until the painted man and the great beast came again.
Careful to stay in the shadows, she looked out of the doorway once again. Men and women alike were unidentifiable shadows crossing the firelight of the communal hearth. The noise of the naked children running around rose like bird chatter above the crackle of the flames. She heard the occasional chink of one stone pot against another as the women set their families' meals in the outer ring of embers. The adults' conversations were too quiet to hear, men and women standing with their heads close together, some being shaken with regret. Others wiped tears from their eyes.
The defiance that had set her shouting at the old man in the days of their youth rose within her. Could she steal an ember from the hearth unnoticed and fire the hut herself? That would deny those who relished the prospect, and would spare those who would weep a few discreet tears for her fate, and out of fear of their own old age.
It would also draw unwelcome and immediate attention. Besides, she had nothing to carry an ember in. The stoppered hollow bones that the old man was wont to carve were all gone. Everything had been traded for food to sustain him through his slow decline and that final cruel fever.
She glanced behind her towards her own stone cooking pot lost in the darkness beyond the old man's body. There
was no way she could carry that away with her. All the same, the water it held would deceive her hungry belly for a little while. She slipped back into the darkness to kneel stiffly down by the heavy stone bowl. Cupping her hands, she drank as much as she could of the water she had so laboriously brought up from the river.
When she felt uncomfortably full, she returned to the mottled scurrier hide and gathered up the corners. Trussing the whole bundle with a fraying rope of plaited bark, she clutched it in her fleshless arms and edged close to the doorway. Peering out, she satisfied herself that everyone else was busy around the hearth or their own dwellings. The old man's hut was on the edge of the village. It had been in the middle when he had first brought her here. When the changing seasons saw them all return to this place, the old huts were repaired and news huts built but never on the same spot where a previous dwelling had died with its builders. So, as the years passed, a gap had opened up as the huts that had surrounded theirs were burned and the rest of the village edged away. The old man had outlived everyone else in the hunting party that had brought her here as a captive.