16. The First Mother #2
She nodded. “It was hard to get used to, and it came from me. A part of me.” She pursed her lips together. “Is your magic the same? Like inside you, a well?”
“...I don’t know.” How stupid was I, not to know about myself? But how long had I been unable to even try, and now it was even more dangerous. Now it had almost killed the man I cared about.
“You may need to learn of it, and soon.” She looked past me. “He will need you.” And with the magic stringing her meaning to my mind, I knew exactly who “he” was.
Soft footsteps crunched in the leaves. “Are you finished with Rowena?” He’d switched to Common again for me.
I hesitated, afraid to have him hear this voice, but secrets wouldn’t help us. “Yes,” I garbled, and his eyebrows rose.
“More magic,” he said, flat.
Rowena crossed her arms, defiant. “I’m not letting her go in blind and mute.”
“I didn’t ask you to.” He nodded to her. “Thank you, sorceress.” His eyes flicked to me. “This is Rowena’s magic?”
I nodded, not trusting this power to speak.
“We should go, while it’s still light.”
It was hours to sundown. The sun was still high. But I didn’t argue.
He started through the woods, and I straggled behind him, till he stopped, waited for me to come alongside. “Sorry,” he said. “I walk too fast when I’m nervous. If I start troubling you, tell me to slow.” He was still using Common, not going back to the tongue that was his.
I dared to whisper, “Alright.”
As we moved towards a main path, the voices started to untangle themselves, greetings, laughter, quarreling.
And the words were words, rushing together and coming apart, meaning so thick on the air I almost forgot to walk, couldn’t watch my feet.
Vrathgar glanced back as I stumbled over a root. Wordless, he took my hand.
We were taking a different direction through the woods than we’d gone before, deeper, farther. Someone scolded after children, and the epithet she shouted was like “scallywags,” but the picture it gave was that of wriggling puppies.
“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you. About the rules of the circle.” His voice rumbled over the others, the magic narrowing to a point as I soaked him in. “I didn’t think you’d feel the need to intervene. I was wrong.”
The alien words wriggled from my mouth. “He was lying.”
“Yes. He's Khal's enemy.” There was no emotion on his face.
I moved quicker to keep alongside. “He was lying about you, and you didn't think I'd care?”
He looked down, frowned. “Why are you angry?”
I wanted to pull my hand away. Arguing this close to each other felt wrong. But that old couple in their garden were watching us, and I didn’t want anyone to see and think he’d been rejected. “Why aren't you? Why aren't you angry?”
“People have been making up stories about me all my life. I can't always be angry.”
“Maybe I can!”
The side of his mouth twitched.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said. The smile vanished. “I appreciate your gesture. Just don’t do it again. Don’t put yourself in danger I can’t stop.”
A bitter taste rose in my throat. “I thought you said the Drashik valued more than just strength.”
“They do.”
“Then why couldn’t I take my name out of his mouth?”
He saluted an old orc man leaning over a workbench in the sun.
The gnarled orc glowered, all suspicion.
Vrathgar didn’t even look ruffled. “The traditions are old,” he answered.
“They were supposed to ensure that the people survived, that we stayed strong. Now they create a sense of belonging. They give the young something to earn.”
The women by the stream rose in my mind’s eye. “Like your young women killing so they can get married.”
“Yes,” he looked uncomfortable. “Though no one has to anymore.”
“Has to kill?”
“Has to marry.”
A laugh tumbled out of me, a little ridiculous, the only sound not shaped by the magic. It almost hurt to go back to speaking, to letting that too-honest hissing out. “So the same people who think I'm a barbarian think I haven't killed enough to deserve you.”
His face was grim. “It's an odd system, yes. And there are situations that fall through the cracks, though people try to make exceptions work. Vyval, Tyralk’s great aunt, she was injured as a child.
Her legs and one of her arms didn't really work. Her sisters, her shield sisters, they carried her into the hunt and made sure she got her kill. They dragged her through the initiation and let her crawl the last few feet.” His hand tightened in mine, his mind elsewhere. “There is compassion, it's just…”
“A brutal compassion,” I finished.
He nodded.
“Where is that compassion for you? Why do they treat you like this?”
He shook his head. “It’s not like that. Drazha can be harsh, but she loves her son, and she defends her people.
I half grew up around her fire. I’ve eaten the meat that she hunted, from when I was too weak to draw a bow.
If they see me as a problem, it’s because I’ve been one.
And they’re right to defend their people from threats. ”
“Am I a threat?”
He looked down at me, and his eyes lingered. “You could be.” He turned his gaze back to the trail. “Almost there now. Watch your step.”
The path turned downwards, and a riot of color, pinks and reds and shocks of yellow and lavender, flowers tall and carpeting, stood protectively around a cottage made of daub and stone.
The little house looked like it was hiding in the flowers.
The roof was good straw, and the paint on the walls was fresh.
Around the window-frames, more flowers had been painted, like the ones at Grezha’s cottage, in green and yellow and red.
Vrathgar, beside me, didn’t relax at the sight, all the lines of him tense, bracing.
“Is she like Drazha?” I whispered. The image of that fierce face, the ache from my own forehead and shoulder, put a pit in my stomach.
“No.” He said. “No, she’s not going to hurt you.” His steps still slowed on the narrow path towards the house, careful. Flowers were reaching out, crowding the path to a single foot-fall, and he went ahead, drew me behind him, so as not to crush even one.
“Has someone told her? About you getting married?” It occurred to me how odd it was that she hadn’t visited, that this wasn’t the first house he’d come to, injured and broken.
“Maybe,” he said. “People visit here sometimes. My aunt might not have wanted to bother her about it, if she thought it would come to nothing.”
Was that why he hadn’t brought me here before? Because our union was something that would come to nothing?
We reached the low door, painted green. It was barely tall enough for him. He drew breath, and knocked, quiet.
There was no sound.
“Do you think she didn’t hear?”
“She hears.”
A soft scuffling sounded, a quiet clink, like something dropped and recovered. Then silence.
“Mum?” he said, and the Orcish rolled off his tongue. “It’s me. Just me. I’ve brought…I’ve brought someone to meet you, if it’s alright.”
The door opened a crack.
Vrathgar had joked that he got his beauty from his father, but the face peering from the doorway, one golden eye and a slice of chin, was shockingly pretty, large, doe-eyes, delicate bones, an elfin jaw.
In this tiny slice of a visage, her irises were like spilled sunshine, like honey poured out, her hair the same deep color as his with threads of silver shining at her crown.
She watched us, it felt like too long, like being watched by a wild creature.
Whether she was ready to pounce or fly, I could not tell.
The door swung open, and I froze. Deep scars curved from her jaw, pulling over her mouth, up through the socket where her other eye had been. The magic resolved into her words. “Who is this?”
Vrathgar’s touch rested on my arm.“Mother, I come to honor you as I bring home a wife.” Formality laced the words.
He spoke in Orcish, so much gentler than I’d heard him speak before.
“This is Annora. She doesn’t know our tongue, but the sorceress, Rowena, has shared with her a gift, so she can talk with you now. She will understand you.”
“A wife.” Her gaze brushed over me, unsmiling, back to him. Her frown deepened. “You are injured.” She reached out, shaky, barely touching the bandage on his arm.
“Just a scratch. I’m fine,” he lied. “You know how the others worry over me.”
“What happened?”
“I quarreled with a bird.”
“A bird?”
“The biggest chicken I’ve ever fought with, my pride is devastated…”
“Gah! You bring a bride with no warning, and now you mock at me.” She landed a swat, very carefully, very gentle, against his wrist, like a tap on a child’s hand. “You come in. Annar-zha, you too. I am sorry, it is so dark—"
The house was dark. Stepping in felt like walking into blackness again, the sole light the coals on the hearth. My eyes were too slow, but Vrathgar guided me when I stopped, and soon I was sitting on a low seat, waiting to be able to see again.
“You are married! And with no warning. A wife!” She clucked in the darkness.
Movement, rustling, soft sounds. Something smooth knocked against my hand, and I managed to grasp it. A bowl.
“You never bring young women here and all at once, a wife!” She did not mention that I was human. “Tell me now. How did you meet?”
“I was traveling near her people, and she took a liking to me. It’s been very fast.”
“Nayah, you scallywag!” She chided. “You should have brought her here first. You do things right. What do her parents think about this?”
“Annora is an orphan, but she had a mentor who gave her blessing. Her community gave her bridal gifts as we left.”
“A mentor?” The word had another connotation around it, the idea of working a trade or combat style. “Is she a warrior?
“Annora was training as a healer. She's very talented.”
“Tch tch! You keep speaking for her! Let me talk with my daughter in law.” A silhouette realized itself in the shadow, a dim outline of her shape. She spoke to me. “Do you link arms with Grezha then?”