Shadows of Myth

“I’ll help you,” Tom said quickly, his heart thundering. Master Archer, the mysterious visitor of years past. Perhaps he would get a chance this time to ply him with questions about his travels. This was clearly an adventure of some kind, too, and Tom had no intention of being cut out of it.

Sara nodded her permission, and Tom followed her to the kitchen.

Nanue Manoison tried vainly to recapture the attention of his audience, but he failed. It was as if, with the arrival of the strangers, worry had crept in, as well. People exchanged uneasy glances, and a pall seemed to settle over the room.

Little by little, the local residents drifted away, leaving the public room occupied only by trappers and traders.

Outside, the cheerful decorations blew dismally in the breath of the icy wind, and the last of the party lanterns flickered out.

Sara Deepwell had some knowledge of tending the sick. Over her short years, she’d been called upon many times to help when someone was injured or ill, most likely because her mother had been a healer and Sara had learned at her side. Many of the skills remained, and there was little in a sickroom that could shock her or cause her fear.

But as she entered the room of the mysterious woman, what she saw did shock her. Her dad had lit the fire, and by its light she could see that the woman’s ragged wrap was stained with blood. And she could see the pallor of the child clutched in her arms, a child who was plainly dead, who had a bandage around her throat.

“Great Theriel,” she murmured. Behind her, she heard Tom stumble slightly beneath his burden of a cauldron of hot water.

“Just set it over here by the fire, Tom,” she said briskly, as if there were nothing of note occurring.

Tom complied, then at her gesture left the room.

Slowly, Sara approached the bed. The child was already frozen, as cold as the ice upon the winter river. But the woman, who still breathed shallowly, was hardly much warmer.

Bending, Sara tried to take the dead child from the woman’s arms. At once her eyes flew open, eyes the color of a midsummer’s morn, and a sound of protest escaped her.

“Let me,” Sara said gently, almost crooning. “Let me. I’ll take care of her. I promise I’ll take care of her.”

Some kind of understanding seemed to creep into those blue eyes, and the woman’s hold on the child relaxed.

Gently Sara picked up the corpse, and just as gently carried it from the room. A small, thin child, no older that seven. Gods have mercy on them all, when someone would kill a child of this age.

Outside, she passed the body to a nervous Tom. “She will need a coffin, Tom. See to it.”

He looked as if he might be ill, but he stiffened and nodded.

“And treat the child as gently as if she were your own. Her mother would want it that way. Get one of the women to clean her up and dress her.”

Again Tom nodded, then headed for the stairs.

Back in the strange woman’s room, Sara found her patient had lapsed into some kind of fevered dream, muttering words and sounds that made no sense. She threw a few more logs on the fire, knowing her patient would need every bit of heat she could get.

Then, tenderly, with care and concern, Sara undressed the woman and washed her with towels dipped in hot water, chafing her skin as she did so to bring back the blood.

When she was done, her patient looked rosier and healthier. All the dried blood was gone, and the rags had been tossed upon the fire.

Gently Sara drew the blankets up to the woman’s chin and took her hand. “You’re going to be all right,” she crooned. “Everything will be fine, you’ll see.”

But she wasn’t sure she believed her own words. With dread in her heart, Sara Deepwell went downstairs to make sure the child was being properly tended.

In the public room, all attention had fixed on Archer—or Master Blackcloak, as some called him. His two companions had disappeared into their room, unknown and unknowable, but Archer had joined the small group of men still remaining around the fire. He ordered a tankard of Bandylegs’ finest and put his booted feet up on a bench.

“A caravan was attacked,” he said in answer to the questions. “Slaughtered, every man, woman and child. The only survivor I found is the woman I brought in.”

“Who would do such a thing?” Nanue marveled. Traders and caravans were rarely attacked, for while they carried much wealth, they also traveled heavily guarded by stout men. It had been a very long time, a time almost out of memory, since anyone could recall such a thing.

“And to kill everyone,” muttered Tyne, who was seated across the room. “Thieves need only to steal a packhorse or wagon. They don’t need to kill everyone.”

“These weren’t thieves,” said Archer.

A collective gasp rose. “How can you know that?” Nanue demanded.

“Because all their goods still lay there. Bags of rice and wheat and dried meats. All of it lying there, cast about thither and yon, much ruined by blood and gore.”

The silence that filled the room was now profound, broken only by the pop and crackle from the fireplace. The chill night wind seemed to creep into the room, even as it moaned around the corners of the inn. It was as if the fire had ceased to cast light and warmth.

“Tomorrow,” Archer said, his voice heavy with something that sent chills along the spines of the perceptive, “I will return to the caravan. I will seek for some sign of the attackers, and for some sign of where they went after. I welcome any who care to join me.”

“Join you?” asked Red Boatman, stiffening on his bench. “Why should we want to tangle with such things?”

“Because you might be able to recover some wheat, meat and rice. Unless I mistake what I saw in your fields, you’ll have some use for it before this winter is done.”

A few ayes rippled around the room.

“But to steal from the dead…” Tyne sounded troubled.

“They have no more use for it,” Archer replied. “’Twere better if it saved the children of Whitewater.”

A stirring in the room, then silence. A log in the fire popped loudly.

Archer put his feet to the floor and leaned forward, scanning every face in the room. “Mark me, there is evil afoot. Evil beyond any seen in your memory. Look to your larders and look to your weapons. For none will remain untouched.”

Then he rose and strode from the room, his cloak swirling about him, opening just enough to reveal an intricately worked leather scabbard and the pommel of a sword. It seemed a ruby winked in the firelight.

No one moved until his footsteps died away.

“Who is he?” Nanue asked. “Should you trust him?”

“Aye,” said Bandylegs, who’d been listening from behind the bar. “I’d trust him with my life, I would. None know anything about him, but he’s been passing through these many years, and never a bit of trouble come with him.”

“Trouble has come with him this time,” Tyne responded darkly. “Much trouble indeed.”

Bandylegs shook his head. “Next you’ll be telling me he brought the winter. Enough, Tyne. The man is right. If there’s food up there we can use, we need to get it for our families. Beyond that, I plan to stay safe behind these walls until spring.”

A murmur of agreement answered him. It seemed the matter was settled. Once again tankards needed filling, and life settled back into it comfortable course.

If Evil were afoot, it wasn’t afoot in Whitewater.

Yet.

4

Firelight flickered over the dark wooden walls of the room. Sara lay on the settle, curled into a ball beneath a blanket, watching her charge sleep. The woman’s color had become more natural now, and her breathing had finally settled into an easy, regular rhythm.

She thought she ought to sleep herself, now that it appeared the woman was going to be fine. But it was already approaching dawn, almost time to get up and rekindle the cook fires for baking bread. Almost time to go roll, knead and punch the dough, and set it to rise for breakfast.

But not yet. For now she could lie on this settle and watch the light of the flames dance on the walls like creatures out of myth. The cold wind keened noisily, and the curtains over the windows stirred a little but kept the draft out. Those curtains had been made and mended by generations of Deepwell women, including her mother. She imagined that if she closed her eyes and touched the fabric she might be able to sense all the hands that had touched them and tended them.

She sighed lightly and closed her eyes. She was so weary, far too weary for someone of her years. She was only twenty, but already life had become an endless grind of sameness. She loved her father, yes, and loved the inn, but the sameness of it all was not suited to someone so young. Then there was Tom. Sometimes he made her heart smile. Sometimes she looked at him and saw her future laid out in an endless progression of days all the same.

She shook her head sternly, trying to brush away the thought. Such as she were not made for great adventures. She was made to run the inn in her father’s stead, and provide ale and food and shelter to all who needed it, to someday bear children of her own and raise them to the same solid life.

The faint, sparkling dreams that sometimes tried to take hold of her were just that: dreams. She was blessed with a good life, and she knew she should be grateful for it.

There was a light knock at the door. Rising, she cast aside the blanket and crept to the door to answer it.

Her father stood outside, and in his arms he held a familiar white bundle topped by boots of the finest, softest white leather.

“She’ll be needing something to wear,” he said gruffly.

Sara looked at her father’s burden, her eyes suddenly stinging. “But, Dad…”

“She’ll not be coming back, lass,” he said. “Six years…Nay, she’ll not be coming back. Better this should be worn by someone who has nothing than waste away in a chest.”

She accepted the bundle from him reluctantly. It felt as if she were giving up her last hope. Her heart squeezed, and her eyes burnt.

“It’s all right, Sara,” he said gruffly, his eyes reddened. “It came to me in the night. That woman…she should have these. I love you, girl.”

“I love you, too, Dad.”

“Sleep late,” he said. “I can manage the bread, and Mistress Lawd is going to help me. You worked hard yesterday. Get some rest.”

Mistress Lawd? Sara watched her father walk toward the stairway and wondered if the Widow Lawd had done something no other woman had done in six years: catch her father’s eye.

It would do him good, she thought as she reentered the room and closed the heavy plank door behind her. He needed someone besides his daughter in his life.

But inside her, something was cracking wide-open with a new kind of grief, as she recognized the final farewell to her missing mother.

The woman on the bed was sitting up, awake, blanket pulled to her chin. Her eyes were wide and fearful.

Sara at once hurried to her, smiling, setting the clothes down on the bed.

“Good morning,” she said cheerfully. “’Tis good to see you awake. I reckon you must be hungry.”

The woman managed an uncertain smile and said, “Water?”

“Of course.” Sara hurried to the ewer and poured water into a cup, bringing it to her.

The woman accepted it with a murmur that Sara couldn’t understand. A different language, perhaps?

She touched her chest as the woman looked at her. “Sara,” she said.

The woman nodded, then hesitated. Suddenly her eyes widened with astonishment, and she touched her own breast. “Tess,” she replied, her tone hushed.

“Hello, Tess.” Sara kept her voice bright and her smile cheerful.

“Hello, Sara,” the woman replied, her syllables a tad uncertain.

“Now don’t you worry about a thing,” Sara said, patting Tess’s shoulder. “I’ll bring you some broth, and while I get it, you get dressed.”

There was only more confusion on the woman’s face, so Sara carefully unfolded the bundle, displaying the fine leather pants and the finest wool over-tunic, which would reach the floor and was slit for riding up front and back. The belt, hand-embroidered with gold thread. The boots soft as butter.

She pointed to the clothes and then to Tess. “For you. Clothes.”

Comprehension dawned on Tess’s face.

Miming, Sara said, “I’ll get you something to eat.”

“Food?”

“Aye, food.”

Tess nodded and smiled.

Sara hurried out, wondering what in the world they were to do with the woman if she didn’t speak their language. It might be months before they learned anything about her.

The kitchen fires were already roaring, and Mistress Lawd and her father were up to their elbows in flour. Tess scooped some of the stew from yesterday’s pot and found a slice of day-old bread.

“She’s awake and hungry,” she told her dad. “And her name is Tess.”

“Good news,” he agreed. “Take the food up to her, then get yourself into your own bed, child. You haven’t slept a wink, I wager.”

Tess was dressed when Sara returned, and the girl caught her breath as she saw the woman standing by the window, the curtains drawn back. Beautiful, she thought. So beautiful. It was as if the clothes had been made for her. They certainly had not been made for Sara, who had inherited her father’s sturdy build rather than her mother’s willowy slenderness.

But on Tess the clothes seemed to become something more, and Sara felt an urge to call the woman my lady.

But it was a sorrowful face Tess turned toward her, blue eyes haunted by loss, by sights better not seen. She moved her arms as if cradling a child and made a questioning sound.

She wanted the dead child. Perhaps her own child. Probably her own child.

Sara carried the stew and bread to the small table in the corner and set them down. “Eat first,” she said, once again miming. “Then I’ll take you to your child.”

As if she understood, Tess obediently sat and began to eat.

Sara sat with her, chattering as if to stem the pain to come. “You don’t understand me at all, do you?” she said. “I don’t understand you, either. Pity of it is, it’ll probably take you weeks or months to say the simplest things.”

Tess astonished her by answering. “I learn.”

Then Tess herself looked amazed, as if surprised that she had spoken the words.

“Maybe,” Sara said, “you just forgot how to speak, because of the terrible things that happened.”

“Terrible,” Tess agreed, nodding, her blue eyes shadowing. “Terrible.”

She bowed her head for a few moments, then resumed eating as if she understood that she must fuel herself regardless.

After breakfast, Sara took Tess downstairs to the room where the child was laid out. Tess approached slowly, noting that someone had garbed the girl in a green dress that covered the wound at her throat, and had washed her and brushed her hair to a golden sheen. She lay within a rough-hewn coffin of planks set upon two sawhorses.

“I’m sorry, Tess,” Sara said behind her. “It must be so hard to lose your child.”

It was as if the skill of language was returning to her with each passing moment, for Tess realized she could understand Sara. But the words were barely filling in the black void that was her memory, a memory that began when she woke among the slaughtered caravan.

She looked at the girl lying so still, feeling a sense of pity, and a deeper sense of failure that she had been unable to save her. She felt loss and sorrow for a life snuffed out too soon, but one thing she knew for certain.

“Not my child,” she said quietly. “I found her.”

“Oh,” said Sara, stepping up beside her. “How sad.”

“Yes.”

Tess reached out and touched the cold little body, and felt again the wrenching sense that she had failed this child.

“She’ll be buried this morning,” Sara said. “It can’t wait any longer.”

“No. Thank you.”

After a few more moments, Tess turned from the little coffin.

“Come,” said Sara. “I’ll take you to your parlor. It’s right next to your room. Then I’ll bring you some tea and cakes. And then,” she added, with a smile. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

“Thank you for caring for me.”

“I was glad to do it.”

Alone in the parlor with tea and cakes and absolutely no idea who she was, where she was going or what she would do next, Tess sat by the window and watched the darkness slowly fade from the sky.

The mind was a singularly empty thing when one had no memory. The only images that would come to her were of the horror she had found upon awakening amidst the carnage of the caravan, of her struggle to save the little girl and herself, of the riders who had rescued her. And of them she had only snatches of memory, because exhaustion had taken her so deeply.

Exhaustion or shock.

At least language seemed to be coming back to her, albeit slowly, words that belonged to this time and place, to judge by her brief talk with Sara, and words that came from elsewhere.

Those other words were doubtless a clue to her origins, but so far no one had seemed to recognize them except herself.

And even now they seemed to be growing dimmer in her mind, fading bit by bit as they were replaced by new words, words that were growing increasingly familiar.

She must have suffered a severe blow to her head. Somehow she had jangled her brains, and perhaps for the last few days she had been babbling nonsense that only seemed to make sense.

She counseled herself to patience, for if her memory of words was returning, surely her memory of other things would return, as well?

But before the instant when she’d awoken amidst the caravan, there was only a huge darkness in her mind, as if everything had been erased.

As if nothing had ever been there. As if she had been born only three days before.

Panic rose within her, and she had to force herself with steady calm to regain her self-control. What was she going to do? Run out into the frigid night until she collapsed and froze to death in the snow?

No, she could only wait.

Turning from the window to survey the lantern-lit room around her, she spied a mirror. It wasn’t a very good mirror, although how she knew that she couldn’t be certain. Hesitantly she rose and walked over to it, wondering what she would do if she didn’t recognize herself.

Closing her eyes at the last moment, she took the last step and faced the mirror. Then, by exerting every bit of her will, she opened her eyes and looked.

A surge of relief passed through her. She recognized the face as her own. Blue eyes, small nose, delicate mouth and oval chin. Yes, that was her, although she couldn’t have said why she thought her hair was longer. Much longer. But at least she hadn’t forgotten her own face.

And the clothes…Taking a few steps back, she looked at the beautiful white garments that had been given to her and felt somehow that she was used to different attire. Perhaps something plainer and more simple? Something less expensive and beautiful?

Finally she could look no more. The only answer the mirror gave her was that she hadn’t forgotten her own face.

She didn’t know what she would have done if a stranger had looked back at her from the glass.

Spreading her hands before her, she recognized them, as well. Including a small scar between her thumb and forefinger, though she had no idea how she had come by it.

But at least not everything had been stolen from her.

Feeling a little better, telling herself that soon all her memory would come back, she returned to the table by the window and poured a cup of tea.

Everything would work out somehow. She had to believe that.

There was a creak from behind her, and she turned quickly to see the stranger who had rescued her, the tall man with the gray eyes.

“My lady,” he said, his eyes sweeping over her.

She wanted to argue with him that she was nobody’s lady, but the words stayed frozen in her throat.

This morning his cloak was gone, revealing garments of leather and wool. His black hair fell to his shoulders, thick and shiny. He was not armed, so his leathern tunic fell straight around his hips. His boots, unlike hers, were heavy and thickly soled.

Finally it dawned on her that he was staying on the threshold because he didn’t want to frighten her. With effort, she found the words.

“Please. Come have tea and cakes.”

A faint smile softened his austere features. “You have remembered how to speak.”

“A little.”

He nodded, apparently finding this to be a good thing, and joined her at the table, pouring himself a cup of tea, then reached for one of the thick sweet cakes.

“I’m sorry about your child.”

She shook her head slightly. “Not mine. I found her.”

He nodded. “I’m still very sorry. I could tell how much you wanted to save her. Can you remember anything of the attack?”

Her throat tightened up as she thought of the child, of finding her in all that gore and blood, of the unimaginable carnage that was her first memory of life. “I remember nothing before I woke up afterward,” she said finally, her voice thick with unshed tears. She turned her face toward the window, seeking signs of a brightening day, hoping for anything that might alleviate the darkness that surrounded her and filled her.

Right now she didn’t even have a foundation on which to stand. Nothing but emptiness behind her. She wasn’t even sure how old she was.

“Nothing?” he said finally. “You don’t remember anything?”

“Nothing,” she repeated. Let him think she spoke of the savage attack. She wasn’t ready to admit to anyone at all just how vulnerable she felt, how vulnerable she was, knowing nothing at all of her past.

He drained his tea, swallowed the last of the cake and said, “I’m going below. Today we’ll ride back there and see what we can learn. If you remember anything to tell us before we go….”

She compressed her lips and nodded. He strode from the room as if he were master of all the world. If that man had ever known a moment’s fear, she couldn’t imagine it.

Which made him that much less approachable to a woman who right now could feel nothing else.

5

The funeral was a sad little affair at midmorning. Several men had dug the grave in the cemetery outside the town walls, then volunteered to carry the pitifully small coffin. Tess walked right behind it, Sara holding her arm. Behind them came Archer and his two companions, their hoods drawn low over their features.

Bandylegs Deepwell said a few words about the gods welcoming such an innocent in the hereafter; then the clods of earth began to fall on the wood with a hollow sound.

The bitter wind cut through all clothing, even through the heavy green cloak Sara had given Tess to wear over her new garments. Then the few turned back into the town, heading toward the inn. Tess was hardly aware of the tears that trailed down her cheeks until Sara reached out to wipe them away, murmuring, “They’ll freeze on your face, they will.”

At the inn, however, when Tess saw Archer and his companions bringing forth their horses, something steeled within her.

“Take me with you,” she said to Archer.

“’Tis cold, milady,” he replied, scratching behind one of his black horse’s ears. “You’ll slow us down.”

“I might. But I might also remember something if I see it again.”

He hesitated, gray eyes meeting blue. “Very well,” he said finally.

Other men were joining them now with packhorses, to save what they might of the meal, rice and dried meats of the caravan. Among them was Tom, looking at once bold and frightened as he bade farewell to Sara. Sara for her part looked torn between a longing to go and fear for Tom. It was so plain to everyone that more than one villager drew near Sara to promise they would keep an eye on young Tom.