rix_scaedu

I wrote this to aldersprig's 12th prompt "A long-cold-to-each-other pair who once loved each other are brought together by a quest."  This is followed by Then They Started Making A Plan.

“Spatelli!”  The screeching, auburn haired sell-sword looked magnificent but now was not the time to tell her that.  “You told me you were going to get Tarrascotti for this job.  What happened?”

The thief looked apologetic.  “I found him where he overwintered in a Trideian manse, but his wives drove me off.  I’m sorry Liana, but Capalini was who I could get.”

Liana Fieri glared with hatred at the drui grinning at her from table in the corner of the room.  “So what happened to the priest of Aschaer?”  She flipped a glance at the priest of Lunifer sitting next to Capalini.  The pale haired, wan man hunched further over his drink as if to avoid the woman’s anger.  Beside him the drui leaned back against the wall and grinned.

“The war priests had no-one to spare in any of the temples I asked at,” Spatelli held up his hands in a defensive gesture, “but in Liancre they recommended this Giuffre guy.  Apparently he’s a good man in a tight corner and he’s a dab hand at bringing light into dark places.”

“Priests of Aschaer said that about him?”  Liana seemed to be at least temporarily defused and looked at the pale priest quizzically.  “Are you sure it’s him they were talking about?  He looks like we should be taking him somewhere to be nursed back to health rather than on an expedition.”

“Liana,” protested Spatelli, “he can probably hear you from over there.  Besides, haven’t you noticed?  All priests of Lunifer look like that.”

“Can’t say I’ve met enough of them to notice,” admitted Liana.  “So, now you’ve got a team together, are you going to spill the beans on this job?”

“Come and sit down with the others,” coaxed Spatelli.  “I don’t want to have to go through this more than once.”

“Alright.”  It was a grudging concession and the sell-sword stalked over to the table, then took the seat opposite Capalini so she wouldn’t have to sit next to him.

As she settled herself in the chair Capalini cocked an eyebrow at her.  “So, we’re working together again, are we?”

“Apparently.”  Her reply was stiff and cold.

Capalini flicked a silver coin tumbling up through the air to come down in front of the priest, who caught it with astonishing skill.  “What’s this for?”  Giuffre sounded surprised as he checked the denomination.

“Whatever you do with charitable donations, holy father,” Capalini gave an impudent grin.  “It behoves me to be generous to the gods today because, apparently, hell has frozen over,” and he gave a little seated half-bow to Liana.

In her hands the wooden trencher Capalini had emptied of its olives as she crossed the room snapped in half.

They reached the manse a little before noon.  It was built in a nook below the ridgeline, surrounded by trees above and beside it that reached down the slope to border the meadow where several horses and a cow grazed.  Of the buildings there was the manse itself, a barn, what looked like a woodshed and an elevated pigeon loft.  The buildings were surrounded by a low stone wall with a couple of gates in it and inside that boundary Tarrascotti could see chickens and geese going about their business.  It looked every inch a solid farmyard, but as far he could see there was no actual farmland.

They were expected.  It was a warrior priestess of Navira Sharptooth who met them at the gate, an older woman with greying hair and an athletic body.  “You’re late,” she commented, humour in her voice, “two weeks late.”

“We would have been here sooner,” replied Katinka, “but our husband tried to get himself killed by a rabid bear just before we met him.”

“So your message said,” the older woman acknowledged.  She looked Tarrascotti over, “He looks quite well for someone a bear tried to kill.  You three must be good for him.”

“We like to think so.”  Sofia was swinging herself down from her horse, “You must be Silvana.”

“I am,” the older woman opened the gate.  “House Mistress Lucretia and Nella left two weeks ago to go to their new postings, so I’m afraid the house probably isn’t up to your standards.  I admit I plan to show you around and leave almost straight away.  I’m supposed to overwinter at Penoa but the stars have been bright and cold these last few nights – I think winter’s no more than a week off so I need to make the most of these few days.”

She let them into the farm enclosure and led them to the barn, talking the whole time – not from garrulousness but to convey necessary information as efficiently as possible.  She covered stabling, the remounts in the field, the cow and the poultry, animal fodder and the carrier pigeons in the loft.  Tarrascotti noted that his wives seemed to be taking the information in effortlessly.  Apparently they all knew exactly what sort of establishment they’d come to.

Silvana surprised them all by adding onto her comments about pigeon breeding, “That reminds me, Katinka, your old pack sisters sent you a message thanking you for your recommendation and said the arrangement seemed to be working out well for this winter.”

“Recommendation?”  That was Ellabetta but Tarrascotti and Sofia were looking at her curiously too.

“My pack sisters wanted a man to den up with them for the winter,” explained Katinka, “and I suggested Tarrascotti’s friend, Luca, the wolf priest.  He’s smart, thinks as he ought to about what’s important, is good in a crisis, isn’t bad looking and I think he will make strong, healthy babies.  He’s not attached and he needs to overwinter somewhere.”

“That description almost makes me wish I was going to overwinter with your pack sisters,” commented Silvana, “but at Penoa I can see my son and his family.”

“I thought Luca was going over the pass to Belhedi,” commented Tarrascotti.  “He said something about a cave system there being important.”

“No-one can get through the low pass,” commented Silvana, “there’s been a landslide.  The king’s men have been working on it for almost a month but it won’t be open again until next autumn.”

Tarrascotti did some sums in his head.  “Given when he left the village, if he got anywhere near the low pass before he found out it was closed, then he hasn’t had time to get over the high pass.  I don’t know how your pack sisters persuaded him to stay with them, my dear,” he told Katinka, “but if winter is only a week away, they may have saved his life.  The high ranges in winter is no place to be alone on foot.”

“My pack sisters can be very persuasive when they want to be,” Katinka tossed a smile at him, “and the wolf priest isn’t stupid – the time might have been what decided him to accept.”  Her eyes widened as the penny dropped.  “Wolf priest, wolf cubs” and she giggled.  “There were a lot of wolf cubs in my dream.”

I wrote this from ysabetwordsmith's sixth prompt

She was standing in a field of short flowers and grass.  The flowers grew on mounded plants that barely passed her ankle, golden-centred ruffles of white and red combined.  Bees flew from flower to flower in a pattern that seemed to go with a tune she could hear in the back of her ear.  Sometimes the flower stalks moved to the bee so as to keep the rhythm.  The bees were important, but she didn’t remember why.

“You haven’t forgotten why bees are important,” said a whisper through the music, “you haven’t been told that yet.”

Wolf cubs, all of an age but not the one litter, rolled across the grass in a mock fight and tug-of-war.  A breeze raced across their small bodies, ruffling their fur as if someone were tickling them, and then twisted itself around her head with a laugh that she half recognized before racing off across the field to-

Katinka woke with a start.  It was still night, mid watch, but she was wide awake now in the aftermath of a god dream.  Some priestesses had them often.  Not Katinka.  From what she remembered of the few she’d had, this one had been unusually light hearted.

Tarrascotti had the watch and she was vaguely disappointed to find Sofia, her Keviran co-wife, awake and sitting beside him.  His third wife, Ellabetta, was still asleep in her bedroll.  If she envied the other two anything, it was their ability to sit with their husband and immediately feel domestic.  She hadn’t the knack of it herself and he always seemed more reserved with her, as if he were afraid she might bite.

She could, of course.  Sharptooth’s warrior priestesses would use teeth to rend flesh if combat were needed and they had no other weapons.

“Can’t sleep?”  Sofia smiled at her from the other side of the fire.

“Or did something wake you?”  Their drui husband respected her wildcraft skills, his own were good enough to make her wonder how often the old man had lived rough, and now he was scanning their surrounds and testing the warding he’d put round their camp.

“I had a dream,” she confessed, “that’s all.  A happy dream.  With bees, flowers, wolf cubs and one of Sharptooth’s dream forms.”

“Bees,” said Sofia, leaning forward in interest, “are one of Kevira’s dream forms.  If they’re feeding from flowers that’s a sign she’s pleased.  Wolf cubs don’t mean anything I know of.  Have you done something the rest of us should know about?”

“I don’t think so.”

This is written to ysabetwordsmith's first prompt.  It follows on from Unexpected Rewards.

Tarascotti’s wives were taking him to a Trideian manse for the winter.  They were travelling by horseback which he found an agreeable luxury, he could rarely afford a horse’s upkeep and would rather keep the coin aside for the lean times anyway.  Priestesses, it seemed, had more resources than wandering drui for hire.  Katinka was leading the way several horse lengths ahead on a brown mare, while Ellabetta was bringing up the rear on a much heavier black gelding.  Sofia rode companionably beside him on a sorrel mare while he was astride a darker chestnut gelding.

He was still getting used to being married.  The whole idea of three wives and his presence at the wedding not being necessary still seemed extremely strange to him, but they had certainly nursed him back to health after his near fatal encounter with the bear.  Ellabetta had replaced almost all his clothes, the bear having destroyed nearly everything, and he was rather pleased with her efforts.  As for spousal relations, well, none of the girls were shy and they didn’t seem to get jealous of each other but Tarrascotti wasn’t used to sustained, interested female company.

They were coming out of the woods into the farmland around the river, the fume from the waterfall just visible at the bottom of the cliff, when Katinka held up her hand signalling a stop.  When she rode back to them, Ellabetta having come up from behind, they could see she was worried.

“Willow song,” she spat out in her delightful accent, “and we came this way to avoid Grandfather Willow in the valley above the falls.  It doesn’t look like somewhere under a blackheart’s influence, but it’s definitely willow song.”

“Let me see if I can hear what it’s saying,” Tarrascotti offered, climbing down from his horse and walking forward to the edge of the trees.  The dip of the river valley lay before him, mainly farmland with the river marked by autumn yellow willow trees.  He cast his spell on himself, then listened to the web of wind, root and leaf and finally began to speak what he could hear.  “Milking cows stay in your fields and eat your grass; farmer cut here and here for your fence wood and some will grow into a tree in place; basket weaver, take you branches from here and let the light into the tree; wise woman, these are the best trees for the bark you need put aside for winter; and sweet, brown-skinned boys fishing for your dinner, don’t let the old pike pull you in!”

“It’s a whiteheart,” Katinka took a deep breath in, “I’ve never seen one before.”

This story comes after a sequence of stories that I wrote in the 30 days of flash fiction about a goblet being exchanged for a princess.  This occurs to one of the goblet couriers some time later.

Tarrascotti woke up, which was surprising given how much of his last memory was made up of rabid bear.  He felt sore all over, which was probably not surprising given how much of his last memory was made up of rabid bear.  He was in a bed, which was a good sign, and he wasn’t chained down, which was an even better sign.

The ceiling had been whitewashed.  The room was day lit.  He turned his head to the left and saw a window with tied-back curtains.  He turned his head the other way and saw a woman dressed in black who was sitting in a chair and sewing something white.

“You’re awake,” she sounded pleased and put aside her sewing.  “Would you like a drink of water?”

“Yes, please,” he agreed, realising that he was thirsty.  “I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“Oh yes.”  She had stood and walked to his bedside to pour a cup of water from a jug on the bedside table.  She was thirtyish, muscular, with brown hair in a bun and her black clothes were revealed as a three-quarter length, sleeveless jerkin split for riding over shirt, trousers and boots.  Wear on the jerkin above her hips showed where a sword belt sat.  “It seems you don’t get to leave us so easily.”

He raised himself to drink and she supported him with a firm, capable hand while the other held the cup for him.  When he’d finished drinking he said, “You’re a warrior-priestess of the Silent Bride.”

“Yes.”  She smiled.  “I’m glad to see that being crushed by a bear hasn’t addled your wits.  My name’s Ellabetta.  Now you need to rest quietly while I go get the others.”  She put the cup down, helped him to ease himself comfortably flat again and strode out the doorway.

Her youth, less than half his age, and her vigour made him feel very old.  Sitting up had been an effort.  Clothes would be nice but he couldn’t see any.  He didn’t want to deal with priestesses while naked and in bed.

Ellabetta wasn’t gone long enough for him think he might be able to get out of bed on his own.  She returned in only a few minutes, one of a triumvirate of Trideian priestesses.  The blonde in the Sharptooth’s green with archery guards sat on the end of the bed.  Ellabetta resumed her chair and took up her sewing again.  The redhead in Keviran brown with a smudge of flour on one cheek marched over to the bedside, picked up his wrist and took his pulse before leaning over to test his temperature with her cheek.

“No trace of fever anymore,” the Keviran priestess said cheerfully, “So now we just have to build up your strength again.”

“How long have I been out for?”  Tarrascotti sounded the way he felt, weak as a kitten.  “What happened with the bear?”  That seemed a safe way to put it.

“It fell on you, of course.”  That was the blonde, smoky-voiced and accented, on the end of his bed.  “Fortunately, you weren’t bitten, just clawed and crushed.  You would have died before we got here if that wolf-priest, Luca, hadn’t gotten the bear off you as quickly as he did.  We must have missed the action by what, a quarter of an hour?”  Her look appealed to the other two for confirmation.

“That seems about right,” agreed the Keviran.  “You got infections in some of the scratches from its claws, but you weren’t bitten so you didn’t get rabies.  You were unconscious longer than I would have expected with us looking after you though.”

“I remember trying to blast it with everything I had left, after it spun me around by the backpack,” Tarrascotti said slowly, “after all, if you’re about to be killed by a bear then having enough energy left to keep your heart beating isn’t an issue.”

“That would explain why it didn’t have a head left above the lower jaw,” commented Ellabetta as she clipped off her thread.

“I’m surprised I’m still alive,” Tarrascotti went on wonderingly, “and I don’t understand why you three ladies are looking after me.”  There’ll be a catch somewhere, he thought to himself, and I’m too tired and sore to figure it out before they tell me.

“Ellabetta’s already introduced herself,” the Keviran told him, smiling...fondly at him, “I’m Sofia and this,” she gestured at the blonde, “Is Katinka.  We’re your wives.”

That got him up, well half sitting, and damn the bedcovers.  “I think I’d remember being married!”  Three wives, all young enough to be his daughters!  No-one had three wives, it was riduc-

“I’m sure you would,” said Sofia calmly, “if you’d been at the ceremony.”

“The High Priestesses decided that you deserved an additional reward for your care of the Chasrubdel,” Katinka put in from the end of the bed, “Continuation of your bloodline and someone to take care of you.  I must say,” she added with some asperity, “that if you’re going to make a habit of rescuing remote villages from rabid bears then you’ll need to let us get into overwatch positions first!”

They arrived at the appointed meeting place on time. This was no midnight meeting in shadowy ruins, this was an afternoon appointment in the open. In a warmer climate the landscape would have been savannah. This was farmed country, but not devoted to cropping, the copses frequented by herded swine and the trees evenly trimmed from underneath by cows’ tongues.

The place was chosen well: not in a village; not in cover; neither next to any of the single and clustered menhirs that punctuated the landscape nor in any formation of them; and on a road that anyone might travel. Thirty priestesses on horseback, twenty of them war priestesses, accompanying one other person were not the road’s usual traffic. Two men and a woman on foot were less unexpected.

The two groups didn’t quite meet but sent forward a representative each, Tarrascotti for the walkers and a priestess of Kevira from the mounted party.

“You’ve brought the goblet?” asked the brown-clad, middle-aged woman.

“Of course,” Tarrascotti nodded, “You’ve brought the girl?”

“Naturally,” the priestess nodded in return. “May I see it?”

“When I can see the girl.”

“Fair enough,” the priestess gestured and the one who was not a priestess was led forward to be clearly seen.

Tarrascotti unwrapped the goblet and held it out, upright, for inspection. “Are we agreed?”

“We are.” The priestess sighed. “We’ll make the exchange then?”

“Yes,” Tarrascotti agreed, and they did

The priestesses departed with the goblet back in its satchel. The walkers were left with the girl, on foot and in miscellaneous black, green and brown.

Bennoli bowed and asked, “Princess Christobella, are you well?”

“Yes, thank you.” She was - observant.

Edita asked, “Should we have told them about the ice maiden?”

“I left them a letter,” Tarrascotti replied, “And the wine.”

“What is this place?” Edita looked wide-eyed at the ruins that surrounded them. The great stone structures had not surrendered to violence but to age and nature. Statues still stood, but they were wrapped with vines, dotted with moss and patched with lichen. Birds flew in and out of empty window spaces. Butterflies danced in the sunlight over courtyards turned to meadows.

“Faruma,” said Bennoli. “Let’s not linger, this place gives me the creeps.”

“But what is it?” Edita asked again.

“It used to be the centre of the theological world,” Tarrascotti explained. “All the gods had their biggest temples here. Then the gods died and the world fell apart. There’s no point in keeping up the temples.”

“Except for Aschaer and Lunifer,” amended Bennoli, “But they moved their seats elsewhere, can’t say I blame them, priests or gods. This place is like a mausoleum.”

“Fell apart? Like seasons out of kilter?” Edita seized on Tarrascotti’s comment. “Not just the seasons,” her hands shook in frustration as she tried to find the words to explain a new idea, “But the reasons there are seasons in the first place. The seasons came first then the plants. That’s why she’s worried,” Edita went on, “Whatever killed the gods broke the world. The gods that were left weren’t enough to fix it but before it fell apart Sharptooth claimed spring and made it happen. Sharptooth’s will is what keeps the world doing what it’s supposed to do for spring to happen. If it falters...”

“So our ice maiden-,” Tarrascotti prodded.

“Wants her father back, wants the Summer Queen back, wants the Hunter back, wants everyone back, but if she can’t have that, she’ll try to do some of it herself.”

“Careful,” rumbled Bennoli, “You’ll be her first priestess yet.”

“Not me, my daughter.”

“Thank you,” the ice maiden removed her hands from Edita’s head, the woman’s normal colouring beginning to restore itself under the frost which was itself turning to fine mist in the suddenly warmer air. “I understood grief from loss. I have experienced that myself, when my father and so many of my sisters died, but this is another grief. Humans are so complicated. Cold is and animals deal very directly with necessities. Humans are strange indeed – they wrap themselves round with so much that they forget the why of what they do.” She walked back to the edge of the encampment where the snow was beginning to melt, stepped over the wards, became mist and was gone.

“So,” Bennoli had put the kettle back over the fire, “What did she want?” He was building the fire up to help warm the still shivering Edita.

“What an emotion feels like,” Edita held her hands carefully out to the heat. “She asked me if she could take the feeling of a broken heart. But she took more than that,” the woman was puzzled, “The feeling after you’ve been betrayed and the walls you build around yourself to stop those things hurting you again, she took those too. And I think she looked at why we don’t just kill the people who do that to us.”

“When you say took,” Tarrascotti was filling three infusion balls with something warming to go in their mugs with the hot water, “What do you mean?”

“The memory of those things is still there,” Edita said slowly, “But the edge is gone. It’s as if it happened a very long time ago. And she left things behind too, about as strong as the memories of what she took. Worry about the consequences of leaving winter unbound – I’m not sure what they are, but she seems to feel that only the Sharptooth,” she used the title of the Trideian goddess of nature and growth, “Stands between us and disaster. Grief for her father and her sisters, and an immense respect for Lunifer.” Edita looked up but the moon was not in sight, “And I felt that while she was doing it her mind was growing, becoming more complicated, taking up more space inside my head.”

“Sounds like it might be working then,” Tarrascotti said, “That plan of hers to become a god.”

At first she thought it was just a drop in temperature, normal under the clear starlit sky. When she realised it wasn’t, couldn’t be natural, her throat was too cold for speech so she had to shake him awake.

Tarrascotti woke to being shaken by Edita, her skin, like the ground and his bedding, covered in frost. “Bennoli!” He bellowed the fighter’s name as he whipped his warm bedding around the freezing woman.

The other man was awake in moments, bringing his blankets over to wrap around the foggy breathed Edita. “Aren’t your wards were supposed to protect us from this sort of attack?” he remarked to Tarascotti.

“They have,” was the grim rejoinder. Outside those wards the snow was two feet deep and still floating down out of a clear sky. “Who are you?” He shouted, no point beating about the bush, “What do you want?”

“You have the Chasrubdel.” She coalesced out of the falling snow and walked into the encampment. “Give me the goblet and your companion will live. I will return it and be rewarded by the Three Sisters.”

“Its exchange has already been arranged for an agreed price,” Tarascotti replied, “We are but paid agents. We have taken coin and are under obligation.”

“Very well,” the icy beauty nodded her head, “But I demand a toll or your companion dies.”

“What is she?” It was Bennoli who asked.

“An ice maiden, daughter of the old Winter King.” Then to her, “What do you want?”

“I will tell the woman, for it is she who will pay.” The ice maiden stepped forward and whispered in Edita’s ear.

“Why would you want that?” Edita’s blue lips moved but no sound came out.

“To understand. To be closer to being a god. To bind winter again.”

Edita nodded.

The goblet had the old man, Tarrascotti, worried. Every evening when they camped they set it down on the flat beside the camp fire, filled it with good Arcanum rosé the innkeeper had supplied, added a drop of blood each to keep the Trideian goddesses happy, and left it overnight. A makeshift shrine. Every morning the goblet was empty and clean. The clean truly worried him. Animals would have left dregs in the undisturbed goblet. A drui, he was used to manipulating magical energies himself but divine agency scared him. The motives of the gods were not, well, human.

The others asleep, he composed himself to keep watch. Other sight was not a spell, more a way of seeing the world, a meditation of sorts. Tarrascotti was very interested to see what it would show him when he looked at the goblet.

As he slipped into that other mind state his view of the world changed. The fire gained a centre and halo of that deep warmth beyond red. A wash of the same colour overlaid all three of their bodies – he doubted Edita would be comfortable with the detail of her person that wash showed him. The colour and intensity of the stars above him changed with the addition of this warmth and the thin, cold fire that burnt on the other side of violet – stars and the sun had so much of that.

Various items on all of them glowed with imbued magics. His own wards set just outside the bounds of the encampment were silver, green and beyond violet to this sight.

The goblet – the goblet was wreathed in godstuffs: beautiful, potent, deadly. He could see it absorbing their offering like a beautiful woman licking and sucking honey slowly off her fingers.

While looking back at him.