She clothed herself in garments for the first time, clothes of a girl-child from the sixth house, whose daughters were still young enough to provide them. And she might always have been clothed. She observed the flow of the loom, the bubbling of pots, the gamboling of Babbya, all with equal intensity. She braided her hair and unbraided it. She washed herself in the stream, but, as the hunter’s wife had noted, true banaz that she was, the wolf child had always smelled clean, and of a strange natural perfume, like a flower.
She knew the Vis language, either that or she had no need to know it, taking information with tactful delicacy from their minds. Although no one but the hunter’s wife had direct communication with her, and that seldom.
By night, the wolves slept at the door.
The village left the altar standing.
The hunter’s wife began to love the child, even in these few days, love her as the daughter-sister the gods had not yet granted her. But the child in her village clothes, her hair like sunbeams, seemed older than a child. She seemed a woman.
And on the fifth day the hunter’s wife wept, and the wolf child stroked her hair, her hands a caress, her eyes that were like suns eclipsed by a remote gentleness.
“You must get the loan of a zeeba,” said the hunter’s wife to her husband. “You must go south.”
He frowned, at his wife’s sorrow, the child’s silence.
“Why?”
“She’s told me, in the way she tells me things. She wants you to take her to the town. And—to sell her there, as a slave.”
“There are laws,” he said, “against the sale of Lowlanders.”
“She gathered herbs on the hills today, to stain her skin and hair.”
The hunter stared, as at the first. And afterwards he stared almost in a renewal of fear as he saw the child standing under the lamp, her hair brown as wood, and her skin swarthy, which before had not even tanned.
The wolves dashed, black and white, over the brim of the blue hills, and ran with the cart and zeeba for several miles.
The child regarded them, but did not make a sound. That she spoke to the wolves within her head was likely.
When the wolves dropped back and did not reappear, the hunter said: “You’ll have taken away the luck of my village.”
But he knew that was unfair and untrue, and after-seasons proved as much.
The town of Olm lay in that nebulous region of borderland where Lan married with Elyr. Mountains towered over the town, the backbone of the landscape. Somewhere up amid their spines was to be found the ancient kingdom of the Zor, leaderless now, save that it gave its fealty to the king at Amlan. The Zor had, centuries ago, held to itself a religion currently commonplace: The worship of a woman god, to whom the serpent was sacred.
The carts that came jumbling into the marketplace of Olm had all manner of goods to sell. Even slaves were sometimes sold there, Though Lanelyr, like her parent lands either side, dealt sparingly if at all in slavery. Indeed, to some extent it was the blond man of Shansar and Vardath who had revitalized a flagging trade. In the second continent there were now countless Vis slaves at work for fair-skinned masters. And in the marketplace at Olm, a small group of blond Vardians, merchants of flesh of all kinds, stood with wine, watching a woman on a dais. She was a snake dancer from the Zor, a contortionist limber as the giant snake through whose silver coils she wheeled her brazen body.
Such sights, inserted between the drapes of her litter, brought only exasperation to Safca, the daughter of Olm’s Lannic guardian. But then, the world exasperated her; the world, her youth, and her lack of opportunity. She still fantasized occasionally that some lord, riding through Lanelyr, would see and be seduced by her, sweeping her away to worthier things. But she knew herself too homely to have such an effect.
“Go on,” she said to her bearers impatiently.
Her outrider leaned to the litter, and explained the obvious: The Vardians were in their path and might well refuse to move until the dancer was finished. Such a scene would look poorly.
“If I must wait here, then,” said Safca, “I’ll visit the stalls.”
She got out of the litter, enamel beads in her hair, her spirit crumpled, and started to walk across the market. The outrider dismounted, and walked now at her back, hand ceremonially to sword-hilt.
She was recognized on most sides, and offered politenesses, of course. Only the Vardians quite ignored her.
Perversely, Safca Am Olm idled to inspect the cages of multicolored birds directly beside them. Through bars and feathers, she covertly watched, disliking the invaders’ paleness and their language, wondering through all her antipathy if one might turn and find her interesting merely because she was a contrast.
But they did not turn.
The dancer on the dais fulfilled her ritual—once, such dancing had been nothing less—and went away, roped by the snake. Presently, it became apparent the rostrum was to be used for a slave auction.
The guardian’s daughter stood in the burning sunlight, pretending now she watched the stage.
The Vardians drew her. One in particular. She considered if it would be possible to enjoy a foreigner. Zastis was not so far off. Could this man be enticed as a lover? They said the men of the Other World were immune to Zastis, but how could that be?
The first owners showed off their wares. As they were bid for and sold, the Vardians did nothing at all. Next came a chain of slaves from the backlands, handled by the public auctioneer. They were unexceptional, three men and a couple of slovens, no doubt brought to this by debts.
One of the Vardians, the one Safca had become fascinated by, pointed out the sloven at the end of the line.
But no, it was not the sloven. Another stood just beyond her, a child, eleven or twelve, a girl with a wave of hair, too light to be all Vis, too dark to be legally one of the yellow people.
“Twenty copper parings,” the Vardian called out, “for the child.”
“Twenty, master? That’s not—”
“Vardish copper. Not the impure muck of Lan.”
Safca lost her temper with this man who spoke with an accent, reviled her country, and would not look at her.
“Ten parings of silver,” she cried, much clearer than a bell. “Good silver from the guardian’s store. Nothing imported.”
Here and there, some of the Lannic crowd laughed.
The Vardian turned at last. His look was frank, unenthralled and touched by menace. She held it, alarmed, sweat starting on her forehead. Involuntarily her fingers closed over the lucky bracelet she wore on her left wrist and never took off. Slowly, he turned back. “Fifteen parings of Vardish silver, by Raldnor.”
She lost her head. “By Raldnor!” she shouted, “and by Yannul the Lan, one of his captains—” there was more crowd noise “—twenty silver parings.”
The Vardian turned again. She withered in his gaze. Without another accented word, leaving their wine, he and his companions walked off across the market.
She felt silly, degraded almost. She should have left well alone.
Lan, neutral throughout the Lowland War, had given many of her sons to fight for the hero Raldnor against Dortharian oppression, not least Yannul, the wandering acrobat, who learned the trade of soldiering beside Raldnor in Xarabiss, then used the knowledge fighting side by side with him and with his army, across the length of Vis. It had been Yannul, too, who made the perilous voyage with Raldnor that ended at the forest-shores of the Sister Continent. Some said Yannul had remained in Dorthar, at Anackyra, with the Vathcrian King who was Raldnor’s son. Others said Yannul was in Lan. A pity he was not here. It seemed the yellow men who swaggered across Lan, her commercial conquerors if not otherwise, needed some token of the past to stay their arrogance.