Neither did Jame, but supposed that she would find out.
As she and the rathorn traveled north and rose with the land, winter reasserted itself. Snow lingered under trees and blew down from the heights in sparkling veils, momentarily obscuring the landscape. Few birds sang and no trees drifted. When they came within sight of it, the Silver was a gray and white sheet of frozen water. Still, they set a good pace, arriving at Kithorn in the early afternoon.
This time, the keep courtyard was packed with Merikit, with more spilling out the gatehouse doors. Voices and laughter rose from within.
Curious but seeing no way to force an entrance, Jame circled the wall. Bright faces turned to look down at her from on top of it.
“Here, Earth Wife’s Favorite! Up here!”
Jame stood in the saddle and worked her claws into the crumbling stonework. Death’s-head promptly walked out from under her. She scrambled up to join the children.
“You’re just in time,” whispered Prid. “The Maid is about to reject her suitors.”
Below, only the sacred square around the covered well remained relatively clear. Within its precincts a fantastic figure clad in the relics of a white court gown strutted and preened before the audience as if before a wall of mirrors.
“There was a maid, oh so beautiful, so proud,” murmured Jame, remembering her previous venture into the Merikits’ sacred space.
Swish, swish went the embroidered hem. Where had they gotten that dress?
Then Jame remembered: this had been Marc’s home keep before the Merikit had slaughtered everyone in it. Someone must have pilfered this finery before the flames had claimed it. She reminded herself that the massacre had been over eighty years ago, the result of a misunderstanding, not malice, and that Marc had long since claimed the blood price for it. Still, she wondered what Highborn lady had last worn that tattered garment and what she would think to see it now.
Not, of course, that it currently clothed a female. Only shamans could mum before their gods. This one was masked to conceal the wizened features of Index’s old friend, Tungit.
Other shamans decked out in decrepit finery of the same era approached the Maid and were dismissed by her with haughty gestures and personal insults that made the audience roar with laughter.
“No chief’s son would do for her, oh no. Why this particular mummery, Prid?”
“The equinox is the Eaten One’s festival. We need her permission to fish the Silver and she needs us to break open the ice. Listen!”
“I would rather be a war maid and track the wild game,” declaimed the shaman, to a muted cheer from Prid. On her other side her cousin Hatch glanced at her wistfully.
The Maid’s mother sidled up to reproach her. “Take a mate and become a proper wyf,” she squeaked in a high voice. “I have a fine lodge. To whom should I leave it if not to you?”
“What want I with hearth or housebond? What is a lodge but an earthbound trap?”
The audience shuffled their feet. Some began to stomp until all had picked up the beat.
“Oh no!” cried the mother, wringing her hands. “The earth is shaking! The River Snake must be hungry. Who will save us?”
The Maid swayed her hips seductively, to more laughter from the crowd. “No need for a hero. I will deal with him, for who can resist my charms?”
As the mother withdrew, the Maid began to pantomime gingerly walking on ice. Flagstones shifted under her feet, limned by bright lines of sacred space. “Ooh! This is harder than I thought.”
Into the square crept a shaman wearing the catfish-skin cape.
“Look behind you!” cried the children on the wall.
“Did I hear little birds twittering? Wakie, wakie, snakie, snakie!” She slipped. “Oops. I’ve fallen into the water. Oh no!”
The fish-man slithered over her.
“Munch, munch, munch.”
“And he ate her all-l-l up!” came the triumphant chorus of the onlookers.
Then they all turned and began to stream out of the courtyard, leaving the square empty.
“Come on,” said Prid. “Let’s hurry back for the feast.”
Jame went with her. She had no doubt that she had just witnessed one version of that unfortunate maiden’s transformation from mortal into the immortal if eternally compromised Eaten One. At the same time, it had seemed to be ringed with other stories, other maids and other fates—something tragic, profound, and complex reduced to a farce. Pride falls, but what of bravery and rebellion against a fate not of one’s choosing, brought to such an end? Did the audience laugh so as not to cry?
And she remembered Prid quoting from this mummery at the winter solstice. No wonder Gran Cyd had warned her not to, given the Maid’s fate.
They came to the rebuilt boys’ and girls’ lodges reserved for those like Prid too old to stay at home but too young to know which way to turn their lives.
“I’ve moved into the men’s lodge,” Hatch told her. “It’s on the west side of the village next to the war maids’.”
“Now that you’ve come of age, what will you do?”
He gave her a crooked smile. “The same thing I’ve always done: wait for Prid.”
Overall, thought Jame, he was lucky to live in a society that gave him the freedom to fit in where he wished, or to decline until he was ready. The men’s and women’s lodges seemed to be halfway options. Jame glanced at the tawny-haired girl skipping beside her and wondered if she would outgrow her desire to run wild with the war maids. It seemed to Jame that one had to pick one’s discipline eventually or risk never growing up at all.
On the other hand, who was she to condemn the warrior life?
Here was the village on its palisaded hill, and inside the orderly mounds that marked each individual subterranean lodge. Ma, Da, and their twin girls greeted Jame from their threshold. Among the Merikit even two women could have such a family since the mother decided who had fathered her children. Other lodge-wyves waved. Most took it as a great joke that Jame was the Earth Wife’s Favorite and Chingetai’s heir, therefore officially male.
Gran Cyd waited outside her lodge, resplendent in crimson and gold with a rich fur cape draped over her bare shoulders. Her dark red hair, elaborately braided, shone against the white fur. She had the glow of a woman with child, but as yet showed little other sign of her pregnancy for which (to her embarrassment) Jame had been credited, along with that of half a dozen more among the lodge-wyves.
“Come,” she greeted Jame. “We must make haste to the feasting ground by the Silver Steps.”
Jame was somewhat chagrined. Sitting on the wall had chilled her and she had been looking forward to the warmth of the underground communal hall. The queen saw her shiver.
“Wait.” Gran Cyd descended into her lodge, and returned with a black fur cloak almost as sumptuous as her own. “A present,” she said, slinging it over Jame’s shoulders despite her protests.
“What are the Silver Steps?” Jame asked as they departed the village, followed by a crowd mostly comprised of women and children.
“You will see.”
They walked about a mile upstream over a path beaten through the snow by the men going before them. Here the Silver’s ice showed deep fractures and dislodged chunks ground against each other as the current rushed under them.
By now it was midafternoon with the sun beginning its tumble down the sky toward the western mountain peaks. Jame regarded the lengthening shadows with unease. She hadn’t been this far north since the winter solstice, much less with night coming on.
“What do the Burning Ones do while their master sleeps in the earth?” she asked Gran Cyd.
The queen raised an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
“I saw them at the solstice, with someone whom I didn’t expect to see. A Kendar named Vant.”
“So.” She walked on for several strides, thinking. “Perhaps that explains it. Normally, from solstice to Summer’s Eve the Burnt Man’s hounds sleep. This winter, though, we had a kin-slayer in the men’s lodge, one brother killing another. It sometimes happens, when the weather is bad and no one can go out. The walls close in. Tempers grow short. Nonetheless, we drove out the slayer, thinking that he would perish of the cold; instead, the Burning Ones came, led by one who did not burn except for his eyes. Perhaps that was your Kendar.”