He trotted across the moonlit clearing just inside the northern gate, and galloped out into the waiting desert shadows. The moonlight gleamed on his broad shoulders for a long time, then he became part of the darkness.
Brown John found Robin sitting on a stone watching, and gathered her in his arms. “I’m sorry, little one,” he murmured. “I could not talk him out of it.”
She looked off at the spreading desert. The dark night sky was wearing one radiating white jewel, the midnight star. After a moment, she said softly, “Brown John, someday, somehow, I will find a way to be with him. I will, I swear it by the midnight star.”
“I think you might, Robin. I think you just might.” She gazed up at him, comforted, and saw the reflection of the star twinkling in his eyes.
Seventy
The Barbarian tribes were angered by Gath of Baal’s refusal to be their king, but it did not blunt their resolve to become organized and possess a champion whose magic was contagious for times of emergency. To resolve the problem, the Council of Chiefs argued and consulted throughout the night.
The next day the council announced their decision. As the bukko, Brown John, with his foresight and possible magic, had compelled the Death Dealer to act as their champion during this last, great emergency, and as his Grillards had organized and supplied the Barbarian Army, they invited Brown John to sit permanently with the Council of Chiefs. In addition, for the duration of any emergency, the bukko would serve as their leader. It was assumed by all, of course, that the old stage master still had the power to compel Gath of Baal to serve as their champion, and Brown John did not offer to confuse them with the facts. As no one considered Robin Lakehair to be more than a momentary romantic distraction for Gath, her name was not brought up at all.
Brown John formally accepted the offer, and made no mention of her either.
After hearty congratulations all-around, the tribes packed up and moved out the northern gate heading for the Great Forest Basin. They left Bahaara in flames. It burned brilliantly for hours, then the flames died leaving a blackened, smoking skeleton city to be ravaged by the sands and time.
The Barbarians were no longer an army. They were tribes again, and traveled on separate trails. All, that is, except for the Grillards. They accompanied the Cytherians. They followed them across the desert, down through The Narrows and across Foot Bridge. There they said their sentimental good-byes, and Robin turned east for Weaver. The Grillards continued north on Amber Road back to the Valley of Miracles.
Seventy-one
Reaching home, Robin and the Cytherian warriors were greeted warmly and with great honor and celebration. Robin was given a place of honor at the feast, anointed with incense and garlands of flowers, and, even though she was wan, pale and stood out vulgarly in her short hair, was praised as a daring and courageous girl of virtue and beauty. During the following weeks, the children came flocking to hear her tell of her adventures. Their adoration, along with a steady diet of milk, hardy bread and fresh fruit, quickly nourished her back to health and lifted her spirits so that once more she began to echo the melodies of the birds and the laughter in the ripple of the brook.
But when the wounded veterans of the campaign dragged their crippled limbs back into the taverns to tell their version of the war, things began to change. The soldiers relieved their aches and pains with quantities of hard wine and wildly exaggerated tales of their battles, laying dark emphasis on all that was unnatural, mysterious and brutaclass="underline" the satanic appearance of the Queen of Serpents, the devil fire within the horned helmet, the horrible transformation of the warlord into a hideous reptile, and the long, unexplained and intimate visits Robin Lakehair had paid the Dark One in his secret home in The Shades, a place where strong men feared to travel, yet a place from which she always returned unhurt and in remarkable health.
As these tales, along with those of the unholy carnage done by the Death Dealer and his axe, circulated, they grew uglier and more sinister according to the appetites of both the tellers and listeners. Consequently, many of the villagers who had suffered loss of loved ones during the conflict, were uncomfortably reminded of their unhappiness, and disturbed by unnatural fears. The stories, after becoming old and revolting, stopped. But Robin was an ever-present reminder of times best forgotten. And, as she herself had suffered no ill effects from her very questionable adventures, rumors began that she was in some way tainted by them.
If she was, of course, she could contaminate the holy work and spoil the cloth, so her spindle was taken away and given to another girl. Robin tried to bear up under the hurtful insult, believing that time would eventually restore her tribe’s belief in her.
But it was the gossip that was fed by time, and Robin, who could not comprehend these attacks against her, did not know how to argue against them. The situation compounded. She was shunned at the well, and the children were led from her presence. She spent much time in the forest, but too much time alone brought on a deep melancholy, and it became more and more difficult for her to return to her room in the evening.
Then one night she dreamed of the children themselves reviling her. She woke up drenched in sweat and sobbing. Panic made her heart pound and showed in her eyes. She jumped out of bed, threw on her bone-white tunic and slipped into her soft leather boots. With her belongings packed in a bedroll, and tied to her back, she dashed out of Weaver before first light. Her sacred whorl was held tight in her fist. But there were shadows under her eyes, and no lilt in her stride. There was no longer a friend to whom she dared say good-bye.
When she arrived at Pinwheel Crossing, the morning sun was beating down on her hair and shoulders. She studied the many signs marking the roads: Amber Road which would take her she did not know where, the road to Coin and the Kavens, then the road to Dowat territory. But they only made tears well in her eyes. She glanced back down Weaver Road, and looked at the sacred whorl in her fist. Defiantly she flung the whorl into the surrounding foliage and started down the Way of the Outlaw.
She had no other choice. She was an outcast.
Seventy-two
Robin reached Stone Crossing when the sun was low in the western sky. She climbed to its heights and paused there, gazing down at the camp spread out among the apple trees in the clearing beyond the river. A tentative smile lifted the corners of her small pert mouth, but before she was halfway down the slope, the smile was moving with abandon into her cheeks.
There were children playing on the ground under the trees. Seeing her approach, they stopped their game, and crowded around her, bombarding her with questions.
“Who are you?”
“What’s your name?”
“Did you come to see the show?”
“Are you going to stay?”
Robin listened with delight, then covered her ears playfully and they laughed, quieted. She considered them for a moment with warning eyes, then asked, “Are you going to let me say something, or aren’t strangers allowed to talk in Rag Camp?”
They smiled shyly, and nodded.
“All right,” she said, then squatted facing their small active faces. “Now, I am looking for a man called Brown John, is he here?”
“Oh yes,” they squealed.
They took her hands and led her across the clearing toward the stage where the three colorful wagons served as backdrops.
“He’s over here.”
“In the red wagon.”
“That’s his house.”
“Really?” Robin gasped admiringly, “I thought it was just part of the stage.”