ARROWDALE
Karigan outfitted herself in an old wool coat,
wrapped the scarf that Aunt Brini insisted she wear around her
neck, and pulled on heavy mittens. In the sleigh was a thick,
coarse blanket she and her father could throw over their laps, and
sea-rounded cobbles that had been heated at the hearth to keep
their feet warm.
Her father took up
reins and coach whip, clucked to the pair of drays, Roy and Birdy,
and the sleigh lurched forward. The sun had broken clear of clouds
and clumps of snow dropped from fir boughs along the drive as they
glided along.
The air felt
lighter, not so bitter, and the chatter of birds reminded Karigan
the worst of winter was done and spring was on the
way.
“Why are we going to
town?” Karigan asked.
“You shall
see.”
Karigan settled
beneath the blanket, slightly annoyed. She said no more, however,
figuring her father would reveal his purpose in his own time, and
no sooner, even if she pestered him. So she kept her peace as the
horses paced steady on through drifts, their brasses and harnesses
jingling in a cheerful rhythm.
The G’ladheon estate
sat in the country just outside of Corsa, and once they joined the
main road, they picked up speed, for the road wardens had already
knocked down drifts and compacted the snow. Such maintenance was
spotty throughout the realm, but Corsa was prosperous, and the city
masters paid attention not only to the harbor, but to the roads as
well, knowing that while a great deal of trade happened along the
waterfront, goods must also be transported to and from the harbor
overland. Proper road upkeep, they asserted, could only promote the
city’s continued prosperity and its reputation as the foremost
merchant port in the lands.
Soon the woods
thinned, opening up to field and pasture, the snow smooth across
the landscape like thickened cream and undisturbed save for the
meandering tracks of hare and fox. Houses appeared with more
frequency as they approached Corsa. Karigan could sense the ocean,
too, feel the moist draft of it upon the air. And still her father
did not speak. He just sat there, subtly guiding the horses, his
gaze fixed on the road.
In Corsa proper, the
streets were lined with homes and shops, folk sweeping and
shoveling snow off front doorsteps. Children played in the street
throwing snowballs at one another, and a few shoppers struggled
along on uncertain footing.
Her father halted
the sleigh before a poulterer’s shop with plucked chickens, geese,
and turkeys displayed in the window.
“I’ll be back
momentarily,” he said. He hopped out of the sleigh and entered the
shop, returning minutes later with a large, dressed turkey, and
deposited it in the back of the sleigh.
He left her again
for other shops, returning with a huge wheel of cheese, a sack of
flour, a jug of molasses, a tub of butter, and other foodstuffs to
amply fill any larder. Karigan could only watch in astonishment as
the back of the sleigh was filled up. She did not think Cook’s
pantry had been so barren.
“What is ... ?” she
started to ask, when finally he sat beside her again and collected
the reins.
“You’ll see,” he
said.
He guided the sleigh
onto Garden Street. It wasn’t a particularly gardenlike
neighborhood, even when it wasn’t winter. Still, it was a solid
street of middle- to lower-class merchants and tradesmen. Their
houses stood tightly together, smoke issuing from
chimneys.
Her father brought
the drays to a halt in front of a tall narrow house sided with
cedar shakes, just like all the others.
“This is Garden
House,” he said, startling her. “We shall go in for a brief
visit—it’s time I brought you here, because as my heir, you will
one day become its steward.”
What was he talking
about? Before she could ask questions, however, he said, “Look and
listen, and you shall see.”
He spread blankets
across the backs of the horses, then removed a basket from the
sleigh, leaving the rest of his purchases in the rear. He strode
toward the house and Karigan could do nothing but
follow.
Her father bounded
up the front steps and knocked on the door. Within moments it was
opened by a matronly woman with steel gray hair. At once she
smiled.
“Master G’ladheon!”
she exclaimed.
“Greetings, Lona,”
he said. “How are you?”
“Never better,” the
woman replied, “and now even better than better to see you. Come
in, come in out of the cold!”
Karigan followed her
father into the dim entry hall and was conscious of others peering
from doorways and around corners.
Her father handed
the basket over to Lona. “Fresh baked oat muffins,” he
said.
She lifted the cloth
that covered them. “Ooh! They look delicious!”
“There is more out
in the sleigh,” her father said.
“Oh, Master
G’ladheon, you shouldn’t have!”
He grinned. “Of
course I should have.”
“Jed! Clare!” A boy
and girl came running down the stairs at Lona’s shout. “Master
G’ladheon has brought us some things. Please unload the back of his
sleigh for him.”
Without taking the
time to put on coats, the youngsters dashed out the
door.
“You must have tea
with us,” Lona said, her gaze falling curiously on
Karigan.
“I’m afraid we must
decline. Another time perhaps. But, I wish to introduce my
daughter, Karigan. One day she’ll be watching over Garden
House.”
Lona gave Karigan a
solemn curtsy. “I am pleased to meet you, mistress.”
“Me, too,” Karigan
said, much bemused.
“We are grateful for
all your father and Mistress Silva have done for us,” Lona
said.
Karigan glanced
sharply at her father at the naming of the Golden Rudder’s madam.
Garden House, however, did not have the air or appearance of a
brothel. She didn’t know what to make of it.
“Have we any new
residents?” her father asked.
Lona nodded and
glanced down the hall. “Vera, dear, please come meet Master
G’ladheon. Don’t be shy; he is most kind.”
A figure emerged
from the shadows of a doorway and limped toward them. When more
light fell upon her, Karigan’s heart skipped a beat. Much of her
face was a mass of burn scars. Karigan was immediately reminded of
her friend Mara, whose own face was badly scarred when Rider
barracks burned down. Karigan judged the young woman to be her own
age. She did not approach closely.
“Vera,” Lona said,
“this is Master G’ladheon, our patron, and his daughter,
Karigan.”
Vera curtsied, but
did not speak.
“Hello, Vera,”
Karigan’s father said with a nod. “I want you to know you are most
welcome here. Welcome to stay as long as you need. And
safe.”
“Thank you,” Vera
said in a tentative voice, and she receded back into the
shadows.
Lona drew closer to
Karigan and her father, and said in a low, confiding voice, “Vera’s
husband hurt her. Threw lamp oil on her and burned her for no
reason other than his dinner was a little late.” As Lona spoke,
Karigan could hear the fury behind her words. “He did that, and
other things. One of Mistress Silva’s people brought her to us from
Rivertown. It was best, we thought, she be hidden some distance
away from her husband.”
Karigan glanced at
her father and saw his brows knitted together in anger. “You did
right,” he said.
Just then, Jed and
Clare returned, arms loaded with some of the foodstuffs Karigan’s
father had purchased.
“Master G’ladheon,
it’s too much!” Lona said.
“There’s more out
there,” Jed said, with wide eyes.
Karigan’s father
just grinned.
Lona decided Karigan
must meet the rest of Garden House’s residents, and one by one,
they filed by to curtsy and bow to Karigan and her father. Mostly
they were young women, some with children, a babe or two of
suckling age among them.
Her father greeted
each of them by name, and received a kiss or smile in return, none
so reticent as Vera had been. Meanwhile, Jed and Clare brought in
the rest of the goods from the sleigh.
There was much
oohing and aahing over the size of the turkey, which seemed to
dwarf Jed, and once again Lona asked that they stay for tea or
supper, and once again, Karigan’s father declined.
They made their
good-byes and walked in silence back to the sleigh while the
residents of Garden House watched and waved from the front step and
windows.
As Karigan’s father
removed the blankets from the backs of the drays, she demanded,
“What was that all about? Who were those people?”
“They are those
who’ve come on bad times; some profoundly hurt and mistreated by
those who are supposed to love and protect them. Garden House
provides them refuge, when they cannot find it
elsewhere.
“It was Silva’s
idea, actually, and she founded the first in Rivertown. It’s called
River House. She seeks out the abused, those with no place to go,
and offers them a place for as long as they need. One in her
profession has occasion to find such persons.” He set the blankets
in the back of the sleigh and they both climbed up onto the bench.
It was cold right through the seat of Karigan’s
trousers.
“But why ... ?” she
began.
He clucked Roy and
Birdy on. “Let us just say Silva was once in a position similar to
those she aids today. She was inspired to help others because of a
stranger who once helped her.”
“You?”
He smiled
enigmatically. “Silva and I go back a long way.”
Karigan was glad he
and Silva helped those in need, truly she was, but she found it
difficult to reconcile the Golden Rudder and Garden House as being
part of the same equation.
“Silva runs a
brothel,” she said.
“Yes, she does,” her
father replied. “It’s what she knows. And, she is very good to
those in her employ. She does not force them into labor or to stay
as others do.”
Karigan remembered
Trudy, one of the prostitutes at the Golden Rudder, speaking well
of Silva. But it was still a brothel, a
business that traded in flesh. It was a demeaning profession, and
just plain wrong.
Her father drove the
sled down the main street of Corsa, past shops where one could
purchase exotic teas and spices and other goods from afar, and by
landmarks Karigan knew well from her childhood: the counting- and
customshouses, the stately residence of the lord-mayor, and the
offices of important merchants, including her father’s. She picked
out its bold, granite facade as they drove by.
A branching street
was inhabited by the guild houses of the merchants, coopers, and
longshoremen, among others. Another street held housing for
dockworkers and shipwrights. All appeared quiet, and would remain
so until the spring trading season picked up.
They paused on the
brink of a hill before the street descended straight down into
Corsa Harbor, to take in the view. The harbor bristled with masts,
some vessels tied up to wharves, others anchored offshore or moored
to buoys. The snow concealed the usual squalor of the waterfront,
made it appear more quaint. Traps and nets, pilings and barrels,
all the ephemera of a busy waterfront, were bumps beneath the
covering of snow.
Gulls lined up on
the wharves and waves thudded against wooden hulls. A way off,
Karigan could make out a raft of eider ducks adrift, undismayed by
the swells the storm had created. It was nearing sundown and the
edges of billowing clouds were tinted orange, while small islands
across the harbor, with their crowns of spiky spruce and fir, fell
into silhouette.
A crumbling keep of
the Second Age stood jagged on the headland of a larger island at
the entrance to the harbor, maintaining a ghostly vigil over all
who passed. Mordivelleo L’Petrie, a clan chief of old, had built
the keep. He’d known the harbor’s importance and stoutly defended
it from those who’d contest him for it, namely pirates and invaders
from foreign lands. After repelling a particularly ferocious
assault from the Under Kingdoms, he was formally invested as the
prince of the region that included the harbor, today’s L’Petrie
Province.
Karigan’s gaze swept
along the crescent contour of the shoreline, and there, near where
the Grandgent River emptied into the ocean, were the warships of
Sacoridia’s navy, and the yards that serviced them. It was a
testament to Corsa’s importance as a port that the navy’s largest
fleet berthed in its harbor, guarding it, the realm, and the
all-important river from any enemies. Mordivelleo L’Petrie, she
thought, would be pleased.
“I was going to show
you Garden House when you finished service with the king,” her
father said presently, the sunset casting an orange glow on his
face as he gazed out to sea. “But it seemed appropriate to take you
there today. I hope you consider it a worthy endeavor, something to
keep going when the time for you to inherit comes along. Many of
our residents have moved on and done well for themselves.” After a
long pause, he added, “I don’t suppose I’ve redeemed myself in your
eyes at all.”
“Is that why you
brought me to Garden House?” Karigan asked.
“I did not wish for
you to judge my relationship with Silva based purely on your
knowledge of the brothel.”
“What is your relationship with Silva?”
“We are friends of
long standing.”
“And you’re a client
of her brothel.”
Her father did not
answer, but snapped the reins over the haunches of the drays and
guided them away from the harbor.
They left the town
behind, the sleigh gliding into the deepening dark. With the
setting sun, the air chilled perceptibly and Karigan burrowed
beneath the blanket. The cobbles at her feet had gone cold long
ago.
She would receive no
real answers about the brothel from her father. He had told her
there were things he’d never discuss with her. And, she supposed,
she did not want to know the specifics. What she really wanted was
for none of this to have happened in the first place. She wished
she had never heard of the Golden Rudder; she wished he’d deny his
connection to it and say that it was all just a huge
misunderstanding.
But he did not, and
it was not. She could wish all she wanted, but it wouldn’t change a
thing.
And yet, she
reflected, because of his association with the brothel and its
madam, he was doing good works such as supporting Garden House, his
efforts no doubt saving the lives of those like Vera. Karigan may
have had a privileged upbringing, but she wasn’t so naive that she
didn’t recognize the need for such places.
As she thought about
it, she realized she’d only known a single, narrow facet of her
father. Now she had discovered he was just as complicated and
complex as any other person.
So absorbed in her
thoughts had she been, that when the sleigh hit a bump, she was
surprised to discover her father was not taking the main road home,
but rather a narrow lane bordered by forest.
“Where are we?” she
asked.
“Arrowdale Road,”
her father said.
Karigan’s
disorientation faded immediately. Arrowdale was a meandering old
track that was the “long way” home. She used to go riding on it
sometimes, but to her it had always seemed so forsaken, a little
spooky. There were only a few, long abandoned homesteads along it,
taken over by the march of the forest. History held that some
battle of the Long War had taken place in the folds of the land,
hence the name Arrowdale.
“Your mother and I
used to ride out this way at night sometimes,” her father said
unexpectedly. “The stars were always lovely, and no one bothered us
out here.”
Karigan glanced up,
and between the bordering tips of evergreens, the stars were
bright. The Hunter was making his seasonal trek to the west, and
the Sword of Sevelon was in the half-raised position, slowly
rotating upward from its winter’s rest.
They entered a
clearing and the full expanse of the heavens opened overhead. Her
father halted Roy and Birdy to gaze at the stars and Karigan
imagined her parents young and in love coming to this
spot.
“Now that you know I
am quite imperfect,” he said, “can you accept that I misspoke
earlier? I can’t say I like magic, or the fact it puts you in
harm’s way, but I would never view my daughter as
cursed.”
“You never told me
about mother’s bloodline,” Karigan said.
“Stories. Stories
told by superstitious islanders.” He paused, then said, “Tell me,
where did you find the muna’riel?”
“You knew of it
then?”
She perceived, more
than saw, him nodding.
“I found it in
mother’s chest among her things.”
“How did it ... ? I
had it locked in my sea chest, down in the study.” He shuddered
beside her. “Magic. I guess it wanted to be found.”
It was, Karigan
thought, a perceptive statement from one with an aversion to magic.
“You didn’t give it to me as mother wanted.”
Silence followed her
words, then he said, “I desired to protect you from the magic. Or,
at least not encourage it. I even let your aunts believe your
mother was speaking nonsense in the end.”
Karigan wished she
could see his features better in the dark, but she imagined his
expression downcast to match his voice.
“I see I was wrong,”
he continued. “Magic found you anyway. Do you have the muna’riel
with you? May I see it?”
Karigan dug beneath
her coat and into her pocket to retrieve the moonstone. She held it
aloft on her mittened hand, the shock of light making the horses
snort and bob their heads. The brilliance of the stone chased
shadows deep into the woods, and the snow in the clearing
intensified the silver-white light almost to blinding.
Karigan’s father
shielded his eyes until the light ebbed to a more gentle glow. The
snow on the trees that ringed them glittered as if strewn with
diamonds.
“I forgot how bright
it was,” he murmured. “I can’t remember when your mother first
showed it to me. After we were married, of course, but before you
were even conceived, I think. She never explained how she had
acquired it, but she said it was Eletian. When I pressed her about
it, she’d only laugh and find ways to distract me.”
“She knew how you
felt about magic,” Karigan said.
“Yes, I suppose she
did. And I suppose I chose not to see it in her, even though the
muna’riel would light only for her and not me.”
“I wish I could help
you understand,” Karigan said, “that it’s not the magic itself that
is evil or good, but the user who makes it so.”
But he did not
reply. He sat there, his eyelids drooping and head nodding until
his chin rested on his chest. He breathed deeply as though
asleep.
“Father?” Karigan
asked. She nudged him, but he did not stir. She jabbed him harder,
and still no response. He seemed only to sleep, but
...
She glanced at the
horses, and they stood with heads lowered as if also
slumbering.
A light blossomed in
the center of the clearing. A silvery, fluid flame that flickered
and grew into a column the height of a person.
“Five hells,” she
murmured.
The light of
Karigan’s moonstone spread toward the flame, surrounding it as if
to embrace it.
Finally, a voice said, you
have come.