A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories Read online

  When they reached the end of the short tunnel, the princess stopped and stared dully at the chain pegged into the rock wall; the links were rusty with disuse, for her greatgrandfather had ended the sacrifices which had once been a part of the twice-yearly Festival. The only sacrifices for generations had been the sheaf of corn burnt at every threshold for the winter solstice. Dully she turned her back to the low rough wall and leaned against it, and raised her arms, the huge sleeves belling out around her like wings, that her uncle might the easier fasten the chains to her wrists. How long? she wondered, and did not know. In the old days, she had read, the priests killed the victim when he, or, rarely, she, was chained, that he might not truly suffer the agonies of thirst and starvation; and then left him there for the seven days tradition said it would have taken him to die. When the waiting was done, they took the body away and buried it honorably. She thought, wearily, that she doubted her uncle would have the mercy of the old priests.

  One torch they left her; one of the courtiers tipped it against the wall, where it trailed soot up to the ceiling; then the seven of them turned and left her, never looking back, as she, wide-eyed, watched them go, and listened to the echo of their footsteps fading into silence, into the grass under the sky beyond the stony cavern in the hill.

  Then she broke, and screamed, again and again, till her voice tore in her throat; and she hurled herself at the ends of the chains till her wrists were cut and bleeding; but still she pulled at her fetters and sobbed, and clawed backward at the indifferent wall, and kicked it with her soft slippered feet. Then she sank to her knees—her chains were too short to permit her to sit down—and turned her cheek against the rock, and knew no more for a time.

  The ache in her shoulders and wrists woke her. The torch had nearly burnt itself out, and what light there was was dim and red and full of shadows. She sighed and stood up, and leaned against the wall again. She closed her eyes. Almost she could imagine that she heard the hill’s heartbeat: a soft thud, thud. Thud.

  Her eyes flew open. I am no Festival offering, she thought. I’ve been left for the monster; the monster has come for my name day. That is why I am here. A ritual of purification—if it is my fault the thing came, then perhaps I do belong to it; gods, I can’t bear it, and she bit down a scream. Thud. Thud. Please make it hurry. She gave a last horrible, hopeless jerk at her chains, but her mind was too clear for this now, and the pain stopped her at once. The torch flickered and burnt lower yet, and for a moment she did not recognize the antler shadows from the other shadows on the low smoky wall. Then she saw his great head with the wide man’s shoulders beneath it, the stag pelt furring him down to his chest. But it was a man’s body, naked and huge, and a man’s huge hands; and panic seized her, and she screamed again, though her voice was gone and the noise was only a hoarse gasp. But the stag head’s brown eyes saw the cords that stood out on her neck, and saw the terror that pressed her against the wall. He had taken soft, slow steps thus far, but now he hurried, and his huge hands reached out for her. She had just the presence of mind to be able to close her eyes, though she could not avoid the warm animal smell of him; and she felt his hands close around her bleeding wrists, and she fainted.

  She came to herself lying stretched out on the ground. She was not sprawled, as though she had fallen, but rested peacefully on her back, her poor sore wrists laid across her stomach. She blinked; she had not been unconscious long, for the torch still burnt, guttering, and by its light she saw an immense shadow looming over her, that of a stag, with antlers so wide he must turn his head with care in the narrow tunnel. She raised herself to her elbows, wincing at her shoulders’ protest. Surely …? The stag looked gravely down at her. She sat up the rest of the way, and gingerly touched one wrist with a finger. The stag stepped forward and lowered his nose between her hands; his eyes were so dark she could not see into them, and his breath smelled of sweet grass. “Yes, they are sore,” she said to him stupidly, and he raised his great head again, the heavy, graceful neck proudly balancing his crown. How did I …? Did I imagine …? She looked at the wall. The chains had been pulled clear out of the wall, their staples bowed into broken-backed arches; they lay on the floor near her, flakes of rust mixing with smears of fresh blood.

  The stag dropped his nose again, and touched her shoulder as gently as a snowflake landing, or a mare greeting a new foal. She stood up as shakily as any foal; her head swam. Then she took an eager step forward, toward the other end of the tunnel, toward the grass and the sky—but the stag stepped before her, and blocked her way. “But …” she said, and her eyes filled with the tears of final exhaustion, of desolation of spirit. The stag knelt before her. At first she did not understand, and would have stepped over and around him, but he was stubborn. She seated herself meekly on his back at last, and he rose gently and walked out of the cave.

  She shivered when the first breath of air from the hill touched her face, although it was a warm night. She looked up in wonder at the sky, and the stars twinkling there; she could not believe she had spent so little time in the tunnel, leaning against the rock wall, with her arms aching and her mind holding nothing but despair. She looked uncertainly back the way her uncle had led them, though she could not see far for the trees that ringed the small valley. But it seemed to her that the shadows under the trees were of more things than leaves and stones, and some of them were the shapes of human watchers; and it seemed to her too that a low murmur, as from human throats, rose and mixed with the gentle wind; but the murmur was a sound of dismay. The stag paused a moment a few steps beyond the cave’s threshold, and turned his fine head toward the murmur, toward the path to the city; then he turned away and entered the forest by a path only he could see.

  They stopped at dawn, and he knelt for her to dismount; she stretched her sore limbs with a sigh, and sat stiffly down. The next thing she knew it was twilight again, the sun setting, and a small fire burnt near her, and beside that lay a heap of fruit. There were several small apples, and sweet green gurnies, which must have come from someone’s orchard, for the gurny tree did not grow wild so far north. She did not care where they had come from, though, and she ate them hungrily, and the handful of kok-nuts with them. She recognized the sound of a stream nearby, and went toward it, and was glad of a drink and a wash, though she hissed with pain as she rubbed the caked scabs on her wrists. When she returned to the little fire, the great stag was standing beside it. He stamped the fire out with his forefeet and came to her and knelt, and she trustfully and almost cheerfully climbed onto his back.

  They travelled thus for three nights. Each evening she awoke to a fire and to a small offering of fruit and nuts; but she had never eaten much, and it was plenty to sustain her. Even though she did not know it, her eyes grew brighter, and a little color crept back to her pale face; but only the stag saw, and he never spoke. On the third morning, though she lay down as she had done before, she did not sleep well, and once or twice she half awoke. The second time she felt a flickering light against her closed eyelids, and sleepily she opened them a little. A huge man knelt beside a small fire, setting down a small pile of fruit beside it, and then prodding it with a stick to make it burn up more brightly. He stood up beside it then and held his hands out as if to warm them. He was naked, though his heavy hair fell past his shoulders, and his thick beard mixed with the mat of hair on his chest and down his belly. His hair was a deep red brown, like the color of a deer’s flank, and the bare skin beyond was much the same color. If this were not enough to know him by, the antlers that rose from his human head would have reassured her. She closed her eyes again and drifted peacefully back to sleep; and when she awoke at twilight, the stag lay curled up with his legs folded neatly under him and the tip of his nose just resting on the ground.

  That night they climbed a hill face so steep that she had to cling to his antlers to prevent herself from sliding backward; the incline did not seem to distress him, although she could feel the deep heave of his breathing between her k
nees. About midnight they came to a level place, and she saw that a vast lake stretched to their right, and the moon shone silver upon its untroubled surface. She could not see its farther shore; the silver faded to blackness beyond the edge of her eyesight. The stag stood for a few moments till his breathing calmed, and then took a path that led them away from the lake, through more trees, and then to a broad field that smelled sweetly of grass and sleeping cattle, and then into more trees. But something now twinkled at them from beyond the trees; something too low and golden for a star. Her heart sank. She had thought as little as she might for the past four nights; she knew irresistibly that she must be being carried to somewhere, but she was sorry that the somewhere was so close. She reached out and grasped a silky-smooth horn. “Stop,” she said. “Please.”

  He stopped and turned his head a little that he might roll one brown eye back at her. She slipped off his back and stood hesitating. Then she laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Very well.” He stepped forward, and she kept pace at his side.

  The golden twinkle resolved itself into a ring of torches set on slender columns in a semicircle around a small, bare courtyard before a great stone hall. The stag walked without pause up the low steps to the door, a door high and wide enough even for his branching crown. Still she kept pace, and before her was a vast chamber, dimly lit by a fire in a hearth at its far end. There were several tall chairs before the fire, and from the shadows of one of them a tall narrow man with pale hair stood up and came toward them. “Welcome, child,” he said to her; and to him, “Thank you.”

  She did not care for the big hall; it was too large and too empty, and the shadows fell strangely from its corners; and the last roof she had stood under had also been of stone—she shuddered. She would not pass these doors. The man saw the shudder and said gently, “It’s all over now. You’re quite safe.” She looked up at him—he was very tall—and wanted to say, “How do you know?” But if she asked one question, a hundred would follow, and she was tired, and lonely, and had been trained never to ask questions.

  She did not remember if it was the stag or the tall man who showed her to the long narrow room with the row of empty beds in it; she woke up burrowed in blankets in the bed nearest the door, with sunlight—late-morning sunlight, she estimated, blinking—flaming through the row of windows high above her head.

  Her sleeping hall, she discovered, was built out from one wall of the great central chamber she had peered into the night before. The tall man sat on the front steps she had climbed, her hand on the stag’s shoulder, the night before; his long hands dangled idly between his bent knees. He looked up at her as she stepped from the sleeping hall; his hair blazed as yellow as corn in the sunlight. He wore a plain brown tunic over pale leggings and soft boots, and around his neck on a thong was a red stone. She turned away from him; around her on three sides were trees, and on the fourth side, the great grey hall; overhead the sky was a clear, hard blue. She lowered her eyes, finally, and met the man’s gaze; he smiled at her.

  “I am Luthe,” he said.

  She did not answer immediately. “I am Ruen. But you know that, or I would not be here.” Her voice—she could not help it—had a sharp, mistrustful edge to it.

  Luthe spread his fingers and looked down at them. “That is not precisely true. I did not know your name till now, when you told it to me. Your … difficulties … were brought to my attention recently, and it is true that I asked, um, a friend if he would help you out of them. And I asked him to bring you here.”

  “A friend,” she said, the edge to her voice gone. She closed her eyes a moment; but there was little she cared to remember, and she opened them again, and tried to smile. “It is pleasanter to thank you—and him—without thinking about what, and how much, I have to be grateful to you for.” She paused. “I would like to declare, here, today, that I have no past. But then I have no future either. Have you a use for me?”

  “Yes,” said Luthe.

  “I suppose you will now tell me that I may not forsake my past so? Well. I am not surprised. I never learned so much as … my uncle wished to teach me, but I did learn a little.”

  “You learned far more than he wished you to,” Luthe said grimly. “Had you cooperated to the extent of idiocy, as would have pleased him best, he would not have had to disturb the weather for half the world to invent portents for his insignificant corner of it.”

  She smiled involuntarily. She had never heard anyone speak with less than complete respect of the Regent; and these few words from this strange man reduced her uncle to nothing more than a nuisance, a bothersome thing to be dealt with; and suddenly her past was not the doom of her future. “That awful weather was his …?” She sobered. “But I am still a poor excuse for a queen, even if he is not a—an entirely honorable Regent.”

  Luthe laughed. “You are wrong, my child. Only a real queen could call that poison-worm only ‘not entirely honorable.’ The defects in your education can be mended.” He stood up, and bowed. “Which is the first item on our agenda. We will do our poor best to look after certain historical and philosophical aspects.…”He paused, for she was looking at him uneasily.

  “Truly I am not good at lessons,” she said.

  “You wouldn’t know,” Luthe said cheerfully. “You’ve never had any. With me you will have real lessons. And your … um … lesson in practical application will be along presently.”

  “Will I—may I—see my … the stag again?”

  “Yes,” said Luthe. “He will return. Come along now.”

  She sighed, but the custom of obeying orders was strong.

  She had no way of knowing it, but visitors to Luthe’s mountain often found themselves a little vague about the passing of the days. There was something about the air that was both clearer and fuzzier than the air she was accustomed to; she slept heavily and dreamlessly and woke up feeling happy. She learned a great deal in a very short time, and was astonished to discover she could.

  “Do stop giving me that fish-eyed look,” Luthe said irritably; “I’m not magicking anything over on you. You have a perfectly good brain, once you are permitted to use it. Your uncle’s absence provides permission. Now pay attention and don’t brood.”

  One morning Luthe announced, “No lessons today. I anticipate visitors.” She looked up in alarm. She had seen no one but Luthe since the stag had brought her here, and she knew at once that the visitors would have something to do with her future. She tried not to be dismayed, but she was still enjoying the novelty of enjoying anything, and dreaded interruption; the habit of pessimism was not easily shaken, even by Luthe’s teaching.

  Soon she heard the sound of … something … making its way through the trees around the courtyard where they sat. Just before she saw the great stag separate himself from the shadows of the trees Luthe stood up. The stag’s footfalls were soft; the noise was made by someone who staggered along beside him, one arm over his neck. This man wore tattered leggings under a long white tunic, now torn and dirty, the left side matted brown and adhering to his side. The stag stopped just inside the ring of trees. “Oof,” said the man, and fell to the ground.

  “You needn’t have half killed him,” Luthe said. “You might also have carried him here.” The stag looked at Luthe, who shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Well, he is here, which is what matters.”

  Ruen stared at the stag, who turned his head to return her gaze; but if he said anything to her, she did not hear it.

  “Ruen,” Luthe said, and she realized by his tone that he had repeated her name several times.

  “I ask pardon,” she said, and snapped her eyes away from the stag’s.

  Luthe looked at her and smiled faintly. “Here is the practical lesson I promised you.”

  She blinked, and glanced down at the man on the ground. He stirred and moaned; the moan had words in it. She knelt beside him, and his eyes flickered open, saw her, tried to focus on her. “Ugh?” he muttered. “Uh. Oh.” His eyes closed again.

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bsp; “I suggest you get him to the nearest bed in the nearest sleeping hall,” Luthe said briskly, “and I will join you in a little time and tell you what to do next.”

  The man on the ground was a lot bigger than she was, but she lifted one of his arms to drag it around her shoulders. He feebly tried to help, and she managed to get him to his feet. “Sorry,” he muttered in her ear. “Not feeling quite … well.”

  They stumbled the few steps to the nearer of the two long sleeping rooms, and she hauled him up the few steps to the doorway, and tried to lower him gently onto the first bed; but his weight was too much for her, and he fell with a grunt. Luthe arrived then, and handed her warm water in a basin, and herbs and ointment, and long cloths for bandages, and a knife to cut away the stained tunic. She’d never dressed a wound before, but her hands were steady, and Luthe’s patient voice told her exactly what to do, although he did not touch the man himself. The wound, or wounds, were curious; there were two neat round holes in the man’s side, one of them deep and the second, a hand’s length distant, little more than a nick in the skin. She stared at them as she bathed the man’s side; they might have been made by a blow from a huge stag’s antlers.

  When she had done all she could to Luthe’s satisfaction and could at last leave the man’s bedside, the stag was nowhere to be found.

  She slept in the bed next to his that night, with a fat candle burning on a little table between them, but he slept peacefully, and when she rose at dawn and blew the candle out, she stood looking down on the man’s quiet face, and noticed that he was handsome.

  Later that morning he awoke and, when he discovered her sitting beside him, said, “I’m hungry.” When she brought him food, he had pulled himself nearly to a sitting position against the bedhead, but his face said that it had not been a pleasant effort; and he let her feed him without protest.