The Golden Shrine Read online

  If it does some good, she’ll forgive you. If it doesn’t, she’ll never know, he thought. The same thing had occurred to him many times before. What had always stopped him was that, if it did no good, he would know.

  Maybe it was worth one try, for the sake of the fight against the Rulers. He knew he wouldn’t be doing it for his own pleasure. And, a moment later, he knew he was talking himself into doing what he’d intended not to do.

  And so he did. No one would be able to say any more that he hadn’t done everything he and anybody else could think of. He still had trouble believing it would make a difference when nothing else had. But there is—I suppose there is—the chance I’m wrong. As if I’ve never been wrong before!

  He made love to her as if she really were there with him, as if she could enjoy it, too. If he was going to rouse her, didn’t he need to rouse her in a different way first? Or did he? Was the connection between this and waking her entirely mystical?

  Was it entirely imaginary? Even as he moved, that struck him as much more likely.

  He finished. Then he pulled up his trousers and put Marcovefa’s back onto her. Even with the tent flap closed, even with the two of them in that small space, it wasn’t warm in there.

  Then he waited. And he waited. And he waited a little longer. And, when nothing happened, he went on waiting till the lamp ran out of fat and went dark, plunging the inside of the tent into something that would do for darkness absolute till he met the genuine article.

  And then, weary and despairing, he lay down beside Marcovefa. He didn’t intend to fall asleep. No matter what he intended, he did.

  “WHAT HAPPENED IN that fight? How did I get back here? Why don’t I remember? Did I get drunk last night? I don’t feel hung over.”

  Hamnet Thyssen opened his eyes. That did him some good—daylight leaked in through the tent flap, and a bit more under the bottom of the tent. Marcovefa was sitting up beside him. For a moment, he simply accepted that. Then, more slowly than he might have, he took in what it meant. “By God,” he whispered. “It worked. It really did.”

  “What did?” she asked. Before he could answer, she repeated, “I don’t feel hung over,” and went on, “But why am I so—so tired? It’s like I haven’t done anything for a long time, so even sitting up like this wears me out.”

  “Yes.” Hamnet nodded dizzily. “It’s just like that, as a matter of fact.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marcovefa, by contrast, sounded irritable. Her stomach rumbled. “I’m hungry,” she declared, as if daring him to doubt it. “It’s like I haven’t had enough to eat for weeks.”

  “It’s just like that, too,” Hamnet told her.

  “Will you please make sense?” She’d gone beyond irritable—she sounded as if she’d hit him if he didn’t do what she told him in a hurry.

  “I don’t know if I can, but I’ll try.” Hamnet Thyssen told the story as quickly as he could.

  Marcovefa heard him out. She stayed quiet for some time afterwards. Then she said, “We are on the steppe again? Not in the forest? If you are making some kind of joke with me . . .”

  “Why would I do that?” Hamnet said. “All you have to do is stick your head out of the tent. You’ll find out whether I’m telling the truth about that.”

  “Yes,” Marcovefa admitted. Another silence followed. Then she asked, “What is this mistletoe? I never heard of it. We don’t have it up on top of the Glacier.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Hamnet said. “It’s a small plant. It grows on trees. I don’t even know whether the Rulers knew about it before they came down into the Empire. Maybe they learned about it from a Raumsdalian wizard, or maybe they found out about it by themselves. I don’t suppose we’ll ever find out. Any which way, they used it on you, and for a long time all the magic we could think of to use didn’t do a thing against it.”

  “And you ended up . . . screwing me awake?” Marcovefa laughed. “Why didn’t you think of that sooner?”

  “I couldn’t believe it would work.” Hamnet heard the dull embarrassment in his own voice. “Well, I owe Trasamund an apology. I won’t be sorry to give it to him, either.” He muttered something under his breath.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “I said, it didn’t seem right to take you when you weren’t there to know what I was doing. Almost like taking an animal.”

  That made her laugh again, this time in surprise. “All these big animals you have down here—you could do something like that. I never thought of it before. But this worked, so I don’t mind. And if it didn’t work, I wouldn’t mind then, either, because I wouldn’t know.”

  “I finally figured that out for myself,” Hamnet answered. “It was about the last thing we had left to try.”

  “Can I get something to eat now?” Marcovefa asked. “With my belly full, I will figure out how to pay the Rulers back.”

  “If you can get up, they should have something over at the fires,” Hamnet said. “If you can’t get up, I’ll bring you something. You need to get your strength back—it’s been a while.”

  She tried. She plainly didn’t have an easy time of it, but she managed. “How long has it been?” she asked, wobbling. Hamnet told her. She shook her head in disbelief. “And I don’t remember anything after I got hit, not anything at all. I wondered how I came to the tent, not how half a season passed away. But my body tells me half a season did.”

  “Well, come on,” Hamnet said. “You’re here again, and a good thing, too. Not having you told us how much we need you, by God.” He hesitated, then added, “And I’ve missed you.”

  “I would have missed you,” Marcovefa said. “I didn’t miss anything.”

  Hamnet made do with that. He left the tent first, then held out his hand to help Marcovefa. She blinked against the light when she emerged, and swayed like a sapling with the Breath of God blowing. But she stubbornly stayed on her feet.

  They’d slaughtered a musk ox the night before. Chunks of the carcass lay in the snow. No worry about keeping meat at this time of year, only about keeping scavengers away from it. Pretty soon, when the sun turned, the weather would warm up—but the scavengers wouldn’t go away.

  Ulric Skakki was worrying a couple of ribs off a larger slab of meat. Alert as a lion, he looked up the instant he registered motion out of the corner of his eye. But, while motion didn’t surprise him, one of the people making the motion did. “What have we here?” he said, jumping to his feet and giving Marcovefa a courtier’s bow. “The face is familiar, but the name. . . . It’ll come to me, I’m sure.” Then he raised an eyebrow in Hamnet’s direction. “And?”

  One word was plenty. “And Trasamund turned out to be right,” Hamnet said. “Who would have imagined it?”

  “Everyone but you thought he might be,” Ulric answered. “You see? You have a magic wand after all.”

  That made Marcovefa laugh till she almost fell over. It made Hamnet’s ears feel as if they were on fire. “How much more meat is left on that slab?” he asked gruffly. “Enough for her and me?”

  “Oh, I expect so.” Ulric ambled over to toast the ribs he’d taken.

  Hamnet cut off two for Marcovefa and then two more for himself. “I could eat these raw,” Marcovefa said. “We would do that every so often, up on the Glacier. Not always enough dried dung for a fire. Raw meat isn’t bad.”

  “I’ve done it, too,” Hamnet said. “Go ahead, if you care to. I like them better cooked, though.”

  “Well, so do I.” Marcovefa made her way over toward the fire. She still swayed, but she managed. Hamnet followed. He was ready to grab her if she faltered, but she didn’t. He judged she was running more on determination than strength. Well, determination would serve, at least for a little while.

  She didn’t cook her meat for very long, but tore at it with strong white teeth. Hamnet let his char a bit more on the outside. He wasn’t so desperately empty as she was. He and Liv had done their best to feed her while she was beyond herself, but
he knew they hadn’t done well enough.

  “Ha!” Trasamund shouted the moment he saw Marcovefa. The jarl pointed a beefy forefinger at Hamnet Thyssen. “I told you so. Took you long enough to listen, didn’t it?”

  “You tell me all kinds of things,” Hamnet said. “I suppose you’re bound to be right every once in a while.” So much for an apology.

  Trasamund’s answer was brief, definite, and highly obscene. Had he said it in a different way, Hamnet would have tried to kill him. As things were, he only grinned. Marcovefa giggled. She could do that at the same time as he ate. Anything noisier might have made her slow down.

  That shout from the Bizogot made other people stick their heads out of their tents to find out what was going on. “They might be so many marmots when a fox yips,” Marcovefa said. She had an excuse to pause: she’d stripped one rib of meat and was about to start on the other. “I’ll want more after this,” she told Hamnet.

  “Nobody will stop you,” he said.

  But he wasn’t quite right. Trasamund came over and gave Marcovefa a big, smacking kiss. After he broke away from her, musk-ox grease gleamed on his lips. Liv embraced her. So did Runolf Skallagrim and Audun Gilli. Everybody wanted to make much of her. She wanted to eat, and she did.

  Ulric Skakki nudged Hamnet. “Nice to have hope again, isn’t it?” the adventurer said in a low voice.

  “Hope.” Count Hamnet tasted the word. In some surprise, he nodded: it seemed even richer and more mouth-filling than musk-ox marrow. “Hope.” He said it again, savoring the taste. “Yes, by God. It is!”

  “We’ve been a sad, raggedy lot lately—plague take me if we haven’t. Only the stubborn buggers stuck at all,” Trasamund said. “Well, things will look better soon. You can boil me for an egg if they don’t.”

  “You can boil all of us if they don’t,” Hamnet said. The Bizogot jarl didn’t try to tell him he was wrong.

  The fuss over Marcovefa finally brought Eyvind Torfinn and Gudrid out of their tent. “Well, well!” the scholarly earl said. “What do we have here? Hale again, are you? What splendid news!”

  If Gudrid thought the news splendid, she hid it very well. She glanced over to Hamnet. “Dead in bed, just like you,” she said.

  “Not dead—just asleep. And better that than a foe in bed,” Hamnet retorted. They eyed each other with complete mutual loathing. Not for the first time, Hamnet wondered why she didn’t back the Rulers since he opposed them. The only answer he’d ever found was that they likely didn’t want anything to do with her . . . even in bed. She couldn’t care for that. Well, too bad.

  “I am hale, yes. I have Hamnet to thank that I am hale,” Marcovefa said to Earl Eyvind. She eyed Gudrid, who suddenly lost her bluster. This side of murder, Hamnet was unlikely to do much to her. Magic offered Marcovefa so many unpleasant possibilities.

  Gudrid started cutting up meat for breakfast. Marcovefa went over and got herself some more from a different chunk of the musk-ox carcass. Gudrid watched her warily. Count Hamnet wondered whether Marcovefa could work any magic at all, weak as she still was.

  When Gudrid brought her meat to the fire, it exploded into brilliant white flame. Gudrid let out a startled shriek. She thrust her hand into the snow, so the sudden burst of heat must have burned her.

  Eyvind Torfinn hurried over to her. “How bad is it?” he asked anxiously.

  “Not—too.” Gudrid looked at her hand. “No, not too. But only luck it isn’t. That horrible bitch—” She sent Marcovefa a glare full of daggers.

  “If you would leave off quarreling with her and with Count Hamnet, you would give her no excuse for harassing you.” Eyvind Torfinn sounded earnest and sensible.

  That, of course, did him no good with Gudrid. “How am I supposed to eat?” she shrilled. “There’s nothing left of that piece of meat.”

  “Try another one, then.” Yes, Earl Eyvind was sensible. “I’m sure everything will be all right this time.”

  “I’m not.” But Gudrid’s only other choice was going hungry. She worried another gobbet off the carcass. Marcovefa, whose new rib had cooked in the most ordinary way imaginable, sat there smiling and watching her do it. Gudrid muttered to herself. Hamnet thought she wanted to tell Marcovefa to look away but didn’t have the nerve. He doubted whether he would have had the nerve himself.

  More than a little apprehensively, Gudrid took the new piece of meat over to the closest fire. It didn’t burst into white flame. It burst into searing green flame instead. Gudrid squalled and soothed her hand with snow—although, again, the real damage seemed small.

  “How am I supposed to eat?” she asked again, plaintively this time. Marcovefa . . . smiled.

  MARCOVEFA SEEMED TO gain strength far faster than finally getting enough to eat again could account for. By the end of her first day awake, she wasn’t far from where she had been before the Rulers wounded and enchanted her. So it seemed to Hamnet Thyssen, anyhow. “Did you enjoy making Gudrid squawk?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she said matter-of-factly. “Did you enjoy it, too?”

  “Some.” Hamnet felt uncomfortable admitting it, but he would have felt more uncomfortable lying.

  “Good. She should leave you alone. If she has not got the sense to do that, she will find out other people will not leave her alone. Me, for instance.” Marcovefa hesitated, something she rarely did. “But maybe I should have just slapped her instead of using a spell, even one that is not so big.”

  “What? Why?” Hamnet asked.

  “Because the Rulers, curse them, they felt it. I could tell. They know I am awake again,” Marcovefa said.

  “Oh.” The small word carried a lot of freight. “They’ll . . . try to do something about that, won’t they?”

  “Yes.” Marcovefa’s brief answer was freighted, too. “I am dangerous to them—and so are you.”

  “Me? Everybody says so, but I wish I could believe it,” Hamnet said.

  “Who woke me? You did!” Marcovefa said. “Could anyone else have done that? I do not think so! Do we have a better chance with me or without me? With me, I think. And you put me back in the fight.”

  “That doesn’t make me dangerous. It makes you dangerous,” Count Hamnet insisted. “And you are. You know it, and the Rulers know it.”

  “And they know about you, too, and they fear you,” Marcovefa told him.

  “The Rulers don’t fear much of anything.” Hamnet despised them, which didn’t mean he didn’t—reluctantly—respect them. Say what you would of them, they made formidable foes.

  “They fear us. Not just me. Us.” Marcovefa sounded so certain, she challenged Hamnet Thyssen not to believe her. And then she did something altogether different: she changed the subject. “You know how you got me to wake up?”

  “Yes. I finally listened to Trasamund,” Hamnet answered. “That isn’t something you want to do every day, not if you have any sense.”

  “This is not what I meant. You should know it is not,” Marcovefa said severely. “You know what you did to make me wake up?”

  “Of course I know what I did,” Hamnet said. “If it had been anything else, I would have tried it sooner.”

  “I was not awake then. I did not wake up till the morning. I am awake now.” Marcovefa waited with what Hamnet took to be quickly shrinking patience.

  A heartbeat or two more slowly than he should have, Hamnet realized why her patience might be shrinking. “Well, then,” he said after the light dawned, “let’s see what we can do about that.”

  What they did was what they’d done the night before. As Hamnet had known it would be, it was a great deal better with both of them awake to take pleasure in it. Afterwards, Marcovefa stroked his cheek. “We do all right together.”

  That was less than enormous praise, but enough to make Hamnet nod. “How much more can you hope for?” he said. Even managing to keep that much would be better than he’d done with Gudrid or Liv.

  As if picking the thought from his mind, Marcovefa said, “I am s
urprised you did not kill that mouthy woman while I lay asleep. She is like a flea—she bites and jumps away and then bites again.”

  “I came close a couple of times,” Count Hamnet admitted. “But people talk if you kill a woman.”

  “Let them. She is gone after that, and no one has to listen to her any more,” Marcovefa said ruthlessly.

  Hamnet didn’t care to think about that. Thinking about it was too likely to tempt him to do it. He changed the subject instead: “The Rulers’ wizards can sense you’re yourself again?”

  Marcovefa nodded. “I said so. I was not spinning fables.”

  “They’ll come after you, then. They’ll come after all of us.” Hamnet Thyssen wanted those to be questions. They came out as flat statements.

  She nodded again. “It is as we said this morning—I am sure they will. They are not fools. They would not be so much trouble if they were. If I were fighting us, I would come after us once I got such news. Would you not?”

  “Too right I would,” Hamnet said regretfully.

  “There you are, then.” Marcovefa might have been a schoolmistress going through a proof in geometry. Back in his school days, Hamnet had never imagined lying naked on a mammoth hide with a schoolmistress. Most teachers in Raumsdalia were men. Most of the ones who weren’t were neither young nor attractive. He supposed that rule was bound to have exceptions, but he’d never met one.

  Again, he hauled his thoughts back to the business at hand: “How can we beat them?” But that wasn’t the question he really needed to ask. He asked the one that was: “Can we beat them?”

  “They would not worry so much about us if they did not think we could,” Marcovefa answered.

  “How?” Hamnet asked bluntly.

  “I don’t know. We will have to find that way.” Marcovefa asked a question of her own: “Do you think you can find the way again?”

  Most of the time, Hamnet would have said no—it was too soon, and he not young enough. But he found he could after all, so he did. As he’d seen before, having a shaman for a lover wasn’t the worst thing in the world. No, indeed.