Skin (41 page)

There were no deer antlers adorning the doorways of the central street and many houses
were emptied of their shrines. ‘The totems are abandoned,' said Sulis. ‘This is not
well.'

Both wary of what we might find, our pace slowed as we approached the Tribequeen's
compound. We passed through the gateway, and what we saw brought us to stillness.

Clustered around the entrance to the Great House was a large gathering of my townspeople,
some sitting, others sprawled on the ground. At the sound of our footsteps, they
turned to us with an inhuman slowness. Their eyes were dark and staring, their faces
gaunt.

‘What is this, Journeywoman?' I whispered, filling with dread.

‘This is Troscad,' said Sulis with shock in her voice. ‘The ritual fast. They are
hungering against the Tribequeen's injustice.'

‘But why? How does Fraid betray them?'

‘We cannot ask them. Troscad prohibits both word and food. Go to your kitchen house,'
she commanded under her breath. ‘Wait there
for me. Speak to no one. Not a word.
I will go to Fraid and learn what has happened.'

Cah was alone in the kitchen, at the quern stone, grinding wheat. ‘You are back,'
she said, standing.

‘What has happened?' I asked. ‘Why do the townspeople make Troscad?'

She knelt back down at the quern. ‘Your bedfellow has taken Caer Cad.'

It took me a moment to realise she spoke of Ruther.

‘Ay,' she said, working the stone. ‘He appealed for clientage with Rome but Fraid
would not agree. Then he worked secretly last winter to gather support from the warriors.
He challenged for the kingship and won it by one vote in the council.'

I gasped in astonishment. ‘Where is Fraid?'

‘One of the farmhouses gives her refuge. I know not which.'

‘And Llwyd? Surely he has not sanctioned Ruther as Tribeking?'

‘Of course not. But Ruther does not care for the ways of the journeymen now. Amusing,'
she snorted, ‘that his great love is a journeywoman in training.'

‘I am no love of his.'

She poured a fresh cupful of grain into the quern hole. ‘Do not say so too loudly.
It is rumoured that he is still angered by your marriage refusal, despite that it
is three seasons past. If you were clever, you would keep far from his sight.' She
chuckled and looked up at me. ‘Not the welcome home you were expecting, eh?'

‘I must find Llwyd,' I murmured, too distracted to respond.

‘Be careful,' she warned. ‘Ruther has cast Llwyd from the walls of Cad. He forbids
the townspeople to see him and he is not a forgiving Tribeking. Many townspeople
are fasting against his kingship and he'll see them die for their effort, I'm sure
of it.'

‘And you? Do you not fast against this wrongdoing?'

‘I'm busy enough cooking here with only Ianna to help me. Whether I make bread for
Fraid or Ruther, it is all the same to me.'

I flinched at her heartlessness, then realised that she had mentioned only Ianna.
‘Where is Heka? Does she not help you?'

Cah raised her eyebrows. ‘She serves in Ruther's house. He looked favourably, as
I did, upon her spine and grit and likes her to attend his person.' She looked at
me. ‘I miss her being here,' she said. ‘She was good company.'

Ignoring her, I turned and walked to the door. ‘Cah,' I said, turning back. ‘Where
is Neha?'

‘Heka took her. She preferred Heka to all others when you were gone.'

I took a sharp breath then turned and left.

I stood at the southern gate, looking over the fields of Summer in the afternoon
light. Any one of the farmers could have been hiding Llwyd and would not have said
so. But if my sense of him was true, he would be ritualling in response to this crime
and there was a place I might find him.

The shadows were long when I reached the Oldforest. If Llwyd had been challenged—if
he could not ritual freely by the river—he would come here.

I held to the river track, peering among the trees. At last I saw the shape of his
pallid robes, stark against the dark trunks that ringed my journey pool. He had marked
out a circle of branches close to the river and had placed within it small carvings
and statues that honoured the deer. I stopped at the boundary, still wary to enter
a journeyman's circle without my skin. ‘Journeyman?'

He startled at my voice. ‘Who is there?' His vision had weakened.

‘It is Ailia. Returned.'

‘Ailia!' His steps were laboured as he came forward to embrace
me. Through his woollen
cloak, I felt the bones surfaced by his fast. ‘Have you learned of Ruther?' he asked.

‘Ay. But little else. I know nothing of the invasion—'

‘We are to fall, Ailia.' His voice was empty. ‘The Romans have claimed Stour Valley,
Brae Cad and Caer Hod. We are clear in their sights.'

I stared at his face, ashen with hunger. ‘How does Ruther propose to meet this attack?'

‘With full submission. This is his purpose. We are to be slaves of Rome.'

I shook my head. ‘He cannot be Tribeking without your sanction.'

‘He does not observe our laws now. And he has the support of the warriors who betrayed
Fraid.'

‘But the township hungers against him.'

‘Yes. They still love Fraid. There is great division.'

Evening had began to dim the forest. Llwyd motioned to a fallen log, covered with
moss, and we sat. ‘We will go to him together,' I said. ‘He is a tribesman of Durotriga.
He must listen to his Journeyman Elder.'

‘He will not. He is of the Roman mind. He listens to his own counsel and that of
other warriors.'

Llwyd shivered in the cooling air and I moved closer to him, placing my hand at his
back. ‘Stay steady, Journeyman,' I whispered. ‘We will survive this.'

He turned to me. ‘Will we? It is the journeymen and -women who are first slaughtered.
Most violently. Most publicly. There is no better way to subdue a tribe than by destroying
those who hold its knowledge. The Romans know this. Whole towns are made subject
by the slaughter of wisepeople.'

My heart quickened.

‘If we are killed,' he continued, ‘who will ensure the laws of skin
are not broken?
Who will listen when the Mothers speak?' His voice, so resonant at festival time,
was hoarse and feeble. ‘I did not think this could happen, Ailia. I thought our knowledge
was beyond destruction.'

I looked to the coursing river, to the oaks rising like warriors around us. I remembered
the Singing and it filled me with strength. ‘It
is
beyond destruction.' My voice
was steady. ‘This land is our knowledge. They are one and the same. Come.' I reached
for his hand, bidding him rise.

Llwyd did not move. ‘It is too late. They are too strong.'

‘We will be the first to fight and win against them,' I urged. ‘The first of Albion
to keep the laws of our choosing. They will not have us. Others will see our triumph
and be strengthened by it.'

Llwyd stared at me. ‘How will we succeed where Albion's greatest fighting tribes
have failed?'

‘Because…' My answer crumbled. Sulis's doubt had seeped into my sureness. I could
find no words to tell him. Yet I was the being he had yearned for, the soul that
would protect the knowledge he loved.

With shaking fingers, I unfastened the neck of my robe and pulled away the soaked
wad of dressing. Then I took his hand and pressed it to my chest. ‘Because we will
fight with the blessing of the Kendra.'

I flinched in pain as his gnarled fingers traced over the raw crusts of my cut. A
deep ache arose as he touched.

Slowly his face lit as he read the round, spiralling shape of the mark. Then his
breath caught. ‘There is song in the wound,' he gasped. ‘You are made Kendra—?'

‘Yes,' I said.

‘But what of your skin?' he whispered, hope thinning his voice.

I re-pinned my robe, terrified to answer. How would I hold the title if Llwyd would
not acknowledge it? ‘The Mothers have marked me without skin.'

His face blackened. ‘No,' he muttered. ‘They have not. They cannot mark a Kendra
without skin.'

‘But yet they have,' I said, praying that he would hear me. ‘And there is sense to
it…there is a reason—'

‘Stop!' He rose to his feet. ‘There can be no reason. You are in grave breach of
law with this. I can hear no more—'

‘Wait!' I cried as he walked away. ‘I told them I was skinless! I asked them to return
me, and yet…' I paused.

Llwyd stopped.

I took a long breath. I could be shunned anew, or worse, for the words I was about
to say. ‘The Mothers have no need of skin.'

Slowly, he turned to face me. Never, even in the peaks of ritual, had I seen him
so inflamed. He sank to the ground, where he knelt, calling on the Mothers, bidding
me to silence my violation.

I crouched before him, clutching his arms, which shook me away with unexpected force.
‘You speak against skin!' he cried. ‘Against the very source of skin!'

‘I do not, Llwyd! Hear me!' I pleaded. ‘It is ours!
Our
truth! It belongs to the
hardworld. Skin is
our
understanding of what
they
create.'

He stilled for an instant and looked at me.

‘Their creation is beautiful beyond measure,' I said, ‘and skin is how we know it,
and how we protect it, but they themselves do not need skin.
We
are bound by it.
But the Mothers are not.'

A deep confusion darkened his gaze.

‘For us, skin is life itself,' I continued, ‘and by the Mothers, I would give my
own eyes and tongue to have it. But I do not. And yet the Mothers want me as Kendra.
And if you want my knowledge, Journeyman, you must accept me.'

Llwyd's stare was cold and bewildered. ‘I have loved you and protected you and trusted
in your gift. But you are asking me to speak
against the truth upon which my life
is built…'

My heart clenched. Could I ask this of him? I had no other choice. If he did not
hear me, there would be no Kendra, no future. ‘It is a greater truth that I bring,'
I said. ‘A new understanding of the Mothers' greatness. How powerful are they who
are more powerful than skin?'

I watched his face closely as this new truth—that our spirit beings, our Mothers,
did not need skin—moved through him, shifting, turning, then embedding.

‘Perhaps,' I continued, ‘the Mothers have chosen me precisely because I am unskinned,
because they want us to know that skin is
not
theirs. It is ours.'

He sat motionless.

We both turned at the rustle of an animal close behind us. A honey-coloured doe lifted
her head from the forest floor, tasting our scent on the breeze. It took two delicate
steps toward us, then paused before taking flight into the evening. ‘My totem appears…'
murmured Llwyd, staring after it.

He turned to me then dipped his head to kiss my fingers. ‘Kendra,' he whispered,
his breath warm against my knuckles.

Llwyd knew where Fraid was hidden. As he led me north through the laneways in the
last drifts of dusk, we shaped a strategy.

‘I will speak with Ruther,' I said. ‘There is still a chance I can turn his view
and gather the allegiance of his fighting men.'

‘Speak with him,' agreed Llwyd. ‘You alone could sway him. But do not speak in anger.
He will always match it. Use the power you hold over him—it will be even greater
now. Use his love for you.'

‘It should be the Mothers he loves,' I said.

‘He loves them no longer, but he loves them in you. Let him see them that way.'

I glanced at him. ‘You are the cleverest of us all.'

‘Remember, he does not look well upon me now,' he said, waving away my praise. ‘Do
not tell him that you have met with me.'

We arrived at a farmhouse, nestled among apple trees on the banks of the Nain in
outer Cad. It was well kept and not long built, one of many belonging to Fibor, and
leased to farmers for a share of the grain. Here, at least, antlers hung from the
lintel and pots of burdock smoked in the shrine. We bowed before them and sounded
the bell.

A gap appeared in the doorskins and Manacca, now as tall as my shoulder, peered out.
She threw her arms around my neck when she saw me. Behind her was the housewoman,
whom I had aided several times in birth and sickness. She beckoned us through, her
two young sons at her skirts, clamouring to see the visitors. ‘Greetings, Ailia,'
she said. ‘You have beaten the Romans by only days.'

The southern wall of the room was thick with Fraid's shields and weapons. Fibor,
Etaina and Fraid were at the fire. Between them, in the strong place, sitting so
still that at first I did not see her, was Sulis, her face pale.