Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (20 page)

Maigrid let her run free. She ran for the joy of it, freed from the tensions of Mai Dun; and she ran from fear. For sometimes she forgot and accidently touched someone, and then was caught in their life and memories. She would run to the granary and hide. There she was safe in the company of animals and birds; they had no memories. Her worst fear was she would one day be lost in someone else’s life and never come back.

Almost two years had gone by since she left Mai Dun. She would be fifteen on the feast of Samhain next month. It was time to return.

Sabrann shivered with the full awareness of time; it brought a cascade of troubling thoughts she wanted to avoid. I can’t be a ruler like Caradoc ... I’m not a warrior, she thought. She wanted to stay far away from all the people who called her names—
Speirleag! tràill!
—and stared at her face.

She touched her cheek and her face flushed hot in anger at the tattoo. Rosmerta was gone, but the tattoo remained—a curse for the rest of her days.

The deer made a small snorting noise. Sabrann looked into its eyes and felt a fleeting sensation of recognition. You’re just like me, she thought. It, too, loved to run.

Sabrann hobbled stiffly to the granary ladder and climbed to the top. Inside, with a hunter’s cunning, she tied a small sheaf of barley with a long supple stalk and dropped it through the hole. With one end wrapped around her wrist, she waited for her quarry to come and take the bait. She would lure the magical deer close, touch that red-gold neck, and take one small hair.

“Maybe it can help me stay here. I might never go back!” She grinned at the thought; like a small child evading the calls of her mother, she thought she could hide forever.

She lay down to wait for the deer and briefly closed her eyes. Maigrid’s plump, round face immediately came to mind and Sabrann could almost hear her voice.

Carenta—
dear one
.
Sabrann smiled at that. Maigrid always used her childish name.
Carenta, you must mind me. You go too far. You will anger the gods!

How could that be? Sabrann always thought, brought back to the present by her hungry stomach and sore feet. What was life, but the will of the gods anyhow? She would touch the deer, pluck a stray hair. If she hurried back, Maigrid wouldn’t notice she’d been gone, and Glas wouldn’t tell.

She loved Maigrid as a mother, but she was always warning Sabrann not to go beyond the stockade, or to stay away from the river, or not be gone so long hunting. Sabrann was ever headstrong and willful, and could not resist.

Her heart swelled with love for the only mother she ever knew. Sirona, her birth mother, was like a dream, a story; Maigrid was warm and real.

Damp from running and chilled, Sabrann jiggled the barley bait on her hand, and moved deeper into the warm grain.

Maigrid would just now be getting up and moving about the great circular farmhouse, wrapped in her blue cloak. She spun the wool herself and dyed it with woad. It protected her well, for by early morning the central fire, built on large, rounded, black stones, had burned down to embers. Maigrid’s soft breath showed in the cold air, as she quietly built up the fire again and then started the morning meal. Glas always brought in firewood and water from the stone trough in the yard. Sabrann usually helped him—he was her best friend.

A light breeze blew barley chaff and the sharp scent of dung into her nostrils. She struggled to hold her breath and not sneeze. Any sound now might alarm the deer and send it running again. The dark shape of the red deer moved slowly through the remaining mist toward her, its nose lifted, sniffing the fresh-cut barley in the granary.

She stifled a yawn and waited. She would tell Glas about the chase and how she had lured the magic deer. They told each other everything. And Maigrid, too. Maigrid would understand; she always did
.
Sabrann checked the barley bait string hung from her wrist and waited.

CHAPTER 13

Outside the snug granary, the late autumn air was cool with a sure hint of the winter to come. Far away, the rising sun shone blood red on Maigrid’s round farmhouse, distant and innocent, as its gate creaked and swung open wide. Cattle stirred, restless and braying, the rooster announced the new day, and a cawing raven soared with alarm into the air, stark black against a roseate morning sky. These sounds and more stirred some in their covers, but Sabrann lay in a deep sleep, a frown upon her face, her hands held tight to the now empty barley leaf string.

It was Sirona!

Smiling, the beautiful woman beckoned to her.

Mother!

Her mother’s smile vanished. She cocked her fair head to one side, as though she heard a sound from afar. Then she called and beckoned again. No – she screamed something!

Panic and fear replaced the comforting presence. This was not how the dreams of her mother usually went.

Sirona’s lips moved, speaking intently, each word mouthed slowly. Then her face faded. A large, dark shape loomed before Sabrann. Twisting away from it, she tried to reach Sirona and cried to her.

“Mother! Moth-err-r-r!”

The dream vanished. She sat straight up, feeling some unnamed terror. Her nose burned—smoke drifted through the wattled wall! It curled slowly in the still, morning air. She gasped for breath and crawled to the corner near the ladder. She stood and peered through a small opening between the wall and the thatched roof.

The deer was gone. Wisps of smoke crept over the far end of the surrounding field. Where was it coming from? Distant sounds floated through the air—dimly heard voices and muffled hoof beats growing louder, fading in and out.

Then silence.

This unnatural silence felt deafening. She strained to hear the familiar, early morning sounds. No cattle spoke softly to each other as they came to forage in the autumn fields; no vocal brown sheep resisted the shepherd’s staff.

Nothing was as it should be. She felt the strangeness in her bones.

Her body grew cold and stiff with fear. She could not see or hear the source of her fear, but felt it climbing up her spine, to the top of her head, spreading its cold fingers through her skull. She whispered a repentant plea to the mothers.

“
Help me. I promise, Matrones, dear, dear Matrones, I will never run this far again. And always ... I will always mind Maigrid.”

Her scalp tingled, and the hairs on the nape of her neck stood out. She gripped the amulet at her neck. She had to get home to Maigrid. Sabrann inched down the ladder. A wave of heat touched her legs as she dropped to the ground. Crouching low, close to the thick, supporting post, she tried to see beyond the smoke-covered field.

Just then, the morning breeze came up and parted the veil of smoke at the far eastern end of the field. There, silhouetted against the glowing dawn sky, a line of men with torches and drawn swords, advanced slowly toward the granary, torching the stubble on each side, igniting walls of fire that quickly consumed what was left of the field.

Sabrann gasped. She knew what they were doing; she had learned it from Caradoc’s hunt master. To catch an animal you cannot see, you flushed it out with fire! But what were they hunting? A runaway slave? That must be it. Slaves ran away all the time.

She fought her fear, trying to be calm. Who could they be? Her hand pulled nervously on her braid. Maybe they were raiders from Hieriyo; the farm was so close to their island in the western sea. Or renegades! They hunted anything. But she had never seen any here; only peaceful traders, the Coriosolites or Veneti men, who traded for small amounts of tin and carried it away in large hide-covered currachs, crossing the narrow sea back to Armorica. They never harmed anyone.

Rough Dumnonii voices and then another, a Durotriges, floated on the breeze.

The Durotriges voice spoke, breaking the muffled silence. “Yes. Burn it all ... everything ... She couldn’t have gotten far.” And a moment later—“that Marne girl.”

They hunted her! Her mind shrieked an alarm.

Get out of here, now. Get home.

She had to get away, back to the farmhouse, to Maigrid and Culain and the others who would protect her.

On hands and knees, hiding behind some unburned barley, she crawled toward the blackberry hedge at the far corner of the field. From there she could circle around and run the back way to the farmhouse. Biting her lip to keep from crying out, she pushed through the sharp-thorned, tangled mass of branches.

But there was no safety on the other side. The next field lay smoldering, slowly catching fire from burning pieces of chaff carried on the breeze. Bending low, she ran—zigzagging around patches of blazing grain.

High above, great circles of sea gulls wheeled in the sky. The air smelled acrid, dense with smoke. Cattle called from far away. She stumbled as a hare ran into her feet and then again as a pack of field mice scurried past, making a constant stream of squeaks. Gulls screeched. Desperate calls of sheep filled the air. Overriding everything, the sound of fire roared and crackled, consuming the dry stubble and brush in its path.

An ember fell on her face. She screamed. Flames licked at her legs as she plunged wildly into the next field, sobbing as she ran. Darting around the small fires, leaping over low, stone fences, she circled through the fields directly behind the farmhouse. But she saw no one. Where were the workers, the other farmers? Her eyes watered, stinging from the thick smoke that was everywhere. Patches of flaming barley scorched her arms. Strands of her long hair caught fire, and she beat it out with her hands. Panic made the run seem slow and her legs grew heavy. Stone shards in the plowed furrows cut deep into her feet.

Almost there, she sobbed as she ran. Now fully above the horizon, the sun washed everything in a carmine haze—smoke and sky tinted the same fiery hue. No longer trying to conceal herself, Sabrann ran straight up the last rise where she would see the encircling stockade and safety.

At the top, she shrieked in horror and fell to her knees.

The stockade was a ring of fire encircling the farmhouse! The double gate hung open. Livid red and orange flames lifted above the thatched roof; smoke billowed, rising high on the early morning breeze.

And through the flames, she saw grotesquely swaying bodies. The people she loved hung from the high beam at the entrance to the farmhouse, burning like human torches for the gods of death. She could see their faces!

A sound rose above the roar of the fire. Some animal screamed without stopping. It pierced the fire’s din, rising and falling repeatedly.
Her
voice. The screams tore from her body with a force equal to the devastation surrounding her. She knelt there, screaming at the abomination before her, until she fell down to the trampled earth. Her hands dug into the soft soil, seeking something—anything—to hang onto. She raised one hand, and caught between her fingers was a tiny shred of something. Feather light, it fluttered in the fire’s draft. Blue-colored wool. Maigrid! She stared at it in stunned disbelief, but could not let go, and jammed it into the leather pouch on her belt. Her stomach rose up in her throat.

She stood and then staggered a few steps, before she dropped to her knees again, and vomited, convulsing and retching bile. Her stomach heaved as she gagged, until there was nothing to expel, her throat swollen. When she finally could stand again, she ran from the inferno, like a forest animal before an advancing fire, keeping her face turned away from the burning bodies.

Around back, she came to where Culain’s smithy hut stood close to the stockade. It was the only thing still left, but its walls were slowly catching on fire. Maigrid had never wanted it near the big farmhouse because of the danger from his roaring furnace. Master of fire, his dominion was only within the boundaries of his smithy and did not extend to the house where Maigrid ruled.

Culain! Maigrid! Glas!
Their names scoured all thought from her mind.

Then Sabrann stopped, transfixed. Before Culain’s hut were two figures. A short, squarely built man, with sword lifted high above his head, stood poised to strike a small figure under the man’s foot.