Frostflower and Thorn Read online

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copryight © 2012 by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  DEDICATION

  This book was born at George R. R. Martin’s Clarke College Workshop, Dubuque, Iowa, in the summer of 1977. To the members and consultants of the workshop, and to my mother, who helped lick the story into shape, sincere gratitude.

  PREFACE TO THE 2012 EDITION

  My most important characters tend to fall into one of two types. Recognizing them in the Biblical Martha and Mary of Bethany, I suspect they are archetypes, known to many other human beings besides me.

  Believing them not so much androgynous as transcending gender lines, in my mind I call them Sir Kay and Sir Ruthven. Based on my own readings of the Arthurian romances and the Gilbert & Sullivan operas, this is in general the way I see them: Kay is practical, hard-spoken, impatient (especially with incompetence), no-nonsense, brusque to the point of rudeness; Ruthven (a.k.a. Robin Oakapple) is gentle, dreamy, a bit shy, almost unfailingly courteous, yet with some lurking potential for mischief. Both have a streak of idealism, but Kay’s takes the form of feisty determination to see things done right and refusal to suffer fools gladly, while Ruthven’s tends to greater introspection.

  They do not invariably appear together. I have consciously used Kay and Ruthven as themselves—most accessibly, in my novels Idylls of the Queen (Kay) and Meadowsong (Ruthven in his Robin identity). Torin the Toymaker (At Amberleaf Fair and various short stories) was conceived as an alternate-world Ruthven. At almost all other times, it develops quite unconsciously, and only later—sometimes decades after my first use of the character(s) in question in some completed work—do I come to see, “Oh, yes! It’s happened again!”

  I call them Sir Ruthven and Sir Kay, after two of my lifelong favorites in other writers’ works. I could call them Corwin Poe and Rosemary Lestrade, who came into my own work in the early 1980s—as minor characters who quickly took over, in a coup familiar to fictioneers—and who eventually helped me analyze this phenomenon of the two types.

  I could also call them Frostflower and Thorn.

  CHAPTER 1

  Thorn scowled at the morning sun coming through the shutter’s broken slats. She sat up in bed, groped for one of her boots, and hurled it at a roach on the opposite wall. Then she picked up her other boot and used it to slap her latest bedpartner awake.

  “Eeyy! What—”

  “Out, Spendwell.” Thorn felt sick again, and, for the moment, disgusted with men, especially pasty-faced merchants too proud of their new beards to shave them off.

  “Out? I just fell asleep!”

  “You’ve been snoring since middle watch.” The swordswoman got out of bed and walked to the dented slop-pot in the corner. Damn morning sickness! She braced her head against the wall, and some crawling thing, probably another roach, wriggled into her hair. She slapped it out even before wiping her mouth. Behind her, Spendwell was moving around in his flappy slippers.

  “Aren’t you gone yet?”

  “Don’t take your temper out on me, Thorn. I wasn’t the one who got you pregnant.”

  “Only because that damn weaver in White Orchard beat you to it.” Or maybe it had been the smith at Eldrommer’s Farm. At least it had not been a farmer-priest. Get pregnant by one of them, and a woman had to carry the brat full term so she could give it back to the farmer’s family.

  Thorn found her tunic, pulled it on, and belted it fiercely. The merchant was still looking for his gold-embroidered stockings. “If you’re going to loll around here all morning,” said the warrior, “do something to pay for your place. Tell me where I can find a borter in this stinking town.”

  Spendwell looked up and grinned. “Why not go ahead and bear the brat this time, Thorn? You can always give it away to the sorceri.”

  She found one of his stockings, looped it around his neck, yanked him to his feet, and pulled him, struggling and growing puffy in the face, to the door. She opened it, let go the stocking, and shoved him down the rickety stairs.

  “Damn you, Thorn, you’ll hang for hurting me!”

  “Eat stones! You’re breathing. You stumbled down over your own toenails.”

  “If my leg’s broken—gods, I hope the brat splits you apart!”

  Thorn started down the steps. Spendwell hurried to his feet, grabbed his stocking, and ran across the dirty brown tiles to the outer door. The swordswoman watched him fumble with the latch until he got it open and escaped. Then she chuckled and climbed back to her room.

  After opening the window to let in some comparatively fresh air, she began her morning exercise. She jerked her knees up towards her belly with unusual roughness. Maybe she could cause a miscarriage and save herself the borter’s stinking tongs. Warriors’ God! She would rather fight in ten raids than lie down on a borter’s table again. But so far the grub was stubborn.

  She was squatting on the floor kicking her legs when the innkeeper of the Golden Rye poked her head into the room. “Stamping around, slamming doors, shouting, throwing merchants down the stairs—gods! It’s summer, warrior. Decent folk are still trying to sleep.”

  Thorn reached over and lifted Slicer from the floor near the bed. The innkeeper backed away. “I want you out before midmorning,” she said as she closed the door behind her.

  Chuckling at the innwoman’s pitiable attempt to save face, Thorn jammed her sword point-first into the floor, digging up a few more splinters. Smardon’s fingernails, but she would have loved to slice up an innkeeper, just once in her life! Unless you paid the night before, they left you to slop in the alley; and once they had your money, they looked for excuses to throw you out early. When Thorn remembered the restraint she had used with Spendwell…

  But for slicing up innkeepers or merchants, a warrior would stink in Hellbog forever, even if she escaped being stoned or gutted first. Well, maybe she would still slice up an innkeeper if she ever got a good opportunity. Chances were she would stink in Hellbog anyway, and meanwhile she could probably dodge the townwarriors and escape to the other side of the Tanglelands.

  Or maybe she would slice up the borter after he was through getting the grub out of her.

  Thorn recognized the foulness of her mood by the foulness of these thoughts. At another time, they would not have occurred to her. Well, who wouldn’t be sour-tempered in her present condition?

  She finished her exercise and pulled on the rest of her clothes, shaking each boot first in case a roach had crawled inside. Someday she would cross-lace her trousers with velvet ribbons again, instead of hempstring. She emptied her purse into her hand: three coppers and a silver. For two or three goldens, she could hire a good physician to do the business, give herself that much chance. But even if she hired out to another farmer tomorrow, she might not have time to earn enough. Wait too long, and the physician charged five goldens and would not promise a woman’s survival. So it had to be done soon, or she would be caught with a grub in her belly for thirteen times as long as a hen took to hatch an egg…more than half those days seeing her slim belly bulge out until she was waddling around with almost as much extra bulk as a criminal after swallowing the stones. Very few farmers or townmasters would pay a waddling, melon-bellied warrior. And afterwards, maybe she could find someone to buy the brat for about as much pay as she had lost during the final sixty or eighty days…gods! She would have to find a borter before another hen’s-hatching had gone by.

  Some warriors turned to robbery when they wanted money. Thorn would prefer to die with the borter’s tongs in her. She looked for a moment at the sheen-amber in Slicer’s pommel, the garnet in Stabber’s. No, a physician was not quite worth robbing her swo
rd or dagger. She had heard they did the same things the borters did, only a little better—usually. She had also heard that some physicians were drunken bog-bait; and how did a stranger know the good ones ahead of time?

  She left the room, jerking the door shut, and descended the stairs, clumping as loudly as she could.

  The time was an hour after sunrise on a summer day, and only three people were in the meal-room: a pair of stablemen throwing dice at the window table while they waited for their bread and beef, and a sorceress sitting at the small table beneath the stairs, drinking a bowl of milk in timid little sips. Her face was half-hidden by her black hood, and a big, mangy, brown mongrel lay at her feet, slowly thumping its tail against the floor.

  Thorn pulled over a bench and sat at the dice-players’ table. Stableworkers were not wealthy; but they were dicing for high stakes (for stablemen), and if the Warriors’ God was generous this morning, Thorn might win a couple of silvers.

  The older stableman looked at her with narrowed eyes. “We don’t know you, warrior.”

  She turned her purse upside down over the table. “Do you know the sound of money?”

  “Let be, Father,” said the younger man. “Room for three until the platters come. The game is Falling Doubles, warrior. A kip the round.”

  One copper the round was hardly worth rolling the dice. “Four kips the round,” said the swordswoman.

  The old man slapped his palm down on the table, but his son spoke first. “Our chances are two to one, Father. And stranger’s money makes a sweeter game.”

  “Four kips the round, then.” The old man shoved the dice to Thorn. “The roll is at threes.”

  Before the inn wench came with the stablemen’s breakfast, Thorn’s one silver and five coppers had dwindled to a single kip. Better save it for dinner. If she lived to eat dinner. Thanks to her bloody luck, she had better spend the day looking for a cheap borter who would loan his services for a witnessed pledge of double his usual price, to be paid before harvest.

  “Breakfast, warrior?” asked the inn wench, setting down the platters of steaming beef and brown break speckled with mustardseed in front of the stablemen.

  Thorn growled a refusal and stood up, swinging her bench away from the table and banging it down again more or less where she had pulled it from. She glared once around the meal-room, then strode out of the Golden Rye before she yielded to impulse and broke something.

  Rabbity townsfolk were beginning to loll around in the streets. A couple of merchants were going in opposite directions, each leading a donkey with sacks of merchandise. Probably one was taking blue cloth from the east side of Three Bridges to the west, while the other was taking green cloth from west to east. A smith was yawning like a hound as he hauled his anvil into the open space between his shop and his neighbor’s, a tiler was lying on a roof beside the hole she would mend when her hammer would not disturb any sleepers, a stonecutter was lazily roughening pebbles for the next execution. Townsfolk were lazy bastards. On a farm, all the workers were hustling around before sunrise, even in summer.

  Thorn crossed the street and headed for a fruitseller who was starting to bring out his stock for the day. Setting a basket of peaches on his window shelf, he eyed the warrior suspiciously. She scowled to show him she was honest. He yawned and turned back into the depths of his house for another load.

  Someone was coming up behind the swordswoman. A person walking softly and an animal padding after. Had Thorn quarreled with anyone here in Three Bridges who might be stupid enough to try an attack by daylight in a town street? She waited until the unknown had almost reached her, then spun around and drew her dagger in the same instant.

  It was the sorceress and dog she had seen in the meal-room of the Golden Rye.

  The mongrel retreated behind its owner’s black robe and waited there, whining and thumping its tail. The sorceress dropped her gaze at once, but otherwise did not flinch. “Swordswoman?” she said quietly.

  Sorceri were scum, but if even half the tales about their powers were true… Thorn quickly returned Stabber to his sheath. “I don’t think I know you, sorceress.”

  “My name is Frostflower. It is permitted here for sorceri to buy other folk food?”

  The warrior shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not. I pay for my own meals anyway.”

  Frostflower sighed and looked at the half-filled window shelf. The fruitseller came and set out a bowl of cherries, frowned and shook his head at the sorceress, and returned inside. Frostflower tried to slip half a copper into Thorn’s hand. “Fullorchard does not like to sell to us. You will buy a peach for me? I will wait around the corner to the right.”

  The dog had come out from behind the sorceress and was snuffling around Thorn’s boots, still wagging its hairy tail. The warrior resisted the urge to kick its muzzle, and pushed away Frostflower’s half-copper. “I still have money. Go wait.” More to get away from the dog than to please the sorceress, she strode to the window shelf.

  Suddenly she felt a longing for strawberries. She fought it. It was the damn grub inside her; she herself had never liked the blasted things. She began to look the peaches over. Fullorchard wanted a quarter-kip for a peach. The warrior refused to haggle, but she did insist on examining every piece of fruit and making her own choice. She took her time. Maybe if she took long enough, the sorceress would give up the wait. At last Thorn chose two of the largest peaches, one fully ripe, the other a little green. Plunging her dagger into the green one, she broke her last copper and tossed half to the fruitseller. He failed to catch it, and she strode away without waiting to see how soon he would find it.

  Frostflower was waiting where she had said, her back almost touching a cheesemaker’s thick wall, her fingers rubbing the mongrel’s head. Thorn started to toss her the riper peach, but stopped and put it into her hand instead.

  “Thank you. Now you must accept this.” Again the sorceress tried to give her half a kip. Thorn, already devouring her own peach from the point of her dagger, shook her head. “Keep it. I don’t need your damn quarter-kip. I need two goldens. Good-bye, sorceress.”

  She began to walk on. The sorceress kept pace with her. “You need the two goldens because you have a baby inside you?”

  Damn that merchant to Hellbog for shouting it all over the inn. “That’s my business.”

  “And the two goldens will buy a clean place to give it birth?”

  “I said, that’s my business.” Thorn half-kicked at the dog, which was snuffling around her heels again. It avoided her foot, whined, and went on following her.

  “You have still a long time to earn your two goldens.”

  “Eat stones, sorceress!”

  Frostflower raised her head to look up into the warrior’s face. She had one brown and one blue eye.

  Thorn swallowed a bite of peach half-chewed. It was not wise to insult sorceri so openly to their faces. “I—that is, I’ve only got about two hen’s-hatchings.”

  “Then you do not want the child?”

  “No!” Whatever emotion the sorceress felt—confusion, eagerness, whatever the demon sorceri could feel—it did not seem to be anger at Thorn’s insult. Relieved on that score, the swordswoman let out her frustration. “Big, awkward lump inside you, ugly trouble-making brat when it gets out—what kind of bloody load is that for a warrior?”

  “You want the goldens for a physician, then, to bring it out before it grows too large?”

  Thorn nodded, taking another bite of green peach and pushing the dog out of her way with one foot so that she could start walking again.

  “And if you do not earn the goldens?”

  “Then I’ll have to find a borter to do it for a promise. Hell! Will you keep your—dog—away from me before I kick its teeth in?”

  “Dowl!” said the sorceress. Whining, the dog returned to its owner. “Your pardon, warrior. Dowl helps a little, by his size, to discourage attack by folk who do not know that he loves everyone.”

  “Unh.” Thorn won
dered if the creature would still love anyone who booted its hairy ribs in. She tried once more to stride away, but Frostflower laid one hand on her arm.

  “I can help you, swordswoman. It will not be the same kind of help you would have from a physician or borter, but the result will be the same, for you.”

  “Yes? And what’s your price?”

  “Nothing. Only…”

  “Only?”

  Frostflower looked up at her again with those mismatched eyes. “Only the baby. And only if you decide to give it up.”

  Thorn slapped her hand against the nearest wall. “What the Hell would I do with the damn thing?” But what would the sorceress do with a bloody little grub like that? “You want it for some kind of sorcering?” the warrior asked suspiciously. “Or do you just want to eat it?” Frostflower was welcome to it for a meal—probably a lot better than the mold and dung sorceri usually ate in their retreats—but it was Thorn’s grub, and she’d be damned if she would let it be used in any kind of weather-blasting or plague-spreading spells.

  “We do not eat babies,” Frostflower replied with a sad half-smile. “Only plants. And I want it for nothing ugly, nothing unlawful. It’s not unlawful for us to raise children in our retreats, not in most parts of the Tanglelands.”

  “Raise it? It’s a grub, sorceress. Not much more than two hen’s-hatchings old!”

  “Nevertheless, if I help you, it will live.”

  “Unh. I see. You’ll help me the way a stinking farmer-priest would help me—shut me up somewhere for the next eleven or twelve hen’s-hatchings.”

  “No. It will take longer than a physician’s help, or a borter’s, perhaps. I know little of their work. But no longer than a winter afternoon.”

  A winter afternoon’s work done on a summer day like this, and Thorn would have time afterwards to earn a copper slaughtering a pig for somebody. “Quick enough,” she agreed noncommittally, sucking on her peach pit.

  “It will not be comfortable—”

  “You think it’s comfortable on a bloody borter’s table? I don’t give a blasted fart about comfortable, so long as it’s quick. But if you’re lying about that part, sorceress, you’ll wish the farmers were in charge of your scaffolding!”