Robin Lakehair traveled Summer Trail heading east. She crossed through The Shades and the Valley of Miracles to Thieves Trail, which she took south until she reached Border Road at Lemontrail Crossing. There she paused and drank greedily from her waterskin. As she did, she gazed across the gorge and her heart sank.
Just beyond the remnant of the bridge, a heavy Kitzakk spear stood upright in the ground in plain view. Impaled on it was the fresh cadaver of a Wowell witch.
Robin’s mouth gaped open. One hand covered her mouth, the other held her stomach as it convulsed. She grabbed up her things and scrambled back to her feet.
Hurrying east along Border Road, and passing only occasional travelers, she soon reached Amber Road. It was the main merchant road. It started far to the north in the Empire of Ice, stretched across the forests, then south through the cataracts and across the deserts to the jungles. There was some traffic to the north, but none coming from the cataracts to the south.
Robin’s eyes darted about suspiciously as she dashed across Amber Road and hurried on. An hour later she rounded a bend and stopped to catch her breath. She had been traveling for four hours, but now, in the distance, she could see Three Bridge Crossing and her Cytherian home, Weaver. It waved in the midday sun like a giant, multicolored flag. She dropped to the grassy ground, leaned back against a rock and sighed with relief. She was no longer too far from home.
The village stood on a reddish hill cleared of trees except for occasional clumps. It was shielded on three sides by forest. The border gorge guarded the southern side. Sheep and herders cluttered the wide clearing which Robin knew surrounded the village. Past it rose a palisade wall with a gate at the northern corner. The wall stopped just before reaching the southern end of Weaver. There the village fell apart and ended in rubble just short of the gorge spanned by the three bridges where workers were building gates. The village’s three main interior streets crossed over the bridges of Three Bridge Crossing, then joined together and moved south up into Weaver Pass.
Weaver itself rose above the palisade in irregular tiers. Mud and wood houses crowded the lower tiers. They were well-made structures with outside shutters on the windows and the stone chimneys rising from flat roofs exhaled white smoke. Clean-clothed and freshly scrubbed residents were active here sorting wool, cleaning and washing it, and combing and carding it into fluffy readiness for spinning.
On the upper tiers were rows of steaming wooden vats of dye the size of small houses. Workers, male and female, stirred the fabrics in the vats with long, heavy, wooden paddles. Golds, yellows and mustards made from safflower and fustic stained their naked bodies and loincloths, as did reds, rusts and oranges made from madder, and the roots of Teima, Arrashad and Fantell berries which had been harvested and dried in spring. The Cytherians dyed the huge squares of finished cloth rather than the spools of thread. Consequently, there was considerable spillage and the heights of the village, as well as many of the residents, tended to change colors with the seasons. Even the supervising priests in their formal tunics of spun gold and silver sported red and yellow stains.
Above the steaming vats was a level space, circled by unpainted wooden buildings, and a wooden temple. Weaver Court. In its sunny yard the children of Weaver were taught the village trade by the elders. Within the temple the virgin maidens of Weaver spun cloth to the music of their own voices.
Weaver Court was surrounded on three sides by sheer bluffs called the Heights. They rose twenty feet above the roofs of the temple and formed a large, irregular spread of flat ground fed by many footpaths. Here the wet dyed cloth was spread to dry on poles. The resulting effect was a single multicolored patchwork flag of yellows, oranges and reds, the gigantic banner of a fairy-tale village.
Robin picked herself up and half-skipped toward the village. Nearing it she drank in the familiar scents of the hot, moist steaming dyes that mixed with the pungent odors of lye, lime and the fresh urine used in the washing. Reaching the clearing she heard footsteps behind her and turned around to see Gath coming down the road. The wolf waited behind at the edge of the forest. Neither looked at her.
Gain’s eyes were fixed on the frantic activity at the bridges. Groups of men, half-hidden by dust, were noisily working on the gates with hammers, nails, saws and curses. When he neared Robin, he looked up at Weaver Pass and tilted his head slightly, listening to something she could not hear.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He looked at her as if he had not realized she was there, and said, “Nothing.” He glanced at the village. “Is this your home?”
“Yes,” she replied proudly.
He looked at her warily and said accusingly, “You are a sorceress. You brought me here?”
“What?” she exclaimed. “Me? A sorceress!” She almost giggled. But, seeing he was deadly serious, she stopped herself and spoke evenly. “I didn’t bring you, honestly. I’m not magic, not at all! I only weave cloth.”
He scratched his shin with the shaft of his spear, then growled, “Tell me your name.”
She blushed, averted her head slightly and watched his eyes with the corners of her own. “Robin… Robin Lakehair.”
She waited, but no other question came. With artless sincerity, she said, “I want to thank you again. I owe you my life, and I won’t forget it. If there’s anything I…”
“We are finished now,” he said abruptly.
She hesitated and her lips curved up slightly. “Then why did you follow me?”
He said, “You healed the she-wolf,” as if it explained everything.
She nodded solemnly, then tried again to communicate. “Can… would you let me explain now? I’ll only take a…”
He shook his head.
She dropped her eyes, turned without speaking and headed directly across the clearing toward the Forest Gate. But her feet betrayed her, and dragged. She felt, for the first time in her life, as if she were doing something absolutely and terribly wrong. But there was no explanation for it.
At that moment Dirken and Bone emerged from Border Road behind Gath. They were wheezing and grumbling. Robin, then Gath, turned and saw them, and they, humiliated, edged back out of sight into the forest.
Robin hesitated thoughtfully, then turned back toward the gate and wandered directionless through women herding goats and spinning wool not seeing their welcoming smiles. She passed through a crowd of boys battling with stick swords, reached the gate and suddenly stopped, looked off at the cataracts.
A distant thundering was coming out of the massive shelves of grey rock. It grew louder by the heartbeat.
Spellbound, Robin looked back across the clearing at Gath.
He stood facing the cataracts, head lowered. He unbuckled his helmet from his belt, lifted it above his head and lowered it into place, waited. A predator scenting blood.
Robin shuddered, looked back at the cataracts.
Dust billowed up out of the pass, and mounted Kitzakk raiders erupted from its mouth, plunged toward the three bridges screeching.
An alarm gong clanged inside the village. The women in the clearing screamed as they drove the children and animals toward the forest. In the village women cried out and raced to find their children, scurrying through men who scrambled for their weapons.
Robin, shuddering, looked back at Gath as he slipped his axe off his back, then turned sharply, hearing the sharp cries of children coming from Weaver Court. She plunged into the flow of bodies spilling out the gate, fought her way through them and ran into the village.