The Golden Shrine

“How?” Hamnet asked eagerly.

Marcovefa spread her hands. They were callused and scarred: the hands of a person who’d worked hard all her life to survive. Up atop the Glacier, not even shamans had an easy time of it. “I do not know,” she replied. “When it happens, you will see.” Her smile pulled up only half her mouth. “And so will I. And it will surprise both of us.”

“What do we do in the meantime?” Hamnet said.

“Fight the Rulers. What else can we do? If they win, if they evade their doom, prophecy melts like snow on a south-facing slope in summer.”

Hamnet Thyssen scratched his head. “Then how is it prophecy?”

“If we fight them hard, they won’t win. I hope they won’t, anyhow,” Marcovefa said.

“But you aren’t sure?” Hamnet persisted.

“I am sure of what I know. But one of the things I know is that I don’t know everything there is to know,” Marcovefa replied.

He scratched his head again. “Does anybody know anything?” he asked.

“Of course. Just not enough.” By the way Marcovefa said that, she meant it to be reassuring. To Hamnet, it was anything but. He didn’t push it any further, though. If he did, he feared he would end up feeling like a dog chasing its own tail.

Compared to trying to understand what prophecy meant, riding out on patrol was a relief. He knew what he was doing there: looking for enemy warriors. He knew what he would do if he found them, too: either fight or run away, depending on how many of them there were.

He didn’t mind having Marcovefa along, either, since on patrol they weren’t trying to understand the whichness of what. If he came across one of the Rulers’ shamans, chances were Marcovefa could beat the man.

That thought, unfortunately, brought Hamnet back to the whichness of what. Not long before, he would have taken it for granted the Marcovefa could beat the Rulers’ wizards. He still thought she could, but he wasn’t sure any more. That couldn’t be a good sign.

Neither could the way his force of Bizogots and Raumsdalians kept falling back toward the north. If this went on, they’d retreat past Nidaros before long. When would they end up back in the great northern forests again? When would they end up on the Bizogot plains beyond the forests?

“It would not be so bad,” Marcovefa said when he asked her about it.

“Not to you, maybe,” Hamnet answered. “But this is better.”

“No,” she said. “Things are as they are meant to be. This is as it is meant to be. I do not worry about it, no matter what happens.”

“You don’t?” Hamnet said. “Well, I do, by God. Suppose something happens to you. What would we do then? We can’t beat the Rulers without you. We’ve already proved that, curse it.”

“You proved you did not beat them, yes,” Marcovefa said. “You did not prove you could not beat them.”

Hamnet saw the difference. No matter what he saw, to him it was too subtle to matter. If the Bizogots and Raumsdalians hadn’t beaten the Rulers without the shaman from atop the Glacier, what were the chances they could suddenly start doing it now? Woefully slim, he thought.

He caught motion from the corner of his eye. It wasn’t the kind of motion he was used to, the kind a man on a horse made. Riding deer had a gait with more up-and-down to it. The Rulers probably thought horses were the ones that moved oddly. That was their worry, not his.

One of the Raumsdalian troopers in the patrol also spotted the enemy riders. “There’s some of the bastards!” he said, and strung his bow in one quick, practiced motion. “Let’s drive ’em off!” He swung his horse toward the south.

“Sounds good to me,” Count Hamnet said, also stringing his bow. “Have they got a wizard with them?” he asked Marcovefa.

“Yes, I think so.” She didn’t sound worried about it. But then, when did she?

The Rulers didn’t need long to realize their foes had seen them. They could have pulled back into the trees, but they didn’t, even though their patrol was smaller than the one Hamnet led. They didn’t charge forward, either. They held their ground so they could shoot from mounts that weren’t moving.

With their recurved bows, they made formidable archers. Their arrows fell among the Bizogots and Raumsdalians before Hamnet’s men could hit them. Marcovefa swore in her dialect. A shaft had grazed her hand a moment before hitting the leather of her saddle. It didn’t pierce the saddle and wound her horse. Good luck went through Hamnet’s mind.

Then Marcovefa slumped over, unconscious or dead. “Poison!” Hamnet gasped—it was the first thing he thought of. He grabbed her and steadied her so she wouldn’t fall down and get trampled. Her eyes had rolled up in her head; he saw nothing but white when he peeled back an eyelid.

Nothing to do but flee when their main shield was taken away. The Rulers pursued for a little while. Their harsh jeers said they had a good notion of what they’d done. But, again, horses outdistanced riding deer. Hamnet Thyssen wondered if it mattered.

XVI

MARCOVEFA LAY IN front of Hamnet, splayed over the saddle like a stag killed in the hunt, by the time the patrol got back to camp. She wasn’t dead; her heart beat and her breathing stayed steady. But, try as Hamnet would, he couldn’t rouse her.

He led her horse. The arrow that had grazed her still stuck up from the animal’s saddle. Something was strange about the point. It seemed to be made not of iron or bronze or chipped stone or carved bone but of leaves of some sort. Leaves, of course, had no business hurting anyone unless they were poisonous. Even then, Hamnet had never heard of a venom that could strike so swiftly from such a small wound.

He’d never heard of any such thing, no. But the Rulers had.

When people in the camp saw Marcovefa all limp and pale, it as was if they’d had their hearts plucked from their chests. Some of them hung back—they didn’t seem to want to know any more. Others rushed forward.

“Is she slain?” Trasamund demanded—as usual, he came straight to the point.

Hamnet Thyssen shook his head. “No. It’s sorcery. Where’s Liv? Where’s Audun?”

They rushed through the crowd. “What happened to her?” Audun Gilli asked.

“That did.” Count Hamnet pointed to the arrow. “It only scratched her, but she’s been like this ever since it did.”

“Get her down,” Liv said. Hamnet obeyed. Liv and Audun steadied Marcovefa so he could dismount without dropping her. Then he carried her to the tent the two of them shared and laid her down on a fur robe there.

Audun uncinched the saddle from Marcovefa’s horse instead of pulling the arrow out of it. He lugged the saddle after Hamnet. Was that excessive caution or common sense? Hamnet would have liked to blame the wizard for it, but found he couldn’t.

Liv tied back the tent flaps to let in more light. Then she stooped by Marcovefa. As Hamnet had before her, she checked the other shaman’s pulse and peeled back an eyelid. Marcovefa showed no signs of consciousness.

“I don’t think she will die right away,” Liv said: as much consolation as she had to offer.

“No, neither do I.” If Hamnet said it, maybe it would come true. “But how could the Rulers do—this—to her?”

Liv was silent. That hardly surprised Hamnet. No wizard liked to see another wizard—especially one more powerful than she—brought down. But then, his voice even more hesitant than usual, Audun said, “I think the arrowhead is made with mistletoe.”

He spoke in Raumsdalian. Even now, he wasn’t fluent in the Bizogots’ tongue; foreign languages weren’t easy for him. Liv’s Raumsdalian was also imperfect. “What is this mistletoe?” she asked.

Audun sent Hamnet a look of appeal. The only trouble was, Hamnet didn’t know how to say mistletoe in the Bizogots’ language. He did the best he could: he explained what mistletoe was. He wondered if that would mean anything to Liv. The Bizogot steppe was treeless, of course, so why would she know anything about the parasites that grew on trees?

But she did. Her eyes widened. He’d forgotten what a deep blue they were. “Levigild the hero!” she exclaimed.

Count Hamnet had heard a good many Bizogot tales or legends or whatever they were. That one was new to him, though. By Audun’s blank look, it was new to him, too. “What happened to this Levigild?” Hamnet asked.

“His mother wanted to make him safe from all the danger she could,” Liv answered. “She got everything in the world to promise not to harm him. But she forgot about the mistletoe—to her, it wasn’t worth remembering. God didn’t like what she was doing, because he was afraid Levigild would be a rival. So he had a blind man make an arrow with mistletoe for a head. He shot it, not even knowing Levigild was anywhere near him. The arrow hit Levigild in the chest, and he died.”

“This arrow only grazed Marcovefa,” Hamnet said. “She isn’t dead—she’s just . . . out. Can you bring her back?”

“I would not know where to begin against mistletoe,” Liv said, which was exactly what Hamnet didn’t want to hear.

Reluctantly, he turned to Audun Gilli. Use the man who’d taken one woman from him to save another? He wouldn’t have, if he thought he had any other choice. If Audun did save Marcovefa, how would she show she was grateful? However she wants to, and damn all you’ll have to say about it, Hamnet thought. “What can you do for her, Gilli?” he asked roughly.

“God,” Audun said. “I don’t know if I can do anything. I’m not a healer. You know that. You know what kind of wizard I am, Thyssen.”

As if to remind Hamnet, a cheap burnt-clay cup grew lips and said, “He doesn’t ask for much, does he? Heal her from a sorcery nobody knows anything about? Sure, that sounds easy.”

Hamnet’s ears heated. He did know what kind of wizard Audun Gilli was, worse luck. “You knew something about the wound, anyhow,” he said. “You can’t blame me for hoping.”

“No one should be blamed for hoping,” Liv said softly. “Not ever.”

“Yes, you can say that, can’t you?” Hamnet’s voice was bleak enough to make her flinch. But his desperation drove him to speak directly to her again: “Please see what you can do to help her, Liv.”

“Me? But I told you—”

“You knew about this Levigild.” Hamnet Thyssen was proud of himself for coming up with the legendary Bizogot’s name.

“Well, yes, but . . .” Liv struggled to put what she was thinking into words. “Hamnet, I told you—I know nothing of mistletoe except the legend! I would never have recognized