The Sword-Edged blonde

SIXTEEN

Inside was a quaint little temple big enough for perhaps twenty people at a time. A huge white horse head silhouette in mosaic tile dominated the far wall, with a low altar before it. A cauldron, charred from much use, sat over a fire pit in the center of the room. Half-moon benches circled the cauldron. The woman closed the door from the outside, leaving us alone in the room with Carnahan.

Then another woman emerged from a side entrance carrying a fresh bundle of grain, oats by the look of it. She placed it on the altar then turned to us. She had long wavy hair streaked with gray, and wore several symbolic necklaces. “Hello,” she said. Her slight accent identified her as Ginstrian, from the far west.

“Epona Gray?” Cathy asked, all business.

The woman looked carefully at her, just as the other one had done on the hill. “If I am… what happens?”

“If you are, I give you a package, you make your mark on a receipt and we all go our merry way.”

“What sort of package?”

Cathy sighed impatiently. “Ma’am, I am tired, and frustrated, and really just want to be rid of this thing, okay?” She pulled the small box from her pocket. “This is it. I have no idea what it is, or even who sent it. I just got paid to put it in your hands.”

The woman reached for the box, but just as her fingertips touched it, Cathy yanked it back. “ If you’re Epona Gray,” she added.

The woman smiled contritely. “All right. I’m not Epona. I’m her assistant. My name is Nicole Ritter.”

“Assistant?” Cathy repeated disdainfully. She gestured at the temple. “Then is she the priestess here or something?”

“Something. She’s also very ill.” She said this as if the words didn’t quite convey the meaning.

“Then maybe we should get this to her quickly,” Cathy snapped as she returned the box to her pocket.

“I could sign for it,” Nicole said. “Epona wouldn’t mind.”

Cathy shook her head. “Sorry. From my hand to hers. That’s what I was paid for.”

“We could take it from you,” Carnahan said. There was no malice or threat in his voice, just a simple statement, and that made him scarier.

I turned to him and kept my voice just as neutral. “Might be harder than you think.”

“Mr. Carnahan, we’re not that way here,” Nicole said firmly. To Cathy she said, “I would really prefer not to take you to Epona right now, miss. Both for her sake and yours. But…” She bit her lip as she thought.

Then she stepped close and looked intently into Cathy’s eyes. Cathy tensed but didn’t move away, almost like the woman had instantly transfixed her to the spot.

“Do you know the goddess inside you?” Nicole asked, so softly I barely heard it. “Are you a spiritual woman?”

Like a contrite little girl Cathy said, “I don’t… ” The she blinked to break the moment. “I’m a busy woman,” she said in her normal voice. “If it’ll simplify things, we can leave my muscle-boy here. He gets in the way more than he helps, anyway.”

Nicole pondered this a moment, still looking Cathy over. “Very well,” she said at last. “I’ll take you. Give me a few minutes to change clothes. Mr. Carnahan, since you and this gentleman seem to have so much in common, why don’t you entertain him until we return?”

Carnahan looked at me like you would an ingrown toenail. But he said, “Sure.”

Nicole excused herself into a back room. Cathy put her hand on my arm and leaned close. “If it seems like I’ve been gone too long, don’t wait for an invitation. Come find me.”

“My plan exactly,” I replied quietly.

Cathy nodded, then said for Carnahan’s benefit, “Then go play with your new friend. But don’t get so drunk we can’t leave when I get back.”

I grinned at Carnahan. “Reckon I’m all yours.”

“Hmph,” the big man replied. With a last look at Cathy, I followed him out the door.

The sun had dropped out of sight behind the treetops, and torches now illuminated the paths and doorways. I smelled meat cooking and incense. A crowd gathered near the central well, and I heard music and dancing. Between two other buildings children too small to celebrate played and laughed, watched over by two hugely pregnant teenage girls.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked Carnahan.

“Ah, when their daughters turn five, they send them out to get trampled by the wild horses. But I’ve never seen it happen. The horses always miss, and the kid is therefore ‘blessed by the goddess Epona.’ ” His sarcasm was thick.

“Epona is a goddess? ” I asked.

“You betcha.” We reached a long, narrow building with a sign over the door proclaiming it Betty’s Place. “The great goddess Epona, who lives in the forest with her spirit birds and magical horses.” He snorted. “It’s a bunch of horse shit if you ask me. Somebody trains those animals not to run over people. And if Epona’s a goddess, then I’m the damn King of the Monkeys.”

The door opened just in time to catch his last words, and the same woman who’d led us to the temple smiled at us. “Your majesty,” she said with a mock curtsey.

“Oh, stop it. Betty, this is-?”

“Eddie,” I said, and bowed slightly. “Pleased to officially meet you.”

“Likewise.” To Carnahan she said, “You have a friend with manners, Stan. How’d that happen?”

“Nicole told me to entertain him,” the big man mumbled. “C’mon, let’s sit down.”

“Just pick a seat, I’ll be right with you,” Betty said, and I followed Carnahan to a corner table. The place wasn’t exactly a tavern or entirely a restaurant; parchment books lined the walls, and board games were available. Small candles on the tables kept the room dim and somehow mysterious. Three teenage girls talking in low, intense voices sat at the only other occupied table. Music filtered in from outside.

“So what kind of place is this?” I asked softly. It may have been a bar, but it felt more like a library or church.

“It’s some damn place for thinkin’ instead of drinkin’,” Carnahan confirmed. “They serve watered-down beer and tea so strong it’ll slap you.” He shook his head. “You put women in charge, this is what you get.”

Betty appeared next to us. If she took offense at Carnahan’s comment, it didn’t show. She put some bread on the table. “I’ll be right back to take your orders, gentlemen.”

When she was out of earshot I observed, “You seem a bit out of place here, Stan.”

He ran his fingers through his short hair and nodded. “Yeah, you could say that. No matter how much I try, I still stick out, and not just ’cause I’m tall.”

Then he looked at me with surprising sincerity. “You ever kill anybody? Hell, course you have, I could tell the minute I looked at you. Well, I killed one too many people. He wasn’t any different than anyone else, except that when I looked in his eyes, I didn’t see an enemy. I just saw a guy just like me, man. With everything inside him-” He slapped his chest for emphasis. “-that I have inside me.” He looked down. “After that, I went looking for something different.”

“And you found it?”

He shrugged. “If you like rule by committee, kids underfoot all the time, and some woman who claims she’s a goddess living in the woods calling the shots, then yeah, I found it. I thought these folks were all here for the same reason as me, to get away from all the meanness in the world. And they’re mostly decent people. But they’re so cut off here, I don’t think they realize how fragile all this is. They think anyone who shows up has been divinely drawn here by Epona. But eventually someone’s gonna top that hill who ain’t lookin’ for peace and love.”

“So why do you stay?”

“Gave my word,” he muttered. “All I got left, so I have to make it worth something.”

Betty returned and put down two tankards of wine. “Compliments of the house. We have to finish this old stuff before we open the new cask Epona gave us. Enjoy.”

Again I waited until Betty was across the room. “Epona gave them wine?”

He nodded. “She keeps the good stuff to herself, and when her worshippers hold their mouths just right, she gives it to them. Us,” he corrected.

“She sounds more like a bartender than a goddess.”

He took a long drink. “I’m bein’ too cynical. Epona’s something, I gotta admit. She started this place. A spot away from everything, away from all the troubles of the world. People hear about it, but supposedly you can’t find it unless you’re meant to.”

“So I’m meant to be here?”

“Hell, I’m just repeating what she told me. She lives in a little house in the heart of the woods out there, and every full moon, people go up there to ask her advice, her blessing, and so forth. Nicole is sort of her day-to-day manager here in town, making sure everything runs smooth. Most of the jobs are done by women, unless something needs lifting or killing.”

“Lots of things need lifting?”

“No. And nothing ever needs killing.”

“You sound disappointed,” Betty said from behind me.

Carnahan looked up. “Got nothing to fight against here, Betty. Nothing to measure yourself against.”

“We fight against what’s inside of us. That’s the scariest stuff of all, don’t you think?”

“That’s Epona talking,” he snorted.

“ No,” Betty said with surprising, sudden intensity. “It’s me talking. Every person here believes in what Epona represents, but we think for ourselves. We believe we can exist without conflict, in harmony with nature and-”

“-in connection with spirit,” Carnahan finished with her. “Yeah, I know the words.”

“But not the meaning. Stan, we all took a conscious leap of faith when we came here. I won’t have it denigrated by someone like you.”

“Someone like me?” he repeated. He glanced at me and winked.

“Yes. Someone who says he believes, but doesn’t. Someone who says he wants to change, but not really. You’re a liar, Stan, and you and I aren’t the only ones who know it.”

Stan smiled at me. “Sense of humor is the first casualty of enlightenment.”

Betty rolled her eyes, grinned and mussed his hair like a boy.

“You believe this Epona is a goddess?” I asked Betty.

She thought for a moment. “Do you know what I was before I came here? Nothing. Well, that’s not strictly true, I bore my late husband’s children, then raised them to be men like him and women like me. We left no mark on anything. Every special jagged edge had been smoothed away by time and our sense of propriety. I knew that when I died, I’d leave no trace behind. Even my children would forget what I looked like. But I was resigned to being a woman, a person, of absolutely no consequence.”

Her whole demeanor changed. The amusement was replaced by a look of wonder, all the more powerful for its completeness. “Then I met Epona. She didn’t try to convince me my life was wrong, or my choices bad. She just… she showed me I could be more. I could matter.”

“By moving to the woods and opening a tavern?” I asked, with as little sarcasm as I could manage.

She smiled one of those infuriating, patient grins the enlightened always have for the rest of us. “I understand why you say that. After fire ants, cynicism is the most difficult thing to kill. But look around. Every tile, every crossbeam, every book and decoration and piece of furniture is there because I put it there. This place is mine, in a way my life never was before. And a cynic could never see that, or even comprehend it. But once the cynic inside us dies, the idealist can dance in the moonlight. Epona showed me that. That’s why I love her, and worship her. So yes, I believe she’s a goddess.” With that, she left to attend to something in her kitchen.

“She feels pretty strongly about it,” I observed to Carnahan.

“Ah, they all do. I tell you, if I hadn’t promised to stick it out for a year, I would’ve already blown this place like a port city whore.”

“How much longer do you have?”

He shrugged. “This is boring,” he said abruptly, and stood. I followed him to the end of the counter. He removed the darts from the dart board, then nodded at a big bowl of apples. “Grab those.”

We went outside. It was completely dark now, and the enormous full moon rose in the east. Orange torchlight illuminated the whole town.

Carnahan stuck all the darts but one into the wall by the door. He readied the remaining one in his hand. “We can at least try to keep our skills sharp, right? Those apples won’t feel anything. Toss one up.”

“Which way?”

“Surprise me.”

I threw one high into the darkness above the torches. Carnahan’s eyes flashed upward, his arm jerked, and the dart stuck neatly into the fruit as it came down.

Betty, watching from her tavern’s back door, said, “Not bad.”

Grinning, Stan reached for the bowl. “You try.”

I plucked a dart, and he hurled an apple higher and harder than I’d done. I made myself relax; no conscious skill could help me with this, only the instincts I’d honed over the last few years. My elbow flexed before I even knew it, and my apple landed with the dart fully embedded.

A few other townsfolk stopped to watch and politely applauded. The three girls we’d seen inside joined Betty in the doorway. I took the bowl back and threw another apple. Carnahan hit it dead center. I did the same on my next turn.

By now we’d attracted quite a crowd, including several charming young ladies. Miraculously we both hit our next two apples, to much appreciative clapping. At last one girl, a shapely lass with long red hair, took an apple from the bowl. She wobbled a little, tipsy from the celebration, but the gleam in her eye was unmistakable.

She took a big, voluptuous bite from the apple. Torchlight glinted on the juice as it ran down her chin. “I have an apple-flavored kiss,” she said, “for whichever of you puts their dart closest to the center of this bite.”

Carnahan and I exchanged a look. This was more like it. We each plucked a dart, his red and mine green, and waited.

The girl looked up into the clear, starry sky and took a deep breath. “By Epona’s white mane, I ask that my wish come true,” she called to the night. Then she threw the fruit as hard as she could.

The moment grew silent and immobile. No one breathed. Again my arm snapped, and the fruit hit the ground on the open space between the girl and us.

With a sly smile, she bent and picked it up. The crowd gasped.

Our two darts could not have been closer together. The flights were interlaced and the shafts side by side in the exact center of the bite.

The crowd cheered. Carnahan and I both grinned. The girl pulled the darts from the apple and, holding them side by side, licked the juice from their tips. “Looks like,” she said with an unmistakable smile, “I owe two kisses.”

My grin grew wider. Heck, I could grow to like this place.

A familiar voice suddenly cried, “Will you people get the hell outta my way!” Cathy pushed roughly through the crowd, oblivious to who she shoved. Behind her, Nicole almost ran to keep up. Cathy seemed uninjured, although her hair was tousled, but something bad had clearly happened. She marched right up to me and faced me with cold, suddenly haunted eyes. The crowd fell into a murmuring semi-silence.

“I’ve done my job and made my delivery,” she snapped. “I am now going to take the longest, hottest bath of my life, and then I am leaving. What you do is entirely your business, but I advise you not to go anywhere near this Epona.”

I stepped close to her, aware that all eyes watched us. “Are you all right?” I asked softly. “Did something-”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she muttered, and pushed past me. I started to go after her when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Mr. LaCrosse,” Nicole said. Her eyes were even sadder than they had been before. “Epona would like to see you.”

“I’ve just been told that wasn’t a good idea,” I said. I didn’t know if I should pursue Cathy or not.

“Miss Dumont will be fine,” Nicole insisted with gentle authority. “She wasn’t hurt in any way. And neither will you be. Epona merely wants to meet you.”

A murmur went through the crowd.

“Why?” I asked.

Nicole stepped closer. “She said to tell you,” she whispered, “that she knows how hard you tried to save Janet.”

I went cold inside. Cathy knew nothing of my past; certainly I hadn’t seen anyone from Arentia in the village. There was no way, no fucking way, this Epona could know about Janet.

Nicole smiled sympathetically at my reaction. “She is a goddess, you know.” She pointed at my sword. “You won’t need that.”

“I usually need it the most right after someone tells me that.”

“You’re going to meet a lone woman half your size. Who’s also deathly ill.”

“I thought she was a goddess.”

“Then going armed won’t matter, will it?”

“Don’t worry,” Stan interjected. “Seriously. Being with Epona is the safest place in the world.”

I unbuckled my sword. I would’ve preferred to leave it with Cathy, but I handed it to Carnahan. He took it easily, the weight barely registering. “Keep it clean for me, okay?”

He nodded. “Like it was mine.”

Nicole took my arm. For the benefit of the crowd she said, “Now come into the forest, Mr. LaCrosse, and meet the Queen of Horses.”