Gravelight by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Author:Marion Zimmer Bradley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Gothic, Occult & Supernatural, Contemporary
ISBN: 9781429992763
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1997-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

THE GRAVE OF HOPE

/ recoil and droop, and seek repose In Itstlessness from vain perplexity, Unprofitably travelling toward the grave. — WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

THEIR GUIDE HAD DESERTED THEM YESTERDAY, AND BY then the three of them — her guide, the priest, and she — had been traveling for months, having pressed always north and west, farther into the savage wilderness than any Englishman had yet penetrated.

They'd long since left the lands belonging to the friendly Delaware who farmed and hunted alongside the members of the tiny English outpost named after Lord Baltimore. The lands they were passing through now were under the control of a tribe called the Tutelo. The guide had wanted to turn back, but Father Hansard thought they might not see any Tutelo aboriginals at all if they were fortunate.

They had not been fortunate.

They'd thought they were, for a while. She and Father Hansard had accounted themselves lucky when they'd awakened one morning to find that the guide had only taken his own horse and left them the pack mule and supplies. They were not lost. Among the supplies Athanais had kept under her personal rule was a sextant, an excellent astrolabe — and the geomantic map. All she had to do was reach the place the stars spoke of and claim the land.

I

GRAVELIGHT I79

* * *

The ambush, when it came, was brief and effective. A hail of arrows from cover; monstrous misshapen dark-skinned men with painted bodies, howling like demons. An arrow took Father Hansard in the throat; Athanais might have escaped herself but for that the devils killed her horse under her. It threw her as it died, and instants later she was dragged to her feet by one of the brutes.

They did not kill her, but neither did they speak any Christian tongue, and she had no other weapon with which to beguile them. She was forced along with them unwilling, her hands bound behind her back with leather thongs.

The village was a crude cluster of shacks made from tree bark and matting, more primitive conditions even than beyond the Pale in Ireland. It was filled with other savages, mostly women and children. Their only garment was a crude apron of fringed leather, and they fingered the smooth stuff of her riding dress with open interest.

Her captors shoved her ahead of them into a hut like the others. They were not gentle — Athanais went sprawling through the opening made by the rolled-up mat and fell to the floor beside the bier

The dead woman lay upon several layers of woven mat. Her eyes were closed, and her face was sunken in the fashion of the several-days dead. She wore ornaments of shell and bone in her hair, her ears, and about her throat, and her buckskin apron was richly beaded. The she-savage's skin and hair were painted and oiled more elaborately than that of anyone Athanais had yet seen, and she was surrounded by barbaric offerings, but all the pungent spices on her and around her could not disguise the gagging odor of corruption.

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