Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online Page B

rocks of the far side, singing as she saw the old herd sitting outside the hut in the sun.
     
    “‘I don’t want your gifts, I’ll take them not:
    The master herder must hear of this!’
    ‘Then if you’re really going to tell,
    then you must sink in the ground to your neck!’”
     
    And Mariarta burst out laughing—the herdboy had been stupid not to take the gifts, when keeping quiet would have meant the saint stayed and kept the alp green and the cows well.
    Mariarta made it onto the grass, finishing the rest more softly as she came into the meadow; how the saint left the alp. It withered behind her, and all the cows called to ask where she was going; but the spell of her secrecy was broken, and she couldn’t stay.
     
    “‘Farewell, farewell to everything;
    heaven only knows when I’ll return!’ 
    And when she went, the bells rang so hard
    that all their clappers broke clean away—”
     
    The herd watched her come, making no sign. He sat there, the wrinkled, bearded face immobile, his brown eyes on her, sharp. The good crossbow was in his lap.
    “I know that song,” he said.
    Mariarta leaned against the wall, panting with her exertion. “So does Bab Luregn.”
    The herd laughed. “He knows some things. But not all. Some scare him. He won’t go near Tgiern Sogn-Gions.”
    Mariarta laughed, since the ghost there was shut safe in a tin box and could howl all it liked until Judgment Day. “I don’t care about Bab Luregn. Only about that.” She looked at the bow.
    The herd handed it to her, then reached  beside him, coming up with a fistful of quarrels. “Today you shoot.” He walked around the side of the hut. Mariarta followed him.
    The hut as seen from the side looked peculiar, since the herd had been shooting at it for many years. The wood of it was all splintered into a surface so rough it resembled fur in places. In addition, limewash had been used to paint target patterns on the wall, the commonest one being the square-within-squares like the board you played jouss on.
    “Here,” the herd said, handing her the quarrels. Mariarta stuck five of them in her pocket, saving one out, then stood on the curve of the bow. She hooked the horn hook through belt and bowstring, stood, felt the string thump smoothly into place. Mariarta laid the quarrel in the groove, slipped its back against the string.
    “The center,” the herd said, indicating the solid- painted square, a handspan across, in the middle of the target. “Not from here. Back up.”
    Mariarta walked some fifty paces from the hut, noting the slight wind she walked into. It would make no difference to her shooting, though it talked in her ears, a low sporadic rumble, as she walked into it.
    “There.”
    She turned around. That white patch looked tiny from here.
    She raised the bow, sighting down its stock, noticing the way the notch carved into the far end of the stock leaned to the left. The wind pushed gently at her back, ruffling her skirts. Mariarta aimed—
    The wind rose. Not in any way that could be felt in clothes or hair; but it seemed to be rushing past her shoulders, down the stock of the bow, rising. The fletching of the quarrel whined softly with it, as if in eagerness to be let go. Everything seemed to be pouring or leaning toward the patch of white. Mariarta breathed in with a great effort, as if the air were all rushing away from her toward the target—then let the breath out and pressed the trigger. The quarrel leaped away, the bow bounded in her hands—
    She heard the hollow sound of the quarrel sinking into the wood. That Mariarta was used to. What she was not used to was the sight of the quarrel dead in the middle of that white patch.
     “Again,” the old herd said.
    Mariarta was already spanning the bow. She had never felt anything like that rush forward and away, the striking: not as something remote, but as something she was part of. Mariarta straightened, the quarrel in the groove, feeling the wind stream