Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories Read online

  Between Worlds:

  The Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories

  by Martha Wells

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or current events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Martha Wells

  eBook Cover by Tiger Bright Studios

  www.marthawells.com

  “The Potter’s Daughter” first appeared in Elemental in May 2006.

  “Night at the Opera” is original to this collection.

  “Holy Places” first appeared in Black Gate Magazine #11 in August 2007.

  “Rites of Passage” first appeared on marthawells.com in April 2014.

  “Houses of the Dead” first appeared in Black Gate Magazine #12 in July 2008.

  “Reflections” first appeared in Black Gate Magazine #10 in March 2007.

  Table of Contents

  Ile-Rien

  The Potter’s Daughter

  Night at the Opera

  Cineth

  Holy Places

  Rites of Passage

  Houses of the Dead

  Reflections

  The Potter’s Daughter

  This story takes place sometime before the events of the novel The Element of Fire.

  The potter’s daughter sat in the late afternoon sun outside the stone cottage, making clay figures and setting them out to dry on the flat slate doorstep. A gentle summer breeze stirred the oak and ash leaves and the dirty grey kerchief around her dirty blond hair.

  Someone was coming up the path.

  She could hear that he was without horse, cart, or company, and as he came toward her through the trees she saw that he was tall, with dark curly hair and a beard, with a pack and a leather case slung over one shoulder. He was unarmed, and dressed in a blue woolen doublet, faded and threadbare, brown breeches and brown top boots. The broad-brimmed hat he wore had seen better days, but the feathers in it were gaily colored. Brief disappointment colored her expression; she could tell already he wasn’t her quarry.

  Boots crunched on the pebbles in the yard, then his shadow fell over her and he said, “Good day. Is this the way to Riversee?”

  She continued shaping the wet clay, not looking up at him. “Just follow this road to the ford.”

  “Thank you, my lady Kade.”

  Now she did look up at him, in astonishment. Part of the astonishment was at herself, that she could still be so taken by surprise. She dropped the clay and stood, drawing a spell from the air.

  Watching her with delight, he said, “Some call you Kade Carrion, because that is the sort of name given to witches. But the truth of the matter is that you are the daughter of the dead King Fulstan and Moire, a woman said to be the Dame of Air and Darkness of the fayre.” He was smiling at her. His eyes were blue and guileless, and he had a plain open face.

  Kade stopped, hands lifted, spell poised to cast. Names could be power, depending on how much one knew. But he was making no move towards her. Intrigued, she folded her arms and asked, “Who soon to be in hell are you?”

  “I know all the tales of your battle with the court, the tricks you play on them,” he told her, his expression turning serious. “But the story I tell of you is the one about the young gentlewoman of Byre, who died of heartbreak in the Carmelite Convent’s spring garden when the prince of a rival city took her maidenhead and mocked her for it afterwards.”

  Kade lifted an ironic brow. “I remember the occasion. I didn’t realize how entertaining it was. Finding an untidy dead woman in my favorite garden was not the high point of my day.” It was incredible that he had recognized her; no one in their right mind would expect a half-fay half-human witch to be barefoot and wearing a peasant’s muddy dress. As a rule the fay were either grotesquely ugly or heartbreakingly beautiful. Kade was neither. Her eyes were merely grey, her skin tended to brown or redden rather than maintain an opalescent paleness, and her features were unfashionably sharp. She had never looked like anyone expected her to look and this was why she had never expected anyone to recognize her when she didn’t want to be recognized.

  Oblivious, he continued, “You took on the appearance of the poor lady and waited there, and when the prince returned--”

  “He found me instead, and we all know what happened to him then, don’t we?”

  “Yes,” he agreed readily. “You found that the little idiot had consented, and that she had been as guilty of bad judgment and weak nature as he was guilty of being a rake. So instead of killing him you cursed him with a rather interesting facial deformity to teach him better manners.”

  Kade frowned, startled in spite of herself. She had never heard anyone tell the incident in that light. It was astonishingly close to her own point of view. “And what does that tell you?”

  “That you have a sense of justice,” he assured her, still serious. “I’ve told many stories of you, and it’s one of the things about you that always impressed me.”

  Kade considered him carefully. He evidently knew his danger and didn’t shrink from it, though he hadn’t exactly dared her to be rid of him. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken to her this way, with a simple fearless acceptance. Kade found herself saying, “She didn’t perish dramatically of heartbreak, you know. She killed herself.”

  He shifted the pack on his shoulder and shook his head regretfully. “It’s all the same in the end.” He looked up at her, his gaze sharp. “But I’m here now to tell the story of the potter of Riversee who was murdered, and how you avenged her. I’m Giles Verney, a balladeer.”

  The balladeer part she could have guessed, but she still wasn’t sure what to make of this man. Surely he can’t be simply what he seems, she thought. People were never what they seemed. “Very well, Giles Verney, how did you know me?”

  “There’s a portrait of you in the manor at Islanton. It’s by Greanco, whom you must remember, as he was court artist when--”

  “I remember,” she interrupted him. The only other portrait of her had hung in the Royal Palace in Vienne, and was probably long destroyed. Greanco was a seventh son and had the unconscious ability to put a true representation of the soul of his subject into his work. Kade could weave glamour into an effective disguise, but hadn’t bothered for the inhabitants of Riversee, who had never seen her before. “You came here for the story of the dead potter.”

  Giles looked toward the door of the cottage. “I was in Marbury and heard about it from the magistrate there.” He shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line. “It’s a shocking thing to happen.”

  Maybe if I show him exactly how shocking it is he’ll go away, she thought. She said, “See for yourself.”

  He followed her into the cottage with less hesitation than she would have expected, but stopped in the doorway. It was dark and cool and flies buzzed in the damp still air. The plaster walls were stained with dried blood and the rough plank floor littered with the glazed pieces of the potter’s last work, mixed with smashed furniture and tumbled cooking pots. After a quiet moment he asked, “Do you know what did this?”

  She hesitated, but his story of the gentlewoman of Byre alone had bought him this answer. “Yes.”

  Giles stepped forward, stooping to pick a piece of wooden comb out of the rubble. His face was deeply troubled. “Was it human?”

  “I don’t know. But you’d be surprised how often something like this is done by a man, despite the number of tales where giant hands come down chimneys.” Kade rubbed the bridge of her nose. She was tired and the whole long day had apparently been for nothing. She made he
r voice sharp, wanting to frighten him. “Now why don’t you go away? This isn’t a game and I’m not known for my patience.”

  He looked up at her, the death in the poor little room reflected in his eyes. As if it were the most self-evident thing in the world, he said patiently, “There has to be an end to the story, my lady.”

  Stubborn idiot, if you are what you seem, Kade thought wearily. “There might be no end. I’ve waited all day here and all I caught was you, a human mayfly.”

  His expression turned quizzical. “You’re pretending to be another potter?”

  “Clever of you to notice.” Kade regarded the thatched ceiling sourly. The inhabitants of Riversee knew her only as the potter’s daughter, come from another village to see to her mother’s body and continue her craft. But now Giles’ recognition of her made her wonder. Had she fooled anyone? Did the whole village whisper of it behind her back?

  “Do you know why it was done?” Giles dropped the comb and got to his feet, dusting his hand off on his doublet.

  She wouldn’t give him that answer. “No.”

  “She was killed because potters are sacred to the old faith, or you wouldn’t be here.” Giles glanced around the room again, frowning in thought. “Could it have been the Church?”

  Kade shrugged, scratching her head under the kerchief. “The local priest is about as old as his god’s grandfather. I’m not discounting misplaced religious fervor, but he hasn’t the strength or the temperament.” As for the rest of Riversee, they might be baptized in the Church and pay their tithes regularly, but they still left fruit and flowers for the nameless spirits of the water and the wood, as well as the fay. Then she glared at him, because he had drawn her in again and she had hardly noticed.

  Giles nodded. “That’s well, but as you say, it’s best not to discount it altogether. What do you plan next?”

  She stared at him incredulously. “Are you mad?”

  He smiled, with the air of someone waiting for a joke to be explained so he could laugh too. “Why do you say that?”

  Kade clapped a hand to her forehead in exasperation. “In all the stories you’ve supposedly told of me, did it ever occur to you that I’m easily angered and don’t appreciate human company?”

  Apparently this hadn’t occurred to him. He was aghast. “Don’t you want the truth told?”

  “Not particularly, no.” Kade waved her arms in frustration. She still couldn’t believe she was having this conversation.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “Because it’s my concern,” she said pointedly.

  “My concern is to tell tales. This would make a very good tale,” he assured her, all earnest persuasion.

  Gritting her teeth in frustration, Kade pulled a bit of yarn off her belt and knotted it into a truthcharm. The strands held together and she knew he believed what he said, and she was enough of a judge of character to know that he wasn’t merely overdramatizing himself. She took a deep breath, flicking the charm away, and tried to reason with him. “That’s all well and good, Giles, but I’ve made this my battle, and I don’t need interference.”

  “People will tell things to a balladeer they wouldn’t think of saying to any other stranger,” he persisted. “I could be a great help to you.”

  Apparently reason worked as well with him as it would with the birds in the trees. “I don’t need help, either.” Exasperated, she stepped out of the shadowed cottage into the bright sunlight of the dirt yard.

  He followed, the leather case he carried bumping against the doorframe with a suspicious twang. Kade hesitated, her attention caught. “What’s in there?” she asked warily.

  He patted it fondly. “A viola d’amore.”

  Despite her best intentions, she found herself eyeing the case, torn between caution and greed. Like all her mother’s people, she had a weakness for human music. She conquered it and shook her head, thinking if I wanted to trap myself, I would send just such a man. Inoffensive and kind, easy to speak to, with a legitimate purpose for being here. “I want you to leave, on your own, or I’ll make you.”

  “Is it trust? Wait, here’s this.” Giles set his pack on the ground, knelt to fish a small fruit knife out and used it to cut off a lock of his hair. He held it up to her. “There’s trust on my part. This should be enough to show you that there can be trust on yours.”

  She took it from him mechanically. That was trust. For a man without any magical knowledge it was also the greatest foolishness. For someone who knew as much about her as he plainly did it bordered on insanity.

  She sighed. He might have a touch of the sight; the best balladeers did. Whatever it was, she really couldn’t see her way clear to killing him.

  No need to tell him that immediately. She lifted a brow, regarding him thoughtfully. “Did you ever hear the story of the balladeer who spent the rest of his life as a tree?”

  * * *

  Kade led Giles through the crumbling town walls and into the cluster of cottages that surrounded Riversee’s single inn. The small houses on either side of the rough cart track were made of piled stone with slate or thatched roofs, each in its own little yard with dilapidated outbuildings, dung heaps, and overgrown garden plots. The ground was deeply rutted by wagon wheels, dusty where it wasn’t muddy with discarded slops. The nearby post road made Riversee more cosmopolitan than most villages, but the passersby still watched Giles narrowly. They had become used to Kade, and a few nodded greetings to her.

  As they passed under the arched wagongate of the inn’s walled yard, Kade said quietly, “Tell your stories of someone else, Giles. I can be dangerous when I’m embarrassed.” She added ruefully, And I’ve embarrassed myself enough, thank you, I don’t need any help at it.

  He smiled at her good-naturedly, not as if he disbelieved her, but as if it was her perfect right to be dangerous whenever she chose.

  The inn was two stories high, with a shaded second-story balcony overlooking outside tables where late afternoon drinkers gathered with the chickens, children, and dogs in the dusty yard. A group of travelers, their feathered hats and the elaborate lace of their collars and cuffs grimy with road dust, argued vehemently around one of the tables. To the alarm of bystanders, one of them was using the butt of his wheellock to pound on the boards for emphasis. Kade recognized them as couriers, probably from royalist troops engaged in bringing down the walls of some noble family’s ancestral home. Months ago the court had ordered the destruction of all private fortifications to prevent feuding and rebellious plots among the petty nobility. This didn’t concern Kade, whose private fortifications rested on the bottom of a lake, and were invisible to all but the most talented eyes.

  Kade took a seat on the edge of the big square well to watch Giles approach the locals. The men seated at the long plank table eyed him with suspicion as the balladeer started to open the leather case he carried. The suspicion faded into keen interest as Giles took out the viola d’amore.

  Traveling musicians were usually welcomed gladly and balladeers who could bring news of other towns and villages even more so. Within moments they would be fighting to tell him their only news -- the grim story of the potter’s death, or at least what little they knew of it. Kade stirred the mud near the well with her big toe. She was disgusted, mostly with herself. She knew why the potter had been killed well enough -- to attract her attention.

  In the old faith, the villages honored the fay in the hopes that the erratic and easily angered creatures would leave them alone. Riversee was dedicated to Moire, Kade’s mother, and Kade could only see the death of the village’s sacred potter as a direct challenge. A few years ago it might have pleased her, this invitation to battle, but now it only threatened to make her bored. She wasn’t sure what had changed; perhaps she was growing tired of games altogether.

  * * *

  That night, seated atop one of the rough tables in the inn’s common room, Giles picked out an instrumental treatment of a popular ballad, and watched Kade. She sat near the large cook
ing hearth in the center of the room, regarding the crowd with an amused eye as she tapped one bare foot to the music.

  The inn was crowded with a mix of locals and travelers from the nearby post road. Both the magistrate and the elderly parish priest were in attendance; the first to count the number of wine jugs emptied for the Vine-growers’ Excise and the second to discourage the patrons from emptying the jugs at all. Smoke from clay pipes and tallow candles and the heat of the fire made the room close and muggy. The din of talk and shouted comments almost drowned the clear tone of the viola, but whenever Giles stopped playing enraged listeners hurled crockery at him.

  If Giles hadn’t known better he would’ve thought the dim flickering light kind to the rather plain woman who called herself the old potter’s daughter. But when firelight glittered off a wisp of pale hair as she leaned forward to catch some farmer’s joke, he saw something else instead. The daughter of the spirit dame of air and darkness, and a brute of a king, Giles thought, and added a restless undercurrent to the plaintive ballad. Smiling at his folly, he bent his head over the viola.

  Over the noisy babble and the music there were voices in the entryway. Two men with a party of servants entered the common room. One was blond and slight, with sharp handsome features and a downy beard. His manner was offhand and easy as he said something with a laugh to one of the servants behind him. His companion could not have been a greater contrast if nature had deliberately intended it. He was tall, muscled like a bull, with dark greasy hair and rough features. Both men were well turned out, though not in the latest city style, and Giles labeled them as hedge gentry.

  He also had a good eye for his audience, and saw tension infect the room like a plague in the newcomers’ wake. There was muttering and an uneasy shifting among the local people, though the travelers seemed oblivious to it. In Giles’ experience the nobility of this province were little better than gentlemen farmers and usually got on quite well with their villages and tenants, except for the usual squabbles over dovecotes and rights to the mill. Obviously the relationship in Riversee was somewhat strained.