Instructing the Novice Read online

  Lizabeth shivered, even though they were out of the cold and the train car was warm. She didn’t like how the darkness enveloped them so completely. There were weak, golden lights near the top of the car but they only served to throw everything into shadow. She moved closer to Lone, being careful not to touch the arrow still sprouting from his arm.

  “You were amazing back there but are you all right?” she murmured, looking up at him. “I mean, I guess that’s a stupid question—you were hit with an arrow. But—”

  “I’m well, Lizabeth.” The ghost of a smile stole over his lips. “I’ve had worse wounds in battle. Though now that we’re no longer in danger, I think I’ll pull it out.” He gripped the shaft of the arrow and Lizabeth saw his lips tighten as he prepared to tug.

  “Nay, lad.” One of the guards who looked to be in his fifties shouldered his way through the crowded train car and came to stand by them. “Gods-damned Friezens use barbed tips,” he explained, brushing Lone’s hand from the arrow’s shaft. “You’ll need to cut it out. Here—move your furs.”

  “Cut it out?” Lizabeth exclaimed but Lone was already moving the heat-saving furs aside to expose the dark green of his uniform shirt.

  “Here, let’s see where we are.” The guard, who had gray streaks in his short black beard, tore the heavy, silky material of Lone’s shirt open. He made a jagged rip in the fabric which exposed the place where the long shaft of the arrow—which appeared to be made of bone rather than wood, Lizabeth noticed—was buried.

  She drew in a sharp breath when she saw how deeply the arrow was embedded in Lone’s arm. She’d thought before that it was in his bicep but now she saw it was on the outside edge of his arm—was that the tricep? Whatever, she was a lawyer, not a doctor. The point was, it looked bad.

  “Yuh, that’ll have to come out,” the guard remarked. “Sooner’s better than later, don’t you think, lad?” he asked Lone.

  Lone nodded tightly. “If you have a knife I’ll do it myself.”

  “Oh, no need for that with old Joren around.” The guard smiled at him. “I’ve cut out more arrows than a gillard has teeth. Just you hold still and I’ll have it out in a wink.”

  Matter-of-factly, he pulled out a long, sharp dagger from its sheath at his belt. Before Lizabeth could protest that they needed to wait until they were someplace with antiseptic and pain killers, the guard—whose name was presumably Joren—had made two swift, deep cuts above and below the shaft of the arrow.

  “Wait!” Lizabeth protested as the blood began to well up from Lone’s flesh. “Please, you can’t just—”

  But before she could finish the guard had taken a good grip on the arrow. With a swift twist and tug, he yanked it free and held up the bloody arrowhead triumphantly. Just as he had said, there were tiny, jagged barbs along the sides, Lizabeth saw faintly. There was no way it would have come out cleanly without the deep cuts to Lone’s arm. But as the dark crimson blood began to well up from the wound, she still felt sick and unhappy.

  “Oh, Lone!” Quickly she grabbed one of her furs and pressed it over the bloody wound, holding firm pressure to try and stop the flow. “God, this is awful!”

  “We knew it would be dangerous,” he pointed out in a low voice. “I’ll be fine, Lizabeth—Kindred are fast healers.”

  “Kindred, are you?” Joren looked up from cleaning the end of his dagger and gave Lone a critical look. “Might have known it from the size of you. No wonder the two of you decided to steal the Snow Queen right out from under the Friezen’s noses. Kindred can’t stand to see a female in trouble—I know that right enough.”

  “We couldn’t just leave her there,” Lone said, frowning. “I did my research before I came—I know what the Friezens do to women.”

  “Oh, yuh—they’re right cruel fuckers, they are.” Joren nodded darkly and shot a glance at Anya who was sitting against a wall with her head thrown back and her eyes closed. Lizabeth couldn’t tell if she was only resting or so worn out from her ordeal that she’d fallen asleep. “Escaped from their ripening hut, did she?” he asked.

  “Yes, actually. That is what she said.” Lizabeth kept her voice low. “And when they came after her, she said she’d rather be a ‘gray-face’ than be cut. What does all that mean—do you know?”

  “Yuh, I know. The Friezens call themselves ‘gray faces’ because their skin gets hard and gray from allus livin’ in the cold. It grows a protective covering-like.” Joren motioned to his own face with the hand not holding the dagger. “But they believe they need a woman with a smooth face for the Snow Queen. So they take one who’s in her second fertility and shove her in a heated hut to stay for months and months until her skin gets soft and clear and smooth again.”

  “Her second fertility?” Lizabeth frowned. “What’s that?”

  “You don’t know about the second span?” Joren looked surprised. “I kind of thought you might be in it yourself, m’lady,” he added, giving her a penetrating look.

  “I’m sorry but I’ve never heard of it before,” Lizabeth said. “Could you please explain?

  “Yuh, sure.” Joren shrugged. “Well, the Friezen women only have two periods when they can have children. Once in the second decade of life and once in the fourth. Those in their second fertility are highly prized, don’t you know. It’s said that all the greatest Friezen leaders were born to mothers in their second span. Their children are smarter, stronger, and longer-lived. So say the legends, anyway.”

  Lizabeth shot a glance at Lone.

  “Is that why you thought I might be extra-attractive to the Friezens? Because of my age?”

  “That and your beauty, Mistress,” Lone murmured. “It’s one reason I wanted to be certain your face was covered before we went out of the shuttle,” he added, frowning unhappily. “Unfortunately you took off your scarf. I don’t like the fact that they saw you.”

  “Never fear, your lady will be safe at the Tower of the Higher Mind, lad,” Joren said comfortingly. “The Friezens can’t get to us because they have no access to the train and it’s the only way up.”

  “Thank you for the reassurance,” Lizabeth said. “But tell us…” She dropped her voice even lower. “What exactly do the Friezens do to their Snow Queen? Poor Anya seemed to be running for her life and she kept saying she didn’t want to be cut.” She nodded at the woman who was plainly asleep now, her face creased with worry, as though she was having bad dreams.

  “You sure you want to know, little Mistress? Very well then,” Joren continued before she could answer. “They have this belief that the Snow Queen can conceive better if they cut out her pleasure pearl. Some kind of damn-fool idea that if she has pleasure in the act, all the life-force that ought to go into her child will float out into the wind instead.” He shook his head gravely. “So they hold her down and spread her thighs and…” He didn’t finish in words but made a graphic cutting motion with his dagger.

  “Oh, that’s awful!” Lizabeth pressed her own thighs tightly together in horror.

  “I told you they practiced female mutilation,” Lone said in a low voice.

  “The mutilation’s bad enough but afterwards the shaman and the head of the tribe and just about any other damn male that wants to has a go at her.” Joren’s previously friendly face was dark. “Trying to get her pregnant, y’see. The poor women that go through it don’t always survive the process but if they do and they conceive, the Friezens think they’ll have good hunting out of it all year. And the child that’s born of it—if it’s male—may grow up to be the next leader or shaman of the tribe.”

  “God,” Lizabeth breathed, shaking her head. She was doubly glad now that they’d insisted on taking Anya with them. She cast another glance at the sleeping woman. No wonder she’d decided she would rather freeze to death than go through what her people had planned for her! Lizabeth would rather freeze to death herself.

  “This practice of the Friezens—haven’t the people of the Tower ever had a thought to stopping it?” Lone asked. H