Cherriese's Arc

Chapter 6 of 13

By morning the rumor had already moved through the valley faster than Cherriese could walk it. The lone exile had spoken to two newcomers at the water line. The newcomers had spoken to her partner. By the time Cherriese came down from the lodge with the wand wrapped in cloth at her belt, her partner met her on the path with a hard face and a harder mouth. The partner said the husband should be killed at the gate before he spoke a word. The partner said Cherriese had been weak to bring him in. Cherriese listened until the partner was done. Then she told the partner to leave the valley by sundown. The partner stared. Cherriese did not raise her voice. She said a guardian who decided a death before the trial was a guardian who could be bribed to decide the next one. She said she would not build a grove on that. The partner spat on the stones and went up the slope to gather a pack. Cherriese watched until the figure was past the ridge. Her hands shook only after. She had lost the one person who had bandaged her wounds without being asked, and she had lost her at the worst hour. That was when her husband came down the path between two of the newcomers, wrists still bound, and held out the thin striped crystal to her a second time. He said he had kept a second wand hidden in his coat lining. He said he had not used it against her. He said she would need it now that she stood alone at the gate. Cherriese took the needle of crystal from his bound hands and turned it in the light. The facets threw color across his face and showed no lie she could read. She did not thank him. She walked him to the jagged stone pillar at the center of the clearing, its crown of sharp crystals catching the noon sun, and tied his rope to its base. He would stand there until she decided what he was. Then she rang the lodge bell and called the valley in. They gathered inside the hollow trunk shelter, on the stone benches under the crystal-studded bark. Sixteen faces. She told them what her husband had done on the road. She told them what her partner had demanded and why she had sent the partner away. She held up the second wand so every face caught its light. She said any voice that spread a rumor before the trial, any voice that named a sentence before the facts, would walk out of the valley by the same path her partner had taken. The grove would be built on what people did when helping cost them, not on what they whispered when it was easy. She walked them out to the tall carved stone at the clearing's edge and cut her three rules into the soft band beneath the crystal inlays with the point of the new wand. Safe water. Borders we hold. Mouths that cannot be bought. The valley read the lines as she carved them. No one spoke. When she finished, the clearing was quieter than it had been since the beacon was lit, and she stood alone at the gate with two wands and a husband tied to stone.