Tara Runeweaver's Arc

Chapter 4 of 19

Bjorn's hand slid down her arm and stopped at her wrist. He turned her palm up like he was opening a book. Tara felt the cool weight of a stone ring drop into her hand, carved with his seal, a strip of hide trailing from it. He closed her fingers around it and smiled, small and certain, then walked away into his men. She did not know what the ring meant. She only knew every warrior in the hall had seen him give it. Women swept in before she could breathe. They took her elbows and pulled her through a side door into a warm, low room. Steam rose from a basin. They stripped her travel wool and washed her shoulders, her throat, her hands. No one spoke to her. They spoke around her, quick and practiced, as if dressing a bride or a sacrifice. Tara watched their hands and tried to learn. They dressed her in bright silk and white fur. One woman knelt and cuffed a stiff leather bracelet to each wrist, etched with old marks and tipped with wolf fang. Tara turned her wrist and the white fur brushed her pulse. She did not know the meaning of the symbols. She did not know if the cuffs said wife, or property, or something older. She memorized the way the woman fastened them. She would ask, later. She would not ask now. At the door to the hall stood a tall carved post, three animal faces stacked above each other, frost in the notches. The woman ahead of her touched the wolf's mouth with two fingers, then her own lips. Tara watched and did exactly the same. The woman behind her made a small sound of approval. It was the first sound any of them had made for her. She stepped back into the hall. The colored fire jumped high. Every man turned. She saw their eyes move from her face to the cuffs at her wrists to the stone ring in her hand, and she saw what those small things meant by the way the men looked away from Bjorn when he met their eyes. She had passed. She did not know the language yet, but tonight she had spoken it without a single mistake.