The Feast of the Trickster Read online

  The Feast of the Trickster

  Copyright 2015 Beth Hilgartner

  Published by Beth Hilgartner at Smashwords

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For Ernest, who asked for a book about real kids, and for Josh, Naomi, and David.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  A Note on Language

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Other Books by this Author

  Connect with Beth Hilgartner

  Author’s Note

  The Feast of the Trickster was originally published in a hardcover edition in 1991. It is the concluding volume of a two-part work, which began in Colors in the Dreamweaver’s Loom, first published in 1989. Colors and Feast have been out of print for many years. It is my hope that these e-book editions will make it possible not only for those who enjoyed these books when they were first released to revisit them, but also for these books to find another generation of readers. Though marketed as YA fantasy by the original publisher, the themes this story explores are timeless; it is my hope that those of any age who read fantasy will find something to enjoy in the adventures of Zan and her friends.

  Beth Hilgartner, May 2015

  A Note on Language

  In the Senathii, references to a specific member of one of the peoples (that is, Orathi, Vemathi, etc.) use a form of the name which indicates the gender of the person in question. For example, a desert woman is called a Khedatheh (-eh being the feminine ending); a man is called a Khedathen (-en being the masculine form). If the gender of the individual is unknown, the neuter form, Khedath, is used. The -i ending is plural.

  PROLOGUE

  June in Vermont is either heavenly or dismal. This afternoon, a determined rain thudded on the corrugated roof of the horse barn, and the comfortable smells of hay, horses, and leather were mixed with raw dampness. Angel scrubbed her dirt-caked bridle, pushed a coil of blond hair off her forehead, and sighed. Mark looked up from the saddle he was cleaning.

  "It's so boring," Angel said. "I mean, the first day of summer vacation and we're cleaning tack."

  "So go for a trail ride in the rain," Brice suggested. "No one's stopping you."

  Angel rolled her eyes. "It's not the rain; it's that nothing ever happens here."

  Brice set aside the boot he'd just polished and reached for its mate. "What do you want to have happen, Angel?"

  "Something exciting—" she began. "Something different; something out of the ordinary; something amazing—do you know what I mean?"

  "Like mad dogs?" Brice offered. "Or an earthquake?"

  "Or a nuclear plant accident?"

  "Oh, Mark!" Angel said with great disgust.

  "Well," he said, "how about an alien invasion?"

  "Exactly!" Angel cried. "Aliens would do nicely! Maybe they'd carry you off!"

  "For it to be really exciting, they'd have to carry you off," Brice put in. "I can see the headlines now: 'Girl, fifteen, abducted by UFO.’”

  She tossed her grubby sponge at him. The arrival of their boss, Kelly Sebastian, cut short their discussion.

  "You guys planning to ride today?" Kelly asked. "I've got a pair of beginners coming for a three-thirty lesson, so if you want to ride inside, you'd better get moving."

  As she left, Brice leaned toward the others. "Maybe the aliens would carry off Kelly!" he whispered.

  Mischief lit Angel's hazel eyes. "Even aliens wouldn't dare," she replied. "Besides, it had better be more like close encounters, if the excitement is going to last us all summer."

  Mark shook his head. "You're weird, Angel; but I don't know what we'd do without you. I'm going to get Churchy ready. Aren't you guys going to ride?"

  ONE

  The Weaver sat at the Loom, a frown lodged between his brows as he studied the pattern. Things were desperately wrong. The fabric of Fate was not as closely woven as it should be. There was a spreading weakness he could not put right. And the pattern! The orderly world he knew was spinning into chaos; the pattern showed it, shot through as it was with the vivid purple of the Trickster's color—a thread he could not control. The Feast of the Trickster was fast approaching, heralding the season when her power was greatest and the influence of the Loom weakest. Long ago, the other gods had felt it necessary to curb the Trickster's wildness, so they had, over the Weaver's protests, used the Loom to bind her power. It was not the Loom's way to destroy power. As the Weaver had foreseen, the Loom would only limit the Trickster's ability to use her power; during the time the Trickster was able to wield her power, there was a great deal of it at hand. The result was that most of the time, the Trickster was unable to upset things through her perversity. Only during the few years preceding and following her Feast (which fell every twenty-one years) was she troublesome; but because of the Loom's binding, she had access to enough of her own stored power to be extremely troublesome indeed.

  The Weaver thinned his lips. There was another problem with the gods' solution: it made the Trickster angry. With each passing of her Feast, she had striven more determinedly at the Loom's binding. She wanted to be free; the Weaver could feel her anger and her strength even now, like a salmon too strong for the angler's line. With each cycle, she had gained in subtlety; she flexed her power to find new weak places in the Loom's bonds. The Weaver feared this Trickster's Feast, as he had never feared it before; when the Trickster came into her full power, she might rip free, unraveling the whole of reality.

  The Trickster played her game with masterly skill. She was angry enough not to care that her freedom would bring the end of the Loom, and with it the Weaver, and would shake the foundations of their world. The Trickster fed and fostered whatever chaos she could work into the pattern, to prevent the Loom from strengthening itself. But the Weaver knew his work; he had found the point from which the weakening had begun. He could see that everything began to change the instant the Stranger, 'Tsan, had been torn from the Loom by the Trickster's malice and flung across the void to another world.

  'Tsan. He shook his head. She was such an enigma. He had strung her color in the Loom at the request of his sister, the Forester. Three and a half years ago, the people of the forest, the Orathi, had been threatened by the conniving of the City and the violence of the desert people, the Khedathi. The Forester felt that they needed a Wanderer, a leader from beyond the forest's borders. The Weaver had agreed; but when he strung a Wanderer's color on the Loom, for some unguessable reason, 'Tsan had been pulled from her own world into his. Although it hadn't been easy for
her, the Weaver knew, 'Tsan proved stronger than she had thought herself; somehow, she had knit together a band of misfits to ask a boon of the gods. But the Trickster had chosen that moment to test her own weakening bonds. She had set the companions a further quest, one fraught with greater difficulties; and then, when they surmounted even these odds, she had loosed her malice on them, "rewarding" them with bitter, unwelcome gifts; 'Tsan was ripped from the Loom and cast across the void to the land whence she had come. Even the hard-won boon—to save the Orathi—was twisted as only the Trickster could devise. Now the City itself was endangered by the threat of its own Tame Khedathi turning feral; the fragile truce between the shapeshifters and the desert Khedathi was at the point of shattering. The whole world was poised on the brink of violence and war.

  "And the Trickster's thread runs through it all," the Weaver whispered. With an explosive sigh, he began to weave. Vivid colors shimmered as he wound them into the pattern: gods' colors—deep blue, clear gold. When he finished, he spoke two names—gods' names: "Dreamer, Namegiver." His siblings appeared in a swirl of moving air. At his gesture, they approached to study the Loom.

  The Namegiver's voice was grim. "Chaos, Destruction, Doom. Weaver, I do not like your pattern. "

  "My pattern? It is hardly that."

  "How has she grown so strong?" the Dreamer demanded.

  "Her power grows as her Feast approaches," the Weaver responded. "It is the price of the Loom's binding upon her."

  "I know that," the Dreamer snapped. "But in the past, the Loom has constrained her. She has caused trouble at her Feast, but never anything like this. The Loom is failing, Elgonar."

  "Do you think I cannot feel it? I am bound to the Loom more firmly than even the Trickster. I fear it is only a matter of time before she will tear free, and the whole will unravel. "

  The Dreamer laid a gentle hand on the Weaver's shoulder. "But El, why?"

  "She has weakened the fabric of Fate," he said heavily. "How, I'm not certain, though I suspect it has something to do with the way she cast out the Wanderer. "

  "Well, weave her back, " the Dreamer said.

  "No!" the Namegiver cried.

  A sour smile twisted the Weaver's lips. "I've tried. But the Trickster thought of that. I strung 'Tsan's color, but when it touched the Loom, it turned to the Trickster's purple. It is not an experience I am anxious to repeat. "

  "But your Wanderer is the answer, I think," said the Namegiver. "What if she were brought here another way?"

  The Weaver considered her question. At last he answered, his words deliberate. "Since the Trickster has anticipated me, I cannot use the power of the Loom to summon 'Tsan from her far world; but were she here, within the Loom's sphere, then, yes, I could weave her into the pattern—and her presence would strengthen it. But how to get her here? I don't think I can withstand the Trickster at her Feast."

  "You needn't stand alone, you proud idiot," the Dreamer said hotly. "I am with you. This is too great a matter for heroics."

  "Irenden took my very words," the Namegiver said. "We will aid you however we may."

  "I thank you," the Weaver said. "We will need one another's strengths if we are to prevail. But without the Loom, I do not see how we three can bring 'Tsan across the void."

  "We need other allies," the Namegiver said. With one finger she traced a thread in the Loom's pattern. "Minstrel." Her finger moved to another strand. "Swordswoman." A third: "Shapeshifter." There was a hesitation as she sought the fourth. ''Prophet. And to bind them together," she concluded, "the Heart-mender."

  "’Tsan’s companions," the Dreamer breathed. "What can they do?"

  The Weaver's face brightened. "We shall set them another Quest. Yes! If anyone is equal to the task, surely they are." He reached for the shuttle. "Leave me now. I must weave them together. When all is in readiness, I will call." He sent the shuttle flying through the warp with more energy than he had felt in many, many weeks.

  ***

  In the City, the Street of the Artisans was not as busy as one might expect on a fine spring afternoon. There was little laughter or bright patter from either sellers or buyers. A pall of anxiety hung over the market; no one was strong enough to lift it.

  Remarr the Minstrel sat on a worn blanket beside the silversmith's booth. His fingers pulled music from his harp, but even he seemed to have succumbed to the tension in the air. His melodies called up images of early winter, of the fading of things, of loss, death, and sorrow. There was no eager crowd gathered to hear the magic of his harp, and the battered tin cup on the pavement before him was empty. For the last two days, his cup had been empty when the market closed at dusk, and he had gone to bed with no supper whatever. The Vemathi merchants were sick with apprehension; the Tame Khedathi had turned surly, no longer spending the odd coin on the trinkets the Street of the Artisans offered. Lean times had come; everyone's belt needed tightening.

  The sound of a coin falling into his cup snagged Remarr's attention—but his music faltered into silence. This coin was heavy, yellow, and the size of his circled thumb and index finger. He looked up, seeking the hand from which the coin had fallen. Efiran Moirre watched him. Efiran Moirre: head of the powerful House of Moirre; father of Remarr's friend and companion of years past, Vihena Moirre Khesst. He remembered, with an odd twinge of loss, that the tin cup he used for begging was marked with the badge of House Moirre—the last remnant of the provisioning Efiran had given 'Tsan and the Orathi twins for their journey to Windsmeet.

  For a long moment, Remarr and Efiran studied each other. Remarr saw an aging Vemathen, still handsome, though his dark hair had faded to gray and his eyes were shadowed. Efiran saw a young man; judging from his white-blond hair, golden skin, and dark eyes, a Khedathen, whose hands were callused from the harp and not the sword. He lacked the feline grace of the Tame Khedathi Efiran knew. The minstrel's face was drawn, his skin too tight to the bone, his eyes too large and dark in their sockets. Efiran shook his head.

  "You are too thin, Remarr."

  He shrugged. "Indeed. No doubt hunger blunts her claws on the thick walls of your fine house."

  "No doubt," Efiran agreed. They regarded each other warily. Then Efiran sighed. "I came," he said, "to give you news, and a warning. You know of the tension between Edevvi and Belerann?"

  Remarr nodded. Belerann spoke for the Tame Khedathi; Edevvi, one of his lieutenants, was known to be dissatisfied with his leadership. The talk hadn't worried Remarr; Edevvi was no friend of his and would make his life unpleasant were she in power, but Belerann was too shrewd to rise to her bait. Remarr had always believed that even if Edevvi forced a challenge, Belerann had nothing to fear from her blade. Now, though, Efiran's manner struck an ominous chord.

  "Edevvi challenged Belerann this afternoon—and won."

  "Merciless gods, how? She isn't half the fighter he is."

  Efiran clenched one fist. "She had the Trickster's own luck. He cut her early on; and—soul of honor that he was—he offered to spare her if she put up her sword. Despite her wound, she fought like one possessed. He slipped in her blood. It was over in an instant." He shook his head. "That's the news," he went on, heavily. "Now the warning: there are two things that young hothead wants badly enough to have risked death on Belerann's sword. One is the City; she'll have to wait for that, I wager. But the other is the head of one blond harper. Don't stay in the City for her sycophants to find you."

  Remarr studied Efiran's face, as though he could peel away his skin and see the motives in his mind. "Why are you telling me this?"

  A curious expression, almost a smile, flitted across Efiran's face. "It will annoy Hobann."

  Remarr's eyes narrowed at the name of his one-time employer. "Hobann is dead." The merchant had fallen in one of the Lord of the City's purges, two years ago.

  "Forgive me," Efiran said. "My jests are all of a dark hue these days. That was why I took 'Tsan and the Orathi twins into my House: to annoy Hobann. 'Tsan guessed what was in my mind—gods know ho
w—and asked me who Hobann was. I've never forgotten it. But I haven't answered your question. If my daughter Vihena is accepted as Khesst, then surely you are almost Moirre? Perhaps I came to warn the son I never had."

  "Are you naming me Moirre?" Remarr demanded in disbelief.

  Efiran hunched an elegant shoulder. "No. But if you came courting my daughter Anfeh, who knows where that might lead?"

  "Anfeh is just a little girl," the minstrel protested. And an impossible brat as well, he added inwardly.

  "And you are hardly in a position to come courting. I speak of what may be, not what is, Remarr Khesst."

  The minstrel's face went still as a carving. "Not Khesst," he said, his flat tone covering the pain he felt at hearing his birthname. "Khesst isn't as open-minded as you, Moirre. If they welcomed Vihena and tolerated me for her sake, they would yet slice me to ribbons if they heard me style myself Khesst. They cast me out. I am neither Khesst nor Moirre. I thank you for your news and your warning, but I do not want your daughter, nor your gold, nor your pity." He snatched up the tin cup, and made as though to toss the coin back at Efiran Moirre, but the look on the older man's face stopped him.

  "Buy a horse—a fast horse. Consider it a loan, you stiff-necked harper. Pay me back if we both survive the brewing storm. And I don't pity you, Remarr; not at all." Then he strode off, moving with surprising energy for an old man. Remarr watched him go, the coin in the westering light still bright on his own palm.

  Remarr hugged himself as he began to shiver. "The Weaver's at his Loom," he whispered to himself, "and it's my thread he draws into his pattern. But gods—oh, merciless gods!—with whose destiny is he tangling mine, this time?"

  He stowed his harp in its case, gathered his possessions, and walked away. He found himself whistling. Things were stirring; there were changes in the air. He could feel it.

  ***

  The Weaver laid the shuttle aside. It had taken delicate work, but the first of them was in motion. Now for the swordswoman—and swiftly!—for the minstrel might have need of her. He studied the pattern for several moments; with a decisive nod he reached for her color, and set to his task.