Kasha went from hot to frozen. That was the very last question she'd ever expected out of Felaras.
"You're drunk," she stammered, finally. "You're drunk, or you'd never have said that."
Felaras shook her head, gently curving grey strands just brushing the tops of her shoulders. "No, I'm not. Or not that drunk."
"Felaras—I—" She was at a total loss for words.
"Have either of them asked to be your permanent lover yet?"
"No!" She flushed hotly again. "We're . . . friends. That's all. I don't want to have to choose between them, not ever! Not for that, not for any reason!"
"You're a Watcher—"
"I know that. I'm a Watcher before I'm anything else, Felaras, and—"
"So focus and give me the answer to my question."
Kasha took a deep breath and focused down until her stomach stopped churning; stilled her mind and let whatever would come rise to the surface.
And when the thought came, it seemed an odd one, but she spoke it anyway.
"Zorsha has never had a nickname. Teo has never been Teokane to anyone except as a signature."
Felaras took her words, turned them around, and looked them over; Kasha could see it in the slightly unfocused eyes, the frown-line between her thick grey eyebrows.
"Meaning?"
Kasha followed her thought, as carefully as she would have followed a track over barren ground. "I'm not quite sure. Except that—nobody ever gave you a nickname either. Or me. Can people obey somebody they still think of as 'young Teo'? Can they trust the decisions of a man who is still bearing the diminutive he wore when he was a child?" She had to shake her head. "I'm not sure what it means; I'm not sure it means anything."
"Let me lead you down a side path, then; suppose I told you to choose, not for the Order, but for yourself. Told you that you would have to make up your mind between them. Then what?"
Kasha shoved the extreme embarrassment and the uncomfortable feelings that question caused down into a corner of herself and sat on them until they weren't getting in the way of her thinking. "If I were forced into choosing one of them as my lover, it would probably be Teo. And that would be because Zorsha would be hurt, but not as badly, nor as deeply, by my making a choice. Which is why I won't." Her mouth was dry, and she was feeling very off-balance and unsettled, and she didn't want to have to deal with it anymore. "Felaras, I don't like having to think about these things—"
"Enough of it, then. Drink your wine; you look like hell."
"Do I?" She willed her insides to stop fluttering. "I feel like hell. I've avoided just this topic ever since the three of us figured out that boys and girls were different. And that I wasn't a boy. Like I said, we—but when it looked like it might get into something other than a game, I started saying 'no' to that. I enjoy what we have and I don't want it ruined."
"But you've told me what I needed to know, girl. That Teo isn't as resilient as Zorsha. That other people view him—how to put this?—with a little less than the full respect the Master needs."
Kasha laughed, hearing the edge of hysteria in her voice and hoping Felaras didn't. "You talk about respect? With all the fights in Council—"
"They fight me; that doesn't mean they don't respect me." Felaras chuckled out of the dark depths of her chair. "Somebody out there respected my abilities enough to try and joggle my arm tonight. An ill-wishing. I sent it home with its tail between its legs."
Kasha sat bolt upright, mug sloshing. "An ill-wishing? But—"
Felaras waved her alarm aside. "Don't fret yourself. By tomorrow whoever it is will have other things to think about. We're going to have those blamed nomads at the door; that should keep everyone's attention, and—"
There was a tentative knock at the door. "Come," Felaras called, and Zorsha slid around the door-edge with his hands full of papers, his blond hair and brown clothing dark with either sweat or rain, grey eyes looking a bit less sleepy than usual.
"Master Felaras, you said—"
"—that I wanted that inventory on my desk tonight, thank you. Yes, I meant it."
"Well, this is everything, down to the last straw in the stable." He put the neat pile of paper exactly in front of Felaras with a half-smile of pardonable pride.
"Good man; go get yourself some of that wine and get to bed; I'm calling a full Convocation tomorrow." She shifted her gaze to Kasha. "Finish yours and get yourself off. I'll need you tomorrow, and not muddled."
Kasha downed the last swallow in her mug, and left it on Felaras's desk. Zorsha waited for her just beyond the door in the dark stairway.
She stumbled over a rough place; he caught her elbow. Roughly sensitive after her bout with Felaras, she twitched away from him. Wisely, he let her go, and let her lead the way down the uneven stone steps.
"Is it that bad?" he asked her, about halfway down. "There's a lot of rumors below, but no real facts."
He had a very pleasant, rich voice; lower than a tenor, higher than a baritone. It unsettled Kasha in a way she did not want to deal with, and she simply nodded, forgetting for a moment that he probably couldn't see her gesture in the ill-lit staircase.
"Kasha?"
"It's bad," she replied shortly.
"The messenger was from the Vale, then? The nomads are at the Teeth?"
"They're at the Teeth," Kasha got out around her clenched jaw, exerting control over herself to answer. "They'll be in the Vale in the next few days. That's why the inventory. What we have now may be all we'll have for a while."
Zorsha made a soft little sound, like a cross between a sigh and a grunt. "I rather thought that was it." As they reached the bottom of the staircase, he gave her arm a squeeze, surprising her before she could pull away. "Go get some rest. You may not get any for a while."
She turned to glare at him. But he was already gone.
CHAPTER TWO
Teo's eyes misted over, and he lost the sense of what he was reading.
Gods. He blinked; blinked again, but the old and fading words on the yellowed parchment page kept running together into illegibility. Teo rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand to clear them, but they wouldn't stop blurring. He glanced over to the corner of the scarred desk, at the time-candle he'd brought with him into the Library. He shook his head in mild surprise. Half burned-down already? It only seemed an hour ago that he'd started his search.
Is it really midnight? He sneezed and rubbed at his nose as another sneeze threatened; his eyes felt gritty and sore. He looked around, certain that the candle must have burned too fast, but he was alone; nothing but battered, empty desks and full, dusty bookshelves. His fellow Archivists and their novices had slipped away while he was deep in researches. I guess it must be. I guess I got pretty involved.
He closed his eyes for a moment; felt contented, rather than exalted, by his discoveries. But then, that was what being an Archivist was all about, anyway. Not the Seeker's sudden thrill of seeing something new arise out of your investigations, but rather the slow process of putting all the bits together until at last you could stand back and see the whole.
The whole—Hladyr bless, I have put together a whole indeed this time!
He opened his eyes again and contemplated the neat pile of papers before him with profound satisfaction. Each page was covered with notes in his own careful hand. He had put together a picture of the horse-nomads and their ways that had waited unnoticed in the Archives for a century—and that only Felaras had guessed (or hoped) existed. More than enough to inspire a soul-filling contentment.
An aged but still musical contralto interrupted his reverie.
"When I told you to burn midnight oil on this one, Teo, I didn't mean you to take me quite so literally."
He blinked, and came back to himself; not with a start, but slowly, carefully, as he did everything. He turned around to face the door, wondering what could have brought the Master of the Order down at this hour. Unless . . . unless things had gotten worse since this afternoon.
; Master Felaras leaned against the frame of the open Library door, the only spot of color in the room full of dark wooden bookcases and leather-bound books. Her scarlet wool tunic and darker red breeches made her look like a flame in the light from the time-candle and the carefully shielded oil lamp beside the door.
No outward sign identified her as the Master of the Order. Not her age, nor her iron-grey hair—there were others in the Order who looked (or were) older. Not the sword at her side, nor her clothing; Masters wore what they pleased. Some Masters of the Order had gone robed in precious silks, and some in rags.
She certainly didn't look or act nobly born; if an air of pedigree was a prerequisite for the Master's seat, Halun, (silver-haired, blue-eyed, holding himself with all the pride of his Ancas ancestors) would have had it long ago.
Maybe it was the aura of calm authority. Maybe it was the feeling she seemed to project that she would, somehow, get things done.
Whatever it was, it was obvious that she was the Master even without the tiny badge on the shoulder of her tunic, of Sword, Flame, and Book—the badge that only the Master wore.
"Dreaming awake, lad?" Her generous mouth quirked in a smile. "Hadn't you better be doing that in bed?"
He gave himself a mental shake, and returned the smile. "I'm sorry, Master, I was woolgathering."
"I hope you were gathering more than that." She sniffed, and rubbed the side of her nose with her knuckle. "I hope you gathered me some answers. I need them; we've had bad news. The nomads are at the Teeth."
"I have what you wanted, I think," he said cautiously. "I found a whole set of Chronicles taken from some silk merchants who came through the Teeth about a hundred years ago."
"Isn't that a bit old to do us any good?" she asked doubtfully, pushing away from the door frame and walking over to lean on his desk instead.
He shook his head as she planted both palms on the desk top and looked over his shoulder. "No, not really. Things don't change much for the horse-nomads. Not that much to change, really. They would probably be much the same today as they were when the Sabirn Empire collapsed . . . except for one thing."
He launched into a fairly concise summary of what he'd gleaned, pausing now and again to check his notes. Felaras followed his speech with narrowed eyes, nodding now and again when something he said seemed to touch on something in her own mind.
His throat was dry and his voice cracking a bit as he built up to the really choice bit of his gleanings. " . . . so this wandering healer, whoever he was, and the merchants seemed to think he was one of us, made one really important change in their outlook. Almost in their religion. By the time the merchants came through, he'd risen in the legends of the Clans to something like a saint or a demigod."
"Which means what? That a scholar gets nearly the same treatment as a shaman?"
"Oh, better," Teo hastened to tell her, not concealing his glee, the glow of discovery making him forget his aching shoulders and burning eyes for a moment. "A man that's a scholar or a healer is sacrosanct. It's assumed that the Wind Gods have him under something like divine protection. If you molest him, you bring the gods' anger down on your whole Clan; if you shelter him, you bring their blessing. A scholar can move about among the Clans pretty much at will, and virtually unmolested. All he has to fear is outlaws."
"What if this bunch is—"
"No," he interrupted, "these aren't outlaws; they have their horsetail banner with them, so they're a real Clan."
"Gods bless." She gripped the edge of the table and closed her eyes, leaning all her weight on her hands; and suddenly Teo saw not her strength, but her bone-deep weariness.
It frightened him. They depended on her.
"Master Felaras?" he said, reaching out to touch the wool of her sleeve with tentative fingers. She sighed; and he saw not the Master, but an old, tired woman. One with terrible weariness behind what was no more than a facade of strength. "Master?" he faltered again in dismay.
She opened her eyes quickly, and the strength was back; real, and not an illusion. It was surely the weakness that was the illusion—
She was looking at him measuringly, and he wondered why.
"Teo," she said, slowly, "Would you . . . ?"
When she didn't finish the question, he prompted her. "Would I what? Anything you need, Master Felaras. Just tell me what to look for."
"Never mind." She favored him with another of her half-grins; back to being the Master Felaras who was as predictable and dependable as the stone of the Fortress. "Get on to bed, there's a lad. I'm calling a Full Convocation in the morning, and I want you to have a clear head for it; as one of my three pets, you'll be in for a lot of questioning, after, from your own chapter. I want you in shape to answer clearly and remember who asked what for me." When he hesitated, she jerked her head impatiently in the direction of the door. "Off with you! I'll secure the Library."
He nodded obediently, gathered up his paper and his pens, and handed her his notes on his way out the door.
But as he left the Library he thought he could feel that penetrating stare on his back—as if she was looking for something in him. It seemed that her eyes followed him all the way back to the door of the Archivists' Quarters.
* * *
The boy slept uneasily beneath his blankets of felt and horsehide, his face pale and haggard in the light from the clay-lined fire-basket, his dark hair matted with sweat. From time to time he moaned in his sleep, as the pain of his wounds and of the injury to his head passed the drugged wine he'd been given; it bit at him and made him toss his head on the hard, flat leather pillow. He shivered too; and that was a bad sign, for the round felt tent was as warm as a sunshine-gilded spring day, so that meant that the last of the mould-powder had done him no good. Yuchai was undoubtedly in the first stages of infection, and the Healer-woman Shenshu might not be able to grow what he needed quickly enough to do him any good.
Shaman Northwind (he'd borne the name for so long that even he had difficulty recalling the time when he'd been Taichin, or sometimes Taichin Wanderer) sighed and began unpacking his medicine rattles and sacred incense from their basket. The scent of precious sandalwood rose from the packing; nothing less would call the Wind Lords' attention to their need. He'd helped clean and bind the boy's injuries; he'd well-wished him with all the strength and skill at his command. When all else failed, there was always prayer.
At least the storm has stopped, he thought. But everything else . . . it's as though the entire world was ill-wishing us. And now Yuchai—lightning spooking his horse, sending both of them into that pit-trap—it was an omen. Wind Lords, have you deserted us too?
Someone coughed politely outside the tent-flap; Northwind identified the cough without thinking. "My tent is always open to you, Khene Jegrai," he called softly.
The felt tent-flap was pushed aside by a strong, slender brown hand; the rest of Jegrai followed his hand in short order, and was, like the hand, strong and slender. The Khene of Running Horse Clan cast a worried look at the wounded boy, then seated himself cross-legged on the layered carpets of the tent-floor with a grace that was almost boneless.
There was something about the young man that commanded attention, demanded loyalty. Northwind sometimes thought of him as a pure flame in a fine porcelain lamp such as the Suno made and used; his spirit seemed to shine through his flesh. That spirit was powerful enough to make one forget Jegrai's patched and faded clothing, garb that was more suited to a beggar than a Khene and the son of Khenes.
"How is the boy?" That voice, as flexible and obedient to Jegrai's will as his horse, held only concern now. For once—with no one about to see him—Jegrai was not being Khene. Jegrai was being young Yuchai's adored—and anxious—cousin.
The Shaman shrugged eloquently, rippling the fringes decorating his suede leather garments. "He lives. Whether he will prosper I cannot tell you, but it is now in the hands of the Wind Lords. Both I and Shenshu have done all we can."
"The Wind Lords do not hear u
s," came the bitter reply.
Twenty years ago Northwind would have rebuked Jegrai for blasphemy. Ten years ago he would have delivered a lecture on the folly of man attempting to judge the will of the gods. That was in the days when Running Horse held their territory in relative peace. Before the Suno Lords chose to conquer the Clans from within, by setting Clan against Clan, turning what had been friendly contests of honor into blood-feud and death. Before Khene Sen of the Talchai turned upon them. Before their flight into this strange land where the earth rose to block the sight of the open sky. Now he only sighed.
"I do not know that either, Jegrai. It certainly seems that nothing we have done has prospered."
"Except our running," the young Khene spat. "That we do well enough, it seems."
Northwind looked up, and his eyes locked with Jegrai's hard, black ones. There was no doubting the power, the will behind the Khene's eyes. The tent seemed too warm of a sudden, and the Shaman was the first to drop his gaze.
"I do not know what to tell you," the Shaman said, after silence thick enough to choke upon filled the tent. "I truly do not. You know what I know; that the omens have told me that the Winds say our fate lies in the West. And truly, these people of the West cannot seem to stand before us."
"That is at least in part because we move so quickly that we outpace the rumors of our coming." Jegrai's tone was still bitter, and he played with the end of his sash, plaiting and unplaiting the faded fringe. "We are down to half the strength we had when we fled the Talchai, Shaman. At this rate . . . Tell me, should I stop this senseless, cowardly fleeing? Should I give myself over to the hands of our enemies? Will that save my people further suffering?"
To his people, the Khene was as strong, as cold, as a living blade—as fierce as a wind-driven fire. He was none of these things now; the mask was gone before his teacher and oldest companion. Northwind could not meet that burning, agonized gaze, but for that question he did have an answer.
"It was," he said slowly and carefully, "the Talchai who broke faith when your father died. It was the Talchai who allied themselves with those Suno dogs and began gathering or destroying the Outer Clans. More specifically, it was Khene Sen, who would make himself Khekhene over all the Clans. And he did so because you dared to speak the truth of him in Khaltan, the Great Council. Would you have us bind ourselves over to one who licks the spittle of dogs so that he may bear the Banner of Nine Horsetails, so that sons of dogs will call him Khekhene?" His voice strengthened. "You kept honor; Sen has destroyed his."
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