Karavans

by Jennifer Roberson

  Audrun sounded more angry than surprised. “You’re saying we may still be turned away, even after we agreed to the terms?”

  “Everyone may,” the guide said gently. “This close to Alisanos, the master risks nothing. Not with lives at stake. The diviners you have consulted were for yourselves. This one is for the welfare of the karavan.” He smiled warmly at them then, as if to mitigate the fears engendered by his words. “See Ilona.”

  Davyn well knew the tone Audrun employed. She was displeased. “We’ve seen fourteen diviners.”

  Rhuan laughed, oblivious to her mood; or else uncaring of it. “See another.”

  TWILIGHT GAVE WAY to darkness. Ellica let Gillan lead her along the shadowed pathway all of five feet before wrenching her arm out of his grasp. Startled, he swung to face her. “Elli, we need to go.”

  Tears were banished. Now she couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice. “I know we need to go. I’m not saying different.”

  “Then what—”

  She stopped the beginnings of his question with a silencing chop of a hand. Even as Gillan stared at her she brushed at her skirts. Her hair—well, her hair wanted a comb. In the meantime she did what she could, pushing tangles behind her ears. She scowled at her impatient brother. “That man thought I was a whore.”

  “Elli, that man—”

  “—was in his cups; I know.” She licked her fingers, smoothed them across her face, and pulled the hem of her tunic up to wipe away the grime of dust and tears. The anger remained, but it was tightly interwoven with embarrassment. “I know.” She smoothed her hair against the crown of her skull. “And likely that woman did, too, and she wasn’t in her cups.” Ellica stopped short. “At least, I don’t think she was.” She yanked the hem of her tunic down. “I’m not going back to the wagon looking like a—”

  “You don’t, Elli! Mother of Moons, will you never listen? He was drunk, and likely blind with it.”

  She drew in a breath, released it noisily, then began to walk back the way she had come. Gillan fell in beside her.

  “I didn’t know … I mean—you and Adric?”

  If she thought about Adric, she’d begin to cry again. Even now tears prickled behind her lids. Best to find something else to think about, something that would deter Gillan’s questions.

  An idea occured. “Why do some women become whores?”

  He was patently startled. “What?”

  “Why do some women become whores?”

  He was flummoxed. “You’re asking that of me?”

  “You’re a man.” She shrugged. “Well, almost a man.”

  The latter prompted a scowl. Gillan stopped. “My beard’s coming in.” He set two fingers against his chin.

  “See?”

  Ellica halted, and squinted. “I don’t see anything.”

  He pointed more deliberately. “Here. I can feel the hairs.”

  Though there was muted light from the tents along the footpath, Ellica could see nothing of the much-prized hairs.

  But she gave in on that point to remind him of her question as she began walking again. Now she was genuinely curious. “So, why do some women become whores?”

  Eventually he answered. “Maybe because they have no men of their own.”

  She shook her head. “That can’t be it. There are women aplenty in the world without men, and all of them can’t be whores. That diviner isn’t. The hand-reader.”

  After a moment Gillan shrugged a little. “She doesn’t need to be a whore. She’s a diviner.”

  “And the courier isn’t a whore. She said so.”

  “But she might have a man,” Gillan observed.

  Ellica noted that his strides had lengthened. She had to make more effort to keep up with him. Maybe he was a man, with his voice broken, his chin sprouting, and his legs growing longer. Now that she noticed, he was indeed taller. Accordingly, she asked what to her seemed a fair enough question, in view of the topic. “Would you go with a whore?”

  Gillan stopped in his tracks. His expression was a mixture of embarrassment and utter disbelief. “Why are we talking about whores?”

  “I saw you looking at the Sisters of the Road. Would you have gone with one of them?”

  Gillan pushed both hands through his fair hair, standing much of it on end. “This is—this is a stupid thing to talk about!”

  “I can’t ask Da,” she said simply. “I thought about it on the road from the settlement, but I couldn’t ask him. It didn’t feel right.”

  “But it feels right to ask me?”

  “I saw you looking at the Sisters. Da didn’t. Not the way you did.” She thought he blushed, but she couldn’t be sure in low light. “I did ask Mam.”

  Gillan was as astonished as she’d ever seen him. “About whores?”

  “She’s always told me I could ask her anything.”

  Her brother stared at her for a long perplexed moment. “I don’t think she meant you should ask about whores.”

  Ellica nodded. “So I’m asking you.”

  He was blushing. He turned on his heel and began to walk, raising his voice to carry over his shoulder. “We’re not speaking about this, Ellica.”

  She watched him for three strides, then hastened to catch up. She did not intend to be taken for a whore yet again this night, by a man drunk or sober.

  And then, all unbidden, came the memory of Adric’s face. The memory of hesitant kisses one summer day beneath the big old oak.

  This time, when she wept, she did it silently.

  Chapter 10

  ILONA HAD PACKED away her table, cushions, rugs, lanterns, and lantern-hooks, and now sat framed in the open wagon door, spooning stew into her mouth. The night before departure her dinner was always late, as there was no knowing how many people might ask her for readings. She and the other two karavan diviners, Branca and Melior, shared the work, but which of them was consulted was up to the travelers. Some trips, she had more custom; on others, they did. This one had been evenly divided among them.

  The sun was down. Grandmother Moon stood high in the heavens over the karavan grove. Only two outfits remained: Jorda’s and Sennet’s. All others had departed the week before.

  Small fires marked where the wagons stood, casting a glow amid the trees. Wood smoke wreathed the camp with an odor Ilona found comforting in its familiarity. She had hung a single lighted lantern from the hook over her head so she could see to eat. Her booted feet were set two steps down, making a table out of her lap beneath tunic, split skirts, and the shawl thrown over them.

  The last bite was in her mouth as Rhuan, coming out of darkness into light, appeared at a jog, sidelock braids swinging. His expression suggested he was very intent upon something, and Ilona had an idea what it might be.

  She smiled wryly as he halted before her, forestalling his first words. “I hardly believe I am so good at making stew that you wish a meal from me. So. You want me to provide a reading for your farmsteaders.” The smile turned into a grin. “And I read no hand to determine that.”

  Rhuan nodded, solemn. “I have told them to come.” He looked away from her a moment, then met her eyes. He had made up his mind about something, but she suspected he wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. “’Lona—it needs to be a good reading.”

  That shocked her. “Needs to be! Well, I don’t doubt all of us need good readings. But they are what they are, Rhuan. You know that.” She twisted to set the empty stew plate and horn spoon behind her, then turned back to fix him with a steady gaze that belied the flinch of dismay in her belly. Did he—? Well, best to address it directly. “Don’t you dare tell me you believe I manipulate my readings.”

  He raised a conciliatory hand. “I know you don’t, ’Lona.”

  Still, the thought pinched. She raked him with an assessing examination but saw no humor, no irony, no affected innocence. The dismay dissipated; he was serious, then, and perhaps he truly had not intended offense. “I can’t give a false reading of good that won’t truly exi
st, Rhuan. But neither can I leave out the bad.”

  “I know.” He had the grace to be shame-faced. “I should not have implied such a thing—”

  “You didn’t ‘imply,’” she broke in crisply.

  A gesture indicated he accepted the reprimand. “No. No. But—they do need it. Badly. I think they have been misused by other diviners.”

  Ilona got out another tin cup and poured tea into it from a battered kettle. “They may feel misused by what I read, Rhuan. Did you think of that?” She extended the guest-cup.

  He accepted it, sketched a quick gesture over it—homage to his Shoia gods, he’d told her once, when she had pried out of him the admission that he was devout—then dropped into a habitual squat, forearms resting across upended thighs. “They understand.”

  She searched his oddly shuttered expression. “Do you?”

  He drank. Then nodded, setting hair adornment aglint. But he looked into the cup, not at her. Avoiding something, she knew. She didn’t believe Rhuan would ever lie outright to her, but leave parts of truths unspoken, oh, yes.

  Ilona sighed. “You told them to come to me specifically, didn’t you? Not to Melior or Branca.”

  His eyes lifted to hers. “You’re kinder,” he said, “when delivering bad news.”

  “Ah.” She found that ironically amusing. “I doubt ill tidings delivered kindly affords anyone comfort.”

  “It might.”

  She gave in then, because he wasn’t after all asking her to do what she could not, or what she should not. And he was serious, not wheedling or playful, nor employing manifold charms. “Very well. Are they coming?”

  “They’ll need to hitch up the wagon, and then they’ll come.”

  She finished her tea, thinking ahead to the ritual. She would need to take out the table again; well, perhaps not. It was more comfortable to talk with people and read their hands in the proper setting—they expected it—but not required.

  “’Lona—if there is anything I can do for you, say it.”

  Payment offered, in his own way. She stared at him over the rim of her cup as she drank the rest of her tea. Then, smiling broadly, said, “Yes.”

  He nodded once, acknowledging her acceptance. “Ask.”

  Knowing it would shock him, she did. “Let me read your hand.”

  One blink. And then he was standing. “You know you can’t.”

  Idly she noted, “You’ve never let me try.”

  “Why waste your time?” The tone was light, but the body held tension.

  Ilona shook her head. “You go to other diviners all the time. You allow them to try and read your omens.”

  “‘Try,’” he agreed, handing her back the empty cup. “But they can’t. It isn’t possible. So when they do—when they concoct ridiculous stories about what is to come, and lecture me on the worthiness I require for a proper afterlife once I’ve ‘crossed over the river,’ as your people say—I know they are false diviners.” He paused, studying her. “Do you really want to risk me unmasking you as a charlatan?”

  Ilona laughed. There was nothing in life she was more certain of than her ability to read the auguries. “You could attempt it, if you like. Just as I could attempt to read your hand.” And had, once—or begun to—very briefly. When he had been dead.

  Rhuan shook his head. “There is no diviner in the world who can read a Shoia.”

  “Either that,” she drawled, “or there is something you don’t want me to find out.” Something beyond the chaos she had sensed when his hand, limp and still warm despite his death, lay in hers.

  A muscle jumped in his cheek, putting the lie to the lightness of his tone. “Ah, but you said it yourself: there are no secrets between us.”

  She smiled, shrugged, set down her own now-empty cup. When she looked up, Rhuan was gone.

  RHUAN DID NOT immediately go to Jorda after visiting Ilona. Instead he slipped along the perimeter of the encampment where the firelight did not reach, and went to the horses. The horse-master, Janqeril, had picketed them for the night rather than leaving them in their small herd; the horses would be needed before dawn, as the encampment arose.

  Rhuan took from the string of remounts his favorite gelding, spotted black on white, but availed himself of neither saddle nor bridle. The halter was enough. He untied the rope and swung it across the horse’s neck, reached under and caught it, then knotted the free end to the rope loop beneath the gelding’s jaw. He led him some distance from the rest of the string, then grabbed a handful of ivory mane and swung up, settling down across the spotted back.

  The horse was full of snort and opinion; Janqeril’s horseboys had learned not to exercise the spotted horse. Rhuan preferred to do it himself, despite the resultant displays. And one such lurked now: the spine beneath him arched, the tail whipped, the head rose up into the air, then bent at the poll with an air of annoyed impatience, ears spearing the air. Rhuan spoke to the gelding softly in a language only a very few would recognize, smoothed an eloquent hand down the long angle of shoulder, then tapped him lightly with his heels.

  The journey was short. Rhuan rode only as far as a grassy bluff overlooking the river. The escarpment was neither sharp nor steep, nor was the descending angle or footing particularly dangerous, but riding down could be unpleasant if the horse missed a step in the abbreviated light offered by the moon. So he slipped off the gelding, left the loop in the rope rein across the spotted neck so the horse would not put a hoof through it while grazing on summer grass, and walked to the edge.

  Below, water shone silver-black. It lazed through the shallows like a sleepy hound. Tomorrow Jorda would lead the karavan down the rutted trail to its bank, where the accomodating earth rolled out smoothly to water’s edge, and all would fill their water barrels. After that, Jorda would take his people onto the road, and Rhuan and Darmuth would ride ahead to see what there was to see.

  To make certain all was well with the world.

  Rhuan shivered, flesh going taut on his bones. Inside, something—shifted. He felt a twinge within his viscera. A feathering along his bones. All was distinctly not well with his world.

  He closed his eyes, hoping the sensations would pass; knowing they would not. Two days before he had awakened just before dawn, aching in every joint, be touched. The worst passed within several hours, but he remained aware of a subtle pressure. A presence.

  Alisanos.

  After forty human years: Alisanos. Again.

  He should have known the primaries would interfere. Such promises as theirs were never to be trusted.

  Flesh stood up on his bones. A shudder wracked him. Rhuan’s eyes snapped open; the world around him was a hazy pale red and out of focus. He gazed up at the moon, seeing the doubled stars as her acolytes burning against blackness. The moon’s cycle went on no matter what he did, or what was done to him. Grandmother Moon: near to disappearing. Then no moon at all, called the Orphan Sky. Followed by Maiden Moon, tentative, growing to fertility; and Mother Moon, gravid, whelping the nights to come. And then the drift into old age again, the wisdom of the Grandmother shaping the night sky.

  It was a pity, he reflected, that he could find no comfort in the cycle that ordered the lives of humans. That he was governed by something else entirely.

  Beneath itching flesh, muscles spasmed. The feathery touch became demanding, wreathing itself, serpentlike, around his bones. Muscles knotted. He tried to wait it out with clenched hands and gritted teeth, but the pressure increased. Unimpressed by his petty strength, it pressed down like a hand from the heavens, unstinting with its power. That power dropped him awkwardly to his knees, body bent forward, arms braced, splayed hands flattened against the soil, breath hissing in his teeth.

  A quiet voice from behind said, “It’s getting worse.” Darmuth. Of course.

  “You know what’s coming.”

  Rhuan nodded. Once.

  “You could leave. Distance yourself.”

  It took effort to speak, and more yet to speak clearl
y. “I won’t run from it.”

  “If you stay here, it might take you.”

  The blurt of Rhuan’s laughter was cut off by a sharply indrawn breath of pain. “And is it that you want me to run from it? Or to it?”

  Darmuth’s tone was dry. “I can’t ask you to do either. It was merely an observation.”

  Observation. What Darmuth was best at.

  Rhuan felt sweat on his brow, bathing his upper lip, prickling beneath his armpits. The air was cool on the moisture, stippling rousing flesh. From aching hands and knees he moved into a seated position facing the river, legs crossed, spine to Darmuth, and sat improbably straight. A practiced toss of his head swept back the heavy plait of braids that had fallen forward so that it dangled down his spine. He wanted no impediments, no distractions, as he assimilated the discomfort.

  Rhuan drew in a long breath. “I accepted the journey the primaries set before me. I accepted all potential tests and challenges, even ignorant of which are created by the primaries and which are merely happenstance. This too may be a test.”

  “But the primaries are fair, Rhuan. You may change your mind. You may repudiate your vow. They left you those options.”

  “And if I do so, I am trapped forever in a world the primaries rule, bound by their laws, made to play their games.” Rhuan shook his head. “Here there are no games. Here you are born, you make your way in the world, and you die. No more.”

  Darmuth smiled. “Few would call it ‘trapped,’ to live with the primaries.”

  “It isn’t freedom, Darmuth. Not as I desire it.”

  “Ah, but there are many who would say the freedom you desire is tantamount to a death sentence…for the soul, if not the body, for one such as you.”

  Rhuan smiled slightly, staring across the red-tinged darkness. “My soul is more alive among humans than it was before I came here.”