The light was poor, but his eyes saw better in the dark than those of humans, and his hands read tales of the wood. He had only to smooth his sensitive fingertips over the surface, brushing grain, knots, blemishes, and he knew the name of the tree that had rendered up its skin, its heart, its life. Humans wouldn’t understand; they would believe he meant the name that indicated what kind of tree it was. Had been. But Rhuan, touching wood, learned the personal and private name of the elderling who once had lived, who had given up that life for a wholly human need.
Humans, Rhuan reflected, didn’t understand all too many things, even about their own land, their own world. About their own gods.
Light from a lantern flickered across his vision. Two people approached, movements hesitant. Rhuan looked up from greeting the wood to greet them.
He was more than a little startled to discover the arrivals were the two eldest children of the farmerfolk from the end of the karavan. “Are you looking for the master?”
The boy shook his head. “We’ve come to speak with you.” He and his sister exchanged glances before he continued. “It’s about tomorrow.”
Rhuan set down the plank upon the others. A fine elderling tree, once an ancient and proud oak. Now diminished by the ax and adze of humans. “We’ll head back after the morning meal. It will take a few days to reach the settlement.”
The children exchanged glances again. The boy was clearly uncomfortable. A frown knitted the pale brows arching over blue eyes that would no doubt one day be as steady as his father’s. “No, it’s not that. We won’t be going back. Da has decided we must go on as we planned, to Atalanda.”
“Because of the diviners,” the girl said quietly, “and the baby.”
As she spoke, her face colored up. She had the fine, fair skin of youth, and pale white-blond hair that would, as she aged, turn wheat-gold. She would be very pretty, Rhuan thought. “Ah yes, the baby.” He selected another plank and introduced himself in silence with the touch of his flesh. Inwardly he spoke to the tree of his regret for the death of a fine, strong elderling. Then, with carefully gauged neutrality, he spoke to the human saplings. “Your da and mam have four living, healthy children. Perhaps it might be best if they weighed those lives as heavily as that of the unborn child.”
“But the diviners,” the boy protested. He was, Rhuan realized, not quite so young after all, with lantern light glinting briefly off a thin crop of golden stubble along his jaw.
“Diviners,” Rhuan murmured, “may not necessarily always be completely, absolutely, incontrovertibly accurate.”
The girl was as taken aback as her brother. “They’re diviners.”
Smiling, Rhuan gave in gracefully. “Alas, I am but a guide. What do I know of such things?”
The young man’s tone strengthened. “You know about Alisanos.”
His sister chimed in as well, no longer hesitant. “About demons, and devils.”
“And how to keep a wagon safe upon the roads.”
“How to save us from Hecari.”
“How to kill Hecari.”
“You’re a guide,” the girl declared with conviction.
Her brother, who had gained confidence as they detailed the challenges and dangers, nodded. “The karavan is turning around. It’s going back to the settlement. There will be no others until next season.”
“You’re a guide,” she repeated, more quietly now, as if she sensed the power of passion in their words. “One wagon may not be a karavan, but we need your help all the same.”
Rhuan smiled, watching the plank as he once again smoothed its skin with his own. “Your parents know nothing about this, do they? That you’ve come to me.”
In unison, they shook their fair-haired heads.
“Rhuan!” Jorda’s voice. “Rhuan—” But he broke off as he came up on them and saw the children. Rhuan watched the karavan-master make a concerted effort to regain control of his tone. “Your pardon,” Jorda said civilly, “but my guide and I have karavan business to discuss.”
It was dismissal, and they took it so. Before they could turn away, Rhuan spoke. To them, not to his employer. “I will come with my answer in the morning.”
The boy nodded. The girl’s expression suggested she didn’t believe him. Both walked away, heads bent. Indeed, they did not believe him.
It was a mark of Jorda’s high-running emotions that he asked nothing about what the children wanted. Rhuan knew him well enough to realize that beneath the bristling beard, the master’s broad jaw was set very tightly.
“A woman has come to me,” Jorda began, “worried because her husband is missing. He missed dinner, she says; he never misses dinner. He went to relieve himself and never came back.”
Rhuan said nothing. It was best to let the angry rushing river run its course.
“There seem to me to be two possibilities,” Jorda continued, “as to why this man is missing. He met an animal that took him for a meal, though there has been absolutely no sign of predators—or so my expert guides have told me. Or he just might, just might possibly, be the man who assaulted Ilona, and met a predator of an entirely different sort out there in the darkness.”
Rhuan took up another length of plank and examined it. “I suppose he might.” He silently spoke his name to the elderling as he placed fingertips upon the adzed surface. “I suppose it is also possible he and his wife had an argument, and he is out walking off the anger.”
“In the dark.”
“Ah. Yes, it is very dark to your kind. Perhaps not.”
Jorda’s tone was mostly a growl. “My ‘kind’?”
Rhuan paused, but did not look up from the wood. This plank would do well; it told him so as he asked it in the silent language of the trees. “Forgive me. I sometimes forget myself when learning the story of a once-proud tree who has been murdered by humans.”
“I’m talking about a man, Rhuan, not a tree!”
A hallmark of humans, to dismiss, to diminish, what was not as themselves. And yet he liked them. Still. He grimaced. Most of the time. “The third possibility is, of course, that this missing man may not be the one who assaulted Ilona.”
Through his teeth, Jorda said, “And what do you suppose the odds are of that?”
“I never wager on or with lives, particularly human lives, which are all too fragile as it is. But you know that.” Rhuan rose and met the master eye to eye. “Are you accusing me of killing him?”
“I know you’re certainly capable of it. You’ve done it be- fore.” Jorda made a gesture. “But no. No, I’m not accusing. I’m not even asking. Maybe I don’t want to know. If he is the one …” He gestured again, but more sharply, as if silencing the direction of his private suppositions and suspicions. “You see better at night. It might bring this woman some peace if you were to search for the man.”
Rhuan leaned the selected plank against the wagon. “No woman should be worried for her man’s safety. But then, no woman should be worried for her own safety.”
Jorda scowled. “Find him. Then report to me.”
Rhuan understood the implication very well. He would not be asked if he were responsible for the murder, should he discover the body … but the body most definitely was to be discovered.
DAYLIGHT WAS BANISHED, dusk had gone. Darkness ruled. The tent settlement now was illuminated only by the stars, pierced-tin lanterns hung out on shepherd’s crooks, a thin scattering of meager cookfires, and the embers of wooden tent poles transformed by fire to coals. The keening laments too had died out, replaced by low murmuring, the occasional voice raised in call or question, the quiet talk among those who even in poor light sifted through the remains of tents in search of bodies or belongings. The stench of fire remained, as well as the faint underlying odor of burned flesh, for in the destruction of the tents a few of the one in ten selected for culling were burned.
Brodhi found himself following the girl. She walked what had been narrow footpaths winding through the tent village without the hesitation
of uncertainty, though many landmarks had changed. But she moved slowly, if steadily, checking at downed tents before going on. Brodhi watched her thin, straight body in its loose tunic go before him, noted the tilt of her head, the set of narrow shoulders. There was pride in her body, an unconscious grace in the economy of her movements despite her youth. Oddly, as she passed each tent, be it burned heap upon the ground or a still-standing oilcloth dwelling, she made a gesture with one hand or the other as if indicating, as if counting, the tents. Brodhi could not help himself: he looked, he counted, even as she did. And when occasionally they came across a body fallen in the culling and as yet unclaimed by kin, the girl paused and inspected each face, each body, albeit she touched no one.
When they reached a small clearing at an intersection of five footpaths, the girl stopped. She turned to him then, turned to him and lifted her exquisite face. The clarity of her eyes was unsettling.
“Did you see them?” she asked.
“See who?”
“Dardannus, the Kantic priest. Hezriah, the bonedealer. And Lavetta, the fat woman. All of them crossed the river.”
Had died, she meant. “I hardly know everyone here,” Brodhi told her acerbically, “dead or living. I can’t be expected to, not when so many people come here and leave here nearly every day.”
The curly-haired head tilted slightly as she examined his face. “They would know you. If you died, and your body lay here, or here, or there.” She gestured to indicate the places she meant. “Anyone who saw you would know your name. Brodhi the courier. Brodhi the Shoia.”
He knew, then, her name. “Ferize.” Air hissed through his teeth as he inhaled sharply. “Ferize, what have you done? I can’t sense you.”
The little girl with eyes that had seen the flow of two centuries examined him mutely.
“I can’t sense you!”
“Kendic was there, too. His body. Did you see it?”
He had seen Kendic fall beneath the warclubs of Hecari. He had not recognized him on their walk through the settlement-cum-battlefield. Just a body was Kendic. No more a man.
“Ferize—”
“I shielded,” the girl said matter-of-factly.
“You can’t do that with me!”
“Oh, I can. I just never did.”
“Why now? Why here?”
“A test,” she said simply.
Of course it was a test. Or a trick. “For what purpose?”
“To see,” she said, “if you saw. With more than merely your eyes.” The tilted head was incongruous in the child’s semblence. He should have recognized it. “But you have as yet no comprehension of ending, of loss. Of how it is for humans who have only one life in this world to lose those they love. And what grief is.”
He recalled the keening of the women. The tears on the faces of men. He recalled Bethid’s anguish, and Mikal’s shock. But those memories told him nothing. Nothing that was necessary. Nothing of import. Nothing that would, in any way, affect or alter his life.
“Ferize, it makes no sense.”
“When it does, then perhaps you’ll be ready to go on,” she told him. “To move from this place, this life, to the place and life you desire so very badly.”
And then the shielding was gone, and he sensed her. Felt her, in all places and all ways. Her loss would indeed affect and alter his life. But losing her was no risk, here; losing her would not happen, here. Because it could not, here.
“Look again,” Ferize said in the voice of a child, in the voice of a human child, though her tone was ancient. “Best to keep looking each day, and each night, and every moment, until it makes sense. It is required, Brodhi, that it make sense. That you understand.”
“Ferize—” But he broke it off, because he doubted she could hear him. Not when she so decisively, so suddenly, absented herself from his company.
Somewhere nearby, perhaps around the next turn, a child was crying.
“Ferize!”
The quality of her absence verged upon desertion, not mere departure.
“Ferize!”
“What are you shouting about?”
A woman’s voice. He spun.
Bethid.
No one save Ferize, or possibly Darmuth, could take him unaware. But he’d been distracted, and she had. He’d been shouting, and she had.
Shouting. Where humans would hear him. Where humans would see him, as Bethid had and did.
“That was not necessary,” he snapped. “It was wholly unnecessary.”
She stared at him blankly.
“Sending the girl,” he growled. “What did you hope to accomplish?”
Bethid shook her head slowly, with grave deliberation. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”
And Brodhi realized that she probably didn’t. That it was all too likely Ferize had lied to him. She certainly needed no directions from Bethid or anyone else to find him in Mikal’s tent, either in the guise of a little girl or another entirely.
Between his teeth, he cursed.
“They’ve found Kendic’s body,” Bethid said. “They’re pulling the dead aside and setting them together, so that people may have better luck in finding those they’ve lost. In the morning it will be easier, but the kin for now are using lanterns and torches … I think they don’t want to wait until daylight.”
Kendic’s body. One of those Ferize had indicated. One of those he had seen, but not recognized. Because it hadn’t mattered. And it made no sense to him that it should.
Ferize had told him it was required that such things matter.
He had not known by name the Kantic priest, the bonedealer, the fat woman. They served only to take up space in this settlement, in this world, if not in his life. But Kendic he had known.
Did it matter? Had Kendic, alive, mattered to him? Should Kendic, dead, matter more, or any less?
“They’ll begin the rites at dawn,” Bethid continued. “I’ll be there with Timmon and Alorn. Will you go?”
“I imagine it’s self-evident that the Kantic priest should be given Kantic rites,” Brodhi replied ironically, “but how will anyone know which gods the other dead folk worshipped in order to give the rites?”
And then he recalled, with abrupt and unexpected clarity, how he had knelt beside an old woman, a dead human woman, and wished her well of her journey out of life into death.
“Is that what you want?” He raised his voice, turning his face to the sky. “Is this what you want, Ferize?”
“Brodhi. Brodhi?” And again, with more emphasis, “Brodhi!”
He looked from the night sky to the small woman. Irritation sharpened his words. “What is it?”
“Who are you talking to?”
Frustration bubbled up. “Why does it matter? Why should you care? Why should it possibly be any of your concern?”
She had washed her face at some point, but the overlay of shadows hollowed cheeks and eyes. Only the muted glow of ear-hoops touched by firelight lent color to her face. “Because whether you like it or not, whether you want it or not, I care about you. We are couriers, we two, and owe one another loyalty because of that, but we are friends, too. In general I like you, Brodhi, even though there are many times when you make it difficult. More than many times when you are insufferable.”
Imprecision again. Why could no human truly grasp the details of his or her own language? Bethid in particular was difficult to follow at times, to parse through the thickets of emotion-laden words to find the heart tree. “‘More than many times,’” he quoted, “would mean all of the time.”
“Why, yes,” she said in an ingenuous tone. “Yes, I do grasp that, Brodhi. Why do you think I said it?”
Bethid sounded, in that moment, using that tone, very like Ferize. He scowled at her, trying to see beneath the shell that was Bethid to the demon beneath, just in case she actually was Ferize in yet another form. Another shielded form.
“Why?” he asked cautiously. “Why does liking matter?”
She blinked
. Eventually she offered, “Because it just does.”
That was a Bethid answer. He relaxed. So, Ferize desired him to learn. He would learn. “Why does it matter? Why should it?”
“Brodhi!” She stared at him in perplexed. “Here we stand in the midst of a half-destroyed settlement, of a decimated people, and you want to debate why it matters that I should like you?”
“Yes.”
She raised a stiff hand, palm facing him. The gesture was unmistakable. “Stop,” she said. “No,” she said. “There are bodies to find and identify, kin to console, rites to be conducted, belongings to be sorted. I will not have this conversation with you. Not here, and certainly not now. And if nothing else, you have reminded me just how in-human you are.” Bethid shook her head as she lowered her hand. “If Rhuan were not as he is, I would begin to believe that all Shoia are like you. And then it would be a very good thing that no others have appeared.”
“Rhuan?” He laughed in disbelief. “Rhuan is a fool.”
“Rhuan is a good man, Brodhi. He understands us. He likes us. He cares about us. And for all that he can be wholly irresponsible on the one hand, on the other I have never known him to turn his back on a human when that human requires aid. And if he were here now, I know he would be carrying off and identifying the bodies, because he cares enough about us to learn our names.”
“Bethid,” he said curtly, with exaggerated clarity. “Timmon. Alorn. Mikal.” His mouth was a grim line. “Names.”
A muscle leaped in her jaw. “But not very many.”
He would have continued, but as she turned sharply and presented him with her back, it was abundantly clear she considered the conversation finished. Irritating, that she should take that initiative from him. Just as Ferize had. He glared after her.
When Bethid had disappeared into darkness, Brodhi looked again at the sky. He could not keep the incredulity from his tone. “Is this really what you want, Ferize?”
Karavans Page 24
