Karavans

by Jennifer Roberson

  “Then what are you?” She squeezed her eyes closed as the contractions worsened, coming much more quickly. It was time to push, time to use all her strength for bearing the child. But she had to know. “What are you?” Audrun repeated. She recalled her youngest daughter’s accusation. “A demon?”

  His mouth twitched in a brief ironic hook. “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “Half-human. But I was born here.”

  The contractions now came very hard. “And what is the other half?”

  “You need to concentrate on bearing the child.”

  A cry of pain was wrenched out of her. She bore down upon the baby that wanted to be born well before its time, but was, inexplicably, at full term. Audrun bared her teeth at Rhuan. “I’m trusting you to help me deliver this baby … tell me who you are. Tell me what you are.”

  “Dioscuri,” he said quietly. And before she could ask what that was, “My father is a god.”

  Pain gripped her. Pain tore her asunder. And on that pain, on a rush of blood, she bore the full-term child that was not due for another four months.

  The child, he had said, that Alisanos wanted.

  In the depths of the trees, howling began.

  THE TREES BEHIND Brodhi quieted. Thunder dissipated. The sun crept out and began, albeit slowly, to dry his hair and clothing even as it shed light upon the wasteland. He heard silence, nothing more.

  Brodhi’s arms fell to his sides. He remained upright on his knees, but the joy of anticipation was usurped by a dawning awareness he refused to acknowledge. He felt his body begin to tense, muscle by muscle, fiber by fiber, until he ached with it. An unrestrained howl of fury broke from his throat, banishing silence. Hands curled tightly into fists as he bared his teeth. The world, free of storm, nonetheless turned red. He broke into a lengthy litany of curses heaped upon the heads of the primaries of Alisanos, the gods who had the ordering of that world.

  One thousand of them. And not one of those thousand had seen fit to release him from the journey he despised with all of his being.

  They left him here, the gods. Left him among the humans.

  The message was plain: He was not one of them yet. Not worthy of them yet.

  He heard the snap of a twig from the forest just behind him. “They would believe you mad, the humans,” Darmuth observed, gliding out of cracked, upended, and leaf–stripped trees. “A moon-touched man shouting nonsense to the sky in words they can’t understand.”

  Brodhi lunged to his feet, spinning to face the demon who wore human form. “I care less than nothing what humans believe.”

  “Yes, you’ve made that rather plain.” Darmuth folded muscled arms across his chest and cocked a hip, looking wholly at ease. “And that may be the very reason Alisanos left you behind.”

  “I belong there.”

  “That’s yet to be determined.” Darmuth’s winter-gray eyes lacked the irony that so often glinted in them. Black pupils elongated into slits. “Your time among the humans isn’t completed.”

  It was all he could do not to shout it. “Alisanos moved.”

  Darmuth shrugged lazily. “That matters less than nothing. Human time, Brodhi. The land may be different, but the time, and the counting of it, remains unchanged.”

  “Why are you here?” With effort Brodhi cleared his vision of the red haze. “Why not go to Rhuan? He’s your task, not me.”

  Something flickered in Darmuth’s eyes. “Rhuan’s not available.”

  Brodhi shook his head in disgust. “He went with those foolish farmsteaders, didn’t he?”

  “Rhuan’s in Alisanos.”

  For long moments Brodhi could only stare silently at Darmuth. When he could speak again, the words issued from his mouth in heat and raw pain. “The primaries took him back? How by all of their names could they take him? He’s not worthy! He’s repudiated them. He wants to be human.”

  “The greatest test Rhuan can face now is the knowledge that he is in Alisanos. Before his journey is done. Your greatest test?” Darmuth shrugged again. “I think you know.” “To remain,” Brodhi said tightly. He spat onto the earth.

  “To remain here, knowing Rhuan is there.”

  “I rather think so.” Darmuth’s tone was light, but his eyes remained frigid. “It’s as well for you I have no vote in your final disposition. Your arrogance and unflagging hatred of humans bodes ill for your ascension.”

  “The primaries are arrogant beyond bounds,” Brodhi retorted, “as they should be; they’re gods. And thus I am like them. You know it. I do. I belong among them.”

  “Until the human year is done, you belong here.”

  “I could go,” Brodhi declared. “I could go across the border and into Alisanos. I am of it; it can’t deny me entrance.”

  “Of course you may go,” Darmuth agreed. “And of course it can’t deny you entrance. But to return to Alisanos now negates the vows you made to the primaries. Negates the time spent here. You would either be required to begin again, which would prolong your misery, or be refused outright. Which might be worse. Would be worse.” The demon paused. “They could do that, you realize. Refuse you altogether. And then you would no longer be dioscuri, but trapped between the godhood you desire and the humanness you despise. A neuter.”

  Brodhi opened his mouth to roar in rage at the demon, but Darmuth abruptly was standing in front of him, immediately in front of him, so close Brodhi smelled the musk of his scales, though he wore human flesh. Brodhi jerked his head back as the sinuous forked tongue flicked between Darmuth’s lips, tasting his anger.

  “This is why,” Darmuth said, sibilants harsh. “This is why Ferize and I were sent to be your watchdogs.” Human teeth shifted shape and size, forming curving points. A ripple of scale pattern stippled Darmuth’s skin. “You prove yourself unworthy by behavior such as this.”

  For once Brodhi wished he had demons’ teeth. His own, bared, lacked the impact he sought. “Ferize is more than my watchdog.”

  “That you are bound in the way humans call marriage has no bearing on this, and you know it, Brodhi. She owes her bones and blood to the primaries. That takes precedence over whatever you may share with her in copulation.”

  He could not win this battle, Brodhi knew. He, who had the wit and words, the delicacy of tone both subtle and telling, and the knowledge of when and how to wield them all to crush a human soul—or, he reflected with grim satisfaction, to provoke Rhuan into anger—could not use any of those weapons against the demon. Because the demon was correct.

  But even as Brodhi, helpless, howled his fury again, Darmuth took his leave and did not hear it.

  Epilogue

  A UDRUN WAS BREATHLESS from pain, from pushing; from the shock of the realization that in a matter of moments her body could be changed from a five-month pregnancy to full term. That was Alisanos. He had told her so.

  Alisanos.

  Howling filled her ears. Inhuman howling; an inharmonious melody that raised the skin on her bones. “What is that?”

  Rhuan wore a mask now, an expression that gave nothing away of his thoughts. “They give welcome to the child.”

  Her body was wracked with weaknees, even as the afterbirth followed the child. She could not control her tears, her gasping; could not stop her trembling. “Who gives welcome to my child?”

  “The denizens of Alisanos.”

  In her exhaustion, Audrun could barely open her eyes. But when she did, when she saw again the sepia sky, the double suns, the gnarled, twisted trees unlike any she knew bowing low over her where she lay upon grass and ground, a flicker of anger kindled. Small, so very small and fragile, but slowly gaining strength. “Why? Why does it matter to these— denizens—that I’ve borne a human baby?”

  “That answer,” Rhuan said, “is complicated. Perhaps for now we would do best to make certain you and the child are well.”

  Nearly lost in the howling, she heard the baby squall. A mother’s ears, even amid wholly alien noise, recognized its ow
n.

  As Alisanos did. He had told her so.

  Oh, but she was weary. Her body ached, muscles overstretched from the effort of bearing the child, from the abruptness of her belly’s change from five months gone to nine. She made a sound, and his eyes flicked to meet hers. Cider-brown eyes, not red; but she had seen them turn red.

  “She is strong,” he said.

  She. A daughter. The child intended to be born in Atalanda, among the kinfolk who had not emigrated to Sancorra province as her parents had. Where she had married a good man and borne him four children.

  And now this fifth.

  Fourteen diviners told her to bear the child in Atalanda. She had not. The karavan diviner had seen tears, grief, and loss in her hand; and she had lost her family. She grieved for them. Cried for them. Had bled in childbirth upon the soil of Alisanos.

  Audrun moistened dry, cracked lips as fear threatened to swamp her. “Is she human? Is she whole?”

  Dimples flickered briefly in his face. “She is.”

  That much she had, despite the fact four months of pregnancy had flown by in a matter of moments. She lifted a trembling hand. “Let me see her. Let me see her.”

  Audrun yet lay on her back. Rhuan settled the baby face down against her breasts, lifted and crossed her arms over the child. Without thought the left hand swaddled the tiny spine, elbow hooked under the baby’s bottom; her right hand cradled the fuzzed head.

  Human. Whole.

  But even in the moment of bliss as she met the infant, fear blossomed. Human, and whole. Yes. But this was Alisanos.

  Audrun closed her eyes. When she opened them once more, her voice was steady. She looked up into the warm, kind eyes of the man she had known as guide, as Shoia, but who was after all something entirely different. Something entirely more.

  She stroked the downy fluff upon the infant’s head. “We have to find them,” she said. “My husband. My children.”

  There were no dimples in evidence. “It may be difficult.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  He shook his head. “We don’t know where they are.”

  “That doesn’t matter, either.”

  “They may be in the grasslands still, and safe, or here in Alisanos.”

  “Then we’ll look in both places.”

  “Audrun—”

  She was adamant. “We’ll look in both places.”

  The warmth in his eyes was gone. In its place was the chill of bleakness. “We can’t leave here, Audrun. Look here, yes. That much I can give you. But for how long, I can’t say.”

  Desperation was a tangible ache in her chest. “Why can’t you say?”

  He took a breath, then released it slowly. “Because Alisanos will change you. It changes every human unfortunate enough to be taken. There may come a time when you no longer remember you had a husband. That you had four other children. Or even that you ever lived in a place other than here.”

  Audrun tightened her grip on the infant. “And my baby as well? She will be changed?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded.

  Tears. Grief. Loss. Danger for her children. The karavan diviner had seen it all in the landscape of her hand.

  Audrun drew in a trembling breath. “We have to look. We must.”

  Rhuan reached out and covered her hand as it cradled the infant’s head. “We will look.”

  “For as long as it takes.”

  His emphasis was delicate. “For as long as we can.”

  About the Author

  Jennifer Roberson wrote her first novel at the age of fourteen, and shortly afterward received her first rejection slip. Fifteen years and several manuscripts later, Shapechangers was purchased by DAW Books and a career—and a fantasy series—was born. In addition to the eight-volume “Chronicles of the Cheysuli,” Jennifer also concocted the Sword-Dancer saga, featuring swords-for-hire Tiger and Del and employing a desert setting she is quite familiar with after residing in Arizona for nearly fifty years. In a departure from her primary genre, Jennifer has also published: three historical novels, two a retelling of the Robin Hood legend, and one set in the seventeenth-century Scottish Highlands, based on an actual incident; and several other titles in various genres. She has also edited fantasy anthologies, and has published nearly thirty short stories.

  In 2000 she left the desert behind and moved to Northern Arizona, where she lives on acreage in the shadows of a dormant volcano and the largest ponderosa pine forest in the world. Her primary hobby is the breeding and exhibition of Cardigan Welsh Corgis (the corgi with the tail) and currently shares her household with seven Cardis, one elderly Labrador, and two cats. In 2004 Jennifer embarked on a secondary hobby when she began creating mosaic artwork, which threatens to take over the house.

  In the 1990s, Jennifer Roberson collaborated with Melanie Rawn and Kate Elliott on The Golden Key, a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Karavans marks the beginning of her first new (solo) fantasy universe since the “Sword-Dancer” series first appeared in 1984. Her website resides at www.cheysuli.com.