He let out a deep breath. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Lycas patted his shoulder.
Marek picked his way over the rocks and shrubs toward Nelma and Adrek’s tent. He needed to see his son.
The wounds Basha had dealt him would take years to heal. The memories would last forever. But perhaps he could take what he’d learned in Leukos to help his people resist the inevitable Ilion aggression.
Whether Raven bestowed Her Aspect in the next generation or the next or the next, the Reawakened would fight.
Rhia gasped at the crowd awaiting them at the edge of Velekos. Though Bolan had sent a pigeon days before with news of their return, Rhia hadn’t expected the entire village to greet them. Their cheers echoed off the cliffs near Prasnos Bay, where the water shimmered and sparkled in the late-morning sunlight.
Her pony balked at the oncoming crowd, causing Nilik to squirm in the sling against her chest. Behind her, Marek squeezed her waist and pointed ahead to the left.
“Look,” he said, “in front.”
Rhia shaded her eyes and squinted into the sun. A wide smile stretched her chapped lips. “Father!”
“Let me take Nilik while you run ahead,” Marek said.
“No, we go together.” She clicked her tongue to urge the pony forward.
Tereus reached her first as the crowd swept among their troupe, hugging the adults and cooing at the children. He helped her and Marek dismount the pony and took his grandson in his arms.
“He’s so big.” Tereus’s face pinched, then he bent to kiss Rhia’s cheek. “I knew you could do it.”
She gazed at her father with blurry eyes, then heard a familiar voice call her name.
Damen was rushing toward her. She hugged him hard enough to make him gasp, then drew back. The dark circles under his eyes might be a good sign.
“Your son,” she said. “Is he—”
“On his way.” He stood on tiptoe to look behind him. Nathas led Reni through the crowd, pushing aside those who would jostle her. The Squirrel woman held a bundle in her arms.
Rhia let out a tightly held breath. “That’s why you’ve lost sleep.”
“Sleep?” He rubbed his eyes and looked at the sky. “I remember something called sleep.”
Marek sprang to their side and wrapped Damen in a Kalindon-style bear hug. Rhia turned to Reni and Nathas as they approached and remembered to greet them before gawking at the baby.
“His name’s Corek,” Reni said. “In memory of Coranna.”
Tears slid from Rhia’s eyes, unbidden and unexpected. Marek’s and Nilik’s disappearance had overshadowed Coranna’s death. Now that they were safe, she could finally mourn her mentor.
Damen slid an arm around Rhia’s shoulder. “There’s a feast waiting in the town hall,” he said gently. “That’s the best part, heh?”
She wiped her eyes and nodded. Only a fellow Crow could understand the consoling power of food.
They headed for the village, where more people waited in the streets. A large open tent had been set up outside the Velekon town hall. Rhia’s stomach growled at the savory smells, and she wished the crowd would let them pass more quickly.
She looked at Marek. “I was going to ask if we could wash up first, but now that we’re here…”
He smirked. “It would be impolite not to eat a little.”
“Just a little.”
They ate and drank all afternoon, fitting in bites and sips between visits from total strangers who wanted to welcome them and meet Nilik, who slept through most of the chaos.
Finally, after dinner, she was able to speak with Damen alone about the cave in the Gray Valley. He rubbed the corner of his jaw as he listened, tensing at her description of the oozing, sucking mass.
“Should we move these unborns,” he asked her, “and if so, where?”
“I don’t think they can be moved. They seemed like a part of the land itself. And they didn’t feel unhappy to me. Not happy, either, just—there.” She shifted her feet under the table. “It’s hard to explain, but they didn’t feel like people.”
“How could the senator’s son steal her soul piece if he wasn’t a person?”
“Maybe she gave it to him. Maybe she thought it would keep him alive.”
Damen ran his teeth over his bottom lip. “I think I would’ve done the same for Corek. Not consciously, of course.”
“We all try to bargain with Crow, whether we mean to or not.”
Damen swished his drink. “And it never works.” He took a long sip and set the empty mug aside. “Next time either of us speaks to Him, we’ll have lots of questions.”
The fiddlers struck up a reel, and Rhia felt a hand squeeze her shoulder.
Marek kissed the top of her head. “I insist you don’t dance with me.”
She laughed and stood to join him, despite her drowsiness from the food, ale and traveling. At first it felt strange to dance, to move with no purpose other than joy, but the music injected her feet with an energy she hadn’t felt in months. They danced the first song together, then switched partners with every new tune, according to Kalindon custom. The Velekons were confused at first by the irregularity, but soon caught on.
As evening fell, she sat with her family and Damen’s, devouring the last of the berries and cream. Lycas was telling their escape story to another group of curious Velekons. With each mug of ale, the events grew larger and wilder.
“…and then the crows themselves carried us away,” he told an astounded group of listeners.
“How could they do that?” asked a gray-haired woman with a skeptical regard.
“They grew wings the size of horses, of course,” Lycas said, “and wrapped us all in a giant blanket made of—of rose stems. So they could grab hold.” He nodded solemnly.
“What are roses?” another voice asked.
“Hideous plants,” Marek said, “with thorns that leap out and cut you, like snakes from a hole.” He exchanged a grim look with Lycas. “It was a painful journey in that blanket.”
When the Velekons wandered off to spread the story, Lycas and Marek shared a long laugh.
“That ought to keep people talking awhile,” Lycas said as he finished his dessert.
“When will you go back to Ilios?” Tereus asked him.
“Right away.” Lycas’s gaze tripped over the crowd again, as if expecting Mali and Sura to appear. Tereus had told them that when Mali found out Lycas would be leaving again, the Wasp refused to bring their daughter to see him. Rhia planned to have some words with her old nemesis, the kind of words she wouldn’t utter in front of her own father.
Tereus nodded. “I’ll help Adrek and Nelma take the children back to Kalindos.”
“And see Elora while you’re there,” Rhia said.
Her father gave an embarrassed smile, then sobered. “It will be hard for her to hear her children are still missing.”
“They won’t be for long,” Marek said, “if Alanka has anything to do with it.”
Rhia looked at Nilik, who slept in an open basket beside her. On the other side of him, Damen’s son, Corek, stretched and cooed in Reni’s arms. From the corner of her eye, Rhia saw the rest of the table watching the babies, as well. She knew what they were all thinking: which boy would become Raven?
“I think they should arm wrestle for the Aspect,” Marek said.
Damen set his elbow on the table and pushed his plate out of the way. “Maybe their fathers should act as stand-ins, heh?”
Marek rolled up his sleeve. “Agreed, Crow man. Let’s see whose son gets to save the world.”
Rhia laughed with the others as the Crow and Wolf battled biceps, cheered on by their respective families. Lycas leaned over and kept the contest a tie by pushing their hands to favor whoever was losing at the moment.
Rhia watched the grasp of three hands, one from each village. Though the Ilions had attacked, slaughtered and captured her people, they had also united them. If the people of the Spirits—o
r the Reawakened, as Marek insisted on calling them—could continue to join their strengths as they’d done this past year, perhaps they could ward off future calamity.
Tiros had helped, as well, by sending its third-phase Hawk to Asermos, and by taking the evacuees from last year’s battle. The headstrong residents of that distant, dusty village would probably be the last to admit they needed anyone else.
Perhaps one day even the Ilions would unite with Rhia’s people, as Horse had told Filip. Her time in the Descendants’ land had only heightened her dread of the future. Their ways had grown so far apart, a final reconciliation seemed impossible.
But if the Spirits could dream it, so could she.
VOICE OF CROW
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0654-4
Copyright © 2007 by Jeri Smith-Ready
First trade printing: October 2007
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Worldwide Library, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Voice of Crow Page 35
