Chapter 24
TORVIC KNEW FROM helping his mam garden that something wasn’t right. Each day, more plants in Lirra’s vegetable garden drooped. He and Meggie weeded and watered with great care, making sure the plants had room to grow as needed. But it seemed that no matter what they did, the garden continued to fail. Initially Lirra dismissed it with a smile, explaining what they knew as farmsteader children, that some crops inevitably failed. Weak seed, she said; it was just as well such were not grown to adulthood. But the corn and wheat were healthy, tubers grew well, and melons and squash thrived. It was true they would miss carrots and onions and a few other ingredients in their stew, but they would do well enough.
Without the cow, there was no milk and thus no cheese or butter. But Lirra’s snares delivered small game now and again, enough to keep them in meat. They had eggs aplenty from the hens, and the beans grew nicely. There were no true seasons in Alisanos, Lirra explained, because the weather might change from hour to hour, so she had adopted the habit of planting year round, knowing some crops would be lost while others thrived.
But then the vegetable garden in its entirety began to die, and three of the hens stopped laying, and the tubers rotted in the ground. Melons grew no larger than a man’s thumb, then split open. Lirra said they would do well enough with only four laying hens, and killed the three not laying. Torvic and Meggie plucked them, and for a ten-day they ate well of roasted chicken. But then the rooster died, and Lirra stopped smiling.
That night, beneath blankets laid before the hearth, Meggie whispered a question to Torvic: what they would do if the other hens stopped laying? And without a rooster, where would chicks come from? Mam and Da had made it quite clear that a prosperous farm required a rooster, even though Meggie didn’t quite understand the rooster’s role in things. Torvic said he didn’t know, but that Lirra would think of something. Lirra had lived alone for several years in Alisanos, and if she didn’t know what to do, she wouldn’t still be alive.
“We’ll plant more seed come morning,” he told her beneath the blanket.
“What if it doesn’t grow? What if it dies?”
“We’ve meat,” he answered, “from the snares. And Lirra says that now and again when she forages she comes across a wagon swallowed with its people, with supplies still there. Maybe with us to help, we can find more wagons.”
“We’ll get lost,” Meggie declared.
“No, we won’t. Lirra will lay the stinkwood fire. We can follow our noses.”
“If the other hens stop laying and we eat them, there’ll be no more eggs.”
He couldn’t argue with that. But, “We’ve the snares, Meggie. We won’t go hungry.”
Lirra’s voice came to them from the bedstead. “Sleep, children. No sense borrowing trouble. Now and again we’ll go hungry, but it won’t last. It’s just a matter of planting and raising what’s strong, and culling the weak seed.”
“See?” Torvic said to Meggie.
Meggie did not answer. She burrowed more deeply yet beneath the blanket. Meggie had stopped crying so often, but he did see her now and again wiping tears away. Sometimes he felt like crying, too, but he had to be strong for Meggie.
“We’ll raise what’s strong,” he whispered, “and cull the weak seed.”
ILONA SLEPT BADLY. The night was filled not with dreams, but with vague memories of the man who so resembled Rhuan, and of the grief and heartbreak living in every line of the farmsteader’s face. No longer fevered, no longer with an arm that ached, there were no excuses for her. But she found no comfort in sleep, no cessation of the burdens of life. When she awoke, she felt dull and weary.
She had told both Bethid and Naiya that she wanted no company in the night, asserting that she was well enough to tend herself. Fortunately, they accepted her argument. She slept and woke by herself in the wagon, a film of dew coating her coverlet. This morning Jorda meant to put on a new canopy, but then she recalled that he was to ride with the farmsteader to his wagon, to bring it back, and perhaps her canopy would have to wait.
She pushed back the coverlet and realized she had once again slept in her clothing, though at least these were garments she’d donned only the day before, following her bath in the river. As she crawled out of her bed, reflecting that she’d best go find a bush since there would be no privacy with the nightcrock in the uncovered wagon, she recalled that she’d bidden the farmsteader to visit her before he left with Jorda.
Perching on the edge of her cot, Ilona went very still. O Mother of Moons, she had promised to read his hand! But what if she couldn’t? What if her gift was still absent? What then would he think of her, and of her defense of Rhuan? A diviner with no gift carried no weight at all in the world. She might as well be a charlatan, might as well support the man’s concern that Rhuan had, somehow, desired his family to be taken.
Ridiculous. Ludicrous. Completely unwarranted. But Ilona knew well enough that in times of trouble, such things as logic were often buried under grief and anger. And there was that aplenty in this settlement.
FOR WHAT SHE assumed were days, Ellica lay upon the rude pallet of leaves and branches. The dreya tended her with infinite care and gentleness, often stroking her hair, now untangled; stroking also her arms and legs. At first she had recoiled from such intimate touch, but it became clear to her that the dreya were simply fascinated by her skin, by her coloring. They were silver all over, from hair and eyes to a softly glowing silver flesh showing slightly darker patterning. Ellica was so blond her hair was almost white, and her skin, though fair, had a milky tint to it absent from theirs, with undertones of rose. Veins ran bluish within her flesh, and where her pigmentation was pink, such as her lips, theirs was darker gray.
She could not speak as yet, and they wished her not to try. That she healed, she knew; frequent applications of the sticky substance to the wound in her neck had closed the skin. But fingers told her a scar remained, a ring of puckered tissue encircling her neck. The dreya brought her water, fed her with nuts and something astonishingly sweet with the barest hint of spice. It was a limited offering, but she took pleasure in the sweet substance. And eventually she recovered enough that they allowed her to rise without help and to tend her needs alone; initially her brief trips to a bush to relieve herself required two dreya to assist her.
The dreya, she discovered, did not communicate with one another as humans did. That they had voices, she knew; she heard their soft, chiming laughter. But they were mostly silent, linking hands often as if touch conveyed speech. They combed one another’s hair with bundles of stripped twigs from their own trees, each twig ivory beneath the silvery bark. At any given time several might go into their trees, passing through tall clefts, but Ellica was never left alone. The ring was her refuge, and she blessed them for offering it.
When she was strong enough to rise on her own, to walk without assistance, all twelve dreya escorted her to the tiny sapling in the center of the ring. With gestures and soft trilling, they made it clear that the sapling was hers to tend. Ellica smiled and nodded, kneeling down beside the sapling. It was small recompense, she felt, for how they had served her. And she understood why the work was necessary; the sapling attracted all manner of insects determined to feast on its wood, and birds often flew down in attempts to break off tiny twigs or to bore holes in its trunk. Ellica groomed the sapling several times a day, if time be measured in days within Alisanos, nurturing pale, fragile leaves as they uncoiled from tiny buds, removing suckers at the ground to make certain a single trunk grew straight and strong, not weakened by lesser sproutings.
Ellica found a tremendous peace in tending the newborn tree, surrounded by silver women within a ring of silver trees. Her strength slowly returned. She took nourishment from the nuts and sweet substance, aware of no desire for meat, bread, or vegetables. When the double suns rose, so did she, a sense of renewed vitality filling her spirit.
Then one day, as she woke with the sun, she heard the voices of the dreya and saw t
heir tears. Each woman clung to her tree, weeping, reaching out again and again to touch the hands of others. That they grieved was obvious. One by one they began to slip into their trees, until only one dreya was left. She took Ellica by the hand, led her to the sapling, and mimed that she was to devote herself to its care. There was an urgency involved in the dreya’s gestures, and a grief in her eyes that did not fade. Ellica nodded, knelt beside the sapling, and stroked its narrow trunk, trying to assure the dreya she would tend the tree. The woman cradled Ellica’s head, bowed hers briefly in gratitude, then turned to her own silver-trunked tree. With a final glance at Ellica, she slipped into the cleft. Overhead, in the shining canopy, leaves rustled. Stems and branches wound themselves together. There was no branch of any tree that was not touching another.
Save for the sapling, alone in the ring’s center.
As Ellica was alone.
WHEN BRODHI FINISHED explaining matters to Corrid, his freckles stood out more prominently because the skin beneath them was pale. Corrid stared at the map a moment, then looked at Gathlyn as if to ask, in silence, if any of what Brodhi had told him true. Gathlyn nodded before the question could be voiced. Hallack, perching atop the table slab, was markedly grim.
“But no one ever told me,” Corrid said faintly. “Why wouldn’t they tell me about such a place as Alisanos?”
Hallack drank down ale while Gathlyn asked, “Where in the province are you from?”
“Far northeast.” Corrid waved a hand at Brodhi’s rough map, though the markings didn’t extend that far.
“Aye, well, that’s likely why,” Hallack said, nodding. “Alisanos has been sitting along the Atalanda-Sancorra border for forty years. It moved there a few years before I was born, but my folk have always lived in the southwestern portion of the province. We’re closer, so I heard all the tales as I grew up.”
“While I,” Gathlyn said, “was alive when it moved. I was but a child, but everyone in the northwest heard about it. My folk, too, have told tales of it ever since.”
Corrid stared again at the map. “But it could move anywhere?”
“Anywhere,” Brodhi said, “at any time. And when it moves again, which is a certainty, who knows but that it will go northeast and swallow your people.”
That did not set well with Corrid. He looked at all three men, satisfied himself that it wasn’t a jest, then began to murmur a petition to the Mother of Moons.
“Meanwhile,” Brodhi said, “we’ve got the warlord sending warriors with me so they may see for themselves, when I return to the settlement. Tomorrow.”
Gathlyn swore. “An active Alisanos and the Hecari. One is enough of a burden, but both?” He shook his head. “Poor Sancorra.”
Hallack agreed. “A man could wish the deepwood would swallow all the Hecari for us.”
Brodhi said quietly, “A man could wish … or a man might do something to further that.”
Gathlyn and Hallack made derisive sounds simultaneously, as Corrid gazed at Brodhi. “But he couldn’t, could he?” the young courier asked. “I mean, there’s really nothing we could do, is there?”
“Die,” Hallack said. “That’s what we’d do.”
“Very likely,” Brodhi agreed, and left it at that. For an initial foray into learning what other couriers felt, it was less than effective but it was better than no knowledge at all.
RHUAN FELT THE rage rise up in his soul. The voice he knew at once, and its arrogant tone; it was not required that he see the man to recognize him. But the man did step out out of the shadows, clear for all to see, and Rhuan looked for the first time in several human years upon the man who was his sire.
Audrun was on her feet, clearly startled. Rhuan remained seated with his back against the downed tree, trying with great difficulty to ignore the impulse to rise. Alario would expect it, would expect some form of acknowledgment and deference, and Rhuan refused to give it.
“Audrun, sit down.” He tried to keep the anger from his voice. Anger would please Alario.
She looked down at him, face still blank with surprise, then slowly seated herself on the log once again. “Are we in danger, Rhuan?”
“Oh, indeed, always,” Alario said. His smile was edged. “Surely Rhuan has explained to you what I am.”
“In fact, I have not,” Rhuan said before Audrun could answer. “You mean so little to me that it never crossed my mind.”
“Ah, but I mean enough to you that you choose to turn your back on all that I could give you, on all that you could be, as Alario’s get.”
Rhuan laughed. “Because I want none of it. None of you.”
“Stop,” Audrun said. She looked from one to the other. No fear was evident in her expression or posture, no concern of any kind, except for annoyance. “Very well. I take it you are kin. I take it as well that you are neither of you particularly friendly with one another. I may be only a ’little human,’ but this I have seen before. Therefore I say to you both: explain matters. Plainly. You will not use me to cut at one another.”
Rhuan, taken aback, blinked and closed the mouth he’d opened to respond.
Alario’s laughter was startled, but also long and loud.
Chapter 25
AUDRUN LOOKED FROM Rhuan to the man who appeared to be his father. Certainly there was a strong resemblence in coloring, in the arrangement of their features, and of course in the elaborate braid patterns and beading, had she not undone Rhuan’s. But the father was, she realized—and not unexpectedly—taller, broader, heavier, and clearly more mature. He strode out of the shadows and into the light of double suns with a powerful elegance that eclipsed what she remembered of Rhuan’s uninjured movements. That this man was in his prime was beyond obvious; he carried with him supreme self-confidence, such a strong sense of condescension and casual superiority that she disliked him at once. She blamed Rhuan not at all for the bitterness she’d heard in his tone.
“So,” she said to the man, taking the offensive before he could, “since Rhuan has not made the introductions, as you seemed to expect—though I don’t know why you should—perhaps you will tell me who you are, and why I should care?”
The bigger man raised an eyebrow, and made the motion seem more eloquent than ten words assembled into a sentence. “I am Alario. Primary of Alisanos. A god, little human; and yes, there is indeed power I manipulate to suit my needs, as my get has pointed out, even to suit my whims, which is something he abhors.”
“Your get?” Audrun echoed, incredulous. “You make him sound like a puppy!”
“And so he is.” Alario, clad in rich, russet hide tunic and leggings, with wide, gold-bossed and -buckled belt and glints of beads in his braids, seemed almost to glow with vitality. Casually, he leaned his spine against a tree and folded his arms across his chest. “He hasn’t yet proved himself to be anything else. And I doubt he will.”
“Why are you here?” Rhuan asked, as yet still seated on the ground with every appearance of insousiance.
When Alario smiled, no dimples appeared. Rhuan’s, Audrun realized, must have come from his mother. “I am here,” Alario said, “because it was brought to my attention that you were here, where you should not be. Failed already, have you? Given up on the journey—”
Now Rhuan stood, thrusting himself upward with a hand on the downed trunk. “I have not. Neither of those. I am here because Alisanos saw fit to go active—”
“He came to help us,” Audrun put in. “He tried to direct us away, and was trapped himself.”
“Were you? Trapped?” Alario grinned. “Have you explained to her that you could walk out of Alisanos at any time?”
Audrun looked at Rhuan sharply. “Can you?”
“I can,” he affirmed, “but not with you, nor with any of your family. And I choose not to do so just now, journey or no journey, until all of your kin are safe.”
“What journey?” she asked.
But before he could answer, Alario spoke over him. “I see, too, that you have gotten yourself ma
rried in the meantime.” He looked curiously at Audrun. “Was taking down his braids his idea, or yours?”
“I’m already married,” Audrun declared coolly. “I have not married Rhuan.”
“Where is your husband?”
It pinched. She lifted her chin, allowing no weakness to show even briefly, because she knew it would amuse him even as it gave him a weapon. “I don’t know. He may be here in Alisanos, or in what you call the human world.”
“Then he is unable to keep this match from going forward.” Alario locked eyes with Rhuan. “In Alisanos, what exists in the human world means less than nothing. In Alisanos, you took down his braids. In Alisanos, you have in essence married him already. But we do like ceremony at the Kiba. Thus, you’ll marry him again before the primaries. You have no choice.”
“I have every choice,” Audrun replied evenly, refusing to let him bait her. “I will speak at your Kiba and explain to all of your fellow gods that I took down his braids with no notion of what it means in Alisanos. It was done in ignorance as I tended his scalp wounds. There was no intent on my part to make any kind of arrangement between us.”
“But the arrangement is made. It cannot be unmade.”
“Why not?”
“Because we the primaries have no wish to have it unmade.”
“How do you know what the other primaries want?” Audrun countered. “One thousand altogether, I understand. Can you swear that the other nine hundred and ninety-nine will agree with you? I think not. I think when I explain matters, few will stand by you. Not all nine hundred and ninety-nine can be as arrogant as you.”
“Actually,” Rhuan murmured, “they can.”
She ignored him, speaking only to Alario. “I think you personally will only maintain that the ‘arrangement’ must remain in place because you know it will prove an annoyance to Rhuan. I think if he were anyone else, you wouldn’t care in the least. And if the other nine hundred and ninety-nine are as arrogant as you, then I shall deal with all of you.”
Deepwood: Karavans # 2 Page 22
