The Shoia’s expression was no longer bored. “You believe that on the word of a hand-reader, who may well be a charlatan, I will enter a place known to all as deadly. A place all avoid. A place that even now I am mapping precisely so that no one ends up there by mistake.” Brodhi leaned forward, hands resting palm down on the table top. “Are you mad? Or are you simply stupid?”
“She said—”
“I don’t care what she said, human! Go yourself. This is your family—you take the risk.”
Davyn spoke quietly, deliberately, relying on fact, avoiding emotion. “My oldest boy is sixteen. His name is Gillan. The next oldest is Ellica, fifteen, his sister. The younger ones—”
Brodhi stood up so quickly his stool fell over. He was clearly furious. For a moment Davyn believed he saw something red flicker in his eyes. “This is Ilona, your hand-reader?”
Davyn nodded. “She reads true. Everyone says so.”
“Do they?” Brodhi picked up his brimming tankard and upended it, spilling ale onto the floor. “I will not drink your ale. I will not take your coin-rings. I will not enter Alisanos to search for your family. But what I will do is have a word with your diviner.”
“My younger ones are five and six. Megritte and Torvic. The baby—her name is Sarith.”
Brodhi turned on his heel and strode out of the tent, slapping the entry flap aside. Davyn slowly drew in a breath, then released it. When he lifted his tankard, he saw his hands were trembling.
But Ilona had seen it. Ilona read true.
“IT’S TIME,” DARMUTH said. “We must leave now.”
Gillan, awakening slowly and stiffly, peered up from the rude pile of leaves he used as a bed. The demon stood over him. “Time for what?”
“Time to go.”
Brilliant sunlight cut through openings in the tree canopy. Gillan shielded his eyes with a flattened hand, squinting from under it. He had not slept well until near dawn, and was slow to grasp such thoughts as arising for the day. “Go where?”
Darmuth leaned down, closed a firm grip around Gillan’s left arm, and pulled him up from the bedding. “To the Kiba.”
Gillan scrambled up in ungainly fashion, keeping weight off the burned leg. When Darmuth released his arm, he grabbed the tree beside his bedding, taking all his weight onto his sound right leg. “Now? It’s barely morning.”
“Time to go,” Darmuth repeated.
Rising from the confusion of an abrupt wakening, Gillan scowled at the demon. “Is this a jest? If so, it’s a poor one. I can’t walk anywhere yet.”
“You’ll be riding, not walking.” Darmuth closed a hand around Gillan’s upper arm and took him from the tree. “There is a log just there, see?”
Gillan, completely taken up with attempting to stay upright, hopped to catch his balance. “I see it. What about it?” The guiding hand was inexorable; he had no choice but to follow its lead. “Darmuth—”
“Sit a moment,” Darmuth directed, placing Gillan immediately in front of the log. “When I’m ready, use it to help.”
Gillan sat down hard on the log, hissing as it jarred his ruined leg. “Use it to help what?”
But Darmuth didn’t answer. Darmuth was, in fact, losing substance. Gillan gaped as the demon’s form thinned nearly to transparency. A moment later substance returned, but was completely reshaped. What stood before Gillan now was a four-legged creature in place of a man who usually appeared perfectly human.
“You’re a horse—?”
A gray horse, in fact. And it bent its neck around to place its mouth atop Gillan’s shoulder, which it proceeded to bite.
“Ow!” Gillan jerked away, rubbing his shoulder. The message was clear enough, as was the means to mount. Gillan sighed. “Yes, I see. Be patient, if you please; this will be difficult.”
The horse sidled a step closer, dropping its head down as if to graze. Nodding, Gillan grasped mane. He pulled himself upright; then, using the horse to steady himself, he hopped one-legged up onto the surface of the log. Balance was nearly lost, but the horse stepped closer yet. Gillan clung to him a moment, found his balance on the one leg, then spread his hands along the horse’s back. His left rested at the gray withers. His right was at the beginning of the horse’s rump.
Gillan had ridden since early childhood. He had mounted this way many times when there was no saddle, once he was tall enough. But never, never using only one leg. Never when the other leg hurt unremittingly.
Gritting his teeth, Gillan dropped his body as if to crouch, bent elbows outward, bounced three times, then thrust himself upward. Pain shot through his bad leg, but he was in motion. Momentum carried his body up and over. He landed belly-down across the horse’s back. Trusting to instincts, Gillan immediately swung his good leg across the broad rump and scooted into place behind the horse’s withers. He reeled there a moment, contemplating vomiting from pain and dizziness, but clamped both hands tightly into the mane before him. The horse moved one way, then the other, barely shifting its weight, until Gillan’s sense of balance reasserted itself.
He was weak and in pain, and sweating. But he had grown up on horseback; this, he could do.
“How far?” Gillan asked, before he recalled that a horse could not speak. Grimacing, he recalled Darmuth’s dry tones. “As far as it is, yes?”
The horse snorted, shook its head, and began to walk.
RHUAN STOOD WATCH as Audrun waded out into one of the shallow blue-green pools. The ill-used hem of her skirts, at its longest point, touched barely below her knees. She caught the skirts up by habit, then waded carefully out a little farther. And finally, as if surrendering every portion of her awareness, Audrun sat down. Water reached to the top of her hips. She put her hands below the water and scooted out farther, seeking depth. Finding it, she leaned back and back, floating, upper body held in place by the tension in her arms as she clung to the shallower stone at the edge of the dropoff. She arched her spine, tipped her head back, let the water take her hair, then lowered her upper body. All of her was afloat within the pool, though she anchored herself with both hands.
Long overdue, he knew. He had pushed her hard, had asked a great deal, but had not pushed too hard, nor had he asked too much. What she didn’t realize was that going into the Kiba to confront the primaries would demand even more. This was merely the prelude.
He had stripped off his boots, tunic, and baldric. Now he stood on stone beneath the water, wet above his ankles. It didn’t matter that the bottom of his leggings were soaked. His tunic had served a newborn infant in all of her needs. He looked away from Audrun to where the cliffs met, lifting his eyes. Water poured down as if from a bottomless pitcher, sun-dazzled mist rising. He lost himself in it. So many human years since he’d been in Alisanos …
“What are you thinking?”
He glanced back, breaking from his reverie. Audrun sat again in shallow water, legs crossed. She was working at wet hair, trying again to split out the snarls and tangles. She was cleaner, tension washed away, hair slicked back from her face. He saw for the first time that without constant family cares, without the worries of travel, she was attractive. He had always viewed her as a mother, not as a woman. Now he revised his estimation.
But her question was due an answer. “That all I ever wanted to be was not like my father.”
“From what I saw of him, I can attest that you aren’t.” Head tilted as she tended her hair, Audrun smiled. “What was your mother like?”
He shook his head. “She died not long after I was born. I never knew her.”
“I’m sorry. But you must be very like her.”
“I don’t know how. We are raised in the creche, not by our parents.” He walked back toward the pathway beside the pool, sloshing through shallow water. “We are expected to be like our sires.”
“What does it mean if you’re not?”
He turned. “It means—Audrun.” He kept his tone even, free of alarm, but nonetheless quietly urgent. “Audrun, come out of the water. T
ry not to splash. Make haste, but carefully.” He fixed his eyes above the cliff opposite the pools, watching the winged creature rising on the air. It was some distance away, but the eyesight of the creatures was legendary. “Audrun.”
She rose up dripping from the water, face gone pale. As instructed, she moved carefully toward the pool’s edge, gliding feet along the stone beneath the water to save splashing. “What is it?”
“Draka.”
“What is a draka?”
“Something you don’t want to meet.” He extended a hand for her to grasp, bringing her out of the water onto the pathway. “There is an overhang back by the cliff face, this side. Walk steadily to it. Don’t run. Make no sudden moves.”
She twisted her head briefly to follow his own line of sight. “Mother of Moons!” Before he could urge her to move again, she began to walk away toward the cliff face.
Rhuan held his ground, watching the draka. Its body was a sinuous, gleaming, coppery mass beneath the double suns. Enormous wings lifted it high, higher yet. He willed it to turn away, to take another direction. But in a moment he knew its path lay toward the pools.
Swearing beneath his breath, Rhuan began to back slowly away from the pool’s edge. He hoped Audrun had reached the cliff face, was pressed against its stone beneath the overhang. He continued moving slowly, trying not to react when his bare feet met sharp stones and thorn bushes. Steadily he made his way through the brush, arms spread for balance, hands open, eyes fixed upon the creature in the sky.
Finally he risked a quick glance over his shoulder to mark the cliff wall. Audrun was there, white-faced, squatting, making herself small. Her eyes tracked the draka. Red dirt clung to the ragged bottom of her skirts. Rhuan covered the last one hundred paces as quickly as he could without crashing through the brush. Relief filled his chest as he reached the overhang, and then he turned and squatted as Audrun did, placing his back against stone.
“Blessed Mother.” Audrun’s tone was a mixture of disbelief, fear, and awe.
The huge draka soared up to the cliff opposite their own. Now its wings were clearly seen, huge membranous structures of pale copper-gold, shining wetly in the sunlight. Those wings steadied the body as it settled slowly, uncurling legs to extend scaled feet, to grip soil and stone with dark talons. Wings folded. The tail unfurled over the cliff’s edge. The long, sinuous neck counterbalanced the weight of the body, lifting the head high in the air.
“Can it see us?” Audrun whispered.
“Not if we don’t move. The brush shields us, and the shadow beneath the overhang.”
“What is it doing?”
Rhuan sighed. “Sunning itself.”
Audrun bit back the quiet, startled laughter, but he didn’t blame her. One did not think in terms of a creature such as a draka, with its deadly talons and fierce eyes, undertaking an activity so benign. “How long will it stay here?”
“Unfortunately …” Rhuan very slowly, very carefully, lowered his body out of its squat to sit upon the earth, “… as long as takes its fancy.”
Chapter 31
BRODHI FOUND THE hand-reader outside of her wagon, kneeling by her cookfire. She’d hung a kettle from a small shepherd’s crook planted inside the rock ring. A mug was in one hand as she cloaked the other in layers of shielding rags and reached for the kettle handle.
He walked right up to the other side of the modest cookfire and stopped, glaring down at her. She glanced up, registered his expression, and said, ironically, “I suspect you aren’t interested in my tea.”
He freighted his words with scorn. “No indeed. I came here so you could instruct me in my actions.”
A faint frown passed briefly across her face. Then comprehension came into her eyes. She looked at her kettle, mug, and folded rag, sighed, then set everything aside. She rose, shook out her skirts, and met him eye to eye across the cookfire. “Whatever you came to say can be said while I’m seated.”
He watched her walk to the back of her wagon, climb three steps, then seat herself in the door frame, booted feet planted two steps down. After a moment he followed, halting at the foot of the bottom step. Her wagon was tall; he did not have to look down far to meet her eyes.
“I read true,” she said as he opened his mouth to speak, cutting him off. “I am sorry if that inconveniences you, but I won’t apologize for it. Yes, Brodhi, I did read the farmsteader’s hand; and yes, Brodhi, I saw you in Alisanos. With two of his children. My obligation wasn’t to you, it was to the farmsteader who engaged my services. I saw what I saw.”
He had lost his temper with that farmsteader. He would not do so again. “You are a charlatan.”
She laughed at him. “Of all the things in my life of which I am, and which I am not, charlatan falls most decidedly into the latter category. I realize that for a dioscuri that is hard to understand, but it’s quite true. I saw what I saw, Brodhi. It matters to me not at all that you choose to disbelieve me; many have, over the years. And they have regretted it.”
He had never told her he was dioscuri. He had never mentioned the word to any human, here or elsewhere. Rhuan knew, of course, as did Ferize and Darmuth. But humans did not. A chill coursed through his belly. “Ilona—”
“I understand you are the last of Karadath’s children who are dioscuri. Did you kill all the others?”
Brodhi stared at her, stunned.
Ilona smiled without humor. “Oh, yes. I know. I understand what faces you when you return to Alisanos. In fact, I know rather a great deal about you. Alario was most forthcoming.” Hazel eyes were clear and cold. “Yes, Brodhi—Alario. Rhuan’s sire has visited me.”
She had completely undermined his planned attack. Now he was aware of thoughts tumbling one over another, portions of them rising to the surface, settling onto his tongue, and yet he spoke none of them. “Alario was here.”
“Twice.”
“Why? Rhuan is in Alisanos.”
“He didn’t come to see Rhuan. He came to see me.”
It was preposterous. “You? Why?”
“He feels Rhuan is inferior get.”
“He is.”
“He feels you are more suited to be an heir than Rhuan.”
“I am.”
“But you happen to be Karadath’s heir, not his own, and it troubles him. He feels he’s losing his standing among the primaries.”
Brodhi wished he could dismiss everything she said, but it was clear to him she spoke from actual knowledge. She knew too much. “He is losing his standing among the primaries.”
“And so he has decided he should get a new son, make a new dioscuri. One more fitting, he says, than the one he has now.” Ilona shrugged. “I personally feel Rhuan is worth far more than you or Alario, but that seems to make no difference.”
Now Brodhi smiled. “No, it doesn’t. You’re a human. You aren’t expected to understand, and what you feel doesn’t matter in the least.”
She tilted her head slightly, studying his expression. “Human or no, it matters enough that Alario has decided to get this new son on me.”
He went cold to the bone. He couldn’t disbelieve her; what she said Alario intended was exactly the action that a primary in Alario’s position should do. Particularly since it would harm Karadath’s position.
“I’m curious, Brodhi—how many of your brothers have you killed?”
He found a cool smile, trying to regain lost ground. “I’ve lost count.”
“And Rhuan?”
“Rhuan? Rhuan’s weak; he hasn’t killed anyone. And you wonder why Alario feels he needs a new heir?” For the first time he paid very close attention to the hand-reader, examined her as a possible piece upon the primaries’ gameboard instead of discounting her because she was a human. His own mother had been human. “I am aware this is not how humans conduct their lives. But if Rhuan wishes to survive beyond childhood, he should accept what must be done.”
“Childhood!”
At last, he could tell her something Alario hadn
’t. “We are, in the human tongue, adolescents. In your years, we are young. We are on the cusp of adulthood, he and I … that we are here is because of that. I have heard a human term, a human phrase, rite of passage. This is ours, Ilona. If we wish to become adults, accepted as adults, we must become more than dioscuri. We must prove to the primaries that we belong among them.”
She sat stiffly upright within the frame of her door-jamb, staring at him fixedly. “How do you do that?”
“Many methods, among them various tests. A journey. The latter requires five human years in the human world.”
“And then?”
“Then we return to Alisanos. We face the primaries. We explain our actions, defend some of them. They decide if we are fit to become adults.”
“And if not?”
“If we are not fit to become adults, we are not fit to procreate. And so the primaries make certain we cannot.”
Ilona frowned. “How in the world can they do that? If your seed is alive, it’s alive. You can sire—”
“Castration.”
The color flowed out of her face. Horror shone in hazel eyes as her lips parted.
“Our world,” Brodhi said, “is somewhat more rigorous than yours.”
“Mother of Moons …”
“Yes, we kill our brothers. It is necessary so that one day we may challenge our sires. Only one of us may do that; it is how our sires are replaced. If we fail our journeys, fail our tests, provide the wrong answers, we remain children. And the opportunity to challenge our sires, to become as they are, never arrives.” He stared at her. “And I think even a woman may understand that castration is not an acceptable outcome.”
“Brodhi—”
“You do read true,” he said, “though in this case perhaps not for the reasons you believe. Yes, I will enter Alisanos. You have made it necessary.” He shook his head. “Karadath should know what Alario intends.”
Deepwood: Karavans # 2 Page 28
