Path of Fate

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

Koijots pointed out the spot he wanted and Reisil communicated it to Saljane. Once again the bird perched on the top of the wood tangle, talons gouging into the slick wood, wings unfurled for balance. With fluttering hops, she journeyed down to the spot Koijots had indicated. The tangled mass creaked and shivered beneath her. The recent additions to the pile groaned and cracked together, rolling and pitching on the river’s angry current.

  Finally Saljane hung the spell on the stump of a branch, as big around as Reisil’s wrist, and broken off less than a foot from the trunk. The goshawk launched herself up with heavy flapping of her wings, but did not gain much altitude. A log beneath her canted and rolled, shoving upward what appeared to be little more than a sapling. Reisil screamed as the wood whipped into Saljane. Feathers exploded like dandelion puff and Saljane screeched. She fell into the water at the edge of the boat, just out of Reisil’s reach.

  The young ahalad-kaaslane didn’t think. She vaulted over the rail into the frigid, boiling current. She sank, sodden boots and clothes pulling her down. The current grabbed her, drove her forward toward the battering logs. Reisil kicked furiously upward and back, against that angry pull. The cold cut through her chest, and when she broke the surface her lips were already blue. She kicked hard against the current, searching for Saljane.

  There! Too near the tumbling logs. The goshawk’s head was above water, her beak open, her eyes impossibly wide. Her wings opened and closed in the water, but the saturated feathers were too heavy to be of any use, even if she could have dragged herself from the water, even if the blow had not broken something.

  The current whirled Saljane around and batted her toward the churning logs. Reisil kicked hard, flinging herself up and over, letting the driving current help her. Her arms closed around Saljane and she pulled them both under. The bird struggled against her grip. Reisil broke the surface again, kicking backward, the knobby bark of redwood log not eight inches from her face. Saljane’s talons raked her stomach in panicking fury, but Reisil refused to let the bird go. The vicious beak bit deeply into her cheeks and neck as the terrified, pain-stricken bird fought for freedom. Blood ran down her face in thick ribbons, but Reisil was so cold she hardly felt the injuries.

  Somewhere in a detached part of her mind, she found humor.

  ~Oh, ahalad-kaaslane, what we have done to each other in our short bonding. If we survive this, may we both be better friends.

  The current dragged at her and she found herself between two spinning logs, larger in diameter than she could put her arms around. When they came together, they would crush her. Reisil sucked in a breath and flung herself sideways, under the water, under the log. She pumped her legs, but they hardly seemed to move. Her lungs screamed from the pain and cold. She could see nothing but a glimmer of blurry light above. Where was the boat? Where was safety? She could not stay under any longer, could hardly resist the demands of the current. And Saljane—could she be drowning her ahaladkaaslane ? She thrust herself up toward the light.

  Her hair clogged her eyes. She could see nothing. Reisil gulped air, her lungs burning. She couldn’t feel her fingers, couldn’t feel her feet. Logs rumbled together—where? How close? Saljane twitched in her arms but no longer struggled, no longer pecked and scratched.

  Sudden hands closed around her.

  “Steady, now,” Kebonsat said, his voice strained. “We’ve got you.”

  Reisil wasn’t even capable of relief. She let herself go slack as two sets of hands tied a rope around her waist, beneath her arms where she clutched Saljane to chest.

  The rope grew taut and she felt herself pulled through the water, then up out of it like a lead weight. She dangled over the steel current, inching upward in jolting tugs. More hands grappled her and pulled her to the deck, where she lay in a frigid puddle.

  “How is she?”

  “Blessed Lady! She’s blue. Is she breathing?”

  “Get something for these wounds. At least they’re clean. She won’t have lost much blood either. Cold as she is, the blood’s sluggish.”

  “Gonna scar bad, ’less you get them treated right. Need to get to Priede to the tark there. Best play that spell if you still can.”

  The voices whirled around Reisil. Kebonsat. Sodur. Glevs. Voli.

  “So cold,” Reisil whispered.

  “Gotta get her dry. What about the bird?”

  Gentle hands settled on hers still clutching Saljane.

  “Let her go, Reisil. You got her out; let us do the rest.” The voice was soft and comforting. Sodur. She relaxed her arms. “Good girl. I’ll get her warm and dry. Concentrate on yourself now.”

  ~Saljane?

  ~Saljane?

  Weak. Safe. Worry. Pain.

  They were pressing cloth to her face and neck and she felt someone tugging on her boots, then her trousers. They lifted her and carried her to a pallet out of the rising wind. They cut her shredded jerkin from her and all movement stilled about her a moment. Then muttering. Kebonsat? They bound her ribs and stomach and swaddled her in blankets. She shivered, her body shaking like an aspen leaf in a gale. Fiery agony spread questing fingers along her stomach and up her face. Despite the chill, sweat beaded on her forehead and her body twisted, seeking escape from the pain.

  “Give her some of this.”

  Reisil found a cup on her lips and sipped. Then spat. She struggled, tearing herself from Kebonsat’s bracing arm. Sodur brought her up short, pressing her back down. This time his voice was less gentle, more commanding.

  “You’ve no choice. Saljane lives in your mind, hears your thoughts, especially now when you’re in so much pain. You may not want the laudanum, but she needs you to have it, or I can’t help her. You jumped in the river to save her. Would you let her die now for your aversion to the drug? Wouldn’t hurt you either. Can’t do a lot more for you until we get to Priede. Do you want to suffer the entire way there?”

  Again Kebonsat held the cup to her lips. She looked at Sodur through her agony, lips compressed. Then with a sigh she drank. It tasted bitter and sweet and foul, despite mixing it with wine. She drained the cup with a grimace and lay back. Sodur patted her shoulder and left.

  “Upsakes?” Reisil couldn’t help but ask. Kebonsat seemed to understand the question.

  “No harm from him. Sodur gave him a dose of that stuff as well. He ought to sleep until Priede.”

  “Good.” Reisil sank back, pain fading already. She still felt cold and grateful to Kebonsat, who cuddled her beside him. It wasn’t personal, she knew. He was a fighting man and knew that she could yet succumb to hypothermia and shock. A weight settled on her right side. Lume. The yellow-green eyes glowed at her and his heavy head settled on her hip with a rumbling purr. Reisil gave him a dreamy smile, then dropped into darkness without dreams.

  She woke, a comfortable weight across her thighs, something like a collar around her neck—but not unpleasant. The ground rumbled beneath her. Every jounce gave her a lash of pain. She blinked. The sky above was black—no stars. Storm clouds. She remembered seeing the storm moving across the Dume Griste mountains when Saljane was flying. Wind fingered into the wagon bed and plucked at her hair—dry now. She craned her neck and saw nothing but the painted wooden sides of the wagon and the back of the driver, his hat pulled low, the neck of his blue woolen coat pulled high. The wheels made a dry, scuffing sound on the road. Were they in Priede? Where were the sounds of the town?

  They rumbled over a rough patch and her head bounced. She moaned. The collar on her neck wriggled and she stiffened. Upsakes’s weirmart peered up at her, yellow topaz eyes gleaming.

  “What are you doing here?” she wondered in a husky voice.

  The little animal nosed her chin and squirmed down beneath the blankets. Reisil blinked at the matte black sky. Why wasn’t the little creature with Upsakes? Still, her animal warmth around Reisil’s neck was welcome and she snuggled into it, drifting off again.

  She woke when she was being lifted out of the wagon. She struggled against the ha
nds that held her.

  “Easy now. The tark’s inside. Sodur’s already taken Saljane in.”

  Reisil forced herself to relax. Kebonsat held her gently. She looked at him blearily, her head on his chest. A beam of yellow light fell across them and they entered a cottage high on a hillside above Priede. That’s why no city noises, she thought.

  The scents of the room nearly broke her heart, smelling so much like her own little house. Not hers anymore, she reminded herself, the knot in her throat swelling. Herbs hung drying in bunches from hooks on the beamed ceiling. Tansy and chamomile, rosemary, colts-foot, dragon’s blood. A stew bubbled in a pot hung on a tripod in the spacious fireplace, the yeasty smell of fresh-baked bread making Reisil’s mouth water.

  “Ah, what have we here? Lay her down on the table. Better light than at the bed. That’s right, stay there, keep her from rolling off. Laudanum, eh? Can smell it. Wearing off, though, eh?”

  Reisil understood the last to be directed at her and nodded to the man with short, bristling gray hair around the sides of his round head, his bald pate shining rosy gold in the candlelight.

  “Righto. They tell me you went into the Urdzina.” He tsked, pulling the blankets off her carefully. “Not wise, m’dear. Cold, cold, cold. This time of year especially. Running high on snowmelt, despite the drought. Little irony of the gods. Ah. And these from the bird?” He glanced across her to Kebonsat, who nodded confirmation. Glevs stood beside him. Where were Sodur and Saljane? She began to struggle up, her gaze darting to the door. The tark pressed down on her shoulders as Kebonsat and Glevs seized her arms and legs.

  “Gently now.”

  “Saljane.”

  The tark looked at the other two men with raised eyebrows, his red pug nose twitching.

  “The goshawk,” Kebonsat said by way of explanation.

  “Ah. Well, worry no more. I’m not the only tark in town tonight. There’s a visitor—my sister—who is also a tark. She’s got the care of your ahalad-kaaslane. She’s very good and has a way with animals. Now I’m going to have to give you something to put you to sleep again. No, no. I know best right now. You need stitching, and I can’t do it if you’re thrashing about. Nor will my sister manage that bird of yours. Hear it? She knows you’re awake now and it’s setting her off.”

  Reisil could hear Saljane’s loud cries in the next room and a soothing voice. A woman, somehow familiar . . .

  “None of that foul potion again. Try this. Tastes better too, if I do say so.”

  Reisil swallowed the liquid held to her lips, eyes widening in surprise. She knew this drink. She’d learned it from Elutark, one of her mentor’s own recipes.

  “Good, good. Now, before you fade away, do reassure that bird of yours.”

  ~Saljane. Ahalad-kaaslane.

  Red worry. Sparks. Pain.

  Reisil felt the concoction the tark had given her beginning to take hold. She didn’t have any words to give the bird, so she tried to show her feelings instead. Pride. Affection. Something deeper, something to fill the loneliness she kept buried deep in her heart, loneliness rooted in her parents’ abandonment. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and trickled down to dampen her hair. A sob hunched in her throat and she swallowed hard on it.

  Had she made Saljane feel so in refusing her? Could the bird forgive that sort of pain? Could she?

  Reisil woke again to flickering shadows. A smoky scent mingled with the herbs, and a duskier, masculine smell rose from the pillow and sheets. She wriggled and realized she was in the tark’s bed, with Lume lying lengthwise beside her.

  She lay still for a moment. There was a sound of a sleepy fire, the creak of the roof and a rattle of a shutter. In the stillness she could hear Lume’s even breathing and her own racing heart.

  The day’s events rose up and flooded her mind and she knew her dreams had woken her. She felt the same urgency she had standing at the gates of Kallas—an invisible hand pushing against her back. Every moment took Ceriba farther away; every moment brought disaster closer.

  She struggled up on her elbows, sucking a silent breath against the ache in her side and face. Lume stretched a paw across her stomach in protest, his claws delicately extended on the quilt. Candles glowed on the mantel and the table. The tark slept in an overstuffed chair opposite the bed, his feet propped up on a wood block. The chair was covered with a geometric-patterned orange and brown brocade, threadbare along the arms and shredded completely along the bottom. He must have a cat, Reisil decided. One who’d decided to retreat while Lume invaded its home. In the window burned a rosemary candle, flame tall and straight.

  Her stomach growled as she sat up further. Her head spun. She gasped, feeling the wounds along her stomach as she moved. It was enough to wake the tark.

  He yawned, looking at her. She was wearing a man’s shirt and nothing else. Lume rolled over and snuggled into the warmth she’d left behind.

  “I thought you’d wake soon. You ahalad-kaaslane never do things properly when it comes to healing yourselves. I expect you’ll be rambling off with the rest of them in the morning. No sense at all. No sense.” He was shaking his head, bustling through his cabinets for a bowl, half a loaf of bread and a crock of butter. “That bird of yours, though. She won’t be flying for a week or more. Nothing broken, thank the Blessed Lady. But bad bruising. Elu’s done what she can—my sister is very good, you know. The best. But still, be a week, and then short flights. Up to you to see her fed, but then that’s what having an ahalad-kaaslane is for.”

  Reisil clutched her fingers on the quilt over legs. Elu? “Elutark?” She gasped.

  The tark turned around, eyebrows raised.

  “That’s my sister. Lives in Kodu Riik still. Down visiting me. I’m Odiltark, by the way. Always good to know the names of the people who’ve had their hands in your blood. How do you feel?”

  Reisil was still reeling. Elutark here, in Priede. “Where is she? Elutark.”

  “With your bird.” He nodded toward the next room. “Asleep, I should think. If she has any sense.”

  The door opened on silent hinges and Reisil’s teacher and mentor slipped into the room, shutting the door behind her.

  “She never did have much sense either.” Odiltark sniffed, laying out another two bowls. “I suppose you’re hungry too? I could use a bite, since I’m awake. Let’s see what else I can find.” He went back to rummaging in his cupboards.

  Reisil turned her stricken gaze on Elutark. She was just as Reisil remembered. Silvered chestnut hair in a long braid wound around her head, bright blue eyes in a round face, small, birdlike hands, deft and gentle. She reached out and touched the bandages on Reisil’s face.

  “What have you done to yourself, Reisiltark?”

  Tears ran down Reisil’s cheeks.

  “Just Reisil, now. I’ve become ahalad-kaaslane.”

  Elutark frowned and sat on the edge of the bed, brushing the tears away.

  “Oh, no, my child. Ahalad-kaaslane you may have become, but you will always be a tark. The Blessed Lady has extended both hands to you. You have been chosen for great things.”

  Reisil blinked. Great things? Her? She shook her head and then winced.

  “Just so. Though you shall find it an uncomfortable burden. Being either is difficult in any case, but both—” Elutark smiled and stroked Reisil’s hair from her face.

  “You will manage. You were my brightest student. And you have always understood what being a tark means. How to serve. Your life has been hard, growing up without parents or family, passed off from hand to hand. Lonely and terrible as that was, it has made you staunch, capable and self-reliant. You will realize how much one day. But for now, just know that our Blessed Amiya could not choose anyone better.”

  “They are two different things, tark and ahaladkaaslane . One heals, the other—”

  “They are different, but not so opposite as you imagine. The ahalad-kaaslane preserve and heal Kodu Riik as the tark does its people. Both come from the Lady’s ha
nd.”

  Odiltark lit more candles, setting the table with dried fruits, jellies, pickled vegetables and the leftover stew he’d been cooking when Reisil arrived.

  “There now. Let’s get you up to the table, shall we?”

  Reisil looked at Elutark. “Saljane?”

  “Asleep. With a bit of that sleep nectar. She’ll be very sore for several days. She won’t be able to hunt for herself, nor fly. If she were in the wild, I wouldn’t count much on her chances. You must be careful also. I don’t want you tearing out those stitches or letting them go septic. Lady knows I’d rather have you here for a week to mend, but I suspect you won’t tarry.”

  Reisil shook her head, feeling that silent push at her back.

  The brother and sister tarks helped Reisil to the table. For a while silence reigned as the three fell to with purpose and determination. Soon crumbs, drippings and scraped bowls were all the evidence left of their meal.

  Reisil sat back, feeling sleepy again. She yawned.

  “Where are my friends?” she asked. Not quite the right word for them. She didn’t really count any among them friends. She wished she could trust Sodur. She liked his dry warmth, like a cozy hearth on a stormy night. Kebonsat had been kind to her, but that didn’t make him a friend. Though she knew she was drawn to him. He was like the safety of a stone wall at her back when shining eyes threatened from the dark.

  “There is an inn not far from here. It is quite comfortable. They shall return for you in the morning. The two who had dunkings I gave a concoction of my own. They’ll be lucky not to have come down with chest colds, the both of them.”

  Both of them? Reisil rubbed her head. She remembered Kebonsat’s voice in the water, but someone else had helped him tie the rope around her. Who?

  “Time for you to get back in bed. I told them not to bother us until well after dawn, so you still have a few hours’ sleep yet. Drink some more of this. Don’t argue—I want you to sleep. Tomorrow is soon enough to start abusing yourself again. There you go; that’s a good girl.”