'How long will you be staying with us? I visited with your men this morning. They are weary.'
Part of Taim would willingly stay here, in this high, cramped chamber with only the sky and wind and gulls for companions, for weeks on end. That part of him had long ago been subjugated, though, by a warrior's sense of duty.
'Only a day or two, my lady,' he said with an almost apologetic smile. 'You know I must go on, to Glasbridge. Whatever is to become of me and my men, we cannot rest. Not yet.'
II
ANYARA POKED HER head out from the hut and found an expectant group waiting. A cluster of Kyrinin children stared at her. They looked soft, pale and harmless. One or two of the younger ones shuffled behind their older comrades as her tousled head appeared. As Anyara hauled herself out on to the wooden boards and stretched the sleep from her limbs, the children backed a few yards further away before re-forming their group. Beyond them, a woman paddled by in a little round boat of taut animal skins. Anyara watched as she coasted effortlessly off along the edge of the reedbeds. A flock of tiny birds burst from the reeds and went churning and chattering away. The lake wore a mirror calm. Scraps of mist hung over the water, obscuring the furthest shores, and the whole scene was eerily beautiful and still.
Anyara had not known what to expect of the vo'an. Now, after a night's uneasy sleep, she was still unsure. Like everyone, she had heard tales of how the Kyrinin kept great bonfires burning night and day, or how their children never played but only practised the killing arts of bow and spear. Or how their old women ate the dead. She was tempted to remain in the hut they had been given and hide away from the unfamiliar sights and sounds and smells that lay outside. These were, after all, Kyrinin, and their kind had killed more than a few of hers over the years. But it was a belief deeply ingrained in her that fear -- like grief, or pain - must be mastered, lest it become master in its own right. She did not want Orisian, and certainly not Yvane, to think she was unsettled by this place. So she went walking alone through the vo'an, and forced herself to hold her head up and look about her. The gaggle of children followed silently, attentively, in her wake.
She saw a young woman, perhaps her own age though it was hard to tell, dextrously gutting fish with a bone knife. A pair of men, barefoot and leaning on their spears, watched her go by from behind the blue turbulence of their tattoos. She heard lilting voices and from somewhere further away the casual, pitter-patter beat of a small drum being tapped. She smelled the smoke of small fires, meat cooking and the rich scent of the hides stretched over so many of the huts.
Few people paid her much heed, save the group of curious children. It did not feel threatening, but neither did it feel comfortable or entirely safe. She could not read this place as she was able, through birth and belonging, to read Kolglas, Anduran or even Kolkyre that she had only visited a handful of times. The Kyrinin knew she was out of place just as she did. They did not speak when she was close enough to hear, ignorant though she would have been of what they were saying. Their lack of interest in her was, she felt, as deliberate and conscious as any pointed stares would have been.
It was with some relief that she came to the edge of the settlement, where the platform met the shore. She stepped down on to the ground and walked a little way along the water's edge. The children did not follow her. Tall reeds thronged the shallows and as she tracked a slight curve of the shore they cut off her view of the vo'an. Save for the smokesign in the pale sky, she might have been utterly alone in a wilderness. She found a place where the reeds gave way for a stretch and sat on a rock there, gazing out over the lake's flawless surface.
Even as she watched, the morning's thin mist parted and she glimpsed the towering peaks of the Car Dine to the north. She had the sense then of being in a borderland, poised between two worlds. Over the Car Criagar whence she had come lay the real world, of towns and markets and humankind. In the opposite direction, out beyond the Car Dine, lay something else altogether: the fearsome Great Bear Kyrinin; Din Sive, the most ancient forest in all the world, filled with shadows, and then the Tan Dihrin that touched the roof of the sky. Between this quiet lake and the Wrecking Cape which lay uncounted days' journey to the north, there might not be a single human village or farm. She felt herself to be terribly small and fragile, the land and sky to be terribly unlimited.
She had felt something similar five years ago, when she emerged from the grip of the Fever into a world without her mother and her older brother. She felt unutterably vulnerable for months, poised between the tortured sleep of the Fever and a future which she barely recognised. She mastered that feeling in the end, along with the grief that could have crippled her. Now her strength was being tested again. She needed to hold firm, and not just for herself. It had not been just for herself that first time, either. Even then, in the wake of the Fever, part of it had been for Orisian.
She rose briskly to her feet. On impulse, she picked up a small stone and flicked it out over the water. She watched the ripples spreading out from its fall for a few seconds before turning back towards the vo'an.
She found Orisian and Rothe sitting on the edge of the platform outside the hut, their naked feet dangling down over the water. The sight was so incongruous - the probable Thane of one of the True Bloods sitting with his shieldman in the midst of a Kyrinin camp as casually as if they were on the harbour's edge in Kolglas -that Anyara almost laughed.
'What's happening?' she asked.
'Nothing,' said Orisian. 'Varryn came to check on us, but he's gone back to Ess'yr, wherever she is. We're waiting for word.'
Anyara lowered herself down to sit beside them.
'Where's Yvane?'
'Gone off,' grunted Rothe. 'On her own. Didn't say where.'
Orisian was picking at a splintered crack in the planking. 'She'll be back soon, I'm sure,' he said.
'We're trusting her a lot, for someone we hardly know,' observed Anyara.
'Indeed,' agreed Rothe, 'and the Kyrinin, too.' To Anyara's keen ear it sounded like a complaint born more out of habit than conviction. And he had not called them woodwights.
Orisian was unperturbed. 'Well, Inurian did send us to her. I always trusted what he told me; I won't stop now.' He looked at his sister. 'In any case, what choice do we have? We do need help, out here. We'd have been dead by now if it had just been the three of us.'
They lapsed into silence. Anyara had faith in her brother's judgement; in most things, at least. Growing up amongst men, amidst warriors, could teach a great deal to a girl with the eyes to see, and Anyara had those. She wondered if Orisian was aware of the way he sometimes looked at Ess'yr. Perhaps he did not even know that his eyes followed her with a particular attention that, to Anyara, was instantly recognisable. She had seen men look at her that way in the last two or three years.
It was, though, not a look she had seen from her brother before. His interest in Jienna, the merchant's daughter in Kolglas, had been embarrassingly apparent but it had been an unfocused, overawed kind of fascination. There was little that was childish in the way he watched Ess'yr. It worried her. Any such union would be unthinkable to most of her race, but it was not Ess'yr's inhumanity that bothered Anyara most. Rather, it was fear for Orisian's feelings that stoked her unease. Ess'yr was too hard, too far from what he knew, to be a safe object of her little brother's affection. And she had been Inurian's lover. That was a river with dangerous currents, Anyara thought: one Orisian should have the wit not to swim in.
She could see signs of a change in her brother. He had always been a thinker, always able to see, or imagine, things she could not. But she had been the strong one, on the outside at least, since their mother and brother had died. Before that, it had been Fariel who shone most brightly. Now events were demanding something new of Orisian, and in response to that call he was perhaps beginning to unearth parts of himself that had long been overshadowed. He might be a good Thane, if he lived long enough. Even so, Anyara still saw in him the boy she had chased up and down K
olglas' stairwells, and she was not at all sure that boy could fit Ess'yr into the puzzle his life had become.
Varryn came to fetch them an hour or so later. Wordlessly, he gestured for them to follow him into the heart of the vo'an. There, in an open space ringed by skull-adorned poles, Ess'yr was kneeling. A great, bizarre face woven of willow branches stood to one side.
'It's a soulcatcher,' Orisian murmured when he saw Anyara looking at it. 'They think it protects them from the dead. It's supposed to be one of the Anain.'
It disconcerted Anyara. The fact that the Kyrinin would invoke such sinister creatures as the Anain was too blunt a reminder of the chasm of difference that lay between her and them.
'Stand here,' instructed Varryn.
Without further explanation, he went to kneel at his sister's side. He picked up a deerskin bowl that held a dark, viscous liquid. Ess'yr had closed her eyes. Her face was still, almost as if she was asleep. Varryn immersed the point of a long, thin needle in the liquid. He rolled the tool around the bowl, soaking it.
Anyara frowned in confusion.
'The kin'thyn,' Orisian said. 'She's killed her first enemy.'
Anyara grimaced as Varryn set down the bowl and moved closer to his sister, the dye-coated needle poised and ready.
'He's going to tattoo her?' she said, almost disbelieving.
There was not so much as a twitch in Ess'yr's face as the skin of her cheek was pierced. Varryn pricked out curling lines, the track of his work marked by beads of blood and dye. Slowly, the pattern took shape. There was something horribly fascinating about the process. This scarring of a woman would never be permitted amongst the Haig Bloods, yet here it was being enacted as a mark of respect. Anyara wondered how Orisian would feel about Ess'yr's perfect skin being thus marred. When she glanced at him, his expression was one of such rapt attention that she was not sure he would think of this as a marring at all.
It lasted almost an hour. Varryn never faltered; Ess'yr never opened her eyes or made a sound. The blood flowed, the kin'thyn swooped and swirled its way across the skin. Kyrinin who wandered past sometimes paused to watch for a little while, but seldom tarried long. Though the children were more interested, even their numbers dwindled as the long minutes passed. Eventually Varryn sat back and set needle and bowl aside. He took up a cloth and carefully dabbed at Ess'yr's face.
Ess'yr's eyes flickered open. She gave her brother a simple nod and rose to her feet. She looked over to where Orisian, Anyara and Rothe were standing. 'I thank you,' she said. 'What for?' Orisian asked her. 'For leading me to the kin'thyn.'
Blood was still flowing from the innumerable tiny wounds upon her face. She looked as though she had been mauled in some terrible fight. Anyara almost wanted to look away. Instead, it was Ess'yr who turned and strode off, Varryn following. Orisian gazed after them.
'Lucky you,' Yvane said from behind them, a fraction more loudly than was necessary. All three of them started.
'How long have you been there?' Anyara demanded as Yvane smiled with ill-concealed satisfaction.
'Oh, not long. Lucky you, as I said. Most rare nowadays for Huanin to witness the kin'thyn being bestowed. An honour, I should say.'
Anyara realised that her hand had closed about something in her pocket. She fingered it for a few moments, and then an abrupt pang of guilt shook her as she realised what it was. Carefully she withdrew the short length of knotted cord and held it in her palm.
Orisian did not notice, but Yvane did.
'Now where did you come by that?' the na'kyrim asked. Orisian looked down at what Anyara was holding.
'I'd forgotten,' she said. 'Inurian gave it to me, after we got out of Anduran. He said...'
'...he said it should be buried,' Orisian finished for her.
'I'm sorry,' said Anyara, and repeated, 'I'd forgotten.'
Orisian gave the slightest shake of his head, and took the cord between finger and thumb. There was a kind of emptiness in his face as he turned one of the knots in his grip.
'It's what . . .' he said, 'it's what the Kyrinin do if they're afraid their body will not be properly buried.'
He held it up, and met Anyara's eyes.
'It's his life. Each knot is a piece of his life.'
'How do you know that?' Anyara asked quietly.
'Ess'yr and her brother made them before we left their camp.'
'Should we bury it, then?'
Orisian did not answer at once. He held the cord as if it was some delicate piece of jewellery. She could not say why, but his expression made Anyara think of their father.
'We should give it to Ess'yr,' Orisian said quietly. 'It is for her, I think. She will know what to do with it.'
'He would have been thinking of you, when he made some of the knots,' Yvane said to him. For once her tone was gentle, careful. 'The knots may be events, or feelings. Or people. He will have put you into some of them, I am sure.'
'Perhaps. I would like to know what they all are; what he was thinking when he made it.' He held it by one end so that it hung loosely.
'Even if he had lived, he would not have told you what the knots were,' said Yvane. 'It is a private thing, a conversation with death.'
'I'll take it to Ess'yr,' Orisian said.
'No.' Yvane's voice was still measured, but firm now. 'He gave it to Anyara. That is important, in the way of these things. She is the one who should give it to Ess'yr for burial, if that is what she thinks it best to do.'
Orisian held the knotted cord out, and Anyara took it. She coiled it neatly in her hand.
'Will you show me where Ess'yr is?' she asked Yvane, and the na'kyrim nodded.
They walked silently through the vo'an. It was not far. Varryn was standing outside a low hut. He watched them approach and did not move aside from the entrance.
'Be polite,' murmured Yvane, hiding the movement of her lips behind a rub at her nose.
'Varryn, is Ess'yr here?' Anyara asked.
'She rests,' the warrior said.
'Can I talk to her? I have something for her.'
'Not now. She rests.'
'It's important,' Anyara said. 'I think she would want to see me.'
Varryn was unmoved. He reminded Anyara of a Thane's shieldman on some grand ceremonial occasion, rigid with the importance of his role. She did not want to show him the cord - she thought it was something Inurian would have meant for Ess'yr alone - but it seemed the only way to gain admittance. She opened her fingers, exposing the cord in her palm.
'It is Inurian's,' she said. 'Ess'yr should have it.'
And she saw, for the most fleeting of instants, a reaction in Varryn's face. Its presence was too brief, his features too subtly inhuman, for her to be certain of its nature. Perhaps annoyance, perhaps pain. He stared at the cord for a moment or two, then looked away. As she drew breath to ask him again, he moved. A soft prod in her back from Yvane told her not to wait for more of an invitation. She ducked inside the hut.
It was gloomy within. Dark furs and animal skins covered the floor. Grey feathers hung from the hut's wooden skeleton. Ess'yr was lying down. Anyara crouched beside her. Although the poor light hid the worst of what had been done to the Kyrinin's face, the swirling needle tracks were visible, as was her skin's angry reaction. Ess'yr's grey eyes looked out from a wounded visage.
Anyara offered her the cord.
'It is Inurian's,' she said. 'Orisian thought ... I thought it should come to you. For you to . . . bury.'
Ess'yr sat up carefully, protecting her injured ribs. She took the cord. She hardly looked at it, but closed it in her fist.
'Thank you,' she said, so quietly that Anyara almost did not hear.
It felt as though there should be something more to say. Anyara saw no emotion in Ess'yr's face, but those knuckles were white, the pale fingernails digging into the palm of the hand. For the space of a few heartbeats Anyara hesitated and wished that this woman was less of a stranger to her; wished they had something more in common than loss. She ros
e and turned to go. As she reached for the door flap a thought occurred to her.
'Could Orisian come with you? When you bury it, I mean. Inurian meant a great deal to him, too. It might help him.'
Ess'yr looked up. Kyrinin and Huanin eyes met, and there was a flicker of understanding in the gaze. It lasted only a fraction of a moment.
'No,' Ess'yr said. 'It is not for Huanin to see. It is not . . . allowed.'
Anyara nodded, and went out into the daylight.
'I am sorry,' she thought she heard Ess'yr say behind her.
'Thank you for asking,' was all Orisian said when she told him. He did not seem surprised or hurt at Ess'yr's refusal. Perhaps he knew what to expect, having seen more of the Kyrinin than she had.
Yvane stayed with them. She sat cross-legged outside the hut strengthening the seam on her jacket with a needle and thread she had borrowed from their hosts. She was absorbed in her task, and showed little interest in what Anyara and the others were doing. Orisian was subdued and Anyara thought it best to leave him with his thoughts. She dozed in the hut.
When she woke, feeling better than she had in days, Orisian and Rothe were sparring with sticks on the platform outside. Kyrinin children had assembled once more to observe this strange spectacle. Yvane was also watching, wearing the slightly mocking expression that Anyara thought was on the na'kyrim's face a little too often.
Orisian was working hard. There was sweat on his forehead. Anyara knew what an effort her brother had to make when it came to these things. Now there was a concentration in his work that had never been there before Winterbirth.
The mock fight ended, and Rothe patted his charge on the shoulder.
'Good,' the shieldman said. 'Better, at least. Your side?'
'I didn't really notice it.'
'I did, though. You favour that side a little. It unbalances you. But that will pass.'
'And your arm?' Orisian asked, nodding at the bandages around Rothe's wrist.
'Sore. But it does not hamper me.'
Godless World 1 - Winterbirth Page 45
