She turned her attention back to her uncle, who was now explaining how the strangers had journeyed all the way from Isarre, or so they said, to seek an alliance with the Azkhantian warriors. Apparently, they had no understanding of the different independent clans and their territories. They’d traveled east from Isarre, across the Sand Lands, and then north toward the steppe, and so had stumbled upon the Golden Eagle lands.
The crowd buzzed with astonishment. Everyone knew of Isarre, a nation of seafarers and stone-dwellers. For all practical purposes, they were indistinguishable from their Gelonian enemies. They were not Azkhantian, and they had nothing of value to the steppe dwellers and so were of little interest. Isarre was too distant to present either a credible threat or an opportunity for raiding. Now these men had come all this distance to bargain for help in defending themselves.
“What kind of moon-blind fools do they think we are?” one of Shannivar’s neighbors muttered.
She had no answer. Certainly, the fate of Isarre was of no concern to the Golden Eagle clan. They shared ties of neither blood nor honor. Yet she could not help thinking what a grand adventure it would be, to journey to a country so far and strange. To travel the reaches of sand and ocean, farther than the eye could see or an eagle could fly. Perhaps even to carry war into the heart of Gelon, to see the invaders tremble as their own lands and flocks were trampled beneath the hooves of her horses.
She did not know if these two men were in truth what they claimed. For a moment, she hoped they were, so that she might go with them.
Words were all very fine, but those who dwelled in stone could not be relied upon to tell the truth. Their story must be verified by the blessing of Tabilit, as revealed through the dream visions of the shaman. Esdarash brought the audience to a close so that Bennorakh, the enaree, could examine the outlanders.
The crowd began to disperse. Esdarash’s wife scolded the younger women for lingering, for the day was still young. “The felt must be properly rolled or it will dry unevenly! You’ll never get a good husband if the men see how lazy you are!”
“I’ll be along in a moment, auntie,” Shannivar murmured. She watched as the enaree took the two strangers into his own jort. Doubtless, they would remain there for the rest of the day or perhaps longer. The vision could require several days.
Shannivar felt a shiver of pity for the two strangers. She had been examined by the clan shaman only once, before her first foray against the Gelon. The memory was still vivid, the smoky closeness of the jort, the strange designs painted on the felt panels, the sonorous chanting. She had been frightened of the enaree, this strange, wild-eyed half-man in women’s clothing, and fascinated as well.
At the time of Shannivar’s initiation, Bennorakh had but lately joined the community, for their old shaman had died of a lung-fever two winters before, leaving no apprentice to take his place. Half-starved and covered with mud and brambles, Bennorakh had stumbled into the winter encampment on the very changing between the Moon of Darkfall and the Moon of Wolves. Unerringly, he had gone to the enaree’s jort that stood dark and empty, as if waiting for him. No one had questioned his right to be there. Every family had placed offerings of food and other necessities outside the door flap. The hunting had been good all that season, and the grass especially plentiful in the Moon of Foals.
When Shannivar had presented herself for his blessing, he had drawn the point of his sickle knife between her breasts and said that her heart would never rest in Azkhantia. When she heard this, she knew that Tabilit had not destined her for a peaceful life.
* * *
As the sun crested the eastern hills the following morning, Shannivar set out on Radu, accompanied by Mirrimal as her closest woman friend and Kendira as her cousin’s wife. The felt had been properly rolled, smooth and straight, then set out to dry. Now was the proper time to assemble the framework for Shannivar’s jort.
The women traveled slowly, laughing and singing. This was partly for Kendira’s comfort and partly for the simple pleasure of the day. Mirrimal rode her rangy gray, leading an old she-camel that carried supplies and would carry the completed lattice back. Shannivar set aside her own gloomy thoughts, pleased to see her friend bright and happy once more.
They came across a stand of willow, unloaded the camel, hobbled the horses to graze, and set about cutting and shaping the long, flexible strips for the lattice. As they worked, Mirrimal told a hilarious story about her younger brother at the last khural, how he had won honor in wrestling on horseback, but fallen off while attempting to pick up a dropped kerchief at full gallop.
“And so,” she concluded, “the girls told him that the Gelon had nothing to fear, if only they would go to war in their skirts!”
“Perhaps we should teach the Isarrans the hat-stealing game!” Kendira said, holding her sides. Shannivar had never seen her so relaxed.
“I don’t know that game,” Mirrimal said. “Is it one your people play?”
Kendira looked down, her cheeks coloring faintly. “Among the Black Marmot clan, it is a bridal game. When a young woman is ready to be married, she wears a special hat—this tall and shaped so,” she gestured with her hands and set the other two giggling, “and red!”
The giggles erupted into outright laughter. Kendira’s eyes crinkled merrily. “She rides her horse along a flat field, toward a pole set at the very end.”
“We know what the pole symbolizes,” Shannivar said.
“Any man who wants her follows,” Kendira went on, grinning. “Of course, she has a whip to fend them off. So only the one she wants will catch her. That man must steal her hat and place it on the pole.”
“Ooohh,” Shannivar groaned appreciatively.
“What if—what if she wants none of them?” Mirrimal asked.
Kendira shrugged. “Then I suppose she must reach the pole first and place the hat there herself.”
In the awkward silence that followed, Shannivar said, “I cannot believe a man so foolish as to live within a stone dwelling would be able to catch any Azkhantian woman.”
The three friends laughed heartily at the follies of the stone-dwellers. How strange it must be, Shannivar thought, to live in only one place, a place she had not made with her own hands. The love of her friends, her kin, indeed, her whole clan would be woven into the lattice of her jort and the layers of felt. Wherever she went, their memories would sustain her.
Watching Mirrimal and Kendira bind the flexible laths, lulled by the music of their voices, she felt something pull at her heart, an unexpected heaviness like the first intimation of farewell.
Chapter 6
SHANNIVAR and her friends returned to the dharlak three days later with the completed lattice tied to the camel’s back. The she-camel, true to the capricious nature of her kind, turned surly the last few miles. The beast spat at the horses and tried to kick Kendira.
Shannivar, who had been riding ahead, halted Radu and twisted in the saddle to watch. The camel lifted nose to the sky, baring long, orange-streaked teeth.
“Wretched beast!” Kendira snapped. The last few miles, she had been massaging her low back and leaning heavily on the saddle pommel.
“Gray-ears is usually sweet-tempered. For a camel, that is. Something troubles her.” Instead of beating the camel with a stick, as any man would do, Mirrimal slipped from the saddle. Rumbling noises came from the camel’s throat, though she made no attempt to either spit or bite as Mirrimal drew closer. Crooning, Mirrimal stroked the camel along its narrow, bony chest. The rumbling softened into a sigh.
Shannivar watched in admiration. “I don’t know how you do that.”
“It’s not all that different from your way with horses.”
“Better horses than camels!”
“On the other hand, I prefer camels to babies.” Mirrimal cast a sidelong glance at Kendira.
Sniffing, Kendira tucked a stray tendril of ha
ir back under her head scarf and pretended not to notice.
Mirrimal gave the camel a last pat and returned to her horse. Clucking encouragement, she shortened the camel’s lead line. For a moment, it looked as if the camel might resist, but the beast, although reluctant, was resigned and took one swaying step after another.
Ahead lay the dharlak, peaceful and tidy. Children laughed as they splashed in the lake. Horses and sheep grazed on the slopes, unconcerned by their approach. Curls of smoke, easily recognizable as cookfires, rose here and there. In the direction of the enaree’s jort, however, Shannivar thought she saw a cloud like greasy smoke that refused to dissipate.
At the edge of the encampment itself, the camel’s cooperation came to an end. The beast dug her forefeet into the dirt and whipped her head around in unmistakable threat. Mirrimal would not force the camel to go any further, so the women were obliged to unload the jort lattice and baggage, and carry them into the dharlak. Kendira protested, but not too much, when Shannivar and Mirrimal lifted the lattice between them.
“You have other duties to attend to,” Shannivar insisted, seeing that Kendira was near the end of her strength. “Go now, for if your husband is not sufficiently impatient for your return, then surely your mother-in-law must be! You cannot leave her to do all the work herself.”
“Yes, you are quite right,” Kendira said, clearly relieved. “A married woman has responsibilities and cannot always please herself.”
Mirrimal watched Kendira walk away, rolling with the awkward gait of pregnancy. “Can never please herself, more like.”
It was Kendira’s own affair whether she was happy or not, satisfied with her life as wife and mother or not, whether she longed to return to hunt and battle, whether she missed her own clan and its customs.
Shannivar was not afraid of hard work, but when she thought of spending the rest of her life confined to jort and cookpot, weaving, and tending babies, she felt sick at heart, as if she had unwittingly traded Eriu for Gray-ears. There must be more to a woman’s life than what Kendira had accepted.
The two women deposited the lattice beside the pile of folded, dried felts outside Grandmother’s jort. Scarface came out to greet them, making a motion that Grandmother was sleeping. From the pot on the banked cookfire, she dipped out three cups of butter-laced tea. They moved away from Grandmother’s jort to talk more freely.
“What’s the news?” Shannivar asked. “Has Bennorakh released the strangers?”
No, indeed, Scarface told them, in between sips of her own tea. The strangers were still sequestered with the enaree. Day by day, smoke rose from the opening in the roof, sometimes white, sometimes black, and once—here Scarface made a grimace of disapproval—it had been green. Drumming had filled the air, pierced for an instant by screaming.
Shannivar could well imagine how the smug, slightly malicious speculations about the strangers had died down, to be replaced by with muted awe. Rarely was one of the clan put to such a testing. At least, Scarface qualified with a carefully guarded expression, so Grandmother had said.
Shannivar and Mirrimal exchanged glances. This must be a matter of serious prophetic importance for the enaree to examine them with such vigor.
Grandmother emerged from the jort at that moment, querulous at being awakened. Mirrimal bowed and took her leave while Scarface asked if there was anything Grandmother needed. Shannivar diverted the old woman’s irritation by asking her to inspect the new lattice. Grandmother did so, and although she ran her gnarled fingers over every strip of wood and every joining, she could find no fault. The perfection, Shannivar reflected wryly, was in part due to Kendira’s near-obsession with detail. At the time, Shannivar had thought her cousin’s wife excessive, as if a woman’s value—or her eligibility for marriage—were determined by the evenness of her jort lattice. Apparently, Grandmother thought so, too.
A hubbub from the direction of Bennorakh’s jort brought an end to the examination of the lattice. Shannivar walked at Grandmother’s side, Scarface supported her on the other, and together they passed through the gathering crowd.
Esdarash and the other senior men took their places in a semi-circle around the enaree’s jort. As was proper, Esdarash sat on his stool of stitched, painted camel skin. At Grandmother’s approach, he gestured for a second seat to be brought for her.
Grandmother settled herself. Scarface sat at her feet, but Shannivar remained standing. The crowd grew still, as if holding its collective breath.
The door flap lifted and Bennorakh emerged. Even the most excited onlooker drew back respectfully. The shaman looked haggard, as if the hours of smoke and chanting, of visions and fasting, had etched themselves into his features. For a moment, he struggled visibly to focus on the waiting assemblage. He seemed not to know them, or perhaps he had forgotten himself and what he was doing there. Then his gaze fell upon Shannivar, where she stood behind Grandmother. His expression shifted.
Grandmother made a censorious noise in her throat. Shannivar had no doubt it was meant for her. Although she made no response, she could not take her gaze away from the shaman. A fire burned behind his deep-set eyes. What could it mean, that intense look? She wanted to dismiss it as the result of fasting and too much dreamsmoke. Something roused within her, stirring to life.
Shannivar sensed a wordless bond between herself and the enaree. She did not know whether to be elated or terrified. A thought gathered in her mind, like a storm condensing across the winter sky. She had the distinct impression that Bennorakh had seen her in his visions, that Tabilit had interwoven her destiny, and perhaps her death, with that of the outlanders.
How could she, Shannivar of the race of Saramark, daughter of the Azkhantian steppe, have anything to do with stone-dwelling outlanders?
A moment later, the strangers themselves stumbled from the dark interior of the jort, red-eyed and pale. The older one could barely stand. Sweat matted his hair to his skull, giving him a cadaverous appearance. His jaw muscles stood out in stark relief against the stubble on his cheek. He seemed to be holding himself erect by willpower alone. The younger man, the one Shannivar had marked for a warrior, carried himself better. From the way he looked around the audience, his gaze flickering from Esdarash to the other men, he was ready to respond to any physical threat.
The moment stretched on. The older of the Isarrans wavered on his feet, Esdarash waited in stony formality, and Bennorakh stared at Shannivar. Then the enaree raised his dream stick. As he shook it, the bones and shells, the sacred stones and amulets of carved horn rattled. The brittle sound pierced the air.
“The strangers have spoken truly!” Bennorakh proclaimed, his voice hoarse as a raven’s.
The older stranger closed his eyes, lips moving silently. His gods had answered his prayers. Or perhaps, Shannivar thought with another glance at the enaree, the Sky People had a use for even moon-mad stone-dwellers.
Esdarash ordered drink and food for the Isarrans. People turned to their neighbors, speculating about what might happen next. Everyone seemed to have a different opinion.
Surprisingly, Grandmother said nothing. Shannivar bent to whisper a question in the old woman’s ear. She felt a curious stillness in the aged shoulders. The next moment Grandmother toppled sideways, and Scarface burst out screaming.
Shannivar caught the old woman in her arms. She staggered under the sudden, inert weight. Tiny as she was, Grandmother was surprisingly heavy. Kneeling, Shannivar lowered the old woman to the ground. Someone was shouting—Esdarash, she thought, although she could not make out his words through Scarface’s rising shrieks.
“Grandmother!” Shannivar cried. “Grandmother!”
There was no response. The old woman’s head lolled to one side. Her eyes were closed so that only a thin line, like the first glimmer of a new moon, shone between her lids. Her lips had gone dark, almost black.
Don’t leave us. Don’t leave us. We nee
d you.
Shannivar, not knowing what else to do, bent down and placed one ear over her grandmother’s chest. She might not have been able to hear even a strong pulse through a traditional quilted vest and woven wool shirt, but Grandmother wore Denariyan silk.
For a long, terrible moment, Shannivar heard nothing. Then, muffled, as if far away, came a doubled drum-beat. Ta-thum . . .
Another.
Against her cheek, Shannivar felt a faint stirring of air from her grandmother’s parted lips.
Relief swept through her. The air turned too bright.
She sat back on her heels and entwined her fingers with Grandmother’s. The assembled clan crowded around her. Esdarash pushed forward, his face ashen.
Quickly Shannivar said, “She is not dead! She breathes! Her heart beats!”
He stared at her, then at Scarface, who was still wailing as if Grandmother were certainly dead.
Shannivar rounded on Scarface. “Be still! Would you shame us all by your weakness?”
It was exactly what Grandmother would have said, and in the same tone of voice. Scarface scrambled backward, almost falling over her own feet. Her howling died instantly. An intimation of calm settled over the crowd.
“Take her to her jort.” Shannivar pointed to the nearest men. She had no idea who they were, nor did she care. “Carefully, now.”
“Do as she says!” commanded the enaree. He shook his dream stick for emphasis. The bones and shells clattered like hooves over barren rock. “Go, go!”
The men jumped to obey. Composure recovered, Scarface went along, instructing them in the properly respectful way of carrying Grandmother. Bennorakh trailed after them. He glanced behind once, to meet Shannivar’s astonished gaze. In that moment, she saw flames, red and gold, behind the lightless dark of his eyes.
Esdarash, having recovered from his first moment of shock, began shouting orders. His son, Alsanobal, stood beside his father, glowering at the Isarrans as if they had somehow caused Grandmother’s collapse. The two strangers watched the commotion, uncomprehending. Shannivar had no thought to spare for them as she hurried away.
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