Shannivar

by Deborah J. Ross

  One afternoon, Zevaron reined his mare beside Chinzhukog’s sturdy tundra horse and opened a conversation about the merits and ancestry of the breed. Shannivar, riding Radu a little distance behind, did not intend to overhear the exchange, although there was no presumption of privacy under the open sky. Radu’s walking pace, although slower than her silken gait, outstripped the shorter strides of the tundra horses. Within a short time, Shannivar had drawn near to Zevaron and Chinzhukog, and they were no longer discussing horse breeding.

  “. . . the stone-drake,” Zevaron’s words came clearly to her. “Where exactly was it seen? How far from the village? You are certain it came from the mountains where the comet—the white star—fell?”

  Shannivar could not make out Chinzhukog’s answer, only the reluctance of his lowered eyes.

  Zevaron did not seem to notice. “Did any person, a child perhaps, see it fall?” He pressed on, stumbling on unfamiliar Azkhantian words as he asked about the deformed babies and mutilated reindeer, and whether any in the village had strange dreams or visions.

  Why could Zevaron not see the anguish his questions caused? Shannivar fumed inwardly. This was too much! Was it possible he did not know that a curse, spoken aloud, gained in potency? The stone-dwellers could not be so different in their nature as to be ignorant of all decency. The Snow Bear chieftain had already told their story for the entire gathering to hear. Why force his son to recite the agonizing details once more?

  Despite her disapproval, Shannivar recognized the relentless hunger behind Zevaron’s questions. She had seen his face in the tent on top of the enarees’ promontory just before he slammed his hand down on the stone-drake. She had seen the shifting play of darkness and light behind his eyes. She had heard the determination in his voice, the unspoken vows he would keep at the cost of his own life. Something more than human ambition drove him.

  It reminded her of the way Tabilit’s will had taken hold in her own spirit. Understanding that, she could not condemn Zevaron for faithfulness to his own gods.

  All the same, Shannivar took Zevaron aside when they had stopped for the night and the western sky glowed like embers. One of the Snow Bear men had found a fine campsite with a grove of willow surrounding a natural spring that kept the grasses lush. The horses and pack ponies had been watered and hobbled to graze. The reindeer lay close together, eyes half-closed, legs tucked under their bodies, as they chewed their cud. As Shannivar and Zevaron walked past, Eriu lifted his head, ears pricked, a stalk of feathergrass hanging from his jaws.

  Shannivar laid her hand on Zevaron’s arm. He turned toward her, and she felt his response as if through her own body. They were alone, with the horses between them and the rest of the camp. “Zevaron,” she said, speaking softly yet firmly, “you must not ask the Snow Bear men to speak of the stone-drake and other such things.”

  “Why not? Everyone at the gathering knew about them. I am not asking anyone to reveal a secret.”

  “You speak of secrets? You, who tell your own story only in mysterious hints?”

  “My history is not the issue here. The situation in the north is another matter. Do you suggest I go blind into enemy territory? Or is it forbidden to ask questions?”

  “It is cruel, surely you must see that!” she said hotly, then reined her temper under control, lest their voices be overheard. She did not want the discussion to turn into a public argument. “These men have suffered greatly and now you remind them of what they must return to. At least, let them have a little peace on this journey. It will end all too soon.”

  Dusky red flushed Zevaron’s face, expressing shame rather than anger. “You are right. I have thought only of my own need for information and not of the effect of my words. But—surely you must agree—it is better to learn as much as possible of what I may face.”He shook his head. “Preparation is half the battle, or is that not true on the steppe?”

  “In a physical fight, certainly. But in the realm of magic, a man’s own mind can be turned against him.”

  “I am not unprotected.”

  “So you think.”

  “So I know.”

  Shannivar stared at Zevaron. How could any man except an enaree safeguard himself from supernatural malevolence? Understanding seeped into her thoughts. Each people had its own defenses against evil. His must be powerful indeed. “If you would learn more,” she suggested, “you would do better to take your questions to Bennorakh.”

  “Bennorakh? Why, what could he tell me?” Zevaron sounded snappish. “He has never been in the north.”

  “You once spoke of ancient legends,” Shannivar pointed out, “of Fire and Ice, of the sorcery of Khored the King. Your Khored had just such protection as you speak of, did he not? Just as every land has its own gods and its own customs, so it has its own demons. If we go now to a land beset by that ancient evil, would it not be better to seek advice from one who is learned in such matters?”

  For a long moment, Zevaron gazed at her. In his expression, she read astonishment, although quickly masked. “I thought,” he said slowly, “from the way you look at your shaman, that you did not like him.”

  Shannivar wanted to laugh. One did not like or dislike an enaree. His kind were set apart from other people, neither men nor women, living half in the ordinary world and half in one she could only imagine. They were to be pitied as much as feared, but always respected. “Bennorakh has lived among the Golden Eagle people since I was a child. I do not always understand what the gods tell him, but he has always been their faithful messenger. He has come with us for their reasons and not his own.”

  “And you?” He turned to her, and the air between them shimmered as if a wave of heat had suddenly arisen from the earth. “Do you come for the reasons of your gods, too?”

  “I am called, even as you are.”

  “No, not as I,” he answered in a tone that was terrible in its desolation. “By the Most Holy, I hope not as I.”

  * * *

  One day melted into another, and only the slow waning of the moon and the shortening of the days hinted of the season’s passage. The party settled into a comfortable routine of travel and rest, of silence and song, the relentless rhythms of waking, tending to the animals, riding, hunting, and settling for the night in a place very much like the last. After his initial missteps, Zevaron made friends among the Snow Bear men, in particular Chinzhukog, the chieftain’s son. The difficulties of language quickly gave way to Zevaron’s willingness to learn and his good humor when he made mistakes. The Snow Bear men sat with him, chanting the legends and lineages of their tribe. In turn, they pressed Zevaron for knowledge of his own people and his travels. Like Shannivar, they were particularly fascinated by his tales of life at sea. None of them had seen any body of water larger than a lake, and the notion of endless gray-green waves struck them as exotic, yet almost laughable.

  They passed through the territory of one clan and then another, sometimes stopping for a night of hospitality and the telling of tales. Those who had not attended the khural this year were eager for news. They peered at Zevaron with shy curiosity, and now and again a boy of two or three would dart out, touch Zevaron’s hand, and race away, giggling. Zevaron, far from being affronted, would throw back his head and laugh. From his saddlebags, he would produce a packet of sticky Denariyan sweets, which he presented to the child’s mother, to smiles all around.

  At one such stop, the chieftain made such a serious effort to buy Eriu to improve his breeding stock that Shannivar urged a timely departure before the man decided to honor the old tradition of horse-stealing.

  Riding side by side, Shannivar and Zevaron passed the time by telling one another stories, legends and holy tales, as well as incidents from their own lives. Shannivar sang the ballad of Aimellina daughter of Oomara, who died at the hands of the Gelonian invaders.

  Zevaron related how he, a man of Meklavar, came to a friendship with a
Gelonian noble. Briefly, as if he feared sounding boastful, he told of saving Danar from the Ar-King’s assassins without any idea that Danar’s royal father had been given custody of Tsorreh. “Danar and I—I guarded him, for her sake, because she had come to love him like a second son. She found goodness even in Gelon. I wish she had been right! The last time I saw her alive, she gave me—gave me—” He broke off suddenly. His voice trembled, not with emotion but with physical effort. His face flushed. Gasping, he forced out the words, “—gave me a treasure of our people.”

  For a time, he said no more. His breathing softened, and his color returned to normal. Whatever his difficulty in speaking of this treasure, the parting gift of a mother he so clearly loved, Shannivar understood the sharpness of his grief. She did not press him further. From her own experience, she knew that the pain of loss would subside in time. She thought of his mother, dying in a hostile land so far from her people.

  “She must have had a great heart.”

  “She is here when I speak of her to you,” Zevaron said. “I have not been able to say her name aloud since—but you, you understand. Have you also lost family?”

  Shannivar could not remember her own mother, who had died giving birth to her, and she had already passed her womanhood ritual when her father was killed in a Gelonian raid. Grandmother had been parent and matriarch to her, and now Shannivar would never see her again. Nor Mirrimal . . . Grief rose in Shannivar’s breast, but whether her own grief or Zevaron’s, she could not tell. He gazed at her with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. He must be thinking how easy it was to accuse him of keeping secrets while guarding her own.

  “You are right,” she said. “We have both lost kin and heart-kin. And homes.”

  “Will they not miss you?” Zevaron asked. “Your clan? Your family?”

  “I would not have returned to the Golden Eagle anyway.”

  “Why did you come with me? I cannot believe it was only out of duty. Is there something in the north that draws you, too? Something you have kept secret?”

  Does he think the stone-drake spoke to me as well?

  “When, as a child, I learned the ballads of Saramark, I prayed that I, too, might be chosen for such a destiny,” she said. “Tabilit has woven together the threads of our lives for a time. We are comrades on the road. I do not know what my part will be, or if we seek the same goal. I know only that something I have longed for all my life waits for me.”

  After a long pause, Zevaron said, so quietly she could not be sure she heard rightly, “It is not good to be alone.”

  * * *

  As they traveled on, Shannivar finished the last of her stores of bittergrass and star-eye, herbs used by fighting women to prevent pregnancy. She gathered more, although the plants she found differed in subtle ways from the ones she knew. She continued to brew them out of long custom.

  The Moon of Stallions passed, and the Moon of Fire Leaves as well. Soon a new crescent of light would herald the Moon of Frost and the turning of the season to winter. The land grew more rugged, with broken hills and steep-walled canyons formed by swift-flowing streams. The bones of the hills jutted out from the thinning grasses. Antelope were fewer, but there were plenty of rabbits and marmots to hunt.

  On the day the Snow Bear men announced they had passed into their own territory, they set up camp early. The horses grazed contentedly a little distance from Shannivar’s jort, where she and Zevaron sat beneath the rolled-up door flap. Dinner, a small antelope Shannivar had brought down with a single arrow, roasted over the cookfire.

  “I am curious,” Zevaron said. “How do the Snow Bear men know the boundaries of their territory? I see no difference.”

  “Do you not know your own land?” She made a fist and tapped him gently on the arm.

  He shook his head. “Perhaps you nomads have such a sense, but I must rely on outer signs—a river, a mountain, a city—to know where I am. At sea, we used the coastline and sometimes the stars. Someday, I would like to take you to Meklavar and show you its treasures. Not gold and precious stones such as the Gelon prize, but the library, the castle with its great window of colored glass that shines like molten jewels, the ancient temple set high within the mountain.”

  “My people do not care for cities of stone,” she said, “but I would willingly visit yours.”

  “I hope,” he said. “I hope it will be possible. Someday.”

  “There is the small matter of the Gelon.”

  “The Gelon, yes.” His brows drew together. For a long moment, he fell silent.

  “Shall we fight them together, do you think?” she said, trying to lighten the moment. What she meant was that if he returned from the north a great hero, covered in glory and celebrated in song, the Council at the next khural would surely give greater weight to his proposed coalition with Azkhantia.

  “If the chieftains would not ally with Isarre, I cannot hope for their help, not even if you plead my case. But Azkhantia may not be the only force capable of defeating the Ar-King. Somewhere, there must be . . .” His gaze flickered to the north, his face tightening. She could not tell what he was thinking, but when she spoke to him again, he smiled.

  * * *

  After climbing steadily all day, the party came out onto a high rocky plain. The night air was very clear, and the stars burned bright in the moonless sky. A cold wind swept down from the north. When it was time to set up camp, they found neither tree nor rock for shelter. The horses stood together, tails clamped against their rumps, facing away from the wind according to the wisdom of their kind.

  Shannivar unrolled the extra layers of felt around her jort. The felt was thick, springy beneath her fingers. She remembered sitting with Mirrimal and Kendira, beating the fibers and singing. How long ago that seemed, how far away.

  Somehow, young Chinzhukog found enough dried reindeer dung from a previous caravan to make a small fire. The flames fluttered in the shifting gusts and lasted just long enough to prepare tea before guttering out. They ate their communal meal cold—a mixture of cheese, bha, and parched grain moistened with a little k’th—and then prepared for sleep. Bennorakh disappeared into his jort, and the Snow Bear men, even more taciturn than usual, retreated to their own shelters.

  Shannivar finished the last of the tea, savoring the richness of the butter on her tongue. While the nights had been warm, Zevaron slept outside or in his flimsy trail tent. It would have been mildly scandalous for him to share Shannivar’s jort while the weather was fine. They were not kin, nor were they betrothed, but the steppe had one unforgiving rule in the bitter cold: live together or die.

  Why then did she feel shy about speaking? It was not as if she proposed to take him into her bed as well as the warmth of her jort. Who cared what the Snow Bear men thought, when they had not invited the outlander to share their own shelter? As for Bennorakh, the enarees had their own ways of judging men and women.

  Zevaron looked both startled and relieved when she suggested he pass the night in the jort. He had been having a difficult time getting his tent set up in the wind. The last of the cookfire embers had gone out, leaving the camp in near darkness.

  “What about the horses?” he asked. “Will they be all right?”

  “Oh, for them this is a brisk autumn breeze, nothing more. In bad weather, when we are in kishlak, the wintering-place, they have shelter against the worst storms.”

  “I do not think my poor horse would survive such a winter.”

  “Most beasts do. It is only men who do not have the sense to come in out of the wind. Do you mean to stand there all night?”

  Shannivar secured the door flap behind Zevaron. Politely, he avoided stepping directly on the threshold, which would have broken its protection against evil spirits. He had learned some manners, then.

  The familiar smells of wool and cedar and trail dust filled the jort. By comparison to Grandmother’s jort, the space
seemed sparsely furnished. If this were a family dwelling, the areas for men and women would be divided by the central hearth.

  Shannivar touched Zevaron’s arm. “Here is a carpet to keep out the earth’s chill, and there are extra blankets if you need them.”

  She prepared her own bed and slid out of her outer clothing, her eyes averted. With her skin as well as her ears, she sensed the rustle of Zevaron’s movements, the faint sigh of his breathing, and the sounds as he settled his body on the carpets. The air was warmer because there was another person to share it.

  Chapter 22

  THE land rose, each range of hills higher than the one before. From time to time, Shannivar glimpsed distant gray-purple mountains. They set up their camp in the failing twilight beside an old well, its stones so eroded and crumbled as to be barely recognizable. This place was well known to the Snow Bear people as a reliable water source.

  Shannivar and Zevaron worked together, putting up the jort and tending to the horses. Bennorakh retreated into his own jort, going about his own mysterious business, while the Snow Bear men prepared the evening meal.

  As the last light seeped away from the western sky, Zevaron wandered to the northeastern edge of the camp. His back to the cooking fire, he peered into the featureless dark. Shannivar felt drawn to him, he looked so proud and lonely at the very edge of the light.

  He pointed to the sky. “Look! Look there!”

  Above the northern rim of the world, Shannivar made out a faint glow. It grew stronger moment by moment, flickering like distant flames of green and red. The flames merged, spreading across the sky. The light shaped itself into an arch as additional ribbons of color appeared, slowly brightening. Then they folded back on themselves. As she watched, transfixed, they merged into a radiant curtain.