The Wild Road

by Jennifer Roberson

  And Davyn, her husband, was not in Alisanos! “Thank the Mother,” she murmured; yet there was a selfish portion of her that wished he were.

  The braidless man left them. He said nothing, merely made a gesture she recognized as a request—or a command—that they remain here.

  Meggie, no longer infant or toddler, was heavy, and Audrun too weary and worn to continue carrying her no matter how much she wished to. She leaned down and settled Megritte on the stone bench then turned and put out her arms to the others. As one, they engulfed her, Torvic in tears, Gillan laughing brokenly in relief and release, and Ellica, still clutching her sapling as if it were an infant, rested her head against Audrun’s shoulder. There wasn’t room enough in her arms to hug everyone at once, but she did her best. All of them were in tears, even herself, but no shame, no shame in it. She brushed hair out of their faces, briefly cradled their cheeks. They were filthy, thin, faces gaunt beneath the grime, clothing torn and stained. But they were whole. Whole and alive, and no longer missing, no longer lost in the deepwood.

  “Thank the Mother,” she repeated fervently.

  Tears rose, stung, spilled. Cradling the heads of her children one by one, Audrun kissed each on cheeks and brows, then turned back to Megritte. She sank down upon the bench, gathered Meggie close, and began the efforts needed to bring order to tangled blond hair. Her own needed care as well, but she would rather tend her child.

  Torvic found room on the other side of the bench next to her, so that she was between her two youngest, while Gillan hobbled to a wide shelf of stone and collapsed upon it, hissing in pain. Ellica sat down upon the earth, taking care to cradle the sapling and its rootball in her lap. Her manner was, Audrun realized, akin to her own when she tended an infant. To see it in her daughter, who had no child, struck her as odd; odder still to see that her charge was a tree. Ellica’s tears had dried, and now she wore an expression of serenity, as if she drew strength from the sapling.

  Audrun caught movement from the corner of her eye and looked up from Meggie’s head. She registered braids and ornamentation as well as clean, sharp features, a severe expression, and a form incontestably female. Rhuan had called her Ylarra.

  Ylarra halted before them. She looked at each of the children individually, as if evaluating them. Then she looked at Audrun. “The challenge has been accepted. We shall make you this road through Alisanos. Until there is a place for you upon it, you shall remain here.”

  Audrun could not curtail the bitterness in her tone. “As prisoners.”

  “We do not keep prisoners,” Ylarra replied. “Those who are our enemies, we kill. But you have taken yourself a dioscuri as husband, and there are obligations in such things. Thus you and your young will remain as guests until there is a place for you on the road.”

  Audrun had denied that Rhuan was her husband several times within the confines of the Kiba, before the assembled primaries. She denied it again, now, but this time with neither anger nor rancor. This time she maintained self-control and spoke calmly. “You heard me before, in the Kiba. Let me say this again, since it appears you have not yet grasped the meat of the matter: I did not marry Rhuan. I unbraided his hair to cleanse his wounds. I have a husband, a human husband, in the human world.”

  Ylarra’s smile was thin. She was a tall, elegant, powerful woman, larger than many men in the human world but no less feminine for it. A light kindled in brown eyes. Amusement, Audrun believed, and an arrogance so plain as to overwhelm a human. But Audrun refused to be overwhelmed. She is not a god; a demon, perhaps.

  But no, not demon. Were she to attach that label to Ylarra, it would attach also to Rhuan. And that Audrun refused to do.

  “Believe as you will,” Ylarra said. “But here you are subject to our customs.”

  Audrun realized that she should be afraid. She was meant to be afraid. It was true she was apprehensive, but that emotion was as nothing compared to the others that motivated her. She was wife and mother, and such responsibilities superseded fear. “And if I refuse to abide by your customs?”

  “It would be best,” the primary said, “that you do not. We have no obligations to a human who is not—by our customs—married to a dioscuri. And we do not guest humans here, in the heart of our people.”

  No threat colored Ylarra’s tone, no promise of punishment. A handful of words spoken quietly, evenly, with no trace of emotion. But Audrun felt it, and she understood: So long as she was believed to be Rhuan’s wife, sealed by Alisani customs, she and her children would be safe.

  “You will be looked after,” Ylarra continued. “A neuter will be assigned and a private chamber with certain amenities.”

  Rhuan had said time ran differently in Alisanos. “For how long must we remain?”

  “As I have said: until there is a place for you upon the road.” Dismissal was implicit as Ylarra began to turn away.

  “Wait!” Audrun wanted to jump up from the bench, but she could not bear to let go of Torvic and Megritte. “Wait,” she repeated, and was gratified when Ylarra turned back. “You say until the road is built. But how long will that take?”

  “Always time, with you. How long this? How long that?” Scorn underlay her tone, a gesture waved the question of time away. “And the answer is what, in Alisanos, the answer always is: That which is made here is completed when it is completed.”

  Yet again Audrun forestalled her departure. “Are we . . . will we be safe from the poison while we’re here?”

  Ylarra’s brows rose. “The ‘poison’?”

  “The wild magic,” Audrun answered. “Rhuan called it a poison.”

  “There is no poison here.” The primary smiled. “Only power.”

  “Rhuan said it would change us. That we could never go home because of what it would do to us.” She steadied her voice. “If you can make this road, surely you can see us safely home. We are as yet unchanged. Wouldn’t you prefer to have us gone, we humans? Then your home would be uncorrupted.”

  “Home?” Ylarra echoed. “Go home to the human world?” Braid ornamentation glinted in the light of double suns suspended above the tree, above the cliffs. “They would shun you, your folk. Is that what you want?”

  Abruptly, Audrun recalled the old man, the ragged stranger in the tent settlement, who had come up to the wagon. She recalled his clawed, scaled hands. He had begged for her aid, had begged to return to Alisanos, because he was no longer welcome in the human world.

  But Audrun was adamant. “Before the change begins.” She stretched out a hand and displayed it, wishing she could still the minute trembling. “See? Nothing. I am human. My children are human. There is no poison in us. Show us the way . . . take us to the border between your world and mine, and we will go.”

  Ylarra said, “Ask your eldest.”

  As the primary intended, Audrun instantly wanted to look at Gillan. But she would not allow herself. Not before Ylarra.

  Ylarra smiled and departed. Audrun waited tensely until she was gone then looked at Gillan, asking without words.

  All of the color leeched out of his face. Wordlessly, he peeled back his homespun pant-leg, stripped away the bindings, and showed her the discolored flesh, the terrible patchwork of demon-scaled skin.

  Already, it began.

  Too late, too late, too late. Chilled flesh rose on her bones. Grief engulfed her, yet she shed no tears. Not before the children. She was all they had, until their father came.

  But inside, Audrun wept: for what they might have become, for what they once had been.

  RHUAN’S HEART LEAPED as Ylarra entered the chamber he shared with Brodhi and pronounced sentence. It was so like the primaries to assume that denying him their presence was a punishment, when in fact, it was what he would have requested, given leave to do so. Darmuth, the demon who traveled with Rhuan, reporting his journey’s progress to the primaries, h
ad evidently told them nothing of Rhuan’s heart; the half-human heart that longed to live among his mother’s people for the balance of his life. Darmuth’s discretion was unexpected. Darmuth owed loyalty to the primaries; his task was to stay with his charge and monitor his doings in the human world, then divulge those doings to the primaries.

  Like all dioscuri, Rhuan was expected, at the completion of his journey—providing the primaries found him worthy—to challenge his sire so that he might ascend to Alario’s place, were Alario defeated. He fully expected to be found unworthy to challenge his sire, but he was still dioscuri, and a successful completion of the journey would buy him a boon nonetheless and well before any challenge might be mounted. It was that boon he strived for, not the chance to challenge his sire, but the opportunity to inform the primaries, without reprisal, that he was departing Alisanos forever.

  He might have lost the opportunity altogether, had the primaries decided his premature return to Alisanos was worthy of castration. He had come close, Rhuan knew. Closer than was comfortable.

  It was a gift, this sentence. Five additional human years in which to inhabit the human world. A new journey begun among humans he knew, humans he valued, humans he counted as friends.

  With Ilona, who was more.

  And it was time that she knew it. Time she knew him.

  ALARIO KNELT BY the shaded streamlet, leaning down to scoop water with one broad hand into his mouth. But drinking, rinsing his mouth, was not enough to wash away the bitter taste of annoyance—not regret; regret suggested weakness—and the acknowledgment that he had acted hastily, far too hastily; that he had, in a brief but overwhelming moment of fury, undone all his plans.

  The edges of the streamlet were choked by ground cover aprickle with hair-thin, hollow thorns, pale-to-invisible barbs that insinuated themselves through one’s clothing into flesh. Disturbed, the thorn-guarded heart of the plant fed poison into the barbs, injecting the flesh of anyone—demon, beast, or wayward human—with killing venom.

  But Alario was a primary and more powerful than most. Where he knelt, ground cover bent itself away, withdrawing from him in something akin to obeisance.

  Quite against expectations, his mind fed him a vision of the woman. The human woman, called hand-reader.

  Infuriated, as angry as Alario had ever been in all of his many years, he had hurled her against the steep wooden steps of her wagon. In the instant her body struck, the moment the bones of her fragile human neck snapped, he regretted his actions, regretted his anger.

  No. No, not regret; primaries had no regrets.

  He merely wished it undone.

  Alario, kneeling, nodded. Wished it undone. That was acceptable.

  Self-control, even in the midst of unalloyed instinct, was paramount among the primaries. But he had allowed the woman to rouse his anger and the unreasoning instinct to destroy. Wished it undone, indeed; she offered everything he needed to defeat Karadath, to destroy Brodhi, his brother’s get. And to replace the weakness that was Rhuan.

  His first human diascara, Rhuan’s mother, had never angered him. She was compliant and subservient in the months leading to the birth.

  Perhaps that was why Rhuan was a failure. The dam had been too meek. Temperament mattered.

  He had taken that particular human woman because her scent was correct. Her pheromones appealed. She would give him, he was certain, a sound dioscuri.

  Rhuan, he knew, could do no such thing, could not choose based on scent. Worse, Rhuan had no desire to do such a thing.

  Temperament was all.

  The woman called hand-reader by superstitous humans, was neither compliant nor subservient. That was why he had, in fury, flung her against her wagon. And thus ruined his plans for a new dioscuri worthy of the title.

  The war within was ancient, formed of blood, bone, instinct; of the drive to sire get who were stronger than oneself. And yet everything in the primary cried out to survive, to destroy every threat. And yet also to sire that which could kill its progenitor or be relegated to the position of neuter, his manhood cut away.

  Alario smiled. And then as the demon leaped from the shadows, he effortlessly caught the scaled neck in one broad hand. He closed on the throat. Squeezed. In a frenzy, the demon attempted to twist free, to double up hind legs and rake through clothing at flesh, but Alario swatted away those legs and claws with his free hand. He felt the sudden cessation of movement as the demon’s body went lax, and he threw it aside easily. He rose, smiling again. Such a small, inconsequential demon, foolish enough to believe it might attack a primary with impunity. Now the dead demon made but a small pile of meat in the shadows beneath the trees, mostly hidden by spike-leafed brush. Others would come to feast upon its remains, of course. Nothing would be left but a scattering of bones, unless they, too, were consumed.

  Alario stood quite still, very still, listening to his body, giving understanding over to his senses. The body always knew, when the mind did not. Instinct guided every primary.

  That woman, the hand-reader, had appealed far more than Rhuan’s mother. He wished it undone, her death.

  He wished it undone.

  Was he not a primary, to wish a thing and thus gain it?

  Fierce joy rose up in his body. Alario smiled, baring white teeth in the coppery tint of his face, his indisputably beautiful predator’s face.

  Chapter 1

  BETHID AWOKE JUST before sunrise, clear-headed and alert and instantly aware of a lurking sense of unease. Something, somewhere, was wrong. She heard the snores of fellow couriers Timmon and Alorn; the two had patched storm-torn oilcloth the day before and raised the common tent all couriers shared while at the settlement. It required additional attention, but she was grateful for any cover at all in the aftermath of the terrible storm.

  She sat up, assuming a cross-legged posture. With neither full sunlight outside nor lantern light inside, the interior of the tent was markedly dim. She was aware of a sick feeling in her belly, the kind she felt when something had gone wrong or she had to do something she dreaded—and then memory abruptly spilled through her; memory and grief.

  The hand-reader.

  Oh Mother, the hand-reader was dead.

  And another memory: Rhuan, surviving Alisanos only to discover that Ilona was dead. Such grief and shock in a man’s eyes Bethid had never witnessed. She had left the wagon then, departed to give him the opportunity to master himself, to provide Ilona’s body company through the night.

  Morning rites. Mourning rites.

  Bethid closed her eyes and planted elbows on her thighs, leaning down into the heels of her hands to rest her brow, to apply pressure to her eyelids as if to banish the recollection. She wanted nothing more than to blot out this moment, the day before, and the vision of the karavan-master, sitting on wagon steps, cradling Ilona in his arms.

  She scratched her scalp with rigid, short-nailed fingers, understanding the poignancy. Rhuan of the many women now wanted only one.

  The night before, with Naiya, a Sister of the Road, Bethid had dressed Ilona in a burial shift, combed and braided her hair, settled her atop her narrow cot beneath a multi-hued coverlet. Now it was time to wrap the body and bring it out for the rites and the burial. Ilona had crossed the river; it was time to say goodbye.

  Her mouth twisted briefly. Conducting rites was the responsibility of diviners and priests. But neither had survived the terrible storm engendered by Alisanos, and Ilona, too, was dead. Now the duty fell to Jorda, the karavan-master, who had known Ilona best.

  Bethid glanced at the two forms hidden beneath bedclothes. “Up,” she said, then cleared her throat and tried again. “Timmon. Alorn. We have rites this morning, remember?” All would attend, tent-folk and karavaners alike.

  Snoring eventually broke off. She saw Alorn’s brown curls appear at the edge of a blanket as he pulled it down
. Timmon, a long lump beneath bedding, mumbled something with typical morning incoherency.

  “Up,” she repeated, flipping back bedding to reach boots at the end of her pallet. She had slept in her clothes, too tired, too depressed, to change into her sleeping shift upon her return the night before. “Gather up the folk,” she said, tugging on her boots. “I’ll go to Ilona’s wagon. . . . Mikal and Jorda are meeting me there.” The bottoms of her trews she tucked into boot-tops, then cross-gartered leather riding gaiters around her calves and tied off the leather thongs.

  Both men were awake, she saw, truly awake now, and were not inclined to joke as they usually did, or to complain about too little sleep. They said nothing as she untied and slipped out the door flap.

  The sun was a lurid glow along the horizon. With its slow climb came first birdsong from the groves. Most of the trees in the younger grove had been uprooted in the storm, thrown down against the earth with rootballs bared to the day, limbs and branches stripped, offering no shelter to wildlife. But the larger, old-growth grove had mostly been spared. It was there Jorda had brought his karavaners to camp temporarily, until it was sorted out what they would do and what Jorda advised. All had been bound elsewhere, attempting to put distance between themselves and the brutal Hecari warriors who had overrun and conquered Sancorra province. But Alisanos had gone active, destroying everyone’s plans, reducing fears of the Hecari to, for the moment, mere inconvenience, despite the fact the warriors were dangerous. The Hecari were men. Alisanos was far worse. Alisanos swallowed people whole; those it gave back, if rarely, were no longer human.

  And, she remembered uneasily, Alisanos now nearly surrounded them.

  The haphazard appearance of tents pitched willy-nilly without regard for order no longer shaped the settlement. In the handful of days since Alisanos had gone active, tent-folk and karavaners alike had heeded the advice of Jorda the karavan-master, and Mikal, the ale-keep who ran the largest and busiest tent. It had fallen to these two men, natural leaders both, to make recommendations for the safety of the survivors. The tent-folk had repaired what they could with belongings rescued from the storm and with aid and contributions from the karavaners. Tents had been raised once more, but this time they stood in ranks of circles around a massive stone-ringed bonfire. Instead of a tangle of footpaths, a clear grid of trails had been laid down.