The Wild Road

by Jennifer Roberson

  There was purpose in Rhuan’s challenge to the primaries, and she had not seen it. Purpose and solution.

  Acknowledgment replaced despair. Tension began to subside, replaced by fragile hope. A road meant she and her children could leave the deepwood, could find Davyn and put this nightmare to rest. . . . Rhuan had said he would bring Davyn to her, once the road was built

  And if there were a road through Alisanos, they could travel upon it to safety. Away from Alisanos, away from the Hecari. To security, to a new life. Perhaps once on the road any change begun by the deepwood would dissipate.

  Except . . . except there was the infant. She must be found. Before anything else.

  As she thought of the child, her breasts ached. A glance down showed damp patches where the milk-soaked breast bindings had failed. Her children had seen it before; it meant nothing to them. But Audrun was embarrassed to think of the primaries seeing milk stains. Heat rose in her face. She had defied them in soiled clothing and tangled hair. That, she could do again. But that the obvious signs of lactation were perhaps amusing to the primaries irritated her.

  Then again, it reinforced her demand that they find the child. It was difficult to put a missing baby out of one’s mind when so obvious a reminder was before them.

  “New bindings,” Audrun muttered. Tighter bindings. For comfort if nothing else.

  Movement caught her eye. Gillan, perched on the table-like formation of stone directly across the path, tugged his homespun trouser leg back down to his ankle, hiding the the ruin of his leg, the area in the flesh of his calf that resembled an imperfectly stitched patchwork of bruising that was, in fact, scales.

  Scales. Human flesh made into—what?

  Audrun recoiled from that picture in her mind. Instead she answered Torvic. “No, we will not stay right here. We are to be given accomodations.” She rose, pulling Megritte up into her arms. The girl was heavy, but at that moment Audrun did not care. “Let us go find whomever is responsible for giving us these accommodations.”

  Torvic asked, “Are we ever going home?”

  She did not know if he meant the cabin where he had been born, burned by Hecari, or the wagon that had become their home on the way to Atalanda. And she dared not ask him. There was no purpose in frightening a boy.

  “Not yet.” Audrun retained a casual tone as she hitched Megritte into a better position on one hip. “But we will. I promise it. The Mother of Moons will see us home.”

  And Gillan, shocking her with the raw anger in his tone, said, “This is Alisanos. How do we know the Mother is even here? How do we know any moon is here? Mam—this is Alisanos.”

  Audrun held Megritte more firmly even as she met her oldest son’s blue eyes, his bitter and wet blue eyes. Because of those tears, she modified her own tone from the snap of authority and impatience to a gentler assurance. “We are to have a road, Gillan. Safe passage. When it is built, when enough of it is built, we will walk out of here to your father.” She nodded firmly, settling the topic. “Now, everyone up. Ellica, come along. Without the sapling, please.”

  Ellica, still seated, glanced up, startled. Pale hair was a rats’ nest, with snarled braids and loosened locks in tangled communion. “But—my tree. I can’t leave it. It’s too young.”

  “Sweet Mother . . . it’s a tree, Ellica, not a child!”

  Tears filled Ellica’s eyes. “I have to tend it.”

  Audrun gritted her teeth. Now she had two children in tears—and the two eldest at that, who should offer strength of will, not doubts, for the sakes of the youngest. It was up to her, then, how everyone fared. “Then bring the tree with you. We’ll plant it wherever the primaries see fit to house us.”

  AS HE PASSED by the battered old grove on his left, Brodhi sensed a presence behind him and stopped short. Bethid nearly ran into him as he swung around. “What now?” he asked and felt a brief spark of surprise that he was actually annoyed. Annoyed.

  She re-established balance by taking a step backward. Her delicate features, so incongruous in view of her wiry strength and physically demanding employment, were sharp beneath tanned skin. In her eyes he saw an expression that surprised him: contempt. Anger, he had seen in her; frustration more often, when he behaved in ways she felt were rude. But contempt? Never.

  Contempt . . . from a human. For him.

  The realization delayed his answer until he could summon a tone of nonchalance. “I repeat: What now?”

  “That farmsteader has lost everything,” Bethid answered in a clipped voice. “How dare you? How dare you? Have you no compassion whatsoever?”

  “Compassion,” Brodhi said, his tone bland, “is a useless emotion. I avoid it.” As he avoided all others. Except for that flash of annoyance. He would have to consider that. He would have to consider why Bethid’s contempt meant anything to him.

  And it had.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I can see that. However—and I may only be able to count the occurrences on the fingers of one hand—you have proved helpful now and again. Why not help a man desperate to locate his family?”

  “I told him the truth,” Brodhi answered. “Is that not helpful? I understand humans esteem truth.”

  “But there are ways of telling—”

  He overrode her. “Yes, Bethid; yes, I am all too aware that humans also esteem emotions, having a raft of them to use as needed. His family is in Alisanos, Bethid. I merely told him so.”

  “Brutally.”

  He ignored that. “Now he knows. He will come to terms with it.”

  “But why did you have to be so cruel? Why say what you said the way you said it?”

  A brief flicker of amusement at her convoluted question died out. “What did I say?”

  She gestured frustration by lifting upturned arms away from her body, then let them slap down against her thighs. “I can’t quote you . . . but it was something to the effect that they were no longer living the way he would recognize living. Mother of Moons, that’s harsh, Brodhi. Is he supposed to accept that with no questions? With no pain?”

  “He wanted to know. He knows.” Brodhi lifted his hand in a sharp motion to cut her off as she opened her mouth. “I have learned, among humans, that false hopes can be every bit as painful as hard truths. The truth requires less time and less effort.” He raised his eyebrows. “Would you rather be struck to death by a Hecari warclub all at once, or have your flesh flayed bit by bit over a handful of your days?”

  Bethid scowled at him, offering no answer.

  “What would you do,” he began, “if this family were to come out of Alisanos?

  “Rejoice,” Bethid snapped. “What would you expect me to do? I’d welcome them. Of course!”

  “You would mourn them,” Brodhi told her, “once you were over your shock and disgust. No doubt you would send up prayers to your Mother of Moons. Alive the family may be but no longer human. Not anymore.”

  “Of course they are still—”

  “No, Bethid. Here is the truth of it: Alisanos transforms humans. The wild magic seeps into flesh, into bones, into blood. I have seen what humans do when one of their own returns. There is no ‘compassion,’ Bethid. There is no kindness. There is no welcome. I have seen humans vomit, so upset by the horror of what their kin have become. I have seen rocks thrown. I have seen backs turned. I have seen a woman screaming at what once was her husband, telling him to go away and never come back. Would you have this Davyn do the same to his wife? To his children?” He shook his head. “My compassion is truer. It saves him from the grief, his family from excoriation and abandonment.”

  Her prickly frustration faded into shock. “How transformed?”

  “How is it done? Or what is done?”

  “Sweet Mother, Brodhi—How will they be changed?”

  “The mechanism is the will of Alisanos. As for t
he change itself?” He shrugged. “It depends on how long a human is in Alisanos and where. The wild magic is inconsistent.”

  “‘Inconsistent,’” she echoed with explicit clarity, glaring at him. “How inconvenient.”

  “What would you have me say? Should I lie to him? Mislead him? Is that not cruel?” He saw color rise in her face. It was the edge of anger, born of a depth of empathy that he could not comprehend. “Bethid, you know nothing about Alisanos. I do.”

  “Because you’re from there.”

  It was statement, not inquiry. Ah, yes. She knew he wasn’t Shoia. The hand-reader had told her so; the hand-reader who had, unaccountably, drawn the attention of Alario, his sire’s brother. Possibly the hand-reader knew more than any human alive about Alisanos.

  But not enough.

  Bedthid’s hands went to her hips. “Alisanos is a place, not a being. How can it have a will?”

  He stared into her eyes and saw an implacability equal to his own. It was far more than curiosity—this was a demand. And yet he could not explain Alisanos to her, because he lacked the human words. Alisanos, to those born of it, simply was. Every child of his people was taught from the creche that Alisanos was omniscient and sentient, and terrible in both. Alisanos was greater than even the highest of the primaries.

  Who was, at this particular time, Karadath, his sire.

  Five years. Five human years. Until that time was up, he could not challenge his sire. He could not prove himself. He could not ascend. He could do nothing, now, save repeat his journey to complete his journey.

  “I’m not in the habit of betraying confidences,” Bethid said, “as you well know. And I can’t see that my knowing additional details would harm this settlement more than it already has been harmed.” She made an expansive gesture with her right arm, as if presenting the entire settlement to his attention. “See what Alisanos has already done? Tell me why, Brodhi. And if it’s a who, not a what, tell me that, too. I deserve it, don’t you think?” She tapped her chest. “I am here at the edge of the deepwood, within striking range. If I am to be taken by Alisanos, to be transformed by it, I want to know why and how.” And then the demand dropped away from her voice and posture. Bethid looked tired as she raised a hand, palm out. “But—not now . . . later. I suspect it will take all of my attention, and I haven’t it to spare just now.” She was tired; it was most unlike Bethid to let go of either argument or passionate discussion before its natural conclusion. She looked past him and sighed. “I see our tent is down again . . . Timmon and Alorn are mired in canvas.” Her gaze returned to his. “Repairs are more easily made by four in place of two.” She slapped him on the arm with the back of her hand. “Now, Brodhi. Before the sun sets.”

  He turned to watch her as she moved past him, striding toward the collapsed tent. She was a small person, small even for a human woman, and yet her personality and determination were greater than any human he knew. Brodhi considered for a moment, eyebrows arched, then hitched a shoulder in a brief shrug and followed her. It served him as well to put up a tent he intended to sleep in come nighttime.

  And at least Bethid’s attention had been appropriated.

  Chapter 5

  THERE HAD BEEN no time, no time at all, nor room in Ilona’s mind to truly comprehend what had happened to her. First, death. Then, life and a night in Rhuan’s arms; and then harried, blundering explanations to friends and strangers about her resurrection. Now she stood alone in a soiled burial shift, hair a mass of tangled ringlets, feet bare and dirty, with nothing but time to sort out the turmoil in her mind.

  They had left her, all of them, their minds on other things: Rhuan departing with the farmsteader whose family was lost to Alisanos, Mikal and Jorda marshaling men to again raise the ale-tent, Bethid following Brodhi, and the tent-folk and karavaners once again turning their attention to their damaged belongings.

  She was alone, yet surrounded.

  Ilona put out her hands. They trembled, even as a shiver ran through her body. Now, now there was time, and her body knew it. It overtook her, shook her, weakened her knees. She was altogether, and suddenly, hungry. Thirsty. Utterly exhausted.

  Nausea rose. Ilona pressed both trembling hands against her mouth. No, no—please, no.

  She ran. Shaking, shivering, hungry and not, in need of privacy. In need of a bath. In need of . . . something. Something as yet unrecognizable.

  She had been dead. She had been murdered. Yet lived.

  Shoia, Rhuan said. That was the glib explanation; and the only one, he said, that others would understand. He was not Shoia, nor the courier, but she apparently was.

  Shoia.

  She had no idea what it actually meant, to be Shoia. Or if, beyond offering a person seven lives, it meant anything at all.

  As Ilona reached her wagon parked beneath one of the old-growth giants, she stopped at the bottom of the steps. Nausea subsided. Now she had time to send an appeal skyward, something unconnected to her mundane belly but wholly connected to emotions, particularly self-doubt: Oh Mother, help me. Guide me in this.

  She climbed the steps into a wagon, no longer tidy in the wake of the earth’s violent upheaval. For a moment she stood just inside the door, noting with empty interest the tumbled array of belongings and supplies spilled across the floorboards, across the blankets she and Rhuan had shared. But her chaotic surroundings were of no moment. Other concerns filled her mind.

  Slowly, she folded her shaking body and sat down on the blankets. She pulled the coverlet from the floorboards, from under those things fallen. She wrapped it around her, clutched it close, but could not still her trembling.

  She had Rhuan . . . was that not enough, to have the man she desired?

  No. It was not.

  Too much, too much in her mind. Time, now, to parse the thoughts and realizations gathering behind her eyes.

  She hugged the coverlet, hugged the body beneath it, and felt tears rising.

  Ilona let them fall.

  THE FARMSTEADER MENTIONED the need to relieve himself, so Rhuan was alone as he climbed the steps into the family’s wagon. He paused just inside the door, noting that the contents of the tall, huge-wheeled conveyance were no longer set perfectly into their places, as was required to host two adults and five children. And the rib-supported canopy listed to one side, as if the earth’s shaking had pushed everything out of true.

  At the front of the wagon, wood planking formed a large, elevated platform. Atop it lay thin, straw-stuffed mattresses, muslin sheets, and a tangle of coverlets. Room for four children, Rhuan realized, but the boards had shifted and were no longer evenly aligned. Trunks filled the area beneath the platform. A child’s cloth doll lay face down in the center aisle.

  The wagon shifted as the farmsteader climbed up, ducking his head to avoid the ribs overhead. He paused, then gestured Rhuan to take a seat upon the bedding platform. He himself sat down upon the floor crosslegged. As Davyn picked up the doll, Rhuan saw that his hands shook. A quick glance at his face betrayed tears in the man’s eyes.

  A wholly human compassion rose in Rhuan. He shoved the platform boards back into order, then sat down. “It is the truth, what I’ve told you. They are safe.”

  But that was not enough. Not for husband and father. He saw it in Davyn’s eyes as tears dried.

  Rhuan moistened his lips, drew in a breath that fully expanded his lungs, and continued. “It is true that Alisanos occasionally gives up what it has taken almost immediately, but we simply cannot assume that will happen in this case. Hope, yes; of course we will hope, but we must not be frantic with it.”

  “‘We,’” Davyn echoed. Something glinted in his eyes, something akin to a potent anger suppressed, and Rhuan realized he had erred in words meant to reassure. “‘We’ assume nothing,” the farmsteader declared flatly, with a sting in every word, “and I will indeed hope, and
pray, in any display of emotion I wish. Frantic? Oh yes, I may be frantic. I may be desolate. I may be naked in my despair. But you have no wife, no children. How in the Mother’s name can you even begin to comprehend what I think and feel?”

  It was a natural reaction. Rhuan opened his mouth to say that according to the customs of his people, he actually was married to the farmsteader’s wife. Then he closed it, abruptly aware that such a statement would not, in the least, bring ease.

  Davyn continued to stare at him fixedly. Rhuan saw the tautness of his face, the pallor of his flesh, the anger in his eyes. “Did you send us the wrong way?” Davyn asked in a raw tone. “In the storm. Intentionally. Did you send my family the wrong way? Those I’ve asked have said you would never do such a thing . . . but I know nothing about you. What if you had a reason for giving them up to the storm? And is it just bad fortune that I was left behind to ask such questions?”

  It had not crossed Rhuan’s mind that he might be blamed for the loss of the farmsteader’s family. For several moments he could not think of a proper answer, until at last he said, “No. No. And I will swear that to your Mother, if you wish.”

  Davyn flared, “You are not worthy of the Mother.”

  Oh, indeed: anger and hostility. Rhuan owed nothing to this Mother of Moons; she was no deity of his, but he offered because he believed it might mean something to the farmsteader. Clearly, it did not. And, strangely, it hurt to have it stated so definitively. Unworthy. He, the son of a primary. Unworthy of the Mother.

  And perhaps he was. “I attempted to send them to safety. They were my responsibility. I am a karavan guide. I do care. I do. I sent them to what I believed was safety. And you as well.” He shook his head and was reminded that as yet his hair remained unbraided. There had been no time to instruct Ilona in the intricacies. “Alisanos does what it will do, goes where it will go. I could only do what I believed was safest.”

  Davyn leaned forward as he shut a fist around the cloth doll. He raised it, displayed it. Shook it at Rhuan. “My entire family is lost.”