The Wild Road

by Jennifer Roberson

  Audrun, who was lost.

  He heard movement, the quiet thunk of a pewter cup set down on his table. He took his hands away from his face and looked up. Mikal slid the cup across to Davyn. “Stronger than ale,” he said in his deep voice. “I think you’re in need of it.”

  Davyn stared at the cup, then met Mikal’s single eye. “Drinking spirits is not the answer.”

  “Now and again, it is.”

  Davyn watched the ale-keep move on to another table, asking what was wanted.

  ALISANOS DESIRED HIM. With supreme subtlety, that yearning crept into his flesh, wreathed his bones, slid the membrane over his eyes. Sheer startlement opened him wide to the deepwood.

  He was of Alisanos, Alisanos told him. Born there. Raised there. A shudder ran through Rhuan’s body. His bones twisted.

  Already bent to implant yet another stick where a cairn would be, it was a simple matter for him to collapse onto hands and knees. The earth was cool, still wet from the rain. Mud. Mud beneath his hands, sticking to his knees. The sun fell out of the sky.

  He belonged to Alisanos.

  Did he? Would he?

  Rhuan inhaled sharply through locked teeth, breath hissing. Again, he shuddered. All the fine hairs on his arms and legs stood up beneath his clothing. Unbraided hair slipped down, dangled, dipped into mud.

  Oh, but the deepwood wanted him. It beckoned. It begged. It seduced.

  It put him in pain, with the promise of more to come. Rhuan reached into his soul, his sense of self, and found the strength to deny the deepwood. He could not say “no” aloud. He could not speak at all, aloud.

  But inside his head he was not mute.

  Rhuan released the drawn breath, hearing it hiss between his clamped teeth yet again. From his soul he told the deepwood: You can’t have me.

  Alisanos answered: Yes I can.

  All the primaries and dioscuri had land-sense. It ran like a river in their veins. It provided them with the ability to know precisely where the border lay between Alisanos and the human world, where one step was the difference. But there was nothing precise about the border itself. It was fluid. Where in one place the borderline was narrow, in another it was wide. The lack of uniformity offered one of the deepwood’s greatest threats. How was one to stay out of the border, away from Alisanos, if one knew not where to step? Here? There? Here again? One foot in the border, the other not? Infinitely dangerous to humans. But primaries and dioscuri knew exactly where the border lay, its breadth, its length, whether one foot might be in and the other out. Rhuan could easily have escaped as the great storm came down upon them, because he knew, he felt where the storm was going. Yet he did not escape.

  Alisanos said, scathingly: Because of a woman.

  Yes. Because of a woman. He could not leave Audrun, separated from husband and children, to be swept up in howling violence. And so he had done his best to save her, to bring her out of harm’s way. But in doing so, blinded and deafened within the storm, he sent them both into danger. Both into Alisanos.

  Come home, said Alisanos. I miss you.

  The primaries had sent him back to the human world. Alisanos was disturbed by that. It wanted him.

  Two steps. That was all. Two steps, and he would be home.

  No. Not home.

  Rhuan wrenched himself out of the mud, rising awkwardly. His bones buzzed with proximity to the deepwood. Flesh itched. Limbs twitched. Loose hair bore a burden of mud. He bent over, put his hands on his knees—

  Something.

  Something there.

  Something that was not Alisanos, but of Alisanos.

  Rhuan spun as he straightened. Slickness squelched beneath his feet. Wet, mud-weighted hair slapped against his spine.

  His sire.

  AS SHE EXPECTED, a great number of folk had come to Ilona for hand-reading. Most of them were adherents of different divinations, of different avenues to contact with the Mother, but Ilona knew the reckoning was that any diviner, in such extraordinary and threatening circumstances as these, would do.

  Mostly men came. Nearly all of them had wives, children. Seated crosslegged on the other side of the lacquered table, hand outstretched, somewhat nervously looking at accoutrements unknown to them, they did what they could to downplay the need for Ilona’s gift. It was their wives, they said, who sent them.

  As always, Ilona hid any physical expression that her clients might find unsettling or insulting and accepted whatever justification they offered for the visit. In good times, times when life was predictable, it was the women who came, asking personal things, usually, such as whether an ill child would recover, whether a certain man was honest in his wooing, was she pregnant, would she become pregnant, would the child live. But these were bad times, and life was no longer in any wise predictable. Women’s concerns were now set aside so the men could assume their duties as protectors. But not all the men were married, not all were in or seeking a relationship. Some had no one to ask for save themselves. And these were the ones Ilona found most honest in their needs. They had courage in themselves to visit a strange diviner, to trust that she could show them a way to the Mother; were not influenced by concerns about family. They had come to the settlement alone, meaning to depart Sancorra by horseback, wagon, or booted feet. Their road had been clear; their intent, to make a better future away from the Hecari. But now that road, that future, was deferred. It made men tentative or assertive, depending on whether they had anyone to be brave for.

  Ilona found all manner of answers in their hands but also questions. She had long ago learned never to be too blunt when relating what she saw. She read true and told them the truth. Unlike charlatans who wielded falsehood like a scythe—to increase the number of their coin-rings, to make clients dependent—she did not believe aggression or exaggeration was the way to the Mother.

  Maiden Moon found avenues through the tattered limbs of old growth trees, through broken branches, to elder roots loosened from the soil. Ilona stretched to unkink her spine, then rose. More tea, she thought. A soothing blend that would ease her but not cloud her mind. She believed no more men, no women, would come to her tonight. Darkness, in such circumstances as these, was best greeted by a retreat to wagons, to tents, to prayers and petitions from inside shelter.

  Ilona, kneeling to fill her mug, smiled with a slow anticipation. Rhuan would come to her later, when he retired for the night from mapping the border between safety and the deepwood. Her smile widened, the knowing smile of a woman who knew herself desired. Desired by the man whom she herself desired.

  The sounds of karavaners tending night chores eased her as much as the tea. The rustle of horses, mules, bedded down for the night with grain to supplement grass. The occasional bark of a dog. Children with high-pitched voices protesting the need for sleep. The faint creak of wagon stairs folded away for the night, denying easy entry to vermin. Somewhere, a woman sang to a child, lulling it to sleep.

  Ilona’s smile now was not one of sexual anticipation but of the comfort found in the familiar. These days, familiarity was something which all could seek, could cling to, trying to find a way to accept that their lives, for the rest of the rains, were tied to a place nearly surrounded by Alisanos.

  No, no one else would come. Ilona began to collect and put away items used in her readings, folding away the table drape, blowing out lamplights depending from shepherd’s crooks. One she left alight, to guide Rhuan, though she knew it was unnecessary. He saw better at night than humans, she knew, regardless of the Mother’s light, or of a lantern or banked fire. He would come to her late.

  And exhausted by her readings, she turned to mount the steps into her wagon. There she remade the pallet on the floor, folded blankets back, slipped out of her clothing. The thin chemise worn beneath tunic and skirts was enough, she knew, until Rhuan came and took it from her.

 
Tired. So many hands, so many visions. Tragedy and joy.

  RHUAN STARED AT his sire, time suspended, time revoked. He was, in that moment of discovery and astonishment, rendered entirely mute.

  Alario smiled. He took the two steps necessary to leave the deepwood. To enter the human world.

  When he summoned the power of speech, shock stripped Rhuan’s voice of its natural timbre, leaving rust in its place. “Why are you here?”

  Alario shrugged. “You prefer the human world to the deepwood. Perhaps I feel the same.”

  Rhuan released a blurt of laughter and disbelief. “I don’t think so.”

  “Perhaps not,” Alario agreed.

  Rhuan regained control over his voice. “What do you want with me? And why did you unbraid your hair?”

  “Oh, I’m not here to see you. You’re not worthy of my attention. You are—an insect.” Alario waved his hand as if shooing away a troublesome fly. “No. I came for the woman.”

  He spoke so offhandedly that at first Rhuan just stared at his sire. Then a sharp stab of concern shot through him, coupled with wariness. “What woman?”

  “The hand-reader.”

  Shock, and with it heat, sheathed Rhuan’s flesh. The red membrane slid down over his eyes. Anger, not fear. A hard, unyielding, painful knot of desperate anger. “You are not—”

  Alario’s hand shot out and closed over Rhuan’s throat, holding him in place even as his body jerked in response. “Not—what? Not to see her?” He smiled. “I think otherwise.”

  He had killed her once, had Alario. Was he returning to do so again?

  With raw, unreasoning power, Rhuan jammed the heel of his hand up against the underside of his sire’s chin, knocking Alario’s head back. It caught him completely off guard. He staggered back two steps to regain his balance and lost his grip on Rhuan’s throat. Rhuan promptly took himself several long paces away, putting more distance between them. His throat was on fire from the pressure of Alario’s hand. He would be lucky to have any voice by morning.

  Blood flowed from Alario’s bottom lip. He blotted it on the back of his hand, stared at it a moment, then grinned at Rhuan with bloodied teeth.

  And Rhuan knew, knew without question, what his sire planned. Not killing. Making. Remaking. And he understood. “She isn’t Shoia at all, is she? You brought her back.”

  “I was angry when I killed her. Yes. I. Is that an admission of weakness to you?”

  Rhuan could do nothing more but stare at his sire.

  “Dead, she was of no worth. Of no use. But I unmade what an earlier anger provoked.” Alario’s smile was mocking. “Shoia? No. There are no more Shoia in the world.”

  “Then—”

  “Then she has no lives to spend. One death. One human death. That, only. I gifted her with a reprieve. But merely temporary . . . she’ll die bearing me a dioscuri, of course. And so the reprieve is ended.”

  Rhuan’s skin heated. “No.”

  Alario took two swift, long steps forward and smashed a fist across his son’s face. “Yes.”

  He might be a dioscuri, but primaries were considerably stronger. Rhuan went down hard, limbs sprawled every which way. His head smacked the ground, a second insult to his skull. He felt blood run from his nose down along his cheek. Hearing seemed muffled.

  Instinct told him to rise, that it was dangerous to remain in a posture of submission. He tried to hitch an elbow underneath to lever himself up. But now Alario stood over him. Still stunned, Rhuan was only vaguely aware of his sire’s skin shifting to a warm glow, the third lid dropping. Alario was alight with power. He reached down, grabbed a fistful of loose hair, and jerked his get upright, much of Rhuan’s weight hanging from his scalp.

  Alario said, “You’ll remember none of this.”

  Rhuan could no more avoid the second blow than he had the first. This time bones broke beneath Alario’s hand.

  Down. Down into the darkness.

  Chapter 16

  AUDRUN SAW HER children settled upon the cots, each sitting on the edge. On each, a packed straw pallet covered by bright bedding rested on tight-woven ropes, making the cots more bearable than a bed upon the floor. Gillan, tentatively stretching out on his back, was clearly exhausted and in some pain; Ellica, yet again, was distracted by her tree. Torvic and Meggie shared a cot for the moment, hunched against one another as their legs hooked over the edge.

  Audrun, too, was exhausted. So much of her had been spent in accelerated childbirth, in confronting the primaries, in recovering her children. But it was not time to rest just yet, no matter how much she longed to. First, there was a task.

  “Meggie,” she said in a quiet voice tempered by a delicate patience. “Meggie, would you come over here? I would like to give you a hug.”

  Megritte sat stiffly upon the cot’s edge, staring speechlessly at her mother. Her eyes seemed strangely fixed, lids stretched too wide. Audrun, who had briefly lived in the horrific vision conjured by the primary, Karadath, could well understand Megritte’s consuming fear. Instinctively, she knew better than to force a close physical presence on her youngest daughter just yet. Maintaining control of her voice, carefully avoiding a command, she asked, “Meggie, could you come give me a hug? Could you come over here and climb into my lap?”

  Torvic, seated so close to his younger sister, said, “She won’t talk.”

  Audrun blinked as her brows rose. But Torvic had been with Meggie since the storm. He was the one to whom Audrun addressed her question. “Has she injured her throat?”

  “No,” he answered. “But she won’t talk.”

  Audrun looked at Meggie. The child’s face was gray, smears of dark circles below her eyes. Hair straggled from braids, her clothing was soiled and torn, the marks of trees and vines crisscrossed her lower legs, which, because her skirt was tattered, had not been shielded against the depredations of the deepwood.

  Audrun kept her tone even, inflections carefully doled out. “Meggie . . . you don’t need to talk just yet. Just come to me and let me wrap you up in my arms the way you’ve always liked.”

  “She won’t,” Torvic said.

  Gillan, stretched out on a cot, sounded cross and impatient. “Let her be, for now,” he said. “She needs a nap. When she wakes up, she’ll be better.”

  Pain could do that, could bring about such a tone of voice Audrun knew, and his exposed leg showed scarring as well as scales with fiery margins.

  With confidence and a trace of annoyance in his voice, Torvic said, “No. She won’t.”

  Gillan shifted, resettling himself. Pain was reflected in his eyes, in the lines of his face. He seemed to have aged, Audrun saw, over a matter of days.

  “You can’t know what she will do or not do,” she said to Torvic.

  “She told me.” Torvic looked away from Gillan to his mother. “Meggie told me.” He touched his head. “In here.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” Ellica snapped, looking up from the infant tree in her lap. “This is not the time for one of your games.”

  “It’s not a game.” Torvic still stared at his mother. “It’s not, mam. I can hear her in my head.”

  They were in Alisanos. She knew from Rhuan, from her own experiences, that anything was possible.

  Audrun drew a quiet breath. “Can anyone else hear her?” She looked at Megritte. “May I hear you? Inside my head?”

  “No,” Torvic said. “No one but me.”

  THE SPIRITS WERE extremely powerful. Davyn discovered that very soon after the first few swallows on an empty belly. He increasingly felt oddly detached from his surroundings, wrapped in dullness, aware that his vision was affected. The ale-tent would not keep still. He widened his eyes to see if that would curtail the slow spinning, but no. So he narrowed his eyes. No. And yet he lifted the cup and drank again. At first, his belly had pr
otested the burning, but no longer. He felt detached, distanced. But he did not stop drinking.

  Others had come into Mikal’s tent in search of ale and spirits. Tables filled. He saw two Sisters of the Road entering with two male couriers. Not Brodhi; the others. They had put off their blue cloaks, but both wore the silver brooch identifying them as couriers, as honest men who carried word to others. One of the women was Naiya, gold-streaked hair worn loose. Her eyes paused briefly as she saw him, but then her attention returned to the man who walked with her to a small table set in one of the tent’s corners. Stools were found. They sat, the four of them, gazing at one another. Davyn saw a coyness in the women’s eyes. He saw, too, the eagerness in the couriers’ faces.

  One of the men shifted on his stool so he could look at the bar. “Spirits,” he called. “Four cups, if you please.”

  They drank for pleasure. Davyn thought he would never feel pleasure again.

  But he might find relief, if not answers, in spirits.

  He pushed his empty cup across the table, catching the ale-keep’s single eye, and signalled for more.

  Mikal delivered the spirits to the couriers’ table, then eased himself onto a stool set across from Davyn. He put a tankard on the table; Davyn could smell the tang of spirits. “Feeling better?”

  “I can’t tell.” Davyn leaned forward against the table and once again braced his head in one hand. “This is . . . strong. The spirits. But it doesn’t make me forget.”

  “No,” Mikal said. “Not you; I do see that. Nothing will ever allow you to forget.” He paused a moment. “Your cup is empty. Have this tankard in its place.”

  “What are you here for?” Davyn asked, realizing his bluntness was rude, but it was the spirits talking. “What do you want that’s worth a cup of spirits?”

  “An opening,” Mikal said. “Were I simply to sit down and start discussing your personal business, I would be taken as rude. Instead, I offer drinks. Courtesy has its rewards.”