“Kor …” I jostled him in my arms. “Kor!” I begged.
“Please wake!” But he was sleeping so soundly I could not rouse him.
“He—he is breathing? Truly?” It was Leotie, beside me, coming close to look, and all my tribesfolk were crowded around, babbling to each other in a tumult of relief and joy. Then their voices fell to a whisper and trailed off into an awed silence. In that silence I felt a great peace, and my sobbing quieted, though from time to time my shoulders still shook.
“But he is sleeping so gently,” an old woman said softly to her neighbor. “See, he nearly smiles.”
“His skin, as smooth as a babe’s.”
It was true. All marks of wounds were gone, even the scars the devourers had put on him in vigils past.
“Very comely, for all that he is so dark,” someone else murmured.
“And so brave. He never begged—”
“Yes. Hush. We are all shamed by what happened.”
“Sakeema has taken mercy on us,” a man’s voice said, “that he is alive.”
“He is as fair as Sakeema himself, sleeping there.”
“Dan.” It was Leotie again, coming up to me with an armload of pelts and fleeces and blankets. She arranged the things into a thick bed. “Here, lay him gently down, and come, let me see to you, those wrists—”
I did not yet feel that I could speak. I shook my head.
“Dan, please. Only for a moment.”
But I would not lay Kor down. Whether more out of love for him or fear of losing him, I would not let go of him, even for the moment. I sat where I was. In the end, Leotie washed off of me what blood she could and put a blanket around my shoulders and around Kor—he was naked, but warm. Others brought food for me, but I would not taste any. I had no thought for food. And then they took down my father’s tent, brought it and raised it over me, on the spot, to keep off the dew and nighttime chill and perhaps the rain. They built a fire near my feet—the smoke curled up through the vent at the tent’s ridge. Then, leaving the food and the bedding and some firewood, they went away, for it was very late.
I sat holding Kor through the night as he slept. Sometimes he stirred in his sleep, and every time he did so my heart warmed with joy. Between times I was afraid or angry or grieving, my thoughts tossing and swirling like the waves around the headland, but slowly quieting like the sea after a storm. I steadied my anger, my grief, as I might steady a lathered horse, and on toward morning at last I was calm enough to truly think. And think I did, more deeply and plainly and well than I had ever thought in my life.
Dawn lightened the sky above the smoke vent, turning it the colors of a wild rose. All was still—my people were finally asleep after a troubled night. The small birds were just beginning to stir and sing in the trees, one soft note, then a pause, then another, soft as the dawn. The world was fragrant, quiet, peace lying on it as simply as the dew.
“Kor,” I said, my voice sounding loud in the hush, “wake up.” My arms were numb and aching from holding him.
He stirred, but still he slept.
“Sakeema,” I said very softly, “please wake and speak to me.”
His eyes opened, and they were his own, looking on me with amusement and love.
Chapter Eighteen
Kor sat up, gathered the blanket around his waist and looked at me. “You are calling on the name of Sakeema?” he asked gravely.
“I spoke to you,” I told him levelly enough, though there was a catch in my voice. It unsteadied me to see him sitting there, after all that had happened, well and whole—with the merriment starting in his eyes.
“Dan, for the first time I begin to think you truly mad! You call me Sakeema? You, who brought me back to life with your tears?” His voice grew hushed as he said that, and his hand lifted toward me, but I could not quite touch it. I was almost afraid of him.
I said, “Only Sakeema could have done what you have done for me. You came here knowing what would happen, letting it happen so that—I would see—”
“Dan,” he interrupted, “I knew only a little. I had some fool’s thoughts of—interceding for you, somehow. Certainly I did not intend to be killed.”
“But you meant for me to be well.”
“Yes, body of Sakeema, what else? All of us who love you wish you well.”
“You knew you would not be talking with my father. You knew what he was likely to do to you.”
“No. I thought it more likely that he would try to hurt you. As he had done before.”
I stared at him, startled. He looked down at his hands. “I heard your ravings,” he said softly, “when we were in the pit. I learned some things. You have remembered, Dan?”
Very weary, not yet ready to speak of it, I merely nodded. Kor’s expression sat oddly on him, god that I thought him to be, for he looked sheepish.
“I am properly befooled,” he said. “I had thought I would—fend him off for you, save you, and in the end it was you who saved me—from death itself.”
“But not from torment,” I muttered.
“From Tyonoc? When you could not lift weapon against him for your own sake, even though he drove you out of your mind? But in the end you did it for me.…” Wonder in his voice. I could not think so well of myself.
“I killed my father,” I said starkly.
“No. You unhoused a devourer. Hardly a deed of evil.”
I stared anew. “How—Did you know about the devourer, also, before we came here?”
“No! I saw it! It nearly flew through me. I have never been so frightened, even in life. I—I badly wanted to come back to you.”
Nothing should have startled me by then, but I felt faint, looking at him. He was speaking of the moment when he had been dead, and he looked frightened still.
“I saw—I saw everything, Dan. I was floating a small distance above the treetops, looking back, downward, and I saw you break loose at last—you were magnificent. And I saw—my body—”
He winced in pain at the memory and shut his eyes, as if by doing so he could stop seeing it.
“Don’t,” I whispered. “Don’t speak of it anymore.”
He seemed not to have heard me. “The poor, hacked thing,” he murmured. “Odd, that I should cherish such a thing.”
I felt a cold touch of fear. “You will come to hate me,” I said, my voice very low.
“What?” He opened his eyes and blinked at me.
“You will come to hate me for what has happened.” The torment that sickened me, remembering.
“Never.” Kor gazed steadily at me, his bare shoulders calm and beautiful, but tears coursed down his cheeks. “Dan, you held me to your heart.”
I wanted to hold him to my heart again. Only fear prevented me.
“All night you held me.…”
His hand lifted toward me, and this time, willy-nilly, mine met it, for I could sooner have changed my shape than stay away from him.
“I will always love you.”
I seemed to see a bubble of amaranthine light, bursting open like a flower, leaving a fragrance as nameless as the nameless god.… My fears, gone as if they had never been. Like my weeping, done with. A hush, a peace far beyond any I had ever known had hold of me with the clasp of his hand, a joy fit to fill the world. He saw it, or felt it, and smiled like sunrise, though the warm salt dew still lay on his face. I shall always remember that smile.
“But it is all I have ever wanted,” I whispered to him, as if something uncanny spoke in me, as if out of a self I scarcely knew. “All I have ever wanted. Love.”
“Dan, you have it.” He embraced me, the hard, clean embrace of a friend and a king, and I felt dawn’s light swelling inside me, the dayspring of joy. My long night was truly over. I might never weep again.
“You are Sakeema,” I told him huskily.
“Dan, you are a blockhead,” he replied, and thumped my back as if to rouse me, and let go of me.
It was a dawning that could never be taken from us, a
daybreak that would live in us for as long as we lived, that hushed, birdsinging time. Kor and I, beneath the fawn-colored light, sheltered by a tent of deerskin, talking. He lay back at his ease on the bedding Leotie had left him and let the tears dry on his face. I sat gazing at him, letting self know to the center of being that truly, indeed, he lived.… And though there were some things I was not yet ready to tell, to him or anyone, we talked deeply and well. I remember we talked about Tassida—it did not trouble us to do so, for neither of us could be touched by sorrow that dawning. How Tass had returned and seen Kor’s healing, and fled again, afraid. She and Kor had not spoken of what I thought, or not entirely, that night at Tyee’s encampment, when she had cut my arm and left us. Kor had told her what he knew of Tyonoc and me, what he expected to face. She had come back, I surmised, with some thought of aiding us—and found a mutilated body in my arms. Looking at Kor, lying smooth-skinned and bare-chested on his bed of pelts and fleeces, I could remember without sickening. The dusk before seemed but a black dream, gone with dawning.
When dawn had turned to sunrise, and sunrise to early morning, Leotie came and softly called to us from outside the tent, then entered and gazed at Kor with shining eyes.
“You are truly all right,” she marveled. She carried his pack and bedroll from his horse in her arms, but she stood as if she had forgotten them.
At her back walked Tyee, stooping under the tent flap and coming in behind her, looking diffident. I stared at him, seeing what I had not noticed the night before—his face was swollen and bruised black, his shield arm wrapped in bloody bandages, and he walked stiffly, and gingerly sat down by my side.
“Where did you get those marks?” I asked him.
“I was—conversing with Ytan.”
“He came back?” I half rose in my horror. Tyee caught my arm and pulled me down.
“No. Last night. While the—Korridun’s bloody welcome was going on.”
“So it was you who set me free!”
He shook his head. “Leotie. It was all I could do to—busy Ytan, a moment.”
“And it took such a parlous long time,” Leotie said, “for the others of the twelve to sicken and turn away so that we had our chance.…”
She was still gazing at Kor. We are sorry, her glance said. “Bygones,” he replied.
Tyee wore a tunic. “What is under that shirt?” I demanded of him. “Were you stabbed?”
“Yes,” he shot back. “Heal me with your tears?” His daring surprised me so, I laughed out loud.
“Sakeema, no! I’ve spent tears enough—I hope there are none left!”
“Tyee!” Leotie feigned shock, then remembered at last the things she was carrying and took them to Kor. “That fanged mare you rode has left Ytan somewhere and come back,” she told me. “I’ll go get your gear.” She went out.
“I hope she threw him hard,” Tyee grumbled. “I hope she broke his churlish neck.”
I leaned back on an elbow and looked at him, mindful that I had a bone to pick with him. Though what had happened could not have been easy on him, either. I would be gentle.
“Tyee,” I said, expecting him to look at the ground, “you could have told me, you know. What things were like here. You let me walk into the arms of a murderer, deliver Kor up to him for slaughter—”
He shook his head, meeting my eyes in a calm way that was new to me, in him—he seemed quite certain of himself. “You had to know for yourself,” he told me. “You would have called me a liar and bloodied my nose before you could have believed any harm of our father.”
Blast him, he was right! It was I who lowered my eyes.
“Has Dan always been like that?” Kor asked my brother whimsically. “So pigheaded?”
“Bullheaded,” I corrected with what dignity I could muster.
“Of the three of us, he has always been the favorite, and the one most like our father.”
My glance shot up again, for I had not told him that I was a murderer as well.
“When he was himself,” Tyee added. “True man and true king. I remember too, you know.”
“Then there really was a change,” I murmured.
Sudden, but so subtle … Tyee and I talked, trying to comprehend it and think when it had happened. Perhaps only Wyonet, our mother, had truly known. Tyonoc’s words had been the same, gestures the same, duties attended to, and often he smiled. But heart was all lacking. Loving him as I did, I keenly felt the difference, but denied it in my mind. Others, perhaps, had not noticed until after our mother disappeared, gone one morning without a trace. Tyee and I had made search for her, then mourned her. But Tyonoc had not. And when whispers had begun, I had made excuses for him, saying that he was dazed by grief. I had even managed to still the whispering in my own mind.
Tyee said, “She must have noticed—the change—before anyone else. Our mother. They were close.…” He turned to explain to Kor. “She was a strong woman, though not very wise or even clever. I think she reproached him.”
“Still, perhaps it was not he who killed her,” said Kor. “Perhaps a devourer took her. There was one in him. Perhaps he invited another.”
“No,” I said, the single word.
Kor looked closely at me; Tyee turned to stare at me. He said hoarsely, “You know what happened to her? Truly?”
I answered him only with my eyes. The knowledge lay heavy in me. Tyonoc himself had told me, one horrible day.
“Can you yet tell us, Dan?” asked Kor very gently.
I shook my head. Later, my brother and I would walk somewhere, in solitude, and I would tell Tyee what I knew. I needed rest and time, one more day, and he deserved to learn first, and alone.… Soft footfalls outside the tent, and Leotie came in with my gear, laid it by me, and sat down. The talk took an awkward pause.
“You spoke of devourers, Kor,” Tyee said at last. “It is they, then, who carry folk away in the night? They are the demons who take the children?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“How, then, did—” Like me, Tyee was finding it difficult to say the name. “—our father—Tyonoc—how did he remain?”
Kor asked, “Have you felt the embrace of a devourer, Tyee?”
“No!” He shuddered, and Leotie drew closer to him. “No. We have heard tales, but to my knowledge none of us had seen such a creature before last night.”
“They come most often at night. Weapons and blows are of no use against them. They try to take you in utterly, so that you are nothing anymore but part of them.” Kor spoke slowly, hard put to describe this process that was more horrible than being eaten. “But if you are—well centered—it is not the same, exactly, as being strong or courageous—”
Tyee was leaning forward, intently listening.
“—then they cannot devour you, or not easily. And I think your father might have been such a one, when he was truly your father, if he was like Dan.”
I said nothing. The others nodded.
“I think that he withstood the devourer for a while, and it tried a different mode of attack. It folded itself into a weapon and pierced him. As it could not take him in, it went within him instead, made itself part of him as he would not be part of it.”
We would not have been able to believe it if we had not seen.
“Twice they have tried that with me,” Kor added quietly, “and I think one once attacked Tassida in somewhat the same way.”
“Then there is—one in Ytan, too.” It was Leotie, a note of horror deep in her voice.
None of us answered her. There was no need. For a long moment we sat in silence.
“We need you here, Dan.” It was Leotie, looking into my eyes as she spoke. “The game is growing scarcer, and the Fanged Horse Folk come and go as they will. And this other threat … It has been hard since you went.”
“It was hard coming back,” I retorted.
“Yes.” She had the grace to wince and lower her eyes. “Yes, truly. But, Dan—”
“Let him be! He is dazed, exhau
sted, can you not see that?” It was Tyee, speaking with more force than I had ever heard from him. Leotie glanced at him with a surprise perhaps equal to my own, then turned back to me, contrite.
“I wasn’t thinking. Dan, let me bathe those wounds of yours, and then I will bring you something hot to eat, and then you had better sleep.” She rose to fetch water.
“No, wait!” I put out my hand to stop her. “Tell me first what this thing is about.”
“Let it go,” she said.
“I will not be able to sleep until I know.”
She sighed and put it briefly. “We want you as our king, Dan.”
Kor said afterward that it should not have surprised me, but in fact it did. Taken utterly aback, I floundered in astonishment and a vague doubt.
“But—I have been gone, my ways are no longer your ways entirely. My hair is cut. You no longer know me.”
“We knew when you came back to us that things would soon be better.” Leotie astonished me anew by kneeling in front of me and taking my hands in hers, the gesture of supplication. “Your hair will grow. Please, Dan.”
The uproar in my mind made me say the thing that lay uppermost. “Do you not want the kingship for Tyee?” I blurted.
“I have never been made of the stuff of kings,” Tyee cut in from his place beside me. “You know that, Dan, as well as I do.”
I took my hands out of Leotie’s and turned to look at him, certain of what I was going to say, as certain as he was. “Never before, perhaps, Tyee,” I told him softly. “But now you are.”
He gazed back at me in plain disbelief.
“You are. You have always had goodness, and now you have found it all: the heart, the courage, the strength of spirit—wisdom, even.” I turned to Kor, knowing he could sense these things more surely than I. “Is it not so?”
“Yes,” he said very quietly but so firmly that no one could doubt him. “Your homecoming has in a way been a blessing, Dan.”
Leotie was looking at Tyee with new eyes. I got up, stooped under the tent flap, and walked outside.
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