Sakeema, who had promised that he would come to us again. Who in my vision had given me a friend’s promise that he would come again, in the way we least expected, in the time when we needed him most.
Dreaming, I yearned for him, inwardly chanting a song of longing and love.
The hart wears a crown but Sakeema wore none.
Sakeema the king, where have you gone?
Badgers have setts and the bears have their dens.
Sakeema the king, where is your throne?
What wantwits we are, what wanhopes all!
We did not know you truly until
The deer had taken you back to your dwelling.
How will you come to us, beloved king?
Perhaps even now you are walking among us,
And dolts that we are, still we do not know you.
Dear king of the creatures, prithee come back to us,
Bring back the stags of wonder, we beg you.
Our hearts ache with thinking of the small spotted deer,
Our hearts ache with thinking of the great maned deer,
Of the brown and yellow deer, our hearts ache with dreaming.
Bring them back to us, Sakeema the deer king.
Bring back the stags of splendor, we beg you.
Bring back the wolves of wonder, we beg you.
I awoke in the night, perhaps the second or third night, seeing the shadows of the looming pines, seeing wan moonlight, hearing a goshawk scream, and I felt an awful dread. I was very ill, and it frightened me, for I was not accustomed to being so sick. Wounded, yes, but not sick. Kor lay asleep beside me. I could reach over to rouse him if need be, but if I were to die I would be truly alone.
Sakeema, I silently begged the night, please come to me, please help me.
Awakened from my vision, I had been unable to remember his face, and I had despaired. But lying in the wound-fever and dreaming of Sakeema, I deemed that I saw him truly, for I saw Kor. No one could have done what Korridun had done for me and not be Sakeema.
Even in my right mind, I thought the same. Though at the time of which I speak I was nearly senseless. A day or two passed of which I remember little except wretchedness. A night came, moon on the wane, and I slipped in and out of nightmare. The devourer had indeed taken me, I was worse than dead, and utterly alone—no, I was waking, and the shadows lay long.
“Kor,” I begged.
He was sitting by me in the night, and he reached over and gave me the handbond, not for the first time. It strengthened me with the will and courage of ourselves plus the two kings whom we had seen in the swordpool, heroes of old whose names we did not know. It strengthened me, but it could not avert what faced me.
“I am dying,” I whispered.
He did not deny it. I could not see his face in the darkness, but I felt his taut distress as he gathered me up so that my head lay in his arms. His hand clutched mine tightly.
“I, who have faced Pajlat in battle and survived,” I complained, trying to make light of it, “I, who have brought up a sword out of the pool of vision—I, who have survived eversnow and Cragsmen and hotwind wildfire, I lie dying of a wet dream and Mahela’s ill will? It is unthinkable.”
I would not have had strength to hold forth at such length had he not been handbonding me. The peril to my body remained the same, and he knew it. A sort of warm salt rain was falling on my face.
“Sakeema,” I begged him, “know yourself. Heal me.”
I had called him Sakeema once before, and he had laughed at me. This time he was in no fit fettle to laugh or argue. He spoke only four words, and his voice was choked.
“I am not Sakeema.”
“You, who died in torment for my sake, not Sakeema?”
“It was you—who brought me back, Dan.”
He could barely speak. Shamed, I kept silence.
“There is no—power of healing in me. I wish I were—who you say I am—for your sake.”
I had sensed for a certainty that he was. No one could have loved me as he had, showed me the mercy he had shown me, given self as he had given for me, without being more than man, more than king. But if he did not know it himself—and it was the custom of the Seal Kindred to humble their kings—perhaps he felt as helpless as I did.
Helpless, sinking down to death.
I felt as if I were drowning, but too weak to struggle, too weary to feel much pain. A heartsick longing for life was in me, but not much pain. Sinking, sinking down into the black water, swept along by its flow … flow turned to flight, black water turned to night sky. I seemed to drift in it without effort, looking down at my own bandaged body with an odd leave-taking tenderness, looking down on Kor where he held me in the glow of dying embers, his tears falling onto me.… I did not want to leave Kor. Above all things, I wanted to stay with him. But a tug like the current of a strong stream pulled at me—I strove against it, and still it carried me away, no matter how hard I struggled. I cried out to Kor, but he could not hear me, and soon I could no longer see him … then all was black, as if I were dreamlessly sleeping.
And then someone was roughly shaking me.
Indignant, I muttered reproach and opened my eyes, blinking in bright daylight. But my indignation left me when I saw Kor, his head drooping over my shoulder as he held me, asleep or swooning, exhausted, the marks of tears on his face. And by my side knelt Tassida, scowling down on me.
“What ails you two?” she barked with that proud lift of her chin that I loved. “Kor!” She gave him a shove to rouse him.
He raised his head as if it were almost too heavy for him to bear. Then I sat up to face him, stretching my arms, feeling as well as I ever had in my life. He stared, his mouth opened wordlessly, and joy lighted his eyes like sunrise over mountaintops. I hugged him.
“Kor, you rascal, you did it!”
“Did what?” demanded Tass.
“He brought me back from Mahela’s grasp! I was nearly dead—”
“Dan,” Kor interrupted, “I did nothing.” He had hold of me by one shoulder, as if I might somehow float away from him.
“You must have! Without knowing, as you held me. I was as good as gone—”
“Perhaps we only thought that.” He was smiling, but he looked abashed. “Perhaps we’re a pair of jackasses, Dan.”
“You certainly look it,” Tass snapped, and she turned away, stabbing kindling into the embers at the heart of our firepit.
“How could we say for a certainty that you were dying? Perhaps you were just about to take a turn for the better.”
“You know as well as I—”
“He was bright-eyed enough when I woke him,” Tass put in, busy with the fire.
I lost patience, lunged up and started ripping at my bindings. “What are you doing?” Kor exclaimed.
The bandages were stiff with old blood. “Get these filthy rags off me,” I raged. In my haste I could not manage the accursed knots tied behind my back. Kor got up and complied, to humor me. And as the swaddlings fell away, I turned to face him.
“Now,” I challenged him, “say you have done nothing.”
He gaped, turning so pale I thought he would faint. For my wound was gone as if it had never been.
“No,” he whispered, swaying where he stood. I went to him to steady him, but once by his side I could not help but embrace him again.
“No!” he declared more loudly, forestalling me. “I am not—who you say I am!”
“Why do you fight it so?” I asked him, astonished. To be Sakeema and bring life and healing to an ailing world—what could be more splendid?
He straightened and met my gaze, his strength somewhat regained. “Dan,” he stated, “I am overjoyed to see you well. But I tell you plainly, put that notion out of your head or I will knock it out.”
Behind me, Tassida laughed. I puffed my cheeks in exasperation.
“You’re tired,” I said to Kor. “Rest. I will bring in meat.” I threw a wadded blanket at him. But when I bent for my arrows
and bow, a dizziness overtook me and I had to brace one hand against the ground to keep from falling on my head. It was Kor who laughed that time, warm and low.
“Healing or no healing, you have not eaten in too long a time, brother.”
“Sit down, both of you,” Tass ordered. “I have a few ends of old meat.”
Strips of bison dried for traveling, she meant. She brought water, then washed stones and put them in the fire for boiling with. She made a three-legged stand nearby, slung a deer gut from it to cook in, squirted water into the gut from a goatskin, and put in the meat.
I sat and watched her, trying to calm the pounding of my heart when her movements brought her near me. Tassida. She was not many men’s dream of womanly beauty, perhaps. Not dainty, she. Limbs long and strong, scarred from hardship and battle, a face somewhat like a comely youth’s, firmer yet more fine. Her clothing was a wanderer’s rough clothing, deerskin leggings, a patched tunic of brown wool. I had loved many women more soft and sweet.… Gazing at Tass, I could not think of their names.
The stones had heated. She moved them from the fire to the cooking water with loops made of green willow.
“Brother?” she inquired when she was done, as if Kor had just spoken.
We lifted our right hands to her, smiling, and showed her our matching marks—all my wounds had been healed except this one that I cherished. Then Kor showed her his sword—stone flashing red in the pommel—and we told her all that had happened since we had seen her last.
After a time she gave us warmed and softened meat to eat. “I am not hungry,” she said abruptly. Her manner was odd, but it did not matter to me. She had always been distant with us, her past a mystery, a fargazing look in her eyes.
I ate and stole glances at her, utterly content, joy of living filling me so that I knew Kor had to feel it as well—I sensed his smile even when I was not seeing it. Even when I was looking at Tassida, her handsome face, the way the light brown lovelocks of her hair stirred in the mountain breeze, the soft sheen of her doeskins. Or at the wide-spaced pines with trunks nearly as orange as flame, the lush grass of the parks between them, or at the horses roaming there, my ill-tempered dun mare, Kor’s yellow Sora, Tassida’s beautiful, grass-eating Calimir. Or at the sky, so close, so blue I could scarcely bear it in my happiness. These were the uplands my people loved to roam, and I could not have chosen a better place to awaken in. My belly was being filled. Who could want for more?
Red deer came out of the distance, appearing like visions to graze at Calimir’s side. And suddenly I felt the pang of an old longing, so old most folk knew it only as legend. There had once been eleven sorts of deer besides the red. Where had they all gone? We were few, we tribesmen, and the Demesne we hunted was vast. We had not eaten them all. Not even a tithe had we eaten.
The red deer sufficed to feed us, but the longing of the spirit went unfulfilled.
I felt Kor’s wry gaze on me, and shrugged, and reached for my arrows and bow. Leaving him and Tass by the fire, I went off to down us a deer for our supper.
Chapter Two
Truly, Kor was weary, after nursing me more nights and days than I have fingers on one hand. I had thought he would be talking with Tass when I returned with a yearling hart, but he lay soundly asleep. Tass and I skinned and butchered the young deer ourselves. It did not surprise me that she was expert. She had been on her own, hunting and warring and carrying on some nameless quest, for years, maybe her lifetime of years, for all I knew. She had told us little, Kor and I.
“You hunt with mercy,” she commented, severing the neck.
I nodded. The spine was broken cleanly by my arrowhead of chipped flint, so that the deer had died within an eyeblink. The Fanged Horse Folk, and even some of my own Red Hart Tribe, said that meat tasted sweeter when it had leaped in fright and pain, but I did not care. Venison downed by my bow might be cooked the longer, to my way of thinking, for the red deer were like tribesfolk to me, and I wanted never to make them suffer. I had practiced long to learn the skill of killing them instantly.
“If I cannot slay with the single bolt,” I said, “I do not shoot.”
“You should have so much mercy on Kor,” said Tass.
“What do you mean?” I demanded, though I knew well enough.
“Calling him Sakeema.”
I glowered at her. “Can you say it is not true?” I argued, lowering my voice so as not to awaken him.
“I hope it is true.” Dark fire in her voice, for no one knew more of the legendary past than Tass. She traveled plains and mountains and seacoast in search of it. With a jolt I realized that her longing was perhaps greater than my own.
“Why does he deny it?” I muttered.
“You know what they did to Sakeema, Dan.”
Ai, yes. Torments—and Kor had already withstood torments enough for any ten heroes. Shamed, I kept silence.
“Also, you know Kor, that he does not speak untruth or lack for courage. But you cannot know Sakeema for certain. So stop badgering Korridun. You are hurting him.”
I retorted the more sharply because she spoke truth. “You dare speak of hurting Kor?” I whispered furiously. “You, who spurned his proffered pledge?”
I should have known those waters were too deep for me. She looked me levelly in my eyes. All powers, but she was strange and beautiful, her dark-browed face as startling as a dream.
“I spurned him for your sake,” she said, “and if you should be fool enough to ask me the same, I would spurn you for his.”
I stood up, reeling a little as if I had been struck, and took the offal away upon the deer hide to feed it to the fanged mares up on the slope. And there I stayed watching them, though their rendings made no very pleasant sight.
“Bring mushrooms for stew!” Tass shouted up the mountainside at me, and her shout woke Kor.
I gathered mushrooms and crowberries in a fold of birch bark. By the time I had enough I felt ready to face Tass again. She and Kor scarcely glanced at me when I came back to the fire, for they were quarreling. Or rather, Tass sounded vexed, and I sighed. Our Tassida had been the best of comrades when she was a boy: steady, courageous, ardent in a quiet way. But since we had found her to be a maiden, she seemed always to be on her mettle.
“I can’t get any sense out of her,” Kor appealed to me. “She says she just happened to find us here.”
“It is true!” Tass dumped mushrooms and berries into the stew, stirred it savagely. “Wind of chance pushed me this way. Whatever urgings govern me, I always obey them.”
Kor quirked his eyebrows at me, as if to say, See? But I was in no fit mood to dispute with her, and kept silence. She crouched with the stirring paddle in her hand, her lips slightly parted—they were of the shape of a noble bow, double bent. My mistake, to notice those lips. I felt a warm tide rising in me and battled it, ashamed, knowing Kor would feel both the warmth and the shame. No matter. He knew far worse of me.
“And you, Korridun King,” Tass added more quietly after a moment, “you will be bound homeward now?”
“No. I mean, yes, but only for a little while.” How his head lifted at the mention of his home along the western sea.
“Only for a little while? But where, then?”
“To go with Dannoc, to find his father.”
It took the best wits of both of us to explain to her that Tyonoc had been gone for years, only the shell of his body left, possessed by a devourer that made him, seemingly, into a monster. When, maddened beyond bearing at last, I had struck with my sword, the devourer had rippled out of the wound and flown away. Tyonoc’s body had crumpled like a husk, then disappeared.
“His self and his body are together again, somewhere,” I declared, “and I must find him!”
Tass put down the spoon she had been holding. “Dan,” she said with an odd gentleness that cut worse than wrath, “you are a blockhead.”
“So I have often been told,” I said stiffly.
“And justly so. If—”
Whatever she meant to say, I smothered it in noise. “You,” I cried, “who venture alone to the arid plains in search of—nothing, mere smoke puffs, imaginings, you call me blockhead? My father is real!”
I had come close to truth, for I saw her startle as the lash stung. “And you are besotted with him,” she retorted. “You have been besotted with him since I have known you.”
“It is called love,” Kor put in mildly. “Have you a father whose name you know, Tass?”
The soft-spoken question, with not even a tinge of wrath or self will in it, served to stop us both at full career. The look on Tassida’s face smote me. Then for the first time she answered us a question about herself.
“No,” she said briefly. “I am sorry, Dan. All that I meant to say is, how can you tell me he is—whole, somewhere? When the devourers try to take you, it is as if you are nothing. You no longer exist.”
So she knew that much. And the doubt she raised was one I had not wanted to face. I no longer felt like shouting at her.
“If it is so for my father,” I said heavily, “then we will find it out.”
Silence.
“There is my mother, also,” I said after a while.
“And my mother the king,” Kor said, his voice low, “and my father, who followed her.”
“And where do you expect to find them all?” Tassida asked.
“Westward,” said Kor, the single word.
The vast water that lay beyond his headland home. The sea from which the devourers came, to which they returned.
“The ocean?”
Kor nodded. “Mahela’s realm is reputed to lie beneath the waves.”
“Would you two think with your minds instead of your hind ends?” Tassida’s voice rose. “How do you propose to reach Mahela’s realm?”
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