Godbond

by Nancy Springer

  “Prince Chal cannot answer you.”

  I saw my father’s shade drifting in the warm wind that summerlong blew down the landward side of the mountains, drifting nearly within my reach, had I cared to reach. His wraith, faintly aglow and greenly wavering in the night, as if seen through the darkened waters of Mahela’s hell.

  “She punished you,” I muttered, staring at him. “The old bitch. Stinking carrion bird.” Mahela had indeed taken her revenge on him and on Kor’s mother, Kela, after Kor and I had escaped.

  “So I am unbodied. But I am a warrior again, Dan, and no worm.” Tyonoc’s voice came to me clear and strong, and his face wore the fierce warmth of a king. Though he roamed with the restless dead, yet in a way he was my father again as I remembered him, and like a stripling I turned to him with my trouble. I sank to my knees, facing him. “Is Korridun well?” I blurted.

  “How would I know? But he is not numbered among the dead.” A dark significance came into his voice. “No more than Sakeema is.”

  I cared less for Sakeema than for my bond brother, at that moment. “Father, please,” I begged, “you shades, you travel like birds. Go, bring me news of Kor.”

  “Plague take it, have I reared this oaf for nothing?” My father sounded far less patient than he had of old. “Dannoc, heed what I have said! I tell you quite surely, Sakeema is alive, somewhere! Have you forgotten your quest?”

  I gave him no answer, but looked at the ground, and when I looked up again, he was gone, no more than a mote in the wind. And though I listened long, I did not hear his voice again, and I did not know if he would do as I had asked.

  I turned back to the tarn. Once again the shadow-stars drifted on its chill surface. I sat and watched them with no expectation, and sometimes, very weary, I dozed. The night slowly passed.

  “Where is Sakeema?” I softly asked the pool of vision in the darkness before daybreak, but there was no answer.

  Chapter Five

  Watching from the lookout at sunrise, I saw the smokes coming up from the cooking fires of my fair-haired, wandering people—it could be no other people than my kindred of the Red Hart Tribe. Like wisps of horsehair shining in the slantwise light, the smokes rose far off to the east and somewhat southward, in the region of beaver waters.

  I readied Talu, mounted her and traveled to take council with my brother Tyee.

  I had thought, until that sunrise, that I would travel in haste to the thunder cones and search their skirts for the blackstone cave where the Herders believed Sakeema had been taken by his foster brothers, the wolves. But perhaps Tyee knew more nearly than I where it might be. Perhaps he knew the legends of the Otter and the Fanged Horse Folk regarding the place where Sakeema lay and slept, he or one of my folk.

  Better truth was, I had felt my soul yearn at the sight of those smokes.

  Urgently I journeyed, sometimes late into the night under the light of the waxing moon, and every day’s riding tugged at my heart.

  It was perhaps the last time I would see this place, if Mahela had her way. And I seemed to know it more clearly, more sweetly, more deeply than ever before. As if always halfway into vigil I rode, every sense heightened, seeing every young unfurling leaf on each red-barked cherry tree, smelling each crescent of warm loam turned up by Talu’s hooves, feeling sunlight.… This was my homeland, which I had roamed all my life until I had gone to Kor, and the beauty of it was like no other beauty to me, the shaggy hemlocks and the small winding streams, the meadows yellow with mallow flowers—but for all my hearkening, I rode it in silence. No birds sang at dawn. No grouse whurred away from my passing, or hawks shrilled overhead. No doves called. No coneys rustled in the laurel, or squirrels in the lindens. No deer leaped.

  I did not utterly starve, for forage was somewhat easier to find in the lush upland valleys of the Red Hart Demesne that it had been in the mountains. There were groundnut and late sparrowgrass, and mushrooms like white moons in the grass. But I felt forever starved, hunger as much of soul as of body. Talu starved worse than I, kicked apart rotten logs, ate the grubs and worms. She grew thin, and I took to walking to spare her when our pace was slow, when the brush was dense.

  The fifth day after I had left the pool of vision, as I struggled through one such thicket with my fanged mare at my side, something scuttled out of the cover at my feet, clucking. “Ridge chicken,” I muttered, standing dumbfounded because I had not seen a living wild creature in so long. And before I could think my mouth began to water at the thought of the roasted flesh. Ridge chickens made easy hunting, so stupid that a child could walk up to them and knock them on the head. The one I had flushed had stopped at a small distance. There it stood, complaining through its beak. As if of its own accord my hand drew the stone hunting knife from its leather sheath at my belt. I let go of Talu’s reins, prepared to grasp and kill.

  But my heart stopped my hands. The dimwitted, rackety creature, probably it lived only because not even gluttonous Mahela wanted it, as she seemed not to want the asps and worms. But it was a creature of Sakeema even so. One of the few remaining. I could not kill it. With a fierce, joyous resolve I knew that I would never eat flesh again, and I stood rapt, watching its small eyes amid their pink wrinkles of wattle, the fussy stirrings of its dust-colored feathers—

  And Talu, who had grown tired of waiting for me to dispatch the hen and give her her share, pushed past me, shouldering me out of her way and sending me sprawling into a thorn bush. She bore down on the ridge chicken in two strides, bit off its head and devourer it, bones and all. After a moment I swallowed my vexation, got up out of my thorny seat and turned away from watching.

  “Well,” I muttered, kicking at the loam as if I could find myself something tasty there, “better you than I. Pity we can give none to our friend the wolf.”

  Talu walked on with satisfied grunts thereafter, and we made good time that day.

  I came to my people of the Red Hart some few days later, quietly, in the hush of dusk. When I saw the signs of their nearby encampment I left Talu in the brush and made my way afoot, skulking forward as silently as a thief, for I wanted no commotion until I had had a chance to greet Tyee. At the time of day he would be in his tent, I thought. But I was wrong.

  I blinked in astonishment, for ahead of me blazed a great fire. It was hardly the season for soulfires, at the wrong end of the year, in fact, but there one burned, flames swaying higher than the heads of those gathered around it. All the tribe, even to the infants, was seated in a wide circle there. Firelight shone off the unbound, sun-colored hair of children and the yellow braids of the others, the warriors, the matrons, and the bone-white, thinning hair of the elders.

  I stopped in the shadows of the nearest aspen grove, watching.

  The shaman was dancing. A raven mask covered his hair and face. In a spearhead-shaped cloak of deerskin he danced, circling the blaze, and his fringes hung so long they seemed to spring from the ground, wavering like fire. To me he was a black, swaying flame of a man seen against the flames that danced and swayed much as he did. He passed his hands through the fire to show that he possessed power. He reached into the blaze, pulled out coals and held them up for his people to see. With his hands he raked out coals in plenty, like a marmot raking out a fiery burrow, and then he stood upright and walked on them with his bare feet. His head and shoulders had been thrust into the fire. I could not believe what I was seeing. This was a new shaman, a young and potent shaman, not the old graybraid I remembered. He danced again. Others should have been dancing with him, the king, the warriors, but no one did.

  I scanned the tribe, seeking Tyee, but could not find him amid the crowd of braided heads in flickering firelight—perhaps he sat on the other side of the fire from me. My gaze soon turned back to the shaman. This man, whoever he was, had taken upon himself the whole burden of his people’s petition. The tribe sat in utter silence, so great a silence that even at the distance I could hear the low-voiced singing of the fire.

  Then I noticed th
e horse, nearly out of my sight in the shadows beyond the great fire, and a chill crawled into the back of my neck and found its way down my spine. Not since I was a child and the tribe beset by smallpox had a horse been sacrificed. But there it stood, firelight turning its dun flanks sunstuff-bright, a great-eyed, high-headed yearling that must have been the tribe’s pride. The white feathers of the victim glimmered in its mane and tail.

  As I watched, a child led the horse forward. Another brought the shaman the blackstone knife with handle of carved human bone, a knife used only for this. Then both children backed away.

  The shaman struck the victim with mercy, straight and hard to the throat, and bled the colt into the fire, and himself heaved in the body—he was great in power, his must have been the strength of four men! And the signs were good, for the flames took the flesh eagerly.

  Again the shaman took up the dance, circling the flames, the long fringes of his cloak and leggings fluttering and tossing like a deer lure. This was the dance that needed no music but the rhythms of life itself, quickened breathing, heart’s beating, ever-faster drumming of feet. More strongly, more wildly every heartbeat he danced, breath-span by breathspan more vehement, until he was whirling like a tempest as he circled the fire, his fringed cloak flying higher than his head, higher than the flames. And then, spinning, he toppled and fell so that he lay nearly in the fire, writhing as the trance took him. And then he lay as still as if he were dead.

  Very silent, very sober, some of the elders of the tribe came and pulled him away from the fire, then placed around him many objects, of what sort I could not see at the distance and against the light of flames. Some of them they placed in his limp Hands. Then every member of the tribe came forward and placed around him things of like sort, even the smallest children bringing them, even the babes, until the offerings, whatever they were, some no bigger than pebbles, others as large as a man’s fist, made a mass and a circle around the body of the shaman like the circle of the tribe around the fire.

  Which circle the tribe once again took, sitting in their places, utterly silent, waiting. And still I had not seen Tyee.

  I stood in the aspens, watching, waiting, knowing by then where my brother was, wishing him well in his quest—though I did not yet know what quest it was. The fire burned low and ceased its soft singing, but no creature noises eased the silent passing of the night, not even the uncouth voices of frogs.

  The great fire had burned down nearly to embers when at last the shaman stirred and slowly rose. He stood, a black figure against flames no longer, but a lean and shadowed man. Slowly, even more slowly than he had come to his feet, he put up his hands and lifted from his head the carved wooden black-stained raven mask with its lappet of black feathers that covered his hair. For a long moment, as he lifted it, he seemed very tall, very looming. A gasp and a whispering went up. Then he took it off, and he was just a man again.

  He was my brother Tyee.

  Once more the king, he looked around at his waiting people, the circle of their offerings and their selves all around him, and his look was bleak.

  “I have failed,” he said.

  Stark silence answered him.

  “I flew high,” he said, “above the paths of sun and moon, above the stars, above sky into beyond. But I could not find the god. Then my strength failed me.”

  Silence was broken by a sullen murmur, but no one spoke out loud for all to hear. Nor did anyone speak to Tyee. His people got up and walked away from him. One of the women handed him something, a bundle of some sort, then turned away like the others. As if stunned or weary, without much talk, they all went to their tents to sleep, for it was very late.

  I stood struggling to center myself, to encompass my anger at the tribe, my Red Hart people: anger because they had received his striving so churlishly. Tyee, my brother, a shaman! And a potent one. He had grown and changed much since I had seen him last. To fly above sky in search of a god—it was a thing seldom heard of, a quest worthy of a master shaman, a hero among shamans. But in those worst of times, the people had no regard for defeated valor, however courageous. They wanted only victory, and their king’s word that all would be well.

  Tyee stood alone, with bent head. Softly I stepped out of my cover and walked toward him.

  Even in heartache he was a king, Tyee, and a warrior, and not easily to be taken unawares. His head snapped up. He swung around to face me. There he stood in the light of the remaining flames, splendid.

  There he stood, cradling an infant in his arms.

  I stopped where I was, at the verge of the firelight, looking at him as if I had never seen him before. He was a shaman, and now—he was a father? I had not known, I had been away from him far too long, too much had changed without my knowing.… He had changed. He had grown very thin, haggard, all bone, taut skin and too-hard muscle, as if he had seen much hardship. And his look as he gazed back at me smote my heart.

  “Dan,” he murmured, surprised, but—why did he not stride forward to greet me with joy? Something heavy in him, something more than the night’s defeat. In his blue eyes, the numb, glazed look of a creature in a deadfall trap, suffering long.

  “My brother!” I went to him and embraced him as best I could without disturbing the baby in his arms. I kissed him on the temple, held his head between my hands so that his eyes met mine. “My brother, what is it? What has hurt you?”

  His eyes narrowed in pain, and he did not speak. The silence of the night all around us gave me the answer.

  She whom I remembered would not have left him alone at such a time.

  My hands dropped away from him, I stepped back, feeling my knees tremble as a weakness took hold of me. I nearly lurched into the fire. “No,” I whispered. “Sakeema, no.”

  “Leotie is dead,” Tyee told me.

  My onetime lover, but his—his life’s love, his lifemate.

  “She died in the birthing of this little one here.”

  It could not be. It could not be. She was all he had in the world.

  “Tyee,” I said, my voice breaking, “I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He spoke with stark calm. “In a way it scarcely matters. We will all be food for Mahela’s maw within a twelvemonth.”

  Ai, his honesty. So it might well be, if my quest failed.

  Something had cracked beneath my clumsy foot. Numbly I looked down, I looked at the objects that had ringed Tyee. All around me, small figures carved of wood, such as shamans often made for the sick. But those were of human form, and the one I had broken was in form of a deer.

  I saw others. Deer, mostly. Standing harts, fawns lying in thicket or suckling at the hinds. But also birds, eagle and partridge and songbirds, hawks with spread wings. And beaver, pika, marten, squirrel. Even the carved figures of foxes. There was a fox lying curled with its brush covering its face. There was a mighty bull bison. There were tens and tens of them, the creature carvings. For months everyone in the tribe must have been making them, and they were very beautiful, some of them, especially the deer. All the animals, all my people’s longings, standing mute by a dying fire.

  I crouched and picked up the hart I had broken, stood erect again and tried to fit the splintered thing together, cradling it in my hands as he cradled the infant in his arms. I did not speak, but my heart cried to Sakeema for the sake of my brother, his babe, all the forlorn world.

  Tyee must have seen something in my face. In the same bleak, hard-muscled way he said, “Call no longer on Sakeema, or on any god. There is no god. I have sought even to the far, dark spaces between the stars. There is no savior. There is nothing.”

  I think it was then, facing his grief, that the change began in me, for I did not gainsay him.

  Chapter Six

  The king’s tent was the largest one, with the emblem of the red hart painted on its deerskins in colors made of red ocher. I knew it of old, and urged my brother there, for he needed to sleep. He was exhausted, and without reason I felt nearly as weary. I sprawled o
n skins like the child I had once been and slept deeply.

  In the hush of earliest daybreak the mewling of Tyee’s infant daughter awoke us. He got up, cradled the baby to his chest and sat cross-legged by the small, cold firepit at the heart of the tent, rocking his body to quiet her. I sat by him.

  “I have seen our father in the air,” I said after a while, “and he tells me that Sakeema lives.”

  Dawn made me say that. But Tyree did not speak to the matter of Sakeema. Instead he said, “You have been speaking with our father? You parleyed with a spirit of the dead, and you are yet alive?”

  Since I myself had been dead for a while in Mahela’s realm, it did not seem so strange to me. I shrugged. With the whole world sinking down into ashes, perhaps the dead were closer to us all than they had ever been before. Or perhaps we were all closer to them.

  “Why should it surprise you?” I asked him. “You, a shaman? Have you forgotten I saw you last night? You were magnificent.”

  “Hunh. For all the good it did.” Something struggled in Tyee’s face, and he turned on me suddenly, thrusting his jaw at me. “Why are you not with Korridun?”

  His tone took me so aback that I did not answer him. He scolded on.

  “Have you no name anymore, that you wear no braids? You hair has grown long enough and half again.”

  Had I no name any longer? My ways were no longer the ways of the Red Hart. Quietly I told him, “I dare say you know why my hair hangs loose.”

  “Are you so much beyond us?” Tyee flared. “Why not call yourself Sakeema and have it done with?”

  “Your grief speaks, my brother,” I said softly. “Let us not quarrel.”

  A quiet, for the span of several breaths.

  “I am sorry, Dan.” He did not look down as he once would have, feeling himself in the wrong, but met my eyes steadily, holding the baby against his shoulder. “Grief, yes, the same grief you know. Not only for Leotie.”

  There was a ripple of light as the doorflap raised, and a young woman slipped in. When she saw me she stood rooted with surprise. “Dannoc!”