Godbond

by Nancy Springer

  I gave her a smile of greeting, and was glad that I remembered her name at once. Powers be praised, I had not forgotten these my people no matter how much had happened since I had seen them last. She was Karu, a proud warrior and the flower of the tribe. Many were the young men who would have put their hands in fire if it could have earned them the gaze she was giving me now. Glance I should answer, for I knew she did not offer herself lightly.…

  I looked away, looked down at the ashes near my feet, and in a moment Karu came and took the infant from Tyee, bearing the baby away somewhere, perhaps to another woman to be fed at the breast. The doorflap dropped behind her, and there was a small silence.

  “Well,” said Tyee wryly, “now I know for certain that the world is coming to an end, when Dannoc refuses a virginal maiden.”

  And when Dannoc ate no meat, though neither of us said it. “And when the Red Hart have taken to eating fish,” I retorted. I knew they had, for I had seen the offal piled outside the camp. Most likely Talu was munching the stinking bones at this moment.

  “No joke, my brother. Is it not true that the world is ending?” Though he had said that it was, too often he had said it. I knew then that hope still moved in him despite all his dark thoughts, stubborn as a heartbeat, hurting him worse than his grief.

  I knew how hope hurt, and kept silence.

  “There are those among my counselors who think that we can live like this,” Tyee said, “netting fish in the beaver ponds, eating wild carrot and biscuit root and the hearts of the bulrushes. But without the beavers to tend the ponds, without the birds to spread the berry seeds and eat the midges, without the deer, how long can it last? A turning of the seasons, perhaps two.”

  “Likely Mahela will not let it last even so long,” I said. “She will grow greedy for the flowers, next.”

  Tyee looked at me as if he did not entirely understand me, but pursued his own thoughts. “Biscuit root is good food to put by for the winter,” he argued, as his counselors must have argued with him. “There is black rice, and groundnut, and cherries can be dried. Fish can be dried like meat. But without the creatures.… Dan, am I wrong to feel doomed? They tell me my thinking is colored by despair.”

  He sat hunched, his long braids swinging in front of his shoulders, the slate-blue peregrine feathers of a king tied to the ends. His braids were the color of dead grass in winter. The feathers, I saw suddenly, had grown tattered and old. It had been too long since a peregrine had lived to give new ones.

  “You are one who has the heart to grieve,” I said in a low voice.

  Tyee sat up straight, looked at me sharply. “Dan, why are you not with Korridun?” he demanded once again. “What has happened since I saw you last? You are—more than thin and starved, like the rest of us. You look as if you have been to hell and back.”

  I said, “I have.”

  He gazed at me.

  I told him, “The world is ending, as you have said. I must find Sakeema and awaken him before it is too late.”

  My brother stared at me for the span of several breaths without letting his face move. I could not tell what he was thinking, but although he had not stirred I felt as if he had edged away from me. “You have always been like that,” he muttered finally. “All your days, speaking of Sakeema as if he lived.”

  I shouted, perhaps too loudly because of my own doubts, newborn, faintly stirring. “But he is alive! As alive as I am!”

  “How do you know? Have you seen him? Has he touched your hand in greeting?”

  There had been visions so fire-true, it was as if he had.

  But many people had visions. My visions would not convince Tyee. Or even me, any longer.… “How do you know anything is true, when you cannot see it?” I retorted. “How do you know the air you breathe?”

  “I have seen the wind stir the trees. But I have seen no such stirring of Sakeema.”

  “How can you say that? A white lily floating on the water, not Sakeema? I see his traces everywhere.” Or at least, so I always had seen my god.… A thing I had never told anyone, that I seemed to see Sakeema’s trail wherever I went, in the mountains, the sky, the hollow of my own hand. Before my inner eye as I rode floated the face I could not remember, seen like the echo of a ghostly touch, like the faint scent of a forgotten song on the wind. I had never told anyone, not even Kor—perhaps there had been no need to tell Kor. But this was my brother Tyee.

  “I have told you I have searched,” Tyee said starkly. “I have sent my spirit beyond the stars, and there was no god there. Nowhere. Nothing but emptiness.”

  “He is here, then! Somewhere. Our father has told me that he is alive in the world somewhere.”

  Tyee said, “It is nothing new that you are a dreamer.” A bitter love in his voice. “This quest of yours, it is nothing new. All your life, you have been seeking Sakeema.”

  And I realized with a small shock that he was right. I had looked for the god in my father, in Korridun, in dreams and in Mahela’s realm. I could only hope that it made more sense, now, to look in a visionary pool and an empty cave. Swallowing, I nodded. “There is truth in you,” I admitted.

  “Truth enough to know that it is folly. You are off chasing a dream when you should be with Korridun.”

  That hurt so badly that for a moment I could not move or speak. Then I shouted at Tyee, “How do you know where I should or should not be? How do you know anything if you do not dream! How do you know Leotie loved you?”

  The pain on his face at the mention of her name drove me to my feet and out of the tent before either of us could say more angry words.

  There was an uproar outside. Someone had heard my voice, or Karu had spread the news that I was there. As soon as I lifted the entry flap and they could see my face there was an outcry, half joy, half like the clamor of a colt taken away from its dam for weaning. And as soon as I had stepped clear of the tent the entire kindred of them, elders, warriors and children, rushed me to embrace me.

  “Dannoc! You have come back to us!”

  “Dan, we have missed you so! Things will be better now that you are back!”

  “We will braid your hair for you again, Dannoc! Ai, but it is good to see you!”

  And the little sunny-haired children, some of them perhaps mine, clustered around my knees and gazed up at me large-eyed, as if I were a hero stepping out of legend to see them. I swung a few of them up by each arm, and still they stared solemnly.

  I tried to tell my people that I had come back to be with them only for a short while. But they were not hearing me—it is odd and marvelous, how folk will not hear that which they do not wish to hear, no matter how plainly one’s mouth forms the words. And I felt weary because something lay wrong between me and Tyee. So I said no more for the time. I let them talk, and I listened. There was much to be listened to, news of births and deaths and lovers’ pledgings, and journeyings in search of game. Much talk of the search for the red deer.

  “Our arrows, our bows, they are useless now, for nothing stirs on land that is larger than a frog. They are quaint keepsakes, good only for show and ceremony, like the elk antlers I once wore on my head.”

  Antler crown that had made him a king. It was Tyee, standing beside me, his hand resting lightly on my shoulder. I turned to him. His blue eyes, clouded by the quarrel, like mine.

  “Tyee, I am sorry.”

  “Hush,” he told me softly. “We’ll talk later.”

  Like a begging dog I wandered from cooking fire to cooking fire, and my people feasted me throughout the day. They gave me cress and amaranth, and fish, and a sort of bread made of biscuit-root meal, very good and filling, but after a while my heart felt so full of love and grief that I could scarcely eat. At every firepit I saw the small deer carved in wood, and often a man or woman sat carving another with hands now practiced at what must once have been a strange art. As if each one of them were a shaman, seeking to bring back the creatures by this magic—but no. I saw nothing in their faces but wistfulness. The sh
aping of the small wooden creatures was but a wanhope pastime to hunters now idle.

  “Dannoc! Come, sit, eat! We have eels, here.”

  Which a year before would have been scorned, by me and all the others. But I ate, and the food tasted not too foul, not with my people looking on.

  “Dannoc. When you left us last, you laid before us a—an undertaking.…” They were hesitant to speak of it. A strange quest it had seemed to them at the time, and no less strange now.

  So I gave account to them, of how Kor and I had traveled to the Mountains of Doom, Mahela’s undersea realm of the captive dead, which she called Tincherel, “the haven.” She had a twisted way of seeing, Mahela. I had spoken with Tyonoc there, and failed to bring him back with me, but Kor and I had learned to know the glutton goddess, our enemy. Kor had learned to know her all too well.… And I told my people what my quest now was, no less uncanny than the last one. They sat silently and listened to me, and said little afterward, for none of them wished to call me fool, but neither would they speak to the urgency of our need for Sakeema. To do so would have been to admit the desperation of our plight. The world’s plight. And of them all, only Tyee had that honesty.

  And I asked them to tell me all they knew of Sakeema, where the Otter said he lay and slept, what the Fanged Horse Folk deemed of him. And they told me that the Otter said he had floated down the river in a spruce-root basket, and the salmon had taken him and borne him out to sea. He would come back with the salmon some day, the Otter said. It was a saying of no use to me. And what tale the Fanged Horse told of the god, my folk knew no better than I.

  Nightfall neared. Embers glowed in the dusk. Tyee came up to me, his baby daughter nestled on his shoulder in a blanket of the Herders’ softest wool.

  “She has had her milk,” he said, “and now I must walk her asleep. Come with me?”

  Not knowing what to say, I walked along in silence at his side. But Tyee did not lack courage to speak.

  “They like you better than they do me,” he remarked when we were out of earshot of his folk. He had been among the listening crowd, my brother Tyee. “Better than anyone. They very nearly worship you.”

  I shot a surprised look at him in the half light. His face looked calm, almost serene, and there had been no hint of self-pity in his voice. Tyee had a strong mind, as strong and hard as the lean muscle and bone of his body. At one time I had thought him a weakling, but no longer. He had earned kingship, and kingship had changed him. I did not deny what he had said, though I very much wanted to, for I would not insult him with lies.

  “Even Leotie liked you better,” he added in the same clean tone, “for all that she chose me.”

  “Tyee,” I whispered, stunned, “forgive me for coming here. I will go away.”

  “No, stay. Come more often. You are my brother.” He gave me a soft glance. Yet his voice had gone dark when he added, “None of it matters.”

  “But it does. Is that why you wish me to go back to Kor, then?”

  “Dan, my brother, think better of me!” For the first time he sounded less than calm. “I am comforted to see you, I wish you could always be by me. What I have said, truly, none of it matters. We are dry leaves in a bitter wind. This little one will not live to learn her own name.”

  He stroked and patted the infant in his arms. We walked in hemlock shade. Nor, again, could I deny what he had said, for a cold doubt was growing in me whether Sakeema could be found by the way I had devised.

  “I said you should be with Korridun because you belong at his side,” Tyee told me. “All sense shows it. I have never seen two such comrades as you.”

  “Tyee, nothing less than—than the world’s peril could have taken me from him.” For all that I tried to match his quiet courage, my voice shook. “My heart longs for him always, even in my sleep. I ache for him as much as I do for Tassida, and I see her face in my dreams.”

  My brother looked at me in surprise, for Kor had been courting Tassida when Tyee had known them both. But Tyee was a king, with a king’s wit, and in a moment he nodded as if he had understood something.

  I said, “Yet, as much as I long for either of them, that much I long for Sakeema. I hunger for him more than I hunger for meat. Tyee, I am pulled apart like a flower in the hands of a child. It is as if the nameless god’s halfwitted brother has hold of me, trying to make me be in three places at once. But all sense tells me that there is no hope for any of us unless I find Sakeema.”

  “By my braids, I had forgotten that old tale of the halfwit who makes all the mischief!” Tyee sounded grimly amused. “He holds us all in his hands right now, for certain. I find it far easier to believe in him at this time than in Sakeema.” His voice went bleak. “Dan, as I love you—go back to Korridun.”

  Something stark in his voice kept me from being angry at him. “For what purpose?” I asked softly. “That we should die together? I have told him I will not give up hope while the sun yet stands in the sky.”

  “He may die sooner than the rest of us,” said Tyee. “Pajlat has gone to take council with Izu, and they have dipped their knives in wine.”

  The Fanged Horse Folk and the Otter River Clan would attack Kor together, he meant. My stomach clenched at the news, though it was no more than I had already surmised. No more than I had known when I left. No more than Kor had known when he had bid me a gentle farewell.

  “I would be but one more warrior at Kor’s side. Better that you and the Red Hart Tribe should go to his aid, Tyee,” I challenged.

  He looked away from me, and we walked in silence beneath a cloud-shadowed moon. Full dark had fallen. The baby slept on my brother’s shoulder.

  “I will,” said Tyee quietly after a long silence.

  I turned my head to stare, for the Red Hart are not much in the custom of seeking out war.

  “I will,” he said softly but fiercely, staring back at me. “I will lead my people to Seal Hold and we will fight at Korridun’s side. It will be a better way for us to die than by waiting here.”

  “It might not be to die. Kor’s Hold is deep and strong, with springs of fresh water. And if his people have gathered seaweed you will not starve. All he needs is numbers.” A fool’s hope was growing in me. “Tyee, if you mean it … I am comforted that you will be by him.”

  Dark merriment got the better of him, and he laughed out loud into the night, making the infant on his shoulder stir and wail. “I do not mean it to comfort you,” he declared amid laughter. “I mean it to shame you into doing the same.”

  “Think better, then.” There was that between Kor and me which did not permit shame. “Still I must seek Sakeema.”

  Tyee sobered, calmed his baby daughter, squatted down in a hunter’s crouch beside a beaver-felled birch, now rotting, for the beaver were gone. I sat on damp ground, facing him. Pond water lapped beyond us, wraith-white in moonlight, full of echoes of what had once been.

  “Is there no doubt in you, Dan?” Tyee asked softly, in a sort of wonder, or plea.

  I would not yet admit to doubt. “Is there nothing you believe in?” I asked him.

  “Ay. And that is the hellish thing.” He looked away from me, out over the level water that rippled in the moonlight. His voice was very low. “There is a feeling in me that whispers and niggles, insistent beyond all reason, about you and Kor. That all might yet be well if you were together.”

  Moonlight slanting off the pond’s surface made watery shadows on his still face, like the ghosts of tears. And I seemed to feel a spear nudge its way into my heart.

  “And Tassida,” said Tyee in a voice barely above a breath. “That strange, scornful, wandering warrior of yours. There is a prickling in me when I think of her.”

  That did not smite me, for who could see Tassida and not remember her with awe? Or Kor. He had died and come to life again, and Tyee had seen it all. I found my voice.

  “Tyee. If there is truth in you, tell me of Sakeema.”

  “The god who is dead?” he said harshly, thou
gh not to argue with me. He was done with arguing, and spoke merely the truth as he saw it.

  “Tyee,” I urged.

  He looked at the ground, and the moonshadows flickered on his face. “Folk say the Herders have wisdom,” he told me finally. The saying was a gift he gave me against his will, and I touched his hand in thanks.

  In the early morning, before many folk were about to protest, I left the Red Hart yet again, bound toward the Herder village beyond the thunder cones. The last one of my people I saw was Karu, standing in the meadow mists, plucking the petals from a starflower. She gave me a single glance as I rode by, and I knew without hearing them the timeworn words that she chanted.

  Pluck me one, pluck me two.

  Will you love me if I love you?

  Pluck me two, pluck me three.

  Sakeema, please come back to me.

  Chapter Seven

  It was not Talu I rode. I had left her behind to rest and fatten herself upon the fish offal my people threw daily on their midden heaps. She could not have much longer survived the journey with little on which to feed her ugly bulk but grubs and lizards and sometimes snakes. Fanged monstrosity, she had not even raised her bony head from her greedy feeding to watch me go. Scant gratitude in her, and I felt sure I had saved her life—for a time—by leaving her.

  I rode a curly-haired pony, Tyee’s gift. A stallion, dun of color, as were all horses I knew except Tassida’s Calimir, and blue-eyed, as were the pride of my people’s horses, and tough enough to travel far, even on scant forage. But like all such grass-eating ponies it was round, so that I felt as if I were sitting on an overlarge mushroom, and the long spirals of its fur made it feel soft, too soft to suit me now that I was accustomed to Talu’s hard, gaunt frame. I admitted to myself that I did not miss her high, jutting withers bruising my groin. The curly-haired stallion was shorter of leg than she, and I hoped I would not miss her warlike stride.

  Bound eastward, I traveled more northward than eastward for the time, heading toward the Traders’ Trail, which lay on the skirts of the Red Hart Demesne. It would take me around the black barrier of the thunder cones to the dry, vast plains where the Herders gazed their six-horned sheep. It also took me to the reaches of the Steppes where the Fanged Horse raiders roamed, a circumstance that did not much please me. But Pajlat’s minions were hosting somewhere westward, to the best of Tyee’s knowledge, in order to attack Kor. None of them were likely to be on hand to trouble me.