“Steady,” said Tass quietly. She slid down from Calimir, then came and grasped Talu by the nose and forelock, as if I had been waiting for her, as if I needed her help with the mare—I needed her help indeed, but not for that. Her eyes met mine with understanding. The strength in her, when she was needed—how could she not know herself for a healer? I got off Talu and hobbled her, and quelled my heartache as I did so, then strode to greet my people, and they crowded around me, and I lifted Tyee’s daughter, the little sunnyhead, high in the air while the other children climbed my back and legs as if I were a tree.
Too few of the little ones, their hair flying feathersoft. And soon Mahela intended to take them all.
Tass and I stayed with my people only for the midday meal, for we were in haste, and small need to explain to them why. They fed us biscuit root and berries, for it was the height of the berrying season, and as we ate they packed us provision to take along. A child ran and netted fry for Talu to eat raw. A hobbling old man spread a riding pelt on her back, strapped it on, brought a bisonhide headstall for me to put on her—he would not risk her fangs, for he had better sense than I. Some of the striplings, hunting about in Tyee’s bundles, found me brown buckskin leggings and a pair of boots large enough to nearly fit me. I put the things on gratefully, for wool chafed the insides of my thighs where they pressed against Talu’s bony ribs.
“Gentle journey, Dannoc.”
Young, piping voices. Old, quavering voices, nearly as high as those of the children. A baby’s wail. Farewells echoed after me as I rode away.
“Be wicked, Dannoc! Slay ten tens of Pajlat’s minions for me!” That was one of the nursing mothers, a fierce and canny fighter who doubtless wished she were at the fray.
“Make haste, Dannoc, give Pajlat our greeting!” Laughter at that, quickly stilled.
“And tell Korridun we remember him. We of the Red Hart do not forget our friends.”
If Kor yet lived. Ache in me again, to think that he might have died believing that I had forgotten him—no. It was an unworthy thought.
“Courage, Dannoc! Tell Tyee, courage! It is not so bad a thing to die. Only mountains last forever.”
Words, all the fumbling words that could not quite say what was meant.
“Dannoc.” It was a small girl-child, perhaps one of my own, her gaze deep as sky. “Come back, then, after it is over.”
I rode away with set jaw. By whatever god yet lived, I would have courage for my people’s sake.
“Come back, Sakeema, we love you,” said Tass softly by my side, her voice half hushed, half mocking.
We rode in silence, for the most part. I managed better with Talu since I had proper gear, and I galloped and loped her wherever the terrain would allow, to take some of the sourness out of her. Calimir cantered along willingly, feeling lightened no doubt since my body no longer burdened his hips. By dark we were in the foothills and following the Blackstone Path.
At dawn, awakening, I found Tassida carefully dividing our food between my bag of deerskin and hers of woven linden. Then I stood up, my mouth suddenly too dry to speak, and went to her, knowing but not wanting to know what this might mean.
“I will take a circuit southward, to the pool of vision,” she told me without looking up from her doling out of biscuit-root bread. “I wish to see with my own eyes this sunstuff panel that shows the tree, the pomegranate.”
“Tass,” I protested, “why? I have told you everything there is to tell of it.”
She scowled at me in annoyance. “Do you never think you might not have seen all?”
I swallowed and tried again. “Tass. Please. We need to come together, with all haste, to Seal Hold.”
“Do you not yet know Calimir’s speed?” She stood up, taking her bag of provision to the gelding who already stood in his gear and waiting. “Go to Kor. Be on your way with good heart. Go at the best pace of that ramshackle mare of yours. I will rejoin you before you have topped the pass.”
She was boasting. But I took no offense, for it was a thing she had never said before, that she would leave and come back to me.
“Tass,” I said slowly, “I trust your promise.” Even though she had broken it once before—but there had been reason. Even Vallart had failed Chal, reaching the strand at land’s end on the way to the Mountains of Doom. Tass also had reached the limits of her friendship one day, but like Vallart following Chal she had followed me.
Something in my voice had touched her. Loading provision on Calimir, fumbling with rawhide thongs, her hands slowed and stopped. Her eyes met mine.
“I trust you. But all my heart is crying out that we ought not to be apart,” I told her. “There is doom in the air.”
“That is why I must venture this thing!” she blazed at me. “If there is a chance that I can comprehend the secret—”
“Comprehending be damned!” I burst out, though I should have known better, for shouting never did any good, with Tassida. “Reason is Sakeema’s whore. It was reasoning that took me away from Kor, and now she wants to take you away from me.… Tassida, what lies between us is beyond understanding. Do you not feel it?”
“Beyond your understanding, maybe,” she shot back, and she tied the last knot. But the touch of my hand stopped her before she vaulted onto Calimir.
“Tass,” I whispered, “do you not feel it?” That strange, nameless passion.…
She did, I knew she did. But she was afraid, and running away, as always. Nor could I scorn her. I had felt that fear.
And she surprised me. She turned fully to face me.
“I feel—” She swallowed, but her eyes met mine and did not waver. “I feel my love for you, Dan. I must go my own way, but I will come back to you. Truly.”
I could not move, not even to kiss her, or I would have wept, and I had to let her go. What she had just said—it was courage surpassing bravery, coming from her. My gaze clung to her, but my body I managed to still. Only after she was mounted did my hands lift, trembling, toward her, for against all reason I felt I was forever losing her.
She met my stare for a moment longer, lifted a hand that shook as badly as mind, and cantered away. A stride, two, three—
I had to let her go, I had to let her be free, I told myself, but no amount of thinking it could help me. Against all my will, the mindcry was wrung from me, went winging after her. Tass!
Her body jerked as if it had been caught in a noose. Calimir slid to a rearing halt.
“Do not do that!” Tass sounded frightened and furious.
Tassida, my love, my Tass.…
She rode away, and I stood and watched her go.
Chapter Thirteen
After Tassida left, the days that followed, the mere sight of a farewell-summer flower was enough to tighten my throat with unshed tears.
Mine was a peculiar sort of despair, a tender torment. As I traveled my senses were heightened to everything, so that even my skin seemed to feel beauty like the touch of a flensing knife of sharpest blackstone. I saw flowercups where I had never noticed flowers before, on herbs so tiny and humble that I did not know the names of them. I saw every lichen growing on every stone, their delicate fingertip branches reaching, their many subtle colors, white-green and gray-green, puce and pink and muted orange. I saw marvelous colors in the stones themselves, specks and dazzles of sun yellow and sunset purple, hairsbreadth serpentines of black. I saw mosses—odd, that I had never noticed before how many sorts of mosses there were, the airy brown seed stalks of some of them, the dense spiral patterns others made. I felt their pricklesoft touch, and the sunlit touch of yellowing aspen leaves, and the tingling scrape of pine boughs. I smelled resin, I smelled leaf mold in sunlight, I felt every breeze, every shaft of sunlight, I heard the wash of wind, I saw every rainshadow, every hue and slant of light in the sky.
How could it yet be so beautiful, without Sakeema?
For he was gone, like the creatures and their sounds, gone or a blackguard, and I had turned my back on him, and I
hated him for what was happening, the dying within me as well as outside of me. What was the use any longer of dreams, of my foolish notions and my stubborn, aching heart? What was the use of beauty with no creature alive in it but the fanged mare moving between my legs?
And Talu was weakening even before we reached the mountains.
Tassida was right, blast her. Talu’s speed could not match Calimir’s—but only because the gelding ate his fill every night of grass and browse, while for Talu there had been nothing but toads and grubs since we had left the region of beaver waters. Pitiful food for this hulking creature who had been reared on the leavings of bison kills. Small wonder that her speed soon slowed.
“For Kor’s sake, Talu,” I whispered to her as I kicked her into a trot that soon lagged. “For Kor’s sake,” kicking her again, sending her struggling up the steep, twisting slopes of the Blackstone Path. I bit my lip and whispered the words for my own comfort as much as for hers. Indeed, only for Kor’s sake could I have driven her so—even a failing horse was faster than a man on foot in this terrain. The way led all steeply upslope. We had scaled the foothills and reached the mountains’ knees.
I spoke to my wayward lover as if she were there. “Tassida, may Sakeema someday forgive you for this.” Then I remembered with a pang how we were all betrayed by Sakeema. “May I someday forgive you,” I muttered.
Tass … for moments at a time I could sustain a brittle hope that she would rejoin me as she had promised, sustain it for perhaps a quarterday before it shattered into despair. I knew that there was love of me in her—but I knew also her fear of it. She had been furious with fear when she had left me. No matter, or it should not have mattered, for she would come back to me in time, as she had always done before, back to us, to Kor and me—but there might not be time. Time for the three of us, time for the world.
“Mahela might take it all into her maw before you are ready, Tass,” I grumbled as if she could hear me.
Lying wakeful at night, hoping that Talu could paw out a snake or two to eat, I watched the stars as if they might blacken and die in the sky. Riding each day, I anxiously regarded the larches and lindens and the dusty blooms of latesummer flowers as if they also might wither away before my eyes.
I had not seen any devourers of late, nor had my folk, for so they had told me. Nor did I expect to see the demon servants of Mahela. Like Pajlat and his minions, like the ungrateful Otter River Clan, they would be warring on Kor at Seal Hold.
“For Kor’s sake, Talu!” I urged her faster. Days past, I would have galloped a willing pony up these slopes. Talu could only lunge a few strides, then trot.
For Kor’s sake.… Though what I expected to do for him I was not sure, except comfort him with the touch of my hand and die at his side. Was he yet alive? He had to be. I could not believe otherwise. I would have felt my heart die if he had been dead.
Talu was laboring, as always. Perhaps there would be asps for her in the rocks of the scree slopes, only a day or two ahead … but time, there was no time for her to rest and regain her strength. I stopped her a moment, slid off her and ran beside her up the steepening path, ran until my chest ached with panting, and she trailed me at a reluctant trot, her head hanging. There was not even zest enough in her, anymore, for her to threaten me with her fangs.
After a while I walked wearily in front of her.
Coming to Kor, after all, no faster than a footpace.… Shadows lengthened, my head hung like the mare’s and I could not speed my steps for despair. Talu and I plodded through the dusk, and from time to time, hunter and warrior that I was trained to be, I raised my head to look about me, though truly I had small thought for any danger less than the world’s death. The Cragsmen were all off warring at Pajlat’s side, and Ytan with them, or so I expected—
Flicker of movement on the trail ahead, just around a turn. A brown form, standing.
It was a deer.
Red Hart born as I was, I had my bow in my hand and the arrow nocked to the string before it had more than raised its great, questing ears. A fool’s thought had once been mine, that I would no longer kill the creatures of Sakeema, but that had been in a less desperate time. Before me stood meat, to save my mount’s life in most dire need—
The deer’s great eyes met mine. For a heartbeat longer it would stand, gazing at me, before it leaped away. An easy target—
I could not shoot.
I could not kill the great-eyed creature, not even for Talu’s sake so that she could take me to Kor.
I was not thinking of the deer people, though afterwit tells me it was surely one of them—only a human will could have kept it from the devourers so long. But in the falling darkness I could not see the human gaze of those wide eyes. I knew only that it was warm, beautiful, alive, and my pigheaded heart would not let me kill it, even though I very much wanted to. Slay it, and save Talu, Kor, the world—at the price of a single deer.…
It did not leap away until I had lowered the bow, blinded by tears so that I did not see it go except as a watery blur. Then I turned and flung my arms around Talu’s lanky neck, pressed my face against the coarse hair of her mane and sobbed. She could have buried her fangs in my kidneys and had me for her feasting. But she let her head droop until it rested against me instead, and all I could do for her was weep.
That night, though I knew I should lie down and rest, I could do nothing but pace beneath the waning moon. In widening loops and circles around my campsite I roamed, until at last my wandering took me to a rib of the mountain where I could see out over the pine spires and look at the night and the sky. The still, starlit and moonlit sky, stars thick as frost flowers, hovering like moths just above the treetops, night so beautiful it almost angered me—still, I craved comfort. I lingered there, trying to steady myself, trying to ease myself by breathing deeply of the night—
Waft of smoke on the air. And I had made no fire.
My head came up like that of a questing stag, and I ventured farther out on the rocky spur I could not fully see—where did it end? I did not want to find myself treading on air. Then within the span of a step, quite plainly, I could see the edge of it against fire glow. I lay down for caution’s sake and peered over the lip of the stone. In a fold of the mountain’s flank below me burned a small campfire, and by it, staring into the flames, sat she whom I loved. She, the bearer of the amaranthine jewel.
Tass. A great wave of relief washed through me, leaving me limp and quivering. Even at the distance I knew her, even though her back was turned partly toward me, without seeing sword or horse I knew her merely by her slender shoulders and the firelight on the tawny lovelocks of her hair.
She sat within tongueshot. I could have hailed her across the night. But no one who has been reared a Red Hart shouts without a second thought—it is our nature to move in silence. And I wanted to go to Tass with a lover’s silent tenderness, step close to her before I softly said her name. I came to my knees, ready to creep back and find my way down to her.
And before I could move farther I saw aspen boughs stir beyond her fire, saw myself step before her with a lover’s silent tenderness, saw my ardent smile and the firelight shining on my fair, unbound hair.
“Dan!” Tass cried gladly, rising to meet me.
It was Ytan.
His buckskin leggings, lappet, boots, much like mine in wan moonlight and dim, flickering firelight. He had unbraided his hair so that it hung loose like mine. The cutthroat, he must have been spying on me—he even wore a long leather scabbard like mine, as if for a sword. There were small differences—the marks braiding had put in his hair, the rims of his ears beneath it, not notched like mine. But it was unlikely, in the starlit night, that Tass would notice them, or notice the wooden haft of his stone knife riding in the long sheath.
“Have you come no farther than this?” Tass was saying. “I thought you would be a day’s hard riding farther on at least, perhaps two.”
By way of reply he reached out, drew her forcefully to him a
nd kissed her. Nor did she resist.
A shout would have alerted him as well as her. But indeed, I was not thinking so clearly. It seemed to me that already I saw her at the point of his knife of jagged flint, mutilated, and the anguish in my heart and mind welled up and cried out to her while my mouth was still dry and frozen with horror. The mindcry was no more than a single word, her name.
Tass!
Instantly she stiffened, flung back her head and hurled herself away from him with a suddenness that caught him utterly by surprise, or she would not have been able to escape him. His fingers furrowed her arms, clutching at her to keep her, but to no avail. Tass was strong when she was enraged. She pulled away and stepped back to give herself room for her fury.
“No! You—you brigand, stay out of my mind! It is like—no better than devourers, than Pajlat’s raiders—”
He fully intended to rape her body, not her mind. “Tass,” I shouted aloud, “beware! It is Ytan!”
She gasped, and Marantha’s hilt leaped to her hand. Ytan was coming at her with his hunting knife drawn. I had alerted him, too, as I had not wanted to do, calling aloud, and he had the advantage over Tass, knowing himself to be her enemy before she could fully comprehend it of him. But he had not reckoned with Marantha’s quickness. The sword flared, a storm-white burst that blinded him, and struck, and only his lifted knife saved him—the stone blade broke off to the hilt in his hand. The next blow would slay him—
He did not await it, but leaped away and fled down-slope, speedily gone between the trees, and Tass did not pursue him, for she was badly shaken. Even at the distance I could see that she could barely stand. Though I could not understand how it had happened, she seemed to be hurt.
“Steady, Tass,” I called to her. “I am coming.” Her pale face had so filled me with fear for her that I swung myself over the lip of the outcropping where I stood, not able to see what lay below, searching blindly for a hold with my feet.
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