“I will abide by my bargain,” I heard Mahela say. She sounded as shaken as I. “Korridun, I need you too badly to do otherwise.”
No sound, then, but the lapping of salt water along the shore. A terrible question echoing in that silence.
Kor! I begged.
“I am going with her, Dan,” he answered me aloud. His voice, very quiet, very gentle. “I am going with her, back to the place she calls Tincherel.”
It might as well have been the end of the world.
For a moment I could not move or speak. It was as if a mountain had fallen on me. Then, with a roar like falling mountains, a murdering madman’s roar of rage and sorrow, I snatched out my sword and rushed at the goddess to kill her. Rage and grief of Dannoc, wrath of Darran and all the strength of godbond were mine. I knew Mahela to be a twisted, unnatural thing, no better than a devourer—why should she have Korridun? Godhead and fate and doom be damned. My face, my skin, my whole body blazed and crackled with lightning fury as I leaped at her.
Whether brave, indifferent, or frozen with fear, Mahela did not move. She stood straight and still in her huddle of dark cloak, awaiting me. But in a single leap Kor was there, between me and her, taking the warrior’s crouch, ready to dart in any direction I might choose to get past him, though he had not touched a weapon. And I knew he would not raise blade against me.
Dan, no! His face as frightened, pale and staring, as it had been that first night I had stormed into his life with drawn sword. As you love me—
I scarcely heard him. I was berserk, and like a bull bison I charged him, knocking him flat when he would not yield to me. Mahela, right in front of me. Sword flashing in air, high-poised above my head. I would strike hard and true—
But it was Tassida I saw before me, Tass embracing the goddess, shielding Mahela’s body with her own. “Dan, no!” she shouted aloud, horror on her lovely face. “You fool, it is my mother!”
And Kor was up again and had a grip on my arms from behind, pulling me back with all his strength.
I broke free of him—no one, not even Kor, could hold me back when I was raving. I tore Tass away from Mahela and flung her to one side. Very still, both fair and dark, the goddess stood before me. I lifted sword to smite.
Darran!
It was Kor, mindspeaking me by my true name. I turned toward him, for I could not do otherwise—and all my wrath pooled into sorrow at the sight of his face. I stood shaking, weak as a starving man, staring at him. In very truth, I was Darran and I could not save him, not even with the sword. He would not let me.
“I am to go with Mahela,” Kor told me, quietly, gently, “and she is to let the dryland be while memory of this time shall last and beyond. Forever. It is a fair treaty.”
“No!” It seemed to me most unfair, for his sake. “Kor, why?” I dropped Alar to the sand, I was pleading with him, or with whatever powers had control of his fate. “All you have ever done is give goodness. Why must it always be you who suffers torment? The—one who keeps vigil, the—victim.…” Memory of all he had done, thought of what he meant to do, harrowed me. I started to weep.
I hid my face, I could not see him, but I felt his touch—he put his hands on my shoulders. “Listen to me, Darran! We are the three stonebearers, you know that. Tass is the healer. You are—seeker, dreamer, but more, you will find out what you are. And I am, always I have been, the—the sacrifice. Of course it is I who must go. It is fitting.”
“Fitting,” I muttered, turning my face away.
This, then, was the ordeal. This was the dark agony of being Darran, to love such a brother and not to be able to save him. Kor himself was the price to be paid for the world’s well-being.
“Dan, look at me!”
Dan, you are making it harder for him! Cease those tears! It was Tass, coming up beside me. I felt rather than saw her scowl.
You do not understand! I flared at her. You do not know that—that chill and deathly place—
I understand well enough that you are hurting him!
Truth in her, blunt and hard, like river stones. And hurting Kor was the one thing I had wanted never to do again. I centered myself, let tears go for a small while. I raised my head, looked into his well-beloved face.
He only looked back at me, silent, his chest heaving as if he had fought a battle. In his sea-dark eyes, a plea. Something I had to do for him before he—before he was gone.… By my side stood Tass. Somewhere behind, Mahela, very still. Around me, the empty world, vast sky, vast sea, shore silent but for the washings of salt water, mountains where no deer ran. I let it all go, let passion go and looked only at Kor, thought only of Kor, what I had to do for him—though I knew he would not ask it of me, he would never ask it of me again.
IF YOU FELT WHAT IS IN ME, he had told me once, IF YOU TRULY FELT ALL THAT IS IN ME, THEN YOU WOULD UNDERSTAND. And I had tried it, that closest of all bonds, and I had come close, but I had fled. I had failed him.
And this would be—my last chance.
Handbond, I mindspoke him.
He comprehended, and for a moment it was as if he could not move. Only his mind moved to touch mine, faltering.
Heartbond.… he thought to me.
Heartbond came first. Yes, my brother, I know.
His right hand left my shoulder, met mine. Fingers met, sword scars met, passed the grip. We did not need it for strength any longer, I noticed. The clasp was more for—for closeness.
Heartbond, handbond. Then mindspeak. But, beyond mindspeak, the mindbond without words.
I ventured.
No longer aware of my body. I was—soul, as if dead, a greenshade flying over the sea, or swimming in it, as shadowgreen as the greendeep, but I was—living, I was Dan, as vast as the sea, as limitless. Yes. That was the aspect that had once so terrified me, being without limit, without edge, a formless, boundless Dan opening into the vastness that was Kor as he opened into me, I could no longer think of him as other, he was a warm sea as vast as sky, welcoming me without a ripple, and what was the use of fear when I was so warmly afloat, gliding, drifting at my ease in Kor … and he in me? All that was in Kor was in me. All that he had ever known, I knew. All that he remembered, so did I. All that he … felt.…
His passions, I felt as my own.
I felt it, but even unbounded as I was I could scarcely encompass it, that surpassing great gift of his to me, to his world, that courage, that … love.…
He loved her. And I had wanted to kill her.
He loved Mahela.
Truly loved her, with a keen-edged, striving love that had been willing to combat her yet loved her none the less, a love as shining as his sword against stormcloud. A love so light and dark, so much a part of him that he himself scarcely knew it yet, but how could I not have known it? He had coupled with Mahela, and being what he was, he was then fated to love her. He was Kor, the master of mercy, the king by the sea.
Kor, within me and of me, like light in the sky, like salt in the sea.
As I accepted self I accepted him, all that he was, all that he felt, all that was in him. And I was willing to stay with him, formless in him, forever. No thought in me of pulling back, as waves wash back into the sea. No memory, almost, of my body, left—left outward, when we were all inward, Kor and I, and as immense as stardark, as limitless as the haunts of the nameless god. But there was a calling, voiceless, or a touch not of hands, something that mattered to me, and reluctantly I turned my thoughts from Kor to attend to it.
Dan. Kor.
Mindspeak. It was Tass.
Her arms around us both, she was gently, quietly calling us back, as gently as once she had eased our way back from the sea. And though I did not know when we had moved, Kor and I stood with right hands clasped but left arms around each other, tightly embracing, with our heads pressed against each other, so that when I came back to awareness of my body I felt first the warm salt wash of tears against my cheek, my own and his.
Kor thought to me, Nothing can sunder us utter
ly, Dan.
Not even death, or the abyss of the sea. He spoke truth, words that could have been tested by fire. I knew that.
Mahela stood watching us. She had not moved, or spoken scornfully to us, or tried to part us as she once had done, and she looked somehow frail in spite of all her power, standing there as she was in a cloak borrowed from a corpse, apart, with a small frown on her ageless, handsome face. And I saw that unwonted diffidence in her, remembered the lilt in her voice, the odd tenderness of her smile, and I knew why Kor had broken godbond and run to face the wave that could have destroyed the world.
She loved him, in her tortuous way.
“I can scarcely blame you, Dan, for not thinking better of me,” she said quietly to me. “But be comforted. I am not your enemy any longer. I accept my defeat.”
I stooped and picked up my sword, which yet lay at her feet. I sheathed the blade, then faced Mahela. “Great lady,” I replied to her, lifting my head, “how can I think of you as defeated, you who will have Korridun?”
I could feel him there beside me, the touch of his mind against mine, his hand still gripping mine. And I knew how he had fought against his unwilling bond with Mahela at first as if against a doom, and how the battle had made him into a darkened, embittered mockery of self. It was indeed better, and fitting, that he should be with her.
Yet I will miss you, Kor. The touch of your hand.
The sea lapped at our feet, and on the sea a bright ship came sailing, the tall masts bare of sails, bare even of the banners that had once hung upon them. It was Mahela’s dwelling from the Mountains of Doom, and it shone regally in the light of the sun dipping westward behind it.
What needed to be said could not be put in words. Tass touched Kor’s hand, embraced him and kissed him. I held him hard for one last moment before slowly releasing him, and he turned to Mahela without a backward glance. Taking her hand, he guided her to a coracle. For the first time I grew aware that his people were silently watching from the headland, the beach. Elders and children, the nursing mothers and the few warriors who yet walked, all watching and silently weeping. And the Red Hart warriors who yet lived, and the Otter River folk, even the Fanged Horse raiders. And the sylkies who remained put on their pelts and gave him, sealform, a retinue as he sent the coracle away from the shore.
At the distance of the breaking waves Mahela spoke to us, her voice raised to carry to the reaches of the headland.
“Now hear me well, you mortals: I give up my creation to you for all time. No longer will there be a sanctuary in my realm beneath the sea. What you slay will be slain for all time. What you drive away will be gone. What you wreak will be done. If the sea grows more salt, it will be because I weep, but I will not lift my hand again.”
She bowed her head, tightly shut her eyes, clung to Korridun’s hand with both her own as if she were a captive pleading for his mercy. And with a surge and a sweet clamor the creatures came up out of the sea.
Chapter Twenty-two
The joy, the grief of that day—it was godbond, I think, that had given me the strength to withstand such mingled anguish and exaltation as I had never known before, and have not since. Joy as keen, as vehement as the sorrow.… I stood watching my bond brother, in the coracle, ever farther away from me, and the creatures were coming back to the land.
The waves washed at my feet, and the creatures ran up onto the shore with the water. Ferrets and hedgehogs, wildcats, foxes, the little pika in their tens of tens, and—all of them, all! The great, sleek catamounts, the bears, the badgers, and the deer, fallow, red, gray, the spotted deer, all the deer in all their twelve kinds, even the blue deer of Sakeema. And the tossing of the waves was the tossing of tall heads, manes of spray, horses! Not the dun horses only but the beautiful wild horses of many colors such as had once run on the plains, black, bay, white and the colors of sunlight, neighing and curveting and cantering onto shore. And the birds, the peregrines, the eagles! Bursting out of the sea, taking to sky. And ai, the white antelope of the peaks, and the great maned elk, and the wolves, the wolves of wonder.…
Those who stood on the shore that day and saw it were to the end of their lives deemed blessed by all who spoke to them. And for generations thereafter time was reckoned from that day, the beginning of the renewed world.
All manner of clamor rose from the many sorts of beasts greeting each other, and the sweet clamor broke out from the watchers as well, seeing the creatures, the white weasels and gliding squirrels, the swans! So beautiful. And the bison plunging out of the sea. And after them—the people.
As if in a dream I heard Winewa’s scream, joy so piercing that it hurt, as she saw her daughter, our daughter, toddling toward her. Karu sobbed with happiness and embraced a tribesman. All those whom the devourers had taken were being returned. The folk of the unknown tribes of the times before memory walked out of the sea, their rich robes trailing in the water, and stood blinking. Then slowly they smiled, or wept, and some of them fell down and embraced the ground.
I saw it all, for I was Darran, but I stood as if rooted, even as bison thundered past me, and I watched after Kor. Tassida stood by my side, handbonding me, but even she could not comfort me much.
Slowly, slowly, like a boat in a dream, the coracle bobbed away, but its speed seemed all too great to me. Far too soon to suit me, Kor reached the waiting ship, helped Mahela aboard and boarded in his turn. Then I could no longer see his body, his erect head, the dark cap of his hair. I let go of Tassida’s hand, burst from my place like the hawks bursting from the sea, and I seized a gray horse—such power was in me since godbond, I grasped the mane of a mighty gray more beautiful even than Calimir, and I vaulted onto its back and sent it where I wished, at the gallop, though the creature was wild with gladness. Up the mountainside by the straightest way we went, at a speed as if we ran on flat land, yet the speed seemed not great enough to me, and I shouted for more. I was in a frenzy to reach a vantage where I could see far, very far, before the ship had sailed out of sight.
I stopped at last at a place where I could look out over the spires of firs, and I let the gray gallop away. In sundown light, the ship was a fair blade of sunstuff cutting the glistening surface of the sea. Then it was a smaller knife of blackstone, leaving behind it a widening gash … sea would heal from its sundering, but would I, ever? Then it was a chip of flint near ocean’s edge. And then it was gone in the sunset, and I could not see it any longer, though I climbed to a higher crag and looked again, though I narrowed my eyes against the sky glory, seeking.
I sat down in the dirt under a gaunt blue pine, bent my head to my knees and wept.
Through sunset I wept as grievously as I had once wept over Kor’s broken body, and my hands snapped the pine needles under my knees and flung them away, and my tears soaked into the forest loam, and my fingers crept into it as if to hide. As of themselves my hands took up some of the dampened loam and shaped it, the way old Ayol of the Herders had once shaped clay beside a dying fire. Then I looked at my hands and saw what I was doing and cried aloud with pain, for my longing for my brother was worse than ever—
And the lifeless lump in my hands turned into a singing bird as red as my heart, and it flew away arrow-swift into sundown, winging toward Kor.
Comfort in that, somehow. Comfort in the feeling of the earth in my hands. I shaped it again, and laid it down, and under my hands the moist earth turned to a small brown deer that looked at me with wide eyes before bounding away.
This was the thing I was fated to be, then. Darran. The lifemaker. The shaper.
My weeping lessened, and I made others. I made more deer, and great-eared foxes, and a falcon, and a new sort of small dog that sniffed me, waved its tail in thanks and trotted away. Until twilight had turned to a darkness soft with stars I made them, and then I sat with my back against rock, bone of mountain, and listened to the night. It was full of the good creature sounds, chirrings and whistlings, the pipings and rustlings of songbirds in the trees. Somewhere clo
se at hand, grunt and squeal of quarreling pika. More distant, owl’s call. A screech that stopped my heart—catamount scream, I had never heard it before. On a far slope of Chital, the cry of wolves, as sweet to my ears as singing.
At moonrise Ytan and Tassida came walking up the mountainside, following my plain trail. Alar glowed like firelight to greet them, but I could not hail them or look at them without heartache, because they were not Kor. When they saw me, Tass came and sat by my right side, took my hand. But Ytan stood straddle-legged in front of me.
“Body of our father, Dan! Are you still sulking?”
Plainly, he meant to rouse me, but I did not answer him, did not so much as look up, not even at Tass. In a moment Ytan kneeled and laid his hands on my shoulders.
“My brother, please,” he said, “tell me what I can do to help, after—after I have done so much to harm.”
Only such an appeal from ever-sour Ytan, I think, could have moved me to speak. “But it was not you, Ytan.” I raised my head and blinked at him. “It was the devourer in you.”
“Still, I—I remember, Dan.”
By my side, Tassida snorted in exasperation. I was of like mind. “There is no need for amends, Ytan,” I told him. “But if there were, do not folk in Seal Hold need your help?”
In starlight I saw the flash of his smile, and he moved to sit at my left hand. “Less than the person here, I think. Tassida has healed all who needed it, and brought all those who died this day back to life and wholeness. All of them, even the horses.”
“Especially the horses,” she muttered. I looked at her.
“You could not bring back Calimir,” I said slowly.
She shook her head. Her voice was steady, the glance of her eyes, level into mine. “It seems I cannot help the longtime dead. Those whose souls have fled.”
Only those whom the devourers took, Mahela’s pets, had come back from her realm, Tass told me. Not those who danced over the eversnow. The dead were dead. Tyonoc. Kela. Wyonet, Tyee, Leotie. Gone, forever gone, like … Kor …
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