Exile's Children

by Angus Wells

  “So you shall,” she promised, and thought, If the Maker grants us the time.

  It had been a souring of their idyll they had worked to forget—which was not difficult because they were in love and alone in a new world, and could do nothing to change events beyond the valley. So they had settled to their new life and built for themselves a happiness that, by consent, precluded overmuch discussion of that dark, black wind that seemed to blow against the mountains from the west and perhaps found a way through the hills to pervade the plains of Ket-Ta-Witko. But still it was there, like the breath of the Breaking Trees Moon skirling about the entry of their lodge, seeking to intrude, and though they did not speak of it, still it chilled them in those hinder parts of their minds that yet looked past the valley. It was as if a shadow hung behind them, just out of eye’s range, so that when they turned to seek it, it was gone, darting round to another quarter, where it lurked hidden but yet present, like a skulking wolverine invisible in the night but there—unseen and unscented, unheard, only present.

  But there was also lightness, an easy forgetting of the dark and what it held, or might. Marjia was such a beacon. Colun brought her to them when the Moon of Dancing Foals was old in the sky. Rannach thought she looked not unlike the moon in its fulness: all round and beaming, like a gold-haired boulder dressed in lavishly embroidered shirt and swaying skirt, her hair coiled and pinned with bright silver fixings about a plump face from which cheerful blue eyes sparkled and a rosebud mouth seemed fixed in an everlasting smile.

  She bustled, bee-busy and happy as those honey-gatherers, into their camp, kissing first Arrhyna and then him—they both must stoop to accept her embrace—firmly on both cheeks, then cheerfully ordering Colun to unload their gifts. There were needles for Arrhyna, a metal comb, a mirror of polished metal ornate in its design, and a thin knife edged fine to trim hide. For Rannach there was a knife and a small ax, both sharper and stronger than any he owned, a supply of arrowheads, and a new tip for his lance.

  “There was not much trading this year,” she said, “and so we’ve much to give.”

  Rannach was embarrassed. “We’ve nothing to compare,” he said. “You shame me.”

  “Ach!” Marjia waved a cheerfully dismissive hand and with her other poked Colun in the ribs. “You promised my husband tiswin, no? And me the knowledge of its making. That’s gift enough. The Maker knows, but have I that art, I’ll make my husband happy—and have something to trade that drunkards like him will beg for.”

  “I am not,” Colun said as dignified as he could as he laughed, “a drunkard.”

  “But fond of tiswin, no?” his wife returned, and before he had chance to reply said to Arrhyna: “Shall we look to our dinner and leave these men to manly talk?”

  Arrhyna would sooner have heard whatever fresh news Colun brought, but it was clearly Marjia’s purpose to lighten the day, and she knew Rannach would advise her of what was said, so she allowed the tiny woman to take her off and regale her with casual conversation as they prepared the food.

  Marjia had never met with a flatlander before—only the Grannach men attended the Matakwas—and she found it hard to accept that Arrhyna could be happy with no company save Rannach’s. Her own people lived close, in subterranean enclaves that sounded to Arrhyna quite horrible. The villages were lit, Marjia assured her, but the very idea of dwelling beneath that unimaginable weight of stone, families all crowded together with room piled on room, house atop house, prompted Arrhyna to shudder. But then, it was no less odd to Marjia that the People dwelt as they did, in lodges under the open sky.

  “The sky,” she said gravely as her blunt fingers worked with deft efficiency on the vegetables Arrhyna had gathered, “is all very well. Indeed, once in a while, it’s good to venture out. But …” She glanced up at the wide panoply of stars and moon and shuddered herself. “I’d not want to be out here all the time. It’s so … open.”

  Arrhyna could only nod and agree that their two peoples were different in their attitudes.

  “But what does that matter?” Marjia beamed. “We are all the Maker’s children, no? And did he see fit to make you to wander the open places and we to dwell within our hills, then that’s as it should be.”

  Arrhyna smiled and voiced heartfelt agreement: she liked this woman on the instant. She could not help, looking at her, thinking of those stones the old folk heated in the lodgefire to warm their sleeping furs of a winter’s night: Marjia was as round and solid, and as comforting.

  And when, the next day, the Grannach woman departed, Arrhyna found she missed her. It had been a comfortable time, that first visit, and there was a small vacuum came with her going. For a while Arrhyna thought nostalgically on the companionship of the clans, of neighbors and shared duties, of all the things the women of the Matawaye did together. But she had Rannach, and before long the little sadness went away.

  She asked her husband what news Colun had brought, and Rannach had shrugged and told her little that was new—the invaders still massed about the foothills, the Grannach still watching them; no more. They both of them wondered what purpose drove the strangelings and if they would attempt the crossing of the mountains, but that was only speculation and idle in light of their isolation. They prayed that the Maker deny the invaders passage, which was all they could do, and returned to their solitary life.

  Nor did the subsequent visits of Colun and Marjia shed further light. They came again when the Moon of Cherries Ripening sat high and plump over the peaks, and in the Moon of Ripe Berries, but with nothing new to tell. It was as if all the world hung in stasis, or the Maker’s wards defeated the invaders: hope in that, but still the ugly suspicion of something impending, still that sense of the wolverine lurking rapacious outside the fire’s glow.

  But it was ever easier to set that nagging doubt aside: the invaders made no move and there was nothing they could do, so they worked to set aside the doubts and turned their conversation to more cheerful matters.

  Chief amongst these was the manufacture of the promised tiswin. Colun had brought kettles and pots at Arrhyna’s request, and he and Marjia joined in the harvesting of the juniper berries and those other herbs required. She had versed Marjia in the quantities and the method of preparation. It seemed at first strange to instruct a woman likely old enough to be her grandmother or more in a thing she had learned at her mother’s side, but Marjia was so enthusiastic a pupil—and urged on by her anticipatory husband—that Arrhyna soon forgot that difference and only enjoyed the Grannach woman’s company. Together they set the brew to ferment, laughing at Colun’s downcast face when Arrhyna told him the tiswin should not be ready until at least the Frozen Grass Moon, or even later.

  “Ach, so long!” He sighed dramatically, his craggy face a pantomime of disappointment. Then brightened, asking, “There’s no chance I might have a taste now?”

  “Not save you want a sour belly,” Arrhyna told him. “It would taste foul now, and make you sick.”

  He slumped like a disconsolate stone and murmured, “Then I suppose I must make do with our beer.”

  “Which is no bad thing,” Rannach said.

  There were kegs of the Grannach ale stored in a lean-to, barrels of worked wood banded with staves of metal, strange to the two Matawaye who used no such storage: Arrhyna thought such constructions would be a fine way to keep meat. Colun had brought them on a handcart he and Marjia hauled like two sturdy ponies, the cart itself of as much interest to the Matawaye as the beer. The idea of carving wood into discs and fixing those discs to axles fixed in turn to a walled platform was unknown to the People. Their portage was done all on horseback, or on travois, and the notion of utilizing wheels was as novel to them as was the idea of riding to the Grannach.

  “This,” Rannach declared, touching the cart’s round wheels as if they were holy objects, “would make traveling easier. A horse could be set in front to pull, and it all move faster than a travois.”

  “Likely,” Colun agreed, without much in
terest. “But now, do we open a keg?”

  Rannach had acquired a taste for the beer, and insisted that their hosts accept deerskins and meat in return. It was a time of learning for them all, marred only by that lingering, unspoken presentiment and one other thing.

  Arrhyna had been the first to broach it. “We are your guests, and you are always welcome in our lodge,” she said. Nervously, for she feared she might offend. Indeed, had Marjia not beamed at her, she might have fallen silent then; but the Grannach woman sat all agog and her smile was invitation to continue. “But only you come. Why do no others?”

  There was a moment of hesitation, Colun glancing at his wife and Marjia at him as if they shared some silent, somewhat embarrassed communication. Then Colun said bluntly, “Not all welcome you here. There are some claim I was wrong to bring you, that you should be sent back to the lowlands. Some say I defy the Order—that which you name the Ahsa-tye-Patiko—in giving you this valley. They say your presence offends the Maker and weakens our defenses.”

  He shrugged apologetically while Marjia laughed and said, “They are fools! Should friends not aid friends in time of trouble? How can that offend the Maker?”

  “Still,” Colun said, “some claim that.”

  “Should we go?” Rannach asked. “I’d not see you suffer on our behalf.”

  “Ach, no!” Colun flung a dismissive hand at the sky. “This valley belongs to the Javitz, and I am creddan of the Javitz. It is other families—envious families—who make these claims.”

  “But no other … Javitz? … come,” Arrhyna said.

  Colun smiled sheepishly and told her, “I’d not give offense, save I must. The right and wrong of my decision is still debated and no conclusion reached, but meanwhile …”

  He shrugged and found his mug. Marjia continued: “My brave husband would see you safe—and does. But he must also consider the welfare of our family, and so would hold all claims of wrongdoing to himself alone. Should the debate decide against him, then he’d not see any other Javitz blamed, but only him.”

  “And you?” Arrhyna suggested.

  Marjia chuckled then, her round form shaking as if a boulder trembled. “I’ve no doubt that what he did was right,” she said. “And am I condemned for that, then so be it.”

  “What shall happen,” Rannach asked, “if the decision goes against you?”

  “Who knows?” Colun replied, and grinned. “No flatlander has ever come here before—it’s no easy decision.”

  “And so,” Marjia added cheerfully, “will take a long time to decide. The elders will argue back and forth, and you two likely grow old before any minds are made up.”

  “Still,” Rannach said, “I’d not bring you to harm. Were it better we go, then we shall.”

  Marjia then said, “Hush. We’ll not hear such talk. Eh, husband?”

  “No. You are our friends: you are guests of the Javitz. I should …” He drew himself up: a stone bristling like an offended dog. “I should take that as insult. Indeed …” He assumed as haughty a mien as might a stone. “… I forbid it; and any further talk of departure.”

  Save, Arrhyna thought even as she smiled her thanks—letting her eyes wander briefly to where the Maker’s Mountain loomed high under the afternoon sun—that we and you are all forced to depart, fleeing like the Whaztaye before whatever menace lurks beyond these ringing hills.

  But she hid that unpleasant thought behind her smile, which was entirely genuine, for she thought she’d never known such staunch friends.

  So it went, idyll and menace, the days blending one into another as the moons waxed and waned and waxed again, time turning seemingly unconcerned with the events of men. Sometimes Arrhyna thought of the valley as a refuge, an island in a wide river, buffeted by hard floods but yet impregnable, safe. At others she thought of it as a beautiful prison in which she lay happily trapped, able to ignore the world outside.

  And Rannach, she wondered as she studied her husband’s face in the light of the Moon of Hairy Horses, what does he feel? What does he not tell me?

  She asked again, “What of Colun’s news?”

  He shrugged and said, “The Maker’s wards hold yet, no? So the invaders probe, but the Grannach defenses still hold them back.”

  “Colun told us,” she said, “that they move deeper into the hills, that Grannach have died fighting them in the passes and the tunnels.”

  “And I,” he returned, “have said I’d fight with the Grannach. And Colun tells me no, that his folk can hold the tunnels and the passes and have no need of me.”

  “But,” she said, “what if … ?”

  Rannach reached out to take her hand, raising it toward the shape of the holy mountain, now luminous under the moon. “It is in the hands of the Maker,” he said. “His wards shall hold or not. Do they, then such talk as this is pointless. Do they not, then I shall fight.”

  “And what,” she asked, “of the People? What of the Grannach?”

  “I shall fight,” he said. “I shall do what I can do. But for now I can do nothing save wait. It is in the Maker’s hands.”

  20 Quest

  Morrhyn lay across his horse’s neck, a hand clamped over the muzzle, and listened to the hoofbeats drumming through the sun-heated earth. The slope rose gently before him and he prayed to the Maker that the hollow hide him from the Tachyn he had seen, and they had not spotted him.

  A band of fifteen or twenty by his swift count, riding hard from the north, their faces all painted for war. He had sighted them as he climbed the slope—too far from the woods behind to risk retreat and nowhere to run save this shallow depression that might, were the Maker kind, conceal him. If not, if they found him, then all was lost, for they would surely slay him, wakanisha or not.

  Or fool, he thought not for the first time. Perhaps only a fool on a fool’s errand. Perhaps only a dreamless Dreamer riding to his death, one way or the other. Why am I doing this? Why have I left my people behind to go seeking … what?

  It was not a thing he could properly explain to himself, and therefore quite impossible to define to others. No dream had summoned him to this quest, he had perceived no sign: there was only that inward certainty. He knew he must go; but when that was the only reason he found to give and got back sound arguments for his remaining, he could not help but feel doubt. The Maker sent him no guiding dreams—he could not claim that imperative—and he sometimes wondered, even as he prepared to leave, if some other agency lured him away, or even if he lost his mind. And, the Maker knew, there were sound enough reasons to stay.

  “Chakthi runs loose,” Racharran told him, “and I’ve not the warriors to spare to bring you safe to the hills.”

  Morrhyn had shaken his head at that and smiled sadly. “I’d not ask for an escort, old friend.”

  “I doubt,” Racharran had said, “that the Tachyn will respect even a wakanisha now. If they find you, they’ll likely kill you.”

  And Morrhyn had shrugged and asked, “Shall that matter?”

  “Yes!” Racharran had replied, staring fiercely at his friend. “To me and all the clan. We need you.”

  “Blind horses travel slow,” Morrhyn had returned, “and need much care. As I am now, I am of no use. Do I go the mountain …”

  “If you get to the mountain,” Racharran had said.

  “If,” Morrhyn had agreed.

  “Then what?” Racharran had turned to gesture westward, a hand sweeping wide in indication of the distance to be traveled. “If you get safely past the Tachyn and climb the mountain. Then what?”

  “I don’t know.” Morrhyn had looked then to where the hills stood, too far off they might be seen. The Fat Moon was yet young, a slender crescent decorating a sky so serene, it belied the turmoil below. It shone over the massed lodges of the Commacht and the woodland to the south of the camp. There were more bodies scaffolded in the trees now, and amongst the tents women keened in mourning: the fighting had been fierce. He said, “I know only that I must go.”


  “And leave us,” Racharran had said.

  “I am not a warrior.” It had been hard to look Racharran in the eye. “I am a wakanisha robbed of his dreams. Perhaps … do I go to the mountain …”

  “Perhaps!” Racharran had said, irritation a moment exposed, like a knife part-drawn, then again sheathed. “Perhaps and perhaps and perhaps. Can you offer no better reason?”

  Morrhyn had said, “No,” and decided then he had best leave quickly.

  “How will you find us again?” Racharran had asked, resigned now. “When you come back?” The way he said it made the “when” a lingering doubt.

  “All well,” Morrhyn had replied, “I’ll find my dreams again and they’ll guide me.”

  It was a measure of Racharran’s trust that he nodded then and only asked, “When shall you leave?”

  “With the sun,” Morrhyn had said.

  He had left the next day, mounted on his favorite paint horse with what few supplies he carried lashed behind his saddle. He took no weapons save a knife and a bow, a quiver of arrows tipped for hunting, not war—he felt no desire to fight, and hoped no Tachyn impede his progress: he wanted only to reach the Maker’s Mountain and find what answers lay there, if any did. He could not help that nagging whisper of doubt that murmured its traitorous pessimism in his ear.

  He felt alone, even as he role with Racharran and two hands of warriors to the farther perimeter of the clan’s temporary grazing. Dreamless, it was as if a part of his being had been taken away, a function so vital he no longer felt whole. He thought of men who had lost limbs or sight or hearing, and it seemed to him like that: that some vital and integral part of him had been cut off, leaving him less than he wished to be. He felt like a hunter whose left hand was gone, denying grip on a bow: useless. And so he must cling to that single hope, that the certainty he had felt was a promise of enlightenment and optimism. That in the mountains he should find his dreams again, find again that communing with the Maker that made him wakanisha.