She had come to a place where priests of every tribe were peering into the mists of the marsh to know the future, while she just looked ahead and saw a void. She was a creature of the moment, fleeting and transient.
She Stepped to her wolf’s shape and rose silently, slipping between the bulky shapes of her hosts, and out into the night.
At first she intended heading straight for the Tigers’ fire. Perhaps – she had not totally decided – she would even walk straight up to them, show them what shape she could assume, show them that I am of you. She imagined it all, daydreamed it in detail even as she left the Bears’ hearth. She assured herself what it would feel like to step from under the Wolf’s Shadow and into the embrace of a different god. Even while she wore the Wolf’s own shape, she thought it. Perhaps that was why her feet led her astray.
Despite the fires, it was very dark in the Stone Place. Above her, the stars were shrouded, mocking those below who might seek to fish the future from their pond. Her wolf nose was battered by a multitude of scents: the bodies, fires and food of a dozen tribes. Abruptly she found that she could not tell which of the leaping lights of the island were nearby, and which were all the way across it.
Trying to shake off her uncertainty, she pushed forwards with a sudden flurry of speed. Ever since leaving the Winter Runners, she had raced through the world as though distance itself was a cure for all ills, and now it betrayed her. Abruptly the land was clear on either side, just the packed earth of this artificial hill . . . and then there were the stones.
They rose above her, to the left and to the right, great dark sentinels that she sensed more than saw. In a convulsive moment she felt as if something had gripped hold of her – intangible and irresistible, stripping her skin from her, nose to tail. A moment later she was in her tiger shape, its keener eyes harvesting distant firelight so as to make out the tall, still monoliths rising before her. For a brief moment she felt that the wolf was gone, totally gone, and scrabbled with unexpected panic within her, searching out all its old haunts one by one. Then she had it again, cowering at the very back of her mind, while the tiger in her was so bold . . .
She had almost run straight inside the circle of stones. She had almost crossed into the eye of the Stone Place, where the spirits watched all the time. Only priests went there and, though she had pretended to herself that she felt like a priest, now she knew she was nothing but a fugitive girl. If she had taken another handful of steps . . .
Who could know? But she would be marked forever. To stand before the greater spirits even a priest must purify himself and sacrifice and beg.
Her eyes caught the approach of more lights: a line of torches emerging from one of the camps, and she froze, torn between the desires to flee and to spy.
Their own fires picked them out for her, and her tiger’s heart jumped – for it was her people, her own people, the ones she had never known.
A woman led them, who wore mail of bronze squares and an ornate helm with a feathered crest. The skin of her cheeks was raised in thin lines that the torchlight turned into dancing shadow-stripes. Behind her followed two men, their faces solemn. They had some of the look of the people Maniye had grown up with, but with something else as well. Their eyes were angled, their faces longer. There was a mystery written into them. To Maniye, they were beautiful.
She followed their progress, crouching close to the base of the closest stone. They were tracing a curving path, and she knew they were making for some special point, some invisible path known only to the Tiger, by which the circle could be entered.
Turning to keep them in view, she realized her error.
She traced the line of the stones with her eyes. The circle was simple, just a ring of irregular, jutting fingers with a single squat altar in its very centre. As the torches neared, many of the stones leapt into relief, casting their shifting shadows across the ground, across the circle that they enclosed.
The circle that she was inside. She had bounded straight into it, and only been brought to a halt by the stones on the far side.
She knew then that it was the coming of the Tiger to these stones that had Stepped her into this shape. If she had just been some hapless Wolf girl, then surely she would have been punished: struck blind, driven mad, killed on the spot. The spirits could do such things.
With this new knowledge, though, she could not stay. Half-belong as she might, she could not trespass within the circle during a Tiger ritual. There was reckless, and there was outright foolhardy.
She held her breath as she backed out between the stones, between the same two pillars that she’d thought had been keeping her from going in. Casting a glance behind her, she saw the three Tigers now enter the circle, their priestess at the fore.
Moving further away, she could see more. Her eyes caught a deeper darkness between the fires, and after a moment she identified it: spies, other spies. Of course, any who chose to look up the hill towards the Stones might see something of what passed between the Tiger and their god, but these – whoever these were – they had drawn closer.
Still clad in her tiger shape, she circled them, closing carefully, wondering who it was that took such an interest in her people.
Yet who else but her other people? She stopped dead-still because she had recognized a face she knew. Yes, yes, there was Kalameshli Takes Iron, and the sight of him sent a jolt of fear and hatred through her, a short lifetime’s worth of taunts and goads flurrying through her head like snow. A moment later he was almost forgotten though.
Akrit Stone River was here too. He knelt on the ground, a man with patience to spare, and stared at the stones and the three votaries within. The two Shadow Eater men were singing now: one low and one high, an eerie counterpoint that seemed to rise up into the clouded sky and resonate through the earth. Their torchlight barely touched Akrit’s eyes, lurking there as the faintest of angry embers.
She began to back away. Their attention was fixed on the ritual. The spirits had blessed her this much: that she had spotted them first.
It was the fur of her flanks that told her of the other: not her nose, nor eyes nor ears. When she twitched away from him, he was close enough to reach out and take her by the scruff of the neck.
Broken Axe regarded her expressionlessly – no, not quite: there was a slight twitch to his lips, a token amusement at having found her yet again.
She had frozen in shock, and she saw his eyes flick towards the gathering of Wolves and to the Tiger ritual beyond. A shout from him would bring Akrit and Kalameshli both down on her back. She was caught, helpless and immobile, torn between leaping and fleeing.
Then that seed of a smile grew a little, and he shrugged and turned away, strolling over towards the other Wolves, not a hint of hurry in his steps.
She fled then, but he never called the alarm, and her father never knew she had been there.
24
The Tiger ritual had been disconcerting: a familiar message yet written in an alien tongue. The woman who stood in for their priest, and her two eunuch servants, they had gone through strange steps, made unfamiliar offerings, and yet Akrit felt he understood. Watching from out in the dark, he had seen an urgency in those motions, an invocation of martial preparedness. The Tiger tribe, too, were readying for conflict.
‘There is a time coming,’ Kalameshli confirmed, later. ‘The spirits speak of it. My dreams – the dreams of many priests here – are disturbed by it. So the Tiger hear the same voices. They do not know your plans.’
Akrit had never concerned himself that the Tiger might be readying themselves to defend against him. He was struck by the sudden thought that his own plan – the plan he had been nursing all these years – might not be his plan at all. What if it had merely been gods and spirits working through him? He knew many who might be proud of playing such a role, but not he. Akrit Stone River was, above all, his own master. The Wolf wished no cringing thralls amongst those born in his Shadow.
The morning after, and keyed up
by Kalameshli’s words, he went to speak with the priests of the Moon Eaters, who were here in force. He needed to present himself to them, to win their blessing. He needed to have them thinking of him as the next High Chief.
And yet, when he reached them, it seemed he was a man come second to the feast. The hard, derisive eyes of Water Gathers stared out at him from the midst of the priests.
‘Stone River,’ began the son of Seven Skins, ‘who would have thought to find you here? What purpose can you have, so far from home?’
Catches The Moon, the young priest of the Many Mouths, was lurking in his shadow, and there were plenty of sidelong glances shared between the Moon Eaters.
‘I have told these wise men of the passing of my father,’ Water Gathers explained expansively. ‘All agree he departed from his tribe as a strong man, a warrior, should.’
‘He did,’ Stone River agreed. ‘He was a man we shall not see again for a generation. Would that more were like him.’
The twitch at the corner of Water Gathers’ mouth was slight, and utterly unamused. ‘I have told them also of my father’s last words to me: how he bid me follow in his tracks, how he marked me for greatness. I am my father’s son, his heart, his all. I was his joy, when he still lived amongst us; to see me in my strength was what gave him the strength to leave his people in my care.’
‘So much he told you.’ Akrit could sense Kalameshli right behind him, the old man urging him silently to hold his temper. ‘And yet I guested with your brother, a fine man and a wise one, and it seems your father had said not a word of this to him.’
‘My brother Otayo is no hunter,’ Water Gathers replied contemptuously. ‘He brought my father neither joy nor solace by tending hearth while his mate sought prey.’
They are already with him more than with me, Akrit thought, letting his peripheral vision inform him of the Moon Eaters’ disposition, even as he kept his eyes fixed squarely on his opponent. He knew what he wanted to say, and also he knew that those words could never be taken back. They would fan the hatred of Water Gathers into a high burning fire that might consume either or both of them.
And he realized that he was going to say them anyway. He was losing face moment to moment. No man would follow a High Chief who turned his back.
‘I, too, spoke with your father before his passing,’ Akrit said softly, making them lean in to hear more clearly. ‘It is true he said much of you. You were uppermost in his thoughts. But he was also my friend, my teacher, like unto my own father. We began the rising against the Tiger that drove them into the high places, and we finished it, he and I. Who else can boast the same that lives now?’ Not Water Gathers, certainly. ‘He spoke fondly of Otayo but, like you, he lamented your brother’s choice to keep a home rather than to lead the hunt. For, if your brother had taken up the bow and the spear, your father would not have to lament your becoming chief of the Many Mouths.’
The Moon Eaters had gone quiet and still, recognizing that moment in a fight where wrestling and blows are no longer enough, and the knives are drawn.
‘He was a honed blade, your father. Even in his last days he had a keen edge to him. Even sick, he was a man I would follow into the fire. And you are no blade, but a maul. You are a blunt striker, without wisdom or subtlety. You are not the man to follow Maninli Seven Skins.’
The words struck home like arrows, but Water Gathers was still standing firm, braced against them. There was only one brief moment when his mask cracked, and Akrit could see into his soul. He saw there more self-knowledge than he had expected. He saw that Water Gathers knew all of what his father had thought of him, and that becoming High Chief in Maninli’s place was the only way he could erase the burning venom of that knowledge.
‘And yet I am a man,’ Water Gathers spat. ‘I say my father loved me, and he saw himself in me. And in my sons, Stone River, my sons who shall carry the blood of Seven Skins down to their own sons. We have heard the wind of your words. Now show us your sons. Show us what the loins of the Winter Runners can fruit.’
‘I will show you,’ snarled Akrit, and yet he had none, and not even the girl to bring before them. And if I had her, I’d tell them precisely what I would bring for the Wolf, with her at my side. If I had her, I’d have her here to beat them with. If . . . If . . .
Amongst the Stones was a bad place to be, Asmander had decided. They all felt it: the northern spirits of place bending their gaze upon the three travellers. Shyri was skittish, jumping at shadows. Venater brooded and glowered, his flinty eyes stabbing out at anyone who looked his way, meeting the savagery of the north with savagery of his own.
A spirit place. And of course the Riverlands had such places of their own, but most of them had been built upon, weighed down with stone and garlanded with priests until they became something else, something that was a part of the Sun River Nation. Asmander had no sense that this place was a part of the Crown of the World in the same way, if for no other reason than there was no single Crown of the World. Just like the Plains, this was a fragmented place where men had never learned to live together. And just like the Plains, it was a foolhardy place to venture unprepared.
Asmander felt unprepared. He had come to treat with the heart of the north, but found it had no heart. The invisible presence that swathed this place like a miasma, and pricked up the hairs on his arms, was a divided and many-faced monster.
The two Coyote had left them as soon as they crossed the causeway, as though being seen with the southerners would be bad for their own reputations. The pair were priests, he had realized. All this time travelling with them, thinking of them as itinerant pedlars, when they had come here for their own devotions. Asmander tried to work out just who had used whom the most, in getting here.
‘Wishing you’d not come?’ Venater’s rough tone grated in his ear.
‘The lucky man’s wishes are ignored by the world. The luckless man’s are granted,’ Asmander replied, the old saying falling from his lips by rote.
‘You’ll go hunting this Stone River, if he’s even here?’
‘He’s here,’ Shyri’s voice broke in. ‘I saw one of his people – one of his warriors from the Wolf place. And he was watching us.’
‘We cut such fine figures, who would not?’ Asmander remarked drily. The three of them were indeed attracting a lot of attention. Leather-skinned northerners stared at them as though they were ill-loved figures from legend, stopping in their tracks to glower at the three travellers. More than that, though, there was a constant pressure about them, a flexing of the air, a bristling of the ground. The Stone Place did not know them; the Stone Place did not like them.
‘First things first: we will set a fire,’ Asmander directed. ‘In the morning, we shall see what we can accomplish.’ He looked up at the louring sky, feeling that same great presence bear down on him. He wanted to fight it. He wanted to run. He wanted to shed his human form.
‘I will not perform for you,’ he whispered.
The next morning he woke slowly. Whatever the northern spring might be like, the world was still bitterly cold, and none of the Horse Society’s gifted clothing could change that. The fire had died, and the three of them had been huddled close together, Shyri curled into him, and Venater’s broad back against his own.
He had not slept well, waking often to stare up at a sky full of scudding clouds, at the cold and distant constellations. He could pick out plenty that he had a name for, but they seemed different here, refusing to acknowledge him. This was a northern sky and, like the Stones, it did not know him.
And he knew that the local people would be the same, unless he did something about it. If he just went from hearth to hearth and badgered them for aid, then it would not matter what he promised them. He first needed to cut himself a place in their world. And not just the craggy, boggy, freezing hell that was the Crown of the World. He needed to engage with the world of their traditions and their observances. He needed to touch the invisible here at the Stone Place.
; With a chill, clouded dawn clawing at the eastern sky like a corpse from its grave, he kicked the other two awake.
‘I am about to do something reckless,’ he informed them.
‘What’s new?’ Venater responded promptly, but the old pirate’s eyes flicked towards the jutting fingers of the stones, and Asmander nodded.
‘What if you die of it?’ he asked – not quite an angry demand, yet certainly nothing as human as concern.
‘If the locals kill me, I expect you both to go down valiantly before their blades in an attempt to prolong my life,’ Asmander told him, eliciting a snort of derision. ‘If I am struck down or driven mad or whatever by . . . by the powers here, then you’re just plain out of luck, Child of Venat.’
‘You’re serious? You’re going to piss on their gods?’ Shyri demanded.
‘What? No!’ Asmander snapped back. ‘That is how you go about things on the Plains, is it?’
‘Certainly it is. We find a holy place of another tribe, piss on it’s the least we do. How else to keep our enemies’ gods weak?’
Asmander shook his head. ‘Well, thank you. Suddenly this desolate place seems somehow more civilized in comparison.’ He was about to go marching off towards the stones, when she snagged his shoulder.
‘Wear this.’ It was a necklace of polished discs, weirdly textured. He had seen it on her sometimes. She had a bag of similar pieces and swapped between them, for unspoken reasons of her own.
‘If this is another pissing-contest thing, then I won’t.’
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 29
