by Dave Smeds
The cost of victory had been too high.
"Come back," he sang in bittersweet rythni. Elenya, the only one of his companions who could understand him, closed her eyes in pain.
He gradually became aware of the object tickling his hand, and for the first time saw the bough lily. He let it fall into the dust.
PART TWO
Scheming Dragons
Hidden dragon. Do not act.
– I Ching, First Hexagram, First Line
XVIII
JANNA DID NOT STAY in her sea chamber, but took Toren to a reception room near the pool decorated with rugs, tapestries, overstuffed pillows, and curtained alcoves. He sat down, the tortoise cupped carefully in his palms.
The high priestess took an ornate glass bottle and a snifter from a cabinet and poured him one swallow of a scarlet liquid. He took it, sniffed it mistrustingly.
"It will ease the shock when your totem is restored," she said.
The concoction smelled similar to that used by his own Fhali shaman for the totem ceremony. He drank. It coated his gullet with a hot, medicinal film.
"It is very strong," he said, suspicious.
"It needs to be," she explained. "This procedure is not going to be the pleasure you have imagined."
His fingers knotted around the stem of the glass. "My ancestors," he said anxiously. "They were harmed inside the gem?"
"No," she answered quickly. "They are intact. It is you who have changed." She rubbed her cheek, looking guilty. "Except for the potion, there's not much I or Struth can do to prepare you. When you awaken, I will be gone. This is something you will have to deal with by yourself."
His eagerness dribbled away, but nevertheless he longed for the reintegration. She replaced the snifter in the cabinet and ordered him to lay down on the divan. The potion melted into him, grasping at his consciousness. The tortoise shimmered.
Janna's incantation built from soft, crooning tones to full-voiced song. His tortoise lifted its head, blinked its eyes, and crawled forward. Its pads left brief, smoky tingles along his chest and throat. It slipped into his mouth like a bird into its nest, dissolving as it passed his tongue, following the path smoothed by the potion. It merged with him.
The room dimmed. Janna's shadowy form hovered nearby. A kind of drowsy half-sleep overtook him, and dreams filled the empty place in his mind, dreams of his father, his grandfather, and all his ancestors along the male line back to the founder of the village. He was no longer a cheli.
The peace and joy of reacquaintance lasted an instant, then he fell into a chasm of screams.
****
Deena draped her feet in a pool in the garden of Struth and kicked. Spray danced to the tiles on the far side. The sun sparkled and beamed off the ripples. The water kissed her aching, road-weary soles.
She jumped as a shadow fell across her.
Janna stood beside her, though Deena had not heard her approach. The high priestess reached down with her intimidatingly beautiful hands and caressed the top of Deena's head with long, carefully polished nails.
"I thought I'd find you here, though I expected you'd be bathing more than your feet." Her eyes flicked toward the dusty riding clothes on Deena's body.
"I was planning to," Deena replied. Heat rushed to her cheeks. Must she constantly feel unfeminine in Janna's presence? "It's been so long, I wanted to savor it."
"Not to mention that you were lost in thought," Janna said, laughing.
Janna always treated Deena like a favorite niece. The role never hung easily on the latter's shoulders. "Well, yes. As I told you, it's been an eventful journey."
"Yes." Janna picked up the barrette that Deena had left on the tile. "It's just as well you haven't changed clothes. Tie your hair back up, too," she said, handing her the clasp. "I want you to look like you did the last time Toren saw you."
"Why?"
"I want you to visit him."
Deena's heartbeat quickened. "Why?"
Janna lowered her head, frowning. "I've just given him back his totem. It may be important to his adjustment to see you. You… will remind him of what he's been through in the last few weeks. At least, that's what Struth hopes."
Deena sprang to her feet, and hurriedly rolled up her hair. "Child," Janna said, setting her palm firmly on Deena's shoulder, "I doubt that he will want to see you right now. He will probably shun you. If so, let him be. What matters is that you confront him just long enough for his ancestors to take note of you."
Subdued, Deena nodded, and reached for her socks. "He's in the Soft Room," Janna said. The priestess smiled and glided away into the fronds that surrounded the pool and isolated it from casual view.
Deena tugged on her boots and threaded her way down a flagstone path. She strained to remember exactly where to find the Soft Room; she had seldom been there because the chamber served mainly as one of the hospitality rooms.
She wavered outside the closed door, poised her knuckles to rap on the wood. A groan and a muffled impact filtered through the barrier. She caught her breath and threw open the door.
Toren rolled across the floor, clutching his head, digging his heels so sharply into the finely woven carpets that he bunched the fabric into dramatic folds and mounds. He tumbled toward her, forcing her to leap over him. He came to a stop against a tapestried wall.
"Toren?" she murmured.
He jerked his gaze toward her. She quailed, frightened by the feral glow in his pupils. A string of clipped, foreign words streamed from his mouth.
"I don't understand," she said soothingly. "Use Mirienese."
He jerked with each syllable, as if physically struck. He shook his head, focussed on her once more, and snorted in disgust. She swallowed a lump so big it bruised her throat.
"Toren, what's wrong? It's me, Deena."
He shouted a brief, stern phrase, and jabbed his finger toward the doorway. Stung, she ventured half a step toward the opening. Janna's warning rang in her mind: He may shun you. Indeed he had. The rejection stabbed her deeper than she could have imagined.
She was not quick enough for him. He seized her by the waist and tossed her. She flew like a sack of grain out of the room. His strength awed her. She was lean, but she was not that small.
She scampered down the corridor, getting herself out of range. Toren slammed the door closed. She stopped and looked back, wincing at the pinched spots on her waist. Tears trickled down her cheeks. She cursed the bitch who had sent her to him.
She kicked the floor like a cast-off toddler and walked stiffly away. Behind her, the door shot open. To her horror, Toren came charging down the tile after her. She whimpered, ducked down, and buried her head under her arms. No. What had she done to deserve this?
He ignored her, barreling past as if she did not exist. He sprinted out of the archway, through marble columns, and plunged into the dense shrubbery of the garden.
Deena flopped back on her rump, panting. Her weeping gradually dissipated. As her pride recovered from the shock, she fretted anew for Toren. What were his ancestors doing to him?
****
Toren crawled to the base of a tree and hugged it. His breathing slowed until, at last, he no longer had to inhale through his mouth. The bark against his cheek eased the storms in his head. Though the tree's size compared poorly to those of the Wood, it and the foliage around him blocked off all view of the temple. Dirt lay under his body, not strange, flat stones or impossibly colored fabric. His ancestors ceased clamoring to be released from the square walls of the room where they had reawakened. His own mind fought its way to the top, and began to function.
Deena. That had been Deena in the room, and in the corridor, cowering from him. Deena, his friend.
No, his great-great-grandfather's specter rumbled. A woman cannot be your friend. A modhiv makes friends among his fellow scouts; he has no time for females, save to beget sons on them. If a modhiv fails to return from a foray, his comrades will understand; a woman will not. And that one was a foreigner. A
Fhali should not even speak to females of other tribes.
Nearby a flower bloomed. His ancestors could not name it, but Toren had encountered it in the mountains the day before. "Liris," he said, repeating the name Deena had taught him. "It means Beauty."
No, his forebears protested. Flowers have names like shadebloom, whiteroot, blossom-that-opens-in-autumn. Beauty is a name for a pet animal.
Toren shook and curled into a fetal huddle. One after the other, his ancestors condemned him. Why have you left the Wood? Why have you eaten sacrilegious food? What is this talent springing from you, that should belong only to a shaman? The sun lies nearly overhead, when it should ride the sky to the north.
It's not my fault, Toren cried.
Where are we? Why are we here? If not your fault, whose is it?
He explained with imagined images of a dragon and armies marching over battlefields. He gave them firsthand memories of the frog god and a wizard whose blood smoked and dissolved steel. But all these things-even the steel-stunned them with queerness, sent them cringing away to things familiar and secure. Finding none, they accused him again of betrayal.
I had no choice, he moaned. They took you away from me, sealed you in a talisman.
His ancestors recoiled. You let them strip you of your totem? Cheli! Non-human!
I am a cheli no longer, Toren protested. You are restored. But the revelation had overwhelmed them. Dizzy with their silent yells, Toren crawled over to a tiny pool and dunked his head in and out. The shock of cold water on his face gave him back his wind, kept him from retching. A cloud of fish darted away from the impact point.
The activity caught his eye. Desperate to occupy his mind with anything but his ancestors' voices, he counted the number of species in the pool. There were four. At the bottom, a few scumsuckers browsed. Tiny minnows clung to the protection of roots and water lilies. A broad, puffy type dominated the open water, challenged only by a long, streamlined, rainbow-hued sort.
His ancestors recognized none of them, which gave them all the more reason to wail. Toren gritted his teeth and kept his glance on a specimen of the fourth species. A memory struggled to coalesce, battered by the hurricane within him.
The day before, in the mountains, he, Geim, and Deena caught five such fish in an alpine stream, and roasted them for dinner. A good meal. The pure white flesh tasted light and flavorful.
"Aumeris," he murmured. That was the name Geim had used. It meant streaker. "Aumeris."
He barely heard himself. Twenty-five generations insisted that they knew all the fishes of the Wood. There was no need to know the names of fishes elsewhere. What if their meat was poisonous?
His ancestors did not know this world, did not want to know this world. Then let them keep theirs, and leave him to deal with the one he was living in.
The voice that shouted most loudly was that of his great-great-grandfather, who had also been a modhiv. He called for his descendant to remember the code of a warrior, to hold to the ways that had served the tribe generation after generation, to purge himself of foreign tongues, ideas, and loyalties.
Toren reoriented a small connection in his mind. His great-great-grandfather's voice vanished from the din. Toren choked back a sob. Quickly he searched, and found that every part of that ancestor's experiences remained, accessible to his call. But now, the information came only if he called it. The dead man's spirit lived on, but was bound, forbidden to speak without permission.
What had Geim said? "Things change when one has no ancestors to tell the living how things should be." For Toren, at that time and in that place, things needed to change. He stilled his father's voice, and his grandfather's. He wept, but the pain of separation was less excruciating than the condemnation, confusion, and disquiet of the active totem. He had heard legends of Vanihr who had silenced the speakers within, but he had judged the tales to be myth. That they might be authentic occurrences had been inconceivable.
He repeated the adjustment until he had muzzled every ancestor. "Forgive me," he whispered as he shut out the founder of the Fhali nation.
All at once, the tiny grove into which he had fled seemed disturbingly vacant. A small frog splashed noisily into the pool, startling him. Birds fluttered in the upper reaches of the trees, suddenly very loud. He accessed the recollections of his father, just to be sure he could. His sire, a stern believer in the value of tradition, chastised him because he had let his hair come loose. The manner in which it was fastened was one of the ways Fhali denoted their tribal identity. Toren cut off the admonishment.
He rose unsteadily to his feet. Like most of his ancestors, his father had been angry that Toren had been abused, livid that the totem had been violated. Strangely, Toren could not summon one breath of rage.
He stumbled out of the grove, uncertain of his destination. The Soft Room did not beckon, nor did he wish to see Struth or the high priestess. He did not wish to see anyone. In time he would seek out Deena, at the very least to apologize, but not yet. He turned away from the wing of hospitality rooms, discovered a path through the garden, and headed for the front of the temple complex.
****
No one challenged him, though he passed a pair of priestesses, and sentries gazed down at him from their posts on the outer walls. The drelb, to his surprise, courteously opened the exit for him. He meandered into the amphitheater via the main entrance, tucked himself into a corner, and observed the petitioners at the Oracle of the Frog God.
The supplicants cast their offerings and uttered their questions. Struth declined to answer. As the afternoon wore on, Toren huddled farther and farther back toward the wall. Though the people at the dais represented many nationalities, none spoke Mirienese, and certainly none used Vanihr. Toren ached for the turn of a familiar phrase. He caught barely a word here and there, trivial terms whose meaning he had picked up listening to Geim and Deena converse during the journey.
He missed his ancestors. He needed them. He clenched his fists. Why could they not have whispered? Why did they have to shout?
He rose and left the temple. Walking down the avenue of temples, the fire of anger flickered at last. The irony struck him. That morning, he had projected his fury at Struth because she had stolen his totem; now he resented his ancestors and had to wonder if the frog god had done him a service by containing them.
He nearly bumped into a fat acolyte of one god or another, who cursed him. Gibberish, more gibberish. Other passersby mumbled their unintelligible gossip. What was he to do with himself? The confrontation with his totem had proven that he had, after all, somewhat adapted to this northern world, but that did not mean he belonged here yet.
How could he get back to the Wood? Only there, in familiar lands, could he possibly let his totem live as it had before. No, he was deluding himself-he could never let his ancestors speak freely again. They would always remind him of what he had done. But the Wood was still the only place he could call home, and Rhi waited for him there.
To leave the continent, he would have to cross the ocean. He would need to know the speech of the sailors to find passage, work off debts, and avoid opportunists. The only scheme that tempted him was to return to Irigion. He knew the route, and once there, some of those who spoke Mirienese could teach him the tongue that most of the northern principalities seemed to share. A year or two might be consumed before he reached the Wood, but that would still return him home long before his son came of age.
He threw the dream up at the wisps of clouds gathering in front of the setting sun. Struth had snared him well.
His warrior instincts told him that one of the people walking behind him was making straight for him. He turned.
Geim joined him. For an instant, the sight of another Vanihr reawakened his totem. His ancestors strained at their bonds. Toren winced, but kept them in check.
"You are well?" Geim asked.
Toren laughed wryly. "I am healthy, if that's what you mean."
"Not exactly," Geim stated, but let the matter d
rop. The bracelet on his wrist, the talisman of pursuit, drew Toren's glance. Geim shrugged. "You know you're too valuable to us to let you wander far. Struth felt you needed the time alone, but now it's best that you return to the temple."
"Why not?" Toren said, and reversed direction. "Thank you for reminding me of my imprisonment. I was just reflecting on what a clever cage it is." Under the sarcasm, it astonished him how good it felt to be able to discourse with ease and subtlety.
"The precautions are for your own safety. Gloroc's spies and assassins have a formidable reputation, and even Struth's eyes cannot be everywhere."
"The concern of the goddess touches me," Toren said.
"You really are free to go, if you wish."
"I may do that-later." The language matter refused to settle down and leave Toren be. "Tell me," he asked as they turned down the alley toward the side entrance, "why did Deena teach me her native tongue, and not the one that you and she shared? Was that deliberate?"
"You mean, why did we keep you from learning the main language of the north?" Geim asked bluntly.
The forthrightness pleased Toren. "Yes."
"It was not to handicap you, if that's what you're thinking. Just the opposite. Struth wants you to learn the High Speech immediately. Deena and I were prohibited from teaching it to you, in part because it is not a native tongue to either of us. We each speak it with an accent. Would you like to start now?"
Toren blinked. "As a matter of fact, yes."
The drelb admitted them to the temple. "Very well," Geim said. "We had planned to wait a day or two, but I think tonight will do. Come. There's someone you need to meet."
XIX
DUSK HALLOWED THE CORRIDORS of the main edifice of the temple complex as Geim led Toren up spiraling stairs to the third floor. They stopped before a door in the northeast corner of the building. Geim knocked. A thin, warbling voice responded.
