by Unknown
The conversation came to an end and Kandor straightened and assumed a dutiful expression, his fair hair catching the firelight. Kira hoped it wouldn’t darken like her father’s, or her other brothers’, for Kasheron had been fair and it pleased her that their noble ancestor’s blood showed more strongly in her and Kandor than in the rest of the family.
The talk at the table ebbed and flowed. Sendra’s teeth clicked on a pile of pitchie seeds, a soggy collection of husks growing in front of the elderly helper. Kira had never liked pitchie seeds, but they contained enough sustenance to keep a traveller hale for many days, and without them Kasheron and his companions wouldn’t have survived their first winter.
‘If her cough doesn’t ease, you’ll need to concoct a syrup of three parts annin to one part brenna oil,’ her father was saying to Merek.
Kira roused. ‘What cough is this?’
Lern took a gulp of thornyflower tea and wiped the wetness from his lips. ‘Thinaki, daughter of Lomarkon. She’s been in the Haelen since this morning. Lomarkon says she’s been coughing for three nights, and nobody in their longhouse can get any sleep.’
‘So he’s brought her here to rob us of ours,’ grumbled Merek.
‘Is the cough wet or dry?’ asked Kira.
‘Dry,’ replied Lern.
‘Then she should be having something more soothing than brenna oil.’
‘Kiraon,’ her father’s voice cut in icily, ‘you weren’t in the Haelen this morning to examine her, so I fail to see how you can make such a judgement.’
‘If the cough’s dry, then it would be better treated with honey.’
‘Lomarkon said they’d tried honey but it hadn’t worked,’ offered Merek.
‘Lomarkon hasn’t the wit he was born with,’ broke in Sendra. ‘I remember when his first bondmate Birishi gave birth. Lomarkon thought the babe would do better if nut oil were added to the wet nurse’s milk. Nut oil! We had six days of scouring before your dear mother – may she rest easy ’neath the ’green – found out what the trouble was.’
Sendra placed her calloused hand over Kira’s. ‘She was a lot nicer to that fool than I would’ve been. He needed a good knock on the head with something solid to get his brain working. But your mother sat him down with never a harsh word, and explained to him that a mother’s milk was like the finest draught of withyweed ale to a baby, and you couldn’t improve on withyweed ale. He seemed to understand that and the baby thrived. Still, that was your mother all over. She always knew what to say and how to say it.’
There was a brief silence broken only by Sendra’s sniffing, but Kira felt little sadness, remembering hardly anything of her mother and rarely thinking of her. It hadn’t always been so. When she was younger she’d yearned to know everything: the colour of her mother’s hair and eyes; her favourite bird and tree and flower; where she’d liked to roam and gather; and how she’d healed.
Her father had made his disapproval of her questioning plain, and in Kira’s ninth or tenth season, he’d simply forbidden it. ‘Your mother is at rest beneath the alwaysgreen, and shouldn’t be disturbed,’ he’d said.
Kira could still remember the cold finality of his eyes, and they were the same now, staring at her over the rim of his cup.
‘And where have you been this day, Kiraon?’
Kira felt Kandor tense and avoided looking in his direction. ‘I’ve been gathering,’ she said, reaching for a piece of Sendra’s special nutcake as if her only concern were hunger.
‘I didn’t ask what you’d been doing, I asked where you’d been.’
‘I gathered in and around Enogren.’
‘In and around Enogren,’ her father mimicked, studying her unblinkingly. ‘As I have specifically forbidden you to go beyond Enogren, I’m assuming that “in and around” means only the land west of Enogren.’
Lern and Merek had stopped talking and Sendra’s teeth had fallen silent.
‘The stocks of sorren were exhausted. I needed to go a little way east to gather more.’
‘You went beyond the First Eight?’
Kira’s heart flapped like a broken-winged bird. Her father knew that sorren didn’t grow within the First Eight; every Healer at the table knew it, just as they knew it was a powerful purifier that the stores in the Haelen must never be without. But her father wasn’t interested in any of these facts; he was only interested in whether she’d defied his will.
‘I went beyond the First Eight,’ she admitted.
‘And you took Kandor with you?’
‘I left him at Enogren,’ she said, the heat rising in her face, though she refused to drop her gaze. Let him prove her deceit if he could; he wasn’t going to bully Kandor as well.
‘And, in your judgement, it was safe to abandon your brother and go off as the whim took you?’ His voice was silky, but his eyes were as hard as axe-wood.
Abandon Kandor? How dare he! ‘The Protectors deem the First Eight safe and have never imposed any limitation on travel within them or to the longhouses. Of course, if you believe they err in this matter, perhaps you should discuss it with Commander Sarkash,’ she said, gazing at him innocently, though inside a small voice crowed in triumph.
‘In going beyond the First Eight, you disobeyed me,’ said her father, abruptly changing tack. ‘This flouting of my authority is not new in you Kiraon, and it becomes you less and less. You’re nearing seventeen and as a resident of the Bough, it behoves you to set an example to others, and particularly to your younger brother. You’re too old to go traipsing about dressed like some wild Terak Kutan of the north, and too old to spend as much time as you do with Protector Tresen.’
‘Tresen? But we’re clanmates,’ said Kira, staring at her father in astonishment. Did he know she had been with Tresen this day?
‘Precisely!’
Kira searched the others’ faces, at a loss to know what her father’s objection was, but Merek was intent on his nutbread and Sendra sat with her eyes downcast, while Kandor looked as bewildered as she.
Only Lern was prepared to offer something. ‘Father’s saying that people might think you’re courting,’ he said uncomfortably.
‘But we’re clanmates,’ repeated Kira, staring at her father in shock. Was he suggesting she’d break the Tremen law forbidding bonding between clanmates? Maxen’s flinty eyes stared back at her and she realised he knew she and Tresen were only friends; he was simply using their friendship as a weapon against her.
‘In penance, you will confine yourself to the Arborean for the next moon, and conduct yourself as a member of the Bough should,’ said Maxen. ‘You will wear clothing befitting your position and you will not go wandering about the forest gathering; there are sufficient gatherers within the Bough without you doing so. You may heal in the Haelen if you wish, though there is little enough to do there for myself and Merek and Lern. At the end of this moon, we will discuss this matter further.’
A whole moon! ‘But father . . .’
Maxen’s hand slammed down on the table, spilling Lern’s tea and scattering Sendra’s pitchie seeds. ‘There will be no more discussion on this matter! Is that understood?’
Kira’s eyes blazed but her father’s were the harder and she was forced to nod.
Maxen relaxed back in his seat. ‘Now, as you’ve finished your meal, Kiraon, you may go to your room.’
*
Kira gave up the struggle to sleep somewhere near the mid point of the night. She’d forgotten to get Kandor to salve her back and it was throbbing, but that wasn’t the main thing keeping her awake. She felt as if something was sitting on her chest, crushing and suffocating her. Throwing back the covering, she rose and went to the window. The moon was full, silvering the sweep of grass and limning the trees fringing the clearing. The Bough was one of the few places where the moon could be seen unimpeded by a mesh of leaves and branches, for Kasheron’s followers had cleared a large circle round the Tremen place of healing.
It had always seemed strange to Kira that tho
ugh there were no trees, the Northerners had named the area around the Bough the Arborean. But in the last moon she’d stumbled upon the answer to the puzzle. She’d been testing her knowledge of the Warens by travelling with an unlit lamp when she’d missed her turn and come upon a small storage room. It was damp and most of the Writings had mouldered away, but there were a few tantalising fragments still readable.
. . . seed of the al . . . ns . . . something Kira had taken to be alwaysgreens . . . has grown well, and seed from these first eight . . . something . . . planted a day’s march . . . cared for by the octads . . . the first eight now make a fitting crown for the Arborean . . . one greater than je . . . Jewels, Kira had guessed. The rest of the Writing had disintegrated, but the meaning she gleaned from it was that the Arborean was crowned with a circle of alwaysgreens, the First Eight, a crown made of the green and growing, not the hardness of the metal and gems of the northern crowns. So originally the Arborean had referred to not just the circle of land around the Bough but a greater circle of land stretching to the Warens’ entrance, which meant that her confinement in the Arborean would actually allow her to continue exploring the Warens. No doubt her father wouldn’t quite see it in this way, she thought resentfully.
Beyond the window, the moon illuminated the trees. Enogren would be as bright as a candle and as easy to climb as a stroll to the Kashclan longhouse. Her fingers beat a rapid rhythm on the windowsill. If only her father weren’t Leader she’d be living in the Kashclan longhouse with the rest of her blood: Miken and Teserini, Mikini and Tresen, the Healer Brem, old Tilda, Arlen, Paterek, Werem . . .
She swung away, colliding with the chimes hanging there and releasing a burst of woody music that she quickly stilled. Every child had chimes of alwaysgreen in their sleeping rooms to ward off harm. Her mother had hung these ones for her: a sun, a moon, a star and a mira kiraon; simple shapes singing a simple song, not like the Morclan chimes Teserini had told her about. Those took the shapes of things beyond the forest, including the sinuous running horse of the north. Her father wouldn’t be pleased!
There were six paces between her bed and her door, and she counted them now as she had so many times before. Six paces, six paces, six paces. Miken had once joked she’d wear out his floor with her pacing. He’d said she should take to withyweed ale when she was upset, like normal Tremen. Miken joked with her often but her father never joked. Perhaps it came with the burden of leadership, this necessity of weighing every word, of controlling, of crushing. The sense of suffocation grew again, as if the air had thinned.
Suddenly a cry sounded, the shock of it like frost on flesh. The mira kiraon was hunting in the canopy, wild and free. She was out the door and halfway across the darkened hall before she was fully aware of where she was going.
Then another sound brought her up short. A bark, almost like an owl, but not the mira kiraon this time. It was too harsh for a frost king or a hanawey. She looked round wildly, searching for a darker shadow to hide in, then abruptly realised that it was Thinaki coughing in the Haelen. Kira cursed herself. She’d meant to check on Thinaki earlier but the argument with her father had pushed it from her mind, and now the poor girl had been left alone half the night in a strange and frightening place.
Thinaki’s eyes widened as Kira opened the door.
‘It’s only Kira,’ she whispered, coming across to the pallet.
Thinaki’s grip on the blanket loosened as another bout of coughing took her. Kira laid her hand across Thinaki’s forehead, feeling a moist heat. Her father had said nothing about fever. Thinaki’s pulse was fast too.
‘Do your bones ache?’ asked Kira.
Thinaki nodded. ‘And my head.’
‘Did you tell the other Healers?’
‘I told my father,’ said Thinaki shyly.
And no one had questioned her further, thought Kira.
Thinaki was a summer younger than Kandor and had the dark hair and beautiful long-lashed eyes common among Barclan, but right now her hair was damp with perspiration, and her eyes over-bright.
‘I’ve some salve that will take the ache from your bones, and a tincture to soothe your cough and cool you down,’ she said, smiling reassuringly and patting Thinaki’s hand. ‘I won’t be long.’
She went to the Herbery, not bothering to light a lamp. The room, which was drenched in moonlight, was filled with the smell of beeswax seals, and of the herbs hanging in bunches from the ceiling.
Kira worked quickly, returning to find Thinaki bent double over the pallet, another bout of coughing racking her body. She eased Thinaki back and began massaging the salve into her joints, inhaling deeply as she worked, the scent releasing her own tension.
‘That feels good, Leader Kiraon,’ said Thinaki.
‘I’m not the Leader, Thinaki, that’s my father.’
Thinaki flushed. ‘Th . . . those of my longhouse call you Leader. They say you’re the best Healer in Allogrenia since Kasheron himself.’
Such a sentiment was hardly likely to please her father! thought Kira. ‘That’s very nice of them, Thinaki, but not true. Now, I’m going to give you a tincture to soothe that cough and let you sleep. No, it’s not evil tasting,’ she added as the girl’s nose wrinkled. ‘You have my word as “the best Healer since Kasheron”!’
Thinaki drank it and settled back into the pillows. Her work done, Kira collected up the salve pot and empty cup and started to the door, Thinaki’s eyes following her.
‘Would you like me to sit with you until you go to sleep?’ asked Kira.
Thinaki nodded and Kira came back, settling beside the pallet and smoothing Thinaki’s hair from her forehead with long gentle strokes.
‘Ah, Healer Kiraon, that feels nice,’ murmured Thinaki drowsily. ‘It takes away the pain.’
3
In the lands below the cave where his ancestor Ordorin had long ago received the Last Telling, Erboran bent and scooped the muddy water of the Thanawah into his mouth. The low sun threw his shadow across the grass as he scanned the dusty pasturelands and cloudless sky.
In the Older Days, the sorchas would’ve already been dismantled and the long trek north begun, following Nastril, burning low and bright on the horizon. In the Older Days, the young and the women who were large with child would sit astride the ebis, the sorchas and cooking pots lashed behind them as they skirted the Cashgars’ eastern flank, journeyed across the Mahktan Plain and rounded the Braghan Mountains, to enter the rich pastures of the north.
In the Older Days! he thought, his eyes flashing and the muscles rippling under his skin. The tales of his people’s dispossession were fresh in his mind despite the long seasons since Tarkenda had told them to him. The northern tribes had come together and taken all the lands north of the Braghans for their own, butchering the Shargh like fanchon. The fighting had been long and bloody, but in the end the Shargh had been forced beyond the Braghans’ southern foothills. The defeat had broken them into four peoples.
Urchelen had led his remaining blood-ties deeper into the south looking for new pastures, and the Soushargh still dwelt there. Irkardin’s people had become the Weshargh, taking their name from the western lands they’d retreated to. His own forefathers had settled here, in the shadow of the Cashgars, under Artmenton’s rule. They’d been the only ones to keep the name – of the Shargh – the Sky Chiefs had granted them. But Urchelen and Irkardin had had more honour than Ashmiridin. They’d never dirtied their knees to the cursed Northerners to keep their grazing tracts, as Ashmiridin had. And Ashmiridin’s blood-ties had honoured his treachery by continuing to use his name!
He scooped more water to his mouth and spat it back into the river, reminding himself that all that happened upon the earth, this dawn and a thousand dawns past, was the Sky Chiefs’ will and couldn’t be gainsaid, despite the carping of some on the Grounds. Even thinking such thoughts risked seeding past evils into the present.
He touched his palm to his forehead, begging the Sky Chiefs’ indulgence. Then, for g
ood measure, he tossed a handful of water over his head, cleansing himself of the memories. Shaking himself like a reedrat, he sloshed his way up the bank and settled into a loping run, head lowered, black hair streaming in the wind. The Grounds stretched away east and west, dotted here and there with ebis, while in front of him a single spur rose, set with sorchas glowing in the westering sun.
Yrkut the First had bequeathed them sorchas after he’d risen from the dust and spat his essence into the air, bringing the Shargh into being. As well as these shelters, he’d given them the wolves and the grahen; the moorats and the fanchon to hunt; and he’d given them the ebis’ hide and hair, bone and sinew, meat and milk to feed and clothe themselves so that they might have the strength to give thanks and honour to those who watched over them.
Erboran brought his palm to his forehead in a habitual gesture, but he didn’t alter his pace or vigilance. To the west, thirty-two ebis grazed with twelve ebi at their feet. In the next few days, the ebi would number twice that if the birthings went well, the rains came and the grass grew green again. Away in the stone-trees, an ebis bull bellowed and a shrill squawking erupted overhead as a flock of marwings broke from the trees, clashing and squabbling, before coming together in the shape of a spearhead. Erboran smiled and some of the tension lifted from his shoulders. The sky might be bereft of clouds and the air as warm as fire coals, but the marwings’ flight augured well.
Erboran ran on, his long stride bringing him to the roots of the spur, but he didn’t lessen his pace as the land steepened, for he was Chief of the Shargh and could run with equal strength over flat land or hilly. He continued to scan the surrounding lands as his muscles propelled him up the slope, his eyes confirming the dryness of the pasture, the grazing places of the ebis and the manner of bird flight. After a time he came to the first of the sorchas.
