Whisper of Leaves

by Unknown

  There were voices, harsh whisperings of an argument ill-suppressed and she recognised one of them. Relief swept over her as the realisation that she’d been taken by Tremen not Shargh finally penetrated her dazed mind.

  The voices intruded again. The speaker from last night was Tresen, and the person he argued with was Kest. The subject of their dispute was audible too: it was her.

  She put the cup down and tried to smooth her tunic, but it was crumpled, torn and stained. The floor tilted and she grabbed the table for support, struggling to hold back the flood of images, knowing that if she let them come she would be utterly lost.

  ‘For the sake of the ’green, leave her to sleep.’

  ‘There are injured!’

  Kira shook her head savagely, grappling with the flashes of smoke and fire filling her mind.

  ‘She’s injured herself! And exhausted. She needs to rest!’

  Injured? She clutched at the word, imagining a falzon bandage binding a wound, the gaping flesh disappearing under the cream, fragrant cloth. Her breathing slowly steadied and she was able to let go of the table and move in the direction of the light, the voices growing louder as she went.

  ‘Men are dying, Tresen! The Sheaf’s destroyed, we must have –’

  Kest saw her and froze mid-sentence. They were sitting at a table, Tresen with his back to her. Kest was still clad in his finery from Turning, but his tunic was grimy, one side hanging in tatters. Tresen turned, looking as old as Miken, his skin sallowed by the lamplight. No one spoke, but Kira kept her feet moving until she was almost to Kest, keeping her gaze on him, not trusting herself to look at Tresen.

  ‘How many injured are there?’ she said, her voice croaky.

  Kest stood, his face full of pity, and for a horrible moment she thought he was going to offer condolences.

  ‘How many injured are there?’ She could bear being thought half-witted by repeating herself, but she couldn’t bear words of comfort, for that would mean . . .

  ‘I . . . twenty-five, Healer Kiraon,’ said Kest, his gaze on her cheek.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘In the third training room.’

  ‘It’s close to the herbal stores and the Water Cavern,’ volunteered Tresen. ‘We’ve made it into a Haelen.’

  Like in the Bough. Images of the inferno surged back and she screwed her eyes shut, struggling to visualise falzon bandages until she was able to open her eyes again. Kest was exchanging glances with Tresen, but his face flicked to neutral.

  ‘I’ll need help,’ she said, her voice scarcely audible. She coughed to clear her throat. ‘How . . . how many Kashclan are here?’

  ‘Five, including Miken and Tresen,’ answered Kest.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Arlen, Paterek and Werem.’

  Not Merek. The last of her hope guttered and she gripped the table with such ferocity that her fingers went numb. ‘They’re not Healers,’ she rasped. ‘I’ll need Healers. Does Sarkash command Tresen to heal or protect?’

  ‘I’m afraid Commander Sarkash is dead. Miken leads until the council meets, but I command the Warens. You can have Tresen to aid you and whoever else you choose.’

  ‘Whoever else . . .’ she echoed. What use would any of them be? She thought of Feseren and Sanaken and their incurable wounds and clenched her jaw.

  ‘I’ll take you to the training room, Kira, and help you arrange it to your liking,’ said Tresen gently.

  Kest turned his feet towards the first training room, where he knew Miken waited to speak with him. The Kashclan Leader was sitting at a table resting his head back against the wall with his eyes shut, but he roused as Kest settled opposite.

  ‘She’s gone with Tresen to the third training room,’ said Kest, in answer to Miken’s unasked question. ‘How she’s walking I’ve no idea, let alone functioning.’ He cleared his throat and rubbed his face wearily.

  ‘Kira’s concern will be for the wounded now,’ said Miken. ‘They will take all her intent and all her strength for a time. Her grief will come later.’ He paused. ‘Patrols are now in place?’

  Kest nodded. ‘Protectors are at the longhouses and, with the clansmen there rotating through protecting duties, the longhouses should be secure. At least there’s been no argument about patrols guarding gatherers or gathering being limited to the First Eight.’

  ‘It’s not sustainable in the long term,’ said Miken.

  ‘No,’ said Kest, reminded abruptly of his own objection to Sarkash’s orders in the Water Cavern. It seemed a lifetime ago.

  ‘Of course, we don’t know what the long term is,’ said Miken.

  ‘My first duty is to secure what remains,’ said Kest. ‘The Bough is gone and the dead are beyond our aid, but the longhouses remain and the wounded. I need as many Healers as possible within the Warens. You, of course, must return to your longhouse, but I want Tresen here to help Kira, and Werem, Arlen and Paterek. Send Brem too – if you’re agreeable.’

  ‘While we have enough clansman at the longhouse, it’s best he serves here,’ said Miken, rising. ‘We must keep the healing-knowing safe till it can be written again.’

  The Kashclan Protectors sat quietly, grim-faced and armed, but more intent on the alwaysgreen in front of them than on the trees at their back. Pekrash’s men patrolled there as discreetly as possible given their need to create a protective circle around the alwaysgreen and its grieving Kashclansmen.

  Miken was barely aware of his kin as he stood with his palm against Sogren’s gnarled trunk, his attention on the patchwork of sods between its massive roots. Maxen, Merek and Lern lay here, but not Kandor, though it was unheard of to separate a family in this way. Never had so many members of a family died at one time in Allogrenia and Miken daren’t risk disturbing Sogren’s roots further. Kandor rested with Fasarini under the great alwaysgreen Wessogren instead; mother and son together again in death. Likewise, the other Kashclan dead had been buried under their bondmates’ alwaysgreens.

  Miken straightened and rubbed the soil from his hands, repelled suddenly by the knowledge of the death it held: Maxen, Merek, Lern, perhaps even the very future of the Tremen; certainly of the sweet rituals of farewell that brought comfort, for the risk of attack remained too great. No burial was easy but the embrace of clan-kin and their songs softened the pain of those left behind. There had been none this time, just the words of ending, delivered while his clan-kin stood, swords in their hands. There had been no women present either, for he’d ordered they remain within the Protector-guarded longhouse. Even Kira was absent, despite it being her right and duty to lay the first sod, to sing the first mourning-song and to lead the words of parting.

  Miken hadn’t seen Kira since he and Tresen had carried her to the Warens, and now his duty to his dead clan-kin was done, he had a sudden and overwhelming need to reassure himself that she was well. Nodding to his clan-kin, he set off through the trees, passing Pekrash’s men but declining their offer of an escort. He had a sword but no fear he’d have to use it, for it was broad daylight and a waning moon would soon rise, not the full moon the Shargh clearly favoured for their filthy work.

  His pace quickened. Their stinking swords hadn’t reached Kira, nor would they while he drew breath! Not that they hadn’t caused her terrible injury. Kira’s loss was shocking, and the wound of Kandor’s death in particular would be long in its healing. Miken took a steadying breath. Praise the ’green that she was stubborn and single-minded, qualities that had infuriated Maxen, but which would now ensure her survival. Despite Kest’s concerns, she’d not be turning away from life while there were injured to be cured.

  And if there were no cure? Miken’s feet slowed. Fire with flatswords brings the bane, fire without brings life again. One indecipherable rhyme was all that lay between them and the rot that would inevitably come. And Kira knew this, for she’d seen it already in Sarnia Cave. How would she deal with so much death?

  Miken cursed and shoved a shelterbush branch out of his way; he was thin
king like a man defeated and a fool! The rhyme proved there was a cure for Shargh wounds, but they’d lost it. They’d grown lazy in their fastness of trees, that was their problem. They’d confused seasons of peace with an absence of enemies. It wasn’t a mistake Kasheron had made.

  Miken shrugged savagely. What was the use of dwelling on past errors; they must work now to save what Kasheron had founded.

  A flowerthief danced through the foliage, its yellow eye comical against the ring of green plumage, and Miken’s heart lifted. The forest was still beautiful, despite the darkness that had descended on them and, in the one thing that mattered most, fortune had been kind. The only person in the whole of Allogrenia capable of rewriting the Herbal Sheaf had survived.

  But how? His belly growled and he broke off a spray of pitchie, forcing himself to chew the dusty seeds as he contemplated the attack. He and his clan-kin had been set upon as they’d neared the Arborean, but that was just the backwash of the fighting at the Bough. And suddenly, there was Kira, running towards the flames and towards the Shargh. The sight of her in such danger had almost been worse than the sight of the Bough burning, and it had only been her momentary pause and Tresen’s younger legs that had allowed them to snatch her back from certain death. But they had been too late to save Kandor. That failure would haunt him for the rest of his days.

  Miken shook his head and spat out a husk. None of it made sense. If Kira had fled the attack on the Bough, she’d have taken Kandor with her, and there was no reason for her to leave before. Indeed, as the only woman in the Bough, she was responsible for hosting the evening and ensuring the smooth running of the feast, duties Maxen certainly wouldn’t have let her relinquish. And she’d escaped from the Shargh’s clutches with nothing worse than bruising, when even fully trained and armed Protectors had succumbed.

  There had been no warning. Kest had outlined to him the events within the Bough, telling him that Maxen wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss, even if he’d believed there was danger. Maxen was too busy fuming over Merek bonding with a Morclanswoman – and Kest’s sister of all people. Miken smiled sourly. Maxen wouldn’t have challenged his eldest son and chosen successor; he was more likely to have vented his anger on Kira. Miken had seen him berate her often enough before. Then his blood ran cold.

  What if Maxen’s anger had gone beyond words this time? What if he’d actually struck her? Miken glanced back over his shoulder in the direction of Maxen’s chill corpse, and shivered. The notion was unthinkable! He was letting his dislike of the man cloud his thinking. As Leader, Maxen most of all was bound by the Tremen strictures forbidding violence. He shrugged but the idea remained firmly lodged in his head; it gave explanation for Kira’s absence from the Bough, and the bruise on her face, in a way nothing else did.

  The forest thinned then gave way completely as he reached the Arborean, the air taking on a sooty scent. The trees ringing the blackened earth were fading to yellow, as if it were autumn rather than summer, but their colour had nothing to do with the gentle change of seasons. Scorched leaves littered the ground, crunching under Miken’s feet and rattling from the canopy, framing a sight no less shocking than it had been after the last of the flames had been beaten out.

  He stopped, despite his intention to pass through quickly, and he was unsure whether it was the devastation of everything Tremen that held him there, or the fact that so little of the building remained. Even the birds had fled. Normally the air would be alive with springleslips and tippets attracted by the rich pickings of bark beetles, stickspiders and flutterwings the clearing provided, but the Arborean was silent. Even the sky was bereft of clouds.

  He started off again, moving slowly over the open ground until he felt something shift under his foot. At first he thought it was just a stick, but there was a smoothness and symmetry about it that was unnatural. Extricating it from the earth where it had been pressed by many feet, he used his thumbnail to clear the mud from the delicate scroll of carving, blinking as his vision blurred. Old Benam had given Kandor this pipe when the boy had first shown an interest in music. Kandor had barely been four seasons and Benam already an old man. Now the alwaysgreens sheltered both of them.

  Feeling suddenly old, he sighed, and turned his feet north, towards the Warens.

  Time in the Warens wasn’t measured by sunlight or shadow, nor marked by frost or dew. Nothing gave song or lent flashes of colour like tippets or springleslips, or scented the air with leaf or blossom, berry or bark. The Warens were unchanging stone: dark and often dank, but safe, and safety was paramount now. Kest grimaced. He missed the open world above.

  Footsteps sounded ahead and his sword was in his hand before he realised it, but it was only Karbrin replenishing one of the lamps. Kest sheathed his sword and nodded to him as he passed, feeling faintly foolish. The Shargh had reduced him to jumping at shadows. Better to jump than die, he thought grimly. He’d not gone much further when footfalls sounded again, but these reverberated with the precision of a patrol and he flattened himself against the stone until Pekrash’s men had passed. The four patrols Kest had sent out had now returned, and they all told the same story; the forest seemed empty of Shargh. Was it possible?

  The air sweetened and a yellow glow ahead announced the opening to the third training room. He braced himself; this was where they’d brought the injured, screaming with pain, vomiting and sobbing, straight after the fighting. Two had died as they’d carried them and three shortly after. Kest took several steadying breaths, fearing what he was about to see, but it was quiet now and the air sweet, no longer stinking of sweat and blood.

  Mattresses had been laid in neat rows, lamps set at regular intervals to give the Healers light, and tables shifted from other caverns to serve as shelves for water jugs and basins, pots and grinding stones, and stacks of herbs. The scent he’d noticed in the tunnel was more intense, reminding him abruptly of Feserini’s birthing room, and of scooping the unconscious Kira from the floor. Leader Feailner Kiraon, he corrected; she was going to have to accept the title now, whether she willed it or not.

  Kira was at the other end of the cavern, bent in tending, Tresen beside her, but Kest turned the other way to where those with lesser injuries lay and those whose wounds were inflicted by the agony of loss. Kesilini’s face was peaceful now, the savage grief smoothed away with sickleseed, and he knelt beside her and took her hand, its warmth bringing him relief as intense as pain. When he’d fought his way through the choking smoke in the Bough, he’d believed he’d never see her again, and he still had no idea how she’d managed to escape when so many hadn’t.

  The further caverns were being emptied of their dead, their clan-kin taking them away under Protector escort for burial. Seven Protectors had lost their lives in the battle in the trees outside, including Sarkash, who’d arrived near the end of the fighting, and sixteen Protectors and clansmen and women who’d been celebrating the Turning. The Shargh had killed all their swords could reach and scarcely a clan had escaped untouched. Clanleader Farish had perished and members of Sarclan, Sherclan and Barclan longhouses, but the greatest single loss had been from Kashclan: Mern, Stinder, old Dera, Maxen, Merek, Lern and Kandor.

  He smoothed the covering over Kesilini, his gaze on Kira again. The treegems in her hair caught the lamplight as she worked, but the bruise on her face was hidden. His men had told him that Kandor had been killed after most of the Shargh had withdrawn. The Shargh had hunted him down, passing other Tremen in pursuit of him. Had their quest been to destroy the Tremen leadership? Was that why they’d ignored the longhouses in their path, striking at the heart of Allogrenia? If so, they’d all but succeeded: Maxen, Merek, Lern and Kandor were dead, and Kira was carrying their foul mark on her face.

  He kissed Kesilini on the forehead, then moved towards the entranceway. Most of the more severely injured were sleeping, either from the effects of sickleseed or everest. Kira should have been sleeping too, her paleness clear from where he stood. But since Kandor’s death, she had t
hrown herself into healing, and even when she did rest, Tresen said, she tossed about in nightmares, crying Kandor’s name.

  Kest sighed. Kira was the holder now of all the healing they had left – Kasheron’s legacy reduced to one exhausted girl. How had it happened? Why had it happened? At that moment she looked up, but there was no flicker of recognition, and even from a distance, he could see that there was no gold left in her eyes.

  25

  A single column of smoke rose above the landscape, visible the length and breadth of the Shargh Grounds. No wind blew and no wing-beat frayed or softened it, so that it reached almost to the clouds before skewing sideways, staining the sky. The pyre had been set on the edge of the Grounds, where the land began to rise and break into the stony steps of the Cashgars, and where a single cave-mouth gaped, marking the place of the Last Telling. It was the place where the Sky Chiefs’ breath came closest to the earth; where their thoughts had seeded the minds of Tellers; where the spirit most easily quit its human shell to make the journey skyward.

  Shargh swayed and muttered, their wailing stilled by the ritual lighting of the pyre. The gather-wood was brittle from countless days under the sun, and the flames devoured it swiftly, their tongues licking at the wolf-skin enclosing Erboran’s corpse, his flesh thickening and souring the smoke. The acrid plumes engulfed Arkendrin, who’d positioned himself too close to the pyre, but he stood his ground, eyes smarting, clamped mouth silencing a gurgling cough. His brother’s profile was dark against the bright orange of the flames, and as the wood broke and settled, his jaw sagged open in a macabre grin. Arkendrin’s teeth clenched. Even in death Erboran mocked him!