by Maya, Tara
“Hyo, Finnadro. Friends.” She included Vessia and even Vumo in her glance. Then she looked at Amdra. “And others.”
“It’s been a long time, Nann.” Zavaedi Vumo flung back his fur cape dramatically. He knelt and kissed the back of her gnarled hand. She slapped him playfully.
“None of that, scoundrel.”
Amdra cringed. “Father, please tell me you don’t ‘know’ the War Chief of Green Woods.”
“Widows get lonely, dear.” Vumo grinned.
“He was spying on us at the time,” Nann said. “But his brother bought him back, so we spared his life.”
Vumo’s grin widened. “My captivity was traumatic indeed.”
“Of course, we assumed he was spying on behalf of the Rainbow Labyrinth. We did not know he was allied with Orange Canyon,” Nann continued. “Else we might have hanged him anyway.”
Amdra muttered something dark and incomprehensible.
“So, Finnadro,” said Nann, “I sent you to strengthen ties with the Imorvae of Rainbow Labyrinth, and instead you’ve brought me more than a hundred mouths to feed.”
“The refugees have elders and young among them, but most are warriors, and they have a grudge against the bird people.”
“So why did you bring me bird people as well? Is this prelude to a war?”
“We have no wish to fight you,” said Amdra.
“Not honorably, in broad daylight, no,” said Nann. “You have no compunction hunting our helpless ones by night, though, have you?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Your slave raids into Green Woods territory! You steal our Imorvae Tavaedies and then desecrate them in black rites that even horrify the Deathsworn! Do you deny it?”
“We only take wildlings as slaves, and then only from our own tribelands,” said Amdra. “If some of your crazed wildlings trespass on our land and fling themselves into our nets, that is not our fault.”
Nann would have retorted, but Vessia held up her hand. “I have pledged that Tavaedies of all six tribes will be welcome to dance for me at Midwinter. I would rather hold that contest here than elsewhere, but if any tribe is excluded, I cannot. Will you allow the Orange Canyon folk in, War Chief Nann?”
“My Lady, I know who and what you are, what you have done, and what you can do,” said Nann. “But you ask me to risk much. Will you pledge to fight by my side if the bird-riders betray us?”
“That is why I came here,” said Vessia, ignoring Amdra’s hiss. “It is not safe for me in my own tribehold. I need friends I can trust. Your people have never wavered in their support of liberty, even when the Bone Whistler strode the world in all his evil might.”
“You are right. I cannot shame my ancestors by playing the coward.” Nann used an antler to prong the boiled meat from the stone bowl. “So. Sit and share meat with me. You too, Rider.”
The meat was as tough and lean as Nann herself, but they ate. Vumo saved them all from uncomfortable silence by regaling Nann with stories that made her laugh. After the meal, Finnadro escorted Vumo and Amdra back out of the lair, but Nann asked Vessia to remain.
“You will guest with me during your stay, Lady,” said Nann, “if you are so honored.”
“It would bring me honor, and joy also,” said Vessia, surprised to find it quite true. Once, she would have wished to be on her own, not trapped in a house, or even in a hold. Tonight, however, she was grateful to finally sleep beside a fire.
Dindi
Dindi did not share Jensi’s disgust for the Green Woods tribesfolk, although their way of life was more different from the Corn Hills than Yellow Bear had been. The Corn Hills clans had brought goats, aurochsen and horses with them. The goats were allowed to wander the marae with the pigs and dogs, but that wouldn’t work for the larger animals. They built their own kraal on the slope below the hold.
The Green Woods tribesfolk used winter as a time to hunt animals in their winter white pelts, which could be easily dyed, and were therefore highly valued. They filled the marae with tanning racks, laden with weasel, mink, ermine and hare. Preparing a fine pelt took half a moon. First the pelt had to be scrapped clean, staked low to the ground without dragging, and covered with salt. After fourteen days of salting, the skins were soaked in clear water for one day, then rubbed with mink oil. The Green Woods tribe always kept head, paws and tail intact with the hide. They did not waste the meat either. Roast mink didn’t make much of a meal, so they stewed it or mixed it with better meats and stuffed it into intestines to make sausages.
They cast greedy eyes on the cows and goats the Rainbow Labyrinth had brought with them; the Green Woods huntsmen had no taste for cheese or milk, so dismissed the outrage of their visitors at the idea of slaughtering all the beasts.
Tension flared between the two tribes when a thief stole a cow from the kraal. The owner of the aurochs accused a Green Woods tribesman of the Foxfighter clan. Jensi muttered darkly that they were unlikely to get justice, since that was the clan of Nann, the War Chief. Everyone gathered in the Great Lodge, with the Green Woods tribesfolk on one side and the Rainbow Labyrinth tribesfolk on the other. Shouts and insults hurled from both sides. It looked to grow ugly fast.
“That aurochs belonged to my family!” cried the Full Basket uncle who had lost the cow.
“Animals belong to themselves, no man owns them, any more than a man can own a tree, a stream or land!” shouted back the accused man’s kin.
“I also own land, with a tree and a stream on it!” shouted the Full Basket uncle.
“What if I killed and ate your sow?” another demanded.
“Try it and you will find my fist is the next thing you eat!”
War Chief Nann pounded her elm staff. “Silence! It is true, we do not have the same laws as the Rainbow Labyrinth. But we both hate thieves. The accused will be treated the same as one accused of stealing another man’s pig or a hunter’s kill.”
The accused man knelt before War Chief Nann and Finnadro. Finnadro questioned the accused man, who denied the crime.
“That’s where it will end,” Jensi predicted in an undertone to Dindi.
Finnadro waved his hands over the kneeling man. The man had no visible aura at first, but Finnadro kept moving his hands, until a pattern began to glow. Swirls of putrid green light, like slime on a pond, ebbed and churned in the man’s aura. Dindi leaned forward to squint at it, fascinated.
“I taste deception in his aura,” Finnadro announced. “And guilt. He is the thief.”
“Let him be stripped and hanged naked for a day,” decreed War Chief Nann. “Less if he confesses and leads us to the beast.”
Dindi was impressed by War Chief Nann’s fairness. The woman had not even brought up the man’s kinship to her. Furthermore, once Nann made her decision, her people accepted it without further protest. They turned their ire on the thief instead of the outtribers.
When they said “hanged naked for a day,” they meant outside. Folk hurled rotten nuts and fish heads at him while warriors stripped off all his clothes except for a loincloth. Then they took him to the edge of the wall, below one of the huge trees. The Sylfae reached down an arm-like branch, or maybe it was a branch-like arm, and with a twiggy hand, grasped the man’s wrists and yanked him off the ground by his arms. Then the poor miscreant was left dangling from the tree, all but naked, in the bitter winter wind.
After only a short time, his skin looked bluish and he began to wail for mercy. He cried that, while he had eaten some of the beef, much of the meat still remained, frozen in a secret snow hole in the woods. Warriors cut him down, let him dress and take them there. That was the end of the incident.
No one else stole a beast from the kraal after that.
Umbral
The Deathsworn landed their shadow bats in a tangled section of forest outside the Green Woods tribehold. Umbral ordered them to make camp. The shadow creatures had not only lasted the whole flight here, they still pulsed with negative energy. The wing
s would not be useful inside the tribehold, however.
He danced before his bat, twisting and warping the darkness into a new shape. A jet-black dog with scarlet slits for eyes materialized from the billowing void. The thing snarled. An unnatural roar hid in the rumble, a vulgarity that no ordinary dog’s throat ever made.
“Where are you going?” Ash demanded.
“Inside, since that is where the White Lady has gone.”
“Smack into a ring of Sylfae?”
“The fae cannot see us.”
“Exactly, and what they cannot see will alert them something is wrong. We have no chance to take the White Lady as long as she is inside the protected circle.”
“I won’t stay long,” he promised. He did not add that he had a second reason for going. He needed to know if the girl he had sensed back in the Corn Hills had had perished in the battle or escaped to the Green Woods. He had not told Ash about the girl yet. The time was not ripe. He had to be sure first.
When Ash saw he would not be swayed, she wanted to go with him, but he ordered her to stay at the camp. Only the black hound slunk at his heels when he approached the tunnel into the tribehold. The tall redwoods keened in pain when he drew near. The Sylfae searched wildly for what ailed them. They could not perceive him, but they screamed when he passed under their roots through the tunnel. Green Woods Tavaedies hurried to speak to the trees, to find out what was wrong. Umbral slipped behind a group of newly arrived clanfolk. When they glanced at him, the Obsidian Mirror reflected back to them what they expected to see—a tribesman from another clan, a stranger, but one who belonged as much as they in this place.
The trees could not explain their pain to the Tavaedies, only weep.
Umbral discovered one more challenge in his search. The marae was built on a place of power, one of seven in Faearth. Colored bands of magic looped everywhere, a thousand times brighter to his Vision than the patterns of color painted on the Great Lodge. The more recent the dance, the brighter the color, the sharper the taste.
He needed his prey to dance. A fresh Pattern would stand out, even here.
Lingering near the men gossiping on the Lodge porch, he heard that there would be a number of dances the next day, which was the beginning of the seven day Midwinter festival. First, each of the guest clans would have their Tavaedies perform. After that, a variety of local folk dances were scheduled: the Dance of the Maidens, the Dance of the Warriors, and then, in the evening, wedding dances.
His prey had magic; she had to be a Tavaedi. Though he’d promised Ash he wouldn’t stay long, he had to stay for the Tavaedies performances. She would be there. He ran his tongue over his lips in anticipation.
He had only to wait for the dances to begin.
Dindi
As soon as the dance began, Dindi felt sick. She reminded herself that her part was small. She only had to place props in the correct spots on the platform. Back home she’d aided the Tavaedi troop for performances before, though of course, she was never allowed to actually dance the magic. She still fretted that somehow she would single-handedly manage to disrupt the Pattern, with three tribes watching. It was imperative that she not look at the crowd. One glance at a familiar face, and she might lose her concentration. She was grateful she was allowed to wear a costume and mask, an old Yellow one.
The dancers gyrated rhythmically. Dindi waited out the first Pattern with a fluttery stomach. At last she heard her cue.
Dindi laid the rattles in their places along a line, her movements carefully timed to have the instruments there just as the Tavaedis needed to grab them for the next segment of the Pattern.
Her part done for the duration, Dindi withdrew to the side of the raised performance platform. The pressure gave way to giddy relief. Leaving on her costume, Dindi drew her knees up under her chin and watched the dance with wistful eyes. In the heated Lodge, the Tavaedis danced almost naked. The masks were bulky, woven like baskets from long reeds, two feet tall, and covered with fabric, cornhusks and beads. But their mantles were long, loose beaded fringes, that flew up as they twirled, to teasingly reveal their bare, painted limbs and loincloths underneath. Tamio looked irresistible with his muscles bulging out. In the year since Initiation, he was more superbly built than ever. To think, he'd once annoyed her as much as Kemla had.
Tamio lifted Kemla and swirled her in the air and dipped her down, licking her cleavage where the strings of beads slipped away. Dindi's heart lurched in her chest. Mercy, what she would not give to be in Kemla's place.
It was both a relief and a disappointment when the Pattern wove to an end. Forming a long, snaking line, the Tavaedis climbed down the ladder through a trap door to a secret room below the Great Lodge. Dindi fell into line at the end. The Tavaedis kept shaking their rattles in rhythm, until, one by one, they disappeared into the subterranean under-chamber. Dindi entered last.
While Dindi adjusted to the cool dimness underground, a fight unfolded.
“Agh! You oaf!” screeched Kemla, tearing off her mask. Her face was as scarlet as the mask. “You stepped on my costume! You ripped it!”
“It's your own fault, you clumsy cow, you were out of step!” retorted Tamio.
“If you do that again, I will kick you—whether we are performing or not!”
Abiono hurried over to his squabbling Tavaedis. “Kemla, do you have any idea how that would disrupt the magic?”
“Look at what he did to my costume!” Kemla held up a beaded fringe. “Proof!”
“Mercy, Kemla, dear—”
“Never mind.” Kemla tossed her hair. “Let’s see what presents the ungrateful dog-breath barbarians brought us.”
In the middle of the room were the gifts brought for the Tavaedis. The Tavaedis were supposed to divide the gifts equally amongst themselves, but Kemla picked out what she wanted first.
There were large pottery urns of nuts, smaller urns of dried beans, baskets of dried fruit, smoked fish, strings of peppers and onions, small clay vials of precious raw salt. More rare were strips of sable fur, feather fans, flint tipped arrows, shell diadems and beaded tunics. It all looked very grand to Dindi, but Kemla snorted in disgust.
“Rubbish,” she declared. “All rubbish.” Kemla still gathered quite a bit of the ‘rubbish’ up for herself. Dindi didn’t touch anything while the rest of the Tavaedis gathered up treasures.
Abiono approached her almost furtively. He shoved a pelt into her arms.
“You can’t give her that!” objected Kemla. She hurried over from across the room, where she had piled her own claims. Kemla snatched the pelt out of Dindi’s hands. “The gifs are for real Tavaedies.”
Abiono shot a helpless look at Dindi, though it was his job to distribute the gifts.
“I do have something for you, however,” Kemla told Dindi. “Come here.”
Kemla went back to her pile. She picked up a clay jar. “For the Midwinter Rites, you will need to paint my whole body with the correct henna patterns. I want you to practice, so you don’t mess up. But don’t you dare use one drop on yourself, or I will have you whipped.”
Dindi averted her eyes so Kemla would not see her anger. Kemla pushed her aside to show Marita her new shell diadem. Kemla dropped it, and it rolled to Tamio, who tossed it like a toy.
Dindi sequestered the jar of henna in a bag on her belt so she could climb the ladder back up into the Lodge. She did not want to miss the Dance of Maidens.
In the kiva, Kemla screeched at Tamio.
Kemla
As soon as she began to dance, Kemla reveled in the rapt eyes of hundreds of men and women fastened on her. She loved their liquid attention, sucked it in like a nursing calf. She and Tamio had the star roles. Together they whirled together, a sun and a moon in their own sky.
Tamio leaned her back in an intimate clutch. He ran his tongue up the dimple between her breasts all the way up her neck. She was powerless to resist his impertinence without disrupting the dance. He lifted her into the toss. On the next clutch, where
he lowered her almost to the floor, while she kept her body straight as a post, he whispered into her ear.
“Soon, Kemla.”
Delicious exhilaration tingled down her spine. She felt exposed and shameless, as if he had stripped her right there on stage for everyone to see.
He said nothing else during the performance, but if he thought he could tease her like that without consequence he had another thing coming. On their way into down into the dancer’s kiva, Kemla deliberately shoved into him.
“Agh! You oaf!” Kemla cried dramatically, tearing off her mask. Her face flushed with secret pleasure. “You stepped on my costume! You ripped it!”
“I did not!”
She grabbed him by a diagonal strap across his chest and yanked his face close.
“Prove it,” she whispered.
“It's your own fault, you clumsy cow, you were out of step!” Tamio shouted loudly, for their audience. He added under his breath, “My word is proof.”
“Not good enough!” she hissed. She added loudly, “If you do that again, I will kick you—whether we are performing or not!”
Abiono, ever the gullible fool, fell for their mock fight. “Kemla, do you have any idea how that would disrupt the magic?”
“Look at what he did to my costume!” Kemla held up a beaded fringe. “Proof!”
She arched her brow at Tamio. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, a tiny smirk tugging the corners of his lips. He wagged his eyebrows in Dindi’s direction and licked his lips lasciviously.
How could he be so confident, especially since he did not claim to have taken Dindi yet?
Gnawing on the problem, Kemla stopped Abiono from spoiling Dindi with some unearned trinket. Kemla gave her a jar of henna instead, with a warning, “But don’t you dare use one drop on yourself, or I will have you whipped.”
