Bloodstone

by Barbara Campbell

  Ifrenn’s presence was a blow. Darak had counted on Sanok’s support and had been shocked to learn how feeble he’d become. To his shame, he had not even noticed Sanok’s absence on the beach, but he promised himself that before the day was over, he would visit him.

  “Darak. Stop daydreaming and answer the girl.”

  He looked up to find Nionik’s daughter leaning toward him, a waterskin cradled in her arms.

  “Thank you, Oma.” He held up the cup, eyeing her swelling belly. “Not long now.”

  She straightened, one hand on her back. “By the full moon, Mother Griane says. Elasoth swears it’ll be a boy from the way he kicks.”

  “What do men know?” Muina shook her head dismissively. “Use the needle on a thread, child.”

  “I did. It swung round and round no matter how many times I did it. Another girl for sure.” With a sigh, she continued around the circle. Elasoth looked flustered when she poured his water; obviously, this was his first council meeting and he wasn’t sure how to behave.

  Nionik had no such reservations; he kissed Mirili’s cheek and thanked her for the basket of oatcakes. As soon as she and Oma departed, he called for silence.

  “The first order of business is to ascertain that it is, indeed, Keirith’s spirit inside this man’s body.”

  “Good gods, why would I make that up?” Darak exclaimed. “Do you think I’d pass off some stranger as my son?” He subsided under Nionik’s quelling stare. The council had barely begun and already he’d forgotten Griane’s warning. “Forgive me. I just never expected a test would be required.”

  He saw the panic in Keirith’s eyes as he rose. Saw, too, how quickly he suppressed it. Gortin rested his hands lightly on Keirith’s shoulders and closed his eye. For the first time, Darak was grateful for his limited gift; Struath would have sensed the remnants of the Zheron’s spirit immediately.

  Two deep creases formed between Gortin’s brows. His eye flew open.

  “What is it?” Nionik asked.

  “Nothing. This is Keirith.” The tremor in Gortin’s voice was plain. “His spirit . . . has changed . . . but it is Keirith.”

  “Changed? How?”

  “A man’s spirit is not fixed. It reflects the things that happen to him. The joys he has experienced. The suffering he has endured. Keirith’s spirit has endured . . . a great deal.” Gortin bowed his head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Keirith’s hand came up to cover Gortin’s. Even hard-bitten Ifrenn seemed moved.

  Maker, let them remember this moment. If they do, they can never condemn my boy.

  Nionik waved Gortin and Keirith back to their places. “We must now decide whether the Holly Tribe should be invited to share our deliberations.”

  This time, he managed to keep his voice level. “The Holly Tribe?”

  “Morgath was brought before the combined councils for casting out the spirits of animals. Keirith—by your account, Darak—has cast out the spirit of a man. There is a precedent.”

  He resisted the urge to shout, “Damn the precedent!” Instead, he asked calmly, “Will Keirith get a fair hearing from the Holly Tribe? The elders hardly know him.”

  “Forgive me, Memory-Keeper, Oak-Chief . . .” Elasoth glanced around the circle uncertainly.

  “Go on,” Muina ordered. “You’ve as much right to speak as anyone else.”

  “I just thought . . . since the elders of the Holly Tribe don’t know Keirith, they would not be swayed by sentiment.”

  “What’s wrong with sentiment?” Lisula demanded. “We are surely judging not only the act but the man who committed it. We who know Keirith best are best able to judge his character.”

  Elasoth wilted visibly. The rest of the council began debating the point until Muina interrupted. “If you call the elders of the Holly Tribe in, you might as well take the boy to the heart-oak now and have done with it.”

  “They’re not fools,” Strail rumbled. “Well, most of them aren’t. Can’t say I think much of their new chief.”

  Ifrenn hawked a gob of phlegm into the fire pit. “He’s a sanctimonious stick. How else could he have lived with my sister for so many years? She’s so pious, she pisses honey.”

  Nionik cleared his throat. “Your point, Strail? About the Holly Tribe.”

  “Oh. Aye. Just that wise men—women too, I suppose—would keep their minds and ears open and not rush to judgment until they’d heard the whole story.”

  Muina’s voice overrode Lorthan’s murmur of assent. “As soon as they hear Morgath’s name, Keirith is a dead man.”

  Darak flinched, but Keirith accepted the brutal words without changing expression.

  “I agree with the Grain-Grandmother,” Gortin said. “It’s too easy to draw parallels between Keirith’s power and Morgath’s without taking into account their natures.”

  “A good point,” Lorthan said.

  “Besides,” Muina added, “this is our business. Must we run to the Holly Tribe every time we have a difficult problem to resolve? Bad enough that we have to discuss how many fish we can take from the lake and whether a hunter can cross the river in pursuit of a deer he’s stalking.”

  Gods, she was clever. The two councils had argued both issues only this spring and there was still a good deal of acrimony about the outcome of that debate—especially among hunters like Ifrenn and Strail.

  “Is there any more discussion? Then I call for a vote. Those in favor of inviting the elders of the Holly Tribe to our council?”

  “Nay,” Elasoth said loudly. Lisula leaned toward him and whispered something. “Oh. Forgive me, Oak-Chief.”

  “Never mind,” Muina said. “Despite Nionik’s vote-calling and all-in-favoring, we’re not very formal here.”

  “All in—Does anyone wish to invite the elders of the Holly Tribe? Fine. Then we’ll settle this matter ourselves.”

  Darak breathed a quiet prayer of thanks to the Maker and another to Muina. The first battle had been fought and won.

  Muina poked his knee. “Control your temper,” she whispered.

  “I’m trying. But it’s hard—”

  “I don’t care how hard it is. If you start arguing with everyone, you’ll condemn the boy as surely as the Holly Tribe. Forgive me, Oak-Chief,” she said in a normal voice. “I was reminding Darak of his manners.”

  Good-natured chuckles greeted her remark, as much over his discomfiture as Muina’s bluntness. He couldn’t risk alienating the council members, especially Ifrenn and Strail; they had always been jealous of his hunting skills. Keirith’s fate could be determined by such personal issues, no matter what Strail said about wise men who would keep their minds and ears open.

  For the rest of the morning, he kept his mouth shut. Keirith gave his account of what had happened in Pilozhat and answered the exhaustive questions that followed. Darak had insisted that neither of them reveal his part in Urkiat’s death. It was one thing to cast out the spirit of an enemy, another to attack a child of the Oak and Holly.

  When it was his turn to speak, he simply supported Keirith’s story, taking care to emphasize the Zheron’s determination to destroy them both. He also told them how Keirith brought Hua back from the brink of death. His words provoked shocked exclamations and dozens of new questions for Keirith to answer. Darak had been certain the story of Hua’s reclamation would show the elders that Keirith could use his power for good, but while Lisula proclaimed it a miracle, the expressions of the others ranged from doubt to awe to fear.

  By midday, the questioning was finally over. “Thank you for appearing before the council,” Nionik told Keirith. “And for your thorough, honest answers. We’ll excuse you now so we can consider what you’ve told us. Before you go, is there anything you’d like to add?”

  Keirith rose. “I just want to thank the elders for hearing me. And to say that I’ll abide by your decision.” He hesitated a moment; for the first time, he looked uncertain. “I don’t know why I have this power. It’s not something I wanted. It
. . . scares me. I understand how a man . . . like Morgath . . . could abuse it. Maybe I have, too. I don’t know. But if I had to choose—if I could go back to that moment when the Zheron attacked us—I would still cast him out. He meant to torture my father, strip away pieces of his spirit until he was mad.” Keirith looked down at him. “I didn’t tell you before. It was after you had . . .”

  “Fled.”

  “Nay.”

  “I fled! When the Zheron attacked, the great Spirit-Hunter hid and left his son to fight for him.”

  “You didn’t know how to fight him! I did. And when he was close to breaking me, you came back. Without you, I couldn’t have defeated him. He would have cast out my spirit and then he would have found you and taken you apart piece by piece. I couldn’t let him do that. That’s what I wanted to say. To all of you. My father is the bravest man I’ve ever known. And I couldn’t let the Zheron destroy him.”

  Keirith placed both hands over his heart and bowed very low to him. The gesture stunned Darak. Similar to the genuflection Malaq had made when they parted, it was, at once, utterly foreign and completely natural. The others would see it and wonder if this was evidence of the changes Keirith’s spirit had undergone.

  He wanted to embrace his son, to tell him how proud he was of him. Instead, he rose and offered the same genuflection to Keirith. One by one, the other members of the council got to their feet. They remained standing until Keirith left the longhut.

  All afternoon, the debate raged. As Memory-Keeper, it fell to Darak to recite the law that might condemn his son. He stumbled only once, when he reached the last of the acts deemed offenses against the gods: “to subvert or subjugate the spirit of any creature. The punishment for one who commits such abominations is death.”

  A lengthy discussion followed. Had a crime been committed? If so, was it justified? In the case of murder, the law was clear: anyone who killed without provocation would be cast out of the tribe. But the law didn’t specify whether subversion or subjugation of a spirit could be justified—as could murder—if the act was committed in self-defense.

  “As elders, it’s our duty to interpret the law as well as enforce it,” Lisula insisted.

  “Of course,” Lorthan agreed.

  “Why is it so vague?” Elasoth asked.

  “Because it was only set down after Morgath’s sacrilege,” Muina replied. “Until then, no one could imagine anyone would subvert the spirit of another creature.”

  “Or possess the power to do so.” Strail glanced at Ifrenn who nodded.

  “Struath did,” Darak interjected.

  “What Struath did—or didn’t do—has no bearing on our deliberations,” Gortin said.

  “I believe it does. Struath was a great shaman, but he told me that he had cast out the spirit of a wren. He didn’t mean to. He was young. Just a few years older than Keirith. And under Morgath’s influence.”

  “I will not sit here and listen to you vilify Struath!” Gortin exclaimed.

  “I saw Struath use his power to try and cast out Morgath’s spirit.”

  “He was fighting for his life!”

  “So was Keirith!”

  “Stop shouting, both of you.” Nionik’s glare swung from him to Gortin. “Struath is dead, may his spirit live on in the Forever Isles. Whatever . . . mistakes he might have made, he paid for. We will not debate his actions here.”

  He couldn’t belabor the point without risking the censure of the entire council, but he had to make them understand that the tribe’s greatest shaman had used the same power as his son. You could not revere one and condemn the other.

  “Struath once told me that magic was not evil,” Lisula said, “only those who misused it.”

  Lorthan nodded thoughtfully. “Very wise.”

  “Tree-Father, you know Keirith well,” she continued. Better than any of us. Except Darak, of course. When you dismissed him from his apprenticeship, did you believe he had misused his gift?”

  Darak didn’t trust himself to look at Gortin. What a fool to provoke him by bringing up Struath.

  “I was afraid of his power. And the potential to abuse it. Naturally, I thought of Morgath.”

  Darak’s hands clenched into fists.

  “But Keirith is not Morgath. It was my duty as Tree-Father to help him understand his gift, to teach him to use it wisely. Instead, I acted out of fear. And . . . jealousy.”

  Slowly, Darak raised his head.

  “Keirith sought communion with the eagle, not power over it. He would never touch any wild creature with the intent to harm it. In casting out the spirit of this foreign priest, I believe he acted in self-defense. If Keirith had killed him with a dagger, we would exonerate him. He had to use another weapon—the only one he possessed.”

  Once again, Gortin had proved himself the better man. And all Darak could do was nod his thanks.

  By late afternoon, they were all exhausted, but Darak was confident that Muina, Lisula, Gortin, and Nionik would stand with him. Lorthan, too, probably; he always voted with the chief.

  Nionik held out two small bowls. One contained black pebbles, the other white. “No one should be swayed by another’s choice. For that reason, we will cast our votes anonymously. When I pass the bowls, please take four pebbles—two black and two white.”

  He waited for the bowls to return before continuing. “The first vote will determine if Keirith was justified in casting out the spirit of this man. If you believe he was, place a white pebble in this.” He held up a small deerskin pouch, not much larger than the bag of charms each man wore around his neck. “If you believe Keirith’s act was not justified, place a black pebble in the bag. Is that clear?”

  After receiving nods from everyone, Nionik added, “If there are more white pebbles than black, Keirith is exonerated and our deliberations are over. If not, Keirith will be deemed guilty of a crime and we must vote on his punishment.”

  “What . . . ?” Elasoth faltered. “What punishment will we vote on?”

  “I’m coming to that,” Nionik replied. His ill-concealed impatience made Elasoth flush. “Forgive me. I’m tired. We all are. You’re right to seek clarification. We’re deciding a young man’s fate today and there must be no confusion as to our proceedings. For a crime of this nature, there are only two punishments: casting out or death. If you place a black pebble in this bag, you are condemning Keirith to one of those punishments. Is that clearly understood?”

  Nionik’s gaze moved slowly around the circle and lingered on him. Darak wanted to believe it was Nionik’s way of showing his support, but it was hard to read anything other than exhaustion in his face.

  Gortin got to his feet stiffly and closed his eye. “Maker, guide the heart and mind of each person sitting around this circle. Oak and Holly, give us wisdom and help us to judge this boy—the child of our tribe—as we would wish to be judged.”

  As Gortin sat again, Lisula rose. “Lacha, soothe our hearts with your eternal waters. Bel, fill our minds with the light of truth. Halam, earth mother, guide the hands that hold Keirith’s fate. Taran, Thunderer, proclaim the path we must follow. Eternal elements of life, bless this council and bless Keirith, who needs our wisdom. And deserves our mercy.”

  Nionik frowned at Lisula who glared back at him defiantly, Maker bless her.

  When Darak’s turn came to vote, his hands betrayed him and he fumbled the bag. Both Elasoth and Muina reached out to help him, but he shook his head and carefully slipped a white pebble inside. Lisula gave him an encouraging smile as she passed the bag to Nionik who poured the pebbles out.

  Darak could only make out a spill of black and white among the rushes. Lisula’s sharp cry told him the outcome.

  Nionik looked up. “Keirith has been judged guilty.”

  He could feel Muina’s fingers gripping his knee. He could hear Lisula’s soft murmurs of distress. But all he could do was stare at Nionik and shake his head.

  “I’m sorry, Darak. Truly sorry.”

  They had
condemned his boy. His own folk had condemned him.

  “The council has decided that Keirith committed a crime.”

  “Nay.”

  “We must now vote to determine whether he will be cast out of the tribe—”

  “Nay!”

  “Or sentenced to death.”

  Darak’s gorge rose and he staggered outside. He barely made it behind the longhut before his legs gave out. He fell to his knees, fighting the urge to vomit. He could scarcely breathe for the hard knot in his chest. It was like Fellgair was holding his heart again, squeezing it between remorseless fingers. When he felt the hand on his shoulder, he looked up, surprised to find Lisula kneeling beside him instead of the Trickster.

  She pulled his head down to her breast. Something damp and warm oozed down his face. Lisula’s tears, he realized. Why couldn’t he weep for his son?

  He should never have allowed Keirith to come home. He should have forced him to stay with Illait. But he had been so sure . . .

  “Darak. Dear. They’re waiting for you.”

  He shoved himself upright with such force that Lisula fell back on her elbows. “You expect me to vote on whether my child’s heart should be cut out of his chest or whether he should be driven from his home?”

  “Darak, please . . .”

  “Get away from me.”

  He leaned against the longhut, his fist pressed against his chest. It had all been for nothing—the endless journey, the terror of opening his spirit, Keirith’s battle to defeat the Zheron. Urkiat’s death. And Bep’s and Hakkon’s and Malaq’s.

  “What future does Kheridh have in your village? At worst, he will be sacrificed for using his gift. At best, he will have to hide it the rest of his life.”

  In his arrogance, he had refused to heed Malaq’s warning, assuring him that Keirith belonged with his people. The same people who were now deciding whether to kill him or cast him out of his tribe forever.

  He heard footsteps in the grass and turned.