“You think I don’t know it? Here, sit down before you fall down.”
He had brought food. Not much, but as much as Seal Hold could spare in those worst of all times: some bits of cold fish, last year’s dried berries, a handful of precious oats. I sat under a massive blue pine and ate. My shaking stopped, though I think I drew strength more from his presence than from the meager food. He slung a pair of cedar bark bags off Sora while I ate, stripped the gear off the mare, and turned her loose to hunt snakes in the scree with Talu. He gathered some deadwood for a fire, scraped clear a space for it, and made a ring of stones. There would be no hurry, I saw, about leaving this place among the blue pines. Kor brought cones and punkwood, set to work with his firebow. When smoke had turned to sparks and flame, finally, he sat beside me.
“I should have brought you dry clothing,” he said.
“No need.” The food, the warmth of the fire, the warmth of his words were enough. We watched in silence as the flames took hold. I had been riding longer than I thought—already day was drawing on toward nightfall.
“You were right about Olpash,” Kor said after a while in a low voice. “His face troubles my sleep.”
“No need, Kor!”
“I would like to try to understand what happened.”
“About Olpash?” There was more, I knew, far more, but better to grapple with one thing at a time. “It was not wrong, Kor, that you killed him. Kings must protect their power from schemers. It was only—wrong for you.”
“Wrong for Sakeema?”
“Blasphemy!” I teased. “No. Wrong for you. Kor. My friend. Bond brother.” I reached out toward him. Fingertips met, and despite hunger, despite the world’s desperation, despite the dark hand of Mahela looming in the distance, a deep sense of strength and well-being followed. I smiled. But Kor’s eyes were misted.
“Dan, do you know how long it’s been? Since your handbonded me willingly?”
Since that long night in Tincherel. Nothing had been the same since the sea had so roughly flung us back to the land. “My own folly,” I said. “I felt—betrayed.”
“By me?”
“By Sakeema.”
“But—”
“Don’t say it.”
“That I am not Sakeema? You knew it by then.”
“I felt betrayed, even so. Kor, I have never laid much claim to good sense.”
He sighed and spoke very softly. “No holding back for you, Dan. Nothing by halves.”
“That is what my father used to say.” Thoughts of Tyonoc, still trapped in Mahela’s realm, sent a sharp pang through me. Kor must have felt it, for he turned his head.
“I know we said were going to save him somehow. Dan, I did all that I could.”
“It was my quest. How did I come to lay it all on you, or on the god? It was I who failed.”
Ai, the harsh touch of truth. I had not wanted to know such truth. Less painful, I had thought, to blame Kor. The more fool, I. There was no misery worse, for me, than blaming Kor.
“Saying we failed means little under the finger of Mahela,” Kor mused. “She is as mighty as death or the sea. She always wins.”
We talked for a long time, as day shaded into dusk and twilight deepened into nightfall. Tall pines sheltered us, long needles shadowed against the bluedark sky. Somewhere an owl calling. Gray wolf came and lay near our feet. Kor got up to tend the fire, sat by me again, and talk went on. Our voices, very low, not for fear that anyone would hear us, but because we needed to be quiet, calm, soft with each other—neither of us wanted to hurt the other ever again. Tears on our faces sometimes, silent, shining in the firelight. Long pauses sometimes as we gathered courage. It took courage to speak of some things. Of Istas, lying dead, and Kor’s grief, how I had failed to comfort him. Of too much dying, all around us. Of Tassida. Most of all, it took courage to speak of Tassida.
I—I could not help it, Dan. That night out by the Greenstones. Your love for her, so ardent—it awakened me.
Sometime, unawares, the weary murmur of our voices had slipped into mindspeak. Better understood, some things, in mindspeak.
But you have not ceased to love her, I ventured. Best to face that now.
No. I love her well. Still—it must be love of a different sort, Dan. Yours—so passionate …
He let his thoughts trail off into silence, and I waited, almost able to sense how he braced himself. He had once said that my passions assaulted him with the force of a four-day storm.
I have never felt such love, Dan.
You—felt. I understood. In our minds, he was telling me what was nearly unspeakable.
I felt all that you did.
In your body.
Yes.
Silence for perhaps the span of ten breaths—except that I could scarcely draw my breath. The darkness of night seemed to press down on me.
Never—never before, Dan. Or since. Only—that once with you and Tass.
“You frighten me,” I whispered aloud.
Yes. It frightened me, also. And made me wretched.
There was no answer to that. Misery upon misery had been his: Istas dying and Tass my lover and the whole deadly matter of Mahela weighing upon him. Small wonder that he, a mortal king, had given way beneath the strain.… A mortal king who had died three times, who healed, and mindspoke, and felt the passions of the people around him? I struggled against fear, my chest heavy with it.
So I struck out at you, he thought to me, ashamed. And at Tass.
Fear much like mine had been hers, had driven her off, sent her fleeing, when he had mindspoken her in his rage.
“What did you say to her?” I asked in a tight voice.
Kor shook his head. “I do not want to tell you. Something vicious. The substance of it was, Go away.”
He got up, kicked at the fire, and strode off into the benighted forest. I stayed where I was, hearkening, and the wolf raised its head and listened with me. We could hear Kor crashing about. After a time he returned with pine boughs to pile on the fire. Flames leaped up. I could see him again, bruises and all, and he could see my face. He settled himself beside me again and leveled a long look at me.
“There is no devourer in me, Dan,” he said abruptly.
“Of course, I know! That needs no saying.”
“But you are afraid.”
“Not any longer.” I thought I was not.
“Then why are we speaking aloud?”
“Because …” I fingered my cut lip. “Blast,” I muttered.
In rueful amusement he said, “You are more like Tassida than you know.”
It was true. I had not been afraid of him when I had thought he was a god who could never wrong me. But since I had seen he was but a poor, floundering mortal … Three times a mortal loved one had turned against me, and it was like dying: once would have been too often.
“You are afraid of coming too close to me.”
“I—I scarcely know you, Kor, you are so changed! You are …” I could no longer say defeated. I knew his courage. But somehow Mahela’s touch lay on him yet. “You are darkened in a way I cannot understand.”
“Dan,” he said intensely, “if only you could feel what I feel—”
It had nearly happened, that night in Mahela’s domain. “That frightens me worst of all,” I whispered.
Why? If you felt what is in me, if you truly felt all that is in me, knew what—what I have undergone, what has made me be the way I have become, then you would see, you would be sure of me again.
“You want me to—to enter into your being?” Spoken words were clumsy, but stubbornly I kept to them until I saw my path clearly.
“Yes. Will you try it? Dan?”
I swallowed at my fear, knowing that things would never again be right between us until I braved it. “Very well,” I said. “But how?”
“That is for you to say. Dan, you showed me the way to my sword, to handbond. You taught me mindspeak.”
“But this—this other thing,” I prot
ested, “you have been doing it half your life.”
“Since I went to the Mountains of Doom the first time. Now you have been there, too. Dan, I know—you came close, that night when I lay with Mahela and nearly drowned in her.”
Terror, just remembering. I swallowed again. “Handbond came first,” I muttered.
His hand met mine, the sword scars met. We passed the grip, warm, steadying. Strength as of four heroes, mine, and I felt I would need it all. “Don’t let go,” I told Kor.
“Dan, is it such an ordeal? Don’t do it, then.”
“Hush. Keep the handbond.” He had once died in torment for my sake—it would be my shame if I could not do this thing for him. I closed my eyes, centering myself. Courage …
Mindbond came next.
Very true, Dan.
Closeness. I heard his mood in his words, hopeful in the midst of despair but trying not to hope overmuch. I felt, as I often did, his presence as a bodiless thing, as if his mind lay against mine. But still that thin barrier, like a skin …
I had to risk.
Kor’s grip, warm, constant—I took strength from it, then ventured. I was no longer aware that my eyes were closed, for I had none. Or if I could not see, it was because I was all inward. Handbond still with me, as I knew well enough, but I no longer felt it. I was a swimming, flying thing, a spirit, swimming in sky or flying in sea—no, more. I was sky, I was sea, the indeeps of me as endless as the sea, formless, melting into—other, as tears melt into the sea. I knew my name, it was Dan. And I knew the name of the place where I was, the warm sea. It was Kor. And I also was fluid, warm, we were as one, and other was so much a part of me, I could no longer tell—the boundary, there was none. And I felt—
Something so vast I could not name it.
Then terror. My own terror, my very own.
It struck like a graymaw, tossed me as a seal tosses a salmon, tore me so that I seemed to feel blood splattering, I wanted to scream but I had no mouth. Fleeing, I was fleeing in terror because I had no skin, no mouth, no edge. Because I had been almost, for an instant, someone else. I seemed to remember a bloody dead body, mangled—my own. I had died, and I did not want to die, ever—
Arm around my shoulders, hand gripping mine. Eyes again, open to see a bruised and well-beloved face. I could scream now. Perhaps I already had, for Kor looked frightened. I let my head sag to the warm cloth at his shoulder and sobbed. Kor held me tightly, as if he could somehow stop my shaking.
“Failed,” I moaned.
Dan, I am so sorry! I should never have asked it of you.
Hush.
I didn’t think it could be so hard for you.
I do everything the hard way, Kor.
I raised my head to look at him, already knowing: I had thought this was a thing I had needed to do for him, and had failed to do. But it was all his gift to me. What he had given me in that half a moment before I fled …
Grave dark eyes the color of the sea met mine. Burdened he might be, but there was something in him that could never be defeated.
“You scamp,” I told him huskily.
I was not the only one who could love forever. Love without end, boundless as the sea.
“You forgot,” Kor whispered. “Heartbond came first of all.”
No need for handbond any longer. Strength enough in me, now, for any hundred heroes. Both arms around his shoulders, I embraced him.
I dried my face with my hands. Together we sat in silence as the fire blackened into embers. Dying, like our world, falling ashmeal into nothingness … In the morning Kor would go back to lead his people, and I, on a fool’s quest, seeking a sleeping god.
We must have slept, for we were both exhausted.
I awoke to gray daylight, full of fog. Alone. Kor was gone, leaving me gear and food. I readied my horse in silence, remembering a vivid dream: Kor had mindspoken me in my sleep, telling me he would be steadfast and await my return, bidding me gentle journey, sparing us both the impossible parting, leaving us both with a better farewell to remember.
Heartbond came first.… The words pulsed in me like heart’s blood as I rode eastward, toward the far slopes of the mountains, toward the unknown place where the sleeping god might lie.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Sea King Trilogy
Chapter One
I am a madman, a murderer, a mystic, and above all, Sakeema’s fool. Always, Sakeema’s fool. I am he whom folk called Dannoc, the dreamwit who left his bond brother in search of the god.
And I found him soon, in a way. I starved, those early days of the journey, for there was scant food to be found on the mountainpeaks, and at the Blue Bear Pass, as I lay weak from hunger and chilled by the thin air off the eversnow, he came to me.
His head crowned in skyfire glory, he looked down on me. Lying on stony ground, blinking up at him, I could not see his face.
“Sakeema?” I mumbled. I had seen him so once before, in vision.
“Don’t call me Sakeema, Dannoc!” A well-beloved voice, annoyed as always when I addressed him by that name. For a time I had thought he was the god. It was my bond brother, Kor.
But when he kneeled beside me, helping me to struggle up and sit with him, still I could not see his face. I badly wanted to see again his quiet, dark-eyed face. But it was hidden by the blaze of light around his head, and I felt as if the god held my shoulders in his hands.
“Are you sure?” I murmured. “You look so much like him.”
“Dannoc, you are lightheaded.” And no wonder, after the many days without sufficient food. “Come on. I will take you back to Seal Hold.”
Only the world’s peril could have made me leave him as I had done. The vast, wild world, mountainpeaks, meadows, pine forests, plains, all dying, falling bit by bit into Mahela’s maw. To my soul’s center I wanted to go back and be with him again, yet I could not. “Must go find Sakeema,” I muttered, and his hands sagged away from me.
Seeker, he mindspoke me, how do you expect to find Sakeema until you have truly found yourself?
He cast aside a king’s distance, mindspeaking me, he was all candor, his soul bared to mine. Though there was never less than truth in Kor, ever.… But I did not heed him, I snorted in scorn, deeming that I knew myself well enough. What was there to know? That I was the only one in the six tribes crazed and foolish enough to go off in search of the god?
Kor—if it was Kor—the one with the face I could not see against skybright glow—he lifted one hand and touched my forehead in answer to my scoffing.
“What is your name?” he asked aloud.
And I could not remember. I was madman, murderer, once again in the prison pit and utterly at his mercy, but unafraid. And I could not remember my own name.
“Of what age were you when you took your name vigil?”
The same question he had asked me once before, but this time I remembered the answer. I had been thirteen, and my father had braided my sunbleached hair for me into the two braids of a Red Hart adult and warrior. How I had loved him in those days, my father, king of the Red Hart Tribe.… He had turned back and embraced me yet one time more before he had left me. I remembered clearly enough the days alone on the crags up amid the eversnow, where the air was thin and nothing came but wild sheep and the black eagles soaring. I remembered the fasting, the lightheaded weakness that had come over me, the same hunger-weakness that I had felt all too much of late.… And I remembered, or relived, the vision:
A hunter, a proud Red Hart hunter in deerskin lappet and leggings, bare-chested, with the yellow braids lying long on his weather-browned, battle-scarred shoulders. His head high, his blue eyes keen. Myself, when I grew older, I had thought or hoped as a stripling of thirteen summers. The hunter kneeled to study the ground, finding his way along a faint trail. Then he stood and scanned the land intently, and I saw that he had ventured to a mountain-peak, and that his blue eyes, deep as highmountain sky, searched crag and eversnow and meadow, spruce forest and pine forest and fir f
orest and distant shortgrass steppe, hilly uplands and river valleys and even the vast plains and the vast sea—all the world he scanned, searching. He carried a well-curved bow, and he raised it and shot a redfletched arrow, far, far, so far I could scarcely follow its flight. I lost sight of the hunter and saw only the arrowbut no, the hunter was the arrow, its sharp stone head wore his keen-eyed face, his long braids streamed in the wind of its passing. It pointed sometimes downward toward the belly of the earth and sometimes upward toward the sky, but it never fell to earth, and its red feathers beat like the wings of a red bird. And it shone like the sun, its seeking head and feathered shaft aglow with sunyellow glory, and then, as if it had just seen me, it shot straight at me to bury its sharp stone head in my heart, or so I thought. It sped toward me, the face of the hunter turned eagerly toward me—but I gasped for breath, seeming already to feel that bolt in my gut, and I blinked, ending the vision.
Dannoc, Dannoc, Dannoc. My name was Dannoc, “the arrow.”
I looked at the shining head and shadowed face of the one next to me. “Dannoc is my name,” I told him.
“Are you certain?”
Such nonsense. It had been my name for years. How could I be less than certain? The image of the arrow had filled my sight. “Of course I am certain.”
“Of course. Are you ever less than sure?” Affection along with the gentle mockery in his voice. “But I think it is not your true name. Call yourself, rather, Darran, ‘the seeker.’ The hunter, the one who follows the faint trail.”
I gazed with caught breath, struggling to understand what he was saying.
“Luckily, ‘Dan’ will do for both,” he added in a voice both tender and oddly aloof. “Farewell, Dan, my friend. Seek well. I will miss you while you are parted from me.”
“Kor! No!”
Like the arrow in my vision he took flight, soaring skyward and away from me, shining like the sun.
“Wait! Kor!” I cried out, struggling to rise, falling back on the ground instead. Odd, that I was so weak I could not stand. Hunger had not yet made me so weak.… In desperation I mindcalled him. Kor! By all the bonds that join us—
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