She shrugged one shoulder, over which was slung a sack. “The prisoner was wounded,” she said. “He’ll not survive a day’s walk back to his village unless the wound is bound.”
Draven could not argue. Judging from the rigid lines of pain he had witnessed settling across the prisoner’s face, he doubted even Ita’s ministrations would bolster him enough for such a trek. But the fellow would not die in Rannul territory at least.
Ita followed her brother down the narrow track, her branch tapping the rocks ahead of her to test their dependability. Draven did not touch her, though he longed to take her arm and support her along the way. Ita would not stand for that. So he moved slowly, allowing her plenty of time to pick her way behind him. In this manner they reached the prisoner at last.
The prisoner gazed dully up at Ita. There were faint questions in his eyes, but he was too weak to ask any of them. When Ita opened her sack and set to cleaning and binding his wound, he closed his eyes and leaned back his head, the muscles in his neck straining now and then. But he made no protest.
When she’d finished, Ita rose to her feet, grimacing as she was forced to put weight upon her clubfoot. She leaned against the wall and turned to Draven, her eyes flashing as though daring him to comment on her pain. “Are you waiting for nightrise?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She glanced out at the white rapids. “You’ll not navigate that in the dark.”
“Safer than setting out now and being seen.”
“Have you done it before?”
“Yes.”
“At night?”
Draven did not reply. Taking this as answer enough, Ita sighed and shook her head, her pale hair falling across her face. Then she said, “I’ll go with you. I’ll sit in the prow with a light.”
“No,” said Draven. “That would only confuse my vision. The moon will rise, and I’ll use her light alone.”
Ita looked as though she wished to argue. Thinking better of it, she said only, “I’ll go with you.”
And Draven, who knew his sister well, kept his mouth shut.
Darkness came soon enough, filling the hollow and spreading across the forest. The prisoner’s loss would now be known across Rannul, and the search would spread over the fields and into the wilds. Still Draven waited, his sister beside him, the prisoner at their feet. It was too dark to see their faces, and Draven was glad.
Far away they heard the beat of Rannul drums. A beat of summoning. A beat of rage.
The moon rose. By her light, the culvert became eerily bright. Draven moved to a secret place along the bank and pulled back a sheep’s hide covered over with bits of moss and rocks and leaves. Beneath it lay his canoe, built of his own hands. It was smaller than the war canoes of Gaher’s men, but it was well balanced. There was space enough in the bottom for the prisoner to lie, and Draven helped him to climb inside. Once there, however, the prisoner insisted on sitting upright.
“Can you shift your weight at need?” Draven demanded.
“My people know the waterways,” the prisoner replied. His voice boasted more strength than previously; perhaps Ita’s healing hand had worked better magic than Draven had believed. “I will not overturn us.”
Draven grunted and began to slide the canoe into the water. Ita, moving with surprising grace, sprang forward, ready to climb aboard as well. But Draven was too quick for her. He stepped between her and his craft, pushed off into the culvert, and leapt inside.
“Gaho!” Ita cried, forgetting her brother’s new name in her fury. “Come back for me!”
“Forgive me, Ita,” Draven called over his shoulder, and left her standing on the bank even as he took up his paddle. There was no time for more words, no time for arguments. The water flowing from the culvert spilled into the rapids, dragging the canoe with it. The prisoner clutched the sides of the canoe, shifting his weight with expert coordination, Draven was grateful to note. Otherwise, they may well have ended their journey rather more abruptly than planned.
Navigating from memory as much as by the eerie moonlight, Draven struck out with his paddle and avoided the rocks. He knew that the rapids, while treacherous, would likely not be able to take his life even if he were overturned. He was a strong swimmer and had survived a broken canoe or two while learning these waters. But the prisoner would not be so lucky, not in his wounded condition. No, there was no quarter for mistakes, not tonight.
Draven felt the familiar thrill in his gut as the first of the longer plunges took them. Cold spray soaked their skin, soaked through the dressings on the prisoner’s shoulder. Draven watched him, crouched in the prow of the canoe, his pain forgotten in the need for precise balance.
The second plunge was greater than the first, and for a terrifying instant Draven feared that he had lost control. His memory failed him, and he felt unfamiliar panic. But his arms recalled what his head could not, and on instinct he struck out and narrowly avoided crushing boulders. He heard the scrape of his canoe, felt the pressure of solid rock beneath his feet. But the river pulled his craft over and away, and no damage was worked . . . no lethal damage anyway.
Once, and only once, the prisoner cried out. He did not know these treacherous waters and could scarcely see the way before him. A single cry was not the sign of a coward, and Draven felt his respect for his enemy rising. He himself made no sound, all his efforts concentrating on their survival.
Thank the airy gods he had left Ita behind! She would flay him with her tongue should he live to return. But that would be better by far than seeing her dashed to pieces in this crushing flow.
The third plunge was not so deep, but it was fast and winding. Draven half-stood in the canoe, his bare feet braced on the sides. How deceptively calm the water looked in the moonlight, belying the dangerous currents beneath! But Draven did not lose his head. He shouted to the prisoner, “Lean!” though he had no time to call a direction. He could only trust that the prisoner, feeling the pull of Hanna’s frothy arms, would be able to interpret the command correctly.
The prisoner leaned—to the right, just as needed. The canoe tipped frightfully, but Draven’s push on the left-hand boulder created just the right balance and slid them through the narrow pass unharmed. The instant they were through, both Draven and the prisoner ducked low, arms outspread, striving to attain the necessary equilibrium again and not overturn the canoe.
Thus they burst free of the rapids. Draven the coward sat upright as the calmer, deeper waters of wide Hanna welcomed them and cradled them in her chilly bosom. He turned to look back over his shoulders, watching the moonlight touch the white foam of the rapids and turn it to living silver. As far as he knew, no other man had done what he and his enemy had just accomplished. Too bad that he was no true man and the prisoner no better than a devil.
The prisoner himself collapsed in the bottom of the canoe and did not move, his remaining strength momentarily lost to him. But he had proven a worthy water-mate, Draven admitted. And he wondered briefly what the two of them might have achieved together had they been born of the same village. Perhaps they may have even hunted Hydrus in his season.
Draven continued to paddle, his heart slowing to match the steady rhythm of his arms. The prisoner did not move, but his heavy breathing told Draven that he did live. Kahorn territory encompassed the whole of the opposite bank, as far as Draven knew. He searched for a safe mooring.
Suddenly the prisoner sat up. The canoe tilted, and Draven was obliged to shift his paddle and weight to regain balance once more. The prisoner, who had been so careful while they navigated the rapids, did not seem to notice. The light of the pale moon illuminated his upturned face.
He stared up at a high, bare promontory on the Kahorn side of Hanna. Draven had seen this promontory before but never thought much of it beyond the strange fact that nothing grew upon its slopes, though the surrounding landscape was lush with forests. He had never experienced anything like the dread that he now saw etching lines in the prisoner’s face. Curious, Drav
en looked up to those high crags himself.
He saw, much to his surprise, that the promontory was not so bare as he had supposed. By the light of the moon he saw the thin arms of a dead tree right on the very summit.
“The shadow!”
Draven startled at the prisoner’s voice. He looked at his pale face again, and found that the prisoner had turned imploring eyes upon him. Not once during their death-brawl the night before had Draven glimpsed such a desperate expression on the other man’s face, not even when he anticipated the final blow. It was strange and unnerving.
“The shadow,” the prisoner said. “Don’t let us pass through the shadow.” He pointed to the long reach of the promontory’s dark silhouette cast across the water.
Draven did not think to argue. There was too much awful urgency in the prisoner’s voice. So he changed their course and drew the canoe up closer to Rannul territory, where the shadow did not reach. They slipped past, and Draven moved to the center of the river again.
“Please,” said the prisoner, “carry me on.”
“Will that not take you far from your village?” Draven asked. The prisoner must have been caught many miles upstream, and the further they went now, the longer his trek home would be.
“It does not matter,” said the prisoner. “Please.” Once more he looked back over his shoulder at the promontory, now behind them.
Again, Draven did not argue but continued paddling in silence. The world around them spoke in the voices of the night, and the river’s songs whispered to them until the promontory was almost lost in the darkness. At length the prisoner said, “Here,” and pointed to a sandy bank on the Kahorn side of Hanna.
Draven steered his craft to it, plunging the prow of the canoe up onto the sand. The prisoner climbed out, staggering in his weakness. Draven remained where he was. He half expected the prisoner to run, disappearing without another word into the forests, never to be seen again.
Instead, the prisoner stood with his back to Draven for several breaths. His wounded arm, exhausted from the strain it had endured over the rapids, shuddered with pain.
“My name is Callix,” he said suddenly, turning and looking Draven in the eye. “Prince of Kahorn.”
“I know,” said Draven.
“Because I am alive, your father will wage war upon my people.” Callix kept his eyes fixed upon Draven’s. “You must dissuade him.”
“Gaher will never be dissuaded.” Certainly not by his coward son.
“You must try. For your people’s sake.”
Here Draven drew himself up, his eyes alight. Disgraced though he was, the pride of Rannul still ran in his veins. “My people are not afraid of war. Certainly not against Kahorn!”
But Callix shook his head solemnly. “You don’t understand. You must not let them cross the river. If they do, they will suffer the same fate as Kahorn. And that is not a fate you would wish upon even us, your age-old enemies.”
Draven felt some of the pride-rage dying back in place of curiosity. “What can you mean by this?” he demanded. “From what do your people suffer? Why were you found so far from your village?” He paused, then added, “And why do you fear that high hill?”
Callix stepped back, his eyes very dark as the shadows of the forest closed in around him, blocking out the moonlight. “Ask me no questions, Gaher’s son. You have saved my life . . . let me return the favor with my warning. Do not cross the river. Not in war. Not in peace.”
With those words, the Prince of Kahorn slipped away and was gone, leaving Draven with the prow of his canoe upon the sandy bank.
As the Kind One spoke—working on his woodcarving all the while—it seemed to the girl that his voice came from far away. Indeed, as his story progressed she began to feel as though she herself stepped from the confines of her body and drifted on the winds of time to years gone by. Akilun’s words bore her up and carried her gently back to an age before Kallias Village was built, back to a time when a warlike tribe lived across the river. She thought she saw Rannul Village from her high vantage, and the field where Draven lay prostrate in despair. She thought she saw brave, clubfooted Ita tending to the wounds of her enemy, and the white rush of River Hanna’s rapids.
The girl did not know it, but the images she beheld so clearly in her mind’s eye were the result of Akilun’s speech. For as he spun his tale, he did not speak in the language of the girl’s tribe but in his own tongue. And that was a language the girl did not understand but which struck her ear and broke in her mind, scattering into images, sounds, smells, tastes, all manner of sensations which she could understand deep down in her heart and soul. Had she been even a year or two older, she may have noticed the strangeness of the Kind One’s telling and been too afraid to go on listening. As it was, she sat in rapt attention as the story played out before her vision.
But when Akilun spoke of the promontory and the dead tree standing upon its crown, something stranger still happened to the girl’s vision. She was staring, without realizing that she did so, at the stump Akilun carved. Not at the carving of Draven’s immobile, ageless face, but at the stump itself. When Akilun told how Draven looked up and saw the tree’s warped branches etched in moonlight, it seemed to the girl that she was Draven herself, seeing with his eyes. The ugly stump before her was no stump at all but sprouted great branches such as it must have boasted in the days before it was hewn down. These twisted in the shadows, reaching beyond the light of the Kind One’s lantern. Reaching like hands to touch the girl’s face.
She gasped and sat up straight, her eyes staring. The stump was only a stump once more, and Draven’s too-familiar eyes gazed down upon her. But in her imagination the girl could still see, like ghosts, where the branches had been.
Akilun paused in his work, setting aside his hammer and chisel. “I think perhaps that is enough story for one day,” he said, smiling gently at the girl. His smile comforted her, and the ghostly branches vanished from her view.
Nevertheless, she was grateful when Akilun took her hand and led her back through the cavernous hall—beneath the ringing work of the Strong One’s hammer overhead—to the great double doors. The sunlight welcomed her, and she stepped, blinking, into the work-littered yard.
“Will you come again tomorrow?” Akilun asked as he let go of her hand.
The girl looked up at him. Beyond his shining face she saw the darkness of the hall. Her heart beat a conflicted rhythm in her breast. She both shook and nodded her head and could not have told which answer was true.
Then she ducked her chin to her chest and darted away, seeking the path back down to Kallias.
“Did you see Akilun?” her grandmother asked when the girl settled down next to the old woman at the family fire that night. “Did he tell you more of the story?”
The girl nodded, staring into the dancing flames without seeing them. She watched instead the black wood held in the heart of the fire, its dry bark wrinkling back to reveal the heartwood beneath. She wondered if trees felt pain.
“What did he tell you?” her grandmother urged. Her voice was low, and she spoke for the girl’s ears alone. The rest of the family group was caught up in the tale of the day’s hunt as spun by the girl’s eldest sister. No one had spare attention to give the quiet little girl and her old grandmother.
The girl was glad for her grandmother’s interest. It was hard to earn much notice when part of so large a family. But she found herself hesitant to speak of what she’d heard that day.
Her very hesitancy was enough for her discerning grandmother, however. The old woman nodded and said a quiet, “Ah!” before leaning closer to the girl and putting an arm around her shoulders. “I know. I know,” she said softly. “It is a difficult tale, that one. Did he speak of the tree?”
Surprised, the girl turned a sharp glance up to her grandmother’s face.
“Yes,” the old woman said, reading all the answer she needed in that one quick look. “I thought as much. Be brave, dear child, and hear the tale to
its end. Has Akilun spoken of Hydrus yet, and of the great hunt?”
“No, grandmother.”
“Well then, tomorrow I shall go up the hill with you and ask Akilun to tell the tale. I have not heard that part of the story in a long while and would be glad to have it told me again.”
So the girl leaned into her grandmother’s side, glad that the decision was taken from her hands this time. She would have to climb the promontory tomorrow. She would have to help Grandmother.
“You are mad,” the girl’s mother said the next day, scowling as she held the full waterskin in her hands. “Quite mad. What do you think you’re about, climbing the hill at your age?”
“At my age?” Grandmother laughed, her eyes sparkling merrily. “You’d put me in my grave, Iulia, but I’m not so ancient as all that.”
“Ancient or otherwise, you’ll do yourself an injury if you insist on such foolishness,” her daughter replied, handing the waterskin to the girl as she spoke. “Think of your condition!”
“I do, more frequently than I like,” Grandmother said mildly. “Which is why I’m bringing a strong young shoulder to lean on.” So saying, she placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder and gripped hard as though to prevent the girl from running off.
The girl’s mother looked from her daughter to the old woman and back again. The girl could see her forming another argument and knew that in another moment she would suggest Grandmother bring one of the stout young boys along with her instead. But in the end, Iulia simply threw up her hands and declared she hadn’t the time to contend with such nonsense, and if the two of them wanted to waste a whole day on such an imprudent trek, so be it! She had mouths to feed and crops to gather and so on and so on.
So Iulia stalked off, still grumbling, and the girl and her grandmother exchanged secret smiles.
Partway up the hill, however, the girl began to wonder if her mother had been right. Grandmother was not as strong as she used to be, and her condition made the going very slow. To a certain extent, the girl didn’t mind. She wasn’t eager to face that ugly stump again, or Draven’s wooden visage either, for that matter.
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