by P. C. Cast
“But it’s the truth. The blight had taken hold enough that the wound on my leg had started to fester and stink.”
“That’s a death sentence, and a quick one,” Sol said.
“Not anymore it isn’t.”
“This girl, Mari, she didn’t give you the remedy, though.”
“She will, Father. I know she will. I just need time to get her to trust me.”
“I hear you, son, and I’m even in agreement with you, or as much in agreement as I can be without having met this girl. What you described to me is someone the Tribe could possibly accept, especially if she brings with her Laru’s son and the cure for the blight. The problem is time. You don’t have much of it,” Sol said.
“I’ll have all the time I need if we don’t tell anyone that Mari can cure the blight. We just tell part of the truth for now—that some Earth Walker women found me and saved my life, and that they did it to show their humanity. We’ll tell the rest of it after I’ve earned her trust and brought her and Rigel here. I don’t understand the problem with that.”
“There isn’t any problem with your plan. There’s only a problem with time. Nikolas, I’m sorry I have to tell you this, but O’Bryan is dying.”
“What! The wound wasn’t that bad. It was only—” Nik stopped himself as realization caught up with his racing mind. “O’Bryan has the blight.”
“He does. And it’s advancing rapidly.”
“How long does he have?”
“Days. He wants to end it, Nik. He’s been begging the Healers to give him the dram of monkshood.”
“No! That’s not going to happen. I won’t let it happen.”
“What are you going to do?”
Nik rubbed his shoulder, wishing he had a mug of Mari’s noxious tea to ease his aches and pains. “I’m going to find Mari and convince her to cure O’Bryan. Now.”
“We could go to the Elders and petition them to allow a group of Scratchers to go free. We’d have to tell them about Mari’s ability to cure blight, but that would be enough to get them to agree, though I can’t promise that they’ll continue to free the Scratchers after we do have the cure.”
“Father, you have to stop calling them Scratchers. They’re Earth Walkers.” Then Nik sat up straighter. “And we don’t need to go to the Elders because I don’t need a group of Earth Walkers freed. I only need one.” He met his father’s questioning look with a relieved grin. “Jenna is Mari’s friend! I’ll offer Jenna’s freedom in exchange for O’Bryan’s life. Mari doesn’t have to give me the recipe for her poultice right now, so long as she cures O’Bryan.”
“I don’t think the boy can travel, Nik. He’s pretty bad off,” Sol said.
“Then I’ll need your help twice—once sneaking Jenna off Farm Island, and again sneaking Mari here to cure my cousin.”
“Son, I’ll help you once, twice, a thousand times. Just don’t almost get yourself killed again.”
“Father, that’s a deal.”
“What’s this daughter of Galen like really?” Sol said.
“She’s smart and strong. She’s also kind, but I don’t think she’d describe herself that way. As tough as she is, calling her kind might actually be an insult to her.” Nik found himself smiling as he thought about Mari. “She’s an incredible artist. She even sketched a picture of Galen, Orion, and her mother.”
“I’d like to see that someday,” Sol said.
“I hope you will, Father.” Nik sipped his ale, thinking about Mari. “There’s a sadness about her. Every time she smiled it was like she’d forgotten how, and wasn’t sure if she even wanted to remember.”
“Well, she’s lost both of her parents. Her mother recently. You know how that feels, son.”
“I do, but I think it’s more than that. I recognize the sadness that comes with being an outsider in your own skin,” Nik said.
“You’ve never told me you feel like an outsider,” Sol said.
“It’s not an easy thing to tell, and I don’t want to disappoint you any more than I already have.”
Sol leaned forward, taking his son’s shoulders in both of his hands. “Nikolas, you don’t disappoint me. That’s something you’ve created in your mind. I don’t care if you are chosen by a dozen magnificent Shepherds at the same time, or no canine at all—I wouldn’t love you any more, and I’ll certainly never love you less.”
Nik blinked through tears, trying for a smile. “Father, are you just saying this because you thought I was dead?”
Sol’s expression didn’t lighten. He held his son’s gaze. “I’m saying it because it is the truth. Son, I want you to make your own choices, and if that takes you down a path I could never have expected for you, then follow it and know that you will always have my love as well as my respect.”
“Thank you, Father.” Sol hugged him, and for a moment Nik rested there, safe in his father’s embrace.
They parted, each wiping at their eyes. When their gazes met again the two men laughed.
“It is so good to have you back,” Sol said. “Wilkes gave a full report about what happened out there. He made it clear that your instincts were absolutely correct, and had they listened to you the outcome would have been much different.”
“I had to kill her. I couldn’t let them take her, but Father, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
“You did Crystal a great kindness.”
“I wish that task had fallen to someone else.”
“I know, son. Sometimes it is our greatest kindnesses that are the most difficult to bear.”
“I want to see O’Bryan.”
“Son, wait. Stay here tonight. You’ve been through so much. You need to sleep and to continue to heal. At dawn I’ll go with you to the infirmary.”
“I can’t wait. If it was me in that deathbed, O’Bryan wouldn’t wait either,” Nik said.
“Your loyalty is impressive, son. It’s one of your best qualities. Would you like me to come with you?”
“That’s not necessary. Relax, finish the ale. I will take you up on your offer for me to stay here tonight, though. I don’t feel like being alone.”
“Actually, you being alive has breathed life back into me, and I have something to do, too.” Sol stood, wiping his hands on his pants. Nik saw shadows under his father’s eyes, and the lines on his face looked deeper than they had before he’d left, but Sol was smiling at him and it seemed he was newly energized. “I could walk partway to the infirmary with you.”
“Can I borrow some of your clothes? I’m going to cause enough lifted brows and ten thousand questions without appearing in the castoffs of a Scratcher,” Nik said.
“Absolutely!” Sol took the stairs to his bedroom two at a time, and was back in moments with pants and a woven tunic, thick enough to keep out the nighttime chill.
“Where are you off to, Father? Going to see Maeve?” Nik asked as he changed his clothes.
“No, yes, well—I imagine she’ll be there already.”
“There?”
“We have a member of the Mercenaries visiting us,” Sol said.
Nik’s brows shot up. “A cat man is here? Really?”
“Really. It has been interesting, though I admit I have not been a proper host. I was mourning the loss of my son.”
“Not anymore!” Nik grinned at Sol.
“Which is why I am going to join the gathering for him when earlier I excused myself,” Sol said.
“Well, tell him not to allow his Lynx to mark the visitors’ nest. Remember the last time one of the Mercenaries came through here and his cat marked the nest?”
Sol shuddered. “The stench was unbelievable, especially after our canines felt they needed to add their markings to try to cover what the cats did. Dreadful, just dreadful. But we don’t have to worry about that with Antreas’s Lynx—females don’t mark like males.”
“What? Are you saying a male Mercenary bonded with a female Lynx?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Sol said.
“I didn’t think that could happen,” Nik said. “Male Lynxes choose a male human to bond with, and females choose a female. Or have the childhood stories of the cat people completely misled me?”
“You haven’t been misled. This bonding is unusual—the first I’ve known. I don’t believe it’s a particularly polite subject to question a Mercenary about, though.”
“No doubt,” Nik smiled. “What’s the cat man doing here?”
“Looking for a mate.”
Nik laughed. “From among the Tribe? I can’t see many of our young women wanting to go from living in the sky surrounded by beauty and canines, to living in a den surrounded by cats.”
“You know surrounded by cats is an exaggeration. With how solitary they are, it can pretty much be guaranteed that the only cats that would surround them are kittens the female births, and then only until they bond with their humans.”
Nik shook his head. “They’re an odd people, aren’t they?”
“They reflect their Companion animal, as do we. Lynxes are different from canines, and so are their people. No matter how strange they seem to us, they are excellent guides and fighters.”
“You mean excellent guides and assassins,” Nik said.
“I think calling them assassins is as impolite as questioning them about the sex of their cats,” Sol said, smiling at his son. “But there is no doubt about their skill with blades.”
“And that those skills are for hire. That’s never sat well with me, Father. Where’s their loyalty?”
“To their Lynxes and themselves, I believe,” Sol said. “They do know the only paths through the mountain passes, which makes me glad their skills are for hire.”
Nik laughed. “Father, I can’t imagine you wanting to trek through the mountains.”
“Well, not me. The time for roving has passed for me, but there is a whole other world beyond the mountains. I hear that the grasslands stretch on forever, and are a thing of great beauty,” Sol said.
“And don’t forget the Wind Riders!”
Sol laughed heartily. “How could I forget them? When you were a boy you could never get enough of the stories of the magickal horsewomen of the prairie. Do you know I saw you riding a stick and pretending it was a horse when you were about six winters old?”
Nik felt his face flush with heat. “Can we change the subject now?”
His father grinned at him. “I think you named that stick Lightning, if I remember correctly.”
“Old man, your memory is totally fading,” Nik teased. “Let’s go before you’re completely senile.”
Sol laughed again and clapped his son on the back. “All right, all right, are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” Nik said.
Just before they left the privacy of the nest, Sol turned to Nik. “Son, I applaud your decision to tell as much of the truth as you can about what has happened to you. I want you to be prepared, though. If all goes as we hope the Tribe will, eventually, know the full truth about Mari. I cannot predict how our people are going to react. They believe Scratchers are little more than underdeveloped children with a strange, magickal ability to grow things. They need to be cared for, as we do our sheep. Losing that belief will change our world, and I just don’t know how the Tribe is going to accept that change.” Sol paused and then added, “Though if they want to stop dying of the blight, they have little choice.”
“Father, that is exactly what I’m counting on.”
40
Nik was relieved to see that the gathering for the Mercenary was small, and mostly made up of the Elder Council and a group of single women who were young enough still to consider mating, but old enough that the chance of a canine choosing any of them was pretty slim. Which means, Nik thought, scowling to himself as he and his father approached the group, that most of the women are my age.
“Nik! Oh, Nik! You’re back! You’re alive!” Maeve jumped up from her place beside Cyril and hurled herself into Nik’s arms as she laughed through happy tears.
“Hello, Maeve. And Fortina. It’s good to see you, too.” Nik disentangled himself from Maeve and bent to rub the growing canine behind her ears, thinking how very much she looked like Rigel—and then feeling a pang. Not of envy, as he would have felt before he found Rigel, but a pang of yearning. He missed Rigel. He also missed Mari. The realization of that missing left him crouched beside Fortina, staring at the pup with his mind in tumult.
“Nik, are you well? Are you whole? Sol, is he really okay?” Maeve was asking.
Nik shook himself mentally, patted Fortina once more, then he stood, smiling at his father’s lover. “Sorry, Maeve. Yes, I’m fine. Completely fine.”
“Nikolas! I cannot express how good it is to see you returned to us.” Cyril grasped Nik’s hand, shaking it warmly.
“Thank you, Cyril. It was a close thing.”
“How did you get back? Sheena said you were mortally wounded when the run-off took you under,” Cyril said.
“That’s a complicated story, my friend,” Sol began. “Nik can tell it after—”
“Father, I don’t mind telling Cyril.” Nik made himself smile, as if he had absolutely nothing to hide. “The sooner the Tribe hears what happened to me, the less complicated the telling will be.”
“Go ahead then, son,” Sol said.
Nik drew a long breath and then dove directly into the deep end. “Sheena was right. I was mortally wounded.” Nik moved so that his back was to Cyril and Maeve. Then Sol helped to lift his sweater so the neatly bandaged wound was visible to all.
“You’ve already been to the infirmary?” Cyril and the rest of the group that had left the Mercenary to join Nik shared confused glances, which Nik understood. Gossip traveled like summer forest fire in the Tribe. If he’d been to the infirmary, the Tribe would have already known he’d returned.
“I’m on my way to the infirmary right now,” Nik explained, pulling his sweater down. “My wound was bandaged by Earth Walker Healers.”
“Earth Walker Healers?” Maeve’s tone was incredulous as she looked from Nik to Sol for an explanation.
“He means Scratchers.” Thaddeus’s voice, laced with sarcasm, came from the rear of the group that had joined them.
There was a sudden, complete silence, and then Nik nodded and smiled at Thaddeus as if the man had just helped him. “Good to see you alive and well, Thaddeus. And what you said is correct. Earth Walker is what they call themselves. The name Scratcher is an insult.”
Thaddeus barked laughter. “Leave it to Nik to worry about insulting a Scratcher.”
Nik’s smile was gone. He skewered Thaddeus with a sharp, honest gaze. “The Earth Walkers saved my life. I think to repay that with insult is wrong.”
“But why would they save you?” Cyril spoke quickly before Thaddeus could monopolize the conversation.
“That was one of the first questions I asked the two women,” Nik said. “And the truth is one of them wanted to slit my throat and leave me floating with the river trash where they’d found me.”
“If that is the truth, why didn’t they?” said Rebecca, another of the Elders, who was studying Nik carefully.
“The other Healer, Mari is her name, wouldn’t allow it. Luckily for me, Mari was in charge. She said to kill me would make them as inhumane as the people who make up the Tribe of the Trees.”
The outcry that followed Nik’s words was so great that other members of the Tribe started poking their heads out of nearby nests.
Sol lifted his hands, motioning for silence. “Nikolas simply repeats the words he was told. Shouting will not change the experience. I say we listen to Nik and learn from what has happened to him.”
“You were actually in a Scratcher burrow this past week?” Rebecca asked.
“Earth Walker burrow, and yes, that is where I have been.”
“What was it like?” called one of the young women from the back of the group.
“Are you saying they were actually taking care of themselves?�
� said someone else from the gatherers.
Nik looked through the growing crowd until he saw who had asked the first question, and addressed her directly when he answered. “Evelyn, the burrow was comfortable and clean, as well as beautiful in a unique way. As to the second question—yes, they were most definitely taking care of themselves, and me as well.”
“Yeah, and your answers prove how delirious you had to have been,” Thaddeus quipped. “Well, at least Nik knows where the burrow is. A Healer or two will be a nice addition to the Farm. Maybe they can keep the other Scratchers from dropping dead so often.”
“I don’t know where the burrow is. The women blindfolded me, but even if I did know, I wouldn’t lead you to them,” Nik said.
“Are you no longer part of the Tribe of the Trees? Are you now an Earth Walker?” Thaddeus asked the question as if he was concerned for Nik’s answer, but his eyes were shining with a shallow, mean victory light and his words were laced with anger.
Nik ignored Thaddeus, turning to Cyril instead. “Those two women saved my life, and all the Earth Walkers asked in return was for me to share my story with the Tribe. So, this is what you should know—the Earth Walkers we keep captive here seem unable to care for themselves, are filled with melancholy, and die early because being caged is deadly to them. Out there, in the wild, they are very different. They are not morbidly depressed. They have families they love. They value loyalty and their Healers. They have an amazing understanding of herbs and how to use them to heal. They appreciate art. They’re smart and interesting. They are as human as are we.
“And that’s the story they wanted me to bring to the Tribe. Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I need to visit my cousin in the infirmary.” Nik hugged his father and then pushed his way through the swiftly forming crowd, bumping Thaddeus with his shoulder. He had to suck in a painful breath as it felt as if he’d run into a stone wall.
“Watch yourself.” Thaddeus’s voice was low and mean. “There’s more to some of us than what can be seen.”
“Obviously, as you somehow managed to escape from a gang of Skin Stealers with the only wounds being sustained by your canine,” Nik said in an equally low voice. Then he turned his back to Thaddeus and walked away.