And saw nothing.
Sighing heavily, he rolled onto his back and placed a hand over his racing heart. It was no good today. He was exhausted and becoming clumsy. He looked over his shoulder. How can I return to them with nothing? All the traps they’d set three days ago he’d found empty today. And the few bushes within half a day’s walk that were still bearing edible fruit were becoming depleted. To reach more abundant berry shrubs he would have to travel farther than he cared to, and it would be dark soon. He had little choice but to return. Picking up the five animal skins, heavy with water, he checked the woods once more, and began the slow trek back.
By now, he knew every twist and turn of his cave home. He could navigate it even in the black — and he usually did — at least until he reached the inner chamber. Before entering there he always lit a torch, for no one in that horrible and hallowed place needed surprising.
Holding the torch behind him, he ducked into the room. Pale and silver as moonlight through mist, faces — set with wet glimmering eyes — squinted up at him through drawn hoods and cowling blankets.
He swallowed heavily and, attempting to suppress the burning pain in his heart, set the torch into a holder in the cave wall and let the water skins slide from his shoulders.
“Pree K,” a voice said from across the cave.
Pree K nodded to Jhock as his friend stood to help him with the water. He could see in Jhock’s eyes how weathered he must have looked — there was more concern there than usual.
“It’s all right,” Jhock said quietly. “We’ll go out together tomorrow. Maybe our luck will change.”
Just then a taller, skeletal young man stepped up to them. “It’s my turn to go tomorrow,” he said. “The two of you have been going out every day for nearly a turn.”
“But your father — ”
“Will be served best if the two of you get some rest.”
Pree K and Jhock acquiesced in silence. Only En’t’s father, Grek Occoju, who had once been the Rieevan Council Spokesman, remained of the adult men. He had been sick off and on with fever and cold for two turns now.
The three young men rationed out the water for the night then blew out all but one of the torches and curled up in their tattered blankets.
The anxious and sad faces of En’t’s little brother and two baby sisters as well as the only other little girl still living, Lily, would not leave Pree K’s mind even as he closed his eyes. They hadn’t complained or given voice to their hunger and cold tonight — indeed they hadn’t for a long time. Even after Lily had lost both her mother and her father, she’d cried only once. Nevertheless, Pree K knew that every day as he, Jhock, or En’t left to go out for water and food, the children watched them leave and passed the terrible sunsteps in fear, wondering: Would this be the last time they saw their protectors and providers? Were they leaving now and, like so many of the rest, never coming back?
Chapter 58
Obvious Revelation
A s the days after Monteray’s visit progressed, Rhusta watched as Wing slipped into the rhythm of the planet and his body began to heal rapidly, its energy threading through daylight into moonlight, rising and falling spherically from sunrise to sunset.
In regular cycles of consciousness and sleep, Wing had begun to eat and his body showed signs of improving strength.
Rhusta had finally kicked the shy’teh cub out of the house, fed up with cleaning up after it. He’d hoped it would find its way — far away — and not come back. But it had returned after the first booting and each time thereafter, scratching at the door, begging to be let in where it would go to Wing’s side and lie down.
Thankfully, as Wing got to the point he could move about a little, the cub would go out with him, following and bounding behind Wing, the two exercising and doing their business together, much to Rhusta’s relief.
The cub proved to be male, with an appetite to match. Rhusta knew feeding it could be detrimental to its learning to live wild. But that, he knew without satisfaction, was a thing already done. Still, the fact remained that the shy’teh and Wing were connected. It was likely that, when Wing left for Legran, the creature would go with him. On the off chance it didn’t, Rhusta determined to simply not allow it inside or feed it until the cub figured out how to live wild or die.
Glancing across the cabin, at the snoring cub and resting Wing, Rhusta took up Monteray’s knife and went out to check the snares down in the fether grove by the stream.
As the cabin door shut behind Rhusta, Wing roused. He swallowed against the dryness in his throat and looked up at the now very familiar rafters that made up the simple cabin structure overhead. He was far from healed, but the need to get on to Legran had begun to pull at him.
Curling his fingers, he scratched the head of the shy’teh cub absently. What the cub would do when he left, he didn’t know, though he was quite sure Rhusta would not welcome it in the cabin any longer. Hopefully it was recovered enough to make it on its own.
He dozed and when he woke again, night had drawn fittingly across the mountains, quilting them over with a thin layer of shadows, bedding the world for rest. He was still weak, he knew, and probably should not be leaving in the morning. But one more day laid up here in the cabin and he thought he’d go mad. He could walk at least, and now, with his training from Rhusta, he could take whatever time he needed getting to Legran without starving to death or dying of exposure.
Also, and just as importantly, Kive has successfully chased off Ime. The days were warm and glowing and though they were still at a high elevation, the nights were far fairer than they’d been when he’d escaped from Rieeve.
At his side, the cub was snoring lightly, putting off more heat than Wing thought a small body could. He glanced down at it in the dark. Small, yes, but not as it had been. He was astounded at how much it had already grown from the tiny, pathetic thing Rhusta had found out on the scree field.
Wing’s thoughts turned to Legran. He did not feel excitement about getting there, necessarily, but rather a sort of compulsion, as if it were the last point of something before completion. And perhaps that was it, exactly. The need to do this one last thing for his lost people.
Best to it, he told himself silently. Get it out of the way. And then…
Then.
He couldn’t imagine a “then” other than to return to the mountains. But then an image began to form in his mind. He was a builder, and now that he had gained some knowledge of living in the mountains, he could do as Rhusta had done, build himself a place and live out his life exactly as Rhusta was doing. The idea left the hollow space inside of him with a sharp ache; still, it was a picture of a possible future he’d not imagined before.
Sleep came for him with that potential in mind and so Wing was startled when the next thing he knew, was Rhusta, nudging him awake as if the cabin were on fire.
“Good morning, your royal highnesses. It’s time you were both up and out of here. Big day — for all of us. You’ll be on your way to new adventures and I’ll finally get my house back.”
With the drug of heavy sleep still dragging at Wing’s consciousness it took him a bleary moment to cognate Rhusta’s words.
He glanced out one of the cabin’s small windows. Indeed, the sun had already come up and had been in that attitude for more than few steps.
Beside him, the cub stretched and yawned, showing its sharp white teeth and blinking like an owl.
Still finding it painful to move, Wing’s jaw tightened as he moved his shoulder. He had removed Rhusta’s sling days past. Still the shoulder nursed a steady ache and, like his leg, refused to accept any weight first thing in the morning.
Getting up slowly and pointedly ignoring the prepared breakfast on the table, Wing folded up the bedroll and tugged it tight with his good arm using a length of ropey sinew. He’d already packed another duffel of goods and necessities from Rhusta the day before; it lay by the door. Before the shy’teh attack, he’d tanned a leather hide from one of he and
Rhusta’s fent kills, and fashioned it into a functional, long-sleeved, coat. He set it carefully atop his shoulder, slipped on his tall leather boots, picked up a set of bow and arrows, also constructed under Rhusta’s tutelage, and headed out the door.
The cub padded out the door after him, heading for the bushes at the far side where the pair usually went to relieve themselves.
“That won’t be our stopping place today,” Wing said to the cub, wondering what he would do should the cub decide to follow him beyond what had become their usual roaming grounds near Rhusta’s cabin.
But Wing didn’t have time to think further on the matter as a voice rang out —
“Merehr!”
Wing came to a slow stop.
“Son Cawutt-Merehr!”
Beneath a rising sun that had frozen suddenly in its heavenly orbit, Wing turned around.
Just outside the door to the cabin Rhusta stood, gazing at Wing across the clearing.
Wing had never told Rhusta his surname; but that was the least astonishing thing ⎯
Merehr? Wing thought. Why had he called me that?
It was then Wing recalled a singular feeling, an impression of indefinable familiarity he’d experienced with Rhusta his first morning in the cabin.
He called me that once before, Wing remembered vaguely.
Walking forward, Rhusta bridged the gap between them. A few steps away, he stopped and said again: “Wing Merehr.”
Wing stood motionless.
“I know your name,” Rhusta said. “I know you. It’s unfortunate that, even though one can leave, not everything can be left behind.” He looked Wing over for a moment. “I was one of them, too, you know. I read the Ancient Writings as a child and I dreamed of meeting the Leader in the flesh. Then it all went backwards — they thought it was me.”
Wing’s stomach made a sickening somersault.
Rhusta continued. “I know you think I could never understand what you felt, what you went through growing up in Rieeve. But I’ll tell you, I have a pretty good idea.”
The two gazed at one another for a lingering moment, and Wing suddenly saw with a clarity so painful and obvious he felt ashamed...
“Rhegal,” he muttered.
Rhusta met Wing’s eyes. “ ‘Merehr’,” he said softly. “How can a single word manage to conjure such hope and such peril? Your heart lifts and sinks with the hearing, doesn’t it?”
But Wing could only stare. Here, before him, stood the one who had rejected the prophetic calling of the Leader and fled. Wing had been a child.
“They thought I was everything the Ancient Writings said the Leader should be. Do you know how I repaid their belief?”
Wing’s voice came back faint, barely audible, “You disappeared.”
Rhusta’s eyes narrowed and he nodded. “Yes.” A long pause followed. “I don’t know if our people were any more right about you than they were about me. And I don’t know if you are who you are because of that belief, or for other reasons altogether, but here is what I do know...” Rhusta’s eyes suddenly shone, leaping with an incandescent light both surprising and intense. “I’ve seen you in your fields,” he said. “I’ve seen you in the Mesko forest with your brother and father. I have seen that there is care in your hands, and I’ve seen moments of pain when you thought no one else could see you. In short,” Rhusta said, his voice surprisingly gentle, “I have watched you grow, and that has changed my mind about a lot of things I thought I was absolutely sure of.”
Wing had no idea how to reply to such a confession. He, indeed, had no idea how to settle any of it in his mind, so he gazed back at Rhusta in silence, awe-struck and ill-equipped, thinking only, All those times in the fields in Rieeve when I felt a presence, like I was being watched...
It was him.
And then Wing remembered the vision he’d had as a young boy, his arm caught in a rusty trap, just before the shy’teh had appeared. In that vision he’d seen a father, a set of the Ancient Writings on his lap, reading to his young son — a young, red-headed son. Wing had later realized that the young boy had been the man, Rhegal. Now he saw that the boy was the man Rhusta.
“Our people may have failed us,” Rhusta said. “Or maybe we failed them. I guess all that is now irrelevant.”
Closing the distance between them, Rhusta reached out and — for the first time in Wing’s waking moments — touched him, placing his rough, aging hand upon Wing’s arm.
As rooted as a giant Mesko to the spot where he stood, Wing wavered slightly, unable to speak, hardly able to feel until Rhusta pressed something into his hands. Wing looked down and saw the small brown ledger of the Ancient Writings Rhusta had kept on his bookshelf. His gaze locked unseeingly upon it as Rhusta handed him two more things: a seasoned stave and one simple length of the green wood they’d cut together.
Rhusta nodded at them and said, “You know how. Take your time. You might need them.”
Wing raised his eyes.
“I have not always been what you see here,” Rhusta said. “But I have, all these revolutions, let my failure, my own fear and resentment, get the better of me. I have done all I can for you — so I want you away from here. I want you to run, for you have been hurt, and you are angry, and if you don’t re-find your reason for living, you will die, no matter what I’ve taught you, and all that you are, and all that you’re meant to be will be wasted.”
Rhusta’s words drained Wing of strength.
Though there had been those who refused to say it, Wing had heard Rhegal’s name spoken often throughout his life and on more than one occasion by his own father. For Wing, Rhegal had been a figure, an idea, larger and yet more tragically real than almost any other because, on some level, Wing had always felt that only Rhegal might have truly understood what Wing had gone through as the one their people believed to be Merehr.
Now, to know that he’d just spent nearly seven turns with the man...
There were so many things he could have asked him. So much they could have shared. So many questions he could have answered. They could have shared in the grief of the loss of their people. All that precious time now seemed utterly wasted.
Trembling, partly compelled and partly resistant, Wing met the blue-grey gaze of his provider, healer, and guide.
“I...?” Wing stammered. In the word was both a plea and a question.
But Rhegal merely nodded his head and urged him to go.
“No,” Wing said, “it’s you. It’s you! Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you say something? I have so many questions, so much to…” Wing began to stammer and stopped. “Rhusta. Rhegal. My people. Your people…”
Rhusta’s throat worked and Wing was sure he saw the glimmer of tears in his smoke-grey eyes.
“Go,” Rhusta said. “You have to go.”
Shocked, Wing found he could only stand.
Rhusta began to walk away, finally turning his back and moving off at clipped pace back toward the cabin.
Wing felt a quick inclination to run after him but stopped himself.
Feeling as if each boot weighed a pendtar, Wing slowly began to back away.
At last, he turned about, and suddenly he was running.
The weight of the pack and the bedroll had disappeared from his awareness as did the pain in his shoulder and leg and he ran far longer than his healing body should have endured but much less than his mind needed to quiet the confusion raging inside it. Over rock and root, game trail and gnarled underbrush, Wing’s thoughts consumed the path like a man starved until the still healing fracture in his leg snapped him back into the reality of pain.
He came to a slow halt and looked about.
Though the sun was not yet growing heavy in the sky, Wing knew he’d be going no further today. It was then he realized that he’d not seen the shy’teh cub since it had gone into the trees that morning to pee.
All for the best, he thought, and began hunting for firewood. It was then he noticed that he still held the small brown copy
of the Ancient Writings in his hand.
Later, as evening drew in and the flames of his fire licked up against the darkening sky, Wing opened the duffel Rhegal had provided, and placed the ledger inside it.
Stretching out onto his back, he gazed up into the darkness. He needed to collect his thoughts, to find a place where he could rest easy with them. In the end, it was the pain in his body that superseded the need for clarity of mind. The pain raced up and down the mending bone in his leg, he didn’t dare move his shoulder, and his head throbbed dully.
Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow he would try and fit the man Rhusta into the paradigm he’d had as a youth of the man, Rhegal. Tomorrow he would try and understand how the man could have known who Wing was and kept his secret. Tomorrow he’d be able to comprehend how Rhusta could have been so ruined, so bitter, as to not have broken his silence upon finding out that their people were gone, destroyed, murdered. That they two were, perhaps, the very last of their race. Tomorrow, Wing would be able to understand…
Sleep embraced him mid-contemplation.
Dawn bled through the hills of darkness. Wing felt its first fragile rays crawl slowly across his face, over his eyelids. He stretched and when he brought his arm back down it hit something soft and warm. Startled, he glanced down and found the shy’teh cub lying as it had every night in Rhusta’s cabin, nose tucked into Wing’s armpit, ears twitching in sleep, back rising and falling with easy breaths.
Wing grunted and dropped his head back to his bedroll.
He’d hoped the cub would have gone off, or that he’d lost it over his long, mindless run.
But the cub had followed, clearly not to be left behind.
“What am I going to do with you?” Wing said to back of the soft black head. The cub raised its head sleepily and looked at him. “You can’t come into Legran with me.”
Just as clearly, the cat did not understand Rieevan. It yawned hugely and tucked its head back into Wing’s arm.
With a sigh, Wing reached up and rested his hand between the cub’s small shoulders, scratching idly, a routine established early on, even, or so Rhusta had said, before Wing had been conscious enough to realize what he was doing.
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