by Ru Emerson
'Ylia?’
'I—I dreamed. Sorry.’ She caught her breath, steadied it with an effort. ‘Sorry to waken you, cat. Just a bad dream.’ She closed her eyes; dark fur touched against her shoulder.
'Merely a dream. They cannot harm.’ Her thought was soothing. Ylia relaxed suddenly and slept again. This time nothing disturbed her until the early rays of the morning sun slanted down the ravine and into her eyes.
Was this a thing she was to be plagued with henceforth—or, like Lisabetha's mind-speech, a thing brought about by contact with the Foessa and those within them? I could not be certain, though, unlike Lisabetha—for Ylia's own sake, I hoped the latter.
My opinion on individual persons is not necessarily reliable. Like humans, I take notions and they are not always the right ones. With the girl's cousin, however, this Vess—well, if anything, I was never harsh enough in my judgment of him. That he wanted Brandt's throne I never doubted, though I was the only one who agreed with Ylia on that. Like Lyiadd, he could not entirely hide his thought or his desires from me, and I knew what he thought, how he sought to pressure the nobles ("That a woman should rule! Worse, a girl of few years and little experience!"), how he worked to sway the North ("Your King breaks faith with ye, that he brought a witch to wife, to bear him children of that heritage to rule ye!"). Amusing to me, that last, since clearly Vess had no true beliefs of any kind, though he certainly made an outward professing of this Chosen religion. Well, it is not the first time a human has clutched some belief or other to its breast to win over the adherents of the belief to its bidding, and will doubtless not be the last.
30
Ylia sat up slowly and yawned. A poor night's sleep; she was grateful they intended to stay another day. Nisana sprawled near the fire, sleeping still—or again. The clearing was otherwise deserted, save for Golsat, who tended a small, roughly woven rack of fish over a smoky fire. Ylia could hear a low, melodious chant down the ravine, and in the opposite direction, toward the pool, children's laughter. Golsat handed her food and drink.
“Where is everyone?” The tea was cool, the meat cold, Lisabetha's flat bread tough and tasteless without salt.
Golsat shrugged. “The Chosen are burying the woman who died. As I recall, they put much work into such a thing and will be at it until after dark. Lus and the children are with ‘Betha and Malaeth, searching out groundberries and plants. Marhan and Levren left before first light, hoping to bring in a deer. Brelian,” he scowled at his rack, “is back at the creek.” She bent to the last of a decidedly uninteresting breakfast to hide a smile.
“So we stay here another day.”
“Good for us; we need the food, and I could use the rest myself.” Golsat eyed her soberly. “What do you think we will find at Aresada?”
“I try not to think on it much. But I suppose the time has come I must. I do not know what we will find. I know there are folk there, a large number of them.”
“Do you?” A brief smile, quickly gone. “There is much you ‘know’ these days, isn't there?”
“Some. But you know much I cannot understand also. I would have starved long since, left to my own devices ... if I had not gotten hopelessly lost right at the start. We are confounding, each in our own ways, all of us. Don't you think?”
“Sooth. You in a way I never met before, though. But, you do know more of the Caves than I.”
“A little. There are folk there, but we all knew that. There are no few. I know of some—well, I know.” She smiled at him. “But who is there, which of the folk of Nedao, I will not know that before you do.”
“Well—” He smiled, clearly unconvinced. “Marhan is still irritated with you, you know.”
“I daresay!” She laughed quietly. “But you know how he is! It goes beyond his dislike of warrior women, I begin to think—as though I were his own baby, his fragile Princess.”
“Oh.” Golsat laughed in reply. “And you have only begun to see this, have you?”
“Well, he disguises it well enough, doesn't he?”
“So,” Golsat replied pointedly, “do you. But he is a good man, the Swordmaster. Narrow in his views, perhaps a trifle. And a little over-swift in arriving at decisions.” He touched his eye, which was still a magnificent swirl of color. “He has a strong arm for one so old! But, no insult, mind, I was surprised. Somehow, even though I had been two years in the City, I never really expected—”
“No insult. We have all learned considerable of each other this journey. Look at Malaeth! I have known her all my life, and had anyone ever told me how great her determination, I would have laughed! I always loved her, of course,” she added as she swallowed more cold tea, “but I thought of her as—well, a soft old woman, even when I was a child. Fluttery, not too intelligent.”
“Unexpected, indeed.” Golsat nodded. “But, as you say, each of us has been a surprise to the others.” He stared off toward the trees. “Lev—” he hesitated, smiled faintly. “To have become friends, even a little, with him.” He met her eyes. “And in such a fashion, who would ever have thought it?”
Ylia laughed, shook her head. “Not I! But—your question of Aresada: there are probably a few from the Citadel there already. A number of farmers and herders from east of the Torth. Perhaps a minor lord or so. Perhaps even a few Teshmorans who escaped as Gors did. Several hundreds, perhaps several thousands. Not many.”
Golsat's normally somber face fell even more. Careful hands turned the rack, settled it back down onto the forked sticks that held it above the smoke. “It is a hard thing to face,” he said finally. “That there is no going back. That the Plain is closed to us forever. Of all of us here, I should find it easy, but it comes no more easily than it did when we fled Anasela. Nor do the losses.”
“No. But we will build again.” Golsat met her eyes. “What I said to Lus yesterday, I meant that. There are valleys within the Foessa where a holding could settle, a number of folk could begin again. We will find such a place. We have done it before, our kind.”
“So we have.” Golsat turned back to the fire to pull his rack from the smoke and dump its contents into dry leaves. “There. That will help. Of course, Brelian will have more—and better—and of better color—” He grinned then, and Ylia clapped her hands together in sudden delight. “And do you dare say one word to him!” he added fiercely, but his eyes danced with mischief.
“Malaeth said it best,” Ylia laughed. “All the wiles of a Narran soothsayer!” Golsat pulled a face at that, but began to laugh himself.
“You know, I never could teach that trick to anyone else, to catch fish with the hands. Brelian has taken to it astonishingly well, but I think at least half the joy of the trick comes of knowing he has bested me and I smart for it.” He shrugged cheerfully. “So why should I disappoint him?”
“Why indeed?” And if it brought him happiness—a sharp, dark pain smote at her inner being; she pressed it savagely away, took one last swallow of Malaeth's tea—it was stone-cold—and put the kettle aside to help Golsat rake the hot little fish from the leaves.
He broke one open, worried it apart and held out a sliver of dried white meat. Ylia bit into it, made a face, but chewed diligently and swallowed. “Well, for anyone who wishes a change from jerky.”
Golsat munched slowly. “Why? What is wrong with it?”
“Nothing, if you like fish smoked. I never have.”
“Hmmmph.” Golsat eyed her sidelong, licked his fingers. “You eat plants.”
“I forget, you barbarians eat your meat half-raw and unaccompanied, don't you?”
“Now that,” Golsat began indignantly, “is not so! I eat bread and rice both, I even eat one or two of the tubers.”
“And smoked fish. Ugh. I think,” she added as she rose to her feet, “that I had better go make myself useful, since everyone else is busy.”
“You of all folk?” Golsat looked up. “Do not overtax yourself, Ylia, not before we reach Aresada.” And, as she gazed at him in mild astonishment, “I d
o not have my mother's Sight, but I feel you will need all the strength you have there. That is all.”
“Then I will indeed take care,” she replied. “But see that you do so as well.” She caught up the kettle, emptied the last dregs of tea into the trees and set out to spy the lands and to gather berries, if there were any.
For what remained of the morning she climbed and walked, searching out a high vantage point. After a long, hard climb up a broad slope and out a long point, she had her view, though she prudently stayed well back from the edge and carefully avoided looking straight down.
Below, spread out all around for leagues, forest ran to the feet of the mountains and far up the slopes. Here the Foessa separated, an outer range bending well to the east, leaving a deeply forested valley some ten leagues by twenty between the spurs. Now and again a clearing, a circle of meadow or a patch of the lighter green that was willow, aspen and running water.
North; she stared intently. Almost at the edge of sight, the forested land ended abruptly, and beyond that, between forest and the blue haze that was distant mountain, a flash of bright green. The Marshes.
Mothers, to be so near! She stared a while longer, finally turned aside, set her mouth grimly and forced herself back down the ledge to lower, safer ground. On the way back to camp she came through a broad, sunny dell and filled the kettle—and herself—with sweet red cupberries.
Brelian was tending the fire, turning another small rack of fish. Golsat was nowhere in sight. Lus and the children had returned with Lisabetha and Malaeth, and the women sat in the shade—Lus and Malaeth picking through their finds while Lisabetha wove a bag of green reeds for the herder woman to carry. The children could be heard in the distance, laughing and giggling as they played an elaborate game of touch.
Early in the afternoon Lev and Marhan staggered in with a deer, and the afternoon was given over to the messy, disagreeable task of cutting and readying the meat. They saved out enough for evening meal and for the next morning, cut the rest into strips. It was a time-consuming task, one Ylia held herself to with reluctance, and only Lisabetha's diligent example kept her at it long after she would cheerfully have quit.
“It is not that I do not mind. I hate this,” Lisabetha whispered in reply when she said as much. “I am so tired of fish, I would do anything to avoid eating it tonight. And I cannot bear it smoked!” Ylia laughed. Golsat scowled good-naturedly at them both.
They left the hide to the men and slipped away to the pool for a good wash and then a nap. It was late afternoon when Ylia woke; Lisabetha was already gone.
She wandered back to the fire to find Golsat and Nisana alone—he tending the fires and a myriad of smoking racks, she, for a wonder, perched comfortably on his knee. As Ylia approached, they both looked up and Nisana, with a happy little sigh, stretched out at full length. Golsat rubbed the hollows behind her ears.
“Those of the Citadel have not yet eaten?” She could hear them still, faintly now, down the ravine.
Golsat shook his head. “They will be hours yet. I have seen this before, in Teshmor. None of them eat before sunrise tomorrow anyway, as respect for their dead.” He spoke without inflection, but the eyes that met hers were concerned. “You do realize how fortunate you are that these we found are so open-minded? Few are!”
Open-minded? She thought of Sata, of her female companions who spoke even less with her than Sata did, of the warding signs they one-and-all used against Nisana when the cat was about. But then there was Grewl. Perhaps. “All I know of them is that my grandsire, Bergony, gave them the Citadel that was once the King's summer home, and its lands, in exchange for their scrivening and tutoring. Most of them are Osneran, a few Narran. Many, of late, of Nedao. I knew of their chief—the Father, as they call him—Gedderan, by reputation; I never met him. He was said to be narrow, but not as narrow of thought as some.”
“Well, I pass no judgment on what they preach.” Golsat reached to turn one of his racks, carefully, and with one eye to the sleeping cat on his leg. “Nor on the religion of any. Because there is a thread that runs through all of them, even that of the Tehlatt, which may be smooth. Nor do I care what any man believes, where his inner being goes when he dies, or why for, does he not demand I believe the same.” He started as the brush behind him crackled loudly, but it was only Marhan and Levren. After a moment, he went on. “Many of these Chosen are not open-minded at all. I have spoken to Narran traders who tell me there is open persecution in Osnera against those with different beliefs—or none at all. They say many of the Nedaoan Chosen are not unlike their Osneran compatriots: fanatics. Willing to convert men by sword, did no other means serve. Or by fire.”
She had watched him in growing astonishment as he spoke, but as he paused for breath, laughed. “Dead men are won to no cause! What stupidity is this?”
“Men of that kind believe the living more easily swayed with such threat against them,” Levren put in quietly. “But you yourself know how they prate against anything AEldra, Ylia.”
“That is true,” Golsat said. “One of them that I heard in the market place in Teshmor preached it that your mother was a child of the Evil One himself, sent to drag all Nedao into the Netherworld behind her.” He scowled as Ylia laughed again. This was beyond belief! “It is no laughing matter,” he added sternly. “If any of those yet lived, they would point to the Tehlatta as the means by which this thing was done!”
“It is dangerous to have them around you,” Levren said mildly. “Folk of that kind. I wonder,” he added thoughtfully, “what happened to that priest when Lord Corlin's guard got wind of him.”
“Nothing, likely. That is ever the way,” Marhan grumbled. “I,” he added, lowering himself stiffly to the ground, “counseled Brandt more than once to send ’em away before they made trouble! And those in Teshmor, there were one or two—but he saw no harm in ’em, no reason they should not speak out. So long as no one took them seriously.”
“But folk do; they did,” Golsat cut in. “Look at our Lisabetha! She has the Sight—so did my mother, many of the Northern women do. But the Chosen will have it this is evil, a sending to tempt the inner being to evil! Just look what they did to our ‘Betha!” He spat into the fire.
“Well, I have never paid much attention to them,” Ylia admitted finally. “I knew how they felt about Mother—anything AEldra. I was not aware, really, how strongly feeling ran until Lisabetha told me. But this Grewl—”
“He,” Levren cut in, “is unlike any Chosen I have ever met.”
“But, with me as an example, they must see there is no evil in being AEldra!”
“You credit them with thought,” Marhan said sourly. “They do not think. They see a thing, and it is either good or bad, according to what their teachings say. You,” he added accusingly, “are as much an innocent as your father was.”
“But they have done so much of what Bergony brought them to Nedao for—copying the old tales, reviving the histories, teaching lost skills. Marhan, this is important work they accomplish!”
“Oh, well" Marhan fell to moodily poking the embers with his knife. “I am unlettered myself and see no point to any of it. That's what minstrels and talesmen are for. But if you want my opinion—” At that moment, Lisabetha, Lus and the children crashed through the brush laughing and out of breath, mercifully silencing him.
During her watch at middle night, the Chosen returned to the camp, silently sought sleeping places near the coals. They would none of them, save the old man, look at her. Perhaps. Marhan's words, Levren's. Golsat's. She turned them over in her mind until it was time to wake Brelian. Nisana materialized from her place with Golsat and nudged her. ‘Search. Not here, away from camp.’
'All right.’ She was tired, but not overly so. They moved into the trees, sought out the pool.
'There is a thing,’ Nisana began, oddly hesitant, ‘I am afraid you had better know now. Though by your Black Well, I would rather not speak it.’
'It must be bad, then.’ Ylia
dropped to the smooth rock, pulled her battered cloak around her knees.
'I have searched Aresada.’
'You have?’ What was she leading up to? ‘How?’
'Never mind. Ylia—Vess rules.’
“Vess,” she whispered. I knew he lived, I knew it! Anger set the blood coursing through her face. “He dares—”
'Of course he dares. He always has dared. Had he known you were alive, he would have dared. But at Aresada, they now believe all in the South are dead, for no word has come. Even so, he would have chanced it. You know that.’
“He—” Ylia's voice cracked.
'We must plan. He will not readily step down.’
“Understated, cat. He will not step down at all. Damn him, thrice damn him!”
'I agree. He is ambitious; you know that, Ylia. And proud. And of House of Ettel and, odd parentage notwithstanding, a noble of Nedao. With all that entails.’
“Noble.” Ylia turned and spat. “I will kill him for this!”
'Of course you will. Because you will have to challenge him to regain what is yours.’
“I will—oh, no.” She buried her face in her hands. “Then everything is lost, cat! He will never accept challenge from me!”
'He will not dare refuse. This is your people's custom, remember that! Remember too, the folk of Nedao. Vess will not dare ignore them. Do you think they prefer him to you?’
“I—” She shook her head. “No. But—”
'Then unless you cannot defeat him—you know your law.’
“Challenge by sword and to the death,” she murmured. “Mothers, I welcome it! I could have defeated him the night before Koderra fell, before this journey started and my skills were honed by dire need. And knowing now what I know of him, what things he has done, I will kill him with pleasure!”
'Then,’ Nisana urged, ‘you will remain Nedao's Queen. After all we have faced, you and I, all of us, how could we not win out?’