Karavans

by Jennifer Roberson

  And memories.

  But her memories of this place would be forever tainted, colored by the knowledge that this place existed only because their province was destroyed. Because this place had been, before, nothing but a road winding through the valleys, one particular mile of it very like all the other miles.

  That road, this place, this wagon, was now both present and future. And she detested all of it.

  THE AGING, DYED oilcloth had faded over time from crimson to a streaky reddish-orange. But the Kantic priest rather liked it; the hue imparted a pale and peaceful roseate glow to the interior of the tent. Dardannus supposed someday he should have the tentmaker make him another—in trade for a favorable augury, no doubt; the tentmaker did not grasp that true divination was not always auspicious—but for now he was satisfied. And the white of the bones, hung along all the tent poles—chains of curving ribs, a spine strung on gold wire, dangling tibia and femurs, a necklet of phalanges, intermixed with a pleasing array of beads, tiny mirrors, clay eyes, and artifacts—looked so nice against the color.

  He smiled briefly, then bent to take up a scattering of costly ivory-colored splinters from the copper bowl on the rug beside his low, cushioned bench. He murmured softly to them, invoking the blessings of the gods in the tongue of the Kantica, and carried the fragments in his cupped hands to the center of the wooden table.

  “Hold them,” Dardannus said quietly.

  The woman sitting on the other side of the table, heavy legs folded upon a green cushion, jerked her hands back from his offering. “Hold Shoia bones?”

  “They impart nothing to you,” he soothed, “but they must know you. Let them taste your scent, the texture of your hands, the gentleness of your touch.”

  She was unconvinced. Lavetta had been a regular follower of the Kantica for several months, but she was timid, unwilling to surrender herself to his guidance. It had taken some time to turn her away from false diviners, but at last she had agreed to see what omens he might find for her in the Kantica. Surely the auguries Dardannus studied would be more positive than those she had experienced with the charlatans. He was the greatest Kantic diviner in the settlement.

  Lavetta declared, “You didn’t make me hold all those other bones.”

  She was wary. Dardannus quietly set his handful of fragments down upon the crimson cloth, which had not been exposed to the elements and thus was not faded. Against it, the bones were pearlescent.

  It was a sad little pile of nothing much recognizable; small bones such as fingers and toes, and fragments of larger burned more quickly, so small pieces, chips, and splinters were best, unless one worked a Great Augury, in which whole bones and a bonfire were used. In this case it was the ash Dardannus needed, not the actual bones. And the fire was ready; he need only set the splintered pieces into the flame and let it do its work. In time the bone would burn down to grit and ash, and he could read the resulting omens.

  “It shall be as you say, Lavetta. Perhaps when you have fully accepted the Kantica….” His voice trailed off.

  Her mouth sagged. “You mean you won’t read them for me unless I hold them?”

  “There are different rituals associated with different bones,” he explained, “just as there are different gods. The others required less of you. These require more.”

  Lines appeared in her brow. “Why are Shoia bones so different?”

  “Better to ask why are the Shoia themselves so different.” He kept his tone soothing. “One may see deeper, and farther, with Shoia bones. The Shoia themselves live much longer than ordinary men—indeed, it is often said they can never die—and thus their bones are richer. By using them, I can see farther into your own life, Lavetta. Instead of a mere echo of the gods, I may well hear them shout.”

  Her painted-on eyebrows arched up in startlement. “About me? Why would the gods shout about me?”

  He reached across and briefly touched the back of her hand. “Lavetta, you must never doubt your own value in this world. It is true you have encountered hardship in your life—”

  “Four dead husbands and no wealth to show for it? I should say so!”

  “—but even the most afflicted may gain the true peace of the afterlife,” he continued, ignoring the interruption. “One merely needs personal worthiness so that when one’s spirit crosses the river—”

  “That’s what I want!” She was suddenly less sharp. She was human again, and small, reduced in body, heart, and soul, and terrified that her afterlife would be worse than her life. “Oh, yes … I want so much to be worthy! I want—I want to know that I’ll go to a better place when I cross the river, not to …not to that place.”

  “Alisanos?” He spoke the name intentionally, without fear, though Lavetta paled and made a ward-sign against it, grasping the amulet around her throat. “I think you are in no danger of such a fate, Lavetta. You are but a poor widow attempting to make do with such as the gods have given you.”

  “And what else do they intend to give me?” Tartness had returned. “Another husband who can die?”

  A tedious woman, Lavetta. But she always paid on time; for that, he forgave much. “Perhaps. Or perhaps a husband with whom you may someday, many years from now, grow old.” Lavetta was already in middle age and heavy-bodied with it, but a little harmless flattery soothed many. “But only Shoia bones will allow me to look deeply enough, to see far enough to bring you the answer you seek.”

  She peered at the pile of bone splinters from beneath frowsy graying brown hair. “Just—hold them? That’s all?”

  “Briefly,” he told her. “Then I shall burn them, and we shall know your future—”

  But Lavetta’s potential future ended abruptly as someone flailed at the oilcloth, attempting to find a way in through the canvas. A man’s voice, raw from shouting, still shouting; scrabbling hands finding the slight gap between flaps to rip the fabric aside. He stood hanging on the cusp between light and dark, with the yellow glare of the sun behind him and the rose-tinted pallor of the tent before.

  “Send me back.” His voice was a harsh, crowlike caw, as if words came hard to him. His mouth opened in a rictus of effort. “I thought I was a man … I thought—” He drew in a trembling breath, released the words on a lurching rush. “Tell me how to go home!”

  LERIN HELD OUT a sienna-colored clay cup. “It’s a bitter brew, and for that I beg your pardon, but most effective this way. I have made it somewhat stronger for you than for the usual client, as you will naturally have shields in place.” Lerin smiled; she was a handsome woman in late middle age, hair gone to gray, but the smile lighted her face into youthfulness. “You’ve done this before, if not with me; you know what is to come.”

  Ilona, accepting the clay cup with its pungent herbal tea, shook her head as she lifted the cup to her mouth. “I’ve never sought a dream-reader.”

  Lerin’s dark brows arched over blue eyes. “Never? And you a diviner yourself?”

  Ilona swallowed some of the bitter drink. “My dreams have never been the sort that needed reading.” Disbelief still shadowed the older diviner’s eyes, so Ilona clarified. “For me, dreams have simply been something that occurs when I sleep. I’ve never attempted to sort them out for meanings.”

  “Then you have closed off a part of your soul.”

  They knelt upon the rug-strewn floor of Lerin’s tent. It was a small tent, but cozy and comfortable. The usual collection of beads and charms dedicated to various gods festooned the main pole. Lerin’s cookfire was out of doors; inside, she relied upon a small oil-filled brazier to heat her teas and potions.

  Ilona accepted the reproof with chagrin; she would have said the same herself, had Lerin come to her.

  “Nightmares?” Lerin asked.

  “Occasionally.” Ilona sipped more tea. “Not often enough to concern me.”

  “Then what brings you to me?”

  Ilona drew in a deep breath. “What I saw last night … the images seemed to be of a future time and place, not a jumble o
f memories or suppositions. I felt that clearly. They were vivid, disturbing, and they awakened me from a sound sleep.”

  Lerin nodded. “A presentiment.”

  “This is Jorda’s last trip of the season,” Ilona explained, “and he’s late departing. You would think I’d dream of all the tasks that need to be done hastily, instead of what I saw.” With effort, she drank down the dregs of the bitter tea. “The dream felt—different.”

  The dream-reader reached out and took the cup from Ilona’s hands, smiling slightly. “Well, we shall discover what you saw, and what it means. I see the tea is working; do you feel relaxed?”

  Ilona was aware of a lassitude sweeping through her body. “I feel as if I might sleep for months!”

  “Oh, no. Sleep comes after.” Lerin made a gesture. “Lie down there, if you please, on your back.”

  Ilona followed instructions and settled upon the pallet made comfortable by cushions and blankets. She stretched, hearing subtle cracks of tense muscles. “If nothing else, my back will be improved before we rattle it to pieces again upon the karavan roads!”

  Lerin set the cup aside and knelt at the head of the pallet, settling long, dark skirts. “I will place my hands on your brow, like so.” Ilona felt the cool fingers resting against her skin. “I will draw the dreams out from hiding, but you will have to guide me, Ilona. Find the images you saw, those that disturbed your sleep. Place them at the forefront of your awareness. If they are mixed with other dreams of no consequence, I won’t be able to give you an accurate reading.”

  Ilona wasn’t certain she could unwind the pertinent dreams from the others, particularly since she had been told to do just that. Her subconscious was recalcitrant that way. But as the tea worked through her body, she let it also invade her mind.

  “Good,” Lerin said softly. “Call up the dreams, Ilona. Remember them as clearly as you can.”

  “They’re just fragments,” she murmured, eyes drifting closed.

  “Fragments are merely pieces needing someone to put them together into a whole. As you read hands, so I read dreams. Trust me, Ilona. Let go, and bring those fragments forward.”

  Crimson lightning. Steaming rain. Howling wind. Hecari. A karavan, turning back. A woman in profile.

  Fragments. Moments. Nothing more.

  “Let go, Ilona.” Lerin’s voice was soft. “Let them become my memories.”

  Ilona exhaled. She let the memories of the dream, the tangled skein of images, leave her mind and enter Lerin’s.

  Chapter 3

  “I WANT TO GO HOME,” Torvic announced, leaning out of the high-sided wagon so far his elder sister snatched his tunic and yanked him back down.

  By rote, Audrun answered, “We must go on, Torvic.”

  “I want to go home,” Megritte echoed; as she would, as expected, because she followed Torvic’s lead in all things. She was four. He, at five, had the sagacity of age.

  Torvic also had the stubbornness of their father. “I want to go home.”

  And it was Ellica, fifteen, the eldest girl, who said what her mother longed to: “There isn’t any ‘home’ anymore, Torvic! The Hecari stole it all!”

  “Hush,” said Audrun. “Not here.” The enemy’s ears were everywhere.

  Gillan, the oldest son, heir-in-waiting to whatever they might make of the new land, knotted a sixteen-year-old fist into a hank of Torvic’s tousled fair hair. “Be still, sprat. Do you think Mam needs to hear such talk? Da said to wait here, and be still. So—be still.”

  “I am still,” Torvic retorted, very carefully not moving at all so he wouldn’t actually be lying. “But I can talk. Da didn’t say I couldn’t talk!”

  Ellica muttered, “Da should have.”

  Megritte, whose braids were loosening into freedom, tried a question of her own. “When are we going home?”

  “We’re not!” Torvic snapped, transforming his own reprimand into one for his inferior. “Didn’t you hear Ellica? Didn’t you hear Mam?”

  “Oh, stop.” It amazed Audrun most days that she had birthed such headstrong children, since in her youth she had been praised for her kindness, sweetness, and grace. Now, queasy, hot, weary, and completely bereft of such things as kindness and grace, it meant nothing but extra effort to control her equally hot and weary children. “I haven’t the patience for this. Your da will be back soon; until then, be still. Be quiet,” she persisted, seeing the look in Torvic’s eye. It would last perhaps the count of ten fingers, she thought, before someone spoke again. And she couldn’t blame them. They had been on the road for days, either cramped in the wagon or walking alongside it. There had been no time for leisure, and no settlements offering other children to talk or play with. As difficult as it was for her to uproot her life, it was worse for the children. They had no voice in the matter.

  Upon approaching the tent settlement, Davyn had halted the wagon yards away from the outskirts, carefully not infringing upon it or the dusty, tree-cradled area where departing karavans gathered. Both settlement and karavan area were a matter of paces away, but the wagon nonetheless remained isolated, clearly part of neither tents nor karavans.

  Before Davyn went off to find a karavan-master, he and Audrun rolled up and tied the yellow-painted oilcloth sideflaps stretched over the curving roof-ribs so they might benefit from fresh air, but he made it plain they were all to remain inside the tall-wheeled, closely packed wagon containing what was left of their belongings. Not to set foot, Davyn warned, on the ground without his say-so.

  Immediately after his father’s departure, Torvic asked his mother what they were to do if they needed to pee, at which point Gillan reminded him that they, as males, need only aim over the sideboards. This observation resulted in cries of disgust from Ellica and Megritte, and a reprimand from Audrun.

  Though she might have preferred that option herself, in place of the chipped crockery pot shoved under one of the narrow cots.

  Now they sat and fidgeted amid bedding, furniture, foodstuffs, pots hanging from roof-ribs, and clothing trunks, with such farming implements as they retained attached to the exterior sideboards, tailgate, or hanging beneath the floorboards of the huge, high-sided wagon. But what Davyn hadn’t considered in his attempt to keep them safe was that this settlement, with its floodplain of colored tents, offered such enticements for bored and curious children as Audrun had never seen.

  Megritte asked, in the smallest of her voices, “Where did Da go?”

  “To see the karavan-masters,” Gillan answered, “so he can find us room in one of the karavans.” He waved an arm in the direction of the nearby grove of broad-crowned, thick-trunked trees where wagons and livestock waited. “They’re over there; see them? Those are the karavans, meeting up with the karavan-masters.”

  “Horses,” Megritte observed, peering through dust at the mass of conveyances and beasts some distance away. “We don’t have horses. We only have fat old oxes.”

  “Oxen,” Torvic corrected. “Don’t you know anything?”

  But the “fat old oxes” were not so fat anymore. Their journey from the family’s home in the midst of the province to this place at its edge had worn the fat away. And it concerned Davyn, who knew they needed strong, healthy oxen to get them overmountain.

  “Can I go see Da?” Megritte asked.

  “No,” Ellica said sharply. “We’re all to wait here. Da said so.”

  Megritte voiced what her mother very well knew all of them wondered. “Why?”

  “Because,” Audrun said succinctly, intending to leave it there; then relented because she had detested that answer herself in childhood. “Because we know nothing of this place, or the people in it.”

  “Bad people?” Megritte asked.

  Torvic, being Torvic, brightened perceptibly. “Is there danger?”

  “Might be,” Gillan observed, affecting his father’s drawl.

  Audrun smiled at him, marking how he grew more like Davyn each day, gaining height and width of shoulders even as his voice bro
ke. But she directed her words to Torvic, offering a lesson, though she doubted he would learn it. Not today, not here and now. “But there is also the chance of getting lost. Can you count all those tents? Can you see from one end to the other? Could you find your way along all the twisted pathways? Would you know how to find the wagon if you got lost?”

  “I’d ask,” Torvic answered promptly.

  “Ask who?” Ellica was definitely peevish. “We’re strangers here, Torvic. No one knows us. They don’t even know Da or Mam. Who could you ask that would know?”

  Torvic put his chin up. “Diviners,” he declared. “They know everything.”

  Audrun touched her belly, glancing at the nearest roof-rib with its dangling thong of colored beads and bone-carved charms. They had not seen a diviner in all the weeks on the road. Davyn would make sure the spells were renewed for the wagon and oxen before they left, and the omens read, but she would like to find a moonmother who could tell her whether the child was healthy and whole.

  And whether it would live. Whether all or any of them would live, on the road winding along the dangerous edges of the deepwood.

  Audrun shivered again. They were near the borderlands, Davyn said. Alisanos. Too near, she believed. She felt it in her bones.

  “Diviners know everything,” Megritte echoed.

  “Then I want to know,” Ellica challenged, “who I’m going to marry.”

  Torvic made a sound of desperate derision. In that, Gillan joined him.

  Audrun blessed their innocence, that the most important thing in their lives just now had nothing whatsoever to do with a journey along a road so close to Alisanos, where devils and demons lived.