IN HIS VIOLATED tent, the Kantic priest and his female client gaped at the disheveled man standing before them whose trembling, outthrust arms so clearly beseeched their aid. Lavetta, swearing by a god she supposedly no longer worshipped with her conversion to the Kantica, leaped up clumsily, overturning Dardannus’ table in her attempt to escape. The diviner heard the faint clang of copper bowl against upended table leg and the anguished protest rising from his own throat as the bone fragments tumbled in an ivory shower to the carpeted floor. He rolled from his bench, wincing as a knee pressed against a knucklebone; he found it, gathered it up, began collecting the others with immense care, as if they were precious gems.
For the Kantica, they were.
“Please—send me home!” The stranger’s voice, issuing from blackened lips and a spittle-fouled beard, was a harsh, rasping wail.
With more agility than Dardannus expected of her, heavyset Lavetta bent, ripped one sidewall from the ground, wholly heedless of the damage she did to hangings, spell-charms, and artifacts—many of which came down in a tangled disarray of string and beads, cascades of mirrors, wood, and wire—and ducked under it, shrieking about Shoia bones and moonsick men.
Furious, Dardannus glared up from his costly fragments long enough to mark the stranger’s greasy, matted hair and beard, the blood-rimmed eyes, the soiled clothing. The man reeked of ordure. And of something else, something more … alien.
Anxious to recapture his priestly dignity and aplomb, Dardannus summoned his most deep and dramatic tones. “Would that I could, I’d send you this moment to Alisanos itself!”
With a garbled outcry the stranger stumbled forward, fell to his knees before the overturned table. He was shuddering as if beset by palsy, hands reaching out again toward Dardannus in supplication. “Now! Now!”
And then Dardannus noticed that the fingers were not fingers at all, but claws. Thick, black curled claws, turned back onto themselves so sharply they cut into the flesh of the man’s wrists, which were themselves scaled and a sickly purplish-green.
The priest nearly vomited.
A man with claws and scales was no man at all.
I thought I was a man, the stranger had said. As if he once was. As if he knew he was no longer.
Dardannus swallowed back the bile of fear and horror. In frantic haste he snatched up the nearest bone still dangling from his tentpole and waved it threateningly. “Away!”
“Please.” Claws shook and rattled. “Show me the way home.”
The Kantic priest heard the fear rising in his own voice. He squashed it with anger. “Find it yourself.” He wielded the scapula, wishing it were a bit more substantial. “You were there once already … find it yourself!”
The grime-smeared face crumpled. The man was sobbing as he rocked on his knees. “I don’t know how. Once I did, once I did, when it took me—but I am lost now, lost…”
Emboldened by the stranger’s obvious feebleness—and feeble-wittedness—Dardannus decided the scapula was less effective than simple human force. He set the bone down, hesitated to summon the will to put hands upon the filth of madness, then snatched handfuls of the man’s dirtcrusted tunic. With a grunt of effort, he hauled the body to its feet. “Your home’s not here,” he wheezed, stiffening his arms as he swung the man to face the tent flaps. “Look for the deepwood elsewhere!” And shoved.
The man was gone. Oh, not entirely; but he was now outside the tent. Dardannus heard the broken sobs and continued pleading. For that matter, he still smelled the man; but no, that was the reek of effluvia left in the madman’s wake even as he staggered away.
For a long, long moment, Dardannus stood frozen in place. From the deepwood? Breath tangled in his chest. He was once a man—But clearly, so clearly, no longer. He has claws—he has claws—
Dardannus gagged, swallowed bile. Aloud, he whispered in horror, “Alisanos took him … changed him …”
But the stink of the man remained. It abruptly transformed the experience from one of horror to one of entirely mundane resentment. Easier to deal with. “Holy gods,” the diviner murmured in disgust, then transformed the words into a prayer. “O most holy gods, Mother of Moons, I petition you to cleanse my tent of this taint—” He turned again to the task of collecting the bits of bone he had dropped when snatching the scapula from the ridge pole. “—so I may serve you in purity—”
Even as Dardannus bent, the door flap was pulled aside yet again, rattling the few remaining charms. One of them fell, clacking against those already tumbled upon the rugs. “In purity?” an amused voice asked. “Or in profit?”
Dardannus spun around so quickly he nearly lost his footing in the rucked carpet and the trap of his own overturned bench. He caught himself before falling; it would have been most painful to land atop a wooden leg. “Mother of Moons,” he gasped, noting the red hair, brown eyes, and the wealth of coin-rings and beads woven into Shoia braids. Then, in shock, “Rhuan?”
“In the very flesh.” The tone was mocking, as usual; Dardannus recognized it easily. Rhuan was infamous within the settlement for his ironic tongue. “Not what a Kantic priest would prefer to see, I understand, flesh not being in your purview, but I rather prefer it this way. Now—” coppery brows rose, “—show me these Shoia bones Lavetta was shrieking about.”
“That man!” Dardannus toward the tent flaps behind Rhuan. “That man was—he is—an Alisani demon!”
“Who? That moonsick fool I saw staggering away?” The Shoia grinned; incongruous dimples appeared. “I think not.”
“He had claws and scales! In place of fingers and flesh!”
The grin faded abruptly.
“He did!” Dardannus insisted. “He came in here begging for me to send him back to the deepwood.”
The mocking was banished now, as was the laughter. “What did you tell him?”
“That I couldn’t. I don’t know how.”
Rhuan’s voice was cool, bereft of its usual lightness.
“You know precisely where the borderlands are, Dardannus. We all do.” Then added, dourly, “For the good of our lives.”
The priest felt a knot in his lungs. Tension. A tinge of fear. The Shoia wouldn’t forget what Lavetta had said about the bones. “I told him he could go back without my help. He came from there … he can find his own way back!”
“Maybe he can’t,” Rhuan observed mildly. “If he’s a human once taken by Alisanos and now escaped, he may not have mind enough left to find his way anywhere.” His expression was pensive, turned oddly inward for a man everyone knew as someone who laughed even when he killed.
Or so Dardannus had heard.
The priest straightened his robes. “It isn’t my responsibility to see him back to the deepwood.” Then he cursed himself for providing the Shoia a very neat opening.
“Ah. Yes.” Rhuan didn’t miss the opening. Rhuan, they said, missed very little. “Your responsibility lies with bones, not moonsick old men—or even a poor fool who’s escaped Alisanos. Therefore I propose we discuss that responsibility.” He was smiling again, with an edge to it Dardannus didn’t know how to interpret. “Show me the bones, priest. Then tell me where you got them.”
Dardannus summoned his flagging willpower and forced himself to breathe. It wasn’t easy. His lungs wanted not to work, and his throat threatened to close. Inwardly he chastised himself as he held out bone splinters in his upturned palm, offering them in silence. He was a diviner. A Kantic diviner. He had no business being frightened half to death.
But he had never witnessed a living Shoia inspect Shoia bones.
Rhuan took, then rolled, the fragments in his hand, as if tasting them with his flesh. His face was impassive, schooled out of its habitual mocking smile into a smooth mask of implacability. Dark copper-tinted hair was bound back into a thick complex plait of beaded subsidiary braids, slicked away from a face that was, Dardannus realized uneasily and abruptly, alien. And yet it should be alien, that face; Rhuan was Shoia. Shoia were not human.
The
priest’s lungs still wished not to work, and his throat felt tighter than ever.
Even Rhuan’s skin was colored copper. Oh, it was normal flesh, warm as a human’s—Dardannus had felt the touch of slender fingers when Rhuan took the bones from his own trembling hand—but there was a faint coppery cast to the flesh, as if the sun tanned him differently. And just now, strangely enough, that flesh seemed stained a bit darker.
Dardannus shifted uneasily. It was the light, surely. His crimson tent was weathered to that faded, streaky orange-rose. It merely cast an odd glow across the Shoia. Probably his own face was colored oddly as well.
Then Rhuan looked at him, looked into his eyes, and the skein of logic was undone. The skin was darker. The eyes, usually a warm cider brown, contained the faintest flicker of red.
The priest drew in a sharp, tight breath. He knew little enough about Shoia, and likely less about Rhuan or his kinsman Brodhi, though the latter was not known for violence. But rumor had it a man might die by Rhuan’s hand and never know he was dead as he fell down upon the ground.
And then the Shoia’s skin was not darker, and his eyes merely brown. It was Rhuan again, odd and oddly dangerous, but familiar Rhuan, with the familiar skin tones, the familiar cant of his face, the overfamiliar—and annoying— irony in his voice. “Be free of your fear, diviner. These are not Shoia bones.”
Dardannus nearly gasped. “Not—?” And then realized it was very likely best not to show disappointment and outrage over being cheated of Shoia bones before a Shoia.
Yet Rhuan seemed to understand very well what the priest was thinking. Smiling faintly, he tipped his hand and let the fragments fall in a wispy shower to the disordered rug. “Be free of your fear, Dardannus—and also with your tongue. Who sold you these as Shoia bones?”
“What—” He cleared his throat, firming his voice. “What will you do to him?”
Rhuan’s smile sweetened. “Talk to him.”
Dardannus was again aware of all the rumors he had heard, all the tales both large and small, born of fertile minds, and possibly some truths.
I am a Kantic diviner. The gods themselves will aid me. Even a Shoia may not gainsay a god.
Dardannus met that smile with one of his own. And lied. “Hezriah,” he said calmly; Hezriah had been charging him more of late, and it was time to teach the bonedealer a lesson about such things. “Hezriah sold me those as Shoia bones.”
Chapter 4
Shouting caught Audrun’s attention. Still wagon-bound, still trying to keep the peace among fractious children, she glanced up from irritated contemplation of a new snag in her road-stained skirts. It took but a moment to find the individual from whom the noise issued: a ragged, bearded man staggering out of the tents. The children, like hunting hounds—no doubt grateful to have something upon which to fix their attention—drew themselves up into a tensile awareness, staring.
People near the tents scattered away from the man like chicks from a flapping apron, mouthing prayers, clutching at protective amulets, and making various ward-signs. The man’s arms were outstretched, yet his hands were cocked upon themselves at the wrists as if useless, not reaching, not grasping, making no motion beyond an odd, helpless gesture of pleading, of loss, of futility.
Megritte was round eyed. “Who’s that?”
In dramatic tones, Torvic announced, “An Alisani demon come to get you, if you don’t behave!”
Audrun reprimanded him automatically, but did not take her eyes from the staggering stranger. He was close enough that she could see his tattered tunic and leggings, matted hair and beard. Was he besotted on ale?
Megritte, deciding her brother told the truth regarding Alisani demons, shrieked piercingly.
Ellica winced visibly, clapped her hands over her ears. Audrun very nearly mimicked her, so shrill was her youngest daughter’s tone. But she had no time to do anything but watch the man warily, half fascinated, half fearful, and hoping very hard he would not see them.
But he oriented himself on the sound of Megritte’s shriek. Audrun saw him look. Saw him see.
And then, mouthing silence, he began to stagger directly toward them.
Megritte shrieked again, more loudly yet. Audrun took her into her arms, letting the girl bury her head against a pregnancy-tender breast, and hissed at Torvic to get down, to sit down at once; at Gillan and Ellica to move away from the sideboards.
She badly wanted her husband there, but he was not. It was up to her to protect them all. And so she finally unstuck the clinging Megritte, forcefully handed her over to Ellica, and ordered all of them to get out of the wagon at once.
Ellica gasped. “Get out?”
“Go to the tents,” Audrun hissed. “Not far, but get away. I’ll come fetch you when it’s safe.” She clambered over the sideboard nearest the approaching man, seeing no sense in remaining cornered in the wagon. “Haste, now.” And when they hesitated, “Gillan. Ellica. Do as I say.”
Audrun turned back to face the stranger. She heard her children moving—the rasp of cloth, the clanking of hanging pots stirred by movement, the hitch of bodies over the side, the murmured complaints and questions from Torvic and muffled sobs from Megritte—but did not see them, did not watch them go. They were children, not fools; she trusted them to look after themselves until she could gather her lambs again. Best to send them away from the wolf while she played guard dog.
The man stumbled closer. His damp, reddened eyes were fixed on her. He appeared not to see the children at all, which suited Audrun. She clutched the wagon with one hand and tugged her tunic and skirts into order with the other. It was habit, to face all things in life with such tidiness and competence as could be managed.
ILONA OPENED HER eyes. She felt an absence in her mind, the lack of a touch on her brow. It took her a moment to focus on the oilcloth roof. Lerin’s tent.
Memories returned. “Are we finished?”
“Yes. You may sit up.”
Ilona did so, turning her body to face Lerin. “What did you see?”
“I saw a storm like no other, with killing winds and rain. I saw a karavan, and Hecari warriors. I saw a woman.”
“Was there enough for you to read?”
Lerin’s smile was of brief duration, merely a wry twitching of her lips. “If one knows how. A portion should be clear even to someone not a diviner: a storm is coming. But that is not why the karavan turns back; there is an even greater threat that causes that.”
Ilona shook her head. “Jorda has never once, while I’ve been with him, turned a karavan around.”
Lerin made a slight silencing gesture, counseling patience. “That may be. But in the future—a week from now, a year, a decade—he shall do so. The Hecari?” Lerin shrugged. “It should come as no surprise that you might see one or many in your dreams. They are a plague upon the land, consuming Sancorra day by day, and you have seen them among the karavans.”
Ilona nodded; she had seen far too many Hecari as she traveled the roads with Jorda. “What about the woman?”
“Little to see,” Lerin replied. “A profile, tawny hair no more. She is a stranger as yet, but will come to be known to you, come to be important.”
Part of Ilona was frustrated by the information. It told her very little. But she supressed her impatience; surely there were times when the clients she read for felt the same. “Is this woman to be a client of mine?”
“I think that likely,” Lerin said. “But in profile, it was difficult to see enough to recognize her, and her hair was loose beside her face. I can only tell you that a woman will bring great change—”
Ilona’s brows rose sharply. “You said nothing of a change before.”
Lerin ignored the interruption. “—to your life, to the world, or both.”
She struggled to keep her tone courteous. “But you can’t tell me when any of this will ocur. This storm, turning back, or the woman’s arrival?”
“As you said, they were fragments.” The older diviner spread her hand
s. “I’m sorry, Ilona. I wish I could tell you more; I don’t mean to be vague with obscure predictions, like a charlatan. But you do know enough from this to recognize the moments when they arrive in your future.”
Nothing more remained to be said or done. Ilona inclined her head in brief thanks, diviner to diviner, as she rose, and paid Lerin in the coin used among all diviners: The promise of a reading when Lerin desired one.
Slipping through the tent flap, Ilona looked into the skies. A bright, brilliant blue, and cloudless. It was not a day for a storm of any sort, she felt, had it crimson lightning and steaming rain, or merely the kiss of moisture on her hair.
Briefly she shook out her skirts, then set off toward the karavan grove. But ahead of her on the winding footpath she saw a familiar back. “Rhuan!” She hastened to catch up. “Rhuan—wait.”
But as she reached him, as he swung around to face her, Ilona discovered that it wasn’t Rhuan after all. The expression was much more severe than she had ever seen Rhuan wear, feckless as he was; and every line of the body bespoke irritation.
Embarrassment heated her face. “Oh—Brodhi. Forgive me; I thought you were Rhuan.”
His eyes, like Rhuan’s, were brown. But there was no amusement, not even resignation in them. Brodhi’s tone was clipped and cold. “We are not so much alike that we should be taken for one another.”
Embarrassment faded. “But you are,” Ilona said mildly. “Particularly from the back.”
“I am taller—”
“A finger’s width, perhaps.”
“—and my braid pattern is much different.”
“Brodhi,” she began patiently, “no one in this settlement knows anything at all about the ritual braid patterns of the Shoia. Almost no one in this settlement knows anything at all about the Shoia, period, except for what Rhuan has told us; the Mother knows you never say anything about yourself.” She waved a hand to forestall the bitter reply she saw forming in his eyes. “But of course you’re correct: why should you share anything about your race with ignorant Sancorrans?” Ilona bestowed upon him a sweet, insincere smile. “Excuse me; I have duties at the karavan.”
Karavans Page 4