Deepwood: Karavans # 2

by Jennifer Roberson

  She had a task, and was grateful for it. Yet part of her was aware of a burgeoning anxiety, an apprehension that, once marked, twisted her belly upon itself. Two fellow couriers had also been in the settlement, sharing the common tent. She had seen neither Timmon nor Alorn in the midst of the storm as she, with Mikal, ran through the tents shouting for people to hasten eastward. There hadn’t been time to look for specific individuals, only to cry over and over again that all should flee the settlement. Many had, but some had not. They remained behind now as corpses, clothes made muddy and sodden. Bethid prayed Timmon and Alorn had heard her shouted instructions and obeyed them. Later, she would search for their bodies, hoping not to find them.

  Beneath a sky now naked of shielding tree canopies, where grass did not grow, beside a massive grandfather oak that had withstood the storm, Bethid knelt in the mud. With a handful of rocks she built a haphazard fire ring atop a broad, flat stone. But the deadfall of leaves dropped from trees, of small twigs and brittle leaves, had been torn from the ground by wind. “Tinder … tinder,” Bethid muttered absently, glancing around. But anything stripped from the trees by winds would be too green, too damp to catch fire.

  She rose and went to the wagon, climbing onto the bottom step. “I need kindling,” she told Jorda, who was bent over Ilona. “Anything of wood, to burn. Everything on the ground is wet.”

  Jorda dwarfed the tall wagon, despite its size. Muttering, he cast about awkwardly, eventually scooping up something he found on the floorboards. “Here.” He thrust the handful to Bethid. “Wood.”

  She stared at what she grasped. Her spine felt cold. “These are rune sticks.”

  “They’ll burn. And here is dry cloth to help—we’ll hope Ilona forgives the sacrifice.”

  “But these are rune sticks, Jorda.”

  “Beth, not now. You wanted kindling. There’s kindling.”

  “But, Jorda—”

  The karavan-master was clearly impatient and irritated. “Burn them, Beth! Ilona’s a hand-reader—those are for show.”

  Bethid felt slow and stupid under his green-eyed gaze. “But I use a rune-reader.”

  That he understood; everyone in Sancorra province relied on diviners as something akin to extensions of the gods, to learn if their futures were good or bad, if they were worthy of a good afterlife when they crossed the river, and to confirm that plans were auspicious.

  Jorda’s irritation was dispersed behind an expressionless face. “You do this to aid a diviner, even if her art is not the one you rely on. In these circumstances, I think the gods will forgive you.”

  It felt wrong, utterly wrong, but Bethid, with effort, mentally shoved that feeling aside, dismissing it with the discipline of a trained courier. Yet even as she knelt and began to arrange the rune sticks within the small stone ring, a rebellious portion of her mind betrayed that discipline. “Mother of Moons, forgive me. I do this for one of your daughters.”

  A man’s voice, heavy with irony and scorn, yanked her attention from the fire ring. “Your Mother of Moons has nothing to do with this, Bethid. It’s Alisanos you should concern yourself with.”

  “Brodhi!” Bethid stared at the copper-haired, manybraided Shoia. He was wet as all of them were, but cleaner, and moved with the efficient grace of a man unaware of personal discomfort. In fact, he looked angry. That was not an emotion she was used to seeing in her fellow courier, who generally wore an implacable mask that hid all feelings except for a habitual and annoying arrogance.

  It struck her then with a tangible shock that though she remained concerned for the safety of Timmon and Alorn, she had not thought of Brodhi at all.

  TORVIC PEELED BACK the blanket and oilcloth he had clutched around his body in the midst of the storm. Beside him, Megritte was crying. The rain had stopped, the wind, the lightning and thunder; the world was calm again. Steam rose from the ground, filling the forest and muting sound.

  He and his sister had been put into a crevice between two huge tree-shielded boulders, cautioned by Rhuan, the karavan guide, to remain where they were, to not stir until the storm died. Well, the storm was dead; Torvic saw no sense in continuing to hide.

  He folded back additional layers of fabric, baring a damp blond head and equally wet shoulders. “Meggie, stop crying.”

  She did not.

  “Meggie, there’s no storm anymore.” Torvic shed the blanket and oilcloth and stood up, climbing down out of the crevice. Indeed, beneath the wide, drooping tree canopies there was no storm; but something was not quite right. The colors looked different. The sun was brighter. Squinting, Torvic looked up past the leaf canopy to the sky overhead.

  The world they inhabited was not the same.

  Torvic stood utterly still. He felt pressure in his chest, rising to fill his throat. He swallowed back a painful lump. He would not cry. Would not. He was a year older than four-year-old Megritte—that year made him better, braver. But he could not suppress the trembling that began in his body.

  Megritte climbed down next to him. Her hair was a tangled thicket torn free of its braids. Her face was wet with tears. “Torvic—”

  But he interrupted. “Meggie, we have to go.” He didn’t like his tone; it was thin and weak. He tried again. “We have to go. We have to find Da and Mam. We can’t stay here.”

  That diverted her. “He went to find them. The guide. He said he’d find Ellica and Gillan, and then Mam and Da. He said we should stay here.”

  “I don’t want to stay here, Meggie. The storm’s over. We should go find Mam and Da.”

  Megritte opened her mouth to say something further, but the air was filled with a high-pitched, inhuman, ululating scream.

  AUDRUN TOOK BACK her screaming infant from Rhuan. “How could you make me cut her? Mother of Moons, she’s but a newborn!” She uncurled the baby’s fist to inspect the damage done, spat into the tiny palm, then used the hem of her longtailed tunic to wash the blood away.

  He was cleaning the knife she had used. “It was necessary.”

  “And now you believe she’s yours?” Automatically she cradled the baby in such a way as to calm her, rocking her slightly. “Hush, hush, little one—all is well.” As the thin crying died out, Audrun unwadded the tunic from the baby’s fist. She blinked. “It’s not bleeding anymore. The cut is closed. There’s just a small scar.”

  He nodded. “She’s a child of Alisanos, as I am.”

  “She is not,” Audrun declared with vigor. “She is no such thing. This is Davyn’s child, not yours, and she’s Sancorran-born. She has nothing to do with Alisanos!”

  “We have commingled blood,” he said with a calmness she found distinctly annoying. “Hers passed into me, mine passed into her.” He displayed his right hand. “You see? I heal quickly, if the wound is not too severe. She will also, should she be injured. But neither of us is immortal. Not here. Alisanos rules here.”

  That startled her. “But you revived before, when the Hecari dart struck you. I saw it.”

  “In your world. Yes.”

  She shook her head, frowning. “But if you’re not Shoia … there’s no such thing as six deaths before the true death, then, is there?”

  “For a true Shoia, there is. But I’m not Shoia. In your world I can’t die.” He paused. “Well, other then temporarily. Here,” he shook his head. “Here, it’s different. Alisanos is deadly even to dioscuri.”

  Audrun felt an upsurge of desperation accompanied by an underlying nausea. Too much had happened, too much had changed, too much yet would change. Her husband and children were missing, save for the infant born too early in any world but this one, and she hadn’t the faintest idea where any of them were or where she should begin searching. Or even if they lived. Mired in exhaustion and worry, she could not wholly comprehend what Rhuan was telling her, though she knew it was important that she should. “When—” She paused as her voice broke, cleared her throat, and tried again. “When will it begin? The changing?”

  “It has begun,” he told her
gently.

  “Oh, Mother.” Audrun held the infant more tightly yet, closing her eyes against the sympathetic expression on the guide’s face.

  “But if it calms you to know, you will likely see nothing immediately. Alisanos seeks out the blood and bone, first. Lastly the flesh. It may take years, Audrun, for a complete change. By human reckoning.”

  She swallowed around a painful lump in her throat, fighting back tears of fear, of anger, of helplessness. “And are they gone? Those creatures that wanted the baby?”

  He grimaced. “For the moment. But I am neither my sire, nor a primary, for all my recent posturing, and they will remember that at some point. They will seek us again.”

  Anger, oh, yes, anger was in her heart. Anger and utter despair. The baby was safe again in her arms, a warm bundle wrapped in the remains of Rhuan’s leather tunic, but the karavan guide—the Alisani-born karavan guide!—had laid claim to her daughter. Yes, he explained it was for the child’s safety, and a part of her accepted that, but the balance of her mind and emotions rejected the idea outright. With Davyn absent, with Davyn missing, she could not bear to think of his daughter being claimed by another man. O Mother, let him be safe. Let us find him, let him see his child!

  Even as she cradled the baby against her chest, Rhuan stepped in behind her, undid the knot in his tunic sleeves, adjusted the length of the sling, and retied it at the back of her neck.

  She felt a mixture of gratitude, embarrassment, and annoyance because he performed the act of a husband. “You may take it back,” she said. “Your tunic. I can carry her.”

  He shrugged bare shoulders. “It’s easier with the sling.”

  Yes, it would be, but he was a stranger, and male. It stirred a question. She latched onto it, relieved to find a topic that did not emphasize their danger. “How do you know about such things?”

  His smile was fleeting. “Dioscuri help in the creche.”

  The words meant nothing. “What is that?”

  “Children are kept together from birth. They are raised by secondaries and neuters, not their parents. Part of a dioscuri’s duty, before puberty, is to assist in the creche.”

  She could not keep the skepticism from her tone. “And you said dioscuri are—children born to gods?”

  Dimples flashed as he grinned. “Is it so difficult to believe I’m the son of a god?”

  “Difficult?” The impulse was to laugh in desperate disbelief, but she curbed it even as she answered with pointed honesty. “More accurately impossible.”

  Unoffended, he nodded, irony twisting a corner of his mouth. “Yes, well, Brodhi has said the same. I will have to tell you about Alisanos and the lives of my people, but later. For now, we would do best to move on.” He placed a warm hand on her shoulder and turned her. “I suspect we’ll be followed anyway, but if we can make it to the Kiba, we should be safe.”

  Distracted, she allowed him to urge her into motion. “Where and what is that?”

  His tone was odd. “Well, I know where it was the last time I was here. It may be elsewhere, now. But we’ll go first to where it was when I departed Alisanos.”

  Audrun stopped dead, turning to face him. It took all of her strength to keep her voice level and nonconfrontational, to banish panic. “You will forgive me, I do hope, that I must ask you to be clearer. That I require more information, more explanation. I know only that somehow we have come to be in Alisanos, that my pregnancy was inexplicably escalated, and that I now have a newborn to tend four months before the proper time. I am not alone, you see. I have more than myself to deal with. And also, there is my family to find, my children, my husband.” She drew in a breath that shook; steadied it with effort. “I know you mean well, but I must ask questions. I must know things. I require answers.”

  The dimples were gone, as was the irony in his tone. He looked away from her a moment, glancing into the forest depths, then met her eyes again. “I will answer you as best I may. Always. I will keep you and the child as safe as I can. Always. But this is Alisanos. Very often, what once had answers may now have none.”

  Abruptly, she was tired. Strength had run out in the aftermath of childbirth, of fear, of terrible anxiety. Her mind felt slow, sluggish, distant. Even the weight of a newborn taxed her. She let the sling take more of the baby’s weight. “But you know this place. You said you were born here.”

  “I do, and I was. But Alisanos is … capricious. At present I don’t know where the borders are, where the heart of the wood—the Kiba—is. There are no maps of Alisanos, not even here.” He touched his head. “All that you have heard about Alisanos, all of those things that seem impossible and thus not to be believed, are true. I will do my best for you. But I have been in your world for four human years. Here time is reckoned differently.” His tone intensified. “Audrun, you must understand—Alisanos is chaos. Is maelstrom. There are no such things here as roads, tracks, or pathways. The wood is wild. Things change overnight… or even by the moment, as human time is reckoned.”

  “And this—Kiba?”

  “My people are there, much of the time. We may find safety among them.”

  Her tone was sharp. “‘May’?”

  “May,” he repeated, with simple emphasis. “I can give you no certainties, Audrun. Not here.”

  She found the correct term. “But you’re dioscuri.”

  “I have some advantages,” he said carefully, “in some circumstances, against some of the inhabitants.”

  Some, some, some. Tears formed unexpectedly. To Audrun, some was simply not enough. Angrily, she dashed the tears away. She looked at her fingertips, where moisture glinted. And recalled the words of the karavan diviner: blood, grief, loss.

  She looked up and found calm brown eyes watching her. “The son of a god,” she began, “should know many things.”

  “He does,” Rhuan said. “He just may not know the right things.”

  It made no sense. She opened her mouth to ask a question, but froze. In the near distance, slicing through the forest, came a high, shrill, ululating scream.

  “The baby,” Rhuan said, and before she could protest he had relieved her of sling and infant. “Go before me.” He turned her, pushed her into motion, even as he slipped the sling over his shoulders. “Run, Audrun. Run.”

  Chapter 3

  BRODHI WAS BROUGHT up short when he came upon the battered collection of surviving karavan wagons amid a storm-sundered grove. He looked upon the young woman kneeling before a small fire ring beside a huge elderling oak. He knew Bethid better than any of the assortment of humans he had met as a courier, but that did not necessarily explain her values to him, her thought processes, the motivations for her behavior. Now, as she worked, her thin face was strained, freedom of movement somewhat impeded by wet, sticky clothing. That she didn’t know he was present was obvious.

  Though his eyes were now clear of the red membrane, and his flesh freed of the blood engorgement that deepened its hue, Brodhi could not stem the tide of anger rushing back as Bethid petitioned the Mother of Moons. Nor could he control the trace of bitter desperation threading his words, though she wouldn’t recognize it. No one had heard that tone in his voice before, so none could interpret its meaning. “Your Mother of Moons has nothing to do with this, Bethid. It’s Alisanos you should concern yourself with.”

  She looked up sharply, clearly startled. “Brodhi!”

  She had built a sad little pyramid of carved wooden rune sticks within the modest rock ring atop a flat stone to keep it free of mud and puddled water. He recognized the instinct: as much a need to kindle flame against the memories of the terrible storm as anything else. Light. Heat. Warmth. But also a shield against fear, a method to restore familiarity with, and faith in, the world.

  Anger stirred anew, tinged with a brittle chill. “Nothing you do will make it the same. It’s gone, Beth.”

  She stared at him. “What’s gone?”

  “The world you knew.”

  It surprised him when she did
n’t protest, but merely nodded. “Yes. It won’t—it can’t—ever be the same. But we can rebuild.” A sweeping gesture encompassed the remains of the grove, the wagons, the detritus of what had been a settlement. “There’s enough here to make a beginning.”

  He took a step closer. Inside him, there was pain and a sense of futility. His eyes hazed red briefly; it took all his will to force the nictitating membrane back beneath his eyelids. “Do you even realize what has happened?” He flung out an arm. “Alisanos has moved, Bethid. It’s now but a half a mile away in that direction, not days away. Can you risk that? Any of you?”

  Her blue eyes, which had followed his arm, now flicked back to his face. “We have to.”

  Inexplicably, he wanted to cry. Too many emotions, too much frustration, filled his chest. His throat ached with the impulse, with the conflict in his soul. He was weak, he knew, to walk so close to the edge of a loss of self-control, particularly before a human. And that fanned his anger, refined it, aimed it at the woman who knelt before him. “You’re fools. All of you. You put blind trust in gods you don’t know, in rituals and prayers and petitions. You wear charms around your necks and hang them from tent poles and invoke the Mother’s mercy.” He spat aside. “You waste your time. And mine.”

  Bethid’s expression was startled for a moment, then closed. She bent her attention to striking steel against flint in an attempt to light the shredded cloth and rune sticks. “This has nothing to do with you, Brodhi.”

  His lips drew back from his teeth. “So long as I am in this world, it has everything to do with me!”

  She merely shook her head, not bothering to answer. She had raised a shield against him, was now dismissive of anything he said. And that further infuriated him.