Deepwood: Karavans # 2

by Jennifer Roberson

  He opened his mouth to answer, but no words came. Only despair, denial, and desperation. Tears welled in his eyes. He said at last, in a broken voice, “What am I to do? What am I to do? They are my life.”

  It was the karavan-master, after a heavy silence, who answered. “Tomorrow,” he said, “tomorrow we will go to your wagon and bring back what is salvageable. Even the wagon, if we can.”

  Davyn, puzzled, looked at him. “That isn’t important. I don’t care about those things. All that matters is my family.”

  “It is important,” Jorda said, “and you will care about those things, as you should. Perhaps not now, perhaps not even tomorrow, but everything in that wagon speaks of those you loved.”

  Oh, but it hurt. He could barely speak. “My oxen are dead.”

  “Then we will take a team. All will be brought back.”

  “Before …” the diviner said, and he saw she was white and trembling with exhaustion. “Before you go, come to my wagon. I will read your hand.”

  From the tail of his eye he saw the courier and karavan-master exchange a concerned glance. But he knew, looking at the diviner, that she was not fit to try his hand tonight.

  He rose. He inclined his head. He marshaled his voice so it did not waver. “I thank you. I thank you all.” He began to turn, to walk back up the aisle to the tent flap. But the karavan-master asked him to wait a moment. Davyn turned.

  Jorda said, “There is bedding at my wagon. Take what you need.”

  Davyn had not considered that. Where and how he would sleep had not been part of his thoughts. Only his family, only the guide. He nodded his thanks and walked out of the tent.

  Chapter 23

  WHEN BRODHI SETTLED into the refectory with a sheet of clean parchment and fine lead, no one was present. He preferred it that way. But by the time he began transferring the rough sketch he had made to the fresh parchment, couriers began trickling in. At any given time many were on the roads throughout the province, while others returned to Cardatha with messages for city-folk or for the warlord himself. So long as there were no messages waiting to go out, riders were at their leisure. Prior to the war, few enough couriers had time to spend at the Guildhall, but since the Hecari had overrun Sancorra, the business of the Guildhall was under the warlord’s control. Couriers did not depart without the warlord’s permission, and those returning with messages were required to first go to the huge gher palace to report the news to the warlord in person. It was a complete abrogation of a courier’s traditional duties, but no one dared protest except in the confines of the Guildhall.

  The long slab of a table could host more than twenty couriers. Brodhi, at one end, had pulled a candle rack close to provide clear light as he drew in minute details. He was not a mapmaker, and those of the Mapmakers’ Guild would denigrate his work, but it was enough; he knew to provide his own Guild with the information necessary for the proper execution of duties and also enough for the mapmakers to begin what would come to dominate Sancorra: knowledge of where Alisanos now lay.

  The Guildhall kitchen with its huge hearth and spit abutted the refectory and nearly every courier stopped there to beg a bite or two from the cook or to gather up a new pitcher of ale and some mugs. In this instance, three couriers came back into the refectory with bread, ale, and four mugs. One, he supposed was for him; it was courtesy extended to every man present, though likely no one truly expected him to partake.

  He knew them: Corrid, Gathlyn, and Hallack. Corrid, eighteen, was the youngest of the three, sandyhaired, blue-eyed, with a spattering of freckles across his nose, and a body not yet at ease with its height and length of limbs. Gathlyn was dark of eye, of hair, swarthy-featured, of medium height, past forty. Hallack was brown-haired, with hazel eyes, in his midthirties, the tallest. All were garbed in undyed woven tunics and trews, with leather riding gaiters cross-gartered over their boots and lower legs. None wore scroll cases looped over their shoulders, which meant they had completed their current duties, and they had clearly left cases, badges, and cloaks in the sleeping chamber.

  Ale was poured. As Brodhi carefully made note on his map of how Alisanos cut across the old road, Corrid, foaming mug in hand, wandered up from the other end of the table. He stood at Brodhi’s left shoulder, studying the in-progress map. Without asking permission, he placed a grimy fingertip on the parchment. “What’s this? I don’t recognize this route. Where is it?”

  Brodhi picked up the importunate finger and pushed the hand aside. “East of where the Cardatha road joins up with the northwestern route.”

  “No!” Corrid’s voice contained a note of startled disbelief. “It doesn’t look anything like that, Brodhi. What are you trying to do, confuse us all?”

  Gathlyn and Hallack also came down to look. They agreed with Corrid: Brodhi had misdrawn the routes.

  Brodhi, continuing to work steadily with a careful hand, didn’t bother to respond.

  Hallack pointed. “What’s this? Where is this, Brodhi?”

  “You’ve chosen to disbelieve me; why should I answer?”

  Gathlyn made a rude sound. “Don’t ask Brodhi anything, friends, he’ll give you naught for it.”

  “Look here.” Corrid indicated the tiny trees Brodhi had sketched. “This isn’t right. Not if it’s supposed to represent the southern route to Ixtapa.”

  “It does represent the southern route to Ixtapa,” Brodi said. “What it also represents is that the topography of the entire southwest region has changed. No map is accurate now.” He glanced up at Gathlyn and Hallack. “What in this world might prove so powerful as to change the lay of the land?”

  “Nothing!” Corrid declared before the older men could speak. “Brodhi, is this a jest?”

  But Gathlyn didn’t laugh. Gathlyn was old enough to remember. He understood at once. He released a long, low whistle of startled comprehension. “This much, Brodhi?”

  “This is but a small section,” Brodhi replied. “We’ve had no time to scout all the changes. But here, you’ll see, the deepwood encroaches. I rode north a fair piece, then northeast, to join up with the Cardatha road.”

  Corrid asked, “What are you talking about?”

  Hallack shot the youngest a hard glance. “No schooling, is it? You know naught of Alisanos?”

  Gathlyn shook his head, still studying the map. He indicated a notation. “Where is this, Brodhi?”

  “That is a settlement. Or was. The Hecari paid a visit. Far fewer are there now, unless you count the bodies.”

  “Blessed Mother,” Hallack murmured. “Decimation.”

  Gathlyn swore, crying down multiple curses upon the Hecari. He walked three paces away in tight-coiled tension, then swung back. “What else?”

  Brodhi went on. “It’s near the crossroads of the northern route to Korith, the southern to Ixtapa, and the Cardatha road. This is a river, as you see; it’s a natural gathering place. Unfortunately, this—” Brodhi indicated an area with his lead, “—is Alisanos, now but a half-mile away.”

  “What’s Alisanos?” Corrid asked, young face baffled.

  Hallack and Gathlyn, annoyed, each grabbed a shoulder and shoved him down onto the bench. “Did your parents teach you naught about the deepwood?” Gathlyn asked.

  And Hallack, in contempt, “It’s a young fool, isn’t it?”

  Corrid looked from one to the other. Then he looked at Brodhi. “What is it?”

  “Let him up,” Brodhi said, and waited until the older men allowed Corrid to stand. He crooked a finger, beckoning the boy closer. “Time you learned,” he said, “what all of us under the warlord’s fist should know.”

  FOR MORE DAYS than he could count, Gillan knew pain intimately. He was ashamed of his weakness, ashamed of tears, of begging for something to stop the pain, of begging for his parents to find him. Lost to fever much of the time, he was distantly aware of Darmuth tending his ruined leg, but that only brought renewed pain and Gillan told him time and time again to stop. But Darmuth, possibly because he was
a demon and took joy in this, refused. The pain continued. Each day the demon peeled burned skin away; it crossed Gillan’s fevered mind to wonder if Darmuth ate the ruined flesh. Each day the demon applied to his leg an oil that stank, then slathered on pulp taken from a plant Gillan didn’t know, and each day Darmuth wrapped the leg in several huge, flat leaves, binding them on by winding from knee to ankle a thin length of fabric taken from the hem of his tunic. Gillan spent more time unconscious than awake, for which he was grateful, but with that came confusion as to how much time had elapsed since the storm that brought him into the heart of Alisanos.

  He asked Darmuth if he would be trapped in Alisanos forever. He asked that question again and again. No answer was ever given. The demon only smiled. And so eventually Gillan stopped asking. He accepted that Alisanos was his future as well as his present. That comprehension brought grief, anger, a terrible despair. He was lame, he was alone. To all things, he was lost.

  But somehow, somehow, he would find a way to survive.

  AUDRUN AWAKENED VERY stiff. She had spent much of the night jerking awake, waiting to return to sleep, only to be again disturbed by dreams she could not recall come morning. With Rhuan clearly recovering, she didn’t seek to share body heat with him—to do so would have made her too uncomfortable. So she slept cold as well, arms and legs knotted upon themselves in a search for warmth of any kind. By the time the double suns rose, she felt more tired than when she had gone to sleep the night before.

  Rhuan said little this morning. Waking was a slow process because of his wounds, and he arose carefully, grunting with exertion. But there was no question that he had improved since the day before. He had indeed taken her suggestion with regard to his leggings, and used fringe cut from the seams to close the flaps of leather from knee to ankle. His hair, free of braids, hung to his waist, still slightly crimped. He did use a length of fringe to tie it back into a single tail, but otherwise made no attempt to deal with it. Looking at it brought home to Audrun the memory of Rhuan’s words regarding their “marriage.” It prompted the same kind of desperate denial she’d employed the day before, as much in her mind as on her tongue.

  With no water for washing, she knew herself to be the mess Rhuan had mentioned, her face marred by welts, scratches, and sap, debris in her hair. Audrun collected several of the cloth strips used as route markers for a trail that no longer existed to tie back her hair, but as Rhuan made no comment about leaving immediately, she began to separate snarls of hair, to free them of tangles. She gritted her teeth as some strands fore, combing and recombing her hair with spread fingers, trying to free small sections from larger tangles.

  As she worked, Rhuan tended to personal matters, then walked into the burned dreya ring. Audrun recalled he had mentioned wishing to give them some sort of farewell rite. She wasn’t certain if she should also go into the ring, or stay without. She was all at sea in Alisanos, now that Rhuan was recovered enough to make decisions. For days she had clung to the drive to care for Sarith, to find water, to bandage Rhuan’s wounds, to forage for food. The immediacy of those tasks was lifted from her now; there was time for her to question her actions, to wonder what would become of her.

  To wonder what would become—what had become—of her children and her husband.

  Rhuan walked from tree to tree. At each charred trunk he paused, pressed both palms and forehead against the blackened wood. Whether he spoke, she could not determine. But the posture she understood: grief, sorrow, guilt. The latter stilled her fingers. It filled her up abruptly with identical emotion.

  The dreya died for my child.

  Tears welled, stinging. She looked at the ring of twelve charred trees, black amid the green; at the hole in the canopy where leaves and branches once thrived.

  Audrun rose, ignoring the protests of her stiff body. She crossed to the ring. This had nothing to do with Rhuan, with what he said in the privacy of his mind, in the movement of his lips with no voice evident. Audrun, too, walked to each trunk, one by one by one, but on the exterior of the ring. At each, she pressed one palm against burned trunks. Inside her mind she thanked the dreya for their kindness, for their protection, and wished them, in Sarith’s name, peace in the arms of the Mother, and peace in the presence of whatever deity they claimed.

  When she finished, she looked up and found Rhuan standing near. He nodded slightly. “That was well done.”

  For reasons she could not comprehend, those few words, spoken in his quiet voice, made the tears run faster.

  “Audrun.” Self-conscious, she dashed the tears away. “Audrun, you have given them honor. There is no cause for tears.”

  She looked up into his face, her throat nearly closed by grief. “I have lost much,” she said unevenly, “more than any wife and mother should, but they—they lost their lives. For a human child, they died.”

  “I know this is difficult to understand,” he said, “but Sarith was theirs, too. She is of two worlds, Audrun—the human one and this one.”

  “And lost to both.” She swallowed painfully. “I think it would be easier to bear had she been stillborn than to lose her … to lose her that way.”

  Brown eyes were warm. “But there is still hope. A human child has great value in Alisanos. I doubt very much she will be killed, Audrun. So long as she lives, there is a chance she’ll be found.”

  “And at this gathering place, this Kiba, what exactly will happen?”

  “I can’t tell you exactly what will happen there. But you and I will ask to address the primaries—”

  She couldn’t help the irony in her tone as she interrupted him. “All thousand of them?”

  “As many as care to come. Most will, I think; perhaps all.” His smile was crooked. “This is a unique situation.”

  “And what is the likelihood of these one thousand gods deciding to help me?”

  He shrugged. “That, I can’t say. I wish I could, to ease your pain. But nothing like this has ever been brought before them.”

  Audrun frowned. “But you’ve said hundreds of other humans have been taken by the deepwood, including your mother. Hasn’t anyone else ever gone to the Kiba and asked for help?”

  He sighed, then stepped close. He closed his hands around her upper arms and steered her to a downed tree. “Audrun, sit. Be comfortable.” He guided her down onto the huge log, then sat on the ground next to her with his back against the log. “It’s far more complex than you think. First, those who are taken by Alisanos often don’t survive the first night, let alone long enough to reach the Kiba. Should they survive, they would then have to know the Kiba exists.”

  “And lacking that knowledge of the Kiba’s existence, no human would think to search for it.” She nodded. “And humans also have no knowledge of the existence of your thousand gods, so they’d never think to ask them for aid.”

  “No, humans ask their own gods for aid. But this is not the dominion of those gods.”

  She thought back to all the prayers she had made to the Mother of Moons since arriving in Alisanos. Words. Nothing more. Nothing that might be answered. It set an ache in her heart. It stole hope from her. She turned her head away, not wishing him to see the conflict in her face.

  “I mean no offense by this, Audrun, but humans are innocent, and ignorant. In the confines of Alisanos, humans are children. Infants, as Sarith is. And those who survive any length of time become something other than human … there’s little likelihood such people ever remember what they were, what they have lost, or know what they have become, which is a mercy. Even if they knew the Kiba existed, they might not survive to reach it. Or along the way they may forget why they wanted to reach it in the first place.”

  She turned her head back and looked into his face, into his eyes, and saw a measure of sympathy she did not expect. She realized she had not asked the one question that most needed an answer. “If Alisanos has been taking humans for so long, then surely your people, your gods, have seen them in the deepwood, lost and alone.”

/>   “Yes.”

  “And they do not help these folk? They do not take them to the Kiba for aid? Why is this, here and now, a ‘unique situation’?”

  He drew a breath, then released it. “One thousand of my people are gods, as I’ve said. Primaries. But Alisanos is—Alisanos. It is the wellspring. It is wild magic in its purest, most concentrated form—powerful, overwhelming, utterly unchecked. To humans, it is poison. This is why humans are changed when they come here. Their bodies and souls can’t withstand the poison; either they die, or they are slowly transformed to something that can survive, but they are no longer human.” He held out a hand, turning it palm up, palm down, as if making an example of his flesh. “But my people are vastly different. We are of the wild magic, born into its substance just as demons and dreya are. It wraps our bones, leaps in our blood, provides certain abilities. Those of my people who are particularly gifted, the primaries, can manipulate the magic, but Alisanos itself cannot be controlled. No more than humans can control their world. Humans live in their world, they are born to it, and some aspects of it they can affect, but they truly control nothing.” His lips quirked a moment. “You may build a shelter against the rain, but you can’t control the storm.”

  “But we’re not gods, Rhuan! You say your people are. How can they be gods if they have no control over Alisanos?”

  He opened his mouth to answer, but an entirely different voice broke into the conversation. “We’re gods, little human, because we say we are.”