“And it’s the wrong direction from the Bestowing.” The site for this sacred three-day quest lay to the west of Tiros—far from Descendant-occupied territories. Despite the Ilions’ best efforts—negotiations, bribes and escalating shows of force— Tiros remained a free village, as did Kalindos, Marek’s birthplace in the high mountain forest two weeks’ travel away.
How long this freedom would last, no one knew.
Another shout came from the tower. Rhia looked up to see Sani leaning over the rough wooden railing.
“It’s Lycas!”
Rhia yelped with joy and bounced on her toes. Her brother’s continued survival amazed her. As the leader of the guerrilla fighting forces, Lycas was the Ilions’ favorite target. She feared it was only a matter of time before they found a way to counteract his Wolverine savagery, wiliness and inhuman strength.
“Nilik will be glad,” Marek said in typical understated fashion.
Rhia smiled, imagining her son’s face when he came back from his Bestowing to see his uncle waiting. During Lycas’s sporadic visits to Tiros, he treated Nilik like his own son.
Small wonder. Rhia had named him in memory of their brother Nilo, Lycas’s twin who had died in the first battle against the Ilions nearly twenty years ago.
She rubbed her breastbone, as if she could feel the wound herself. No death before or since had carved such a gouge in her and Lycas.
Her brother waved one of his immense arms as he approached at an easy trot. His long black hair streamed in the wind despite the tie binding it at his nape. Even at a distance, his size and strength were intimidating. She didn’t envy the Descendants whose last living sight was Lycas’s face.
He slowed the horse to a cooling walk, and the cloud of dust around him diminished. Unable to wait any longer, Rhia ran to greet him.
Lycas dismounted, his posture showing no symptoms of a long ride or a long life. He gave a casual wave, as if he’d been gone eight hours instead of eight months.
“You made it!” Rhia hurtled into her brother’s arms, dwarfing herself in his enormous embrace. His dark bay mare snorted and danced at the end of the reins, startled by the sudden movement.
“Good, I’m not too late, then.” Lycas let go of Rhia and picked up the wide-brimmed hat that had toppled from her head. He tugged her auburn braid, then tossed it back over her shoulder, as if to confirm that it hadn’t been cut in mourning for anyone in her immediate family.
Marek stepped forward and embraced Lycas, thumping him on the back. Lycas returned the gesture—less heartily, of course, to avoid cracking his brother-in-law’s ribs.
“Nilik should be back tonight,” Marek said. “Big party, all of Tiros is coming.”
Lycas merely nodded and clucked to his horse to lead her into the village. Rhia studied his black-and-gray-stubbled face, which looked unusually drawn and somber.
She stopped in her tracks. “You have bad news.”
He took a deep breath, wrinkling his nose. No doubt his Wolverine sense of smell was assaulted by the stench of Tiros, of too many people and not enough latrines.
“Jula’s at home?” he asked.
“Yes.” Rhia’s voice filled with caution. “Why?”
“I’ll wait until we get there to tell you. I don’t want to have to repeat it twice.”
They passed the watchtower, collected the shovels and set off for the center of the village. A gust of wind blew up, and Rhia raised the cloth around her neck to cover her mouth and nose.
Dust danced in small tornados over the street, which was empty of life except for a few wandering dogs. Most Tirons were at the other end of the village, dragging tables, benches and lantern posts to the center of the westernmost intersection for Nilik’s feast.
Lycas jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “What are the red-and-yellow flags for?”
Marek held up the shovels. “Descendant grave markers. Six men last night, with pitch-soaked rags in bottles.”
“Fire starters.” Lycas hissed in a breath. “A place this dry, with the homes so close together, they could burn the whole village.”
“Vara’s working on that,” Rhia said. “She’s having the Tirons add brick and stone to the walls between the houses to slow the spread of fire.”
“Vara the Snake is here? Why?”
“She had to leave Asermos about seven months ago, just after you were here last.” She shook her head in disgust. “The new grandparent laws.”
The older she got, the more Rhia questioned the progression of her people’s magic powers. They moved from first to second phase of their Aspects by conceiving a child, which caused many painful social and personal complications.
Third-phase Aspects, bestowed when a person became a grandparent, included such formidable powers as shapeshifting, long-distance telepathy—and in Rhia’s case—resurrecting the dead. She was in no hurry to take on that ultimate burden.
Because the Ilions rejected the Spirits and created gods in their own image, they possessed no magic. To protect themselves, they required all third-phase Asermons to be registered. Last year, registration had turned to exile.
Lycas’s voice returned her mind to the present. “How did the soldiers get so close to the village?”
“The lookouts recognized the man with them,” Marek said, “someone from Asermos.”
“A spy.” Lycas let out a harsh breath. “Was he killed?”
“They shot him,” Rhia said. Some said it was in defense of the village, but others claimed it was in cold blood. Either way, his soul had drowned in regret.
“He might have had information we could use,” Lycas said.
They left the horse at a ramshackle stable where a gruff old man refused Lycas’s Ilion coins. Rhia had to barter her stall-mucking services in exchange for the boarding.
A short trudge later, they reached Rhia and Marek’s home. She opened the gate to a waist-high wooden fence, which led to a small yard. White and brown chickens scattered as they passed. Rhia nudged one aside before pushing open the front door.
Her daughter Jula sat at the table in the center of the main room, brown hair veiling her face as she bent over a piece of parchment. She looked up as Lycas ducked his head to enter the house.
“Uncle!” She popped out of her chair and ran in three strides to give him a leaping embrace. At sixteen, she was still tiny, like Rhia herself, and Lycas lifted her as if she weighed no more than a bird.
When he set her down, she grasped his hands. “Did Papa tell you my news?”
Marek grinned at her on his way to the stove. “Thought we’d let you surprise him.”
“I had my Bestowing!”
Lycas looked at Rhia, his eyes filled with sudden hope.
Jula grabbed his arm. “No, I’m not Raven, but we always knew that, since the prophecy said it would be a hard labor, and my birth was easy.”
Rhia grunted. “That was the last day you gave me no trouble.” As she moved to shut the door behind her, a brown chicken slipped through. A sharp bark shot from under the table, and the chicken scampered outside.
Jula turned back to Lycas. “So guess what I am? And no looking at the fetish hanging by the door.”
Lycas sighed, heightening Rhia’s fear. Usually he indulged his niece in all her teasing and tricks. Instead he pointed at the two parchment sheets on the table. “What’s that?”
“A project.” Jula hurried to tuck one sheet behind the other. “And maybe a short letter for Corek.”
Lycas’s face turned graver, which Rhia hadn’t thought possible. Had something happened to Corek? Growing up, Jula and Nilik had spent summers with the family of Rhia’s Crow-brother Damen, including his son Corek and stepdaughter Lania. The four children had been inseparable. Rhia and Marek and Damen had not-so-secretly speculated on the likelihood of a romance between Jula and Corek, and between Nilik and Lania.
Oblivious to Lycas’s dark mood, Jula picked up the parchment and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Father’s making me help him and G
alen with the code to fool the Descendants. They test it on me.”
“She acts like she hates it.” Marek squeezed her shoulder. “But she won’t let us forget that she writes better than we do.”
“Even though she’d rather talk.” Rhia turned to hang her black feather fetish on a nail by the door.
“Even though she’d rather talk,” Rhia heard her own voice say again.
She turned and glared at Jula. “Stop that.”
“Stop that,” her daughter said in a perfect imitation of Rhia’s voice. Jula covered an impish grin with her hand. “Sorry,” she said in her own voice.
Lycas shook his head in sympathy at Rhia. “A Mockingbird girl. Could a Crow mother be any more cursed?”
Rhia smiled. Though she and Jula bickered, like their feathered counterparts, she was lucky her children were alive and safe. She knew Lycas worried about his own daughter Sura, who remained in occupied Asermos, where her mother Mali led the resistance. His crusade against the Ilions had taken him away from his family when Sura was only two weeks old. He’d said it was more important for his daughter to grow up in a land of freedom than to have a father.
Now she had neither. It was too dangerous for the outlaw Lycas to show his face in Asermos. Rhia hoped her own children filled at least part of the void in his life.
He ruffled Jula’s hair. “Congratulations on your Bestowing.”
“Thank you!” She rolled up the parchment sheets. “Nilik will be so happy you’re here to see him become Raven.”
Rhia pulled out a chair for Lycas. “Sit. Drink. Talk.”
He obliged, sinking into the chair so heavily she feared it would break. She set a full mug of ale in front of him. He gulped the contents in one long swallow, let her refill it, then took a deep breath.
“Last month I set up a camp near Velekos so I could work with the resistance there, such as it is.”
“Good,” Marek said. “It’s been weeks since we’ve gotten a direct message from Velekos, since Damen told us magic had been outlawed there, like in Asermos.”
“The Ilions have been tightening their grip so slowly, most of the Velekons hardly even noticed.” He opened and closed his fist around the clay mug, in a gesture Rhia recognized as a wish for a Descendant neck. “Last week, they noticed.”
“What happened?” she asked, dreading the answer.
“There was an incident.” Lycas stared straight ahead at the steps leading to the upper floor. “Lania went for her Bestowing, in a remote area in the hills northwest of Velekos. A squadron of Ilion soldiers came upon her.”
Rhia’s stomach twisted. Beside her, Jula gave a soft gasp.
Lycas continued. “They said they were just having fun. Harassing her, calling her names. Then she became violent, delirious, babbling something about the power of a Wasp. They say she stabbed one in the thigh.”
Rhia winced. “So they arrested her?”
He made a bitter noise in his throat. “They beat her. They raped her.” His lips tightened. “They murdered her.”
“No…” With a low moan, Jula dropped into the chair across from Lycas. She put her face in her hands and started to cry.
Rhia opened her mouth, but even she, a Crow, couldn’t find the words to express her sorrow. If anything like that had happened to her own children…
Lycas spoke again. “They desecrated Lania’s body so that—” His voice lost its flatness, coming closer to breaking than she’d heard in years. “It took a week to find all of her, to give her a proper burial.”
Rhia’s legs trembled, and she sank into the chair beside Jula, who was sobbing now. She put her arms around her daughter. For once, Jula didn’t rebuff her, just clutched her like a frightened child.
“Lania was only sixteen,” Lycas whispered.
“Monsters,” Marek spat as he paced behind the table. “What happened to the soldiers?”
“Suspended without pay,” Lycas replied, “and jailed at the garrison until their trial. Spirits know when that’ll be. The military says it’s an isolated incident, a few bad boys run amuck.” He squeezed the mug again, then set it aside quickly as if to avoid crushing it. “Velekos has exploded. Riots, vandalism, mass arrests. By now there’s probably a curfew.”
A whimper came from under the table. Rhia looked down to see Hector, their nut-brown terrier, trying to climb into their laps. She boosted him up, wincing as his claws scratched her legs. Jula hugged the dog and sobbed into his shaggy coat.
“We hadn’t heard any of this,” Marek said.
“It happened last week.” Lycas looked each of them in the eye. “That’s why I’m here, not just for Nilik’s Bestowing. Velekos is ready to revolt, but they need help. Not just soldiers and archers. Messengers, healers for the wounded, builders to create secret passageways from home to home.” He looked at Marek and Jula. “Code-breakers.”
Rhia felt a cold dread slither through her veins. She couldn’t let Nilik go to Velekos, but she also couldn’t tell anyone why.
Marek looked out the window. “Something’s happening.” He opened the front door. Rhia heard distant shouting and the pounding of feet.
Someone called their names, and Rhia recognized the voice of one of their neighbors.
“Nilik’s coming!” the man shouted. Hector began to yap.
Jula dumped the dog off her lap and brushed the heels of her hands hard against her wet eyes. “When he hears about Lania—” Her voice choked.
“We’ll be there for him.” Rhia fetched the pitcher of water and poured her daughter a mug.
Jula slurped down the water, wincing as she swallowed. Then she slammed down the cup. “Let’s go. We want to be in the front of the crowd.”
They hurried down the dusty main road, Hector leading the way. Rhia’s heart pounded, and not just from exertion in the late summer heat. Her people needed Raven now more than ever, after what had happened to Lania.
When they finally reached the front of the throng, Nilik was little more than a moving spot on the horizon to Rhia’s eyes. She folded her arms and stood her ground. It would undermine Nilik’s dignity to have his mother rush forward and clamp him in a smothering embrace.
Her toes twitched with impatience inside her boots, and her mind ran through all the possibilities, every Spirit Nilik could have. He’d shown no particular talents growing up—or rather, he’d displayed a wide range of skills, proudly honing each to extreme competence, though not brilliance. He proved equally deadly with sword and dagger and had worked beside Bear and Wolverine warriors to repel more than one Descendant attack. He could hunt most prey with a bow and arrow, though not with a Wolf or Cougar’s preternatural skill and patience. He could read and write as nimbly as any Fox, Hawk or Mockingbird; Marek had seen to both children’s literacy at a young age.
Perhaps his wide-ranging but less-than-luminous skills meant that Raven would choose him. As the Spirit of Spirits, She was connected to them all.
Rhia could see Nilik now, and hear the whispers of speculation behind her:
“He’s walking so upright and proud. Must be a Bear.”
“But look at the swiftness of his gait. Could surprise everyone and be a Spider.”
Someone snickered. “The boy can’t draw a stick figure with the right number of legs, and you think he’ll be an artist? He looks quick and strong because he’s a Deer. That’s my wager.”
“You’re all fools,” a fourth voice whispered. “He’s got to be the Raven. Got to be. He’ll deliver us all.”
Rhia closed her eyes, wishing it weren’t too late to pray for such an event. She’d thought it audacious before, to ask the Spirit Above All Others to bestow Her Aspect upon Nilik—or anyone, for that matter.
“Please,” she whispered softly. “We need You. Accept my son as Your servant.”
She opened her eyes to see Nilik stride across the dusty plain. His posture gave no clue he’d just spent three days without food, water and sleep; that he had been visited by Spirits both benevolent and te
rrifying.
As he came closer, his pace slowed and he removed his hat, revealing a sunburned, sweat-streaked face. His light brown hair, which had never felt a mourning blade, hung down his back and blew in the evening breeze.
He scanned the faces of those in the front of the crowd, keeping his own visage inscrutable. When his gaze alighted on Lycas, he stopped short.
“Uncle!”
Nilik’s dignity and serenity shattered as he ran forward, past his parents, and embraced Lycas, who returned the hug with a misty look in his eyes.
Nilik drew back, gave Lycas’s wolverine claw fetish a long look, then clutched it in his fist. Rhia gasped. It was exceedingly rude to touch the fetish of an Animal one didn’t share, a show of disrespect for that person’s Spirit.
Which could only mean one thing…
Rhia’s heart thudded, then seemed to stop.
Nilik opened his hand and gazed at the claw. “I’ll be needing one of these now.”
A sigh of disappointment spread through the crowd. As increasingly loud murmurs carried the news backward through the throng, Rhia stood as if frozen.
No.
She wanted to throw herself at her son, beat her fists against his chest until he took it back, until he told the truth. That he was Raven. That he was Fox, or Horse, or Butterfly or Otter.
Anything but Wolverine. Anything but a warrior.
The crowd dispersed, making their way to the tables. Several well-muscled men lingered. Rhia recognized them as the close-knit band of Tiron Wolverines. They were no doubt waiting to “welcome” their new Spirit-brother with their usual ritual, which involved a thorough beating to demonstrate how much violence he could endure without pain or injury.
Nilik finally looked at Rhia and Marek. “I know you wanted me to be Raven. I’m sorry I let you down.”
Rhia stepped toward him. “Nilik, it’s not your fault.”
He looked at Jula, whose face was still red and puffy. “Were you crying?”
She covered her cheeks and squeaked out his name.
Nilik turned back to Rhia. “What’s going on?”
She took his hand. “It’s Lania.” A hundred times or more she had appeared on a neighbor’s doorstep with these terrible words, ready to counsel and console. Why was it so hard to speak them to her son? “She’s dead.”
The Reawakened Page 3