by Mary Mackey
Perhaps she had been coddled too long on the strength of her pilgrim's necklace, or perhaps she was just getting impatient with Shara so close at hand, but in any event she was feeling more irritable than usual. The paddle had seemed heavier in her hands this morning, the current stronger, the traders ruder, and the sun too hot to bear.
After she made Arang the broth, she went off by herself to sit in the shade and cultivate self-pity. She thought of the cool winds and fogs of Xori; she thought of her mother standing on the beach waving goodbye; she even thought of Bere and how sweet his kisses had been, which wasn't fair to Stavan, but then she was annoyed with Stavan and in no mood to be fair. Why she felt so irritated with him was something of a mystery. He hadn't done anything out of the ordinary; in fact, when she reviewed the morning, she had to admit he'd paddled the dugout a little harder to take up her slack. He just seemed so loud and full of energy. His voice hurt her ears, and when he'd jumped over the side of the boat to swim alongside, he'd kicked up so much water she'd had an urge to reach out and dunk him in retaliation.
Thinking about home made her feel like crying. She closed her eyes and tried to tell herself it was a beautiful day, the journey was almost over, and she was being unreasonable, but a vague throbbing in her temples distracted her. Sixteen curses! she thought, opening her eyes and glaring at the river. The sunlight on the water was molten; she squinted at it, wishing it would go away. The very sight of it hurt. Was she getting a headache too? Oh, wonderful. Oh, perfect. This was just what she needed. Everyone knew there was nothing harder to get rid of than a summer cold.
The day went from bad to worse. Arang whined and she alternated between snapping at Stavan and apologizing. Stavan was remarkably patient with both of them, and for once Marrah was glad the traders couldn't understand a word she said.
By the time they stopped to pitch camp, it was clear both she and Arang were sick. Stretching out on the ground, she refused dinner; Arang ate some stew but threw it up. Lying down beside Marrah, he put his head on her chest and began to whimper.
"I hate this trip. I hate you for making me come. I want to go home."
"Well, you can't go home and neither can I, so you'll just have to put up with it."
Stavan walked over to where they were lying and stood over them, looking concerned. "What's going on here?"
"I think we're fighting," Marrah said, "only I feel too rotten to keep up my half."
Stavan put his hand on Arang's forehead and then on hers. "You both feel feverish," he announced. At this, Arang began to cry. Picking him up in his arms, Stavan tried to soothe him, but he only cried harder.
"I think he's really sick," he told Marrah.
Marrah sat up. Her head was spinning, and the throbbing had turned into a drumming. It was dusk, but even the firelight hurt her eyes. She asked Stavan to bring her medicine bag. The strings were hard to untie, but she managed to locate a packet of rosemary. "Boil this in some water and give it to Arang," she said, and then she lay back down and closed her eyes.
A little while later, Stavan brought her and Arang cups of rosemary tea. Thanking him, Marrah drank hers, but Arang had to be persuaded, sip by sip. Later still, Marrah felt Stavan lift her up, carry her closer to the fire, put her down on a bed of soft moss, and cover her with her cloak, but by then she felt too sick to do anything more than mumble an apology for being so hard on him all day.
"Don't worry about it," he whispered, kissing her on the forehead as he tucked the cloak in around her. The fire crackled and flames leapt up, casting strange shadows. Marrah saw the four traders looking at her with concern. Why, they're not so bad after all, she thought. She wondered if rosemary tea had been the right thing to give Arang. If not, she had plenty of other herbs with her. In the morning, she'd ask Stavan to make a tea of — what? What was wrong with them? What sickness did they have?
Just a summer cold, her mind sang. Just a summer cold.
Cold. She felt cold in spite of the fire. Curling up, she wrapped her arms around her knees and fell asleep.
She remembered very little of the next four days. Sometimes she was conscious enough to realize she was very sick, but mostly she burned with fever. She remembered Stavan forcing her to take sips of broth and herbal teas, and once she woke to find him cutting off her hair.
"Stop," she begged as her curls fell to the ground, but even as she begged him to stop she knew he was doing the right thing because if she didn't get cooler somehow she was going to burn up. Later, when he picked her up, walked into the river with her, and held her in the cool current, she tried to fight him, but he was too strong and she was too weak.
"Let go of me!" she yelled. But it was the delirium talking, and when she came back to her senses and saw how gentle he was being with her, she put her head on his shoulder and cried.
Another time, she realized he was crying. It was the oddest sight, and she laughed at it.
"I think Arang's dying," he told her.
She wanted to cry too, but she couldn't stop laughing. "Beastman," she said, "I'm taking you to Shara so everyone can see how funny you look." It was a horrible thing to say, and the minute she uttered the words she was ashamed of herself, but Stavan only kissed her and held her closer.
"I know," he said. "I've known for a long time. And I don't care. Marrah, please get well. I love you."
"Bring me Arang," she begged. He brought Arang to her, putting him gently down beside her. Arang seemed to be asleep. Kissing him on the lips, Marrah cradled him in her arms. He couldn't be dead yet because he was still hot with fever. She took off the yellow stone the priestesses of Nar had given her and put it around his neck. As long as he wears this and I hold him, she thought, his soul won't be able to leave. Clutching him, she fell asleep.
Time passed: bad time, full of troubled dreams. In the middle of the night she woke to find Arang gone.
"Arang!" she cried. One of the traders bent over her. It was the mother. The moonlight shone on her gray hair, making it look like the white water that swirled against the rocks at Shemsheme.
"Hush," the old woman whispered. "Don't worry. The big man's taken the little boy down to the river again to cool him off." Marrah tried to protest, but the trader was gone before she could get the words in the right order.
The next afternoon her fever broke, and she woke drenched with sweat. Her skin was raw, and the palms of her hands burned as if she had plunged them into hot water. Uncovering herself, she looked at her arms and legs. They were covered with tiny red spots. She thought of chamomile and pennyroyal and then of the village of Sebol and of Nurga who couldn't speak. "Stavan!" she cried. He was beside her in an instant, holding a cup of cool water.
"Do I have...?" Her tongue was thick, and she couldn't remember what it was called, the disease that had made Nurga act so strangely. "How sick am I?"
Stavan dropped the cup to the ground. Putting his hand on her forehead, he felt the coolness. "Praise Han!" he cried. He took her in his arms and began to kiss her cheeks and forehead. "Praise the sweet little Goddess who guards you! You were very sick, but you're getting better."
She had one more question to ask him, but she wasn't sure she could bear the answer. She reached down and touched Earth, and her fingers trembled. "Is Arang alive?"
"Yes," Stavan said, "but he was very sick. I had to hold him in the river all last night. This morning his fever broke. He drank some broth and now he's resting."
"Bless you, Stavan! You saved both our lives."
"Don't say that," he begged, but she hardly heard him. She was too happy.
"I want to see Arang." She tried to get to her feet, but her legs gave out under her. Stavan caught her, picked her up, carried her over to Arang, and put her down beside him. She took Arang in her arms and curled around him again. When she woke, he was sitting up, calling for Stavan to bring him something to eat.
They both recovered rapidly, and in a few days they were back on the river again, floating down to the Sweetwater Sea as i
f they had never been on the edge of death. The only difference was that the traders and Stavan had to paddle a little harder when they hit crosscurrents since both Marrah and Arang were too weak to do much more than sit and watch the world flow by.
Although the fever was soon only a memory, it had an unexpected consequence. Before she got sick, Marrah had been sure the traders were the four rudest people on earth, but it turned out she had misjudged them. Not only had they stayed around to make sure she and Arang recovered, they weren't hostile at all, only painfully shy.
"We thought you were as important as the Goddess Herself," one of the younger women told Marrah in halting Old Language, "but now that we've seen you and your brother get sick like ordinary people, we aren't so afraid of you." Breaking into a large grin that revealed two missing front teeth, she gave Marrah a friendly slap on the back. "We're all glad you didn't die, girl, but your hair's a real mess. I've got a pretty blue-and-white scarf in my basket that I was taking down to the Sweetwater Sea to trade for shells. Maybe when we stop this evening I can do something to make you look less bald-headed."
Marrah took this for the kind remark it was clearly meant to be and thanked her. A few minutes later the trader and her sister broke into a loud river song, beating out the rhythms with their paddles, and after that there was hardly a moment when the four of them weren't either singing or joking with one another in their own language.
That night she was sitting beside the river wearing the blue-and-white scarf around her head and watching a pair of white egrets stalking tadpoles in the shallows when Stavan came up and sat down beside her. It was her favorite time of day, halfway between the evening meal and sunset, when colors were beginning to fade and the air was cool and sweet. He put his arm around her shoulder, and they watched the birds silently until the sun began to sink and the egrets were no more than white shadows against a glowing dusk. Finally he spoke.
"I've been thinking." He sounded somber and tired.
"Thinking about what?"
"About what's going to happen when we finally get to Shara." He took her hand. "Do you remember the things you said to me when you were so sick?"
"No, not really." She thought back to the days of high fever; she could remember Stavan's face bending over her, the shock of the cold river, the way she had held Arang to keep his soul from leaving his body, but mostly it was all a jumble of confused images and bad dreams surrounded by long blank spaces when she had hardly seemed to exist.
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. "You talked a lot."
"I did?"
"Some of it was just delirium, but a lot of it made sense. You really don't remember?"
"Not a word. What did I say?"
He waited so long before he spoke that she thought perhaps he wasn't going to tell her. "You kept talking about a prophecy that had been given to either you or your mother, I couldn't tell which. You kept asking me to take something called the Bread of Darkness out of your mouth so you wouldn't have to see what was coming, and then you'd cry and shudder and cling to me and beg me to take you back to Xori where the beastmen couldn't get you. At first I thought it was just the fever talking, but after a while the pieces began to fall into place. These beastmen you were so afraid of weren't just bad dreams; they were men on horseback, and you or your mother had been warned that they were coming to destroy Shara. Once I figured that out, I understood what we were doing." He pointed to the boats tied up and bobbing slowly in the current. "We're going to warn your people about mine, aren't we?"
She was upset that she'd given away so much. "I wasn't supposed to tell you!" She pulled her hand out of his. "I've broken a solemn vow." She felt terrible and yet, at the same time, relieved. So he knew. The truth was out, and she wasn't to blame. The fever had spoken for her.
There was an awkward silence. He cleared his throat. "If it's any comfort to you, I'd guessed most of it a long time ago. Of course I didn't know there'd actually been a prophecy, but I would have had to be a fool not to figure out you were carrying a warning of some kind. One day your mother is talking to me about the Sea of Grass, asking me how many warriors the Hansi have and how fast they can ride west. A few days later, she's sent the three of us off to Shara with orders to move as fast as we can. What could she have been doing but warning your people against mine? And why would she have wanted me to go with you except as proof?"
"You've known all these months?"
He nodded.
"And you never once mentioned it!"
"Why should I? At first — before we came to love each other — I found it amusing that you were carrying me off to the East to serve as a bad example. I thought, Well, I'll have plenty of food, a warm bed, and fast traveling as long as I stay with her and her brother, so why not let them take me east in style? I was planning to win my life back from you and leave at the first opportunity. And that's just the problem." He paused again. "I did win my life back."
There was something strange in his voice. She looked at him in surprise, trying to read what was in his eyes, but his face was only a white oval in the darkness. "I don't understand."
"I saved your life," he repeated.
"Yes," she agreed, "you did. And Arang's too. I'll never be able to thank you enough for that. The traders would never have thought of holding us in the river to cool our fevers. You're a born healer. If you hadn't — "
"You don't understand," he interrupted. "I saved your life. That means we're even. It means you're not my chief anymore. It means that according to the laws of the Hansi I don't owe you anything. If you had horses I could take them, and if you had cattle I could steal them. I have a new chief now — or, rather, an old one — my father. I owe him the loyalty I used to owe you. In fact, if I were a good son, I'd already be on my way back to the Sea of Grass to tell him how Achan died and to warn him about your people. No, it's worse than that: I wouldn't be on my way to warn him. Your people aren't ever going to attack mine. They don't have horses or spears or decent bows, and they'd make laughable warriors. No, I'd be on my way to tell him that there were rich pickings in the West: cities full of gold without so much as a wall to defend them, fat cattle, women, slaves — "
"Stop!" she leapt to her feet. "You can't mean this!"
He was beside her in an instant with his arms around her. "Marrah, I'm sorry; Marrah, listen. Of course I don't mean it. I'd never betray your people; I swear by all that's sacred that I'd die myself before I let any harm come to them. Forgive me; I'm tired and overwrought. I've been worrying for days about this. I didn't mean to upset you so much. I just wanted you to understand how my people would react if they heard how your people live. They wouldn't admire you for living peacefully with one another; they wouldn't care about your fine pottery or your temples. They'd only think — "
He stopped in mid-sentence and held her closer. "You're trembling. I'm still upsetting you. Come, sit back down and let me go more slowly. I'm sorry. Sometimes I have all the tact of a stampeding bull."
She was more than upset: she was furious, but she had known Stavan a long time and loved him too well to doubt him when he said he'd never betray her people, so she sat back down, swallowed all the bitter words on the tip of her tongue, and let him talk.
What he had to say turned out to be simple in the way unpleasant truths were often simple: he had decided there was no use taking a warning to Shara. He'd given it a lot of thought, he said, and it had become clear to him that her people would have no idea what to do when she appeared to tell them they were about to be attacked. Perhaps they'd believe her, since she was Sabalah's daughter, and perhaps they wouldn't, but in any event it wouldn't matter in the long run. The Hansi knew everything about war, and the Sharans knew nothing.
Was Shara as open and undefended as all the cities they'd seen along the River of Smoke? he asked, and she had to admit it was. Did the city contain a single man or woman who had been trained to kill? Did its people have scouts, weapons, enough supplies to withstand a long siege i
f the fields were burned and the wells poisoned? Were its people even capable of running away? Could they, for example, retreat to the hills and live off the land, coming down only at night in small bands to attack? They were farmers, weren't they? Farmers, craftspeople, fishermen? Some of them could hunt, yes, but they grew most of what they ate. What did they know about building a fire so the smoke couldn't be seen or smelled? What did they know about walking so they left no prints for dogs and trackers to follow?
"Nothing," Marrah was forced to say again and again. "You're right. They know nothing. They don't think that way. Just the idea of killing another person would horrify them." She wrung her hands and wept. "You're right; they can't all run west like my mother did. They'll be slaughtered."
"Slaughtered or captured," he agreed, "but it doesn't have to happen." He got to his feet again and began to pace. His words came quickly, tumbling over one another. "While you and Arang were sick, I couldn't sleep. I lay awake night after night worrying, and for once my worrying paid off. I have a plan to save your people, and I think it will work." Again he pointed to the boats that lay bobbing in the river. "Tomorrow or the next day we'll reach the Sweetwater Sea. You and Arang will turn south toward Shara, but I'll go north, back to the Sea of Grass, and find my tribe before winter sets in." She started to object, but he gestured for her to let him continue.