Home Ground (Darshian Tales #4)

by Ann Somerville

  “Hello,” he said, smiling. “I’m Wepizi.”

  “Jozin?” the older boy said uncertainly.

  “It’s all right—he’s a friend,” Jozin said.

  “What’s that thing?” the girl said, pointing.

  Wepizi realised she meant his moustache. He smiled and knelt. “Come and see.”

  She was the oldest, and darker-skinned that the others, indicating northern stock. She approached boldly, then put her hand on his moustache, which he made twitch by moving his lips. She giggled. “It looks like a dowkiqu.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose it does.”

  Jozin lifted his head. “Here comes Nuveize.”

  Wepizi looked up, and saw a woman walking towards them in a slightly hesitant manner. The youngest boy ran over to her and took her hand, and her progress became more confident. Wepizi stood up and dusted himself off as she came closer.

  “Welcome,” she said, in a low, pleasant voice exactly like her mental intonation. She was a handsome woman in her middle years, going a little gray, somewhat older than himself. “I’m Nuveize. Nice to meet you properly, Wepizi.”

  He bowed low. “The honour is mine.” He straightened up, but then with shock realised Nuveize was blind—she had the slightly unfocussed look of the truly unsighted. “I didn’t know....”

  “Of course you didn’t,” she said gently, then held out her hand to him. “Come inside—we have much to discuss.”

  Jozin put his hands on the other two children and led the way. Whatever Wepizi had been expecting, it wasn’t this.

  Their home was a large natural cave, or at least had started that way, for some of it was clearly hewn by human hands. It all looked weathered and settled as if it was very old, and there were inner doors which he suspected led to even more caverns. The one in which he entered bore the signs of long habitation, for surely it would have taken many years to have added all the refinements, the comforts, the touches like the hangings and decorations on the very walls themselves. The ornamentation was an odd mixture of styles—he recognised that of some of the northern tribes, but also some from the most southern. Much was completely unknown to him, as if it was unique to this very place, created without outside influence. Everything looked clean, if rather worn, as if it had all been well used and loved in its time. He found it impossible to place an age on any of it—there were no clues. It could have been hundreds of years old, or made in the last five.

  Though there were no windows, the air was fresh, so there had to be some kind of ventilation, though of what kind, he could only guess. The entrance and the cavern were illuminated by balls of fire such as Romi could produce at will—but no candles or lamps that he could see. The only natural light came through the entrance, and must mean the place was rather depressing if this was the only indoor space they had.

  Nuveize broke into his thoughts. “Actually, this is just one of a dozen caves, Wepizi. But now there are just the eight...seven of us...we just live in here.” “Please, sit.”

  It was warm and dry in the high-ceilinged cavern. They must somehow be using the same thermal vents that heated much of Dizeindo—this close to the volcano, he supposed that was reasonable. It was arranged not unlike the army sleeping quarters, with a central stove, an eating area around that, and sleeping pads pushed against the walls. At the far end were workbenches and tools, but since they were presumably independent here, there had to be storerooms and other work areas in the other caves. This was just the living area, he guessed.

  He was invited to sit. There were no proper chairs, just large pillows, and two large piles of furs onto which the three younger children jumped with a giggle.

  “I brought some umis nuts,” Wepizi said, hesitating a little, because it might be seen as him criticising their hospitality.

  But the children immediate ran over to him. “Please? May we?” the young girl said, staring at him eagerly.

  “Helinoa, remember your manners,” Nuveize said. “Make sure you share.”

  “I will,” she said, accepting the bag from Wepizi, and pouring a few nuts into her friend’s hands, and then the hands of the other boy, Jozin and finally Nuveize, who seemed to know exactly where Helinoa was, and put her hands out without any sign of hesitation.

  “How did you...?” Wepizi started to ask, wondering how she could have seen the child’s actions.

  “I see through other people’s eyes,” Nuveize said. “Takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s better than the alternative. Thank you for the food, it’s much appreciated.” The children settled down and cracked the nuts on the ground. Jozin was using his power to break his open—handy, that.

  “It’s nothing much. Would you like to introduce me?”

  “I’m Kilinze,” the youngest boy said, from his seat on the floor near Nuveize’s feet.

  “Yes, and he has no manners at all,” Nuveize said, shaking her head. “That’s Helinoa, and this young fellow is Giwade. Say hello to Wepizi, Giw.”

  “Hello,” he said in barely above a whisper. Wepizi reassessed his age—possibly no more than eleven. Helinoa seemed about the same or a little older—Kilinze had to be only seven or eight, though he was a lot more confident than his older friend.

  “Hello, Giwade, Helinoa, Kilinze. I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  “Are you a normal?” Helinoa asked, before popping a white piece of umis flesh into her mouth, and grinning at the taste. “Good,” she said, her mouth still full.

  “We don’t like normals,” Kilinze said in a perfectly ordinary tone of voice, picking out the contents of a shattered nut with agile fingers as he spoke. “Because they want to hurt us.”

  “Not all normals do,” Wepizi said, turning to Nuveize. “Maybe you should explain your situation, and then we can see what can be done.”

  “Jozin, please, make some tea while we talk—it’s only serka tea,” she said as Jozin rose to obey her. “We have to use what we can get.”

  “I understand. Actually—no, I don’t,” he corrected, smiling apologetically. “Perhaps you better just tell me everything.”

  With the youngsters happily eating their treats, Nuveize began her tale. It had started many generations ago during the occupation by the eastern warlords, she said. “The Blessed built refuges like this all over Andon, and made it their business to rescue any more of their kind who were born. Even after the warlords left, we kept taking the children because normals couldn’t cope with our powers.”

  Wepizi frowned. “I don’t understand—how can children be disappearing all over Andon, and not a word of it ever got reported? A single child dies or goes missing—the whole settlement knows.”

  “When the parents want the child gone, it’s easy,” she said, smiling thinly. Behind her, Jozin’s face was unreadable, but Wepizi could guess some of what he was thinking. “One or two of us, when we detect one of our kind, we observe, and if the child is under threat, we move in. Sometimes the parents just want their child saved, because they know they’ll be persecuted. Other times, they’re frightened. Sometimes, they are already hiding the child’s powers—easy with those of my Blessing, or that of the senses like Giwade—and those, we leave, though we tell them what to do if they need our help. Occasionally, the parents don’t want the child to be taken anyway, but because they want to exploit their talent—that’s very rare though.”

  “But how...?”

  “We leave suggestions in their minds—that the disappearance has been investigated, that it’s all explained, and we make them forget about the child’s powers, laying explanations in their minds so no one talks about it. If the parents cooperate, it’s very easy, and people are surprisingly simple to manipulate.” She must have seen his horror. “Please understand—it’s the only way for us to have survived all this time,” she said, sounding rather defensive. “The Darshianese have a different way of dealing with it—but in the south, their Gifted did exactly the same while the Prij were in control. And will again, should their population turn on t
hem. Every minor and major Gifted in that country knows what they have to do, if that happens. And so they do here.”

  “So if you thought I would use this information for ill—”

  “I would remove it from your head,” she said calmly. “But you won’t.”

  He was flattered by the trust, but the idea of how the Blessed had hidden themselves appalled him as much as the necessity for doing so. “Tell me why you are so few, and why you can no longer support yourselves?”

  Jozin handed him some tea in a rough earthen mug, and then sat down next to him on the same cushion. “Gemeli died a year ago, but we were doing fine until Yuzin died,” he said, as a flash of pain crossed Nuveize’s face. “None of us can hunt as well as he could, and since Gemeli was the only one who could really fish....”

  “Yuzin had Jozin’s Blessing, Gemeli had that of the senses,” Nuveize explained. “He loved to fish in the high lakes out on his own, though he sometimes took one of the children with him. If he’d had someone with him that day, maybe he’d be still alive.”

  “What happened?” Wepizi asked.

  All the children looked sad now. Gemeli’s death had clearly been a blow. “He drowned—we don’t know how, but we think he slipped and hit his head. He was very old, though, so he might have just fainted, or got dizzy. We found his body floating in the water.”

  “I found him,” Jozin said quietly.

  Wepizi put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “And...Yuzin?”

  Nuveize’s lips tightened. “Yuzin had a heart attack last autumn. I think...he overworked himself, trying to make up for Gemeli’s death. I don’t know, but now we’re all that’s left.”

  Her voice, laden with pain, conveyed the sorrow of her lover’s death that her spare words did not. Wepizi knew well what she would be feeling.

  “So...you still survive by hunting? Your talent makes killing prey easy, I suppose,” he said to Jozin.

  To his surprise, the boy looked horrified, shrugging off his hand. “I don’t kill with my power. None of us do. It’s forbidden.”

  “I’m sorry, I mean no offence—”

  Nuveize held her hand up. “We know you don’t, but you must understand—it’s an inviolable rule. We kill nothing, man nor beast, through our powers—ever. Yuzin only used his talent to chase prey, but never to kill. So I was raised, so we are all raised. Without that, then we would never be able to trust any other Blessed, or even hope to enter the world of your kind again.”

  “You hold to Sephiz’s will then.”

  “Some of us do,” she said with a thin smile. “But since we abide by that prohibition, and none of us hunt or fish as well as Gemeli or Yuzin, it’s been a lean time. We’ve still managed, more or less. We gather food—fruit, grain and herbs—and we used to sell hides to the settlements, even in Dizeindo—other things too, like gemstones, wooden implements, that kind of thing. I used to do a lot of woodcarving, but I haven’t been able to do that since my eyes failed completely. The children have tried to make up the lack, but it’s all happened too fast, and they’re so young.... And once I’m gone, Wepizi, no one will be able to protect them here anymore. People will find them, and I’m afraid of what that will mean.”

  She was their guardian in more ways than one. “You are the only one with your gift?”

  “Now. There used to be more. Everyone’s gone now. We weren’t a big group to begin with, but there was enough diversity of talent. But we can’t survive another winter. Don’t look at me like that, Jozin. You know we can’t,” she said as Jozin got a balky look on his face.

  “We could. We could have if Timinke hadn’t....” He glanced at the younger children, and Wepizi realised they didn’t know, or at least, didn’t fully understand.

  Nuveize shook her head ruefully. “You’re forgetting Laovei too. Jozin, it’s over. If Laovei had suffered that injury here, she’d be dead. We have no one who can look after any of us now, any who fall ill or are hurt. You’re the only one of us who can hunt at all, and if you got sick, or injured, or even died, we’d be trapped here, helpless. We’re too vulnerable now.”

  “But you said yourself, we could join up with another group, if we can find them.”

  She tilted her head and looked at him wryly. “And you assume you would be welcome and they would be people you would like. That’s not always the case.”

  “Just because Yuzin and Gemeli didn’t trust the others....”

  “Not just them,” she said. Wepizi got the impression this was an old argument, and one that Jozin put up more for form’s sake than anything else. “I can’t stop you if you want to go off, Jozin. But I’d have to look after the young ones, and I can’t do that on my own.”

  Wepizi interrupted. “Excuse me for asking—but you could, with your abilities, just...take...I mean no offence, but if you’re desperate?”

  The wry expression on Nuveize’s face became one of resignation. “Lately we’ve had to, though I hate it, and it goes against every principle I and Yuzin and Gemeli have tried to raise them all by. But we can’t keep doing that, and it’s not enough. Now we will just have the six of us able-bodied. With Timinke and Jozin, we were just about holding things together, but now Timinke’s gone, and there’s too small a margin for safety. I don’t want to wait until we are not coping at all. We deluded ourselves we were self-sufficient, and we’re not. Not any more.”

  “But...you’ve gone to so much trouble to isolate yourselves. Do you expect the normals, as you call us, to simply deliver food to you?” He supposed that might be possible, but he didn’t think Juimei, or any governor, would agree to that easily.

  “No.”

  She glanced down at Kilinze and Helinoa, still quietly cracking nuts, listening to their conversation, and since she was hardly looking for her own benefit....

  Wepizi understood. “It’s not just about survival, is it? It’s about living.”

  “Yes. When there were enough of us to be a family, a tribe, then the children were growing up with enough people around them to learn about life and each other. You can’t have a tribe made up of seven people, and we’re no longer in a state to offer homes to any more of our kind, even if we found them. You have to understand—we’re rare. Jozin here came from two hundred miles away—Iome from even further. You get clusters of the children at different times, different places, and then none are born for a generation or more. No one knows why. All I know is—I want my children to have a chance at a normal life. If we’d had been able to do that, Timinke might still be alive, and Laovei not a cripple. They wanted more than we could offer, they wanted to see something of the world. And look what happened.”

  She dipped her head, hiding her face behind a fall of greying hair, a mannerism so like Jozin’s, Wepizi felt it had to be one he picked up from her. “Tell me what you want.”

  She took a deep breath. “Do you think your town could offer us refuge? Or any town? Do you think the world of normals can cope with us now?”

  “I honestly don’t know, my dear. What alternative do you have?”

  Her blind eyes swept the room, looking at her charges, perhaps through Wepizi’s own sight. “Nothing honourable. Nothing that wouldn’t cause more problems. We’ve been isolated too long from the others, and...their ways are not ours. Will you help us, Wepizi?”

  “Will you come to Dizeindo? I can only offer the same shelter that we’re offering everyone else, for now. It’s not a good time to be asking for special favours.”

  “We don’t want special favours. We just want to live. I want my children to live. It was all Yuzin wanted. In his name, I must do this, because I can’t bear to lose another the way we lost Timinke.” She smiled, but a tear slipped down her face. “He was such a lovely boy. So high-spirited, but with the purest heart. He only wanted to cheer Laovei up a little.”

  “I told him not to,” Jozin said, lifting his head, his expression anguished.

  Wepizi put his hand on Jozin’s shoulder again to comfort, but the lad had to fi
nd his own path through his pain. Losing a friend, losing a brother, was not something anyone got over in a day.

  “Well, if we’re going to do this, then there are things you’ll need to do.”

  And Sephiz help them all if the prince took it into his head to make a difficulty over this.

  ~~~~~~~~

  Still shaking with anger and shock over Wepizi’s blatant disobedience, Juimei was in no mood to feign civility. He turned a cold eye on his page as Neime slunk back into the shop. “Why aren’t you doing your job? Oh, that’s right—you don’t answer to me anymore.”

  At least Neime had the grace to look vaguely ashamed of himself. “Jui, don’t be like that. I just wanted you to talk to Wepizi—”

  Juimei slapped the desk in annoyance. “I do not need you to manipulate my interactions with the military, Neime. I know you think I’m an incompetent dodderer, but I am the governor. Not you, not him. Do you have a problem with that fact?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” he snapped. “Then get back to the infirmary, and stop buggering about with that child. We have more than a hundred patients who need your help. You’re being idiotically self-indulgent and it has to stop.”

  No one listened to him anymore. Neime didn’t move. Juimei didn’t have the appetite or the energy to argue with him, and wondered if he should just commandeer a wagon heading northwest and go back to Visiqe. He was about as much use and influence here as a bridle made of snow.

  He read his notes again, or tried to. All he could see was Wepizi walking out of the door, despite the worst threat in Juimei’s armoury. And now he would have to follow up on that damn threat, or he and this office would be nothing but a laughing stock. Why did Wepizi have to do that? Whatever happened to talking over a decision, having time to think? Was it so wrong for him not to want to lose their most senior military officer on this mad expedition?