The Wild Road

by Jennifer Roberson

  Rhuan teetered on the brink of explanation. He liked, admired, and respected Audrun; her loss was indeed devastating to the man who loved her. Because he knew Audrun, he understood how much this loss hurt; understood better than Davyn believed he did. He owed the man, he felt, for Audrun’s sake, for the sake of the children lost to Alisanos; owed the absolute truth and clear, unequivocal answers to all of the farmsteader’s questions. This man was a caring, responsible father who dearly loved his wife. He was indeed devastated. Anyone possessed of compassion would wish to help this man.

  Compassionless Brodhi could withhold all information, Rhuan reflected, as the rules of the journey required, but now, here, he himself could not. Not when he looked into Davyn’s eyes and saw the naked pain, the agony of not knowing. And that pain kindled a share of its own in him. Empathy, he recognized; a purely human emotion.

  What would I do, had I lost so much? Had I lost what I most loved?

  And he realized that he could be empathic because he had lost what he most loved. When he saw Ilona, dead.

  It was time to offer whatever words, whatever explanation he could to assuage a fraction of the man’s pain. He would no longer keep secrets from him even if it was forbidden to tell him of Rhuan’s heritage, the dictates of the journey. After all, Darmuth wasn’t present to hear him. Too much divulged, Darmuth would say; and the demon would then be required to tell the primaries what Alario’s get had done.

  Could he lie to Darmuth? Could he lie during a Hearing? To do so abbrogated everything about the journey. And it put Darmuth in danger.

  Rhuan looked at the doll with its stitched-on face, button eyes, hair of yellow yarn, then met the farmsteader’s gaze. There was no question in his heart but that he had to ease this man’s pain. Despite the risk to himself, he was wholly comfortable with his decision. “They were together when I left them. Where they are, no harm will come to them.”

  Davyn’s face was taut. Jaws flexed as he gritted his teeth. “Tell me why you left them there. How you could come out, but they could not. Are you immune to this wild magic?”

  “No,” Rhuan answered. “No such escape exists. In Alisanos, I can die.”

  “Then how is it you’re untouched by this transformation?”

  And now the crux. “My mother,” Rhuan said in a carefully calibrated tone, “was human.”

  Davyn blinked, momentarily diverted by an apparent non sequitur. “Your mother?”

  “My sire—my father—was not. Is not. It is the absolute truth that I was taken by Alisanos even as Audrun was; I can avoid its caprice no more than anyone. But because of my father’s blood, I have more resources.”

  “Sweet Mother, you’re talking in riddles! What do you mean, ‘resources’? Why does your father’s blood mean anything? And if he’s not human, what is he?”

  “A god,” Rhuan said dryly.

  “A what?”

  Rhuan drew in a deep breath, then blew it out in a noisy gust. “What I am about to tell you will sound fantastical—well, I suppose it is fantastical. But it is not fantasy. There is a difference.”

  Davyn scowled. “Speak directly; I have neither time nor patience for dramatic elaboration.”

  Rhuan continued at his own pace, in his own way. “Of course it is all so fantastical that not a soul would believe you—and if anyone asked, I would say you were lying. But no one would believe you anyway. So—”

  “Rhuan!”

  “—so why bother to tell them?” He let his skin color deepen faintly, his eyes glint red; summoned a subtle trace of the presence all primaries commanded. “Why bother to tell them?”

  Davyn understood. He eyes flickered and he pressed his lips together, then said clearly, “Nor have I time to tell fantastical tales.”

  And so Rhuan explained. He told Davyn what he could of—everything. More than he had told to any human, save Ilona. It required a good while, even abbreviated to the mere facts, facts without personal observations, without nuances in his tone.

  When he finished, his voice roughened from so many words, Davyn sat there with his mouth partly open and the thoughts behind his eyes working frantically. Rhuan suspected the farmsteader had so many questions that he could settle on none of them. Some, anticipated, had been answered, but in turn led to other questions, other explanations.

  “She is a strong, confident, self-sufficient woman,” Rhuan said, “as well as an exemplary mother. Alisanos may not distinguish among those it has taken and those who were born there, but I do. And, regardless of what they say, the primaries do as well. She is someone to contend with, Davyn. Neither weak nor lacking in courage. She will withstand them all.”

  Davyn dropped the doll to his lap. He bent forward, dug elbows into his knees, covered his eyes. Rigid fingers encroached into his hairline. The fair hair he had bequeathed to all his children was stiffened from dried perspiration and pressed back against his head.

  Regret was an unexpected knife in Rhuan’s abdomen. He realized that no matter how well meant, regardless of how carefully he framed them, his words hurt Davyn to his very soul. It was true that Rhuan himself had no wife, no children; but he was human enough—yes, human enough—to take into his heart the farmsteader’s grief and to know that empathy was also a gift he might offer.

  What would I do in this man’s place? But he knew no answer. He could not anticipate how he would react, what he would feel. To the primaries, he was as yet a child, an adolescent. Perhaps they were correct. A child could not completely understand as an adult might.

  Or perhaps only a dioscuri who took upon himself the expectations of his people, who celebrated all of the arrogant assumptions of his race, could understand the world as an adult. Perhaps that was the explanation for Brodhi’s attitude, his unspoken certainty of supremacy, of ascension. Brodhi simply knew one day he would kill his sire. His confidence was unwavering. Rhuan knew he himself wanted no part of the ritual—and that certainty had nothing to do with fear Alario would kill him. Nothing existed in him to kindle potent instinct into pure challenge, into the overwhelming need to kill his sire. No part of him felt the slightest urge to ascend.

  He wondered if, in human terms, that made him a coward.

  Davyn straightened, hastily wiping tears from his eyes with the back of a hand. His voice was raw. “She is everything you described. So strong. But she will be transformed regardless, yes?”

  Rhuan banished personal musings and returned to the only topic that mattered to the farmsteader. “She less than others. Of that I advise you to be certain.” He recalled Audrun’s exhaustion, and the mental strength required to continue on and withstand the primaries, even as her body, all human, began to flag. The woman had experienced accelerated labor, had given birth prematurely, yet still faced down the primaries.

  Davyn’s voice lost its edge. “She was fifteen when we married. But she has always been strong, and confident, and self-sufficient.” He met Rhuan’s eyes. “The children . . . you say they are more vulnerable to the wild magic.”

  It was not a question, and in any case, Rhuan had already answered it. But he recognized the ongoing process of Davyn’s mind. It would require time to truly grasp the magnitude of what he had been told. “They are more vulnerable. Anyone new to life is so.”

  “Then the newborn is lost . . . Sarith. She’s lost.”

  Rhuan refused to lie for the sake of calming fears. Davyn deserved the truth. “She may be.”

  “And yet—a road?”

  “A road that will, upon completion, take you to your family and on to Atalanda. Your family may not come to you—and I have told you why—but you may go to them.”

  “And will I, too, be changed?”

  Rhuan shook his head. “Not upon the road.”

  NOW AND AGAIN, a stream ran before the tiny dwelling. Now and again, a river. Occasionally no water ran at
all, merely a webwork of trees all woven together, canopy to canopy, branches so tightly tangled there was no parting tree from tree. Roots broke free of the soil and encroached upon one another, braiding themselves together into a massive woody lattice against the ground. Blackened lichen furred boughs and rocks. Fern, bracken, grass, and fallen broken leaves layered footing beneath the trees. But footing was not necessary when one had wings.

  It was little more than a hut, knit together from layers of cut sod, crooked courses of wracked branches, and upright, twisted timbers; from streambank mud, sinews from beasts, succulent vines wrapped around all and dried into snug ropes. Grass and bracken grew from the outer skin of the hut until it was clothed in vegetation, indistinguishable from the forest. Behind it, forming the back wall, was a massive outcropping of stone, black and gray and roan, veined with glinting chunks of brittle, cloudy crystal. It loomed over the roof of the low hut. Here all was damp beneath the trees, dryness denied because the double suns of Alisanos were made nearly invisible by the thickness of the canopy overhead. This dampness had never troubled the demon, whose wings lifted it above the trees into the brilliant warmth of the suns.

  But now it had a child.

  Now it had a daughter.

  This day, a stream ran before the hut. Sweet water was plentiful. The demon landed gently on the ground, folded its wings, cradled the infant against its chest. It cast a glance at the tight-woven canopy overhead, air-scented briefly, then ducked beneath the low lintel and entered the hut.

  The interior appeared larger than the exterior. Coals glowed in the fireplace against the rock wall across the back, where hearth and chimney had been built of stone ruddy and gray, piled one atop another and mortared into place. Holding the child one-armed, the demon bent and tossed tinder into coals, letting a foreshortened sweep of barely spread wings serve as bellows to raise flame. Twigs, sticks, limbs, all added as the fire grew. The demon would make the hut warm for the child.

  Fragile human child.

  Wings again were folded away. The black, open hide jacket hung askew, so the child, wrapped in dirty cloth torn from a woman’s skirt, was pressed against demon flesh. Cold demon flesh, white as ice, except for a bloom of darkness rising from beneath hide waistband to breastbone, shining scales the color of bruised human flesh.

  Now, the child began to fuss. Swaddled in cloth, it squirmed restlessly as if it would escape. The head was bared. Pale, white-blond hair, mere fuzz against the skull. Rosy silken skin, until the child began to cry, and then the face reddened. Cries rent the air.

  Hungry, it thought. The child was hungry.

  The demon cast a wild glance around the hut. There was no food. It hunted when hungry. But the child, so young, could not do so. It was the demon’s task to feed the infant.

  It sat down upon hard-packed earth, close to the fire. It bent its head down over the child, and long black hair, shining in the firelight, fell down upon the infant, who startled from the touch. Crying now was fear, not mere hunger.

  “Tha tha,” the demon said. A clawed hand moved the sheet of hair aside, closed gently over the fuzzy skull. “Tha tha.”

  No. Not tha.

  “There,” the demon said. “There, there.”

  Poor hungry child. Poor hungry human.

  The demon closed its pale, slit-pupiled eyes. For long moments it sat there cradling the child, legs folded crosswise, fire warming the hut, wings folded against black hide. And then as the child continued to cry, the demon pressed a single claw against its own chest just below the black nipple, and drew a line.

  Blood welled. Spilled.

  “No.” That much, it remembered. Milk, not blood. “No.”

  The demon tipped back its head. Its mouth fell open. A single convulsion passed through its body.

  Beneath the blood, a breast began to grow. The infant knew. The infant nuzzled until the nipple was found. White milk flowed.

  And as the child suckled, the demon remembered when it had been human.

  When it had been a woman.

  Before Alisanos.

  “There, there,” it said.

  Chapter 6

  IT WAS, AUDRUN decided, beautiful in a way she’d never encountered. Beneath the towering, hollowed cliffs grew trees both sparse and spindly, robust and elegant, forming close-grown stands and copses and the occasional solitary spears. Significant time had been lavished on the grounds of the Kiba. Pebbles, rocks, and soil were mostly russett-colored. Carefully hewn sections of stone paved looping pathways, mortared together into patterns with an equally ruddy substance. Everywhere she looked, she was surrounded by the color, as if the Mother’s palette had been limited. And yet the trees and shrubbery were rich green jewels against a backdrop, while flowering plants cascaded from raised gardens. All of the bare ground she could see had been raked, creating thin, shallow striations; and the rocks pulled out by the raking had been arranged alongside the paved pathways as intricate mosaic borders. The tidiness of the Kiba was amazing. Even the shrubbery and trees were neatened by careful pruning.

  It was bright. Too bright. Here the double suns were not blocked by thick, massive forest canopy. She and her children, following a pathway beneath the looming cliffs and dwellings, were fully exposed. Squinting, Audrun felt the heat beating on her scalp and knew if something were not done to curb the sunlight, her fair-skinned, pale-haired children would soon burn badly. Having experienced that herself, Audrun wished to spare them the pain and the peeling.

  “Here.” She stepped off the paved pathway near a clump of bushes and a singleton tree. Depending from the tree’s drooping branches were wide, pleated fronds. She recognized the tree and its fronds as one she had seen frequently while following Rhuan through the thicker forest. “Take Meggie, Gillan.” She set her youngest daughter down, relieved to be free of the weight. Then she stripped frond after frond from the tree and handed them out. “Use these to block the sun. Suns.” The plural was difficult to remember. “We’ll have to take time later to make ourselves hats. For now, these will work.” She handed Gillan a second frond. “Will you see to Meggie? She’s so young; her skin is more vulnerable.” She fixed Torvic with a minatory eye. “You as well, young sir.”

  Ellica stood clasping her small sapling in one arm while the frond dangled loosely from her right hand. The expression on her face was of startled grief. “How could you hurt it so?”

  Audrun, assisting Torvic to adjust his frond, glanced at her. “Hurt what?”

  “The tree!”

  “The tree?” In disbelief, Audrun looked at the tree from which she had liberated six fronds. Then she turned back to her eldest daughter even as she plopped a frond across her own head. “Ellica, don’t be ridiculous—”

  “I am ridiculous because I know that it hurt the tree? Imagine having your fingers torn off one by one!”

  “Sweet Mother, Ellica—”

  “It hurt the tree, Mam!”

  Audrun could think of nothing to say. Words were lacking because the entire experience was wholly beyond comprehension at this particular moment. Her mind was blank. All she knew was her tall daughter clutched a cloth-wrapped rootball against her chest as if it were a child, part of Gillan’s leg was now scaled, Megritte hadn’t said a single word since arriving at the Kiba, and Torvic—well, Torvic seemed wholly Torvic. Ellica, obviously, was not quite Ellica.

  But Audrun instantly rejected her own judgment. Of course Ellica was herself.

  It was hot on the paved pathway, even utilizing tree fronds as haphazard sunshades. “Come,” Audrun said crisply. “We can learn nothing of these folk if we stand here arguing over whether a tree was injured by my actions. I need information. Leaving the deepwood as soon as possible is the first order of business, but apparently this is impossible until a road is built. And that will take time.” She waved an arm at them in a gathering gesture. �
��I want to find someone in control, someone other than that arrogant female. Gillan, Torvic, go. Take Meggie. Ellica, now, if you please. And cover your head!”

  Tears ran down Ellica’s dusty cheeks, but she raised the frond over her head and followed the others. Audrun, aware of the odd picture she and her chicks presented to the world as they paraded down the pathway with tree fronds held over their heads, realized that with Davyn not present, all such parental decisions and issues now fell to her. Each and every one of them.

  Audrun sighed as she brought up the rear, rubbing absently at her chin with the back her left hand. Blessed Mother, aid me in this. Or I’ll surely die of frustration before a week is through!

  And then their straggling parade came to an abrupt halt. Audrun, bringing up the rear and lost in thoughts of the Mother, nearly collided with Ellica. Instead of arranged neatly in single file, her children gathered in a clump, clogging the pathway. Mute Megritte, once again, was in Gillan’s arms. Audrun opened her mouth to ask in aggravation what had caused the sudden halt but closed it instead. Some several feet away, centered precisely in the walkway as if he fully intended to block it, stood one of the primaries. Arms were crossed, legs were spread. He stared at them all out of predatory eyes, as if considering that they might make a good meal. His expression was austere, but also intrusively calculating.

  Audrun registered that he was nearly a mirror image of the primaries she had seen in the pit. Clothing made of gleaming, scaled hides, skin touched with copper, and hair—all those beads and braids!—the same. The angles of his face, the shape of his body, even the tilt of his head . . . such a strong resemblance to each other was not even present in her children, who were very alike. And then she realized that she recognized him despite the likeness to all the other primaries. Something set him apart. Something very powerful.

  “Ah,” she said. “You were the one who wished not to help us. You are Karadath, Rhuan’s uncle, I believe. Or whatever you choose to call it.” She remembered Rhuan’s reference. “‘Kin-in-kind,’ isn’t it?”