by Kate Elliott
My heart, my flesh, my bones, my spirit—all these thrummed as though caught within the vibrating string, within the almost inaudible thunder of a distant drumbeat that rolled on and on.
And then the air quieted and the world fell still. I was sitting on my backside, panting, with my left hand in a fist against the earth and Andevai holding my right hand, our fingers twined intimately together.
He released me at once, shaking free as if the touch of my skin hurt his, and scrambled to his feet. To check on the horse. Who was fine, perfectly fine, grazing at a fine stubble of grass over on the hearth side of the fine old oak. I could not catch my breath.
“Are you still there?” called the djeli. “Or were you caught in the tide of the dragon’s dream?”
A rising clamor drifted from beyond the canopy: Birds.
Like a woman who carried four times my years in her bones, I creaked to my feet and took one slow step and a second. I grasped hold of a low-hanging branch to steady myself as I looked over what had once been the levels with a summer forest whose foliage was mostly familiar to my eyes. As in a trance, I pushed through the leaves and beyond them to get an unobstructed view.
The world had changed. A wide, flat, open landscape spread away to the horizon. This was no place I had ever seen. A lazy river spread so wide it might as well have been a shallow sea, its many channels weaving a net through solitary islets and green carpets of reed. Scattered across higher ground rose slim-trunked trees crowned with swords as leaves and trees alight with flame-red flowers. Everywhere flocked birds in such number and painted with such bright colors that the sound and sight rendered me mute with wonder.
“Come back to warded ground,” said Andevai. I had not even noticed him walk up beside me. When I glanced back, the tree I had thought was an oak looked entirely different, with a huge trunk and stubby branches more like roots, covered with clusters of white flowers.
“It’s the same tree,” he said, noticing my startled gaze. “If you stay out here, you may be caught in another tide. Now perhaps you do not wonder why it is dangerous to hunt in the spirit world. Besides the beasts and monsters, I mean.”
“What happens to those who are caught in the tide?” I asked as I stared at the fluttering, rippling landscape of birds and river and dawn sky drenched with rosy gold but without a sun.
“They never come back.”
“Why didn’t you leave me out there, then?”
An icy, contemptuous look was the only answer he gave me. He turned and walked away, under the shadow of the tree.
24
Dazed, I followed him under the canopy. I kept walking, out to the open brick hearth, and I sat down on the stone bench as heavily as if I’d been kicked. The tree, the dun, and the well—not to mention the seven big cats—looked exactly as they had before, untouched by the tide that had altered the world beyond. The fire burned steadily, and as I stared at it, aware of Andevai moving about under the oak tree engaged in what activity I could not guess and did not want to know, the observation belatedly occurred to me that the fire was not consuming the wood along whose lengths the flames licked.
I understood nothing: not this place, not my companions, not my life.
I hate tears.
Tears had not brought back my parents, not the tears I had wept when I was six nor the ones shed occasionally as I grew up an orphan reading my father’s journals and so desperately missing him and what he could have given me had he only been there in person, he and my voiceless mother, the Amazon warrior who no one ever spoke of.
Tears flowed unbidden now. I pressed a fist into my belly just below the curve of my ribs to stop myself from sobbing out loud. The djeli put her fiddle to her chin and tuned the strings. Was she indifferent to my crying or simply polite enough to give me what privacy she could by pretending not to notice me?
“Catherine? Are you weeping?” He strode out from under the tree.
The sable cat leaped up on the rock beside me and sat on sleek haunches as it yawned widely. This display of fearsome teeth and muscular bulk brought Andevai up short. He muttered a crisp, ferocious curse.
Gracious Melqart! The man had bothered to change his clothes out of the practical but rustic country garb he had previously been wearing and back into the fashionable clothing worn by men born to wealth and style. Wrinkles marred the perfection of dash jacket and sleek trousers, and his boots were wiped clean but still smudged. Seeing him revert to the form in which I had first beheld him dried my tears better than any sympathetic words could have. How on earth had he managed to change clothes with that injured arm? The man was clearly insanely devoted to looking fashionable.
The cat leaned against me. Much the same size and height as me, it possessed the warmth of a living soul. Its presence gave me comfort, not least because I knew perfectly well, as did Andevai, that it could rip him open. I scratched the back of its neck, and it rumbled a purr.
“That beast is wild, not domesticated,” he said in a choked voice. “It could turn on you at any moment, however much it seems sympathetic to your situation just now.”
“It rather reminds me of you, then,” I retorted without wiping my tear-streaked face. “It was kind of you to forebear to murder me just now, when I was unprepared to defend myself. I appreciate it. But I can’t know when you will change your mind. When you will hear the mansa’s command echoing in your thoughts. When you will think of your village, for which I am sure I do not blame you for wanting to spare them whatever punishment you can. I would do so myself, had I kinfolk who care for me as yours clearly do for you.”
“You are mocking me.”
“Am I? Why do you think so?” The tears were drying. I withdrew my hand from the big cat’s nape. “Or is it only that you expect mockery, having become accustomed to it in Four Moons House, where, I am given to understand, they despise you for being the son of slaves and yet envy you for the rare and unexpected potency you carry in your person. I think that when small-minded people envy and despise, then they will mock, thinking it their only weapon. I am not, I hope, a small-minded person. I will not mock you. I’ll tell you straight to your face that I don’t trust you and can’t trust you, and that despite my concern for the generous and upright people in the village who decided it was better to aid me and keep their faces clean before the ancestors than to betray me and truckle favor with the mansa, I intend to stay alive. I intend you shall never have”—wasn’t it better never to use her name, especially in the spirit world?—“the other one. After the winter solstice passes, the other one makes her majority and can no longer be coerced into marriage. Perhaps then I might be allowed to live, since there will be no particular reason to benefit from my death. Do you think that is remotely possible?”
His gaze seemed likely to freeze me where I sat, only he had no mage power here. He had only a sword that, in the spirit world, seemed just an ordinary sword. But I also had a sword, and I had a friendly pride of saber-toothed cats to guard me. Also, I had wounded his right shoulder.
“I think it not likely,” he said as slowly as if each word were being scraped from him by gnawing teeth, “that you can escape the mansa’s anger once he has set it on you.”
By rising, I silenced him. “I’ll do what I must to survive. Can you possibly expect me to do otherwise?”
He crossed to the third stone bench and awkwardly drew on his greatcoat. “The mansa will spread his net wide in looking for you. He will call in favors owed him by the local princes and dukes. His net will be difficult to evade.”
“I am used to evading those who seek me.”
A man with such cursed remarkable eyes ought not to be allowed to stare so provocatively at women. He seemed about to speak, then did not.
“What does it mean,” I asked, “to walk the dreams of dragons?”
He smiled with an edge of triumph, as young men would do when they know they’re about to win a victory over a rival. “Ask the scholars of Adurnam. I can’t tell you.”
; “Can’t, or won’t?”
“In this matter, there is no difference.”
“You’re leaving.”
“I must be seen to be hunting.”
“Seem to be? Is this some new scheme to trap me?”
“I could tell you that I’ve changed my mind. That I won’t kill you. But you’d be foolish to believe anything I told you.”
I laughed, and his cheeks darkened. “Why this fine speech, Andevai?”
A bored and superior expression transformed his face, reminding me forcibly of our first meeting when he had appeared scornful and distant. But other emotions besides arrogance and disdain might trigger such a mask as he tried to conceal what surged in his heart.
He spoke in a throttled voice I could barely hear. “By their actions, by hiding you and aiding you when they know perfectly well what my situation is, the elders of my village have shamed me into considering what constitutes right behavior. They made a decision to risk themselves rather than offend the ancestors. To hand over a guest is to spit in the face of the elders. To murder someone who is innocent just because she stands in the way of grasping at a treasure is wrong. I must act in the manner my people have shown me is right.”
“He who tries to wear two hats will discover he does not have two heads. Are you a magister or a village man?”
“That’s what Duvai has always taunted me with. Maybe it’s true, but even Duvai can’t see a bird in the air and know whether it harbors an egg in its nest.”
“Whatever that means! Strange of you to speak so highly of your village elders, only after your sword drew my blood and I did not collapse dead at your feet. Had I died, then your touching and heartfelt protestations would not sound so sweet to my ears, would they? For, indeed, in that case, I would not be around to hear them at all!”
If a man could look more imperious and contemptuous than he did at this moment, I would have been surprised to hear it. “Maybe I did not realize what I was capable of. Maybe, afterward, I was sorry to have found out!”
I was trembling, my hands in fists and my eyes stinging. “Are you saying you regret trying to kill me?”
He looked away. “I make no excuses. It’s done.”
The male cat nudged my back with his head, the smooth, hard curve of one of his incisors sliding against my shoulder. I leaned back, feeling peculiarly safe.
Andevai looked back at me, at the big cat, at the rest of the saber-tooths over by the well. He coughed slightly, clearing his throat as before a speech. “If I can draw the chase to the toll roads and rivers, I’ll do so. If I can draw the net away from Anderida, I’ll do so. In that case, a person fleeing in the direction of Adurnam might do well to travel one of Anderida’s quiet old roads. Once the eldest Barahal daughter reaches her majority, we have no hold over her, by the terms of the contract.”
The djeli drew a long, pure melody out of her fiddle, but paused before it came to a cadence, holding the bow from the strings as if not sure what came next.
Visibly startled, Andevai turned to her. “What is that?” he demanded.
“It’s the payment you have made to me,” she said with a considering look first at the fiddle, as if it were hiding something from her, and then at him. “By telling me your story. It’s not quite ready yet, but this song will be yours when it is earned.” A tone lingered on the breeze, more felt than heard.
He hesitated, as might a hound suddenly realizing it faces a wolf. “Then you have received a fair payment, for the shelter I’ve received here?”
“I have received what is fair,” she agreed. “Where are you going?”
“Back to the mortal world. And you?”
“I stay where I am bound, as I must. Later, perhaps, we will meet.”
“Perhaps we will meet another day. Until then, let your day be well.”
“And your day, likewise.”
Leave-takings could take as long as greetings, but in the end he walked to the oak, ducked under its canopy, and returned leading the mare. I realized at that moment that I was not going to set the cats on him.
Walking past me, he spoke. “I left what is yours under the oak. Do what you must, Catherine. I will do as I must.”
“Wait,” I said. “I don’t know how to get back—”
But without looking back, he trudged up a dusty track that wound away into the higher country. The sable male padded after him and halted on the track, tail lashing, to watch until he vanished beyond stands of wide-canopied trees bearing colorless thorns and white flowers.
What an idiot I was, standing here while he walked away! I had absolutely no idea how to return to the mortal world. I dashed over to the oak and found my bundle on the ground. As I grabbed it, the cloth flapped open and a heavy leather pouch thudded to earth beside my gloves. Inside lay silver denarii and five gold aurei. Yet the coins weighed heavy in my hands. What message had he meant to send me by leaving them with my things? That he was sorry? That he wanted me to live? Was the coin meant in payment for the cut? Had he, in that last moment when we grappled, actually changed his mind and only cut me purely by accident as he broke away? For so it seemed to me now, looking back on it.
Or perhaps he was far more clever than he looked. Perhaps he had deliberately trapped me here; perhaps I was actually dead and could never return.
I strode to the fire and faced the djeli, who lowered her fiddle. How had I first mistaken her for an aged, frail, starving woman? She was not young, certainly old enough to be my mother if I had a mother, but with a healthy shine in her face and a robust, healthy build.
“How do I return to the mortal world? Must I run after him and hope to catch him so he will show me the way?”
“The cat and the horse do not eat the same dish.” She raised the fiddle. “A dry mouth cannot sing.”
I laughed. “It is the way of djeliw to speak in riddles, is it not?”
“You mistake me for a Celt. It is I, Lucia Kante, who cups knowledge in my heart. I await the ones who will learn from me, but you are not that one.”
The big male sashayed up and thrust his head against my hip to be petted. After I had rubbed his ears and nape, I drew up a bucket of water, carried it over, and set it down beside the djeli, and then retreated to sit beside my cloaks and coin. Maybe I wasn’t a Barahal, but I had been raised among a people for whom bargaining was the same as breathing.
“Is this water your offering?” she asked.
“A dry mouth cannot sing,” I answered, “but perhaps water will not quench your thirst. Are you a mortal woman or a creature of the spirit world?”
“I am the person I am, a multitude held in one flesh.”
“Most tales say that time runs differently in the spirit world than in the mortal world. I would not want to stay here too long. I need to go back. Will you show me the way back?”
She held out a hand, palm up. “For a payment. The same as he made.”
“Let me tell you a story,” I said. “Since it seems that’s the coin you seek. In the beginning, the people who call themselves Kena’ani founded the city of Tyre. There presided the gods and goddesses, the kings and the high men of the temple, the queens and the priestesses. Their ships explored the great sea. In time, the children of Tyre founded trading towns and ports like Gadir all along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and farther afield south along the coast of Africa and north along the coast of Europa. In time, there was born to the king of Tyre a daughter named Elissa. When she grew to be a woman, she understood that the king, her own father, hated her and wished to sacrifice her. So she fled Tyre with her people. The blessed Tanit raised winds, and on these wings brought her to a distant shore. Elissa bargained with the tribe that lived in that region. She said, ‘Let me have for my people only as much land as one ox hide will encompass, and we will settle there and be content.’ Thinking her simple-minded, the tribe agreed, but she trimmed the ox hide into a leather cord and extended that cord to encompass a mighty swathe of land. Her people called the city founded th
ere Qart Hadast, the new city, and she became its dido, its queen.”
Perhaps the air of the spirit world breathes a fragrance that intoxicates. How else could I possibly have looked upon Andevai and not despised him, merely because of the way he had looked sidelong at me and the way his hand had felt, holding mine? Intoxication leaps from mind to tongue. A dizzy compulsion overtook me as I kept talking, and talking, and talking. I was the vessel full of wine and she the one drinking. As long as she listened, I could not stop. I told the tales the Kena’ani tell their children, of the trials and struggles of the gods in ancient days, of the long war against the Romans, of the Persian invasion and the arrival of refugees from the empire of Mali. Of mercenaries and merchants, spies and historians. How Daniel Hassi Barahal had ridden into the world at the same age I was now and traveled across Europa and the north of Africa in the service of his family, seeking secrets to sell for profit, and in the service of his own desire to comprehend the way of the world.
No cat, he, but curious just the same. He had midwifed babies into the world, escaped brigands, climbed mountains, and sat through the interminable sessions during which Camjiata’s law code was argued into fruition. He had traveled south to Rome and Qart Hadast, east to Galatia and the very border of the Pale. He had ventured north into the ice with a party of determined explorers, and west to Land’s End beyond which the ocean crashed against a desolate shoreline.
The man I had believed to be my father.
As I talked, the djeli assayed a bowed melody here and a plucked tune there. Her feet rapped a rhythm on the earth. Now and then she spoke in response, or sang a phrase to punctuate my story: It’s true. I hear you.
How or why or when sleep overtook me I did not know. I only knew I slept because I woke between one breath and the next, as if a melody had called me out of an entrancing dream that had something of Andevai in it, curse him. A fiddle played a graceful tune as sinuous and proud as the stroll of a cat. I touched tongue to lips and wiggled my fingers and toes; yes, I was awake. Warmth drenched my back.