‘This was passed to me by my mother – my real mother, and she had it from hers. The horns it is cut from belonged to a tribe wiped from the Plains in the story-times, the long-ago times. Like the Aurochs, they have gone back to their beasts, and my people drove them to it. So: this is strength, this trinket. This is triumph. I lend you the strength of the Laughing Men through all the years. We know no masters and there is nothing we will not do. That is our creed. Wear this, and carry our strength to the northern gods.’
Genuinely touched, Asmander took the cord and looped it over his head. The horn discs were an unfamiliar burden on his chest, heavy in a way their mere weight could not account for.
‘That’s a fine creed, girl,’ Venater said softly.
‘One your people would recognize,’ Asmander noted, and the pirate nodded solemnly.
Then it was time: the sun was dragging itself clear of the horizon, a finger’s breadth at a time, as Asmander strode towards the stark pillars at the heart of the island. The other two fell in behind him and, both at once and yet with no spoken signal, they Stepped, so that he approached the heart of the north with a spotted hyena padding to his left, and a sprawling, whip-tailed dragon on his right, the dawn light glittering on its black scales.
They stopped on reaching the stones themselves, though. It was only Asmander who stepped through into that circular space, to drop to his knees before the altar. By then, a great many eyes were fixed on him.
He bowed his head: not in reverence but merely as an aid to concentration. With his eyes closed, he could feel the hostility surging in on him in waves from all sides, from every stone. It was not a personal dislike, not the price of anything he had done. It was the place itself reacting to the child of another land, of different gods.
So, here I am, he addressed the stones in his mind.
I am the First Son of Asman. But that will mean nothing to you. Why should you care who my father is, after all?
I am born of the clan of the Bluegreen Reach – and on the banks of the Tsotec that is a good thing to be. But it is nothing to you, and who would blame you?
I am a Champion of the Sun River Nation. I am a scion of Old Crocodile, bearing a warrior soul within me, a soul from out of time. I can Step into a shape you never saw, a beast of the myth-times that no man ever hunted.
Ah, I have your interest, then? For he could feel the vast, invisible attention of the place shifting around him, like great stone blocks.
I have come a long way to stand before your people. You are mighty and I am but a man, yet I have seen sights that most of your people cannot dream of. I have seen Atahlan the beautiful and fought pirates amongst the estuary islands. I have hunted with the Laughing Men, and have stood in the dead city of the Stone People.
With his eyes closed, it was easy to believe that a ring of people surrounded him, close enough to touch. Perhaps they did. Perhaps killers of the northern tribes had crept up to avenge this slight offered to their holy place. The temptation to open his eyes, to reach out for them, was like a fire under his skin. To do so would ruin everything though.
I have earned my place here, he told the stones. I have fought Sure As Flint, champion of the Many Mouths tribe, and I have sent his soul onwards to be reborn amongst the wolf packs. As who I am means nothing in this land, recognize me for my deeds.
And he stood up smoothly, with his eyes still tight shut. One hand found the steel dagger he had killed Sure As Flint with, and he drew its blade across the back of his arm, feeling the sensation as cold more than pain. He held the metal in place there, letting his blood slick it, turning it so that both sides were greasy with redness. Then he laid it on the altar. What belongs to the Crown of the World, I return to it. Take it, take my blood. Know me and recognize me.
Stepping away, the sudden absence of that fierce pressure almost made him stumble. He felt a gathering of powers knotting with the louring clouds above, twisting and coiling across one another.
There was thunder, but it was distant as the mountains, dismissive like the shrugging of gods. Nothing struck him down. He felt no curse descend upon him. The north did not have to like him, but it had withdrawn its enmity a little, giving him some time and room.
He turned and walked back to the other two, meeting none of the northern gazes that lit upon him.
‘Who knows?’ he told them, as he made that last step, the one which took him out of the circle, out of the direct focus of the Crown of the World. Who knows what I have accomplished?
Venater twitched his head sideways pointedly, and only then did Asmander see a third figure there, lurking in the shadow of one of the stones at the outer edges of the circle. His eyes went wide when he saw what manner of man the newcomer was.
A Serpent priest: just about the last man Asmander would have looked for here in the cold north. An ancient Serpent, his skin gone pale and brittle, grey beneath his eyes and in the hollows of his sunken cheeks crossed by the faded snakeskin tracks of his devotion. He wore Horse Society cast-offs, just like Asmander and his fellows, but here was a withered old man of the south, nonetheless.
‘You dare more than I would, Champion of the Riverlands,’ the priest said softly. For a moment the hair stood up on Asmander’s neck, that this man should know him and his soul so quickly. In the next, he guessed that such information had come from the loose lips of Shyri or Venater.
He realized that he had tensed up, waiting for some terrible pronouncement from the old man, but the priest merely shook his head slightly.
‘My name is Hesprec Essen Skese, and I have been travelling a long time, and it is good to see faces that I recognize. Let me be a guest at your hearth, just for a brief while, and I will ask the blessing of Serpent for you, and then we may talk of warmer places.’
It was close to midday the following day when Loud Thunder’s Mother finally sent for him. Lone Mountain ambled up, and Maniye wondered if the pair would start fighting again, but they just stared at each other until Thunder nodded and sloped off towards the single tent. Maniye tried to trail in his wake but he turned and looked at her in a way that told her she was not welcome there. This was the heart of the Bear’s mysteries and not for outsiders.
Lone Mountain now sat down almost exactly where Thunder had been, looking as disconsolate at being kept out as the other man had been unwilling to be called in. She went and sat near him, and tried to think of some way to open a conversation. The great brooding bulk of the Bears warned her off, though. They were all of them built on a different scale to her; they could smash her with a single ill-thought gesture.
Then he glanced towards her, expressionless, and she blurted, ‘I like your robe,’ before she could stop herself.
He grunted. A moment later she read the sound as amusement. ‘I traded many skins for it, to a Horse man. I thought it would make me . . . different.’
She nodded warily. ‘Because you want . . .’
‘It is not to me she listens,’ Lone Mountain said softly. ‘It is to the spirits: to Winter and Storm and the Bear. In another season, in a different year, I would be enough. She would call me, and tell me to become war leader, because all the wars would be small wars.’
Maniye felt a curious cold feeling run down her back. ‘Wars . . . ?’
Lone Mountain’s voice dropped lower, until it became a whisper for her ears only. ‘Mother is old. For ten years now we have thought she would soon pass on and leave her human shape behind her. She is close to the spirits, as only one of so many years can be. But is she wise now, or has she gone beyond wisdom into the foolishness of age?’ He was not looking at her, but talking as if to order his own thoughts. ‘She speaks of a great war and a time of broken laws. She says it will be soon now. She says she has looked in the sky and the water and the earth, and they tell her Loud Thunder must be war leader, or none at all.’ His broad shoulders rose and fell.
Maniye was peripherally aware of a low rumble of voices from within the tent, deep enough that she almost felt it
through the ground. Now one voice was raised, angry and insistent: as resonant as Thunder’s own but a woman’s voice nonetheless. Lone Mountain shifted uncomfortably. The other Bear men were paying no heed, some sleeping, one feeding sticks to a fire with a child’s all-consuming focus, another knapping a flint with careful, measured strokes. Only Mountain himself seemed to detect the shift of mood. She had the impression that he had travelled more than the rest, spent more time with human beings of other tribes.
She wondered if he had been trying to be like Loud Thunder.
She could hear Thunder’s slow tones sounding as though he was patiently explaining something. The other voice cut him off in mid-flow. There was nothing to the rhythm of their speech that suggested they would be finished any time soon. Maniye put a hand briefly to Lone Mountain’s arm, a tiny gesture of commiseration, and then backed away from that solitary tent, seeking somewhere where the air was less taut and tense.
There was quite a milling of people in the space between the fires. She saw a handful of the Coyote had laid out blankets, setting out their stock in trade. This would not be their usual goods and gear that they had hawked between villages of the Crown of the World from spring to fall. Instead, here were their special wares: scrimshaw from the Wetback people of the coast; translucent sharp-edged stones stolen from the earth; blades of black glass; glittering statuettes of jasper and greenstone and shining grey false-iron stone. These were trade goods fit for priests, objects of ritual, and the men and women who had brought them here were not pedlars but votaries playing their part in the great dance between spirits and men.
She watched the acolytes of a dozen tribes crouching to pore over the assembled wares, as though divining the future in that scattering of items on the blankets. Everyone here was consumed with purpose, desperate to lure the favour of the coming year. There would be propitiations and ceremonies, dancing and drums. Some would don masks, others would paint their faces. There would be promises made, and sacrifices of precious things. Perhaps the Deer people would have a crowned year-king whose reign was come to an end, or the Eyriemen a girl-child clad in gold to become their messenger to the other world, or the Boar would bring the makings of a god-feast. Every tribe of the Crown of the World had come here with its own traditions and ways, but nevertheless they were all seeking the same thing.
Her eye lit on one particular piece amidst the ceremonial clutter. From somewhere, after how long a journey, had come to the north a carving in a rich green stone. Its shape was foreign, a twined and knotted serpent that seemed to tunnel in and out until it had honeycombed the material that it was composed of. She knew instantly this must be southerner-work, some token of Hesprec’s own faith. Although she had nothing to trade for it, she drew closer, thinking what a fine gift it would make for him.
When she had squatted there long enough, knowing that she was wasting her time and yet fascinated by the delicate workmanship, she looked up and found herself staring into the eyes of Kalameshli Takes Iron.
The priest of the Winter Runners had plainly noticed her in the very same moment. For a moment they just stared. She was close enough that he could have reached out and grabbed her, and she felt every muscle tense, ready to Step, ready to spring away.
A terrible expression appeared on his face. It was not what she expected – not the anger that she almost demanded as her due: here I am – I ran away, I disobeyed. But Kalameshli had only shock and alarm to offer her. It was as though she had become a figure of fear somehow for the man who had tormented all her growing years.
His hands twitched, but almost to shoo her away rather than to reach for her. And then it was too late. There was another man at Kalameshli’s elbow, and it was her father.
Akrit Stone River saw her and his face went dead, every vestige of him withdrawing from it and leaving her no window into his thoughts at all. He was frozen, his body battling itself, and she was still there, still caught on the very point of flight, and around them everyone else continued about their business.
It was the Stone Place, she understood: the sacred place where no man raised a hand against another, save in the name of religion. It was as she had been told: so long as she remained here, and so long as the days of the equinox held, she was safe from the merely worldly ambitions of her father.
But there was a dark and angry look coming to Stone River’s face as he stared at her, and she saw Kalameshli raise his hands in warning, not touching his chief, but trying to draw his attention and tap his ire. By now a few of the traders around them had sensed something amiss. She saw one old Coyote flip his blanket over and bundle his goods away hurriedly.
‘Girl,’ her father got out. ‘Come with me.’
She shook her head, finding that she had no words left when facing him. She remembered the weight of his hand, the quick fire of his rage, the coldness of his regard. These had been the milestones of her years. They were her memories of home and family and childhood, and she had shed them like snakeskin when she had absconded with Hesprec.
‘You are mine,’ Stone River hissed. ‘Come with me.’ Still he would not actually reach for her, but his head twitched, tugging at her with his authority, demanding that she come meekly to heel.
There was a word rising within her. She felt it coming like a nauseous wave and tried to fight it down, but it flooded her mouth with bile and forced its way out of her lips.
‘No,’ she said.
And then she had Stepped, because she saw that word impact on Akrit Stone River’s composure and tear it open. He lunged for her then, with Kalameshli calling out his name to stop him, but all he got was a handful of hairs from her tail.
Then he had Stepped himself and went pounding after her.
25
The Snake priest stood up abruptly, ritual words forgotten. Asmander stared at him uncertainly. Hesprec Essen Skese had been seeking the Serpent within the earth, digging deep with his mind to find and wake his buried god. He had been speaking softly: familiar words of faith that left Asmander oddly homesick. Strange how he had not really felt that strained tether that was trying to draw him back south until he had run into this reminder of that other invisible world. Until then, he had felt more as if he was running away.
Now the old man was on his feet, benediction forgotten, staring off towards the Stones.
‘Messenger,’ Asmander addressed him formally, ‘has the Serpent spoken to you?’
‘Something is wrong.’ It emerged as just a murmur from those withered lips, but he caught it.
Without warning, the old priest was off, hurrying away and leaving Asmander caught between a desire to follow and the old understanding that there were deeds of priests that other men were best not knowing about.
In the end he followed though. Even as he set off he felt as though the ground beneath him was suddenly treacherous, as though the swamp itself was rising to reclaim it. He felt a great and unseen fracture threatening in the sky.
Hesprec was hurrying – or as much as he could – to where a scattering of huge men loomed around a tent. They were all on their feet, looking puzzled and sullenly angry, but uncertain, too, glowering around for whatever had disturbed them. One or two of them Stepped, surging into even larger forms that grunted and shook their heads and bared their fearsome teeth at each other. Asmander had never encountered a bear, but he knew one when he saw it. The stories he had heard about the north did not do them justice.
The flap of the tent rippled, and then a woman shouldered her way out, as big as the men and clad in a vast robe of hides that was sewn all over with bird skulls. Her broad, flat face was turned up to the clouds, and Asmander saw her sniff the air. Her expression was unreadable, totally closed to outside scrutiny.
Hesprec stumbled to a halt, head turning left and right but plainly not finding what he was looking for.
Then Asmander saw a flurry of movement over towards the stones themselves: a fleet, low shape skimming the ground: a small, grey-pelted wolf with a greater beast behi
nd it. He took it for a ritual: a mock-hunt invoking of the greater Wolf they set such stock on here.
Hesprec let out a sharp hiss, and Asmander understood that this was no piece of religious theatre.
The smaller wolf tried to break away towards them, but its pursuer got in front of it, herding it away, driving it towards the stones themselves. Hesprec took a deep breath and began to hurry towards them, but Asmander could see that the hunt would be at an end long before the Serpent could intervene. And here, old and frail and far from his own places of power, what could he do anyway?
Then the little wolf was at bay, trapped with its back to the ring of stones, and Asmander saw it shift into a girl, and its pursuer turn into Akrit Stone River.
By then, Venater and Shyri had caught up with him, both of them equally baffled by what was going on.
‘Wondered when he’d show his face,’ the old pirate grunted. ‘You going to ask him to lend you some warriors? Looks like a perfect time.’
‘Stop your lips flapping for once,’ Asmander told him tautly. ‘Can’t you feel it?’
It was plain that Venater couldn’t, but to Asmander it was as though the entire island, all the invisible, roiling presences that had gathered here, were bending close to see what the two Wolves would do next.
Maniye could feel the stone circle at her back, like a fire. Her heart was hammering as though she had run herself ragged for two full days. Before her, her father appeared like a monolith himself, as heavy and intractable as the stones.
She could see careful movement as the others fanned out to ensure she did not try to slip aside. There would be Smiles Without Teeth and her father’s other hunters and old Kalameshli – all the antagonists of her childhood.
‘Child, come here,’ Stone River ordered her flatly. He was holding his temper by a thin thread, but he still held it.
She bared her teeth, those silly, blunt human teeth. ‘I’m not a child. I passed my trials.’
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 30