by Unknown
Kira was set down and Ormadon’s freezing hand fastened on her wrist as he picked a path up the slope. Kira didn’t look back, concentrating on keeping her balance forward, and straining to see Ormadon’s gestures. His hand grew warm, and Kira thought how odd it was to be comforted by a Shargh’s grip. But he prevented her from escaping as well as from falling.
Kira wondered whether he was Palansa’s father and the younger Shargh her brothers, or members of her family. Then she gasped as she snatched a glance upwards and realised that they were climbing towards the highest hut. At Cover-cape Crest, Marin had said that the Ashmiri Chief set his hut the highest, even when the land was flat. If they were going to the highest hut, it meant Palansa must be linked somehow to the Shargh who hunted her. He was the man Irlian had said was Chief, the man with the rotting eye – Arkendrin, the Ashmiri had called him.
They drew closer to the hut and Kira began to pant in fear. Take the everest, the voice in her head ordered as Ormadon’s steps quickened. He hauled her swiftly over the last lip of land, then without pause dragged her across to the hut, pushed her head down and thrust her inside. Kira dipped her chin and tore a leaf of everest free as she stumbled to her knees onto the soft pelts, but she didn’t swallow. For as she’d fallen, her belly had thrust up under her ribs, hard and tight, and something within had flickered.
Kira let the everest fall from her mouth as a knobby hand wrenched her upright. Reeling from her discovery, she snatched a glance downwards, trying to see if her bulging belly were obvious, but the woman’s roughened hand forced her chin up. Then a lamp was held close. Dazzled, Kira cringed, expecting the slash of knives, but as her sight cleared she saw the lamp-holder was Palansa. And clinging to Palansa’s leg, his large dark eyes fastened on Kira, was a little boy.
‘Ersalan,’ breathed Kira.
Relief that he looked so well steadied her and she was comforted that her pack wasn’t stuffed full of useless herbs. Palansa swung the boy into her arms and kissed the fluff of his head.
‘Tarkenda,’ she said, indicating the older woman.
Tarkenda barely nodded before she called something and a warrior entered. He was muscular, and armed with a spear and several short swords.
Kira shrank back but Palansa smiled at her reassuringly. ‘Erlken,’ she said, indicating the man. ‘Erlken son Ormadon. He . . .’ Palansa searched for the word. ‘He . . .’ She tried again, muttered a Shargh word in frustration, then went to the hut’s opening. Putting Ersalan down, Palansa spread her arms. ‘Erlken . . . keep Kira.’
Erlken was guarding her, Kira realised, but they were in the Chief’s hut – Arkendrin’s hut! Erlken couldn’t guard her against him.
‘Eat,’ said Palansa, ushering Kira to the table.
Kira perched tensely on the wooden stool, her eyes on the door flap. Tarkenda was busy cutting a large yellow cheese with a very sharp knife, but Kira barely noticed, the reality of her predicament washing over her.
How in the ’green had her Healer-knowing failed her so completely? She suffered moon-bleeds only occasionally and, in all her time in the north, had bled only once. Seasons ago Sendra had warned her that she’d never carry unless she put more meat on her bones, but Kira had been glad to be free of the bleeds that bothered other women. Keeping clean on long gathering expeditions was hard enough.
She didn’t even know when the child had started. The bonding had become so destructive that she remembered her fights with Tierken more vividly than their love-making.
‘Eat,’ repeated Palansa, pointing to the hunks of cheese and meat on the clay platter.
Kira quelled the impulse to refuse, recalling how the Ashmiri had offered her food after she’d healed Irlian. If she wanted to build friendship with the Shargh, she’d have to open herself to their ways, or at least to their food. Kira picked up a wedge of cheese and took a small bite. It felt strange in her mouth but not unpleasant. Then Palansa poured her a cup of water and Kira was surprised that they mixed it with honey as the Tremen sometimes did.
The food and warmth in the hut added to the weariness of the journey, but she daren’t close her eyes, knowing that the Chief must soon return. Ersalan was perched on Palansa’s lap, Palansa feeding him as she spoke softly with Tarkenda. The night deepened and, despite her fear, Kira began to nod, starting awake as Palansa touched her arm and gestured to the bed. Kira shook her head and Palansa repeated the gesture.
‘Arkendrin,’ said Kira, pointing at Palansa and then at the bed.
Tarkenda and Palansa gaped at her.
‘No,’ said Palansa, shaking her head vigorously.
‘Arkendrin,’ repeated Kira shrilly, giving an expansive gesture that took in all the hut.
Palansa and Tarkenda exchanged quick words then, taking Kira by the wrist, Palansa tugged her to the fire circle. Crouching beside the fine ash, the Shargh woman drew a series of stick figures.
After the first, she pointed to Tarkenda, then drew two figures underneath that she named Erboran and Arkendrin, stabbing her finger into the ash several times to make her meaning clear. Kira nodded and glanced up at Tarkenda, aghast to realise that Arkendrin was her son. Palansa touched Kira’s hand with her sooty one to regain her attention, and, pointing to the figure she’d named Erboran, held up a single finger. He was the elder son, Kira guessed.
Next Palansa drew a figure beside Erboran and pointed to herself, then a smaller figure beneath, and pointed to Ersalan. Kira smiled, relieved that Palansa was bonded to the elder son. If they were like the Tain and Terak, the chiefship would run through the first-born son.
Then Palansa went to the shelf above the bed and retrieved a strange headdress made of leather and metal. It reminded Kira of the circlet Tierken had worn at Laryia’s wedding, and Kira guessed it was ceremonial. Palansa’s face filled with grief and she wiped away the figure representing Erboran, and lowered the headdress onto her own head. Removing it, she beckoned Ersalan, and set it on his downy hair. Erboran was dead and Palansa was Chief until Ersalan grew, guessed Kira. Then why had Irlian called Arkendrin Chief? The only thing that Kira could imagine was that Arkendrin wouldn’t accept a woman or a baby being Chief and had claimed the chiefship for himself. But none of it explained Arkendrin’s long hunting of her.
Taking a steadying breath, Kira pointed to the Arkendrin figure, then mimicked a sword slash across her own throat. ‘Why?’ she asked, giving an open-hand gesture.
Palansa’s response was chilling. ‘If . . . Arkendrin kill . . .’ she said, pointing to Kira’s eyes, ‘Arkendrin have everything.’ Her hand swept around the hut, coming to rest on her own breast. ‘Everything,’ she repeated.
51
Kira’s horror at her situation deepened as time went on, and having to remain hidden in the hut gave her plenty of time to dwell on it. She paced around castigating herself for failing to realise what the sickness and clumsy tiredness had portended. The decision to undertake the perilous journey into the Shargh lands, and to take everest to prevent the Shargh using her as a weapon, or to escape a slow, painful death, had been excruciating enough. But she’d only had her life to consider then; now she had another.
Every fibre of her being yearned to flee back to Allogrenia, but the risks she’d taken in coming would be wasted if the Shargh’s sickness returned after she’d left. Winter was only a moon away and anything that afflicted the lungs worsened in cold and damp weather. And while the Writing had suggested blacknuts prevented sicknesses affecting the chest, she’d seen no nuts in any of the meals she’d been offered.
At least one encouraging thing had happened though. While Palansa and Tarkenda hadn’t seemed to recognise the nuts Kira had shown them, Erlken had, pointing away over the grasslands. Kira had mimed coughing, eating the nuts, then being well, and both women seemed to have understood the nuts’ importance. Palansa had indicated that Erlken would procure some for Kira, but frustratingly, she hadn’t indicated when.
Kira glanced down at her belly as she paced around, thankfu
l its bulge was still hidden by her shirt. How naive she’d been in thinking she could share a man’s bed then simply walk away. No woman could do that without risk. And even if she somehow survived her time with the Shargh and returned to Allogrenia, she had no idea how she could heal and care for a babe.
At least the herbs she’d brought with her were being put to good use. After many confusing and time-consuming exchanges with Palansa, and much drawing in the fire ash, the two Shargh women were able to convey to Kira the story they had concocted. It was known Palansa had journeyed south with an ailing baby Chief, and had returned with one soon restored to health. And it was also known that Ormadon had taken three blood-ties south since. Palansa and Tarkenda had woven the two events together, telling how Palansa had been gifted the knowing of the herbs’ whereabouts by a treeman who’d pitied Palansa’s sick child. Once Ersalan was well, and the cure proven, Palansa – on behalf of the young Chief – had sent Ormadon and his blood-ties to gather more of the herbs so that the young Chief’s people could be cured.
While Arkendrin’s cronies had lined up with the rest to receive their share, Arkendrin had refused the ‘treeman’s filth’, for his strength was slowly returning. He gathered it to him like a hunk of meat, conserving it by using Irdodun as his eyes and ears, and to do his bidding.
A scuttle-lizard, Palansa called Irdodun, because of his sly comings and goings. But Tarkenda thought of him as more akin to a marwing that, having spied a sick or wounded creature, circles relentlessly until the creature is harried to death. Sometimes she thought it was Palansa, Ersalan and herself Irdodun circled, and sometimes even Arkendrin, for over the last moon Irdodun had stealthily moved his sorcha up the spur until it now sat just below Arkendrin’s.
Tarkenda wondered whether Arkendrin realised, but if there were indeed any threat to him, Tarkenda concluded sourly, it was Arkendrin who had seeded it. It had been he who had sought to destroy the long tradition of first-born sons inheriting the chief-ship. And, in doing so, he had opened the eyes and the grasping claws of others to the possibility that the chiefship could belong to any with the courage, or cunning, to seize it. And Irdodun was just the sort of man who’d think himself capable of doing so.
But mostly Arkendrin’s recovery and Irdodun’s increasingly arrogant swagger fed Tarkenda’s fear for the Healer. Tarkenda found it hard to think of her now as a creature, or as the sinister force of the Telling. Rather, it seemed that, like herself and Palansa, she had been swept up in the whirlwind of Arkendrin’s ambition.
At first Tarkenda had suspected the Healer’s motives, for her coming to the Grounds still made absolutely no sense. But as the days passed, the Healer’s obstinate, single-minded determination to pass on her cures convinced Tarkenda that the Healer really was driven by healing, and not by any ulterior motive. And in some curious way, she reminded Tarkenda of Palansa. In taking Ersalan south, Palansa had ignored Tarkenda’s advice for the very first time, but her actions had saved Ersalan and drawn the Healer to the Grounds, seeding the potential for what Tarkenda had seen in vision and dream.
The gathering of marwings over the Grounds one evening was neither a vision nor a dream though, and as Tarkenda stood with Ormadon peering out at them, her dread grew. A dead ebis or wolf or the pickings of a grahen could all draw them, but her heart told her otherwise. Ormadon’s young blood-tie Aronin had gone to the stone-trees a day ago and had not returned, and now Ormadon had sent Erlken to where the marwings circled, and taken his son’s place in guarding.
Tarkenda’s gaze shifted to the spur below, to where Shargh cooked their evening meals, and she wondered how many would support the blood-born Chief, and how many Arkendrin if they were called upon to fight? In the past, Tarkenda could have listed them off – from those high on the spur with Voices at Speaks, to their humblest blood-ties – but she couldn’t any longer, for the fighting had shattered old allegiances. The only comfort she could draw was that both sides shared a weariness of death.
Ormadon hissed, and she whirled to see Arkendrin and Irdodun making their way up, Irdodun’s strut unmistakable. Neither had approached the top sorcha since their return from the fighting, but now they came within a length of the door, only stopping when Ormadon raised his spear.
Tarkenda saw that Arkendrin had wasted, but what he’d lost in muscle, he made up for in belligerence. The leg wound had given him a limp, the wound to his face blindness in one eye, so that he tilted his head to glare at her with his sound eye. Envy and hatred had devoured him, leaving him a malevolent and dangerous shell.
‘The Sky Chiefs have sent to me that you harbour the foul creature of the Telling,’ he snarled. ‘Give it to me now!’
Erlken’s absence left only Ormadon’s spear to protect them, Tarkenda realised, and any aid would be far slower than Arkendrin’s sword strokes.
She let her breath sift through her teeth. ‘I don’t think the Sky Chiefs have sent you anything but ill fortune, Arkendrin,’ she said steadily. ‘They’ve taken your speed and strength, your hunter’s eyes and most of your followers. But I trust they haven’t taken your memory of the traditions of deciding matters of import.’
Arkendrin’s head lowered like a wolf smelling out a grahen hole. ‘I could take it,’ he growled.
‘Not with honour,’ retorted Tarkenda.
Arkendrin’s good eye seemed to bulge and Tarkenda felt Ormadon tense.
‘I’ll call a Speak and all those with Voice will know your treachery. You’ll go with it, Chief-mother, into the filth that spawned it.’
With a final glare he limped away, Irdodun by his side, head held high.
‘Irdodun had blood on his cape,’ muttered Tarkenda.
‘I saw it, Chief-mother. Things turn ill.’
‘Yes. I fear for Aronin, Ormadon.’
‘He’s already in the Skylands, Chief-mother, or how else did Arkendrin know of the Healer? What do you intend at the Speak?’
‘I don’t know – I was trading for time,’ admitted Tarkenda.
It was late in the evening when Erlken ducked into the top sorcha, tossed a handful of stone-fruit on the table, and in brutally few words described the slashed remains of his blood-tie. Tarkenda remained motionless in her chair long after he’d gone, dully considering the stone-fruit. They were the same as the Healer’s food.
Heaving up her aching bones, she went to the bed and held the lamp aloft. The light fell softly on the faces of the Healer and Palansa as they slept, and illuminated Ersalan’s, in all its innocent sweetness, as he curled between them.
Tarkenda’s heart quickened, as she almost sensed what the last part of the Telling meant, but even as her mind groped after it, it slipped away.
52
Tierken knew the allogrenia was either the Renclan or Kenclan Sentinel, but because of the imprecision of the Protectors’ descriptions in Sarnia, he didn’t know which. It didn’t matter. The milder weather and ample moisture of the south had certainly made it immense, and had also created a lush carpet of grasses sufficient to keep twenty-three horses fed while he was in the forest. Marin would camp within the trees’ edge, taking advantage of the canopy’s shelter, and graze the horses here.
If Kira had gone to Talliel, he would be back with Marin in a little over half a moon – the time it took to visit Laryia, acquaint himself with the Clancouncil, and resolve with Protector Commander Kest how the Terak patrolmen here and the Tremen Protectors in Sarnia were to be administered. But if Kira were still in Allogrenia, Marin’s wait could be longer.
Marin came to his side and handed him a mug of cotzee. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to trade the Kirs and Kessomis for the rest of the Terak and Illians?’
‘The risk’s greater here than in there,’ said Tierken, nodding towards the forest. ‘And I want the Tremen to see the full extent of the peoples they’re a part of. Keep your half of the patrol busy, though,’ he added, aware of the Terak and Illian’s need for action.
‘That I will,’ said Marin. ‘They can pr
actise arrow skill by hunting rather than trapping our dinner, and as the stinking Shargh lands are only two days away, there’ll be plenty of scouting to do. I’ll make sure Kalos gets some nice long gallops, and that sister of his. They’ll both be fit for the journey home then.’
Tierken drained his cup and heaved on his pack. His full quiver and bow were clipped to its side, and he wore three knives and a sword at his belt.
‘If the news is ill, I’ll return soon after a moon half,’ he said to Marin. ‘If not, I don’t know how long I’ll be.’
‘I’ll beg Meros for a long wait then, Feailner,’ said Marin, with a smile.
Tierken and his men set off and the forest closed in quickly, the light dimming to green where the trees still held their leaves, and to pale yellow where they didn’t. Not knowing which Sentinel he’d taken bearings from, Tierken was unsure whether he was going due south, or south-west. The Kessomis seemed to have the best sense of direction under the trees though, so he kept Ayled and Serden close.
The possibility of attack was small, but the lack of visibility made Tierken’s shoulders crawl. He stared about as he went, not just alert for any threat, but to acquaint himself with Kira’s lands. The trees muffled noise, so that when birds did give voice, their calls seemed piercing. The scents were strange too, the men’s boots scuffing up countless seasons of leaf-fall and sending rich odours into the air.
Tierken could see nothing edible, despite having memorised descriptions of food plants and trees, and that, combined with his lack of certainty over his direction of travel, made him wish for contact with a Protector patrol. It wasn’t very likely though, he concluded, given that he was in the land of Healers rather than fighters. But the thought had barely crossed his mind when he was surrounded by sword points.
Irid must frequent forests as well as mountains, thought Tierken dryly, as he ordered his men not to draw their weapons, and kept his own hands clear of his belt. Morclan were easiest to pick from the ring of Protectors, for he knew they tended to be tall and fair, and the Protector Leader was a good head taller than Tierken, with eyes that showed intense blue, even in the thickening dusk. The man fitted Kest’s description, and Tierken hoped it was the Protector Commander, for it would save him both time and explanations.