by Mima
Suddenly KarRa knew. The dividers between the doors, the curtain to pull across front, the seat with a hole in the middle…”Oh!” she said, “How clever. Where does all this water come from?”
Cro cocked her head. “Our watermages maintain the flow from the river and underground lake.”
KarRa sensed Cro pitied her and changed the subject. “I'll help wash.”
They went and knelt at the long tub of flowing water. KarRa marveled at how much they wasted as they cleaned. She learned from the chatter around her that the water was not wasted, but cleaned in large fields where it seeped down into the earth to come out at the river downstream, purified. Clans had cleaning rotations, so that everyone took a share of the general cleaning of River Mountain. Along with the shared wealth, it was incredible to KarRa. In the Dark, mostly women cleaned. If men did it, it was less often, and half the quality.
After the dishes had been put away and the clothes hung to dry, Cro led KarRa along a new corridor. The room reminded KarRa of the first room she had met Merk in, what felt like a lifetime ago. It was small and bare, with a pillar of stone in the middle and nothing else but two chairs pulled up near it.
Cro stopped dead just inside, clearly unsure. Grif was standing behind a chair, his big hands clenching around the chair back, his eyes pinned to the door, his whole body tense. KarRa immediately tensed as well, moving up onto the balls of her feet, raising her hands up to the ready.
Grif's gaze flicked from Cro to KarRa and back, his whole body awkwardly softening as if he forced himself to tone down.
He nodded his head deeply at Cro, “Mountaincat Domina, I did not know you had been assigned to KarRa.”
“I have been honored, Owl. You have met before, but the time was difficult.” She held up her hand to the man, “This is Owl, called Grif.” Moving her hand toward KarRa, she said, “This is KarRa, of Fourth City.” She nodded her head deeply to Grif, a sort of half bow with chin against chest. “I'll be in the lounge when you're done, KarRa.” Cro waited, watching her.
KarRa nodded her head deeply the way she had and said “Thank you, Cro.”
Cro left, smoothing the cloth over the door opening.
Grif smoothly stepped around the chair to stand in front of it and motioned to KarRa. “Please sit.”
KarRa moved forward cautiously, shoulders rounded, hands at her sides. She noticed her chair was positioned with the back to the door. She moved the back of it so that it sat at a side angle to his, facing the pillar. Now the door was to her hard left. Grif eyed her as she sat, then moved his chair so that they sat face to face, with the pillar at his side.
She sat in the silence and waited, keeping her eyes low, on Grif's chest. Many moments passed and she sensed him studying her.
“I have spoken with Merk, the man who took your vow, your healer Xu, and Tril, the black Wolf who found you. I've bonded with Rylan. I feel like I’ve gained a good sense of you. In the course of the bonding, and later the testing in the Clan, I’ve come to know Rylan very well. Yet your relationship with him concerns me.” He stopped and waited. KarRa fought to keep her breathing steady under his regard. She still sat relaxed, her eyes on his chest, a neutral position. After a moment he continued.
“In the depth of our bonding, I found Rylan’s earliest memories, which he did not consciously remember. It doesn’t fully explain how you came together, but it gives a few clues. Would you care to hear what I found?”
KarRa could only nod.
“Bedplay in the human world does not mean a woman is entirely supportive of the Trux, although many seek us out for our status. But no Trux would abandon a woman if she was pregnant, and most in the Cities now know that our children are extremely precious to us. In Rylan's unconscious memories, he talks to you via a magepath when he is living among people who care for him. He was part of a family, and it was a good one. His mother must not have told his Trux father about him. But there are no clear memories except for you in his head, and a burning desire to find you. Not just a female presence, but you.
“He finds you alone in the forest, and you are both very young. I question how two children of perhaps six ended up in the forest when humans fear it so. It was winter. He wanted to return and could not find the way. You especially cried for your mother, constantly. He became distraught at your fear, and not being able to find the way home, closed down. You became the leader for the first time, and sometime after this, a human who Rylan only remembers as some sort of dark monster captured you.
“He beat you both, but fed you and gave you warmer clothes. He took you to a crowded, stinking place that Rylan found completely overwhelming. I believe this must be the lawless fringe settlement you grew up in. You somehow escaped this man together, but his memories are nothing but a blur of hunger, beatings, fear, and you, until you were taken in by the mage named Scuffle.”
“Oh.” KarRa was stunned. Rylan had a family. He gave up everything for me… KarRa had only wondered the briefest moments of her youth about her past. Rylan had dwelt and brooded on it endlessly. KarRa had always been more deal-with-what-you've-got, while Rylan was forever wondering about the unknowable. Her mind whirled. Six seemed awfully young to be living in the woods, but she didn't really know anyone who was six. Lilu, one of her clansisters, had a child on purpose a few years ago. It must be about five now. From her memory of it, she couldn't imagine such a tiny soft thing surviving in the True Wild alone. Rylan had left his people for her. He probably had saved her life if she was alone in the forest. He must be devastated to learn that they were real, and probably lost to him forever.
“This is where his conscious mind picks up. He remembers hating being trapped inside the mage's shak and fighting with you, viciously, about wanting to leave. He remembers hating the way you laughed with the other children. He sees the City exile Scuffle as a sort of all powerful warrior. He remembers fighting and making friends with an older boy named Far, who he still holds in respect. Are these memories meeting up with what you know now?”
KarRa had to work her throat to start the saliva enough to move her tongue. She had to force her clenched jaw to open. Grif's voice had been matter of fact, calm. She nodded.
“Do you have anything to add about how you managed to find each other so young?”
She raised burning eyes to the red-gold gaze of the man across from her and held it despite the wash of power off him. “Scuffle had a sort of adoption ceremony. He would go into a trance. He would mark our skin with needles and ink. He would tell us what he saw. Sometimes it was the future. He told me when I was sixteen that Rylan was a Beast. I mean Trux. Everyone knew that most Truxet who actually survived to show signs died in agony or suicide. Except a few legends of those taken in by you—like Trey.”
“Trey is a legend?” Grif's eyes crinkled with humor. “I'll have to tell him,” he murmured.
“Scuffle told me I'd get Rylan in here. When I finally told Rylan this, after … after … well, later, he refused to consider it. It was widely believed, as you probably know, that horrible things happen to the women who come here. Even I believed it. I got a clansister powerful in foresight to agree to lie to Rylan when he was ill, so we could go. But she saw true, and saw me here, slightly hurt but changed in a good way. It is only right, I see now. I took him, and I helped give him back.
“One of the things Scuffle told Rylan during his skinmarking was that we were soulmates. I don’t know about that. I only know that he makes me feel better whenever he is near, and that our magepath is true. Have you seen Rylan's skinmark?”
“Yes.” Grif nodded, still holding her eyes with his power. “It’s beautiful. The wind and the moon.”
“Yes, it is. We were allowed to design our own. Most of the Clan spent years changing their minds. I knew that I wanted mine to be a symbol of Rylan.” She drew up the tunic sleeve and turned her wrist over, holding her arm angled out. Grif's eyes seemed to glow redder as he studied the design.
“An Owl flight feather,” he w
hispered with amazement.
“So Scuffle told me when I described the shape I wanted it to take. It's blue because that's the color I associate with Rylan in my magescape.” There was a pause as KarRa let her eyes drop down to his chest, not wanting to seem aggressive, and feeling she had held them long enough for pride's sake. He was unnerving her.
“You were beautiful on the spirit plane, glowing gold. I put a door in place for each of you for Rylan's first Change. I cannot believe the two of you have managed with such an open bond your entire life. He was in agony over the separation of your spirits. I think it almost killed you both. It affects him still.”
KarRa's eyes snapped up. “What?!”
“He cannot sleep. On his third night with us, he finally asked for a bed partner and has managed a few hours here and there. Until you woke yesterday, he had to struggle so hard to control the new influx of magic open to him. Now he is controlling it much better. Please understand. I had to give you both a way to close your bond during the Change.”
“You think putting the doors up almost killed us? It was just a bloody nose.” But she remembered the echoing wrongness of the sensation.
Grif’s voice softened. “At the bonding, I was furious with you. You shouldn't have been there. It was a shocking breach of privacy. I couldn't believe it when Merk didn't order you out, but I was impressed that you recognized the Owl was for him, and I told myself I was going to focus on Rylan.
“He was on the verge of failing his first Change when you added your voice to the chant. And he was on the verge of being lost in the Owl when you called out again. I've meditated on it and I think without you he would have failed.
“At first this made me sick. I was sure that I had failed as an Alpha. I was sure he had not truly bonded with the Owl, through me. But I was hard on him at the Clan ceremony and it was clear to me that we have bonded. But closing your bond like that should not have had such an effect on him. Unless you were soulmates.”
He stopped, his voice almost a whisper. “You probably don't know what it meant when his hand reached for you out of the Owl.” Now his voice was a whip. “I haven't told this to Rylan.” He stopped and she nodded her understanding of a secret.
“He will be an alpha. His partial change on his first return makes it a certainty. He will know as well in a few days, when he starts to work with a spiritmage.” Grif stopped and when KarRa glanced up he was looking away into far space.
She waited until she thought she would burst. “What does that mean?”
“It means he will have a narrower path to choose from than most warriors. Less than a quarter of warriors are alpha, although our Clan and the Bears show higher numbers. Alphas are stronger, more powerful in magecraft, but the Beast is as well. Alphas need to mind their balance much closer than other warriors. There can only be two alphas in clanhome, for Owls it is our Nest, for any length of time. These are the Clan Alpha and his second, called the Alpha's Shield. All other alphas leave if they do not choose the four-path challenge for those positions. They do it for the good of the Clan, as their Beastspirit cannot help but want to constantly test and challenge the other alphas near.
“They can be tested by the Council and trained for three years. They will then work as an element mage in a duty set by the Council. Council mages are our highest level of warrior. They sublimate their Clan ties for ties to their element brothers, and bare their chests to show that they are Council bound first, for the good of Vladaya. Within the element bond, the Beastspirits are quieter, less aggressive than within their own Clan. Warriors who are not alpha can train to this position as well, but often fail their final tests.”
“Like Merk? He is a Council spiritmage, an alpha?”
Grif nodded once. “Some alphas choose not to follow the Council's direction, and a few don't have the level of mage power needed for the training in the first place. They become lone alphas. They go their own way, without help from Council or Clan, still managing a duty. Sometimes they return at the Autumnal gathering, sometimes they stay gone from Vladaya forever.
“I am wondering if Rylan has gone his own way for so long … he may not choose to take on the structure of a Council mage warrior. Or he may try to meet me in Challenge.” He looked back at her with a piercing stare. “What do you think he will do?”
“I think he will stay with the Council,” she said promptly. He stared at her and she held his gaze. “He isn’t interested in being a leader, or he could have easily formed his own Clan in the Dark. He wants a family. He will want to hold them safely. He will stay in the best position to keep them safe whatever it means to him personally. He would not take them to go live in the wild alone. Rylan learns from his mistakes. He has mourned his lost past his whole life. He has always been the more cautious of us. He thinks more, he plans more, he waits longer. Not that he isn't capable of action and decision,” she added hastily. “He just likes to feel protected. It's definitely something important to him.”
Grif moved his body over his spread legs, elbows on knees, and idly folded his hands together. Still, he kept his head up and his eyes on KarRa's face as he said, “Let me get back to the mystery of your bond with Rylan. I saw your spiritpath to each other. I saw the effect doors between you had upon both your health. You seemed to have connected from an incredibly early age, spurring him to protective action he should not have been able to take until well into his teens. I saw you through passion in his memories. He craves you. He wants you. Yet he is always turning away and seeking bedplay elsewhere. Why?”
KarRa's breath caught in her throat. Instantly she looked at the floor and curved her shoulders in, tucking her hands tight in her lap. Nothing could make her feel so small and broken as remembering that Rylan was no longer hers. She swallowed stiffly and whispered, “He said it felt wrong.”
Grif shot to his feet, toppling the chair over backward, and KarRa curled herself lower in the chair. She knew when she was outmuscled. Grif paced around the room, agitated. She could feel the waves of power roll off him, yet it didn't taste exactly like anger. Finally he stopped, between her and the door she noted, and his power rolled over her in concentrated waves. It prickled her skin and made her stomach heave. Her nose stung like fresh greens had been broken just beneath it. Somehow, she was being challenged.
“Rylan hasn't asked about becoming your mate at all. It is an unnatural reaction, as mates are entirely possessive. Physically, they need to be in close contact often. I can’t believe the willpower it took for him to leave you, to keep from fucking you. It’s a testament to his dedication to protecting you. If it wasn’t for your magepath, I don’t think he would have stayed sane. That extra bond kept him together. But he’s still thinking with human ideas. He seems content that you will be well treated, and given a choice. He visited you briefly to reassure himself you were recovering a few days ago. He did not speak of you again until yesterday, to tell me you had awoken and he wanted to see you again.”
KarRa let a choked breath. “When will I be able to see him?”
Grif shrugged. “His training is intensive, and unmated men are usually not allowed in the women’s caves. He wanted to see you last night. I decided to test his bond with you another way. I said it was time to pull away from you, so you could go to a mate without looking to the past. He turned absolutely white, then said, “So be it.”“
KarRa could not have controlled her reaction if she had had ten warclubs cued in her face. She doubled over in the chair with a gasp and began to shake. You knew you were probably going to lose him, she told herself.
Grif strode toward her. She could feel his power pushing out before him like a rushing wind. He flung himself into a crouch before her, grabbing her arms and lifting her so that he could see her face. He gave her a shake. “Stop! Think! What is between you that he does not fight for you?”
KarRa was paralyzed with hurt. An image flashed into her mind, Rylan looming above her, leaning in the doorframe of a narrow hallway, face twisted in rag
e and cold determination. AloneAloneAlone. Her body seemed to be beating the words and her hand flew to the scar on her neck as if it was freshly made.
Grif shook her again, his huge hands making a doll out of her and KarRa tried to scramble away, her feet pushing the chair back so that his arms extended. “Holding himself divided from your future is the only way he has survived. Your culture had no meaningful marriage and he had no concept of mating. He feels guilt and jealousy!”
KarRa shook her head.
“Yes! He has such concerns about what it took for you to come here, and how severely the spiritpath’s doorway damaged you at his first Change. Yet he thinks this new doorway will be a way for you to be free. He has always worried that your tie to him is unhealthy and unnatural. He thinks you are going to be given to someone else, and that a new man will be better for you, but it makes him insane.”
KarRa gave a choked wail and wrestled from his grasp, crashing sideways to the floor, scrambling up and away to the wall. “No! That's not true.” The words were guttural with emotion as she spewed all her darkest secrets to this powerful stranger like a child. “He doesn't want me at all. He never has. He wants other women, with long hair and soft breasts. He knows I'm wrecked inside. I have hardly any power at all. This is his chance to be free. He feels trapped and obligated out of loyalty.
“When we were nineteen, he left me. He took his first lover and I gave him the shak. He was glad! I knew he was glad! He thinks I'm a coward for not wanting children. He has finally gotten full use of his power with this door between us and he fears having to help me again. You said how much power he has now! It was because of me! Because I sucked it up! And now he's discovered that it was because of me he lost his family, his bloodclan. He's always been kind to me, because he feels sorry for me that I love him so much.” Her voice choked on the words. She hardly knew what she was saying, but she knew her hurt was pouring out in unmeasured words, dangerous but unstoppable.
“You're so wrong. You know him better than I, so stop being hysterical and piece together what you know about him.” Grif's face was hard and cold as he crossed his arms, standing to face her.