“It has been many generations since we fishfolk have heard talk of those you call Sea Raiders—longer still since we have met them. And yet here you are, and only days past a Raider came here to us. A male,” it went on as Jaele saw the blood, the face, the body bent and disappearing into trees. Days past. “Wearing a torn tunic. He stood and stared at us as you did, today. When I went toward him, he fled, even though my hands were empty before me.” It looked down at its hands, turned them over so that the webs and scales glinted in the sunlight.
“It is not chance,” Jaele said softly. “A group of them destroyed my home. He killed my mother, and I followed him inland. I lost him on the jungle road—but when I came here I knew. . . .” She closed her eyes against the shine of spires and scales. “Why is he here? Why did he not return with the others?” she asked, and opened her eyes when it said, “Of course I cannot answer with certainty. Perhaps he did not want to return; perhaps the others did not want him to.” It paused; she heard its breath gurgling, deep in its throat. “There are tales of others of his kind who tried to live for a time in this land, eating foods rich in juices in order to survive. These tales say that they soon turned east, even though they did not want to. In their walking and their swimming they followed the old path of their ancestors, who had been pursued by Galha. They were pulled by their history and their sea. Those who resisted died. He will feel the same pull, and he also will die, if he does not heed it. Of this I am certain.”
There was another silence. Jaele was still clutching her dagger, her fingers wrapped numb and nail-ground. “So he will go east,” she said at last, “when he leaves here.”
The fishperson touched her lightly, on the hand that held the dagger. “He was seen yesterday,” it said, “on the road. Riding alone, away from the city.”
Yesterday, she thought. While I was telling myself that there would be time to find him. She said, “Then I too will go east.”
“She drove them through desert and mountains, plains and hills . . . following the rising sun.” Her father’s words; Galha’s army. Now there was only one Sea Raider, and Jaele, and an ancient rage. “I will go east, and I will find him,” she said, and a new certainty bloomed hot within her.
The fishperson gazed at her without blinking. “He may die in this land, without water, before he reaches the sea. He may try to live with food only, as those others did—but soon he will be very sick. Perhaps you do not need to find him.”
She shook her head and thought that she might laugh, or weep. “You do not understand,” she said. “I do need to. It is more than need.”
The fishperson stood before her a moment more. “Wait,” it said. Again it glided away from her and back, this time bearing a polished red stone, the kind she had collected at the edge of the tide. It pressed the stone into her hand. “This may be used to enter our waters,” it said, “if your strokes lead you to us.”
“Thank you,” she said, curling her fingers around the stone’s coolness as the fishperson slipped away, water-streaked, through the sunlight.
“He was here. Dorin—he was here.”
Dorin rubbed his eyes with his palms. “What?” he said, blinking. Serani had already returned to the booth; Dorin had been slower to wake, despite Jaele’s grip on his shoulder. “He,” he repeated, “here. . . .” and then he understood, and gaped at her.
“Until yesterday—one of the fishfolk told me, he saw him—and someone else saw him leave the city, riding. He will go east. Dorin,” she said in a different voice, as she looked at him, “you didn’t believe me. You didn’t think he was here.”
He pulled his fingers through his hair, did not raise his gaze to hers as he said, “You were so upset. I thought. . . .”
They sat without speaking. The marketplace outside was stirring again, with music and laughter and footsteps. Jaele closed her eyes and was still.
“What will you do?”
She opened her eyes. He was looking at her, now. “I’m going to find him. I will follow him east.” She spoke in a voice that was hard and glittering as the daylit spires. “I will find him as Queen Galha found those others, even if I have to follow him to the Ladhra River and Fane. Even if I have to follow him across the Eastern Sea.”
“And if you do not find him?” Dorin asked quietly. A gust of wind blew the red cloth inward, and Jaele saw his fair hair move across his cheek and back again, to lie against his neck.
“I will,” she said. “I will walk in Galha’s footsteps and I will find him.” A breathless pain pressed against her flesh from within; she was stretching, glowing, with the joy of it.
Dorin arched his brows and said, “An epic plan, Jaele. But Galha had an army. Fighters, horses, ships. You will be alone.”
“Not alone,” she said quickly. “I could go to Queen Aldhra and tell her that the Sea Raiders are back; she might send some Queensfighters with me. Her family was wronged, as well—”
“Yes,” he interrupted, “a long, long time ago. Perhaps it is only a story. Whether story or truth, Queen Galha had her revenge. Queen Aldhra will not see the need to send her fighters across the sea. Especially now, when they are required to battle the northern tribes who are many—and very, very real.”
“But the Sea Raiders are also real,” Jaele said, voice leaping high, “and they have killed her subjects. There will be fear along the coast now.”
“Will there?” he asked, and she flinched beneath his eyes. “Did you hear of fear along the coast after they attacked my town, so many years ago? Did you run and tell anyone in the town near your home? There will be rumours. Stories told at night, as always. And the Queen will certainly not waste her troops and time pursuing rumours—not when she has so much else to attend to.”
“If I went to her, though, and told her,” Jaele said, but without the eagerness of her first proposal. “If not Queensfighters,” she went on slowly, “then others. Companions I will meet as I travel—people who will understand my need.” She gazed at him until he glanced away. “Dorin —come with me.” She remembered his words the night before; remembered also her own grasping emptiness. Not alone, she thought.
“I have already told you,” he said, “that I do not have your anger. I cannot pursue this man—these people—without it.” As she opened her mouth to reply, he added, “Serani and I were intending to leave soon, in any case—and we will be going east. You could travel with us for as long as it suits you. But please—do not expect me to share your fight. Things are different for us, Jaele.”
“You say that now,” she said after a moment, “but you may not, later. I will travel with you and Serani—and perhaps someday you will travel with me.”
The red-gold hangings parted then, and Serani looked down on them. She smiled and gestured at the wagon outside, and Dorin nodded. “Yes,” he said, “it is time to leave.”
Before noon that day the tent was dismantled and the pots packed away, and Jaele rode with Dorin and Serani through the marketplace and out beneath the gleaming portcullis of Luhr. They had first stopped at the communal stables for Serani’s horse—a bedraggled, muddy-hued creature that Jaele regarded with suspicion.
“What did you expect?” Dorin asked with a grin. “One of Queen Aldhra’s war stallions?” To the horse he said, “I don’t think she likes you much.” The horse blew his breath out in a sound like a sigh. “No matter, Whingey—she’ll change her mind.” Jaele snorted and climbed into the wagon.
The sun rose and set; the moon narrowed and broadened again to fullness as the travellers skirted the deepest, cruellest part of the desert. Dorin told Jaele that they were heading for the mountains that blotted the horizon like green-patched fingerprints. The mountains Galha crossed, she thought. “Pursuing an army; following the rising sun.” She watched for another horse, a tall rider who would be urging it forward, straining east. But the land lay empty except for sand and stunted trees, and later small brown bushes.
Jae
le and Dorin began to race each other every morning in the cool before dawn, while Serani still slept. Jaele loved the sunless stillness, and the sound of her sandals and Dorin’s, muffled in sand or sliding noisily down slopes prickly with stones. They would return to the wagon as the sky lightened; Serani would smile at their flushed faces and give them water from a bag to cool themselves. Dorin laughed often as they raced, even though Jaele was always half a stride ahead of him. The sadness in his eyes seemed to flicker and pale.
At times she found her own pain slipping loose in happiness and cold mornings. But an image would come to her—her mother’s eyes, the man’s eyes, blood dark on sand and skin—and she would shrink from the pain, then cling to it, knotting it hard and sore and tearless. At night she slept with her sack beside her on the ground. She did not unwrap her father’s dagger, but she knew its shape and the bumps that were jewels, and she remembered its darkened weight in her palm.
The mountains grew larger and clearer on the horizon, and the grizzled brush gave way to trees which stood defiantly in dry and rocky soil. “Willows,” Dorin said one day. “We’ll follow them, since they grow over underground springs. They’ll lead us to water, and the mountains.”
Jaele began to wake at night; the sound of wind in the trees was not the desert silence to which she had become accustomed. She would sit up and look at the black shadows of trunks and hanging leaves, and at the blacker shapes of the mountains. Often she noticed that Dorin was not there. At first she was concerned, but she woke every dawn to his hand on her shoulder and his smile. They would run, and she would forget the worry.
The food they had brought with them from Luhr began to disappear, in great part because of Whingey, who, though scrawny, ate anything given to him and frequently munched quietly on the others’ portions while unobserved. Serani showed Jaele which plants had leaves that could be boiled into soup. She also, with a serious look and a hand on the girl’s arm, warned her which were poisonous. It was Serani who gave Jaele her first taste of herb water, a drink of hot water and steeped sweetleaves taken from plants that grew in shade, close to the ground.
One night Jaele woke to find Dorin sitting beside her with his arms wrapped around his drawn-up knees. She mumbled sleepily and struggled to sit up.
“We’re almost there,” he said.
“Oh?” she said, rubbing a hand across her eyes. She heard the rustle of the wind, the low murmur of a night bird, the faint crackling of the barely red cook fire.
At last he said, “Tomorrow we’ll reach the mountains, and the silga. The mountain folk.”
“Good,” Jaele replied. “Then we’ll be able to get more food. That horse of yours might have driven us to starvation.” She did not speak of her sudden excitement—the quick thrill of her plan shaping, like Serani’s clay. The silga, who might have seen, who might understand.
Dorin was silent for a moment more, then said, “I have something for you.” He opened the pouch at his belt and drew out a small object. Grinning, he held both his hands behind his back. Jaele laughed and grasped both his arms, shaking him. He pressed the thing into her right hand, saying in a rush, “I saw you looking at the starfish and the shells, and I know they remind you of your home.”
Jaele opened her fingers. She was holding a small shell shaped like the top of one of the mushrooms Serani had shown her. She held it up to her eyes and saw that it was light, perhaps blue, marked with a darker thin spiral line. There was a tiny hole in it. “I thought you could put a thong through the hole, to wear it around your neck,” Dorin said.
Jaele did not speak at first. She slipped it carefully into her own pouch. Then she leaned over and put her arms around him. “Thank you,” she said. He stiffened, and she drew away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just . . . happy.”
He nodded but did not look at her. She saw his eyes as he rose to return to his pallet; they were dark. He did not wake her before dawn to run. That day, sitting in the wagon while he walked silently beside it, she felt a heaviness in her stomach and limbs that she later knew was fear.
SILGA
CHAPTER THREE
Serani, Dorin, and Jaele reached the foothills at dusk. Jaele gaped up at the trees: they were huge, towering darkly green and gold. “These are the ones!” she said to Dorin excitedly. “As tall as the sky! Aren’t they?”
“No,” he said with a small smile. “No.”
There was a path between the trees, just wide enough for Whingey and the wagon. The ground was soft with fallen leaves and moss, sharp with needles. Once beneath the trees it was very dark, and Jaele saw only patches of sky, grey and blue spaces shifting among the boughs. The path climbed slowly; when they came to a clearing, she wondered at how far they had walked. The scrub stretched away below them, and the white-capped peaks were not far above. As they turned to continue on, they heard the horns.
Jaele saw later how these were made—from ore hacked and smelted and moulded in the deep places within the mountains—but now, standing in the clearing above the trees, all she knew was that this sound, so high and lonely and wild, frightened her.
“We are expected,” Dorin said dryly as the notes faded. “As usual.” Jaele noticed that Serani had put her hands against a tree trunk. Dorin said, “You can feel the sounds: they make the trees tremble.”
They went a bit farther along the path, walking so that Whingey would be able to pull the wagon up the slope. Jaele tried to imagine Sea Raider and Queensfighter armies surging up this path, and could not—though one man, yes: again she could almost see him, his shape in the trees before her. Her breath began to whistle, and her head felt full of air. Just as she was certain she would have to stop, Dorin pointed ahead. There were lights, flickering high up among boughs and leaves. Horns sounded again, much closer. She noticed that smaller paths branched off the main one, and that huge holes gaped beneath spreading roots. “What. . . .?” she asked, and Dorin replied, “You’ll see.”
Serani, Dorin, and Jaele halted before the widest, most pitted and gnarled trunk. Serani turned to Jaele, putting a hand on her arm. “Don’t be alarmed,” Dorin muttered. “We don’t enjoy dealing with the tree silga, but we need—”
Three silga stood before them; Jaele started, for they had come so silently and gracefully. They were very tall. Their skin was so white that she could see their veins, criss-crossing and dark. Their hair was long and, depending on how the light struck it, brown-green. Their eyes were large and round and yellow.
“Serani,” one said, and his voice was low and rough. The old woman nodded at him but did not smile. “And the youngling,” he went on, looking at Dorin.
“And this is Jaele,” Dorin said quietly. “She is travelling with us.”
The silga man looked down at her. She felt tiny, a twig on the ground, a sprig of moss. He said nothing to her.
“We will purchase the goods tomorrow,” he continued, looking again at Serani. “Your customary lodgings have been readied.”
Dorin led Whingey away, and Serani walked behind them. Jaele followed slowly, trying not to look back at the silga. Instead she looked at the holes beneath the trees. She began to see indistinct shapes moving within them, and was certain that there were eyes, gleaming from the darkness. She blinked, and hurried to catch up with the wagon.
They came to another small clearing. Here the trees seemed younger, and there were no holes. Torches had been lit along two low platforms and beside the steps that had been let down below them. “I didn’t see steps or platforms anywhere else,” Jaele said, glancing up into the trees.
Dorin smiled grimly. “They don’t need them.”
“How do they live up there?” she asked.
He shrugged as he began to lift packs out of the wagon. “Perhaps in huge nests of leaves? Perhaps hanging upside down? No one knows.”
Later, lying next to him on the lowest platform, she said hesitantly, “I thought I saw creatures under the trees. In the
holes.”
“Mmm,” he mumbled, rolling over and folding his cloak into a pillow. “There are the tree silga and there are also the earth silga; you’ll probably see soon enough. I’m tired.”
Jaele lay awake a bit longer, looking up through the dark masses of boughs and leaves and creepers above her head. She thought she heard the horns again, very far off, and was more sad this time than frightened. She fell asleep. She was lying on a boat, surrounded by a gently shifting sea.
Jaele woke to the sounding of horns nearby. She sat up and found herself covered in spots of sunlight which danced as the leaves above her fluttered. Dorin was leaning against the trunk below her, panting and mopping his forehead.
“You ran without me,” she said.
He shrugged. “You were sleeping so soundly: didn’t want to wake you.”
“Ah,” she said. The hard, sharp weight in her stomach had returned. The horns sounded strident in the green sunlight.
Serani was sitting on a boulder by the wagon. She looked resigned, as if she were preparing to taste something she knew would be unpleasant. Jaele stood above her. She looked questioningly at the old potter, who grimaced and gestured toward the entrance to the clearing.
The same three silga were approaching, led by the tall male. In the daylight their hair was green and shining, and their skin looked even more transparently white. Their robes seemed made of leaves. “I trust you slept well,” he said, gazing down upon them. No one answered him; he did not seem to notice. “We have come to purchase your goods.” He turned to the two behind him and spoke to them in his own language. Jaele gasped at the beauty of its sounds, fluid as wind or water. Not words, but images of sunlight and shadow and deep green smells.
Dorin handed Serani a number of pots and jars from the wagon. All were squat and broad-necked and unpainted. The head silga turned them over in his hands, then passed them to the others. They produced—Jaele did not see from where—pine cones and acorns and a jingling handful of silver.
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