“How will they know if I am or not?” he asked, feeling nervous.
“It is simple,” Ki answered. “You will go to the Seeing Wall. All Tamal u’Khan do.”
“Tamal u’Khan?”
“One chosen to represent the Primal Force. Like your Lord Ember. If you truly have been chosen by the Primal Beast and are Khodo Khim, you will be welcome here, as Lord Ember would be, if he cared to come.”
“And if I’m not?”
Ta fielded this question, leaning in close to his ear. “Then you will freeze to death at the Seeing Wall.”
I should have tried harder to escape, he thought.
People gathered around the clearing, bald boys and men, white haired women and girls. While curiosity and wonder at the stranger played on their lips, a suspicious hostility lingered in their eyes. More than one of the men had his eye on Davon’s rifle and he gripped it tightly. Ju’Jal’s sons surrounded him, motioning for the gawkers to stay back.
“Have you discovered any of the other Primal Forces besides Air?” Davon asked, keeping an eye on the crowd.
“No,” Ki responded. “Only Fire and Air are known to us. We seek the others.”
A man emerged from the lodge, tall and shirtless. A multitude of necklaces hung about his neck, each strung with bone carvings of runes, people, and animals. He was older, crow’s feet fanning away from the corners of his eyes, but his frame still held power. His ice blue eyes burned with anger as he regarded Davon, a single obsidian blade clutched in his hand.
Ju’Jal walked at his side, speaking animatedly, but whatever he said did not dissipate the fury in the man’s eyes. Behind him came a woman, also of older mien. She, too, was weighed down with many of the same kinds of necklaces. Like all the women, she wore a jerkin, but a white fur stole hung about her shoulders, as did a leather thong with two pouches on each end dangling about.
Ki leaned in. “The man is A’Kor, what you might call a King or a War Leader. The woman is our T’Mak, a Queen or Priestess. I caution you to be very calm. The A’Kor is an angry man and does not brook weakness. Stand firm.”
The A’Kor was taller than he first appeared, even taller than Davon himself. Davon steeled himself and met the indignant gaze of the approaching A’Kor without flinching. The bone trinkets tinkled against each other as they swayed from the motion of the A’Kor’s determined stride. Davon tried not to focus on the wicked looking dagger gripped in his palm.
Without fear or hesitation, the A’Kor stood toe to toe with Davon, eyes bearing down as if to yank out his soul and hold it up for inspection.
“You read this foreigner?” the A’Kor said, directing his question to Ki but keeping his eyes on Davon.
“I did. He is a man of honor.”
“Are you sure?” the A’Kor said, eyes pegged to Davon’s. “Is your judgment clouded, perhaps, by the gifts your father has told me of?”
“I read him before I knew of his gifts.”
The A’Kor retreated a step. “Show me, Spear Sisters, that I may believe.”
The two women produced the carvings from their backpacks, and let them fly, much to the astonishment of the onlookers.
Davon relaxed for a moment as the A’Kor’s dour face briefly shared in the wonderment. But without waiting for Ta and Ki to finish their demonstration, he stepped forward and with a quick slice of his dagger ripped Davon’s shirt from the collar to his belt. Instinctively, Davon dropped his rifle and pulled his sabercat knives.
Ju’Jal interposed himself between the two men who stared a silent challenge at one another. “He only wishes to see the mark, Davon,” Ju’Jal soothed.
“Who gave him the daggers?” the A’Kor hissed. “A trade for the carvings, perhaps?”
“He fashioned them,” Ki answered.
“Lies!” A’Kor spat. “The Bittermarchians and Creetisians care nothing for wood or sacred bone. They prefer their metal and their rifles.”
“I made them after a hunt,” Davon asserted. “It is a craft I learned as a youth.” He spun the daggers, pointing them hilt first at the A’Kor. “You can have them, if it pleases you.”
The A’Kor kept his eyes on him, but returned his own obsidian dagger to his belt. “Keep your daggers,” he said, “and show me the mark.”
Davon twirled his daggers and resheathed them, his dexterous movements eliciting appreciative nods from the crowd. Ki winked at him, a bare grin on her lips. Davon opened his ruined shirt. The T’Mak joined the A’Kor, inspecting the scars.
“Tell them, Davon, how you came by the scars,” Ju’Jal prompted.
Under the enthralled gaze of the Aua’Catan, Davon recounted the tale of his misadventure while hunting the sabercat. Everyone nearby kept craning their necks to get a look at his chest.
When Davon finished, the A’Kor frowned more deeply than before.
“I cannot believe that Khodo would return and not choose one of the Snow Born to be her servant. The Kai will take this man to the Seeing Wall tomorrow. We will let the ice have its way with this outlander and see then if Khodo would choose such a man to be her Tamal u’Khan.
“Ju’Jal, remove his weapons from him and place him under guard tonight. Your family has custody of him until morning. If you take pity on him and he escapes, one of your children will be held as a death debt until he is either killed or captured. Do you understand?
“Yes, A’Kor,” Ju’Jal said.
“Then remove him. Light the Pahk fire!”
The A’Kor and T’Mak walked back toward the lodge while a fire was lit in the large pit in the center of the clearing. Davon shook his head, eying the crack in the canyon wall above the lodge, the one he had passed through to enter the primitive valley. It was hard to see with the deepening of evening, but he had half a mind to find out if any of the Aua’Catan warriors could catch him if he made a break for it. Judging by their long legs and defined musculature, he calculated they could run him down with ease.
Ju’Jal collected his rifle and put out his hands for the daggers. “I mean no disrespect, Davon. I am sorry the A’Kor has seen fit to treat you as a prisoner. I did not foresee his anger. He has no love for outsiders, but I thought that the possibility of finding Khodo Khim would sway him to show more hospitality.”
Davon placed his daggers in Ju’Jal’s hand. “I’ll want these back.”
“And you shall have them.”
“Come, Brown Man,” Ki said. “Our family lodgings are not far.”
The family encircled him to keep the throng from him, leading the way out of the gathering place—the Pahk, Ki explained—and out onto a winding pathway through the trees. Traveling to the lodgings of Ju’Jal took them halfway around the lake where they found a series of five huts made from draping hides over a conglomeration of wood and bone tied and bent into a tight frame. The huts bunched around a small clearing—the family Pahk—and Ju’Jal ordered his sons to start a fire.
A log with a top and bottom shaved flat served as a bench, and Davon sat down, Ta and Ki flanking him. Ta reached up and pulled at his hair.
“It is so odd to see a man with hair,” she said, giving it a tug as if to prove its authenticity.
“And on his face, too!” Ki said, rubbing his beard.
“Please, ladies, I—”
They laughed. “Ladies!” Ki exclaimed. “We are not your painted ladies with their frilly, useless dresses.”
I’ve noticed. “You’ve seen them, then?”
“From a distance,” Ta said, “though I do wonder how they keep their clothes out of the fire.”
Ki nodded. “And who is your painted lady, Brown Man? Or are you poor and love a woman who cannot pay to make her face into another?”
“I have no Lady,” he said. “Now if you would—”
“You lie,” Ki said. “You forget that I took your breath into me. You breathe her in and out with every rise and fall of your chest.”
“I have no commitment with anyone,” Davon amended.
“You have
not bonded her?” Ta asked.
Davon had suspicions about what that meant. “We are not married, nor are we engaged to be so.”
The fire started to lick the branches, casting a healthy orange glow on the faces of his two companions, their eyes eager and absorbing.
“Tell us of these rituals, Brown Man,” Ki prompted.
Davon exhaled. He had nothing better to do. While he explained the intricacies of courtship, engagement, and marriage, their expressions evolved from interested, to surprised, to horrified.
“And so, if you wanted to marry this woman you love, you would ask permission of the father unless you feel he will object, in which case you—what was the word? Lope?”
“Elope,” Davon said. “Though it is generally frowned upon.”
Ta and Ki exchanged a look and then burst out laughing.
“We are sorry to mock you,” Ki said, “but it is such a terrible mess. You bring your woman here. Then you can just bond her and be done.”
“What does that mean?” Davon asked, afraid of what she might say.
“Bondings happen on the first snowfall,” Ki explained. “Those who wish to share a tent together do so on that night and they are bonded. Parents have no say in the matter.”
Davon had to admit that the simplicity of it was appealing given his present circumstances, but it did lack that air of celebration and ritual that would memorialize it.
“Are either of you bonded?” Davon asked.
Ta frowned. “No. We are Spear Sisters. That means that whatever man wants to bond with one of us must bond with both of us. And we will not bond with a man until he can tell us apart.”
“I see,” Davon said. Odd, indeed. He decided not to bring up that he knew how to sort them out. “But I must ask you, the A’Kor mentioned that I am to go to the Seeing Wall with the Kai. What does any of that mean?”
Ki stood, extending her hands toward the nascent fire. “Whenever a Primal Force chooses someone to be a Tamal u’Khan they are taken to the Seeing Wall where they are tested. We do not know what happens. Only my father, who is the Tamal u’Khan of Primal Air, has undergone it in our lifetime. The Kai and A’Kor will take you there.”
“Kai?”
“There is one Kai for each of the Primal Forces. Only my father actually has the right to represent a Primal Force, but until the others are found or are within our grasp, three others stand in place as Kai until there are true Tamal u’Khan to represent Fire, Water, and Earth. If you are truly Khodo Khim, then you will be the Tamal u’Khan over the Primal Beast.”
“And the A’Kor will have to accept you,” Ta added.
Davon’s mind swam with all the new terms, finding he didn’t want to learn them. He wanted to get up and leave immediately, get back to Arianne, and punish those who wanted to hurt her. He itched to do it.
Ki returned and sat at his side as the fire grew full enough to wash its heat over them, casting its orange blush on the branches all around them. A warm exhaustion pulled at his tired mind and eyelids as the heat grew.
Two of Ju’Jal’s sons approached with a spit punched through the carcass of several large rabbits. In minutes, a savory smell called to his famished nostrils. The meat hissed, grease dripping into the fire, the smell watering his mouth. Hunger from the long march gnawed at him. His two companions played with their bird carvings, sending them diving at their brothers and laughing at the result of their pranks.
Footsteps behind them turned them all around. A grave-faced A’Kor, two men, and an older woman plied the trail to Ju’Jal’s huts.
“Where’s Ju’Jal?” the A’Kor asked of one of the brothers.
“I am here,” Ju’Jal answered, emerging from his tent.
“Get the outsider up,” the A’Kor said. “We go to the Seeing Wall now.”
“Now?” Ju’Jal returned in surprise.
“As I said. We cannot risk the contamination of this outsider a moment longer. I and the rest of the Kai agree on this point. We go. He will face his destiny or his doom.”
Chapter 34
After ten days of grueling travel, Miss Ironhorn announced that they would at last see Frostbourne before the sun set. The fine black carriage commissioned on the Queen’s farthing carried Arianne and Missa, Emile and Orianna, across a bumpy road through open fields of grass covered hills. The brooding sky and stiff wind matched the mood of the women that bounced along in silence. Arianne kept her gaze pegged to the outdoors. While warm in temperature, the northwestern reaches of the Tahbor’s duchy felt cold. When they crossed the Ebb River, Emile pointed out the road that led south to the city of Tahbor and promptly burst into tears as it reminded her of her now ex-fiancée.
Arianne couldn’t bring herself to comfort the young woman. Emile had tortured them for ten days, and neither Arianne nor the lady’s maids had a kind thought in their heads for the embittered, opportunistic woman. For the first three days she had cried uncontrollably, wailing about how the Earl of Tahbor would never want her again and how her life was ruined. The fourth and fifth days she cursed Davon with all manner of vulgar language that she could conjure. It was all Arianne could do not to reach out and slap the woman. Orianna clearly felt the same. Days six through eight Emile plotted out her future course. She had, quite humbly, admitted that her chances of being a duke’s wife were now slim, so she relegated herself to naming off the likely candidates among the Marquesses.
This animated frenzy of hopeful prognostications died on day nine when Miss Ironhorn settled into an irritable depression that had persisted since then. She was quite convinced now that no man of consequence would ever want her and she would have to go rooting around in the dirt after the sons of Barons and Knights. The only relief for Arianne was that Emile’s unremitting self-absorption had spared her any need to remark or offer opinions on anything. That Emile Ironhorn thought that Arianne hated Davon as much as she did was plainly evident, but everyone else in the carriage knew the opposite was true, the three of them sharing furtive looks to lend their miserable confinement some levity.
The road took them north that morning, the fragrant spruce boughs of the Windhill Forest finally relieving the bleak monotony of the grassy plains. The four mounted carriage guards pulled in close; the northern woods were known for their packs of dire wolves. As the afternoon wore on, the iron walls of gray covering the sun finally broke into ragged shreds of clouds, the afternoon light burning their feathered edges. Emile, pale and silent, wiped her eyes and sat up as the sharp scent of the trees filled the carriage, blown in on a vigorous breeze.
“How I hate that smell,” she said. “That stench pervades Frostbourne. Those trees surround the house. Davon refused to cut them down. That shall be first thing I do when we get there. I’ll have those trees chopped down just to spite him so that if the Queen ever does reinstate him—which I doubt—he will come back to find those nasty trees of his just piles to be burned! I shall swing the ax myself if it comes to it.” She reached out and took Arianne’s hand. “And I shall let you have a swing at one yourself, for Lord Cornton’s sake.”
Arianne snatched her hand away. “You insult my honor if you think that I would stoop to such petty schemes of revenge.”
“He killed your husband!”
“Defending your honor, Miss Ironhorn,” Arianne returned.
“His defense was unnecessary,” Emile said haughtily.
“Yes it was,” Arianne agreed. Unnecessary and pointless. “But it was done, and done for you. Did you ever thank him for it?”
“Thank Lord Carver?”
“Yes,” Arianne said. “Thank him for defending your honor.”
Emile looked away. “Of course I did.”
“The Baron wrote and apologized to me not long afterward.”
“You see!” Emile exclaimed, thinking she had won a point. “Even he realized his mistake. The brute.”
“Yes,” Arianne said. “I daresay by then he had quite realized his mistake.” She shot a knowing grin at Missa
and Orianna, who stifled their smiles.
The road curved and sloped more, snaking around hills and twisting between stands of beautiful blue spruce as they wound closer toward Frostbourne. A stubborn mammoth held them up for several minutes, standing still in the middle of the road. Its curved tusks were discolored and spotted with moss. Arianne hung out the window to get a good look at it. She’d never seen one of the beasts so close, its powerful presence and humorless eyes intimidated and delighted her. The men shot in the air to no avail, and it tromped a leg down hard upon the road with a trumpeting challenge. The horses whickered nervously and backed the carriage away.
“How I hate those things,” Emile grumped. “If it charges, it will be the doom of us all.”
The woolly beast finally moved off, and the driver whipped the horses into a quick pace; no doubt the woods proved dangerous after dark. Just before sunset they pulled through the gate of Frostbourne manor, a stiff evening wind scraping the branches of the massive firs across the wooden shingles of the rustic home. The servants, quite unprepared for their arrival, bolted about, a thin, proper man standing on the porch barking orders.
“That is Mr. Simmons,” Emile informed them. “I hired him as steward to replace Mr. Saunders. How I hated that man.”
The carriage stopped, and a footman stepped forward to help them debark. The wind whipped their dresses and their hair about as if offering a rough greeting. Arianne smiled. The place was wild and tempestuous, it’s unrefined nature appealing in its own way. Wolves howled at the close of day, dogs braying in return from kennels somewhere behind the house. The edifice itself was clean and made of patchwork stone, sturdy and colorful, a hedge of tiny purple flowers encircling its base. Servants scrambled to light lanterns hanging from strong wooden beams that supported the roof of the porch.
Emile clutched her hat as she stepped down onto the drive. “How I hate this wind.”
Mr. Simmons stepped forward. “We were unaware of your return, Lady Carver. We are quite unprepared for you this evening, though we should have a good supper for you in an hour.”
Flametouched Page 33