by Fiona Patton
The strong scent of horseflesh and grass came over her and, she breathed it in with pleasure. It had been as mild a season as could be hoped for on the Berbat-Dunya, and the herd had weathered it well. They were strong and healthy and two of the mares were pregnant, one with twins. Danjel estimated that they would drop within a fortnight, plenty of time to bring them to the Rus-Yuruk encampments before that happened. Fifteen ponies for twelve was a good season’s work and would help make up for her long absence from her mother’s people.
Raising her face to the wind whispering in from the north, she tasted the messages it carried: vast flocks in motion, shepherds in their midst and sentinels on the hills, all beginning the great trek from winter pastures to summer. The people had weathered the season well, too. They, too, were strong and healthy and eager to move to the summer camps, east and south. From there, they would make raids on the villages that ringed Gol-Beyaz Lake as they’d done for centuries.
But this year would be different, and the underlying excitement that colored Danjel’s prophecy sparkled with unborn possibilities. This year, her people had agreed to ally themselves with the traditional enemies of Anavatan in exchange for trade and spoils and free access to the lake of power once their Gods had been defeated. An ambitious agenda, and all because of the mad young seer the Rus-Yuruk had taken in as one of their own six years ago. A mad young shepherd who would drive them south and east as surely as Danjel’s ponies were driven. Driving them to war.
Pulling a grass fetish she’d fashioned earlier that morning from her pouch, Danjel changed genders once again as he rubbed it between finger and thumb. The stalks were fine and elastic, heralding change and growth, but twisted under his grip with a restlessness that spoke of random movement and out-of-control actions. Pulling it apart, he tossed it to the breeze to go where it would, then shook his head as the individual grasses spun about his face, catching on his clothes and tangling in his hair.
“So, for all your excitement, you’re not yet ready to set out on your own,” he noted. “I don’t blame you. I’m not ready either. I never am when I come home to my wild lands.”
He glanced about with a wistful expression. This was the land where he’d been born and, deep in the Berbat-Dunya, alone with the whispering winds and the singing spirits, his prophecy was clean and clear, like the night sky, bright with stars and shining only for him. In the past he’d returned here every year to gather prophecy for his people, drinking in the peaceful silences, and strengthening his sight. No other wyrdin dared to walk the paths he’d walked.
Until Graize.
Danjel closed his eyes briefly as he called up the image of his adopted kardos. Graize, who’d come screaming into Danjel’s world like a comet falling to earth, the storm-enhanced spirits of the wild lands tearing at the young seer’s flesh and being torn apart in return. He wielded his destiny like a cyclone, snatching up anyone foolish enough to stray into his path. He’d snatched up Danjel and carried him, first to the vast walls of Anavatan where Graize had brought Hisar into the world in as violent a birth as could be asked for, then later to the Petchan mountains where rock and water had cut the Yuruk wyrdin off from the wild lands’ open, peaceful horizon. On the grasslands, he’d carried him into battle with the Warriors of Estavia and Brax, Graize’s personal adversary, the dark-haired man that colored all his prophecy with madness and pain. But it had been Danjel who’d finally carried Graize to the wild lands and shepherded him back to a fragile sanity.
Pulling a piece of shredded fetish from his hair, Danjel frowned at it. The problem with prophecy was that it changed as quickly as the weather and a good decision last summer might have become a bad decision by spring. It might have been a mistake to bring Graize and his cyclone into the Berbat-Dunya. Who knew what forces might be snatched up to follow him here.
As if in answer to his question, a faint shimmering to the south caught his attention and shifting genders once again, Danjel raised up in the saddle to regard the horizon intently, then gave a sharp whistle.
A tiny spirit, no bigger than a mayfly, appeared at her elbow. Accepting a seed of power, it read her desire, then spun off to do her bidding. Danjel leaned back in the saddle, waiting patiently as her pony began to crop at the tough grass beneath its hooves.
The spirit returned almost immediately, gyrating in the air like a drunken butterfly, its agitation plain. Soothing it with another seed of power, Danjel dusted the news off its tiny wings with one finger like pollen from a flower petal. In a ring of small hills before the wetlands some three hours distant, a party of six—strangers by their pattern of travel—moved north. Four tasted of leather armor and metal weapons, one of parchment and foreign dyes. As for the sixth, the spirit had managed to glean no more than a single glimpse of white sands and sparkling blue waters before being driven back by a dark, fathomless power that hinted at an insatiable hunger rivaling the spirit’s own in its near feral intensity.
Danjel smiled sympathetically. The spirits of the wild lands were not used to being denied. After feeding it a final seed of power, she released it with a thoughtful expression. Graize had spoken to her of Panos of Amatus, the strange, sensual oracle from the southern sea; a woman of great, hidden power who tasted of white sands and sparkling blue waters. As the envoy of the Skirosian king, she was deeply entrenched in Graize’s plans against Anavatan. It could only be her. Graize’s allies were on the move, and the watchful eyes of Incasa’s seer-priests would be scouring the lands around the lake of power, so Panos was taking the land route north.
Danjel frowned suddenly, her concern shifting her gender back and forth until it settled on the male. The land route north led straight into a bog hidden from even the most powerful seer by the wild lands’ undulating and unpredictable currents.
Glancing up at the sky, he read its portents on the wind. A bank of clouds was building to the north, promising a summer storm within a day or two. If he pushed the herd just a little harder, they would reach the Rus-Yuruk encampments before it hit, but if he lingered to shepherd an incautious band of strangers who had no real business moving about in his domain, it would catch them all out in the open.
He half turned toward the herd, then sighed resentfully. Panos was Graize’s ally and Graize was Danjel’s kardos so, whether he liked it or not, it was Danjel’s duty to ensure that Panos didn’t drown in the wet lands or become hopelessly lost in the wild lands.
Changing genders once again, the Berbat-Dunya wyrdin wheeled her pony about and, whistling to her dogs, began the laborious process of changing the herd’s direction to intersect with the forces that Graize’s cyclone had dropped into her lap. Again.
Back at camp, Graize suddenly sat up with a laugh as he watched a flock of birds led by a single, purple swallow change direction in the sky.
“Kardos!”
Yal turned from where she was laying out the last of their spring supplies before their tent.
“Yonder birds bring news of your shepherd!” he shouted.
“What news?”
“A change of purpose and direction.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that Danjel will not be here to take the noon meal with us but should arrive by nightfall.”
Flopping onto his stomach, he scattered a handful of power seeds into the grass, watching intently in the Yuruk way as a cloud of spirits rose up to devour them. “Hooves disturb the earth,” he murmured. “Ten running freely, two burdened from within, one burdened from without, and seven carrying birds on their backs. They do not move to a single design just yet, but they soon will. The swallow draws them together.
“Danjel’s coming home,” he shouted to her through the grass. “And brings me a gift: six droplets of the purest prophecy shining as brightly as the morning dew.”
Yal made a face at him. “I see more than a dozen dusty black starlings,” she stated, shading her eyes with one hand to more clearly make out the distant flock. “How does that make six of anything bright?”
“The company you spoke of? Panos and Hares with four others?”
“How well you count. Yes. They’ll be here by nightfall.”
“Hungry?”
“Hungry and tired.”
Yal glanced at their supplies. “But mostly hungry,” she noted sourly.
Danjel arrived exactly when Graize had predicted, driving the ponies before her just as the sun slipped behind the horizon. Panos of Amatus rode easily beside her with Hares and four Skirosian guards dressed as travelers bringing up the rear.
Graize met them as they came over the rise. Panos dismounted at once, dancing up to him to plant a kiss on both cheeks, her wide, black eyes twinkling.
“You taste of bronze-cast bells and marbled prophecy,” she crooned, shaking out her hair in a cascade of golden light.
“And you taste of gilded feathers and honey-sweet intrigue,” he replied, matching her mixed imagery with pleasure before turning. “You’ve met Danjel. This is Yal.”
The Petchan woman gave Panos a reserved nod from where she was building up the fire in the center of the camp and Panos returned it with a dazzling smile of her own.
“The terns and gulls of the south greet the plains swallows and mountain hawks of the west,” she said with musical formality, then glanced at Graize with a sly smile. “And we are pleased to once again be in the vaulted presence of the shining city’s eastern lake gull, who looks down upon his domain from the loftiest of minarets like a monarch on a diamond throne.”
Graize snorted at her. “Yal’s worried you’ll eat up the last of our supplies,” he said bluntly, ignoring her metaphors.
Yal gave him a dark look but did not gainsay him.
“Our guide is a great prophet and foresaw this very circumstance,” Panos answered easily as both Hares and Danjel came forward, carrying a brace of coneys each. “So you see, we do not come empty-handed. Plus I bring a jug of the finest arak from Maf-abia to her delin.” She gave a guileless smile. “Will they be enough gifts to grant us a place by your fire?”
Yal raised a questioning eyebrow at her, but when Panos continued to smile, she unbent enough to nod. “Of course. You are welcome.” She cast a pointed look at Graize and Danjel. “My people will help me prepare the rabbits,” she said, “while your people set up camp.”
“Pitch tents,” Danjel added, gesturing at their packhorse. “The night will be clear of rain, but not of insects, and it may be colder than you’re used to.”
“All nights here are colder than I’m used to,” Panos agreed. As the four guards began unloading the horses, she accepted a heavy, woolen cloak from Hares with another dazzling smile. “But basking in the shining company of my beautiful Anavatanon seer will warm me, even if he does scowl far too much for my liking,” she added, stroking his cheek.
Feeling lighter than he had for months, Graize gave her a mock bow. “I will try to smile more if only for your pleasure,” he said with unusual gallantry. “At least until after we’ve drunk Yal’s arak.”
“And after you’ve helped with the coneys,” Danjel added pointedly.
Night came swiftly, the last of the sun’s light leaching away to leave the sky a brilliant swath of black velvet scattered with stars. The company sat around the fire, eating roasted rabbit and passing Maf’s jug back and forth. Sitting in the crook of Danjel’s arm, Yal glanced over at Panos.
“Graize says that you travel to your lover, Prince Illan of Volinsk?” she asked, tossing each of Danjel’s dogs a chunk of meat.
Panos’ expression grew wistful. “Officially, I travel as my father, King Pyrros’, envoy to join our northern ally in his bid against Anavatan,” she answered, setting her usual fluidly moving speech patterns aside for a moment. “But unofficially . . .” She sighed. “My body aches to be with my fiery sorcerer once again, and a dream embrace is a poor substitute regardless of how strongly we may connect mind-to-mind. No doubt I shall forget all my official duties when he’s next within the true circle of my arms, and I in his. He soothes the itching in my flesh like a balm of aloe and honey. “
“I know exactly how you feel,” Yal agreed. “Graize might have been in danger had Danjel taken much longer, and I’m not even interested in a man’s bum . . . I mean balm,” she added with a gleam in her eye.
Across the fire, Hares looked up from the sketch he was attempting in the flickering light to cast Panos an embarrassed look as the two women laughed, their joined voices ringing out like silver bells in the still air.
“Hares and my mother would have me settle on a fine Skirosian nobleman’s balm,” Panos explained, her black eyes sparkling. “A powerful priest’s or a mighty admiral’s; even a wealthy spice merchant so recently come into his lands and titles that his balm has yet to grow hair would do. But they may have to accept an ambitious Volinski prince’s instead. Not a terrible burden for them, I should imagine.”
“You will . . . settle on him?” Yal asked, her tongue tripping over the foreign expression. “Does that mean. . . . make a life with him?”
“When I see him, it will mean make love to him,” Panos replied, “as fire makes love to a forest. As for an entire life,” she shrugged. “Who can say? Life can be painfully short, or painfully long. The future is so delicate as to be easily broken if it’s squeezed too hard, like a ripe fruit, ready to be eaten, but oh, be ever so careful how you go about eating it if you don’t want its pulp all over the ground instead.”
“So, you haven’t seen a future with him?” Yal pressed, refusing to be any more distracted by Panos’ metaphors than she had been by Graize’s earlier.
“I have seen many futures, some with him and some without him. Such is the way of prophecy when war looms on the horizon,” Panos answered in an uncharacteristically melancholy voice. “Still,” she added, throwing off the mood as she might throw off a cloak. “Sometimes knowing the future takes the spice out of the present, and I like a spicy present. Don’t you?” She waggled her eyebrows in Danjel’s direction, and Yal chuckled.
“Yes,” the Petchan woman agreed. “And clearly we both prefer exotic, foreign spices.”
Danjel glanced at her with a smile of her own. “Well, this foreign spice is worn out from traveling,” she said, kissing Yal on the ear. “And we need to be up early tomorrow if we’re going to reach the Rus-Yuruk encampment before the rains come.” She stood. “I’m for bed. Will you be long?”
“Not long at all; I’ll come with you now.”
“Kardos?” Danjel turned to Graize.
He shook his head. “Yal will want your balm all to herself tonight,” he replied. “I think I’ll linger here beneath the all-knowing stars and get caught up on the news from the south.”
“As you like. Just try not to be too late. Remember, the ground is a hard and unforgiving surface if you fall off your pony tomorrow.”
“Yes, Abia.”
Danjel and Yal left, arm in arm, the dogs trotting obediently behind. After a few moments, Hares rolled his sketch into a cylindrical leather case, put two guards on sentinel duty on either side of the rise, then he and the others retired as well, leaving the fire and the last of the arak to the Anavatanon and Skirosian oracles.
The two seers sat in companionable silence for a long time, Panos staring into the fire with an inscrutable smile on her face. Weaving the prophetic bow the eldest of the Petchan sayers had given him last year, back and forth, Graize sat watching as the spirits lit up like tiny candles as it passed them by.
Finally, Panos glanced over with a speculative expression in her black eyes. “All your streams are finally coming to
gether,” she observed, “to create one great raging river of possibility. But there seems to be one individual stream flowing contrary to your design, and its recalcitrant behavior could send your plans to the bottom of Gol-Beyaz, yes?”
He shrugged. “If you mean my Godling,” he replied, “It will soon fall into line.”
Panos laughed. “Of course I don’t mean your golden God-child,” she scoffed. “It’s following the path of youth exactly as It should do. No, this is something entirely different.”
“A hidden element hanging in the balance whose discovery could mean the difference between success and failure,” Graize intoned in a bored voice. “I know. I’ve seen it. But since, as you say, all the streams are coming together to create one raging river, a single element can be swept aside if it gets in the way.”
“That depends on the element’s identity.”
“Which is still shrouded.” He touched the side of his nose with one finger.
Panos regarded him with a humorous expression. “It’s said among the Skirosian oracles that prophecy is like a broken mirror, showing everything there is to see except oneself. I never thought to witness such a perfect example of the saying.”
He scowled at her. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that you are intrinsically tied up with the future, and so the element which hangs in the balance is not shrouded at all, beautiful one. It’s you.”
When he just stared at her, she laughed. “How easily swept aside do you think it is now?”
He snorted. “You always did have an ironic sense of humor,” he noted in a dry tone. “I don’t hang in any balance.”
“No?” Lifting a twig from the fire, Panos watched as the tip slowly burned down. “A gray-eyed seer and a dark-haired warrior standing together on a snow-capped mountain ridge. From the time I set foot upon these shores, that image has been foremost in my mind.”