“Where is this gathering place, exactly?” Korram wondered, unsure why the event seemed to be such a serious issue.
There was an uncomfortable shifting around the circle. “It’s been a secret among our people for countless generations,” Silanth finally replied. “I’ve never heard of anyone telling a Lowlander about it, much less bringing him there.”
“Which is why there’s still a problem,” Ernth put in. “Yes, I know there’s a way to solve it, but I still say that isn’t going to work.”
“What won’t work?” Korram demanded, turning to him.
“Well, you’ve been learning our ways,” Charr explained, “and it’s true that you seem trustworthy. But outsiders don’t come to the Mid-Autumn Gathering. They never have. People would be horrified if a Lowlander showed up.”
“If you weren’t killed on sight, you’d be driven out,” Ernth told him bluntly, “and even if somehow you weren’t, you’d never be allowed to speak to the group.” But he didn’t say the words with the same scorn and anger he would have used a few days ago.
“But I’m the Prince of Malorn! Technically this land belongs to me anyway.”
“When you come before them all at mid-autumn,” Carch put in quietly, “no one will care who you are or what belongs to you. They will never be willing to listen to you unless you first become one of us.”
“But isn’t that what I’ve been doing?” Korram protested. “I’ve been learning to live just the way you do. What more would it take?”
“It will never work,” Ernth predicted. “There’s no way a Lowlander would survive.”
“But it has been done before,” Relth ventured, “or at least so I’ve heard.”
“In legend,” Ernth burst out indignantly. “Not in reality, at least not recent reality.”
“What’s been done in legend?” Korram demanded, turning back and forth to stare at them both.
“I say he might,” Thorst argued. “Some have it easier than others. You never know.”
“What? What’s been done before?” Korram demanded. “What would I not survive? Tell me what you’re talking about!”
“The Rite of Acceptance,” Thorst explained patiently. “If you were Accepted, you would earn the honor of becoming one of us, no different than anyone else among our people. You would have the right to come and speak at our Mid-Autumn Gathering, and everyone would listen.”
“Well, that sounds good.” Korram couldn’t understand why they were making this such a big deal. Hadn’t the family already accepted him, more or less? “So what does it take to get Accepted?”
Looks were exchanged all around the circle. This was obviously another Mountain Folk secret. “You have to go and get yourself a horse,” Thorst said finally, and Korram couldn’t quite keep back a surprised laugh.
“A horse? That’s all? I have dozens of horses back at the palace stables.”
“Not one of those,” Chun corrected sternly. “A mountain horse. Like ours.” He pointed to the family’s horses, grazing in their little herd nearby.
“I don’t understand. What do I need a horse for? You all don’t even ride your horses very often.”
“Horses are at the center of our lives,” Relth explained. “As you’ve seen, they carry everything we own when we travel. But more than that, they’re our friends. Every adult among our people has his or her own horse. Being able to get one proves you’re worthy to live in the mountains.”
“Well, all right. That doesn’t sound so bad. Where do I get a horse? I don’t have any money anymore, remember?”
Ernth laughed. “You can’t use money to get Accepted, Prince of Malorn. You have to have what it takes inside yourself. Strength, courage, determination, creativity, survival skills. It isn’t easy, even for our people. For a Lowlander, it would be close to impossible.”
“What if I have all those things?” challenged Korram.
“You don’t,” Ernth shot back, though still not as unkindly as he used to speak to him. “You likely wouldn’t last three days out in the mountains on your own. You don’t know anything about how to survive out here without tools and weapons.”
“I can learn,” Korram objected. “I’ve learned a lot already.”
“We’ll tell you how this works,” Carch put in, interrupting the argument. “The Rite of Acceptance should not be attempted lightly. Even our people don’t always survive the attempt.”
“All right.” Korram leaned back and crossed his legs. “Tell me what’s involved, then. We’ll see if I can do it.”
“You must travel alone to a place we call Horse Valley just beyond Mount Clinja, where horses roam wild,” her husband Thest told Korram. “You will choose one, or one will choose you, and will become your lifelong companion.”
“There are hundreds of them there,” Charr put in, “but you have to pick just the right one. The horse that will love you when it sees you, understand you immediately, and Accept you as no other could.”
It sounded silly to Korram to think of a wild animal loving, understanding, and Accepting him. That part was probably superstition. But if he caught and tamed one, he supposed it would probably grow attached to him eventually.
“If you succeed in this and return alive with a horse of your own, you will be Accepted by our people,” Thest continued. “All of us have done this – except the little ones, of course.” He indicated baby Chenth and young Thisti and Sench, who were listening wide-eyed. “Among our people, a child becomes an adult at Acceptance.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Korram replied. “I’ve already learned how to find edible plants, and cook them too; and I can fish and hunt. I should be able to manage the journey.”
“It’s not as easy as that, Prince of Malorn,” Ernth scoffed. “Can you fish without line and hook, and hunt without bow and arrows? Can you cook without any utensils, and sleep without a tent or blankets? Can you ward off ravenous wolves and snowcats without a spear, and survive the trek over the snowy passes with only the clothes on your back? And can you capture a wild horse with no rope or harness – capture his heart and make him want to leave his home and be yours – and then survive the return trek, protecting and providing for yourself and your horse, and find the home camp again even if we’ve moved since you left?”
Korram could guess at the real meaning behind the list of difficulties Ernth had just spelled out. It was terribly difficult, but I succeeded. If a mere Lowlander were to succeed too, it would cheapen my accomplishment. That, Korram suspected, was the real reason Ernth didn’t want him even to try.
Everyone was watching him for his response. Deep inside, he was honest enough to admit that he probably could not do most of those things effectively. But then, a couple of months ago he hadn’t been able to do half the things he could do now.
“Not yet,” he finally replied, meeting Ernth’s gaze evenly. “You’re right, I couldn’t do all that yet. But I’ve learned a lot from you people so far, and I'm ready to learn the rest of what I need to know.” He looked around at the others, meeting all their gazes. “If you’ll teach me the skills I need, I’ll undertake this Rite of Acceptance.”
“There isn’t much time before the Mid-Autumn Gathering, though,” warned Chun, Ernth’s father. “We’re already past the end of summer. I hope you can learn fast.”
“We can keep teaching him on the way,” his wife Therk pointed out. “We have a choice of routes when we move on this morning. Let’s head for the one that will take us closest to Mount Clinja to give him a little head start, and he’ll still have about half a moon to practice the skills he’ll need.”
“But there aren’t any routes that will take us right up to Mount Clinja,” Ernth warned Korram. “It’s not an area our people normally pass through, because the slopes are so steep and there’s not much to be found there to eat. So don’t think you’ll have a short or easy journey when you go off on your own.”
Thest nodded his agreement. “I’m afraid that will be the way of it, boy. We’ll take y
ou as far as we safely can, but you’ll still need to travel alone through dangerous territory for many days.”
Korram nodded too. “I understand. I’ll face whatever dangers I must.”
As soon as everyone had finished drinking their milk, several of the Mountain Folk headed down to the stream to fish for breakfast while the rest began taking down the tents. At Chun’s insistence, Korram joined the fishing party.
“You had better learn to fish with a spear, boy,” Chun told him. “You’ll probably be able to make a spear without tools more easily than a hook and line.” He led him upstream away from the others to a quiet spot where trees on the bank overhung the water. “Watch for fish and then stab them. Like this.” The two of them stood motionless on the bank, peering into the dim water. For a long moment nothing happened, and then, so suddenly that Korram jumped, Chun thrust his spear out and down with a jerk. When he pulled it out of the water, a wriggling silver fish was impaled on the end.
Tugging the fish off and tossing it onto the bank, Chun handed his spear to Korram. “Now you try.”
Korram stood staring at the water for a long time before he even saw a fish. When he did, he stabbed at it so hard that he lost his balance and had to flail wildly with his free arm to keep from falling into the stream. The spear came up empty, the fish vanished.
Without a word, Chun reached for his weapon. His face warm with embarrassment, Korram handed it back. “Look,” Chun told him sternly. “What you think you see underwater is not the way things really are. You have to aim for where the fish really is, not where it looks like it is.”
“What are you talking about?” Korram demanded.
“Look,” the man repeated. He beckoned Korram to follow him out from under the trees. Though the sun was not yet up over the mountains, Korram could see the bottom of the streambed more clearly here. Chun used the end of the spear to pry a large white pebble out of the bank by their feet and then nudged it into the water with his bare toe. “Poke the pebble,” he ordered, handing the spear to Korram again.
Feeling silly, Korram lowered the head of the spear into the water above the little rock. But as he did so, he observed how the shaft seemed to change angles as it dipped below the surface, pointing in a slightly different direction than he had thought he was aiming. It took two tries to touch the pebble, since neither it nor the tip of the spear was where it seemed they ought to be.
He nodded, understanding now. “I learned all about that with my science tutor back home. It’s called refraction. Something about how light travels differently through water than through air.”
Chun brushed off his explanation as he might have done a mildly annoying insect. “Try again, with a fish this time.”
Korram tried several times but still didn’t succeed in spearing any fish, though he got closer than before. If only they wouldn’t move so fast! He did finally manage to brush one with the tip of the spear, but the fish got away, and the older man scolded him for not thrusting forcefully enough.
Finally Chun took his spear back and caught two more himself. He handed Korram his knife and made him practice slicing the fish catch open and cleaning them before they hiked back up the slope to rejoin the family for breakfast.
The tents had been taken down by now. Sitting on the ground, the family roasted the fish over hot coals on spits made from pieces of a long, green sapling. They made Korram do most of the work, demonstrating every step and then peering over his shoulder while he copied them, quick to correct him half a dozen at a time if he made a mistake.
They spent the rest of the day trekking deeper into the mountains, heading east, everyone taking turns herding their huge flock of goats. When they stopped for the evening, some of the family started on the milking, while Ernth and Charr and Relth took their bows and scattered across the nearby hillside to hunt for supper. Korram, who knew he was a good shot even though he no longer had a bow of his own, would have liked to join them. But Silanth called him over and announced that he was to be in charge of the fire for that night’s supper.
Korram was good at starting a fire with the flint and steel he and Trayven had brought from Sazellia. But of course that was no longer an option, and he knew he had better learn to do it the Mountain Folk way if he were to have a chance at surviving at night in the high mountains.
“Go gather the wood first,” Silanth ordered, seemingly determined to make sure he practiced every step in the process.
Korram set off into the trees and began to gather up fallen sticks and branches, breaking the larger ones into manageable sizes as he went. After he had brought back two armloads, Silanth inspected his pile and frowned disapprovingly. “You need more twigs. Go back and get the smallest ones you can find.”
Choosing not to be irritated at her stern tone, Korram obeyed. Next, she insisted that he peel the dry bark off the sticks and crumble it up to use as tinder. He already knew to place his tinder on the bottom and arrange the twigs he would use as kindling around and above it like a conical tent. The larger sticks and small logs he piled carefully around the edges, ready to be added to the fire as it grew.
Silanth nodded her approval. “Now use these,” she ordered, pulling two small stones out of the pocket of her goatskin tunic. “And take a close look so you’ll be able to find some of your own later.” She held them up one at a time as she handed them over. “This is your handstone,” she told him, “and this one is your striker.”
Korram examined them closely. The handstone was a bronzy gray color, about half the size of his fist, with a groove across the length of it. The striker was a white rock he recognized as quartz, a little smaller than the handstone. He had seen other rocks that looked like both of these in streambeds.
“When you go off on your own to attempt the Rite of Acceptance,” Silanth told him, “you should look for firestones like this right away. When you find good ones, keep them with you for the rest of your trip and make sure they stay dry and clean. If you can’t light a fire, you’ll never survive on Mount Clinja at night.”
She showed him how to hold the handstone with one hand and hit the striker against it with the other, scraping it hard and fast along the groove until sparks appeared. At first Korram thought it was easier than he had expected. But the hard part was holding it close enough to the crumbled bark that the sparks would catch, and then rearranging the pile of wood so that some of the larger pieces blocked the wind, which blew out the tiny flame the instant it appeared.
Thisti and Sench watched the lesson, giggling good-naturedly at his failures. Sench even pulled his thumb out of his mouth long enough to join in his sister’s cheers when at last Korram succeeded in lighting a flame that didn’t go out. The two of them leaned over to help him feed the little fire with twigs and then larger sticks, and when it had grown into a respectable blaze, Korram finally sat back on his heels and grinned triumphantly. Another skill mastered. Now as long as he could find the right kind of stones, he would have no cold evenings on his solitary journey.
The family continued heading east over the next few days, their direction gradually changing to southeast and then almost due south. Traveling at a leisurely pace for most of the daylight hours, they strolled among their horses and goats, occasionally stopping to munch on berries or gather them to bring along for supper. In the late afternoons they stopped and let the animals graze while they divided up the end-of-day jobs: milking, hunting or fishing, gathering firewood, cooking.
Thest, however, left these tasks to the others while he worked on the pair of boots he had begun to sew for Korram from a piece of deerskin. “You can’t attempt the Rite of Acceptance in those Lowlander shoes,” he told Korram flatly. The others chuckled as though the very idea were ridiculous.
Everyone began to talk of how close they were getting to Mount Clinja and to speculate about whether or not Korram was ready for the coming ordeal. Around the campfire during supper, the others told stories of their own Acceptances, gleefully describing in vivid detail the da
ngers they had faced from cold and hunger and wild animals. Throughout the day, during meals or while they traveled, one or another of them would often teach Korram something new or make him practice a skill he had started to learn. They were always reminding him that he needed to get much better – at everything – if he were to have the slightest chance of surviving in the wild on his own. With each reminder, Korram grew a little more nervous.
When the boots were done, he tried them on and discovered that they were softer and more comfortable than the ones he had brought from Sazellia. At the family’s unanimous insistence, he peeled off his reeking, hole-ridden socks and tossed them into the campfire.
“We wear our boots over our bare feet,” Thorst explained, as though it should have been obvious. “If you need padding or warmth, stuff grass or moss inside.”
Actually, none of the others was wearing footwear of any sort at the moment. They went barefoot, seeming hardly to notice sharp rocks or thorns under their tough soles. Korram knew they covered their feet only in winter.
From across the campfire, Ernth smirked at Korram, whose soft city-bred feet had become a joke in the family. “Better get used to those boots before you go off on your own, Prince of Malorn.”
Thorst nodded his agreement. “Otherwise you’ll get awful blisters like I did.”
Sure enough, the new boots did give Korram blisters at first, but time and handfuls of grass helped. At Thorst’s suggestion, he soaked his boots in a stream overnight and wore them wet the next day, and they molded better to his feet after that.
One evening about a fortnight after leaving Lantil’s village, Thest took Korram aside. “We’ve come as close as we’re going to get, boy. Much further and there are too many dangers to the goats and horses and not enough food for us, so you’ll have to make the rest of the journey on your own.”
He pointed to a wide, snowcapped mountain to the southeast. “You see that white peak? That’s Mount Nezkodney. You don’t have to climb all the way to the top; when you get close, you’ll see passes you can travel through. Once you’re on the other side, you’ll see Mount Clinja just beyond, the closest mountain to the east. It has two steep peaks rising up side by side like a horse’s ears, so you can’t miss it. Once you’re over the pass between the peaks, you’ll come down into Horse Valley.” He grinned at Korram. “Think you’ll be ready to set off in the morning?”
Prince of Malorn (Annals of Alasia Book 3) Page 17