Her voice dropped to a husky whisper, but still everyone heard. “—and somehow your passion brought him back to life. Well. Whole. Healed. As we see him.”
An uproar broke out. Istas, Olpash, others called to us, demanding to know if it was true. Kor and I did not answer them, but Tassida made her way through the crowd to us, and we spoke with her.
“Is it so horrible?” she asked.
“It is fearsome, as you have said, and too recent for comfort,” Kor replied. But he was not angry. Our love for her kept us from anger.
“If you must sing, Tass,” I told her shakily, “then give us the song of Chal and Vallart.”
She sat close by us, and I saw that she wore a sword, like Kor’s, like mine, at her belt, and on its pommel shone a great stone the color of the blessing of Sakeema in the sunset, a color no one can name except by the legendary healing flower of the god, the amaranth. Too red to be called violet, but darkly far from the blood red of Zaneb’s stone. It was a color pure, clear, and piercingly sweet, like the fragrance of the amaranth, once known to me in a vision.
Tassida struck the chords of the song. And, so great is the power of music, the babble faded and the crowd grew quiet to hear. Kor and I sat down, and I let my head rest for a moment against his cloaked shoulder, for I felt weak with love and wine and fear, hearing once again Vallart’s words to the prince his comrade:
“… I will follow you if you walk into the sea.
What is a friend? Troth without end.
A light in the eyes, a touch of the hand—
I would follow you even to death’s cold strand.
To death’s … cold … strand.”
Chapter Seven
Late the next day, after we had had time to recover somewhat from our welcome, Kor and I left Seal Hold and rode along the ocean again. It was a sunny day with scarcely a haze of fog—rare, along that shore. Tass rode with us, and looked sideways at us, for Kor still wore his sealskin cloak. There were long silences as we rode, and I, for one, felt awkward.
“Did you see anything uncanny at the pool of vision?” Kor asked in the midst of one such silence, glancing at Tassida’s sword. The jewel in the pommel flashed in the westering sunlight as he spoke.
“Yes,” she replied, only the single word and no more. A quiet, again.
“In your many travels, have you ever seen a wolf, Tass?” I asked after we had ridden onward awhile.
“No,” she said. A long pause, so long that I thought we were in the grip of silence still. But she surprised me by speaking. “On my way over the mountains, coming here, I thought I heard one howl. From where, I could not tell. The sound echoed between the peaks.”
She had journeyed, we surmised, not far behind us. “The night of the hunters’ moon?” Kor asked.
“Yes.”
She heard either the wolf or you, Dan, Kor mindspoke me, hiding his amusement.
Hush, I told him. Oddly, I feared that Tassida might overhear us, though certainly I had never feared that Istas might, or any of the others.
Kor must have sensed my doubt. He looked at her askance. “Tass, why are you here?”
Tass had been amiable till then, for her. But the question put her on her mettle at once. I saw her come to warrior alertness on Calimir’s back, as if she carried a spear. “Why not?” she retorted.
“No reason. But you say you do not wish to travel with us, yet you seem always to be turning up. What—”
“If you do not want me here,” she interrupted hotly, “I will go.”
I laughed, feeling more at ease since we were quarreling—our bickering seemed more natural than the silence. “Tass, you have always gone when you wished and come back willy-nilly, like changing weather. What wind blew you here this time?”
She sighed and let go of spleen for a moment, speaking quietly. “I wanted to see if you are still bent on this witless venture.”
For answer Kor nodded at the sea. “Greenstone stacks,” he said.
Weird spires and crags and hillocks of rock rose from the ocean ahead of us, their shapes sometimes round, sometimes mountainous, but stranger than those of any mountain I had ever seen. The day was nearing sundown, the tide running high, and the great rocks stood darkly shining, wet with spray, looming against an orange sky and water of like hue. The steady clamor in my ears, calling of many seabirds and crashing of surf, made me feel lightheaded, as if I were floating rather than riding along at Talu’s jarring trot.
“And look,” Kor added, “my cousins.”
Portions of the dark and shining rock seemed to move, and I blinked, making out the sleek forms of seals, wet and gleaming. They lay basking in the sunset, some sitting upright as if in salute to the fineness of the day, heads pointing skyward, some nudging each other with whiskered noses, swaying into unlikely curves, some lolling in the spray as the rocks wallowed in the waves: the odd, watersheen shapes of the seals echoed the many shapes of the Greenstones. Or perhaps the rocks echoed seal forms. It was as if the rocks stood there, knee-deep in the sea, for no other purpose than for seals to lie on and frolic upon.
Seals lay at the foot of the cliff to landward, also. Kor dismounted, we all dismounted, and walked softly toward them over the sand of the beach, and they did not flee from us.
“How can the Otter River folk want them killed!” Kor muttered angrily.
Kor’s people killed seals sometimes, in need and with reverence, as we of the Red Hart killed deer. But they ate fish so as to spare the seals, and were joyful when they saw that many seals lived.
“Of all creatures, one of the few that has kept the many colors of Sakeema’s time.…”
The three of us stood looking, the seals nearly at our feet. Indeed, they were of almost every possible creature color, some black, some gray or brown or yellow or russet, and some shone nearly blood-red in the sunset light. Half-grown pups were covered with soft fur as blue as blue fog. Their elders were often mottled and spotted with patches of random color: white ringstreaks, red blankets, brown dapples, yellow specks. I even saw a green tinge on the flanks of some. A grand black bull lifted his head and barked at us—he was as large as I. A gray cow stretched and fanned herself with a flipper. The smallest seal was the size of a small child, but most were middling, about of a weight with a young woman or a youth of the Seal Kindred.
“On the plains,” Tassida said softly, “horses run in as many colors as these.”
Except for Calimir, the horses I knew were only brown and dun. All deer were gone except the red, all foxes but the gray, all wolves …
Kor turned to his yellow dun mare with a sigh and began to strip her of her gear. I turned likewise to Talu. Whether disturbed by our actions or merely because the sun was sinking, the seals ambled away or slithered into the water. Tassida stood watching us with a puzzled frown.
“You are staying here? But you have brought no sleeping robes, no food.”
“None needed for a vigil,” Kor said.
We walked the horses farther southward along the shore, beyond the Greenstones, and turned them loose, sending them away with a shout. Forested mountain slopes rose up from the sea, rocks full of whistlers and pikas and viper nests. And there would be leavings on the beach as well, dead fish—Talu, for one, loved fish, the riper the better. We hoped the horses would be able to fend for themselves so as not to take food from Kor’s people. We hoped, perhaps, that they would be waiting for us when we came back. Though we scarcely dared to expect it. As to the coming back itself, we scarcely dared to expect.
Tassida watched us, wide-eyed.
“You two—you truly think you can bring back Tyonoc from the realm of the dead.”
The wary look on her face made me think of Istas and the way she had seen us off, silent, suspicious, half-fearful after hearing Tassida’s song. Whether Tass had intended the ballad for that purpose, or for whatever purpose, there had been no protests in Istas since. No nattering, no chewing on the outcome. No talk of safeguards, a retinue. No protests
from any of Kor’s kindred, least of all from Olpash. I had to smile, but the smile washed away as if with the tide, for I was afraid.
“We don’t think it,” Kor replied, grim. “We go to do whatever task awaits us. Thinking is of no use.”
He took off his sword, and I mine. It was dusk, the sun had sunk, the sea washed dim. We carried the swords into a cave beneath the cliffs, not far from another cave I remembered from another time, and the stones in the pommels shone red and yellow, lighting our way with a sundown glow. On a ledge at the farthest indeeps of the cave, out of the reach of tides, we laid them down, blades crossed, and laid our hands on them for a moment, letting our fingers touch in the whisper of light, faint as starlight, and we bade farewell to the weapons we scarcely understood.
Tassida had followed us. “They will be safe there?” she said, more a plaint than a question. I noticed that her voice was shaking.
“They should be,” I told her. “Have you ever tried to touch one of these swords not your own?”
“No. Mine—came to me.”
“If I tried to take it from you, it would cut me. Slice off my hand, if need be.” I smiled, remembering the cut Kor’s sword had given me when I had been foolish enough to try to capture it for him, and stepping toward her I raised my hand to show it to her.
She turned and ran out of the cave.
Shrugging, I followed. Kor followed. Tass was swinging up onto Calimir.
“Off again?” Kor called, his voice low.
“Yes. You two terrify me.” Nevertheless, she quirked an odd smile at us. “Take your horse gear back to Seal Hold?” she offered.
It would keep better there than in the cave. We handed it up to her, deerskin riding blankets and leather headstalls. Dusk was darkening. Though I looked intently, I could scarcely see her face.
“Farewell. Gentle journey to you. I—” For a moment her hands touched ours, Kor’s and mine, and I felt something for which I had no words. Not even the name of love described it. Perhaps she felt it too, and it made her forget what she wanted to say. She ducked her head, stammering, and pulled her hands away. “Blast it,” I heard her mumble, and then she sent Calimir springing landward. We watched him gallop, a dark shape against the pale sand of the beach.
Just as we were about to lose sight of her in the twisted spruces, she reined him in and turned back toward us. Perhaps she raised a hand—I could not tell. But her voice rang out clear and strong through the nightfall. “Come back!” she called. “Be sure you come back to us mortals!” Then she was gone.
I shivered. What had she meant? I felt all too mortal myself.
We put off our boots, our clothing. Naked, we stepped to the edge of the surf, Kor and I. He carried his sealskin cloak in one hand. I had nothing to aid me in making the change, and no thought, either, as to how I was to do it.… Cold clutch of seawater at my feet. If the seals were still on the rocks I could not hear them—I could hear nothing but the commotion of surf, or my own heart’s pounding, my own fear. I felt adrift, awash, as if already I were drowned and bloating. The nearness of the sea filled me with dread. It was not to me a familiar beauty and sustainer and danger, as it was to Kor. As if entangled in wrack of nightmare, I could think only of black water, chill, deep, and how it had gathered me in to kill me.
And Vallart’s words to Chal throbbed like a heartbeat in my head: I will follow you if you walk into the sea.…
“Kor,” I whispered, echoing the song, “I am not of the stuff of legend.”
I do not think he heard me, not above the surf’s roar. I would have needed to shout to be heard. But I am sure he felt my fear. He reached over and handbonded me.
Come, he mindspoke, it is only to go out to the Greenstones, the farthest stack, for now.
What then, neither of us could say. But how could I hold back, whatever might befall? It was my quest, my father, Tyonoc, whom we sought—was it not? Who was the leader and who was the led?
“Come on,” I said fiercely, for the handbond had given me courage. Letting go, but staying close by him, I strode forward to do battle with the surf.
Battering water—it blinded me, burned my lungs, knocked me backward, filled me with terror and rage. I had been reared where the upland streams run knee-deep, and I was not accustomed to the ways of mighty water. It angered me that water should mob, overrun, best me. I strove against it, and it beat on me worse than giant fists, worse than a Cragsman’s cudgel. Where was Kor? I could not see—
His grasp closed on my wrist, and he was pulling me downward. Panicked, I fought him too. Was he my betrayer now, like the father and brother who had kicked at my head to drown me in the black tarn?
Dan, stop thrashing. The easing contact of his mind, once so frightening to me, now felt as steadying as handbond. I let him draw me down under the breakers.
No one can fight Mother Sea. She is mighty and larger than the mountains, she always wins. One must slip through her lines.
He brought me up in the quieter water beyond the surf, where I took in air with ragged gasps. Even here waves tossed me and slapped at my face, stinging my nostrils with salt. Disgusted, wanting only to gain the solid footing of the rocks and be out of this foul-tasting smother, I tried to churn my way forward. My hands threw up splashes of green light from the black water. The rocks were black hulks against a sky milky with stars, their verges awash with faint light. At my side, Kor floated at his ease, stretched out on the surface of the ocean, his path limned with dim green, the sealskin swimming like a living thing beside him.
Slip, Dan, slip! Edgewise.
I tried. Sometimes I got on better, but I could not entirely manage it. Kor reached out from time to time and gave me a tug, helping me flounder forward. More often, Mother Sea gave me a hefty blow and threw me back, or I sank, choking, to blunder against the rocky bottom or feel Kor’s grasp again on my wrist. Coming up, I gasped or gulped or spat like a cat. It was time past forever before I finally reached the rocky sea stack where we were to keep our vigil, and I had so exhausted myself that I lay flat on the wet rock, scarcely out of the spray.
Kor helped me up to the rounded top after a while, where it was dry and the rock gave back the warmth of the day’s sun. He kept silence for some time, until I was done panting.
“You hate it,” he said finally.
“Mahela, yes.” I was still coughing up salt spume from time to time.
“Go back. The waves will carry you to shore.”
“No.”
I did not want another dunking, he thought. “I will come with you, and swim out again.”
“No! Kor, don’t talk like a fool. I’m staying.”
“Pigheaded,” he muttered.
“Speak for yourself,” I retorted.
“But that’s just it! Dan, don’t you see I am at fault for bringing you here? How can it be right? You are not made for this. If—” He stopped. Something unspeakable lay in his mind, making my own fear anger me.
“I’m past needing a nursemaid,” I told him savagely. “You tend to your vigil and your life. I’ll tend to mine.”
Warmth was leaving the rock. I sat up, shivering in the chill sea breeze. We Red Hart, we go bare-chested into blizzards, but the ocean damp makes us quake. I would be shivering for the most part of the next several days.
Kor sat by me, silent and still, legs folded, hands clasped. But I was not deceived. Not until all was right between us would he be able truly to begin his vigil.
I mindspoke him, but not with words, just a touch, as if I had reached over to touch his arm. Gentle, but he was somewhat startled and turned toward me with a quick intake of breath. Then, delighted, he smiled. Nor were such smiles commonplace in him.
“How did you do that?”
“I—I don’t know. I just—” Words would not come, and I puffed my lips in exasperation. “I had to tell you, or show you,” I blurted at last. “Kor, pay no attention to my spleen. Our lives are bound, I know that.”
“Heartbound, handbound,
mindbound,” he said softly, moved.
“But, Sakeema be my witness, Kor, I am here of my own will. I seek my father to save him, remember? If I fail, it will be of my own doing, not yours.”
Maybe he did not believe me entirely. In my heart I did not believe it myself, deeming of him what I did. But it served, for the time, to free him, and he nodded, reaching over to me. We clasped hands firmly and in silence.
“Look,” he said after a while, letting his grip drift away from mine, “the starlight on the whitecaps and the green swirls between, is it not beautiful?”
He was not one to say such things idly. I knew he wanted me to see beauty in the black water so that I would be able to enter it with more ease. But I could not reply to him, and those were the last words he spoke to me for the many days of the vigil.
I shivered through the night, sitting by his side, and saw the morning dawn all too slowly through fog. Nor did the fog burn away, all the next day. I sat bone-chilled and cramped with cold, longing for the sun, but I suppose it was as well that the haze hid it, or our naked skin would have been scorched—sun rays fall strongly at sea. Though at the time I scarcely considered myself blessed. Alone in gray brume, Kor and I sat without eating or speaking or sleeping, as is the custom for the keeping of vigil. We moved only to relieve ourselves into the sea on the far side of the stack or to drink the fogwater that gathered in small pools atop the rock, water that tasted rank and was never enough. I sucked the dew that dripped from the ends of my hair. Other than that, we sat. Kor sat atop his sealskin cloak. I had nothing but the hard rock under me, but I did not complain, not even to myself, for I knew he had not brought the pelt along for his comfort.
Even the second night neither of us slept, though I for one would sorely have liked to, if it were not for the wintry cold. Kor, I think, had already gone into a sort of trance. Alert and tranquil, he faced the sea as if he were only waiting for a beckoning, a sign.
We saw seals from time to time. Some came and lay at the base of the very sea stack on which we sat. We saw many things: cormorants flying, low to the water and as silent as the mist, and some sort of large fish leaping in the distance, and fulmars on the rocks, and the third night, when the mist cleared, a skein of geese across the moon, their piping very faint—the sound of that faraway flock wrenched my heart with a sorrow and longing I could not explain. And the cries of birds, gulls, sanderlings, whimbrels, kittiwakes, every day, as constant as the soughing of the water, and the vigil had taken its course as a vigil should, for I had passed beyond impatience and hunger and cold into something other, and time had ceased to hold meaning for me. The trance was in a way better than sleeping. I suppose I dozed from time to time, still upright, but I do not recall doing so—I remember only that everything seemed very clear and bright, as if in a mist made of sunshine, in which there were no shadows. I saw every tan leaf of the kelp that swam by the knees of the rocks, every bladder and stem. I saw a small feather that dropped from the breast of a passing bird. My breathing, so it seemed, was as slow and steady as the rhythm of the tides. I do not know how long we sat, Kor and I, after the skein of wild geese crossed the moon with a sound as of a distant clay flute.
Mindbond Page 8