The Tale of the Five Omnibus

by Diane Duane

  Lorn stopped his horse close enough to be polite and not to need shouting, but fairly well out of spear- or sword- reach. Beside him, Eftgan pulled up and nodded politely at the strangers, all of whom shifted uneasily at the movement, as if expecting it to be some kind of signal for attack.

  It took a moment for the rustling to die away. When it did, Eftgan said, “The Goddess’s greeting to you, strangers, and my own with it. What brings you into my country?”

  This time the start that ran through them was much more pronounced, and Lorn found this understandable. He clearly heard Eftgan’s voice asking the question in her drawly north- country Darthene. But at the same time he heard it inside him, underheard it, in Arlene of a perfect Prydon-city accent—his own, in fact. Yet it was still her voice. All the Reavers flinched and stared at one another like scared children, except the small man at their head. The set, wary look on his face apparently needed more than this surprise to unsettle it.

  “What do you mean by ‘your country?’“ the man said. The words of the strange language, as they came out, sounded surprisingly light and lyrical—but then Lorn had never heard Reavers do anything but scream unintelligible battlecries before.

  If the response surprised Eftgan, she showed no sign of it. “All this land is in my care,” she said, “from these mountains to the Sea far to the north, and from the great river to the next great river eastward. I see to it that the ground bears fruit for beasts and men, and that the people who live in my country have enough to eat, and that they are safe in the places they live, and that justice is done them. I have sworn to die rather than fail in any of this. And even if I do die, the Goddess who gave me this responsibility will hold me responsible still. I have Her to answer to. So I speak of the country being ‘mine’, and the people who make their homes in it call me theirs: their Queen.”

  The looks of concern and bewilderment that passed across the Reaver’s face troubled Freelorn considerably. Didn’t these people even know what a ruler was? And what if they don’t? How are we going to explain to them that this is our land, and we would thank them not to invade it every summer—

  “You speak of seeing that your people having enough to eat, and being safe,” the man said. “I know that work myself, and do it for my own.”

  “For all the people like you, everywhere?” Eftgan said. “Or only these with you now?”

  “These and others,” the Reaver said. “As for the great many others, I am only their eyes, and their lips to speak, if any can be found who understand.”

  Eftgan nodded. “What words would the others speak, then?”

  The man cocked his head to one side. “Those who move on this side of the mountains,” he said, “seem to have a new arrow to their bow.”

  Freelorn nodded too, then, and nudged Blackmane a few steps forward, closer to the man on his shaggy horse. Only a few steps: the man looked at him, alarmed, and moved in his saddle. “The arrow,” Freelorn said, “is mine.”

  The man was still staring at him, an odd unsettled look. “If when you speak of a new arrow,” Lorn said, trying to match the man’s own old-fashioned, poetic idiom, “you mean that the mountains moved to aid us, rising up and falling at our behest, when they never did so before, you speak of something that was my doing. Or if you speak of the fiery shadow that rose up from the battlefield east of here, some days ago, that arrow was mine as well. It is my bow they were set to. And more arrows will fly yet.”

  He paused. The man just would not stop staring at him. “I belong to the land westward beyond the river,” Lorn said, “as this lady belongs to the lands hereabout. It is my lands you have come to, as to hers. And so we ride together to meet you.”The Reaver took a deep breath, like someone steeling himself to do something that terrified him, and nudged his own horse with his heels, heading him toward Lorn. Lorn sat there, fairly terrified on his own behalf, and cursed himself silently for not having even a knife ready to hand at the moment. But he held his ground.

  The small man stopped right in front of him and just to one side, close enough to touch and to examine minutely. The shaggy skin thrown over everything; the roughspun cloth of the overtunic; the peeling, crudely tanned leather of the sword fittings and tack. And slung by the side of the horse, the short quiver of Reaver arrows—with the rude hatchmarks by the fletching, two rings, crossed, and red paint rubbed into the scratches.

  Lorn stared at the arrows a moment, then looked up into the face of the Reaver. It was pale with fear, and the knuckles of one of the man’s hands were strained white where he clutched the reins. The other hand lifted, now, reached out tentatively to Lorn, touched him gingerly on the chest where the arrow had gone in; then prodded. Again, harder.

  Then the man said, rough-voiced, fearful, “You are alive. You are one of Them. The Gods.”

  Oh, Lady! Lorn thought, distressed. He breathed out, met the man’s eyes, shook his head—but does that even mean the same with them as it does with us? “No,” he said. “The—arrow—that I loosed… it struck yours aside. That’s all.”

  The Reaver looked from Lorn to Eftgan. “I have never seen such a thing,” he said. “They said your people were accursed, and would rise from the dead to haunt us.”

  “We do not do it often,” Eftgan said, “and never without the Goddess’s leave.” Her voice was light, but she slid a sidelong look at Lorn. They? she said, bespeaking him.

  Yes. “I have things to do,” Freelorn said to the Reaver, “and could not let your arrow stop me.” He worked hard to keep his face quiet, for sitting here and bald-facedly taking credit for Herewiss’s miracles made him guilty. “There are people in my land past the river who would deny me my right to care for it. I am on my way to take back my own from them.”

  A look of suspicion went across the Reaver’s face. “They told us,” he said, “of the wicked one, the child of the beast, that was cast out, and fled for seven years, and would try to return.”

  That set Lorn back for a moment. Child of the beast, indeed— He thought of his father’s dry wise humor—and then of Héalhra’s statue in Lionhall, all cool wisdom, and passion ready to strike, but controlled—a symbol for a person who had become more than any mere beast, more than any mere man before or since.

  Beside him, Eftgan sat impassive, waiting. “You seem to have been told many things,” Lorn said, finally, “and it must be hard to know what to believe. But more can be said than what you have been told. For one thing, I have no desire to kill you all.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “What of the mountain that fell on our people?” he said. “What of the shadow and the fire, that made day of night, and opened the earth, so that it swallowed a thousand great companies of my folk? Child of the beast, you lie. We came the great journey, hungering, from the snows, and death is all you had for us. Death is all you have ever had!”

  Freelorn shook his head, to have something to do to cover up the fact that his hands were shaking. Hungering. Could it be something so simple as that? It’s cold enough in our southern lands, hard enough to grow anything: how is it for them? But his anger was beginning to get the better of him. “As for the mountain, that was a door that had to be closed,” he said. “Hungering you come; what of my people, then, whose fields you set afire, whose cattle you drive off or kill, whose houses you burn, with my people in them? By that door you have come a thousand times. Now it is shut, and my people in that part of the world will fear you no longer! But as regards Britfell field,” Lorn said, “if you send a messenger back to your own side of the mountain, you will find that your people are not dead. Sent back to your own countries, and well away from our own, yes. But the Goddess bids us not kill, when it can be avoided.”

  The Reaver’s eyes were still narrowed. “That too could be a lie,” he said.

  Lorn reached up, pulled down his shirt to show the healed scar, looked up again and met the man’s eyes and held them. “This was not,” he said. “I came back. Your people went by another road. But they live. Send, and
see.”

  Fear and anger were fighting in the Reaver’s eyes. “‘Your own’—what gives you right to keep all the good for yourselves, to shut us out forever? Our beasts have little, our children die; here the grass is green and the sun is warm, so why must we die and you live? Rather than that I will make you die—or perhaps I will not, myself, but my sons will, and their sons—and then those who are left will yield up the green places to us, and we will have our share—”

  Lorn’s heart was beating fast with anger and fear. And so we’re no further along than we were before. Back to driving them out, killing them, being killed, the fields burning—

  — and the image came to him; riding out in this part of the world with his father, a long, long time ago. Far southeastern Arlen, the green fields of it in the summer, stretching miles and miles to the foothills of the mountains. But nothing but grass would grow there, and the green fields were too far away from any settlements to support the sheep that could have grazed there—by the time they were walked back to civilization, all the fat would be walked off them and they would be lean and ill. “It’ll be many years before this part of the world has enough people living in it to make it worth living in,” his father had said, “and nothing we can do about it but keep the land safe for the Goddess, and wait Her time—”

  “Listen to me,” Lorn said to the Reaver, his voice so calm it surprised even him. “What you say has truth about it. Why should we have all the green country?” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Eftgan’s eyes flick toward him. He made no sign. “In the south and east of my own country,” he said, “there is empty land that my people cannot use, for it’s too far from where most of us have come to live. Tell me if it’s as I think, that you do not sow fields, to grow grain? You only pasture sheep and cattle?”

  “Grow—grain?” the man said, bewildered again.

  Oh, Goddess, thank you— “Never mind,” Lorn said. “Those empty lands I told you of: they are wide, none of my people live nearby. Once I have my own back, I will give them to you.”

  Eftgan shifted in the saddle. Lorn ignored her.

  “Give—” the man said,

  “You and your people may be there, as many of you as can be supported by your horses and sheep and cattle,” Lorn said. “That land is wide. You must promise that your riders will not come into the settled lands where my people are. But that land will be yours to move through, yours and your people’s, always. And should you become hungry, if the land fails you, we will find other ways to help you.”

  The Reaver looked suspicious again, but this time the fear seemed to be ebbing out of his eyes. “If this is a true offer,” he said slowly, “those for whom I speak would help you take back ‘what is yours’. Even the others never made us so fair an offer.”

  The others?—no, later— Lorn breathed in, breathed out, shook his head. “No. Forgive me, but you must return to your own place for the moment. Or if you like, remain here, but help no one. I and the—others—must settle our own affairs without the help of strangers.”

  The Reaver chieftain was silent for the space of a few breaths. “And you,” he said to Eftgan, “do you also say this?”

  “At another time, I may,” she said. “For now I say that what my brother promises, that he will perform, and that I will help him perform, inasmuch as I can.”

  The Reaver looked at them both for a long few moments, his face grim, but no longer angry. Finally he nodded. “This must be thought on,” he said. “I will send, first, to see what is true about our own people. Should I and my comrade- chiefs find you truthful… then here we will stay, and wait.”

  Eftgan nodded at that. “Is there anything your people here need?” she said. “Food? A place to stay?”

  “We have food, for the time,” he said. “‘Stay’? Do you mean more tents—?”

  “If you have enough for your present needs,” Eftgan said, “that is enough for us. I will send you a messenger in some days, if I may, to see how you are getting along.”

  The Reaver bowed in the saddle—a quick gesture, but courteous enough—and turned his pony and rode off. His group gathered around him, followed him away.

  Eftgan and Freelorn watched them go. Eftgan was shaking her head. “This has been one of my more interesting mornings in this world,” she said. “Lorn, you asked him some of the right questions, and I was able to see some interesting answers in his head. —They don’t understand the idea of owning land at all, I don’t think. They don’t understand houses, or being tied to one place—and as you found, they don’t understand farming. No wonder they never looted the fields, only burnt them. To try to make the people settled there move away, I suppose, so that the land could be returned to grazing, which the Reavers understood.” Eftgan shook her head. “These people… are as we were, a long time ago, after the Darkness fell, but before the Dragons came…. ”

  Freelorn nodded. “Now all I have to do is win my kingdom back,” he said, “and give a third of it to them…. ”

  “Yes,” Eftgan said, throwing him a peculiar look, “I doubt my people would be happy with the offer, either. Better you than me, brother. Nonetheless, it was an offer that needed making—and if you had not, I think I would have had to. He was quite right; we have no right to our plenty while they starve. Sometimes the Goddess speaks to us unusually clearly…. ”

  Eftgan tugged at the reins and turned Scoundrel back toward her own people. Lorn followed her, musing. “Hunger,” he said. “Did we ever seriously consider that as a reason that they kept coming back again and again? Or did we always prefer to think that they were just a herd of bloodthirsty brigands?”

  Eftgan shook her head. “It would certainly be easier to get people to fight them if a ruler pretended not to know otherwise. Whether any other Darthene or Arlene kings or queens have had such suspicions…. it’s hard to tell. But we do, now.”

  He nodded. “You ought to head home,” he said to Eftgan—forced himself to say to her—and reached out a hand. She took it, slid it up the forearm so that they gripped each halfway up the other’s arm; the warrior’s grip, or the king’s.

  “Go safe,” she said, “and go always with Her.”

  “She’s always here anyway,” Lorn said. “As for my half of it—” He shrugged. “I’ll do what I can. Meantime, you be careful too. And if you hear from Herewiss—”

  Eftgan said nothing, just nodded, then turned and rode away to her waiting people.

  Lorn turned his back on her, and nudged Blackmane with his heels. “On the road again, my lad,” he said, and let the gelding take his own way through the bracken and the jutting stones, eastward, toward the low hills and the distant Arlid. In a soft clangour of pots, Pebble came pacing after them on his lead rein. Lorn only turned once, after a while, and saw the flash of something diamond-hafted held up under the noon sun. Lorn waved in that general direction, unable to make out figures distinctly. Another flash, blue this time, and then the only light left was the everyday light of the sun on the heather and the stones.

  He turned again, and rode east.

  FIVE

  Iha’hh irik-kej ahaa taues’ih ohn taue-stihé hu.

  The only thing more to be feared than a great desire is that same desire come true.

  (Dracon proverb)

  “I plan to fly,” she had said, so offhandedly. Being more than half-Dragon, these days, she thought she might as well. Now Segnbora flew, and shook her head at her own naivété, for she had never thought it would be so complicated.

  How many times in the old days, when she had merely been a sorceress, did she look up at birds and think, What a marvel to do that. And how easy it looks. And so it did; a flick of the wings, the wind to bear you up, freedom to soar. Well, freedom there was, now, but not in the shape that she had ever expected. There was a strange body to manage, with its own habits and prerogatives. —Well, not exactly strange; no Dracon body would ever be strange to her, inside or out, now that she was “outdweller”, sdaha, to Hasai.
/>   She glanced over at Hasai as she soared. They were flying slowly, for pleasure’s sake. Rushing would not profit them in the slightest at this point, and there had been little enough time to fly for pleasure since she had broken through into her Power and things started to happen in a hurry. Hasai was in slow-flight extension, his wings at full spread, not moving. A Dragon, Segnbora had found, rarely needed to move its wings except when landing, to brake—an old habit, even that not entirely necessary. Using the wings to push against air was the least part of flying, for a Dragon. Once upon a time, back in the dim times on the Homeworld, when Dragonkind was young and inexperienced, it had been the most important part. But now, for most of their flying, Dragons propelled themselves using forces that the world itself bred in its turning—invisible lines that stretched north to south, as well as other lines more local, and more tenuous but more powerful forces that started where the air gave out and had to do with the Sun, and the Moon and the other worlds that went around it.

  Other worlds, she thought, shaking her head slightly. There was soft laughter from some of her mdeihei in the background. They found it mildly funny that the humans of the Middle Kingdoms didn’t even know about the other planets in their solar system. Segnbora had not even known what a solar system was, until Hasai suddenly became her mdaha and changed almost everything in her world.

  Nor had she known about what flying took; but she was learning, in short order. She had a chorus of hundreds of breathy, rumbling, echoing voices singing in the back of her mind, now; all Hasai’s linear ancestors, all of them mdahaih, “indwelling”—physically dead, but nonetheless alive inside her, and vocal—and all commenting in intricately interwoven melody on her skill, or lack of it. That by itself didn’t bother her… but the complexity of the comments left her astounded.