In short order they were lounged in one of the largest bark-and-stave tubs Tokela had ever seen, with their mud-spattered, sodden clothing and furs whisked away to be brushed clean and spread to dry by the huge hearths in the far alcoves. Šaya even offered Našobok a shave. He politely declined, saying it was more likely he’d fall asleep in the process and end up with a cut throat instead of a smooth cheek.
Finally, back in the main den of the longhouse, hide scrubbed a-tingle and hair let loose to dry, Tokela found himself cross-legged across from Našobok and focusing on his first real meal in some Suns. Tubers, roasted meats, fresh bread, and a side bowl brimming with cracked šinc’teh parboiled in bone broth. The Elementals had subsided beneath River’s gentle croon. Between the relief of that and the meal, Tokela was nodding off. For the second time, he barely saved himself from landing face-first into his well-scraped plate. Across the board, Našobok was dozing—snoring, even. Somehow he hadn’t yet fallen over. Tokela smirked, leaned over and gave him a push. Našobok woke up just in time to topple over, legs still crossed.
Fire hissed approval. Tokela chuckled.
Šaya led them to a huge pallet, a privileged one right beside the largest of the hearths, wide enough for a tangle of four and piled high with colourful midLands blankets. Tokela willingly shed his borrowed robe and burrowed in. The blanket threads were worn soft, sliding thick comfort against his skin and wafting delicious spice past his nostrils.
Našobok crawled in beside and gathered him up. But not even the sensate enticement of that hard, heated body sculpting close could keep Tokela awake any longer.
THE GROTTO was dark, seeming uninhabited.
The Domina was present, nevertheless. Her anger sparked reflections, trailed luminescence in her wake. They have failed.
“The vortex—”
Was merely a factor. Did you think I wouldn’t track them?
“I assumed you would.” Cavodu crossed his arms, waited.
Sure enough, You sent the wrong ones for the job.
“Under your orders, Domina,” he reminded. “They know this world better than most.”
Which means they are tied to it. To the world, and moreover, its people. White fury underlaced it. And so they let the little savage go, for no more than some unfathomable… ephemeral reason!
“The fault is mine, Domina.”
Yes, it is.
Silence. Then, just as Cavodu was about to turn away and head from the grotto, the silent threat whispered from the brine.
Well. Better to take care of it oneself, after all.
TOKELA WOKE to the smell of burning leaf. Našobok sat, a bronzed silhouette drawing Smoke from a beautifully carven pipe.
Lying on his side, Tokela peered at the pipe for some time, eyes following the lines of leaping Seawolf chasing smiling fish, watching the shells dangling from the bowl dance and shiver.
Rain pattered on the thatch, a relief. No clear skies thisdark, no Stars. Only the echo that had, since the desert, been ever-present but bearable. Tempting, to let ša lull him back into slumber; instead Tokela sat up and scooted close to Našobok. Opening the blanket he wore across his shoulders, Našobok gathered Tokela in.
The longhouse lay so quiet. For a displaced brace of heartbeats Tokela was confused, almost reached out to see if… well, if They were even there. He had slept hard—his first real bed in some Sundowns probably had much to do with that—and bit by bit the uneven tenor of his dreams came back to him. That awareness made him doubly conscious of the unfathomable echo humming just beyond true hearing, of the more Earth-bound presences conjoining within his Spirit…
Of River, keeping all submerged. Contained.
Even outwards, though, silence broke itself, here and there. Muted noises came from the alcoves that held the cookFires. No stirrings from their sleeping neighbours, bundled in various cloaks, blankets and furs… Ai, perhaps one. A movement flickered from the corner of his eye and Tokela turned to see one of the herdClan females shifting in her blankets, putting an infant to nurse. She flitted her eyes up at the movement, and Tokela smiled. She returned the smile, then settled her attention back upon the infant.
She had met his gaze. What was humming within must not be evidencing itself without.
Perhaps… if he loosed himself into their Dance would it be easier? Maybe he should go to the shamans, learn the way. Earth seemed willing to the try, Fire importunate as always and Wind whistling about the eaves, filling his chest and…
No more pain, My own, only the undertow of dreamings to wash them clean. An ache in his heart and a shiver through his limbs, River’s presence a tandem comfort as Našobok’s hand settled over his. It displaced an unthinking yearning, bringing Tokela back into reality.
Našobok was reality: sound, strong, sane.
“Did you sleep well?” Našobok murmured, subvocal hunting-talk that carried only to the closest set of ears.
Tokela answered in like fashion. “Well enough. Better than I should, perhaps. How long have you been up?”
Našobok shrugged, offered a puff of the pipe. It was tempting, but Spirits were soft enough so that Tokela could waft on the waves of them. He was still unsure about Smoke’s effects. Shaking his head, Tokela kept up the nigh-silent conversation.
“I hope sleep comes easier to you on board Ilhukaia.”
“It always does.” There was a buoyancy underlying Našobok’s voice that had been absent during their journey. Tokela understood. His own heart had lightened as River’s voice had strengthened within him. Despite misgivings of what could happen, he could hardly wait to ride Her again.
As to riding… “What shall we do with Lioness?”
“I thought of sending her to Inhya. She was born of horseClan, you remember. It would be a more certain future for a worthy travelling companion than just trading her here. And fair enough exchange for stealing you.”
“You stole nothing! They didn’t want me. And my body and heart are mine to give.”
“Ai, sharpen your horns.” Našobok turned a half smirk upon Tokela. “When I was oskih I too chafed at restrictions.” The expression widened. “But was very glad of the freedoms, at that.”
Good humour restored, Tokela reached up and traced his fingers along the thin fur on Našobok’s cheek and throat and back through the thick length of bistre hair beneath the blanket.
“Hunh! One dark of rest and the rutty oških returns.” Našobok inclined his head against Tokela’s for a heartbeat. “Do you… well. Sense anything? Except for sleeping—and you needed it—I’ve seen you watching out. Waiting. Listening?”
Tokela shrugged and didn’t take his head from Našobok’s shoulder. Instead he looked into Fire’s eyes, breathed lightly the smouldering leaf, felt two voices swirl in his head, mixing as surely as heat and Smoke.
Soothing. Not wakening.
“And what, then, do you hear?”
“Very little. Stars are covered, River is close. I sense nothing. Yet.”
“Yet.” Našobok nodded. “A’io.”
They will know what we’ve done. She will send others.
She. Spoken with such fearful regard by all of them, but particularly the one who had claimed but denied Tokela, who had spoken of “mending” him as if he were a pot that had somehow broken.
What is broken? Fire again, speaking with Palatan’s voice; as if he lingered with them, curled up beside Našobok. So many meanings, but what meaning for the likes of you? Damaged, but not past reason. Wrecked like a craft on a sandbar, disconnected—and that the worst of all, for you keep turning away from ones who could help you.
Help? More like danger for others, Tokela replied, swift as an arrow’s flight. Your… co-tenant touched me, and almost couldn’t retreat.
From hold of Stars, not you.
They are in me, somehow. Danger lies in the very smell of my blood.
And that blood drawn forth by shards of breakage; by shattering of what promise is yours: a promise that now bleeds unclean an
d pools fallow in your Spirit. This spoke deep beneath Tokela’s feet, speaking with a twinned aspect of both Earth and River. To deny that promise is to refuse what you truly are.
Refusal, a’io. And also pure survival. He had spent so much of his existence asking—disputing. Spent even a normal maturity, he realised, shoring up closer to Našobok, in staving off and sequestering any hint of Spirit into a small knot of denial.
It had saved him. Until it no longer had.
Back to the same tangled pathways, only this time Tokela could actually See where they might take him, where they had taken him.
I know that what I am has hurt others.
It has also saved others. Would you sit in judgement upon your own actions? Do you even have that right?
A gentle hand took his chin, tilted it up; he found himself peering into Našobok’s storm-hued eyes, heard others stirring, saw dawn breaking into the far windows of the hostel. All of it telling Tokela he’d been… gone.
“Hunh. I thought as much. Come back to me, Star Eyes… what is this, eh?” Našobok’s fingers stroked along the fine, soft fur on Tokela’s jaw. “You’re getting awfully well grown, I see; from late bloom to full fruit. Your grandsire would have said an animal Spirit was rising too strongly through you.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” Tokela matched Našobok’s sudden grin with his own, albeit a self-conscious one. “Did he say that to you, then?”
“Often. As to bad? N’da, not bad, but you know our birthing-tribe. They’d call it presumptive, more like, taking upon ourselves what Spirit rightfully belongs to our animal brothers and sisters. I also grew my face fur early—like a half-wild horsetalker, Grandsire always groused. I finally told him he’d married into horseClans, so he had seeded my animal Spirit.”
“Did it make him angry?” Their mutual grandsire’s temper was legendary; Tokela had never felt the edge of it himself.
“To the contrary. He always respected strength, even if it rose as precociousness.”
Tokela laughed.
“I rather like yours, too.”
“Mine?”
“Strength.” The grin widened. “Precociousness. And I definitely fancy the look of this.” Našobok fluffed at Tokela’s jaw once more; that and the tone of voice tingled heat into the pit of Tokela’s belly. “But back to present matters.” Našobok’s voice lowered once more into hunting-talk. “You were… away. This won’t serve you well on any craft. Do the tall ones lurk? Or the Spirits? I thought River’s voice would aid—”
“It wasn’t Chepiś. Nor any of the Elementals… well, not exactly,” Tokela amended, thinking of the Fire-filled voice.
Našobok’s brows were twisting, almost comically so. Plain as plain his thoughts: Grandmother’s toes, what now?
“It’s… Palatan. He wants me to go there, to him.”
The breath leaked from Našobok in a long, low whistle.
“I’m not… Oh, Wolf, I’m not sure I can.”
27 – Eyes of Stars
They broke their fast and, while Našobok was chatting up the hostel’s caretaker—something about a very big fish—Tokela slipped out to see to Lioness.
Simple. No voices, no hovering anything wanting… well, whatever. Only the soothing sound of animalKin breathing and sighing over breakfast with flat molars crunching cured grasses; only the smell of horsehide as Tokela brushed Lioness until she gleamed. Dawn slid through the barn, sending motes of dust dancing upwards into the roof timbers. The little mare lipped his hair, stood soft-eyed and rapt as he shared breath with her.
After the fifth such interchange, Tokela heard a chuckle, looked up to see Našobok leaning against the doorway, grinning.
“Ai, animalKin See you, no question.” His grin widened, and he hefted the rucksack higher over one shoulder. “I’ve news. A trade vessel has been spotted upRiver.”
“Yours?”
“Likely. They were due here two darks ago. Come.”
They strode down the hill. It was a much different place with Sun cresting the trees, spilling brilliance across the settlement. There was mud, to be sure—always mud this turn of Hoop in duskLands—but the dwellings seemed less forlorn, the tall, carven lodgepole fortifications with their watcher’s hut less forbidding and more sensible.
A shout rose from the tall stands of still-misted conifers ahead; Našobok alerted, threw the rucksack over one shoulder, said again, “Come!” and skipped into a run, light-hearted as a ahlóssa.
Tokela followed into the towering trees; thick, then thinning, then a brilliant flash against his eyes nigh to match the one in his Spirit: River’s reflection, outer and inner. Still steaming around the corners, fog burning away but still hiding Her other flank, Her coppery waters lapped at the quays and shorehouses, tilting the small craft tethered there. A large promontory was beginning to peek through just upRiver, a protective jut of ochre stone and conifers. Nothing to be seen past that, but sounds travelled: a slap and slide of water against a great wood hull, voices floating, seemingly, in another place. People were emerging from the trees beside and behind Tokela, waving and calling out, running to eagerly line the largest and most deepset of the quays.
Našobok halted. Still grinning, he put thumb and fingers to his mouth, and let out a piercing whistle.
It was answered from the mists beyond the promontory, carrying high in Wind’s nigh-stillness. A span of drawn-out heartbeats passed. Then a tall mast burst from the mists and rounded the promontory, oars working.
Shorn of the grace of her winged lateen sails, the craft lay down in the water, broad and working-like with cargo, but Tokela felt his breath catch in his throat as she hove to, parting coppery water in search of the outer quay. In thisnow Ilhukaia was, inexplicably, one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.
Riverwalker, she called to him with River’s voice.
“She does it to me too.” Našobok’s voice was a mere whisper, and as Tokela turned, he saw River glint in the storm-hued eyes.
Heard, in a sudden scree of warning: Riverwalker. Beware!
Scented a tang, high upon a slight, dry breath of Wind.
Then, from the water, they came.
The colour of silt and kelp and bitter poison, exploding from River like water-horses. Yet they were nothing like. These were unnatural, Shaped things: bipedal creatures with fins, and claws, and one bulbous, lidless eye above a lipless mouth. Gashes gaped upon their swollen, misShapen necks, raw and open and fluttering.
They fell upon Ilhukaia.
And River… screamed.
The not-sound plunged into Tokela’s heart like a dual-edged blade, ripped sideways, and took him to his knees.
PANICKY CRIES rose, bouncing off the fog and surrounding trees. The current was against Našobok—not River’s, but the onlookers in flight. Našobok leapt forwards nevertheless, his passage a cresting wave, heading for Ilhukaia and shoving aside those who didn’t give way.
His crew was fighting for their lives. Munro hung to the tiller by sheer will, while a pair of oarmates fended off the invaders snatching at their oars. Ilhukaia gybed, a dip and swerve that sent everyone sliding. Only seven of them, against…
Monsters.
They screamed, a low-level keen that dug behind Našobok’s eyeballs and burned.
“Well,” he let the word drawl into a sneer. “The tall softlings must now make creatures to do their bidding?” He slowed but once, and that to shrug the shortbow from his shoulders and string it. He shot a glance backwards to ensure Tokela had heard…
Tokela hadn’t. He had fallen, sprawled facedown on the hard planks of the quay. One of the cursed creatures was squirming out of the water and towards him—too close for Našobok’s liking.
Fisting several arrows, he bent the bow, nocked and loosed,; gave a grunt of satisfaction as the creature collapsed into River. Shouted, “Get up, Tokela!”
But Tokela didn’t respond. perhaps the creatures’ screams were doing something Other to him, perhaps whatever had flun
g him down had also flung him… away, as if Sun had become Stars to incapacitate him.
His crew fought on, some hand to hand, others with whatever weapons could be snatched up and wielded. There was something hanging nigh to the furled sail… perhaps not… but a’io, it was there, fading like wings against bright Sunlight.
More, it seemed to focus back. Not with eyes, nor with any identifiable feature or expression. Nevertheless, its reality and intent hung there, Shaping the will of its creatures with…
What? It didn’t matter. Našobok snarled and shot. Waste of a good arrow. The hovering thing merely faded then reShaped itself, like some sick incarnation of clouds beneath Thunder’s wings.
Tokela suddenly twitched, lurched upwards, and let out a hoarse shout—a warning? Našobok’s body obeyed before he thought, whirled. One of the creatures, two arrows in its neck, skidded past him and rammed headlong into another. The things moved blind, clumsy, but when they went down they didn’t stay down. Even with missing limbs, or mortal wounds bleeding a thick, blue-black ichor, they kept coming.
And his crew kept fighting. Two were back-to-back, shadowing first mate Odina, who was beating off several of the things with her spear—and losing. Another was being dragged across the planking by the hair. Half were downed.
Several more of the creatures leapt out of the water; one headed for him and the other for Tokela. Našobok took them out, one after another, and laughed as two more scrabbled up onto the quay. He grabbed for the quiver at his hip…
Laughed again, this without humour, as he found it empty.
And three of the screaming creatures fell upon Našobok, sending him sliding across the slick-wet quay and into River.
HE HAD seen such creatures before, smelt the ichor of their blood, seen the Void-within-Stars kindling behind their eyes. But these creatures were twisted beyond any recognition. Their eyes roiled with inky shadows and ice-white flashes, mouths gushing blood, neither the indigo ink of outLand things nor the crimson of Grandmother’s Kin, but a black that rejected both. Even its skin pulsed, as if it were still, somehow, changing, body insects crawling a corpse, Shaped with outLand sorcery.
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