The man turned his head, feeling, perhaps, that I was better prepared now to speak to him. “Ryo inGara,” he murmured. “If you wish to come, I will show you a place near this, where I hope you may rest comfortably. If you prefer to stay here, I will have a pavilion raised up in this place. If you wish to be alone, I will go and see no one comes near you. If you want something else, tell me and I will supply your wish if I can.”
He spoke in taksu, almost entirely without accent. His voice was lower in pitch than I might have expected. He spoke softly, and turned his head away again as soon as he had finished speaking, to show that he did not require me to answer at once, but would wait until I was ready to speak.
I did not know what I wanted. I did not want anything. I sighed. Then I said, “Show me this place.”
“Yes,” he murmured. When he stood up, I saw he was almost as tall as an Ugaro, though of course much more delicately built. When he walked away, I got to my feet, again surprised by the effort this took, and followed.
As he had promised, he led me only a short distance, along the stream and through a small wood, to a place where low hills rose up. Here he showed me a house, built of earth and into the earth. This house had been set into a hill where the stream turned aside. Flowers grew up the walls and grasses grew on the roof, so that the place seemed part of the hill. The door stood open and so did the windows, three of them in a row. Small birds called to one another, little ones, earth-colored. They fluttered amid the grasses, undisturbed by our presence.
When the man entered the house, I followed again. There was only one room, a long one, running back into the hill. Starlight came in through the windows and the door, and a lamp hung on a chain. The oil in the lamp was fragrant with some scent I did not know, almost like flowers. The floor was beaten earth, but covered with mats woven of grasses, each with a subtle pattern worked into the weaving. A low table, at a level comfortable for a person sitting on the floor, took up the center of the room. Earthenware bowls covered with cloths stood on the table, and a round loaf of bread, and narrow earthenware cups, and a pitcher. A small glass bottle stood beside the cups, filled with some red liquid—wine, I thought, but darker in color than any other Tarashana wine I had ever tasted.
A couch, or perhaps a narrow bed, stretched along one wall, a blanket folded and lying across its cushions. At the near end of the room, a small fire burned in a hearth, so small that the house was not uncomfortably warm. At the far end of the room, a tributary of the stream came into the house; it curved around and flowed out again through a different wall. The sound of the moving water was soothing.
The man said, his voice soft, “I ask that you permit me to tend your wounds. I most earnestly ask this. I promise that I am a skilled healer.” He waited, his gaze lowered, for me to decide.
I did not care about my injuries. I even welcomed the pain, in a way. That distracted my mind from other things that hurt me more, things I did not want to think about. But I knew it would be stupid and childish to refuse. I said, “Yes. I thank you for your kindness.”
The man went to the table and lifted the small bottle. “If you drink this, you will sleep for a little time. Will you drink, so that I may tend your wounds without causing further pain?”
“No,” I said curtly. His manner did not change at all, but I knew my answer had been too abrupt. I said, “I do not distrust you. I do not mind the pain.”
He only nodded. “If you might be pleased to sit by the stream,” he suggested, and himself moved to kneel there, laying out tools I had not known he carried. Needles, and a kind of thread, and a small, slender knife with a tiny slanted blade. The knife was made of wood, beautifully carved with a serpent that carried something in its mouth. The blade did not look like metal at all, but like glass. I was not very interested, but I thought the man must indeed be a skilled healer, to carry a knife that had been made with such care for its purpose.
I sat down by the stream, setting my mind at a distance and relaxing the muscles of my shoulders, my arms, my body.
I knew at once he was indeed skilled. He splashed a liquid across the cuts, which stung sharply but then eased the pain. Then he set many tiny stitches very quickly, more quickly than I had ever seen anyone work, Ugaro or Lau. He dealt with the wound on my side first, then the lesser wounds, then at last the fevered cuts across my stomach. He took out Lalani’s stitches and cleaned the cuts, opening one where it had closed across fevered flesh. He spread an ointment across those cuts before he closed them again.
The Tarashana man worked swiftly, but long before he was finished, I knew how stupid I had been to refuse the medicine that would have let me sleep. But somehow, despite all that had happened, I still had too much pride to say this had been a mistake. I would not have thought I had any pride left at all, but I did not ask for that medicine, even though by the end, I had to work hard to keep myself still and relaxed while he worked.
When he had finished, the man gathered his tools and put them away. “This is your place now,” he said gently. “Stay here as long as you wish. Do you need help to stand, or to reach the bed? Shall I bring you something to eat?”
I wanted to go home. I wanted the winter country as a child longs for his mother. I wanted my mother—or perhaps I wanted to ride out alone into the cold and silence of the steppe and never speak to any person again.
I said, “I thank you for your kindness. I do not need help.”
The man bowed his head to me, rose to his feet, and left me as quietly as he had come. I still did not know his name, but I did not care. I scooped water from the stream with my hand and drank. The water was cool and sweet, tasting of earth and rain. I thought of lying down where I was, by the stream. But after a little while, I made the effort to get to my feet. I went to the table, and looked in the bowls. One held fruit, berries of some kind I did not know, pink and fragile, the size of my thumbnail. The other held something else, knobby finger-sized objects, roots perhaps, earth-colored on the outside, cream-colored on the inside when I broke one. I tasted the one I had broken. It was firm on the outside, soft and creamy within, blandly sweet. The bread, already sliced, was made of the kind of grain the Tarashana grow. It was dense and moist, different from bread made with wheat, the taste earthy and somehow warm.
I had not felt hungry, but I ate a slice of bread and another of the roots and a handful of berries. Then I went to the bed and lay down. It was narrow, but not so narrow it was uncomfortable.
I thought of drawing my knife again and finishing the task I had started, throwing my cut hair out for the wind to blow away. All my injuries hurt, but I could have set the pain aside. Except I was very tired now. I could always cut my hair later. For now, I did not move. I closed my eyes and let the quiet fill my mind until I slept.
-26-
The starlit country does not measure days and nights as we Ugaro measure days and nights. The Sun never comes to those lands. The Moon comes there, but even when she looks down upon the starlit lands, the stars are so many and so bright that her light makes little difference. Those lands are filled with light all the time, brighter than any night in the winter country, not so bright as any day in the summer lands. This was disconcerting to a man accustomed to days and nights that are each very different from the other, but at first I slept all the time anyway, so that made little difference.
Every day, someone brought me food. Sometimes this was one person and sometimes another, but they were all Tarashana, never any of my own people. All the Tarashana looked the same to me, but the delicate tracery of designs on their faces and hands was different for each of them, so they were easy to distinguish one from the next. Sometimes the person who brought me food was the same man who had showed me this house, and sometimes it was another man, and sometimes a woman and sometimes a different woman. I was grateful they did not speak to me. I did not want to talk to anyone. I did not want anything.
Memory plagued me more and more as I recovered my strength. I could not bear to th
ink of anything that had happened, but I was unable to think of anything else.
When the time came, the Tarashana healer took all the stitches out of my healing wounds. The scars across my stomach were vivid and red, but the wound fever had not returned and the cuts had healed cleanly. The scars only pulled a little when I stretched and bent. Eventually they would become pale, but those were scars I would carry all my life. Probably the deep cut along my ribs would scar as well.
As my strength returned, I began to exercise, jogging and shadow-sparring. When I made myself tired enough, I thought less of other things.
Eventually, my brother Garoyo found me. At that moment, I was lying on my stomach by the stream, tickling the speckled fish, catching them and letting them go. I had no heart to kill a fish, no desire to go to the effort to make a fire to cook one, and no appetite to eat one. The Tarashana did not bring meat, but the food they brought was good enough and I did not care what I ate.
Now Garoyo had come to this place. I heard him, I recognized the sound of his footsteps, I knew he had come. He was not trying to be quiet. He came most of the way and then paused, probably seeing me, and then came close and stood for some time, not far away, looking at me. I pretended I did not know he was there.
“Ryo,” he said at last. “You have been alone long enough. Come back to the village with me now. The Lau have withdrawn to a different village, farther to the east. You do not need to see Aras or speak to him.”
Obviously he knew exactly what Aras had done to me. Probably everyone knew. I did not look up. I did not want to talk about Aras. I asked the only questions I wished to ask. “Does everyone live? Has Etta come back from the sky?”
“Everyone returned to the land of the living. Our sister’s thoughts are still half in the sky,” Garoyo told me. “But she is coming nearer to the world. When someone speaks to her, sometimes she answers. Iro talks to her. He is drawing her back, though slowly.” He paused. “She would probably return more quickly if you spoke to her, Ryo.”
I said nothing.
Garoyo said, “Raga misses you—”
That made me recoil. “I do not want to see him,” I said forcefully. I got to my feet, turning at last to look at Garoyo. He seemed just as always. I saw nothing of the wounds that had killed him. I said, “I am glad you are not dead, Garoyo. I am glad our younger brother is not dead. But I do not want to see him, or you. I do not want to see anyone. I want to be alone.” Turning my back on him, I went into the house. As he was my eldest brother and the warleader of the inGara, this was unpardonably discourteous. I did not care.
“Ryo!” he called after me. But he did not order me to return, nor did he follow me.
I half expected that he might wait outside for me to come out again, but when I next went out, he was not there.
Later, at some time after that, I did not know how long, Geras came there. He came to the house, tilting his head back to look at me because I was sitting on the roof. I had watched him come. I had thought of walking away before he come near enough to speak to me, but the effort had seemed too great and I had not cared enough to do it.
“Ryo,” he called up to me. “Listen, I’m sorry about what happened. It was a bad situation all around. The whole business was bad from top to bottom. I don’t blame you for being upset—in your place, I’d probably have done the same thing, not that a Lau’d dare lift a hand to a scepter-holder, but I’d’ve been tempted, I can tell you that. Anyway. Lord Gaur’s upset too, you know. Or maybe you don’t, and if that’s so, then I can tell you, he’s not happy about anything to do with this. If you come back, he won’t come near you, you know that, right?”
I did not answer. I did not care enough about anything he said to answer him.
“Listen,” said Geras, raising his voice and speaking forcefully. “It was a battle—a war. You know that. In battle, commanders have to make tough decisions. Sometimes they have to sacrifice a man, or a company, or a talon—or a friend. It happens. You know that. You’re not a child, though no one would guess it from the way you’re acting!”
He wanted me to argue with him, or shout at him, or fight with him. Anything. I saw that clearly. I had been stupid to stay and let him speak to me. I stood up and walked away, stepping from the roof of the house and climbing up the hill. If he came after me, that would not matter. He could walk much faster than I could, but now that I had recovered more of my strength, I could walk for a longer time. If he followed me, I would simply walk until he had to stop. I did not care what direction I choose. It did not matter to me where I went.
“Suyet’s worried about you,” he called after me. “So is Lalani. So am I, come to that!”
I did not care what he said. I came to the top of the little hill and went on, down the other side, and followed the stream away. He did not follow me.
Some distance from the house, I found a deep, round pool. Slender silver-barked trees grew around the pool, their leaves long and silvery-green, the long streamers of their flowers swaying gently in the breeze, glimmering with light. I lay on my back on the moss beside the pool and shut my eyes and listened for the faint song of the stars, but I heard nothing save the soft movement of the breeze through the leaves. The flowers had a light, clear fragrance, not exactly like any flower I knew from the winter lands.
After some time, I did not know how long, I went back to the house. Geras had gone. While I had been absent, someone had come and left bread and a plate of sliced fruit I did not recognize, with white skin and pink flesh. I took this food up onto the roof and ate it there, and then lay down and shut my eyes, still on the roof, out in the clear air, where the breeze could come and perhaps blow away some of my unhappiness.
For some time after that, only the Tarashana came and went, very softly, respecting my wish not to speak to anyone.
Then, eventually, Tano came. I had gone to sit by the pool, and when I came back, he was there, waiting at the house. He had found two blunted swords, or perhaps asked a Tarashana metalworker to blunt two of our own swords—if they had metalworkers. I did not know. I had seen almost nothing made of metal in this place. I had not even wondered about anything as simple as that before that moment. I had not cared to know anything of the Tarashana, except that they were quiet and did not trouble me.
When I came, I found Tano sitting near the house with the practice swords laid out on the grass before him. He had brought something else as well. A whip, the kind made of green wood with a short length of braided leather at the tip. He shifted from sitting to kneeling when he saw me, bowing respectfully. He said nothing. It was not his place to speak first.
I did not want to speak to him. I wanted him to go away. If he had only brought the swords, perhaps I might have walked away again. But the whip bothered me. I could not imagine why he had brought that. Finally I said, “Tano. Have you acted in some wrong way? If this is so, you need not come to me. Garoyo should correct you for it.”
He knelt back on his heels, looking up at me. His expression was calm, but I could see tension in his shoulders. “You said that if we both lived, you would consider the matter of my disobedience. I ask that you consider it now, so that I may set that failure in the past.”
It took me a moment to remember the incident. Then, when I did remember, the mistake seemed long ago and unimportant. But anyone could see it was important to Tano. Also, it was true that a young warrior should not be permitted to think too little of that kind of mistake. Nor should a young man ever be allowed to believe that older men do not care whether he behaves well or poorly.
My opinion mattered to Tano. That was why he had come to me. Anyone could see it would be wrong to send him away.
Finally, I walked forward and picked up the whip, running it through my hands. “That was a serious mistake,” I said, keeping my tone level. “Take off your shirt and stand against the wall of this house.”
He obeyed at once. He stood properly, his head up and his hands open and relaxed, but he could not quite keep t
he tension from showing in the muscles of his shoulders and back.
I set the whip lightly against his back, not a blow, only a touch, to remind him to listen to me. His muscles tightened, but that was not shameful as long as he did not actually flinch. I said, “In the midst of battle is not the time to take an order as a slight to your pride. Do you understand this?”
“Yes,” he said fervently.
“If the memory of a mistake is sharp enough, then you do not need a severe beating to teach you to behave better. Is the memory sharp?”
“Yes,” he said again.
“Good. So. Ten strokes, to set the lesson firmly. Is that too few, or will you remember?”
“I will absolutely remember,” he promised.
“I think you will. Ten. Are you ready?”
He breathed in, let the breath out, and said, “Yes, Ryo.”
I dealt ten hard strokes quickly, not drawing out the punishment. He flinched a little at the first, but if I had not been looking for that, I would not have seen it. Then I stepped back. He turned, knelt, and bowed very properly. The welts showed on his back. No other marks showed now, except a scattering of old scars, much faded now.
“So,” I said. “Remember what you learned, but set this mistake in the past. You may sit. I am glad to see Garoyo has not found it necessary to correct you for any serious fault. I hope you are doing well with him and with Hokino.”
That surprised him. He straightened, meeting my eyes. “Garoyo is strict, but he is not ... he tells me when I have made a mistake. If the mistake is serious, he strikes me for it. But he has not considered any mistake so serious as to merit a beating.”
“So. Good. Who made the whip?”
“I asked someone to show me how.”
Someone. I did not ask who that had been. I laid the whip aside and looked at the practice weapons. “Whom have you been sparring?”
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