Karavans (34 page)

Away from the cookfires, away from the wagons, Vencik stumbled into darkness, fell to his knees, and vomited.

He was not,
was not
that kind of man. But what he had done—what he had so nearly done—spoke of something inside, some demon or devil that had slipped into his soul. Wanting to silence his wife’s mother for a single day was not so bad a thing …but to assault the hand-reader? There was no other reason he could think of but a devil or demon.

He needed a priest. He needed a
different
priest, one who could cleanse him, purify him, exorcise the evil thing inside that had forced him to do such a terrible thing.

Vencik wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his tunic and sat back on his heels. And froze.

It was the time of the Orphan Sky, but there were stars. What little light existed was enough. He saw the karavan guide smiling gently down at him. “I can be a priest.”

Vencik stared.

“I can cleanse you. I can purify you. I can most distinctly exorcise you.”

Hope kindled. But this was a
guide
.

Could priest and guide be the same thing?

“You,” the man said with every evidence of satisfaction, “are as poor an excuse for a human as I have yet seen in this land.”

Vencik lowered his head to stare at the ground beneath his knees.

“And I think it’s time you left it.”

His head snapped up. The last thing Vencik saw, beneath the Orphan Sky, was the sudden slashing movement arcing toward him out of the darkness.

Blood. Blood. So much blood
.

And no air at all, save that which whistled out of his freshly opened throat.

R
HUAN SQUATTED BESIDE the big supply wagon, looking through the spare plankwood Jorda always carried. He had decided it was best if both of Ilona’s bottom steps were replaced, and wanted to be certain he selected the strongest planks for their construction. There were tools aplenty in the wagon as well as wood, spare ropes, harnesses, fittings, pots of axle grease, spokes; medicaments for humans, horses, draft animals; whole oilcloth canopies as well as patches, gut, and awls for stitching the heavy cloth, silk thread and needles for stitching more fragile flesh; lamp oil, lanterns, kindling; spare clothing, leather, bedding, and much more.

The light was poor, but his eyes saw better in the dark than those of humans, and his hands read tales of the wood. He had only to smooth his sensitive fingertips over the surface, brushing grain, knots, blemishes, and he knew the name of the tree that had rendered up its skin, its heart, its life. Humans wouldn’t understand; they would believe he meant the name that indicated what
kind
of tree it was. Had been. But Rhuan, touching wood, learned the personal and private name of the elderling who once had lived, who had given up that life for a wholly human need.

Humans, Rhuan reflected, didn’t understand all too
many things, even about their own land, their own world. About their own gods.

Light from a lantern flickered across his vision. Two people approached, movements hesitant. Rhuan looked up from greeting the wood to greet them.

He was more than a little startled to discover the arrivals were the two eldest children of the farmerfolk from the end of the karavan. “Are you looking for the master?”

The boy shook his head. “We’ve come to speak with you.” He and his sister exchanged glances before he continued. “It’s about tomorrow.”

Rhuan set down the plank upon the others. A fine elderling tree, once an ancient and proud oak. Now diminished by the ax and adze of humans. “We’ll head back after the morning meal. It will take a few days to reach the settlement.”

The children exchanged glances again. The boy was clearly uncomfortable. A frown knitted the pale brows arching over blue eyes that would no doubt one day be as steady as his father’s. “No, it’s not that. We won’t be going back. Da has decided we must go on as we planned, to Atalanda.”

“Because of the diviners,” the girl said quietly, “and the baby.”

As she spoke, her face colored up. She had the fine, fair skin of youth, and pale white-blond hair that would, as she aged, turn wheat-gold. She would be very pretty, Rhuan thought. “Ah yes, the baby.” He selected another plank and introduced himself in silence with the touch of his flesh. Inwardly he spoke to the tree of his regret for the death of a fine, strong elderling. Then, with carefully gauged neutrality, he spoke to the human saplings. “Your da and mam have four living, healthy children. Perhaps it might be best if they weighed those lives as heavily as that of the unborn child.”

“But the diviners,” the boy protested. He was, Rhuan realized, not quite so young after all, with lantern light glinting briefly off a thin crop of golden stubble along his jaw.

“Diviners,” Rhuan murmured, “may not necessarily always be completely, absolutely, incontrovertibly accurate.”

The girl was as taken aback as her brother. “They’re
diviners
.”

Smiling, Rhuan gave in gracefully. “Alas, I am but a guide. What do I know of such things?”

The young man’s tone strengthened. “You know about Alisanos.”

His sister chimed in as well, no longer hesitant. “About demons, and devils.”

“And how to keep a wagon safe upon the roads.”

“How to save us from Hecari.”

“How to
kill
Hecari.”

“You’re a guide,” the girl declared with conviction.

Her brother, who had gained confidence as they detailed the challenges and dangers, nodded. “The karavan is turning around. It’s going back to the settlement. There will be no others until next season.”

“You’re a guide,” she repeated, more quietly now, as if she sensed the power of passion in their words. “One wagon may not be a karavan, but we need your help all the same.”

Rhuan smiled, watching the plank as he once again smoothed its skin with his own. “Your parents know nothing about this, do they? That you’ve come to me.”

In unison, they shook their fair-haired heads.

“Rhuan!” Jorda’s voice. “
Rhuan
—” But he broke off as he came up on them and saw the children. Rhuan watched the karavan-master make a concerted effort to regain control of his tone. “Your pardon,” Jorda said civilly, “but my guide and I have karavan business to discuss.”

It was dismissal, and they took it so. Before they could turn away, Rhuan spoke. To them, not to his employer. “I will come with my answer in the morning.”

The boy nodded. The girl’s expression suggested she didn’t believe him. Both walked away, heads bent. Indeed, they did not believe him.

It was a mark of Jorda’s high-running emotions that he asked nothing about what the children wanted. Rhuan knew him well enough to realize that beneath the bristling beard, the master’s broad jaw was set very tightly.

“A woman has come to me,” Jorda began, “worried because her husband is missing. He missed dinner, she says; he never misses dinner. He went to relieve himself and never came back.”

Rhuan said nothing. It was best to let the angry rushing river run its course.

“There seem to me to be two possibilities,” Jorda continued, “as to why this man is missing. He met an animal that took him for a meal, though there has been absolutely no sign of predators—or so my expert guides have told me. Or he just might, just might
possibly
, be the man who assaulted Ilona, and met a predator of an entirely different sort out there in the darkness.”

Rhuan took up another length of plank and examined it. “I suppose he might.” He silently spoke his name to the elderling as he placed fingertips upon the adzed surface. “I suppose it is also possible he and his wife had an argument, and he is out walking off the anger.”

“In the dark.”

“Ah. Yes, it is very dark to your kind. Perhaps not.”

Jorda’s tone was mostly a growl. “My ‘kind’?”

Rhuan paused, but did not look up from the wood. This plank would do well; it told him so as he asked it in the silent language of the trees. “Forgive me. I sometimes forget myself when learning the story of a once-proud tree who has been murdered by humans.”

“I’m talking about a
man
, Rhuan, not a tree!”

A hallmark of humans, to dismiss, to diminish, what was not as themselves. And yet he liked them. Still. He grimaced.
Most of the time
. “The third possibility is, of course, that this missing man may not be the one who assaulted Ilona.”

Through his teeth, Jorda said, “And what do you suppose the odds are of that?”

“I never wager on or with lives, particularly human lives, which are all too fragile as it is. But you know that.” Rhuan rose and met the master eye to eye. “Are you accusing me of killing him?”

“I know you’re certainly capable of it. You’ve done it be-
fore.” Jorda made a gesture. “But no. No, I’m not accusing. I’m not even asking. Maybe I don’t want to know. If he is the one …” He gestured again, but more sharply, as if silencing the direction of his private suppositions and suspicions. “You see better at night. It might bring this woman some peace if you were to search for the man.”

Rhuan leaned the selected plank against the wagon. “No woman should be worried for her man’s safety. But then, no woman should be worried for her
own
safety.”

Jorda scowled. “Find him. Then report to me.”

Rhuan understood the implication very well. He would not be asked if he were responsible for the murder, should he discover the body … but the body most definitely was to be discovered.

DAYLIGHT WAS BANISHED, dusk had gone. Darkness ruled. The tent settlement now was illuminated only by the stars, pierced-tin lanterns hung out on shepherd’s crooks, a thin scattering of meager cookfires, and the embers of wooden tent poles transformed by fire to coals. The keening laments too had died out, replaced by low murmuring, the occasional voice raised in call or question, the quiet talk among those who even in poor light sifted through the remains of tents in search of bodies or belongings. The stench of fire remained, as well as the faint underlying odor of burned flesh, for in the destruction of the tents a few of the one in ten selected for culling were burned.

Brodhi found himself following the girl. She walked what had been narrow footpaths winding through the tent village without the hesitation of uncertainty, though many landmarks had changed. But she moved slowly, if steadily, checking at downed tents before going on. Brodhi watched her thin, straight body in its loose tunic go before him, noted the tilt of her head, the set of narrow shoulders. There was pride in her body, an unconscious grace in the economy of her movements despite her youth. Oddly, as she passed
each tent, be it burned heap upon the ground or a still-standing oilcloth dwelling, she made a gesture with one hand or the other as if indicating, as if counting, the tents. Brodhi could not help himself: he looked, he counted, even as she did. And when occasionally they came across a body fallen in the culling and as yet unclaimed by kin, the girl paused and inspected each face, each body, albeit she touched no one.

When they reached a small clearing at an intersection of five footpaths, the girl stopped. She turned to him then, turned to him and lifted her exquisite face. The clarity of her eyes was unsettling.

“Did you see them?” she asked.

“See who?”

“Dardannus, the Kantic priest. Hezriah, the bonedealer. And Lavetta, the fat woman. All of them crossed the river.”

Had died, she meant. “I hardly know everyone here,” Brodhi told her acerbically, “dead or living. I can’t be expected to, not when so many people come here and leave here nearly every day.”

The curly-haired head tilted slightly as she examined his face. “They would know
you
. If you died, and your body lay here, or here, or there.” She gestured to indicate the places she meant. “Anyone who saw you would know your name. Brodhi the courier. Brodhi the Shoia.”

He knew, then,
her
name. “Ferize.” Air hissed through his teeth as he inhaled sharply. “Ferize, what have you done? I can’t sense you.”

The little girl with eyes that had seen the flow of two centuries examined him mutely.

“I can’t
sense
you!”

“Kendic was there, too. His body. Did you see it?”

He had seen Kendic fall beneath the warclubs of Hecari. He had not recognized him on their walk through the settlement-cum-battlefield. Just a body was Kendic. No more a man.

“Ferize—”

“I shielded,” the girl said matter-of-factly.

“You can’t do that with me!”

“Oh, I can. I just never did.”

“Why now? Why here?”

“A test,” she said simply.

Of course it was a test. Or a trick. “For what purpose?”

“To see,” she said, “if you saw. With more than merely your eyes.” The tilted head was incongruous in the child’s semblence. He should have recognized it. “But you have as yet no comprehension of ending, of loss. Of how it is for humans who have only one life in this world to lose those they love. And what grief is.”

He recalled the keening of the women. The tears on the faces of men. He recalled Bethid’s anguish, and Mikal’s shock. But those memories told him nothing. Nothing that was necessary. Nothing of import. Nothing that would, in any way, affect or alter his life.