Karavans (43 page)

He glanced beyond her, seeing Jorda in the background. He owed the man news of his decision sooner rather than later. “I will return,” he repeated.

She made no move to detain him as his body and thoughts inclined toward the karavan-master. She merely said, “If Alisanos allows it.”

That came as a shock. He fastened all of his attention once again upon the hand-reader, and accusation. “You’ve been talking to Darmuth.”

“Not intentionally. He was mending my steps.”

“Oh Mother, I forgot.” Rhuan put out a hand in an apologetic appeal, then withdrew it. “I forgot, ’Lona.”

“But yes, I’ve been talking to Darmuth. And he has been most frank.”

Warily he said, “Darmuth, frank, is often dangerous.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “That I have seen. But I have never seen him afraid.”

Rhuan swore. The flicker of anger deep in his belly threatened to grow, to rise, to redden his gaze. And she would see it, and wonder. More than she already did. “He is a consummate manipulator. Don’t allow him to sway you. Darmuth—”

“This wasn’t manipulation.”

“Darmuth’s version of the truth is often manipulation. I know it well, Ilona. I’ve been its victim all too often.”

“He believes if you go so close to Alisanos, you invite it to take you.”

She was pale. Her face was carved of bone. Beneath dark, level brows, her eyes were unflinching.

Darmuth’s truths could be most discomfiting when used on fragile humans. And yet that was not how Rhuan had
ever viewed Ilona. This moment in particular, she was strength incarnate.

He owed her much. But not this. “I’m going, ’Lona.”

“I know that.” Her mouth curved slightly. “I came only to say farewell, and to wish you well on your journey.”

She could not possibly know the costs of his journey, the requirements of a highly personal journey so different from the one he now embarked upon. But Rhuan nonetheless very much appreciated the sentiments from the only human who knew him half so well.

“In the name of the Mother of Moons—” But no, that was a human oath. Rhuan wanted to give her something more. He raised his hand. He turned it to her, displaying his palm. Displaying what he had kept hidden from her for three years. It was not true disclosure; that he kept shielded. But it was more than he had ever offered before. “On this,” he said, “I promise. I will survive. I will return.”

He did not lower his hand.

And she did not look at it.

“Be certain of it,” she said, and turned away.

Rhuan watched Ilona go. He was aware of a pinch of guilt, of regret, of wishing life might be different. That he could explain to her why it was necessary she not truly read his hand; that he could show her what it held. But of them all, Ilona was most dangerous to him. And so he let her go despite a twitch of his body that nearly sent him after her. He restrained that which was goading him to follow, to catch up, to place a hand on her shoulder and turn her toward him. To look into her face and see no disbelief, no fear, no alarm, as he told her the truth.

They were friends. Nothing more. And so it had to remain.

In other women, he found physical release. He had loved none of them, nor had they expected it. He chose carefully, and as carefully exercised self-restraint in the bedding so that he would impregnate none of them. He would risk no child of his having to make the choices he did, nor to undertake the tests he faced every day. And so he did no more as Ilona departed than to watch her as she walked
away, straight and tall and slim, until she was lost among the wagons.

KNEELING INSIDE THEIR wagon, Audrun tucked away various items more properly than her children had. She appreciated their efforts, but when a family of six lived out of a wagon—a large one, to be sure, but not so large as the home of sod and wood Davyn had built at the beginning of their marriage—every bit of space was important. Anything left out of its place, anything put away haphazardly, affected everything else in the wagon.

On the road to the tent settlement as they made their way through steep hills on a difficult track, they had seen an array of furniture, of things once beloved of a woman, built with care by a man, left at the side of the track. Audrun was stunned by the waste until Davyn grimly explained that packing a wagon with too many unnecessary things burdened the draft animals required to pull it. Lives, he’d said, were far more important; a man could build another table, had he the skill, or buy another bureau mirror for his wife, had he the money.

But it was the woman-high harp standing beside the road that took her breath. She knew nothing of the instrument save that she had heard about harps, heard that a person who could play it conjured the music of the gods. The sweeping belly wood had cracked, destroying the symmetry of the carvings that once had been silver-gilt. The strings were a snarled ruin. One, only one, remained as it had been, taut top to bottom, glinting in the sunlight.

No, she had said when the children walking beside the wagon wanted to explore the abandoned things. No, she told herself inwardly, when her own heart wanted to touch the single harp string, to hear a whisper of the magic.

No, Davyn said, asking the oxen to move out more smartly as he called his children back to the wagon, back to the barren track to raise dust with their footsteps.

Now, the wagon shifted and creaked beneath the weight
of her husband climbing in from the back. Some idea, some concern, set vertical creases between his brows. He smelled of oxen and labor and grime, the salty tang of perspiration.

She noticed suddenly what she undoubtedly should have marked before: his hair was receding.

She wanted to touch that hair, to smooth away the cares. But even as she lifted her hand, he spoke. “I have done my best. All the years of our lives.” His tone was lowered for privacy, but nonetheless thrummed with emotion. “I always will, Audrun.”

Instead of touching fine blond hair, she placed her hand over the calloused one of her husband. “There is nothing, and no one, who could possibly make me doubt it.”

His eyes sought hers. “The guide.”

In her mind’s eye, she saw the Shoia. His attire, so alien to her; the deft motions of his hands when set to a task; the kindness, the humor, in his eyes. The unexpected dimples carved deeply in his face as he smiled, or laughed. And how he understood her children.

The father of those children now doubted himself.

“No,” she said.
“No
, Davyn.”

He looked away from her, lips working as if he chewed the interior of his mouth.

“I was blessed,” she told him, “when the Mother made you and set you into my path.
We
were blessed when she gave us healthy children growing straight and strong. Guide or no guide, Davyn, you are not alone in this.”

After a moment he nodded. He turned his hand beneath hers so that it faced up, and interlaced his fingers with hers.
“I
was blessed,” he said hoarsely.

She smiled, leaned forward, brushed a light kiss across his stubbled chin. “If we’re bound for Atalanda, we’d best be going.”

He squeezed her hand, then backed out of the wagon, ducking his head so as not to brush the string of charms hanging from the white-painted Mother Rib.

Audrun stared at the dangling leather thong, the tarnished silver charms, the fragility of feathers, the carved
stone and wooden beads. At her throat hung something similar. She closed one hand around the necklace.

“Mother of Moons,” she whispered, “see us there safely.”

IT WAS AS she climbed the steps into her wagon that Ilona realized what Rhuan had told her.

Six deaths left.

Six.

He had meant it as comfort, to assure her that he had other deaths left to him. And despite the wonder that still, even after three years, teased her mind as she remembered the first death and resurrection she had witnessed, she had grown complacent with the knowledge. He had died again only two days before, and resurrected. And now he told her six deaths remained to him of the seven.

Her hands holding onto the doorjamb, one foot poised for the top step, Ilona stilled.

Six deaths.
Six.

But she had witnessed two.

Surely Rhuan could count.

She could.

A man who died twice, who had, supposedly, six deaths left to him out of seven, was one death wrong.

Her muscles tensed to turn, to descend the steps in haste, to go to him, to confront him, to explain that lies to her were not necessary. But she held her body in check.

Ilona had known liars in her life, men and women who, for whatever reason, almost never told the truth. Her own father had lied to her time and time again, until she learned, as a girl, to believe nothing he said; except those promises made to punish her if her chores were not done on time. She had seen the satisfaction in his eyes, sensed an inner amusement that was pleasure. She had never looked into his hand with the eyes and senses of a hand-reader because in those days she didn’t know what she was, but there had been no need. He lied. That was all, and it was enough.

Rhuan was not a habitual liar, but she had known him to lie. Always it had to do with a question from a worried, exhausted karavaner on the verge of breaking down for one reason or another; or with his own health. He lied to mislead people from frightening truths.

She knew then that he had
not
killed her assailant. She had allowed herself to believe he might have, but now, removed from the emotions of that time, she knew.

But this time, she knew he lied. Six deaths, he said, and Shoia only died for good on the seventh.

She had witnessed two.

So. Six deaths left were more likely only one.

Ilona climbed the top step and stood inside her wagon, staring at the rune-carved Mother Rib and the dangling string of charms. Absently she removed the sticks from her hair, let down that hair, shook it out, then slowly began to twist it upon itself once more. When it was more neatly wound against the back of her head, she thrust the sticks through again to hold the coils in place.

Her own ritual, to busy her hands as she prayed to the Mother. A simple prayer, withal:
Let him live.

A
T JORDA’S BEHEST, the karavan made haste to return to the tent settlement. Rhuan spent the journey riding up one side of the column and down the other, calmly but firmly urging those driving the wagons to get quicker gaits out of the draft animals. He knew Jorda’s mind was on discovering the magnitude of the damage done to the settlement where he had many friends; his own attention was split between wondering if he also had lost any friends in the Hecari decimation and concern about how the farmsteaders were faring as they struck out on their own. Practically speaking, though the settlement decimation was a brutal thing, it nonetheless left survivors who could help one another, while the farmsteaders numbered only two adults, and one of them was pregnant. With Alisanos preparing to go active, they were, Rhuan felt, in a far more perilous position.

And yet as he at last rode ahead to the outskirts of the settlement, Rhuan revised his opinion. The odor of burned oilcloth, timber framing, lamp oil, and human hair and flesh clothed the remaining tents like a miasma. He saw charcoal-smeared inhabitants dragging forth the remains of their property from burned tents, while others piled up wagons with charred and useless tent poles and destroyed belongings, preparing to haul the loads away for burial or
burning some distance from the settlement. Others were raking the pathways through the narrow, winding routes throughout the settlement, mixing ash and wet coals with dirt so it might pack down somewhat. He saw grieving families piecing through the ruins of their tents frantically as others tried to gather up and take away that which was no longer of use. And he saw a place amid the copse of trees usually reserved for the karavans that now, seated or lying on blankets, was filled with the wounded. Many of them had burns from fighting the fires, while others had sustained injuries from the Hecari in the midst of the culling.

The sight stunned him into halting his horse abruptly, staring mutely at the destruction. Away from the settlement, merely hearing news of the culling, the magnitude of the destruction had not registered. He had been busy with Hecari incursions upon the karavan, including his own death, and had allowed other matters to remain in the forefront of his mind.