Karavans (47 page)

The sun was down and the newborn Maiden Moon took precedence in the sky; Rhuan felt the preliminary seepage of chill making its way up through the trebled fabric beneath him as he settled, crossing his legs. With night so near, a human would need lamp or candle to see in the leaf-shielded pocket, but he and Brodhi required nothing save the eyes in their heads.

Attempting to take his mind off of the upcoming Hearing, he asked, “Have you ever died from a throat-cutting?”

Brodhi shook his head, attention focused on what he took from the beaded bag.

Rhuan felt at his throat. “Well, avoid it if you can. It’s uncomfortable at best.” The skin seemed whole and firm as even, but some wounds did leave scars

“I try to avoid dying as a matter of course.” Brodhi set the leather bag aside and began unrolling a section of thin hide. “You, on the other hand, seem to attract it.” With exquisite care, Brodhi spread the hide between them, fingertips lingering to stroke the surface. The color of the hide, as Rhuan looked upon it, almost blended into the dark blankets, a dusky twilight blue with the barest sheen of silver, tiny scallops of interlocking scales. He saw Brodhi’s fingers tremble slightly and looked up to see that his eyes were closed, his lips moving. Brodhi’s cheekbones, Rhuan noted, were flushed, and a sheen of perspiration lent glinting highlights to his kinsman’s angular face.

It felt—wrong. It made Rhuan feel awkward and uncomfortable
to witness that private inner communion, even if it did have something to do with himself. He wanted nothing more than to get up and walk briskly away, refusing even to glance back, but Brodhi was undertaking this night’s journey for Rhuan’s sake, not his own, and for Rhuan to turn his back on that sacrifice would not endear him to those who judged his worthiness, who weighed the information Darmuth provided in making their decision.

Or, in this case, information Brodhi would Hear and later transfer to Ferize, when next he saw her.

Rhuan fidgeted. He drummed his fingers on his knees, shifted position several times, gnawed first on his bottom lip and then the insides of his cheeks.

He hated Hearings. It was why he avoided them.

Brodhi’s eyes were now unshielded by lids, open but lost in shadowed sockets. He smiled faintly, acknowledging Rhuan’s discomfiture, then drew his knife. “To give you peace, I will do it anyway.” And before Rhuan could protest, Brodhi cut into the ball of of his left-hand thumb. Quietly he shook out blood in each of the four cardinal points of the earth, murmuring Names, then looked again at Rhuan. “The blood is spilled. I swear to tell only what I Hear.”

Rhuan instinctively sought to delay the moment with carefully casual lightness. “What, no opinions?” he asked. “No irony? No …superiority?”

Brodhi’s reply was to flick blood droplets at Rhuan. “The oath is made.” After cleaning his knife, he touched the bleeding thumb to the section of thin hide. When he lifted it, there was no more blood to be seen, nor the mark of the knife. He then took up a section of reed and turned it on end. With care he worked the wax plug free, then cupped the reed upright in both hands and presented it, waiting mutely.

Rhuan hesitated, staring at the open reed. The scent of the contents was so sharp his nostrils prickled in response. It would be horribly disrespectful to sneeze, so he rubbed his nose violently to kill the impulse.

“It’s for you to do,” Brodhi said. “I can’t take it from you. You must offer it.”

“I know that.” Annoyed, Rhuan reached out, set a fingertip into the reed opening, and felt the heat of the contents, though cool to the touch, burn a line up to his wrist. He gritted his teeth. “I’m going to hate this …”

“Had you lived up to your responsibilities, this would not be necessary.”

Rhuan grimaced. “Do we have to trade words even on the brink of this?”

“Had you lived up to your responsibilities, ‘this’ would not be necessary.”

Trust Brodhi to maintain arrogance even now, humbled by nothing. Rhuan scowled at him in the darkness, then closed his eyes. He touched the oil-laden fingertip to the eleven blessing points: the center of his brow, the bridge of nose, both eyelids, the hollow between nose and mouth, the arch of cheekbones, upper and lower lips, his chin, and lastly his throat.

What irony, in view of his earlier death to an opened throat.

It began in each place his fingertip had touched. A lattice of fire blossomed across his face, running from one blessing point to the next. Every hair on his body, save for the heavy braids, stood on end, prickling abrasively.

With Darmuth it was a simple and painless process handled much differently. But this was Brodhi. This was kin-in-kind. This was a
dioscuri
even as he was, and what they made between them this night would never be forgotten. Oh, the words would be, but not the emotions. This ritual would bind them to one another even more than the ritual that allowed them to communicate with one another over great distances.

“Let go,” Brodhi said. “Open to it, and the pain will subside.”

The lines of pain felt like they were sinking through flesh. Through clenched teeth, he asked, “Have you ever done it this way?”

“Never,” Brodhi answered. “But then, I accept my responsibilities.
I understand what the term ‘regularly’ means when it comes to Hearings.”

Reprimand. Arrogance. Supreme self-confidence. As always.

Rhuan’s skin crawled, rising on his bones. He felt doors opening inside him. He sensed the vastness of the world, the maelstrom that defined his mind, his personality, the essence of who and what he was. That laid bare his soul.

The words burst out of Rhuan’s mouth, slurred together on a note of pure, primal fear, of abrupt appeal in the midst of an interior pain, of a mental rearrangement, that threatened to burst his skull. “
LetmegofindDarmuth
…”

Brodhi said, “Too late.”

I
N THE DARKNESS of night, Audrun awoke abruptly with the echoes of a scream, her scream, inside her head. Her heart pounded so hard she feared it might burst her chest. Something,
something
in a dream had terrified her, driving her into wakefulness. But she realized she had not truly screamed, for neither Davyn nor the children reacted. All was quiet, save for her own ragged breathing.

Beneath the wagon, she lay curled in blankets next to her husband, spooning to share his warmth, to place the unborn baby safely between them. He slept deeply, not stirring. She envied him his peace. Sleep always eluded her after a bad dream.

As her heart slowed to its normal rhythm, as perspiration dried and her breathing settled, Audrun tried to recall the nightmare and could not; the images were fleeting, unrecognizable, fleeing memory’s grasp now that she was awake. Frowning, she brushed hair back from her face, then, as cool night air crept into openings, pulled the blankets more closely around her neck. She did not suffer nightmares often, but when they occurred they were terrifying.

A moment later she gritted her teeth against whispering an unkind word of annoyance. Her bladder had awakened as well. After giving birth to four children, her body was much quicker to reach the characteristics of late pregnancy.
And ignoring it would not work. She had learned that years before.

The knowledge of the nightmare still teased her. Bladder pressure or no, she wanted nothing at all to do with crawling out of her blankets and walking off into the darkness. But the urge would merely increase to true discomfort if she remained where she was, and she would never get back to sleep.

Moving slowly so as not to awaken Davyn, Audrun got to her hands and knees and crawled from under the wagon. She took the top blanket with her, wrapping it around herself as she moved, and put on felted buskins over stockinged feet. Audrun reached for the small pierced-tin lantern hanging off the side of the wagon. The rock-rimmed cookfire, with some coals still alive, was a matter of a pace away.

She rose, took that pace, and knelt once again. She felt for and found the kindling twigs, selected one, and poked an end into the coals. When the twig caught and flared, she carefully touched it to the wick inside the small lantern. As the wick took flame she quickly closed the vented door and latched it. She tossed the half-burned twig onto the coals and raised the lantern high as she climbed to her feet, shedding freckled illumination.

Such times as these were when she regretted leaving the night-crock in the wagon with the children. But she and Davyn had decided it was far better for adults to go wandering in the darkness to find an appropriate tree or shrub than to permit the children to do so. So she and Davyn always slept clothed, save for shoes and boots.

Ordinarily it didn’t bother her at all to seek relief in darkness, but the nightmare had left her jumpy. She couldn’t remember what it was she had dreamed, but its effects remained vivid and unsettling. Fortunately the small lantern was enough to light her way to the nearest tree. It was a gnarled old oak, an odd juxtaposition in a stand of immature trees with as yet fragile limbs and branches. Its thick roots had broken through the soil in places, forming pockets and hummocks and hollows. Audrun stepped carefully
to the other side of the tree, set the lantern down, and began to gather up long skirts and blanket.

The lantern winked out.

This time, Audrun did swear. But very softly.

Her approach had stilled the nightsingers, but the lantern drew moths. Now, with the lantern out, the moths were gone. The nightsingers remained mute. As Audrun’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she was aware of how very quiet it was in the little grove of trees.

Beneath tunic sleeves, beneath blanket, the hairs rose up on her arms. Audrun remained standing next to the big oak, frozen in place with skirts and blanket clasped in knotted hands. She felt vulnerable because of it; Audrun opened her fingers slowly and let the fabric drop, falling again to her ankles. She drew slow, silent breaths, released them as slowly and silently. Still there was no sound.

She bent down, bracing herself with one hand against the tree while the other felt around for her lantern. She found it sitting upright just as she had left it. The pierced tin was cool to the touch, but then the wick had not been lighted for long. Audrun closed her hand around the handle and stood up again with care, listening for some sound, any sound, that would mark the night as ordinary.

A twig snapped behind her. Audrun swung around, raising the lantern for use as a weapon, searching for something, anything, that she might see.

Eyes shone in the darkness.

RHUAN’S VOICE DIED out. Brodhi waited in case there was something more, but nothing else was said. In place of the voice of his kinsman he heard the chittering rasp of the nightsingers, intermittent noise from the settlement, the whisper of leaves fluttering in response to a rising breeze.

Brodhi studied Rhuan. His eyes were closed; he was lost in the reverie of completion, the mental blankness that occurred when one has poured oneself out. A Hearing was
precisely that: An opportunity for the speaker to open himself, to explain himself and his thought processes, his decisions, the ramifications of his actions, regrets or satisfaction, the emptying of his heart and, finally, the restatement of his goals. Ordinarily there was no drama attached; Brodhi told Ferize what he had done during the interval since she had last Heard him, explained how it might affect his goal, and declared how he felt and what he wanted. His goal had never changed. He told Ferize with great regularity, within the confines of a Hearing or simple conversation, what he felt, what he wanted, and what he had done. His Hearings were routine and painless.

But it had been months since Rhuan availed himself of the ritual, ignoring the needs of his own journey even as he put off Darmuth’s needs. Rhuan was alone on his journey no more than Brodhi. But Rhuan hated the entire concept of the Hearing. Backwards, Brodhi thought: he himself was a very private individual, but had no difficulty in participating in a Hearing, in communicating his thoughts and opinions. Rhuan, who was far more open when among the humans, wanted nothing to do with the ritual.

Perspiration was drying on Rhuan’s skin. That the pain had ceased, Brodhi knew, for there was no more tension in Rhuan’s face. Just emptiness, the enervation of completion. The next step was Brodhi’s.

But he put it off. He stared at his kinsman, his kin-in-kind, and wondered what made them so different. Their sires were brothers and shared likenesses physical and emotional. But he and Rhuan had been different for as long as he could remember. They had never seen the worth in one another’s thoughts or desires as long as they had lived. So little time separated them in human terms, and even less in the terms of their people. But they might as well be strangers born on opposite ends of forever.

“Fool.” It was little more than a whisper.

Rhuan did not hear, did not respond. He sat a matter of feet away, drained. Yet Brodhi was full. It took time to assimilate what he had been told, to wall it off in his mind, into the self-containment of a courier. Carrying the words
of humans, Hecari or Sancorran, meant nothing to Brodhi. But now he was to carry the words of his kin-in-kind.