Karavans (50 page)

Ilona smiled crookedly. She knew Rhuan disdained the other two diviners as weak in the art, but she said nothing of it to Jorda. “Rhuan believes he makes his own future without such aids.”

The karavan-master made a sound akin to a growl. “It is a term of employment, that all new hires see one of my diviners. I assumed you had read his hand before recommending him to me.”

She kept her voice steady. “Tansit was dead, Jorda, his butchered body still in your wagon awaiting rites and burial. You needed a new guide to take over his duties as soon as possible.”

“So you knew nothing about him.” Jorda shook his head, scowling at the ground. “I don’t like to scold, Ilona, but it’s imperative I be able to trust my guides. I believed you had read his hand.”

She didn’t duck the mild rebuke, nodding her under-
standing. “Yes, I recommended him without reading his hand; he is Shoia, and I felt it appropriate, in view of Tansit’s death, that the karavan have a guide who could revive if he was killed.”

Jorda mulled that over as they walked, finally growling acquiescence as they reached Mikal’s tent. “He’s been trustworthy enough, I’ll agree—but in the future, do as I ask and read the hands of all potential hires. Men do tell lies … I depend on you to find the truths in their hands.”

Ilona promised him she would do so, but did not divulge her fear that hiring a new guide might occur sooner rather than later, if Rhuan did not return from escorting the farmerfolk to Atalanda along the road so close to Alisanos.

Jorda stepped aside and motioned for Ilona to precede him into the tent. The door flap was tied back. Lantern light, voices, and the tang of pungent ale spilled out into the darkness.

Ilona’s stomach growled noisily. She clapped a hand to it as warmth suffused her cheeks. But it elicited a brief chuckle from Jorda, and if it played any role in easing his concerns, the embarrassment was worth it.

“Come.” Jorda, grinning, guided her inside. “We’ll find a table and I’ll ask Mikal for food as well as ale.”

She would be glad of food. But she was not glad to have misled Jorda.

Once, she had looked into Rhuan’s hand. She had believed him dead, not yet knowing he was Shoia and would revive; she wanted only to discover what manner of death ritual he might prefer. But what she had seen, that fleeting glimpse of Rhuan’s soul, had left her with no knowledge of anything substantive. Only an awareness of
maelstrom
, the violent, drowning whirlpool of his spirit.

BRODHI AWOKE ABRUPTLY to a hot hand on his cheek. It was a woman, a black-haired woman leaning over him, her lips but an inch away from his own. As they brushed his mouth, he felt the familiar pull of
arousal, the helplessness to resist. But he and she had parted in anger; a portion of him remained angry and did not want to submit to her kisses.

And yet he did. He always did. And did so now.

When he finally broke the kiss, she sat back from him, feet folded neatly beneath her. Brodhi heard the steady breathing of Timmon, Alorn, and Bethid, all lost to sleep, ignorant of Ferize’s presence. She smiled at him, tossing back the curtain of tumbled, waist-length hair. Black-haired tonight—or perhaps for only a moment—and black-eyed, with fine, fair, translucent skin begging him to touch it.

Her smile broadened as he reached to trace the outline of her face. Even as his palm cupped her chin she twisted her head, sinking teeth into his hand.

No. Sinking
fangs
.

Blood ran. He tried to jerk his hand away but Ferize gripped it in her own. She turned his bleeding palm up, studied it, then kissed it. He felt the fangs transform themselves into human teeth. He felt her lips burn. The blood stopped flowing.

A lesson
, she said within his mind,
to teach you to treat me better
.

He answered in kind.
I treat you as you deserve
.

Ah, but you don’t. You treat me as you believe I deserve. But since you have only such knowledge of me as I choose to give you, you are ignorant of what I deserve
. Black eyes sparked.
But I forgive you. This time
.

Ferize could drive him mad with her beauty in any form, her heat, her mercurical and unreliable emotions. Just now she sat demurely at his side, hands and feet folded, lips curving in a slight smile. She knew very well how he reacted to her; it pleased her to use him as her instrument.

She reached out and took one of his sidelock braids into her hands. Still smiling, she began to untie the thong that held the hair and the ornaments in place.

Brodhi closed a hand over hers.
Not now. Not here
.

Ferize displayed a complement of very fine teeth. Human teeth, though the look in her eye was nothing approaching human.
Yes, now. Yes, here
.

Ferize
—

I want it
, she said simply,
and I shall have it
.

It was its own ritual, this unbraiding of the hair, undertaken only by the one who wore the braids and the one he or she took as a sworn lover. Ferize was his wife, in the parlance of the humans. She had the right. Humans wouldn’t understand, but to his people this marked them bound, that she had the right and exercised it.

Under her breath, Ferize began to sing very softly as her slender, long-nailed fingers deftly unwove the sidelock and began to strip it of ornamentation.

Brodi felt the welling up of an unaccustomed desperation. He clamped his hands around her wrists and stopped the unbraiding. Saying nothing, still imprisoning her wrists, he rose to his feet. Ferize was clearly startled, but then she began to smile.

He took her outside the courier tent, took her into the deeper darkness of the treeline but paces from the tent. He heard the occasional impact of hair ornaments striking the earth, falling from the loosening sidelock. But he did not pause for them.

At the verge of trees, he stopped. Her wrists remained trapped in his hands. Ferize was laughing at him.

“No,” he said. “
I
say when.
I
say where. And just now, there is something else more urgent.”

Her voice was husky. “I think not.”

“Rhuan’s Hearing.”

She stopped laughing. “That’s Darmuth’s business. What does it matter to us?”

He released her wrists. “It matters because it was I who Heard him earlier this evening. Not Darmuth.”

Ferize frowned. “Why?”

“Darmuth told me Rhuan has been avoiding it. Earlier this evening he was killed, so I took advantage of it.” Brodhi shrugged. “He had no strength to refuse me.”

She looked thoughtful, studying his face. “You feel polluted, yes?”

He bared his teeth in a violent grimace. “I feel
poisoned
.”

“Well, then,” she took him by the hand. “We’ll see that you are purged, and then I will finish what I began.” She captured the loosening sidelock, tugged it lightly, then led him deeper into the darkness, where humans would not see.

BY DAWN, AUDRUN was exhausted. She had not slept again, and her eyes felt full of sand. The children, trusting to their parents, managed to fall asleep; Megritte, who had refused to return to her little nest of bedding, now slept slumped against Audrun’s left shoulder. It pinned her in place, for she had no wish to disturb her youngest, but her body was unhappy. Now and again she moved a limb in search of a more comfortable position, taking care to do so quietly and slowly, but she ached with the need to stand, to stretch.

To sleep.

Even Davyn, spine set against the trunk, had drifted off. He didn’t look particularly comfortable with his head drooping sideways toward his left shoulder, but his breathing was deep and even. She had no doubts he would complain of a stiff neck and old bones come true morning, but he would be more rested than she.

Outside, as the lightening of the sky presaged dawn, nightsingers fell silent. In their place came early birdsong from the tree canopies. Despite the drama of the night, morning, though barely broken, was perfectly normal. And, as Davyn had promised the children, all seemed much improved now that the moon was replaced by the sun.

If she were not to sleep, then it was time to begin morning chores. Audrun eased Megritte off her shoulder and carefully tipped her down toward the bedding on the floorboards, settling slack limbs even as Meggie roused just enough to briefly complain before falling asleep again. Audrun pulled a blanket up to her daughter’s chin, then began the careful process of untangling herself from hummocks of bedclothes and stepping over Davyn without waking him as she made her way to the rear of the wagon. She
pulled back the loose oilcloth, noted that it was cool enough for a shawl, and liberated it from the tangle of bedding. She climbed down, glad to move at last, stretched prodigously, then made her way to the remains of the cookfire, skirt hems heavily dampened by dew. Kneeling, she scraped ash away with a stick, uncovered live embers, and began to add bits of kindling. As she blew on the remains, they came sluggishly to life. Within a matter of moments she teased flame from the coals, and the fire renewed itself with the aid of chips and twigs.

Audrun sat back. The rim of the sun began its climb above the black blade of the horizon. It seemed impossible now that the night before had engendered such fear and apprehension. She pulled the string of charms from beneath her tunic, clasped it in both hands, and gave thanks to the Mother of Moons, in her guise as the Maiden, for seeing her through the long night, for blessing the day again with light. That accomplished, Audrun reached for the kettle. The routine of morning tea would blunt any remaining concern about such things as glowing eyes and ear-piercing, howling shrieks.

Then she remembered that the karavan guide would be upon the road, intent on catching them up, and that knowledge lit within her an overwhelming sense of relief. By the time Davyn climbed down from the wagon, cracking his back with one hand as he scratched stubble with the other, Audrun was able to offer him a bright smile and a cup of hot tea, her weariness forgotten. A new day birthed new hope. Atalanda no longer seemed so distant.

T
HE TREE RHUAN slept under was a haven for a multiplicity of birds, and it was the noise of competing morning songs that woke him. He lay flat on his back, right arm stretched out into cool, damp soil; the left, he discovered, was bound by something. He opened his eyes and rolled his head toward the enormous tree trunk and discovered that at some point during the night, the elderling had sent out a questing root. The thin, immature rootling had wrapped itself around his left arm in a spiral from armpit to wrist.

He smiled, sleepily patted the woody root, then remembered that he was near the human encampment, not elsewhere. Certainly not anywhere that a tree should be able to bind his arm. And that served to startle him into complete wakefulness. It shouldn’t be possible here, not in the human world. Other places, yes. But he lay quietly, not moving to free himself. To do so would be rude, when the tree was merely being supportive in response to his petition the night before.

Rhuan again touched the root wrapped around his arm. “Elderling, I thank you.” He had specifically asked for tranquility, and the tree had made certain he slept without cares, without unsettling dreams. “But I must go now. Thank you for your kindness.”

For a long moment there was no response. Then the root gently squeezed his arm and began to unwrap itself. When his arm was entirely free, Rhuan sat up. The rootling nosed through the rich soil beneath the tree canopy, then plunged, snakelike, into the earth, leaving only a ruffle of soil to mark its passing.

Rhuan suppressed the concern the tree’s action engendered; there would be time to consider it later. He assumed a kneeling position as he had the night before, and once more pressed palms and brow against the rough wood. He spoke his appreciation again in his own tongue, not that of the humans, then hastily set about shaking out and rolling up his blankets and oilcloth groundcover.

He had recovered from the killing the evening before, and the Hearing. No more delays existed. It was time now for him to pack onto his horse the things he needed for a solo journey, and to set out at a good gait. He had lost more time than intended, but he traveled light and his horse was capable of sustaining a goodly pace, while the oxen hauling the farmsteaders’ big wagon could not travel quickly.