Mindbond (10 page)

“Tass!” I exclaimed hoarsely.

She's being a youth again
, Kor mindspoke me, a warning. Tass would take it ill if I revealed her secret in my fervor. I sank back in my place, staring at her numbly. She had not returned my greeting, but sat smiling at Kor or me across the shadows of the firelit hall, picking out chords and song-notes on the harp. A strange melody, strong and surging yet eerie. In a moment she started to sing in her clear voice, low for a woman, not too high for a boy or a young man. It was a new song she sang, one I had never heard.

“Let me sing you a song of a seeking,

Let me sing you a song of a quest,

Of Dannoc, the king's son who did not remember,

And Korridun Sea King, who could not rest.

Which is the leader and which is the led?

‘I would walk through fire for you, Kor,' Dannoc said.”

A stirring of surprise and excitement rippled around the room, as if tall prairie grass had rippled in a sudden wind. And I sat stunned, remembering the vigil night I had spoken those words to Kor, feeling warm with mead and the memory and with love of the singer, but uneasy about the song.

“Dannoc rode homeward and Kor rode beside him,

Braved Cragsmen and sorcery and Fanged Horse raiders,

With Dannoc the madman who did not remember

How Tyonoc his sire had betrayed him to slay him.

Which is the lord, which the afterling?

‘We're heartbound together,' said Kor Sea King.”

A murmur of wonder rose through the feasting hall—these folk were hearing my tale, mine and Kor's, for the first time. I felt Istas's glance search me, but I would not look at her. My eyes were misting at Kor's remembered words.

“And witch wind, Mahela's breath, sparked high plain wildfire.

As fast as a horse can flee, faster it ran,

Panting hot, drawing near, as a hound hunts the deer—

And fire blazed before them! Kor's mare leapt in fear.

He fell hard, lay senseless. Then afoot back came Dan,

And took up his comrade and walked through the flames.

“Dannoc rode homeward and Kor rode beside him,

Dannoc his friend who had walked through the fire.

And coming at dusk to the Red Hart encampment,

Dannoc faced and embraced there King Tyonoc, his sire.

And Tyonoc smiled. Then ‘Seize them!' he bade.

And Dannoc was bound, and Kor put to—”

“No!” I shouted, stumbling to my feet, sending trencher planks and pottery crashing over. I did not care, I could not bear it, for I knew too well what had been done to Kor. “Tassida, why! Were not the torments of the time terrible enough? Why have you made this song!”

Except for the noise I had made, the hall was as silent as a hundred spirits waiting. Tassida's answer sounded to the farthest listener.

“Because these people do not know by half how fearsome and how powerful you two have become! Kor died. Tyonoc all but cut him to pieces. And when you broke free you let a demon out of your father's body with your sword. Then you held Kor, cradled him and wept—”

He was standing beside me, one arm around my shoulders, and only his presence kept me from weeping anew or shouting at her again.

Her voice dropped to a husky whisper, but still everyone heard. “—and somehow your passion brought him back to life. Well. Whole. Healed. As we see him.”

An uproar broke out. Istas, Olpash, others called to us, demanding to know if it was true. Kor and I did not answer them, but Tassida made her way through the crowd to us, and we spoke with her.

“Is it so horrible?” she asked.

“It is fearsome, as you have said, and too recent for comfort,” Kor replied. But he was not angry. Our love for her kept us from anger.

“If you must sing, Tass,” I told her shakily, “then give us the song of Chal and Vallart.”

She sat close by us, and I saw that she wore a sword, like Kor's, like mine, at her belt, and on its pommel shone a great stone the color of the blessing of Sakeema in the sunset, a color no one can name except by the legendary healing flower of the god, the amaranth. Too red to be called violet, but darkly far from the blood red of Zaneb's stone. It was a color pure, clear, and piercingly sweet, like the fragrance of the amaranth, once known to me in a vision.

Tassida struck the chords of the song. And, so great is the power of music, the babble faded and the crowd grew quiet to hear. Kor and I sat down, and I let my head rest for a moment against his cloaked shoulder, for I felt weak with love and wine and fear, hearing once again Vallart's words to the prince his comrade:

“… I will follow you if you walk into the sea.

What is a friend? Troth without end.

A light in the eyes, a touch of the hand—

I would follow you even to death's cold strand.

To death's … cold … strand.”

Chapter Seven

Late the next day, after we had had time to recover somewhat from our welcome, Kor and I left Seal Hold and rode along the ocean again. It was a sunny day with scarcely a haze of fog—rare, along that shore. Tass rode with us, and looked sideways at us, for Kor still wore his sealskin cloak. There were long silences as we rode, and I, for one, felt awkward.

“Did you see anything uncanny at the pool of vision?” Kor asked in the midst of one such silence, glancing at Tassida's sword. The jewel in the pommel flashed in the westering sunlight as he spoke.

“Yes,” she replied, only the single word and no more. A quiet, again.

“In your many travels, have you ever seen a wolf, Tass?” I asked after we had ridden onward awhile.

“No,” she said. A long pause, so long that I thought we were in the grip of silence still. But she surprised me by speaking. “On my way over the mountains, coming here, I thought I heard one howl. From where, I could not tell. The sound echoed between the peaks.”

She had journeyed, we surmised, not far behind us. “The night of the hunters' moon?” Kor asked.

“Yes.”

She heard either the wolf or you, Dan
, Kor mindspoke me, hiding his amusement.

Hush
, I told him. Oddly, I feared that Tassida might overhear us, though certainly I had never feared that Istas might, or any of the others.

Kor must have sensed my doubt. He looked at her askance. “Tass, why are you here?”

Tass had been amiable till then, for her. But the question put her on her mettle at once. I saw her come to warrior alertness on Calimir's back, as if she carried a spear. “Why not?” she retorted.

“No reason. But you say you do not wish to travel with us, yet you seem always to be turning up. What—”

“If you do not want me here,” she interrupted hotly, “I will go.”

I laughed, feeling more at ease since we were quarreling—our bickering seemed more natural than the silence. “Tass, you have always gone when you wished and come back willy-nilly, like changing weather. What wind blew you here this time?”

She sighed and let go of spleen for a moment, speaking quietly. “I wanted to see if you are still bent on this witless venture.”

For answer Kor nodded at the sea. “Greenstone stacks,” he said.

Weird spires and crags and hillocks of rock rose from the ocean ahead of us, their shapes sometimes round, sometimes mountainous, but stranger than those of any mountain I had ever seen. The day was nearing sundown, the tide running high, and the great rocks stood darkly shining, wet with spray, looming against an orange sky and water of like hue. The steady clamor in my ears, calling of many seabirds and crashing of surf, made me feel lightheaded, as if I were floating rather than riding along at Talu's jarring trot.

“And look,” Kor added, “my cousins.”

Portions of the dark and shining rock seemed to move, and I blinked, making out the sleek forms of seals, wet and gleaming. They lay basking in the sunset, some sitting upright as if in salute to the fineness of the day, heads pointing skyward, some nudging each other with whiskered noses, swaying into unlikely curves, some lolling in the spray as the rocks wallowed in the waves: the odd, watersheen shapes of the seals echoed the many shapes of the Greenstones. Or perhaps the rocks echoed seal forms. It was as if the rocks stood there, knee-deep in the sea, for no other purpose than for seals to lie on and frolic upon.

Seals lay at the foot of the cliff to landward, also. Kor dismounted, we all dismounted, and walked softly toward them over the sand of the beach, and they did not flee from us.

“How can the Otter River folk want them killed!” Kor muttered angrily.

Kor's people killed seals sometimes, in need and with reverence, as we of the Red Hart killed deer. But they ate fish so as to spare the seals, and were joyful when they saw that many seals lived.

“Of all creatures, one of the few that has kept the many colors of Sakeema's time.…”

The three of us stood looking, the seals nearly at our feet. Indeed, they were of almost every possible creature color, some black, some gray or brown or yellow or russet, and some shone nearly blood-red in the sunset light. Half-grown pups were covered with soft fur as blue as blue fog. Their elders were often mottled and spotted with patches of random color: white ringstreaks, red blankets, brown dapples, yellow specks. I even saw a green tinge on the flanks of some. A grand black bull lifted his head and barked at us—he was as large as I. A gray cow stretched and fanned herself with a flipper. The smallest seal was the size of a small child, but most were middling, about of a weight with a young woman or a youth of the Seal Kindred.

“On the plains,” Tassida said softly, “horses run in as many colors as these.”

Except for Calimir, the horses I knew were only brown and dun. All deer were gone except the red, all foxes but the gray, all wolves …

Kor turned to his yellow dun mare with a sigh and began to strip her of her gear. I turned likewise to Talu. Whether disturbed by our actions or merely because the sun was sinking, the seals ambled away or slithered into the water. Tassida stood watching us with a puzzled frown.

“You are staying here? But you have brought no sleeping robes, no food.”

“None needed for a vigil,” Kor said.

We walked the horses farther southward along the shore, beyond the Greenstones, and turned them loose, sending them away with a shout. Forested mountain slopes rose up from the sea, rocks full of whistlers and pikas and viper nests. And there would be leavings on the beach as well, dead fish—Talu, for one, loved fish, the riper the better. We hoped the horses would be able to fend for themselves so as not to take food from Kor's people. We hoped, perhaps, that they would be waiting for us when we came back. Though we scarcely dared to expect it. As to the coming back itself, we scarcely dared to expect.

Tassida watched us, wide-eyed.

“You two—you truly think you can bring back Tyonoc from the realm of the dead.”

The wary look on her face made me think of Istas and the way she had seen us off, silent, suspicious, half-fearful after hearing Tassida's song. Whether Tass had intended the ballad for that purpose, or for whatever purpose, there had been no protests in Istas since. No nattering, no chewing on the outcome. No talk of safeguards, a retinue. No protests from any of Kor's kindred, least of all from Olpash. I had to smile, but the smile washed away as if with the tide, for I was afraid.

“We don't think it,” Kor replied, grim. “We go to do whatever task awaits us. Thinking is of no use.”

He took off his sword, and I mine. It was dusk, the sun had sunk, the sea washed dim. We carried the swords into a cave beneath the cliffs, not far from another cave I remembered from another time, and the stones in the pommels shone red and yellow, lighting our way with a sundown glow. On a ledge at the farthest indeeps of the cave, out of the reach of tides, we laid them down, blades crossed, and laid our hands on them for a moment, letting our fingers touch in the whisper of light, faint as starlight, and we bade farewell to the weapons we scarcely understood.

Tassida had followed us. “They will be safe there?” she said, more a plaint than a question. I noticed that her voice was shaking.

“They should be,” I told her. “Have you ever tried to touch one of these swords not your own?”

“No. Mine—came to me.”

“If I tried to take it from you, it would cut me. Slice off my hand, if need be.” I smiled, remembering the cut Kor's sword had given me when I had been foolish enough to try to capture it for him, and stepping toward her I raised my hand to show it to her.

She turned and ran out of the cave.

Shrugging, I followed. Kor followed. Tass was swinging up onto Calimir.

“Off again?” Kor called, his voice low.

“Yes. You two terrify me.” Nevertheless, she quirked an odd smile at us. “Take your horse gear back to Seal Hold?” she offered.

It would keep better there than in the cave. We handed it up to her, deerskin riding blankets and leather headstalls. Dusk was darkening. Though I looked intently, I could scarcely see her face.

“Farewell. Gentle journey to you. I—” For a moment her hands touched ours, Kor's and mine, and I felt something for which I had no words. Not even the name of love described it. Perhaps she felt it too, and it made her forget what she wanted to say. She ducked her head, stammering, and pulled her hands away. “Blast it,” I heard her mumble, and then she sent Calimir springing landward. We watched him gallop, a dark shape against the pale sand of the beach.

Just as we were about to lose sight of her in the twisted spruces, she reined him in and turned back toward us. Perhaps she raised a hand—I could not tell. But her voice rang out clear and strong through the nightfall. “Come back!” she called. “Be sure you come back to us mortals!” Then she was gone.

I shivered. What had she meant? I felt all too mortal myself.

We put off our boots, our clothing. Naked, we stepped to the edge of the surf, Kor and I. He carried his sealskin cloak in one hand. I had nothing to aid me in making the change, and no thought, either, as to how I was to do it.… Cold clutch of seawater at my feet. If the seals were still on the rocks I could not hear them—I could hear nothing but the commotion of surf, or my own heart's pounding, my own fear. I felt adrift, awash, as if already I were drowned and bloating. The nearness of the sea filled me with dread. It was not to me a familiar beauty and sustainer and danger, as it was to Kor. As if entangled in wrack of nightmare, I could think only of black water, chill, deep, and how it had gathered me in to kill me.