Shannivar (31 page)

She paused. What came to her was that Zevaron, sent upon a great and dreadful quest, had not turned back. He had not taken the easy road with his friend to Isarre or stayed in Denariya and become rich. If he were serving the gods, they must in turn protect him. She had no right to conjure them or demand their help. She could only implore their grace. Tabilit must judge what was in her heart, in her soul, even as she judged Zevaron. Bending her head, Shannivar touched her lips to his.

If breath is life
, she prayed,
let mine flow into him. Let my life sustain us both.

Or if need be
, she added, trembling,
let my own pass away.

Beneath her hand, the warmth of Zevaron's body shifted, growing hot and sharp, as if a fire had taken hold of him. A whirlwind of brilliance swept through her own body. She could see nothing except that coruscating gold-white light.

She floated above a misty, radiant sky. Currents swirled around her, not random but in a pattern she could almost but not quite recognize. Colors winked into being, at first blurred and indistinct, then crystalline.

Blue, a summer's cloudless sky

Green, as new grass in the Moon of New Foals

Red, as spilled blood, as berries

Gold, pure and new-minted, fresh from the smith's shaping

Pink, as a maiden's cheeks, as blood-stained water

Purple, deeper and richer than any she had ever seen
.

The colors seemed to fade as they came together. The light turned clear, clearer than any spring water, than any polished crystal. It focused all other light into itself. In its depths, she beheld a brilliance beyond description. She had sensed it in the back of her throat in the soaring cadences of song, in the instant before she and Zevaron had first kissed, in the shimmer of moonlight on wind-ruffled grass. Now she felt as if she could spread eagle wings and soar above all ordinary things, that there was no limit to her vision.

To the south, across the sea of bitter waters, a city gleamed like a jewel set in the living rock of the mountains. Ancient patterns glimmered in its walls, in the rhythm of prayer, the holy words echoing through rock and mortar.
Meklavar.

Never before had Shannivar understood the strength of stone. Fortresses had always seemed as prisons, as obscenities on the earth. Now, through the magic of the gem, she understood this city of walls and mountains. It was not a cage but a garden, a place of nourishment of the spirit. Through its intricate byways, she sensed the resonance of other crystals, like called unto like, and yet incompletely, their harmonies out of tune.

She looked further south, across cerulean waters where huge creatures plunged and swam. Was there a flash of brilliance, as quickly hidden?

The power of her dream vision flung her to the southwest, to Isarre's white cities along the coast, and then north to Gelon. Gelon appeared as a cloud of rust and tarnish, densest over the largest city. Although it shifted like vapor, she could not penetrate it. Instinct urged her to flee, but her warrior's training held firm. The Mother of Horses, to whom she'd prayed, had brought her to this place, as to the others. She must endure the sight of her enemy's stronghold for Zevaron's sake.

Something lurked in Gelon, generating the cloud to hide itself. No human sorcerer could have done this, she knew that much through the magic of the crystals. This was a thing of spirit, preternatural and malevolent. She knew instinctively that this miasma had the power to taint any good purpose, to twist hope and hunger, pride and loyalty, all to its own purposes.

The vision dimmed. Shannivar began to make out the interior of the
jort
, to feel the weight and warmth of Zevaron's body, to see the light sifting through the ceiling opening. She refused to believe that Tabilit had brought her this far, only to fail. Perhaps in order to save Zevaron, she must follow his own quest.

With an effort, she turned her attention from shrouded Gelon to the northernmost reaches of the steppe. Like an arrow, she sped beyond the country of the Snow Bear, straining to make out the mountains where the stone-drake had been found. Peaks rose before her eyes like the curtains of Tabilit's Veil. Row upon row stretched upward. Never in all her dreams had she imagined anything so massive and so steep. She had once heard them called the Pillars of the World, because they held up the sky.

Shannivar's vision faded. Any moment now, she would return to the ordinary world. Wordless need drove her on. The mountains turned filmy, and she saw, behind their eternal horizon, a jagged gap, sheets of fractured rock opening up like a wound. Beyond, she sensed something stirring, a beast roused from slumber. No, no beast this. It had never been alive, and yet it was sentient. It moved, it sensed, but it knew neither loyalty nor love nor joy, only a slow, frozen hatred of everything living. It turned sightless eyes toward her, orbs of burning ice, of frost-rimed fire—

Run!
Run before it sees you!
Every fiber of Shannivar's being recoiled, but she willed herself to hold fast. She was a daughter of the Golden Eagle, heir to Saramark. She would not give up until she had wrested Zevaron from whatever held him in its grasp.

The form was turning away, its edges dissolving like fog torn by wind. The light in those eerie eyes winked out.

Shannivar's awareness fractured into confusion, shards of color and form. Muscles momentarily slack, she toppled backward. All sense of the menace of the north and the guardian gem vanished. She scrambled to Zevaron's side. When she lay her head against his bare chest, she heard a faint, spasmodic pulse. His chest rose and fell in a shuddering breath.

He lives! My beloved lives!

She threw her arms around him, her eyes stinging. She felt his hands on her back, drawing her close against him. His lips moved against her hair, and she thought she heard the whisper of her name.

Once she had thought that Tabilit had surely woven their lives into a single tapestry, a single destiny. They belonged to one another, choosing and chosen. Whatever came next, in the north or beyond, across the wide steppe or even in far Meklavar, they would be together.

B
ENNORAKH
watched as Shannivar and Zevaron sipped their steaming, buttered tea. Her belly clenched at the smell, but she forced it down. Bennorakh's eyes seemed to see right into her mind, as if he were pacing the boundaries of her vision. Only when she and Zevaron had finished drinking and she felt steadier, less drained by the potion's aftermath, did the
enaree
ask them what had happened.

Zevaron stared into his cup, swirling the dregs. Shannivar wondered what he had seen, if it had been so disturbing he dared not speak of it. He might have wandered the borderlands of the Pastures of the Sky, but surely that was not so terrible a thing. She wanted to ask if he too had seen King Khored, or the misshapen giant of frost and fire, or the multi-hued radiance.

To give Zevaron time to recover himself, Shannivar related her own experience as best she could. The vision was already beginning to fade, its details blurring in her mind. She found she had no words to describe many of the things she had seen, things that had been so vivid only a short time ago. As she spoke, Zevaron roused from his daze. His eyes focused, and he looked less drawn.

Bennorakh listened gravely, without interruptions or questions. He did not prompt Zevaron, although it was clear to Shannivar that Zevaron's experience must also be told. Only then could the shaman interpret their combined vision.

“I saw many things,” Zevaron said in a voice that sounded as if he hadn't spoken in days, “many of which I cannot clearly recall. I saw an ocean racked by storm, rising to blot out the sky. The heavens rained white fire on the land. A mountain cracked in two and creatures of molten rock crept forth, freezing everything they touched. A woman garbed in white held a poisoned fruit in her hand. I cannot believe these are omens of good.”

“Omens are rarely what they appear,” Bennorakh remarked.

Shannivar privately agreed with him. Then, to her surprise, the
enaree
refrained from questioning Zevaron further. She wanted to know what happened when Zevaron had almost died—or had actually died. He was concealing as much as he revealed.

Bennorakh dismissed them, and they returned to Shannivar's
jort
to rest. “In my vision, I saw him,” Shannivar said to Zevaron, once they were alone, “your great king, your kinsman, Khored. No—” seeing the flicker of disbelief in his eyes, “—not as I imagined him from the stories you told me, the legends of your people. I
saw
him. It was as if I watched the great battle with the Shadow of Shadows—your Fire and Ice—with my own eyes.”

His doubt faded into wonder.

“We were spirit-joined,” she said.
Tabilit brought us together for this quest.

“I too saw Khored of Blessed Memory and the battle that vanquished Fire and Ice,” he murmured. “I watched him wield the Seven-Petaled Shield, I—” He broke off, rubbing his chest.

Gently Shannivar covered his hand with her own. “I know you cannot speak of this, that some force keeps you silent. But when you were dead, or I thought you were, I prayed to Tabilit, and I touched . . .” Words vanished from her mouth. She did not feel herself restrained, not in the way it seemed he was. She simply had not the speech to describe the shifting rainbow prism.

“There are some things, yes, I cannot speak of,” he admitted. “And others I did not tell the shaman.”

Shannivar commented that the
enaree
was accustomed to hearing all manner of bizarre visions. “It is not good to keep visions to yourself, no matter how difficult or confusing they are. We are not on this journey for our own private purposes, but for those of the gods.”

He set his jaw and looked away.

“Will you not entrust me with what you saw?” she pleaded. “We need not tell Bennorakh if that is what is stopping you.”

After a moment, he nodded assent. Some of the things he described sounded very much like what she had seen, or what she still remembered. Others were strange, including the woman with the poisoned fruit, who had clearly drawn Zevaron into some sort of spell. From Zevaron's embarrassment, Shannivar thought perhaps he had wanted to take the offered fruit. Perhaps she had offered something more. At last, he paused, leaving only one more thing hanging unsaid in the space between them, one thing he did not want the
enaree
to know, one thing he struggled to speak aloud.

He drew himself together and met Shannivar's gaze. “I saw—over and over again—” Here his voice changed, and she caught a tone of savage exultation, of desire that went beyond craving. “I saw Gelon. Gelon burning.”

* * *

Shannivar packed her personal belongings, checked her weapons, medicinal supplies, and spare clothing. Her supply of women's herbs was almost gone. The last she gathered had been during the Moon of Frost along the trail. It was not unknown for a warrior woman to bear a child, although that meant laying down her bow for a time. Older married women sometimes used the herbs solely for reasons of health, since children were considered a blessing to the entire community. Not knowing what else to do, she sought out Chinjizhin's wife, Ahnzel.

In the absence of a tribal
enaree
, Ahnzel had taken over many of the traditional healing functions. Shannivar had noticed how various members of that extended family, and other families as well, came to her with worried expressions and departed looking relieved. When Bennorakh interacted with Ahnzel, he treated her with almost as much respect as he would have shown a colleague. At first, Shannivar had supposed this to be ordinary politeness to the wife of a chieftain, but she had since come to understand that the
enaree
recognized a spiritual kinship with the old woman. She remembered what Mirrimal had said about the strange half-world of the shamans—that it should not matter whether they began as men or women, as long as they ended up in the same halfway place.

It was midday and the men were busy tending the reindeer herds, when Shannivar and Ahnzel went into Ahnzel's
jort
. Chinjizhin was up and about, so they had the dwelling to themselves. Ahnzel pulled the door flap closed and tied it securely against the gusting ice-edged wind. The living space was divided by a central hearth into men's and women's sides.

Ahnzel ushered Shannivar to the women's side and indicated she should sit on a cushion with worn designs of snow hares in flight. The older woman brought out a tea set, a pot and cups of beautiful but chipped blue ceramic. Shannivar waited in polite silence while Ahnzel brewed the tea and offered her a cup. The tea was strong, bitter, and lightly salted.

“Now, woman of the Golden Eagle,” Ahnzel asked, sitting back on her own cushion, “what do you seek from me?”

Shannivar explained what she wanted, bittergrass or star-eye, whatever grew in this climate.

Ahnzel looked astonished. “You cannot—” She broke off, lowering her voice as if she feared being overheard.

“Why, do the women here not know how to prevent pregnancy? Or—” Shannivar faltered, “is such a thing forbidden?”

“Not at all. What do you think we are, animals that drop their young at any season? The life of the Snow Bear is not for the weak of body or spirit, and food must go to those who can best make use of it. Far better to bear fewer children who can be properly cared for than to have many and see them starve. But such things must not be used to uproot a pregnancy.”

“No, I mean their use in prevention.” Shannivar's throat tightened. She gazed, wide-eyed with astonishment, at the old woman.

Ahnzel's dark eyes glinted in the diffuse light filtering through the roof opening. Slowly she nodded.

How can it be possible?
Had she been mistaken in the herbs she had gathered along the trail? That was more than a moon ago. What if they only resembled effective remedies, but lacked true pharmaceutical qualities? She stared at the empty cup in her hands and struggled to gather her thoughts.

“My dear,” Ahnzel said, using a strange but understandable term of endearment from older to younger kinswoman. Something in Ahnzel's voice hinted at the question no one ever dared ask,
Do you want this child?
“Did you not know?”

“How could I? I haven't—haven't missed—”

“But you have a lover, and from all appearances he is an ardent one.”

Ardent. Oh, yes.
Then:
How can she tell if I am pregnant when I myself had no reason to suspect?

The answer leapt to Shannivar's mind. Ahnzel was gifted with an inner sight akin to that of the
enarees
. The signs had been there all along—the unusual fatigue, the tenderness in her breasts, the queasiness at the smell of morning tea.
A baby. A child? Zevaron's child?
She bent over, arms protective around her belly.
Oh, Sweet Mother Tabilit!
I took the dream potion—such strong magic—has it harmed my baby?

“My daughter, are you well?”

“I am well. And will be well. But—since by your arts you knew of my pregnancy before I myself did—can you tell me, please, is my babe well? Did the potion—” She could not go on.

Ahnzel placed one hand, feather-light, on Shannivar's abdomen. For a long moment, neither woman took a breath. Ahnzel straightened, her spine creaking. Her expression was thoughtful, but a smile hovered at the wrinkled corners of her eyes.

“I can sense nothing amiss at this time. However, it is in my mind that only the strongest babe could have made his presence known this early. I think you have nothing to fear on that account.”

Ahnzel patted Shannivar's arm. “Go safely under Tabilit's wide sky until we meet again.”

* * *

Shannivar told Zevaron about her pregnancy that night as they lay with their arms around one another after lovemaking. His muscles tensed and his breath hissed in a sharp inhale. She pulled away and propped herself up on one elbow. She could not read his expression in the dim light filtering through the central opening of her
jort
, and did not know what to expect. Any man of the clans would have been overjoyed. Rhuzenjin would also have tried to use the pregnancy to pressure her into marriage. Better to face a problem squarely. “What's the matter?”

“Matter?” his voice sounded thick with emotion. “Nothing! It's just . . . I didn't expect—”

“What?” she countered, forcing a laugh. “Do your people not know where babies come from?”

“Of course we do. I thought—I'd heard talk at the
khural
—that women of the steppe have ways of preventing pregnancy. Oh, Shannivar, I would never have exposed you to the risk had I realized!”

Shannivar frowned. At every turn, it seemed, some man was lecturing her on
risk
. She set aside the thought as unworthy. Surely a daughter or son was a blessing to clan and family, even if she would not be able to fight for a time. She wondered what Saramark had done when her children were infants, if she strapped them to her back or carried them in front of her on her saddle while she went about her heroic deeds. Or did she stay in camp until they were old enough to be left with their aunties?

“The chance of pregnancy was small,” she said, “and it was mine to take. The herbs sometimes fail, and there are differences from one variety to another. But when you say
risk
, do you mean this news is displeasing to you?”

“No!” The eagerness of his denial surprised her, as did the unrestrained delight with which he embraced her. “That is, if it does not displease you.”

This time, she did not have to force a laugh. “A babe is a treasure of the clan.”

“I thought you would not wish to set aside your present life—riding to battle, hunting—and this journey. My only sadness is of being parted from you.”

“Who said anything about
being parted
? Do you think that the moment a woman becomes pregnant she is helpless? That her skill with a bow, her knowledge, her courage, all fly out of her like a flock of startled ptarmigans?”

She went on in this fashion for a time, growing more vehement, until she realized that Zevaron had made an honest mistake in assuming she would now abandon the quest. He was not blind; he was ignorant of what a woman on a horse, pregnant or not, could accomplish. He had lived in stone houses, and then at sea, among men. She told him how Kendira had ridden out to make the
jort
lattices, how her kinswomen often did the work of managing the encampment, putting up and taking down
jorts
, cooking and weaving, beating felts, and harvesting wild barley, until the very day the babe was delivered. While a mother nursed her own infants, the raising of the children was shared by the women and men of the clan. If a woman died in labor, her sisters and cousins, aunts and grandmothers, took over. “We women are constrained from hunting or going into battle not by childbearing itself but by the customs of marriage,” she explained.
Although we should not be.
“It does not often happen that unmarried women bear children and continue with their lives as warriors and hunters. Most women marry first, and then they set aside their bows.”

“And you do not wish to marry?”

“I am determined to live my life as I choose,” she replied with heat, and then realized he might have been asking if she wished to marry
him.
She touched his face in the near dark. “And I choose to defend my people, to take the man I love into my
jort
, to follow where Tabilit has called me. She brought us together, surely you realize that, and she has blessed us with this child. But she has also put a fire in my heart. She has set me on this path, and I do not—I
cannot
—believe she intends me to give up now.”

He was silent for a moment, and she added, “Would
you
turn back, so close to the northern mountains?”

“The danger is for myself alone. You are carrying a child, and therefore placing two lives at risk. How can I allow that, especially when it is mine?”