The Wild Road (10 page)

Another man might have questioned her further. Another man might have mocked. But after a moment Rhuan bent, retrieved the dropped mug, scraped the interior with his fingers, and knelt beside the fire to refill it.

Then, he paused. Ilona saw the motions of his hands change. He knelt beside the fire, mug clasped, and murmured words she did not know. When at last he looked up at her, she saw the laggard return of his senses, of his awareness of surroundings.

She ventured a question, if very quietly. “What is it?”

When he looked up at last, she saw a quick flash of red in his eyes. “I thanked it. I apologized.”

She was not certain she had heard him correctly. “You—thanked it? And apologized?” She paused. “A
mug?
”

“That once was a tree.”

“A . . . tree. Well, yes. Many things are made of trees, including this wagon.”

“It lived once. Blood ran in its veins, just as it runs in ours. Humans tend not to think of that.”

She wondered if the observation included her among those who did not think. But a mug? A simple wooden mug?

He refreshed the tea, then rose and offered the simple wooden mug.

Ilona took it but did not immediately drink. She studied the mug, noting scrapes and gouges. With gentle fingers, she explored the exterior as she had never done before. Fingers found smoothness. Fingers found divots. Found ill usage, compared to what it had been before axes, sledges, and saws took it down.

When the warmth was back in her hands, the familiar aroma rising, she felt tension slowly relinquish her neck and shoulders. “Then we'll wait,” he said, referring to the bath she had forgotten about.

Ilona blew out a long breath. “I'm sorry. I thought you were—him.”

“My sire?”

She nodded. “I forgot your braids were undone.”

“Well, I believe we can remedy that.” Firelight gleamed on the smooth flesh of his face. “How nimble are your fingers?”

“My fingers?”

“Devoid of knife, that is.” He lifted one of her hands and guided it to his head, where sheets of hair hung almost to his waist. “I asked you last night if you would braid my hair.”

“There is a lot of it,” Ilona observed. “It would take half the night, at least.”

He grinned, and dimples appeared. “I suspect we can find something else to do with the other half.” Then the dimples faded, as did the laughter in his eyes. “I started to explain this last night but got sidetracked.”

Ilona smiled widely. “So we both did.”

“But if you do braid it, you must know about the repercussions.”

She tried to school her tone out of skepticism into mere curiosity but failed. “There are repercussions for braiding hair?”

“Among my people, yes.” His expression, she noted, was a carefully constructed mask, but the brown eyes, reflecting flame, burned. “It's a ritual undertaken to seal a man to a woman, a woman to a man.”

She put her free hand to the disarray of her own hair. “Then I would braid mine?”

“There are different braiding patterns for a woman. I would braid yours.”

Now she touched his hair, letting it slide through her fingers. It needed washing, as hers did, but despite the ripples left by braids it hung nearly straight. “How did yours come to be unbraided?”

Night encroached, but she could see fleeting expressions in the glow of the campfire. Something very akin to guilt. “It was not to be done, but was.”

Obscurity had always been a part of him, but this night, after all that had happened, she had no patience for it. “What in the Mother's name does that mean?”

He touched his scalp, pushing fingers through his hair. “I was injured. Furrows, here, from a demon's claws. They're gone now, but she wanted to clean the blood away. I was unconscious, or I would have stopped her.”

“Why does it matter that she unbraided your hair? Oh. I see. That's part of the ritual, too. “

“Among the primaries, if a woman wishes to marry a man, she unbraids her hair. If he accepts her suit, she then unbraids his.”

“And then you braid it back again?”

“Yes.”

“So whoever unbraided your hair was asking you to marry her?”

“I was unconscious.”

That sounded suspiciously like an excuse. “So you have said.”

“She didn't know what it meant.”

“Sweet Mother, Rhuan, just say it, would you?”

“Audrun.”

“
Audrun
?” She stared at him. “The farmsteader's wife?”

“The storm took us together. I led her to safety. Well, eventually—first I had to wrestle with a demon who wanted the infant.”

“What infant? What demon? Rhuan—”

He placed two fingers against her lips. “If we are to have this conversation, may we have it in your wagon? For privacy's sake?”

She removed his fingers from her mouth. “Yes, we shall, but first one thing.”

“Augh, Ilona, not another
thing
—”

He was so anxious, so worried, that Ilona had to stifle laughter. “If I have it right, then according to your people, you're married, aren't you? You and Audrun?”

Hastily he said, “It doesn't
mean
anything. Not here. It's not a human ritual. It's what the primaries do, but it means nothing here. Nothing at all.”

She raised her brows and spoke with an overly dramatic tone. “But you've asked me to braid your hair. Here. So obviously there
is
some significance to the ritual, even by human terms. Yes?”

The conflict in his face was clear. “But we're not married. Not here. Audrun's already married, here. So I am free, here.”

“Here, here, and here. But the primaries think otherwise.”

“I'm not there, Ilona. I'm here.” He stretched out his arms. “
Here
.”

She laughed, tugged gently on the lock of his hair still grasped in her hand, then tugged harder. He followed the pressure on his scalp until their faces were level. She rested her forehead against his. “Yes, you are. Here.” She pointed to the wagon. “But let's go
there
.”

Chapter 7

B
ETHID WAS SOUND
asleep until the earth shuddered and the tent fell down. It startled her so much that she sat up, thrashing, and got herself entangled in billows of heavy canvas. What she uttered was in no way polite. And then, “Sweet Mother, the lantern!” Timmon and Alorn were absent, staying late at Mikel's ale-tent, and it was routine to leave a lantern burning until all couriers returned to the tent. She smelled oil and smoke. “Where—?” It was difficult to make her way through the yardage of canvas. “Oh Mother . . . Brodhi? Are you here?” She had glimpsed him as she'd rolled up in her bedding. “The lantern's fallen. Brodhi?”

From somewhere came his voice, clear and concise, unmuffled by fallen tent. “I have it.”

Relief. Now she could afford to be frustrated instead of worried. On hands and knees she made her way through folds and billows until at last she reached an edge of fabric and stuck her head out, yanking canvas aside. The settlement animals, yet again, were in an uproar. Across the grove, throughout the ranks of tents, she saw banked fires glowing. Above, the moon shed enough luminance to see shadowy bulks of nearby tents. She wondered if any others had fallen or just the one she slept in.

The earth stilled. Bethid crawled out from under the edge of fallen canvas and rose. Not far from her stood Brodhi, who had already made his escape. The extinguished lantern hung from his hand. She tried to restrain her tone, but failed. “How many more times is this going to happen?”

“Alisanos does as it does. It will take time for the land to ease.”

“No, I don't mean that. I mean: how many more times is the tent going to collapse? Someone did a piss-poor job of pitching it.
Re
-pitching it, that is. What does it take to keep it upright if only for one night? That's all I ask.” She raised a pointing finger in the air to emphasize the number. “One night. One undisturbed night. If Alisanos wants to shake the world again, why doesn't it do so in the daylight?” Aggrieved, she shoved fingers through her short-cropped hair, scrubbing violently, and glared at Brodhi. “Do something.”

“
Do
something? I?”

“Yes. You. You're from there. Do something.”

For a moment he ignored her, inspecting the lantern's oil reservoir. Then he bent, took something from the ground, tossed it at her. Bethid caught it, saw it was a slim stick. “
You
do something,” he told her. “Flint and steel are buried beneath the tent. Go lift a light from another fire.”

Bethid scowled at him. “My boots are in the tent.
Under
the tent.”

“You have feet.”

“Sweet Mother, Brodhi—you can't expect me to go traipsing barefoot through the dark!” She peered at his own feet. “You have boots on!”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I have land-sense. I knew it was coming, this shrugging of its shoulders. And your first thought, as well, should have been to pull your boots on.”

“If you knew this was coming, why didn't you tell me? A warning would have been good. I'd have appreciated a ‘Bethid get up and put your boots on before the tent falls down on your head,'
before
it fell on my head.”

“By then I was out of the tent. With my boots on.”

“Don't sound so smug.” She inspected the stick again, then tilted back her head to look up at the moon. Some light, but not enough. Barefoot, she went off to find the closest fire, swearing each and every time her feet struck rocks.

JUST BEFORE DAWN
,
the rain began. Davyn was wrapped in blankets on the floor of the wagon beneath a canopy given him by a karavaner with one to spare. He was perfectly dry, except for his tears. He had repeatedly dreamed of Audrun and the children throughout the night, getting little true rest. The karavan guide's words about a road, and safety when one was upon it even in the depths of Alisanos, left Davyn with a mix of relief and worry.
When
would the road be done?
When
might he take it into the deepwood and find his family?
When
could he once again hold Audrun in his arms, embrace his children?
When
might he meet the smallest one, the infant named Sarith?

Unanswerable questions, he knew. Rhuan could not predict when the road would be completed. The only action Davyn himself might take was
in
action, as he waited. And waited.

He rolled over onto his back, peering up at the oiled canvas of the wagon canopy. Outside the dawn grew stronger. He could see rain striking the canvas, as well as hear it, see the fragile light of a new day. Another day without his family.

Davyn pressed his hands over his face and rubbed. He had not shaved in three days, and his jaw itched. Fingertips found stubble and scratched.

The rain was, as far as Davyn could tell from inside the wagon, perfectly ordinary rain. Not the searing, steaming rain that had, in that unnatural storm birthed by Alisanos, struck the ground like spears and left divots of earth overturned. And it was not, as yet, a drenching rain.

It had been the promise of heavy storms that had set all folk in the karavan to better speed in order to reach their destinations before the rainy season, the monsoon, set in. When his family joined the karavan, Jorda the karavan-master had been plain with regard to their oxen, known to move more slowly and ponderously than horses or mules. He'd explained that, in another year, all the karavans would have already gone, but Jorda's was late, as was one other, which meant that he and Audrun and the children found a place. Jorda put them at the very end, where oxen would not slow the others; where he and his own ate dust.

But now it was rain, welcome for its cooling properties, the abatement of dust, the filling of barrels put out for such purpose; but it would be unwelcome after a handful of days and the roads transformed to mire, a sucking mud that could trap heavy wagons. Even if his family were here, they could go nowhere now. Best to stay with others beset by the same delay than set out alone. He and Gillan together still would not have been strong enough on their own to lever a wagon mired down, even with the oxen pulling. Better to stay here, he knew—as much to wait for the road through Alisanos to be completed as to sit out the monsoon.

Outside, rain fell harder, faster. No one would be going anywhere. It was time to break out the weather clothing, the trousers and shirt made of oiled canvas, though of a lighter hand than wagon canopies, and a rope-belted, hooded coat against the worst of the rain. Months, it would be. Months in one place. But for Davyn, alone, good weather would do nothing to urge him on his way. The child was born. Reaching Atalanda now lacked the relentless drive to get his family to safety, as the diviners had all urged before the baby was born.

The baby
was
born.

Blessed Mother, his children, his Audrun, all of whom were his life. Precisely the kind of life he had wanted and had, before now, beneath the Mother's weeping skies.

AUDRUN STARED AT
the primary, stunned beyond words. He wanted
her
? To make another
dioscuri
? To make a child who would, at its birth, cause her death?

But she found her tongue as well as renewed strength, and schooled her tone into matter-of-factness, refusing to allow the primary to provoke her before her children. She sensed the shock of her eldest, Gillan and Ellica, who knew how children came into the world; Torvic and Megritte, as yet too young, knew nothing of such things in humans, only in livestock.

“I didn't realize you were insane. My sympathies for your condition.”

She saw a brief flicker of surprise in his brown eyes, the faintest spark of red, though nothing showed in his face. “Untrue,” the primary said.

In the same matter-of-fact tone, she said, “Oh, I think you are. Without question.” Then she realized that possibly the same could be said of her, standing with a tree frond balanced on her head. She lowered it to her side. The double suns were blinding. Hats. They needed hats. “You stand here before me—before my children, no less—and declare we'll make a baby, you and I.” She stared into his eyes, putting as much conviction into her own as was possible. No wavering. No flicker of concern or fear. Primaries exuded physical and mental strength, a nearly overwhelming power. But she refused to surrender to it. “You are impolite, to suggest such a thing. Before my children, if you please, you will mind your manners.”

Ah. She saw it: she had provoked him.

“Human, do you know where you are?”

“Oh, yes. Rhuan explained about the Kiba.”

“It is the heart of our people . . . do you mock that? Do you mock me?”

She drew in a careful breath, trying not to let it shake, and released it as carefully. “I never mock children. It serves no purpose.”

He was, abruptly,
there
, standing in front of her, nearly touching her. The children, now, were behind him; a glimpse showed eyes gone huge and mouths open. She felt his power, recognized that she could not truly withstand it. It took great effort to hold her ground. His height, his bearing, his eyes, the sheer power of his presence nearly beat her down. Her legs were weak, trembling. She did not know for how long she might remain standing. She dug the fingers of her right hand into the frond at her side, realizing as she did so, completely inconsequentially, that two fingernails were broken.

The back of her neck prickled, but she did not give ground. He wanted her for breeding; he would not kill her when a child of his would do it for him.

The timbre of his voice tightened. “Would you, human woman, mock a
god
?”

He would not kill her. That gave her strength. “Probably not. I was taught good manners.”

“Yet you mock me.”

“Well, yes. You are deserving of it. How dare you come to me, a guest of the Kiba, and say such things? That is most rude. I was led to believe better of you, but apparently Rhuan was wrong.”

“Rhuan—? Rhuan is a child. He speaks as a child.”

“In my world, I rather think he's an adult.” She wished badly she could see more of her children behind him, but by standing so close, he blocked her. She had to tip her head back to look into his face. She did so, meeting his eyes. “And why, when you already have a
dioscuri
, do you want to get another? Isn't Brodhi enough?”

He smiled. “Alario means to do it.”

It took her aback. “And does that mean you must?” She shook her head. “Is everything here a competition?”

“Of course.”

“And what will you do with two
dioscuri
?”

“What we have always done. We let them fight.”

“You would risk Brodhi?”

“No risk,” Karadath answered. “If Brodhi should fail, it would be because the other was more fit. And if
that
one dies, then Brodhi's worth is assured.”