The Wild Road (9 page)

Davyn dropped the doll to his lap. He bent forward, dug elbows into his knees, covered his eyes. Rigid fingers encroached into his hairline. The fair hair he had bequeathed to all his children was stiffened from dried perspiration and pressed back against his head.

Regret was an unexpected knife in Rhuan's abdomen. He realized that no matter how well meant, regardless of how carefully he framed them, his words hurt Davyn to his very soul. It was true that Rhuan himself had no wife, no children; but he was human enough—yes,
human
enough—to take into his heart the farmsteader's grief and to know that empathy was also a gift he might offer.

What would I do in this man's place
? But he knew no answer. He could not anticipate how he would react, what he would feel. To the primaries, he was as yet a child, an adolescent. Perhaps they were correct. A child could not completely understand as an adult might.

Or perhaps only a
dioscuri
who took upon himself the expectations of his people, who celebrated all of the arrogant assumptions of his race, could understand the world as an adult. Perhaps that was the explanation for Brodhi's attitude, his unspoken certainty of supremacy, of ascension. Brodhi simply
knew
one day he would kill his sire. His confidence was unwavering. Rhuan knew he himself wanted no part of the ritual—and that certainty had nothing to do with fear Alario would kill him. Nothing existed in him to kindle potent instinct into pure challenge, into the overwhelming need to kill his sire. No part of him felt the slightest urge to ascend.

He wondered if, in human terms, that made him a coward.

Davyn straightened, hastily wiping tears from his eyes with the back of a hand. His voice was raw. “She is everything you described. So strong. But she will be transformed regardless, yes?”

Rhuan banished personal musings and returned to the only topic that mattered to the farmsteader. “She less than others. Of that I advise you to be certain.” He recalled Audrun's exhaustion, and the mental strength required to continue on and withstand the primaries, even as her body, all human, began to flag. The woman had experienced accelerated labor, had given birth prematurely, yet still faced down the primaries.

Davyn's voice lost its edge. “She was fifteen when we married. But she has always been strong, and confident, and self-sufficient.” He met Rhuan's eyes. “The children . . . you say they are more vulnerable to the wild magic.”

It was not a question, and in any case, Rhuan had already answered it. But he recognized the ongoing process of Davyn's mind. It would require time to truly grasp the magnitude of what he had been told. “They are more vulnerable. Anyone new to life is so.”

“Then the newborn is lost . . . Sarith. She's lost.”

Rhuan refused to lie for the sake of calming fears. Davyn deserved the truth. “She may be.”

“And yet—a road?”

“A road that will, upon completion, take you to your family and on to Atalanda. Your family may not come to you—and I have told you why—but you may go to them.”

“And will I, too, be changed?”

Rhuan shook his head. “Not upon the road.”

NOW AND AGAIN
,
a stream ran before the tiny dwelling. Now and again, a river. Occasionally no water ran at all, merely a webwork of trees all woven together, canopy to canopy, branches so tightly tangled there was no parting tree from tree. Roots broke free of the soil and encroached upon one another, braiding themselves together into a massive woody lattice against the ground. Blackened lichen furred boughs and rocks. Fern, bracken, grass, and fallen broken leaves layered footing beneath the trees. But footing was not necessary when one had wings.

It was little more than a hut, knit together from layers of cut sod, crooked courses of wracked branches, and upright, twisted timbers; from streambank mud, sinews from beasts, succulent vines wrapped around all and dried into snug ropes. Grass and bracken grew from the outer skin of the hut until it was clothed in vegetation, indistinguishable from the forest. Behind it, forming the back wall, was a massive outcropping of stone, black and gray and roan, veined with glinting chunks of brittle, cloudy crystal. It loomed over the roof of the low hut. Here all was damp beneath the trees, dryness denied because the double suns of Alisanos were made nearly invisible by the thickness of the canopy overhead. This dampness had never troubled the demon, whose wings lifted it above the trees into the brilliant warmth of the suns.

But now it had a child.

Now it had a daughter.

This day, a stream ran before the hut. Sweet water was plentiful. The demon landed gently on the ground, folded its wings, cradled the infant against its chest. It cast a glance at the tight-woven canopy overhead, air-scented briefly, then ducked beneath the low lintel and entered the hut.

The interior appeared larger than the exterior. Coals glowed in the fireplace against the rock wall across the back, where hearth and chimney had been built of stone ruddy and gray, piled one atop another and mortared into place. Holding the child one-armed, the demon bent and tossed tinder into coals, letting a foreshortened sweep of barely spread wings serve as bellows to raise flame. Twigs, sticks, limbs, all added as the fire grew. The demon would make the hut warm for the child.

Fragile human child.

Wings again were folded away. The black, open hide jacket hung askew, so the child, wrapped in dirty cloth torn from a woman's skirt, was pressed against demon flesh. Cold demon flesh, white as ice, except for a bloom of darkness rising from beneath hide waistband to breastbone, shining scales the color of bruised human flesh.

Now, the child began to fuss. Swaddled in cloth, it squirmed restlessly as if it would escape. The head was bared. Pale, white-blond hair, mere fuzz against the skull. Rosy silken skin, until the child began to cry, and then the face reddened. Cries rent the air.

Hungry, it thought. The child was hungry.

The demon cast a wild glance around the hut. There was no food. It hunted when hungry. But the child, so young, could not do so. It was the demon's task to feed the infant.

It sat down upon hard-packed earth, close to the fire. It bent its head down over the child, and long black hair, shining in the firelight, fell down upon the infant, who startled from the touch. Crying now was fear, not mere hunger.

“Tha tha,” the demon said. A clawed hand moved the sheet of hair aside, closed gently over the fuzzy skull. “Tha tha.”

No. Not
tha.

“There,” the demon said. “There, there.”

Poor hungry child. Poor hungry human.

The demon closed its pale, slit-pupiled eyes. For long moments it sat there cradling the child, legs folded crosswise, fire warming the hut, wings folded against black hide. And then as the child continued to cry, the demon pressed a single claw against its own chest just below the black nipple, and drew a line.

Blood welled. Spilled.

“No.” That much, it remembered. Milk, not blood. “No.”

The demon tipped back its head. Its mouth fell open. A single convulsion passed through its body.

Beneath the blood, a breast began to grow. The infant knew. The infant nuzzled until the nipple was found. White milk flowed.

And as the child suckled, the demon remembered when it had been human.

When it had been a woman.

Before Alisanos.

“There, there,” it said.

Chapter 6

I
T WAS, AUDRUN
decided, beautiful in a way she'd never encountered. Beneath the towering, hollowed cliffs grew trees both sparse and spindly, robust and elegant, forming close-grown stands and copses and the occasional solitary spears. Significant time had been lavished on the grounds of the Kiba. Pebbles, rocks, and soil were mostly russett-colored. Carefully hewn sections of stone paved looping pathways, mortared together into patterns with an equally ruddy substance. Everywhere she looked, she was surrounded by the color, as if the Mother's palette had been limited. And yet the trees and shrubbery were rich green jewels against a backdrop, while flowering plants cascaded from raised gardens. All of the bare ground she could see had been raked, creating thin, shallow striations; and the rocks pulled out by the raking had been arranged alongside the paved pathways as intricate mosaic borders. The
tidiness
of the Kiba was amazing. Even the shrubbery and trees were neatened by careful pruning.

It was bright. Too bright. Here the double suns were not blocked by thick, massive forest canopy. She and her children, following a pathway beneath the looming cliffs and dwellings, were fully exposed. Squinting, Audrun felt the heat beating on her scalp and knew if something were not done to curb the sunlight, her fair-skinned, pale-haired children would soon burn badly. Having experienced that herself, Audrun wished to spare them the pain and the peeling.

“Here.” She stepped off the paved pathway near a clump of bushes and a singleton tree. Depending from the tree's drooping branches were wide, pleated fronds. She recognized the tree and its fronds as one she had seen frequently while following Rhuan through the thicker forest. “Take Meggie, Gillan.” She set her youngest daughter down, relieved to be free of the weight. Then she stripped frond after frond from the tree and handed them out. “Use these to block the sun.
Suns
.” The plural was difficult to remember. “We'll have to take time later to make ourselves hats. For now, these will work.” She handed Gillan a second frond. “Will you see to Meggie? She's so young; her skin is more vulnerable.” She fixed Torvic with a minatory eye. “You as well, young sir.”

Ellica stood clasping her small sapling in one arm while the frond dangled loosely from her right hand. The expression on her face was of startled grief. “How could you hurt it so?”

Audrun, assisting Torvic to adjust his frond, glanced at her. “Hurt what?”

“The tree!”

“The
tree
?” In disbelief, Audrun looked at the tree from which she had liberated six fronds. Then she turned back to her eldest daughter even as she plopped a frond across her own head. “Ellica, don't be ridiculous—”

“I am ridiculous because I know that it hurt the tree? Imagine having your fingers torn off one by one!”

“Sweet Mother, Ellica—”

“It
hurt
the tree, Mam!”

Audrun could think of nothing to say. Words were lacking because the entire experience was wholly beyond comprehension at this particular moment. Her mind was blank. All she knew was her tall daughter clutched a cloth-wrapped rootball against her chest as if it were a child, part of Gillan's leg was now scaled, Megritte hadn't said a single word since arriving at the Kiba, and Torvic—well, Torvic seemed wholly Torvic. Ellica, obviously, was not quite Ellica.

But Audrun instantly rejected her own judgment. Of course Ellica was herself.

It was hot on the paved pathway, even utilizing tree fronds as haphazard sunshades. “Come,” Audrun said crisply. “We can learn nothing of these folk if we stand here arguing over whether a tree was injured by my actions. I need information. Leaving the deepwood as soon as possible is the first order of business, but apparently this is impossible until a road is built. And
that
will take time.” She waved an arm at them in a gathering gesture. “I want to find someone in control, someone other than that arrogant female. Gillan, Torvic, go. Take Meggie. Ellica, now, if you please. And cover your head!”

Tears ran down Ellica's dusty cheeks, but she raised the frond over her head and followed the others. Audrun, aware of the odd picture she and her chicks presented to the world as they paraded down the pathway with tree fronds held over their heads, realized that with Davyn not present, all such parental decisions and issues now fell to her. Each and every one of them.

Audrun sighed as she brought up the rear, rubbing absently at her chin with the back her left hand.
Blessed Mother, aid me in this. Or I'll surely die of frustration before a week is through!

And then their straggling parade came to an abrupt halt. Audrun, bringing up the rear and lost in thoughts of the Mother, nearly collided with Ellica. Instead of arranged neatly in single file, her children gathered in a clump, clogging the pathway. Mute Megritte, once again, was in Gillan's arms. Audrun opened her mouth to ask in aggravation what had caused the sudden halt but closed it instead. Some several feet away, centered precisely in the walkway as if he fully intended to block it, stood one of the primaries. Arms were crossed, legs were spread. He stared at them all out of predatory eyes, as if considering that they might make a good meal. His expression was austere, but also intrusively calculating.

Audrun registered that he was nearly a mirror image of the primaries she had seen in the pit. Clothing made of gleaming, scaled hides, skin touched with copper, and hair—all those beads and braids!—the same. The angles of his face, the shape of his body, even the tilt of his head . . . such a strong resemblance to each other was not even present in her children, who were very alike. And then she realized that she recognized him despite the likeness to all the other primaries. Something set him apart. Something very powerful.

“Ah,” she said. “You were the one who wished
not
to help us. You are Karadath, Rhuan's uncle, I believe. Or whatever you choose to call it.” She remembered Rhuan's reference. “‘Kin-in-kind,' isn't it?”

He looked at her children one by one, studying each closely, then raised his eyes to hers. The timbre of his voice was beautiful; she had forgotten that. “You are a very stubborn little human.”

Audrun did not permit herself to flinch from either tone or observation. “So I have been told. Well, not that I am a stubborn
human
, nor particularly little—to us, that is—but yes. Stubborn. Particularly in defense of my children.”

“Are all of them yours?”

Feeling somewhat at a disadvantage because of her generally unkempt appearance, damp bodice, and the incongruity of a tree frond balanced on her head, she attempted to summon dignity and stood up straighter. “Of course they are.”

“By different sires.”

Audrun was shocked. “
No
, not different si—fathers! One. Only one. My husband.”

“If they are of the same litter, why such disparity in their sizes?”

A gust of incredulous laughter escaped her. “Humans don't have litters! We have . . .” she paused, rethinking, “but no, that's not entirely true. There are such things as twins, and I've even heard of a triplet birth many years ago, though none lived, nor did the mother. But we don't refer to them as ‘litters.' They are children.
Child
is singular;
children
means more than one.” And then she wondered what in the Mother's name she was doing parsing words with him. “So long as you are here, imitating a wall, would you be so good as to explain what is expected of us? Where we may stay?” She gestured. “My children are exhausted, as you can see, and I gave birth some while back. It takes its toll, such things, especially here. We would like—”

He cut her off. “You are fecund.”

“I . . . well, yes. Five children does suggest fertility.”

“We do not have litters. We have singleton births. And only one for each dam.”

Audrun's eyebrows rose. As the mother of multiples, she asked, “Why only one for each mother?”

“They die.”

His matter-of-factness shocked Audrun. “The mothers die? Each time?”

“But you are fecund. You haven't died yet. I think we should make a
dioscuri
, you and I.”

THE TEARS WERE
gone, the wagon neat, tea was ready for drinking as the sun went down. Ilona knelt beside the modest fire and took up the kettle with a rag wrapped around the handle, then filled a wooden mug playing proxy to pewter. She dropped two precious mint leaves into it—as drawers slid out in the quaking, much of her hoard of herbs and spices had spilled and were now mixed with dust—then retired to a fat cushion placed up against the massive wagon wheel, where a second cushion warded her spine against the hub. She sat down with a sigh, thumped her head lightly against the yellow-painted wheel spokes, and reflected that she needed nothing so much as a bath in the river, where she could cleanse her body as well as wash tangled, grit-encrusted ringlets. But she was too weary. Changing out of the burial shift into clothing of the living, for all it was a simple thing, stripped her of her last remaining reserves of strength, physical and emotional. More discouraging, tears always gave her a headache that lingered, sometimes beyond a night's sleep.

It was just after sunset. Nightsingers one by one joined in a ratchety, ringing chorus. She heard the flutter of birds looking for purchase in the old grove, the flap of wing against leaf. Dogs throughout the grove barked, answering dogs in the tents, and Ilona heard the squealing comment of a horse at Janqeril's picket lines. Across the grove cookfires sprang up, and soon a veil of smoke drifted through, followed closely after by the odor of meat, wild onions, and spices. The shouts of children playing echoed amidst the great old trees, as did the voices of mothers as they called respective children in to dinner. Her belly, too, was empty, but she was disinclined to eat. She sat upon her cushion, leaned against another, and sipped tea as twilight fell and the moon and her acolytes rose.

A twig snapped. Without even thinking, Ilona scrambled to her feet, and as the mug tumbled down it emptied the remains of warm tea all over her skirt. In the deepening dimness of twilight, she saw Alario and yanked the knife from her waistband, holding it low and underhanded, as she had been taught. She had killed no man, ever, but had meted out a slice here and there for those who grew too insistant.

And then she realized that the intricate braids were missing, as was prime maturity. “Blessed Mother, it's you!”

Rhuan, who had stopped moving altogether upon sight of the knife, observed, “You cut the drawstring of your skirt.”

She felt the heat of a blush. Indeed she was standing ready to stab, cut, or slice with the big knife, completely committed to action, but she thought the fierce tableau was much undermined by the pile of fabric puddled around her ankles. Still gripping the knife, she peered down. “So I did.”

“Might I recommend a scabbard if you mean to keep such a vast knife on your person?”

“Perhaps a scabbard would be best.” And as she met his eyes, laughter bubbled up. She was so tired she surrendered wholeheartedly to laughter, and after a moment he grinned and stepped close. She felt him take the knife from her loosened hand, heard the clunk after he tossed the weapon aside, and then the warmth of his arms encircled her. But she protested. “I need a bath. I badly need a bath.”

“Well, I daresay I do, as well. Everyone is eating, including the livestock, and not likely to stir any time soon. We could retreat to the river unburdened by watching eyes.”

His last sentence sent a wholly unexpected chill streaking down her back. She felt the prickle of it in her flesh. “Not at night!”

It startled him into arched brows and questioning eyes.” Why not at night? No one will be there.”

She bent, grabbed the fallen skirt, pulled it up where it belonged. Indeed, the drawstring was cut. Ilona hung onto the waistband to preserve a little modesty. She was a diviner; tentfolk and karavaners might very well be planning to visit her, even those who did not follow her faith. “Not now. Please. I'd rather wait until daylight.”