Crown in the Stars (55 page)

“Give me that look again and I’ll beat you, child! How dare you. I’ve treated you like my own daughter, and this is how you behave.” Fuming, she called to Ra-Anan, “See how she is? Do you see this? Kicking at my shoes when she walks behind me, and deliberately slowing down when she walks ahead!”

His patience gone, Ra-Anan hushed Tabbakhaw with
a killing look and snatched the startled Ormah by the arm, dragging her away.

Offended, Ormah argued, “Why do you always believe her? I wasn’t doing anything wrong! If she thinks I am—”

Ra-Anan shoved the young woman at Perek and said, “Here. She’s your wife now; make her behave before I kill her.”

Ormah’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. When she could finally speak, she sputtered, “You c-can’t just give me to him—you’re not my father!”

“Where is your father? Go complain to him!” Ra-Anan snapped.

Ormah had been separated from her parents and siblings by the confusion in the Great City, a loss that hadn’t affected her too badly.

“Go back through those mountains alone—you’ll starve to death if the animals don’t kill you first.” To Perek, Ra-Anan said, “She’s yours. You both need to marry anyway.”

“But not to Perek!” Ormah wailed, her mouth so wide open that the youngest children of their new tribe—sons and daughters of the metalworker, Nekhosheth, whimpered in sympathy.

Remorseless, Ra-Anan glared at Ormah. Perek smugly took her by the arm.

Adoniyram awoke with the dawn, immediately plotting mental lists of tasks he needed to accomplish for the day: Finish inspecting the canals, encourage the workers, and check on the priest Ebed—who was proving to be as
quiet, orderly, and wise as Rab-Mawg had been ambitious, unpredictable, and self-destructive.

I’m glad you’re gone
, Adoniyram thought to the now-departed Rab-Mawg, whose family had retrieved him from the tower three days after the chaos had descended from the skies.
And I’m grateful you’re here
, he thought, turning, hearing his young wife sigh and stretch herself awake.

She was Ghid’ohn’s sister, a pretty girl with gentle dark eyes and an unresisting personality. They had been married for seven weeks, and she had yet to argue with him about anything. She had even let him rename her, Atarah, without a murmur. He hadn’t liked her name—Telathah—which unimaginatively designated her as the third child in her family after Ghid’ohn and another sister. Shoshannah, he knew, would have argued to keep her first name—if he had been able to understand her.

One day, Shoshannah, I’ll go looking for you
, he thought, determined.
I’ll find you, and that brother, Gibbawr, you insisted was mine. And I’ll see the Ancient Ones with my own eyes …

Musing, he drew Atarah into his arms and kissed her, gratified by her softness and her obvious adoration of him. She would never be as amusing as Shoshannah had been, but for now, she was a comfort, and that was enough.

For now.

Twenty-Nine

STEPPING OUT of his new reed hut, binding his straight black hair into a severe horseman’s plait, Ra-Anan studied the sun-gilded morning contentedly. Five years of slow, difficult travel had brought him and his tribe to this eastern coastline—a deep, curving bay teeming with fish, crabs, and shellfish, pleasingly enhanced by a fertile marsh to the north populated by flocks of raucous—and edible—birds. Best of all, his quarrelsome tribe had finally agreed this past month that they would stay here permanently.

Nekhosheth and Perek were already awake and busy, hollowing out a fallen tree, carefully burning and chipping its interior to create a boat.

Ra-Anan approved. “Do you think you’ll finish it today?”

“Maybe,” Perek grunted, as Nekhosheth nodded.

The low nickering of a horse stopped them cold. As one, the men turned and saw a tribe of horsemen approaching from the south—followed by their families, who were also on horses. They had apparently been drawn to Ra-Anan’s settlement by the plumes of smoke rising from their work and from the morning fires. Jolted, Ra-Anan stared at the horsemen, recognizing some of them as former merchants from the Great City.
They must have taken half the horses in the city—some of those are mine!

Worse, these horse thieves had weapons aimed at Ra-Anan, Perek, and Nekhosheth. Apparently recognizing one of the men, Nekhosheth called out, “Peh-ayr! You’ve become a horseman?”

Peh-ayr, a dark, sparse-bearded, sneering man, called to Nekhosheth in ringing, rhythmic accents, nodding at Ra-Anan and Perek as if to ask, “Why are you with them?”

Another horseman, bony and surly, unmistakably motioned for Ra-Anan and all the others—who had emerged from their reed huts—to leave.

Seeing this, Ra-Anan’s former priest Awkawn cried, “They’re chasing us from our own homes that we’ve built? No!”

The surly horseman responded by shooting an arrow at Awkawn’s feet. Awkawn retreated as his wife and everyone in the tribe yelled in protest. Ra-Anan called to his wife and the other women, “Zeva’ah, gather everything you can! All the gear you can carry! Quickly before they decide they should have that too!”

Peh-ayr followed Ra-Anan’s every move with a readied arrow. Seeing this, Nekhosheth muttered, “He still hates you—always has.”

Ra-Anan felt all the hair on his head prickle with apprehension. “We’ll go,” he told Perek, who looked ready
to fight. “We’ll start again. We don’t have much to lose yet, except our lives—and the children’s.”

Apparently remembering his young son, whose birth had settled him—and Ormah—tremendously, Perek nodded. But he scowled at the former merchant-thieves.

“Boats,” Nekhosheth said abruptly, as soon as they were safely away from the invading tribe.

Peering ahead at the northern coastline, Ra-Anan said, “What about boats?”

“Easier than walking. We
can
swim if there’s an accident—but we’ll be careful.”

Nekhosheth was obviously thinking of the tribe’s children. The invaders had taken his children’s horses, which meant that the littlest ones would have to be carried. The journey—wherever it took them—would be dismally slowed.

Ra-Anan agreed reluctantly. “Boats it will be then.”

That night, as Ra-Anan sat down at the evening fire, Zeva’ah rolled her dark-shadowed eyes at him—the expression of a woman who has had enough. He expected her to berate him for not defending their settlement. Beneath his breath, he snapped, “Say it!”

“I think I’m with child.” She lowered her face into her hands, rocking, weeping.

After all these years?
Shocked, he pulled her into his arms as she cried for this new infant, and for everything she had lost: their home, luxuries, their sons, and their
Demamah. Ra-Anan soothed her, aware of the others staring curiously. “Things will be better in a few years, you’ll see. As our tribe grows, we will have a city again.” Frowning, he asked, “Can you swim?”

Weeks piled upon months, then became years, which Ra-Anan had always tracked by systematic knots in cordage: small knots for days, large knots for weeks, thread-marked knots for months, each cord ending with a year. The cords fringed to six… eight… nine years after the scattering of the tribes. Nine years of travel.

Using laboriously crafted wooden boats, carefully balanced with adjoining planks, Ra-Anan’s growing tribe cautiously worked their way up the northern coast. Eventually the land curved east, then south. Vistas of lush, misty grasslands filled with wildlife tempted them to linger, while pouring, chilling rains compelled them to flee, turning south with the coastline. Often they took refuge in caves to escape the weather. And they fought over where to settle. They had not yet found a place as wonderful as the deep, sparkling bay so rudely stolen from them by the merchant-thieves—a crime they all mourned.

Ra-Anan began to doubt that his young daughter, Tereyn, an unexpectedly happy child, and her constantly hungry infant brother, Nebat, would ever know a true home.

“That looks like a fine cave!” Tabbakhaw announced,
to Ra-Anan’s irritation, pointing toward a dark-hollowed outcropping of limestone along the shore.

Waving an oar from their boat adjoining Ra-Anan’s, Erek called to Tabbakhaw, “As you say.” Being their son-in-law, he was now almost subservient to Tabbakhaw and her husband, Chuwriy.

Behind Erek, his wife, the pregnant Salkah, sniffed loudly. “Let’s hope it’s a fine cave; the last one was so damp I felt as if I were living in a puddle.”