Deepwood: Karavans # 2 (18 page)

Audrun knelt beside him. “What can I do? I know you’ll revive, should you die, but there must be something I can do for you now.”

The membrane had dropped over his eyes so the world he saw, the woman he saw, hazed red. “Keep me alive.”

“But—”

“
Do
keep me alive, if you would be so kind. In the human world I can’t be killed, not permanently, but here …” He closed one bloodied hand around the
woman’s slender wrist. “
Here
, death is death. There is no revival. Not for any of us.”

Her face blanched. Every cut, scrape, and bruise, and the dark circles beneath her eyes, stood out from her flesh. “But—your father’s a
god
. You told me so!”

“In Alisanos,” he said, “even gods die.”

I
LONA AWOKE ABRUPTLY, with the sense that she’d been dreaming but no memory of the content. Her mind was clear; she recalled the violent storm, the fall from Jorda’s draft horse, the realization that she was not in Alisanos. And there was pain. Her arm was broken; she remembered that well.

She looked upward, blinking, aware that there was no shielding oilcloth canopy stretched over the ribs of her wagon. She could not recall when that might have happened, though likely during the storm. Overhead she saw the spreading panoply of twilight as the first bright stars began to appear. She heard the rustlings of birds outside, the chirp and scraping of nightsingers. She smelled roasted meat as well.

Movement came from beside her. “Ah, you’re awake.” A woman leaned over her. The courier, Bethid. “I’ve brewed more willow bark tea; would you care for some? And Brodhi, of all people, came by with venison. Are you hungry?”

Ilona peered up at her. “What day is this?”

“The remains of the first day after the storm,” Bethid replied. “You’ve lost no days and nights, only a handful of hours.” She placed a hand on Ilona’s brow. “I think you had a fever, but it seems to be gone now.”

The courier’s palm was calloused against Ilona’s forehead. But it was still a palm, and her gift was not blocked by such things as calluses and scars. Ilona caught Bethid’s wrist in her right hand. “May I read it? Will you allow it?”

The courier’s expression was a mixture of reluctance and a wish to please her patient. “I go to a runereader.”

“And you may again,” Ilona said. “I wish only to read your hand this once—it won’t taint you. A runereader won’t turn you away.”

Bethid looked abashed. “I’m sorry. I should know better.” She knelt down beside the cot, a quick smile flashing. “Go ahead, then. I can bear it.”

“This is not for you,” Ilona told her, “but for me. I have not been able to read a hand since the storm.”

“If you see anything bad, don’t tell me. I’d rather be surprised.”

Ilona pushed herself slightly upright with her right elbow to lean against the pillow and cushions someone had placed beneath head and shoulders, wincing against the pain in her left forearm. “This will be awkward, but I must try.” She resettled her splinted arm, willed the pain to pass, then nodded at Bethid. The courier offered her hand. Ilona placed her own over it,
but did not touch flesh to flesh. Her palm hovered over Bethid’s.

Nothingness.

“No,” Ilona said. “Oh, no …”

The courier withdrew her hand abruptly. “I said I don’t want to know if there’s anything bad in it!”

“No, it’s not you. It’s not bad. It’s me. I see nothing.
Nothing.”
Ilona held her own hand up before her eyes, staring blankly at the palm she knew so well, but could not read. “Mother of Moons, what has become of my gift?”

“What do you mean? Is it—gone?”

Ilona looked at the concerned face. “I see nothing.” Tears unexpectedly stung her eyes. “A hand is just a hand!”

“Perhaps it’s the broken arm,” Bethid said, seeking to reassure. “Jorda said that as long as he’s known you, you’ve never been sick or injured.”

Ilona considered that. “I’ve always been healthy. I’ve broken no bones before now. I’ve never been ill.” She examined her palm again. “Could it be so? Could a broken bone block my gift?”

Bethid shrugged. “Why not? Pain and fever, and time needed to heal. Perhaps your ability is secondary to–to physical interference. It takes strength to heal, you know. Perhaps once the bone is whole, your gift will return.”

Ilona dropped her right hand across the coverlet. Her eyes sought Bethid’s. “Do you know Lerin, the dream-reader?”

The courier shook her head. “I haven’t been here often enough to learn all the diviners. And, as I said, I see a rune-reader.”

“Would you do a thing for me, and ask for her? See if you can find her, and tell her I’d like a consultation?”

“I will,” Bethid agreed. “But first, let me fetch you a mug of tea, and the meat Brodhi brought. You can eat while I’m gone. But if you should fall asleep, do you want me to awaken you if I find the dream-reader?”

“Yes,” Ilona declared. “Please.” The courier nodded and ducked out, descending the folding steps. Ilona once again fixed her eyes upon the night sky. “Please. Let my gift not be gone.”

She knew of no true diviner who had lost the ability to see the fortunes and futures of others. Not even a suggestion of it had ever been mentioned among diviners she knew. But the world was no longer the same. Who could swear that the coming of Alisanos had not affected them all?

Fear welled up, swamping her. What was she, without her gift?
Who
was she, without her gift? What under the sun and moon would she do with her life?

“Mother,” she whispered, rubbing tears away, “let my gift not be gone.”

AUDRUN FELT SICK to her stomach from a jumble of fear and shock. Holding her newborn daughter, she knelt beside a man she had believed
invulnerable to serious injury, able to overcome death to live again. She had
seen
it, once. Impossible as it was, she had witnessed the guide’s revival from death caused by a poisoned Hecari dart. But now he had told her death, a permanent death, was indeed possible for him in Alisanos, despite who and what he was. And he was badly hurt.

What can I do? What should I do?

Blood from the wounds in his scalp covered his face. His chest, naked beneath the baldric of throwing knives, was scored by dozens of claw marks. Blood seeped through rents in his leather leggings. But the worst were the deep, deep gashes on his abdomen.

Mother of Moons, what can I do?
Guilt also rode her that she worried for herself and the child should he die. But she could not set that aside, even in the face of his injuries.

And then it came to her that despite what he was, a son of Alisanos, he was also a man. Not human, but a man, and a man who walked the thin blade of a knife’s edge between death and life. What would she do if this were Davyn, slumped against the tree? Why, care for him! Give him her time, and what skill she had at healing. A wife and mother learned such things.

She cast a glance around the dreya ring. Branches and limbs had returned to the positions expected of trees. No shield blocked the sky and its two suns, no fence kept out such things as winged demons. Winged demons who spoke
Sancorran
. Who may have even been human once, fully as she was, but lost to the
deepwood. Lost to the world. No longer a man, no longer a human.

Is that what will become of me?

Rhuan stirred. His breathing was arrested on a small grunt of pain, and then his eyes opened. Kind eyes, she had always felt. But now red, not brown. Now wholly alien.

He was no more human than the winged demon was.

“Mark your way,” he said, barely aloud. “Always mark your way.”

No more. No additional words. Lids dropped over his eyes. He was, she believed, unconscious.

At home, tending Davyn, she would ask for water. There was no one here, no children present, she could set to that task. So it was left to her. Were she at home, tending Davyn all alone, she would fetch the water herself. She would clean and bandage his wounds, offer water to drink and broth to eat. She would change the dressings as often as seemed necessary, try to keep a fever from setting in, let him know she was near, that he was not alone. That he should and would survive, because he was strong, and because she needed him. That the children needed him.

In her arms was cradled an infant. Around her, in a ring, gathered trees of the dreya, whom Rhuan had asked for help. And help they had offered. She was alive, and held a baby safely in her arms,
because
of the dreya.

Audrun nodded. Then she looked for and found a
tree in the ring that offered a form of protection within a tangle of roots upon the surface of the earth, and carefully set the baby into it. Sated, Sarith slept. Audrun drew in a deep breath, then rose. In the center of the dreya ring, she beseeched assistance. For the baby. For the man. For herself. Then she began to tear strips of fabric from her long tunic. She would, as instructed, mark her way, allowing her to return to tend the man and the infant.

A frisson of fear ran down her spine. This nightmare was not made of any images, fractured or whole, she had seen in her sleep. In no moments of the night, mired in darkness, had she envisioned herself trapped in Alisanos. Nor trapped with an infant wholly dependent upon her.

But the hand-reader, the woman named Ilona, had seen in Andrun’s hand tears and blood and grief. And all had come to her in plenty. Her family, save for the child, was stripped from her. The knowledge of Alisanos that Rhuan, born to the deepwood, held was lost to unconsciousness. And the baby, tiny Sarith, knew nothing at all of anything, save of the woman who offered milk and warmth, a soothing voice and the beating of her heart.

Still standing in the center of the ring, Audrun looked at her sleeping baby. Looked at the man whose father was a god. And knew that the safety of both, as well as her own, depended solely on her.

But when had the safety of her children not depended on her since she’d borne her first?

She knelt beside Rhuan and took the long-bladed knife from his sheath. With precision she cut two long strips of fabric from the hem of her skirt. Her ankle pained her and would make walking difficult, but she had no choice. She dared not remove the boot to wrap her ankle because she might not be able to get it on again. So instead she carefully and tightly wrapped the strips around her boot, cross-gartering the leather, until her leg was encased from sole to midcalf.

She rose, testing her ankle. The compressed leather cut into her leg and would probably chafe, but she could bear that. With the weapon in her right hand and her left full of cloth strips intended to mark the way, Audrun limped out of the ring.

DAVYN REACHED THE wagon as the sun slid below the horizon. Twilight would soon bleed to darkness, and the slender crescent of Maiden Moon would rise in the sky. One day? Could all have happened in a single day? Or had the storm stolen more time than that from them, with none of them the wiser?

So much,
too
much, had occured. And now he was left alone with two dead oxen and the wagon canted sideways on its broken axle, with trunks, barrels, and chests set out upon the road. The arrangement, made so he and Gillan could lever up the wagon and replace the damaged axle, reminded him oddly of a hen with chicks.