Deepwood: Karavans # 2 (23 page)

Gillan rolled his head aside, refusing to look at the man he’d trusted as a karavan guide. Darmuth was a demon. For all he tended Gillan’s leg, he remained a demon, a creature of Alisanos. Gillan stared hard into shadows, willing himself not to cry, trying to let sense overtake pain. But his leg was afire beneath Darmuth’s hands, and all he could do was whimper like a child.

Would he become a demon? Or something else? Something worse.

If worse existed in Alisanos.

He shut his eyes. Clenched his teeth. And resolved to remain human no matter what it took.

THE ROAD, BRODHI discovered, ended abruptly. It stretched out in front of him, beckoning him onward, but was encroached upon by a forest that hadn’t existed when he rode from Cardatha to the tent settlement to speak of the Sancorran lord’s execution. But he did not question it. He did not gasp aloud in disbelief. He knew exactly what it was, and why the road disappeared.

So if he continued on the road, he too would disappear into the deepwood. Thus it was incumbent upon him, if he wished to remain on his journey toward ascension, to avoid Alisanos and find another route to the Cardatha road. Accordingly, Brodhi swung his horse left. He would skirt the deepwood, avoiding the boundary that beckoned, that would lead him into the interior. Born of the deepwood, his land-sense was undeniable. He knew, he
felt
, exactly where Alisanos began and the human world ended.

Then he reined in his horse. He thought back, memory giving him a clear vision of how far he had ridden and the landmarks he had passed. Brodhi dug into his scroll case and took a tattered roll of parchment from it. He had delivered its message sometime before, orally, and the scroll had never left his possession. He
next dug out lead, spread the soiled sheet across his thigh, and began to sketch. Maps were born thusly, and understanding. Taken back to the settlement, it would provide answers. So Brodhi was careful in his illustration, making certain to draw exactly what he had seen. Accuracy was paramount. Meanwhile, his horse dropped his head and began to graze on moisture-laden grass. From high overhead, the sun blazed. The skies were clear. It was difficult to recall that they had been occluded by black, heavy clouds giving birth to red lightning and shattering thunder only yesterday. The world was dry again. Birds sang, beetles rattled, buzzed, and chirped, small game sought safety in vegetation. Here upon the road, all were safe. A matter of paces away, no one, nothing, was.

Brodhi continued to sketch carefully but the task was interrupted as a large shadow passed overhead. His instincts warned him it could well be something out of the deepwood; during and after a shift in locale, Alisanos often disgorged creatures.

He glanced up as the shadow passed again. A soft, glinting shower of opalescent scales drifted down, and the winged creature came closer. Just as it arrived on the road directly in front of Brodhi, the creature convulsed, then took on human form. By the time it landed, by the time he had his horse under control again, Brodhi was smiling. And when the creature dissolved into a recognizably human form, sans wings, tail, and scales, it became a woman. A woman
with wild red hair, green eyes, and freckle-dusted face, with features that were uncannily beautiful. She wore an indigo tunic and skirt, a silver-bossed belt, and slippers. Bright eyes laughed up at him.

Brodhi returned his attention to his map. “Back, are you?”

“To stay,” she said. “Well, for a while.” She strode gracefully forward, placing hands around the horse’s muzzle. “Be still,” she murmured to the bay gelding made nervous by her arrival. “All is well. I haven’t come to eat you.” Then her attention returned to Brodhi. “Where are you going?”

“Cardatha,” he said absently, still sketching. “Where the warlord is.”

The woman moved from the horse’s muzzle to Brodhi’s right leg. Slim, pale hands with perfectly human nails stroked his thigh below the parchment. “Come down,” she said. “Come down off this horse.”

Brodhi smiled inwardly. “I’m busy, Ferize.”

“Busy doing what? Drawing pictures?”

“Exactly. Pictures that may mean the difference between death and life, between sanity and madness.”

Standing beside the horse, she was not tall enough to see the surface of the parchment. “For humans?”

“For foolish humans, yes.”

“Ah. And then what will you do, when this task is finished?”

“Go to Cardatha, as I said.”

“Drawing pictures all the way?”

“Well, yes. So that when I return, I can offer the
knowledge to the humans who survived Alisanos going active.”

“Tedious.” Ferize closed fingers upon a tattered corner of the parchment. “Tedious in the extreme.” She tugged slightly. “I think you need distracting.”

“I find you immensely distracting,” Brodhi agreed, “but this must be done while the memory is fresh. I came from here … to here.” He tilted the parchment up to display it. “See? From here to here.” Fingers traced the way. “Only to discover that the old road now lies in Alisanos, and so I must find another route to Cardatha. There, I will buy better parchment, perhaps vellum, and transfer the map to it.”

“A mapmaker.” Small white teeth showed between her lips. “Such a demotion for a
dioscuri
.”

Brodhi continued drawing. “If I, as
dioscuri
, choose to do this, the task is elevated.” He flicked a glance at her. “And if you spoil this, I will be most wroth with you.”

Ferize laughed at him. “Wroth, is it? Because I spoiled something you intended for humans?”

Her fingers now lay across the parchment, obscuring his work. Brodhi gathered up the fingers in his own and lifted her hand away. “Not now, Ferize.”

“‘Not now,’” she mimicked, adopting a pettish tone. “I have been away, undoubtedly leaving him bereft, and he says ‘not now’ when I return.”

“Not now,” he repeated. He slipped his foot free of the stirrup. “But if you wish to ride double with me when I set out again, you may as well come up now.”

Ferize disdained the offered stirrup. In a swirl of full skirts, she leaped from the ground to land lightly atop the horse’s rump. Then she snuggled herself close to his body, wrapping arms around his torso. One hand drifted down. “I could make you forget all about drawing pictures for humans.”

“I’m sure you could. But that would not be the responsible thing to do when lives are at stake.”

“Human lives.”

“Human lives.” He finished sketching a final tree, then carefully rolled closed the parchment. It and his lead were returned to the scroll case hanging from his saddle. “I think we need not allow additional humans to end up where they most want
not
to be when Alisanos has already fed so well.”

I
N ALISANOS THERE was no moon, neither Maiden, Mother, nor Grandmother, only the Orphan Sky. But this Orphan Sky, here in the deepwood, promised no reappearance of the moon in any guise. Two suns, nothing more, and when they slid below the treetops and then beneath the horizon, giving way to the dark, only stars shed light, unless one had a torch.

Audrun did not. She sat in the clearing as the suns went down, beside the burned dreya ring, with a man’s head in her lap. She had vastly underestimated how much time would be required to undo all the braids, to allow her opportunity to spread hair loose and tend scalp wounds. Rhuan had not roused at her touch. She had washed his other wounds time and again, wishing she had spirits. His breathing was regular, without hesitation, but that was not necessarily good, she knew. She had heard of injured folk who went to sleep, and remained that way. Their bodies
withered, curling up on themselves, until at last they breathed no more.

So many braids, so much hair. It wanted, needed, washing. Audrun had no idea how often Rhuan undid the braids, or how often he washed his hair. She knew only that this was necessary, this unplaiting, to gain access to his scalp. Other wounds she had cleaned. Only these remained.

With the light gone, she halted her self-assigned task. Come morning she could begin again and unplait the balance of the braids. For now, so exhausted she trembled unremittingly, she needed rest badly. Her breasts ached, and the bodice of her tunic was damp with leaking milk. Though she had eaten the meat from the black-rinded melon she had opened to make a water bowl, she was hungry. She believed it very likely that she would topple over into unconsciousness if she didn’t allow herself to sleep.

Earlier, she had found Rhuan’s leather tunic. Now she folded it and slid it beneath his head as she backed away on hands and knees. They lacked mat, blankets, anything that might be used as bedding. The spare clouts Audrun had cut for the baby had been made over into bandages. She was tired enough, she believed, that it wouldn’t matter that she lay on soil, grass, and deadfall. She had no idea how it might affect Rhuan. The only warmth was what their bodies carried. Audrun lay down carefully on her side, resting her body against his.

Night sounds in Alisanos were far different from those in the human world. Were there beasts in the underbrush? Creatures come to eat them? If so, nothing would hinder the predators. Nothing at all. Here, she and Rhuan were prey.

Her mind was as exhausted as her body. Slowly, she surrendered herself. And as she did so, she saw again in her mind the terrible image of the winged demon rising to the sky with Sarith in his arms.

Sarith. Megritte. Torvic. Ellica and Gillan. Her children, gone. The fruits of her womb were trapped in Alisanos, even as she was.

Now, in the dark, with nothing to do but sleep, Audrun, very quietly, allowed herself to weep.

IN LIRRA’S CABIN, Meggie cried herself to sleep when the double suns set—if night were called night here—bringing darkness to Lirra’s cabin. Torvic had decided he must be strong for his sister, and did no such thing, himself. When he and his sister performed chores for Lirra, usually in the garden, or feeding chickens, he told Meggie that crying did no good. Crying wouldn’t bring Mam and Da back, or Gillan and Ellica. Only the Mother of Moons knew where their kinfolk were, and perhaps one day the Mother would see to it they were reunited. Meggie always agreed to stop crying so
much, but each night, not long after Lirra had tucked them into their pallets on the cabin floor, the tears came again.

Torvic kept track of the days by carving notches into a stick. But he knew time ran differently in Alisanos, because the days seemed to last longer than in the human world. He could only keep track of what he and Meggie experienced, not of what might be true in the human world. When they returned to their world, how much time would have passed? Weeks? Months? He dared not consider years. But the rhythms of his body were adapting to Alisanos. He could feel it.

And found it terrifying.

Torvic didn’t tell Meggie. He didn’t even dare hint to her that he felt different in the deepwood; it would worsen matters. And as she said nothing at all to him of feeling different, he believed she didn’t experience Alisanos the way he did. Rather than plant ideas in her head, Torvic held his silence on the matter. And hid the calendar stick as well, returning the knife to Lirra’s small collection after each notch was cut. He didn’t know if Lirra was aware of what he did. He didn’t know if she would care if she were. But he could speak to her of his feelings no more than to Meggie. It was a personal thing.