Foxfire (78 page)

Owan elbowed him in the ribs. “And because you'd eat anything.”

Keirith listened to their bantering, their shared memories of vision quests and hunts and the villages they had left behind. And for the first time in moons, he felt at peace. Talking about Fa had eased his grief, and realizing he had banished the boys' fears—if only for a little while—gave him a greater sense of accomplishment than his visions ever had. The same quiet joy he had first experienced after healing Hua.

When they left Selima's camp near sunset, Keirith carried that joy with him. It shattered when they arrived to find the main camp in turmoil. His mam drew him away from the knot of wailing women and told him Donncha was dead.

“Dead? How?”

“I don't know. She took a nap this afternoon and never woke up.”

A shrill cry made them turn. Catha was clutching her babe to her breast, but one hand came up to point at him. “It was your doing! Donncha spoke against you and you killed her.”

“Keirith wasn't even in camp!” Callie exclaimed.

“Donncha was old,” Ennit added. “For days, she's been complaining about her shortness of breath. Likely, her heart gave out. You should be glad she was granted a peaceful death instead of accusing Keirith of murder.”

“Who knows what he can do with his magic?” Catha insisted. “He cast out the spirit of a Zherosi priest, didn't he? And now he's done the same to poor Donncha.”

“That is not so!”

Duba's voice shocked them all into silence. Even after Keirith helped reclaim her broken spirit, she seldom spoke to anyone save Alada and their orphans. In all his life, he had never heard her voice raised in anger.

“What do you know of Keirith's magic?” Duba demanded. “I felt him—searching for me through the emptiness that filled my spirit after my boy died. I know his power. The light he carries inside of him. And the darkness, too.”

As he had done during his other spirit-healings, he had opened himself to Duba, sharing his pain and fears to ease hers. But hearing her speak of that connection made him feel naked before the tribe.

“We all have our dark places. Our secrets. I've touched Keirith's. And I know he did not do this. Now stop upsetting the children, Catha, and help us gather stones for a cairn.”

Catha's face crumpled. Arun awkwardly patted his mother's shoulder and led her away. Slowly, the others dispersed, the priestesses to prepare Donncha's body, the women and children to gather stones.

His mother touched Duba's arm and murmured something. Duba smiled and shook her head. When Keirith thanked her, she patted his cheek, as if he were one of her orphans. Then she and Alada herded their little ones away, smoothing hair and wiping tear-streaked cheeks.

His mother stared after her. She looked old and tired, but under his scrutiny, she straightened, thrusting out her pointed chin with the same stubborn defiance that had helped her survive starving winters and illness and death. He had never seen her weep for Fa, but sometimes he caught her clutching the bag of charms she wore about her neck. Her hand came up now, fingers closing convulsively around the doeskin.

“Mam . . .”

“Not here.”

He followed her along the stream until they were out of earshot. For a long moment, she stared at the water trickling over the stones. Without looking at him, she asked, “Do you think Rigat killed her?”

He could not bring himself to speak the truth. “I don't know.”

“He's settling old scores, isn't he?”

“I think so.”

His mother astonished him by smiling. “Then he hasn't turned against us. He's still trying to protect his family.”

But how could he say that when his mam's face was alight with hope?

Instead, he asked, “And the Zherosi? They could have caught us—killed us—days ago. He must have told them not to. But if that's true, why bother sending them after us?”

“A test, perhaps. Of our loyalty. Our love.”

“Love shouldn't require a test.”

“But it's tested every day. In little ways, mostly. But also in the hard choices we make.”

He nodded, uncomfortably reminded of the choice the Trickster had forced upon her, but he couldn't help asking, “And Fa's death? Was that a test, too?”

Again, her hand closed around the bag of charms. “Darak was the center of my world—and yours. If we can forgive Rigat for that, surely we can forgive him anything.”

“Killing an old woman whose only crime was to speak aloud what others thought?”

Her gaze slid away from his.

Abandoning his resolve, he demanded, “Where does it end, Mam? Will Catha be next? Or Faelia?”

“He would never harm his sister!” When he was silent, she said, “Nay, Keirith. I won't believe that.” But doubt shadowed her expression.

“There are limits to love, Mam.”

Her fingers worried the bag of charms, but once again, her chin came up. “Then we must find him, Keirith. And reclaim him. Before we reach those limits. Or Rigat does.”

 

 

 

The tribe moved east as soon as the cairn was built. “It will only remind them of Donncha's accusations,” Faelia told him. But she also confided that she wanted to find a more defensible site. “If Mam's right—if Rigat's testing us—he'll soon tire of this game. When he does, we must be ready.”

None of the sites satisfied her, but after three days on the move, the children were so exhausted that they had to call a halt. Ennit slaughtered two more sheep while the men hunted and the boys and girls fished and set snares. They smoked most of the meat and fish; Faelia insisted they have food that would last if they had to flee.

During the day, Keirith supervised the fishing with Dirna, but every day at sunset, he slipped away from camp, seeking stillness and solitude—and Natha. Where once he had struggled to obtain a vision, they had come with disturbing regularity since he had fled the village. Three times, Natha had shown him the eagle chicks. Now, instead of the elder killing the younger, they battled each other with bloodstained beaks and claws.

Only once had he Seen something else. In that vision, he stood on a barren hill, watching a line of people walk one by one over the edge of a cliff. A woman raised her hand in farewell. Although he could not see her face, her belly was big with child. Suddenly, he found himself in a cave, staring down at his sleeping parents. His mother's face was peaceful, but his father's was turned away. Fa looked oddly small, as if age had shrunk him. When he walked toward them, the vision abruptly ended.

He hoped the image of the people vanishing over the cliff was a metaphor for the flight of his tribe rather than an omen of its annihilation. He could make little sense of the part about Mam and Fa. Still, if they could never lie together again, perhaps it meant he and Rigat would never battle.

“Foolish boy,” Natha chided him. “The message is clear to a hatchling. You simply refuse to accept it.”

“But how can I accept it if it means Rigat's death or mine?”

“You are confusing the message with the outcome.”

“Can I change the outcome?”

“Is the future fixed?”

It was like the years had rolled back and he was once again Gortin's apprentice. Only it was Natha answering questions with questions, and scolding him for his impatience.

He envied Callie who could comfort the tribe with the ancient story of their people's flight north. And his mam and Hircha who soothed their bruises and scrapes with poultices. His visions offered only the promise of death.

The promise was fulfilled on their fourth evening in the new camp. The shouts shattered his trance and sent him racing downstream. His steps slowed when he discovered the entire tribe clustered together on the bank. The women backed away to let him pass; the fear in their eyes sickened him.

Mam and Hircha crouched on either side of a woman. Even before he saw her face, he knew it was Catha.

Dirna sidled up to him. In a few moons, she had lost her father, her uncle Nemek, her cousin Nionik, and Adinn, the man she'd hoped to marry. Now her aunt was dead as well. Although her face was stricken, her voice trembled only a little as she whispered, “She was washing the baby's clouts. We saw her slip and hit her head. By the time we reached her . . .”

Catha's wet hair straggled across the grass like strands of lakeweed. His mam smoothed it and brushed her palm across Catha's face, closing the shocked, staring eyes. Although no voices were raised in accusation, everyone had to be thinking the same thing: Catha had spoken against him, and now she—like Donncha—was dead.

They buried her that night and broke camp at dawn. Wila nursed Catha's babe with hers. Mirili told Keirith she knew it was not his fault, that Catha's behavior had become increasingly erratic since the deaths of Nemek and young Nionik. A few people speculated that Catha had killed herself, but Keirith knew that was impossible. Little Ailsa was less than two moons old. Catha would never have left her motherless.

He helped the others set up camp before heading upstream, uncertain if he wanted to seek another vision or simply escape the brooding tension. The splashing water soothed him and the trunk of the tree-brother at his back lent him strength. Pine boughs whispered in the breeze and sunlight danced across the water, playful as a child. This was the kind of magic his father had loved, the ordinary magic of the forest that he'd worshiped as reverently as the gods who had created it.

He let himself drift, his senses mesmerized by the slap of water against rock, the hiss of foam dissolving in the shallows, the ever-changing play of colors as the water passed from light to shadow: sparking gold and silver, darkening to a dull greenish gray, foaming white over the rocks.

His smile faded as the foam coalesced into shapes. Ungainly wings sprayed water droplets as they flapped. Sharp beaks sprouted. Two feathered heads twisted toward him. Two pairs of eyes stared back at him.

The blue-eyed chick chuckled. “How's it going to end this time, Keirith?”

He stared back, too shocked to reply.

This time the voice spoke inside him.

He whispered Rigat's name and felt another chuckle resonate in his spirit. Beneath it, the power smoldered, stronger than ever. If Rigat choose to turn it against him, the power would destroy him. Just as it was consuming Rigat.

The teasing voice carried echoes of Fellgair's mockery, but beneath the confidence, Keirith sensed a throb of loneliness. Immediately, the sensation vanished and with it, Rigat's presence.

“Nay! Don't go!” He staggered to his feet, whirling around in search of his brother.

Rigat leaned against the trunk of a pine. His face was thin and bronzed from exposure to the sun. It was as if all the softness had been burned away, and with it, the boy who had teased him for his inability to walk quietly through the underbrush, who had eagerly proposed that he play eagle and spy on the Zherosi, who had dreamed that, together, they could change the world.

His brother's glance wandered from the stream to the sky—everywhere except in his direction. Yet Keirith was certain Rigat was studying him covertly, gauging his reactions. How many times had Rigat invaded his spirit without his knowledge? Often enough to know about the vision of the eagle chicks.

He suppressed the flash of anger, along with the questions he wanted to ask: about Donncha and Catha, the attack on the hill fort, the Zherosi's senseless pursuit. And Fa.

It would always lie between them, tainting their relationship. Keirith knew his father would be the first to urge him to find a way to salvage the love they had once shared. Knew, too, that any sort of confrontation would drive Rigat away. But he couldn't help blurting, “Why wouldn't you save him?”

Pine needles rustled as Rigat swung his foot in a slow arc. “You don't understand. I couldn't save him. The healing doesn't last. Not when the wound is mortal. It always needs more. And if I had no more to give . . .”

Rigat could have given them more time with Fa, but that might simply have prolonged his suffering—a day or two of health before the inevitable decline began. Fa had always recalled his father's slow march toward death with horror. Keirith could never have forced him to endure that—even if it meant losing him sooner.

He thrust aside the memory of his father's face, twisted in agony, to recall his mother's, desperate and hopeful as she urged him to reclaim his brother.

“Come back to us,” he said.

Rigat started, but quickly converted his reaction into a shrug. “Why?”

“You don't belong with them.”

“They worship me.”

“But they don't love you.”

Rigat studied the dark furrow his foot had carved in the earth. “And you do?”

“Aye.”

For the first time, his brother met his gaze. The bloodshot blue eyes searched his face. For all he knew, the power searched his spirit as well, intent on uncovering any doubts.

“Come back to us,” he repeated. “We're your family. Your tribe.”

Rigat's fingers clenched in his khirta. “They hate me. Not you and Mam. Or Callie. But the rest of them. Even Faelia.”

“Nay.”

“They drove me from the village.”

“They were frightened.”

“They wanted to believe Othak's lies!” Rigat slammed his fist into the trunk of the pine. A tiny shower of dead needles drifted onto his head and shoulders. “Just like they wanted to believe Donncha's lies. And Catha's.”