The Steerswoman's Road (79 page)

Even the smell was strange. Over the right-hand camp, a familiar
miasma composed of goat must, food smells, garbage, and human sweat hung in an
almost visible cloud: strong, friendly, welcoming. The quiet camp on the left
smelled only of the veldt: a faint scent like sour milk, cinnamon, and dust.
The absence of the usual odors disturbed Rowan. It seemed to imply not
cleanliness, but a lack of the normal and healthy adjuncts of human existence.
It was a smell of poverty.

She turned to ask a question of Fletcher, but Bel asked it
first and provided the answer simultaneously. “Face People?”

Fletcher nodded, then lifted one finger to covertly indicate
the path ahead of them. On the ground, in the center of the avenue, sat a man.

He was small, with short dark hair. Cloakless, he wore a shabby
goatskin tunic, a single garment with a hole for the head, belted around the
waist, its hem ending well above the high tops of his boots. His sword was
slung on his back, and his arms were wrapped around his drawn-up knees. The
arrangement of his limbs left his genitals partially exposed; he was as
indifferent to the fact as would be a dog. He simply sat, with his back to the
lively camp and his face to the mottled walls of the quiet one, staring,
neither blankly nor with hostility, but with infinite patience.

When the travelers parted to pass around him, he ignored
them, gazing ahead stolidly. Rowan and Bel exchanged a disturbed glance over
his head. Fletcher, however, remained irrepressible. “Morning,” he called out
cheerfully to the fellow in passing.

The man looked up, his expression unaltered; but a moment before
Fletcher’s glance turned away, he nodded, once, in acknowledgment. Then he
returned to his study.

Out of earshot, Rowan asked, “Is he an outcast?”

Fletcher winced. “You’ll have to ask him yourself; no one
else wants to. He showed up about a week into Rendezvous; sits there for a few
hours every day, then vanishes, no one knows where.”

“Not into the Face People’s camp?” Bel asked.

“Don’t know.”

They found Kree’s tent, left their equipment within, and then
proceeded to Kammeryn’s tent to inform him of their return. But as they
approached, Rowan noticed something lying across the threshold: two cloaks, one
of them Kammeryn’s, identifiable by the pattern on its bright woven trim.

The three stopped short, paused long. “Oops,” Fletcher said
eventually. Bel emitted a pleased “Ha!” Rowan blinked twice, then began perusing
a mental list of the tribe’s less decrepit female mertutials. Fletcher took
charge of the situation and gazing at the sky with ostentatious nonchalance,
led the women away. “Lovely weather,” he commented.

“I didn’t recognize the other cloak,” Bel said quietly. She
was suppressing a grin.

“You wouldn’t ...” He caught sight of Averryl, seated by Berrion’s
tent. “Aha! Just the man we were looking for!”

The warrior was repairing a break in his sword strap,
braiding bits of leather between his fingers. “I see Fletcher found you. I
thought he might. When you want something found, call for Fletcher. It’s a genuine
talent he has.”

Rowan dropped to the ground, pulling her cloak under her. “Actually,”
she said, “Kammeryn is the man we’re looking for, but it seems he’s occupied at
present.”

Leaning forward, Fletcher spoke conspiratorially. “And when
did that happen?” He tilted his head in the direction of the seyoh’s tent.

“While you were gone. Not so surprising, when you think of
all the time they’ve been spending together.”

Rowan could restrain her curiosity no longer. “Who?”

Averryl exuded pride on his seyoh’s behalf. “Ella.”

Both women were taken aback. “The same Ella?” Bel asked. “None
other. Everyone knew she was being courted by someone. It turned out to be
Kammeryn.”

Rowan pointed out, “He could be her grandfather.”

Averryl shrugged with the urbane air of one long accustomed
to an unusual fact. He pretended to give careful attention to his work. “Actually,”
he said, “I believe he’s some kind of cousin about fifty times removed. They’re
both of Gena line.”

Bel had been considering; she reached her conclusion, tilted
her head. “It makes sense to me. If Kammeryn courted me, I might think twice,
but I wouldn’t take very long to do it.”

“There’s no problem with her being of another tribe?”

Averryl shook his head. “We’ll be at Rendezvous for another
two weeks or so. It’s enough time for a small romance.”

“Then courting, and a romance, aren’t necessarily a prelude
to a more permanent arrangement?”

“No,” Bel told her. “The rites are different for marriage.
You have to be very certain and very serious. It’s forever.”

Rowan spent the next two hours plying the Outskirters with
questions on the traditions and formal rites surrounding marriage and child
rearing. Halfway through, Chess wandered by, listened a moment, commented, “Hmph.
I see we’ve got our steerswoman back,” and wandered off again.

“We had four days of tempest,” Kammeryn told Rowan and Bel
after they had described their journey and explained their return. “When the
rain slackened, one of our scouts came back in, with an odd report.

“He had found another tribe of Face People, but pitched in
open camp. I sent people to watch it, for two days; then I permitted one of our
scouts to be spotted. The Face People responded with a request to meet.”

He shook his head in thought. “It was the wrong season,” he
continued, “and twelve years too soon to Rendezvous. But I thought it might be
a good thing, to gather now.” He addressed Bel. “Under normal circumstances, it
might take you eight months to deliver your message to four more tribes. But we
have six tribes here, right now.”

“They were all ready to Rendezvous? No one attacked?”

“I sent scouts to look for Ella’s tribe, thinking that their
seyoh, having heard your story, would feel as I did. They joined us. With
three tribes together, no one would attack. And when scouts of other tribes
sighted us, they could see that we were a genuine Rendezvous. They reported to
their seyohs”—he gave a small smile—“and everyone was curious.”

Rowan smiled to herself; curiosity, she knew, was a powerful
force. “What did you tell them, when they came?”

“That, by the end of Rendezvous, two people would arrive who
had seen a fallen Guidestar. And that all the seyohs must hear what they have
to say.”

“I can speak to them all at once,” Bel observed.

“Yes. When would you like that to be?”

Bel thought. “Two days from now. In the afternoon. Tonight,
we’ll rest. Tomorrow, after dinner, when everyone will be telling poems and
tales, I’ll give my poem. The seyohs will have a night and the next day to
think about it.”

With a full day of waiting before Bel was to tell her startling
tale to the massed tribes, Rowan found an afternoon’s distraction for herself:
she sat beside the fire pit, carving a bit of tanglebrush root with her field
knife. Bel leaned against a cushion beside her, eyes closed, apparently half
dozing. Rowan had attempted to converse with her, to be sternly told that Bel
was adding new stanzas to the poem of her and Rowan’s adventures in the Inner
Lands, and that quiet was required. So the two sat silently, companionably, engaged
in their separate occupations.

From one of the avenues of another tribe, Rowan noticed
Dane, the eldest child in Kammeryn’s tribe, emerge in the company of a strange
boy. Dane caught sight of Rowan, waved, and approached; to forestall any
interruptions to Bel’s creativity, Rowan rose and went to meet the two young
people.

“This is Leonie,” Dane introduced the boy. He was dark, and
broad of build, some four inches shorter than gangly Dane. He nodded greeting
to the steerswoman. “When we leave Rendezvous,” Dane continued, “he’ll be
coming with us.”

“You’re joining the tribe?”

“No,” the boy replied. “I’ll stay till after walkabout.”

“There’s no one in his tribe near his age,” Dane explained. “And
I’d have to wait three years for Hari. That’s too long.”

“I see.” Rowan found appalling the prospect of these two
children wandering the wildlands alone.

Dane’s eyes were bright in anticipation. “We’re working out
signals. Because he can’t tell me his tribe’s, and I can’t tell him ours. So
we’re making up our own.”

Rowan searched for something to say. “Make the signals good
ones,” she told the children, “and learn them well.”

By evening, Rowan was restless; but Bel declined to observe
the evening’s entertainment and remained in Kree’s tent, contemplating her own
presentation for the following evening. Rowan brought her dinner. “Why do you
need to change your poem?”

When creating, Bel habitually wore an expression of utter serenity.
Her face altered not at all as she replied, “To make it better.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Rowan admitted honestly.

Bel began to eat, completely absorbed in her thoughts.
Presently she said, mildly, “Go away. Find something to do.”

The steerswoman smiled to herself and accepted the
dismissal. She sought out Fletcher.

“Aren’t you bored with my company by now?”

“Not at all,” she assured him.

He offered his arm in exaggerated Inner Lands courtliness. “Then
permit me to be your escort for the evening. Ho, Averryl!” he called to his
friend, “I’m squiring the steerswoman tonight.”

The warrior handed his empty bowl to a waiting mertutial. “What’s
‘squiring’?”

“Making sure she enjoys herself.”

Rising, Averryl wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and
his hand on a cloth. “Get into another insult duel. That should be fun.” He
passed the cloth to the mertutial.

Fletcher acquired a fantastic glower. “I lost the last one.
Miserably.”

“Exactly.”

The tribes were camped on a slope. Rowan, Fletcher, and
Averryl walked down among the paths of Kammeryn’s camp. They ended finally at
the tribe’s fire pit, skewed from its usual position. Not far to the right lay
another fire, apparently belonging to another tribe, and to the left lay four
more, all arranged to form a short arc. There were open-sided cook tents near
each fire, each tribe ranging out behind its cook tent in a widening wedge.
Rowan instinctively surmised a completion of the arrangement: a single central
open area ringed around by fires, with the avenues between tribes radiating like
the spokes of a wheel. The steerswoman calculated that it would take twelve
tribes to complete the circle.

Averryl shook his head when Rowan commented. “No, that never
happens. There are never twelve tribes near enough to each other to Rendezvous.
The most I’ve ever heard of gathered is eight.”

There was food at each fire pit, and all were apparently welcome
to sample. Past the fires was a large flat area, where activities were in
progress: dances with spinning sticks flung into the air, and impromptu groups
of musicians with bone flutes, wooden clappers of various tones, banjos, and
mandolins, the last amazingly constructed from the skulls of goblins.

They paused to watch a wrestling match, where a pair of muscular
women contested, first one pinned to stillness, then both suddenly writhing
and twisting, and the other now pinned to stillness. When the match was won,
Averryl gave Rowan and Fletcher a sidelong glance, then wandered over to speak
to the winner, saying something to her that immediately caused her to laugh
out loud with delight.

Fletcher nudged Rowan; she nudged him back. Linking arms
again, they left Averryl behind.

After dinner, a more formal gathering took place. People arranged
themselves about the open area, on all sides, taking advantage of the natural
slope. And one by one, each tribe was called upon for a song, or a poem, or a
tale.

Rowan heard of a fierce battle for pasture; of a young
warrior who presumed to court her own tribe’s seyoh; of a haunting, where the
spirit of an uncast man killed his tribe’s goats, one by one, until his body
was found and given proper rites.

But when the Face People were called upon, they did not respond.
There was an uncomfortable pause, and then Kammeryn’s tribe was called on, and
Averryl delivered the tale of his rescue by Rowan and Bel.

When he finished, someone spoke out of turn. “I will tell,”
the voice called out. A small man approached from the back of the crowd and
made his way down the slope to the center, walking stolidly, almost defiantly,
as if to battle.

There came a slow rising, murmur of surprise, and within it
isolated pockets of sharp comment, clearly disapproving.

“What’s wrong?” Rowan asked, but when the man reached his position,
she saw him clearly for the first time. “That’s a Face Person.”

He stood boldly in place, staring down each individual complaining
group.

“Will they try to stop him?” Rowan asked.

“Don’t know.” Fletcher was squinting at the man. “That’s our
friend from the alleyway.” The man they had seen, sitting alone, facing the
Face People’s camp.

When quiet came at last, the man announced, “This is for the
one I love: Randa, Chensdotter, Luz.”

“Should he say her names?”

“She must be dead.”

The man drew a long breath, as if to shout; instead, he
sang: “Who has seen her,” he began in a harsh voice,

“—Following the wind

From end to end, long hills

Winding, black and midnight, when her voice

Comes shadowing down the sky? ...”

“That’s Einar’s song,” Rowan said quietly. “ The Ghost Lover.’”

“One of Einar’s songs,” Fletcher corrected. “He wrote about
a thousand.”

The singer did not have a singer’s voice: it was rough-edged
and unmelodic, needing to be forced from note to note. But the song itself,
somehow, did not suffer. It acquired a color far different from that which Bel
had given it. It was no longer a song of sweet, eerie longing; it was a
hopeless plea, a cry of pain.