Trickster's Choice (35 page)

Aly swam to the edge of the pool. She was about to climb out onto the land when a small flock of kudarung attacked, driving her underwater. She found Nawat there, forced under the surface as she had been to escape their tormentors. They shot up for a deep breath of air before the immortals descended. On her next trip for air, Aly looked around quickly. There, on the bank near the shallow upper stream, she saw a likely weapon. She ducked underwater and swam toward it, her head aching from the chill and the kudarungs’ assault. When she came up again, the large branch was a yard away. She lunged and seized it, wading into the shallow water above the pool. There she stood, batting her persecutors away with the branch.

Nawat joined her, to huddle at her side. “They are not very forgiving,” he observed.

Aly lifted a foot and shoved him back into the pool.

Above the shrill, furious calls of the kudarung she heard laughter as harsh as any crow’s bawl. She turned to find its source and saw an old woman barely five feet tall. The newcomer was dressed like the highland raka women in a bright wraparound jacket and long skirt, both thickly embroidered. The fire of a magical Gift shone from beneath her skin in Aly’s Sight. The old woman had a long nose, eyes like upside-down crescents framed by wrinkled flesh, and a mouth as straight as Junai’s. White locks combed to either side sprang from her hairline at the center of her forehead. The rest of her short, curling hair was the color of steel shot with threads of black and white. Her laughter had a jeering quality.

“Ochobu Dodeka, is this how you treat your guests?” Aly demanded, swinging her branch at the kudarung. “We’re here to talk to you. Call these things off before I hurt one!”

“I don’t want to talk to
you
,” the old woman replied with a grin that showed teeth. “And they aren’t pets, to come and go at my command.” She looked at Junai and Ulasim. “
This
is the god’s messenger?” she demanded, her black eyes snapping with scorn. “If you’re listening to this luarin sisat, you haven’t a prayer of success. I won’t go with you to die!”

Aly sighed. It was time to work. She handed the branch to Nawat, who was climbing out of the pool. When he took it, Aly went to Ochobu. The kudarung who had concentrated on swarming Aly turned to continue their attack on Nawat.

“Am I mistaken?” Aly inquired mildly, leaning her head to clear water from one ear. “You’re refusing to help us.”

“If they are helped by such as you, they are beyond hope,” retorted the old raka. “They would do better to take the road as roaming Players, amusing the luarin nobility.”

Aly leaned her head to the other side to clear the water from that ear. In her politest tone she inquired, “So you must approve the work roster, before you will deign to help? Must the ones who risk their lives among the luarin every day bring each and every tool they choose for your inspection first?”

Ochobu scowled at Aly. “No one asked you.”

Aly dug in her ear with a finger. “Your
god
asked me, Ochobu Dodeka,” she replied, still polite, knowing that the old woman expected her to show rage. “And do you know what? It will be for nothing,” she informed the raka with her friendliest smile. “Because as long as you and others like you find only obstacles, you can put off actually having to
do
something. You can just talk about it and dream of someday. We’ll all die of old age. You raka will still have the luarin boot on your necks. After a while,
raka
won’t mean ‘people’ anymore—it will just mean ‘slave.’”

“I could blast you where you stand,” Ochobu whispered, her eyes deadly.

Aly wrung out her tunic’s hem. “Go on,” she said cheerily. “Do your worst. Of course, the god might object.” She gave Ochobu a moment to think and then another moment to act. When it was clear the raka mage was not going to kill her, Aly called, “Nawat, stop playing with the little horsies. We’re going back to Tanair.”

“I would gladly stop playing with them,” Nawat called, swinging his branch around him to keep the kudarung at bay. “They are the ones who will not stop.”

Ochobu looked over Aly’s shoulder, pushing her lips in and out, as if she were thinking. Aly concentrated on wringing out as much of her tunic as she could reach. Finally Ochobu bared her teeth and whistled sharply. A handful of kudarung flew away from the swarm. The old woman whistled twice more before the rest broke off their assault and returned to their clump of brush.

Ochobu looked at Ulasim and Junai. “Did the pesky crow have to come?” she demanded.

Aly smiled graciously. “I like the crow.”

The old woman looked at Aly, then at Nawat. “Stay away from my drying lines,” she warned.

Nawat treated her to his beaming smile. “I am a man now. Men do not drag cloth in the mud.”

The mage snorted, then looked Aly over. “Were you any other god’s messenger, I wouldn’t believe you,” she said drily as Ulasim and Junai led the horses across the creek. “But our god
would
pick a luarin.”

“You choose tools for a task by their crafting, not their look,” a crow said crisply from a nearby tree. He flapped over to land on a barrel in front of the cottage. “A smith’s finest hammer will be streaked with soot.” Like the Kyprioth-crow of Aly’s first Isles dream, he wore gem-studded rings on his talons and a gaudy jeweled necklace around his throat. He shone in Aly’s Sight.

“So you really chose this wench,” Ochobu said.

Kyprioth ruffled his feathers. “Stop trying to quarrel with me, or I will leave you to the Rajmuat luarin. Do you think Oron was bad? He will be as nothing compared to Hazarin, Imajane, Rubinyan, and Bronau, believe me. If we’re to change things, it must be now. The Chain’s time has come.”

Aly frowned. “What’s the Chain?” she asked.

Kyprioth turned a ring on one claw with his beak. It was Ulasim who answered. “My mother and her friends,” he said, meeting the old woman’s eyes with defiance. “A network of raka mages, spread throughout the Isles, waiting to take back what was theirs.”

“You said it might not be so,” Ochobu remarked wearily to Kyprioth. “You said we might fail.”

“Every human effort has that chance,” replied Kyprioth. “We gods can’t change that. Besides, it would be very bad for your characters if you had things easy all the time.”

“I told my children that. They didn’t believe me any more than I believe you.” Ochobu walked over to a bench next to her door and sat between the cats. “We wouldn’t be in this state if you had turned the invaders away three hundred years back.”

Kyprioth leaped off the barrel in crow form and landed on the ground as a man, in his human jewelry, jacket, and sarong. He stood before Ochobu, sparks in his dark eyes. Aly took a step back, feeling his presence as a pressure on her body and mind, like a heatless sun. Ulasim and Junai shaded their eyes as they looked on. Only Nawat seemed unconcerned. He squatted on the ground, dripping, as he ate selections from a column of ants.

“You do not think gods may be routed from their thrones, and thrust into the outer parts of the Divine Realms?” Kyprioth asked Ochobu softly. “You do not believe a god may be so battered in combat with his land-hungry brother and sister that he might need centuries to heal? Do not speak of what I should have done, Ochobu Dodeka. You were not at my side on that battlefield.”

Aly wished she could go anywhere else. This was too personal for her. For the first time she felt like a true intruder in the Copper Isles.
This
was the reason he toyed with her and the Balitangs, this ancient loss. Kyprioth’s playfulness had made the stakes seem small, as if he had meddled with her life for his own amusement. Now she had the truth of it, that the tide was turning in the Copper Isles. She was a pawn, the Balitang children just one more piece, on a board that stretched over miles and years.

Ochobu slid down to kneel before Kyprioth, tears streaming down her face. She had borne even more of the god’s power than had Aly, Ulasim, or Junai.

Aly rested a hand on the old woman’s shoulder. “Maybe she snaps at you because she’s afraid,” she told Kyprioth, though she didn’t quite dare to look into his face. “You gods know you have centuries to turn the tables. We humans don’t. We have short lives that can be made shorter with the stroke of a sword.”

Burning fingers gripped her chin, forcing her to look up. Aly jerked away from the painful touch. When Kyprioth grabbed her chin a second time, it didn’t hurt. Her knees quivered as she met his bottomless gaze, but somehow she managed to remain on her feet.

“Dear heart, you are wasted in Tortall,” Kyprioth told her softly, his eyes showing her suns and waves that swamped islands, volcanoes, and shivering cracks in the earth. “One of us would have put a fire like yours to use sooner or later.” He let Aly go and regarded Ochobu. “Old woman, let’s have a cup of tea, for old times’ sake.”

Aly helped Ochobu to stand, but she didn’t go with Kyprioth and Ulasim when they followed the woman inside. She stayed in the sun, drying out with Nawat as Junai unsaddled and groomed the horses. It took a while for her head to stop spinning from that long look into the god’s eyes.

A flicker of light at the cottage’s open doorway told Aly that the god had left. Ulasim and his mother remained inside for a while longer, talking. Junai and Aly practiced their combat exercises and Nawat tried to catch fish barehanded in the stream. At last Ulasim left the cottage, saddlebags hung over one shoulder. He and Junai got to work saddling their horses and the swaybacked mare that ambled out of the shelter of the trees when Ulasim left the house. Ochobu finally emerged, carrying a pack. She thrust it into Aly’s hands, then walked over to the clump of brush where the tiny kudarung nested.

“Nawat, put that down,” Aly told her friend, who had secured a wriggling fish. “We’re leaving.”

“But I just caught it,” Nawat complained. “I knew I could.”

“You still know you can. Let the poor fish go,” Aly retorted. “With all the bugs you’ve eaten today, you can’t possibly be hungry.”

She heard a sound and turned, frowning, to see what was the matter with Junai. Her usually stoic bodyguard was actually trying not to giggle.

“If you only knew how
strange
that sounds,” Ulasim remarked. “You sound like her mother.” He nodded at the red-faced Junai.

Nawat sighed and released his captive back into the stream.

Aly shook her head and strapped Ochobu’s pack to the back of Cinnamon’s saddle. “Well, he
has
been eating a lot of bugs,” she said, knowing that didn’t explain anything.

Ochobu returned and mounted the swaybacked mare. Three adult kudarung flew in her wake, all of them pitch black with white stars on their muzzles. “They make good messengers for short distances,” Ochobu told Aly. “And if you or the crow bothers them, you can carry your own messages.”

Aly rubbed her sore ear and winced. She had bumped the deepest bite. Holding her much-smeared handkerchief to the wound, she said, “I never bothered them in the first place.”

“I will not bother them if Aly says not to,” added Nawat. To her he whispered, “Not until we have enough nestlings of our own to mob them back.”

“We’re not
going
to—” Aly began in a heated whisper, trying to deny that they would mate and have nestlings, but realized it was useless. This was just one of those ideas Nawat would have to outgrow, since words didn’t seem to change his mind on the subject.

“Let’s go,” Ulasim ordered. “There is work to be done at home.”

They rode together out of the hollow and back down the road. When they reached the fork that led to Pohon, Ochobu reined up. “Junai, ride in and let Pilia know I am gone,” she ordered. “Ask her if she will keep an eye on things and feed my animals.”

“I cannot,” Junai replied. She pointed to Aly. “She is my charge.”

The old woman glared at her granddaughter. “You think I cannot protect your luarin pry-monkey?”

“Sorry, Grandmother,” Junai said quickly. She kicked her gelding into a trot and headed for Pohon.

Aly watched in awe, then turned to Ochobu. “Will you teach me how to do that?” she asked. “She never listens to me.”

“I will not,” said Ochobu, following Ulasim down the road. “Converse with me only when you must, luarin. I may have to treat with you, but we will not be friends.”

Aly shrugged and let mother and son ride far enough ahead for them not to suspect she was eavesdropping. Ochobu might never like her, that was plain. So long as they could work together until the equinox, Aly didn’t care if Ochobu liked her or not. The old woman had every reason to hate white skins, after all. At least I don’t have to share a small castle with her over the winter, she thought happily. She watched as Nawat ran into the woods a little way to examine something that had caught his eye. He would return when he felt the need.

It occurred to Aly that in her eagerness to get
any
kind of true mage to Tanair she had never asked anyone what kind of power Ochobu had. Obviously the old woman was strong, to stop bandits from preying on the villages of the plateau, and protective magic was certainly the most important thing for the Balitangs to have. Still, Aly could put Ochobu to better use if she knew the mage’s strengths.

Aly let her mind drift, absorbing forest sounds: songbirds, rustling creatures, squirrel disputes, Nawat’s steps among tree litter. In the distance a crow family discussed the location of a dead animal supper. An eagle’s distant shriek reached her ears, and the whisper of wind in the pines. She closed her eyes, adjusted her mind to bring into play the more complex aspects of her magical Sight, then opened them.

Ochobu’s Gift had been visible from the moment Aly first saw her. Gifts always appeared in her vision as a series of ripples in the air around the mage, as if he or she gave off heat. Now Aly’s deeper Sight discovered more specific powers that appeared as images that glowed then faded over the round curve of Ochobu’s back. She saw a mortar and pestle, a handful of plants, a storm racing over the open fields of the plateau, a charm that turned away harmful magics, a bowl of water for scrying.

“Stop that,” Ochobu called over her shoulder, startling Aly out of her calm state. “It tickles.”