Winterbirth (23 page)

'Yes,' he said.

Still resting much of his weight on Rothe's encircling arm, Orisian followed the woman out into daylight.

His eyes had forgotten its feel and he had to squint against the glare, but the instant touch of a breeze upon his face and of the cold air upon his skin was like diving into a cool pool on a hot day. It woke him.

He blinked and inhaled deeply, shaking his head a little. The woman was watching him with an amused smile upon her lips.

The sunlight was coming in low and clear from the west. A dog bounded past, yelping as it crossed from light to shade and back again. A small gang of children were in close pursuit, laughing and shouting.

When they caught sight of Orisian and Rothe standing outside the tent, they stumbled to a halt and stood in a tight knot, staring at them. Orisian's eyes followed the dog as it ran on and vanished between some huts.

He was in a great camp of the Fox Kyrinin. Domed tents made of hides and skins dotted the forest floor, spreading as far as he could see amidst the trees. Kyrinin were moving amongst them. There were dogs, and a few goats wandered through the camp idly picking at grass or bushes. It was a bright, brisk winter's day, and the scene had a peaceful feel to it.

Then he saw the object standing not far from the hut he had rested in. It was shaped of intertwined twigs and grasses supported on a frame of poles: an intricate weaving which suggested, rather than portrayed, the image of a face. He remembered it from his ill dreams.

'What is that?' he asked.

The woman followed his gaze, but did not respond.

Kyrinin were gathering now. They drifted up as if in answer to some silent summons to stand in a wide semi-circle, watching Orisian and Rothe. Many of them carried spears. Rothe shifted uneasily. The woman said something in her own tongue, and there were a few slight nods amongst the crowd. The children's view of the strange visitors to their camp had been obscured by the arriving adults and they slipped through the forest of legs to the front once more.

'Hungry?' asked the woman.

Orisian nodded. The crowd parted without a sound. As they passed through the ranks of Kyrinin, Orisian felt unease filling him, as if it had leapt the gap from Rothe's body to his own. Intense grey eyes were fixed upon him. These people, so close he could touch one simply by reaching out, were not as he had imagined they would be. He had thought, when he pictured them in his daydreams, that they would be delicate, almost frail. For all the grace in their lean frames, there was a muscular strength and confidence too. Even their silence was more presence than absence. He was glad of Rothe's arm about him, which seemed then as much protection as support.

Beyond the ring of Kyrinin, the woman brought them to a small fire. A girl was turning a hare on a spit.

Fat fell into the flames, hissing and snapping. The girl danced away as they approached.

'Eat,' said the woman.

Orisian lowered himself to the ground and sat cross-legged. The scent of the meat woke a ravenous hunger in him. Rothe lifted the hare from over the fire and laid it on a stone. They picked scraps of meat from its carcass. Orisian could hardly eat fast enough to meet the need within him. Food had seldom tasted so sweet, and with the warm cloak about him and the air so sharp and fresh he felt, for the first time since he had woken, something like himself. Only when the hare had been reduced to a pile of greasy bones did he pause. He tried to wipe away the juices from around his mouth. They clung to him.

He looked up at the woman standing to one side.

'How do you know my brother was called Fariel?' he asked.

There was no reaction in the Kyrinin's expression. 'Inurian spoke of him,' she said, then turned away.

'You know Inurian?' he called after her.

She went to the watching crowd and began speaking to some of them. A skinny dog came and made a grab for one of the bones. Rothe waved it away. It growled balefully at him before sitting down just out of reach and fixing the remains of the meal with an obsessive stare. Orisian looked into the centre of the fire. He had asked Inurian to let him come on his journeys into these hills many times. And now here he was, amongst the people the
na'kyrim
had known and visited. He had strayed, through a nightmare, into the secret part of Inurian's life he had always been so curious about, and Inurian was not here with him. Nothing was as he had hoped it would be.

'She's coming back,' muttered Rothe.

'You must go in again,' the woman said.

Rothe and Orisian were parted. The enforced separation brought a thunderous rage to Rothe's face.

'It's all right,' Orisian called after his shieldman, though he was not certain of the truth of that. To his surprise, the woman followed him into the tent, and watched as he lowered himself on to the sleeping mat once more. She squatted at his side.

'Do you know Inurian well?' he asked her.

'You must speak with In'hynyr tomorrow,' she said.

Orisian looked blank.

'The
vo'arityr.
The . . .' She grimaced, apparently frustrated in her search for the right words. 'She is the will of the
vo'an.'

'I see,' said Orisian dully.

'Some wish to send you to the willow.'

'What does that mean?'

'To take your lives.'

'Why?' asked Orisian.

'You are Huanin. Perhaps not friends to the Fox. Some say you should not be here.'

'But we were brought here,' protested Orisian. 'We did not choose to come.'

'You would be dead if I did not bring you. The needed medicine was here.'

Orisian pressed his hands into his eyes. Perhaps Rothe had been right. There was nothing but danger here. The woodwights were savages after all, their thoughts twisted in strange patterns.

'The
vo'an'tyr
will send for you.' She rose and made to leave the tent.

'Wait,' he said. 'Will you be there tomorrow?'

The woman shook her head.

'Will they speak my tongue?' asked Orisian.

'In'hynyr has often wintered at Koldihrve.'

For a moment Orisian was puzzled, then he understood. Koldihrve: the settlement of masterless men at the mouth of the Dihrve River beyond the Car Criagar. It had the reputation of being a wild, dangerous town, all the more so because the Fox Kyrinin had a winter camp on its edge. It was the one place Orisian had heard of where Huanin and Kyrinin still lived side by side.

'That is where you learned it as well?' he asked.

'Enough questions.' She made for the doorway.

'What is your name, at least?' Orisian said.

'Ess'yr,' she said.

With that she was gone and Orisian was left alone. After a time - a dead space in which thoughts ran unhindered and chaotic around his head - for no one reason that he could name, but for all of them, he found there were tears in his eyes.

They came for him early in the morning. He had been awake a little while. The sound of dogs barking outside had woken him before dawn, and dark thoughts had kept him from sleep once roused. When the Kyrinin entered the tent he was examining his wound, having peeled away the dressing. There was an angry red weal, but it seemed to be healing. He had no time to replace the poultice. Silent Kyrinin warriors led him out of the tent.

A wetting drizzle was falling, as much a heavy mist as rain. Beneath its veil, the
vo'an
was a silent, muffled place of indistinct shapes. They crossed through a part of the camp he had not seen before, rising up a slope to a grove of trees where one shelter stood apart from the others. There was a patch of bare earth before it, into which tall poles were driven. One had a column of deer skulls attached to it, another the pelts of beavers, a third was twined around with boughs of holly. They sent him inside alone.

The air within had a cloying, herbal intensity that was almost tangible, as if someone had pressed a cloth dripping with scent across his nose and mouth. He wrestled with a sudden wave of nausea. A bright fire burned in the centre of the tent, and a crowd of Kyrinin were seated around it. As he stepped in, all turned to look at him. One of the women rose and reached for him. He shrank away from the touch. She grasped his shoulder and pressed him down. He sank to the ground. The oppressiveness of the air seemed a little less, and his head ceased to spin. The woman put a small wooden bowl into his hands.

'Drink,' she said.

He lifted the bowl to his lips, and winced as he tasted the hot, bitter liquid it contained. He did not dare to put it aside, since he had no idea what had significance here and what did not. Somewhere inside him, not as far beneath the surface as he would have wished, there was a small boy shivering with fear and loneliness. He knew a time had now come, perhaps the first time, when he could not allow that boy to be a part of his thoughts. He rested the bowl on his knees and looked around with what he hoped would pass for composure.

There were perhaps twenty Kyrinin crammed into the tent, facing and flanking him in tight ranks. Here and there, on the faces of both men and women, he could make out the fine, curling facial tattoos that he thought were supposed to mark out warriors or leaders. In the War of the Tainted, he had heard, the Kings' warriors had cut the skin bearing such brands from the faces of dead Kyrinin, to prove what dangerous enemies they had slain.

Opposite him, across the shimmering flames, was a small woman, older than most of the others. She was wrapped in a cloak of some roughly woven material decorated with black and blue swirls. There were bold streaks of red slashed through the silvery hair that fell across her shoulders. Her features were sharp but there was a furrowing in the skin at the corner of her eyes and mouth that betrayed the passage of years. Her flat grey eyes were fixed upon Orisian.

'I am In'hynyr. I am the
vo'an'tyr,'
she said, her voice a light, reedy sound that had a thread of iron within it.

Orisian nodded. The liquid he had swallowed had left a burning track down his throat and into his chest.

"We will talk,' said In'hynyr.

'As you wish,' replied Orisian faintly. He was at a loss to know what else to say, or whether he should be saying anything at all.

'There are five
vo'ans
of the Fox clan this season,' In'hynyr said, 'which is a good number. This place we are in now is a good one. The Sun-facing slope with rich forests. There is food to be gathered here. The forest is generous. This season is the first we have had a
vo'an
here since my first child was carried on my back. She has many children of her own now. It has been a long wait for the Fox to return. When there was a
vo'an
in this place before, Huanin from the valley saw our fires and came to seek us out. We led them over rough ground and steep valleys. We traded killings with them and they went away. You are from the valley, thicklegs and heavyfoot?'

'I ... I am from Kolglas,' stammered Orisian, caught unawares by the sudden question. In'hynyr's voice had a rhythmic, lulling quality to it that distracted him from the meaning of the words being spoken.

'Why have you come to this
vo'an?'
asked In'hynyr.

'I was wounded. I was brought here. Ess'yr said . . .' Orisian replied. He tried to continue, but In'hynyr gave a sharp sniff and spoke over him.

'It was known in the Fox clan that there would be war in the valley this season. Our spear
a'ans
in the summer returned from the lands of the enemy with word of a Huanin army. They said the White Owl, who are carrion-eaters, would make war upon the people of the valley alongside this army. The White Owl, who have no memory, make themselves the servants of the Huanin. That is good. They shall suffer for it. It is good, too, that there is war in the valley. If there is war in the valley, we shall be left in peace.

So we returned to this
vo'an
after many years.'

Orisian was struggling to follow all that was being said. If the White Owls had given aid to the Inkallim, it might explain how they had reached Kolglas. With Kyrinin guides they might have come undetected through Anlane. Yet it seemed an impossible alliance. The White Owls were no friends of humans, and the Bloods of the Black Road certainly none of Kyrinin.

'This is a good
vo'an,'
In'hynyr was continuing. 'We shall come back here next season if all is well. The
a'an
of Yr'vyrain found you and the big man by the water. Ess'yr of that
a'an
wished to make you well, and brought you here. We gave leave for that, for death had your scent. You are made well now.

'It is a grave matter that you and the big man have come here. When the clans were younger, when the City shone like the sun, one of the Huanin came into a
vo'an
of the Fox, by an ice-free stream in a valley of oaks. He was lost. He was given food and shelter. But he was foolish, and spoke of foolish things like a child who knows not how to be still. After a time the people told him to go. And because the Huanin heart is hot and their thoughts are like fire, he was angry. He took earth in his hand and cast it upon the
torkyr
and cursed the Fox. For this, he was taken and sent to the willow. This did not heal the wound.

Many of the people in the
vo'an
sickened and died in the next summer. The flames from the
torkyr
they carried with them were made unclean by his anger.'

'You want to kill me because of something that happened hundreds of years ago?' asked Orisian, striving to keep the tension that was knotting his stomach out of his voice.

'This man was sent to the willow a thousand and a half years gone,' In'hynyr corrected him. 'When the wolfenkind still cast a shadow in the world. When the Fox lived nearer the sun, in kinder lands. But his name is not forgotten. I know the names of the people who died of sickness in the summer that came after. They are not forgotten. We sing for them still. We do not forget. Do you? Do the Huanin forget the past?'

'No, we don't forget, but ... I am not the same as that man. His mistake ... his foolishness ... is not mine.'