Part 31 (1/2)

”Quick, quick,” said the Akka woman.

”Stand there, to that side.” Adica stationed herself on the chalk calling ground and studied the stars. The pa.s.sageway to the Akka loom was made most easily when the Ploughing Man's Eye rose in the east, but there were other, more circuitous routes to every loom just as there were many ways to pattern cloth. It was too late in the evening to catch and hold the threads of the Bounteous One and her swift, shy child, Six Wings. But the Sisters were rising, and their twin lights could be woven in with the scatter of stars known as the Shaman's Headdress and hooked to the Dipping Cup as it dipped into the north.

She raised the obsidian mirror, caught the light of the gold-haired sister and, by s.h.i.+fting the mirror slightly, the silver hair of her twin. Light caught in the stones. As she wove it in with the other stars, threads flowered to life among the flattened oval of the stones to form a pa.s.sageway leading to another loom.

She picked up her sack and, with the others behind her, crossed through into a snow as light as feathers, spitting from heavy clouds. They stood on a high plateau composed mostly of boulders tumbled every which way, covered with lichens and mosses and a dusting of snow. The rocky land gave way toward the horizon to heaps of golden stones jutting up like huge tumuli, untouched by snow. No trees gave shelter against the cutting wind. Only the circle of stones and the gleaming hillocks defied the swirling snow. Mountains cut an edge along the eastern horizon. The light was cloudy and gray, lightening with dawn, although Adica could not see the sun.

Their guide trudged away down a path worn into scant earth, more pebbles than soil, and marked out with a trail of chalk that, curiously, was free of snow. Adica hurried after her. Alain took up the rear guard with his dog-headed staff raised and the dogs at his heels. The path cut down through rock that fell by degrees into a steep valley smothered in trees and snow. Winter still lay heavily on this land. After a time, she saw clearings that had been hacked out of the forest. Pigs and deer had made tracks through these snow-drenched clearings. Otherwise they were a featureless white.

Down by the valley's mouth, near the arm of water that bounded the lowest reaches of the valley, rock corrals penned in reindeer. Three boats draped with felt rode high on logs, upturned above the sh.o.r.eline. A half-dozen smaller, sleeker skiffs lay drawn up on the rocky beach. Ice rimmed the shallows, but the deep waters lay as smooth as gla.s.s, unfrozen despite the bone-chilling cold.

Beyond the corrals, torches ringed a longhouse. This hall served the entire tribe as home, storage, and stable. Even Spits-last, their sorcerer, lived cheek by jowl with them, never knowing solitude.

Flakes of snow spun past. Although the wind had cut harshly on the plateau above, the shadow of winter burned more intensely within the valley's heart. The shock of the temperature change made her shudder. She paused once to catch her breath. Alain put an arm around her shoulders to warm her. His expression was grave.

”This country knows me,” he said in his stumbling way, ”and I know this country. In this country was born fifth son of the fifth litter, who became a strong hand.” He shook his head, puzzling out the words.”His hand is strong. Hei! I cannot speak the name. There were children of rock here, but I see them .not now. Many children of rock lived here when I saw it. They do not live here now.”

”I don't understand what you're trying to say.”

”Quick!” The Akka guide beckoned impatiently.” Walking One of Water people dead is, or not dead is. To her you must speak.”

People came out of the long hall to stare at them. A boy doused torches as weak daylight rose. It was too cloudy for her to mark the position of the sun's rise against the distant cliffs and ridges. Beyond the hall she saw other structures, pit houses or burial mounds, dug into the ground. She had only visited Spits-last once, in his homeland, and it had been snowing then, too, drowned in winter's darkness.

They stepped into the long hall to be greeted by a powerful reek. The long, low s.p.a.ce was lit by three hearth fires and so smoky that the air seemed alive with particles. She smelled cattle and sheep, penned farther down. The taint of rotting crab apples hung in the air, a sweet tinge above the thick perfume of human bodies pressed together. Alain spoke a few words to his dogs, and they sat down, unmolested, on either side of the door. Their Akka guide made a path for them through the people by using her spear's b.u.t.t to poke and prod everyone aside, but Adica and Alain were not as lucky as the dogs: hands reached'forward to pinch her bare skin or fondle the strings of her skirt, until she pulled out of the grasp of one only to find another waiting to handle her. They breathed into her face, gabbled in their hard tongue, and poked and prodded her with their fingers as though to a.s.sure themselves that she was a living being.

Beside the second hearth fire, on a pallet, lay Falling-down side by side with a dead woman half-covered with pine needles. His eyes were closed. For an instant Adica thought.he, too, was dead. She knelt beside him and touched his hand, and he opened his eyes at once. He had the hazel eyes common to his tribe, rheumy with age but still sharply intelligent.

”Adica!” he said with pleasure in his brittle voice. She helped him up to a sitting position.” I sent the Walking One of Tanioinin's people twelve days ago to fetch you. Alas that the loom brought you here so slow. My cousin is dead now. She died at sunset.”

”What happened?”

Alain crouched beside the woman and, without any thought of death's dangers and taboos, brushed aside pine needles and placed a hand around the curve of her throat, listening.

Falling-down watched him with bemus.e.m.e.nt.” Can this be the man the Holy One brought to be your husband? Where did he come from not to fear death?”

”He was walking the path to the Other Side. I don't know where he came from before that.”

Alain sat back on his heels. The people who had crowded up behind him to stare skittered back, as if afraid that he, having touched that which was dead, would infect them. He did not appear to notice them as he looked at Adica.

”Her soul no longer lives in her body.”

”So you see,” said Adica to Falling-down.” He knows when a spirit still walks in the land of the living. Why are you here, Falling-down? Why did you leave your tribe? Such a long journey is difficult for you. And it is so dangerous now to walk the looms, if the Cursed Ones stalk us.”

He lifted a hand for silence. A child brought him a wooden cup filled to the brim with mead. He sipped at it before reciting his tale. The Akka Walking One translated his words to her people, who crowded around to listen.

”The s.h.i.+ps of the Cursed Ones landed on the coast of our land. Scouts of our cousins the Reed people saw them. They sent a Running Youth to alert us. Then another Running Youth came. The s.h.i.+ps put to land near the nesting ground of guivres. The guivres rose and feasted on them.”

Voices murmured in satisfaction at this gruesome and well-deserved fate. The Akka woman spoke sharply, and the people quieted, not without a lot of pinching and protests, so that Falling-down could go on.

”We feel happy, when this news runs to us. Then the loom opens. This one, my cousin, who is a Walking One of our people, falls through. She is wounded. She brings a terrible story with her.” As he got caught up in the awful tale, his words began to slip; past became present, and his careful use of Adica's language, learned over a lifetime, became sloppier.” The Cursed Ones attack the people of Horn. All their houses and all their villages the Cursed Ones burn.”

A general moan spread through the crowd, and was hushed, again, by the Akka woman's terse command.

”Evei the children they kill, cut cut.” He made .a chopping motion with his hand. Children who had crowded up behind him to listen leaped back with frightened cries. But no one laughed.” The people of Horn escape to the hills. Horn is old woman. She is not strong. She is more weak now. Maybe she die. But she send this Walking One, who is once my cousin, through the loom. She send her home, with the warning. Maybe Horn die already.”

”But if Horn dies, then we can't weave the great spell!” cried Adica, shocked out of her silence. Alain set a hand on her shoulder to calm her.

”No more news brings this Walking One,” said Falling-down, indicating the dead woman.” She is not yet dead, in the home of my tribe, but no healer in my people can save her. So I bring her here. Healer woman of the Akka people is renowned.”

Adica looked around, but she did not see the famous healing woman of the Akka people: a tiny woman who wore a cloak of eagle feathers.” Even the Akka healing woman could not save her?”

”No. The Fat One turned her face away. After half a moon's journey, this Walking One dies. Now, Akka healing woman and our brother Tanioinin pray to the ancestor, the old mother of their tribe. But you, Adica. You have strong legs. I am too old, and Tanioinin cannot walk. Tell me this: Why did the Cursed Ones attack Horn's people and my people so close together? Why did they try to steal you?”

”The Holy One warned us. They've learned that we mean to act against them. They want to kill us so that we cannot work the great weaving.”

”Yes. We must know if Horn lives. We must know if the Cursed Ones attack our comrades also, and if Shu-Sha is safe. Walking Ones are not strong enough alone to do this. You have strong legs and strong magic. You must warn the others.”

She gestured toward the eaves.” The sky is cloaked with clouds. We will have to wait until the stars s.h.i.+ne again and the weather clears off.”

”For that we cannot wait.” He spoke so gravely that his words frightened her. She knew that the Holy One had power over the weather, but her magic was ancient and even more frightening, in some ways, than the blood magic of the Cursed Ones.” We wait now in this house for the other Akka sorcerers to come. Tanioinin's brothers and sisters and the cousins of the healing woman, they will come down from their halls north of this place and south of this place. When they come, they will call that thing which can blow the clouds away so you can travel.”

”Quick, quick,” echoed the Akka woman. She stamped a foot and clapped her hands together. The crowd around them echoed her words, the foreign syllables sounding strangely on their tongues. Someone threw pine needles and a rain of dried herbs and tiny pebbles on the fire. The flames hissed and spit, and a thick cloud of smoke boiled up, drowning Adica. She coughed violently, starting back, and Alain found her by touch and drew her away as the Akka people sang in loud and rather discordant voices a song repeating the same words over and over: ”nok nok ay-ee-tay-oo-noo nok nok.”

When she had done blinking and could see again, the dead woman, and the pallet on which she had lain, were gone. Had they vanished through magic, or simply been carried off? She did not really care to know. The secrets of her own G.o.ds, and her own magic, were perilous enough.

”Come.” By some mode of communication unknown to her, Alain found a raised pallet under the eaves and there, after setting down their packs, they lay down together. She was too tired to do anything but rest in his arms.

What if it all came to nothing? What if the Cursed Ones had discovered all their plans? What if the Cursed Ones used their blood magic to kill the human sorcerers who threatened them? Truly, she was willing to sacrifice herself knowing that her death would free her people from fear, but'it seemed the G.o.ds mocked her now. Without realizing, she had started to cry.

”Hush,” said Alain, stroking her arms.” Sleep, lovely one. Do not fear for what is to come. Just sleep.”

His quiet voice brought her a measure of peace. With him held tightly alongside her, she slept.

ALAIN woke to humming. At first he thought it was Adica, who could be counted on to make all kinds of strange noises in the course of her prayers and spells. He smiled, so blindingly happy that he didn't even want to open his eyes, only soak it in. How strange to think that it was only after he'd lost everything that he gained what mattered most. Tightening his arms around her, he tucked her closer against him. Which was when he realized that the warm body lying alongside him wasn't Adica's but that of a rancid-smelling child.

”Hsst!” A woman clad in oiled sealskins jostled Alain and the child awake and, with an expression of urgency, beckoned to Alain to follow her. He b.u.mped his head on the eaves as he swung out of the bed and stood up too soon; everything was built for shorter people here in the north. The long hall was empty, silent and cool. Winter had sucked the warmth out of the fires. Except for Sorrow and Rage, sitting faithfully by the door, the three of them were the only ones inside. Muttering and rubbing his sore head, he followed woman and child outside.

The humming sounded out here as well, a sound that rang up through the ground to reverberate in his head. Sorrow whined, irritated by the noise, but Rage remained silent. The woman called urgently to him again, gesturing that he should follow, but he hesitated, looking for Adica.

”Ta! Ta!” cried the woman, beckoning. She hustled the child toward the mounds that cl.u.s.tered like a flock of sheep along the valley floor behind the long hall.

Alain hurried after her. Several people ducked down into the entrance of one of the mounds. Coming up behind them, he looked down a low tunnel, a smaller version of the pa.s.sage that led into the queens' grave at Adica's village. This pa.s.sage, too, was lined by stones, but it hadn't as sophisticated corbeling. In a crouch, he scuttled down the pa.s.sage to a chamber that smelled of vegetables stored for a long time in a cool place, slightly spoiled by damp. No light illuminated the chamber, yet it was warmer here beneath the earthen mound than outside. Bodies pressed against him, all smelling slightly of rancid oil.

”Adica?”

She did not answer. She wasn't here. He knew it in the same way he knew he had a hand at end of his arm. The moon had waxed full seven times since that day when he had found himself lying naked by the bronze cauldron up among the stones, but sometimes it seemed as if it had only been seven days, or as long as seven years. But in any case, he wasn't going to hide in here without knowing where she was.

Crawling backward, he ducked out into the fresh air. The cloudy light of afternoon made him blink. The constant throbbing hum continued unabated. Adica wasn't inside any of the eight mounds. The people crowded within seemed nervous, but not panicked. Each time he found his way in to one of the dark chambers, hands pulled him farther in, and when he made to leave, they plucked at him, urging him to stay.

But he had to find Adica.