Deepwood: Karavans # 2 (4 page)

Where?

Four children, lost. Audrun, gone. And no guide on horseback offering answers to his questions.

North. South. East. West.

A harsh, strangled sound broke from Davyn’s throat. For a long, excrutiating moment he battled freshening tears, struggled to tamp down panic. And then he began to think.

There was food in the wagon. Waterskins. And now, in the brilliance of the day, he could see in all directions. He could orient himself. His sense of direction, overwhelmed in the storm, was restored again.

Bless you, Mother. Thank you
.

Davyn began to gather the items that would be necessary for his journey.

BETHID SAW THAT Jorda was correct: Ilona’s wagon was missing its colorful canopy, but the rest of it appeared to be intact, if in disarray. She jogged ahead, hastily dropped the folding wood steps, and pulled open the door. Bethid kicked aside various objects to clear a path for Jorda, and lifted a scattering of fallen possessions from the narrow cot. Part of her was aware that she paid no attention to neatness as she
stuffed objects here and there away from the cot, but there was no time for such things.

“Willow bark tea,” she muttered, kneeling down beside the cot. Beneath it was a many-drawered cabinet with brass pull knobs. Bethid began pulling them open one by one, inspecting the contents. She was no diviner and knew nothing of such objects as one might use, but herbs she was familiar with. The fourth small drawer contained a small drawstring muslin bag through which she smelled the astringency of the tea that, steeped, might offer surcease from pain. “I think Mikal’s spirits will do better …” Bethid tucked the bag into her belt, then cast about for a kettle.

Jorda was at the steps. “Is there room?”

“A moment …” Bethid looked this way and that. “Ah—here.” She rose quickly and made her way to the door, slipping out with the kettle in one hand and the muslin bag of tea plus flint and steel in the other. Ilona, she saw, was markedly pale but for a bluish bruise rising on her brow and left cheekbone, and unconscious. Bethid waved Jorda in and searched for a nearby fire cairn or ring. With trees upended all around her, branches stripped of leaves, she was even more aware of a funereal feeling. The world was upside down.

She had a task, and was grateful for it. Yet part of her was aware of a burgeoning anxiety, an apprehension that, once marked, twisted her belly upon itself. Two fellow couriers had also been in the settlement, sharing the common tent. She had seen neither Timmon
nor Alorn in the midst of the storm as she, with Mikal, ran through the tents shouting for people to hasten eastward. There hadn’t been time to look for specific individuals, only to cry over and over again that all should flee the settlement. Many had, but some had not. They remained behind now as corpses, clothes made muddy and sodden. Bethid prayed Timmon and Alorn had heard her shouted instructions and obeyed them. Later, she would search for their bodies, hoping not to find them.

Beneath a sky now naked of shielding tree canopies, where grass did not grow, beside a massive grandfather oak that had withstood the storm, Bethid knelt in the mud. With a handful of rocks she built a haphazard fire ring atop a broad, flat stone. But the deadfall of leaves dropped from trees, of small twigs and brittle leaves, had been torn from the ground by wind. “Tinder … tinder,” Bethid muttered absently, glancing around. But anything stripped from the trees by winds would be too green, too damp to catch fire.

She rose and went to the wagon, climbing onto the bottom step. “I need kindling,” she told Jorda, who was bent over Ilona. “Anything of wood, to burn. Everything on the ground is wet.”

Jorda dwarfed the tall wagon, despite its size. Muttering, he cast about awkwardly, eventually scooping up something he found on the floorboards. “Here.” He thrust the handful to Bethid. “Wood.”

She stared at what she grasped. Her spine felt cold. “These are rune sticks.”

“They’ll burn. And here is dry cloth to help—we’ll hope Ilona forgives the sacrifice.”

“But these are
rune
sticks, Jorda.”

“Beth, not now. You wanted kindling. There’s kindling.”

“But, Jorda—”

The karavan-master was clearly impatient and irritated.
“Burn
them, Beth! Ilona’s a hand-reader—those are for show.”

Bethid felt slow and stupid under his green-eyed gaze. “But
I
use a rune-reader.”

That he understood; everyone in Sancorra province relied on diviners as something akin to extensions of the gods, to learn if their futures were good or bad, if they were worthy of a good afterlife when they crossed the river, and to confirm that plans were auspicious.

Jorda’s irritation was dispersed behind an expressionless face. “You do this to aid a diviner, even if her art is not the one you rely on. In these circumstances, I think the gods will forgive you.”

It felt wrong, utterly wrong, but Bethid, with effort, mentally shoved that feeling aside, dismissing it with the discipline of a trained courier. Yet even as she knelt and began to arrange the rune sticks within the small stone ring, a rebellious portion of her mind betrayed that discipline. “Mother of Moons, forgive me. I do this for one of your daughters.”

A man’s voice, heavy with irony and scorn, yanked her attention from the fire ring. “Your Mother of
Moons has nothing to do with this, Bethid. It’s Alisanos you should concern yourself with.”

“Brodhi!” Bethid stared at the copper-haired, manybraided Shoia. He was wet as all of them were, but cleaner, and moved with the efficient grace of a man unaware of personal discomfort. In fact, he looked angry. That was not an emotion she was used to seeing in her fellow courier, who generally wore an implacable mask that hid all feelings except for a habitual and annoying arrogance.

It struck her then with a tangible shock that though she remained concerned for the safety of Timmon and Alorn, she had not thought of Brodhi at all.

TORVIC PEELED BACK the blanket and oilcloth he had clutched around his body in the midst of the storm. Beside him, Megritte was crying. The rain had stopped, the wind, the lightning and thunder; the world was calm again. Steam rose from the ground, filling the forest and muting sound.

He and his sister had been put into a crevice between two huge tree-shielded boulders, cautioned by Rhuan, the karavan guide, to remain where they were, to not stir until the storm died. Well, the storm was dead; Torvic saw no sense in continuing to hide.

He folded back additional layers of fabric, baring a damp blond head and equally wet shoulders. “Meggie, stop crying.”

She did not.

“Meggie, there’s no storm anymore.” Torvic shed the blanket and oilcloth and stood up, climbing down out of the crevice. Indeed, beneath the wide, drooping tree canopies there was no storm; but something was not quite right. The colors looked different. The sun was brighter. Squinting, Torvic looked up past the leaf canopy to the sky overhead.

The world they inhabited was not the same.

Torvic stood utterly still. He felt pressure in his chest, rising to fill his throat. He swallowed back a painful lump. He would not cry. Would
not
. He was a year older than four-year-old Megritte—that year made him better, braver. But he could not suppress the trembling that began in his body.

Megritte climbed down next to him. Her hair was a tangled thicket torn free of its braids. Her face was wet with tears. “Torvic—”

But he interrupted. “Meggie, we have to go.” He didn’t like his tone; it was thin and weak. He tried again. “We have to go. We have to find Da and Mam. We can’t stay here.”

That diverted her. “
He
went to find them. The guide. He said he’d find Ellica and Gillan, and then Mam and Da. He said we should stay here.”

“I don’t want to stay here, Meggie. The storm’s over. We should go find Mam and Da.”

Megritte opened her mouth to say something further, but the air was filled with a high-pitched, inhuman, ululating scream.

AUDRUN TOOK BACK her screaming infant from Rhuan. “How could you make me
cut
her? Mother of Moons, she’s but a newborn!” She uncurled the baby’s fist to inspect the damage done, spat into the tiny palm, then used the hem of her longtailed tunic to wash the blood away.

He was cleaning the knife she had used. “It was necessary.”

“And now you believe she’s yours?” Automatically she cradled the baby in such a way as to calm her, rocking her slightly. “Hush, hush, little one—all is well.” As the thin crying died out, Audrun unwadded the tunic from the baby’s fist. She blinked. “It’s not bleeding anymore. The cut is closed. There’s just a small scar.”

He nodded. “She’s a child of Alisanos, as I am.”

“She is
not
,” Audrun declared with vigor. “She is no such thing. This is Davyn’s child, not yours, and she’s Sancorran-born. She has nothing to do with Alisanos!”

“We have commingled blood,” he said with a calmness she found distinctly annoying. “Hers passed into me, mine passed into her.” He displayed his right hand. “You see? I heal quickly, if the wound is not too severe. She will also, should she be injured. But neither of us is immortal. Not here. Alisanos rules here.”

That startled her. “But you revived before, when the Hecari dart struck you. I saw it.”

“In your world. Yes.”

She shook her head, frowning. “But if you’re not Shoia … there’s no such thing as six deaths before the true death, then, is there?”

“For a true Shoia, there is. But I’m not Shoia. In your world I can’t die.” He paused. “Well, other then temporarily. Here,” he shook his head. “Here, it’s different. Alisanos is deadly even to
dioscuri
.”

Audrun felt an upsurge of desperation accompanied by an underlying nausea. Too much had happened, too much had changed, too much yet
would
change. Her husband and children were missing, save for the infant born too early in any world but this one, and she hadn’t the faintest idea where any of them were or where she should begin searching. Or even if they lived. Mired in exhaustion and worry, she could not wholly comprehend what Rhuan was telling her, though she knew it was important that she should. “When—” She paused as her voice broke, cleared her throat, and tried again. “When will it begin? The changing?”

“It has begun,” he told her gently.