Northlight (29 page)

What he hadn't been taught, what he couldn't understand, was why the northers hadn't taken the kit. The healer had known what the Laurean medicines could do and yet had sent for Terris to use them. For Etch, not for one of his own people who might need them just as badly.

Terris picked up the syringe. The glass and surgical steel felt cold. He found the big artery in Etch's armpit and positioned the tip of the syringe over it. The pressure device hissed softly as it drove the medication through the skin and into the bloodstream. As if in response, Etch's head moved on his pillow, a lolling movement like a blinded man searching for the light. His eyelids quivered and he took a deep, sighing breath.

The healer held out a waterskin, its soft belly supported in a wicker basket for handling. The flexible neck ended in a tube of delicately carved bone. Terris took it and tried not to think about the origin of the bone. It looked very much like a human finger.

“If he wakes, he must drink.” With surprising agility, the healer rose to a crouch and glided from the alcove.

After a time, Etch roused again. A groan came from his throat, as if he were trying to speak. He licked his dry lips. Terris held the bone tube to his mouth and tipped out a small amount of water.

Etch swallowed. His eyes opened slightly, pupils wide and unfocused as he fumbled with his good hand for the waterskin.

“It's all right.” Terris gently restrained him. “Just drink, it's all right. You're safe, my friend, I'm here,” very much as he'd murmured to the laboring mare. Etch relaxed back on the pallet and began drinking thirstily, pausing only to take a breath. Soon his gulps slowed and he drifted off to sleep again.

Terris touched Etch's arm again. This time the skin, although still hot, felt moist. He cradled the waterskin on his lap and sat back.

The little screened-off room sank into a dense quiet. Noises from the encampment outside flowed around the healer's tent as if it were a chunk of granite in the middle of a gently murmuring stream. The healer himself had vanished without a trace. As the moments stretched on, Terris became acutely aware of his own heartbeat, the whisper of air through his own lungs, the watchful stillness of the norther guard.

Terris's thoughts drifted, half-drowsy, his eyes slowly closing. The walls darkened and the unmistakable reek of beeswax filled his nostrils. For a moment, his vision blurred, then he blinked and his eyes focused again. He felt himself being carried across a dimly lit room, safe in strong familiar arms and bathed in a sweet milky scent.

Suddenly he found himself gazing down at the face of a desperately ill man, but it wasn't Etch. The features seemed strange and yet hauntingly familiar — skin dusky in the candlelight, cheeks sunk with fever, eyes bright as embers.

The man on the bed raised one hand as if reaching out. The rustle of the bedclothes masked the sound of his voice, a rasping whisper.

Terris felt himself being shifted, transferred to another set of arms, thin and wiry. The skin smelled familiar but far less intimate and reassuring. He twisted, following the milk-scent. The woman who was the source walked away from him and sat on the bed. He saw her hold the man's hand in hers. Some emotion Terris couldn't understand charged her voice as she spoke.

For a long time she sat unmoving, the only sound the hoarse rattle of the man's breathing, growing slower and harsher. After a time of silence, she reached down to brush the dark hair back from his forehead and cover his eyes. The candlelight reflected on a ring on her finger, the signet a dotted doubled circle.

The woman's head dropped forward, her short-cropped hair hiding her face. Her shoulders sagged, but her spine remained rigidly erect. She drew a deep, shuddering breath.

Her tears shone in the flickering candlelight.

Terris blinked and found himself shivering in the norther healer's tent. His cheeks were wet. He wondered what his life might have been like if his father hadn't died, how growing up with Esmelda might have been different. He felt unbearable sadness for the ways she herself had changed.

Slowly the tears on his face dried. Etch slept peacefully on his pallet. The norther guard, who had been sitting like a carven rock, said, “Why do you weep, souther? Your friend will live. See how well he does already.”

Terris flinched as if he'd been caught naked. But there was no prying behind the question, no scorn, no sense that the man was probing for some weakness he could exploit. Only puzzlement and sympathy.

“I know that,” he said. “I — I was remembering my father. He died when I was a baby. I used to think I made it all up, stories, nothing more. But this time — I
saw
him. He was real. Here. Now.”

“Yes, you have that look about you. It is not easy to know a father through the spirit only.”

Terris didn't know what to make of this comment. No one in Laurea, not even the gaea-priests who were always holding forth about cosmic oneness, would have reacted with such simple acceptance. For lack of something better, he glanced at the herbal remedies arrayed on the low shelf beside Etch's pallet. “Did your people suffer very much during the epidemic?”

The norther looked surprised. “You are Esmelda's son, and yet you don't know?”

“Know what?”

“That she sent medicines — vaccines — for all our people along the border. Not one of us sickened. We died other ways — of cold, of hunger, of souther spears. But not of pestis fever.”

Why? Why would she want to help the northers? Why not simply do nothing and let the plague wipe them out? No, that's what Montborne would have done. Esme sees things differently — and so do I.

“There were many things about her I never knew,” he answered slowly.

“It's for this — and other things — that we permit her agents to live among us. But do not hope they will bring her news of you now. We will make sure none of them leaves the trading camp in time.”

The norther leaned forward, the shaft of his spear resting against his shoulder. “As for you, I see the same thing with Jakon and his grandfather, who is The Cassian of Clan'Cass. An ordinary chief would have killed himself after the Brassa massacre. He is a legend all through the north; even the crazy Huldites listen to him. So Jakon brought us down here, where he could build his trading post without everyone forever asking what The Cassian would have done. It's always that way with leaders and the children who walk their shadows.”

“I don't know about the grandfather, but Jakon — he doesn't need to, how did you put it?
walk anyone's shadow.
”

“Ah!”

Terris looked down as he digested the implications of that single syllable. “Tell me — I'm sorry, I don't know your name — am I still a prisoner?”

“I'm Grissem, and we take no prisoners. You are...an untrusted guest. You cannot go to the long-house uninvited, or the sweat hut when it's built, or women's quarters, or leave the island.”

“Until Jakon decides to accept my word.”

“Until you eat his bread and salt.”

Bread and salt, an old ritual of hospitality. “And then?”

“Then you would have sworn to keep faith or be killed.”

Bread and salt sounded so innocent, something Terris would have easily accepted. Kardith — or any Ranger — would have known what it meant and refused. Aviyya, if she were still alive, would have known.

Terris shivered against the sense of rising quicksand. Yet he'd learned more about the northers in five minutes than he would have in five years at home.

“We know your ways are not ours,” Grissem said, “which is why Jakon has left you the choice. For now, at least. When the sweat hut is finished, he'll go there to fast and pray. The Northlight will come down to him and show him what he must do with you.”

And then, Terris thought with a shiver, there may no longer be a choice.

But what, by all the hidden gods of Harth, is the Northlight?

Terris and Etch wandered along the shoreline, waiting for the sun to go down. Grissem followed a few paces behind, far enough to give them the illusion of privacy but not so far they could forget the spear he carried. They had been on the island for five days now, and Etch was back on his feet and rapidly regaining his strength. Meanwhile, Terris's nerves grated with the frustration that increased daily. Jakon had disappeared into the sweat hut, there was no sign of Kardith, and Terris hadn't been able to exchange more than a few words with the northers to fill in the tantalizing glimpses of their culture. Despite his earlier words, Grissem had kept them carefully isolated from the lake community. They were, indeed,
untrusted guests.

As the sun dipped toward the horizon, the expanse of tundra beyond the lake turned misty purple in the failing light. Overhead, the sky had gone a sullen blue-black. Terris gazed over the gently lapping waves, half expecting to find Kardith sitting alone and furious in an oarless boat over the deepest part of the lake. But the wind-rippled water was empty. Firelights glowed on the far shore. Bits of music and talk, faint and disjointed, reached his ears.

Earlier the same day, Grissem had informed Terris that Jakon had emerged from the sweat hut, having dreamed up a message from whatever gods had come down to speak to him. Grissem hadn't phrased it exactly like that, but Terris didn't expect the so-called
message
to be anything more than a hallucination born of dehydration and Jakon's own expectations. The eastern nomads did the same thing with their dreamsmoke rituals. These northers appeared to take the matter seriously, almost religiously, and a special ceremony had been scheduled for that evening in the long-house.

Etch scratched absentmindedly at his healing arm. He caught Terris's eye and jerked his hand away.

“I should know better,” he said, a little sheepishly. “Still, a good sign, that itching is. I knew a man once, who ran horses along the Border clear out to Archipelago. His brother lost an arm, and for years afterward the damned thing kept itching. Said it drove him half crazy.”

The last thin line of solar brilliance flared and died along the western rim, leaving only the lightest of yellow with none of the orange or red of the city. The sky went dark and then hazy with stars. Grissem led them back to the long-house and through one of the side entrances.

As Terris stepped through the narrow doorway, his first impression was a confusion of light and movement. Light because glass globes now lined the halls, spreading a soft, white-blue glow. And movement, because the hall seemed to be full of people, men streaming in from one side and women through the other, their heads gray and honey-gold and flaxen. He caught a glimpse of Jakon sitting in his usual place on the drum stool, and Kardith, escorted in through the women's door. She looked strong and alert, unhurt.

Etch, at his side, let his breath out audibly. “Thank all the gods of Harth, she's all right.” Grissem gestured forcefully for him to be quiet.

From the front of the long-house came a bitten-off exclamation, a woman's sharp cry. Terris glimpsed a dark head, taller than the rest, but whether man or woman he couldn't tell, for Grissem grasped his elbow and pulled him down the hall, then motioned for him to sit along the wall beside Etch.

Black hair...not a norther.
Terris curled his fingers into fists, digging his ragged nails into his palms and forcing himself to keep still.

Aviyya had black hair.

There she was, taking her seat across the room with the other women, and glancing over at Kardith with a quickly-masked expression of astonishment. Her gray eyes, ringed with lashes so dark they looked smudged, scanned the men's side of the room, paused as they met his and widened with surprise. Her lips, strong and full and dark, shaped his name. Only then did he realize she wore her Ranger's vest over a set of pale gold elkskins, and that her black hair was braided like any norther woman's.

The last norther took his place, seated along the outside of the room. Terris glanced from Aviyya to Kardith and back again. His mind flooded with questions, and he wished he knew what was going on.

As for Aviyya herself, she seemed like someone familiar seen through warped glass. He recognized her, but not the ways the years had changed her. There was no mistaking the flash in her eyes as she glared at Jakon. Her body might be motionless, but the spirit within it glowed like a sparking flame.

Grissem brought out a drum and padded sticks. The women took down the wall ornaments and held them in their laps. What Terris had thought were plaques or shields, he realized, were really hand drums.

Boom!
Grissem brought one stick down on the drum head.
Boom!
With the next beat, the women joined in. Terris felt the vibration through the wooden floor and, without meaning to, began tapping his foot in rhythm.

Boom-boom-boom!
Grissem brought the drumming to a halt.

A man at the far end got to his feet and walked slowly to the center. His hair, so white it bore no tinge of yellow, gleamed in the light of the globes. He saluted Jakon and began to dance. At first he moved stiffly, as if his joints were half-frozen with arthritis. Soon he seemed to glide across the carpet, his steps strong and fluid. His arms traced circular patterns. Terris recognized the gestures for what they were — complex, ritualistic, rich in cultural meaning he had no basis for understanding. He wondered if the man were telling a story — perhaps of how the southers had come to the camp, perhaps of Jakon's Northlight vision in the sweat hut. The drums sang again, the women's fingertips skimming the stretched painted hide in ghostly whispers.

After the old man sat down, there was a moment of stillness before a young woman arose to take his place. Slowly she lifted her arms above her head and tilted her head back, her braids falling past her waist. Her knees bent deeper and deeper until she seemed about to fall to the ground. Then she began to curve and twist, as if trying to escape from an insupportable weight. She moved faster, spinning, reeling, sometimes rising on the toes of one foot, her head still thrown back. Through it all, the drums were silent.