The Kin (59 page)

“Now we found a path,” he said. “It was a people path. We followed it. We were careful, careful. No one came, no one went. We came to mountains. The path went up. We climbed far. There were many trees. They stopped. We came to a valley. It was in the mountains. There we found a thing. I do not tell you now—I do not have words. Tomorrow you see it. Noli comes. It is First One stuff.”

That was all he would say, but instead of returning to his place among the men he beckoned to Noli and took her aside to the edge of the firelight. They settled down and sat talking in low voices for a long while. When Noli came back to the fire she looked puzzled and anxious.

They left as soon as they were ready next morning and travelled east along the route that Suth had described. They weren't exploring, as he and Tor had been, so they made good time and reached the path he'd told them about well before midday.

It was a well-worn path, broad enough for two people walking side by side, though there were signs that it hadn't been recently used. If they'd turned right they would have been heading for the southern side of the valley, but they went the other way, directly towards the mountains.

Over the past few moons Mana had often seen those white peaks, unreachably far away. Now she was looking at a single one, so close that it seemed to tower above her.

The path began to climb, twisting to and fro. Still climbing, it entered an area of woodland—not the dense, tangled, steaming forest that grew along the river in the New Good Places, but cool and sweet smelling, with open glades among the trees.

Net and Tor were scouting ahead, with Tun and Suth leading the main party. Mana, Noli and the rest of Suth's “family” were close behind, with the rest of the Kin spreading down the path. Sometimes after they'd rounded a bend Mana could look down and see between the tree trunks the tail-enders still toiling up the previous stretch.

All at once Noli halted, and froze. The others jostled to a halt behind her. Suth and Tun heard the slight commotion and turned to see what was happening.

“Goma is here,” said Noli quietly.

They stared at her, then looked at each other, bewildered. Goma was one of the Porcupines, with whom the Kin used to share the New Good Places. She'd been a special friend of Noli's, because she was the one to whom their own First One, Porcupine, came. But apart from Noli's mate, Tor, who was Porcupine, the Kin had seen nothing of them since they'd split up to travel either side of the river as they'd all journeyed north to escape the drought that was killing the New Good Places. How could Goma be here, after all this time?

“Ko,” said Noli in the same quiet voice. “Run. Find Tor. Bring him.”

Ko raced off. Noli waited, gazing up the slope above the path.

“She comes,” she said. “Others are with her.”

She called the Porcupines'
I come
sound and started to scramble up. Before she'd gone far, someone stole out of the trees higher up, peered for a moment, gave a cry of joy and came slithering and bounding down. She flung her arms round Noli and they hugged each other, laughing and crying. Only when they stood apart and gazed at each other could Mana see that this really was Goma.

By then three other women had appeared. Mana recognized two of them as Porcupines. They looked far more scared and uncertain than Goma, until they recognized that the people on the path were their old friends, the Kin, and came down and greeted them.

Then Net, Tor and Ko came hurrying down the path, and there were yet more greetings and cries of gladness, but Mana didn't take much part in them because she was still watching Noli and Goma. She saw Goma admire Amola, and realized at the same moment that Goma's little son wasn't with her. She heard Noli's questioning grunt. Goma's face turned sorrowful and Noli started to weep. He was dead, Mana realized, and wept too.

After that the two women stood for a little while, touching and stroking each other and making murmuring sounds, before they came down and joined the others on the path.

“What happens to Goma?” Noli said as they climbed on. “I do not know. I feel bad times. I feel sadness. I feel fear, blood, another sadness. My thought is this. The Porcupines come round the marsh. They find little food. Some die. Men come. They fight the Porcupine men. They kill them. They take women, Goma too. They bring her to this place. She is afraid, afraid. It is not the men she fears. They go. They do not come back. These women are with her. They run away. We find them. Still she is afraid. I feel her fear. I feel the thing she fears. It is demon stuff, bad, bad. Suth says this also.”

They climbed on, cautiously now, though they had still seen no sign of anyone using the path for a long while. Then the slope eased and they came out into a long, narrow clearing. It was the bottom of a valley between two steep spurs of the mountain. Trees clung to the slopes on either side, with dark cliffs above them. A thin stream rippled along the floor of the valley. Some way on, on the left side, the cliff ran sheer down to the clearing. Against it lay a low, treeless mound.

They stopped at the edge of the wood and stood staring. Mana could see no sign of danger, but she could sense something. It was as if the air was full of whispering voices that she couldn't quite hear, while invisible hands were fingering her skin, too softly for her to feel. She shuddered and looked at Okern, but he was fast asleep in the sling Tinu had made for him. His small face was untroubled.

Noli turned to Yova. She was breathing deeply, as she sometimes did just before Moonhawk came to her, but there was no froth on her lips, and she seemed in full control of her own body.

“Yova, take Amola,” she said. “This is my stuff. It is Goma's stuff. We go first.”

Goma was already beside her, looking anxious and frightened, but she took Noli's hand and together they led the way on. The Kin followed, keeping close together, but the three women who had been with Goma in the wood refused to come any further.

The path ran straight towards the mound, which lay on the far side of a low rise, so that they saw only the upper half of it until they reached the top of the rise. By then they were only a few tens of paces from it, so that its meaning burst suddenly upon them.

Just in front of them two large boulders stood either side of the path, forming an entrance. On top of each of them was a human skull. Rings of skulls circled their bases. Beyond the boulders two lines of posts, topped with skulls, led down to the mound. More posts and skulls ringed the mound. Where the path reached the mound there was a low slab of rock. Behind it, in the mound itself, was a dark opening.

Noli paused, but not from uncertainty. She seemed to be waiting for something. She looked at Goma, who was holding herself more confidently now. They nodded, as if one of them had spoken.

“Moonhawk is here,” said Noli, still quietly. “Porcupine also. He slept. Now he wakes.”

The two women, still holding hands, walked on towards the mound. The Kin followed, spreading out into a line on either side of the path, but Suth and Tun stayed on it, and Mana followed them down.

When Noli and Goma were about ten and ten paces from the slab a man came out of the opening behind it. He was old. His hair was white, his eyes bloodshot and gummy, and he used a staff to walk with, though he held himself as straight as a young man. Mana didn't need the colour of his skin, or the skulls that dangled from his belt, to tell her that this was a demon man. She would have known by the way he moved, by the look on his face, by the feel of his presence. Though he was old and feeble, he seemed far more terrible than any of the savage young hunters they had fought in the marshes.

The red-rimmed eyes stared at the newcomers. The man raised his staff and gave a harsh, croaking cry, which echoed from the cliff above him.

He waited for the echo to die, and cried again, and then again. Each time the cliff repeated the sound. Mana's stomach felt cold inside her. The echoes sounded to her like more than echoes. They sounded like the demon speaking from the rock.

The Kin murmured uneasily. She guessed they were having the same thought, the same dread. Then Okern stirred against her side. She looked down and saw that he had woken and was gazing around with a puzzled frown.

Had the demon spoken to him too? Specially to him? Called to him?

No!

Now Mana knew what she must do, why she was here. She moved forward, and Ko started to come with her.

“Wait,” she whispered. “This is my stuff. It is good.”

She walked steadily forward, past Tun and Suth, past Noli and Goma, and up to the slab. The mad old eyes stared furiously at her, then fell on Okern.

The man's face changed completely. His mouth opened in a horrible grin, showing a few yellow teeth. He made a puffing sound and started to hobble round the slab.

Mana waited, standing her ground, until he stood facing her.

“No, you do not have him,” she said firmly.

“Do not have him,” whispered the cliff.

The old man poked his head forward at her and made an angry gesture towards the slab—
Put the boy there
.

“No,” said Mana again, and the cliff answered, “No.”

The man took a tottering pace towards her, reaching out an arm to grab at Okern. Mana snatched him away. She was filled with sudden fury, fury at this fearsome old man, and all the demon men, and what they were—what they had allowed themselves to become. It had been their choice. The demon was theirs. They had chosen it.

“No!” she yelled. “He is not yours! He is mine! He is Moonhawk!”

“Moonhawk,” shouted the cliff.

The old man staggered. It was as if the echo itself had struck him a violent buffet. He clutched at his staff with both hands, fighting for balance. His mouth gaped. A grating retch rasped through his throat. He staggered again, as if another blow had struck him, and toppled forward at Mana's feet.

She stayed where she was, staring down at him, clutching Okern to her side, until Tun came forward, bent, and rolled the old man onto his back.

“He is dead,” he announced.

“Dead,” agreed the cliff, matter-of-factly.

Moving and speaking quietly so as not to wake the echo they carried the body into the hole in the mound. They dragged out some strange stuff they found in there—old fighting sticks, horns of antelope, twisted bits of tree root, and bundles of dried grass tied into curious shapes. Almost everything had at least one skull lashed to it.

They laid the skulls aside and piled everything else into the entrance to the hole. Again setting the skulls aside they heaved up the ring of poles and the two lines beside the path and added them to the pile. They then set fire to it.

At first Mana took no part in any of this, but sat cradling Okern in her arms, touching, stroking, murmuring softly to him, as she had so often seen the Porcupine mothers doing with their babies. Slowly she realized that something had changed inside her.

Her wound was healed, the wound in her spirit that she had given herself when she had killed the demon man in the marsh. Clean spirit had grown over the place, leaving no scar. It was finding Okern that had healed her—saving him from the marshmen, mothering him and caring for him and watching him begin to grow into a life of his own, and now, finally, bringing him here and facing the old demon man, and the demon itself, and defeating them.

She had killed a man. He had been bad, bad, but he had been people.

But she had saved a man, and not just his life. If the Kin had never fought the demon men, or if the demon men had won that war, Okern would still have been born, but nameless. And he would have grown to manhood learning to be a demon man like his father, so that was what he would have become, a hunter of people, a savage killer of men. Now, perhaps, he would grow up not like that.

Mana had long had a secret fear that Okern's real father had been the very man she had killed. Now, though she would never know, she found herself hoping it might be so.

This, she thought, was what Moonhawk must have meant when she'd told her to wait.

After a while Noli came to feed Okern, so Mana passed him over and went to help the others carry the skulls and pile them up well away from the mound. They were just finishing when Noli came to give Okern back. As soon as Mana took him he fitted himself snugly against her, sighed and fell asleep.

“Noli,” she said, “I thank. And I say this. My trouble is gone. I am well.”

“This is good,” said Noli. “Now we do the death dance. Mana, you dance with the women.”

So Mana joined the line on one side of the pile of skulls, and stamped out the dance, and sang the long wavering wail that would free any spirits that were left in this demon-haunted valley and allow them to go wherever they were meant to by whatever First Ones had been theirs. Even at this distance their voices roused the echo in the cliff, so that it seemed to be taking part in the ritual.

By the time they'd finished it was almost nightfall. They had brought enough to eat at midday, but they had neither foraged nor hunted, and there was little left. They wouldn't take any food from this demon-infected place, let alone sleep here, so they made their way back down through the wood in the dark to a stream a little below it. There they drank, and laired for the night.

Mana slept with Okern close beside her, sheltering him with her body, warming him with her warmth, and did not dream at all.

Several more moons later the Kin was once again at Two Caves. Most of the Good Places on these northern slopes now had names of their own. Not long ago Mana had heard Ko telling Tan a wonderful story about why Snakeskin Hill was called that. It wasn't the real reason, it was just something Ko had dreamed up. Ko was always full of dreams.

By now Amola could stand, and was starting to walk, while Okern was crawling so fast and with such determination that Mana needed to keep an eye on him all the time he wasn't asleep. He seemed to have no sense of fear or danger.