The Wild Road (6 page)

He
walked away.

Ilona couldn't believe it, even of Brodhi.

Rhuan's mouth stretched into a taut line, but he continued smoothly with what he had started to say, ignoring Brodhi. Ilona understood why Rhuan did so: expressing any curiosity about Brodhi's appearance might lead folk to question where he had been. And just now there were too many other questions to be answered. Addressing the fact that Brodhi had been in Alisanos searching for Audrun and her children would undermine any calm Rhuan might achieve. “But for now,” he said, “we'd best look to rites for the dead.”

Ilona felt a chill. Rites that had been originally intended for her.

And it was nearly tangible, the weight of questions in everyone's eyes. How could she be standing among them, clearly alive?

Chapter 3

I
LONA BLURTED THE
first thing that came into her mind. “I wasn't dead. I
appeared
to be dead, certainly, but I was only unconscious.” She realized that laid blame for the mistake at Jorda's door, and hastened to absolve him. She was a diviner; there were many things about divining and its different sects that folk did not know. “I was dream-walking.” She infused her tone with confident matter-of-factness. “Lerin taught me how, before she died in the storm. I struck my head.” Ilona touched her temple briefly. “I wasn't dead after all . . .”
Oh Mother, help me find a way through this tangle!
And then she found it, altering the topic. “—but Rhuan is correct. We do need to hold rites. For the others.”

Bethid raised her voice. “She's a diviner. She can officiate. We're lucky she isn't dead. Now we have a link to the Mother, even if not all of us are accustomed to relying on a hand-reader.”

Ilona smiled inwardly with relief. Nicely done. She owed the courier her thanks, when the opportunity presented itself.

“I'm going to Brodhi,” Bethid told Ilona, touching her elbow briefly. Then she circled around the crowd to take the shortest route.

“Dawn rites,” Jorda announced, promptly assuming Bethid's lead. “Tomorrow.”

It would allow time for the bodies to be cleansed and made ready, two more graves dug, and vigils held. It also bought Ilona time to sort out a more detailed explanation for her resurrection. She couldn't contradict her story and tell them she
wasn't
Shoia; and people would certainly ask when they came requesting she read their hands in the wake of the draka attack. It bought, as well, a day for Rhuan to prepare answers that would calm them. To nearly all tent-folk, he was mostly a stranger, but he had warned the settlement of the deepwood's imminent shift, saving lives. The karavaners knew to trust him and would say so. Rhuan was believed to be Shoia, as was Brodhi; like diviners, they were
expected
to know things others might not.

Ilona reflected that she could not look less like a hand-reader had she tried, clad in a wrinkled, dusty burial shift with grit on her face, and hair a tangled mess. But she summoned a professional demeanor despite her disarray. “We will see to it that the dead are given proper rites as they cross the river. At this time tomorrow, we'll meet at the burying place.”

Where she herself, this morning, would have been interred.

“Wait!” called a voice. “Brodhi—wait! Did you find them? Did you find my family in Alisanos?”

The farmsteader, Davyn. Of course. With exquisite timing, hastening toward Brodhi as he exited the grove. “Sweet Mother,” Ilona murmured as a stirring ran through the crowd. Shock was palpable.

A man blurted what all of them were thinking. “He was in the deepwood?”

And another. “He was in Alisanos?
Came out
of Alisanos?”

BETHID CAUGHT UP
to Brodhi not far from the couriers' common tent. She could tell from his posture, an indication she knew well, that he had no intention of explaining anything, but she had to ask. “Ilona told me you'd gone into Alisanos. Are you all right?”

When he continued his determined striding, Bethid jogged after him and caught at an arm. “Brodhi—I know. I know you're not Shoia. Ilona told me.”

He did not tear his arm out of her grasp, as she expected, but he nonetheless impressed upon her, with his expression, the rigidity of his jaw as he halted and turned to face her, that her inquiries were not welcome. She let go of his arm instantly. “The hand-reader knows nothing. She is a charlatan.”

Bethid shook her head. “No. She's not.” She drew in a breath and ventured, “You risked Alisanos . . . I simply want to know if you are all right.”

Before he could answer—provided he intended to answer, and that was not a certainty—the farmsteader arrived. “Did you
find
them? Are they all right? Did you bring them out?” Restrained desperation was evident in his tone, his face. His clothing was soiled and wrinkled, and his hair lay damply against his head. “Where are they?”

Bethid saw something briefly flicker crimson in Brodhi's eyes. The faintest trace of ruddy color suffused his skin. It was the closest he had ever come, in front of her, to overt anger. He could be a cold man; she had seen that. But this? This heat was not Brodhi.

But Brodhi, she remembered as her belly spasmed with the thought, was unlike anyone she knew. Not Shoia, Ilona had said, but from Alisanos.
Of
Alisanos. Rhuan also.

Were they even human?

Brodhi's words were clipped. “I did not go into Alisanos to find your family.”

“I know that, but
did
you find them? Unintentionally?” The farmsteader put out a hand, as if he intended to touch Brodhi. But the expression on Brodhi's face repudiated the impulse. Davyn's hand fell slack at his side. He repeated, “
Did
you find them?”

In the face of Davyn's desperation and Brodhi's indifference, Bethid blurted, “For the Mother's sake, Brodhi,
tell
him if you know something!”

The faint ruddiness disappeared from Brodhi's skin. His eyes, once again, were brown, and implacable. “Your wife and your children are together.”

“Alive?” The farmsteader was hoarse-voiced, close to tears of frustration.

Brodhi said, “Perhaps not, anymore, as you would describe living.” He shot a glance at Bethid, challenging her to speak again. “They are now of Alisanos.”

A harsh, inarticulate cry broke from the farmsteader's mouth. He wavered on his feet a moment, turned unsteadily as if he meant to walk away but abruptly swung back. “
You
came back!
You
came out!”

“So did Rhuan!” Bethid, shaken, stared at Brodhi in disbelief. “How can you say such a thing? Obviously there is a means to leave Alisanos. It's been done!”

“Rhuan . . .” the farmsteader said in a flat, stunned voice. “He was with—he was with my family when Alisanos moved.” His eyes on Bethid were abruptly alive with hope. “Rhuan has returned also?”

Calmly, Brodhi said, “Perhaps you should discuss this with him.”

Bethid opened her mouth to speak again, but shut it as Brodhi turned and began walking once again toward the common tent. A painful ache centered itself in her chest, right behind her breastbone. She liked Brodhi. In spite of his moods, his self-imposed isolation, she
liked
Brodhi. He had done her a great favor in seeing to it she could enter the courier trials. But this. . . . In the midst of so much grief and panic, how could he be so indifferent?

“Do you know where he is?” The farmsteader looked beyond her, toward the fire circle. “Rhuan?”

Bethid glanced back. “He was right there—” But he wasn't anymore. Neither Rhuan nor Jorda nor Mikal nor Ilona. “The ale-tent,” she said abruptly. “I would look there.”

But she did not. She went after Brodhi.

ONCE BEFORE, JORDA
and Mikal had found select men among the tent-folk and karavaners. All were older, all unlikely to panic, and all had wits enough to grasp salient points without making judgments or assumptions. Those men, summoned out of the tide of folk who still clustered near the fire ring, now gathered in Mikal's tent. Seats were found on stools, chairs, and benches. Hastily erected after the storm, the tent showed signs of battering with torn cloth and cracked timbers hastily wrapped with ropes to keep them whole. But then, so did the men show signs of battering; mental if not physical. Mikal found tankards and cups enough to serve them and charged nothing for the ale and spirits.

The plank across the tops of two heavy wooden barrels was thick enough to support a man. Rhuan boosted himself atop it, legs dangling, boot toes touching the earthen floor. He drank his own share of ale, then set the tankard aside. Quietly he told them what a draka was, described the habits of the beasts, and did not downplay the outcome when a person was taken. “If you see a winged shadow, lie down. Immediately. Wherever you may be. Don't move, don't even twitch, until you are absolutely certain the draka is gone. Movement attracts them.
Prey
attracts them, and that means infants, children, adults, as well as livestock. Crying, shouting, and screaming merely provokes them further.”

And eventually, as expected, one man asked what all of them were thinking. His hair was a mix of brown and gray. Smile lines webbed the flesh near his blue eyes, though at present no humor touched his face. Rhuan recognized him as a karavaner. Sandic, he recalled. “How do you know so much about Alisanos?”

As a Shoia, as they knew him, Rhuan replied with casual ease, “Draka are legend among my people. It isn't Alisanos we know, but the beasts.” Twenty pairs of eyes stared back at him. “There are tales of a time when Alisanos moved, and two draka were disgorged. Many of my people were killed.”

“And resurrected?” Sandic asked. “It would seem your people have a greater advantage than we do. Those who fell from
our
sky will never live again, nor the child who was taken.”

It prompted murmuring among the others. Rhuan nodded. “That is true. But a truth is also that when killed repeatedly, even Shoia die.”

That, too, roused murmuring. Concerned glances were exchanged.

It was Jorda who asked the obvious question before anyone else could. “What happened to those draka? Did you find a way to kill them?”

The lie came easily because it had crossed his mind the moment he saw the draka. “We fed cattle on thornapple,” Rhuan said. “They went mad from the poison. The draka then ate the cattle—” But he broke off. His vision grayed out and all the hairs stood up on his body. Swearing, he swung himself off the wooden plank. His suggestion to the men was succinct. “Out.
Now
.”

The earth rippled beneath his boot soles. A shiver shook the ale-tent. A strong shudder followed it, pewter tankards clanking as they tipped over, were knocked one against the other. Others fell and rolled off the tables, spilling ale. Canvas trembled. The earth beneath groaned. The rope holding one of the poles together came unwrapped, and the tautness caused it to whip through the air. One man, struck, cried out.

Poles cracked. The tent leaned to one side. Shallow guy-line anchor irons were pulled from the ground. Outside, Rhuan caught at poles and billowing canvas, attempting to hold open an escape route. Mikal, as expected, was the last to leave, fighting his way through falling canvas. Throughout the grove so close to Mikal's tent, amidst the ranks of tents surrounding the fire pit, Rhuan heard screaming. In a matter of moments all of the assembled men had dispersed, running for tents and wagons, seeking families. Dogs barked frenziedly. A horse, broken rope hanging from its halter, careened through the center of the settlement.

The ale-tent collapsed. Then the undulations of the earth died away. All was still again, save for the sound of weeping and a woman's raised voice, demanding explanation of a husband who knew no more than she.