Tortall (28 page)

“Building things,” Adria said, leafing through the book and halting at the pictures. “Bridges, houses, towers. It’s the first step.”

“Building things,”
the four darkings said with a sigh, as if they were having visions of wonderful structures.

Adria glanced back at her city as the ferry drew away from it. She looked only once. Then she turned her eyes forward, toward her home-to-be.

A tentacle tugged on her sleeve. “Adria,” Lost said. “Teach us.”

“I’m learning myself,” she protested, but she bent over the book and began to read softly to her class of four.

Arimu of the Wind People was halfway through her Year of Proving when she found the creature at the bottom of a Dustlands canyon. She was on her way back to her camp with combs of honey when she heard a roaring moan. Since she was a careful girl, she tethered her camels in a safe place, then went to see what made such an unearthly noise.

There, in a stream, she discovered what looked like a bull wearing blue silk drapes and brass trinkets. He lay there as if he’d been thrown from the cliffs as a sacrifice to the gods. But that made no sense. Arimu knew this country. No one lived here to make any sacrifices.

She approached the bull, her spear raised. He looked half-dead—she would put him out of his misery. A crippled animal would never survive here.

The bull turned his head. Arimu froze. He glared straight at her. When could a bull look a human straight in the eye?

He croaked something, as if he spoke to her. Nonsense, Arimu told herself. Bulls can’t talk!

The bull made other noises. These, too, sounded like speech.

“Stop it,” she ordered, before she realized she spoke to him as she would a human.

She had heard
stories
of bull people. His feet were human-like and bleeding from cuts. So were his hands. His chest was powerful, to hold up his large head. And now she understood the problem with his eyes. They pointed forward like a human’s.

The blue silk rags had once been embroidered trousers and a jacket. The many rings on his horns were gold, not brass. Some were jeweled. He was no sacrifice. No one threw gold and gems into a canyon.

He was still talking. Finally he spoke in a market language she knew. “Help … me. Please.”

Arimu scratched her head. How could she explain? She doubted he knew the customs of the Dustlands nomads. Someone of her tribe would have mentioned knowing bull-men or cow-women.

“You … understand,” he said, and coughed. “I beg you, by the laws that govern all civilized people, to help me.” He spat into the dust. “You
are
civilized, are you not?”

Arimu leaned on her spear. “I am civilized by the laws of the Wind People, the children of the Dustlands,” she replied. “Who are
your
people? How did you get here?”

“I ran,” said the bull-man. He looked at his scraped hands. “When I did not run, I walked, and when I could not walk, I crawled. I was on holiday when I was captured like an
animal
. An animal! Hunters from the Merchant City cast a sleeping spell on me, and put me in a cage. They released me
in a canyon maze, far from here, to hunt me, camping in silk tents at night while I starved! I stole a horse, but it finally threw me. I just kept running away. Look at me!” He lifted his rags. His hands left bloody streaks on them. There were tears in his eyes.

“I am a Tenth-Rank Scholar,” he said woefully. “I was studying to become a Ninth-Rank Scholar. I wanted a little holiday, and now look. I don’t even know where I am.” He drew away. “Where are your people? Are
they
going to hunt me?”

Arimu smiled crookedly. “The Wind People are in the north. I am the only human you will see for miles.”

He still looked nervous. “You will rob me. Only I know how to take my rings from my horns. If you cut my horns from my head, a dreadful curse will descend on you.” He began to chant in some foreign language, only to begin coughing. At last he caught his breath. “Please help me.”

Arimu sighed. “The Wind People do not give knowledge away. Once we did. Then, when we were poor, we were driven from rich homes east of the Andrenor into tents in the Dustlands. We no longer
give
anything to outsiders. When I go home in six months, I will be asked to tell the full tale of my time here. I cannot lie, and I cannot break my people’s law.”

The bull-man reached up to a horn, wrapped his hand around a jeweled ring, and gave it a complex twist. It popped open. He slid it off and tossed it to her. “What will this buy?”

She inspected it. When she saw it was real gold and jewels, she put her spear aside and came to look at him more closely.

“It buys you medicine and care for your wounds,” she said. The bottoms of his feet were cut to ribbons, his knees and hands nearly so. He took another gold ring from his horns and gave it to her. “This buys you a ride to my camp. The wounds first. I can’t bandage them all, but I can clean them.” She set her pack down at a distance, so he couldn’t grab it, and took out what she would need. “Do you have a name?”

He lay back with a groan, then spoke a mouthful of syllables. “You would say Sunflower,” he added.

Arimu smiled as she cleaned his cuts. “Well, Sunflower, tell me if it hurts too much,” she said to warn him as she swabbed a six-inch gouge in one of his great thighs. He grunted a reply; sweat rolled from his hide. His feet twitched as she plucked thorns from between his toes; she ordered him to hold still. Seeing a stone embedded in his heel, she pulled it out. He wheezed and relaxed. When she looked up, his eyes had rolled back in his head. He had fainted.

“Just as well,” she muttered in her own tongue.

By the time she was done, he was awake enough to get onto her strongest camel. She tied him down when the pain of that effort made him faint again. Slowly she led both camels up a tiny trail to the canyon’s rim. Twice Sunflower’s camel nearly fell off the path, dragged down by his shifting weight. Arimu got so frightened that she promised the rings he’d paid her to the goddess Dansiga, if she let them reach the top in safety.

They camped that night on the canyon’s rim. In the morning Sunflower showed improvement. Though he was too weak to walk, he had plenty of questions, demanding to
know the names and uses of every plant he noticed. Once they camped that night, Arimu gave him a tiny knife and a stick, and asked him to whittle some tinder while she got firewood. When she returned, he had cut himself three times.

“Scholars don’t whittle,” he said when she scolded.

“How will you live to go home?” she demanded as she cleaned his wounds. “It’s nearly autumn. You’ll need to build fires at night. They don’t just start themselves.”

“I’ll learn quickly enough,” Sunflower said.

Arimu wasn’t so sure. She remembered his infant-soft hands and feet. What did he know of the kind of work needed to survive in a desert autumn?

As she got the fire going, he resumed his questions. This time, they were about her.

“They turn you out on your own at
thirteen
?” he asked, horrified, when she explained about the Year of Proving.

“If I want to lead my people,” she said, watching the flatbread as it baked on a stone. She boasted, “It’s the path of greatest honor, if I succeed. I came to a part of the Dustlands where the Wind People have never gone, to map land we have never walked. If I survive the year and bring my maps home, my people will have new places with water, grazing, and hunting. We will have new places to live free of our enemies.”

Sunflower snorted. “How far away can your people be, not to have maps of this place?”

Arimu smiled up at him. She did feel smug about her choice. “Spring City. Here.” Using the map she carried with her, she pointed to the location of Spring City and to the ruined tower where she lived now.

“You’re mad,” he said. “You’ll get eaten, or lost.”

“Not as long as I have a good map and the stars.” She pointed to the sky. “The North Star never moves. I know the constellations and where they are at every season. All children of the Wind People learn these things as soon as they are able to learn. What are
you
taught?”

“How to read, and write elegantly,” Sunflower replied dreamily. “How to play the lotus flute and the harp. The principles of music and poetry and law.”

“Where did you learn such useless things and not fire starting?” Arimu wanted to know.

Sunflower touched the map southwest of the Dustlands, on the seacoast. “We call it Wheeler.”

“The Veiled City,” she whispered. “But it’s a legend.”

“It’s veiled against those who mean us harm,” he corrected her. “So we cannot be invaded and enslaved.”

“But you wanted a holiday,” Arimu said.

Sunflower heaved an immense sigh. “I
wanted
an adventure. And so I left the veils. I got my adventure, and a person who wants me to pay for everything, and asks what use are poetry and music.”

Arimu knew her duty to Sunflower. She meant to do it, even if she made him pay according to the customs of her people. “If you’re to get home alive, you must know some things,” she explained as she helped him down the steps into her lair under the old tower called Karn Wyeat.

“But I feel your kind of learning will not make me as happy as my kind of learning,” Sunflower replied mournfully.

“You’ll be happy when you’re home.” Arimu helped him to sit, then built a small fire of tinder and twigs and lit it. “There’s the firewood,” she said, pointing. “All you need do is add wood to keep the fire going. I’ll tend the camels.”

She returned to a smoke-filled room. Once she aired it out, he explained that he had begun to look through a book she had found in the ruined karn. When he saw the fire was dying, he had thrown tinder onto it. Then, when it had blazed too high, he had scattered water on it, dampening the tinder and making it smoke.

More than once in the weeks that followed, Arimu wondered if that had been a sign from Dansiga that Sunflower could not survive on his own. He let meals burn. He let fires die. He knew wonderful stories for every constellation but had no idea of their summer or winter positions, which could guide his travels. She found him watching a sandstorm advance, as if it were an interesting display. She barely got him back to the karn with both their skins in one piece.

She taught him the uses of honey and spiderwebs as medicines first, then which plants were edible. She even showed him how to build a fire using dried dung and brush.

“Why?” he asked her, recoiling from the smell. “There is wood here.”

“Because you don’t want to follow the Andrenor to the coast,” she told him.

He shuddered. “Follow the river to the Labyrinth and Merchant City? I may be a dreamer and an idiot”—names she had called him after the sandstorm—“but I don’t want to be captured again!”

“Then you will have to cross the desert. Trees are scarce west of here. It’s mostly brush, so you’ll have
something
to use, but you must know how to use it.”

“Oh,” he said mournfully. He drew closer to the fire. “Honored Teacher, teach me to cook food over burned animal droppings.”

She grinned, put out the small fire, and began again.

While Sunflower mended their clothes—children of his people were also taught to sew—Arimu made a straw hat that would fit around his horns and a pack. He copied her map with brushstrokes that made it into a work of art. When he was strong enough to venture farther from the karn, she tried to show him how to find water and food.

He was not very good at it.

One by one, Sunflower paid Arimu every ring from his horns. The next day, he put on his hat and the pack. He tucked the copy of the map in his rope belt. “You have taught me all you can by the laws of your people,” he said. “I thank you. When I am home, I will compose a song in your name and sing it before the elders.… What is this?” he asked as she thrust a small pouch at him.

“I did not give full value for the sapphires in that pair of rings two days ago,” she told him. “This makes us even.”

He dumped the pouch’s contents onto his brown hand: her spare flint and steel. He failed at making a fire with sticks as often as he succeeded.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “Your goddess Dansiga blessed me when she put me in your path. I will make an offering of songs to her as well.”

She had told him that the Wind People hated goodbyes.
He walked up the steps and out of the karn. Arimu followed and watched as he checked the sun’s position and headed west. He used the trail they had already scouted. It would take him into a valley where a stream flowed south.

She told herself, He can follow that safely for at least four days. If he doesn’t fall in and lose his food. If he doesn’t forget to check the rocks for snakes before he sits. Unless he sees a bird he doesn’t recognize and follows it out of that valley and gets lost, or steps in a bog. Or he loses the pack, or …

I have taught him all I can under the Wind People’s laws, she thought angrily. He has nothing more to pay me. He is an outsider, a bull-man. I owe him nothing.