Children of the Dawn (46 page)

That night the Tlikit cave sheltered more than a few old men: On one side were the five Masat, and twice as many Teahra guards;
on the other, Kai El, the chief who held the lives of everyone in his hands. No one slept.

The next day Kai El strode across the cave. The Masat—if that was who they were—sat with hands and feet bound, ropes tying
one to the next; crusted with blood and dirt, stinking of body waste. Hate and disgust swept him as he looked down.

With the vision of a hawk, I see what others can’t
… His spirit song forced him to see beyond his personal feelings, to the future and the safety of his people.

He pointed to the huts outside the cave.

“Teahra Village,” he said. Then he tapped his chest.

“Kai El. Chief.”

He pointed at them with a questioning look. They glared fiercely at the man standing over them, and said nothing.

Tahna came into the cave. She knelt, and spoke slowly.

“Tsilka was my mother.”

The captives looked at each other.

“Squill,” one said, poking his chest. “Tsilka… Squill… ” He locked the fingers of both hands together, grunted, and smiled.
The meaning was obvious.

Tahna looked down. Kai El saw that she was embarrassed. He knew then how proud he was of his sister. She must hate the men
who killed Gaia more than anyone. But she had put it away somewhere… as he had.

Squill made a motion with his bound hands toward the others.

“Masat,” he said.

“Masat,” Kai El repeated. Ice crept around his heart. ’Then we
should
kill you.”

“No kill. Work.”

Kai El and Tahna looked at each. How could this savage know their language?

“Tsilka you bring. Tsilka talk.”

Tahna said, “Tsilka is dead.”

The man didn’t understand.

“Dead,” Kai El said, slicing his hand across his throat.

Squill nodded. The faces of the others were blank. They didn’t share his knowledge. It was limited, but Tsilka had taught
him enough that they were able to communicate.

With those few words and many signs, the chiefs told the captives why they were so hated: because their brothers had stolen
four women, and killed one.

Squill was sorry about the women, but it must have been some other tribe. The Masat were a peaceful tribe. They did not steal
river people. Their god, Raven, forbid it.

Grabbing several necklaces around the man’s throat, Kai El told him the people of Teahra were not stupid. They had seen Masat
men three times, and they all wore necklaces.

Squill agreed that it must have been Masat men after all.
He spoke to the others. They remembered now: Two bad men had been chased away. It must have been them. He was glad they died.
He was sorry about the women.

The Masat men took off their necklaces, to be given as gifts to the women who were stolen. Insulted, Kai El didn’t take them—as
if some beads could make up for what had been done. The men tossed them at his feet.

Squill said they would be good slaves, if they were allowed to live.

Kai El told him it was wrong to have slaves. Teahra gods forbid it.

He knew there were only two choices: Kill them, or let them go.

Letting them go was dangerous. Would they want revenge for their dead? Would they want what they saw at Teahra Village? Would
they bring a herd of warriors to get it?

But to kill them, not in the heat of battle, but in the cold of revenge… how would that affect his people?

Kai El and Tahna were learning to thought-speak with each other. She let him know that she was worried about the same things.

Tsilka, who had lived with the Masat, had said they were not bad people, except for keeping slaves. Even slaves weren’t treated
badly, except for the killing of one or two. To Kai El’s Shahala mind, the idea of slaves was horrible, and no amount of goodness
could make up for it.

Tahna’s Tlikit mind saw it differently. She also thought it was a bad thing, but she knew that good people could keep slaves.
Her own people had since the Misty Time, until they were forced to accept Shahala ways.

The Brother and Sister Chief came to an agreement in their minds.

Their people were not killers, and never had been. The killing of these five men might be like the taste of meat to a cat.
The lesser danger was to let them go.

Kai El and Tahna talked to their people around the fire that night. When they were done, people thought
they
were the ones who had decided to let the Masat go.

But first Kai El wanted to find out as much about the danger as he could. He kept them for several more days, not letting
them know whether they would live or die. He asked about the number of warriors in their village, the kinds of weapons they
used, how far it was, and how to get there. Squill answered, and everything he said agreed with what Tsilka had said.

The two villages were about the same size, with the same number of warriors and the same kinds of weapons. By following the
Great River, then turning and following the edge of the endless water, a man could get to the Masat village in less than one
moon.

Kai El asked about their slaves.

They had slaves, but they were worthless people from a tribe who lived farther up the endless water. The Hida and the Masat
had been enemies since grandfathers were little ones.

Squill told him again how his tribe never bothered any other people. Especially river people. The god Raven loved his river
people, and would kill the Masat for harming; them.

Kai El finally told Squill that they could go, with this warning: If they or any of their kind ever came back, what Raven
would do to them would be nothing compared to what Teahra warriors would do.

Tahna thought they should be allowed to give their gifts to the women who’d been stolen. Bree, Nissa, and Selah took the necklaces
without looking at the men.

They left.

“Don’t come back!” Kai El yelled.

The necklaces were pretty. The women couldn’t help liking them. There were so many, they gave some to their friends.

Tahna took two that were alike… two strings of white shells, big as a fingertip… circles that went over her head and lay on
her breast.

“One for me and one for Gaia,” she told Kai El.

The Masat came back. The same five, and three more.

When Kai El took the warriors to meet them, the intruders threw down their weapons. Then they threw down large packs and opened
them.

There were furs Kai El had never seen before; shells; woven hats; smoking pipes; necklaces.

“Trade,” Squill said.

Kai El allowed them to come to Teahra. They stayed for several days, eating the people’s food, sharing a smoking plant they
had brought with them. Kai El thought it was better than kinnikinnick, not so hot in the mouth. Puffing it made his head light.

Teahra people traded roots, firefish oil, and stone beads for the wonders from the land by the endless water.

The next time the Masat came, they brought two young women who wanted to stay. The people of Teahra, who now had several kinds
of blood, welcomed another kind to the tribe.

Kai El knew when he saw them that neither Masat woman was his soulmate.

T
HEY CALLED IT “FREEZING RAIN,” BECAUSE IT
turned to ice as soon as it hit the ground. Sometimes it was already frozen, and stung the skin as it came down. In the second
winter of the Brother and Sister Chief, freezing rain fell day after day, until a thick layer of ice covered everything in
Teahra Village but the tops of the warm huts. It was cold and miserable outside, and dangerous to walk, so people stayed in
their huts as much as possible. Kai El hadn’t been to his home in the cliffs for days.

Awakening in a deep recess of the Tlikit cave, he looked out and decided that this would be the day that he’d go to the cliffs.
The ground-ice hadn’t gone anywhere in the night, but for now, it wasn’t raining ice. The sky was blue, and beautiful. He
couldn’t remember the last blue-sky day he’d seen. He hoped the sun would stay and melt the ice, but for now it was cold enough
to see his breath.

As he approached the Moonkeeper’s hut, Kai El slipped. He grabbed a piece of wood by the door, shaking the hut.

Inside, a girl yelped—Chopay, ten summers, who was living with Tahna now, learning Moonkeeper’s ways.

Tahna said, “Who is it?”

“The hawk has landed,” Kai El said as he entered.

Chopay squatted by the fire with a poking stick in her hand.

“You scared me, Kai El.”

He tousled her hair.

“Sorry, little one. There’s too much ice out there. My feet did a dance by themselves.”

Tahna stood at her work shelf.

“Smell this,” she said. “It’s the most wonderful smell.”

He sniffed some little round seeds on a flat grinding stone.

“What? I hardly smell anything.”

“It isn’t on the outside. It’s on the inside. That’s where you find the real beauty of everything.”

She mashed the seeds with the other part of her grinding stone. A sharp odor rose.

“Whew,” he said. “You think that’s wonderful?”

“Mmm. I do.”

“Me too,” Chopay said from her place by the fire. Kai El thought she’d make a good Moonkeeper someday.

He said, “After living here through fourteen winters, I thought we’d seen the worst. But I was wrong.”

“I know,” Tahna said. “Ice that falls like rain… what mean spirit would make a thing like that?”

“I think you have a broken leg to tend,” Kai El said. “One of the Masat women slipped as she was chipping ice for water.”

“Oh,” Tahna said with sympathy. “Chopay, get your furs. Poor things, they don’t know about ice. It never freezes at the endless
water. They don’t even wear moccasins there.”

Kai El shook his head. “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

All that the Ogress—as Tsilka was called after her death—had said about the Masat people and their home had turned out to
be true—though that didn’t change the memory of her as a madwoman.

Kai El said, “I’m going to the cliffs.”

“It’s dangerous,” Tahna said. “Why don’t you wait until the ice melts?”

“That might not be until spring, the way this winter is going.”

“The last thing I need is to have my brother all broken up.”

“Sister, I’m a warrior with feet like Suda, the ram. I can climb in the dark with my eyes closed. I’ll be able to tell what’s
happening to the Great River from up in the cliffs. We need to know.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “We do.”

The long cold weather had changed the Great River into something that people had never seen before. First in quiet pools at
the edge, then farther out, the water hardened into choppy wave shapes. Frozen chunks floating down the river snagged on boulders,
and caught more chunks. Freezing rain added layer after layer, ice upon ice.

Kai El said, “I walked out there. It’s solid near the shore, but as you get toward the middle, you hear water rushing underneath.
The ice groans and creaks. Then you think you feel it moving, and it seems like a good idea to turn around and come back.
I don’t know how far it goes.”

Tahna said, “I wish you’d stay off it. And keep others off. Men aren’t supposed to walk on rivers. The ice could break apart
and take you away.”

“I can keep men off the river,” he said, “but I can’t keep them from asking questions. Like, ’How far out does it go? And
what if it freezes all the way across?’ Tahna, people have always wondered what’s on the other side. I have. Haven’t you?”

Tahna shrugged, but he knew she had. They had talked about it. She was just afraid of the unknown, as women had reasons to
be.

“The men are talking about crossing. I will lead them. I need to know as much as I can.”

“Well then, you’d better go up for a look. Please be careful.”

Kai El made his way along the river trail, and began the climb up the Moonkeeper’s Path, made dangerous by ice. He slipped
and fell, and would have bruises to show for it.

Partway up, he could see that there were places where the ice went all the way across the Great River. It looked as if men
could
cross to the other side.

Now that Kai El knew it could be done, he would have to decide if it should be.

Having seen enough, he could have gone back to the village. But he wanted time alone to think, so he kept climbing.

He sat in front of his cliffside hut, gazing at the frozen river, and the hills rising out of it on the other side. The only
colors were gray and white.

The Great River was blocked. Who could believe it?

Kai El remembered the dream where he and his mother had thrown stones on a river of ice. This ice didn’t seem bad, like the
ice in the dream—just different, interesting, and full of questions. He had to laugh to think of breaking it with stones.

Glancing up at She Who Watches, he said, “We could cross it, you know. Tor would if he were here. Haven’t you always wondered
what’s on the other side?” Then he laughed at himself. “I’m sure you know by now,” he said.

Looking back at the river, Kai El saw something move. He caught his breath. Far away on the other side, an animal came onto
the frozen river, advancing slowly toward Teahra Village. He squinted, trying to make it out. A bear?

No. A man in a bearskin. The man crept along, then stopped, looked back, and motioned with his arm. There were others.

The question of whether Teahra warriors should cross faded. The new question was what to do about the strangers already on
their way.

In a tight cluster, six or seven walked and crawled onto the frozen river. The braver one who’d tried it first waited. They
came a short distance, then one fell. They turned back for the shore, and wouldn’t be persuaded to try it again.

Kai El knew what it felt like to have people too afraid to do what you wanted them to.

Falling and getting up again, the brave one slowly, steadily approached.

Kai El had a strange feeling, as if he knew this one who was coming. As if his life was about to change.