Exile's Children (50 page)

Colun had, of course, agreed, though he doubted he could protect anyone against the terror that stalked the hills. But he did his best, for all it cost him dear. When the invaders had come into the Javitz caverns, the Grannach were ready, and when it became obvious the strangelings came in numbers too great to defeat, Colun had made a terrible deci
sion. He had planned it in advance, as a suicide plans his demise—in precise and horrid detail. The Javitz had been forewarned, and were ready with food and clothing, whatever they might carry easily. The refugees had less to carry, for all the Javitz shared with them what they had—and Colun had spoken long and forcefully on this, telling them they were no longer Javitz and Basanga and Katjen but only Grannach now, and did any argue, then they were free to return to their family caves. None did argue, but only obeyed him, hailing him as creddan of all the Stone Folk. It was an honor that sat sour as he called his people back from the advancing invaders and gave the word to the golans to do what they had reluctantly agreed upon.

It was a Pyrrhic victory: vast numbers of the invaders and their beasts had died as the Javitz cavern came tumbling down on them, burying them forever under such a weight of stone as must forever entomb them, and Colun had wept with his people to see the ancestral home cave destroyed—as if their past were taken from them, leaving only a bleak and homeless future. He felt an emptiness come into his soul as he fled, the tunnels all filled with the awful thunder of destruction, and he thought that wound should never heal.

He had led the decimated Grannach away to an uncertain future in the lesser caves and the high, hidden valleys, where they grubbed out a poor living as best they could and hid like nervous deer from the invaders' wolf packs that scoured the hills. But they did, at least, live, and Colun supposed that was something. And was he not sure how long they might survive or what dread fate descended on the world, then he could console himself with the knowledge that he had saved as many as he could and that there remained a remnant of the Grannach alive in the world who would otherwise have been dead. But that was small consolation, must they exist like rats, nibbling warily about the fringes of a world filled with only enemies. Sometimes he wondered if it had not been better to die fighting, but then he would look at the children and the women and the old ones and know that it was better to cling to life and hope, to ask the Maker to set right this awful imbalance.

He sometimes thought, in more cheerful moments, that perhaps the Matawaye would defeat the invaders, and then would feel that little optimism slip away as he thought of the awful fury of the strangelings and their numbers. He
knew
that the flatlanders were divided as his own folk had been, and would most likely fall like the Grannach before the incomers. And now Morrhyn was come, more dead than alive, and that was a very strange thing—that the Dreamer be here where he should not be, as if he were a corpse risen from the grave.

“I'd speak with him,” he said. “When he wakes.”

“No doubt.” Marjia did not turn: she was too intent on spilling broth between Morrhyn's cracked and blistered lips. “But when that might be, I cannot say.”

Colun turned to Nylj. “You found him in the valley, you say? Were there tracks?”

Nylj ducked his shaggy head. “The Maker knows how he came so far, but yes—his tracks came from the direction of the Mountain.”

Colun frowned. Morrhyn had come from the Maker's Mountain? The mystery deepened.

“You're sure?” he asked.

Nylj looked a moment offended and Colun smiled an apology. “It seems impossible he could be there,” he explained. “I cannot understand it.”

“Nor I.” Nylj allowed himself placated. “But there he was, like a snow-blinded hare struggling through the drifts.”

“Did he say anything?” Colun asked.

“Only cried out. Were there words in it, I could not understand them.”

Colun nodded and walked to the cave mouth. The snow had ceased falling a little after dawn and the valley lay silent and still, palisaded round by jagged peaks. The Maker's Mountain stood distant and aloof, and the winter sun outlined the tracks of Nylj's party like shadows on the snow. Colun could not understand it: Morrhyn had no right to be here, and still less to be alive. It was a further impossibility in a world become all impossible.

He went back inside the cave. Morrhyn slept now. Colun studied the wasted features and looked to his wife.

Marjia read the question in his eyes and said, “I don't know. He's no right to be alive, so perhaps he'll live. It's in the Maker's hands now.”

Colun nodded and returned to his brooding. He thought he no longer understood his world; it seemed all turned on its head.

When he woke he was buried and began to tunnel from under the weight of snow, thinking all the while that it was oddly warm and that it should be far easier to sink down beneath that comfortable blanket and let it take him away to endless sleep. But he had a duty he must discharge, and so he chided himself and called on the Maker, and fought to reach the light. Then he felt himself clutched and fought the hands that held him and cried out, cursing, until he was forced down and knew
himself lost. He was dead, or dying, and cursed spirits sought to drag him down, that he not dispense his charge, but all the world be given over to malignity and he be damned with them, a companion in despair.

Fire's glow then, and torches that revealed faces all craggy and bearded, and others that were hairless and smooth if no less craggy: he recognized them, dimly, from some distant place, another time. One, he thought he knew, but could not properly remember. Perhaps death played him a final trick, fooling his eyes and wandering mind. If so, he must fight it. He was not yet ready to die, not until his duty was done. And so he fought and cried out, looking for the light of the sky, that he might see the stars and take a bearing from them and go on.

“Morrhyn! Morrhyn, for the Maker's sake, don't you know me?”

He knew his eyes were open, but not that they saw, or what: he thought perhaps the spirits looked to trick him. The sky was black and starless and the only light came from flames which hurt his eyes. He sat up and wondered why he felt no cold but only warmth, as if he rested beside a fire. And indeed, when he squinted, he thought he saw a fire burning, and torches beyond, as if he rested within a cave whose walls reflected back the flames' glow, and in them saw squat shapes that were like the Grannach he remembered, who lived in the hills and were the Stone Guardians. Or tricksy spirits sent by the Breakers to lure him and lull him into failure.

He said, “Who are you? I charge you, in the name of the Maker, to speak true.”

“I am Colun of the Grannach,” said the closest shape. “Do you not know me?”

He looked at it and then away, at his body which he saw was all swathed in furs, and at the fire that burned close by, and the huddled shapes beyond. Then up to where only darkness was, shadows darting there, thrown by the fire and the torches. Then down again, to find a nervous, smiling face hung round with plaits of flaxen hair, holding out a bowl that steamed and gave off a most savory and appetizing aroma.

“This is Marjia, my wife,” said the Colun-shape. “She's broth for you to drink.”

He closed his eyes and voiced a silent prayer, and when he opened them again, shapes and shadows resolved into tangible reality and he knew he lay within a cave, surrounded by Grannach, and that it was not a spirit that spoke to him, but Colun, whom he knew.

He said, “Colun?”

And Colun answered, “Yes?”

“Where am I?”

“In a cave, deep in the mountains. Where the invaders are not yet come.”

He said, “The Breakers. They are the destroyers of worlds.”

“They surely look to destroy ours,” Colun said.

And he said, “Yes. I must go on,” and sought to rise. But he was too weak, and so must fall back as Colun said, “First eat. Build your strength, eh? Then we'll speak of what's to be done.”

“There's no time. They'll be in Ket-Ta-Witko soon.”

“Likely, they're there already,” Colun said in a bitter voice. “They've crossed the mountains, and by now must be near the plains.”

“I must tell the People. I
know
about the Breakers.”

“Morrhyn, you're near to death. You cannot go on yet. You must rest and gather your strength, and then we'll go on together.”

He said, “No! There's not the time. I have to go on.”

“To die? That should be useless, no? Listen to me. You'll rest here and regain your strength, and then I'll take you on.”

He frowned. The light hurt his eyes and he supposed he must have suffered the snowblindness, but now could see—praise the Maker!—which meant he had lain some time. “How long have I been here?” he asked.

“Seven days,” Colun answered.

“Too long!” he cried, and sought to rise again.

Colun pushed him back, and he was too weak to resist. Marjia hung a blanket about his shoulders and held out the bowl.

“Drink this,” she urged. “You're very weak and need food.”

He studied her round face awhile, and then his hands. They seemed to him like sticks, the skin drawn taut and thin over the linkages of bone. They trembled, and when he attempted to take the bowl he could not, for his hands shook and the effort of closing his fingers was more than he could manage.

Marjia said, “Let me.” And to Colun, “Do you support him?”

Colun nodded and set a thick arm around Morrhyn's shoulders, holding him up as Marjia spooned broth into his mouth. Some spilled down his chin, and inside him doubt laughed mockingly. He was the savior of his people, a man too weak to hold a bowl of broth who must be fed like a baby? He drank the first bowl and then another, and then sleep took him away again and he dreamed.

It was no clear dream, with no clear answers in it, but like those others a thing of possibilities: all pessimism and hope, intermingled, as if he saw all the multiple threads of myriad lives and myriad deeds spun out to conclusions that might or not be real, action and interaction
confused, outcomes multiplied. He saw the remnants of the Grannach in their caves, and the Breakers' great army flooding down through the foothills onto the plains of Ket-Ta-Witko. He saw battles fought and the People die, slaughtered like the Whaztaye, and the Breakers claim all of Ket-Ta-Witko for their own. And come back into the mountains to hunt down the last of the Grannach, for they would leave none alive where they went, save it be for food or sport. And he saw them go on, beyond Ket-Ta-Witko into the other worlds, spreading destruction and death, conquering folk whose ways were strange and incomprehensible, and knew that if they were not halted, then they would take all the worlds for their and all the Maker's creation be undone and only darkness rule.

He saw Rannach and Arrhyna, snowbound in their lonely valley, and the horses they tended, and the new life swelling in Arrhyna's belly. And he saw himself, speaking with them, and Colun, and then himself mounted and riding with Rannach across a landscape all wintry and warring, bringing word of what he knew and what the People must do. And he saw himself ignored and heeded both, and the strands divide as complicated as a spider's web.

He saw the strange ones of his other dreams, afloat on a great river that he did not know, hunted. And warriors strangely dressed, with weapons he did not understand that spat fire and killed at distances greater than any arrow might attain. And in that was again hope and despair, the division of possibilities, so that he felt as must a leaf caught and tossed all about in a great wind, and all he knew was that somehow the three were the hope of the People, though why or how he could not comprehend.

And then, alternate to the destruction of all he knew and held dear, he saw again the answer—which was so enormous and frightening, it woke him.

He lurched up from his bed, crying out; and Marjia was there, and Colun, holding him, confused as he wept for the enormity of what he knew and the impossibility of its achievement. And the knowledge that he must attempt it, though it cost him his life.

“Soft, soft, eh? All's well.” Marjia stroked his brow as she might stroke the brow of a child frightened by nightmare.

“You're safe here,” Colun said. “The invaders go by and know nothing of this cave.”

“Safe?” He heard his own voice croaking. Marjia fed him more broth and he added, “None are safe. I must go.”

Colun said, “Morrhyn, you'd not last a night out there. The Maker alone knows how you survived this far.”

He said, “The Maker keeps me alive, that I do his bidding.”

Had he not been so intent on supping the broth, he would have seen Colun look to his wife with brows raised in question of his sanity.

He heard Colun ask, “Where did you come from? Where have you been?”

He emptied the bowl before he spoke, and then between sips of a second told the Grannach of his quest: that all the wakanishas of the Matawaye were dreamless and that he had climbed the holy mountain and got back his dreams. They gaped and looked at each other in amazement and wonder, and at him as if he were a prophet, and he told them again that he must now go bring the word to the People.

Colun frowned. “It will not be easy. The mountains are all winterbound now, and these Breakers are surely into Ket-Ta-Witko.”

“Even so.” Morrhyn smiled his thanks as Marjia brought another bowl of broth. “I must attempt it.”

“Not yet.” Colun pointed a stubby finger at the invalid. “You're too weak yet. You must regain your strength.”

Morrhyn said, “There's not enough time. I must go.”

“Ach!” Colun waved frustrated hands. “I can bring you down the mountain. Drag you on a sled if needs be! But what then?”

“Rannach's horses, no?” Morrhyn returned.

Colun barked harsh laughter. “Think you you can sit a horse? Ride it across Ket-Ta-Witko with all the invaders—and the Tachyn—in your way? You'll die, man! Likely when you fall off and break your addled head.”