Faery Worlds - Six Complete Novels (10 page)

From that vantage, they watched Kavio’s kayak shoot out of the narrows like an arrow from a bow and arc into free fall over a thousand foot waterfall.

Rthan felt no triumph, only weariness. He still had to find those of his companions who survived, portage the boats they’d left behind down the cliffs and make the rendezvous with War Chief Nargano before the Autumn Equinox.

Blue light flared, and, impossibly, he smelled the ocean. His little girl Meira climbed next to him on the rock.

“He’s not dead,” said the Blue Lady. “You have to go after him.”

“No human could have survived that fall, my Lady, but even if he sprouted wings like a fae lord, I must tend my men first.”

“If you ignore my warning, you will suffer.”

“Is that a threat?” He frowned. “Or a prophecy?”

“Water rolls downhill to the sea. Is that a threat or a prophecy?”

Kavio

In answer to his call, slyphs buffeted Kavio’s boat with their zephyr breath, guiding it past the thundering spume at the foot of the falls. The canoe skipped on the water like the rocks he’d thrown at ponds as a boy. Finally, it snuggled into a gentle current.

He looked up at the top of the cataract, but he couldn’t see Rthan. Leaning back in the canoe, he let tension drain from his body, though even now he did not relax completely. He wondered how he could remake himself if everywhere he went he kept stumbling upon the vipers left to nest by his father.

Once already he’d underestimated Rthan, he would not do it again. Despite his desire to rest, he forced his canoe to the fast currents, and where there were none, paddled hard. Settlements occurred more thickly with each day he spent on the river, with less no man’s land between; the totem poles he passed were engraved with the symbols of three, four, five clans at a time, and the moss growing on the weathered wood testified these clanklatch alliances had stood firm for generations. He was seeing what the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe might have been, if not for the rise of the Bone Whistler and the civil war between the Morvae and the Imorvae. Several times he had to duck warning arrows from warriors in bomas, but at least the closer he got to Yellow Bear tribehold, the less chance he would encounter the Blue Waters tribesmen. Even they would have better sense than to attack the tribehold itself.

Occasionally Kavio saw groups of women rinsing roots and filling water baskets at the river’s edge. If the women spotted him, they fled, for a warrior paddling a kayak was not a welcome sight. Outtriber, exile or scout for a war party—he could be up to no good as far as they were concerned.

All the more strange, then, that one afternoon a lone woman standing on the shore caught a glimpse of his canoe and ran toward the river, shouting.

“Hey ho! Hey ho!” She waved both arms. Flaps of loose skin jiggled under her arms and chin, giving the impression of a once nicely plump woman who had eaten too little for too long. Her skirt was ragged too, a shaggy mane of raccoon tails and bark felt tassels that ended in knots. She hid her sagging, wrinkled breasts with necklaces of twisted robes made from the same material. Nothing else. Not a single bangle of gold, which was odd for Yellow Bear. The womenfolk here treasured their gold more than their children.

“Stranger, hey ho! Come nigh, I wish you no harm!”

His first thought was that she was a hexer, and a cannibal. Nonetheless, his curiosity overcame his sense, and he paddled his canoe to the shore. The mud was slick and carpeted green with fuzz that tickled his bare feet.

“Are you a Tavaedi?” she asked. Up close, he could smell the fetid rot from her mouth.

“I am an exile,” he answered cautiously. “I have no tribe or clan.”

“I guessed as much already. I don’t care, nephew. My need is too great. I saw the glow about you, even from the across the river. Do you dance Yellow? Can you heal?”

She had a small daub of Yellow in her own aura, probably not enough to be a Tavaedi, but enough to recognize magic in others. He deemed it for the best she could not see the other Chromas in his aura.

“I know a few healing dances,” he said. Better to understate the case. “What is your need?”

“My son.” She tugged on his arm. Her fingers felt like dry sticks. “He is sick. Come to my house and I will give you a ringlet of gold if you can heal him.”

Chapter Four

Hex

Dindi

To Dindi’s dismay, the distance from the wooded cliffs down and across the lowland fields was greater than it had looked from up above. There were many switchbacks on the way down the hill, and then a long meandering footpath led them through more woodsy areas and cultivated cornfields. Unlike in the Corn Hills, where the clans tilled permanent fields, the Yellow Bear people still practiced swidden agriculture. They burned out an area to be planted for a season or two, then allowed the woods to grow back over it while they moved on to cultivate another spot.

Settlements in the Yellow Bear lands were spaced farther apart than in the Corn Hills, and smaller. Several times over the next several days, they passed clanholds, all of the same peculiar design. The beehive shaped mounds that Dindi had mistaken for houses from the buff were actually steep, artificial hills of much larger dimensions than she had estimated. At the top of each artificial hill, a clay or log pike wall enclosed a dozen or less dome shaped houses. Warriors sat in bomas, crow’s nests. These cage-like platforms at the top of tall posts reminded Dindi of larger versions of her rabbit hutch back home. The Yellow Bear people did not seem to have kraals for horses or aurochsen, but goats gamboled everywhere, along with many kinds of fat, waddling birds and peccaries. Also, occasionally Dindi caught the tantalizing smell of smoking fish.

The fae here were strange too, though not unfriendly. Brownies rode on the backs of the birds. Nymphs in flowing gowns dangled from the branches of the trees. Many of them waved at Dindi as she passed, but she scrupulously ignored them.

They snaked along through Yellow Bear territory circuitously at first, in order to avoid trespass whenever they saw a warning totem post. These posts, of wood or stone, featured the tribe’s totem on the bottom, a bear standing on its hind legs with one paw raised, the clan marking in the middle, and a rayed disk at the top. Once, they saw a clanhold burning in the distance, mute evidence of war with a neighboring clan.

They did not rest in any of the clanholds, but camped by night in the wilderness near the path, as they had before. The Tavaedis also allowed them each to scrounge the forest for edibles, with the caution to stay in pairs and beware of trespassing directly on the lands of any Yellow Bear clan lands. They had not packed enough food for the whole journey, so they needed to find more as they traveled. The Tavaedies set aside days to send the boys hunting and the girls foraging for food.

Dindi wasn’t the only Initiate disappointed to learn they would not see the ocean in the far West. In fact, they had not caught a glimpse of the ocean since they entered the lowlands.

“It’s better that we don’t go near the ocean,” snapped Abiono, in response to Tamio’s complaints on this point. “The settlements on the coast are often attacked by Blue Waters tribesmen. Sometimes the vicious thugs even bring their war canoes up the river!”

“Really?” Tamio leaned into this news, enthralled. “Is there any chance they might attack while we’re here? A war would be really marvelous!”

“Yellow Bear tribehold is the third largest in Faearth. Blue Waters barbarians aren’t foolish enough to attack such a hold when even the Bone Whistler himself did not dare,” Abiono said crushingly. “I suggest you worry about passing the Initiation and not go looking for more trouble.”

As they neared the tribehold itself, settlements occurred more closely together. When the Tavaedies decided to ask for shelter at one of these, Sycamore Stand, the Initiates had their first chance to look at Yellow Bear tribesfolk up close.

From a distance, Dindi had already seen that they built their holds upon some sort of mound. Sycamore Stand was no different. The travelers descended to the hold from some hills thick with chaparrals. From this vantage, the outline of the artificial earthen mound, raised from the valley floor, showed clearly. It was not a simple round hill, Dindi now saw, but a disk shape with a long extended earth walkway, like a tambourine with a handle. A ditch surrounded the disk. Sharpened stakes prickled the ditch. The only safe approach into the hold, then, was to cross the narrow walkway. Five clumps of dome houses, perhaps a hundred domiciles in all, dotted the flat disk top. The houses looked like beehives or birdhouses. Each was round, domed and plastered white. A tiny hole in the middle of the wall, well above ground level, served as the only entrance. Rope and wood ladders dangled from these window-doors.

Most of the houses were painted along the bottom, patterns of stripes and circles in color pallets dominated by yellow, but graced by occasional touches of blue and orange. Those with the finest and freshest paint had also been crowned with a golden disk on a miniature ladder in the top center of their domes. “The ladder to the sun,” Abiono explained the ubiquitous symbol.

Yellow Bear Tavaedies and warriors came out to meet the visitors and escort them across the long neck of earth to the hold. They dressed distinctly from Rainbow Labyrinth tribesfolk. The male Tavaedies here wore billowy knee-length elderbark skirts under immense diamond shaped masks that reached below their waists and far above their heads. The outsized ‘eyes’ and ‘lips’ of the diamond-head masks were plated in beaten gold. One Tavaedi wore an immense gold Ladder to the Sun disk above his diamond shaped mask. The female Tavaedies wore longer skirts and complicated crowns of golden beads and bangles formed into prongs, loops and horns.

Yet, to Dindi, the ordinary clanfolk appeared no less outlandish. Matriarchs and maidens wore their hair chopped short, like the cap on an acorn. They swished about in full skirts made from bark rag strips and knotted cords. Patriarchs wore hats mounted with disks, warriors, hats mounted with horns. Gold necklaces and arm torques encircled the necks and limbs of both genders, and a few of the men’s disk shaped hats were plated in gold as well. Women wore gold ear rings and nose rings and seashell ankle bracelets that click-clacked when they walked.

The Tavaedies in regalia strode out to meet them, led by a majestic woman in a headdress of gold spangles.

Brena

A black crow swoops toward the bear, shedding a feather, which becomes an arrow. A girl is there, with a bow, who unleashes the arrow into the bear, and watches as the whole world melts and dies. A baby’s cry. Brena tries to scream but she has no mouth.

There is a wound in the world.
The bear looks right at Brena. Help me heal it.

Brena awakened from the nightmare with her hands digging into her thigh. The fire in the hearth had died to low embers. Her sleeping mat lay on one side of the ovoid, one-room house, her daughters slumbered together on the other side. All of her herbs hung in baskets on pegs on the curved mud wall, forming a nest of sage and chamomile. She breathed in the aroma and forced herself to relax.

Dulled by mud walls, but not damped completely, came the sound of weeping—Ula’s younger sister, in the next compound, still sobbing over her miscarriage. The ugly affair with Ula hadn’t done anything to set Brena at ease. Ula and her sister had married the same man, because Ula had proven barren. In public, Ula had made a show of welcoming her younger sister’s pregnancy. In secret, Ula, who had no magic, made some nasty bargain with the lower fae, who gave her blue cohosh to slip into her sister’s acorn stew.

The hexery had been discovered, and Brena, among others, cast stones on the mat to condemn Ula. The Tavaedi society of Sycamore Stands clan gave Ula the usual choice for a witch, to be sacrificed to the fae or given to the Deathsworn.

Brena could not help but think of her nightmare, and how easy it would have been to slip the black arrow into Ula’s heart—Ula who was condemned to die anyway—and end the faery’s torment. It infuriated Brena to catch herself in these unworthy thoughts. She pushed away the temptation. In any case, Ula chose to be tied to the black obelisk at the edge of the clan lands, to be given to the Deathsworn.

The clan of Sycamore Stands belonged to a clanklatch, a local alliance, of five clans, and did not often suffer attacks from outtribers. However, one morning, not long after Ula’s trial, the warriors who manned the bomas – crow’s nests built on tall masts – sounded their conch shells. Clanfolk fled their gardens and cornfields to huddle inside the stockade on the top of the hill. Outtribers, an entire band including Tavaedies, had been spotted crossing the totem poles marking the boundary of Sycamore Stands territory. The outtribers approached the earth ramp to the hill, where they left gifts and waited to be invited further. The Sycamore Stands clansfolk observed the newcomers, recognized them, then designated Zavaedi Brena to greet them when the stockade opened.

The Zavaedi of the outtribers bowed his head and spread his arms. He raised his voice for all to hear.

“Sycamore Stand Clan of Yellow Bear Tribe, we trespass without malice upon your hospitality. By your leave, Zavaedi Brena of Sycamore Stand.”

“Zavaedi Abiono of Broken Basket of the Rainbow Labyrinth, welcome,” she said. “It’s been long since we’ve seen you. How many Initiates do you bring?”

“Seven boys and seven girls, Honored Auntie,” said Abiono.

Brena inclined her head. “We also have Initiates to send to the tribehold. I will be escorting them. The Initiates can all travel together.”

Native and visiting Tavaedies danced and played rattles and drums to escort the Initiates into the center of the hold, where the hosts prepared a feast for the guests.

Brena felt back in her element overseeing the preparations.

“The friends you chose now will influence the rest of your life,” she warned her daughters as they rolled out the flat bread on large rocks. “When I was your age, I neglected the people who could have helped me become a better Tavaedi and only spent time with those I thought were ‘amusing’. That was a mistake. They held me back from being as good a dancer as I could have been. I didn’t want to humiliate my friends, so I didn’t try as hard as I should have.”