Godbond (17 page)

“No more,” she said softly, with a catamount's perilous, padding softness in her voice, “no more of this, if you wish Calimir to carry you any farther.”

Therefore, since I had no desire to go afoot again, I did not tell her that already my feet were half healed.

We went on that day past nightfall, until I was too weary to speak to Tass or badger her in any way, as she well knew. When at last we stopped I lay down without eating and slept a sleep like that of the dead.

Within five days we were back to the hemlock forests of the Demesne. There was no lying together for us during that journeying, no soft touch of fingers and lips, no lovemaking. Whether because she felt an urgency like mine, or to silence me or vent her incessant anger on me, Tassida kept up a merciless pace. At night we both stumbled to the ground and slept lumpishly, without a fire. We gnawed food on the move by day. After reaching the forests, within two days more we had ridden to the region of beaver waters.

There we paused to do a quarterday's worth of fishing, starting before sundown and fishing on through the twilight, for we were nearly out of food. I fished with bow and arrow, Tass with her stone knife lashed to a trimmed sapling by way of spear. But all our patient standing won us only two gudgeon of middling size. We saw no pike or bass or any other fish but those two and a few fry.

“Even the fish are scarce, now,” said Tass in a hushed voice.

I went in after the fry, trying to use my woolen shirt for a net, and caught none. We gathered swamp onion and bulrush stem instead, made our fire and steamed our two fish, peeled the bulrush for the pith. Far too silent, the night around us, I noticed now that I was not too weary to care. The pond creatures should have spoken to us in small lappings and ripplings, but the water lay still as death. I did not wish to speak of it, for it was heartache even to think of the sounds that should have been, sleepy conversing of wood ducks in their nests amid the reeds, bat twitter overhead, heron crake and beaver splash. But now even the whispering and buzzing of insects was nearly gone.

“No chanting of summerbugs,” I said softly to Tass.

She merely looked at me and nodded, for there was nothing more to say. Her lean, boyish face, sad and angry, eerily beautiful in the firelight.

“Tass,” I told her, softly, gravely, leaning toward her, “there are only the three swords.”

I had once thought that there were more, there had to be more, though in fact I did not know fully what the swords were for or what they meant, except that they slew devourers. Perhaps Tass knew even less than I, but she knew without telling, we all did, that the swords were uncanny. I saw her stiffen, saw her eyes narrow as she looked back at me.

“Yours. And mine. And Kor's.” I touched the pommel of my own sword, Alar, fingering the yellow stone. “Tass, it is as you once said: For some reason we do not know, we belong together, we three.”

Abruptly she took a green stick and scraped the coals away from our supper. She lifted the fish from its wrapping of lily leaves. “Eat,” she commanded.

Nor am I known to be a sluggard where food is concerned. But I sat and stared at her, my portion untouched. “Tass. Speak to what I have said.” She was not meeting my eyes, and it annoyed me.

“How can I?” she flared. “How can you know what you have just told me?”

So I related the tales to her while I ate, related my dreams to her, or my visions, as best I could. There was a dim sense in me of a pattern, a wholeness, if I could but grasp it. Though what, indeed, could it matter? The world was dying, and I had failed in my quest to save it. Still, I told the tales.

Tass sat uncomfortably while I spoke, staring into our small fire. She sat in like wise when I was done, and said nothing.

“The blue fruit, the pomegranate,” I added after long silence, for I was not sure I had made myself clear. “I saw in the sunstuff picture, the one that still lies in the stone lodge above the pool of vision, how Mahela took it away. Though I deem she took the whole tree, for I saw it myself.”

“Perhaps, Mahela,” Tassida said harshly to the fire. “Perhaps, the same tree.”

“What is the use of thinking otherwise?” I protested. “Say it is the same tree, the same fruit, the pomegranate of the god. I think Chal quested to the Mountains of Doom to get it back.”

“You say it was Vallart who sundered the fruit. Yet the sunstuff panel shows it dropping from Mahela's beak.”

I puffed my lips impatiently, for the fault was Mahela's, and legends were often pictured so, to show the first cause. And she knew it as well as I. “Tass,” I chided.

Still she would not look at me. “Blue rind, white light, three puissant stones, or jewels,” she murmured, more to herself than to me. “Might it be the stones that lend life to the swords themselves?”

Alar stirred softly in her leather sheath by my side, and I stroked her. The yellow stone glowed beneath my hand.

“Nor could Chal and Vallart have worn the swords as their weapons,” Tass went on as if I had answered her, “unless Alar and Zaneb themselves had willed it.”

“Very true,” I agreed. “But Marantha kept to a place by herself, on the wall, and threatened when Vallart came near her.”

I was half teasing, half trying to help her see how much like the sword she was, how she fit the pattern. But at last she looked up at me, a dark look. “So perhaps it is not as you say,” she challenged, “that we three, Kor and you and I, belong together.”

“Tass,” I complained in exasperation. She knew it well enough, she had been the first to sense it! She had pledged her word to stay with us forever, but then in our quarrel we had frightened her away.

Her glance fell to the fire again. “Three stones from the same mystic fruit,” she muttered. “Dan, I always knew that you two, you and Kor, were—fated, somehow, something from the god. But I cannot think as well of myself.”

I reached across to where she sat, lifted her fine-boned chin in three fingers of my right hand so that her eyes met mine. “Stay with us,” I requested her softly, “if only because I love you.”

The amaranthine stone at her belt glowed warm. But her dark eyes flashed in fright, she pulled away from the touch of my hand, and I knew I had pressed too hard, too fast. She stumbled to her feet, fear taking away her usual feral grace. “I—I do not know,” she stammered. “I must think.” She started away into the darkness.

“Tassida!” I leaped up and strode after her, catching her by the arm, catching her gaze with my gaze again. “Promise me at least this, that you will yet be with me when I awaken in the morning.” For I knew her. She was not one to tarry in her leave-taking, Tass. Like a hummingbird frightened from the flower, she could be gone in an eyeblink. More than once I had awakened or turned around from some task or dream to find her gone like a bright leaf blown away by the wind.

“Promise,” I urged her.

“Slime of Mahela, Dan,” she flared, “what do you deem I am? Do you think I would leave you afoot here, when you must come to Kor with all haste?”

That had to suffice, for she jerked her arm free from my hand and left me. Like the wild thing she was, she stalked off to wander in the night.

I fed more wood to the small campfire, threw the fish offal into the brush, peevishly took Tassida's bedpelt as well as my own and lay down to stare at the flames until sleep came to me.

It was long in coming, as I knew it would be. Always during those days the world's doom lay heavy on me, and I ached and yearned for Tassida's touch, the warmth of her lithe body next to mine. Ardently I wanted to follow her into the night. I wanted her comfort, her love—but I knew I did not dare to woo her by so much as my silent presence. Her old, old fear had hold of her, and she would flee.

I slept at last, but my slumber was full of formless darkness and uneasy, shadowy dreams.

Something huge and dark was moving somewhere close at hand, moving nearer … black storm of war? Black storm of Mahela's making, shot through with greenish lightning and the corpse-sheen of devourers? Heavy, hideous, cold and crushing on the chest, devourers. Crashing sound, thunder cones shuddering forth black rock and red fire. Stone thunder, storm thunder growing nearer, something vast and fearsome was moving in the forest—

I awoke with a start and sprang at once to a warrior's crouch. Something was indeed crashing about in the underbrush at a small distance, some large, shadowy creature. A devourer? It reeked of—death.… I heard a rending sound, a hollow thudding, a rippling or fluttering as of great fish-gray fleshy wings in the wind—

Or large nostrils, fluttering with a strong breath. Weary and desolate as I felt, the drollness of it struck me all the deeper, and I laughed aloud, uproariously. I laughed until I was bent and breathless. It was monstrous, certainly, and hideous, and devouring fish offal with a ghastly stench. It was my fanged mare, Talu.

Intent on munching fishbones, seeking to lick every last morsel of fish juice and fish innards from the laurel leaves and the forest floor, she sourly let me approach her and did not threaten me. Evidently she was not in heat. I caught her by her straggling forelock and felt for her ribs, the gaunt line of her spine jutting from her back. She seemed not much thinner than she had ever been, and she swiped at me lazily with her fangs in greeting.

“Did my people feed you well until they left, Talu?” I rubbed the coarse hair of her forehead even though I knew she was not fond of patting, it was so good to meet a living creature in those dying times. “
Ai
, Talu, have you seen Tassida tonight?”

And even as I said the words I knew with a taut, chilled feeling how happenstance that seemed like all good fortune might turn out to be all ill. Tassida had not said that she would cleave to me or come with me to Kor. She had merely said that she would not leave me stranded, afoot. Now that I had Talu, Tass's promise did not bind her. I stiffened myself against a panicky urge to go searching for her at once.

“No need,” I whispered to the horse to calm myself. “She loves me, I know it well enough. The love draws her to me.”

And frightened her, and drove her away. But I would not say that.

I fed Talu the cold ends of our fish supper, and as she gulped them I hobbled her with the rawhide laces of my wretched boots so that she would not stray before morning. She was a sour thing, Talu, as likely to kick me as come to me when I wanted her, especially since she had been roaming free for a while. I had to make sure I could catch her. As soon as she had bolted her bits of fish she laid back her ears and started away from me, then squealed in vexation when she found she could not go far, swung down her head and lashed out with her hind hooves. I dodged away in time, and smiled, for the mare's ill temper made me think of Tassida, and Tass would not have thanked me had she known it.

I found my way back to bed, hearing Calimir browsing at the birch branches somewhere not far away—that sound comforted me somewhat. Tass had not yet left me.

At dawn, when I awoke, she was sitting by the cold ashes of the fire.

“Yon uncouth mare has eaten our breakfast,” she grumbled.

“I fed it to her,” I admitted. “I had to bait her with something, or she would not have stood still for the hobbling.” I got up and stood awkwardly, feeling absurdly sorry that Tass must go hungry, absurdly anxious to feed her or please her somehow. There was no time to spear and cook more fish. “Let me get—there ought to be groundnut hereabouts. Wait, and I will dig you some.”

Tass eyed me strangely. “Never mind, Dan. There will be berries. Come, let us ride.”

Nor did she tell me any word of what she had thought in the night.

I had no riding pelt nor any proper headstall, only my bootlaces knotted together into a single rein and looped through Talu's mouth. Tass held her by the nose and forelock while I vaulted onto her—the prospect that faced me seemed to restore Tassida's good humor, and she smiled through the morning, riding along quietly on gentle Calimir, eating wild black cherries by the handful off the slender red-barked trees. There were no cherries for me. Talu was so fractious that I could do nothing with her but hang on by my hands and heels, my crotch jarring against her parlous sharp spine, as I tried to urge her in the right direction. Sometimes I succeeded, so that Calimir cantered along merrily after Talu and me, and more often I failed, so that Calimir stood at ease and Tassida ate cherries while my mare and I serpentined through the thorn thickets.

It was during one such unplanned and unwilling foray that I spied a wisp of smoke and heard the whicker of a pony, the barking of a tan hound. Then I hailed Tass, wildly waving, and sent Talu forward in spite of her most fervid balking and swerving. There was a Red Hart encampment not far away.

Only a few tents, I saw as we drew near, less than twelve. And around them, only the old and infirm, some nursing mothers and the children. They came warily to their feet as I rode in on rebellious Talu, then cheered wanly when I succeeded in stopping her. The striplings yet too young to go to war came running in from the far fringes of camp, where they had been prowling and sulking and looking off westward. They were few, and very young. Tyee must have taken near-children with him, and even the elders who could yet ride the distance and shoot an arrow. I saw Tyee's baby daughter being held by a one-armed old woman, but of course Karu was not there. She was with her fellow warriors.

And I sat stupidly on my fanged mare, gaping at those who were left behind. “Tass,” I murmured as she rode up beside me, “so few.” And so starkly in peril.

“Steady,” said Tass quietly. She slid down from Calimir, then came and grasped Talu by the nose and forelock, as if I had been waiting for her, as if I needed her help with the mare—I needed her help indeed, but not for that. Her eyes met mine with understanding. The strength in her, when she was needed—how could she not know herself for a healer? I got off Talu and hobbled her, and quelled my heartache as I did so, then strode to greet my people, and they crowded around me, and I lifted Tyee's daughter, the little sunnyhead, high in the air while the other children climbed my back and legs as if I were a tree.