Madbond (24 page)

“I trust not!” I found my voice, and I had to answer her smile. “If he is not back by moonrise, I will go looking for him.”

In fact, he was back a little after full dark, and I met him at the firelight's reaches, for I had been watching for him. “She's gone,” I told him.

“I know.” He sat down where he was, wearily, and I sat beside him, and the others let us alone. Nor were they any longer very merry.

“Go after her, Kor,” I said.

“When this other matter is done, perhaps.”

“Never mind that!” I felt annoyed and disappointed in him, in his lack of courage. “I can go to my father alone, and you can come to him another time. Kor—”

“What has happened to your arm?” he interrupted mildly.

“Never mind that, too. Kor, you must go after her now, before she rides out of your reach!”

“Dan,” he retorted with just a touch of edge to his voice, “I have not gotten by entirely without thinking, out there in the forest, and I myself have decided what I must do. You were not there, and there is no need for you to instruct me.”

Once again, it seemed, I was an ass. I sagged, defeated. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“No need.”

“I still cannot believe she would refuse you.”

“It is not that she dislikes me,” Kor said, something wry in his voice. “We talked, we rambled. We were friends.…”

He got up and touched my shoulder so that I also got up and followed him. We walked out of the reach of the firelight, wandering and looking up at the stars.

“Why did she hurt your arm?” he asked after a while. “I would not have thought it of her.”

“It was mischance.” I remembered Tassida's sobs as she rode away, and the memory sent a pang through me. I longed to comfort her, to soothe away her anger and pain, to heal whatever hurt was in her that had sent her away from us—and then the guilt struck. I would never touch her, never allow myself to touch her. She was beloved by Kor.

“Dan,” Kor said softly, “no need for shame. Sakeema knows, you have given me my chance.”

“Blast it,” I whispered between clenched teeth. He had felt—whatever warm song had flooded my veins—

“I know you love her. I have known for days.”

“Curse it, Kor!” I cried out, turning on him, miserable and angry, though not truly at him. “Why do you have to know such things? It can only hurt you, and I would have held my peace until it passed!”

“You think it will pass?”

I was no longer sure. It felt different, as—Tassida was different.… Numbly I rested my head against a hemlock trunk. “I hope so,” I muttered.

“Perhaps you ought to take your own advice, and go after her.”

So Kor was not wholly without malice, after all. He had said that to hurt me, I felt sure of it, and he had succeeded. I nearly writhed with the pain of the knife-edge he had put me on. But there was this odd consolation, that whatever anguish he caused me, he felt as well. In less than half a heartbeat he groaned out loud and reached blindly toward me, meeting my hand as it lifted toward him. Hands met and gripped, hard, and that simple pain of the body helped both of us.

“Forgive me,” Kor whispered, a catch in his voice. I heard his chest heave. “Dan, you are all honor, and I have hurt you—”

“Blast it, hush,” I ordered him. There was no need for such talk. His goodness vexed me.

“You would have given your happiness for mine, and I am bitter.”

“Would you bloody
hush!”
I snapped.

“In a moment.” He had charge of his voice again, and I was glad of it, for above all things I did not want to weep. I was afraid of weeping—not that of others, but my own. I heard his breathing, hard and ragged, and flinched from that sound, then heard it steady and was glad of that as well.

“There is one more thing I must tell you,” said Kor. “I owe it to you.”

I waited.

“Tass more than half loves you.”

A bubble of joy welled up in my chest and burst into sorrow. Great Sakeema, no wonder he was bitter. Let me tell you a merry-go-sorry.… I could not speak.

“I felt it in her when you greeted Leotie. But it was all a jealous surge, love and anger. The anger has sent her away.”

I could not bear any more; I was spent. “Kor,” I appealed to him, “what are we going to do?”

Grip of his hand tightened on mine. “I wish I knew,” he said.

Chapter Seventeen

All seemed so hopeless in regard to Tassida that we did nothing, and I, for one, gave over thinking about her. In the morning we readied our fanged mares. Tyee and his hunting band caught their curly-haired ponies, and we all rode together through the day to the place where the main body of the tribe was camping.

“Your people, these ones of them anyway, are much to my liking,” Kor told me privately as we went out to catch the horses. “And Tyee—I very much like Tyee. His is a gentle heart. But there is a trouble in them none of them will name.”

I looked at him warily. “You have sensed this in them?”

“Yes. In Tyee most of all. He feels it plainly, but he will not face it.”

“Well,” I said mostly to myself, “as one who cannot even remember—something, I can hardly scorn him for that.”

Kor nodded but did not answer.

I decided to try Tyee yet one more time as we rode. I noticed he seemed to be in no hurry, but set a comfortable clopping pace, and by afternoon, as we nodded along, the sun had lulled us so that we were almost asleep.

Tyee rode by my one side, Kor by the other. “Tyee,” I asked him drowsily, “what are you doing out here, really?”

“We came out to get away from Father for a while,” he answered, just as drowsy, and then his head snapped up as if his own words had startled him awake.

“What?” I could not believe that, I who remembered a straight man with strong hands and quiet ways. “Why? If all is not well, you should be with him.”

“And what of you?” he retorted sharply, as if my words had stung more than I had meant them to.

What of me, indeed. I looked down at Talu's scrawny mane and smoothed it with my hand. “Was he—was he much stricken after I went?”

“No,” said Tyee, the one short word.

I glanced over at him in surprise. Perhaps he was jealous. “What was said? Was there a search for me?”

“Nothing was said. There was no search. You were just gone. As if you were dead.” Four curt statements, torn out of him. And before I could ask him more he kicked his pony and turned it, trotting back to where Leotie rode.

Kor spoke softly from his place by my side. “Your father has changed from the way you remember him, Dan.”

“The more reason I should go to him,” I said fiercely. He was crazed with grief, perhaps.

“Since your mother's death,” Kor murmured as if to himself. But the words called up such a storm of reasonless anger in me that my whole body tightened with it, and Talu reared and jumped forward between my knees. I checked her. Kor was staring at me.

“You still cannot remember.”

“No!” The anger, whatever had caused it, was not at him. I had nowhere to go with it except homeward, and I did not want that. I puffed my cheeks and blew through my lips, sending it away.

“Tyee is your younger brother?” Kor asked after a while.

“No. Elder.”

Kor glanced round at me in surprise. “But then—his would have been the leadership of the tribe, had there been need of a new leader?”

I did not wish to think what he meant. Also, he was wrong. “In the event, it would have been up to the tribe, which of us to choose. Tyee, Ytan, or me.”

“Do you think the tribe would have chosen you?”

“How should I know?” I shrugged. “Leotie chose Tyee.”

“You were too much for her,” Kor said in a low voice. “She wanted a man she could mother and scold. So she chose next best.”

I had never thought of it in that way, and I grinned at him in thanks. But he was somber, not looking at me, and he rode the rest of the day mostly in silence, very grave, his mouth sober and straight, his hands still, sitting lance-straight on his mount, as if he were centering himself for the most difficult of vigils.

I remembered it afterward, his silence, his haunted eyes. But at the time I thought only of my father. Soon I would see him again.… If there was a trouble, I knew the way to blot it out, and I bathed my mind with the warm memories. Tyonoc, who had made the half-sized arrows for me when I was young and showed me the ways of a hunter. Tyonoc, who had fashioned me bow after bow as I grew, and finally had showed me through weeks of patience how to make my own, strong, recurved, a man's bow, out of deerhorn backed with sinew. Tyonoc, the king who himself had braided my hair for my name vigil … When he saw me, home again at last, his proud face would light with joy and he would embrace me. My throat tightened and my heart beat hard, thinking of him.

A little before sundown we found the place where the deerskin tents were pitched, along the banks of the river that ran down from the place of many springs. The largest tent, the one with the Red Hart emblem painted on its walls in bright ocher, was my father's. But he was not there, for with leaping heart I had already seen him. He and all my people stood assembled on the river plain, and there was a great fire, and mounds of food for a feast.

He was standing at the fore of the tribe, a still, tall figure in the garb of a king, the quilled and beaded headband over his yellowbright hair that shone like the setting sun, the cloak of white deerskin fringed with ferret tails, the scars of hunting and battle gleaming whitely on his bare chest, and in his braids the peregrine feathers of a king, and on his arms the armbands. He was tall and massive, as tall as I, and glorious in the sunset, and he stood with great dignity with his twelve of retainers, six men, six women, at his back. This was all fitting. With him also stood my brother Ytan. And many were the smiles on the faces of his people behind him, and some of them shouted their welcome to me. And on the face of my father also there was a smile as I came before him.

I had expected something more—tears, perhaps. Such was his stature in the eyes of my people, my father was not afraid of tears—they could not lessen him. But his smile was enough for me. There was no dignity in me, seeing him, and I did not care. I was off of Talu and standing before him in a single stride, and with ardor I embraced him.

His body, hard, did not answer my embrace.

Puzzled, I stepped back to look at him. Yet he smiled, but there was something I did not recognize in that smile, not on his beloved face.… “Dannoc,” he said, and there was something odd in his voice, too. “You truly do not remember.”

Kor had come up and stood silently at my side.

“No,” I said, “I do not remember. Have I displeased you in some way, Father?”

He did not answer me. His smile grew, but it was as hard as his body. “Who is that with you?” he asked.

He knew well enough, for Tyee's runner had told him. But I spoke for the sake of ceremony. “This is Rad Korridun of the Seal Kindred, their king and the best of comrades.”

My father's eyes glinted and he turned to his retainers. “Seize them,” he ordered.

I stood stunned, unable to believe that I had heard him truly. A murmur of surprise and horror went up from my people. Most of the twelve stood still, their faces showing the horror I felt, unable either to obey him or go against him. But three of them strode forward, and Ytan came forward with them. On his face rode the same smile that had been on my father's, and on him I knew the name of it: gloating.

He went to Kor and cuffed him, and that shocked me out of my frozen stance. With a shout of anger I started toward Ytan. But two of my father's twelve had grasped me by my arms, restraining me. Two more took hold of Kor.

“Listen, my people!” My father lifted his voice in the king's call, and everyone fell silent to hear. “This is the foreign sorcerer who has taken my son away and bewitched him.”

“Father, no!” It was Tyee, stepping forward, as stunned and distraught as I. “Korridun and Dannoc have come here with good intent to honor you. They have braved danger—” But he was trembling, his voice faltering so that half the tribe could not hear him. My father silenced him with a single harsh glance.

“By his own saying Dannoc is not in his right mind! And you will see how he is enthralled and under the power of the sorcerer who dwells by the sea.”

My father turned toward Kor and spat at him. Kor had not spoken a word or struggled. Nor had I—not yet. I merely looked at Kor, a look that must have been as wild as the swirling of my thoughts, and he met my eyes in a quiet way. And with a pang like a spear thrust I saw that he was not surprised. He had expected all that was happening.

“So shameless is this one, he has come here openly to flaunt my son's captivity before us,” my father ranted.

I spoke, standing very still and tall. “My father, I have loved you since I was born.” My words were firm enough to be heard by all and yet meant for him alone. “I have never wanted to go against you or defy you. I have fought Pajlat himself to come back to you. But this day I must say to you: You are wrong. Korridun of the Seal Kindred is all goodness and all honor. You do wrong to speak ill of him.”

I met my father's eyes as I spoke, letting him see all that was in me, all hurt, all love: Anger I had left behind, for the time.… But in his stare nothing answered me, not even anger. Nothing. Tyonoc of the Red Hart might as well have been a stranger to me. And at my final words he smiled his hateful smile.

“Thus speaks a man bewitched,” he told my people.

None of them believed him, I could see that. They all stood white and silent, cowed and shamed. But my father did not look to them. He strode over to stand before me.

“Sire,” I tried again, “it does you dishonor to lay hands on one who has come in peace. And you dishonor your son Tyee who brought us here.”