Mindbond (19 page)

“You also,” I told him, feeling a warm tide of gratitude toward him.

Uneasy in Mahela's dwelling, I left it soon afterward and made my way back to my father's tent. Seeing the dark cast of my face, he greeted me in silence. I sat by his doorflap and tried to tame my thoughts, but they circled like penned ponies, and I could make no sense of them. Nor could I find heart to speak to him of Ytan.

“Did Mahela take your storytelling well?” asked my father at last.

Wearily I said, “I am here, am I not?” He gave me a hard stare, and I smiled to see even so much spirit in him and offered him better answer. “She says she will summon me again.”

“The next time you go to her, then, if you please her, petition her for leather to make yourself leggings and boots.”

I scowled, for I did not consider that I was going to be in Mahela's realm so long as to need leggings and boots, and plainly Tyonoc deemed differently. But I would not quarrel with him.

“Is Sakeema in this place?” I asked him abruptly.

He shrugged. “How am I to know?”

I checked the fury that threatened to rise in me. How could he speak of Sakeema so indifferently, as if it did not matter? “If Sakeema were here, would he not call himself by the name of Sakeema?” I asked as evenly as I could manage.

“Ah, but there are many here who call themselves by that name. Perhaps half a hundred.” Tyonoc smiled in genuine amusement, and I felt very much the fool, but I could no longer feel angry with him. He leaned back against the rise of stone that shadowed his tent and regarded me.

“Dannoc, my son the storyteller, now let me tell you a tale,” he said, and I looked at him curiously.

“Not so very long a tale,” he added. “Call it the tale of Nicu.” And I narrowed my eyes at him, leaning forward to hear, for Nicu had been the foolish name my mother had called me, “little fawn,” before I took a name of my own.

“You had not yet lived through even four seasons,” my father said with something soft and wry in his voice, “but you were then much as you ever were and yet are: bold, strong, and always rushing headlong into trouble. We joked that your many falls must have thickened your skull. You were standing and trying to walk before you had been with us much more than half a year, and before you well knew how to walk you were trying to run.

“Your mother and I had gone our own way apart from the tribe for a while, for that was a time when everything seemed to go against me, my luck was bad. Tyee and Ytan were sick with the swelling fever. Your mother tended them and you. And when I went out to try to bring in meat for the five of us, my arrow flew awry and I shot a nursing deer.”

It was abomination to shoot a hind with a fawn. I winced in sympathy for my father.

“She was not dead, the hind. She staggered away with the arrow in her shoulder, and I could only hope she would yet be well. Then, to try to make things less wrong, I went and found the deer calf—her bleat had drawn it out of the thicket, it stood dazed—a little, long-legged, dappled thing. I took it up in my arms and bore it back to the tent for Wyonet to nurse along with the rest of you.

“And you, less than a year of age, you came stumbling to meet me, with a gait like a duck's, trying to run and falling on your chin and getting up again, and you seized at the fawn as if to embrace it like a brother. I tried to prevent you, but then I saw that the little creature was not afraid of you. Then and thereafter it curled up against you for warmth and comfort, and you treated it more kindly than I would have thought likely of any child so small. And it slept with you at night in your bed.

“Wyonet fed it with her own milk, as she did you, and sometimes the two of you nursed side by side, one at each of her fair white breasts.” Tyonoc's voice faltered, and I could see that it cost him something, the telling of the tale, but he kept on. “And sometimes you and your fawn brother gamboled and played together, you in your lumpish baby way and it on its long, slim legs. It stayed with us a cycle of the moon, and then its mother came and took it back.

“Right into the tent at night she came, the hind, stepping over our sleeping bodies, and nuzzled her fawn, and it got up and followed her out. And I lay still and thought nothing of it except that you would be mightily dismayed when you woke in the morning and found it gone. Then I slept again, hoping I had made things right for the deer and my luck would change. But when morning came, you were not in your bed or anywhere to be found.

“I tracked you. Somehow you had followed the deer on those short baby legs of yours, trotting along through the night. But then I lost the trail, and though I searched through the day and far into the night I could not find you.

“Every day I searched, every day for another turning of the moon, and did little else, and Wyonet and I were in despair, and our two remaining sons were sick and hungry, for we scarcely took time even to find food for them. But in a twilight when the moon was rising—and the moon had come round the cycle yet again—I found you standing with the deer herd in a meadow, standing and suckling at the teats of a fair hind, with one arm across the back of the fawn, your foster brother. And I called you by name, and you ran toward me in great excitement, then stood still and started to weep as the deer fled away from you.

“But when I picked you up you embraced me. And I carried you homeward to your mother and brothers, and the next day Wyonet and I broke camp and rode to rejoin our people. For many years after that, all went well for me, and our people made me their king. And if there has always been a softness in your heart toward the deer, I have never thought ill of it.”

Leaning against rock, Tyonoc eyed me in a settled way. The tale was done.

“Why did you never tell me this before?” I demanded.

“Dreamer that you were, and are, there was nonsense in your head enough. We did not wish to add to it.”

I retorted, “Then why do you tell me now?”

“What can it possibly matter now? Call yourself Sakeema, if you wish, like so many of the others here. You have as much reason as they.”

“Give me credit for better sense, Father,” I told him coldly. “I am not Sakeema.”

But if Sakeema was who I deemed him to be, he was a captive in Tincherel, and he faced Mahela's devouring power.

Chapter Thirteen

Sometime before dark the devourers came back, bellying in with a rush through the greendeep, swooping up with rippling wings each fell servant to a tall crag of its own, and settling, upright, with their snakelike tails coiled around the spires on which they perched and their wings tightly furled around their bodies, so that they looked like looming gray stumps in the undersea twilight, each one with a staring eye that glinted whitely. Eight of them. Three were missing.

I cowered when they came. Many others, I saw, did the same. Then, recovering somewhat, I watched them from as close a vantage as I dared, trying to see all eight of them at the same time, alert for any movement they might make. Mahela came out of her ship-dwelling to look at them, then went back in, walking stormily. I watched until it was too dark to see anything but black forms atop the black crags, and I saw no sign of Tassida. Nor, I surmised, had Mahela.

Nor had Kor, when I mindspoke with him. But he was uneasy on account of the three devourers that had not returned.

They must be yet at large against Tass.

Perhaps. What does Mahela say?

She says nothing, and I assure you, I am not rash enough to ask her, Dan! She is in foul humor.

That, to me, sounded so much the better for Tass, but all the worse for Kor. I could think of no reply.

I am up against it now, Dan.

She gives you no choice?

Perhaps he laughed, for I sensed a grim amusement.
She gives me a choice which is no choice. The devourers, or her.

Ai, Kor!

She is
—
she is only a woman, Dan.

I smiled, for it was what I had been about to say to him, thought I daresay neither of us believed it.

You have decided to risk it, then?

For a certainty! There are many of them, and only the one of her.

And she might yet be the more perilous.… I did not mindspeak the words, though I might as well have.

Perils we do not yet know seem the more attractive. Dan, I know I spoke boldly yestereven, but now
—
I only hope I can give her what she wants of me.

I fervently hoped it too, but I made my answer seem offhand.
Why not? It is easy.

When I am forced to be false to myself? When I am afraid?

Odd, how heart chooses suddenly to catch hold. I felt the sting of tears behind my eyes. “Do not be afraid,” I whispered aloud. My hands lifted as if to comfort my brother with my touch.

Dan?

Here. Kor
—
it will be all right.

I am summoned. Until later, then.

Later.…

The devourers could be seen only as shadows against the dark. I went down the craggy ways to my father's tent, to sit with him until he lay down to sleep. Even though I could not see him, even though we did not speak, I did that. Surely Mahela would not commence with Kor until folk were asleep.… As soon as Tyonoc's breathing had steadied into the rhythm of slumber, I left the tent, went outside. The water seemed very heavy, the undersea night very still.

Kor?

No answer. But I somehow knew that he was not sleeping. Afraid of my own sureness in that regard, afraid of—nothing. No time now for fear. He was in peril, or he would be soon.

Feeling my way with bare feet, I walked up the path between crags, toward Mahela's abode. Trying to be silent, though there were no guards I knew of. The fell servants still stood furled on their peaks. Perhaps they slept, I thought hopefuly. No, their single eyes glinted fishy white in the faint sealight. It was not wise, or permitted, to be abroad in the night in this place, that I sensed as surely as if I had been told. But perhaps the powers here had no interest in me.

Kor?

No answer. Mahela, the wretched, ruthless slut, she had started sooner than I had thought. I would not shout within my mind, I would not panic Kor. Hard put to control my own terror—but I knew I must, for he was lost somewhere, cast adrift from self, and I had to find him.

Slipping along between crags or behind them, within the watery shadows that have no edge, I made my way toward Mahela's dwelling. No lights there tonight. Closer … as close as I dared, standing in the shelter of the last black jutting rock before the open slope where her subjects gathered.

Kor, brother, it is me, Dan. I am here.

Still no reply. I had to risk.

Forgetting the night, forgetting the devourers, forgetting that there might be guards. No longer aware of chill water. Reaching out with mind.

As if to touch him without words, as I had done once or twice before … It was harder now, everything was harder when I was terrified. The old fear, bone deep, gut deep, of being drowned, and not in ocean, either. Drowned in—in Kor himself, if I came too close.… No matter. I searched.

Kor. Bond brother.

I felt—whereness, Kor, he was there, very near but withheld from me. Struggling. He needed me.

Kor, I am here, I am handbonding you.
My hand reached toward him through the dark water. My fingers curled.

Dan!

Very faint, as if he were far away. Yet I knew he was just within Mahela's walls.

I hear you, Kor, I am handbonding you, I am mindbonding you.

Dan!
The word was like a sob, but closer than before.

I am here.

Dan, don't go away!

I won't, I won't! Take hold of me. We two together are strong.

Handbond.…

Heartbond, mindbond. Hang on, Kor.

It is like
—
being swallowed up.

Like the devourers.

No! Worse. Far Worse. The pleasure, the great joy
—
I want to do it again, I know I will do it again and be
—
lost from self. She is warm, can you believe it? Mouth, breasts, belly, all warm and marvelous. I hate her.

I hesitated.
Is it necessary that you do it again?
I asked him at last.

Yes.

Then do not be afraid, Kor.

Silence for a little while. I withdrew my mind from him sufficiently to look around me and see if I was in any danger. But he felt the difference at once.

Dan!

Here, I am right here. I am outside, by the nearest crag. I was just having a look at the devourers.

And?

They seem to be sleeping now. I no longer see the glimmer of their eyes.

Good. Dan, stay there. Keep hold of me.

Of course.

Even if this takes all night.

Of course, Kor!
I knew his fear.
Would I let you drown?

We were already dead and breathing water—I felt the warm touch of his amusement at the thought of drowning. Mirth even amidst his horror.

I truly felt it. Him. In me. Or had I been taken into him?

Ai, my fear, an odd, inward fear, worse than any fear for the body. Fear of losing self … but no, coward though I was, I would not be afraid. No space for fear in that dense night outside Mahela's dwelling, night as black and greenly shining as cormorant sheen. Terror enough where Kor was. Time enough for my own qualms—later.

I mindspoke to him—pain in this as much as comfort, but I mindspoke of the Demesne and of the ways of dry land, of sunshine and warm air, summer breezes, hawks soaring. All the creatures of Sakeema. And the colors, seen beneath sky instead of beneath seawater. Pebble colors, pink lichen, aspen leaf. Sunset color, dawn glow, glow of eversnow. And the smell of blue pines, flash of sunlight on the sea surf, glint of wet seaside rock, soft feel of moss. Seal Hold. Mortal voices, kinfolk—