Shannivar (27 page)

On the day the Snow Bear men announced they had passed into their own territory, they set up camp early. The horses grazed contentedly a little distance from Shannivar's
jort,
where she and Zevaron sat beneath the rolled-up door flap. Dinner, a small antelope Shannivar had brought down with a single arrow, roasted over the cookfire.

“I am curious,” Zevaron said. “How do the Snow Bear men know the boundaries of their territory? I see no difference.”

“Do you not know your own land?” She made a fist and tapped him gently on the arm.

He shook his head. “Perhaps you nomads have such a sense, but I must rely on outer signs—a river, a mountain, a city—to know where I am. At sea, we used the coastline and sometimes the stars. Someday, I would like to take you to Meklavar and show you its treasures. Not gold and precious stones such as the Gelon prize, but the library, the castle with its great window of colored glass that shines like molten jewels, the ancient temple set high within the mountain.”

“My people do not care for cities of stone,” she said, “but I would willingly visit yours.”

“I hope,” he said. “I hope it will be possible. Someday.”

“There is the small matter of the Gelon.”

“The Gelon, yes.” His brows drew together. For a long moment, he fell silent.

“Shall we fight them together, do you think?” she said, trying to lighten the moment. What she meant was that if he returned from the north a great hero, covered in glory and celebrated in song, the Council at the next
khural
would surely give greater weight to his proposed coalition with Azkhantia.

“If the chieftains would not ally with Isarre, I cannot hope for their help, not even if you plead my case. But Azkhantia may not be the only force capable of defeating the Ar-King. Somewhere, there must be . . .” His gaze flickered to the north, his face tightening. She could not tell what he was thinking, but when she spoke to him again, he smiled.

* * *

After climbing steadily all day, the party came out onto a high rocky plain. The night air was very clear, and the stars burned bright in the moonless sky. A cold wind swept down from the north. When it was time to set up camp, they found neither tree nor rock for shelter. The horses stood together, tails clamped against their rumps, facing away from the wind according to the wisdom of their kind.

Shannivar unrolled the extra layers of felt around her
jort
. The felt was thick, springy beneath her fingers. She remembered sitting with Mirrimal and Kendira, beating the fibers and singing. How long ago that seemed, how far away.

Somehow, young Chinzhukog found enough dried reindeer dung from a previous caravan to make a small fire. The flames fluttered in the shifting gusts and lasted just long enough to prepare tea before guttering out. They ate their communal meal cold—a mixture of cheese,
bha
, and parched grain moistened with a little
k'th
—and then prepared for sleep. Bennorakh disappeared into his
jort,
and the Snow Bear men, even more taciturn than usual, retreated to their own shelters.

Shannivar finished the last of the tea, savoring the richness of the butter on her tongue. While the nights had been warm, Zevaron slept outside or in his flimsy trail tent. It would have been mildly scandalous for him to share Shannivar's
jort
while the weather was fine. They were not kin, nor were they betrothed, but the steppe had one unforgiving rule in the bitter cold: live together or die.

Why then did she feel shy about speaking? It was not as if she proposed to take him into her bed as well as the warmth of her
jort
. Who cared what the Snow Bear men thought, when they had not invited the outlander to share their own shelter? As for Bennorakh, the
enarees
had their own ways of judging men and women.

Zevaron looked both startled and relieved when she suggested he pass the night in the
jort
. He had been having a difficult time getting his tent set up in the wind. The last of the cookfire embers had gone out, leaving the camp in near darkness.

“What about the horses?” he asked. “Will they be all right?”

“Oh, for them this is a brisk autumn breeze, nothing more. In bad weather, when we are in
kishlak
, the wintering-place, they have shelter against the worst storms.”

“I do not think my poor horse would survive such a winter.”

“Most beasts do. It is only men who do not have the sense to come in out of the wind. Do you mean to stand there all night?”

Shannivar secured the door flap behind Zevaron. Politely, he avoided stepping directly on the threshold, which would have broken its protection against evil spirits. He had learned some manners, then.

The familiar smells of wool and cedar and trail dust filled the
jort
. By comparison to Grandmother's
jort
, the space seemed sparsely furnished. If this were a family dwelling, the areas for men and women would be divided by the central hearth.

Shannivar touched Zevaron's arm. “Here is a carpet to keep out the earth's chill, and there are extra blankets if you need them.”

She prepared her own bed and slid out of her outer clothing, her eyes averted. With her skin as well as her ears, she sensed the rustle of Zevaron's movements, the faint sigh of his breathing, and the sounds as he settled his body on the carpets. The air was warmer because there was another person to share it.

T
HE
land rose, each range of hills higher than the one before. From time to time, Shannivar glimpsed distant gray-purple mountains. They set up their camp in the failing twilight beside an old well, its stones so eroded and crumbled as to be barely recognizable. This place was well known to the Snow Bear people as a reliable water source.

Shannivar and Zevaron worked together, putting up the
jort
and tending to the horses. Bennorakh retreated into his own
jort
, going about his own mysterious business, while the Snow Bear men prepared the evening meal.

As the last light seeped away from the western sky, Zevaron wandered to the northeastern edge of the camp. His back to the cooking fire, he peered into the featureless dark. Shannivar felt drawn to him, he looked so proud and lonely at the very edge of the light.

He pointed to the sky. “Look! Look there!”

Above the northern rim of the world, Shannivar made out a faint glow. It grew stronger moment by moment, flickering like distant flames of green and red. The flames merged, spreading across the sky. The light shaped itself into an arch as additional ribbons of color appeared, slowly brightening. Then they folded back on themselves. As she watched, transfixed, they merged into a radiant curtain.

“What—what is it?” she asked, her voice half-choked with awe. Surely this rapture unfolding above her must be the door flap to Tabilit's own country.

“I do not know.”

“It is the Light of the North.” Chinjizhin came to stand beside them. “We call it Tabilit's Veil. It is said that births and weddings under such a sky are greatly blessed.”

For long moments, they watched the curtain wave and swirl overhead. The lower edges seemed to catch fire, flaring red and orange. Blues and purples appeared as points of brilliance. The diaphanous display rippled faster, as if caught in a celestial storm. The sky ignited with swirling color.

A hush fell over the watchers. Shannivar's heart ached. In her mind, she saw the draperies part to reveal a far country, like the one she sometimes glimpsed when the rising sun pierced mountains of cloud. She had yearned then to spread wings like her totem, the Golden Eagle, to rise above the earth and sail through those canyons of light to the lands beyond.

“How could I have doubted the words of the
te-Ketav
?” Zevaron murmured, his words for himself alone. “How else could there be such glory in the world?”

Shannivar and Zevaron had drawn together as they watched the shimmering display. She felt his warmth on her face. Almost, she could hear the beating of his heart. No, it was not his heart, but her own, and for a moment there was no difference.

In wonderment, she turned to him, and they gazed at one another in the multi-hued light. His breath was on her skin. His heart beat within her body.

Truly, she had been guided to this moment by the spirit of Saramark, by Tabilit herself, by the thousand tiny decisions that might have turned her path in another direction. She might have let two strangers go on their way, or she might have returned to Golden Eagle clan with Rhuzenjin, or she might have joined some other clan as an unattached warrior . . . She might have died at the Gelonian fort or in any of a dozen raids. Might have let Zevaron go up to the
enarees'
promontory on his own.

There was but one small step yet to take, one veil to sweep aside. She reached out her hand and his fingers curled around hers. An absurd joy bubbled up in her like a never-failing spring. She wanted to laugh aloud.

Together they moved toward the
jort
. Behind them, the Snow Bear men began chanting in praise of Tabilit's gifts, petitioning the goddess for protection.

Inside the enclosed darkness of the
jort
, diffuse light sifted through the smoke hole. Zevaron put his hands on her shoulders, and she moved into his embrace. Her skin tingled with the pressure of his arms tightening around her, the muscled length of his body pressed against hers.

His mouth was surprisingly soft and warm. She had been kissed by men before, and lain with them, but never with such delirious care, such delicately paced arousal. Here she felt no frantic haste, but a deep awareness of each moment. Each movement of his lips on hers, each touch of his hands, each curve of his body carved itself into her memory.

They piled the carpets into a single luxurious layer, then slipped out of their clothing and beneath a shared blanket. She was as eager to explore his body as he was hers. In the purification tent, they had stolen glimpses of one another, but now she could touch and taste him as well.

She rolled him on his back and stretched out on top of him. He put his hands on her buttocks, pulling her closer. Between her parted thighs, she could feel the hardness of his erection. Her own body was ready, moist and swollen, but she wanted to draw out the moment, to savor every part of him. To remember this night forever.

The skin of his torso was warm and smooth, except for the surprisingly soft hair along the center of his chest and downward. Burying her face in the angle between his neck and shoulder, she inhaled his masculine scent. He smelled of the trail and like other men, yet unlike. Cushioning her teeth with her lips, she took a mouthful of his skin and bit down. He gasped, shuddering. From his reaction, this was not a common form of love-play among his people, but from his breathing, she could tell he enjoyed it.

She planted little kisses, sometimes with her lips alone, sometimes with tongue and gentle teeth, in a line down the center of his body. Like most young women who had fought against the Gelon, she'd had her share of celebration afterward, usually after too much
k'th
, but she had never got so drunk that she could not remember the lovemaking she particularly enjoyed. One lover had delighted her with running his hair and lips up and down her body. By his soft moans, Zevaron found the experience as pleasurable.

After a time, he hooked one leg around her back and rolled both of them over. He laced his hands in her hair, tipping her head back to cover her throat in unbelievably soft kisses. Each touch of his lips spread ripples of sensation over her skin. He went farther down, between her breasts, pausing at each nipple. Her breath caught in her throat. She wanted him to stop, to slide into her now,
now
, and yet she also wanted each moment to last.

The farther down on her body he went, the slower and more sensual his kisses became. He breathed across her skin and her entire body quivered.

Yearning built up deep within her, spreading out from the sweet aching between her thighs. In an instant, he lifted himself, and then he entered her, not all in one stroke, but with a rhythmic, rocking motion, easing in and then out. Each thrust was deeper, and there seemed to be no end to them.

She dug her fingers into his buttocks, pulling him deeper inside her body. His muscles flexed and hardened as he pressed against places she had not known existed inside her.

Oh, now!

She was on fire, in an agony of impatience. Any moment, the building storm would break, flooding all through her, and yet each heartbeat, each racing pulse, carried her further.

Just at the moment when she thought she could bear it no longer, a storm of pleasure ignited where their bodies joined. It surged and pulsed all through her. She felt herself as a stream of melting intensity, as if she had been seized and swept into an endless sky of light.

Zevaron shuddered, and Shannivar felt his breath as if it were her own, his wordless cry issuing from her own throat.

The crest of ecstasy peaked and began to fall away, but only for an instant, a heartbeat, a single exhale of amazement before it flared up, as powerful as before. She gave herself over to it, and this time, she sensed, it was her orgasm that transported them both. Zevaron was in her body, in the soaring currents in her mind, in her heart. Her vision went white, then filled with colors that paled the lights of the north.

My blessing upon you, my children.
Words formed in her mind, dissolving as she came back to her senses. Laughter spilled from her. He was laughing inside her, outside her, along with her. He said something in his own language, and she did not care what it was.

Spent, he rolled off her and onto his side, one arm still holding her. A slight shift, and he rested his head on her shoulder. Her arms went around him. She felt utterly content. She trailed her fingertips over the smooth skin of his shoulder. She felt the firm, elastic texture of his muscles, a softening of the indefinable tension that never seemed to leave him. He murmured in pleasure. Smiling, she continued stroking him, over the flatness of his shoulder blade and the bony tips of his spine, like a chain of nubbly pearls.

When her fingers slid over a ridge of harder tissue, she paused. She had seen those criss-crossed scars during the purification ritual. From her own experience with battle wounds, she knew what kind of injury would cause them, how deep the slashes must have been. How deliberate. The scars were white and some years healed, but they were not the work of a blade, not the way they followed the contours of his back.

Not a knife. A whip. A whip laid on again and again, slicing skin and muscle, laying bare the bone underneath.

“Don't stop,” he whispered.

She had not realized that her hand was now still, resting on the hieroglyphics of pain etched in his flesh. She wanted to ask and yet did not know how. Would the telling open old wounds, not of the body but of the spirit?

Gelon whipped their slaves, beat them mercilessly and sometimes unto death, or so it was said. Had Zevaron been a Gelonian slave?

He shifted, raising himself on one elbow. She felt his gaze on her. Questioning, testing, demanding. Demanding what? That she not shrink from what must be asked? She lifted her chin. “I want to know about your scars, how you got them. Will you tell me?”

His breath left his body in a rush. In the near dark, she felt him nod. He lowered himself to lie once more on his back, no longer touching her.

So alone
, she thought.

“You have heard how my mother and I escaped the fall of Meklavar and made our way to Gatacinne, in Isarre. How the city came under Gelonian assault. She was taken prisoner and then sent by ship to Gelon. To Aidon, where I found her four years later. What I did not tell you is that I tried to find her before she left Gatacinne. The city was in turmoil—Gelonian soldiers and Isarrans fighting in the streets, the port on fire, buildings burning everywhere.”

He paused. She felt how the memories crowded around him, enshrouded him. His voice turned hoarse, as if with remembered smoke. “Before the attack began, we had been housed separately. She was in the Governor's mansion, and I was in a barracks with the young men. I didn't like us being apart, but we were dependent on the hospitality of her kinsmen and in no position to demand anything. It turned out I was right. When the fighting began, the Gelon targeted the mansion. It was one of the first places they captured. I couldn't get to her in time. I couldn't—”

Meklavar had come under Gelonian rule four years ago, or was it five? Shannivar tried to imagine Zevaron then, barely grown to manhood, alone in a strange city, cut off from the one person he knew, fighting against men older and more experienced. He was lucky to have survived.

“I heard that a foreign lady fitting her description was on a ship setting out for Verenzza. That's a Gelonian port. I had no money for passage to follow her. I went down to the wharves, and—what happened next doesn't matter. It was a stupid, impossible scheme. I was caught up in a Gelonian raid and became fodder for their oar-ships.”

“Taken prisoner?”

“Taken slave. And the first law of the slave—” Zevaron drew a breath, and in that silence, Shannivar heard the echoes of the lash.

“—is that the masters will do whatever they wish, whenever they wish—”

In Shannivar's mind, parallel lines of fire seared his skin. The pain took his breath away. He hunched over and tried to cover his head. Back-handed, the lash struck again, knotted strips of leather biting deep. They landed on Zevaron's back, too fast and heavy to count. He tried to twist away, but his tormentor kicked his legs out from under him. Within a few minutes, his back and shoulders had turned into a mass of cuts, some of them clear down to the bone.

“—simply because they can,” he finished.

She breathed in his pain, his bitterness. In her heart, she understood the Zevaron he had been, the boy struggling for the breath to scream, but all that came were sheets of agony, cold and burning at the same time. The hiss of the lash filled his ears. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he felt the sticky warmth of blood as each new blow landed.
Sweet Mother, he was being flayed alive.

She reached out and rested one hand on his cheek. A shudder passed through him. With a sound that might have been a sob, he curled on his side, facing away from her. She moved closer, fitting her body to the curve of his back. Her breasts pressed against those terrible scars. She thought how her breasts might someday nourish a child and provide the sustenance of life. If only, in some illogical way, her woman's body might somehow lift his pain, draw it out as she might draw out venom from a wound, and then change it into a blessing.

His back was adamant, unyielding. On impulse, she shifted her position. Gently, with her heart in every movement, she pressed her mouth against first one line of scars and then the next. Her lips followed the gnarled and corded ridges. She tried to put into each kiss all the tenderness she could express. Over and over, she traced the pattern of his suffering, his humiliation, and his despair. As she worked her way along the lines of indurated tissue, she left a trail of tears as well as kisses.

Finally she came to the end. Of scars, of kisses, of tears, she could not tell. In the pit of her stomach, she felt a silence. There was nothing more she could do, except to hold him.