The Dreamtrails (101 page)

“So my mother says,” said a clear husky voice, and I looked up to see Jakoby’s lovely, long-limbed daughter, Bruna. She was clad in violet silks, and she sat beside Seely with the fluid grace of a silk cord, adding, “I think it is her greatest desire to see the practice of immersions end.”

“Bruna!” I said. “I am glad you arrived safely. I did not see you when we came ashore, and I feared that something might have befallen you on the coast road.”

“I did not go down to the ship, but I sent word with a friend to tell my mother where I had placed her tent.”

I did not ask why she had not come to the ship, for it was obvious. “Why is Jakoby so opposed to the practice of immersion when the rest of your people see it as an honor?” I asked.

Bruna turned her slanted golden eyes on me. “You must ask my mother that question, Guildmistress, for it is at the heart of her deepest sorrow.”

I was startled by her words, for if I remembered correctly, the overguardian of the Earthtemple had told Jakoby that before she returned to Sador on the
Umborine
, she would encounter something that touched upon a deep sorrow. Did that mean that she had been sent out by the Earthtemple to bring back Jak and his insects since they would heal the isis pools and put an end to the practice of immersion? If so, then surely the Temple guardians would approve Jak’s gifting.

I realized that Bruna was watching me, waiting for me to respond to her rebuff. In truth, I had half expected it, for the question had been an intimate one. But Bruna had dealt firmly and gracefully with me, and as she turned back to answer some question of Seely’s, it struck me that the young tribeswoman had lost her characteristic arrogance. There was no longer any haughtiness in her face or judgment in her eyes. Indeed, the last time I had seen her in Sutrium, Bruna had been a girl, lovely and half wild, but now she was a woman.

Bruna remained with us for the length of two chant songs, singing exquisitely when everyone sang and between songs helping us get food from the embers to sample, recommending some and rejecting others. In the break between the chant songs, she asked numerous questions about Sutrium and events in the Land with an eagerness that surprised me. Yet she did not ask about Dardelan. Then she rose and departed as abruptly and unexpectedly as she had joined us.

“She is very beautiful,” Seely said wistfully, gazing after her.

My attention was not on Bruna but on Dardelan, who was approaching our fire pit from the other direction with Jak and Brydda. Obviously, Bruna had left because she had seen him, but from the tranquility on Dardelan’s face, either he had not seen Bruna or he truly cared nothing for her.

As they sat down, Dardelan told me I looked splendid,
and it was a pity that Rushton would not join us to admire my finery. He nodded toward the tables, and I turned to see that Rushton was now seated beside Bram, and the two men were speaking closely together. Rushton had a parchment before him and was now scribing something upon it. Not envying him, I turned back to find the others talking about Jak’s insects and the furor they had roused. The teknoguilder insisted he had not had any idea that his gift would be so controversial, and Dardelan asked what was involved in releasing the insects into the desert lands. Was it simply a matter of tipping them onto tainted earth? Jak shook his head, explaining earnestly that it would take him and Seely at least two moons to settle the insects, for they had to be carefully established as a colony somewhere near the edge of the Blacklands, and from there, they would gradually spread out.

“I look forward to hearing of your progress, for I cannot truly see the Sadorians refusing your gift. It seems their objection concerns whether these insects mean the process of immersion is to end immediately or die out naturally as the isis pools lose their taint,” Dardelan said. “How do you plan to return to the Westland when this work is done? If you will travel by sea, I would be glad if you would stop a night at Sutrium and give us your news.”

“Seely and I mean to travel by the coast road to Obernewtyn after we have finished here,” Jak said. “But it will be no hardship to stop a night to exchange news in Sutrium on our way back to the Westland.”

“You will be my honored guests,” Dardelan promised. “But perhaps you will decide not to go back to the Westland, once you have been at Obernewtyn again.”

“There is a lifetime’s work for me in the Beforetime complex,” Jak said simply.

“What will you do with the knowledge you gain of the Beforetime?” Jakoby asked. The glint in her eyes as she joined us made me think that she had been engaged in more than one fiery discussion following her speech.

The teknoguilder met her gaze steadily. “I will use what I learn as best I can, to serve our time.”

“Are you sure the knowledge of the Beforetime will serve this world?” Jakoby countered. “Some say that it is enough to live in the aftermath of the mistakes made by the Beforetimers, without courting the danger of dabbling in their knowledge.”

“So said the Council,” Jak replied, “but knowledge is no more evil than a knife. It is how knowledge and knives are wielded that makes them evil or not.”

“I do not doubt you or your motives, my friend,” Jakoby said. “But like a knife, knowledge can all too easily fall into the hands of those who will have no scruples about using it.”

The teknoguilder sighed a little. “This is a dance of words I cannot win. Let me ask you a question instead. My hunger for knowledge gave me the gift that I offered tonight to the tribes. Do you say I should not have sought that knowledge or brought it here to put into practice?”

Jakoby held his gaze and finally said, “No, I do not say that.” She laughed then and seemed to relax. “For one who does not dance with words, my friend, you have a quick-stepping mind.”

Seely gave me an expectant look, and I knew she was willing me to ask why Jakoby had been so determined to end the practice of immersion. But instead, I said lightly that we had seen Bruna and that she looked well. I was watching Dardelan covertly, and I saw him stiffen and then master himself. His reaction made me feel gleeful. Jakoby merely answered
equably that she did look well. “I only wish she had not decided to work for a season in the spice groves, for I had hoped to spend some time with her.” She did not look at the young high chieftain at all, as if she had forgotten there was ever anything between him and her daughter.

I asked, “When will she leave?”

“Tomorrow,” Jakoby said. “Those who will serve always leave before the final feast of the conclave, for the grove cannot be left unattended for more than a fiveday. She will leave at dusk.”

“She will be happier in the desert than she was in the Land,” Dardelan said flatly.

“If you think it, then I know it must be so,” Jakoby said to him coolly. She rose with the same sinuous grace as her daughter and looked at me. “Guildmistress?”

I stared up at her stupidly before realizing that she was asking me to accompany her. I got to my feet with clumsy haste, mumbling a farewell to the others, and followed her through the throng. She led me away from the feast site and toward the trade stalls. A silky breeze blew, carrying the scents of cook fires and perfumed oils and salt to us, and I asked if Bruna really meant to leave for the desert so soon.

Jakoby’s laughter echoed merrily over the moon-drenched sand dunes. “Did you see Dardelan’s face when I said she would leave tomorrow?”

“Then it is not true?”

“It will be true, if I have not lit enough of a fire in Dardelan’s belly to hunt a mate,” Jakoby said crisply.

“Hunt?” I echoed.

“Three hours before dawn tomorrow, any man may hunt any woman whose name he has scribed on a stone and set into the bowl that stands before the tent of the tribal leader of
the woman he desires, so long as she is not mated to another or deemed too young. The woman is given the stones at midnight as a warning, and she has an hour’s start on her hunters. She may favor the man when she glimpses his face, but still the man must catch her.

The hunt ends at dawn.”

“That is barbaric,” I said, appalled.

She grinned. “It would be, if those hunted were not tribeswomen.”

“Dardelan is no tribesman,” I said.

“For this night, he must become one if he would have Bruna. He let her flutter from his fingers when she had given herself to him like a tamed bird, and now she has returned to the tribes. So now he must hunt her in the desert way. Right at this moment, several of my tribesmen are telling Dardelan of the hunt, and one of them will boast that he means to hunt Bruna. He is a strong, handsome warrior whom any woman might desire for a mate.”

I did not know whether to be shocked or to laugh. “Does Bruna know?”

“Of course not. She is all sad dignity and restraint since her return from the Land. She has told me that her love for Dardelan is dead. Maybe she even believes it. Yet in an hour or so, I will send someone to her with the stones that have her name scribed on them, and she will have no choice but to take part in the hunt.” Jakoby laughed wolfishly.

“What if Dardelan does not put in a stone? What if the other hunter catches her?”

“My daughter will not be caught, save if she desires it, and Dardelan will have to prove himself by catching her,” the tribeswoman said proudly. Then she smiled. “I do not doubt that I will go now and find there are two stones in my bowl for Bruna.”

“I thought you were opposed to their match,” I said.

“I was in the beginning, but there is true love between them, and recent events tell me that the days in which Sador stood apart from people of the Norseland and your land are coming to an end. Yet, they will still decide the matter between them, the boy chieftain and my daughter. I am done with a mother’s meddling.”

Jakoby stopped, and I realized where she had been leading me; the Earthtemple loomed ahead.

“The overguardian has summoned me?” I asked, looking into the dark cleft in the earth that was the entrance to the Earthtemple.

Jakoby nodded, and we walked in silence down into the dense pool of moonshadow where the Temple entrance lay. The last time I had come here, I had entered this rift in broad daylight. Long lines of petitioners had waited in the shade of the rift walls—people wanting prayers said for them or a futuretelling, healing or medicines, or those needing to exchange coins from the Land for tokens. The veiled guardians had gone up and down the lines dispensing advice, exchanging coin for tokens, accepting gifts, and handing out medicines and, occasionally, reproaches.

Tonight the rift was empty.

“We must wait here,” Jakoby said, a grim note in her voice.

“Jakoby, do you dislike the Earthtemple because it allows the immersions?” I asked softly.

She glanced up at the star-specked sky and said almost wearily, “Do you know I might have served here as a guardian, for my mother entered an isis pool when she was pregnant. Though she did not know it at the time, there were two inside her belly. Both of us were born perfect, save that my sister had a deformed jaw and mouth. Seresh remained
with me and our mother until we were five, for my sister needed no special care such as the Earthtemple offers. My father disapproved, for deformed babies were generally given immediately to the Temple. I do not know what motivated my mother to diverge from tradition, but she left my father and lived apart from our tribe, so neither my sister nor I knew that she was deformed. I only knew that I looked like my mother and my sister did not, but we supposed that she resembled my father, whom we believed to be dead.

“You would think I would have known she was terribly deformed in the face, but the ideal of beauty is learned. Despite the difference in our faces, my mother adored us both and lavished us with affection and tenderness, telling us over and over that we were beautiful. Then one dark-moon night, she brought us to Templeport. We came here and waited until a Temple guardian emerged. I do not know how, but it had been arranged in advance. Only at that moment did we realize Seresh was to stay, but not I. We wept and clung to one another, for there was great love between us, and we did not understand why we must be parted. “It is an honor!” my mother cried to my sister, and tore her fingers from mine and dragged me off.

“I ran away as soon as I could and came back here, but the Temple guardians would not let me see my sister. They said she needed time to become accustomed to that life. When I was older, my mother told me everything, but I came here many times against her wishes, seeking Seresh. I wanted to see that she was happy, as I had been promised. Finally, they allowed me to see her. She was veiled, but when she drew back her veil, I gasped, for I had not seen her since we were children, and I saw that her face was ghastly.…”

Jakoby’s eyes glittered with tears. “Seresh saw my reaction,
of course, and she asked me in a bitter voice what hurt she had ever done to anyone that I should have beauty and she a monster’s mask. I did not know what to say, so I asked foolishly if she was not happy serving in the Earthtemple. “I am a monster among monsters,” she answered.

“What happened to her?” I asked, full of pity.

“She ran away from the Earthtemple. The guardians said she drowned herself, and I believe that is truly what they thought. But when I was older and had been made tribe leader, an overguardian who was a kasanda summoned me and told me that Seresh had not died but had stolen coin and escaped upon a ship that had berthed here to collect water and food. The overguardian had dreamed it and dreamed that I must be told. She did not tell me why. Perhaps she did not know.”

“But … where could she go and what could she do?” I asked.

“There is not a sevenday that passes when I do not ask that myself,” Jakoby said. “Needless to say, when Bruna lay in my belly and my bondmate said it was dark-moon and time for me to go to the isis pools, I refused. He left me, saying I was no true woman. You saw tonight how many of the tribesfolk revere the practice of immersions.” Her expression was cold and dreamy. “You know what I remember most? Seresh loved pretty things. She dressed in my mother’s silks and jewels and danced with such grace that it was pure beauty, and neither of us ever knew she was hideous to behold. How she must have hated it in the Earthtemple where they wear only rough white weaves and never dance.”