Time of the Eagle (11 page)

Three days later, in awful agony, he died. As I heard the axes dividing him for the birds, I wept. I wept for him, for myself, for my huge, unbearable failure in all things, even in my skill to heal. As I mourned, there came a memory of a time far back in my childhood. It seemed that again I was in Yeshi's tent with my mother, and I was watching her heal an old woman. I had been ten summers old then, and just beginning to learn.

I remembered watching in awe as my mother moved her hands over the old woman's head and down the back of her neck, easing her pain. It was a wonder to me, to see the woman's face as she relaxed, and to hear her moaning cease. And my mother's face— Ah! How beautiful that was! I remembered her smile as she smoothed the old woman's brow and hair, and sang softly to her. Full of love my mother's face was, love that lay across her like a light and poured from her heart and her hands and leaped like gentle fire from her fingertips. Then my mother had noticed me there, and she had lifted her hand and stroked my face. Power
had come from her. “Always remember, Avala,” she had said, “that the greatest thing in healing is love. I always knew that, in a corner of my heart; but your father, he helped me to know it with all of my being. Love can heal all manner of hurts, and go where medicines and knives cannot.”

As I called this to my knowing I bent over in the Igaal healing tent and wept. It seemed such a simple thing, to love. Love I had, somewhere in me, but it was lost behind the huge rage at my enslavement, and Mudiwar's rejection of the great prophecy, and beneath the overwhelming sorrow and anxiety and resentment that ached in me with every heartbeat. With every bit of my will I tried to put those feelings aside, to summon up a kind of warmth toward the Igaal. But I could not. My heart was closed, and I did not know how to open it.

I was still bent over, grieving and desolate, when Mudiwar came in.

“You refuse to stop my people's pains, Shinali slave,” he said.

“None of them come to me for healing,” I said.

“A hunter came, and you let him die. That's why they won't come. Now they're afraid of you. What trickery is this?”

“It is no trickery, Chieftain,” I said. “My
munakshi
, it has gone.”

“Gone? Gone? How can it go, unless you refuse to take it up?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Heart's truth, I tried to heal the hunter.”

“You did not try!” he raged, banging his stick on the mat. “Until you do your work properly, you shall not eat. You shall not sleep in my tent, and you shall not speak with anyone save those you are to heal. Chimaki will not help you. See if that will help you find your
munakshi
again!”

“How can I heal people, if they won't come?” I asked.

Ignoring that, he stormed out, thumping his stick beside him.

And my heart, it was closed more tightly still, and love was locked away.

So I lived apart in my healing tent, going out only to drink at the river, or to use the toilet pits on the other side of the funeral ground, or to wash. In the evenings I went out to bathe when the women went down for their washes. On the third evening, when the others were not watching, Chimaki whispered to me that she had hidden some clean clothes behind a fallen tree high on the bank. I found them when the women were gone, the clothes and a comb, and a package of bread and meat. There was also my own Shinali dress, and the tunic my father had painted. I wept as I took them back to my tent, thinking of my last night with my own people, of the sacred bathing-time in the river, and the new dress my mother had put on me. Then, I had been loved.

That evening, alone in my healing tent, I combed my hair and put on a clean dress, and looked at myself in the blade of one of the healing-knives. As I looked I had the strange feeling that I did not know who I was anymore. Was I Shinali, or was I Navoran? Or was I neither, a half-breed, not worthy of either of the bloods in me? Maybe the All-father had seen into my heart, my doubting, unloving heart, and had been angry with me, and so had taken away everything I treasured—my family, my tribe, my happiness, my ability to heal. Now I was a slave in an alien place, and would anyone here ever love me?

I thought of Ishtok, and how he had always put his sleeping-things by mine when I had been in their tent; did it mean that
he favored me? I looked at myself carefully in the knife and wondered what he saw when he looked at me. I tried to see myself anew, from his eyes. Did he think I was beautiful?

I remembered a talk I had with Santoshi once, when I had been thirteen summers old and she had been fourteen. From her childhood she had been admired, and many of the boys favored her. She had been plaiting my hair for me, and I had asked her, “Tell me truly, Santoshi: am I pretty?”

“Ah, now, that's a thing I'll have to think hard on,” she had replied, laughing, turning me to face her. Then she became serious, frowning as she studied my face. “I've heard the old ones say that you look like your father,” she said thoughtfully. “More like him than like your mother. They also say he was a beautiful man, so I suppose that you, too, are beautiful.”

“The truth,” I said. “As you see it.”

She sighed. “To be true, Avala, your nose is too big, your eyebrows too fierce, and your chin has a little dent in it that makes you look too strong for a gentle-hearted healer. If I didn't know you better, I'd be afraid of you.” She was always arrow straight. But she had added, in her laughing way, “But your eyes are amazing. Any one of the boys would love you, for your eyes.”

But as I looked at my eyes now, in the narrow knife in the Igaal healing tent, I thought how my blue eyes had caused only hate in this camp, and the people did not care who my father had been, or who I was. Even Ishtok, did he truly like me for myself, or did he talk to me just because he felt sorry for me, because he knew what it was to be alone in an alien place? That was surely it, I decided; he was simply being kind.

Sighing, I put down the knife, and my hand brushed the tunic
with the wobbly canoes. With my fingertip I traced the signs of my father's names, that he had painted. He, too, had been in an alien place, when he had been with my people. Had he longed for his own Navora, as I longed now for my Shinali place? Or was his love for my mother enough to wipe out his homesickness? Or had he suffered, torn between two peoples, two ways of life? For the first time I realized how great his love had been, that he had chosen the Shinali, even all the way to death.

In the evening of the seventh day Ramakoda came in. He sat down and for a time just looked at me, saying nothing. I stared at my hands, ashamed of the way they shook, for I was hungry and weak, despite the food Chimaki managed to smuggle to me. I hid them under my armpits, and looked out the tent flap at the evening skies. The clouds were all on fire, and the river ran like blood between the darkening lands. It was an evening like the one when Ramakoda and I had first met, and I had seen the vision in the skies. A hundred summers ago, it seemed, and the vision had vanished away.

“I'm worried about you, my sister,” he said. “My father says you refuse to heal, but I also know that no one comes to you.”

“I couldn't heal them if they did come,” I said. “The gift, it's gone.”

“There's more than the gift gone,” he said, very gently. “Your spirit, it's wandering in a desert place.”

I looked away. “True,” I said. “But I didn't send it there myself.”

“I have been talking with my father,” he said. “He has given permission for you to live in our family tent again, since you are still
nazdar
kinswoman to me. You may eat with us and live as
you did before. He has commanded the people to come to you for healing, even if it is only for bindings for their cuts and medicines for their fevers. He commands you to do what you can for them.”

I said nothing. Was I supposed to be grateful?

“I have also been talking with Ishtok,” Ramakoda added. “We have worked out a plan for your escape.”

Emotions flooded over me—joy, and fear, and again that awful, unbearable weight of failure.

“I know you are always being watched,” he said. “But there is one time, one night in the year, when no one will be watching. Ishtok will help you.”

I bent my head low, and he asked, smiling, trying to see my face, “Are you not happy, sister of mine? I thought this news would give you joy.”

“It does, in a way,” I said. “But . . . The work I did here, it was for nothing. It will be hard to go home and tell people I have failed.”

“Because Mudiwar won't march on Navora, with your people? Is that what you're meaning?”

“Yes,” I said. “I thought this was my chance to persuade your people to join with mine.”

He put his hand under my chin and made me look at him. “You
have
persuaded us,” he said. “You are looking at the chieftain who will join his people with yours, and who will fight beside you for freedom for us all.”

“But you might not be chieftain for many years,” I said.

“Name of Shimit, Avala, what do you want me to do—kill
my father, fire up my horse, fly around to the hundreds of tribes scattered across the land, round them up, bring them back here for a battle feast at tomorrow's dawn, and all of us march on Navora in the morning?”

I could not help laughing. “You've forgotten the Hena,” I said.

“Ah—the Hena. Yes, well, I shall need another half a day,” he said, smiling. Then he added, serious again, “This is what I
can
do, Avala. Next spring at the great Gathering of the Igaal tribes, I will tell of the Time of the Eagle, and light the fire in my people's hearts for freedom. I will also tell them that when they see your people encroaching on our lands, they are not to drive them off, but to welcome them, because a Shinali healer once saved my life, and the lives of many in my tribe. And when I am chieftain, I will find your people, and we will fight side by side. I swear that, with
sharleema
.”

I smiled, my heart leaping at the words of affirmation and hope, and at the old Shinali vow.

“In the meanwhile,” he said, lowering his voice, “I will tell you the plan Ishtok and I worked out, for your escape. That one time when you will not be watched is the night of the first snow of winter. We have a big feast to appease the gods and bring a friendly wintertime. It's a good feast, lots of
kuba
, lots of storytelling and dancing, and plenty of eating. The feast goes on for two days and a night, and at the end of it we all sleep. Even the little children and the dogs. It's a symbol, that long sleep, of the earth's sleep in the wintertime. And when we wake we dance a special dance, a sign of the spring to come, when the whole earth
is awakened, and we move on to fresh pastures and hunting fields. But that sleep in the beginning of winter . . . Well, we call it the Feast of Forgetting.”

“And I could go, during that time?”

“Yes, you can go in that time, Avala. It is not the way I wished it, taking you home myself, with gifts for your chieftain. But this way will have to do, for now. Ishtok will go with you to the other side of the forest. Then you'll just have the grassland to cross, and the ravine. No one will even notice you've gone, for a day at least. By then you'll be home.”

Home! Joy flooded through me then, and I wanted to jump up, to dance, to hug him. Instead, I hugged myself. I thought of how my mother's face would look when I saw her again, of Santoshi. How wonderful, to be with them again! To see Yeshi again, and my grandmother. Then an awful thought came to me, and I said, “But what if they've moved? What if my people have moved?”

“I have thought of that, too. If they are not there, you can come back. No one will have missed you.”

“But then I would never find them,” I said. “And I would be a slave here for the rest of my life.”

“I have no way of controlling what your people do,” he said. “Shimit knows, I have enough trouble trying to have my way with my own tribe. All I can offer is a chance for your escape. Will you take it, or not?”

“I'll take it,” I said.

For the land is our life, our hearts' home, our place of belonging. In it lies our freedom and our peace.

—From Yeshi's story

A
utumn came, and Gunateeta died. For fourteen days the Igaal mourned for her, and the elders cast sticks on the ground to see who would be the new holy one, but the sticks showed nothing, and no one was chosen. Mudiwar limped about looking worried. I kept out of trouble, and Chimaki and I healed all who came to us. Though the deeper ways of healing and easing pain were still gone from me, my skill with herbs and needles and knives remained, and that I passed on to Chimaki. Now she was the healer and I her helper, and I think because of that more people came. We were kept busy.

Although it was autumn now, there was no rain, and Mudiwar said we must move to fresh grasslands for our herds. So everything was packed up, and the belongings loaded onto horses, or onto flat sleds that were dragged. One morning before dawn we left, traveling south. A slow journey it was, for most of us walked, and everyone carried something, even the children. The people sang as they went, glad to be going to a new place; but I was sad, for the move tore me farther from my own people and meant
that on the night of my escape, in winter, my journey home would be long.

Near evening we reached a forest and camped under the first trees for the night, wrapped in blankets on the ground. The next morning we went deeper into the trees, following the river inland, and crossed the water at a place where it was shallow and wide. There, we set up our tents. Five days we were to stay in that place, for it was close to Navoran territory, and Mudiwar wanted only to refresh our herds before traveling far north, across the deserts.

On our third evening in the forest, when everyone else was talking and telling stories, Ishtok sat close to me and said, his head bent near to mine, “I want to take you somewhere tomorrow, Avala. Sleep in your clothes, have your shoes nearby. I'll wake you before dawn.”

One thought swept over me: escape! Seeing the look in my face, he smiled a little and shook his head. “Not home, yet. Freedom for one day. Will that be enough for now?”

I nodded, and he got up and went to talk to someone else.

That night I thought I would never sleep. But suddenly he was shaking my shoulder, his lips close to my ear. “Avala! It's time.”

Before I slipped from my blankets, he was rolling out under the tent wall, for our beds were close to the edge. Quickly, fumbling in the dimness, I pulled on my shoes and got my father's painted tunic from under the roll of my pillow. My hands shook, and my heart beat so wildly I thought the others would surely hear it, and wake. Then I crawled out under the tent flap.

It was very dark outside, for the tops of the trees blocked out the stars. Only the dim walls of the other tents glowed, from the
low lamps still burning within. Two of the dogs rose from the shadows and would have barked at us, but Ishtok was prepared for them and threw them pieces of meat that kept them quiet. Then he took my hand and led me out between the tents. We passed the last of them and then stumbled in the darkness among the trees, to the edge of the forest. Ishtok's horse was there, tethered under a tree, already saddled for a journey. Beyond the last trees I could see the vast plain and, black against the stars, the jagged peaks of far mountains.

“Where are we going?” I asked, my voice quiet though we were far from the tents.

“Not to your people, I'm sorry,” he said. “I can't do that, not today. Today my father would know, and flog me, and never forgive me. The time for your escape is at the Feast of Forgetting, as we planned. But there's somewhere else I'm taking you, for a day. Someplace else that will mean a high lot to you.”

“But won't you be punished, even for this?”

He mounted his horse and leaned down to offer me his hand, to help me up. “Probably,” he said. He tried to pull me up behind him, but it was a while before I managed to clamber onto the beast, and we laughed a lot, quietly. I settled there at last, and it was strange to be so close to him, my face brushed by his hair.

“Put your arms around my waist, and hold on tight,” he said. “We'll start off slowly, and go easily. I won't let you fall.”

I did as I was told, and he picked up the reins and clicked his tongue, and his horse moved off. I was glad it only walked, for I was afraid of falling off; but when the trees were behind us, and the forest grass gave way to the dust of the plain, Ishtok kicked the horse into a trot, and soon after that into a gallop, and I clung
to him more tightly. Soon the forest was far behind us, and I asked him, shouting above the pounding of the horse's hooves, “Where are we going?”

He shouted back, over his shoulder: “To your Shinali land!”

At first I could not believe his words. Then joy swept over me, wild and sweet and unexpected, and I laid my cheek against his back, and hugged his waist more tightly still. Briefly he laid one hand across both of mine, and squeezed, and we went on.

The sun came up, warm on my back. The mountains rose before us, their slopes tawny, still bare from summer's blast. Desolate they were, with a wild, bleak beauty. Above them the blushing skies were cloudless, and there were eagles in the heights. Glancing behind me, I saw the plains stretching out on either side, empty and peaceful; and, far behind us now, the forest where we were camped. The wind scudded clouds of dust across the plain and was cool on our faces.

I looked to the front again, over Ishtok's shoulder, to the mountainous wall marching as far as the eye could see, to the south and to the north. Slightly to our left was the Shinali sacred mountain, Sharnath, important in the springtime rituals of our lost life, its summit golden in the sun's first light. Directly ahead of us was a shadowed cleft through the ranges.

“Taroth Pass,” said Ishtok, pointing to the cleft. “It's the one pass through the mountains, by the place called Taroth Fort. I've heard the old warriors talking about it. In days long gone the fort was put there to keep my people out, and to stop them from fighting with your people, who had the treaty with Navora. They say the fort is deserted these days. I hope so, or we'll have to turn
back fast, and trust to Shimit that no one sees us.”

I, too, was worried about the fort, but for other reasons.

Ishtok stopped the horse, lifted his waterskin, and drank, then offered it to me. “I've got food, too, in the saddlebag,” he said. “We can eat later. You can have your first meal on your own land.”

“I'll always be grateful for this day, Ishtok,” I said. “You don't know what you do.”

“That's a truth,” he said. “I hope I'm not leading you to your death. I'm hoping you'll be able to walk on the edge of your land. But it'll be Navoran crops and grazing fields by now, for sure. If there are people there, we'll only look, then get out. Fast.”

“Even a look will be enough,” I said.

He kicked his horse into a trot again. Quickly I slipped my arms about his waist and held on, enjoying the rhythm of the ride, marveling that we went so wondrously fast across the earth. As we neared the pass I saw the entrance clearly. The walls were steep and high, and I saw why it had been easily defended in days long past. It was the only place in the mountains wide enough for an army to quickly pass through. Today there were no soldiers that I could see, and we seemed alone in the wide, brown world.

The sun had not yet reached its height when we entered the dark shadow of the pass. A warm wind blew through, smelling of the grasslands beyond. The floor of the gorge was very flat, the cliffs towering on either side. Our horse's hooves echoed strangely, and sometimes we heard the sharp, high cries of birds far above. Once I shouted a Shinali battle cry, herald of the greater
battle cries to come, but Ishtok told me to hush. He was a high lot afraid of meeting soldiers, though I felt no danger. About halfway through the gorge we passed a high waterfall that tumbled down steep rocks to become a narrow river. It rushed along to the left of us, its waters roaring and echoing along the high cliffs. The pass was almost straight, and as we came out at the other end, the view of Taroth Fort unfolded before us. Then an awful dread came over me, for it seemed that all the agony of my people hung about that place, and it was heavy with the heaviness of death.

Huge that fort was, its grim walls soaring as bare and bleak as the mountains all around. Four great lookout towers stood on the corners, and there was no way in save by the two high gates. The gateway was higher than an Igaal tent, and when closed the gates would have been impregnable, in days gone by; now they were broken, the remaining wood hanging in rotting planks from the big rusted hinges. And beyond the fort, its grass still summer brown, was the Shinali land.

“It's bare!” I cried, astonished. “After all the battles and the killing, the Navorans have done nothing with it.”

We rode farther on, past the towering walls of the fort, alongside the river, on to the edges of the land. It lay before me empty, flat and unspoiled, as if waiting for our return.

Without a word Ishtok turned and offered me his hand, and swung me down from the horse. He, too, dismounted, and I heard him take the horse down to the river's edge. I waited, breathing in the tranquil beauty, the warm scent of the grassland. Then Ishtok came, leading his horse, and we walked together onto the
plain. Not far onto the land I stopped and took off my shoes, so I could walk barefoot on the beloved soil. Ishtok took my shoes and followed a little way behind me. On I walked, and on, cherishing the dust, the shining river, the trees, the luminous Shinali air. For the land was still ours, untouched, and that was a marvel to me. A breathlessness was there, a sense of expectation, of waiting. As I walked I thought of all the stories I had heard, in those travel-worn tents of the Wandering; I thought of the story Yeshi had given me that last night with my people, and the songs and prayers of old Zalidas. And then it seemed that they were stories and songs no longer, but something more; and I saw, slow as if outside our time, images of warriors in battle, their faces marked with paint of blue and white, their great war-bows bent, their mouths open in the Shinali war cry. Soldiers there were, too, with bronze armor and shields on which red horses pranced, and white plumes on their helmets and shoulders. The earth trembled, and I heard the throb of drums, the clash of steel, and saw the silver flash of swords, and the bright flights of arrows. The scenes of battle faded and passed.

I saw flocks of sheep, and children minding them, and women sitting by the river with looms, weaving. Sound of flutes and pipes, and people dancing in rain. And old men chanting, their voices cracked and dry, torn by the ancient wind. Then battle again, and a house burning, burning, and darkness, and people walking away. The smell of fire, and the sound of something clanging, like metal cooking pots. Then this stillness, this waiting.

I knelt on the ground, and then lay on it, my cheek against the earth, my arms spread wide. I wept and prayed and sang, and
then lay quiet, feeling the earth beneath, the memories of generations layered in the sacred dust.

When I stood I saw Ishtok nearby, his face taut with worry.

“Don't go too far out, Avala,” he said. “If someone comes, we're dead.”

“There's no one around,” I said. “Look—nothing but grass, and memories.” I caught sight of the farms on the other side of the river, the strip of land my people had sold to the Navorans.

“My Navoran grandmother lives there,” I said. “I wonder which farm is hers?”

Ishtok chewed his lower lip, nervously. “I hope you don't want to visit her,” he said.

Smiling, I turned to go back. But at that moment I caught sight of something a little farther along, about halfway along the plain. “I think that is where our house was,” I said, shading my eyes from the sun. “There's something standing on it.”

I began walking toward it, and Ishtok came with me, still leading his horse. I felt the tension in him, the fear that we walked openly where Navoran eyes might see us, and I took his hand and gave him my peace. For peace I did have, out on that land, despite all that had happened there. There was a presence in that place, a joy-wildness, as if it lay under the All-father's hand, secure in his safekeeping. For the first time I understood, with all of my knowing, why my people longed for this land, this windswept plain, this place of belonging: it was Home.

We reached the mound in the earth and discovered that it was a garden. It was enclosed by a low wall of river stones, and wildflowers grew within, and herbs. And in the center, high on a pole, streamed a white flag, and on it, in blue, a graceful sign of looped
and interlacing lines, decorative but simple, without beginning or end.

“A Navoran banner,” said Ishtok, and I was surprised at the anger in him. “Shall I tear it down?”

He would have leaped over the stones at once, but I put my hand on his arm. “Wait! That blue symbol painted on it, it's Shinali. It's our sacred sign for dreams. And it means more, for it's the sign that the spirit world and the earth world are both the same; that a word foretold in the spirit world will have its full form in this one.”

Astonished, we stood staring at the banner flying over us with its brave sign, at the bright garden.

“Whoever painted the sign was a friend to your people,” said Ishtok. “But why would they plant flowers where your house was?”

“The house, it was used as a funeral pyre the night my people left this land,” I said. “Most of the house was underground, with a roof of grass. All my people lived in that one house. After the last battle they put all the dead Navoran soldiers and the dead Shinali warriors in the house, and set the roof on fire. Someone has covered over the bones, and filled the hollow, and made it a sacred place. But who would know what the dream-sign means, unless they were Shinali themselves?”