Time of the Eagle (12 page)

“Perhaps someone from your tribe came back,” said Ishtok.

“No. No one has walked here from my tribe, until today. It must have been a Navoran, perhaps from the farms. Perhaps my grandmother. But I don't know how she would know our dream-sign.”

We began walking back, and I noticed small things on the
ground—a child's shoe, and a bone spoon, both weather worn and old. There were arrowheads, too, and many small, perfectly round stones. An image came to me, swift and dark, of people fleeing at night, bundles in their arms and on their backs, and children dragged along by their hands, crying.

As we neared Taroth Fort dread came on me again. As if he knew, Ishtok said, gently, “We'll ride past, Avala. You don't even have to look at that place.”

“I want to go in,” I said. “I understand, now, what the land means to my people. I have shared their peace, their joy. I need to understand their pain, too. Will you come with me?”

He took my hand, and we approached the gateway. For a long time we stood there, looking in on the abandoned courtyard. All around the mighty walls were built wooden rooms, fallen to ruins, and the dust was littered with grasses and the bones of wild animals. We went in farther, and the eerie silence of the place was full of ghosts. It seemed that all the pain of my world had been trapped there, and the screams of women and tormented yells of men and the crying of children had sounded but a moment ago, and been suddenly cut off, and the walls and the stones and the bitter dust still held the echoes.

Ishtok and I did not speak, but he tied his horse to a pillar on the edge of the courtyard and came with me while I looked around. In the courtyard was an old well, a broken bucket on the rim. I dropped a stone down, and it fell many heartbeats before it hit the bottom. There was no water. Not far from the well the ground was blackened from a cooking fire of years long past. I remembered my mother saying how they had starved here, and what little food they had been given was moldy and bad,
while the soldiers who had guarded them had feasted well.

I went up some steps into what must have been the Shinali sleeping place, for there were a few blankets abandoned there, covered in rust brown stains. There was a child's little wooden horse in the dust, and a buckled metal cooking pot, and other things abandoned on the day of leaving. The place was open to the courtyard on one side, but on the walls people had drawn charcoal pictures of their life. I could not bear to look; the sorrow of the place, the despair, was like dust choking me. Ishtok put his arm about my shoulder, and we went outside into the sunny courtyard.

“My parents slept in one of the towers,” I said. “My mother said it was the tower on the southwest corner. That one over there.”

“If you want to go up, I'll come with you. If you want me to.”

“I don't know, Ishtok. It's hard, being here. This place, it's where my father lived his last days. Where so many of my people died. Where Tarkwan, our great chieftain, was tortured, and where he died. There is so much pain here. And yet I also want to be here, to know, even if it breaks my heart.”

He lifted his right hand and briefly stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers. “I'm here to mend it,” he said. “That is what I wanted to do, today. To mend your heart. To make it strong.”

I wept, and we went over to the tower together. The door was rusted off its hinges, and Ishtok threw it on the dirt behind us. Then he followed as I climbed the narrow, spiraling stairs.

Never had I been on stairs before, and there were many. And the walls were close, leaning in, suffocating. The air was stale, the dust unmoved since the day my father and my mother had walked
down these stairs for the last time. High above us a wind blew in the heights, moaning and whining like a wounded animal. Up we went, and up, resting sometimes, leaning on the curved stone walls. At last we came to the top, and a little wooden door. I turned the handle, and it swung almost silently open. We went in and for long heartbeats stood there, lost in amazement at what we saw.

The room was eight-sided, with eight stone pillars holding up the wooden beams of the roof. And between those pillars, all around, were wide windows open to the sky. Through those windows the whole world could be seen. Going over to the window ledge, we looked down. Though the window ledge was of solid stone, and wide enough to safely sit upon, the sudden spaciousness, the distance to the lands below, made me dizzy. I could see all the way to the sea. Clearly, I saw the land my people had lost, with the silvery river down the very center of it, and the tiny bright oblong that was the garden where the house had been. I saw the green and yellow squares that were the Navoran farms, the land of my Navoran grandmother. Beyond the farms were low green hills and trees, among them a gleam of white walls and towers, the wink of sun on something polished. I realized it must be the place where my father had learned his ways of healing. Past the hills, hazy with smoke and too far to see clearly, was the stone city of Navora.

As I leaned on the window ledge I looked at my hands, and it seemed that I saw my father's hands, for he, too, had stood in this place, and leaned on these stones, and looked down upon the country he loved. His presence was in the air here, in the
wind that blew in from the sea. A long time I stood there, touching the stones he had touched, feeling him only a heartbeat away, a finished breath beyond.

Lost in the thought of him, I moved around the windows, and saw an old well-worn road going to the coast. Then sorrow swept over me, for my mother had told me of that road, and of how she had stood long summers past and watched my father walk away along that shining dust, and known she would not, in this life, see his face again. Overcome with grief, I bent my head in my hands. Too many feelings rushed over me, too many images, pictures built of stories my mother had told, fleeting awakenings in my knowing, quick visions of times past and people gone. For a moment I heard shouts in the courtyard behind us, and the clash of steel as soldiers exercised. The sounds echoed around the old walls, then were gone. Somewhere below birds cried; it was the sound of a child screaming. And in this room sighs and whisperings, and vanishing joys too sweet to bear. In this room I had been made.

“I am ready to go now, Ishtok,” I said, wiping my face on my hands.

We went back down to the courtyard. The sun had already slipped behind the towering western wall, and the courtyard was mainly in shadow, and cold. Shivering, we got the horse and left the fort. Outside the gates we scanned the land and coastal road, looking for soldiers, but saw none. We were totally alone, the fields and roads bare, the only dust raised up by skittish winds.

We drank at the river and filled our waterskins, and Ishtok got a package from his saddlebag. “I almost forgot. Your first meal
on your own land,” he said, smiling as he passed me a hunk of bread and cold meat that he had brought. “If you feel like eating now.”

“I do,” I said. “The fort was not the end of my people's history, and the best part of the story is yet to come. I'd like to eat on our land, and have the first of many feasts.”

We sat on the edge of the grasslands and I gave thanks to the All-father, and we ate and drank. The silence there, the radiance of the land, was breathtaking. One last time I walked on it, out just a little way, and knelt and said a prayer. I lifted up some of the dust, and looked at it in my palm, wishing I could take it with me. And then Ishtok came with a little leather bag no larger than my palm, and crouched by me and held the bag while I trickled in the dust. “I knew you would want to take some,” he said. And his smile, the tenderness and understanding in his eyes, healed my heart.

“You make up for all the wrongs your people have ever done to me and mine,” I said. “Thank you, with
sharleema
.”

“It was my joy to give you this day,” he said.

He closed the bag with a fine leather thong and placed it about my neck. For many heartbeats his hands stayed there, on my neck, his fingers lightly caressing my skin. Then, smiling a little, he turned away and whistled to his horse, and we mounted for the journey back to his people's camp.

I looked back one last time upon the Shinali land. The sun was low, its brightness blinding. It seemed that the Navoran places were already on fire. I blew a kiss toward the farms where my Navoran grandmother lived, then turned and slipped my
arms about Ishtok's waist, and we left.

Slowly we went at first, so we would raise no dust to betray our presence. But halfway down the gorge Ishtok kicked the horse into a trot, and I held on to him more tightly, my hands clenched in front of his waist. He placed one hand across both of mine, and held it there all through that journey.

Cold it was, on this far side of the mountains, and we traveled in purple shadow that stretched out on the flat lands before us, the far edges torn into the shapes of the jagged peaks. Beyond the shadow the world was gold.

It was near the middle of the night when we arrived back, and the whole camp was awake. There were cries of relief, and Ramakoda came to greet us both, shaking his head and half smiling, and I was sure he knew where we had been; but Mudiwar roared at us to go to his tent and wait for him there.

That night Ishtok and I were in a mighty lot of trouble. Mudiwar had thought that Ishtok had taken me home to my people and was furious with him. “You never,
never
go away for a day like that again!” he shouted, in front of all the people gathered about. “Where did you go?”

“Just out on the plain,” said Ishtok. “Just riding.”

“Ramakoda went out looking, and did not see you.”

“We were in the shadow of the mountains.”

“Near the mountains? Name of Shimit, were you trying to get yourself killed? There's Taroth Fort there, on the other side, and Navoran territory! Did you not think of soldiers? You're a fool, a fool! You could have been captured—or you could have led the
soldiers back here, to us! You have placed all of us in danger. You should be horsewhipped, you and Avala. What have you to say in your defense?”

“Avala has done a great many good things for this tribe,” replied Ishtok, quiet and calm, unmoved by his father's wrath. “All we have given her is slavery and pain. I gave her a day of freedom, that is all.”

“A day of freedom?” raged Mudiwar. “She's a slave, not a trained falcon you can release when you feel like it!” Then old Mudiwar's eyes narrowed, and he said, almost spitting out the words, “Did you take her to the Shinali bit of dirt? Because if you did, I'll kill you, and after that I'll take away your horse.”

Ishtok said nothing.

Ramakoda came forward through the people crowded into the tent and said, “They are home safely, my father. Ishtok is right; we have done a great wrong to Avala, and perhaps this day a part of it has been put right. Let it be.”

Mudiwar turned on Ramakoda then, a terrible rage in his face. But suddenly the old man threw up his arms and said, “Oh, Shimit take the lot of you! I'm tired. I'm going to sleep.”

One of the slaves rushed to spread out his sleeping-furs, and people smiled at one another, relieved, and got their bedding. Ramakoda said something quietly to Ishtok, and it must have been a warning, because for once Ishtok did not place his bed next to mine. Lamps were put out, and people began to snore. I lay thinking about the day, holding it in my knowing, treasuring it, even the terrible moments, the echoes, the pains, and the stupendous joys. I thought of Ishtok lying not too far away in
the dark, and remembered his understanding and his warmth, the feel of his hands upon my neck, the nearness of him. Gratitude flooded through me, for the great gift he had given me that was this day. At last I slept, holding in my hand the little bag of Shinali dust, and dreamed of the shining land.

T
he fiery leaves of autumn faded and fell, then winter breathed its cold across the land. By then we had moved back to our former camp. We had not traveled farther north, for Mudiwar was not well, and the journey would have been too much for him. Now that it was colder, the thicker clothes were taken from the large wooden chests in the chieftain's tent, and I was given long winter dresses and shoes and a white coat of rabbit fur. Kimiwe said the clothes had been her mother's, but Ramakoda made no comment.

Mudiwar's illness worried me. At times, when he exerted himself, he could hardly breathe, and his lips were always blue. Worn out, he went to bed early each night, and lay listening to the stories and jokes, but not taking part. One evening I went and sat by him, and put my hand on his chest. I could feel the rattle of his lungs, and his awful struggle to breathe.

“Do your
munakshi
on me, Shinali woman,” he growled, between labored breaths. “I command it.”

“Such healing cannot be commanded, my chieftain,” I said. “But I will try.”

But though I stilled my mind and heart and prayed, and tried to visualize the healing light flowing through my hands to him, the power did not come. I tried to feel love toward him, to awaken a fondness, as if he were a grumpy but honored grandfather; but I felt nothing. His was the word that kept me here against my will, his command the cause of all my sorrow and pain, and I could not wipe that out.

“I'll get some medicine for you,” I said, removing my hand.

As I stood to go to my healing tent, he said, “Useless Shinali witch! I don't believe you've lost your power! I think you do it out of spite! You're like all your people—a stinking parasite, a leech on the nation that shelters you!” Then he collapsed, exhausted.

In my healing tent I got the medicine for him, then sat alone awhile in the dark, shivering, lost in grief and doubt and a terrible longing for home.

Then came the day of the first snow, and there was excitement as the people prepared for their Feast of Forgetting. For the first time in my stay with them, they were to eat inside their tents, and Kimiwe told me they would eat inside all winter long. But the food was still cooked in pits outside, and the men did the cooking, wrapped in their furs against the fierce wind. Beyond them, the youths put up a low tent for sheltering the goats at night, and to keep them safe from wolves. The oldest goats had been killed for the feast.

While everyone else was busy outside Ramakoda came to
me with a bag he had made, and told me to hide it under my sleeping-furs, with my coat and anything else I wished to take. “There is food in the bag,” he said, “enough for the day's journey. I can't tell you how much I wish I was going with you, with all the gifts and goodwill that you and I both had dreamed of. You'll always be in my heart, Shinali woman.”

There were things I wanted to say to him, but some of the men came in, calling for him, and he turned and went out.

When the feast began I sat alone with my back to the tent wall, watching what was going on. All night the people ate, and laughed, and sang songs and told stories. At times the musicians banged drums and the women clapped, and the men got up and danced. They did not paint their faces the way we Shinali did but wore masks carved out of wood, stained with garish colors. Several times Ishtok came and sat with me to talk, but Chimaki was with me much of the time, and he said nothing about our plan.

All the next day I waited while the feast went on and the
kuba
flowed. I did not eat much, for I was too excited, thinking on my escape. While Chimaki was talking with the women, Ishtok came and sat by me.

“I've hidden my bow in your healing tent,” he said quietly. “I've put my coat there, too. When it is dark outside I'll give you a signal. It will mean that I am going to get my things, and that after a short time you must leave, too. I'll be waiting for you at the western side of the tents. Don't try to say good-bye to anyone, lest they are questioned after, and punished for not telling Mudiwar. Only Ramakoda and I know you are going.”

“Will you be punished?” I asked. “Mudiwar will surely know you helped me.”

“Mudiwar is already far gone with
kuba.
By tonight's middle they'll all be far gone. I'm going to pretend I've drunk too much, so that if anyone does remember I disappeared for a time, I can say I fell over on my way back from the toilet pit, and fell asleep in the snow. It happens. You're not afraid, are you?”

“I'm terrified. What is the signal you'll give?”

“I'll flap my arms like eagle's wings.”

We smiled, and he put his hand inside his shirt and drew out something wrapped in fine leather. “Talking of eagles,” he said, “I have something for you.”

Unwrapping his gift, I discovered a drinking cup, beautifully formed out of wood. The bowl itself was perfectly smooth and round, but underneath it the wood was carved into an eagle, its wings spread wide and sweeping upward to hold the bowl. The bird was shaped as if it were just coming down to land, and its lowered talons and the tips of its tail feathers formed points for the cup to stand upon. For a few moments I could not speak; never had I been given such a gift, except for the tunic my father had painted.

“It's beautiful,” I said at last. “I'll treasure it, Ishtok, as long as I live. Thank you, with
sharleema
.” I touched his sleeve in the Igaal way of showing gratitude, and in the dimness I saw that his eyes were wet.

Softly, he kissed his fingertips and laid them against my cheek, then he went back to the dancing. Long heartbeats after, I felt his touch on my skin, the warmth and gentleness of him. So many
times, since our journey to the Shinali land, we had been close, and many times I had thought that he would kiss me. But he never had, nor had we spoken of our feelings, and I supposed it was because I would soon be gone, or because he had made promises to a beautiful Hena girl called Navamani. As I watched him go back to the dancing now my heart ached, and I thought how fine he was, and how much I would miss him after this night.

Bending my head low over the cup he had made, I traced the eagle's wing, and thought of the eagle on the bone
torne
Yeshi wore. The images blurred, combined, both unspeakably precious to me. I wrapped the cup in the leather again, and, when no one was watching, put it carefully in the bag hidden behind me, under my bedding, close to the tent wall.

Ramakoda came and sat with me for a few moments. He brought me some food. As he gave me the bowl he said, “Go well, sister of mine. We'll meet again, in the Eagle's Time.”

“I live for that day,” I said. “Thank you for all that you have done for me, Ramakoda. For being an older kinsman to me in every way, for protecting me and helping me.”

“Not as much as you've helped me,” he said. “But for your help, my bones would be bleaching out by the Ekiya, and Kimiwe would be flying in the wind. I owe you a great debt, and will never forget it.”

“My heart and yours will always be together,” I said and touched my hand to my chest, then to his.

“They surely will,” he said. “Shimit go with you.”

Then he stood up and went back to the dances.

Chimaki came and sat by me, leaning her head on my shoulder. My heart ached, thinking I would not see her again.

“You're a good healer, Chimaki,” I said. “If anything ever happened to me, you'd manage well on your own. You know the medicines to give to Mudiwar. If his breathing gets hard, make him breathe over steaming water with leaves in it from the
inagha
plant.”

“Nothing will happen to you,” she said.

Darkness came, and more hot meat was brought in, and more jars of
kuba.
There were more dances, prayers, and rituals, and I half-listened, drifting in and out of sleep, for none of us had slept much the previous night. I woke suddenly, disturbed by the lack of noise. They all were sleeping, many of them snoring, men, women, and children lying every which way on the rich carpets, beyond knowing, thick furs pulled roughly across them. Even the slaves slept, and the brazier fires burned low, their glow flickering across the furs and flushed faces, and on the drinking cups and empty food bowls stacked high on the wooden chests. I could not see Ramakoda or Chimaki, though Kimiwe slept near me, a doll clutched in her arms.

Across the dim tent someone got up and stumbled over the sleeping forms toward the door. He turned and looked at me, and I saw that it was Ishtok. He flapped his arms like wings, then went out.

My heart thumped painfully. I longed to hug Kimiwe, to say good-bye to her, but I simply kissed her cheek while she slept, then dragged my bag and winter coat from under my furs. I was already wearing new boots Ramakoda had made me, and the warmest winter dress I had. Shaking, sick with apprehension and joy, I lifted the tent flap and rolled outside, dragging my bag after me. The other tents around were powdered white under the
moonlight, and were quiet. There was no one but myself outside. I could smell smoke from the cooking pits, and could hear the river rushing southward into the night.

I pulled on my coat and laced it up, then took the mittens from my bag and drew them on. I pulled my hood over my head, and placed my bag over my shoulder. My breath was white in the moonlight, and the cold made my face ache. It had stopped snowing, and a moon, sharp as ice, blazed among the bitter stars. I turned westward and began walking.

I walked quickly, my steps crunching on the snow between the sleeping tents; no one came out. Once a dog barked, hearing me, but a man sleepily swore it to silence. On I went, past the last row of tents. Ishtok was there, on the edge of the plain, his fur coat black against the snow. His bow was across his back, with a quiver of arrows. He said no word but turned toward the plain, and we began walking. On and on through the winter whiteness we went, into the silence and the west. Running east to west were the five stars we Shinali called the Pathway of the Sun, and we followed their direction. Often we turned and looked back at the camp spread along the riverbank, but there was no one about. We did not speak.

We were halfway across the plain before Ishtok relaxed and said to me, with a grin, “This is your freedom, Avala, forever this time. What does it feel like?”

“A high lot joyful,” I said. “But sad, too.”

He took my hand, and I wished I were not wearing mittens, so I could feel our hands palm to palm. He was not wearing a hood, and there were flecks of snow in his black curls. He did
not speak again, and we walked quickly across the moonlit plain. An age, it seemed, since I had ridden across this plain in front of an Igaal rider, with Ramakoda moaning beside us. I looked back at the tents; already they seemed like another world. Ahead were the forested hills. I could see the tree trunks stark against the snow ahead, but they were layered with white above. Then the plain was behind us, and we were in the shadows under the trees.

Letting go of my hand, Ishtok took his bow, and got an arrow in readiness. “Wolves,” he said. “Maybe bears. We'd make an easy prey. Keep very quiet.”

It was easier walking in the forest, for little snow had fallen through the branches, though the ground was dark. Through the treetops I glimpsed a sky already turning gray. Once we saw two wolves, their eyes yellow and their breaths misty, and Ishtok yelled at them and they fled, vanishing like smoke among the trees. He had not even lifted his bow, though I was glad he had it.

Too soon we were through the forest, facing a wide plain pink from the dawn, with mountains on the other side and a black river cutting through the white. The Ekiya.

“Here's where we say farewell,” said Ishtok. “You will be safe; the soldiers never come in the winter. But go quickly.”

I pressed my hand to his breast, over his dark fur coat, and spoke the Shinali farewell. He placed his hand over mine, and bent his head until our brows touched. He was much taller than I. His breath blew like mist about my face, and was warm. Briefly his lips brushed mine.

“May all the gods go with you,” he said.

I wanted to say things to him, deep things, but did not know
where to begin. Then suddenly it was too late, and he was backing away, trying to smile, failing. Behind him the sun rose red in a stormy sky. Clouds, black and heavy, were tumbling in from the north.

“Go well!” he called, and waved once, then turned and vanished among the trees.

A long time I stood looking at the shadows that had swallowed him. Then, from far in the forest a wolf howled, and I turned and began walking across the wide white grasslands. The sun was lost again behind heavy cloud.

By the day's middle I had reached the ravine carved by the wild Ekiya through the mountains, and the river tumbled out to meet me before plunging northward to the plains. I stopped and ate some of the meat Ramakoda had packed into my bag, for I had eaten little at the feast, and drank from the waterskin he had given me. Not far to my left was the sloping rock, slick with ice, that I had hidden beneath when the soldiers came. So long ago, it seemed.