Cordimancy (22 page)

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” she heard Toril whisper. “It never felt like the right moment. You haven’t exactly been approachable.”

No. She had not been willing to talk. She couldn’t dispute it.

“It’s not hopeless,” Toril continued. “I’ve been thinking hard about this. If Gorumim’s really heading for the river, then we have a chance, even without any special abilities on my part. I know people in Two Forks. We keep cash reserves there. Half a dozen powerful men owe my father a favor. If we can get there before he does...”

When Malena did not respond, and the silence grew awkward, a plaintive tone crept into his voice.

“Please forgive me,” Toril whispered. “I am trying to do my best...”

She felt his chest heave. His breathing grew more noisy, and his forehead began to bob against her shoulder.

“I’ve made a mess of everything,” he gasped, his voice hoarse. “Tat told me to be diplomatic at the council. You begged me to find a way to agree with Gorumim. Instead, I shot my mouth off and made him angry, and he took it out on Noemi.” A barely audible whine dwindled from tenor into soprano as he fought a sob.

Malena wanted to grab Toril and shake him. She wanted to pound his shoulders with her fists, weep in bitterness and accusation. Did he really expect her sympathy? Did he have any idea of the price that others were paying for his pride and stupidity?

She stepped away from the boulder, the tree, and her husband, and walked out into the rain.

23

footwraps ~ Malena

The
fire had generated a broad bed of coals by the time Malena rejoined the group. Her teeth chattered; the shoulders and hood of her cloak were sodden.

The black dampness of the trees ringed them on every side, and hung opaquely overhead to hide cloud and moon. The air was motionless but full of the subdued patter of the rain, punctuated by drips and trickles. Her boots sloshed.

Oji nodded a curt greeting as she stepped into the clearing. He was crouched over the fire, hands stretched wide, still wearing the double layers that Toril had given him earlier; he looked more alert than when she’d seen him last. Had he taken a nap before starting his stint on watch, or did his vitality just return with proximity to heat?

Beneath the boughs of a spruce, Shivi and Paka snuggled like spoons, sound asleep under layers of buckskin and wool. An undignified snore from Paka brought a fleeting smile to her lips; she noticed how his beard bent inward as he inhaled.

Toril curled nearby, surrounded by mounds of pine needles. His face looked pale, weary; a bare sole half-poked into the light. Hika lay on one side of him, his staff on the other, endcap glinting.

Why did she find herself able to feel empathy or good will for her husband more when he was asleep?

“Lavender tea?” Oji suggested. “Shivi told me to keep it warm.” He extended a tin cup.

Malena curled her fingers around the hot metal and sipped gratefully.

When her fingertips had lost their pink, and her belly gurgled with warmth, she worked her boots off and hung them upside down on sticks jammed in the dirt near the fire. She was just finishing when she remembered that her bedding was in the saddlebags.

She winced in regret. The rough footwraps she wore could scarcely get wetter, but the ground was muddy and full of pine cones and rocks. And at last she was not cold. Was it worth pulling the boots back on again?

Oji’s voice caught her as soon as she stood and stepped away. “He already laid out your stuff.”

Malena rotated on her heel, eyes scanning the margins of the firelight. Beyond the boots, in the overhang of another spruce, she saw a beige blur with cream along the edge.

The sheepskin was spread on a knee-deep bed of dry needles. When she pulled it back, the aroma of toasted spruce tickled her nose. Two melon-sized stones nestled in the piles of padding, still radiating heat from the fire. Atop one lay a pair of clean, dry footwraps.

“
You
were crying in your sleep.”

Malena turned around and considered Shivi’s small form in the morning half-light.

“I thought I was quiet,” she said, wiping at her cheeks.

“You were. But I’ve become a light sleeper in my old age.” Shivi took a step closer. “I don’t think it’s wise for you to wander away. I was worried sick about you last night, even though Oji said he could tell you were close.”

Malena shrugged. “The wood naris have been keeping watch. I heard their voices when the morning breeze began to sway the trees.”

“Wood naris are as flighty as birds and as elusive as moonbeams. Not a source of protection.”

Malena sighed. “You’re right, of course. It’s crazy. Being alone scares me to death, especially this deep in the wilderness. But I’m a bit numb, I guess. Jittery about everything, to the point where one more risk hardly seems to matter. And being around people who... know what happened... gets me claustrophobic. No offense intended. I just have to come out for air no matter what might be waiting to grab me.”

“Some times are safer for breathing than others,” Shivi observed.

Malena shrugged again.

“You were angry with Toril when you left last night.”

“Yes.”

“He told us why.”

Malena pursed her lips and shook her head. “I thought he wanted his privacy. He waited long enough to tell me.”

“He said you convinced him that we had a right to know. He said he couldn’t do anything special in whatever rescue plan we picked, because his magic is gone. His plan is to try to reach the river port before Gorumim does.”

Malena stared at the brightening sky.

“I’m feeling pretty stupid right now. I should have listened to him when he wanted to go to Sotalio.”

Shivi’s fingertips brushed her elbow. “Because we came, someone who cares about those children is close behind the men who took them. I think good will come of that—but even when a kind act doesn’t accomplish its preferred purpose, it kindles more light in the universe. It is never wasted.”

Malena exhaled. “I thought the young were supposed to be idealistic, and the old jaded.”

Shivi’s lips twitched.

“I’m desperate to imagine we’re doing something noble here, but the truth is, I’m afraid, Shivi. Afraid I’ll be attacked again. Afraid my parents are dead. Afraid I’m wrong about Tupa being up ahead. Afraid about the rescue. Afraid that I doomed those children by insisting on a course of action that could never work.”

Shivi didn’t respond right away. “I’m afraid, too,” she murmured at last.

Malena chewed her lower lip and fretted with her braid. “How do you stay so steady?”

“When a woman gives birth,” Shivi said with a sigh, “there is always risk. You can’t wish away the scary parts. But you can trust and hope. It never ceases to amaze me how most labor ends in joy.”

Malena snorted. “Joy?”

“Joy is not the absence of sorrow, Malena. It is its transformation. Or its overcoming—sunlight singing the dawn, knowing the night must flee.”

“What kind of transformation can you possibly expect to come from
this
?” Malena rasped, spitting the words as they tumbled out. “Most of those children have parents who were slaughtered. My sister’s probably one of them. If we can’t stop Gorumim, he’ll murder them in cold blood. My husband’s an outcast who’s lost his magic, we have nowhere to live...”

Shivi regarded her without blinking.

“Now that you’ve started, you need to keep going,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re leaving out an important part of the tragedy.”

“My list isn’t long enough for you?” Malena snapped. “You want me to include Toril’s father dying, the others who were butchered in the attack? You want me to include the fact that a vicious, powerful man is determined to kill me? Should I throw in Toril’s humiliation that he has half a wife?”

Shivi bit her lip.

“Toril’s sorrow runs deep. I haven’t been around him long, but that much is obvious.” She lifted her fingers to Malena’s shoulder—a faint feather of pressure. “And the sorrow’s not all self-pity; you’d be surprised what a good man’s heart can hold.”

Shivi trailed off, her head bowed.

Birds chirped in the distance, and a breeze fretted the treetops.

Eventually Shivi looked up again, her eyes intense. “But Toril’s grief isn’t what I was after. I want you to put your own name on the list of victims that need mourning.”

Malena absorbed this with stony silence. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she finally said. Her voice broke at the end of the sentence.

“No,” Shivi agreed. “I can see that.”

Malena looked away. “Talking won’t change what happened.”

“But it might change you,” Shivi responded, shrugging gently. Malena could feel her palm move across a shoulder blade, leaving a trail of warmth in its wake. “Look. I didn’t follow you to demand that you pour out your heart; you get to pick how you’ll deal with your own grief. I just want you to acknowledge that you can’t rescue yourself by rescuing the children. And you can’t ignore your own pain forever.”

“Who says I’m ignoring my own pain?” Malena choked out, her eyes swimming. “I can’t escape it. A week ago my future was bright. Now I see darkness everywhere.”

The other woman did not respond at first.

A squirrel chattered. A swallow flitted across the horizon. Then Shivi shook her head and took a breath.

“A week ago, this day was in your future. And so was your wedding, plus all the happy and meaningful moments you’ve yet to live. You’ve encountered some profound darkness, but darkness isn’t how your song ends.” Shivi lifted a lock of hair over Malena’s ear. “I’ve watched mothers bury a newborn, and then gone back to help them labor again in later years. If anybody has a right to acknowledge the fear, the heartache, and the pain, they do. The next time they look death in the eye to give the world a child, they know the cost and the risk. The first loss never goes away.”

Shivi’s voice cracked subtly, and Malena remembered the woman’s guarded reaction when Paka talked about the couple’s own children.

She opened her mouth, but Shivi pressed on. “Just remember that the wail that new baby gives, and the joy that mother feels when the new labor is over, are just as real as the grief—and twice as precious for the price that’s paid. Sunshine eventually follows darkness. Not perfectly. Not in every story. But often enough to hope through the night.”

“But...”

“I’m not telling you that your problems will go away. They are real, and you need to face them. But you are made from stern stuff, Malena i-Toril sa-Teluilsir. Do not be convinced otherwise. Do not give up on joy.”

Malena hiccupped softly. She could barely see through a welling of tears. “I’ll try, Shivi.”

Shivi lifted a palm to her cheek. “As long as you keep saying that, little Lena, the darkness can’t win.”

24

thirteen years ~ Toril

When
Toril asked about his friend’s age, the answer shocked him.

“Thirteen,” said Oji flatly. The little man smiled at Toril’s open jaw. “That seems young?”

“Of course,” answered Toril. “When I was thirteen I was barely past my naming day. Still a child.”

“I am born osipi, not a human who naming-became one. I had this when I was six,” puffed Oji, rubbing his mustache as he jogged beside Toril’s horse. He’d dismounted half an hour earlier, claiming a need to stretch his legs; he showed no signs of fatigue.

“But how can a thirteen-year-old have any sort of judgment or maturity?” Toril asked. “There’s just not enough time to live much in so few years.”

“Not enough time to live?” said Oji, raising a hand in a gesture of disbelief. “I day-live more than you week-live.”

“You eat lots of meals. You sleep several times. That’s not the sort of living that I mean.”

“It’s not the living I mean, either. We live faster, human. As you bounce once in the saddle, my heart beats half a dozen times, and my thoughts fly apace. It is tiresome to speak to you, when you dawdle to choose thoughts and word-put them.”

“Your speech isn’t much faster than mine,” Toril said. He remembered how he’d once been tempted by Dashnal’s fire. He remembered feeling so… different. But wasn’t Oji exaggerating a bit?

“I was trained,” said Oji gravely, trotting around a large thistle and angling back toward Toril’s horse. “It’d be much easier to chirp, but it’d also be rude.”

“I know you use your hands...”

“Have you never learned more about us than that stereotype?” Oji countered. “The signs are useful; I can communicate from a distance, color my words, speak behind my back. Perhaps I should teach you sometime. But we talk without the signs all the time—when it’s dark, when we call to someone who’s out of sight... Osipi speech mostly word- and form-matches your own, but we prefer a more natural pace. Have you never heard it?”

A stream of syllables poured from his mouth, full of vowels and sibilants and clicks. Some phrases brought twinges of recognition, but the tempo was impossibly fast. When he was finished, a long pause ensued as Toril digested this new strangeness.

“I felt the power of your fork on my naming day. But I still thought that osipi were getting the raw end of the deal, to only live a few years.”

“That’s how you measure life? In years? Judged so, the satarisu would be lucky and we’d be cursed.”

“Yes.” Toril was rather surprised that his friend did not see it that way.

“Life is experience, stonecaster. The sata renounce all magic so their lives may be prolonged. Is two hundred years worth the cost?” Oji exhaled loudly. “It isn’t just the magic they lose, you know. They hear well, but music escapes them. They see well, but only gray. They’re just as taste-immune as temperature-immune. They long-remember a few things, but as they age, much substance leaks away. That’s why they’re so record-fond. Their dusty histories cannot compensate the children they never have.”

“Sata know the stars and the shape of land and sea,” said Toril. “They learn languages. They build. They travel. They see kingdoms rise and fall. It gives them wisdom.”

“Does it?” Oji asked. “Is that what you humans think you lose when you can’t push away the magic? You think you’re somehow accepting a lesser, second-best destiny, that you’ll never have the same glory or happiness as your white-haired betters?”

“Well, sata move in circles of power and influence,” Toril faltered. “Is it foolish for simple country folk to aspire to that? To be sata is to be educated, to never wonder if your belly will be full tomorrow. Most of the raja’s advisers and ambassadors are sata. It is the same in Korlia and Renir as well. They wouldn’t be in positions of responsibility if they had no vision or good sense.”

“Not even a highland shepherd should be that naïve, stonecaster—let alone a clan chief. Consider Gorumim.”

“I didn’t say they were
better
than others—only that they have a perspective that’s difficult to equal. Part of what scares me so much about opposing Gorumim is wondering what subtleties in his plan are hidden from me.”

“Subtleties? He looks to be just as stupid as most men, when it comes to matters of pride and power.”

Toril shrugged. “I grant you that. But he has at least
some
hidden knowledge, and it’s a dangerous variety. The reaper curse that descended on Noemi is the strongest magic I’ve ever seen. He shouldn’t be able to do that as a sata. Nor should he be able to conjure wolforen. What kind of man are we fighting against?”

“The flesh and blood kind, stonecaster. There is no other. Even the most deluded in my clan could agree on that.”

“Exactly what did he promise your clan that made them agree to do his bidding?”

Oji turned his gaze up the trail. “Like I said, an end to hunger. Land in the north.”

“I don’t get it. What good will it do you to have land in Zufa, if you can’t bear to hold it through the rains of winter?”

Oji continued to slink along without responding.

Toril pursed his lips as he considered what the silence might mean. “I guess Gorumim gave up little on the naming day,” he observed, “if he can still profit from magic and have the long life as well. Does he claim he can do the same for the osipi?”

“You’re a poor listener as well as a slow talker,” snapped Oji. His speech accelerated as he emphasized his point. “Have you heard nothing I’ve said? To forego magic is to forego life, no matter how many empty years you’re compensated.” He stepped off the path, slapping at weeds that rose to his shoulder, and motioned Toril to rein in beside a cluster of wildflowers.

“What color do you see?” Oji demanded. “What color are the petals?”

Toril looked back, decided the group was too spread out anyway, and swung out of the saddle, groaning a little at muscles stiff from hours of riding. “White?”

Oji waited.

“With a splash of yellow and blue in the center.”

Still Oji waited.

“I don’t see what you’re getting at.” He’d seen their like many times before; they were nothing remarkable.

“My people call these speckled lilies. They’re fleck-covered the color that rainbow-follows violet.”

Toril stared at the triplet oval clusters. Was Oji inventing this just to prove a point? He saw no speckles. Wasn’t violet at the edge of a rainbow? His eyebrows knit. He had felt an amazing sensory burst long ago, when he’d braved the river and tasted the fork of the half lives for a while. But it seemed hazy and a bit hard to credit, now.

Oji laughed at his puzzlement. “Did you think the sata were the only ones experience-trading years? I may not have your lifespan, but I can smell these flowers or a beautiful woman a hundred paces away. And I will not dotage-linger like you; I will snuff suddenly, like a candle at its wax end. Is that such a bad trade?”

Shivi and Malena had ridden together since their last break; as Oji wound down, their horse dropped from a trot and took a few steps off the trail to stop beside the men.

“Shall we rest?” Shivi asked. “My old bones can’t keep up this pace forever, and we should have stopped to eat something hours ago. Noon has come and gone. It will do us no good to press on until one of us faints.” She looked back at Paka, who was lagging on the pony.

“Only for a little while,” Toril said, guessing that her concern was at least as much for her husband as for herself. He reached up to offer her a hand. “The tracks we follow are getting fresher.”

Toril felt the slenderness and thin bones in Shivi’s arm as she dismounted. She was almost bird-like in her lightness and fragility; the speed of their journey had to be a hardship for her, but she never seemed to complain. Paka was a bit slower, but no less determined.

He wondered again about their motivation. Had it been wise to allow them to come? They’d made things less awkward for Malena; he was sure of that. And they’d mostly kept pace. They claimed they would help with the children when the time came, and perhaps there was sense in that notion.

But was he leaning too heavily on their moral support? They were his clansmen. Was he leading them to more heartbreak, or to their own deaths?

Once Shivi was standing, he turned to offer a hand to Malena as well, but she was already swinging a leg smoothly; he had to duck to avoid her boot.

Shivi began working the latches of her saddlebags to break out provisions. “It’s not that simple, you know,” she said over her shoulder.

“What do you mean?” said Toril. He wasn’t sure whether Shivi was talking to him or to Oji.

“The choice we make on naming day, to renounce the magic, or to embrace it, or to allow its visit in whatever measure the Five choose, isn’t just a reflection of the balance between passion and discipline in a person’s heart. And it’s not a wholly personal decision.”

“Selecting one prong of the triple-forked path is as personal as anything I can imagine,” Oji said. “I’ve always been a bit jealous of the freedom you humans have in that moment, to decide what you will become.”

Shivi turned to face them, strips of jerky in her hands. “Jealous?”

“Of course, I am glad to be one of the golden,” Oji said. “But it would have been nice to declare an allegiance, instead of knowing mine from birth. A born osipi has no say in whether he’ll let magic in the blood.”

Shivi turned to wave at Paka, who was now approaching, whistling a tune. Then she sat, rather slowly, in the grass. “Everybody gets to decide what they’ll become. You decide it every day.” She raised a hand to forestall Oji’s objection. “You think born osipi are the only ones that approach their naming day with circumstances that color their choice?”

“My parents would have been disappointed if I’d made any choice other than the one I did,” Toril interjected. “That influenced me.”

“Me, too,” Malena agreed. “I hoped I wouldn’t be a heart, but even if I’d known, I would still have chosen the same. Become a sata, and you outlive everyone close to you. Become an osipi, and your loved ones have only a few years to adjust to the idea of your death. You could claim that the human path is the kindest all around.”

“Kindness has a high price, if it makes you become something you are not,” Oji responded.

“The price of choice on naming day is not all borne by the young,” Shivi muttered, studying her feet. Toril wondered if he detected sorrow in her voice. But when she looked up again a moment later, her expression was matter-of-fact. “People are complex, Oji. Do not assume they would all join you if they just understood what they were missing. And do not assume that only humans and sata give something up.”

Oji colored slightly. “I suppose my perspective skews.” He did not sound convinced.

Shivi smiled at his attempt to be polite. “Consider this, my golden friend. Some day you will wish you could run freely through the snow. Or you will wonder what it feels like to plant a crop in the spring, and then stand in waist-high fields of your own homemade gold when autumn comes. Or you’ll mourn the chance to know your grandchildren. Human experiences, too, are worth having.”

“It doesn’t take a human to tell me that,” snapped Oji with surprising bitterness. But when Toril raised his eyebrows to invite an explanation, the little man just shook his head.