Deepwood: Karavans # 2 (24 page)

But he did tell Mam and Da. Each dawn, before Meggie awoke. Before Lirra awoke. In his mind, he told them everything.

BETHID MADE GOOD time, covering ground effortlessly atop smooth-gaited Churri. As on all assignments, she rested and watered Churri several times throughout the day, ate and drank in the saddle, stopped for the night as the sun went down, and was on the road again just before dawn. But this time she felt a sense of urgency far more demanding than usual. This time it wasn’t a message she bore on her shoulders, but quite probably the welfare of karavaners and tent-folk. With Brodhi on the road to Cardatha, it was imperative she find Rhuan as soon as possible.

Thus, when she turned off the main road onto the shortcut to Atalanda and saw a man in the distance walking in her direction, relief came with a rush. The absence of a mount explained Rhuan’s tardiness. She shouted, waved, and asked Churri to increase his pace so she might reach Rhuan more quickly. And yet as she drew nearer, her relief plummeted. The man wore no braids; in fact, he was blond. Nor was he shaped as Rhuan was. Within a matter of moments she recognized him: one of the farmsteaders Rhuan had gone to aid. The husband, in fact.

Hiding disappointment, Bethid reined in as she reached him. “What’s happened?”

The man halted. He was red-faced and wet with sweat, hair sticking to his head. His voice was hoarse,
as if he had not drunk in too long. But Bethid saw he had plump waterskins looped across his shoulders. “My family,” he said, “has been taken from me.”

“Alisanos,” she breathed. “O Mother—I am so sorry! All of them?”

He scrubbed a forearm across his brow. “All but me.”

“Did Rhuan find you?”

“Rhuan?” Color drained from the man’s face. He was white now, blue eyes frigid. Anger was palpable, as was bitterness. “Oh, indeed, he found us. And delivered my family into Alisanos.”

“Rhuan
did?”

“The guide,” he said. “The Shoia.” He spat aside and made a gesture Bethid recognized as a curse.

She struggled to find words, to control her shock. “He wouldn’t! Why would you think so? Why in the Mother’s name—”

“Because he did so!”
the man roared. “He put my youngest two up on his horse, sent my older two north, and instructed my wife and I to go as well. He was explicit—”

“He told the settlement folk to go, also,” Bethid cut in, “before the storm got too bad. He meant us to escape, and likely wished the same for your family.”

“He meant no such thing! He delivered my family to Alisanos. He probably intended the same for you, even if it didn’t come to be.”

Churri sidled, upset by the emotions. Bethid reined
him in, absently patted a shoulder. “Why? Why would he do such a thing?”

The farmsteader’s tone was venemous. “Maybe he’s not a Shoia. Maybe he’s a demon out of Alisanos. Or maybe the Shoia
are
demons, and come from Alisanos. All I can tell you is that he sent us all north. He carried my youngest north. I looked, you see, when the storm was over. I searched. All I found was Alisanos! No wife, no children. Only the deepwood!”

She was sympathetic to his grief and anger, but couldn’t believe what he said was accurate. “I can’t imagine that Rhuan—” she began, and was sharply cut off by the farmsteader.

“Do you know him so well, then? Does he confide in you? Do you know his thoughts, his intentions?”

She did not. “I know Brodhi better, of course, but—”

“Swear to me,” the farmsteader said.
“Swear
to me on the name of the Mother that the guide is incapable of doing such a thing.”

On the name of the Mother? Bethid couldn’t do that. She knew who Rhuan was, but not the heart of the man. “I can’t,” she said quietly.

“You see?” His smile was humorless, little more than a grimace. “I tell you, they are gone. All of them. Where they went is now part of the deepwood. Where he
sent
them.”

She wanted to disagree. She wanted to convince him his belief was incorrect. But she had no evidence, and no words that might ease his anger.

“I’m assuming,” the man said, “he’s returned to the settlement. The Shoia.”

Bethid shook her head. “No one has seen him since he set out after your family.”

The farmsteader swore, spat again. “I want him,” he said. “I want him so I can find out what’s become of my family. So he can guide
me,
not a karavan, into Alisanos.” He glared up at her. “Is the karavan-master at the settlement?”

“He is.”

“Then he is most likely to know where his guide might be.”

“I don’t think Jorda knows,” she told him. “The storm broke not long after Rhuan left. As I said, no one’s seen him since.”

“Convenient,” the man muttered. “I have not seen him on the shortcut. Perhaps he’s in hiding.”

Bethid badly wanted to diffuse the situation. Accordingly she dismounted. “Here. Climb aboard. You’re too heavy to ride double behind me; take the saddle, and I’ll ride behind you. Best we get you to the settlement.”

“I want,” he said, “to find my family. I need the Shoia to do that.”

“And the most likely place you’ll find him, eventually,
is
the settlement.” She indicated the saddle again. “We’ll ask when he returns.”

“If he doesn’t?”

Bethid sighed. “Then there are two possibilities. He’s either dead—”

“Or in Alisanos, where he sent my family.”

After a moment, reluctantly, Bethid nodded. She did not believe, could not believe Rhuan would do such a thing, but she recognized that the farmsteader would not be convinced otherwise. Not yet. “Let’s go,” she said. “If what you say is true … well, Jorda needs to know.”

“Everyone
needs to know.”

It was difficult to agree, but she did. “Yes.”

Satisfied with that, the farmsteader mounted Churri. Then he shook the stirrup free of his foot and reached out an arm. Bethid set her left foot into the stirrup, caught his hand, and swung up onto the horse’s broad rump.

He was wrong, the farmsteader. He had to be wrong. Bethid retained a very clear memory of Rhuan coming into Mikal’s tent, urging them to go east, urging them to tell everyone in the settlement that safety lay in going east, that doing so might deliver them from Alisanos. It made absolutely no sense for Rhuan to send anyone
into
danger. Not on purpose.

And then another memory came. Rhuan had freely admitted, there in Mikal’s tent, that he couldn’t tell them
how
he knew they should go east. He simply knew, he said, and asked them to trust him. And they had, she and Mikal, when Jorda and Ilona expressed their faith in Rhuan. Those two knew him best. Those two believed. Jorda’s and Ilona’s trust in Rhuan had been enough for her, enough for Mikal.

Bethid had gone east, as Rhuan instructed. And she had survived. So had others.

This man’s family had gone north, also directed by Rhuan. North was not east; she wondered why the change in direction. Especially now that all in the family but the farmsteader were lost to Alisanos. And Rhuan himself was nowhere to be found.

He’s wrong. He must be. Rhuan wouldn’t do such a thing. Not intentionally
. Indeed, it was more likely, Bethid felt, that he might well be trapped in Alisanos himself, as helpless as the farmsteader’s family.

But Bethid kept that thought to herself. The man in the saddle was understandably upset, desperate to find his family, and as desperately afraid he could not. Rather than give in to grief and despair, he conjured something in which he could believe, something that supported an irrefutable certainty that Rhuan was to blame for his family’s fate because, she knew, it provided a goal. Something to which he could anchor himself. Something that allowed him to be a man, not a soul paralyzed by a terrible loss.

Perhaps once he spoke to Jorda, his conviction could be altered. But it would take two or three days to reach the settlement. She would not ask Churri to resume the pace she had required while on the way to the shortcut. The farmsteader was a big man, and now the horse carried two. But even walking, Churri would get them to the settlement more quickly.

So many things,
too
many things, to think about. To stave off confusion, to dismiss the image the farmsteader
had planted in her mind of a family sent intentionally into Alisanos, Bethid sought and found her own certainty:
When Rhuan arrives at the settlement, he’ll explain everything.

BEHIND A MASS OF underbrush and shrubbery near the river’s edge, Ilona took the red signal cloth from beneath the rock that weighted it and hung it where it could be easily seen by anyone approaching from the settlement. Then she stripped out of her soiled clothing. It was awkwardly done because of her splinted forearm, but eventually she managed it. Tunic, skirt, belt, and smallclothes; she would remove her felted slippers at the grassy verge just before she stepped into the water. Then, odd as she knew it was, she tied one end of the rope near the roots of the largest bush and knotted the other end around her waist. She acknowledged her weakness, seeing no shame in it, and realized that though the river’s current, here, might not be so strong, she wished to take no chances. Jorda, Mikal, and probably the Sister would admonish her if they learned what she did; the achoring rope provided her with a small defense against them.

She played out the rope as she walked carefully down the riverbank, placed the towel and slippers near the edge, then, gripping the ball of soap in her left hand despite the splint, used the right to let herself
down. The entire process felt strange, almost comical, but eventually she stepped down into the water, balanced on stones beneath her feet, shivered from the chill, then worked her way carefully down into the pool carved out of the riverbank. The cool water would do well by her broken arm as well, she felt, and if there were any slight residue of fever, that, too, would be banished. Ilona slowly sank into the hiphigh pool, hooking the splinted arm across the top of her head, though she imagined no harm would come to it if she got it wet. But she wouldn’t do it intentionally; that would give Jorda yet another thing to chastise her for.

Ah. Bliss. After a long moment she raised the splinted arm into the air and tilted her head back, back, until her skull touched the water, soaking her hair. A somewhat deeper dip wetted the rest of her hair and her head, lapping at her face. Ilona released a sigh of relief; then, rising, clutching the soap ball in her right hand, began to scrub hair and skin.

She would be clean again.
Clean.
Ilona revelled in the water, shedding worries along with dirt. Such luxury!

It was as she lathered her hair, staring absently into the distance, that Ilona noticed the trees. New trees. Strange trees, all twisted upon themselves. They were unlike anything she had seen. The forest, perhaps a half-mile away, stood where no forest existed before. She was certain of it.

“Mother,” she murmured, chilling again. “Alisanos?”

It must be so. No other forest could simply
arrive
where none had been before.

Mother of Moons, the deepwood. Much too close.

Then, unexpectedly, apprehension faded beneath awed curiosity. Alisanos, visible. Alisanos, here.