Exile's Children (36 page)

She nodded and asked, “But what of Colun's news?”

The Grannach had not visited them often since delivering them to the valley. He had gone away with his people, and they had spent weeks exploring the confines of the place before deciding on a permanent campsite. It was a valley large enough that an entire clan might have lived there and not gone hungry: it was as if they two were delivered alone into a newborn world, separate and distinct from the wider country that was Ket-Ta-Witko. They had erected their lodge where the stream bent round in an oxbow, lush grass bordering the water, osiers behind. Rannach had hunted and she had planted: they were happy. The moons had faded, one dying to birth its successor, and it had been a good time, free of those concerns that had driven them from the People. Rannach accepted his banishment with a stoic indifference that she knew concealed his hurt, but that had waned as he settled and grew content, and she had wanted only to be with him, thinking there could be no true life for her without him. It had seemed to them both perfec
tion, and were it not for the world beyond their idyllic confines, it might have been, had they been able to forget the larger world beyond the hills.

But then Colun had come back when the Fat Moon waned, telling them of the invaders beyond the mountains who, he said, massed about the foothills, now seemingly masters of all the Whaztaye country.

“And of what beyond that?” he asked rhetorically. “Where did they come from? What are they?”

Rannach shrugged then and said, “I've never seen them and cannot say. Can your golans not tell?”

“The golans speak with the stone, not dreams,” Colun replied. “And no, they cannot tell. But I have seen what I have seen.”

His tone, his face, was grim, and Arrhyna asked, “Shall they breach your defenses?”

The Grannach shrugged then, and said, “Not yet. And a hard fight if they attempt it. But they are so many. They camp in the foothills as if they'd settle there, or wait for something. They herd their beasts on the plains below and, the Maker knows, but such creatures as they ride are past my imagining.”

Rannach asked, “Do they not ride horses?”

Colun shook his head and answered, “What they ride are more lion than horse. I told you they had slain the Whaztaye, no? I was wrong—their animals feed on the Whaztaye!”

He shuddered then, and Arrhyna felt a cold dread invade her, her world. Rannach frowned as if he found this impossible to consider and asked, “They ride lions?”

“Not lions,” Colun replied, “but things like lions, as if lions and horses and lizards had combined. They roam the plains to hunt the Whaztaye sheep—and anything else that lives and has blood in its veins. And their riders hold those of the Whaztaye who still live in pens and feed them to these animals—still quick. They are like some sickness come into the world. By the Maker, they make Chakthi look benign!”

Arrhyna asked, “What are they?”

But Colun could only shake his head and shrug and tell her he did not know, nor any of his people, and Rannach asked, “How do you know all this?”

“We watch,” Colun said. “From the hills where our golans have cut new tunnels so that we may observe them.” And he shook his head and added, “It is not a pleasant observation.”

“Is that not dangerous?” Rannach asked. “Might they not find such tunnels?”

“Perhaps.” Colun shrugged then, and looked uneasy. “But better
we know what they do, eh? And if they find those openings, we can bring the stone down on them.”

“Shall they?” Arrhyna said. “Find the tunnels?”

“Not save they've Grannach eyes,” Colun told her. “Nor the high passes, which are well guarded now. All well”—he looked toward the holy mountain and shaped an obeisance—“the Maker shall see us safe.”

“All well,” Rannach said, “then, yes. But if not?”

“Then we fight a bloody war,” Colun replied. “But not for a while. And you'll have warning enough. Now …” He dismissed concern, staring intently at Arrhyna. “What news of tiswin?”

It had been hard to shake off the fear his news induced, but she had essayed a smile and told him, “I believe I can make you tiswin when the junipers grow ripe.”

“When shall that be?” he asked eagerly.

“In the Moon of Ripe Berries,” she answered, and for all her fear could not resist smiling at his expression as she added, “And then the winter to ferment.”

“Ach!” He grimaced at that. “So long?”

“I thought,” she said, laughing at his exaggerated unhappiness, “that you Grannach were patient.”

“We are,” he said. “But patience is patience, and tiswin is tiswin. And I had hoped that bringing you flatlanders here meant I should have my own supply.”

“So you shall,” she promised, and thought, If the Maker grants us the time.

It had been a souring of their idyll they had worked to forget—which was not difficult because they were in love and alone in a new world, and could do nothing to change events beyond the valley. So they had settled to their new life and built for themselves a happiness that, by consent, precluded overmuch discussion of that dark, black wind that seemed to blow against the mountains from the west and perhaps found a way through the hills to pervade the plains of Ket-Ta-Witko. But still it was there, like the breath of the Breaking Trees Moon skirling about the entry of their lodge, seeking to intrude, and though they did not speak of it, still it chilled them in those hinder parts of their minds that yet looked past the valley. It was as if a shadow hung behind them, just out of eye's range, so that when they turned to seek it, it was gone, darting round to another quarter, where it lurked hidden but yet present, like a skulking wolverine invisible in the night but
there
—unseen and unscented, unheard, only
present
.

But there was also lightness, an easy forgetting of the dark and what it held, or might. Marjia was such a beacon. Colun brought her to them when the Moon of Dancing Foals was old in the sky. Rannach thought she looked not unlike the moon in its fulness: all round and beaming, like a gold-haired boulder dressed in lavishly embroidered shirt and swaying skirt, her hair coiled and pinned with bright silver fixings about a plump face from which cheerful blue eyes sparkled and a rosebud mouth seemed fixed in an everlasting smile.

She bustled, bee-busy and happy as those honey-gatherers, into their camp, kissing first Arrhyna and then him—they both must stoop to accept her embrace—firmly on both cheeks, then cheerfully ordering Colun to unload their gifts. There were needles for Arrhyna, a metal comb, a mirror of polished metal ornate in its design, and a thin knife edged fine to trim hide. For Rannach there was a knife and a small ax, both sharper and stronger than any he owned, a supply of arrowheads, and a new tip for his lance.

“There was not much trading this year,” she said, “and so we've much to give.”

Rannach was embarrassed. “We've nothing to compare,” he said. “You shame me.”

“Ach!” Marjia waved a cheerfully dismissive hand and with her other poked Colun in the ribs. “You promised my husband tiswin, no? And me the knowledge of its making. That's gift enough. The Maker knows, but have I that art, I'll make my husband happy—and have something to trade that drunkards like him will beg for.”

“I am not,” Colun said as dignified as he could as he laughed, “a drunkard.”

“But fond of tiswin, no?” his wife returned, and before he had chance to reply said to Arrhyna: “Shall we look to our dinner and leave these men to manly talk?”

Arrhyna would sooner have heard whatever fresh news Colun brought, but it was clearly Marjia's purpose to lighten the day, and she knew Rannach would advise her of what was said, so she allowed the tiny woman to take her off and regale her with casual conversation as they prepared the food.

Marjia had never met with a flatlander before—only the Grannach men attended the Matakwas—and she found it hard to accept that Arrhyna could be happy with no company save Rannach's. Her own people lived close, in subterranean enclaves that sounded to Arrhyna quite horrible. The villages were lit, Marjia assured her, but the very idea of dwelling beneath that unimaginable weight of stone, families all
crowded together with room piled on room, house atop house, prompted Arrhyna to shudder. But then, it was no less odd to Marjia that the People dwelt as they did, in lodges under the open sky.

“The sky,” she said gravely as her blunt fingers worked with deft efficiency on the vegetables Arrhyna had gathered, “is all very well. Indeed, once in a while, it's good to venture out. But …” She glanced up at the wide panoply of stars and moon and shuddered herself. “I'd not want to be out here all the time. It's so … open.”

Arrhyna could only nod and agree that their two peoples were different in their attitudes.

“But what does that matter?” Marjia beamed. “We are all the Maker's children, no? And did he see fit to make you to wander the open places and we to dwell within our hills, then that's as it should be.”

Arrhyna smiled and voiced heartfelt agreement: she liked this woman on the instant. She could not help, looking at her, thinking of those stones the old folk heated in the lodgefire to warm their sleeping furs of a winter's night: Marjia was as round and solid, and as comforting.

And when, the next day, the Grannach woman departed, Arrhyna found she missed her. It had been a comfortable time, that first visit, and there was a small vacuum came with her going. For a while Arrhyna thought nostalgically on the companionship of the clans, of neighbors and shared duties, of all the things the women of the Matawaye did together. But she had Rannach, and before long the little sadness went away.

She asked her husband what news Colun had brought, and Rannach had shrugged and told her little that was new—the invaders still massed about the foothills, the Grannach still watching them; no more. They both of them wondered what purpose drove the strangelings and if they would attempt the crossing of the mountains, but that was only speculation and idle in light of their isolation. They prayed that the Maker deny the invaders passage, which was all they could do, and returned to their solitary life.

Nor did the subsequent visits of Colun and Marjia shed further light. They came again when the Moon of Cherries Ripening sat high and plump over the peaks, and in the Moon of Ripe Berries, but with nothing new to tell. It was as if all the world hung in stasis, or the Maker's wards defeated the invaders: hope in that, but still the ugly suspicion of
something
impending, still that sense of the wolverine lurking rapacious outside the fire's glow.

But it was ever easier to set that nagging doubt aside: the invaders
made no move and there was nothing they could do, so they worked to set aside the doubts and turned their conversation to more cheerful matters.

Chief amongst these was the manufacture of the promised tiswin. Colun had brought kettles and pots at Arrhyna's request, and he and Marjia joined in the harvesting of the juniper berries and those other herbs required. She had versed Marjia in the quantities and the method of preparation. It seemed at first strange to instruct a woman likely old enough to be her grandmother or more in a thing she had learned at her mother's side, but Marjia was so enthusiastic a pupil—and urged on by her anticipatory husband—that Arrhyna soon forgot that difference and only enjoyed the Grannach woman's company. Together they set the brew to ferment, laughing at Colun's downcast face when Arrhyna told him the tiswin should not be ready until at least the Frozen Grass Moon, or even later.

“Ach, so long!” He sighed dramatically, his craggy face a pantomime of disappointment. Then brightened, asking, “There's no chance I might have a taste now?”

“Not save you want a sour belly,” Arrhyna told him. “It would taste foul now, and make you sick.”

He slumped like a disconsolate stone and murmured, “Then I suppose I must make do with our beer.”

“Which is no bad thing,” Rannach said.

There were kegs of the Grannach ale stored in a lean-to, barrels of worked wood banded with staves of metal, strange to the two Matawaye who used no such storage: Arrhyna thought such constructions would be a fine way to keep meat. Colun had brought them on a handcart he and Marjia hauled like two sturdy ponies, the cart itself of as much interest to the Matawaye as the beer. The idea of carving wood into discs and fixing those discs to axles fixed in turn to a walled platform was unknown to the People. Their portage was done all on horseback, or on travois, and the notion of utilizing wheels was as novel to them as was the idea of riding to the Grannach.

“This,” Rannach declared, touching the cart's round wheels as if they were holy objects, “would make traveling easier. A horse could be set in front to pull, and it all move faster than a travois.”

“Likely,” Colun agreed, without much interest. “But now, do we open a keg?”

Rannach had acquired a taste for the beer, and insisted that their hosts accept deerskins and meat in return. It was a time of learning for them all, marred only by that lingering, unspoken presentiment and one other thing.

Arrhyna had been the first to broach it. “We are your guests, and you are always welcome in our lodge,” she said. Nervously, for she feared she might offend. Indeed, had Marjia not beamed at her, she might have fallen silent then; but the Grannach woman sat all agog and her smile was invitation to continue. “But only you come. Why do no others?”

There was a moment of hesitation, Colun glancing at his wife and Marjia at him as if they shared some silent, somewhat embarrassed communication. Then Colun said bluntly, “Not all welcome you here. There are some claim I was wrong to bring you, that you should be sent back to the lowlands. Some say I defy the Order—that which you name the Ahsa-tye-Patiko—in giving you this valley. They say your presence offends the Maker and weakens our defenses.”