Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar (5 page)

To begin with, the she-wolf suffered many lonely hours. Indigo was asleep for much of the time, slowly recovering her strength, and during her short waking periods, Shalune would more often than not detail at least one of her subordinates to sit with her in the close, quiet sickroom. The
kemb
family was too busy to pay Grimya much attention-even the youngest children were allowed no time to play with her—and beyond the ordinary routine of giving her food and water and an occasional kindly word, they left her to her own devices.

Had they been anywhere in the world but the Dark Isle, Grimya thought, she might have spent her time hunting, a pleasure that she greatly enjoyed and that might have enabled her to repay her generous hosts with some fresh meat. But hunting in this dank, heavy forest was a far cry from stalking and chasing through the cool greenery of the Western Continent or over the snows of the Redoubt. Here there were pitfalls at every turn: flowers and leaves that stung like hornets, reptiles that spat poison, crawling things that could bite even through her thick fur to draw blood and raise painful rashes on her skin.

Besides, Grimya didn’t know that she’d want to catch, let alone eat, the game animals she had seen lurking among the trees hereabouts, for something about them repelled her. They looked unwholesome, dull and slinking and surly things, living their lives in a world of lush semidarkness and decay, and utterly alien to a wolf born and bred in the clean, bracing cold of the far south. Their uncooked and unspiced flesh, she suspected, would taste as repellent as they themselves looked to her, and—though she knew the comparison was irrational—they reminded her in an obscure way of the warped creatures she’d seen, more years ago than she could count, in the poisoned volcanic mountains of Vesinum.

She wished with all her heart that they’d never come here. The Dark Isle had a reputation throughout the world as an unhealthy, unclean place that was better shunned, and when Indigo had made the decision to leave the city-state of Davakos on the Western Continent and set out once more on her travels, Grimya had tried to persuade her not to cross the great island but to find another route for their journey. Indigo had refused. They must go northeastward, she had said, and northeastward meant just that. The only other choice was to sail north through the Snakemaw Straits and then bear toward the Jewel Islands and the Eastern Continent beyond, and that was something she didn’t want to do. Grimya had understood the reason for her reluctance. Both the Jewel Islands and the Eastern Continent held terrible memories for Indigo: memories of friends who had died a quarter of a century ago during her desperate bid to find and unmask the Serpent-Eater of Khimiz. Memories, too, of friends who had survived that ordeal with her but who had since aged a quarter of a century while Indigo remained unchanged, friends who would now be unrecognizable. Indigo desperately didn’t want to risk meeting them again. Worst of all, she didn’t want to risk discovering that time had got the better of them and they had died a natural death. She’d already suffered that blow once, when she and Grimya had returned to Davakos after an absence of more than twenty years. They had had an old and dear friend among the Davakotians, a tough little woman called Macce, who had been both shipmate and close confidante when Indigo had crewed on the
Kara Karai
under her command. Indigo had promised Macce that she would return one day. She had kept the promise at last, but its fulfillment came too late and she and Grimya had reached Davakos’s shores only to learn that the little sea captain had come to the end of her natural span and gone peacefully to the Earth Mother. Indigo had grieved deeply. She felt—and nothing Grimya could say would sway her—that she had betrayed her old friend. The wolf didn’t understand this complex and peculiarly human reasoning, but she knew Indigo well enough to believe that her decision to travel directly across the Dark Isle and subject herself to its hostilities rather than take the easier route was some kind of self-imposed penance, a way of atoning for her failure by inflicting hardship on herself. Macce, Grimya thought sadly, would never have approved of such foolish behavior.

But, wise or no, the thing was done now and they must make the best of it. At least there was the cheering knowledge that Indigo was improving by the day—indeed, almost by the hour—and whatever her doubts about Shalune and her followers in other ways, for that Grimya was deeply grateful to them.

On the third day of her recovery, Indigo was allowed to leave her bed for the first time, and while she sat on the
kemb
veranda in the comparative cool of late afternoon, she and Grimya had their first chance in some while to talk privately together without interruption. In the last few days, Grimya’s telepathic sense had enabled her to pick up a good deal more of their hosts’ tongue, and though she had kept her distance from Shalune’s cohorts, she had nevertheless overheard snippets of their talk here and there. That, together with the extraordinary scene she had witnessed at Indigo’s bedside, had enabled her to piece together at least a partial jigsaw of the women’s intentions.

They were talking of omens
, she silently told Indigo, after glancing back—illogically—over her shoulder lest someone should be watching them.
I didn’t understand much of what I heard, but I think they were led here by something that happened or something that they saw. It has a connection with you, Indigo, I’m sure of it. With what they said before about you being “the one.”

Indigo stared at the still, heavy forest canopy a few yards from the
kemb
. “The one ...” she mused aloud, then switched back to telepathic speech.
You didn’t overhear any more details? Such as in which direction this place of theirs lies
?

No
. Grimya paused.
Why? Is that important?

It might be
. Indigo reached into the neck of her shirt and took the small lodestone from its leather pouch that hung constantly around her neck and was one of her oldest possessions. Grimya looked at the stone as it slid into Indigo’s palm and said,
Ah
....

I studied it last night before I slept. But the message it gave me wasn’t as straightforward as I expected—look, I’ll show you
. Indigo held the stone out so that Grimya could see its flat surface. Quivering within it was a minute fleck of gold light, and as Grimya felt Indigo’s mind focus and concentrate, the tiny pinpoint moved abruptly to one edge of the stone.

Northeastward, just as before
, the wolf observed, and glanced at Indigo in puzzlement.
I don’t understand
.

Watch
, Indigo told her. The point of light continued to flicker at the stone’s edge for a few seconds more. Then suddenly it shifted back to the center and began to dart rapidly between the two points like a trapped firefly.

It did the same thing last night
, Indigo said as Grimya showed her teeth in surprise,
it’s never behaved in such a way before, and I have a suspicion of what it’s trying to tell me. Northeastward and yet here at one and the same time, as though it can’t decide which is the more accurate message
. She gave Grimya a long, thoughtful look.
Could that mean a connection with Shalune
?

Grimya understood.
With Shalune, and yet also with this place to which she wishes to take you
?

If it lies northeast of here, yes
. Indigo looked back into the
kemb
, where the women were preparing the midday meal. Shalune wasn’t in evidence, but Indigo had an instinctive feeling that she and her cohorts weren’t far away. She turned to Grimya again.
If it does, then I think that we may have found what we were looking for. Or rather, that it’s come to find us
.

During that day and the one that followed, Indigo tried by every means available to discover more about Shalune and her intentions. That was no easy task, for although Grimya was slowly learning words and phrases of the Dark Islers’ language and tried to teach Indigo what she knew, it wasn’t enough to allow, yet, for any communication with the four women. Then, on the fifth morning, Shalune came into Indigo’s room, made what had become her customary obeisance and indicated that she wished Indigo to follow her. She seemed pleased about something, and Grimya, picking up the tone if not the gist of her thoughts, warned Indigo that something was afoot. Cautiously, Indigo allowed Shalune to escort her along the passage, through the
kemb’s
main room and out onto the veranda.

She stopped dead when she saw what awaited her. How the women had come by it, she couldn’t begin to imagine, but set incongruously on the hard-packed earth before the
kemb
was a litter, made from bamboo and rattan, curtained with multicolored fabric and hung about with grotesque fetishes of wood, bone, stone and feathers. Beside the litter stood the three subordinate women; they, too, made obeisances, and Shalune, smiling with satisfaction, gestured toward the litter and said something in which Indigo caught only the word for
people
.

Grimya stared at the litter.
I think she is telling you that the villagers have made this thing
, she communicated uncertainly.
She also says something about going, but I can’t understand any more than that
.

Shalune, still smiling, indicated the litter again, and abruptly Indigo understood. With no preamble and no apparent preparation, the priestesses meant to depart from the
kemb
this morning—and the litter was intended to carry Indigo herself.

She heard movement behind her and turned to see two of the
kemb
women emerge through the door with her packs in their hands. They carried them reverently and a little nervously, as though half afraid to touch them, and at a brusque signal from Shalune, they hastened past Indigo and down the steps to load their burdens into the litter. Indigo stood still, not knowing how to react. She wasn’t prepared to simply capitulate to the women’s wishes without knowing where they meant to take her or what they meant to do with her, yet how could she make them understand that? How could she voice her protest?

They were waiting for her, and Shalune’s heavy brows were starting to knit in the embryo of a frown. Indigo looked at her, into her hard eyes, and said carefully in the Dark Isle’s tongue, “What is this?”

Shalune looked astonished. This was the first time that Indigo had ever addressed her in her own language, and the question caught her completely by surprise. Recovering her composure, she bowed low with a flourish of one hand and spoke rapidly and emphatically.

Grimya, what did she say
? Indigo communicated desperately. She hadn’t understood; the speech had been too fast and too complex, but she didn’t want Shalune to realize how limited her grasp of the tongue as yet was.

I think
... The wolf struggled to match the words she had recognized with the impressions that her telepathic senses garnered from Shalune’s mind.
She is saying you will be carried. She talks of esteem, and of something else—I don’t know what it means, but it feels like a good word, a word of praise
.

Shalune was watching Indigo expectantly but warily. Quickly and silently Indigo asked the wolf,
What’s the word for “where”? I must find out where they mean to take us
!

Grimya told her, and Indigo repeated the phrase aloud. Again Shalune replied rapidly and at length, and Grimya said,
She talks of water and ... a place, a building, I think. A special place. Like ... a temple
?

Indigo nodded. It was what she had suspected, and she met Shalune’s gaze steadily.

“Where?” she said again, and this time gestured first to her right and then to her left, her eyebrows raised slightly in a clear interrogative.

Shalune bowed again and turned to indicate the track that ran past the
kemb
and away, farther into the island’s depths. “That way,” she replied. Indigo knew enough to understand her words this time. “Five days of walking.”

Indigo stared past the woman’s pointing finger, and her face gave away nothing of the sudden quickening of her pulse. Northeastward. The lodestone’s seemingly ambiguous message was explained. For a moment she stood very still as a mixture of emotions and reactions rioted in her mind. Then she realized that above them all, one clear in stinct stood out, and it swept away all doubts, all caveats, all other considerations.

She said silently to Grimya:
We must go with them. There’s no other choice that makes any sense
. And with a grave nod to Shalune, she walked down the veranda steps toward the litter.

Her hosts heaped gifts upon her before they would allow the procession to depart. Indigo didn’t want to accept them; the family might be modestly prosperous by local standards, but it was by no means rich and couldn’t easily afford to give away the foodstuffs and utensils and bolts of fine-woven cloth that were piled into the litter at her feet. Her protests went unheeded, and all that her erstwhile hosts wanted—hungered for, it seemed—in return for their generosity was for her to lay both her hands on the heads of each of them in turn, from the old grand-dame to the smallest babe-in-arms.

Indigo felt like a charlatan, but she didn’t have the courage to refuse them, and when finally the blessing ceremony was over, and amid noisy farewells, the four women bore the litter away, she sank back behind the colored curtains feeling shamed and guilty. What had Shalune and her cohorts told these trusting people? That she was some special being, imbued with the power to bring them good fortune? Did Shalune herself believe that ... and if she did, why? What
was
she to these women?

She sighed and pushed back the curtain, which was making the already overheated air inside the litter unbearably stifling. Grimya, who disliked confined spaces and had preferred to run alongside the litter rather than ride with Indigo, looked up as the fabric twitched back. She had read her friend’s thoughts and she spoke in Indigo’s mind.

It seems to me that we cannot hope to have the answers to those questions for a while yet. We must be patient, and trust in the lodestone.