Moonheart (38 page)

"How do you tell them apart?" he'd asked.

"By the way that the sen'fer'sa moves through them. Feel it. Shak'-syo has a winter's breath about him— a piercing spirit like a sudden north wind— while May'asa dreams a golden breeze."

Raising his taw, Kieran had reached out to find it so.

"Well?" Ha'kan'ta asked now, drawing him from his introspection.

"I was thinking of the wolves," he said. "Their movements are more graceful than a bear's to my mind."

"Do you have an affinity towards the wolf?" She had the shredded reeds burning and had begun to add kindling. "What is your totem? Surely not that of the wolf?"

"Totem?" An affinity with a certain animal was yet another of his studies that Tom had been lax in. These many worlds, the quin'on'a and Ha'kan'ta's people... there was so much that Tom had never told him about.

Ha'kan'ta gave him the time he needed to think, busying herself with the fire and then in kneading what looked like unbleached flour on a flat stone by her knee.

"My name," Kieran said. " 'Foy.' It comes from the Irish word 'fiach' which means 'raven.' "

"And do you have an affinity with your flying brothers?"

"I never really thought of it."

Ha'kan'ta stopped kneading for a moment to regard him.

"You are still troubled, are you not?" she asked. "About your companion, Saraken?"

"Yes and no." Kieran sighed. "It's hard to explain. When I first apprenticed to Tom, I didn't know anything— about magic and that sort of thing. But when I began to learn and found my taw... it opened up whole new horizons for me. Changed the way I perceived the world. I thought I understood the limits and goals of what Tom was teaching me and tried to adjust to the one while attempting to attain the other."

"There are few limits," Ha'kan'ta said.

"I'm beginning to see that now.
Nom de tout!
There's so much more than I was led to believe. And that makes me wonder: why did Tom tell me so little?"

"How did he withhold knowledge from you?"

"Well, he never showed me how to get to these other worlds, for one thing."

Ha'kan'ta shrugged. "I think this shows the difference between one who is born to the craft and one who is led into it. From my earliest studies I knew that I must do my reaching for myself. My craftfather— who was my blood father as well— showed me how I could attain the state of sen'fer'sa, the something-in-movement that you call your taw. Once I acquired that ability, I was left to discover whatever else I might on my own."

"He didn't show you anything else?"

"He gave me guidance— when I asked. But often his replies to my questions were cloaked in so much ambiguity that I was left feeling more confused than before I'd asked."

"Lord dying Jesus! Doesn't that sound familiar!"

"So I sought more on my own. Did you not seek?"

"I... No. I suppose I never did. I was content with what I had, with striving for more peace of mind. I suppose that I never really believed in these other worlds, for all that I'd been taught so much that was unbelievable."

"Then there you have it."

Ha'kan'ta returned to her dough. Watching the slow steady movement of her fingers, Kieran thought out loud.

"And that's what's been bothering me about Sara," he said.

"What?"

"Well, everything seems to come so easily for her. Poof! And she can do this. Poor And there's something else she can do."

"She is a seeker— that much is evident. She reaches out for understanding, for an understanding of everything. And that can be both good and ill, for one can spread oneself too thin. We have a saying..."

" 'Accomplished at much, but master of none.' Or something like that?"

"Exactly," Ha'kan'ta said. "Still, she has a skilled craftfather. Taliesin Redhair will not allow her to go too far astray."

"Taliesin? Sara's craftfather?"

"It is to him that she has gone— of that I am sure."

Kieran digested this information and found that it didn't surprise him.

"But as I said before," Ha'kan'ta added, pinning him once more with her steady gaze, "you should put worries of her from your mind for now. You are strong as well. I can feel your taw— bright and shining. And there is as deep a strength in it as anything Saraken will find within herself. Master the Beardance with me. Face Mal'ek'a at my side. Think of this— not whether or not you are equal to the task. Kha?"

"Understood," Kieran replied.

"Good. We will eat soon. And tomorrow, when the moon has set, I will take you to my Glade of Study. The medicines are strong there."

Kieran let out a long breath and the bunched up muscles around his neck and shoulders loosened as the tension drained away. Ha'kan'ta was right. Were the quin'on'a right as well? Had Tom been chasing after shadows?

Ha'kan'ta finished the kneading, shaped the dough into small loaves, wrapped them in green leaves, and set them by the edges of the fire. Then she left him and went into the lodge for a few moments. Returning to sit beside him, she handed Kieran a small six-holed whistle made of bone.

"Can you play one of these?" she asked.

Kieran began to ask why, but she simply shook her head and pointed to the whistle. Shrugging, he hefted it, first in one hand, then the other. He drew up his taw and reached out, following the instrument's contours with his inner senses as he ran his fingers along the smoothed bone of its surface. Then he lifted it to his lips and played— a slow air, haunting and unfamiliar, that he realized he'd gotten from the whistle itself, from the instrument's memory of having had that air played on it many times before.

When he finally took the whistle from his lips and held it on his lap, Ha'kan'ta asked him:

"Given only the instrument, how would you judge its previous owner?"

"That's a strange thing to ask, but..." He closed his eyes, recalling the air and the feel of the air holes against the pads of his fingers, the fit of the mouthpiece against his lips, the spirit that still spoke through it. "I sense a deep quiet. A stillness, like the silence in the heart of my taw. But this instrument's owner had that stillness a thousandfold deeper than anyone I've ever known."

"An apt description."

"Whose was it?" Kieran asked.

"Taliesin's. Now do you understand what the quin'on'a meant?"

"Taliesin's? But—"

But nothing. Now he did understand. And if the bard was anything like this instrument's memory of him, he could well understand how everyone from Sara to the quin'on'a defended him. The spirit he sensed that still touched the whistle could never have become Mal'ek'a, could never have become so evil. But if that was so, why was Tom so convinced that the harper was his enemy?

"Ha'kan'ta..." he began, but she shook her head once more.

"No more talk. Now we eat. And afterwards, you must rest. Your wound still requires time to heal properly. We will have all of tomorrow to speak as much as we will. And in the evening, we will go to my Glade of Study."

The smell of the small loaves lifted from the fire, reminding Kieran of just how hungry he was. Trouble was, bread alone wasn't going to fill him up.

"We must eat lightly," Ha'kan'ta said. "And tomorrow evening we fast in preparation for the Beardance."

Again she seemed to have read his mind. What was it? Did his features give away everything he thought? The discipline of shielding his own thoughts was one of the first things that Tom had taught him, along with how to tune out the staticlike mental noise that leaked from the people around him. He bore the skill as unconsciously as he breathed. Yet she seemed to cut right through it.

At the same time that he realized this, he discovered that he could feel the easy rhythm of her surface thoughts as well. He watched the firelight touch her features as she moved the leaf-wrapped loaves away from the fire with a stick. A sense of easy companionship came from her, as though they'd been friends for a long time. She looked up, catching his eye. A fleeting sadness touched her thoughts, then was gone.

"I have been lonely," she said, "for I have sought no companionship since my father journeyed to the Place of Dreaming Thunder. But tonight, sharing my fire with you, I remember what it is I have been missing. My people are solitary folk by choice. Loneliness is rarely a stranger to our lodges. But when the choice is taken away from one... as the tragg'a took my father from me..."

"I'm sorry it happened," Kieran said. "Especially the way it did. It must have been hard on you."

Ha'kan'ta sighed. "I know he is happy, drumming in that place of peace. But still I miss him."

They sat quietly for a long moment. When Ha'kan'ta finally stirred, Kieran started to give the whistle back to her, but she shook her head.

"You must keep it," she said. "I've never played it and I can think of few things more sad than an instrument that is never used. Let my sadness be alone in the night and, with your company to ease it, soon set aside. At least for awhile."

"Thank you," Kieran said, meaning more than just the gift of the bone whistle.

Ha'kan'ta smiled. "You are very welcome, Kieranfoy."

They slept that night on beds of cut cedar boughs, out under the open sky with the scent of the resin strong in the air. Kieran lay awake for a long while, listening to Ha'kan'ta's quiet breathing as she slept a half dozen paces or so from where he lay. He held her gift of Taliesin's whistle in his hand, running a finger across the air holes. An owl hooted in the distance and he had the sudden urge to lift the instrument to his lips and call back to it. Instead, he turned over and, still clutching the whistle, finally fell asleep.

The following morning Ha'kan'ta removed the poultice from Kieran's side and pronounced it healed enough to not require further bandaging. Kieran stared at the scar tissue in mute fascination. All that remained of the wound was a set of four white scar lines raised upon his skin.

That day they spent lazing about Ha'kan'ta's camp, talking of their craftfathers and themselves, exchanging tales of their worlds and their own roles in them as the morning drifted into the afternoon. Late in the day, Kieran took out the whistle and played a few of the Irish tunes he remembered from his days with Toby's band and tried a strathspey that he'd learned from a piper the last time he'd played a club in Halifax. Ha'kan'ta accompanied him on a small ceremonial drum and the jaunty Celtic tunes took on a curious reverence as the music drifted off through the trees.

It drew the wolves in from the forest to lie between them and even Ak'is'hyr, who stood between the riverbank and the camp placidly chewing his cud, appeared to be listening. Kieran had never experienced anything quite like it before. The bone whistle, an instrument he was not overly proficient upon, took on an entirely new dimension for him against the rhythm of Ha'kan'ta's drumming.

At length the twilight came and the moon, floating high above the pines as darkness fell, turned westward and dipped below the trees. The combination of fasting and the strange resonance of the music that he could still hear inside him worked a spell on Kieran so that he felt light-headed and very aware of his surroundings.

Ha'kan'ta stood. She seemed to float to her feet.

"It is time," she said.

Taking Kieran by the hand, she led him into the forest.

The night skies above Ha'kan'ta's Glade of Study were moonless and grew darker as a spread of cloud cover moved across the stars. A wind touched the boughs of the encircling pines and made a low mournful sound.

"Amongst the rathe'wen'a," Ha'kan'ta explained, "each of us has their own cha'hen'ta— Glade of Study. This is mine. I have named it S'ha'vho'sa— Where-the-Moon-Meets-the-Pines— and it is here, and only here, that I may pass on my knowledge to another. Craftknowledge, such as the Beardance."

Kieran nodded. They were sitting cross-legged, directly opposite each other and so close that he could have reached out and touched her shoulders.

"What exactly is a Beardance?" he asked, remembering their conversation the previous night about how each of them viewed a bear's movement. He was a little uncertain of what was going to be expected of him. Would they daub paint on themselves and dance?

"A Beardance is the ability of shaping one's spirit as a bear's spirit is shaped."

"Shapeshifting?"

A mild sense of alarm touched Kieran. He saw clearly in his mind's eye the man that he'd had to kill in Patty's Place— what? A hundred years ago?

"It is a shapeshifting," Ha'kan'ta said, "but not of the body. Think of the something-in-movement— your taw. You know it as a silence— shapeless, without boundaries. With my people it has the rhythm of a drum and takes on the properties of our totem. With the Beardance, you will learn how to take on the shape of a bear's taw. You will be strong as a bear— stronger than you have ever been. As strong as Taliesin. Strong enough that together we may defeat Mal'ek'a."

"Just like that?"

Ha'kan'ta smiled and shook her head. She had brought a leather bag with her and her ceremonial drum. She set the bag between them and took from it a necklace of bearclaws and a shallow bowl of carved wood. Next she withdrew what looked like dried mushrooms and a small watersack. She put the mushrooms into the bowl and, using the back of her thumbnail, ground them as with a mortar and pestle. When she was satisfied with the fineness of the powdered fungus, she added water and stirred the mixture with her finger until it became like a paste.

"You must lie down now," she said.

"But..."

"Do not be alarmed. I will be your guide. What we must do now is allow you to meet my totem. But because she is a totem, she is not of this world, nor of any world that can be reached by physical means. She dwells in the world of my heart— deep within. She dwells in Ha'hot'rathe— Where-Walk-the-Bears."

"I'm not alarmed," Kieran said. "I just want to know what to expect."

Ha'kan'ta shook her head. "You must free yourself of all expectations, save this: that you are in my care and that I will keep you from harm, no matter where you go. I will protect your body; my totem will protect your soul."