Moonheart (57 page)

"What are you thinking about?" Jamie asked Traupman.

Traupman looked up from where he'd been studying Thomas and shrugged. "Just trying to work out how the shaman did it— calming us all down without speaking a word. And the way he diagnosed what's the matter with our patient here."

"We don't know that he's right," Jamie said.

Traupman shook his head. He crossed the room and took a chair across from Jamie.

"I believe he went right into Thomas Hengwr's mind," he said. "He went right in and, mind to mind, found the problem." He looked beyond Jamie, eyes slightly unfocused. "It's so frustrating. To find out after all these years that it's all real, all possible. After sifting through so much garbage looking for even a shred of evidence. I'd give anything to be twenty years younger so that I could begin again with what we've learned in these past few days."

Jamie nodded. "Perhaps it was simply our own inability to come to terms with the reality of it all that was holding us back."

"Perhaps," Traupman agreed.

"I'm going down to talk with Sam," Jamie said, rising from his chair. "I think I'll give him a hand with those journals."

"Why don't you bring a few up and I'll go through them while I'm babysitting our patient."

"All right. Want a drink to go with them?"

"Tea would be fine."

Blue sat up suddenly, looking around.

"What is it?" Sally asked. "Your medicine man?"

"Don't know, babe. I just have this feeling."

He crossed to the window and looked out into the darkness. There was something out there. Not just the tragg'a, not just the night. He could see the moon from where he stood, still above the trees. He didn't think it was Ur'wen'ta coming. He didn't know what it was. He just had this feeling inside that... something was coming.

"I'm going to check out the windows and doors," he said. "Want to come?"

"We're not going outside?"

"I'm not planning to, babe."

He shouldered the Weatherby and went to his pack, taking out Mercier's .38. He'd already given Tucker the Margolin. He handed the weapon to Sally.

"Use both hands, okay?" he said. "It's got a hell of a kick if you're not expecting it."

Sally swallowed and took the gun. It was heavy and looked huge in her small hands.

"You okay, babe?"

She nodded.

"Don't shoot until you know what it is you're shooting at, okay?"

"I don't know about this, Blue..."

"It's probably nothing," he replied.

"I'll be all right," Sally said.

"Then let's go."

Blue didn't know what they were looking for. He just knew he had to get moving, because something else was moving. They ran into Tucker and Maggie in the Silkwater Kitchen. Tucker had just finished cleaning the Margolin.

"What's up?" he asked, taking in their weapons and their attitude.

"Don't know," Blue said. "It's just a feeling I've got."

Tucker nodded. There it was. He wasn't the only one. He regarded the biker steadily, realizing that his attitude towards him had changed over the past few days. He was glad they were on the same side— whatever was shaping up.

"I'll take the west side of the House," he said.

Blue nodded. "Something's coming," he said, "but I don't know what it is."

Tucker waited for him to explain.

"What I'm trying to say is, don't shoot first and ask questions later. It could be Ur'wen'ta."

"That's not making it easy," Tucker replied. He'd been about to tell Blue that he didn't need to be told a thing like that, but he'd bit the comment back.

"Nothing about this is going to be easy," Blue said.

Sara followed the clifftops east. Her moccasins whispered against the rocks. Low-growing twigs brushed against the soft leather of her dress. The wind tugged loose hairs from her braids to tickle her cheeks. The tang of the sea was strong in the air, mixed with the heady rich resin scent of the spruce and cedars. Stars glimmered like distant candles and the Northern Lights danced.

She came out of the woods into May'is'hyr's Glade of Study— Rathe'feyn, the Moon's-Stone-Bear. Here the night was silent. Standing under the height of the Bearstone, she had the sensation of entering a cathedral whose lofty ceiling was the night sky itself, whose walls were the forest and the cliffs. Stepping close to the Bearstone, she laid her cheek against its rough surface and thought she felt the earth breathe through it.

For the first time since Taliesin and Pukwudji had spoken of them, she began to get a true sense of those shadowy Old Ones that moved just beyond the borders of one's everyday perceptions. It didn't matter then whether or not they were testing her, nor what their reasons might be. All that was important was that she be found worthy of their continued interest. What she'd told Taliesin was true: everything she'd been before, all her friends and her life up to now, had made her what she was. But the desire to become a moonheart, she realized suddenly, did not invalidate what she'd done thus far. Nor did it make her a different person.

What did she want? She repeated Taliesin's question to herself. To reach her full potential. And if that entailed going back to her own time and facing the danger of Kieran's demon, then that was what she had to do.

She'd come this far, mostly by drifting along with events, like a leaf on the wind. It was time she took to the Way using her own endeavors, with a clear goal in mind.

Closing her eyes, she drew up Taliesin's tune in her mind and sent a silent call through the forest. Against her back, the Bearstone seemed to grow warm, adding its own deep resonances to her small thought-voice.

Pukwudji was no longer sure what it was he'd attempted to do by entering Sara's dreams and drawing her to him. To prove something to the bard and his stag-browed Forest Lord from across the Great Water. Yes. To show them that there were many Ways and all of them true. And in doing so, he'd be helping Sara— which was no selfish deed in its own right. So. Given such motives, why did he sense such foreboding?

He knew the feeling well enough, for this would not be the first time he'd meddled in the affairs of those more powerful than himself— but none of them had been Forest Lords. It would be wise, he was once told by an old tribal Shaper of the quin'on'a, not to meddle in the affairs of the Old Ones. For they were powerful and quick to anger.

Miserably, Pukwudji stared at his toes and wondered what he'd begun. Should he go to the bard and tell him what he'd done? Thinking a moment, the honochen'o'keh mournfully shook his head. No. It was too late for that. Oh why, oh why, had he meddled?

Because, he told himself, such was his nature.

He lifted his head with sudden resolve. He was Pukwudji. Not so powerful as a Forest Lord, but he had strengths still. Not so wise as the quin'on'a, but cunning still. Yes. He was Pukwudji and he was what he was. Always alone, but never on his own, for all the world was his home.

His fears washed from him like tidal foam flowing from the shore-bound rocks. His owlish eyes gleamed bright in the darkness as he stood up and looked about. He heard it then— Sara's sen'fer'sa calling to him. Ah, he thought, feeling the strength of her call. Grandmother Toad herself might call like this, solemn as the mysteries of the old stones that once walked and now were still.

Hai-nya!

He liked this herok'a whom he'd only met in a dream, but had watched from afar all through the day. His future self had liked her as well— or so her memory showed him. There was in her something that was neither bear nor wolf nor any beast he knew. It was as delicate as the moon's light, yet rooted deep in the earth's bones. When she grew her horns...

He lifted his head and called to the night sky:
See her, Mother Moon? She is your daughter, this hornless one. And she will not be hornless for long.

The wind stirred the leathery cedar leaves and rattled the slender spruce needles one against the other.

Hai-nya-hey!

Pukwudji grinned. He opened his arms wide and took an owl's shape. Silent wings beat the night air as he sailed above the dark trees, following the call back to its maker.

Other beings heard that silent call.

In the round tower overlooking the sea, Taliesin's harping faltered for a moment, then began anew. Call him then, he thought. Perhaps a manitou can help you where I cannot. His harping took on an edge, reflecting his disappointment.

May'is'hyr nodded over her weaving. Yes, Little-Otter. Call Old Man Coyote's cousin to you. But remember what I told you. What he will be will depend on what is inside you.

She glanced at Hagan who'd looked up, regarding first her, then the harper, before returning to his net. He heard nothing but the wind, but he'd lived with these two long enough to know that for them the night held more than he could sense. Something was brewing. The little maid was gone, Taliesin brooded like a lovesick bird, and Mayis was too quiet for his liking. But that was the way of druids— be they harper or shaman. They were always hearing things on the wind, reading import into the flicker of a fire's honest flames, the turn of a bird's wing in the sky. Bah! It was no concern of his.

Further afield, in the camp of Ko'si'tye, Tall-Deer, who was the chieftain of the tribal folk whose hunting lands bordered closest to the round tower, the tribe's old Healer lifted his grey head from his blankets and left his lodge to learn what had called him from the paths of sleep. His name was Ho'feyn'to, Wind-That-Shakes-the-Moon, and he had seen sixty-three winters. Stamping his feet in the dewy grass, he lifted his head to regard the night skies, his nostrils flaring like a hare's. For a long moment he stood, listening with his sen'fer'sa, before he returned to his lodge.

"What is it?" his craftdaughter asked from her blankets.

"Spirit talk."

"But what do they say?"

The old man regarded her through the lodge's darkness, his old eyes bright and seeing as clearly as if the sun had already risen.

"If you must ask," he said, "then there is no need for you to know. Kha?"

His craftdaughter sighed and turned, seeking sleep once more. "Kha," she said softly.

Ho'feyn'to sat awake for a long while, his gnarled fingers toying with the rough fringes of his medicine bag, as he considered what he had heard. At length, he too returned to his blankets, but sleep was long in coming.

Further afield still, three tragg'a paused in the midst of their hunt.

Their heads swiveled on their thin necks. Yellowed tusks gleamed in the starlight and long talons clicked loud in the still night air as they opened and closed their clawed hands.

Listening, they regarded each other, weasel grins tightening their lips into grimaces of amusement. This herok'a they sought would not be so hard to find if she kept up this call. Instinct gave them a direction and, judging the distance between themselves and the call, they began a shuffling lope towards it. If they kept to this pace they would reach the herok'a long before sunrise.

The talisman medicine she carried they would deliver to Mal'ek'a. But her hornless soul would be theirs. They would feed on her body and make a medicine necklace from her bones.

For a long time Sara was simply a part of her call. It was like an old stately tune that kept tempo to the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest, to the drum of her heartbeat. The call grew fainter, fainter, then died away. She opened her eyes. Pukwudji had come.

The little man stood a few feet away, regarding her with his big solemn eyes.

"You came," she said.

Pukwudji nodded.

"I am like the tide. I always keep my trysts."

Sara smiled. "I didn't know we had one."

"Oh, yes." He sat down, taking his time about crossing his legs.

"You seem at peace," he said at last. "At least, more so than the last time I saw you."

"It's very peaceful here. Something about this stone and the air and well, everything. But all my fears and worries are still there, underneath the calm, banging around against each other in a big jumble. I don't really want to think about them, to be honest, but now that you're here, I suppose I should." She was quiet for a moment, gathering her thoughts. "Pukwudji, if I was just dreaming the last time we met, how come you remember it too? Was it real?"

"It was real. I came to you as a totem would come: through a dream to warn you. I thought what they did was wrong. What they expected of you was unfair if they would not allow you foreknowledge."

"They?"

"Taliesin and
his
totem. The stag. The Forest Lord from across the Great Water."

Sara remembered what Taliesin had told her last night after he'd come walking out of the forest. He said he'd met with a "stag who caught the moon." So it hadn't been just bardic doubletalk, or rather, it had been, only she hadn't pursued it far enough. An image came to mind of a small bone disc with a stag's antlers inscribed on one side and a quarter moon on the other.

"You were very vague last night," she said.

Pukwudji nodded. "I was... afraid."

"Of what? Taliesin?"

"Of him? No. Of his totem. Forest Lords are very powerful, Sara. I knew I was meddling in what didn't concern me. They can be quick to anger."

"What changed your mind?"

The honochen'o'keh looked uncomfortable.

"That's okay," Sara said. "You don't have to tell me any more if you don't want to. I don't want you getting into trouble because of me."

Pukwudji remained serious for a long moment, then a broad grin blossomed. "I changed in here," he said, tapping his chest. "Who are the Forest Lords, I thought, to tell Pukwudji what to do? I have been here as long as they have. And especially a Forest Lord from across the Great Water! What have I to fear from him?"

Watching him, Sara knew that what he said was ninety percent bravado. Still there was nothing wrong with that. Bravery was in knowing the odds and still going against them.

"Thank you for helping me," she said.