People of the Nightland(60)

He bowed his head, and nodded. “Oh, yes, very much.”

He wondered why he’d just said that, when, in truth, he really didn’t know.

“Then you’re a fool.”

“I suspect so.” She didn’t catch the irony in his voice.

He shoved away from the ledge and gazed up at the night sky. “The Blessed Star People have begun to open their eyes. We should go. Given the trails we have to follow, we have a way to travel before we reach Headswift Village.”

She woke Ashes, and they walked quietly in the deep blue shadows of the boulders, stopping frequently to listen for the sound of footsteps on the path behind them.





Twenty-three

Kakala turned his head away as someone threw a cupful of something liquid at him. The cold stuff spattered on the cage bars, and on his crouched body. His nose immediately detected the cloying scent of urine.

He closed his eyes, breathing deeply. The cage was a wooden box, constructed of spruce poles carried in from the distant groves where they extended in small patches into the tundra. The poles had been hacked into lengths, the corners bound together with wet sinew and allowed to dry snug and tight.

He had room only to crouch in the waist-high box. Food and water were brought daily—the former consisting of scraps collected from the camps, bits of gristle, previously gnawed bones—anything thought unfit for the evening fire.

Other people don’t do this. The notion seemed stuck in his head. No people he’d ever heard of treated their miscreants this way. Among the Sunpath, traveling from camp to camp with the seasons, a family was responsible for its own. A man who compulsively stole, or acted violently or dangerously, was simply smacked in the back of his head when he wasn’t looking. It was a way of recognizing that something was wrong, that some evil had taken possession of his soul.

Why are we so different?

He shifted, feeling the muscles in his back, thighs, and calves cramp. And this was just the end of the second day.

He clamped his eyes tight, grinding his jaw.

At least it is only me this time.

Each heartbeat that he spent bent double and aching was one that Keresa, Bishka, and the rest did not. He was here for them, enduring for them.

Not like last time. That had been true horror. He had watched his beautiful wife wilt, her soul ebbing in futility, as she crouched two cages down from him. At first they had called reassurances back and forth. But as the days passed, she had grown reticent, and then, finally, ceased to answer his pleas completely.

He liked to believe that she died the night of the storm, that it was the cold wind, blowing snow, and fog that had killed her. Not a loss of will.

He needed but look back to see her long dark hair, the sparkle in her eyes. Oh, how she’d laughed, her white teeth shining behind full lips. Had any woman ever lived to match her?

Their life together had been special. She, like Keresa, had been born to the hunt, to the trail, and adventure.

Perhaps it is time for me to die, as well. Nothing is left.

With Nashat’s order, he had felt everything slip away. All of the long hard years it had taken to rebuild his life and reputation had vanished in an instant. Nashat had taken it all with a snapping voice, disdain in the man’s eyes.

“Why?” he whispered. “What have our people become?”

Opening his eyes, he looked up past the polished spruce poles to see the Star People, so many of them, on the clear black night. They packed so closely together they made the sky seem small.

Like me. I am small. And getting smaller.





Exile

The Sunpath People call the time before Wolf Dreamer led humans through the hole in the ice the Exile. They believe it was a period of eternal darkness and cold, a lonely time when the gods had abandoned them.

How strange that they do not realize Exile requires solitude and abandonment in order to reveal its truths. It is only when the gods desert us that we dare to look deep inside and ask why … .





Ti-Bish tried his best to be invisible as he took step after careful step up the irregular course of the ice tunnel. In the sacred stories, it was told that great shamans, witches, and Powerful Spirit Beings could wish themselves invisible.

But I am not one. I am not that worthy of Power’s gifts. The knowledge pained him, but could not be helped. For him, it was enough to just try with all the longing in his heart to fulfill the terrifying destiny Raven Hunter had chosen for him.

He stopped short, seeing the standing figure in the half-light. The man was illuminated by a thin streamer of light slipping past the hanging in the great Council chamber.

How can I pass him? Ti-Bish swallowed hard, fear rising in his bony chest. The man was obviously a warrior, for he held a thick wooden club, and stared watchfully up the tunnel toward the exit.