The Wild Road (8 page)

Her prickly frustration faded into shock. “
How
transformed?”

“How is it done? Or what is done?”

“Sweet Mother, Brodhi—
How will they be changed?”

“The mechanism is the will of Alisanos. As for the change itself?” He shrugged. “It depends on how long a human is in Alisanos and where. The wild magic is inconsistent.”

“‘Inconsistent,'” she echoed with explicit clarity, glaring at him. “How
in
convenient.”

“What would you have me say? Should I lie to him? Mislead him? Is that not cruel?” He saw color rise in her face. It was the edge of anger, born of a depth of empathy that he could not comprehend. “Bethid, you know nothing about Alisanos. I do.”

“Because you're from there.”

It was statement, not inquiry. Ah, yes. She knew he wasn't Shoia. The hand-reader had told her so; the hand-reader who had, unaccountably, drawn the attention of Alario, his sire's brother. Possibly the hand-reader knew more than any human alive about Alisanos.

But not enough.

Bedthid's hands went to her hips. “Alisanos is a place, not a
being
. How can it have a will?”

He stared into her eyes and saw an implacability equal to his own. It was far more than curiosity—this was a demand. And yet he could not explain Alisanos to her, because he lacked the human words. Alisanos, to those born of it, simply
was
. Every child of his people was taught from the creche that Alisanos was omniscient and sentient, and terrible in both. Alisanos was greater than even the highest of the primaries.

Who was, at this particular time, Karadath, his sire.

Five years. Five human years. Until that time was up, he could not challenge his sire. He could not prove himself. He could not ascend. He could do nothing, now, save repeat his journey to complete his journey.

“I'm not in the habit of betraying confidences,” Bethid said, “as you well know. And I can't see that my knowing additional details would harm this settlement more than it already has been harmed.” She made an expansive gesture with her right arm, as if presenting the entire settlement to his attention. “See what Alisanos has already done? Tell me why, Brodhi. And if it's a
who
, not a what, tell me that, too. I deserve it, don't you think?” She tapped her chest. “I am here at the edge of the deepwood, within striking range. If I am to be taken by Alisanos, to be transformed by it, I want to know why and how.” And then the demand dropped away from her voice and posture. Bethid looked tired as she raised a hand, palm out. “But—not now . . . later. I suspect it will take all of my attention, and I haven't it to spare just now.” She
was
tired; it was most unlike Bethid to let go of either argument or passionate discussion before its natural conclusion. She looked past him and sighed. “I see our tent is down again . . . Timmon and Alorn are mired in canvas.” Her gaze returned to his. “Repairs are more easily made by four in place of two.” She slapped him on the arm with the back of her hand. “Now, Brodhi.
Before
the sun sets.”

He turned to watch her as she moved past him, striding toward the collapsed tent. She was a small person, small even for a human woman, and yet her personality and determination were greater than any human he knew. Brodhi considered for a moment, eyebrows arched, then hitched a shoulder in a brief shrug and followed her. It served him as well to put up a tent he intended to sleep in come nighttime.

And at least Bethid's attention had been appropriated.

Chapter 5

T
HERE HAD BEEN
no time, no time at all, nor room in Ilona's mind to truly comprehend what had happened to her. First, death. Then, life and a night in Rhuan's arms; and then harried, blundering explanations to friends and strangers about her resurrection. Now she stood alone in a soiled burial shift, hair a mass of tangled ringlets, feet bare and dirty, with nothing
but
time to sort out the turmoil in her mind.

They had left her, all of them, their minds on other things: Rhuan departing with the farmsteader whose family was lost to Alisanos, Mikal and Jorda marshaling men to again raise the ale-tent, Bethid following Brodhi, and the tent-folk and karavaners once again turning their attention to their damaged belongings.

She was alone, yet surrounded.

Ilona put out her hands. They trembled, even as a shiver ran through her body. Now, now there was time, and her body knew it. It overtook her, shook her, weakened her knees. She was altogether, and suddenly, hungry. Thirsty. Utterly exhausted.

Nausea rose. Ilona pressed both trembling hands against her mouth.
No, no
—
please, no
.

She ran. Shaking, shivering, hungry and not, in need of privacy. In need of a bath. In need of . . .
something
. Something as yet unrecognizable.

She had been dead. She had been murdered. Yet lived.

Shoia, Rhuan said. That was the glib explanation; and the only one, he said, that others would understand. He was not Shoia, nor the courier, but she apparently was.

Shoia
.

She had no idea what it actually meant, to be Shoia. Or if, beyond offering a person seven lives, it meant anything at all.

As Ilona reached her wagon parked beneath one of the old-growth giants, she stopped at the bottom of the steps. Nausea subsided. Now she had time to send an appeal skyward, something unconnected to her mundane belly but wholly connected to emotions, particularly self-doubt:
Oh Mother, help me
.
Guide me in this
.

She climbed the steps into a wagon, no longer tidy in the wake of the earth's violent upheaval. For a moment she stood just inside the door, noting with empty interest the tumbled array of belongings and supplies spilled across the floorboards, across the blankets she and Rhuan had shared. But her chaotic surroundings were of no moment. Other concerns filled her mind.

Slowly, she folded her shaking body and sat down on the blankets. She pulled the coverlet from the floorboards, from under those things fallen. She wrapped it around her, clutched it close, but could not still her trembling.

She had Rhuan . . . was that not enough, to have the man she desired?

No. It was not.

Too much, too much in her mind. Time, now, to parse the thoughts and realizations gathering behind her eyes.

She hugged the coverlet, hugged the body beneath it, and felt tears rising.

Ilona let them fall.

THE FARMSTEADER MENTIONED
the need to relieve himself, so Rhuan was alone as he climbed the steps into the family's wagon. He paused just inside the door, noting that the contents of the tall, huge-wheeled conveyance were no longer set perfectly into their places, as was required to host two adults and five children. And the rib-supported canopy listed to one side, as if the earth's shaking had pushed everything out of true.

At the front of the wagon, wood planking formed a large, elevated platform. Atop it lay thin, straw-stuffed mattresses, muslin sheets, and a tangle of coverlets. Room for four children, Rhuan realized, but the boards had shifted and were no longer evenly aligned. Trunks filled the area beneath the platform. A child's cloth doll lay face down in the center aisle.

The wagon shifted as the farmsteader climbed up, ducking his head to avoid the ribs overhead. He paused, then gestured Rhuan to take a seat upon the bedding platform. He himself sat down upon the floor crosslegged. As Davyn picked up the doll, Rhuan saw that his hands shook. A quick glance at his face betrayed tears in the man's eyes.

A wholly human compassion rose in Rhuan. He shoved the platform boards back into order, then sat down. “It is the truth, what I've told you. They are safe.”

But that was not enough. Not for husband and father. He saw it in Davyn's eyes as tears dried.

Rhuan moistened his lips, drew in a breath that fully expanded his lungs, and continued. “It is true that Alisanos occasionally gives up what it has taken almost immediately, but we simply cannot assume that will happen in this case. Hope, yes; of course we will hope, but we must not be frantic with it.”

“‘We,'” Davyn echoed. Something glinted in his eyes, something akin to a potent anger suppressed, and Rhuan realized he had erred in words meant to reassure. “
‘We'
assume nothing,” the farmsteader declared flatly, with a sting in every word, “and I will indeed hope, and pray, in any display of emotion I wish. Frantic? Oh yes, I may be frantic. I may be desolate. I may be naked in my despair. But you have no wife, no children. How in the Mother's name can you even begin to comprehend what I think and feel?”

It was a natural reaction. Rhuan opened his mouth to say that according to the customs of his people, he actually was married to the farmsteader's wife. Then he closed it, abruptly aware that such a statement would not, in the least, bring ease.

Davyn continued to stare at him fixedly. Rhuan saw the tautness of his face, the pallor of his flesh, the anger in his eyes. “Did you send us the wrong way?” Davyn asked in a raw tone. “In the storm. Intentionally. Did you send my family the wrong way? Those I've asked have said you would never do such a thing . . . but I know nothing about you. What if you had a reason for giving them up to the storm? And is it just bad fortune that I was left behind to ask such questions?”

It had not crossed Rhuan's mind that he might be blamed for the loss of the farmsteader's family. For several moments he could not think of a proper answer, until at last he said, “No. No. And I will swear that to your Mother, if you wish.”

Davyn flared, “You are not worthy of the Mother.”

Oh, indeed: anger and hostility. Rhuan owed nothing to this Mother of Moons; she was no deity of his, but he offered because he believed it might mean something to the farmsteader. Clearly, it did not. And, strangely, it hurt to have it stated so definitively. Unworthy. He, the son of a primary.
Unworthy
of the Mother.

And perhaps he was. “I attempted to send them to safety. They were my responsibility. I am a karavan guide. I
do
care. I do. I sent them to what I believed was safety. And you as well.” He shook his head and was reminded that as yet his hair remained unbraided. There had been no time to instruct Ilona in the intricacies. “Alisanos does what it will do, goes where it will go. I could only do what I believed was safest.”

Davyn leaned forward as he shut a fist around the cloth doll. He raised it, displayed it. Shook it at Rhuan. “My
entire family
is lost.”

Rhuan teetered on the brink of explanation. He liked, admired, and respected Audrun; her loss was indeed devastating to the man who loved her. Because he knew Audrun, he understood how much this loss hurt; understood better than Davyn believed he did. He owed the man, he felt, for Audrun's sake, for the sake of the children lost to Alisanos; owed the absolute truth and clear, unequivocal answers to all of the farmsteader's questions. This man was a caring, responsible father who dearly loved his wife. He was indeed devastated. Anyone possessed of compassion would wish to help this man.

Compassionless Brodhi could withhold all information, Rhuan reflected, as the rules of the journey required, but now, here, he himself could not. Not when he looked into Davyn's eyes and saw the naked pain, the agony of not knowing. And that pain kindled a share of its own in him. Empathy, he recognized; a purely human emotion.

What would I do, had I lost so much? Had I lost what I most loved?

And he realized that he could be empathic because he
had
lost what he most loved. When he saw Ilona, dead.

It was time to offer whatever words, whatever explanation he could to assuage a fraction of the man's pain. He would no longer keep secrets from him even if it was forbidden to tell him of Rhuan's heritage, the dictates of the journey. After all, Darmuth wasn't present to hear him.
Too
much divulged
, Darmuth would say; and the demon would then be required to tell the primaries what Alario's get had done.

Could he lie to Darmuth? Could he lie during a Hearing? To do so abbrogated everything about the journey. And it put Darmuth in danger.

Rhuan looked at the doll with its stitched-on face, button eyes, hair of yellow yarn, then met the farmsteader's gaze. There was no question in his heart but that he had to ease this man's pain. Despite the risk to himself, he was wholly comfortable with his decision. “They were together when I left them. Where they are, no harm will come to them.”

Davyn's face was taut. Jaws flexed as he gritted his teeth. “Tell me why you left them there. How you could come out, but they could not. Are you immune to this wild magic?”

“No,” Rhuan answered. “No such escape exists. In Alisanos, I can die.”

“Then how is it you're untouched by this transformation?”

And now the crux. “My mother,” Rhuan said in a carefully calibrated tone, “was human.”

Davyn blinked, momentarily diverted by an apparent non sequitur. “Your mother?”

“My sire—my father—was not.
Is
not. It is the absolute truth that I was taken by Alisanos even as Audrun was; I can avoid its caprice no more than anyone. But because of my father's blood, I have more resources.”

“Sweet Mother, you're talking in riddles! What do you mean, ‘resources'? Why does your father's blood mean anything? And if he's not human, what
is
he?”

“A god,” Rhuan said dryly.

“A
what
?”

Rhuan drew in a deep breath, then blew it out in a noisy gust. “What I am about to tell you will sound fantastical—well, I suppose it
is
fantastical. But it is not fantasy. There is a difference.”

Davyn scowled. “Speak directly; I have neither time nor patience for dramatic elaboration.”

Rhuan continued at his own pace, in his own way. “Of course it is all
so
fantastical that not a soul would believe you—and if anyone asked, I would say you were lying. But no one would believe you anyway. So—”

“
Rhuan!
”

“—so why bother to tell them?” He let his skin color deepen faintly, his eyes glint red; summoned a subtle trace of the
presence
all primaries commanded. “Why bother to tell them?”

Davyn understood. He eyes flickered and he pressed his lips together, then said clearly, “Nor have I time to tell fantastical tales.”

And so Rhuan explained. He told Davyn what he could of—everything. More than he had told to any human, save Ilona. It required a good while, even abbreviated to the mere facts, facts without personal observations, without nuances in his tone.

When he finished, his voice roughened from so many words, Davyn sat there with his mouth partly open and the thoughts behind his eyes working frantically. Rhuan suspected the farmsteader had so many questions that he could settle on none of them. Some, anticipated, had been answered, but in turn led to other questions, other explanations.

“She is a strong, confident, self-sufficient woman,” Rhuan said, “as well as an exemplary mother. Alisanos may not distinguish among those it has taken and those who were born there, but I do. And, regardless of what they say, the primaries do as well. She is someone to contend with, Davyn. Neither weak nor lacking in courage. She will withstand them all.”