CHAPTER XXVII

…winter comes on, the dying season of the year in which the All-Holy conquered the Western Grass

Autumn declined towards winter during the month they travelled from the shores of the Kinsai’aa. At first they had travelled by night, when Mikki could ride, but as his strength returned they had begun to journey under the sun, hunting as they went. If Mikki was slow and sleepy, reluctant to wake in the mornings, that was—almost usual. He had told himself so. It was winter, and the nature of demons was coloured, somewhat, by the form in which the soul of the world had shaped them. He had used to sleep days at a time, those years when they had settled in Baisirbsk and the winter sun had barely crawled above the southern horizon.

Moth had been patient. She had not pushed. She held him when he twitched and whimpered in his dreams. When all he could do was pace in silence, and the hills and the sky faded, even the scent of them gone to rank reeking of his own body and human stench and smoke, a cage in the darkness of the All-Holy’s temple or the endless jolt and creak of the wagon and the singing that was inside him somewhere, words circling, gnawing, rooted in his flesh…when he could not seem to lift his head even to follow the flight of a hawk or the darting fear of a hare, the water-flow passing of a herd of antelope, she was there, a voice, a clean scent, a rope he could cling to, to haul himself back. She sang, often, or chanted one of the old lays of heroes half-remembered, humankind and demon-kin in the old days before the seven came into the world—the travelling ones, the wanderer-heroes they had loved best, he and she both. In their former travels he had told those as often as she, they taking turns, sometimes, which of them presented themselves as the storyteller, the singer, and which hung back in the shadows, watching…They had hunted Ogada so, Ogada who had been her cousin Heuslar, slayer of her brother, of Mikki’s mother, when first they took the road together.

He had been so young. His mother would have said so, though the cousins he had sailed with when he was truly a young man had grown old and white-haired and taken the road to the Old Great Gods by then.

The Undrin Rift twisted its way between the northerly reaches of the Red Desert and the Black, and followed the course the Shikten’aa might once have taken, carrying meltwater from the mountains to the northern sea. Ghost of a river, cut deep. Up in the desert it was all shattered, knife-edged stone. Where it sliced through the faded yellow grasses here, it was still a region of cliffs and ledges, dry terraces. To the north it broadened to a valley, and the river began to come to life in pools and sloughs and swamps, acres of cat-tail and loosestrife. Clans of the Great Grass grazed their herds in the summer meadows there, and held the hills against intruders, be they raiders from other clans or peacefully passing caravans. He and Moth been there before, long ago.

These cliffs were less contested, but a bad road for horses. For camels. For anything short of a goat, really. There was a track, or there had been, long ago, when Ulfhild Vartu had ventured on some expedition into her enemy and husband’s lands of the Great Grass.

Moth had flown it first, making sure it was no false trail they followed, something that might fade away and leave them hanging over a sheer drop. Passable, she said. But she had sounded doubtful. For a bear, the narrow way was perilous. Mikki went head low, rocks rubbing his flank in some sections, each paw placed with care, following where Moth led the horses. She had said she would rather have taken the horses down first and flown back to follow with Mikki, but he had not waited. Had not argued. Simply been there, behind her.

Black ice slicked the stones in small patches where the morning sun had not fallen.

Not a child, not a damned invalid. He had been, he knew it. He was just…not ready to be out of her sight. To be where the wind might not bring him the scent of her.

“I sent you away,” he said.

It had been burning in him, growing, a pain he could not spit out.

She stopped, there on the crumbling track. Tied the lead reins up, first one, then the other, where the horses wouldn’t tread on them, careful deliberation. Came back, edging past the more excitable spotted horse. Sat down, there at Mikki’s feet, Keeper hitched over her lap, her back to stone and some creeping thing with tiny leaves turning red hanging over her. Below them the stone dropped away, not quite cliff, loose and betraying, to any great weight that set a foot there. He sank down, head on his paws, where he could see her face. She set a hand on his neck, fingers digging into his ruff. She was looking for those scars again, as if she feared they might have torn open. As if she had to remind herself, every time she touched him, that they were there.

He wished she wouldn’t. They were scars. Hardly the first he’d won.

“I left you,” she said.

“I knew why, minrulf.” It came easily, and then it hurt, like seeing a place long lost in time, trees and years long fallen, half forgotten. Taste of the word on his tongue. Tears burning in his eyes and he did not think he’d ever wept before, not in his daylight form, not the bear. Could bears even cry? “I knew why. You were wrong. You should have defied them. The Old Great Gods to turn against a demon of the earth—they would not. They could not. I would have told you so. It was a lie, their threat against me. It was, my heart, it always was. But you left. You flew away. And so I looked for you. Years, I looked for you. Holla-Sayan came, too, a while. After his wife died—I was still looking for you then, and he and I went up into Baisirbsk. The homestead was gone by then—”

“I burned it.”

“I know. It wasn’t the first time I’d been back. But the ruins of it were gone to the forest, then, and the winters were growing heavier. Late frosts and early, they said, year after year. The folk at Swanesby were talking of leaving, going to seek new lands on the Amunn’aa. So I went down across the Great Grass, and nothing, nothing of you—no songs, no whispers on the wind, no scent, no rumours on the road. And I left Holla. I think he went up to Lissavakail for a time, and down to the south, to the sea where the lotus blooms. And I went home.”

“I’d gone to Pirakul. Beyond Pirakul. To the eastern edge of the world.”

“Why?”

“To see what was there.”

“What did you find?”

“The western edge of the world. Trees. A land that perhaps the ships sailed from, to come to the Drowned Isles, long ago. I don’t know. But I didn’t find Jasberek. Then.”

“Lucky for him.”

“Maybe. Not in the long run. He came to find me, did I say?”

“He’s dead?”

“Ya.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He tried to take Lakkariss.” She shrugged. Said nothing more, beyond. “So? After you left Holla-Sayan?”

“But then you did come to me, when I’d gone home to wait, and…you would not give up the sword. Not give up what they had set you to do. To kill for them.”

Her fingertips had found the scars. Followed them, as if nursing her own pain.

“I sent you away so I wouldn’t see you serving that.”

She would not leave the scars be. He jerked away, head snapping around, jaws closing about her arm.

Stop that.

They held so a frozen moment. Then he let her go. In silence, she rose again, edged back past the horses, chirped to call them on, not bothering with the reins now.

He followed. Angry without words. Not where he had meant to lead them. Not what he had wanted said. Couldn’t find what, now, to say.

“Loose stone here,” she called back.

It rattled beneath the horses’ hooves. Something fell away, long, skittering plummet.

A yellow land, pale, with darker bands, tawny brown, running through the layers of stone. Sharp-edged where frost had broken it; smooth where time had rubbed it, or running water. A dry land, with the breath of the high desert in the south wind that sucked the moisture from eyes and nose and panting mouth. Something of the deserts reaching down, following the ghost of the Shikten’aa, hungry, to drag the Grass into it…

It was only a dry autumn wind. Nothing more.

The cliffs descended in shelves and drops and slopes. Not some single feature, but a region, a land, almost, in itself. Creatures lived here. Little scurrying things, and foxes and snakes to prey on them. Birds.

Disaster, almost, when a sparrow whirred away under unsteady Lark’s nose. A hind foot slipping. Moth had him by the bridle, coaxing him back, calm—Mikki crossed that crumbling section of the path most warily, and Moth was there, tense, silent, as if she might take him by a handful of fur, tug him on, what slight weight she had against his bulk a useless anchor. He found solid footing again with a huff of breath. Nosed at her, wordless, pushed her on ahead.

She went, but thumped a closed fist on the top of his head, gently. Eased something between them.

Great black span of wings, circling against the sky. Eagle. Two of them. Something moving below, pale dun backs. A herd of kulan following a thread of green. Mostly barren stone and sand down there, but pools held water, and there were shadows of sedge-grown channels, greened by rain or seepage rising from below.

A change of angle, as the way they followed faded out from under their feet. Twisting to face into that south wind, and dropping down, onto a broader way, a layer of that darker stone. She could have used another human body then. He wasn’t much use, though the horses were easy with him now. It had taken them longer to settle into acceptance of the scent of the devil.

Trying to turn them in such a narrow space, trying to lead them down, that leap below…turned, they wanted to go back, to follow the track before their noses, up.

Patience, she was, and calm, a rock of it. He squeezed around, not quite slipping over, to put himself between Lark and Fury, to keep Lark where he was, till Fury was down in a sudden rush and scramble. Moth praised him, Westgrasslander words, stroking his sweating neck.

Reminding him of Holla-Sayan, managing horses. Not something he had often seen in her. Too often forgot she could be. Something Ulfhild had been, that Vartu had rarely needed. She was so offhand, with Storm. Talked to him like a dog, like a contrary human. But the necromantically revived bone-horse hardly behaved as a normal beast anyway. To listen to her tales, he never had, even when he was a living creature.

She talked to Lark now as she had talked to Mikki himself, those first days after they crossed the Kinsai. Gentle. Careful. Very certain, too, that he would do, could do, what she wanted. Come a little forward. There. And down, easy, there, look, Fury’s gone ahead, there, come…

Laugh or growl. Going to talk me down too?

You stay where you’re at till I’ve got him out of the way.

Lark plunged, a rush, a skidding on the stones.

“Steady now, steady!” She was between the horse and the tumbling slope, fool, leaning into his shoulder…Mikki was prepared to fling himself down after, to grab her, if they slipped, teeth in whatever it took…

Of course, falling, she might fly. He and the horse would not.

The horse calmed. Snorted. Pushed on after Fury.

Moth waited until Mikki followed.

The afternoon wore on in the descent, but that had been the worst of it. No discussion, when they came, finally, to the valley bottom. “Camp,” he said, and Moth, after a quick scan around, nodded. The horses rushed to where a trickle of water formed a reedy pool, sending a scatter of blackbirds into the sky.

Firewood was all small stuff, twigs and brush. No trees, even though this ought to have been a sheltered place, and it was not so dry as he had imagined.

No fish in the pool, though. He prowled away, came back with a marmot, went back to dig out another. Little enough. Moth had the fire burning and was baking bannock on a stone.

“You want those cooked?” she asked.

“You do. You’re too thin. You don’t eat enough.”

“I don’t?”

“Get me an antelope, once we’re back up in the grass.”

Advantage of having no hands. He got to laze on the sun-warmed rocks while she skinned and gutted the marmots, threading the livers and hearts on a stick of green willow. The sun itself was lost to them; they were in the dusk of the high walls, now, but the eastern cliffs glowed golden.

Going up, once they crossed the broken land between, should be easier, surely.

She jointed the marmots and since they had plentiful water, for a change, set them to seethe.

The faintest touch of a goddess lay over this land, an echo more than any true awareness. Shikten, Skitan sometimes, in the north. They had known her of old, in Baisirbsk. So far up her course, she might be almost a different being, far from spruce and birch and moss, far from the vast silence of the ice. Nothing gathered either to welcome or challenge them. A lonely place, the Undrin Rift.

Warmth was fading from the stone, shadows deepening. Moth was on her knees, feeding the fire beneath the kettle.

“Soon as you have arms, you can go find me some more wood,” she suggested.

“It hurts,” he said, nose pressed to her neck. “It hurts, but I’m better, I am. I’m—I just need you here, not—not fussing.”

“Was I?”

“For you, princess, yes. You treat me like a wounded dog. I’m not going to—to fall to pieces.”

“Or bite me?”

“Sometimes you need biting.”

Tell me, she said, and sat back from the fire. Challenging. He hurt you. I can’t see it. I can’t help.

You do. Just being here, you do. Like getting Lark down that rockface. Were you going to hold him, if he slipped? You made yourself his shield, his anchor, and he trusted the way would be there.

“This was entirely the wrong path for horses. The winters and the spring rains wear the rock away more than I realized.”

“Over centuries, yes, they do. You of all people should have remembered that. But there’s an idea, we could turn mapmakers.”

“Mikki—”

“I was in a cage,” he said, lowering his head to rest on her shoulder, hairy cheek to her ear.

“Yes.” She wrapped an arm over him. Restrained herself consciously, he suspected, from compulsively seeking the scars, to reassure herself he was still whole.

He drew a deep breath, long. Felt it. Clean air, sand and stone and water beneath the sky.

“I couldn’t breathe. In the cage. I couldn’t feel—the trees. The earth. The forest. My heart…it was torn away from where I would have it be.”

Demons hid their hearts, human songs declared. Left them behind in their own place, and so unlike gods, they could wander, and yet always be one with their land. It wasn’t so…straightforward. If his heart, a soul-heart, was buried, it wasn’t in a place.

He had known she would find him.

Yet the songs caught a glimmer of the truth, faintest reflection on water.

“I was chained. To him. I could feel him, all the time. As if he were…a tick, feeding on me, but the size of a mountain. A mouth, buried deep within me. Is that what it is, to have two souls?”

“No. Cold hells, no.” She was silent a long while, as if she considered. “Not for me, at least. I don’t know. Holla-Sayan might have said differently, once. I don’t know. But no, never. We are one, Ulfhild and Vartu. I am one. We always have been.”

“Good.”

There was more he wanted said. Much more, perhaps. What did it all come down to, though, but this? Arm, arms about him. Warmth of her, human warmth, and the heat and the cold of the fires that spun life over old bones. A lonely boy’s dreaming, weaving stories around a figure in a tale who cast shadows, such shadows, beyond what the words had ever said of her. Born by her grave, he had been, in the many-chambered tomb that had been old before a demon chose it for her den and it was used to bind a devil down. He was meant for her, he’d always thought, felt, which was that boy’s lonely dreaming, nothing more, and yet…and yet. He was needed. He never doubted that. And in that—

Something vital, still unsaid.

I knew you were coming for me, he said. I knew you would find a way. And aloud, “So, princess, how do we get Lakkariss back?”

She laughed.

“Beornling, I love you. I do. Let him keep it.”

“Vartu…” He sat back at that. Sunset, too, overtaking him. The wind might still be from the south, but it was cold, now, raising goose-bumps on naked skin.

“Why do you think it took me so long to come to you?”

“Tell me.” He pulled her to him. “Leave the fire to look to itself a while.”

She’d been so careful of him all this way, and he was—not needing that, now. He might, again. It came and went, the weight of the chains remembered, the cage, the suffocation.

Not tonight. He got her out of her swordbelt and byrnie and she was laughing, Moth, laughing again, like a girl, and making him do all the work of boots and ties while she clung close, mouth finding the places that made the breath come quick, ear and nipple and back to his mouth, hungry, both of them, as if they had been starved.

Near on two centuries. Mikki supposed they had been.

No cold reaching air of Lakkariss laid by them, either. Time enough to ask about that later. Maybe. Time, now, to let all worries go by. For a while.

The fire would die down before the soup-kettle boiled dry.