The canoe hangs in the jaws of the rapids. Bearing the Shaman’s body, the raft tilts, slides down the hole where the river vanishes under Grave Mountain. Up the glassy slip, away from the fanged wave, I fight the canoe thrust and thrust and thrust. Lutha slumps, shocked by her father’s death, their brief, sole meeting. Behind me, Nip whines.
Up the chute of snarling water inside the Island of Bones. Through the rip at the mouth. Leap out. Drag across shallow shingle into Lake Ka’s still water. Out of the river’s tug, I slip back in and collapse over my paddle.
Too much had happened too quickly. I had escaped being blinded, had beaten the Carny and the Droll. Jak and the Shaman both dead. And here I was back in the canoe, on the lake, with Lutha! So close in the sun I smelled her skin, sweet as honey.
I stretched out one hand, began to say, “I’m sorry –”, stopped. My fingers tightened on the paddle until the knuckles bulged white. The canoe shook with my trembling. Viciously, I dug, shoved against the water, sent the canoe left.
Lutha stirred, lifting her head, coming back into herself.
“Are you all right?” I looked past her shoulder and gaped. Where the Floating Village should have been – thatched roofs peeping over the palisade – only the stone statue reared out of the water, surmounted by Hekkat’s enormous two-faced head. For the first time I saw it had a third face. I was still staring when, from the beach behind the Triple-Hekkat, a canoe speared.
“Salt Men!” Lutha grabbed her paddle. “Up the lake, idiot!” She spun the canoe right, and we fled, tossing spray. Paddles hissing we surged forward, surged again, then the canoe was running, barely touching, skimming on our fear of my old enemies.
Even in danger, something in me resented being called an idiot. (I was no boy to be ordered about!) The Salt Men’s canoe had several paddlers. (I had studied, had become a Healer.) They must catch us. (I could have been the Shaman, the Judge!) I paddled even harder. (I’d show her!)
Confident cries. The Salt Men catching up. I worked even harder but, through a red mist, saw Lutha’s paddle drag. Taunts echoed from ahead as well as behind. A horn brayed, and Lutha slipped something over her head. Silver trickled like water through her fingers.
“Don’t give in now, idiot!” I muttered, but it came out at as a groan. I gulped air, paddled on. We ran into the shadow of a headland. Along its cliff-top a wall of posts, people moving behind them. Over our heads, a flight of arrows twittering. They plunged, tossing up a white hedge. The Salt Men shouted, gesticulated, but dared come no closer.
As several canoes sprang from a beach below the headland, Lutha turned. “For my father!” I half-closed my eyes, but she dropped something over my head. Silver again, like the run of water. My hand found something hanging at my throat. There was a sense of something familiar, then I knew I was remembering something else I had once worn round my neck.
“You’ll be safe only so long as you wear it.”
I craned to see what it was. “Watch this!” said Lutha. The Salt Men spun and fled, paddles spanking, light dancing. It looked comical. I stopped laughing as three canoes cut off their escape, and Lutha’s trap slammed shut! So that was why she had been alone on the lake, why she deliberately slowed our canoe. Sweat still trickled warm down my chest, drops from my forehead, but the skin on my spine puckered cold.
Excited voices cheered her ashore, crying her name. A group of young women armed with spears. One at the front – tall, flashing eyes – levelled her spear’s sharp tip at my throat. Her eyes flared wide as she saw the thing around my neck, and Lutha struck down her spear.
“Ish is under my protection!”
The girl flung herself crying on the sand, and Lutha trampled, spurned her. The girl crawled, grasped at her hand but Lutha looked away.
The girl stared at me, a blue-eyed glare so intense it was like the spear thrust. I staggered. “She’s jealous! Of me?”
The young women carried Lutha off through a gate in the palisade and up the hill. Two came back, lifted the fallen girl to her feet, calling her Raka. Another came running.
Expressionless, she spoke through or past me. “Follow!”
“Where are we going?” Silence.
“What was all that about?” Silence.
“What’s wrong with Raka?” I gave up and looked around.
So many! Men. Women. Babies. Children. I thought of the people I had read about, the huge numbers who had once lived in the cities of the Walls. Lutha’s Headland People were more than I had ever seen in one place. They must have been over a hundred! Two hundred?
I saw the swing of Lutha’s red-hemmed skirt, her brown legs I remembered in the canoe that other time. Warriors fell back, saluting with their spears. When they saw what hung about my neck, they saluted it, too. Nip and I followed up a mound to a large round house.
On the steps, Lutha turned. A pretty girl brought her a bundle wrapped in soft deerskin. I heard myself grunt. Even before Lutha took the bundle almost carelessly, pulled back the corner of the deerskin, I knew what it was.