TILLU AWAKENED SLOWLY. She had drifted at the edge of sleep for much of the night, feeling that she should rise and go back to Capiam’s hut, but never finding the willpower to leave the body comfort of the nest of hides and Heckram’s warm chest rising and falling beneath her cheek. She pushed a handful of hair back from her eyes. A dim light gave substance to the furnishings of the tent, color to the woolen blanket that wrapped her close to Heckram. Bird sounds, and the mutter of folk moving past the tent. Morning sounds. She sat up abruptly, suddenly awake.
“Kerlew!” she said aloud. And then, “Kari!” At the sound of her voice, Heckram reared up and sat blinking in the light.
“It’s morning,” he said blearily. For a moment he sat still, catching up with himself. Then he reached across Tillu to scoop up their clothes. “Here,” he said, thrusting the wrong shirt at her, “you’ve got to get to Kari, talk to her. Take her to Ristin, if you want. Or to Stina. Tell them what’s wrong, and let them take care of it. But do it quickly, before they start making her ready for the joining ceremony. I’ve got to get up the Steps, after Kerlew.”
Tillu experienced a moment of disorientation. Someone else had taken charge. She smiled a crooked smile as she pushed his shirt back at him and found her own. She wasn’t sure if she liked being directed. But as she pulled her shirt on, she thought of the alternative; of being responsible for everything, handling not only every problem but every decision, however minor. She could find nothing wrong with his suggestions; it was only that he had voiced them first. “You’ll find Kerlew for me.” She said the words aloud, trying them out. The confidence she felt in him surprised her.
“Yes. And I’ll bring him back to you, not Carp.” Heckram pulled on his leggings as he spoke. He glanced over his shoulder at her. He stopped suddenly and looked at her, long. She looked back, wondering what to say. Nothing, she decided. They would not need to always explain things to each other. They already understood. So she didn’t apologize as she stuffed Kari’s knife into her belt and ducked out of his tent. It wasn’t necessary.
She hurried past children carrying birch scoops of reindeer milk, thick as cream, and women fetching buckets of water. She nodded hastily to those she knew. “Oh, Healer!” called one, “My husband’s fever is back again and…” But Tillu only nodded quickly and hurried on. Soon, she promised her guilt, soon. The fevers and headaches that came and went, the tick bites that suddenly abscessed, could be tended tomorrow. Kari’s joining had to be stopped today.
“Here you are! I’ve had the whole herdfolk searching for you!” Ketla exclaimed, annoyed, as Tillu pushed into the tent.
Tillu’s eyes flew to Rolke, fearing the worst. But his thin chest still rose and fell, and the fever still tossed him. Habit made her push past the women to him, kneel to feel his skin.
“But where’s Kari?” Ketla demanded of her back. “Surely she’s been out with you this morning? When we awoke and you were both gone, we worried. It’s like her, off playing like a child when she should be preparing herself for her joining. A hundred things to be done, and she leaves them all for me. But now you are back, and we can…”
“Kari’s not with me,” Tillu replied distractedly. The boy’s fever was higher today, consuming what little flesh he had left. But his breathing disturbed her most. It sounded like water splashing over stones, a nasty, gurgling sound. She scooped up a dipper of yesterday’s cold willow-bark tea and held it to his lips. He didn’t even turn his head away. He was unaware of her. Tillu closed her eyes tightly.
“Kari’s not here?” she demanded an instant later. Ketla glared at her.
“Isn’t that what I’ve been telling you? She’s not here. We thought she was with you. I sent Joboam out to find you both. When he didn’t come back, I sent Pirtsi. Don’t think that was an easy thing to do; you tell a young man that his girl has run off on their joining day! But he took it well and went.” The other women murmured assent.
“You sent Joboam after her?” Tillu asked in outrage and dismay. “Where’s Capiam?”
“Well, of course I sent him after her. What else was I to do? Capiam would have done the same thing, had he been up to it. We’ve always sent Joboam after Kari when she ran away and hid from us. He was always the best at finding her. Rolke was no use at all. And he certainly couldn’t be asked to do anything now, sick as he is.” Ketla looked flustered and a little angry. The healer wasn’t listening at all. “As for Capiam, he’s still abed. Feverish, like Rolke, and not feeling well.”
Snorting her exasperation, Tillu stepped over to the pallet Capiam and Ketla shared. The man was lost beneath blankets and hides. She tried to pull his blanket down, but he gripped it tightly. His eyes were shiny, his lips papery as bark, but he spoke in weary command. “I am not as ill as Ketla thinks I am. I am just tired, and a bit feverish. Leave me alone.”
Tillu pulled stubbornly at the hides, but Capiam was just as stubborn in retaining them. “Leave me alone,” he repeated obstinately. She sighed and sat back on her heels.
“All right. I’ll leave you alone. But I will leave some tea that I want you to drink, whenever you are even a little thirsty.” She glanced about. Ketla was directing the women who were setting out Kari’s joining clothes and discussing the food to be prepared. Tillu leaned closer to Capiam. “Have you any idea where Kari is? Where did Joboam say he would look for her?” Capiam only flapped a hand at her irritably.
“Can’t you leave me alone? Joboam will find her, and Ketla will handle the joining ceremony. It isn’t until this afternoon. By then, I will have rested, and I will be there. Until then, Joboam will find her. Joboam will…he can see to things. Ask Joboam.” Capiam’s eyes sagged shut with weary finality. His hand fell limply atop the blankets. Tillu rose abruptly.
“Ketla,” she said clearly, slicing through the women’s conversations. Recklessness settled on her, a premonition of hovering disaster that could be averted only by direct action. She pushed through the circle of women and knelt to put her face on a level with Ketla’s. She took the stout herdwoman’s hands in hers, noting the fever that still simmered in them.
“Put off the joining,” she said in a voice so deadly soft that it filled the tent. “Your husband is ill, you yourself are not well,” and, over the beginning of Ketla’s objections, “and your son is dying. Dying. Now is not the time for a joining.”
“No! Oh, no, not dying, Tillu.” Fear and refusal whitened Ketla’s face. “You’ll see, Healer, he’s a strong boy. And the najd has said he’ll get better. He’s sleeping now, resting, and when he awakes he’ll feel better. He’ll be up to the feeding grounds, watching the reindeer and the young girls before the end of summer, you’ll see.” Ketla’s voice rose higher and higher as her frantic words tumbled out. Tillu shook her head.
“No. Dying, Ketla, despite the best I can do.”
“But the najd…”
“The najd has ways of making words say nothing at all. What did he say, exactly? Wasn’t it, ‘In the shadow of the Cataclysm, Ketla and Rolke would be freed of pain.’ Don’t you see? He will be right, whether Rolke gets better or dies. That is always how he speaks. With promises that offer nothing, predictions that take no chances. No, Ketla. Listen to me, even though I tell you hard things. Put off this joining. Don’t make me leave Rolke to run and find Kari. For she must be found before Joboam finds her. She must be told she doesn’t have to join with Pirtsi. You know she doesn’t want to. That’s why she has run away. And you’ve sent Joboam after her, the very one who has made her hate and fear the idea of being any man’s mate. And you know that, too!”
Certainty grew in Tillu as she watched Ketla’s eyes widen in horror. She felt a flicker of hope. Ketla would put off the joining, would hear Kari out. But Ketla’s face set more deeply into stubborn denial. The gathered women, shocked to silence by Tillu’s words, began to mutter among themselves. Sudden glints of anger kindled in Ketla’s deep eyes.
“Get out!” she shrieked abruptly. “Healer, you call yourself? And kneel before me and wish death on my son, and carry wild tales about my daughter! Speaking lies about the najd who chants for my son, and has taken your own son into his tent! Get out! Take your evil tongue and useless medicines with you! Get out of my tent! The najd. Someone fetch the najd for me! I want him to come now, to drum and chant for Rolke and Capiam.”
“Ketla!” came Capiam’s weary rebuke from across the tent, but Tillu had already risen. She was not surprised at Ketla’s behavior. It was how she dealt with things she did not wish to face; she denied them. Tillu stiffened her back and forced herself to speak calmly.
“I will go. There is little I can do here that you cannot do yourself. Rub Rolke with water often, and pour tea into his mouth; even if he does not swallow, it will wet his tongue. And give the same tea to Capiam. It may keep his fever down. The sickness is rising in him, as it did in Rolke.”
“Get out! Get out! Get!” Ketla was shrieking now, shaking with fury. The healer’s calmness only incensed her more.
“I will. I’m going to find Kari. I’m going to tell her she does not have to join with Pirtsi, that she can go to Stina and the older women. They will tell her that she is free to join or not join. And they will see that no one forces her. Some of the herdwomen seem to have forgotten their old traditions.” Tillu’s eyes raked the women standing speechless around Ketla. They shifted uneasily, their sudden silence more unsettling than their previous whispering had been.
“Is it true Kari does not wish to join with Pirtsi?” asked one softly.
“Get out!” Ketla shrieked, and Tillu did not bother to reply. She swung her pouch of herbs to her shoulder and left, slapping the door-flap aside. A panting Pirtsi stood before her.
“Well?” Tillu demanded recklessly. “Are you going to say you didn’t know Kari didn’t want you?”
“I…no…What?” He took a breath, gathered his wits. “Healer! You are needed at the reindeer pens.”
Tillu gave a wordless cry of frustration, stamping her foot. Some fool with a broken shoulder or leg, no doubt. “It will have to wait!” she declared fiercely. “Have him lie still and put a cold wet cloth on it until I can come! Do what you did for a broken bone before I came along.”
“But it’s the najd!” Pirtsi exclaimed, horrified.
“All the better!” Tillu snarled.
“But he’s dying…” Pirtsi’s voice trailed off. Tillu looked at him hard, seeing the shock in the boy’s face, the trembling of his hands. “Like Elsa,” he added on a breath.
“What do you mean?” Tillu demanded. She stepped closer to the youth, steadying him with her hands on his shoulders. She locked gazes with him, willing the truth out of him.
“He’s crumpled,” he said abruptly. “Broken like dry sticks.” He shuddered violently and turned from her. She let him go. “Tell Capiam,” she instructed him and began to run.
She did not see the tents she passed, didn’t hear the folk who cried out to ask what was wrong. Her savage expression was enough to bring men and women running after her, all eager to witness whatever disaster she raced to.
The sorting pens were on a hillside above the camp. Years ago, the pens had been built of boulders and stones. Brush and bushes had grown up around them. The men standing at the open mouth of the pen shouted when they saw her. She pushed past them, ignoring their words. Abruptly she slowed to a walk.
Carp lay like a crumpled doll. A herdsman from one of the other herdfolk stood over him. At the far end of the pen, herders shouted and trotted, keeping the restive vajor and their calves back from the shaman. Tillu drew near reluctantly. He had to be dead. No one could be so crumpled and be alive. One leg was bent under him and out from his body. The wrongness of the twist hurt to look at. The herdsman stared down at the body entranced. When Tillu touched him to move him aside, he looked at her as if she were an apparition. His wet lips trembled.
“They must have thought he meant harm to the calves. The vajor trampled him. Usually they jump over a fallen man, swerve aside from a standing one. I’ve never seen anything like this. What was he doing up here before dawn? Why did he come in here?”
Tillu didn’t answer. The print of a cloven hoof was clear on Carp’s face. His left eyelid was split open, and the eyeball dangled on his bloody cheek. He wore one of Joboam’s fine tunics of bleached leather. Mud smeared it and blood seeped up through it. His hands were curled defensively over his chest. Two of the fingers twitched, and Tillu cried out softly. He heard her.
“Kerlew.” Blood came out with the name. “A last word,” he begged. She knelt in the churned mud and dung beside the old man. Something moved her to put one hand softly over his.
“Guilty hands. Say he has guilty hands.” A grayish tongue moved briefly inside the bloody mouth. “I didn’t touch it, but he did. I knew it would show.” He stopped, struggled to draw a breath. Tillu heard a wet bubbling from his chest. She could not move. The herdsman was transfixed with horror. At the mouth of the pen, voices were raised, but no one came near.
“Fool to fear a woman. Only a woman. He say, kill her, kill the secret. I say, no. I laughed at him. Thinking he could kill a secret. Not when I knew. Fearing a woman. Weak man. Strong hands. When wolverines fight, one must die.” His other eye opened, stared sightlessly up. “Take his drum. It’s a good drum. Kerlew. My. Son.”
His mouth sagged open, blood running thinly over his chin. Tillu bent closer to hear his last words. There was only a sigh.
“He’s dead.” She did not know how much time passed before she finally uttered the words. Time had paused as she knelt there. My son, my son. Her heart beat out the words. She could no longer hate the bones and flesh heaped before her. He was gone, and in his passing had stolen the hatred that had fueled her resolve. Like a mask cast aside, the najd was gone. An old man had died, an old man who had longed for a son. For a short time, he had had one. Could she begrudge him that?
She rose stiffly, not feeling the caked mud that clung to her legs and feet. She pushed through a crowd of herdfolk. They milled past, crowding about the body to exclaim over the horror of it. No one detained her. The ones that met her eyes faltered and looked away. Old Bror caught her arm, speaking words of concern, but she pulled free and walked on. She was nearly outside the pen when Joboam confronted her. She shook her head, not looking at him, and tried to step around him. He moved to block her. “What do you want?” she asked dully.
“Only to know what you saw, Healer.” The contained glee in his voice lifted her eyes to his face. His mouth was solemn, but his eyes gleamed with a mocking challenge.
“Where is Kari?” she demanded suddenly.
For an instant his control slipped. She looked up into black anger, and felt suddenly small as the man towered over her. Then he smiled, slowly. The anger stayed bright in his eyes but he kept it from his voice.
“Why, Healer, I don’t know. I looked all morning for her, but found no trace. When I went to tell Capiam I couldn’t find his silly little daughter, he told me the najd had been killed. As he is too ill to move, he asked me to look into it. Pirtsi said the reindeer trampled the najd. Is that what you saw?”
The challenge was plain now. “I saw an old man dying in the mud and filth,” Tillu said carefully. Anger shook her body and voice. For an instant Joboam’s confidence faltered.
“Pirtsi told me he was already dead,” he said unevenly.
Tillu stood silent. Joboam lifted a hand to grip her, thought better of it and let his hand fall to his side. “Don’t toy with me, Healer.” His voice was deadly soft. “We both know how ill Capiam is. And his son. You see who has been chosen to take up the reins for him. Be wise. Please the next herdlord.”
“Have you buried him already?” Tillu asked calmly. Some small part of her mind screamed for caution, but she could not find the control to be wise. Her eyes tracked the long, livid scratch down the side of his neck. “You’d better beware of infection in that,” she said coldly. “Scratches from nails often infect.” He twitched as if stung, but made no reply. She turned away from him, and he let her go. She walked on. Behind her, his voice lifted in command, calling for quiet and for one man to explain what had happened to the najd. The gabble behind her died. They would obey him. They would follow him, when the time came. She found she didn’t care.
She walked back toward the tents, scarcely watching where her feet took her. Making plans. Heckram would bring Kerlew to her, and she would leave. She’d take her boy and leave these people, strike out across the tundra while the summer days were long. And Heckram? asked a small voice inside her. And Kari? And Ristin? And Lasse? the small voice nagged. “I can’t help them!” Tillu heard herself declare aloud. “Kerlew and myself. That is as much as I can take care of. Kerlew and myself.”
“Tillu?”
Lasse. She hadn’t seen much of the boy lately. He was taller than she remembered him. Was he growing that fast? After an instant, she realized he was silently staring at her. She tried to gather her mind. “What is it?”
“Are you all right?”
The question puzzled her until she glanced down at herself. Carp’s blood was on her hands, and mud caked the front of her legs from her knees down. She couldn’t know that it was the look in her eyes that most rattled Lasse.
“I think so. Were you looking for me?”
“Yes. Actually, no. I was looking for Kari, but no one knows where she is. I had heard she was missing. I wanted to talk to her, to tell her…there is a way to keep from joining Pirtsi. To join with…someone else, instead. I went by Capiam’s hut, finally.”
Tillu could guess the courage that must have taken.
“Ketla screamed at me to go away, but one of the women there came after me. She told me you had gone to look for Kari, and might know where she was hiding. Ketla thinks you told her to run away early this morning. She’s very angry at you, but Capiam is too sick to do anything about it. I thought I should warn you…she’s sent for Joboam. She’s saying he’ll bring you back to the tent and make you tell where her daughter is. Please, Tillu…” He looked desperate. “Do you know where Kari is?”
Tillu turned her worries carefully. She counted them out to herself. “Kerlew is missing. Heckram’s gone to look for him. Carp is dead. Kari is gone, and I don’t know where. But I know she’s run away because she doesn’t want to join with Pirtsi. And Joboam is coming to look for me.” She looked into Lasse’s stricken face. “Do you know the way to the Najd’s Steps?”
He hesitated. “Yes. Yes, I do. Follow me.”
She trailed after him as he led her swiftly through the village, slipping between the tents and threading their way past meat racks and hides stretched to dry in the sun. The effort of trotting brought order to her mind again.
“Heckram was going to climb the Najd’s Steps,” she explained to his back. “He thought he might find Kerlew there. He went seeking a najd’s vision,” she added in answer to Lasse’s puzzled look. “I think I had better find Heckram. He’ll know best what to do. And perhaps he has found Kerlew by now. Perhaps we could just slip away.”
“Slip away?”
“Leave,” Tillu said tersely. “Run away from the herdfolk and Joboam. Kerlew and I. Find a new life somewhere else. Again.”
Lasse looked at her incredulously. “Alone?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes had gone ahead of them, up the gentle swell of grassy hill to where a group of young men and women gestured and exclaimed to one another, and beyond to where the wall of the Cataclysm rose, sudden as pain. It shone black against the blue sky, and Tillu’s neck protested when she rolled her head back to see its top. It was a wall across the wide world, a buckled wedge of stone and earth pushed up to bar the herdfolk and their reindeer from further wandering. Some places were tumbled and rounded with weather, cupping small green pastures or pockets of blessed white snow where the stinging insects never ventured. Reindeer clustered on the white patches in refuge from the bugs. But at this place the Cataclysm rose, vertical and uncompromising. A slide of schist and shale at the base marked its only flaking concession to wind and rain.
She could not see what held the herders’ attention but she thought she saw the Najd’s Steps They scarcely merited the name. A jutting scar crawled across the Cataclysm’s face, up the expanse of sheer black stone, and ended abruptly far short of the peak. The ridge of stone looked as if it projected no wider than a foot path from the precipice, and in places seemed to have crumbled away entirely. Other cracks and juttings marred the surface of the Cataclysm, but only one could be the Najd’s Steps. She was scanning the long narrow way for some sign of Heckram or Kerlew, when she heard Lasse give a low cry of despair. He gripped her arm suddenly, pinched bruisingly as he pointed up.
The figure materialized on a tiny outcropping of stone beyond the end of the Najd’s Steps. For a moment it hung there. The wind billowed under its wings, spread the pinions black and wide to the bright fresh day. The bird rose, impossibly immense, lifting wide for flight.
And plummeted.
“Kari!” Lasse cried out, his voice cracking from boy to man on the name. And in that utterance, Tillu saw her, the wings becoming Kari’s feathered cloak. Her small face was pale, her black hair streamed behind her. She did not scream. The Cataclysm thrust out a rocky spur to grip her. She caught on it and tumbled, the wind roaring through her cloak as she fell. Screams rose from the watching herders. The instant was forever.
Lasse dragged Tillu with him as he ran, plunging through the horrified herders. It was farther to the base of the Cataclysm than it looked. Her breath caught painfully in her ribs. Tufts of grass and low bushes scratched her ankles and tore at her calves, but it could not distract her from the crumpled black figure on the green sward.
They were there too soon. Lasse flung himself to his knees beside her, reached to roll her over. Tillu didn’t try to stop him. He couldn’t hurt her any more than she was already hurt. But he pulled his hand back from the body with a stifled cry. He turned a wide, white face up to Tillu, horror and grief shaking his lips. Tillu dropped stiffly to her knees, put a hand on Kari. And pulled it back. Gelid. Beneath the black feathered cloak, the body was sodden and still, pulped organs and bones inside a sack of skin. Tillu swallowed dryly, her mind reeling. If she had not stayed with Heckram last night…if she had asked his advice earlier. If, if, and all useless.
“Get up,” she croaked, rising on shaking legs. She tugged at Lasse’s sleeve, then gripped his collar and dragged him to his feet. He did not resist her, but he didn’t cooperate as she pulled him back from the body. “Don’t look at her. Don’t touch her. You can’t help her now, Lasse. Come away. Come away.”
“What’s happened?”
“Who was it?”
The bright-cheeked girls and tousle-headed youths had caught up with them. Their urgent questions rattled around Tillu as she dragged Lasse back from the body. She didn’t want to be here when they rolled her over. Two deaths in a day. She couldn’t take anymore. “I have to see Capiam,” she insisted, pushing her way past the young herders. “Let go of me. Let me through.”
“It was the healer,” she heard a young voice say behind her. “Why isn’t she doing anything?” And then a sudden scream rose, piercing the bright morning. They had rolled Kari over. She kept her grip on Lasse’s wrist, dragging him along.
The screams floated thin as splinters in the wind. Heckram flinched himself more tightly against the rock face. He wondered if someone had seen him. He doubted it. He considered leaning out, to look down the sheer rock face and see what the cry was about. He grinned harshly at the notion. He kept his hands and cheek pressed against the rock face and edged on another step.
He forced his thoughts away from the sheer fall behind him. He thought of Tillu, and how he had told her of his youthful venture up this same path. He wasn’t sure if bravado or forgetfulness had made him speak so lightly. Now that he was up here, he remembered the ache of calf and back and shoulder. And fingers. He had taken the bandages from his injured hand to improve his grip. Every time he closed his hand now, the pain leaped up his arm. He refused to let himself focus on it. The path was substantially narrower than he remembered. He had been smaller then, he reminded himself. Narrower of shoulder and more sure of foot. Certainly more blithely unaware of death and pain. He pushed on, sliding his foot forward through the gritty rock dust that coated the trail. His toes felt raw. He had discarded his boots long ago, left them on the last wide piece of the Najd’s Steps. His bare feet gripped the cold stone more surely, but felt every abrasion. Something light brushed against his foot. He looked down in the narrow space between his body and the cliff-face. A black feather. Another one. Odd. He had seen cliffs full of birds’ nests before, but they weren’t as windswept as this one. He wondered that the feather stayed on the narrow path at all. He pushed on.
The trickling sweat was from the warmth of fear and weariness. The sun on his back was still the thin warmth of morning. Its light touch reminded him of Tillu’s hands on his body, of her hands spread against the small of his back as she lifted herself against him. A smile, almost foolish in its softness, came unbidden to his lips. Every time he thought he knew her, she surprised him. Her concern for Kari, her constant anxiety over Kerlew, her sober caring for Rolke had never prepared him for the woman she had shown him last night. She had cast her wariness aside, and revealed beneath it a deep hunger and an almost innocent joy in satisfying it. Like a child with a new toy, he thought, and blushed despite his isolation. No woman had ever so thoroughly explored his responses to her touch. The newness of it had made him a youth in her hands, ignited energies and curiosity he had thought outgrown. Even now, he wanted her again. This, he realized suddenly, is what Ristin meant. The feeling she had hoped he would have for Elsa, that no hardship was too great. Did Tillu feel it, he wondered? His face sobered an instant. Hadn’t she trusted him to bring Kerlew safely home?
He wondered what he would do if he didn’t find the boy up here. Look elsewhere, he told himself pragmatically, refusing to worry about time lost. He chuckled sourly at a sudden idea; how would it be to return to camp and find that Kerlew had already returned on his own? Good, he decided. It would feel good to find the boy safe anywhere. An image of his small, uncertain face rose in Heckram’s mind. There were so few times when he had seen the boy’s face unshadowed by fear or uncertainty. When they had carved spoons together. When he had given the boy the bone-knife for his own. The night his thin fingers had awkwardly plaited strips of leather for a new harke-harness. He understood suddenly a father’s pride in his child’s small accomplishments. A lost memory bobbed into his mind. He held a tablo board up for a tall man’s inspection, and his heart swelled tight with pride at the grin that split the man’s dark beard. “Well, and will you be the wolf now, son, and give your father a chance to win on your new board?” Heckram pressed flat to the cliff for a moment, feeling the light morning breeze finger his garments and hair. How had he lost a moment like that, forgotten it so completely? He had had so few moments like that. He stood very still. When he moved on again, he understood what drove him. It was time to close the circle. He wanted to look down into a boy’s face and see that flush of accomplishment.
He edged on, occasionally finding a wider spot in the trail where he could crouch and ease his screaming muscles. At such times he glanced out over the tundra but never looked directly down at the tents below. In one such spot he found two small feathers and the clear outline of a small foot. Had Kerlew brought a dead bird with him? He shrugged and pressed on, step after careful step, his determination refueled by the footprint.
The afternoon heat found him at a wider spot in the trail. He crouched, stiff muscles screaming in the new position, and sipped water from his small pouch. He tried to relate today’s climb to his boyhood one. Had it taken him this long that time? Had the boy Heckram moved faster, been more agile than the man? He poured water into his hand, washed the salty sweat from his eyes and lips. The end of the Najd’s Steps could not be far. He was sure of it. He tried to see the end of the climb but the subtle rippling of the Cataclysm’s wall and the climb of the path denied him. Kerlew might crouch at the end of this trail, or he might find only an empty spot and the sheer fall beyond it. Well, he would see. He started to rise, and then hunkered down in sudden consternation. With one thick finger he traced a peculiar imprint in the rock dust and fine gravel of the ledge. It was his imagination. Probably the boy had crouched here a moment, weight balanced on his toes. Yet he could have sworn the track was that of a wolf. He shook his head and pushed the fancy out of his mind. He slung his water skin over his shoulder, tugged it tight against his hip. On again.
The path narrowed drastically. Heckram hesitated. But Kerlew had gone this way. And so he must follow. Face to rock, damp hands suctioned against cold stone, he shuffled along. He peered ahead and down between his chest and the cliff. When he came to it, he stared at it for a long moment. Yes, he had grown. The mark he had scratched at eye level was now between his chest and the cliff. It seemed little weathered, the scratches gray against the cliffs black face. It was the same shape as the small flaps of skin he cut from his calves’ ears. His mark, as individual as his face, never given to anyone before him, never to another after him. He shivered at touching hands with his childhood. He pushed his thoughts back to that day, leaned slightly out to have a better view of what came next.
It was as he remembered. A step or two more, and then nothing. Nothing. No path, no boy, just the narrow ridge of stone dwindling away to a crack in the stone’s face. He felt the trembling start, suppressed it as he pushed himself tightly against the cliff face. He had seen the boy’s footprint in the dust; he must have come this way. The next thought followed mercilessly. He must have gone that way. To the end of the trail and down, taking a false step in the darkness. Tears blinded him. Damn the old najd and his cursed vision. His wisdom had sent a confused boy to die. “Kerlew,” he whispered agonizedly as the screams he had heard earlier took on a personal note.
The rustling of clothing, close at hand. The sound startled him, set his heart thumping. Awkwardly he turned his head, glancing forward and back along the ledge, but saw nothing. He edged another step along the dwindling ridge, felt the bare edge of stone press his sole. He looked again, and cried out in despair. “Kerlew!”
He had forgotten the najd’s alcove. There it was, three steps beyond the end of the trail. He could barely glimpse inside. He thought of leaning back for a better view, but there was nothing to cling to. What little he could see was chilling enough. Kerlew stood within it, face suffused with gladness. His arm stretched out straight before him, hand pressed flat against the empty air at the cliffs edge. His eyes were bright but unfocused. Behind him the shriveled body of the mummified najd was exactly as he remembered it. Time had not touched it. “Wolf?” Kerlew questioned softly.
“Kerlew, it’s me. I’m on the ledge. I’ve come to get you.”
The boy jerked suddenly, then swayed and put a hand on the rough wall of the alcove for balance. The shallow cave in the stone was no more than two steps deep. Kerlew licked his cracked lips. “Wolf?” he asked again.
“I’m over here, Kerlew. Right here.”
The boy’s eyes moved in slow jerks until they came to Heckram. No recognition kindled in them, only curiosity. He stared at the man, and then stepped forward so that his bare toes curled over the lip of the cliff. Heckram’s heart slammed in his throat. “Step back!” he cried.
The boy swayed. “Why?” he asked distantly.
Heckram’s fingers found a tiny crack in the rock. He wriggled them into it. The sight of the boy standing so boldly on the edge of the fall rocked him with dizziness. “How did he get there?” he demanded of the inscrutable stone.
The question engaged the boy’s mind. Kerlew’s eyes suddenly met his and a faint smile touched his dry lips. “I saw the bone najd waiting for me. He had come here, so there was a way for me to come. So I stepped across.”
Heckram tried to take deeper breaths. Fear had been an abstraction when he was climbing the Najd’s Steps alone. Danger had been behind him, a thing he could cheat by clinging to the cliff face. But now that he saw the boy, fear boiled through his veins. Should Kerlew slip now, he could do nothing. But he knew he would reach for the falling boy, tumble alongside him, feeling his stomach lift into his throat, the wind past his eyes. He closed his eyes, squeezed the images away.
Slowly he opened them. He forced himself to look from his ledge to the alcove. Yes, there were lips of stone, cracks, and knobs that an agile boy could use to get across. He doubted he could squeeze his toes onto those minute ledges or wedge his thick fingers into the narrow cracks. But Kerlew had. And Kerlew could.
He licked his dry lips, felt the wind snatch the moisture from them and crack the skin. He took a breath and steadied his voice. “Why don’t you show me how you did it?” he suggested. “I’ll move back out of your way, and you come across to me.”
The boy stared at him. The wind blew long between them. “You want me to come down with you.”
Heckram hesitated. If Kerlew came across, he would have to come of his own will. He could not seize the boy and drag him down the narrow path. It would be all both of them could do to get down safely. “Only if you want to.”
“And if I don’t?”
Heckram pressed his sweating forehead against the cold stone. “Then I’ll wait for you until you’re ready.”
Kerlew smiled suddenly. “Did you think I would be afraid of you? You are already mine, for I’ve held you in the palm of my hand. I will come. Let me gather the things.”
Heckram watched but saw little. Most of the tiny cave was out of reach of his eyes. He heard a rustling, and muttering. A shiver ran up Heckram’s back and he edged himself down the trail. There. There was room for the boy now. In a few seconds he heard the rasp of his shirt against the stone, and Kerlew edged into view. His bundled shirt bumped against his back. His bared arms were thin and pale. He spidered over the rock until he was beside Heckram. His eyes were boyishly bright and alive as he said, “I see it is not the first time you have come this way.”
Heckram grinned at the humanness of his words. He felt dizzy with relief, and warm with sudden comradeship. “Shall we make your mark beside it, to show you that you, too, have come this way?” he suggested.
Kerlew grinned with mischief. “Are you trying to trick me? Do you think I don’t know we are of one and the same? One mark is enough for us both.” He lifted his hand free of the wall, and pointed a thin finger. Blazoned slightly above Heckram’s eye level, it glowed red against the black stone. The five spots of Wolfs track.