Shadow Gate

22

Kontas was a good boy but absent-minded for all his eleven years. When Kirya had done the morning milking, she had to call for him. He was playing dice with his cousins Stanyo and Danya.

'You should be helping with the chores, not playing. You two boys take the herd off away from the tents to graze.' He grinned at her, never one to take a scolding to heart; she gave him an affectionate clout on the head. 'Pest! Go on! Danya, go help Feder with the turning. I'll send Asya over to help you.'

Danya ran off. The boys chivvied the bleating sheep and goats farther into the grass. Four of the six dray beasts followed with placid amiability, while Nimwit and None-in-the-Skull kept ripping up the grass where they stood, oblivious of the movement around them.

She hooked the stool under her arm. With the leather sack sloshing with warm milk over a shoulder, she trudged through the scatter of tents that marked their tribe. Her cousin Estifio sat cross-legged on a threadbare rug outside his wife's tent, embroidering the sleeve of a man's shirt. He grinned as she paused to admire the intricate line of vines wound around dainty flowers.

'A wedding shirt,' she said. 'For Mari?'

'I was thinking for trade. But I'm down to my last needle.'

They looked at each other. Thread they could spin, and plants collect for dye, but they had no blacksmith nor any tribe obliged to offer them the services of a blacksmith.

'Uncle Olig can make you a bone needle,' she said.

He shrugged, his way of passing off disappointment. 'His bone needles are very fine, but not fine enough for this delicate work.'

'If you finish it before the confluence ends, you can trade for needles and the best dyestuffs.'

'Yes, I suppose.'

Estifio's wife Yara, together with Uliya Tomanyi, knelt on a mat, pressing felt into the distinctive linked-circles pattern passed down through their tribe for generations. They were talking intently, heads bent together. Yara's son slept in a sling on her back. Uliya's two little girls tied knots beside Asya, Uncle Olig's granddaughter, who was concentrating so hard that she was biting her tongue. Kirya sighed. They were good girls, very serious, but she could not imagine how Uliya would ever get husbands for her girls, or what Asya could expect as the last descendant of her tent, with no aunts or mother to bargain for her.

Yara and Uliya glanced up to see her, and started as if they'd been caught whispering secrets. What were they plotting?

With a grimace, she hitched the heavy sack a little higher, walking on. Uncle Olig sat on a rug under the awning of what had been his sister's tent, she who had been cousin once removed to Kirya's aunt and mother. Wood shavings littered the rug as he planed the inside length of a shaft of wood.

'Kiri, that gelding kicked Manig again.'

'I don't know why Manig keeps going near him. Is he hurt?'

Not far away, Manig Tomanyi was stewing glue from the deer she and Mariya had killed.

'It was just a warning kick. If that bad-tempered beast had meant to cripple him, he'd have done so. Here, little one, come try this now.'

She set down her burden. Grasping the wood at the center, she set one tip on the ground and leaned into it as the old man examined the way the lower limb bent.

'Would you take off more wood?' he asked her.

She flipped the bow and leaned on the other end. 'This end is stiffen Who is the bow for?'

'Asya is ready for a bow with more draw. That one there-' He pointed toward a composite bow braced into shape and curing.

'Yes, I know,' she said with a laugh. 'Mine will be ready in a few months.'

He smiled. 'A good bow demands patience.'

'Let me get this to the churn and I'll come back,' she said to the old man, handing back the stave.

Little Danya was twisting the rope that turned the drill, and Feder the Cripple bent over the wood he was shaping into a bowl, whistling in time to the rhythmic whoosh whoosh of the turning. He could sing, too, and his ancient winged kur with its horse head, stylized wings along the neck, and two strings sat in its place of honor in the small wheeled cart on which he got around. He had been a fighter before the incident that had crippled him; his saber rode in a sling alongside the precious kur.

He didn't look up as she passed. He didn't need to. 'Ei, ei, Kiri! Hore's a tune for you today. I can hear it coming out of your ears!' He swung into a new tune. With a smirk far too knowing for her tender age, Danya altered the pace of her twisting to match the words. ' "Who is that handsome youth walking through camp? His sister is looking at me, but he pretends not to see me."'

Her ears burned.

Orphan was scraping the last hide, stripped to the waist, skin gleaming. He was a very good-looking youth, a few years older than Kirya and Mariya, but of course to even think of an orphaned lad who did servant's work was impossible.

' "Why is that handsome youth hanging around camp? His sister brings cheese and boiled meat, but he pretends not to see me.'"

Orphan had showed up at the edge of camp about two years ago, silent and empty-handed, and at first they hadn't been sure if he was a demon because although he was black-haired and dark-complexioned like Mari, he had twisty eyes, pulled at the ends as though drawn like a bow, a sure sign of demon blood. But he spoke their language in the same way they did, and he asked what work he could do in exchange for a bit of food and worked so hard day after day and month after month that eventually they simply accepted that he belonged to them now. After all, what other tribe was desperate enough to take in an orphan?

' "Why do the flowers bloom so, everywhere around camp? If I offer the flowers at the entrance to his sister's tent, will he pretend not to see me?'"

Orphan glanced at her, and away at once, since it wasn't proper for any man not related by blood to stare at a woman. She forced her gaze away from the rippling muscles of his back and swung around behind her aunt's big tent. Feder's song faded to whistling.

Her aunt was weaving in the shade of the awning. Seeing Kirya, she set down her shuttle. 'There you are, Kiri. Take that milk to Edina. Then you and Mari take an offering to the holy Singer's tent and get his blessing for the marriage. Then go round to see if the Oliski tribe has come in. I want to talk to Mother Oliski as soon as she is ready to negotiate.'

'Yes, Aunt. Can I take the little ones? They'd like to see all the different people.'

'There'll be time for that later.'

'What about just Kontas, then? He's old enough to-'

'No. I don't want them underfoot to get in your way or say the wrong thing. We need the blessing of the Singer if we hope for a marriage.'

Mariya had her head down, polishing the silver necklaces, bracelets, and headpieces that made up the riches of the tent.

'The cloth I found might be a powerful gift, Aunt. We can expect something better than the Oliski tribe's castoffs.'

'Did I ask for your opinion, Kirya?'

'No, Aunt, you did not.'

'Then do as I say.'

'Yes, Aunt.'

Beyond the shelter of the awning, her youngest aunt, Edina, was hanging strips of meat to dry in the sun, singing the first verse of a child's counting song over and over because it was the only verse she knew. The churn had already been set up for the sheep's milk. Kirya poured the milk into the churn, savoring the rich aroma. She unhooked the ladle from the churn and dipped out a portion for herself. After drinking it down, she licked her lips. Wind sighed in the canvas of the tent, inhaling and exhaling. She carried a ladleful of milk into the tent.

Mother lay on her side, propped on pillows, but she was asleep. The illness had ravaged her, a nest of agony inside her bones. She so rarely fell into a true sleep that Kiri couldn't bear to wake her even for a sip of strengthening milk.

Back outside, Mariya had gathered up a leather bag with the best haunch of meat inside, as well as a length of backstrap sinew suitable for presentation to the holy one. Defiantly, she wore the beaded nets, and she gave Kirya a strong stare to warn her not to say anything, so Kirya said nothing, just slung the bag along her shoulders and headed out toward the distant smoke of gathered fires. Mari hurried along behind.

In any confluence, tribes sited their camps according to an unspoken order. A tribe as weak and poor as theirs had to set up their tents on the fringe of the confluence grounds, well away from the well-connected and rich tribes around which the councils and settlements and marriage offers would pool. They had to tramp through tall grass for quite a ways, passing well-guarded herds of sheep and horses, before the sprawl of the major encampments came into view, and then they had to trudge through the lesser granddaughter tribes and the tribes losing position owing to raids or famine in their herds and inward to the positions of greater importance.

Each tribe had roped off the ground it claimed for its own, leaving wide strips of grass separating camps. They circled in spiral-wise, to get a good look at the banners and rugs and young men of the many tribes assembled so far. There were plenty of banners, and beautiful rugs, and attractive young men laughing and joking and embroidering and practicing with their sabers and whips. Showing off, as young men did in such company.

Of the Vidrini tribe they saw no trace.

Young men kept their eyes lowered as the two girls passed, but masculine gazes brushed them, and heads turned after they had gone by to track their passage. Mariya had that effect on men. Kirya smiled wryly, aware that she was like a stone point placed next to an iron-tipped arrow: serviceable enough, but not the first thing you would reach for.

Two Singers had traveled to this confluence, their presence marked by tall poles wound with streamers. They dared not approach the Sakhalin tribe, whose headwoman's tent stood at the center of the huge encampment. The least of the Sakhalin servants might count herself higher than the Moroshya headwoman. But the Singer out of the Konomin tribe had a humbler station, and anyway they had made offerings to him before and gotten blessings from the holy man for two of their arrows. He was old, no longer in the full flush of his power, and because all of his sisters were dead, he lived in the tent of a niece, its awning visible from here.

They approached the gap in the rope where a pair of jaunty young men stood guard with sabers swinging casually at their side, and took a place at the end of the line already formed by folk fortunate enough to have less far to walk. Everyone carried offerings. A good-looking man wearing a beautifully embroidered shirt swaggered to the front of the line. After a muttered discussion with the guards, he and his armed followers were admitted into the camp.

'I like that,' said an old woman, bent and weary, who stood in front of them. 'That's the Vidrini for you, eh?'

The man strode up to the awning, made his courtesies, and was offered a pillow to sit on while his followers hung back with arms crossed. From this angle, Kirya could not see the Singer, but at least a dozen people stood or sat in attendance under the awning.

'Was that the war leader of the Vidrini tribe?' Mariya asked, a little too eagerly.

The old woman raised an eyebrow, looking over the two girls with a gaze that measured their worth and station. With a snort, she turned her back on them.

Mariya leaned into Kirya. 'I told Mother I should wear jewelry. Then people wouldn't treat us as they do.'

The haunch weighed too heavily on Kirya's shoulders for her to shrug. 'It doesn't matter. Aunt means to marry you to Oliski.'

'I mean to put her off until I discover what's become of the Vidrini,' muttered Mari with a black look. 'I don't want to marry an ugly old man!'

'Women have no choice in marriage, you know that. You can take lovers afterward, if you're prudent about it. Or I'll marry him.'

Mari was close to tears. 'Mother says they asked for me specifically. We're so small in their eyes that even an old, useless man can demand to marry the next headwoman rather than her cousin. It's hard to imagine what manner of man Mother believes we can find for you if that's the case!'

Kirya winced.

'I didn't mean that as it sounded.'

'The bruise doesn't get any less sore if it keeps getting poked. Let's just leave it, eh?' She was used to having nothing much to expect, not even a Flower Night with a decent fellow, someone she could choose. Maybe this confluence would be her only chance to taste a piece of joy just for herself, not for the sake of the others, before the cold truth blew over them like winter's blizzard. But the thought of offering her Flower Night to a stranger who would not otherwise look at her twice was too grim to contemplate.

'Hey! Hey!'

Mariya grabbed her elbow, shaking her back to earth.

Four armed men crossed out from the Konomin camp, pointing at them. 'Yes, you two! Get out of here.'

Under the stares of every woman within earshot, Mari began to snivel.

'Are you talking to us in such a rude way?' asked Kirya. 'We're here to make an offering to the Singer.'

'The Singer doesn't want you here. Says you're cursed. Now get out.'

The old woman spat on the ground by Mari's feet and pointedly moved away, as did everyone else in the line. By now, all movement within eyeshot had come to a halt. The men did not threaten them directly; that would have gone against the gods' sacred laws. But words were enough, even if no saber was drawn.

Kirya knew her face was hot with shame. People in the distance were whispering and pointing. 'How can we be cursed? How can the Singer even know we are here, or who we are? We only came with an offering to ask for a marriage blessing.'

' "Ghosts of a dead tribe, be gone,"' said the man in the lead, without looking them in the eye. ' "The gods have cursed you. You've been touched by the breath of demons." The Singer's words have been spoken. There is no taking them back.'

Mari tugged on her sleeve. 'Let's go, Kiri. Please!'

The gathered people parted to make a path for them to retreat. No one wanted to chance the taint of demon's breath spreading from their nostrils. Head bowed, sucking down sobs so she would not disgrace them further, Mari strode back the way they had come, but Kirya, following behind, kept her head high. What did the Singer know, anyway? Yet when she thought of the cloak, and the dead woman she had touched, she shuddered.

Coming at last into their own camp, sweating and hot, they passed a woman who strode past them without a greeting. Aunt sat in the shade of the awning, shoulders bowed and face so wan and weary that Kirya choked down fear, wondering if the sickness that had struck down her mother had attacked her aunt.

'Mari! Kiri!'

Beyond the tent, Yara and Uliya were whispering, and the men stood in a huddle like sheep, Feder's cart pulled out to join them. The children cowered at the entrance to the tent, Kontas with his head in his hands.

'What did you say to insult the Singer?' demanded Aunt. 'Now Mother Oliski has sent word that under no circumstances will she consider the marriage. We're ruined!' Her words were punctuated by the rhythmic slap of Edina whipping the churn. Cheese and butter could not wait on disaster.

'We didn't even have a chance to talk to the Singer.' Kirya heaved the leather sack to the ground and stood there, panting.

'I knew that orphan was trouble!'

Mari said, 'Orphan?'

Kirya clenched her hands. 'Orphan? What has he ever done except work hard to please us?'

'His eyes are demon eyes!'

It was true enough, but Kirya was too angry to keep silence. 'This isn't his fault. How the Singer could even have known we were coming to see him I can't imagine.'

'The gods see everything.' She looked old, broken. 'We have to leave at dawn tomorrow. Orphan cannot come with us. That's the end of it.'

'Just one more day, surely-' cried Mariya. 'Just one more day.'

Aunt turned a cold gaze on her daughter. 'Do you think I don't know your hopes about the Vidrini boy, Mariya? Put them aside. We must go quickly. Trouble is coming. We must run before it catches us.'

Mari covered her face with her hands.

'Maybe that cloth I found is the trouble,' said Kirya hesitantly.

'Pack up everything. Orphan may take some meat, a pair of wooden bowls, some sinew, a sack, and knife with him. He's a strong young man now. He can find a place in a war band.'

'Not as a kinless orphan, Aunt. He's done nothing wrong.'

'His family is dead, and he survived. That is enough wrong for one person. We should never have taken him in. A demon's child can have a handsome face as easily as an ugly one.' Her eyes were stones, the line of her mouth a closed tent. 'Take some milk to your mother.'

Her mother was awake, but only semiconscious, too weak to sit up but able to swallow milk spooned into her mouth. Her eyes were the same intense blue as Kirya's, and with these she gazed at her daughter, her only way of communicating since she could not speak. Such torment. Such trouble.

Kirya said, 'It seems we'll be moving on, Mother. Don't worry, I'll be with you always.'

Gently, she turned her to the other side, arranged the pillows around her, took away the pad of soft grass that caught her urine

and loose feces and replaced it with another. The smell wasn't too bad; she was used to it. Maybe if her mother could talk, she would ask to be left behind on the grass, to die in the proper manner, but the illness had taken her voice as suddenly as her ability to walk, and in the eyes of the gods to abandon her without her consent was no different from murder.

Anyway, Kirya did not want to lose her. 'Kontas,' she said, calling to her brother. 'Pack our things, and sit by mother. Sing to her, will you? She likes your voice. Mine is such a croak!' She made frog sounds, and that got him to smile a little, but his serious face troubled her as she went out to help Uncle Olig with his gear.

'What did we do wrong, Uncle?' she asked in a low voice as she bound a dozen green staves and placed the bundle in the wagon. 'It doesn't seem right that Orphan is punished for it.'

'His eyes are demon eyes,' said uncle, but no force animated the words. Like all of them, he was too sick at heart to fight Aunt's proclamation. They could not confront the Singer. They had no choice but to leave.

As twilight settled over the grass, Kirya slipped away to a tangle of late-season wildflowers that the sheep hadn't trampled. She plucked a handful of pinks and whites, humble flowers, nothing special, just like her.

Sometimes your position is so bad that the worst thing you thought you could do no longer seems bad at all. Clutching the flowers, she went in search of Orphan. He'd had his talk with Aunt and been given his sad bundle and banished from camp, but he hadn't gone far. He'd hunkered down within sight of their tents.

He saw her coming but did not move or speak. She sank down on her haunches beside him, slung her quiver off to one side, and offered him the flowers.

Ei!

He swayed back, visibly startled. He did not open his clenched hands.

'It's rude not to take them,' she said, not sure whether to grin or to slap him.

He stared at the flowers. 'You don't want me,' he said in his hoarse voice.

'Aunt forbade me, not in so many words, but you know how she is. But I've changed my mind about obeying her. It's my Flower Night. The gods say I can choose who I want. Now are you going to take them?'

As though they were precious, he took them from her. He brought them to his face, inhaled their scent. Then grinned, twisting a finger into the tangle and pulling out a green stalk with triple-pointed leaves. 'These sour-root leaves are edible. Did you know that? Orphan's food.' He sank back onto the ground, one leg crossed before him and the other with knee up so he could prop an elbow on it. He plucked the leaves, chewed several, and touched the rest to her lips. 'I've been teaching the children to recognize which plants they can eat.'

The idea of Kontas eating ground-digger's food made her flush with shame. 'Like we're no better than-?'

'They're sweet.'

His hands were warm, and his smile warmer. She parted her lips and licked at the leaves. The leaves had a snap, but a sweet aftertaste that lingered in her mouth. He chuckled. She leaned toward him, brushed his cheek with her own. She blew softly at his ear, and he cupped her neck in his hand and pulled her closer.

'I'm only an orphan.' With her head turned, and his lips pressed close to her ear, she could not see his expression. 'I'm not worthy of your Flower Night.'

The twilight darkened, brushed by rose like fire along the western horizon. To the east, fires burned where the encampment sprawled, a place they were no longer welcome. Exiles all. Yet maybe none of that mattered. They had good green staves for new bows that could be traded; twin female lambs as well as not one lamb lost to wolves or mouth fever; Feder's precious kur, on which he could sing for favor from the gods.

'Who is worthy?' she said to the heavens. 'We'll follow the gar-deer. We'll ride to new pastures, somewhere they don't know the Singer who cursed us. You'll follow, and in a month or two Aunt will relent and let you back. Things will get better.'

She lay down in the grass and he lay beside her, and as she caressed him and he caressed her, the drumming of her heart quickened and the blood thrummed in her ears like galloping hooves. She

unfastened the loops on his tunic and slid her hands beneath, tracing his muscled chest and smooth back. The small noises he made as she stroked him made her crazy; she could could not hear or see anything, nothing but the presence of him pressed close against her and the warmth that spread through her body. She fumbled with the loops on her own tunic.

His hands gripped hers, crushing her fingers. She grunted with pain. He bent close.

'Listen.'

That drumming was not her heart.

'It's a raid,' he added. 'Stay down.'

'How can you-' She struggled, trying to sit up.

He rolled on top of her to pin her, with the tall grass still concealing them in a conspiracy with the falling of night. His whisper was harsh in her ear.

'How do you think my kin died? I was out looking for a lost lamb. I hid, but I heard it all.'

'Oh, gods,' she whispered.

Hooves drummed on the earth, felt through the soil. Orphan stayed on top of her, nothing of love or lust in his position, only desperation. He had heard what she must hear now.

The shing of steel drawn, shouts and screams, the hiss of flame, the wailing of children, the bleating of panicked sheep. The sounds shuddered the air until she could bear it no longer. She shoved him so hard he toppled sideways, and she sprang up to see a tent spurting flames as riders raced away into the night laughing and howling. Stars blazed above, fire below. She ran. Orphan overtook her and tackled her.

She screamed at him, 'My mother's in the tent!'

Swearing, he leaped up and ran with her.

It was too late.

In the ruins of the camp, Uncle Olig and Feder the Cripple lay dead, cut down despite being too old and too infirm to fight. Cowards! The tent burned, and Aunt had burned hands as they dragged her back from the flaming canvas while Mari sobbed.

'Where are the children?' Edina ran in circles, keening and shouting by turns. The tents were alight, burning crisply. 'Where are the children?'

They shouted and they called, and Kirya whistled – wheet wheet whoo – over and over again. All night Kirya and Orphan and Edina searched in the grass while Mari held on to her mother to stop her from throwing herself into the burning tent where her beloved sister lay.

The Tomanyi cousins and their daughters, as well as Estifio and Yara and their baby son, had fled or been taken.

The children – Kontas, Danya, Stanyo, and Asya – were gone.

Stolen.