“Took him in and had him put a spell on the
chief of her own people?”
Loses His Way nodded. The Icefalcon was silent. Winter-night silence. Death silence. The silence in the eyes of an old man who has just been told by his Ancestors that the boy he has raised from childhood, the young man he looked upon as his successor, is the one They want, the one They have chosen to bring a message to them written in the crimson extremities of pain.
The torture sacrifice, the Long Sacrifice of summer, that the people may live through the winter to come.
Lightning flared, purple-white against the nigrous mountains of cloud. Gray rain stood in slanted columns over distant hills. The wind veered: Bektis, at a guess, witching the weather to turn the storm away. Shamans of the Talking Stars People generally didn’t care if they got wet.
The Icefalcon observed it all, staring into distance, feeling nothing.
“I don’t know whether Gsi Kethko told anyone else of this,” said Loses His Way, after a time, stroking his long mustache. “But for two years now I have been watching for you, waiting to see if you will return to your people and claim your due.”
* * *
“Are you all right, honey?”
Tir sat back on his heels, trembling, small hands propped on his thighs. Hethya ran a competent palm over his clammy forehead, then helped him to his feet and led him away from the little puddle of vomit among the ferns at the base of the big cottonwood tree. Some distance off she knelt down again and took the boy in her arms.
She was a big woman, like the farmwives and blacksmiths in the Keep. Her arms were strong around him and the quilting of her coat smooth and cold under his face, and her thick braids, tickling his chin, smelled good. Tir rested his head against her shoulder and tried not to feel ashamed of himself for getting sick.
It was weak, like the little kids. He was seven and a half. With the deaths of Geppy and Thya and Brit and all the other older children in the Summerless Year, he had stepped into a position of semicommand in the games of the younger.
Tears stung his eyes, remembering his friends. Remembering Rudy.
“There’s no shame in it, being afraid.” Hethya’s big fingers toyed gently with his hair, separating it into locks on his forehead, as his mother sometimes still did. “Even great kings and heroes get afraid. And sometimes that happens, after you’ve been real afraid.”
Tir was silent, trying to sort out what he had felt clinging to the limb of the tree. He was still sweating, though under his furry jacket he felt icy cold, and his stillness alternated with waves of shivering that he could not control.
“You did well,” she said.
In fact, when Bektis had spun around and cried out “Raiders!” and the three Akulae whipped their curved southern swords from their sheaths, from those dark hollows in his mind Tir heard someone else’s voice, one of those other people, say as if thinking it to himself,
Get out of everybody’s way
.
Lying on the branch of the tree, he had felt curiously little fear. Too many memories of killing men himself—ofthose other boys killing men—lay too near the surface. Memories of terror in battle, memories of grief and remorse, memories of the grim rush of heat that drove in the knife, the spear, the sword. Watching Hethya, watching the Akulae, cutting and hacking at the men and women who ran stumbling from Bektis’ unseen illusions filled him with emotion that he could not name, closer to sadness and horror than fear. But strong. Horrifyingly strong.
The emotion, whatever it was, left him wrung out, shaken, sickened, so that as soon as the fighting was over he slid down the cottonwood’s trunk and vomited, not even knowing what it was that he felt. He could see the faces of the dying men still. Their faces, and the faces of all those others who had died in ages past by the hands of those whose memories he touched.
One day he might have to kill
chief of her own people?”
Loses His Way nodded. The Icefalcon was silent. Winter-night silence. Death silence. The silence in the eyes of an old man who has just been told by his Ancestors that the boy he has raised from childhood, the young man he looked upon as his successor, is the one They want, the one They have chosen to bring a message to them written in the crimson extremities of pain.
The torture sacrifice, the Long Sacrifice of summer, that the people may live through the winter to come.
Lightning flared, purple-white against the nigrous mountains of cloud. Gray rain stood in slanted columns over distant hills. The wind veered: Bektis, at a guess, witching the weather to turn the storm away. Shamans of the Talking Stars People generally didn’t care if they got wet.
The Icefalcon observed it all, staring into distance, feeling nothing.
“I don’t know whether Gsi Kethko told anyone else of this,” said Loses His Way, after a time, stroking his long mustache. “But for two years now I have been watching for you, waiting to see if you will return to your people and claim your due.”
* * *
“Are you all right, honey?”
Tir sat back on his heels, trembling, small hands propped on his thighs. Hethya ran a competent palm over his clammy forehead, then helped him to his feet and led him away from the little puddle of vomit among the ferns at the base of the big cottonwood tree. Some distance off she knelt down again and took the boy in her arms.
She was a big woman, like the farmwives and blacksmiths in the Keep. Her arms were strong around him and the quilting of her coat smooth and cold under his face, and her thick braids, tickling his chin, smelled good. Tir rested his head against her shoulder and tried not to feel ashamed of himself for getting sick.
It was weak, like the little kids. He was seven and a half. With the deaths of Geppy and Thya and Brit and all the other older children in the Summerless Year, he had stepped into a position of semicommand in the games of the younger.
Tears stung his eyes, remembering his friends. Remembering Rudy.
“There’s no shame in it, being afraid.” Hethya’s big fingers toyed gently with his hair, separating it into locks on his forehead, as his mother sometimes still did. “Even great kings and heroes get afraid. And sometimes that happens, after you’ve been real afraid.”
Tir was silent, trying to sort out what he had felt clinging to the limb of the tree. He was still sweating, though under his furry jacket he felt icy cold, and his stillness alternated with waves of shivering that he could not control.
“You did well,” she said.
In fact, when Bektis had spun around and cried out “Raiders!” and the three Akulae whipped their curved southern swords from their sheaths, from those dark hollows in his mind Tir heard someone else’s voice, one of those other people, say as if thinking it to himself,
Get out of everybody’s way
.
Lying on the branch of the tree, he had felt curiously little fear. Too many memories of killing men himself—ofthose other boys killing men—lay too near the surface. Memories of terror in battle, memories of grief and remorse, memories of the grim rush of heat that drove in the knife, the spear, the sword. Watching Hethya, watching the Akulae, cutting and hacking at the men and women who ran stumbling from Bektis’ unseen illusions filled him with emotion that he could not name, closer to sadness and horror than fear. But strong. Horrifyingly strong.
The emotion, whatever it was, left him wrung out, shaken, sickened, so that as soon as the fighting was over he slid down the cottonwood’s trunk and vomited, not even knowing what it was that he felt. He could see the faces of the dying men still. Their faces, and the faces of all those others who had died in ages past by the hands of those whose memories he touched.
One day he might have to kill
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