and songs all his life. He could stumble along in her company.
May the Earth Mother greet you, little flower. May the Air Mother greet you, little breeze. May the Fire Mother greet you, little flame. May the Water Mother greet you, little wave.
From this angle, he could not see beyond Mai's gleaming body, but as Priya extended her hands to catch the baby as it was born, the threads poured off Mai to fill the hollow until it seemed to burn, drowning the newborn child.
Mai sagged back, reclining against the cloth-draped rock with a gasped sigh.
'Marshal!' cried Priya. 'What are these things? Are they living creatures? Or something else? What do we do?'
The baby wailed, and the tendrils spun as though on the strength of that tiny voice and whirled into the air and blinked out. The child ceased crying.
Miyara faltered, voice breaking, but within the darkness she stamped and kept singing.
Be woven into the land with this song.
Be strong. We cherish you.
Joss stumbled out along the path and groped along the ruined wall until he found the lamp. It took him three tries to light the wick with his flint, and by the time he got back into the cave the infant had been placed on Mai's chest, still attached by a cord pulsing with faint flashes of blue as though the last tendrils had actually slipped into its umbilical. Above, a weave of light bridged the cave's high ceiling, glimmering faintly.
'One more!' exclaimed Mai, and she sucked in a breath and pushed again.
Priya caught a red mass in a bowl.
Miyara hurried forward to offer tea to the new mother. 'You have to name the child before you cut the cord,' she said to Mai.
Mai's eyes were closed, and at length she opened them to stare at the baby, who opened its tiny eyes as if in answer. 'The father names a child,' she said, in a remarkably ordinary voice. 'I must wait for Anji.'
Miyara glanced at Joss as if for support. 'That's not our way,' she said. 'It's-'
'Never mind it,' said Joss hastily. 'She'll name the child, or he will, as they please.'
'I guess we're uncle and aunt now,' said Miyara. Then, as an afterthought, she added, 'That's how we do things here, Mai.'
Mai smiled wearily, too exhausted to move as Priya washed her and bound a pad of linen torn from Miyara's shirt to absorb her bleeding. 'And I am glad of it, for I thank you, both of you. What is it, Priya? A girl, or a boy?'
'A boy, mistress.'
'Just as Grandmother said. Aiyi! I thought it would never come out!' Her skin gleamed from sweat, and all at once Joss saw how naked she was.
'Marshal,' said Priya, 'please fetch water so I can wash child and
mother. It must be cooled enough so as not to burn, but still generously warm.'
He flinched as though he had been slapped, although she had spoken in an entirely pleasant tone. He hurried out, carrying the lamp. Thunder rumbled among the crags, and the air felt charged, ready to snap and spark. High in the air, almost out of range of his vision, a fireling winked into existence and vanished, and then a second, and ten more, and after that more than he could count, like kinfolk come to weave a new child into the heart of their clan, chanting the greeting.
He stopped to stare, but they were already gone.
Eiya! Never for him a child called from beyond the Spirit Gate to join father and mother; he must be content as an uncle, and unaccountably he wept as he trudged the long dirt path to the fire pit, where flames blazed and the wind caught sparks and sent them tumbling. Away up in the mountains, lightning flared, and thunder boomed, and as he hooked the pot off the tripod, rain washed over the valley, cleansing everything in its path.
'Why do you follow me?' asked Kirit.
'I'm the hells unlikely to follow them.' Downstream along the bank of the River Istri, Mark indicated distant lights sweeping northward through the sky out of the Toskala.
'They are looking for us,' said Kirit. 'It is safer if we do not travel together.'
'You don't trust me.'
The girl shrugged.
'I thank you anyway,' continued Marit, 'for not joining them. I'm not your enemy, Kirit. But I have a cursed good idea that they're headed back to their camp, to see if Hari has woken. To give him his staff. Then they'll be after both of us.'
'He will betray us?'
I like him. But that doesn't mean we can trust him.'
'Or that I can trust you,' said the girl. 'Do not follow me. Maybe you are their spy.'
'I'm not,' said Marit more with weariness than heat. 'But I'm not going to debate that now. At the turn of the next month -
when Lion falls into Ibex — I will walk the shore of the Salt Sea where the spine of the Earth Mother cradles the birthing waters.' The girl stared at her, devoid of emotion. 'If you don't know of it, you being an outlander, the Salt Sea lies northwest beyond Heaven's Ridge, where the gods cleft the Hundred from the lands beyond. When a new reeve finishes her first year of training, her circuit of the land, that's the last place she visits: to lay an offering of flowers at the Earth Mother's womb. You'll know the place when you see it.'
'You go back to them, now?'
'I am not one of them, Kirit. Surely you saw they meant to destroy me. If you won't trust me enough to ally with me, then what if they find you in the end? Five, to judge one. They're after you now, just like they're after me. And most likely they're after the envoy, wherever he's hiding. As for me, I'm going to find my staff.'
Reeves patrolling over the Liya Pass had once commonly met at Candle Rock to exchange news and to replenish wood for the signal fire kept ready in case of emergency. But the fire-pits were half filled with dust and debris, the white stones that had once ringed the hollows tumbled out of line. Under the craggy overhang, spiders and rock mice had made comfortable homes in the depleted woodpile.
What a bright day that had been, Joss waiting for her, him so young and her so eager. Where had that young woman gone? What we have lost we can never get back again.
Marit stood where she and Joss had so long ago shared the embrace of the Devourer. With the setting sun behind her, she looked east toward the ridge of hill held by the hierarchs to be sacred to the Lady of Beasts, to whom she had served her year's apprenticeship as a girl of fifteen. Ammadit's Tit could be mistaken for no other landmark.
Out of habit, out of respect, she cleared the stones, raked out the fire pit, and shifted such wood as was still usable into a new stack, splitting kindling. You had to leave things as you would hope to find them.
Herelia had been closed to reeves for so many years that she doubted any reeves chanced the Liya Pass in these more dangerous days, for fear of being ambushed, as she had been twenty years ago.
Nor, in the circuitous route she had taken over many days and nights flying up here, had she seen much traffic on any of the tracks or roads in these parts. The land appeared quiet and orderly. Subdued. Probably it was. But looks could be deceiving.
In the gray light before true dawn, she flew Warning along the high ridgeline to the black knob of the Tit. The Guardian's altar tucked on a shelf of rock below the summit glittered with the first sparks of sunlight. She'd had a hard time maneuvering Flirt onto the ledge, but Warning simply galloped as on a ramp down to earth. Mark dismounted, and the mare trotted across the labyrinth, seeking the spring.
Now, the gamble, the sticks tossed, the game set in motion.
She set her right foot on the entrance, and her left. She named each turn as the woman wearing the cloak of night had taught her: Needle Spire bright with the morning sun; Everfall Beacon; Stone Tor; Salt Tower beside the Salt Sea; Mount Aua; Highwater stream; the Pinnacle; the Walshow overlook; Swamp Bastion; Horn Vista; the Dragon's Tower; Thunder Spire; the Five Brothers; the Seven Secret Sisters; the Face on the Kandaran Pass, where night still shadowed the Spires. A hundred and one altars sacred to the Guardians wove through the land and, together with the Ten Tales of Founding, held the garment together.
The Rocky Saddle. The Eagle's Talon. Haldia Overlook.
