Killbird

be given her chance to choose.» It was breath-holding time again, for two things could happen. First, Yuree could make a choice and it was all over. Secondly, she could refuse to make a choice and then it was in the hands of the gods of man. «May I look first?» Yuree asked, with a charming smile directed at her father. «Yes, my daughter,» Strabo said proudly, pleased that she was wise enough to examine the offerings before making a choice. Many prewomen let their hearts rule and choose without regard for the future or for the ability of their pairmates to provide for them. Yuree started at the end of the line, with the pile of buythings offered by Yorerie the Butcher, made delighted sounds, pawed through, leaving the pile untidy, and moved on. It was several minutes before she came to my pile, and then I stood as if frozen, afraid to look down, as she knelt and pulled my pile apart. «Such lovely bearskins,» she cooed, and I flushed, hoping, for the first time, that she would choose me immediately. «But,» she went on, «Logan's offerings are beautiful, as are those of Cree and Teetom. It is so difficult.» «It is difficult,» Strabas agreed, kneeling beside Logan's pile of buythings, «but consider this,» she said, holding up a lovely beaded skirt of deerskin. «There is no need for haste,» Strabo said. Yuree stood, smoothing the tight little skirt of grass over her shapely rump. «It is sooooo difficult.» I knew that she was not going to pick. It was going into the hands of the gods of man. So be it, I said to myself. «Can you not choose?» Strabas asked, holding up the deerskin skirt. «No, Mother, I cannot. I am too honored by the offerings of the finest premen of our family,» Yuree said. «She will not choose,» Seer of Things Unseen had told me, not a half moon past. «She will extract the last measure of it, sending it into the hands of the gods of man.» And Seer was right. «We will leave it to the gods of man to choose,» Strabo said, with a smile of satisfaction. «Will you, Yuree, daughter of Strabo of the Strongarm, give a sign, a sign to encourage?» This was Logan. «I will,» she said. She put her hand on her chin. She made such a pretty picture that I felt my knees go weak again. «But I must have time to think. My sign will be suspended from the top of the hidehouse before the sun seeks its rest.» I knew it all, all aspects of the custom. Only two nights past I had sat before the fire of the Seer of Things Unseen and she, sucking the juices from tender meat which I had prepared for her, unable to chew with her toothless gums, had told me once again. «She will not choose,» Seer had said. «And she will demand brave and dangerous things.» For, you see, she had two choices. If asked to give a sign, she could, if she chose, give a hint as to the identity of her first choice and, thus assured, that lucky preman could apply himself to the last tests with confidence. However, she could also choose to forego giving a clue and to demand a task, a test, a gift. «Eban,» old Seer had said. «It is said you have the curse, and yet would your scalp burn in the sun if your curse was allowed to grow?» Indeed, when I was young and let my hair grow it was unnecessary for me to oil my skull against the summer sun, but curse it was, along with my skinny limbs. «It is said,» Seer went on, «that beyond the far hills are families who do not consider hair as a curse, but as a protection, even an adornment.» «They must be mad,» I said. «Is it not mad to seek danger in order to be considered for the dubious joy of being pairmate to a spoiled child?» Seer asked. She was talking about the prewoman I loved, had loved for as long as I could remember. «If a preman cannot face danger for what he desires,» I answered, «he does not deserve to be called man.» «She will send some of you to find death,» Seer said. So be it, I thought, as I, having waited the long day through, saw Strabo of the Strongarm come from his hidehouse and reach for the message string, and then I moved closer and watched as he tied on the clue which Yuree was giving us. I saw the other chosen watching, and I saw Teetom's face blanch, he being the first to see as Strabo stepped away. I saw it then. There was no mistaking it. I'd seen it before, on Strabo's father when he was family head, on Strabo himself. The thing which hung there was multicolored, connected by the hard veins, lumpy, hard, beautiful and deadly. All Yuree was asking her future pairmate to do was bring her a necklace of dragon guts. Chapter Two I spent the night alone atop a dome. God likes chaos. I used my hardax to chop and strew underbrush and a few trees, working in the late-evening light until I had transformed the very peak into a tangle in the center of which I made my bed and lay down with the fire burning low, godsticks in my hands making the sign. «God of Chaos,» I prayed. «I have prepared a small place for use, feeble as I am, unable to wreak the huge and terrible beauty which is in your power alone. I use it to pray to you, to pray to you to guide me into, the land of the dragons, to give strength to my arms and courage to my heart.» God sent a sign. I saw it coming from the far horizon, to the west, where the hills were high and the forests deep, from where Strabo had led us to the Valley of Clean Water. It was burning there in the night sky, a star larger than the rest, moving relentlessly toward me but high, high, up there where the gods of man lurk. It moved directly over me and continued until, after a long, long time, it went below the lower hills from which the sun rises to sink, some say, into the field of large water which is there beyond the deadly flats where once, Seer of Things Unseen says, there were giants in the old days. A sign. God spoke. I rubbed my godsticks and made the sign and fought sleep. I thought of my father. When I was to go on my first hunt he gave me the hardax. Dragonskin. Lovely and deadly and capable of cutting rock. Jagged, laced to the sturdy wooden handle with animal thongs. I had never allowed one spot of the red dragon's blood to stain it, polishing it daily, oiling it with the fat of the swimmers. I had learned early that there is a certain amount of oil in the skin, so on long hunts I rubbed it, being careful of the sharp cutting edge kept keen by constant honing, against me, my face, my belly, my arms. Until it gleamed. No one had a finer hardax. And no one had such a father. I awoke with the sun and did not scrape my curse. I would be away for days, moons perhaps. There would be no one to see my shame. I ate of the fruit from trees and went down the hill to find Seer of Things Unseen at her cookfire. I gave her a softened and well-cooked piece of deermeat. «Seer,» I said, «it is said that the dragons inhabit the far hills toward the rising sun.» «So you are determined to go,» she said. «I ask your blessing and I beg to be allowed to share a bit of your wisdom, as much as my poor head can absorb.» «You go to find death.» «Perhaps.» «As your father did.» «Then I will live in the memory of men as being brave.» «Ghosts hear no praise,» she said. She sighed and coughed. «There be dragons in the far hills. There have always been and there always will be, for brave men such as Egan the Hunter, who last slew a dragon and presented its gaudy guts to the elder Strabo, come but once in a thousand moons.» «You think I am not one of those men?» I asked. «You are but a child, and a dragon's teeth are sharp, far-reaching and deadly.» «But I am the son of my father, and he slew a dragon.» «And was slain,» she said grimly, «by still another dragon.» «I am fleet of foot,» I said. «More so than anyone else in the family.» «A dragon's teeth travel with the swiftness of an evil thought,» Seer said. «And his eyes are death, searing and blasting and burning.» «I will not allow him to spit his teeth at me nor to catch me in his evil eye,» I said, full of the confidence of youth. «Eban, my son,» she said, «don't go. Stay. There are other prewomen. The daughter of Bla the widow looks upon you with interest.» I shuddered. The daughter of the widow was ugly and of shrill voice. Yuree's voice was the coo of the woodland birds. «Well, there is this,» Seer said. «Perhaps you will not find a dragon.» She chuckled. «I'm sure the others won't. So perhaps you won't and then it will all be in the hands of the gods of man, foolish as that may be for those who tempt them.» «Perhaps I won't,» I said, «but I will try.» «Yes,» she said. «How will I know?» «When you see the white bones of death, you will know.» No one alive in the family had even seen a dragon. My father had, had slain one, but he was dead. And my mother had died of grief. I left the Valley of Clean Waters, climbing the near ridge to look down and out and up to still another ridge, and for the first few days I walked in fear, expecting to see the white bones of death, sign of a dragon, behind every tree, at the top of each ridge, in the bottom of each valley. I traveled light, my hardax, my sleepskin, a bag of dried meat, for the hills were abundant in summer with fruit and game large and small. I ate well and drank deeply from free-flowing springs of cold and delicious water and made my bed under the trees, looking upward to see the cold stars and, once, twice, the sign from God, the glowing messenger which came from the west and burned fire as it passed over me. I didn't know which direction the others chose, and I didn't care. Perhaps Logan would make a serious effort to find a dragon, perhaps not. I, like the Seer of Things Unseen, had little confidence in the sincerity of the others. Many times I had lost myself in the hills, leaving the family far behind to wander and seek the view from the next hilltop. Once I traveled as far as the low slopes, there to see the inbreeders, weak, starving, fighting among themselves and breaking the basic rule of God. I had no desire to go among the inbreeders, to see the blood of man spilled, as they spilled it on the slightest provocation. How they must breed, to be able to afford to squander life, God's greatest gift. Not that I fear them. In my healthful strength I could lift two of them and toss them headlong, but they are sick with the ultimate sickness, the madness, and I fear contagion. I set my course away from the known haunts of the inbreeders, making my way slowly—seeing places not before seen by members of my family—toward the unknown hills to the north of the place where the sun rises, into vast and lonely forests, unaware of the passage of the days, for time was not important. Should the others come before I returned, the custom demanded a full moon of waiting. And when I returned with the necklace, and I was determined to do so, it would be over and the gods of man would be robbed. There came a day when the hills descended in front of me and there were high ridges only behind me and I could see a vista which was strange and forbidding. I moved slowly, my skins tied high to bare my chest and belly to feel danger, and there was none. There were deer and once or twice a distant sight of a bear, tempting me. I denied myself repetition of the test of manhood, killing one of the huge and dangerous