Capiam is right. There's no point to your going back down the trail tonight. None at all. You'd only come back too weary to keep up tomorrow, and cause all sorts of problems. Now you listen to me and go back to your fire and rest. Joboam will bring you your boy. Is Kari feeding you well? We were so glad to hear that you were sharing her fire. Though she was rather rude to Joboam to take you over like that.'
'Oh, please don't blame Kari for that. If there was any rudeness, it was mine. I felt more comfortable with her companionship. And she has helped me to understand your ways.' Tillu filled in her courtesies while her mind raced. She had been ordered to return to her fire and stay there. What would the herdlord do if she disobeyed?
Abandon her and her son on the tundra? Beat her? Other than Elsa, she had seen few incidents of violence among the herdfolk. But that was not to say she wouldn't be beaten if she disobeyed. She had never met a people who were tolerant of independent women. The herdfolk seemed so, and yet ... She bid them good night and thanked Capiam for sending Joboam to search for Kerlew. She backed from the tent, scarcely hearing Ketla's murmured reassurances. Her heart sank deep in her body, beating raggedly with a rhythm that vibrated through her flesh and matched Carp's insane drumming. She had to go back to look for him.
She stumbled past sleeping dogs and hobbled reindeer and fires banked for the night. Twice folk called out to ask her if Kerlew had been found yet. When she replied, she felt their sympathy, but also their condescension. What a fool they must think her, worrying over a boy ten years old. Any son of theirs would have followed the trail through the darkness, or built himself a shelter of bushes to weather out the night. Any son of theirs would not have wandered away or would have been able to find his way back.
Kari had pitched her shelter away from the other tents. Tillu set out across the empty space, her small fire a beacon in the night. Overhead the stars were myriad and tiny, the moon a discarded paring of cheese rind. Hummocks of grass dotted the ground and Tillu stumbled. Tears were very close and even more useless. Think, think. If she took a torch and went back down the trail, Joboam would find her. She didn't want to imagine what would happen next. If she didn't, the boy would never be found. And if she tried to go in darkness, circling around Joboam, hoping to strike the trail ahead of him? The night was too dark, the tundra too foreign a place to her. She would be as lost as Kerlew. 'Kerlew,' she whispered.
A dark shape rose between her and the camp fire. Heckram's arms enfolded her, holding her closely. The coarse leather of his shirt was rough against her cheek, but comforting. His voice rumbled in his chest and she felt the vibrations of it through her hands pressed flat against him. 'Go to Kari's, and get some sleep. I'm going back to look for Kerlew. I'll find him.'
'Capiam won't allow it.'
'I'm not asking Capiam.' His quiet words suddenly conveyed to her the depth of the rift between him and his people. It shook her.
'I can't ask this of you, Heckram. I think it will anger him greatly and ...'
He sounded almost amused. 'I didn't hear you ask me. I'm doing it for myself, and for Kerlew. That boy. I have no claim on him, but I couldn't bear for harm to come to him.'
'It wasn't your fault,' she said uselessly. When he did not reply, she added, 'Watch out for Joboam. Capiam has sent him back along the trail to find Kerlew. If he found you instead ...'
This time there was no mistaking the bronze-edged humor in Heckram's voice.
'Perhaps I shall find him first. Did you never think of that?' Kerlew: The Seite IT WAS
GETTING dark. He glanced about anxiously, his lower lip sagging away from his bottom teeth and brows puckered as he scanned the empty plain. He still didn't see Tillu or Kari. He didn't see anyone. He had walked and walked and walked, and still she wasn't here. He sniffled angrily. He was tired and hungry, and getting cold. Tillu should have been where he could find her. Why was she being so mean to him? And Carp and Heckram, too. They were all mean to him today.
He sat down abruptly and began to cry. Softly at first, and then, when that brought no results, louder, until his angry cries filled his ears. No one came. But Tillu almost always came when he cried. Where was she? His crying became frustrated screams, screams that tore his throat with their force. Still, no one came. He stopped suddenly, and opened his eyes to look around him. He snuffled miserably, and then lifted the front of his shirt to wipe his face. He tried to think what to do next.
What was he supposed to be doing? He thought back carefully. But his memories were tangled. Carp had spoken to him early that morning about the necessity for a shaman to seek his own vision. He had spoken of long fasts and journeys and sacred smoke. Then Heckram ... or was it Carp? ... had told him to run and find Tillu when the reindeer got sick. And something else? His mind plunged about erratically, and then suddenly brought up an image of Joboam. Joboam had smiled at him, and pointed the way to Tillu. He rubbed at his eyes again, and then slapped angrily at a mosquito on his wrist. It popped redly and left a smear of blood on his skin. For a moment he played with it, seeing how far his finger could spread the smear.
When he looked up, he couldn't see anyone. Where had they all gone? Instinctively he stood up to see farther. 'Tillu?' he called questioningly. 'Carp?' No one answered. He shivered and hugged his arms around himself. It was going to be night soon. They shouldn't have gone on. They should be pitching their tents and lighting warm fires and cooking food. His belly roiled at the thought of food. He sniffed hungrily, but smelled no smoke, no scent of bubbling stew or roasting meat. He swallowed the saliva that had welled up in his mouth at the thought of food.
Once more he looked around himself. In the distance, he picked out a shape that might be a great gray rock. He squinted his eyes. Were there scrubby trees growing at the base of it? Then that was where they were. Kari liked to pitch her tent against a stone for the warmth that it kept. And Tillu complained that the dung-fires stung her eyes. Tillu would like a fire of wood from the trees. Pleased with himself for figuring it all out, Kerlew set out for the shape in the distance.
Dark caught up with him as he walked. Gnats and mosquitoes sang shrilly in his ears, and stung him until he ran from the cloud of insects around him. He ran until he was out of breath and then walked again, until the stinging insects once more gathered around him and forced him to run. Always he kept the gray rock before him. In the uncertain light of the stars, it was no more than a lighter patch against the black horizon, a lump that rose above the blackness. Slowly it grew in his sight, until it was a thing that reared up taller than a man, taller than two men. And then he stood before it, panting with the effort of his last run.
He stared at the immense stone jutting up from the tundra. It was huge, bigger than three tents put together, and taller than one tent atop another. The stone itself was white and gray and black. Its planes of color changed as Kerlew walked slowly around it. What was a black hollow became a facet of glistening white mottled with silver when viewed from another vantage place. Lichen clung to it, softening some of its harsher facets, fuzzing its edges with life. The grass grew taller and lusher around its base, and small bushes crouched in its shelter. The warmth the dead stone gathered by day and released by night made its shelter a refuge for many forms of life.
Other things clung to it, too. Scraps of fur had been fixed to its rough surface with resin. An old offering of meat showed as a scatter of rib-bones on the tundra's sward.
Here was a small circle of amber pellets left beside the great stone. Symbols were painted on the flat surfaces of the stone in red and white and black pigment. Stark outlines of reindeer and men and other paintings more difficult to interpret decorated it. Here were the painted tracks of a rabbit, there a man's handprint, and beneath it in red the toe-pad tracks of a wolf. Kerlew shivered and hugged himself tightly. He tried to remember why he was here, but all he could recall was running toward the stone. He thought Carp might have sent him.
He walked around the stone, watching it change as he moved. Power. Power radiated from it like heat from a fire. It attracted Kerlew and filled him with fear at the same time. He dared not go close enough to touch the stone, even though he longed to feel the warmth of its rough surface, to trace with his fingers the power signs that decorated its sides. He contented himself with stooping by the circle of amber pellets.
Around the circle he dotted his forefinger, touching each pellet in turn. One called him, and he plucked it from its bed, held it close to his eyes to examine it. He felt its sleek sides, knew that in light it would be full of yellowness. He hesitated only a moment, then pulled his shaman's pouch out of his shirt and slipped the pellet inside. It might hold some of the power of this place. He hoped it was the right thing to choose. He wished Carp were here to tell him what to do. Carp.
He closed his mouth firmly, pressing his lips together. Maybe Carp had sent him here. A shaman had to seek his own vision. No one else could do it for him. And Carp had told him that sometimes shamans went for long
