'Forever is a long time,' Ristin said in a pragmatic voice. 'I'm afraid all I know of it is today, and the day that will follow it. But only if we get this day started. I hate to wake them, but I must, unless we wish to be last in the caravan.'
She tossed her eggshells into the fire, and rose stiffly. Tillu jumped up to follow her.
She felt almost shy as she knelt beside Kerlew and shook him gently. He stirred and complained, and opened his eyes. For a long instant he regarded her sleepily, his long silky lashes framing his odd, deeply set eyes, reminding her of a wondering babe. Then his eyes widened, he sat up, and flung his thin arms around her neck. Tears stung her eyes as he choked her with his hug. She held him tightly, feeling his thinness, the warmth of his small body through his light shirt. How close she had come to never holding him again. Her son. She loosened her grip when he released her neck, and leaned back to look into his face. Like Kari, he glowed with suppressed amazement.
'Mother, I have seen so much! I know so much more now, I have been so far! And I have come back, alive! He said I would, and I have done it! Carp, where is Carp? I have so much to tell him, there is so much he must explain now.' And in one wrenching instant he scrabbled clear of her, crawling across the hides to fling himself on the old man with cries of delight. Tillu looked after him in disbelief. She felt gutted. She stared at them, watched the old man's heavily veined hands pat her son's back as they embraced. Then he was sitting at Carp's side, taking the food that Kari offered, stuffing it into his mouth without thanks or hesitation, and talking to Carp, heedless of the food that muffled his words. He spoke in a rapid, excited whisper she could not decipher, his thin hands waving egg and bread in wild gestures. His eyes never left the old shaman's face.
But Carp's eyes strayed. His gaze lifted over Kerlew's head in a flash of vindictive triumph. Tillu recoiled as from a physical blow. For one brief instant she had held her son in her arms. Now he was gone. She could see him, she could touch him, but they no longer walked in the same world. He was Carp's now. She stared at him with hungry eyes, unable to turn away even though she knew Carp gloated at her. It was no comfort to see Kari sitting patiently, close enough to hear any request of Carp's but not so close that she intruded on the najd and his apprentice.
Strong hands fell on her shoulders, pulling her to her feet and turning her to face him. She had to tilt her head back to look into Heckram's eyes. They mirrored her loss.
'Why don't you walk with me today?' he invited her quietly. She nodded dumbly.
CHAPTER NINE
Kari led the harke that Carp sat upon. Tillu watched them as they moved into place in the caravan line, heard the greetings the folk called as he passed them.
'So the young apprentice found his way back to you! Good luck upon us!'
'I told his mother there was nothing to worry about, didn't I? Glad to see your boy is safe and fine.'
'Look, there, the najd's boy is back.'
Carp grinned his gaping smile and nodded down on his well-wishers, while Kerlew trotted beside his knee unaware of the attention. The sprinkling rain misted Tillu's eyelashes and made rainbows as she longed after him.
She walked beside Heckram, listening to the creak of the harness leather and the deep thrumming of his voice. The rain damped her face and gradually soaked her clothing until the weight dragged on her. Tillu felt that she must be staggering along like a gut-wounded animal. The oddest part was that no one else noticed any change.
Carp had taken her son, wrenched Kerlew from her as she had occasionally wrenched a rotted tooth from a man's jaw. He had said he would, that Kerlew would be his when the migration of the Herdfolk began, but somehow she had not believed it. She had been deceiving herself all these days of traveling, pretending that because she could see Kerlew and speak with him he was still hers. It wasn't so. She tried to tell herself there was no difference between this day and other days when Kerlew had walked beside Carp instead of her. But there was. Today she knew what the others had recognized long before. Kerlew belonged to Carp. He was the najd's boy, not the healer's son. He would not be coming back to her tonight, or any other night.
The sun came out, sending vapors streaming up from the earth. And rising with the vapors came the midges. They hovered over Tillu as she walked on the other side of the harke Heckram led. They walked thick around the harkars' eyes and shrilled in Tillu's ears. They were not enough to distract her from Kerlew's loss. Heckram spoke softly over the moving back of the harke about the things they passed, telling her the herdfolk names for the plants and grasses. Kari had already taught them to her, but she let him speak on. She let her mind drift on the flow of his words.
The bright sunlight soon dissipated the midges. 'But they'll be back come evening.
We'll make fires tonight, and heap green moss on the flames to keep them away. Their humming can drive a man crazy, let alone a reindeer. I'm glad the Cataclysm is in sight.
Watch it today; it will rise up before us, and tomorrow night we will camp at its feet.'
She nodded to his words, unable to keep her mind on them. Somewhere ahead of them, Kari led the harke that Carp rode on, and Kerlew walked beside it. Tillu would have given a great deal to know what had happened to Kari. The change in her was plain to everyone. Many had turned to watch her as she took her place when the caravan formed up that morning. Even Ketla, bundled up on a litter dragged by two harkar, had lifted her head to stare at her daughter in perplexity. Tillu had met Capiam's glare with a blank stare. This was none of her doing; let him speak to Carp if he did not approve of it. Strangest of all was the oddly neutral look on Joboam's face.
He showed no surprise at Kerlew's reappearance, nor at Kari's caretaking of Carp. He passed Tillu and Heckram without a word or a look, letting his rajd fall into line behind Capiam's. She watched the bunched muscles of Heckram's shoulders slowly relax as he stared after Joboam's retreating back. So he, too, had expected a confrontation. He turned questioning eyes to her, but she could only shrug. She understood nothing of what was happening today, except that she hurt. She stung as sorely as if Kerlew had been skin stripped from her body. To have him be returned and then once more taken from her doubled the hurt. She walked in a daze.
Sometimes she let her hand rest on the warm shoulder of the harke. The smooth shifting of the muscles beneath her palm loaned her strength. There were moments when the fragrances of the warming earth pushed their way into her attention. Twice the cries of birds drew her eyes skyward to a territorial battle in the air. But as quickly as she roused, she lapsed again, sinking back into her own morass of abandonment. She felt Heckram watching her, heard the gentle stream of his words, but could find no replies. Her mind was too full. From Kerlew to Kari her mind wandered, and then to Ketla on her litter. Why was Carp so satisfied, Joboam so aloof of them? Her steps slowed as she tried to juggle all the pieces, and Heckram slowed the rajd rather than rush her. Other animals and folk passed them. She did not even watch where she was going, but walked with her one hand on the reindeer's shoulder and her eyes turned inward.
'I want to show you this,' she heard him say. She was aware that they were veering gradually away from the caravan's path. The only difference it made to her was that the ground they trod now had not been packed into a path. Bushes caught at her feet, and low growing brambles scratched her bare ankles. The ground became rough where the unevenness of frost and thaw had heaved and broken it. Huge raw boulders had been squeezed up by the tortured earth, and in other places great sinks had been formed by lingering pools of water. It was the most uneven bit of ground they had encountered on the tundra, and its irregularity seemed restful after the eternal flatness and retreating horizon of the plain. The rest of the herdfolk detoured around this disturbance, but Tillu was glad that Heckram chose to lead his rajd over and through the buckled upheaval.
The land rose around them. They traveled between the crumbling walls of an arroyo.
In the lee of upthrust earth and stone, bushes grew boldly, standing taller than they did on the tundra proper. The flowers were larger in the collected heat of the hollows, and their fragrance hung in the still air. Thaws and running water had gullied the earth before seeping away. The edges of the ravines were bright with moss and dangling flowers. Ice-bright ranunculus dripped down a cleft. Small, fragrant anemones bloomed in the sheltered areas, and tiny blue forget-me-not cloaked the ground.
'Stop,' Tillu said softly. Heckram muttered to the rajd and the animals halted and gazed around them, their ridiculous ears spread in perplexity. 'It's so quiet,' she whispered to herself. The depression of the ravine hid the
