For an instant his control slipped. She looked up into black anger, and felt suddenly small as the man towered over her. Then he smiled, slowly. The anger stayed bright in his eyes but he kept it from his voice.
'Why, Healer, I don't know. I looked all morning for her, but found no trace. When I went to tell Capiam I couldn't find his silly little daughter, he told me the najd had been killed. As he is too ill to move, he asked me to look into it. Pirtsi said the reindeer trampled the najd. Is that what you saw?'
The challenge was plain now. 'I saw an old man dying in the mud and filth,' Tillu said carefully. Anger shook her body and voice. For an instant Joboam's confidence faltered.
'Pirtsi told me he was already dead,' he said unevenly.
Tillu stood silent. Joboam lifted a hand to grip her, thought better of it and let his hand fall to his side. 'Don't toy with me, Healer.' His voice was deadly soft. 'We both know how ill Capiam is. And his son. You see who has been chosen to take up the reins for him. Be wise. Please the next herdlord.'
'Have you buried him already?' Tillu asked calmly. Some small part of her mind screamed for caution, but she could not find the control to be wise. Her eyes tracked the long, livid scratch down the side of his neck. 'You'd better beware of infection in that,'
she said coldly. 'Scratches from nails often infect.' He twitched as if stung, but made no reply. She turned away from him, and he let her go. She walked on. Behind her, his voice lifted in command, calling for quiet and for one man to explain what had happened to the najd. The gabble behind her died. They would obey him. They would follow him, when the time came. She found she didn't care.
She walked back toward the tents, scarcely watching where her feet took her. Making plans. Heckram would bring Kerlew to her, and she would leave. She'd take her boy and leave these people, strike out across the tundra while the summer days were long.
And Heckram? asked a small voice inside her. And Kari? And Ristin? And Lasse? the small voice nagged. 'I can't help them!' Tillu heard herself declare aloud. 'Kerlew and myself. That is as much as I can take care of. Kerlew and myself.'
'Tillu?'
Lasse. She hadn't seen much of the boy lately. He was taller than she remembered him. Was he growing that fast? After an instant, she realized he was silently staring at her. She tried to gather her mind. 'What is it?'
'Are you all right?'
The question puzzled her until she glanced down at herself. Carp's blood was on her hands, and mud caked the front of her legs from her knees down. She couldn't know that it was the look in her eyes that most rattled Lasse.
'I think so. Were you looking for me?'
'Yes. Actually, no. I was looking for Kari, but no one knows where she is. I had heard she was missing. I wanted to talk to her, to tell her ... there is a way to keep from joining Pirtsi. To join with ... someone else, instead. I went by Capiam's hut, finally.'
Tillu could guess the courage that must have taken.
'Ketla screamed at me to go away, but one of the women there came after me. She told me you had gone to look for Kari, and might know where she was hiding. Ketla thinks you told her to run away early this morning. She's very angry at you, but Capiam is too sick to do anything about it. I thought I should warn you ... she's sent for Joboam. She's saying he'll bring you back to the tent and make you tell where her daughter is. Please, Tillu ...' He looked desperate. 'Do you know where Kari is?'
Tillu turned her worries carefully. She counted them out to herself. 'Kerlew is missing. Heckram's gone to look for him. Carp is dead. Kari is gone, and I don't know where. But I know she's run away because she doesn't want to join with Pirtsi. And Joboam is coming to look for me.' She looked into Lasse's stricken face. 'Do you know the way to the Najd's Steps?'
He hesitated. 'Yes. Yes, I do. Follow me.'
She trailed after him as he led her swiftly through the village, slipping between the tents and threading their way past meat racks and hides stretched to dry in the sun. The effort of trotting brought order to her mind again.
'Heckram was going to climb the Najd's Steps,' she explained to his back. 'He thought he might find Kerlew there. He went seeking a najd's vision,' she added in answer to Lasse's puzzled look. 'I think I had better find Heckram. He'll know best what to do.
And perhaps he has found Kerlew by now. Perhaps we could just slip away.'
'Slip away?'
'Leave,' Tillu said tersely. 'Run away from the herdfolk and Joboam. Kerlew and I.
Find a new life somewhere else. Again.'
Lasse looked at her incredulously. 'Alone?'
She didn't answer. Her eyes had gone ahead of them, up the gentle swell of grassy hill to where a group of young men and women gestured and exclaimed to one another, and beyond to where the wall of the Cataclysm rose, sudden as pain. It shone black against the blue sky, and Tillu's neck protested when she rolled her head back to see its top. It was a wall across the wide world, a buckled wedge of stone and earth pushed up to bar the herdfolk and their reindeer from further wandering. Some places were tumbled and rounded with weather, cupping small green pastures or pockets of blessed white snow where the stinging insects never ventured. Reindeer clustered on the white patches in refuge from the bugs. But at this place the Cataclysm rose, vertical and uncompromising. A slide of schist and shale at the base marked its only flaking concession to wind and rain.
She could not see what held the herders' attention but she thought she saw the Najd's Steps They scarcely merited the name. A jutting scar crawled across the Cataclysm's face, up the expanse of sheer black stone, and ended abruptly far short of the peak. The ridge of stone looked as if it projected no wider than a foot path from the precipice, and in places seemed to have crumbled away entirely. Other cracks and juttings marred the surface of the Cataclysm, but only one could be the Najd's Steps. She was scanning the long narrow way for some sign of Heckram or Kerlew, when she heard Lasse give a low cry of despair. He gripped her arm suddenly, pinched bruisingly as he pointed up.
The figure materialized on a tiny outcropping of stone beyond the end of the Najd's Steps. For a moment it hung there. The wind billowed under its wings, spread the pinions black and wide to the bright fresh day. The bird rose, impossibly immense, lifting wide for flight.
And plummeted.
'Kari!' Lasse cried out, his voice cracking from boy to man on the name. And in that utterance, Tillu saw her, the wings becoming Kari's feathered cloak. Her small face was pale, her black hair streamed behind her. She did not scream. The Cataclysm thrust out a rocky spur to grip her. She caught on it and tumbled, the wind roaring through her cloak as she fell. Screams rose from the watching herders. The instant was forever.
Lasse dragged Tillu with him as he ran, plunging through the horrified herders. It was farther to the base of the Cataclysm than it looked. Her breath caught painfully in her ribs. Tufts of grass and low bushes scratched her ankles and tore at her calves, but it could not distract her from the crumpled black figure on the green sward.
They were there too soon. Lasse flung himself to his knees beside her, reached to roll her over. Tillu didn't try to stop him. He couldn't hurt her any more than she was already hurt. But he pulled his hand back from the body with a stifled cry. He turned a wide, white face up to Tillu, horror and grief shaking his lips. Tillu dropped stiffly to her knees, put a hand on Kari. And pulled it back. Gelid. Beneath the black feathered cloak, the body was sodden and still, pulped organs and bones inside a sack of skin.
Tillu swallowed dryly, her mind reeling. If she had not stayed with Heckram last night
... if she had asked his advice earlier. If, if, and all useless.
'Get up,' she croaked, rising on shaking legs. She tugged at Lasse's sleeve, then gripped his collar and dragged him to his feet. He did not resist her, but he didn't cooperate as she pulled him back from the body. 'Don't look at her. Don't touch her.
You can't help her now, Lasse. Come away. Come away.'
'What's happened?'
'Who was it?'
'Is he dead?'
