The bright-cheeked girls and tousle-headed youths had caught up with them. Their urgent questions rattled around Tillu as she dragged Lasse back from the body. She didn't want to be here when they rolled her over. Two deaths in a day. She couldn't take anymore. 'I have to see Capiam,' she insisted, pushing her way past the young herders.
'Let go of me. Let me through.'
'It was the healer,' she heard a young voice say behind her. 'Why isn't she doing anything?' And then a sudden scream rose, piercing the bright morning. They had rolled Kari over. She kept her grip on Lasse's wrist, dragging him along.
The screams floated thin as splinters in the wind. Heckram flinched himself more tightly against the rock face. He wondered if someone had seen him. He doubted it. He considered leaning out, to look down the sheer rock face and see what the cry was about. He grinned harshly at the notion. He kept his hands and cheek pressed against the rock face and edged on another step.
He forced his thoughts away from the sheer fall behind him. He thought of Tillu, and how he had told her of his youthful venture up this same path. He wasn't sure if bravado or forgetfulness had made him speak so lightly. Now that he was up here, he remembered the ache of calf and back and shoulder. And fingers. He had taken the bandages from his injured hand to improve his grip. Every time he closed his hand now, the pain leaped up his arm. He refused to let himself focus on it. The path was substantially narrower than he remembered. He had been smaller then, he reminded himself. Narrower of shoulder and more sure of foot. Certainly more blithely unaware of death and pain. He pushed on, sliding his foot forward through the gritty rock dust that coated the trail. His toes felt raw. He had discarded his boots long ago, left them on the last wide piece of the Najd's Steps. His bare feet gripped the cold stone more surely, but felt every abrasion. Something light brushed against his foot. He looked down in the narrow space between his body and the cliff-face. A black feather. Another one.
Odd. He had seen cliffs full of birds' nests before, but they weren't as windswept as this one. He wondered that the feather stayed on the narrow path at all. He pushed on.
The trickling sweat was from the warmth of fear and weariness. The sun on his back was still the thin warmth of morning. Its light touch reminded him of Tillu's hands on his body, of her hands spread against the small of his back as she lifted herself against him. A smile, almost foolish in its softness, came unbidden to his lips. Every time he thought he knew her, she surprised him. Her concern for Kari, her constant anxiety over Kerlew, her sober caring for Rolke had never prepared him for the woman she had shown him last night. She had cast her wariness aside, and revealed beneath it a deep hunger and an almost innocent joy in satisfying it. Like a child with a new toy, he thought, and blushed despite his isolation. No woman had ever so thoroughly explored his responses to her touch. The newness of it had made him a youth in her hands, ignited energies and curiosity he had thought outgrown. Even now, he wanted her again. This, he realized suddenly, is what Ristin meant. The feeling she had hoped he would have for Elsa, that no hardship was too great. Did Tillu feel it, he wondered? His face sobered an instant. Hadn't she trusted him to bring Kerlew safely home?
He wondered what he would do if he didn't find the boy up here. Look elsewhere, he told himself pragmatically, refusing to worry about time lost. He chuckled sourly at a sudden idea; how would it be to return to camp and find that Kerlew had already returned on his own? Good, he decided. It would feel good to find the boy safe anywhere. An image of his small, uncertain face rose in Heckram's mind. There were so few times when he had seen the boy's face unshadowed by fear or uncertainty. When they had carved spoons together. When he had given the boy the bone-knife for his own. The night his thin fingers had awkwardly plaited strips of leather for a new harke-harness. He understood suddenly a father's pride in his child's small accomplishments.
A lost memory bobbed into his mind. He held a tablo board up for a tall man's inspection, and his heart swelled tight with pride at the grin that split the man's dark beard. 'Well, and will you be the wolf now, son, and give your father a chance to win on your new board?' Heckram pressed flat to the cliff for a moment, feeling the light morning breeze finger his garments and hair. How had he lost a moment like that, forgotten it so completely? He had had so few moments like that. He stood very still.
When he moved on again, he understood what drove him. It was time to close the circle. He wanted to look down into a boy's face and see that flush of accomplishment.
He edged on, occasionally finding a wider spot in the trail where he could crouch and ease his screaming muscles. At such times he glanced out over the tundra but never looked directly down at the tents below. In one such spot he found two small feathers and the clear outline of a small foot. Had Kerlew brought a dead bird with him? He shrugged and pressed on, step after careful step, his determination refueled by the footprint.
The afternoon heat found him at a wider spot in the trail. He crouched, stiff muscles screaming in the new position, and sipped water from his small pouch. He tried to relate today's climb to his boyhood one. Had it taken him this long that time? Had the boy Heckram moved faster, been more agile than the man? He poured water into his hand, washed the salty sweat from his eyes and lips. The end of the Najd's Steps could not be far. He was sure of it. He tried to see the end of the climb but the subtle rippling of the Cataclysm's wall and the climb of the path denied him. Kerlew might crouch at the end of this trail, or he might find only an empty spot and the sheer fall beyond it.
Well, he would see. He started to rise, and then hunkered down in sudden consternation. With one thick finger he traced a peculiar imprint in the rock dust and fine gravel of the ledge. It was his imagination. Probably the boy had crouched here a moment, weight balanced on his toes. Yet he could have sworn the track was that of a wolf. He shook his head and pushed the fancy out of his mind. He slung his water skin over his shoulder, tugged it tight against his hip. On again.
The path narrowed drastically. Heckram hesitated. But Kerlew had gone this way.
And so he must follow. Face to rock, damp hands suctioned against cold stone, he shuffled along. He peered ahead and down between his chest and the cliff. When he came to it, he stared at it for a long moment. Yes, he had grown. The mark he had scratched at eye level was now between his chest and the cliff. It seemed little weathered, the scratches gray against the cliff's black face. It was the same shape as the small flaps of skin he cut from his calves' ears. His mark, as individual as his face, never given to anyone before him, never to another after him. He shivered at touching hands with his childhood. He pushed his thoughts back to that day, leaned slightly out to have a better view of what came next.
It was as he remembered. A step or two more, and then nothing. Nothing. No path, no boy, just the narrow ridge of stone dwindling away to a crack in the stone's face. He felt the trembling start, suppressed it as he pushed himself tightly against the cliff face.
He had seen the boy's footprint in the dust; he must have come this way. The next thought followed mercilessly. He must have gone that way. To the end of the trail and down, taking a false step in the darkness. Tears blinded him. Damn the old najd and his cursed vision. His wisdom had sent a confused boy to die. 'Kerlew,' he whispered agonizedly as the screams he had heard earlier took on a personal note.
The rustling of clothing, close at hand. The sound startled him, set his heart thumping. Awkwardly he turned his head, glancing forward and back along the ledge, but saw nothing. He edged another step along the dwindling ridge, felt the bare edge of stone press his sole. He looked again, and cried out in despair. 'Kerlew!'
He had forgotten the najd's alcove. There it was, three steps beyond the end of the trail. He could barely glimpse inside. He thought of leaning back for a better view, but there was nothing to cling to. What little he could see was chilling enough. Kerlew stood within it, face suffused with gladness. His arm stretched out straight before him, hand pressed flat against the empty air at the cliffs edge. His eyes were bright but unfocused. Behind him the shriveled body of the mummified najd was exactly as he remembered it. Time had not touched it. 'Wolf?' Kerlew questioned softly.
'Kerlew, it's me. I'm on the ledge. I've come to get you.'
The boy jerked suddenly, then swayed and put a hand on the rough wall of the alcove for balance. The shallow cave in the stone was no more than two steps deep.
Kerlew licked his cracked lips. 'Wolf?' he asked again.
'I'm over here, Kerlew. Right here.'
The boy's eyes moved in slow jerks until they came to Heckram. No recognition kindled in them, only curiosity. He stared at the man, and then stepped forward so that his bare toes curled over the lip of the cliff. Heckram's heart slammed in his throat. 'Step back!' he cried.
