‘Not true,’ laughed Daingol. ‘Sowsie might have been foremost among the Council and the singers. She chose not.’
‘I chose not.’ Sowsie stared into the flames, making a puckered mouth at what she saw there. ‘Now I may choose again. I will need help for this oath. Lain-achor, you and I can bind this one to Jasmine’s need.’
‘Fitting,’ said Mum-lil. ‘He would have had a child from her. So she shall have one returned through him.’
‘If Hu’ao lives,’ breathed Jasmine.
‘Wait,’ Thewson grumbled. ‘I have sworn this to Jasmine. To find the child. It is the bride price.’
‘Bride price?’ Mum-lil was much offended. ‘She carries your child and you talk of bride price?’
‘We are needed to go north,’ said Sowsie. ‘You most of all, Thewson. This one is needed for nothing. Let us use him.’
Thewson merely stared at Jasmine, she returning the stare. At last, she said, ‘I will think of another price, Thewson. If they can bind that one in a way that will make him find my child but not harm her, then let him go.’
Sowsie smiled, and Lain-achor seemed equally amused. They did not say why, but when they took the dog king away into the grasses for privacy, they laughed.
Daingol shook his head. ‘I cannot tell you of that oath,’ he said to Mum-lil. ‘But it is one of which Peroval would approve.’
It was a long time before Sowsie and Lain-achor returned, striding into the firelight with laughter in their eyes still. Behind them the dog king came, in some way indefinably changed.
‘This is no longer dog king,’ said Sowsie. ‘This is Fox, quick and sly, bright of eye, sharp of teeth, barker in the wilderness, evader of the dogs of men. The oath demands this of him.’
Him they had called the dog king was changed before them, pricking his ears, straitening his back, his eyes glittering. He laughed at them, a fox laugh.
‘We have taken memory,’ said Sowsie, ‘and time. We have given a new life with this oath. Go then, west to the Chornagam Mountains, to the trail of this child, months old though it be, even into Lakland if you must. Bring those you find to Labat Ochor, to Tiles, and await us there.’
He barked once and was gone into the darkness, swift as an arrow’s flight. Far off they heard another quick bark, and then silence.
‘Would I had this magic,’ said Doh-ti, ‘to bind that one who called himself Lithos.’
Sowsie shuddered. ‘Hush. That one could not be bound so, uno-li. That one did to his companion what Terascouros and the company did to those of Murgin. Terascouros would not have let me put the oath of Obon upon her unless she was weary unto death. That one, Lithos, would not allow bonds upon him … it. I wish we could reach the Choir of Gerenhodh to tell them of Lithos, but it is too far, too hidden. They must learn of it for themselves.’
Jasmine’s feelings were injured that night. Thewson seemed to disregard the fact of her pregnancy, said nothing of it, treated her with no new courtesy or respect. Indeed, he seemed rather more distant than usual, remote, spending most of the evening with Daingol and Lain-achor. Finally, late, she approached him as he wandered alone far from the firelight and challenged him about it. He spoke then as though to the stars, shaming her.
‘When I walk in the day, I remember a time. When I wake from sleep, I remember that time. It is as though all the life which is Thewson turns upon that time and is changed.
‘We stand in a dark place with shining beasts around us, a black city seeking us, nanuluzh, a new strangeness. Umarow comes from the high sky and cries. I see the strange one, wrapped in robes from the black city, Jaer, like something killed for meat, half butchered, half skinned. I smell blood like a knife on my tongue, hegr the Umarow cry metal in the sky, see black night and grey dawn far off, feel the old woman’s claws in my arm.
‘And I am not there. I am far off, in the night of the Lion Courts where the One Who Will Not Answer lives, where stones shine in my face and a voice speaks. It tells me I am chosen to do a thing which the god desires. It tells me I will take a wounded one to safety. Do it, says the god.
‘And I am there in the place of shining stones, also here where the black city dies. In my head comes the whirr of the wings of the jewelled bird god, and the voice saying, “Think, go. For this are you saved and saved again.”
‘At this, I am angry. I am Thewson, son of the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried (though he is buried now). I am warrior, spear carrier. God should save Thewson because I am he. Then I smell blood and am ashamed. When we walk in the forest of the sloping land while that Medlo and you, Jasmine, make stories and the sun is warm, that Jaer walks with me and thanks me for noon meat. We talk of hunting, of the spear.
‘I am ashamed. I, Thewson. In my head, the bird god curses me. “Fool! Eater of Shadows! Would we choose an unworthy one to do this thing? Have pride, warrior, for only strength will do our bidding now.” So, I swear I will walk forever with this burden, this Jaer, until I die from walking.
‘Now, Jaer sleeps, wakens, goes away to the east. The smell of blood is gone. Jasmine curls against me in the night and there is joy. Sky gatherer falls in the Lion Courts. Old ones die. All the towns are shut tight, shut against us. I do not know what will come. It may be, wa’osu, that the gods save me for something more. I seek a crown, still, the Crown of Wisdom, for I need it. Where? Where?
‘The child –
