Suddenly River is warm—inexplicably so—upon her eyelids. So warm, so welcome, this current and this soft hum and this shadow, and it is peaceful, so peaceful… The curious promise claims her, and finally she submits, opening her mouth and her eyes and her lungs to the heat of Her finality, and
he is alone, alone as he has never been but it is worth it—his wings are broken and web-tangled, but they will dry and heal and he is free. Tokela gasps and somehow it is Wind, not River, that fills his lungs. But nevertheless it is dark, and peaceful, and he is here.
Here.
He is now, and instance, and impulse. He knows nothing else, feels nothing else, has somehow been emptied of all save the simplest and most basic drum of life:
Survival.
Dreaming. Asleep. Oblivious. The strange foresight, the Star-voices, the crippling awareness, all of it he locks away. All of it he makes still, silenced, never to be wielded again, never to emerge again…
Until now.
“I HAVE no reason to lie, Mound-chieftain. He was my playmate. I mean him no harm. But I saw what I saw.”
Akumeh was scared.
His honest fright skittered into Inhya’s own breast. It twisted chill about the thick, turbulent knot that had lain there, tight-spun, since Laocha had come running to the main fishing grounds with news of tumult at falling weir. Then Akumeh—steady, cheerful Akumeh—had come as well, babbling of drownings and madness and blood that was not.
They had descended upon the Fall with ropes and slings and plenty of strong backs, and brought their children home.
“I know you’re not lying, Akumeh,” Sarinak reassured, walking across the chieftain’s gathering den. Akumeh knelt on the rug in its centre, eyes steady upon Sarinak as he laid a hand upon Akumeh’s shoulder, then his head. “I do not question your honour. I don’t doubt what you saw. I merely question your interpretation of it.”
“Mound-chieftain, I—”
“You were, all of you, pushed past any reasonable limits. I’m thankful all of you are alive.”
All of them. Anahli, swathed in furs in her dam’s tipo, with Kuli and Aylaniś in constant attendance. Madoc, sitting proud and propped on a narrow shelf, watching Akumeh with narrowed eyes. The ankle was swollen, to be sure, and painful, but instead of a bone snapped, it had been the ligaments that had torn; longer healing, perhaps, but less chance of deadly infection.
Tokela, on the other hand…
He’d been unconscious from the time Sarinak had hefted him, limp, over one shoulder and carried him across on the barge they’d brought. He’d remained unaware when Sarinak lowered him—remarkably gentle—onto a rush-stuffed pallet on the floor of their bedding den.
“You are troubled.” Sarinak took a few paces sideways, eyes upon Akumeh. “Still.”
Akumeh looked over, spoke to Madoc in a voice that quavered. “You were there, after. Tell him what you saw. Tell me”—a plea—“what it was. It looked like he was bleeding. Bleeding from his nose and eyes, only it wasn’t. Blood.”
The chill ran up Inhya’s spine and lodged between her shoulder blades.
“That is true. It wasn’t blood.” Madoc met Akumeh’s gaze with a composure quite unlike his normal fierce defensiveness. “Tokela was already bleeding, didn’t you see the gash on his head?”
“A’io. The weir must have hit him.” Akumeh took a breath, let it out slowly. “I pulled you both from beneath the fall. Tokela almost submitted to River, but we made him breathe. It was truly blood, then. But after?”
“We were all… not ourselves,” Madoc agreed, very soft. “It… It made me think wild things, too. But when you ran for help, I tended to Tokela myself,” Madoc said. “What you saw was not blood. It was the colour of indigo. It was indigo.”
“He had newly laid more,” Akumeh agreed, but it came chancy.
“It mixed with the blood running down his face, nothing more.”
It was unnerving, how well Madoc spoke the lie. His sincerity made Sarinak grunt with satisfaction, made Akumeh’s confusion settle further into willing disbelief.
But Inhya had already seen the truth.
Either Madoc had not been careful enough, or the strange bleeding had started again. For when Inhya dried and tucked her eldest son into a mound of furs in the chieftain’s bedding den, she had seen the traces. A small skim, in Tokela’s ears and nostrils, of a substance she’d seen but once before—the colour of lapis, of indigo stain.
Lakisa’s birthing-blood.
Shaper blood.
Chepiŝ blood.
This was no mere River Spirit. This was nothing that Palatan could help, no matter how he might try.
“Perhaps River hadn’t washed away all the dried matter, and the indigo smeared and mixed with the blood from his head wound,” Sarinak offered. “Be easy. It is good you came to me with this, good to fear something Other. But it is dangerous to make assumptions, also.”
“I would not hurt him,” Akumeh insisted. “But neither could I remain silent if—”
“‘If’,” Inhya put in, “is just that.”
As one, the three males looked at her. Madoc alone seemed wary. Sarinak was relieved, and also Akumeh, though still anxious.
Sarinak took note of it, repeated, “Be easy. Your actions thisSun were honourable. You saved lives. You spoke with frankness despite your feelings, ensured dawnLands remains untainted by any sorcery. Your people will know of your bravery, and surely you’ll be given leave to take your adult’s path after this. You have earned it, Akumeh.”
More relief as Akumeh nodded, started to turn. Then, hesitant, “What of Otter? Tokela, I mean. Will he…?” Again, the hesitation. Sarinak threw a troubled frown Inhya’s way. “My chieftain has drummed for my return,” Akumeh continued, “and I… I…”
“We shall tell Tokela what you seem unwilling to,” Inhya replied, blunt.
Akumeh flushed and retreated from the den.
Madoc growled something beneath his breath; Sarinak gave a hiss of disapproval and Madoc subsided, looked away.
For some time there was only
