Already Našobok had second- and third-guessed his decision to head for River, was working on a fourth. He was out of his depth here, in more ways than one.
“They’re waiting out there. Somewhere.” Tokela tangled fingers in Lioness’s mane, and the little mare stretched her neck, happy with the caress.
“You said they can’t hear you unless—”
“They don’t need Stars to glean where we’re going.” It was cold, oddly accepting. But a nigh-imperceptible shiver ran across Tokela’s shoulders.
Našobok leaned forwards, gave his hair an affectionate tug. “Then perhaps we’ll be able to stop long enough for a wash, eh? In that little River-daughter we hope for. You smell of horse.”
“There are worse things to smell of. You aren’t so sweet yourself.”
“Was that an insult?”
“Insult, promise, your choice.” Indigo eyes, thankfully clear and uncomplicated at present, slanted his way.
Ai, this was more like it. Našobok snugged a little closer, ensured it with a murmured, “I’d like nothing better than to have a swim with you. Dunk you in River’s curves, haul you up sleek as a Sea-pup, drops of water shining in that dark hair like Stars.”
Such talk did as he’d intended: Tokela’s shiver held more pleasure than uncertainty. Still…
“I used to play beneath Stars.” Tokela’s voice dipped low. “They were… friends. When I was old enough, I would go with my father, check the herds his brother kept for him in midLands. Sky was wide, there—not like here, but more than within the trees spreading across River’s flanks. I’d curl up with him and we’d lie awake, watching Stars while he would tell me their names.” A soft intake of breath, then another shudder. A grit of teeth.
A reminder past any diversion: the hunters were still hunting.
Našobok didn’t want to contemplate the strength it must take for one oških to deny them. After all, taleKeepers spun fables of an ancient and united front, an entire tribe of shamanKin standing firm upon the boundaries of Grandmother, locking their Spirits into Her defence.
Only it hadn’t been forever, had it? Perhaps it hadn’t been that many shamans, either.
“Našobok.” It wavered, unsure. “Was he my father?”
“Of course he was, in any way such things matter. I remember him well, Tokela. He and your mother were kind to a young troublemaker. He even tried to make of me a herder.” Našobok grinned. “It didn’t go well.”
Tokela snorted. “That takes no guessing.”
“Ai, well.”
“It seems you’ve always been around. Always”—a smile—“here.”
“Hunh. Some things sing long before we understand their songs.”
“You were there when River took my parents. It was before you were outcast, but you didn’t truly belong a’Naišwyrh, so you told me. You knew you’d have to leave, find another place. Still, you sat with me, told me stories.”
“I did.” Našobok remembered that child sitting lone and lost in the dusky light beside River, tears tracing his cheeks.
“But was he my sire, Wolf?”
“Ai, but since when do such things matter?”
“This time, it matters.”
“Perhaps it does and perhaps it doesn’t, but what sire has any rights to claim any child other than by a dam’s grace? You are your dam’s son, and of our People.”
Tokela was silent, and Našobok realised common sense had its own flaws, here. Tokela’s dam had been the one to insist, after all, that her child was of two sires.
Of course, her Spirit had long since wandered, then.
“Either way, it doesn’t matter, Tokela. Not to me.”
A half turn, and a wry smile. “Perhaps one day it won’t matter to me—!” It lurched upwards into a yip.
The mare stumbled and lurched, went to her knees. Tokela grabbed mane and stayed on, barely. Našobok pitched sideways into the sand.
Only it wasn’t just sand. It slithered, shifted like a living thing. The mare clambered sideways, heaving herself out from under Tokela and onto more solid ground, whilst beside them another cry echoed—it sounded like Tokela’s name—before the sand sucked them both down and into a shuddering of dust and black.
“AS USUAL, they do nothing.”
Palatan thought he was alone. He would have sworn that even Chogah had left the chamber, it seemed that empty.
Yet, here she was.
So he answered, polite, “I can’t blame them. Their hands are tied by ways older than any of us.”
“Even me?”
“You are indeed old, aunt, but not that old.”
“And you’re young enough to give me their arguments, nephew. What of your own?” Chogah leaned, heavy, upon her staff. Her dark gaze refused direct contact with Fire’s light, leery of the co-tenant Spirit that had snatched another, more powerful staff from her. “If not for the first of medicineKeepers flaunting that same law, neither you nor I should be here, debating what is and what will be.”
“There is nothing to debate. The Council has spoken, and they have the right to—”
“To make more cowardly mistakes?”
“I’m just glad they haven’t refused Anahli’s right of place.” Palatan closed his eyes.
“Yet. She is Power-full. Even moreso than you once she finds her way. Tokela, even moreso. And Galenu would have given him to Chepiś!”
“He knows no better.”
“Just enough to be dangerous. And foolish. The Chepiś want Tokela for his Power.”
“Našobok will keep him safe.”
Chogah snorted. “I asked you once before how such things have come to pass. What if we acted, not Chepiś? What if we considered how that power could benefit us, not the tall ones?”
“You walk forbidden paths, Chogah.”
“As do all, Palatan, who would tread in the steps a’Alekšu’ín.” She angled forwards, hands taut upon her support as if to choke the horse heads carved there. “What did our Mother tell you, down in the deepest places?”
He froze. “You have no right to make talk of that. Not anymore. Nor do you have the right to ask—”
“What did She say?”
He remained silent, remembering.
“She claimed him. Didn’t She?”
Still, he didn’t speak.
Finally, Chogah turned away with a grumbling sigh. “Then what you and I—Alekšu and Alekšu tuk—must ask ourselves is this: Do we let Chepiś have the oških, and perhaps, in the having, take and use the shamanKin
