Inhya had. The creature was unmistakable, and that Tokela had been able to conjure him was…
She would give the likeness to Fire, first chance. Not that any offering could purge this worst of secrets, kept to shelter the son of her oških lovemate. Her son, now.
It got her with me.
Foresworn, whichever path she took.
“Inhya?” Sarinak peered at her, a bowl extended in one hand.
Inhya took it and looked down, continued her tread of deception’s anxious path. “Tokela was watching the Riverwalker craft. Again.”
“The younglings always watch, particularly upon the festival of First Running. All the comings and goings and excitement.” Sarinak applied himself to parcelling the spit-roasted fowl. “They fancy adventure, and what they think is freedom. They comprehend little of what it truly means to live as outlier. Outcast.”
It soothed her heart to watch him. Her spouse could steady the cliffs beneath their feet if only by the deliberate economy of his motions. In the privacy of their own place, he had unwrapped the Sky-hued scarf from his head, letting thick, emmer-coloured waves tumble back from his forehead. The long twistlocks at his temples, darkened with oil and wrapped with carved-wood beads, lay flung behind his powerful shoulders, shining dark gilt against the hearth’s flickering warmth.
Sarinak a’Naišwyrh, son of Beloved ones and now Mound-chieftain in his own right, had come young to his status. It had not bent him but made him stronger, moulded from the copper clay of dawnLand’s protective cliffs.
“D’you remember when you first came here?”
He often spoke thus when they had this time together, with just that hint of satisfaction. Always it brought forth from Inhya a fond, equally satisfied smile. A sharp breach of custom, a fem leaving her dam’s tent to make a home amongst a spouse’s tribe! Yet in truth, Inhya had found little hardship in trading nomadic duskLands vagaries for a settled life here in dawnLands, within the Great Mound-beside-River. Thick RainForests, dens dug deep into the cliff mound, and an everpresent River’s chill regard gave reassuring boundaries to existence. Inhya had fancied Sarinak’s ambition, then fancied him, then loved him as ever she had Lakisa…
Sarinak, as usual, nipped at the heels of Inhya’s thoughts. “I blame the wyrhling for filling our eldest son’s heart with too many tales.”
Sarinak’s outlier once-brother had indeed given Tokela more Stars in his eyes than he already possessed, but… “That one has been long away.”
“Perhaps Tokela watches for the wyrhling’s return.” Another snort, disgruntled, as he portioned the tender meat into equal servings. “Perhaps we’d best weir that stream before ša floods. It could be to everyone’s good, did we send Tokela away from River.”
Inhya’s brows quirked. “To Aylaniś? She owes hearthing trade, true enough—”
“There’s enough foolishness in Tokela without trebling it running wild as hareKin with your brother’s People.”
Inhya raised her brows, peered at Sarinak.
“Don’t cast such eyes at me, spouse, you know what I mean.” He leaned forwards, glower turning to grin. Inhya had to grin back—she couldn’t help it—but the expression congealed as Sarinak continued, “I thought, perhaps, to send Tokela to his sire’s folk.”
And who are those? she wanted to counter, and didn’t.
“His sire’s uncle, for one.”
Inhya sniffed. “I wouldn’t loan a dog I disliked to Galenu a’Hassun.”
“Hunh.” Sarinak offered another smile and pushed the platter within her easy reach. “True. But the time is coming when Galenu could demand sire-rights.”
“You and I will fly to Everwintering Mountain first. That one! Nothing but a selfish old khatak.” Inhya deliberately slurred the dawnLands word for “solitary” into insult: withered, can’t earn himself a spouse. “He’s no fit guardian. I’d little honour my lovemate’s memory, did I shrug off our son’s welfare so lightly.”
Galenu! He’d bewitched Lakisa from Inhya’s side with his forbidden tales. Worse, he’d introduced Lakisa to the forbidden places. And not so much as soiled his fingers with the consequences. While Inhya hoped—desperate, an orison to rise and set with Brother Moon and His siblings—her lovemate’s son would mature more of firstPeople, less of Chepiś. A dangerous wager from its undertaking, but her heart had felt strong enough to hold it.
Then.
“Lakisa’ailiq”—Sarinak gave sharp and deliberate invocation of the dead—“may she walk lightly the Long Path, is gone. Bones picked and honoured in ashes long given to River. Yet still her son raises her Spirit in your eyes.” He shook his head and took up his food. “Ai, the sooner Tokela enters the oških den, the better.”
MADOC LOOKED everywhere.
River, first; searching Her thighs in the lee of the massive Mound. A breach of manners, to stare so intently at the craft moored, bobbing gently in the current, but they were merely wyrhlings, and Madoc had to find Tokela, after all.
When there still were no signs, Madoc headed farther downRiver.
He and Tokela had with their own hands built a wykupeh amongst the thick trunk branches of a weeping tree. A few leagues downRiver wasn’t so far if one ran the distance, which Madoc did.
But a thorough search of both wykupeh and the sand-and-rock cove that bordered their haven garnered nothing.
Where could Tokela be?
Disconsolate, Madoc finally gave up, knowing he’d not find Tokela had Tokela truly decided to hide. Instead Madoc ran back upRiver and took his time scaling the crest of Talking Bluff. The drumKeeper—weathered by long watches in Sun and Rain to as deep a sienna as the drum resting at her side—diverted him, offering a piece of sapsweet fit to coax a smile from her chieftain’s son.
Soon Madoc was not only helping the drumKeeper’s ahlóssa daughter put away more of the sweet chews, but also tossing a game of bones on a brightly painted hide.
HE WAS sure the t’rešalt would stay him.
Or perhaps he’d just hoped.
Caverns were home to Tokela, a comfort—but this outland thing was neither, lingering overhead, an ominous weight. Beneath his feet the ground seemed… lax, more mossy
