'Make them welcome,' Akaisha hissed.
At her command, Carnelian and the others moved round the fire so that its light poured out to illumine the figures. They strode in to close the ring and then sat down. They were offered djada and water.
'It's good to have you back, son,' Akaisha said.
When Ravan did not even turn to look at her, Fern grew incensed. 'Didn't you hear your mother?'
The younger people were sneaking glances at each other. Whin was regarding the Master with unconcealed loathing. Akaisha was struggling for composure.
It was Poppy who pointed out the shape standing watching them in the night.
'Come forward,' said Whin.
Moving into the light the shape revealed itself to be Krow.
'Well?' Whin demanded.
Krow's black hunter's face glanced at the Master for guidance but he seemed unaware of him.
'Krow has nowhere else to go,' said Carnelian, at last.
Akaisha found a smile for the youth. She beckoned. 'Join us.'
Krow muttered his thanks to Akaisha and shot Carnelian a grateful look. After that, people spoke in whispers, giving the Master anxious glances, while he sat, a massive shadow gazing unblinking into the fire. Once he did look at Carnelian, who saw in his eyes fierce triumph.
In the morning the Tribe flung the embers of their hearths into the wind. Where fire caught, smoke leapt quickly westwards. They turned their backs on the flames and trudged into the sepia east. The Master walked in their midst as if he were alone. Observing him, Carnelian feared what he might be feeling. He needed to probe him, but Osidian never spoke. What little he ate he passed through the folds of his uba so that only the pale mouth in the blackened face was revealed. His eyes seemed to have no more sight in them than glass. Poppy shunned him as if he were a stranger. Ravan served him like a slave so that his own people turned away, not wishing to see his humiliation. Krow might have been the Master's shadow.
As the days passed, Carnelian gave up waiting for Osidian to speak. He strove to bear the weariness of the march as well as he saw the Elders and the children were doing. Still, each day was like a fever to which only the cool repose of night brought some relief.
One day, feeling a tremor of thunder coming from the west, Carnelian asked Fern with eager delight whether it might be some rain.
Fern's eyes peered out between the folds of his uba. There'll be no rain for several rebirths of the moon. Until then, the Withering will tighten its grasp on the land, relentlessly.'
Carnelian waited for more, but Fern only said, 'I fear we may soon enough see what is following us with thunder.'
Carnelian did not have the energy to pursue it. The sun was turning the world to molten gold. Their store of water was the very heart of their march. Over the first few days they had come across water-holes, puddles, which they drained down to the mud and even that they did not waste, but plastered it on the aquar to cool the burning in their hides. Eventually the land had nothing to offer them but dust.
The thunder following them became a shuddering in the ground. Looking back, Carnelian saw a sandstorm bearing down on them. The Elders began shouting orders. The arc the Tribe made across the plain began coalescing around groups of Elders. The children huddling in beside them were walled in by the kneeling aquar. On the outside men swung their bull-roarers while women gathered stones.
Carnelian stood with Osidian, Ravan and Krow on one side, Fern on the other whirling the blade of a bull- roarer around his head, dizzying Carnelian with its strobing, moaning cry. The women had built a cairn of stones in front of them. Sil pushed herself between Carnelian and Fern. She glanced back anxiously to see Leaf in Akaisha's arms. Poppy was there too. Carnelian gave her a smile and she returned it nervously. He turned back to watch the storm roll mountainously towards them.
Their heads,' a voice screamed and many arms pointed up into the clouds that were billowing up and obscuring the sun.
Carnelian looked and saw dark shapes floating high among the veils of dust, the necks that held them there, then emerging through the murk their chests and the column legs that were churning the earth.
Carnelian fell back against Sil. 'Heaveners,' he gasped in fear and awe, as every eye was locked to the oncoming giants.
'Such power,' exclaimed a voice in Quya. Looking out of the corner of his eyes Carnelian saw Osidian's, fierce and staring. But the shaking of the ground forced him to think about himself. He ignored the stones tumbling at his feet. He caught one glimpse of the nearest Ochre clump before all vision was blasted away by a tidal wave of grit.
Madness took them all. Carnelian shouted and screamed with the rest as he cast stones up at the lumbering, sky-filling shapes. Cliffs of hide slid past on either side. Each footfall shook the ground. Grey with dust, the mouths of the Tribe choked and bellowed. Coughing mixed with screams and the rattle of stones glancing off hide. Then the heaveners were gone, rumbling away into the east. Carnelian sagged exhausted among the ashen crowd, feeling the thunder slowly recede even as the sand stopped hailing.
People burst into song and laughter, with wonder at witnessing such sacred power and majesty; hugging and kissing each other in delight at their survival. Carnelian was pulled into a dance by Sil and Fern, tears smudging the dust around their eyes. It took Carnelian a while to notice Osidian emotionless, gazing off after the cloud-shrouded giants.
They tramped eastwards along the wide roads driven through the dead fernland by the herds. Carnelian was grateful the load of djada he carried had been reduced by consumption, to match the depletion in his strength.
One morning he saw, rising with the sun, mountains liquid blue in the dawn.
'Drink deep of that sight, Carnie,' Fern said. Though we've still more than half our journey before us, it's a promise of cool air and crystal water.'
Until the sun rose to its full fiery strength, the sight of the mountains was enough to put smiles back onto the dust-bleached faces of the Tribe. Soon the glare had turned the sky opaque so that it appeared the mountains had been nothing but a mirage.
Often in the morning and in the quick dusk of evening, they could gaze with longing at the mountains that grew day by day more solid. At last the morning came when Akaisha promised her hearth they would soon be climbing up out of the burning plain. They chewed knotted djada, their eyes grit-reddened and weeping, but they made better speed drawn on by the sight of journey's end.
The land began to fold, and here and there a leaf missed by the passing herds, or a still green fern crozier, gave them hope. They wound up into the hills along ever-steepening paths. The mountains formed a distant turquoise wall across the lower sky from which noisy rivers poured their colour down into the valleys.
As the day was waning they reached a land of verdant valleys curled with delicious mist. They kept to the paths that wound around the slopes. In the valley bottoms, the ferny pastures were filled with the creatures of the plain.
By a narrow defile, they entered the valley which, Fern told Carnelian, the Tribe considered its own. Men that had been sent ahead waved down from the craggy heights to indicate the place was free of danger. Once through that gateway, the aquar fanned out and Carnelian found he was walking into a long and narrow valley, green-walled and watered by a stream.
People all around him sighed their relief, kicking their hot feet through the coolness of the ferns lining its banks. Eastwards, the mountains rose dipped in the cool blue of the fading afternoon. For Carnelian it was a sacrament to kneel before the glimmering stream. He bent to scoop a tiny pool into his cupped hands and, blinded by its dazzle, drank. He winced as the water drove its iciness through his teeth and deep into the bones of his face, then laughed with the sheer pleasure of it. When he had drunk his fill, with Poppy holding his hand, they went to luxuriate in the shadow of a tree.
IN THE MOUNTAINS
