“Yes. We must go into Kubal.”
It was nearly midnight when they came at last to the little clearing with the rocks across its entrance. Zephy strained to push them back. “No, wait, I can climb them,” Thorn said, pulling her away. He slid up, surprisingly agile on his hands and one knee, and she handed him the pack.
In the shallow cave three figures sat up in the darkness; the baby stirred and whimpered. Elodia took Zephy’s hand and Toca clutched at her tunic. But Tra. Hoppa looked only at Thorn. She put her hands on his shoulders and turned him so the moonlight touched his face. Then she led him to her goatskin robes and helped him to lie down. She prepared a drought for him, soaked the wrappings on the moss, then brought him bread and charp fruit. Zephy was hungry too, and bone tired, but the old woman’s concern was all for Thorn.
A thin rain had started, making Zephy shiver, and she was close to tears with fatigue. Elodia pulled her in under her own covers as if she were the older of the two; but even warmed by Elodia’s closeness, it was a long time before Zephy was able to sleep.
And when at last she slept she dreamed and woke in a cold sweat, but unable to remember; then she slept again, and when she woke the sun was shining into the green clearing and glinting off the black stone cliffs. And high up the cliff Elodia was clinging to the stone, picking morliespongs. Zephy lay half dreaming still and saw that Thorn still slept. She brought herself more fully awake and sat up to look at him. His color was better, and he seemed to breathe more easily. She smiled and lay back and was about to sleep again when she smelled their breakfast cooking.
She rose and found Tra. Hoppa laying breakfast on a stone in the center of the clearing. The fried morliespongs smelled wonderful, and there was mawzee mush and a little of the mountain meat. The eager donkeys had to be tied to a boulder to keep them out of the food. Dess, who had pushed in greedily, sulked now with her tail turned to them in fury.
The baby had been bathed and properly fed, his napkin washed and laid across a rock to dry while he sported a piece of Tra. Hoppa’s petticoat; he seemed much happier; certainly he smelled better. Toca held him solemnly, his blond head bent over the child, then looked up at last with a lonely, hopeless expression on his face. “He wants his mother,” the little boy said sadly. “It’s like . . . it’s an ache in him you can feel.”
Zephy put her arm around Toca. “And she must want him too. She must ache for him terribly.” She paused, studying the child. “But he is like you, Toca. He’s like all of us. We’re different. We would have been killed had we stayed, or made slave.”
“Children of Ynell,” Toca said solemnly, his six-year-old face serious and pale. She could see the fear in him; she thought the sin of his difference must have frightened him all his short life.
Part Four: The Luff’Eresi
From Prophet of Death , Book of Carriol
For the spirit moves onward, born yet again in a form we do not understand, born yet again on a plane farther removed from Ere than the plane in which the Luff’Eresi now dwell. So are the planes of the universe. One and another and another beyond all human counting. And each of you must move from the one to the other in lives that shine like hours in our mortal days. Must move or, trapped in a lust for cruelty that destroys the spirit, must die bound in one body forever.
SEVENTEEN
For four days they lingered in the valley, cooking sparingly and fanning the smoke into the wind so it would not be seen. Thorn grew stronger, and the wound cleansed itself at last. The fever left him, and as he began to feel his strength returning he told them of the conquering of Dunoon, and how he came to be lying wounded in Anchorstar’s wagon.
“We had planned, long before, a ruse to deceive the Kubalese, and it would have worked,” he said, “if my father had not been wounded. We had taken food and stores to a secret valley we knew, high in the Ring of Fire, in a place no horse could climb, only the goats. We took the herds there, we had moved all of Dunoon when the attack came.
“The refuge is a meadow whose only access lies narrow along the edge of a lake of molten fire. No Kubalese coming through that narrow pass could survive our arrows and the boiling lake as well. It is a dangerous place, animals—and children—can fall and be burned alive, and there are fire ogres still in the caves, though those caves still hold relics in some places of an old outpost of Owdneet, too. The heat of the lake warms the pastures so they are lush and green, and the rock cliffs rise sheer on every side for protection. The Kubalese could not stand against us there. This might once have been a secret place where the Horses of Eresu grazed, perhaps where the Children of Ynell came to shelter in times of war.
“The herds and the women and children remained there, but the rest of us returned to Dunoon. We slept in the caves, but we lighted all the cookfires of the village each night to make it seem we were still in Dunoon. And we posted sentries.
“When the band of Kubalese came—my father had counted on a small band, on most of the army staying in Burgdeeth, and he was right—when they came they set fire to the cottages. The village was in flames almost at once. They thought they would drive us forth and shoot those who did not burn to death, but there was not a man, not a woman or child in the village, and no herd to slaughter. When they discovered the ruse, they began to mill about and to go in forays among the rocks and up into the cleft, searching. When they had dispersed, we attacked. And we killed many.
“But then in the midst of battle my father was wounded, swept up by the Kubalese and dragged to the center of the burned village. By his height and his leading of command, I suppose, they knew him for Oak Dar. He was crippled in the back and unable to move. If they had not carried him, the injury might have been less severe; I have seen animals wounded like that.”
It was a moment before Thorn could go on.
“If it had been any other man in Dunoon, the battle would have continued. The Kubalese demanded that the herds and all of Dunoon return. They ordered that we tend the flocks as we always had. And because my father lay paralyzed and helpless, all of Dunoon did return, the herds, every woman and child. We became slave to the Kubalese, for those few days that Oak Dar lived.
“When—when my father died it was by his own hand. For though his legs were paralyzed, his arms were not. And his mind was clear. He waited until most of the Kubalese soldiers had returned to Burgdeeth, leaving seven of their cruelest guards in Dunoon. We found my father, on the morning of the third day, with the . . . with the skinning knife through his throat. He would not live captive and be the cause of the captivity of his people.
“We covered him and let him lie there as if he were sleeping, until the two guards came to the cottage for their breakfast. Loke and I took them from behind and killed them. The other five gave us more fight, but we had all the men of Dunoon, and though they had left us no weapons we had slabs of painon wood and stones.
“We buried my father on the mountain. We buried the Kubalese at the foot of Dunoon. I was bleeding so badly that I took the shirt off one to staunch the blood. That, I suppose, is how the festering began, with Kubalese dirt in my blood.
“We laid them in a common grave and marked it with a message the Kubalese will not soon forget. Then all of Dunoon—all of the men who were left, and the women and children, and all the flocks—began the trek over the mountains once more to the lake of fire. My mother, too, mourning, and Loke beside her. I stayed, though she rankled at me about my leg. I told her I would rest a bit, and I went to the cave, to the wagon, to dress the wound again before I started out to find Anchorstar, and you. I never came out again until Zephy found me. The fever came on me as quick as a breath, and I woke to find myself sprawled on the wagon floor, freezing, not knowing how long I’d been there. I got into Anchorstar’s bed, and the next time I woke was when Zephy called my name.”
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