The ring of five dragons, p.17
The Ring of Five Dragons, page 17
part #1 of The Pearl Series
The perwillon stumbled, went to its knees, then collapsed over onto its side not a meter from where Giyan stood guard. The stench of the beast filled the cave.
Eleana ran to where Annon lay, stanching the fresh blood with strips of her own clothes. “That was close.” She turned to Giyan, ducked her head. “I believe we have need of your healing powers.”
Giyan knelt beside Annon and looked closely at the new wounds. She reached into her pouch. “We will have to use ground herbs and roots,” she said with a worried look. “My sorcery will not heal a wound from a perwillon. It is a creature from another age, impervious to sorcery of any kind.”
Eleana stared at Giyan for a long time. “I had heard tales of sorcery such as yours, but I did not imagine that it actually existed.”
“The young have stopped believing,” Giyan said. “That is a sadness almost too great to bear.”
“I believe now, and I will tell others.”
“Not yet.” Giyan was packing the bloody wound with the dried mash. “When the time is right.”
Eleana rose and approached the perwillon. She unsheathed her knife and hacked expertly through the thick fur. “At least it died for a good cause. We will have fresh meat to eat.”
Annon, Eleana, and Giyan ate their fill of the perwillon’s liver and heart, the most nutritious parts of its innards. As for its brain, it was a small thing, located just under its thick shoulder muscles, not worth the digging. They ate these Kundalan delicacies raw, for they dared not risk building a fire, lest its smoke be observed by their enemies. Then Giyan left the cave.
Afterward, Giyan left them for some hours as she searched the hills and glens for herbs to help heal Annon’s wounds. When she returned, she immediately set about her preparations. Annon and Eleana broke off their quiet conversation to watch her.
“Judging from the single roots, you were not able to find much,” Eleana said.
Giyan nodded. “But what I did find is very potent, indeed.” She held up the twisted, dark red root. “This is mesembrythem. It is one of the most powerful herbs in the pantheon of sorcerous remedies.” She continued her work, shredding the root with her nails. “In all but the most practiced hands, it is very dangerous and highly addictive. Its regenerative powers can instantly morph into the deadliest poison, either through overdose or the introduction of oil of heart-wood.”
She took the shreds into a corner of the cavern, put them in a pile on the ground, and squatted over them. Annon and Eleana turned away, heard her urinating on the root shreds. “They need a weak acidic so- lution to activate properly,” she said, rearranging her robes. “This will have to do.”
Within fifteen minutes they had swelled up, the dark red color fading into the faintest of pinks. Giyan gathered them up. She looked down at Annon and smiled. “The mesembrythem will, first of all, stanch the blood. Then it will give you strength.”
Annon nodded. She placed the shreds in a complex pattern over his wounds. Her concentration was so absolute that neither of the others said a word.
When she was done, she expelled a small sigh, and said to Eleana. “I fear I must rely once again on your goodwill.” Annon closed his eyes, growing drowsy with exhaustion and the effects of the herbal remedy. “We must continue our flight.”
“Is it wise to move him? He has lost a great deal of blood.”
“I fear we have no other choice. Our enemies are too close on our heels. Besides, the mesembrythem will heal him in a few days, I hope.”
“You have a safe harbor?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“I have friends along the way who will be able to help.”
“My thanks, Eleana, but you saw what happened here. I do not want to put anyone else in danger. We will purchase two of your best cthau- ros.
“Your coins are no good here,” Eleana said. “The cthauros are yours.”
“Thank you for your generosity.”
“It is the least I can do.” Her eyes flicked toward Annon, then returned to meet Giyan’s level gaze.
They regarded once another silently for some time before Giyan rose. “I will reconnoiter to make certain the hoverpods have moved on.”
“You are as generous as you are courageous, Giyan.” Though she was very grateful for this time alone with Teyjattt, no matter how short, Eleana did not dare meet the other woman’s eyes. When Giyan had disappeared out of the mouth of the cave. Eleana bent over Annon.
“You will be leaving soon. It is time to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” His voice was thick. He had eaten little, having had no appetite for the strange, gamey organ meat. Now he felt both nauseated and light-headed. “No, no. You must come with us.”
“Alas, it is impossible. I have obligations here. I know you understand about obligations.”
“Yes. I do.”
She stroked his forehead, smiled down at him. “Teyjattt. Would Giyan be jealous if she heard me call you that?”
“I do not think so, no. She likes you.”
“And you?”
He lifted a hand and she took it in hers, squeezed it tight. She bent even lower over him. “Ah, that face,” she whispered. “I will know it anywhere.”
“I wish you were coming with us.”
“As do I.”
His hearts constricted. “Eleana…”
Tears came to her eyes. “I am pleased Giyan likes me.”
He looked at her, searching for answers, found only her enigmatic smile. For the time being at least, it was enough. A shadow from the cave entrance came toward them and automatically their hands unwound.
“It is time,” Giyan said.
“I must go,” Eleana whispered/ “to fetch the cthauros.” She reached down, unwrapped something from her waist. “I leave this token with you, Teyjattt.” She laid her knife in its polished ammonwood scabbard on his chest. “Until we meet again.”
Vessel Half-Empty
It is an evil omen, you bringing the boy here,” Bartta said ungraciously. “I am happy to see you, too, sister.”
“You live with the ruler of our conquerors. I do not see you for sixteen years, and now here you are on my doorstep, asking for succor for a V’ornn, no less!”
“Try to see him as a boy under threat of death from his father’s enemies,” Giyan said.
“His father was my enemy also.”
“So are the V’ornn who seek him.”
Bartta stood back, allowing Giyan to half carry the still-weak Annon inside. But she did not lift a hand while her twin transported him to the room where Giyan herself had slept when she was a child. The cottage, on the next to highest of the village’s thirty-seven tiers, had three bedrooms. Bartta now slept in the room that had belonged to their parents. She had put Riane, the girl she had found beneath the flat stone, in her old bedroom.
“How did you know to look for me here,” Bartta said, “and not at the abbey?”
“I remember everything, sister,” Giyan said. “Including your penchant for retreats here, to try to fathom the pattern of the powerful bourns—those mystical power paths that crisscross Kundala Müna laid down at the world’s creation.” Giyan cocked her head. “We Ramahan have been trying to make sense of the pattern for close to a century. Are you any closer to solving the mystery?”
Bartta made a sour face. “You mock me now.”
“Not at all. On the contrary, I admire your persistence.”
Bartta followed Giyan, watched with avid eyes as her sister set Annon down. “Have you used your Gift on him?”
“He was mauled by a perwillon.”
“Müna protect us! Those beasts are daemon-spawn! What ill luck that you happened upon one.”
Giyan busied herself making Annon comfortable.
Bartta came cautiously into the room. “He is not unpleasant-looking, for a V’ornn.” She moved closer, bending over Annon. Her forefinger jabbed out. “What made this discoloration?”
“He was attacked by a gyreagle. It left its talon in him.”
“He’s lucky it did not pierce his lung. V’ornn have only one, I am told.” She sucked at her lower lip. “It happened when he was a small child, yes? The wound is long healed.”
“No,” Giyan said, standing up. “It was a recent attack. Less than a week.”
Bartta’s eyes opened wide. “Sorcerous work.”
Giyan turned to her. She took her twin by the arm, led her back into the great room.
Osoru—the Five Moon sorcery—has been banished from the abbey ever since Mother’s death,” Bartta hissed.
“Do not admonish me, sister. The sorcery worked on Annon is not of my doing.”
Bartta frowned, sat down beside her exhausted twin. “Whose, then?”
“I haven’t eaten in a day and a night.”
Bartta nodded, put a big iron stewpot on the fire. Giyan looked around. The whitewashed walls were, here and there, streaked with soot, but otherwise the cottage seemed much the same as it had when they were growing up. A fire winked and crackled in the old stone hearth, the black, potbellied kettle stood on a wooden shelf with all the other cooking paraphernalia, the same dark-hued hangings sagged on their pins, the ammonwood furniture was worn to a glossy sheen. There and there, were oddities that made Giyan understand that this was no longer her home. Like the ornately carved heartwood chest in the great room and their mother’s lovely perennial garden. Once, it had been filled with swirls of delicate pink thistlewort, yellow mountain laurel, white snow-lily, and aromatic rosemary. Bartta had transformed it into a botanical laboratory of sorts. There was shanin, Pandanus, la-tua, datura inoxia, plus at least a dozen varieties of exotic mushrooms, all of which and more Eleusis had allowed her to grow in the secret garden inside the palace. They were mostly subtropical plants, but her sister had apparently found a method to adapt them to the harsh mountain climate. This high in the mountains of the Djenn Marre, mornings and late afternoons were almost always chilly, even in High Summer. Nights were either cold or frigid, depending upon the season.
It had taken them four days and four nights of almost constant riding to get here. Along the way, Giyan had twice spotted Khagggun hov-erpods at a far remove. They were still sectoring the Marre pine forest; because they were awkward to maneuver over the foothills’ steep gradients, they no longer appeared to be a threat.
She had allowed them to stop only to relieve themselves, which was still an awkward and time-consuming procedure for Annon. They ate the foodstuff Eleana had given them while riding. They had ascended through the land of sudden lakes, through increasingly rocky scree and acutely pitched ridges, along winding paths of well-trammeled Marre pine needles, past swiftly flowing streams and small waterfalls. Above them rose the majestic, snowcapped peaks of the Djenn Marre, becoming ever more awesome the closer they came. Giyan pushed the cthau-ros to their limit. By the second day, Annon had slept off and on while she guided both animals on the path she had chosen into the upcountry where her home village of Stone Border lay nestled. Once, sliding into an exhausted sleep, she had dreamed her terrifying dream of bloody hands, and a fire crackling, consuming her. She had awoken sobbing at the cold, glittering stars. A soft wind stirred the treetops. The moons were gone, as if unable to bear any longer her inner torment.
“They did not harm you, the V’ornn?” Bartta, stirring the stewpot, broke the awkward silence.
“No harm came to me, sister,” Giyan said wearily. “Quite the opposite.”
“That is difficult to believe.” Bartta was piling dried fruit and crusty bread onto a plate. “I had given up hope.”
“In Axis Tyr I fell in love.” Giyan was staring at her hands. “I do not expect you to understand.”
Bartta ladled stew into a bowl, brought it and the plate to the table. She poured Giyan some sweet, dark mead.
Giyan was famished, but she hardly tasted the food. Her thoughts were with Annon. Her heart ached for him. She tried to banish the fear that had grown in her ever since they had left Eleana. She had important things to tell Bartta, but she was suddenly afraid. “Tell me about life here,” she said.
“It has been hard,” Bartta said. “Harder by far than when you were here, because now we are losing our folk to the V’ornn and to Kara.” She gestured. “Once these Kundalan were followers of Müna. But Müna has forsaken them, they claim, and so they give themselves over to this soulless, Goddess-less religion that threatens the very fabric of our spirituality.”
“For once we agree on something.” Giyan put food into her mouth, chewed slowly, tasting nothing but the mounting fear inside her. “Kara brings no good to either its followers or to us. It is a dead end.”
“It is worse. Each Kundalan who converts to Kara is another wound inflicted on the Ramahan corpus. As the Ramahan go, so goes the Kundalan, eh, sister? Though its practitioners claim Kara gives them hope, at the heart of Kara is a certain nihilism that seeks to obliterate our history, our lore, the very essence of who we are. No, truly we have no need of such a latter-day religion.”
“And yet each month it grows stronger.”
“Yes, fed by the anger of Müna forsaking her children.”
“And every day the Holy Scripture slips farther away from us, isn’t that so?”
Bartta’s voice was fueled by equal parts envy and contempt. “I am surprised you remember Scripture. You have the Gift.”
“Like water, we always return to the source,” Giyan said softly.
“Does it seem strange to return, sister, after all your time among the conquerors?”
Giyan pushed aside her plate. “To be honest, I feel somewhat… displaced.”
“I will take you to our mother’s grave,” Bartta said shortly as she cleared the table. “If you stay long enough, that is.”
“And what of Father?”
“Kara took him. He could not resist the new religion’s practical message of the here and now.”
And there lay their personal history, trammeled in the dust. Giyan felt oddly defeated. Not for them the cries of delight, the tears, the deep love that twins so long separated should feel. From the first, a wary cynicism had established itself, as if they were two enemies meeting to hammer out a truce after a long, drawn-out war.
“You are a very different person than the one who went with the V’ornn sixteen years ago,” Bartta said. There was a certain bitterness in her voice that scored Giyan’s heart like the talons of an all-too-familiar creature. She had returned to the doorway to what had once been her bedroom. Inside, Annon lay sleeping.
“But what can one expect?” Bartta continued. “By the look of you, dressed in alien finery, you are now more V’ornn than KundalanV.”
Giyan turned to face her sister. She pushed back the sifeyn. “You know better than that.”
Bartta turned her closed face away. “Forgive me. I am distracted this morning. I have been for a week. I found a girl, the same age as your V’ornn charge. She is in the acute stage of duur fever. Despite all my efforts on her behalf, she will die within the hour.” She looked to her twin. “Unless with your Gift—“
“I cannot bring life to the dying. You know that better than anyone.”
“You must try. I beg of you. Perhaps your coming here is another omen.”
“Another omen?” Giyan stiffened. “Speak plainly, sister, for I, too, must tell of omens.”
Bartta folded her arms across her birdlike chest, gave her sister a curious look. “Seven days ago, I saw an owl before sunset.” She scowled. “The night messenger of Müna never shows itself during daylight hours unless it brings unexpected death in its talons.”
“The owl is a harbinger of change,” Giyan replied. “There is always fear in change.”
“Not for the Ramahan,” Bartta declared.
“I think, these days, especially for the Ramahan.”
Bartta shook off her sister’s words. “The owl—Müna’s messenger—led me to this girl, Riane. It came out of the forest and circled the spot three times. I was meant to find her, don’t you see? Why? She is dying, and I cannot save her. It makes no sense. And yet there can be no doubt of Müna’s hand in this.”
“Have you notified her family?”
“There is no family—at least none that she can remember. She has no memory.”
“Poor thing.”
The sounds of people screaming stilled Bartta’s response. The sisters rushed to the window. Beyond the herb garden, past the unpainted cedar gates, steeply stepped streets descended to the village plaza. It was filled to bursting now with townsfolk, Khagggun, mostly on foot, a few riding cthauros.
“Müna protect us!” Bartta cried. “Another cursed Khagggun raiding party!” She ran to the door. “We thought our cliffs would stop them, but it only stopped their hoverpods. They steal cthauros from the villages below and march on.” As she opened the door, Giyan held her back.
“Don’t go out there, sister.” She peered down to the square, could see the dreaded insignia on the Khagggun’s helms. “This raiding party has more on its mind than random terror.”
Bartta’s eyes became slits. “What do you mean?”
“Someone betrayed us, saw us steal out of the palace. But I cannot imagine who.”
Bartta tore away from her sister’s grasp. “Stay here,” she ordered. “If you are right, the Khagggun will doubtless begin a house-to-house search. I must find a away to keep them away from here.”
“What can you do?”
Bartta went out the door without another word.
Giyan turned away from the window. Anrron was still asleep. To distract herself, she went into Bartta’s bedroom, saw the girl Riane lying deathly pale. Despite her lack of color, her lank, greasy hair, her emaciated body she was a strikingly beautiful girl. Giyan stood over her for a moment, said a prayer to Müna. She put a hand on the girl’s cheek. She was burning up with fever. Giyan let out a long breath, allowed her mind to clear of all thought, all imagery, all emotion. Riane was so near death it took some time and effort to gather in enough of her faint aura.
She summoned Osoru.
She tried to direct the spell toward the girl, but something was blocking it. She was of no more use to Riane than Bartta had been. She tried again. Nothing. She did not understand. The power always came when she summoned it; it always obeyed her wishes. Why had it failed her now?
