Fionavar 1 (31 page)

Parry, like crazy. The urgach, weapon reclaimed, was right on top of him, and it levelled a great two-handed sweep of its own giant blade. Dave was a strong man, but the jarring impact of blocking that blow made his right arm go almost as numb as his left; he staggered backwards.

"Tore!" he cried desperately. "I can't-"

He stopped, because there was suddenly no need to say anything more. The urgach was swaying like a toppling rock, and a moment later it fell forward with a crash, Tore's dagger embedded to the hilt in the back of its skull.

The two men gazed at each other across the dead body of the monstrous creature.

"Well," said Tore finally, still breathing hard, "now I know why I didn't kill you."

What Dave felt then was so rare and unexpected, it took him a moment to recognize it.

Ivor, up with the sun and watching by the southwest gate, saw Barth and Navon come walking back together. He could tell-it was not hard-from the way they moved that they had both found something in the wood. Found, or been found by, as Gereint said. They had gone out as boys and were coming back to him, his children still, but Riders now, Riders of the Dalrei. So he lifted his voice in greeting, that they should be welcomed by their Chieftain back from the dreamworld to the tribe.

"Hola!" cried Ivor, that all should hear. "See who comes! Let there be rejoicing, for see the Weaver sends two new Riders to us!"

They all rushed out then, having waited with suppressed excitement, so that the Chieftain should be first to announce the return. It was a tradition of the third tribe since the days of Lahor, his grandfather.

Barth and Navon were welcomed home with honor and jubilation. Their eyes were wide yet with wonder, not yet fully returned from the other world, from the visions that fasting and night and Gereint's secret drink had given them. They seemed untouched, fresh, which was as it should be.

Ivor led them, one on either side, letting them walk beside him now, as was fit for men, to the quarters set apart for Gereint. He went inside with them and watched as they knelt before the shaman, that he might confirm and consecrate their animals. Never had one of Ivor's children tried to dissemble about his fast, to claim a totem when there had been none, or pretend in his mind that an eltor had been an eagle or a boar. It was still the task of the shaman to find in them the truth of their vigil, so that in the tribe Gereint knew the totems of every Rider. It was thus in all the tribes.

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So it was written at Celidon. So was the Law.

At length Gereint lifted his head from where he sat cross-legged on his mat. He turned unerringly to where Ivor stood, the light from outside silhouetting him.

"Their hour knows their name," the shaman said.

It was done. The words that defined a Rider had been spoken: the hour that none could avoid, and the sanctity of their secret name. Ivor was assailed suddenly by a sense of the sweep, the vastness of time. For twelve hundred years the Dalrei had ridden on the Plain. For twelve hundred years each new Rider had been so proclaimed.

"Should we feast?" he asked Gereint formally.

"Indeed we should," came the placid reply. "We should have the Feast of the New Hunters."

"It shall be so," Ivor said. So many times he and Gereint had done this, summer after summer.

Was he getting old?

He took the two newest Riders and led them into the sunlight, to where all the tribe was gathered before the door of the shaman's house.

"Their hour knows," he said, and smiled to hear the roar that went up.

He gave Navon and Barth back to their families at last. "Sleep," he urged them both, knowing what the morrow would be like, knowing he would not be heeded. Who slept on this day?

Levon had, he remembered; but he had been three nights in the grove and had come out, at the last, hollowed and other-worldly. A difficult, far-voyaging fast it had been, as was fitting for one who would one day lead the tribe.

Thinking so, he watched his people stream away, then ducked back into the darkness of Gereint's house. There was never any light in that house, no matter which camp they occupied.

The shaman had not moved.

"It is well," Ivor said, hunkering down beside the old one.

Gereint nodded. "It is well, I think. They should both do, and Barth may be something more." It was the closest he ever came to giving the Chieftain a hint of what he had seen in the new ones.

Always Ivor marvelled at the shaman's gift, at his power.

He still remembered the night they had blinded Gereint. A child, Ivor had been, four summers from his hawk, but as Banor's only son, he had been taken out with the men to see it done.

Power for him all his life would be symbolized by deep-voiced chanting and torches weaving on the night plain under the stars of midsummer.

For some moments the two men sat quietly, each wrapped in his own thoughts, then Ivor rose.

"I

should speak to Levon about tomorrow's hunt," he said. "Sixteen, I think."

"At least," the shaman said in an aggrieved tone. "I could eat a whole one myself. We haven't feasted in a long time, Ivor."

Ivor snorted. "A very long time, you greedy old man. Twelve whole days since Walen was named.

Why aren't you fat?"

"Because," the wisest one explained patiently, "you never have enough food at the feasts."

"Seventeen, then!" Ivor laughed. "I'll see you in the morning before they go. It's up to Levon, but I'm going to suggest east."

"East," Gereint agreed gravely. "But you'll see me later today."

This, too, Ivor had grown accustomed to. The Sight comes when the light goes, the Dalrei said.

It was not Law, but had the same force, it seemed to Ivor at times. They found their totems in the dark, and all their shamans came to their power in blindness with that ceremony on midsummer night, the bright torches and the stars suddenly going black.

He found Levon with the horses, of course, tending to a mare with a bad fetlock. Levon rose at his father's footstep and came over, pushing the yellow hair back from his eyes. It was long, and
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he never tied it back. Seeing Levon lifted Ivor's heart; it always did.

He remembered, probably because he'd been thinking of it earlier, the morning Levon had returned from his three-day fast. All day he had slept, bone-weary, the fair skin almost translucent with exhaustion. Late at night he had arisen and sought his father.

Ivor and his thirteen-year-old son had walked out alone into the sleeping camp.

"I saw a cerne, father," Levon had said suddenly. A gift to him, the deepest, rarest gift. His animal, his secret name. A cerne was very good, Ivor thought with pride. Strong and brave, proudly horned like the god for which it was named, legendary for how it would defend its young. A cerne was as good as could be.

He nodded. There had been a difficulty in his throat. Leith was always teasing him about how quick he was to cry. He wanted to put an arm about the boy, but Levon was a Rider now, a man, and had given him a man's gift.

"Mine was a hawk," Ivor had said, and had stood beside his son, their shoulders touching as they looked together at the summer sky above their sleeping people.

"Eastward, right?" Levon said now, coming up. There was laughter in his brown eyes.

"I think," Ivor replied. "Let's not be foolhardy. It's up to you, though," he added quickly.

"I know. East is fine. I'll have the two new ones, anyhow. It's easier country to hunt. How many?"

"I thought sixteen, but Gereint wants an eltor to himself."

Levon threw back his head and laughed. "And he complained about not enough feasting, didn't he?"

"Always," his father chuckled. "How many hunters, then, for seventeen?"

"Twenty," Levon said immediately.

It was five fewer than he would have taken. It put great pressure on the hunters, especially with the two new ones in the band, but Ivor held his peace. The hunting was Levon's now, and his son knew the horses and hunters, and the eltor like no one else did. He believed in putting pressure on them, too, Ivor knew. It kept them sharp. Revor was said to have done the same thing.

So "Good" was all he said. "Choose well. I'll see you at home later." Levon raised a hand; he was already turning back to the mare.

Ivor hadn't eaten yet, or talked to Leith, and the sun was already high. He went home. They were waiting for him in the front room. Because of Gereint's parting words, he wasn't totally surprised.

"This," said Tore, without ceremony, "is Davor. He crossed from another world with Loren Silvercloak last night, but was separated from him. We killed an urgach together in Faelinn last night."

Yes, Ivor thought, I knew there was something more. He looked at the two young men. The stranger, a very big man, bristled with a certain aggressiveness, but was not truly so, Ivor judged.

Tore's terse words had both frightened and pleased the Chieftain. An urgach was unheard-of news, but the Outcast's saying "we" made Ivor smile inwardly. The two of them had shared something in that killing, he thought.

"Welcome," he said to the stranger. And then, formally, "Your coming is a bright thread in what is woven for us. You will have to tell me as much as you care to of your story. Killing an urgach-that was bravely done. We shall eat first, though," he added hastily, knowing Leith's rules with guests.

"Liane?" he called.

His daughter materialized instantaneously. She had, of course, been listening behind the door.

Ivor suppressed a smile. "We have guests for the morning meal," he said. "Will you find Tabor and have him request Gereint to come? Levon, too."

"Gereint won't want to," she said impertinently. "It's too far, he'll say." Ivor observed that she was keeping her back to Tore. It was shameful that a child of his should treat a tribesman so. He
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would have to speak to her of it. This business of the Outcast must be ended.

For the moment he said merely, "Have Tabor say that he was right this morning."

"About what?" Liane demanded.

"Go, child," Ivor said. There were limits.

With a predictable toss of her hair, Liane spun and left the room. The stranger, Ivor saw, had an amused look on his face, and no longer clutched the sheaf of papers he carried quite so defensively.

It was well, for the moment.

Loren Silvercloak, though, and an urgach in Faelinn Grove? Not for five hundred years had such a creature been reported to Celidon. I knew, Ivor thought, there was another reason why we stayed.

This, it seemed, was it.

They had found a horse for him, not an easy task. The Dalrei tended to be smallish people, quick and wiry, and their mounts were much the same. In winter, though, they traded with the men of Brennin in the land where the High Kingdom ran into the Plain near the Latham, and there were always one or two larger mounts in every tribe, used usually for carrying goods from camp to camp. Riding the placid-tempered grey they had given him, and with Ivor's younger son, Tabor, as a guide, Dave had come out at dawn with Levon and the hunters to watch an eltor chase.

His arms were in pretty rough shape, but Tore had to be just as bad, or worse, and he was hunting;

so Dave figured he could manage to ride a horse and watch.

Tabor, skinny and tanned dark brown, rode a chestnut pony beside him. He wore his hair tied back like Tore and most of the Riders, but it wasn't really long enough for that, and the tied part stuck up on the back of his head like a tree stump. Dave remembered himself at fourteen and found an uncharacteristic empathy for the kid beside him. Tabor talked a lot-in fact, he hadn't shut up since they'd ridden out-but Dave was interested and didn't mind, for once.

"We used to carry our houses with us when we moved," Tabor was saying as they jogged along.

Up front, Levon was setting an easy pace eastward into the rising sun. Tore was beside him and there seemed to be about twenty other riders. It was a glorious, mild summer morning.

"They weren't houses like we have now, of course," Tabor went on. "We made them of eltor skin and poles, so they were easy to carry."

"We have things like that in my world, too," Dave said. "Why did you change?"

"Revor did it," Tabor explained.

"Who's he?"

The boy looked pained, as if appalled to discover that the fame of this Revor hadn't reached Toronto yet. Fourteen was a funny age, Dave thought, suppressing a grin. He was surprised at how cheerful he felt.

"Revor is our brightest hero," Tabor explained reverently. "He saved the High King in battle during the Bael Rangat, by riding through Daniloth, and was rewarded with the land of the Plain for the

Dalrei forever. After that," Tabor went on, earnestly, "Revor called a great gathering of all the Dalrei at Celidon, the mid-Plain, and said that if this was now our land, we should have some mark of ourselves upon it. So the camps were built in those days, that our tribes might have true homes to come to as they followed the eltor about the Plain."

"How far back?" Dave asked.

"Oh, forever and ever," Tabor replied, waving a hand.

"Forever and Revor?" said Dave, surprising himself. Tabor looked blank for a second, then giggled.

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He was a good kid, Dave decided. The ponytail was hilarious, though.

"The camps have been rebuilt many times since then," Tabor resumed his lecture. He was taking his guide duties seriously. "We always cut wood when we are near a forest-except Pendaran, of course-and we carry it to the next camp when we move. Sometimes the camps have been completely destroyed. There are fires when the Plain is dry."

Dave nodded; it made sense. "And I guess you have to clear out the damage the weather and animals do in between times, anyway."

"Weather, yes," Tabor said. "But never the animals. The shamans were given a spell as a gift from

Gwen Ystrat. Nothing wild ever enters the camps."

That, Dave still had problems with. He remembered the old, blind shaman, Gereint, being led into the Chieftain's house the morning before. Gereint had trained his sightless eye sockets right on him.