Madbond (12 page)

“Kor is in the hearth hall, last I knew,” he remarked.

He was there yet, sitting idly by the blackening fire, though the place was dim and empty. His glance flickered up when he heard me, then down again when he saw who I was, and I knew at once that my surmise was right, that he had been avoiding me. I was amazed.

“Why?” I exclaimed out loud.

“Why what?” He met my eyes finally, but his were hard.

“Why are you angry at me?”

“Angry? You tell me. Why should I be angry?” There was no heat in his voice, but something like irony or bitterness, and I noticed he did not motion me to sit down, though I stood leaning on my staff only a few paces away.

“I don't know!” I spoke with heat enough for two. “Unless you are only now waxing wroth at me for what happened more than half a month ago, and that seems unlike you. What have I done to you since? I have tried to act with honor—”

“Honor!” The word brought him to his feet, his eyes flashing. “You and your bloody honor! If I had thought only of honor, you would have been dead the day you came here!”

“And that might have been better,” I shot back, knowing at once that the words were untrue—my heart had fainted for joy the moment I knew Istas would not kill me.

“You proud ass. You and your fool's honor be damned.” Coming from him the words stunned me, widened my eyes, for I had never known anything but kindness and mercy from him, had scarcely ever heard him raise his voice. But he was shouting now. “Do you suppose it was easy, standing by and letting you and Istas play out your vicious, hellish game? Do you really think that, just because the blows fell on your great hulk of a body, they hurt me any the less? I knew Istas would come to herself, she had to, but I never thought it would take her so long, so cursed long—and you, you damned cock-proud jackass, you would not cry out, and no more could I.…” He was shaking with passion, and though his voice fell to a whisper, the words came out no less intensely. “By great Sakeema's blood, I would far, far rather have taken that suffering, yours and hers, on my own body than to stand by so helplessly.”

It was true. Why should that stagger me, I who had never heard less than truth from him? But it was true, fire-true and not just a manner of speaking, all that he had said. He had felt my pain, redoubled with hers, redoubled with—his own.…

I could not speak. I could only grip hard at my staff for support and stare into his furious eyes, myself now helpless—the look in those eyes had struck me to the heart. In a moment he turned stormily away from me and strode out.

I wanted to sit down, I felt weak. But not there. I needed air, out, outside.… Half desperate—or I would not have found the strength—I hitched and plunged my way out and up the headland. Talu whinnied when she saw me, but I did not greet her. I crawled to the edge of the forest, collapsed under the wind-beaten spruces and closed my eyes, listening to the wailing of the gulls.

When Kor found me, half a day later, I was numbly watching a red squirrel nibbling at the early spring buds.

Kor sat silently beside me. I knew without looking who it was. He watched the squirrel with me.

“In the time of Sakeema,” he said softly after a while, “my elders have told me, there were gliding squirrels, fawn-colored and with great eyes and very beautiful.”

“Time of Sakeema be damned,” I muttered peevishly, though I had not known until then that I was sulking. I had believed that I was drawing solace and strength from the wild things in the manner of my people.

“Well,” Kor said wryly, “we've damned a lot today, between the two of us.”

I rolled over to face him, at that. “I didn't know,” I blurted, getting the words out quickly, for this was not easy. “You told me, but I—I didn't understand, Sakeema forgive me. I never meant to burden you with my pain.”

“Stop it,” he said.

I sat up so that I could face him more levelly. “If you feel all that I do,” I told him, not quite steadily, “then I had better go away, for there is a plenitude of hurting in me.”

“Dan,” he said in gentle exasperation, “don't be an ass. You can barely walk.”

“I can ride. Talu will take me.”

“She threw you off!”

“Only because I tried to master her. I can sit on her and let her take me where she will. Or, what am I saying, she is yours. Where is my own pony, the one they said I rode here?” With my mind whirling as it was, I thought perhaps he had hidden it along with my great uncouth weapon.

He sighed, not wanting to reply. “It died shortly after you came,” he said finally.

“How so?” Some strange seaside disease, I thought.

“You had ridden it to exhaustion, Dan.” Very softly, very gently. He knew me.

For a moment I could not believe him. I, Dannoc son of Tyonoc, ride to death one of our tough little blue-eyed, curly-haired ponies, the tribe's pride? I would as soon have ridden one of my brothers—
ai,
Mahela's hell. Despairing, I dropped my head to my knees.

“I suppose you want to know the penalty for that, now,” Kor muttered. He was trying to jest, but the words jarred me. My head snapped up.

“I have told you, I will go away! My troubles will not trouble you much longer.”

“Dan, you sound like a child! Run away, don't care where, poor thing. Plenitude of hurting, bah.”

“I am trying to spare you!” I flared at him. “I see no end to this.”

“Well, I do.” Kor stretched out on the mossy ground and surprised me by grinning up at me. “Istas is almost herself again, my people are singing with happiness that they need no longer shun you and quarrel with me, you are dreaming of Winewa—don't look so aghast, Birc told me. And I have at last vented my spleen after twenty-some long, long days.”

I stared hard at him. “It was more than just venting spleen,” I said slowly.

“Not much more. Great Sakeema, can't a person do some shouting once in a lifetime without having poor invalids riding off on wild mares?”

I had to smile. “Well,” I admitted, “your spleen is perhaps an improvement on my early days here. You were so—so sweet, half the time I wanted to hit you.”

He sat up and laughed aloud, a joyous laugh. It warmed me to hear it. But then he sobered suddenly.

“Dan,” he requested, meeting my eyes, “don't think of leaving yet awhile. Please.”

“But why? I have caused you nothing but trouble.”

“Yes,” he agreed lightly, “and having gotten thus far with you, don't you think I want to see trouble through? Stay awhile. Truly, you cannot go off with that foot unhealed, even on a horse.”

It was true enough, and I nodded. There were better reasons, but he was not speaking them, and I was too tired to seek any longer for reasons. It was sundown, though the sunset was only a yellow blur in the foggy white of the western sky over the ocean. Kor looked that way a moment, then stood up and reached down to me, helping me rise. With his arm under one hand and the staff in the other I hobbled back toward the Hold.

There was a distant flash in the yellow-white of the sky, a flash or glint as bright as that great, strange, fearsome knife of mine. Kor stopped where he stood and squinted toward it, frowning.

“No bird shines so,” he said.

Very true. It shone like a fish, but large. Perhaps a sea hawk had caught a great salmon. No, no hawk—

I could see it flying with a rippling motion and drawing swiftly closer. I could not help gripping Kor's arm. It was—Sakeema help us, it was the thing he had told me about, the soul-swallowing, life-sucking, destroying thing, bluntly broad at the front and then tapering, taller than I from head to tail—no, there was no head, only a single eye staring whitely and a mouth, a maw, like that of a starfish, leading directly into the belly of the thing's bulk—it was altogether eerie, silent as an owl in flight, and it was coming straight at us.

“A devourer,” said Kor in a voice gone dead.

“Your knife!” I urged him. I had worn none since I had been a madman.

He stood still. “Knives do no good,” he said in the same way.

I saw the breasts—large, comely even, but gray, and sickening on that strange cloaklike body of cold flesh. I saw a sort of clamshell-shaped organ farther back, under the tail, which looked strong, like a thick, flattened snake.… I had once seen eels slithering across the grass by a river on a moonlit night, but I had never seen anything that made me shiver as did the sight of that devourer.

It shot over our heads and veered off inland, rising until it had disappeared over the snowpeaks. Kor and I stood rigid in the darkening day, looking after it, and only when it had been gone ten breathspans did we speak.

“I like that no whit,” Kor said, grim. “I have never seen a devourer in daylight before. Never at all, except on my vigil nights.”

“It is dusk,” I said. “Perhaps the thing has an errand to another king, somewhere.” My own words chilled me, though I had intended them as jest—no other kings but the Seal kings kept vigils, to my knowledge. Suddenly I could not still my own shaking.

“Perhaps. Sakeema help him or her if it does.”

“Was that the same devourer you have seen before?”

Kor turned and stared at me.

“I mean, can you tell any difference—”

“Dan, I was too stupid to think that there might be only the one! You mad dreamwit, you are trembling. Sit down.” He lowered me to the ground, sat beside me. The look on his face had lightened somewhat.

“Perhaps it is Mahela herself in one of her many forms,” I said.

“What a comfort you are.” Irony, now. “I had thought that the things were her minions, and that there were many. But I have not seen more than one at a time. How would one tell any difference, in the dark?”

“The size of the breasts, maybe,” I said promptly. “Or the shape of them, the feel—”

I spoke in all seriousness, but he started laughing.

“Dannoc, I am not such an adept with breasts as you seem to be!” He laughed without much mirth, and he sobered suddenly. “Dan, how is it that the women take to you so easily? Winewa is not the only one willing to bed you. Half the maidens in the tribe look with warmth at you, and they would have let you know it long since if it were not for Istas and her grudge.”

“Truly? Confound that interfering old woman—”

He would not be diverted.
“Dan,”
he insisted.

I looked at him. Darkness was gathering quickly, and I could scarcely see his face, but I could see the tense line of his shoulders.

“Do you mean to say—they do not come to you?” I could scarcely believe it. He was comely enough, and king, and a worthy king.

“No.” Flatly.

“But why?”

“I am asking you, Dan,” he reminded me, half amused, half annoyed.

“Well …” I floundered for a reason. “I do not understand these women of your tribe,” I admitted at last. “They hold themselves apart from men, aloof, as if there were a mystery to their affairs. Yet the men stand in scorn of the women because they do not go out in the coracles.”

Kor shrugged. “I have thought perhaps it is because I am king. But you are a king's son in your tribe. Did you have lovers among your own people?”

“Yes.” Memories came back to me in a sudden rush, making me feel warm and easy, so that my shaking left me. Sakeema, yes, there had been lovers, Olathe and Naibi and Leotie—“white fawn,” that meant. Leotie was a beauty. Every buck in the tribe had wanted her. She had favored me for a while, and I was so happy I could scarcely walk for dancing. Then she had left me. A sweet pain, remembering, for it had been a tender leave-taking.

Then a harsher pain, and I frowned. There had been some reason why she had left me—but I could not remember what it was.

Kor sat watching me.

“Never mind, Dan,” he said abruptly. “I must be an idiot, keeping you out here in the dark and chill.” He got up, helped me up, and gave me my stick and his arm to lean on. “And I know you have not eaten, for I drove you out.”

“Poor invalid, I.”

“Make the most of it.”

Never mind, he had said. Even so, that night when Winewa came into my chamber and gently woke me, I was not entirely willing that she should play with me in her usual manner.

“Do you like me, Winewa?” I asked her.

“To be sure, I do,” she retorted promptly. She was nothing if not prompt and ready, my Winewa. “I am not much in the habit of bedding with men I do not like! Would you think that of me?”

“No, no. But how is it that you like me?”

“For yourself! You are different, and I will never forget you. But I do not love you,” she added in her frank, forthcoming way, “if that is what you mean.”

I smiled, having known full well the limits of dalliance. Questions, though, were easier to ask in numbers. “You, your friends, the other maidens, Lumai, Lomasi,” I went on, “do none of you ever go to Kor?”

“King Korridun.” Her candid voice grew softer than I had ever heard it. “We would give life and breath for him, make no mistake, Dannoc. But no, we do not lie with him.”

“Why not?” I felt my smile fade.

“He is too—too fearsome.”

“How so?” I let her hear my astonishment. “It can hardly be said that you lack for boldness, Winewa.”

She smacked me lightly in reproof. “He is an oddling,” she said defiantly. “His father was of the Otter. He is different from the rest of us.”

“Winewa!” I protested. No one could have been more different from her than I, with my hair the color of bleached seregrass, my blue eyes. She raised her hands in a gesture of surrender.

“I—I don't know, then, why he is an oddling. But we all feel it, don't you? Something—fated—about him.”

My skin prickled, and I kept silence, I who had seen his eyes blaze earlier that day. After a moment, in the same very low voice, she went on.