Blood Indigo Read online

  “Little breath is wasted in what talk is being made.”

  “You worry overmuch about talk. Folk are made to jabber. It means nothing.”

  “I found him up Overlook.” Sketching lay upon her tongue; she bit it back. Her birthing-tribe held symbol makers in reverence, but Naisgwyr’uq had suffered from their proximity to forbidden Shaper’s places. They allowed no such tolerance. The twisted remnants of Winnowing, so long ago but lingering, had burnt hot-deep into the memory of her spouse’s tribe. Her tribe.

  Sarinak crumbled spicebark into the steaming copper basin. The heady, warm scent rose, curling about their den. Yet such comfort did little to allay concern.

  “I took others to the felling duty.” Sarinak sank onto the blanket beside her. “Tokela is too like his dam, heedless of honour or propriety.”

  And even moreso had Winnowing’s memory leapt into flames when Tokela’s dam, sister of Sarinak’s sire, had defiantly fanned them to consort with outLanders.

  Lakisa. The whisper within Inhya’s heart would never pass her lips. Respect and mourning. Love… and fear. Your son becomes lost in River’s song, sees in Her what none should. Makes likenesses of Them.

  Surrendering to such things could become an initial step down an illicit path. First the lure of an Elemental, then the thrall leading to possession, and from that merely several steps more to the ultimate transgression: manipulating the Elementals.

  Shaping.

  It was why any transgressions amidst their own were cleansed by the Alekšu or, if necessary, purged. It was why Chepiś and their places were anathema. Chepiś honoured nothing, used frightful abilities to twist things into abomination with what Power their kind had long ago Winnowed from Grandmother’s heart. The cost was high, true: those made outcast as with Sarinak’s younger brother; or like to Inhya’s own brother, who’d fallen possessed in adolescence. At least Palatan had been cured, and now helped others so cursed.

  Her thoughts lingered upon him, fond. Palatan should arrive soon. First Running should last a quartering of Brother Moon; the councils and festivities ran for several Suns before and after. Surely they could speak of her fears for Tokela…

  N’da, her brother’s empathy would be tested with this. Palatan, like others, might suspect the rumours of Tokela’s siring for truth, but he’d no proof. Even Sarinak refused to acknowledge any of it. Tokela lived with them, but Inhya doubted he understood the implications any more than he’d recognised the likeness still crumpled in her pouch.

  Inhya had. The creature was unmistakable, and that Tokela had been able to conjure him was…

  She would give the likeness to Fire, first chance. Not that any offering could purge this worst of secrets, kept to shelter the son of her oških lovemate. Her son, now.

  It got her with me.

  Foresworn, whichever path she took.

  “Inhya?” Sarinak peered at her, a bowl extended in one hand.

  Inhya took it and looked down, continued her tread of deception’s anxious path. “Tokela was watching the Riverwalker craft. Again.”

  “The younglings always watch, particularly upon the festival of First Running. All the comings and goings and excitement.” Sarinak applied himself to parcelling the spit-roasted fowl. “They fancy adventure, and what they think is freedom. They comprehend little of what it truly means to live as outlier. Outcast.”

  It soothed her heart to watch him. Her spouse could steady the cliffs beneath their feet if only by the deliberate economy of his motions. In the privacy of their own place, he had unwrapped the Sky-hued scarf from his head, letting thick, emmer-coloured waves tumble back from his forehead. The long twistlocks at his temples, darkened with oil and wrapped with carved-wood beads, lay flung behind his powerful shoulders, shining dark gilt against the hearth’s flickering warmth.

  Sarinak a’Naišwyrh, son of Beloved ones and now Mound-chieftain in his own right, had come young to his status. It had not bent him but made him stronger, moulded from the copper clay of dawnLand’s protective cliffs.

  “D’you remember when you first came here?”

  He often spoke thus when they had this time together, with just that hint of satisfaction. Always it brought forth from Inhya a fond, equally satisfied smile. A sharp breach of custom, a fem leaving her dam’s tent to make a home amongst a spouse’s tribe! Yet in truth, Inhya had found little hardship in trading nomadic duskLands vagaries for a settled life here in dawnLands, within the Great Mound-beside-River. Thick RainForests, dens dug deep into the cliff mound, and an everpresent River’s chill regard gave reassuring boundaries to existence. Inhya had fancied Sarinak’s ambition, then fancied him, then loved him as ever she had Lakisa…

  Sarinak, as usual, nipped at the heels of Inhya’s thoughts. “I blame the wyrhling for filling our eldest son’s heart with too many tales.”

  Sarinak’s outlier once-brother had indeed given Tokela more Stars in his eyes than he already possessed, but… “That one has been long away.”

  “Perhaps Tokela watches for the wyrhling’s return.” Another snort, disgruntled, as he portioned the tender meat into equal servings. “Perhaps we’d best weir that stream before ša floods. It could be to everyone’s good, did we send Tokela away from River.”

  Inhya’s brows quirked. “To Aylaniś? She owes hearthing trade, true enough—”

  “There’s enough foolishness in Tokela without trebling it running wild as hareKin with your brother’s People.”

  Inhya raised her brows, peered at Sarinak.

  “Don’t cast such eyes at me, spouse, you know what I mean.” He leaned forwards, glower turning to grin. Inhya had to grin back—she couldn’t help it—but the expression congealed as Sarinak continued, “I thought, perhaps, to send Tokela to his sire’s folk.”

  And who are those? she wanted to counter, and didn’t.

  “His sire’s uncle, for one.”

  Inhya sniffed. “I wouldn’t loan a dog I disliked to Galenu a’Hassun.”

  “Hunh.” Sarinak offered another smile and pushed the platter within her easy reach. “True. But the time is coming when Galenu could demand sire-rights.”

  “You and I will fly to Everwintering Mountain first. That one! Nothing but a selfish old khatak.” Inhya deliberately slurred the dawnLands word for “solitary” into insult: withered, can’t earn himself a spouse. “He’s no fit guardian. I’d little honour my lovemate’s memory, did I shrug off our son’s welfare so lightly.”

  Galenu! He’d bewitched Lakisa from Inhya’s side with his forbidden tales. Worse, he’d introduced Lakisa to the forbidden places. And not so much as soiled his fingers with the consequences. While Inhya hoped—desperate, an orison to rise and set with Brother Moon and His siblings—her lovemate’s son would mature more of firstPeople, less of Chepiś. A dangerous wager from its undertaking, but her heart had felt strong enough to hold it.

  Then.

  “Lakisa’ailiq”—Sarinak gave sharp and deliberate invocation of the dead—“may she walk lightly the Long Path, is gone. Bones picked and honoured in ashes long given to River. Yet still her son raises her Spirit in your eyes.” He shook his head and took up his food. “Ai, the sooner Tokela enters the oških den, the better.”

  MADOC LOOKED everywhere.

  River, first; searching Her thighs in the lee of the massive Mound. A breach of manners, to stare so intently at the craft moored, bobbing gently in the current, but they were merely wyrhlings, and Madoc had to find Tokela, after all.

  When there still were no signs, Madoc headed farther downRiver.

  He and Tokela had with their own hands built a wykupeh amongst the thick trunk branches of a weeping tree. A few leagues downRiver wasn’t so far if one ran the distance, which Madoc did.

  But a thorough search of both wykupeh and the sand-and-rock cove that bordered their haven garnered nothing.

  Where could Tokela be?

  Disconsolate, Madoc finally gave up, knowing he’d not find Tokela had Tokela truly decided to hid
e. Instead Madoc ran back upRiver and took his time scaling the crest of Talking Bluff. The drumKeeper—weathered by long watches in Sun and Rain to as deep a sienna as the drum resting at her side—diverted him, offering a piece of sapsweet fit to coax a smile from her chieftain’s son.

  Soon Madoc was not only helping the drumKeeper’s ahlóssa daughter put away more of the sweet chews, but also tossing a game of bones on a brightly painted hide.

  HE WAS sure the t’rešalt would stay him.

  Or perhaps he’d just hoped.

  Caverns were home to Tokela, a comfort—but this outland thing was neither, lingering overhead, an ominous weight. Beneath his feet the ground seemed… lax, more mossy floor than any rock, yet his eyes detected nothing but more of the oddling not-stone. Any impulse to reach out quelled itself as if struck. He found himself crouched and creeping—as if it were even remotely possible that he could bump against the lofty ceiling. His shaking fingers kept touching his knife. He kept moving.

  Deeper than first gathered, the t’rešalt lay bare of overgrowth and darker than any dark—save for the spastic lightning-shards that occasionally spread over its surface and… well, they seemed to follow him, a wake of not-Fire that pocked his eyes in blinding white shards. His nostrils, too, were overwhelmed, filled with the charged, silt-wet cloak of an approaching storm. A shivery rash of sensation washed over his skin, lifting hair from scalp to ankles. His pace dragged more and more, a scrape and shuss just that much too loud. Gritting his teeth, Tokela forged onward.

  In truth it was only several tens of steps, with the thing sparking and snapping and crackling about him, his breaths skittering, faint but determined, amongst the cacophony. He counted them, speeding more and more as the thing pressed upon him, tight and empty and unending…

  Tokela staggered past the t’rešalt and fell to his hands and knees, released.

  Counted a brace of his own heartbeats.

  Looked up, eyes ghosting with white sparks, and irising all the wider to take in the blessed normalcy of dark. His heart, conversely, tightened and twisted against his breastbone. Now he was here—in here—he wasn’t sure what to do with the reality.

  What that reality meant.

  It was said that only Chepiś could venture past the t’rešalt.

  But his mother had done.

  Taking refuge in the thought, Tokela tossed the hair from his eyes and rose to his haunches, curious.

  Not so different, after all, than the deeper woods north of Naisgwyr’uq. Trees, towering over him in muted shades of jet and downRiver malachite, their canopy so far over his head it didn’t even feel as if there were any ceiling, only darkness rising and melding into forever. Moss and lichens, with old logs fallen in their own rot, making fecund nurseries for fresh shoots and fingerling plants. Wet, dripping from the dark and hanging in the air.

  Only…

  This place felt different, somehow. It smelt different.

  Forbidden. Misbegotten monsters wait, eat curious ahlóssa who don’t stay upon their bedshelf, who wander where they shouldn’t…

  Nostrils flaring, Tokela rocked to his feet. He was being foolish. Nothing had changed. Moreover, he hadn’t changed. Still in his own skin, still possessed of hale limbs, with breath to fill his lungs and heart pounding, a rhythmic if agitated drum, in his breast. Still of firstPeople.

  His gaze, unwilling, slid back to the t’rešalt, which looked much the same—only darker, those odd sparks and cracks muted, gone quiet.

  Until something erupted, Stars from pitch, with the sound of wet droplets flung into Fire’s embrace. Tokela jumped like hareKin. Averted his gaze.

  And went deeper into Šilombiš’okpulo.

  3 – Anahli

  She’d forgotten how Air was weighted, here. Ša dripped from the trees, glittering and heavy. Ša hung in her lungs, lingering there even as she exhaled. Ša puffed her long braids from oiled sleekness, and tickled her ankles as she dismounted. The fringe of her leggings made dark swathes in the damp grass as she walked forwards, scratching her mare’s black-splotched face and gathering the rein. So sodden, here, that trees grew unhindered save by each other, and had to be cleared to make proper grazing.

  Letting the breath escape her pursed lips, Anahli a’Šaákfo watched it vent upward like the steam escaping the winter caverns in duskLands. It wasn’t even that cold.

  And she’d better get used to it.

  Her mare danced in place, snoring from curled nostrils, eyes on the herd grazing the other side of the clearing. Anahli grinned and slipped the rope from the mare’s nose, stepped back. The mare exploded into a run, bucking and squealing and farting. The other visitors—horses, shorthorns and even a few lammoi from hillClans—responded to the mare’s high spirits. Tails flagging, they lapped the clearing, once coming so close Anahli’s leathers rustled with their passing.

  She didn’t retreat. Instead she cupped both hands to her mouth and let out a whoop.

  Another answered from behind her—more a whistle, really, and then her name echoing against the trees. “Anahli!”

  Another smile teasing her lip, she pretended not to hear. As if such a thing were possible when Kuli was in full voice.

  “Hihlyanahli!!”

  She turned about just in time for several hands of giggling, wriggling little brother to leap into her arms and try to knock her flat. Laughing, she let him, and they rolled in the damp grass.

  Which just set the herd off again. Anahli’s black-spotted mare in the lead, they made for the far line of trees. The cattle lumbered after, stub tails flung high, and even the phlegmatic lammoi snorted and circled the clearing with their curious, rocking gait. Watching them go, still laughing, Anahli rolled to her feet and peered down at herself: best leathers smudged with damp and green; colourful skeins and fur mussed where they’d been plaited into her braids.

  “Ai, now look what you’ve done!” She gave a half-hearted smack at Kuli’s cinnabar topknot. “How am I to make a proper impression if I look like I’ve been rolling in the grass with ahlóssa?”

  “You have been rolling in the grass with ahlóssa.” Kuli looked up at her, flat on his back in the grass with an impenitent grin. “I was watching for you from Overlook; saw you riding ahead! Where are Aška and Yeka?”

  “Soon. Our dam and sire rode slowly with the elders.”

  Kuli’s eyes—moss-coloured as their sire’s—widened. “Which ones… Ai, not old Chogah! She can hardly even sit a horse any more, why is she—?”

  “Show respect, little Fox.” It was purposeful, pointed. “If you’re going to be ugly about Chogah, I’ll leave you here.”

  “I’ll just follow you. I don’t mean to be ugly. But she started it. She’s ugly to Yeka and you know it.”

  “That’s not yours to judge.” Anahli knew she was puffing up like poked serpentKin, but the subject made her tired. And angry. “Our sire isn’t the one who lost honour and place.”

  “Chogah’s honour left long ago! Yeka only did what he should’ve done long ago, since she wouldn’t step down on her own—”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but you’ve no business, ahlóssa, prattling elders’ talk when you don’t understand any of it.”

  “I understand more than you think.” Kuli’s chin quivered—rebellion and hurt.

  Both got to Anahli; she understood them all too well. “Come here, my little Fox,” she relented. “Let’s not argue when I’ve missed you so.”

  He sprang up and sailed into her, hugging her fierce. “I’ve missed you too! Come on, then—The Mound is bursting at the seams, all these people. And there’s food!”

  AS FIRST daughter, riding ahead was a breach of manners. Anahli should have remained, entered the arched and ancient entwined conifers of Naišwyrh’uq’s redoubt at her dam’s side. Should have, at the very least, rejoined her tribe to formally greet the hosts of First Running, and witness the honour done to the new-Broken Alekšu.

  Who just happened to be her sire.

  Instead Anahl
i took some time replaiting her mussed quartet of braids into shining, gaily-wrapped ropes that waved about her hips. She let Kuli, chattering all the while, help brush the dirt from her leathers, then followed him—not to find their parents, but to the cooking hearths.

  She was noticed, no question. Instead of a decorative headscarf, her uncovered, carmine-daubed hair part ended in long ebon braids. Instead of woven split kirtles swishing, or a rich, full tunic, her lanky thighs were clad in pale leathers with her best fringed bag adorning one hip, and her muscular arms garbed only with a spiral tattoo on her drawing bicep, with copper rings stacking up the other.

  One handsome male a’Naišwyrh—another oških, from his lack of headwear—was eyeing her from several places down in line. He looked mature enough to court opposites. Anahli wasn’t. ‘Like to like’ was traditional across the allied tribes, but horseClans customs weren’t so strict. And males had the illicit fascination of difference.

  With a dip of head and a small smile, Anahli turned away.

  Kuli was already diving into a helping of fish stew.

  “Your people follow?” One of the hearth tenders smiled, offering Anahli a steaming bowl that smelled just as glorious as Kuli’s. The next poured bark-and-honey tea.

  “They are.” With a grateful gesture Anahli took both. The steam from the tea warmed her nostrils, the bark bowl her palms. As if in response, her arms puckered with chill.

  “You’re shivering, oških.” A blanket was draped over her shoulders; Anahli turned to see a smiling elder, two grey twistlocks peeping from the nape of his bright scarf. “Take my blanket. I don’t mean to conceal your beautiful finery, but just for little while? Your people are used to dry heat… N’da, no matter, I am Chukfitohya, bred for winter and wet; I will be well.”

  Rude to refuse such kindness, though Chukfitohya—despite his calling of winter hareKin—seemed so scrawny he likely needed his blanket. Maybe he also meant to discourage that handsome oških. Anahli paid belated heed to her sire’s warning—several times over, at that—about the stricter expectations of the Great Mound-Upon-River.