Children of Earth and Sky (36 page)

She remained silent. What was she going to say?

“I killed you,” her brother said again. “I saw my arrow hit.”

“Be silent,” said Skandir grimly. “Make your peace with your god and stars.” He looked at Danica, then at the artist.

“He hit you? With that arrow?”

She looked at the arrow she held. She nodded.

“You wear no armour?”

She shook her head.
Zadek
, she wanted to cry. She wanted to say it aloud.

“I have seen a man survive an arrow when it struck a talisman he wore.”

She shook her head.

“This was too close, in any case. That can only happen at the limit of an arrow's range.” He sounded calm, but this man, too, was beginning to realize something unnatural had happened here.

Well, it had, she thought.

“You are all right?” Marin asked. More his normal voice.

She looked at him. Such a handsome man, and he . . . she mattered to him. She knew that. Which was unfortunate, in all the circumstances.

“I am,” she said. “My chest hurts. There's blood. It is . . . it is on the arrow.” She held it up, as if that would clarify something for them.

“I killed you,” her brother said for a third time.

“And I told you to be silent,” Skandir snapped. “I won't say it again.”

“What will you do? Kill me sooner?” Neven was clearly in pain. He'd been struck on the back, then clubbed on the head or shoulders.

He has courage
, she thought. And,
Of course he does
, she thought.

“I can do that,” the old warrior said.

“Then do it!”

“No,” she said.

She knelt in the tall grass by the woods, before the old warrior.

“Please, no.”

He raised two thick eyebrows. “You will need to say why.”

She drew breath again. It was so painful to do that. This was all impossible, she thought.

She said, “I have promised to come with you. To join you. Do you still want me?”

“You killed ten men here. I do.”

“Twelve,” said Marin Djivo. “She killed or wounded twelve. I counted. You would have lost this battle. You would be dead, Ban Rasca.”

“I am not the ban of anything,” the old man said, a reflex. “But yes, she is good with a bow. I will take her with me. What does that have to do with this one?”

“He is my brother,” she said.

There was no way to not say it, and no way she could think of to make it less blunt. The world didn't allow that, or wasn't allowing it. They were both here.

“
What?
” Skandir exclaimed. He made the sign of the sun disk. First time she'd seen him do that.

“Holy Jad!” Marin whispered. She was looking at him. A moment later she looked across at the other two. The artist still held a branch in one hand. Her brother . . .

“That is a lie!” her brother said.

Tico growled, she silenced him with a gesture.

She stood up again. You should not say this kneeling.

“Your name is Neven Gradek. You may know it, or you may have been too young. Mine is Danica. I don't know if you'll remember me. You were named for your grandfather. You were born in a village called Antunic in the borderlands northwest. You were taken by hadjuks in a summer raid. We fled to Senjan—our mother, our grandfather, me. You were not quite four years old. You . . . you were born in autumn.”

There was silence. What could any of them say to this? she thought. Swear, pray, cry aloud?

Skandir cleared his throat. “This is . . . this has always been known as a strange place. There is a glade somewhere back in this forest. People here say . . . there were said to be powers here.”

“It isn't so far back,” said Pero Villani. His first words. “They
have cut the trees up to it. I went through it. I saw . . . I saw talismans there, amulets.”

“Did you take anything? Tell me you didn't!” Skandir cried.

Danica looked at him. Saw him make the sign of the disk again.

Villani shook his head. “I touched one. A metal bird. But I put it back. I took a branch.” He lifted it a little, as if to show them. He was looking at Danica. “I heard . . . I thought I heard a voice, just before the arrow. It said . . . the voice said,
Children
.”

Danica stared at him. Too much was impossible to explain here.

“I heard that,” her brother said.

A different voice this time. He sounded young.
He is fourteen
, she thought. She had always been aware of how old he'd be if alive, wherever he was. Skandir didn't silence him this time.

The old warrior shook his head. “And the world keeps surprising me. I don't like being surprised. There were beliefs about this forest. Maybe that is how this . . .” He looked at Villani. “You touched an offering, you said?”

An offering
, Danica thought.

The artist nodded.

But that isn't it
, Danica thought.
That isn't how this happened.

She was looking at her brother. Staring, hungrily. He was fair-haired, more red than she was, freckles, big for his age, broad-shouldered. Their father and brother had been big men. And now she saw something change in his eyes.

She asked, “
Did
you know your name? Mine?”

After a long moment of birdsong and the wind she saw him nod his head, once. He pointed at Marin. “And I heard that one call it, as I released.”

She began, appallingly, to weep after all. Furiously wiping tears away, she said, “You were aware of someone, weren't you, this spring, when you fought a man?”

His mouth gaped. “How do you know that?”

“I do,” she said. “A knife?”

Fear in his eyes. He was a boy. He nodded again, that same single downward motion. She had carried him through their village, teaching him the names of things.

She said, “You have been loved, Neven. You never stopped being loved.”

“My name is Damaz.”

“You were named for your grandfather who—”

“My name is Damaz! I am a djanni of the army of the khalif. What you are saying means nothing.”

“That last is untrue,” said Skandir, but not harshly. “What we come from matters.”

“Not to me! Go ahead, kill me, the way barbarians do.”

“I can do that,” the old warrior said for a second time.

“Please, no,” Danica said. “This is my one request.”

“It is a large one, even from a good archer.”

“Then let it be a large one.”

Marin Djivo said, “It might be good if a man survives, goes back to the army to tell them Skandir destroyed those sent after him.”

“And if he tells them a merchant party helped?”

“We hid in the woods. An archer from Senjan helped you and rode away with you. If he says it was a woman, their shame is greater. He might not say it.”

Marin was, Danica thought, as intelligent as anyone she'd ever met. And courageous, and a good man, and he cared about her and . . . and she was riding away with Skandir, whatever else happened now. Because her life, since the fires in Antunic, had been pointed towards exactly this, killing, revenge, war—just as this old warrior's had been.

She was more like Skandir, she thought, than anyone in Dubrava could ever grasp. It was a sorrow. But that didn't make it false.

“You may go,” Skandir said, looking at Neven. “No weapons.
I grant you your life. Ride back to your army.”

“I am a djanni. We do not ride.”

“You will be hard-pressed to make it on foot, but I am sure a heroic djanni of the great khalif's army has his means.”

Neven stood. She saw him wince. She said, she had to say, “You can stay. You are Jaddite-born, you were taken as a child. You can turn your back on those who did that to you. You can fight them. Take your own revenge. They don't get to decide what you are, Neven!”

“No,” he said. “Almost every djanni was a Jaddite child. It is what we are. Why would I be the one to betray those who taught me, honoured me?”

“Because they stole your life,” she said.

“They
gave
me a life.”

“Not the one you were born to, with the family you had!”

“And the faith,” Skandir added, quietly.

“I am not the only one this has happened to.” He swayed a little, but his voice was firm.

“No, you aren't,” Skandir said. “But you are now one who has a chance to return. It is not a thing to turn your back upon.”

“Why not? Why would I leave everything I know?”

“To find everything taken from you,” the big man said. “Ask me a harder question, boy!”

Her brother was silent, and in that silence Danica said, “Maybe . . . maybe stay because I'm here, too, and asking you.”

“
Why
are you here?” he asked. “You said Senjan? Why here now?”

Too hard to answer, too much that would need explaining. She said, “Neven—”

“My name,” he repeated, “is Damaz. I am from the garrison of Mulkar, fifth regiment. I am a djanni in the khalif's army.” He turned to Skandir. “If you are letting me go, may I leave?”

She wasn't weeping. She wanted to. She reached down again, a hand touching her dog.

“You may,” said Skandir. “I said as much. Though if you stay, there is a place for you with me, because of . . . because there is a power in this.”

“A power,” her brother mimicked, and in his tone she heard their older brother, Mikal, who had died the night of the raid.

“If you leave we will never see each other again,” she said. Her turn to sound desperate. She looked only at her brother now.

He shrugged.

“Think, lad! What will they do to the one
survivor?” Marin Djivo said suddenly. “They will decide you fled.”

“They might,” Skandir agreed. He sighed. “If you are wise, you will tell them your leader ordered you back as the battle turned, to report that it was me you fought.”

Another shrug, but Danica saw a hesitation.

Clutched by fear, she said, “You think you were made to throw that knife in that fight only to go back now to their army?”

“I threw the knife in a fair fight!”

“And I know about it!” Her voice was urgent. “His name was Neven, too. You were named for him. Neven Rusan. Our mother's father.”

She was telling too much, with three others here and the clerics of Jad constantly inveighing against witchcraft,
and
with Senjan said to be a place that knew dark arts, especially the women.

Even so. This was, she thought, her last chance. She wanted to walk across the grass and touch him. She knew she could not.

“Neven, I don't want you to die.”

“Why? You don't know me at all.”

“But I do. I did. There hasn't been a day when I haven't thought of you, and revenge. That is why I'm here. You asked. That is my answer. It is about you.”

She could feel three men looking at her. She kept her gaze on her brother. His eyes held hers a moment. Then he turned away, to Skandir.

“I will not tell about the merchants,” he said. “In return for my life, which was in your hands.”

“No. In your sister's hands,” the big man said. “Without her you are dead here, for the forest creatures to feed upon.”

Another shrug. A boy's shrug. She tried to imagine what he must be feeling. She failed. He turned back to her.

“I thank you, then,” he said coolly.

And turned. Turned and went away, through tall grass, past flowers, the sun bright above. They watched him go, a well-made boy, back down towards the ditch and then the road. Someone there, seeing him, called to Skandir. The old man held up a hand, staying his men.

Her brother never looked back. Afterwards, days and nights, Danica would see this moment in her mind, clearly, as in that same spring light, and find herself unable to believe he hadn't looked back at her, not once, and that she'd let him go.

The borderlands, what they did to people there.

—

HE IS AWARE OF DRIFTING,
he is very high. He understands that whatever it is that has held him here, to her, whether his own fierce will or a gift of Jad, or of something else, older, is spent now, is finished. He broke whatever it was when he stopped that arrow. He pushed—and that feels to be the right word—too hard.

That is why he is floating now, rising. So high on a bright day. Last bright day. He can see them both far below, apart, distance growing. Granddaughter, grandson. The boy, walking stiffly away, is sheathed in pride and fear. Neven. Named for him. He understands pride and still feels fear. For him, for both of them. Even now, even leaving, finally. How long is forever?

He is not a man who had ever offered words of love when he was in the world. He hopes, now, that it has been understood. He hopes they will be all right, as much so as is ever allowed.

He himself is allowed this aching, far, final glance. His last thoughts are their names, the one and then the other, then he is air, sunlight, lost, gone.

I
t is Skandir who takes charge after the boy disappears down the road to the east.

He does this effortlessly, an easy assumption that it is his task. There are people who lead, it can be as simple as that.

Looking at Danica as they come down from the trees, Marin wants to comfort her and is afraid to even try. Without a word spoken he has an understanding with the old warrior and Pero Villani that nothing will be said about what happened at the forest's edge. The others were too far away, they will have seen nothing that needs explaining.

Well, one thing. Skandir tells his remaining men that he let the last Osmanli go, weaponless, so he could tell the serdars of the khalif's army who had destroyed them here. If he gets back alive, he adds.

There are no tools in the cabins, but a little farther off they find some buried by the woods. An attempt at hiding them from thieves. There are shovels, axes, woodcutters' saws, in three graves. They set about digging a true grave on the far side of the road for Skandir's men.

Marin is blunt with the Seressini merchants who want to move on immediately—leave these raiders who'd rashly endangered them. He makes clear that if they leave now they do so without Dubravae guards. He invites them to do so. They decline. They actually look afraid of him. He hasn't taken this tone before.

He is uncomfortable with how angry he feels, in fact. Men from Dubrava, he thinks, taking a turn with a shovel in the sunlight, are
so
discreet and diplomatic. It startles people when they are otherwise.

Danica had told her brother that her entire life was about vengeance. Said it was why she was here. She'd said the same thing to Marin, in fact, one night within Dubrava's walls, within his family's walls, in his room.

And he, Marin Djivo, younger son of a merchant? What was his life about? Trade? Clever, profitable dealings? He was from a city-state that flourished by letting no one hate them enough to do anything disagreeable. Where you are situated in the world, Marin thinks, digging a grave in a Sauradian meadow, shapes how you act in the world.

Then he amends that thought: it is
one
of the things that does so. Rasca Tripon and Danica Gradek might frame it differently. Or the old empress living with the Daughters of Jad on Sinan Isle might do so. They are all exiles, he thinks, taken from what they were, where they were.

He digs hard, sweating in the sunlight though it isn't warm. They need large graves, there are many dead. Pero Villani works beside him. When their eyes meet, both men look away.

They'd touched the half-world this morning.

There is no way to deny it. The artist had actually touched something
in
that world. He'd said as much. And they'd both seen a woman take an arrow in the heart—and rise up, alive.

Skandir had said this was alleged to be a spirit-haunted wood.
They have reason now to believe this is so, whatever clerics might declare.

This is a place to leave, as soon as they can, he thinks. They finish laying to rest the dead in the afternoon. Ban Rasca speaks the prayers—he'll have done this many times, Marin thinks. More than two decades of his men dying. It is astonishing, really, that he is still alive, still fighting. They move on, along the imperial road, headed east.

They stop to bury some other men towards day's end—from the first ambush set by Skandir's archers. There are Asharites dead here, too. Marin sees Danica moving about, claiming arrows. Archers never let arrows go to waste. She moves stiffly, is pale and silent. They haven't spoken. He has no idea what words to offer. The boy, her brother—
Neven
—had walked away, returning to Ashar. What did you say?

They leave the Asharites unburied, after taking what can be used from them. Skandir and his men will have done this before, too, Marin knows. You don't leave useful things behind, not in the life these men live. He tries to imagine such a life. He can't, really. It is beyond him. He feels that as a failure on his part. He does notice something, however. He thinks about mentioning it, but does not.

There are six raiders left healthy. There are three wounded they are taking east. One is badly hurt, held on a horse by another rider. Skandir tells them there is a sanctuary with a small village beside it not far ahead. They'll overnight there, have the wounded treated—maybe left behind, maybe left as dead.

In the morning Skandir and the remnant of his band, including a woman from Senjan and her dog now, will go south to regroup in Trakesia. And Marin Djivo, merchant of Dubrava, will carry on with his party as he had been before, in a world that isn't now what it was this morning.

—

PERO KEPT GLANCING
at his left hand as he walked, the hand he'd used to pick up that artifact in the forest.

He had no idea what he was looking to see. Perhaps his fingers would begin to turn black, rot, fall off. Perhaps he was doomed. Skandir, so vividly fearless, had seemed frightened when Pero said he'd touched something in the glade.

He'd put it back. Immediately. He couldn't even remember clearly what it had looked like now, which was strange for an artist. There was a blurring in his mind there. A bird of some kind. Made of metal. An offering? What else
could
it have been?

But to what power? Something strong enough to bring Danica back from death, or let it pass her by? A terrifying thought. He knew what the clerics would say. But . . .

Children
, he had heard.

That had not been imagined. A voice in the air, urgent sorrow. And that
had
been Danica's brother there. The two of them, brought together.

Pero could make sense of some things: there had been a raid, and the hadjuks did take small boys. Sold them as slaves, almost always castrated.

But sometimes they became djannis. What the boy had said to Skandir was true: most of those elite soldiers were Jaddite-born. They owed everything to the khalif. Had no division in their loyalties. As they had just discovered here.

But the other thing, Danica rising up . . . Sometimes, Pero thought, you arrived at a moment you could not explain to yourself. He looked at his hand again. Skandir had said that perhaps because he'd put back that object he'd found . . .

Who could know such things? What man far from home, an artist from Seressa's lagoon, could know? Was he accursed now? Blessed? Had he saved Danica Gradek's life by touching something there? Or was he simply a man who had come too late, with a tree branch, out from trees?

He looked for her, at the front of the party again. She hadn't spoken since her brother had rejected her and gone back to find his army, to risk explaining why he was alive and everyone else was dead. The Osmanlis would probably kill the boy, Pero thought.

They went on. Clouds came without rain, moved away, west on the wind. There was no one else on the road now. They didn't stop for a meal: food and drink were taken on foot or mounted. Skandir wanted to reach this village as quickly as his wounded could manage. One of them was in bad condition. Pero didn't know much about such things, but he wondered if a man with a wound like that could live.

His fellow Seressinis were chattering. They always did, but this was different. They'd had an adventure. It would make such a good story back home, Jad willing. The great, wild Trakesian warrior ambushing Osmanli soldiers right in front of their eyes! They had seen it all. Yes, he was alive, Skandir, the legend. Yes, it had been beyond thrilling to see that craggy, bearded figure. A barbarian? Of course he was! The man had swung a sword red as his beard! And killed them all, the Asharites! More wine, please. Yes, it was
very
good to be back in Seressa, queen of cities, Queen of the Sea, where civilized men—and women—went about their lives.

Pero saw Skandir lift a hand, pointing.

There was a small sanctuary, left side of the road. The road itself had curved away from the forest, or the woods had been cut farther back, leaving space behind a small, domed holy building. He saw huts and pens and houses, and tilled fields beyond. The sun was behind them, low, twilight coming. It was colder now.

“I'll go in for the evening rites,” Skandir said. He looked at his horseman with the wounded man in front of him. “Take them to Jelena. Tell her it is me. That I'll be there soon.”

The man nodded, moved ahead, off the road. The two other wounded ones followed. There were no ditches here. It was quiet, serene. There was smoke rising from chimneys. Hearth fires, the
dinner hour soon, animals would be brought in from fields. There was a holy place to pray as the sun went down. Evening coming to Sauradia beside the imperial road that had been here a thousand years. It seemed a peaceful place. That was probably not true, Pero Villani thought.

He went with Skandir. So did Djivo and four of the raiders and all the Seressinis. They left the guards with the animals and goods and walked a worn-smooth path through a gate in a fence.

“There used to be Sleepless Ones here,” Skandir said. “Not for some time. Only a few clerics are left. But it is still a holy place, and men died today.”

There was very little light inside, only a few candles burning, it was hard to make anything out. A space under the dome, not large, an altar, a sun disk suspended from metal chains behind it. No benches. You would stand, or kneel on a stone floor, to invoke the god here. He saw niches in the wall to his left. They were empty.

From a doorway at the back, behind the altar, a small man in faded cleric's yellow emerged and approached.

“For an offering,” he said, “I will gladly lead you in the sundown prayers.” He was very young.

“We will offer,” Skandir said. “I have done so before. Lead us, please. There are souls to usher towards Jad's light today.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” the cleric said. “Let me get candles.”

Pero looked around again. The walls were bare of art or ornament. Ornaments could be stolen, he thought. Or offend the Asharites who ruled here now. Art might wear away, or be destroyed. This place existed on sufferance. The clerics would keep their presence modest, quiet. He heard a clinking sound, a chip of stone or glass had fallen from overhead. He looked up.

It was too dark to make out clearly what was on the dome. The small windows at the base of it were grimed with dirt. Decades of it. Probably more. Even before Sarantium fell this would have been a too-remote place for attentive maintenance and repair.

There was a mosaic of some sort up there. He made out a single large image spanning the dome . . . Jad, rendered in the eastern way. Of course, given where they were. He could see a dark beard, a lifted hand. The eyes were large. He couldn't see more. Had they come at midday, he thought, he might have been able to discern what some craftsmen had laboured to do long ago. Sometimes you found good work in these remote places, but mosaics needed light. He knew that much, even if no one worked with stone and glass any more.

The door at the back opened and closed again, echoing. The cleric re-emerged from the gloom, carrying four white candles. They'd hold them in reserve for a time when travellers stopped here. Candles were expensive.

He had never prayed under the eastern Jad, the one whose son had died for mankind—bringing fire, in the oldest version of his story. A banned doctrine in the west, heresy. Pero felt it again, how far from home he was. He looked at his hand. It didn't seem to be falling off.

The new candles were lit on the altar, touched to smaller ones burning there, and placed in iron holders. He wondered how many clerics there were. Probably they lived in the village where Skandir's wounded men had gone. Would there come a day when no holy men were here at all? When the faith of Ashar and his stars claimed this sanctuary and that bearded god looked down on the artifacts of another faith? Or when the stone and glass that shaped him were hacked away, not simply allowed to fall?

He stepped on a mosaic piece as he moved forward, a crunching sound. It seemed a sorrowful thing to Pero. Up by the altar and the disk the cleric cleared his throat, bowed, and began the evening chant, familiar words, a different melody. Skandir knelt, and Pero and the others did the same. He felt a tessera under one knee, he moved it away. He felt sad and lonely but there was some comfort to be found in the known invocation. At the proper place he named his father and mother in his prayer.

—

DANICA SLIPPED QUIETLY
inside when the chanting began, staying by the door. She named her dead when the cleric reached that pause in the service—and she added the newest one, who had died a year ago but hadn't left her until today.

It was difficult not to call to him. It was going to be difficult for some time. She added a prayer for her brother, as always, and doing that led her to go back out, before the end of the rites.

It was dark now, colder, twilight upon them in Sauradia. She looked for and found the evening's first star. Her mother, once they had arrived in Senjan, had taught her to name the first star she saw each night for her father and ask its blessing. She still did that. Some rituals were your own, not part of any doctrine. The stars didn't belong only to the Asharites. They shone above them all. She remembered her mother saying that. It was difficult, how alone she felt.

She looked around. No signs of life or movement, but a dog moved past the gate and her own dog stirred from near this doorway and came over to her and pushed his head against her. She reached down and ruffled Tico's fur at his neck. Something, at least, had not left her, she thought—then decided that was weak, self-pitying. Life and the world owed you nothing.

Except sometimes there was a chance of revenge—the chance she was seizing now, riding away in the morning with Skandir. There were unexpected sorrows in that, but sorrow was embedded in everyone's days, wasn't it?

She had come back outside for a reason, she reminded herself, and resumed scanning the fields. The other dog had moved on to the village. Tico stood beside her, alert now, taking his cue from her. She heard an owl call, then the quick sound of its wings before the glide.