Eyes of Crow (25 page)

They scavenged some food from the wake and returned to his home, using a basket and pulley to hoist their dinner. Marek hung a blue cloth from his porch railing to signal his presence, then changed it to the red Do Not Disturb flag.

Rhia washed the cuts on his face as thoroughly as possible, considering she couldn’t see them.

“Do you really think Skaris killed Etar?” he asked her as she wrapped a chunk of ice within a cloth.

“Not on purpose.” She reached out gingerly to find his head without poking him in the eye, then held the ice to his swollen cheek. “Maybe someone else put the poison in the drink and had him serve it.”

“But how would that person know Etar would get that particular mug unless they told Skaris which one to give him?”

“Good point. Skaris had to have known. But it doesn’t make sense. Why would he do it?” She helped Marek remove his shirt, which reappeared as it left his body. “If Kerza was right, and it happened over a Council dispute, the Owl from Velekos will find out who planned it.”

“But a second-phase Owl can only detect a direct lie, so they’d have to run through every name in the village, looking for a yes-or-no answer.”

Rhia stopped, holding his shirt. “Unless it wasn’t one of the Kalindons.”

“Then who?”

“What if Etar died for something bigger than Council politics?” She held up a hand in a preemptive plea against his interruption. A thought buzzed around her mind, something that had seemed insignificant at the time. It came to her half-formed. “Didn’t you tell me one of your Bear friends went to the Descendant City? The one who couldn’t feel the Spirits there.”

Marek let out a small gasp. “It was Skaris. He brought them a message from the Council.”

“Maybe the Descendants turned him into a spy.”

“Skaris? Not likely. He’s too boastful to be a good secret-keeper.” He took the cloth to cleanse the cuts on his side. “Your village has been living under the shadow of a Descendant invasion for years. You must think any odd event is a sign of war.”

“The Descendants have every reason to invade Asermos,” she said, “and no reason not to.”

“No reason, other than the slaughter of their troops. If your village coordinated its magic, you could stomp any opponent into the ground.”

“We’d need time to coordinate our magic. Someone would have to warn us of the enemy’s movements weeks in advance.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m not making this up. I had a vision years ago. Someone I know will be killed in the battle.”

“Have you told them?”

She shook her head. “It’s forbidden.”

Marek sat next to her and took her hand. A shadow of nothingness obscured her palm. “When I think of all you have to see and hear as a Crow, I don’t blame you for wanting to run away.”

Rhia’s toe nudged the cloth used on Marek’s wounds. It was covered in mud as well as blood. “You got filthy in that fight. Would you like me to heat water for a bath?”

“Oh, that would be—” He caught himself. “No, I’ll do it.”

“You got this way on my account, so it’s the least I can do. Besides, you took care of me for days in the forest.” She pushed him gently down on his back. “Rest while it heats.”

Rhia collected a bucketful of water from the cistern that sat on the rope bridge between his home and Coranna’s. His stove was tiny compared to the Crow’s, and by the time the water heated, he was asleep. She wet a cloth and flicked some warm water in the direction of his snores.

“Hey!” He spluttered, and she heard his feet hit the floor.

“Your bath’s ready.”

“Then help me undress,” he said in a tone that invited more than sympathy.

She obliged, resisting the urge to demand more from his body than it could comfortably offer. He sat on the floor, leaning against the bed, while she cleansed him. His murmurs of appreciation made her long to see his body in the warm lantern light.

With the leftover water, he scrubbed and rinsed his hair. As he rubbed it dry with a clean cloth, he said, “Sometimes having short hair comes in handy.”

She broached a difficult question. “Will you keep cutting it?”

His hand stopped moving, and he set down the towel. “I knew you were wondering.” He put on a fresh shirt from a pile in the corner, then ran the towel over his head again. “It’s growing, isn’t it?”

“Hair will do that.”

He was silent as he finished dressing, each article of clothing vanishing as he put it on. “I don’t know, Rhia. It still hurts. I was there.”

“For the birth?”

“Usually fathers wait outside, but some women prefer their mates or husbands to be with them. I wonder if it isn’t to make us appreciate how much they suffer to bear children.” She heard him sit on the bed with a heavy sigh. “Kalia wanted me there.”

It was the first time he had spoken his mate’s name to Rhia. Kalia was real now.

“It was bad,” he said, “from the beginning. There was so much blood. The baby, he tried to come out feetfirst. He kept ripping her apart from the inside, until finally—she begged Elora to cut her open.”

Rhia closed her eyes. Such surgeries were impossible to survive without a third-phase Otter or second-phase Turtle.

Marek’s voice went dead. “But it was too late. When they took him out of her, he wasn’t breathing. And neither was she.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“It was nighttime, so she couldn’t even see me before she died. I was already invisible.”

She sat next to him on the bed. “She knew you were there. She knew you—” Rhia stumbled over the word “—loved her.”

He drew a strand of her hair through his fingers, sliding down to the ends, which came to the shelf of her collarbone when pulled straight. “Can I ask you how your mother died?”

“Her heart, it—gave out.”

“Was it quick?” he whispered.

“No.” She felt herself shrink inside. “We all had a chance to say goodbye. But it wasn’t enough time, and I—I couldn’t help her cross.”

His hand drifted to her cheek and caressed it with the backs of his fingertips. “You must have felt terrible.”

“I still do.”

“And yet, your hair grows long.”

“Because I only wear my guilt on the inside.”

He sucked in a sharp breath. “You think my mourning is some sort of display?”

“I think it’s punishment, and not just for you. How do you think Coranna feels each time you cut your hair?”

“She made a bad choice, and we all have to live with it. Except Kalia and my son. They don’t get to live with anything.”

Rhia touched his chest. “I don’t think Coranna made a bad choice. I’m glad she chose you.”

“If you knew Kalia, you wouldn’t say that.”

Eyes stinging, she drew back her hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You must wonder if I compare you.”

“Don’t you?”

He sighed. “We were so young. We’d loved each other since childhood, but the older we got, the less we understood each other. It’s hard to explain.”

Rhia thought of Arcas. “You don’t have to.”

“We fought all the time,” Marek said, “about stupid things, things I don’t even remember. When we found out she was pregnant—” He shifted his weight on the bed. “We didn’t rejoice at the thought of raising a child together when we could barely stand to be within the same walls. We only thought of ourselves, not the baby. So Wolf and Swan turned our new powers from blessings into curses.”

“What happened to her Swan magic?”

“In their first phase, Swans can interpret their own dreams, and in the second phase, they can do it for others.”

“I know,” she said. “My father’s a Swan.”

“He waits for others to tell him their dreams, right?”

“Of course.”

“Imagine your father following everyone around, begging to know what they had dreamed the night before, and then only being able to see what those dreams said about him.”

Rhia couldn’t imagine. “How awful for Kalia.”

“Soon no one wanted to be near her, or they would tell her a false dream to keep their own privacy. She couldn’t sleep at night with her head so full of questions and worries. But when she felt the baby move inside her the first time, she understood what it meant, how enormous it was to be a mother. Instead of fear, she felt happiness. And Swan returned her true powers.”

Rhia filled in the ensuing silence:
But Wolf didn’t return yours.

Marek lay down, drawing his breath in a wince. “The more I thought about it, the more afraid I became. It was like I was getting younger instead of older, maturing backward. I started staying out all day, sleeping in the forest so no one could see me. It’s a wonder they didn’t forget what I looked like. When Kalia needed me most, I failed her.”

Rhia realized how similar his struggle against his Spirit was to her own, and wished she had trusted him sooner with the truth of her mother’s death.

She lay beside him and held his hand between both of hers. “I wish I could say something other than, ‘I understand.’ It sounds so hollow.”

“No, not from you.” With an audible effort, he turned on his side to face her and drew a blanket over them. “I know Coranna waited years for you to be ready to become Crow. I remember when we first got word of you.”

Rhia thought how differently events would have turned out if she’d come then instead of now. “When Kalia died, were you…”

“Together? Yes and no. I planned to help her raise the child, but our spirits were no longer connected enough to be mates, much less husband and wife. We both expected to find other people to marry someday.”

The way Kalindons separated marriage and childbearing made Rhia uneasy. “What if you’d found someone first? Who would help her take care of the child every day?”

“I would. Everyone would. Children are too valuable to be raised by only two people.”

She was suddenly glad she had brought several months’ worth of wild carrot seed. The thought of having a baby without the security of a husband horrified her. In Asermos, a woman in that situation would depend on the generosity of her family and maybe a few neighbors.

“We should stop making love for a week or two,” she said. “It’s getting close to my risky time.”

“There are things I can use to make it safe for us. A little awkward, maybe, but—”

“Completely safe?”

“There’s no such thing as completely safe.”

“Then let’s not.”

He stretched a leg to cover hers. “Will you sleep here, anyway? This bed’s too big without you now. Look how happy the blankets are to wrap you up.” He flapped the covers and made a tiny cheering noise. “See? They never do that for me.”

She chuckled. “So we’ll simply lie next to each other, as chaste as geldings?”

“We could just sleep, or…” His hands wandered under the blanket until they found their warm destination. “We could find other means of pleasure.” Rhia arched her back, imagining the means. He slid closer and touched his forehead to hers. “Listen,” he said, “you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever known. Never think anything else. Promise me?”

“You don’t have to say that.”

“Promise me. Promise you’ll never feel that you’re less than anyone, no matter what.”

She guessed that “no matter what” meant, “even if someday you return to Asermos and we never see each other again.” But between now and “someday,” she would have him and gladly let him have her.

“I promise.”

Coranna continued training Rhia in the rituals she could perform in the first phase of her Aspect: the prayer of passage, to ease the dying person’s spirit out of this world; the body-chant, sung to complete the separation after death; and the calling of the crows, to carry away the spirit and end the funeral. Someday, when Rhia entered the second phase—after conceiving a child—she, too, would be able to speak with departed souls, especially those who lingered close to this world.

Coranna also taught her how to block the terrible visions of a person’s eventual death. Not only did the visions bring knowledge too heavy to bear, they could also produce blackouts, like the one Rhia had experienced with Dorius. In a battle situation, where she would help the healers decide which of the wounded could be saved, repeated visions would render her mad and useless.

Rhia spent her nights with Marek, though she couldn’t see him after sunset, except for a slight shimmer now and then as a result of intense effort on his part. Every night she would run her fingers through his hair—as casually as possible—to discover it growing long and soft. His bouts of brooding dwindled to the occasional inward gaze of reproach as evening light faded and he with it. He left their bed before sunrise to hunt, then slept most of the day. Though she was glad his nocturnal ways left time for her studies, she doubted he would fit in on a farm, where work lasted sunup to sundown. Yet the thought of returning home without him gave her a dull pain below her ribs, as though she had swallowed a stone.

She no longer dreaded the forest and its darkness, but instead learned to hear its song. Each tree was a unique instrument, with the winds its players. The steady southwesterly breeze whispered most of the day, creating a background hum that reminded Rhia of a gentle rain on wheat fields. The north wind swept down from the mountains, usually at night, in a swirling chaos that twisted the branches, leaves, and needles into a riot of sound. Wind from the southeast brought rain—nearly every day for a month—and with it an arrhythmic patter as water dripped from the trees onto the roofs of the houses and the rocky terrain below.

On occasion she would see the old lone wolf from a distance. His pale yellow eyes watched her, and she learned to grow calm under his gaze. Though it went against her stomach’s demands and her principles of separating the wild from the tame, she saved pieces of her dinner for him when he looked gaunt. Sometimes at night she heard his solitary, unanswered cry.

Though Rhia knew a certain faction of Kalindons would always resent her, most of the villagers opened their hearts and homes to their guest, making her feel like one of them. Yet a dissonant note lurked beneath the overarching harmony—Etar’s death and its mysterious circumstances. She avoided the home of Skaris, who watched her from his window with what felt like a burgeoning bitterness. Her lingering suspicions of Coranna—who had an opportunity and perhaps a motive to kill Etar—made Rhia’s studies difficult, and her qualms concerning Razvin were only slightly tempered by the obvious adoration he shared with his daughter.

One night, several days before the summer solstice, Alanka and Razvin invited Marek, Coranna and Rhia to dinner. Though Rhia found it difficult to be in the same room with Razvin, her appetite insisted she attend. As Marek had warned, most nonfeast days in Kalindos featured a maximum of two unsatisfying meals. When a Kalindon hosted guests, however, the meals were large, to honor all who attended.

“What do you miss most about Asermos?” Razvin asked Rhia as they sat down to eat that evening.

She contemplated her surroundings. All the windows were open, the sun shining through the western one, long before its summer bedtime. A cool breeze wafted through the airy house, and the trees whispered a soothing tune.

“Bread,” she said finally.

The others laughed.

Razvin gave her a teasing grin. “Not your family, your friends, your—” he glanced at Marek “—anyone else?”

She hid her discomfort at the diminishing memory of Arcas. “I miss bread. It rounds out a meal, makes it complete. If I could give one Asermon gift to Kalindos, it would be bread.”

Razvin’s smile disappeared. “We can’t have farms here to grow the wheat, and we don’t want them. How many trees had to fall so your land could be tilled? How many animals had to be enslaved so you could have your bread?”

“I like bread,” Marek said in an even voice. “At the Fiddlers Festival in Velekos, they served slabs of meat between two hunks of bread, all dipped in juices. Messy but delicious.”

“Meat from animals bred for slaughter, with no chance for escape, no dignity of the hunt.” Razvin kept his eyes on Rhia. “Farming makes you soft.”

Her face heated. “You call having everyone live through the winter ‘soft’?”

“You only live through the winter if the harvest has been good. If there’s a drought, or too many insects, then people starve anyway, and more of them, since there are more to feed.”

“In good years we store extra food to keep that from happening.” She didn’t point out that Kalindons gorged on their extra food at feasts rather than save it.

“If all those fields and stores of food were taken from you, you wouldn’t survive a year.”

His words gave her a sudden chill. “Why would they be taken from us?”

He shrugged. “A storm, perhaps. A flood.”

“An invasion?” she said.

The table went silent. Razvin stared at her with fear-tinged eyes. Then he blinked his gaze back into beguilement. “Who would dare invade the all-powerful Asermos?”

“Anyone who thought they could defeat us. The Descendants, for instance.”

He looked at her darkly. “If so, you’ve brought it on yourselves. When you create a world that others covet, you shouldn’t be surprised when someone tries to take it from you. Look at Kalindos. We’re safe as long as we have nothing worth stealing. Safe and happy.” Razvin lifted his mug to the others. “Here we prefer to live on the edge.”

“We don’t
prefer
it,” Coranna said. “The edge is forced on us by our surroundings. You’ll understand when you’re my age—Kalindos is my home and I’ll never leave it, but these old bones will take any ease they can get.” She turned to Rhia. “When you return for second-phase training, bring as much bread as you can carry.”

Marek brightened at Coranna’s words, then his brow creased and his gaze dropped to his plate. Rhia wondered if he were imagining her return after bearing another man’s child. The possibility had receded beyond the grip of her own imagination.

Alanka merely picked at her food and said nothing.

“Well, sweetness?” Razvin asked her. “Don’t you have a request for some Asermon treasure? Bread? Cheese? Ale?”

Despite Rhia’s fullness from the meat and nuts, her stomach yearned for a meal of nothing more than bread, cheese and ale.

“What about a nice Asermon boy?” he asked. “They grow them bigger there, I hear.”

Alanka pushed away her plate. “Father,” she said without looking at him, “why do you have to be such a monster?”

Razvin stared at his daughter while a dozen emotions played over his face. He began to speak.

But instead of forming words, his mouth emitted a strangled yelp. He clutched his head and lurched from his chair, which clattered to the floor behind him.

“Father!” Alanka ran to his side. He pushed her away with a growl, then crouched low, hands on the floor. His back arched, and the animal cry that came from his throat curdled Rhia’s blood.

Razvin’s body twisted in agony as it shrank. Red hair sprouted from his neck and arms, becoming thick as fur.

Rhia gasped. It
was
fur.

Razvin was turning into a fox.

Claws sprang from the knuckles of his fingers and toes, and he shrieked until his face elongated into a red-and-black snout. Then the human noise turned into a snarl. His limbs shortened and lengthened into doglike proportions. Eyeteeth sprang into fangs. Last came the tail, and Rhia averted her eyes to keep down her dinner.

The fox lay panting on the floor for a moment, then rose to flee. Razvin’s clothes hung loose on his body, which wheeled in panic upon finding no escape from the room. He tripped on a bunched-up sleeve and smacked his snout on the floor.

“Father?” Alanka approached the fox slowly. “Can you hear me?”

A light flickered in the creature’s black eyes, as if he recognized her voice.

“He’s come into his full power,” Coranna said. “Foxes can shape-shift in the third phase.”

Alanka shook her head. “But I’m not pregnant. I haven’t been with a man in over a month.” She looked away. “Not that it’s anyone’s business.”

Rhia started. “One of my brothers.” She put her hand to her mouth. “I’m going to be an aunt.”

“Me, too!” Alanka bounded over to hug her. “I don’t even know them, but I’m so happy.” She muted her enthusiasm and turned back to her father. “But what do we do with him?”

“Let him out,” Marek said. “See if foxes can climb trees.”

“That’s not funny.” Alanka glared at him. “He can probably understand us.”

The fox uttered a rattling bark, then with a high-pitched cry, flopped onto his side and changed back to human form, much faster than he had become a fox.

No one spoke as Razvin stared at the wall for a long moment. Then he said, “That was incredible.”

Alanka knelt at his side. “Are you all right?”

“Incredibly painful, but nonetheless…” He looked up at Alanka. “Does this mean—”

“No.” She held up her hands. “It must be one of your sons, going to be a father.”

“Oh.” He eased himself to a sitting position and rubbed the base of his spine. “Did I have a tail?”

Rhia couldn’t forget Razvin’s words of foreboding. All along she had felt that Etar’s death was somehow connected to the future of Asermos, though she couldn’t explain it out loud in a way to make anyone, even Marek, understand. Razvin held the answers, she was sure of it now.

The morning after the Fox’s transformation, Rhia waited outside his house, hiding in a clump of brush, while Alanka was out on a hunt with the other Wolves. Razvin appeared and removed the blue flag from his porch, signaling the house’s emptiness. He descended the ladder and set off toward the river empty-handed. As he moved, his head swiveled slightly, as if looking for someone—or ensuring that he went unobserved.

She followed, and managed to keep him just on the edge of her sight until they were far away from the village. She walked slowly to maintain her stealth, but as she neared the rushing river, dared to proceed more quickly, counting on the water to mask the sound of her footsteps.

A thicket of sycamore trees appeared. She slid from one mottled white trunk to the next, listening in vain for Razvin’s steps. He must have changed course, she thought, disappointed with her first attempt at tracking.

Voices.

She recognized only one, that of Alanka’s father. The other man spoke with what she thought was a southern accent, like that of Velekos, but more foreign-sounding. She caught a word or two, but the cascading water muffled their remarks.

A bit of pale gray moved in the corner of her eye, from deep within the forest. She searched the shadows for a clearer glimpse. Was it another stranger, come to meet with Razvin? No more movement occurred, and she decided to press on, keeping an eye behind her lest she become surrounded.

She changed her angle on the riverbank. A ledge concealed a small area right next to the shore. If she dared, she could crawl to the rim and hide in the long grasses growing there. It might be the only way to hear them.

Rhia dropped to her hands and knees and crawled forward, making sure not to rustle the grass closest to the river.

“What about the Wolves?” she heard the strange man say.

“There are no Wolves in Asermos,” Razvin replied.

“Are you sure?”

“Besides, my daughter is a Wolf. I’ll give you nothing you could use against her.”

Rhia inched forward and finally glimpsed the two men. The one speaking with Razvin held what looked like a flat box, on which he made odd markings. His fair skin and hair were smooth, the latter tied in a short gathering at the base of his neck. He couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Rhia. Beyond him in the shallows bobbed a canoe bearing strange designs.

“And why should I trust you?” the man asked. “How do I know this isn’t a trap?”

Razvin’s eyes narrowed. “I assure you, I have no love for the Asermons. When Skaris brought me news of your plans, I felt no sympathy for them. But I must keep Kalindos safe, like you promised. One man had to die already for this bargain, a Council member I suspected of getting close to the truth.”

I knew it,
thought Rhia.
Etar
.

“Murders mean attention,” the stranger scolded. “Does anyone suspect?”

“That’s the beautiful part. Our friend Skaris tried to poison an unwanted guest among us. I merely switched the mugs so that the Councilman would die instead of her.”