Mindbond (3 page)

“Why does he deny it?” I muttered.

“You know what they did to Sakeema, Dan.”

Ai, yes. Torments—and Kor had already withstood torments enough for any ten heroes. Shamed, I kept silence.

“Also, you know Kor, that he does not speak untruth or lack for courage. But you cannot know Sakeema for certain. So stop badgering Korridun. You are hurting him.”

I retorted the more sharply because she spoke truth. “You dare speak of hurting Kor?” I whispered furiously. “You, who spurned his proffered pledge?”

I should have known those waters were too deep for me. She looked me levelly in my eyes. All powers, but she was strange and beautiful, her dark-browed face as startling as a dream.

“I spurned him for your sake,” she said, “and if you should be fool enough to ask me the same, I would spurn you for his.”

I stood up, reeling a little as if I had been struck, and took the offal away upon the deer hide to feed it to the fanged mares up on the slope. And there I stayed watching them, though their rendings made no very pleasant sight.

“Bring mushrooms for stew!” Tass shouted up the mountainside at me, and her shout woke Kor.

I gathered mushrooms and crowberries in a fold of birch bark. By the time I had enough I felt ready to face Tass again. She and Kor scarcely glanced at me when I came back to the fire, for they were quarreling. Or rather, Tass sounded vexed, and I sighed. Our Tassida had been the best of comrades when she was a boy: steady, courageous, ardent in a quiet way. But since we had found her to be a maiden, she seemed always to be on her mettle.

“I can't get any sense out of her,” Kor appealed to me. “She says she just happened to find us here.”

“It is true!” Tass dumped mushrooms and berries into the stew, stirred it savagely. “Wind of chance pushed me this way. Whatever urgings govern me, I always obey them.”

Kor quirked his eyebrows at me, as if to say, See? But I was in no fit mood to dispute with her, and kept silence. She crouched with the stirring paddle in her hand, her lips slightly parted—they were of the shape of a noble bow, double bent. My mistake, to notice those lips. I felt a warm tide rising in me and battled it, ashamed, knowing Kor would feel both the warmth and the shame. No matter. He knew far worse of me.

“And you, Korridun King,” Tass added more quietly after a moment, “you will be bound homeward now?”

“No. I mean, yes, but only for a little while.” How his head lifted at the mention of his home along the western sea.

“Only for a little while? But where, then?”

“To go with Dannoc, to find his father.”

It took the best wits of both of us to explain to her that Tyonoc had been gone for years, only the shell of his body left, possessed by a devourer that made him, seemingly, into a monster. When, maddened beyond bearing at last, I had struck with my sword, the devourer had rippled out of the wound and flown away. Tyonoc's body had crumpled like a husk, then disappeared.

“His self and his body are together again, somewhere,” I declared, “and I must find him!”

Tass put down the spoon she had been holding. “Dan,” she said with an odd gentleness that cut worse than wrath, “you are a blockhead.”

“So I have often been told,” I said stiffly.

“And justly so. If—”

Whatever she meant to say, I smothered it in noise.
“You,”
I cried, “who venture alone to the arid plains in search of—nothing, mere smoke puffs, imaginings, you call me blockhead? My father is real!”

I had come close to truth, for I saw her startle as the lash stung. “And you are besotted with him,” she retorted. “You have been besotted with him since I have known you.”

“It is called love,” Kor put in mildly. “Have you a father whose name you know, Tass?”

The soft-spoken question, with not even a tinge of wrath or self will in it, served to stop us both at full career. The look on Tassida's face smote me. Then for the first time she answered us a question about herself.

“No,” she said briefly. “I am sorry, Dan. All that I meant to say is, how can you tell me he is—whole, somewhere? When the devourers try to take you, it is as if you are nothing. You no longer exist.”

So she knew that much. And the doubt she raised was one I had not wanted to face. I no longer felt like shouting at her.

“If it is so for my father,” I said heavily, “then we will find it out.”

Silence.

“There is my mother, also,” I said after a while.

“And my mother the king,” Kor said, his voice low, “and my father, who followed her.”

“And where do you expect to find them all?” Tassida asked.

“Westward,” said Kor, the single word.

The vast water that lay beyond his headland home. The sea from which the devourers came, to which they returned.

“The ocean?”

Kor nodded. “Mahela's realm is reputed to lie beneath the waves.”

“Would you two think with your minds instead of your hind ends?” Tassida's voice rose. “How do you propose to reach Mahela's realm?”

“Getting there is no problem,” I quipped, trying to make a jest of death. Tass gave me a glance of such fury it silenced me. But Kor spoke quite serenely.

“I am a king of the Seal Kindred. If my mother's blood runs strongly enough in me, I will be able to find my seal form.”

Be a seal, he meant, and swim to Mahela's court, as his mother Kela had once done for his sake. Nor was Tassida very much staggered to hear it, for she had seen many marvels.

“Have you ever done so?” she demanded.

“No. I never wanted to, before.”

“Then how—”

“Fasting, vigil.” Kor shrugged. “That is as it comes.”

“And Dan? Do you propose to go out in a coracle and drown yourself?”

Kor winced, for such was very nearly the way in which his own father had died.

“That also is as it comes,” I said.

“Meaning, you have no plan,” said Tass acidly.

Kor smiled. “Are you thinking of coming with us, that we must answer so many questions?”

“That is as it comes,” she retorted, mocking us. “Once you are at Mahela's court, supposing you should ever reach it, what then? She is the goddess. You will not be able to take from her anything she does not wish to give you.”

“We will see,” Kor said quietly.

Tass snorted like a horse. “You are a cockproud ass! If—”

Kor interrupted, though without heat. “I meant what I said just as I said it. We will see. If we gain nothing else, we will gain knowledge.”

“Much good it will do if it dies with you at the bottom of the ocean.”

“Be of better hope, Tass!” he protested.

“Dolt,” stated Tass, and she got up and strode off between the trunks of the great yellow pines until we could no longer see her. Kor sighed with exasperation.

“Do you want her to come with us?” he asked me, not turning to look at me.

I grimaced, for it was a vexed question. Being without her was perhaps less of a torment than being with her. “She plans to have neither of us,” I said.

“Truly?”

“Yes. It is perhaps a mercy. If anything could turn us against each other, it would be she.”

“I think nothing can. And I wonder what is her reason for refusing us.” Kor was still staring straight ahead. “Do you want her with us? In some ways she is wise. And she will never betray us.”

“Blast it.…” My thoughts floundered helplessly. I took joy in seeing Tass, in hearing her, in being near her. Not joy enough to ease my thwarted desire, but still … “How am I to say I do not want her with us,” I burst out, “when I long for her?”

“I have seen you looking at her. Well, we still make a matched pair of fools, then, Dan.” Kor smiled and stretched as if waking from sleep. “I will ask her when she comes back.”

He and I sat companionably, stirring the stew from time to time, heating the stones to cook it, dropping them in with the willow loops. Afternoon passed. Sometimes he dozed in the warm sunlight. Sometimes we talked. Evening drew near, and the sun sank, heart red, toward the snowpeaks. Silently we sat, side by side, and watched it.

Color flamed through the sky. By Kor's side, the stone in the pommel of his sword blazed red, seeming to answer the sinking sun.

As if something had spoken to him, he picked up the sword and with both hands held it before him by the cross of the hilt, blade down so that the tip rested on earth. Like a young shaman taking vigil he sat holding it thus, his face uplifted to it and to the sunset light and to the blood-red light of the jewel. His dark eyes seemed to see far, forever, and his look was rapt.

“Zaneb,” he said.

The name of the sword. And I knew it was not a name he had made for the weapon, but a name he had found. Sundown, it meant, and sun sank behind the eversnow as he said it. But as it vanished a glory went up, as if to crown the mountainpeaks, a splendor of the purest glowing amaranthine light, a half-circle flash of that unheard-of color, and then gone.… The blessing of Sakeema in the sunset, his greeting, gone. Long shadow of evening fell over us, and out of that sudden dusk strode Tassida.

And the heart-red jewel in the hilt of the sword in Kor's hands gave forth light like a bubble of blood that burst skyward, as if yearning for the lost sun. And Tassida stopped in her tracks.

But Kor was not looking at her. Softly he laid his sword down on the ground. “Zaneb,” he hailed it, and lightly she rose and presented her hilt to his hand.

“How did you know her name?” I breathed.

“It came to me, as the sword came to me in the tarn.”

“You would have known Alar's in like wise,” said Tass, “had you not been so afraid.” By the scorn that roughened her voice I knew that she was herself afraid. But some nameless sadness was on me so that I did not answer her. Zaneb. Sundown.… I sat gazing at Kor as he held the sword, I felt the touch of something beautiful, yet—fated.…

“Dan,” Kor said to me easily, quietly, as if I had spoken to him, “there's a notion I want out of your head.”

“I cannot help what I see as truth,” I told him just as quietly, “but if it distresses you, I will say no more of it.” All powers be thanked, not even Kor could read thoughts. Or so I believed.

“Well enough,” he said.

We ate in silence, watching the snowpeaks turn dusky purple and disappear into nighttime sky. The stew was thick and fragrant. Kor and I used the last of the millet to make flatbread, which we toasted on the hot stones. We all ate ravenously. Only after every scrap was gone, except the chunks of cooked meat meant for the morrow, did Kor break silence.

“Ready to ride on the morrow?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“Truly? You feel strong and well?”

“As well as I ever have. You?”

“The same.” He turned to Tassida. “Tass,” he proposed calmly, formally, “travel with us, be our comrade again.”

She seemed taken aback, and edged away from the fire. “I—I don't know.”

“I promise you, I will not importune you in any other way.” He turned to me. “Dan?”

It was a promise not lightly to be given, but I nodded. “As a comrade, Tass,” I told her. “Just as we were before.”

“You know that is not possible,” she said.

“As close as we can make it, then. Tass?”

“I don't know,” she muttered. “I must think. Or listen. To whatever it is that guides me.” She walked off into the darkness.

She was gone all night, though I awoke from time to time and fed the fire to keep it blazing, making of it a beacon to guide her back to us. I daresay she knew the way well enough without it. Kor poked at the fire from time to time also, and prowled about, and he was up before the dawn, waiting. Which was well thought of, because it was not long after first light that Tassida came back and began gathering her gear stealthily, as if she did not wish to awaken us, though in fact we were awake already.

Kor stood up and faced her, his eyes grave. Only then did she speak in answer to his mute question.

“I must go my own way,” she said softly.

“And what way is that?” he asked just as softly.

“For the time, back the way you have just come. I wish to see this pool of vision.”

I had come stumbling to my feet. “We could show you.”

“No. I will find it.” She turned away, whistling for her gelding.

“Why off so early, Tass?” I was honestly puzzled—my wits are not at their best when I am half-asleep. “It is not yet sunrise! Stay awhile, eat with us.”

“No. My thanks, but no. I am going now.” The handsome black Calimir appeared at her side, his white legs and mane and white-spotted belly glowing eerily bright in the dim light.

“Let me get you a packet of meat, then.”

I started rooting about for something to wrap it with. But Kor stood motionless where he was, and his voice when he spoke was low.

“You are frightened of us.”

I listened for a snort, a scornful reply, but they did not come. There was nothing from Tass but silence.

“Frightened of us, since we know you for a maiden! Tass, why? What have we ever done to you but honor you?”

I straightened to look at her, food forgotten. She was strapping on her wolfskin riding pelt, tying her pouches to it, fastening the cordgrass bridle, all in haste, as if she were fleeing from a real danger, and her eyes in the dim light looked haunted.

Kor took a step forward, and she froze as if he had rendered her too terrified to move. But his gaze caught hers, and she answered him.

“Nothing,” she said, her voice so struggling we could scarcely hear it. “You have done nothing to hurt me. You just—are.”

“Are what?”

She jerked her head away from his glance and vaulted to the horse's back. Kor caught hold of her reins, and I stepped to his side. “Careful,” I warned, trying to ease what was happening with a jest. “She'll have her knife out in a moment.”