The Luck of Brin's Five (4 page)

“Odd-Eye is gone,” said the Harper, making an averting sign.

“May his soul-bird fly far,” murmured Whitewing, running a thin, blue-veined claw down the tent fabric so that the dry skin rasped against the coarse cloth. “Have you heard of the fire-ship in the lake?”

“I have seen comings and goings,” said Roy cautiously. “A fire-ship?”

Whitewing hissed with pleasure. “There is a great reward for catching its devil!”

“A devil!” Harper Roy made an averting sign. “There was a devil in the fire-ship?”

“A devil . . .” said Whitewing, “. . . and Tiath Gargan will have it for his own.”

“Great North Wind . . .” said Roy. “Is our Great Elder come to Hingstull as well as a flying devil?”

“He lies down river at Otolor; he has flown in a party of vassals to scour the mountains.”

We shuddered now at Whitewing's story; Tiath Gargan had never come so close.

Roy probed a little. “Is it certain this devil did not . . . drown?”

“Tiath's hunters saw it flying down,” said Whitewing eagerly. “The Great Elder will give land-title to any Family that delivers up the flying goblin, dead or alive.”

“That
is
a great reward.” Roy was cunning. “Perhaps Mamor and I might try . . .”

“What?” creaked Whitewing. “With no Luck in your house? Hunt a devil?”

“Why do you tell us then?”

“Out of friendship.” Whitewing grinned like a wolf. “Hunter Geer will catch the devil. Tell us if you see any prowling thing.”

“None,” said Roy, “before you came.”

Whitewing's pink eyes blazed. “Take care! If the devil is not found . . . who knows what Strangler Tiath might do in his wrath?”

“We need not fear him!”

“You must!” Whitewing took a step into our tent, but the Harper blocked his way. “Your Luck has died. You are accursed. If the devil is loose, your ill-fortune will keep us from finding it. Tiath Pentroy is a devout follower of the old threads.”

“Our prayers for Odd-Eye's journey are not ended!” growled Roy, “leave us in peace . . . or you blaspheme against our Mother, the North Wind.”

“Remember my warning . . .” Whitewing drew back, hovering for a moment outside our tent. Then through slits and watch-holes we all saw the creature run flapping through the snow towards Hunter Geer's tent, under the rock wall.

We doused our candlecones and talked in the dark. Poor Diver came out from the covers confused and still more confused by the way we clapped hands over his mouth to silence him. There was a terrible struggle to communicate, but he accepted that danger was about and sat mute.

“We must leave!” said Mamor. “This night, rain or snow. Our good fortune depends on it.” He dug me in the ribs and rattled the mat-loom; I went on taking it to pieces. Brin was already packing her scrolls and skeins into one of the hide bags.

“Strangler Tiath . . .” quavered old Gwin, “will he come after us?”

“Not likely,” said Brin. “We have more to fear from the weather.”

“You don't know,” Gwin whined. “You've not seen the Pentroy's handiwork. Trees strung with the dead, like rotting fruit!”

“We must leave, Mother!” urged Roy. “What if they searched this tent? Then we
are
in trouble with Tiath Pentroy, and our Luck is dragged into Rintoul as a devil.”

“We must leave word for Hunter Geer,” said Brin. “We have gone in order to leave him a clear field . . . to take away our accursedness.”

“The Luck wants his pocket vest,” said Narneen. “He is patting about for it.”

We gave Diver his vest, thinking he was hungry for more chocolate, but instead he performed another of his miracles. He produced something from a pocket, and there was light . . . a marvellous cool circle of light, better than a candlecone, coming from a small gray rod. We sat in amazement; then Mamor began to dismantle the two great looms while Brin and Roy rolled and sorted the finished work. Gwin fussed in case there was fire-metal-magic at work; but I tapped the case of the magic light, and it was not metal. It was not wood either but something like horn or crab shell. Wonder of wonders, Diver had two of the magic lights, and he gave me one to hold. He showed me how to work a sliding catch on the shaft and turn the light on and off.

Then he gestured to me. “Why?” I believe he even had the word. Why were we alarmed, packing up, talking so urgently in the dark? So while the Family labored around us in the familiar ritual of packing, Narneen and I labored with the explanation. Danger! Armed vassals with spears, ropes . . . ropes for hanging. Diver drew on his paper, we tried to draw. New words crackled around Diver's head, but he took it in. And all the while he and I held the magic lights and spotted them in the exact place that they were needed.

Suddenly Diver stood up, excited; I would have said afraid. Of what? Our spinners, poor creatures, that Brin was popping one by one into their sack with a few ends of deer meat . . . they hardly ate in winter, they were sleepy. We laughed and explained and showed him the skeins of silk and a finished piece of work from Old Gwin's lace loom. He understood and drew a picture of some smaller variety of spinner. Yet he had a horror of these harmless things. We brought him the largest one to stroke, the one called Momo or Cushion, and it was all he could do to place his hand on its soft hairy back and look at its sturdy spinnerets. His face was stiff with loathing, like Old Gwin come upon a pile of sharp knives beside a blazing fire. Narneen made Old Gwin's averting sign for Diver . . . and he understood; we all laughed again.

By the middle of the night, we were packed up; the tent was an empty shell with all our gear shrouded in its center. The weather was holding, just; a fine flurry of snow, but no wind. Old Gwin believed her prayers were being answered. We were wrapped and shod; Diver had a cloak muffled over his suit and vest, and his boots were excellent. Our heavy stuff—the folded loom boards, the work rolls, the wool sack—was packed onto the sled, and the way was clear. We stood in shelter, without light, while Brin and Mamor took down six panels of the tent. We would leave the other three between us and Hunter Geer as a shield. Roy was weaving a message skein; he gave me careful instructions. When the Family had passed through the break in the glebe wall and descended onto the track we had chosen, I, watching, would slip across to the Hunter's tent and leave the skein under the flap weight-stones.

So I stood watching as they all went over the edge. I stole along, crunching a little on the snow and thinking of Whitewing. I got the skein down under the weights and was on my way free and clear when a terrible sound rang out. A hunting horn at the western gate! Torchlights! Armed vassals! I ran blindly into the ruin of our tent, fifty paces from the breach in the wall, across a clear expanse of snow, marked with the tracks of our Five. The party had entered the glebe; voices were raised—there was movement in Hunter Geer's tent, and movement too in the breach of the wall. I longed to cry out to my Family, urging them to stay back.

When I thought I saw my chance, I dived across the snow. There was a cry; two vassals with spears came after me. I was hard held against a leather breastplate with the Strangler's device of three knots. I struggled, kicking and biting in blind panic.

“It's no devil!” panted one vassal. “Just a child!”

“Hold the brat!” said the other. We were halfway between the ruined tent and the open glebe. There was a frightening shout, and Diver came through the breach in the wall. He raised his hand, and a reddish beam glowed in it. The guard on my left was dashed into the snow. Again, with the same glow and crackle the other guard was struck, taking me down too.

“Dorn!” It was Diver calling my name. I jumped up and ran to the breach in the wall. Mamor was with Diver, and he dragged me through; we went slithering and bouncing down to the track beyond. We did not wait to see what the search party made of Diver's attack; in fact it had been hidden from them. They would find two guards flattened, that was all. The Family was waiting, and with hardly a word we went down Hingstull at a breakneck pace. Old Gwin rode on Roy's back; Narneen was lying on top of the sled, like a package. We raced on down, driven by a rising wind, pressing through the cold scrub and the snow-filled hollows among the stones until at last Brin said: “We must rest now.”

“A few paces more,” said Mamor, whose track it was. “This is Stone Brook. I have a cave.”

So we came to the cave, jolted and weary, and pressed into it. We laid down the tent fabric and used the light sticks to help settle ourselves. Everyone was bone weary; Diver looked sick again and lolled against the wall of the cave. I did not dare ask him, or try to ask him, what was uppermost in my mind. Were the vassals dead? I asked Mamor, and he thought not . . . the vassals were only knocked unconscious. I was still shaken by the thought of a weapon with so much power.

Brin sat in our midst, as usual, resting her back and drawing great breaths.

“All right?” asked Roy. He was concerned for the hidden child; too much running could unsettle it.

“Fine,” said Brin. “This one will have an early showing, I think.” As if to answer her, the child whimpered. We all took this as a sign of good fortune. Gwin twitched back Brin's vented robe to let the air come to the child. Diver, in the light, had a look of extreme bewilderment. We made signs to him . . . child . . . rocking it in our arms, but he still did not seem to comprehend. He signed or said, “Where?” and we pointed to Brin and said, “There, of course,” but he shook his head.

The child whimpered again, and Brin had to reach down as mothers often did before the showing, to settle it to the teat. Diver's curiosity overcame him, and he crawled forward.

“Well, you are our Luck,” said Brin, smiling, “so I will show you.”

“What's bothering the Diver?” asked Mamor. “Doesn't he know where children are nurtured?”

“Perhaps his people are different,” suggested Roy.

“What difference could there be?” said Gwin. “Show the Luck quickly, so the child won't take cold.”

So Brin, in the magic light, let Diver look into her pouch and see the hidden child, settled into its milky sleep again. She had already given Narneen a look, and I remembered seeing Narneen before her showing. It was the way we were taught.

Diver learned his lesson and drew back, shaking his head as if he had seen a miracle. He talked in his own language and laughed and shook his head and, for some reason, stroked his chest. Then he made signs to each of us in turn, and guessed, correctly as it happened, which we all were . . . female or male. I was certain, by this time, that Diver was different from us in ways we could not imagine . . . ways that concerned both life and death.

Our link with him was frail, yet already there was trust between us. We turned back to the Diver and he to us after each revelation. He needed us, certainly; what could he do in an alien place, for all his magical devices, alone on a mountain with hunters out after him? We needed him too . . . although this might be harder for city folk to understand . . . because he was our Luck and in spite of all his strange magic, not because of it. The bond that was woven was the simple Family bond that had brought all the Five together. Now Diver, whatever he was, had become part of it.

Presently we lay down to sleep in our cave while the snow came down. Next day it was so bad that both hunters and their quarry had to remain under cover. It was a holiday of sorts, because we could do no weaving. We sat and ate chocolate in the cave at Stone Brook, teaching Diver more and more new words, while he drew us pictures.

III

There is a road winding down under the cliff below Stone Brook. It meets up with the brook below the falls and leads down into Cullin, where the brook joins the great river, the Troon. On the third day we had made certain plans; Harper Roy and I set out for Cullin. We had come to a way down the cliff when we heard voices, a chant, drawing nearer on the road. The Harper looked through the snow-laden trees and whistled. “Diver must see this!”

I ran to fetch the Luck from the cave, then we crouched out of sight as the party of armed vassals came singing and chanting down the road below us. They were carrying Diver's air ship between poles in a huge transport net. It must have been heavy, for it took twenty Moruians to carry it, but I was surprised to see that it was such a small thing. Its shape was like a rounded fish, and it was patchy silver in color. The light bounced off it as it rode in the net; there were streaks of charred blackness on its surface as if it had come from the fire.

Diver watched it go by and we watched him, doubtful, in case the sight of its capture might make him restless or sad. He watched the procession with narrowed eyes, then asked, “Where?” The Harper told him Cullin, the place we were bound for, to spy out the land. I took Diver's arm and pointed again. A litter was being carried down after the air ship. A rich palanquin, with ruby red hangings, quilted with white silk cord—a ridiculous carriage for the mountains. The crest was the one we had first seen, star and spindle, which Gwin named as Galtroy; but the vassals, most of them, had worn the crest of three knots.

“Flitterling!” scoffed the Harper. “Some fancy-work friend of Tiath Pentroy. That grand equipage will get soaked if the bearers miss their footing.” Diver wanted badly to go after his ship. He could speak enough now to say “Follow . . . follow . . .”

I begged him not to leave us, holding his arm in case he should scramble down the cliff. He exchanged glances with Harper Roy, the sort of glances grown-ups exchange over the head of a child, and I felt foolish, but I knew he did not mean to leave us. The Harper and I took him back to the cave and we talked a great deal, quickly, about the matter, with poor Diver looking on and occasionally putting in a word.

“Danger . . .” fussed Old Gwin, “. . . the Luck will be found . . . the vassals will carry him off!”