Wild Blood (Book 7) (21 page)

Ria pulled Jenji out of her tunic and cradled him in her hands, looking into his dark eyes.

“I need your help,” she murmured, hoping he somehow understood. “Please help me.”

She was so anxious that it was hard to concentrate, hard to think herself small and silent and unnoticeable, but if Jenji’s excitement was a measure, she succeeded at last. He gladly settled himself on her shoulder when Ria placed him there, thrumming eagerly in her ear, but Ria dared not distract herself with wondering whether or not he might be helping her hold her invisibility. There was nothing to do but try. If only tonight had been as dark and cloudy as during her previous attempt!

There was no hope of climbing the wall, not and concentrate on her invisibility at the same time, so Ria had to work her way south again to one of the many gaps in the wall. To her surprise and relief, none of the wall guards raised a cry, although ordinarily she would have been plainly visible walking slowly along the wall in the moonlight.

Her intense, prolonged concentration made Ria feel dreamy and somehow detached. Slowly she picked her way through the gap in the wall; slowly she waded through the moat and crept along at a snail’s pace over the open ground between the city and the forest, expecting at any moment to hear a cry from the wall. Now her head was starting to ache, and her jaw, too, from the way she’d been clenching her teeth.

No cry came, and at last Ria was far enough away that she was certain they would not see her. She gratefully let her don’t-see-me drop and sighed with relief. Jenji gave a disappointed little chirp, but nuzzled Ria’s neck forgivingly nonetheless.

Ria sighed again, squared her shoulders, and turned to face the forest, and freedom.

Chapter Ten—Valann

Lahti settled easily into his hut, apparently willing to put their conversation with

Rowan and Dusk and the prospect of the anger of her clan out of her mind for the present. Val, less serene, wondered how soon the clan would make its displeasure known. He himself had felt and resented the slight distance between himself and the other elves of the clan, and even so, the other elves had always treated him kindly enough, until last night when Garad had stepped aside to avoid him. Lahti had never known how it felt to be set apart from her own people. He silently vowed he would do everything in his power to keep her from feeling that pain. By unspoken agreement they spent their morning together in the hut, avoiding the rest of the clan.

By midday, however, the hut had grown warm in the late spring heat, and Val was already growing tired of the dim light and unchanging view. It was Lahti, however, who finally suggested that there was no point in hiding.

“We’ll visit my mother,” she decided. “She may need meat. Her hut’s only a short distance away. Then we can go hunting, if you like, or go to the waterfall to bathe.”

Val had to concur. They couldn’t cower in the hut forever like a mouse in its burrow; soon enough they’d be snapping at each other out of restlessness alone.

When they reached Kella’s hut, however, they found that the door flap was tied closed, and there was no answer when Lahti scratched at the door and called out. A covered basket lay outside the door; Lahti lifted the cover and all the color drained from her face. Quietly she replaced the cover and picked up the basket, turning away from the hut.

“What is it?” Val asked softly, though he could guess well enough.

“Those belongings I’d left with her,” Lahti said dully. “A few carvings that I made when I was very young, such as that. And the bracelet I gave her this year at the Planting of the Seed.”

A single tear slid down Lahti’s cheek, and the sight of it pierced Val’s heart like a spear. He clenched his fists until his knuckles were white, shaking with anger.

“If this is your mother’s love for her daughter, may the Mother Forest blight her loins so she never bears another,” Val growled.

Lahti gasped and turned wide, shocked eyes to him.

“You mustn’t say such a thing!” she said, horrified. “You mustn’t even
think
such a thing! Such a wish is—is—unthinkable, an offense against the Mother Forest.”

“I don’t care,” Val snarled. “I don’t care.” He raised his voice, almost shouting. “Perhaps we’d be better living among the humans! How could they show less kindness and compassion than our own folk?”

“Valann, stop it,” Lahti hissed, pulling him back toward their tent. “You’ve lost yourself in your anger. Stop before you bring more trouble on us.”

Retreating like a mouse back into its den. Almost Val pulled free of Lahti and stormed to the very center of the village. By the Mother Forest, he’d fight every elf in the clan if they’d dare cross him! At last, however, Lahti managed to coax him inside.

“You mustn’t be so angry,” Lahti told him. “Rowan told us this would happen. We knew it already.”

“Tomorrow I’ll begin building a new hut, far outside the village,” Val growled. “Then we won’t have to so much as see these vine-rotted folk at all, not until they finally decide we’re fit to be treated as clan members and kin.”

“Build your hut where you like, and I’ll live in it with you,” Lahti said warmly. “But, Valann, you mustn’t carry hatred and anger with you wherever you go. It twists the spirit. Our kinfolk aren’t wronging me. They’re only waiting to see the consequences of the choice I made. They don’t hate either of us; they’re only afraid that because I’ve done something forbidden, I’ll bring the Mother Forest’s disfavor upon them. Once our child is born whole and perfect, and once I take my passage, it’ll all be well again.”

Val said nothing, only shaking his head sullenly. He thought he’d known these folk whom he called his own people; he’d been wrong, horribly wrong. How could anything be well again now?

“Valann, stop brooding,” Lahti said gently. She chuckled. “Here we are together in your hut where you’ve always wanted me, free to couple whenever we wish, and me bearing your child, and all you can do is scowl. Come and hold me.”

Val could not possibly sulk while Lahti pulled off her tunic and made herself comfortable on the furs; it was impossible even to think of his anger with the clan with Lahti’s soft skin burning against his. After their play, however, perhaps to distract him further, Lahti broached a thought Val had never even considered.

“Your mother carried a human’s seed, and she bore two children,” Lahti said thoughtfully, leaning on Val’s chest. “And you yourself carry some human blood. Do you think I might bear two children, too?”

Val raised an eyebrow.

“How am I to answer that?” he asked, shrugging. “That question is better posed to Dusk. From what Rowan told me, my mother was forced by a human shortly after she coupled with her mate. Dusk says that dangerous magic was used on her while she was with child also. Either of those might be the cause. Or perhaps Ria and I were sent by the Mother Forest to sow the seeds to unite elf and human in friendship against the coming storm of war, as Rowan believes,” he added sourly.

“Don’t you want such friendship?” Lahti asked curiously. “Don’t you think these humans are better our friends than our enemies?”

“I think they’d be better far away from us,” Val said, shrugging. “And calling them friends won’t make them so, even when they’re the ones who say it. Remember Minda? She went to the human city just before the invasion, heavy with child, and humans at the gate shouted angry words at her and threw clumps of dirt.”

“But they didn’t shoot arrows,” Lahti reminded him.

Val shook his head, rolling over to topple Lahti from his chest.

“Humans,” he growled. “Why must every conversation begin and end with humans?”

“Because your sister is with them,” Lahti said simply. “But we won’t speak of it if it angers you. Come and sleep.”

“I’m too restless to sleep,” Val said with a sigh. “I’ll walk a little first.”

“Oh, Val, you’re not going to try to listen to what they’re saying around the fire pit?” Lahti sighed. “You know they’ll still be gossiping about us. It’ll only make them angrier, and you, too.”

“I’ll stay away from the fire pit,” Val promised. In truth it hadn’t occurred to him to go there; what he wanted to do was assess the best route to sneak out of the village later, while walking off some of his anger so he could sleep.

He fancied that Lahti gave him a sharp look as he pulled his clothes back on and stepped out through the door, but it hardly mattered. He could scarcely creep away tonight without her knowledge; he carried nothing but his knife, and Dusk’s four-footed or winged sentries were likely watching every step he took.

The thought brought a wave of fury that made his hands shake. Rowan and Dusk had always said that Valann was one of the Mother Forest’s most special children, destined for great deeds, and that the Mother Forest demanded much of such children. But hadn’t it been enough that he’d had to prove himself again and again in order to make his place in the clan? Hadn’t it been enough that he’d had to fight for his very birthright of passage into adulthood? Now Lahti was suffering with him, and he was as good as a prisoner in his own home!

Defiantly Val strode out of the village into the forest, down to the waterfall and pool where the elves often went to bathe. A slight rustling in the trees above him kept pace, and Val had a sense of something moving in the undergrowth, too. Apparently Dusk had half the creatures in the forest tracking him!

The water looked cool and inviting, but Val merely sat down on a mossy rock overlooking the water and watched the rippling reflection of the moon. His own reflection scowled back from the water—not human, not elf. A prisoner, indeed. Val growled with frustration and threw a pebble into the pool, shattering his reflection.

Suddenly he sat upright, his ears straining. Something had changed subtly. Was it a wisp of strange scent on the wind, too slight for his nose to detect clearly? Had a new note joined the familiar night forest sounds, something his straining ears could not quite hear? Val crouched on the stone, hand on the hilt of his knife, every sense alert. Something was near, something was here, something that was a part of this place, that somehow made Val suddenly seem an intruder. Val squinted again into the darkness all around him. Nothing.

Val glanced down at the water again and gasped. His reflection no longer stood alone on the rock. A tiny figure stood beside him, almost touching him, tawny gold eyes gazing into his in the reflection.

For a moment Val was utterly confused. Had he slipped somehow back into his passage vision, to the memory of the still pool he’d found at the center of his spirit? Was this a kind of waking dream such as Dusk had? If he turned away, would the reflection vanish as his dream had vanished?

Valann’s entire body froze as he felt a warm touch on his hand. In the reflection, he saw small brown fingers, each digit twining with green vines, clasping his own. He realized he was trembling. The pressure on his fingers strengthened, a warm and comforting grasp. The tiny fingers clasping his were rough and callused.

Slowly he turned, afraid to look, afraid to breathe. His eyes skimmed up slender brown legs twined thickly with green vine designs, over a slight body clothed in a tattered leather tunic, and up to the delicately contoured face, framed in tumbled short curls, that he remembered from his dream. Warm gold eyes met his squarely.

Val’s heart pounded so fiercely that he feared for it. He clung to the small hand clasping his own as if by that touch alone he could be certain that this, too, was no dream. Small, callused fingers reached up to gently caress his cheek, and then without either of them seeming to move, he was kneeling on the rock and she was holding him while he shook, while his tears soaked into the soft leather of her tunic. She said nothing, only held him close, but somehow she comforted him. Somehow without words he knew that she loved him, that she had always loved him, that often she’d watched him through her own eyes and through the eyes of the beasts around him, that she had ached to know him as fiercely and with as much frustration as he had longed to understand why she had given him to Rowan.

At last Val drew back, and Chyrie took his hand again, drawing him to his feet. She glanced up into the trees; a rustling sound answered her glance, and a small hawk, another of the birds Dusk commonly worked with, swooped down to land carefully on Chyrie’s outstretched arm. Chyrie gazed sternly at the hawk, and it launched itself again, flapping away into the trees. Chyrie smiled reassuringly at Valann, then led him out of the clearing away from the village, back into the forest where a stag and a doe were waiting.

“Where are we—” Val began, but Chyrie silenced him with a finger pressed to his lips. She shook her head and gestured Val toward the stag.

Val hesitated and glanced back toward the village, thinking of Lahti. He didn’t want to leave her alone, especially now, and he couldn’t deceive himself into believing she’d understand, but when might a chance like this come again? There was no choice to make, not really. Hopefully he wouldn’t be gone long. He climbed quietly onto the stag; he had to hurry as the animal was already following the doe upon which Chyrie rode. They had not traveled more than an hour before Val realized where they were going: His mother was taking him back to the Forest Altars. But why?

The ride to the Forest Altars took a little longer than Val would have expected, as Chyrie did not lead them directly there, but rather followed a circuitous route. Several times Val heard noises behind them and turned to look, only to see other deer crossing and recrossing their track after they had passed. Did these deer too serve Chyrie? Were they concealing the tracks of Valann and Chyrie’s passage? Val was awed. Silence’s ability to instruct the deer they’d rode to bear Val and Lahti all the way back to Inner Heart, a journey of three days on the straight route, had awed Val, but Chyrie dwarfed even that feat if she could command several deer at once. He began to believe that Chyrie had indeed eluded Dusk’s vigilance, perhaps even rendered it impossible for the others to track him.

Chyrie led Valann to the far side of the grove, to one of the more remote Altars. Chyrie slid from the doe’s back, and the doe wandered over to browse at a nearby bush; as soon as Val stepped away from the stag, however, it vanished into the forest.

Chyrie took Val’s hand and led him into a thicket just outside the stone-marked boundaries of the grove. There, to Val’s surprise, he found a small camp had been prepared, sleeping furs laid ready. There was no fire pit, but a baked-clay firepot stood handy, and a pile of dry wood had been placed next to it. There was no meat, but small baskets of greens, tubers, and what were probably last autumn’s nuts lay nearby. There was a larger wrapped bundle there, too, and Chyrie picked this up.

Valann turned back to Chyrie and again started to speak, only to be silenced again as Chyrie shook her head warningly. She pointed to the campsite sternly, and her meaning was clear; Val was to stay there. Val sighed but nodded his understanding and sat down on the sleeping furs to show that he would obey. Chyrie touched his cheek again and smiled, then vanished from the thicket with her bundle. Val waited a few long moments, then peeked out through the bushes. Chyrie was nowhere in sight, and the doe was gone as well.

Val sighed again and settled back down in his small camp. Judging from the obviously unused state of the camp, Chyrie had prepared it for him; judging from the amount of food laid ready for his use, he would likely be there for some time, too. Apparently Chyrie had departed on some extended errand and he was to await her return.

Once more Val could have growled in frustration. He’d left Lahti alone to face the clan’s disapproval, only to find himself stranded at the Forest Altars awaiting his mother’s return. He’d managed to slip out of Inner Heart, all right, but now he could hardly go west as he’d wished in search of his sister. He lacked his bow and arrows or even a spear, and he could hardly make his way through the forest and approach the human city armed only with a knife. He had no journey food, and hunting in other clans’ territories was forbidden—and extremely dangerous, too, if a hostile clan found him doing it. Reaching the western edge of the forest when he was well armed and fully supplied had been a difficult and dangerous journey; without even those small advantages, it would be all but impossible.