Chapter 4
Kahvi became aware of curious eyes on her person. She looked across the room, and saw one of the strange waterpeople – wavedancers, she’d heard them called – looking at her. Kahvi scowled, and sent: **come here if you’re so curious. I won’t bite.**
The female laughed, and did indeed walk over to Kahvi. “I’ve heard much about you, chieftess.”
Kahvi sighed. “I bet. What do they call you?”
“Krill. I am a huntress.”
“Huntress of fish?” Kahvi couldn’t resist a little teasing.
“Fish… and other things. Sharks, sometimes.”
Krill didn’t sound like she was bragging.
“What do you want from me?” Kahvi asked.
“A story, perhaps. A story of the greatest hunt, as only the greatest hunter could tell it. I want to hear about snow bears.” Krill smiled, almost shyly.
“Get me something to drink and you’ll get your story.” Kahvi promised her.
Krill darted off and returned with a jug. She poured Kahvi a cupful of something purple. Kahvi drank it. “Hardly Old Maggoty’s finest, but it will do.” She stated flatly.
“The Sun Villagers are still learning how to brew wine.” Krill admitted.
Kahvi drank more, and began recounting the tale of a cold winter, and a hunt, a long time ago in the Frozen Mountains. She had to explain many things to Krill, including the concept of snow, but the parts that had to do with hunting Krill seemed to understand instinctively. Krill, too, drank of the wine, but not as liberally as Kahvi. The Go-Back chieftess was beginning to enjoy herself. The wine helped her forget the strange pulling feeling inside her, the whispers of her soul.
“… and then Vok distracted the bear and I struck my spear in, right through his eye, but the old bear wasn’t done with me, he pushed me into the snow and then collapsed on top of me. And it took four stags to drag his dead carcass off me! And that was the biggest snow bear ever slain in the Frozen Mountains that I know of.”
Kahvi could tell Krill had been holding her breath. “Amazing!” The wavedancer admitted, and grinned. “I’d like to hunt for snow bear sometime.”
Kahvi slapped Krill’s back. “Sure you would. And you’d do it, too, I can tell by the look of you. You should have been born a Go-Back, lass, you’d have fit right in.”
Krill grinned again. “Maybe… but I do like the sea! I can tell you a story too, if you like?”
Kahvi nodded, a little drunkenly. “Go ahead, you owe me one.”
And so Krill told a story of hunting sharks at the reef. Now it was Kahvi’s turn to ask questions, such as what a reef was, and Krill was more than eager to explain. But by the end of the story, Kahvi was beginning to nod off. “Hey, chieftess, am I that boring a storyteller?” Krill complained and nudged her.
“Mhhh.. the wine… stronger than it tastes, curse it!” Kahvi mumbled.
“Alright… time we got you to bed.” Krill tried to help her up.
Kahvi resisted. “I’ll sleep here. Good furs. Fire. S’good.”
Krill rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me… no one gave you a room? Come with me.” Krill managed to get Kahvi upright, mainly by brute force. Kahvi swayed slightly. Krill wrapped an arm around Kahvi and led her along the corridor. She took her to the guest bedroom that had been assigned to her. Kahvi saw the bed and collapsed on it. Krill sighed and managed to get Kahvi’s boots off. She left the undressing at that. Kahvi seemed too drunk to care about anything. Krill drew the curtains in around the bed – she didn’t like the light of the Palace shining in her eyes when she slept, so she’d asked for curtains – and settled in beside Kahvi.
Kahvi slept the heavy sleep of the drunken. And she dreamed. In her dream she was looking for something. Someone. She was looking for a little girl, no, a young maiden, who’d fallen into the water. The water had taken her away. But she couldn’t remember the maiden’s name. It was very important that she remember the name. How could she call her name if she didn’t know it? And why didn’t she know it.
Kahvi came to a fog-shrouded river. Someone stood on the opposite shore. The mist hid the person’s features.
“Who’s there?” Kahvi called out.
The figure waved a hand, and then walked away without answering.
Kahvi felt suddenly that she had to follow the stranger. She waded into the river and swam across. On the other shore, she found footprints. She began to track the stranger. No matter how fast she moved, he was always just out of sight, going ahead of her. Kahvi called out again:
“Wait for me!”
And he waited. Kahvi caught up with him, and saw it was Skywise. She felt cheated, and she realized she’d been expecting Cutter.
“What games are you playing with me?” Kahvi demanded of him crossly.
Skywise didn’t speak. Instead, he pointed down.
Kahvi saw a pool of water. And under the surface, a maiden was… dead? Or sleeping? Kahvi looked closer, and saw this was the maiden she was looking for. She looked familiar, but Kahvi still couldn’t remember her name.
Kahvi woke up. She saw Krill sleeping beside her. Careful not to wake the maiden, she slipped off the bed. Kahvi pulled on her boots and headed down the corridor. She located the cooking area by smell and grabbed a basket, then filled it with smoked meat. The Palace was quiet, it was very early in the morning. Kahvi walked to the big hall, grabbed her spear, and then walked out to the wall. She touched the wall and willed it to open, and to her surprise, it did, letting her out.
Kahvi stood outside and found the Palace was still in the Frozen Mountains. This suited her. She walked out, into the dawning day, quiet on her feet as a thief. Soon she was a dwindling shadow on the hillside. Then she was gone.
Inside the Palace, Skywise woke to a sudden feeling of immense loss.
Chapter 5
Kahvi had spent a few days in the Frozen Mountains, wandering around aimlessly. One morning she saw wild stags grazing, and approached them. To her amazement, they responded to the soft voice she used when trying to convince a tame stag to come closer – it seemed to her that these stags had once known elves as friends and riders. Indeed, as she mounted the stag, it became obvious she was used to carrying a passenger. Kahvi soon reached an understanding with her new mount. And having acquired a mount, it made sense to travel farther. With no particular goal in mind, she headed southwards.
After an eight of days since leaving the Palace, the pains of Recognition denied had severely incapacitated the chieftess. The feeling was like hunger for fresh greens in midwinter, like some strange illness that resided not in any particular area of her body but in her deepest soul. And yet Kahvi kept travelling. She had begun to have dreams, quite usual as dreams go, but every day after dreaming she saw landmarks she remembered from her dreams near her travel route. She started letting the landmarks guide her choice of paths and directions. The landmarks always pointed the same way, farther south.
In two eights of days, Kahvi was finding it hard to concentrate. Her every waking thought was of Skywise, much to her annoyance, and he even invaded her dreams, although the landmarks were still visible. She forced herself to hunt and eat, although even the choicest meats seemed to have lost all flavour.
One evening Kahvi arrived to a clearing. On the edge of the clearing there was a rock wall, and in the wall a cave mouth. Kahvi approached cautiously but found no sign of animals living in the cave. She made herself a torch and lit it with her sparkstones. Then she ventured into the depths of the cavern. To her surprise, she found it was shaped, either by a rockshaper’s magic or a mason’s tools. There were stairs leading to a high throne, and holders for torches. The cave smelled of dust – dry stone dust, the kind that didn’t contain a single trace of anything that had ever been alive. Kahvi explored further into the cave.
In the very back, she found a still pool of water that reflected the light of her torch. Something about the pool seemed very familiar, but she thought it was only another landmark from a half-forgotten dream. Kahvi was thirsty, so she cupped her hands and drank from the pool. The water tasted fresher and cleaner than any water she’d ever tasted before.
Suddenly Kahvi felt so tired it seemed difficult even to keep her eyes open. She found a flat piece of floor and spread her furs on it. Then she put out the torch and lay down. Soon she was asleep.
Kahvi dreamed of the High Ones. They were all around the cave, surrounding her, and she listened to their talk and watched them work at their daily chores. She witnessed many of them using magic. She saw a female, golden-haired and beautiful, begin to recount a tale of the lives they had lived while travelling between the stars. Something about the story, the feel of endless wandering from one planet to another, seemed to strike a familiar cord in Kahvi’s heart. The High Ones had been restless, perhaps even bored, constantly on the move, always looking for new challenges.
Someone interrupted the flow of the story; a child of the High Ones, perhaps three turns old, turned to his mother and asked: “Where was I when that happened?”
The mother looked at the storyteller for permission to speak, and the golden-haired one nodded her approval.
The Mother told her son:“My dearest petal, you were not yet sired when we were on the crystal world. Only after we had landed here did your father look at me with the eyes of choice and we decided to dream your name. We danced the dance of joining, and your shape began to grow inside me. For the time of two turns you grew inside me, and while you grew I spoke with you in sending. After that time, you were born from my body, and I told you your name and nursed you on my breast. You were like Maliah over there” – the mother pointed at a baby in its mothers’ arms, “little and helpless. So are we all when we come to the world. And from a newborn you have grown to a big boy, and learned to ask questions. Now let us listen to Setten’s story again.”
The boy stared with eyes full of wonder, looking at the baby, then at his own hand. Slowly he nodded.
Kahvi woke from the dream, and looked around. The light of early morning was giving the cave enough illumination that she could see her surroundings. There was the throne, and the stairs, the pool… but where was the dried fish rack? Where the fire pit? Where was everyone, Two-Spear and Willowgreen and that annoying Redbark? Why hadn’t Greywolf woken her and taken her hunting like he promised?
And then the thousands of years of memories hit Kahvi’s mind, and she shuddered, as if her body had felt a physical impact. Sleeping in this cave, drinking the High Ones’ water, her mind had been returned to the time when she last had lived here. She remembered everything now. Everything.
And Kahvi realized, finally, that she was not here simply trying to escape from an unwanted Recognition. She was here to find her soulname. But how would she find it? She’d never known it, there was no memory to regain.
Kahvi tried to think of stories about how others had found their soulnames. But the stories were more confusing than helpful. Finally she gave up and went hunting. She caught a ravvit and gathered some firewood. Back in the cave, she lit a fire and got ready to cook her kill. She speared the carcass on a stick and hung it over the fire. As she did so, a flame licked her hand, leaving a small burn. Kahvi raised her hand to her mouth, trying to soothe the pain. She tried to be more careful as she turned her catch over the flames, but this exaggerated care caused her meal to slide off the stick and into the flames. Kahvi retrieved it, but burned her hand again. In rage, she kicked the fire apart, and ate her meat half-raw, almost like the wolfriders.
The red, wet meat left an unpleasant taste in Kahvi’s mouth, like blood and ashes. She went to the pool again, hesitated, then drank some. As she drank she realized the pain in her hand was gone; both burns seemed to have vanished when she dipped her hands in the water.
The High Ones’ water. The healing pool. Magic.
And somehow the thought of magic wasn’t repugnant anymore. Kahvi’s mind felt instead a humble gratefulness to the pool for all it had given her. Life. Healing. Memories. And a clear draught of water too, not something to take for granted in the wilderness.
Kahvi dipped in her hands and drank again. This time she didn’t feel sleepy, she felt more awake than she had ever been. Kahvi remembered when Aurek had given her the drug that tuned her mind into the Egg, and how he had instructed her to meditate. At that time she had been out of her body, and almost out of her mind, too. Now she felt instead that she was going deeper inside herself, into the secret parts of her soul. She was in a labyrinth, walking past events in her life in reverse order. The memories settled in place and she saw her life fold itself back into childhood. But the path didn’t stop there, she travelled onward through fuzzy recollections of a mother’s loving arms, into her very birth. And even further, through darkness echoing with the sound of an immense heartbeat, into the moment of her parents’ Recognition.
There, at the end of the road, she found a light, and a name.
She was Roya. She had always been Roya, she always would be.
How strange… to travel all over the world looking for something she was carrying with her all the time.
Chapter 6
Skywise was watching the Scroll of Colors.
Three maidens entered the room, two of them giggling, and the third trying to hush up the other two. They were, of course, Maleen, Ruffel and Vurdah, and Vurdah was the one appealing for silence, although not for any specific respect of the Scroll of Colors – after spending many years inside the shimmering walls, all three had come to think of the Palace of the High Ones as their home.
No, Vurdah wished for quiet because the giggles were at her expense.
“Skywise?” She asked, hesitantly, already dreading the look she would see when he turned.
“Yes?” He turned his head, and there it was, that faraway look of wishing he were somewhere else. Vurdah did not look at the Scroll. She did not wish to see what it would undoubtedly show.
Maleen and Ruffel looked, though.
“This is boring! What are you looking at that for?” Maleen complained
“Nastybad Highthing watch pretty-pretty Whitecold Highthing sleep!” This was not a preserver’s voice, but Ruffel’s squealing imitation of one, something the other two found hilarious. Maleen giggled and even Vurdah smiled a little, though her eyes remained sad.
“Skywise… you’re always here nowadays. And you’re always watching Kahvi in the Scroll. We miss you. That’s what we came to say.” She told him. She had given up on wanting him to be her lifemate, so long ago it felt like another life, like it happened to someone else. Vurdah still shared furs with him, still loved him, but she was willing to share him with everyone now. She herself had learned to love others – not many, considering she’d been apart from him for centuries – and though she had not yet become a mother, she was hopeful that Recognition would find her someday. With whom and where, she had no idea, and now she kind of liked the idea of it being a complete and utterly delightful surprise.
But still… she was not happy with the fact that Skywise was Recognized now. He had changed. He looked worried all the time, he hardly had any appetite, and though Leetah assured Vurdah that all the effects of Recognition denied had been removed by her magic, Vurdah knew that its effects on the mind could not be so easily wiped away, not unless one wished to wield magic like Winnowill had.
And that was not the worst of it. The worst was that Skywise no longer found pleasure in flirting and all the delicious acts that usually followed flirting. He never approached anyone suggesting a joining, and if someone approached him he would accept, but one could tell it gave him only the basest physical satisfaction.
Skywise sighed heavily. “I’m sorry. Things will be better soon. Once she’s here, things will be all right. She is on her way.”
“Why don’t you just take the Palace to her?” Maleen asked.
Skywise shook his head. “She would not appreciate that. She would think I am showing off to her, and taking away her choice. She has to come to me, so that she will feel she is free to leave again, without being chased like a wild stag.”
“Surely a maiden runs away only to be chased!” Ruffel exclaimed.
Skywise smiled, remembering the many times he had chased her, in the fields of the Sun Village, not so long ago for him, much longer for her. “Maleen can tell you that is not always the case.”
Maleen nodded. At Ruffel’s puzzled expression, she whispered something to Ruffel’s ear. Understanding dawned in Ruffel’s face. “I would run away too if a troll fancied me!” The red-headed maiden stated, nodding fervently.
Maleen rolled her eyes. Telling secrets to Ruffel was like yelling them out from a mountaintop.
Vurdah giggled. But the gossip would keep for later, when it was just the three of them. Instead, she looked at Skywise. “Really, Skywise. You need to take a break. Nothing’s going to happen to her while she’s sleeping. Go and get some rest. Eat something.” She pleaded to him.
“Alright, alright… you’re starting to sound like Cutter.” Skywise complained. He allowed Vurdah to lead him away from the room, but stole a glance at the Scroll in the doorway.
In the flowing images of the Scroll, Kahvi lay on her side, sleeping. There was a smile on her face, a sign of happy dreams. She looked young, innocent, and beautiful, like a dream herself.
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Topic: Leanan's odd pairings and assorted stories (Read 9071 times)