That moment of silence beside a sacred one, with only the soft sound of trickling water, would be remembered. This was the way the world should have been and was not.
When they resumed their journey, the sacred one turned southeast again. After a hard and long run, it stopped past nightfall. Osha slid off, knowing now that food and water would be close by. He found a patch of odd wild berries, all red as blood and covered in tiny seeds, he had never seen before. These were far sweeter than the skins of bisselberries.
They shared another meal, and Osha curled up beneath the bare trunk of a tall and spindling pine. He never got to close his eyes, let alone sleep, before the clhuassas walked over and lowered its head, and he could feel its breath on his face.
Osha did not know what to do this time. He had never asked for this journey, but a being sacred to his people had seen him safely this far, never leaving him to struggle onward on his own.
“My thanks,” he whispered.
Osha froze stiff as the sacred one pressed its soft, gray nose against his forehead. A feeling of peace swept through him, like that moment by the creek, and he fell asleep without even realizing, until ...
When he opened his eyes again, he was alone in the dawn.
It took a few moments for him to realize the listener was nowhere in sight. He scrambled up and looked around, uncertain of where he was. The sound of crashing waves reached his ears, and he stepped off over a rise toward that distant roar. Not long after, he spotted the edge of the thin woods and looked down toward a coastal settlement.
Small boats lined the few narrow docks, and two ships floated in a tiny bay formed by twin streams running into the sea. As he looked upon the settlement, all of the remaining sensation from his last night with the sacred one vanished.
Osha headed down the gradual slope to find passage farther south....
Wynn didn’t even realize she’d stopped breathing until Osha went silent and looked down again from where he sat beside her. She took a sudden breath, and any question of what had happened next caught in her throat. All she could think of was that Fay-descended creature that had ...
“The greimasg’äh, and I ... and you,” Osha whispered, “are the only ones I know of who have ever been so close to one of them.”
At first Wynn wasn’t certain what he meant.
One time in his land, when Leesil had needed to find his mother, Chap had gone off into the wild on his own. Wynn had snuck out after him, even though the an’Cróan forest would quickly confuse her—or anyone not an’Cróan. She was almost instantly lost, but Chap had found her and so had a pack of wild majay-hì, which had included Chap’s future mate, Lily.
The only way Wynn had been able to keep up with the racing pack in Chap’s search for Leesil’s mother was ...
“You and I,” Osha added, “are the only ones I know who have ever been gifted with their aid, in carrying us.”
Yes, in Chap’s racing search with the pack, a listener had carried her.
Osha hung his head. Whatever tense harshness had shown in his long features since she had first seen him in Calm Seatt appeared to fade.
For just a moment Wynn saw the Osha of past, better days. And though to be Anmaglâhk was all that he had ever wanted, it was his innocent wonder that made him so much better than any of them in her eyes.
“But it left you ... before you even reached your destination,” she said too quickly.
Osha looked over at her, and some brief confusion passed across his face.
“No ...” he stammered, as if baffled. “It made certain I would hear the waves upon waking.”
Wynn wanted to curse herself, and not only for having stalled him now that he was talking. The Osha of old vanished before her eyes, replaced by that harsher, hardened one. It hurt her to see that.
“But you found passage?” she asked, trying to urge him onward.
“Of course,” he whispered, looking away. “I was Anmaglâhk. My people would do anything to serve them.”
For an instant Wynn hung upon those two words—I was rather than I am—and then Osha’s suddenly cold voice pulled her onward....
Osha had no trouble gaining free passage on a small, single-masted fishing vessel. That was best, for it had no destination for passengers or cargo that would be delayed in serving his need. The following day, when he boarded, the boat’s master and her small crew were more than happy to assist an anmaglâhk. He did his best to smile, and he was more than grateful in his manners, though what he had asked of them was not by his choice.
That first day, sailing south down the eastern coast, heading beyond his people’s territories, was when he began to truly contemplate the stone inside the pocket of his forest gray cloak.
What unknown reasons did the Chein’âs—the Burning Ones—have for summoning him, of all the Anmaglâhk, a second time?
He could not find an answer.
Worse, over the next two days, now that he no longer clung to the back of the clhuassas, he had too much time to think. He dwelled upon the faces of Leanâlhâm and Gleannéohkân’thva locked in grief with no help or comfort. But on the third day he began watching the shoreline, as Brot’ân’duivé had given him clear instructions regarding what to look for.
When the beach came into view and he saw a distant mountain’s peak line up with that place, his chest began to ache. He found it hard to even breathe as he left the bow to approach the ship’s master. He was given what meager supplies he asked for without hesitation from the crew.
Osha felt all the more unworthy in that he was here only because a greimasg’äh had broken a sacred oath. And yet the summons could not be refused, or sacred ties to the Chein’âs might be damaged—and Osha would not be responsible for that. If the Chein’âs called to him, he would answer.
So he stepped down into the lowered skiff and allowed himself to be rowed to the shore. Once he was alone again, he turned inland toward the peaks.
He could still hear Brot’ân’duivé’s voice driving through his mind like a knife.
The last time he had made this journey, he had been blindfolded while following an elder member of the caste, but he knew it had taken three days. Now he walked with his eyes open as he headed straight toward a mountain in the distance ... until he saw another, closer one with a broken top.
There were streams along the way, providing both freshwater and fish. He tried not to think beyond his daily needs. He did take the time to find a stout branch, and, using supplies taken from the fishing vessel, he fashioned himself a torch. He knew it would be needed.
It was late the third day when he located the chute. Its bottom end was partially hidden by an overhang. He would have never noticed it without knowing exactly what he was looking for.
He remembered having climbed it while blindfolded, and how he had nearly slipped on the loose, rocky debris in its bottom. After one last hesitation, Osha entered the chute and climbed upward until he reached the mouth of a tunnel ... where he stopped and lingered.
It was a while longer before he knelt to strike flint against a stiletto to light his torch. He forced one foot in front of the other, inside and downward, until echoes of his steps were all he heard rolling along the dark and rough stone walls. He traveled deeper underground as the tunnel turned this way and that, until he began to feel slightly dizzy and the air grew uncomfortably warm.
The walls were craggy, but the floor smoothed out, and then suddenly he stepped from the tunnel into a cavern. His eyes instantly locked on the space’s only prominent feature.