“She’s different today,” said Hulami. “She seems — I don’t know — more like a woman and less like a war chief this morning.”
The vintner’s words trailed off as she watched Nianki walk away. “What do you think it is?” Amero prompted, worried about the sister he’d so recently regained. “She’s been acting strangely this morning, even crying, and she seems so distracted. Do you think she’s ill?”
Hulami gave him an quick sideways glance. “Ill? Not exactly,” she said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Karada was in love.”
That was a notion Amero had never considered. “You really think it possible?” he asked her.
“Certainly. I’ve lived long enough to recognize that look on a woman’s face when I see it.”
Amero thought of Pa’alu and of Nianki’s strange behavior at the feast. Perhaps a few nights’ reflection, aided by Hulami’s vintage and his news about Pakito and Samtu, had caused Nianki to consider Pa’alu anew. Amero wondered where Pa’alu was. The plainsman should be told about Nianki’s change of heart.
Pa’alu woke, certain he was dead.
He’d run off from the feast just as the thunderstorm broke, fleeing headlong into the rain-swept night. His only thought was to find the elf priest and demand the spell be broken. Though he waited in the bowl-shaped canyon for two days, Vedvedsica never appeared. Despairing, his mind still reeling from what had happened, Pa’alu returned to the fringes of the nomads’ camp and was taken up by several of his reveling comrades. He accepted their repeated offers of wine.
When the wine and food had at last run out, Pa’alu had left his compatriots. A part of his benumbed, wine-sodden brain still seethed with thoughts of finding the elf priest, so he thought to search elsewhere. Late one night, he crossed the rope bridge and staggered up the logger’s path, tripping constantly on the deep ruts left by dragged logs. Exhausted at last, he collapsed on an outflow of tiny pebbles.
When Pa’alu woke, this third morning after the feast, his face and arms were numb from lying on the stones all the night before. Thinking for one crazed moment he was dead and in his grave, he swallowed hard and tried to move his lifeless limbs. When his feet twitched and tingled painfully — though his arms remained numb — he decided he might not be dead after all.
He rolled over, and the brightness of the ivory-clouded sky burned his face like a flaming brand. After an effort that brought beads of sweat to his brow, Pa’alu managed to get one limp arm over his tortured eyes. Too much wine. Far too much.
The amulet.
The thought brought him upright with such violence, his stiff muscles shrieked in protest. He sat, wavering from side to side, as his foggy mind tried to recall the events of the past — how many? — days, especially those of the feast night. Where was the amulet Vedvedsica had given him? He patted through his muddy clothing and found nothing.
Some of the fog wrapping his brain lifted. He’d already used the amulet, hadn’t he? At the feast, he’d held it out to Karada. The dragon tried to take it from him. Pa’alu drew his knife. There was a flash of lightning from the dragon. Then Pa’alu was lying on the sand, and he no longer held the amulet.
Nianki had picked it up. Nianki and Amero.
Nianki and Amero.
“Oh, my ancestors,” Pa’alu groaned, covering his face with his hands.
“Don’t the blame the dead for the faults of the living.”
Pa’alu flinched at the sudden intrusion and tried to push himself to his feet. When his bleary eyes adjusted, he saw Nacris sitting cross-legged on the ground a few steps away. Her horse was tethered to a handy pine sapling. He’d been so involved in his memories of that horrible night that he’d not heard her arrive.
“Why are you here?” he groaned, too lost in his own misery to really care.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Nacris replied. She looked well-scrubbed, her hair pulled back tightly and tied. Her buckskins had been buffed with pumice to whiten them.
“So you found me.”
Ignoring his unwelcoming tone, she handed him a full waterskin. It dangled from her hand for only an instant before the painfully parched Pa’alu grabbed it. Upending it, he drank deeply, the excess water trickling over his neck and chest.
Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he said, “Thanks.”
Nacris said nothing hut continued to watch him intently. He suddenly felt uncomfortable under her flinty gaze, and unconsciously he began to comb his hair and beard with his fingers, trying to look more presentable.
“Why are you here?” Nacris said at last.
“I drank too much and lost my way.”
“No, I mean, why are you in the band?”
He paused in his grooming. “To follow Karada,” he said.
“Is that the only reason?”
“What other reason do I need?”
“And when Karada falls in battle or dies of sickness? Will you remain with the band then?”
Feeling was returning to Pa’alu’s limbs. The sensation was agonizing — like the bites of a thousand horseflies at once — but Pa’alu hardened himself and addressed Nacris’s question. “I would stay by my brother,” he said. “I would stand with Pakito.”
She nodded slightly. “A sensible answer. Did you know Pakito has gained a mate since the feast?” Pa’alu’s expression showed his ignorance, so she added, “Samtu.”
“He’s fortunate.” His tone gave the lie to the simple pleasantry. Knowledge of his brother’s happiness, when he himself was so miserable, was like bitter ashes in his mouth.
“You’re one of the finest hunters and scouts in the band, Pa’alu,” Nacris said. “If Karada and the band part ways, who will you follow?”
He was beginning to understand the cast of her words, and he shook his head. “You can’t be trying to take the band away from Karada again. Did Sessan’s death teach you nothing?”
“It taught me no one of us is strong enough to defeat Karada. To succeed, the best of us must join together.”
Pa’alu stood up, dropping the waterskin on the pebbles in front of Nacris. “You’re a fool,” he told her flatly. “Karada is the band. There is no band without her.”
He started to walk past her, and Nacris said, “And if Karada betrays the band? What then?”
“You’re talking nonsense. Because you brought me water, I won’t mention this to Karada — ”
Nacris stood quickly, took Pa’alu by the shoulder, and whirled him around. “Karada is betraying the band right now! She sided with the mudtoes this morning!” Pa’alu recognized the derisive term for the villagers that was gaining popularity among the nomads.
“What are you talking about?” he said. Nacris related the events that had taken place outside the house of Hulami the vintner. “Karada sent her own people away thirsty then accepted a jug of wine for herself! She’s so taken with her own power, she forgets the welfare of her people!”
“Liar! How many times in the past has she gone without food so that others could eat? Gone without sleep so that others could rest? Karada cares nothing for her personal comfort. She lives like a mountain goat, guiding her flock through treacherous places, surviving on only the sparest food and water.”
Nacris folded her arms. “That was before we came to this strange valley. Now there’s meat and drink in abundance and a man for her to love.”
The last words pierced Pa’alu’s aching head. His fist knotted around the front of Nacris’s whitened buckskin shirt. He lifted her till she was swaying on her toes.
“What did you say?” he hissed.
Unresisting, she said, “Arkuden, the headman. Her brother.”
His grip slackened, and Nacris stepped back. Eyes wide in horror, Pa’alu hissed, “Why do you say that?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Her long-lost brother turns up alive, offers food and comfort in abundance. Why shouldn’t she side with him against the rest of us?”
Pa’alu relaxed, realizing Nacris knew nothing about the amulet or its effect. The rage and frustration he felt over the failure of his stratagem resurfaced.