The Chein’âs had summoned Osha—the Sudden Breeze—a second time.
“Are you just going to stand there?”
Brot’ân’duivé rose from the memory without a twitch.
Magiere stood watching him with her arms folded, half sitting upon a stack of crates in the alley between the warehouses.
“Or are you going to tell me what you meant about Wynn?” she added.
Brot’ân’duivé would certainly not tell her of the séyilf, the stone, or what it had done to Osha. That matter had yet to be settled, even after so much time. He did not fully understand what had come of it so far, but Magiere would not be put off much longer.
“It began before I knew anything of Wynn’s ... interference with Osha,” he finally answered. “Do you remember an enclave among the Coilehkrotall clan?”
“You mean Gleann and Leanâlhâm’s home village?” Magiere frowned, exhaling with impatience. “Of course. We were guests there.”
“Yes, you were,” Brot’an answered, and he nearly shook his head at her cutting of Gleannéohkân’thva’s true name. Humans were so inadequate with any language but their own. He held up a hand as she was about to speak—likely to demand that he get to the point.
“My part began after you left your homeland for this continent,” he said. “Osha had already departed to return to his people. Events were in motion from that moment, though I was unaware at the time. Some things only became known to me the day I arrived at Gleannéohkân’thva’s home.”
And with that he began to tell Magiere a part of his story....
Brot’ân’duivé stepped on through the dense trees toward the central enclave of Coilehkrotall. Wild brush grew higher than his head in places, but there were more oaks and cedars here due to the great width of their trunks. Those trunks bulged in unusual ways and grew more immense along the way.
While foliage remained lush and thick overhead, in the spaces between trees the underbrush gave way to open areas carpeted in lime-colored moss. Someone stepped out and turned away as if emerging like a spirit from the bloated trunk of a cedar.
Brot’ân’duivé did not bother to see who had emerged and barely glanced at thickened ivy hanging from branches overhead. The vines shaped an entryway into the tree’s wide opening between the ridges of its earthbound roots—the an’Cróan lived inside massive trees.
He passed more such dwellings with openings and flora-marked entryways, and then a large clay dome of an oven in an open lawn; smoke was rising from its top. Several women and two men stopped, touched their companions, and turned one by one to stare. They nodded to him politely with warm smiles.
Nodding back, Brot’ân’duivé did not pause and continued to the enclave’s western outskirts and one large tree almost apart from the others. It was the familiar home of an old friend, a healer among their people, and one of the few in this world whom Brot’ân’duivé trusted. He pushed aside the canvas curtain over the entrance to peer into the main chamber.
“I am here,” he said.
Moss from outside flowed inward across the chamber’s floor. The tree’s interior had grown into a large rounded room with natural ovals for doorways. Curving walls were bark-covered like the tree’s outside, though some bare, glistening wood was exposed, not as if the bark had been stripped but rather that the oak had grown this way with purpose. Tawny-grained wood of natural curves shaped the archways to other curtained spaces, as well as the steps rising upward around the left wall to another level through an opening in the low ceiling.
Bare wood ledges at the height of seating places were graced with saffron-colored cushions of floral patterns in light yellow. Brot’ân’duivé saw a smaller chamber through one archway with a curtain tied aside. Stuffed mattresses were laid out upon the moss-carpeted floor, along with soft pillows and green wool blankets. But the three people who occupied the main chamber all turned their heads at his greeting.
“By the ancestors,” Gleannéohkân’thva said. “Did your mother teach you no manners?”
“She taught me,” Brot’ân’duivé answered, ducking inside. “But I did not listen.”
The old healer scoffed, suppressing a smile. He was dressed in a quilted russet shirt, and his unruly hair was shot with gray.
In spite of his poor manners, Brot’ân’duivé nodded to the others present.
Young Leanâlhâm sat on the moss carpet with a needle in hand as she worked upon an embroidered pillow slip. She was dressed much as any other girl who had not yet gone for her name-taking. A plain cotton skirt of amber color spread around her folded legs, and her pullover of soft goat’s wool looked a bit too small for her frame.
Leanâlhâm was three years past the time when she should have gone for name-taking. Gleannéohkân’thva and Sgäilsheilleache had their reasons for delaying her ... because of her mixed blood. She did not speak and dropped her gaze. Brot’ân’duivé’s presence always daunted her, but he gave it no thought as he fixed on the third occupant.
“Welcome,” she said evenly.
Cuirin’nên’a, mother of Léshil and daughter of great Eillean, stood near the stairs.
She wore a simple tawny gown with a russet wrap around her shoulders. Such plain clothing did nothing to diminish her or what she was. Her hair fell like corn silk all the way to her lower back—she must have cut it recently. Her face was triangular like those of all an’Cróan, though its long angles swept in soft curves down to a narrow jaw and chin. Her caramel skin was flawless, and a long narrow nose of delicate nostrils ended above a small mouth of full lips a shade darker than her skin.
Cuirin’nên’a’s almond-shaped eyes were large, even for her people. One could become lost in them, if one was careless.
To Brot’ân’duivé, she sometimes did not seem quite real. Dressed so unlike the anmaglâhk that she was, her seemingly fragile beauty had been—was—a tool she wielded like any other. It made her deadly.
“Greetings,” he returned, stepping farther in.
“To what do we owe the honor of your presence?” Gleannéohkân’thva asked wryly.
“Perhaps I missed your company.”
Brot’ân’duivé had come to speak to his old friend and to Léshil’s mother, though he found it difficult to look at Cuirin’nên’a. It was not her dangerous beauty that affected him, but rather the fact that she was the living reminder of someone else.
Departed Eillean, Léshil’s grandmother, was always there in Brot’ân’duivé’s thoughts when he faced Cuirin’nên’a. The loss of her had been terrible for his people, as was the loss of any greimasg’äh. Yet his loss of Eillean was one that he had never been able to put aside, though they had never truly bonded.
He did so now, for there was much he needed from the old healer and Léshil’s mother.
The three of them had long been involved in the dissident movement among their people.
Brot’ân’duivé had been the newest of them to join that faction. That too had been the doing of Eillean, who had also brought her daughter, Cuirin’nên’a, among them. Most dissidents were not anmaglâhk, but there were a few. All had come to realize that Most Aged Father was no longer fit to lead their caste, and that the old one’s view of how to protect their people had in itself become a threat to them.
Gleannéohkân’thva would never speak of such things in front of Leanâlhâm. She was an innocent, not one of them, and Brot’ân’duivé was in no hurry. They could talk later tonight. As he dropped cross-legged on the moss, something did distract him.
A warmth grew suddenly in one spot inside his tunic, between the outer and inner folds of the fabric on his front left side.