On the far side of this valley, I could see a blackened scar of wildfire softened with a bloom of new green. Beyond, a jutting jag of stone burst from a jumble of grass and saplings, a stream fell to its fate over the angular edges, splitting and plaiting to plunge into a rainbow haze. Behind, a rampart of flat-topped rocks marked the far side of another valley hidden in the folded land, no way of guessing how far, how deep or how long it might be. The striped and dappled face of a cliff shifted and changed as a cloud passed between it and the sun. Still farther away, a saw-edged peak pied with snow and rock was merely the nearest of the massive mountains drawing clouds close around their shoulders.
“Are those the high peaks?” I asked Sorgrad.
“No, just the southern ranges. The land falls away again beyond there, into a wilderness of lake and plain. The highest peaks are a season’s journey farther north again.” He looked up at the sky, face unreadable.
“So where exactly are we?” asked Usara with a frown.
“Hachalsoke.” ’Gren waved an expansive arm. “Home to the Hachalkin.”
“One family owns all this tract of land?” Usara’s confusion was hardly surprising. You could fit Hadrumal and all its wizards into the wide valley whose sides we’d been toiling up.
“You have to understand that things are very different up here,” said Sorgrad slowly.
“Tell us,” I encouraged. “We don’t want to get someone’s hackles up by saying the wrong thing.”
“You need to watch what you say, both of you.” Sorgrad was deadly earnest. ‘This isn’t the Forest, everyone used to new faces and new ideas. Things move slowly up here and change comes seldom. The sokes have good reason to be wary of incomers; whole kindreds have been wiped out by pestilence brought by travelers.”
I couldn’t see any sign that hand or boot had ever touched this place. “Do you know where the closest compound is?”
Sorgrad pointed to the middle distance. “That spur valley where the river runs down toward the lake. A fess needs water, shelter, and timber to hand. It’ll be set halfway between summer and winter grazing, close enough to the heights for hunting and mining, not too far from the main valley for taking the metals and pelts down for trade and exchange.”
“So what makes this compound different from a village?” Usara’s face was unenthusiastic as he assessed the terrain we’d have to cover.
“Each fess is just one kindred,” replied Sorgrad. “Maybe fifty or more people in a big soke, not counting the children, but all just the one family.”
“How in Drianon’s name does that work?” I spoke before I could help myself. All family ties meant to me was the heavy disapproval laid on my head by my mother’s bevy of superior sisters and my grandmother’s constant scorn for my Forest blood. “What if you can’t stand each other?”
Sorgrad paused before speaking. “You have to understand that the family is everything in the mountains. The soke is more than valleys and dales. Anyatimm belong to the land more than it belongs to them. That’s been so since Maewelin raised the mountains and Misaen forged the people. A soke is bloodline as well as territory and both are the women’s privilege; they are its guardians.”
“Eldest daughter inherits?” I prompted as he fell silent. I’d shielded him from Usara’s prying questions all the way up here but now it was time for him to lay out the runes for all to see.
“It’s not like Tormalin land, which can be owned, bought or sold,” he said finally, eyes acknowledging my silent demand. “Each daughter gets a share in the resources of the soke: the animals that can be caught or pastured there, the metals or gems that can be dug. The rights are tied to the blood. If a woman has no daughters to follow her, the rights are passed back up the line, mother to mother and down to another branch, sister or niece.”
“And the men do all the work,” grunted ’Gren. I passed him a honeycake to stop his mouth.
“The men do the physical work,” Sorgrad echoed, “away in the hills for half a season at a time. But that’s their half of the compact sealed on the hearth of the rekin. A stone is set there when a boy reaches his ninth summer and leaves his mother, when a couple marry, when an elder steps aside to yield precedence to son or daughter. The hearth is the heart of the rekin, the stronghold, I suppose you would call it. The rekin is the heart of the fess and the fess is the heart of the soke.
“Those elders fit enough and younger boys herd the goats while the men in their prime go trapping in the winter, work the mines in the summer. A son’s labor is owed to his father until he’s of age in his twenty-seventh year, you see. Up here a man works to bequeath coin and valuables to his sons, who will take that patrimony to a different soke when they marry. That’s their contribution, the means to trade for whatever a soke may lack. The women work in the rekin and the fess, cooking, weaving, spinning, curing hides, rearing the children.”
“Curious.” Usara’s color was better for some food.
“No more so than paying someone to take a daughter off your hands with a dowry and eldest son grabbing everything at the deathbed,” Sorgrad laughed. “Lowlands customs amazed us at first, didn’t they, Sorgren?”
“It was those enormous black cows I couldn’t stop staring at,” shrugged his brother. “I’d only ever seen goats.”
I shared out the rest of the cakes and chose my next words with care. “So what brought you both down to the lowlands?”
The brothers exchanged a strangely reluctant look.
“It’s not only the Forest Folk think it’s ill omened to be born at the dark of both moons,” admitted ’Gren. “It wasn’t so bad when I was still at my mother’s heel but once I was out in the diggings, every accident or piece of ill luck was laid at my door.” He shrugged. “I got sick of it and decided to leave.”
“And I came too.” Sorgrad’s blue eyes were as distant as the sky beyond the farthest peaks. “Middle sons of a long family, no one missed us.”
“Did you live in these mountains?”
“No, the far side of the Gap, what would be called the Middle Ranges.”
“So it had nothing to do with you being mage-born?”
It took a breath for my ears to convince my wits I’d heard right. “What did you say?”
Usara was looking intently at Sorgrad. “I asked if your decision to leave the mountains was related to the fact that you’re mage-born.”
“You’re mistaken, wizard! The air’s too thin for your wits up here!” But as I spoke, I saw ’Gren look at Sorgrad and knew it for truth. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” Sorgrad gave a careless shake of his head but his eyes were angry. “When’s it ever been relevant? You’ve always said magic is trouble and I agree. That’s all it’s ever been to me. They said ’Gren was unlucky, but no one wanted to be within arm’s length of me after tinder started lighting itself in my empty hand! No one would go in a shaft with me, in case firedamp blew everyone clean down to the plains. My first winter hunting, I was lost for three days in a blizzard and everyone said the wind was trying to claim me for its own.”
“I thought your affinity was for fire,” interrupted Usara eagerly. “I should have realized you were helping to warm Zenela. It was the flood confused me; the more I thought about it, the more certain I was some elemental disturbance provoked it. What exactly were you feeling when—”
“Shut up,” I told the wizard abruptly. “Did you choose to leave or were you sent?”
“I was banished,” Sorgrad told me, pain fleeting in his voice, ignoring Usara utterly. “Still, it could have been worse. The Middle Ranges haven’t fallen completely away from the old ways like the Easterlings above Gidesta, but on this side of the Gap the Westerlings probably still kill anyone marked for Misaen.” His smile was thin and humorless.