Keera pauses to recall the words precisely: “That the only true ‘magic’ is madness,” she repeats by rote, but with intent and understanding. “Just as the only real ‘sorcery’ is science. My lord.” She moves through the crowd to gain a look at the objects that the warrior holds.
And they are just what both the tracker and Caliphestros had feared and predicted: The bones, Keera knows in her heart, of the smallest parts of children.
Taking in this look of comprehension in his young friend’s features, Caliphestros says: “So—you saw them, too, eh?”
Keera looks up at Caliphestros. “Yes, lord. As we left the pool. They were trapped in the outlet stream. But I admit that I did not think that you had seen them.”
“I was waiting for just this sort of moment to discuss the matter,” Caliphestros replies. “To see whether or not you would make true sense of the sight, as indeed you have.”
Veloc steps forward to put a proud and comforting arm about his sister. “If I am not mistaken—” Veloc says, turning his handsome features to face Caliphestros, “we not only may, but must obey Yantek Ashkatar’s imperative immediately, and return swiftly to Okot — but even before that, we must send runners ahead, must we not, Lord Caliphestros? To warn that no one in Okot take water from the questionable sources on the northern slope of the town?”
“You share your sister’s blood, Veloc, that much is evident,” Caliphestros replies, not quite so enthusiastically as the historian would have wished, as the old scholar replaces his various possessions in the small bags about his neck. He then looks to Ashkatar. “For now, however, Yantek — the tirelessness and diligence of your troops have made possible the answers to all immediate questions: anything that is left to explain should be discussed, I submit, in the place your tribe calls the ‘Den of Stone.’ And so, if you will alert your troops, as Veloc says, to send runners—”
Without thinking, the anxious Ashkatar raises his whip, which Caliphestros catches just before the black-bearded commander can bring it down again, silently giving the yantek an admonishing reminder, and looking to the now fully alert panther beneath him. “Avoiding all acts of foolishness,” the old man says, “now that we bear such precious evidence, which is the most accurate and valuable form of knowledge — and persuasion …”
“Send runners to the Groba!” Ashkatar orders, busily turning his attention to immediate matters, in part to hide his own embarrassment. “Let them know that more explanations will follow with us — but that they must heed our warning concerning the water in the northern wells!”
“Well said,” Caliphestros judges. Casting his eyes about the increasing darkness, and seeing a nearby hillock that is crowned with thick, obscuring undergrowth, he gives Ashkatar a nod. “Now, Yantek, I shall withdraw and attend to the needs of an old man’s body, and rejoin you in but a few minutes.”
“Very good, Lord Caliphestros — I shall have our escort ready to march by the time you return!” Moving back into his much more comfortable role of admonishing and administering commander, Ashkatar begins to sound out more orders, to both the units that will remain behind on guard and patrol, and to those who will go ahead to Okot. Caliphestros, meanwhile, urges Stasi toward the hillock—
At which Keera notices something odd: the old man has his eyes fixed, not on his destination, nor on the objects he carries, nor even on the powerful companion beneath him. He hurries Stasi along: a natural enough thing, if his old man’s need to relieve himself is as strong as he has suggested. Yet, Keera decides, there remains something not quite correct about his behavior …
Thus, with darkness now falling in its characteristically rapid fashion, in the springtime hours between bright day and Moonrise within Davon Wood, and with Ashkatar’s troops assembling their torches south of the hole at which the foragers, Caliphestros, and the Bane yantek have only just been standing — and most of all, knowing full well that her small scheme may lead to a moment of profound embarrassment between herself and the aging scholar she has come to so admire and trust — Keera puts caution aside and, backing slowly away from the others as they ready themselves for the last stage of the journey south, quickly and silently slips up the trunk and into the branches of one especially thick elm tree. The higher reaches of this gnarled giant offer connections to still other thickly leaved forest sentinels — maples, oaks, and firs — all of which ultimately lead up and over the hillock behind which Caliphestros quickly disappears.
3:{ii:}
One secret unraveled, another made more complex …
It may seem implausible or indeed impossible, that a man or woman, however skilled, should be able to move through treetops every bit as stealthfully as those animals practiced in that form of undetected movement: birds, squirrels, and tree kittens.† And yet, with the wind on Keera’s side — blowing, as it so often does, in from the west and pushing both her limited scent and any excessive sounds of movement back toward Ashkatar’s noisy group of warriors — she is indeed able to achieve this feat, despite the added danger of Caliphestros’s continuing to search the branches above him, evidently looking for something or someone with whom he intends to meet.
The discovery of just who that someone is, when it comes, nearly destroys all Keera’s clever, silent tracking in the treetops. She hears the quiet chatter and quickly beating wings of a starling flying at night, and, correctly guessing who is on the way, turns about and smiles at the same speckled, rainbow-tinted bird that the three foragers encountered what seems a long time ago, when they first followed Stasi and Caliphestros back to the pair’s cave. The bird flits about the spot Keera currently occupies, in the middle of an oak limb, then alights on the limb next to her, staring intently upon the tracker’s human features. Keera is delighted to once again hear the starling’s approximation of Caliphestros’s name, which the bird chatters to her proudly; however, she is also deeply nervous that Caliphestros himself will spot the bird and thereafter lock eyes on her, and so Keera urges it along:
“Quietly, now!” she whispers, as softly as she can. Cupping her hands, she tries to urge the starling down the limb, but, as if in a moment of indignation, the feathered fellow simply flaps noisily into the air a few feet, and then lands directly atop Keera’s head. Now utterly at a loss as to what to do — for the bird is no longer making any sound, but rather settling in, as if he means to stay for a bit — she sits as still as her unnerved condition will allow: for Caliphestros has by now heard the starling, and is more quickly turning from one direction to another, imitating the sounds of the bird in an effort to persuade him to come down. When the speckled messenger finally does stir, however, neither of the humans present causes his action; rather, it is the sudden, utterly silent, yet swift and somewhat threatening passing, above, of an enormous pair of dark, gliding wings, which come close enough to the starling to make it shriek once in alarm and then flutter down to Caliphestros in a nervous dart, alighting upon his shoulder.
“Ah!” the old man says, turning to face the starling’s wide eyes. “What was all that business? And where is your associate, if I may ask?”
But the starling’s “associate” is otherwise engaged, for the moment, having swept down to take up the smaller bird’s position on Keera’s tree limb; the difference being that this creature — the same great eagle owl that has been only very occasionally and briefly visible, from time to time, in Caliphestros’s wake, as well as visiting with Visimar — stands every bit as tall as Keera, when she sits upon the limb they share. The tufts of feathers† that appear at once to be her ears as well as her stern eyebrows, and which ordinarily sit in a lower and more critical position than do those of the smaller males of the species, rise high above her enormous and severe golden eyes, for the moment, in the presence of this strange human who has ventured into the bird’s realm.