The peace and joy of reacquaintance lasted an instant, then he fell into a chasm of screams.
Deena draped her feet in a pool in the garden of Struth and kicked. Spray danced to the tiles on the far side. The sun sparkled and beamed off the ripples. The water kissed her aching, road-weary soles.
She jumped as a shadow fell across her.
Janna stood beside her, though Deena had not heard her approach. The high priestess reached down with her intimidatingly beautiful hands and caressed the top of Deena's head with long, carefully polished nails.
"I thought I'd find you here, though I expected you'd be bathing more than your feet." Her eyes flicked toward the dusty riding clothes on Deena's body.
"I was planning to," Deena replied. Heat rushed to her cheeks. Must she constantly feel unfeminine in Janna's presence? "It's been so long, I wanted to savor it."
"Not to mention that you were lost in thought," Janna said, laughing.
Janna always treated Deena like a favorite niece. The role never hung easily on the latter's shoulders. "Well, yes. As I told you, it's been an eventful journey."
"Yes." Janna picked up the barrette that Deena had left on the tile. "It's just as well you haven't changed clothes. Tie your hair back up, too," she said, handing her the clasp. "I want you to look like you did the last time Toren saw you."
"Why?"
"I want you to visit him."
Deena's heartbeat quickened. "Why?"
Janna lowered her head, frowning. "I've just given him back his totem. It may be important to his adjustment to see you. You… will remind him of what he's been through in the last few weeks. At least, that's what Struth hopes."
Deena sprang to her feet, and hurriedly rolled up her hair. "Child," Janna said, setting her palm firmly on Deena's shoulder, "I doubt that he will want to see you right now. He will probably shun you. If so, let him be. What matters is that you confront him just long enough for his ancestors to take note of you."
Subdued, Deena nodded, and reached for her socks. "He's in the Soft Room," Janna said. The priestess smiled and glided away into the fronds that surrounded the pool and isolated it from casual view.
Deena tugged on her boots and threaded her way down a flagstone path. She strained to remember exactly where to find the Soft Room; she had seldom been there because the chamber served mainly as one of the hospitality rooms.
She wavered outside the closed door, poised her knuckles to rap on the wood. A groan and a muffled impact filtered through the barrier. She caught her breath and threw open the door.
Toren rolled across the floor, clutching his head, digging his heels so sharply into the finely woven carpets that he bunched the fabric into dramatic folds and mounds. He tumbled toward her, forcing her to leap over him. He came to a stop against a tapestried wall.
"Toren?" she murmured.
He jerked his gaze toward her. She quailed, frightened by the feral glow in his pupils. A string of clipped, foreign words streamed from his mouth.
"I don't understand," she said soothingly. "Use Mirienese."
He jerked with each syllable, as if physically struck. He shook his head, focussed on her once more, and snorted in disgust. She swallowed a lump so big it bruised her throat.
"Toren, what's wrong? It's me, Deena."
He shouted a brief, stern phrase, and jabbed his finger toward the doorway. Stung, she ventured half a step toward the opening. Janna's warning rang in her mind: He may shun you. Indeed he had. The rejection stabbed her deeper than she could have imagined.
She was not quick enough for him. He seized her by the waist and tossed her. She flew like a sack of grain out of the room. His strength awed her. She was lean, but she was not that small.
She scampered down the corridor, getting herself out of range. Toren slammed the door closed. She stopped and looked back, wincing at the pinched spots on her waist. Tears trickled down her cheeks. She cursed the bitch who had sent her to him.
She kicked the floor like a cast-off toddler and walked stiffly away. Behind her, the door shot open. To her horror, Toren came charging down the tile after her. She whimpered, ducked down, and buried her head under her arms. No. What had she done to deserve this?
He ignored her, barreling past as if she did not exist. He sprinted out of the archway, through marble columns, and plunged into the dense shrubbery of the garden.
Deena flopped back on her rump, panting. Her weeping gradually dissipated. As her pride recovered from the shock, she fretted anew for Toren. What were his ancestors doing to him?
Toren crawled to the base of a tree and hugged it. His breathing slowed until, at last, he no longer had to inhale through his mouth. The bark against his cheek eased the storms in his head. Though the tree's size compared poorly to those of the Wood, it and the foliage around him blocked off all view of the temple. Dirt lay under his body, not strange, flat stones or impossibly colored fabric. His ancestors ceased clamoring to be released from the square walls of the room where they had reawakened. His own mind fought its way to the top, and began to function.
Deena. That had been Deena in the room, and in the corridor, cowering from him. Deena, his friend.
No, his great-great-grandfather's specter rumbled. A woman cannot be your friend. A modhiv makes friends among his fellow scouts; he has no time for females, save to beget sons on them. If a modhiv fails to return from a foray, his comrades will understand; a woman will not. And that one was a foreigner. A Fhali should not even speak to females of other tribes.
Nearby a flower bloomed. His ancestors could not name it, but Toren had encountered it in the mountains the day before. "Liris," he said, repeating the name Deena had taught him. "It means Beauty."
No, his forebears protested. Flowers have names like shadebloom, whiteroot, blossom-that-opens-in-autumn. Beauty is a name for a pet animal.
Toren shook and curled into a fetal huddle. One after the other, his ancestors condemned him. Why have you left the Wood? Why have you eaten sacrilegious food? What is this talent springing from you, that should belong only to a shaman? The sun lies nearly overhead, when it should ride the sky to the north.
It's not my fault, Toren cried.
Where are we? Why are we here? If not your fault, whose is it?
He explained with imagined images of a dragon and armies marching over battlefields. He gave them firsthand memories of the frog god and a wizard whose blood smoked and dissolved steel. But all these things-even the steel-stunned them with queerness, sent them cringing away to things familiar and secure. Finding none, they accused him again of betrayal.
I had no choice, he moaned. They took you away from me, sealed you in a talisman.
His ancestors recoiled. You let them strip you of your totem? Cheli! Non-human!
I am a cheli no longer, Toren protested. You are restored. But the revelation had overwhelmed them. Dizzy with their silent yells, Toren crawled over to a tiny pool and dunked his head in and out. The shock of cold water on his face gave him back his wind, kept him from retching. A cloud of fish darted away from the impact point.
The activity caught his eye. Desperate to occupy his mind with anything but his ancestors' voices, he counted the number of species in the pool. There were four. At the bottom, a few scumsuckers browsed. Tiny minnows clung to the protection of roots and water lilies. A broad, puffy type dominated the open water, challenged only by a long, streamlined, rainbow-hued sort.
His ancestors recognized none of them, which gave them all the more reason to wail. Toren gritted his teeth and kept his glance on a specimen of the fourth species. A memory struggled to coalesce, battered by the hurricane within him.