Having found it, they need only proceed to the next steep place, where the rock plunged to some habitationless cold ravine. Familiar with the terrain, each woman was aware they would come to such a prescribed spot in less than an hour, by climbing up a fraction, half a mile off the track. So Cah had been generous, sending the men to make the omen, allowing the rite to conclude so swiftly.
It was still, windless, bitter when they came to it, the ridge above the depth.
The gongs were dumb. The women bore the wooden box to the edge of the slope, and, laying it down, every hand was put to it, every hand that had nailed it up, all but the hand of the kinswoman, Tibo.
Pushed to the brink, then over it, the coffin dropped out into the air, and fell into the frozen channel below. Down and down it went, touching against nothing, until, far beneath, it struck a ledge and shattered away into the exploding snow.
The women stood up, and looked at Tibo. Now she must mourn her loss.
Tibo flung back her head, and howled, to the blanched, flat sky. The women observed her, braced to wait, for it should be a prolonged lament; the dead was Tibo’s husband’s mother.
And after this, the long route home.
No choice, none.
What, in her absence, would Orbin do?
It was an orchid, then, this time. More, it was a lion-cub.
Somehow, as it had been more often ten years ago, Katemval’s instinct had drawn him to his goal at the exact and proper moment. A find.
Yes, he would dismount for this one.
The Ahsaarian swung out of his saddle and walked, stiff from the riding, toward the child. Standing apart from his oaf father, the boy looked only at the men, the zeebas, the thoroughbred. As he had been shoved from the hovel, he had set his fingers briefly, friendly, on the flank of the dark bitch-dog, taller than he was. He showed no fear, and no curiosity either. Yet the black and liquid eyes were intelligent and pure.
“Well, my dear,” said Katemval, lowering himself to gaze into them. He put his hands gently on the boy and felt him over. He was whole and straight. Even the feet, when Katemval investigated them through the sloppy little boots. There was a thread-thin pale ring of scar on his left wrist, but, whatever had caused it, clean-healed, and the sinew and muscle unaffected. “Do you have all your teeth?” The boy nodded, and permitted Katemval to peer into his mouth. The teeth were healthy and very white. “Tell me,” said Katemval, “the farthest thing you can see.” The boy eyed him, then the eyes turned away, across the valley. “The mountains,” he said. Katemval followed the dialect assiduously. “Something smaller,” said Katemval. The boy said, “A bird, on the tree.” Katemval glanced over his shoulder. His own sight was keen. He saw the bird, far along the valley on a dead seedling cibba ribbed with snow. “Good,” said Katemval. “What’s your name?” “Raier,” said the boy. Katemval lifted his brows, and rose. “He’s acceptable,” said Katemval.
He gestured to one of the riders to bring him the money bags.
“Just a minute,” said the oaf-father, “I didn’t—can’t be sure—”
“Seven silver draks, I said,” said Katemval.
The oaf licked his lips. “Nine.”
“No.”
The boy, low to the earth, watched them bickering over his head, his destiny weightless as a leaf between them.
“Eight,” said the oaf. “Give me eight.”
“I will give you seven, as I previously explained. Here.” Katemval, undoing the strings, shook seven triangular coins into his palm. New-minted, their edges hard, they glittered in the white light, beautiful and absolute. The man’s arm had come out, the hand automatically grasping. Katemval said, “I’ve registered my dealings with your priesthood at Ly. You comprehend me? This is a legal transaction. Now the child’s mine.”
The man suddenly grinned. “He owes me,” he said. “If I worked the guts out of him, he’d never bring in this amount.”
Katemval lost interest in the man. He looked down at the boy again. “You’re coming with me. We’re going on a journey. I’m taking you across the sea, to a proud land with cities of stone. An adventure. You don’t need anything. Is there anything you want to bring with you?” Not an unkind man, Katemval, sentimental maybe.
But the child only gazed up at him. Did he realize what was going on?
Katemval lifted him suddenly and carried him over to the thoroughbred, setting him on the saddle, swinging up again behind him. The child did not seem unnerved, not frightened of the animal or the zeebas, as he had seemed unafraid of the farm dogs.
The oaf was adding up his silver, again and again. He did not or would not oversee their departure. But the dark bitch-hound began to bark, and all at once the boy writhed about and stared back at her, and suddenly, as Katemval put spur to his mount and it broke into a rapid trot, the boy stretched out his arm toward the dog, yearning and desperate, and without a word or a sound, he wept.
“Ssh, little lion. The gods love you. You’re going to a better life than starvation in a sty. Trust Katemval. He knows. Glory days, the power of what you are. Don’t waste it. Live it. You will.”
But something made Katemval hope, for all that, they would not encounter the eerie funeral party on its way back up the slope. He did not know the women had taken a higher track to the ravine, and had as well as hour’s keening to accomplish yet.
The twilight was sinking down as Tibo, having parted from the last of the other mourners, came home alone. There had been no chat between the women, it was not seemly, and anyway might delay them. Each of the differing homeward paths was long, and there were dearth and drudgery and hungry fractious men at all their ends.
A wind came with the dark, pummeling against the crags all around, drumming in Tibo’s ears. So she did not hear the dog howling until she was very close.
Tibo checked. This was a sound of lament, like the howl she herself constantly had had to give above the ravine, until her throat was incapable of giving more. Yet the dog had not mourned for the old woman.
Tibo ran. Across the jagged rocks, through the soft snow, the shadows, and came to the stone-cold yard, and faltered again. The howling shook the dog-shed, the outcry of Blackness.
Tibo opened the door of the hovel-house.
The room was drenched warm with firelight, Orhn asleep one side of the hearth, the other, Orbin, in the chair that had been his mother’s. Warm, but not secure. Things altered. And there, and there, and there—where Raier would be after the coming of night, a vacant space.
“Hoh, Tibo,” said Orbin, softly. “While you were out yammering with those women, I got to worrying about this farm. There’s no money in it, I thought. But then a man came riding by. Oh, you’d have liked him. A foreigner. You’d have wanted to invite him in. But he wasn’t looking for a whore. He was looking for something else to buy. With Alisaarian silver. Look. Shall I tell you, Tibo, what he wanted in exchange?”
The cold months were very hard that year. A period of deadly freezing nothingness. Beasts had died even in their byres. Men had died merely from falling a few yards outside their doors. When the breaking rains began, the snow fell on, mingling in the water, as if they should never be rid of it. But many sought the way into Ly, to sacrifice to Cah for a better year, a chance to abide. Orbin, seeing Orhn had lost two of his cows to the winter, set out on the course as usual, a silver coin in his pocket, leaving the idiot and the slut behind.
The route was doubly unpleasant now, sludge and ice combining, and the snowy downpour pelting over all. Here, with careering descents at regular intervals on either hand, Orbin went slowly, but undeterred. There was the solace of religion, the quick flicker of lust, and some prolonged drinking before him. He might even, rich as he temporarily was, remain the night on a wine-shop pallet. He might even make a special offering to Cah, to appease her, in case appeasement was necessary. He did not think so, really. He had been within his entitlement to sell off an illegal child, as Orhn would have been able to sell his own offspring, or Orbin’s, come to that. The slut stayed quiet enough about it. Not a word all winter. Not that one had been anticipated. She knew she had no redress and no say, and that anyway it was her fault. If she had been any use about the place, or any use to Orbin—she did not even know how to enjoy a man—he might have acted differently. Serve her right. Still, he was glad she had spread her legs for the easterner. He liked the silver, and liked telling her what he had done about the brat. Although he had been slightly uncomfortable before and after, wondering how she would take the news. As if she could object, or mattered.