‘I see,’ said Orisian dully.
‘Some wish to send you to the willow.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘To take your lives.’
‘Why?’ asked Orisian.
‘You are Huanin. Perhaps not friends to the Fox. Some say you should not be here.’
‘But we were brought here,’ protested Orisian. ‘We did not choose to come.’
‘You would be dead if I did not bring you. The needed medicine was here.’
Orisian pressed his hands into his eyes. Perhaps Rothe had been right. There was nothing but danger here. The woodwights were savages after all, their thoughts twisted in strange patterns.
‘The vo’an’tyr will send for you.’ She rose and made to leave the tent.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Will you be there tomorrow?’
The woman shook her head.
‘Will they speak my tongue?’ asked Orisian.
‘In’hynyr has often wintered at Koldihrve.’
For a moment Orisian was puzzled, then he understood. Koldihrve: the settlement of masterless men at the mouth of the Dihrve River beyond the Car Criagar. It had the reputation of being a wild, dangerous town, all the more so because the Fox Kyrinin had a winter camp on its edge. It was the one place Orisian had heard of where Huanin and Kyrinin still lived side by side.
‘That is where you learned it as well?’ he asked.
‘Enough questions.’ She made for the doorway.
‘What is your name, at least?’ Orisian said.
‘Ess’yr,’ she said.
With that she was gone and Orisian was left alone. After a time—a dead space in which thoughts ran unhindered and chaotic around his head—for no one reason that he could name, but for all of them, he found there were tears in his eyes.
They came for him early in the morning. He had been awake a little while. The sound of dogs barking outside had woken him before dawn, and dark thoughts had kept him from sleep once roused. When the Kyrinin entered the tent he was examining his wound, having peeled away the dressing. There was an angry red weal, but it seemed to be healing. He had no time to replace the poultice. Silent Kyrinin warriors led him out of the tent.
A wetting drizzle was falling, as much a heavy mist as rain. Beneath its veil, the vo’an was a silent, muffled place of indistinct shapes. They crossed through a part of the camp he had not seen before, rising up a slope to a grove of trees where one shelter stood apart from the others. There was a patch of bare earth before it, into which tall poles were driven. One had a column of deer skulls attached to it, another the pelts of beavers, a third was twined around with boughs of holly. They sent him inside alone.
The air within had a cloying, herbal intensity that was almost tangible, as if someone had pressed a cloth dripping with scent across his nose and mouth. He wrestled with a sudden wave of nausea. A bright fire burned in the centre of the tent, and a crowd of Kyrinin were seated around it. As he stepped in, all turned to look at him. One of the women rose and reached for him. He shrank away from the touch. She grasped his shoulder and pressed him down. He sank to the ground. The oppressiveness of the air seemed a little less, and his head ceased to spin. The woman put a small wooden bowl into his hands.
‘Drink,’ she said.
He lifted the bowl to his lips, and winced as he tasted the hot, bitter liquid it contained. He did not dare to put it aside, since he had no idea what had significance here and what did not. Somewhere inside him, not as far beneath the surface as he would have wished, there was a small boy shivering with fear and loneliness. He knew a time had now come, perhaps the first time, when he could not allow that boy to be a part of his thoughts. He rested the bowl on his knees and looked around with what he hoped would pass for composure.
There were perhaps twenty Kyrinin crammed into the tent, facing and flanking him in tight ranks. Here and there, on the faces of both men and women, he could make out the fine, curling facial tattoos that he thought were supposed to mark out warriors or leaders. In the War of the Tainted, he had heard, the Kings’ warriors had cut the skin bearing such brands from the faces of dead Kyrinin, to prove what dangerous enemies they had slain.
Opposite him, across the shimmering flames, was a small woman, older than most of the others. She was wrapped in a cloak of some roughly woven material decorated with black and blue swirls. There were bold streaks of red slashed through the silvery hair that fell across her shoulders. Her features were sharp but there was a furrowing in the skin at the corner of her eyes and mouth that betrayed the passage of years. Her flat grey eyes were fixed upon Orisian.
‘I am In’hynyr. I am the vo’an’tyr,’ she said, her voice a light, reedy sound that had a thread of iron within it.
Orisian nodded. The liquid he had swallowed had left a burning track down his throat and into his chest.
‘We will talk,’ said In’hynyr.
‘As you wish,’ replied Orisian faintly. He was at a loss to know what else to say, or whether he should be saying anything at all.
‘There are five vo’ans of the Fox clan this season,’ In’hynyr said, ‘which is a good number. This place we are in now is a good one. The Sun-facing slope with rich forests. There is food to be gathered here. The forest is generous. This season is the first we have had a vo’an here since my first child was carried on my back. She has many children of her own now. It has been a long wait for the Fox to return. When there was a vo’an in this place before, Huanin from the valley saw our fires and came to seek us out. We led them over rough ground and steep valleys. We traded killings with them and they went away. You are from the valley, thicklegs and heavyfoot?’
‘I ... I am from Kolglas,’ stammered Orisian, caught unawares by the sudden question. In’hynyr’s voice had a rhythmic, lulling quality to it that distracted him from the meaning of the words being spoken.
‘Why have you come to this vo’an?’ asked In’hynyr.
‘I was wounded. I was brought here. Ess’yr said . . .’ Orisian replied. He tried to continue, but In’hynyr gave a sharp sniff and spoke over him.
‘It was known in the Fox clan that there would be war in the valley this season. Our spear a’ans in the summer returned from the lands of the enemy with word of a Huanin army. They said the White Owl, who are carrion-eaters, would make war upon the people of the valley alongside this army. The White Owl, who have no memory, make themselves the servants of the Huanin. That is good. They shall suffer for it. It is good, too, that there is war in the valley. If there is war in the valley, we shall be left in peace. So we returned to this vo’an after many years.’
Orisian was struggling to follow all that was being said. If the White Owls had given aid to the Inkallim, it might explain how they had reached Kolglas. With Kyrinin guides they might have come undetected through Anlane. Yet it seemed an impossible alliance. The White Owls were no friends of humans, and the Bloods of the Black Road certainly none of Kyrinin.
‘This is a good vo’an,’ In’hynyr was continuing. ‘We shall come back here next season if all is well. The a’an of Yr’vyrain found you and the big man by the water. Ess’yr of that a’an wished to make you well, and brought you here. We gave leave for that, for death had your scent. You are made well now.
‘It is a grave matter that you and the big man have come here. When the clans were younger, when the City shone like the sun, one of the Huanin came into a vo’an of the Fox, by an ice-free stream in a valley of oaks. He was lost. He was given food and shelter. But he was foolish, and spoke of foolish things like a child who knows not how to be still. After a time the people told him to go. And because the Huanin heart is hot and their thoughts are like fire, he was angry. He took earth in his hand and cast it upon the torkyr and cursed the Fox. For this, he was taken and sent to the willow. This did not heal the wound.