'It wasn't your fault,' she said uselessly. When he did not reply, she added, 'Watch out for Joboam. Capiam has sent him back along the trail to find Kerlew. If he found you instead ...'
This time there was no mistaking the bronze-edged humor in Heckram's voice.
'Perhaps I shall find him first. Did you never think of that?' Kerlew: The Seite IT WAS
GETTING dark. He glanced about anxiously, his lower lip sagging away from his bottom teeth and brows puckered as he scanned the empty plain. He still didn't see Tillu or Kari. He didn't see anyone. He had walked and walked and walked, and still she wasn't here. He sniffled angrily. He was tired and hungry, and getting cold. Tillu should have been where he could find her. Why was she being so mean to him? And Carp and Heckram, too. They were all mean to him today.
He sat down abruptly and began to cry. Softly at first, and then, when that brought no results, louder, until his angry cries filled his ears. No one came. But Tillu almost always came when he cried. Where was she? His crying became frustrated screams, screams that tore his throat with their force. Still, no one came. He stopped suddenly, and opened his eyes to look around him. He snuffled miserably, and then lifted the front of his shirt to wipe his face. He tried to think what to do next.
What was he supposed to be doing? He thought back carefully. But his memories were tangled. Carp had spoken to him early that morning about the necessity for a shaman to seek his own vision. He had spoken of long fasts and journeys and sacred smoke. Then Heckram ... or was it Carp? ... had told him to run and find Tillu when the reindeer got sick. And something else? His mind plunged about erratically, and then suddenly brought up an image of Joboam. Joboam had smiled at him, and pointed the way to Tillu. He rubbed at his eyes again, and then slapped angrily at a mosquito on his wrist. It popped redly and left a smear of blood on his skin. For a moment he played with it, seeing how far his finger could spread the smear.
When he looked up, he couldn't see anyone. Where had they all gone? Instinctively he stood up to see farther. 'Tillu?' he called questioningly. 'Carp?' No one answered. He shivered and hugged his arms around himself. It was going to be night soon. They shouldn't have gone on. They should be pitching their tents and lighting warm fires and cooking food. His belly roiled at the thought of food. He sniffed hungrily, but smelled no smoke, no scent of bubbling stew or roasting meat. He swallowed the saliva that had welled up in his mouth at the thought of food.
Once more he looked around himself. In the distance, he picked out a shape that might be a great gray rock. He squinted his eyes. Were there scrubby trees growing at the base of it? Then that was where they were. Kari liked to pitch her tent against a stone for the warmth that it kept. And Tillu complained that the dung-fires stung her eyes. Tillu would like a fire of wood from the trees. Pleased with himself for figuring it all out, Kerlew set out for the shape in the distance.
Dark caught up with him as he walked. Gnats and mosquitoes sang shrilly in his ears, and stung him until he ran from the cloud of insects around him. He ran until he was out of breath and then walked again, until the stinging insects once more gathered around him and forced him to run. Always he kept the gray rock before him. In the uncertain light of the stars, it was no more than a lighter patch against the black horizon, a lump that rose above the blackness. Slowly it grew in his sight, until it was a thing that reared up taller than a man, taller than two men. And then he stood before it, panting with the effort of his last run.
He stared at the immense stone jutting up from the tundra. It was huge, bigger than three tents put together, and taller than one tent atop another. The stone itself was white and gray and black. Its planes of color changed as Kerlew walked slowly around it. What was a black hollow became a facet of glistening white mottled with silver when viewed from another vantage place. Lichen clung to it, softening some of its harsher facets, fuzzing its edges with life. The grass grew taller and lusher around its base, and small bushes crouched in its shelter. The warmth the dead stone gathered by day and released by night made its shelter a refuge for many forms of life.
Other things clung to it, too. Scraps of fur had been fixed to its rough surface with resin. An old offering of meat showed as a scatter of rib-bones on the tundra's sward.
Here was a small circle of amber pellets left beside the great stone. Symbols were painted on the flat surfaces of the stone in red and white and black pigment. Stark outlines of reindeer and men and other paintings more difficult to interpret decorated it. Here were the painted tracks of a rabbit, there a man's handprint, and beneath it in red the toe-pad tracks of a wolf. Kerlew shivered and hugged himself tightly. He tried to remember why he was here, but all he could recall was running toward the stone. He thought Carp might have sent him.
He walked around the stone, watching it change as he moved. Power. Power radiated from it like heat from a fire. It attracted Kerlew and filled him with fear at the same time. He dared not go close enough to touch the stone, even though he longed to feel the warmth of its rough surface, to trace with his fingers the power signs that decorated its sides. He contented himself with stooping by the circle of amber pellets.
Around the circle he dotted his forefinger, touching each pellet in turn. One called him, and he plucked it from its bed, held it close to his eyes to examine it. He felt its sleek sides, knew that in light it would be full of yellowness. He hesitated only a moment, then pulled his shaman's pouch out of his shirt and slipped the pellet inside. It might hold some of the power of this place. He hoped it was the right thing to choose. He wished Carp were here to tell him what to do. Carp.
He closed his mouth firmly, pressing his lips together. Maybe Carp had sent him here. A shaman had to seek his own vision. No one else could do it for him. And Carp had told him that sometimes shamans went for long periods without food or rest or warmth to find a vision. Had Carp told him to seek this place? He slapped a mosquito on the back of his neck, then suddenly battered angrily at the shrilling swarm that hung about his face and ears. He ran to escape them, then stopped again to stare at the great, gray stone. Would he find his vision here? Would he find his spirit brother and be a true shaman?
He chewed his lips, worrying at the idea. He knew it distressed Carp that he had no spirit guardian. Lately the old man talked of nothing else. He nagged almost as much as Tillu, telling him over and over again that he must have a spirit brother before he could be a full shaman. Was that why he had sent Kerlew into the night and the cold? To find this place?
He shivered, and wished suddenly for fire. But he didn't know how to make fire in the open. He only knew how to make fire inside the tent with Tillu's fire bow, and how to keep fire burning once it was started. He wished that Tillu were here to make a fire.
Or Heckram. Heckram was nicer. He didn't nag the way Tillu did when Kerlew couldn't do something. Usually Heckram just did it himself and let Kerlew do something else that he could do. He didn't scream at him for letting the fire go out, or nag him to go out and find a spirit brother. 'Heckram?' he called plaintively to the night.
But even he didn't answer.
Kerlew's eyes had adjusted to the waning light so gradually that he was scarcely aware that it was full night now. He noticed only the increasing cold that made him shiver in his thin summer shirt, and the swarms of mosquitoes that were attracted to his body heat and blood. Every few moments he would dash a few steps to escape the humming insects, and then pause to once more ponder his situation. But he never went far from the rock. He orbited the great gray stone as the night grew deeper and colder.