Hearthfire, page 26
He had never for a moment considered that there were more ways to speak to other people than the words he already knew. A rock was a rock was a rock. If you wanted to tell someone about it, you said rock. Here he wasn’t so sure, and the inability to communicate with the Northlanders made his skin feel loose on his bones, as if he were swimming inside himself.
The Northlanders spoke in low voices, as if afraid they were wrong about the Hearthlanders being able to understand them and didn’t want to risk being heard for what they were saying. Ryd and Carin sat on a log, their legs touching as if the small comfort of a familiar friend could anchor them in this new world where Ras simply felt adrift. He knew he could probably move closer to them, lean a shoulder against Carin’s. He wanted to. The village around them was small and at once the largest place he had ever been. Everything around him made him feel as though he had no bearings on the world anymore.
The ignorance of his youth nearly made him despair.
His stomach churned; they hadn’t eaten since midday, and no one had thought to bring them anything to eat. Ras wasn’t sure if that meant the Northlanders were poor hosts or simply that Ras and the others were prisoners.
Carin opened her rucksack and pulled out a packet of dried fish, causing a stir among the Northlanders. They made no move to take her food as she divided it between herself, Ryd, and Ras, but their eyes followed it with such burning curiosity that Ras wondered if they had fish in the Northlands at all. Eating with fifteen sets of eyes on him felt uncomfortable, and the murmurs that rose and fell around him didn’t help.
The first Northlander to approach them seemed to have taken it into hys hands to make them hys responsibility, and sy sat down on a stump pulled up in front of their log.
Sy pointed to hyrself. “Jen ve Lahgirtan.”
The woman’s name was the first thing he understood, and Ras was surprised by the prickle of tears in his eyes. He saw the release of breath from both Ryd and Carin and knew he wasn’t alone.
“Jen ve Lahgirtan,” Ras said. At his speaking, ripples went through the gathered Northlanders. He pointed to himself then. “Ras va Cantoranth.”
His name caused a bit of a stir, but it was Carin and Ryd who drew more curiosity, as they both pronounced themselves of Haveranth.
Jen ve Lahgirtan gestured between the two of them and said something Ras couldn’t understand. Carin and Ryd looked back and forth between one another, confusion writ across their faces. Jen frowned, then stood from her stump, beckoning another villager toward her.
She pointed to herself again. “Jen ve Lahgirtan.” Then to the person beside her. “Tinan vy Lahgirtan.” Jen took hys hand and touched the thin skin of hys wrist, then her own, repeating the word she’d said the moment before.
At Carin and Ryd’s blank looks, she drew it out, pronouncing each part as clearly as she could.
And Ras understood.
“Sahla’ahmvar,” Jen said. Kin.
A word Ras knew, but not the one commonly used. Sahthren was what Hearthlanders used, for those born of the same parents and close relations alike.
Ras saw understanding glint through Carin and Ryd like a shiver, and they looked at one another, shaking their heads.
Carin gestured around herself at the village and said, “Lysraht.” Crevasses. Then she pointed at Jen and Tinan vi Lahgirtan and said, “Jen and Tinan vi Lyrsaht. Carin and Ryd vi Haveranth.”
A chuckle went through the Northlanders, and Jen nodded, though her gaunt face still held murky understanding.
The rest of the evening passed thus, with one side or the other naming things and the rest responding. Ras still felt discomfited, though the curiosity on both sides bore with it a strange camaraderie. When they finally set up their tent on the outside of the village, he couldn’t help but notice the Northlanders quietly positioned armed villagers nearby.
• • • • •
The next morning, Ras rose early and tried to hunt. He pointed out into the forest when one of the villagers eyed him nervously, then gestured at his belt knives and short bow and was greeted with more curiosity, but the villager let him go.
For several hours, Ras saw nothing but vermin. The foothills were almost eerily quiet, even for the onset of winter. Back in Cantoranth, the snows would have started in earnest, though now with Foresight waning into a sliver, her sister beside her, always smaller and seemingly plumper. There should have been some sort of game in the hills, either saiga or hares or some creature—any creature larger than a squirrel. But the woods were silent and sounded only the rushing of the wind in the trees.
He killed three squirrels and two fat voles, and that was all he could find. Ras had never before had such an unsuccessful hunt. He thought of the stores of food Carin had kept so carefully rationed. They wouldn’t last to see Vigil Moon’s fullness.
He returned to the village, which they had learned was called Suonlys, for the white-capped mountain that rose up to the south behind it. At the village’s center, Ryd had his snowshoes out and was showing them to the villagers. He spoke slowly as if hoping to be understood, but as Ras approached, he saw that the Northlanders followed more the tracing of Ryd’s fingertips across the weaves of gut twine and curves of the doubloon tree branches than they did the words he spoke.
Carin he found near the tent, her bow still slung over her shoulder. She saw him approaching nearly empty-handed, and a frown puckered her face as he came within hearing range. “No luck?”
Ras showed her his kills, and he saw her eyes flick skyward, where the sun was already halfway down to the horizon again. He understood the meaning of that as well as she did; that it had taken him all day to find enough food for one real meal between them was yet another worry to add to their pile.
But it wasn’t the food she drew his attention to.
She pulled out one of the waterskins, half empty already. The others, he knew, were in the same state. “I thought for certain we would come across a clear stream or spring, but there haven’t been any. We will need water, and we will need it soon.”
“Where do they get their water?” Ras asked, motioning at the village of Suonlys. Village. Hardly more than a hunting encampment. Surely farther north there had to be proper settlements.
Carin shook her head. “I haven’t asked. I’m not sure how. They seem to be treating us with enough wariness, and I get the feeling that water is not plentiful. I worry they will think we are trying to take their resources.”
Her words sunk in after a moment, and Carin met Ras’s eyes, stricken at what she had said.
All they had done their entire lives was take resources from the Northlands. While Ras had long since come to terms with it, Carin and Ryd obviously hadn’t, or he wouldn’t be here right now.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Carin said, and walked off in the direction of Ryd and his snowshoes.
Ras set about skinning his quarry from the day, and carefully reserved the small skins and tails of the squirrels, not wanting to waste any possible things of value. While the rest of the Hearthland may not have done the same, hunters knew how to use even the smallest bits of a creature for something useful.
A short time later, Carin returned with Ryd and six full waterskins.
Surprised, Ras wiped his bloody hands on dampened bavel cloth. “How did you do that?”
“Traded the snowshoes,” Ryd said.
“I guess we won’t need them.” Ras shook the pot full of carcasses in front of him, watching them slide around, barely covering the bottom of it. With a little of the dried fruit from the ialtag, they should make a hearty enough stew, if bland. But for three people…
The stew tasted well enough once it was done, and the three of them picked tiny bones from their mouths, sipping dingy water from their skins. The water tasted of leather and silt, like licking a dusty rock and about as satisfying.
The villagers occasionally came over and tried to talk, but Ras found his mind drifting. He agreed to take second watch and fell into his bedroll.
He woke partway through the night with stabbing pains tearing apart his stomach.
Lurching from his blankets and kicking Ryd in the process, he stumbled from the tent and managed three steps before falling to his knees in the dirt and retching. He heaved until his stomach felt inside out and his eyes dripped stinging tears into the pool of his bile. Ras felt his stomach drop, twisting and clenching, and his skin slicked with clammy sweat. He shoved against the ground, not caring that his hands slipped in the puddle of his vomit, making it to the edge of the village with a half crawl and falling behind a bush where he yanked down his breeches and had to cling to the bush to keep from tumbling backward into his own shit.
Ras lost track of the time that passed while he was behind the bush, alternatively vomiting and loosing his bowels. He begged death to take him as the sun began to touch the sky with cold, cruel light. His head pounded, and dimly he became aware of Carin’s voice, rough with bile, and Ryd’s as well not far away.
He lost consciousness as the first rays of dawn touched his face.
CARIN HAD never been in such horrible pain.
Once, as a child, she had been running through her mother’s smithery just as Rina removed a piece of glowing metal from the forge with her heavy tongs, and Carin had caught her elbow on the red-hot bronze. She had felt a flash of something indescribable, and she had stopped in bewilderment for the tiniest of moments until her mind caught up with the pain and then she screamed, screamed so loudly half the village came running.
She felt like that hot metal had lodged itself inside her stomach now.
It seemed as though every strip of dried fish, every drink of water, every berry and every piece of fruit had decided to erupt from her body. Carin found herself outside Suonlys, clinging to a scraggly tree with every bit of failing strength she had, and found that strength lacking. She could hear Ryd, and further away, Ras, doing the same.
Was this what illness was? This horrible gutting feeling? Nothing green seemed to come from her nose, so she could not be sure. Had the villagers poisoned them?
Carin finally lay back against the damp forest floor, only half a handspan from where her bile sank into the ground.
Someone approached on soft feet. Carin forced herself to open her eyes and looked up to meet the eyes of Jen ve Lahgirtan.
The look in the eyes of this Northlander stranger was not spite or malice, but confusion and pity. She knelt next to Carin and gently touched a hand to Carin’s forehead, murmuring something under her breath.
When Jen turned over her shoulder to call out, Carin realized she hadn’t come alone. A few other villagers stood behind her, Tinan and several more whose names escaped her. After a moment, firm hands took her by the shoulders and feet, lifting her from the ground.
Carin closed her eyes, trying not to allow the swaying of her body in the hands of these strangers to make her ill again. After a short distance that seemed to take as long as crossing the Mad Mountains, they laid her down on a pallet. Someone touched a damp cloth to her face. A loud moan a moment later told her Ryd had been brought in, and she opened her eyes at the sound of shuffling clothing to see him deposited next to her. Ras came next. The air smelled sickly sweet and at once sharp, and Carin’s throat convulsed on the urge to throw up again.
The villagers murmured still, or perhaps spoke at normal volumes that simply felt muted to Carin’s wool-packed head.
When she opened her eyes again, the light had changed, angling into the small dwelling from a different direction. Jen sat beside her, waterskins lain out around her. Carin tried to roll to one side and failed.
Jen lifted a hand to make her stay her movement, unstoppering one of the waterskins and giving it a sniff. She did the same with each of the others, then took small sips from each. Nodding in satisfaction, she then began mixing the water between the skins, pouring some from one to another, always leaving one of them to the side without combining any of the others with it. It was that skin she brought to Carin’s lips after several moments, tilting Carin’s head back to help her drink.
Carin tried to shake her head, sending water dribbling down her chin, but Jen made an alarmed sound and she stopped. The woman’s eyes were dark and bright, like the chunks of shiny black rock sometimes found in the mountains near Cantoranth. They made arrowheads out of them sometimes.
Jen’s eyes met hers, almost pleading, and Carin understood. The taste of the water finally coated her tongue, and she knew. This water was the water they had brought with them out of the pass. The other skins had been partially filled with it, and this was the only remaining full one. She allowed Jen to tip the water down her throat and drank.
It felt like a river’s worth, but Carin knew it had to only be a trickle. She fell back on the pallet, her muscles feeling as though they had been pummeled with her mother’s hammer against an anvil. Jen did the same for both Ryd and Ras, who barely woke enough to drink. Why Carin was awake and alert, she didn’t know. She had drunk as much of the water as either of the others.
Jen said something a moment later, and Carin twitched when she realized Jen was speaking to her. Slowly. Carefully. Taking the time to draw out each word.
Carin closed her eyes and listened.
Jen repeated herself, and Carin motioned with her left hand for the other woman to do it again.
The sounds were different than she was used to, but the words…she had never given much thought to words before, not much at all, but as she listened to Jen repeating herself over and over, Carin remembered a time when, as a child, Rina had taken her to Bemin’s Fan. There she had played with other children, and she remembered that they spoke of different things than did her playmates in Haveranth. They had words they used that she did not understand, words of the sea and of beaches and shells and sand. Could the cycles spent on opposite sides of the mountains have slowly changed their words to sound differently? To mean different things? What would Dyava think of this?
For a moment, Carin thought of her distant lover, his curiosity and his constant optimism. He would be forgetting Carin’s existence even then, but she could remember his.
She listened with new ears then, hoping for some glimmer of meaning.
“Lah,” Jen said insistently. Then a word Carin couldn’t quite make out. Then again, “Lah, lu Lahgirtan. Lu Lahg-irtan.”
And Carin felt understanding wash over her like the waves of the Bemin. Lah, that was water. Jen pronounced it with a wider sound than did the Hearthlanders, her mouth open and the word hovering at the top of it, in the hollow above her tongue. Lu, that was in. And Lahgirtan, Carin got it. She knew. Jen was saying something about the water in Lahgirtan, which meant…bog? A “wet land”?
Carin pulled her head off the pallet and looked at Jen. “Lah lu Lahgirtan,” she repeated back.
Jen sat back on her heels, relief crossing her face. She touched the water in the skin she had just given Carin to drink. “Lah lu Haverant.” She pronounced Haveranth just slightly wrong, but Carin felt a flash of triumph in spite of the weakness in her body.
Even though the water in the skin wasn’t from Haveranth at all, Carin knew precisely what Jen was trying to say. The water from home was safe for her. Water from here, or from Lahgirtan—it was not. Carin looked at the other skins and then understood why Jen had mixed them so carefully. Following Carin’s gaze, Jen touched the second skin and put her hands close together. Then the third and put them farther apart. Then the fourth, then the fifth, until by the sixth her hands spanned the whole of the waterskin.
Sometimes in early planting time in Haveranth, the villagers would go to the Bemin in the pale hours of morning and wade into the water. If one went in all at once, the water could shock the body and cause pain. So a little at a time, they would push their feet into the cold currents, then to the knees, then to the thighs, then hips and gasp as the water touched their sensitive middles, then deeper until finally they would submerge themselves in the water.
The water in the skins, that was like wading in.
She met Jen’s eyes with as much gratitude as she could muster, and then Carin let sleep take her.
• • • • •
Recovery took the next two turns, and there were more bouts of sickness on the way. Jen painstakingly fed Carin from the waterskins, sometimes speaking quickly and quietly even though she knew Carin could not understand the words. Carin didn’t need to; she understood the meaning. Without water, Carin would die. Vigil Moon was nearly fat in the sky when Carin finally felt well enough to walk a full circuit around the village. Each day Jen, or Tinan or Tinan’s bond-mate, Valyr va Sandyu, would come into the dwelling and speak slowly to the Hearthlanders, and after two turns of it, day in and day out, Carin was starting to be able to understand, though sometimes it felt as though she were walking blindly across a log and stumbled when she least expected it.
She walked with Tinan one day, Tinan’s arm supporting her only a little as they made laps around Suonlys. For a while she listened to Tinan, who spoke of growing up with Jen to the north, of meeting Valyr, of falling in love. It made Carin think again of Dyava, and when she fell silent and distant, Tinan seemed to sense it and grew quiet.
Dyava. The thought of him still made Carin’s heart feel fragile, like the glass from Bemin’s Fan. And Lyah and Jenin. She couldn’t bring herself to think of Lyah. Listening to Tinan speak felt a bit like being curled up in a chair near her mother’s hearth as a child, listening to adults talk about boring adult things, but only hearing the words through the haze of home and warmth and soft dimness. She now understood the words more often than not, but they felt thick and heavy to her, as if she couldn’t quite hear them with clarity.
She needed to find the stones the ialtag had mentioned, and she wasn’t sure how to go about it or how they would find help. Having left those enormous white bats behind, if Ryd and Ras had not also remembered them, Carin would have thought she had simply dreamed those turns in the cave with the ialtag far above gazing down and those below alternating curiosity and urgent teaching. She made no mention of the ialtag to the villagers of Suonlys.
