Farseed, page 13
There was no sign that any of her people had been here, either, and no reason for them to have concealed any evidence that they had come back to this region. When approaching these hills, she had always waited near the marsh until night, wanting to be certain that she could not be seen or her presence sensed, but had never seen any sign of a fire or heard the sound of human voices in the darkness. She told herself that by now, her father had to believe that she was dead, but if he was still in the grip of his rages and moods, she could not predict what he would do.
He might be looking for her now. If Belen came with him, she would have to be even more careful. She wondered if she could remain still enough to keep Belen from finding her, from sensing that she was nearby.
She picked up the sack that held her dried fish and tied it to her back, then left the cave, heading west, toward the marshlands where the river flowed into the sea. The swamp, thick with reeds and floating mats of green fibers and oily mud under the brown waters, no longer repulsed her, although she remained wary whenever she crossed it. She still hated the way that the mud oozed against her feet, making her feel as though it might suck her under the water. The mire pulled at her, forcing her to move slowly, every step an effort.
But she was safer on the other side of the marsh and away from the sea. One of the first things Ho had told her was to stay away from the marsh, that there were too many places where a person might get trapped and sink into the mud, but she had quickly found ways through the swamp as a child and was always careful to keep to the same routes. The other side of the marsh had been a place for her to hide for a while whenever Ho was either raging or brooding, to hear her own thoughts without the emotions of others leaking into her mind. Her father was unlikely to cross the marsh to discover the refuge she had made for herself and the two people she had found all those months ago.
Nuy had discovered the two strangers among the giant shells of the caves where her people had once lived. The two had endured the full power of the sudden storm that had blown in from the sea; it was a wonder they had survived at all. They had lost their horse and, with the animal, some of their supplies, saving only a small pot and two of their packs. The wind had struck with such force that the man had been swept off his feet and dashed against a wall of rock. Nearly blinded by the wind and rain, and supporting her companion, the woman had somehow managed to get both of them inside a cave that faced northwest, away from the storm.
The woman had told Nuy all of that only later, but Nuy guessed at some of what had happened as soon as she found the pair. The man was propped against the shiny pink and blue-green wall of the cave, a pack under his head, his right leg bound between two of the thick hard reeds that grew along the riverbank. The woman stood at his side, her weapon aimed at Nuy, and their horse was nowhere in sight.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” the woman said, “but I’ll shoot if I have to.” Her brown hair was plastered against her head and neck; her greenish eyes were wild. “You can understand me, can’t you?”
Nuy nodded. “Yes.” She wondered why the stranger would think that she wouldn’t be able to understand her.
“You must be one of Ho’s group,” the woman said, “one of their children, from the looks of you.”
Nuy said, “I’m Ho’s daughter.”
The woman drew in her breath. “What’s your name? Where are the rest of your people? What are you doing with Chiang’s horse?”
“You ask too many questions at once.” Nuy led the black horse inside, careful not to make any sudden movements.
The man tugged at his beard. “What are you called?” he asked her.
“Nuy. Nuy the daughter of Ho.”
“And your mother?” the woman asked.
“My mother’s dead. I never knew her, because she died when I was still small. My father never told me her name and neither did anyone else. Katti says that speaking the names of the dead brings bad luck, but I never believed her. Not saying their names didn’t always keep bad luck away.” Once Nuy had thought that her father had missed her mother too much to be able to speak her name, that it would have pained him too deeply to say it, but after a while she had come to believe that he had simply forgotten it. Too many things had escaped his memory over the years, almost everything except his fears, his resentments, and his hatreds.
Nuy let go of the horse’s reins, untied the packs from its back and set them on the ground, then sat down and folded her legs under herself, sitting on her heels. The horse retreated toward the back of the cave.
Nuy said, “You don’t have to keep aiming that thing at me.”
The woman lowered her arm.
“What’s your name?” Nuy asked.
“My name is Bonnie,” the woman answered, “and this is Tonio. He broke his leg.”
Nuy peered at the splint. “Looks like you set it straight.”
“Of course I set it straight,” the woman said.
“Owen broke his left arm once,” Nuy said, “and Eyela showed me how to set it. You’d never know there was ever anything wrong with his arm now.”
“Where are the rest of them?” the man named Tonio asked. “The rest of your people, I mean.”
Nuy considered what to say to him. Sooner or later, she would have to tell them that their companion was dead and that if her people came upon Bonnie and Tonio, they would most likely kill them as well. She would have to say that her father had cast her out. She wondered how much of that they could take in at once.
“My people don’t live here now,” she replied. “We lived here for a while, but then a great storm came and my father decided that it wasn’t safe to live here anymore, so we moved inland.”
“Then why did you come here?” the woman called Bonnie asked.
“I was looking for you,” Nuy said. “The man I found said you would come here sooner or later.”
“Where is Chiang?” The woman’s voice was higher now, and harsher. “What happened to him? How did you get his horse?”
Nuy pressed her hands against the fronts of her thighs. “Say nothing to me until I’m finished, or this will be even harder for me to say.” Slowly, choosing her words carefully, she told the two about how she had followed Chiang, hoping only to lead him to her people, and how he had died. She kept her words simple, not telling them how their friend had looked after his death, his body scarred and bloodied by the spear that had killed him.
Bonnie was still as Nuy spoke, not saying a word, but tears were streaming down her face by the time Nuy had finished. Tonio covered his eyes with one hand.
“I am most sorry for this,” Nuy said. “I knew that my father was angry and troubled, but I didn’t know that he was so afraid of your people that he would seek the death of your comrade. I warned him away too late, and even then, I didn’t think that he would—” She swallowed. “Please believe me. If I had known such harm would come to your friend, I would never have led him there.”
“You’re sure,” Bonnie said in a strained voice. “You’re certain he’s dead.”
Nuy nodded. “Yes.”
Tonio let his hand fall. “But why?” he asked. “Why would Ho be so frightened of Chiang?”
“He’s afraid of anyone from the north. Years ago, two of my people went north to trade with you and when they came back, they brought death with them, a fever and a heaviness in the chest that made their lungs fill with water. I escaped that fever, but others did not. That’s why Ho was afraid of your friend. He believed that the man might be bringing us death. Maybe he would have settled for driving him off, but he had fallen into the stream and maybe my father needed to be certain that he was dead, that he couldn’t harm any of his people. That’s why he drove me away, too.”
“Drove you away?” Bonnie lifted a hand to her throat, fingering her necklace of small bright stones nervously.
“Because now he thinks I may be carrying death, too, because I was with your friend.”
“That’s crazy.” The woman called Bonnie had a stunned and empty look on her face.
“My father’s thoughts have been very troubled for a long time, and now there are only twelve of us left.” Nuy paused, wondering if she could still count herself as one of her father’s people. “Eleven besides me.” She opened her hands. “Here it is. I’ll do what I can to keep you alive, but when you are able to travel, I beg you to take me north to your people. After that, I must try to make my way back here to find two of my people, those to whom I am most tightly bound, but I won’t ask any of your people to come back with me. I only want to learn whatever I can from you and then bring whatever little I might need back with me to help my friends. And if they won’t come north with me, at least I will have tried to help them.”
Would Carin and Sarojin welcome her back? Would Belen have come to miss her enough to treat her more kindly, as he had when they were children? Or would they all have become as mad as her father, convinced that she was bringing death to them? She refused to believe that. The three of them, if not the adults, would have to know as soon as they saw her that she was incapable of bringing death to them.
“I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to travel,” Tonio said. “It isn’t just my leg. I think my head might be affected.” He looked at the woman from the sides of his eyes. “I didn’t want to mention this before, but my head is throbbing and I’m feeling dizzy, too. Even if my leg heals enough so that I can ride, and that would probably take at least two months if not longer, I don’t know if I could even stay on a horse.”
“You have to rest,” Bonnie said, “and then you’ll get better.”
“And by then we’ll be that much shorter of food.” Tonio closed his eyes for a moment. “If this girl’s willing to travel with you, I suggest that you both head north as soon as possible and leave me here.”
“No,” Bonnie said, “I won’t leave you.” The woman was being careless and foolish, but Nuy found herself warming to Bonnie for so quickly rejecting her companion’s suggestion.
“The longer you stay here,” Tonio said, “the worse your chance of making it back to the settlements. You won’t have enough food, and you’ll also have to deal with colder weather at the other end less than two months from now. If you go now, you might just be able to make it.”
“I’m not leaving you, Tonio.”
The man smiled weakly. “You’re a better friend to me than I deserve.”
Bonnie smiled back at him, but there was a sad look in her eyes. “Let’s not talk about this any more.”
Nuy glanced from the woman to the man. Her best chance might be to wait until these two were asleep, then to take the horse and all of the supplies and leave here by herself. She knew from what little Owen and Katti had said that they had gone west to the river and then followed it upstream when they had gone north to trade, and perhaps she could find out from Bonnie and Tonio if there was anything else she ought to know about how to reach their settlement safely.
That thought repulsed her. She had led one of these people to his death, however unknowingly; she would not leave the others here to die. She would not deserve to be taken in by their people if she abandoned them.
“I can help you,” Nuy said, “and then later, you can help me.”
“You’d be better off leaving right now,” Tonio said.
Nuy shook her head. “What kind of welcome would I get from your people if I have to go to them and say that I let you die? It’s bad enough that your friend is gone because of me. He’ll haunt me if I don’t do what I can for you.”
“But how can you help us?” Bonnie asked.
“I can find food for you, and I can keep my people from finding you, because if they do, make no mistake, they’ll kill you.” Nuy paused, wanting them to understand that much right away. There was no point in saying that it might be Ho and Owen and Daniella who would most want them dead and that the others might be more hesitant to take their lives. Owen would do whatever Ho wanted, Gerd and Zareb were as loyal to him as the dogs her people used to have, Belen might grow even more hardened against kindness and mercy, and Katti and Eyela would not stand up to her father or try to stop him.
“Someone may come for us,” Tonio said. “If we’re not back by the time the cold season comes, they might send someone south to look for us.” Nuy knew little about Tonio’s people, but even she heard the lack of conviction in his voice; he sounded as though he was trying to convince himself as much as her.
“We’ll be safe enough here for now,” Nuy said. Her father’s fears would keep him away from this place for a while, even though he might have guessed that this was a place where she might hide. She could only hope that he would not send Belen to search for her; it would be harder for her to hide from him.
They were close enough to the river for Nuy to fetch water for them easily, and near enough to the sea that she could go down to the shore in the morning to see what fish the early tide had washed onto the sand. Dry gourds shed by the boltrees, brush, and dried horse droppings provided fuel for their fire, although they made a fire only when they needed one to cook some of their food. They did not need a fire to warm themselves, and she had never seen any bears, big cats, or wolves near the area that bordered the sea; the cats and wolves preferred to hunt inland where there was more prey. Nuy also did not want to risk any chance of alerting her father to their presence. He would probably not look for her here, but there was always the chance that he or others of her people might come back to forage nearby.
Bonnie and Tonio taught her how to make flat pieces of bread from the powdery substance called flour, and how to cook beans in the pot, but they ate as sparingly as they could from the few supplies they had left. The dried fruit and meat would keep, and the fish Nuy collected could sustain them for a while, although Bonnie worried that they could not live that way for very long.
“It’s because we’re not native to this world,” Bonnie explained, “because we came here from somewhere else. This fish can fill our stomachs so that we don’t feel hungry, but I don’t know how much actual nourishment it’ll provide. If we ate nothing but the fish and whatever plants might be edible, we could feel as though we’ve eaten enough even while we’re slowly starving ourselves.”
Nuy shook her head, not sure that she understood. The fish had always satisfied her own hunger, sometimes for many days when there was nothing else to eat, but her people had not survived only on fish even when they had been living near the sea. Deer could be hunted farther inland, one could make do with rabbits and rits, and there were the birds and eggs that could occasionally be found near streams and pools. Even though the great storm had swept most of those birds away from the coops where her people had kept them, a few of the freed birds had managed to survive along the river.
“So we’ll have to conserve our food,” Bonnie continued, “make it last as long as possible, but with any luck, maybe we won’t have to wait too long. Within a month—in about thirty days, our people will expect us to be back. Thirty days after that, they’ll begin to worry about us, and not long after that, they’ll have to be wondering what’s happened. And then they’ll send someone out to look for us.”
“And by then,” Tonio added from where he lay, “maybe I’ll be able to travel, if I can stay on that horse. And you’ll come with us.” Tonio’s head was propped against an empty pack, and he was still unable to sit up for long without feeling disoriented or nauseated, but perhaps that would pass.
Nuy spent one day guiding Bonnie down to the river with the horse, showing her where the water was fresh enough for the animal to drink. Farther down, where the river ran into the marshlands, the water was brackish and the footing treacherous, and the horse might be injured if it fell among the thick hard reeds. When Nuy’s people had still had horses, they had lost three of them that way, and Bonnie and the horse would be safer staying near the caves, hidden by the rise on which they stood from anybody who might be approaching from the east.
For several days, the two northerners alternated between high-spirited hopes that some of their people might already be on their way to search for them and darker moods when they thought of their dead comrade. Nuy shared neither their hopes nor their sadness. She had mourned for Chiang and deeply regretted her own part in his death, but there was nothing she could do to change that, and hoping for anything meant looking too far ahead.
Twenty-eight days after Nuy had found Bonnie and Tonio, she returned to the cave with fish to find Bonnie sitting outside the opening, her head bowed, and knew immediately that something was wrong. She sniffed at the air and realized that the horse was gone even before Bonnie told her that the animal had escaped.
“It’s my fault,” Bonnie muttered as they both entered the cave. “Something startled her, something moving in the grass, and before I could get a grip on the reins, they slipped out of my hands. I should have been more careful, I know.”
“Did you go after the horse?” Nuy asked, keeping her voice as low and calm as possible.
“Of course I did, but every time I got close to her, she’d run off again, and after a while she was so far away that I couldn’t go after her. I waited as long as I dared, but she kept running, getting farther and farther away from me, and finally I couldn’t see her at all.”
Nuy did not know what to say. Tonio, lying near the banked fire, was silent, but his dark eyes were angry. His rage might have been directed at Bonnie, but perhaps he was also furious with himself for being so helpless.
“She might come back,” Bonnie said. “When we go to get more water, maybe we’ll find her.”
“And maybe we won’t,” Nuy said bitterly.
“Maybe that’s just as well,” Bonnie went on. “She’ll have more of the green grass to graze on farther north. There isn’t as much of it near here, not the paler green or the darker green grass, so I don’t know how much longer she would have lasted here, with only the yellow grass.”
Nuy stood there, still holding her small sack of fish. There was only a small chance that her father would find the horse, but if he did, he would probably recognize it as Chiang’s horse, especially if the bridle was still around its head. There was an even smaller chance that he might decide to track the horse, to find out where it had come from. Even a very small chance that Ho might come after her sooner rather than later was not something to welcome, and if Belen came with him, it would be even harder for her to hide herself and her companions from them.
