The Roads of Taryn MacTavish, page 62
part #3 of Lords of Arcadia Series
That way is best.” He glanced at her, shrugged again. “Our lord wishes to show you that he is no animal and so he will show you changes. But the ways that work for Farasai and Cerosan do not work for lycan. The Land of Tooth and Claw is not the Valley. Choice is a luxury for a gentler place. That place is not here. Wait.”
He stopped, raising one hand to halt her as well. His head lifted, slowly turned as he scented the air. His ears moved rapidly, focused, then slowly rotated back. He folded gracefully onto all fours, motioned for her to follow, and then eased on ahead.
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Getting low to the ground wasn’t much of an option for Taryn. She managed to hunker down a bit, keeping herself behind a screen of berry bushes and broadleaf trees, but she took only another dozen steps before he signaled for her to stop again. Then he pointed. Taryn grappled with a tree trunk and his shoulder to get to her knees, then peered through the tight interlace of thorns and twiggy branches, her mind whirling with possibilities. She saw them at once, recognized them at once, and then every thought she could ever have froze under a blanket of numbing mental snow.
Some fifty meters away, a cave had been set into the wall. Set was indeed the operative word, although she had no idea how it was managed or who could have constructed an enclosure like this on such a massive scale. But all she needed to see were the creatures to suddenly see that this place, everything the walls contained, had been carefully designed to keep them. The over-abundance of fruit trees and berry bushes, all planted. The rich tracks of game, all brought in from outside whenever the interior stock ran low. The splashing streams, like the cave itself and the too-sheer walls it had been set into, all manufactured, provided for them. They never go as far as the doors, Alorak had said, and why would they? All their needs were met right here.
It was a good design, a prize-winning habitat that would be admired by any zoo. The slopes leading from the ground up to the cave were shallow and deliberately roughened to provide easy footing and good traction even in snow.
Paths worn by many bare feet made a rosette that connected cave with stream with bushes with trees. And it was such a nice cave, so broad, so sturdy-looking, not at all dank or menacing. It seemed to her that she could see many sub-chambers inside the cave, but it was dark and the cave only held her interest at all because the creatures around it were so horrible to her senses.
Horrible, but not because of any monstrous appearance. They were short; the tallest of them might reach her shoulder, but most fell well below even that. Their bodies were squat, thick-boned, and even the females were wrapped in layers of powerful muscles. They were naked except for a thin covering of coarse, springy hair. They had broad, fleshy noses and wide mouths home to blunt, bad teeth. So they were ugly, but not horrible.
And they weren’t horrible for anything they did. There weren’t many of them, two dozen at most, including the handful of children. They were mostly just lying around taking the sun, well-fed and nicely-hydrated and satisfied with doing nothing at all. One of them, the biggest male, was chipping at some stones, hunched far over to protect his genitals from shrapnel, so that he was nearly working over his own ankles. He had another flake of rock in his mouth and as he worked, he rolled it from one side to the other in a distracted, contented sort of way. Two of the females were working leather. By their sizes, Taryn guessed one was the other’s mother and this was some sort of teaching exercise, although no words were exchanged. They had removed the hair somehow 482
already and cut or ripped the hides into thick strips, but for the moment they used no tools other than their own bodies, chewing along the edges and jutting out their lower jaws to pull the whole strip back and forth rapidly over their teeth, turning now and then to spit bloody fat and other scraped material indifferently onto the ground. Another female sprawled nearby, playing with a broken branch.
She had eaten all the berries off it and now lay swatting lazily at herself—her thighs, her belly, her palms, her face, her breasts—not to chase flies but just, apparently, because she liked the sensation. Her skin was bright red and deeply lined with the almost-welts caused by this fun game, but she showed no signs of stopping anytime soon.
As Taryn stared, the one knapping stone abruptly hit a fault. The rock in his hand shattered and he flinched back, smacking at his face and sneezing. Then he sat up, glared furiously at his empty hand, and suddenly he was on his feet and raging. He howled and barked and spat, but managed to keep the bit of rock he carried in his mouth clamped tightly at the corner of his lips like the stubby end of a cigar. He jumped around, stomping on each and every shard of broken stone he saw, but none of them cut the soles of his filthy feet, which Taryn guessed had to be hard as hooves by now. And throughout his temper tantrum, none of the others even looked around. Most didn’t even open their eyes. Perhaps sensing that he wasn’t impressing anyone, he soon stopped and stood grunting to himself and glaring at the others. His eye lit on the one with the branch and his hand dropped to rub moodily at his penis. He stomped over and announced his intention with a solid kick to her thigh. She, indifferent, swatted lazily at him with her branch.
Alorak touched Taryn’s arm. She didn’t move, couldn’t move. She stared in horrified fascination as the male first slapped at the branch and then grabbed the female and flung her violently onto her belly. She didn’t resist, but he punched her anyway, barking and spitting again, entering her in one savage thrust. The female picked at the twiggy ends of her branch, nibbled at a few, and swatted at her face with it, completely unaffected by what was happening to her.
When it was done, the male got up grumbling and stalked back to where he had been sitting. He knuckled at a few bits of stone, picked up a large flake and then a broad wedge, and sat down. He hunched over, settled his elbows on his knees, and started chipping.
It wasn’t a damn thing like Jane Auel said.
Alorak pulled at her arm again. Taryn backed away from the bush and tried to stand, but she had no strength. She looked at him helplessly. He was smiling.
He lifted her, not just up and onto her feet, but all the way into his arms.
He carried her swiftly and silently away and she clutched at him until her hands ached.
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“Your wise men are correct,” he said, setting her down at a distance.
“They do not adapt well. Everything must be provided for them. I cannot imagine how many died before they learned to eat Arcadian fruit.”
“W-what…How did they…?”
“The Great God Pan brought them here. They were being kept on Avalon, by the humans there. I suppose they must have thought they would make good slaves, for they are strong and fit enough in their own way. Perhaps they were kept only for bloodsports, or mere vanity, because they look so similar to humans.”
“No, they…they all died…”
“When Pan heard of them, he brought them here, all that he could safely take, and had a home built for them.”
“That isn’t what happened!” Taryn shouted, and clamped a shaking hand over her mouth, staring wildly around at the trees.
Alorak was smiling again. His tail swept slowly back and forth as he walked. “What do your wise men say happened to the other people of Earth?” he asked gently. “Was it sudden? Was there a progression of many peoples slowly changing into those we have just seen? Was there such a progression for your own kind, or did they just appear?”
Taryn shook her head, but not in answer, and he knew it.
“The dragons opened the first Roads, they say, but when the humans learned of their making, they were quick to carve their own. They found many worlds—”
“No!”
“Among them, your Earth.”
“No!”
Alorak moved past her and opened the doors. He pulled her, stumbling, through and shut them into darkness. When the doors were barred and the zoo closed away, he came to her again, finding her effortlessly in the blackness. His breath on her face tasted of blood.
“Earth was seeded with humankind, as were hundreds of other worlds.
Then the Mage Wars divided them, shattered the old Roads. Earth was abandoned, then forgotten. When the Wars ended, it was nothing more than another rumor in books no one read. Thousands and thousands of years went by before Avalon found a way back to your Earth, and by then, they found their people ignorant of their origins and their conquered world filled with gods.”
“Oh please, this can’t be true!”
“Avalon brooks no competition. The gods were slain, scattered. Some came here. Most died. And in that war, the Roads were once more broken.
Your Earth became one of the Remembered Realms, yet one that remains, for the moment, unreachable.”
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Taryn tried to push out of his grip, but he would not allow it. He did, however, open the outer doors, bringing light in stinging spears back into her dark world. He let her stagger away from him then, but he held his hand out in open invitation. Overprotective Alorak. Supportive Alorak.
“The Great God Pan knew the doom of his kind, and of all kinds that humans encounter. He found the last Road to Arcadia and brought all he could find to the safety of this world. He did not declare which should stay behind, which were fit to live or die. He brought them all. And when he saw that Earth’s last people could not make their own way, he had this place built for them, and made the High Pack their stewards. Without us, the last true peoples of Earth would perish.”
“True people,” Taryn echoed hoarsely, almost choking on the words.
She wanted to tell him that she was Earth’s true people, that there were bones and tools and things that proved it, but she couldn’t. What was proof, really? Men saw what they wanted to see, proved what they wanted to see proved. The truth was here, inside this secret cage, and it was greater than whole museums full of fossils.
“These are the children of Earth,” Alorak said, staring down into her eyes. “You are one of Avalon’s.”
She had to listen now. She was too tired not to. But Alorak seemed to be finished. He watched her as she stood limp and trembling before him, and finally he came to touch her arm.
“You needed to see them,” he told her quietly. “My father would rather keep you ignorant of your nature. I do not know why. Perhaps it is because you already seem so powerful. Perhaps he is afraid that you might seek more, if you knew there was more within you to find. Wizards have come here in the past.”
He sent a brooding look over his shoulder, staring through the trees in the direction of the Valley, then shrugged and looked back down at her. “But I believe that you have been honest with us all this time. I believe you deserve honesty from us.”
She nodded once, listless and cold.
Alorak looked up, measuring the sun. “Are you ready to descend?”
She nodded again, still silent. He offered his arm. She took it. After a while, that arm moved to enfold her shoulders. She leaned in close, grateful for the warmth of his contact. They didn’t speak, but she could sense his smile.
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84. Confrontation
Taryn was not aware of the return journey except as colors passing before her eyes. She remembered no rests, no conversation. She remembered no clear thoughts, only a sickening weight in her heart and a few fractured images—
the overgrown and ancient outer wall, the male Neanderthal kicking the female, the hoofprints worn into the passage of the enclosure, the female idly swatting herself in the face with her branch. The Great God Pan had brought them here.
The lycan were made their guardians. The last true people of Earth were being kept by werewolves in a private zoo.
She was aware, very vaguely, of another lycan appearing in their path and of his ear-splitting howl, answered on seemingly every side. She didn’t bother to stop or look around, but just kept following Alorak until they came to the clearing at the center of High Pack. There, she had to stop, because there Kruin leapt down and seized her.
“Where have you been?”
He did not shout when he was angriest. His voice was scarcely audible and scarcely coherent beneath his quiet snarl. He was furious.
And so, suddenly, was she.
She slapped his hands off her and shoved him back into a group of wolves gone still as stone. “You keep your damn hands off me!” she heard herself say. “I can go wherever the hell I want to.”
Kruin’s head slowly turned until it faced Alorak, but it was a long time yet before his eyes moved from Taryn to stare down his son. He said nothing.
His broad chest began to show each breath more and more clearly, but all in silence.
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It was Sangar who finally spoke, nervously and from a distance, as if she did not quite dare to be present. “No one knew where you had gone. We…I was worried.”
“I was taking a walk.” Taryn took a single angry step forward, glaring up into Kruin’s stony face. “Want to guess what I saw?”
Kruin did not so much as glance at her, but he said (still very softly and heavily overscored with growls), “Get to my den.”
“Kiss my Irish ass.” She started to march around him.
She saw the pack scatter back an instant before Kruin’s hand clamped over her arm. He wrenched her around, his eyes blazing and teeth bared mere inches from her face.
“You were given to me, human.”
“And I can walk away any time!” she shot back, and shoved.
It was like shoving a tree. He remained exactly where he was and the only effect she had showed itself in a further flattening of his ears.
“Go to my den at once.”
“Why don’t you just build a wall around me and keep me there?”
His nostrils flared and the next thing she knew, the world had spun around and she was being towed backwards up the slope to his cave. She spent two seconds stunned to inaction, then punched him for three seconds more, and ended up carried the rest of the way with her arms pinned irrevocably to her sides. She screamed. She wanted to swear at him, but all she could think to call him was a son of a bitch and she didn’t think that was very insulting, all things considered. So she just screamed, and the most infuriating thing about it was that all her screaming seemed to accomplish was a sore throat. One of the Fringes they passed even laughed at her. Taryn heaved her legs up and kicked that one in the chops, which made a lot more of them laugh, but didn’t make her feel any better at all.
Darkness swallowed her. Kruin lugged her to his furs and set her down, not too jarringly, which proved that no matter how angry he might be, he was not unmindful of her condition. “Must I bind you?” he asked.
She slapped him.
He took two strong breaths, returned his eyes to hers and said again,
“Must I bind you?”
She yanked herself away from him, tears blurring the sight of his burning eyes. “Was it fun?” she demanded. “Listening to me talk about my world when you knew—” Her voice broke. She covered her mouth as if she could hold the sobs in physically, then rounded on him again. “You knew the whole time!”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“To what purpose?” He stared her down coldly, unmoved.
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“You wanted to keep me ignorant!” she spat. “Is that it? Did you think that if I knew I was really one of…” Her mouth twisted soundlessly, unable to find the words she needed. She could see only the magus in her mind, the son of Mab, the evil blight that had pursued her so single-mindedly, hurt and killed so many, ruined so much. Her ragged breath became a cry and she shouted, “—that I would just magically turn into a wizard? That I would march straight down to the Standing Stones and come back to kill you!”
His eyes narrowed at the mention of that place, but not with confusion or surprise.
“You didn’t trust me! You didn’t trust me because I’m human!”
He did not reply.
“Get out.” Taryn twisted away, bracing her hands on the cave wall and squeezing her wet eyes shut. “I can stay here, but I can’t look at you right now.
Get out.”
She thought he must have done so, but as the first sobs shook out of her, she felt his hand brush at her neck. She slapped out blindly and this time, he left her.
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85. It Changes Things
She spent the rest of the day alone in Kruin’s den, wallowing in an emotional mire of self-pity, confusion, and anger, all of which ran together to make an exhausting boredom. Graal came in twice with food and both times, Taryn ignored it. Sangar came in the third time, left her bit of roasted meat beside the other untouched offerings, and then came to sit beside Taryn.
“You have to eat something.”
“I can’t. I’ll throw up.”
“Are you ill?”
“No.”
Sangar picked a tieneedle off the freshest piece of meat, waved flies off the others, and finally looked at her. “Shika is gone. He was punished and now he is gone.”
“Was he the one that…You know what? I don’t even care.” Taryn sighed. “Just leave me alone, Sangar.”
Sangar didn’t retreat. She inched closer, scratched at her splint, and finally put an arm around her shoulders. “What’s the matter?” she murmured.
“I give up, that’s what’s the matter. I give up. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I don’t know why I bother trying. I don’t want to be here. I never wanted to be here, but I thought it was about building trust. And clearly, it’s not. So I give up. You can all do whatever you want. I just don’t care anymore.”
Sangar licked at her throat. Taryn wiped it away with the back of her hand. She sensed rather than saw Sangar’s flinch. The wolfish arms went away.
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Taryn couldn’t bring herself to call her back. She found a corner to curl up in away from everyone else and closed her eyes.
