Five
“MANY OF THE OLD BELIEVERS have come to us, those from the cities, especially.” Yaro led the way down a steep and rocky path to a stream running along the bottom of a narrow vale. They were only over the ridge from the Caid ruins, but with the snow falling the previous afternoon, the stream had been easy to miss. Dhulyn followed closely, carrying the empty water bags and taking care not to crowd Koba, the Racha bird balancing on the Cloudwoman’s shoulder.
Koba cocked his head, and shook it slightly from side to side. “True,” Yaro said, in answer to some remark only she could hear. “Those who were content to stay in their shrines and hold their tongues were left there; especially the unimportant shrines, which held no relic of the god. But since the priest Beslyn-Tor has become head of the Jaldean sect-” Yaro stopped and turned to face Dhulyn. “You know there are others besides us Clouds who follow exclusively the Sleeping God?”
Dhulyn nodded. More than half the soldiers she’d fought with were followers of the warrior god, praying before each battle that if they should fall, they might sleep with him until they were needed again.
“Things have changed with the Jaldeans since Beslyn-Tor became their head, up there in Gotterang. They’re saying he’s been touched by the god, knows things he cannot know, and sees more than a man can see. And there are others who have been visited in the same way.” Yaro reached the water, and her Racha bird dropped off her shoulder to perch on a nearby rock. Yaro crouched at the edge of a small pool, dipping up the cold water into her hand and tasting it, smacking her lips with pleasure. “And there are many new priests now.”
Dhulyn set the water bags down next to Yaro, and passed the Cloudwoman the first one. “And what do they do, these new priests?”
“Preach against the Marked, as far as any of us can make out,” Yaro said as she maneuvered the opening of the first water bag under the surface of the pond. “This new heresy you say you’ve heard from the Finder in Navra-he reached us, by the way, we heard by Racha from Langeron-the Sleeping God must be kept asleep, our safety lies in his unbroken dreaming, and the Marked are the incarnation of evil in the world, trying to awaken the god and destroy us all. That nonsense.”
“But the armies would rebel-”
“And are being told they’re already the soldiers of the god, already fighting to keep the world safe.”
Dhulyn frowned, rubbing her temples with her fingertips. “We are more sensible in the southern ice,” she said. “The Sun and the Moon are always with you, the Weather gods, and the gods of the Hunt and the Herd.”
“We’re not so changeable here in the Clouds either.” Yaro exchanged her full bag for the next empty one. “We’ll keep to the old ways.”
Dhulyn waited until the third bag was filled, and then the fourth, before sitting down next to the Racha bird; Koba blinked at her companionably. Yaro pushed the stopper into the final water bag, dried her hands by running them through her hair, settled herself on a patch of last year’s grasses, and leaned back on her elbows, legs stretched out before her.
Dhulyn leaned forward. “You spoke of the old ways, Brother,” she said. “I must ask you…” She tapped her own face, indicating where the tattoos marked Yaro’s. The Cloudwoman lowered her eyes, nodding. After a moment she looked up again, but not at Dhulyn, at her Racha bird. Koba turned his head, returning her look first with one eye, then the other, before nodding in turn.
Yaro sat up, crossing her legs and resting her hands on her knees.
“I lost my first Racha,” she said. Her eyes unfocused, as if she no longer saw the world around her-the stream, the pool, and Dhulyn Wolfshead-but the past. Koba left his perch next to Dhulyn and half flew, half hopped until he was beside Yaro, crooning deep in his throat, a keening sound. “I was very young, and I found him, you see, fallen from the nest.”
Dhulyn made a querying note in her own throat and Yaro glanced at her. “It does happen,” she said. “Rarely, but it happens. Perhaps too many chicks hatch, perhaps there is a shortage of food that season, and one chick or more is pushed or falls from the nest.”
“But the trial,” Dhulyn said. “I thought for the bond to form, there had to be a trial?” That was why bonding with a Racha was usually part of the Life Passage.
“I saved him from a wolf,” Yaro said. She breathed deeply in through her nose and, blinking, turned to the living bird beside her and smiled. Koba rubbed his hooked beak against her right cheek.
“That was considered enough of a trial, you see, and we were bonded.” Yaro cleared her throat. “We were two months together,” she tapped the faded tattoo of feathers on her left cheek, “when I fell ill of a brain fever. I was near death for days.”
Yaro looked up, and Dhulyn saw the young girl, and the young girl’s sorrow and loss in Yaro’s face. Her living bird pressed his head against her, and both closed their eyes for a moment.
“My Racha, my-” Yaro pressed her lips tight, as if she could not say the bird’s name. But, gaining strength from contact with her living bird, she opened her eyes and continued. “My first Racha died during my fever. I fell into what all who saw me thought would be the final sleep, but Sortera the Healer came.” Dhulyn looked up and Yaro nodded. “Two weeks before she was expected, she came and Healed me. But when I finally woke, I was alone, my bond broken, and that she could not Heal.”
Dhulyn cleared her throat but remained silent when Yaro again touched the faded tattoo on her left cheek.
“I believe it was the Healing that kept me from following my soul into death,” she said. “But I believe I should have died before ever Sortera came. My Racha gave me his life, and that is how I lived long enough to be Healed.
“I could not throw away his gift, but neither could I remain in the Clouds and see around me every day the space where my soul was not. So I went to serve the Sleeping God another way.” This time Yaro touched the green-and-gold tattoo above her ears. “I have no talent for scholarship, and I feared the meditative life, so I became a Mercenary Brother.”
Dhulyn nodded her understanding. Though she did not know where the belief originated, she knew the Clouds considered the Scholars, the Jaldeans, and the Mercenary Brotherhood to be three orders of the ancient priesthood of the Sleeping God, and therefore three disciplines open to any Cloud who chose to leave the mountains.
“In the Brotherhood I found another kind of bond; you will understand me, you are Partnered. But while I was Healed, still I was not whole.”
Dhulyn touched her own tattoo, her Mercenary badge, traced her finger along the black line that threaded through the colors. The line that showed she was Partnered. Did she understand? She had always believed in the bond of Partnership. But now, after Parno’s insistence that they return to Imrion, and especially after her Vision of his child-was it possible that he might leave her, leave the Brotherhood as Yaro of Trevel had done, and return to his House? Marry? Father children? Did this mean their souls were not one? She pushed the thoughts away. Today’s worry today, so said the Common Rule.
“One day,” Yaro was saying, “I found myself thinking again of my home, the color of the sky above the mountains, the smell of the pines. Alkoryn Pantherclaw, who is Senior Brother to us all here on the Peninsula, advised me to make a visit home.” Yaro looked at Dhulyn from under her lashes. “My coming was seen as the direct intervention of the god. My cousin Evela, who had been a toddling child when I left my clan, had become a young woman, a Racha woman. Two days before I arrived she had fallen ill. Of a brain fever.” Yaro leaned forward, elbows on knees. “My bond had been broken, and I lived. It was hoped I could help my cousin do the same. But it did not fall out that way.”