If he had a virtue, Ivor reflected, something of his nature he wanted his sons to have, it was tolerance. He smiled wryly. It would be ironic if that tolerance could not be extended to himself.
Which reminded him. His sons; and his daughter. He had to have a talk with Liane. Feelingly decidedly better, Ivor went looking for his middle child.
Revor’s Kill. Oh, by Ceinwen’s bow, he was proud!
The Feast of the New Hunters started formally at sundown, the tribe gathering in the huge central area of the camp, from where the smell of slowly roasting game had been wafting all afternoon. Truly, this would be a celebration: two new Riders and Levon’s deed that morning. A feat that had obliterated the failures before. No one, not even Gereint, could remember the last time it had been done. “Not since Revor himself!” one of the hunters had shouted, a little drunkenly.
All the hunters from the morning were a little drunk; they had started early, Dave among them, on the clear, harsh liquor the Dalrei brewed. The mood of mingled relief and euphoria on the ride home had been completely infectious and Dave had let himself go with it. There didn’t seem to be any reason to hold back.
Through it all, drinking round for round with them, Levon seemed almost unaffected by what he had done. Looking for it, Dave could find no arrogance, no hidden sense of superiority in Ivor’s older son. It had to be there, he thought, suspicious, as he always was. But looking one more time at Levon as he walked between him and Ivor to the feast—he was guest of honour, it seemed—Dave found himself reluctantly changing his mind. Is a horse arrogant or superior? He didn’t think so. Proud, yes; there was great pride in the bay stallion that had stood so still with Levon that morning, but it wasn’t a pride that diminished anything or anyone else. It was simply part of what the stallion was.
Levon was like that, Dave decided.
It was one of his last really coherent thoughts, for with the sunset the feast began. The eltor meat was superlative; broiled slowly over open fires, seasoned with spices he didn’t recognize, it was better than anything he’d ever tasted in his life. When the sizzling slices of meat started to go around, the drinking among the tribesmen got quite serious as well.
Dave was seldom drunk; he didn’t like surrendering the edge of control, but he was in a strange space that evening, a whole other country. A whole other world, even. He didn’t hold back.
Sitting by Ivor’s side, he suddenly realized that he hadn’t seen Torc since the hunt. Looking around the firelit pandemonium, he finally spotted the dark man standing by himself, off on the edge of the circle of light cast by the fires.
Dave rose, not too steadily. Ivor raised an inquiring eyebrow. “It’s Torc,” Dave mumbled. “Why’s he on his own? Shouldn’t be. He should be here. Hell, we … we killed an urgach together, me and him.” Ivor nodded, as if the stumbling discourse had been lucid explanation.
“Truly,” the Chieftain said quietly. Turning to his daughter, who was serving him just then, he added, “Liane, will you go and bring Torc to sit by me?”
“Can’t,” Liane said. “Sorry. Have to go get ready for the dancing.” And she was gone, quick, mercurial, into the confused shadows. Ivor, Dave saw, did not look happy.
He strode off to fetch Torc himself. Stupid girl, he thought, with some anger, she’s avoiding him because his father was exiled and she’s chief’s daughter.
He came up to Torc in the half-dark, just beyond the cast glow of the many fires. The other man, chewing on an eltor haunch, merely grunted a hello. That was okay. Didn’t need to talk; talkers bugged Dave anyhow.
They stood awhile in silence. It was cooler beyond the fires; the wind felt easy, refreshing. It sobered him a little.
“How do you feel?” he asked finally.
“Better,” Torc said. And after a moment, “Your shoulder?”
“Better,” Dave replied. When you didn’t say a lot, he thought, you said the important things. In the shadows with Torc, he felt no real desire to go back to the centre of the clearing. It was better here, feeling the wind. You could see the stars, too. You couldn’t in the firelight; or in Toronto, either, he thought.
On impulse he turned around. There it was. Torc turned to look with him. Together they gazed at the white magnificence of Rangat.
“There’s someone under there?” Dave asked softly.
“Yes,” said Torc briefly. “Bound.”
“Loren told us.”
“He cannot die.”
Which was not comforting. “Who is he?” Dave asked with some diffidence.
For a moment Torc was silent, then: “We do not name him by his name. In Brennin they do, I am told, and in Cathal, but it is the Dalrei who dwell under the shadow of Rangat. When we speak of him, it is as Maugrim, the Unraveller.”
Dave shivered, though it wasn’t cold. The Mountain was shining in the moonlight, its peak so high he had to tilt his head back to take it in. He wrestled then with a difficult thought.
“It’s so great,” he said. “So tremendous. Why’d they put him under something so beautiful? Now every time you look at it, you have to think about …” He trailed off. Words were too tough, sometimes. Most of the time.
Torc was looking at him with sharp understanding, though. “That,” he said softly, “is why they did it.” And he turned back to the lights.
Turning with him, Dave saw that some of the fires were being put out, leaving a ring of flame, around which the Dalrei were gathering. He looked at Torc.
“Dancing,” his companion said. “The women and boys.”
And a moment later Dave saw a number of young girls enter the ring of fire and begin an intricate, weaving dance to a tune laid down by two old men with curiously shaped stringed instruments. It was pretty, he supposed, but dancing wasn’t really his thing. His eyes wandered away, and he spotted the old shaman, Gereint. Gereint was holding a piece of meat in each hand, one light, one dark. He was taking turns biting from each. Dave snorted and nudged Torc to look.
Torc laughed, too, softly. “He should be fat,” he said. “I don’t know why he isn’t.” Dave grinned. Just then Navon, still looking sheepish about his failure that morning, came by with a flask. Dave and Torc each drank, then watched the new Rider walk off. Still a boy, Dave thought, but he’s a hunter now.
“He’ll be all right,” Torc murmured. “I think he learned his lesson this morning.”
“He wouldn’t be around to have learned it if you didn’t use a knife as well as you do. That,” Dave said for the first time, “was some throw the other night.”
“I wouldn’t have been around to throw it if you hadn’t saved my life,” Torc said. Then after a moment he grinned, his teeth white in the darkness. “We did all right back there.”
“Damn right,” said Dave, grinning back.
The young girls had gone, to cheerful applause. A larger operation began now, with the older boys joining a number of the women. Dave saw Tabor move to the centre of the circle, and after a moment he realized that they were dancing the morning’s hunt. The music was louder now, more compelling. Another man had joined the two musicians.
They danced it all, with stylized, ritual gestures. The women, their hair loose and flowing, were the eltor, and the boys mimed the Riders they would one day be. It was beautifully done, even to the individual quirks and traits of the hunters. Dave recognized the characteristic head tilt of the second Rider in the boy who imitated him. There was enthusiastic applause for that, then there was laughter as another boy danced Navon’s flashy failure. It was indulgent laughter, though, and even the other two misses were greeted with only brief regret, because everyone knew what was coming.
Tabor had untied his hair for this. He looked older, more assured—or was it just the role, Dave wondered, as he saw Ivor’s younger son dance, with palpable pride and a surprisingly graceful restraint, his older brother’s kill.
Seeing it again in the dance, Dave cheered as loudly as everyone else when the young woman dancing the lead eltor fel
l at Tabor’s feet, and all the other women streamed around him, turning at the edge of the circle defined by the fires to form a whirling kaleidoscope of movement about the still figure of Tabor dan Ivor. It was well done, Dave thought, really well done. A head taller than everyone there, he could see it all. When Tabor glanced at him across the massed people in between, Dave gave him a high, clenched-fist gesture of approval. He saw Tabor, despite his role, flush with pleasure. Good kid. Solid.
When it ended, the crowd grew restive again; the dancing seemed to be over. Dave looked at Torc and mimed a drinking motion. Torc shook his head and pointed.
Looking back, Dave saw that Liane had entered the circle of fire.
She was dressed in red and had done something to her face; her colour was high and striking. She wore golden jewellery on each arm and about her throat; it glinted and flashed in the firelight as she moved, and it seemed to Dave as if she had suddenly become a creature of flame herself.
The crowd grew quiet as she waited. Then Liane, instead of dancing, spoke. “We have cause to celebrate,” she sang out. “The kill of Levon dan Ivor will be told at Celidon this winter, and for many winters after.” There was a roar of approval; Liane let it die down. “That kill,” she said, “may not be the brightest deed we have reason to honour tonight.” The crowd hushed in perplexity. “There was another act of courage done,” Liane continued, “a darker one, in the night wood, and it should be known and celebrated by all of the third tribe.”
What? Dave thought. Uh-oh.
It was all he had time for. “Bring forth Torc dan Sorcha,” cried Liane, “and with him Davor, our guest, that we may honour them!”
“Here they are!” a high voice cried from behind Dave, and suddenly goddamn Tabor was pushing him forward, and Levon, smiling broadly, had Torc by the arm, and the two sons of Ivor led them through the parting crowd to stand beside the Chieftain.
With excruciating self-consciousness, Dave stood exposed in the light of the fires, and heard Liane continue in the rapt silence.
“You do not know,” she cried to the tribe, “of what I speak, so I will dance it for you.” Oh, God, Dave thought. He was, he knew, beet-red. “Let us do them honour,” Liane said, more softly, “and let Torc dan Sorcha no more be named Outcast in this tribe, for know you that these two killed an urgach in Faelinn Grove two nights ago.”
They hadn’t known, Dave realized, wishing he could find a place to disappear, knowing Torc felt the same. From the electric response of the tribe, it was clear that they hadn’t had a clue.
Then the music began, and gradually his colour receded, for no one was looking at him anymore: Liane was dancing between the fires.
She was doing it all, he marvelled, spellbound, doing it all herself. The two sleeping boys in the wood, Torc, himself, the very texture, the mood of Faelinn Grove at night—and then somehow, unbelievably, whether it was alcohol or firelight or some alchemy of art, he saw the urgach again, huge, terrifying, swinging its giant sword.
But there was only a girl in the ring of fire, only a girl and her shadow, dancing, miming, becoming the scene she shaped, offering it to all of them. He saw his own instinctive leap, then Torc’s, the urgach’s brutal blow that had sent Torc smashing into a tree….
She had it dead-on, he realized, astonished. Then he smiled, even through his wonder and stirring pride: of course, she’d listened in while they told Ivor. He felt like laughing suddenly, like crying, like some kind, any kind of articulation of emotion as he watched Liane dance his own desperate parry of the urgach’s sword, and then, finally, Torc’s hurled dagger—she was Torc, she was the blade, and then the toppling, like a mighty tree, of the beast. She was all of it, entire, and she wasn’t a stupid girl after all.
Ivor saw the urgach sway and fall, and then the dancer was herself again, Liane, and she was whirling between the fires, her bare feet flying, jewellery flashing on her arms, moving so fast her hair, short as it was, lifted behind her as she exploded in a wild celebration of dance, of the deed in the night wood, of this night, and the next, and the days, all of them, of everything there was before the hour came that knew your name.
With a lump in his throat he saw her slow, the motion winding down until she stopped, her hands across her breasts, her head lowered, motionless, the still point between the fires; between the stars, it seemed to him.
A moment the third tribe was still with her, then there came an explosion of cheering that must have rocketed beyond the camp, Ivor thought, beyond the lights of men, far out into the wide dark of the night plain.
He looked for Leith in that moment, and saw her standing among the women on the other side of the fires. No tears for her; she was not that sort of woman. But he knew her well enough after so many years to read the expression on her face. Let the tribe think the Chieftain’s wife cool, efficient, unruffled; he knew better. He grinned at her, and laughed when she flushed and looked away, as if unmasked.
The tribe was still buzzing with the catharsis of the dance and the killing that had led to it. Even in this, Liane had been wilful, for he was not at all sure this was how he would have chosen to tell them of the urgach, and it was his place to decide. It couldn’t be kept hidden, for the auberei would have to take word on their ride to Celidon tomorrow, but once more, it seemed, his middle child had gone her own way.
How could he be angry, though, after this? It was always so hard, Ivor found, to stay angry with Liane. Leith was better at it. Mothers and daughters; there was less indulgence there.
She had judged it rightly, though, he thought, watching her walk over to Torc and the stranger and kiss them both. Seeing Torc redden, Ivor decided that not the least cause for joy this night might be the reclaiming of the outcast by his tribe.
And then Gereint rose.
It was remarkable how tuned the tribe was to him. As soon as the blind shaman moved forward into the space between the fires, some collective thread of instinct alerted even the most intoxicated hunter. Gereint never had to gesture or wait for silence.
He’d looked silly before, Ivor reflected, watching the shaman move unassisted between the flames. Not anymore. However he might look with eltor juice dripping from his chin, when Gereint rose in the night to address the tribe, his voice was the voice of power. He spoke for Ceinwen and Cernan, for the night wind and the dawn wind, all the unseen world. The hollowed sockets of his eyes gave testimony. He had paid the price.
“Cernan came to me with the greyness of dawn,” Gereint said quietly. Cernan, thought Ivor, god of the wild things, of wood and plain, Lord of the eltor, brother and twin to Ceinwen of the Bow.
“I saw him clear,” Gereint went on. “The horns upon his head, seven-tined for a King, the dark flash of his eyes, the majesty of him.” A sound like wind in tall grass swept through the tribe.
“He spoke a name to me,” Gereint said. “A thing that has never happened in all my days. Cernan named to me this morning Tabor dan Ivor, and called him to his fast.”
Tabor. And not just named by the shaman after a dream. Summoned by the god himself. A thrill of awe touched Ivor like a ghostly finger in the dark. For a moment he felt as if he were alone on the Plain. There was a shadow with him, only a shadow, but it was the god. Cernan knew his name; Tabor dan Ivor, he had called.
The Chieftain was brought unceremoniously back to the reality of the camp by the high scream of a woman. Liane, of course. He knew without looking. Flying across the ring, almost knocking over the shaman in her haste, she sped to Tabor’s side, no longer a red spirit of dance and flame, only a quicksilver, coltish girl fiercely hugging her brother. Levon was there, too, Ivor saw; more quietly, but as fast, his open face flashing a broad smile of delight. The three of them together. Fair and brown and brown. His.
So Tabor was in Faelinn tomorrow. At that thought, he looked over and saw Torc gazing at him. He received a smile and a reassuring nod from the dark man, and then, with surprise and pleasure, another from giant Davor, who had been so lucky for th
em. Tabor would be guarded in the wood.
He looked for Leith again across the ring of fire. And with a twist in his heart, Ivor saw how beautiful she was, how very beautiful still, and then he saw the tears in her eyes. Youngest child, he thought, a mother and her youngest. He had a sudden overwhelming sense of the wonder, the strangeness, the deep, deep richness of things. It filled him, it expanded within his breast. He couldn’t hold it in, it was so much, so very much.
Moving within the ring to a music of his own, Ivor, the Chieftain, not so old after all, not so very, danced his joy for his children, all of them.
Chapter 12
Tabor, at least, was no baby. Ivor’s son, Levon’s brother, he knew where to lie in the wood at night. He was sheltered and hidden and could move easily at need. Torc approved.
He and Davor were in Faelinn Grove again. Their guest had, surprisingly, elected to delay his journey south in order to watch over the boy with him. Tabor, Torc thought, had made a strong impression. It wasn’t unusual: he liked the boy himself. Characteristically, Torc gave no thought to the possibility that he himself might be another reason for Dave’s reluctance to leave.
Torc had other things to think about. In fact, he had been of two minds about being accompanied that night. He had been looking forward to solitude and dark since the festival. Too much had happened there, and too quickly. Too many people had come over to embrace him after Liane’s dance. And in the night, long after the fires had burned down, Kerrin dal Ragin had slipped into the room Levon had insisted he take in the camp. Levon had been smiling when they talked, and when Kerrin appeared in the doorway, Torc had belatedly understood why. Kerrin was very pretty, and much talked about among the hunters; her giggling, scented arrival was not the sort of thing an outcast grew accustomed to.
It had been very nice, more than that, in fact. But what had followed her arrival in his bed did not admit of leisure or tranquillity to let him reflect on all that had occurred.