Michael agreed and pointed with the stick. "I have to get back now."
"Look at that!" a high-pitched masculine voice shouted from the crowd. "They give the bastard a fortune in wood!"
"Shut up!" Savarin cried, waving his arms and advancing on the crowd. "Go home, shut up, shut up!"
Michael tried to pick up his pace again, what little he had had in the first place. Halfway, the agony began to subside and the run became easier. He had heard of second wind but had never experienced it before. His body seemed to resign itself to the situation and make the best of things.
It was late morning when he came to the creek and crossed it, then clumped to where Spart was standing on the mound. Spart took his stick and called to the other Crane Women with a sharp whistle.
Coom emerged from the hut to inspect him. She palped his legs and arms and shook her head violently, tossing her dust-gray hair. "Usgal! Nalk," she said, pointing to the stream. "You stink."
"That's not fair," he said, frowning resentfully.
"Things won't be fair again until you've bathed," Spart said. "Then follow Coom away from here and you'll keep on working."
"But I'm exhausted."
"You didn't run without stopping," she said. In the hut, Nare cackled and withdrew her face from the window.
Michael dragged his feet to the stream and removed his clothes. He was down to his underpants before any notion of modesty occured to him. He glanced back at Spart, but she was on her haunches plaiting reeds into a mat. She paid him no attention. He kept his underpants on and dipped a foot gingerly into the water.
Of course, it was freezing. He closed his eyes. They would think him an idiot or a coward if he always hesitated. He stepped back and then ran forward, plunging in feet first. The shock was considerable; when he surfaced, he could hardly breath and his teeth chattered like expert telegraphy. Still, it was better to bear the hardship than put up with more ridicule.
As he rubbed the silty, mica-flecked water over his skin, he once again noticed the pungent herbal smell. Apparently that was the nature of water in the Realm. He crawled out of the creek - which was about four feet deep in the middle - and shook his arms and legs, scattering ribbons of water across the bank. Still damp, he put on his clothes, but held the jacket by its yoke and carried it to where Spart was plaiting her reeds. I
She turned her attention away from her work to look him up and down and shook her head pityingly. "Only a fool would dive into water so cold."
Michael nodded without argument. That was their game; he could go along with them. "Thanks," he said.
And so it went for the first five days.
Chapter Nine
The Crane Women ran Michael around the level grasslands, with the stick and without it, sometimes one or two of them pacing him and giving directions. They seemed tireless. When he was near collapse from exertion, they wouldn't even be breathing hard. After a while, Michael suspected Sidhe and Breeds just didn't get tired. He asked about that once, and Nare simply smiled.
He learned the Pact Lands within the vicinity of Euterpe and Halftown quickly. There wasn't all that much to learn - grasslands, the curve of the river, one fork and an oxbow beyond the fork.
He asked about the Blasted Plain, but Spart told him that part of his education would come later. He could see the haze beyond the perimeter of the Pact Lands, and occasionally make out black spires rising through orange-brown clouds, but his radius was never more than six miles from Halftown, and the Pact Lands, he surmised, extended at least ten miles on all sides.
Sometimes, his exercises seemed ridiculous, designed to humiliate him.
"Five times you have missed the mark," Nare said, standing over him. Her shadow bisected four concentric circles drawn in the dirt ten feet from where he squatted. He had been set to tossing pebbles, trying for the central circle. After an hour he had only hit the center three times.
"I've missed more often than that," he said.
"You miss my words, too," Nare said. "You fail to understand anything we've been showing you. Five tests." Michael tried to remember the times he had been tested in any meaningful way. "Not a good sign," she went on. "Don't you see the truth behind the tests? Must we explain in words? Words are so beloved to you!"
"They're clear, at least," Michael said. "What do you want me to know? I've done everything I can to cooperate-"
"Except use your head properly!" Nare grabbed his arm and hauled him to a standing position. "This is not a bullseye. These are not pebbles. You are not training, and this is no series of useless games."
"Funny," Michael said. He regretted saying it immediately; he had vowed that whatever the pressure, he would not behave like a smartass.
"You're a crack-voiced child, and worse, jan viros. What have you learned?"
"I think. I think you're trying to teach me how to survive by thinking a certain way. But I'm not a magician."
"You are not required to be one. How would we have you think?"
"With confidence."
"Not that alone. What else?"
"I don't know!"
"If we tried to turn you into a magician, we'd be even more doltish than you. You're not special. But Sidhedark is not like Earth. You must learn how the Realm is special, how it supports and nurtures us. You cannot be told. Words spoil the knowledge. So we must torment you, boy, to make you see. The Sidhe returned language to humans thousands of years ago, but they never explained how language can destroy. That was deliberate."
"I'm trying to cooperate," Michael said sullenly.
"You cooperate so you can show us you aren't a fool." She smiled, a hideous and revealing expression which didn't reassure him at all, and probably wasn't meant to. Her teeth were cat-sharp and her gums were black as tar.
"In betlim, little combat, warriors not kill. Best," Coom said. They circled each other with the sticks held before them in broad-spaced hands. "Lober, not hurt. Win. Strategy."
Michael nodded.
"One thing very bad," Coom said. "Rilu. Anger. Never let mad control! Mad is poison in betlim. In great combat, rilu is mord. Hear?"
He nodded again. Coom touched his stick with her own. "Disarm you now."
He gripped his stick tighter, but that only made his hands hurt more when, with a whirl and a flourish, she whacked his stick straight up in the air, parallel to the ground. He caught it as it fell, wincing at the pain in his wrists.
"Good," Coom said. "Now you hear why you learn. Hear that stick is wick; you are Sidhe given power of pais where you stand. I take wick and take land from you. Stop me - maybe stop me. Hear how I move. Take control of air. Of Realm."
Then she did an amazing thing. She leaped up, braced her feet against nothingness, and sprung at him with her stick. He retreated, but not before receiving another bone-rattling blow. She hung before him a moment and landed on her feet. "Good," she said. "Stronger."
She disarmed him again, this time whacking the stick out of his reach before it came down. He walked over to pick it up and turned to see Coom standing where he had been.
"Gave up ground," she accused, looking disgusted.
"You took away my stick."
"Didn't take away most important weapon." She threw down her stick and backed up a pace. "Come at with kima."
He didn't hesitate. She reached around with one spider hand as his stick came down on the spot where she had stood, grabbed hold and slammed it to the ground.
He could feel the bones in his back pop before he let go.
"Little defeats teach potential," Coom said. "Not to waste my time, you will train with this." Spart came from the hut carrying a headless mannequin with bush-branch arms. It held a smaller stick, tied to leafy "hands" with twine. Michael groaned inside, then resigned himself to the indignity.
"Take this off thirty paces and hammer it into the ground. Then fight with it," Spart said.
He did as he was told, clutching the cloth, straw and wood mannequin and using his stick to pound it in like a
stake. He assumed a stance before the mannequin, imitating Coom and feeling foolish -
And it promptly swung up its stick and knocked his to the ground. The mannequin vibrated gleefully, twisted on its stake and became limp again.
When the hair on his neck had settled, Michael retrieved his stick and resumed his stance, a little farther back. They sparred for a bit, the mannequin having at least the two disadvantages of being staked to the ground and using a shorter, flimsier stick. Michael wasn't encouraged.
He had no illusions that the fight was fair. He got his lumps.
Chapter Ten
As the pre-dawn light filtered through the plaited reed door cover Spart had given him, Michael scrawled another poem in the dirt floor.
Night's a friendly sort
Oh yes likes to throw a
Fright now and then - when
The wind hums - but after
You're dead will gladly
Share a glass of moon.
Nothing more than exercise, he thought - not worth recording even if he had the means, which he did not - no pencils or writing implements of any sort but the stick, no paper but what was in his black book. And he hardly considered his work worthy of going in the book.
The Crane Women usually arose fifteen minutes before sunrise, which gave him a short time of being alone and at leisure - time more important than sleep. He used the time to read from the book or write in the dirt, or just to savor not having anything in particular to do,
Fie heard the door to their hut creak open. He took the book, zippered it into his jacket pocket and wrapped it in the folds before hiding it in the rafters overhead.
"Man-child! Jan wiros!"
He came out of the house and saw Coom approaching, with Nare two paces behind. They looked like hunters unsure of their prey - and he was their prey. The Crane Women were masters at unnerving him. He could never predict their moods, attitudes. He should have been a nervous wreck, but he found himself adapting.
"More run," Coom said. "To Euterpe and back. With kima."
He grabbed the stick without hesitation and ran. Behind, Nare called out, "This evening is Kaeli." She said it as if some special treat were involved. Michael hefted the stick before him and crossed the creek. He did not see the watery hand which rose up, grasped at his ankle and missed.
He could make it to the town without collapsing now. He took some pride in his improvement. For the first time in his life he felt the exultation of the body in sheer activity, the meshing of breath and legs, the matched, almost pleasant ache in all his muscles.
At first, he stayed away from the outskirts housing, not wanting to bring on another confrontation. But he was curious what Savarin was up to, what the teacher had meant the last time, that there were people he wanted Michael to meet. He decided to enter Euterpe and go to the schoolhouse - and the populace be damned. He had his stick and he felt a little cocky.
He was up to the main gate when he almost bumped into the teacher. They laughed and Michael put down his stick, breathing deeply and wiping sweat from his face with his shirt sleeve.
"I thought I might catch you during your morning constitutional," Savarin said. "And warn you. Best stay out of the town for the next couple of days. Alyons has been harassing us since your arrival. The townspeople are upset. They're liable to strike out at you without being aware of what they're doing."
"I haven't hurt them," Michael said.
"No, but you've brought trouble. Things here are marginal, at best. Alyons threatens to reduce our allotment if anything else happens to upset him." - "Is that why they shouted at me the last time?"
"Yes. I still have people for you to meet, but later. And I also wanted to tell you. something's planned for tonight - the Halftown Kaeli. Have they invited you?"
"Nare mentioned it before I left. I don't even know what it is."
"It's very important. Kaeli is when the Sidhe get together to tell stories, usually about the early times. I'd like you to listen closely and pass on what you hear. I've only heard one - and that from a distance. I was hiding in tall grass. Now, with the Breed guards so tense, I don't dare. Nobody is allowed near Halftown now - - -That's what makes me think something is afoot."
"What?"
"Best not to ask for trouble yet. But a grazza, perhaps. A raid by Riverines and Umbrals. Keep an eye out, and be careful."
"You want me to come back and tell you about the Kaeli?"
"Of course," Savarin said, his eyes brightening. "But a couple of days from now, when things are more settled." He looked around nervously. A few faces peered from nearby windows, and two men loitering by the gate cast glances at them. "Until then," the teacher said, gripping Michael's hand and releasing it with a wave as he made for a different gate. Michael picked up the stick, held it over his head, and began the return leg of his run.
His body took over almost immediately and he forgot Savarin, forgot the Kaeli, forgot almost everything but the sensation of distance covered.
The Breeds of Halftown marched in double file over the grassland, dressed in dark brown and gray cloaks, conversing casually in Cascar and calling to those farther forward or back in the lines. The air was still and cool; the sun touched distant hills and the ribbons of evening cascaded slowly to the hazy horizon, revealing the stars with their tiny circling motions.
Behind the lines marched the Crane Women. Michael walked abreast of Spart, wearing his jacket. (The book rested in its nook in the tiny house, as secure as he could make it.) He had washed his clothes in the creek earlier, as a concession to formality; they were still slightly damp even after drying near a fire Nare had kindled. Holes revealed his knees and the shoulder of the jacket had separated at the seam.
The Crane Women wore short black coats that emphasized the length of their legs and the shortness of their torsos. They walked with arms folded, jutting elbows making them look more then ever like birds. They seemed to carry more of an ancient reserve with regard to Kaeli than the other Breeds, and didn't talk.
Those assigned to choose the site had gone on ahead during the late afternoon. Now a bonfire blazed a few hundred feet down the path, squares of peat and dried brush-wood providing the fuel. Circling the bonfire was a perimeter of poles, each topped by a leafy green branch. When the Breeds had gathered within the circle, Lirg came forward and paced around the fire. Michael sat beside the Crane Women, crossing his legs on the grass stubble and dirt.
Lirg spoke in Cascar for a few minutes. Michael understood little of what was said; he had difficulty even picking out the meanings of individual words in the long discourse. There seemed to be many words in Cascar with the same or subtly shaded meanings, and the syntax varied as well.
Spart leaned forward from behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. "You haven't learned the tongue, have you?" she asked.
"I've only been here a couple of weeks," Michael said defensively. Nare blew out her breath. The Crane Women looked at each other, then Spart sidled forward and placed both her hands around Michael's head.
"Tonight only," she said, "You have a boon. It won't last." She removed her hands and Michael shook a buzzing out of his head. When the dizziness passed, he listened to Lirg. The Breed was still speaking Cascar but the words were limpid; Michael could understand all of them.
"Tonight," Lirg said, "We invoke the sadness of the time when we were grand, when the Sidhe marched between the stars as easily as I circle this fire." He passed around to the other side, his words piercing the crackle of the flames. "Each will share the tale, the part of his ancestor, and as conclusion, I will tell of Queen Elme and her choice."
First to pick up the thread was a tall brown-haired Breed who announced himself as Manann of the line of Till. As Manann spoke, Michael was enchanted by the way the language adapted to poetry - half-singing, half-speaking, until he could no longer tell the difference.
The Earth, home to us all, has spun A thousand polar dances since The war called Westering, won First by men, who decre
ed that none
Of the race called Sidhe should possess Souls beyond the border of Death. Unwitting, the Mage who made us less, Who imposed this inward emptiness,
Gave to the Sidhe life without end.
And then time came for the wheel to turn
Again. The Sidhe thus damned did send To defeat the vain and gloating men
Who had in cruel and thoughtless rage Robbed us of life beyond matter. The Sidhe bid the responsible Mage To work their own vengeance and engage
His power to transform men to beasts. Triumphant Sidhe in sweet passioned Irony watched mankind decreased. Yet in the shape of the small, the least