The only thing to do was try again. She closed her eyes and whistled the moonheart tune, but this time there was no clearing of her thoughts. No shift of the world underfoot. Pukwudji’s powers had brought her this far. Without him. . . . Panic reared, sudden and full, but she fought it back.
Easy, she told herself. Think before you freak out. She had to relax, to clear her head of everything but Taliesin. She thought back to the time she’d managed it successfully. She hadn’t had a moonheart tune then. What had she done that was different, that worked? And then, as she fiddled nervously with the band of gold on her finger, she knew.
She looked down at the gold ring. It was a twin to Taliesin’s, might even be his, for all they knew. It was the rings that had called out to each other, or else why had she come to meet the bard in the first place?
Come on, she told the ring. Do your stuff. She rubbed it with her finger and, keeping her thoughts on the harper, started to hum the tune again. And this time the shift underfoot came. The beach fell away behind as the magic took her up and away.
“There is an enemy,” Sins’amin said when Kieran finished his story, “and it did come from across the Great Water many summers ago, but its name was not Taliesin.”
“Mal’ek’a we named it,” Ko’keli said. Her fingers, still tapping her drum, rapped out an off rhythm that sent a chill up Kieran’s spine. Her blue heron mask bobbed as she nodded her head.
“Nameless, no one may harm it,” she added, “though it may harm us. Find its true name, young warrior, and you will gain our favor. Too many of our tribe have fallen prey to it—for too many summers.”
“Mal’ek’a is our enemy?” Tep’fyl’in asked, shaking his tomahawk. “It keeps us strong, like the wolves do the caribou, and the fox the grey goose. Is that the work of an enemy?”
“Would you go to the Place of Dreaming Thunder before your time?” the Healer Shin’sa’fen asked. “For that is where the Dread-That-Walks-Nameless would send you were you to meet him, drum as you might, or shake your totem stick until your arm grew too weary to hold it.”
Kieran could almost feel the grin behind Tep’fyl’in’s wolf mask.
“If I am slain by Mal’ek’a, old woman,” he replied, “then my time has come.”
Sins’amin broke in before the Healer could frame her reply.
“We may argue the good or ill of Mal’ek’a’s presence until the day that Grandmother Toad herself Dreams her own Thunder,” she said, “and still come no closer to the truth than we are now. Yet it was not for that we gathered in council today.” She looked to either side of her, the bearmask fierce in the fire’s highlights.
“Kha,” Tep’fyl’in said brusquely. Understood.
Shin’sa’fen tapped her birch totem stick against her knee. The bone beads clicked together until she stilled them with her hand.
“Kah,” she said softly. By the intonation she put on the word, she added a further meaning to it. Understood, but unfinished.
“You spoke of dreams,” the Creator Hoth’ans said to Sins’amin. She pointed to Kieran. “I have dreamed twice of this herok’a. Once he rode a Stag to the edge of Pinta’wa where a Swan caught him by the shoulders and bore him north. I followed their flight until the Swan alighted on a high cliff. The worlds spun below, layer upon layer of worlds, and the Swan gave him a choice: To take up his own Drum, or to take the life of a caged Wren.
“He chose the Wren.”
The others sat in silence when she was done speaking. Kieran, versed as he was in the symbols of the Way, understood as well as the quin’on’a what the dream meant. The Stag and Swan were forces of benevolence and creation. The choice he was offered was to maintain the tradition, or Drum, that his mentor had given him with the Way, or to kill Taliesin, symbolized as the Wren.
Dreams had a power of their own. Unspoken by the quin’on’a Creator, but nevertheless lying there between her words, was the judgment that by choosing to kill the Wren he had closed himself off from the Way. He was about to ask why that should be, to explain yet again that it was not he who sought the harper, but the harper who sought his mentor, but then Ko’keli, her slender fingers still tapping on her drumskin, asked:
“And the second dream?”
Hoth’ans tapped her bone totem stick against the reed mat that floored the lodge.
“In the second dream the herok’a grew horns,” she said.
A herok’a who grew horns was a shaman or Wayfarer who filled his or her potential.
“Which dream will you give truth to?” the Creator asked Kieran.
He chose his words carefully. “You say that Taliesin is already dead. How then can I harm him?”
“Time does not flow like a river here,” Sins’amin replied. “Not as it does in the World Beyond from which you came. Here time is like an eddy or a whirlpool. If you seek Taliesin Redhair, you will not be drawn to wherever it is that Mal’ek’a lairs, but back to a time when Taliesin has not yet fared to the Place of Dreaming Thunder.”
Kieran was having trouble following her logic. “So he’s still alive?” he asked.
“Not in the sense that you use the word,” Ha’kan’ta said, speaking for the first time since he’d told the council his story.
“The question I ask,” Tep’fyl’in said, “is why do we allow this herok’a to question us?” He fingered his tomahawk and it seemed that the wolf mask bared white fangs for an instant as he turned to Kieran. “Do you consider our words twice-tongued?”
“Ill luck it is to threaten one in council,” Ko’keli murmured.
“He is not of our council,” Tep’fyl’in retorted grimly.
Sins’amin lifted a hand and, except for Ko’keli’s soft drumming, all sound ceased in the lodge.
“We have given your enemy what name we have for it,” she said to Kieran. “Will you trust us enough to seek the one we have named Mal’ek’a? Or will you persist in seeking Taliesin Redhair’s death?”
“And if Mal’ek’a proves to be Taliesin?” Kieran countered.
“If that proves true,” the quin’on’a Beardaughter replied, “then we will aid you ourselves in bringing about his death.”
“Then I agree.”
Sins’amin nodded, then clapped her hands together.
“This council is ended,” she said.
Ko’keli’s drum stopped abruptly. For a long moment Kieran sat watching the five masked figures who sat silently before him, then Ha’kan’ta nudged him.
“Now we go,” she said softly.
“But they haven’t said if they’d help me or—”
“The council was not concerned with whether or not it would help you,” she replied. “Its concern was whether or not you were a threat.”
“A threat? To what?”
Ha’kan’ta shook her head.
“Outside,” she said. “There we can talk.”
Kieran opened his mouth, then shut it so hard that his teeth clicked together. He stood up on stiff legs and followed Ha’kan’ta outside. Not until the doorflap had fallen back across the opening did they speak again.
“What happened in there?” Kieran asked.
“You were judged.” She held up a hand to stop him from interrupting her. “Understand, Kieranfoy. Your craftfather is a drum-brother to the quin’on’a—but so was Taliesin, though in his case it was indirectly, through my father. Mother Bear will not abide blood strife between brothers-in-blood. When such occurs, she withdraws her sen’fer’sra—her spiritual vitality. Without that something-in-movement, the quin’on’a would die and my own people would be struck as if deaf and blind. Imagine yourself without your Wayfarer’s taw, Kieranfoy.”
“I don’t even want to think about that.”
“Exactly.”
“But what I don’t understand is, if Taliesin’s dead, why are they so worried about what I might do to him?”
“Don’t you ever listen?” Ha’kan’ta asked. She smiled to take the edge from her words.
??
?Nom de tout! I listen. It’s just that nothing I hear makes any sense.”
“I will repeat it one last time. In these worlds—what you call the Otherworld—the farther one gets from the World Beyond, the more enmeshed time and space become. Like the layers—”
“Of an onion. I know. Great analogy, only—”
“Only this: If you reach out for Taliesin Redhair strongly enough—you will reach him. But the distance you cross will entail a crossing of years as well as land. And if you were to kill him, if his blood was on the hands of Toma’heng’ar’s craftson, it would be the same as though we had killed him. My father. The quin’on’a. Myself. All who are true kin or kin-in-drumming. And then we would suffer Mother Bear’s judgment.”
“So the council was held to see if I could be called off my hunt, is that it?”
“Yes.”
Kieran frowned. “And what if I went right on ahead with it? What if I did kill Taliesin?”
“But you won’t—not anymore. Not with what you know now.”
“I suppose. I’ll have to think about it some more, that’s for sure. But what about Tom?”
“What Toma’heng’ar pursues is what the council have named Mal’ek’a. He may think he seeks Taliesin Redhair, but he will learn quickly enough when he confronts his thing of shadows just what it is that he faces.”
“And what’s that? What is Mal’ek’a?”
Ha’kan’ta sighed. “An old evil. That is all I know. An old evil from across the Great Water. I think perhaps it might well have its origin in the same homeland as both Taliesin and your craftfather, else why is it so bound to them? But we will see soon enough ourselves, Kieranfoy. Together we will see how Mal’ek’a deals with the Beardance of the rathe’wen’a.”
“The council wouldn’t help me, so why will you?”
“I have as good a reason as you to hunt Mal’ek’a, Kieranfoy. I told you my father was dead. I did not tell you that he died but a month ago when the tragg’a slew him.”
An image of what the tragg’a were leapt from her mind to his and Kieran shivered.
“Why did they kill him?” he asked softly.
“They sought the medicine bag of Taliesin Redhair that my father held in trust for many a year.”
“His medicine bag? But after all this time, it’d just be so much dust, wouldn’t it?”
Ha’kan’ta touched the pouch that hung at her hip.
“This was my grandmother’s,” she said. “It is twenty long-summers old—two thousand years. Magics keep it whole—the something-in-movement of Mother Bear.”
Kieran looked down at the pouch and then understood why Ha’kan’ta was helping him.
“Sara’s pouch,” he said. “It’s Taliesin’s, isn’t it? But what does Mal’ek’a want with it?”
“Taliesin’s medicines were very strong. Mal’ek’a wants something that was in that pouch and sent his tragg’a to fetch it for him. But my father no longer had it. He gave it Toma’heng’ar—”
“Who gave it to Aled Evans who, when he died, left it in his will to Sara’s uncle. He stuck it in a box that sat around in the back of her store until she found it. Lord lifting Jesus!” Kieran shook his head. “But why now?” he asked. “Why, after so many years, would Mal’ek’a suddenly start looking for it?”
“Mal’ek’a was always evil,” Ha’kan’ta said, “but not always as powerful as he is now. It is said that he had taken the wolverine as his totem and for that reason the tragg’a serve him, for they are the children of Darkness and the devil-bear.”
“But . . .” Kieran was thinking aloud. “Sara left the pouch in her uncle’s house. Mal’ek’a will have it by now, unless . . .” The memory of a gold sparkle on a small hand returned to him. “The ring,” he said softly. “It’s the ring he wants.”
As they’d been talking, they’d wandered down by the lakeside. Kieran looked around, then back at the quin’on’a village. “Where is Sara anyway?” he asked.
Ha’kan’ta closed her eyes and turned her inner vision outward. She stood still for a long moment, then said: “Gone.”
“Gone? Well, she can’t have gotten far.”
“Far enough,” his companion said. “She has stepped beyond this world.”
“Great,” he thought. And she had the tobacco with her . . .
“She’s gone home,” a third voice said.
They both turned. Pukwudji sat hugging his knees on a nearby rock, a huge grin on his wide face and his eyes filled with a teasing light.
“Who in . . . ?” Kieran began.
“Pukwudji Sarafriend,” the little man said. “That’s me, hey?”
“What have you done with her?” Ha’kan’ta asked sternly.
Pukwudji simply shook his head, refusing to be intimidated.
“He said she went home,” Kieran said. “That must be Tamson House. In the World Beyond.”
“I said home indeed.” Pukwudji’s grin grew broader still. “But home is where the heart is, hey? Do you know her heart well enough, O-would-be-bardkiller? Do you now?”
Kieran took a step towards the little man, but Ha’kan’ta drew him back.
“Remember we spoke of drum-brothers?” she said. “This honochen’o’keh was one of Taliesin’s. The bard was loved by many.” To Pukwudji she added: “Kieranfoy has sworn council-oath not to harm Taliesin.”
Pukwudji shrugged. “Redhair could not be harmed by such a one as he, now could he?”
Kieran frowned. He couldn’t remember swearing council-oath. Then he realized that among these people, one’s words were taken at face value; by agreeing not to harm Taliesin unless he could prove the bard was Mal’ek’a, he’d as much as sworn an oath.
“No more riddles, Pukwudji,” Ha’kan’ta said cajolingly. “Tell us where you sent her. Was it truly to the World Beyond? To her uncle’s home?”
“She went,” he said. “And where? Did I not say? Then I’ll give you one more hint, but just the one and no more, hey? So listen closely: I sent her to meet my ownself so that I’d know enough to meet her here. How’s that?”
“Pukwudji . . .” Ha’kan’ta began, but she was too late.
The little man tumbled off his perch, landed on his feet with a thump, and scampered between them, giving Kieran a pinch on the leg as he ran by. As he neared the lake, he leaped high into the air and did a somersault. By the time he hit the water, he’d turned into a silver-backed trout and disappeared into the lake.
Kieran frowned some more, rubbing his leg. Ha’kan’ta tried to keep a straight face, but failed. Her laughter was clear and sweet and, faced with it, Kieran could only join in.
“It has been many days,” she said, when at last she caught her breath, “since I have had reason to laugh. Pukwudji!” she cried across the lake. “I give you thanks!”
Far from the shore, a trout leaped four feet out of the water and landed with a smack on the surface of the lake before vanishing once more. Ha’kan’ta shook her head, still smiling.
“Come,” she said to Kieran. “It is time we were on our way.”
“But Sara . . .”
“Is a grown woman. She can look after herself.”
Their totem masks removed, Sins’amin and her War Chief remained behind in the council lodge long after the others had gone. Tep’fyl’in toyed with his wolf mask, the firelight gleaming on his strong features. He was the youngest elder—his coppery skin unwrinkled, his brow high and smooth, his small horns burnished and gleaming. “Strange use of a council,” he said, laying aside his mask.
Sins’amin shrugged. “How so?”
“Such a judgment as we delivered could as easily have been made by one—and she our Beardaughter—as in full council.”
“Kha. But think a moment, my Red-Spear. Of Taliesin.”
“Taliesin?” he replied. “He drums with our ancestors. What thought does that require?”
Sins’amin smiled. “And yet, Kieranfoy brought with him a companion, and the ba
rd lives now in her.”
“You met her; we did not. Tell me, is it true? Has Redhair taken a craftdaughter?”
“Yes. The clasp on her cloak was a twin to his. And she wore his ring. But if final proof were needed, I offer this: Her eyes give my thoughts their truth. She grows her horns, and they are of Redhair’s drumming.”
“Ah. Then I understand. And you told Kieranfoy nothing. . . .”
“Kha!”
Unspoken between them lay an old quin’on’a prophecy, a power dream thought misinterpreted when the bard did not take an apprentice before he died.
“Kieranfoy and Ha’kan’ta will not prevail against Mal’ek’a,” Tep’fyl’in said. “A Beardance, even one Danced by the Drummers of the Bear, cannot prevail against him.”
“Perhaps not.” Sins’amin’s eyes held distant lights. “But it will give Taliesin’s craftdaughter time to grow her horns.”
Tep’fyl’in smiled, but the humor never touched his eyes. What if the prophecy was wrong? If Taliesin’s drumming was never passed on to another? What then? In the Mystery Realms that those in the World Beyond called the Otherworld, time was a strange and malleable thing. In this turn of time’s whirlpool, Taliesin never took a craftdaughter and the bard himself was dead. That could change, if the herok’a Sins’amin spoke of grew her horns. But if she did not? Was it such a terrible evil that the quin’on’a had a creature such as Mal’ek’a against which they could test the strength of their bodies and the sharpness of their wit? A tribe was measured by its foes. Did not Mal’ek’a make the quin’on’a of the Bear Clan the mightiest of all the Clans?
But these thoughts he kept to himself.
“Kha,” was all he said, his voice soft. “Understood, old mother.”
Chapter Five
Tucker’s Buick headed a three-vehicle cavalcade that pulled up in front of one of the Patterson Avenue entrances of Tamson House. Before the Inspector stepped out of the car, he shook his head at Collins who was drawing his .45 Colt from its holster under his armpit.