“Pa’teyn’ho was very old when he spoke those words,” Tep’fyl’in said. “Who knows whether it was truly his totem speaking through him, or the ramblings of an elder grown too old for his position? Who can even swear that it was Taliesin Redhair he spoke of and not some other? Hoth’ans bears a stag’s aspect. Who can say that it is not her daughter that the prophecy speaks of?”
“Sometimes I wonder,” Sins’amin said, “whether you argue with reason, or simply to hear the sound of your own voice. Hoth’ans has no daughter. There has been no child born in our lodge since the Winter of Ko’han’to’s passing. Three-and-thirty winters—by the counting of the tribesfolk.” She let go of his arm and looked across Pinta’wa’s clear waters. “Tell me, Red-Spear. Why must you always take an opposing view?”
“You wait for a prophecy to be fulfilled,” he replied. “I would prefer to confront our enemy myself.”
“This is not a thing we can do.”
“Old mother, I fear you are wrong. It is something we must do, we must learn to do, or we are lost. If we wait too long, the world will pass us by. Then we will be dust indeed—not even remembered in the poorest lodge or tipi.”
Sins’amin shook her head. “It was the herok’a who crossed the Great Water that turned the tribesfolk from us, who shrouded their lack of respect for us with their glib tongues and hollow gifts. So it is that those same herok’a must either grow horns themselves and so sustain us, or turn our tribesfolk back to the old ways.
“Pa’teyn’ho knew this. And as he knew that Taliesin’s coming would bring us great joy, so he knew that sorrow would come as well. Mal’ek’a is the essence of the lies that the herok’a brought with them. By such reckoning, he is Taliesin’s dark twin. So Taliesin, through his craftdaughter, must set it right once more.”
“Little remains for us in the World Beyond,” Tep’fyl’in said. “The forests have been cut down, the plains seeded with the herok’a’s crops. . . .”
“Yet there is enough.”
“Taliesin never had a craftdaughter, old mother. He died without passing on his drum.”
“No. There you are wrong. I agree that our traditions have not spoken of his taking a craftdaughter, but this I know: his spirit lives on in the one named Saraken. I felt its presence drumming in her.”
“That matters not,” Tep’fyl’in said. “Mal’ek’a seeks her. He will not give her the time to grow her horns.”
“It is only there that we have failed. I had thought to give her time by sending the one named Kieranfoy to face Mal’ek’a. But he learned his dance too well.”
“Our only failure,” Tep’fyl’in said, “is in not confronting Mal’ek’a ourselves. Time and again I have put it to you. It is we who must take action. Are we grown so old that we must cower in fear at the mention of Mal’ek’a’s name?”
“No, Red-Spear. But we are the deathless who have come to know mortality. If we were to confront Mal’ek’a, all we would gain is our own deaths. Pa’teyn’ho was the first of us to age and die. Would you follow him?”
“Yes. But with my spear in hand and my wolves at my side. I am stronger than some hornless maiden, old mother. I will not die abed, riddled with time’s dreary wounds.”
Sins’amin shook her head. “Mal’ek’a was not born to the Way. Only a herok’a who has grown horns, not one who was born to them, has any hope of defeating him.”
Tep’fyl’in sighed, his expressionless features masking his frustration. It was an old argument, never resolved.
“Then allow me this,” he said at length. “Allow me to confront Ha’kan’ta and her new blanket-mate. Allow me to send them back to buy you the time you tell me you need.”
“We must let them speak first,” Sins’amin said. “We know only that they return. Not why.”
“I will tell you why: Because courage has died in their hearts!”
“You cannot know this.”
“In here,” Tep’fyl’in replied, tapping his chest. “No matter what words come from between their lips, in here I know why.”
“We will see.”
“They know we’re coming,” Kieran said.
Ak’is’hyr’s bulk moved underneath them, the great muscled limbs carrying them as quietly through the forest as the padded paws of the two white wolves that flanked them. It was a curious, but not unpleasant sensation, riding high on the creature’s back, ghosting through the trees. Another curiosity was how the return trip from Ha’kan’ta’s camp to the quin’on’a lodge took only a third of the time as the trip out had.
“I do not think it is possible,” Ha’kan’ta said, “to approach a quin’on’a lodge without their foreknowledge. But this time I sent word ahead that we were coming.”
Kieran shook his head. “Not a good idea.”
“How so?”
“You’ve given them time to prepare their story.”
“You do not trust the forest spirits, do you?”
“Tom always told me to be careful around them—if the occasion ever arose that I’d have to deal with them. No, I don’t trust them, Kanta. They want something from us and I don’t think it’s going to be something we’re willing to give them.”
“Perhaps,” Ha’kan’ta replied. “They have changed from my grandmother’s time. Even from my father’s time. Once there were many quin’on’a lodges. Now there are few. And they lie deep within the Otherworld—far from the World Beyond, where once the quin’on’a hunted with as much freedom as any of your own people might.”
“Why’s that?”
Ha’kan’ta sighed. “My father told me it is because they learned how to die. Once they were held in awe by all the tribesfolk. Now only the rathe’wen’a remember them and we grow very few in number. There might be a handful on your world. No more than thirty others scattered throughout the Otherworld. That is not enough to sustain the quin’on’a. They need belief. Without that belief, they wither.”
“Just like elves,” Kieran said.
“What?”
But Kieran wasn’t listening. His mind had gone back to another conversation, back through the years. “Were they real or not?” he’d asked his mentor.
“Very real,” Tom had replied. “But I doubt you’ll run across any now. Their time has gone from this world, Kier; this world belongs to mankind now. Elves, the gods of pagan pantheons, hobgoblins and boogiemen, call them what you will—their ‘reality’ was directly dependent on how much people believed in them.
“When I walk a forest today, I can still hear the drum of Cernunnos’s hooves in the long silences. But where once it was a sound like thunder, these days it is a distant echo. Someday it won’t be heard at all. The time will come when wizards too will no longer walk our forests. And then . . . ah, then what a sorry world it will be.”
“But can’t something be done?”
Tom had shaken his head. “What can you do against the inevitable? Can you see Pan walking the streets of New York? Diana leading her Wild Hunt through London? There is no more room for them in this world, Kier. When the last of the people we call primitive have been ‘civilized’ . . . with the loss of that innocence, the last magics will disappear.”
It had seemed a very depressing prospect to Kieran, for all that the closest he’d been to the beings that Tom described were the tales of the old man himself.
“Don’t look so glum,” Tom had said. “They disappear from our world, but there are other worlds for them still. World fitting within world, each a little smaller than the next, like Chinese boxes. Each world a little more magical until the last world of all.”
“What world is that?”
Tom had smiled then. “Why, the Summer Country, Kier. The Region of the Summer Stars from which all magics come and, in the end, all magics must go.”
Kieran remembered thinking it all so much rhetoric—platitudes couched in mythic terms. Jungian symbols that, while perhaps not real in themselves, were still capable of awaking answers in those who understoo
d them. He’d never really pursued them any further. But now. . . . Now he had to accept that the old man had been doing more than setting a few new riddles in front of him. He had only himself to blame for not going further; but, to be fair to himself, he hadn’t really wanted more. The deepening of his taw had seemed wonder enough.
“You are very quiet, Kieran.”
“I was thinking,” he said, “of how close I came to never knowing the real wonder of the world.”
“And you know it now?”
He shook his head. “No. But at least I’ve started to look for it again.”
Three of the quin’on’a elders met them on the slopes just outside the village: Sins’amin the Beardaughter, Tep’fyl’in her War Chief, and the Creator Hoth’ans, who had twice seen Kieran in her power dreams. Strangely enough, for all her earlier antipathy, it was Hoth’ans who seemed the most pleased to see them. When Kieran slid down from the back of Ak’is’hyr, she smiled at him.
“Last night you chose the Drum,” she said. “I welcome you, drummer.”
Tep’fyl’in scowled at her, but her head was turned and only Kieran and Ha’kan’ta saw the look he gave her. When Ha’kan’ta dropped to the ground beside Kieran, the big moose stepped softly back into the woods, melting in amongst the shadowed pines. The two wolves remained, amber eyes regarding the quin’on’a with suspicion.
“Brothers,” Tep’fyl’in said to them. “Do not regard me with such ill wishing.”
The guard hairs rose on the wolves’ backs and they moved closer to Ha’kan’ta and Kieran. Kieran started at the brush of stiff fur that touched his hand. Looking down, feeling the warmth of the wolfs body close against him, he knew a sudden comfort. He’d raised his taw as they approached the lodge. Now he used it to touch the mind of the wolf at his side, and he knew May’asa, the Summer-Brother, offered his protection.
Tep’fyl’in’s scowl grew deeper, but he kept his own counsel. Beside him, Sins’amin touched her necklace of bear claws.
“Why have you returned, drum-sister?” she asked Ha’kan’ta.
In the asking of that simple question, Ha’kan’ta knew that Kieran had been right. The quin’on’a were plainly displeased to see them return. A cold anger rose up in her.
“Did you think never to see us again?” she asked. “Was that your purpose in sending us against Mal’ek’a?”
“We did not send you,” Sins’amin replied. “You chose to go of your own will. Our only concern was that you did not trouble the spirit of Taliesin Redhair with your follies. And remember, drum-sister, it was you who brought the outworlder to our council. You that chose to go with him. You that shared your body with him. You that taught him his Totemdance.”
“And that was ill done?” Ha’kan’ta demanded coldly.
“It is not our affair,” Sins’amin replied.
Ha’kan’ta shook her head. “Warm is the greeting you give a drum-sister. Have I become the enemy as well? What do you see when you look at me? A tragg’a in drummer’s flesh?”
“Do not seek to question us,” Tep’fyl’in said.
Sins’amin put her hand on his arm, but he shook it off. “Through your ties with the World Beyond,” he told Ha’kan’ta, “you have reawoken old griefs. Taliesin Redhair was your father’s drum-brother, yet here you are consorting with his self-claimed enemy. You said you would destroy Mal’ek’a, yet you turn back before even setting out. You speak with words of wind. If you would show your worth, bind truth to your words. Return with deeds done, not questions. Then we may speak as equals.”
Ha’kan’ta stiffened at Kieran’s side. The wolves growled low in their chests, lips drawn back from their teeth.
“Mother of God!” Kieran said, taking a step forward. “Who do you think you’re talking to? We’re not your lackies, here to run at your beck and call. Nom de tout! If you want the demon killed, why don’t you do something about it yourself?”
“I do not hear you,” Tep’fyl’in said. “You are nothing to me.”
The mental scorn that followed hard on the heels of the War Chief’s words snapped something inside Kieran. He lunged forward, swinging a fist. Tep’fyl’in smoothly blocked the blow with his left forearm, caught Kieran by the scruff of his shirt, and effortlessly cast him to the ground. The abruptness of his dispatch, coupled with the shock of hitting the ground so suddenly, left Kieran breathless.
“You question my courage,” Tep’fyl’in said. “As I question yours.”
He drew his tomahawk from his belt and threw it. It landed in the earth between him and Kieran.
“Pick it up,” he said, “and we will see who lacks courage and who does not.”
It was a challenge to ritual combat. Kieran had only to pick up the tomahawk to accept the challenge. Accept the challenge and get the living shit kicked out of him—if he didn’t lose his life.
“Don’t,” Ha’kan’ta cried.
Don’t? Kieran thought. What else could he do?
He knew the whole situation was stupid beyond reasoning. Might makes right. The old law of the jungle. But it didn’t matter if he was going to get creamed. Didn’t matter that there was no way he could stand up against a trained warrior and hope to win. He had to try. For himself. For Ha’kan’ta. To prove his worth to these so-called higher beings.
He sat up and swallowed drily. His hand shook as it reached out to take the tomahawk’s handle. He looked up. Tep’fyl’in’s grin was feral, his eyes glittering.
“I forbid this madness,” Sins’amin said. “He does not know what he has accepted. You are a trained warrior, Red-Spear. He is not. It will be slaughter, plain and simple.”
“I think he understands well enough,” Tep’fyl’in replied.
“I . . . I understand,” Kieran said.
Sins’amin shook her head. “Still I forbid it.”
“Too late, old mother. He has already accepted the challenge.”
“He is not the enemy.”
Tep’fyl’in’s anger spilled from him. “They are all our enemies,” he said fiercely. “He and Redhair and all those white-skinned devils that stole the tribesfolk from us. What is Mal’ek’a, but their evil given substance?”
“The tribesfolk had their choice,” Hoth’ans said.
Tep’fyl’in shook his head. “If the herok’a had never come from across the Great Water, there would have been no need for the tribesfolk to choose. And what choice is there when the herok’a offered gifts with one hand while concealing the knife blade with the other?”
There was no answer to that old truth. Just as there had been no way to prevent it. The world fared on. Sooner or later, what had come to be would have come about. But that did not lessen the frustration of seeing the tribesfolk turn away from a way of pride and strength. It did not diminish the grief. Never mind that the tribesfolk had made the choice themselves.
But there had been even a semblance of choice only at first, when the herok’a came in small numbers. Later they arrived hundreds to each great ship and swarmed across the land like maggots feeding on an old kill. They were scavengers. Thieves. It was this that built the rage in Tep’fyl’in. And Sins’amin knew that he was not alone in his anger. With the tribes so diminished, many of the quin’on’a felt the same. Grandmother Toad knew that she shared that anger herself, though she tried to temper it with reason.
“So be it,” the quin’on’a Beardaughter said wearily. “What will be the weapons?”
“Spears,” Tep’fyl’in said quickly.
Kieran stood up, the tomahawk gripped tightly in a trembling hand.
“Not spears,” Ha’kan’ta said softly to him. “They are his chosen weapon.”
Kieran looked at her and shrugged. What did it matter? his eyes told her. He looked down at the tomahawk—Tep’fyl’in’s totem stick. Holding it up in front of him, he spat on it and tossed it at the War Chief’s feet.
“Spears,” he agreed.
Tep’fyl’in’s anger hit him like a physical blow, but Kieran ha
d been expecting it and braced himself.
“This’ll look real good,” he said contemptuously. “It’s going to show everyone how brave you are. The big War Chief. War Chief of a tribe of fools.”
Tep’fyl’in’s eyes narrowed to slits. But through the red film of his anger, he could feel his own totem stir in agreement to the outworlder’s words. Where was the honor in besting one who had no skill? No honor. But honorless or not, he would still glory in the other’s defeat.
“To the death,” he said.
Sins’amin shook her head. “First blood!”
“Kha,” he replied. Understood. What did it matter? First blood would be the same as the outworlder’s death when he plunged his spear into him.
“The challenge will be met at moonrise,” Sins’amin said.
She looked from Kieran to her War Chief. Her anger was plain. This was not how it had been meant to be. She turned to Ha’kan’ta. “This was never my intention, drum-sister—” she began, but Ha’kan’ta cut her off.
“Drum-sister no more. You have a strange manner of repaying old kindnesses. I am not the enemy. Kieran is not the enemy. But your people and mine are kin no more. Whatever outcome Mother Bear allows tonight, know this: I will call a council of the rathe’wen’a and tell them of this madness. The quin’on’a will never outlive the scorn we will hold for you. By the First Bear’s dark eye, I wish you ill—now and forever.”
Sins’amin bowed her head under the weight of Ha’kan’ta’s words. This came of her own intricate plottings. But deserved though it might be, had not those plottings been made with the best for all in mind? Aie! She had been too devious for all their good. Too late, too late now to make amends. The only hope that remained rested on the frail shoulders of Taliesin’s craftdaughter—and she had yet to grow her horns.
She lifted her head to regard Ha’kan’ta, opening her spirit that the rathe’wen’a might understand what and why she had done what she did. But Ha’kan’ta remained closed to her, her heart cold, her desire to understand shattered by anger.