“Ready?” she asked.
Bahdlahn nodded eagerly and rubbed his fingers together.
“Go!”
Pebbles flew every which way, and in the end, Aoleyn opened her hand and said, “Five,” dropping the pebbles to the ground. Bahdlahn put his down beside hers and Aoleyn started counting them. She had barely begun when the boy said, “Twelve.”
Aoleyn finished her count and nodded her agreement before her eyes went wide and she gawked at Bahdlahn. He had produced the number before she had finished counting. He hadn’t counted, she realized; he had added. He knew that he had seven, and she had mentioned her five, and this boy, this simpleton whose own mother proclaimed as “stupid” had added them together in the snap of fingers.
Aoleyn stared at him for a long while, and Bahdlahn looked away.
“We should do it again,” she said. “Do you think we can get more?”
The boy looked back and nodded, his smile returning.
“I have nine!” Aoleyn announced after the next round, though she didn’t put them down. She looked at Bahdlahn slyly. “How many did you catch?”
Bahdlahn opened his hands, revealing seven once more.
“Seven,” Aoleyn said. “So how many did we catch?”
The boy licked his lips.
“More than last time?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You know how many,” she said suspiciously, obviously so.
He swallowed hard.
“Say the number.”
He started to shake his head slowly, but Aoleyn sharply demanded, “The number!”
“Sixtee—” The boy stopped short and glanced all around, as if looking at a way to run away.
Aoleyn was beginning to understand. She didn’t openly accuse him, then, however, and decided to keep going to see if she could get him to lower his guard.
“Sixteen!” she proclaimed happily, smile beaming. “We caught more than the first time!” Putting a bit more excitement than was necessary into her words, hoping to help Bahdlahn to not be nervous.
“We’ll catch more this time!” Aoleyn promised.
They didn’t. In fact, they came close a couple of times, but sixteen remained the highest number as they continued their game, round after round, laughing and playing. At one point, Aoleyn lifted three different stones and began experimenting with the magic in a different way, letting one drop, then catching it with the telekinesis as she let a second one drop, then catching that as the third fell.
As she did that, Bahdlahn took up three small stones of his own and began juggling them, and it occurred to Aoleyn that they were both doing the same thing, she with the magic of Usgar, he with nimble hands.
They soon went back to their other game, but by then the daylight was fast waning and it grew harder to even see the pebbles, let alone catch them. Still they tried, stubbornly, to beat sixteen, but now they couldn’t get close, and wound up slapping more pebbles than they caught.
It didn’t matter though; the silliness seemed to only make the time more precious, the day more fun.
But then the moon peeked over the shoulder of Fireach Speuer, as if to spy on them.
A red moon, the Blood Moon.
The face of Iseabal.
Bahdlahn gulped. Aoleyn turned to him just as he was jumping to his feet, already moving away before he had fully stood up. Rising, she caught him by the arm, but he tugged against her.
“Run,” he said.
“Why?” the young woman asked him, staring at him earnestly. She knew why, of course, but what could this simpleton slave possibly understand about Iseabal? “Lizbeth,” Bahdlahn replied.
“Lizbeth?”
Bahdlahn pointed at the rising orb and enunciated more clearly. “Elizabeth!”
“The name of the moon? You call it Liza … Elizabeth?”
He nodded frantically and kept pulling her along, clearly desperate to be out of there and back to his mother in the pine grove.
“That’s what your people call it?” Aoleyn pressed. She knew that she had to let him go—he had farther to run than she did, after all, but there was something else here, some level of insight or understanding that she had not witnessed with young Bahdlahn before. “Your mother taught you that?”
He nodded again.
“What else did she teach you about it, besides its name?” she asked.
He shrugged and held up his hands.
“Lots, huh?” Aoleyn asked in a teasing and jocular manner. “And you can keep more still in that funny head of yours?”
He shook his head—too emphatically, she thought.
“You don’t have enough words?”
“No,” he said, sounding more cogent and determined than she had ever heard. “No time.”
Aoleyn couldn’t really argue with that, as surprised as she was by his reaction. This was the first time she had been with Bahdlahn with the Blood Moon rising since that long-ago day when they had been out collecting pinecones for Seonagh. Though, on that occasion, he hadn’t shown such fear.
She pulled him with her instead of letting him run, taking him to the edge of the Usgar encampment, where the bonfire was already ablaze, and sentries moving out to the camp’s perimeter.
“We’re safe here,” she said, finding an out-of-the-way place. “Tell me.”
Bahdlahn glanced all around, focusing mostly on the camp and not on the darkness beyond.
She shook him. “Tell me and I’ll take you back to your mother.”
The boy swallowed hard.
“I know you can talk,” she warned. “Might that I’ll tell the warriors.”
His eyes went very wide and he trembled visibly, and Aoleyn immediately got the sense that he would spring upon her and throttle her! Only then did she realize how important this particular secret truly might be, for only then did the young woman understand it from the poor boy’s point of view—and from his mother’s point of view. She, Innevah, had done this to him, from his earliest days, and only now did Aoleyn understand why.
“I will never tell them,” she said quietly. “I will never tell anyone … Thump. And I will never let them hurt you.”
He seemed to calm.
“What do you know about Iseab … about Elizabeth? Please whisper to me. It is important.”
Bahdlahn put his lips to her ear and began whispering something she couldn’t decipher, and it took her a lot of words—more words than she had ever heard strung together by the boy, certainly!—to figure out that he wasn’t speaking the common language of the tribes, but rather, something that sounded more primitive and guttural, short and stout and very different from the flowing language of the mountain tribe. He spoke in a low monotone, not unlike the chanting the Coven used often in their rituals.
“Is that the language of the lake tribes?” she asked. “Some secret way of talking?”
“Older,” Bahdlahn answered.
“Older?”
“The Ancients,” he explained. “Old lessons.”
“What does it mean?”
Bahdlahn looked all around again, and Aoleyn realized that he was making sure that no other Usgar were around, reinforcing her new insight of how critical it was to him—indeed, his very life depended upon it!—that no one understood how well he could truly speak.
“Elizabeth bleeds and the Beast wakes,” the boy said, his voice hushed. “The world bleeds with her.”
Aoleyn didn’t know how to respond, for too many things bounced about in her head. Bahdlahn had spoken in two different languages! And he had spoken in a clear and reasonable manner, in complete sentences. In that moment, he seemed in no way to resemble a simpleton who was once called Thump.
Also, the lakemen clearly understood the danger of the Blood Moon. Had they been visited by the fossa, as well?
And who were these ancients, or ancient lessons, or whatever it might be?
It was all too much for Aoleyn at that moment, so when Bahdlahn whispered, “Please, home,” she could only nod and lead the way
.
Aoleyn ignored the sentry’s call for her to stay in the camp and ran to the south with Bahdlahn in tow, sprinting the short distance to the slave grove.
Bahdlahn led the way, moving in with certainty through the tangled branches.
Aoleyn heard the boy’s mother gasp with obvious relief when he pressed deeper into the pines. She, too, had seen the Blood Moon.
Aoleyn pushed her way into that inner chamber, to see Bahdlahn’s mother hugging him close, her arms wrapped tightly about him, kissing him all over his head.
Aoleyn felt something welling up inside her she did not expect and could hardly fathom: envy.
Innevah looked past her boy to see Aoleyn, her face a mask of utter relief. She nodded at the young woman, then motioned for her son to go into his chamber beside hers, two natural shelters separated by some intertwined branches.
“Greetings, Innevah,” Aoleyn said at last, meekly.
The woman’s gaze went to the floor. She answered in a quiet tone, “Greetings, mistress.”
“Not mistress,” Aoleyn said, moving into the room and bending to bring her eyes to Innevah’s level. “Just Aoleyn.”
“I know.”
“Your son has told you much about me?”
The woman looked up, her face twitching with nervousness. She shook her head slowly. “He cannot speak.”
“But you know of me,” Aoleyn stated more than asked.
“There are not so many Usgar,” Innevah answered. “An uamhas must know.”
Aoleyn let her stare linger for a little bit, then glanced to the side, to the corridor where the boy had gone. She noted him in the other chamber, moving back and forth.
“My gratitude, mistress, for bringing Thump home.”
Aoleyn snapped her head back to look the woman in the eye. “His name is Bahdlahn,” she said through gritted teeth. She wasn’t sure why Innevah’s use of the demeaning name had so bothered her. Perhaps it was because she was jealous of the obvious relationship between Bahdlahn and Innevah. Aoleyn had never known her own mother, after all, and from what she knew of her people, even if she had, she would not get hugged and kissed like that anyway. Seonagh was the closest thing she had, and she had only ever known a slap across her face from her teacher.
Or maybe it was something else, she began to wonder. She thought back to the first time she had looked in on Innevah and her baby, those many years before. She still remembered it, and vividly. The moment had been burned into her mind forever when she had heard Innevah telling her child, her innocent baby, that he was stupid.
“We call him Thump,” Innevah said, again looking at the floor.
“And I say Bahdlahn,” Aoleyn snapped back. “So which will it be?”
“Bahdlahn, mistress,” Innevah said. “You are mistress, I am uamhas. It is not my place to choose.”
Aoleyn wasn’t sure how to move this conversation along. Many things continued to bounce about her thoughts, most prominently her understanding now that Bahdlahn was nowhere near as simple and stupid as she had presumed, even when she had come to believe that he wasn’t simple enough to hold the name of Thump.
What was happening here was much deeper than anything she had before imagined. She was pretty sure she knew the truth, but only Innevah could confirm.
But not then.
She was about to bid Innevah farewell and take her leave, when a cry went up from outside. “To the fire!” they cried. “To the camp! The sidhe rascals have come! A raid!”
23
THE WORLD BLEEDS
Their time on the mountain plateau was nearing its end. The north winds had begun to blow and Talmadge and Khotai had visited four of the villages now, including crossing the lake to Sellad Tulach, the easternmost village, nestled among the mountains that lined the eastern edge of the plateau. In their initial journey to get to Loch Beag, Talmadge and Khotai had to approach from the northeast, crossing all the way around the northern edge of the plateau to the easier climb beyond the northwestern edge of Loch Beag. That corner of the mountain plateau presented a long trail, but not a vertical climb.
Talmadge had not second-guessed his choice to allow Khotai into more of the villages this year, for in every one, she had been afforded great hospitality. Talmadge’s own acceptance to these lands had come much more slowly than his exotic friend was experiencing. She understood these people more than Talmadge did, even though he had spent many months among them. The To-gai-ru ways were similar to the folk of the tribes, the affinity to the land around them, the understanding and efficiency of the language and the daily routines. Khotai had been a natural fit here around the waters of the loch.
As soon as he had become certain of these perceptions regarding Khotai, and confident that they would be common about the tribes, Talmadge had changed his normal trading route, had decided to save the best village for last.
He wondered if he and Khotai might one day make Fasach Crann their home. They were still young enough to have children. Was it possible that his future would take such a turn?
“I’ve not known more amazement,” Khotai said from behind the man, who was gazing back to the south, toward Fasach Crann. He turned about to regard the woman as she stood at the crest of the path they had walked, facing away from him.
He knew what she was talking about. She was overlooking the desert, some two thousand feet below.
Fasail Dubh’clach, the Desert of Black Stones.
Although he had been to this place many times, Talmadge understood Khotai’s awe at the spectacle so far beneath them. He remembered the first time he had glanced over this very ledge, and the first thought that had occurred to him regarding the unusual landscape. They were high up on a mountain plateau, beside a huge lake that was, by all reports, very, very deep—deeper even than the mountains were high, so the tribesmen said. That lake lay in a natural bowl. What would happen to that bone-dry desert below them if an earthquake cracked the mountain wall? If the natural dam holding back such an immense amount of water someday failed?
What a sight that would be! And not a very welcomed one to any who might live down there in the Desert of Black Stones.
He walked over to stand beside his beloved Khotai, and appreciated the view even more. The sun had just set, but the deep night had not yet arrived, and he could still clearly make out the large shapes down below.
The stars were just beginning to shine, and soon an amount beyond counting would fill the night sky, their light competing with the full moon.
He stepped behind Khotai and wrapped his arms about her. Perhaps they might spend the night out here, feeling so much a part of something so much larger. Larger than each of them, larger than them together.
Like the way he felt about his love for her.
The night deepened, the stars began to shine, and both Khotai and Talmadge drew in a sharp breath, gasping in awe and reverence. Out across the low desert before them and down to the south, they saw the floating hues low in the sky. It was a rare sight this far north, but Talmadge knew it to be the Halo.
Khotai reached up over her shoulder to run her fingers across Talmadge’s face. What was there to say? What words could express the serenity, the beauty, of this heavenly view, with the dark desert spreading wide far below and the magical equatorial ring of Corona shimmering with color to shame the very stars above?
The harmonious sweep of the Halo’s hues continued far in the distance, holding them silent. But a moment later, they both painted on curious expressions when that distant shimmer shifted from its multitude of hues to a monochrome red.
Khotai looked back over her shoulder at Talmadge, or started to, but stopped halfway, her eyes going wide, and leading his gaze.
The red moon began to climb over the eastern shoulder of Fireach Speuer.
“We should get to the village, and quickly,” Talmadge said. Only then did he realize that they really were all alone out here, and looking back, he noted the large fires being constructed within Sellad Tulach.
/> “Why?” Khotai asked, obviously sensing his sudden change of mood. “I like the privacy. I like the view.” She gently stroked his face. “I like the company.”
Talmadge couldn’t help but grin at that, but as tempted as he was, he knew better. “The full moon,” he explained. “The villagers huddle when the moon shines red.”
“Fables?”
Talmadge shook his head. “Might be, but fanciful tales believed in heart. In all the villages. When the full moon’s red, all the tribes—even the Usgar, I am told—huddle beside great fires that steal the red glow.”
“Because there are monsters about?” Khotai asked lightly, and it was clear to Talmadge that she wasn’t taking any such threats seriously.
He wasn’t, either, when he considered just the matter of some village fables about some demonic monster, but that was only one concern.
“If we stay out through this night, our return will be met with doubting eyes,” he explained. “They’ll want to know why. They’ll want to know how. They’ll know we doubted their … fables and so do not value their wisdom.”
Khotai nodded and moved past him, taking his hand and turning him as she moved back toward Sellad Tulach.
“I’ve no wish to insult them,” she said. “They’ve already come to like me more than they like Talmadge, and if I am to take over your trading routes, I need to continue that.”
That brought a laugh to Talmadge and he playfully swatted Khotai on the rump as he caught up to her.
“They only suffer you because they like me so much,” he said.
“You tell yourself whatever you need to hold heart,” she was quick to reply.
Talmadge pulled her close.
“You should’ve taken me to this place years ago,” Khotai said. “But I understand your want of secrecy.”
“Not that,” he said, stopping his walk and holding her back. “I…” He stammered for some response but couldn’t find one.
“I know,” she said, helping him out. “Badger’s ghost haunted you. But there’s more than that—be truthful, my love! This place, Loch Beag and the mountains, the desert below and the stars above, is pure to you, unspoiled. You would keep it that way, and you feared that showing your secret would despoil it.”