The Wild Road (2 page)

Karadath, on the other hand, was arrogant with the awareness that Brodhi was markedly promising. Brodhi had, before setting out on his journey, killed two of his
dioscuri
brothers. Brodhi would one day challenge his sire; and if he defeated Karadath, he would ascend to his father's place. It was
expected
that one day Brodhi would do so.

But Brodhi, like Rhuan, had come home too soon. And he, like Rhuan, would be punished for it.

THE ANGER THAT
had bolstered Audrun's courage and provided the words with which to challenge the primaries in their own Kiba, drained from her body as she climbed the steps. Now there was joy; joy and intense relief and other emotions too tangled upon themselves to name. The Shoia courier had brought her children to her.

All save one. The baby stolen by a demon.

That child, for now, was mourned more quietly than otherwise, because the children she knew best, the children she had raised, were alive, and present.

The courier had been sent away before she could thank him, even as she took Megritte from him into her arms. Darmuth, one of the karavan guides—but seemingly at home in the deepwood, which made her suspicious—also departed after murmuring something about the children being damaged but “safe for the time being.” Megritte in her arms, Audrun told the other children—Gillan, Ellica, and Torvic—to stay close as they all followed a man whose features, height, and coloring marked him kin to the primaries. The difference was a certain softness to his face, as if his skin didn't fit as tightly as it should. He was braidless, this man, his dark coppery hair cut short at the nape of his neck. It was without the ornamentation that wove through the multiple braids worn by the courier, by all of the folk called primaries, and by Rhuan. No—that
had
been worn by Rhuan, before she undid them and married herself to him. Without speaking, this braidless man led them away from the Kiba along a paved footpath to a huge, spreading tree beside the towering cliffs. A massive stone bench had been placed under the leafy canopy; Audrun had already marked that everything in this place was of a larger scale than in her own world. But then, she had discovered in the Kiba that the primaries themselves were of a larger scale.

Gillan, she had already noted, limped badly. Ellica clutched against her breasts a small sapling wrapped in homespun skirts. Audrun wanted badly to know what had happened to them while they were lost in the deepwood, but there would be time to ask them later. For now, the only thing that mattered was that all of them were safe.

And Davyn, her husband, was not in Alisanos! “Thank the Mother,” she murmured; yet there was a selfish portion of her that wished he were.

The braidless man left them. He said nothing, merely made a gesture she recognized as a request—or a command—that they remain here.

Meggie, no longer infant or toddler, was heavy, and Audrun too weary and worn to continue carrying her no matter how much she wished to. She leaned down and settled Megritte on the stone bench then turned and put out her arms to the others. As one, they engulfed her, Torvic in tears, Gillan laughing brokenly in relief and release, and Ellica, still clutching her sapling as if it were an infant, rested her head against Audrun's shoulder. There wasn't room enough in her arms to hug everyone at once, but she did her best. All of them were in tears, even herself, but no shame, no shame in it. She brushed hair out of their faces, briefly cradled their cheeks. They were filthy, thin, faces gaunt beneath the grime, clothing torn and stained. But they were whole. Whole and alive, and no longer missing, no longer lost in the deepwood.

“Thank the Mother,” she repeated fervently.

Tears rose, stung, spilled. Cradling the heads of her children one by one, Audrun kissed each on cheeks and brows, then turned back to Megritte. She sank down upon the bench, gathered Meggie close, and began the efforts needed to bring order to tangled blond hair. Her own needed care as well, but she would rather tend her child.

Torvic found room on the other side of the bench next to her, so that she was between her two youngest, while Gillan hobbled to a wide shelf of stone and collapsed upon it, hissing in pain. Ellica sat down upon the earth, taking care to cradle the sapling and its rootball in her lap. Her manner was, Audrun realized, akin to her own when she tended an infant. To see it in her daughter, who had no child, struck her as odd; odder still to see that her charge was a tree. Ellica's tears had dried, and now she wore an expression of serenity, as if she drew strength from the sapling.

Audrun caught movement from the corner of her eye and looked up from Meggie's head. She registered braids and ornamentation as well as clean, sharp features, a severe expression, and a form incontestably female. Rhuan had called her Ylarra.

Ylarra halted before them. She looked at each of the children individually, as if evaluating them. Then she looked at Audrun. “The challenge has been accepted. We shall make you this road through Alisanos. Until there is a place for you upon it, you shall remain here.”

Audrun could not curtail the bitterness in her tone. “As prisoners.”

“We do not keep prisoners,” Ylarra replied. “Those who are our enemies, we kill. But you have taken yourself a
dioscuri
as husband, and there are obligations in such things. Thus you and your young will remain as guests until there is a place for you on the road.”

Audrun had denied that Rhuan was her husband several times within the confines of the Kiba, before the assembled primaries. She denied it again, now, but this time with neither anger nor rancor. This time she maintained self-control and spoke calmly. “You heard me before, in the Kiba. Let me say this again, since it appears you have not yet grasped the meat of the matter: I did not marry Rhuan. I unbraided his hair to cleanse his wounds. I have a husband, a human husband, in the human world.”

Ylarra's smile was thin. She was a tall, elegant, powerful woman, larger than many men in the human world but no less feminine for it. A light kindled in brown eyes. Amusement, Audrun believed, and an arrogance so plain as to overwhelm a human. But Audrun refused to be overwhelmed.
She is not a god; a demon, perhaps.

But no, not demon. Were she to attach that label to Ylarra, it would attach also to Rhuan. And that Audrun refused to do.

“Believe as you will,” Ylarra said. “But here you are subject to our customs.”

Audrun realized that she should be afraid. She was meant to be afraid. It was true she was apprehensive, but that emotion was as nothing compared to the others that motivated her. She was wife and mother, and such responsibilities superseded fear. “And if I refuse to abide by your customs?”

“It would be best,” the primary said, “that you do not. We have no obligations to a human who is not—by our customs—married to a
dioscuri
. And we do not guest humans here, in the heart of our people.”

No threat colored Ylarra's tone, no promise of punishment. A handful of words spoken quietly, evenly, with no trace of emotion. But Audrun felt it, and she understood: So long as she was believed to be Rhuan's wife, sealed by Alisani customs, she and her children would be safe.

“You will be looked after,” Ylarra continued. “A neuter will be assigned and a private chamber with certain amenities.”

Rhuan had said time ran differently in Alisanos. “For how long must we remain?”

“As I have said: until there is a place for you upon the road.” Dismissal was implicit as Ylarra began to turn away.

“Wait!” Audrun wanted to jump up from the bench, but she could not bear to let go of Torvic and Megritte. “Wait,” she repeated, and was gratified when Ylarra turned back. “You say until the road is built. But how long will that take?”

“Always time, with you. How long this? How long that?” Scorn underlay her tone, a gesture waved the question of time away. “And the answer is what, in Alisanos, the answer always is: That which is made here is completed when it is completed.”

Yet again Audrun forestalled her departure. “Are we . . . will we be safe from the poison while we're here?”

Ylarra's brows rose. “The ‘poison'?”

“The wild magic,” Audrun answered. “Rhuan called it a poison.”

“There is no poison here.” The primary smiled. “Only power.”

“Rhuan said it would change us. That we could never go home because of what it would do to us.” She steadied her voice. “If you can make this road, surely you can see us safely home. We are as yet unchanged. Wouldn't you prefer to have us gone, we humans? Then your home would be uncorrupted.”

“Home?” Ylarra echoed. “Go home to the human world?” Braid ornamentation glinted in the light of double suns suspended above the tree, above the cliffs. “They would shun you, your folk. Is that what you want?”

Abruptly, Audrun recalled the old man, the ragged stranger in the tent settlement, who had come up to the wagon. She recalled his clawed, scaled hands. He had begged for her aid, had begged to return to Alisanos, because he was no longer welcome in the human world.

But Audrun was adamant. “
Before
the change begins.” She stretched out a hand and displayed it, wishing she could still the minute trembling. “See? Nothing. I am human. My children are human. There is no poison in us. Show us the way . . . take us to the border between your world and mine, and we will go.”

Ylarra said, “Ask your eldest.”

As the primary intended, Audrun instantly wanted to look at Gillan. But she would not allow herself. Not before Ylarra.

Ylarra smiled and departed. Audrun waited tensely until she was gone then looked at Gillan, asking without words.

All of the color leeched out of his face. Wordlessly, he peeled back his homespun pant-leg, stripped away the bindings, and showed her the discolored flesh, the terrible patchwork of demon-scaled skin.

Already, it began.

Too late, too late, too late
. Chilled flesh rose on her bones. Grief engulfed her, yet she shed no tears. Not before the children. She was all they had, until their father came.

But inside, Audrun wept: for what they might have become, for what they once had been.

RHUAN'S HEART LEAPED
as Ylarra entered the chamber he shared with Brodhi and pronounced sentence. It was so like the primaries to assume that denying him their presence was a punishment, when in fact, it was what he would have requested, given leave to do so. Darmuth, the demon who traveled with Rhuan, reporting his journey's progress to the primaries, had evidently told them nothing of Rhuan's heart; the half-human heart that longed to live among his mother's people for the balance of his life. Darmuth's discretion was unexpected. Darmuth owed loyalty to the primaries; his task was to stay with his charge and monitor his doings in the human world, then divulge those doings to the primaries.

Like all
dioscuri
, Rhuan was expected, at the completion of his journey—providing the primaries found him worthy—to challenge his sire so that he might ascend to Alario's place, were Alario defeated. He fully expected to be found unworthy to challenge his sire, but he was still
dioscuri
, and a successful completion of the journey would buy him a boon nonetheless and well before any challenge might be mounted. It was that boon he strived for, not the chance to challenge his sire, but the opportunity to inform the primaries, without reprisal, that he was departing Alisanos forever.

He might have lost the opportunity altogether, had the primaries decided his premature return to Alisanos was worthy of castration. He had come close, Rhuan knew. Closer than was comfortable.

It was a gift, this sentence. Five additional human years in which to inhabit the human world. A new journey begun among humans he knew, humans he valued, humans he counted as friends.

With Ilona, who was more.