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“But you know the way. How?” Olikea suddenly seemed uncertain.

“Lisana. Lisana shared many of her memories with me. She made this journey scores of times, first as a young girl and then as a Great One. I rely on her memories.”Advertisement

They were quiet again and I felt Olikea relaxing against the warmth of his body. His arms were around her, holding her close to me. I felt sorry for her. Behind Soldier’s Boy’s closed eyelids, he was thinking of Lisana. My thoughts drifted toward Amzil. If only she were the woman in my arms now. Olikea exploded that fantasy.

She spoke softly. “You are not one of us. To some, that will be a problem. They may even be angry that you have come there.”

“I know. It will not make my task easier.”

“You will have to prove yourself to them before they will accept you as part of our kin-clan, let alone as a Great One.”

“I was thinking of that.”

She drew a deeper breath and let it out slowly, a prelude to sleep. “How long will it take us to reach the Wintering Place?”

“We could be there tomorrow. But I do not wish to move that swiftly and arrive there depleted of power. We will move more slowly and stop sooner.”

“That makes sense,” she agreed, and then said, “I need to sleep now.”

“Yes,” Soldier’s Boy agreed. But it was some time before he closed his eyes. I sensed he was weighing his options and planning a strategy. But I could not find a way into those thoughts and suspected he deliberately kept them from me.

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CHAPTER NINE

JOURNEY IN DARKNESS

I became an observer of my own life. Soldier’s Boy was the first to waken. I’d been awake for hours, alone in his darkened skull and feeling oddly helpless. I knew that he was planning something, something that would affect both of us forever, but had no idea what it was or how I could influence him. I’d again attempted to move the body, to “sleep-walk” it while he was unconscious and succeeded not at all. All I could do was to wait.

He stretched slowly, mindful of the two sleepers who flanked him. Awkwardly, he disengaged his body from theirs. They both burrowed into the warm space he left, now sharing the blanket more comfortably. He walked a short distance away from them before he relieved himself. Overhead, a narrow stripe of blue sky showed. I tried to decide if the mountains were leaning closer to one another overhead, or if distance only made it seem that way.

When he went back to Olikea and Likari, the two had cuddled together. In the semidarkness, Olikea embraced her son, and both their faces looked peaceful. I wondered who the boy’s father was and where he was. Soldier’s Boy understood far more of Speck customs than I did. I found my answer in his mind. Only rarely did Specks select a mate and remain with one person for life. The kin-clan was the family who would raise the children born to the women. Usually, mates came from outside the kin-clan, and often the journey to the Wintering Place or the Trading Place was when young women met males from other clans for those liaisons. It was not necessary for a boy to know who his father was, though they usually did. Often fathers had little to do with sons until they were old enough to be taught the hunting rites. Then a boy might choose to leave his kin-clan to join that of his father, or he might decide to remain with his mother’s people. Women almost never left their kin-clans. It was not the Speck way.

“It’s time to travel again,” Soldier’s Boy said. His voice sounded odd.

Olikea stirred, and beside her, Likari grumbled, stretched, and then recurled in a tighter ball. He scowled in his sleep. Olikea opened her eyes and then sighed. “It’s not night yet.”

“No. It’s not. But I wish to travel now. The nights grow colder. I don’t want to be caught here when winter bites hard.”

“Now he worries about it,” she muttered to herself, and then seized Likari’s shoulder and shook it. “Wake up. It’s time to travel again.”

We did not quick-walk. The light from above reached down to us. It was the strangest natural setting that I had ever experienced. What had seemed like a pass between two mountains had narrowed to a crevasse. We walked in the bottom of it, looking up at a sky that seemed to grow more distant with every step of our journey. The sides of the rift were slaty, the rock layered at an angle to the floor. Rubble that had tumbled down into the rift over the years floored it, but a well-trodden path threaded through it. Moss and little plants grew in the cracks of the walls.

By late afternoon, the crack that showed the sky had narrowed to a distant band of deep blue. We came to a place where water trickled down the stony walls. It pooled into a chiseled basin, overflowed it, and ran alongside our path for some distance before it vanished into a crack. We refilled the water skin there and everyone drank of the sweet, very cold water. Plants grew along the stream, but not luxuriantly. It was evident that they had recently been picked down to the roots. Olikea muttered angrily that nothing had been left; tradition demanded that some leaves must always be left for whoever came behind. Soldier’s Boy, his stomach grumbling loudly, lowered himself to his knees. He put his hands in the cold water, touching the matted roots of the plants lightly. pqdm.com