Beside the second hearth fire, on a pallet, lay Falling-down side by side with a dead woman half-covered with pine needles. His eyes were closed. For an instant Adica thought he, too, was dead. She knelt beside him and touched his hand, and he opened his eyes at once. He had the hazel eyes common to his tribe, rheumy with age but still sharply intelligent.
“Adica!” he said with pleasure in his brittle voice. She helped him up to a sitting position. “I sent the Walking One of Tanioinin’s people twelve days ago to fetch you. Alas that the loom brought you here so slow. My cousin is dead now. She died at sunset.”
“What happened?”
Alain crouched beside the woman and, without any thought of death’s dangers and taboos, brushed aside pine needles and placed a hand around the curve of her throat, listening.
Falling-down watched him with bemusement. “Can this be the man the Holy One brought to be your husband? Where did he come from not to fear death?”
“He was walking the path to the Other Side. I don’t know where he came from before that.”
Alain sat back on his heels. The people who had crowded up behind him to stare skittered back, as if afraid that he, having touched that which was dead, would infect them. He did not appear to notice them as he looked at Adica.
“Her soul no longer lives in her body.”
“So you see,” said Adica to Falling-down. “He knows when a spirit still walks in the land of the living. Why are you here, Falling-down? Why did you leave your tribe? Such a long journey is difficult for you. And it is so dangerous now to walk the looms, if the Cursed Ones stalk us.”
He lifted a hand for silence. A child brought him a wooden cup filled to the brim with mead. He sipped at it before reciting his tale. The Akka Walking One translated his words to her people, who crowded around to listen.
“The ships of the Cursed Ones landed on the coast of our land. Scouts of our cousins the Reed people saw them. They sent a Running Youth to alert us. Then another Running Youth came. The ships put to land near the nesting ground of guivres. The guivres rose and feasted on them.”
Voices murmured in satisfaction at this gruesome and well-deserved fate. The Akka woman spoke sharply, and the people quieted, not without a lot of pinching and protests, so that Falling-down could go on.
“We feel happy, when this news runs to us. Then the loom opens. This one, my cousin, who is a Walking One of our people, falls through. She is wounded. She brings a terrible story with her.” As he got caught up in the awful tale, his words began to slip; past became present, and his careful use of Adica’s language, learned over a lifetime, became sloppier. “The Cursed Ones attack the people of Horn. All their houses and all their villages the Cursed Ones burn.”
A general moan spread through the crowd, and was hushed, again, by the Akka woman’s terse command.
“Even the children they kill, cut cut.” He made a chopping motion with his hand. Children who had crowded up behind him to listen leaped back with frightened cries. But no one laughed. “The people of Horn escape to the hills. Horn is old woman. She is not strong. She is more weak now. Maybe she die. But she send this Walking One, who is once my cousin, through the loom. She send her home, with the warning. Maybe Horn die already.”
“But if Horn dies, then we can’t weave the great spell!” cried Adica, shocked out of her silence. Alain set a hand on her shoulder to calm her.
“No more news brings this Walking One,” said Falling-down, indicating the dead woman. “She is not yet dead, in the home of my tribe, but no healer in my people can save her. So I bring her here. Healer woman of the Akka people is renowned.”
Adica looked around, but she did not see the famous healing woman of the Akka people: a tiny woman who wore a cloak of eagle feathers. “Even the Akka healing woman could not save her?”
“No. The Fat One turned her face away. After half a moon’s journey, this Walking One dies. Now, Akka healing woman and our brother Tanioinin pray to the ancestor, the old mother of their tribe. But you, Adica. You have strong legs. I am too old, and Tanioinin cannot walk. Tell me this: Why did the Cursed Ones attack Horn’s people and my people so close together? Why did they try to steal you?”
“The Holy One warned us. They’ve learned that we mean to act against them. They want to kill us so that we cannot work the great weaving.”
“Yes. We must know if Horn lives. We must know if the Cursed Ones attack our comrades also, and if Shu-Sha is safe. Walking Ones are not strong enough alone to do this. You have strong legs and strong magic. You must warn the others.”
She gestured toward the eaves. “The sky is cloaked with clouds. We will have to wait until the stars shine again and the weather clears off.”
“For that we cannot wait.” He spoke so gravely that his words frightened her. She knew that the Holy One had power over the weather, but her magic was ancient and even more frightening, in some ways, than the blood magic of the Cursed Ones. “We wait now in this house for the other Akka sorcerers to come. Tanioinin’s brothers and sisters and the cousins of the healing woman, they will come down from their halls north of this place and south of this place. When they come, they will call that thing which can blow the clouds away so you can travel.”
“Quick, quick,” echoed the Akka woman. She stamped a foot and clapped her hands together. The crowd around them echoed her words, the foreign syllables sounding strangely on their tongues. Someone threw pine needles and a rain of dried herbs and tiny pebbles on the fire. The flames hissed and spit, and a thick cloud of smoke boiled up, drowning Adica. She coughed violently, starting back, and Alain found her by touch and drew her away as the Akka people sang in loud and rather discordant voices a song repeating the same words over and over: “nok nok ay-ee-tay-oo-noo nok nok.”
When she had done blinking and could see again, the dead woman, and the pallet on which she had lain, were gone. Had they vanished through magic, or simply been carried off? She did not really care to know. The secrets of her own gods, and her own magic, were perilous enough.
“Come.” By some mode of communication unknown to her, Alain found a raised pallet under the eaves and there, after setting down their packs, they lay down together. She was too tired to do anything but rest in his arms.
What if it all came to nothing? What if the Cursed Ones had discovered all their plans? What if the Cursed Ones used their blood magic to kill the human sorcerers who threatened them? Truly, she was willing to sacrifice herself knowing that her death would free her people from fear, but it seemed the gods mocked her now. Without realizing, she had started to cry.
“Hush,” said Alain, stroking her arms. “Sleep, lovely one. Do not fear for what is to come. Just sleep.”
His quiet voice brought her a measure of peace. With him held tightly alongside her, she slept.
o;We feel happy, when this news runs to us. Then the loom opens. This one, my cousin, who is a Walking One of our people, falls through. She is wounded. She brings a terrible story with her.” As he got caught up in the awful tale, his words began to slip; past became present, and his careful use of Adica’s language, learned over a lifetime, became sloppier. “The Cursed Ones attack the people of Horn. All their houses and all their villages the Cursed Ones burn.”