Chapter Eighteen: Relativity

Zhamouta crept through Radovin in a cold mist, a familiar sensation made new. His mind slowly expanded to fill the tent. Or maybe the tent shrank and fell into his mind.

Balekara sprinkled more fragrant herbs and something resinous over the coals. The hot ashes sputtered and smoked, an ever-changing pattern of black and glowing red amid gray. White plumes of smoke wove a slow dance toward the blackened smokehole above.

Radovin drifted up and away, following a bridge of hollow drum sound into the Spirit World. This time he was not alone. Five shining beings surrounded him: a fox, a badger, a lynx, a reindeer, and a wolf.

Shamans took the form of the animal spirits that guided and guarded them and from which they derived some of their power and knowledge. The wolf had Ottavar's eyes.

"Hai, Raven," the grinning fox said, with Hacaben's voice, "can you take us to the place where Kayotar died?"

Radovin wondered for a moment who the man was talking to, then he caught the spark; he was in spirit-guide form too. He stretched his shining black wings. "Yes. You can follow me?"

"Lead on," Hacaben said.

"Foolish boy," muttered the badger to himself. Brenjezac was obviously not the patient type.

Radovin drew on his memories of the hunt site, where he had been several times to help butcher and haul back meat. Ottavar knew it even better; Radovin was conscious of his support. The shared vision unsettled him at first, but the enhanced image of their destination drew them all together.

The group shot through the darkness into sudden day to hover over a valley with one steep drop-off, a few man-lengths high. Six naked humans alit at the edge of the cliff. Below, rank weeds and brush grew among weathered bones, dead as the bones except where a haze of green buds swelled on branchtips.

"Well flown, Radovin," said Damagi, the former lynx. "Now--ah, look."

Down in the valley five men approached. Only two of them were still among the living. One had been alive little more than a day ago. A chill ran down Radovin's back.

The men stopped at the scattered edge of the bone heap. Kayotar looked short next to a tall man with a strong resemblance to Lovaduc. He pointed toward the bottom of the scarp. Ludoven followed his gaze, hands moving in conversation. Behind them, the other three picked up long leg-bones from the ground.

Knowing of it was bad enough, but to watch the cold-blooded killing, helpless to stop it, like a bad dream--Radovin fled in horror, quick as thought on raven wings.

As in a dream, his flight took him into another, darker vision. He soared under ragged, moonlit clouds. Below him lay a familiar landscape, streaked with remnant snowdrifts. There was the winding river where he had gathered wood left by the spring flood, its familiar curves leading to the Bull band's camp. A sinking feeling crept up on him. Vahé! The others--he had run off without a word, what must they think.

He banked into a wide curve and slowly circled the camp. A fading streamer of light trailed behind. As he thought about the other shamans, the subtle luminescent trail rippled and brighter patches appeared in it. Another raven soared beside him.

"You fly fast," Ottavar said.

"I'm sorry. I didn't think."

"It's all right. You've never worked with a group before. None of us do it very often. That's why Balekara counted me in. You are my apprentice. We have a tie of kinship as well. I have to keep my little brother out of trouble, ah?" Ottavar winked at him.

Radovin felt no less shamed, but it was easier to bear, knowing that Ottavar was not angry.

He saw that the other four shamans ran along the trail of light in their four-legged animal shapes. Radovin wondered how Ottavar could shape-shift into something other than his guide's form. He thought to ask, but a movement below caught his eye.

Two men stood near the entrance of the main lodge, one fat and one thin--Bodisar and Ivergan. They paused in their hushed conversation, turned toward the lodge. In an appalling flash, Radovin knew when it was, and what was about to happen.

This was even worse--how could he stand back and watch a friend die? Vezanidi didn't deserve to be dumped headfirst in the midden.

No! He dropped like a striking hawk, once more heedless of all but what he saw and felt.

Halfway toward carrying out his notion of descending upon the malefactors to distract them, he found himself in another place altogether.

Drifting mountains of thunderheads billowed in an intense blue sky. Between the sunlit clouds, an eagle soared beside the surprised raven, one fierce golden eye holding him fast. Below them spread a magnificent landscape. A great river cut a winding streak of reflected sky through a valley flanked by snow-capped mountains.

"You can't change the past," the eagle said.

Radovin stared defiantly back. "How do you know?"

"Because if it could be done, I wouldn't exist, and neither would you. I can't tell you more than that."

"Who are--" No, he knew--he had heard that voice before. "Kayotar!" Radovin did a roll. When he was right-side-up again, he went on, "Hai! You always disappear before I can ask a question."

"I am here now," the eagle said dryly. It changed course and flew faster. The raven followed, wings beating three times to the eagle's one. He was not going to be left behind unsatisfied.

Kayotar's words in that last dream stuck in his mind. A drum is empty.

Curiosity is a great emptiness.

"It was--you were there when that one was struck by the skyfire. He saw you. No one else could, not even Ottavar or me."

"Yes. You drum well. You opened the way for me. I thank you for that."

Radovin cocked a curious eye at him. Opened the way? Kayotar's answer bred more questions. "What do you mean? I don't get it. I never knew you, but you come to me in dreams, always just before something happens you turn up. Why talk to me in riddles? Why didn't you speak to Ottavar or somebody else?"

"I can't always do what I want," the eagle replied. "I was trapped, I could only reach out a little. What you saw before was only part of me, a shadow, an echo." He made a chuckling sound, eagle-ish laughter. "What you see now is only part of me."

Trapped? Stampeding questions piled up behind one another. Those in front kept going over the cliff faster than he could find the words to ask them. "But why me? We never even met. Mama said she was going to take me to you for training, but--"

"I should have known you sooner. Your mother should have told me."

"Should have told you what?"

Kayotar's golden eye glared at him. "About you."

"Me? What about me? What am I to you? I wish you'd tell me."

"You really don't know? Vahé! No!"

"Know what, ah? Mama wanted me to study under you, that's all I know. She died and I got stuck with--kahhh! That one. If you knew my mother, why ask me? Why are you playing games with me?" Radovin's frustration bubbled and rose like a new batch of hucha. This fellow was worse than Raven for pulling ears.

"I'm sorry," the eagle replied, with an un-raptor-like softness in his voice. "I don't mean to, never meant to. I thought that you knew, that she would have told you. I never knew I had another son until it was too late."

The astonished raven tumbled into the nearest cloud. Radovin recovered control of his wings quickly, but had no idea which way was out. Cold mist, a huge sigh of wind, and a grumble of thunder surrounded him. "Kayotar!" he cried, "Hai--where--" A strong current sucked him deeper into the dark guts of the thunderhead. Wind wrenched painfully at his wings. Folding them, he willed himself out, away from the cloud, in a dangerously hasty leap of faith.

The lone raven emerged at the edge of evening, amidst a cloudscape painted with all the colors of the sun's magic. He flew with rapid, angry strokes toward the setting sun. Left unfilled again, after that! A raven's eyes shed no tears, but it can curse as well as any crow, and that affords some relief. He soon cooled down. This was getting him nowhere. If Kayotar wanted to show up, he would. If not, nothing could make him.

Were the rest of the group still here in the spirit realm, or had they returned to their bodies? Most likely they had; it was the sensible thing to do. It could be dangerous to stay too long. His wings felt heavy. He let go of the vision of fading sunset and plunged into darkness.

Radovin found a path of sound, stepping-stones in the stream of space and time. He let it pull him into a familiar sensation of falling. It was easier coming back on a drum-path than when he flew on his own, and safer. With a shock like belly-flopping from a high bank into a cold pool, he found himself back in the Middle World, the world of the ordinary five senses.

Hands held his head, touched his hands, rubbed his legs. The drumming stopped. "Ah, he's back." It was a woman's voice, one strong thread in a soft weave of murmurs. Then he heard Ottavar, much closer.

"Rado, are you all right? Can you hear me?"

He blinked at the haze and his vision cleared a little. Ottavar's blurred face loomed close, repeating his worried questions.

"Ahnn...mfthlth." Radovin's mouth hadn't caught up with him yet, and he was terribly thirsty. He made a great effort to reclaim his distant limbs. One hand clenched, then the other.

Ottavar helped him sit up and held a cup to his lips. The warm broth was good, meaty with a bracing herbal tang. When he had greedily sucked it all in, he rubbed his eyes. Then he stared at his hands as if they were someone else's, stuck on his arms by mistake.

"How do you feel?" Ottavar had an arm around his shoulders yet, though it was not necessary for support. "You were out pretty long. I was ready to go back looking for you." He sounded concerned, not angry.

"Uh, 'm all right now. I'm sorry." Radovin shoved some hair out of his face and looked around. "Ah, I'm sorry. I didn't--I mean, I didn't want to go off on you like that. It was Kayotar. He took me away. I talked to him, after."

"Ah!" Ottavar's eyes brightened. "Can you tell us anything?"

"He told me--" Woh! An absurd realization tangled Radovin's tongue. "He's my--I'm his--I'm--your uncle?" he finished with his mouth hanging open.

There were some gasps and a laugh from somewhere out of sight. A smile spread slowly over Ottavar's face. "I think so," he said. "He told you that you're his son?"

Radovin sucked on his lower lip and shrugged. "Yeah. He went the long way around the lodge, but if you put it all in one basket, that's it. You knew?" He squinted at Ottavar's still slightly blurred face.

"I suspected it."

"It's...all right with you?" That sounded daft.

Ottavar put his other arm around Radovin and hugged him hard. "All right--" Anything else he might have tried to say died laughing.

Radovin wrapped his arms around Ottavar and laughed with him until his eyes filled with tears.

"So that was it," said Hacaben, tossing a twig into the embers. The loose bark flared. He sat facing Ottavar and Radovin on a soft bison hide laid over the floor mats, wearing nothing but a fur cape he had brought along. The other two had a large piecework coverlet of white and russet fox fur draped loosely around them. Balekara lay on her bed on the other side of the hearth, her head propped up on one hand, watching sleepily. Radovin leaned against Ottavar, his eyes vanishing in long blinks. Ottavar's eyelids were heavy too.

Hacaben continued after a yawn, "I knew Kayotar had gone off with the same woman more than once that one summer. I had a feeling there was something more to it than the usual, because he didn't want to talk about it." He gave Radovin a critical look with his eyebrows unevenly raised.

Ottavar chuckled silently, shaking his head at the thought of his grandfather sneaking off to make an uncle. He could find no fault with the old man's choice of women. His own memory of love and loss still hurt--Kayotar must have been torn to learn of her death too, and so soon after the loss of his true-mate and many good friends.

"She never told me," Radovin mumbled sleepily. "Just that she wanted me to study with him. It was all right at home, ah? Nobody cared if she knew or what. Din' matter to me. An' after we went to the Bull band...."

"Vah! No, it wouldn't have been a good thing to talk about there," Hacaben said. "But I wonder...."

Ottavar knew that the "son of Raven" would have been welcome at any hearth. Children were treasures that no one but their mothers had a special claim to, they were the future. Lovaduc was more like an older brother than a cousin to Ottavar and Bazenaber. If any of them had lost their parents at the age Radovin had, they'd have been cared for--fed, clothed, taught; guided into maturity with patience, not kept under a basket. It was hard to comprehend people who would abuse and neglect a child because they blamed him for the circumstances that left him with no home or family. Radovin was no child any more, but a little cosseting would do him no harm. Mama would revel in it.

"She could have gone to another band. Others did," Ottavar said, looking up again. "Any of'm would have been glad to have one so skilled. With herbal medicine," he added hastily, hoping no one had taken an unintended double meaning . "She could have come to us." He had wanted so badly to ask her to, knowing nothing of her previous affair with his own grandfather, or that he had a young uncle. What a tangled mess life could be. It would have been funny if it hadn't been so sad.

Hacaben nodded. "I think that may well have been her plan, but she wouldn't have wanted to make it look like she was spreading a net for Kayotar while he was in mourning. I expect that was why she never told him that they had a son. Both of 'em too bloody honorable for their own good. He loved Meshila, wouldn't have wanted to hurt her in any way. Bringing in another woman doesn't always work out. And you know your grandmother had...bad moments. I think Solera might have known that too.

"So, what I think is, she got close as she could for the time being. Maybe it wasn't the wisest move, but she couldn't know that. She was grieving too. If the wind of evil influence hadn't blown a second time.... The future is a hard thing to see. You know what they say about plans." He reached over to pat Radovin's shoulder. There was no response. "Huh, he's off in dreamland."

"I'd like to be there. Are you going to talk all night?" Balekara managed to get the words out just ahead of a huge yawn.

"I was about to leave, maduana," Hacaben said with mild irony.

"Pfah! There's plenty of furs, woven blankets if you like. Roll yourself up and sleep here. No use your staggering around in the dark waking up other people."

"Staggering? Give me a sack of hucha and I'll show you some staggering."

Ottavar let out a long, wide yawn, stretching the arm that was not half supporting Radovin. "Grab some fur, Hac," he said, flipping a corner of the pieced bedcover. "Your own bed is ice-cold by now. Three is a warm number, ah?"

"You've talked me into it," Hacaben said, with a grin. He leaned over and pulled the fur half off the other two. Radovin's head rose.

The three of them settled into a cozy knot under the soft coverlet. Ottavar heard a contented sigh from Radovin, who had managed to wind up in the middle. He smiled, feeling pretty satisfied himself. One by one he let his muscles melt like fat in a lamp. He was gone long before he got to his toes.