Chapter Twenty-nine: All Through the Night

Radovin stepped over to the hearth, crouched to add twigs to the dying coals, and blew the fire to life. A familiar prickling on the back of his neck made him look over his shoulder. No one was there, of course, just that feeling. Knowing what it was didn't help.

Ottavar was feverish. That was to be expected, but he would need watching. Some fever was inevitable in the healing process. It was as if the body's fire--the spirit--burned hotter, trying to boil away the evil influences. If it had to fight too hard, the "pot" might get burnt. Even overheated cooking stones could damage rawhide or basketry pots, and a pot hung over a hearth to keep warm would char and lose its bottom if the fire touched it. It was a healer's job to tend the fire carefully.

Radovin thought of another image that often arose in his mind when he was helping someone who was injured. Tiny men and women gathered at the site of the wound, working away as if repairing a damaged lodge. Sometimes they had to fight off ugly fanged creatures that attacked them and harried the spirit of the wounded person.

It did no harm to play out these odd visions, encouraging the tiny people, giving them strength. It wasn't as if he were doing any magic, after all. Now that it was not forbidden to call on real spirits to assist...well, it still didn't seem wrong, and old habits die hard. He had enough to do watching out for his bad ones.

He closed his eyes for a moment. "Sleep well," he whispered. "May the Good Ones watch over you, and keep all evil away. The spirit of the White Horse runs ahead of you; the Wolf guards the trail behind. So may it be."

The hilltop gave a good view. Radovin turned once around slowly. Moonlight cast forgiving shadows over the landscape's arid hostility. A light wind whispered in the grass. A fox barked. He thought he had glimpsed the faint glow of a fire to the southwest. It could only be Fredo and Haro. Wolves sang farther west. That music would keep them huddled there.

The fire had almost starved to death when he got back. He gave it the dry stalks he had gathered during his reconnaissance and what wood remained from before. Dead branches were getting scarce. With greater effort and a silent apology to the spirits of the place, he broke living wood from the tough shrubs. The green limbs would burn more slowly and give off smoke to guide the searchers after dawn.

Toughened as they were from everyday work, his hands were getting sore. He could not bear to ruin his knife to spare his hands. It was meant to cut meat at a feast, not to butcher a bison; it was much too fine for hacking at wood in the dark. If one of the gang had an axe, he had not left it behind. Ratovin-scatovin, always running off unprepared.

When the fire burned well, he knelt by Ottavar, bending close to test for fever-heat or the smell of sickness. Not...too bad. He straightened, contemplating the dimly lit face. Ottavar's eyelids twitched, a sign of dreaming. Radovin wished him well on his spirit journey. Dream well, friend of my heart; leave pain behind for a while. Please, You who watch over him, keep him safe. He sprinkled whiteleaf all about, whispering a charm against evil. All he could do was keep watch. He could give the sleeping man no medicine for either his physical pain or the torment of his spirit.

He wanted to tell Ottavar that he didn't have to be stronger, braver, ten times smarter than everyone else. I've had more than enough of someone who thinks he's better than the rest. It is enough to live among good people who care, whose hearts are true. All I want is to know what you want, so that I won't offend or hurt you. Could he tell him that? It was so hard to find the words when he needed them, and hard to say them, hard to know how they would be taken. Even his silence mucked things up.

Ayah-kayah. Stay awake!

Birds invoked the coming dawn. Smoke rose into growing light. Radovin's head was full of smoke. He smacked himself with a stick, dug his fingernails into his earlobes. The pain helped a little. Keep going, he told himself, just keep moving and feed the fire.

Ottavar stood in a cave, a spacious chamber lit by some indefinable source. He was looking for Radovin, who had wandered off and gotten lost again. Or maybe it was the other way around. A confused, echoing sound drew him toward a narrow side passage. He entered, and walked down a gradual slope into the dark bowels of the Earth.

The constant susurration teased his ears. It might have been water, wind in leaves, rain...or distant voices speaking words that were never quite clear enough to understand. He needed to know what the invisible speakers said. On he went until he could see no more, and with the dark came silence.

A shroud of gray fog slowly blew away to reveal a broad, featureless plain. All directions seemed the same. Ottavar walked on. By now he knew that it was a dream. If something had drawn him here, it would show itself, unless he did something to break the vision. Before long, he sensed someone walking beside him.

"I've been wanting to talk to you."

Ottavar spun around to face his grandfather. "You could have, any time. I've wanted to ask you a few things."

Kayotar shrugged. The movement reminded Ottavar of Radovin.

"I did leave a lot of loose ends, didn't I? But I didn't choose either the time of my coming or of my going."

"It's been hardest on Radovin. You could have kept in touch with Solera, at least."

"It wasn't all one way, Ott. For the Good Ones' sake, I was an old man already. I thought it was too late to start something new--but I did, didn't I?" Kayotar laughed bitterly. "I know. Nothing like hindsight to show where things went wrong, and I've got more of that than you want to know. But Soli understood why we couldn't go on. Why we thought we couldn't. She--oh, hell." The foreign cuss-word from his mysterious past betrayed his vexation. "What good are what-ifs? Rado survived. He has you, and Davo and Vina, now."

"Yeah. Lot of good I've been so far. He looks up to me and I fall flat on my face. I feel like a fake, nothing but a mask and a lot of air."

"You haven't done so badly. Radovin doesn't expect you to be perfect. You shouldn't either, ah? He saved your silly ass, but you saved his first, pulled him out of his crazy death-trip. What if you hadn't recognized him? You don't know yourself as well as you think you do."

Recognized? Ottavar thought back to that night when Rado had turned up, a bedraggled, dirty, freaked-out messenger of the avenging spirits. It had taken a couple of days and a dream or two to sort it out, but...yeah, he had seen something, and stuck with it. It had been well worth doing.

"Yeah. I guess we both take after you." Ottavar stared his grandfather in the eye. The sharp gaze of the spirit retreated from his.

Kayotar sighed, and paced back and forth a few times. He turned to face Ottavar, raising his hands and letting them drop again. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't help."

"No. But you're right. I'm being an ass."

The old man nodded. "I'm glad you know that."

"Thanks." Ottavar couldn't help smiling.

Words began to emerge from a muddle of half-heard whispers. An unseen force pulled at Radovin, its voice more and more insistent. "Come to me. I will give you what you want. Join me, be one with me. We will take what we need and no one can stop us. Come to me."

Power oozed from beneath the flat slab of stone, sucked at him, enclosed him. It held him helpless in a net of thoughts that were not his own. "Come to me, I will give you the strength you cry out for. Don't resist, you want it. You deserve it, you have earned it. Come, join us. One touch and everything you want is yours." His hand reached out, even as another part of him fought to awaken from this nightmare.

Another voice rose in the background as the seductive urgings grew in strength. "No," it said, "don't touch it, stop." The conflicting echoes confused him. Why was he here, what was he doing? "No!" That other voice bouncing off the inside of his skull--Kayotar?

"Hai, halloo!"

He pulled his hand back. That was Davoner's voice, and--vahé!--his head spun. Sunlight dazzled his eyes and cut through the haze in his mind. Had he fallen asleep? He was down on one knee, his hands almost touching the stones covering the place where he had hidden it away. What was he doing here? His stomach roiled and he gasped for breath, pushing himself up and away, onto his feet.

The smoldering fire had done its work. He stumbled forward to meet the group that abandoned all caution to leap down the ramp of shattered stone. Davoner, Tevina, Bazenaber, Jesumi, others; his blurring eyes lost sight of them and he had to stop, groping ahead. Arms surrounded him and he clutched a firm body in a desperate embrace.

Davoner's voice inundated him. "Rado--Maru-mari amuta--it's you here! Is Ottavar--"

"There," Radovin sobbed. He freed an arm in a vague gesture. Davoner started forward but stopped to catch him when his legs refused to move. A roaring sound began to drown the footsteps crunching past. He was whirling in a red and black vortex and he couldn't reach out of it to say anything.