Chapter Thirty-two: Not with a Bang

Ottavar tried to sleep beyond a brief nap after breakfast, but trivial disturbing thoughts kept pulling him back. His healing progress, better than he might have expected, left him restless. It also confirmed his hunch that Radovin used healing magic unconsciously.

Radovin shouldn't have been left with the burden of representing the band, and besides that-- Pah! What an old grandmama he was. They wouldn't let Rado get close. Kayotar was probably keeping an eye on him too.

The tent was quiet and dim. Voices drifted in from outside; subdued conversation, a nervous laugh. Propped half sitting up, he was about as comfortable as he could be. He watched Tiwa weaving a headband from spun animal hair with her fingers. Her brows were drawn in concentration, but her eyes seemed focused somewhere else. Her small, nimble hands twisted the strands in an independent dance. She looked up as if feeling his gaze. Ah, the warm light of that smile. Love, the most powerful vizanu. He smiled back.

"Do you need anything, awida?"

"No, my little dove. I just can't sleep. I could get up and sit outside for a while."

"You should lie still, you will heal better."

"All right, I'll behave." As willing as she was to do his bidding, Tiwa was just as ready to give him orders in her role as healer. She was right, too. He still needed to conserve his strength. "I will let you wait on my every need," he said, with a self-mocking smile.

"That is good. Are you hungry? Thirsty?" She shifted her weight slightly as if preparing to get up.

"No, no, I'm fine. It's hard to just lie here--because I am better, I s'pose." Another day or so and he could probably move freely, if not painlessly, without making himself vulnerable to spirits of corruption. Pain had a purpose--it let you know that something bad had happened, and it warned you not to aggravate an injury. There was a line drawn somewhere between being foolish and being a whimpering coward. Somewhere in the neighborhood of boredom, perhaps.

"Sing to me, Tiwa. Then maybe I'll sleep again, ah?"

She smiled and laid down her handiwork.

Lovaduc's first concern was to find a heavy, solid rock to use for a hammer. No one else could choose his weapon for him, it had to fit his hands and feel right. "I won't be long," he told them. "There's some likely ones at the laundry place." With a hasty blessing from Balekara, he strode off.

Radovin was left stewing in his thoughts with nothing to do but avoid smearing his paint. He forced himself to sit motionless, while his back and scalp prickled up and down. Kayotar could have dropped a few clues. The presence of so much power all around plucked at and tested his spirit.

Novices patrolled the area beyond the circle, keeping all those who insisted on watching from getting close enough to distract anyone. Some people would sit and watch an approaching grass fire! The lay audience wore wreaths of protective herbs, amulets, and charms against all sorts of evil. Not that any of that would help if--vahé! Don't even think it.

When Lovaduc returned, Hacaben and Odazhan painted a maze of spiraling lines over every part of him not covered by breechclout or hair. The headman entered the circle carrying his hammerstone. Balekara and Radovin arose at his approach.

"Stand by me, Rado," Lovaduc said. "For luck, ah?"

Radovin's stomach nearly flew off without him, but he nodded.

The headman gave Balekara a hopeful look. "If that's all right."

"It is fitting. May all good go with both of you in this, and with all of us."

Lovaduc inclined his head solemnly and Radovin moved to his side. As one, they turned and stepped slowly toward the cairn. They halted an arm's length away and stood facing it.

The shamans of the White Circle closed their ring around the cairn.

Balekara lifted her hands to the sky and announced the beginning of the ritual. All fell silent but for the drums that beat steadily over a constant whisper of shaken rattles. The inner circle of high initiates, now seated, began to chant, weaving a net of vizanu to attract and capture loose spirits.

Lovaduc handed Radovin the hammerstone to hold while he dismantled the top of the cairn, revealing the package atop a knee-high boulder. He gingerly undid the wrappings and let the heart-stone slide out. The chant faded. A pounding thunder of drums filled the consecrated space. He turned toward Radovin, holding his hands out.

Their eyes met as Radovin set the hammerstone in Lovaduc's hands. The headman nodded, then turned toward the boulder where the talisman lay, darkness made solid.

Good Mother of all Spirits, Radovin thought, be with us, let us be One in your spirit as we all were once and will be again. Guide us and help us in this. Father Sun, may we walk in your light. Raven, be with me. He had an unworthy twinge of doubt about that last bit, considering Raven's ways.

Lovaduc raised the hammerstone high above his head. Sunlight turned the tall man's hair into a fiery halo. He looked like a sun-god, or a spirit of vengeance.

The mighty arms descended in a blur, and the hammerstone struck with an ear-piercing crack. Echoes shook the ground. In fact, the ground shook.

Lovaduc staggered back, eyes wide, mouth open in a grimace of pain. Radovin barely heard the onlookers' screams of terror. His attention was all on what was happening in front of him.

The air over the shattered talisman darkened. A whirling distortion began to expand from it. Wild, erratic strands of spirit-power flew out from a spinning black hub. Faces formed and dissipated like smoke. The darkness spread, as if the storm of unleashed vizanu devoured light.

Ivergan took form, eyes blank, unfocused. Radovin stood fast. The man had no power over him now. The lost spirit needed to be set on the right path. Radovin didn't want that job. Not with this one.

The spirit's gaze found him. To Radovin's surprise, its eyes filled with horror. Then it whirled away with the rest of the bewildered souls that spun outward to the waiting shamans.

Darkness surrounded Radovin completely now, broken by fitful sparks of spirit-light. A new apprehension tempered his relief. He felt another familiar presence--the shadow that had haunted his dreams. The voice that had whispered to him in his weary daze returned, stronger and clearer.

"I...will...have...you...now!"

Lovaduc was not surprised at the pain in his hands. He had hit the thing hard, broke it into dust. The quaking of the Earth itself threw him off balance both physically and mentally. Stepping backwards is not the best thing to do when the ground wobbles under your feet, and he wound up flat on his ass. When the tremor ended he picked himself up, too shaken to be embarrassed.

Thanks to long discipline and the fact that many of them were sitting down, the shamans had kept up their noise-making and whatever else they did without interruption. He hoped it would take care of everything. That had been one weird moment. The very air had seemed to waver and darken. Probably it was just his imagination and the added shock of the earthquake.

He had never witnessed any magic as powerful as this before, the entire body of the Dedicated acting as one against a sinister force. Nor had he ever been smack dab in the center of a circle of power. It had his hair standing up, but he didn't think he dared try to leave. No telling what would happen if he caused some distraction.

Lovaduc turned slowly around. He saw Sherilana standing as close as she could get without stepping into the circle. She looked worried. He wondered when she had got here. Everything else looked pretty much all right--except that Radovin was lying flat on the ground, limp as wet wash.

He knelt by the unmoving body, but paused with his hand hovering. What should he do? You don't want to disturb someone who is in a trance. If that's what it was. Vahé, he looked fish-dead. Other shamans usually gave some sort of warning sign before they phased out. Come to think of it, they never up and disappeared with a bang, either. He bent close, trying to see if Rado was breathing. He was. Well, that was something.

Lovaduc decided to leave bad enough alone for now. All he could do was stand by and keep an eye on the body. At least that was still here. The runt had a way of coming out alive and on top--nothing but surprises from the moment he turned up.

He sat back, rubbing his fingers together and blowing on them. They still tingled. A second, lesser tremor shook the ground, and Lovaduc shivered too. He wondered if the big rocks were walking in broad daylight.

Ottavar woke in the dappled shade of a gigantic tree with a trunk as thick as a mammoth's body. Roots reached out from it like vast talons grasping the earth. He got up and turned slowly around, gazing in wonder at the impossible forest that surrounded him. This was a power dream, he had strayed into the Spirit World.

Which way to go; ah--he heard distant singing. He thought he recognized the tune--a women's song to while away the time when spinning and weaving.

The sweet, flowing voice was tantalizingly familiar. When he rounded the bole of another enormous tree and came in sight of the singer, he knew why.

A woman with hair as black and sleek as a raven's wing sat in the center of a small hollow amid four of the incredible trees. She had been spinning, and was now rewinding the yarn.

The woman he had once loved and lost, who had also loved his grandfather; whom he had wanted so badly to see once more--somehow he did not want to face her at this moment. Ottavar turned away, eyes closed.

He heard her say his name. He turned back. "Solera."

"It's good to see you again, Ottavar."

Her smile was as beautiful as ever. She had been older than he when he first met her; now they were near the same age, and she would never grow old.

He raised empty hands. "I wished to see you again sooner."

Solera got to her feet and came closer. "I am sorry that you were hurt. That summer...I was filled with grief, and you were so--"

"Crazy mad in love," he finished for her, with a wry smile. "So was Kayotar, ah?"

"Yes, and so was I. With both of you--one I couldn't have, and one I didn't think I could choose without hurting the other. I didn't want to hurt either of you, and so I hurt everyone. I thought we would only be with the Bulls until next Summermeet. Then I could speak with Kayotar without breaking my word, at least to ask him to take Rado." Solera lowered her head. "Ah, my poor sweet boy. I didn't know that one who called himself Dedicated had become a heart-eater until it was too late. Much too late."

She held her hands outspread, a plea for forgiveness that Ottavar could not begrudge even if he had believed that she needed it. Her eyes glistened with tears. He reached out to comfort her, grasping her shoulders firmly. She felt solid and warm.

"It wasn't your fault he was left alone. You couldn't know that you would take ill. You were young and healthy, you were passed over once by the Evil Influence."

"Yes, but poison is more certain."

Ottavar went rigid with horror. "What--?"

"I was nearly ill, too worn out to help myself. When I realized what was happening, it was too late. That...shadow-caller gave me a potion that he said would strengthen me. But it tasted wrong, I only drank a little. It was enough. I was helpless afterward. He kept Rado away from me. There was no one else who might have suspected. A few more doses, and it was done."

"Oh, Soli." If only he had spoken up, insisted that she come home with him!

"No, don't blame yourself too. I would have refused if you had asked me. I had to, I was bound by my word to stay away from Kayotar."

Blame or no, Ottavar felt tears spill out of his eyes. He blinked to clear them.

"Don't tell Rado, please," Solera said.

Ottavar took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out as slowly as he could. She was right; Radovin didn't need another reason to hate Ivergan, and what was past--was past. "All right. I won't. But if he asks...."

Solera nodded. "I hope he won't have any reason to. But my little blackbird always had a way of finding out what he needed to know." She smiled sadly and stroked Ottavar's damp cheek with her fingertips. "And finding what he needed. I am so glad he found you. Thank you for helping him."

"I would have sooner, if I had known. I--" Ottavar's throat closed. Would have helped you. Would have damned myself to help you.

"I know. Don't cry for the past, my sweet. Rado is safe and happy now. He is where his heart must be. And you--your heart has room for both old memories and new love."

His heart was so overfilled it stuck in his throat and hurt. They leaned closer together, their arms slowly completing an embrace that lasted half an eternity, or at least a few breaths.

"I have to go now," Solera said softly in his ear.

Ottavar drew back to look into her eyes. It was no easier to part with her a second time, knowing that it was forever. "Go with all good," he whispered.

"May all good be with you." Stars gleamed in the endless deep of Solera's dark eyes as she faded away.

He was half awake when the thought struck him. Why had Ivergan killed Solera?

Because he knew.

Radovin hung suspended in time and space. A being straight out of legend confronted him: the ancient creator of the talisman, a hunched human form, thick bodied, long of arm and short of leg. Stories told of men like this, the Bent Folk, heavy-boned and fearsome in their inhuman strength. Their spirits lurked in caves and swamps, luring men to their death with flickering torches. Occasional rumors arose that they still dwelt somewhere in mortal form.

"Begone, you!" he ordered, suddenly bold. He had seen the stone smashed, the magical structure fly apart. The Old One had lost most of his stolen power already. "What do you want with me? Your home is broken--go to the Underworld, where you belong."

The Old One glared at him, glowing embers beneath heavy brow ridges in a face formed of shadows. "You are life. You were promised," its dry voice grated.

An echo of some unknown tongue underlaid the words that made sense. A shroud of cherished hatred over all told Radovin this spirit was twisted beyond redemption.

He made a rude gesture. "Go piss up a rope."

It wasn't going to listen to him anyway. His confidence wavered again. He had never handled a normal strayed spirit, let alone an Old One that wanted to stay that way and had done so for a long time. The revenant was still dangerous, homeless or not. Could he keep it from getting a hold on him? He'd better, because who knew what it might be able to do with a fresh soul, even now.

Hissing, crackling, twisting whips of energy flickered through the dark ether. Radovin wished he could use some of it, but it was as wild and slippery as lightning, and as dangerous.

He knew that he was not alone, with the steady throb of drums in the background, but he couldn't distract the other shamans while they were handling all the normal spirits and the loose power. Vahé, he wasn't even supposed to be here. This sliding over into the other world without thinking was not good.

The glowing eyes moved closer and closer. Radovin shaped a thought into a spear. The thing laughed at him, like dry stones sliding and clashing.

"You are mine. All is mine."

Patuka! You're not getting your filthy claws on anything if I can help it. Scenes from recent days flared in Radovin's inner vision. His new family and band, happily talking and working together, singing around the fire. Tucali playing with the neighbors' little ones or sitting on his lap demanding a story. Havener showing him how to grip a spear properly while Jerevan watched, grinning his face off. Ottavar, bound and bloody, his eyes full of pain.

How dare this thing threaten good, innocent people? A spring flood of anger washed away all Radovin's fear. Unseen presences gathered close behind him. A strength that was not his own flowed through his bones and veins. The spear of vizanu in his hand shifted form, grew heavier. He gripped a large basket with both hands. A basket of--

What?

Ha! The spirits are giving back in kind.

The spectral sorcerer's eyes blazed. "Now," it said, stretching long arms toward him, gnarled fingers grasping for his soul.

Yes, now!

With the force of lifetimes of pent-up fury, Radovin flung the basket of shit into its face.

The spirit collapsed with a hideous shriek into a whirling black sphere. Lightning crackled around it. Radovin froze in astonishment. He watched it grow smaller and smaller. In another moment, it would vanish. No! He wasn't done with that thing, not until he was certain--.

"No," said a familiar voice. A firm hand gripped his arm. "You can't follow it, you're not prepared for such a journey."

Radovin yanked his arm free and whirled to face Kayotar. Diffuse, pallid spirit light illuminated the high roof of a large cave arching over them. Once more he had been hauled off to another place before he could act.

Ottavar blinked his sight clear to gaze into a pair of worried brown eyes. "I'm all right," he said, puzzled by Kewarratiwa's anxiety. She sat back on her heels with a smile of relief. Behind her, Tevina stood wringing her hands.

"Mama, what's wrong?" It was not at all like his mother to look so distraught, she was not easily shocked.

"Didn't you feel the earth shake? Vahé! Twice, it made hearthstones roll, the tents were like grass in the wind! Thank goodness you're safe here. I don't know how you slept through it. I hope Rado is all right. Baz said that he was...out, gone into the Spirit World."

"Ah, yeah." The earth shook? Greater powers than any wielded by mortal men were about today. It was quiet now. The sun shone bright, he could see that, through every opening in the tent. No ominous feelings hung in the air. Rado was off and gone again? But surely he'd have had some inkling if something was wrong, Soli hadn't seemed concerned. "Baz still here?"

"No, he went back to tell everyone that we're all right. I hope it's true." Tevina absently brushed back a strand of hair that had escaped from her neatly tethered braids.

Ottavar pushed a smile forward. What could he do but try to keep things calm here. "Don't worry, Mama. The good spirits were showing their anger at the evil one. I'm sure Rado is fine. I...had a good dream." If it was a dream. It had left a sense of peaceful resolution, at any rate. Sadness too. "We'll hear all about it soon. Everything will be all right now. Make yourself a cup of tea and sit down, rest a while."

"I shouldn't let myself get so shook up," Tevina said. "But after...well, it's over now, ah? Thank the Good Ones." Her stance eased.

"Yes, it is over." Ottavar felt a wash of relief at his own words, a certainty that he could not claim as his own. Maybe everything was all right.

Kewarratiwa touched his hand. "You would like some tea?"

Ottavar grasped her hand for a moment, held by eyes that were old and young at the same time, and so filled with love. He thought he understood his grandfather a little better now, and maybe himself too. If only he could get through the rest of his own life without making a mess of anyone else's. "Yes. Thank you, Tiwa."

She arose, graceful as a bird. "I will make water hot. I think it will not spill out now, ah?" Her smile told Ottavar that she trusted his judgement, whether he did or not.

"Why not? Where has it gone?" Radovin faced Kayotar warily; two lone wolves debating whether to form a pack or go for the throat. Echoes battered the cavern walls.

"You don't need to know that. It's gone, it has no power to harm anything here and now. Better to leave well enough alone."

"How do you know?" Radovin was not going to let go that easily.

"I can't tell you."

"Then why tell me anything, why bother with me at all when you let Mama die alone?"

"Life isn't fair, Rado. I loved Meshila--Davo's mother--with all my heart. The same way I have always loved everything. I loved knowledge, only I couldn't see when I was running away from it." Kayotar paused, eyes glittering in the dim light. "I loved your mother, and I knew she loved me, but we both knew it wouldn't be right. Maybe we were both wrong. We decided not to see each another again. I hoped she could find someone else. She did, but--" His eyelids dropped and he turned partly away. "Your mother was foolish to keep quiet about you."

"My mother was not foolish!"

Kayotar flung up his hands. "Ahhhh! All right, all right. But I should have known--could have, I know. I wish I had." He turned toward Radovin again, holding out his hands. "I should have been there for you. Rado, I'm sorry. Not that sorry mends anything."

"It doesn't matter. We were happy. Before the sickness, anyway." Radovin fiddled with his fingers. His truculence had abated, and he felt silly yelling at a dead man.

Kayotar went on, his voice sad and tired. "I spent too much time away when Davo was young, too. Always off visiting, exploring one thing or another. I should have been there more for all of them."

Radovin looked up again. "It's done, ah? Like you said before, we can't change the past. I have a home now, I have a family--I have everything." He gave Kayotar a little shrug and a half-smile.

Kayotar returned a wider smile, and the cave seemed lighter. "Yes, you do. Even I have to admit that no matter how I botched up my life, most things always came out right in the end. Maybe I didn't always see it until after, and I can't say I'd have planned it that way. But who's to say that my plans wouldn't have made everything worse?"

"Raven laughs at plans."

"Any wise man knows that."

"Mama told me that you were wise."

Kayotar's smile grew. "I'd better not argue with you on that. You're at least as stubborn as I am."

Radovin had nothing to say to that. He let his curiosity loose instead. "This cave we're in, is it a real place in the Middle World?" Spirit places were solid enough in their way, but this cave had an earthly quality even in the vague glow of spirit-light.

"Yes, it is. You've never been in any of the caves here?"

"Here?"

"Spirit Valley." Kayotar shook his head. "I forget that I'm not talking to myself. This is the place where Firebringer hid. You know the story, ah?"

"Uh...yeah." Radovin shuffled his feet. In his fifth summer, while his mother and other herb-collectors worked near this very cave, he had wandered into the alluring dark hole. No spider had spun a web over the entrance to conceal him as it had the mythical hero, and a fussing search party hauled him out.

"There are a slew of caves in Spirit Valley. Ottavar can show you them--and other things. Some of the caves are too narrow or steep to go into. Men have been known to fall into deep holes, or just go in and never come out. Little boys, too." Kayotar gave him a knowing smile that made him wince. Even spirit cheeks could feel hot.

"There are things more dangerous than holes." Kayotar began to slowly pace the circumference of the cavern. "The heart-stone was hidden away in a cave."

Now that was something. Radovin jumped for the fresh track. Kayotar and that one had been friends, once. "Is that why we're here? You said I couldn't follow the Old One, but--"

"No, no, it was another place that we found that."

We found it? "You knew about the Stone all along?" Radovin turned in place, watching Kayotar.

"Yes. But I didn't know all about it. Ivergan and I had other reasons to fall apart. Now I can see that the cursed talisman probably had a part in that too. It's over now, thank the Good Ones. But--" Kayotar stopped abruptly, facing Radovin. "You had better go. They're worried about you."

Just when he was about to find out something! "It's only been a little while. I wanted to ask you--"

"You know that time is different here. Go, now." Kayotar's hands thrust out at him.

He fell backwards into the dark limbo between the worlds, spinning down, down, down, his ears filled with a rushing sound. His unanswered questions whirled away with him.

Radovin gasped and fought with his unwieldy limbs. He was trapped, held down, out of control. His head bumped against something. One of the voices that babbled all around him exclaimed, "Ow!" He opened his eyes, blinking at dazzling sunlight.

Jumbled sensations started making sense. He heard cries of joy. A voice vibrated loud against his head, an inarticulate roar. He cleared his eyes with a few more blinks.

"Rado, are you all right?" Davoner, this time distinct.

"Yeah, 'm a'right." Radovin shivered, cold despite the sun and surrounding bodies. "Thirsty." His mouth was dry as the wind. Even without drugs, a spirit journey took its toll. He had probably left his mouth hanging open besides. Warm hands assisted his effort to sit up. Hacaben bent over him, staring intently. Jesumi inserted herself into his field of view with a small waterskin. He grabbed it and squirted lukewarm water into his mouth and all over his face. It felt good.

"Thanks, Sumi," he said. Smears of paint came off on his hands when he wiped at his wet face. He looked at everyone else. They were all as paint-smeared as on the day of his adoption. The memory put a silly grin on his face that grew until it erupted in laughter.

It was over--they were free!