Splitting the party when there are only two players– ouch. But it did work.

The king didn’t wake up the next day either, at least we didn’t see him. (I slept a lot myself too!) We were preparing to go back with the delegation and collecting everybody, when Fikmet and Sepideh beckoned me from the side of the camp and Fikmet said “I’m not coming and Sepideh isn’t either! We have to take the armour back.” “To where you got it from? Is it a holy place?” I asked, and yes, it was. “Can I come?” I said, because I suddenly felt that it was important to thank the warrior woman’s spirit, and all the gods as well. “I don’t see why not,” they said, “we’ll go on, not back, and catch up with the rest at the tower.” So I went to ask Ferin if he needed me. The only thing he could possibly need me for was the direction sticks, and several of the other people could do that and the head of the Spear tribe was going along, surely he could do it too! Well, perhaps he needed me for bitching at him, but he said it was all right with him so I got some journey stuff and food, and as an afterthought the grease lamp, and went with the other two.

We had to walk around the mountain at first, Sepideh carrying the heavy armour, me carrying all our provisions, so Fikmet only had to carry her small pack and her knife. There was a passage into the mountain on the other side: it went down a bit, and around a bit, and it became darker and darker. Also narrower and narrower. It was easy for Fikmet, but Sepideh and I were of course a lot bigger, both of us about the same size, she a bit broader and I a bit taller, We did get through, but we had a couple of awkward squeezes.

Sepideh had an oil lamp and I had the grease lamp, but we only lit them when we were confused about where we were going. When we got tired we rested, keeping watch, though nothing had happened when they were going the other way either, but Sepideh and I both had the habit so we took alternate watches and let Fikmet sleep. It was dark and lonely and silent; only very rarely I heard a drop of water fall.

Another stretch, and then the passage became wider and the floor damper and more drops fell. Another stretch, and then Sepideh lit the oil lamp and we could see that we were in an immense cave, with pillars of stone rising from the ground and hanging from the ceiling. I could feel the presence of gods here, and also another presence. “Is that the warrior?” I whispered to Fikmet. “Yes, I think so,” she said.

There was a basin hollowed out near one of the walls of the cave. That was the warrior’s grave: her bones were in it. Sepideh started to put the pieces of the armour back on the bones, praying, while I sang invocations –a strange sound in that hollow mountain, and probably the first time that this mountain heard prayers in Ilaini!– and talked to the gods a bit more. Achok was very insistent, and I said to him “yes! I am taking care of myself!” and wondered whether I used semsin to pray, but I couldn’t tell on my own and didn’t want to ask Fikmet because she was obviously praying too. Then I said “thank you!” to the spirit of the warrior, and Fikmet and Sepideh finished their prayers too, and we went on to the other side of the cave.

After a while we heard the sound of water, and a bit further on there was a little stream in the middle of the passage. At first it was a trickle, then it got our feet wet, and then it was a proper stream, and when we turned a bend it widened out and there was a sort of ledge with the boat! It was indeed the boat that we’d first seen at the entrance on the other side. We all squeezed in –if it could carry six children, it could carry two adults and one child. The water was going our way, too! “That’s a lot quicker than on the way here,” Fikmet said. Most of the time we only had to make sure that the boat didn’t smash to pieces on the walls of the passage, and Sepideh and I took turns with the paddle for that. At one point there was a bend that the boat could lie still in, and we slept a bit, not that it was easy sitting up, but we could at least rest our arms and not have to pay attention all the time.

I don’t know how long we were underground, a couple of days, I think. We were hungry but not thirsty, the water was perfectly good to drink, only very cold. Then we saw light overhead! After a while we were at the bottom of a deep narrow cleft in the mountain. “This is where I fell down,” Fikmet said. There were plants growing on the sides, and birds, and lots of little fishes, but we were going so fast that it was no use trying to pick or catch something. There was no bit of shore to pull the boat on to, either, though we passed some caves that people had obviously lived in by the pottery shards on the floor. That would be a good place to live if you wanted to be out of sight! But there was nothing that looked like stairs or anything else made by people, it would be very hard to get to the top to hunt or to go anywhere.

Then the river went underground again. There was still some weak light from somewhere, or our eyes had got used to the darkness, because we could actually see where we were going. Then suddenly there was a ‘plop!’ next to the boat, and we saw a curved pale thing under water! I took out my cutting knife, just in time, because a white head on a long neck came up and sank a row of little sharp teeth in the side of the boat. I hacked at the neck and it let go and went under, but we were all shaken. This looked a lot like the monster we’d seen at the stair-tower! A bit like a snake, but more like an eel, a giant one, that neck was as thick as my leg and the head the size of Ferin’s two fists. It looked hungry. Well, it wasn’t having us for its supper!

Then, when we were going very fast, there was a fork in the passage. I was steering, and I chose the wider way just in time. We hadn’t gone far before Fikmet said “I think it was the other way, really!” and indeed it looked as if we couldn’t really go any further. So I climbed out of the boat and tried to push it back against the current, while Sepideh did the same with the paddle and Fikmet looked out for sharp edges, and we got it round the bend in one piece and Sepideh and Fikmet pulled me in again. My legs and feet were completely numb from the cold water, and I didn’t have room to wriggle them or anything to keep them warm with, so I’d just have to wait until it got better.

Some way beyond the fork the river widened out and became so slow that we had to paddle. The rock above us was very high now, too, we were in a cavern. And there was a shaft of light ahead, the stairway on the island! “Oh, I want to be on the surface, out of this hole!” I said, and the other two were the same, so we got the boat on the little bit of strand and started to climb the slippery stairs. Fikmet first, as quick as a squirrel, and then Sepideh and I, but my feet still didn’t feel anything so I missed my footing halfway and crashed on a lower step. Something cracked in my left knee, I could hear it before I felt it, and I couldn’t move my leg at all any more. Then I fell down more steps, right to the island, and I thank all the gods that I didn’t hit my head, only just about everything else.

Sepideh and Fikmet were down almost at once, but they couldn’t get me up the stairs between them, so they made a cot for me of the boat lined with Sepideh’s coat, one of the very few things we had that were still dry enough to give some warmth. When they lifted me in it did hurt, so much that I could have bitten my tongue if Sepideh hadn’t given me a knife to bite on the handle.

“The others will be along soon,” Fikmet said, “we’ll watch out for them.” And they did, one on the surface and one staying with me most of the time. They couldn’t go hunting alone, of course, and I said I didn’t mind if both of them went together but they wouldn’t leave me, suppose something happened and I was stuck here? That was a good point, except that the food would run out. Had run out, in fact, but before we got more than annoyingly hungry the tribe was there, carrying meat and lots of other things.

Ferin squeezed through the stairwell to embrace me, but he couldn’t get me up through the narrow passage. Then they tied me up in the boat so I couldn’t fall out whatever happened, and hauled me up like that! I think a camel did the pulling. It was so good to be out of that cold damp hole, even though being hauled up hurt like anything.

The whole rest of the tribe was there, Ferin and the boys and the other women, and the king’s son and his sweetheart the mage’s daughter, and also the mage Naran himself, and the chief of the Spear tribe who was going to Valdyas to hunt with King Athal. Naran and Ferin set my knee, I don’t remember much because I passed out while they were doing it, but it seems that Naran found out how to look inside someone’s body to see how the bones should go, like Doctor Dushtan in the palace, and he’s decided he wants to learn to be a doctor because he likes that kind of work. There was no wood except the slats of the boat, so that’s what they splinted it with. I hope nobody else needs to take the underground way then, or they’ll be eaten by the eel-things!

So I went the rest of the way on the camel, at least until the leg was whole enough to walk a short way with crutches, and that was after we’d passed some watering-places where there were real trees to cut crutches from. I’ll probably walk with a limp for the rest of my life, though.

It turned out that the king had left the camp about the same time we had, and we could still see him! It looked as if he was going to the city too. We debated going to catch him, but we really didn’t want to fight (and I couldn’t fight, not even with my mind yet! Gods, pain makes it so hard to think, and it feels like the knee takes all the semsin I’ve got to heal itself with!) so we just kept watching him, and he was past the fort before we got to it. Well, if he was between the fort and the city he could really only to go the city and we’d find him there.

We went to the village instead to tell them everything that had happened. They didn’t know we were the tribe of the Dawn yet! Ferin had made Sepideh chief before we got there, but it was hard to get people to accept it. Not everybody was going to the city, some stayed in the village, and I left the snake with them because I could hardly take a snake to the fort! (Enough rats there, surely, but it was a tent-snake, not a fort-snake.) So we arrived at the fort with a lot less than the whole tribe: Ferin and Tamsin and I, and Naran and the young couple, and the Spear chief, and Fikmet and Tasgal and all the women because they wanted to go to the city and talk to the princess but some would probably want to go back.

Of course Ferin and I had to tell everything that had happened, I think we spent half the night talking! There was a doctor of the Order who looked at all of us to see if we’d picked up anything on our journey, but I wouldn’t let him look at my knee, I’d rather take that to doctor Dushtan at the palace. When I get back to the fort –I thought Faran wouldn’t want me in the Order any more because of my limp but he does want me!– the doctor can look at my knee all he wants.

I’ll really miss Ferin when he’s off to his mother’s house with Tamsin! And I don’t think I’ll be able to go to Valdyas myself any time soon, I’m sort of the only person who knows anything at all about the Khas once Ferin is gone so they really need me.

Companion piece to Ferin’s, here. It starts approximately where that stops.

Nobody told me that the drinking contest was also a boasting contest! Good thing that I’d been having Ferin’s example all that time. I’ll never be as good as him, but at least I was better than the king. Made of stronger stuff, too, though that may have been all the Síthi wine I grew up with and all the fatty meat I ate before the match. And everything I told was true– I did outrun a yak and cut its throat with my knife, the king didn’t have to know that it had Makane’s spear in its side at the time, right? And all the gods were with me, I could see them right there. The king is a mage, he should be able to see gods better than me, but perhaps he was already too drunk for that.

I’m glad it didn’t go on any longer, though, because we had work to do afterwards, Ferin had invited Naranbataar to our tent to show him how semsin worked, at least how you could get power from the world without killing people for it. And he understood most of it! But he was bound to the king, and he had mages bound to him in turn, and he explained that every mage (except the king) was bound to someone else and it all went back to the king in the end. That’s why the king was such a strong mage and it was so hard to contradict him! So when Naran heard that we’d undone binding before, he wanted us to do that for him if we could.
Well, that needs two people or you get stuck yourself, and anyway I’m a bit better at it than Ferin for some reason, so drunk or not I had to help. And I wasn’t so drunk that it didn’t work, though it was hard because the king’s bindings were tougher than those of an ordinary bog-standard mage. But we got Naran free, and then we had all the other mages in the camp come to our tent as well to do the same thing for them! And now Naran could help, and that was a good thing because there were dozens of them and Ferin and I could never have done that between us. We promised to show all of them how to get power from the world, but not just now because we were knackered.

Then the king’s mother turned up! And she wanted me to free her of her binding to the king, too. “Can you still do that, Ailin?” Ferin asked, and of course I didn’t want to say no, not for this woman I’d come to respect. And, let’s face it, like. So I called on Anshen, my Anshen, though what I got was the dark side of Achok (nuisance! but there was nothing I could do about it) and I picked all the little sticky bits of binding from the old lady’s mind with that power.

I must have fainted or something, because I found myself floating somewhere and Achok floating there too, like I was dreaming him. And he said “I helped you this time, but don’t try it again soon or you’ll go to Nah! You took too much out of yourself.” Yeah, right, I didn’t need Achok to tell me that, it wasn’t for nothing that I called on a god, I’d known that I didn’t have the strength myself but it was for the old lady. But I said “thank you” and he disappeared, and I don’t know how long I floated after that but I woke up in the tent and Tamsin gave me water and porridge because I didn’t want anything strong or heavy or greasy, and we were all out of herbs for tea.

Not really a story, just a couple of thoughts from Ailin. To be continued, because we had to stop after the hunt but before we actually talked to the children.

Khas are strange people.

It’s true that I’m now in a Khas tribe, and I count as the tribe’s headman’s sister, so that makes me at least a little Khas, but still. All the real Khas –the born Khas– knew that we were at the king’s –well, court, camp, gathering, whatever– when we arrived but they hadn’t known where it was before we nearly fell into it.

And It’s also strange that we didn’t see the camp at all until we were almost upon it, not smoke from the fires and not the people either. Ferin did see some people but not by far so many! Perhaps their mages were hiding it! But I’ve seen lots of mages now, and none seem to be actually doing anything. They just walk around looking important, and most Khas men who aren’t mages themselves look down on them a bit and call them effeminate because they wear brightly coloured clothing and long robes.

But I’m learning to shoot with a bow! Ferin started it really when he took everybody outside the courtyard (we’re in with the really important people, it seems, and we’re not telling them that we have only the one tent that we’re in and not eighty tents in the camp) to train fighting. There were people shooting at targets there, so I just joined in but threw my knives at the targets. And found out that I had to get closer with a knife to hit, a bow has a much larger range!

It was a couple of days until the men started to accept me, not as a silly woman wanting to play along with the men, but as someone who could aim and hit. I did take one of the soldiers along, the one who has a bow, I forget his name, he’s the youngest. He wasn’t really protecting me, but he stayed behind me so I wasn’t a young woman alone among a lot of men who think that any woman who doesn’t belong to anybody is theirs for the taking. And indeed someone asked me who I belonged to and wouldn’t believe me when I said I belonged to myself, if I don’t have a husband or a father and I’m Ferin’s sister I must belong to Ferin! I should perhaps start saying that I belong to Anshen, that will be true some day anyway. But this same man lent me a bow and showed me how to hold it, and my first arrow went much too high (fortunately not wide, I might have hit someone otherwise) but the second bounced off the target, and the third stuck in the target though far from the mark painted on it.

I’m going to need a bow of my own. I think I can make arrows, but my teacher says it’s hard to make bows and you need the exactly right kind of wood, though the trees that grow right here are better for it than some other trees. Perhaps Sepideh and the others can swap some of the beads that Ferin’s been making for it. Also, I need a leather sleeve for my left arm because the bowstring keeps hitting my skin, and that hurts like being whipped! But I think I can make that myself, we have enough spare pieces of deerskin.

There was a tent next to ours now with a man and two women and two children, a boy about Fikmet’s age and a slightly younger girl. The children were very interested in us. That was different from the adults, they didn’t only not talk to us (I’d have understood that, we’re perhaps a bit strange) but the people from different tents didn’t even talk to each other! Where I come from, when you get new neighbours you go over and talk to them and see if you can help with anything. The women who went into the main camp every day said that people there talked more, it looks like it’s only the headmen who don’t want to have anything to do with each other. Perhaps they’re all really enemies, or very jealous, and only have to be there because they all want to see the king. Ferin talked to the man he wrestled (and even the man’s wife, because he took Ferin home to his tent) and I talked to the man who is teaching me to shoot with a bow, and the women are talking to the camp women all the time!

I taught the children that game where you make a circle in the sand and divide it and throw your knife in the other person’s bit to conquer it, I don’t even know what it’s called but we played it all the time when I was a kid (it taught me to aim and throw straight, and I told them so).

Ferin sent a soldier to the king’s hall to talk to the servants and find out things. “What things?” he asked and we all had suggestions: is he at home? if not, when is he coming back? how many more tribes are coming? does he have a wife? what is his favourite colour? what does he like to eat? He went, and came back in the evening with answers. “The king is out hunting,” he said, “and he’s going to be away for several days more” and that figured, because there were so many people in this camp that food might get scarce soon. And the king’s favourite food was meat, too! He had several wives, who were in the palace. I made a resolution to talk to those wives, or at least someone of us women should talk to them!

One thing I’m really worried about: the king is a mage. And he must be a really strong mage or he wouldn’t have beaten all the other kings. (Though of course you don’t have to beat all the kings to become king, only the one who currently is king.) Come to think of it, you might argue that the king of Valdyas is a mage too, though he doesn’t do horrible things like Khas mages, and he hasn’t become king by beating other kings.

Then Ferin saw Fikmet when he was looking out on his watch! And the other children too. They were at the pool where we’d camped just before we came to the king’s camp. Sepideh and I took the camel and went out on the plain, hunting for meat of course, but also passing the pool without anyone getting suspicious. They were all there! I went and hugged Fikmet at once, never mind if she was secretly Timoine as well, and we promised to come back after the hunt.

It wasn’t easy to find anything to hunt on the plain– there were so many people in the camp who all wanted to eat! But then we saw a small herd of jumping-deer, and sneaked nearby –I’m a bit better at that than Sepideh so I could get closer– but we didn’t want to risk killling just one and having the rest run away, so I picked up a rock and threw it as far as I could, making it land at the other side of the herd. They all stopped grazing and ran, right at us! I threw both of my knives without really aiming, I’d hit something anyway, and Sepideh threw her spear, and when the herd was past it turned out that one had also run so close to her that she’d killed it with her sword. So now we had four of the deer! Sepideh skinned hers and cut up the meat and wrapped it in the skin, but I left mine whole and only took out the entrails and left them for the birds with a prayer to Mizran. I knew that Ferin would want a whole deer to roast!

Either there’s more behind this than we know, or it’s a really elegant way for the GM to relieve himself of a handful of NPC hangers-on. Anyway, makes for interesting dynamics.

The next night I went to sleep determined to notice when I was dreaming. Ferin wouldn’t let me take a watch, but I did wake up in the middle of the night and saw a glow on the horizon as if there was a fire. I pinched myself –no, probably not dreaming– and then went and poked Ferin, who woke up and saw it too. He took the watch along, I think Ot and Bayat, and went to investigate while I kept watch instead. After a while, it must have been half an hour, they still weren’t back, and I couldn’t see Ferin with my mind at all! I woke up the captain, because we’d talked about going in military force the next time, and I didn’t know anything about military force. But the captain was sort of… well, not very military about it, not taking things in hand as I’d expected (or like Ferin would have done). In fact he let me make all the decisions! So I finally got him to admit that it would be a good idea to go there well-armed and surround whoever it was. He asked if I wanted to leave someone to guard the camp but I thought the snake would do that, so I told the snake “if it’s the camp or your life, escape; otherwise guard”. I still don’t know how much snakes understand but I hoped she got it.

When we were all armed and ready I noticed that Fikmet wasn’t there! And I could see her with my mind: she was where the glow was. I could in fact see two people there, both gifted, and Fikmet was one of them. Even more reason to go there and do something about it.

When we arrived at where the glow was Ferin and the watch were just arriving too, and they hadn’t noticed the time passing. I thought again that I might be dreaming after all, or the gods were giving me visions. There was a pyre like the one the mage’s mother had burned him and herself on, blazing, and Fikmet was lying on it looking as cool as anything! The dead mage was there too, he was the second gifted person. He did still look like a spirit, floating and a bit translucent. I talked with Sepideh and the captain a bit, and we decided that if this was real Fikmet must have been drugged if she didn’t fight. I ran towards the mage as fast as I could and when I thought I was in range threw a knife, and it passed right through him. I just kept running, snatched Fikmet from the burning pyre in passing (burning my hands a bit) and took her to the nearest safe place, or at least a place where weren’t too close to the fire and out of the way of any fighting. “Are you all right?” I asked. She was, didn’t even look drugged, and it had really been a real fire, I had the burns to prove it!

When I turned back –I still had a feeling that this mage was mine– Ferin and some of the others were cornering the mage. I’d thought before that Naigha was who I needed for this, but all I knew to call Naigha with was the Fourth Invocation so I did that, and I knew she was there. “He’s dead,” I said to her, “so please take him! He doesn’t seem to understand it.” “You kick him out,” Naigha said, perhaps not quite in those words but clearly enough. But how could I kick something that was in my head?

Oh! This image of him or whatever it was was right in front of me, I could kick that. So I did, but I kicked right through him too, of course. He was spirit, I had to kick with spirit! Fortunately Ferin had seen me trying and said “use my strength!” and I made a kind of extra strong boot of spirit, seal-stuff, my own and Ferin’s, as hard as I could make it, like stone, and kicked the mage with that.

This time, he rippled.

“Let’s kick him on the pyre!” Ferin said, and that’s what we tried next. It sort of worked, but he didn’t stay there until we’d made a kind of wrapping from seal-stuff, Ferin and Tasgal and Makane and me all together. I thought there should be something more, to make him believe he was dead, so I asked the Khas women to help me sing a song for the dead. “You sing it,” Sepideh said, but she told me the words to each line and I sang and everybody else sang along with me, and finally he went poof! and was gone, the fire just burning by itself. He wasn’t in my head any more either, And Ferin said I was a journeyman.

I sat down next to Fikmet, feeling empty. And then I woke up. Another dream! But I was still a journeyman; some real things had happened in it. And the mage’s spirit was still gone, too. Later I told the real Fikmet “I snatched you off a mage’s pyre in my dream!” and she laughed and said “You’re always dreaming strange things about me!” Suddenly a thought came to me, “are you really Timoine? Daya? Part of you anyway?” and she said “Perhaps. A bit.” (Well, any kid kan be Timoine a bit, so even if the other stuff hadn’t happened later she’d probably have been right.) I said to Ferin, “If I was alone now, I’d go right back to Faran and ask him to take me into the Order.” I’d been thinking about that anyway, but now I was a journeyman and I could. When we’re back –if we ever get back– that’s exactly what I intend to do.

We stayed at that camp for another couple of days, and I didn’t have any more nightmares but Ferin wouldn’t let me stand watch yet either. A good thing because I was so tired, as if I’d pulled all the strength out of myself to kick that mage. “What did you do?” Ferin asked, and all I could say was “I wrapped up the mage in a neat parcel of seal-stuff and gave him to Naigha as a present.”

We had a tribe meeting to decide on a name for the tribe –I think it was Ferin and the captain who had thought of doing that together– and with a lot of back-and-forth and some silliness we decided on calling it the Tribe of the Dawn. (There were already enough Tribes of the Snake, and of the Owls, and even of the East. Though we could have been the Tribe of the Far East, but thinking of the east being just a kind of very far west, as Ferin said, confused me.) Ferin made a flag of a light-coloured goat-skin that he scraped and painted a rising sun on with his own blood from a finger he cut especially for that! It was red to start with, of course, but it dried brown. “They won’t know it’s yours,” I said, “it could just as well be the blood of your vanquished enemies!” “All the better,” Ferin said.

Then there was more travelling, and on the last day that the direction-stones had indicated we came to a chasm. It wasn’t very wide, only a couple of yards, too wide to jump but we could probably have managed with the tent-poles. It was quite deep, though, and at the bottom we could hear a stream and birdsong. We could see some of the birds, too, about the size of my hand, very bright blue and yellow. “Would those be good to eat?” Ferin wondered, and I was thinking of what one could do with the feathers.

“I didn’t know this was here!” Sepideh said, and nobody else had heard of it either. The worst thing was that there weren’t any direction-stones in sight, not on this side and not on the other. We decided to search on both sides, a party going south with Fikmet in it and a party going north with me in it to have as much semsin range as possible, while Ferin and the captain stayed behind to guard and coordinate. We decided to walk until we thought we were getting out of range, or for two hours if that was sooner. We looked for direction-stones, scuffmarks, tracks, changes in the terrain, both on this side of the chasm and the other side, and listened but all we could hear was the stream and the birds and sometimes also the croaking of frogs and the slithering of snakes. I’d left our snake drowsing on a pile of baggage, or I’d have let her hunt!

The chasm got narrower at some point, so much that I could almost have jumped across, and a bit further on it wasn’t much more than a crack in the ground, but the sound of water was still there. And then we saw something that looked like a landmark made by people: a kind of pillar of stones, thinner at the top than at the bottom. I called Ferin –we were almost out of range there– and asked him to look through my eyes. “We’re coming,” he said, “I’ll call the rest. Go on slowly. Careful, there may be other people there.” What he didn’t say, but I know he meant, was that we were here with less than half our full fighting strength and if someone was defending the pillar we’d better have the rest with us too.

So we had a rest first, behind some low bushes, and then crawled in the direction of the pillar. Ferin called a while later, “we’re coming, but the other lot are late, we’ll all be there around dark.” Now that we knew they were coming and it was too dark to keep going anyway we made camp, sheltered as well as we could behind a little ridge, and a fire was burning when all the others came in, Ferin leading the camel with Fikmet on top of it. She’d gone down the chasm and slipped and broken her ankle! The soldiers’ woman, Otfal, and I knew most about setting bones so we made splints and pulled the foot until it went ‘snap!’ –this made Fikmet faint– and tied the splints to her leg so it was about straight. We’d tell her when she woke up not to walk on it for a couple of weeks, not that she’d want to. But fortunately we had the camel!

It was much too dark now to even see the pillar, so we waited until the next morning. Some people were talking about rigging something to get the camel over the chasm, but I said “we can just walk around, it’s only a quarter of an hour that way!” and that was true, there wasn’t even a crack in the ground some way further along though it opened up again to the north. It wasn’t very far to the pillar, and it turned out to be much smaller than it had looked: about half again as tall as Ferin. “I think this is a landmark to show there’s water,” Sepideh said, “I’ve heard of those, though I’ve never seen one until now.” Well, there was water all right! Only no obvious way to reach it, our longest rope wasn’t long enough to get into the chasm. But then one of the soldiers found a hole in the ground with stone steps leading down in a sort of shaft. “Volunteers to go down?” Ferin asked, and Bayat and I went, laden with water sacks, and I with the grease lamp as well.

It was quite a long way down, and I was glad we had the lamp because there were places where the steps were uneven and I’d surely have been scared if I hadn’t been able to see anything, but at last the shaft ended on a sort of little island surrounded by water. The water was dark and still, it didn’t seem to flow at all, and the shaft stood on it like a sort of pillar with a hole in one side. I smelt and tasted the water and it was fresh and didn’t taste of anything in particular, perhaps a bit of stone as if it had been in a stone crock, so we filled the water sacks. Then Bayat walked round the pillar and called me, “Come and look here!” He’d found a boat! It looked as if it had been made from a single tree-trunk, and it didn’t look as if more than one person could sit in it comfortably. “Better go up and tell the others,” I said, because I sure wasn’t going to try out a boat on an unfamiliar lake!

Ferin was very interested, because he knew most about boats of all of us, so he went down this time –in his loincloth, his body greased, because he thought otherwise he wouldn’t be able to get through, and that was very true because when he came back he had some scrapes. Bayat wanted to go down again too, so he got to carry all the empty water sacks we still had. Ferin told us he’d seen something like a fish or another creature, and if that hadn’t been there we could all go down to wash, but suppose it was something waiting for food to come in reach of its jaws, like an alligator or a people-eating fish! We’d better go unwashed until the next pool.

There were some very clear direction stones around the pillar, one set pointing south along the chasm where we didn’t really want to go, and one almost due west were we had been going, only four days so we decided to take that one. But not today! We sorted out our things, filled all the other water bags too, shook the sand from our clothes, practiced, and generally rested before the next stretch.

The next morning when we wanted to set out it turned out that all the children were missing! We could see them, though, some way to the south along the chasm. Ferin and I –perhaps it would have been more useful to leave one gifted person in the camp, but neither of us wanted to stay behind– decided to go after them on the camel. When we were about to saddle up we saw something scrawled in the sand, and I thought I recognised the way Fikmet wrote ‘a’: “We had to go. Good luck.” What!? Just now we were a tribe, all the young of the tribe leave, just like that? If they’d been abducted and had time to write, they wouldn’t have written that, because it was very unlikely that anyone taking them would be able to read Ilaini anyway.

“If we’re not back in two days, go on!” Ferin told the women and the soldiers, and we rode south as fast as two people on one camel can go. After a while we knew we were close to the children but couldn’t see them at all! “They’re under us!” Ferin said. So they were– not in the chasm, but on the underground river. They must have taken the boat! How all six of them could have fitted in, and how Fikmet had managed to go down the stairs with her splinted ankle, was a mystery, but there they were. It didn’t look as if they were being coerced or compelled, except perhaps Fikmet. I spoke to her with my mind, and she said “We really had to go, it’s more dangerous for you than for us, take care!” Damn Daya and her earthly images! Because I was sure now who was doing the compelling. Well, at least I belonged to Anshen now and she couldn’t compel me. “But will we see you again!” “Probably,” Fikmet said. “At the king’s court?” “Yes, I think it will be there.” I couldn’t help wailing a little, “I’d have liked to learn a lot more together!”

Then Ferin also spoke to Fikmet but of course I didn’t hear it. He said to me later that he’d told them we’d miss them and he’d have liked to keep them in the tribe. I agreed completely! But we couldn’t do anything now, so we went back and told the others what had happened. Some of the women were all “yes, Daya does that” and the soldiers didn’t show any feelings at all. I’ll never understand those Khas! That we didn’t have the children any more had changed everything, it wasn’t me and Ferin taking care of the children with all those other people around us, but me and Ferin leading a group of adults while we were the very youngest. (Well, perhaps Tamsyn was younger, she wasn’t sure, but she looked about our age.)

There was nothing for it but to follow the four-day direction stones and go on towards the west. Sepideh was still sure that we were getting closer to the king. Four days, then another five days, then another three. It was higher ground here, much colder, and then some very cold white stuff started falling out of the sky, like cotton fluff. When it fell on you it changed to cold water. Ferin said it must be snow, and there was lots of that in Valdyas but not where he had lived. It was nice when it fell on the ground and stayed there, because it made it very easy to find tracks of animals. There were more trees here and higher bushes, some of the trees were very strange, going up straight and ending in a point and with a sort of soft green needles for leaves. “We could make tent-poles from those trees!” I said, but we didn’t need a new tent. We could cut wood for fires, though! And when it was so easy to follow animals we might as well hunt, even though we’d lost our best hunters, Mar and Makane. I think I was the best hunter left! Though some of the soldiers and the women weren’t bad either, and five of us went and followed tracks of something large and hooved while Ferin and the rest made camp.

It was easy to find the large and hooved animal, but it was already someone’s dinner: half a dozen wolves that had brought it down and didn’t notice us because they were busy eating. “There are wolves here,” I said to Ferin, “but they’re eating, not going for us at the moment.” “Thanks!” he said, and we drew back and found some other tracks to follow, a small herd of jumping-deer. We got four in total (because one had two spears in it) and the rest ran away. Ferin and the others hadn’t only made a big fire, but built a kind of low wall of upright poles as well, so the wolves would find it hard to get at us even if they got hungry again. Ferin made beads from the deer’s short straight horns and threaded them on a string for Tamsyn, and promised to braid some in her hair later when it was light, and it was a really peaceful evening, except that we were still missing the children a lot.

She is sixteen and impetuous. And this part of the world is so strange that she also wants to stick with what she’s already familiar with. Sort of, at least. (But I have an idea of what to do– thought of it when writing this so I won’t divulge it yet.)

Ferin has told the story about what happened in the world, but I have to tell what happened to me because of course other people haven’t seen that. Some of it was in dreams, some just in my head, and I can’t tell it apart very well.

So we’d killed that mage –I don’t even remember which of us killed him, only that it wasn’t me because I do remember saying that I didn’t want to kill another one– but he kept haunting me in my dreams. Not right away, first I had different dreams, but the first time I didn’t even know I was dreaming. I’d been trying to pray to Anshen –take a bit of fire from the great communal fire in a pot because I wanted to be alone, not sit with all the strangers– just to make sure that he knew I was there, and I knew he was there, but all I got was the Khas Ashok and it confused me more than it helped me. Then in the night I woke up before my watch and I heard such a strange sound, as if water was glugging from a jug. When I went to investigate I could see that there was a kind of stream of light coming from Ferin’s head and flowing to somewhere outside the camp. I’d heard of that kind of thing from the war, but I couldn’t call the princess or the baroness to take care of it and I didn’t know what to do without hurting him. (Or indeed at all.) So I went and called the watch, which was Fikmet and Sepideh, and Fikmet went with me and took the lamp while Sepideh stayed on watch. We saw the strange light run out of the camp and flow into a pool that the moon reflected in, and my face too, and Fikmet’s face. We were very scared and ran back to the camp to try and wake people up, but we couldn’t wake even Ferin. That made me extra afraid that he would die, of course. But it was Ferin, not looking as he was short of any anea, who woke me for my watch, and nobody had noticed anything, not even Fikmet. We went to where the pool was and there was no pool at all, not even the rise that it had been behind.

The next time I don’t really remember –things are so confusing!– but there was the mage we’d killed, sort of floating, and I said “I’m not afraid of you!”. He said “You should be” and disappeared. Or perhaps he didn’t disappear, but just floated there menacingly. It happened another few nights, too. I was more annoyed than scared, couldn’t the bastard leave me alone? But scared as well, I admit, and it made it very hard to sleep because I didn’t have Anshen to call on properly, the only place I could sleep was next to Ferin. He’s not Anshen of course, but he’s big and good and solid and dependable.

And –oh goodness, I’m telling this all out of order– there was one time I had to choose someone to help me, and I had Fikmet with me and asked her and she came. And then suddenly I knew that it wasn’t Fikmet, but Timoine in Fikmet’s form, and at the same time herself. Anshen was there as well, and I thought that because Ferin had had a journeyman’s trial choosing between gods this must be mine, and I did want to choose Anshen (but not over Timoine) but there was only Ashok, and I sure didn’t want to choose Ashok! So when Fikmet said I could only have one to help me I asked her, and told Anshen I’d have him the next time. Then I woke up and Ferin noticed that I was different but I hadn’t taken a trial. (Or perhaps I failed my journeyman’s trial! Does that mean I can do it again next time, or never again?)

Now I can’t talk to Fikmet even waking without seeing her as Timoine a little, especially when she said “Daya isn’t mad at you, I asked!” when I was confused.

But anyway. The mage. We were trying to find out what he’d done to Bayat and tried to do to me so we could guard against it the next time, and it was so slippery that we couldn’t pin it down. So the next time I saw the dead mage in my dream –by now I knew that I was dreaming– I confronted him and asked him outright how he did it. “I can’t tell you,” he said, “but I can show you. Let me into your mind and I’ll show you.” It did sound useful, and I was very careful, telling him exactly what he would and wouldn’t be allowed to do with me, and again asked Timoine to protect me (because for one I hadn’t committed myself to Anshen, and also I didn’t trust Ashok much more than I did the mage) and let the mage into my mind. I could feel him sitting there like a kind of hat, only under my skin, and there was no way at all that I could get anything out of him this way.

I don’t know what to do now. I wish I had someone who really knows about this kind of thing, much more than we do, and not Khas, someone like the baroness or Faran of the Order. There’s the spirit of a dead Khas mage inside my head and I don’t know what to do with it.

It is a kind of jealousy all right, but Ailin doesn’t want what Tamsyn has– no component of envy.

Ferin thinks I’m jealous of Tamsyn. Nonsense! It’s not as if I want him to fuck me instead, far from that! He thinks it because I’ve started feeling so comfortable around him that I don’t mind if he touches me, brotherly-like, teaching me to wrestle and things like that. Only I was stupid enough to tell him. On the other hand it’s annoying to see the little limpet clinging to him all the time, I thought he was a nice guy but when she’s around he starts thinking only with his pecker. Oh wait… Well, perhaps I am jealous.

Anyway.

We went off north, and found not only Bakmet and her kid –I’d expected a toddler, but she turned out to be older than Fikmet, perhaps ten or eleven– but also four women who were hammering iron out of the mountain. And I almost cut another mage’s throat, but fortunately Makane did it so I didn’t have to. (Do they really die so easily? Aren’t they used to Valdyans and Síthi and some of their own people who take initiative for a change?) I talked to the girl, because they’d been “taking care of the men”, not only the mother but also the daughter, and gave her some of the salve for tender skin and said to tell me if she bleeds when she thinks she oughtn’t, and also if she doesn’t bleed when she thinks she ought (though she may be just too young for that). And she cried, a lot. I told her that I know, and she believed me.

Gods, I’ve learnt so much. Not only to kill people –I never had until that first mage, though not for lack of opportunity– but also a handier way to skin animals, cut meat from skin instead of skin from meat, Tamsyn did that with the cow-thing we caught. If it works with cows it must work with goats too. And to hunt, I helped catch that cow and almost caught a little leaping-goat too but Mar stumbled on a stone next to me and cursed so loud that they all startled and ran away. And then Fikmet took my hand and said “will you teach me to hunt? And to throw knives like you?” Well, I’m still learning to hunt myself, but I’ll gladly learn as I teach! That’s the way I taught the little girls from the next courtyard to cook, too. She needs a shorter and lighter knife than me, but they have all sorts of knives in the village so I’m sure we can find one.

The women from the mine came to me –I think Ferin sent them– and said that they’d figured out what they want: to talk to the king of the Khas and convince him that women are people too. “Where does your king live?” I asked, and the answer was “everywhere!” — which didn’t help much of course. But the king is with the army, there really is an army, they say it’s the last one because there used to be lots of kings and lots of armies but there’s only the one left now. The women say they can find the king, wherever he is.

I’m teaching them all knife-throwing, the four miner women and Fikmet too, and as soon as Ferin is fit enough to travel we’ll first go to the fort and get them all armour and weapons. (Well, no armour for Fikmet I expect, only a better knife than she’s got and perhaps a leather jacket. But Ferin wants to outfit the miner-women as a private little army.) And then we’ll go to see this king. I just hope I dare, I don’t really feel like walking into a whole army of Khas soldiers…

In which Ailin learns things.

This starts in medias res because the main story is Ferin’s, but Ailin has to tell the parts that men aren’t let in on. Come to think of it, it also ends in medias res, there’s little that Ailin can tell apart from her learning that Ferin hasn’t told already.

Ferin says that some of the story is mine, and he’s right of course but I don’t really know how to tell it. Or where to start for that matter. But I’ll tell the women’s things because Khas men and women are really so different, you can’t imagine even if you were brought up in Aumen Síth where there are enough different people to see that not everybody thinks the same way. Not even if they’re of the same people, the Síthi for instance, the old trade families keep their daughters inside much more than my family did, when I still had a family. And of course the Valdyans don’t seem to care if someone is a man or a woman, not for most things anyway.

So we got the boys and the little girl Fikmet to take us to the village. It wasn’t as far as we’d thought, perhaps less than an hour, and it wasn’t as big as I’d thought either, seven big tents each of a different colour and a stone building which is the water-house. The water comes in at one end and collects in a trough and flows out again so the camels can drink it. You wash inside or outside, the camels don’t seem to mind drinking water that someone has washed themself in. It’s not as if they’ve got soap or anything, perhaps they wash with herbs. Come to think of it they don’t wash themselves much at all, not by far as much as Ferin and I and the Síthi do.

The village headman turns out to be only about twelve years old, and a nasty piece of work if you ask me, I think he actually likes treating all the women like dirt, he’s all as if he deserves it! There’s also his uncle, who has a wooden leg, and though he’s a lot older he doesn’t seem to be the boss. But the really real boss is the headman’s grandmother, Mina. She’s gifted but hides herself as well as the mage’s mother did, and she has time to teach me because she’s not about to kill herself! But what she taught me wasn’t to hide, but to sing.

It was like this: we’d arrived, and Ferin spent most of the evening telling stories, he’s better at that than I am, I think sailors get good at that being at sea all the time having adventures. Then he had to go and take a piss, so he asked me if I could sing. I don’t have much of a voice but I know lots of songs, so I sang the one about the maid and the soldier that I love the tune of, nobody understood it anyway so it didn’t matter that it’s a bit bawdy. I’d barely finished when Mina asked me “why do you only sing half?” I’d sung the whole song, and I don’t understand that much Khas, but I thought she didn’t mean half the song, but half of whatever singing is, as if you’re only half dressed, or half washed, or something that’s cooking is half done. “I can’t sing all that well,” I said, “my voice isn’t so good.” “No, it’s not your voice, you’re singing only with your voice, not with your spirit!” At least I think she meant spirit, or mind, that’s the same word in Khas as far as I know.

She saw that I didn’t really understand, so she asked “Why do you sing?” That was a hard question, obviously she didn’t mean because Ferin had asked me or why I sang that song but why I sing at all. “Because I like the sound it makes,” I said, “and the words, the story, that too. Do you always sing with your mind?” “Always,” Mina said. It sounded like they never sang just like that, it always had to be useful! But I did want to learn. “Can you teach me that?” I asked, and she looked hard at me and said “Yes, I think so.”

Then she taught me a Khas song because she couldn’t do it with a song I knew, either because it wasn’t serious or useful enough or because she didn’t understand all the words. “This is a song for making the people of your household happy,” she said. “You sing it in the tent.” I made a seal around us, saying “Our tent usually looks like this when we travel,” and she could see it but thought it was very strange. Then she took me into her own tent and told me to repeat words after her, that I didn’t understand either. But it was to greet the huge snake that guarded the tent! Every tent has one, and they’re harmless as long as you’re polite to them. I can now say “Hi snake!” in Khas. (You don’t say “Bye snake!” when you go out; I asked.)

Then Mina made me sing in the tent, to wrap the song round everybody inside. I had to know if the snake was also somebody, because it made the singing harder if I didn’t know. I looked hard at it with my mind and the snake had anea all right, so I included it. I think MIna approved of that. I sang until I ran out of words, then looked around and saw that it had worked a little but not as much as I’d intended. “You’ll learn,” Mina said, and she also said that this didn’t mean that the people in this tent were now my people, so I could go to sleep with Ferin and the rest of my own people.

I remembered to say “Hi snake!” to the snake in the tent where Ferin was! This one was longer and thicker than Mina’s, with a pretty pattern on its head. The children were all inside, and so was Ferin, but he was behind a curtain making love with the girl he’d been chatting up earlier. (This made Fikmet giggle a lot, and she set me off giggling too.)