Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [235]
We followed the Tabara River as best we might, but our journey often took us far afield. Lacking a poet's gifts, I am hard-pressed to describe the terrain we traversed. Such diversity! At its height, the landscape was nearly like unto the Camaeline Mountains that border Skaldi—forested and plunging, dense with pine and sycamore. Here the air grew thin and the nights were cold; so cold we huddled in our tents, shivering and glad of our woolen blankets.
The deep valleys were another matter altogether, green and tropical, filled with all manner of birds, flashing from tree to tree with raucous cries and bright plumage. There were monkeys, too; cunning creatures with bold eyes and scolding voices, agile and long-limbed. Our progress was slow through the valleys, and I was glad of our guides, for we would have been lost on our own, map or no map.
On the eleventh day, we reached the plain where Kaneka's village was located, and it proved yet another new landscape, vast and tawny plains dotted with the gnarled forms of eucalyptus trees. Here we were able to follow the river once more. It flowed at a good pace, narrower and swifter than where it joined the Nahar upstream.
As we drew near Debeho, Kaneka grew moody.
I asked her about it when we made camp that evening, pitching our tents beneath a spreading eucalyptus.
"I quarrelled with my brother, little one," she said, her voice unwontedly somber. "Do you have brothers?"
I shook my head. "Not that I know of."
Kaneka gave a faint smile. "They are a blessing and a curse. We sought, both of us, to be named our grandmother's successor."
"The storyteller," I said, remembering.
"Even so." She nodded. "There was a contest. Each of us was to tell a story, a true story, that had never been told before. Mafud lied. His story, of a magic ring and a spellbound prince—an Umaiyyati trader told it to him. I know, for I overheard it. But my grandmother did not know, and judged him the winner. No one believed me, so I ran away."
"The Skotophagoti found you? The Âka-Magi?"
"Not in Jebe-Barkal." Kaneka toyed with a gold necklace she held in her lap, a gift of the Lugal, bowing her head and polishing the gleaming metal. "Tigrati tribesmen found me; highlanders, like him." She jerked her chin at Tifari Amu. "So I was their captive. They traded me to a merchant in Meroë, and there he sold me to a caravan-master, to cook and clean for him." She smiled bitterly. "It is why I know so much about camels, little one. And he, he took me to Iskandria. That is where an Aka-Magus found me, and how I came to Drujan."
"Do you fear the welcome you will receive?" I asked her.
"No," she said shortly, clasping the pendant about her neck, where it nestled against the leather bag that held her amber dice. She looked at me. "Yes. As we draw nigh, I fear."
"Don't." I placed a hand on her arm. "Fedabin, in Daršanga you told us the stories of our fates, and you told them true. Without your courage to follow, the zenana would have faltered. You have lived such a story as your brother can only dream on his darkest nights, and emerged alive to tell it. You will be welcome. I am sure of it."
Kaneka looked at me a long time without speaking, then shook her head. "Would that I could tell your story, little one, but it is writ in no tongue I understand. The gods themselves must throw up their hands in dismay."
"Ah, well." I stood and stretched, watching the purple twilight fall across the plains. Our bearers had a fire blazing, and the spoils of last night's hunt cooking in a stew. Tifari Amu and his comrade Bizan lounged before their tent, whetting their spearheads and conversing. Joscelin and Imriel were returning empty-handed from the river, Joscelin winding the cord of his fishing-line