Chapter Nine
The next morning Francesca found the hide walls of a Sansoussy house could be as confining as a force field. Every time she tried to explore, Mina materialized as if from nowhere, blocking her way, and asking what she wanted. Mina met every request—brought Francesca breakfast, took away the dishes, provided water for washing, even emptied the chamber pot—but still Francesca was getting annoyed. She wanted to see what was going on. She had just decided to confront Mina and ask whether she was a prisoner when, without warning, Ran-Del appeared in her room.
“Don’t the Sansoussy ever knock?” Francesca asked in exasperation.
“Good morning, Francesca,” he said, a hint of rebuke in his tone.
“Good morning,” she said belatedly.
Ran-Del reached over and unhooked a curtain beside the door. It fell into place and covered the doorway. “When you want privacy, leave the curtain down. No one will come in. If it’s important enough to disturb you, they’ll scratch on the door frame first.”
“Why are all the doors so low?” Francesca said, venting her aggravation. “Don’t you all get sore backs from all this stooping?”
A half smile tugged at Ran-Del’s lips. “It’s hard on older people. But it makes it easier to defend a house or a room if everyone has to bend very low to enter it.”
She had never considered that. “Oh.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“Just fine, thank you.”
Ran-Del raised his eyebrows. “Maybe you haven’t figured it out yet, but I can tell when you lie to me.”
“All right, I was being polite,” Francesca said crossly. “I hardly slept all night. It’s too damn noisy out here in the woods. There were all kinds of scratching sounds outside.”
“It’s mostly just tree branches scraping on the walls and the roof,” Ran-Del said, looking up at the ceiling.
Francesca looked up, too, and saw the leafy canopy and a patch of clear golden sky, visible through the ventilation flaps.
“Although, with the ceiling flaps open,” he went on, “you might hear the wind in the trees, too.”
“Ran-Del,” Francesca said, “when can I get out of here? Will your great-grandfather send me back soon, or at least let me leave on my own?”
Ran-Del looked dismayed at her suggestion. “You’d never make it on your own, Francesca. Great-grandfather wouldn’t let you go by yourself. Besides, he told Grandfather that your father is coming here.”
Francesca opened her eyes wide at this news. She had wondered when her father would show up. Maybe that was what the old man had seen the day before? “Pop’s coming here? When? How does your great-grandfather know that?”
Ran-Del shook his head. “I can’t explain how a psy gift works. But if Great-grandfather says that your father’s coming soon, then he’ll be here soon.”
She let out a sigh of relief, but then she had an alarming thought. “You won’t try to hurt him, will you, Ran-Del? You’re back with your people now, and Pop can’t harm you anymore.”
“That doesn’t excuse what he did,” Ran-Del said, a hint of inflexible anger in his voice. “But you needn’t worry. Grandfather forbade me to go near your father, and I’m not inclined to suffer punishment twice in as many days.”
“Punishment? Punishment for what?”
Ran-Del looked away for a moment. “It’s of no consequence. Have you eaten? Would you like to go outside and see the village?”
A sense of relief flooded over Francesca. “Yes! Your grandmother keeps popping up to offer things, but she seems not to want me to go out.”
“There’s no reason you can’t go outside,” Ran-Del said. “You’re not a prisoner.”
He looped the curtain back over its hook and led the way out of the door. Francesca followed him through another bedroom, then the storage room, and then outside.
Sunlight hit her eyes, but a slight breeze felt cool on her skin. The light filtering through the tree tops gave the air a strange, diffused look. All around the village, people were walking about, working in their gardens and performing household chores. Small children climbed in the lower tree branches, playing games and calling down to their elder siblings who were helping with the chores. A young girl two houses away swung a long, thick stick at a piece of carpet hung over a line. She beat it with enthusiasm until she saw Ran-Del and Francesca, and then she stopped abruptly. Francesca smiled at her, but the girl stared at them, then ran inside her house.
“Do I look that ferocious?” Francesca asked. “I thought I’d fit right in wearing this dress.”
Ran-Del took her arm and steered her in another direction. “There are only three hundred and twenty-two people in this village. She knows every one of them by name, so she knows you must be the strange woman everyone’s talking about.”
They walked a ways through the village, following the winding paths that meandered between the houses. None of the adults ran away at the sight of Francesca, but quite a few stared or gave her a backward glance as she passed. Ran-Del spoke to a few people and was answered courteously.
They were passing a large house that rambled in every direction when a young woman stepped outside with a basket of wet laundry. She had long blonde hair that fell around her shoulders in soft waves, and her face was a perfect oval set with classic features. Her slashed trousers and sleeveless tunic were not unlike Ran-Del’s clothes, except that the tunic was laced shut where his vest was open. Still, she looked utterly feminine. She stopped when she saw them and gave Francesca a cool, appraising stare.
“Good morning, Ran-Del,” she said.
“Good morning, Bettine,” Ran-Del answered, reluctance in his voice.
Bettine lifted one arched eyebrow, smiled a tiny, satisfied smile and then deliberately turned her back on them and began to hang the laundry up on a line. Francesca noted as she lifted a bed sheet that the caste bracelet on her wrist had no sky-gold beads.
Ran-Del took Francesca’s arm and then pulled her along farther into the village.
“Well,” Francesca said, “so that’s Bettine?”
“Yes.”
“She’s very beautiful. Too bad she’s such a bitch.”
Ran-Del didn’t answer, but Francesca saw him clench his jaw.
Contrition set in. Really, she had no right to be so critical. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You can tell me to go to hell if you like.”
“No, I can’t. You’re a guest.”
It sounded like a promising situation. “Does that mean I can say whatever I like, and you can’t answer back?”
“Yes. Although you’d be abusing a guest’s privilege if you did that.”
“I’ll try to mind my manners,” Francesca said, her good humor restored. “You don’t have any more golden-haired goddesses tucked away to tempt me into rudeness, do you?”
“No,” Ran-Del said, with a reluctant smile.
Francesca looked around the village. The houses were spaced far enough apart to give everyone room to have a good-sized garden and some privacy. In the middle of a cluster of homes, someone had cleared a large space, but instead of a garden, all that occupied the space was a large circle of flat stones divided into four quadrants, two of which had rounded stones arranged in them. “What’s that?”
Ran-Del looked where she pointed. “That’s our calendar. Every morning the shaman or someone he designates moves a stone from the autumn quadrant into the winter quadrant. When all the stones are moved, winter is here.”
It seemed reliable, if incredibly low tech. Francesca continued her scrutiny. As far as she could see off into the forest, there were houses and people.
“Your village looks so big,” she said. “I mean, it seems to cover quite a lot of ground. No wonder you’re so used to walking for transportation. Where do you keep the lamels?”
This made Ran-Del smile even more. “We don’t keep them anywhere. We don’t keep lamels. They’re wild animals. When we need a way to carry sick or elderly people, or to haul goods, w
e catch some lamels and gentle them. When we don’t need them anymore, we feed them well and let them go.”
It made no sense to Francesca. With logic like that, the wheel would never have been invented, let alone skimmers and flyters. “But if you kept them all the time you could ride them instead of walking.”
Ran-Del shrugged. “What would that accomplish? A lamel can’t run any faster than a human. All that would happen is we would get out of shape.”
Francesca couldn’t repress a smile. “You mean like me?”
Ran-Del kept his expression neutral. “I never said that.”
She laughed out loud. “You didn’t have to, Ran-Del. I don’t need psy sense to see that you hold city dwellers in contempt.”
“No.” Ran-Del sounded earnest. “I don’t hold you in contempt. I simply wonder how you can bear to live in the city, in such huge houses, shut away from the trees and the sunlight.”
Francesca looked up at the leafy canopy over her head. “It’s not that bright here under the trees. I’ll bet it gets damn gloomy when it’s nighttime, or when it storms. Winter must be a treat.”
“Actually, there’s more light in winter. When the blackwoods go into hibernation, all the leaves curl up tightly and the sunlight shines down through the branches.
“But still,” Francesca said, “the days are shorter—and colder.”
“That’s true. Winters are long and hard to bear. That’s why we say winter-borns are tougher.”
This reminded Francesca of something. “How did your parents die, Ran-Del? How old were you?”
“My father was killed on a hunt when I was only four seasons old. My mother isn’t dead; she remarried and lives with the Standing Rock Clan now.”
Francesca was surprised. “But why don’t you live with her, instead of with your grandparents?”
“Because I’m in the Falling Water Clan,” Ran-Del said. “I carry Great-grandfather’s line, too, so I must stay with my own people.”
“What does that mean, you carry his line?”
He got that impatient look that made her feel like a small child. Had she looked like that back in Shangri-La when he asked questions?
“The Sansoussy believe that a man lives on in his sons,” Ran-Del said, “and his sons’ sons, just as a woman lives on through her daughters and their daughters. Grandfather was the only one of Great-grandfather’s children to survive to adulthood. He and Grandmother had only one child, my father. Since Father was killed when I was young, I’m his only child. Thus, there’s no one but me to carry on Great-grandfather’s line.”
It sounded like nonsense to Francesca. Why would a child of the same gender be more likely to perpetuate a parent’s existence than a child of a different gender? “Is it so important?”
Ran-Del nodded emphatically. “Great-grandfather is the greatest shaman the clan has ever had. It would be a disgrace to all of us if his line were allowed to die out.”
Francesca tilted her head to look at him. He had given her a perfect lead-in to her question so she might as well ask it now. “Then why aren’t you married yet?”
He looked away as he spoke. “Grandfather wants me to marry. I expect he’ll make me choose someone soon enough.”
“But not Bettine?”
Ran-Del sighed. “Not if Great-grandfather still says no.”
Francesca remembered her interview with the old shaman, the way he had shrunk in front of her, just from trying to see the future. “He’s a spooky old man, Ran-Del. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but he gives me the shivers.”
Ran-Del didn’t look offended. “I know what you mean. He spooks me, too, sometimes.”
“Where is he today?” Francesca said, glancing around. “Does he get outside much?”
“Great-grandfather likes to walk around the village every morning, but this morning he’s holding a seeing.”
Francesca’s interest perked up. This was something she would never see in Shangri-La. “A seeing? Why? Is something happening?”
“I don’t know. Grandfather said he decided to do it last night, after he saw you.”
“What does he do? I mean, what makes it a seeing and not just the usual Sansoussy unfocused stare that you all seem to get when you meditate or whatever?”
“You shouldn’t make light of the Disciplines or psy talent,” Ran-Del said, the gentleness of his tone robbing the admonition of any offense, “And a seeing is not the same as meditating. Great-grandfather will use the Fourth Discipline first, to achieve a deep samad state, but then he’ll breathe in medicine smoke. Burning wood from a medicine tree produces smoke that heightens psy sense. Once he’s reached an advanced samad state, Great-grandfather will use the Sixth Discipline—known only to people of power—to try to control his psy talent.”
“What do you mean try to control it? Doesn’t he always control it?”
Ran-Del shook his head. “Not completely. People with psy ability that lets them see other people’s feelings and thoughts have some control over it—they can use the Disciplines to block it out if they wish, or they can focus it on a particular person. Psy sense that lets you see what will happen next is different. It comes to you from time to time—not always in a useful way. In a seeing, a person of power tries to look ahead to see what the future might hold.”
Francesca reached out and gently touched the glass bead on Ran-Del’s caste bracelet. In some ways, the Sansoussy were like an alien species. “Did you ever do a seeing?”
This made him laugh. “Me? No, I’m no man of power. I couldn’t be a warrior if I were. To be considered a person of power, you must have at least four sky-gold beads.”
“Who decides? I mean, who says how many beads you wear? Do you get rated or something?”
He seemed in a better mood; he answered her questions with continued good humor, “When you become an adult, you spend two days alone in the revelation lodge, with three elders of power. You’re required to go through all the Disciplines, even the Fifth, and to open your mind to them. Once your Ordeal is finished, you’re given your caste bracelet, with beads for your clan, your family, and your ancestors, plus however many glass beads they consider you’ve earned.”
Francesca frowned. For people who lived so simply, they had very complicated rules. She could understand why her father was so fascinated with them. “But what about people like Bettine who have no psy sense? How can they learn the Disciplines?”
“Anyone can learn the Disciplines. It’s just a matter of hard work. That’s why we call them Disciplines.” He gave her a curious look. “How did you know Bettine had no psy sense? Did I mention it, or did you look at her caste bracelet?”
She grinned at him. “Both. She was giving me the once over; I didn’t see any reason not to return the favor.”
Ran-Del stopped walking. They were at the outskirts of the village, where the houses had thinned out and Francesca could see the forest in its natural state. In many ways, it didn’t look that different from the village.
“There’s not much in our village except houses and gardens,” Ran-Del said. “Is there anything in particular you want to see?”
Francesca glanced around and noticed one small building that stood off by itself with no garden and no sign that it was inhabited. There wasn’t even a tea vine growing up the side. “What’s that?”
Ran-Del looked away. “That’s the betrothal lodge,” he said, with studied nonchalance.
Francesca had a brief twinge of conscience, but in the end his embarrassment served only to pique her curiosity. “What’s a betrothal lodge?”
Ran-Del studied a distant blackwood tree as if it were a thing of great interest. “When a man and a woman want to marry, they must first be betrothed. They go through a ceremony with their families and a village elder, and then they’re escorted here. They spend the night together, and the next day, they’re betrothed.”
“I see,” Francesca said, trying not to smile. It seemed like little more than a ritualized, really good first
date to her. “What a charming custom.”
Ran-Del looked stung, his lips setting in a hard line. “We’re not savages, Francesca. If you find it quaint to follow rules of behavior instead of merely doing whatever you please, stop and think how we see your customs.”
Francesca’s good humor evaporated. “Who says we don’t have rules? We do have some restraints, you know, even if we acknowledge our feelings.”
Ran-Del stopped walking to literally look down at her. “Acknowledge them? From what you’ve said, it sounds as if you encourage them. If there are rules in force in your city, it’s hard for me to see what they are.”
Francesca made a noise of disgust. “How would you know? When did you have time to study our customs?”
“I didn’t have to study them,” Ran-Del retorted. “You told me yourself that you’ve had many lovers. Such behavior would never be tolerated among the Sansoussy.”
Francesca glared up at him, seething with rage. “How dare you judge me! After two minutes with a woman who was showing nothing more than bare shoulders and a little cleavage, you were ready to say to hell with every last rule in your precious Sansoussy book.”
Ran-Del dropped his head and then looked away, as if he were unable to meet her eyes. “You’re right. What I did was wrong. Grandfather has already punished me for it.”
The abjectness of his surrender made Francesca suddenly want to take his side. “It wasn’t anything terrible. What do you mean, your Grandfather punished you?”
Ran-Del glanced around, then lifted the left side of his vest to reveal an angry, red welt.
“Good God!” Francesca said. “How did you do that, Ran-Del?”
He answered her literally. “I held a white hot iron rod on my side for a few seconds.”
Francesca stared at him, open-mouthed with amazement. These people were even stranger than she had thought. “Your grandfather did that to you just for making a pass at me?”
Ran-Del shook his head. “Not just for that. He was angrier about my using the Fifth Discipline. I hadn’t realized it at first, but he was enraged when I told him I had used it at your father’s house. He said the circumstances didn’t warrant it.”
“Is that the thing where you stop your heart?”
Ran-Del nodded. “We have the right to use the Fifth Discipline only when our honor is at stake—when living would be a worse alternative than dying.”
Francesca mentally weighed attempted suicide against corporal punishment. “In that case, I suppose it’s not as terrible that he punished you. But it seems excessive to burn you like that.”
Ran-Del smiled and shrugged. “That’s our way. I earned worse when I was younger.” He traced a very old scar on his right arm, a little above the elbow. “That’s from a time when I was sixteen seasons—I had just come of age. I wanted to hunt alone for a timber cat, so I took my bow and went out by myself, even though Grandfather had forbidden me to do it. I never even sighted a timber cat, and when I came home, Grandfather was waiting.”
Francesca touched the scar. It was wider and longer than her finger and looked as if it had come from a very bad burn. “So your grandfather did that, too?”
Ran-Del jumped at her touch but said nothing.
Francesca stroked the scar gently. “It must have hurt a lot.”
“It did.”
She moved her hand to a smaller scar above the first and gave it the same treatment. “How did you get this one?”
Ran-Del swallowed hard. “That was for falling asleep when I was on watch, when we were on a hunt.”
She looked up at him. “How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
He seemed very restrained all of a sudden. And then she noticed he was breathing hard. “What’s wrong?” Before he could answer, she figured it out by herself. “Oh,” she said, removing her hand. “I’m sorry.”
Ran-Del murmured an inarticulate reply.
She was unable to resist a comment. “It doesn’t take much to set you off, does it?”
Ran-Del didn’t answer.
Francesca turned back the way they had come. If he was feeling primal urges, it might be better to remove him from temptation. The last thing she wanted was more corporal punishment on her conscience. “Let’s go back to your house. Can I watch your great-grandfather do his seeing, or is it private?”
“It’s not completely private,” Ran-Del said, letting out a deep breath. “Doan will be there, and Grandfather will go in from time to time, to see how Great-grandfather is doing. A seeing can be very exhausting, and Great-grandfather is quite old.”
“How long does it take?”
Ran-Del shrugged. “It takes what it takes. It’s not like building a house or skinning a day bat; you can’t say when you start how long it’ll last.”
“So can I watch or not?” Francesca said persistently.
He knit his brows in a faint frown. “Why do you want to watch? Nothing happens that you can see.”
Before she could answer, a small animal came running from behind a house and rushed at Ran-Del. Francesca stopped in alarm, but Ran-Del merely held out a hand sternly.
“Halt, Buster,” he said firmly.
The animal stopped in its tracks and sat back on its haunches. Francesca studied it curiously. It was vaguely similar to the guard dogs in the city, having the same elongated head with narrow, pointed ears, and a sharp, wedge-shaped nose. But instead of fur, this animal had loose, leathery skin with a narrow strip of stiff, bristly hair running from between its ears all the way down its spine to the end of its small, stubby tail. Unlike the impressive animals back at her compound, the Sansoussy hound was no taller than Francesca’s knee. Only the double rows of sharp, fang-like bony ridges in his mouth and the single sharp claw on the back of each foot were at all threatening.
“Is that what you call a dog?” Francesca asked.
“His name is Buster,” Ran-Del said, “and he is a dog.”
Francesca didn’t argue, although she wasn’t convinced. They walked along and the dog fell in step behind them, trotting briskly to keep up. Every now and then it—he Francesca corrected herself—flicked his small blue tongue over his lips and darted his head from side to side as if he were watching for something,
“Is he yours?” Francesca asked, watching him curiously, “or don’t you keep dogs, either?”
“Yes, he’s mine. We keep dogs because they’re useful. If you’re hunting game, they’re very good at tracking, and they make good watchdogs, too.”
“If he’s a hunting dog, why wasn’t he with you the other day when Pop caught you?”
“Dogs are no good for hunting game that can climb or fly,” Ran-Del said. “All they do is spook them into fleeing. How did you know Buster wasn’t with me?”
It was Francesca’s turn to look embarrassed. She remembered watching Ran-Del on her father’s holographic projector before she had ever met him. She was saved having to answer when they heard a hail.
Ran-Del glanced around. Mina stood near her house, waving her arm at them. “Come on,” he said to Francesca. Picking up his speed almost to a trot, he loped over to his grandmother, Buster running at his heels.
Francesca followed more slowly, glad she was no longer obliged to keep up with his pace.
When Francesca drew near, Ran-Del stood beside his grandmother, head bent respectfully. In spite of his pose, he seemed to be arguing with her. The dog was nowhere in sight.
“But, Grandmother,” Ran-Del said, “why would he want me there? My psy gift is too weak to be of any use to him.”
“We all know that.” Mina sounded cross. “Nevertheless, your grandfather said you’re to go in and be prepared to stay as long as you’re wanted.”
Ran-Del ducked through the front door of his house before Francesca could catch up. Francesca nodded politely at Mina and followed Ran-Del. There was no sign of him when she stood up in the storage room, and Francesca realized she had no idea how to get to his room. She decided that most likel
y he had either gone into the shaman’s great room, or he would go there soon.
Isayah met her as she came through the doorway.
“My father is occupied, Francesca Hayden,” he said. “If you wish to see him, you’ll have to come back another time.”
Francesca shot a quick glance around. Two Sansoussy sat on the floor, the old shaman and a middle-aged woman. “Ran-Del said a seeing isn’t precisely a closed ceremony. Is it all right if I watch for a while?”
Isayah stood uncertainly for a few seconds and then nodded. “Very well, you may remain if you keep quiet and stay out of the way.”
“Thank you,” Francesca said, keeping her tone respectful. She took a seat on a bench on one side of the room and waited expectantly.
Ji-Ran Jahanpur sat cross-legged on the carpet in the middle of the room. His eyes were closed, and he seemed oblivious to his surroundings. The Sansoussy woman sat beside him, one of her knees almost touching his. She looked in much the same state as the shaman. Isayah Jahanpur fanned the fire in the brazier on the floor in front of his father, poured a cup of water for the woman, and adjusted the lamps to burn a little less brightly. Francesca had begun to wonder where Ran-Del was when he appeared beside the doorway.
“Good,” Isayah said. “Now we can begin.”
Francesca sat up. Had Pop ever been to a seeing? He had never mentioned it. This would be something to tell him. She waited expectantly for something to happen.