I, too, was worried about the fort, but for other reasons.
Ishtok stopped the horse, lifted his waterskin, and drank, then offered it to me. “I’ve got food, too, in the saddlebag,” he said. “We can eat later. You can have your first meal on your own land.”
“I’ll always be grateful for this day, Ishtok,” I said. “You don’t know what you do.”
“That’s a truth,” he said. “I hope I’m not leading you to your death. I’m hoping you’ll be able to walk on the edge of your land. But it’ll be Navoran crops and grazing fields by now, for sure. If there are people there, we’ll only look, then get out. Fast.”
“Even a look will be enough,” I said.
He kicked his horse into a trot again. Quickly I slipped my arms about his waist and held on, enjoying the rhythm of the ride, marveling that we went so wondrously fast across the earth. As we neared the pass I saw the entrance clearly. The walls were steep and high, and I saw why it had been easily defended in days long past. It was the only place in the mountains wide enough for an army to quickly pass through. Today there were no soldiers that I could see, and we seemed alone in the wide, brown world.
The sun had not yet reached its height when we entered the dark shadow of the pass. A warm wind blew through, smelling of the grasslands beyond. The floor of the gorge was very flat, the cliffs towering on either side. Our horse’s hooves echoed strangely, and sometimes we heard the sharp, high cries of birds far above. Once I shouted a Shinali battle cry, herald of the greater battle cries to come, but Ishtok told me to hush. He was a high lot afraid of meeting soldiers, though I felt no danger. About halfway through the gorge we passed a high waterfall that tumbled down steep rocks to become a narrow river. It rushed along to the left of us, its waters roaring and echoing along the high cliffs. The pass was almost straight, and as we came out at the other end, the view of Taroth Fort unfolded before us. Then an awful dread came over me, for it seemed that all the agony of my people hung about that place, and it was heavy with the heaviness of death.
Huge that fort was, its grim walls soaring as bare and bleak as the mountains all around. Four great lookout towers stood on the corners, and there was no way in save by the two high gates. The gateway was higher than an Igaal tent, and when closed the gates would have been impregnable, in days gone by; now they were broken, the remaining wood hanging in rotting planks from the big rusted hinges. And beyond the fort, its grass still summer brown, was the Shinali land.
“It’s bare!” I cried, astonished. “After all the battles and the killing, the Navorans have done nothing with it.”
We rode farther on, past the towering walls of the fort, alongside the river, on to the edges of the land. It lay before me empty, flat and unspoiled, as if waiting for our return.
Without a word Ishtok turned and offered me his hand, and swung me down from the horse. He, too, dismounted, and I heard him take the horse down to the river’s edge. I waited, breathing in the tranquil beauty, the warm scent of the grassland. Then Ishtok came, leading his horse, and we walked together onto the plain. Not far onto the land I stopped and took off my shoes, so I could walk barefoot on the beloved soil. Ishtok took my shoes and followed a little way behind me. On I walked, and on, cherishing the dust, the shining river, the trees, the luminous Shinali air. For the land was still ours, untouched, and that was a marvel to me. A breathlessness was there, a sense of expectation, of waiting. As I walked I thought of all the stories I had heard, in those travel-worn tents of the Wandering; I thought of the story Yeshi had given me that last night with my people, and the songs and prayers of old Zalidas. And then it seemed that they were stories and songs no longer, but something more; and I saw, slow as if outside our time, images of warriors in battle, their faces marked with paint of blue and white, their great war-bows bent, their mouths open in the Shinali war cry. Soldiers there were, too, with bronze armor and shields on which red horses pranced, and white plumes on their helmets and shoulders. The earth trembled, and I heard the throb of drums, the clash of steel, and saw the silver flash of swords, and the bright flights of arrows. The scenes of battle faded and passed.
I saw flocks of sheep, and children minding them, and women sitting by the river with looms, weaving. Sound of flutes and pipes, and people dancing in rain. And old men chanting, their voices cracked and dry, torn by the ancient wind. Then battle again, and a house burning, burning, and darkness, and people walking away. The smell of fire, and the sound of something clanging, like metal cooking pots. Then this stillness, this waiting.
I knelt on the ground, and then lay on it, my cheek against the earth, my arms spread wide. I wept and prayed and sang, and then lay quiet, feeling the earth beneath, the memories of generations layered in the sacred dust.
When I stood I saw Ishtok nearby, his face taut with worry.
“Don’t go too far out, Avala,” he said. “If someone comes, we’re dead.”
“There’s no one around,” I said. “Look—nothing but grass, and memories.” I caught sight of the farms on the other side of the river, the strip of land my people had sold to the Navorans.
“My Navoran grandmother lives there,” I said. “I wonder which farm is hers?”
Ishtok chewed his lower lip, nervously. “I hope you don’t want to visit her,” he said.
Smiling, I turned to go back. But at that moment I caught sight of something a little farther along, about halfway along the plain. “I think that is where our house was,” I said, shading my eyes from the sun. “There’s something standing on it.”
I began walking toward it, and Ishtok came with me, still leading his horse. I felt the tension in him, the fear that we walked openly where Navoran eyes might see us, and I took his hand and gave him my peace. For peace I did have, out on that land, despite all that had happened there. There was a presence in that place, a joy-wildness, as if it lay under the All-father’s hand, secure in his safekeeping. For the first time I understood, with all of my knowing, why my people longed for this land, this windswept plain, this place of belonging: it was Home.
We reached the mound in the earth and discovered that it was a garden. It was enclosed by a low wall of river stones, and wildflowers grew within, and herbs. And in the center, high on a pole, streamed a white flag, and on it, in blue, a graceful sign of looped and interlacing lines, decorative but simple, without beginning or end.
“A Navoran banner,” said Ishtok, and I was surprised at the anger in him. “Shall I tear it down?”
He would have leaped over the stones at once, but I put my hand on his arm. “Wait! That blue symbol painted on it, it’s Shinali. It’s our sacred sign for dreams. And it means more, for it’s the sign that the spirit world and the earth world are both the same; that a word foretold in the spirit world will have its full form in this one.”
Astonished, we stood staring at the banner flying over us with its brave sign, at the bright garden.
“Whoever painted the sign was a friend to your people,” said Ishtok. “But why would they plant flowers where your house was?”
“The house, it was used as a funeral pyre the night my people left this land,” I said. “Most of the house was underground, with a roof of grass. All my people lived in that one house. After the last battle they put all the dead Navoran soldiers and the dead Shinali warriors in the house, and set the roof on fire. Someone has covered over the bones, and filled the hollow, and made it a sacred place. But who would know what the dream-sign means, unless they were Shinali themselves?”
“Perhaps someone from your tribe came back,” said Ishtok.
“No. No one has walked here from my tribe, until today. It must have been a Navoran, perhaps from the farms. Perhaps my grandmother. But I don’t know how she would know our dream-sign.”
We began walking back, and I noticed small things on the ground—a child’s shoe, and a bone spoon, both weather worn and old. There were arrowheads, too, and many small, perfectly round stones. An image came to me, sw
ift and dark, of people fleeing at night, bundles in their arms and on their backs, and children dragged along by their hands, crying.
As we neared Taroth Fort dread came on me again. As if he knew, Ishtok said, gently, “We’ll ride past, Avala. You don’t even have to look at that place.”
“I want to go in,” I said. “I understand, now, what the land means to my people. I have shared their peace, their joy. I need to understand their pain, too. Will you come with me?”
He took my hand, and we approached the gateway. For a long time we stood there, looking in on the abandoned courtyard. All around the mighty walls were built wooden rooms, fallen to ruins, and the dust was littered with grasses and the bones of wild animals. We went in farther, and the eerie silence of the place was full of ghosts. It seemed that all the pain of my world had been trapped there, and the screams of women and tormented yells of men and the crying of children had sounded but a moment ago, and been suddenly cut off, and the walls and the stones and the bitter dust still held the echoes.
Ishtok and I did not speak, but he tied his horse to a pillar on the edge of the courtyard and came with me while I looked around. In the courtyard was an old well, a broken bucket on the rim. I dropped a stone down, and it fell many heartbeats before it hit the bottom. There was no water. Not far from the well the ground was blackened from a cooking fire of years long past. I remembered my mother saying how they had starved here, and what little food they had been given was moldy and bad, while the soldiers who had guarded them had feasted well.
I went up some steps into what must have been the Shinali sleeping place, for there were a few blankets abandoned there, covered in rust brown stains. There was a child’s little wooden horse in the dust, and a buckled metal cooking pot, and other things abandoned on the day of leaving. The place was open to the courtyard on one side, but on the walls people had drawn charcoal pictures of their life. I could not bear to look; the sorrow of the place, the despair, was like dust choking me. Ishtok put his arm about my shoulder, and we went outside into the sunny courtyard.
“My parents slept in one of the towers,” I said. “My mother said it was the tower on the southwest corner. That one over there.”
“If you want to go up, I’ll come with you. If you want me to.”
“I don’t know, Ishtok. It’s hard, being here. This place, it’s where my father lived his last days. Where so many of my people died. Where Tarkwan, our great chieftain, was tortured, and where he died. There is so much pain here. And yet I also want to be here, to know, even if it breaks my heart.”
He lifted his right hand and briefly stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers. “I’m here to mend it,” he said. “That is what I wanted to do, today. To mend your heart. To make it strong.”
I wept, and we went over to the tower together. The door was rusted off its hinges, and Ishtok threw it on the dirt behind us. Then he followed as I climbed the narrow, spiraling stairs.
Never had I been on stairs before, and there were many. And the walls were close, leaning in, suffocating. The air was stale, the dust unmoved since the day my father and my mother had walked down these stairs for the last time. High above us a wind blew in the heights, moaning and whining like a wounded animal. Up we went, and up, resting sometimes, leaning on the curved stone walls. At last we came to the top, and a little wooden door. I turned the handle, and it swung almost silently open. We went in and for long heartbeats stood there, lost in amazement at what we saw.
The room was eight-sided, with eight stone pillars holding up the wooden beams of the roof. And between those pillars, all around, were wide windows open to the sky. Through those windows the whole world could be seen. Going over to the window ledge, we looked down. Though the window ledge was of solid stone, and wide enough to safely sit upon, the sudden spaciousness, the distance to the lands below, made me dizzy. I could see all the way to the sea. Clearly, I saw the land my people had lost, with the silvery river down the very center of it, and the tiny bright oblong that was the garden where the house had been. I saw the green and yellow squares that were the Navoran farms, the land of my Navoran grandmother. Beyond the farms were low green hills and trees, among them a gleam of white walls and towers, the wink of sun on something polished. I realized it must be the place where my father had learned his ways of healing. Past the hills, hazy with smoke and too far to see clearly, was the stone city of Navora.
As I leaned on the window ledge I looked at my hands, and it seemed that I saw my father’s hands, for he, too, had stood in this place, and leaned on these stones, and looked down upon the country he loved. His presence was in the air here, in the wind that blew in from the sea. A long time I stood there, touching the stones he had touched, feeling him only a heartbeat away, a finished breath beyond.
Lost in the thought of him, I moved around the windows, and saw an old well-worn road going to the coast. Then sorrow swept over me, for my mother had told me of that road, and of how she had stood long summers past and watched my father walk away along that shining dust, and known she would not, in this life, see his face again. Overcome with grief, I bent my head in my hands. Too many feelings rushed over me, too many images, pictures built of stories my mother had told, fleeting awakenings in my knowing, quick visions of times past and people gone. For a moment I heard shouts in the courtyard behind us, and the clash of steel as soldiers exercised. The sounds echoed around the old walls, then were gone. Somewhere below birds cried; it was the sound of a child screaming. And in this room sighs and whisperings, and vanishing joys too sweet to bear. In this room I had been made.
“I am ready to go now, Ishtok,” I said, wiping my face on my hands.
We went back down to the courtyard. The sun had already slipped behind the towering western wall, and the courtyard was mainly in shadow, and cold. Shivering, we got the horse and left the fort. Outside the gates we scanned the land and coastal road, looking for soldiers, but saw none. We were totally alone, the fields and roads bare, the only dust raised up by skittish winds.
We drank at the river and filled our waterskins, and Ishtok got a package from his saddlebag. “I almost forgot. Your first meal on your own land,” he said, smiling as he passed me a hunk of bread and cold meat that he had brought. “If you feel like eating now.”
“I do,” I said. “The fort was not the end of my people’s history, and the best part of the story is yet to come. I’d like to eat on our land, and have the first of many feasts.”
We sat on the edge of the grasslands and I gave thanks to the All-father, and we ate and drank. The silence there, the radiance of the land, was breathtaking. One last time I walked on it, out just a little way, and knelt and said a prayer. I lifted up some of the dust, and looked at it in my palm, wishing I could take it with me. And then Ishtok came with a little leather bag no larger than my palm, and crouched by me and held the bag while I trickled in the dust. “I knew you would want to take some,” he said. And his smile, the tenderness and understanding in his eyes, healed my heart.
“You make up for all the wrongs your people have ever done to me and mine,” I said. “Thank you, with sharleema.”
“It was my joy to give you this day,” he said.
He closed the bag with a fine leather thong and placed it about my neck. For many heartbeats his hands stayed there, on my neck, his fingers lightly caressing my skin. Then, smiling a little, he turned away and whistled to his horse, and we mounted for the journey back to his people’s camp.
I looked back one last time upon the Shinali land. The sun was low, its brightness blinding. It seemed that the Navoran places were already on fire. I blew a kiss toward the farms where my Navoran grandmother lived, then turned and slipped my arms about Ishtok’s waist, and we left.
Slowly we went at first, so we would raise no dust to betray our presence. But halfway down the gorge Ishtok kicked the horse into a trot, and I held on to him more tightly, my hands clenched in front of his waist. He placed one hand across both
of mine, and held it there all through that journey.
Cold it was, on this far side of the mountains, and we traveled in purple shadow that stretched out on the flat lands before us, the far edges torn into the shapes of the jagged peaks. Beyond the shadow the world was gold.
It was near the middle of the night when we arrived back, and the whole camp was awake. There were cries of relief, and Ramakoda came to greet us both, shaking his head and half smiling, and I was sure he knew where we had been; but Mudiwar roared at us to go to his tent and wait for him there.
That night Ishtok and I were in a mighty lot of trouble. Mudiwar had thought that Ishtok had taken me home to my people and was furious with him. “You never, never go away for a day like that again!” he shouted, in front of all the people gathered about. “Where did you go?”
“Just out on the plain,” said Ishtok. “Just riding.”
“Ramakoda went out looking, and did not see you.”
“We were in the shadow of the mountains.”
“Near the mountains? Name of Shimit, were you trying to get yourself killed? There’s Taroth Fort there, on the other side, and Navoran territory! Did you not think of soldiers? You’re a fool, a fool! You could have been captured—or you could have led the soldiers back here, to us! You have placed all of us in danger. You should be horsewhipped, you and Avala. What have you to say in your defense?”
“Avala has done a great many good things for this tribe,” replied Ishtok, quiet and calm, unmoved by his father’s wrath. “All we have given her is slavery and pain. I gave her a day of freedom, that is all.”
“A day of freedom?” raged Mudiwar. “She’s a slave, not a trained falcon you can release when you feel like it!” Then old Mudiwar’s eyes narrowed, and he said, almost spitting out the words, “Did you take her to the Shinali bit of dirt? Because if you did, I’ll kill you, and after that I’ll take away your horse.”
Ishtok said nothing.
Ramakoda came forward through the people crowded into the tent and said, “They are home safely, my father. Ishtok is right; we have done a great wrong to Avala, and perhaps this day a part of it has been put right. Let it be.”