Twenty-one
“Don’t do this!” Tara caught Ki’san’s arm as he strode toward the enclosure gates with no protection or supplies beyond his clothes, boots and a fur cloak. “This is crazy!”
“This is the only way.” He didn’t even slow his steps. “And my father has not secured me much time. The council reconvenes in two days to make a final decision.”
“You can’t head off alone up the mountains to spend the night in a fucking cave!”
“It is not a cave. It is the mouth of the All Mother. It is the only place I can hear Her voice clearly. This is the only way She can proclaim my path.”
“She already did! You’re a doctor. That’s what you want to be.”
That stopped him.
“What I want to be—what I must be—is with you, my mate. My clanbrothers have thrown their support behind us to make you clanmother. The council is reluctant to interfere, to take you from the A’rahan because it may end with an uprising. I would not have civil war on my head if I can prevent it.” He took her hands in his. “And what I will do, I do with a glad heart because it honors you.”
“Couldn’t you just say you’re a warrior?”
“I would not deserve you if I could.”
Her jaw hardened. “You’re not going!”
“I must.”
“You could die out there!”
“If the All Mother wills it.” He cupped her cheeks in his warm hands and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “And better that than live without you, my sweet Tara.” He smiled. “I am not afraid.”
Her eyes stung. “I am.”
“Do you believe I love you?” His shimmering gaze searched hers. “Do you know it so?”
“Yes! But—”
“And do you love me?”
“Of course I do.” Her vision blurred. “You know I do.”
“Then trust in me. Believe in me. Know that, for you, I can—I will—face anything.” He brushed his mouth to hers again. “The younger Brother readies for his rest. To reach the cave before nightfall, I must go now.”
His fingers slipped from hers as he turned once again to the gate.
Two of his clanbrothers held the gates open for him. He stepped through, and Tara darted forward to watch him until the last moment before the doors shut for the night. Only when the heavy bar fell across the gates did she allow her tears to overflow.
Snowflakes floated down, catching in her eyelashes, swirling around her. Wiping at her face, she dragged herself back up the snowy path to the clanhall.
E’lar waited at the clanhall door. “He is gone, then?”
She threw a disgusted look at the clanfather. He could have stopped Ki’san, stopped him from venturing out into the wildness without so much as pack of matches, forbidden even a fire tonight. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“It is the only way to meet the council’s demands.”
Tara pushed past him into the relative warmth of the clanhall. “Yeah, you really rallied to his defense.”
“Do you think I want my own son to die?”
“You didn’t exactly fight for him!” She rounded on the clanfather. “I think you’d rather have him a dead warrior than accept him as a healer.”
E’lar froze. “Is that what he told you?”
“Actually Ki’san didn’t say anything about you—other than you destroyed everything that could have let him know his mother.”
“So that he could have hurt as I do?” E’lar demanded. “So that he would keen endlessly for what was taken from him?”
“You didn’t do it protect him; you did it to protect yourself!” She couldn’t hold back; her shout echoed against the cold stone. Hot rage at the one person who could have prevented Ki’san from running headlong into icy danger made her blood burn. She indicated the clanhall doors, the gathering darkness beyond. “Just like you let him go walk out into a frozen wilderness with nothing but the clothes on his back because that’s what’s best for you.”
“You are wrong!”
“Oh really?” Her eyes narrowed. “Because if you were thinking that no matter what happens to Ki’san out there your enclosure got themselves a clanmother, you are out of your fucking mind!”
“I did not send my only son—her son—out into the winter’s night for myself,” He took a step closer. “I did this—I am willing to endure this—for his sake. I do not know much of humans. I never thought to encounter one, but I think you know even less of g’hir. If the council takes you, if we cannot prevent it—” E’lar shook his head. “He will not survive the loss of his lifemate.”
She stared, remembering how Ki’san had once told her that many g’hir had chosen not to survive when the Scourge ravaged this planet. But Ki’san was on his own world, his family was here to support him. E’lar had shown some support already, maybe not enough, but this lifemating thing wouldn’t actually kill— “You seem to have done just fine.”
The clanfather paled. “You cannot know what it took to keep me from following her to the All Mother’s hall. You cannot know what it costs me now. I have endured for the sake of our son.”
“If that’s so, then why the bad blood? Why not accept his choice to be a healer?”
“Because . . . I did not see the All Mother’s wisdom. I thought She had doomed him to a solitary life. I thought, when there are so few females that even the heir of an enclosure cannot be assured to have a lifemate, he would know nothing but sorrow.” His shoulders fell. “But She had set him on right path all along. For to be a healer was how She carried him to you.”
Something might have brought them together, but the idea of an alien goddess guiding their fate—
“I thought—” Tara shifted her weight. “I thought you hated me.”
“Hate you?” His face was grieved. “How could I? I see in my son’s eyes the love that shines for you. Yet our enclosure is such a poor offering, when others can offer you riches.”
“Riches.” She gave a short laugh. “Oh you are talking to the wrong girl if you think I’d ever run off on Ki’san for a pile of cash.”
“We can scarce offer you the comforts you deserve.” He indicated the clanhall. “There are enclosures who will fight to offer you luxury beyond imagining.”
“People think that having money means you have no problems—and I’ll be the first to admit it does prevent a whole lot of misery. I wouldn’t be alive now, wouldn’t have had the quality of life I had, if not for my family’s riches. But it isolates you too. When people looked at me, all they saw was the Douglas heiress. People liked me for my money, they pretended to like me for my money, some people hated me for my money.” Tara smiled a little. “I actually kind of liked thinking you hated my guts for being human or my big mouth. Anything but my stock portfolio.” Her smile faded. “Ki’san is the first real friend I’ve ever had. The only one who’s loved me for me.”
“Even as a boy he had the kindest, most loving heart.”
Softness, sorrow, crossed E’lar’s face.
“Like his mother?” she asked gently.
“Yes.” His eyes were luminous with remembered love. “Just like his mother.” Seeing Tara had caught him, E’lar straightened, the familiar flinty mask back in place—almost. “We should go in. The others await us in the hall.”
“Oh, I am not hungry.” Tara passed her hand over her face. “And I really can’t sit up there and pretend to be okay right now.”
“No one expects it of you.” He took her arm. “And we too are his family.”
“What are his chances? Really?”
“Ki’san is of these mountains. He is young and strong. He lived and trained here to be a warrior until he was seventeen summers. And he is far from the first to seek the All Mother’s voice in that place.”
Alone and without supplies, not permitted even a fire, every warrior of this enclosure had once gone sit within that sacred cavern, waiting for the goddess to speak into his heart, even if it took days—
“In summer though.” Her throat was tight. “No one goes up there, to that cave, in winter, do they?”
“No.” E’lar’s voice was heavy. “They do not.”
When all the Sisters had fully risen, flooding the room with cool light, Tara finally gave up any pretense of sleep. She didn’t bother with slippers—hot water was piped in below the wood floor here, warming the room as it did throughout the clanhall—but she pulled her fur-lined cloak around her shoulders.
The snow-covered valley glistened in the moonlight. The river winding around the snowy shore was dark blue, the clanhall silent as the night. Tara sat on the bench, her elbow on the sill, resting her face in her hand, the pads of her fingers against the cold glass.
“Just come back, Ki’san,” she whispered. “All that matters is that you come back.”
She sat there, alone, as the moons moved slowly across the sky. Her eyes grew heavy as the last of them, the Little Sister, was left still chasing after her elder siblings. The breeze stirred her hair, tickling her nose. She brought her head up, blinking in sleepy confusion.
Her eyes widened.
The woman was tall, but just as she appeared in the crystal’s image, her blonde hair long and unbound, her dress blue as a summer sky, young and beautiful as ever. The spirit’s face was turned to the window, as if she too had spent the night here in silent vigil.
Tara blinked rapidly, too bewildered to move, too astonished to cry out.
The spirit looked right at her then, her gaze urgent, with eyes the same brilliant shade as Ki’san’s—
Suddenly the moonlight was gone, plunging the room into darkness. In the next moment, the first of the Brothers’ light turned the sky pink, and Tara was alone.
Shaking, stiff from sitting by the window, she had to grip the stone sill to get to her feet. She passed her hand over her face, then looked back at the valley, at the path into the mountains.
“Ki’san . . .”
Rose had only come to her in the moments before her own death. The tingle of that same spirit energy raised the hair on the back of Tara’s neck now. This spirit too, had come to communicate Ki’san’s impending fate, that within the bond between Tara and her son lay the only way to save him—
Tara threw off the cloak and the nightgown. She dressed quickly, yanking her boots on, pulling the cloak back over her shoulders in moments. She pulled open the door to their apartments, her hand skimming the stone wall as she raced down the stairs.
“Mata,” E’lar met her at the foot of the stairs, his face grave. “It is not time yet for Ki’san to have returned.”
“I know.” She hurried past and, seeing her intention, one of the clanbrothers jumped forward to open the clanhall’s heavy door for her.
Snow crunched under her boots as she strode through the courtyard. The flurries had stopped, but the sky showed promise of more on the way.
“Tara!” the clanfather was fast on her heels. “Where are you going?”
“To find Ki’san.” The words sounded crazy. She’d barely seen this planet. She had neither supplies nor survival skills, but she could feel a pull in her chest, drawing her along this path toward the mountains. She knew in her bones she could find him, she could find him in the midst of a blinding blizzard—
She gasped as E’lar was suddenly in front of her, blocking her way to the open gate.
“I fucking hate when you people do that!” Tara’s hands clenched into fists. “And you need to get out of my way right now!”
“Mate of my son,” E’lar held his palms up. “Even now he awaits the Goddess’s voice. This is a sacred time for a warrior. He must not be disturbed.”
“There’s something wrong.” Tara tried to darted around him. “He’s in trouble.”
“Ki’san spent many years being trained to be a warrior,” E’lar caught her arm. “He will return when She has spoken to him.”
“I saw her.” Tara pulled against the clanfather’s hold. “I saw his mother. She was in my room, looking out the window, toward the mountain, she looked at me—”
“His—?” E’lar’s face was the same shade as the snow. “She is dead. Killed by the Scourge.”
“I saw her ghost. Her spirit.”
“You lie!” He bared his fangs. “You know nothing of her!”
“Ki’san has a crystal, an image of her. He carries it with him. He showed it to me.”
“There are no images of my So’yana.” His lips trembled. “In the madness of grief I destroyed them all.”
“Ki’san found one you missed—Goddamn it! Let go of me!”
“What did you see?” he demanded, shaking her a little. “Tell me what you saw!”
“Ki’san’s mother, up in the room. She was young, like she is in the crystal. She looked at me, then back out at the mountain.” Tara twisted her arm, just like her self-defense teacher taught her, breaking E’lar hold. “I’m telling you, he needs me! I have to go after him!”
“If you have had a sending, if you saw her—” He straightened. “You do not know these mountains. I will organize a search party. We will bring him back.”
E’lar was an older g’hir, which meant that he was still about ten times stronger than she was, and Ki’san had made his father swear to their All Mother that he would protect Tara in his absence. He would never let her past the walls; never take her along for the search.
That pull toward the mountains was getting stronger with every heartbeat . . .
And in a flash, she saw what to do.
Tara’s glance rose to the clanhall’s second floor gallery.
“Do you—” The clanfather’s gaze frantically darted from window to window as if he might see his lost lifemate there. “Do you see her now? My So’yana?”
“No. I don’t. Sorry, I’m freezing. It’s spring back home.” She pulled her cloak tighter and started back to the clanhall. “I shouldn’t have left the crystal up there in our room like that. It’s so precious to Ki’san. I should have brought it down, kept it with me.”
“Wait for me the dining room, there are many others there already. You will find a fire burning and food too. I must choose clanbrothers to go with me to search,” he said as they reached the clanhall door. “But first I will go upstairs for the crystal.”
There was such longing in his voice that Tara swallowed hard. She shook the snow from her cloak. “Okay. Just make sure you don’t leave until you give the crystal to me. It means so much to Ki’san.”
“I will. I promise.”
E’lar’s footfalls were quick on the stairs, but not as quick as Tara’s when she turned, heading right back out into the snowy courtyard.
“The clanfather wants both of you in the hall immediately,” she said to the guards at the wall. “He’s organizing a search party to go after Ki’san. Hurry!”
The warriors offered shallow bows to their new human clanmother, racing up the hill at her word, even as she slipped through the gate—