"She can't talk to Kashi that way. Take her to the grove, Pavek!" he demanded—the same demand he'd made when Pavek had arrived here, and for roughly the same reason. "Let the guardian judge her, and
her Father and her vengeance."
"No," he replied simply.
"No? It's the way of Quraite, Pavek. You don't have a choice: the guardian judges strangers."
"No," he repeated. "No—for the same reason we'll bury the templars and return their belongings. The Lion will know what we do to his messengers, and he knows how to find us. And, more than that, this isn't about Quraite or the guardian of Quraite. This is about Urik and Kakzim. I saw Kakzim making Laq, but I didn't go back to find him because I thought when he couldn't make Laq anymore, he couldn't harm anyone either. I was wrong; he's become a murderer with his own hands. Hamanu's right, it's time for me to go back. We'll leave as soon as the kanks and Mahtra are rested—"
"Now," Mahtra interrupted. "I need no rest."
And maybe she didn't. There was nothing weary in her strange eyes or weak in the hand she wrapped around Pavek's forearm.
"The bugs need rest," he said, and met her stare. "The day after tomorrow or the day after that."
She released her grip.
"I'm going with you," Zvain said, which wasn't a surprise.
"Me, too," Ruari added, which was.
Akashia looked at each of them in turn, her expression unreadable, until she said: "You can't. You can't leave Quraite. I need you here," which was a larger surprise than he could have imagined.
"Come with us," he said quickly, hopefully. "Put an end to the past."
"Quraite needs me. Quraite needs you. Quraite needs you, Pavek."
If Akashia had said that she needed him, possibly he would have reconsidered, but probably not, not with Hamanu's threat hanging over them. That, and the knowledge that Kakzim was wreaking havoc once again. He started for the door, then paused and asked a question that had been bothering him since Mahtra spoke her first words.
She blinked and seemed flustered. "I'm new, not old. The cabras have ripened seven times since I came to Urik."
"And before Urik, how many times had they ripened?"
"There is no before Urik."
As Pavek had hoped, Akashia's eyes widened and the rest of her face softened. "Seven years? Escrissar—"
He cut her off. "Escrissar's dead. Kakzim. Kakzim's the reason to go back."
Pavek left the hut. Mahtra followed him, a child who didn't look like a child and didn't particularly act like one, either. She slipped her arm through his and stroked his inner forearm with a long fingernail. He wrested free.
"Not with me, eleganta. I'm not your type."
"Where do I go, if not with you?"
It was a very good question, for which Pavek hadn't an answer until he spotted a farmer couple peering out their cracked-open door. Their hut was good-sized, their children were grown and gone. He took Mahtra to stay with them until morning, and wouldn't hear no for an answer. Still this was one night Pavek wasn't going back to Telhami's grove. He stretched out in a corner of the bachelor hut.
Tomorrow was certain to be worse than tonight. He'd get some sleep while he could.
Chapter Six
How old are you?
A voice, a question, and the face of an ugly man haunted the bleak landscape of Mahtra's dreams.
Seven ripe cabras. A whirling spiral with herself at the center and seven expanding revolutions stretching away from her. The spiraling line was punctuated with juicy, sweet fruit and the other events of the life she remembered. Seven years—more days than she could count—and all but the last several of them spent inside the yellow walls of Urik. She hadn't known the city's true shape until she looked back as the huge, painted bug carried her away to this far-off place.
Mahtra hadn't remembered a horizon other than rooftops, cobbled streets, and guarded walls. She had known the world was larger than Urik; the distant horizon itself wasn't a surprise, but she'd forgotten what empty and open looked like.
What else had she forgotten?
There is no before Urik.
Another voice. Her own voice, the voice she wished she had, echoed through her dreams. Did it tell the truth? Had she forgotten what came before Urik, as she had forgotten what stretched beyond it?
Turn around. Step beyond the spiral. Find the path. What before Urik? Remember, Mahtra. Remember....
The spiral of Mahtra's life blurred in her dream-vision. Her limbs became stiff and heavy. She was tempted to lie down where she was, at the center of her life, and ignore the beautiful voice. What would happen if she fell asleep while she was dreaming? Would she wake up in her life or in the dream, or somewhere that was neither living nor dreaming?
Somewhere that was neither living nor dreaming...
Mahtra knew of such a nowhere place. She had forgotten it, the way she'd forgotten the colors and shapes on the other side of Urik's walled horizon. It was the outside place, beyond the memories of the cabra-marked spiral.
A place before Urik.
A place of drifting, neither dark nor bright, hot nor cool. A place without bottom or top, or any direction at all, until there was a voice and a name:
Mahtra.
Her name.
Walking, running, swimming, crawling, and flying—all those ways she'd used to move toward her name. At the very end, she fought, because the place before Urik had not wanted her to leave. It grew thick and dark and clung to her arms, her ankles. But once Mahtra had heard her name, she knew she could no longer drift; she must break free.
Mahtra put a word to the substance of her earliest memories: the place before Urik was water and the hands were the hands of the makers, lifting her out of a deep well, holding her while she took her first unsteady steps. Her memory still would not show her the makers' faces, but it did show Mahtra her arms, her legs, her naked, white-white flesh.
Made, not born. Called out of the water fully-grown, exactly the person she was in her dream, in her life:
Mahtra.
The hands wrapped her in soft cloth. They covered her nakedness. They covered her face.
Who did this? The first words that were not her name touched her ears. What went wrong? Who is responsible? Who's to blame for this—for this error, this oversight, this mistake? Whose fault?
Not mine. Not mine. Not mine!
Accusing questions and vehement denials pierced the cloth that blinded her. The steadying hands withdrew. The safe, drifting place was already sinking into memory. This was the true nature of the world. This was the enduring, unchanging nature of Mahtra's life: she was alone, unsupported in darkness, in emptiness; she was an error, an oversight, a mistake.
That face! How will she talk? How will she eat? How will she survive? Not here—she can't stay here. Send her away. There are places where she can survive.
The makers had sent her away, but not immediately. They dealt honorably with their errors. Honorably—a dream-word from Urik, not her memory. They taught her what she absolutely needed to know and gave her a place while she learned: a dark place with hard, cool surfaces. A cave, a safe and comforting place... or a cell where mistakes were hidden away. Cave and cell were words from Urik. In her memory there was only the place itself.
Mahtra wasn't helpless. She could learn. She could talk— if she had to—she could eat, and she could protect herself. The makers showed her little red beads that no one else would eat. The beads were cinnabar, the essences of quicksilver and brimstone bound together. They were the reason she'd been made, and, though she herself was a mistake, cinnabar would still protect her through ways and means her memory had not retained.