Kerian shivered.
Once Iydahar had said to her, “You will hear it said the Kagonesti are savages. You will hear it said that Qualinesti did not steal us away. You will hear it said that others stole us, humans, minotaurs, ogres, or goblins looking for profit. Sometimes you will hear it said the Qualinesti rescued us from those creatures, but we know better. We will always hear the wailing of our kin. We will always remember the faces of those who stole us from our home. Stay in your city, Keri, but you stay at a cost There will come a time, Turtle, when you find you can’t remember how to be who you are.”
Turtle. The old pet name didn’t sting. It recalled her heart to another time, another place, and the brother who loved her no matter what befell. How would Iydahar feel about her if he knew her lover was a Qualinesti, and not only that, the king of the Qualinesti?
In the sky, crows shouted, raucous and sailing toward the bridge. The scent of smoke vanished, then returned. Kerian ran swiftly, in and out the rows of peach trees, through the orchard, heading for the forest road and the way to Sliathnost.
At the edge of the orchard, where the ground sloped down into forest, Kerian halted and looked back. Over the gnarled branches of peach trees, four towers stood high. Silver spans of bridges gleamed. Kerian bade silent farewell to the bridges, the towers and the shining city. She ran down the hill and into the forest, that green and glossy realm which so much reminded her of the Ergothian wilds of her childhood. For a time, running, she was again the child, the girl who lived in a land of forest and seaside sky.
“Can’t catch me, Keri! Keri can’t catch me!”
Iydahar flung the old taunt, laughing. Kerianseray had known that scorn all her young life, and she had known its tempering love. What ran between them, brother and sister, was always a weaving of this, the scorn of the elder, the son whose place in the universe of his parents had been encroached upon by this unexpected girl, and the abiding affection he would never deny. She was, after all, and no matter how supremely annoying her very existence, his little sister.
“Turtle!”
In the sky, gray gulls echoed Iydahar as he ran ahead of her, long limbs shining in the sun, brown and powerful. Kerian struggled to keep up, sand like glue beneath her feet, her little legs pumping hard and seeming to take her nowhere. Iydahar sailed over reaching driftwood, and all the while his bright hair streamed out behind, the color of moonlight. His tattoos seemed like shadows on him, shadows on his back, his arms, his legs. Inordinately proud of those markings was Iydahar, her brother. They were now a year old, the pain of them long ago healed, and they denoted his lineage, his tribal heritage, the hopes his people had for him. Iydahar Runner, said the markings on his legs.
Kerian had not a mark on her except the bruises and scratches from her run through the forest and down to the beaches, from her stubborn insistence on keeping up with her fleet brother. She was still too young for marking, too young to bear the history of her people. This she resented deeply, believing herself to be every bit as worthy as her brother. Perhaps more so, for she was the unexpected girl, the child of parents who had no reason to look for a second, having been granted the gift of the first.
“Come on, turtle-girl!”
The child whose name meant Wing-Swift redoubled her efforts, and tripped over rock and fell flat on her face. The surf pounded the shore, the gulls shrieked, and Kerian lay stunned, the breath blasted from her lungs and little sparks of silver light jumping in her vision.
Iydahar’s laughter skirled up to the sky-and fell suddenly silent. The sound of the gulls became strident, the drumming of the sea against the shore like thunder. Somewhere, far behind in the forest, a stag trumpeted, or seemed to. Kerian’s heart hammered. No stag made that sound, not truly. It was a warning cry voiced by a Wilder Elf.
Spitting sand, Kerian tried to push herself up. Her head reeled, a line of blood trickled down her cheek. Feeling that, she felt sudden sharp pain where she’d torn her cheek. A shadow fell over her darkly. Two hands reached down-Iydahar’s-and jerked her hard to her feet. The sight of his face, his expression tight with fear, stilled her angry protest. Past him, upon the sparkling blue water of the bay, she saw a tall ship, its sails black against the sky.
Iydahar, so much taller than she, bent down suddenly, like swooping. “Run!” he shouted, pushing her hard toward the forest.
Run! For those were slavers. Neither recognized the sails nor any flag, but they need not have. Someone in the forest had got word from someone else, around the curve of the bay, upland at some secret Kagonesti watch-post… someone had seen the sails and known the ship. Word had passed, by runner, by drum, by cries such as that mimicking a stag’s threat. Word had been passed all the way to here, this beach where the two children of Dal-latar and Willowfawn ran, playing where they should not have been.
With all her heart and sore lungs, Kerian ran. She fell and scrambled up again. She ran, and she heard her sobbing breaths loud in her own ears. Iydahar didn’t run ahead of her now, he ran behind, shouting: “Run, Keri! Run, or they’ll catch us!”
She fell again, her brother grabbed her up, and this time he didn’t let her go. Grasping her by the wrist, he ran, dragging her along with him, and in the sky the gulls shrieked. They gained the forest as the ship pulled into the bay. They scrambled into the shadows and kept running until they’d climbed up into the thickest part of the forest. Not until their lungs tasted the tang of pine did they stop.
Gasping, shuddering with exertion and fear, Kerian fell to the ground. Iydahar knelt beside her, waiting for her to catch her breath. Gasping, she could not slow her breathing. She thought her heart would race right out of her chest.
“Easy,” he said, softly. He sounded like her father then, his tone gentle and a little amused. “Easy, Keri. You’re all right.” He gathered her into his arms. “We’re all right. Easy, easy.”
Over and again he said that, and she matched her breathing to the sound of his heart, the two slowing together. Iydahar let her go and stood looking around, trying to see down to the ocean. Only a glitter showed between the trees. Looking higher, he saw that these trees offered no hold for climbing, or none that he could reach.
“Keri.” He jerked his head at the tree and made a stirrup of his joined hands.
She understood at once. Hands on his shoulders, she climbed into his hands.
“Up!” her brother cried, and up she went, tossed high and reaching for the branch. She caught it, clung, and pulled herself up to straddle it. Scrambling, she climbed into the pine-scented heights, the long needles of the tree brushing her cheek, the sap clinging to hands and naked feet. The blood had dried on her cut cheek, but the brush of needles against the torn flesh stung. She kept climbing until she had the sky and a clear view of the bay.
“What do you see?” her brother called.
“Water-ship-people-” She stopped, her heart leaping suddenly into her throat. “People coming out of the forest-”
In a long line they came, men and women with children by the hand or on their hips. Kerian counted twenty. They were bound one to the other, and they went attended by weaponed guards. Sunlight ran along the edges of naked blades and pricked on the tips of steel-headed arrows.