"There are too many in your father's tent for you to be undisturbed, and only me in mine—so I carried you off here, where you might heal in peace. So, young warrior, have you seen enough of battle to suffice you?" Jegrai said teasingly as he stretched limbs that must have been cramped, from the way he winced.
"I have seen nothing of battle, Khene," Yuchai whispered. "All I saw was a storm—"
"Wind Lords willing, that is all you will ever see, cousin," Jegrai replied, his face darkening. "Yuchai, little cousin, will you now content yourself with your father's path? I know you have it in you to be a Singer, and a great one."
"How can I think of the path of the Singer when half of the warriors who once followed our banner are dead, Khene?" Yuchai croaked. "Vredai needs fighters, not tellers of tales and keepers of lore!"
Jegrai shook his head. "We have said this before, you and I. I know all your arguments, as you know mine. Wind Lords willing, there will be no more of fighting for some time. But—all that is new in your case is that at the moment you can neither sing nor fight—though the chagun healer says that you will heal well enough to fight again, and Shenshu agrees with him." Jegrai picked up a bowl from the little flat table beside the fire-pot in the center of the tent, and stared moodily at its contents. "I could almost wish you crippled, little cousin. You have too fine a mind to waste . . . ah, enough. Drink this. This time it will not put you to sleep."
"This time?" Yuchai said, wonderingly. "Chagun healer?"
He remembered something more of that last dream. The man with his thin, pale face and gentle hands who brought both agony and soothing. The brown giant who filled the tent, nearly. He thought them visions.
"Whenever you woke I have been giving you of this to make you sleep again," Jegrai said. "It is from the healer-with-the-knife. But he said to leave off part of it, else it would make you crave for it."
"Cousin," Yuchai said wonderingly, "Where—hai-kala, in the name of the Wind Lords, where are we gotten to? This is not our last camp—I hear water—and the strangers you spoke of—"
"We have," Jegrai told him with a smothered twinkle in his eyes, "come to an unusual place, by the grace of the Wind Lords. Almost it could be the lands of blessed spirits. We have been granted water-pledge by wizards who hold lightning in their hands. One of them came himself from their home in the clouds to heal you with his own hands."
"That sounds like a tale to me, cousin," Yuchai said skeptically, sipping at the bitter brew of herbs Jegrai had handed him. As son of the Clan Singer he had a sure instinct for bald truth, the gilding of truth, and the warping of it.
Jegrai chuckled. "It is a tale. A tale a good many of the Vredai believe, but still only a tale. The 'wizards' are only men and women, I think; and though they have much wisdom, still, they can learn much of us. And if they are to be believed, this is their wish, to learn. The lightning I have seen, with my own eyes. Aya, it is powerful and fearful, but if men made it, other men can learn the use of it. The place in the clouds is a tall stone building up on the mountain pass on the western side of the valley."
Yuchai managed a feeble grin. "That sounds like less of a tale, though it is wonder enough."
"There is more wonder. One of the wizards did come to heal you, for no other reason than that another asked it of him, and both are good men. He gave us these herbs that kept you in a healing sleep and took your pain, and as I said, he also told us that after three days you would begin to crave them and that we should use them more sparingly. The Shaman thinks you are brave enough to do without except when you must sleep of nights, and I agree."
If Jegrai thought him brave enough to bear pain, then he would bear it until it tore him to ribbons before he complained. "I can bear it, cousin."
"I—I think I would like to ask another thing of you," Jegrai said after a moment of heavy silence, all the laughter gone from his face. "No—do not agree without thinking, and hear me out. We are under a three-day truce with the wizards. I go to speak with them before long, this very day, in the matter of—perhaps—an alliance. I think that there will be an exchange of hostages. Shenshu would go; she is wild to learn of this healing-with-knives. With her, Losha, equally wild to see new herbs and their uses, and to see the craftwork of these wizards. Shaman Demonsbane is to be the third. Shaman Northwind will be sometimes here, sometimes there if they permit; I think perhaps he and the woman-Khene of the wizards are two of the same mind. But I think that there should be a fourth to go." He paused. "Someone whose life they well know I value."
Yuchai blinked, and licked his lips. "M-me?"
"How better to hold my loyalty than to hold one who cannot escape them should I determine to betray them? And how better to prove my intentions than to offer that same person?"
Yuchai shivered. To be left alone, among wizards, trapped by a wounded body in a great hulking stone prison . . .
How better to serve his adored cousin, his Khene?
"Hear me, Yuchai—there may be something more here than being a hostage. The others speak of going to learn, so why not you also? You say you would be a warrior for the Vredai—would you wield your mind for me instead of a sword? Would you learn to cast lightning instead of shooting a bow?"
That possibility had not occurred to him.
"But I will not force you," Jegrai continued. "Though you would serve me and Vredai there as no one else could. You—little cousin, you are the only one of Vredai other than the healers and the -Shamans—and your father, whom I do not trust, as you know—with the quickness of mind to learn these things for me. You know Trade-tongue. You are the only one at all who would do this out of love for me and for the learning. You are the only one except perhaps Shenshu and Northwind who would see things clearly, and with no baggage of omens and portents attached."
"I would?" Yuchai said, bewildered. "Why do you say these things?"
"Because, little cousin, you ask too many uncomfortable questions," Jegrai replied, grinning. "You accept too many inconvenient answers, provided they be truthful. You are, in short, too much like me. I have another reason for wanting you in the hands of the wizards, and it is an entirely selfish one. I want you entirely whole again, little cousin, as strong and limber as before, and with both Shenshu and the healer-with-knives within the fortress walls, if such a thing can be, it will be."
Yuchai did not really need to think upon the matter long. Jegrai wanted this: well, Jegrai would have it.
Although—when he thought a moment longer, the notion of all the new things to see, to learn—that alone would likely have been as much a temptation as Jegrai's need.
"I will go gladly, cousin," he said softly.
The Khene sighed. "You may come to regret your decision before the day is over," he replied, "and your father will want my head upon a stake before his tent. But I thank you, Yuchai. You buy me more than you know."
It had been Felaras's decision to make the nomads come to her choice of ground, so they met in a pavilion set up by the side of the road within sight of the Fortress. The Order had used this pavilion at harvest festivals in the Vale; it held fifty people and tables for all of them, and was more than large enough for the two delegations and the single bargaining table.
They lined up on either side of it, her group, then the nomads. She'd wondered about chairs, the table, but the nomads seemed reasonably acquainted with such furnishings. The nomad chief Jegrai—even handsomer now that he was clean and rested—had brought with him only seven other folk (and Eriel had babbled about auspicious numbers), so she had ordered the same. The four of the delegation, and Zorsha, Kasha, and Boitan.