Yadovír smiled, and there was a kind of madness in his eyes. “Oh, Otar Kalún, I think we have gone too far to think about safety.”
Gamayun, the Dayseer, sits in an ivory tower in the sea of times. Does she sing the future into being, or does she only speak of what she sees? No one knows.
From “The Tale of the Black Sirin”
(Old Tales, Book VII)
Chapter 20
A Narrow Escape
Tall warriors, robed in grey, faces confined behind black iron helms with no eye-slits, held screaming children over vast fire-pits. The mothers, shrieking in despair, all turned to Voran, asking him that most horrible of questions: “Why?” Tortured forms that once were men—now misshapen freaks with empty eye sockets and bald, bloodied pates where their hair was torn off—huddled around him, reaching for him with blackened nails. The ones without eyes saw him the best.
Tarin laughed, and Voran awoke. Voran’s upper lip twitched. He snarled and barked at Tarin. His hands groped for a rock with which to beat the old man to the ground. With a start, Voran awoke again.
They were still in the hag’s village, though some distance from the carcass of the dead serpent-hag. Voran’s wounds throbbed. The skin around them was yellow and gummy. He tried not to look, afraid he would be sick or faint. Tarin sat by the river, arms hugging his knees, looking at nothing. His lips moved noiselessly, repeating something. He turned at Voran and made a face.
“You should wash,” he said. “You’re quite filthy, you know. A bath of fire would really be best.”
“A bath of…what?”
Tarin turned away and began to mumble to himself again.
“Why?” asked Voran. Tarin’s expression was unreadable. “Why did you come to save me from her? What am I to you?”
Tarin huffed. “I knew your father well.”
Voran fell silent. It was not what he expected, and he was not sure how he felt about it. For so long he had grown used to avoiding thoughts about Otchigen, or when that failed, to hate him until his heart grew numb like an overused muscle. Now, to think of his father in any positive light was uncomfortable.
“It’s a strange thing about words, Raven Son,” said Tarin. “We talk and talk and talk and never seem to get anywhere. While if you really meant the word, you could make a tree flower.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Tarin chuckled and continued mumbling to himself happily, patting his head with his hand. His kestrel flew down from a branch above. Tarin made a show of falling to the ground in fear as the kestrel landed on his head, as though it were a dragon with talons bared. Then he turned over and laughed at himself.
What a strange man, thought Voran.
“That dream you just had,” said Tarin, “the warriors holding babies over bonfires. It was not a dream, you know.”
Voran’s heart tripped and started again.
“Vasyllia has fallen?”
“Not quite. I didn’t say it was the present time that you saw. Just one of possible futures. It seems Gamayun whispered to you in your sleep. She really can be the most pestilent annoyance.”
Gamayun? Who in the Heights was Gamayun? Voran was becoming infuriated with the man’s lack of useful answers.
“You come here and rescue me,” said Voran. “You helped me kill the hag. Now what?”
“Who said she was dead?” Tarin had an impish smile. “The hag is an intimate of the dead lands. Don’t count her out yet.”
“Will you help me?” Voran felt like punching the crazy old man.
“Will you help yourself?”
Turning to a stone on his left, Tarin kissed it and blessed it with a strange sign. Then he crouched with his ear to the ground, listening intently, until his eyes closed and he began to snore.
“Tarin!”
Tarin opened his eyes and winked.
“What should I do?” Voran felt no older than ten, called to account before the elders of the seminary. Come to think of it, this man could very well have been an elder in his time, if not for his madness.
“Ah, something useful at last,” said Tarin, becoming serious. “I know of your search for the weeping tree. I can take you to it. One condition. You must become my slave.”
Voran laughed. “You freed me! Now you want me to put on my shackles again?”
“That is my condition.”
“And if I refuse? What is to stop me from going to Vasyllia now? As you said, Sabíana waits for me.”
Tarin grimaced like a masked jester. He extended his hand and began to count off his fingers. “First, those wounds will kill you soon. Second, you severed your bond with Lyna when you lay with the hag. You won’t stand a chance against anything out in the wild. Third, you are still in the Lows of Aer, and I doubt you will find a way back without me. Fourth, Vasyllia is already under siege by the Raven. Fifth, you are an idiot.”
Voran bristled, but managed to keep quiet.
“While I offer you a solution to all of those problems, especially the fifth one. You have the word of a storyteller, and tellers never lie. But you must become my slave.”
There was no point in having this conversation. Voran was too tired to think, much less construct a rational argument.
