The sun was just beginning to dispel the soft greyness of pre-dawn, backlighting the early mist with hints of pink and gold. Sleepy twitters from waking birds were gradually augmented until the full dawn chorus was filling the air.
Nemeth ducked under the tent flap, wiping the sole of his left foot hard on the grass as he came in. "If there's one thing I can't stand about going out barefoot in the morning," he said to no-one in particular, "it's treading on a snail."
Jevann turned over, rubbing his fingers through his chestnut hair. "I don't even like treading on snails with shoes on," he replied sleepily, sitting up and glancing around the tent at twenty-plus still-sleeping Children half-buried under an assortment of furs and hides.
Nemeth gave him a steady look and raised one eyebrow, grinning. "I don't think I've ever seen a snail with shoes on, let alone trodden on one."
"Idiot," said Tarke affectionately, handing him a steaming mug and throwing her waist-length almost-black plait back over her left shoulder. "Did you go to look for Sherath, or just to admire the sunrise?"
"Both," said Nemeth, sitting cross-legged next to her in one easy fluid movement. "He's on his way back – could be a while, though."
– He didn't sleep too well, Nemeth added strictly for Tarke's Hearing.
– I noticed. Painful dreams, said Tarke softly. And you were dreaming about that sword again.
– Yes, agreed Nemeth, but how did you know?
– You were mumbling in Southern Elvish again.
***
Sherath paused in his uphill climb to shift the weight of the alp-ox calf, easing it on his shoulders. He had gone out as much in search of solitude as of food, but at this point some company to share the burden would have been appreciated. ... it's the kind of morning Shiyeth would have loved, he found himself thinking. He switched the memory off with a soft coldness that buried it along with all the rest, and walked on again, aware that just because a twin was dead some three-hundred-odd years didn't mean he was any the less missed. It was a while since memories of Shiyeth had intruded on his waking thoughts... probably something to do with last night's dreams, he reflected.
He made another minor adjustment to the weight on his shoulders before striding out again up the mountainside path. The early morning breeze backed round capriciously, blowing tendrils of Sherath's streaky ashy blond hair into his eyes as he walked.
It also brought him a soft, suppressed, pain-filled sound, as of an animal in desperation. He dragged his Awareness sharply out of his inner thoughts, a quick frown briefly furrowing his brow. Wallowing so much in memories that you miss something that obvious? he reprimanded himself, extending the Awareness out in the direction of the sound, and quickening his stride.
Animal, herbivore, large..... alp ox, his Awareness ran the identity across the surface of his mind quickly, and then qualified it with ... female, in labour. A moment's hesitation. She's not going to be overly receptive if you approach her carrying a dead calf.
He grinned to himself, sighed, and put the dead calf down, dragging it under the cover of a bush. Not that that's going to hide it from anything with a nose.... He approached the clearing cat-footedly quiet and from upwind, pausing in the cover of the trees.
The alp ox was lying with her back against a fallen tree, her head turned back along her flank, her coat dark with sweat, and the whites of her eyes showing. She was breathing rapidly and shallowly. As Sherath watched, she strained again, her legs stiffening and her eyes bulging with the effort. Sherath closed his eyes and ran Awareness through the animal, feeling for the calf.
– Oh, wow. What a pickle. Head back, legs back, half-turned sideways. You have about as much chance of birthing that as you have of flying to the moon, he added, pulling a small nut-wood box from the breast pocket of his deerskin jacket and very carefully extracting a small thorn dart from it with a tweezer-like split twig. He inserted the thorn into the load-hole of the blow-pipe that hung on a leather thong around his neck, sighted on the soft skin of the animal's exposed underbelly, brought the pipe up to his lips and blew the dart out sharply in one easy, practised movement. He was extracting a second and longer thorn from his box even as the ox's eyes rolled upwards in their sockets and she went limp. He walked across the clearing, crouched by the ox, and ran the second thorn carefully into the muscle of her neck.
– That ought to keep you asleep for a while, m'dear.
He shifted round to the rear of the ox, easing his hand and arm along her birth canal. Pretty dry. Birth sac not ruptured. The back half of his mind flashed an old, old memory of Kail the Healer birthing a mountain sheep while he himself looked on as a young Child.
– The mechanics of birth are simple, Kail had commented. The channel through which the young animal is to be born has to be large enough for it to pass through. The flesh is elastic, so it's the distance apart of the bones that is of prime importance here. To a certain extent the joints will open and stretch, but that's a minor factor.
Secondly, the animal must be presented to the channel in a way in which it can pass through. For the larger animals, the optimum presentation is both forelegs and head to present in a straight line, with one foreleg slightly in advance of the other. Both hindlegs presenting is the second-best option. For the smaller animals, head first is the best, rear-end first the second-best.
Thirdly, the channel itself must be moist. If it is dry, it may tear.
Sherath allowed the old memory to fade away into the background, and gently eased his hand further in until he could feel the rubbery birth sac, stretched along the back of the unborn calf. His fingers could feel the dorsal spines of the vertebrae clearly through the sac, and the vaguer outline of ribs on either side. Awareness told him the calf was alive, but weak from hours of intermittent and inescapable pressure. He tried to find an area of birth sac that he could either pinch or twist, but the presentation of the calf left no fluid-filled hollows available within reach to help him. He paused for a moment, easing himself into a lying position to try and extend his reach, but still got no further ahead.
– Hmm. Okay, you do the moving, he thought, and jabbed the calf's curved back hard with two extended fingers. The calf squirmed to escape. Sherath jabbed it again, then pushed it in the direction of its squirm against the massive (and thankfully now flaccid) uterine muscle. Two more hard jabs and readjustments of the calf's position, and then his fingers found the hollow between neck and shoulder. He took a pinch of the birth sac between his fingers, twisted it sharply and then pulled. For a moment the sac just stretched, then it tore, releasing a sudden flood of warm viscous fluid along Sherath's arm.
The relief from that clinging sticky tightness was almost incredible, and Sherath realised with a grin that he was almost breathless. He felt a sudden rush of sympathy for the female ox.
The calf, feeling the sudden change in its environment, perked up and squirmed again – this time of its own volition – and Sherath grabbed a fold of skin on its neck, trying to keep it lying in at least something like the right direction.
It was several minutes' hard effort to hook his fingers round the calf's foreleg below the elbow and coax first its knee and then finally its hoof forwards; and even longer to do the same with the other foreleg, which had the full weight of the calf resting on it. The sweat was running down Sherath's skin in trickles before he finally got both the calf's forelegs into position, and, having achieved that, he withdrew his arm from the animal, flexing the muscles and working his fingers cautiously.
He sat back on his heels for a minute, breathing deeply and reflecting that the enforced rest would probably have done the mother ox almost as much good as anything else. He took a deep breath and lay down again, starting the slow work of bringing the calf's head forwards and into line with its forelegs. Once finished, he took hold of both tiny hooves, and gently pulled the calf's forelegs and head forwards into the birth canal before finally bringing his arm back out and massaging it to restore the circulation.
He sat up, stretching his back and shoulders, and then got to his feet and removed the long thorn from the ox's neck before retreating into the undergrowth downwind of her.
It took perhaps three minutes for her to wake. At first she woke slowly, giving a soft moan of remembered pain, and a half-hearted strain at the calf inside her, which slid easily forwards. The ox came awake fast and strained again with renewed vigour, and within a few more minutes her calf's forelegs, head and shoulders had appeared, and she reached her head round and started licking at it.
Sherath grinned to himself, and back-tracked towards the kill that he had left under the bush.
He paused about a hundred yards from the spot where he had left his kill, and once again had to smile to himself as he caught the sounds of soft juvenile growls and the occasional warning grunt from an adult.
A young female snow leopard, having fallen on the bonanza of the freshly-killed calf, had brought her cubs down from their rocky lair to feast.
Sherath crept closer and watched the big cats for some time, letting his Awareness drift round the family group, admiring the sleek muscular litheness of the female and the well-rounded health of her fuzzy-coated young. In a few more weeks they'd lose the fuzz and be as sleekly spotted as their mother. He let his Awareness stay with the female, shutting his eyes and feeling the power of her muscles, the suppleness of her joints, unstiffened by age or injury. He became Aware of what it would be like to be a snow leopard, down to such details as the way that whiskers functioned, and the delicate mechanism of claw retraction. He allowed his Awareness to sink deeper into leopardishness, shutting his eyes to let the feeling take over.
Scents became deeper, richer, he felt his scalp muscles pull his ears into a twitch as something tiny rustled in the bushes behind him; then suddenly the whole world around him seemed to shudder and jar, becoming unfocussed and disorienting. His skin began to crawl and tingle all over with a weird confusion of both having and not having fur. And, over all, an inescapable feeling of femaleness. He drew a sharp breath in, opening his eyes abruptly, and pulled his Awareness swiftly away from the leopard, shaking his head to clear the sensation. The tremor from his head ran right down his back and into his tailbone; he rose softly to his feet again, somewhat shaken.
***
Nemeth waited about half a mile away from the tents, sitting with his back against the rough bark of the tree and his long legs stretched out along the branch. He reached out softly with his mind to track Sherath's approach and smiled at the swift flash of recognition as he made contact. There was restlessness and something approaching laughter in Sherath's thoughts.
– Good hunting? asked Nemeth softly, curious about the laughter.
– Interesting, Sherath answered. I've brought back a sheep, anyway.
Nemeth watched his half-brother walking beneath the trees, his easy grace all but concealing the strength which lay beneath and made light of the mountain ram lying like an enormous woollen collar across his shoulders.
Nemeth dropped lightly down from his branch to walk beside Sherath. "Here, let me take that sheep," he offered, lightly testing Sherath's mental defences as he did so.
Sherath grinned and shifted the ram across. "Be my guest," he said. "Why are you probing?"
"What are you hiding?" asked Nemeth curiously. "I thought you were out after a calf."
"I was," said Sherath, stretching his arms up above his head and flexing his shoulder muscles. He glanced sideways and caught Nemeth's eye. "Okay," he said, and let Nemeth have a brief review of the morning's events.
– Oh, strange, said Nemeth with a smile when they got to the leopard episode. What do you make of that, then?
– Almost forgot who I was, said Sherath lightly.
– You've not been yourself since you woke, Nemeth said.
Sherath laughed. "True," he answered. "You're fidgety, yourself," he added. He ran his mind gently through Nemeth's thoughts. – What are you attempting to hide from me?
– Hark who's talking! replied Nemeth with a laugh. I suppose you'll tell all in your own good time, he added. "All I was 'hiding' was that everyone's on the fidget, today. And I was only 'hiding' it because I didn't want to distract your attention from whatever it was you were thinking about."
"So that you could probe more effectively?" asked Sherath with a smile.
"Okay, yes, partly that. You weren't the only one with painful dreams last night," he went on. "Jevann was suffering, too."
"I noticed," said Sherath. "He started not long after midnight, with that recurrent nightmare he has."
"'Not my nightmare'," quoted Nemeth, "'but someone else's. The Child's.'"
– I was listening in, said Sherath softly. This time, it was different. He stepped outside the nightmare and watched it. It was as if he – and I – were there with the Child. Vivid. Painful. And lingering echoes of ill-intent that came not from the Child's nightmare, but from elsewhere. Ill-intent that was real, that the Child had suffered personally. He suppressed a shudder at the particular nature of the Child's memories. Sick, he added.
Nemeth was silent for a few moments, sharing the already-shared memory. – It's a strange place, he commented, after a short while. Oddly symmetrical.
– Too many straight lines and square corners, added Sherath. Yes, I know what you mean.
– And very odd background noises, too, commented Nemeth. Not like anywhere I've ever been; imaginary or otherwise.
– Makes one wonder where Jevann dragged it up from, said Sherath softly.
– And why? suggested Nemeth. It's been recurring for how many years?
– A dozen or so, said Sherath, casting his mind back. There have been others, also in the same odd surroundings, but this particular one keeps coming back. It's the first time he's been able to step outside it, though – that I've known about, anyway, he added as an afterthought. Why is everyone else fidgety?
– Restless. Itching to be on the move again. The finely carved nostrils of Nemeth's hawk-like nose flared as if scenting the breeze for danger.
– And what are your thoughts?
– Are you asking me for my opinion as Challenger or as brother? asked Nemeth.
– Either. Both. And what does Tarke think? Sherath's eyes quizzed him.
– As Challenger, I'm wary of taking us into anything that smells too strongly of danger. As brother, I can handle whatever danger I'm scenting at the moment.
– You wouldn't admit to not being able to handle it, anyway, said Sherath with a laugh.
– I might.
– Since when?
– Tarke wants to get to the bottom of what's bothering Jevann. Jevann's not just fidgety – he's almost driven to be moving. Specifically South East.
– Towards Dakesht?
– That general area. Tarke's suggestion is that you try to piece together what's happening as we move.
– Seems reasonable, agreed Sherath.
----
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