Tarashana by Rachel Neumeier (best novels to read for students .TXT) 📗

ask Aras for leave to go to the Convocation, if circumstances permitted. If not that, then I had intended to ask him for leave to visit the inKarano. I had forgotten all that. I had entirely forgotten that I had been given to him as a tuyo. This struck me now in a rush of surprise and confusion.

He had the right to do anything to me that he chose.

We had come back to the fire now, but when that thought came to me, I stopped where I was, in the glimmering light of the trees that surrounded the place. I did not mean to look at Aras, but I could not help it. He was sitting quietly, his back straight. His gaze met mine.

He said, “Hardly anything, Ryo.” Then, when I did not answer, he dropped his gaze to the fire and said nothing further.

Everyone had paused to watch us. I had not intended that, either. I went to the fire and sat down, not near Aras, but beside Suyet. My sister deliberately walked around the fire and sat down beside Aras. She did not say anything to him, but her decision to sit there said more than words. Aras did not look up. I was trying not to watch him, but I could not help but see how his good hand, resting on his knee, tensed and then relaxed again. No one spoke.

People had been speaking before I came to this fire. I had heard their quiet voices as Etta and I approached. The fault was mine that everyone now sat silent and uncomfortable. I said, finding it was true, or true enough, “I have missed you all.” I turned deliberately to Suyet, knowing he would relax and speak easily if given the chance. I said, “Tell me everything that has been happening.”

 -29-

We came out of the pass during the late morning of a clear, cold day. The sky seems farther from the earth on a day like that; more distant, but brighter. The Sun stood perhaps four hands above the horizon. The Moon stood higher, barely visible in the brilliant sky, but a careful eye could find her. She stood almost directly above Talal Sabero. The sacred mountain was visible from the mouth of the pass, but seemed very far away. Because the lower slopes lay in shadow, the high peak seemed to float suspended above the world. I thought I might see a long, high thread of light reaching up from the mountain into the sky, but probably this was merely something I imagined.

To one side of the pass, the river fell down and down in one last long series of waterfalls. At the edges, spray had frozen and more water run down and frozen again, so that ice decorated all the stone near the waterfalls. Sunlight caught in the ice, glittering so brilliantly that every dagger and sword of ice seemed to be lit from within, as though we still stood in the starlit lands. Below, to the west, the great valley between Talal Soka and Tala Somara lay protected by the roots of the mountains. Before us, the long lake stretched a long way south, leading the eye away from the great mountains and out to the endless steppe.

The great herds of the inGara ambled through the valley, where the dry winds from the mountains pull snow from the earth into the air, so the grass is never covered over. But there were more cattle there than ours. Also, all along the lake, and far up into the lower slopes of the mountains, and tucked into the valleys between the roots of the mountains, stood many, many tents and wagons—far more than belonged to even so large and prosperous a tribe as inGara.

Etta had been right. We had stepped across the whole of the long cold, right to the edge of the coming spring. This below us now was the Convocation.

The Convocation is always held near the end of the long cold; indeed, we say that spring comes on the day the Convocation begins. The ground will still be frozen hard on that day, not wet and boggy as it becomes later, so travel through the high north is not difficult in that season. But the wind has begun to carry the feel of spring. Craftsmen and craftswomen have made use of all the long hours of the cold season and so have many bows or knives or furs or cloth to trade. Girls have trained their ponies to race, and boys who have just become young men are eager to test their strength and skill against rivals from other tribes. Everyone is very ready for the Convocation.

Every winter, the Convocation is held in a different tribe’s territory. The wealthiest and most prosperous tribes compete for the privilege, as hosting the Convocation offers a fine chance to show off the tribe’s generosity and strength. As Convocation law forbids serious quarrels between enemies, this is a time people may move easily from one tribe to another, for any of the different reasons people may wish to do such a thing. Kin who belong to different tribes, perhaps enemy tribes, take the chance to see one another. Men show off their courage and honor and skill before unmarried women. Mothers and grandmothers meet to discuss matters of marriage and trade between their tribes. Absolutely everyone wishes to hear tales they have not heard many-many times before, so poets are welcomed everywhere they go.

I had not realized the Convocation might come to inGara in this year. We had hosted it seven winters ago ... eight, now ... so the privilege would not ordinarily have come back to us for some years yet. But I should have thought of this.

“I think we may be certain your mother wrote more than one letter to the women of the inKarano,” Garoyo said to Etta,