Laloog was dozing on the couch when Mistress Yuka came to visit. The events of the past few days had left him exhausted. His younger son, Luke, was the current chieftain of the Yonsa clan, and when he heard that the Gate to the Mountain Deep had opened, he immediately sought his father’s advice. As one of the last participants of the previous Giving Ceremony and Elder of the Yonsa clan, Laloog was highly revered. But inwardly, he was exasperated that his son insisted on consulting him about everything from the gifts for the Mountain King to the hospitality that should be offered to the envoys from the capital.
Yesterday they had finally sent off the carts, heavily laden with gifts, and, at last, fatigue overtook the old man. He had found it hard even to get out of bed this morning. He felt himself drawing closer to death a little at a time, but he supposed it could not be helped. After all, he had never expected to live to seventy.
He woke to a knock on the door, but it was a few moments before he could move. “Mmm?” he finally managed to murmur.
“Master Laloog.” It was a young guard from the entrance. “Mistress Yuka from the house of healing is here again.”
Laloog sighed. “Show her in.”
Listening to the young man’s footsteps recede into the distance, Laloog stared moodily into the fire. Lately, he dreamed constantly of his eldest son, Taguru, and that could only be due to the unsettling news that Yuka had brought recently. Her words had stirred up the grief that he had thought buried by time. But if what she had told him was true …
The moment he had seen her six days ago, he had been filled with foreboding. Nothing unsettled Yuka, not even when she had to lop off a patient’s arm, and he had often thought that if she were a man, she would have been an unparalleled warrior. Yet she had rushed into his room with her hair in disarray, and his fears had been immediately confirmed. Greeting him only perfunctorily, she had fixed him with fierce, glittering eyes, and launched into her preposterous tale.
To think that Karuna’s daughter still lives …
Of course, Laloog had not believed her at first. He had tried to convince Yuka that the woman must have been Jiguro’s lover, or that she was manipulating the story of Karuna’s daughter to suit her own designs. But Yuka had merely laughed sharply and shook her head. “It was Balsa,” she said. “You’d recognize her too if you saw her.”
Laloog had only seen Balsa once before, long ago when Karuna, back from the capital, had paid a visit to Laloog’s younger brother, the chieftain. As a Spear, Laloog had also been living in the capital, but he happened to be staying at the chieftain’s hall to attend his nephew’s coming-of-age ceremony. Karuna had brought his three-year-old daughter with him. Her arm was in a sling, and the white bandage stood out against her skin, which was as darkly tanned as a boy’s. Apparently, the first thing she had done on reaching Yuka’s house was to fall from a tree and break her arm. “She looks more like Yuka at the same age than you,” he had told Karuna.
Those were good years, Laloog thought. Karuna was the king’s physician and we were so proud that he came from the Yonsa clan.
Then it had all come tumbling down in a landslide of misfortunes — the death of the king, Jiguro’s flight, Karuna’s murder, and finally the loss of Laloog’s eldest son, Taguru, who left in pursuit of Jiguro, never to return. If, as Yuka claimed, these tragedies had all originated in a plot hatched by King Rogsam …
Laloog recalled King Rogsam’s oily face, and then the face of Jiguro Musa as a youth of sixteen, shining with courage in the Darkness below. He felt as if Jiguro, a man he had hated and tried hard to forget these many years, had suddenly fixed his fearless, determined eyes on him.
He came back to the present at the sound of the door opening. The pungent smell of rubbing ointment preceded Yuka into the room. She came every day on the pretext of treating the pain in his joints.
When she met his eyes, he shook his head gently. “They haven’t caught her yet.”
Rumor had swept through the Yonsa and Musa clans faster than galloping horses: The fugitive captured by the two Musa warriors had slipped from their grasp, badly wounding them both. The news had reached Laloog’s ears the same day it happened. On its heels came a message from Kaguro Musa himself, officially requesting that the woman be apprehended if she fled into Yonsa territory. Further rumors indicated that a massive search launched by Kaguro had been unsuccessful.
Yuka brought a chair over to Laloog’s couch and sat down. She began massaging ointment into his wrinkled elbow with practiced hands. His arm was thin and the muscles were withered, so that the loose, baggy skin moved under her hand each time she ran her fingers over it.
“I hear that Yuguro Musa has already passed through Yonsa territory,” she said.
“Yes, he joined up with the men from our clan. They should reach Yonro territory tomorrow.”
Yuka increased the pressure in her fingers. “I’m sure Kaguro will listen to you now that Yuguro’s gone.”
Laloog looked at her sharply. “Yuka —”
“People are saying that Yuguro left Kaguro’s eldest son behind and took his own son with him instead. In fact, Master Kahm only passed through Yonsa territory this morning. Surely this is a god-given opportunity. Kaguro must have some misgivings.”
Laloog sighed. “You hear everything.”
Yuka smiled. “The waiting room at the house of healing has always been a hotbed of gossip.”
Laloog gazed up at the ceiling. “You would ask me to trigger an avalanche between the Yonsa and Musa tribes? There’s no strength in this old body of mine to stop it once it starts, you know.” He added in a whisper, “I can’t take that risk on something that won’t benefit our clan in any way.”
“You are the clan Elder. The clansmen are your children. Would you stand by and watch your children die?” She scooped up some sticky yellow ointment with her ring finger, then said quietly, “Even now I hate the one who killed my brother. I can still see Karuna’s dead eyes staring into space. Would you forgive the man who made the best young warriors of our clans die for nothing — the man who sent Taguru to his death?”
Laloog roughly brushed her hand away and sat up with a groan. He faced her, glaring. “Where’s the proof? Tell me that. Just where is the proof that will convince our people I should accuse the most powerful man in Kanbal of deception?”
“There is a witness — Balsa. Will you let Yuguro kill her?”
“That’s what I mean. There’s no proof that that woman is telling the truth.” He shook his head. “Yuka, there’s nothing I can do about it. How many times are you going to bring this up?”
She stared straight into his eyes. “As many times as it takes. Do you think I’m going to stand by and let him kill my only niece?”
There must be some way to help Balsa. This thought consumed Yuka both waking and sleeping. But she always came back to that one fatal flaw: There was no way to prove that Balsa was telling the truth.
When she left Laloog’s room and went outside, snow was falling like dust from the silver sky. The men were busy fixing the winter livestock pens to ready them for the goats being herded down from the crags. Soon the mountains would be buried in snow.
Yuka wondered where Balsa was now. Mounting her short, sturdy mare, she headed back to the house of healing through a flurry of powdery flakes.