Tarashana by Rachel Neumeier (little red riding hood ebook TXT) 📕

I nodded. I knew the kind of tree he meant. The place he described would be easy to recognize. “All the Lau are there?”

Garoyo signed agreement.

“I would prefer to see no one but Aras. I do not want to argue with anyone. I do not want to fight anyone.”

He nodded again. “Make your way slowly. Hokino and I will go before you. We will bring the other Lau here, to the place we have been living. We will bring them by a different path, one that runs close to the mountains, so that you will not meet us on the road. How long shall we expect to hold them close?”

I had not thought about this. Now I looked at the sky. The Dawn Sisters stood together just above the mountains. I knew the long cold must have come to the winter lands; that is when the Dawn Sisters stand in that place. I had not realized so many days had passed. But I only said, “Until I come there, or until the Dawn Sisters stand again where they stand now.”

“Very well,” Garoyo agreed. He looked at me for some time, neither of us moving. He said finally, “In battle, a warleader must often make a hard decision. If that decision had been mine, I would probably have made it differently. But Aras is not exactly like a warleader, nor exactly like a lord. I think he is also not only a scepter-holder for his king. He is something else besides all those things. He had no choice but to make the decision as he made it.”

“I know that.”

“Yes. You have probably known this for a long time. I remind you not because you do not know, but because you may have set aside your understanding. You should not.”

I said nothing.

Garoyo looked at me a little longer. Finally he said, “If you kill Aras, I will understand that. Everyone will understand it.”

“Yes,” I said, though I was not certain this was so. Certainly the Lau would not understand it, or forgive it. But Garoyo was not thinking of the Lau. I added, in case he had not thought of this either, “The Tarashana people might not forgive it.” That was a problem I had thought of while I walked from the place I had been living to this place. I should have thought of it before, but I had been distracted by many other thoughts. But I had to say it. The possibility was one that made the whole matter something for a warleader to decide.

Garoyo only nodded again. “Hokino and I have discussed that. We have decided we need not regard their opinion in this matter. We agree the decision is yours to make. Kill him if you must. I think the act would be wrong for you, I think you would be hurt by it, but if you feel you must do it, I will not say you should have decided otherwise. No one will say you were wrong to do it.” He looked at me searchingly for a long moment and then sighed and left me there.

I had been walking for a long time, so I sat down where I was and rested for a hand of time. For two hands. Three. I needed to prepare myself. There were certain thoughts I would soon want to have in my mind, and other thoughts I wanted to put away for the present.

After enough time had passed, I stood up and walked the way my brother had showed me. Twenty bowshots, twenty and two, twenty and four, was not so great a distance. I could run that far in three hands of time; less than that if I pushed myself. I was not so impatient now. I did not run. I walked, slowly at first, but faster as I came to the lake. The houses of the Tarashana blended softly into the low hills, but I had by this time learned to recognize a Tarashana house when I saw one. I counted each as I passed it.

I thought about the trees and the scent of the breeze—here, this close to the mountains, the wind carried the scent of snow and stone. I longed for the winter country. I let myself feel that longing. Those were the thoughts I held in the front of my mind. Below that, I let myself think of what Aras had done to me, of the rage and the growing terror as I understood what he had done. Below that, I came to one decision and then another regarding how I would answer that act. I came to each decision firmly, meaning to hold to it. Then I made a different decision and meant just as firmly to hold to that one.

I put every other thought out of my mind.

When I came to the place, I found him there, waiting for me, sitting with his legs drawn up, below the tree Garoyo had mentioned. The soft radiance of the flowers shed light rather than shade below a tree like that. At first it seemed to me that he looked just as always: imperturbable, impervious. The only difference was that his left arm was in a sling. Then he moved, getting to his feet and coming forward a little, and the light showed me that was thinner than he had been, with a tracery of new lines at the corners of his eyes and his mouth. The set of his mouth was hard, in the way that meant he was exerting himself to show less than he felt.

He had known for a long time that I was coming. He could hardly have failed to know it, probably before Garoyo and Hokino and the others came here and took the other Lau away. There was no sign anyone had fought. The mosses were not torn or trampled. Garoyo was too wise