Karavans
Raves for Jennifer Roberson’s Karavans:
“The first volume in a new fantasy saga from Roberson (Sword-Dancer) establishes a universe teeming with fascinating humans, demons and demigods … the pieces are in place for what promises to be a story of epic proportions.”
—Publishers Weekly
“In Roberson’s rather original tale of sorcery and change in the aftermath of war, the land of Sancorra has been conquered by the bloodthirsty Hecari, and many of its inhabitants are fleeing. High-quality characterization and world building abet Roberson’s novel conception.”
—Booklist
“Jennifer Roberson’s Karavans (the opening volume of her first new series in two decades!) is a storytelling tour de force with all the trappings of a classic fantasy saga: a cast of fully realized and singularly unique characters, desperate quests, ominous prophecies, and intertwining plotlines filled with dark magic and supernatural intrigue—all set in a war-torn realm drenched in blood. Fans who have enjoyed Roberson’s previous works will be absolutely blown away by this emotionally charged nomadic adventure through a world teetering on the brink of chaos. Set in one of the most vividly described and downright intriguing fantasy realms to come along in years, Karavans is arguably Roberson’s best work to date. Featuring breathtaking cover art by artist extraordinaire Todd Lockwood, this is a ‘must-read’ fantasy if there ever was one.”
—The Barnes & Noble Review
“The many mysteries set up are tantalizing enough to make me impatient for more.”
—Locus
“Beautifully written … All the characters are beautifully drawn and Roberson has uncanny lyrical phrasing.”
—Romantic Times Bookclub
DAW titles by
JENNIFER ROBERSON
KARAVANS
DEEPWOOD*
THE SWORD-DANCER SAGA
SWORD-DANCER
SWORD-SINGER
SWORD-MAKER
SWORD-BREAKER
SWORD-BORN
SWORD-SWORN
CHRONICLES OF THE CHEYSULI
Omnibus Editions
SHAPECHANGER’S SONG
LEGACY OF THE WOLF
CHILDREN OF THE LION
THE LION THRONE
THE GOLDEN KEY
(with Melanie Rawn and Kate Elliott)
ANTHOLOGIES
(as editor)
RETURN TO AVALON
HIGHWAYMEN: ROBBERS AND ROGUES
*Coming Soon in Hardcover from DAW
JENNIFER ROBERSON
KARAVANS
DAW BOOKS, INC.
DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, FOUNDER
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM
SHEILA E. GILBERT
PUBLISHERS
http://www.dawbooks.com
Copyright © 2006 by Jennifer Roberson.
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-101-64251-1
Cover art by Todd Lockwood.
Book designed by Elizabeth Glover.
DAW Books Collectors No. 1359.
DAW Books Inc. is distributed by Penguin Group (USA).
All characters in the book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
First Paperback Printing, April 2007
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A.
Printed in the U.S.A.
I dedicate this to my uncle and to my aunts, with love,
Sam Hardy
Molly Hardy
Clare Witcomb
and to the memory of my mother
Shera Roberson
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Epilogue
About the Author
Prologue
AFTER SO MUCH TIME, his voice, the words, came hard. He had been—other—for time out of mind.
“I,” he said. And, in shock, repeated it: “I.”
Other words, more words, came back to him. Words that, strung together, shaped identity. He knew those words. And knew himself, when he had not for an endless time, immured in darkness.
“I … am … man.”
A man. He was.
Human.
“I am man. I am a man.”
The emphasis was important.
“I am a man.”
He crowed victory, no longer mute.
He was a man.
Was he not?
Around him the world shuddered. Darkness bled into light. Nausea took him. Bile burned the back of his throat, occluding a sob.
So close.
So close to … elsewhere.
So close to home.
“I am a man.”
He was. Had been. Was born so.
Man. Male. Mortal.
He remembered, remembered, after a space—for time out of mind—when he could not.
“I am,” he said aloud, seeking solace, seeking strength.
But darkness wrapped its fingers around him. Darkness took him up, as if to inspect him more closely. His head filled, and his eyes. His ears. His mouth and his nose. He choked on it.
Darkness.
Darkness dangled him by the scruff of his neck, as if he were vermin caught by a dog. Darkness smelled him. Shook him. And then, with a twitch of negligent hand, darkness discarded him.
He fell. And fell.
When he landed, when he had recovered breath enough to speak, strength enough to move, he sat up. Light. In place of darkness, light. He saw. He smelled. He heard. He felt. He tasted.
“I am a man,” he said. And, “Home.”
He stood. Balanced. Began to walk.
To humankind. To home.
To anywhere other than where he had been.
Alisanos.
Human?
Was he?
Could he be, after dwelling in Alisanos?
He stopped walking. Stretched out his arms, and gazed upon them. Began to tremble.
At the end of his arms, in place of
his hands, were—other.
He screamed.
Human?
No.
Not he.
Screamed and screamed and screamed.
ILONA AWOKE ABRUPTLY to the sound of a scream resounding within her skull. For that moment of shock, the initial instant of confusion caused by a sudden awakening out of deep sleep, she heard it. And then realized the sound had not been a true scream but merely the futile attempt of her sleep-fettered body to cry out. She had managed at most a moan.
Her wagon was dark. She had dropped the oilcloth sides of the roof canopy and blown out the last lantern hours before. The karavan encampment, wagons gathered within a sprawling grove of wide-crowned trees at the edge of a haphazard tent settlement, still slept, save for the occasional yip or bark of a dog, the restless wuffling of picketed draft animals, the ceaseless metallic scraping of insects known as nightsingers.
She lay awake in the narrow cot beneath the roof ribs of her tall, high-wheeled wagon, recalling the scrambled flashes of dream-born images. Confusion, mostly: scarlet lightning, a roaring wind, black skies, steaming rain, the glimpse of a woman’s profile, a Hecari warrior with war-club raised, a karavan turning back. None of it made sense.
Ilona closed her eyes and rubbed the lids with her fingers, stretching them out of shape. Jorda, the caravan-master, had never turned back in all his years on the roads throughout Sancorra province. His reputation was for always getting his people where they paid him to go. It made no sense that Jorda would turn back.
Voice hoarse from sleep, Ilona chastised herself. “You read hands, remember? Reading dreams is not your gift.”
But she could not shake the images, the memory of panic. Red lightning, a roaring wind, black skies, a woman, inexplicably steaming rain, and a karavan turning back.
Not Jorda’s karavan, then. Perhaps nothing more than a dream construct, false images conjured from the back of her mind.
Ilona turned onto her side, resettling blankets over her upper shoulder. She was a diviner, yes, but the omens and auguries she read lay always in a human palm, not in images fed to her in the darkness. Her dreams were merely dreams, albeit some more dramatic than others. Nightmares, however, only rarely plagued her.
But she could not remember experiencing the violence of such dreams on the day before the karavan was to leave. Usually those dreams were filled with the minutiae of departure, the nagging concerns that she might forget some chore, neglect to pack things she needed for the journey, be not quite ready when Jorda gave the order to the karavan to follow him out of the grove. It didn’t matter that she had been with Jorda for years and on numerous trips; she always worried something would be lost or forgotten in the confusion of departure.
Ilona sighed and stroked a strand of hair out of her face. Diviners were not immune to such omens as she read in hands. If she had time the next day, perhaps she could consult with a dream-reader in the tent settlement. It would do no good if one of Jorda’s three karavan diviners ignored her own future while she read those of others.
THOUGH RHUAN WAS a karavan guide, a man hired to ride out ahead of the column of wagons to scout the safety of the roads and water holes, that duty also included providing protection to the folk joining Jorda’s karavan. In the nights immediately before departure, he and Darmuth, the other guide, rode the perimeter of the grove in which more than thirty wagons had gathered. The draft animals, mostly horses and a few mules, were tied or hobbled close by; the remuda, the small herd of extra riding horses kept for Jorda and his two guides, and the draft teams used by the three karavan diviners were picketed farther away with the horse-master keeping an eye on them. It was not unheard of for thieves to sneak among the wagons, hoping to find a few items they might later sell. Rhuan and Darmuth prevented that.
He rode his favorite horse, a handsome cream gelding boasting a black-spotted rump and a splattering of larger black spots spreading across the balance of his body. In the darkness of the grove Rhuan couldn’t see Darmuth, but knew he was present. And knew also that Darmuth, because of a duty never spoken of among the humans, would be watching him as much as he tended the welfare of the karavan.
Though lamps and lanterns had been blown out hours before, a ruddy glow emanated from dying cookfires scattered throughout the grove. Jorda was not the only karavan-master who camped his folk here; there were times when the wagons outnumbered the trees. But it was late in the season, and only two karavans remained. Sennet was leading his out in the morning; Jorda’s departure was set for a day later.
Without warning, Rhuan’s flesh prickled. He felt the hairs rising on his limbs, at the back of his neck. The ratcheting of the nightsingers abruptly stopped. From under one of the wagons a dog lifted its voice in a howl; neighboring dogs joined it in a wailing threnody. Within moments Rhuan heard sleepy voices testily calling out to quiet the noise, some threatening punishment, and one by one each dog fell silent.
The night felt heavy. Rhuan reined in. His skin itched. An accompanying shudder ran the length of his body. But he made no attempt to rub or shrug away the annoyance. Instead he slipped off his horse, dropped the reins so the spotted gelding would, as trained, remain in place, and walked to the nearest tree.
Rhuan knelt beside the gnarled roots that broke through the soil. Still the nightsingers held their silence. He placed his palm against the trunk.
Those in the settlement who knew him, or knew of him, also knew he wasn’t human, but Shoia, a man born of a race from a far distant province, a race never seen before in Sancorra. But though it was no secret he was Shoia, Rhuan refrained from exhibiting all of his gifts. It was one thing to be the subject of much speculation about what a Shoia could do, and quite another to be feared for his abilities. He desired the trust of the humans, not their wariness. A guide’s effectiveness would be lessened if his charges feared or distrusted him. It was important they not witness this communion between man and tree.
But it was dark beneath this tree, farthest from the fires, and he was shielded by the horse, who dropped his head to seek out the sparse sprigs of grass that had withstood a barrage of wagon wheels and hooves. Rhuan spoke softly, using the language he’d known from birth but never spoke among the humans. Darmuth would understand it, but then he was no more human than Rhuan; and Brodhi, Rhuan’s kin-in-kind, spoke it as well. But Brodhi, mercifully, was absent. This was a private moment.
Beneath his palm Rhuan felt the roughness of bark; more deeply, the thrumming of vibrancy and life in the heart of the wood. The elderling oak was not yet on the verge of death. With grave respect Rhuan sought that life, sought the sentience, an awareness that humans could never understand.
He jerked his hand away, hissing. His palm tingled unpleasantly. It was not the oak, he knew; elderlings did no harm, but could be conduits for danger. Their roots ran deep below the surface, cognizant of things unknown among men. Rhuan felt the prickling awareness bestir the hair on his flesh again, answering the first faint precursor. Change was coming. A change so profound it would touch even earth and sky and sun. Humans would suffer. Humans would die. His body knew, even if his own sentience instantly denied the truth. Certainly Darmuth knew as well. But Darmuth had said nothing. He left it to Rhuan to discover for himself.
Alisanos was coming.
Rhuan rose. The horse raised his head, ears flicking forward like sharp-tipped sentinels. The animals sensed it. The trees knew it. And now he banished denial and allowed himself to admit the truth. Because by admitting that truth, he might be able to save human lives before Alisanos took them.
If the humans permit me. Rhuan took up the dangling rein and swung it over the gelding’s neck. If they believe me.
Chapter 1
“I NEED MORE BONES,” Hezriah declared. “You must bring me another body.”
It was stifling inside the undyed, soiled oilcloth tent. He’d have rolled up the sidewalls in hope of catching a stray breeze except his job was not the kind people wanted to see on their way to market.
His was the kind of job no one needed to see, either, because it was the prosaic and thus tedious side of the augury business. For all there was magic involved—at least, for the legitimate diviners who truly did converse with the gods—no one wanted to see how the ingredients required by the magic were assembled. Just the end result.
They want to see the flesh on the body, and breathing, not the bones underneath. Hezriah smiled, liking the turn of phrase; most appropriate for his line of work. I should write that one down. “Well? Have you a body for me?”
A bead of sweat rolled down the heat-flushed cheek into the wiry beard of the other person in the tent. His hireling, Merriq. “Brought you one last week, didn’t I?”
Outside, someone shouted, hoarse-voiced; the bonedealer caught three words in ten. Something about a moonsick man. Not his business; he had no time for such folk as lacked a proper mind. Deepwood bait, such folk. Their bodies and brains were cursed, not fit for augury.
“That was a child, Merriq. Not enough bones there to fill but a partial order.” Something stung his cheek; he slapped hard, gritting his teeth. The dead insect tumbled to the hard-packed dirt floor covered by a hemmed sheet of black-dyed canvas, slightly sun-rusted. Dusty footprints marred the surface: his own, and Merriq’s bigger, booted feet. “Cursed horseflies,” he muttered. “Should all be sent to Alisanos.” Though, come to think of it, more probably they had come from the deepwood; all demons and devils did, be they in human form or other. Hezriah scowled anew. “Have you anything due in from the anthills?”
“Day or two,” Merriq answered stolidly. “Still too much meat on the bones.”
“Well, that will do for Dardannus.” Hezriah nodded, briefly calculating how long the Kantic diviner would tolerate the delay without reducing payment or looking elsewhere for a supplier. Practitioners of the Kantica did not count patience among their virtues. “But I need another body as soon as possible.”
“Do you want me to kill someone?”
He grunted. “No, no. Let them die on their own; I have ethics, and I respect the law—unlike some I could mention, named Eccul! But surely you can find someone crossing over the river in one of the alleys, can’t you? Or someone murdered for not paying his debts?” The latter happened frequently among bad wagerers and drunkards.