• Peigra's Blog:

Calton's Shadow, Pt 7

By: Peigra

Baltik had never been one to pass an opportunity to show himself off, whether Before or Now, and Now was certainly no exception.

Peigra did not remember much of leading all the mounts to the tie poles, the children in awe of the great black beast in the middle of them, or the meal and sleeping. She did not remember much but Genda’s roar as he and Rira collided, and Soir was on the other side, the three crashing together in a motley of arms, shouts and incoherent laughter and words.

Baltik, tired as he was, rested while Peigra spoke of the journey and settled her saddlebags beside her so they would not get lost, until one of the guest tents was designated to her. While Peigra talked, ate and continued to exhaust herself, Baltik was rested, fed, and brushed, the latter being relative as the children could barely reach past his knees. He accomodated them by going down to the very sands they were trying to clean off of him, and they crawled all over him with delight and slid down the other side of his back. They marveled at his hooves, so great they were nearly as large as their own child-sized heads, and his tail!

No horse had ever suffered from too much pampering after a long ride.

When the sun kissed the waters again to the east, the camp was already rising, many already moving to their assigned duties, but Baltik stood out despite everyone trying to avoid staring at his bulk. Nearly every child had offered to water and tend to the mounts, and there had been some squabbling as to who would get the duty of caring for Baltik for the morning feeding and watering.

Enduring it as only he could, Baltik was taken by the elder horseman, who accepted the great honor of such a horse of breeding and form, and took the time to lead Baltik to the spring where the others were being led. His hands roamed Baltik’s neck, his spine, his ears were inspected, his hooves, and the old man’s gentle pat against his side was enough that the horse nibbled at the man’s hair. “You are a fine one, yes, you should be with the mares, and soon,” the man said, seeing the great foals that would come from such breedings.

The Bahmi had lived in the deserts to see things in generations, not just the now. There was always a now, when children were crying and needed to be suckled, elderlies without teeth whose gruel needed to be macerated and soaked, young men reminded of their duties and not peeking in on the young girls who were dressing. There was also the plans for generations, where such things as, slowly, day by day, deeper wells were dug so that there would be water for them, new safe caves discovered, stashes of emergency supplies for famine or attack put in new areas, negotiations with young men and women with other clans to keep the bloodlines going. Larger vaiyuu, better pastures in the south, these were things of the future that were also a part of each day and would, eventually, lead to other future plans for those who came in the future. Every generation had to think of the present, and the future, and learn from the past.

Baltik provided a new challenge, of both present and future, and several of the horsemen, trainers, riders and anyone with curiosity, came to watch as the elder horseman brought Baltik, on a neck rope, to the packed area under the shade of the palms and began to run him through the paces every foal learned. He pranced eagerly, knowing them, and despite Berdel’s cries he was useless, Baltik was viewed as a beautiful creature, and one not even close to his prime as yet.

“He must go south.” Again and again, the voices nodded in agreement, and from the smallest child to the eldest who came and squinted, feeling Baltik’s sides with their aged fingers, they all deemed it so. Such a great stallion had a duty, as everyone did, and needed to do it, and soon. Every child was dreaming, as they ran about the feet of their elders for chores or mingling, of riding a great black horse such as a foal Baltik would sire on the mares in the south.

For himself, Baltik tossed his head and gave great snorts at their plans. He knew what was coming, and had his own agenda. If it meshed with theirs, he kept his counsel, and his ears flicked back and forth, listening, his eyes watching, and his infinite patience even to the smallest, curious baby still in wrappings, brought up to drool on his nose, was gently touched. Baltik was a well trained horse, and there were already coins being exchanged as to whose mares would get the first breedings.

Peigra knew nothing of the morning negotiations, waking to find herself in a familiar tent, with familiar scents, and the padded rush-woven mat beneath her bedroll to give her some comfort from the sand. She had not been surprised to wake in Rira’s tent, for even if she had not been something to the old woman in Before, she was an honored guest.

That Rira had recognized her, whispering that dreams had been plaguing her for some time, that Peigra would not return, that she would forget, that fate would keep them separated, so many paths that Rira worried for. The old woman seemed younger now than she had when Peigra had previously been her apprentice, and it gave her a feeling of security, as the lines in her face were not as deep, the worried pursing of her lips not as often.

Her hair was colored differently also. At some point, Rira had shaved her head to get it tattooed in a symbol of her dedication and service to her clan, and her Bahmi people, during one of the shaman gatherings that happened occasionally, and it was a mark of great honor. However it had been done, her hair had gone the same colors as the tattoo, so her graying, honey-sand colored hair had an odd waterfall of odd colors when it was pulled back into her braids. It gave her a roguish look, and Peigra thought it added to her leadership abilities.

As always, Rira was up before the sun, and this one time, had left Peigra to sleep. Only on days when rituals were happening at night did Rira sleep in, and allow those in her tent to do the same. Her predictable routine was dangerous, as many in the clan saw it as anyone could find her at any given time in the same spot, same day, and no one would know until it was too late if something happened to her until she was late. She only spoke that she was protected, and had the deep scars along her upper arms, and along her left shoulder and neck, to prove it.

When she had been a child, Rira had been a twin, with a brother who had been gifted, and had been slated to be the next clan shaman, and she had been to go to another clan in marriage, which had suited her fine. The other clan would also be near the water, and as their elder herbalist had recently died, it would fall to Rira to teach the childen, not much older than herself, how to use and hunt for the plants in their area, as she herself learned from them of new ones.

The scorpions in the desert were reknown for their size and ferocity, and only skilled hunters took them down, and taking one down was also a test of a young warrior, male or female, for them to prove they were ready to be accepted as such. Rira’s brother had been on his final test, hunting scorpions with an elder hunter and two other groups from neighboring clans. Gathering the young men and women all together was easier, as the scorpions moved on trails well-marked in the sands, and taking them down was a group effort, though the first spear, axe, or arrow was always designated to someone, as was the final death blow.

The first group’s kill had been uneventful, the second with some difficulty, and the third had gone the same. Rira’s brother had been in the second group of young warriors, despite the elder shaman’s warnings that shamans did not need to prove themselves with weapons of war. That should have been enough for him, but Rira’s brother had gone anyway, wanting to prove himself to a young woman he had his eye on, whose father wanted proof before her agreed to the arrangement.

The spear had struck a lucky blow, into the eye of the scorpion, and only a few hunters could claim to have done so. Rira’s brother had charged ahead, as it was to have been his kill, and he would be a clan warrior when it was done. What her brother had not taken into consideration was the adrenaline rush of the wounded creature, and the speed of its spearing tail. Had it just been the claws that raked his arms, he might have lived, mauled forever, but lived. The raking claws had been the distraction, and the tail had done the rest as it caught him against the neck and shoulder curve, and there was nothing to be done.

Rira had been weaving a basket for her journey when she had given the cry, and the clan had known something had gone wrong. The shaman had looked to her, knowing also what had happened, and had tripped, stumbling on the very basket Rira had been weaving and went down on his knees. In her haste to see him righted, despite her screams and her tears, she had helped him up, to his feet, and had taken his staff and handed it to him. She had not been able to lift it before that moment, as her brother had been able to do.

The moment had come and gone before anyone had realized what had happened, and that the clan’s future shaman had revealed herself. The ugly scars had appeared that afternoon, as had the puckered skin along Rira’s shoulder and neck, traveling as the poison would have in her veins, in her brother’s body. They had remained with her all her life, as a reminder that one did not mock the advice of others easily, and small misgivings sometimes had lethal effects.

Older, the clan’s current Elder shaman, and wise in many things that she had learned from trading with others who were not Bahmi, Rira’s wisdom came from the fact that she could see into people, see their fears, their ideas, and mostly, into the odd, ethereal thing called a soul. Upon birth, she knew exactly where and what the child would be, and said nothing to the exhausted mother and expectant father, but wrote down her thoughts. When the child grew, and was recognized by the clan as an adult, the scrolls were taken out, and presented, and burned as that life was behind them, and a new one beginning that did not need to be predicted.

She had only been wrong once, and that had been about her only child.

Every clan in the sands knew of Rira, as they knew the names of the Clan Elders, the one man or woman of each clan who led them and spoke for them during gatherings, and the shaman from each of them were known also. Every child learned them, and though they might never meet them personally due to travel or death or fate, they knew who they were. Rira, currently the only woman shaman with the rank of Elder, was easy to remember. All the children knew her before they could walk, because she always had a cleaned finger and some soft, sweetened chips of ice, which helped teething babies as she laid them, fingernail-sized and on her fingertip to the toothless ones, and later, as they grew, was a treat to help the children during what they considered boring clan meetings. Their fathers were obeyed. Their mothers were respected. Rira was beyond it all, and they would mourn her deeply when she was gone.

All the babies recognized Rira, blind, deaf or slow as they might grow to be, they all knew her, and there was always a smile when she touched a finger to their lips, and the predictable opening of those lips, waiting a treat, as they had as children.

Rira’s magick enabled her to do such things, and it was with great pleasure that she did so. It stretched back from when her own mother had put her in charge of her younger siblings, and one sister had been teething. Cool always soothed swelling or pain, and Rira had known, as had the clan, that her magick could help, and she had been encouraged to use it for small things, but as she had not been destined to be a shaman, she was not to be trained with it. So the tiny ice chips were all she was openly allowed to do, and sweetening them with the sap that came from squeezing the tiny seed pods on the palms helped to ease the first sting of that ice.

Always, she woke before dawn, and walked out to the water, and climbed up onto the wide rock that had been gouged with footholds after so many endless generations before her, climbing it in the same holes. Her staff in her lap, she sat cross-legged, and closed her eyes, waiting for the sun to come over the water. Most thought she was meditating, or consulting the spirits, or communicating with other shaman through the odd pendant around her neck.

Had anyone asked her, she would have told them she liked the way the sun felt when it first came up over the water, still cool, but suddenly blazing against her closed eyelids, and life-giving as the water and the oasis where the clan lived. It just felt good to be warm again, after a night of cool and dew and soft winds. She was getting old, and it felt better with each passing year.

She was not surprised when something came beside her, and sat down, and she did not need to ask who it was. Smell was important to the desert dwellers, and Peigra’s hair had an odd fragrance to it, from the last time she had washed it, scented with herbs. They sat together on the rock, shaman and young woman, both eyes closed, staring out over the water as twin sentinels, Rira with her oddly-wrought graying hair, the tattoo color working itself oddly into the remaining bits of honey and sand color, and Peigra, with her odd ivory-gold hair, in a pair of twin braids trailing down over the rock as patient snakes, waiting for the sun’s warmth.

They sat, waiting, and the sun came up as it always did, bathing the lands once again in heat and light. No one found it odd that the two women were sitting on the rock, though many would have considered it disrespectful of Peigra, had she been merely a guest and not the whispered vision that Rira had been speaking of for months now. “She has returned,” was all she kept repeating. “She must be brought back to us.”

And here she was.

Rira opened her eyes first, and looked to Peigra, seeing the youth returned to the face that had come to her, scarred, wounded and openly afraid to trust anyone. The bloodline wars of the other lands had done that, not the Bahmi, and it had taken time to earn the girl’s trust, but Rira had been the one to do so, and the respect between the two had been more than that of friends, more akin to a teacher and their student, and later, a mother and her child. Rira had openly loved Peigra, as had the clan for her caring and her willingness to bleed and fight for the clan’s survival, even when, sometimes, death was never beaten. No healing was ever guaranteed, no birthing survivable, no wound that could not catch infection and spread.

The tunic on Peigra was thin, and not old but of a quality Rira would not have expected on the girl, and she noted that both shoulders were upright, the right was not drooping, and would inquire on that later. She had already heard the others speaking of Baltik and the dozens of foals he would sire, and grinned. Baltik was indeed destined to go south, but not as soon as they wanted him to go. All in time.

The sand-leathered hand that reached out pulled at Peigra’s shoulders, and the cobalt-violet eyes with their emerald rims looked up, and did not resist the tug. Arms went around Rira’s waist, and the two held one another in an odd, leaning position, staring at the sun, starting to blind them, as it came over the water. The staff clattered down off the rock, down to the water’s edge, and Peigra kissed Rira’s cheek as she slid off.

“Will it let you?”

Peigra fell to the sand, and found it was not true sand but wet sandy silty muck, which splattered her leggings and her exposed legs, and she squished in it a moment, enjoying the feel of it between her toes. The staff was at her feet, and she looked at it, and then to Rira. Everyone knew the tale, that the staff could be touched, but none but a shaman could lift it, despite many attempts at people to lift what seemed weightless but became as heavy as the lands themselves in the hands of others.

“May I try?”

Rira came to the rock’s edge, still easily mobile, nearing fifty, and let her legs hang over the edge. “Will you be disappointed if it refuses you?”

From below, there was a bright laugh, and Peigra shook her head. “I’m not a Bahmi, Ta`na,” she said, using the Bahmi word that, loosely translated, could have been mother or respected female. By accenting the first syllable, it became the respect of the woman she called her mother, but by putting the accent on the second, the word was now a woman of respect and great authority, but not necessarily a mother. “It doesn’t matter if I can lift it or not, but I want to feel it, because I can.”

Rira motioned her, and Peigra crouched down. The staff, whomever had first discovered it, had found an odd tree, perhaps ten years, maybe fifteen when it had been struck down from whence it had come. The base had been jagged, so the story went, but constant pounding as people walked with it, in the sand, on the rocks, had ground it down to a flat stump, and the top had fallen off or been sawn off to create a staff even the tallest Bahmi could wield and still not rise above. Around it, in a continuing circular pattern, something, a vine perhaps, had wound itself around, digging a deep groove that the tree had begun to grow around, while the vine dug itself deeper and deeper into the tree as it grew wider. Some shaman of the clan had used the groove for ribbons, beaded leathers, painted symbols, and Rira left it as it was, having enough decoration, as she said, on herself to match the staff’s infamy.

Peigra touched the wood, feeling the familiar tingle. In the Before, the staff had helped her sleep, but she had never determined the how, because the staff had magick in it, and was inanimate, wood, solid and without life for only it knew how long now. Many hands had worn their oils into the wood with caresses and care, and she felt the staff as it warmed beneath her touch. Rira had once spoken it was a welcome, when the staff warmed, that it recognized someone, but how, or why, only it knew.

She knew it would allow it, before she set her other hand on it, but asking Rira had been imperative, as Peigra was not known to everyone in the clan. She did not know if anyone else from the Before had come to this clan, and there was heavy superstition about death that Peigra wanted to avoid.

She was also not a Bahmi, and about to lift the greatest, most sacred thing that the clan could claim ownership of. Conscious of herself, she lifted the staff slowly, but quickly, in an odd motion that kept it in her hands a moment, and with a great, respectful bow, she held it up to Rira as the old woman slid down into the silty muck.

Hands covered Peigra’s, and the gentle, leathery lips touched Peigra’s forehead, as they had Before, and as they were Now. “Now, we can continue what we had no time for. And this,” she said, giving the staff a shake. “This knows you are here also and has waited.”

“Waited for what?”

“In time, Ran`ta, in time,” she said, and took the staff. “For now, eat, you are thin, too thin. Do they feed you in this city of Meridal?”

“Meridian,” she said, grinning. Rira was teasing her, and rightly so. Peigra had not eaten well in the last several days, and was tired from riding again after so long locked in the city with Temur. Her thighs were not raw, but were stiff and complaining, and she tried to walk normally as she could. They walked along the water now, back to the tents gathered loosely in an oval with one end open to the water.

“You came with coin? Some? You shall make much from them,” Rira said, motioning with her hand up towards the tents. “They are selling foals of foals of foals that had not been settled into mares yet.” Peigra grinned at that, and nodded. In the Before, Baltik had not had the opportunity to go south, not with the war as it had been, but there had been enough willing breeders to bring their mares to him when she had returned to the clan.

“He’ll be unbearable,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But he’s not going to breed anything till he’s older.”

Rira stopped, and looked to Peigra, then up, towards where the mounts were tethered. “He is not yet grown?”

Laughter, laughter that made Rira’s weathered face smile as well, came from Peigra. Her braids shook around her knees as her head shook with them. “He’s only two, Ta`na, he’s not even out of his baby wobbles.”

To that, Rira gave a great snorting noise, and shook her head. “Immense he will be, and how will you get on him?”

“I’ll probably have to use a rock to get on him.”

“Find a good man to push you up.” Rira waited for something in reply, and stopped, and looked to Peigra, who had stopped, and was staring at her feet. Rira came closer, and touched Peigra’s face. “You were hurt, were you not?”

“I was, and you warned me, but I’d probably do it all over again if I had to.” Rira’s fingers touched Peigra’s shoulder, and the young woman opened her collar a bit, showing her the flawless skin, without the hideous scarring and poultices beneath the bandages. “It’s on him now,” she said, motioning up towards Baltik. “He’s got the same mark on his right shoulder, but I don’t. Only he knows what it means now.”

“Then it truly means nothing is stone, and even water can move a rock eventually. Perhaps things will be different, and you can live again.”

She frowned, and motioned beyond Rira. “Do they know? About what I am?”

“Some might suspect, but there have been several in the last few months, and much talk. As they were mourned, and are now returned, some are finding it hard to reconcile the living and the dead, who are now alive again. It will remain to be seen if it benefits anyone.” Peigra nodded. Rira would have been the one to know instantly when she had come back to the past; it was how the woman was, and how her magick worked. And her patience, again, had paid off.

They stood again, facing one another, teacher and apprentice, matron and maiden, surrogate mother and adoptive child, and held one another again. Rira inhaled the young woman’s hair again, and smiled. “I have you again, once again,” she whispered, sighing gratefully as the sun warmed her face, and she closed her eyes.

It was a beautiful dawn.



The clan, despite its proximity to the water, was not one who took advantage of the lake’s waters often, only in desperate times when game on land was scarce. Rira, in the Before, had insisted that Peigra show every child how to swim, as this rare oddity that had once been mocked had become a lifesaver if something happened to the clan’s village and the children could escape to tell other clans what was coming. And as with any mother, the knowledge that their children were alive, to grow and be something, was worth the cost.

Learning to swim had opened up a whole new realm of fun for the children in the Before, and Peigra had given special accolades to those who had come up with odd things from the depths as she taught them to control their breaths and dive for shellfish. Rira had developed a taste for them, only on days for ceremonies, and often sent children on special duties for her meal before she fasted. If one was going to fast, it was easier done on a favorite meal.

The duty fell on Peigra’s shoulders again, having to teach an entire generation over again how to not only go into the water, but to survive in it, and off of it. Eager learners they were, it also took some time to convince many of them to enter the water, even with Rira’s permission as she stood, knee-deep, in the water with them. There were also several mothers who had come to watch, perhaps to fish their children out if they started to drown, though without knowing how to swim themselves, what good that would have done remained to be seen. Two of them came into the water with their children, and sat in it, listening, curious as their children were.

Floating was easy, it was one of the first lessons Peigra had learned, to float with a tide if the river came quickly over the fields; it had happened twice, when a quick melt had been encouraged by heavy, warm spring rains and the waters had nibbled out a new channel to flow, taking it into the farmland. The road along the farms in Freemarch itself had once been a path the river had cut out, now long packed and filled in.

The splashing and teasing wore off when the children realized that to float properly, they had to be quiet, and had to suddenly contemplate the oddness above them, the bright skies that were often cloudless. Each child had to float for ten seconds, and was promised a reward when complete, that last by Rira, not Peigra, who was already getting odd looks from the mothers at not only being a guest but suddenly teaching the children in the water, which was not forbidden or taboo, but certainly not something that happened every day.

As had happened in the Before, the children loved playing in the water, and were not only eager learners, but quick ones, and many of the children were swimming on their own, albeit odd strokes, by the mid-meal that usually signaled a long rest during the heat of the day, when even the scorpions rested. Many of the children had to be dragged out of the water, and Rira stood before them on the mucky silt, demanding promises from them that they would not go in the water without Peigra, or her permission, and Rira got those promises and knew they would be kept. From Rira, no one would have issues, and Peigra felt no irritation, as it also put the matter on Rira’s shoulders if someone objected.

“In”, had been the only command, and Peigra had given a sigh and found herself lying on one of the reed mats, slathered by the salve for sunburns as Rira clucked at her. “You know better than to be out that long without your linens.”

“They were having fun, and I forgot,” Peigra admitted, and Rira nodded, but clucked her tongue also.

“You will be writhing in your sleep for some time.”
Peigra sighed, and nodded. Even lying on the reed mat, her shoulders were aching, sunburned through the thin, unbleached linen tunic she had been wearing, and she knew the itching she was feeling in her scalp was not just sand that had lodged there. Her head had sunburned in the past, and it irked her, the peeling flakes making her itch incessantly. She felt Rira’s fingers, smearing the salve into her scalp, and sighed, knowing she would need a long soak in the hot pools, which were on the edge of the clan’s boundaries, shared with their border clan.

Rira often went to soak her bones with the elders, and it would be a good time to soak the salve out when she went with Rira, for she would be going with Rira. As in Before, Peigra was with Rira, and unless the old woman gave her duties, it was her expected spot to be with the woman at all times.

The lack of any other visible apprentices was not something Peigra noted until Rira began massaging her scalp with the salve, after unraveling both braids and smoothing the hair out on the reed mat as her fingers moved along tired skin and skull. “Rira, who’s with you, here, in this time?”

“With me?”

Peigra motioned with a hand, wrapped in linen to keep the salve protected from bugs that might stick to it. “Staying here, with you. Shouldn’t there be someone else here?”

“I knew you were coming back, and their time was finished. They were sent to Nerik, to the east, where they came from.”

She tipped her head back, and it was pushed back down by gentle, but firm, fingers. “But how’d you know now was when I was coming? You can’t be without an apprentice, Rira.”

“There will be apprentices again, but no more for me. That time of my life has passed. My duty, now, is to train the future shaman for the clan.”

Peigra smiled, and closed her eyes. It would be a beautiful thing to meet the next shaman, and she drifted to sleep, her head being massaged by Rira’s gentle fingers. The old woman left her on the mat, wrapping her head in linen to keep the bugs away, and went to her own mat to sleep the heat of the day away.

Glancing to Peigra, she touched the odd pendant at her throat, nothing more than carved wood held against her skin with a leather strap that, with the right pressure and in the right place, could choke her or be pulled off instantly. “She has returned,” she whispered to it, and beneath her skin, it pulsed several times, one for each of the other clan shamans, and Rira pursed her lips. “Now, we wait.”

In gentle shushing noises, in a sharp cry and then in whispered giggles, one by one, the clan began to sleep, as it had for generations, when the sun was too hot to do much of anything but sleep. The children were always restless during the heat of the day, and their voices went quiet, one by one, as their eyes closed and their minds wandered out onto the lake, onto the sands, on the backs of foals not yet conceived, wherever their dreams took them. Their parents, grateful for the quiet, rested also, a respite that a few might use to get some private sewing finished, a meditation, a game of bir with another sleepless soul.

Rira tried to sleep, but could not, and turned to her side, watching Peigra sleep, the sadness that gripped her lifted, briefly, as she looked at the young woman, no, a girl, for this was the Peigra that Rira had never met in Before. The old shaman had met Peigra after the kings had slaughtered their own lands far to the north, and Peigra had been sent south, to parlay with the Bahmi for more men to be sent, more supplies, more horses. She had not been the only woman in that large group, but she had been the only survivor of the skirmish.

There were no small, razor-thin scars on Peigra's face in this time, her muscles had not yet developed the flex that they had in the other time, nor had her woman's shape formed out completely. There was such a youth to her, a step, a look, a laugh that had not been there before.

The oddness of the Before and the Now was something the shaman understood, all of them did, and they could look at an Ascended and see their past, their present, and the constant pain in every last one of them to prevent the past and forge a new future.

Not everyone had wanted to come back, and that was a harsh reality that those bringing the folk back had not anticipated, and were having to quietly attend to. Some of them were sent away, to keep them from the cities where they might sow discord, others suicided; Rira had seen the one who had returned to the clan, months earlier, and had been so lost that they had slit their throat during one of the naps. Coming back to their family, where siblings that had been elder than them were now younger, parents were younger, older, perhaps dead, someone else occupied their lands, their husbands and wives had moved on to other partners, there was an endless list of possibilities. No one knew exactly what had been expected from the Ascended, between battles, to occupy them.

She had known, months earlier, that Peigra had returned, as Temur had recognized her from his time with the clan during one of their exchanges, when children from the water were sent inland to learn, and those along the water sent to learn of the sands and their secrets. Temur had offered to take the confused young woman who had caused the machine to misalign itself, and whose unexpected appearance had thrown the entire process into chaos for a day.

Rira knew how the machine had been tampered with, and smiled to herself on her mat. Nothing was without a weakness, man, machine, god.

In the clan, currently, there were upwards of nearly a hundred, with an additional fifteen who were from other clans on their exchange. Most of them would be leaving soon, and Rira would be sad to see them depart, but their shaman, Twi, was young and would see them through their lives. He would grow with these warriors, and the two young women who were part of the group were outproving the men in many of the competitions. It was good to see the women better than the men, for it made them all stronger to see that they all had to work as a team, and the men had more striving to do, and the women had to learn patience to wait for others to catch up.

The clan had been hearing of Peigra for months now, of the time she had been with them in Before, and there were hazy not-dreams but dreams, visions, odd memories that some of them could recall of Peigra, and Rira had dismissed them until several people had asked, one morning, where the white-haired girl was who had been picking drakefoot by the stream. There were no young women with white hair, nor anyone in the clan who matched the description, and no less than half the clan had seen the girl around the grounds that day, doing many duties. It had told Rira that it was time.

The time had come to bring Peigra back to the home that she knew, not the home of her blood, but the home that was hers now. Rira had found the tattoo beneath Peigra’s hair, against the back of her neck, and had rubbed it gently, pressing her own magick against it as Peigra fell to sleep. Yes, it was time.

The pendant at her throat pulsed, and she touched it. It would take time, but they were coming. They would decide if Peigra was worthy, but Rira already knew, and had decided months earlier. She was not so old she would die tomorrow, but war was coming again. There had never been one of the horrors that had broken over the clan, ripping itself above them while folk scrambled, screaming to collect their children, what could be moved, unable to do anything but clear what could be until the terror opened, and the demons came out.

So far, the rifts had not come to the clan, but Rira knew luck could only hold so long. They might never appear here, they might while they all slept and they all were killed, only fate itself knew.

The clan needed this, and Rira knew she would be fighting her greatest battle since the birth of her child. She closed her eyes, a smile on her face as she sighed. It was good to be the shaman, as the clan had to listen, and to obey, and grumble as they might, they would come to see, in time, she was right.