Tarashana Rachel Neumeier (top 10 motivational books TXT) 📖

with us—the other inVotaro warrior; a great-uncle of mine, my father’s mother’s brother; and a distant female cousin, one of the oldest women among the inGara, whom everyone respected; and some others.

“Ryo, good,” Geras said, holding a bowl of berry tisane out to me. “We’re telling stories, or trying to; come help me out with my taksu so I don’t make a complete fool of myself.”

The evening was unexpectedly good. Geras told a story from the summer country, about a clever farmer who set himself against a band of bandits. My great-uncle told a story from the time when he was young, concerning the ending of a disagreement between two families through the work of two young women, each a daughter of one of those families. My mother told a story she had learned from the poet from the east, about a boy who, alone in the winter forest with only a sledge and a team of three dogs, outwitted a white tiger and brought home five of its whiskers to give to his five sisters. I had to agree that this was a good tale, cheering with everyone else when the boy snatched the whiskers from the tiger’s jaw and got away.

No one spoke of the Tarashana woman who was a sorcerer, or of anything else unpleasant or worrisome or important.

So the evening was good, and the night pleasant. The day after that, my father and my mother and some other people stayed in that camp, but Aras and I and many of the younger people rode on along the lakeshore until we came to the marshes at the tip of the lake. We set our camp there. We came to the place as the Sun set his foot on the western edge of the world, with just enough time to make ourselves comfortable before his light departed the land of the living.

We stayed at that camp for one full day. We heard wolves, and saw one family that came to the lake to hunt and drink. The wolves knew we were there, for wolves are aware of everything that moves in their territory. The mother wolf came close and watched us carefully. Etta set out a marmot already cleaned for roasting, and the mother wolf took that offering before the wolves disappeared back into the reeds of the bog.

“For luck,” Etta explained to Aras, when he raised an eyebrow. “It is always good when the wolves sing to the Moon and tell her we are generous people.”

I sparred Iro again, twice. He had continued to be very polite to me, but by this time I knew he would set aside every kind of deference when we sparred. The first match, I won. The second, he did. We were very closely matched, and both of us wanted to win. I thought about this, and about my sister saying we were too much alike to be friends. I could not decide whether she was right, but I saw that all the inGeiro people respected Iro. Even warriors with more winters deferred to him.

For the first time, I realized that I sometimes expected older warriors to defer to me, and that they usually did. For the first time in many days, I thought of how I had told the warriors pursuing Tano that I wanted to take the decision regarding his fate on myself. I had known they would agree, even though they were all older than I. At the time, I had not even found that surprising.

I did not ask Aras whether he thought Iro and I were alike.

 -14-

The next day, we rode back around the marshes. My father and my mother had already ridden back toward the mountains. No one else had accompanied them; everyone was busy making this camp into a more comfortable place where everyone could live for a longer time. The people who were making the bigger camp wanted us to stop and talk to them, but I was impatient—we were all impatient. Now that we had better reason to believe the woman was not evil, everyone wanted to understand her story.

So we set a brisk pace, declining to halt for more than the briefest moment. No one disagreed—or rather, those who were traveling north all agreed. Etta would come all the way, of course; she would never choose to stay back when she could go forward. Iro would come if Etta did; no one had to say so. But the tasks necessary to arrange the larger camp would take many hands, and besides, many people did not want to go near a woman they now knew was a sorcerer—and hesitated to stay near Aras as well. So in the end, only a small group continued toward the mountains: Aras and Geras, my sister and Iro, and I.

So small a group could ride fast. We pressed our pace, passing more wagons that were making their way along the lakeshore, and finally came up with my father and my mother midway through the afternoon. My father nodded a welcome as we came to ride with them, showing us a palm-up gesture to say no one needed to greet him formally. Aras nudged his pony, going to ride beside my father. Geras followed him, and Etta drew her pony in beside our mother. This left me suddenly riding beside Iro, with no one else too near.

I said after some time, “Etta thinks you will someday be the lord of the inGeiro.”

He kept his gaze directed to the land before and around us. “No one but the gods can know what the coming years hold. But if no mischance comes to me, then it may happen in that way.”

“Perhaps it may,” I agreed. “In your judgment, who was most at fault for the problem that came between the inGara and the inTasiyo?”

This time Iro glanced at me. Then he