After this, things began to change. The tribespeople, if not accepting of Skyleth, at least no longer seemed so fearful. He showed them good places to lie in wait for the shaggy red aurochs and taught them how a longer bow made their stone-tipped arrows fly farther and with more power. Ulanya’s eyes glowed warmly as she watched him do these things, and the rest of the year the days slipped by happily.
That winter Ulanya fell ill. However, by the time the spring winds rushed down from the mountains, the sickness had passed, and Skyleth soon forgot it. Ilinana was walking now, and learning to speak, and so took most of their attention. Then, one evening as green summer gave way to golden autumn, Ulanya told Skyleth that she was with child again. He kissed her and held her tightly in his arms.
“You are everything to me, Ulanya.” He murmured the words like a prayer.
She smiled, but said nothing in reply, and only brushed his cheek tenderly with her fingers.
Three days later she was dead.
The child had been ill-made, the wise woman said. It had passed out of her body, and in so doing it had torn something deep inside. It had happened quickly. Skyleth had been out hunting. By the time he reached their hut, Ulanya was already gone.
He dug the grave himself with a stone adze. They had laid her on a blanket beside it, adorned in beads and fine leathers. Skyleth knelt and kissed her still lips. Then he slipped off the ivory armband he had given her. “You need this to fly no longer, my love,” he whispered, placing it around his own arm.
Ilinana was crying, calling out for her mother, but none of the women would comfort the child. Skyleth picked her up, and she quieted as he held her in the crook of his arm. Many of the tribe cast dark looks in his direction. Their goodwill toward him had died with Ulanya, and now their faces were again filled with fear and suspicion. Ilinana they might have accepted, but for her pale eyes, which forever marked her as different. There was nothing left here for either of them.
As the others lowered Ulanya’s still body into the ground, Skyleth lifted his eyes to the horned peak that loomed over the valley. A strange thrill coursed through him. He had been forbidden to ever return to the lake. But not Ilinana. The People of the Dragon were her people now. Only they could show her who she really was. Tevarrek had said it would be impossible to go back. But for Ilinana’s sake he had to try.
As the others wept, casting the first handfuls of dirt into the grave, he walked away, holding Ilinana tightly in one hand while the adze slipped from the other to fall to-
*****
The vision shattered.
I gasped as my eyes flew open. For a long moment I stared at the adze; then I let it slip from my fingers. It had no more memories to tell. The throbbing between my temples was not so fierce this time. Perhaps the tea had had some residual effect. Or perhaps I was growing accustomed to the power of the images.
I knelt beside the bundle the men had brought to my cave and unwrapped the folds of rough cloth. Ivory bones glowed in the firelight, and copper glinted bright red. So it had indeed been Ulanya in the grave. A dampness trickled down my cheek, and I wiped it away. Strange, that I should weep for one I never knew, who was lost thousands of years before I was even born.
Standing, I moved to the back of the cave. To the casual eye it seemed only a narrow shadow cast by a spur of rock. I knew otherwise. Lighting a candle, I squeezed through the narrow crevice and into the cramped space beyond. Resting on a stone shelf was a cedar trunk. I lifted the lid, and a sweet, dusty smell rose upward. Here I kept the things I dared not let the valefolk see: crisp parchment scrolls, vials of colored glass, and clay jars filled with unguents and powders. These were my own artifacts, the tools of magic.