The Skull of the World Read Free Page B

to act, but to react. When the wind blows, the tree bends. When an enemy strikes, the warrior responds. The warrior is not the wind but the tree. You try too hard to be the wind."
    She bowed her head, accepting his words. She knew them to be true.
    "You shall set out on your naming-quest in the morning," her teacher said. "You must reach the Skull of the World. Listen to the words of the White Gods and return to the haven before the end of the long darkness, or die."
    Isabeau nodded. Fear touched her like an icy finger, but she repressed it sternly. He said then, in an unusually gentle voice, "You fought well, Khan. I thank you, for now I am released from my geas and can once more hunt with my comrades. I had thought it would be many years before I could once again skim in the chase."
    "I thank you," lsabeau replied. "It is not the art of the student but that of the teacher which struck that blow today."
    Although his fierce dark face did not relax, she knew she had pleased him. He said gruffly, "Make your preparations. I shall see you in the morning," then dismissed her with a gesture.
    Isabeau went then to the fire of the Soul-Sage. The shaman of the pride was sitting in meditation, her legs crossed, her eyes closed. In one hand she held a stone of iridescent blue, flecked with gold. A falcon's talon hung on her breast from a long leather cord around her neck. It rose and fell gently with her breathing.
    Isabeau sat opposite her, closing her own eyes. She felt the soft brush of feathers on her hand as the little elf-owl Buba crept out of the blankets and into her palm. She cupped her fingers around the fluffy white bird, not much bigger than a sparrow, and let herself sink into nothingness. Against her sensitive palm she felt the flutter of the owl's heart and it was like a drumbeat leading her down into a profound meditation. For a long time she floated in this exquisite nonbeing, her heart and the owl's heart and the pulse of the universe in perfect rhythm.
    So you go in search of your name and your totem, the Soul-Sage said without words.
    Isabeau felt another little stir of fear and excitement. Yes, she responded. The Firemaker thinks I am ready.
    1 shall cast the bones for you, the shaman said after a long silence.
    Thank you, teacher, Isabeau responded, her excitement quickening. She opened her eyes. Across the dancing flames the Khan'cohban's face was inscrutable. She passed the skystone in her hand through the smoke and dropped it back into the little pouch of skin she carried always at her waist. Taking a smoldering stick from the fire, she drew a large circle and quartered it with two swift motions. Then she poured the contents of the pouch out into her hand and brooded over them. Suddenly she threw the bones and stones into the circle without opening her eyes.
    Isabeau gazed anxiously at the pattern the thirteen bones had made in the circle. She then looked at the Soul-Sage, who was regarding the pattern intently. After a while the shaman pointed one long, four-jointed finger at the bird's claw.
    "Sign of the Soul-Sage, a good omen for your quest, so high to the roof of heaven," she said. "A sign of death as well as wisdom, though, and shadowed by the closeness of the nightstone and the sky-stone. Change ahead for you, like the change wrought on a landscape by an avalanche. Much danger and struggle." Her hand swept down to the fang and the knucklebone and the fiery garnet, and then across to the fish fossil. "Dangerous pattern indeed. There are things in your past and in your unknown which shall seize you in their jaws and seek to drag you under."
    The Soul-Sage had said "unza," another word with many different meanings. With a gesture out into the distance it meant "the unknown place," anywhere beyond the pride's boundaries. With a circling gesture over the head it meant "the place of nightmares," the dreaming unconscious mind. With a sweep of the hand toward the heart and then between the brows, it meant secret