Chapter Five: The High Ones' Water

Kahvi had spent a few days in the Frozen Mountains, wandering around aimlessly. One morning she saw wild stags grazing, and approached them. To her amazement, they responded to the soft voice she used when trying to convince a tame stag to come closer – it seemed to her that these stags had once known elves as friends and riders. Indeed, as she mounted the stag, it became obvious she was used to carrying a passenger. Kahvi soon reached an understanding with her new mount. And having acquired a mount, it made sense to travel farther. With no particular goal in mind, she headed southwards.

After an eight of days since leaving the Palace, the pains of Recognition denied had severely incapacitated the chieftess. The feeling was like hunger for fresh greens in midwinter, like some strange illness that resided not in any particular area of her body but in her deepest soul. And yet Kahvi kept travelling. She had begun to have dreams, quite usual as dreams go, but every day after dreaming she saw landmarks she remembered from her dreams near her travel route. She started letting the landmarks guide her choice of paths and directions. The landmarks always pointed the same way, farther south.

In two eights of days, Kahvi was finding it hard to concentrate. Her every waking thought was of Skywise, much to her annoyance, and he even invaded her dreams, although the landmarks were still visible. She forced herself to hunt and eat, although even the choicest meats seemed to have lost all flavour.

One evening Kahvi arrived to a clearing. On the edge of the clearing there was a rock wall, and in the wall a cave mouth. Kahvi approached cautiously but found no sign of animals living in the cave. She made herself a torch and lit it with her sparkstones. Then she ventured into the depths of the cavern. To her surprise, she found it was shaped, either by a rockshaper's magic or a mason's tools. There were stairs leading to a high throne, and holders for torches. The cave smelled of dust – dry stone dust, the kind that didn't contain a single trace of anything that had ever been alive. Kahvi explored further into the cave.

In the very back, she found a still pool of water that reflected the light of her torch. Something about the pool seemed very familiar, but she thought it was only another landmark from a half-forgotten dream. Kahvi was thirsty, so she cupped her hands and drank from the pool. The water tasted fresher and cleaner than any water she'd ever tasted before.

Suddenly Kahvi felt so tired it seemed difficult even to keep her eyes open. She found a flat piece of floor and spread her furs on it. Then she put out the torch and lay down. Soon she was asleep.

Kahvi dreamed of the High Ones. They were all around the cave, surrounding her, and she listened to their talk and watched them work at their daily chores. She witnessed many of them using magic. She saw a female, golden-haired and beautiful, begin to recount a tale of the lives they had lived while travelling between the stars. Something about the story, the feel of endless wandering from one planet to another, seemed to strike a familiar cord in Kahvi's heart. The High Ones had been restless, perhaps even bored, constantly on the move, always looking for new challenges.

Someone interrupted the flow of the story; a child of the High Ones, perhaps three turns old, turned to his mother and asked: "Where was I when that happened?"

The mother looked at the storyteller for permission to speak, and the golden-haired one nodded her approval.
The Mother told her son:"My dearest petal, you were not yet sired when we were on the crystal world. Only after we had landed here did your father look at me with the eyes of choice and we decided to dream your name. We danced the dance of joining, and your shape began to grow inside me. For the time of two turns you grew inside me, and while you grew I spoke with you in sending. After that time, you were born from my body, and I told you your name and nursed you on my breast. You were like Maliah over there" – the mother pointed at a baby in its mothers' arms, "little and helpless. So are we all when we come to the world. And from a newborn you have grown to a big boy, and learned to ask questions. Now let us listen to Setten's story again."

The boy stared with eyes full of wonder, looking at the baby, then at his own hand. Slowly he nodded.

Kahvi woke from the dream, and looked around. The light of early morning was giving the cave enough illumination that she could see her surroundings. There was the throne, and the stairs, the pool… but where was the dried fish rack? Where the fire pit? Where was everyone, Two-Spear and Willowgreen and that annoying Redbark? Why hadn't Greywolf woken her and taken her hunting like he promised?

And then the thousands of years of memories hit Kahvi's mind, and she shuddered, as if her body had felt a physical impact. Sleeping in this cave, drinking the High Ones' water, her mind had been returned to the time when she last had lived here. She remembered everything now. Everything.

And Kahvi realized, finally, that she was not here simply trying to escape from an unwanted Recognition. She was here to find her soulname. But how would she find it? She'd never known it, there was no memory to regain.

Kahvi tried to think of stories about how others had found their soulnames. But the stories were more confusing than helpful. Finally she gave up and went hunting. She caught a ravvit and gathered some firewood. Back in the cave, she lit a fire and got ready to cook her kill. She speared the carcass on a stick and hung it over the fire. As she did so, a flame licked her hand, leaving a small burn. Kahvi raised her hand to her mouth, trying to soothe the pain. She tried to be more careful as she turned her catch over the flames, but this exaggerated care caused her meal to slide off the stick and into the flames. Kahvi retrieved it, but burned her hand again. In rage, she kicked the fire apart, and ate her meat half-raw, almost like the wolfriders.

The red, wet meat left an unpleasant taste in Kahvi's mouth, like blood and ashes. She went to the pool again, hesitated, then drank some. As she drank she realized the pain in her hand was gone; both burns seemed to have vanished when she dipped her hands in the water.

The High Ones' water. The healing pool. Magic.

And somehow the thought of magic wasn't repugnant anymore. Kahvi's mind felt instead a humble gratefulness to the pool for all it had given her. Life. Healing. Memories. And a clear draught of water too, not something to take for granted in the wilderness.

Kahvi dipped in her hands and drank again. This time she didn't feel sleepy, she felt more awake than she had ever been. Kahvi remembered when Aurek had given her the drug that tuned her mind into the Egg, and how he had instructed her to meditate. At that time she had been out of her body, and almost out of her mind, too. Now she felt instead that she was going deeper inside herself, into the secret parts of her soul. She was in a labyrinth, walking past events in her life in reverse order. The memories settled in place and she saw her life fold itself back into childhood. But the path didn't stop there, she travelled onward through fuzzy recollections of a mother's loving arms, into her very birth. And even further, through darkness echoing with the sound of an immense heartbeat, into the moment of her parents' Recognition.

There, at the end of the road, she found a light, and a name.

She was Roya. She had always been Roya, she always would be.

How strange… to travel all over the world looking for something she was carrying with her all the time.