Outlier

by L. J. Hachmeister

  Akoto groaned and stretched out, knocking her forward. As she tripped over her own feet, he righted her with his tail, bringing her back in close.

  “Thanks, buddy,” she whispered, patting his shoulder.

  I should help, she thought, seeing Natsugra attending to so many people. But what can I do? I’m not good at anything.

  But as she clung to Akoto’s fur, the soreness of her spider-bitten shoulder registered on a new level. She pulled back one of the torn flaps of her shirt. Instead of an ugly purple, she saw dark pink skin. They saved me.

  Taking a deep breath, she whispered to Akoto: “Stay here.”

  The midnight beast grumbled and settled into his spot in the sand.

  With tentative steps she approached the Chakoans. Her father’s warnings came to mind as she studied their weather-worn, painted faces: “Outliers are dangerous, Senzo. They represent all that our ancestors feared.”

  Sen hugged her arms close to her chest as the cries of the sick and injured escalated. Too afraid to look, she watched out of the corner of her eye as several warriors held down one of their own as another approached with a heated blade.

  “Their medicine is weak, their bonds forged in brutality.”

  An overly sweet, pungent smell filled her nose as a black smoke drowned out the moon. She traced the dark trail down to the pyre of burning bodies off in the battlefield. Several warriors ringed the flames, chanting in ancient tongues, their arms outstretched to usher the dead to the skies.

  “They are not part of this world.”

  Every part of her shook, from her head down to her toes. But still, the apprehension she felt for the band of shadowless, forsaken people did not outweigh the fear that drove her out into the wilds in the first place. With each step she took toward the Chakoan camp, she felt one step farther away from the Guild, from her mother and father, from her responsibilities as the sole child of the world’s next great leader.

  As Natsugra rummaged through one of the brown sacks, she spotted Sen hovering at the edge of the camp. “Come here, Sen.”

  Sen knelt next to the medicine woman, looking back and forth between her and the woman lying on a ratty animal hide. Wan and bleary-eyed, the woman moaned between half-spoken whispers, her hands squeezing and releasing something or someone Sen could not see.

  “There is a lot of disease out here,” Natsugra explained as she produced several different herbs from the pockets of her dress and robes and put them in a stone mortar. “Unfortunately, we don’t have access to the good medicine they keep in the Realm. But we do what we can.”

  Natsugra ground the herbs and dried flowers into a paste, adding water from a bladder and pinches of black seeds from one of the pouches attached to belt around her waist. The sour smell that wafted up made nose scrunch up, especially when Natsugra added the vega root. “Tilt her head forward.”

  Sen did as instructed, holding the woman’s cool, sweaty head in her hands, trying to be as gentle as possible as she brought her head forward so Natsugra could pour the brown mixture into her mouth.

  “That vega root you brought is very special. Only certain folks know how to identify it,” the bearded woman said, using her thumb to wipe off the excess mixture from the woman’s lips. “We don’t get many Outliers from the Virid denom; the Mazes usually keep Outliers from escaping the Gardens…”

  Sensing the woman expected a response, Sen answered what she could without delving too much into her origins. “I’m from the Guild.”

  “So, one of your parents is a greenthumb, the other a shock jockey. Interesting.”

  Sen didn’t like the silence that followed, or the gurgling in the sick woman’s throat. The medicine woman pulled close another one of her sacks, muttering to herself until she found what she wanted: a handful of capped vials containing various colored liquids, and a tattered old cloth. After selecting a few oils, she soaked the cloth and applied it to the woman’s forehead. Within seconds, the woman had enough strength to clear her throat before drifting off into a sedated sleep.

  “You’ll not find solace out here, child, if that is what you seek,” Natsugra said as she put away her things. “The outlands are unforgiving, as are we to those that cast us out.”

  Sen pulled up her knees to her chin, counting the sick woman’s breaths to counter the tension building in her chest. Surrounded by agonized cries, the stench of blood, burnt flesh and disease filling her lungs, she could not withstand Natsugra’s mordant stare. For the briefest of moments, she wished herself in her mother’s arms, safe under the Scylan tree.

  “Do you know why we are called ‘shadowless?’” Natsugra said, taking Sen’s hand and raising it up in the firelight. The resulting shadow stretched out over the sick woman’s face, and into the darkness behind her. “Because we are invisible in the eyes of God. And yet what do you see?”

  Sen tried to pull back her hand, but Natsugra held firm. The old woman’s blue eyes, pellucid as a mountain lake in the fall, cut through her like sharpened glass.

  “I—I don’t know.”

  The medicine woman pressed her lips together as if she tasted something bitter. Without looking at Sen, she struggled back to her feet, her knees making a popping sound as she straightened up.

  “You don’t have to stay with her,” she said, motioning to the sick woman.

  “Is she going to make it?” Sen asked, touching her pale arm. Feeling the cold, waxy skin, she immediately retracted her hand.

  “No,” Natsugra replied, turning away.

  Despite the millions of questions running through her head, Sen kept her mouth shut as Natsugra turned her attention to the other sick or wounded Chakoans.

  What do I do? she thought, too terrified to run back to Akoto and leave the camp, but equally fearful of staying. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere.

  The woman coughed, her head falling to the side nearest Sen. Through the slits of her lids, Sen saw into the woman’s glossy chestnut eyes, and sensed something beyond the sickly confines of her body.

  Curious, Sen placed her hand again on the woman’s arm, hoping to look deeper. Nothing. Only the woman’s ragged breath, and the yeasty smell of whatever disease ravaged her insides.

  Stupid. I can’t do anything to help her.

  Still, she recalled the odd occurrences as of late: throwing her arms around Akoto in the Dethros, and the halo of light blossoming out from her hold. Seeing the pulsating light within him when he was dying. Hearing the pale attacker’s whispered words in the din of battle—and reaching back to connect with someone or something she couldn’t name. Impossible things—

  —Things her father would dismiss and punish her for even entertaining.

  Who am I kidding? I’m shadowless.

  With tears in her eyes, Sen scooted closer to the dying woman, setting her straight, and positioning her body in a way she thought would be most comfortable.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, touching the woman’s stringy blonde hair. She set her other hand in the sick woman’s frigid grip. “I wish I could do more.”

  As the cries and moans of the Chakoans died down, Sen saw more than the firelight reflecting off the dying woman’s unseeing eyes. She saw herself, the same small and wiry girl she’d always been, with a shadow that cast out farther than she could see.

  Chapter 6

  Sahib caught up to Nya at the mouth of the river where the terrain began to change. Patches of dirt and red sand gave rise to hardy grasses, shrubs, and sun-bowed trees. Rock spires grouped together, fabricating long channels threaded by rushing winds and water. Just a little bit farther and the walls would come together, creating the formidable maze of the Ko’pai canyon lands.

  “Nya,” he called out. When she wouldn’t stop, he ran up beside her and grabbed at her arm. “You shouldn’t do this alone.”

  “Go back. Osan can’t spare you,” she said, pushing back the low hanging branches of the brittlepines, not caring if the young man got out of the way or not.

/>   “No more than he can you.”

  Furious, she reared around and grabbed Sahib by the throat and pinned him against the tree. “This isn’t a time to lick our wounds,” she said through gritted teeth. “If we don’t act now, we’ll be wiped out.”

  The younger warrior pawed at her hands, veins popping out on his forehead as he gasped for air.

  Realizing herself, Nya let go. Sahib fell to his knees in a bed of grass, heaving and coughing until he righted his breath.

  Nya looked up, through the tangle of the treetops, to the waking sky. Blue light shuttered out all but the brightest stars. Can’t stop. Only an hour left before he heads back to the Realm.

  Finding Sulo wouldn’t be hard, but in her condition, and without a bribe, she didn’t think he’d take her seriously.

  A hand grasped her leg. Nya looked down. Though he didn’t look directly at her, Sahib offered up a half roll of bread.

  “I’m not trying to stop you,” he rasped, his cheeks suffused with blood.

  Nya refused to feel anything, for the boy, for their situation, or how delicious that week-old bread looked in his dirty hands. But she needed to eat.

  Take it. You can’t appear weak in front of Sulo.

  Nya accepted the bread and offered Sahib a hand up.

  “What did Osan tell you?” she asked.

  Brushing off his animal skins and re-securing his weapons, Sahib nodded to the west. “That you want to contact the Shifter. You’re worried about what happened to the Soushin could happen to us. Osan only agreed to let you go as long as you took someone with you… not that you listened.”

  “You’re here now, aren’t you?” she said as she downed the bread. Sahib rolled his eyes. “Stay close to me. And when we meet with Sulo, you’re not to say a word.”

  “What is he?” Sahib asked as he ran behind Nya alongside the river.

  Sometimes she forgot how young Sahib was. Cast out of his home at fourteen like the rest of them, the Swarm reject had only been with the Chakoas for two years, but in that short time, he had made a name for himself as a warrior in the outlands. Faster than any Outlier, he could run down a deerkat, and wasn’t too bad with a bow and arrow. But even though he had been tested and proven in the wilds, he had yet to engage in the clandestine world of subversion and espionage.

  Nya slowed to a stop, touching the damaged bark of one of one of the brittlepines. Dragging her fingers over the scuff marks, she remembered her first—and almost last—encounter with the infamous Shifter.

  “A bully bear…” Sahib said, touching the denuded bark of another tree. “Wow. How does he move in and out of the Realm? Isn’t he branded?”

  Ignoring his questions, she looked for other clues of Sulo’s presence. A few discarded seeds from a yellowberry bush. Tufts of soft brown hair and golden quills lodged into the thorny branches of the river bushes. But most importantly, the distinctive claw marks and five-toed paw imprints in the sandy mud of the riverbank.

  He’s blowing his summer coat, she thought. And fattening up for winter.

  “I mean, wouldn’t a powerful Shifter like that be assigned to one of the denom leaders? Or a world council member?”

  Annoyed, Nya turned to Sahib. “He’s charged to protect one of the Virid sages who happens to have a lot of interest in ‘forbidden’ outland vegetation and will turn a blind eye.”

  That seemed to satisfy the kid, at least enough to shut him up for the moment.

  Nya scanned their surroundings. The multi-hued canyon walls, carved by nature over millions of years, held secrets and dangers that in optimal conditions she’d take no less than ten warriors. Even the other Outlier clans steered clear, fueled by their own myths and legends of the lost souls and demon spirits that lurked in the twisted stone maze of the Ko’pai.

  I hate this place, she thought as the first rays of morning light touched the vast expanse of sandstone and surreal, time-sculpted rock formations. In another time, perhaps in another life, she might have appreciated the compressed layers of deep reds and burnt oranges of the noble stone walls, or tenacity of each tree and bush that staked their claim to meager plots or crevices near the winding river. But acknowledging beauty—in any form—went against her core beliefs. After all, nothing lasted forever.

  “Even the mountains will fall,” she could hear Sho say.

  Movement up ahead. Nya sensed it before Sahib and pulled him back behind a pile of boulders to wait to see who or what emerged.

  Grunting, huffing. A sizeable animal lumbered through the brittlepines, knocking down hearty branches with its bulky frame. But as Sahib drew an arrow, she spotted the golden-brown bear, and stepped out from behind the rocks.

  “Nya—”

  “His eyes. Look,” she said, pointing at the bear’s face as it reared back on its hind legs and sniffed the air.

  Sahib lowered his bow and arrow as his jaw fell agape. She doubted he understood what she was trying to point out as the bully bear snarled and dropped back down on all fours, but it didn’t matter.

  That’s old Sulo alright, she thought, seeing his distinct eyes that once reminded her of the first buds of spring, the kind of vibrant green that shook away the long hardship of winter. But knowing him now, seeing how the decades of slavery eroded what little was left of his humanity, she saw something different.

  “Peace, Sulo,” she said, keeping one hand on her weapons belt, and the other in front of her, palm facing the aggravated bully bear. Keeping her voice even and shoulders relaxed, she continued to talk to him as the quills on his shoulders and back raised. “It’s Nya, from clan Chakoa. I come with concerning news. I need your help.”

  The bear scratched at the mud and sand, retracting his lips over rows of serrated teeth.

  Why isn’t he changing back?

  Out of the side of her eye she spotted Sahib shifting his weight and tensing his muscles.

  Something’s not right.

  “It’s Nya, Sulo. I need your help,” she said, losing the calm in her voice. The bully bear slapped his paws on the ground, unleashing a roar that shook the walls of the canyon. “Come on, dammit—I don’t have time for this!”

  Nya rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and spread out her arms, exposing the scars and tattoos that marked more than her rite of passage into the Chakoan clan, or her many battles. “Wake up, Sulo! You’re not the only one who’s pissed off.”

  The bear shuddered, then groaned. A horrible grating sound reverberated off the canyon walls as bones shrunk and muscles deflated, brown fur and golden quills retracting and softening into tan skin. When the transformation finished, Sulo sat naked on the other side of the river, covered in a shimmering film, heaving for breath.

  “What was that all about?” Nya said, pulling her sleeves back down.

  Sulo shook his head and wiped the film from his eyes. Most days she liked him, but today she couldn’t find the patience to wait for him to sort himself out from his animal.

  “Wasn’t expecting to see you until next month,” he said after hawking up something thick from his throat and spitting it on the ground next to him. “Can’t sneak up on a bear like that.”

  “Thought you had better control.”

  Sulo quirked up an eyebrow at her. Not many people—especially an ungifted Outlier—had the gall to antagonize a Shifter, let alone one that could transform into a bully bear.

  “I’ll lose myself to the bear soon enough,” he said, leaving any hint of pity out of his voice as he casually draped an arm over one of his bent knees. “But you—you won’t make it past winter with the animal eating up your insides.”

  As they exchanged a heated silence, Sahib came up to her side, nervously looking at her for direction. He didn’t understand the code of conduct, the measures that each of them had to take to ensure the other hadn’t gone soft—hadn’t turned on their true loyalties.

  “You’re still a thorn in my side”

  “And you’re still too easy,” Sulo said, standing to meet her as she cr
ossed the river. After they had clasped forearms, he looked to Sahib. “Who’s this?”

  “Another thorn,” she said, crossing her arms as Sahib offered his arm in greeting to the Shifter.

  Instead, Sulo grabbed the young warrior by the shoulders and assumed an overly serious tone. “You should learn to keep better company, kid. Nya isn’t known for her good graces and charm.”

  Nya made a mental note to punish Sahib later for grinning. “I need your help.”

  The Shifter ran one hand through his gray-and-black speckled hair as he scratched at the scruff of his grizzly face. “I figured as much. Nobody has seen or heard from Lord Vulgis in months. There’s all sorts of conspiracy talk between the denom elders.”

  “I know; I’ve heard the border guard rumors. Something’s happening within the Order of Nezra. I don’t like any of it.”

  “But that’s not why you came here,” he said, his eyes finding the fresh stains on her tunic and trousers. She caught him sniffing the air again, his inner predator heeding the call of blood.

  “There’s new sickness,” she said, recalling the battle near the spires. Whatever happened to the Soushin seemed beyond what regular sickness could do. She had never seen skin sapped of color like that before—at least not among the living—nor such impossible contortions and mobility from limbs bent in the wrong direction. It seemed like dark magic, an illness spun out of ire and curse; a feat only one denom could manage.

  As she described the battle to Sulo, she watched his reaction, gauging what little she could from his stolid gaze. An older Shifter, Sulo had endured over three decades of slavery, outlasting most of his kin, and bearing the burden of his experiences alone. He didn’t react to her tale of bloodshed, or even to her descriptions of the Soushins’ appearance—but he did stop her when she mentioned her encounter with the dying blue elk in the Dethros.

  “Are you sure of what you saw?”

  The question infuriated her, and she didn’t hide it. “You know better than to doubt me.”

  Sulo arched his back, sunlight reflecting off his naked body. Refusing to avert her eyes, she stared him down, even as he stretched out his arms and legs.