The Very Best of Kate Elliott

by Kate Elliott

  She topped the rise to see hills rolling all the way to the eastern horizon. Dropping smoothly away from her horse’s hooves lay a long grassy hollow half in shadow with the late afternoon light. The ground bellied up again beyond the hollow like a pregnant woman’s distended abdomen. Edek had dismounted partway up the farther slope. He’d stripped out of his tunic in the heat and crouched with the sun on his back as he examined the ground. Above him, thick blocks of stone stood like sentries at the height of the hill: a stone circle, dark and forbidding.

  The sight of the heavy stones made her ears tingle, as though someone was trying to whisper a warning but couldn’t speak loudly enough for her to hear. A hiss of fear escaped her, and at once she spat to avert spirits who might have heard that hiss and seek to capture her fear and use it against her. She whistled again, but Edek did not look up. With its reins dropped over its head, his mount grazed in a slow munch up the slope toward the looming stones. He had his dagger out and was digging at the dirt. His quiver shifted on his bare back as he hunkered forward. What was he doing, leaving himself vulnerable like that?

  She nudged her mare forward. When the reins tightened and pulled, Belek’s mare braced stubbornly, then gave in and followed. The litter bumped over a rough patch of ground. Belek grunted, whimpered. Eyes fluttering, he muttered spirit words forced out of him where he lay spinning between the living world and the world of the spirits. A bubble of blood swelled and popped on his lips. The head of the farmer he had slain bumped at his thigh. Its lank hair tangled in his fingers. The skin had gone gray, and it stank.

  Edek did not look up when she halted behind him. She touched the hilt of the sword slung across her back. Once they reached the tribe, she would have to give it back to her uncle. Only men carried swords.

  “What if I had been your enemy?” she asked. She drew the sword in a swift, practiced slide and lowered its tip to brush Edek between the shoulder blades.

  He did not look up or even respond. He was trying to pry something out of the densely packed soil. The sun warmed his back as he strained. As the quiver shifted with each of his movements, the old Festival scars on his back pulled and retracted, displaying the breadth of his back to great advantage. She didn’t like Edek much; he was good-looking enough to expect girls to admire him, but his family wasn’t wealthy enough that he could marry where he pleased, and that had made him bitter, so in a way she understood his sulks and frowns. And she could still ogle his back, sweating and slick under the sun’s weight.

  Suddenly he hooked his dagger under an object and with a grunt freed it from an entangling root and the weight of moist soil. When he flipped it into plain view, she sucked in breath between teeth in astonishment.

  The sun flashed in their eyes and she threw up a hand to shield herself from the flare. Edek cried out. From Belek came a horrible shriek more like the rasp of a knife on stone than a human cry. Only the horses seemed unmoved.

  She lowered her hand cautiously. At first glance, the object seemed nothing more than an earth-encrusted feather, but as Edek cautiously wiped the vanes with the sleeve of his tunic, the cloth separated as though sliced. Where dirt flaked away, the feather glinted with a metallic sheen unlike that of any bird’s feather.

  “It’s a griffin’s feather!” said Edek.

  Kereka was too amazed and humbled to speak, awed by its solidity, its beauty, its strength. Its sacred, powerful magic. Only shamans and heroes possessed griffin feathers.

  He shifted in his crouch to measure her, eyes narrowed. “Even a humble clansman can aspire to wed a begh’s daughter if he brings a griffin’s feather as her bride price.”

  Kereka snorted.“Even one you dug up from the dirt?”

  “The gods give gifts to those they favor!”

  “You’ll set yourself against the mighty Vayek and the entire Pechanek clan? Who will listen to your bleating, even with a griffin feather in your hand to dazzle their eyes?”

  “Who will listen? Maybe the one who matters most.” How he stared! He’d never been so bold before! She shook a hand in annoyance, like swatting away a fly, and he flushed, mouth twisting downward.

  The feather’s glamour faded as the shadow of afternoon crept over their position. And yet, at the height of the hill to the east, a glimmer still brightened the air.

  How could they see the setting sun’s flash when they were facing east, not west?

  “Look!” she cried.

  A woman stood framed and gleaming within the western portal of stone and lintel. Sparks flowered above the stones in a pattern like the unfurling of wings sewn out of gold, the fading banner of a phoenix. So brief its passage; the last embers floating in the air snapped, winked bright, and vanished.

  Edek stared, mouth agape.

  The woman, not so very far away, watched them. She had black hair, bound into braids but uncovered, and a brown face and dark hands. She wore sandals bound by straps that wound up her calves over tight leggings suitable for riding. A close-fitting bodice of supple leather was laced over a white shirt. But she wore no decent skirts or heavy knee length tunic or long robe; her legs were gloved in cloth, but she might as well have been bare, for you could imagine her shape quite easily. She wore no other clothing at all unless one could count as clothing her wealth of necklaces. Made of gold and beads, they draped thickly around her shoulders like a collar of bright armor.

  A woman of the Quman people who displayed herself so brazenly would have been staked down and had the cattle herd driven across her to obliterate her shame. But this woman seemed unaware of her own nakedness. Edek could not stop staring at that shapely bodice and those form-fitting trousers even as the woman hefted her spear and regarded them with no sign of fear.

  “Chsst!” hissed Edek, warding himself with a gesture.“A witch!”

  “A witch, maybe, but armed with stone like a savage,” muttered Kereka in disgust. Anyway, even a woman who carried a spear was of no use to her.

  A shape moved behind the foreigner: broad shoulders, long hair, sharp nose. Of course no woman would be traveling alone! Edek did not see the man because he was blinded by lust. Let him hesitate, and she would take the prize. This was her chance to take a head and never have to marry the Pechanek begh’s son.

  Kereka sliced the halter rope that bound Belek’s horse to her saddle, and drove her mare up the hill. A Quman warrior rode in silence, for he had wings to sing the song of battle for him. She had no wings yet— only men were allowed to wear armor and thereby fly the honored pennant of warrior’s wings—but she clamped her lips tight down over a woman’s trilling ululation, the goad to victory. She would ride in silence, like a man.

  The horse was surefooted and the hill none too steep. Edek had only a moment in which to cry out an unheeded question before he scrambled for his mount. Ahead, the woman retreated behind one of the huge stones. The man had vanished. Kereka grinned, yanked her mare to the right, and swung round to enter the stone circle at a different angle so she could flank them.

  “Sister! Beware!”

  The words rasped at the edge of her hearing.

  It was too late.

  She hit the trap with all the force of her mare’s weight and her own fierce desire for a different life than the one that awaited her. A sheet of pebbles spun under its hooves. A taut line of rope took her at the neck, and she went tumbling. She hit the ground so hard, head cracking against stone, that she could not move. The present world faded until she could see, beyond it, into the shimmering lights of the spirit world where untethered souls wept and whispered and danced. Belek reached out to her, his hand as insubstantial as the fog that swallows the valleys yet never truly possesses them. It was his spirit voice she heard, because he was strong enough in magic for his spirit to bridge the gap.

  “Sister! Take my hand!”

  “I will not go with you to the other side!” she cried, although no sound left her mouth. In the spirit world, only shamans and animals could speak out loud. “But I will drag you back her
e if it takes all my strength!”

  She grasped his hand and tugged. A fire as fierce as the gods’ anger rose up to greet her. She had to shield her eyes from its heat and searing power. She blinked back tears as the present world came into focus again.

  It was night. Twilight had passed in what seemed to her only an instant while she had swum out of the spirit world.

  Pebbles ground uncomfortably into her buttocks. A stalk of grass tickled the underside of one wrist. Tiny feet tracked on her forehead, then vanished as the creature flew. She sat propped against the rough wall of standing stones, wrists and ankles bound. How had this happened? She could not remember.

  The scene before her lay in sullen colorless tones, lit by a grazing moon and by the blazing stars. Each point of light marked a burning arrow shot into the heavens by the warrior Tarkan, he who had bred with a female griffin and fathered the Quman people.

  The flaring light of a campfire stung her eyes. The man crouched before it, raking red coals to one side. He had a thick beard, like the northern farmers, and skin pale enough that it was easy to follow his gestures as he efficiently scalded and plucked her grouse and roasted them over coals. Grease dripped and sizzled, the smell so sweet it was an insult thrown in her face.

  Where were the others?

  Edek lay well out of her reach, slumped against one of the giant stones. The horses stood hobbled just beyond the nimbus of light; she saw them only as shapes. Belek’s litter lay at the edge of the harsh and restless flare of the fire. Still strapped to the litter, he moaned and shuddered. The woman appeared out of the darkness as abruptly as a shaman’s evil dream. She crouched beside him with both hands extended. Lips moving but without sound, she sprinkled grains of dirt or flakes of herbs over his body.

  Fear came on Kereka in the same way a spirit sickness does, penetrating the eyes first and sinking down to lodge in the throat and, at last, to grasp hold of her belly like an ailment. There are ways to animate dead flesh with sorcery. She had to stop the working, or Belek would be trapped by this creature’s magic and never able to find his way past the spirit-lands to the ancient home of First Grandfather along the path lit by Tarkan’s flaming arrows. But she could not move, not even to push her foot along the ground to kick the corpse and dislodge Belek’s spirit.

  Mist and darkness writhed between dying youth and foreign woman. With a powerful inhalation, the woman sucked in the cloud. Belek thrashed as foam speckled his lips. The witch rocked forward to balance so lightly on her toes that Kereka was sure she would fall forward onto Belek’s unprotected chest. Instead, the woman exhaled, her breath loud in the silence; the air glittered with sparks expelled from her mouth. They dissolved into the youth’s flesh as the witch settled smoothly back on her heels. She lifted her gaze to look directly at Kereka.

  No matter how vulnerable she appeared, indecently clothed and armed only with a stone-pointed spear in the midst of the grasslands, she had power. As the begh Bulkezu, ancestor of Kereka’s ancestors, had wrapped himself in an impenetrable coat of armor in his triumphant war against the westerners, this woman was armed with something more dangerous than a physical weapon. She was not the bearded man’s wife or slave, but his master.

  She nodded to mark Kereka’s gaze, and spoke curtly in a language unlike any of those muttered by the tribe’s slaves.

  Kereka shook her head, understanding nothing. It would be better to kill the witch, but in the event, she had no choice except to negotiate from a position of weakness.“What do you want from us? My father will pay a ransom—”

  As if her voice awakened him, Belek murmured as in a daze.“Kereka? Are you there?” Rope creaked as he fought with unexpected strength against his bonds. He looked up at the woman crouched above him. “Who are you? Where is my sister—?”

  The witch rose easily to her feet and moved away into the gloom. The bearded man stood up and followed her. Kereka heard them speaking, voices trading back and forth in the manner of equals, not master and slave. Two warriors might converse in such tones, debating the best direction for a good hunt, or two female cousins or friendly co-wives unravel an obstacle tangling the weave of family life within their tents.

  Belek tried again, voice spiking as he tried to control his fear.“Kereka? Edek?”

  “Chsst!” Kereka spoke in a calming voice. She adored her brother, son of her father’s third wife, but he was the kind of person who felt each least pebble beneath him when he slept, and although he never complained—what Quman child would and not get beaten for being weak?—he would shift and scoot and brush at the ground all night to get comfortable and thus disturb any who slept next to him.“We’re here, Belek. We had to tie you down to keep you on the litter. You’d taken a wound. Now, we have been captured by foreigners.”

  “I feel a sting in my gut. Ah. Aah!” He grunted, bit back a curse, thapped his head against the litter, and yelped. These healthy noises, evidence of his return from the threshold of the spirit world, sang in her belly with joy. “I remember when I charged that dirty farmer, but nothing after it. Did I get his head?”

  “Yes. We tied it to your belt.”

  His hand groped; he found the greasy hair.“Tarkan’s blessings! But what happened to me?”

  He deserved to know the worst.“The woman is a witch. She trapped us with sorcery. I think she must have healed you.”

  “Aie! Better dead than in her debt! If it’s true, I am bound to her and she can take from me whatever she wants in payment.”

  His fretful tone irritated her. “No sense panicking! Best we get free of her, then.”

  “It’s not so simple! The binding which heals has its roots in the spirit world and can’t be so easily escaped. Her magic can follow me wherever I go—”

  “Then it’s best we get back to the tribe quickly and ask for the shamans to intercede. There’s a knife at your belt. You should be able to cut yourself loose.”

  Obedient as always to her suggestions, he writhed under the confining ropes.“Eh! Fah! Knife’s gone.”

  Night lay everywhere over them. The fattening moon grazed on its dark pastures. Kereka clenched her teeth in frustration. There must be some way to free themselves!

  Only then did she see a stockpile of weapons—their good Kirshat steel swords, iron-pointed arrows, and iron-tipped spears—heaped beyond the campfire, barely visible in the darkness. A stubborn gleam betrayed the griffin’s feather, resting atop the loot in the seat of honor.

  The foreigners ceased speaking and walked back into the fire’s aura. The witch still carried her primitive spear and she was now brandishing a knife that gleamed in black splendor, an ugly gash of obsidian chipped away to make one sharp edge. She had not even bothered to arm herself with the better weapons she had captured, although the bearded man wore a decent iron sword at his side, foreign in its heft and length.

  The woman crouched again beside Belek.

  Anything was better than pleading—that was a woman’s duty, not a man’s—but the knife’s evil gleam woke such fear in Kereka’s heart that she knew such distinctions no longer mattered.

  “I beg you, listen to my words. Belek is the honored son of the Kirshat begh’s third wife. He has powerful magic. The shamans have said so. He has already entered the first tent of apprenticeship. To kill him would be to release his anger and his untrained power into the spirit world. You don’t want that!”

  Where there is no understanding there can be no response. And yet, the woman weighed her sorcerer’s knife and, with a flicker of a smile, sheathed it. Instead, she slid a finger’s length needle of bone from a pouch slung from her belt.

  Leather cord bit into Kereka’s skin, tightening as she wiggled her hands and only easing its bite when she stilled. She could do nothing to spare Belek whatever torture this creature meant to inflict on him. Witchcraft had bound her to the rock.

  The woman caught hold of her own tongue. With exaggerated care she slid the fine needle point through thick pink flesh. Then, with a delicacy made m
ore horrifying for the sight of her bland expression in the face of self-mutilation, she slid the needle back out of her tongue, leaned over Belek, and let those drops of blood mingle with the drying froth on Belek’s lips.

  He struggled, but he too was bound tight. He gasped, swallowed, grimaced; then he sighed as if his breath had been pulled out of him, and abruptly his head lolled back. He had fainted. Or been murdered.

  “Tarkan’s curse on you!” Kereka shouted.“I’ll have my revenge in my brother’s name and in the name of the Kirshat tribe! Our father will drive his warband against you even to the ends of the earth—”

  The woman laughed, and Kereka sputtered to a halt, her mouth suddenly too dry to moisten words. The skin on her neck crawled as with warning of a storm about to blow down over the grass.

  The witch gestured, and the bearded man came forward, knelt beside Belek, and dribbled water from a pouch into his mouth. Belek sputtered, choked, spat, eyes blinking furiously. The bearded man stoppered the pouch and dragged the litter over to rest in the lee of the great stone to Kereka’s right. He offered water to Kereka, wordlessly, and she tipped back her head to let the cool liquid flow down her parched throat. She knew better than to refuse it. She needed time to think about that knowing laugh.

  He returned to the fire. Tearing apart the grouse, he ate one, wrapped the rest of the meat in a woven grass mat, then curled up on the ground beneath a cloak. The woman settled down cross-legged to stare into the fire. Occasionally she fed it with dried pats of dung.

  Night passed, sluggish and sleepy. Kereka dozed, woke, tried to worm her way out of her bonds but could not. No matter how hard she tried to roll away from the monolith, she could not separate herself from the stone. She hissed to get Belek’s attention, saw his eyes roll and his mouth work, but no sound emerged except for a faint wordless groan.

  The witch woman did not stir from her silent contemplation of the campfire. Now and again a bead of blood leaked from between her lips, and each time as it pearled on her lips she licked it away as if loathe to let even that droplet escape her. She did not speak to them, did not test the bonds that held them, only waited, tasting nothing except her own blood.