Across the Dark Water

by Jennifer Lynn Alvarez

  Hazelwind nodded. “We thought it’d be easier for just two of us to sneak in and get you out.” He glanced at the

  stalls around her. “Where’s Shysong?”

  “Outside. We’ll have to find her, but this netting is too thick to bite through,” she whispered. “And Shysong and I can’t fly. They . . . cut our flight feathers.”

  Hazelwind arched his neck, rumbling. “They grounded you?”

  “Shh, just open the door.”

  He grasped at the complicated lock with his wingtips, then turned around and kicked it as hard as he could with both hind hooves. “By the Ancestors!” He shuffled from hoof to hoof. “That door is as hard as stone.”

  Dewberry tried next, with the same result.

  A sharp clicking noise drew Echofrost’s and Hazelwind’s attention. Standing at the end of the aisle was Koko. She stood on the balls of her feet, her breath coming fast, her eyes locked on Echofrost’s rescuers. She had an arrow drawn and aimed at Hazelwind’s chest.

  Echofrost fluttered her purple feathers. “That’s the weapon they used to shoot Shysong!”

  Hazelwind turned slowly and faced the girl. He lowered his neck and flared his wings, threatening her right back. Dewberry joined him, spreading her wings wide and striking her hoof against the floor.

  Sweat beaded on Koko’s forehead. She pulled the arrow

  back farther, and closed one eye. “Yuh aren’t takin’ that braya,” she said, her voice cool and calm.

  Hazelwind stepped toward her, and Koko exhaled.

  “No,” Echofrost cried. “She’ll shoot you. Just go.”

  Koko loosed the arrow. Hazelwind dodged to the side, and it grazed a thin line of blood across his hide. His nostrils flared, and he trumpeted a challenge. Koko had already nocked another arrow.

  Outside the barn, Echofrost spotted a patrol flying down from the night sky.

  “A patrol is landing!” she neighed. “Leave while you can. I’ll figure a way out of here.”

  Another arrow flew, slicing another trail of blood across Hazelwind’s buckskin chest. Koko advanced, and Echofrost realized she wasn’t trying to kill Hazelwind, just scare him away—but she also believed Koko would kill Hazelwind if he didn’t leave.

  He seemed to come to the same conclusion. “This isn’t over,” he blared at Koko.

  “She can’t understand you,” Echofrost whinnied.

  “Oh, she understands me well enough,” said Hazelwind, glaring at Koko. Then to Echofrost he neighed, “I see how it is. Next time I’ll bring more steeds.”

  Then he and Dewberry lifted off and soared over the

  stable girl’s head, out the door, and into the blustering heights where the Sky Guard Riders couldn’t fly.

  Echofrost watched them until Koko slammed the barn door shut, cutting off the glow of the moon. Slowly, Echofrost’s heartbeat returned to normal and then expanded with hope. Hazelwind had not abandoned her.

  17

  The Farmer

  “GET UP, GIRL,” RAHKKI SAID, CLUCKING AT HIS uncle’s swamp buffalo. He’d been a farmer’s apprentice for almost four full days now, and he was busy helping Uncle Darthan prepare a new rice field for the following season. His uncle was farther away, tending the mature plants on the lower plains. It was almost dark, and Rahkki had just one more irrigation ditch to dig before nightfall.

  “Get up,” Rahkki repeated. He was standing on the end of a trencher, which was like a plow, except that it cut one long rip into the soil at a time. It was hitched to his uncle’s swamp buffalo. Rahkki clucked at her, urging her forward. He’d named the beast Lutegar, which meant

  “lazy” in Talu, but he spoke to her in Sandwen. “Move!”

  Uncle Darthan’s rice farm was located northwest of Fort Prowl and bordered by the River Tsallan, which was wide and long and dumped into the black-sand ocean in the north. Rahkki’s uncle diverted water from the river to irrigate his rice fields, and his crops provided the bulk of the rations for the land soldiers.

  But heavy afternoon rains had further drenched the soil today, and Lutegar, who liked to wallow in mud, lay down in her traces every ten steps to roll in it. Rahkki shouted commands at her, waved the whip his uncle had given him, and cursed her to the clouds and back; but she merely swiveled her big ears. He tried to scare her forward with low growls and sudden movements, but Lutegar watched him with fearless eyes.

  Now Rahkki abandoned his perch and stumbled toward her. Placing both hands on her gray rump, he pushed. Lutegar bellowed but didn’t budge. He pushed harder. She leaned onto her side. Rahkki was dripping sweat, and each time he had to get off the trencher, his feet sank deep into the turned-up soil. His only pair of boots was soaked, the worn leather ruined.

  He marched to Lutegar’s head. “Up!” he commanded, pulling on her harness. “Please.” He grabbed her horns

  and stretched her neck out straight. She groaned, but her hooves didn’t shift, and the sun was dropping fast. Rahkki let go of her horns and walked ahead of her, thinking she might follow him. She didn’t. He stopped and stared at her big, flat face. “You would sleep here all night, wouldn’t you?”

  She blinked her black eyelids.

  “Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” he said, leaning against her. “You aren’t afraid of anything. You’re too big for the dragon to eat and too heavy for a Gorlan giant to carry away.”

  Lutegar whipped her short tail at a fly.

  Rahkki glanced at the rice bed where his uncle worked, pulling weeds, hunched over and concentrating. “You’re making me look bad,” he said to her.

  She groaned softly, as if to say: You don’t need my help for that.

  Stumped, Rahkki walked over and sat on her back. Lutegar didn’t like that. She heaved herself up and began walking. “Hey there! That’s better.” Rahkki squeezed his legs, urging her to walk faster. She turned her head to bump him with her horns, but her neck was too short. She gave a weak buck, but that only made Rahkki laugh.

  “You’ll have to do better than that to get me off.”

  Rahkki had ridden horses since he was two. The village kids teased him, calling him Rahkki the Spider because he stuck to unruly horses like a spider sticks to its web. It wasn’t the worst thing to be called, Rahkki had decided, except when it was followed up by the older kids catching him and throwing actual spiders down his pants.

  Rahkki patted Lutegar. “I’ll get off at the end of the field,” he promised her. “Just keep walking.”

  The swamp buffalo dug into her work and dragged the trencher, forming a deep ditch. Rahkki stretched his arms toward the disappearing sun. “I am King of Beasts,” he bellowed, and his voice rang out over the valley. No one but Uncle Darthan heard him, and his uncle didn’t look up from his work. Rahkki wondered what Princess I’Lenna would think of him, riding a buffalo. He shook his head. No, she wouldn’t be impressed. She wanted to ride the wild pegasi. I’Lenna was as fearless as Lutegar.

  While Rahkki pondered, Lutegar trudged obligingly to the far end of the field and then Rahkki leaped off her wide back. When he turned around to admire their work, his heart sank. The ditch was crooked. Since he’d been riding Lutegar and not guiding the trencher, it had fallen over and zigzagged side to side, chewing up the land so that the destruction was as wide as it was deep. The new

  ditch now cut into the future bed where the rice would grow—or not. Rahkki stared, wringing his hands.

  Just then Uncle Darthan arrived from the lower fields to inspect Rahkki’s progress. He beheld the torn-up field, blinking as slowly as Lutegar.

  “I’m sorry,” Rahkki said.

  His uncle pointed. “That doesn’t look like work. That looks like play.”

  Rahkki’s jaw dropped. His boots were ruined, he was soaked in sweat and mud, and he was pretty sure he’d ripped a hole in the back of his trousers. “I had no fun doing it . . . I promise.”

  His uncle frowned. “Maybe you will have fun cleaning it up.”

  Rahkki glared at Lute
gar. The clan liked to joke that he was a Meld, someone who could communicate with animals. But Lutegar was living proof that he could not. “She doesn’t listen to me.”

  Uncle Darthan peered at Rahkki, his sun-darkened face as still as the deep river that flowed behind his hut. “It’s you who doesn’t listen to her.”

  “She’s not a Kihlara, Uncle,” Rahkki sputtered. “She doesn’t have a thought in her head. I can’t get to her.”

  His uncle’s lips curved gently. “She’s certainly gotten

  to you.” He pointed at Lutegar’s right horn and whistled. The swamp buffalo trotted to his side like a well-trained pony.

  “Hey! How’d you do that?”

  Uncle Darthan and Lutegar headed toward the barn. “I’ll put her up,” he said, chuckling like a contented hen. “You get inside.” Uncle glanced up at Sunchaser. The pale moon was a thin crescent in the sky. “This is a night for dragons.”

  Rahkki shivered, realizing how dark it had gotten, and he sprinted toward his uncle’s hut. The giant, drooling dragons hunted on dark nights, and they were known to eat boys Rahkki’s age. But Rahkki was careful. He slept with his shutters closed, and he didn’t bait the dragons like Mut Finn and his friends. Teasing dragons didn’t prove anything really, except how fast you could run (or couldn’t).

  He froze when a voice called out his name. “Rahkki!”

  Looking up, he spotted his brother hovering overhead, flying on Kol. The chestnut stallion descended, and the wind from his huge wings whirled Rahkki’s hair. “What are you doing here?” Rahkki asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need your help with something. Go ask Uncle if I

  can borrow you for a few hours.”

  Rahkki’s heart surged. He didn’t care what Brauk wanted him to do; anything was better than spending another boring night indoors with Uncle. Uncle was kind, but about as exciting as the plants he grew.

  Rahkki trotted to the barn and asked Uncle Darthan for permission to leave with Brauk, and he was surprised by how quickly Darthan agreed. “Yes! And I’ll pack you a dinner.” He shut the barn door and they returned to his cabin together. “Call your brother inside while I prepare.”

  But Brauk was already striding into the hut with Kol. The big stallion lowered his head to fit through the doorway.

  Darthan broke into a wide grin at the sight of the chestnut. “Your Flier looks good.”

  “Thanks,” Brauk said, puffing at the compliment. “I’m trying a new grain that I bought from the Fourth Clan. It’s working—he’s shinier than ever.” Brauk pointed down. “And look at those hooves! They’re smooth as river stones.”

  Uncle nodded approval as he opened his larder and removed three strips of buffalo jerky, a rice ball, and a scoop of salted seeds. “Your mother would be proud of you,” he said.

  Rahkki’s eyes shifted to Brauk. He didn’t like talking about their mother, not with Rahkki or anyone else. “What’s done is done,” he’d grumble when Rahkki tried to question him about her. Brauk was thirteen—a man—when Reyella was assassinated, and Rahkki wondered how much his brother blamed himself for her death, and the death of their unborn sibling. But tonight Brauk just nodded, letting his uncle’s comment pass without temper.

  Darthan finished packing Rahkki’s dinner into his satchel, which already carried his empty purse, some dried sinew, a few Kihlari feathers, his blowgun, which he used to dart fish in the River Tsallan, and his game of stones. He was grateful when Brauk struck up a new conversation.

  “Are you ready for the giants if they come?” he asked Darthan. “You know they’re on the move. They’ll try to destroy the crops.”

  Uncle nodded with a wry smile. “I’m as ready as one man can be.” Uncle hired extra workers during the planting and harvesting seasons, but otherwise he ran the farm alone, until now.

  Brauk grunted. “The queen will send the Land Guard here. She’ll protect her—I mean your land.”

  The room went still again. The farm was another sore

  subject—but not for Brauk, for Uncle. After Lilliam assassinated their mother and then failed to kill her sons, their uncle had stepped in quickly to protect them. He swore his rice farm, the largest farm in the seven clans, to Queen Lilliam and her Land Guard in exchange for his nephews’ lives. Uncle Darthan had transformed himself from a wealthy landowner to Lilliam’s indentured servant in the span of a heartbeat.

  The queen’s greed led her to accept the offer, and all seven Sandwen queens were present to seal the pact at a Clan Gathering. Lilliam later regretted the deal because she’d made it in haste. Brauk and Rahkki had been young and harmless then, but each day they’d grown older and more dangerous, like baby tigers. Rahkki didn’t plan to seek vengeance on Lilliam, but he saw that concern in her eyes each time she looked at him.

  “This should feed you well,” Darthan said, handing Rahkki the packed satchel. “I added an apple for Kol and a slice of honeycomb for you, Brauk.”

  Brauk grinned, and the tension left the hut. Honeycomb was Brauk’s favorite treat, but rare. Only the First Clan kept bees, and they charged richly for the honey they collected.

  “I’ll have Rahkki back soon,” Brauk promised.

  “Keep him as long as you want,” said Darthan.

  Rahkki frowned, and Uncle patted his back. “Just have him back by dawn,” he corrected.

  Was he imagining it or did Uncle seem eager for him to go? Rahkki thought back over their last few evenings together. Was he annoying? He tried to sit quietly and stare at the fire, like Darthan; but Rahkki enjoyed humming and tossing fat into the flames, making them sizzle and spark. And when that got boring, he tried to be helpful.

  The first night he’d fleshed buffalo hides, but that ended when he broke Uncle’s carving bone. The next evening he’d made wax dolls using candles, thinking to sell them at the coming Clan Gathering, but his uncle took the wax away after Rahkki had set the curtains on fire. The following night he spiced the stew, not realizing that his uncle had already done so, and that meal had to be fed to the pigs.

  But Uncle was never angry about these mishaps; instead he taught Rahkki how to fix his mistakes. Overall, Rahkki thought things were going well, but perhaps Uncle felt otherwise. The man had lived alone for thirty-five years, and maybe he did find Rahkki’s humming and

  foot tapping and fire baiting bothersome.

  But Rahkki wasn’t about to wait for Uncle to change his mind. As soon as Darthan handed him his cold dinner packed in his satchel, he raced out of the hut with a wave, followed by Brauk and Kol.

  The stallion knelt, and Brauk climbed aboard, then snatched Rahkki’s hand, lifting him off his feet and dropping him onto Kol’s back behind him. Rahkki tucked his dinner satchel over his shoulder and wrapped his arms around his brother’s waist.

  “Ready?” Brauk asked.

  Before Rahkki could answer, Brauk squeezed Kol’s sides, sending the stallion flying forward. Rahkki’s gut flipped and he looked down, watching the farm shrink beneath his dangling feet.

  He gripped his brother’s waist tighter, sitting dead center on Kol’s back. The stallion’s ribs expanded and contracted between Rahkki’s legs, and his bright wings hinged at his shoulders, pressing down on the wind. Rahkki felt dizzy as they sailed over the jungle.

  “Want to fly higher?” Brauk asked.

  “No!” Rahkki yelled this so loudly that their uncle probably heard him.

  “Faster then?”

  Rahkki leaned against Brauk’s warm back. “No, please.”

  A long chuckle ran through his brother. Rahkki’s fear of heights was why he would never ride a Kihlara by himself, and the reason he would not join the Sky Guard, even if he had a full round of dramals to purchase his own winged steed.

  Brauk patted Kol’s neck and Rahkki noticed a purple feather tied to his wrist. Kol’s yellow one hung from his other wrist. “Is that Sula’s feather?” Rahkki asked.

  “Yes, I trimmed that wild braya’s wings so she can’t fly away. The
feathers will grow back in time for the auction, if she’s still alive.”

  Rahkki tensed. “What do you mean, if she’s still alive?”

  “That’s why I’m here. She won’t eat or drink,” Brauk grumbled. “You call her a warrior, but I say she’s a mule. If you can’t fix her, I’m going to put her down tomorrow.”

  “You can’t kill her, Brauk! She’s a Kihlara. She’s too . . . valuable.”

  Brauk shook his head. “She’s weak and untrained, worthless the way she is, and I won’t let her starve to death in her stall. That’s cruel.”

  Rahkki imagined the wild silver mare. She’d been

  fierce and wiry when he’d seen her four days ago, and he couldn’t imagine her giving up. Then he remembered her stillness, like a hunting serpent. She’s waiting for what she wants, he thought. But what did a wild Kihlara want? Rahkki thought hard and then he smiled. “I think I can help her.”

  18

  The Landwalker Cub

  QUIET FOOTSTEPS TAPPED ACROSS THE DIRT floor, approaching Echofrost’s stall. She was still reeling from Hazelwind and Dewberry’s visit earlier that evening. Shysong was back in her stall now, and she’d not taken the news well that Storm Herd was hiding in high nests they’d built in the jungle, plotting on how to help them escape. “We’re all going to end up captured,” she moaned.

  “Not if we keep our heads,” said Echofrost. It was late, and her exhaustion had returned. But Echofrost recognized the footfalls of Brauk coming toward her. She’d hoped he’d let her sleep, but he was back again, and he’d brought his small look-alike brother with him.