Wanderer's Song

by P. E. Padilla

  What was that he was doing? He was trying to incorporate his choreography for the spells into his combat, but it cost him his normal smooth, efficient movement. She bit her lower lip as he received a cut on his forearm. She took a step toward him, ignoring the two animaru moving in to attack her. They sprang arrows from their eyes, almost as the same time.

  “Don’t you dare, girl,” Tere Chizzit yelled at her over the din of battle. “You’ll affect his focus and get yourself killed. All we can do is try to whittle down these others while he takes on the commander. Get your head straight. I might not be here to save you next time.”

  She clenched her jaw, gripped her knives, and got back into the battle, attacking one of the three creatures going after Raki.

  There was a sudden flash and Fahtin found herself several feet away and picking herself up off the ground. She wasn’t alone in this. Raki was coming up also, and Aila was on one knee with her left hand holding her up. Tere Chizzit, ten feet farther than them from the apparent source of the blast, stumbled to a stop.

  The animaru were worse off. The ones nearest Aeden simply were not there any longer. Those farther out looked to be damaged severely. All of them had been thrown back from the force of what could only have been Aeden’s magic. The ground in a ten-foot circle around him was clear. The commander had been blasted back, too, but didn’t seem to be seriously injured. He had to have destroyed more than a hundred of their enemies with that single spell. Could he do it again? Would he?

  The fighting continued, Fahtin engaging the creatures where she could, helping her friends and them helping her. Aeden cast the spell again and, being further from him, she kept her feet. Still, it pushed her away from him and her friends. She fought on.

  The world devolved into claws and teeth and the slashing of her knives. They grew heavy in her hands, and her movements grew slower. She lost track of how many times Aeden had used the magic to thin the numbers of the creatures. Her breathing became ragged and her vision dimmed. She didn’t even notice that her friends were not around her.

  She whirled around to try to find them, but they were nowhere to be seen. Instead, dozens of the black creatures surrounded her. Closed in on her. Disoriented, feeling like she was trying to control her body from afar, Fahtin brought her long knives up and prepared to take as many of the animaru with her as possible.

  A deep voice with the ring of command said something in a language she didn’t understand, and the monsters kept just out of the range of her weapons. The big, hairy creature that had been fighting with Urun, the other commander, stepped up in front of her, babbling something in that strange language. She didn’t understand a word of it.

  Too late, she realized she shouldn’t have been giving all her attention to the leader. Strong, rough hands grabbed her from behind and the sides as something struck her head, stunning her. Another blow from the other side of her head, and everything went black.

  The dark world was slowly replaced with one of dim light, as if dawn was breaking. Fahtin’s head felt like rocks had been battling within it. Opening her eyes caused spears of pain to shoot through the already considerable torment. She groaned and tried to sit up.

  She couldn’t.

  She lay on the ground, hands and legs tied. She worked the dryness from her mouth and moved her head gingerly around to loosen her neck. At least they hadn’t put a gag on her mouth. They must not care if she screamed or made noises. Somewhere in her muddled mind, she took that as a bad sign.

  When she was finally able to focus, she took in the scene. She seemed to be in the center of several hundred animaru. They were among thicker and taller trees than she’d seen for at least two days. The sun appeared ready to set, but she had no idea which way they were traveling. The big, hairy commander was issuing orders, by the sound of it. He noticed she was awake and came over to her.

  “Quis sas du? Tous so Gneisprumay?”

  “I don’t understand you,” she croaked.

  The creature chattered back at her in their strange language. When he realized she would not understand, he barked out more orders, and all his underlings got to their feet. A particularly large animaru, wide and tall and with skin that looked to be covered with some type of scales, picked her up easily and put her on its shoulder. Another command and they all started moving at a loping run. As Fahtin bounced on the thing’s shoulders, she noted the sun.

  They were traveling southeast. Away from Sitor-Kanda, away from where the others were going.

  51

  “We’re getting further behind with each hour,” Tere Chizzit told the others.

  “How is that possible?” Urun fell rather than sat on a moss-covered fallen tree. The terrain had turned to thick forest again. “We’re very nearly running the entire way, sleeping only a few hours a night.”

  “These creatures can move quickly,” the tracker said. “For all we know, they don’t sleep. Ever. All I can tell you is that they are covering more distance than us each day. Even if we ran until we were exhausted and didn’t sleep, we couldn’t catch them as things are.”

  “What are you saying, then?” Aeden said, his voice taking on a dangerous tone.

  “Calm yourself, boy. I’m not suggesting that we stop or turn aside. Don’t go getting all highland on me. I’m just presenting the facts as they are.” It seemed to mollify the red-haired young man. The muscles in his jaw relaxed and the hard edge on his eyes softened from diamond to good steel. The anger was still there, but it wasn’t directed at Tere any longer.

  “Fine,” Aeden said.

  “The way I see it,” Tere continued, “they have to be going somewhere. Eventually, they’ll get there, and then we’ll catch up.” Raki and Aila smiled at that. “But keep in mind, wherever they’re going probably has thousands more of their fellow creatures. A headquarters or nest or something, whatever it is they have.”

  “It changes nothing,” Aeden said. “We’ve rested enough. Let’s get moving.”

  Tere chuckled at that as he picked up his bow. These highland clansmen were all cut from the same cloth. It brought back memories, it surely did. As he put his tired legs into motion, all he could think was that he should have outgrown this decades ago.

  He looked toward where their prey was heading. Well, maybe “looked” was not an accurate term. He was blind, as blind as if he’d been born with no eyes at all. That didn’t mean he couldn’t see, though. It merely meant that he had to perceive things in a different way. For all that people looked at him strangely because they thought he could not see it, his way of moving about in the world was probably superior.

  Sure, he missed things like color and eye contact with other humans, but he could sense things around him equally well in the day or night. Light had nothing to do with how he formed images of his surroundings. A young man he had met once, just a few years back, had exclaimed that what he did was magic. The boy was not too far off.

  Tere had always been able to read the auras of things, the way they affected the field of magic that surrounded them. It wasn’t so much that he read magic from people but that he interpreted how everything around them was affected.

  It was like the entire world was covered in a thick fog, visible yet not obscuring vision. When anything moved through that fog, it swirled and parted in front of them, making it easy for an observer to see where they had gone. The thing was, that fog remained disturbed for days, sometimes weeks, and Tere Chizzit could read those “tracks” in the fog. It wasn’t too much of an exaggeration to say that he could follow the path of someone over solid stone a week or two after they had passed.

  The gift had served him well all his life, but especially since he had lost his eyesight. The interesting thing was that since that had happened, his perception of the magic field had increased, as if his body took the extra attention from his eyesight and put it into his talent. He came very close to precognition with individual movements. Intent, it seemed, began the swirling in the magic field even before the body mov
ed. He could easily read where a strike or a projectile would come and simply move out of the way.

  While this made him formidable in battle, it had practical uses, too. Hunting, he could aim for where the animal would be instead of where it was. He never missed with his bow. Never. Taken all in all, he thought that maybe he would choose to be sightless, given a choice. He’d been happy in his little forest home, away from others, biding his time until he died.

  But what about the boy, and the mission? Why was he still here with them if his forest was so wonderful? You never did know when to say no to a cause, you old fool, he chided himself.

  It was important, though. He had lived long enough to know that. It could be the most important thing he had ever done, and that was saying something. The man nodded to himself. Yes, he would stay with the group, see this thing through to the finish. He had taken himself from society, hidden in his forest, and pouted about the difficulties of life for long enough. Whether they knew it or not, this pack of would-be heroes needed him, needed his experience and his guidance. He would give it to them, freely, even to his death. If he was going to die anyway, he might as well do it as a hero and not in some ignominious way in the forest to no good end.

  Tere Chizzit hitched his pack up and adjusted it on his shoulders. They had some traveling to do. A girl needed him—them—and he would not let her down. Not while he still had breath and a bit of magic left in his body. Casting his senses toward the horizon and seeing clearly where the creatures had taken Fahtin, he moved off, each step bringing him closer to heroic action or death. Either one was fine with him.

  The world rushed by Fahtin in blurred motion as she was roughly carried along by animaru bodies. Greens, browns, the gray of stones, it was all hard to focus on as she bounced on the shoulder of the thing carrying her. She could only take a few minutes of it before she had to close her eyes or become sick. While it would be satisfying to empty her belly all over her captors, it wasn’t wise, especially since she had not been fed in the two days since they took her.

  Of all the things that could kill her, she wouldn’t have thought starvation would be one of them, but it was a real possibility. She was able to convince those keeping control of her to let her lie down at a stream’s edge to drink water, after several kicks to the ribs when she flopped to the ground to try it. Apparently these creatures neither drank nor ate.

  Fahtin wondered about that, how they survived without food or water, but it didn’t matter. According to what they had learned, all these creatures were un-alive, creatures of death. They were not dead, precisely, because to be dead you have to have been alive before. Right? They were simply not alive, and so they did not need such life-nurturing things as sustenance. It made her feel as if an icicle was being dragged across her bare back.

  She needed to make them understand that she had to have food or she would die. How did one explain to those not alive how she needed something to maintain her life? How did one explain colors to one without sight? That would be an easier task.

  “Food,” she said when the big, hairy leader came to check on her during one of their brief breaks. “I need to eat.” She moved her mouth like she was chewing, but it didn’t seem to make any sense to the beast. It said something in that language they used, but it was just as meaningless to her.

  The animaru didn’t talk much—they were not a loquacious race, it seemed—but they did converse a little. As they did, Fahtin had started to notice something. Some of the words sounded like others she had heard. Her father and mother were not scholars, but there were one or two in the Gypta family who enjoyed books. Jehira was one such. As the old soothsayer was teaching Aeden about the Song of Prophecy, she had mentioned other ancient passages, these in the language of magic, Alaqotim. It sounded somewhat like what the animaru spoke.

  Maybe the languages were related somehow, the animaru language and Alaqotim. If she could just dredge up a word or two to make them understand…

  The leader barked a command, a familiar one by now. It meant they were to get started again. Fahtin racked her brain. Some word for food. She had to come up with something, or she would never survive this trip. Even if she did remember, it was possible that it meant nothing in their language. Why have a word for food if you never ate? If she could only think of a word that meant to them what food meant to her.

  A thinner and taller animaru than the one who took her before picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. As the group started loping smoothly through the surrounding trees, Fahtin closed her eyes again. She would try to think as they traveled so that when they stopped again—if they stopped again—she would be ready to tell them what she needed. She had to. Her very life depended upon it.

  The landscape was lost in the darkness as the forces that took her traveled at night. They seemed stronger when the light was dim or gone, and they stopped less to rest. Could she figure out the word for darkness and use that to explain what she needed? Failing at that, could she lunge toward some edible root or fruit and hope they would understand her before they beat her into unconsciousness for being rebellious?

  The world spun even when they were stopped now. The hunger, an ache in her stomach at first, had dissipated into a mild throbbing and a complete lack of any energy. Fahtin felt like just standing would take that last of her strength and make her lose consciousness. The end was coming if she didn’t figure something out.

  Lying there, on a bed of long grass where her animaru handler had dropped her when they stopped, she let her mind wander. It was so hard to keep it on anything specific. She tried to open her eyes and look around in the early morning light, tried to find something that could be helpful, but all she could manage was to flutter her eyelids, forcing them open only to have them close again on their own.

  She was going to die.

  Fahtin rolled to her side, trying to ease the ropes that tied her hands in front of her. They went halfway up her forearm, forcing her arms into an awkward angle that made her shoulders ache. She had found that certain positions alleviated the pain more than others, allowing her to breathe almost freely, though not quite. As she went to her side this time, she noticed something she had been too preoccupied to recognize before.

  Rocking back and forth, she confirmed what she thought she had felt. Yes, right there. Something pressed into her side as she moved. One of her knives. They had not taken her weapons. Since they were foreign things to most of these creatures, they wouldn’t check for anything dangerous, just securing her arms and legs and staying clear of her mouth in case she tried to bite them. She had at least one of her weapons!

  But what difference did that make? She couldn’t use it with her arms tied like this. They might as well have taken her blades. It gave her some hope, though. As little as it was.

  Before they started moving again, she gyrated her body as she often did to try to relieve her cramped muscles. This time, though, it was with a purpose. When she was finished, she had to suppress a smile. There, in a false pocket at her thigh, she had felt something that gave her even more hope than before. The knife she normally kept strapped to her leg was still there. That one could be reached—albeit with great difficulty—with her tied arms. She kicked herself mentally for not checking before. Well, she knew now. Maybe she could escape before she starved.

  All she had to do was to get to her knife, cut her bonds, and then slip away from several hundred creatures when they weren’t looking. No problem.

  52

  Fahtin’s animaru captors started off again. Through the haze in her tired mind, she recognized that they did not move as quickly now that the daylight had come. It was true, the creatures seemed to derive power from the darkness. The next time they stopped, she would try to use that to communicate with them. Even if it earned her a beating, she was nearly finished already. Maybe they would beat her, and in her weakened form, she would just die.

  She thought she was ready to give up. It was obvious that her friends couldn’t rescue her. Ev
en if they came after her—Aeden would insist on it, even in the face of his mission—they couldn’t match the pace set by the creatures. She didn’t know what they had in store for her, but dying of starvation seemed an easy way to go. She was so weak, so weak.

  The rhythmic motion of the animaru carrying her stopped abruptly, jarring her out of her daze and making her open her eyes as she was dropped to the ground. She desperately tried to wrangle the blurred images into something clearer as activity sprang up around her. The black things were shouting in that stupid language of theirs, looking around as if confused. Unclear on what was happening, Fahtin nevertheless recognized this as her only chance to escape.

  The disturbance seemed to be coming from ahead and off to the right. As her captors rushed toward that direction, she had to curl up in a ball to keep from being trampled. Soon, the attention of all the animaru around her turned to whatever caused the commotion. None of them were paying attention to her.

  Fahtin rolled awkwardly toward the trees that lined the side of their path. When she reached the edge of the road and rolled one more time into the ferns and long grass preceding the trees, she had to close her eyes to fight off the dizziness her tumbling had caused. She clenched her jaw to fight the urge to throw up and closed her eyes until it passed. When she opened them again, they grew wide.

  Was that Aeden in the midst of the animaru? A flash of red hair became visible in between the creatures as they circled to combat their foe. Had her friends found her? How had they caught up? The pace her captors had been setting was faster than humans could possibly match. Maybe they had obtained horses.