Mistress of Animals

by Myers, Karen

  The bigger problem had been the occasional encounter with Rasesni priests in the towns they passed through, wherever a temple had been rededicated to Rasesni gods. The news of events at the north end of Neshilik, and the death of the Voice, the wizard-tyrant that had so threatened Rasesdad, had spread from the temple school in Gonglik, and along with it Penrys’s role in his defeat, the one that had led to a Kigali tailor referring to her as “Destroyer of Demons,” the somewhat comic title she was still living down with Najud.

  These priests had wanted to make a fuss once they realized who they were, and more than once Penrys had been grateful to the tailor’s wife for the scarves she wore around her neck, obscuring the chain that marked her. She was very tired of explaining to them that, yes, the Voice had also worn a chain like hers but, no, she didn’t know who he was.

  She hoped to spend a year or so in sarq-Zannib, some of it with Najud’s family, before deciding what she should do next. If Najud would have her that long…

  Would their intimacy survive once they were back with his people and no longer alone on the trail? If she would be moving on in a few months anyway, maybe she should encourage it to attenuate into a professional relationship, one wizard to another.

  That would be wiser—he would be settling with his clan, as most Zannib wizards do, now that he was a master wizard and no longer a journeyman, and what could she offer him that would fit his life? The endless circle of the annual migration? Children? Whatever she was, she doubted she could bear him children, and this was a man who wanted them, who had deferred them too long. She didn’t want to watch him make his choice of a wife, and she couldn’t stay indefinitely—there was no place for her there.

  She wasn’t ready to give him up, not yet—she’d been alone far too long for that—but she was determined to try.

  CHAPTER 3

  “We should bring what we can with us,” Najud said.

  He was reluctant to disturb the packs at the base of the lud in the morning, especially since someone had gone to the effort to arrange them there, but there was no point leaving everything to rot, not when they had capacity in their pack train now that some of the fodder and fuel had been consumed.

  “We can at least get it off the pass and take it to the clan.”

  “Do you know which clan it is?” Penrys asked.

  “I know the markings.”

  He showed her the arc of the world-bow, the blessing after rain, cut into the leather of the packs. “That’s Kurighdunaq, my cousin Zyebirs’s clan. My mother’s sister Qizrahi married into it, to everyone’s surprise. It’s unusual to marry out-tribe like that—made quite a stir when she brought her herds into their bloodlines.”

  “Is that the clan we were hoping to meet?”

  He nodded, unhappily. For all he could tell, his cousin’s pack was here somewhere, and he among the missing. He’d never met the man, and now he feared he never would.

  “You can see the zamjilah, the eye-of-heaven, on our goods, for my clan. That’s what we call the spoked ring in the center of a Zannib kazr, where the smoke rises up.”

  He would be glad to shift to a warm, round kazr from the flimsy traveling tent they were using, once he could buy or make one. Waiting for one until he reached his family was not appealing, not as the weather got colder.

  “I didn’t know what that was,” Penrys said. “Thought the symbol might be a wheel.”

  He kept forgetting she was a foreigner to his land. The intimacy of the mind-speech and her fluency with his language made it seem as though they knew each other well and, of course, there was the sharing of their bodies. But she was still a stranger, not some Zan woman, considering a marriage. And he was years past the sudden, impulsive passions that snatched a woman from around the fire and arranged with the tayujdaj, the marriage broker, to speak with her family and count her herds.

  And then, they were both bikrajab, wizards, and she something alien and strong and solitary, with that chain around her neck and her unknown origins.

  There were so few woman like him. He could live alone, or try to make a life with a mind-deaf woman, one who would dislike and resent the differences between them, the way the old songs demonstrated. He’d always expected to end up unmarried, settled in his clan with all of its families and children, making a fuss over his nephews and nieces and maybe sharing time with a widow, now and then, to keep away the loneliness.

  Penrys thought the donkeys he was bringing home, to breed mules with, were the main purpose of his present little caravan, and that she was just keeping him company to learn more about the Zannib and their practices. He didn’t dare tell her the rest of his plan, that he thought of her as a cautious wild creature that he was luring along, crumb by crumb, hoping to make her comfortable in the warmth of his family, since she had none, hoping she might stay and build something with him, anything.

  And like any wild animal, he had to be careful not to alarm her. He didn’t want her to feel his attention on her, the way the hunted animal can tell it’s being watched. When they mind-shared, he sensed her withdrawing a little more each day, as though she were anticipating a parting, and it worried him—he wasn’t ready to bring a discussion about the future into the open, and scare her away.

  “Come, help me stuff these packs into the donkey loads. We won’t look into their contents now—that’s the clan’s business, not ours. Then you can help me pile some rocks on that horse, once I cut its tack off and free it from constraint.”

  “How’s your hand?”

  Najud’s question was a welcome distraction from the mindless work of piling a rock cairn over a dead horse. They’d been at it for a couple of hours and were finally nearing the end. The tack Najud had cut off of the body made a forlorn heap near the road, ready to be stuffed into another donkey pack.

  “It’s fine. The glove keeps it protected,” Penrys replied.

  Her left hand was healing quickly. Though she was used to the speed with which her body healed, leaving no marks after the worst of wounds, it had been a surprise to her when her left hand began rebuilding the four fingers, lost in her desperate fight with the Voice only a month ago. The first two were already fully grown, and the third nearly so. The fourth was still a stub, since the slice that took them all had been diagonal, and it had the longest way to go.

  How old am I? No marks on m’body at all, not wrinkles, not childbirth.

  She had no memory older than three years, when she was found in far away northern Ellech, in the snow, naked except for the chain around her neck.

  The Voice had also been chained, but she’d learned nothing from him—neither where he came from nor any information about his own past. She’d been brooding about it for weeks now. Someone must have made us, but why? Can he control us somehow, through the chains? Are there more of us?

  She shook it off and stood up, bending and stretching to relieve her muscles. No point worrying Najud about it—not his problem. Just another reason to end it before it’s worse for both of us.

  She’d been alone for three years, isolated at the Collegium in Tavnastok in Ellech. She could get used to it again. She shivered a little in the chilly air, and headed for her horse to tighten its girth and resume her cloak.

  Najud placed his last rock, and then scooped up the stripped tack. The bright colors of the abbreviated Zannib-style saddle were dulled from a couple of months of outdoor exposure, but even so the day seemed a bit less vivid to her, once they were stuffed away into a pack.

  Once they’d passed the debris in the general vicinity of the lud, there was nothing else to be found. After a couple of miles of trail, Penrys stopped looking for it and relaxed back into the work of the trail, keeping close behind Najud’s string and watching after her own.

  From five horse-lengths in front of her, she heard Najud’s voice raised in a sad, solemn song. He stopped himself, abruptly.

  “Join me,” he called. “Do the harmonies. The right ones, mind.”

  Then he started over aga
in.

  She tapped him for his expertise in singing, to share the feel of how a song like this should go, how it should sound, and then she raised her own voice in wordless harmony to match his.

  As she heard the words she could follow the meaning, but since she didn’t know what the words would be in time to sing them, all she could do was provide a counterpoint for his voice. Verse after verse it continued, a commemoration for the fallen.

  CHAPTER 4

  Two days later, they were still picking their way cautiously downhill, hemmed in by the rock walls of the lower pass. Every now and then Penrys got a bit of a view which helped her judge how much closer they were to the end of this trail. Last night’s heavy autumn rain had laid the trail dust, but it had taken the animals a while to shake off the chill and settle into their work this morning.

  For a distraction, she picked up one of her incomplete conversations with Najud, fifty yards ahead of her.

  *You expected to find this particular clan. Do they always take the same route, every year?*

  *The tarizd, the migration route, is like one petal of a many-petaled flower. The base of the petal is the zudiqazd, the winter camp. From there, they travel in a big loop, never exactly the same, but planned to hit the important grazing places. In the center of the flower are the zudiqazd of all the nearby clans in that tribe, and each petal goes in a different direction.*

  Penrys pictured for herself a round circle of petal-like routes surrounding the winter camps. Local geography probably interfered with the perfection of that image.

  *Does it ever change?*

  *Sometimes the petals blow back and forth, and the routes shift, sometimes just once, and sometimes for years. Marriages can change routes, if enough new alliances are formed with the same clans. Sometimes groups want to travel adjacent routes.*

  She could almost hear the shrug in his voice.

  *Things change. Nothing is constant. That’s why children learn the landmarks for the tarizd of every clan in their group. Each year, at the zudiqazd, the next year’s tarizd is planned for each clan while all those clans are together, so there will be no misunderstandings.*

  Penrys wondered how they resolved conflicts about favorite grazing spots. Was there always consensus, or did some tribal leader step in?

  Thinking of conflict, she again scanned the surroundings. This time, she found the mind-glows of people, not far away.

  *Three men coming, and horses. Wiriqiqa-Zannib speakers.*

  She felt Najud’s surprise, and then his swift evaluation. *I see a wide spot ahead. We’ll wait for them there. Tie your string to mine, then ride up and join me.*

  Najud and Penrys sat their stolen Rasesni mares side-by-side at the upper end of a wide spot in the trail, he on his Zannib saddle, with its minimal structure, and she on the Kigali cattle-herding one, with its heavy leather construction and the prominent horn, the horn that had been so helpful while her hand was useless.

  Penrys took her hat off and ran her fingers through her hair before resettling it, and Najud took a moment to make sure his turban was straight and tidy.

  The low murmur of voices and the clatter of hooves heralded the appearance of the strangers before they could see them, but then one of Najud’s pack animals stamped his foot and the voices stopped. Only one animal continued forward, judging by the sound, and then a rider appeared, in Zannib robes and turban on a horse in light Zannib tack. The young man inspected the two of them waiting and the first horses in Najud’s string, and made a brief bow from the saddle.

  He called back over his shoulder. “Strangers, traveling.”

  He pulled forward and off to the side to make room for his companions.

  These were the first Zannib Penrys had seen, besides Najud and the illustrations in the books she’d read in the Collegium. She couldn’t tell if they shared the same dark curls under their turbans, but their faces all had a broad resemblance to Najud’s. It was hard to be sure, but she thought they were all younger.

  They were armed, each of them, with a long curved sword slung from their saddles under their left leg.

  The second one to arrive rode a few steps forward and bowed his head. “Greetings, tulqaj. I am Jirkat, son of Mishajmarzuwi of clan Kurighdunaq, and these are my clan-kin.”

  Najud returned the bow. “I’m Najud, son of Ilsahr of clan Zamjilah.”

  Jirkat said, “I’ve heard of you. Isn’t your mother Kazrsulj, the sister of Qizrahi, and you therefore the cousin of some of my clan?”

  When Najud nodded, Jirkat continued. “Your stock-lines do well with us. I hope she left your family some few animals to get by on.” He grinned briefly at Najud, and now Penrys was sure he was a few years younger.

  “You’ve retaken your name, I see. You are now a jarghal?”

  “It is so. I’ve completed my nayith and am returning home to Zamjilah. This is my bikrajti companion, Penrys, lately of Ellech.”

  Eyebrows on all three faces raised at the mention of the distant country, and Penrys could feel their eyes noting the foreign look of her.

  Najud urged his horse forward a step. “I bring you bad news of clan-kin, from up the trail.”

  Jirkat said, “That’s who we’re looking for. Are they on the trail above, or perhaps in Neshilik? Living or dead?”

  “We found no one on the trail, living or dead, and they haven’t been seen in Jaunor. But we found their belongings, and what we found we’ve brought with us.”

  He gestured at the trail behind them, at the string of animals that continued out of their sight.

  “What we found disturbed us greatly. We’d like to tell you about it and return what we found to their clan-kin.”

  Jirkat nodded. “We’ve made a camp at the foot of the trail, those of us on the search. Come guest with us and tell us your tale.”

  When the trail finally widened and the grassland sloped down before them, Penrys took several deep breaths as though her lungs had been stifled from the enclosed journey of the last few days.

  Her vision was still restricted directly to east and west by the encircling ranges that sheltered this spot, but spread out before her the grass rolled unrestricted to the horizon.

  It was different from the valley of the Mother of Rivers. This landscape was drier, providing no promise of an immense river lurking just beyond some fold of land, and the grasses were not the same variety. They waved in dull yellows swaths, reflecting the waning of the year.

  Further out in the cove were three of the round tents Najud had described to her, what he called kazr. All three were small, more for travel then longer-term dwelling, but they looked cozier than the tent the two of them were using, with their wrappings of felt and their decorated canvas covers, and the gaily painted wooden doors. They were arranged in a small circle, their doorways facing inward.

  Beyond them were small herds of all sorts—horses, sheep, cattle, and even a few goats, and the four mounted herdsmen keeping watch over them broke away from their duty to ride into the camp to greet their returning kinsmen and the guests. One older woman opened the wooden-framed door of her kazr and stepped out to join them, her black and curly hair pulled into a horsetail by a colorful scarf.

  Penrys scanned the area and found no one else. As they got close enough for the others to see their faces, she felt the wave of disappointment wash through the camp.

  We’re not who they wanted to see.

  Najud stopped outside the circle and waited for everyone to arrive, and Penrys attached her string to the end of his and moved her horse up to join him.

  She looked them over, and her heart sank.

  They’re so young, they make me feel elderly.

  Except for the woman on foot, Jirkat was the oldest one there, and he was clearly a few years younger than Najud. He and his two companions were the oldest of the men, perhaps twenty years old. The herdsmen were two younger men and a woman three or four years younger, and a girl of maybe ten. Penrys pegged the woman on foot as the mother of the girl.<
br />
  Jirkat addressed the gathering. “Our people were not on the High Pass trail. These bikrajab have just come through there from Jaunor, and they say they have bad news for us. I know of this bikraj—he is cousin to our clan, sister-son to Qizrahi, whom you all know.”

  The woman stepped up and bowed to both of them. She was dressed like the men in breeches. Her low embroidered boots with upturned toes and her boiled wool overrobes blocked the chill air.

  “Be welcome to this camp, bikrajab, and accept our poor hospitality. We have no kazr large enough to guest us all, but please dismount and share our food, while we water your animals. We’re desperate to hear of our kin.”

  Najud bowed low in his saddle to her, and Penrys took her cue from him, dismounting when he did.

  The woman waved the girl and young woman to their horses, and they took them in charge, leaning from their mounts to seize the reins, and taking the pack string with them. Penrys watched them lead the animals to the spring on the west edge of the camp. Najud paid no attention—this must be a customary form of hospitality, and he seemed content to let it take its course.

  The riders who brought them also dismounted, and handed their reins to the two younger men who took them along after the others to the spring.

  The woman ducked back into her kazr and carried out an armful of small rugs which she laid on the grass on top of pieces of canvas, and gestured for them to sit. Penrys took the rug next to Najud when he folded his legs with dignity and sat down.

  The woman returned with wicker baskets that held cheeses and small, freshly-baked, flatbreads, and her third trip produced an iron kettle and three stoneware cups. The odor of steaming bunnas filled the air.

  Najud eyed Penrys. *Pretend you like bunnas. This is a matter of hospitality.*

  She nodded silently.

  The woman called, “Jirkat, if you will bring cups for your companions, there’s enough for everyone.”