Mistress of Animals

by Myers, Karen

  “The skin absorbs it and leaves nothing behind after a few minutes, not even finger smudges.” He touched her cheek, lightly.

  “I’m surprised you bear so few marks from all those hours flying in the cold air.”

  She froze with surprise. How observant he is. Even with the face wrappings, some of her skin always seemed to get chapped or mildly frostbitten, but it healed by morning.

  “Good advice, Khizuwi. Thank you.”

  Najud joined them, and Penrys suspected he’d noticed her reaction and wondered about it.

  Khizuwi finished the rest of his current skewer and tossed the stick with its charred end into the fire.

  “Bikrajab,” he said, addressing them both with a nod, “Please, come visit our kazr tonight. We would like to speak with you about bikraj things.”

  After Penrys and Najud cleaned up from dinner, they stepped out of their kazr to obey Khizuwi’s summons. Penrys saw that ropes had been tied to stakes at waist height, three of them. They ran from the doorway of each kazr to the next. She nodded to herself—in case it snowed so hard you couldn’t see, you could hope to blunder across a rope and follow it.

  Najud tapped on the doorframe and then entered the wizards’ kazr, but Penrys hesitated in the doorway. She could smell the promise of snow in the air, and the warmth of the interior was appealing, but it still felt like a trap to her. She smothered her uneasiness and followed Najud all the way in.

  The kazr was about the size of the one that Umzakhilin had gifted them with, but older and a bit faded. Like theirs, the back half was hung with drying meat and there were packs thick along the walls, out of the weather. Two equal-sized bedframes faced each other from opposite sides, and a roll of bedding on the floor attested to Munraz being displaced from his bed for the benefit of Khizuwi, their senior guest.

  The two older wizards and the apprentice all rose to welcome them. Even for so short a walk, Najud had insisted they wear their heavy hooded cloaks and gloves, and they removed those as soon as they stepped inside. They gratefully accepted bunnas or kassa, kept hot by their fire. Penrys and Khizuwi were alone in their preference for kassa— everyone else warmed their hands around a cup of bunnas.

  After a few appreciative remarks about the antelope and the coming storm, the conversation lagged. Najud ignored the awkwardness of the silence, apparently willing to let them raise the purpose of this meeting at their leisure, but it made Penrys nervous. She blew on her scalding kassa and sipped it cautiously, and waited.

  Jiqlaraz set his cup down finally and spoke. “It’s unfortunate that the first storm is likely to obliterate the trail.”

  “I flew through the gap while I was waiting for all of you,” Penrys said, “just to see where the track was headed before the snow hit. It definitely went down into the vale you described.”

  “Good, good,” Khizuwi said. “We’ll know where to pick it up again, in a few days.”

  “How long before we can travel?” she asked.

  “That depends on the storm,” Jiqlaraz said.

  When Penrys waved her hand in irritation at the obvious reply, Najud said, “As soon as the winds are gone we can move, but everything will be take longer if the snow is deep. We’ll have to ride more slowly, and check the trail more frequently.”

  He paused. “If they’re wintering in shelter on the other side, you might be able to find them directly, if you get close enough.”

  She smiled, tightly. “I don’t have to worry about the snow.”

  “Yes, but we do, and you can’t get too far ahead of us.”

  Penrys felt the familiar, frustrating urgency. “They’ve got to be dying in this weather, in their summer clothing. Every day we wait…”

  Khizuwi broke in. “The weather is the weather, lijti. There’s nothing else we can do. If you find them, all by yourself, what then?”

  He raised his hand in question and Penrys reluctantly nodded and sighed.

  Jiqlaraz cleared his throat.

  Penrys watched him. Here it comes, what he really wants.

  “We have not forgotten your description of Najud as one who knows how to organize bikrajab to work together, and we’d like to hear more about that.”

  Najud smiled faintly and nodded.

  “In addition,” Jiqlaraz said, “we’d like to hear more about what we can expect from someone like this qahulajti, so similar in some ways to you.” This last was addressed directly to Penrys. “If we have the opportunity, perhaps we can study her for some time before…”

  Munraz stared at his uncle, his eyes wide. Khizuwi confined himself to a sideway glance so brief the Penrys wasn’t sure she’d seen it.

  Jiqlaraz ignored them both. “After all, we need to plan how the four…” His eyes flicked to his nephew’s face. “…the five of us will overpower her, when the time comes.”

  Khizuwi said, “You’re hoping that our colleague will just allow us to experiment on her, to see what we need?”

  “No,” Najud said, flatly, half rising in anger.

  Penrys put a hand on his shoulder and drew him back down. She lowered her eyelids sleepily and drawled, “Now, then, let’s just try this idea of Jiqlaraz’s for a little while, see what he advises to capture her.”

  To Jiqlaraz she added, “You can go ahead.”

  She’d raised her shield by this time and was scanning all of them. Compared to a room full of hostile Rasesni mages, this was likely to be straightforward, but she’d never met any Zannib wizards besides Najud, and there was no reason to take chances.

  As she expected, Jiqlaraz pounced almost before she’d stopped speaking, with no effect on her defenses.

  Khizuwi bowed his head with a little salute of the hand as if to apologize for the necessity of participating, and attempted his own assault without success. He smiled ruefully as he continued, and invited Munraz to join in. “You may as well find out what it feels like to fail.”

  Penrys could feel Najud’s worry as he watched with her. She told him, “They’re a lot like you, even Munraz. You’re all about the same strength, though your experience must be rather different.”

  With amusement, she observed Munraz’s shy smile. He must’ve wondered if he was as strong as his uncle, or would be, someday.

  “Enough,” she told them. “We calibrated this sort of thing in Gonglik with the Rasesni mages. The way we counted it, wizards like Najud were about a level ten in strength, that is, ten times stronger than the weakest of them. The best of them were about a twelve.”

  Jiqlaraz puffed up a bit in satisfaction.

  Najud commented, “We figured Penrys was about ten times stronger than the best of us.”

  And, just like that, Jiqlaraz’s expression curdled.

  “I can teach you to combine your strengths,” Najud said, “and that will make you more effective. Then, when we add in Penrys, we might have enough.”

  “Or not,” she said. “The Voice, the wizard-tyrant in Rasesdad, was stronger than me. How much was the power he stole from his wizards, how much the chain, and how much just him… well, that I couldn’t tell you.”

  She shrugged. “This girl may be stronger than me, too. What may be working in our favor is that she might not have met wizards yet, since none of her captives seem to have been bikrajab. So maybe she doesn’t have the practice and skills that the Voice did. Does she know how to shield herself? What would have triggered that?”

  “Does she have wings?” Munraz’s voice popped up unexpectedly, and Penrys smiled at him.

  “I don’t know. Don’t know if the Voice did either, but his chain looked like mine, and he had the ears.”

  Into her mind, involuntarily, flashed the image of the Voice’s head rolling in the road, one furry ear bloody, and one dusty. “He died too quickly for us to find out more,” she said, without going into the details.

  Khizuwi asked, “How did he steal power from bikrajab?”

  “He drew on the core of their power and left them just enough for survival, like tapping
the sap from a tree for sugar.” She ran her tongue over her lips, recalling the taste of the syrup from the north of Ellech.

  “How did he do that?” Jiqlaraz leaned forward eagerly.

  This is not a man to gift with power. If I trusted you before, which I didn’t, I wouldn’t now. Penrys was pleased that the truth wouldn’t help him any. “It feels like this,” she said, and sucked lightly at the root of his power until it was about half consumed.

  He staggered up white-faced and backed away.

  Najud frowned at her, and she restored Jiqlaraz’s power to him.

  Munraz hastened to his uncle’s side for support and gave Penrys a wide berth as he passed.

  “The power is stored in the chain, somehow, I think. He held wizards captive for almost three years like that, as well as a horde of others,” Penrys said. “Let’s hope this young one hasn’t discovered how to do it yet.”

  Najud commented mildly, “We already know she’s stronger than you in at least one respect—her reach to the High Pass from the summer encampment.”

  “And I’ve never tried to control people,” she said.

  A sudden slap of the wind against the wall of the kazr added punctuation to her statement, informing them all that the blizzard had begun.

  Hostile weather, and newly hostile wizards, now that they have a better idea of what they’re up against and how dangerous I might be to them. I suppose it was only a matter of time. Penrys could feel her shoulders sagging, but Najud gave her a quick nudge with his elbow.

  “Let’s teach them some of the basics of how to join together,” he said, “before we go out and brave the storm, eh?”

  CHAPTER 29

  Necessity forced Penrys awake in the morning, and she bundled up and braved the windblown snow in the dim daylight to deal with it.

  Ilzay and Jirkat were up before her, she saw, fussing with the fire pit they’d dug the night before into the ground softened by their cooking fire. Off to the side there were lively flames, freshened by the wind gusts, and strong enough to beat off the falling snow for now. As she watched, they maneuvered cobbles out of the fire with sticks and rolled them into the open pit. When they landed, they sent up a shower of sparks that fought against the snow flurries, and Penrys realized there must be a roaring fire in the pit, too.

  She waved at them as she ducked back inside. Najud stood near the entry, rough-dressing for the same purpose.

  “Looks like Jirkat and Ilzay are starting the cooking already,” she told him. She chuckled. “Didn’t see Jiqlaraz helping.”

  “I just hope they put a good stake in the ground so we can find it again in a few hours.” He licked his lips in anticipation.

  He waited a moment to watch her peel off her coverings and hang them from hooks on the lattice walls to dry. “Going back to bed?” he asked, hopefully.

  “Sorry.” She smiled. “Maybe later.”

  He made a show of disappointment and went out into the storm, securing the door behind him.

  Penrys didn’t know how many days this storm would last, but she knew they’d want to get moving again as soon as they could. If she wanted to clean anything in the snow, now was the time, storm or not.

  She dressed more thoughtfully for the day, and started piling up the rugs from the back half of the kazr near the doorway. Then she bundled up again and brought an armful out into the snow next to the wall of the kazr, along with one of Najud’s new brooms.

  After laying the rugs on top of several inches of snow, she used the broom to sweep snow onto the tops of the rugs, then swept them hard, using the snow as a sort of scouring powder to absorb dirt and freshen the fibers. She shook each one free of snow when she was done and dropped it back into a pile near the door of the kazr. Najud joined her, relaying the carpets back into their proper place and lifting the ones in the front half for the next batches.

  By her third load she’d acquired an audience. Khizuwi watched her in silence for a few moments. “Where did you learn to do that?” he asked.

  Penrys straightened up and realized he was not alone. Winnajhubr and Munraz had joined him, and Jirkat had drifted over. When she glanced in the direction of the fire pit, she could no longer see any flames at all—just a stake in the ground, from which another rope ran to the doorway of Jirkat’s kazr.

  “This is something they do in Ellech, the country folk. The servants at my patron Vylkar’s hunting lodge would do it in the winter after several inches of new snow had fallen—though not, of course, in a blizzard.” She grinned. “When it’s this cold, the snow cleans without soaking them in water. Works for blankets, too. You can even scrub them with brushes for stains, but it’s awkward without something to push against.”

  She saw their interest and expanded. “I’ve seen them do this for ordinary clothing, too, when it’s not easy for them to wash or dry it in wintertime, in the small huts. But with all that meat drying inside, I don’t want to add wet clothing, so I’ll see what I can do with our clothes out here after I finish the heavy stuff.”

  As if yoked together, Jirkat’s head turned to Winnajhubr, and Khizuwi’s to Munraz. The same apprehension showed on the faces of both the young men, and they heaved identical sighs.

  Penrys burst into laughter at the performance and told them, “It’s not so bad. You’ll be happy for fresh bedding tonight.”

  She asked Khizuwi, “What do you normally do to clean blankets and rugs?”

  “We hang them over lines in the sunlight, and beat them to drive out the dust,” he said.

  “And in winter?”

  “Once the shabz is finished, we can do the washing, but this…” he gestured at the rugs, “waits until the spring. When the taridiqa starts, the folk left in the zudiqazd begin their cleaning, and the taridaj do the same as soon as they set up the spring encampment.”

  Penrys shrugged. “I didn’t know when we might be stopped again—thought I better get to it while I could.”

  Najud had returned outside sometime while this was going on, and at that he stepped up and threw an arm around her shoulder possessively. “This one’s mine, but I might be able to arrange for the borrowing of brooms for the rest of you.”

  It took a couple of hours for Penrys to satisfy her fit of cleanliness.

  As much as possible she did the work outside, on the lee side of the kazr where any dirt from the cleaning would be blown away or covered with snow.

  The stove and the few bits of furniture were scrubbed in place with wet cloths, and all the bedding down to the ropes stretched across the frames had been stripped off, and the ropes themselves retightened. The cushions, like the thin umaqab on the beds and the small scattered ones, had at least been freshened by an external scrub and a limited airing, which consisted of Penrys gripping them on her back, one at a time, while the wind gusted against her and she tried to hold on.

  When she could think of nothing left to attack, she came inside and hung up her outer garments for good.

  Her eye fell upon three canvas buckets full of water, warming by the fire. Najud straightened up from remaking their bed, and she saw that the other one was already tidily assembled, too.

  He was freshly-shaven and the ends of his hair dripped, and he wore only what was needed in the warmth of the kazr, a riding-length robe over breeches, and the simple slippers they used inside.

  She stopped to appreciate her work. Everything was reasonably clean, and the bright colors of the painted woodwork, too fresh to have faded much yet, were echoed by the more subdued hues of the carpets and the accents of cushions and Najud’s little squares of fabrics that he used for special occasions. They reminded her of when she first met him, traveling in a supply wagon for the Kigali cavalry.

  When she glanced down at her own dirty hands, she sighed. One more thing to clean up.

  Najud walked past her and opened the door to drop the outer flap and tie it down. Then he closed the door and looked at her sternly. “You’ve forgotten one thing,” he said, and drew her over to the sto
ve, where he’d arranged soap and a towel nearby. He began to unfasten her clothing. “I’ll help you with this myself.”

  CHAPTER 30

  “Do we have to get up?” Penrys mumbled. After the morning’s work, Najud had rubbed the soreness out of her muscles. He hadn’t stopped there and, what with one thing and another, she was disinclined to move.

  “It’s solstice,” he said, cheerily, and swatted her through the blanket by way of encouragement. “Durmiqa bul. We’ll all be eating in here—don’t you want to be up to greet them?”

  “What, now?” she said, in alarm.

  “No, but soon. Better get dressed.”

  He was wearing the best robe he’d packed with him, and the cleanest of his turbans. Penrys thought he looked like some barbarian lord, except for the grin.

  “When Winnajhubr and Munraz return from checking on the horses, Ilzay and Jirkat will dig out our dinner.”

  Penrys scanned for the two youngest. “They’re on their way,” she told him.

  He opened the door and rolled up the flap to make it clear that visitors were welcome. The draft of cold air brought snow in with it, and it was unexpectedly dark outside.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Who can tell exactly in this weather?” Najud replied. “The middle of the afternoon. All the kazrab are still standing—a fine thing—and there’s only a couple of feet of snow so far. Still, looks like it will go on till morning at least.”

  He went on outside and left her.

  There was nothing as fancy as Najud’s robe in her pack, but she donned her newest and cleanest clothes and checked that everything was tidy for company.

  Najud had brought the low worktable into the front area and laid his binwit on it, the rolled leather bundle that made up his mead kit. It only held two small bottles, and Penrys wondered if he’d managed to top it up since they’d celebrated the turn-home in his borrowed freight wagon on the Kigali plains.