Mistress of Animals

by Myers, Karen

  The explosion of relief and joy from Najud overwhelmed her. He dropped his shield entirely and let her see the full effect of her agreement. It frightened her—what had she done to deserve it? But she was glad, so glad, that he wanted to find a way to make it possible, too, whether she deserved it or not. It was her job to make sure he didn’t regret it.

  She sat there quietly with him for some time, all uncertainty vanished. It was a magical moment, and she knew it couldn’t last, but she wanted it to.

  Inevitably, a thump on the door ended it.

  Winnajhubr stuck his head in. “We’re going to knock down the load on the roofs and sweep a path along the ropes. Again. Can we borrow your brooms…”

  He paused. “Najud?”

  There was nothing indecorous in the way they were sitting, but Penrys was amused to see how slow Najud was to give Winnajhubr his attention.

  “Leave me one. I’ll come out and join you in a moment,” Najud said.

  Winnajhubr lingered, maddeningly. “We haven’t checked on the horses since morning, bikrajti.”

  The suggestion was clear. “I’ll take a look and tell you,” Penrys said.

  A quick smile flashed across the young man’s face, and he hastened to grab a broom and leave.

  She stood up and stretched, enjoying a remarkable sense of well-being. “Back to work,” she told the bemused Najud.

  He smiled at her and rose. “Whatever you say, lijti.”

  She snorted. “The first order of business is warmer clothes, if we’re going outside.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Penrys emerged from the kazr in her full winter flying gear. The gusts of wind were less frequent but the snow was still coming down thickly, and already starting to cover the swept canvas of the kazr roofs with a new layer, even as Najud and Winnajhubr were knocking the old layer off.

  When Najud raised an eyebrow at her clothing, Penrys told him, “The horses are all still there, but I can’t tell how they’re doing for food, or whether they’re able to reach the grass. I want to take some grain out to them and see.”

  He nodded and waved her down to Jirkat for the grain sack. She trudged through the fresh snow on the path and told him what she wanted.

  “Not too heavy,” she said. “I can alway make multiple trips, but I can’t carry very much, especially with all this clothing.”

  Jirkat ducked inside and came back in a few moments with a pack partially filled. “If you can find a sheltered spot, where you can scatter it so they can eat it before it’s covered, that would be best. You don’t want them competing, so you might need several spots, or a long line.”

  She hefted it to feel the weight—about twenty pounds. “That can’t be enough, surely.”

  “If you can relay, say, another two like this, it’ll make a difference.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” she said. “I’ll let you know what I find when I get back.” She glanced back at her own kazr. “If it’s important, I’ll tell Najud, and he can tell you.” She tapped her forehead meaningfully, and Jirkat nodded his understanding.

  Penrys thought about lifting another twenty pound as she launched, and it made her legs tired. “Tell you what, Jirkat… I’m going to use the path to get into the air, but could you then go stand in the middle with the pack up, and the straps where I can reach them? That way I can circle around and grab it from you. Easier that way for me.” She illustrated what she meant with her hands.

  His eyes widened. “All right, bikrajti. Whatever you need.”

  She needed a few running steps to launch, and the partially cleared path almost ran out before she got off the ground and pulled herself into the air. The wind was stronger above the ground, but she used it to increase her momentum and then cut lower to leave that wind current and circle back to Jirkat to snatch the pack. He held it up steadfastly as she swooped by and her hands closed around the pack straps like an ungainly eagle snatching at a fish.

  It was only a couple hundred yards to the enclosed meadow that sheltered the horses. Penrys had been checking on them remotely while Jirkat and Ilzay had gone there in person until the height of the blizzard, and this was the first time she’d actually seen them in days.

  She was relieved to find that at least half of the area had been trampled thoroughly, evidence that they were digging through the snow for what fodder they could find. The winter-hardy horses stood bunched together wherever they could get out of the wind, except for the ones taking advantage of the relatively calm air to continue foraging.

  After she circled the meadow twice, she decided that the edge of the woods on the west was the best suited for laying out grain. The snow was shallow there, only a few inches drifted in, and the horses seeking food would soon dissipate that.

  She landed in the meadow near the uphill side of the ground she’d chosen and thought about herd management. The trick was to start farthest away from the horses and work toward them. The hungriest or most motivated would be the first to investigate what she was doing, and once they found bits of grain, they would stay there looking for more, so she might be able to scatter it out lightly until she reached the weaker horses without causing too much competition between them.

  This load of twenty pounds was nothing, but by the time she came back with more and repeated the exercise, maybe they’d have sorted themselves out adequately.

  Her landing caught their attention, and when she shook the half-empty pack to let the grain rustle audibly, some of them started her way.

  She shuffled her way through the snow under the trees as quickly as she could and dribbled the grain out in handfuls as she went. When it was all gone, she stepped back into the meadow and ran a few clumsy steps downhill to launch again.

  A quick pass around confirmed that the herd was slowly converging on the grain in a line, the way she’d hoped, and she headed back to the camp.

  This time she found Najud waiting with the next load of grain. *Everything all right?*

  *They’re fine. Stay there, and I’ll circle around.*

  As she swooped by him, she dropped the empty pack from one hand and grabbed the new one with the other.

  After her last load, Penrys walked up the grain line to look the horses over one by one. Their concentration was on muzzling up the last bits they could find, so she was able to check each one for injury or fitness, at least superficially.

  They were losing weight, as Ilzay had told her would happen all winter long until they could gorge again in the spring, but this was normal for them. It wouldn’t kill them, unless the winter was much harder than usual. She wondered how Najud’s donkeys were doing, and the Rasesni horses, back in the zudiqazd with Umzakhilin.

  This blizzard was full of snow, and that was a problem for the horses pawing for grass, but it wasn’t terribly cold. That meant the stream was still a good water source, frozen over in spots but open in others. The marks of trampling made it clear that the horses could break through it as needed for water.

  It was time to return for good. The winds were picking up again, and the snow was swirling instead of just falling.

  She reported to Najud. *I’m finished here—anything else I need to do?*

  *Come on back. I think we’re due for more of the storm.*

  When she launched and circled the meadow one last time to pull herself higher into the air, she checked for predators—a bear or two could wreak havoc among the horses. There was nothing that large within reach, but it reminded her she hadn’t been able to scout for days, since they were pinned down by the snow.

  *The wind isn’t bad yet, Naj-sha. I’m going to do a circle around the camp, to check for problems.*

  He didn’t reply immediately, and Penrys bit her tongue as she pictured him discarding his first few responses.

  *Stay within range. I mean it.*

  *Agreed.*

  She started at an angle downwind, to the southeast. When she was done, she wanted to come back to the camp from the southwest, which would be downwind again.
That way, if the weather worsened, she wouldn’t have to fight the wind on the way back.

  A circle with a five-mile radius centered on the camp should tell her all she needed to know about any nearby hazards.

  She flew as low as she dared, but the visibility was terrible through the falling snow. Her constant awareness of Najud tethered her circuit and she didn’t push the extremes of her range, fearing to lose contact and thus any hope of orientation, with no sun visible and no recognizable terrain.

  Her mind-scans found more of the antelope Ilzay had hunted, and many of the smaller predators that thrived in the snow which immobilized their prey. There was a bear in the northeast quadrant, not very near the camp, but she seemed very sleepy and almost undetectable. Penrys wondered if that’s what hibernation felt like.

  Most of the animals were waiting out the storm. No birds shared the air with her, and even the foxes she found felt warm, as though they were snug in a den somewhere.

  Time for me to come inside, too.

  She swung through the final western quadrant of her patrol, struggling to keep the wind from blowing her off course. Five miles from camp - she checked she could still detect Najud. Five miles outward… nothing. She slanted slightly to the south—the gap was down there somewhere—and then… People! Several people—cold, starving, dying.

  *People. A group of them, in bad shape. I think they’re some of ours, the captives.*

  The response was immediate. *Where? How far?*

  *You can feel my direction. West-southwest. I think it must be the trail through the gap. I can’t see them, and they’re not moving much. I’m not sure how far—they’re not between us, they’re on the other side. That’s why I couldn’t sense them before from the camp. Maybe two more miles? Seven altogether.*

  She thought about the contact problem.

  *If I land there, I’ll be out of range.*

  *Don’t do that. Wait a moment while we talk about it.*

  She glided with the wind and probed her find more carefully. They were moving in this weather, but very, very slowly. There were no wizards in the group, anyone she could reach directly. She could feel determination in some of them, but everything else was confused and very strange—she couldn’t make sense of it. Was it just that they were dying that distorted their emotions, or something else?

  *Pen-sha, here’s what we’re going to do. Most of us will come, on horses and leading horses, with blankets. We’re going to take them back to camp to wait out the rest of the blizzard.*

  She waited for him to continue. There was something else.

  *Can you reach anyone in camp, not just me?*

  *You’re worried about direction?*

  She felt Najud’s confirmation. *If we leave the camp in this weather and can’t find it again…*

  His image of a snowy trail buried in new snow was clear to her. *I understand. I can feel everyone in the camp from here.*

  *Then we’re going to bull our way out on the trail and leave Khizuwi behind. Once we get about three miles out, we’ll set up someone as an anchor that you can find, and then you can go to these survivors and get them ready. Once we reach you and start back, then you can find whoever we left on the trail, and once we reach him, you can find Khizuwi. Do you understand?*

  Even with no one to see her, circling in the air, she nodded. Clever of him.

  *Yes. That’ll work. Better leave two people together, not just one, in case of accident.*

  CHAPTER 33

  Two hours later, once the riders from the camp had gotten about three miles from her, Penrys rose from her snowy shelter and trampled out a short path so that she could launch into the air for most of the final two miles.

  All the time she’d waited, sitting on the tail of her coat with the rest of the skirt forming a pocket of trapped warm air around her crossed legs, she’d kept up her contact with Najud. Every few minutes she shook the accumulated fresh snow off her upper body, grateful it wasn’t much colder, not like the deep of winter in Ellech, in the lower mountains.

  Najud chose Munraz to remain behind as an anchor on the trail, with Winnajhubr. He wanted someone Khizuwi might be able to reach, if they needed to retreat to the camp three miles back, and Penrys had convinced him to make it two people, not just one. They were under orders to stay there as long as they could.

  The four men who were coming all the way led three horses each, breaking new trail all the way and switching out the leading horses to rest frequently.

  Penrys wanted to walk up on these new people, not just land amongst them and scare them. Happily the thick falling snow cut visibility, and she was able to set down fifty yards away without triggering any surprise in the minds she was scanning.

  They still made little sense to her. They moved as a group, but their emotions were reduced to little more than determination and fear, in varying balances.

  She checked to make sure her chain was covered—the last thing they needed was a reminder of their captor—then she laboriously made her way through the snow, and called out to them over the noise of the wind as they got closer to each other.

  “Hello, the Kurighdunaq,” she cried, and felt no one respond. The sound of them pushing slowly through the deep snow reached her, carried by the wind, and she backed up along her path a short distance. “Over here,” she called. “This way!”

  This time, she felt a reaction from two of them, and the party paused and shifted her way. She repeated her call to guide them, and the leader soon broke into the crude path she’d made and stood, as if bewildered, until the press of the rest of them forced him further down the path, where they staggered to a stop.

  They were something out of a terror tale told late at night around the campfire. The seven men and five women wore rags so little resembling clothing that it was difficult for the eye to make out the outlines of their bodies. Most of them had some sort of blindfold covering their eyes, and all were tied to each other by short lengths of fabric or leather strips.

  “M’name’s Penrys,” she called, as she approached. Several of them turned their heads in the direction of her voice, but even the ones without blindfolds couldn’t seem to quite focus on her.

  “I’m a bikrajti, and there are more of us in our camp, with some of your clan-kin. We’ve been tracking you, trying to find you.”

  They stood still, their heads turning from side to side as if to listen more carefully. No one spoke.

  “Jirkat,” she said. “Ilzay, Winnajhubr. Umzakhilin sent us, and Hadishti.” She tried the names she expected them to know.

  Their inhuman lack of reaction raised the hair on her arm, but she made herself come closer to the leader.

  *Najud, I’m talking to them but they’re not reacting. Watch.*

  She felt him join her. “People are coming, with horses. We’ll take you to our camp. They’re coming through the snow, from the east. That way.” She pointed down the trail, and when she looked that way herself, she winced at the obvious dead end, where she’d landed.

  What will they make of that?

  It didn’t seem to register with them.

  She stopped moving and tried to look deeply into the leader, while Najud watched. The man saw daylight and clear skies. His body felt snow, the flakes fell onto his face, but that wasn’t what he saw.

  *It’s like the illusion I gave Winnajhubr, but much worse. He knows his body is right and his mind is wrong, but he’s been fighting it too long to be quite… sane.*

  Najud’s reaction was swift. *Don’t get any closer until the rest of us get there.*

  Some of them reached out to others, and clung to them, as if for reassurance. When she scanned outward, she couldn’t find the other chained wizard in range, but she wondered if that was just her own limitation. When she raised a shield for herself and extended it to cover these survivors, it made no difference to the illusions the leader saw.

  Someone was going to have to take the first chance. Ignoring Najud’s advice, she walked slowly up to the l
eader, talking the whole time. “I see you all, standing in the deep snow, in the blizzard that’s gone on for two days now. It’s afternoon, and dark from the storm. My friends with horses will be here in an hour or so, and I’ll stay with you until they come.”

  The leader’s head tilted to follow her voice.

  She took a few more steps. “We’ll ride back along the path they’re making, back to our camp. It’s warm there, and we have food for everyone. It will take a little while to ride that far—the horses have been working hard to break the path.”

  The leader was interested in her voice, if not her words, and she tried to reassure him as she would a wounded animal, with a low, quiet, non-threatening voice.

  “D’ya think you can ride? It would mean cutting you apart—you can’t ride all tied to each other.”

  She felt a reaction of fear to those words. “It was clever of you to bind yourselves together, to fight the illusions you couldn’t trust.”

  One more step, and she stood directly before the leader. “I’m going to touch you now,” she told him. “I’m real.”

  His eyes still didn’t focus on her, but she took off her glove and gently clasped his bare hand. He jumped back a half-step, then froze.

  “Yes, I’m real. You’re with friends.” She clutched his shoulder and held it, and the man shook.

  One by one, Penrys spoke to each of them and touched them gently to try and convince them of her reality. They were all thin, walking skeletons with no fat on them, and she wasn’t sure of their ages—they must be younger than they looked, she thought, to have survived this long. But no youngsters, no one not fully grown.

  The rags they wore were a combination of summer garments, both whole and in pieces, and untanned skins used as cloaks and crude shoes. No one was barefoot.

  *Anyone without good footwear has probably already died.*

  Penrys was startled to hear Najud’s comment—she’d forgotten his presence. *They still have knives, some of them. Why would she let them keep knives?*

  *You don’t defang your dog, once you’ve tamed him.*