by Myers, Karen
*No. None at all.*
“That’s right.” Penrys turned to Lurum. “You know Umzakhilin carries the bikraj bloodline. Well, you two, and Bimal as well… you all have a little bit of it, too. Not enough to be bikrajab, but enough that Bimal is dirum, and that you and your brother are more trapped into obeying the qahulajti’s orders than the others are.”
Penrys puzzled about how to explain further to her. “I can shield myself from a bikraj attack of the mind, and can shield others, too. I tried that when I found you, in the snow, but it didn’t make any difference. I thought the qahulajti was still imposing visions upon you, but she wasn’t. That probably stopped a while ago, or she only renews her commands when she needs to. Instead, you were just following her commands, and you’re better at that than your companions are.”
“What can you do about it, bikrajti?” Lurum asked.
Penrys sighed. What indeed? Here’s where they start to fear me again.
“I can… drain his bit of bikraj power, and that might let me wake him. Then I can give it back.”
“Can’t you just take it altogether from him, and me, too?” Lurum asked.
“Not a good idea, lijti. You’d miss it, I think, just as Bimal would miss it as dirum.”
She glanced at Munraz, his face eager to watch this next step.
*This is done using my chain, nal-jarghal, and that skirts the Zannib prohibition against devices.*
He looked indignant. *Aren’t your wings devices? Khizuwi doesn’t stop you flying as a scout. I’m only watching.*
She hesitated. *I fear what your master would say to you.*
*I don’t. Besides, doesn’t the qahulajti bear a chain? Shouldn’t I learn what she can do?*
Penrys wasn’t comfortable with it, but his people considered him an adult, and Haraq had to be cured.
“All right,” she told him. “Find me a cone from this tree. The snow should have knocked some down.”
He pushed his way through the snow until he reached one, lying on the surface in the powder.
She led Haraq to the cedar and turned his face toward it. She pulled off his gloves and gave them to his sister to hold.
*Come watch, nal-jarghal.*
She waited for Munraz to join her, then she drained Haraq’s power into her chain, leaving him just a flicker. Munraz tried unsuccessfully to suppress his shock, but she focused more on Haraq, whose visions of grasslands weakened.
“Smell this,” she told him, holding his face against the rough tree bark. “Take a deep breath—you know that scent, its freshness. Feel the bark against your cheek.”
She took one of his hands and wrapped it around the cone. “Feel the shape of this cone, how it prickles against your fingers.”
Laying his other hand flat on the trunk, she said, “Feel how cold the wood is, the stickiness of the sap.”
His mind was confused, like a man disturbed from a deep sleep, but the grasslands still flickered behind it all.
I need something more. But what?
Everything was buried in blank, useless snow. She knelt down at the base of the tree and pawed the snow away like a dog digging a hole, until she reached the wet soil. As she’d hoped, the tree’s roots had pushed rocks up as they grew. She grabbed one, smaller than her hand, and stood up again.
She opened the hand that held the cone and pressed the stone into it instead, dirt and all. “Feel this—it’s a piece of the mountain. Feel the sharp edges, broken the way rocks break, worked on by water and ice. Once it was a mountain, and someday it will be dirt, but not now. Now it is cold, and heavy, and real. Wake up! Look at it!”
She snatched her glove off and slapped his face with her bare hand. The sharp crack of it bounced through the trees. His hand clenched around the stone and he stiffened, his eyes alert. They looked at the stone in wonder, and then up at all their faces, stopping at his sister’s. She rushed to him and folded her arms around him, but he kept hold of his stone and stared at Penrys over Lurum’s shoulder.
Penrys restored his power from her chain, and he shivered in response. “What did you do, lijti? I heard you, I think, in my dreams.”
“Your friends will be glad to see you again, Haraq,” she said.
Lurum took her brother’s hand and led him back toward the camp. “I’ll explain,” she told him. “Let’s get you some food.”
Penrys watched them go, and Munraz stayed with her.
“Well,” she said, “We should get back.”
Munraz laid a hand on her arm to stop her. “I was watching, still, when you showed him the tree and the rock. I think you could have just commanded him to wake, like she made him dream. Why didn’t you?”
Penrys grimaced. “What, and become his new qahulajti, instead of the one he had? Don’t we have enough of those already?”
CHAPTER 39
Najud straightened up from leaning over his worktable in the kazr and stood up to stretch his back. The pouches of seven of the dead, previously unknown, now hung from the rafters near the stovepipe with their names neatly painted into the engraved leather.
Dhalmudhr’s “family” needed the table, now that he was done with it. All of them were gathered in their new kazr, even the Umzabul boy, Ariqnas, with borrowed lanterns and the other two tables, working as quickly as they could to prepare winter clothing for themselves and as many others as possible from the supplies that had been carried from the Kurighdunaq zudiqazd.
*They can have our worktable now. I’m through with it.*
Penrys’s reply was immediate. *I’ll come get it.*
He was glad for the quiet inside the kazr after the noise of all the women this morning. Once Lurum had returned with the recovering Haraq, he’d gone outside for relief, feeling like a stranger in his own kazr.
He could see nothing good coming of letting them all go back, especially the women but Dhalmudhr was right—they were all determined to do it. When they’d left to join the others in the new kazr, he’d returned to his sad task with the pouches and tried to use the peace and silence to think of a better way.
The door opened, and Penrys came in with Munraz while Najud was making his way through the hanging shabz, testing the dryness of the meat strips. She smiled at him and picked up the light table. “I’ll leave him with you,” she said, cocking her head at Munraz, and carried it easily out of the door.
Munraz closed the door behind her and removed his outer garments, then he turned to face Najud, nervously.
“Do you have a little time, bikraj?” he asked. “I have questions, and I don’t think my uncle will have the answers.”
Najud raised his eyebrows, but he sat down by the stove and invited Munraz to join him. It was unusual for a nal-jarghal with a master to seek information from another bikraj, and likely to cause trouble if the master were jealous and came to hear of it.
“Did the bikrajti tell you how she woke up Haraq?” Munraz asked.
“Not all the details, no. We haven’t had the time,” Najud said.
“She let me watch—it was very kind of her to allow it.”
Just like her. She must know it’s an intrusion to another bikraj’s relationship but she doesn’t care. And she doesn’t much like Jiqlaraz. Well, can’t blame her for that—I don’t like him either.
Najud kept his thoughts to himself. “Why don’t you tell me about it, and ask your questions?”
As Munraz described what had happened, he was startled to hear that both of them had peeked in on him as an example of a bikraj’s core power.
“But then I asked if I could peek at her for a comparison, and she let me.” Munraz ground to a halt.
“Let me guess,” Najud said. “Hard to look at?”
“Blinding,” Munraz conceded. “You must see that all the time, lij, how do you…?”
“She doesn’t know, nal-jarghal,” he said. “At least, I don’t think she does. I’m not sure if she saw the other chained qahulajti clearly, the one she killed, during that fight, but she can’t look a
t herself, of course.”
It was embarrassing, but the apprentice needed an accurate answer. “I don’t look at her that way very often, but when I do, I think of her like the sun, and me the tall sunflower facing her.” The young man’s cheeks flamed, and Najud added, “I don’t think you should do that very much with her, do you?”
Munraz evaded that remark. “Are all bikrajti like that, lij? I haven’t met many, not young ones.” He cleared his throat, then said, “If they are, then I can see why my uncle wants one.”
Najud didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s it like at home for you, nal-jarghal, with your family? Aren’t there several other bikrajab?” He pinned him with a hard look. “Why didn’t they come, too?”
Munraz was silent, and Najud waited. Twice he opened his mouth to speak, and stopped, as if ashamed. Finally he looked down and muttered, “I asked my uncle that. He said, ‘They’re all married already.’”
That sent a chill up Najud’s spine. “And Jiqlaraz is a widower, is that it?”
Munraz blushed, and looked away. “Or me, if she was as young as the messenger said.”
Nothing could be heard except voices outside and the quiet hissing of the fire.
Najud asked him, bluntly, “A qahulajti, and unwilling? How did he think to do it?”
“I don’t know.” Munraz looked up. “It’s wrong, I know it, but now that I’ve met Penrys I think I understand why he would want to.”
“What you are telling me is contemptible, Munraz. What the messenger brought your people was a call for help, for hundreds of people, not an opportunity to… breed.”
“I know,” Munraz said, miserably. “You’re right, but I have to do what they tell me.”
“Do you? Even if you don’t think it’s right? Why?”
Najud let the question stretch on and on unanswered into the silence, and Munraz hung his head.
Penrys broke the tension when she walked in, smiling and rosy-cheeked.
Munraz scrambled to his feet and ducked his head to both of them before grabbing his coat and leaving.
Penrys stared after him. “What’s the matter with him? I told him to talk to you—did you lecture him?”
Najud, still seated by the stove, considered how much to tell her. “I think he has a case of calf love.”
“With me?” Penrys laughed as she hung her cape near the doorframe. “Well, that’s harmless, at least.”
Najud could feel his face freeze, and Penrys stared at him.
“You don’t think so? You’re not jealous of someone Winnajhubr’s age, surely.”
‘It’s not that, Pen-sha.” No good would come of not elaborating, Najud decided. “He tells me Jiqlaraz came to try and capture the girl, if he could, for himself or for the boy.”
“What, as a… wife? Chained and all?”
He could see how that surprised her. “Well, he didn’t know that, of course, or what it meant.”
He cleared his throat. “Worse, we’ve introduced him to another one.”
She burst out laughing. “Oh, yes—that’s likely. I wouldn’t pass that man a piece of…”—her eye roamed the kazr for inspiration—“of shabz if he were dying.”
“I don’t think he’s too particular about approval from either of his candidates,” Najud commented dryly.
Penrys sobered. “You’re not serious? You think this is a real threat?”
“It would be wise to avoid being alone with him. I don’t think he’s quite corrupted his nephew yet, though the boy wanted to know if there were others like you.”
Her mouth quirked. “Well I’m flattered, but he doesn’t know what he’s asking, does he?”
“It’s no laughing matter, Pen-sha. If you were taken unawares…”
She raised a hand. “I hear you. I’ll be cautious about my dealings with Jiqlaraz. I’ve no great desire to spend time with him anyway.”
She sat down on his unused bed to remove her boots, and replace them with the slippers she used inside the kazr, then she carried her boots over to the bare canvas patch near the door to drip.
Her chain was exposed around her neck, and the scarf underneath it. When she caught Najud’s surprised gaze, she explained. “I waited until everyone was in the new kazr, and took the scarf off, and told them the whole story. I think Dhalmudhr had warned them already, so it wasn’t too bad.”
“It’s time they were told,” Najud said, and she nodded.
“Yes, I think so, now that Haraq’s on the mend. Oh, I haven’t told you. D’ya know how I ended up showing him a cedar tree and a rock?”
“They talked about little else when they got back,” Najud said, remembering the chatter.
“Me, I thought it was the slap on the cheek that did it. My hand still stings.” She chuckled. “Anyway, he’s made himself a little pouch to hold the rock. Says it’s a lud, that I made him a lud. It doesn’t work like that, does it?”
Najud was startled. “No, it doesn’t. No one can make a lud, only find one. Maybe you just happened to find one for him.”
“Doesn’t seem too likely to me,” she said, unconcerned. She topped up the spouted pot and put it on top of the stove to heat for kassa. “I thought you had to find your own. That it was between you and the lud.”
“Yes…” Najud let his voice trail off. “Must be a coincidence.”
“Maybe he was just receptive. I had to drain his core to break the hold of the visions—he was just reinforcing the command with his own power. Then I gave it all back, of course.”
The description sent an alarm through Najud. “You didn’t give him any extra, did you?”
“No, why?” Penrys stared at his face. “What’s wrong?”
“I never told you…” he muttered.
“Told me what?” she said, giving him her attention fully, the box of kassa forgotten in her hand.
“When you found the captive bikrajab back in Neshilik, and me with them, and you restored our power…”
“From my chain, yes.” She waited for him to continue.
“When you poured it in, four of them didn’t survive, Pen-sha.”
In silence she lowered herself onto his bed. There was a look of shock on her face, then it was replaced by outrage. She shielded her mind from him.
“And you were going to tell me this when?” she asked, her voice low but rising.
“There was too much going on at the time.” He spread his hands helplessly.
“And afterward? Or the next day? Or week?” Her voice was cold now, and contained.
“Or only after I killed someone else by accident, like Haraq today?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.
She slashed her hand through the air. “That’s not the point. What happened during a battle is one thing. I can live with that, I suppose. I’ll have to. But not telling me, that’s… that’s unthinkable! That’s helping it happen again when it could be avoided.”
She rose and stood over him. “How can you do that? How can you keep that from me, make that decision for me? What am I, a child?”
He watched despairingly as she turned her back on him and hugged herself. His stomach churned, and he stood up and wrapped his arms around her stiff and angry back.
“I’m sorry, Pen-sha, it was the wrong thing to do. I just didn’t want you to be hurt any more.”
She was silent, and even with her mind shielded he could feel through her shaking body how she was trying to rein in her emotions. He tried to convey to her the sincerity of his apology. “Please forgive me.”
In a serious voice, she finally responded. “You can’t be hiding things from me for my own good, Naj-sha. It’s not… respectful. It means I can’t trust you to tell me the truth. How can we be partners without trust?”
“I know,” he murmured into the top of her head. “I’m sorry.” She called me Naj-sha, it’ll be all right. He kept repeating that to himself, part assurance, part wish. He could feel his pounding heart beat begin to slow.
“And i
t’s dangerous. Look what might have happened today.”
“Yes,” he said. He turned her around and pried the box of kassa out of her hand and dropped it on the empty bed. She unfolded her arms to let him do it, and he took advantage of that to hug her again, this time from the front, tightly, as if he had no intention of ever releasing her. He made sure her ear was pressed against his chest.
“I won’t do it again,” he told her, and hoped the magic that made her knees weak when she heard his deep voice conveyed through his body would still work. “Forgive me?”
She lowered her shield against him and sighed. *As if I have any choice in the matter when you hold me like that.*
CHAPTER 40
“Can’t we kill her from a distance? Lay in wait, with bows?”
Penrys broke into the debate wearily, again. “Not unless you can shoot a few miles. That’s how far I can sense you, if I look. Or maybe you’re thinking to sneak up on her while she’s asleep. Through the wolves.”
The man who’d made the proposal sat down again.
Dhalmudhr’s family had the largest kazr in the camp now, and everyone was gathered there, trying to come to some resolution about actions. The smell of leather working still lingered in the air. Three packs along the walls were stuffed with the clothing they’d worked so hard on the day before, as well as the food they were planning to take with them when they left tomorrow, still determined on a rescue.
Penrys was tired, not just from the lack of progress in any sort of feasible plan, but residually, from yesterday’s quarrel with Najud. So easy to damage trust, and so hard to overlook it.
She forgave him—how could she not? He’d meant well and she knew he was sorry, but she hadn’t wanted to face the reality that all men make mistakes, that there was no magic place in the world where two souls have perfect communication and perfect knowledge. Her heart was sore, but it was directed inward rather than at Najud.
Maybe I am a child, without experience. Grow up! He doesn’t owe you perfection, and you certainly don’t have it to offer, yourself.
She sighed, and caught Najud’s worried look. It’s not fair to make him worry about something he couldn’t help. The effect her smile had on him was almost worth the turmoil of the day before—he brightened like a full moon and beamed back at her, and her smile broadened.
