Mistress of Animals

by Myers, Karen

  Haraq said, “Six days at worse, three or four days at best. Don’t need a lot of food for that, just for five of us. Even if we have to sit out another storm.”

  He looked up at the rafters in the back of the kazr. The shabz hanging there was their entire remaining supply, but it was more than enough. Most of the food they’d brought with them had gone to Jirkat’s group, but they were in no danger of shortfall.

  Khizuwi nodded. “Tomorrow it is. Now, nal-jarghal, let’s review again what you have learned about the mending of bones. Haraq, if you’ll assist us by the loan of your body for an example?”

  Penrys suppressed her smile. “I thought he was your apprentice, Naj-sha,” she murmured.

  “We agreed, Khizuwi and I, that he would teach as much as he could before he had to leave. I’ve been learning from him, myself.”

  She waved her hand over to the lesson, to encourage him to continue, but he shook his head. “It’s just to make sure he remembers what he was taught already. We’ll need an early night tonight if we plan to travel all day tomorrow.”

  “Too bad the Kurighdunaq couldn’t pick up the rest of their herds while they were here.”

  Najud smiled up at here. “Those animals won’t leave that valley until the snows are gone, if then. You’ll see the Kurighdunaq back in Silmat as soon as they can manage it, to bring the rest of them home.”

  She was silent for a moment. “D’ya think there are any people still there? I didn’t find any, but I could only see a narrow part of the valley, and I wasn’t in the best of shape. And we didn’t go very far into it.”

  “I don’t know.” His voice was somber. “Hope not, but there’s no more we can do with what we have.”

  She looked around at the fragment of their team, and was forced to agree. “At least, with the girl gone, they might recover and survive on their own.”

  Najud nodded. “Some of them will have knives. If they can coax one horse within reach, they’ll be able to get anything else they need. It’s a good spot to winter over.”

  He was warm against her good leg, and they sat there in silence, listening to the quiet voices in the front of the kazr.

  CHAPTER 52

  The four men had the kazr disassembled in the morning faster than Penrys could have imagined. There was nothing useful she could do with one hand occupied with a crutch, so she took herself out of their way and waited.

  When they brought the horses in at last from their sheltered meadow, she swung herself over to greet her five horses from the valley, and the leopard-spotted mare and the dun almost knocked her off her crutch in their enthusiastic shoving.

  They couldn’t fatten on the poor winter grazing, but they seemed livelier for the rest of several days. “We’ll make those your string,” Najud said, as he began rigging the pack gear. “Not the two you rode—those’ll go bare.”

  She grimaced. “I had to put them through a lot. I don’t know who they belong to, but I’ll buy them if we can figure it out. They’re mine, now.”

  As her eye tried to match the horse packs being assembled with the available animals, she did a double-take. “How did we end up with two of those low tables?”

  Najud chuckled. “We tied them together to bring you into the kazr, and Jiqlaraz was in such a hurry to leave, he never got his back. He was careful to take everything he could lay his hands on that wasn’t Khizuwi’s. He left Munraz his clothes and one horse, and took the old family kamah away from him.”

  “But he didn’t take his table back?”

  “I think he was afraid to walk into our kazr and claim it. After all, you were there.”

  “Dead asleep.” She snorted.

  “Even so.” A steely glint came into his eye. “And if he’d tried, I would’ve cut him down before he reached the door.”

  She stared at him, but he bent down again over his work and didn’t notice.

  Everywhere she turned there were busy hands, and none of them hers. Time to move again.

  She hobbled to the old pine on the upslope trail to the gap. The cairn was fresh, the rocks bare except for the lichens that coated many of them. She looked back at the camp, with its seven empty circles, trodden down to the grass, and the mess of pathways within it.

  So little to mark the spot. Only the cairn would remain after the spring growth took hold. A young corpse, its head separated from its body, as if they were afraid she would somehow walk after death.

  The chain was buried with Penrys’s most precious possessions, in the little pack that traveled on her own horse when she rode, the one that contained her lud, and the matching one from Najud—they were different minerals and unbalanced, separately, but they fit together in one enigmatic and complex piece.

  She should show it to Khizuwi, on the way—see if he’d ever heard of a two-part lud like that.

  Footsteps in the snow made her turn and, as if her thoughts had conjured him, Khizuwi joined her at the cairn.

  “Dark thoughts?” he asked her.

  “More like puzzled ones,” she said. “I was lucky, and she wasn’t. That’s almost the whole of it. I could’ve died in the snow on my mountain in Ellech, if Vylkar hadn’t heard me, or been raised by wolves and feral. Why me, and not her?”

  Khizuwi shrugged. “The world is a chancy place.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s not the answer. We’re not some accident of nature. Someone is making us and then dumping us into the world to live or die, heedless of what might happen to us, or to anyone we encounter. This girl would have been maybe ten years old when it happened, when her life was destroyed. What kind of person would do that to a child?”

  “It kills us.” She gestured at the cairn. “And it kills almost everyone we touch. Who’s doing it, and why? Why?”

  She glared at him as if he were responsible. “And what was I, before? Before they took my life from me and made this out of me?”

  She invoked her wings and raised them above her. “A monster for his family to try and tolerate.” She cocked her head at Najud standing obliviously below and helping Haraq bind the rafters of the kazr. “A threat to other wizards. A menace.”

  “A woman who loves a man and is loved,” Khizuwi rejoined, unimpressed. “A bikrajti who risked her life to free others and to capture a qahulajti. A jarghalti who will help a nal-jarghal escape a dark life and become useful to others.”

  She had nothing to say. Her wings drooped, and she put them away, wherever it was they went.

  “You must learn to live with it, lijti,” he said, and patted her shoulder. “It’ll eat you alive, else.”

  She turned back to the cairn and listened to his footsteps as they receded down the slope. When her breathing had calmed, she bowed formally, in the Kigali manner, and slashed her hand through the air. “Sennevi. It is finished, young Vylkerri. I wish it could have had a different ending.”

  CHAPTER 53

  After two days on the trail, Penrys’s leg ached and her temper was short.

  The track of the survivors was as broad as a highway, and as clear. They’d passed Jirkat’s first encampment with its eloquent empty kazr circles, and gone another easy five miles before stopping and setting up their own. On the second day, they’d managed almost thirty miles.

  The necessary distance between the riders with their pack-strings had kept conversation to a minimum. Even the mid-day breaks had been hurried and urgent. They’d finally passed the trail to clan Rashaban and pushed themselves another five miles beyond it before stopping.

  Penrys had scanned to her limit as they rode, but five miles wasn’t far, and she’d felt hemmed in, and blind.

  The best thing was the weather—it held cold, but sunny. The snow remained crisp with just a bit of a thin crust from the sunshine. The broken track they rode was still powdery, and easier for the horses to push through than breaking new trail.

  Now, in the dim light of the kazr, Penrys itched for something to do, other than keeping an obsessive count of the horses, for
aging as best they could under the snow.

  Haraq was mending a leather strap for a pack frame, and Munraz was sitting in front of Khizuwi for his evening lesson. The low drone of their voices was constantly in her ear.

  She’d noticed Najud keeping a wary eye on her after she’d snapped at him in mind-speech on the trail today. She’d apologized, but something was singing along her nerves and she couldn’t shake it. It had left her tense and curt most of the afternoon.

  A phrase of Munraz’s to Khizuwi caught her attention. “But what is wrong with the Zannib-taghr, that they should want to live such a tethered life in the east? Why would anyone want to be a merchant?”

  She heard a subdued snort from Najud, but he left the question unchallenged.

  That was not her inclination, not tonight. “Merchants, is it?” She glanced at Khizuwi in apology for her interruption, but he gestured to her to continue.

  “Tell me, Munraz, do you carry a sword?”

  “Of course, bikrajti. I received it when I became a tushkzurtudin, an adult.”

  “And where did it come from?” she asked.

  “From my father, lijti.” His voice faltered as he mentioned his family, but he kept on gamely. She waved him on in encouragement. “And before that it was carried by his uncle, and then the younger brother of his father, and then…” His voice trailed off as he ran out of the weapon’s lineage.

  “I see.” She waited a moment. “And who made it?”

  “I… I don’t know, lijti.”

  She nodded. She was beginning to enjoy herself.

  “And where did the metal come from?”

  “I don’t know that either, lijti.”

  “Do they mine for iron, the Zannib-hubr, your people? Do they refine it, pound it into steel, twist the billets together?”

  Munraz shook his head.

  “Najud, where do the swords come from? Can you tell him?”

  She felt as if she were back in the library at the Collegium of Wizards in Ellech, where they’d never let her teach a class.

  Najud half-bowed to her in amusement and began. “Most of the trade iron is mined in the hills north of Yenit Ping, the Endless City. That’s in the Galat, where wars have been fought for centuries with Ndant, to control the source of the best iron. From there, it travels to Yenit Ping where entire neighborhoods are devoted to the crushing of the ore, the mixing with charcoal, the purifying of steel. At each stage, others buy the results. Some merchants trade the raw materials, some trade the unshaped steel, and some buy swords.”

  He glanced over at Penrys to confirm that was what she wanted, and continued with a smile. “A few of those swords are shaped into khash, the way the Zannib prefer, with the curve common to horsemen. Perhaps you don’t know, nal-jarghal—on foot, most people use straight swords. While every young man in Zannib would prefer an ancient khash of famous lineage, many a younger son must be satisfied with a new one, brought by ship to Ussha or by biziz, on the backs of animals, to Qawrash im-Dhal.”

  He leaned forward. “From those places, some smaller trader, picking up a few goods for his profit, travels west into the central regions, and there, in a small clan where a young man is soon to be sixteen years old, some proud relative buys him a khash of his own, a new one, suitable for a fourth or fifth son.”

  Penrys took over. “Every khash in sarq-Zannib originated in this way, even the old and famous ones. Either the steel billets were brought and a Zannib smith made the sword from them, or the sword itself was made in a foreign land.”

  “That is what merchants do. They make sure that warriors like you have swords.” She was amused by the appalled look on Munraz’s face. “Arrow points, too, though you can make those out of flint if you prefer. And the stove of your kazr, and its chimney-pipe, so much better than an open, smoky fire. And your very pots and pans and knives and axes. You have silver in your hills, in Zannib, and precious stones, but little gold and no iron.”

  She glanced at Khizuwi, who nodded approvingly. “I have a task for you, Munraz. Tomorrow evening, I want you to tell me where bunnas comes from, and how it gets from the plant to the pouch you carry, and what other nations use it, and how they get it. The same for Khizuwi’s kassa. And you know the carpet you’re sitting on? Tell me where all the dyes come from that give it color and life—what are they, how are they made, and where do they come from? Why are some colors common and others rare?”

  Najud added, “And what do they cost, compared to bunnas and kassa, both here in central Zannib, and in a foreign country. And finally, what do bunnas, kassa, and the wool dyes have in common with each other that make them excellent trade goods?”

  “But… How can I do that?” Munraz said.

  Haraq chuckled. “Just like the rest of us, young bikraj—by asking questions, thinking about it, and asking more questions. I’ll help you—I’d like to know more of those answers myself.”

  The lesson cleared some of Penrys’s bad temper and she made an effort to be more sociable.

  While Munraz, a bit shaken, continued his session with Khizuwi, she turned to Haraq. “What will you do when you rejoin your sister?”

  His face was still lean from weeks of inadequate food, the lines deeply drawn, but she had yet to see him lose his dignity. He paused, as if to consider before speaking, and she waited patiently.

  He nodded to Najud and her, and answered. “None of you can understand what it’s like for the Kurighdunaq to be gutted of so many of its people. No family will be left intact. I have my sister Luram, my cousin Umzakhilin, but what of my other sister, and my two brothers? I had a wife…”

  His voice trailed off. “We’ve all lost parents, but that happens in the natural course of things. It’s the children… There were no children sent back to the zudiqazd. You raised cairns for some of them, I was told. I can guess what happened to the others.

  “What is a tribe without children? We’ve lost an entire generation. I understand you saved much of the property of the clan, zarawinnaj, but what is wealth without people?”

  Najud said, quietly, “I have no answers for you, Haraq.”

  “No, I know that—how could you? You’ve done enough, the two of you, strangers as you are. The qahulajti is gone and the first part of the nightmare is over, and I’m glad I was there to witness it. But the nightmare has only just started. I don’t know that the clan can survive the rest of it.”

  Penrys gave him a sympathetic glance, but there was nothing she could do to help, any more than Najud.

  Her nerves tingled again, and she looked up, trying to trace the source of her irritation. It nagged at her like the buzzing of a persistent fly.

  *What is it, Pen-sha?*

  She couldn’t answer him. It teased at her, just out of reach, but this time she felt a direction—south.

  “We’re about five miles past the trail to Rashaban, right?”

  Najud nodded.

  “There’s something… Could it be Jiqlaraz? Already?”

  Munraz’s head turned when he heard her. “My uncle?”

  “I don’t know. It’s too far away, but something’s been bothering me for hours. If it’s him, it’s more than just one person.”

  Haraq said, “If he hurried, he probably had enough time to get there and return this far. Maybe he’s camped for the night with others, as we are.”

  “They had a way of working together, my ex-family.” Munraz’s voice was bitter. “They hadn’t shown me how to do that, yet.”

  “Like the Rasesni mages, joined together?” Penrys asked Najud.

  He shrugged. “I’ve never heard of Zannib doing that.” He glanced at Khizuwi, who shook his head.

  “There will be trouble with those bikrajab,” Khizuwi said. “It’s been building for decades, from before my time.”

  “There’ll be trouble sooner than that,” Penrys said, “if they follow our trail in the morning.”

  CHAPTER 54

  Late the next morning, they parted from Khizuwi, after confirming
that nothing was trailing them. If it was Jiqlaraz and others that Penrys had sensed, they’d gone somewhere else, presumably to the abandoned camp site. She hated to think of them tearing the cairn apart, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  “I know where I am. Easy to find my way from here,” Khizuwi said. “Three days at most will see me home.”

  “Sure you won’t stay with us for the winter, or at least visit and we’ll bring you back with an escort?” Najud said. “I know Umzakhilin would want to thank you.”

  “No thanks are necessary for us to do what’s needed, jarghal—you know that.” He smiled at Najud’s rueful acknowledgment. “No, you just send back Ariqnas when he’s ready to come, and I’ll let his family know the good news.”

  Penrys leaned low over her horse in a bow. “Thank you for your care, jarghal. I’ve learned a great deal from you.”

  “Not, I think, in bikraj matters,” he said, dryly.

  “In matters I value just as highly,” she said, shaking her head. “You’ve given me much to think about.”

  “Take care of your nal-jarghal, you two.”

  He twisted in his saddle to face Munraz. “And you, young bikraj—listen to them. You don’t know how lucky you are to have escaped the toils of your family, though you may not think so right now. And these teachers of yours, I do believe they will lead an interesting life. Go on as you have begun, and do great things.”

  Haraq had held himself back in this farewell of bikrajab, but Khizuwi singled him out.

  “Haraq, I wish peace on you and all your comrades. The world will be better for all of you in it, rather than lost as you were. Find a way to rebuild and make it so.”

  Haraq bowed to him from horseback, in silence.

  They sat their horses for a few minutes and watched him breaking trail to the northwest, and then returned to the broad track pointed northeast, to the zudiqazd of the Kurighdunaq.