by S. L. Viehl
“Track the ones on foot,” he told his hunters, who had also noticed the trail.
Hasal joined him. “What do you look for, Raktar?”
Teulon picked up a crossbow bolt near the launch and examined it. “The pilot.”
Hasal looked back at the body. “He is the pilot.”
“He is Toskald, not Terran. His hair has been gilded and there are still traces of cosmetics on his skin. He wears no crystal.” Teulon saw faint traces of a dark substance on the alloy-tipped bolt and handed it to his second. “The pilot was shot with this.”
“I do not understand,” Hasal said, turning the bolt over to inspect it. “How do you know this?”
“The dead man shows care to his body but wears clothing that does not fit his body? See how the sleeves are too short here, and the trousers too tight at the waist. Also, his pants are not fastened properly; they were pulled on in haste. The blood pattern inside the launch tells me that he was killed while near the copilot’s chair, and then moved into the pilot’s seat. The helm has been vandalized and there is survival gear missing from the storage compartments. The hunters who came here fired their weapons and wounded something that walks on two feet and bleeds red. As a Terran who had emerged from the wreck might.” Then they had let him walk away—but why?
“Hunters do not wound,” Hasal said, looking utterly mystified now. “They only kill, and they would never allow an ensleg to live.” His expression changed. “That is why the Terran switched clothes? To appear to the hunters as a Tos’?”
“Perhaps.” Despite the facts he had uncovered, there was still something very wrong with this scene, Teulon thought. “Who hunts this territory?”
“Five, perhaps six different iiskars,” Hasal said. “I can send men to check each of them.”
It was another hour before Teulon’s hunters returned with a Terran male dressed in Toskald garments. The wound on his face corresponded with the bolt Teulon had found. As he was marched over to Teulon, the Raktar recognized him immediately.
“The Terran linguist.” It took him a moment to recall the man’s name. “Duncan Reever.”
Hasal frowned. “You know this man?”
It could not be Reever, of course. The Terran had been on board the CloudWalk when it had been destroyed. Teulon had watched him die. Whoever this man was, he was not Reever. Teulon covered his face before facing the Terran prisoner.
“He fights well,” one of the hunters told Teulon. “Broke Lapar’s arm.”
Hasal stepped up to the Terran and gestured to the wreckage. “Were you the pilot of this ship?”
“No. The pilot was killed on impact.”
Teulon frowned. The man’s voice sounded flat and devoid of emotion—exactly as he had remembered Reever’s. “But you took his crystal.”
“I gave it to one of the hunters who came to salvage the wreck.”
That, Teulon thought unlikely, given that the crystal was his only passage off the planet’s surface. The Toskald would never take him back to the skim city without it. “Why have you come to Akkabarr?”
“One of our ships crashed here two years ago. I am here to search for a survivor.” He ignored the chuffing sound Hasal made and addressed Teulon. “I was following someone who might have helped me find her when your men captured me.”
“Searching for a woman. A crash survivor. On Akkabarr.” Hasal spit on the ice. “He is insane, Raktar.”
Teulon studied the sky. A storm was brewing to the east, and it would be dangerous to keep the men out on the ice much longer. Teulon’s battalions were also in position, making the final preparations to move on the armory trenches. He would need to travel to the northern territories to ready the attack forces. The Kangal’s general had not accepted the failure of his scouts and was sending more ships every day to patrol the surface. Teulon could not afford to be distracted by a League spy, no matter whom he resembled.
“I am no more a spy than you are Iisleg,” the Terran said in flawless Jorenian. “I would know your House, warrior.”
“You already do, Linguist.” Teulon removed his face shield. “Now you will explain to me how you still breathe when I watched you die two years ago.”
“I could ask you the same thing.” Reever switched from speaking Jorenian to Iisleg. “I was saved during the battle. We never learned how, but the child who was with me that day may have been responsible.”
Teulon recalled the tiny, golden-haired Terran daughter of Cherijo Torin and Duncan Reever. Xonea Torin, an old friend and captain of the Sunlace, had told him that in order to protect the child, all records as to her existence had been destroyed. Those who knew of her were either HouseClan Torin or their closest allies.
Still, he had to be sure. “What was the name of this child?”
“Marel.”
“Give him back his weapons and release him.” He ignored his hunters’ astonished stares, gestured to the open ice, and walked with Reever past them.
“How did you come to be here?” the Terran asked when they were out of hearing range.
“The League had reasons to keep me alive.” He watched Reever replace a blade in a shoulder sheath fitted as an assassin would wear it. “Do my people believe that I embraced the stars with my kin?”
“The League stated that you ran into an open air lock after your ship was destroyed, and that your remains were lost among the battlefield debris.” The Terran halted and checked the power cells on a pistol before glancing at him. “They also claimed that you started the incident by ordering your ship to fire on the League.”
“I gave the order to protect my ship from a drone launch programmed to destroy it.” Teulon studied the tracks leading away from the crash scene. “Why are you here, Linguist?”
“My wife was captured during the battle and disappeared. She was brought here, as I imagine you were, to be sold into slavery. Her transport crashed on the surface.” Reever halted and faced him. “Why are you leading this rebellion, ClanLeader?”
The word made Teulon’s head pound. “I have no House, Linguist. Here I do the last of the work left to me, and then my path ends.”
The Terran began to say something, and then paused. At last he said, “But you are leading these surface natives into war with the Toskald.”
“I am.” He saw the skela had been brought into the wreck site. “Your pardon, Linguist. I must attend to this.”
Teulon went to the body, where the skela had gathered. “Have the launch shrouded,” he told Hasal. “Erase all signs that there was a crash here.” To the dead handlers, one of whom had already produced a skinning blade, he said, “Do not take his face.”
“Raktar, worgald is always taken,” Hasal said.
“The time for tithes is over. The Kangal will not sell any more faces of the dead to grieving kin,” Teulon said. “Neither shall we.” He looked at the cringing skela, and for once understood why the Iisleg held them in such contempt. “Give him to the cats.”
The skela quickly and efficiently stripped the body before they dragged it over to the waiting jlorra.
Hasal snapped out orders, and the scouting party that had accompanied them to the crash site reassembled and mounted their skimmers.
Reever came to stand with Teulon. “Am I your prisoner, or am I free to continue with my search?”
“There is a storm coming. You will have to take shelter soon.” He nodded toward the trail across the ice. “You were following someone.”
“Two females. The hunters who came to salvage the crash called them vral,” Reever said. “I think they may know something about Cherijo.”
Teulon gestured for Hasal, who hurried over to them. “What is the closest iiskar to this place?”
His second gave Reever a suspicious look before answering, “There are two. Kuorj, one hour to the east, and Pasala, one hour to the west.”
“Which would welcome the Raktar’s personal emissary?” Teulon asked.
“Kuorj. Their rasakt has pledged all of his men to th
e cause. Pasala is smaller, less affluent, perhaps not as loyal to the cause. We have not met with them. The Kuorj would wait to find out the ensleg was your emissary. The Pasala would be too busy feeding him to their pack animals.”
Teulon turned to Reever. “Go east. Tell the Kuorj leader that I sent you to find these females, and you may shelter with them until the weather passes.” He handed him a transmitter beacon. “This will signal my camp. If you are in need of aid, relay the coordinates of your position. Help will be sent to you.” He met Reever’s gaze. “I have never seen your wife on Akkabarr, Linguist. Should that change, I will signal you.”
Reever nodded and departed, heading east over the ice.
The methane-powered skimmers made the hour-long trip to Pasala iiskar in only a few minutes. Teulon’s scouts went ahead to alert the rasakt of the iiskar, who stood waiting with his three highest-ranked men as the Raktar’s party arrived. There were several greeting rituals performed, including the declaration of the rasakt as loyal to the Raktar and the rebel cause, as Pasala and Teulon had never met before now.
Teulon thought Pasala might be in earnest with his vow. His men were thin and wore their weapons battle-ready. The women and children were kept completely out of sight. The camp had been erected near natural thermal vents, the heat from which disguised the camp’s thermal signature and rendered it invisible to any orbital scan. The entire camp was free of clutter, and the Pasala appeared quite ready to pack up and leave within a few minutes’ notice.
“I would speak to your hunters,” Teulon told the headman once the formalities had been observed and the last of the greetings exchanged.
The rasakt displayed the command he held over his people by uttering a few words, which had his hunters assembled beside him thirty seconds later.
“Have you been out on the ice today?” Teulon asked the oldest of the men.
“No, Raktar,” the hunter answered. “We remained here to help with the repair of some shelters, as a storm approaches.”
One of the younger men among the lesser-ranked, the beast master, made a coughing sound, and the rasakt turned and gestured for him to come forward. “What have you to tell, Jaf?”
“I was out on the ice today with the jlorra, at midday,” the beast master said.
“You saw the ensleg launch crash?” Teulon asked him.
The younger man nodded. “Kuorj flew in from the east. I saw them land to lay claim to it.”
“Did you see anything else?”
Jaf glanced at his footgear. “I may have seen something. Something that was not there.”
Teulon tensed.
“You cannot see something unless it is,” Hasal said sharply. “Tell us.”
The beast master shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Two came on foot, from the south, just as the Kuorj had crossed the ice. They were there and they were not. I thought my eyes snow-dazzled.”
“Vral,” one of the other hunters muttered.
Hasal made a sound of contempt. “Vral, is it? Next you will tell me you saw winged jlorra and gold-beaked rothawks.”
“Hold.” The rasakt lifted a hand. “We have heard much talk of the vral. It is said they walk the ice here now, and keep the skela idle.”
“Have you seen them with your own eyes?” Hasal asked. The rasakt shook his head. Teulon’s second turned to the assembled hunters. “Any of you? Say now.”
None of the men spoke.
“It was a trick of the light,” Hasal assured them, his voice gentling. “Out on the ice, a man sees things now and then that are not there.”
The storm was moving in fast now, so Teulon thanked Pasala and his men and returned by skimmer to the central encampment. There he took reports from his battalion commanders and briefed them on the two females for whom Reever searched, and issued orders that the women be captured alive and brought directly to him.
That night, when Teulon had finished planning the next day’s maneuvers with Hasal, he said, “Both the Terran and the Pasala spoke of vral. Who are they?”
“They are nothing.” Hasal stowed away the topographic maps they had been using and went to adjust the heatarc’s flue. “Vral are not real. They exist only in the old stories.”
“What are these stories told about them?”
Hasal looked up. “You wish me to repeat tales told to children who fear the absence of their father?”
Teulon inclined his head.
“As you say.” Hasal crouched to prepare their food and drink. “When a man is harmed, it is said that his blood opens the eyes of the gods. If he cries out like a coward in pain, they look away, and he dies. If he is silent and endures, however, the gods open their ears. Only then can they hear the cries of the man’s women and children. This makes them take pity on those who will suffer the man’s death, and they send the vral to find him. The vral look into the wounded one’s heart. If they find him worthy, they restore him to his iiskar. That is all.”
“What are the vral?” Teulon saw Hasal about to retort, and added, “What are they said to be in these stories?”
“They are spirit made flesh.” Hasal made an uncertain gesture. “They walk as we do, in body form, but they have no faces.”
Teulon thought of the skela, prepared to remove the face of the dead Toskald. “What happened to the vral’s faces?”
“No one knows.” Hasal looked uncomfortable. “Some say they are the souls of those who died during the journey from the old world to this one.”
Or perhaps, Teulon thought, they were the corpses stripped of worgald, brought back by Iisleg subconscious guilt to haunt them. Part of him could accept that. There was not a conscious moment when he was not haunted by his beloved dead. “Why are they so feared?”
“If the vral find you unworthy, they feed your soul to their jlorra,” Hasal said. “To look upon them is to see true death, Raktar. Vral may be sent by the gods, and grant a second life to those deserving of such miracles, but no one wants to see them.”
Teulon considered this. Given the legend, vral might go anywhere on the surface and never be challenged. “How do we find these vral?”
“We could walk the ice until we become as snow-blind as that hunter likely was,” Hasal suggested as he brought over a plate heaped with boiled grain and vegetables for Teulon, and a thick section of boiled meat for himself.
“That may be so.” Teulon accepted the plate. “How do we find two Toskald spies who have disguised themselves as vral?”
Hasal smiled for the first time that day. “Vral are spirit made flesh, but they are not alive. If the legends are true, they would generate no body heat.” He took out his thermal scanner and showed it to Teulon. “Spies, on the other hand, would.”
When Hasal had gone for the night, Teulon dressed and slipped out of the camp. Bsak accompanied him to the place they had found during one of their treks, a tiny ice cave hardly large enough to serve as anything but temporary shelter from the cold.
Bsak spied something moving on the ice, and looked up. Teulon made the gesture of release, and the big cat stalked off. He never brought the cat inside the cave; something about the interior seemed to make Bsak uneasy.
He went in and ignited the tiny heatarc that had been left abandoned in the center of the floor. There were no other signs of occupation, except for a depression in one wall where someone had chopped a hole to look out.
Why does she come here?
Time and an ancient vent shaft had carved the small cave from very old, dense blue ice. It absorbed the light from the heatarc more than it reflected it, but kept the cold out. The interior grew warm in a very short time.
Teulon leaned back against one wall and watched the light flicker. The cave was also one of the quietest places he had ever found on the planet, and soon all he could hear was the sound of his lungs filling and emptying, and the meaningless beat of his heart. He closed his eyes and listened for the whisper of her steps in the snow.
Raktar.
The ghost drifted i
nto the cave, formless, nearly transparent, so insubstantial that her passage barely disturbed the light and the air.
“Spirit,” Teulon greeted her, as he always did. He wasn’t sure how he knew she was female, only that she was. Nor did he reach out to touch her, as he had done the first time she had appeared. He knew she would vanish if he tried to do so. Instead, he watched her go through her ritual of walking the length of the cave three times, going to the depression in the ice once each time before coming to him.
You should not be here alone.
“I am not.” Teulon liked the sound of her voice, and the fact that she spoke perfect Jorenian. “You are here.”
I am not here.
“I know.” He waited a moment. “Are you vral?”
Are you?
She drifted around the cave for a time, gliding more than walking, without purpose. Teulon watched her without speaking, for too many words would also send her back to the otherworld where she dwelled.
You are thinking of her.
“I can do little more,” he said.
I am lost to my beloved, and my beloved to me. The ghost moved in closer. What will we do, Raktar?
“You will haunt this cave.” Teulon studied his hands. He had his father’s large, capable hands. “I will make more ghosts.”
For the first time since she had come to him in this place, she made physical contact. The mist of her came between his hands and rested lightly against his chest. It will not bring them back.
“I know this.” He held her briefly, a slim column of something slightly more than air. He didn’t understand his deep emotion for this creature, whatever she was. He simply knew she was the only thing on this world sadder than himself. “I would bring you back, if I could.”
She moved away from him. There is still time, Teulon. Time for you to use your hands to build instead of destroy.
“Wait.” Teulon opened his eyes as he reached for her.
Like everything that mattered, she was gone.
