by Jean Johnson
The man holding him down stopped stepping on his calf. The release of pressure brought its own fresh wave of pain, but thankfully a bit less intense. “Koro, use your truth-flame spell on this one. I think he’s trying to lie to us.” Lutun’s captor turned back to him. “Koro is a master animadj,” he said, gesturing with his free hand while the one on Lutun’s shoulder continued to hold him in a bruising grip. “He has a particular affinity for fire. If you tell the truth, his torch flames will stay upright and true, but if you tell a lie, they will reach toward your face. And with each lie you tell, we will bring those flames closer and closer to you.”
The man he gestured at held out his own hand toward the younger man with all the sticks, who was busy extracting one of them. It turned out to be a torch, covered in resin and oil-wrapped rags. As the animadj lit it, murmuring his spells to shape the magic, Lutun prayed he was close enough for the Fae to steal the . . . no. He wasn’t close enough. He had roamed too far in his hunting for the anima to pull out of the animadj’s hands and go flying toward the pantean.
Making up his mind to resist, to not tell them anything that could help the efforts of what had to be a scouting party for a great war band, Lutun squared his shoulders under his interrogator’s grip. “I am Lutun of the mighty Flame Sea Tribe. I serve the Taje Djin-taje-ul, she who rules over all, and she will not be happy if you torture me. She will not be happy if you kill me. And she will send her servant, Death, to deal with you if you continue to harm me!”
“Your clan name and your threats are meaningless, little sheep. I am Kuruk, warrior of the Circle Fire, a name and a tribe you will learn to fear. If you live. We are strong, and you are not. Prepare yourself to serve us or be slaughtered.” Bringing his other hand down as well onto Lutun’s shoulder, Kuruk held the grim, flinching youth firmly in place for the coming interrogation.
***
Zudu, the chief animadj, had appropriated a set of caves that went deep into the rocks, and had turned those caves into ornate chambers with the pantean’s help. Like the Fae, Zudu had decided to plan for future generations, an expansion of the tribe’s numbers, and hopefully an expansion in the number of animadjet to train and serve. Some of the best living quarters within the animadjet complex had been given balconies overlooking the valley not too far from the theater, and it was on one of those balconies that Jintaya now sat, having requested a moment of Zitta’s time.
From the look on his face, her request was not what he had expected.
“So . . . you don’t want to raise your own children?” Zitta asked, furrowing his brow in confusion. Having been gauged both trained and skilled enough, Zudu had promoted him to fully-ranked animadj and put him to work helping the tribe settle disputes and questions related to housing and territorial claims for grazing and gathering. “You want me to find parents who do want them?”
Jintaya shook her head. “No, that is not what is meant by this request,” she corrected him. “We do raise our own children, and sometimes the children of others. All children are raised with love and care. Those who are fully Fae by blood are always taken back home . . . though usually we are very careful not to procreate when we are serving on a pantean in distant lands.
“It is simply that those who are Dai-Fae often find it far more comfortable to be raised in the same place as their Shae parent. Having watched the various adults of the tribe and how they interact with each other and especially with children, we four Fae ladies are requesting that certain couples among your people adopt our offspring to be raised by you.” She carefully did not mention the possibility that these half-native, half-Fae children could wind up being a danger to her homeland and would not be allowed to cross the Veil between worlds without solid proof that they were no threat to her kind. “In a way, it is an honor for us to ask someone to raise a child; it means we trust them to be a good parent. It is a compliment. And as you have fathered a child with Rua, she would like you to accept that child into your care when the boy is born.”
“Why would you not raise them yourselves?” Zitta pressed.
“Mostly, it is because we will not have the time to . . . to . . . spare . . .” Jintaya stopped, frowning. Something was wrong. Like hearing an out-of-tune harp string being plucked in the midst of an otherwise melodic, quiet performance. The animadj started to speak. She cut him off with a swift rise of her left hand. Swirling the right one, she murmured the trigger-words for her awareness spell.
Though he had seen parts of this spell before, Zitta still sucked in a sharp breath when scores of soft-shining sparks sprang up from her fingers and spread out. “So many,” he whispered. He looked at the golden-haired Fae. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I do not yet know . . . but someone I have a tie to is in mortal pain. I can feel it,” she murmured, and pressed the edge of her first two fingers to her forehead while she concentrated for a moment. Most of the sparks were arrayed in an odd scribble with sparks poking off here and there, some higher than the others. She murmured another triggering phrase and brought up an illusion of the sandstone and granite canyons around them. Zitta’s eyes widened at this show of magic, his attention flicking from spark to spark as they nestled into, and on top of, the three-dimensional illusion.
“What an amazing spell. Is that . . . ? Are those two sparks you and I?” he asked, pointing at the tiny curve of balcony shelf set to the left of the entrance to the animadjet halls.
“Three sparks, but the spell is not large enough at this size for you to see my child,” Jintaya dismissed. Using both hands, she spun the illusion, checking the various life forces it tracked. “No, no . . . it is not anyone close to the central valley, or I would know their name and their peril if it were that close. It must be one of the hunters.”
Choosing a direction, she shrank the valley down—the sparks remained more or less the same size, forming a bright golden squiggle—and scanned off to the north, then the northeast, to the east . . . The pain she sensed increased, and her hands started moving jerkily, rather than with their normal centuries of practiced grace. When she reached the zones to the south, Zitta reached through the spell and caught her trembling fingers.
“Easy, Djin-taje-ul,” he soothed her, stroking her hands with his. “Deep breaths. It is admittedly frightening to see you upset, but if you are upset, you cannot focus, and if you cannot focus . . .”
“I cannot master the magic, the anima,” she agreed, and managed a slight smile. Her pointed ears had twitched at the way he pronounced her name, infusing it with a different meaning than it should have borne, but it was a good reminder that she was in charge and had to remain calm, not agitated or frustrated. Drawing in the suggested deep breath, she centered herself, then grasped the thread, shifted, and examined. Just as she rotated the illusion from southwest to west, she stiffened. “Lutun! Lutun is in danger. In great pain, and . . . and it is increasing!”
“Increasing?” Zitta asked. “What could make it increase? A desert lion? A nest of scorpions? Hyenas?”
“No, I . . . I don’t . . . Ah!” she exclaimed, fingers clutching at his. Though her digits were slender and not callused, there was a great deal of strength in her grip. “There are others there, other lives—sentient, thinking lives. I think they are . . . By the stars, they are torturing him! But . . . why?”
Zitta wasted a moment in gaping at her, but only a moment. Trained to see the world beyond what was within reach of his physical eyes, his physical hands, he pushed off the bench he was sharing with their leader and braced his hands on the balcony railing. If Lutun suffered from torture, that meant a warband wanted information on his tribe’s vulnerabilities. Zitta drew in a deep breath, then hollered as strongly as he could, letting his voice echo off the stone wall behind him and out across the valley.
“Taje Halek! Puna! Eruk! Tulan—anyone! Djin-taje-ul needs you! Shorno? Shorno, get the hunt mistress and the warriors up here!”
&nb
sp; Jintaya swayed in part from the pain she was experiencing in a foggy version of Lutun’s secondhand injuries, but also in part from the lung power on the Shae man. Righting herself, she winced a little and pressed her hand to her stomach. Like Rua, she was now the equivalent of seven months along, and her center of gravity was off-kilter.
At least this world had similar spans for its moon cycles and its gestation periods, Fae and Shae alike, so that calculating when she would be due was easy. It did nothing, however, for her sense of balance, or for the fact that this fetus, just like her previous children, had a habit of kicking now and again. Reluctantly, she eased back on her awareness of Lutun’s endangered life-spark, but doing so eased much of the nausea and disorientation.
Needing to move, to do something while she waited for helpers to arrive, Jintaya made her way down to the entry hall. The stone benches down here had no cushions stuffed with straw or wool, but they did have comfortable curves to their seats and backs, but she couldn’t stay settled for long. Not when it took several minutes to gather anyone, for it was early afternoon, hot in the midspring sunlight but still bearable for hunting, gathering, herding, and plant tending.
The handful of men and women slowed when they entered the hall, gawking at the sparks still floating in front of her, following their creator while she paced in her agitation. Zitta, joining them, hurried to explain. “These are the anima life-sparks of each member of the tribe, and this one out here is Lutun; he is being injured by several strangers, so we need to discuss how to rescue him,” he said to each one when they arrived. Grateful, Jintaya focused on keeping her awareness balanced between close enough to know Lutun’s condition and distanced enough not to be affected by his pain, while still projecting a detailed terrain map for the tribe’s handful of warriors to view.
When Halek arrived, several of the warriors were debating how to as swiftly as possible get out to the distant valley where Lutun’s spark was located. In his wake came Éfan and Adan, with Tulan trailing behind. As soon as the animadj explained the situation to her, Tulan raised her young voice, cutting through the discussions of the others.
“No! We do not send every warrior and bow wielder we have after these people.” Her hazel eyes stared hard at some of the more agitated men. “I know that valley. Lutun is nearly three selijm from here. Two if you run partway, and it is the hottest part of the day. If the taje-ul’s information is right, that they are harming him at paced intervals, then they are torturing our tribesman. Think,” Tulan ordered the others. “Why would they torture him? To get information.
“Why would they want information? To find out how rich these wadijt are, and how few warriors we can spare. They are seeking our weaknesses to plan for an invasion. Need I remind you that my uncle was a hunter like Lutun, found with many wounds upon him, tortured to death shortly before the Spider Hand warriors started raiding us in earnest?”
“Your words are a grim wisdom, but they are still wise,” Halek praised her. “Lutun is too far away for a rescue, but we may be able to find the tracks of his attackers. We will spare three . . .” He trailed off as the two male Fae whispered to each other in their own tongue.
Jintaya heard their words. Adan was asking Éfan if they could open a gate, a local portal connecting this hall with that spot near Lutun, and Éfan was replying what she already knew: no, they could not. The aether was just sufficiently strange enough in this world that it was actually easier—by no means easy, but easier—to open a tunnel between two different universes than it was to open a tunnel between two points on the same world. The anima itself would resist such a connection, like how a coil spring resisted being compressed.
Using the Fae tongue herself, she spoke. “Enough arguing. Adan, can you grab one of the others, get a pair of slip-discs, and get out there quickly?”
He gave her a guilty look. “Everyone else is gone for the day, Jintaya-ul. Kaife and Parren went north to shape more of the valleys with cistern caches, and to bring various ores up to the surface for future mining deposits. Fali and Rua are north as well, looking for more wild goats to add to the herds. Even Ban is gone; he said he was going to explore to the east to look for oases among the dunes. He took his discs to make his journey swift.”
“Then it will have to be you and I. Fetch my discs,” she ordered.
“But, Jintaya, in your condition . . .” Adan protested.
“Fetch. My discs,” she repeated, and stood with as much dignity and authority as she could. Switching to the human tongue, she stated, “Adan and I shall rescue Lutun. Éfan, you will stay here and devise a perimeter ward with warning spells, to give us advance notice of when a large group of strangers approach. If Tulan is right, then there may be a large force on its way to raid us. In order to stop it, we will need information. Adan—my discs and my armor,” Jintaya ordered him, giving the younger Fae an annoyed frown for the way he hesitated and lingered. “Do not forget my madouk.”
“Ban will never forgive me if harm comes to you,” Adan muttered in the human tongue, not Faelon, but he bowed and turned, leaping into a run that startled the humans around them with its swiftness. His soft-soled boots made only the faintest of patters on the magic-smoothed stone of the entryway.
“Forgive me, Djin-taje-ul,” Taje Halek stated, recovering from the shock of the blond man’s quick disappearance, “but you are in no condition to travel swiftly. Perhaps a few months earlier, but . . . Well, you cannot run easily, and if you were to trip and fall?”
Jintaya held up her hand, cutting him off. “The Fae have more ways of traveling than you. We can find Lutun faster than any of you, and if he is . . . still alive when we reach him, I will be able to heal him immediately. More than that, Halek. I am your taje-ul. It is my responsibility to see to the safety of our combined people. Zudu and Zitta have tested and proven that Fae magics are stronger than yours, and if magic cannot touch me, then their weapons certainly won’t.
“You will all stay here and coordinate with Tulan and Éfan on setting up sentries to watch our borders. Even if he shapes the anima to stand guard for us, a clever animadj could notice such things and find a way around them. Right, Zitta?” she asked the brown-haired former apprentice.
“That is correct. With time, Zudu can even counter some of the magics Éfan has shaped out of the anima, unless he is vigilant,” he agreed. Not many, and he knew that Jintaya knew it wasn’t many, but he was wise enough to gloss over that fact.
Shifting the map, Jintaya displayed a detailed illusion of the local canyons, valleys, and ravines. She had taken the time in past months to look at as much of it herself as she could, and as a part of her daily exercise tried to explore a bit more, up until her fifth month of pregnancy, when the roundness of her stomach started to affect her sense of balance. Linking hands and powers with Éfan, she gave him control of the terrain-map spell.
Even as he accepted it, Éfan frowned and switched to Faelon. “You are starting to feel like Kaife does when he has spent too much time absorbing and sustaining himself on the local anima. Yet you have not cast even a twentieth of the greater magics he has.”
“I have been keeping a life-link to each member of the tribe all this time. It is small, but it is constant . . . and no, I will not cease tracking all these lives,” Jintaya told him. “I accepted responsibility for these people. I also accept responsibility for the consequences of how I choose to monitor their safety.”
Sighing, Éfan moved over to the young woman, Tulan, to elicit her advice on how to monitor all the ways one could approach their settlement. Halek took his place, while the warriors moved to join the tall Fae.
“I have heard you speaking your Fae tongue before,” the stocky middle-aged male stated. “Is there a name for it?”
“We call it Faelon, which literally means Fae-tongue.” She opened her mouth and tapped the tip of her tongue. “This is a lon.”
“Then . . . the language we
speak is adanjé-lon. Flame-tongue.” His mouth curved in a smirk. “It is ironic that we sound like a fierce tribe, the Flame Sea Tribe, yet our most daring ‘warrior’ is our pregnant, gentle-minded leader.”
“We are thinking beings,” she reminded him. “This means we can always be more than just a mere word or a label. I do not like violence, but I can fight. It is regrettable, but sometimes the only way to stop an attacker is to strike back. I will hope that we will not have to do so, but I will not ignore the possibility of it.”
“Your fierce shadow-man is named Death, your own name carries the title of leader within its embrace, and even Adan there, his name means fire and he deals with magics that cause things to grow hot or cold—fire and ice being opposites,” Halek observed. “It was he who showed us how to make tall towers to catch the wind and cool our homes, and that domed place he says will make ice without anima next winter. Are you certain you are not fated to—”
Something swooped into the animadjet hall, scaring and scattering the humans. Even Halek stumbled back a step, though he did place himself between Jintaya and the perceived threat until he recognized it. Adan, carrying a sack bundle on his back and bearing two gold-wrapped staves in one hand, floated a forearm’s length above the ground, his feet resting on the flat sides of golden half eggs connected by a length of stiff-looking golden chain. Jintaya reached up to steady the tribal leader as he gasped a second time, knowing the natives had never seen a floating person before.
Hopping off the contraption when it came to a stop, Adan snatched at the chain while the egg halves bounced up, no longer pressed down by his weight. A snap of his wrist, and the halves folded together, forming a seam-split egg with the stiff chains forming a loop. Tulan recovered first, licking her lips, eyes wide and wondering.
