by Dave Freer
"I don't care who you are. I don't care why they want you. If they try to take my second daughter from us, I'll stop them. They'll have to kill me first. You're our girl an' you're staying." The beekeeper was not a voluble man. His wife normally did most of the talking. But grim determination shone from his big honest face. His wife, now suddenly silent, just nodded.
Shael ran to him, and hugged him, something she had never done before. His grimness melted like wax, and he smiled and tousled her hair. It was something of a shock to Shael. No one had ever done something like that to her before. A royal tantrum and a flogging for the offender would have followed. It broke the warm illusion, and made her aware of what different worlds they had lived in. She looked up at the big smiling face and realized for the first time in her life, that she could not just put her own concerns first. She had to run from this refuge. Not just to save herself, but for their sake.
She broke away from the enfolding arms. "No. I . . . if I don't go, they won't stop coming. Deshin will just send more men." She sighed. "He's not stupid. He'll send the royal beekeeper. If I stay . . . they'll kill us all. You see I . . . I'm, my name is not Kim, it is really . . ."
"Princess Shael."
She gaped at him. "How . . ."
Mae smiled ruefully at her. "Merthly described you in a letter, lass. Especially the green eyes and all the bangles. We didn't know how to tell you we knew, so we just let it pass. We didn't want to lose you, love."
"But, my father . . . he killed your daughter!" Shael's world was painted with hatreds and vendettas. Sometimes there were compromises of state, but the hatred remained. Shael was not prepared for forgiveness.
"You didn't do it, lass. Your father's sins aren't yours. And by what Merthly said, he treated you like no father should."
Shael's cheeks burned. "I'm sure she also said I was horrible. I always was to his mistresses."
Mae chuckled. "Oh, aye. She also said you was so spoiled you couldn't even dress yourself. She was sorry for you, poor thing." The smile ran away from her face. "She said she'd never let her children be brought up like that. Now, let's be scraping the stings out of this fellow."
"What are you going to do with him?"
"Look after him, and then let him go. We'll hide you, lass, and tell him you ran off," said Baer decisively.
Shael nodded and set to work.
* * *
The note on the empty bed was tear-splashed.
"Dear Papa Baer and Mamma Mae,
Please forgive me. I have to go. Please don't try to follow me. I will come back someday if I can. I wish that you really had been my mother and father. Merthly was right. If I ever have any, I won't let my children be brought up like that either."
It was signed "Love, Kim" the name she had written as her own when they asked her what they should call her. She had taken nothing but the little that she had come with.
* * *
"Too slow. I'm too old." The lined face was twisted in pain. The old man clutched at his leg. "Keil, boy," he panted. "Bring me the little bottle from my dilly bag, son."
Keilin didn't wait. He ran as if his heels were on fire. He'd seen the puff adder that had bitten Marou. In the fashion of that particular breed of snake it hadn't slithered off when they came close, but simply gone on lying on the narrow path. The old man had been leading the way, and hadn't even seen it. He'd felt it, but had not been quite quick enough to pull away from the fangs.
By the time Keilin got back, Marou had dragged himself into the shade of a rocky ledge. The leg was already ballooning, and the old man's face was gray-shaded and beaded with a heavy sweat.
Marou reached for the bottle, unstoppered it with shaky hands. Drank. Shuddered. After a few moments the narcotic began to take effect. He spoke slightly easier, but his voice was high and quavery. "Keil, boy. You been like the son I never had. You know Broken-Chimney Rock?" Keilin nodded. "My stash . . . it's in th' cave with the head-sized piece o' quartz next to the entrance. There's a shelf near the back, high up, goes back a long way. 'Nuff good stuff there t' buy a fair-to-middlin' town. It's all yours, boy."
Keilin found his throat closing up, too tight to speak. He shook his head furiously.
"You see, Keil, I struck it rich maybe twenty-five year ago. Went to live in town. I lasted two whole weeks. Th' town was sick o' me and I was mighty sick of it. So . . . I come back out here. It's bin a good life, but I was gettin' a mite lonely. We had a good year an' a bit, boy. I ain't gonna live through this one. I'm too old. I just wanted to tell you, son, afore I finish the rest of the bottle an' go out peacefullike."
Fear and desperate grief clawed at Keilin. The rapid cooling of the pendant stone went unnoticed. "No! You can't!" It was a cry of utter desolation. With it he felt the jewel like an icy snake biting into his chest . . . and willed. For the first time in his life he used the stone with conscious direction. An entire apothecary's shop, including the apothecary and a furtive looking customer, was translocated abruptly from Port Tinarana into the high desert valley.
The drug had stilled Marou's pain to some extent. It hadn't clouded his sharp old mind. As Keilin ran into the shop, which the shocked owner and his customer were attempting to leave, the old man readied his spear. As Keilin was threatening to push his knife through the terrified-looking apothecary's liver if he didn't immediately provide a treatment for puff-adder bite, there came a sonic boom. The platecraft dropped in on the exact position Keilin had been standing a few seconds before. The deadly black spear was thrown even before the craft had come to a complete halt, toppling one of its two riders. The second fired a deadly purple energy blast at where the old man had been. He was injured and drugged, which is why the bolt actually hit Marou's side, instead of missing completely.
Keilin had spent the last eighteen months being taught to act decisively. He seized the first bottle that came to hand, and flung it through the diamond-shaped window panes at the hooded Morkth gunner.
The furtive customer had been a fence, and the apothecary had been in the very act of assaying some stolen property for him. Gold. With hydrochloric acid. It had been a near-full flask of this that Keilin had snatched up. The flask struck the wind cowl of the platecraft and shattered in a burning rain across the jewelled eyes of the Morkth.
The Morkth do not scream, but a terrible keening and a series of rapid high-pitched clicks accompanied the creature's wild firing. Both the fence and the apothecary attempted to run. It was a mistake. Some of the eye facets were undamaged, and while the Morkth was nearly insane with pain, it still reacted instinctively. The movement was seen, and drew fire. Keilin stood, looking for a weapon. His own black spear lay where he had dropped it, a few yards from Marou. It might as well have been on the moon.
But . . . he could read. And the apothecary's supplies were most punctiliously and clearly labelled. Moving slowly he took the large one labelled ALCOHOL, unstoppered it, and tossed it in a lazy arc through the broken window. It showered over the creature that had staggered away from the platecraft, and was advancing on the building in a mad dance. Keilin followed the alcohol with the still burning oil-light from the counter. He did not pause to watch the incandescent chittering thing that ran off into the desert. He sprinted to the old man's side. It was plain that he was too late.
Marou's eyes, wide and staring, looked into some distant place. Beyond speaking, he weakly squeezed Keilin's hand, and then . . . he was gone. For a long time the boy just sat there, until the silence was recaptured by the small sounds of the desert.
At last the boy stood up, gently taking the old hand and laying it back on the old man's bony chest. He looked across at the Morkth body still impaled on the long black spear. "That's what you are all going to be! I'm going to kill all of you. Do you hear me?" His voice rose to a scream. The transmitter line to Beta-Morkth HQ was still open. So, indeed, they did hear him. But they did not believe him. And it was not in the Morkth warrior's genetic design to know fear anyway.
It was evening,
and Keilin leaned on his spear, and watched as the fire consumed the last of Marou Skyann. He had dressed the old man in his best fringed leather shirt, with his broad snakeskin turquoise-studded belt. Marou's black spear Keilin had wrenched from the Morkth corpse, and laid across the gnarled hands. Then he had placed the body out on a bier of dead mountain cedar, which had been carried here into the desert by the floods. It had been doused with the apothecary's entire store of flammable oils.
The fire might call other desert prowlers, but Keilin was beyond caring. He would welcome the opportunity to kill anyone or anything now. When the flames finally died he turned his back on the place, picked up his pack and walked off into the night. He was going nowhere in particular, just away from here. Pure chance took his feet upvalley, heading toward the higher mountains that he'd been aiming towards some eighteen months before. Unable to focus on any course of action but that of killing the Morkth, anger and bitterness gnawed at him. He'd tried focusing his hatred on the pendant stone, to no effect. Only fear or sexual stimulus appeared to make the thing respond. Neither were things he could muster right now.
Eventually he stopped and slept. But not before he had had two startling thoughts: Firstly, he had not heard the high-pitched whine which had always given him warning before. It always appeared that others did not hear the sound. Had he changed in some way? Secondly, he wondered now whether the Morkth were hunting him . . . or the pendant stone. He decided it could be the latter, and smiled grimly to himself. It would make good bait.
For three days he trailed upward into the mountains. Here, where it was colder and the air was crisp, there was even a small trickle of water down on the valley floor. Around it there grew a profusion of plants, but the slopes were still almost barren. He hoped he'd chosen the right valley. Marou had described the route to him, but they'd never come this far from the desert the old man had loved.
Pantherlike, he stalked on upward along the valley lip, keeping just below the skyline. You could see best from here without being too visible yourself. A movement in the valley snagged his eye. It was a party of men.
In eighteen months, other than Marou, the apothecary and his customer, Keilin had only seen one other human, a distant and equally cautious fossicker. The fools in the valley were neither careful nor nervous. Keilin stood motionless awhile. Then he began to follow the hunters. That night, while the fellows slept beside an unhidden fire, Keilin sneaked up and looted half their kill and three of their best pelts. It was a dual exercise, the first half of which was undertaken almost as a public service: it would teach the hunters care. Had this been Marou's territory the old man would have cut every second throat. Secondly, and more importantly, it was also to prove to himself that he could now do what eighteen months before he had been unable to.
When the bellows of outrage and counteraccusations had died away from the camp in the valley below, a revenge party sallied out questing for any signs of the raider. From his nest under the slabs on the ridgeline, Keilin watched without much alarm. When they could find no signs of him, fear began to grow in them. Within the hour they had packed up and were tailing off upvalley. The desert rat followed.
Three days later he was extremely glad he had. They had led him through the pass he'd been seeking. On either side towered white-capped mountains, many thousands of feet higher still. To have crossed those would have been far more difficult. Marou's directions had been vague . . . and had also failed to tell him a great deal.
The western side of the mountains was the wet side. Here mist and rain were as commonplace as the searing heat of the east. The pine forests and heather slopes were a new and alien landscape to Keilin. Much of his hard-garnered desert lore meant nothing here. There weren't even any decent scorpions under the rocks. Just wet white wiggly things. A man couldn't live on trash like that.
Now he sat in the shadow of the pine trees and looked down on the straggling houses below. Part of him longed for the people, the lights and the voices. Part of him curled inwards, away from it, clinging to the security of loneliness. Eventually he steeled himself. He would go down and enquire where the Morkth lands were. After all, he had to start somewhere.
To a child of Port Tinarana the air of Steyir village would have been clear and sweet. To the desert-primed Keilin it was fetid to the point of making him gag. He walked down the dirt track between the ragged-thatched shanties. Fowls scratched in the street, and a mottled pig rooted in a pile of scraps between the houses. The air was full of boiling cabbage and elementary sanitation. According to Marou, at the end of the street was the Margery Tavern, where a few turquoise buyers always hung out. Keilin had decided they would be the best possible sources of information. He and Marou had uncovered a small pipe, with rather inferior nodules a month or so back. The best pieces had gone into the belt Keilin wore, made from the skin of the first snake he and Marou had eaten together, but Keilin still had a few bits of turquoise to trade with. He'd been nowhere near Marou's hoard. Still, what he had should give him some small money, easier and safer to spend than the gold pieces in his ankle pouch, and it would give him an excuse to talk.
The tavern smelled of beer, urine, and also, vaguely, of decay. Keilin entered with caution. There was a small crowd of men getting noisily drunk in the one corner, and a morose-looking individual sitting at the bar. As Keilin came in, the solitary fellow looked up. He brightened visibly at seeing the dry-land-honed youth in desert garb.
"Buy you a drink, youngster?" he asked, as Keilin looked carefully around the dingy room. "How's the diggin's been?"
He took in Keilin's measuring look, "It's all right, digger. You can trust Honest Clarence." He pushed a barstool out. "Sit. Let's see what you've got."
A shadow of a smile flitted across Keilin's face. He'd heard stories about all of the buyers. Honest Clarence . . . the name itself was a joke among the desert prospectors. "My partner mentioned you. He said you weren't to be trusted."
"Naw, couldn't be me. He must be muddlin' me with Square-Deal Tom, or maybe ol' Jep Deep-Pockets," said Honest Clarence, with an attempt at self-righteousness. "Who is your partner anyhow?"
"Marou Skyann."
A look of profound respect came over Clarence's face. "You don't say! Ol' Marou's mind must be wandering. How could he have said somethin' like that about me? Where is the ol' bugger then? Already gone into Lucy's to screw himself silly? Randy ol' sod never had a bath in his life. Lucy's girls mus' be workin' with clothespegs on their noses."
His statements made Keilin suddenly aware that he hadn't actually washed for the better part of a year himself. "Marou's dead," he said shortly. "Puff adder got him."
"Naw! The grand old man of the desert himself, took out by a puffy? I'd have thought the snake'd die of food poisoning first." He chuckled. "If he hadn't been to town. Then the poor beast would've had alcohol poisoning too." He shook his grizzled head. "Hard to believe, boy. Ol' Marou has been coming in every couple of years or so since my father's time. I reckoned he'd still be around for my son, that's Honest Clarence the third, to take to the cleaners."
He sighed. "Beer, digger? Or are you in too much of a hurry to get along to Lucy's place? Want to sell your stones quick, and go and give good money to bad women?"
Keilin felt himself blushing. To hide his confusion he took the few stones out of his pouch and laid them on the bar. Soon they were wrangling. Keilin was sure he got less than the stones were worth, but he also got more than he'd expected. Clarence handed him a handful of silver and copper. "Not the best stones, not Ol' Marou's usual quality at all, but the price is up with the Morkth invasions around Shapstone City cutting off the western fields."
One of the bunch from the far corner staggered past, on his way to part with the beer he'd briefly rented. He bumped into Keilin as the boy stood up. His blurry eyes focused on the desert garb and then on the turquoise-studded belt. "You're one o' them fucking miners from across the mountains!" He turned to his mates. "Hey, boys. One of them thieving pricks is here."
Honest Clarence spoke. His voice was free of the lazy digger's drawl he'd affected when dealing with Keilin. "Leave him alone, Tomas. The turquoise miners are dangerous men, out of your league."
When Keilin had gone into the desert he'd been a boy. When he came out it never occurred to him that he was not a man. So he was unprepared for the next statement. "Maybe so, Mister Clarence, but I ain't 'fraid of no fucking kid."
Keilin stepped back, feeling the reassuring smoothness of his spear shaft in his hand. "I don't want trouble," he said, looking up at the big man who was drunkenly rocking on the balls of his feet.
If the hunter had been sober, the tone would have been warning enough for him. But the fool was very drunk, and only heard the words. "Well you've found it anyway, you little turd." His friends came staggering across from their corner, and their breath was hot behind him, driving him to prove himself. He half-turned to his drinking companions and said extravagantly, "What do think, boys? I reckon those stones ona' li'l lizard fucker's belt will make up for the rou-deer pelts that some shit stole from us other side o' the pass?"
Clarence snorted. "You stupid buggers. I told you before you went that most of the diggers'll kill you if they even see you on their land. If someone only stole your pelts, likely the thief was one of your own mates."
"Me mates? Never!" said the hunter. "Prob'ly this little fucker. So . . . I'll just have that belt . . ." He reached forward, to find something very sharp pressing into his ribs.
"On the other side of the pass," said Keilin conversationally, "we dig up shriba grubs. Fat, ugly things, like you. Then we squash them very carefully, 'cause if you get the juice in a cut, you're going to die. Then we rub our spear blades in it. Touch the belt my partner gave me again, and I'll push this spear in so deep, it won't matter that it's poisoned."
