by Dora Machado
The sky was as blue as Mia's sparkling eye, which along with her green eye, looked down on her with glistening humor.
“We were pooped by the snail.” She giggled. “In-as-snail-bait-out-as-snail-dung.”
Sariah started to laugh but hacked instead and had to turn to wretch profusely. Her bile floated away in the river's efficient current. For a moment, she thought she was floating away as well. She fumbled and dug her knees in the gravel, only to find Kael sitting on a rock behind her, holding her fast between his legs.
“Hello there.” She held on to his calves and dove underwater. The current stretched the length of her hair with a playful, steady tug. She kept herself under for as long as her lungs lasted, then came up for breath. “I'm never traveling by snail again.”
Kael was laughing as she went under once more.
The river bottom was a treasure of polished pebbles and stones, black, brown, gray, yellow, all glimmering with the sun's reflection under the sparkling water. She eyed the stones with a wiser's lust. She had to slip a few in her pocket. A pale fish darted by. The water was clear and delicious, flowing nicely over her skin and clothing.
She came up to swallow great gulps of clean air. Water was streaming down her face like a translucent drape. “Did they—?”
Kael pointed to the nearby bank. She wiped the water from her eyes. Malord was rinsing his weave in the river and Delis was sprawled on top of a rock, swinging her big feet in the current.
“You should see the pile, Auntie. We came out of the side of the thing, right next to its huge shell.”
“I think I'd rather not see it.”
“We were covered in—”
“Mia, don't you remember?” Kael said. “We weren't going to tell Auntie about that.”
And she didn't want to know. “Which way are we going?”
North and west was somewhere upriver, between a tall cypress and a coral-tree blazing with blooms.
“We'll have to scout the area,” Kael said, “before we call the beam.”
“We have until nightfall,” Sariah said. “I doubt the beam will be visible during the day.”
The sight of the forest around them, the damp leaves’ lush scent, the river's gurgle, even the woodpeckers’ hammering threatened to overwhelm Sariah's dulled senses. No wonder they called it the Goodlands. No wonder Malord and Delis stared in shocked fascination and Mia splashed in the shallow river. She realized she had missed trees, water and good soil under her feet. Meliahs be blessed. They had made it to the Goodlands.
The quails’ rancorous call announced a covey in the brush. Her belly grumbled a pathetic growl. “Is that dinner? I'm famished.”
“Is that so? I suppose we ought to do something about it.” Kael picked her up halfway out of the water and locked his arms around her waist, keeping her face to his eye level. He was thoroughly wet too. Clear water drops clung to his thick eyelashes and sparkled on his face like a host of tiny stars. “You took a long time.”
“But I came.”
“I can't forgive the anguish.”
“Wandering a snail's innards is not exactly anxiety free.”
His mouth quivered. “I was beginning to think of ways of buggering a damn snail.”
Sariah kept her face perfectly straight. “Sinful vice or virtuous search?”
His laughter echoed in the clearing and startled the quails into a tumult of clucking and wing batting.
“Are you going to kiss Auntie now?” Mia said.
“Do you really think I should?”
“My daddy says it's your job to kiss her lots.”
“I'll do it,” Kael said. “But only 'cause it's my job.”
To Mia's delight, he smacked Sariah loudly on the lips.
Then he kissed her softly below the ear. “Don't be late next time.”
Sariah swallowed the last bite of roasted quail leg with a moan of delight. She licked the bone until no flesh, marrow, or flavor remained, before she tossed it into the fragrant wood fire. She leaned back, laying her head on Kael's lap and rubbing her full belly.
“Satisfied?” he asked.
“Very.” She licked the last of the delicious grease from her fingertips. “I'm clean and full. What else could a woman want?”
Kael's brow rose suggestively.
“I know,” Sariah said. “A spoonful of honey?”
“You've all but turned into a honeybee.” Kael groped through her pack and handed her the jar. “It's about done.”
“I'll find you more, my donnis,” Delis said from her perch by the stream. She pointed to the water in awe. “It keeps coming, and it's not the same as before.”
Malord mumbled through a mouthful of berries. “It's a river, you twerp. I already told you. You can throw in as many branches as you want, but they're not coming back.”
“What do you think, Auntie?” Fingers dripping with paint and etching knife in hand, Mia stuck her latest work in front of Sariah's nose.
The scene was remarkably vivid. A lush forest stood in the river's background, rich with the aspen's golds and the birch's peeling red-brown bark. The silvery water captured the sun's waning light to perfection. She could see all of them there, sitting around the campfire as they had been just moments ago.
“It's beautiful.” Sariah pleased Mia into a satisfied blush. “Your grandmother Aya would be proud of you. Do you feel a little better now?”
“Much better. Like a warm kettle without the steam, as my mommy likes to say.”
They all laughed. Sariah was relieved. Mia's art was as much expression as it was compulsion, and holding back her dark flows was hard enough for the little girl. Until she met Mia and learned about Aya, Sariah had believed what the Guild taught—that sight copyists were extinct and that their translation had been an aberrant remnant of the Old World, of the times before the rot when parchment and paper had kept the tales well enough and art mixed easily with wising.
Now she knew better. The sight copyist blood endured in the old line of Ars. Aya, Kael's mother and Mia's grandmother, had been a stonewiser of that translation. Sariah struggled to lead Mia through her sight-copyist apprenticeship blindly, but she was sure of one thing—the child was happiest when she unleashed her power to engrave her work on parchment. Mia's latest masterpiece still smelled of fire and smoke. Sariah was about to comment on the beauty of the engraving's foreground when the screams began.
Kael's head snapped up. He was on his feet and running instantly, followed by a hatchet-wielding Delis. Sariah ran after them, but not before directing Mia and Malord to put out the fire and hide. She had her sling loaded by the time she caught up with the other two. They stretched on their bellies at the top of a shallow ravine overlooking a muddy lane. She crawled quietly to join them and stole a look at the scene on the road.
The gray shields were unmistakable. About fifteen or twenty well-armed guards outfitted with the wood, copper and hide shields surrounded an upturned cart. The screams were coming from two young girls twisting in the soldiers’ grips. An older woman knelt on the ground amidst her cart's spills, clutching a bunch of corn ears to her breast.
“It's the Shield's right to requisition your cart and its contents,” the man in charge was saying. “It's the law.”
“It must be another one of your new laws,” the woman said. “My grandchildren are hungry and I didn't take my savings and travel all the way to Ellensburg to feed you stinking pests.”
The swipe of the man's pike struck the woman in the back with a dreadful thump. She flung forward and fell on the corn, hacking from the blow. She was stout and small but she braced herself on arms strong as oaks and faced the brute over her.
“Is this how your master intends to rule?” she said. “Through brawn and pike?”
“We'll teach you to respect the Shield.” He turned to his men. “Take the cart. And take them. All three of them.”
The guards wavered. One of them said, “They're but an old woman and two little girls—”
“Shut up, Kenzy. That one must be at least thirteen. They're three wombs. You know the drill.”
By then Kael had motioned Delis up the road and had an arrow notched in his bow. To see him wielding the traditional Goodlander bow was rare. Kael usually preferred his Domainer sling. But Sariah had seen Kael fight enough times to know he always chose purposively from the impressive array of weapons he carried on his belt. The arrows would throw the Shield off for a moment or two and Kael would profit from the confusion.
He stood up and shot. The same deadly arrow punched through his target's neck, killing the man instantly, and then went on to efficiently skewer another man's calf, disabling the second soldier. Sariah aimed her sling and shot. She winced when she heard the stone clang against one of the men's helmets. Pop. The stone burst on command, and the man fell to the ground, clutching his head through the half-melted helmet.
Her next stone was aimed at the guard who held the smaller of the girls. It bounced on his neck and dribbled down into his shield. The man smiled, thinking she had missed. How she hated using the stones for harm.
She gave him a last chance. “Give me the child.”
The warrior charged her, clutching the crying child in one hand and his pike in the other. Pop. He stumbled midway and looked down in surprise. Dark blood poured down his legs and pooled at his feet. Only his shield kept his guts’ gore from spilling on the ground. His eyes rolled to the back of his head. He keeled over. Sariah picked up the screeching girl and set her on her hip, all the while searching for her next target.
She shouted a warning at the same time she shot at Kael's attacker. Kael hit the ground. The stone struck his opponent in the tiny strip of skin exposed between the back of the helmet and the neck guard. Pop. Meliahs forgive her. The brain would shoot upwards into the helmet.
Kael tucked away his bow and unsheathed his twin swords. They clashed against three of the shield's pikes. The woman who held the other girl was putting up a good fight but she let go when Kael sliced open her shins. Sariah grabbed the girl, dodged a pike, and then ran with the two children to the edge of the road.
“That way.” She pointed the older girl in the direction of the woods. “Take your sister. Hide. Don't come out until I call you.”
A shadow loomed behind Sariah. She whirled just in time to see Delis's hatchet coming down on her attacker's back.
“Thanks,” she said hoarsely.
“Don't mention it, my donnis.”
Sariah's next shot was not lethal, but it would hurt like the rot. It struck under the shield of a man beating the older woman by the cart. Pop. He wouldn't be sitting comfortably for a long time. She helped the woman to her feet.
“Meliahs be blessed, who are you?”
“Don't thank us yet.” Sariah pushed the woman out of a pike's way. “It's not over.”
The surviving Shield regrouped and faced them. They stuck together like hares on a string, holding their barbed pikes ahead of them, advancing in step like a bristling porcupine. Sariah dug in the depths of her weapons belt to find a stronger stone. Kael was already rolling one of his on the ground. Bam. The advancing line broke at its center. Three more men lay in a heap of arms and broken shields. At their commander's behest, the two remaining sides closed the gap and became a line again.
The sound of hooves behind them did not dissuade the Shield from their attack, but the unexpected collision that broke their weakened line did. Malord rode down the lane mounted on a wide-hoofed draft horse and crashed against the back of the Shield's line. He wielded his hefty mace with enormous force, banging on the attackers’ helmets with powerful blows. The early afternoon was filled with the clang of wood on metal and the grunts of Kael and Delis's last efforts.
When the fray was over, Kael came to Sariah. “Are you all right?”
“Not a scratch. Kael, may I present—what's your name?”
“Mara.” The woman tucked a strand of long white hair back in her bun with great dignity. “Mara of Targamon Farm.”
She was short of stature but strong of body, equally rounded at the hips and at the bosom. Besides her smart blue eyes, the most prominent feature on her face was her nose, a fleshy knob with a flat dent at the top of the upturned tip.
“This is Kael,” Sariah said. “He's my mate—”
“Your mate?” Incomprehension clouded Mara's eyes. “Animals mate.”
“He is my…” What was it that Goodlanders called it? “He's my husband.”
“Your husband, eh? A Domainer?” She looked at Sariah's face, noting her matching eyes, and then stared at Kael's black and green eyes with a hint of suspicion. Her pinched face relaxed and her hand shot up to shake Kael's. “I guess we get them husbands from wherever we can. Domainer or not, it's only fair that I thank you for your help. You could have walked on blind to all of this.”
“No, madam,” Kael said. “I couldn't.”
He crossed to the other side of the road where Delis kept watch over the wounded. Sariah and Mara followed. He dropped a skin on a young man's lap. Sariah recognized one of his blue fringed arrows in the lad's calf. Kael crouched before the young man and examined the wound.
“Why are you here?” He snapped the shaft, taking off the point and the feathering.
The lad was shaking with fear and shock.
“I won't ask again. What's your mission?” With a quick thrust, Kael pulled the shortened shaft through the wound.
The man flinched. “We're to requisition foodstuffs and supplies for the wall's guard.”
“Your commander said something about wombs and drills. What was that about?”
“Why should I tell you anything? You're going to kill me anyway.”
“If I were going to kill you, why would I bother treating your wound, you rotting excuse for a brain?”
The young man stared agape as Kael tied a tourniquet below the knee and cleansed his wound. “It's the mandate,” he blurted out. “To seed the pure folk of the Goodlands with the Shield's excellent stock. To save the Goodlands from takeover by the rot's vermin.”
“Ah.” The young man wilted under Kael's terrible glare. “Who commands you?”
“The Main Shield,” the lad said. “Stonewiser Master Arron.”
Arron. The name set Sariah's belly to ice. He was the Main Shield now? The last time she had seen Arron, the day of the breaking of the wall, he had been fighting against Mistress Grimly for control of the Guild. The mistress had taken over the Shield after the Main Shield, Horatio Maliver, quit his command. Arron had probably prevailed in that battle or shortly thereafter. And at the very least, in a stunning reversal of roles, he had managed to wrest command of the Shield from Mistress Grimly. He must have named himself Main Shield after that.
It made sense. Arron wouldn't care if Goodlanders died of famine as long as his purposes were served. His mandate seemed utterly plausible, in character, and not so far removed from the Guild's lesser known notions. Was he close by? Sariah shivered.
Kael knotted the young man's bandage. “Arron. I should have known.”
“That arse-licking mongrel is bleeding us dry,” Mara said.
“Why?” the lad asked, perplexed. “Why won't you kill me?”
Kael's eyes fell on the young soldier's face. “Because you, Kenzy, right? You asked the right question when hearing a bad command. Perhaps in time, you'll learn to act beyond questions, but for now, that little bit of hesitation in your voice when your commander ordered you to hurt the woman and the girls saved your life.”
“My grandchildren?” Mara asked anxiously.
“Here comes one.” Sariah smiled at the sight of Malord on the old horse with the smaller one of the two girls riding abreast. “This is Malord,” she decided for simplicity.
“Mounted on Rodney?”
Sariah couldn't help but notice that Mara took in the entire sight of Malord, as absent of wholeness as it was.
“How valorous of you,” Mara said, “to come like that in our defense. I'm in your
debt.”
“Not at all.” Malord hid his face's furious flush by helping the girl down from the horse.
“You're a Domainer too?” Mara asked.
“As mismatched of eyes as they come,” Malord said.
“Where are Mia and the other girl?” Sariah asked.
“Here they come.”
The girls emerged from the forest hand in hand.
“Come here, Roxana. Are you hurt? Clara?” Mara embraced her granddaughters. “That was close, my girls, very close. If these good people hadn't come…”
“We'll need every hand to right the cart and reload it,” Kael said. “Let's hurry.”
Between all of them, they righted the cart. The girls joined Delis and Kael picking up the spilled groceries. Malord hesitated before quitting the beast. Clearly, he was enjoying his newly acquired heights.
“You'll be needing your horse, I suppose.”
“Oh, no, sir, Malord,” Mara said. “Rodney does so much better with a mounted lead and I so dislike straddling the beast. I think you should ride him, I mean, Rodney, over to the farm. Regardless of whatever drives you to travel this forsaken road, you must allow me to thank all of you with my hospitality, at least for tonight.”
A roof. A bed. A dry blanket. It was tempting.
“Thanks for your offer,” Sariah said, “but we're in a hurry and we—”
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” Kael pulled Sariah aside. “We have a new problem—Kenzy and his surviving friends. They're our prisoners now. If we let them go, they'll go straight to the Shield and tell them about us. They might even lead them back here.”
“Are you suggesting we—”
“I have a different idea. I'll stay behind in the forest, guarding the prisoners for a day or two. If all goes well, I might even be able to play around with the Shield to deflect any attention from you. You go on to this Targamon place. As soon as it's safe, call the beam. If you're successful, we'll meet in three days near the confluence of the twin rivers. You can't miss it. If you can't call the beam, we'll meet at Targamon instead.”
