The Crystal Eye

by Deborah Chester

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I will forgive none of them!”

  “Tantha—”

  “You have food. Good. I am hungry.”

  Tantha vanished inside her shelter. Ampris backed her ears but decided to say nothing at the moment. Tantha had been hard to deal with ever since her mate died, but she needed to remember she wasn’t the center of the universe. Still, Ampris remembered how she’d felt during pregnancy and after giving birth. She found a well-spring of sympathy for Tantha and went off to clean and cook the grassen.

  Tantha came outside, pacing back and forth while the grassen finished cooking. Delectable smells filled the air. Ampris’s mouth was watering. She could barely keep herself from grabbing the fowl off the fire and tearing it into pieces. But eating an underdone grassen was like chewing wood.

  Mewing sounds of curiosity caught her attention. She turned her head and saw the cubs venturing past the doorway of the shelter. Their eyes had opened today, and now they came crawling out, wobbly and adorable. All were spotted except the little male. His coat was light brown in hue, but it had no markings of any kind.

  Ampris left her cooking fire and went to scoop him up. Cuddling him close, she smiled into his wide eyes and slid her finger beneath his tiny chin. He snuggled closer to her, but Tantha appeared at Ampris’s side and grabbed him. Draping him behind her neck, she gave Ampris a brief but hostile glance of warning and walked away to gather up her other wandering cubs.

  Baring her teeth, Ampris snarled silently at Tantha’s back and went back to her cooking. She worked busily, collecting the sizzling cooking juices in a small brass pot. It helped distract her mind from the welcome sensation of holding a tiny cub in her arms again. There was nothing equal to the joy of motherhood, nothing as precious as those first few days of communing between mother and infant: learning each other’s smell, discovering deep and tender mutual love. Over the years, there had been a time or two when Ampris would have taken a mate, but the male Aarouns could not tolerate the physical ugliness of Foloth and Nashmarl enough to accept them as family. Both her sons needed a male figure in their lives, someone with brute strength to back up his authority. Elrabin tried his best to help her raise them, but they were now the same size as the Kelth and they refused to respect him as they should.

  Her busy hands slowed and grew idle. She stared past the fire, caught by a feeling of intense loneliness. She missed her sons, missed their arguments and bickering, missed how clumsy they were, all elbows and feet, missed them surrounding her with hugs and growls, complaining constantly about how hungry they were, or begging her to get the portable vid player recharged so they could watch it. They were growing up semi-feral, their manners rough except when it suited them to remember her instructions. Often she feared for them, feared what kind of world they would find when they grew up. They fit in nowhere except here, yet this was not the kind of life she had envisioned for them. What would the future give them, when they were neither Viis nor Aaroun, but instead some terrible mixture of both? Already they had often known the stinging cruelty of rejection and insult. She prayed nightly for them, while they snored on their side of the tent, asking that they might grow up strong and healthy, that they might grow into wisdom and good sense. For they would have to forge their own paths, would have to make their own place in a world that might not ever accept them.

  “Goldie?”

  Her name was spoken by a voice so weak she barely heard it.

  Startled from her reverie, Ampris looked around and saw Elrabin leaning against the doorway of his shelter. Beneath the crooked bandage swathing his head, his bloodshot eyes stared at her.

  “Elrabin!” She jumped to her feet and hurried over to him. “You shouldn’t be up. Let me get you back to bed.”

  He tried to protest, but he was too weak to resist her. By the time she lowered him onto his blanket and covered him, he was falling asleep again. She sat beside him, holding his hand, until she was certain he was settled.

  Returning to her dinner, she lifted the grassen off the fire and laid it on a flat, washed rock to cool. She mixed warm water with the cooking juices she’d collected and when the mixture was cool enough she awoke Elrabin and fed the broth to him.

  He sipped eagerly, too weak to even hold up his head without help, and he fell asleep again before he finished all the broth. Ampris tucked the blanket around him and watched over his sleep a few moments longer. He seemed to be mending at last, and she was thankful to see this improvement.

  When she emerged from his shelter, she found Tantha sitting on the ground, gnawing on the cooked grassen.

  Ampris roared in outrage and rushed at Tantha. She knocked the food from Tantha’s hands, and Tantha swiped back with an angry roar of her own. The rake of her claws across Ampris’s wounded arm broke the last seal on Ampris’s temper. She grabbed Tantha in a head-lock and flipped her onto her back with enough force to knock the wind from the spotted Aaroun.

  Tantha lay there, wheezing for breath. Ampris stood over her with ears back and teeth bared. Tantha tried to sit up, but Ampris planted her foot on the Aaroun and held her down.

  “I hunted that food,” she said furiously.

  Tantha’s eyes held both anger and desperation. “I have cubs to feed.”

  “We were to share it,” Ampris said. She moved her foot and stepped back, letting Tantha up. “Always I have shared. If you had any doubt you could have asked. There is no need to steal behind my back.”

  Panting, Tantha looked from Ampris to the food lying on the ground and said nothing.

  “We are not barbarians,” Ampris said. She picked up the grassen and dusted the grass and dirt off it. Expertly, she tore the still-warm carcass in half and tossed a share to Tantha.

  The other Aaroun caught it and resumed eating, tearing off chunks of the white, juicy meat and almost gulping them whole.

  Ampris waited, but it seemed Tantha had no intention of offering an apology. Disappointment sank through Ampris. After her kindness toward Tantha, she was hurt that Tantha could be so selfish.

  Yet it had long been the tradition among slaves of all kinds to stand alone, to not help each other. The Viis encouraged this, wanting the abiru to betray and distrust each other so that never again would they unite and become a force to be reckoned with. Ampris had thought that among her own small community this trait could be changed, but it took only a crisis or the threat of starvation to tear all her progress down.

  She ate slowly, unable to taste her meal while Tantha polished off every morsel and even crunched the bones to suck the marrow from them. When she finished, Tantha buried the bones neatly and walked away in silence.

  Still fuming, Ampris put out the cooking fire and cleaned up, then she went back to sit by Elrabin.

  She was there, an hour or so later, holding his hand and softly singing over him when a figure appeared in the doorway of the small shelter.

  “So,” Velia’s shrill voice said, “this is where I find my mate, in the arms of another female.”

  Ampris backed her ears in annoyance. She did not like Velia and had always considered her a poor choice for Elrabin, but she had never spoken against her, even when Elrabin occasionally asked her advice. Now she rose to her feet and silently pushed Velia outside.

  Twilight was falling over the camp, and it seemed everyone had returned. From the corner of her eye she saw Foloth squatted on his haunches outside their tent, unpacking his pouch. Nashmarl, his hood thrown over his shoulders, was rushing back and forth among the crowd of familiar faces and strangers. He had Ampris’s hunting sling in his hand and he was whirling it around his head recklessly. She hoped he had no stone in it, or he would surely hurt someone.

  “You have no right to push me out of my own home,” Velia was saying in Ampris’s face, giving her no chance to rush off to greet her sons. “How dare you—”

  “Elrabin is badly hurt,” Ampris said. “Didn’t Harthril tell you?”

  “Yes, of course he told me,” Vel
ia said. Her golden-brown eyes glared at Ampris. “That’s why we came back tonight. I knew Elrabin would run into trouble. It’s your fault he’s hurt.”

  “Yes,” Ampris said calmly.

  Velia blinked as though she hadn’t expected Ampris to agree with her. She drew a deep breath, and tried to push past the Aaroun.

  Ampris pushed her back, refusing to let her enter the shelter.

  “Get out of my way!” Velia said shrilly. “You can’t keep me out of my own—”

  “You can go in when you calm down,” Ampris told her. “Elrabin needs peace and quiet.”

  “He needs to be told how big a fool he is.”

  “I am very grateful to him,” Ampris said. “He helped me get out of a bad situation.”

  Velia glared at her, firelight glinting off her eyes. “But you got him into that bad situation. Ampris. Always you thinking up something to cause us trouble.”

  Ampris backed her ears at the criticism. “I thought up the raid on that warehouse in Lazmairehl too. Velia. The one that set you free. Or have you forgotten that?”

  Velia’s tall ears twitched nervously. She hugged herself and would not look directly at Ampris. “You have no business tending my mate. I will take care of him.”

  Sighing, Ampris figured Velia’s worry was making her act this way. Velia was usually in a bad mood, but tonight she acted worse than usual. She wasn’t often this openly critical.

  Ampris stepped aside and gestured at the shelter. “When he wakes up. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you. His fever has gone down. He only regained consciousness a short time ago, but he is sleeping again.”

  Muttering to herself. Velia pushed past Ampris and ducked into the shelter.

  Glad to be rid of her, if only temporarily. Ampris turned her attention to more important matters. “Foloth!” she called, hurrying to her firstborn son.

  At the sound of his name, Foloth rose to his feet and turned around. His dark eyes lit up and he ran to embrace her. “Mother!” he said in excitement. “We have had such adventures. Harthril made us break camp and we have been hiding from patrollers. Then we hunted, and then we caught these wandering slaves. They don’t know anything.” he whispered solemnly. “They can’t figure out which berries to look for, and they don’t even know how to pluck the feathers off grassens.”

  While he spoke, Ampris was busy stroking the thin, downy fur on the rounded back of his misshapen head. She nuzzled his neck and jaw, breathing in the scent of him, finding reassurance that he was safe and sound.

  “They can’t do anything,” he finished.

  “Yes, of course they can,” she said mildly, hoping no one had overheard what he said. Foloth was entirely too serious for his own good. He saw things in black and white, and had little patience in considering other points of view. She rubbed the top of his head, where his fur was almost nonexistent. He had the pebble-grained skin of a Viis, and did not burn in the sun the way his brother did. “Foloth,” she said, “you cannot expect them to have the same skills that you do. Their life has been very different from yours, until now. We will have to teach them to be self-sufficient here in the wild.”

  “A waste of time,” he said dismissively. “Where did they come from, anyway?”

  “I helped free them,” Ampris replied. She noticed that most of the newcomers were staring at her now, and turned around to face them. She kept her arm around Foloth’s shoulders and smiled. “Welcome to our camp,” she said.

  A few smiled back, but most looked uncertain and wary. She counted about seven former slaves. All of them were Kelths, predominantly female. Moska, she noted, was not among them, and she wondered if the youth had escaped or been captured.

  “You have met my companions,” she said to them, giving nods to Luax and Harthril, who stood slightly apart from everyone else. Old Robuhl had seated himself on the ground with his long, prehensile tail curled around his neck. His rheumy eyes shifted and glimmered in the firelight while he muttered to himself. “We are a small group, dedicated to living free of Viis rule. Our way of life is not easy. We have no luxuries, no conveniences. We live far from vids or government-supplied food. But we can speak our own language and teach our young our own histories. We work for ourselves and call no one master.

  “If you will live peaceably among us, if you will contribute your share of work to the group, then you may stay with us as long as you wish. We are nomads, forced to move whenever the game grows scarce. We seldom venture too close to cities or towns. If at any time you wish to leave us, you are free to do that. You are free to do anything you want, as long as you bring no harm to us. Any questions?”

  The ex-slaves exchanged glances. One of them murmured to another, and a gray-furred Kelth female stepped forward. “I be called Frenshala.”

  “Welcome, Frenshala,” Ampris said formally. “What is your question?”

  “You be leader here?”

  Ampris hesitated. After Velia’s unexpected hostility and Tantha’s foul mood, she felt a certain tension in the air. Even Luax and Harthril were hanging back more than usual. She glanced around for Nashmarl, but the cub had vanished.

  Facing Frenshala again, Ampris replied, “Yes, I am leader, after a fashion.”

  “What work will we do here?”

  “That is your choice. Everyone has chores to do.”

  “What will be our work?” Frenshala insisted.

  Ampris realized she probably had never been without orders before. “At first, you should probably help with cleaning the camp area, mending clothing, and helping to prepare food. As you learn your way about, we will give each of you lessons in how to hunt. We all take turns in minding this old one.” She gently touched Robuhl’s white-maned head as she spoke.

  He looked up at her with a smile. “Ampris!” he said proudly. “Savior of the people!”

  Slightly embarrassed, she gave him a pat and looked at Frenshala. “Anything else?”

  “Where are our quarters?”

  “Tonight you will have to sleep in the open,” Ampris said. “We will help you make your own shelters tomorrow—”

  “No,” Harthril said, stepping forward. His blue Viis eyes shone in the firelight like jewels. “Not tomorrow. We go. Break camp quick.”

  Ampris looked at him. “Do you think the sniffers will come this far into the hills?”

  “Maybe. They come back for more searching today. Could mean trouble for us.”

  Luax raised her hand. She was extremely thin, even for a Viis female. Her head seemed too large for her spindly neck, and her skin had pronounced streaks of pink variegated with green. She talked even less than Harthril, but now she, too, stepped forward. “Cut out their implants,” she said.

  Agitated yipping broke out among the ex-slaves, and even Frenshala became alarmed, drawing back into the group with her arms held tight against her.

  “That is their choice,” Ampris said hastily, afraid Luax was going to frighten them into fleeing. “Always we have let people choose.”

  “Not now,” Luax said firmly, making a chopping gesture with her hand. “Not when danger comes close.”

  “You can’t!” Frenshala said fearfully. “You will kill us.”

  Ampris backed her ears and looked at the Kelth in dismay. “Are you saying you have ion-release tattoos?”

  “Paket has one,” Foloth said beside her. “It can’t be eradicated.”

  She felt the loss anew and searched the crowd for a glimpse of Nashmarl. Since the days when Nashmarl had crawled about Vess Vaas with only a ball made from rags to play with, he had been fond of the old Kelth. Had Harthril not told them that Paket was dead?

  She looked at the Reject, but he was puffing his air sacs in and out, looking very serious indeed.

  When he said nothing, she prompted him. “Tattoos or implants? Have you looked?”

  Harthril’s rill stiffened about his head. “They would not let us.”

  “You will hurt us,” Frenshala said.

  Some of the Kelths
began to wail and yip louder.

  “Hush that noise,” Ampris said, aware that their shrill voices could carry a kilometer or more if they really got wound up. “We have no intention of hurting you. Once we know what kind of registration mark you have, we can decide what to do.”

  “You lie,” Frenshala said, baring her teeth. “You said that we decide, that there be nothing we don’t have to do. Now you say different. Better we go back to master.”

  Ampris took a step forward. “No, please—”

  They backed away from her, glancing at the dark trees beyond the circle of firelight. Exasperated, Ampris tried to figure out what to say that would calm them.

  Tantha appeared from the gloom with a suddenness that made several Kelths jump. “You aren’t going anywhere,” she said to them, growling fiercely. The spotted fur around her neck stood out in a ruff. “You run back to your master, and you’ll betray us to save your own miserable hides.”

  Ampris glared at the Aaroun. Threats weren’t going to help. “You have no master to return to,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm and reassuring. “He has lost his farm to government confiscation. I told you that when we were penned.”

  “We know about life out here, life in the wild,” Frenshala said. Her eyes shifted back and forth nervously. “Plants that be poison. Wild animals that kill. No water. No food. No shelter. We will die, and you—”

  “I have lived in the wilderness for twelve years,” Ampris said. “I have raised my cubs out here without modern conveniences. You will be safe once you learn how to hunt and what to gather. The drought has made it harder to find clean water, but we—”

  “We want to go,” Frenshala said wildly. “We want to go now!”

  “You will betray us,” Tantha said, her eyes agleam.

  The Kelths backed away, clearly getting ready to dash into the darkness. Once out there, Ampris knew, they could get lost or they could fall into a canyon and be hurt or they might wander all the way down to the base of the hills and likely run into patrollers.