The Taste of Waterfruit and Other Stories (Story Portals)

by Richard Lee Byers

  Another charge. She ducked back and around the pillar, hugging it closely. This time the path was clear. She could keep dodging so long as her stamina lasted, as long as she did not run into obstructions she could not see, but that line of thinking was a stalemate. She should just kill the thing. Her job assassinating Preiza was done.

  But the theft was not, and it was still part of the contract. She might not be able to bring back an egg, but could she bring back the lizard?

  It wasted a lot of energy with every attack. The next charge it barreled into the pillar, toppling it over and missing her so closely she could feel the rush of air as it passed. It hurtled into the wall of the compound with a mighty crash, and the hounds on the other side began wailing. Mortar crumbled and even heavier feet crushed debris beneath its steps. How much bigger was it now? A wagon? A hut?

  But it was newly born. It was capable of powerful magic, but its stamina could not possibly last much longer. Newborn creatures were ferociously hungry. That must have been why it attacked her, why it attacked the guards. That's why it was feeding. After spending so much energy just trying to hatch, it must be ravenous...and tired.

  Katya backed up, finding the other pillar behind her, and waved her arms, trying to flag the beast's attention. She needed to wear it down.

  The ground shook as the ch'thon bore down on her. She darted out of the way, but by this last charge the beast had grown larger than even she had anticipated. A part of its body clipped her, and she spun wildly to the ground as it crashed through the other pillar. She could hear shouts now, as if the hounds had not been enough. The guards were rushing to see what was the matter. And from Preiza's quarters she heard a scream. The woman was awake and free of her paralysis.

  Shi'in, spare me. Katya had expected to be long gone by the time the spell on her wore off, and she dared not open her eyes to reevaluate the situation.

  The door to Preiza's quarters opened with a slam and the ch'thon pounded the ground uncertainly as it shuffled where it stood. A body slumped to the ground, the victim of another nightmare.

  Katya lurched to her feet, her balance unsteady. She felt the cobblestone dipping, sharp and uneven, beneath her left foot. The beast had shattered it beneath its weight.

  It couldn't hold its size forever though. It couldn't. Not as a newborn.

  She closed her hand around a loose piece of stone she found by her left foot. Then, standing, she hurled it at the ch'thon. Even if she could not see it, by now it must be so large that she stood a good chance of striking hide just knowing its vicinity.

  She was rewarded by the thump of stone against scale.

  "Hey!" she shouted. "Here!"

  The bulk shifted, took a ponderous step towards her. Not another charge?

  "What in Belanon's name...?"

  A new voice. The guards were here now, on the other side of the beast. She could hear its steps, pivoting towards them. They shouted and she heard the twang of bowstrings. Arrows clattered against hide, but she didn't hear the sickening thunk of piercing steel embedding in flesh. The men shouted and bodies fell. The ch'thon itself had barely moved, but it now took another step towards them, to feed.

  Not yet, she thought.

  Katya hurled one of her daggers and shouted again, not expecting to draw blood, only its attention. "Over here!" she called.

  It lumbered a step.

  "Come at me!"

  Another step, quickly followed by a third.

  "You still have one more meal waiting here!"

  She threw another dagger at it, and this one must have struck something sensitive because it bellowed and the ground shook as it charged. Katya flung herself hard to one side and tucked her body in a roll as far as her momentum would carry her.

  The ch'thon crunched into another wall of the compound, but it was a lighter sound, and then slumped to the ground, even lighter still. Tiny nails scratched against the stone, scurrying up to her, and she instinctively pulled back her foot and kicked.

  She connected with a small body that couldn't have been heavier than a cat, sending it flying. She waited after it landed with a soft whump, but heard nothing more.

  Battered and bruised, Katya stood up and opened her eyes into slits. She peered in the direction of the ch'thon and at first she could not see anything, but when she walked closer, and searched amidst the rubble that surrounded the destruction of Preiza's courtyard, she saw a tiny lizard, no longer than the palm of her hand and as thin as a finger. It was completely motionless, as still as stone.

  A pity she couldn't bring it back alive, or as an egg, she thought, but at least she could fulfill the job as close as possible to the client's wishes. Katya placed the motionless body in another pouch, this one reinforced by magic, and took off.

  * * *

  Sakone listened dispassionately to Katya's recount of the assassination. She wore the same cloak as before, but did not bother this time with the hood after she sat down. Katya wanted to ask what had happened, what had changed her. Her client wore the face of her friend, but so little remained in the way of the young woman she'd remembered. However, the professional in her continued her report. Lady Kat did not know this woman as anything other than a client.

  The destruction of Preiza's property had been the source of much speculation, and whispers of a giant lizard darted around the marketplace, so Katya was not surprised that Sakone did not react to the news. After all, if she had purchased the ch'thon she surely had an inkling of what it was capable of, and she must have known what had happened the instant she heard.

  "I'm afraid it's no longer in the egg, but I did bring its body back with me," said Katya. She removed the stiffened shape from her pouch and held it out. "I realize this is not the letter of the contract, but I hope you will find this to be in the spirit of it."

  Sakone took the proffered lizard and turned it over in her hand, peering studiously at it. She rapped it smartly on the back of the head, and with a twitch it sprang to life. It crawled back and forth over her open hand, head swinging curiously from side to side as it took in its surroundings. Its scales did not glow anymore, remaining an unremarkable tan in color, and the tongue that flicked in and out of its mouth was a dark purple. The frills, still spattered with dried blood, lay flat along its neck. Sakone wriggled a finger at the ch'thon and it scampered up her arm to curl up on her shoulder, as tame as any pet.

  Katya looked on, wary and disbelieving, until Sakone's attention came back to her and her once-friend smiled. "I think this will do."

  The Hawk in the Sky, The Mice in the Fields

  by Steven Mohan, Jr.

  On the day the people of the Commons called Midweek, Teverus packed up all the valuable possessions that his new life had left to him and carted them off to the small market that stretched along Southgate Road. He hoped to purchase a great treasure, but in the midst of this desperate errand he found something else entirely.

  Something utterly impossible.

  * * *

  The old woman shook her head. “I’m sorry, it’s not enough, Tranick,” she said, using the false name that Teverus gave everyone--even those few he loved. “I have to eat, same as you.”

  Teverus had placed a basket of hen’s egg on the woman’s cart, along with the hen itself, already plucked and ready for the pot. The woman was ancient, approaching her fiftieth year, her back bent with a lifetime of toil, a black cloak wrapped around her to keep her warm even though a bright afternoon sun washed golden light across the road’s cobblestones.

  Sun and wind and time had made the woman’s skin into cracked leather. Her face was surely ugly, but it was not mean. She had offered Teverus a fair deal.

  He simply couldn’t afford it.

  He sighed and reached deep into his bag and pulled out a pair of boots, adding them to the pile on the cart. “They’re fine leather, lined with lambs’ fleece. I made them with my own hands.”

  It was the last thing he had to offer.

  The old woman’s eyes flicker
ed down to the boots and for a moment hope swelled in Teverus’s chest.

  And then the old woman slowly shook her head.

  “Please,” said Teverus, and his throat tightened painfully around the word, like he was trying to swallow an apple whole. “Please--” Everyone called her the old woman or the old mad woman or (behind her back) the witch woman. No one called her by name. “Please, Mela. It’s all I have in the world.”

  The old woman looked up at the mention of her name. She peered at him for a long moment and then she bent to her cart and came away with a fist-sized mass wrapped in the bright green leaves of the jubfruit tree and bound together with twine. “Take this poultice,” she said softly.

  The poultice smelled bitter and foul in Teverus’s hands. He started to unwrap it.

  The old woman shook her head. “No, no. You mustn’t open it until you’re ready to use it. First, set it over a steaming pot to heat it. Not in the pot, Tranick, but over it. When you can smell its stink, it’s ready. Smear the heated paste over the chest and face. The poultice will quench the fire of a fever and chase away the agony of inflamed joints.”

  Teverus nodded at all this like his neck was suddenly fashioned from rubber. “I will do just as you say.” He suddenly found he was ridiculously grateful to this old woman, this witch woman. “Gods thank you, Mela.”

  “Gods go with you, Tranick,” said the old woman evenly, reaching for the eggs and the hen and the boots.

  Teverus turned away from the old woman’s cart, stashing the treasure in the right pocket of his battered coat and shoving his hand in afterwards to make sure the poultice didn’t fall out.

  Then he looked up and saw something that could not be.

  The industry that fed the great city of Jakarr lay outside its walls: the cultivation of barley and wheat, the slaughter of swine and cattle, the tanning of leather, the smelting of ore. The Commons was a place of rough hands and tired backs, not a place of beauty.

  And yet Teverus beheld a vision of loveliness not a half-dozen strides from where he stood.

  The woman stood by a fruit stall, examining a display of carefully stacked orangefruits. Her long, raven hair was unwashed and her olive skin was marred by a smudge of dirt on her left cheek. She wore work pants and a rough woolen coat dyed brown and she smelled faintly of the hay used for a horse’s bedding. The woman had tried to disguise her true nature.

  But there was no hiding her grace, her economy of motion, her dark blue gaze. Not from Teverus’s clever eyes.

  This woman was running from something in the city: maybe an unbearable marriage or an unpayable debt. Maybe from something much worse. Teverus didn’t know her story, but one thing was certain.

  She needed help.

  Teverus could see it as easily as he could see the scarred hand at the end of his arm. He knew all about hiding.

  The sharp clatter of hooves against cobble stones brought Teverus back to himself. The market was a ragged line of carts and stalls with forest behind them and the road to Jakarr’s South Gate in front. It was operated by simple laborers hoping to make a few coppers from the merchants and soldiers and pilgrims moving north towards the great city.

  But what Teverus saw was a quartet of riders moving south.

  The four men said nothing, but looked everywhere. They were lean and muscular, their eyes hungry. None of them smiled.

  Teverus’s pulse quickened. These men were obviously looking for the woman, but who knew what else they might see? The story of Teverus’s life was written in the scarlet script of spilled blood. His escape from the city was the most storied since Gliddus the Death Mage disappeared from Jakarr. There were many who would rejoice at his death.

  And if he had to choose between his survival and the woman’s--he would choose his.

  Teverus’s gaze found the lead rider. The man wore his ebony hair long enough to touch his shirt and his olive complexion matched the woman’s save for a jagged line of white scar tissue that marred his chin. He was handsome enough if you liked demanding and mean. In Teverus’s experience there were plenty of women who liked just that.

  But he didn’t think the beauty in the market was one of them.

  The lead rider was now quite close, no more than twenty strides from the woman, his eyes marking each and every person in the crowd. Teverus knew the type. The rider was studying everything about the people he watched: the hunch of their bodies, the character of their movements, the way they fit in with the people around them. He would see anything out of place, no matter how small. A disguise was no protection against a man like this.

  The woman had no shield.

  But neither did Teverus.

  Teverus swallowed and touched a pendant he wore around his neck. It was nothing more than a half-rusted piece of iron--but it was enough to hold a small bit of magic.

  His hand closed around the pendant. Teverus concentrated fiercely.

  Next to the woman, a small orangefruit at the bottom of the stack seemed to shiver.

  Teverus was no wizard--he had always avoided blue work, preferring to do his jobs with blade and bow--but he knew a few simple tricks.

  Now he was sweating with effort.

  The orangefruit rocked momentarily, unsettling the orange globes resting above it.

  “Just a little more,” Teverus whispered, his jaw clenched, muscles aching with the effort.

  Nothing.

  And then the orangefruit leapt free and suddenly there was an avalanche of gaily colored fruit, dozens and dozens of bouncing, falling, rolling oranges going everywhere. Heptron, the man who ran the fruit stall, was shouting, children darted in to snatch up a free orange, and everyone was looking and laughing.

  Teverus smiled tightly and took a step back, meaning to fade back into the crowd. Except he looked up.

  And saw the lead rider staring at him, ramrod straight in his saddle, murder in his eyes.

  In his blue eyes.

  The man must have been schooled in magic. Teverus’s little trick hadn’t drawn the riders’ attention to the woman, it had drawn it to him.

  Teverus turned and bolted.

  “There,” the man shouted to his fellows. “There she is.”

  They think I’m the woman using a glamour to hide my true face. The thought offered him no consolation. They would ride him down and beat him and then they would undo the small magics that kindly Aaroch had used to hide his identity. And when they discovered he really wasn’t the woman, so what? These men made their coin hunting fugitives. He dared not count on them not to recognize his true face.

  The gallop of the closing horse beat a grim tattoo against the road behind him, doom only seconds away.

  Teverus dodged left, buying himself a few seconds, and suddenly saw the stall of Gerta the Fat, who gathered herbs and spices and made her own-- Vinegar.

  Teverus juked left and snatched up a bottle of wine vinegar. In one fluid motion he smashed the bottle, wheeled around, and flung the broken bottom at the head of the oncoming horse. Vinegar splashed in the horse’s eyes and it screamed, emitting an almost human shriek. The horse reared, throwing the rider.

  It furiously shook its head, whinnying. Blinded, the animal charged into Teverus, knocking him to the ground. Then it wheeled and blundered into the next horse. The two beasts went down in a tangle of legs and horseflesh, blocking the road.

  Teverus found his breath and scrambled to his feet. He slipped between two stalls and sprinted for the forest, running flat out until he could no longer see the market or the road through the trees.

  He leaned up against a pine trunk, breathing hard, gasping for air.

  Good riddance, Teverus thought. Good riddance to the beautiful woman and good riddance to the riders. I did not come to the market for them. I came for--

  His eyes widened and his hand shot into his pocket. He came away with nothing but an emerald green leaf and a broken piece of twine.

  The poultice, the miraculous poultice that meant everything.

 
It was gone.

  * * *

  The sky was just beginning to purple when Teverus reached the small hovel that was his home. He hadn’t noticed the arrival of day’s end. He’d spent the long walk home frantically casting about for some way to purchase a second poultice. If he had a cycle of the moon to hunt game in the forest and earn a few coppers working for the smith over by the river--

  And as long as he was wishing, he might as well wish for a thousand gold pieces and a different life. Both were as likely as having the time to earn enough to buy a new poultice. He didn’t have a moon cycle. He clenched and unclenched his fists.

  He didn’t even have a week.

  The cool of dusk kissed his skin and the air was thick with buzzing things coming out for their night’s work. He felt a sharp prick on his left arm and slapped a mosquito.

  His palm came away smeared crimson with stolen blood.

  His.

  Teverus swallowed hard against the tightness in his throat.

  In some ways it might have been easier if the riders had captured him and hauled him back to Jakarr. No torture that his tormentors could devise would be worse than what awaited him in the hovel.

  But, no. He owed it to Kilah to be here now, even if all he could do was hold her hand.

  He had been a fool to lose the poultice.

  He pushed the door open.

  The hovel smelled of heat and illness, the sour stink of sweat, the grit of candle smoke. Little Kilah lay in his bed, swaddled in blankets and furs, her skin a bright, feverish pink, her face glistening with beads of sweat.

  Her life burning out of her.

  She didn’t open her eyes when he entered, and, for that, Teverus was grateful.

  Sleep was the only mercy he could offer his daughter.

  Teverus stepped into the room, picked up a ragged strip of old cloth, and dipped it in a bowl of tepid water. He used the rag to gently blot the sweat from Kilah’s brow, trying to cool her fever without rousing her. He sang her a lullaby from his own childhood, a soft, sweet tune about a small puppy curling up after a day of digging in the yard, chasing his tail, and bravely stalking butterflies.