by Watson Davis
“And you say some outlaws robbed you on the way?” Thyu’fest said, inching his horse up, leaning over and examining Wu Cheen’s mount.
Che-su turned to follow Thyu-fest. “Just so.”
“Thyu’fest?” the priestess said, her horse fidgeting beneath her. “What is the purpose—?”
“They took all your wares but they left you these fine horses and this crappy wagon?” Thyu’fest asked.
Wu Cheen said, “I was able to lead one string of mounts away so they didn’t get them.”
“Good man.” Thyu’fest winked at Wu Cheen and saluted him with a touch to his cap. “Always protect the horses and be sure to run away at the first sign of danger, huh?”
Wu Cheen touched his chest and bowed. “Survival has always been my motto.”
Thyu’fest laughed and backed his horse up. “You know, these are the horses of imperial soldiers.”
“Indeed,” Che-su said, smiling, her eyebrows rising. “A fine eye for horseflesh you have, kind sir. Master Tee Lon happens to be a personal friend of mine, a most delightful man with the most delightful wit. He reports daily to Bishop Diyune in Basaliyasta on military matters, and he brought the news of a surplus of imperial mounts coming to auction. I could not pass them up.”
“I have met Master Tee Lon,” the priestess said. “He is very respected. Recently returned from the north.”
“Hmm.” Thyu’fest stroked his chin, squinting at Che-su, his brow wrinkling. “They alter the brands in those cases and these brands haven’t been changed.”
Che-su sighed and spread her hands, pursing her lips. “Sometimes when people are impatient for a profit, procedures may be forgotten and overlooked in haste.”
Thyu’fest nodded and spun his horse around, looking away from Che-su, stepping toward the other riders, drifting around the front of the cart to the other side. The hair on the back of Sifa’s neck rose; the two riders behind her inched closer. She edged toward the cart, turning her head to watch them
He looked up at Che-su and asked, “We’ve heard tell of anarchists fighting in Basaliyasta. Sounds like most of Mendenen was destroyed, many people killed. You go through there?”
“Oh, by all the hells, no!” Che-su said, shaking her head, her hand rising to cover her mouth, her eyes wide. “Perhaps those were the very brigands we fought! We passed through Mendenen on the way, but it seemed so peaceful there at the time. I cannot conceive of any sort of rebellion in such an Empress-loving town. I have a close friend there, Rector Kathe; have you heard if she is well? Surely no one would harm such a fine old woman.”
“Sadly, she has passed on to her next incarnation,” the priestess said, inclining her head. “Mendenen mourns for her.”
“After tearing her to pieces,” Thyu’fest said, his eyes going to Shiyk’yath, studying the man. “And what happened to you, lefty? You weren’t so lucky as to have a string of horses nearby so you could flee like a little girl?”
Wu Cheen bowed his head, closing his eyes and grinning, but his left hand dropped to the hilt of one of the daggers at his belt.
Shiyk’yath held up the stump of his left arm and said, “The outlaws—maybe they were rebels—had a spell-caster. She burned my hand off.”
“Ouch.” Thyu’fest chuckled and shook his head. “And now you’re half a man. That’s bad luck for you.”
Shiyk’yath stood a bit straighter and glared up at Thyu’fest.
Sifa’s horse’s ears flicked back and forth, the riders behind her drawing closer.
Thyu’fest said, “You’re looking pretty hale for someone who just got their hand burned off their arm. I bet most of my men here—and they’re all pretty damned tough—but I bet most of my men here would be flopping around like little babies whining about the pain about now.”
Shiyk’yath sighed. “I’m sure I would be too, but we met a healer who took pity on us.”
Che-su exhaled slowly.
“Oh?” Thyu’fest’s eyebrows rose. “Did the Green Lady take pity on you?”
“The Green Lady?” the priestess said. “She is but a myth.”
“We didn’t get the healer’s name,” Che-su said, waving her hands.
“Too bad,” Thyu’fest said. “She’s probably in with the rebels.”
“She does not exist,” the priestess said with finality.
The two guards behind Sifa darted forward. She squeezed her horse’s sides, urging it to move, but the guardsmen’s horses had her bracketed. They grabbed Sifa’s arms, and one pulled the cloth from Sifa’s hair.
Thyu’fest’s eyes flew open in recognition. “You? YOU!”
“NO!” SIFA YELLED, TWISTING and kicking out at the riders beside her. Her horse darted away, squirming out from beneath her, spooked. The soldiers grabbed at her but she wriggled free and fell to the ground, landing on her side. The impact knocked the air from her lungs but her left elbow took the brunt of the force, dislocating her shoulder. She screamed in pain and tried to crawl between the hooves and legs of the horses moving around her.
“Get that bitch!” Thyu’fest bellowed, reaching toward Sifa, preparing to lunge toward her, but Shiyk’yath hurled himself up into Thyu’fest and, grabbing him by the throat, dragged him from his horse using his weight to jerk the man out of his saddle. Shiyk’yath smashed Thyu’fest face-first into the ground.
“What are you doing?” the priestess yelled, tugging at her reins, her horse dancing beneath her. “What is happening?”
Che-su raised her voice in chant, stepping up onto the seat of the cart, her hands swirling, the magic concentrating around her.
Two riders charged toward the cart. One leapt from his horse onto the wagon near Che-su, lashing out and knocking her back; the other slid from his saddle at the wagon’s side.
The priestess chanted, her horse bucking.
Wu Cheen whirled his horse around and flung a dagger, striking the soldier beside Che-su in his eye. The man shrieked and tumbled backward into the bed, scratching at his face. The other man scrabbled up into the cart, seizing Che-su’s wrist to keep her from forming her spell.
Shiyk’yath rammed his knees into Thyu’fest’s back, and punched the man in the back of the head, grumbling, “Half a man, huh?”
Che-su pulled free of the man and flung herself backward over the seat, landing in the bed of the cart, setting her feet wide and steady to give herself a solid base.
The priestess shouted and threw her hands toward Wu Cheen. A fireball exploded from her palms. Wu Cheen ducked, the fireball passing over him and flying into the trees, blasting one apart and catching the tree and plants around it on fire.
“Sifa?” Wu Cheen called out, pulling himself back up into his saddle, his horse dancing around.
“Save Che-su!” Sifa shouted.
Che-su lifted her arms in the air, shouted a magical word, and swept her arms around. The trees around them moved without a hint of wind, the branches reaching out and wrapping around the riders on the left side of the cart. The horses reared, throwing one rider as the others struggled to maintain their seats, ducking their heads.
“Gotcha!” Wu Cheen leaned out from his horse, one hand on his pommel. His arm swept out and lifted Che-su from the bed of the cart, pulling her onto his horse and settling her behind him. His horse bolted, driving forward at the sudden shift of weight and the pressure of Wu Cheen’s legs against its chest.
The priestess threw her hands out once more and a fireball plowed into the trees attacking the guards.
Sifa’s horse shied and reared, almost colliding with Wu Cheen’s. The two guards who had attacked Sifa bent over their saddles, peering down between their horses’ hooves, moving this way and that, searching for her.
Sifa scrabbled out between the two horses and sprinted away toward a fencepost along the side of the road, holding her injured arm. Wu Cheen, his left arm behind his back keeping Che-su in place, shifted his weight to direct his horse toward Sifa.
The two riders by Shiyk’yath and Thyu’fest
leapt from their horses, lunging toward Shiyk’yath with outstretched arms, but Shiyk’yath dove beneath the cart. He rolled all the way out the other side.
The priestess’s horse reared and bucked, throwing the woman off, and her next fireball flew off wild and uncontrolled.
“Set me down! I can’t cast like this!” Che-su twisted on the back of Wu Cheen’s horse, the wild fireball flying over her head, her flailing arms and waving hands directing the trees to whip around, trying to gain time for Shiyk’yath. The trees grabbed at Thyu’fest and his soldiers as well as the priestess, yanking them back, lifting them into the air.
The two guards who’d grabbed Sifa whirled their horses around and bolted after her.
Wu Cheen dropped the reins from his right hand and drew another dagger, hurling it in an awkward underhand motion. The blade missed the mark, but the handle struck one of Sifa’s guards on the side of the neck, surprising the man, and he fell from his saddle.
Shiyk’yath hurled himself onto the back of Sifa’s horse, scrabbling to get himself settled into the saddle as the horse shot off.
Sifa leapt to the top of a fencepost and turned to see her attackers. The one guard remaining charged toward her with a smile on his mustachioed lips.
Sifa found a silence within herself and she pictured lightning as she never had before, seeing it in her mind like Lonyo seemed to when she saw a person’s organs, bones, muscles and skin when she healed them. Sifa called to that magic, to that energy, drawing it not to herself, but the pattern of it she held in her mind. She sensed invisible nodes she’d never seen nor felt before surrounding her, everywhere.
A bolt of lighting struck down out of the clear sky, down through the trees, striking the rider, but not the horse, hurling the man from his saddle, but not killing him, the power drawing back, pulling away even as it struck. The rider landed hard, rolling on the road and slamming into a tree by the side of the road, where he lay moaning.
The horse ran toward her and Sifa caught its neck as it passed by, using the momentum to throw her left leg up over its back. She settled herself in the saddle, reaching forward to grab the reins and to bring the horse around. Shiyk’yath hung on to one horse, while Che-su clung to the back of Wu Cheen while he rode another.
Che-su threw her hands out, and the bushes and trees grew into a wall blocking the road behind them.
Sifa motioned to her friends and yelled, “Follow me!”
THE MOUNTAIN GREW LARGER and darker, the black rock so different than the other stone in the desert, not like the red sandy rocks. A mist swirled up around the mountain with a reddish hue from the bubbling lava in the canyon encircling the mountain.
Sifa turned to look back, and her horse huffed and shook its lathered flanks, spraying sweat and almost unseating her. “We are close now.”
Che-su clung to her back, having transferred from Wu Cheen’s horse to hers a fair distance back. “Oh, no.”
Wu Cheen stared up at the mountain before them, his face caked with dust and sand. “What in the Nine Hells is this eye-offending lump of stone?”
“A place we’ll be safe,” Sifa said, rubbing at her left shoulder where Wu Cheen had popped it back into place. “No one dares come here except me and Ka-bes.”
“Why?” Shiyk’yath asked, his voice a croak. He sat slumped in his saddle, cradling his stump as his horse trudged past her. “What’s wrong with the place that no right-minded people come here?”
“Well, we came here because there are salt deposits a short distance away, very good salt,” Sifa said, prodding her horse to get moving again. “And we would mine the salt and sell it and make good money.”
“We need to discuss your definition of ‘good money’,” Wu Cheen said, snickering and rolling his eyes.
“This is why we shouldn’t let little girls decide where we’re going,” Shiyk’yath said.
The mountain loomed over them, blocking out the sun, the contours of the barren rock becoming clearer.
Che-su raised her head. Her breath was heavy and humid on Sifa’s neck. “I don’t like this place. It smacks of ancient magic and I fear I may not have enough power to combat it.”
“We can’t go much further with the horses in this condition,” Wu Cheen said. “We need to find a place to make a stand, or we’re going to have to give ourselves over to your friend.”
Shiyk’yath leaned back, peering behind them. “They’re coming. That dust trail of theirs is getting close.” He sat back up and sighed. “See? We would have been better off in the forest. Sure, we couldn’t see them, but they couldn’t see us, either. We’d be able to lose them.”
“We will lose them,” Sifa said, lifting her arm and motioning for them to turn. She pointed at a bank of rock and sand with a hazy steam behind it. “Be careful, that’s a cliff there.”
“A what?” Shiyk’yath asked, wiping sweat from his brow and smudging dirt across his forehead.
Che-su straightened up behind Sifa, her body tensing. “Is that a town carved into the mountain?”
“Yes, it is,” Sifa said, a grin spreading across her lips. “That’s the genius of my plan. The door is magic and I know how to open it. Thyu’fest can’t.”
“And the priestess with him?” Wu Cheen asked.
“Well, Ka-bes couldn’t open it,” Sifa said.
“Of course not,” Che-su said, her voice soft. “Wind mages like us wouldn’t have to. Let us hope a fire mage can’t figure out a way in.”
“Well, anyway,” Sifa said, her voice quivering, “we go in, close the door behind us, and we’ll be safe. We won’t have to wait long; Ka-bes is coming.”
Shiyk’yath peered at the steam and the lava below. “And there’s food and water in this village? Something that won’t poison us? No animals to attack us?”
“Um...” Sifa gnawed at her bottom lip, and then said, “There are several kinds of trees inside, all of them very healthy. There are fruit trees and some animals. If there are trees and things, there has to be water somewhere. Right?”
Wu Cheen sighed and shook his head. “That’s not exactly the ‘yes’ my stomach was hoping to hear.”
“I am trying my best,” Sifa said, her bottom lip quivering, her shoulders slumping. “I don’t know. Is that what you want to hear? This is the only place I could think of where we might be safe, especially after Ka-bes took care of the weird head thing.”
Che-su patted Sifa’s back and said, “You’re doing fine, you’re very brave.”
“Weird head thing?” Shiyk’yath asked.
“I’m sorry,” Wu Cheen said, not sounding sorry at all, “I am new at this whole working-for-someone-under-the-age-of-twenty thing. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“What about this weird head thing?” Shiyk’yath asked once more.
“Thank you,” Sifa said to Che-su, turning her horse and walking it up to the edge. The cliff dropped off straight down into a bubbling pit of red and black lava with flames shooting up in geysers.
Sifa squeezed the horse’s chest with her legs, snapped at the reins. She nudged it with her heels and asked it with her heart, trying to get it to go forward, but it refused.
Shiyk’yath asked, “So how are we supposed to cross?”
“We’re going to cross over the bridge,” Sifa said, grinning and pointing at the ethereal bridge glittering before her.
“Bridge?” Wu Cheen said.
Che-su whispered words and moved one hand.
“You have to trust me, there’s a bridge here,” Sifa said, kicking at her horse, clicking her tongue and asking it to move.
“There is a bridge,” Che-su said.
The horse pinned its ears back against its neck and refused to budge.
“The horse won’t go onto it,” Sifa said.
“We’re going to have to walk across,” Che-su said. “Somebody help me down.”
“Yes, your excellence.” Wu Cheen hopped off his horse and hobbled to the side of Sifa’s horse, holding his hands up.
&nbs
p; Che-su slid from the saddle into Wu Cheen’s arms and then struggled to stand upright on the ground. She moaned. Sifa dismounted and took her horse’s reins. She walked out onto the bridge. Wu Cheen helped Che-su stumble onto the bridge.
Shiyk’yath dismounted and inched over to where Sifa stood, looked over the edge and shook his head. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“You’ve got to.” Sifa pulled at her horse, but it would not budge and even pulled back against the reins. Sifa stomped her foot on the bridge. “Maybe we can blindfold the horses and lead them across?”
Wu Cheen said, “We don’t have time for that. We need to get across the damned bridge and behind that damned wall. Grab Shiyk’yath and help him.”
Sifa looked past Shiyk’yath. Thyu’fest and his riders approached and were now close enough so she could make out their bloody faces. A cloud of dust rose behind them as they drove their frothing horses to the edge of their stamina.
“Close your eyes!” Sifa said.
Shiyk’yath squeezed his eyes shut. Sifa grabbed his elbow and guided him onto the bridge, then shooed the horses away, asking them to go a good distance away. They galloped off.
“Is something wrong?” Shiyk’yath asked, still standing in the same spot.
“Nope,” Sifa said, grabbing his arm and directing him forward, goading him to walk and then to jog until they’d crossed over.
“Come back here!” Thyu’fest yelled from the other side. One of the riders ordered his horse to follow Sifa, and charged out into empty space, unable to see the bridge, screaming as he plunged down into the lava below. The other riders backed off, looking down at the ground.
The priestess leapt down from her horse and began waving her arms. Che-su began to chant.
“Better hurry,” Wu Cheen whispered.
“Alright now. It’s right here.” Sifa reached the wall and ran her hand across the surface, feeling the magic she’d felt there not so long before.
Shiyk’yath looked back behind them at the riders on the far side of the canyon. “Are you sure you can open this thing?”
Che-su yelled and stamped her foot and the winds rushed down. A fireball exploded against the wall to Sifa’s right. Sifa glanced behind her just in time to see the priestess shoot another fireball and Che-su summon a wind to guide it off course, making it explode against the wall to their left.
