by Shannah Jay
'Use stone of sleep. Must.' Already the Elder SS'Habi was reaching for the blue stone in the pouch hanging from her body.
'You can try,' said Herra, 'but even if you succeed, we shall make every effort to escape again.'
'This does not make sense.'
Davred stepped forward. 'The Giver of Words has failed to understand us,' he said. 'Failed completely. If the deleff drag us back, it will be a great error, and will disturb the alignments for a long time.'
All three SS'Habi started hissing and making agitated movements with their many limbs. 'How disturb alignments?' one asked at last.
'It will fill Dsheresh with violence, because they will be committing violence against us and we shall not hesitate to reflect that violence back at them.'
The hissing intensified, then the blue stone started flickering. 'Much regret. Musst return to Dsheresh.'
The light began to wash across the group. The three babies closed their eyes. With a sigh, Jonner slumped to the ground, followed by Narla and Carryn. Benjan resisted for a little longer, then crumpled to the ground.
Davred and Katia were still on their feet when the cliff kit pressed forward to stand beside Herra. As the flashes of blue light flickered over her body, Nim began to growl in her throat, then she threw back her head and started howling loudly. The piercing ululations throbbed through the air, like living things in their own right, hurting the ears and drowning out all other sounds. It seemed impossible that one immature animal could make so much noise.
Katia, who had begun to feel numbness creeping over her under the effect of the stone of sleep, jerked wide awake again. She saw Davred shake his head and then mutter something angrily and stand more alertly.
They went to stand on either side of Herra while the kit continued to prowl to and fro in front of the group, howling and roaring shrill challenges at the SS'Habi.
Cheral snapped awake at the same time as Benjan regained consciousness. He was on his feet in one swift movement. 'What's that noise?'
Jonner groaned and sat up, staring around. 'What's happening?' The others sat up groggily and the babies started whimpering, soft little cries of fright.
'It's the kit,' said Katia. 'She seems to be counteracting the effect of the stone.'
The flickering died down and the SS'Habi stood facing them on the platform. 'Iss no one before you came who can resist stone.'
'It's our Brother, protecting us,' declared Cheral.
Davred took a step forward. 'The Giver of Words seeks the truth of everything, Elder SS'Habi. Am I right?'
'Yess. Must seek truth, must know it. Must understand everything.'
'Yet you've said that we cannot understand some things about the deleff and Dsheresh.'
'Iss not in your reality. Iss not possible.'
Davred suddenly looked older, sterner. 'Nor can we humans be fitted into the reality of the deleff. Why are they trying to force us on to a wrong path? They'll disturb the peace of their own world if they try to keep us there. This I know. Then, surely, Discord will follow for Dsheresh.'
'No! No Disscord in Dsheresh. Must not.'
'There will be great Discord if you force us to go back there. We cannot change our path. We're totally dedicated to our Brother's Quest. Leave us alone! We've done you no harm.'
A wind howled around them as he spoke and the sky darkened. Distant thunder rolled across the mountain tops and branches creaked in protest against the sudden gale. It was the first time Davred's wind had blown, and it was powerful in a way Katia's could never be. His voice seemed to echo around them, even after he had finished speaking.
As the wind slowly died down, an image flickered at the other side of the clearing, a group of massive deleff, stone-like, implacable. Thunder rumbled away into the distance and lightning flickered on the edges of the Kindred's vision, distorting the scene around them. Everyone experienced a feeling of disorientation so strong that Narla whimpered with fright, Jonner began to curse under his breath and even Nim moved back to press against Katia.
The wind and thunder died down, but the shadow deleff remained, as did the strange feeling of disorientation. 'Test iss passed,' said the Elder SS'Habi. 'No one else has managed this. Your Quest iss true.'
'Test!' snapped Cheral. 'What test?'
'Deleff test everyone. Have prophecy saying one day Gods will ssend messengers across Dsheresh.
Nothing will sstop them. Messengers will cross all barriers, will sing their way past stone of sleep. Long time wait for messengers. Many thousands of your years. Now you come. Your truth iss the one in the prophecy.
Iss very strong truth.'
'That's why we follow our Brother's Quest,' said Herra.
'Deleff will not stop you now. But still dangers lie ahead. Cannot help you with all dangers. Cannot always be with you. Not always in alignment with your reality.'
The platform started to fade. 'Sorry not to see you again, Elder Ssisster. Follow different paths,' whispered the hissing voice.
The silence in the clearing seemed louder than the noise that had filled it only a short time before. Marek, who had remained unconscious on the ground from the first flickerings of the blue stone, now sat up and shook his head. When he saw that the others were still there, he swallowed and edged away from them.
Nim was still pacing uneasily to and fro. Katia stepped forward to soothe and praise her.
'Well!' said Jonner, always the first to speak. 'That was a close call! I thought we were gonners when those SS'Habi turned up.'
'Well, you aren't out of the woods yet,' said Marek. 'The deleff don't believe in violence, but there's other perils round here. You'll be safe enough in Rakmar's holding, especially if any of you've got healing Gifts, but there's some wild country beyond that. They call it the Tanglewoods. An' no one, absolutely no one, can get through them woods. If you have any sense at all, you'll stay here with us willingly and not risk your lives.'
'Not another danger!' moaned Jonner. 'Haven't we been through enough? I'm not made for all this trouble.
I'd even go back to live with my mother, if I could only get back to the Twelve Claims! She'd be easy to deal with after all this.'
Herra sighed. She knew they weren’t yet safe, weren’t able to pursue their Quest. The Elder SS'Habi had said that they'd passed a test and implied that the deleff were now going to help them. Whether that was true or not, the deleff had transported them hundreds of kloms away from the Twelve Claims and had made no attempt to help them return. How on earth were the Kindred going to get back without transport of some kind? If they had to walk back, the children would be grown up before they got there, and years of useful life would be wasted.
And Herra knew that she didn’t have many years left.
CHAPTER 19 SOO'S EXILE
The deleff pulling the four great trading wagons stopped abruptly and raised their heads to stare up at the sky.
'What the devil's got into them?' asked Giff. His small black eyes narrowed in his heavy-jowled face as he looked around to see what had upset the great creatures. He made no attempt to start them moving again.
They were the best sentries you could have, deleff. You could trust them with your lives, and traders did just that every day, especially in these troubled times. If the deleff were worried about something, best tread slowly for a while and keep your eyes open. 'I wonder what's upsetting them.'
His wife shrugged. 'Who knows? But I wouldn't mind a bit of a stop and - '
'Shhh!'
The deleff had begun to whine through their noses, as they did when they were uneasy, and their ruffs were unfurled, standing up stiffly around their massive necks. Their bodies twisted to and fro, as their eyes searched the sky.
'I can hear something,' said Giff. 'Shut up and listen!'
Whatever it was whistled as it flew through the clouds. Nyris moved closer to her husband, then clutched his arm, gasping in shock as the object came into view. It was like nothing she'd ever seen before, not a bird but a huge cylind
er flying well above the height of the tree-tops.
'Brother look down!' she gasped. 'What is it?'
'Shut up, woman!'
All the people on the four great wagons were staring upwards, their conversations broken off in mid-sentence, their bodies twisted like the deleff's towards the sound. They jumped in shock when all the deleff suddenly lifted their snouts and began to trumpet at the strange object.
Nyris whimpered in her throat and huddled even closer to Giff. For all his bad temper, her husband was a big man, as powerful in his body as he was cunning in his dealings, and if anyone could protect her, it was he.
He might shout at her and curse her when she couldn’t keep up with him, but if anyone else threatened her or their children, he was hot in their defence. A good family man, Giff Bel-Nathryn.
Before he could roar out any more orders, the deleff had started moving again, but this time in the direction taken by the strange object.
'Hoy! Not that way!' Giff yelled, standing up in his seat. 'There's no path! You'll damage the wagons! Stop!'
He gave a sigh of frustration when the deleffal who was one of the pair who pulled his wagon and who always led the others gave, no sign of having heard him. 'Stubborn devils!' he grumbled under his breath, then sat back and let the deleff go where they wished. When deleff decided to do something, you had to give them their heads, or else lose their services. He watched sourly as the great creatures continued to plough through the wildwoods, moving always in the direction in which the mysterious object had disappeared.
'What do we do, Pa?' yelled Ivo from the second wagon, where he was driving his eldest brother's family.
Tia was heavy with child and she found it exhausting to drive all day. Chand had gone on ahead to hire a market pitch and deal with the formalities of registration and taxes, which were increasing almost daily now that Those of the Serpent had overthrown the Sisterhood and taken charge of the traders' markets in the Twelve Claims. There weren’t many wagons still plying the great trading routes between the claims, which gave Giff a bit of leverage, but you could only push those Serpent-loving fanatics so far, then they'd turn on you, even if it hurt their own financial interests to do so.
'What do you think we can do about it, you fool?' roared Giff. 'Do you know how to change a deleff's mind, once it's set on something? If so, you're a cleverer man than I am! And no one's ever called me stupid!'
'Not to your face, anyway,' muttered Ivo. As the abuse continued, he hunched his shoulders and endured.
It was only Pa sounding off.
'What I did to be burdened by a son who's as meedless as a nerid in milk, I don't know! "What do we do?"
indeed! You could get off and dance, I suppose. That would at least entertain the rest of us as we travel.'
Ivo hid a grin at that thrust. Pa had a sharp tongue, but it was all noise as far as the family was concerned, and well they knew it. Get off and dance, indeed! What would Pa say next?
His bad temper somewhat assuaged by this little exchange, Giff sat back and and accepted the inevitable.
As he watched the deleff crash through the undergrowth, he pulled a few nuts out of one of his capacious pockets, nibbling at them daintily. No one attempted to talk to him. Those nuts were a sure sign that he was thinking hard.
'It wasn't a bird, you know,' he said at last to Nyris.
'What wasn't?' Her mind was more concerned with the possible damage to the new canopy on the second wagon than with mysterious flying objects.
'What do you think I'm talking about, you stupid woman? What's wrong with everyone today? Have you lost the few wits you were born with, wife? I'm talking about that thing in the sky. What other strange object have we seen flying around here lately?'
'Oh, that!'
'Yes, that! And if I'm not mistaken, we'll soon find out what it was, because it can't be a coincidence that these deleff have suddenly started chasing through the forest after it.' He took a deep breath and continued his train of thought. 'And if it wasn't a bird, what was it, then, eh? Just tell me that! Trees don't fly. Rocks don't fly. And people definitely don't fly.' He spoke slowly, with heavy sarcasm. 'So what was it?'
'How should I know, Giff? You're always the expert. You tell us.' She clutched his arm. 'Oh, just look at that! Those deleff are getting Tia's new canopy all dirty, pulling it through the trees. You should be thinking about how to stop them, not going on about things that fly across the sky. It must have been a new sort of bird. What else could it have been?'
He breathed deeply and spat a bit of nutshell into the undergrowth. 'Bird! A bird, she says! Are you totally witless, woman? Have you ever seen a bird that shape? Where were its wings? Where was its beak?'
'How should I know, Giff? Just look at the dirt on that canopy. How will we ever get it clean again?'
He gave up trying to talk to her and chewed even more furiously as the wagon jolted through the woods.
The trees started to thin out and the ground to slope downwards. As the deleff began to gather speed, Giff stood up in his seat and stared ahead. 'Is that . . . Yes, it is! I can see water. It's a lake. Well, I'll be tickled senseless! Who'd have thought there'd be a lake so close to the track? Must remember that for the next trip.
Make a good stopover point, especially if there's no village there to charge us overnighting fees.' He reached for the handbrake and eased it on a little to try to slow down the wagon, then yelled back to his sons to do the same. 'Use your wits, you morons! Keep your hands on the brakes. Do you want the wagons to crash into something?'
A short time later, the four wagons burst one after the other through the lower growth that fringed the forest and came to a bone-jarring halt by the edge of the lake. The deleff lifted up their snouts to trumpet loudly again, then walked out of their harness.
Giff winced. 'Stupid noise!' he muttered, out of habit. 'You'd think animals that big would make a deeper sound! What's got into them today?'
Nyris clutched his arm again. 'Look! On this side, over there! It's the thing!'
'Aaah!' Giff's face lit up. He dearly loved to find something new. He eased his great bulk to the edge of the driving seat and dropped to the ground.
'Be careful, Giff! Don't go too near it till you know what it is!' Nyris called, but more from habit than from the expectation that he would pay any attention to her warnings.
Giff walked slowly forward towards the strange cylinder. It was about twice the length of a man and made of a strange, shiny material of a creamy colour. It looked a bit scorched in parts, especially to the rear.
Ivo came up behind him and stood staring at the object, but the rest of the party stayed with the wagons.
Giff sometimes accused his other three sons of resembling the mud-grubbing peasants in the small towns and villages they passed through, and there was more than a little truth in that. If it were not for him prodding them along, Chand, Pheelo and Bree would probably have been just as happy to leave the great eastern trading circuit that spanned several claims and would have settled down in some small neighbouring towns, where they could open permanent shops and set up a co-operative trade group. They’d already hinted at this desire once or twice, but Giff had shouted them down, and since Those of the Serpent came to power, the boys had realised that those who settled down were in the power of the Serpent.
Giff didn’t intend, then or at any time in the future, to abandon the trade routes he’d built up from nothing. He was proud of his achievements, and proud to be seen travelling the roads with his family behind him.
Many other traders had abandoned their routes, however, since Discord raised its ugly head. A few families of traders had even been attacked and killed - a thing unheard of before - and when that happened, their deleff became very distressed and left the scene at once. Those of the Serpent had tried several times to capture the deleff, and to get them to draw the trading wagons for them, but in vain. Their weapons were useless against the thick hides and they found themselves in imminent dang
er of being trampled to death if they tried to coerce the deleff into doing anything.
Several times, the deleff had had to flash their wings in order to escape and it was said that those whom the wings brushed were never good for much afterwards. Serve them right for scoffing at traders' tales, thought Giff. You wouldn't catch anyone from a trading family going near a deleff with its wings showing.
And of course, as all traders now knew, deleff had immediately abandoned those few traders who turned to Serpent worship, even in pretence. The great creatures had just up and walked away, leaving such traders stranded with their wagons. No more deleff came out of the woods, either, to take their places. Deleff just wouldn't bother with anyone who worshipped in one of those cursed shrines. And Giff didn't blame them.
He didn't know how anyone could go in there, so strongly did the shrines smell of that horrible incense they used. The stuff absolutely turned his stomach, it was so sickly sweet.
No, he didn't at all blame the deleff for abandoning snake-lovers, pretend or not. The gentle creatures couldn’t abide violence in any form, and Giff shared their loathing, preferring to fight his own battles with words. He found no attraction in a cult that used women so cruelly, and inflicted the pain of the whip on all its followers. Why would anyone want to be whipped, for goodness' sake? And as for attacking the Sisters and their Healers, like those twisted devils had done, well, that was just plain ridiculous, as bad as cutting off your own manhood.
You never saw the blue robe of a Sister anywhere nowadays, but Those of the Serpent hadn’t managed to destroy the Sisterhood's temples, even so. Oh, no! Giff had seen Temple Tenebrak with his own eyes, covered by some sort of invisible barrier, seen it and been relieved that it was safe. People caught behind the barrier were still standing, motionless, in the streets around the temple months afterwards. A chill had run through him at the mere sight of those figures, untouched by wind or rain or sun, some caught in the middle of a movement. Even birds and butterflies were trapped there in mid-flight. It made your blood run cold to see it.
