The Amber Enchantress

by Denning, Troy

  Sadira went to the wall and peered over the edge. She found herself looking out over endless acres of silver sandgrass, mottled with boulder-sized clumps of rock-holly. In the distance, laboring under the lash of a single half-giant overseer, a dozen slaves were using buckets to irrigate the king’s field.

  As the sorceress summoned the energy for her spell, the first of the sentries arrived and attacked. Faenaeyon killed his almost effortlessly, dodging a clumsy thrust, then twisting the sword from the guard’s hand and slicing the man open with his own blade. Huyar had more trouble, dropping his dagger when he was slashed across the forearm, and Magnus finally had to intervene by knocking the sentry from the cliff.

  Sadira held her disk over the edge of the wall and uttered her incantation. The wooden circle rose from her hand and hovered in midair, then slowly began to expand.

  “What’s that?” demanded Faenaeyon.

  “It’s how we’ll get off the wall,” Sadira explained.

  A bowstring hummed and an arrow ticked into Magnus’s thick hide. The windsinger cried out in pain, but positioned himself where he would serve as shield for the others.

  “Cast the other spell,” Faenaeyon ordered.

  “I told you I wouldn’t,” Sadira said, using one hand to keep her disk from drifting away as it continued to expand. “This is more dangerous, but it’ll have to do.”

  On the side that Magnus was not protecting, a sentry knelt and fired an arrow at the group. The shaft clattered off the stones near Sadira’s head, and the sorceress could see that several more guards were coming up to join the attacker.

  Rhayn chose that moment to cast her spell, tossing her kank shell into the air. The shard disappeared and was replaced by a full carapace. Huyar immediately grabbed it and used it to shield the group. To both sides of them, sentries cursed, then put their bows aside and rushed foward to attack hand-to-hand.

  “I think it’s large enough,” Sadira said, motioning Faenaeyon onto the disk. It was now the size of a large table. “Get on.”

  The chief glowered, but did as ordered. Rhayn and Sadira followed next, then Huyar discarded the kank shell and joined them. Magnus came last, again positioning, his arrow-flecked bulk between the others and the attacking sentries. He shoved the disk away from the wall, then raised his voice in song. Within moments, a powerful wind rose, carrying the company over the king’s lush fields and out into the wastes of the Athasian desert.

  FOURTEEN

  A NEW CHIEF

  IN A DIRT CIRCLE THAT THE CHILDREN HAD CAREFULLY cleared of rocks, two elven warriors stood with their shoulders pressed together and one arm locked over the back of the other’s neck. They had coated their bodies with tangy oil squeezed from fresh yara buds, shaved the hair from their heads, and stripped down to their breechcloths, Both women breathed hard, the powerful muscles of their long legs bulging with effort as they struggled to keep their feet.

  The rest of the tribe stood outside the ring. The adults cheered for the warrior upon which they had wagered, while the children mimicked the contest by wrestling each other on the rocky ground. Magnus lay on his stomach at the far end of the ring. His pockmarked back was covered with a foul-smelling balm, which the elves claimed would relieve the sting of the many arrow wounds he suffered that morning. Judging from the vacant look on his face and the gray tone of his eyes, it had accomplished its task mainly by putting him into a slumber.

  Faenaeyon sat atop a boulder near Magnus, a huge flask of broy in his hand. His face was contorted into a scowl, with an angry silver light burning deep within sunken, glazed eyes. He gnawed constantly at his fingernails, hardly seeming to notice as he ripped away strips of cuticle.

  As Sadira watched her father, the taller of the two wrestlers slipped her free arm around her opponent’s waist and spun in beneath the other’s shoulders. “Good, Katza!” yelled Huyar, along with dozens of other tribe members. “Finish it!”

  Katza, a woman with a heavily lined face and the tip of one pointed ear missing, pulled her opponent onto her back. She spun her shoulders around to finish the throw, hurling the other woman headlong toward the ground. The defender, who was a head shorter than her opponent and half again as stocky, thrust out her arms to break the fall. For a moment, it appeared she would tumble onto her back. Then, at the last instant, she brought her feet down and sprang away in a cartwheel. Landing just inside the circle, the wrestler spun around and fixed a black-eyed glower on her rival.

  “Yes, Grissi!” cheered Rhayn. “Toss that kank-riding trollop into the bushes!”

  Katza cast an angry glance in Rhayn’s direction. Calling a full-blooded elf a kank-rider was a terrible insult, as it implied she was not fast enough to keep up with the tribe on foot. “You’re next, tul’k kisser!” growled the wrestler.

  “How you going to wrestle with a broken leg?” demanded Grissi, moving forward.

  Although Faenaeyon had called the wrestling tournament to celebrate the escape from Nibenay, the tribe hardly seemed in a festive mood. If the chief had expected the contests to bring his warriors closer together, he had been miserably wrong. So far, every match had deteriorated into a rivalry between Rhayn and Huyar, with their supporters taking sides behind them. The rest of the tribe wagered more on which group would win the day than on the wrestlers themselves.

  As Grissi neared the center of the ring, Katza slipped to the side and snapped her leg out in a vicious kick. The blow caught the shorter elf in the face, with the big toe striking the eyeball itself. Grissi’s knees buckled and she reached for her eye, barely managing to keep her feet. The entire crowd gasped in astonishment. Even Faenaeyon winced, but no one cried foul.

  Katza moved forward with a smug expression, reaching out to grasp her reeling opponent’s arm. Grissi let her have it, apparently concentrating all her efforts on retaining her feet. The lop-eared elf pulled her stunned opponent toward her, preparing to deliver the final throw.

  Just then, Grissi came alive. She retracted the arm that Katza had seized, pulling her astonished attacker along with it. Then she smashed her forehead into the bridge of Katza’s nose. The cartilage shattered with a resonant crack and blood erupted from both nostrils.

  As Katza reached up to cover her face, Grissi grabbed her around the neck with one arm and squatted down to slip the other between her opponent’s thighs. She pulled Katza’s body onto her shoulders, then, in one swift motion, she stood up and catapulted the lop-ear elf out of the circle. Five of Huyar’s supporters barely managed to leap aside as Katza sailed past and crashed into a rock pile.

  “I win,” Grissi growled, not bothering to see if her opponent would be capable of returning to her feet. Her eye was bloodshot and rimmed with red, but it seemed to have survived intact. “Who’s next?”

  A young elf standing next to Huyar to began to strip. “Your tricks won’t fool me,” he said, throwing his burnoose to the ground. “Shave my head!”

  While the youth’s friends prepared him for competition, the camp buzzed with the drone of elves settling old wagers and placing new ones. A pair of Katza’s older children dragged their mother off to rest, but no one else paid the woman any attention.

  The green-eyed woman who had tried to help Sadira during the escape from the Elven Market stepped to the sorceress’s side. Sadira now knew the woman’s name to be Meredyd, for one of the first things the sorceress had done after rejoining the tribe had been to thank her for her efforts.

  Meredyd’s lips were spread wide in an affected smile. She had a deep cleft in her long chin and a tangle of brown hair that just concealed the tips of her pointed ears. Her hips and abdomen were so swollen with pregnancy that Sadira wondered how she had found the strength to make the long run from Nibenay.

  “I’ve noticed you have no knife,” said Meredyd. She reached beneath her burnoose and withdrew a long dagger with a blade of sharpened bone. Its ivory handle had been carved in the shape of intertwined serpents, with their heads forming the pommel. “I came across this one
in Nibenay,” she said. “Perhaps you’d like it?”

  The offer was not as generous as it seemed. At the beginning of the wrestling tournament, Faenaeyon had announced Sadira’s true identity and declared her one of the Sun Runners. Everyone had acted as though he were bestowing a great honor on her, but the chief’s true intentions had not been lost on the sorceress. By naming her a tribe member, he was trying to instill a sense of obligation in her that would make it easier for him to assert his authority.

  Since then, Sadira had been presented with many gifts, including the new cape covering her shoulders and the soft leather boots on her feet. As the sorceress had quickly discovered, each present carried with it the obligation to voice her support of a request about to be made of Faenaeyon.

  “I could use a dagger,” agreed Sadira. “What do you want in return?”

  Meredyd’s smile grew more sincere. “You know of Esylk’s daeg, Crekun?”

  The sorceress nodded. Crekun was a handsome man from another tribe who had been severely injured during a battle with the Sun Runners. Esylk had put him on a litter and nursed him back to health, and he had been her slave ever since. “What do you want with Crekun?”

  Meredyd’s hand dropped to her swollen belly. “It would be better for this child if Crekun was a Sun Runner.” With a murderous scowl on her face, she glanced toward a russet-haired woman with a brazen figure and plump lips. The target of Meredyd’s animosity stood near Huyar, shaving the head of the young warrior about to challenge Grissi. “Otherwise, if it happens to resemble its father, Esylk will claim the child as her property—probably when we are near some city’s slave market.”

  “There will be no children sold into slavery if I can help it,” Sadira said, accepting the gift from Meredyd’s hand.

  As she sheathed the weapon, Katza’s oldest son, Cyne, returned from his mother’s camp bearing a skin of broy. He pushed his way to the front of the crowd, then stepped past Magnus’s litter and offered the fermented kank-nectar to Faenaeyon. “My mother’s arm has been broken. Therefore, I ask that Grissi wrestle her next match with one arm bound to her side.” He did not even go through the customary ruse of pretending his gift was intended as anything but a bribe.

  Faenaeyon hardly glanced at the youth as he took the broy. Setting the skin down at his side, the chief looked over the boy’s head to the rest of the crowd.

  As Sadira expected, Huyar’s followers voiced their agreement with the youth’s suggestion, and Rhayn’s supporters opposed it. But Cyne’s impatience cost him dearly with the majority of elves, who were still neutral in the conflict between Huyar and Rhayn. Irritated at his rudeness in not buying their support with gifts or promises, they also raised their voices against this proposal. Some of them even went so far as to suggest that Grissi’s opponent be the one whose arm was bound.

  After gauging his tribe’s reaction, Faenaeyon looked back to the boy. “You heard the tribe,” he said. Though his words were already slurred, he refilled his flask from the skin the youth had given him. “My thanks for the broy.”

  Cyne flicked his wrist and a silver coin slipped from his burnoose sleeve. Holding the disk before Faenaeyon’s eyes, he said, “It’s not the tribe I ask.”

  The chief’s eyes darted to the silver and he stuck his palm beneath the boy’s nose. “Is that my coin?”

  “It is now,” the youth said, dropping the silver into the outstretched hand. He remained standing before Faenaeyon while the chief massaged the coin’s surface with his fingertips.

  Finally, Faenaeyon said, “Grissi will fight with one arm bound to her side.”

  A disapproving murmur rustled through the camp, which Faenaeyon quickly silenced with a stern glower. From what Sadira had gathered about tribal politics, most chiefs took bribes—but only under a suitable pretext. Her father ignored even this minor convention, however, trusting his strong arm to keep warriors from protesting too loudly.

  Cyne stepped away from the chief, sneering at Grissi triumphantly. The black-eyed woman met his gaze with a confident chuckle, then looked back to the man who had challenged her. “I’ll be ready in a moment,” she said, stepping over to have her arm bound. “How about you, Nefen?”

  Nefen strode forward, rubbing a last handful of yara buds over his skin. “I’m waiting now.”

  Noticing that her father still had not taken his eyes off his new coin, Sadira whispered to Meredyd, “I hope you have a few silver up your sleeve.”

  The pregnant elf shook her head. “I can only hope that Esylk does not have any, either.”

  Grissi stepped into the ring, one arm bound to her waist, and Nefen entered form the other side. There was no formal challenge, nor any kind of declaration that the match had begun. The crowd simply quieted and the two wrestlers moved toward each other with hatred in their eyes.

  Confident he could easily overpower his handicapped opponent, Nefen rushed forward. It was a bad mistake. Grissi stopped his charge with a powerful thrust kick to the stomach. As her opponent bellowed out in shock and pain, she whirled around and used her other leg to kick him again. With the momentum of the spin, this blow lifted Nefen off his feet and sent him flying out of the circle. He crashed into Esylk and they both dropped to the ground.

  “That’s not wrestling!” objected Huyar.

  “Maybe, maybe not—but she won. That’s what counts,” answered Rhayn, stepping forward to unbind her champion’s arm before someone suggested that it remain tied for the rest of the tournament. “Who’s next?”

  When no one volunteered immediately, Meredyd took advantage of the lull to step over to the boulder where Faenaeyon sat. She took a beautiful belt-purse of lacquered lizard scales from beneath her cape and held it out to the chief. He continued to stare at the coin Katza’s son had given him, apparently noticing neither the pregnant elf nor her gift.

  “Faenaeyon, I have something here for you to keep your coin in,” she said.

  The chief looked up, his eyes burning with avarice, and snatched the purse away.

  Meredyd waited a moment for him to thank her, but he did not. Finally, she pressed on with her request. “It seems to me that Crekun has been Esylk’s daeg long enough,” she said. “Crekun should be a Sun Runner by now.”

  Unlike Katza’s son, Meredyd had carefully prepared her case with the rest of the tribe. Close to half of the warriors present raised their voices in agreement, and many more nodded their heads. Only Huyar and a handful of Esylk’s friends opposed the suggestion.

  Faenaeyon responded to the chorus by lifting Meredyd’s purse to his ear and shaking it. When he heard nothing inside, the chief frowned and looked at the woman who had given it to him. “It’s empty.”

  The smile on Meredyd’s lips faded. “I had intended to fill the purse with silver,” she said, barely controlling her anger. “But our sudden departure from Nibenay prevented that.”

  Faenaeyon shrugged, then opened the bag and slipped his silver coin into it. “My thanks for the purse,” he said, tying it to his belt. “But I fear Crekun has not forgotten his loyalties to the Sand Swimmers. He’ll remain Esylk’s wife for …” The chief let his sentence trail off while he eyed Meredyd’s swollen belly. “He’ll remain Esylk’s wife for two more months—unless you’ve a coin to put in my new purse.”

  Meredyd narrowed her eyes and stared at Faenaeyon with unabashed hatred. Seeing the woman’s hand drop toward her dagger, Sadira moved forward to prevent her from doing anything foolish. The sorceress had no sooner stepped into the ring than Huyar followed her, with Rhayn close on his heels.

  “When I was a child, my mother could speak of nothing but how wisely and well you led this tribe!” Meredyd snarled. “But now we might as well call ourselves quarry slaves as elves—”

  Sadira caught Meredyd’s arm and pulled her away from the boulder, almost tripping over Magnus’s prone form. “Come and have more broy. Perhaps the drink that’s loosened your tongue will put it to sleep,” she said loudly. More quietly, she whispered, “Will
getting killed help your child?”

  Meredyd studied Sadira for a moment, her eyes flashing with anger. “I won’t let Esylk sell this baby!” she snapped.

  “What my chattel produces belongs to me,” said Esylk, pushing her way roughly to the front of the small group gathered near the chief.

  Sadira glared at Esylk. “A child belongs to its mother,” she said.

  “Good point, Sadira,” Faenaeyon said suddenly. “You’ve won me over.”

  Sadira glanced over her shoulder and saw that Rhayn and Huyar now stood on opposite sides of her father. Between her thumb and forefinger, Rhayn held a small circle of shimmering yellow metal. Faenaeyon’s enraptured eyes were fixed on the disk, as were those of the entire tribe—and with good reason. On Athas, not even diamonds were as scarce as gold coins.

  “From this moment forward, Crekun is a Sun Runner,” the chief pronounced. “Children sired by him are to be treated as children sired by any of our other warriors.”

  Rhayn smiled. “You are wise, my chief,” she said, passing her hand over his broy and dropping the gold coin into it.

  Faenaeyon’s eyes widened and he drained the entire flask in one long gulp. When he finished, he took the gold coin from between his teeth and carefully polished it on his burnoose. “That’s no way to treat gold,” he complained, putting the coin into the purse Meredyd had given him.

  “My apologies,” Rhayn said. She picked up the skin of broy Cyne had provided earlier and refilled Faenaeyon’s empty flask. “Drink up, father.”

  As Faenaeyon lifted his glass again, Sadira joined her sister. “That was unusually generous,” she whispered. “Or are you just trying to upset Huyar?”

  “I did what was best for the tribe,” Rhayn answered, taking Sadira by the arm and leading her away from the rest of the elves. “Meredyd earned the favor of many warriors. Faenaeyon was wrong to ignore them because she had no coins.”