by J. C. Staudt
Weave clapped a hand over her mouth to hide her laughter.
Lokes gave her a dopey grin, which came as a relief. Sometimes he didn’t take so well to her teasing.
“We’re in a tough spot,” she said. “Picking a shepherd out of a trade caravan is hard enough as it is. This city’s full of shepherds coming and going, day and night. Must be a thousand of ‘em walking around here at any given time.”
“Well, we don’t got all year to find him, so we ought to start asking around sooner than later.”
“Hold your horses,” said Weaver. “Have yourself a drink and a cooldown, then we’ll settle in and get down to business.”
Three drinks later, Lokes was feeling better about their prospects. That didn’t last long, however. A man bumped into him as he was walking past their table, spilling a fat gob of cold stout across his back. Lokes arched his spine and gasped at the chilly surprise. The man began to apologize, but Lokes wasn’t having it. Weaver saw the flush rising in his cheeks as he twisted in his seat to give the stranger a one-armed shove.
Aw, shit. There it went.
The man stumbled backward into a table. Beer splashed from the three mugs he was holding, bathing his hands and tunic in its dark ochre. His brow creased. He set the mugs on the table and lurched toward Lokes.
Even if he hadn’t been the least bit drunk, Lokes would’ve been too fast for him. He slipped off his stool and inverted it, using the legs to catch the man’s belly like a hunk of meat in the prongs of a fork. Lokes braced the stool against his thigh, keeping the man at a distance. He caught the man’s swing and popped him a straight one in the nose, loosing spatters of blood across both cheeks like whiskers on a cat. He threw the fist aside and shoved the stool with his hip to send the man toppling into a crowd of onlookers.
Lokes stretched his shoulders and wrung out his hand. Just as he was about to dive in and start the real beating, Weaver came up behind and yanked him away. He yelled and cursed all through the room, stopping only after she’d dragged him out the front door and into the street.
A wall of heat smacked them in the face, so thick it was hard to breathe. The shadows had fallen away and left the upper side of the street bare, catching Meldi and Gish in an inescapable sliver of daylight. The horses were visibly uncomfortable, shifty and anxious.
Weaver and her troublemaking beau mounted and turned down a side street, where the dark steel of a dozen gargantuan, eroding skyscrapers gleamed like crystal in the face of Infernal’s rage. With all the pedestrians descending to the lower side to escape direct light, they broke into a canter down the empty stretch of road to escape both the light-star and the prying eyes of any police officers who might’ve heard the disturbance.
“You gotta quit doing that,” she said when they’d turned another corner and slowed to a trot. “We can’t be getting into trouble if you wanna find that shepherd.”
Lokes was swaying a little in his saddle. He wiped his nose and spat. “Son-bitch should’ve looked where he was going.”
“I know honey, I know.”
“We gonna find this Toler dway, alright,” Lokes said. “And he ain’t gonna like it, neither.”
CHAPTER 4
Battle of the Brinescales
Lizneth’s lungs were burning by the time she reached the mouth of the tunnel. There were many paths to the blind-world, but taking an anxious calai army unawares seemed a poor route to travel, if she wanted to live long enough to deliver her news to Neacal Griogan. When the sentries at the opening pointed their spears and shouted at her in the calai tongue, she raised her hands and said, “Neacal Griogan expects me.” They relaxed and took her to their lord without another word.
Morning was coming on, the light-star peeking red and gold through a haze of low mountain clouds. Lizneth yawned. She’d been running around all night and hadn’t slept, apart from whatever period of trance or hypnosis Sniverlik had brought upon her with his Zithstone Scepter. From the top of the ridge she could see the nomads’ cooking fires dotting the hills, a view of their numbers she hadn’t beheld while she was among them. There were more calaihn than she’d thought, a far greater army than Sniverlik could boast without the aid of the burrow-kin and his other allies.
Lizneth was starting to remember the harshness of the light-star. The day was growing too hot for her, and without Mama Jak’s potions she was left with only Zhigdain’s goggles as protection. The sentries dropped her off at the edge of the camp, where other calaihn escorted her the rest of the way past niches and firepits where warriors were gathering up their things and sharpening their steel. At one of the crossings, several calaihn were pulling strings of chain from a wide wooden box and laying them out on the ground, side by side.
“You came back, little one,” Neacal said when her escorts brought her before him. He was wearing a necklace of polished beads and white feathers, and Lizneth could see that the warlock had been painting him for battle. Colored smudges decorated his face and arms and chest, giving him the resemblance of some garish bird in full plumage.
He still calls me little one, as though I’m less of a zhe than he is.
“What news from Sniverlik? Has he surrendered?”
Neacal spoke with tenderness in his voice, but all Lizneth could think about were the chains she’d seen a few moments before. All she could hear were the words Neacal had spoken to her days ago. Because I need you. That was why he hadn’t taken her captive yet. He was using her. He didn’t care about her family or her village. He was here to kill Sniverlik, their guardian, and enslave them. The thought of it made her regret her decision to come back. She should’ve gone home. She should’ve returned to her family. “Are you here to take slaves?” she asked.
Neacal was irritated. “What do you mean?”
“Are you here to take slaves?” she repeated. “Is that why your master-king sent you?”
“I told you, little one. We are here for Sniverlik.” Neacal knelt, the beads on his necklace tinkling. “What did he say to you?”
Lizneth looked into the calai’s deep brown eyes, which were searching hers in much the same way. Eyes in such a peculiar face, with its tiny pointed snout and sharp cheeks. Eyes that seemed so honest and kind, despite their strangeness. She wanted to tell him Sniverlik’s plan; to warn him. She wanted the calaihn to win and set her village free. Yet something made her hesitate. Those chains.
Neacal grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Tell me, little one. What did he say?” He was gripping her hard enough to pinch the fur on her arms, clamping his fingers around her like vices. “Tell me. Tell me. What did he say? Tell me.”
Lizneth shook free of him. When he stumbled forward and tried to grab at her leg, she shifted away. Then she was running again, but she didn’t get far. A line of calai warriors hemmed her in and wrestled her to the ground. She chittered and struggled against them, but they were much too strong. Neacal came to stand over her, brushing himself off and grimacing as though she’d injured him somehow.
“Did you even deliver my message at all?” he asked, his tone raw and bitter. “I hope you did, or you have ruined everything. You little rat.”
Lizneth had never felt a pain in her chest like the one that struck her in that moment. It was true, then; this hu-man who had seemed to like her so much actually valued her very little. He despised her. She saw that now. Neacal Griogan and all the other calaihn hated the ikzhehn so much they had reduced them to mere prisoners and thralls. Neacal could tell her again that this was about Sniverlik, but the cold zeal in his eyes said otherwise.
“I delivered your message,” Lizneth choked out, as the calaihn held her to the ground with knees and hands and elbows. “The Marauders will never surrender while Sniverlik still lives. If you chase him into the below-world, he’ll kill you all. If you wait here, you’ll rot in the heat and never find him. Run back to your home and don’t ever come north again. He won’t let you live next time.”
Neacal gave her a broad, open-mouthed smile, full of venom. “Wel
come to my service, little one. You have the honor of being my first prisoner of war.”
Lizneth felt cold iron at her throat and ankles. The manacles clinked shut, pinching fur and skin, and the calaihn hoisted her to her feet. The familiar sound and weight of the chains dangling from her body made her feel weaker and more powerless than ever. She was too numb to cry out, too exhausted and wracked with despair to do anything but stand there, hunched and defeated.
“Now,” Neacal said, glowering down at her. “The first thing you will do as my prisoner is to lead us to Sniverlik’s stronghold. Hold your chains while you move, little one. If you make noise, you will be flogged. Go.”
Lizneth didn’t go. She sat where she was and stared off into the distant mountains, uncaring. She didn’t know where she’d summoned the courage to do it. Perhaps she’d forgotten the bite of the scourge, or she’d become suddenly aware that the thought of walking all that way again without a wink of sleep made her want to die. I really do want to die, she realized. But no, it was neither impudence nor tiredness which had given her the strength to defy him. It was hope. Hope for something better, even if that something was death. She knew then for a certainty that no amount of pain or fear could break a heart filled with hope.
Someone put a whip in Neacal’s hand. Lizneth could hear the leather braid creaking as he stretched the coils. A crowd was gathering, the warriors and porters and cooks and warlocks standing still and silent as death. With the whip still coiled, Neacal landed a single firm slap on Lizneth’s shoulder. He waited for her to stand.
She didn’t move.
He hit her harder, in the same place.
This time the blow stung, but she didn’t let herself make a sound.
“Up,” he said. “On your feet.”
Lizneth ignored him.
He gave her a whack across the head, then dropped the coil and let it dangle in front of her, making sure she could see it. He circled around behind her. She heard him take two long backward strides. The whip climbed, then broke the air like thunder.
A slash of pain ran down Lizneth’s spine. Anguish surged within her, sharpening to unbearable heights within the span of a few seconds. She felt the wound open, felt a trickle of blood run down her back.
Neacal was perplexed. “Are you so determined to be stubborn? It would go better for you if—”
A lookout shoved his way through the crowd and stood before Neacal. “Gisheino,” the calai said, out of breath. “Muirrhadi… yarutrobaid.”
The crowd erupted into a churning maelstrom. The hu-mans scattered, and the battle call went up. “Trobaid muirrhadi! Trobaid muirrhadi!”
Lizneth turned to the east, where the light-star had risen to an orange ball of liquid fire above the mountains. Sniverlik had told her he didn’t take advice from parikuahn. Yet he was attacking the calaihn in the blind-world in broad daylight. What was his aim, if not to take Neacal by surprise? His Marauders would suffer in the heat, making any possible victory a hard-fought one. Lizneth had risked everything to report back to Neacal, but now she didn’t know whose side she was on—whose side she should be on. Neacal really was here to take slaves. For the first time in Lizneth’s life, she had begun to think of Sniverlik and his Marauders as a protective force rather than an oppressive one.
When she stood, no one noticed. Calaihn were running past her in every direction, frantic and unprepared. She’d been forgotten in the uproar. Maybe she didn’t have to take sides just yet…
The calaihn had been using a massive boulder as a lookout post from which to keep an eye on the valley below. With the Marauders on the move, the lookouts were abandoning their stations and advancing to bolster the front lines. That boulder might be the perfect place for Lizneth to hide—and it would give her a bird’s eye view of the proceedings. She gathered up her chains to keep them from rattling, just as Neacal had instructed. The clamor in the camp would’ve masked the sound anyway, but there was still the chance she could run into a few straggling guards coming up from the rear.
On several occasions she had to duck behind a rock or crag to avoid being seen, but she soon found that the calaihn were less concerned with her than with the threat of the impending attack. She moved at a steady, brisk pace. No one gave her more than a brief glance as they passed.
The boulder was not hard to climb, even bound as she was. Her manacles were large enough for a calai, so the cuffs hung loose around her ankles, and the length of chain between them was more than adequate to let her stretch out her arms and legs as she climbed. She made it to the top and lay down, both to rest and to make herself harder to see from below. The calaihn were massing on the lower ridge, pacing about and pounding their chests as they shouted and howled their fury. Lizneth found the behavior odd, something they did as a show of strength when it was probably more suited toward staving off their fear.
When the sound of the Marauders’ horns blatted across the mountainside, none of the calaihn reacted. To Lizneth it seemed that many of them hadn’t even heard the horn; half of them had to be tapped on the shoulder by the other half, who were pointing toward the upper ridge. Before her eyes, a flood of ikzhehn began to gush forth from the depths; a fearsome sight, if not also impressive. The Marauders had the benefit of both timing and gravity behind them, and they’d soon accelerated to a startling clip down the rocks. Most of them ran on all fours, blades glinting from forearms and scabbards and hidden pockets forced open by the wind. The calaihn began to trudge up the incline, but they were loose and disorganized, and their plodding advance made a lackluster counter-charge at best.
Behind the Marauders, a lumbering black shape crested the ridgetop and started down the rocks on two feet, his greened copper armor giving off a drab, muted sheen. When Sniverlik thrust the Zithstone Scepter high above his head, Lizneth suddenly knew the reason he had chosen to attack the calaihn during the day’s brightest hour. Where the Zithstone should’ve glinted in the morning light, it dulled the air around itself to a gray blemish instead. For a moment Lizneth felt as though she were staring at a dark smudge on a pane of glass. Then Sniverlik twisted his wrist, and the daylight curved and split into a tangle of hollow ribbons. Calaihn for dozens of fathoms around staggered and began to slow. The Marauders, who were wearing dark studded goggles over their eyes, only charged in the faster.
Lizneth adjusted her own goggles and watched as the calai warriors wilted like heat-stressed flowers, their battle rage softening to a stupor. Their arms dropped to their sides, weapons clattered to the ground, and in an instant many were hunch-backed and shambling. Some even fell forward and slid down the slope on their bellies.
Sniverlik’s Marauders washed over them like a black tide, blades singing. Even with her goggles on, Lizneth couldn’t look directly at the Zithstone for long without feeling sick and achy. Sniverlik’s tumor-like paunch had grown—or so it appeared. He gave an abrasive chittering laugh as his keguzpikhehn leapt over the stones and slashed bloody torrents through the lines of apathetic calaihn.
Soon the Marauders had fought their way to the extremities of the scepter’s influence, where the unaffected calaihn still had their wits about them. It was there that true battle was joined. The nomads were tough, and they fought like fiends, sustaining many wounds before they fell. Each calai who went down brought three ikzhehn with him, some slaying as many as half a dozen or more before meeting their end.
Lizneth saw now why the eh-calaihn called them savages. They roared and shrieked as they fought, cutting Marauders down as if their armor were made of cloth, their own bare bronze chests glistening with blood and scars and sweat. Sniverlik was advancing, however, and with him came the Zithstone, its every gyration twisting the light into sinuous curls of shadow. That’s something crueler than shadow, Lizneth observed, as its threads fluttered through the calaihn ranks, malignant in the hands of the ikzhe chieftain. Papa was wrong about the scepter, and Mama was right. There is some kind of depraved power in the thing.
As the calaihn fought
their way up the hillside, Marauders poured out from rocky hideaways and took them unawares. Each time the nomads gained ground, the Marauders beat them back again. Sniverlik continued his crippling advance, the Marauders as thick in the crags as swarming flies. Lizneth’s hand went to her dagger. By some miracle, the calaihn hadn’t taken it from her when they put her in chains. Maybe Neacal hadn’t meant to take her as a slave after all. Maybe he just wanted to be sure she didn’t flee before she led them to Sniverlik’s stronghold. Should she help them? She was no warrior. Was there anything she could do to help them?
When she stood up, paralyzed with uncertainty, Sniverlik saw her. She could tell he had already scented her haick. Now he knew she had returned to the above-world against his orders. The look he gave her was one of disappointment more than rage. It was if he’d always known she would betray him, and she had only proven him right. She’d had to convince herself that helping the calaihn didn’t make her a traitor to her own zhehn—just to Sniverlik. Now that she saw his eyes, his disquiet shifting to anger, she was beginning to doubt even more that she’d done the right thing.
What I’ve done is put my family in danger. If Neacal doesn’t enslave Papa and Mama and little Raial and the others, Sniverlik will kill them. There’s no way out of this. Still, she’d had to try. Hadn’t she? She wasn’t sure. She drew the dagger, wishing it had been only a dream that she’d dropped it into the cotterphage’s river; imagining the sickly green luster of venom still shining on the blade. But her wish was only that, and in place of poison the steel was streaked with dried water stains. It was nothing more than a normal dagger now. She wanted to kill Sniverlik and Neacal both, but the sight of so much carnage frightened her. There’s only one thing I expect from you, Neacal had said. Courage. She didn’t care what Neacal expected anymore. If she was going to have courage, it would be for her own sake.
The Marauders had begun to tire, growing flushed and listless in the heat. The nomads were gaining ground, but they were still fighting uphill. Some had recovered from the Zithstone’s trance and were picking up their swords to fight again. Lizneth slid down from the boulder and circled around to the far side. She didn’t think about what she was doing; another moment of hesitation would’ve rendered her too afraid to do anything.
