The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom

by Dickson, H. Leighton

  The bird blinked one eye.

  “Take us to Yahn Nevye.”

  The bird blinked the next.

  He sighed, remembering that it was not words the falcons of Sha’Hadin understood and responded to. It stood to reason that it was the same with owls.

  He closed his eyes and formed a picture of the jaguar in his mind.

  The bird spread its wings and left the snow, disappearing into the blackness of the winter trees. Kirin looked at the Alchemist and followed.

  ***

  They found the jaguar suspended by arms and legs between two twisted trees. He was high in the air and stripped to the waist. He had been used for target practice, as many arrows stuck out of the rosettes on his back like the spines of some great dragon. Blood ran down his sides, dark stripes along his spotted pelt.

  Setse sat on her knees beneath him, blood dripping onto her head and freezing as it matted on her face. She was a terrifying sight.

  “Shar Ma’uul dead,” she said in a hollow voice.

  Kirin moved forward, sliding the Blood Fang from its sheath. He sliced first the bindings at the ankles, then the wrists, taking the body as it slumped across his shoulders. He laid it, face down, onto the snowy rocks and Sherah knelt to examine the wounds. There were more than a dozen arrows embedded within the rings of his pelt and she removed them swiftly, dropping them into a pile by her knees. She studied the punctures, the pelt and the skin, the depth of the entries and the organs they had pierced.

  “This one first,” she said softly. “To the kidney. Then here liver, here lung and here spine. He felt them all until the last arrow to the heart here.”

  Kirin watched with detachment as she rolled the body over. The arrows were shallow and did not go through. Like most patterned cats, his chest and belly were white and as he lay like this on the rocks, he looked like he was sleeping if one did not look at the blood at his mouth. If one did not look at his eyes. The Alchemist quietly closed them.

  He glanced over at the Oracle covered in blood. She had not moved.

  He sighed, knelt down next to the Alchemist.

  “Is there nothing you can do?”

  She turned her great golden eyes on him. “Sidi?”

  “I know what you did for the Seer back in the forest of Turakhee. Can you do the same for this man?”

  “Necromancy is a dark art, sidi. It requires the bartering of souls. As you can see, I no longer carry a soul purse…”

  He nodded. He remembered it well, the strange, unearthly, red pouch that had floated on spider silk and haunted her every step.

  “But,” she said. “There might be a way…”

  She bit her lip and he felt himself being pulled into her once again, back into her world of riddles and mystery and wonder.

  “Tell me.”

  “It is dangerous. And costly.”

  “I owe them,” he said. “It was my pride that chased both of them into this trap. Tell me what I need do and I will pay it.”

  “Just say you wish it, sidi, and it will be done.”

  He could have sworn there were tears gathering behind her lashes. His clawless hands ached to brush them away.

  “I wish it, sidala.”

  She nodded, dropped her eyes to the body at her knees and suddenly, there were candles where there were none before.

  “Return the girl to her brother. I will do what I can.”

  “Thank you. I am in your debt.”

  “Of course.”

  But she did not look up, and for that he was grateful.

  He lingered a moment longer before rising to his feet and gathering the Oracle in his arms.

  ***

  Kerris sat against the metal wall, arms draped across his knees, the tip of his tail tapping in time with his breathing. Another creature had tried its luck, charging him from the shadows but again, this attack was met with claws and the smell of blood was heavy on the sand. Everyone in the cell was giving him a wide berth but the silhouettes of Ancestors had completely blocked out the sun.

  He was very tired but he didn’t dare sleep. Not with the level of frustration and anger in this cell. The metal was whispering to him. It was very old and rather strong but there were places where the air had rendered it fragile and thin. It was good to know, for he was a-wanting out of this place. He needed to wait until the Ancestors grew bored and stopped peering down on him from above. It was like living in a cage.

  He looked around. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he could see eight others in this particular cell. Three were simian but of races he did not recognize from his time spent in the Eastern Kingdom. Four were rat-like but again, unlike any type of rat he had ever seen and the last was simply like an Ancestor, only small and very hairy. He wondered why they were all in here and what they had done with his wife.

  There was a scraping sound, and then voices. He did not rise to his feet.

  Three Ancestors entered the cell, dressed in dark green fabric and face masks, carrying sticks and shields for protection. One Ancestor made his way to him, pointed something that looked like a bronze bo or staff.

  “Where’s my wife?” Kerris snarled. He was far too tired for diplomacy.

  They locked eyes for a brief moment before the man turned, spoke to his companions. They nodded.

  “Where is my wife?” Kerris repeated.

  The stick coughed and there was a stinging in the pelt of his chest. He looked down, pulled out what appeared to be a tiny needle, much smaller than those used by his mother for the beading of cushions. He rose to his feet, but his legs had become the roots of gum trees and he staggered to his knees. The cell erupted in hollering and he knew the prisoners had rushed but everything began to spin as the masked face of the Ancestor bent down over him with a strip of metal, growing wider and wider until there was nothing else in the whole world.

  ***

  The dog abandoned his post the moment he saw his sister. It was expected, Kirin thought. The boy wasn’t a cat, wasn’t even a soldier and Kirin forgave him the breach of protocol as he handed the girl over. From the corner of his eye, he could see movement within the circle and he turned, drawing both Fangs and snarling. The Legion backed down, wary but waiting.

  Kirin removed the saddle from Shenan, freed him and aSiffh to hunt. There was a flurry of wings and a rabbit dropped to the snow near the fire circle. He looked up to see the owl, staring at him from a rock.

  “Thank you,” he said, not knowing if owls could understand normal speech or if their communications were restricted to the thoughts of their Seers. With Nevye dead, there would be little for the creature to do and he wondered if it would remain with the company. The rabbits were a pleasant provision and he remembered the falcon Path. She had been a fierce hunter. They would have starved on many occasions had it not been for her skill.

  “En yu wei?” growled the brother. He was dabbing the girl’s face with a rag. For her part, Setse merely sat, arms folded around her knees, seeing nothing. The dog looked up at him. “Shar haan baidag wei?”

  Kirin shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Shar?”

  “Dead.” He resisted the urge to add, ‘murdered by your people.’ He was quite certain it would not have helped.

  The dog looked at his sister, stroked the bloody pelt on her cheek.

  “Can dog cat love?”

  Kirin stared at him a moment. It was a good question, as good as whether a lion and a sacred could love. Or a lion and a cheetah.

  “I don’t know anything anymore, sidi.” He sighed. “I suppose it is possible.”

  The owl stretched its wings, left the rock and disappeared into the darkness.

  It was a long, cold night as they waited, the dog and his sister on the ground, Kirin and the Alchemist’s horse standing guard by the fire. There was no wind and Kirin was grateful. He wasn’t convinced that neither the Legion nor the villagers would remain imprisoned if not for the flames.

  At some point, Setse took a
long shuddering breath, whispered to herself.

  “Setse, yu?” asked the dog.

  “Eye of the Needle,” she said.

  Kirin turned around to look at her.

  “Eye of the Needle, Eye of the Storm.”

  Slowly, as if in a dream, she rose to her feet.

  “Eye of the Needle, Eye of the Storm.”

  Her brother seemed quite undone, for he merely watched her from his place on the ground.

  “Eye of the Needle, Eye of the Storm, Eye of the Needle, Eye of the Storm.”

  She moved to stand beside Kirin at the circle of flame, stared through to the remnants of the Legion within. They stood and the Alpha approached on the opposite side. He raised his arms as if shooting an arrow and grinned wickedly.

  She stared at him, her lips moving but no sound coming, and finally after a very long moment, she stepped through the flames.

  In a movement as fluid and graceful as a dance, Setse pulled a dagger from her boot and plunged it into the man’s throat.

  Kirin lunged but the fire leapt higher, keeping him out. The villagers shrieked and the Legion attacked but it was all a dance as she whirled and spun, feet and hands and a flashing dagger. Naranbataar rushed the circle as well but the flames leapt higher still, roared louder and he was barred from entering. Throats, bellies, faces and arms, all was red as she moved, danced between them, evading their swords. The screams continued and the smell of blood rose in the smoke until the soldiers in the circle were down.

  Slowly, she turned her matted face. Blood dripped from her dagger and the villagers shrunk back.

  “Ugayai, Setse,” came a voice from the darkness. “Zogsoogooroi.”

  The Oracle cocked her head at the sound.

  “Uuchlaarai, Setse,” said the voice. “Enh Taiwain.”

  She turned. In fact, they all turned as Yahn Nevye stepped into the light of the fire, an owl on his shoulder and eyes as white as the moon.

  Long-Swift

  “Two thousand sleepers all dead?”

  “Yeah,” said Solomon as he looked up at a very gaunt Tony Paolini of CanShield North, Pukaskwa, Marathon, formerly known as Sleep Lab 2. “The rats there are brutal. They move in swarms and the Upper Kingdom has huge walls to keep them out. There were no such walls in Kandersteg.”

  “And you were able to bring nothing with you?” came the voice of Crystal Claire. She had been the youngest of them all, a mere thirty year-old when she went under. Now, she looked as old as Cece. “Why did you take a Humlander? Why not a Griffen or a Chopper?”

  “I took what I could get as fast as I could get it,” he said. “Those rats swarmed nightly and the power was intermittent. The cells were drained and the hydraulics were busted. Hell, you had six of you and it still took you almost seven years to get things going. I had no one else but those cats that came into my head once in a blue moon and kept me going.”

  “The IAR experiments,” grumbled Portillo. “They played God with the gene code. It was wrong.”

  “No more wrong that how you’re lying to your own people. There’re no contagions out there any more. There’re no mutagenic viruses turning people into animals. It was a feat of complex genetic engineering and it was a success.”

  “So were the Sandman projects,” said Washington and Solomon grunted. Kade Washington had always been bald. “The Arks were goddamn miracles. I just don’t want to see a return to what got it all started in the first place. We can’t let that happen.”

  “Then don’t,” said Solomon. “That was fear and miscommunication on a global scale. These cats are a people of integrity and honour. We need to be, as well.”

  “The IAR turned people into animals,” growled Portillo. “We don’t know what other monsters are out there.”

  “The IAR is gone, Rico,” said Solomon. “Let it go. There are civilizations in Asia, thriving complex civilizations. There are people over there, people and culture and music and architecture and painting and singing and love and life. They’re proud and strong and funny and sweet and smart and neurotic and right and wrong. Dammit, they’re just like us, Rico. They are just like us.”

  “They are not human, Jeff.”

  “Yeah, maybe they’re better.”

  Solomon bit his tongue but it was too late. He had just crossed a line and an uncomfortable silence fell in the dark room.

  “We will take it under advisement, Jeffrey,” said Jorgenson, on the last of the five screens. He was thin, pale and grey, like the paper of a very old book. “But our first concern is for NorAm and the people of the EUS.”

  “There is no more EUS.”

  “Jeffery—”

  “How about the people of the world, Tad?” said Solomon. “How about that?”

  “We will take it under advisement.”

  “We’re losing comm,” said Celine and she leaned forward. “We’ll try again once the towers have recharged.”

  And one by one, the five screens faded to black, leaving the room very dark and very quiet.

  Jeffery Solomon sat back, ran a hand through his bushy hair.

  “Please don’t do that,” said Celine.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. I, uh, I’m gonna call Damaris.”

  Celine raised a white brow. “You really care about these animals, don’t you, Jeffery?”

  “People, Cece, not animals. Friends. If you can try to remember that, I will try not to shake my fleas on you. How about that?”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Jeffery.”

  “And bureaucracy doesn’t become you.” He rose to his feet. “Hell, we were scientists, Cece. We were in it for the good of the planet. When did we fall victim to the same petty minded dogmas that started the goddamned wars in the first place?”

  “I think…” She sighed, tapped on the console with her fingers. Her sharp eyes grew distant once again. “I think we stopped being scientists when we woke up. We were leaders then, Jeffery. We had to make sacrifices and that changes you. Shepherding people changes you. Who is going to go where, who is going to get the chance to make love and when, who is going to have children. Who is going to go out into the cold to defrost the comm tower and who is going to take the front line against a swarm of rats. Making decisions that affect hundreds, thousands of lives changes you.”

  She tightened her lips. “We went to sleep scientists and woke up politicians.”

  He grunted. “It is the way of things…”

  “Yes. I suppose it is.”

  “I want to go outside.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I want to and I can. Come outside with me, Cece.”

  “Jeffery, you’re talking nonsense.”

  “Come outside. Is there a door? There has to be a door.”

  “Jeffery, sit down.” She reached up to touch the back of her skull. “We have a guest unit on the property. I can have you escorted…”

  “I want to go outside. Your doors are on pulleys and your windows are dead ArcEyes. You’re cobbling a life together out of old tech, dead politics and pseudoscience. We wanted so much better, Cece. We deserve it. It’s a beautiful wor—”

  He paused, cocked his head at her.

  “You just called security, didn’t you?”

  “Jeffery, please…”

  “You know, maybe the Captain was right. He said we’d had our turn. He said we had lost the right to rule. That we had been gone for a very long time and that maybe there was a reason we were gone. A lion said that, Cece. King of the goddamn beasts.”

  “Jeffery, that’s enough…”

  “Yeah, Cece, it is enough.”

  And he strode toward the door, swung it open on two guards pointing Dazzlers at his chest.

  ***

  It was two days before the Khargan’s Ten Thousand came upon the first of the Deer Stones.

  It was simply a rock, tall elongated and chiseled with symbols, but it towered out of the stony plain like a beacon. It was a remnant of an Ancient time, Long-Swift knew, a time of
Ancestors and war and was the first of many stones that dotted the plateau. It was a good sign, for the Bear had run them hard since the earthstorm at Jia’Khan and they needed to rest their bodies before any battle with the cats. Historically, there were very few battles that had been won against the Enemy. It was largely attributed to their horses but Long-Swift wondered if it wasn’t due to the fact that cats were very thorough in their organization of people. Dogs were autonomous and did not welcome rule of any kind. A khan had to prove himself repeatedly before any dog would accept him as Lord.

  The Bear was spending much time with the Oracle. Long-Swift had been surprised that the creature had joined their ranks, as neither Needle nor Storm were built for running. But while they had lagged behind the army during the day, they always managed to drag their massive frame into the Khargan’s tent each moonrise. It walked with the fingerstick now, using it like a cane and the muscle and sinew had hardened like bone. Their strange syncopated voice whispered, shrieked and groaned all night and smoke from the gar smelled like burning flesh. The soldiers were not pleased however, and the Irh-Khan was beginning to hear murmurs within the ranks.

  There was a sweep of wings and he looked up at the Deer Stone. A raven had landed on the top of the Stone, stared at him with shiny black eyes. He sighed. A raven at moondown. It was a bad sign.

  The Khargan had asked him to choose runners and he was debating whether or not to choose himself. There were no more songs inside his head and he was certain the Singer was weeping. He wondered at that, wondered what could make such a powerful, elusive, magical woman weep and he remembered the prophecy of the Oracle. “Swift as swift, but one is swifter. Singer of Songs caught by the Lover of the Lover of Lions.” The ‘Singer of Songs’ was an obvious reference but the ‘Lover of the Lover of Lions?’ Who was the Lover of Lions? Who was the Lover of the Lover and what did any of it have to do with him? It was a mystery. Long-Swift was certain the Oracle’s brain was as distorted as its flesh.

  He shook his head and turned back to the camp, leaving the Deer Stone and the raven behind.