by CK Dawn
After taking a handful of the meat, she headed across to the other side of the stream to see what they were discussing.
Daybian was holding the coat she had rescued. He and Yenteel had moved away from the body, which had been gnawed down to the bone. The air above it was filled with flies.
“We shall be heading west,” said Daybian as she approached.
“I’m sorry?”
Daybian pointed. “We’ll go west.”
She gritted her teeth. “I see.”
Yenteel looked a dozen years older than he had before.
“I must thank you for your help, Kantees.” His voice was also weak but better than it had been.
“I am always pleased to be able to help someone who needs it,” she said. “But next time I shall be more careful with patterners. I believe you almost killed me as well as yourself.”
“But you had enough strength.”
“Barely.” If not for Sheesha, we would both be carrion.
“In that case my gratitude is redoubled.” He tried for a sweeping bow but stumbled in the process and caught himself with the stick only at the last moment.
“Why do you think we should go west?” she said to Yenteel, ignoring Daybian.
“I recognise the coat,” said Daybian.
“I asked Yenteel.”
“But I knew the answer.”
Kantees closed her eyes. Perhaps she was more tired than she thought. One thing was certain, her temper was not good. But, damn it, Daybian had no right.
Why wasn’t she saying this out loud? She turned to Daybian.
“You are not in charge of this …” Words failed her.
“What?”
She gestured to Yenteel and then back to where Gally worked on the fire. “Us.”
“I do not have to remind you, Kantees, that my family owns—”
“Be careful what you say right now,” she hissed. “Or you just might be walking back to your family.”
“—the ziri. My family owns the zirichasa.”
“I’m borrowing them.”
“You’ve stolen them.”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s right, I have stolen them so they are not yours any longer. They’re mine.”
“Perhaps we could discuss this later?” said Yenteel.
Just then Shingul and Jintan let out the booming calls that heralded the return of the hunting pair. Daybian turned in surprise to see them stretching their necks up, mouths open to amplify the call.
“Are they all right?” said Daybian. “Are they ill?”
Kantees found her anger evaporating. At least Daybian was honest in his regard of the ziri and he was genuinely concerned.
“Did they make that noise yesterday?” said Yenteel. “I seem to recall it from a dream.”
“It means Sheesha and Looesa are on their way back,” she said. “I didn’t know why they did that yesterday, either.” She scanned the skies and saw the dots.
She pointed. “There.”
Seventeen
Despite Kantees’ concerns about further delay, she didn’t argue about staying another night so that Yenteel could gain more strength. Besides, it was late in the day and they wouldn’t be able to fly for long.
The blanket that had covered her belonged to Daybian and, while the rest of them slept with the ziri—not completely comfortable but warm—he chose to sleep under his blanket.
Kantees was tired, but even snuggled under Sheesha’s feathers and warmed against his body, she had trouble going to sleep.
Everything suddenly felt too big. The world was too big. Her crimes were too big. The knowledge of what the zirichasa could do was too big. And the tekrak had been too big. And where there was one there could be more. And with them, the people who had taken Jelamie.
Why had they taken him? He was just an annoying child. He wasn’t the heir, merely the spare in case something happened to Daybian.
And Daybian was here, in danger of ending the line of Jakalain by getting himself killed in an attempt to rescue his brother who might already be dead. She did not ask for the responsibility of watching over him. He would probably say that he did not require her to do so.
What am I doing? She asked herself again, who knew how many times in the last few days, and she still didn’t have a good answer. In the end all she could think of was that she was trying to do the right thing. But what right did she have to decide what that was?
She had a painful awakening when Sheesha decided it was time to get up. He rolled onto his rear legs and simply stood. Somehow the rolling motion had invaded her dream as a fall from a great height and she only really woke when she hit the ground. Even then, for a moment, she was not entirely sure what was real and what was not.
Sheesha stretched his wings and shook them out so the feathers aligned properly. He bent his neck backwards and his lower back upwards, all the way from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail, so he was shaped like a cup. He grunted, relaxed, and brought his head round to look Kantees straight in the face. Every time he did this, for this was not the first, was comical as he focused his wide-spread eyes on her. He looked cross-eyed.
And his breath smelled awful.
“Yes,” she said. “We’re going.”
The rest of the camp was not up but Sheesha prodded the other ziri. Jintan snapped at him, then ducked his head when Sheesha growled. Looesa tipped Gally onto the grass, but Yenteel was spared such abuse. Once again, Shingul had been lying over him to keep him warm instead of having him lie on her.
Kantees went off to the edge of the wood to do the necessary and then headed up to wash where the stream entered the pool. The sun was not high; they would be able to get a good distance today.
Daybian appeared beside her. He had stripped off his shirt to reveal his pasty white skin. If he thought it would make him more attractive to her, he was sadly mistaken. In truth, it had the opposite effect. She stood up as he bent down to splash the water on his face.
“What’s west?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Why should we go west? You seemed very sure of yourself.”
“That fellow”—he waved his hand in the direction of the corpse still lying out on the grass across the stream—“comes from Kurvin Port.”
“How do you know?”
“The design on the coat. He’s a Hamalain and, from his age, he’ll almost certainly be one of the brothers. They are very rich and influential in the Conclave.”
“And he was one of the raiders.”
“Yes.” Daybian stood up and looked at her. “This is dangerous.”
She couldn’t believe it. Was he serious in thinking she didn’t know what situation they were in? “Is it that you think all women are stupid, Daybian? Or is it just slave women?”
He looked hurt. “I honestly do not understand you, Kantees.”
“That, Daybian,” she said, “is the first intelligent thing to come out of your mouth.”
She realised she was just getting angry again, which meant she was getting off the subject. She took a deep breath and calmed herself down.
“I know this is dangerous, Daybian, even if we find Jelamie. I’m still under a sentence of death.”
“Why don’t you just run away to the mountains, then?”
“Because I’m responsible,” she said. “But afterwards, yes, I might just do that.”
“Not everything is your responsibility. You’re a slave. Your responsibility ends with the job you do.”
She closed her eyes again to help suppress the violence that wanted to erupt from her. He really did not understand. To hear him you would think that being a slave was a lovely life, no need to worry about anything. Except being beaten, whipped, raped, or killed at the whim of your master because you were nothing more than a possession. Like a cheap ceramic cup. If you fell and broke into a thousand pieces it might be a shame in the moment, but it did not matter in the long run. Another could always be bought.
“You are such an idi
ot, Daybian,” she said quietly. “You think you know so much.”
They returned to the camp and found Gally was saddling the ziri even though Kantees had not told him to. The meat from two days ago had been eaten but there was fresh from the previous day’s kills. She and Daybian ate in silence.
Sheesha and Looesa were good hunters, and considerate enough to bring food back. That surprised her. As far as she knew Sheesha had been bred in captivity and always had been fed dead animals. He had never needed to catch his own. She did not know about Looesa, but he was so tame she could not imagine he had ever had to hunt.
Yet here they were, experts. And the others knew how to call to them—in ways they had never used at the castle.
Perhaps it had something to do with their magic. It didn’t matter—she was not going to discuss it with anyone.
Yenteel was stronger and his skin looked healthier than it had at any time in the last couple of days. He would probably want to perform the healer patterning on his arm again, but for now he seemed happy enough with it in the sling.
“Have you given any thought to how we will enter Kurvin Port?” he said.
“You know about Kurvin Port,” said Kantees.
“That’s where the Hamalain have their dominion.”
“I haven’t thought about it,” said Kantees. “Since I have only just been told. Obviously we cannot fly in but neither can we leave the ziri on their own.”
“Gally can look after them,” said Gally.
She smiled at him. “I know, Gally, and I trust you. But it’s not a concern for the ziri, it’s about people if they discover them.”
“Gally doesn’t like people.” He frowned.
“I know something of the place,” said Yenteel. “The mountains come almost down to the sea all around and Kurvin Port itself is in a wide bay with cliffs around it. There are farms on the slopes that supply it.”
“That’s nice.”
“But the cliffs run for leagues along the coast on that side with hundreds of small bays, and many of those have fishing villages.”
“Fishing villages may not be as bad as Kurvin Port,” she said. “But we still can’t fly into them.”
“I can,” said Daybian.
“But we can’t.”
As if attempting to forestall another argument, Yenteel cut in. “The cliffs have caves. We just need to find a bay that doesn’t have a village, but does have a cave, that’s close to Kurvin Port. The zirichasa can remain there with Gally while we go into the town.”
“I am not clear on our plan when we’ve arrived,” said Kantees. “Just because we know what family the man came from, how does that get us any closer to finding Jelamie?”
“I think,” said Yenteel, “we will have to see what happens.”
“We can enter the town with you two as my servants,” said Daybian. “I can talk to the Hamalain as an equal. I’ll report the death of this brother and then we can find out what he was doing raiding the Jakalain.”
Kantees watched in amusement as even Daybian realised that wasn’t going to work. She looked at the sun crossing the sky.
“That’s enough of a plan,” she said, “until we can find out more.”
There was a short discussion when Daybian still thought he was going to ride Sheesha. But it was the ziri himself who settled that by walking up and standing behind Kantees. She could not resist a grin at Daybian’s expense.
That Shingul would carry Yenteel was a foregone conclusion, as she seemed to have adopted him. Gally already had the reins of Looesa. Even Daybian did not have the heart to deliberately upset the lad. So he rode old Jintan again.
“He’s a remarkably strong zirichak for his age,” said Daybian as he mounted and gave Jintan’s neck an affectionate thump.
Kantees double-checked Yenteel’s saddle buckles because he had been almost unconscious the previous time he had flown and she was not sure how he might react now he was truly awake.
“There is no need to mother me, Kantees,” he said for her ears only.
“How would you know?” she said. “You have no experience of ziri, you do not know what is right or wrong. You are in no position to judge.”
And it seemed, for that, he had no answer but gave her a nod in acknowledgement.
Whether it was something the ziri did without thinking she did not know, but they had arranged themselves on the ground in a diamond shape. Sheesha was at the head, Looesa and Shingul ranged to the left and right behind, and Jintan waited in the rear.
She gave Sheesha a little kick. He spread his powerful wings and stroked them downward. He lifted effortlessly. Wing beat after wing beat pushed them upward and she thrilled once more at the sensation as the ground dropped away.
Looking behind she saw the others in exactly the same formation as they had been on the ground. She had noticed it before but with the new revelations about the creatures, she saw it with new eyes. The only thing that did not match were their wing beats.
She let Sheesha choose their flying height once she had pointed him in the right direction—or the best approximation of “the right direction” as she could manage. She still did not know how big Esternes was and the trouble with using a patterner’s path—direct travel from ley-circle to ley-circle—was that it gave no indication of the true distance.
In the past, when they had gone to the races, they had always gone by the path. Not that it was really a path; there was no walking involved. The group would stand in the middle of the ley-circle. The patterners would chant and inscribe their patterns in wax or clay, and then the travellers would be somewhere else.
Even the journey from her old master to the Jakalain had been by ley-circle. Her old master had maps but he kept them locked up because they were so valuable.
So the matter of the size of Esternes was important.
The wood where they had camped was swiftly lost to view. The ground appeared flat but it was an undulating surface cut by streams and rivers that flowed from the mountains. Yenteel had said the mountains went to the edge of the sea, so if they followed the mountains they would also reach the sea. Then they could follow the cliffs.
Or they could ask someone.
Villages, sometimes less than a dozen buildings grouped together, dotted the landscape. Now that they were travelling in daylight she could see that each village was surrounded by a high fence—which also enclosed areas for animals. Beyond the walls, in almost every case, were herds of goats with men, sometimes boys, guarding over them.
Just as she looked down, the goatherds and the people in the villages looked up at the four ziri passing across the sky. She wondered what those people thought. Did they see the riders? They must. Sheesha was not flying very high and it was easy enough to see the people down there, so Kantees, Gally, Yenteel, and Daybian must be clearly visible.
Not that it mattered. It would be days before any of these people could pass on a message to someone who mattered.
Then there was forest. Almost as if there was a line across the land. Nothing lay below them but trees, and packed so close together only the tops were visible. The undulating green was cut by the occasional wide river. Birds and other flying creatures populated the upper reaches of the trees but what lay below she had no idea.
The sun told her it was getting towards midday. The ziri had been flying all that time and must be getting tired. But they were still over the forest, which now stretched from horizon to horizon in all directions except to the north, where the mountains grew out of the green.
She began to look in earnest for a place to land.
None of the rivers seemed to have any islands and she was concerned about what nasty things might live in their waters. Her time with the scholar had educated her enough that she knew no place in the world was free of creatures that would like to eat you.
She would have preferred an open hilltop, so they could at least see when an enemy was approaching, but the trees covered everything.
“Hey!”
She made Sheesha wheel that way, confident the others would follow. It was a gap, large and circular. Suddenly this did not look like a good idea. As they closed in on it, she could see the trees growing around its edge were twisted and discoloured. The ground itself was devoid of any life. Not a single plant or animal that she could see.
“Ley-circle!” she shouted back and shook her head. “Not safe.”
“No feeding!”
She sighed. That was true. The feeding had been a ten-day ago and it was unlikely there would be another conjunction so close. Questions about feedings and conjunctions had been common at her old master’s house. He demanded a lot of money for the answers since they encroached on the patterners’ knowledge.
She made the decision and put Sheesha into a descent towards the circle. Not the middle, but not too close to the edge. Who knew what corrupted monsters might be lurking among the distorted trees?
Eighteen
The fact that Sheesha and the other ziri did not seem concerned at landing in the ley-circle gave Kantees some confidence. Perhaps magical creatures would be able to sense trouble.
The surface of the circle was damp soil. It must have rained recently. The Taymalin always put stone down in their circles—preferably the hardest stone they could find, because it resisted the warping in all but the biggest circles. But this one must be unknown to the Taymalin, and perhaps anyone else. She and her companions might have been the first people ever to set foot here.
If anything went wrong they might also be the last. A part of her mind suggested that perhaps they were not the first and the bones of the others were here too, perhaps just beneath the surface. Or blasted to dust by the power of a feeding.
As soon as Looesa had landed, Gally set about removing his saddle and other tack. She almost stopped him but the ziri needed to eat and they could not hunt while saddled. So she followed suit with Sheesha while keeping an eye on Yenteel, who was slowly unbuckling himself.
