“You killed him, didn’t you.”
“Kaaliya? Is…is that you?” he stammered, his false bravado born of cruelty shriveling. “He fell—it was an accident.”
“Only truth is spoken here,” she whispered.
“Come,” he said, backing away. “We must leave this place.”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she reached toward him with an upturned palm. The spiders leapt at him in a coruscating arc.
Screams erupted from within the glowing mass where her father once stood. She shielded her eyes to see the spiders enshroud her father’s face, burning brighter than she’d seen before, so bright the tree beyond the tunnel opening shone its bone white palm. She fled down the tunnel.
When she reached the domed chamber she collapsed on the moss, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her father’s screams echoed from the tunnel.
“I want it to go away,” she pleaded into the mossy patch.
“What, Cave Daughter?” The Hollow One rose from the moss next to her, the tiny fibers boiling like maggots around its bare form. “What do you wish to go away?”
“All of this. I should be the one in the Pit. Not Shailen.”
“You will see beyond the darkness one day. Today is not that day.”
Another scream echoed through the chamber.
“Are they hurting him? The spiders?”
“They know him for what he is, but the only wounds he suffers are his own fear.”
“Make it go away.”
“We will do more than that.”
She began to sit up but it knelt and placed a hand on her shoulder. Knotted fingers pressed her into the moss. Fibers began to writhe and squirm along her flesh and she sank. Alarmed, she stared into the Hollow One’s eyes—eyes she couldn’t read. An expressionless mask. Eyes somehow like Old Jai’s, in that they saw more than what this moment in time would allow. Into the ground she sank until the wriggling moss crawled along her cheek. She wanted to scream but could only hear her father’s cries fading away, like Shailen’s.
Soon, everything was dark. She could stay here, she thought. This was what she’d sought when she leapt from her precarious position. Nothing was lost or cast off in this place. Everything that was here, belonged.
***
Kaaliya came to under the sheltering boughs of a tree. In her wildest imaginings, she’d never conjured a tree like this. Thin, whip-like branches draped the ground on all sides. Beside her sat a leaf from the Hollow One’s tree piled with edible roots. Next to this was a gourd. She picked it up and sniffed the contents—water from the spring.
She crawled forward and parted the branches of the sheltering tree. A blue sky bound by open plains greeted her. More of the tendriled trees dotted the horizon, and a road ribboned its way between them and off into the distance. A bird squalled, proud and powerful, and she squinted into the sun.
Returning to the protective canopy, she took up the gourd and drank then she nibbled at the roots until she’d cleared the leaf which held them. Picking the leaf up by the stem, she stepped out onto the road.
She took a few steps, those turning into long strides. Cerudell, Stronghold, all the cities and hidden places from Old Jai’s stories awaited her. Taboo or not, she’d see them all and more. One day she’d return, rich beyond wealth, ready to repay Old Jai. Or at least offer a fair trade.
About The Author
In the fourth grade, Russ Linton wrote down the vague goal of becoming a “writer and an artist” when he grew up. After a journey that led him from philosopher to graphic designer to stay-at-home parent and even a stint as an Investigative Specialist with the FBI, he finally got around to that “writing” part, which he now pursues full time. Russ creates character-driven fantasy about unlikely heroes. He writes for adults who are young at heart and youngsters who are old souls.
For more information, visit http://www.russlinton.com.
The Dowager's Largesse
Jefferson Smith
Editor’s Note: Adventure is a young man’s game—or so you might believe if you let fiction be your guide. But the truth is, adventure can come to us at any age. And the older you are, the more annoyed you are likely to be when it does.
“Better grab your man there, before he chokes himself to death.” Karsten nodded toward the back of the shed where another man lay sprawled against the wall. His unconscious form had slumped down lower on the slippery straw and the chains at his wrists were now wrapped precariously around his neck.
DaGuss turned to look and then nodded to the servant at his side. “Take our friend out to the wagon,” he said. Then he turned back to Karsten as his tidyman dragged the captured thief out into the sunlight. “Can’t allow him to escape us that easily,” the fat merchant said with a chuckle as they passed. “Certainly not before I find out where he’s taken my merchandise.”
Karsten shrugged. “That’s none of my concern. I’ve delivered him, as agreed. I’ll be paid what I’m owed now and leave you to your…reunion.”
The two men were sitting across from each other on musty bales of sawgrass in the middle of a small cow shed. Bright blades of light sliced down through the air around them, swirling with the dusts of mildew and rotting fodder. It had been a number of seasons since any cattle had sheltered there, which was why Karsten had chosen it for the exchange. A quiet location beyond the walls of Ruheen, sheltered against both weather and prying eyes. As a bounty hunter, he preferred to keep his face anonymous. You never knew when being recognized might spoil an otherwise easy warrant.
DaGuss sighed. “Why must you always be in such haste? Won’t you at least join me in a little refreshment? There is another matter I wish to discuss, and business goes so much more pleasantly over a meal, don’t you find?”
“What I’m owed,” the bounty hunter repeated. “We’ll finish the first job before there’s talk of a second.”
The merchant’s gaze flicked briefly to a spot above Karsten’s eyes and he licked his lips uncertainly. Men like DaGuss always seemed unnerved by the gallows mark on the bounty hunter’s forehead. The noose-shaped brand was an all-too-real reminder of the Emperor’s intolerance of those who danced within the shadows of his laws. As for Karsten himself, the scar was nothing more than a souvenir of his ill-spent youth, but that didn’t keep him from taking full advantage of the effect it had on others.
Like now.
With a nod, the merchant reached inside the folds of his kaftan and withdrew a small box, offering it to Karsten with a flourish of his hands. “In payment of the debt that stands between us,” he intoned formally. “Do you accept?”
Karsten took the box and flipped it open. Two jewels gleamed up at him, shimmering their yellowish light against the dark velvet lining. Phoenix stones, as they’d agreed. Karsten poured them into his hand and hefted them for a moment, then returned them to the box, closing it with a tight snap.
“I accept your payment,” he said. “The debt between us is balanced.”
DaGuss bowed his head once in solemn acceptance, and then broke into a smile. “Now, to other matters. Haroon! The food!”
Karsten watched in silence as the tidyman came back in bearing a wide tray laden with cakes and meats and cheeses. Why DaGuss had bothered to bring all that out here on horseback was something of a mystery, but if there was one thing about powerful men that never failed to amuse him, it was their perpetual need to drape themselves in theater.
As DaGuss helped himself to a handful of dainties, he began to talk. Typical grease words about how Karsten’s reputation was known throughout the region. How often they had worked together. How rare a thing it was to find dependability among hired agents. How singularly talented DaGuss was at spotting it—and rewarding it. Wouldn’t Karsten like to arrange an easier life for himself? It couldn’t all be phoenix stones of course, not if he was on a full retainer, but he’d be well paid and…
The merchant interrupted himself in mid-sentence, his eyes shifting across the tray that had been set on a spare bale between the
m. Then he looked up.
“You’ve touched nothing,” he said, a strained note edging into his voice. “Do you mean to refuse my hospitality?”
The bounty hunter sighed. Men like DaGuss lived on the veneer of delicate manners that they conjured around themselves, like a painted eggshell wrapped around the brutal core of their truer nature. To insult that shell would almost certainly be taken disproportionately, and to spill truth upon it, Karsten had been wondering lately about just how long he would be able to stay in this game. Wiliness and a reputation for ferocity would only protect a man so far. Sooner or later he’d run up against a hard enough case—or young enough—and he’d take his retirement on the end of a blade. He wasn’t quite ready to hang up his own and take suck from the teat just yet, but it couldn’t hurt to start listening more closely to the offers.
“I ate before you arrived,” he said. “But I’ll take the Empress if you’ve got any.” That was safe enough. The merchant had more faces and angles than a cut gem and Karsten wouldn’t trust the man to fall if he jumped from a ledge, but not even DaGuss would risk the Emperor’s wrath by tampering with a bottle of the Dowager’s famous brew.
The merchant smiled indulgently. “You’re a careful one,” he said. “I’ll give you that.” With a quick nod he sent his tidyman scurrying out to the supplies. “Happily, I anticipated your caution. So what will you have? The green?” Then he his eyes twinkled darkly. “Or will you try the gold?”
Karsten couldn’t keep a look of surprise from his face as the servant came back in bearing two bottles on a tray, one of dark green, the other a smoky amber. Both were marked with the sigil of the Emperor, surmounted by the bird-in-flight emblem of his mother, known across the empire simply as “The Dowager.”
He’d seen the green bottles before, of course. They were a common enough sight in way stations and kherabats—any place that might attract the poorer folks who could not afford a pint, or the braver ones who enjoyed the thrill of the old woman’s gamble. He’d even chanced a taste of the green himself, on occasion, but the other bottle was little more than a rumor. Karsten had never even seen one before.
“The gold,” he said, quickly, before his nerves could betray him.
For years afterward, Karsten would wonder what had made him choose as he did that day. Wanting to parade his courage in front of a liverless whelp like DaGuss was his usual conclusion, but the truth was that he’d chosen the gold because he thought he’d never have another chance to try it. Simple as that.
If DaGuss was surprised by his choice, he hid it well. “To the Dowager,” the merchant prompted, raising his goblet and pausing.
Easy for him, Karsten thought. The man was drinking some fruity spirit or other. He’d never be fool enough to risk everything he’d made of his life on the Dowager’s lottery. Still, at least he was gracious enough to salute a man who was.
“The Dowager,” Karsten agreed. Then he snapped the fastener from the top of the bottle, matched DaGuss’s salute with it, and raised it to his lips.
It was the last thing he knew.
***
A rough curry brush of hot, wet bristles scraped across his cheek and Karsten sat up.
“I’m awake,” he said, as much to announce his own surprise as to fend off the creature that loomed over him. The shafts of light were slanting low now, almost horizontal, and they’d lost their earlier brilliance, which explained the poxing llama. With darkfall almost upon them, Babette had come in to see why they hadn’t departed yet. She’d been with Karsten for many years and had proven herself dependable in all manner of weather and terrain, but she had one infuriating weakness.
“Still afraid of the dark, huh?” He reached up and scratched at the usual spot on the underside of her chin while she pretended to only tolerate it.
After a minute or so of llama maintenance, Karsten’s head had cleared and he pushed her away gently to look around. DaGuss and his men were long gone, and no wonder. Karsten had seen a man lose the Dowager’s dice-roll once. It had been an impressive display, with the unlucky sod flopping and jerking across the floor as the magery took hold. The band of cutthroats he’d been with at the time—hardened men each and every one—had all taken a measured pace back to watch in silent horror, each of them sharing the same thought: Could just as easily be me down there, performing that unexpected fish dance.
For Karsten though, it hadn’t been the play of lights sizzling and sparking across Quinsha Half-Lip’s agonized face that had left the biggest impression that day. It had been the unmistakable odor of magery lingering in the air afterward. The twin stenches of lightning and scorched meat, all for having picked the unlucky bottle from the pile. And that had all been for a green. No telling what horror steps he himself had just danced upon losing to the gold. By all chances, the merchant and his tidyman had been back on their horses and heading for the High Way before Karsten had even hit the straw.
Following her chin scratch, Babette quickly turned to her other great fascination: looking for food. She nuzzled hopefully about through the moldering floor sweepings and soon chirruped with delight. Apparently their host had not paused to pack up the victuals on his way out. When the llama’s head came up, it was to show Karsten the unblemished pear she’d found. With a quick toss of her head, she sucked her prize in and began to chew noisily. But the fact that DaGuss was gone now didn’t mean his larder was any safer than it had been earlier.
“Spit that out,” Karsten said. The llama looked him straight in the eye. Then she swallowed. The bounty hunter merely shook his head. “Your burial,” he said.
With the pear debate now concluded, Babette returned to her search of the floor, pushing past Karsten as she worked her way further into the shed. That brought her saddle bags forward, which reminded him of the disquiet in his own belly. It was an ache that had been gnawing at him since before DaGuss had arrived, but it wasn’t pangs of hunger that drew him now to his feet. It was an emptiness of a different kind.
Her saddle bags did not seem to have been touched, but there was only one way to be sure. With a flick of his hand, Karsten twitched aside the old blanket that lay draped over the leather cases. Only then did he let out the breath he had not realized he’d been holding. The Sisters were still there, gleaming in their custom saddle sheaths. Of all the bad things that had ever happened to him—and being a bounty hunter, there had been more of those than he cared to count—the worst had always come when he had been parted from his Sisters. There had been no avoiding it this time—DaGuss would not have even set foot in the shed if he’d seen Karsten wearing steel, so he’d had to set them aside. But all that was done now and he slipped them easily out of their hiding place and back into the matching sheaths he wore on each hip. Much better. Of course, retiring the Sisters didn’t mean he’d faced his employer unarmed.
Shooing Babette further into the shed to give himself room, the old bounty hunter knelt down between the straw bales. Three times he jammed a hand into the one he’d been sitting on, and each time it came out holding another of his smaller blades. Then he turned to DaGuss’s bale, and then to two more, each time increasing his bright-edged collection. These were the Cousins, and he spent the next few minutes returning them to the various places on his person—and on Babette—where they would be most ready to hand if needed.
Only after he had completed the ritual and felt fully himself again did he finally raise his hand to his lip. The flesh there still burned and throbbed like a banked fire. He could remember taking that first pull. There had been a snapping tingle and a flash that had seared him like the sting of a drunken scorpion…and then darkness. Now the entire flap of meat below his nose screamed in protest at his probing finger, as though it had been flayed open to the air, although he knew it had not. He needed no vanity glass to tell him that a new brand now stood on his lip to match the gallows mark on his forehead. The Dowager’s bird-in-flight. If the stories were true, it would remain etched there on his face until she herself removed it
. Assuming he actually presented himself, of course, but that was a question for later.
Right now, he wanted a taste of the storied concoction that had cost him so dearly, and for that, he would need the bottle. His search, however, turned up nothing. He knew there was no chance that DaGuss or his men would have touched it. Not and risk a marked lip for themselves. Even so, it was not among the bits of cheese and meat scattered across the straw, nor wedged between any of the bales.
It was Babette who finally found it. As Karsten finished searching through the hayforks and scythes that lay in a jumble by the door, he looked around in frustration, only to see the llama tipping her head back, sucking hungrily at the upturned amber bottle.
“Here! Drop that!”
The llama’s eyes rolled around to look at him, but she continued sucking greedily, daring him to do something about it.
Old straw is slippery, and it took him a moment or two to make his way to her, but that was all the time Babette had needed, and with a happy chirrup, she dropped the bottle at his feet just as he was reaching for it. Empty. Then she belched in his face.
Karsten glared at her. “Stupid beast,” he growled, but no fish dance or lightning show followed, so he shoved the llama back toward the door and snatched the bottle up from the straw.
She’d found it at the very back of the shed, where it must have dropped down between the rotting straw and the rough boards of the wall. It had almost certainly lain there, undisturbed by DaGuss’s men, exactly where he’d flung it when the magestorm had taken him.
“Woulda liked to have seen that,” he muttered to himself. It seemed a shame to have endured one of the rarest—and most painful—spectacles in the modern world, yet not have even a hazy recollection of the experience as compensation. Now, thanks to Babette, he wouldn’t even have a taste to remember it by. The green was widely regarded as one of the better ales anywhere in the Empire, but the gold was rumored to be a honeywine that surpassed even the rare elixirs served to Emperor Marghul himself.
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