I never expected a small baby and a straw carry-basket to weigh so much. I was frantic to get out before the cave dropped on us, yet I also wanted to stay and be a baby myself, curled up against the mother-spirit in the stone. Each time I stopped to catch my breath, I had to force myself to move on. Fortunately, though I did not think so then, the baby’s screams constantly reminded me to keep going. I could not wait to get it off my back, or sides, wherever it had slipped. By the time we came to the rock that half covered the entrance, the basket hung off of my neck, yanking me sideways.
Eyeing the rock and the opening it had left, I crawled out of the straps. Grabbing them in my forepaws, I backed into the opening, tugging the basket after me. It was half-out when it stuck. I was squealing curses when Afra said, “I am sorry that I called you a monster. Please—let me get him out.”
I slid off the rock with gratitude and let Afra lift her child into the open. My poor forelegs ached. My back muscles complained. I wanted to go back into that comforting cave, which was deadly folly in an earthquake.
Spot came over to nuzzle me. I looked up at my friend and moaned. He pushed me a little harder with his nose. Don’t complain, he told me. You aren’t bleeding.
Afra had her baby out of the carry-basket. She held it, bouncing it as she talked softly. It finally stopped screaming.
The hard ground shakes had also halted, though I could feel the same deep shiver that I had felt yesterday, on the rock over the cave’s mouth.
“We should get to clearer ground,” Afra said. “In case the earthquake returns.”
I nodded.
“There is a place by the spring where I get water. But I cannot leave the food that you brought.” She looked at the opening in the cave entrance, biting her lower lip. Then she placed the baby on the ground beside me. “Watch him, please. If something happens …” She shook her head and ran like a fool to the cave. She wriggled into the opening and was gone.
I squealed in irritation. I could have gone for those things! I looked at Spots, thinking that he could mind the baby.
She asked you to watch him, Spots said. If you go into the cave with her, she will panic, thinking the baby is alone but for a stupid horse.
I had to do as she had told me since she was beginning to see that I was no monster. I muttered to myself. I knew he was right. He often is.
Spots walked over to the baby and began to nudge him to and fro, rocking him. The baby liked it. He was chuckling, as if a horse rocked him every day. Then he looked at me. I jerked back, thinking he would scream in fear, but he only watched me as he rocked, his eyes big.
Afra returned with my sack. She must have put some of her own things inside, because it was heavier, judging by the way she carried it. She set it down and watched Spots rock her son.
“I don’t suppose you two would hire on as nursemaids?” she asked. “I’ll take Uday now.” She gathered her son up and tucked him into the carry-basket, asking him, “Did you like that, Uday? Did you?” He chuckled for her, too. Carefully, she settled the basket over her shoulders. While she tightened the straps, Spots made faces for Uday. I gave Spots’s foreleg a push, for showing off.
Afra picked up the heavy sack. She looked at me. “It’s not far, the spring. Would your friend mind if I put this on his back? I know it’s slippery with no saddle, but I can hold it there.”
Spots nodded at her.
Afra looked at him, then at me. “What are you?” she asked. Her lips quivered. Her eyes were wet. She turned to hoist the bag onto Spots’s back. I feared for those eggs inside the robe. They seemed to be doomed.
“I do not weep in the ordinary way of things,” Afra said, her voice defensive. “But it has been so hard, with everyone’s hand turned against me. And now you two come—it was you with the food, before?” She looked at me. Her eyes were dry again. I nodded to her. “Why? What are you, and why are you doing these things?”
I made a cradle of my forearms and rocked them.
“The baby, yes,” Afra said.
Then I ran in place and pretended to be throwing rocks at her. I started to walk around as if I followed a maze, looking confused.
She frowned for a moment. Then her face smoothed. “You saw the boys chase me!”
I nodded.
“Well, you’re kindhearted, both of you. Come. The spring’s this way.” She pointed out the path for Spots, soon discovering that if she spoke the directions, there was no need to point. That was just as well because the sack did slide all over his back. She was kept busy just holding it there.
We followed the gully where Spots and I had waited for Afra to take the sack. The path twisted out of view, making a wide curve around the cave’s protecting stone. We entered a small bay where trees grew and a spring bubbled up through the ground to make a pond. One of the three rocky walls of the bay was part of the stone that made the cave, reddish orange and fine-grained instead of rough brown-black. Plants sprouted in the cracks in the walls. Birds fluttered to the tops of the trees as we arrived.
Spots let Afra take the sack from him before he trotted over to the water. He sniffed at it. Is the water safe? he asked me. I suppose it is, if she has been drinking it, but it never hurts to be sure.
I tested it with a drop of my magic. The water gleamed and rippled for a moment, proof that it was very good. Spots dipped his head and began to drink. I, too, was thirsty. I gulped until my belly sloshed.
While we slurped, Afra made camp. She set Uday up in his basket so he might watch us, then took everything from the sack. It was as I feared—the eggs were ruined. Afra looked at them, crushed messes in the folds of the robe. She covered her mouth, but I could tell that she was trying not to giggle. Finally, she could not help herself. She gave way, and her laughter made Uday chuckle. She was different when she laughed.
Spots brought the soiled robe over to me. We were both shaking our heads over the ruined eggs when Afra picked the robe up. “It’s a shame about the eggs, but you brought me two sausages and a brick of pressed dates. You’re going to make me fat.” She smiled when she said it.
A stream left the pond and flowed out through the rear of our bay of rocks. Afra went to it with the robe. I followed her while Spots cropped the grass that grew around the pond’s edges and watched Uday. Afra knelt beside some rocks in the stream and began to wash the egg from the robe. “I saw this on their headman’s wife,” she told me, scrubbing two handfuls of robe against one another. “If she knew I had it, she would screech the clouds down.” She looked sideways at me. “If I were a better person, I would return it, but the nights are cold.”
I retracted my claws and took an eggy spot of my own, swishing it in the stream to wet it before I tried to scrub the stuff out.
“The horse is odd, but at least he is still a horse. But you … there are no pale blue crocodiles or monitor lizards, and a crocodile would have eaten Uday. You must have come from someplace wonderful,” Afra told me. “Not that my experience of the world is so wide. I have known only the mountain towns and villages.” She traded her clean handful of cloth for a dirty one and looked at me. I was scrubbing as well as I could, in hope that she would tell me her story. “My home is back that way.” She waved her hand toward the east. “My family had the Gift. My mother could charm metal, my father doctored animals. My sister was good at all-around magic. They believed I had no power. Then my woman’s time came, and my Gift with it.”
I nodded. It happened that way in about one person in ten, Numair said. Often it was an unpleasant surprise for the newly Gifted child.
“You have seen my Gift,” Afra said, finding a new place to scrub. I rinsed mine, then found another spot to work on. “No one knew what to do, or how to teach a girl with two-colored magic. They took me to our lord. He gave them three gold pieces for me and told them to go home. That was how I became a slave.”
I reared back on my haunches and hissed. The last emperor, Kaddar’s uncle, had tried to make a slave of Daine once. He had caged and bes
pelled me. That was why there was a new palace in the capital. They could do little with the old one, once Daine and her friends were through with it.
Afra smiled crookedly. “Oh. You know what it’s like. I bore it at first. They fed me well. But I could not make my magic do as they wished, so they beat me and took the food away.” She began to wring out the robe. We had cleaned it entirely. “I would have done as I was told, if I had known how to control my Gift. I didn’t. After a few beatings and enough lost meals, I’d borne enough. That was how I learned that if I wanted to be free of shackles or ropes badly enough, my magic would do away with them.” She shrugged. “I stole some things and I ran away. I traveled with a caravan for a time, dancing for coins.” She spread the robe on some rocks to dry in the sun, and she shook her head. “There was a man traveling with us. Sadly, he had a wife in one of the towns. I did not know that until Uday was growing in my belly.”
I stood, watching her. She spoke well. Perhaps she had learned it at the lord’s house. If I looked at her without the struggle of getting her to eat, or worrying about her magic, if I only thought of her as a human, like Daine’s friends, how old could she be? Her face was not strained with fear or anger as she sat on a rock and looked back at me.
“I joined another caravan, but once my belly was big, I could not dance anymore,” she told me. “You understand every word, by the rivers and springs, you do. I cannot see feelings in the face of a lizard or snake, but I can tell you are sad. Don’t be sad for me. I have whored and stolen, and done both of those among people who had taken pity on me and gave me work.” She pointed toward the village on the other side of the rocks. “Why do you think those boys were so happy to stone me? I got caught at my thieving and thrown out. The villagers had warned me about the Maze of stone, but I never even saw it. I found the cave instead. I felt safe there, and that is where I managed to have Uday without bungling things too badly.” She looked at her worn straw sandals. She was about fifteen, I decided. Nearly my age, just a baby. I knew human females are supposed to be old enough to marry and have families by the time they are sixteen, or even fourteen, but that never seemed right.
I could not play any more games with Afra, trying to keep her to myself. When she trusted me enough, I would take her to my parents. They would know what to do. Numair would welcome her for her rare Gift. Daine would welcome her because once she, too, had been a girl on her own. Afra and her baby would be as safe with my foster parents as I was.
“I think I will sleep,” Afra told me suddenly. “I have learned to fight using my Gift, but it tires me. Or maybe it is nursing a baby and fighting with my Gift both.” She walked back to Uday’s carry-basket and curled up beside him, without even a blanket. I looked at Spots, thinking that there were extra blankets in Numair and Daine’s tent.
Once Afra slept, Spots and I left her there. Afra could also use one of Daine’s scarves, and perhaps a few other items. They wouldn’t mind, once they knew the entire story. I was sure of that.
SPOTS hid behind the tent while I packed up the things I had decided to take from Daine and Numair. Once I was ready, I whistled Spots around to the front of the tent. This time I used some of Daine’s scarves and sashes to tie the bundle to his back. He was helpful about kneeling to help me reach everything. I was just finished when we heard a man’s footsteps on the hillside.
It’s one of the horse guards, Spots said. The one who thinks I should stay tied up all of the time. He thinks he knows better than Daine and Numair what to do for me. I am tired of being polite. Will you destroy his rope for me?
All through this trip I had watched Spots struggle with this stupid human, who would not learn that Spots could manage himself. I gladly would have done even more than destroy a rope.
“There you are,” the soldier told Spots, his face hard. “All morning and all through my noontide meal, I’ve been lookin’ for you, you cursed contrary beast.” He had his lariat at his side and was swinging the noose easily. “I don’t know how you got away from the lines, but you’ll not do so again!” He flung the noose just as Spots turned out of its path. The noose missed. I shrieked—it was one of my new ones—and noose, line, and coiled rope went all to ash. The soldier swore, hugging his scorched hand to his chest. Then Spots danced up and swung his head hard, right into the man’s chest. The man stumbled, fell, and began to roll down the steep slope to the imperial camp. Spots and I fled, Spots soon getting ahead of me.
When I looked back and could not see the soldier, I whistled up my tornado and swept the hillside. I kept the spinning wind trailing me until I reached Spots. He was waiting patiently for me at the edge of the first barrier spell. I let the tornado go and leaned against my friend’s leg. He still had the bundle.
He nudged me gently. Thank you. I must ask Daine to speak to him again and make certain that he listens this time. The other soldiers have learned, but he is too stupid.
I crooned my understanding and reached out, feeling the barrier. It gave under my paws, making them tingle.
Spots took a step forward. What is this? he asked. His skin twitched all over, but he could move through the magic, whipping his tail as if he were beset by flies. I am no mage, so something has changed this barrier, Kitten.
The second barrier stopped him. It also felt different. It flowed over my outstretched paw like cool soup. I felt no little hands exploring me, and I missed them. Confused, I made a shield for Spots and hissed a spell at the barrier. My breath barely touched it before it vanished.
I followed Spots into the rocks, feeling baffled. These barrier spells were old. Why were they changing now?
Afra was still asleep, but Uday was not. He was amusing himself, playing with magical bubbles that were dark pink, pale green, and bright yellow, all swirling together. Afra’s son’s magic was even stranger than her own. I felt grateful that if she did not know of Uday’s Gift, I would not be the one to tell her. Since her power had brought her such trouble, I could not see her welcoming it for her baby. Maybe Numair would teach her how to be glad of their Gifts.
Spots stayed to guard them. I clambered up onto the orange rock to listen for goats. My luck was in: the herd was grazing not too far away, near the edge of the barrier around the rocks. Swiftly I clambered over that warm, welcoming, orange stone to find them. I was soon in the oddest state of mind. Flashes of green, orange, red, blue, and brown fires filled my vision, then faded. The lands before me were shaped the same, but their covering was different. The areas that did not sprout stone were green with trees and brush, and populated with big animals. There was an enormous shaggy cow—why would I imagine a giant cow? There were zebra, too, like King Jonathan and Emperor Kaddar have in their menageries. That was senseless. Zebra could not thrive in these desert lands. Still, I saw the land as green, so perhaps zebra would do well here.
When I ducked to avoid a large imagination bat, I tumbled down a groove in the orange stone. Luckily for me, the groove was long and cushioned with brush that grew in the earth collected there. I was also grateful that no one was on hand to see me, except for a family of rock hyraxes. They had a good laugh at my expense. I bared my teeth at them, which made them run away. Then I felt small as well as stupid.
At the foot of the stone was open ground where the magical barrier ended. I barely felt the magic’s tingle on my scales as I passed through it. Beyond lay slopes of the black lava rock spotted with brush on its sides. Goats. I was back in the real world, looking for goats.
Pausing on the level ground, I listened for a goat bell and heard one nearby, over the ridge. I trotted over to the black rock and began to climb. Then I halted. The bell was coming closer, and with it, human voices. Hurriedly I drew camouflage colors over myself, blending in with the rock and the scrub. Then I crept forward to listen.
“I don’t want to give up my afternoon’s grazing so this mage can look at the beasts,” I heard a human boy whine. “Make her come out to look at them”—I heard the sound of a slap—“Ow! Ma!”
The goatherd turned to make certain that he had them all and choked. “Ma! Ma, look!”
His mother, a good-sized woman in a headcloth and robe, turned, ready to cuff him. Her hand froze in midair. Only long training for and in battle kept me in my place, hoping that I had not made a mistake in my camouflage. No, they were not staring at me, but at the orange stone to my right and at the open ground before it. The goats were baffled and frightened by the humans’ confusion. They began to bleat their fear.
“That wasn’t there before!” the woman said, drawing the Sign on her chest.
The boy did the same. “The Rock Maze lay in that open ground. We never saw no orange rock!” He ventured forward, his staff outstretched.
“Careful!” his mother cried. “This is magic, it’s folly to meddle with magic!”
The boy stopped just five yards from me and waved his staff, expecting something. He was not the only one. He should have touched the barrier there, and with each step forward that he took. When he stopped to tap the orange stone, he was six feet inside the barrier of magic I’d walked through each time I came here.
His mother could bear it no more. “Leave it!” she cried. “We’re no mages! That’s what ours are for—yes, and those grand ones the emperor has brought! Get away from there before you’re hurt!”
Dragon Book, The Page 46
