by Tara Maya, Elle Casey, J L Bryan, Anthea Sharp, Jenna Elizabeth Johnson, Alexia Purdy (epub)
Despite the enemy’s precautions, your woodcraft whispers certain secrets. The brush of the air on your skin, the texture and tilt of the ground, these tell you you’re heading west, toward the ocean. You know you will be sold as a sacrificial slave, a mariah, as soon as they leave the borders of your clan and tribe, too far away for your kin to find or avenge you. Obedience doesn’t bake well in your oven; you’re certain you wouldn’t last long as a slave. They warn you they will kill you if you don’t do what they want, that your life is worth less to them than a fistful of seed. They call you wormbait, carrion.
Their aim is to make you think you are going to die, and they succeed.
So you have nothing left to lose.
Chapter Two
Rover
Kavio
Kavio stood on the balcony of his father’s house, back in the shadows, and the mob hadn’t seen him yet. That couldn’t last.
The mob filled the dusty streets between the blocks of adobe houses. Torches waved like luminous war banners. The throng had been gathering every evening for days before the trial, shouting for blood. Wild fae whirled around them, vicious little Red and Orange imps, unseen by most of the people in the crowd.
“Death to Kavio! Death to Kavio!” the people shouted.
Kavio inhaled the dry summer night. The decree of the Society of Societies might have been commuted to exile, but he still had to get out of the tribehold alive. Now that he faced a mob ready to rend him limb from limb, he found he preferred life in exile to death after all.
Father, still in his face paint and dance regalia, went to the edge of the balcony. Like the kiva, the adobe house had been painted white and the mud walls of the balcony rose organically out of the lower story of the house. For defensive purposes, none of the houses in the tribehold had doors on the first story. Ladders allowed access between the balcony and the street.
Father held up his arms to silence the crowd. It took some time to still their chanting.
“Your cries have been heard. Justice is served!” he shouted. “Kavio has been judged guilty. He will be exiled!”
This appeased few in the mob.
“In the Bone Whistler’s day he would have been stoned!” someone shouted.
Thunderous rage contorted Father’s face, but he never lost his self-control. “The Bone Whistler is dead and so are his ways. The judgment is exile.”
“Of course the mighty Imorvae War Chief spares his own son!” someone else shouted.
Father’s knuckles whitened on the ledge of the balcony, but his pride would not let him stoop to correct the accusation.
“Let Kavio begin his exile, here, now!” cried another voice. “We’ll see how long it lasts!”
Ugly laughter rippled through the crowd.
“Lower the ladder,” Father said to the Tavaedi warriors who still guarded Kavio.
Even the guards looked dubious. “The crowd will rip him apart as soon as he’s down the ladder.”
“Lower the ladder,” repeated Father.
Kavio might have expected Mother to object to this, but she had not accompanied Kavio and Father back to their house from the kiva. In her typical way, she had disappeared without a word of goodbye. I guess she hasn’t forgiven me for turning down her offer.
The warriors lowered the ladder to the street. The crowd began to cheer. Someone took up the chant again.
“Death to Kavio! Death to Kavio!”
He knew his cue when he heard it, Kavio thought sardonically. He stepped forward into the torchlight and the sight of the mob. Another roar went up in the mob, and so many people tried to press close to the ladder that it almost fell into the street. One of the men pushed back the others, shouting, “Let him come down first, if he dares!”
“That’s my invitation, I believe,” he said to Father, grasping the ladder.
“If new evidence or new witnesses step forward to exonerate you,” Father said, “You could resume all your duties as a Zavaedi in the Labyrinth. Is there anything you want to tell me, Kavio, which you didn’t want to say at the trial?”
Kavio thought of Zumo, and what he might have said, did his cousin not share Auntie Ugly’s unreasoning hatred of everything Kavio was. The chances that Zumo would change his testimony seemed slight. To say the least.
“Goodbye, Father.”
He swung his legs around and descended the ladder into the waiting crowd.
They didn’t even let him climb down the ladder, but shook it and pushed it over. He flipped in the air as he fell and landed on his feet, but at once, enraged men and women assaulted him from all sides, some with their hands and feet, some with rocks and sticks. The sheer volume of kicks, sticks, punches, pinches and pummels drove him to the dust in a heap of bruised flesh.
And he thought he had been ready to die. He fought for every last breath, made them pay for every blow with two blows back of his own, but still they were winning, they were going to beat him to death right under his own balcony, as Father watched impassively from above.
A strong arm clasped and dragged Kavio back to his feet. He could breathe again.
“The judgment was exile!” his helper shouted at the crowd. “You will not commit murder tonight!”
Blood dribbled into his eyes, so it took Kavio several blinks to realize who had saved him.
“Zumo,” he said hoarsely. His mouth tasted of blood and dust.
“I’ll escort you out of the tribehold, cousin,” Zumo said evenly. He snapped his fingers. Several other Tavaedis, all Zumo’s hangers-on, formed a defensive square around Kavio and Zumo.
The crowd jeered at Kavio as they passed, and a few of the braver ones hurled rocks or mud at him. He felt the shame of his nakedness strongly, not because of the attire itself, but because of the ashes smeared over his chest and thighs. He tried to hold his head up proudly rather than hunch over and shield himself from the taunting mob. He wondered which was worse, to need the protection of his enemy to walk the streets of the tribehold, or to wonder at its price.
“I thought you cast your stone on the black mat. Why are you suddenly so eager to keep me alive now when you wanted me dead this afternoon?”
“Ah, the stone. Mother suggested it would look more believable. But the fact is, I’ve got what I wanted,” Zumo said.
Kavio pressed his lips together.
“This doesn’t have to be forever, Kavio.”
“What?”
Zumo gestured to Kavio’s bloody, ash-smeared body. “This. Your exile.”
“That’s not the judgment I heard.”
“There is a way that an exile may be allowed to return—if he is pardoned by a War Chief or a Vaedi. Your father can never pardon you, because his impartiality would be called into question. But I could.”
“You?”
“After your father steps down, a new War Chief will have to be appointed,” Zumo went on. “It would have been you before. Now it will be me.”
Kavio felt sick. “Congratulations.”
They had arrived at the large wooden gates at the entrance of the tribehold. There were too many warriors on guard at the gate for the mob to follow. Muttering, the crowd dispersed.
“If you would agree to serve me loyally, I would let you back into the Labyrinth as a Zavaedi again,” Zumo said. He sounded as though he thought he was truly doing Kavio a favor. “I mean it.”
Kavio laughed. He looked his cousin up and down in contempt. “Never forget, I know what you really are, Zumo.”
Hatred boiled in Zumo’s face. And fear. “No one would believe you.”
“Don’t worry.” Kavio’s lips twitched in a self-mocking smile. “I know that. That’s not the point. The point is, I know what you are. And I would rather live in exile the rest of my days than serve a man who lives a lie every day of his life.”
“Be careful, Kavio. Death might still find you.”
“It finds us all in the end, doesn’t it? Goodbye Zumo.”
Outside the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehol
d, no mobs harassed him and no enemies taunted him. Fields that smelled of sweet maize surrounded him. The tribehold stood on a mesa in a large box canyon cut by a river. Irrigation ditches and low stone walls divvied up the fields. The sparkle of willawisps blinked on and off against the night sky. He decided he would walk as far as he could by dawn before he stopped to consider camping. He had no sleeping roll, no pack, no water gourd, not even a weapon.
When the moon rose, he started to scan the valley for the journey omen. He admitted he was vain enough to hope for something noble, a nighthawk or a cougar, but no living creature crossed his path. All he found was the shed skin of a snow snake, luminous white, perfectly intact and as long as his arm. Snow snakes were rare creatures, which lived high in the mountains, but once a year they shed their white skins for jet black scales and descended by the hundreds to mate in the hot desert valleys. A poor omen, he decided. Even after he found the skin, he kept an eye out for a cougar.
He had walked most of the night when he heard footsteps paralleling his. He tensed.
Mother stepped out from the rows of maize. She seemed to glow white in the moonlight. He felt absurdly glad to see her, surprised yet not surprised to find her out here, just where the tilled fields gave way to wild forest. He quickened his step to join her, but when he saw her face, full of pain, he stopped short of embracing her.
She had not forgiven him. Aching inside, he mulled her painful words to him during their fight. You can’t even do this one thing for me.
He remembered reaching toddler-chubby arms up to her, commanding, “Fly with me!” She would sweep him up, as her wings spread behind her, until they rode the wind. Father hated those flights; Mother and Father always fought about it afterward. To stop the yelling, Kavio had learned to stop asking her to fly.
When he’d been seven years old, she’d sewn him his first dance costume, the most wondrous thing he’d ever seen, of spider silk and parrot feathers, cowrie shells and rainbow stitches. He’d ripped it up in front of her. She’d never sewn him another one.
Little by little, over the years, he had pushed her further from him. It was the price he’d paid to please his father.
He wanted to say: I’m sorry. To say: I love you.
He wanted to say: Fly with me.
Instead, his words tumbled out like stones on a slippery mountain trail, hard and impatient. “Just before the trial, you said you wanted me to look for the Vaedi, that humankind would perish if I didn’t. I can go now.”
Mother’s chalcedony bracelets chimed when she shrugged. “I don’t remember saying that.”
“This quest was supposedly so important you told me it was worth dishonoring myself to flee in secret rather than attend my trial. You don’t remember?”
“I thought they would execute you.” The scent of ripening corn wafted from the fields. Mother’s nose wrinkled slightly in distaste. She’d never liked corn, something she’d only eaten after she married Father. “I must have concocted wild things to save you.”
Why had he thought otherwise? She would never change.
“This is the last time I’ll see you, Mother.” He was proud of his straight back. He would not let himself scratch the dried mud that caked his body, though it itched like crawling flies.
She ruined the solemn moment by crying. He let her hug him and weep into his chest. He patted her shoulder. He realized he had been looking forward to her quest, to give him purpose in his exile. In his mind, he tore up the idea of finding the Vaedi, and all the other crazy things his mother had urged him, all lies, all spider-silk and parrot feathers.
As he walked away, the mud didn’t itch as badly. Her fierce hug had rubbed away most of the dust cake, leaving behind only a stain.
Rthan
Rthan surveyed the damage to his water spell. Weeks of fasting, planning, traveling and dancing, ruined. The careful crystalline lines he had built up around the mountain snows had been realigned, diverted. His original configuration would have unleashed a flood of snowmelt several months from now, with spring’s kiss. No longer. The new glowing blue lines of magic would sluice the melt water harmlessly down a dozen smaller arroyos, instead of toward the enemy settlement in the main valley below the mountain. Someone had protected the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold.
“Who could have done this?” he asked aloud.
The other six men and women with him only mirrored back to him his own bafflement and bemusement. They shivered and wheezed in the snow, not used to either the temperature or the altitude. He knew they were wondering if he would order them to stay the long weeks required to dance the entire spell again.
He wasn’t really speaking to the little girl at his side. Nonetheless, she looked up at him with large, grave eyes.
“Kavio the Rain Dancer,” she said. She had joined him almost unnoticed.
Meira. His daughter, his only child, was only eight, but already she promised to be a classic beauty. Her long, straight black hair was knotted by strings of pearls in twists that reached her ankles. Her tiny face was a perfect moon, her mouth an adorable pink shell, and her eyes deep tide pools reflecting the shades of the ocean and the sky. People said she looked like him, but miniaturized and refined. He was a bulky, tattooed tower of muscle, with his long hair disciplined into a top tail of tiny braids to mark his kills. She was an adorable pixie doll.
Meira. His daughter, his only child, had died six years ago. He knew this, knew the person at his side wasn’t really Meira, and yet, he couldn’t stop the love and pain he felt every time he looked at her, glowing faintly blue by his side.
The six with him were all Blue Tavaedies, and they could see her, not as Meira, but as an azure radiance too brilliant to bear. They knew he sometimes called her by his dead daughter’s name, and because of that and because her power frightened them, her presence spooked them. They backed away now, shielding their eyes.
“Should we break camp?” asked Rthan’s second in command, Dorthamo. The man’s gaze slipped past the shimmering blue girl, back toward the lean-tos and campfire along the shore of the frozen tarn. “If we don’t leave now, we won’t have time to do the primary hex.”
“If we hex the Yellow Bear tribehold, but leave their allies unmolested, their allies will still be free to come to their aide during the attack,” Rthan said.
Dorthamo’s face sagged. “Yes…”
“But if we stay longer, the pass will freeze over and we won’t be able to return at all,” Rthan said. “We must break camp. We must cast the primary hex. Or call off the venture entirely.”
“I don’t think the War Chief would agree to canceling.”
“Neither do I,” said Rthan. He waved. “Go ahead. Break camp. I need a moment to speak to…”
“Her?” Dorthamo still wouldn’t look at Meira.
Rthan nodded.
Dorthamo swallowed hard. “Is she angry?”
Afraid to hear the answer, he scuttled away before Rthan could reply. The others hastened after him, and began to disassemble the hide tents.
The little blue girl slipped her hand into Rthan’s, just as his daughter had so many times.
“I’m not mad at you, Daddy,” she said.
“Don’t call me that. I can’t…” He pulled his hand away. “You said Kavio the Rain Dancer did this. Then the Rainbow Labyrinth must know of our spell. They will try to retaliate.”
“No.” A breeze lifted strands of her hair to play in a chilly wind. Dark, inhuman power shone from her eyes, belying the innocence of her child’s face. “They are fools. As for Kavio....”
She smiled at him, but it wasn’t the smile of a mortal child. The coldness of glaciers and the ruthlessness of typhoons glinted in that cruel smile. He shivered. He loved her. She was all he had, since the murder of his family. He had to admit, though, she terrified him even more than she frightened the others. He knew her better.
Kavio
Three days out from the tribehold, Kavio found his first fight. Rovers, men who had left their
birth clan, but not yet married into a new allegiance, often traveled together in packs, like wild dogs, and like dogs, they hunted. Sometimes for need, sometimes for pleasure.
Three dropped onto the path in front of Kavio. One was missing his nose and ears, which meant he was probably a mariah, a captive destined for human sacrifice, who had escaped in the middle of his torture. The other two were undoubtedly exiles like Kavio, judging by the whip marks on their backs, though they did not wear their mud and ashes, and he assumed had no compunction against carrying out more of the crimes which had won them expulsion.
To his surprise, the rovers didn’t attack. They invited him back to their campfire. Shrugging, he accepted—was he any better than they? He found their lack of either resentment or awe oddly refreshing.
“Do you know who I am?” Kavio couldn’t help but ask them.
The noseless, earless one grinned. “I don’t care, Exile. Don’t you understand? This is your chance to escape who you are, become who you want.”
In their camp, they had a captive, some toothless old man, whom they’d tied to a tree. Taking turns, each rover sliced a piece of flesh off the old man’s thigh, ignoring his piteous howls, then tossed the meat on a rock in the fire and ate it.
“We eat first,” the leader, the earless one said, “Then we dance and invite the fae to eat the rest. Who says you have to be a Tavaedi to dance? The fae don’t care who serves them, or how well you dance, only that you do.”
None of the three had magic in their auras, save for a few wild, random glimmers born of strong hates and brooding envies, but—and this was kept secret for this very reason—fierce emotion alone could do damage if combined with dancing, especially if the fae were involved, never mind blood sacrifice and dark bargains. When my Father looks at me, thought Kavio, is it these men he sees?
“So you’re hexers,” Kavio said, “as well as cannibals?”
