Bones of the Past (Arhel)

by Holly Lisle

  Ahead of her Dog Nose darted right, into a less congested aisle, with Runs Slow at his heels. Fat Girl got out of the tight cut-through in time to see a huge puff of green smoke billow up in front of him. The man with the braids and robes stepped out of it and reached at him. Dog Nose yelled, turned, and bolted in the opposite direction. The man chased after him. Fat Girl snatched Runs Slow’s hand and raced behind him. As she passed a stand on which chickens and turkeys sat with their legs tied underneath them, she shoved. The table overturned, the turkeys and chickens went up and over in a flurry of squawks and feathers, and marketgoers and merchants alike began to shout. “Left,” she yelled at Dog Nose. “Go left.” All three tagnu raced down a short aisle where competing rug merchants screamed in Hraddo and half a dozen other tongues that their carpets flew faster or longer or better. If she’d had any idea of how to make it work, Fat Girl would have stolen one. But she didn’t have the time to even ask. The cloud of green smoke burst into existence at the end of the aisle.

  “Right!” Fat Girl yelled, and the three tagnu jumped over a pile of rolled carpets, sent the standing rolls tumbling, and left the rug merchant screeching in their wake. “Faster!” Dog Nose called. “Out!” They were near an exit. Through the opened door, in the deepening gloom, Fat Girl saw a forest of tall, straight wood and draped cloth—Silk People! her mind screamed, even as she realized what she saw were the masts of ships. And beyond them was the vast, dark line of the Great Water. The tagnu were trapped.

  Their pursuer yelled in Hraddo, “Thieves! Catch them!” and four old men looked up from a table where they pushed colored stones back and forth. From either side of the aisle, merchants rushed out of their stalls to capture the tagnu. A giant, dark-haired man grabbed Dog Nose; a woman in red caught Runs Slow and held her, squirming. Fat Girl saw the way ahead was blocked, looked over her shoulder, saw the man with the bearded braid and long robes right behind her, looked ahead again just in time to see one of the old men from the table stand. He also wore long, brightly colored robes, and like the man who chased her, his white beard and long hair were braided and ornamented with gold bands. Seven-Fingered Fat Girl screamed. The old man held out his hands to catch her, she tripped and fell into the board and sent the multitudes of tiny pieces flying, and the dark-bearded man clamped a sharp-nailed hand around her wrist.

  “You come with me,” he told her. “You thieves come with me.” Then, in a different tongue, he talked to the merchants and the old men. The merchants pushed Runs Slow and Dog Nose toward him. Fat Girl kicked and struggled and tried to get her hand to her dart pouch.

  “Wait,” the old man said in Hraddo. He was staring at Fat Girl’s hand, at Dog Nose’s face. “Wait, wait. I know these children. They not steal. They good children—Wen traders.”

  Fat Girl looked at him closely and recognized him as the man who had told her about becks.

  “Yes!” she yelled. “I bring you becks, old man. We find these becks, we bring them you, you trade us good!” She got an elbow into the belly of the dark-bearded man and he snarled something and tightened his grip on her wrist. Then he grabbed onto the tablet tied to her back, and she felt a sort of wrenching, twisting sensation. Green smoke enveloped her.

  Then the dark-bearded man was gone, and with him, her tablet.

  “My beck!” she yelled.

  The old man was looking at Dog Nose. “You have other book, yes?”

  Dog Nose nodded.

  “Then no problem. We find that beck and that saje thief later. Now you come my house, get good food. We trade good.” He turned Dog Nose around, looked at the tablet on his back, and smiled—a tiny, secretive smile. “We trade good-good,” he added.

  The merchants let the tagnu go, and all three of them followed the old man out of the market, and down the windy, drying streets.

  Fat Girl wanted to cry at the loss of her tablet. After everything her tagnu had suffered, now they only had one thing to trade. One beck. Could they buy their freedom with that?

  But the old man seemed happy. Maybe one beck would be enough.

  * * *

  Kirgen snickered, and Roba looked up from her manuscript to see why.

  “I think I’ve found what you need.”

  “Let’s see.”

  “No, just listen.” Kirgen assumed an oratorical pose, one hand pressed against his chest. He translated as he went and declaimed in sonorous, rolling syllables:

  “ ‘Once, it has been said, the First Folk ruled the Northlands. They were cruel masters, exacting tribute from the honest peoples of the South. They built their cities of gold wrung from the sweat and blood of their helpless victims, and demanded half of all jewels, all grains, all fine woods, all fruits and all herdbeasts that each town and city brought forth in every year. And also, they demanded in tithe the fairest and most perfect of the youths of the Southlands, for—’ ”

  Kirgen paused, a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Don’t stop now,” Roba said dryly. “This is delightful stuff.”

  “What’s temrish?”

  “Oh.” Roba closed her eyes and thought. “That’s an old, old term. Bondage of some sort—contractual, I think.”

  “Fine. That makes sense.” Kirgen continued.

  “ ‘—they demanded in tithe the fairest and most perfect of the youths of the Southlands, for temrish, for sport, and for their feasts, which they held in honor of their bloody gods on the day of the mating of the Tide Mother with the Sun. The fairest of the fair the First Folk served up on platters on that day, to sate their abominable hunger.’ ”

  “They ate them?” Roba squeaked.

  “Looks like,” Kirgen said.

  “Ye-e-ech!”

  “So anyway—‘The people of the Southlands, weary of oppression, heartsick at the lost of their loved ones, impoverished, but great in spirit, rose up, and in a mighty tide, stormed to the very lairs of the First Folk, intending to demand their freedom by treaty, or do battle. Long this great army was absent from its home, and long did the patient rulers and councilors wait for word of the battle. Then at last came back one man, crying that all the army were slain, but that the First Folk also were no more. And so saying, he fell to the ground and died, and the rest of the tale died with him. And from that day to this, there has been no call for tribute from the North, and all believe the First Folk to be vanquished, or well and truly dead.’ ”

  “What a happy story. Simply charming.” Roba sighed. “So—the story is that somewhere to the north, there’s a city made of gold, a First Folk city.” She spread her hands and shrugged. “So what?”

  “So—” Kirgen said. “Imagine this. Delmuirie was in the army that went to the north. He rode into the First Folk city, single-handedly conquered the First Folk, and died a mighty hero, after erecting Delmuirie’s Barrier so that Arhel would be safe forever after.” Kirgen crossed his arms over his chest and jutted his chin.

  “Sorry. I don’t buy it.”

  Kirgen winked and laughed. “You aren’t supposed to.”

  “Oh.” Roba leaned back in her chair and stared up at her young assistant. She couldn’t help but think what a pity it was that he wore all those bulky saje robes. She imagined him in the short fishermen’s breeches and light tunics worn by the men in her part of Arhel, and decided even that was more than he needed to wear. “Fine. So we tell Thirk this marvelous little tale—then what?”

  “Then he rewrites our theory, puts his name on it, and claims the scholarship for himself—which in this case is a very good thing. You wouldn’t want your name on this tripe.”

  “True.” Roba stood and gave her assistant a warm smile. “Well, Kirgen, you’re as good as your word. You’ve solved my problem for me. Let’s find a few more quotes. If we’re lucky, by tomorrow morning, I’ll be able to write this up and present it to Thirk—and he’ll pat me on the head and tell me I don’t need an assistant anymore.” She shook her head slowly. “That’s a shame, too. I think I could have gotten used to having an assist
ant.”

  She looked away. When she glanced back, she discovered Kirgen was studying her with discomfiting intensity. “I can think of an advantage in not being your assistant.”

  Roba noted that, irrationally, her pulse sped up. “Really?” she said, fighting back the huskiness that crept into her voice. “And what would that be?”

  “I could tell you how beautiful I think you are—if I weren’t your assistant.”

  Roba shoved her hands into her tunic pockets. She could feel the heat in her face. “You could,” she agreed. “Of course, if you weren’t my assistant, I could tell you how very attractive I find you.”

  She saw Kirgen tense. He slipped off the desk, moved away from her. With his back to her, he said. “I could also tell you, if I weren’t your assistant, that I’ve watched you every minute I’ve been with you—and I’ve never seen anyone as intelligent as you, or as sure of herself. I could tell you I’ve never found anyone I wanted to be with as much as I want to be with you.”

  Roba’s whole body tingled—she felt as though she might stop breathing and explode and catch fire, all at the same time. She walked over to him and rested one hand on his shoulder. She leaned over to whisper in his ear—felt the heat of his skin against her cheek, breathed in the musk-and-soap scent of him—and said, “Tell me that anyway.”

  He turned and her hand fell away. The smallest of distances separated them—they were not touching at all, yet Roba’s body sang at the promise of his skin against hers.

  “I want you.” He whispered it. His upper lip trembled when he spoke.

  She wanted to reach out and touch that trembling lip. Instead, she avoided touching him at all—somehow, she felt that any move in his direction would be irrevocable, would throw her completely out of control. “I want you,” she echoed. “Come home with me tonight.”

  He nodded.

  Very close but not touching, they left her office together.

  Chapter 5

  MEDWIND carried the last of the abandoned skulls into her workroom. She stroked the painted suture line at the top of the skull of Troggar Raveneye, best enemy, and sighed. Where are you hiding, you old bastard? she wondered. Are you safe somewhere? Or have the things that hunt between the worlds gotten at you? She stared off into space, the chill of too-recent terror raising the hair on her arms. I hope all of you can find your way home. I won’t go back looking for you again.

  The front gate slammed shut, and Medwind jumped.

  “Med! Hey, Med! You won’t believe what I found at the market!”

  Found? Medwind wondered. It was Nokar’s day off. He was supposed to be sitting in the geezer corner of the market playing Three-and-One with his cronies, not shopping. Certainly not spending money. Nokar had appalling ideas regarding what constituted a good buy.

  Expecting to be confronted with yet another stuffed kellink-foot drypress-holder or tacky imitation-Proageff tapestry of pudgy nudes on horseback, she hurried into the breezeway.

  He brought home skinny naked kids? She studied the strangers in her hall with surprise and shook her head slowly. Well, that’s a change.

  “You found kids?” she asked, looking at them. They were pitiful. Skinny was only the start—the boy’s face was scarred from forehead to upper lip; his nose split down the middle. The girl was missing the last three fingers on her left hand. All three wore bruises, scrapes, cuts, and the thin pale scars that spoke of more of the same in their short pasts. Their loincloths were torn and filthy. The boy wore a harness of twisted vine—raw spots on the older girl’s skin showed she’d worn one, too. They carried their weapons with a sullen defensiveness and stared at her with untrusting eyes. “Wen kids,” she added, and sighed. “I think I’d rather have had another tapestry.”

  She’d seen Wen kids in the market from time to time—always trading or dickering. They were tough little traders and meaner than the sajes’ lowest hell. The older ones always looked like they’d been run over by a cattle stampede, then threw themselves off a cliff afterwards to mess up anything the cattle missed. She’d never seen an adult Wen.

  But Nokar was shaking his head and grinning like a lunatic. “The kids aren’t what I found—well, they are, but look, Med. Look what the boy has on his back.” In Hraddo, he told the kid to turn around. The boy did, and Medwind got a good look at the tablet he’d strapped there.

  She stared, then moved closer and looked harder. It was a rectangular tablet of something stonelike, luminous off-white, slightly translucent, glossy, and covered by some achingly familiar script that she couldn’t, at that moment, place. She knew that she had never seen anything similar. “What is it?” she asked, fascinated by the odd white material and by the long rows of dots and slashes impressed into the surface. “I know I’ve seen the script before, but where?”

  Nokar cackled and rubbed his hands together. “Think bigger.”

  He was excited—Medwind couldn’t really remember seeing him so obviously thrilled about anything before. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes shone, he seemed to dance without moving.

  Bigger, she thought. Bigger? Bigger what? Bigger tablets, or bigger script?—

  And suddenly she knew. The slashes and dots… carved on stone pillars topped with the carved heads of monsters, left in strangely inaccessible places—it was the same script. “Oh, by the gods,” she whispered. “By the kranjakken gods, that’s a First Folk artifact. Oh, sweet Etyt, Nokar, that’s a hruning First Folk artifact.”

  Everyone knew no portable First Folk artifacts existed. None. The First Folk left the giant carved pillars, a few broken stone domes built high in the mountains, occasional carvings on the sides of rocks—when they vanished into the murky mists of prehistory, they carried everything that could be carried with them. So said conventional wisdom.

  Now here was something that made conventional wisdom appear wrong. “Do you think the tablet is genuine? Is it old—or new? Are these kids First Folk?” Medwind frowned, concentrating. “Did the First Folk become the Wen?”

  Nokar laughed. “I don’t know—and right now it doesn’t matter. There’s more. One of the Tethjan sajes was chasing these kids through the marketplace when they ran into me. He grabbed the tablet the older girl had strapped to her back, and vanished with it. I expect he went to the University—gods know, a find like this would make a scholar’s reputation forever.”

  “Then, if he’s going to claim the find before you, why are you laughing?”

  “Because he may have a tablet, but I have the kids who brought it.”

  Medwind sensed that she wasn’t going to like the direction the conversation was taking. “And… ?” she asked.

  “And with these kids, we can go into the jungle and find the source—maybe a living First Folk village, Med. Maybe a ruin that still has artifacts in it to show us how the First Folk lived.” His voice dropped, became a whisper. “Whatever we find, it will be a link to our real past, to the history we lost in the Purges.”

  “Well, where do they say they found it?”

  Nokar grinned at her. “They won’t say—yet. But I’m going to find a way to get them to tell me.”

  In Hraddo, the girl interrupted. “Where food? Old man say you got food.”

  Medwind arched an eyebrow at Nokar. “You told them we’d keep them?”

  “I told them we’d feed them. I want them around at least long enough to find out where they found the tablets. What if there are more of them, Medwind? What if we could decipher more than the few numbers and symbols we know—if we could truly read the language of the First Folk, think of all we could learn.”

  Medwind felt herself becoming caught up in his excitement. She’d always loved the past. At Daane, history had been a minor subject, overridden by such practical things as research and development, agricultural and livestock sciences, and other current concerns. Medwind’s tendency to bury herself in history books had earned her some derogatory nicknames and had probably been partly responsible for the difficulty she’d found being
accepted. In Nokar, she’d discovered a kindred soul—someone else who saw that past as other than dead and dusty.

  “Don’t dig up the bones of the past, old man,” she’d said more than once, repeating an old Hoos proverb, “—for the past is not dead, and it resents being buried.” That proverb was a joke between them. The living bones of the past called to her as seductively as they did to him.

  “First Folk,” she whispered, and smiled carefully at the three Wen kids. In Hraddo, she told them, “You come-follow. I feed. Later-later we talk trade.”

  Excitement pushed her worry about her missing vha’attaye temporarily to the back of her mind.

  * * *

  Choufa curled on a palmetto mat and looked up at the dark arch of the tree above her. The rain had stopped, and the night echoed with the throb of message drums—nearby, tagnu traders negotiated their right to approach a village for trade goods. Farther off, a village passed along the word that no one had found the rogue band of tagnu who desecrated a sacred path of the Keyu, then vanished into the peknu lands.

  Choufa listened, only mildly interested. Her stomach was full, and she was dry and warm—clothed in coarse ragweave, but clothed, and that seemed good to her. The Keyu were silent, somnolent. Her friends slept around her. The gentle rocking of the tree’s branches lulled her.

  She dozed, only to snap awake, aware that something had changed. Her heart pounded and she froze, eyes still shut, listening. She heard nothing out of the ordinary—the creak of the tree’s branches, the wind through the leaves, drums and animal sounds from the jungle, the steady breathing of the other sharsha near-by-

  —And quicker breathing, very close. A faint, slight shuffle right beside her—her eyes opened as a hand clamped over her mouth.