by J. S. Bangs
“If there were a loose ram somewhere, where would it flee to?” Aryaji said. She rose to her knees and began to look around.
“Get down,” her uncle hissed, but she waved him off.
“No one is watching. Glanod said.”
“But if someone sees—”
Aryaji pointed to a hazy, crumpled band of hills to the northwest of the city. “In the hills, yes? A free sheep could wander off that way.”
“If anyone was fool enough to let their animals go, they could,” Glanod grumbled. “But would they?”
“Does it seem to you that the people of these villages left in great care?” Aryaji said. “They fled the Mouth of the Devourer.”
“Or they joined him,” Vapathi said flatly.
“All of those animals would have been eaten already,” Nakhur said, shaking his head. “I don’t see—”
“And there is the watchtower,” Aryaji said, pointing to the gray stone spire rising next to the north road. A long black scar of burned brush extended down from the hills beside the road and across the plains. “It doesn’t look like it’s occupied. We could see for miles from there.”
“And look for what?”
“Anything.”
Glanod grumbled, a rumbling deep in his belly. He gave Aryaji a suspicious stare.
Vapathi stood abruptly. “It’s better than nothing,” she said. Her limbs seemed to move like lead.
Aryaji stood with her. “Let’s go.”
The men followed them without another word. Glanod’s long strides took him ahead of them. He didn’t bother trying to hide from anyone on the walls. There was a thin, dusty path that wound through the open fields and abandoned rice paddies toward the great north road. The gray watchtower rose above the tops of the trees. It took them an hour of walking to reach it, and when they did they found the door at the base broken and unlocked, with no sign of sentries at the top.
“Go up?” Glanod asked.
“I’m going, at least,” Aryaji said. She pushed through the door. Nakhur motioned for Vapathi and Glanod to follow.
The interior of the tower smelled like burned wood, dust, and old lamp oil. There was enough space at the bottom of the tower for a few bunks, and stairs that climbed the interior of the stone wall. The stairs creaked as they ascended in silence. Aryaji reached the top and heaved open the wooden trapdoor, then they clambered onto the platform.
Vapathi took a deep breath as they stepped out. The whole valley of Virnas was laid out before them: the half-empty bed of the Maudhu river to the south, the stony bluffs of Virnas rising in an elbow of the river, the gray stone walls of the city rising from atop the hills in staid silence. The bulbous peaks of the palace showed above the walls, and the pinnacle of the temple of Chaludra glittered like a needle of gold in the late morning sun. Surrounding the city were a withered yellow plain, empty fields, and shriveled grasses, striped with brambles of dried scrub and browned stands of trees. To the north the great road climbed a gentle ridge, and in the north and the south rolled lines of hills. A scar of fire-blackened earth reached from the east to the west, petering out sometime before it reached the hills.
“What are we looking for?” Glanod said as he heaved himself through the trapdoor. He leaned against the parapet atop the tower and looked around.
“Villages,” Nakhur said. “Villages which might have animals left alive.”
“There and there,” Glanod said, pointing out two clusters of square, slumping buildings that stood out on the plain to their west. Neither had any sign of movement. One of them was blackened with fire. “And there’s more to the south.”
“No good,” Nakhur said shaking his head. “I mean, we could try them, but they look like farming villages. They would have been the worst hit by famine.”
“Aren’t all villages farming villages?” Vapathi asked. She had never been a farmer, and she only dimly remembered the mountain village of her childhood.
“Some are shepherd’s outposts,” Glanod said. “Like that one.”
He pointed to the northwest. Vapathi followed his finger and spied the gray and brown bluffs, just barely visible through the haze. At the base of the bluffs were sprinkled a few tiny structures, the size of mites at this distance, and a scratch in the scrub which might have been a fence.
Nakhur let out a long sigh. “Probably our best bet. Awfully far from here, though. We’ll be walking all day to reach it.”
“We’ll pass through two other villages on our way,” Glanod said. His finger traced out a just-visible footpath that wandered through two settlements before it reached the hills along the horizon. “Maybe get lucky.”
“The stars upon us. We could use a little luck.”
They looked at each other for a moment, then without a word Nakhur began to descend the stairs, and the others followed.
Vapathi doubted they would find anything. She followed out of inertia. She followed on the small chance they might save her brother.
Their path took them through two of the farming villages they had spotted from the tower: tiny, abandoned strips of slumping mud huts, with empty rice paddies and ruined gardens. There was nothing in them, no sign of any living creature other than birds and lizards. Insects buzzed in the windows. They spent a few minutes searching each one, but they found nothing.
The sun was a handspan above the western horizon by the time they reached the village Glanod had spotted from the tower. From the ground it looked even less impressive than it had from a distance. Rocky hills rose out of the plain, brown stones streaked with black, the space between the rocks filled with thorny brambles and scrub palms with narrow leaves. On the north faces, taller pines shaded the rocky ground. All along the base of the hills was a haphazard cluster of structures. They seemed to have been on the verge of ruin even before they had been abandoned, slumped over where the mud bricks had crumbled, with palm thatch that was rotting and turning black.
“Not a great place,” Nakhur said, looking the outpost over with disgust. “Do we even know if they kept sheep here?”
“Look,” Glanod said, pointing to a wooden shack a hundred feet up the side of the hill. A fence patched together from clay walls and wooden gates surrounded it. “If that isn’t a sheep pen, I don’t know what it is.”
They passed through the empty village and climbed toward the abandoned pen. The gate was open, the wooden beams splintered, and the ground around the entrance was dried mud, trampled by hundreds of hoof-prints. The door of the little shack hung open. Glanod stuck his head in for a moment, then returned with a grin.
“They definitely had sheep here. The whole thing smells like wool, and there’s little scraps of hide drying on the walls.”
“But are any of them alive?” Nakhur said.
Glanod shrugged. “They aren’t here. But if there was any flock left and the shepherd let them go into the hills….”
He looked up the hill toward the scrub and pine and shrugged.
“We split up,” Nakhur said. “These hills could go on for miles. We have no other choice. There’s still a few hours before dark. Everyone get as far out as you can, then return here before it gets too dark.”
He hesitated, looking at Vapathi. “Will you be okay?”
Did she look as bad as that? At least she wasn’t weeping. She wasn’t sure she had the strength left to weep.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I can help you look.”
“Be back here by dark, then,” Nakhur said. He pointed to the north. “I’ll go that way. Glanod, you go west, straight up the hill. Aryaji, to the south, along the ridge, and Vapathi to the southwest.”
Everyone nodded. Glanod began plodding up the rocky hill with fast, heavy strides. Nakhur turned to the north and left.
Aryaji turned to the south, and Vapathi followed her for a little ways. There was a path—well, maybe not a path, more like a bald place in the rocks and grass, but at least a place she could walk—but she had to follow Aryaji for a while to reach it. Aryaji slow
ed and let Vapathi fall in beside here.
“We’ll find something,” the girl said as soon as Vapathi had come up beside her. She squeezed Vapathi’s shoulder.
Vapathi didn’t answer for a while. “How do you know?” she said at last.
“Ulaur is with us,” the girl said with confidence.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I have faith in any of the Powers to save us. Not after….”
Aryaji smiled at her. “You know,” she said softly, “I’m glad I didn’t tell the others who you were at first.”
Vapathi shivered. “I thought you’d regret that.”
“Not at all,” Aryaji said. She stopped at the place where the tiny path through the scrub split. Vapathi looked up the hill to the west. This was where they needed to part. “I wanted you to come with us. It was the right thing to do.”
“I suppose the amashi told you to do that.”
She laughed, a clear, girlish shard of joy. “The amashi helped me see who you were, but I chose to keep your secret. You needed friends.”
A splinter of regret pricked Vapathi’s heart. “And look where it’s gotten you.”
“Right where I need to be,” Aryaji said. She grabbed Vapathi’s hand, pulled Vapathi close and kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t be afraid. Find us a ram.”
She let go of Vapathi’s hand and scampered down the path. Vapathi watched her go, and with a strange, unfamiliar feeling of lightness in her heart she began to ascend.
She would never understand the Uluriya. The Powers had never done anything for her, and she had never done more than she absolutely had to appease them. She had given her dhaur when her masters had brought their household to the temples, but even that had stopped once she and Kirshta had entered Ruyam’s service. The only person she had counted on was Kirshta.
And that had turned out so well.
But here was Aryaji, tormented by spirits, doomed to die, looking hopelessly for an animal to sacrifice in a deserted shepherd’s station. And she talked brightly of the care of Ulaur and found time to reassure Vapathi. She shook her head.
The light was already coming in at a sharp angle, casting deep shadows down the side of the hill and making pockets of cool darkness in the path. She picked her way over the rocks, looking for bits of dung or any other sign that a living animal had been here recently. Here and there were wisps of wool caught on a thorn, but how long had they been there? She heard no sound and saw no whisper of movement.
The sun sank lower in the sky. She scrambled up the face of the hill, over dusty stones and into a ravine shaded with pines. Down one side and up the other, until she emerged from beneath the pines onto a hilltop covered with stunted palms and dried, close-cropped grass. All except the top rind of the sun was hidden behind the horizon in the west, and the palms cast stretched shadows over the stones in the orange light.
She searched the top of the hill, then headed over the crown to peer into a dense forest on the other side. Nothing, and she didn’t dare descend farther into the forest in the failing light. If it got much darker she wouldn’t be able to see well enough to cross the ravine.
Back into the little strip of pine forest that surrounded the ravine. Here it was very dark, and she could barely see the path she had walked in on—if it even was a path and not her imagination. She followed a line of bare stone for a while, then stopped.
This was not the way she had come. She was lost. Back toward the west, then a different path forward.
No, this was not the way, either, she realized as the stones scattered away from her. But maybe she could go on. Climb down through the ravine before it got too dark and find the path on the other side. It shouldn’t be that hard to get through the hills and back to the shepherds’ village.
She walked cautiously forward through the gloomy forest. Ahead, the chasm yawned. She heard Aryaji’s voice.
“Vapathi!” the girl was calling. She was on the other side of the ravine.
“Here!” Vapathi called in response.
“Are you well? Where are you?” She could hear the distant crackle of brush, but couldn’t see where Aryaji was.
“On the far side of the ravine. Don’t worry, I’m coming. I’ll get to you in a moment.”
“Hurry,” Aryaji said. “I don’t want to be climbing through the mountains in the dark.”
Vapathi walked forward as quickly as she dared. The roots of pines lay across the path, gnarled and twisting.
One of the roots moved. She leaped back and screamed.
A rapid slithering over the stones. The cable that had laid across the path coiled itself into a loop and raised its head. Its head rocked. It hissed. Vapathi took a step away.
The viper struck.
The serpent. The emblem of She Who Devours. Even here she finds you.
The stones beneath her feet slipped. Pain shot up her heel, a burning pang rising up her leg, a pain more intense than any she had known. She scrambled away, screaming. The darkness of the ravine opened in front of her. She shrieked and grabbed for a pine branch, but missed. She fell.
A moment of tumbling over rain-worn rocks and tree roots. The world spun, and her back slammed against something. Her breath disappeared.
She skidded to a stop. The venom burned in her leg. Nausea overtook her. For a long moment, she didn’t move, willing her lungs to open and let in air. She gasped, whimpered, and gasped for air again.
“Vapathi!” Aryaji called. “What happened?”
“Help,” she cried, barely able to speak. Her breath came in short, shallow gulps. Her vision swam. “Help.”
“Are you hurt?”
“A viper,” she gasped. Somewhere overhead there was the sound of motion. “Help me, Aryaji.”
“I’m going to go get Nakhur and Glanod,” she said. “There’s no way I can get you out alone. Wait for me!”
The sound of movement at the top of the ravine, and Vapathi was alone.
She opened her eyes. The steep sides of the ravine rose above her, fading red light showing through the branches of the pines overhead. The ground beneath her was wet and slippery. Some mountain spring opened near here, and its trickle wet the bottom of the ravine. Her stomach rocked with nausea. Bile rose in her throat.
Time grew strange. She felt the water trickling under her fingers. Darkness. She vomited. The stars came out overhead, twinkling with red light. Her legs were numb. Her hands throbbed. The stars tilted and whirled. The moon was the color of blood, then it was white, then it turned black.
The water under her fingers was warm. Was it water or blood? She heard movement overhead.
No, not overhead. Behind her. Soft wet footsteps in the blood seeping from the side of the hill. She could not turn her head to see who came.
Feet passed by her. Bloody feet, red up to the knees. Someone walked past her. A clicking sound, like a bronze knife striking against a stone. A hand appeared in her vision and motioned for her to follow.
Whimpering with pain, she pushed herself to her knees and tried to stand. She slipped once, banged her shins against as stone, then pulled herself the rest of the way up.
The bloody figure stood ten feet ahead of her in the ravine, silhouetted in the cold moonlight, his face invisible. She staggered toward him.
With the clatter of bones knocking together, he turned and climbed over an outcropping of stone. She tripped, banged her knee on a rock, and could not rise again. She crawled forward, her hands growing wet with the blood that flowed down the ravine.
Was it blood? No, it was cool, clean water again. And then she saw them.
A nanny goat with two kids in the darkness beneath one of the rocks. A bramble shaded this place from view, so she would never see them were she not at the bottom of the ravine itself. The animals must have climbed into the ravine looking for the spring.
They didn’t move, but watched her with narrow yellow eyes. Tame, probably. Abandoned. Whimpering with pain, Vapathi hobbled toward them.
“Hello,” she sa
id. “Are you…?”
They didn’t flee. One of the kids bleated.
“Don’t run,” Vapathi said. She pulled up a handful of grass from the muddy ravine floor and held it out toward them.
The nanny approached her. There was a rough rope around its neck, the remnants of a lead. The nanny leaned forward and nibbled from Vapathi’s hand, and with a sudden move she grabbed the hemp.
The motion made her cry with pain, and the nanny tried to scamper away. Vapathi tightened her grip. The nanny struggled for a moment, then Vapathi lay her hand on the goat’s head. The animal calmed.
“We need to get back to the others,” she said. Her breath started to come a little more easily. “If I ever get out of the damn ravine.”
She started to pull the goat after her, and as she hoped the two kids scampered after them, skittering deftly over the stones. She got three paces before her nausea and the shaking in her legs made her stop. She slid down onto a stone beside the trickle of water and rested her head on the goat’s back.
“I suppose we wait here until morning, eh?” she said. “Too bad we’re going to have to kill one of your kids.” She paused. “But I’m going to die, too. We all become sacrifices when we have to.”
The cold stone underneath her seeped into her flesh. The nanny lay on the ground, and the two kids came up and nuzzled next to her.
She couldn’t go to sleep. Couldn’t let the goat get away. But she lay back, closed her eyes, and waited until dawn.
* * *
“Vapathi!”
It was Aryaji’s voice. She came awake in a moment, and panic set in.
“The goat,” she whispered. “Where’s the goat?”
She stood up, her cold-hardened muscles aching, venom burning in her limbs. She couldn’t lose it, it was the whole reason—
No, it was there, a few feet away, dozing in the grass. “Good girl,” she whispered. She crossed the trickle at the bottom of the ravine and took the goat’s collar.
“Vapathi!” called the voice again.
“I’m here!” Vapathi shouted back, then bent over coughing with pain.
Muffled murmuring somewhere nearby. “Where are you?” Aryaji shouted.
