by Maya, Tara
“Not for hours each day, as I could before,” he said. “You are to come here every day at dawn and return to your stockade by curfew. If anyone asks, they will be told that you help the womenfolk of the local clan fetch water for the quarry workers. I will be nearby, but busy with another task. Each day I will show you the section of tama you are to work on, but then you must have discipline to work on the tama alone the rest of the day. I am going to show you some dances that only Zavaedies learn in the Labyrinth. This is absolutely taboo, but I don’t give a damn. I don’t know another Initiate here who could do it, and I don’t know if you can either, but I am curious to see if you can master the advanced techniques. Again, only if this is what you want. You can still walk away from all this, Dindi. You don’t have to make this sacrifice.”
She walked a little distance from him. The wind scented with grasses whipped her hair past her cheeks and shoulders. From here she could see the quarry where the tiny figures of men wrestled stone from the belly of the earth.
She thought of her beautiful, shameful dream. Her wrists tingled at the memory of imagined leather straps. Her lips felt soft and lonely. Silly girl. He had not brought her here to press his mouth hard against hers.
What he offered was something that Jensi or Gwenika would never understand. Sweet, pragmatic Jensi. Always with a basket or a bit of weaving in her hand…she dedicated her hours, days, and years to fashion things useful to those around her. Dear, kind Gwenika. She had made sacrifices too, in her determination to use her magic to heal those who truly needed her most. Like Jensi’s baskets, Gwenika’s healing had purpose and meaning.
What Dindi wanted to dedicate herself to had to be secret, would probably be useless, and wouldn’t even win her Kavio’s love. Who would sacrifice the beast of Time to accomplish so little?
There was no question about her answer.
“Can we start today?”
Chapter Three
Trust
Brena
Dull pain, worse than mere nausea, churned in the pit of Brena’s stomach. The air smelled of overripe fish and burnt seal blubber, a stench she had promised herself she would avoid for the rest of her life. Yet here she was, once again climbing out of a shaky canoe onto the deck in front of a Blue Waters clanhold. Slimy wood betrayed her hand when she tried to grab the slick wooden post. She slipped and almost fell back into the river. The strong hand of a Blue Waters warrior grasped her arm and pulled her up. The man had dark hair, blue eyes and tattooed muscles, and for a moment her heart leaped: Rthan.
He was not, of course. This man’s face was craggy and lined, not chiseled and cut. He grunted at her, and led her deeper into the clanhold, where a number of elders awaited her.
This was one of those clanholds built over a flat, smooth tributary to the river, entirely on wooden decks held up by huge pylons. The peace party had not stayed here during their journey, but this clan had contacted Vultho that they might be interested in his offer of an alliance in return for sanctuary for the Shunned in case of war. The oiled-skin huts over bone frames looked familiar to her, but in the center of the clanhold, she walked into a surprising scene. A dozen seals sunned themselves on the wood deck. The Blue Waters men and women had gathered in a semi-circle around the seals, who did not seem disturbed by the humans.
Brena scanned the crowd for the Shunned. In every Blue Waters clanhold she had ever visited, there had always been a handful, sometimes more, of the scruffy, ragged beggars, but she didn’t see any here. She wondered if they had been forced outside the palisade altogether.
“Be at home, Envoy of Yellow Bear,” an elder woman said, stepping forward. The auntie wore a seal skin hood over her long white hair and leaned on a bone staff. “We were told that your tribe might be interested in offering us aide against those clans of our own tribe who have allied with the shark Nargano.”
The old woman spit after she said his name.
Surprised at this vehemence, Brena just nodded.
“This is welcome news to us,” said the auntie. “You will understand why.”
She steadied herself on her staff, but otherwise did not move. Neither did any of the other men or women standing there. The silence grew so thick it felt solid. Brena shifted on the balls of her feet, struggling to conceal her discomfort. She had come alone for this journey, which left her at the mercy of her hosts. If they had invited her here as a trap, she would be poorly equipped to escape.
The seals barked.
A strange glow emanated from the seals, and their sleek bodies contorted. The light grew brighter and brighter, until Brena had to turn away. When she looked again, the seals had transformed into a dozen tall men and women in seal skin tunics. Their skin gleamed luminous brown and their eyes were huge and dark, like seal eyes. They almost looked fae, yet were human.
None of them were sick.
“Our secret is now yours,” said the auntie. “I hope your chief will not betray the gift of our trust.”
If her war chief had still been Hertio, Brena would not have hesitated to pledge his resolve. With Vultho leading the warriors….
Brena bowed her head. “Auntie, I will protect your gift with my own life.”
Rthan
Rthan’s old hut had been dismantled after he had fallen in battle, as was customary. During his captivity, his tribe had mourned him as one already dead. On his return to the tribe, a new hut was built. Kinsmen in Sharkshead and others from his birth clanhold, folk who had heard he still lived and come to see if it was true, helped him with the building. Six sturdy rib bones from a whale provided the main support, around which was woven a skeleton dome of femurs and fibulae. Then layers and layers of skins rubbed in lard, fur side down, facing the interior, were stretched tight and lashed to the bones, so that when the hut was finished, it was slick and waterproof on the outside, soft and warm inside. Kinsmen thumped his back and insulted him affectionately, lighting the hearth fire as their last favor before they left him alone in his new house.
The fire burned blue. Against the light, he could see Meira’s silhouette. The little girl stroked a patch of otter fur.
“Otter is my favorite fur,” she said. “I love how thick and supple it is.”
Rthan closed his empty hand. On his wedding night, he had stroked his wife’s hair, whispering to her, “Soft as otter fur.” After their daughter was born, he remembered stroking the soft black down on her head in amazement. “Just like yours,” he’d told his wife.
Meira turned to him, big blue eyes in her heart-shaped face. “I can be a baby if you prefer, Daddy. I can be any age you want.”
“Could you…” Shame filled him at his need. “It is said that other faeries take the shapes of men’s wives, tricking them into infidelity. But you have always appeared to me as my daughter. Never once as my wife.”
“You never objected before.”
“I miss her.”
The little girl shifted and matured. Breasts sprouted, hips widened, hair lengthened. “I can be older, if that’s what you want, Daddy.”
“No!”
“Don’t be angry, Daddy.” Little girl again. About eight, her age when she had been murdered, eight years ago.
“I asked for my wife, not for some sick fae game. Never mind.”
“I will live with you, just as before. I will be everything to you.”
Before. The first days after he had lost his family were a blur to him. Then one day he found the interior of his hut illuminated with an eerie blue glow. His daughter waited for him. He didn’t understand. He thought she was alive, that the attack on the clanhold had all been a terrible dream, he’d even searched the yard for her mother. But as he hugged Meira and rained kisses on her long black hair, he had noticed how coarse and strange it was, how clammy and cool her skin, how pale and bluish. Yet he had not questioned her closely, not at first. Instead, he fed her and told her the jokes Meira had always loved best, just to hear her slightly frog-like laugh.
She had given him the
gift of his own memories, mirrored back to him. His favorite days, like pearls plucked from the oyster husks of his daughter’s life, beaded on a worry string, to be rubbed between finger and thumb in a restless circle. A favorite was the day he had returned after a successful whale hunt, when pungent smoke from roasting blubber permeated everything in the hut. She wheedled him for a piece of the succulent fat, but her mother had said not until the feast that would be shared with the rest of the clan. He’d sneaked her a piece and she popped the whole thing in her mouth. Her cheeks had puffed up just like a walrus. Many, many times they had reenacted the details of that day.
Those reenactments were always missing something, of course. His wife was never there, whereas she should have been. Nor any one else from the clan. If a kinsman came in while the play was in progress, the blue light died, and Meira vanished, leaving Rthan telling jokes to the fur wall. Then, when the interloper finally left, the play would begin anew, all the same words, jokes, and laughs.
Rthan wondered if he could go through that again. What had once been a crutch felt like a net. The thought of repeating, word for word, every line he had exchanged with his dead daughter repulsed him now. The repetition only showed him the one thing the faery could never give him: a woman to hold and love and seed with more children, children who changed with time, who cried as well as laughed, who could one day outgrow him, leave him, and one far day, show him a grandchild with a head of black fuzz soft as otter fur.
The blue light winked out. A moment later, a warrior poked his head into Rthan’s hut.
“Nargano wants to see you.”
Rather than resenting the interruption, Rthan left the hut with a sense of relief. However, he found Nargano in a high dudgeon, stomping around the courtyard from his hut to the huts of his wives and slaves, shouting at cringing warriors. Several miserable waifs lay prone and naked in the dust at his feet. They gibbered for mercy.
Rthan folded his arms. He did not speak, he just waited for Nargano’s rant to make sense. It took some time, because the Blue Waters war chief spent a long time calling insults down on the naked captives, curses which he emphasized with kicks to their ribs and heads.
“I will have no more clans defying me!” Nargano shouted. “It is one thing to deny me an offer of friendship, but to crawl into the hut of my enemy? I will not have it!”
He gestured to his warriors. “Pick this man up!”
The warriors dragged one of the captives up by his arms. For a moment, the fool brightened, as if he dared hope for an improvement in his fate. Then, seeing Nargano reach for a stone blade, the captive blanched and babbled.
“Please, no, please, please….”
Nargano slit open his belly and pulled out a coil of the man’s ropey gut, tossed this around his neck and strangled him with his own intestines. This took a surprisingly long time, during which the only sound in the yard was the wet sound of the man’s tongue slapping against his throat and the sobbing of the remaining captives.
The dead man slumped and dropped to the ground.
“Cut off his head,” Nargano said. “Cut off the ears, noses, fingers and toes of the others. Give them the head and send them home with the message that this will befall any clan who goes over to the enemy.”
Several warriors dragged away the screaming captives. Others hacked the head from the corpse with stone axes. They left the head at Nargano’s feet.
“Rthan!” Nargano noticed him at last. “You will lead a war group and re-take the clanholds that have treated with Yellow Bear envoys.”
“Clanholds? There is more than one?”
Nargano scowled. “A dozen or so, so far.”
“That is…” Rthan cleared his throat. “That is more than I would have believed possible.”
“Even some of the clanholds that formally gave me gifts have gone mad!”
“But uncle, if the defiant clans are truly so numerous, there is no way that I can re-take each one by force. Not if we also want to prepare for war with Yellow Bear. Also…” Rthan had to tread carefully here, “…if you wish to win the friendship of wavering clans, perhaps this is not the best way.”
“I don’t care about their mucking friendship! I want their heads on poles! Don’t give me excuses like a sniveling old woman. I can make you a necklace of your own guts just as easily as I did that dog.”
Rthan stiffened. He did not remind Nargano that he was still the Henchman of the Blue Lady. It would have been undignified to drag her name into this ugliness. However, Nargano sensed the chill in the air, and stepped back. He wiped his feet on a clump of weeds in a useless attempt to wipe off the blood splatter.
“What do you suggest?” Nargano asked finally.
“If Yellow Bear is sending envoys, we should do the same. We do not need to subdue every single clanhold by brute force. If it comes to a fight, you know I am not blood shy. But it would be better if we warn our tribal kin of the dangers of dealing with the treacherous bear-lovers. Most Blue Waters tribesfolk have no love of those filthy flea-bags and will return to our side if we remind them where their loyalties should be.”
“Very well,” Nargano said. “You will go as my envoy to the wavering clanholds. Speak to them softly about tribal love and solidarity.”
Rthan nodded.
“Oh, and Rthan?” Nargano tossed him the gruesome trophy. “Speak softly but carry a bloody head.”
Kavio
Twenty-one men spread out between the redwood trees. Their footsteps made no sound, but they left a clear trail. The soil here was soft and dark, feathered with ferns that curled when brushed by a knee, and pine needles that snapped under the weight of a heel.
“Careful,” said Gremo. As arrow leader, he led all twenty-one men. “Kavio may have circled around behind us.”
“Not possible,” said Tamio. Though only an Initiate, he had already earned the rank of sept leader. “Not unless he cheated and went outside the markers.”
An arrow shot down and hit Tamio in the chest. He yelped and tumbled backward. His skin was a smear of scarlet. More arrows snapped out of the trees. Warriors howled and leaped aside. Some evaded the missiles; others fell to the ground, clutching their chests or legs.
“Where is he? Where is he?” Gremo cried.
“Up in the tree!” Tamio heaved himself up to point.
Gremo shouted and a dozen men aimed their bows up at the tree.
Since they had spotted him, Kavio hung up his bow and leaped off the branch. He dove headfirst toward the ground, but never touched it. The harness and rope he had secured to the branch caught him. He had no weapons, but he needed none. At the lowest point, he grabbed a man around the waist and flipped him to the ground before the bouncy twine yanked him back upward.
He grabbed another branch, kicked off again, and this time he swung to the side, slashing at another man as he sped past. When he grabbed the far tree he kicked his legs again, somersaulted in the air and took the return swing back to the original redwood.
The men were in chaos.
“That muck-assed squirrel!” yelled Tamio. “I’m going to kill him!”
He pulled a rope off his belt. It was attached to a harness already in place, the only thing he wore besides his skin-tight buck legwals. Rocks lashed to the end served as grappling hooks. Tamio wasn’t practiced using the rope; it took him several tries before he lassoed a tree branch securely enough to begin climbing the trunk toward Kavio. He was fast and strong, though. Once he got going, he ascended quickly.
Kavio watched him climb long enough to determine his weaknesses, then drew out his bow and notched another arrow.
Tamio saw the motion and swung away on his rope, narrowly evading the arrow. On the backstroke, he hit the tree with both feet and ran himself rapidly the rest of the way to Kavio’s branch. He jumped onto it with his knife already in hand.
“Hu!” he shouted, triumphantly. “Who is the best now, Zavaedi!”
“Good job, except for one thing,” Kavio said.
Kavio pointed to the stain of red paint on Tamio’s bare chest. “You’re already dead.”
“Just trying to keep the scenario realistic,” Tamio grinned. “One little arrow isn’t enough to kill me!”
“You have to follow the rules of the game.”
“Ha! Like you do, Zavaedi? If Vultho knew you were training us Maze Born, he’d slit your belly from your squash-hole to your zucchini.”
Kavio gripped the branch and shot out both his legs in a flash kick that hit Tamio square in the chest. Tamio plummeted out the tree, though the rope, still attached to his harness, caught and bounced him before he hit bottom. He dangled upside down. Kavio slid down Tamio’s own rope and kicked him again in the butt as he landed.
“Don’t get cocky,” Kavio suggested. “You’re not that good yet.”
“I will be,” Tamio said. He was still upside down. He struggled until he managed to unhitch his harness and drop, right side up, on the ground.
Kavio shook his head. He clapped hands with Gremo, who had acquired a smear of red paint across his throat on one of Kavio’s swings.
“It’s impressive, Zavaedi,” Gremo said. “But you really think we need to hang in trees like possums? Before Rthan left, you were teaching us to swim like otters. First boats, now trees. Can’t we just fight like men, on the solid ground?”
“You fight wherever you have the advantage over your enemy,” said Kavio. “That could be ten spans above the ground or ten spans below it. If we were in the Labyrinth, I’d teach you tunnel fighting too.”
The men groaned.
“Don’t worry, there aren’t enough tunnels here to make that possible,” said Kavio.
“Awww, Gremo would love a chance to be a gopher,” said Tamio.
