by Maya, Tara
Rthan stared at her in revulsion.
The Blue Lady didn’t care. Ugly and terrifying as she was, she still exuded all the power of sea and wind and rain, and she was sure of her hold on her Henchman. She jabbed a finger at him and screamed.
“He’s trying to distract you from my sister! She is the important one. Go stop her!” She cackled. “I will take care of the White Lady’s Curse-bringer son!”
Her transformation continued until she no longer looked even remotely human. Her jaw extended and expanded, her scale skin grew even rougher and bluer, fins grew from her back and arms, until she transformed into a primordial giant, a megalodon shark whose jaws alone were larger than a great white.
The megashark lunged at Kavio. He ran like a cat on fire, and somersaulted into a house for shelter. Jaws snapped shut over the entire house, shattering the clay into pieces. The megladon was so huge that even the ground beneath the house gave way, and the whole ledge of the tor crumbled into the water. Kavio gasped for one last breath before the shark bore him down beneath the cold steel waters.
Brena
The Golden Lady, still in her bear form with Brena riding on her back, reached the hill still above waterline. Here the palisade had been torn out and the fighting between the defending and attacking humans had already moved inland. The Golden Lady clambered out of the water.
However, most of the Brundorfae remained in the water, where they caused havoc among the Blue Waters kayaks. Bears pawed the sides of the boats, tipping them over. The terrified men inside shot arrows at the bears, harpooned them, and speared them, but they could not fend off the bears fast enough. Besides, what sailor had prepared himself to fight swimming bears? The shear terror of their snapping jaws and immense bulk, when they heaved themselves into the boats, panicked the doughtiest warriors.
“Dismount, but do not let go,” instructed the Golden Lady in her honey voice.
Brena slid off her back, keeping one finger touching the Lady’s back. It wasn’t easy, for the she-bear shook the water and biting Blue pixies from her fur. Then the Golden Lady shifted forms, into a tall, slender woman in amber jewels and canary flowers, and she took Brena’s hand in hers.
“Dance with me, my champion,” she said. “We will call forth the sun.”
“I do not know the steps,” Brena apologized.
“Dance with me,” repeated the Golden Lady. She began to sway.
Then Brena saw that she did recognize the dance after all. It had been taught in the kiva, in less wild and fast paced a form, as Building the Ladder to the Sun Dance – the most ancient and revered tama of her people. She joined the Golden Lady. Other Brundorfae joined them, no longer as bears, but as beautiful lords and ladies in garments of caramel brocade and lemonade gauze.
Rthan
Rthan felt the rain thin. He broke into a run. The Blue Lady had warned him about this. Somewhere, the Golden Lady’s Henchman was dancing the sun free of the clouds. If he didn’t stop it, the conquest of Yellow Bear might fail. Though his Lady had disappeared into the lake with Kavio, other Merfae, looking like lords and ladies in silver scaled armor, gathered behind him as he searched for the dancer.
A Merfae lord in a magnificent otter fur cape touched Rthan’s shoulder. Granted extended vision from the contact, Rthan saw a golden light streaming up from the earth like a mirror of the sun. Graceful Yellow faeries danced all around the light. The Golden Lady’s Henchman. No – Henchwoman, he saw, as he neared…
Brena.
The Brundorfae howled and Merfae screeched and ran toward one another to fight. Rthan clutched his mace and walked to Brena, who now stood alone, as he was alone, in the midst of fae preoccupied with each other.
The fatal blow could be his, if he hit her from behind. A memory squeezed the strength from his arm. Brena’s breasts and hip outlined in hearthlight. Warm darkness filled with the scent of rosemary and sage. The whisper of his name on her lips floating toward him in the darkness, and then her touch.
Brena turned to face him. Comprehension flooded her face. “So you are my enemy.”
“I have no choice.” He lifted his mace. She was a Healer, not a warrior, she had no chance of stopping him, but she stepped toward him, full of pride and challenge.
“Mother! Watch out!”
Gwenika emerged from behind a beehive house and raced to the shore, apparently under the lunatic delusion she could help her mother. But she could not see half the fae present, including, for her, the more dangerous half. She trammeled right into a Merfae, who shoved her aside with the point of his spear.
Gwenika fell. Her blood was shockingly red.
Had his daughter fallen like that, slapping the ground with the same sound of a newly caught fish hitting the bottom of the boat? Had her face tilted back to plead for mercy from the empty sky, blind to the fae who surrounded her? Had she too, cried, “Mother!” Had she clutched her side to keep her own intestines, like writhing pink worms, from spilling out? Had she keened in pain?
Merfae grinned like sharks and raised their spears to finish her life.
“No!” Rthan swung his mace left and right and smashed the blue fae to gray dust. He slew more Merfae.
“Leave!” And more.
“Her!” And more.
“Alone!”
Shrieks undulated, fish scales splattered through the air. The remaining Merfae rushed him but they only saved him the trouble of hunting them down. He slew schools and pods of them.
Until none remained.
“I am no longer your Henchman!” he shouted at the empty waters.
He fell to his knees, head bowed.
The rain patter slowed, then stopped. Clouds ripped open onto clear sky and the brilliant yellow sun. Beams streamed from the sky, and sliding down them was a parade of Yellow sylphs in diaphanous gowns and capes, armed like warriors with round gold shields and gold tipped spears. The surface of the water turned from blue to gold wherever they touched down on their beams of sunlight. Soon the lake in the flooded valley scintillated like a smithy’s pot of molten bullion.
Kavio
The shark drags Kavio down to cold depths.
Drowning feels like flying. He is three again, snuggled against his mother’s neck. Her hair smells of wildflowers. She soars with him, past cliffs where eagle nest and gnarly trees sprout like hairs on a boars back. From up here, the pile of clay houses on the mesa looks a terminte mound. Cold winds growl at him as they pass him in flight. He feels fear -- the ground is so far from his toes -- yet never so safe as when he flies with her.
Another memory of Mother. Their fight before the trial. He finds her in his room, packing baskets with her things and his, even the dancing costume she sewed for him when he was a child. It’s ripped and broken, he assumed she had thrown it out, yet here it is, lovingly preserved and now folded into the basket. She babbles about escaping. Warriors guard all the ladders from the house, but no one guards the roof. Her wings are already unfurling.
“I will not flee my trial like a coward,” he says to her. “I will not betray my people.”
Mother’s lips twist. “I would. I have.”
“What have you done?” His heart clenches; she is fae, there is no telling what craziness she might unleash. If he is executed, would she take revenge against the tribe?
“I turned my back on the Aelfae, Kavio, to side with Humankind.” The warp in her smile deepens from bitter to bleak. “My sisters say I betrayed my people. Maybe, but I made my choice. Now you must make yours. You must find the Vaedi.”
“What?”
“The war is not over. We could still lose.”
“Do you think the Morvae…”
She waves him silent. “The Morvae, the Imorvae, these divisions between humans are irrelevant. You and your father are too easily distracted by meaningless power struggles. I’m talking about the only War that matters, the War that gave birth to all other wars. The War between the Aelfae and Humankind.”
“That war ended long
ago, Mother. The last tribe of Aelfae was eradicated in Father’s father’s day. You were the only survivor.”
She shakes her head. “Love is a strange thing, Kavio.” Her knuckles whiten gripping the basket. He has never seen his mother look ashamed before. “I couldn’t kill my friend.”
“Mother, at least try to make sense.” Prying the basket from her, he starts to unpack.
“Find the Vaedi.” Her voice warbles with intensity. “Kavio, do this one thing for me. Or else everything I sacrificed, everyone I betrayed to side with Humankind will have been as seeds wasted on rock.”
The fight goes nowhere after that. Both of them shout things they don’t mean. In the end, he refuses to leave the tribehold. She calls him Curse-Bringer.
Another memory. Simple, peaceful, like floating in a lake. Like flying. He and Dindi are sitting together in the meadow, resting between bouts. Butterflies surround her. Her smile feels like breath to a drowning man.
Kavio
Kavio wasn’t sure when he started to fight. Possibly he had been fighting all along, even drowning in delirium. He and the shark burst back out of the water. He took his first drought of air.
His aura shimmered gold, bright as a sun, so hot it steamed the water around them, and boiled the shark trying to eat him. He poured all his Yellow magic into his dagger, which he thrust deep into the gills of the shark. Gold sparks of fire jolted through the shark’s body. He kept slashing until he felt the monster die.
The corpse turned to stone and he had to let it go, or let it drag him under water. In the last minute, the Blue Lady became a mermaid again, incomparably beautiful, even stone cold.
Dead. At least for a day.
Rthan
An ax tumbled from Rthan’s hands. He stood in aftermath of the carnage. No foes remained for him to fight.
Brena had tended Gwenika during Rthan’s mad battle. She’d wrapped her daughter’s wound—a long, but shallow flesh wound, which would heal as long as it did not spoil—with a tight cloth. Other Yellow Bear warriors showed up and carried the girl away to safety. Everywhere, the balance of battle had shifted.
A soft hand traced a gash in his back. He didn’t need to turn around to know it was Brena. He had been injured in the fight with the Merfae and hadn’t noticed. Gentle as it was, her caress hurt, as his body finally registered pain.
“I suppose I am a prisoner again.” In the distance, he heard gulls’ cry. Now the storm had ended, they were returning back to the sea. After what he had done, he knew he could never return with them.
“Husband,” she said. “You’re hurt. Let me heal you.”
Gwenika
The maidens and other women of the Tor had not been much use during the battle, but afterward, the bulk of the labor fell to them to tidy the mess. Gwenika helped too, though her own injury drained her energy.
“I can’t believe how unfair it all is,” Hadi said. “A whole war and the closest I came to fighting was when I saw an enemy warrior running the other direction, from a bear.”
“Did you take the enemy prisoner?” Gwenika asked.
“Are you kidding? I ran from the bear too.”
There were as many bear corpses as human, but about half of these were faery bears, who, in death, looked like bear shaped stones. The dead Merfae looked like odd stone fish. These, the Tavaedies collected and locked in stoppered jars, and sank in the river, so that they would not resurrect themselves and renew the battle. The Tavaedies work had to be done before dawn.
At dawn the next morning, the faeries who had died and turned to ash or stone, came back to life. A few Merfae who had not been disposed of by the Tavaedies tried to fight, but the Brundorfae killed them again. This time their stone fish corpses were disposed of properly, which would keep them dead for as long as no one opened the jar. The Yellow Tavaedies were swamped with wounded, so Gwenika went to aide her mother.
Brena had the unenviable task of triage. Those who were lightly wounded, she bid wait their turn, those gravely wounded but who stood a chance to be healed, she sent to Danumoro and the Yellow Tavaedies right away, those who could not be healed, she made comfortable while they waited to be sent to Obsidian Mountain. It was to this last group that the maidens were assigned, for all they could do was give them water and comfort.
Kavio
There was no use explaining to the warriors of Yellow Bear that he had not been responsible for their victory, they didn’t believe him. Even when Kavio pointed out that the Brundorfae had turned the tide—literally—not he, they replied that he was the son of a fae and so commanded the fae. The warriors lifted him up on their shoulders and paraded him around to cheers.
When Gremo landed and resumed his human shape, he brought more news to cheer them.
“Nargano is dead!” Gremo announced. “While you all fought here, the Shunned and their kin took Sharkhead! A new war chief has been named there. He has already agreed to allow any Imorvae child born to a Blue Waters clan come to Yellow Bear for Initiation, Testing and Training in the secrets!”
The people whooped. Svego found Gremo and hauled his lover over for a big, sloppy kiss. More cheers and laughter followed, while Gremo turned pink and grinned foolishly.
Hertio called out, “But what will we get out of it?”
“Don’t worry, Uncle!” said Gremo. “I remembered to tell them that any Blue Waters Initiates who stayed their year here must also contribute to building your mountains!”
Everyone laughed. Hertio, however, tucked his hands in his belt and rocked on his heels, smiling in satisfaction.
Though Vultho was dead, and Hertio had fought well in the battle, given his age, he told Kavio privately that he would not seek to be War Chief again.
“Let a younger man take that spear,” he confided to Kavio. “I will concentrate on seeing that the Tors are completed. If enough Blue Waters Initiates come here each year, we can not only finish the Unfinished Tor, but start new ones. I want seven!”
Kavio chuckled and patted him on the back. “Uncle, I am sure if anyone can raise mountains, you can.”
Ironically, after the battle, captured Blue Tavaedies helped the Yellow Bear Tavaedies. Their Blue magic was needed to purify the warriors who had just spilt their blood fighting Blue magic. The Tavaedies curled the dead from both sides into jars, which would be eventually given to the Deathsworn. Once purified and cleansed of their war paint and blood sins, the warriors who were hale enough lit bonfires and poured out the corn whiskey for both celebration and mourning. The elder aunties and uncles of the tribe chose Thrano as the new War Chief.
The war leaders met privately with Kavio in his hut. Thano spoke for them.
“It is no secret that we had our doubts about you,” Thano said. “You are young, you are an outtriber—fa, you are nearly fae. Nothing a seasoned warrior trusts. But we put our trust in you and you saved our tribehold from those stinky fish bastards.”
Grins flashed around.
“As a token of our thanks, we have a gift for you,” said Thano. He and several of the other men stepped aside to reveal a large sack on the ground.
A squirming sack.
Thano cut open the top. Inside, bound into a kneeling position, was Zumo. He glared daggers at Kavio.
“Gremo found him in Sharkshead, trying to help his Blue Water allies,” said Thano. “He would have just brought back the traitor’s head, but seeing as he’s your blood kin and blood foe, we figured you’d rather gut him yourself.”
“Thank you,” said Kavio. “This is a significant gift. Is he mine to spare as well as mine to kill?”
Thano frowned. “Once gifted, a gift cannot be taken back, whatever the receiver does with it. But why spare him?”
“If I spill his blood, or any one here does, it will mean war between Yellow Bear and Rainbow Labyrinth. His deathdebt will be not just on me, but upon all here.”
“We are not afraid,” said Thano. “But I would rather have an ally in Rainbow Labyrinth than enemy. It is Rainbow
Labyrinth that beats with a divided heart, not Yellow Bear. If you tell me that you can unite your people as good allies and crush those who would ally themselves with Blue Waters, I will accept your word. Can you guarantee that?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Kavio. He glanced at Zumo. “Can you give me some time?”
Thano clasped his hand to the elbow. He nodded at the others and they left Kavio alone with his captive cousin.
Kavio
Kavio stood in the center of his hut without speaking for some time, his hands clasped behind his back. He needed to think, to puzzle everything out before he discussed his decision. Though his head ached, he resisted rubbing his temples in front of the captive. Zumo still knelt on the floor before him with his hands tied behind his back.
A growl from Zumo finally forced Kavio’s attention. “Whatever you’re going to do to me, cousin, will you get on with it?”
“Too bad for you that your Blue Waters allies fled faster than the floodwater.”
Kavio fought to keep his voice level. “Was she your henchwoman…or your lover?”
“Whom are you talking about?”
“Don’t play games with me, Zumo. You know whom I’m talking about. I saw you meeting with her in the woods.”
Kavio could have sworn Zumo was genuinely perplexed. His brow furrowed a long moment before he finally blinked.
“Ah, that one. I admit, there’s something quite intriguing about her, and I can’t put my finger quite on what. But she wouldn’t make a good spy would she? She has no magic. You should have been able to see that as clearly as I could.”
Kavio’s heart thudded so loudly he feared Zumo must hear it.
“Now let me ask you something,” said Zumo. “You have no reason to lie, since you’re going to kill me anyway. When will you attack the Labyrinth? And don’t deny you have the Looking Bowl. You plan to use it, just as your father did.”
