Kelyn wouldn’t leave things to chance. She pointed up the steep slope and said, “If you’re any good at climbing, you can find choi buttons up there. A whole bush full of them. We’ve been letting them mature for harvest, but if you like such things—”
Gwawl shoved her. “Those are ours!”
“What’s it matter now?” Kelyn said, glad to have one of the others finally, finally catching on and lending a hand— for the hallucinogenic seedpods were nothing the pack ever touched. Stupid, to rob your own wits in Ketura’s mountains. “If the buttons make them happier, our lives will be easier.” She nudged Gwawl, nodding at the tight space beneath a granite overhang sparkling in the rays of the setting sun.
The rock cats attack from above.
Gwawl wasn’t the only one catching on; Iden looked at the granite retreat with sudden understanding, and as the slavers carried on a loud discussion in their harsh native tongue, the pack moved close to the overhang. When the leader turned to them with a peremptory gesture, it was of no matter at all to sit just where they’d wanted to be. For the first time they were close enough to exchange words freely, but for the first time it was unnecessary. They knew the stakes. Ignoring the pain of her bloodied wrists, Kelyn subtly tested the ropes, checking to see if they’d loosened from the day’s activity—they had—and if she could slip her hands free.
She couldn’t.
But she still had slightly more freedom than the rest of them . . . and she could work at it. They all worked at it, watching as the slavers quickly set up camp and put the sleep-powder packet on the rock for later use. The men split up, and one took on the task of climbing the steep rock, a gleam in his eye. A man who knew and liked the effects of the choi button and was willing to make the climb even with dusk coming on.
Kelyn hoped he didn’t make it back down alive . . . but if he did, then while the slavers crushed, burned, and inhaled the powerful choi, the pack would still have a chance to escape.
The leader started a fire, grumbling at Kelyn in the process. “It’s getting cold up here. You shouldn’t have brought us so high.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, as ingratiating as she could be without sounding false. Mungo rolled his eyes. “It’s the only way I know.”
The sunlight traveled up the rock, leaving the little clearing in shadow. The other men brought more wood, gnarled dead pine that would burn hot and fast. The leader poured a small amount of precious water into a battered travel cup and added a pinch of the drug, heating the mixture over the fire until steam wafted into the air. Then he brought it to them, preoccupied with watching the rocky slope for signs of his companion. “Drink,” he commanded them. “One swallow each.” He took his eyes from the slope to glare at them. “Don’t spit it out.”
He didn’t have to add threats. Unspoken, they hung loudly enough in the air between captives and captor.
They each took a swallow, making terrible faces. Kelyn took her turn last and siphoned the concentrated, intensely bitter liquid under her tongue, scrunching her face in an uncontrollable reaction to the taste.
A trickle of small stones came from above. The slaver glanced overhead, and Kelyn soundlessly pushed the liquid out between her lips, letting it dribble silently down her chin. By the time the man looked down again, she’d scrubbed her chin against her shoulder, removing all traces of the drink. Behind her, the pack held its collective breath, facing the slaver’s suspicious glare.
But if he saw anything amiss, he never had the chance to say so. The trickle of stones gave way to a thump and a thud, and the slaver jumped back just in time to avoid the falling body of his companion.
The limp, falling body.
The leader shouted in surprise and anger, dropping to his knees to roll the man over, shaking his shoulders.
Almost dusk now. Hunt time for the big cats. Kelyn glanced anxiously back at her pack mates, her eyes full of question. As one they shook their heads—all but Gwawl, who mimed wiping his chin. He, too, had spat out the drug.
And the others were already drooping, quickly taken by the warm liquid in their empty stomachs no matter how they struggled against it. Kelyn closed her eyes in resignation. Only two of us. And with Gwawl tied more restrictively than she.
Clumsy Kelyn.
“He’s dead!”
Kelyn turned back to the slaver’s leader, unable to dredge up surprise. So she didn’t try to fake it. She said nothing, just watched warily, knowing the leader might well take his ire out on her. Her hands tightened on her staff. When the moment hung in the air, she gathered her courage and her most practical manner and said, “Only three of you to split the profit, then.”
The leader glared, crouched over his friend’s body and taking no apparent notice of the four deep, bloodless puncture wounds on the man’s neck—the marks of a rock cat so irate it hadn’t even bothered to play. This man’s neck had been broken long before he hit the ground. Kelyn glanced back at her friends.
They’d seen the wounds. Of course they’d seen them, even through the drugs. Their tension filled the little overhang. But the slaver didn’t pick up on that, either. Instead, he patted the dead man’s sides, hunting for—and finding—the seedpods the man had gone to acquire. To Kelyn’s surprise, he left the dead man where he lay and went to the fire. The other two men waited, wary and tight-lipped; the three of them huddled together to exchange terse words, glancing frequently at their prisoners. Then they seemed to come to some conclusion, for the leader settled beside the fire and, though the slavers had dried meat and a handful of dried tubers already set aside for a meal, the three turned their attention to the choi buttons.
Within moments they’d crushed the seedpods to a fine, precious dust that they cupped in their palms, applying glowing sticks pulled from the fire. Pungent smoke drifted briefly toward the overhang, but most of it ended up inside the slavers’ lungs. After a few moments, they didn’t seem to notice when their aim grew less precise and the odor of burned skin mingled with that of the choi. And a few moments after that, they stood, staggering against one another, raucous and jovial.
Gwawl muttered, “I’m not sure . . .”
He didn’t have to finish his words. Kelyn, too, had hoped the potent choi of this altitude would hit the slavers hard, but they were apparently well accustomed to the effects of the herb. They didn’t lose their sense of purpose as they headed for their prisoners, three swaggering slavers standing before a sorry group of drugged, huddled youngsters.
The leader announced, “Now that Grolph is dead, we’ve decided we can spare one of you.”
Spare one of us . . .?
Suddenly Kelyn understood. Spare the profit, leaving the slavers free to use and discard one unlucky youngster. She gave the others a panicked glance, seeing her friends drugged, seeing Gwawl still tightly tied, knowing herself to be no closer to freedom.
But she had her staff. The staff that supported her on the trail, that saved her from bruises when her pack mates picked up their own casually acquired quarterstaffs and set about causing trouble, that protected her from the attack of everything from unexpected rockfall to irate predator. And if her clumsy feet were tied, at least she wasn’t drugged.
The leader reached for Frykla.
Clumsy Kelyn.
Their only chance.
Their last chance.
Kelyn cast her self-doubts aside and exploded upward in front of her friend, staff whirling deftly in spite of her tied hands—and when the men laughed, she planted one end of the staff in the ground and cast herself around it, slamming her feet into one barrel chest, knocking the man into his buddy. She landed in a crouch, lifting the weighted end of the staff to sweep it against the leader’s shins. Down he went with a cry of surprise, turning the slavers into a tangle of stinking, choi-besotted men. The surprise only lasted a moment, but it was long enough for Gwawl to launch himself into the fray, loop his arms over one man’s head to jam the tight ropes against his throat, and pull the man down on top of him.
Gwawl might have been smaller than the slaver, and he might well have trouble breathing beneath the man, but the slaver was now his shield, and both of the other men immediately turned to Kelyn.
She grinned at them, a fierce grin, and unleashed the ululating hunt cry that until now had only echoed through the mountains in practice—the cry that declared her prowess and confidence and intent. She didn’t wait for their moves—she leaped at them, her stance as wide as she could manage in the ropes, and she turned the staff into her shield, whirling it so quickly that it became nothing more than a blur. “I’ve decided,” she snarled. “We can’t spare any of us—but we can spare all of you.”
He snarled right back at her. “You bi—”
That’s when Kelyn heard it. Another snarl altogether, deep and throaty and full of menace. She glanced at Gwawl, protected under his choking human shield, and dove for the overhang, miscalculating enough to land right on top of her befuddled pack mates. “Down!” she cried to them as they tried to heave her off. “Down, down, down!”
They stayed down. Kelyn twisted to look back to the clearing as a huge shadow passed before the overhang. A great webbed paw slapped one man, a hind paw scraped across the man on top of Gwawl, and the immense dappled white rock cat snatched the leader up in his jaws and bounded right out of the clearing.
Silence.
Kelyn sat up; the others disentangled themselves. Gwawl pulled his arms free, dragged himself out from beneath the dead weight of the equally dead man atop him, and crawled over to join the others. The fire had been kicked to embers; night was nearly upon them.
But the slavers were dead. The hunt pack was free.
Gwawl looked at Kelyn and murmured approvingly, “It takes more than brawn to make a powerful hunter . . . or warrior. It takes a clever turn of mind. And you saved the clumsy for last.”
Kelyn moved quickly into the clearing, using the last bit of fading light to grab knives from the slavers, and to snatch up the meat scattered beside the dead fire. She gave Gwawl one of the knives and they went to work on the ropes. She glanced at their stuporous pack mates. “Will they even remember what happened?”
Gwawl grunted as his ankle ropes parted, and stretched his legs with pleasure. “Who knows? Does it matter?”
“No,” Kelyn said, settling in for a long night of huddling beneath the overhang to watch over her drugged friends, guarding against the return of the rock cat. “It doesn’t.”
Because she knew. And things would be different from now on.
Clumsy Kelyn could be her father’s daughter after all.
DORANNA DURGIN
DORANNA DURGIN spent her childhood filling notebooks first with stories and art and then with novels. After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, she spent a number of years deep in the Appalachian Mountains. When she emerged, it was as a writer who found herself irrevocably tied to the natural world and its creatures— and with a new appreciation for the rugged spirit that helped settle the area and that she instills in her characters.
Dun Lady’s Jess, Doranna’s first published fantasy novel, received the Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial Award for the best first book in the science fiction, fantasy, or horror genre. She now has sixteen novels in a variety of genres on the shelves and more on the way; most recently she’s leaped gleefully into the world of action-romance. When she’s not writing, Doranna builds Web pages, wanders around outside with a camera, and works with horses and dogs. There’s a Lipizzan horse in her backyard, a mountain looming outside her office window, a pack of agility dogs romping in the house, and a laptop sitting on her desk—and that’s just the way she likes it.
You can find a complete list of fantasy books, franchise tie-ins, and action-romances at www.doranna.net, along with scoops about new projects, lots of silly photos, and a link to Doranna’s SFF Net newsgroup. And for kicks, her dog, Connery Beagle, has a LiveJournal (connerybeagle) presenting his unique view of life in the high desert of Arizona. Drop by and say hello!
AN AXE FOR MEN
Rosemary Edghill
THEY CARRIED SLEEPING TAR’ATHA before them, borne upon Her golden lions. Ten kings followed Her—the Sacred Twins who had danced with the bulls within the walls of Saloe for Her fame and delight.
But Saloe was no more.
Since before the beginning of the world, the tricolored walls of Great Saloe had stood tall before the Reed Lake, beside the Blue River. Her pillars of red orichalcum called down Ut-ash-atha from heaven, all for the glory of Sleeping Tar’atha.
Saloe was changeless. But Saloe changed.
It was in rain-time, the season that turned the plains dark and lush with pasturage for goats and horses. But that year there was more rain than Sais could remember ever having fallen before. For month after month, Tar’atha hid Ut-sin-atha in the sky by night, hid Ut-ash-atha in the sky by day. There was only darkness, and clouds, and rain.
And then, one day, there was the sound of the world breaking.
Water rushed down into the valley in a great flood. It shattered villages. It drowned the beasts in the pastures.
But Great Saloe was not destroyed.
Not then.
The people came to the city as the waters rose, begging for refuge, and the Lady of Saloe admitted them. Sais was only a very young Priestess of the Temple then, but she cherished the way in which the Lady of Saloe spoke as the voice of the Sleeping Goddess. Perhaps someday, if she too bore twin kings to Tar’atha, she would stand where the Lady of Saloe stood now and rule over the people with the same calm justice.
That had been three turns of the seasons ago.
Before the Reed Lake had turned entirely to salt.
Before it grew to cover the villages, the grazing lands, the fields. Before it grew to rise over the outer terraces of Great Saloe itself.
The rain had stopped, but the water kept rising.
And soon they realized that they must leave Great Saloe . . . or starve.
The Lady of Saloe dreamed an oracle and chose the most propitious day. They would leave at high summer and build a new city in the south. So Tar’atha ruled.
All the remaining people of the city gathered together their animals and their possessions. They built beautiful wheeled carts to carry them and wove lovely clothes to wear.
On the first day, the Ten Kings had led the sacred bulls, garlanded in wreaths of beaten gold, through the great gilded gates of the city. They were followed by a glorious procession: the shadow-women of the Sleeping Goddess, dressed in their most ornate gowns, their most elaborate aprons, bearing the golden image of the Goddess on their muscular shoulders. Behind them walked the Lady of Saloe, with the gold Crown of the City upon her head and the knotted Belt of Sovereignty about her hips, and behind her, Sais and the rest of the Priestess-brides.
But the sacred bulls had never been outside of the city in their lives. They balked as they were led down the long ramp outside the city gates, and when the feet of the first pair sank into the muddy ground outside the city, the creatures panicked.
Bawling and shaking their heads in terror, the sacred bulls stood fast and would not be moved.
It was a terrible omen. Sais could not see it, but she could hear the bellowing, and heard the whispered descriptions of the sight at the head of the column.
“Their throats are to be cut here,” the Lady of Saloe said at last. “Tar’atha requires this sacrifice to bring us good fortune on our journey.”
Sais felt a cold chill of dread creep over her. This was not the ancient ritual. Yes, the sacred bulls died for Tar’atha’s favor, but the Twin Kings danced with them first, bringing them to the place of their death with stave and noose before slitting their throats with the stone knife, for no metal must ever touch their flesh. This was . . . wrong.
But the word was passed, and eventually the bellowing stopped.
The people moved on.
The beautiful gowns were quickly draggled with mud and water,
for all the earth outside Great Saloe was wet and marshy now, salt-poisoned and dead. The ground was too wet for the wheeled carts to be able to roll over it, too wet for the people to simply drag them through the mud. At last they loaded as much of the food and their possessions as they could onto the horses and any other animal that could carry a burden, and left the rest behind. The sucking mud quickly stole away one of Sais’s glittering golden sandals, and in a fit of temper she unlaced the other one and threw it as far as she could.
The golden image of Sleeping Tar’atha they kept with them.
They did not know where to go, or what they must do. They had lingered long, protected by the walls of Great Saloe, while others fled before them. The land had changed.
Tiny streams were great rushing rivers of bitter undrinkable water. Fertile grasslands were dying swamps, the grass yellowed and sere.
By the time Ut-ash-atha sank toward the Halls of Sleep the people were all sick and weary with walking, but a shepherd named Neshat had found a stream of water that was still sweet enough—just barely—to drink.
That night they finished all the cooked food they had brought with them out of Saloe. They lit their lamps, but the wind blew out the flames. It did not matter. Soon the oil would be gone as well.
That night Sais Dreamed.
She had not yet been admitted into the Sanctuary, where the Priestess-brides courted the wisdom of the Great Mother in sleep. Only last year had she begun to bleed as a woman. If the Salt had not come, this year she would have taken one of the Young Kings as a lover in the soft meadows of spring, courting the favor and fertility of Sleeping Tar’atha.
She was still virgin, and so she should not Dream.
But she Dreamed.
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