by R. M. Meluch
Loud crunching footsteps made Alihahd straighten up. Vaslav joined them along the scarp. “They say there are berinxes in the area,” he said.
“Berinxes?” Alihahd looked to Hall. “Those have the teeth?”
Hall nodded.
And at that moment there came a noise from above, high on the rocks, with a trickle of dislodged sand and pebbles. All three spun with weapons raised, but Alihahd immediately pulled back his own and reached over to hold Vaslav’s hand from the trigger.
It was a predator up on the rock outpost—one with slanted coal-dark eyes and a small mouth twisted into a hard contemptuous line in his flat-boned, coldly handsome face. “We are moving again,” Ben-Tairre informed them and moved away.
Vaslav drew in a wavering breath and rejoined the hunters.
Hall waited for Alihahd. An insinuating smile crept beneath the mustache, as if he’d caught some secret Alihahd let slip.
“What?” Alihahd said to the smugly knowing look.
“I don’t care what you say, Captain, you’ve been in combat.”
Alihahd was much too quick at turning and aiming—as a thing done so often it became reflex—and he was much too good at not shooting never to have seen battle.
Alihahd frowned at the weapon in his hands. “Not against Na′id,” he repeated and he hiked after the Itiri hunting party.
By the time they started home again, racing their shrinking shadows, Alihahd was lagging behind. He stumbled, skinned his knees on the gravel slope, and didn’t get up.
“Shall I carry thee?” Ben asked.
Alihahd stiffened. “No, that is all right. Thank you very much,” he said with such a tone of offended aristocracy that it made Harrison Hall laugh.
Ben-Tairre made a pointed gesture of looking at the sun. At this pace they wouldn’t reach the Aerie in time. The noonday sun was lethal. Nothing stirred at midday, not even the chitinous lizards with reflective scales. The Itiri were anxious to beat the sun home.
So Alihahd was left behind. The hunters found a sheltering cave where he could wait out the noon hour and continue the journey alone after the deadly time was past.
• • •
A lizard crawled off its sunny ledge and went slinking into a dark crevice in the rocks.
The croaking of a reptilian crow split the thin air.
A burr of insects shivered in the heat.
Then there was no sound of anything that was living.
Nothing moved.
Shadows shrank to nothing.
Air sizzled. Brown grasses withered.
Outside the cave was a blistering glare—like the sun on a Mediterranean strand.
The sky boiled. Rocks hissed.
He remembered the sun on the Mediterranean Sea. He thought back farther, to the last time he had been completely sober—thought clearly about things best not remembered.
He curled his knobby thin legs up and hugged his skinned knees as if he were cold. His mind was clear and there was nowhere to hide.
• • •
Vaslav paced the north ridge, waiting for Alihahd’s return. Hall came out once to stand at his side, coat drawn back from his wasp waist, fists on his narrow hips, empty pipe between his teeth, earrings gleaming against his deep red-bronze skin.
The weather had changed. There was no sign of the captain.
The red flags were out, warning that the winds were picking up and it was ill-advised to go beyond the Aerie’s sheltered amphitheater. The shadows had lengthened before the clouds cast them over. The Itiri were flocking home.
Pack beasts honked and gurgled. Itiri voices hushed. Birds stopped singing. The beasts sniffed the air.
Broadside, a pack beast was an ungainly bulk. Face on, its enormous body was an aerodynamic wedge that could withstand a three-hundred-mile-per-hour gale.
All over the mountain the beasts stood aligned toward the north, facing the mountain Guardian.
• • •
A cloud. A shadow. A cool breath.
Alihahd woke from a dreaming half-sleep. He wandered from the cave. He had lost track of time and he could see no shadows. The sky was a white slate.
High, high above came the faint echoes of the clashing wind brass and voices that carried even to this distance: “Off the bridge! Shandee!”
Alihahd climbed up to a rocky prominence and gazed up toward the sound, curious.
From over the lofty mountain peaks a swelling cloud loomed and rushed down. The swift wall of gray darkness seemed fast even from far away. It had to be moving in a torrent.
Alihahd was mesmerized by it, like the black cloud over Jerusalem that had come and engulfed him and blotted out the light, everything.
So, frozen, dull, and disbelieving, he stared at this storm that roared like a rocket rain. Its speed was unreal, like a jet stream.
Or was it an actual jet stream? He was five miles above sea level.
And then it occurred to him he ought to be running back for cover. But—as at Jerusalem—it was too late for him to go anywhere. The winds were here.
He started for the cave in the last seconds left to him. He jumped from the rocks with a cold spray of sand and grit. He fell hard, pain exploding in his shoulder and shooting in fiery spikes through his body and behind his eyes. He rolled.
He stopped rolling, and opened his eyes to search for the cave, but saw a figure over him, cloaked in storm clouds.
Jinin-Ben-Tairre.
• • •
A yank on both arms brought a blaze of pain. Alihahd was lifted like a rag doll. He fell against Ben’s body that was almost too hard to be flesh. The blast of wind hit like a truck. They were thrown, flying into sudden still darkness.
Alihahd folded over in pain on the rock floor of the cave as Shandee roared past.
At length Alihahd lifted himself onto his knees and looked up.
A moving wall of gray wind thundered past the cave entrance. It appeared as if they were in a speeding vehicle. Outside was a blur. Inside was still.
And Ben was there, snorting. His face looked burned, his broad flat cheeks scored by flying grit. He shook debris from his hair. Upon catching blue eyes directed fixedly his way, he stopped.
Alihahd simply gazed, cornered, his long limbs drawn in and folded to fit the cramped space, his big frame ill accustomed to bending into unaccommodating places. He lacked Itiri grace but was not without his dignity. It never failed him.
He held his one shoulder at an odd slope. His thick lips turned down, furrowing deep frowning lines into his long face, his brow pinched.
Ben moved smoothly to his side and grabbed Alihahd’s arm with a twist and a hit and a flash of blinding pain. Alihahd roared and turned to strike with his other hand, until he realized that the pain had suddenly abated as quickly as it had come, down to an aching throb, and he could move his right arm in its socket again.
He wasn’t grateful. Anyone who pushed him into harm’s way could damn well pull him out and not expect thanks for it.
He withdrew as far as he could to wait out the storm, squared off opposite Ben-Tairre.
Why not just lose me to the wind? Alihahd thought. It would’ve been a human enough thing to do.
But this being was trying very hard not to be human. He’d been born among humankind, had once answered to a human name. But it wasn’t what he wanted to be.
Alihahd could see the struggle inside—a man who was two people—and Alihahd knew the feeling well.
He slumped back against the dank rock wall, rueful at the situation—caught here, prisoners of the storm, hating one another. All four of us.
Ben spied the corners of a sardonic smile, and his head turned a quick hawklike fraction in suspicion. He wouldn’t like to think himself a source of humor.
Dark-eyed gaze bored into Alihahd, but didn’t penetrate
. Alihahd was well practiced at being opaque.
I am older than you. My armor is thicker. Though you are not doing badly for yourself, warrior-priest. I still see a human boy. You hate me.
Alihahd coughed, deep honking spasms that shook his aching shoulder. Then he sat back again, drained, guarded, his blue eyes heavy-lidded.
You hate me. Hatred is fear. But I really cannot see what you fear.
Alihahd was two meters tall, fair and blond like a warrior-priest, but haggard, bone-weary, old, the ruin of a once great man. He let his head tilt to one side.
You fear me? He smiled again. I am the one defeated here.
When the winds lifted, Alihahd couldn’t walk. He was sick, and weakness forced him to take a humiliating ride up the mountain on the back of a shaggy pack beast.
His illness went on for days, and this time he didn’t recover. His breath rattled. He didn’t want to leave the lordly inhospitable heights of the Aerie as most humans did, but he realized this place was going to kill him, and finally he asked to be taken down to the summer village Kaletani Mai.
With a cloak wrapped around his emaciated figure, Alihahd retraced the twisting trail to the waiting balloon and climbed, subdued and unhappy, into the woven reed basket.
Harrison Hall came to see him off at the ledge, the place where they had first landed on the Aerie, seemingly a long time ago. He faced into the wind, his redingote open to the breezes that tugged at the moored balloon. He clenched his empty pipe between his white teeth. All the sinuous lines in his dark red face molded into one of those lovely demonic smiles that revealed absolutely nothing. He was sorry to see his adversary get away from him, fallen to another opponent.
Alihahd looked back, bitter. “I don’t lose well,” he said quietly.
Hall nodded imperceptibly.
Two ranga unfastened the balloon’s ropes and threw them to the pilot. Eagles guided the balloon as it lifted off the rocks.
Hall took his pipe from between his teeth. Nodded. “Captain.”
“Mr. Hall,” Alihahd said.
• • •
Jinin-Ben-Tairre was alone in the training hall. Its great wide windows were flooded with sunlight that reflected a honey glow on the butterwood panels. The worn wooden floor was pitted and scarred with sword grooves. Ben knelt, sitting back on his bare feet, his head bowed on his heavily thewed neck, his eyes shut. He tried to clear his mind, think of nothing.
His even breaths deepened, but not into the peace of sleep—deep in anger. He tried to calm his thoughts. Darkness kept stealing into his mind. Angry, suppressed thoughts rose into the clear space. He needed to banish them altogether—the dragons he had never really slain, merely pushed aside for a time.
He opened his eyes, stood, crossed to the sword chest, and took up his blade, Da′iku. He glided it through all its possible moves, then began to visualize attackers and cut them apart. They came by twos. He killed by twos. More moved in, all sides. His ivory-gold skin glistened, his black hair matted to his head. His mechanical hand whirred. Invisible necks severed and heads tumbled. Ben rolled, stood, kicked, slashed. Attackers reeled back. He drove straight down with the blade and kicked straight back. He wheeled and cut the air. Movement became random, precision muddied in his savagery.
“Careless, careless, careless,” Roniva said from the archway.
Ben came to a standstill in the center of the chamber, perspiration streaming down his sides. He blinked sweat from his eyes. He hadn’t even heard her come in. His training, his awareness, failed him. Did she see it?
Had to.
Such slips could be fatal when one had powerful enemies waiting.
“How may I serve thee, Fendi?”
“Thou hast hurt my guest,” Roniva said.
There was danger when a Fendi spoke face-to-face. Direct speech from the monarch was reserved for certain messages which brooked no intermediary. Roniva hadn’t spoken to Ben-Tairre since the day she had become Fendi of the Aerie. This moment had been long in coming. Ben knew what this meeting meant. Time had come. Setkaza. Legend called it dance of death. It was an ancient right to be invoked when there were no more options. Declaration gave one leave to kill at any time—and opened oneself to being killed at any time by one’s declared opponent.
“Thou hast killed my cheela. Thou hast killed my son. Thou hast driven away my guest,” Roniva said, the whites of her eyes flashing in her ebony face. She wore a long flowing tunic of shimmering green. It left bare and free her thin whipcord-sinewed arms. Her hand was on her sword hilt.
“He is evil,” Ben-Tairre said.
“I wanted him here!” Roniva cried as she drew her sword in a furious arc and jabbed its point into the floor. She stepped back from the blade, her fists at her sides, her voice a strained tremulous quiet. “From this moment we are bound in setkaza, thou and I. Look to thine own resources, Wolf, for thy days are numbered from today.”
PART TWO:
Ben
6. Wolf at the Door
Gregorian Year 5839 CE
IN THE YEAR OF THE TOPAZ GATEWAY, in the days before Roniva became Fendi of the Aerie, a small stowaway was found aboard Xanthan’s spaceship when the young warrior returned to Iry after a year’s journey among the stars.
“Azo! What hast thou brought to us, Xanthan?” Roniva said as her warrior cheela stepped from his ship into the yellow grass of Lower Aerie.
“What have I . . . ?” Xanthan echoed in puzzlement and turned back to his ship.
A starved, wild-eyed boy stared out through the hatchway at the sunlit village Kaletani Mai and the towering mountains.
“By the fire of my making!” Xanthan exclaimed, and the boy pulled back with a start.
Roniva advanced to him. Her swordbelt jingled with her stride. Sunshine cast a blue sheen on her hair. She leaned in and sniffed at the boy, who drew down into a wolfish crouch. He smelled bad. “What is it?” Roniva asked.
Xanthan stammered. “I—I meant not to bring him. He is a human being. One of the Earth breed.”
The boy emerged from the ship cautiously to crouch in the warm sunshine. His ribs stood out in high relief under translucent sickly yellow skin. Coal-dark eyes smoldered deep in his skull-like head. He snarled at Roniva and ran past her to throw his stick arms around Xanthan’s waist and locked his fingers together. Xanthan placed his hand gently on the boy’s dirty black hair.
Xanthan was lovely, his tender eyes soft green like the sea, his flaxen hair braided into a crown, his skin smooth and unaged. The boy was in love.
Roniva pressed the back of her forefinger to her lips, speculative. Her onyx signet left a fleeting imprint of a sword there when she took her hand away again. “What doth it call itself for a name?”
“I know not. I found him in a trash heap. I fed him and let him go,” Xanthan said.
Xanthan thought he had let the child go. He bowed his head to meet the oddly shaped dark eyes at his waist. “What is thy name?”
Sunlight glistened on the bright edges of Xanthan’s clean golden hair. It made a shining corona around his angelic face. The boy gazed up at the face and clung fast to his silence.
“Doth it speak?” Roniva asked.
“He hath a voice. I have not heard him to speak.”
Xanthan had heard the boy yowl and snarl and screech.
“Perhaps it hath no mind,” Roniva suggested. Her arms jangled with enameled bracelets as she reached out to touch the boy’s head. He snarled and bit her hand.
Roniva jerked back, flashed anger, and smacked him down the nose with her open palm.
His face turned up, cold and twisted, into a vindictive mockery of a smile. He’d known she was going to hit him. But he’d got her first.
The Elders who had come behind Roniva agreed they had never seen anything that untamed, that dangerous.
“Shalt thou kill it, Xantha
n?” one asked. “It is distorted.”
Roniva licked her punctured hand. “I will kill it.”
The boy, without letting go of Xanthan’s waist, skittered around behind the warrior and peered out with a pinched glowering face.
“Ah, it understands,” Roniva said. “It doth have a mind, if not a name.”
One of the other Elders spoke. “Then we cannot kill it.”
“It is a guest?” Roniva cried.
“How can it be else? Xanthan brought it here.”
The stinking little creature thrust the lower lip of his small mouth at them, angry.
Roniva leaned forward, her hands on her knees so her eyes were level with his. “Thou art vicious, and I shall call thee Wolf for lack of a name.”
“What is to be done with it?” an Elder asked.
Xanthan reddened. “I brought him. I shall take care of him.”
“It will die on the mountain,” Roniva said.
Another said, “Leave it here with the ranga. They will feed it. The rest is for its own devices.”
The other Elders agreed. And that was to be the final word on the human boy, Wolf.
No one counted on him following Xanthan up the mountain.
When the hungry, frenzied, mangy-haired thing peered over the rock at the top of the snake path, a ranga woman screamed and dropped her water jug. Clay shattered, water splashed, and the ranga woman ran on stubby legs, shrieking that she had seen a monster.
A crowd gathered to see the monster. Xanthan pushed to the fore because he had an awful feeling that he knew what he would find.
His skinny foundling, hands and feet torn and bleeding from the climb, crawled over the last step onto the Ledge Path. The boy searched the staring faces and picked out his ivory-and-gold god Xanthan from the throng. The boy’s dark eyes were wide in abandonment and asking why. He couldn’t understand what he’d done to be left behind.
And the boy didn’t know why all these other beings had come out onto the terraces to stare at him. They gazed at him in hushed awe. He didn’t know what he’d done.
