Bloodhoney

by Paul Stewart

  Hepzibar nodded. ‘Down in the store caves,’ she said, her rustling whispers halting and faint. ‘Plenty.’

  The youth sat back on his haunches. He turned to the whitewyrme.

  ‘She said plenty, Azura.’

  ‘I heard it, Kesh,’ the whitewyrme hissed.

  ‘We’re happy to share,’ Asa told them, his head inclined, but Hepzibar noted the barbels trembling at the corners of his mouth and knew he wasn’t happy at all.

  ‘Share!?’ Kesh’s voice hissed like geyser steam through a rockcleft. ‘We want something, we take it. Understand?’

  Hepzibar nodded.

  ‘Who are you, anyway?’ The youth’s words were still harsh, yet the blunting of his hunger had taken the edge off their tone.

  ‘I’m Hepzibar,’ she told him. ‘And this is Asa.’

  The youth glared at her suspiciously. He sniffed at the air, his top lip drawn back and sharp teeth exposed. He looked suspicious, undecided about something, then he glanced round at the female whitewyrme. Her eyes narrowed and her voice rumbled like distant thunder.

  ‘They got the taint.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Kesh, turning back to Hepzibar and Asa. ‘That’s what I could smell.’ He crouched down and picked up his kinlance, then stepped towards Hepzibar, sucking in the air over his teeth. ‘You got the stench of kith upon you …’

  Hepzibar shrank back before the tall youth with the dark glinting eyes and pinched, feral-looking face. Asa coiled round her defensively, arching his back and raising his wings to shield her. Undeterred, Kesh moved slowly, deliberately towards them, sniffing at the air and ­scowling.

  Azura skirted the fire and came round behind them, her nostrils quivering and a bloodstained glow turning her eyes from yellow to deep amber. She prodded lightly at both Hepzibar and Asa, and her snout probed with an odd delicacy, breathing in the scent as she too sniffed the air around them.

  ‘And not just kith …’ she hissed.

  ‘Keld,’ Kesh agreed.

  He jabbed his lance at Asa, who trembled and would have backed away, but the great whitewyrme behind him gave a warning growl and he fell still.

  ‘You been with keld?’ Kesh said, the softness of his voice only adding to its menace. ‘Answer me.’ He prodded Hepzibar with the lance.

  ‘No, no,’ she breathed, overwhelmed by the hatred in the youth’s eyes. She husked and chittered, struggling to find the words to explain. ‘We … were prisoners of a keld. We were sold to her. By kith.’ Her words poured out in a waterfall rush. ‘The both of us, sold to a keld hag who chained us up and—’

  Before her, Kesh pressed the tip of the lance at Asa’s chest. Hepzibar bit her lower lip as tears started to blur her vision.

  ‘And?’ Kesh demanded.

  ‘She wanted to kill me.’ Hepzibar’s voice sounded spent, like dry grass. ‘And eat me.’ She swallowed and lowered her head. ‘That’s why we have the stench of the keld upon us …’

  ‘And you, wyrmeling,’ snarled Azura, her red eyes fixed on Asa. ‘What have you to say?’

  Asa looked round at the whitewyrme, so much bigger and more powerful than he was, and when he spoke, his voice was soft and mild as mist.

  ‘Zar and me. We were in the dark,’ he said. ‘Then others came, and we were free …’

  Asa flinched as Kesh jabbed at him with his lance once more. Hepzibar winced.

  ‘We were rescued,’ she blurted out.

  ‘Rescued?’ Kesh hissed. ‘Who by?’

  ‘By my papa, who died … And two kith. A man and a boy,’ said Hepzibar. ‘And a kin …’

  ‘Kin?’ Kesh’s eyes narrowed, and from behind them, Hepzibar smelled the whitewyrme’s smoke as she exhaled.

  ‘Yes. A kingirl without a wyrme of her own, but who understood Asa and me,’ said Hepzibar, her voice lilting yet breathy as she tried to sound braver than she felt. ‘She told us that we had found kinship, just like she had once found kinship with her own wyrme. She killed the hag and helped the two of us to leave that place, and we’ve been together ever since . . .’

  ‘What do you and your puny wyrme know of kinship?’ sneered Kesh.

  Hepzibar cringed at his words and hot tears welled in her eyes. Kinship. All she knew was that she had Asa, and Asa had her, and nothing else in the weald ­mattered. She turned to the young whitewyrme, who inclined his neck until his head was resting on her ­shoulder.

  Kesh eased back a ways. He looked at Asa, then back at Hepzibar. His grip on the lance relaxed.

  ‘I don’t know what you are exactly – with your smell of keld and kith,’ he said at last. ‘But I don’t like it.’

  ‘They’re young,’ Azura observed. She dropped down onto all fours and extended her long battlescarred neck towards Asa. ‘Just how many seasons are you?’

  Asa looked at her, relieved to see that the red was fading from the great whitewyrme’s eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted­.

  ‘How many times have you shed your skin?’

  ‘Once.’

  Hepzibar looked down and smoothed a hand over the soulskin she wore, which was white and pearly and fitted tight. She looked up at Azura, then Kesh, who was staring back at her intently.

  ‘Newly hatched,’ the whitewyrme observed. ‘Three seasons old.’ She turned her yellow eyes on Hepzibar. ‘And you? How old are you?’

  ‘Nearly nine.’

  Kesh snorted dismissively. But he lowered the lance nevertheless, holding Hepzibar’s gaze the while. His brow puckered. ‘So, how did you find this place?’

  Hepzibar swallowed. ‘Asa found it,’ she said. ‘He followed the scent of the wyrmes, though’ – she looked around her – ‘we found no wyrmes when we got here.’

  Kesh and Azura exchanged looks.

  ‘If the colony had been here when you arrived, they’d have driven you off,’ said Kesh. ‘They don’t believe in kinship.’

  Azura, who had circled round and now stood beside Kesh, swayed gently back and forth, her wings flexing with the sound of dry leaves being trodden.

  ‘The great whitewyrmes of the colony don’t understand,’ she said, shaking her great head. ‘They don’t understand that the only way to stop the kith from spreading into the weald is for whitewyrmes to take the young the kith abandon and to teach them our ways.’ She turned her head towards Kesh. ‘To form kinship, so that we can fight the kith together.’

  Hepzibar nodded, but it was all so difficult to take in. She turned to Asa, her lip trembling.

  ‘The great whitewyrmes whose scent you followed, Asa; they would have driven you away. Because of me.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Even though it means you’ll never be accepted by your own kind.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Asa repeated, and he nuzzled up close to her. ‘I have you.’

  Kesh, who had been tracing patterns in the sand on the floor of the cavern with the tip of his lance, looked up. His dark eyes were shot with anger.

  ‘The colony,’ he said, and it sounded like he was cussing. ‘They upped and left as soon as the kith got too close.’ He glared at Hepzibar. ‘As soon as they smelled the kith taint on the wind. We seen them flying overhead,’ he added, ‘heading off to the west in a mighty flock, which is why we came here, Azura and me, to see what they had left.’ He frowned darkly. ‘Wyrmekin don’t run away. We fight.’

  Hepzibar and Asa stole a glance at one another. The young whitewyrme looked tense and his tail swished back and forth, stirring up the dust.

  ‘There are others?’ said Hepzibar. ‘Like you?’

  ‘Lots of others,’ said Kesh, straightening up. ‘The highstacks might have been lost, and the kith are advancing into the valley country. But we aim to contain them, to defend the deeper weald and make sure they don’t go no further.’ Hepzibar heard the anger creeping back into his voice.
‘There’s kin at the black pinnacles and the saltflats to the west. And more at the jagged ridge. And there’s those of us at the yellow peaks who fight the hardest. The meanest …’

  Azura looked at her kin, her eyes bright and barbels twitching.

  ‘Just before the snows hit, we spotted hunters up on the northern rises, heading west. Four of them. Four kith.’ Kesh’s eyes glittered and Hepzibar quavered inside as she saw him slowly lick his lips. ‘They ain’t heading west no more.’

  ‘What did you do?’ she said.

  ‘We killed them,’ said Kesh coldly. ‘Slowly and with great care, and we displayed them on the trail as a warning to others not to follow.’

  Hepzibar lowered her head. She could hear Asa’s low and even breathing, and feel the warmth from his body, so close to hers – but she couldn’t look at him. To them, their friendship was simple. She had him and he had her. They had each other.

  But did their kinship mean that they had to learn how to fight? How to kill?

  She turned away and crouched down and, with stiff shaking fingers, selected the stouter branches from the heap of firewood and placed them onto the fire. The dry wood caught, crackling and sparking. Kesh came and sat on the opposite side of the fire. He laid his kinlance carefully down behind him and warmed his hands in the flames. Hepzibar reached back for more branches. She began snapping them in half and adding them to the fire, one by one. The wood burst into pale green flames.

  ‘You seemed pretty hungry,’ Hepzibar observed, looking up shyly at the older kin. She broke another branch, tossed it onto the fire.

  ‘Food is scarce in fullwinter,’ said Kesh curtly. ‘And fullwinter in the yellow peaks was harsher than usual this year.’

  Hepzibar nodded, and she noticed the way Kesh ran a hand thoughtfully over his jutting ribs. Azura lay down behind him, coiling around the fire in a semi-circle and folding her wings.

  ‘So you came here,’ said Hepzibar.

  ‘The colony had left. We thought the wyrme galleries would be deserted,’ said Kesh pointedly.

  Azura growled, and Hepzibar felt Asa tremble.

  Kesh lay himself down on his side, facing the fire, half curled up and his crooked arm beneath his head. The flames splash-patterned his soulskin.

  ‘The taint of kith and keld is strong,’ he noted, then looked up at Hepzibar, who was holding her raised palms up to the flickering warmth. ‘It makes it hard for me and Azura to sleep.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hepzibar. ‘But …’

  She fell still. It wasn’t fair, she was well aware of that. She and Asa had found the wyrme galleries first. Why, they had been there three weeks or more – and besides, it had been Hepzibar herself who had laid the fire that late afternoon when the chill of the coming night had started to penetrate the chambers. But Kesh’s tone was threatening, and Azura was staring at Asa, her ochre eyes reddening once more. Hepzibar had no option but to move.

  ‘That’s fine,’ she said, ignoring Asa’s low growls of protest. She climbed to her feet and headed for the shadowy side of the chamber, where the fire set the pillars flickering, but offered little warmth. ‘We’ll sleep over yonder,’ she said.

  Kesh snorted. ‘Do what you like,’ he said, and he closed his eyes. ‘Just stay out of our way.’

  Fifteen

  That first night, the sky cleared and the temperature abruptly plummeted. A spiteful wind got up, and the snow that had fallen started to drift. There was no shelter to be had, and Eli kept the two of them on the move.

  ‘We fall asleep in this and we’ll never wake up,’ he said.

  Micah groaned inside, but made no objections. ‘Where are we headed?’ he asked.

  ‘Jura’s cave,’ came the reply.

  ‘Jura’s cave,’ Micah repeated, and shivered at the memory of the hidden home behind the waterfall, where Eli’s friend, the kinwoman, had lived, and died. He recalled the random destruction they’d stumbled upon; the eviscerated whitewyrme, and Jura herself, her throat slit and tongue hacked out at the root.

  Eli eased his pace, allowing Micah to catch up. He turned to him.

  ‘It’s our best hope,’ he said simply.

  Micah nodded.

  ‘Maybe our only hope,’ he added, ‘so I don’t want to hear no nonsense ’bout ghosts and suchlike, you hear me?’ He clapped a hand round Micah’s shoulders. ‘Jura’s spirit has been set free. I saw to that.’ He sighed. ‘All we got to hope is that no one else has already happened upon the place …’

  ‘How far off is it?’

  ‘Three days by favourable conditions,’ came the cragclimber’s reply. ‘Five days, the progress we’re making. Longer than that if the weather turns.’ He patted Micah on the back, then thrust his hands back deep in his pockets. ‘Which is why we need to press on.’

  The cragclimber pulled ahead again, and Micah trudged after him, the wyrmepelt wrapped tightly round his body. With each step, his boots broke through the crust of frozen snow, and it seemed to Micah like he’d been hearing that steady crunch crunch for ever.

  The sun was setting when they’d crossed the high range behind the den, a crosswind blowing the smoke from the thermal vents into their faces. It had reeked of sulphur and hot metal, along with the pungent stench of rotting meat, and Eli had cursed under his breath when he’d discovered the decomposing jackwyrmes plugged into the crack in the warm rock. Later on, having ­followed a long ridge eastwards, they started descending, and by the time the moon had risen, they were trudging across a broad plateau, their shrinking shadows ­marching along resolutely beside them.

  Now the terrain was rising again. It was a wondrous collage of silver and grey. The air was so cold that breathing in stung the fine membrane of Micah’s nostrils and made his eyes water – and the tears, in turn, froze at the corners of his eyes.

  Micah thought of Thrace. The warmth of her body next to his in the sleeping chamber. The softness of her skin against his skin. The sweet musk of her scent. Fresh tears welled, and he wiped them away with a clenched fist before they too froze.

  Daybreak came swift and sudden. One moment, the sky was at its darkest, with the moon already gone and the stars looking higher up in the sky than ever; the next, the sky blushed pinky grey, and splinters of light broke the horizon and set the air to twinkling.

  ‘What is it?’ Micah breathed, clouds billowing from his mouth as he stared at the glittering air around him.

  ‘Diamond dust, some call it,’ said Eli. ‘One of the wonders of fullwinter – when it gets so cold that every trace of moisture in the air gets turned to ice.’ He frowned, then added, ‘Though I’ve never witnessed it myself before.’

  Eli paused, leaving the reason for that unspoken, and Micah thought back to the winter den, which was warm and safe, but shut off from … from all this.

  Micah stepped forward. He gripped the edges of the wyrmepelt, raised his arms and threw back his head. The particles of glittering ice flew around him like shooting stars. It felt to Micah as though he was flying, and when he breathed in he breathed in the glittering sparks of light, and they danced on his tongue and coursed through his veins and his head spun, delirious, exultant.

  He thought of Thrace again, hunched up and pale, slowly fading away in the winter den, and for the first time he truly understood why.

  Sixteen

  Hepzibar lay down with Asa coiled around her. She rested her head on the curve of his belly. She felt his bodywarmth and, with her ear pressed against his scales, she could hear the regular beat of his heart. Slowly, the gentle purr of the whitewyrme’s breathing became more rasping as Asa drifted into sleep, and Hepzibar, feeling safe and secure, soon followed him.

  She dreamed of whitewyrmes. Hundreds of them.

  They were bustling through the caverns, or perching on the ledges, and beyond the teeming galleries the air was full of the great creatures, looking just like Asa onl
y bigger, circling overhead in the warm sunshine, their white wings flexed and jaws opening and closing as they called to one another.

  She laughed with joy and wonder as she craned her neck to watch them, then turned round, eager to share her happiness with Asa. But he was nowhere to be seen, and when she looked back, the whitewyrmes had gone. Every last one of them. The leaden skies were empty. She walked sadly back inside the wyrme gallery, and her footsteps echoed around the deserted chambers.

  A cold wind was blowing. It chilled her body, and she fought against it, but it penetrated deeper and she could not get warm …

  Her eyes snapped open.

  ‘Asa?’

  Hepzibar uncurled and sat up, her cold joints protesting at the sudden movement. She looked round.

  At the centre of the cave, the previous night’s fire was little more than a glowing nest of embers. Kesh was still asleep before it, soaking up the fading dregs of warmth. Azura was curled round him in a broad arc, her eyes closed and soft breaths wheezing from her slightly parted jaws. Asa was standing a little way off, his back to her.

  Hepzibar climbed stiffly to her feet, stretching as she did so. She crossed the floor to Asa and crouched down next to him.

  ‘What you got there?’ she whispered, but even as she spoke she could see what Asa was holding.

  It was Kesh’s kinlance.

  Asa was running a sharp claw gently up and down its length. The curve of his claw exactly matched the lines carved into the blackpine.

  ‘A whitewyrme made this,’ he said. ‘With claws like mine . . . and firebreath.’ His voice was soft and thoughtful.

  Hepzibar reached out and gripped the lance towards one end, where it was ridged and smoothed and moulded to the shape of a human hand.

  Kesh’s hand.

  Hepzibar examined the other end of the lance. It had been filed to a point so needlepoint sharp, it pierced the skin at the ball of her thumb and drew blood. This was what Kesh fought with …

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’