Aurum: The Golden Planet

by Sharon Joss

  One of the board members, Kenson, interrupted. “Mr. Blaylock told us the Khirjahni stable girl who stole Golden Boy is your girlfriend. Is this true?”

  Wayne fought to keep his temper. The look of distaste on the faces of the men in the room told him exactly what they were thinking. What a bunch of hypocrites. “She’s half Terran. And she’s not my girlfriend. She’s a nut job.”

  “Careful, Strickland,” Blaylock gloated. “We have security camera footage of you and her together.”

  Damn! A trickle of sweat rolled down the side of his face. He hadn’t decided what to do about K’Sati yet, but when he did, he would find a way to make it painful for her and satisfying for him.

  Danby Coles, the Chairman, twisted the knife in his ribs. “I’ve heard from two other stable owners who tell me one of our stable girls came to them and begged them to hide two of our traggahs until after the final race. She claimed you instructed her to have them destroyed.”

  After that, everyone turned a deaf ear to his explanations, and even Duprees refused to look at him, even as he argued he hadn’t done anything they wouldn’t have done. They were looking for a scapegoat.

  “Boss?” Lyle caught his attention. “What you want to do?”

  Black clouds obliterated the suns. Probably less than an hour until first sunset, anyway. “What’s the forecast?”

  “Winds expected to drop off sometime by midnight. Should be clear tomorrow.”

  Damn. If only they’d left a day earlier. He’d pulled out every trick he could think of to persuade the board to let him go after Golden Boy and the thieves who took him. This was his only chance at getting his money back. If they hadn’t spent nearly two whole days making up their minds, he would have had this mess cleared up already. And now they’d wasted two more days with only a wrecked sled to show for it. At most, they had three days left to find Golden Boy and get him back to the coast in time to qualify for the final.

  He horked up a lungful of dust and spat disgustedly. “All right. Find us a place to camp out of this damn wind.”

  They came equipped with enough provisions for a ten-day search. In addition to the tranquilizer guns for the traggah, they had plenty of firepower and ammunition. Lyle warned them about the long teeth and the wolf-like rahgs, which patrolled much of the temperate zone. Wayne had never encountered any of the planet’s apex predators, and had no desire to do so.

  But wild animals aside, Dupree told him if he didn’t bring Golden Boy back in time for to run the qualifier for the final, he would personally deliver him to the ice-mine pitmaster in chains, and he would never take another breath as a free man.

  Wayne was not about to let that happen.

  CHAPTER 20

  Silverbeard pounded up the slope, while Renly gripped the crest of his mane in both hands. The forest road they’d been following had disintegrated into a two-foot-wide dirt track running between shoulder-high boulders. Now that they’d left the canopy of open forest, the weak suns warmed the morning air to something above freezing, barely. The air felt drier here; the sounds of traggah hooves beats echoed eerily off the rocks, like drums all around them. The winding trail rose steeply as they gained altitude.

  From the top of nearly every boulder, reptilian heads turned to stare at them. A sea of lizards surrounded them. Rockpies, K’Sati had called them. These things were as big as dogs. Big dogs. Big, grey, crusty dogs, yawning in the morning sun, their sweet pink tongues belying the sharp-looking serrated teeth. They must have weighed seventy or eight pounds each. He dug his heels into Silverbeard’s ribs, urging the traggah to catch up with Neatfoot. Instantly, every head turned toward him, and the lizards scrambled over each other; their attention immediately focused on the jingle of the buckles on his pack.

  A fat lizard launched itself off a boulder at them. Silverbeard whistled an angry warning and sidestepped to avoid the attack, nearly unseating Renly, but the steep rocks lining the narrow trail made it difficult to evade the attack. More lizards surged forward, crowding onto the boulders closest to the path. K’Sati and Neatfoot were already a hundred yards ahead. The road reminded him of a gauntlet, as lizards climbed on top of each other for the best vantage point to launch themselves.

  With a handful of Silverbeard’s mane in one hand, he clamped his legs to the big buck’s side and slowly eased the stonewood club out from beneath his belt. When the next lizard launched himself at them, he swung hard, and the creature went down with the satisfying sound of a crushed skull. Silverbeard’s ears perked up.

  Again and again, the lizards lunged at them from the boulders, and as the traggah eluded them on the right, Renly beat them back with the stonewood club on the left.

  Up ahead, Neatfoot whistled loudly. Silverbeard answered, and surged ahead; Renly heard shrill, angry whistles and squeals coming from the somewhere ahead of them. The lizards too, turned toward the sounds, and as he rounded a turn, he understood why.

  At a wide spot in the trail, Paul and Golden Boy were surrounded by rockpies. Paul lay trapped beneath the traggah he’d been riding. The downed traggah, was in an absolute state of panic; lathered and stinking, the whites of his eyes wide and staring, unable to rise. At his throat, swarmed five large lizards. Their jaws clamped to the poor traggah’s airway, while Golden Boy fought off the encroaching tide of lizards with his hoofs; trampling as many as came close.

  Renly sensed Silverbeard’s outrage as the traggah leapt into the fray, stamping lizards to death beneath his feet in his determination to reach Golden Boy and Paul. Paul lay unmoving in the dirt, his filthy clothes shredded, bloody, and torn.

  Time slowed, even as everything seemed to happen at once.

  He slid from Silverbeard’s back and began bludgeoning the lizards at the fallen traggah’s throat, but realized almost at once that the poor thing was dead. Neatfoot joined Silverbeard and Golden Boy in attacking the lizards, whose attention was now focused on snatching quick bites from the dead traggah.

  K’Sati knelt at Paul’s head, her hand on his pulse. “He’s alive, but we’ve got to get him out of here,” K’Sati said. “There are too many of them!”

  Paul’s eyes fluttered. Renly pulled open the lid, noting the pupil’s slow response to light. His eyes didn’t look normal. Given his history, drugged, probably.

  Disgusted, Renly motioned to K’Sati to help him drag Paul clear of the dead traggah. If they hadn’t come along, when they had Golden Boy would probably have battled those lizards until he had no more strength left. Anger raced like fire through his veins.

  All three traggahs were covered in blood; mostly lizard. They screamed furiously as they stuck at the lizards, stomping them wherever they could. The attack began to falter, as the lizards seemed somewhat reluctant to continue their suicidal charge in the face of such an array of deadly hooves. They turned their attentions to the fallen, and the feeding frenzy began; both on the dead traggah and the trampled and mangled corpses of their own kin.

  K’Sati helped him get Paul’s unconscious body tied to Golden Boy’s saddle, and swung himself up on Silverbeard. As the rockpies feasted on the dead, they made their escape from the rocklands.

  * * *

  Minutes later, they emerged onto the high prairies of the steppes. The magnitude of the expanse of the open landscape around them made Renly uncomfortable. An endless sea of grey-green vegetation stretched before them, broken only by scattered islands of crumbled stone. Great fangs of distant purple mountains framed the horizon in nearly every direction, reaching such heights as if to bite the sky itself. The wind buffeted them in an invisible, malevolent force, as if to say, go back; you are not welcome here.

  K’Sati led them to an outcrop; a jumble of wind-sculpted stones rising above the grassland. One the lee side, they found a shallow cave, not much more than a crevice, which sheltered them from the worst of the winds.

  “What is this place,” he asked, warily.

  “Do not worry. No lizards can survive here. We are on the Plains of the U’N
ui-ah. This is a safe place.” She dismounted and led Neatfoot and Golden Boy toward the back of the cave.

  The inside of the blackened crevice smelled like old smoke and charcoal. Renly helped her untie the still-unconscious Paul from the back of Golden Boy and lay him against the back wall. He searched through Paul’s saddlebags and pockets. To his relief, one of the saddlebags was packed tightly with dried meat, fruit, a hard cheese and a wineskin filled with water. In the other, he found a heavy blanket of rough-spun traggah wool wrapped around a dozen or so of the same brown powder packets he’d seen at Paul’s place.

  K’Sati was busy checking the bloody traggahs for injuries. Renly admired her quiet ease with them. The traggahs seemed grateful for her presence, and leaned into her touch. Silverbeard seemed embarrassed when as she ran her hands down his legs, and gave Renly a rather sheepish look as if to say, I’m only being polite.

  “Are they alright?”

  She nodded. “I think so, but with all that blood, I wanted to make sure.” She wiped her hands on her pants. She noticed the packets in his hand. “Is that dream dust?”

  “I think so. He had a lot of these empty packets back at his place.” He started to open one of the packets, but K’Sati stopped him.

  “Dream dust carries the disease you Terrans call dragon pox.”

  He dropped the packet as if burned. “I don’t understand. What the hell is he doing with that stuff?”

  “Surely you have seen the mandragons.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The soil in craggon caves has hallucinogenic properties which are highly addicting to Terrans. Once addicted, few Terrans ever leave the forbidden zone. Even when they come to the coast for the Gold Festival, they must bring dirt with them, or else they go into withdrawal. They can die.”

  Paul moaned and stirred, but did not awaken.

  “Paul is no mandragon. What’s he doing with this stuff?”

  She gazed at him evenly. “The most likely explanation is that Paul is heading for the forbidden zone. He stole two traggahs, and has more food than he needs. He must have a partner prospecting in the Crags of Corrah. Perhaps your brother has been supplying him with dream dust in exchange for supplies.”

  The explanation seemed reasonable, given Paul’s history. “If dream dust is full of the pox, why would any Terran consider taking it?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “As the disease progresses, mandragons become increasingly paranoid. They don’t dare leave their claim, but they need someone they can trust to bring them food without leading anyone else to their camp. So they get someone close to them hooked on dream dust. This is how most Terrans become dirt eaters.”

  Heat rose in his face. “That’s barbaric. You’re saying my brother would do something like this? You don’t know him. He would never--.” His voice cracked.

  “When the mandragon dies of the pox, the new mandragon takes over the claim. This is what happened to my father.”

  He took a deep breath. If true, Sully and the other mandragons at the gold ball had all done the same thing. Not likely. “I’m sorry about your father, but you must be mistaken. Paul has always been a junkie, a liar, and a low-life. He’ll do anything for a high. He probably bought this stuff off one of the mandragons.”

  “The addiction is specific to the particular craggon den. Once the pox has takes hold, the user is hooked on dirt from that particular claim. No other dirt will help.”

  He didn’t want to believe her. Couldn’t believe her. “When he wakes up, he can tell us and we’ll both know.”

  “Get up.” He shoved Paul’s inert form with his toe. “I know you’re awake.”

  Paul did not respond. Outside the shallow cave, the wind howled. An old ring of blackened stones and charcoal stood at the very back wall, but they had no fuel to start a fire. He used a strip of leather he found in Golden Boy’s saddle to bind Paul’s hands behind him.

  K’Sati took a long swallow from the water skin and offered it to him. “Why are you so angry at him?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t like being lied to. I don’t like being tricked. He sent me off to buy him drugs by saying he would die without them. On Earth, we have drugs like that, so I believed him, but as soon as I left, he ran. He knows where Garrett is, he just doesn’t want to tell me. He’s a liar and a manipulator, and he always has been.”

  “I do not understand. Why would he not tell you where your brother is?”

  The memories flooded though him. It wasn’t just his own childish jealousy of Paul that made him distrust Garrett’s best friend. Their parents banished him from the house and grounds for stealing and instructed Garrett not to associate with him. But it made no difference. Every moment Garrett spent outside the house, he was with his best friend, Paul Hite.

  Much of his childhood memories were of trying to keep up with them. Part of it, he admitted, was the fascination every younger brother has to tag along after his older sibling, and part of it was to see for what Garrett and Paul did when they were off doing those BAD things; but some of it was curiosity about what those BAD things were…

  “They always covered for each other when we were kids. Once, the police came to our house looking for Paul, and my brother told them they weren’t even friends anymore, which wasn’t true. And he would never tell me where Garrett was when I asked him. He’s just always been that way.”

  Truth was, he resented the hell out of Paul, and always had.

  Strong arms grabbed him from behind. He squirmed and yelled and kicked, but was hauled into the unfamiliar bright kitchen and dumped like a sack of garbage on the floor.

  “I found this kid peeking in the window.”

  Garret cursed and shouted at him for spying on them and ruining everything. They taped his hands and legs together and taped his mouth shut. His heart pounded so hard he could barely breathe,

  The quiet man had gold teeth and black eyes. He looked like the devil. Even afterward, his eyes and hands were the only features he ever remembered about the man who abused him. The quiet man pulled Renly onto his lap.

  “I won’t have the money until Friday,” Garrett said. His empty face held no emotion. It was like he didn’t even care. Renly knew instinctively that this must have been Paul’s doing.

  Garret would never leave him with this awful man. Renly closed his eyes in shame against the warm wetness spreading across his thighs. No one said anything. It couldn’t be real.

  But it was. They put a hood over his head and took him with them. They put him in the transport and drove around for what seemed like hours. Shielded behind the smoked glass privacy windows, the man ran tore his soiled clothes off of him. After he was naked, the man’s iron hands wouldn’t stop.

  “Are you alright?” She was looking at him expectantly, twisting her neck scarf between her fingers.

  “What?”

  “I said I must get Golden Boy back to the Arkady Stables as soon as possible.”

  He took a step back. “Oh. Of course.” He’d forgotten. Or maybe he just hadn’t thought through what would happen once they caught up with Paul. “You mean now?”

  “No, in the morning. First sun has already set.”

  “What about the rock lizards?”

  “I know another way. I will take Golden Boy at first light. With his speed, we will be back in time to for him to run his qualifier.” She smiled, but her eyes looked worried. “I will leave Silverbeard and Neatfoot with you and Paul.”

  He’d never even considered she would leave him alone out here. Well, not exactly alone, but the idea of following Paul out into this lizard-infested wilderness seemed like suicide right now. But of course, she had her own life to worry about.

  “If you bring him back alone, won’t they think you stole him?”

  She paled. “Getting him back in time for the race is the most important thing. I will be…fine.”.

  Paul opened his eyes and rolled to his side. A smile curled at the edges of his mouth. “Not if that big boyfriend of yours has a
nything to say about it. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when Wayne finds you.”

  She blushed and looked scared.

  He shoved Paul roughly with his foot. “Nobody asked you. You’re the reason for all of this mess.” He turned to her. “Does he mean Wayne Strickland?”

  She nodded. “He’s responsible for stable security. I will be fine.”

  She didn’t sound at all certain.

  Paul finally seemed to notice his hands were tied. “Hey, cut me loose; you can’t do this!”

  The quiet man with the devil eyes took him down into a filthy basement and chained him to a bolt set into the cement floor. There was a wall sink and a filthy mattress and bucket. No windows. No way to tell the passage of time. Renly tried to guess how long it would be until Friday.

  The quiet man with the hard hands and black eyes told him to call him Papa. They only brought him food after he’d done what Papa wanted. Every time he came to the basement, it seemed like he stayed for hours. Every time he left, Renly vowed he would kill himself rather than let that man do those things to him again, but he was naked, chained, and helpless. And what could a ten-year-old boy do against such a hard, bad man?

  She moved as if to untie Paul.

  “Don’t!” He debated what to tell her. “You don’t know him like I do. He’s dangerous.”

  Paul managed to squirm into a sitting position. “Come on, K’Sati. You know me. Not a mean bone in my body. I’ve never raised a hand against anyone.”

  Anxiety gripped Renly like a vise. “Shut up!”

  K’Sati stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, and Silverbeard whistled nervously.

  He took a deep breath. “When I was a kid, Paul got involved with a loan shark, and dragged my brother into it. When he couldn’t pay, the loan shark kidnapped me.” He shrugged at the shocked expression on her face. “Paul knew who did it, but he never said a word.”