Alchemy's Child (The Mindbender's Rise Book 5)

by D J Salisbury

  Zharyl shrugged. “Sometimes it’s easier to see where someone else is going, even if you can’t see your own path. I don’t know what I’ll do after the quest is over. I can only imagine what a wizard might do.”

  His head whipped back as though he’d been slapped.

  “What?” She patted his knee. “You asked about wizards in town. I heard all about it from my girlfriends.”

  His frozen neck muscles relaxed. Of course she’d heard about it. Only a few thousand people witnessed the sorcerers harassing him. He shouldn’t have mentioned wizards in such a public place.

  Movement ahead caught his attention. Lorel and Tsai’dona were riding back at a full gallop. “Now what?”

  Zharyl shrugged. “Most likely they saw a Setoyan. When can I learn to ride?”

  He stared up at her blankly, and sighed. “After I get you a horse. Unless you talk Tsai’dona into sharing. Lorel won’t, I don’t think.”

  “Tsai’dona’s horse is too little for me.” The girl leaned back against the wagon and huffed, but she didn’t argue further.

  Tsai’dona reined in her mare a hundred paces in front of the wagon, but Lorel rode directly to him. “Fighters headed this way, kid. It’s weird how much they look like you, but bigger.”

  Twice as big, in most cases. Literally. And the plainsmen would consider only Lorel and Zharyl as real people, unless he could convince them otherwise.

  “Stay close to the wagon and look fierce.” He waved at Tsai’dona. “Come on in! Stay with the wagon, no matter what happens.”

  Tsai’dona rode back reluctantly. “They didn’t look friendly.”

  “They never do. We must proceed on protocol.” Formality was the key to any trader’s dealings with the tribes. He didn’t mind getting laughed at it – and if he was lucky they’d find him amusing – as long as they didn’t throw rocks at him.

  Spear-wielding warriors rose out of the tall grass an hour later, trapping the group near the edge of a deep canyon. Twenty, twenty-three thunder-dedicated fighters. Either it was a small tribe, or only a few of them were willing to bother with strangers.

  Amber-skinned, amber-haired, tall enough to touch the moons. Well, two out of three wasn’t bad. Unfortunately, it was his lack of height that got him Outcast.

  The oldest man stepped in front of the rest. “Who goes?”

  An easy question to start out with. “I am Viper, a trader new to this route. I carry–”

  “The girl with you is of the Tribes,” a warrior shouted. “Is she your wife?”

  Heat rushed into his face. “No!” Oh, exactly what he needed to start a war, with him and them, or between the girls. Girls got weird about stuff like that.

  “Scarcely!” Zharyl yelped in passable Setoyan. “And I’m not Setoyan!”

  Several warriors laughed.

  Laughter was safety. Let them laugh all they wanted. He forced his hands to unclench.

  “Is she Outcast?” an older warrior demanded.

  “No, I’m not!” Zharyl stood up and scowled at the warrior. “I am not Setoyan! I’m from Melad! And I’m on a quest!”

  Must the noodle brain announce it to everyone she met? The quest was supposed to be a secret.

  “Indeed.” The warrior frowned at her a moment longer before turning to Viper. “Your blood names you Tribe, but your size names you Outcast.”

  “I was Setoyan by birth and blood.” He wasn’t about to answer the Outcast accusation. Especially since it was too obviously true. “Now I walk my own path. I lay no claim to any tribe, except in friendship and trade.”

  Most of the warriors nodded, but some appeared angered by his words. “An Outcast is nothing to us,” one shouted. “Kill him. Kill them all!”

  “A trader must face an ordeal,” cried another.

  Lorel stood up in her stirrups and sucked in a deep breath.

  He waved his turybird down. “Name the ordeal.”

  Silence.

  Good. They hadn’t planned to make trouble. Maybe he could talk his way out of it. “I have trading goods worth more than any ordeal–”

  The war leader stomped forward. “The Outcast will kill a turybird.”

  Oh, sure. A stupid, carnivorous bird taller than Lorel and built of sharp feathers, hooked beak, and enormous claws. It would tear him into strips too small for jerky. “That’s too easy. Besides, it’s thundering undignified, dancing with a turybird.” Not to mention it wasn’t a traditional ordeal, and it sounded like an honor trap.

  The warrior nodded. “We must choose an ordeal that suits your courage.” He stood still, staring across the plain. Finally he shrugged. “The Outcast will kill the rogue bahtdor.”

  His stomach sank below the roots of the grass. Roots he knew for a fact grew seven feet deep, according to Swanannoa’s Flora of Menajr.

  “My fat mouth,” he muttered. Louder, he said, “I’ll collect my weapons.”

  “Let the Outcast go as he is,” yelled a warrior.

  “Which?” Bess whispered from under the door.

  “The saikeris.” Viper stood on the driver’s bench to face the warriors while Bess rummaged through his gear. Even standing on the bench, he was still shorter than the tallest men. “Is it the custom of this Tribe to send a trader candidate into battle armed with only his teeth?”

  “The nercat does it,” said a youngster. “Even against an abuelo snake.”

  Bess’s hand tapped his ankle.

  He bent and scooped the weapons off the seat. They looked awfully small for what he had in mind. But they’d have to do. The troublemakers wouldn’t allow him a sword, even if he were big enough to use it.

  With a grin as wide as an attacking nercat’s and a forlorn hope the grimace hid his terror, he held the saikeris to his mouth like a pair of triple-forked fangs. “These are my teeth!”

  Many of the warriors laughed and cheered.

  “So be it.” The war leader scowled at the few growling warriors, and they fell silent. “The Outcast will conquer the rogue bahtdor armed with only the weapons he bears now.”

  In his book, that included magic. He’d need all of his skills to survive this mess. Plus twice as much to survive Lorel afterwards, considering the look on her face. Was she about to explode? Could he talk these men to protecting him until she calmed down?

  His luck was never that good. Though it might make them laugh at him. Laughter was safety. And once they stopped posturing, they’d admire his ruffled turybird. But not too much, he hoped.

  Still frowning darker than a water-loaded thunderdrum, Lorel kneed her gelding closer to the wagon. “What on the Loom do you think you’re doing?”

  “I spent a lot of time thinking of ways to deal with a rogue bahtdor.” He shrugged as nonchalantly as he could, considering he was trembling from his toes to his fingertips. “An old male went rogue only a lunar before– before I left. They were still fighting with it, last I remember. It led me to develop a theory.”

  “Weaver’s chamberpot.” Lorel slapped her forehead. “He’s gonna kill some monster with book learning. Ain’t you figured out that monsters ain’t scared of books?”

  He couldn’t stop a laugh, shaky and high-pitched though it was. “Well, I’m not afraid of a bahtdor, not even a rogue.”

  “Maybe you should be.” Tsai’dona pointed at the herd browsing at the far end of the canyon. “Those things are huge.”

  “They don’t look none friendly, neither.” Lorel scowled at the peaceful herd. “Blood in the Weave, look at them teeth! I don’t like this, kid.”

  “Don’t make me nervous.” He glared at both girls. “I know what I’m doing.” Neither of them seemed to notice the lie.

  “Why do you delay?” The war chief frowned at him, but his gaze wandered to Lorel’s long legs. “Do you refuse the ordeal?”

  “I’m leaving right now.” He climbed down from the wagon and strolled toward the canyon cliff.

  Lorel hissed, but leaned back in her saddle.

  “This is a trial,�
�� the war chief said through clenched teeth. “Remove your clothing.”

  Strip? In front of the girls? Not a chance of that, even though it was traditional. But he did peel down to his leather small clothes.

  He needed to thank Tsai’dona for making his much-hated serdil-hide shorts. He did thank the Thunderer for the odd luck of those being the only clean underwear he had left that day. At least in leather he looked somewhat like a proper Setoyan.

  Did also he appear as young and scrawny as he felt?

  “He’s so skinny,” Zharyl wailed. “And look at all those scars! Oh, no! How’d he lose his foot?”

  Maybe he looked worse than he’d feared.

  Bess, now sitting on the driver’s bench with Zharyl, hushed his noisy nercat kitten.

  Young warriors stared at him while he pulled his padded boot back on. The older warriors frowned. One of them muttered to the war chief, who nodded. “Both shoes are permitted.”

  Praise the Thunderer. He’d begun to fear they’d make him hobble along on his stump. That would have cut his survival chances. A lot. Boots improved his odds. His feet weren’t as tough as they used to be. As it used to be.

  He clutched a saikeris in each hand, turned his back on the crowd, and crept down the wall of the canyon, careful to make no sounds, and praying he didn’t trip. Beside the humiliation, if he fell, he’d impale himself.

  He glanced at his saikeris. At least he wasn’t barehanded, but with only these weapons, his chances weren’t good. ‘Little fork thingies’, Lorel called them. Each had three prongs as thick as his largest finger, the outer pair the length of his hand, the center twice as long. They’d been carved from a single piece of bahtdor bone, a substance that, once Dedicated to the Thunderer, was as hard as steel. Each was a lethal weapon.

  His best hope was that even a canny bahtdor wouldn’t recognize saikeris as weapons, since it would be looking for a blade. He counted on confusing the beast and slowing its attack.

  But saikeris were designed to stop a sword blade, not an enormous animal with a mouthful of six-inch-long fangs. Staying alive would be a challenge. Killing the beast would take… creativity.

  Listening for any hint of movement, he crept under a small stand of trees.

  This bahtdor was probably old, a big grumpy beast with an insatiable appetite. Since it was declared rogue, by definition it had taken a fancy to living, bleeding Setoyan flesh.

  He didn’t blame the creature. Tribes regularly fed the bahtdor on human slaves, but those same tribes objected to being the hunted instead of the hunters. How was an ever-hungry bahtdor to know the difference?

  A branch cracked, echoing in the trees before him.

  He eased forward.

  A blue-black mountain charged directly at him.

  He jumped aside and scampered to avoid the saplings brought down by the charging behemoth. Blast. That was much too close. He turned to face the bahtdor.

  It was an ancient female, her blue-black hide tinged gold by age. Her eyes glowed with fury. And decades of experience.

  She was a lot bigger than he’d expected, the largest bahtdor he’d ever seen. Halfway as big as a dragon. At least thirty feet long. Maybe forty. She could devour him in two bites.

  Why, exactly, had he agreed to this travesty? Weren’t there easier ways to complete a trader’s Ordeal? One, he remembered, was to walk barefoot across a seventy-foot-wide mound of fire ants. No thank you. He’d stepping on a tiny mound as a child and had limped – and itched – for a lunar.

  A second way was to descend into a ghoul’s tunnel and bring out the corpse of the most recent missing herder child. In reality, there was nothing left to rescue, but the now-deceased traders didn’t know it.

  Or… Marry into a tribe. That was the worst torture. He’d rather marry a turybird.

  Besides, no sane woman would marry an Outcast and leave her tribe.

  He swallowed hard and circled to the right.

  The bahtdor charged again.

  Time for extreme measures. After the threat of marriage, this creature wasn’t half as scary.

  He dashed at her and jumped on her back, but slid off the far side. He narrowly missed being trampled by her back foot.

  She whirled on him.

  “Lightning blast your eggs!” He scarpered into a tree.

  She banged her head against the tree trunk, stood back, and glared maliciously at him.

  There was one trick that worked when he was a child. Well, it worked for the little kids, any time they wanted to ride a bahtdor. And he wasn’t much bigger now than he’d been as a herder child.

  He slid down from the tree and, lifting each knee to an exaggerated height, pretended to sneak away.

  The bahtdor charged, but far more slowly than before.

  Good, he’d puzzled her. Or she remembered the game. He scuttled out of range of her jaws, whirled, and leaped onto her back. And managed to hang on this time.

  But he couldn’t stay put long. As soon as she got organized, she’d swing her head around and bite his leg off.

  Hand over hand, still clutching his saikeris and moving faster than he had in his life, he hitched up her long neck to her head.

  Now came the tricky part, something he’d never tried before. He stabbed his left saikeri into the base of her head, right at the brain stem.

  The weapon bounced off her skull and out of his hand.

  The bahtdor roared and reared. She stretched to her full height and threw herself backwards.

  Blast, blast, and sandblast. He was so dead.

  Without even thinking about it, he shrieked and jumped. He rolled under a bramble and scuttled toward the far side.

  She squirmed upright in seconds. Her mad eyes followed his progress through the brambles. But instead of going around, the wily old female simply crashed straight through, ignoring the sharp thorns that raked her tough skin.

  Lightning blast her! Slipping between the bramble’s stalks, he crawled until his forehead hit something as dark as the shadows under the plant. Something hard. A boulder, praise the Thunderer. Trailing thorny vines from his hide, he climbed up through the bramble to the top of the rock. He tried to untangle himself, but his arms felt tied to his sides by nail-studded leather strips.

  The bahtdor charged again.

  Forget untangling. He leapt from the rock, barely clearing the edge of the bramble, and scrambled up a tree. Blood spurted where thorns tore out of his arms and legs and chest. Lavender mist trailed after him.

  He must remember to thank Tsai’dona. Thorns would’ve gone straight through linen small clothes. He didn’t want to even think about it.

  The bahtdor stalked to the tree, squatted in its shade, and glowered up at him.

  Blast. She looked as comfortable as he was miserable. He groaned and slid his remaining saikeri into his waistband.

  Now what? He settled onto his branch, yanked thorns from the stinging rents in his skin, and tossed them at the bahtdor’s head. Given that his target was as big as his chest, he couldn’t miss.

  The huge beast hissed with irritation, but held her ground.

  Last year’s fist-sized seed pods surrounded him. He hurled one with both hands and laughed when it thunked off her skull.

  She rewarded him with an earsplitting bellow.

  The old girl made more noise than Zharyl. He rubbed his head ruefully and leaned back to think.

  His other saikeri lay in the dirt not thirty paces away, undamaged. Unobtainable. As useless as the toes on his missing foot.

  The blood magic hovering around him could give him the power to materialize a ghost foot for a few minutes, but what good would be? Besides, it took too much concentration. He wouldn’t be able to run or fight on it.

  What were his options? He could try to escape, but the canyon walls were out of sight, and she was faster than he was. Besides, it meant lawful death for him if he tried to climb out. Such cowardice would earn execution for all of his friends, as well.

  The bahtdor’s hi
de rippled. The old female eased her bulk to the ground and yawned widely. Her saber teeth glittered in the dappled sunlight.

  He stretched out on his branch and wondered how long it would take to starve to death.

  Too long. His only options were honorable death in battle, or dishonorable execution.

  He took a deep breath and launched himself off the branch, landed hard on the bahtdor’s bony back, and jumped down to the ground.

  The old female bellowed in rage and hauled herself up.

  Running for his life, Viper darted across the clearing, scooped up his other saikeri, and sprinted down the path between the trees.

  Or tried to sprint. He wasn’t as fast as he’d been when he had two feet to run on.

  The bahtdor lumbered after him. Gained on him. With a burst of speed, she caught up to him and snapped at his head with enormous teeth.

  He ducked, hopped off the trail, spun, and, using her rising knee as a catapult, vaulted high onto her back. He wrapped his wrists and legs around her neck and clung like magefire.

  She hissed and rubbed against a tree.

  He released his hold on her neck, let the bark slid by, and grabbed on even tighter.

  If only he could think up some magic to use on her. Too late now. He was committed to piercing her brain stem.

  If that didn’t work, he’d have to climb on top of her head and stab her in the eye, even though it meant shoving his hand deep into her skull. Which would probably break his arm about the time she flicked her head and broke his neck.

  Right.

  Kill her fast, or jump off and let her eat him. But if she killed him, his crew would become slaves.

  Slaves who, sooner or later, would be fed to the bahtdor.

  Lorel wouldn’t survive long enough to end up a slave. She’d fight until they slaughtered her.

  The bahtdor bellowed and bucked.

  His arms and legs tightened around her neck. The ivory bracelet hidden under his skin chafed against her spine.

  The dragons believed him him. Lorel trusted him. Kyri needed him to finish the quest before the Mindbender became too strong for them to defeat.

  He refused to let any of them down.

  Gathering his will, he climbed as high as he dared.