by Dan Allen
The sun was finally rising over the peaks to her right.
“Logmar. Tiraset.” She followed the row of peaks. “There!” The trans-divide pass above the glacier fields was just within view at the edge of the horizon.
I can reach it before sundown.
Something else caught her eye. She looked to her right to see two greeders cross over the ridge. In unison, they stretched out their wings and dove into steep glides.
They both had riders and they were headed for her.
Vetas-kazen!
Panic gripped her, but even that did little to make her want to get up.
Lying there wasn’t a bad idea.
Let them get closer.
Dana forced herself to lie still on the ground as the killers approached.
Through the lashes of her half-closed eyes, Dana thought she knew them from the battle.
The druid that Korren attacked.
The other had a cap but could not hide a long braid of silver hair.
Poria—the enchanter.
Dana’s gambit had just gotten far more risky.
The druid would be focused on guiding his greeder. It was clearly flying in the lead position. The other was following. Poria would be looking for any sign of movement—or just trying to stay on her greeder.
Pity.
Dana lay on the ground, holding as still as she could.
The gliding greeders came swiftly.
Dana forced a thought into the greeder carrying Poria. Wouldn’t it be fun to tip the rider off?
Just as the gliding bird sailed out over a tall outcropping, Dana thrust the urge into the greeder with all the will she could muster. Now.
The greeder tucked one wing and rolled.
Poria let go of her reins to try to grab the saddle harness. But her fingers found no purchase.
“Porien!” the druid cried, looking back as the enchanter fell from a height of forty-five feet, a deadly distance.
The enchanter’s cry was cut short as her body disappeared behind a rock. Dana quickly turned her attention to the greeder.
Wouldn’t it be fun to ride with that girl over there on the ground? Dana suggested. We’ll have a race. The big man is too heavy for his bird. We’ll win!
Dana worried that the druid would try to stop the greeder from coming to her, but having seen Poria fall to her death, he appeared to be totally focused on keeping his own bird from dumping him.
The rider-less greeder landed with a flap of its wings, just ahead of the Torsican. Dana hopped on, and it bounded ahead, escaping the Torsican’s grasp by inches.
“Fool girl!” he roared. “You’ll pay for that!”
Up. Go.
Dana urged the greeder back up the rapidly steepening slope. Climbing was her only advantage. To her eye, the two animals were matched in size—likely from the same clutch. But Dana was lighter. With every bound, her greeder lofted farther and with less effort.
The barren ground became rocky, transitioning to a rubble slide and then a field of barrel-sized boulders as she neared the cliffs.
“Give up!” cried the druid. “You can’t run forever.”
He’s right.
He’s lying!
Dana fought off the doubts that preyed on her exhaustion. Ahead, the mountainside steepened into tall cliffs. She steered the greeder toward a dead end at the base of a steep waterfall chute with rust-streaked rocks.
Nearly there.
The incline grew perilous, and Dana’s bird could only ascend at an angle rather than straight up.
The chute, Dana urged. Climb the chute.
A scramble of broken rock led to the gap in the cliffs. This late in the season the run was dry.
Won’t this be fun! We’re winning!
Dana was nearly crying from the effort of teasing her greeder forward.
Behind her, the other druid’s greeder had slowed. He seemed to be looking for a way around the cliffs.
Ha!
There wasn’t one. Not for miles.
“You’re on my mountains now.”
“Go!” Dana spoke to urge her greeder. “Here we go, girl. Up the wash. Up. Up.”
The greeder switched to shorter, more rapid strides as the path steepened.
“Yes,” Dana said, sensing its thoughts. “Just like scrambling up to a roost in a big tree. You’re so clever. Good girl.”
Dana looked back. The druid was pressing forward, his animal’s head locked in her direction. Its legs moved with a frenzied pace, as if driven by mortal danger.
He had triggered its fear response.
Doing that was dangerous, because the animal became difficult to control. It could throw you.
But this druid seemed to have absolute control.
Dana thought of the bloodstone.
No. Too dangerous.
She needed both hands for this.
In the narrow cleft between the cliffs, the greeder bounded left and right, zig-zagging forward.
Rocks clattered from just below her.
He’s getting closer.
This is insane. It’s a dead end. Why am I doing this?
Dana shook her head. Not only did she have to fight her own lack of will, she had to keep her nagging self-doubt from spreading to her greeder.
“Who is the fastest greeder in the world? Who is the cleverest? Look at you. Magnificent.”
Tears of desperation formed in her eyes. Finally, Dana reached out with the last thread of will.
Save me. He’s going to kill us. Climb!
“CLIMB!” Dana screamed. Her voice echoed off the cliffs.
“Give up,” shouted the druid’s voice from only meters behind. “It’s over.”
The chute reached a dry waterfall at least twenty-five feet high.
“Jump!”
The frightened bird leapt.
The greeder scratched at the cliff face, beat its short wings, and scrambled against the rock, scratching for height.
It wasn’t going to make it. The holds were too small for its wide, clawed feet.
But not for a Xahnan.
With a cry, Dana leapt. The greeder fell back as Dana sailed through the air.
Once before she had done this. Her hands had slipped, and she would have certainly died if not for Ryke. But there was no Ryke to save her now. She lived or died on this cliff.
Dana thrust both of her hands into a crack on the rock. She slid downward until her hands jammed together at the base of the crevice.
“Ow!”
Greeders squawked below, and the man bellowed a cry as the birds collided.
Dana’s feet kicked in the air. Finally, her boot found a small ledge. She pushed up enough to free one hand. Bending her hands to form wedges she hauled herself upward, hand over hand. The sharp granite cut into her knuckles.
Dana scraped her way up the rock face, gaining height as quickly as she could. She didn’t look back to see whether the druid was following her or trying to go around. She didn’t even want to know.
Fifty feet up, the slope lessened, and Dana scrambled ahead on a curving rock face so barren that she didn’t dare stop for fear of sliding back and off the precipice.
Going forward was not a matter of will but of primal survival. She was already exhausted. The altitude was extreme, the air brutally cold, and the backs of her hands bleeding from gashes. There was only one thing to do now. She had to beat the druid to Norr. She could hide there, perhaps, until she had a way to survive the exalting chamber.
As she neared the top of a saddle pass, a south-facing slope rose on her left, and Dana nearly screamed in excitement at the crumpled form of a theeler weed stretching out between two rocks.
“Bless the Creator!”
Dana cried for joy as her desperate hands dug and pulled until the stem came free, bringing with it at least half of the gnarled root.
Dana devoured it, dirt and all. She tried to reach between the rocks to dig out the last remaining portion of root but couldn’t reach. She continued on before her m
uscles began lock up again.
Dizziness took her on the upslope. Sounds echoed in her mind, and her vision blurred into waking hallucinations.
Dana forced herself to run. “Faster. Faster.” The rhythm of her feet stomped out a song of suffering.
She checked behind her as a chill, dry wind whipped down the canyon, but she could make out no sign of the druid.
It was all about pain now. She was cold. She was beyond exhaustion. She was hungry and dehydrated—it seemed as though the altitude and dry wind were trying to petrify her.
If the druid wanted to pursue her, he would have to face those demons as well, in unfamiliar territory.
How strong is your will?
Would you risk death to catch me?
Because I’ll suffer anything to stop you.
Still dizzy, Dana kept her eyes down as she stood and forced one foot in front of the other. Morning bled past noon, and the sun began to fall. Still she forced herself to jog along the trail. When the slope finally lessened, she looked up to see the summit only a dozen yards away. Her parched, sunburned lips cracked as she made a weak attempt at a smile. And there, glinting in the final rays of the setting sun, was a patch of salvation.
Snow!
Dana fell to her knees and shoveled the dirt-strewn snow into her parched mouth. Her cheeks ached from melting the crystals. Handfuls of the stuff only seemed to yield a trickle of water. She tried melting snow in her hands and pouring it in her mouth, but her fingers were so cold she could barely bend them. But she kept at it.
Her sifa ached as well. Could she lose them to frostbite?
Above the tree line there was nothing to burn for heat. Only moving would keep her alive.
She forced herself to her feet and stumbled over the crest and down the switchbacks on the dark eastern slope. There were still two peaks between her and Norr, but some of it was downhill, and she would reach the geyser fields by the next dawn. Her tortuous night route along the backside of the mountains was easily as long as her path from Norr to Shoul Falls that had taken her past Port Kyner. Coupled with the exposure and hunger, the route had been brutal.
Feet now treading familiar ground, Dana gained speed.
By morning, she was twelve miles from Norr, within the territorial boundaries. Her warming body teased feeling back into her fingers. First they tingled, then they burned.
She felt the dampness of blood in her boots from torn blisters. She didn’t dare remove them to look at the damage.
But her right knee and hip gave her the most trouble. She had walked along a road sloping to her left, and her right leg had done more of the lifting. Her shuffling run was now a hobbled limp.
Her cracked lips bled whenever she took a deep breath through her mouth. Already, blisters were forming on her nose and cheeks, burned by the constant oppression of the sun at high altitude. She felt like a walking corpse.
The last ten miles to Norr passed in a dream-like torture. The water at the Farlan geyser fields was too hot for sayathi, and Dana drank her fill.
As she dropped in altitude, Dana found edible flowers, greens trodden underfoot on the path, and chewed the chalky insides of thistles—anything not completely poisonous.
Most of this was bound to either give her a terrible stomachache or pass right through, but that was the least of Dana’s worries.
Three miles from Norr, Dana left the path for a game trail.
So close. Don’t stop.
A razorback squirrel scolded her as she passed its pine nut stash, flaring its bone-tipped neck spines as if to remind her she didn’t belong here anymore.
It was true. If the Norrians caught her, would they imprison her for greeder theft—at a minimum. And if they realized she was blood-bound, they would certainly exact the mortal punishment for blood-binding.
Somehow, she would have to blend in.
But her crime would show in her eyes. She was no longer a drale.
Two hours before noon, Dana stopped a mile outside the city. It was out of sight, over a rise, and she was well away from any of the ranger footpaths. There was little chance she could get any closer to the city without being discovered. She had to find someone she could trust.
Voices reached her. Dana recognized their lugubrious dialogue. Only trappers conversed as slowly as these two.
“Shoul Falls has rangers looking under every marmar’s tail.”
“Heard it’s that druid, Dana—same one that tried to rob us.”
“Lousy, rotten, no-good thief—lost me a heap ‘o coin on account of her meddling.”
Evidently, these weren’t the people she wanted.
The voices approached, then began to fade as the game trail they followed turned east.
“Ranger said she was the granddaughter of their last ka.”
“Curse them all to oblivion.”
“Said they didn’t want to lose her, now that they’d found out who she was. Talk was that she might have the makings of their next ka.”
What? Dana’s faltering heart nearly skipped a beat.
“What’s she on the run for then—did she steal greeders from them, too?”
“If they’re looking for trouble like her, they can just go stuff their noses up a rasp-wing nest.”
“I hear ya.”
As the sounds of boots crunching on leaves faded, Dana’s mind whirled. If the ranger’s tale was true, the people of Shoul Falls’s opinion of her and keeping the bloodstone had changed dramatically after the kazen raid on their city. If so, she was no longer an outlaw but their best hope.
Dana wanted to believe it, desperately.
On the other hand, the news could have come from a Vetas-kazen posing as a Shoul Falls ranger. Having an amicable story for why they wanted Dana would make it much easier to get her to turn herself in.
There was only one way to know. She had to return to Shoul Falls, just as soon as she had the solution to surviving the exalting chamber.
For that, she needed Forz. But she didn’t dare get any closer to the city. She was blood-sworn now. If she were caught, she would die like Loka.
Dana let her will spread out on the wind until a familiar yellow-throated warbler touched her mind.
“Find Forz.” She passed a route to the workshop to its mind, along with an image of his snow-white hair. “He has food—lots of it.”
Dana moved into the bird’s point of view. It inspected its feathers, then took to wing, heading over the city wall, and following Dana’s intuition, it flew into the town center. It swooped easily to the second story window sill of Forz’s master’s workshop. Forz was inside at his drawing desk.
It pecked at the window. It pecked again.
For a solid minute it tapped away patiently.
Come on!
Finally, the bird’s sense of alarm startled Dana.
Movement. Forz had looked over from his desk.
Keep tapping.
No. The bird, so far from Dana, was resisting.
Do it! He has buckets of seeds.
Dana imagined Forz carrying loads of pine nuts and wheelflower seeds.
The bird pecked eagerly at the window.
“Unh,” Forz moaned.
The bird started tapping quickly then slowly, quickly then slowly, a pattern designed to be utterly unendurable.
“Most annoying bird in the whole—” Forz darted to the window and lifted the sash. The bird hopped in and pecked at his hand.
“Oh no. Dana—she’s back.”
Chapter 24
Jet awoke after hours of tortured nightmares—an effect of the heavy push of deceleration.
The images of bloody skeletons reaching for him faded as he fought free of the horror of his dream.
There was nothing so terrifying as being taken by the dead.
Taken by the dead.
Jet recalled the surreal epiphany after hearing about Monique’s experience in Ahreth’s meditation chamber. Xahna must fall.
And what if it did? What if the Belie
vers lost the entire planet and their fleet?
The answer was obvious. ASP would win. The corporations would descend on Xahna like ravenous Avalonian bat chickens. All resources—especially the power of the ka—would become prey to their greed.
Xahnans would be drunk with technology for a few years, before segments of society began to rebel and attempt to reclaim the old way. It was already happening on Dayal. The devil rebellions were draining ASP resources faster than the deep pits could turn out valuable heavy metals.
There would come a time when ASP would be unwelcome on Xahna as well.
Then let the dead take them.
Yes!
Jet climbed out of his sleeping sack and climbed a ladder to the empty bridge. “Tiberius, activate my tactical AI.”
“Alright. Attempting to side-along boot Angel.” By the pause between his words it sounded like the AI was in the middle of nap and didn’t want to be bothered.
Moments of silence passed.
“Wake up, Angel!”
As usual, Angel announced the completion of her boot sequence with a personal remark. “Jet, you don’t look so good. Did you run into a wall?”
“Listen, Angel. I need you to run a big sim on the dropship’s tactical server.”
“Tiberius is in low-power mode. Should be possible. What is this all about?”
“Did you ever read the Bible?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Mandatory reading for all Believer AIs. Not much useful strategy there.”
“I’m thinking about resurrection.”
“You?” Angel actually laughed out loud. “Sorry, go ahead.”
“In the book of Revelation there’s a story about two prophets at the end of the world.”
“Oh yes, two prophets are killed in the street. Everyone celebrates because the prophets had been causing plagues—like self-righteous human malware. Did you honestly read that?”
“Yeah,” Jet said. “I mean, I watched the movie version. The dead prophets rise from the dead, float up to heaven, and everybody sees it and is totally scared because they realize they are about to be toast. And there is this huge earthquake, and a bunch of the people are killed—”
Angel made a snoring noise.
“The point is we can’t go to Xahna as friends—they don’t need us. They don’t want us. I say we go to torment them.”