by Tara Maya
The Blind Woman was still staring sightlessly at Umbral with her unnerving white eyes. She wrinkled her nose.
“You aren’t Rudgo,” she said flatly. “You don’t smell anything like him.”
“He’s not Rudgo,” said the Dwarf. “He’s some stranger. We’ve never seen him before.”
Umbral tensed. He had feared the Blind Woman might not be fooled by his mask, but how the dwarf saw through his magic as well, he was not sure. Perhaps it was simply that the Blind Woman’s certainty had broken his spell. Perception was fragile.
“Another of their pranks,” the Blind Woman said. “Well, who cares who you are? You’ll share our meal, and buy one of our blankets. Tomorrow you can repay us with your back and arms. The roof wants repair.”
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Umbral said, easing his stance only slightly. This pair disturbed him. “Do you mind if I add more wood to the fire? I will gladly replace it tomorrow.”
The women shrugged. There was no wood stacked by the hearth, but Umbral remembered seeing a pile against the side of the house.
“Slave,” he ordered Dindi, “Go fetch more wood.”
Dindi left without a word. He wished he could go with her, to ask her in private what she thought of their hosts.
The Dwarf dug a covered pot out of the embers of the fire. She served potato soup to Umbral and to herself. Then she brought a bowl to the Blind Woman and spoon-fed her, bite by bite.
“Forgive me, auntie,” Umbral said. “No one told me your name.”
The Blind Woman didn’t answer until the Dwarf finished spooning her meal. Then she wiped her mouth on her cloak.
“I am Essi, of the Spider Loom Clan. We are all weavers, and I, especially, am renowned for my weaving skills, as you can see.”
She gestured to the loom with the haphazard weave. The Dwarf smirked at Umbral, sharing the joke.
“Lovely,” he murmured.
Dindi returned with wood and built up the fire, but even then, the Dwarf made no move to prepare another bowl.
“Please feed my slave as well,” Umbral said finally.
The Dwarf muttered. She ladled a fourth bowl and shoved this at Dindi so roughly the hot liquid sloshed onto Dindi’s hands. Dindi rubbed her hand.
Considering the quality of everything else in the house, Umbral had low expectations for the potato soup, but it was surprisingly hearty. He devoured it.
“Farla, you lazy runt, since there’s so much light from the fire, let’s get back to work,” Essi barked.
“I’m too tired to help you now, you sightless old mole,” snapped the Dwarf. Farla, evidently.
Essi lashed out with her stick, shrieking, trying to beat Farla, who dodged with a knack obviously born of experience.
“Wretch! Runt! Rat! You lazy good-for-nothing! Do as you’re told or I’ll smash you like the disgusting little roach you are!”
A few of the old woman’s wild swipes connected. Farla howled and flung her arms over her head.
“Stop!” Dindi stood up. “Please stop hitting her!”
Essi and Farla both paused, more from shock than anything.
“Go piss in your own pit, you ugly sow!” snarled Farla. “No one asked you to stick your snout in our craw!”
“Dindi,” Umbral warned. “Stay out of it.”
Dindi might or might not have obeyed, but Essi put down her stick, and Farla sat down beside her in front of the loom. They behaved as if the row had never happened.
Essi’s fingers moved smoothly over the loom, shuttling a thread in and out of successive rows.
“You see how nimble my fingers are, even now,” Essi boasted. “I was not always blind. Every daughter in Spider Clan is a direct descendent of Spider Lady, the Aelfae who defied her kind to gift the secret of weaving on humankind. She taught our race to how to build the first loom. I learned to weave before I had seen three winters snow. No Spider Clan girl is initiated into womanhood until she is as tall as a loom, and weaves one entire blanket on her own. All said that my Initiation Blanket was so exquisite that the eagles looked as though they might fly off the wool. What a pity I never had a daughter who could learn my skill from me and stand beside her own loom! I went blind soon after I was married, and my husband left me. No daughter to follow me, no granddaughter! My thread ends with me! I was hexed, doubly hexed! I should be enjoying my elder years waited on by my grandchildren, but here I am, still weaving.
“I can’t see now, but I remember every Pattern by thread count, so even blind, I can still reproduce our clan and tribe Patterns perfectly. Right now, for example, I need to change from a white thread to a black thread. Farla! Hand me a black thread.”
Farla handed Essi a puce thread.
“This black is used to outline the other color, so I will only tie a few knots of black before I switch again. Farla! Hand me an orange thread.”
Farla handed her more puce thread. Half way through, she cut it and replaced it with a chartreuse thread. She turned around and winked at Umbral. Her expression oozed malice.
Dindi sat down next to Umbral.
“Now I know why the cloth is so ugly,” Dindi said, her words pitched too low to carry. “It has nothing to do with the colors. It was woven from hate.”
Vessia
Xerpen took her wings.
After the initial audience in the Chief’s Hall, Vessia was confined to Amdra’s house. It was actually a compound, a rectangular yard enclosed by four buildings: two long, narrow lodges—including the one where Vessia had awakened her first morning in the tribehold—and two square huts. Slaves slept in one hut, kilns filled the other. The slaves did not come into the interior courtyard, and there was no door to the cooking hut, so although Vessia could hear women thumping mortars into pestles, and smell the potatoes they roasted, she never saw them except when they brought her bowls of steaming food.
She sat outside whenever she could, so she could see the sky, even when it snowed. More often, ice winds blew, though the courtyard was protected. Either way, she did not care.
Captivity infuriated her. Boredom tormented her. Ignorance aggravated her. All around her, though she could not see it directly, she could hear the accelerating pace of activity in the rest of the tribehold as the important day they called the Paxota approached. Slaves were busier, Tavaedies were testier, even the poor little Healer jumped more and gossiped less when she came on her daily checks.
The sky was Vessia’s only friend. In the lengthening days, she marked the approach of the equinox. More useful still, she observed the rounds of the Raptor Riders. They patrolled the blue much the way foot warriors padded around a patch of ground.
Raptors also arrived with prisoners, groups of them at a time, captured and carried in nets. The captives, Vessia guessed, from what glimpses she had over their fur vests and leafy headdresses, were Green Woods prisoners captured in the war, being funneled slowly into the tribehold. Though the Orange Canyon warriors had been driven from Green Woods in the end, they had dragged away many unfortunate captives with them—not just warriors, but women and children, whoever they had come across fleeing the burning forest during that terrible war.
She did not know the fate of these war prisoners, only that the Raptors did not land with them in the main settlement, on West Peak. The birds kept flying east before they dived out of sight, which meant their final destination was the forbidden East Peak.
Since Vessia could not leave the compound, she devised another way to wander—as a passenger in Amdra’s mind. She did not want to abuse the leash, nor alert Amdra how she had subverted it, so Vessia used this method sparingly.
She had no plans to use it this evening, but shortly after dinner, she felt a shock of terror, so visceral that it took her a moment to realize the emotion belonged to Amdra, not to herself. Vessia could also feel Hawk in the link, and he was no less terrified, not for himself, but for his mistress.
Terror turned everything else in the link to fog, but Vessia tried to pick out a V
ision. Three people. In one of the stone lodges—they all looked the same to her. Perhaps it was the Chief’s Hall, or perhaps the Raptor quarters. She could hear voices – one was Xerpen.
All she could see of Xerpen was his feet. Amdra was on her knees in front of him. Tears streaked her face, hot, wet stripes. Behind her was her slave, Hawk, also groveling in the dirt.
“Did you really think I planned to let your disobedience pass unpunished?” Xerpen asked. Vessia recognized the tone. He was playing with a toy. It filled Vessia with contempt, but Amdra was too frightened of him to even hate him.
“Forgive me, Great One, it was the Deathsworn…”
“I know all about the Deathsworn. He will pay for his meddling. But you must pay for your incompetence, Amdra. In the Blood House.”
Amdra melted into the floor. “Please, no, no, not the Blood House, you need me, you still need me, Great One, let me pay with my slave, take my slave, Hawk, let him die in my place…”
Fear flooded Hawk, yet equally strong hope, that Xerpen would accept this. Hawk was ready to take her place in the dread place.
“Why would I want a slave?” Xerpen mocked. “You know what I need.”
Her eyes nearly popped out of her head.
“Take my son!” she burst. “My baby, my little lamb, my Medo.”
This time, the explosion of emotion inside Hawk was not ambiguous. He was outraged. Amdra felt it and squeezed her leash on him, smothering him into silence when he wanted to roar with fury.
Xerpen, on the other hand, sounded grimly pleased. “Very good, Amdra. Very good. Perhaps it won’t be necessary to take either the boy or you. I might have another option. You had better hope my tama goes well. If not…you will offer me your son’s blood, and with a glad heart.
“Here is your chance to prove your life is worth something. The Deathsworn who started Green Woods tribe will never admit to truce now. The war came too soon. They’re like ants poked with a stick, and won’t easily return to their dirt heap until we kill enough of them. But Finnadro serves the Green Lady, who has bowed to her Orange sister for the sake of the Aelfae. Cooperate with Finnadro. Kill the Deathsworn. And there’s a girl with him—kill her too. She seems important to Finnadro, so she may be dangerous to us. Do not tell Finnadro your plan. Just see that she dies. Do you understand? Don’t fail me again.”
“I understand, Great One.” Amdra touched her forehead to the floor. Relief made her limp. New threats hardly registered. She gibbered, “Thank you for your mercy, thank you thank you thank you…”
Xerpen’s feathered eagle cape rippled behind him as he strode away.
“He was testing you,” said Hawk.
“I know,” Amdra said. “I passed.”
He said nothing, but she heard that silence pound as loud as drums.
“I didn’t mean it,” she said.
“He didn’t mean it. You did.”
“It was just another of his stupid tests, and I passed. That’s all. I passed.”
That was what she said, but inside she screamed: Lies, lies, lies. She had failed. She had crossed the line no mother was meant to cross. Hawk knew it, and she knew he knew. She hated him for seeing her as she truly was.
“I know how to deal with him,” she insisted. “I’ve had to deal with him a lot longer than you. You have to trust me.”
His rockslide of anger crushed the flower of his inner cry: I would trust you if you had ever, just once, trusted me. I would have loved you if you ever, just once, not demanded it. I would have died for you if you had not been willing to sacrifice the only one who should matter to either of us.
“And our son?” asked Hawk. “Should he trust you too?”
“How dare you!”
Light flashed between them, a thread, orange like rust, or desert dust, dry and cruel, and Hawk fell to the floor writhing in pain. It wasn’t enough for Amdra to hurt him physically, she knew he had made himself immune to his own body. The agony of the flesh didn’t touch his inner core. She wanted to lash out at him in a way he could never ignore.
“What do you care what happens to the baby?” she sneered. “He’s not even your son, Anayo!”
Amdra achieved her goal. Hawk’s pain was unimaginable.
His abyss was also Vessia’s opportunity.
She extended an image of light, of freedom, of two birds in flight.
You know what you have to do, Anayo, she said directly into his mind.
Yes, he replied, though she could tell he had no idea who was speaking to him, nor did he care.
He snapped the leash that chained his soul to Amdra.
He was free.
Careful, warned Vessia. Wait until the right time. You will know it when it comes.
Who are you? he cried.
But Vessia felt Amdra stir in suspicion, and had to withdraw from the link before Amdra traced the thread.
Maybe, Vessia hoped, she had taken the first step toward her own freedom as well as Hawk’s.
That hope was crushed when Amdra appeared in person at the courtyard. A dozen armed Tavaedies accompanied her.
“Xerpen has invited you to cross the Bridge of One Thread to the East Peak,” Amdra intoned. No trace of anguish or savagery showed on her ugly face. No emotion showed at all.
Vessia hoped Anayo would find his patch of sky and take flight. It was too late for her.
Finnadro
The great raptors landed. Amdra slid to the ground. She surely saw the wildlings who stood with bows half drawn in the brush in a rough semi-circle around Finnadro, but she did not acknowledge them. She addressed Finnadro alone.
“The Orange Lady has told me that Green Woods has agreed to a truce,” she said.
“I never claimed the right to speak for my whole tribe,” said Finnadro. “This is a duty of my own which I must fulfill—even if it means accepting an alliance with an oath-breaker.”
Amdra flushed. “I am no oath-breaker.”
“We had a truce once before. We invited your people in good faith to our tribal lands. How did you repay us, Amdra?”
“We were deceived, Finnadro.” She hissed. “I was deceived. The Deathsworn played us both for fools.”
“Explain.”
“He can change his appearance. He came to me in the guise of…someone I obey, and told me that your people planned to attack us first. We struck only in self-defense.”
“We would never have attacked guests!”
“Now, of course, I know it was all lies, meant to divide us and set us against each other so that he could steal the White Lady from us.”
“But you have the White Lady.”
“To protect her.”
Finnadro snorted.
“We have a common enemy in the Deathsworn. Do you want our help or not?”
“What do you propose?”
“We will fly you over the mountains to the slopes around Orangehorn. You and your …pets.”
Fox snarled. “We aren’t pets. We’re people.”
Amdra shrugged, elegant in her disdain. “We can get you to the general region where we believe the Deathsworn is lurking, but you can sniff him out on the ground better than our raptors could. Once your side—or ours—flushes him from hiding, we both close in and destroy him.”
“He has a captive. She must not be hurt during the battle.”
“Of course not,” Amdra said smoothly.
“Look at her aura,” whispered Fox.
Jagged deception spiked in the Green around Amdra, clear as footprints across a field of knee-deep mud.
“I see it,” he said softly. But some compromises are necessary. Aloud, to Amdra, he said, “I accept.”
Tamio
The roar of the crowd stoked heat in Tamio’s bones. A big grin spread over his face as he and his enemy danced around each other.
They each held two sticks: a wood cudgel – shorter, knobbed at the top; and a staff, long and slender, for defense. The opponent hammered at Tamio; he kept his staff steady to ward
off the blows, while hopping around, trying to wedge his cudgel past the other fellow’s defense. His opponent whirled the cudgel in snapping bites, and Tamio leaped and rolled out of the way. But as he bounced to his feet, a blow caught him in the back. The pain helped him focus. His own moves quickened. He feinted then twisted his wrist and his cudgel slipped inside the other’s staff and boxed his ear. He feinted again and hit his thigh and before he could recover, darted in again and slammed his head so hard that the man stumbled, leaving himself open. Tamio ruthlessly moved in to pound and pound him, until his face was a bloody pulp, then Tamio jumped on his chest, grabbed his head and twisted it until he heard the vertebrae in the neck crack.
His own side cheered. The enemy horde was surly and subdued but let him break his arrow. The man’s near kin broke his too, promising that no one would take revenge for this kill.
Kemla gave him water and mopped his forehead. He grinned at her, surprised. “Were you worried about me?”
“Of course not!”
“Good, because that means you know I’m that good.”
“If your head got any fatter, we’d have to skin and cook it.”
Hadi stepped into the ring next. Tamio worried and even Kemla shook her head, biting her lip. The big opponent, Shegar, intimidated even Tamio.
Aw, muck. We’ll have to peel what’s left of Hadi off the ground like a sheep patty.
Nothing in the first unfolding of the fight changed Tamio’s mind. Shegar roared and pounded Hadi with his short stick. The most that could be said for Hadi was that he kept his defense stick in place. A few blows got through. Shegar blackened his eye and bruised his rib, but Hadi had already lasted longer than Tamio would have guessed.