Blade Kin

by David Farland

  “Tull Genet?” she said at last.

  “Yes.”

  “You have a wife? Fava?”

  “Yes,” Tull said, hopefully.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you, she has been killed.” The words slapped him like a whip, and the sorceress pressed one of Fava’s tunics into his numb hands, a scrap of green cotton with yellow meadowlark feathers sewn around the collar. It was torn and spotted with blood, but he could smell Fava’s vanilla water perfume on it. “The Blade Kin caught her near Smilodon Bay. She tried to fight them when they raped her. They had to kill her.”

  She touched Tull’s hand, wrapped her fingers around his to give him comfort. Blackness threatened to swallow him, stark, and he looked in her eyes, and saw … curiosity.

  The woman watched him the way a child would watch a hog as it was being gutted. Curious, dispassionate. Totally empty.

  The woman had no real sorrow in her voice, no pity. In fact, Tull looked at the glint in her dark-blue eyes, and imagined a smile behind them, as if she were amused.

  Another test, he realized, to see if he were Blade Kin instead of a Thrall.

  This wasn’t the tunic that Fava had been wearing during the attack, Tull knew. He suspected that the woman was lying. Still, a part of him was afraid. Fava could have grabbed it from the house, been killed later.

  “What will you do now?” she asked. “I know the grief must hurt. I know you want to die.”

  Tull fingered the tunic, wondered if Fava were really dead.

  No, he decided. The Blade Kin were ruthless, but they captured slaves, they didn’t kill them. He’d been amazed at the efficiency with which the slavers had captured Smilodon Bay, taking the city by surprise, putting the merchandise to sleep rather than fighting some drawn-out battle.

  No, they would not have killed her.

  “I cared for her very much,” Tull said, and he let some of his fear, some of his real sorrow, creep into his voice. “I suppose I shall need to get another woman.”

  The sorceress glanced at the four Blade Kin guards behind, dismissed them. When she turned back to Tull, her voice became husky, her movements wary.

  “My name is Chulata,” she said. “I need a man, too, for the night. May I comfort you?” She slipped off her black robe.

  Her under-tunic fit her tightly, displaying the curves of her body. She was strong and shapely, seductive.

  He decided to turn the tables, to test her.

  “I’m not sure that you could satisfy my tastes.”

  Chulata raised a brow in surprise. “Who is more to your tastes?”

  Tull put his hands behind his head, considered possible lies. “I slept with a Dryad of the aspens last summer while on my way to Denai. Now the rest of you women seem … tiresome.”

  It was a half-truth, and the honesty carried in his voice.

  Chulata frowned, took Fava’s tunic from him, and her hand trembled with nervousness or anger, he could not tell which. She would be wondering how he could have escaped the Dryad’s spell. The Pwi always succumbed to Dryads, served them as slaves.

  “I will dispose of this for you,” she said, then glanced at him over her back as she left.

  Tull lay on his mat and wondered if he had passed the test. He smiled at the way Chulata had lost her composure at the end, counted it a small victory.

  An hour later, Chulata returned, her composure having returned. “You say you have slept with a Dryad. Can you prove it?”

  Tull considered. If he had not been certain that they were testing him before, he was now. “Ask the innkeeper Theron Scandal from Smilodon Bay. He saw it.”

  “Yet you fought our Blade Kin at Smilodon Bay. You held off our men while your wife tried to escape? You did it because you wanted to save the woman you love, you wanted her to escape. Your love for her is what made you fight so fiercely!”

  Chulata tried too hard to manipulate him into the wrong answers. Tull felt that she was confused. She almost accepted him as Blade Kin. He decided to tease her.

  “Perhaps you are right,” he said, and her expression remained unchanged. “Perhaps I did care for her too much, and it clouded my judgment. In the dark I didn’t know I was surrounded—still, I must think about it and decide.”

  Tull hesitated, as if considering, then asked, “You have been ordered to have sex with me, haven’t you?”

  Chulata did not answer.

  “I hope so,” Tull said. “I want you to spread your legs for me. But we will do it at my convenience, when I command you for my own reasons. Do you understand?”

  Chulata stepped back, stumbled on a mat where Ruwatta had been. Chulata’s face went dark, and she must have felt foolish, so she turned and marched back off with all the resolve and dignity she could muster.

  Chulata went to General Mahkawn’s private quarters. He called her in, and she found him dressed in only a black breechcloth, setting his knives on the table by his bed, as he prepared for sleep.

  “I spoke with Tull Genet,” she reported. “You are right, he talks like a Blade Kin!”

  Mahkawn nodded. “And when he saw the tunic of his wife?”

  “Nothing! A passing instant of grief, nothing more. He suggested himself that he would need a new woman, but none have pleased him since he slept with a Dryad.”

  “Did you try to seduce him?” Mahkawn asked.

  Chulata felt her face burning. “Yes, but he did not take the bait. He isn’t your normal Pwi, willing to bed any girl who offers.”

  “Perhaps we should not be so surprised, if he seems more human than Pwi,” Mahkawn said. “His father is human. Tull is Tcho-Pwi. There is a slim chance that Tull was born to be a Blade Kin.”

  Chulata gritted her teeth. “I do not trust him. You can’t think to make him Blade Kin.”

  Mahkawn nodded. “Perhaps Tull does require further testing.” He went to his desk, pulled out the brass ball he’d found in Tull’s home. He pushed the tiny button on top, watched the three-dimensional image of Anee expand out, nearly filling his small room.

  Mahkawn kept little in the room—weapons, a bit of clothing. He lived the ascetic life of a warrior. The holographic image showed a great white storm swirling out of the blue southern oceans toward the Rough, bringing warm rains. By the time they reached Bashevgo, the rains would turn to snow. Mahkawn waited a moment, and the image of the world faded. The brass ball became only an oddity again. Mahkawn stared at the ball, mystified.

  He poured himself a small glass of rum, swallowed it. Chulata still waited by the door. Mahkawn watched her—a beautiful girl.

  A passing moment of grief. Nothing more. That is all the emotion that Tull had showed when notified of his wife’s death.

  Mahkawn wondered, How will I feel when Pirazha dies. Will I be able to contain so much pain? A passing moment of grief? Tull may be more Blade Kin than I am, Mahkawn thought.

  He admired the big Tcho-Pwi, sleeping down in his cell.

  “Stay. Mate with me tonight,” Mahkawn said to Chulata, “if you will.”

  It had been many years since he’d asked a Blade Kin to sleep with him. Perhaps Chulata could sate his craving, turn his thoughts away from home and his Thrall lover.

  “I would be honored,” Chulata said, her voice betraying excitement at the prospect of sleeping with an Omnipotent. She closed the door behind her.

  ***

  Chapter 23: Stories and Poems

  Fava crouched in the snow, blood pouring from her ear. She whisked out her long knife, waving it in order to ward off the Blade Kin.

  “Don’t be afraid,” a female voice said, and Darrissea Frolic pulled off her mask.

  “Darrissea!” Fava shouted, throwing her arms around the girl. They held each other for a long moment, and Fava heard a sniffle, realized Darrissea was crying.

  “Is Tull here?” Darrissea asked.

  “No,” Fava said. “Only me and Vo-olai and Wayan. How did you escape?”

  “I was in the outhouse when they attacked,” she sai
d. “I hid till this morning.”

  “Didn’t they search it?” Fava asked, surprised.

  “Not the part I hid in,” Darrissea apologized. “Do I smell all right?”

  “You smell sweet,” Fava said and gazed into the human girl’s dark eyes. “But the poison smoke, didn’t it get you?”

  “No,” Darrissea said. “It must rise into the air, instead of fall. Are you all right, and Wayan?” she asked, staring at Fava’s ear.

  “I’m fine. So is Wayan. But I fear Vo-olai is not. Since Anorath got captured, she acts as if she has owe taxa, worms in the head.”

  Darrissea pulled off her backpack, got out some bandages. “What happened to your ear?”

  “I cut it off,” Fava said weakly. “I’m going to Bashevgo to free Tull, so I am disguising myself as a Blade Kin.”

  Going to free Tull. Fava heard her own words distantly as Darrissea bandaged her ear. What was it that her father had said? Tull could become more powerful than Chaa, if he could get free? Fava suddenly realized that something more important than her love for Tull was at stake. She had to get Tull free.

  “Lean your head to the side so that it doesn’t bleed as much,” Darrissea said, pulling Fava’s head down so that her wound faced the sky. The human girl’s hands shook as she worked. “So, you are going to Bashevgo? What of Wayan and Vo-olai? Are you taking them?”

  “I … I hadn’t thought of them,” Fava answered.

  “How crazy is Vo-olai?” Darrissea asked. Though she was speaking Pwi, she used the human word for worms-in-head.

  Fava shrugged, “I have a mountain of worry for her. Come in the house, get some food and rest.” Fava urged her into the kitchen, and Darrissea ate a little, then told Fava to sleep while she kept guard.

  Fava reluctantly gave the human girl the long knife. She’d seen Darrissea practice, and the human girl, with her gawky arms and long thin legs, had good speed and reach, but no strength. She would not be much of a guard.

  Fava slept soundly through the night, and woke at dawn to find Darrissea sitting in the half-light, peering out the window. Snow was falling.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Darrissea said. “We should not go outside today. With snow on the ground, any Blade Kin left out there would find it easy to track us. Also, we should not build a fire. We can use the blankets and the cloaks of the Blade Kin for warmth. If we need to cook anything, we can light candles.”

  “All right,” Fava said. Darrissea seemed to be thinking very clearly. “Do you think anyone else could help us? My father? Surely he can’t be far. The Blade Kin couldn’t have caught him.”

  “They caught him,” Darrissea said. “I found a lot of dead Blade Kin up by the inn, so I didn’t have much difficulty getting a disguise. I dressed in the dark, then kept guard around the prisoners. I could do nothing to help them.

  “I saw your father. He was unconscious when they dragged him from the house, weak from taking his Spirit Walk. Perhaps he saw that the Blade Kin were coming, but couldn’t rouse himself from his trance. Everyone from town got caught, along with a lot of people I haven’t seen before—people from out in the Rough. The Blade Kin have been everywhere. I don’t see how we can hope for anyone to rescue us.”

  “What about Tull?”

  “They took him on the ship,” Darrissea said. “They were angry with him for killing so many of their warriors. They knew about the men he’d killed in Denai.”

  “What do you think will happen? Will they execute him?”

  Darrissea stopped gazing out the window, turned her dark eyes to Fava. “I don’t know.”

  They stayed in the house for the day, and Fava watched over the others. Vo-olai sat for most of the morning, rocking back and forth, or humming, and Fava feared that the girl’s mind was broken. She tried speaking comforting words to the girl, but nothing helped.

  Wayan kept trying to sneak out to play in the snow, so Darrissea sang and told him a cruel story about hungry children whose poor parents were forced to send them into the woods to starve.

  There they met a sorcerer who tried to eat them, and the children escaped only by shoving him in his own oven “until his guts boiled like soup.” When they pulled the sorcerer out, he’d turned into a great meat pie, and the children took it home and fed their parents, and none of them ever hungered again.

  Wayan seemed to enjoy the tale, but Vo-olai frowned in horror as Darrissea told it.

  Yet as Darrissea spoke, Fava noticed that Vo-olai quit rocking, and when the human was done, Vo-olai put Wayan on her lap and told him a Pwi story, one Fava had never heard before, and Vo-olai’s voice seemed strong, almost normal, as if she were telling the story to her own son.

  “Long ago,” Vo-olai started, “there was a great hero among the Pwi, and he was so fierce that when he wanted to go somewhere he would jump on the back of a wild woolly rhino and drive it just as a child would ride a pig. I forget the man’s name,” Vo-olai said.

  “Ananoi!” Wayan shouted. “It must be Ananoi!”

  “Oh, yes, Ananoi, the Rhino Rider,” Vo-olai said. “That was his name. He lived with his beautiful wife, Shape-Changing Woman, in a place not far from here. Well, in those days the animals had many problems getting along, and often they would come to Ananoi seeking his wisdom and help.

  “One day, a huge pack of dire wolves came to him along with the Lord of the Sabertooths. The dire wolves all hid their tails between the legs, and they howled as if in pain. The great Lord of the Sabertooths was very old and huge. He’d grown as large as a hill, and the poor old cat’s teeth had grown longer than a mammoth’s tusks, and they dragged the ground. He was weeping so hard that his tears filled the channel he had left behind. That is how we got the Smilodon River.

  “Anyway, Ananoi took one look at the poor old cat’s red eyes and the river of tears, and he said, ‘Great Lord, how can I help?’ Ananoi thought at first that the Lord had wormy teeth, but could not understand why the wolves came with the cat, and why they too were so sad.

  “The Lord of Sabertooths kept weeping, and he snarled, ‘I have just come from the south, and none of my people can sleep in that land. All of the Mammoth People have climbed up into the clouds, and they run among the clouds so much that the sky thunders. The whole earth trembles, and whenever they step on a cloud, they press water from it so that it falls on us. We cannot sleep!’

  “As soon as he said these words the dire wolves howled in chorus, ‘Save us! Save us!’

  “‘What must I do to save you?’ Ananoi asked, and a green light flashed in the sabertooth’s eyes.

  “‘It would help if you would climb up the rainbow and ride the mammoths down out of the clouds,’ the sabertooth said, ‘so that we could sleep,’ and then he licked his lips.

  “‘Perhaps you should climb the rainbow and chase the mammoths out of the sky yourselves,’ Ananoi said.

  “‘Ooooo, we can’t climb,’ the poor dire wolves howled, and the Lord of Sabertooths snarled, ‘It’s too high for me, and the rainbow is always so wet and slippery.’

  “‘Ayaah,’ Ananoi said, ‘If I chase the mammoth people out of the sky, will you promise not to eat them?’

  “‘Yes, we promise,’ the wolves and the sabertooth all said in unison. And because Ananoi himself was an honest man, he believed them, and he went to chase the Mammoth People out of the sky.”

  “The wolves and sabertooths were lying!” Wayan said. “I know it!”

  “Yes,” Vo-olai said, “they were lying, but Ananoi did not know this, so he rubbed his body with pitch to make it sticky so he could climb the slippery rainbow, and he climbed up into the clouds to chase the mammoth people from the sky.

  “Well, that evening, when he finally got to the top of a cloud, sure enough, he found hundreds of mammoths up there, grazing on the tall blue grass in the clouds, and flocks of meadowlarks flew across the sky like stars at night. There were no lions or sabertooths or wolves, and only the smallest of trees, and all the many lakes up there were filled w
ith huge sturgeon. All in all, it was very beautiful, and Ananoi could see why the mammoth people liked it so well.

  “Since it was almost dark, Ananoi searched for some dry mammoth dung to build a fire with. Although mammoth dung is plentiful up there, it is almost always wet, and it took him a long time, but he finally built himself a nice large fire. Then he went to the lake and caught a huge sturgeon in his hands and sat down to eat.

  “It was a cold night, and soon Vozha, Lord of the Mammoth People, came to Ananoi’s fire to warm himself. Vozha is as large as a mountain, and the hairs on his back grow huge as redwoods, and the fleas on his back are big as coyotes, and when he blows water from his trunk, it rains on the far side of the earth. Not even the great Ananoi would want to pick a fight with such a monster, so Ananoi sought to reason with the great lord.

  “‘You must force your people down out of these clouds,’ Ananoi told him. ‘Every day you stomp around in the clouds and trumpet, and below you the earth rumbles. You smash water out of the sky onto the people down below.’

  “‘We like it up here,’ Vozha said. ‘The grass is tall and sweet; the sun always shines. What do we care if we smash water out of the clouds and make it rain on the people below?’

  “‘You are just like all rich people,’ Ananoi said. ‘You care nothing for the people beneath you. If you do not mend your ways, I will be forced to throw you off the clouds.’

  “‘I’m sorry if our behavior has bothered you,’ Vozha said. ‘We did not mean to dampen your people. We’ve been here a long time, and you are the first to complain.’

  “Ananoi thought long about his words. The mammoth king was right. Ananoi had never been bothered by the thunder before, and in fact he liked it when the summer rains watered his crops. None of the other animals had ever complained—only the wolves and the sabertooths, and Ananoi wondered if perhaps the complaints had all been a ruse. So he said to the mammoth king, ‘Perhaps I have been tricked by the wolves and sabertooths who sent me to complain.’