Bhotta's Tears: Book Two of the Black Bead Chronicles

by J. D. Lakey

  Tam looked expectantly at Megan. Megan cocked an ear into the ambient and then nodded. There seemed to be nothing inherently life-threatening about flying off the promontories above the rock slides. He purposefully did not ask Cheobawn because he knew from experience that her idea of life-threatening was always suspect - ignoring, as she was wont to do anything short of major mayhem. Come foray day, he would require a more specific threat assessment from her. For now, he chose not to muddy the waters with her opinions about the chaos around them.

  Cheobawn let them plan, content to just eat. There was a long discussion about weather and prevailing winds. The coming Firstday was chosen, the timing of the flights set for early morning before breakfast, before the sun had a chance to heat up the air above the forest, and the winds grew chancy.

  Tam relegated tasks. They would spend the next day gathering equipment, preparing daypacks with trail rations, emergency kits, and medkits.

  Unaccountably, Cheobawn could not bring herself to be excited. Something nagged at the back of her mind, something she could not put her finger on. Firstday defied her probing, remaining effervescently unstable no matter how she tried to see around it.

  There was one thing she was positive about, though. They would not go flying.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Cheobawn stood on the lip of the Escarpment once again. She knew it was the same dream, boring and familiar, and tried make it stop. This time, it would not let her go. She tried stepping away into a different dream only to find herself back where she started. She tried to wake herself but only managed to reset the dream. Was she stuck in a loop, forced to dream this over and over again until she became wizened and stooped over with its burden?

  Cheobawn stood on the lip of the Escarpment and looked over the edge. Dream or not, her stomach did a little flip inside her, her mind gone numb as she realized the valley floor was so far away that the air turned the greens of the distant forest canopy into a hazy purple.

  She forced herself to look away, looking instead at the sky. Her mind filled with wonder. The sun was high in the sky yet the sky was as black as the darkest night, the stars so bright they seemed to burn holes in the fabric of the world. The two moons, the large Eiocha and her smaller sister moon, Epona, had somehow managed to break the curse that kept them forever apart. Now they tumbled about in the sky like two truant children. As Cheobawn watched, a handful of stars broke free of their places in the heavens and flew low, streaking across the sky above her head. All of them - the sun, the moons, the stars - paused and looked down, waiting expectantly.

  She looked down from her high vantage point, trying to see what it was they found so interesting.

  Somehow she knew where she stood, though she had never been further south from Home Dome than half a day’s walk. Somewhere off to her right, Badnite Creek ended its race down the mountain in a suicidal leap off the edge of the world. Halfway down, the winds along the cliff-face tore the falls to shreds, turning it into mist. The air was heavy with its water. It tasted of snow melt and oak leaves. She reached up to wipe the damp from her cheeks but her skin was still dry. Her mind had not been totally seduced by the dream.

  She peered down. Something moved there under the haze, like a shadow on the world. She tasted it on the ambient; it reminded her of a fuzzy swarm, all mindless appetite disguised as tumbling chaos. Curious to see what it was up to, confident that the cliffs would protect her, she watched the shadow flow against the foot of her roost. It roiled and heaved, as if stymied by the obstacle but then, as she watched, it began to creep up the sheer wall.

  Even dreamwalking, she had no desire to face it. She turned, thinking to run home. Bear Under the Mountain stood there staring at her, its eyes as cold and as calculating as Mora’s could be.

  Let me pass, she thought at him.

  Defeat the shadow, Bear whispered into her mind.

  I am just a little girl, she protested.

  If not you, who? Bear asked, swinging his massive head from side to side in his agitation.

  She looked over her shoulder. A shadow slipped over the lip of rock. Heart pounding, she turned back to Bear, ready to plead her case. But Bear now wore Mora’s face as a mask. All her arguments died unspoken.

  Earn the right to live, Bear said out of Mora’s mouth.

  Hot emotions flooded her. She hated this game, this game not of her own choosing whose rules made no sense. Cheobawn shook her head, her teeth bared in a silent snarl. A defiant protest formed on her lips but it was already too late. The sound of something heavy scraping across rock came from just behind her. She tried to wake herself from the dream; tried to move, tried to draw a breath to scream but she was frozen. The dream would not end. She stood, staring into Bear’s sad eyes as the monster behind her whispered its insanity into her mind and cold, damp fingers curled around her neck.

  Cheobawn jerked awake, fighting frantically with something that turned out to be her own tangled, sweat-soaked sheets. She rolled out of bed and onto the floor, kicking at the tumbled mess of bedding that still clung to her legs, a guttural yell dying unspoken on her lips.

  Heart pounding, she scrambled away on all fours until her bedroom wall stopped her. She clung to it, too terrified to check the ambient. Despair filled her heart. The ambient outside her room screamed for her attention. The time for waiting had passed. The Escarpment dream had born its dark fruit at last. She tried, unsuccessfully, not to cry. Despite all the High Council’s wishes to the contrary, the Lowlanders had finally found a way in past all their finely crafted wards.

  She wiped her tears away. She had to go tell Mora. What other option did she have?

  Cheobawn got shakily to her feet, trying to compose her report in her head. Would they listen to her this time? She caught a glimpse of her tear-streaked face in the mirror. Who would listen to a crying child and hear anything but childish fears about night terrors? She took a breath, trying to calm herself. She was Tam’s Ear. She needed to act like it. She needed information if she wished to inform.

  With a shudder, she opened herself up to the ambient. A need and an urgency so palpable it was very nearly a presence walked through the walls and took up residence in her room. Cheobawn swayed under its onslaught, her brain reeling. But she did not retreat. Instead, she went hunting for its source. The great monster, Bear Under the Mountain, was there, as she expected him to be. He urged her on, wanting speed and motion.

  Bear was not the only source of alarm. Something much larger tugged at her mind, something akin to the Bear Under the Mountain but made of the dark stuff of the night sky. She tried to imagine its form to make it more solid. Something almost motherly coalesced in her mind. It wore a crown of stars and trailed a cloak all aglitter with a million more stars. It even let her give it a face, though the face would not take a human form, looking instead like the cold face in the smaller moon, Epona.

  There was something more. Underneath the presence of both Bear and Star Woman lay a shadow so alien her mind could not grasp the nature of its existence. It was a hunger so sharp edged she wondered that it did not die from the pain. She could see what it wanted. It even had a name. Eater of Worlds. She shied away from its malevolent taint, focusing instead on the things she could understand.

  She understood Bear’s game. He wanted her to come out onto the mountain and dance once more across the sharp teeth of his desires, playing the hunted, the hunter, or both. But the Star Woman was a stranger to her. Was this dark woman like Bear Under the Mountain? Was she the synergistic harmony of all life spread across the stars?

  Until that moment, Cheobawn had not thought beyond the edges of her world. How many lives, how many verdant planets did it take to create an avatar of Star Woman’s power and scope?

  And what did that mean? Had she misunderstood the dream all this time? Was it more than Lowlanders coming up the Escarpment.

  Cheobawn was afraid of Star Woman’s game. It seemed far more subtle and infinitely more deadly than anything Bear might dr
eam up. Eater of Worlds stalked the limits of Star Woman’s skirts like a boarhound anticipating a hunt, begging to be let off its leash. Try as she might, Cheobawn could not make this hunter take a comfortable shape in her mind.

  Cheobawn fled the ambient. Using every skill Herd Mother taught her, she built a wall to keep them all out. She began her breathing exercise and cleared her mind so that she might think. Despite her wards, she could feel the ambient raging around her, pounding against her walls. They wanted her to act, those three. She tried to ignore them.

  What was she supposed to do? Tell Mora that Bear, Star Woman, and her hunter beast, Eater of Worlds were running around in the southern forests wreaking havoc? Even to her own ears, that sounded unbalanced.

  How much more unbalanced would she seem if she told her truemother that beings from other worlds had come hunting them? It was the fancy of children’s stories. No Elder would take her seriously, right?

  Cheobawn suddenly remembered her search of the database after she first dreamed this dream. According to the central core, Lowlanders did not exist. What else had been hidden from her? Did Mora know that the sky over their heads hid millions of stars with planets such as their own? Why would Mora keep this a secret? If the idea of Lowland dwellers was a threat to the psi gifts of the tribal witches, how much more deadly would it be to tell them of men from the stars?

  Her secret meeting with the Coven had made one thing clear. If she spoke her mind, she risked being cleansed from the dome’s collective.

  Cheobawn put her fist around the black bead in her omeh. She had been a fool to accept their lies as truth when her psi gift told her otherwise. What had they done to her, her Mothers, hanging this cursed stone from her neck? Thinking herself a pariah, she had doubted her gift and in doubting, crippled herself.

  “A little late in the game for truth telling,” she whispered to the empty room. “It still does not tell you what must be done.”

  What she truly wanted to do was nothing. She wanted to close her eyes, silenced her Ear, and pretend the world did not exist. Was that wrong? Could she sit silently while certain death roared down upon them? The very idea went against all her training as an Ear.

  It was her duty to serve her Pack and her tribe, wasn’t it?

  Her wards quivered under an assault, as if the terrible trio sensed her self doubt. If she did nothing, if she locked herself in her room, would they eventually break down her wards and break into her mind once more? The Eater of Worlds heard her fears. It whispered a thought into the back of her mind. An image of herself - inside treebear’s skin, making it dance to her own bidding - bloomed unwelcome behind her eyes. Dancers could be danced in turn, it promised.

  Cheobawn shuddered. Was it an empty threat? Could they rise up inside her and wear her skin like a coat, as she had worn the treebear’s? Would they march her about, making her do things that would do irreparable damage to her already

  tenuous life?

  Cheobawn shook Eater of Worlds out of her head. She replaced it with thoughts of all the strong people in her life. Tam, Alain, and Megan. Hayrald and Phillius. The Coven. Mora. Mora would know what to do. Again, Cheobawn imagined going downstairs and walking into Mora’s office. She imagined handing the burden of this problem over to her mother. Mora would send her Husbands out to capture the invaders. She had said as much.

  Cheobawn built an image of Hayrald and Sybille riding out on their bennelk, fully armed and armored, intent on capturing the Lowlanders. Her imagination failed her. How did one hunt a human being? What would be the yield of such a dark harvest?

  Opening her mind up to the ambient once more, she sent out the idea of Hayrald’s patrol riding towards the beings who crossed the Highreaches uninvited, then plucked the threads of her Da’s future. Eater of Worlds waited there, full of hungry anticipation. Cheobawn shuddered, appalled at the depths of its blood lust.

  Somewhere in the future, Bear Under the Mountain howled in grief as Death swept through the forests, consuming all the warriors of all the domes before it turned the domes and all the life inside them to ash. Cheobawn choked in horror, not understanding how such a simple act could destroy them all.

  Not even I can save the things that live upon my hide, Bear wailed, if Star Woman unleashes her hound upon this world.

  Pressing her hands over her ears, Cheobawn fled the ambient, refusing entrance to the thoughts that were unimaginable.

  What could she do? She wrapped her arms around her trembling body and tried to apply her brain to this puzzle.

  So, Bear Under the Mountain did not believe that Hayrald or Sybille would survive if they went into the southern forests. This thought shook her to her core. Hayrald was the most experienced warrior she knew. He was in the prime of his career, with a lifetime of training, and yet Bear Under the Mountain thought Hayrald’s skills insignificant in the face of an alien being from the stars that defied definition. Had some weak-minded soul been possessed by Eater of Worlds? Was it this monster that Bear feared? What horrors lay in wait for them, there in the south?

  One thing was certain. If she went to Mora, Hayrald would die.

  She was nothing like her mother. The death of those she loved was not a thing she was willing to risk.

  That left only one choice. Cheobawn tried to keep her teeth from chattering together. She imagined herself meeting these creatures then she plucked all the threads of the all her own futures, looking for one in which everyone she loved was still alive at the end of this day’s events.

  Nothing presented itself. She began to cry again, desperation making her frantic.

  I need, she cried out to Bear. I need help. Help me!

  Much to her surprise, something shifted in the ambient. It was as if a hand had reached out and set the pieces of a giant game into motion. Was it Bear who answered her plea? She did not care. A thread of a possible future hummed into life. It played across her mind like a string of bright pearls, each pearl a goal to be attained in order to reach the next.

  This was a game she knew all too well, though she had hoped she would never have to play it again.

  Her night table chirped. A calm voice followed. “It is now 5:30. You must be at the East Gate in thirty minutes.”

  The sound of the table echoed down the long corridors of her mind. It was time to move. The first bright pearl

  beckoned. This was all the push she needed. She grabbed her clothes and headed to the shower.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tam and the rest of Blackwind Pack were in the changing room near the East gate when she walked in with her daypack slung over one shoulder, the bladed stick and her hunting knife in either hand. They had all requisitioned their weapons the previous afternoon. Now all that was left was to put on their boots and gaiters. There had been some talk about full body armor in the planning stages of this foray, in case of catastrophic wing failure or anyone taking a hard tumble on the sharp-edged scree but Alain thought the weight too prohibitive for flight. With the added negative effect on agility, protective clothing had been ruled out.

  As Cheobawn laced up her boots, she let her eyes linger longingly on the racks of body armor and the shelves full of riding leathers. She wanted it all but dared say nothing. Tam had to think everything was safe or they would never get outside the gate. If she did nothing else this day, she had to get outside the dome. It was her first goal; her first bright and shiny spot in the ambient.

  Tam asked her something. She looked up to find her whole team looking at her expectantly.

  “What?”

  “Megan said the North Trail is clear. Do you have anything to add to that?” Tam asked again patiently.

  She knew what Tam wanted. He wanted her usual litany of the comings and goings of all the animals within five clicks of the dome. She could not give him that. From the moment she had plucked the thread of this future, she had become blind to all else, her psi abilities reduced to that curious tunnel vision that she hated, despite its frightening familiarity.
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  “Megan is correct. Trust her judgment,” Cheobawn said.

  Megan smiled at her, glad for the vote of confidence, trusting that if there was anything to worry about, Cheobawn would say something. Cheobawn felt sick for betraying her.

  Tam looked down at his littlest Ear, a puzzled look on his face. She forced herself to smile and, seemingly satisfied, he turned away, returning to the task of getting his Pack moving out the door and down the avenue to the East Gate.

  Tam, being the tallest, carried the wing on his back strapped to a packframe modified for the purpose. Alain carried Tam’s rations in his own pack, Tam’s bladed stick in his hands. They would sort out their burdens later after they exited the East Gate.

  At the gate, Tam pulled a foray token from one of the pockets on his thigh and handed it to the gate guard, Kirlan. Kirlan was the beta male from Highwind Pack. He was near Sigrid’s age. Highwind had matriculated with low marks in the Pack standings. Volunteering for night-shift guard duty was a way to make up for that lack of status. Whatever their handicap, Highwind’s Alpha was still trying to gain a step up in the domes hierarchy.

  Kirlan yawned as he took the blue token and handed over a red one in exchange.

  “You know the drill,” he said with a bored sigh. “No red tag, no entrance without an Alpha Father’s intervention. Try not to get into trouble.” He yawned again, scrubbing his face with the palms of his hands. “Oh, wait. I just remembered. Vinara wants all outgoing Packs on alert. The stables have been in an uproar since before dawn. Some of the bennelk jumped the corral fences this morning at first light. None of the Ears can sense any predators so they think it just might be a storm front moving in, making them proddy. The Watch Ears confirm a storm sense hanging off to the south. Keep an eye on the weather. Stable apprentices are out looking for the strays. Watch for tracks and let them know if you see anything.”