by J. D. Lakey
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“There are nodules along all the joints of the spine and a large sac at the base of the skull.” Cheobawn said with a shrug, her eyes never leaving Bohea. “They are without value. The death of Old Father has tainted them beyond recovery. They must be destroyed.”
“Is that how it works, then?” Sam asked, his interest intense, his excitement only apparent to those who could hear him in the ambient. “The lizards gather the stones, depositing them inside an internal organ like a gizzard? So, you hunt the lizards to harvest their bloodstones? Clever.”
Cheobawn laughed. She had no time to explain the physiology of an entire ecosystem so she pressed an image into Sam’s mind. Of a bhotta grazing upon every living thing of the mountain, converting the trace amounts of aluminum salts that tainted the meat into liquid crystal, the furnace inside the lizard’s fourth stomach refining the salts, the liquid filling the bloodstone sacs, building the crystals one molecule at a time, one layer at a time, year after year, excreting the excess stones in its dung, to be gathered up by the children of the domes, a game of find-the-button as wide as a planet, played with bloodstones. The best stones were the ones plucked from around the bleached bones of bhotta who died of old age, the dens hunted out in the high mountains, the sets prized because the bhotta had tuned the stones with its life and its mind. If one knew the trick, one could make them sing in harmony.
“They are organic?” Sam said in disbelief.
“They are bhotta poop,” she said and then she began to giggle at the look of repugnance on the boy’s face.
Chapter Twenty One
Sam stared at her, thinking perhaps that she was playing a joke on him. “Go. Look, if you don’t believe me,” Cheobawn said. “It would not take much to finish what you started with the skull. The best ones lie just at the top of the spine.”
Sam spun around, searching for something. Spying what he needed, he crossed to the jumble of downed trees and jerked on the handle of a small hatchet imbedded in the remains of a tree trunk. Crossing to Old Father Bhotta’s side, he began chopping away at the jagged edges of the skull. She looked away, unwilling to watch. Old Father felt like a friend now. It was hard watching his body be defiled.
Garro found his first stone. Holding it up in the soft light of dawn, he whooped in ecstasy. From the frenzy in his voice and the tones that bled into the ambient, it seemed as if he liked bloodstones more than he liked hurting small things.
“Walk with me, Lady,” Bohea said, holding out his hand. She considered the man before her. He was not to be trusted, no matter what he said, but what would it hurt to listen? Perhaps she would find truth between the lies. She was in need of an Elder who was not afraid to tell her everything she needed to know.
She shrugged and gave him her hand. He tucked it into the inside of his elbow and guided her away from the sounds of carnage. His feet followed the great curve of the stream bank, his manner relaxed and casual, as if the sand bar had become an elegant garden in his mind.
“May I ask you a few questions?” he asked politely. She peered quizzically into his face, wondering at the abrupt change in his manner towards her.
“Only if you answer my own,” she said.
“It would only be fair,” he agreed. “Where to start? There are so many things that itch at my curiosity. Why are the stones useless?”
“They cannot be tuned. Old Father’s death has become imbedded in the matrix of the crystals. No priestess would dare touch them.”
Things moved impatiently in the shadows under the leaves on the other side of the creek. She chose to ignore them for now.
“So. The stones the Highlands trade are not raw stones. They have been altered in some way. Is that right? How?”
“Who can tell? The Mothers are full of secrets. All Mora will tell me is that what goes down the Escarpment has no value. Perhaps they are merely orphan stones, pretty but otherwise useless. What do Lowlanders do with bloodstones?”
“Mostly,” Bohea said, his voice filled with disdain, “they end up in the collections of obscenely wealthy men to be draped about the necks of their vacuous wives and mistresses. The industrial grade stones are scooped up by electronics industries, the red stones ending up as robotic components. The Scerrons like the rarer dark bloodstones so much they take stones in lieu of credits as part of the payment on their contracts.”
“I do not understand what you are saying, sometimes,” she said, keeping a tight rein on her annoyance. “What is a Scerron?”
“They are a sentient, non-human species hired by the CPC to act as pilots and navigators, making star travel possible,” he said succinctly. “They do their job well because they are adepts.” He said the last, giving her a pointed look, as if she would understand his meaning.
“What is an adept?” she asked patiently, trying to peel back the layers of his answers.
“They are like you. Psionically gifted. It is part of the reason they are immensely skilled at grabbing a point in space and dragging a ship across an almost infinite distance in the blink of an eye.”
Listening to Bohea was like listening to a bad recording in which every other word turned into static but she understood something very important. The High Mothers were sending dark stones down the Escarpment. Even if they were raw and untuned, their psionic properties would be considerable. Was it by accident or design that they found their way through the labyrinth of Lowland society into the hands of a race of off-world Ears? Cheobawn wondered at the nature of the games the Coven played. For all that Mora pretended to be a parochial matriarch, it seemed she was in fact playing a game that spanned all of human space. Until Cheobawn knew more, she could not reveal the nature of her Mothers’ subterfuge.
“Gah! Make sense,” she groused in an attempt to change the subject. “What is payment? What is credits?”
Bohea laughed and then sobered quickly when he saw her face.
“You are not joking, are you? Credits. Money. A way of measuring wealth,” he said, hoping that explained everything.
“Wealth? Do you mean abundance?” she asked, still confused. “Abundance exists or it does not. You share it when there is plenty and do without when times are hard. Why would you need to measure it?”
Bohea opened his mouth, obviously at a loss for words. Cheobawn waved him to silence. She had no time for anymore of this Spacer nonsense.
“Sam and Garro believe they can trade untuned bloodstones at your Trade Fairs. Who would be so foolish as to accept them as trade?”
The Colonel stopped to stare up at the lightening sky before turning a look that bordered on smug in her direction.
“You could tune them,” he said causally. His certainty about her skills perplexed her as did his obvious attempt at manipulation through flattery.
“No. Perhaps when I am older. I have much more to learn about tuning before the Mothers will let me touch a stone again.”
“I get the sense that you have outstripped most of your teachers already,” he said casting a rueful smile in her direction.
“You are being kind. Trust me when I tell you that I am the least of my tribe and that my teachers complain to the High Mother constantly. I am a hopeless truant. My mind is an emptiness that refuses to be filled no matter how hard they try to pound things into it.”
“Perhaps you confuse them, as you confuse me. Who would expect so much wisdom in such a small package. How old are you, Lady?”
“I am going to be seven next week,” Cheobawn said, with a look that dared him to say anything disparaging about her youth.
“Truly?” he said shaking his head as he stared off into an unseen distance.
“My turn again,” she said. “What is this Cee Pee Cee thing?”
“Central Planetary Consortium. It is a governing body made up of representatives from all the planets of all known space. The titular head is always a prince from the ruling family. He sits by appointment and mediates any and all impasses.”<
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She snorted. Nothing had been made clearer. His answers only created more questions. There was one question that needed an answer but she was afraid to ask it.
“Why have you invaded our land?” she asked softly.
“That is a very complicated question with an even more complicated answer.”
Of course it was. She sighed heavily.
“Give me the short version,” she said, “in less than fifty words.” Bohea laughed, amused. Must he laugh at everything she said? She had meant her words in all seriousness. Time ran through her mind, racing towards an ending she could only guess at.
“There are so many players in this drama. The stage is as big as the galaxy. Shall I name them all? Bloodstones. This planet is the only source and only the best come from the Highlands. The ruling family. You upset their sense of proportion and trigger their antipathy for they believe you wish to usurp their power. The Scerrons and their monopoly on space flight. The traces of illegal human genetic modifications whose trail leads back to this planet, to these Highlands. The internal politics and economics of the Spider Wars. The Spiders themselves, a sentient species so unlike humans that the abhorrence is almost primordial on both our parts. They wage a slow, timeless war against us for reasons unknown, the affront lost in history. The list goes on. I know you do not understand so I shall not burden you with further explanations. Suffice it to say I am here at the behest of the Scerrons.”
A bat-eared fox yipped from somewhere up on the ridge line, its call cut short by something much larger. They were starting to eat each other in what could only be a preamble to the frenzy that would soon follow. She pulled her gaze away from the skyline to concentrate on Bohea and the implications of his last statement.
“The Scerrons sent you here,” she prompted Bohea, wishing his voice to continue so that she might not hear the sounds of the dying.
“No, like I said, I am an envoy from the ruling family. The Scerrons have made it very clear that unless we meet with you, their contract with us will end. They refused to fly into this quadrant without assurances of their safety. They are demanding hazard pay. They hold space travel in their vise grip and if they take it into their mind to make our life difficult they will. The CPC is being forced to renegotiate their contract, a thing the ruling family has no wish to do. The Scerrons say you have staked a claim upon most of this sector of the space and they dare not cross it or fly into it without assurances from you that you will not hinder their minds nor destroy their navigational abilities. The royal family believes the Scerrons are being duplicitous in order to extort more money … more benefits. Their demands have become unreasonable. The Scerrons find this allegation insulting. Things are getting quite ugly.”
Cheobawn stopped and stared at him, bemused by his nonsensical chatter.
“What?” she said in exasperation.
“You are a presence in the Scerron hive mind, Lady. They do not wish to offend you, nor are they willing to risk your ire. They wish to parlay so that there might be no misunderstandings between you and them.”
“Not me, surely. Perhaps they meant for you to talk to my truemother?”
“No, Lady. I am most certain,” Bohea said trying
valiantly to put as much sincerity into his words as possible. “My instructions were very clear. Climb the cliffs above Meetpoint, kill the largest lizard I can find and wait. I did this and here you are. I have been trying to put this trip together for nearly a year, so I am quite certain this is what was intended.”
“A year? What … oh,” she said, looking away, biting her lower lip. “Oops,” she said softly.
“Lady?” Bohea asked, a look of surprise on his face. This was obviously not the response he had been expecting.
Chapter Twenty Two
She flushed, embarrassed. What could she say? That in the midst of her first disastrous foray the year before, after making one stupid mistake after another, she had led her Pack into the jaws of certain death in the form of one tenacious treebear. In her terror, as the stone spire on which they hid began to sway under the pounding of the paws of that massive animal, she had lost control of everything. Of herself. Of the power of the planet that she had been forced to channeling for most of the day. Of her sense of identity and knowledge of where her limits began and the world ended. Blown out of her body, she remembered - almost too late - that little girls did not belong out beyond the edges of the atmosphere. She had managed to stop herself but the wave of psi-induced terror had gone on, out into the deep vacuum of space.
In theory, it was still out there, that bubble of psi energy, still expanding, spreading thinner and thinner the further it traveled, a wave with no shore to stop it.
There was good reason that little witches learned to control their gifts very early.
Fear had driven her out. Sanity had brought her back home. But to an adept such as a Scerron who could hear around the corners of space enough to pull ships out of space/time, it might seem like an attack.
This told her something of the Scerrons. They were like her. Powerful but fragile. Their psi-gift could be derailed by the turmoil of restless minds in the ambient.
Would the Scerrons understand? Would they accept her apology? If they only knew her, they might understand what a comedy of errors her life had become. They would laugh about it. Or not. It did not sound like they had a sense of humor, these Scerrons.
“I was under great duress at the time,” she said carefully. “It was unforgivably rude of me. I never intended to trespass into their territory. Can you tell them that? Tell them I apologized.”
Bohea stared at her.
“Are you saying it was accidental? You caused a galaxy wide crisis by accident?”
“No, no. Well, yes but …” She stopped, looking towards the mouth of the little valley, listening hard.
“Lady?” he asked, softly.
“My Pack is not far away, now. I doubt there will be anything I can say that will keep Tam from trying to kill you. I have seen what your weapon can do. We have nothing to match it here. If you would honor me, I ask that you try not to kill the people I love.”
“Never, Lady. Do not worry about my safety. I am fairly sure your Tam cannot kill me.”
She read the truth in that but his confidence puzzled her. Perhaps he did not quite understand how worried and angry Tam had become. She looked towards the body of Old Father.
“Garro is dying,” she said, to change the subject.
“As you said that he might,” Bohea nodded. “What is the toxin in the meat?”
“My knowledge is vague. It is a byproduct of the bloodstone formation. We call it bhotta’s tears, because even their tears are poisonous. I do not know the nature of its chemistry. I am not allowed to formally study chemistry until I am twelve. If you eat too much, your internal organs start shutting down. Heart. Lungs. The lips sometimes turn blue. He will start having seizures, each one more terrible than the next. In the end he will seize and not stop. Then he will die.”
“Bloody hell,” Bohea breathed out in dismay.
“It grieves me, that I did not think to bring any of the antidote with me. Now we are more than a day from home and I am certain he will not last that long. If I had listened to my teachers in my emergency field medicine class, I might know if a local plant could increase his survival rate. Like I said, I am the bane of my teacher’s lives. I am duly chastened. I apologize with all my heart to you for my failure.”
“Gods! Do not …” he shook his head, appalled. “By all the gods, do not burden your heart with the likes of Sergeant Garro. He has long since outlived his usefulness as a human being.”
She could find nothing to say about something so outside her understanding so she remained silent.
Their stroll had taken them full circle, back to the side of the eviscerated bhotta. Garro could be heard deep within the cave made by its ribs, his breath sounding ragged, as if he had run five clicks without a rest.
“I have a gift f
or you lady. From the Scerrons,” Bohea said with a polite little bow. She did not follow him, content to stand and watch as he crossed to the fire pit. He rummaged around in the depths of one of the packs lying in the sand there. Cheobawn looked up at the sky. The little wisps of clouds above the horizon were on fire with the coming light. Tam was very nearly here.
Sam grinned at her from where he was kneeling over a pile of black stones. Bits of brain and skull clung to his clothes. She drew closer, not minding Old Father Bhotta’s death emanations as much as she thought she might. It was funny what a person could get used to.
Sam showed her his treasures. The brain stem stones were as black as obsidian, the light flowing through them like dark water. There were more than twenty, most of them large, perfectly formed stones.
“They are beautiful,” she said kindly. It cost her nothing to be kind.
“Wait. Let me clean them off so you can see them better,” Sam said excitedly. He pulled his belt pouch from around his waist, unsealed it, and dumped its contents out onto the sand. Startled, Cheobawn opened her mouth to protest. Surely he did not mean to carelessly discarding such a fascinating array of tools, instruments, and food lumps wrapped in crinkly paper? Not content with this purging, he pulled the attachments from the pouch’s belt. A com unit and what might have been a weapon or a tool were tossed aside.
Spreading the mouth of the pouch wide, he gathered his stones one by one. Gently, lovingly - as if each were a newly born infant – he set them carefully in his pouch. Never taking his eyes from the stones for more than a moment, he carried them to the edge of the stream. She looked down at the pile of things Sam had discarded, confounded.
These things were important to him. Why else would he risk his life to bring them across a thousand clicks of Lowland, haul them up the Escarpment, and carry them about while surviving all Bear Under the Mountain could throw at him. She stared after him, listening hard but his ambient had grown foggy just like the fenelk bulls in the rut.