by Jean Johnson
Jintaya is exceptionally gentle. She can be firm, yes—as unyielding as ice—but she does not care to kill and will not personally kill. She is water in that she wears away bit by bit at hostility, distrust, and anger . . . but water is no hammer and chisel, able to carve a path in a single day. There are times when an expedition must be . . . swiftly expedient. You, Puhan—the only time anyone of the Fae Rii had managed to get his name right, which made it stand out in his mind—will stay with her. You are ruthless beyond words when needed, expedient beyond thought. You shall be permitted to live among us, but you will guard Jintaya and be the sword she cannot wield—not if she will remain who she is, who she must by her nature be. You are her opposite, and you each need the other, must be with the other for there to be balance in both of your lives. This is your geas, for all you are not bound by it magically.
The torch-wielding natives came around a twist in the tunnels, spotted his head and hands in the dancing shadows, and stumbled to a halt. Shaping his words carefully, mindful of his translation tattoo, Ban stated bluntly, “These caves are forbidden to your people. You will remove yourselves immediately, and look for others to occupy.”
There, Jintaya, he thought. My own attempt at your preferred diplomacy.
“All these caves are ours!” one of the younger men boasted. One of the older women tried to hush him, but he demanded, “We are many, and you are just one. Who are you to tell us where we can or cannot go?”
“Ban.” He would have said more, but his name caused all eighteen natives to twitch and shift back. Some by only a finger’s length, some by a full step. Why would they . . . ?
“He is named Death?” one of the older men whispered, eyes wide with fear. “This is an ill omen!”
Others whispered as well, a susurration of fear and wonder. It seemed the corrupted, Fae version of his name had a distinct meaning in the local tongue. Ban had accepted the new name because it was what Jintaya herself had named him, and he had felt as if she had given him a second life when he had finally accepted her help and her caring. A new name for his new life. But it was ironic that on this world, in this tongue, the name that had given him a second life actually translated as death.
The woman with the longest spear, the one Ban had seen speaking earlier, stepped forward bravely, if warily. “There is only one of you, and we are many. Your name will not scare us away. There is water in this place, and food. Plenty for our tribe to take. You are only one man.”
“I am not alone,” Ban told her. “Jintaya, our leader, has claimed these caves. You will remove yourselves immediately. Go seek others.”
“Djin . . . taje?” She frowned at him in confusion. “You mean Taje Djin?”
“Jintaya,” Ban asserted, wondering why the woman would get a simple name backward like that. Then the translated meaning caught up with him.
Taya was similar to their word taje, though the Fae used a softer “yuh” sound than these locals did. Taje in turn meant leader. The rules of their grammar came to him with the realization that they always put the taje before a name, not after. To do so after was . . . odd for them. Except there was a case where an emphasis could be made, he also realized.
“We are led by Taje Jintaya . . . ul,” he added onto the end. It meant Leader Djin, Leader of All. The men and women, some young, some middle-aged, none old, eyed him warily. Repeating himself, Ban asserted one more time, “By her command, these caves are forbidden to all of you. Leave.”
“No!” one of the younger males asserted. Bouncing a little, he lunged forward, stabbing at Ban with his spear. “These are our caves!”
Sunsteel flashed between them. Metal hit wood as the sword in Ban’s hand connected with the hardwood shaft, and passed through. The uneven cavern echoed with a ringing tang and a dull metallic clatter of the bronze point hitting the stone floor. The youth gaped at his beheaded weapon—then yelled and attacked, swinging the now-bladeless shaft. Ban ducked and swung the crystal rod in his left hand. It connected with the other man’s skull in a burst of steady, clean, golden white light. Whipped around by the strength of Ban’s blow, the youth crumpled with a sigh, slumping across the floor.
Ban eyed him, listening to the youth’s breathing. Unconscious, and struck hard enough to awaken with a headache no doubt, but probably not suffering from a serious concussion. He hadn’t activated any of his strength-based tattoos, so it wasn’t as if the would-be warrior’s brains had been splattered across the cave. Ban had far too many years of gauging his strength in more battles than this entire group would see in their combined lifetimes; he would not be so careless. Deliberate, but not careless. Holding the glowing rod off to the side, Ban pointed at the fallen youth with his sword while the others stared wide-eyed at the crumpled figure, silent with fear.
“He still lives. You will take him, and yourselves, out of these caves. I might not spare the next to attack me. Your entire tribe is not great enough in numbers to stop me. I am Ban. I serve Taje Jintaya-ul. Be grateful she is willing to share these canyons with your people. She will not share these particular caves. If you behave and are polite, you may be invited to stay, rather than be told to leave this area. If you are rude and attack . . . you will be lucky if there are enough of you left to leave.”
There was no inflection in his tone, aside from a point of emphasis on their choices in this matter. He did not stress their impending deaths if they chose unwisely. Ban didn’t bother because he did not care. It had hurt him more than enough to learn after all these years that he could still care for someone. For Jintaya.
“Pulek. Eruk,” the woman with the long spear ordered. “Grab Lutun. We will leave these caves alone. For now,” she added firmly, holding Ban’s gaze as if he were some sort of predator. “Taje Halek will decide whether or not we will come back to them.”
Two of the men moved forward at her command. Ban recognized one of them, the older of the two, as the man who had first spied upon the Fae. He had a few scars here and there and was missing the tip of his third finger. He also eyed Ban warily, gaze flicking repeatedly to the blade that had nearly punctured him. The other fellow stooped and thriftily claimed the bronze spearhead, tucking it into his waistband before helping his companion grab the fallen hunter by his wrists and ankles.
Waiting until the group had dragged the unconscious would-be warrior off, Ban paced slowly in their wake, making sure none were lingering to try to ambush him. Every so often, he glanced behind and saw the work of Éfan, sealing up cave after cave in his wake with what looked like blank walls sculpted and colored to match the rest of the wind-and-water-worn rock.
I will have to remind Éfan to make the walls malleable enough that I can get through them at a touch, he thought, sighing with a trace of impatience. Otherwise there will come a day I will have to bash my way in and ruin whatever sculpting work they will be trying to do, reshaping these caves into a proper Fae home.
***
Deep in the sand dunes to the south, Kuruk, the leader of the small warband tracking the refugees, scowled at the coarse grains around them. They bore no traces of footsteps, save the ones the five of them had made: Kuruk as leader, Charag and Tureg as fighters, Koro and his acolyte Pak. There should have been signs of the passage of over two hundred tribe members . . . but the winds of the desert, slow and sparse save at dawn and dusk, had erased all the marks. “Are you sure the anima can track them? We haven’t seen signs of their passage in three days now.”
Koro, their middle-aged animadj, made a tsk noise. “You know as well as I that the anima can do many things if the will is strong and sharp. My will is trained by twice as many years as you have been alive, hunt leader. And . . . what do I have in my hand?”
“A torch,” Kuruk grunted, lifting his eyes to the sky. He did not care for the teacher-prompting-the-student tone of the older man but let it pass.
“A torch,” Koro agreed, his tone bordering somewhere b
etween chiding and pompous. The animadj had earned the right to be proud, however. “I draw my will from the fire that named our tribe. I draw my power from the encircling energies of the flame as it consumes all that it can eat. The torch flames point firmly north, while the wind, when it stirs, travels to the southeast. The fire I have bound with my will to the anima, and the anima knows where they have gone. We will find them.”
The scouting leader eyed the torch in question. “Well, it looks like it needs more dromid dung.”
“We still have another finger or two before Pak will need to make another torch,” Koro reassured Kuruk. “When we stop for that, I will use a bit of anima to pull up a little more water for us to drink.”
“Good,” Charag grunted. “Marching in sand with my battle-axe is thirsty work.” Unlike the long, bladed pole Kuruk used as a walking staff, and the lightweight bow and quiver of arrows Tureg wielded, he carried a heavy axe crafted of stout hardwood for the shaft and fastened with the wealth of two thick blades made of sharpened bronze.
“Try marching with enough firewood for fifteen days,” Pak grunted.
Charag gave him a disdainful look.
Pak stuck out his tongue, then started to purse his lips.
“Enough, Pak. No conjuring sand devils,” Koro added. “We don’t need them to be seen.”
“Heed your master,” Kuruk agreed, chiding the young male with a jerk of his chin. “We are here to track those White Sands fools. Their animadj seemed to know of a place to settle to the north. For that many people, it would have to be a large and lush oasis. If they find such a place within half a moon’s travel—”
“Then we will attack and take them over as war slaves, claim their land for our own, and crush the Water Spears from each side,” Pak recited, lifting his own eyes to the sky.
It was said that sky-anima was the rarest of all kinds that could be conjured, and thus the most instantly powerful, if the most fleeting, for it made the lightning strike and the air boom and tremble. Stone anima lasted far longer, was the most reliable, but air anima combined with fire or water was most impressive. Air caused the rains that made the landscape flood, which could kill people even on a cloudless day. Everyone therefore implored the anima in the sky for kindness, patience, and mercy. Or mostly just for patience with others.
Pak glanced next at the torch in his teacher’s hand. “Koro . . . Kuruk is right; the wind is picking up and devouring the torch faster than we estimated. We should stop now, or as soon as we reach the next flat stretch. Those low rocks we saw from the last dune are near; it may be over the next rise, or the next two or three. We should check to see how close we are, and create a new one.”
Pursing his lips, Koro eyed the pitch-and-dung-wrapped torch tip for a long moment, turning it a little to check how short the flames had become in the last selijm of travel, and nodded. The wind could and did disperse the smoke it gave off, but it was starting to smolder a bit more and burn a bit lower than it should. It would be better to prepare a fresh one. Fresh burned clean; the thin smoke from a mere torch would be lost in the wind, up until it started to gutter. Conjuring a sand devil, by contrast, was something that could be seen for upward of a full selijm, the distance a healthy person could walk in an hour.
However, when they crested the next dune . . . they found the sand rippling down into hard-packed earth, and a slight rise of rugged rocks. Hard desert, as opposed to the soft stuff they had slogged through. Squinting, all five men stared at the new terrain.
Finally, Tureg spoke. “I see cracks in the terrain ahead. Canyons,” he stated, shading his eyes from the sun’s glare. “There may be water in there, or there may be game. But mostly, there will be a lot of backtracking as we try to follow the flames, which point straight and true regardless of what the actual trail chooses to do. This is where the anima-flame can do less for us than clear tracks would.”
Kuruk grimaced. “That may be true, but we still have a job to do. If there is water for two hundred or more, and game and places to grow things, it is our job to scout it and decide if it’s worth claiming, as well as continuing to pursue. Pak, start your torch making in the valley behind us. Koro, draw upon the anima for water. We will take a dune-break behind this crest. Bury your waste, and keep an eye on all directions, just in case.”
Scattering to their tasks, the other four followed his orders in willing silence.
Chapter Two
Puna, chief huntress of the White Sands, waited for Taje Halek, the tribe’s leader, to digest her words. His left cheek still seeped pus occasionally, and he could not see fully out of that eye, but it was an awkward spot to place maggots to clean up the rotting flesh—unlike his thigh wound, which had finally stopped bleeding. His arm was still in its sling, held together by splints wrapped in rawhide.
Squinting a little, he looked up at her. The sun was at her back, but the large acacia tree he had picked for shade blocked at least some of its glow. His wits were slowed a little from the pain of his wounds, but they were still sharp enough underneath the chronic pain. “It sounds . . . as if they are willing to share this place. If we do not trespass on those particular caves. There are others . . . yes?”
“In the other arms and spans of the canyons, there are a few, yes,” Puna confirmed. “A pack of sand jackals has claimed one gorge and its caves; others have scorpions and serpents. I have asked Pulek to watch the children in the use of their slings, taking aim at the latter caves to flush out those creatures. So far, the jackals are wary of us and the smoke of our torches. I have set people to watch against them, but haven’t driven them off yet.”
He frowned a little, then grunted, nodding. “Yes, the strangers are more dangerous. Jackals, we understand. These strangers, we do not. Or rather, stranger. I only caught a glimpse of him when he chased Lutun out of the caves. I wonder if they all have colors painted on their skin . . .”
“I would like to know what beast’s hide he claimed, to have leathers as black as soot and as supple as skin, rather than stiff and brown like ours,” Puna muttered.
Taje Halek smiled with the uninjured side of his face. “Perhaps he will be willing to tell us.”
He would have said more, but a young girl, barely into the bloom of physical maturity, ran up to them. She stopped, panted a moment with her hands on the dusty knees visible below her wrap-skirt, then said quickly, “Taje Halek, Huntress Puna, the caves are gone! In that little canyon, the caves are gone! Zudu was watching them with the water eye, and they vanished, filled in by stone!”
Both elders stared in dismay. Zuki was one of the animadj Zudu’s three surviving acolytes and quite reliable for her young age. Unlike Lutun. Based on their expressions, most of the others felt the young hunter deserved it, having attacked the stranger without true cause, for there had been no direct physical threats aimed at them before his blow. Puna had left the young hunter with an older hunter who could hopefully calm him down . . . but the youth had been growling about how he would return blow-for-blow to the stranger and beat him with his fists, with his feet . . .
Halek realized his wits were wandering in his pain, and focused when the hunt mistress spoke, covering his silence.
“Thank you, Zuki,” Puna told the girl, hiding her unease whenever the girl glanced her way. Whoever their animadj was, they were surely more powerful than even Zudu, who could shape and fire with just her mind the fajenz beads the White Sands Tribe had been renowned for, before being attacked by the Spider Hand people and driven off by tribe after greedy, spiteful, territorial tribe. To be able to fill in a whole cave mouth with stone was disturbingly powerful.
“Did you see their animadj at work?” Taje Halek asked the acolyte.
Zuki shook her head. “No, Taje. Just between one breath and the next, the cave opening was replaced by solid stone.”
Grunting, Halek pondered on that. “Go back to animadj Zudu,” he finally said. “Tell her
we will continue to explore the other canyons, with a wary eye on where that cave used to be. The anima led us here, to a place Zudu searched for with ample room to spread out and live, but it could not tell us if there were others already living here.
“Puna, tell the others to be watchful and wary of other walls of stone. We have seen no anima-wisps since just before young Lutun was chased out of those caves,” he added. “If these strangers are able to capture and keep the wisps to themselves, we may not have the strength to be able to counter anything their animadjet can do.”
Nodding, both females left their wounded leader to continue to sit and think under the shade of a large, thorny acacia tree not far from the pond.
***
With the largish complex of caverns and tunnels sealed off from all but the passage of fresh air, Jintaya decreed that the reshaping of those caves and passages should begin right away. She herself focused on crafting fresh translation potions for the expedition members, occasionally stopping to check the activities in the scrying bowl. Éfan focused on monitoring the flow of magics, and Ban . . . had nothing to do.
Neither did Rua, who was there as the team’s agricultural expert. Until they had access to flowing water and a place with sunlight where she could erect planting beds, she had to exercise patience. She did so by finding and pulling out a gaming board. Ban brought out a bench from the stacked furniture, and they both straddled it to play the deceptively simple strategy game of little discs that were white on one side, black on the other.
The object was to “cap the ends” with the same color, reversing all opposite colors to “capture” them; the simple version of the game was to see who had the most of their color at the end, but the Fae liked to also “win” by making images and symbols out of the interplay of black and white on the board—every single turn created a new picture-word in an ongoing conversation. Some of those conversations became disjointed, even absurd, but some could be downright poetic.