Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  “Where is it?” Rhin said.

  Gair stared at her.

  “The Starstone Cup. Our deal. Your freedom for the cup.”

  Fallon dangled the keys to Gair’s shackles.

  “The Starstone Cup,” Gair echoed.

  “Yes. Tell me where it is, and you shall be moved to a room with a window. If I find it where you say it is, then you shall have your freedom.”

  “For friends, that does not sound very trusting,” Gair said.

  “I am a friend, but not a fool,” Rhin sighed.

  Gair grabbed at the rope attached to his shackles, heaving the warrior holding it towards him. He seized the man’s head in his two huge fists and gave a savage twist, a crack as the warrior’s neck snapped, and Gair dropped the twitching corpse to the ground.

  “Fool enough to bring me out here,” Gair said, reaching down to draw the dead man’s sword. It looked little more than a long knife in his hand.

  The rasp of iron on leather as Fallon and the other two warriors drew their blades and threw themselves at the giant.

  Gair shuffled to the side, his ankles still bound together, but somehow he kept his balance and swung and chopped as he moved, deflecting one blade and cutting into the shoulder of another warrior, ring-mail and blood spraying, the warrior staggering and falling.

  Gair lunged for Rhin.

  She had stood frozen, unbelieving for long moments, but now she stumbled away, the flat of Gair’s sword grazing her head, sending her crashing to the ground, Gair lumbering towards her, towering over her.

  Then Fallon was behind Gair, a slash and the giant screamed, fell to one knee, dropping his sword, the other warrior still standing, lunging at the giant, blade swinging high and down. Gair caught the blade in the chain between his wrists, launched himself forward, crashing into the warrior, and the two of them were rolling away from Fallon, coming to a stop with Gair’s chains wrapped around the warrior’s throat, his eyes bulging, face purple as Gair twisted his grip and iron links crushed the warrior’s windpipe.

  Then Fallon was on him, his sword stabbing and slashing, but Gair was using the body of the man in his grip as a shield, slowly clambering back to his feet.

  Rhin dragged herself to her knees, felt blood running from the cut on her head into one of her eyes. She shook her head, staggered to her feet.

  Gair was back on his feet, sparks flying as he fended off Fallon’s blows with the iron chain hanging between his wrists. Then Fallon stumbled, his foot snaring on a tree root, and Gair was lashing out, fist crunching into Fallon’s face, blood and teeth flying, Fallon crashing to the ground. Gair cast the dead warrior away and stood over Fallon, breathing heavily.

  “HOLD,” Rhin screamed, taking a staggering step towards them both.

  Gair glanced at her, a grin twitching his mouth.

  “You command me no longer,” the giant said, lifting a boot to stamp on Fallon’s head. But then he froze, one boot in the air, trembling as if pressing against some unseen force as it hovered over Fallon.

  “Do I not?” Rhin said, her hand coming out from her cloak, clutching a clay figure, black hairs embedded within. She held it up before her for Gair to see.

  “No!” the giant gasped.

  “Step away,” Rhin snarled.

  Gair trembled, still trying to bring his boot down on Fallon, who lay dazed at his feet, but no matter how hard he tried, the giant could not finish his act. With a bellow of rage, Gair staggered away from Fallon, stood with his chest heaving, blood leaking from a dozen small wounds.

  Rhin glared at the giant, feeling a cold hatred swell in her belly. She had thought, hoped, that Gair was her friend. Five years spent visiting with him, building what she thought was a friendship. She could have commanded him to tell her all he knew, used the figure back in the gaol, but she had wanted to know—part of her hoping, longing, for a genuine friend. Someone she could trust to stand at her side. Part of her had believed that Gair truly considered her his friend.

  He was right, I was a fool.

  No longer.

  “I had hoped for an ally in you,” Rhin said. “A new age, where giant and humankind worked together.”

  Gair just glowered at Rhin. His fingers twitched as he started to reach for her, his efforts frustrated by Rhin’s clay effigy.

  “That sword,” Rhin said casually, “pick it up.”

  Gair bent and took a sword from the ground, one of the fallen warriors.

  “You have slain two of my men, maybe three,” Rhin said, glancing at the warrior on the ground with a bloody rent in his shoulder. “Almost killed Fallon, my shieldman.”

  She took a long, shuddering breath to control her anger.

  “You would have made a good friend and a better guardian.” She shook her head. “And now you have thrown it all away.”

  Gair’s lips moved but Rhin waved her hand.

  “Silence. Do not bother with your lies,” she said. Gair’s mouth snapped shut. “All I want from you is the location of the Starstone Cup. Where is it?”

  “Lost,” Gair said.

  Rhin felt a wave of rage.

  I want that cup. Must have it.

  “Lost where?”

  “No one knows,” Gair said. “It disappeared in the retreat to the North.”

  “It is true, then, that you giants had it. That it grants long life.”

  “Aye, that was all true,” Gair rumbled.

  “You must know where it is, where it was lost.”

  Gair shrugged. “I do not.”

  Rhin sighed.

  “Then you are no more use to me. Thank you for the lesson,” she said.

  Gair’s eyes asked the question that his lips were forbidden to speak.

  What lesson.

  “I shall not be so quick to trust to friendship again. Now, take that sword and cut your throat.”

  The giant’s eyes flared, the sword in his grip rising, muscles in his arms shaking, trembling as he fought to keep the sharp iron from his throat, but it moved ever closer, until the tip touched his flesh. A trickle of blood ran down his neck.

  “Please,” Gair breathed.

  Rhin lifted the clay figure.

  “Do it,” she snarled.

  Gair’s muscles spasmed involuntarily and the sword sank into his neck, a pinprick at first, then deeper, Gair struggling, fighting with all of his will. Sweat dripped from his nose. And then with a shriek he rammed the blade home, deep into his neck, then ripped it free, blood jetting. Gair swayed and crashed to his knees, staring at Rhin, then slowly toppled onto his back, eyes glazing.

  Rhin stood over Gair’s body and watched as life fluttered and left him, a widening pool of blood spreading around him as it soaked into the ground.

  “I told you I would set you free.”

  DEBORAH A. WOLF

  “DANCING ON THE EDGE” IS A STORY THAT IS NEAR AND DEAR TO MY dark little heart. It details a very small but important slice of backstory for Yaela, whose presence is felt but not fully explored in my epic fantasy series The Dragon’s Legacy.

  Yaela’s relegation to a background character is a deliberate choice on my part, and on hers as well. Born to royalty, raised in splendor and love for the first few years of her life, she finds herself outcast in a world that fears and misunderstands her magic, her appearance, her gender, and everything else about her.

  This loathing of “other” is a common theme in my stories. Humans are driven by antipathy to act monstrously toward those we see as not like ourselves, and in doing so, we all too often create the very monsters we fear.

  Yaela, like many of the more interesting characters I write and love, has done some truly terrible things in her life. It would be easy, if a reader were to sit down and peruse a list of these irredeemable acts, to condemn her as a villain and root for her demise.

  And yet—as so many humans in literature and in the real world—Yaela is driven primarily not by fear, or bitterness, or an understandable thirst for vengeance, but by love. This l
ove makes her relatable,

  and admirable,

  and very, very

  dangerous.

  Deborah A. Wolf

  Dancing on the Edge

  A Story of the Illindriverse

  Deborah A. Wolf

  Akari Sun Dragon turned his murderous gaze from us, and the land sighed a great red-dust sigh of relief. I sighed as well, wishing that I might hope for such respite; the world had survived the killing heat and would thrive during the soft hours of dark, but I had no such assurance. For a girl such as I, dancing on the Edge of the Seared Lands, death burns down from the sky during the day and crawls up from the earth at night.

  They would be here soon, men of the Edge come to pick at us girls like carrion-birds picking at a corpse. There was no hope for me. But my sister, my Haviva, might yet survive. So I woke her, sleepy-bones, before the others roused. I stole water to clean her face, her hands, her feet. I worked the last drops of sweet oil into her scalp and combed her magnificent hair till it sprang up all about her face, a great soft shadow. I smoothed oil across her lids to make her eyes shine, and a smudge of dust beneath to hide the dark hollows of weariness, illness, and endless aching hunger.

  Haviva was hugely pregnant, but she was beautiful. Perhaps it would be enough. For myself, I dragged the comb through my shorter curls and shook the worst of the dirt from my rags. There was no hiding my eyes, was there? Or the stink.

  There was nothing good to speak of, so we were silent.

  The rest of Hadl’s nag of wives woke and began their own pathetic ablutions. Ahda, I know, would have liked to scold me for using the last of our hair-oil, but I stared at her with my eyes of Pelang and she did not dare. None could blame a sister for looking out for herself in times like these.

  Ahda: yes, that was her name. Someone should remember that. It is likely all that is left of her. Ahda, and Nnadira and Kamya, and then of course Haviva and me. We wives were five where once we had been a nag of twelve, and we were being driven closer to the edge of the Edge every night. Our idiot husband had gotten himself injured and was no longer able to keep a place for us in this world. The best any of the others could hope for was to be sold to some other idiot, and survive another day.

  The best I might hope for, I with my cursed eyes and wicked tongue, was a quick and merciful death in a land where death is neither.

  Our husband, Hadl, roused himself eventually, with a great moan, and the rest of the wives fluttered to his aid. I kept Haviva back with a hand on her shoulder, and pressed my last treasure to her lips: a prickly red sabra pear, dusty and wrinkled but still good. Let it nourish her, not him. I was done providing for a stinking lump of meat not fit to protect a territory.

  Her eyes widened and she squeezed my hand, but bit the fruit in half and made me share. The flesh of the pear stung my mouth, sweet and tart. I kissed my sister on either cheek. We shared life; likely enough we would soon share death, as well.

  “Leave off, you stupid buta.” Hadl’s voice cracked like an old leather whip and he flapped his hands. The nag of wives scattered like roaches, startled by the sound of his voice. We had been long in silence, lest some other mahl find us and make an end to us; that he broke it now with a curse sent a shiver down my spine. “Leave off! Is there water? Give it to me. Is there food? No? What good are you, then? Stupid buta.” He hauled himself to his feet, and the stink of rot preceded him. “You will bring me food before morning, if any of you are left, or so help me I will kill you all myself.”

  The others quailed, more out of habit than anything. I ignored his whining and his threats, and prepared to help my sister make the climb to the land above. The distance from our dirt floor to the surface was too short by far—the farther out on the Edge a mahl lives, the shallower the cracks run, and these cracks in the parched earth are all that shelter life in the Seared Lands from the harsh sun. Still, it was a hard climb for Haviva with her gravid belly. Let the other wives cater to Hadl; he was an empty man full of empty threats, stinking carrion that did not know when to shut up and be meat.

  The same had been said of me, more than once. And yet here I was, breathing the cool night air, and where were those who had mocked me? Smoking bones under the sun, every one of them.

  It was time to be seen; it was time to be sold.

  It was time to dance.

  The rest of the nag wiggled their hips at these low men, they flicked their eyes and jiggled their tits and made come-hither motions with their hands. Even Haviva swayed through the rituals of seduction, false as a man’s heart, plodding around in slow and clumsy circles, belly big as a moon. But not I; I, who had been a student of the great Ruaz, who had learned to dance the color red before I was four years old and whose kahi’o e’ anna had once made a king weep, kept my feet still and my heart still and glared at them all. It would be a cold day indeed before such as I danced for such as them.

  I did not dance for them, and so they did not see me, these men from the Edge with an appetite for girl-flesh. They saw the others, though.

  Nnadira was bought away first, and then Kamya. Ahda was last; she was attractive, but there was that spark of intelligence in her eye that no man wants to see. The girls’ lives were sold cheaply enough, and their new men slid past me and my sister with their lazy eyes.

  “And what of these two? You are ignoring my best stock!” Hadl grabbed a handful of my sister’s hair and shook her head at them in rebuke. “Look at this face! These ripe mamouleh!”

  “Look at that belly!” The other man mocked, and his companion snorted laughter. “You think I want to wait for your whelp to come, just so I can kill it? If I want a woman with a ruined body, I will ruin it myself.”

  “Keep the child then, or sell it,” Hadl whined. “Sell her as a breeder. Look at her skin, so fine and dark.” He stroked her arm. “Look, she has all her teeth. These are sisters, these two; fine Inlander blood, the finest.”

  “What lines?”

  “Kentakuyan, the best. These are the only two left after the Night of Sorrows.”

  “Bad-luck blood, then. And no wonder, look at those eyes.” He jerked his chin toward me.

  I stared back hard, daring him to strike me and my daemon eyes. For men living so far out on the Edge, these two had seemed a likely pair—old and scarred enough to have been the warriors they claimed, not so far gone as Hadl. I had almost hoped there would be a sale. What would become of us now, my sister and I, left to rot with this idiot lump of meat who claimed us?

  The second man spoke for the first time. “The pregnant one, another day perhaps. You should have beat the whelp from her before she was ruined. But this one, eyes of Pelang.” He spat. “Too young to breed, and cursed besides. This one is good for nothing but bintshi-bait. You insult us.”

  The man’s voice was deep and dark as our old home. Haviva leaned toward him. I touched her arm, drew her back; this one was not for us.

  “The insult is mine! Bintshi-bait? Cursed eyes or not, she is worth a handful of salt at least. Blooded as a woman; blooded as a soldier too. Bought the pair of them in Murran, two seasons back, from Hasna Mabaradi. This little buta,” he pointed at me with his chin, “will kill anything you point her at, like a hunting cat. Better . . . you can’t bed a hunting cat.” He wheezed a laugh.

  “That one will kill you in your sleep, like as not.” The first man shook his head. “Daemon eyes, staring up at me? No. I think not.”

  Hadl complained, but without much meat to it; wives were mouths he could ill afford to feed, but without us he would be forced to look after himself. No doubt he counted it better my sister and I should starve with him than he should fetch his own drink. So Haviva and I served tea to the two men and their new wives, a thin and muddy hospitality. Hadl did not invite them to our territory, and they did not ask to see it.

  Hours later, after the men had gone and the girls with them, after Hadl had eaten what little food we had and my sister had drifted off to sleep, I crept from the false safety of our undergr
ound home and went dancing.

  I opened my mouth and let the hot salt air roll across my tongue. I flung sa and ka open as a wide net into the night, straining for any sense of life. Still young, still strong, and I was alive as I never felt in the stinking little crack we shared with Hadl. My cursed eyes drank in the moonlight; up top, from this angle, all the world was a hunting ground, and I was not just prey.

  I was Kentakuyan a’o Yaela i Kaka’ahuana, last heir to an ancient and proud line of queens, and I was a dancer.

  I spread my arms to the wide, dark sky, embracing the moons and the brilliant stars, the Web of Illindra that held it up, and all Her children, bound to the sticky weavings of life. I drew breath deep into my belly, imagining as I did so that I breathed in power, and peace, and love: all the things that were denied to me in the bottom reaches of the Edge, where we weak humans huddled in fear of the killing sun. I arched my spine and let my head fall back, and I danced with the night.

  And, oh, the night danced with me. Sweet Eth, lord of the night sky and dark consort of Illindra, was my dark partner, my lover, my killer. He hid me from my enemies, even as he hid my enemies from me, and we danced to the drum-beat of a thousand dying hearts.

  Nighttime in Quarabala can be peaceful, though it is the peace you see in the smile of a child who seems to be asleep and dreaming of a good meal. You know the child is dead, and you know the night is deadly, but it is a comfort to believe otherwise if you can.

  I did not allow the lie to soothe me on this night. Caught up in the dance as I was, still I was awake and alert. My nose twitched and I stopped mid-twirl: the salted winds had carried to me the slightest tang of musk. It was a warning, a breath of warmth against my skin, and I quivered like a hunting cat on the scent. Prey, not predator, I thought, sniffing the air, and very close.

  Pebbles and grit ground beneath the hard soles of my feet as I shifted my weight . . . there. Not ten paces to the fore, a small herd of goatlike dhurga was creeping noiselessly along a shallower crack. Their sensitive ears twisted back and forth but huge eyes were half-closed as they licked and licked at the rich salty walls.