Kill, kill, they crooned to me. Kill them all, kill us, kill you.
I could have fought them; I could have stilled my arms and my legs and the twisted whisperings of my mind, and broken the shadows’ hold on me.
I did not.
Instead, knowing what they were, knowing what I was, I joined the dance.
Hours later I awoke and found myself held in a pair of strong arms. It was Aasah—I knew his scent, by this time—carrying me home as a father might carry a child. For a while I remained limp in his grasp, wishing that things might not have changed between us, wishing that the world was not as it was.
But in my experience, only the darkest and wickedest of wishes are ever granted. I opened my eyes and pushed against his broad, hard chest, and the shadowmancer stopped and put me down. I stood before him, itching with the salt of dried sweat upon my skin, weak-kneed and exhausted.
I had never felt stronger in all my life, or more ashamed. He did not have to tell me that I had failed his test.
I stilled my trembling limbs as best I was able and wondered whether, now that he knew, he would tell Hadl that I was well and truly cursed, or whether he would kill me himself.
“I beg you, forgive me.”
But when his hand met my cheek, it was gentle. “Forgive you? Forgive me, child, for not being there when your people needed me. And forgive me for abandoning you again, for I must.”
My world stopped. I dared open my eyes, and begged him with them. No. No.
“I will not leave tonight,” he promised, and shocked me further by pressing a kiss to my forehead with his bloody mouth. “Not tonight, but soon. I will sing the shadows, that they might conceal my path from Akari Sun Dragon, and then I will run the shining path to Min Yaarif. Were it just the two of us, we might run together. But your sister . . .” He held out his two hands and shrugged. “Perhaps someday, little one, you will learn shadowmancy on your own and make your way to the free lands, and to me.”
I believed his words no more than he did. Aasah reached out a hand to stroke my cheek and continued, “Before I leave, I will give you a gift. But in return, you must promise me something.”
“Anything.” I wanted to die. Take me with you.
“You begged me for forgiveness.” He frowned. “You are Kentakuyan. Never forget. You do not beg. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Aasah. I promise.” His name was honey on my tongue, so rare and sweet.
“Good girl.” He patted my head, and then patted at the sides of his sharat. “Ah! Here we are. Come here, little one. I have something for you.”
Three days later, I woke from a midsun nap to find Aasah staring at me. A world of sadness was in his eyes, and I knew what he would say before he opened his mouth. But he had reminded me that a queen does not beg, and so I waited and said nothing.
“I will leave at dusk.”
The words were a cold knife in my throat, and I choked on them. His arms tightened about me, warning, and his soft whisper tickled at my ear.
“There is no help for it, sweet one, I have stayed much too long as it is. People die every day that I linger . . . how many lives are you worth? Many, perhaps. We shall see.”
“Will you . . .”
“Will I?” He mocked, not unkindly.
“Will you . . .” Keep me. Love me. Save me. “Will you buy me from Hadl?”
“Yes, and yes. No, and no.” I thought he sang the words to me. “You are mine forever, little sister, and I am yours . . . but you will have to buy your own freedom. And when you do, I will be waiting for you.”
“Buy myself? That is not possible. I have nothing.” My words cracked with despair. “I am nothing.”
“Do not be foolish. You are more than you know, and the price . . .” He let out a long, slow sigh. “The price will be greater than you can imagine.”
That much I believed.
“When you are free, make your way to Min Yaarif, and I will find you there. Find the Trail of Bones, not far from here as Sun Dragon wakes. You must dance, sweet one, as you have never danced in your life, hard enough and true enough to make the shadows fall in love with you, that they might protect you from the killing sun. By laws as old as Sajani’s bones, that protection will last not more than three days. Shift the shadows of death to your will, and then run. As soon as Sun Dragon turns his face you must run as if all the Araids in Quarabala are at your heels. Do not stop, not for pain, not for love, not even for the breaking dawn. Stop, and Sun Dragon will find you. Stop, and you die.”
Run for three days, while maintaining control over shadows, when I had not been able to control them for a few minutes? Learn to shadowshift by myself, on the edge of the Edge, while protecting my sister and her babe from our rotting husband?
“It is impossible.” I might be able to run for three days, I thought I might, but Haviva would never make it. And if the shadows slipped away from me, come the breaking dawn . . . to be caught aboveground was death for all of us, a long, slow death by fire.
“Of course it is impossible.” His whisper mocked mine. He stood, and the dim light caught at the jewels on his skin; he shone like the night sky. “You do not become a shadowmancer by attempting the possible. You live, or you die. It is that simple, little one. Now, stop your crying and help me gather my things; come the night, I will sing, and then I will run.”
He left before morning, when the air was still so hot my skin ached just to think of it, and so I would not think of it, or of him. I told myself that the pain in my heart was a small punishment for ever being so young as to hope again. Stupid, foolish girl. I turned my face away and would not watch him go.
Hadl felt well enough and manly enough to beat me that night for having lain with another man, and then he took my shia and climbed out of our hole. I wished he might fall drunk into a clutch of dhurga and be stampeded. Or break through the crust of earth and into a nest of soldier beetles. Or . . .
“Do you love him?”
“Hadl?” I spat; Haviva glanced about, fearful, but he was gone.
“The other man. Aasah.” She glanced at me, dared lay a hand on my arm. “I had feared he might . . . I had hoped he might buy you. Take you away. I thought you liked him.”
I shrugged away from her touch. “We had better get this stinking place cleaned up, lest our beloved husband beat us, Atuim smile upon his head.”
Haviva’s eyes were round as moons. “Yaela, you must not say such things. You must not! What if he hears? He would kill you!”
“And I should care if he does?”
“I should care.”
I looked at my sister and sighed, and thumbed the tears from her cheek. She hugged me, and I let her, and we bent to our task.
That morning I dreamt that I had wings. I would fly up, up, up to the moons, and they promised to show me the road to Min Yaarif, long and cool and glittering with sung bones. But first, they explained, I must cut out my own heart and use it to buy my freedom.
When I woke, I washed my face, and my hands, and my feet. I combed my hair, just as if Aasah were still there to see, and I prepared food and drink for my beloved husband, Atuim smile upon his head, and before he or Haviva had yet stirred I was cutting up the last of the meat the shadowmancer had hunted for us. I could do that much for her, at least, before I left.
I froze, knife high in the air, surprised at my own thoughts. Leave? I would never leave my sister.
You must, insisted the shadowmancer’s voice in my head. You live or you die . . . it is that simple. Your choice, little one.
My choice. My choice? I hacked at the meat as if to cut the lie from it. What part of this life had I ever chosen? I cut my hand and did not care. You live or you die: your choice. Fine words for a man to say, who had never been hunted and shared over a fire and chewed upon like a piece of meat.
I scraped a fine powder of rich, red, salty earth, and rolled the strips of meat in it, and hung them to dry. Though I might not have bothered: it was well salted with my te
ars.
Hadl ate the food I had brought for him, and the sabra water I had squeezed for him, and scratched his crotch, and looked well pleased with himself. “My wives. My good wives. Havi, I have decided. You will keep the whelp.”
Haviva dropped the knife. Her eyes grew huge, and the world grew still.
“Yes. You will bear a son, a fine son for me. I have made a decision. My leg is good—see?” He pulled his grimed leggings down. The scar was angry-looking and fresh, but indeed, it looked to be healing well. “Two good legs, two good wives. I will join my cousin Saamid, and we will start a new clan. And you will be first wives, eh? You like that?”
“Yes, Husband.” Haviva dropped her gaze; the color was high in her cheeks. I knew she had never dared hope to keep the child.
I made my face a mask but could not hide my glare. I need not have bothered; Hadl was busy in his head with his new life, his new clan, and his new wives. A hundred of them, no doubt, a great nag for a great warrior.
Your choice, little one.
I spent the night cleaning our little crack in the ground, as if anything I might do would make it smell less like smoke, and sweat, and rot. I shook out our bedding and ragged clothes, and beat herbs and dust into them, and climbed to the surface over and over again to dispose of old bones, and dried shit, and such other treasures as we had accumulated. Haviva combed her hair, wore her cleanest kamish, and roasted salt meat with manna roots. Hadl preened himself by the fire: our beloved husband, Atuim smile upon his head, the great warrior, the great carrion-bird full to bursting with another hunter’s meat.
I took a deep breath and drew the flute from beneath my bedding.
“What is that?”
“A flute.” Sun Dragon’s gaze had just begun to seek us; just as Aasah had promised, the glittering runes had faded to nothing. It looked a flute, a plain instrument some shepherd might own, nothing more. “Aasah left it, that I might play for you of a morning.”
He grunted. “Liked him, did you?”
There was no good answer to that question, and so I gave none.
“I would play you a tune, my husband. I would dance for you.”
Naked as a shadowmancer’s promise I stood upon the unyielding ground and struck a dancer’s pose, at the same time raising the flute close to my face and squinting against the growing light. One ring to bring them close, two rings to send them, he had told me. I arched back, back, and the muscles in my legs flexed in readiness. Smiling, I brought the end of the flute with a single red-painted ring to my lips—
—and blew.
She raised her voice in a glad song, a call to the Hunt, a call to kill. She rode a great wooden bowl upon the water, so much water there was no end to it; a great wave warm and salty as blood slapped my dreaming face and I wondered at my own surprise. It was the sea, after all, and we were her hunters. Mahadra raised her voice again, a shrill ululation, and the sun shone on her copper bracelets as she pointed up. Our prey had been sighted! I reached for my . . .
“What is this? What is this? What did you do?” The back of Hadl’s hand smashed against my mouth, breaking my trance. His blow sent the flute flying, and for a horrible moment I cared more for its fate than I did for mine. It bounced against the earth, unharmed; not so my face, bounced against my husband’s tender fist. “Buta! I will kill you, you . . .” He shoved me aside and scrambled to his bedding. “The plugs! The plugs! What have you done with them, you . . .”
A single note rang out, the sweet and joyful wailing of death. The bintshi had answered the flute’s call.
My husband turned to me, face purple with rage and eyes full of murder. But my eyes were the eyes of Pelang, and they had seen his death. I smiled at him even as he raised his hand to strike me down, and I raised my own two fists and shook them at his face.
“Never again will you beat me,” I told Hadl, and his jaw dropped open, eyes bugged out at me like a spider’s in his great surprise. “I am done with you, husband.” And I spat upon the ground at his feet.
“I will kill you!” he roared, forgetting the greater threat in the face of my mockery. “I will—”
Hadl froze, hand upraised, and then cocked his head as the bintshi sang. His eyes glazed over as he was caught in a web of my own spinning, one which would likely end this night in all our deaths.
“You will not,” I answered, lifting my chin in defiance. “I think, tonight, you will die.” I was trembling all over in exertion and fear, drenched in sour-smelling sweat, and so afraid of what would happen next that the blood wanted to crawl out of my veins and hide. But I was also, in that moment, utterly at peace.
Better to die dancing with the bintshi, I told my pounding heart, than live another moment dancing on the Edge.
The bintshi crooned, voice rising sweet upon the wind. To me, my loves, she sang. To me.
The ear-plugs had been thrown out that morning with the rest of our rubbish, and Hadl had no chance. He swayed, grinned like a three-night drunk, and shuffled to the new climbing rope I had twisted and hung just that day. Such a wife, a good wife. He set his hand to the rope and climbed.
Haviva cried out and would have followed him, would have dragged him down to his safety—and our death, once the bintshi had gone—but I wrapped my arms about her and held her fast. She screamed, and begged, and beat against me with her fists; I accepted the pain as part of the price of our freedom.
Hadl hitched his good leg over the lip of the rift and then he began to scream too. The bintshi shrieked her triumph, great wings beat above us, and she thanked me for the meal with a blessing of red, red rain.
Long after Hadl’s screams stopped I loosed my grip on my sister. Haviva slid boneless to lie in the dirt, shaking with sobs so that I feared for her and the child.
The shadow of the bintshi passed over us one last time, and I dared a small sigh of relief. No doubt my beloved husband, Atuim smile upon his memory, had been a fine fat meal.
“Haviva, my sweet, we are well, we are very well. Look, Hadl is gone. Well, most of him is gone.” I pulled my blood-sodden kamish away from my skin and grimaced.
“Our husband is gone!” She wailed. “What have you done, what have you done? What evil magic is this, you have killed our husband! How will we live, who will protect us? Where will we go?”
I gaped at her. How could she be so stupid? “What do you mean, where will we go . . . we will go wherever we like. Haviva, my sweet, we are free, do you not understand?”
“You are the one who does not understand.” Haviva left off her weeping and sat in the bloody dirt as if all the spine had gone out of her. “Yaela, how could you be so stupid? We were going inland, where it is safe. We were going to . . . he was going to . . .” She sighed and sat up, dashing tears and blood from her face with the back of her hand. “I suppose it does not matter now, does it? Thanks to you.”
“Yes, thanks to me. Inland, where it is safe?” I wanted to strike her, to shake her, to make her see. “No place is safe for us. No place in Quarabala. Now, we can leave, we can . . .”
“You can leave. And I . . . I suppose you will, now. Go after him, your handsome sorcerer.” Tears welled up in her eyes, terrible to see. After all this, that I had caused her to cry. “I think, I think you . . . you should . . .”
“Hush, hush.” I dropped to the dirt beside my sister and gathered her up in my arms. “Hush, hush, silly one, do you think I would leave you?” I stroked her hair and made a face; it was thick with gobbets of Hadl.
“I guess not.” Her voice was muffled against my breast. She turned her head to the side, streaking my cleaner skin with blood and tears. “I am just . . . afraid, Yaela. So afraid.”
“Yes, and fear is such a new feeling for both of us.”
She laughed, and I held her at arm’s length. “It is a choice, dear one,” I told her. “To live, or to die.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, well then, if that is all it takes, I choose to live. I wa
nt to live.” Her voice wavered, but she took a deep breath and forced a smile, and my heart squeezed tight in my chest.
“There is something we must do first.”
“Oh?” Her smile faltered.
“Yes. We must clean up Hadl.”
She looked about us and grimaced. There was blood on the walls and the floor, and on our bedding, and our food, and in our hair.
“Trust a man,” she sighed, “to leave such a mess.”
The bintshi never returned. Perhaps Hadl had been sweet enough to satisfy her hunger. More likely, she took sick and died from eating such foul meat.
I went dancing most nights, partly to ease the ache in my restless legs, mostly to get away from my sister, who was torn between blessing me for ridding us of Hadl, blaming me for robbing us of Hadl, and endlessly cleaning and rearranging our vile pit of a home. I ranged farther and farther out, testing the night’s patience and my own too-elusive grasp on shadow magic. One morning I all but fell down the rope, hair smoking, feet bloodied, and Haviva refused to speak to me for two days. I felt her fear; who would care for her and her babe if I never came back? Still, my gaze and my feet and my thoughts drifted toward Min Yaarif.
What would it feel like, I wondered, to have water fall from the sky and land on your skin? To give up the life of a stinking, sneaking scavenger and walk tall under the sun?
To be free from the endless whining of an overly pregnant sister? I could not fathom why she blamed me for her woes . . . I had hardly gotten her in such a condition. I said so, unwisely, and she was giving me such looks that I dared the bees again and brought her a peace offering of honey, lest she poison my food.
Unfortunately, when you remove a greater predator, the smaller, nastier ones move into its territory. With the bintshi gone, I was perhaps the largest predator around, and I knew that would not last long.
Unfettered III Page 24