by J L Forrest
“You must do nothing. It’s mine to give, and no light thing to offer. You’re a nescient girl, as far as I can tell, and I’ve known you barely more than a fortnight. This conversation is pointless.”
“I—”
“Enough talking. Finish eating.”
Exemplari. Nyahri rolled the word through her mind. Yea, my mother knew stories, and she knew stories of you, Sultah yw Sabi.
Some cruel.
Were they true? Would you tell them someday?
Yw Sabi and Nyahri ate the rest of their meal in silence. Night sounds accompanied the crackling of the fire, distant coyotes singing. The firelight faded as they sipped their tea, its steam curling. Nyahri leaned back, gazing at the stellar tapestry as she always had, pondering the moons, the White River, the constellations:
What does yw Sabi see when she gazes at them?
Whatever the Atreiani thought or felt, her expression offered no hint. A sense of events larger than herself kept Nyahri fixed on her path, an undercurrent of curiosity, and of something else which she could not yet name, something which burrowed at the back of her mind and within her chest. At moments, yw Sabi’s stern shell felt no tougher than an egg.
Or a hornets’ nest.
I misjudged Suhto’s heart, Nyahri thought, and he a man I knew my whole life. So how can I weigh an Atreiani’s heart?
She did not know.
◆◆◆
The sun rose, the morning frost melting. Nyahri rebuilt the fire and prepared their gear, waiting for the Oudwnii to arrive. Even though she expected them, her gut still tightened when they did. They joked and jostled with each other, little boys half grown to be killers.
Dhaos shined with pride. His men walked behind him, most with their bows strung. They spread along the trail, formation never too tight, always watchful.
The vulture god, Nyahri thought, might come when these archers will.
Yet when Dhaos smiled at her, she forgot about death. Nyahri smiled back despite herself.
“It will be a long hike,” he said, “this first day, but good for the appetite. Tonight we feast to the gods, court some luck.”
Yw Sabi reclined by the fire, her hands crossed behind her head. “How long to Sojourn?”
“A fortnight or so,” he said, “if the weather holds. More if it worsens.”
When the Atreiani only stared at him, he fidgeted, refocusing on Nyahri. Her blood warmed and she turned from him.
“I will saddle the horses,” she said.
Yw Sabi stood, dusted her clothes, and looked from archer to archer. Few held her gaze.
“Possibly, Dhaos,” she said, “you’d be helpful and smother the fire.”
The women mounted. Dhaos rubbed the stallion’s muzzle as if petting a dog, and Nyahri glowered at him, her fists tightening on the reins.
He does not understand E’cwn customs, she reminded herself, when it is all right to touch a woman’s horse, when it is not.
“It is a safe-enough road,” he said, “for some days, until we leave the lower valleys.”
“What awaits us farther on?” yw Sabi asked.
He grinned. “Other than snow? I have cousins among the Qebeccêi, many weeks up the ranges, who tell us groups of C’naädii and Gabarii wander south.”
“Do we need to worry?”
“The C’naädin gods measure the heaven-worthiness of men by how well they murder, and these men will be starving. The Gabarii have no gods and no heaven—they are animals.”
“Delightful people, I’m sure. Why’re they starving exactly?”
“The north has had five or six bad years now, though our mountains will not help them much. In this region, most interlopers starve, and hunger does much to make a man throw away his life. For years we have pressed the Gabarii back from the upper fields, but their numbers still grow, and the C’naädii are more organized and better trained.”
Yw Sabi nodded but said nothing more.
With a word from their captain, the archers began a slow jog toward the high meadows, the path which would take them west. Yw Sabi and Nyahri followed.
{Interim: Divine Transmissions}
72130617:194431:EA39.7392N+104.9842W:
AUTUMN01::
LORAHDI: O goddess, you honor me! Your beauty is the stars, your voice the song of truth! Thank you for your coming!
AUTUMN01: You are a good woman, a keeper of your people, an exemplar among humankind. Know that we love you.
LORAHDI: How may I serve you? What task could I possibly undertake for you?
AUTUMN01: You are their voice. You will keep them. Hold the Atreianii higher than all others and teach your children to do the same.
LORAHDI: Higher even than you?
AUTUMN01: Even than we. The Hive is not your concern. Keep the faith of your Atreianii, make your children ready to follow them.
Transcript Archive, Exhibit A
Vo Misa Station
{14}
Throughout the day they kept a brisk pace. The trees opened onto the high meadows, and the company broke from the cedars into the valleys, veering westward on a deep-trodden path.
A path of generations, Nyahri thought, certainly the same my father took in his boyhood, the same he followed after as a raider, as a killer of Oudwnii.
Dhaos knew the high trails, keeping the travelers clear of mires. During the early afternoon they crested a saddle pass which dropped into fields riotous with wildflowers. The troop paused, eating and gazing at the gelid peaks, now closer and larger and crisper. Snow plumes whisked from their pinnacles. As Nyahri marveled at the view, Dhaos sat on his heels beside her.
“There is an alpine crossing,” he said, pointing, “between those mountains, quite high. We will cross it before the heaviest snows come, or not at all, not till spring.”
“I have never seen anything like this, never been so much in the sky. It is hard to breathe.”
“The air here is thinner.”
“How do you fair, then?”
“You get accustomed.” He whispered to her, “How is it, E’cwni, you come to follow an Atreiani? What happened at Abswyn?” Nyahri glanced over her shoulder. Some distance away, yw Sabi stood on a quartz-granite boulder, arms folded, her face into the breeze. The bright sun disappeared within her long windswept hair. “The first question is my business,” Nyahri said, “the second is hers.” Dhaos’s mischievous eyes centered on her, then on her spear. She clutched it, leaning her cheek against it. “You use that well enough,” he said.
“I would not have cut your throat.” She remembered how close she came to it when they first met.
“Oh, I think you might have.” His lips curled again into his persistent smile.
She half shrugged, looking askance at him. “You did not sit here to talk about snow or spears.”
“Nay.”
“What then?”
He hesitated. “I know who you are.”
She leaned from him.
“Knew it the instant I heard your name,” he said.
“Who else knows? Everyone?”
“No one.” He picked up a pebble and tossed it. “Definitely not my father, gods no. If he had known, there would have been blood.”
“Why did you not tell him?”
“He gets what he wants out of all this, I think.” Dhaos spoke in low tones, hiding his words even from his men. “We need no more enmity. Would you agree?”
She held her tongue, sensing danger between every word.
“Father may think of you only as a dirty E’cwni,” he said, “but I had teachers shrewder than that. They record the family names of the Ahtrosi and Ahtrose, and I learned them.”
“How would they hear of them, these teachers of yours?”
“Travelers, traders, wanderers. Men crisscross the world, swapping goods, exchanging information. I learn what I can of the E’cwnii. I respect you.”
“What of it?”
“There are elders on the chieftains’ council who still despise your father. They hated yo
ur grandfather even more—”
“Why do you tell me this?” She frowned. “How is this supposed to make me feel, eh?”
“Nay! You mistake me.” He raised his hands deferentially. “My point is that there are younger councilmen, like me, who would like open trade, who would sue for peace, who envision better things for the future. When I sit on the council, I will make things right.”
“Between E’cwnii and Oudwnii?”
He nodded. “Between you and me.”
“You think me easy?” Nyahri almost smiled. “You make a game of this?”
“A game?”
“You see me and you see a pretty girl to win to your side?”
“I—”
“You see a conquest?”
“I, nay—”
She rolled her eyes. “Gods.”
“You misunderstand—”
“Take us to Cohltos.”
He sat back against a rock, eyebrows drawn down, shoulders fallen. “You would not try for peace?”
“Did I say I would not? I said nothing like that.”
He nodded, more contrite.
I like you, Dhaos, she thought. Despite myself, into my belly.
Yw Sabi’s voice rang out, “Dhaos! We’ve rested too long. Pack up!”
He hesitated, a double glance into Nyahri’s eyes, and he grinned. Dhaos gathered the company and, with the horses at the rear, the company walked through the slow afternoon into a pleasant windless night. Many thousands of strides onward, with archers stationed at the camp’s edges, other men split wood and lit cooking fires. They dined on roast beef and vegetables, and Nyahri took her fill of it, the last and only fresh food the Oudwnii brought from Aukensis. The rest would be dried rations and whatever they caught along the way.
The Oudwnii smiled, laughing with each other. Dhaos beckoned Nyahri with open-faced grins, though she took her seat beside yw Sabi at a separate fire. The Atreiani added logs to it, and with a twig she marked symbols in the fireside dust.
“You wanted me to teach you,” she said to Nyahri, “time to learn.”
Nyahri studied the writing.
“Can you read these letters?” The Atreiani pointed to them.
“Some.”
“Try.”
“Merkooree.”
Yw Sabi tapped the ground. “Draw this sound out.”
“Mercuree.”
“Close enough. Next—”
“Venoos.”
The Atreiani smiled. “Same symbol, but uh not oo.”
“Venus.”
“Next.”
“Ayert.”
“Interesting mispronunciation. Say it—Earth.”
“Earth.”
“Good.”
“Marse.”
“Good,” yw Sabi said. “More z, less s.”
“Marz.”
“Better.”
Nyahri furrowed her brow.
“Say the rest with me,” and together they stumbled, “Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Hades, Nibiru.”
“What are these words?” Nyahri asked.
“The names of planets, the last one artificial, our making—its name almost a joke originally. We can count five from here, Earth, and I’m sure the E’cwnii have their own names for those. Time changes language. Older roots make yours, in part the tongues most used by my kind. Understand?”
“I think so.”
“Yours is Espana and bits of Englisce with bizarre tonalities, almost uniquely Cine.” Yw Sabi studied Nyahri’s face, hinting a smile. “I see Cine in you, in the corners of your eyes, but I’ve no explanation for that emigration. You kept Latinate characters. I’m calculating etymology as I go, listening to you, lovely one.”
So many unfamiliar words: Espana, Cine, Latinate, etymology—
Yet Nyahri heard only: Lovely one.
Her voice has not sounded thus before, so warm, even kind.
Yw Sabi continued, “You may find Englisce valuable soon.”
“I will learn.”
“Good. Your ability to read the names of the planets, that shows you’ve already learned.”
“Mother taught me, and her mother before, the old letters—Englisce.”
“Your era’s Latin. You must improve. Read again.”
“Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Hades, Nibiru.”
“Good.”
The Atreiani looked toward the archers, tilting her head, her attitude sharper.
She hears them, Nyahri thought, every word they say.
“They’re reckless,” yw Sabi said, “these Oudwnii. Frightened too, but that’ll fade.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re boasting, bullshitting each other.”
An odd word. “Bullshitting?”
“Something about where they’d like to put their cocks. They won’t fear me much longer.”
“I would keep peace with them.”
“Might not be possible, even with your pretty captain.” Yw Sabi exhaled, a short sigh. “They’re fighting men and, once they get callous to something, once they get it into their heads they’re better, they’ll push their boundaries. If the opportunity presents itself I’ll remove their reason to boast.”
“Do you fear them?” Nyahri asked, sneaking glances at Dhaos, wondering if yw Sabi could fear, remembering she broached such a question once before.
Cautious, yw Sabi had said.
The Atreiani’s expression grew icy. “A time will come when they’ll guess what you already figure.”
“What?”
“I’m not invincible.” Yw Sabi shrugged.
Nyahri held her lower lip in her teeth. “Yea.”
“Give me your hand.”
Nyahri hesitated.
The Atreiani repeated, “Give me your hand.”
Nyahri extended her arm and yw Sabi pressed her long, encompassing fingers over Nyahri’s palm. Yw Sabi’s fingertips glanced only across the surface, at the same time soothing, warming, and delightfully nauseating.
“Feel my skin?” yw Sabi said.
“How can I not?” Nyahri wondered if the Atreiani detected the tremble in her voice.
“Your skin has more in common with a fish’s or bird’s or mouse’s than with mine. There’re a thousand differences between our physiologies. We Atreianii are engineered creatures, but if you prick us, do we not bleed? We’re tough, hard to kill, but we can die.”
Nyahri nodded as if she understood, missing important words, terms foreign to any E’cwni.
“My DNA looks nothing like yours,” yw Sabi said, “but my emotions—”
Despite their darkness, her eyes reflected the fire.
“Everything I once knew is gone,” she continued, “my entire life, people I did call friends, cared for, things I cherished.”
“Why share this with me?”
The intensity of their touch grew.
Yw Sabi sat straighter. For one moment, in the dim light, her humanity peeked through at the edges. Yet in the next, her pale lips thinned and she raised her chin, halfway distant.
“You are lonely?” Nyahri said.
“Yes.”
“I understand. You are going to Swyn Templr to awaken others like you? You will have brothers and sisters, fellow Atreianii.”
Yw Sabi shook her head. “No.”
“Shwn Jhon Oudwn expects you to. So does Dhaos, so do they all, I expect.”
“Their mistake.”
“Tell me your whole purpose. Why to Swyn Templr? Why with so much haste?”
“I’ll not tell you yet.”
Yw Sabi let go of Nyahri’s hand, taking her warmth with it. For the sudden distance, Nyahri shivered, turning to the fire.
“Each night,” the Atreiani said, “so long as we’ve firelight, we’ll work on your reading.”
“Yea, gladly,” Nyahri said, yearning for yw Sabi to keep speaking.
“Then vocabulary, long as that takes, and other things altogether. If we’re in each other
’s company enough, you’ll study math, the sciences, history, philosophy.” Yw Sabi reclined in her blankets and unhooked the witch-scepter, holding it to her chest. In time the fire faded, logs crumbling into charcoal. “I’ll keep the watch tonight.”
“What troubles you?”
“You should sleep, Nyahri.”
“You can tell me.”
The Atreiani smiled at those words but said, “Not now.”
Nyahri sighed, breaking the fire, plunging the camp into shadow. She set out her bedroll and curled in it, her longknife clutched in her hand, spear beside her. For a while, she could no more sleep than could yw Sabi, and she stared into the sky.
“Yw Sabi, the drunken stars, those are the planets?”
“Very good. In the Greek they were planetes asteres, the wandering stars. Mercury and Venus dance around Sol like drunkards, Mars and Jupiter and Saturn plod through the solar system, all in their orbits. Each moves in its time, as does this third stone from the sun.”
So many words translated poorly. Solar system, Nyahri thought, rolling the concept through her mind, something which sounded to her like bits of wood floating in a whirlpool, going round and round forever.
“The sun moves around us, Atreiani.”
“Does it? Give it some thought and we’ll explore that when next we speak of it.”
Nyahri pursed her lips, scrunching her eyebrows as she considered. “What about the jade star, the one southeast tonight?”
“That’s Mars, once the Red Planet. I was pleased on my first night awake to find it still green. What do you call it?”
“Cwlr, the mountain lion. Only his left eye is turned to us.”
“Its green is the color of your eyes.”
“Suhto told me so once.”
Nyahri tucked the blankets under her chin and, looking up, found the Atreiani’s serpent gaze on her. It no longer frightened her.
Were the Atreianii devils or were they gods? Nyahri sighed. Why must there be only two choices?
◆◆◆
Whatever humanity and sympathy yw Sabi had revealed by firelight, she concealed it come morning. As the company rode into the higher timber, she watched the woodland, showing no great interest for anything save perhaps the cry of a falcon or the crash of a waterfall.
After three days they departed the meadows for a river-cut ravine, its steep ledges shouldering narrow paths. The woodsmen thought nothing of deadfalls, at home among them, but Nyahri eyed each precipice, cursing and worrying about the stallion’s footing. Scouts walked ahead, arrows nocked, their footsteps soundless on the trail. The thick of spruces and ferns made ambush all too possible.