by Robert Brady
Little worry of that now, they’d thought, with most of the Andarans in Toor hunting Swamp Devils. Just their luck if some had stayed behind or come back early.
True to their fathers, Nanette and Thorna picked up the long wooden spears and leveled them at the new comer. Chessa tried to raise a spell of protection and, at the same time, to summon old Oola, failing at both. Dagi, having no weapon and no magic, did what Dagi always did.
Dagi lied.
“Our men are a stone’s throw away,” she warned. “You’d best be off with you, or we’ll scream and then you’ll see your own liver on a stick at our cook fire.”
The newcomer chuckled and stepped out of the grass onto their playing field. He seemed to be of the race of Men, tall, stocky, in a white cloak like a shaman, his hair black down to his ears, streaked with gray like his beard. He held his hands out wide and empty before him, showing that he had no weapon.
The girls didn’t relax, neither did they run, as one would expect young women to do. The four of them were, in fact, exceptional girls, although they’d yet to realize it.
“I only came to check up on you,” the newcomer said. “These are troubling times, and certain children bear closer watching.”
Dagi looked to the others, then back at the newcomer. She thought she might know the Man, however she couldn’t say how.
“Which of you are the daughters of a Daff Kanaar?” the newcomer asked them.
Now the girls were all on their guard. The Daff Kanaar had many enemies, who might seek hostages, especially now in these troubled times.
Nanette shook her spear. “You’d best be going, grandfather,” she warned him. “My sister and I will see your guts in a moment.”
The newcomer laughed his rich laugh again. The girls fought hard not to be lulled by it—the Man exuded such friendliness, such a feeling that all was right, that this thing happened just as it must.
“Well, those are the daughters of Nantar,” he acknowledged, showing no fear of their spears. “No mistaking that. And these? Whose daughters are these?”
Chessa and Dagi exchanged a glance, and the former tried again to contact old Oola. This time she couldn’t suppress a smile, as she found the old man’s mind and warned him in a moment as to where she was, and what was happening.
Seconds later a war whoop rose up from the tribe, not a quarter of a daheer away.
The newcomer beamed. “Well done, Chesswaya,” he said. “I knew you could do it, given time.”
“Who are you?” Dagi demanded. With no weapon and no magic, still she remained the boldest of them. One warrior who’d tried to switch her for insulting his son had beat her bottom bloody; and still she’d cursed and taunted him. Finally he’d turned and switched his own son instead for not being more like her, and she’d cursed them both all the while.
“Know me, daughters of the Daff Kanaar,” the newcomer said, tilting his head back and spreading his arms to the sun, “for I am thy savior, Steel, the Man-god, and I am come to recognize thee, and to report to thee a great thing has come to pass.”
Nanette and Thorna both turned to the sound of whooping from the angry Andaran warriors who ran fast as they could to the rescue of four young girls in danger. Chessa let the power die out of her hand, and instead applied her will to test the substance of the one who had called himself Steel.
She knew in a second he wasn’t lying, and fell right to her knees, Nanette and Thorna after her. Only Dagi remained standing.
“What thing?” she demanded, suspicious as ever. “What could you have to tell us, grandfather?”
Steel dropped his arms and beamed at the young girl. “I would tell you an age has ended, and another begun, and a prophecy sung by a young girl older than your oldest women has come to pass, as was foretold by the mother, Eveave.”
“Words, words,” Dagi challenged him. “Spoken like a crazy man. I suppose next you want to show us what is under your robes!”
“Dagi!” Chessa hissed, tugging at her hem. “Dagi, that is the Man-god, Steel!”
“So what if he is?” Dagi demanded, and took a step toward him, out of Chessa’s reach. “You’ve come, Steel, you’ve met the daughters of Nantar, you’ve decreed a new age. What have you for Waya Daganogeda, eh?”
“Waya Daganogeda,” Steel repeated, looking the young girl in the eye. “What makes you believe I wanted to see those daughters of the Daff Kanaar?”
Now Dagi frowned. She knew she’d been an adopted daughter, as many were among the tribes. Women and young girls could be traded as any commodity. Her mother, she knew, had been a Wet Belly once, until the Emperor had crushed their tribe to make his Waya Agiladia,and hence the meaning of her name—wolf’s song.
“What Daff Kanaar is my father?” she asked him, and suddenly all was serious for little Dagi. She loved her adoptive father, but she’d rather know her own.
“Yours, and your sister’s there, you mean?” Steel asked her, indicating Chessa. “Do you think it’s any coincidence the two of you are thick as horse thieves? One Man came to the Andaran plains with three Andaran women, not knowing he in fact came with five, and your brother, his Andaran son, Agatani Chewla.”
Dagi’s mouth opened, then closed. In fact, she’d always felt a special bond with Chessa and the two, whose mothers were from lost tribes, Chessa’s being a Drifter, had bonded just like sisters.
But there were certain names every Andaran knew, such as Yonega Waya, the White Wolf who sat the Emperor’s throne in Eldador, and Shela, who was his wife, and Tali Digatishi, his blood brother and the Duke of Thera, who’d built the Theran Lancers from the cast off warriors of Andoran.
And Agatani Chewla, the Andoran name for Vulpe Mordetur, Prince of Eldador, a blooded man with three cities to his name at twelve summers.
The three of them born on almost the same day.
“We are the daughters of—” Chessa couldn’t even say it.
Steel stood. The Andaran warriors were leaping high in the grass now, close enough to see their brown eyes. They’d be on them in a moment, and wouldn’t hesitate to kill the old Man, god or no.
“Daughters of the Daff Kanaar,” he said, “the four of you are come to women, andthere is a song to sing and only one can sing it to you—a Druid in Volkhydro. As was ordained, by the time you hear it,it will be too late—a battle will have already begun that will test the will of every Fovean. When you hear that song, you’ll know what you must do to save this land, and you’ll know who you must talk to accomplish that task.”
Three Andaran warriors crashed into the little playing field, their scimitars drawn, to find four girls, three on their knees, and one crying who had never cried before. Old Oola only had to take one look at them to know they had seen something that innocent girls couldn’t be prepared to see and, even though they wouldn’t speak of it, he knew life as he’d known it on the Andaran plains had ended.
Such is the way of things.
* * *
The goddess Eveave lay back into the arms of Adriam, the All Father, who watched the machinations of the Foveans from on high.
They saw the One, War’s instrument, rage over Fovea, unchecked and invincible.
“I admit,” Adriam said, “you picked your own instrument well.
“My victory,” she informed him, her lips a thin, red line “is complete.”
“We could not have predicted Steel’s involvement,” Adriam informed her. “It seems Water and Earth’s son had a part to play, as he saw it.”
“It was Steel brought the Almadain to War’s Avatar,” Eveave said. “It was Steel who let the Guardian know who was his to guard, and why. It was Steel who wrote a song, and gave it to an Uman-Chi girl to sing it.
“Steel loves these children of Life. How could he not involve himself?”
Adriam nodded. He sensed, as well, Power, War and Chaos’ machinations, and knew how pleased they were. They’d worried for the involvement of the greater gods, and now they thought themselves victorious.