Epic: Legends of Fantasy

by John Joseph Adams

  Riding the Shore of the

  River of Death

  Kate Elliott

  As a child in rural Oregon, Kate Elliott made up stories and drew maps of imaginary worlds because she longed to escape to a world of lurid adventure fiction. This dubious inclination led inexorably to a career as a fantasy writer. “Riding the Shore of the River of Death” takes places in the world of her seven-volume Crown of Stars fantasy series. The Spiritwalker Trilogy (Cold Magic and Cold Fire with Cold Steel forthcoming) is an Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk Regency adventure fantasy with swords, sharks, and lawyer dinosaurs. She has also written the Crossroads Trilogy (Spirit Gate, Shadow Gate, and Traitors’ Gate), which features giant eagles, an examination of the old adage “power corrupts,” and ghosts, as well as the science fiction Novels of the Jaran. While not writing, she lives not in lurid adventure fiction but in paradisiacal Hawaii.

  This wooded western country far from their tribal lands in the east smelled raw and unpalatable to Kereka, but the hawk that circled overhead had the same look as hawks in the grasslands. Some things were the same no matter where you went, even if you had to ride into the lands where foreigners made their homes to get what you wanted. Even if you had to journey far from your father’s authority and your mother’s tent to seize the glory of your first kill.

  The reverberant thunk of an axe striking wood surprised her; she’d thought it was too early to hunt because they had yet to see any sign of habitation. Ahead, barely visible within the stretch of pine and beech through which they rode, her brother Belek unslipped his spear from its brace against his boot and urged his mare into a run. Kereka rose in her stirrups to watch him vanish into a clearing occluded by summer’s leaves. Birds broke from cover, wings flashing. The clatter of weapons, a sharp shriek, and then a man’s howl of pain chased off through the bright woodland.

  Edek, riding in front of her, whipped his horse forward. His voice raised in a furious burst of words as he and Kereka broke out of the woods and into a clearing of grass, meadow flowers, bold green saplings, and a pair of sturdy young oak trees.

  Belek’s mare had lost her rider. She shied sideways and stood with head lifted and ears flat. Beside the oaks, two had fought. Belek’s spear had thrust true, skewering the foreign man through the torso, but the farmer’s axe had cut into the flesh below Belek’s ribs before Belek had finally killed the man with a sword-thrust up under the ribs. Edek stood with mouth working soundlessly, watching as Belek sawed off the head of the dead man with his bloodied knife. Blood leaked from Belek’s gut, trailing from under his long felt tunic and over the knees of his leather trousers, but he was determined to get that head.

  If he could present the head to the begh before he died, then he would die as a man rather than a boy.

  His teeth were gritted and his eyes narrowed, but he uttered no word that might betray how much he hurt. Even when he got the head detached so it rolled away from the body, blood spilling brightly onto the grass, he said nothing, only uttered a “gah” of pain as he toppled over to one side. His left hand clutched the hair of the dead man. With his gaze he tracked the sky, skipping from cloud to cloud, and fetched up on Kereka’s face. He seemed about to speak but instead passed out.

  Kereka stared. One of the young oaks had a gash in its side, but the farmer hadn’t chopped deep enough to fell it. Bugs crawled among the chips of wood cut from the trunk. A cluster of white flowers had been crushed by the farmer’s boots. His red blood mingled with Belek’s, soaking into the grass. This could not be happening, could it?

  Every year boys rode out of the clans to seek their first kill, and every year some did not return. Riding the shore of the river of death was the risk you took to become a man. Yet no lad rode out in the dawn’s thunder thinking death would capture him.

  Edek dismounted and knelt beside Belek to untie the heavy tunic, opening it as one might unfold the wings of a downed bird. Seeing the deep axe cut and the white flash of exposed rib, he swore softly. Kereka could not find words as she absorbed the death of her hopes.

  “He’ll never get home with this wound,” said Edek. “We’ll have to leave him.” He started, hearing a crack, but it was only Belek’s mare stepping on a fallen branch as it turned to move back toward the familiarity of its herd.

  “We can’t leave him.” Kereka knew she had to speak quickly before she succumbed to the lure of Edek’s selfish suggestion. “He is my brother. The begh’s son. It will bring shame on us if we abandon him.”

  Edek shrugged. “If we take him back, then you and I have no chance of taking a head. You must see that. He can’t ride. He’s dead anyway. Let’s leave him and ride on. Others have done it.”

  She set her jaw against his tempting words. “Other boys who were left to die hadn’t already taken a head. He’s taken his head, so we must give him a chance to die as a man. We’ll lose all honor if we leave him. Even if both of us took a head in our turn.”

  “I don’t want to wait another season. I’m tired of being treated as a boy when I’m old enough to be a man.”

  “Go on alone if you wish, Edek the whiner.” Kereka forced out the mocking words, and Edek’s sullen frown deepened with anger. “You’ll sour the milk with your curdling tongue. You can suckle on your grievances for another season. You’ll get another chance to raid.”

  As she would not.

  Last moon the begh’s son from the Pechanek clan had delivered six mares to her father, with the promise of twenty sheep, ten fleeces, two bronze cauldrons, a gilded saddle, three gold-embroidered saddle blankets, five felt rugs, and a chest of gold necklaces and bronze belt clasps as her bride price. Her father’s wives and the mothers of the tribe had been impressed by the offer. They had been charmed by Prince Vayek’s respectful manners and pleasing speeches. Perhaps most of all they had been dazzled by his handsome face and well-proportioned body displayed to good effect in several bouts of wrestling, all of which he had won against the best wrestlers of the Kirshat clan. Her father and uncles had praised his reputation as a mighty warrior, scourge of the Uzay and Torkay clans, and all the while their gazes had returned again and again to the deadly iron gleam of the griffin feathers he wore as his warrior’s wings. Other warriors, even other beghs and their princely sons, wore ordinary wings, feathers fastened with wire to wooden frames that were riveted to an armored coat. Only a man who had slain a griffin could fly griffin wings. Such a man must be called a hero among men, celebrated, praised, and admired.

  Her father had decreed she would wed Prince Vayek at the next full moon. Wed, and be marked as a woman forever, even unto death.

  This was her last chance to prove her manhood.

  When she spoke, her voice was as harsh as a crow’s. “We’ll weave a litter of sticks and drag him behind his horse.”

  Dismounting, she turned her back so Edek could not see her wipe away the hot tears. Honor did not allow her to cry. She wanted to be a man and live a man’s life, not a woman’s. But she could not abandon her dying brother.

  Grass flattened under the weight of a litter as Belek’s mare labored up a long slope. Kereka rode at a walk just in front of Belek’s horse, its lead tied to her saddle. Her own mare, summer coat shiny in the hot sun, flicked an ear at a fly.

  She glanced back at the land falling away to the west. She had lagged behind to shoot grouse in the brush that cloaked a stream, its banks marked at this distance by the crowd of trees and bushes flourishing alongside running water. She squinted into the westering sun, scanning the land for pursuers, but saw no movement. Yesterday they had left the broken woodland country behind. Out here under the unfenced sky, they’d flown beyond the range of the farmers and their stinking fields.

  From ahead, Edek called her name. She whistled piercingly to let him know she was coming. The two birds she’d killed dangled from a line hooked to the saddle of Belek’s horse. Belek himself lay strapped to the litter they had woven of sapling branches. He had drifted in and out of consciousness for four days. It
was amazing he was still alive, but he had swallowed drips and drops of mare’s blood, enough to keep breath in his body. Now, however, his own blood frothed at his lips. The end would come soon.

  Maybe if he died now, before they reached the tents of the Kirshat clan, she and Edek could turn immediately around, ride back west, and take up their hunt in fresh territory. Yet even to think this brought shame; Belek deserved to die as a man, whatever it meant to her.

  She topped the rise to see hills rolling all the way to the eastern horizon. Dropping smoothly away from her horse’s hooves lay a long grassy hollow half in shadow with the late afternoon light. The ground bellied up again beyond the hollow like a pregnant woman’s distended abdomen. Edek had dismounted partway up the farther slope. He’d stripped out of his tunic in the heat and crouched with the sun on his back as he examined the ground. Above him, thick blocks of stone stood like sentries at the height of the hill: a stone circle, dark and forbidding.

  The sight of the heavy stones made her ears tingle, as though someone was trying to whisper a warning but couldn’t speak loudly enough for her to hear. A hiss of fear escaped her, and at once she spat to avert spirits who might have heard that hiss and seek to capture her fear and use it against her. She whistled again, but Edek did not look up. With its reins dropped over its head, his mount grazed in a slow munch up the slope toward the looming stones. He had his dagger out and was digging at the dirt. His quiver shifted on his bare back as he hunkered forward. What was he doing, leaving himself vulnerable like that?

  She nudged her mare forward. When the reins tightened and pulled, Belek’s mare braced stubbornly, then gave in and followed. The litter bumped over a rough patch of ground. Belek grunted, whimpered. Eyes fluttering, he muttered spirit words forced out of him where he lay spinning between the living world and the world of the spirits. A bubble of blood swelled and popped on his lips. The head of the farmer he had slain bumped at his thigh. Its lank hair tangled in his fingers. The skin had gone gray, and it stank.

  Edek did not look up when she halted behind him. She touched the hilt of the sword slung across her back. Once they reached the tribe, she would have to give it back to her uncle. Only men carried swords.

  “What if I had been your enemy?” she asked. She drew the sword in a swift, practiced slide and lowered its tip to brush Edek between the shoulder blades.

  He did not look up or even respond. He was trying to pry something out of the densely packed soil. The sun warmed his back as he strained. As the quiver shifted with each of his movements, the old Festival scars on his back pulled and retracted, displaying the breadth of his back to great advantage. She didn’t like Edek much; he was good-looking enough to expect girls to admire him, but his family wasn’t wealthy enough that he could marry where he pleased, and that had made him bitter, so in a way she understood his sulks and frowns. And she could still ogle his back, sweating and slick under the sun’s weight.

  Suddenly he hooked his dagger under an object and with a grunt freed it from an entangling root and the weight of moist soil. When he flipped it into plain view, she sucked in breath between teeth in astonishment.

  The sun flashed in their eyes and she threw up a hand to shield herself from the flare. Edek cried out. From Belek came a horrible shriek more like the rasp of a knife on stone than a human cry. Only the horses seemed unmoved.

  She lowered her hand cautiously. At first glance, the object seemed nothing more than an earth-encrusted feather, but as Edek cautiously wiped the vanes with the sleeve of his tunic, the cloth separated as though sliced. Where dirt flaked away, the feather glinted with a metallic sheen unlike that of any bird’s feather.

  “It’s a griffin’s feather!” said Edek.

  Kereka was too amazed and humbled to speak, awed by its solidity, its beauty, its strength. Its sacred, powerful magic. Only shamans and heroes possessed griffin feathers.

  He shifted in his crouch to measure her, eyes narrowed. “Even a humble clansman can aspire to wed a begh’s daughter if he brings a griffin’s feather as her bride price.”

  Kereka snorted. “Even one you dug up from the dirt?”

  “The gods give gifts to those they favor!”

  “You’ll set yourself against the mighty Vayek and the entire Pechanek clan? Who will listen to your bleating, even with a griffin feather in your hand to dazzle their eyes?”

  “Who will listen? Maybe the one who matters most.” How he stared! He’d never been so bold before! She shook a hand in annoyance, like swatting away a fly, and he flushed, mouth twisting downward.

  The feather’s glamour faded as the shadow of afternoon crept over their position. And yet, at the height of the hill to the east, a glimmer still brightened the air.

  How could they see the setting sun’s flash when they were facing east, not west?

  “Look!” she cried.

  A woman stood framed and gleaming within the western portal of stone and lintel. Sparks flowered above the stones in a pattern like the unfurling of wings sewn out of gold, the fading banner of a phoenix. So brief its passage; the last embers floating in the air snapped, winked bright, and vanished.

  Edek stared, mouth agape.

  The woman, not so very far away, watched them. She had black hair, bound into braids but uncovered, and a brown face and dark hands. She wore sandals bound by straps that wound up her calves over tight leggings suitable for riding. A close-fitting bodice of supple leather was laced over a white shirt. But she wore no decent skirts or heavy knee length tunic or long robe; her legs were gloved in cloth, but she might as well have been bare, for you could imagine her shape quite easily. She wore no other clothing at all unless one could count as clothing her wealth of necklaces. Made of gold and beads, they draped thickly around her shoulders like a collar of bright armor.

  A woman of the Quman people who displayed herself so brazenly would have been staked down and had the cattle herd driven across her to obliterate her shame. But this woman seemed unaware of her own nakedness. Edek could not stop staring at that shapely bodice and those form-fitting trousers even as the woman hefted her spear and regarded them with no sign of fear.

  “Chsst!” hissed Edek, warding himself with a gesture. “A witch!”

  “A witch, maybe, but armed with stone like a savage,” muttered Kereka in disgust. Anyway, even a woman who carried a spear was of no use to her.

  A shape moved behind the foreigner: broad shoulders, long hair, sharp nose. Of course no woman would be traveling alone! Edek did not see the man because he was blinded by lust. Let him hesitate, and she would take the prize. This was her chance to take a head and never have to marry the Pechanek begh’s son.

  Kereka sliced the halter rope that bound Belek’s horse to her saddle, and drove her mare up the hill. A Quman warrior rode in silence, for he had wings to sing the song of battle for him. She had no wings yet—only men were allowed to wear armor and thereby fly the honored pennant of warrior’s wings—but she clamped her lips tight down over a woman’s trilling ululation, the goad to victory. She would ride in silence, like a man.

  The horse was surefooted and the hill none too steep. Edek had only a moment in which to cry out an unheeded question before he scrambled for his mount. Ahead, the woman retreated behind one of the huge stones. The man had vanished. Kereka grinned, yanked her mare to the right, and swung round to enter the stone circle at a different angle so she could flank them.

  “Sister! Beware!”

  The words rasped at the edge of her hearing.

  It was too late.

  She hit the trap with all the force of her mare’s weight and her own fierce desire for a different life than the one that awaited her. A sheet of pebbles spun under its hooves. A taut line of rope took her at the neck, and she went tumbling. She hit the ground so hard, head cracking against stone, that she could not move. The present world faded until she could see, beyond it, into the shimmering lights of the spirit world where untethered souls wept and whispered and danced
. Belek reached out to her, his hand as insubstantial as the fog that swallows the valleys yet never truly possesses them. It was his spirit voice she heard, because he was strong enough in magic for his spirit to bridge the gap.

  “Sister! Take my hand!”

  “I will not go with you to the other side!” she cried, although no sound left her mouth. In the spirit world, only shamans and animals could speak out loud. “But I will drag you back here if it takes all my strength!”

  She grasped his hand and tugged. A fire as fierce as the gods’ anger rose up to greet her. She had to shield her eyes from its heat and searing power. She blinked back tears as the present world came into focus again.

  It was night. Twilight had passed in what seemed to her only an instant while she had swum out of the spirit world.

  Pebbles ground uncomfortably into her buttocks. A stalk of grass tickled the underside of one wrist. Tiny feet tracked on her forehead, then vanished as the creature flew. She sat propped against the rough wall of standing stones, wrists and ankles bound. How had this happened? She could not remember.

  The scene before her lay in sullen colorless tones, lit by a grazing moon and by the blazing stars. Each point of light marked a burning arrow shot into the heavens by the warrior Tarkan, he who had bred with a female griffin and fathered the Quman people.