by Robert Brady
Jerod stood. Xinto sat, watching. Jerod’s kept his emotions and his thoughts deep below the surface, so it was interesting to see—
The foot that caught Nina underneath the jaw interrupted Xinto’s thoughts as well, knocking her onto her back. She made a sound between a snarl and whimper, and her teeth clacked together.
“You shouldn’t kill her,” Xinto said, as calm as he could be. If Jerod decided to kill the woman anyway, it wouldn’t be Xinto who stopped him, and a race for Jahunga would assure her death.
“You scum,” she swore, spitting out a gob of something that could be either blood, spit, or the end of her tongue.
The toe of his boot caught her in the side, lifting her off of the ground. Now Xinto stood—he had no doubt where this headed.
“We need her,” he soothed the Volkhydran.
“We don’t,” Jerod argued.
“Our Raven…” Xinto began.
Jerod lifted his heel, held it over the Aschire’s head. He regarded Xinto, his face unreadable in the dark.
“You think this one can help us?”
“I think she’s our best chance if we don’t hear from Glynn.”
“You think she will?”
“If she doesn’t,” Xinto said, “she still has a head, you still have a heel.”
Jerod put his foot down next to the other, towering over the prone girl. He turned his head and he spat to one side.
“Xinto is going to ask you some questions,” he said. “Answer them. I don’t want to hear anything more about the Conqueror from you.”
She mumbled. It was a comment on her strength, Xinto couldn’t help thinking, that she remained conscious.
Jerod’s sword was out quick as a flash, its point at her throat. “I didn’t hear you,” he said.
Xinto had heard the same from what the Emperor called ‘drill sergeants;’ his trainers among his Eldadorian regulars.
“I said ‘I will,’” she snarled. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Of that,” Xinto said, “we aren’t sure.”
* * *
Nina of the Aschire found herself hauled before a woman sleeping in her leathers on the plains grass, with the sun rising red and angry to her east.
She recognized Raven, but a different Raven than she remembered.
The hair remained black, but singed on the ends. The skin on her face was reddened, burnt by flame. She had no eyebrows. Her fingernails had been melted and scorched at the ends. She had been too near a fire, and she’d caused it. Nina knew the signs.
“She’s been spell casting,” Nina said, feeling her jaw thicken from where she had been kicked. Her stomach ached as well, but she didn’t plan to give them the satisfaction of seeing it.
“She wondered where the energy she absorbed went,” Jerod explained.
“So why not try to use some of it?” Nina let her tone mock them. Stupid people, what the Empress called ‘mundanes.’ People whose minds had not yet grasped the ultimate truth, or whose minds never would.
Invest yourself in politics, in armies, in worlds, and you will fall short. They are nothing, come and gone on whims. Even gods themselves could come and go.
The most powerful thing in existence is a thought. A thought births it all, and in the end a thought will finish it.
This Raven had thought wrong.
“She might have the black mind,” Nina informed them. It wasn’t unheard of. “She wielded power without being prepared for it. She might be like this for the rest of her days.”
Jerod’s hand immediately pulled back. Nina winced without wanting to. Xinto stepped in once again to rescue her from Volkhydran wrath.
“Can you tell for sure?” he asked her, painfully formal. He acted too friendly, too polite. Nina had seen the Emperor do this when he plotted against someone. He would be too kind, and then far too cruel.
“If you will unbind my hands, then I will touch her mind and see if I can rouse her,” she said. “If she can be roused, then she doesn’t have the black mind, and is merely resting.”
“That would be real nice of us,” Jerod sneered at her. “Letting you go and all of that.”
Xinto shook his head. “She has no magic,” the Scitai said. It was true enough. “She can’t outrun your horse on the plains.”
Jerod’s scowl showed clear even through the dusk’s beginning. “Wake your lizard and the Toorians first,” he said. “If she wants it, then I don’t want her to have it, no matter what ‘it’ is.”
“Fair enough,” Xinto said to him. Nina couldn’t repress a sigh of relief. If she became useful, she remained alive. Jerod wanted an excuse to kill her and, given time, he would find one. Nina’s mind already leapt to the next service she could provide, that would be too good for them to turn down, without betraying the Emperor.
Jerod’s sword leapt out in a flash, and this time the point was not for her, but found its way to the Scitai’s wiry beard.
“On your life, little man,” Jerod told the Scitai, his eyes like steel. “If she deceives us and the girl suffers, then after I have her life, I will have yours, and this song be damned.”
Xinto looked Jerod right in the eye, his jowl nestled against the steel sword. Nina knew the look of a man who had stared his fate in the face before and not blinked.
Xinto might be wary of the Man, but that was a far cry from being afraid. Nina wondered whom exactly she’d fallen in with.
* * *
Many tiny villages surrounded Thera, none of which could be trusted.
There were free holdings as well—persons from other nations, or from the cities of Eldador, having staked a claim to the land and registered with the nation. If they could get a writ from Galnesh Eldador and then could pay their taxes, they could keep the land.
Some peasants had made themselves fantastically wealthy on that plan. Glynn saw it as a travesty. Money to the commons fed their debauchery and their baser instincts. Money needed to be in the hands of nobles who knew what to do with it.
But then, Glynn reminded herself the Emperor had begun his life a common. He could be expected to know no better.
Jack had picketed their two horses and Zarshar had hunted down a wild antelope for them to eat. Their newest charge, this great, drooling beast, lay beside their tiny fire, its great head across the Man’s leg, having already taken a haunch and crushed the bones in its great maw.
The race of Men used beasts for so many purposes—this skill had always eluded the Uman-Chi. In fact, the Cheyak’s most favored people would have no beef were it not for the efforts of their Uman servants. Even their own gallant horses had to be trained by others.
It made no sense to negotiate with what had no mind for it, and yet here they came with a thing that Glynn would have, in her best judgment, allowed Zarshar to slaughter, wondering if they had the secret to a new world.
The Emperor had not become as intelligent or even as clever as an Uman-Chi, and yet he frustrated her people time and again, not with new knowledge brought from his world—that would have been exhausted long years ago—but with an uncanny ability to look at the world around him and see a path through it to victory.
Now things shone more clearly to her, kneeling in prayer to Eveave, secluded from the rest of them at the edge of the fire. Her head down, her knees protesting against the unforgiving dirt, Glynn fought to clear her mind of these concerns and did nothing more than unearth others, new fish for her stream.
War spoke to Lupus the Conqueror and advised him, step after step. Now Eveave had brought these new ones here, and would then do the same.
The gods had lost faith in the Uman-Chi as leaders of the people of Fovea. They had failed to step in where the Cheyak had fallen. Angron Aurelias himself had misjudged and worked against Her, in his ignorance, and now Eveave had clearly chosen.
What good, the salvation of the Fovean world, if the Uman-Chi are not to lead it? What good, the many centuries of Uman-Chi life, if it is spent on the knee to Men?
Glynn
prayed into the night. Soon Jack fell asleep. Zarshar blinked in and out of the nervous rest of his kind. For hours she sought wisdom, solace and to renew her energy.
When she arose, not so much refreshed as renewed, Jack snored softly and the dog had wandered off.
Stupid, she thought. The beast had bided its time and slipped past all of them, in order to seek out its masters.
“Zarshar,” she whispered. He might yet hunt it down.
“It’s patrolling,” he informed her, without opening his eyes. He lay on his back in his armor, far enough from the fire that his jet skin could be difficult to see. She identified him more by the ruddy glow from dying embers on his breastplate.
“The dog?”
“Well, I’m here, and so is the old, fat one, so yes, the dog,” Zarshar rumbled. “Its hide - the brindle color - covers it as it moves, so it’s difficult to see, but it gets up about once an hour, wanders out about a tenth of a daheer, and then comes back and lays on the old Man again.”
“It’s trained, then?” Glynn asked the Swamp Devil. As she spoke, sure enough, the dog returned from out of the night like a spirit, regarded her with a wag of its tail and, receiving no encouragement, returned to the Man’s side.
Zarshar finally opened his blood-red eyes. “I suppose it is,” he growled. “But there are dogs that do this out of instinct. In Angador, the farmers have a shaggy dog that tends herds against wolves.”
She nodded—she’d heard of it.
“It loves him,” she noted.
“It’s a dog,” Zarshar growled, and settled his shoulders deeper into the hard ground.
“They’re stupid.”
She had to smile, despite herself. The Devil may be evil, but not without his charms.
For lack of a better place, Glynn laid her bedroll down beside the Man and dog, and lay on it. His odor didn’t reek as foul as the Devil’s, and his body threw off plenty of excess heat.
Laying down, still in her dress, she watched Jack’s simian face for a while, forcing her mind to rest as she prepared to take what sleep she could.
Kneel down before these? Never.
And yet, the goddess had spoken to their Raven, and surely War to the Emperor. Which of Adriam’s children would address itself to Jack, then? Which would bless his mind with divine wisdom?
Perhaps one did so now.
The minds of Men had turned out to be a treacherous thing.
* * *
By a little stream in a very pretty meadow, Melissa dipped her toes (she had just had them done—they looked gorgeous) in the water and leaned back to let the sun beat down on her face.
Bliss she thought. What a perfect day. She had nothing to do and forever to do it—she couldn’t remember the last time she had actually relaxed.
The birds started singing. Jasmine bloomed somewhere. She loved that smell. How strange for the middle of the day! Jasmine bloomed at dusk.
“Aren’t you a picture?” someone told her.
She threw her hair over her shoulder and looked down the stream, where it flowed from between two grass-covered hill. She saw a doe on top of one of them, munching the clover. Down the other came Raven.
Uck, she thought. She didn’t like this girl. She acted pushy and mean, and dressed in leather like some kind of super hero.
“What do you want?” Melissa asked her.
“Roust you up,” Raven told her. Her leather outfit creaked as she walked, twisting on her breasts and hips. Melissa allowed herself the chick-on-chick mandatory check out. Had to admit—the outfit was working. She would turn heads anywhere.
“You’re making a camel limp somewhere,” Melissa sniped her. “You stole its toe.”
“Nice,” Raven told her. “Your boyfriend pay for those toes, or did he charge it to his wife’s card?”
“I’m sorry,” Melissa said, giving the toes a swish, “I didn’t see the stripper bar down the road from here.”
“You didn’t see it or you couldn’t read the sign?” Raven gave back.
The day began darkening. The doe looked up and seemed alarmed. The cool stream now felt too cold.
“Isn’t there a pole you could be dancing on?” Melissa groused, pulling her heels underneath her butt. She realized right then that she was naked. Why would she be hanging out naked in a public place like this?
Raven walked right up next to her, stood there looking down at her. Melissa’s eyes held level with the dagger in Raven’s boot.
“You going to waste your whole day here?” Raven asked her.
“No,” Melissa scoffed, and then looked up at her. “Why?”
“You have places to go,” Raven said. “You have things to do.”
“Do I?”
“You tell me.”
For the life of her, Melissa couldn’t think of one thing.
“Weren’t you interested in something about fire?”
And behind Raven, both of the grassy hills burst into flame. Where the stream ran too cold, now the water began steaming.
“Fire?” Raven repeated.
“What is this?” Melissa demanded. She tried to stand but Raven shoved her back onto her butt.
“Don’t you make fire?” Raven demanded of her. Her hair and her black leather outfit began smoldering. Her eyes looked wide and wild, and Raven’s smile seemed almost gleeful as she started to burn.
“Fire?” she demanded again.
The flames swept down the hills and across the plain towards her. The doe ran screaming away from it. The stream boiled.
“What are you doing?” Melissa demanded.
“I’m waking you up, little girl,” Raven told her. “Time for you to get your ass going.”
The fire swept right up beside her, past Raven, whose flesh burned right off of her body as if it were tinder.
“Roust, bitch!” the burning skeleton of Raven told her.
“Whoa!” Raven leapt up from the dirty plain. She had been laid down in her harness and pants, her coat turned around, covering her.
The first thing she saw was Nina, glowering at her with some self-important smirk on her face. Without even thinking, Raven balled her fist up and punched the purple-haired girl in the mouth.
“You bitch!” Nina reached for her dagger, but couldn’t find it in her arm sheath.
Melissa reached for her boot dagger, and found it right where she’d left it. Then she put it to Nina’s throat.
“Stop it, both of you,” Jerod snarled.
Nina’s hand rose and did nothing, except to remind Raven of the day before.
She had intervened when Nina had tried to cast a spell. She had taken Nina’s power.
Then Raven had tried to make use of Nina’s power, to use it as her own. And it had worked.
Raven didn’t drop the knife, but looked around her.
The grass looked black, the earth scorched.
She looked for Jerod, for Jahunga, for Xinto—she saw them all. The Toorians, the horses—they were there.
Then who…?
“Drop the knife, Raven,” Jerod warned her.
Jahunga behaved more politic, but more firm. He put the head of his spear against the blade, and pressed it to the scorched plains. “Girl, you put that down, now.”
Raven allowed the weapon to fall. She felt her jaw go slack, peripherally aware that her mouth lay open.
She had wielded magic. She had actually done it.
And more than anything now, she wanted to do it again.
She looked Nina right in the face. She felt the other woman’s gray eyes search hers.
“You know, don’t you?” Nina asked her.
“I know what?” Raven countered.
Nina just looked into her eyes.
Raven thought back to the deck of the Bitch of Eldador, alone with Shela, the conversation, the hug.
She had said, “I knew it.” Once in a while, Raven had wondered about that.
“The most important thing in the world…” Raven began.
A slow
smile crossed Nina’s face, followed by the one on Raven’s.
“I never would have guessed it,” Nina admitted.
* * *
Glynn woke with the sun, the Devil already up and the dog gone. Jack slept the sleep of exhaustion, his old bones weighing on him, no doubt.
The lives of Men were fleeting and lived mostly in sickness.
She saw a portion of the antelope, still half cooked over the fire. She applied her will to drive the flies from it, then to heat it enough to be healthy. The aroma sufficed that hunger overcame sloth and awakened Jack.
“Hmmm?” he said, and rose up to his elbows.
She still felt unhappy with his kind and simply grunted at him. He stood and stretched, then made a low whistle through his beard.
The dog galloped out from between the surrounding hills to be with them, wagging her tail and bumping him for attention. One hand on its head, Jack drew a short knife from his belt and addressed the carcass uninvited. Glynn wondered at what may live in the dog’s coat, which would now migrate to their meal, but said nothing.
“There’s an army marching up from the south,” Zarshar informed them, approaching from behind the dog. She saw dust on his forearms and leggings, and his hair had become tangled with grass.
“Another is coming from the north, and that one is Daff Kanaar,” he continued. “We’re leaving east, then we’ll cut south around the Eldadorians. We don’t want to face any Daff Kanaar.”
Glynn nodded. “I agree,” she said. “We leave as soon as we can pack the horses.”
“What do we do with this?” Jack asked, his mouth around a half-cooked portion of meat. “If they have dogs, we can’t leave this around—they’ll be drawn to it and they’ll know someone’s watching. If I were Lupus, I would want to keep this quiet as long as I could.”
Zarshar clawed a stretch of sod out of the Earth, large enough to cover a dwarf. “We’ll bury it,” he said. “Eat your fill while you can—I don’t intend to wait on you.”
Glynn, Jack and the dog made a quick meal, the dog once again crushing bones in its teeth. Glynn had to wonder at the purpose of the thing—too large to be controlled and too friendly to be trusted. She had begun to think it the pet of some dead farmer, his holding pillaged as forage for some army.