The Rancher's Daughter

by Kyra Halland

  “You Grana and your strange ways,” the A’ayimat muttered.

  They packed up and started out. Lainie and Silas walked at first, leading the horses, to save the animals’ strength and warm themselves up with exercise. As they climbed higher into the mountains, the steep path they were following eased into gentler inclines and valleys, and Silas and Lainie switched to riding. The light snowfall continued off and on all morning, but the thick cover of the forest kept the snow from accumulating too deeply on the ground.

  Just before mid-day they came over a ridge to see a shallow, forested valley spread out below them. Several dozen round wood-framed huts with hide walls and peaked roofs stood in a large clearing just below the ridge. In the settlement, men and women tended horses and sheep and cookfires and what looked like a forge over to one side, while children and dogs ran and played. “Here.” The A’ayimat sentry gestured at the settlement.

  Silas and Lainie reined in beside the sentry and dismounted. “Is this the Aki’imiyat clan?” Silas asked, but the man strode down the slope towards the village without answering.

  Chapter 6

  READY TO DRAW his gun at the first hint of trouble and keeping Lainie close to his side, Silas followed their guide down into the settlement. The A’ayimat man was met by several men and women, who greeted him as though he were returning home. Silas stopped well short of the group, a prickle of suspicion teasing at him. Something didn’t fit.

  He followed the threads of his suspicion, looking for their source. It seemed to have taken the sentry some time and thought to identify the wishcatcher’s origins, and he had spoken of the Aki’imiyat as though they weren’t his clan. But this settlement appeared to be his home, which would mean these people were not the Aki’imiyat clan and, therefore, this wasn’t where the wishcatcher had come from. Why, then, had the sentry brought him and Lainie here?

  The sentry gestured towards Silas and Lainie and said something, and the gathered A’ayimat began to speak heatedly among themselves.

  “I wish we knew their trick of understanding other languages,” Silas said quietly to Lainie.

  “I’d lay money that it uses the power in the ground,” Lainie whispered back. “If someone’s standing on the ground, maybe their thoughts and words make impressions in the power that someone who can touch it can pick up.”

  “That would explain why they consider it bad manners for a settler to talk to them from horseback,” Silas said, impressed with her thinking. “If we’re not on the ground, they can’t understand us or speak our language, except maybe a few words they memorize over time.”

  “I can touch that power; maybe it’ll work for me,” Lainie said.

  But before she could try, the sentry came back over to them. “Come with me,” he said.

  Silas and Lainie followed him into the center of the village, past the group of people he’d been talking with, to a nearby hut. “Aleet!” the sentry called out.

  An A’ayimat woman came out of the hut. Clinging to her side was a little girl, who looked at the people gathered around with wide eyes.

  “Holy shit,” Silas said as Lainie gasped, “That’s her!”

  The child had the white hair and dusky blue-toned skin of the A’ayimat, but instead of gold, her eyes were dark brown. She looks like her mother, but she has my eyes, Coltor had said. The description had seemed maddeningly vague at the time, but now Silas realized that it was all anyone would need to recognize Shayla.

  The sentry spoke to the woman. She turned to look at Silas and Lainie. “Coltor sent you.” Her voice was hostile, and she held the little girl closer to her.

  “He did,” Silas said. “Though he didn’t tell us the child would be with her mother.”

  “Did he receive my message?”

  “Yes, though I don’t think it had the, ah, intended effect. He gave it to us to help us find the girl.”

  The woman spat something that sounded like a curse. There was clearly bad blood indeed between her and Coltor… The horrifying realization dawned in Silas’s mind. “He forced you.”

  “I was patrolling down in the canyon near his ranch. His men found me and took me to him. Mikat says that you two are Grana wizards. Did you know Coltor’s also a Grana wizard?”

  “We know.” Silas felt sick, both at the thought of what Coltor had done to her and at his own association with the man who had raped her.

  “He wanted a child who had both Grana and A’ayimat magic. He kept me until I gave birth to my daughter, then sent me away without her. My own clan, the Aki’imiyat, refused to help me get her back. They called me unclean for lying with a Grana man, and shunned me and cast me out of the clan. For years I tried to get the other clans to help me, but none of them would. They said a child of mixed blood would be a curse to our people. Finally, the Ta’ayatan clan –” she gestured at the people around her “– agreed to help me. So I made the wishcatcher as a final gift for Coltor, and some men went and got my daughter for me.” The little girl looked up at her and said something in the A’ayimat language. The woman replied and pulled her even closer. “I know Coltor sent you to take my daughter from me, but you’ll have to kill me first.”

  After his dealings with Orl Fazar, Silas could well imagine what Coltor had wanted with a half-Granadaian, half-A’ayimat mage child. The mix of Granadaian mage power and the magic native to the Wildings was potent, its full strength and potential yet unknown. Lainie was the perfect example of this; from her ability to bury her own power without a trace to being able to suppress another mage’s power, she had already proved that many of the rules that applied to Granadaian magic didn’t hold true for Wildings power.

  Fazar had intended to start a dynasty of powerful hybrid mages, using Lainie as the mother; Coltor undoubtedly had the same ambition, only with a child from an A’ayimat mother. Did Coltor have any connection to the breeding project that had produced Fazar? Coltor looked to be in his late thirties, a little older than Fazar. He was far too young to have been involved in the scheme at the time that Fazar was born, but from what Fazar had said, Silas guessed the project was still ongoing.

  Whether Coltor was part of the breeding project or not, the circumstances of Shayla’s begetting changed everything. He and Lainie needed the money Coltor was offering for Shayla’s return, but even for that amount of money, Silas didn’t have it in him to tear the child away from the mother who clearly loved her and take her back to the father who intended to use her to further his own ambitions. Silas had thought that Coltor’s manner was that of a loving and worried father and any harshness was due to the arrogance of a man who was used to getting his own way, but apparently he’d been wrong. And even if Coltor did have a fondness for Shayla, he had no right to the child he had brought into the world through kidnapping and rape.

  Silas looked at Lainie, to try to gauge her thoughts. Patches of angry red had appeared high on her cheeks, and her eyes were narrowed with fury. “We won’t take your child back to that man,” she said firmly.

  Though he knew he was making an enemy of the richest, most respected man in the Wildings, Silas consigned Coltor’s anger and the remaining thousand gildings to all eight hells. “I swear it,” he said.

  * * *

  LAINIE WATCHED ALEET and Shayla return to their hut. Rage burned in her heart at what Coltor had done to Aleet and at how he had tricked her and Silas. She didn’t care about the rest of the money or how angry Coltor would be. The horror of Fazar’s attempt to rape her came back to her; Aleet had endured that same horror and more at Coltor’s hands. And she knew all too well the pain of longing for a child; she could never inflict that pain on another woman by taking her child from her.

  Mikat, the sentry who had guided Lainie and Silas to the village, spoke to Aleet as she went into her hut, then came over to Lainie and Silas. “Come with me, and you can rest and care for your horses.” He led them to a place at the edge of the settlement where Mala and Abenar could be tied and grazed. While Lainie and Silas were tending
to the horses, a smiling, plump young woman brought them a meal of venison stew and flatbread.

  “What are we going to do?” Lainie asked Silas as they ate, sitting on the oilcloth ground cover from the tent to keep the cold and damp away from them. Her initial rage had cooled a bit, leaving her face to face with the realities of the situation. “We can’t take Shayla back to Coltor, and the contract doesn’t say anything about what happens if we find her and don’t bring her back. What if he wants us to pay back the money he already gave us? Including what we already spent?” She didn’t even want to think about trying to come up with that much money, let alone facing Coltor’s anger.

  “I suppose we could argue that he offered us the contract under false pretences, since he knew who had taken his daughter and why and refused to tell us,” Silas said. “But I don’t think Coltor would let it go that easily.”

  Lainie stared down at her bowl of stew. Her appetite had disappeared. “So we’re going to have the richest man in the Wildings mad at us. I thought things were going to get better, but they’re just getting worse.”

  A commotion of raised voices in the center of the village caught her attention. She looked over; Aleet had come back out of her hut and was arguing with some of the men.

  “I wonder what that’s all about,” Silas said.

  “I’ll see if I can pick up on what they’re saying.” Lainie put her hands flat on the ground next to the oilcloth, closed her eyes, and extended her mage senses through the amber power just beneath the surface towards the arguing group.

  And then the strangest thing happened: A sense of what was being said brushed against her mind, not exact words, but, like with the wishcatcher, a knowledge of the meaning. There was something about an agreement, an obligation. Aleet wasn’t happy about it. The argument grew more heated, and Mikat, the sentry, joined in, taking Aleet’s side. He made an offer; it was met with flat refusal. Aleet stormed back into her hut.

  “Well?” Silas’s voice, sounding very distant, drifted into her hearing.

  She drew her mage senses back in and opened her eyes. “I couldn’t make out the words – there must be more to this than just touching the power in the ground – but I think Aleet, the mother, agreed to do something, I guess in exchange for them helping her get Shayla back, but now she doesn’t want to do it. Mikat, the man who brought us here, is on her side. He made a suggestion, but the other men didn’t like it.” She thought back over the impressions she had picked up, trying to recall any more details, but didn’t come up with anything. “I wonder what Aleet promised them.”

  “And why this clan agreed to help her when no one else would,” Silas added. “I doubt it was just out of kindness.”

  Aleet came out of the hut again. She offered something to the men she’d been arguing with; a couple of wishcatchers, it looked like. The argument broke out again. Mikat put an arm around Aleet’s shoulders and spoke to the men, but his words didn’t seem to make any difference. Aleet shouted back at the men and burst into tears.

  Lainie didn’t need to understand Aleet’s words to see how desperate she was. “I can’t let this go on.” She stood up and stalked over to the knot of people around Aleet. “Is there a problem?” she asked, raising her voice over the shouting.

  The argument stopped and everyone looked at her. Aleet’s face was streaked with tears; Mikat held her more closely.

  “Is there a problem?” Lainie repeated in the silence.

  “She promised us –” a man started to say, but Aleet snapped at him in the A’ayimat language.

  “Do you want something in exchange for helping Aleet get her daughter back?” Lainie asked. “We can give you money, blankets, food…”

  Mikat said something to the others, nodding his head towards Lainie. A calmer discussion between him and the others followed. Lainie tried to get a sense of what they were saying, but without being able to close her eyes and place her hands on the ground, she couldn’t focus on the amber power well enough to pick up any impressions. She hoped they weren’t going to ask for the horses or her and Silas’s guns – giving those away was out of the question – or for too much money; much as she wanted to help Aleet, she didn’t want to end up broke again.

  As the discussion went on, more people, adults and children alike, gathered around to listen. Whatever Mikat and the others were talking about seemed to be a matter of great interest to the whole Ta’ayatan clan. Lainie spotted Silas standing on the outside edge of the crowd, half a head taller than any of the A’ayimat. He gave her a questioning look, and she shrugged.

  Still more people joined the crowd, and Lainie realized now that she was completely surrounded. A feeling of being trapped pressed down on her, and suddenly she couldn’t catch her breath. She started to try to make her way through the gathered Ta’ayatan folk towards Silas, but they seemed to crowd more closely together, blocking her path. One of the men involved in the discussion reached over and touched her arm. “Please, wait just a moment,” he said, smiling.

  He said something to the others that sounded like a question. Nods all around suggested that an agreement had finally been reached, and a smile broke out on Aleet’s face. Excited murmurs rose up from the onlookers. Lainie waited, anxiety gnawing at her stomach, to find out what they wanted from her and Silas.

  Mikat squatted down and pounded his fists on the ground in a rhythmic pattern while making a call that sounded like a cross between a quail and a coyote being strangled. The force of his blows on the ground traveled all the way up through Lainie’s body; she could feel the magic he was using in the very marrow of her bones.

  The strange display and the dozens of pairs of golden eyes staring at her made her unease swell into a sudden, urgent need to get out of there. Again she tried to push through the crowd to get to Silas, and he started forcing his way towards her. The mass of clansfolk swelled between them, as though they were purposely trying to keep them apart.

  Fear exploded into panic. “Silas!” Lainie cried out as she pushed against the resisting crowd. Instinctively, she started to call up magic into her hands, to blast her way through to Silas, then she made herself stop. There were children in the crowd. She didn’t want to hurt them, and she didn’t want to do something that could provoke an attack on the settlers.

  Silas drew his gun. “Hold on, darlin’!” He fired over the heads of the gathered Ta’ayatan, and followed the gunshot with a fiery ball of blue magic that sailed over the crowd and crashed into a group of huts beyond. The warning shots did no good; the clansfolk didn’t give way, and their excited talk took on an ugly, angry tone.

  Then, all at once, silence fell over the crowd. The circle of clansfolk separated to reveal an old man approaching from the far side of the village. He was short, lean, and muscular, with thinning white hair bound into a single long braid and a straggly white beard. Despite the cold and the light snowfall, he was clad only in a loincloth of animal hide, and he went barefoot on the snowy ground. Around his neck he wore half a dozen leather thongs strung with beads of wood and stone and animal claws, bones, and teeth.

  The old man walked through the parting in the crowd to Lainie and the others at the center. He spoke in a raspy voice; Mikat and one of the other men answered. The old man looked Lainie up and down, then nodded and said something that sounded like approval.

  Aleet smiled again, her face shining with relief, and Mikat turned to Lainie. “The wiseman approves the trade,” he said. “You for Aleet’s daughter.”

  His words slammed into her mind. “What?” she demanded.

  “Lainie!” Silas shouted. He started fighting through the jostling, hostile crowd towards her, pushing and shoving people aside and shaking off anyone who tried to stop him. He got close enough to reach out his hand to Lainie.

  She lunged for him; her fingers brushed his. The wiseman shouted a harsh word, and a rope of gold-colored power wrapped around her other arm, sharp and burning and mercilessly tight. The magical rope yanked her back. “Silas!” she
screamed.

  Then everything exploded in thunder and gold lightning.

  Chapter 7

  SLOWLY, LAINIE’S AWARENESS returned. Her head felt like it was splitting in half. The cold dampness soaking through her clothes told her that she was lying on her left side on the ground. Her hands were tied behind her back, and her feet were also bound. The weight of her gun at her right hip was missing; of course they wouldn’t have left her armed. Pretty much everything hurt.

  She opened her eyes; the cloudy day had darkened to dusk, but even that dim light blinded her for a moment. When her vision cleared, all she could see before her was a thick growth of forest. There was no sign of the village, and she couldn’t smell smoke or hear any voices. She tried to move her head to look around; black spots flashed in front of her eyes and her stomach heaved. She closed her eyes and took some deep breaths. When she felt a little steadier, she opened her eyes again.

  Carefully, she tilted her head back to see what lay in that direction, then down to look beyond her feet. Every movement sent pain shooting through her head and neck. She could see nothing but dense pine forest in either direction. She tried to roll over to see what was behind her, but that made the pain flare up even worse. Breathing hard, her head pounding, she gave up. Anyhow, she didn’t need to look to know that the village was nowhere close by; the silence told her that much.

  “Silas?” she called out. There was no answer.

  Where was he? He wouldn’t have let them tie her up and take her away from the village, he would have fought for her, unless –

  If Silas couldn’t help her, that meant he needed her help. He could be captured as well, or hurt, or worse. Lainie swallowed a panicked sob, and tried to reach out with her mage senses to search for his power. At the effort, an intense spasm of pain seized her whole body, leaving her shivering and wracked with cramps and nausea.