The Rancher's Daughter

by Kyra Halland

  Oferdon tried to nod, but Silas’s arm was pressed too tightly across his throat. “Got it,” he croaked.

  “Good.” Silas let go of him and extended his right hand. “Deal?”

  They shook. Oferdon’s hand was clammy; at least he’d had the brains to be afraid. “Deal.”

  Chapter 8

  THE COLD WAS soaking through Lainie’s duster, all the way down to her bones. Her arms ached from the awkward angle they’d been tied back at. She fidgeted, trying to keep her blood moving. With every movement, the ropes at her hands and feet bit more tightly into her skin. It was starting to snow again, and getting dark, and the real cold would settle in soon. She wished she was wearing her new sheepskin coat, but the weather earlier in the day hadn’t been cold enough to require it.

  After everything that had happened, she couldn’t believe the old priest meant to leave her out here to die of cold. Unless she was being given to a god that accepted frozen people as offerings. Did the A’ayimat even believe in the eight gods, or did they have different gods? In that case, would any of the Eight hear a prayer from her, here in this place where they were unknown? Just in case they could, she begged the Defender to protect her and Silas and the Mender to bring them safely back together again.

  As she finished her prayers, a rustling in the forest undergrowth several measures away caught her attention. From the shadows of the forest, a narrow pair of glowing, dark orange eyes stared at her. Below them, she could make out a long, furry snout with sharp fangs poking up and down out of the sides of the mouth. Behind the head stretched a body the length and girth of a man, covered in gray fur and set close to the ground on short, thick legs. Even in the dim light, Lainie could see the curving claws, longer than her fingers, that tipped each enormous paw. Two long ears standing straight up atop the head twitched towards her while a thick tail, as long as the creature’s body, swished back and forth through the litter on the forest floor.

  Lainie gulped back a scream as her heart thundered in her chest. She fought to keep from making the slightest movement or sound, in hopes of not attracting the creature’s attention any further. This was the first time she had ever seen a grovik as anything more than a shadow in the distance. Now, as she stared at this one only measures away, all the terrifying stories about the beasts, how one grovik could strip a man – or a tied-up woman – down to the bones in a matter of minutes, came rushing back into her mind, and she believed every word of them.

  The grovik took a step towards her. Cold sweat broke out all over her body, and she bit her lips hard to keep from crying out lest she excite or enrage the beast. She squeezed her eyes shut, tears of terror leaking down her cheeks, and prayed as hard as she could. If nothing else, she hoped it would be over with quick. She braced herself, waiting for the enormous, razor-sharp teeth and claws to tear into her flesh.

  From a different direction came a louder rustling sound, followed by a shout. The glow of firelight penetrated Lainie’s closed eyelids, and relief flooded through her. Groviks were known to be afraid of fire. A skittering, slithering sound marked the beast’s retreat back into the forest.

  Lainie opened her eyes. Another A’ayimat man stood before her, holding a burning torch and looking at where the grovik had been. She let out a long, shaky breath, and he turned and grinned down at her, his long white braids falling around his face. The A’ayimat were so strange-looking it was hard to judge age or looks, but this man seemed to be young, and would probably be called handsome, with his firm, chiseled cheekbones and jaw. “I see my grandfather left you out here,” he said. “I apologize. He has his mind fixed on greater matters, and forgets the lesser things of the world.”

  As Lainie’s tension drained, her fear and anger and confusion came spilling out. “Like the fact that his offering is freezing to death out here? And getting eaten by groviks?”

  “Exactly.”

  The young man called out. A moment later, the old priest shuffled back into Lainie’s view. The two men argued for a bit, the younger man pointing at Lainie. Though she couldn’t use her power to try to understand what they were saying, it was clear enough that she was the subject of their argument, and from what the younger man had said, she could guess at its substance. Finally, the old man ended the argument with a gesture and words that said as clearly as if he’d been speaking Granadaian, I don’t care, do whatever you want, and stomped away.

  The young man helped Lainie stand up, then loosened the bindings around her ankles just enough to allow her to take small steps. Her feet stung as the numbness began to wear off.

  “Grandfather lives alone out here so he can better speak with the spirits and the powers of the earth,” the young man said, “so he forgets how to deal with living, breathing mortals. Fortunately, he has me to take care of such things. Come with me.”

  Guiding and supporting her, he led her about half a league through the forest back to the village. Lainie’s shaking, wobbly legs didn’t want to obey her and the walk seemed much longer. In the village, the young man led her into a hut. A young woman, the same one who had brought Lainie and Silas the meal earlier in the day, sat by the central firepit nursing a baby with downy white hair while she stirred something in a kettle hung over the fire. The food smelled delicious, a mixture of rich meat and spices, and Lainie’s stomach reminded her that that previous meal had been a long time ago.

  The man helped Lainie sit down on the thick wool weavings that covered the floor. He spoke with the woman, then the woman smiled at Lainie. “Welcome. Aktam tells me that my grandfather-in-law was going to leave you cold and hungry all night. If groviks didn’t eat you first.” She spoke to her husband again, gesturing at Lainie and giving him what sounded like an order. He knelt down beside Lainie and untied her hands. She stretched her arms, wincing at the sharp prickles that shot through them as the blood started to flow again.

  “I’m sure you must be hungry,” the young woman said with another smile. She scooped some stew into a wooden bowl and handed it to Lainie with a piece of crisp flatbread. “My name is Kesta, and this is my husband, Aktam. Welcome to our home.”

  Though she still wasn’t happy about the whole situation, Lainie forced herself to remember her manners. “Thank you. I’m very much obliged.”

  Eagerly, she began scooping stew into her mouth with the flatbread. Her fear began to ease along with her hunger; the crazy old wiseman aside, if she was being treated as a guest, how much harm could the clan be planning to do to her? It was a wicked thing to offer someone hospitality and then turn around and hurt or kill them. And if bad came to worse, Kesta and Aktam didn’t seem to be afraid to stand up to the old man. If the Defender had heard her prayer, maybe He would use them as His hands to help her escape and find Silas.

  * * *

  “WE’VE WASTED ENOUGH time,” Silas said to Oferdon after they shook hands on their deal. He stood up, sore and shaky but well enough. There was no more time to rest and recover; however much time had gone by since Lainie was captured – two days, three, even more – it was far too long. Suppressing a genuine groan, he hauled himself up onto Abenar. “Where’s your horse?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not much of a rider,” Oferdon answered.

  Silas gave him a flat look of disbelief. Of all the greenfoots he’d ever met, Oferdon was the greenest. “How have you been getting around the Wildings, then? And how did you think you were going to catch up with us?”

  “I came to Bentwood Gulch by mail coach.”

  “Expensive,” Silas said. Travel by mail coach was an extravagance that few settlers could afford. “And no way to go unnoticed.”

  Oferdon shrugged. “It was a worthwhile expenditure. And who would suspect a simple bookkeeper of being a mage hunter? As for you, when I learned you had gone up into the mountains this way, I decided you would most likely return to Bentwood Gulch by the same route after you finished whatever you were doing for Coltor. So I came up here yesterday to wait for you. I dislike camping, but, fortunately, I
didn’t have to wait long. A windstorm blew in, plants and dirt flying everywhere, and when it cleared away, there you were, and the two horses.”

  Yesterday… “When did we sign the contract with Coltor?”

  “Why, just the day before yesterday.” Oferdon chuckled. “You must have taken quite a blow to the head, if you don’t remember.”

  It was still the same day. Silas looked at the sky again. No more than a few hours ago, he had been at the Ta’ayatan settlement with Lainie.

  Damn, he thought, impressed in spite of himself. That must have been one hell of a powerful spell, to send him and the horses back more than a day and a half’s journey in a matter of moments. Taking on the old priest wasn’t going to be easy. On the bright side, that meant only a few hours had gone by since Lainie was taken captive. If he rode hard through the night, he might not be too late to help her.

  “You’re going to ride now,” Silas said. “The sooner I get to my wife, the better. You can ride her mount. Mala’s a good horse; you won’t have to do anything but keep from falling off.”

  “Ah – certainly. If you say so.” Oferdon picked up a blanket and some pouches of food from the ground and stashed them in an expensive, new-looking knapsack, which he slung over his rounded shoulders. Timidly, he sidled up to Mala. The brown mare whipped her head around and nipped at his arm, just missing it. He jumped back. “It doesn’t seem to like me.”

  “I don’t blame her.” Silas edged Abenar over to Mala. He patted the mare’s head and clucked soothingly at her. “Go on.”

  Warily, Oferdon approached Mala again, then clambered awkwardly into the saddle. Mala made her disapproval known with a loud snort, but quickly settled down. She was a good horse, and Lainie had trained her well. “It’s getting dark,” Oferdon said. His eyes darted from Mala to the darkening sky and from one side of the shadowed canyon to the other. Despite the cold, a light sweat had broken out on his face. “Why don’t we camp here and wait till morning?”

  “While my wife is in A’ayimat hands? We won’t be resting at all until I’ve got her back. Oh, and if we run into any A’ayimat, let me do the talking.” He knew exactly the sort of thing an ignorant greenfoot might say to a hostile A’ayimat. At the very least, it wouldn’t be helpful.

  They started riding up the canyon, Mala following Abenar’s lead and responding to Silas’s voice while Oferdon clutched her reins with white-knuckled hands and jounced along in the saddle. From time to time, Oferdon reached back and patted at his knapsack, as though assuring himself it was there. “You do have a plan, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Silas said. “You do what I tell you to do; otherwise, you stay out of the way.” The rest of the plan would depend on what condition Lainie was in and whether or not she was able to take an active role in her rescue. And on how badly the Ta’ayatan wanted her. He hoped it wouldn’t come to a full-out fight, which would endanger Lainie and Shayla and could even escalate into an attack on the settlers in the valley.

  As he rode, he tried to work out what the Ta’ayatan wanted with Lainie, and with Shayla before her. The most obvious answer to him was that they meant to breed her, to start a line of powerful hybrid wizards, like Fazar and Coltor had intended to do. But to what purpose? In Silas’s experience, the A’ayimat regarded Granadaian magic with bare tolerance flavored with a healthy dose of scorn.

  As well, Shayla was a good ten years away from being able to bear children safely. So if the plan was to breed her, why had the Ta’ayatan seemed in such a hurry to conclude the deal?

  They must have wanted Shayla – and now Lainie – for some other reason, though Silas couldn’t think of any purpose that would be served equally well by either one. A half-mage, half-A’ayimat child, and a Granadaian mage whose power was strongly influenced by Wildings magic…

  Was it their power itself the Ta’ayatan wanted? But with a wiseman who was strong enough to magically transport a full-grown man and two horses a good thirty leagues in a matter of moments, what would they want with a wizard of uncertain power and little training? Or a completely untrained child? And the wiseman had shown in no uncertain way that he had no use for Silas’s considerable and highly-trained talents; it had to be the hybrid power he wanted but not necessarily wizardly skill.

  Silas let the question go for now. Sometimes if he let a problem rest for a while, his mind would come up with answers on its own. In the meantime, he was saddled with an unwanted, unknown companion, and it was in his best interest to find out as much about that companion as he could.

  “How did you happen to become a mage hunter?” he asked Oferdon. “To be completely honest, you don’t seem the type.”

  “I married a woman who is dissatisfied with the style in which I am able to support her,” Oferdon said.

  “She didn’t know how much you had before she married you? I thought that was part of any standard marriage contract.”

  “I had expectations that were disappointed. The gift skipped my father, so, of course, he was disowned. When it was discovered that I do have power, my grandparents took me back into the family. As the son of their oldest son, I naturally assumed that I would be their principal heir, but upon my grandparents’ deaths, a year after my marriage, the bulk of the inheritance went to my father’s younger brother. I was left with only a pittance of an allowance to be doled out by my uncle.”

  “That’s a shame,” Silas said, though he was sure there must be more to it. The terms of wills and expected inheritances were supposed to be clearly spelled out in marriage contracts; there was to be no “assuming” about it. More likely, Oferdon had been his grandparents’ principal heir, then had done something after his marriage to get himself disinherited. Depending on the grandparents, it could have been anything from gambling to having an affair with a Plain servant to murder. He didn’t expect Oferdon to give him a straight answer if he asked.

  “Mage hunting is my only choice if I’m going to regain my wife’s good opinion,” Oferdon went on. “But what about you? You’re a Venedias. You’re from one of the richest, most elite, most powerful families in Granadaia! Why did you throw all that away and come out here?”

  “I was bored in Granadaia.” Anyone who had been paying attention to mage society gossip in the years before Silas left Granadaia would already know that his boredom and his distaste for the life he had been born to had expressed itself in some fairly outrageous and, as far as his family was concerned, embarrassing ways. He felt no need to explain or justify himself any further, especially not to someone like Oferdon.

  “Bored? You could have had anything or anyone you wanted!”

  “Like I said, life in Granadaia didn’t suit me. I like it better out here. Except when my wife is being captured by blueskins and I’m being pestered by amateur mage hunters.”

  “Amateur!” Oferdon protested. “I beg your pardon! I’ll have you know that I am entirely professional in my approach to this business.”

  “You didn’t even know that Coltor had a half-A’ayimat daughter.”

  “Did you know before he hired you?”

  “No, but I hadn’t been watching him for eight months.”

  Apparently unable to argue with that, Oferdon fell silent, though he continued to fidget and grope at his knapsack.

  It was dark now, and a light snowfall had begun. Silas called up a mage light to show them their way. The light would give them away to any A’ayimat who might be on watch, but it was inevitable that they would run into an A’ayimat patrol sooner or later anyhow, and maybe whoever they met could offer some hint of what the Ta’ayatan clan might be up to.

  At the top of the canyon, an A’ayimat sentry stepped out of the forest into the glow of Silas’s mage light. “Heavens!” Oferdon gasped. “Are they really that blue, or is it your light?”

  Silas dismounted from Abenar. “Be quiet, and stay where you are.” If Oferdon stayed on horseback, that would limit the amount of damage he could do with careless words, assuming that Lainie’s g
uess about the A’ayimat’s knack for languages was right.

  “You’re trespassing,” the sentry said. He held a pair of curved A’ayimat swords, not in a threatening position but at the ready.

  “My wife is being held captive by the Ta’ayatan clan,” Silas replied.

  The sentry gave him a sharp look. “The Ta’ayatan? How do you know?”

  That was interesting; Silas had expected a flat denial that the A’ayimat ever took settler captives. “I was there when she was captured.”

  “If that’s so, what were you doing on our lands in the first place?”

  “We were searching for a half-Granadaian, half-A’ayimat child –”

  “Aleet’s daughter,” the A’ayimat man stated.

  This conversation might turn out to be useful, indeed. “You know about her?”

  “Aleet is from my clan. The Aki’imiyat. She hasn’t returned to us since she went down to the Grana wizard seven years ago. But word came to us that she had borne the wizard a daughter and that she had deserted them both. Not long ago, we heard that she had taken refuge with the Ta’ayatan clan. And now the Ta’ayatan have Aleet’s child?”

  It didn’t fit. Aleet had said she had asked the Aki’imiyat, her own clan, for help and they had refused, but this man said she had never come home. And from this account it sounded like she had gone to Coltor and left him and Shayla of her own free will. He was going to have to reconsider how wronged Aleet really was and what to do with Shayla. “That’s right. The Ta’ayatan took the child from her father and returned her to Aleet. The father wants her back, so he hired us to find her.”