Bones of the Past (Arhel)

by Holly Lisle

  Spotted Face screamed as a red spot appeared on his chest, and became a thin red line that coursed down his chest and belly. Another red spot bloomed beside it. Dog Nose, hurlstick ready, searched the far shore with frantic eyes, looking for the assassin. Seven-Fingered Fat Girl watched the far cliff, too.

  The boy pulled himself the last few steps across the rope, then fell to the ground. He lay there, gasping, with tears in his eyes. Two long, red-fletched smallspears pierced his back.

  Fat Girl ran to his side, keeping cover between herself and the invisible killer. She stroked Spotted Face’s hair.

  He lay very still, gasping for air. Blood bubbled from his lips, and his skin was white and sweat-slick. “I’m sorry, Fat Girl,” he mumbled. “I didn’t see them.”

  “No one saw them,” she told him. “They kept still and waited until you were helpless on the bridge. You did the best you could.”

  He nodded, seemingly satisfied with that, then closed his eyes. He gasped several more times, then stopped.

  Tears streaked Fat Girl’s cheeks. But you could have saved them! she raged silently at the gods. Foul Keyu, you could have saved my tagnu—but you didn’t. You let them die instead. I swear, I will be death to you now! Her fingers clenched into fists.

  On the other side of the river, drums thundered to life. “Come to vengeance,” they rumbled. “Kellinks-Fear-Us Band, answer our call.”

  Dog Nose and Seven-Fingered Fat Girl exchanged frantic glances. Kellinks-Fear-Us was a big band that split into several smaller units. They took pleasure in their viciousness; they stole territory; they ranged over more of the jungle than any other band. Fat Girl had lost people to them before. Four Winds Band was doomed unless she could figure out some way to stop them.

  At her gesture, the remains of her band ran to her side behind the rock that anchored the bridge and clustered around her. They were all crying. “They’ll have more tagnu here soon,” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl whispered. “If any of their band is already on this side of the river, very soon. Three of us plus Runs Slow won’t be able to win if Kellinks-Fear-Us Band is already here. But if they aren’t, we have to stop them, or at least slow them down.”

  “How?” Laughs Like A Roshi wiped tears from his eyes and sniffled.

  Fat Girl took a deep breath to calm the racing of her heart. “We have to cut the rope.”

  Dog Nose and Roshi stared at her, stunned. “But we can’t,” Dog Nose said. “The Paths are sacred to the Keyu. If we destroy a bridge on one, the Keyu will hunt us down and slaughter us.”

  “Maybe.” Fat Girl nodded and grimly pulled the stone knife Dog Nose had made for her from its place at her hip. “But if we leave the bridge, the other tagnu will kill us for sure.”

  “You are our fat,” Dog Nose said, and rested one hand on her shoulder. “I will cut the rope with you.”

  Roshi nodded. “For Runs Slow—so will I.”

  Runs Slow looked at the other three. “I have a knife, too. I will help.”

  Fat Girl sawed on the bottom rope. “I don’t think I have any more good fat,” she said. “But we still have to cut the rope.”

  Runs Slow cut with her. “I got scared,” she whispered to Fat Girl. “The water was so loud, and I was afraid I would fall. I’m s-s-sorry.” She stopped cutting at the rope and sobbed, covering her eyes with small fists.

  Fat Girl kept sawing away at the rope. She made headway, as did the two boys working on the upper rope. She tried to ignore Runs Slow’s anguish, but as hard as she tried, she couldn’t keep blaming the child for the deaths of the three tagnu. “It wasn’t all your fault,” she finally said. “You’re too little to be tagnu.”

  “I didn’t have a Tree-Naming,” Runs Slow admitted. “Mama and Papa wouldn’t let my big sister go to be Tree-Named. So the priests took all of us away from them. They said my sister was sharsha. They made me tagnu.”

  Fat Girl stared at the little girl. “What happened to your parents?” She couldn’t imagine anyone defying the priests or the Keyu.

  “I don’t know. The priests were really angry. Do you think they did bad things to Mama and Papa?”

  Fat Girl was almost certain they had, but she didn’t want to say so. “Probably not. Maybe the priests don’t do things to big people. Just to kids.”

  Runs Slow looked thoughtfully at her hands, then nodded. “Maybe.”

  The boys were nearly through their rope. Only a few strands held it in place.

  “Stop,” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl told them. “Leave it that way.”

  She sawed on her own rope until it was equally frayed. “Maybe one of them will die when they try to cross it,” she said. “Let’s run, while we still have time.”

  The four remaining members of Four Winds Band took off, running south and west, off the Paths. The sounds of the wild river faded and disappeared, and the other noises of the jungle replaced them.

  “They’ll wait,” Fat Girl said suddenly, while they ran. “They’ll—wait because we might still—be there. Won’t want to—be the first to—cross the bridge.”

  “Easy targets—” Roshi said, and his eyes were dark with pain.

  Fat Girl bared her teeth in a not-smile. “Yah.”

  “How long—will they wait?” Roshi asked.

  Dog Nose snorted. “Not long enough.”

  As if to prove him right, the drums roared to life again. “Bridge destroyed, bridge destroyed—” they raged, over and over. Then the drums fell silent.

  Ominously, the jungle hushed. The animals froze and flattened; the air stilled. Fat Girl felt the jungle grow somehow darker, though no clouds covered the sun. Bad things were about to happen. Every particle of air, every leaf on every tree, every hovie hidden in its stump-hole, shivered with the presentiment.

  “Faster,” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl urged her tagnu. Unreasoning fear crushed her. Her heart bludgeoned against her ribs; her throat constricted until she feared the air in the jungle was gone. “Run faster,” she croaked.

  All four tagnu broke from their steady lope into panicky, headlong flight. They wouldn’t be able to keep it up, Fat Girl thought, and at the same time forced herself to run even faster. The fear had a life of its own—it came from outside of her, and drove her. She could not argue with it, could not reason herself out of it. So she flew, raced, galloped.

  Low thunder rolled through the jungle; the voices of the Keyu called out their promises of vengeance. “You who violated our Path, know that you will die,” they thrummed. “You cannot escape us—the enmity of your gods is forever.”

  “Faster,” Fat Girl urged.

  Laughs Like A Roshi controlled his own panic long enough to stop and pull his sister onto his back. She wrapped her legs around his waist and clutched at his neck like a drowning swimmer. With his added burden, he began to fall behind.

  Fat Girl heard low, muttering murmurs off to one side. Then a soft cough, a bark, quick hisses that came from behind her and in front of her—something flapped its wings and shrieked high overhead.

  Now we die. She didn’t say it out loud—she didn’t have the breath. She veered in the one direction from which no predator sounds came. Dog Nose followed her; Roshi ran a bit to one side.

  The sounds kept coming from behind her and to her right and in front of her, no matter how much she turned. Her fear grew with the abrupt realization that the jungle was driving her, forcing her to run toward its destination instead of her own. No! she thought. No! She might die, but she would not die easily. She readied her dartstick and veered back toward the peknu lands. She would face her attackers—not flee them. Not this time.

  Dog Nose matched her, both in speed and direction. He pulled out his dagger.

  Roshi followed them, but fell further behind.

  The animal noises stayed in front of Fat Girl and behind her and at her sides, but never grew any closer. She squinted, trying to make out the moving forms of the hunting beasts she knew had to be there, but in the moderate underbrush, she could not see anyt
hing that moved.

  The tagnu came over the top of a slight hill, and in front of them the underbrush grew suddenly thicker. Fat Girl looked for a way through—directly in front of them, the thicket became abruptly and viciously impassable. Gleaming thorns tangled and wrapped over each other. She veered west.

  Roshi screamed.

  The scream was awful—a lost soul, mournful, dying animal plea for mercy—pain made human, begging for release. That scream jerked Fat Girl to a complete stop more effectively than all the thorns in the world could have. She looked back.

  The boy was wrapped, from foot to neck, in glistening green vines. He lay on the ground, struggling weakly against the tentacles. His sister stood just out of reach of the vines, her hands pressed to her mouth. She was filthy, covered with humus and dead leaves. Fat Girl could see where Roshi had thrown the girl. The furrow in the jungle floor where she’d landed was clear as a fresh scar.

  Seven-Fingered Fat Girl looked at Laughs Like A Roshi, then at Runs Slow, and then at Dog Nose. She started back toward Roshi as a slow walk, clutching her dartstick.

  “Get Runs Slow,” she told Dog Nose. “Go west; south and west as soon as you can. Don’t—don’t stop. Don’t look back. Run. I’ll catch up with you if I can.”

  Dog Nose bit his lip and nodded. He ran to Runs Slow, pulled her away from the place where her brother lay, and carried her, kicking and screaming, off into the jungle.

  Fat Girl walked as near as she dared to Roshi and the myed vine that trapped him. He looked up at her, his eyes glazed with pain. She looked at him; looked at her dartstick.

  “Take… care of… Runs Slow.” His eyes pleaded for release.

  I wish it were Runs Slow in the myed vine instead of you, she thought. She stared at Roshi, doomed Roshi, and wanted to kill every living thing in the jungle.

  He begged, “Promise… me… Fat Girl. Promise.”

  I don’t want to, she thought. “I will,” she told him, wishing he had asked anything else.

  He screamed again, as the plant dug more of its rootlets into his flesh. The tentacles contracted and relaxed, contracted and relaxed. With each contraction, he screamed again. Finally, at the relaxation point in the cycle, he gasped, “Do it.”

  She couldn’t save him. The myed had destroyed him the instant it caught him; impaled him with its tiny rootlets. Even if she could have destroyed the plant, Roshi would be dead. And this myed was huge, with hundreds of tentacles still waiting. Some were buried under the leaves, some sprawled around the ground near her. She could not save him. She could die with him—but that would not help him, nor her.

  She could only do what he asked. If she just left him, he would not die for a day or two—and he would suffer while the plant slowly ate him. Her tagnu would not die like that. She held her breath, tried to steady her shaking fingers, tried to hold off the tears for just another moment. “Goodbye,” she said, or tried to say. The sounds strangled in her throat—Roshi couldn’t have heard them anyway. The myed tightened its coils again, and he was screaming.

  She put the dartstick to her lips and blew. The little red-tufted missile shot out of the stick. It buried itself in Roshi’s belly. He twitched once, and stopped screaming. His body went limp. The horrible rictus of agony left his face.

  “I would not have killed you on the bridge, Roshi,” she whispered. “I would have let you get your sister.”

  Fat Girl turned away. She ran—west, then west and south, running by feel, her eyes blurred by tears, her feet stumbling as she sobbed.

  She ran through the worst of the thicket—it tore ribbons of flesh from her arms and chest, and she didn’t even care. On the other side, the jungle ended. A rolling, treeless plain spread in front of her. On a hillock, Dog Nose and Runs Slow sat and waited.

  Chapter 4

  “GODS, you look even more bored than I feel. What does he have you doing?”

  Roba looked up from a dull, badly written treatise on Edrouss Delmuirie and sighed. “You don’t want to know,” she told Kirgen, who had finished the student papers a day ago and was hanging around her office grading tests.

  “Sure I do. Maybe I can help.”

  Roba snorted. “I don’t know if I should tell you. What I’m doing is supposed to be a deep secret. You see—” She got up and looked out into the hall to make sure Thirk wasn’t about to drop in on her. Then she closed her office door. “Thirk hinted that I’d get a raise if I joined the Delmuirie Society. So I joined.”

  “Did you get the raise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really?” Kirgen’s eyebrows and voice rose together. “Can I join?”

  “Oh, I’m sure—” Roba laughed. “Not that you’ll get a raise. But I don’t think you’d want to. I’m doing something worse than counting grains of sand in a desert—at least I could find sand in the desert to count. But I have to come up with a theory on where Edrouss Delmuirie disappeared, and why. And I don’t really think there ever was a Delmuirie.”

  Kirgen started to laugh. “That’s what he has you doing? You’re kidding.”

  “I wish I were.”

  “Well, in that case, I can help.” Kirgen launched himself onto her desk, where he sat, grinning down at her with cheerful camaraderie. “You can’t possibly prove that the theory you come up with is correct, right?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Sure.” Kirgen smiled. “It doesn’t even have to make sense so long as it’s different and you can cite sources. I happen to be great at this kind of stuff. I can turn cow flops into poetry—” He chuckled. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you some of my papers on speculation into the nature of fire elementals. They’re great reading.”

  “So you’re saying not to bother trying to come up with something rational—”

  Kirgen made chopping motions with his hands. “The whole premise is irrational. Just come up with something that sounds really big and impressive. And new. It ought to sound new.”

  Roba smiled for what felt like the first time in days. “What a wonderful idea. I guess you can help.”

  * * *

  When the keyunu came for Choufa, they came singing. Women priests traded off lines with men priests, calling and responding; the hard, fast song they sang matched their movements. Hand over hand, the priests worked the ropes that lowered the sharsha in their baskets to the ground. Choufa, shivering in the raging downpour, listened to the words of the song they screamed over the howling of the winds. The words chilled her far more than the rain.

  “Heyo, rains are falling,

  Winds are rising, ho-heyo!

  Ho! The sharsha

  For the Keyu

  To the river!

  Ho! Heyo!

  “Heyo, Keyu calling!

  River rising, ho-heyo!

  Ho! The sharsha

  Feed the Keyu!

  Holy river!

  Ho! Heyo!

  They came to her basket, and lowered her to the ground. One took a blackglass knife with white eyes and teeth on the sides of the blade and cut the withes that held the cage front shut. Another tipped the cage forward, and Choufa sprawled on the ground.

  “Up, sharsha,” a gold-and-green-clad man yelled over the storm and the singing, and kicked her to make his point.

  With all the other sharsha, Choufa wobbled to her feet. The cold, pouring rain soaked her skin and left her shivering, teeth-chattering, bone cold—but it washed the accumulated filth of days from her body, and she was grateful for that.

  Above the jungle canopy, towering thunderheads rose, crackling with fire and growling with the voices of angry gods. The cloudgiants had nudged and jostled and fought until they pressed so close together the sky was blackened beneath them, and the sun and Keyu’s Eye vanished.

  The season of rains had come—sacred season of the Keyu. Choufa knew all the holy songs of the rain festival and all the temple rituals going on at that very moment under the silk canopies. What she did not know and wished she did was what would happen to
her. She could still feel the Keyu. They were no longer dreaming their slow tree-dreams. As the Festival of Rain began, they came fully awake, and their hunger grew.

  The priests dumped the last of the sharsha on the ground, and got them all standing. Then they waited: nine sharsha, two hands of priests, and two hands of the big men who wore green and gold.

  A thin old woman priest Choufa didn’t know clapped sharply. All the keyunu burst into an awful droning song, full of words about duty and sorrow and sanctification and pain. Choufa suspected that they were the ones who would get credit for the duty and the sanctification, but the sorrow and the pain would be hers.

  Then the keyunu began a stately march in the direction of the river. Along with the rest of the sharsha, Choufa stood and watched them. She felt too weak to move—she hadn’t eaten in days, and her legs were so weak from being cramped in the tiny basket cage that she was having difficulty standing.

  “March!” one of the green-and-gold men snarled.

  The sharsha all looked at him stupidly. Choufa took a few tentative steps, lost her balance, and fell in a heap in front of the man who had kicked her before. He kicked her again, and when she could not stand, snarled, grabbed her by the back of the neck with one hand, and jerked her to her feet. He shoved her toward the other sharsha.

  She stumbled into the huddle, and the other children caught her and held her up. As weak as she, they leaned on each other, and with difficulty, began the journey toward the river.

  Choufa was no longer frightened—she found she didn’t care very much what happened to her anymore. She didn’t think there was anything else the keyunu could do to her that could frighten her. She wished all the pain and the awfulness would end, and she thought soon it probably would. That would be fine with her. Dying would solve a lot of problems.