Bones of the Past (Arhel)

by Holly Lisle

  The Hoos warrior arched one eyebrow and studied the child out of the corners of her eyes. “Your daughter,” she told Faia, “scares me. A lot. Much worse than you did, in fact, and you nearly scared the life out of me.”

  “As family traits go, I think I will keep that one. Being able to scare a Hoos headhunter seems useful to me.”

  In spite of herself, in spite of the fact that she was once again without a child to teach for the vha’attaye, in spite of the sure anger of the waking dead when she brought them back—assuming she could find them—Medwind laughed.

  “I have to go after them,” she told Faia. Her smile faded.

  “Go after them?”

  “Go to the place between the worlds. My ancestors and enemy will be there somewhere. I have to bring them back.”

  Faia’s eyes lost their laughter. “The living do not belong in the spirit realm.”

  “I have no choice. This is my duty.”

  “Then let me come with you. Let me help.”

  Medwind smiled slowly. “Thank you—but I cannot. The place I go is sacred to the vha’attaye. It is a Hoos place. I have to go alone.”

  Faia shook her head. “They demean you, they despise you, they treat you terribly, they demand things, and they are completely unreasonable. I would leave them wherever Kirtha lost them, if I were you.”

  Medwind started to get angry, then forced her anger out of the way. The hill-girl did not understand the depth of commitment a Hoos took on who vowed service of the Ancestors. She did not understand that the bonds of the vha’attaye were the prime bonds of Hoos family—that a Hoos who served the vha’attaye served them first before husbands and children and parents. She took a deep breath. “Faia,” she said, “Kirtha is your responsibility, no matter how she behaves. Yes?”

  Faia tipped her head to one side, then nodded. “Of course.”

  “Of course,” Medwind said. “You ask no questions—you simply accept the burden. In that same way, the vha’attaye are my family and my burden.”

  She looked around the big, friendly room for a moment and sighed. “If I have not come out by tomorrow, please bring Nokar and come into the b’dabba. Nokar will know what to do with my body.” She turned and walked out without waiting for an answer.

  She left mother and daughter standing in the workroom and stalked back to her hut. Perhaps the hill-girl would understand. It would have been easier to be self-righteous, though, she decided, if Faia’s suggestion hadn’t been so tempting.

  She knelt in front of the abandoned skulls and offered up a solemn prayer to Etyt and Thiena. There were those among the living who had travelled to the place between the worlds, but only for compelling reasons, and never happily. She knew this, and knew as well that many who left never returned. She offered up her soul to the hands of her gods. Death in the service of her vha’attaye was honorable; she would face it as a warrior.

  She was ready. Chanting and drumming, she drove herself into a trance, into the place where her soul could disentangle from her body. She reached into the cold, dark emptiness between the worlds—stretched her soul into that aching otherness. Her vision darkened, sensation faded, and sound was replaced by the pressure of dark and empty infinity, by an expanse of nothingness so immense the weight of it pressed her into despair. She was alone in that void—the only living thing.

  She stretched into the vast nothing—tried to reach out a hand, and had no hands; tried to walk or swim or fly through the oblivion, and discovered herself legless and armless, yet she moved. She saw without eyes, heard without ears, glowed warm as a tiny sun in the screaming nothing that was the kingdom of the dead.

  Things approached. A few ghostgreen shimmers tendrilled against her, touching like the barest of breezes—strangers. Not her Ancestors. Medwind held her fear close to her and pushed a question at them, formed in the familiar shapes of her waking dead. These—have you seen them? Where are they—my Ancestors, my enemy, my friend?

  Missing, the strangers seemed to tell her. She felt suggestions of the abruptness of the parting, of a rushing wind, great force, surprise. The thing that overcame her ancestors and her enemy was a novelty to the spirits of the waking dead.

  They did not fall to the things that hunt the waking dead? Medwind shaped the thought, touched the ghostgreen strangers with it, and felt a flush of fear, and the recoiling of the soulfingers that touched her mind.

  No. Something other. Something new. The ghostminds rolled the memory among themselves—they showed curiosity at the phenomenon, but no fear.

  It was only Kirtha’s doing, then. Perhaps she could stop worrying.

  A different strain of ghostthoughts touched hers mind. So you’ve come. Good. Look around this hell you’ve thrown me into. This new vha’attaye was familiar, angry—but Medwind felt her own spirit soar in spite of the other’s anger.

  Rakell! She swirled around the greenlit spirit in formless embrace. I’m so happy to find you!

  I wasn’t lost. I left before those bastard Hoosghosts of yours got blown across eternity. The Mottemage’s thoughts felt smug.

  But where are they?

  Gone. For good, I hope.

  Medwind felt herself drowning in anguish. No! She pled with the dead Mottemage. Help me find them. They’re—my family. You are. I need all of you.

  The cold green shadowshape that was Rakell withdrew to the very edge of Medwind’s touch. I don’t want to be needed. I want life, or true death—and whatever comes after. She separated herself from Medwind and retreated, a swiftly receding glimmer of light.

  The other waking dead crowded around Medwind, touching with their cold dead souls the bright, shimmering essence of her life. Then, without any warning, they set up a keening and scattered like dim stars fleeing a monster bent on swallowing the sun.

  She felt something—embodied hatred or embodied hunger—coming at her from a distance. It shot toward her; fast, ravenous, unreasoning, malevolent. She saw nothing, but sensed, somehow, its displacement of the nothing-stuff that formed the place between the worlds. It was massive.

  She bolted, and it came on—

  Panicked, terrified, she flung herself off the paths of the dead, and fell—through sounds and sensations that built toward a roar, eye-searing light, invisible fire that burned every cell of her body at the same time, tastes and smells that became a miasma so thick for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Her skin seemed to bubble and shift while meaningless colors and shapes swirled in front of her eyes and a pounding wall of noise assaulted her ears. Air felt liquid—her body was hot, then cold, then hot—and gasping, heaving, she crumpled into a ball on the floor of the b’dabba and retched and cried.

  She shivered, struggled with a body that twitched erratically, tried to push herself up, fell on her face instead.

  She lay on the goatskin rug—and gradually the incomprehensible attack on her senses resolved into understandable smells and tastes and sights. Her drums hung above her, her candles flickered in front of her, guttering low, and the sound of rain hissed and drummed against the outside of the b’dabba.

  Alive, she thought. Thank Etyt and Thiena, I’m still alive.

  She lay still, staring up into the forest of drums. The place between the worlds waited in her future—if she became someone of importance to the Hoos, she would become vha’attaye. She would be a revered Ancestor, watched and guarded and kept for generations on a table, asked for advice, honored as the voice of wisdom. And in between moments of honor, she would wait in the eternal, terrifying darkness.

  The places of the dead were not for the living. With the charge of the soul-eater still fresh in her mind, she wondered if they were for the dead, either.

  * * *

  Fat Girl kept the tagnu to an easy lope. Even Runs Slow maintained the pace without difficulty. The three of them skirted the edge of the jungle, staying well out of its reach, moving west. They ran in a no-man’s-land—too close to the jungle for the peknu, too far from it for the tagnu and the jungle beast
s. The ground was grassy and rolling. Mornings were dry and easy—but by early afternoon every day, the sky broke under its burden and heavy, pelting rains began.

  Three days out of the jungle, still running west, Fat Girl noted a change in the terrain and in the plants that grew on the grassy plains. Thick tangles of shrubs bent away from constant salt-tanged wind. The leaves of plants were thicker, and all, when licked, bore a faint flavor of salt.

  Late the fourth day, in drenching rain, the tagnu topped a rise. Below them sprawled the peknu place they sought, filled with houses of wood and stone, surrounded by high log walls. Beyond it the Big Water reached to the horizon.

  Fat Girl and Dog Nose readjusted the uncomfortable tablets in their harnesses. Seven-Fingered Fat Girl had been to this same peknu place twice before. It frightened her—it was dirty and noisy and stinking and full of far too many people.

  “We find the old man who trades for becks, we get our god-dirt and our food, and we get out of that place,” she said.

  The other two nodded their agreement silently. All three tagnu took deep breaths. Then they went down into the lair of the outlanders.

  The pretty girl at the gate stared at them and clucked her tongue. In Hraddo, the trade tongue, she said, “Declare you trade-stuff.”

  Seven-Fingered Fat Girl knew the routine. She showed the girl her tablet and Dog Nose’s. “That all.”

  The girl wrinkled her nose. “That good-stuff not. That junk.”

  Fat Girl shrugged. “We lose good-stuff in jungle,” she lied. It was to her advantage if the gate guard decided she was only carrying junk. Somewhere in the peknu town, there was an old man who would trade a lot for becks. But that was her secret.

  The girl made scratch marks on a flat green pad, asked for the names of all three tagnu, made more scratch marks. “You have pay tax when leave Omwimmee Trade.”

  Fat Girl eyed the gate guard. “I know that. I here before. You mark value this junk now.” When they left Omwimmee Trade, anything they took in over the girl’s valuation of their goods would be pure profit—tax-free.

  “Ten rit each,” the girl decided.

  “Ten rit!” Fat Girl shrieked. “You say this junk, I never make ten rit! I have pay more what I make for tax. It worth five rit both. No more.”

  “I give you eight each.” The girl started to scratch on the pad again.

  Fat Girl rolled her eyes and put her hands on her bony hips. “Too much. Who pay me eight rit each this stuff—you tell me? Six both.”

  “Six each. Best I can do.” The girl spread her hands out and shrugged.

  “We lose all good stuff, you rob us for junk. Is bad world this.” Fat Girl turned to Dog Nose and Runs Slow and in her own language said, “She doesn’t know how much these are worth. I think we can get ten tens for each of these—but she’s almost down to nothing. Runs Slow, you cry hard. Dog Nose, hug Runs Slow, look at the guard like she’s bad tagnu, then turn around and walk away. Don’t look back.”

  Fat Girl turned back to the guard. Behind her, Runs Slow began to sniffle, then to sob. Dog Nose made comforting noises. The noises began to retreat.

  “We pay tax someplace people not try steal we eyes. We come long way trade here, we have bad luck.” Fat Girl felt tears welling up in her own eyes when she said that—she let them slide down her cheeks. “We friends die. She brother die.” The tears began falling in earnest. She started to turn away.

  “Little girl brother really die?” The voice at Fat Girl’s back was soft and concerned.

  Fat Girl hated herself for using Roshi—but in a way, she thought, what she was doing was for Roshi. The money they made would feed Roshi’s little sister. She turned back. “Yes,” she whispered. It was truth, and it rang as truth.

  “Six both,” the guard at the gate said. “Go in. I hope you make lot money on you junk.” The girl scratched on her pad, and handed a wooden square with marks painted on it to Seven-Fingered Fat Girl. Fat Girl dug a string of twisted vine from her pouch and strung the square on it. She put the makeshift necklace on.

  The guard stared at her left hand, the hand with the missing fingers, then looked away.

  “Thank you,” Fat Girl said. She turned and called back Dog Nose and Runs Slow. The three of them hurried into the peknu town—they slipped through the gate and trotted down the high walkways to the market before the girl at the gate could change her mind.

  The city seemed almost deserted. Fat Girl had only seen it before in the dry season, when the streets thronged with people and the skies were filled with flying people on carpets and winged beasts and in odd-made things. Now the roads had become rivers, full of swift-running, muddy-brown water that swirled into holes beside the walkways and vanished with a roar. The sheeting rain stung her skin, while the damp cold left Fat Girl’s teeth chattering. The skies were empty except for the low, gray-black clouds.

  Two sodden travelers drove their cart toward the market—the miserable beasts waded through the current that pulled at their legs and hung their heads in soggy misery. Fat Girl and her tagnu loped past them on the highwalk. An icecart driver heading in the other direction stared at them from the dry, covered perch of his cart. Fat Girl stared back.

  Light spilled from the windows of the houses the tagnu ran past onto wet grass and rain-slicked cobblestones—warm yellow light that shimmered in the rain and cast gleaming reflections in the puddles. Fat Girl wished for an instant that she could be behind those windows, in the dry places where the peknu lived. She wished for a thick grass-thatched roof over her head, for a house built from the bodies of dead trees. Then she smiled. She didn’t need that. She had a stone city, her own city, where no tree dared grow. She’d bargained well on her taxes. Now all she had to do was find the old man.

  The outer market was empty, desolate, the square deserted except for a few hardy travelers selling wares out of their covered carts. Those seasoned peddlers recognized the tagnu as unlikely prospects and let them past unchivvied—they saved their strident calls for people less obviously hungry and less poor.

  The inner market, however, was as lively as the outer market was barren. Tables overflowed with a riot of things to buy—with fruit and shoes and flowers, bread and pastries, tools and weapons, woven hammocks, five chickens, roasted pigs; with fish frozen on huge blocks of green ice packed in sawdust; with folds of cloth in colors and patterns that dazzled the eye, and caged birds that preened and shrieked and cackled. Pots and hammocks and baskets and slaughtered beasts hung from the rafters. Smoke wafted up from a hundred cookfires—hawkers screamed after the tagnu in a babble of tongues, crying, “Try! Taste! Buy! Look at this!” The languages might have been different, but the words were the same—Fat Girl knew the hustlers and the peddlers and the thieves, no matter what they said.

  People stared at them. Old women looked from Dog Nose’s scarred face to Fat Girl’s maimed hand, and their tongues clucked. Vendors glared at them, obviously suspecting thievery. Bored young men who leaned against the stalls, whittling at sticks with their big knives, ogled Fat Girl’s body with expressions that frightened her—they called after her, words she didn’t understand in voices she didn’t like. Their laughter behind her felt dirty and dangerous, and made her want to hide. Women with painted lips and painted eyes watched her pass, and studied her skinny, scarred, half-naked body, and tipped their heads in mocking salute.

  The scent of cooked meat wrenched her stomach into a tight fist. Runs Slow pointed at a spitted suckling pig roasting over a brazier, its juices sizzling in the low flames, and said, “I want that, Fat Girl.”

  “Later. We have nothing to pay with yet.” Fat Girl wished she could ignore the wonderful roasting-pig smell. She wended her way through the tight, twisting aisles. She stopped to admire bright red beads at a jewelry stall, then studied a leather carry-bag with a keen eye—she’d copy the design as best she could later. Always she kept part of her attention on the people around her—on the swarthy, brightly clad young children who offered to direc
t customers to the merchandise they desired for a fee, on the hard-eyed merchants who stared after her distrustfully, on the pickpockets and cutpurses who cruised the aisles in search of prey. Fat Girl’s dartstick rested on her hip, tucked into the thong of her myr—but one hand always hovered over her dart-pack. The first person to try to steal from her would feel the prick of her dart and die.

  Dog Nose moved ahead of her, drawn by a gleaming display of metal knives. Fat Girl followed—and noticed two men with long metal-banded braids and beards staring at the tablet on her back. The men leaned their heads close together. One nodded, glanced at her, and slipped out from behind the stall where they stood, selling amulets. They looked rather like the man she sought, but she did not like the expressions in their eyes. Fat Girl tapped Dog Nose. “Move on,” she said, her voice low and flat. “Turn right, then left, then left again.”

  Dog Nose made no sign to show he’d heard, but he turned as she’d directed. Runs Slow followed, and Fat Girl brought up the rear. She watched for the man with the braids and the long, gaudy robes—she looked for his reflection in baubles that hung in the jewelry stalls and watched out of the corner of her eye as she stopped to admire kittens and puppies and silver-scaled lizards in wooden crates.

  There he was! He came around the corner of the third turn, caught sight of her, and immediately stopped and pretended to be looking at the wares of the cloth vendor nearest him. He talked with the merchant, held up a piece of fabric to the light—and when Fat Girl moved on, he moved with her.

  She caught up with Dog Nose and Runs Slow. “There is a man following us,” she whispered. “Get around the fruit stall, then run.” She backed off—tried to make her quick footsteps look casual. All three tagnu eased into the tight side corridor, then through it, then walked calmly in the opposite direction. Behind them, someone shouted incomprehensible syllables, and someone else yelled in Hraddo, “Stop, thief!”

  Hands reached out to grab them. Fat Girl bolted, bit at the grasping fingers, clawed at eyes and faces—escaped, ran faster. Dog Nose kicked the fat merchant who tried to block his way. He squirmed through a tiny space between two stalls. Runs Slow followed him. Fat Girl brought up the rear, sidling sideways, feeling the tablet on her back drag along the rough wood planks.