Bones of the Past (Arhel)

by Holly Lisle

  Not for long, though, Medwind thought. We’ll get the information we want, and move on, and leave them to their city.

  Then she considered what a find like a First Folk city would mean to the rest of the scholars of Arhel. No one had ever found a First Folk library before. No one had ever located a genuine city, even a small one. No one had ever found portable First Folk artifacts before. And once the First Folk site was publicized, no matter how good her intentions, or Nokar’s, the Wen kids were going to be betrayed.

  Scholars won’t abandon a find like that. Once the city is common knowledge, there will always be some mage or saje with a reason to be there—and the claim those kids have on the city will always be less important.

  She stared off at nothing, saddened. It didn’t take farsight to see the shape of unhappiness in the making.

  Chapter 7

  “YOU cannot seriously mean to include children in this expedition,” Thirk said.

  Medwind stood outside the house in the predawn cold and stared him down. “You were invited to join us,” she said. “Do not think you will dictate who may go with us and who may not.”

  Thirk looked disgusted. “Mothers and children. Scruffy heathens. What kind of serious scholarly journey would include them? Think what the history texts will say—that the expedition that proved the Delmuirie Hypothesis included three little jungle rats and a baby. No one will take us seriously!”

  “I suppose the histories could leave off your name if you prefer.”

  He glared. “Think of the danger. A helpless mother and her tiny babe—”

  Medwind broke into disbelieving laughter. “Helpless!” she sputtered. “Helpless? Do you have any idea who that poor helpless mother is?”

  Thirk frowned. “Faia something-or-other. Some girl Kirgen knew.”

  “Faia Rissedote,” Medwind clarified. “The same woman who bested the Wisewoman Sahedre and brought the Second Mage/Saje War to an end. She can take care of herself.”

  The Hoos warrior had her own doubts about Kirtha’s presence on the trip, but Faia had been adamant. The hill-girl was sick of Omwimmee Trade, and bored, and lonely, and she craved the adventure a trip into the forbidden Wen jungle promised. Faia promised she would keep Kirtha from burning down the jungle or the First Folk city. Medwind, who could understand the girl’s wish to do something, kept her opinions on Kirtha’s probable behavior to herself.

  There were no further arguments, and, with everyone boarded and the gear packed at last, the airbox lifted silently into the still-dark sky. It banked around and soared toward the Wen Tribes Treaty lands. Within an instant, it was over the lush jungle canopy.

  Medwind leaned back against the padded leather seat of the airbox and stared out the window as the bright crescent slash of the Tide Mother rose on the horizon with its cup of purple, red, and orange tipped. To spill the blood, she thought, and bit her lip with annoyance at her own irrationality. Hoos legends said when the Tide Mother tipped its cup to Arhel, it spilled blood on the battlefield. Medwind reflected that, since one Hoos looking cross-eyed at another Hoos was enough to spill blood on the battlefield, the old legend stood good odds of being right somewhere.

  But, all the same, she wished the damned planet were hanging straight in the sky. A heritage of Hoos superstition sent tingles down her spine in spite of all her knowledge.

  Edgy—that was the word. She felt it. They all felt it.

  The two older Wen kids were fighting in the seats to her left. They were whispering very fast, and in Sropt, so she only caught snatches of the conversation. “—too many peknu—,” “—they might steal our food—,” and “—do not like these flying things—” seemed to make up the gist of the argument.

  They didn’t like leaving their loot behind, in spite of Nokar’s patient explanation that it would be easier to transport it all after they arrived than to carry it with them the whole way. His explanation of the relationship between mass, energy, and magic had not interested them. They were decidedly cranky.

  Kirgen and Roba were on the outs.

  It’s all that Gornat fisherfolk morality of Roba’s, Medwind thought. Gods, among the Huong Hoos, you have to parent a child before you can marry within the tribe. And to Faia’s hillfolk, marriage is nothing but a kiss and a promise, anyway—if you tire of each other, off you go. No shame in parenting a child without the promise—and no promise made if you parent a child. She shook her head and studied her friend, who sat stiff-backed on the other side of the airbox. But to the Gornats, the gods ordain, and mortals refrain. If she ever sees reason again, the poor man will be fortunate.

  Medwind had seen Kirgen well after nondes the night before, trying to smooth things over with Roba. He hadn’t been doing well—and from results that morning, she figured his luck hadn’t changed. He was in the eagle-seat at the moment, copiloting the airbox with Nokar, avoiding both Roba and Faia. Even so, the tension between them was thick enough to walk on, and Medwind heartily wished them to the other side of the continent until they worked their problems out.

  Thirk, sitting next to Roba, was oblivious to the mood in the car. He rattled on, and on, and on. “—and just think, Roba, you and I will finally be able to destroy the conspiracy that has kept Edrouss Delmuirie from his rightful place as the hero of all Arhel—”

  Medwind rolled her eyes. Perhaps, she thought, studying the horse-faced saje, I gave up headhunting too soon. Not that his head is a specimen I’d want to keep—but I think I’d like it better if it were separated from his body.

  He’d told her a handful of Hoos jokes the night before after nondes. They were obnoxious, and one was even crude. She’d smiled politely, then reciprocated with a quick translation of the one about why Arissers made lousy drumskins. A slow smile crept across her face as she thought back to that—Thirk had gotten very quiet and decided after a moment that he wanted to tell Faia all about Edrouss Delmuirie.

  Medwind was glad to be on her way—but the farther the exploration team travelled, the more she wished she and Nokar were going alone.

  Fat Girl quit snarling at Dog Nose long enough to look over at Medwind, then point to the canopy of green below them. “That is our territory down there,” she said. “Look down next to the Path we follow. You can see the four white stones—they mark Four Winds Band’s Path. Our bridge across the river will be ahead.”

  Medwind looked down. A tiny thread of a path meandered through a natural outcrop of whitestone—the trees were thin enough near the outcrop that she could see the jungle floor. The whitestone boulders became more prevalent, and the trees thinner, until suddenly the airbox was over a gorge, through which an ugly river raced. The river was thick and swollen and muddy brown from the rains, and she could see its treacherous currents and white-water runs from the air.

  “I didn’t see the bridge,” Medwind said when the river dropped away behind them.

  “No,” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl agreed. “I did not see it also. But from here it is very small. Everything is very small. It is a good bridge, though. Three-strand vine rope—very strong.”

  Medwind considered that. The Hoos had rope bridges—sturdy knotted contraptions with wood-slatted walkways and high basket sides. The most valued Hoos horses were those that would edge across them without balking. But she would have been able to see a bridge like that from the air. “What sort of bridge is it?” she asked at last.

  Fat Girl’s forehead creased with bewilderment. “Rope,” she repeated.

  “No—how is it made?”

  “Oh!” Fat Girl smiled, and a look of understanding crossed her face. “You have to soak the vines—green vines work best—and pound them with rocks until they are soft. Then you twist three—”

  “No.” Medwind interrupted, and shook her head. “I know how to make vine rope. I meant, how was the bridge made?”

  Fat Girl’s expression let Medwind know she’d asked an unbelievably stupid question. “One person ties the rope to something strong on one side of the river. Anoth
er person ties it to something strong on the other side of the river. One rope to walk on, and one or two ropes to hold on to. We have a good-good bridge. It has three ropes.”

  Very few things frightened Medwind Song. But when she imagined crossing that ugly, deadly river walking on a single line of rope, her stomach churned more wildly than the river’s rapids had.

  She was still thinking about the rope bridge when Kirgen muttered something to Nokar. He said it softly, but a sharpness in his intonation caught Medwind’s attention. She tensed and leaned forward in her seat, trying to hear better.

  Nokar was answering. “—energy fade (mumbling) trace the lines back, but not forward (more mumbling)—”

  There was a brief silence.

  She heard Kirgen clearly. “I don’t find anything.”

  Nokar muttered something else. “—try bringing in earth energy—”

  The airbox began a gentle drift rightward.

  “Bring it back on-line!” Nokar snapped. “Don’t lose your concentration!”

  “I didn’t!” Kirgen’s voice got louder.

  The airbox moved back to the left—then drifted rightward again.

  “Damn all to Grum’s hell, what’s going on?!” Nokar roared.

  The passengers fell silent as they became aware of the struggle at the front of the airbox. They watched the two sajes directing their flight, frozen in poses of anxiety.

  Thirk cleared his throat. “Might I be of assistance?” he asked. “I’ve done quite a bit of piloting—”

  “We don’t need another by-the-gods-damned pilot—we need power,” Nokar snarled.

  The magicians in the airbox exchanged puzzled glances. Medwind thought she’d misheard. “You need what?”

  “Power,” Kirgen said. His face was pale. Sweat beaded his forehead and glistened beneath the thin furring of his mustache.

  That was what Medwind thought he’d said. She closed her eyes, and mentally reached out to touch the energy of sky and earth—

  And came up dry. As impossible as it seemed, the ley lines that crisscrossed Arhel were absent over the jungle. She felt some form of energy nearby, but, oddly, it wasn’t in a form she could touch—or perhaps she didn’t know how to use it.

  The airbox veered more to the right and began losing altitude.

  Seven-Fingered Fat Girl gripped the back of Nokar’s seat. The girl’s knuckles were white, and her fingers dug into the leather. “Turn now,” she said. Her voice was raspy and frightened.

  “We’re trying, dear,” Nokar said.

  “You do not understand. You must turn now. ‘Trying’ is not to be good enough.” She leaned forward again. Her voice shook when she spoke. “You said this was safe way to travel—that if we go in airbox, we not have to worry about hunting-beasts or Keyu. You said the Keyu not bother us if we fly.” The girl was breathing fast and her body was rigid.

  “We didn’t expect problems,” Medwind said. She watched her husband, and felt the talons of fear scrape along the back of her neck.

  Nokar gripped the pilot’s brace and chanted, trying to draw in energy from anywhere. The airbox slid slightly leftward, then jerked hard back to the right.

  The airbox was flying directly into the rising sun, forty-five degrees off the direction in which they’d been traveling.

  “Something’s pulling us!” Kirgen whispered. He strained against the invisible opponent.

  Fat Girl stared out the window at the trees below and shuddered. “Silk People village is that way,” she whispered. “The Keyu pull us to them.”

  Medwind barely refrained from snapping at the girl. It wasn’t time for superstitious nonsense—the Hoos woman shook her head and turned her attention to her colleagues, hoping that one of them might have succeeded where she’d failed. Like her, Faia, Roba, and Thirk had all been searching the earth and the sky for usable power. Roba and Thirk had given up. They looked from her to each other. Their eyes reflected the horror of their situation.

  Faia tried longer. She closed her eyes and formed her hands into the shape of a ball. Her fingertips glowed faintly blue, and for a moment, a thread of blue light traced its way from the ball of power she’d collected to the pilot’s brace. When it did, the airbox righted its direction. But the light grew paler almost as soon as she’d drawn it, and after only a moment it faded and disappeared. Her forehead creased with concentration. The airbox swung back and forth, with Nokar and Kirgen directing it and Faia supplying a steadily decreasing stream of power. Finally, though, the airbox resumed its eastward course, and Faia dropped her hands to her sides and looked up. “It’s gone,” she said. Her voice was hollow, edged with fear. “The magic’s gone.”

  Nokar leaned heavily against the useless pilot’s brace and stared straight ahead. “I know,” he said.

  The airbox flew on, right toward the village of the Silk People, losing altitude all the while.

  Into the horrified silence, Roba Morgasdotte asked, “How is the airbox still flying?” Her hands twisted the leather straps of her pack, and her fingers trembled. “How can it fly with no magic?”

  “I don’t know,” Nokar said.

  “It’s the doing of the Keyu,” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl answered in her own tongue. “We have angered the Keyu, and now we will all die.”

  Medwind translated for Roba, Thirk, and Kirgen. “She says we made the trees angry, and now we’re going to die.”

  “No,” Fat Girl said, switching to Arissonese. “We not angered keyu—trees. We angered Keyu. Gods.” She pulled her dartstick from her belt. Then she stood and lifted her clenched fist until it touched the ceiling of the airbox. “Kyadda. We die now—but we die like tagnu. All you—get quicklights out. Do what I tell you. Damn-damn Keyu going to pay this time.”

  “Brace yourselves!” Nokar yelled. “We’re going to hit!” He gripped the pilot’s brace and gasped, and Medwind looked past him, into the jungle. They dropped below the canopy, and she caught a blurred glimpse of a dozen airboxes—and then they skidded across the deep jungle loam and bounced to a stop. The nose of their airbox came to a halt against the gouged-open door of an orange rental airbox.

  The air filled with cries and groans.

  Even though she’d braced, that final bounce threw Medwind into the back of the seat in front of her. She’d felt her nose crunch, and blinding white-hot pain shot straight through to the back of her head. She tasted blood. Others among her companions swore softly, and both Runs Slow and Kirtha began crying.

  Kirgen got to his feet and worked his way through the compartment, checking to see that everyone was safe. He bore a few cuts and scratches, but otherwise looked fine. When he came to her, Medwind held her bleeding nose and waved him on.

  By the time the world quit spinning, Fat Girl was at the airbox door, listening. “Stay! Quiet!” the Wen girl snarled. She shook her head in frustration, cracked the door open a tiny bit, and froze in position again.

  “Nothing there now,” she said with satisfaction. “Everybody out, get dry stuff, put it up against trees, and start fires.”

  “What? Why?!” Thirk said. “The jungle will be too wet to burn—and even if we could start fires, we might burn ourselves in them.”

  “You are peknu,” the girl said. Her expression was cold. “You in Silk People land, with big Silk People village right over there.” She pointed off into the trees. “When Silk People catch you, they kill you. Fsst-fsst.” She made an unpleasantly abrupt gesture across her throat with her fingers.

  Medwind winced. If their magic were intact, she wouldn’t be worried about the Wen. Faia was a potent weapon—a natural talent more powerful than any trained magician Medwind had ever come across even when she was untrained—and now that she had training, possibly unbeatable. The rest of the party combined varying degrees of natural talent with years of schooling and experience. Nothing could have hurt them.

  Except that they had no power from which to draw their magic. They were as dependent on whatever physical fighting skills they pos
sessed as the magicless Wen kids.

  Medwind pulled her waterproofed packet of quicklights out of her pack. “Get tinder from those other airboxes,” she said. “Start the fires. It will at least give us a diversion so we can escape.”

  Fat Girl laughed bitterly. “We not escape. The Keyu make sure of that. We die now—but we take the gods with us.”

  Kirgen and Seven-Fingered Fat Girl and Dog Nose pushed all the downed airboxes except their own together, while Roba and Thirk and Nokar piled the dry contents into a heap in the central one. They lit a fire; then, when it began to blaze, tossed clothes, books and other items from the airboxes into the heap. Medwind tore the contents of the airboxes into shreds and piled the shreds inside the middle airbox.

  Faia watched, holding Kirtha and Runs Slow.

  Medwind lit the tinder. It caught and began to blaze. Then the fire went out.

  She lit it again, and again it started to blaze—and again, some unseen force snuffed it out.

  “Keyu.” Fat Girl had been watching the progress of the flames. She stared around at the trees and muttered, “They not like fire so close to their places.”

  Medwind tensed. They’re watching, she thought. The Wen—or whatever guards the Wen have set to protect themselves. She shivered involuntarily and peered into the canopied gloom around her. She saw nothing but trees, but the feeling of eyes on her never faltered. Watching us from somewhere out of sight.

  She snarled. Come out and fight, sheshrud, cowards, drinkers of goat-piss, she thought. Come out and die.

  A muffled exclamation drew her attention to one of the outer ring of airboxes. “Heya!” Roba yelled. She emerged from the ripped door and held aloft something large and white. “Look what was in this airbox!”

  It was another First Folk tablet—surely the same tablet Praniksonne had stolen from the Wen kids in the market. Which meant that all those downed airboxes, with the doors gouged open and huge clawmarks scarring the painted wood sides—