by Holly Lisle
She became aware of a foul taste in her mouth, and of pain that ripped straight through her eyes to the back of her skull. Red flares flashed behind her eyelids with every beat of the bludgeoning cadence of her pulse. She was lost in darkness, lost inside as well as out. She was unsure of her name, could not remember where she was, had no idea how she came to be there.
Rumblings began softly—then became louder. Were they far away? Did they move nearer? Storm coming? she wondered, and “storm” felt wrong but the feeling of “storm”—of things brewing, gathering energy, waiting to explode into sudden fury—that was the feeling the rumblings gave her.
To pain and confusion, she added fear. The arrhythmic thundering noise, she felt sure, was tied to the darkness, to the hurtings of her body.
Drumbeats, she thought.
And remembered.
Roba Morgasdotte came fully awake and forced her swollen, matter-crusted eyes open. It was dusk. She lay naked, facedown on hard-packed clay still cold and damp and slimy from the last rain. She was cold; her head hurt; her wrists and elbows and shoulders blazed with agony. She tried to roll over or sit, but couldn’t—someone had tied her wrists together behind her and strung them to a tree branch overhead. Every move she made—even something as simple as turning her head from side to side—sent fresh fire lancing from her shoulders up to her fingertips.
If she eased her head carefully from side to side, she could see Thirk to her right, and the older Wen girl to her left—both of them facedown; naked; tied. It hurt too much to twist any more, but from the groans and labored breathing all around her, she had to assume the rest of the exploration party was there.
“Anybody awake?” she whispered.
“Yah,” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl answered.
“Do you know what happened?” Roba rested her cheek on the wet clay and closed her eyes and tried to focus her attention on something besides the pain.
“Yah.” The girl’s voice was strained. “They used evastevoffuschrom—‘smoke to sleep the bad-beasts.’ The Wen use it to make sleep the little roshu or kellinks what get on the Path.”
Roba groaned. “You’re saying they trapped us and drugged us.”
“They not nice people,” Fat Girl said. “I tell you peknu this—you don’t think I tell you true.”
Medwind’s voice, muffled and edged with bitterness, came from Roba’s left. “We believed—we simply didn’t think there was anything the Wen could do to us.” Roba heard a brief scuffle, then Medwind’s muffled swearing. “Damn them—I can’t move at all! Lying here flat on my belly and sick as death—and I can’t even roll to my side to breathe.”
Sick, Roba thought. That’s certainly part of it. Her mouth had been home to rodents while she was unconscious, she decided; unclean, unhousebroken rodents. They’d left their fur and worse coating her tongue. Her stomach churned on nothing, the world tilted and rocked like a fisherman’s boat in stormy seas. She’d never been seasick at sea—she was seasick here on dry land.
“Why will the magic not work?” Roba heard Faia’s voice. “I can feel its presence—but I cannot touch it.”
At the sound of the young woman’s voice, Kirtha wailed, “Mama! Help me!”
Roba’s aching hands tightened into fists. The misbegotten Wen had tied even the smallest of the children.
I can get out of this, she thought. There are tricks for tapping into magic. The magic is here—and, if it’s here, I can use it.
She forced herself to relax. She convinced her body that it was floating, free and comfortable in a sea of mud—warm mud. She imagined riding a slow spiraling current of warmth down into the mud, until it surrounded her and she became a part of it. She felt good—safe and warm and free. Earth, she thought. Full of energy—
She reached out, probing through the earth for simple power, for a mere acceleration of a natural process—the process of rotting the rope that bound her. It wasn’t even really magic, what she sought to do—nothing more taxing than the spell a farmer might use to sense the character of the next day’s weather.
She sent her mind coursing, searching through the earth as far as she could stretch, quartering around her like a fanghare sniffing water in the desert. The power stayed just out of reach, palpable but inaccessible.
Air, she thought, and in her mind re-created herself as a thing of wind and sunlight—she imagined herself drifting free of the muddy earth, free of her bonds, of the towering walls of trees—saw herself drifting formless and free among, then above, tall clouds. Power, she thought, and searched for it.
There was no power for her to take from the sky.
Patiently, with enormous calm, she communed with fire, and then with water—and always, the power was close enough that she could feel its presence, but untouchable.
She came back to herself then—back to her shame and her pain and her captivity. Roba let her head drop forward. The elusive, unidentifiable magic defeated her. Ironic, she thought. I am surrounded by some of the greatest magical talent in Arhel, and all that talent isn’t going to be able to save my life.
The drums pounded, incessant noise without rhythm. The Wen sang and chanted. Somewhere nearby a woman screamed, and the first gasping squalls of a newborn baby tore into the air.
Then the chanting grew louder and faster, and the drums were joined by thundering booms so deep Roba felt them before she heard them.
“Now.” Medwind spoke, her voice flat and emotionless. “The biggest drums are saying ‘Now!’”
“What do they mean?” Thirk asked. “What ‘now’?”
“Now we die,” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl said. “Now they give us to the Keyu.”
The first fat drops of cold rain struck Roba’s face and stirred the mud in which she lay, and a flash of lightning and the hard crash of nearby thunder punctuated the Wen drumbeats.
* * *
A man with a knife knelt beside Medwind’s head and pressed his blade gently against the base of her throat. His green-and-gold silks brushed the ground. He spoke to someone behind her in rapid Sropt. “Beat her around a little. Let her know we’re in charge.”
“Lizard-humping tree-burner,” Medwind snarled, also in Sropt. “Your mother screw with worms—your father was one.”
Behind her, the unseen second man laughed and jerked on the rope that held her wrists. In spite of herself, Medwind gasped. Then he dug his heel into the bend at the back of her knee—and she yelled.
“Don’t break her,” the first man said. “I don’t want to have to carry her to the Keyu. She’s too heavy.” He looked down at Medwind and pressed the knife against her flesh so hard she felt it bite into her skin.
She winced, but held very still.
“So you speak the Tongue of People, hey, peknu? Well, then, you’ll take comfort in knowing that you’re going to die for a good purpose. You’re shit, and we’re going to fertilize the Keyu with you.” He grinned and with his free hand fumbled under her shoulder in the mud, until he found her breast. He pinched her nipple and twisted. “Tree-food—that’s you.”
Medwind bit her lip and kept quiet.
“Do we have time to enjoy her?” the second man asked. “I’ve never had peknu before.”
“It wouldn’t be worth the cycle of cleansing you’d have to do afterwards.” He spat in Medwind’s face. “Peknu—pah! That’s lower than dracching corpses.”
She heard the other man sigh. “Maybe so—but she looks livelier than a corpse.”
“She won’t for long.” The first man glared at Medwind. “You are going to behave. If you don’t we’ll slit your belly and pull your entrails out and feed you to the Keyu that way. The Keyu don’t care if we rip you into shreds—so long as you’re still breathing when they get you.”
The second man kept one foot braced on the back of her knee and pulled her upward by tugging on her bound wrists. The pain was incredible.
“You understand me, stinking peknu?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Medwind whispered. She glared at him thro
ugh her haze of pain and added to herself, You corpse-dracching tapeworm-abortion. I understand. And if I ever have the chance, I’ll make you understand. I’ll rip your balls off with my bare hands and stuff them up your nose.
The second man cut the rope that bound her, while the first kept the knife in her throat. She tried to recall a Hoos grapple that would work with one man standing on her knee twisting her arms behind her and the other one trying to knife her, and she came up empty. The Hoos were not supposed to end up in those positions, she decided.
“Hurry up and retie her,” the first man snapped.
The second was fumbling with the rope. Medwind squirmed, and instantly the pressure on both her throat and the back of her knee increased.
“Do not move,” the first man said.
Medwind could feel her blood running in warm, pulsing streams down her neck. “Yes,” she said, and held her arms out behind her for the second man to bind. She clasped her palms together and interlocked her fingers.
The second man muttered, “That’s better.” He jerked the coarse vine-rope so tight Medwind gasped, and the bastard with the knife at her throat grinned.
The deepest of the drums were pounding out, “Feed us, feed us!” Medwind found this unnerving.
They pulled her to her feet and dragged her into line. Each member of the exploration team was there. Nokar looked like the very hells—frail and helpless and beaten. And older—she couldn’t believe how much older he looked. His naked body seemed to be made of nothing but paper and bones.
The rest were battered and bleeding. Fat Girl fought like one insane—or like a beast, who would rather chew off its leg and die free than face the end its captors planned. The rest struggled at intervals, or went passively. But none of them were Hoos.
As a Hoos, she had duties. The duty to rescue her friends. The duty to escape. The duty to kill her captors or die trying. She’d spent the first years of her life learning her duties and a thousand tricks for carrying those duties out.
She tried to stay calm and to wait for opportunity to present itself. She knew she would only get one chance—if she got that. Any mistake, any prematurity on her part, would be fatal. She watched, and stayed ready.
But the Wen dragged her and her friends over their branching roads carefully. They too knew a thousand tricks. They stayed wary. They didn’t make any mistakes. They led the outlanders and the outcasts into a tree-circle, full of drummers and dancers and hellish noise, and Medwind felt the last of her hope evaporate.
* * *
The Silk People were taking them all to the Keyu, along aerial walkways worn smooth by the passage of the uncounted sacrifices who’d preceded her.
Her hands were tied behind her back, but Seven-Fingered Fat Girl fought the Silk People with teeth and feet; butted her head into the stomach of one green-and-gold-swathed captor; screamed fury and terror into the noise that surrounded her. Once long ago she had trusted people and had walked quietly beside men like these—and once she was ripped from the arms of her parents, given a pack and a dartstick, and thrown to the jungle to be food for kellinks or roshu or dooru. In spite of the Silk People, she had lived. Knowing she went to her death, she would not go quietly again.
The three men of the Silk People dragged her along the treewalks, up and down the twisting braided branching paths, stumbling as she kicked and fought. She did everything she could to make them lose their balance. If they fell and took her with them, or even if they didn’t fall, but dropped her, she wouldn’t care. She would rather fall and die than feed the Keyu. She would rather do anything than become food for the Keyu.
She could hear her tagnu and the peknu behind her, struggling too. She didn’t have time to think about the others who shared her predicament—the best she could do was wish them luck, and a quick death.
Ahead, more of the Silk People waited, and beyond them—beyond them squatted the Keyu, as ugly and twisted and malevolent as she’d remembered. The tree-gods thundered their impatience—drummed Feed us, feed us! at terrible volume, so that the very jungle seemed to shake.
Seven-Fingered Fat Girl never quit fighting—but the men were used to resistance. They brought her safely down to the ground, between the rows of waiting Silk People, and into the cursed circle of the gods. Then they held her there, twisting one arm behind her back until she fell to her knees. They waited.
More men brought the rest of the group into the circle. They bound Dog Nose tightly—hands and feet. He’d given them a fight, she thought. His nose bled and his face was bruised and swollen, and his chest was scratched and cut and bleeding in two places. The men who carried him in looked equally battered. Dog Nose looked at her from across the clearing.
On her knees, but with her head unbowed, she met his eyes. You were right, she thought. We should not have travelled with the peknu. She regretted their anger with each other the last few days, and the time she had not spent with him. She regretted holding her position as the band’s fat over him. So many regrets.
“I’m sorry,” she mouthed.
He shook his head “no” and looked into her eyes. He formed the word “peknu” with his lips, then something Fat Girl couldn’t make out.
She moved her head in the tiniest of increments—”no”—and willed him to understand her.
She saw comprehension in his eyes, and he mouthed “in peknu.”
This time she understood.
He mouthed the words again. Slowly. “I—love—you.”
It was a peknu sentiment—their language had no such words. She nodded, feeling tears starting down her cheeks. “I love you,” she told him.
He nodded and looked satisfied. “Goodbye,” he mouthed, at the same time that the Silk People noticed the exchange. They dragged Dog Nose out of her line of sight.
She bit her lip and tasted the salt of her tears. May we meet after death in a place with no gods, she thought.
The Silk People dragged Nokar beside her, and she felt a moment of dismay. His head hung, and he shuffled when he walked. They had beaten him, too—welts and bleeding cuts stood out from the mud all over his naked body. Even without the bruises, however, there would have been something wrong with him. He looked older than before, though she would not have imagined that was possible. His skin was gray and tight over his bones—and so thin and fragile-looking she thought she could almost see the bones through it. He had not looked like that in the peknu town.
He’s dying, she thought, then almost laughed at the stupidity of her concern. They were all dying.
She turned her eyes away from him, and saw Runs Slow, hands tied behind her back, still fighting with the man who restrained her. The man hit her—hard—and she fell forward and lay crying in the dirt.
The green-and-gold-silk man who held Kirtha stood beside the one who held Runs Slow. That man laughed and said something to Runs Slow’s keeper, then picked up Kirtha and swung her upside-down by one foot. Kirtha shrieked and her face went red. Immediately, Faia, Medwind, and even Nokar were fighting again. Fat Girl rammed her head into the groin of the man nearest her and broke free—surprising all of them. She was on her feet and charging the man who dangled Kirtha before he could put the child down. Fat Girl got in one head butt to his face before he dropped Kirtha and punched his fist into Fat Girl’s belly.
Fat Girl went down, gasping for air—and the first man she’d rammed with her head walked over while she lay there and kicked her in the side. She tried to find some satisfaction in the first man’s limp, and the gaping hole in the other man’s mouth where his front teeth had been, but pain swallowed that satisfaction far too quickly.
When the first man tired of kicking her, he grabbed her by one ankle and dragged her back to her place in line. She was too hurt to struggle.
She wished she could kill the stinking Silk People. She’d often wished them dead, but she’d never thought of herself as the weapon that would kill them. At that moment, she wished she were such a weapon.
The last of the s
pectators filed in. At a signal from the priest, the drums stilled. The chanting stopped.
The biggest of the Keyu spoke.
Give us our offerings, it drummed. We hunger.
The Mu-Keyi, chief priest of the village, pranced and strutted like a puffing-krull seeking mates. He drummed boasts to his gods—boasts of the wonderful things he’d done for them, of the grand sacrifices he gave them. While he drummed, the green-and-gold silk men lined up in some prearranged order, with their victims held firmly between them. Her captors pulled Fat Girl back to her feet. In front of her, two men held a bald, tattooed girl who leaned from side to side, crying. The girl was pale. Blood ran down her legs and pooled at her feet. A sharsha, Fat Girl realized. She’d only seen one before, on her own terrible naming day—the day of her exile. That day, the sharsha had been the only food for the Keyu.
The drums started up again, and the first of the green-and-gold silk men moved forward. He held Kirtha aloft.
The Mu-Keyi drummed and danced and chanted, while Kirtha’s guard carried her to the base of the biggest tree and put her down in front of it.
“Kirtha, RUN!” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl screamed, and Kirtha stood and started to run toward her mother.
The Keyu’s thick white palps wrapped around the little girl, and the huge tree made a strange, crooning, creaking noise. The child screamed and struggled and kicked. The front of the tree split open from the base upward, and the palps brought the child forward to the mouth.
The Silk People drummed and prayed and chanted. Faia screamed. She kicked at her guards and fought to get free.
Kirtha stopped screaming and stared at the Keyu. The tree quit pulling the little girl toward its maw. The rest of the trees quit drumming for food. The priests fell silent. Everything stopped.
In the sudden silence, Fat Girl heard Kirtha say, “Bad tree.”
The Keyu’s palps burst into flames.
Chapter 8
WHEN first the Wen guards forced Medwind into the tree-circle, she could find no cause for hope. But as the moments passed, and the Wen began their ritual, she sensed something that made her think she and her colleagues might have a chance to survive after all.