by Holly Lisle
“Who are you?” Medwind asked.
“I saved your life,” the skinny child said. “I will save it again. And then you will save mine.”
Medwind helped Kirgen position the unresponsive Roba on his back. Faia and Dog Nose propped Nokar up between them. Seven-Fingered Fat Girl put Kirtha on her shoulders and held Runs Slow’s hand. Medwind helped Thirk up, and he leaned on her.
Medwind told the little girl, “Let’s go.”
The skinny girl led them out of the circle and into the midst of a herd of children—about fifteen of them, all tattooed, one boy, the rest girls (and some of those very pregnant). What in the hells are we going to do with all these kids, Medwind wondered. But where the kids led, she followed. They trotted along a ground path, one that twisted and tangled through the tree-maze. Several times, the whole crowd of them had to backtrack, stopped by flames or desperate Wen. One of the older tattooed girls fell, transfixed by a spear. Faia caught one of the big stone knives in her thigh, and bled and swore. The smoke was a bigger danger than the Wen, however, and Medwind crouched as best she could to stay beneath the worst of it.
They reached a wall of flames—the tiny aperture that entered onto the tree-path blazed with magefire.
Medwind clenched her fists in frustration. She didn’t have the strength left to pull in magic to fight the fire. She was too weary even to shield effectively. She stared at the burning tree-wall, powerless.
The skinny little kid and her friends, though, were doing something. They all touched hands and stared at the flames. The magefires slowly dimmed, then backed away from the aperture that led into the long and twisting path. Medwind yelled, “Get through fast,” and she and the staggering Thirk made a clumsy run at the smoking, charred wood.
They would have to go through one at a time. Medwind knelt to go through first. Thirk stumbled and fell heavily against her, and she tripped into the red-glowing wood. The coals seared into her left shoulder, and she jerked away, hissing from the pain. She scooted through and turned and pulled him in after her. She could see Kirgen, with Roba on his back, coming in as she and Thirk started down the path.
The tattooed children held back the live flames, at least from the first part of the passageway. Nevertheless, the heat in the tree tunnel was unbearable. Every breath she took burned her lungs. She would have given anything she owned for a cloth to hold over her nose and mouth. Her eyes watered from the heat and the smoke and the ash that blew in the hellish fire-winds. Coals fallen to the forest floor burned her bare feet when she misstepped. She ached for a single wisp of cool air, or the touch of fresh water to her cracked, blistered lips. She hobbled forward, praying to all the gods whose names she could remember for the safe passage of the people she loved and dragged the whimpering Thirk behind her.
The path widened much faster than she remembered and was much shorter. She thought she recalled the passage taking hours, through convoluted, narrow tree-walls—but with a few steps, she was to the point where she and Thirk could once again move side by side. And after a single turn in the passageway, she could see the end of the twin rows of trees. Her mind refused to accept this, even when she made out, in the deep gloom of the jungle’s daybreak, the forms of the airboxes hunkered down in the small clearing ahead.
It’s a trick—or a trap, she thought. One last Wen ruse. But the airboxes remained solid and unchanging as she and Thirk drew near.
They used drug-smoke on us on the way in, she remembered suddenly. But the roshu were real. She stopped and looked around the clearing from the relative protection of the tree-walls. She could see none of the huge beasts. She moved forward again as Kirgen caught up with her and bumped into her.
She and Thirk staggered forward again, in a gross parody of a run. They moved out of the tree-tunnel—and the faint cross-breeze of cool, clean air brushed against her skin and trickled into her lungs. She moved faster, crossed the clearing, and stumbled up to Nokar’s beautiful carved airbox, now scarred by roshu claws and with the door ripped completely away from the frame. She fell into the airbox interior, and she and Thirk lay on the cool wood floor for an instant, panting and weeping. Kirgen joined them and placed his burden carefully along the aisle between the rows of high-backed benches. The rest of the troop caught up in ones and twos. The horde of tattooed kids brought up the rear in a solid, screaming, cheering clump. Everyone crowded into the battered airbox.
Faia and Dog Nose placed Nokar beside Roba.
“They need healing,” Faia said.
“Yah,” Medwind agreed, “but not here. We need to get to safety first.”
Kirgen, who was kneeling at Roba’s side in the narrow aisle, gripped the unconscious woman’s hand and looked up at the Hoos woman. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her—but she may not live until we find a safe place.”
Medwind nodded. She stared pointedly at Nokar and, when Kirgen’s gaze followed hers, answered softly, “I know. But we have more than two lives to think of. We need to use whatever energy we can muster to fly out of here. When we get someplace secure, then—well—” She shrugged.
The muscles in Kirgen’s jaw clenched. “I could fly us out now—but I’m too drained. It will be hours before I can summon and control sufficient magic to lift us off—and you’re in worse shape than I am.”
In her own language, the homely little tattooed leader of the Wen pack asked Medwind, “Why do you not take us out of here now? We saved you, just as we promised.”
Medwind sighed. “We need the—ah—the Keyu-strength, but we are too tired to bring it to us.”
“There are no trees in the sky for you to touch,” the girl objected. “How can you use Keyu-strength there?”
Faia, cradling Kirtha on her lap and hugging the little girl, said in Sropt, “Same strength is in sky and earth, wind and fire. It come from everything around us.”
The skinny girl tipped her head to one side and said, “If it is there, we can get it for you. Show us how to find it; then take us out of this place.”
Medwind’s eyebrows lifted. She translated what the girl said to Kirgen, and the two of them exchanged looks. “What do you think?”
“Fine with me. Show her how to tap the ley-lines if you have the strength.”
Medwind demonstrated, trying not to think of the fire that moved ever closer to their downed airbox, or of the horrors she’d just survived. She taught the Wen children the rudiments as quickly as she could, and thanked every god she could think of when the first thin trickles of channeled energy bubbled to life in their cupped hands.
Then she showed them how to direct it into the control bar—and explained that, once the airbox was off the ground, they couldn’t stop bringing in the energy until they were safely back on the ground. Everyone’s life depended on them—one more time. She made sure they understood that.
“Are they ready?” Kirgen asked. He tugged on his singed beard and shifted in the pilot seat. “As soon as they’re ready, I’ll lift us off.”
Medwind asked them, and one by one, those tattooed kids who could channel magic nodded their readiness.
Their leader, the same skinny little girl who’d saved Medwind’s life twice already, said, “We can do this. We won’t fail.”
Without further discussion, the kids crouched in a line down the aisle, and started pulling in power and feeding it through each other and into the control bar. Their magic was neither neat nor pretty, but it was enough.
Kirgen leaned on the control bar wearily and began to shape the raw energy—and slowly but steadily, the airbox lifted out of the clearing and away from the burning Wen village.
Chapter 9
SEVEN-FINGERED Fat Girl and Dog Nose crowded together onto the airbox’s eagle-seat so they could be together while Fat Girl directed Kirgen. Wind roared in through the opening left by the missing door; Fat Girl’s throat was sore from shouting over it. She was stiff from sitting in one place for so long. But she didn’t care. Beneath her, the flat blanket of jungle changed to d
eep green, crumpled folds of earth, and in the distance she saw the jagged blue lines of a range of mountains.
Home, she thought. We’re almost home.
Not without cost.
She ignored the burns on her back and sides. She and her people were better off than the peknu; the Keyu had shoved Dog Nose, Runs Slow, and her out of the way and refused to eat them. Once tagnu, always tagnu, she decided. Her blisters and raw, red patches hurt, but they looked less awful than the open, bleeding sores the Godtrees had left on the peknu.
She touched Kirgen’s shoulder, near one of those sores. “Hurt you?” she asked.
He winced. “Like fire. And part of my hand is numb. Damn trees dug holes in all of us.” He glanced back at his woman, lying in the aisle, and she could see terrible fear and sorrow in his eyes. Fat Girl imagined how she would feel if Dog Nose were hurt, and maybe dying, and she wished she hadn’t said anything. The young peknu looked so sad.
She pointed at the mountain range. “We get there soon? Yes?”
Kirgen nodded.
“Good. We are almost past the place where the Silk People live. Where the trees are thinner, they don’t live there.”
Medwind leaned forward and shouted, “I imagine the Silk People are trapped in low-lying regions where baofar grow.”
Kirgen yelled back, “You think the Wen are tied to the Godtrees?”
The Hoos woman nodded. “I’d hate to make any more wrong assumptions. The last one almost got us killed—I don’t think I’ll ever assume we can handle anything the world throws at us again—but I think so.”
“That would be good,” the saje yelled. “Seven-Fingered Fat Girl and Dog Nose have pointed out three more Keyu-villages that we’ve passed. I wonder why those Keyu didn’t attack.”
Fat Girl was pleased with how well she had followed most of the conversation. When Kirgen asked that, though, she decided she hadn’t understood as much as she thought.
She and Dog Nose exchanged puzzled looks. Fat Girl phrased her question carefully in the saje’s language. “You ask why rest of Godtrees not attack us?”
“Yes,” Kirgen said.
Seven-Fingered Fat Girl raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “You killed gods. You think other Godtrees want you to come and kill them? The Keyu know we are near—they always know everything. But they not touch us. Gods not like to know they can die, I think.”
Kirgen laughed. “That makes a lot of sense.”
Medwind moved forward, keeping well clear of the gaping hole in the airbox side and out of the way of the tattooed Wen children. She crouched between the three of them, in front of the control bar. The warrior woman asked Fat Girl, “Where is the closest place we can land and make camp? Right now, we need to take care of our wounded more than we need to find the city.”
Fat Girl remembered the battle with rival tagnu that had cost her most of her band. “We must go far as the first mountain valleys, because tagnu not go into the mountains.”
She saw Medwind frown. “The Wen children are tired, and the rest of us are not strong enough yet to wield the magic in their stead. And more than anything, we must tend to Roba and Nokar.”
Seven-Fingered Fat Girl rested a hand on Medwind’s sooty shoulder. Earnestly, she said, “Until we reach mountains, tagnu got Paths everywhere. If we bring airbox down near Path, tagnu of that Path attack us quick-quick. Maybe we able to kill them all. Maybe not. We all tired and we hurt. Maybe we not fight so good. So we go to mountains now.”
Medwind leaned forward and rested her hands on her bare, dirt-coated knees. She sighed. “This is your world, Fat Girl. You’re in charge.”
Fat Girl nodded, satisfied. That was the natural order of things, after all. She led and others followed.
* * *
Choufa focused on the yellow metal bar in front of her and pulled in the power the dying Keyu released. It became more difficult the farther she got from the burning Wen village. Only some of the other sharsha could help—only some of them could feel the power that flowed from the earth and sky—and from the slaughtered Godtrees. Those who could not help sat with their hands clasped, waiting. Their eyes told Choufa they were waiting for the Keyu to reclaim them all.
It wouldn’t happen. No matter how tired she got, she wouldn’t let it.
The airbox passed over other Silk People places, and briefly, as they flew over, she could hear the frightened voices of the Keyu.
<—not food we do not want I/we/I do not hunger for that lifefire do not catch do not bring them pass let them pass don’t let them hurt us—>
And Choufa smiled, and whispered in the mindspeech of the Keyu,
She heard the panic in the Keyu voices and felt them scrabbling after power to send—then energy flowed into her and into the other working sharsha as well. Their eyes went wide with surprise. A few of the children whispered cheers.
The sharsha who couldn’t feel the Keyu-strength enter the airbox didn’t know what had happened. For all of them, stocky, dark-haired Maari asked, “Why do you smile, Choufa?”
Choufa bared her teeth in a wicked grin and hissed, “The Godtrees fear us. They cry out when we pass and beg for their lives. They gift us with their power, so that we will go away and leave them alone.”
Maari grinned in return. “We should burn them anyway,” she said.
Choufa shook her head. “We will take their power and fly to places with no gods. And none of us will be food for the Keyu.”
“Yah,” Maari said after an instant. “That is good enough.”
* * *
The airbox settled in a meadow at the mouth of a deeply cut valley; the valley angled back into the high ridge and vanished between the bulky shoulders of sister peaks.
Medwind and Kirgen pulled out the few provisions the roshu hadn’t gotten. They distributed clothes from the packs and set up shelters for everyone. The tattooed Wen kids refused to sleep in tents—they insisted that when the time came, they would sleep on the floor of the airbox. They gave Medwind bitter little smiles when she offered them help and said that sharsha didn’t need help. She noticed that they and the tagnu kept as far from each other as work and the confines of the clearing allowed. She wondered at that, but didn’t ask.
When camp was set up and the walking injured were being treated for their wounds, Medwind knelt by the bed she’d made for Nokar. He was protected by a felt tarp and wrapped in blankets and spare clothes to ward off the mountain cold. He lay, breathing shallowly, his face pale and waxy. His eyes were closed. He hadn’t responded to anything since she pulled him out of the baofar ramet.
“You saved my life once, old man,” she whispered. She traced his soot-grimed, age-crinkled eyelids with a finger. “Are you going to let me return the favor?”
Nokar didn’t respond.
Faia came up and squatted beside her. “I have been doing what I can to heal the burns and tree-wounds, Medwind.” The girl picked a stem of grass from the meadow and absently chewed on its base. “Most of the damage will heal on its own. Only some of the wounds will require the intervention of magic—herbs and roots took care of the simple things.”
“That’s good news. Who will need the healer-magic?”
“Kirgen has some damage to one hand; I have the hole in my leg from the knife; Roba is terribly injured; and Nokar… well…” Faia looked away, back over the endless expanse of greenery that rolled to the west “Well…” she said again.
The hill-girl tore the remainder of the grass stem into long strings. Her fidgeting was making Medwind nervous.
Faia put down the shreds of grass and sighed. “There are things I have to take care of very soon. Right now Roba is caught between waking and sleeping—trapped in the world of feverdreams. I have done what I can for that. Tomorrow, perhaps she will recognize people. We will see. However, she cannot move her arms or legs, either. The baofar b
ored its rootlets straight into the whitecord that runs through the spine. Something ripped the rootlets out of her. That destroyed most of her whitecord. It is because of the whitecord damage that her breathing is very weak, and she cannot move, and she has so many bad burns. She could not escape the magefires.”
“Can you heal her?”
Faia closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. “I do not know. I have several problems. First, the whitecord is complex—every bit of it has to be restored exactly right or the result will be a disaster. Second, I have not repaired whitecord damage on people before—only on sheep. Third, I will not be able to heal her from outside. To fix the cord, I will have to become part of it.”
Medwind raised an eyebrow. “That’s dangerous.”
Faia looked down at her hands. “I know. If one of the sajes were in any shape to transport, he could go get someone with experience. If we could wait a day or two, Kirgen might be able to go. But I am afraid she will die before then. And…” The hill-girl faltered and stared into Medwind’s eyes with a worried expression.
“What’s bothering you?”
“She does not like me. She is jealous because of Kirgen and Kirtha. If everything does not go well, I am afraid she will blame me—and that Kirgen will blame me, also.”
“You will be risking your life to save her.”
Faia’s mouth twisted into a half-smile. “People seem to only remember that when the results are good.”
The Hoos warrior nodded slowly. “You are right, of course.” She stroked her fingers along her husband’s face and waited for the hill-girl to continue. When she said nothing, Medwind sighed and asked, “And what of Nokar?”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. “His condition is worse than Roba’s, although the baofar damaged him only a little,” Faia said. “From the injuries the tree caused, he might have some weakness in his legs—especially his left leg—but that is all.”