by Jean Johnson
“You wished my attention, Sejo?” the aging but still acute Efrijt asked. Unlike her soot black hair, or her cousin’s bright orange, his hair flowed over his shoulders in a rich, deep auburn. He did not lift his ruby-hued gaze, though she knew he was aware of every detail above the half-circle lenses perched in their wire frames on his nose. They were an artifact, enchanted to assist him in his duties.
“I need some information on a stranger visiting us. He claims to have encountered Efrijt on another world,” she told him.
Harkut lifted his gaze at that. “An outworlder? Here?”
“A human, brown skin, dark brown eyes, black hair, lean, but taller than most. Colorful tattoos embedded in his skin,” she described. “He claims to be associated with the Fae Rii, whom he insists arrived here over forty-five years ago.”
“Hmm.” Sefo Harkut stared across the room. “Fae . . . That would explain the ‘golden anima-beings’ that Seso Parut heard mentioned in rumors by the miners. Parut says they call us the ‘vermillion anima-beings,’ so that would explain who the golden ones are. Anything else?”
“Yes, a world . . . with an odd name . . .” Zakal cast her mind back over the conversation, found the word, and ran it past her thoughts a couple of times. Finally, she said, “He called it ‘Shkaulufet’th.’ Have you heard of it?”
The sefo wrinkled his brickred nose. “It’s one of the Netherhells. One of the few realms where we have to be careful in what contracts are made and signed. Are you certain the stranger said Shkaulufet’th?”
“Fairly certain. He claims one of us abandoned him there. Or did not take him with them, since he refused to sign a contract enslaving him to his rescuers,” she added dryly. “Of course, he also claimed this took place roughly seventeen centuries ago. I’m certain the length of time is an exaggeration.”
“It’ll cost around a half dram, possibly three-quarters, to go back through nearly two millennia of archived information. Even with a world-name and a general timeframe to help pinpoint a particular incident, it will not be easy.” He eyed her over the tops of his half-moon spectacles. “Are you certain you wish to spend that much mercury?”
Zakal debated a long moment, then shrugged. “He claims to be in the service of the Fae, who live twenty centuries. It is possible he comes from a world where they have figured out how to make someone merely human live that long, or that the Fae found a race they could experiment upon to try to improve their own longevity. Or he could be a liar,” she added wryly, “but the man holds a palpable grudge against our race. If his complaint is legitimate, and if he is favored by the Fae, that could cause us even more problems. He certainly seemed to be aware of our method of operating on primitive worlds where contracts are memorized, not written down.”
“If he came from Shkaulufet’th, he would be aware, though I didn’t know they were birthing the beasts in human form of late,” Harkut murmured. “Still, a full dram of potential prevention is far cheaper to waste than a gallon of reparations.”
“I do not think he was born there, Sefo,” Zakal said, frowning mildly. “But if he was there, and did encounter an Efrijt, I want to know what damage I will have to control, when we contest our claim to these cinnabar mines with those nosy, profitless Fae.”
“A good point. And we are up two extra pints of mercury this month,” Harkut added, tipping his head to acknowledge the windfall of good ores. “I shall draft the query and send payment before the end of the day.”
“Thank you, Sefo. Your information-delving skills are a solid strength for our medjant,” Zakal told him. “It does no good to mine and extract the mercury if we have no way to network and sell the results, and no way to know and counter what our competitors might be doing.”
“Well, aside from getting drunk on a regular basis, and living forever,” Harkut mused, mouth curving enough to show the tip of one of his tusks. “But we’d run out of the finer things in life, and I have zero interest in being reduced to the lifestyle of a local.”
“Neither do I.” Bowing her head to her fellow first-rank, Zakal left his study.
She, as the executive officer, had the final say in the big decisions of their corporate trading house. But outside their own exact duties where they reigned supreme, Harkut and Parut were her peers in all other ways. Triumvirates were strong because the other two could act as a check-and-balance against a particular leader. Courtesy was therefore simply good business among equals.
***
Two days later, old Nandjed saw another mirage that was no mirage. This time, it arrived in their home caves amidst hushed murmurs of startlement from the others in the kin-group. Or rather, she arrived. Dusty black hair, skin more red than brown, eyes the color of the deepest, reddest, prettiest crazy rock crystals, the Red Skin woman wrinkled her nose while picking her way through the scattering of grass mats, leather skins, and abandoned tools on the ground.
The woman wore peach and brown clothes, some sort of all-covering leg garment with knee-high enclosed footwear in dark brown. The pants might have covered her from waist to boots, but her top was sleeveless, showing off muscular arms that were a match for any human man’s biceps and deltoids. The Red Skin Tribe were a strong people, males and females alike. The fabric was too fine and soft to be anything spun by a human, and it had been woven with a subtle pattern that caught in the light coming from the smoke hole high overhead, and the larger holes in the cliff wall off to one side, giving them a view of the valley below.
Nandjed had never seen garments that looked like that, that could shift and play with brightness depending on how the light struck the weave. They mesmerized her for a few moments, before something else struck the old woman; the Red Skin woman headed straight for her. Sitting up on her raised bed—a luxury her old bones required in order to get up without help—Nandjed tried to remember why this female was familiar. She had the bearing of a leader, which would make her . . .What was her name again? “You . . . you have come to see me, Taje . . . Taje Sejo?”
The large woman eyed her in disdain. “Will you not stand and bow with respect in the presence of a taje?”
Nandjed blinked at the cold demand. Sighing, she scooted forward on the leather-slung frame, planted her hands on the edge of the frame, and worked on heaving herself upright. On the third try, the Efrijt was the one who gave up.
Raising a hand, the Taje Sejo muttered, “Stay seated, old one. You’re infirm enough. I was told I had to come to you, because you would take forever coming to me. I see it is the truth.”
Relieved, Nandjed relaxed on her resting couch and stirred the cool air of the cave. “Aging happens to everyone, Taje.”
That earned her a superior little smile, and a hint of those extra-long bottom canines. The Red Skin kept the smile, lacing her fingers together at her waist. “Tell me . . . Nandjed, is it?”
Nandjed nodded.
“Tell me, Nandjed, how long have you known that man who came through here a few days ago, the man with the colored ink on his skin, who calls himself Ban?”
That was what this was about? Brows raised in surprise, Nandjed cast her thoughts back. “Oh . . . thirty years, maybe thirty-one. Hassa, there, was just a little thing, wobbling around the caves and learning how to walk, when she wasn’t being carried. That was when the tattooed man came through last.”
“Tell me everything you know about him.”
Scratching at her gray hair, Nandjed considered the words, then gestured at a leather cushion on the ground. “Sit, please, Taje. If you want to know everything, there’s no need for you to stand the whole time.”
Taje Sejo eyed the cushion dubiously, but settled onto it after a moment. Nandjed nodded, then lifted her chin.
“Hassa, fetch water for the taje. Show her our hospitality!” she chided her niece’s child. “She’s had a long walk to come to see me.”
“Of course, Nandjed,” the curly-haired w
oman agreed. She fetched a pair of wooden mugs and dipped them into a pottery jar, filling each one while Nandjed focused her thoughts and fluttered her palm frond fan.
“Let’s see . . . He came walking up the valley,” the old woman reminisced. “From the southeast, not from the northwest like he did this time. We had just sent Tikkun south to apprentice to the iron-maker . . . and the season was the high rains of winter. The worst of the flooding had passed, so having a visitor was not completely unexpected, unlike this time around. He was handsome back then, too.”
“Is there a point to this?” the taje asked her, impatience coloring her low voice.
“Of course,” Nandjed replied calmly. She accepted one of the mugs from Hassa and sipped. “You wanted to know everything. I’m too old for admiring such things now, but I saw him after he bathed this time around, and he hadn’t aged a day. Still handsome, still young-looking. Even his hair was the same length, bound in a single braid that fell to his lowest ribs. Nice muscles, no scars . . . which is a strange thing. Everyone gets scars from injuries, if they live that long. Thirty years should have given him a scar or two at the very least, but Damek remarked later that evening how the man had no scars visible once he had bathed, just the colorful tattoos.”
Taje Sejo sipped cautiously from her mug, though her attention stayed more on the elderly woman. “You have a good mind for details. Go on . . .”
Nodding at the praise, Nandjed fluttered her fan and continued. She’d been giving Ban’s visits some thought, both the first one and the current one. All those old memories had been freshened in her mind, and she had an appreciative, if brusque, audience for her reminisces. Perhaps this visit was not so alarming.
“Now, I remember when he came up the valley all those years ago, I was working on that old blanket Hassa’s youngest is curled up on,” Nandjed continued. “I could tell the inked fellow, Ban, was sharp-eyed; he complimented me on the pattern I was weaving, but pointed out an error I’d made two weft rows down, and that was after looking at it for only two blinks. I hadn’t even noticed it! Luckily, it wasn’t nine or ten rows down, and he sat with me and we chatted while I worked to correct it.
“Well, I chatted, and he mostly listened and asked a question now and then,” she added to her special audience. “I had the feeling that poor young man had been hurt badly, didn’t trust easily, but though he was a little blunt and rough, he was polite in his own way. Utterly fearless, too; we had a scorpion come scuttling through the cave, and he just walked over to it and stepped on it with his bare foot before it could get to little Hassa . . .”
Chapter Three
Fading summer
Ijesh, Flame Sea Valleys
“About time you showed up!” Fali called out to Ban. The Fae huntress had an antelope slung over her shoulder by its bound-together hooves, its belly gutted and body drained of blood. She grinned at him, her beige eyes alight with teasing mirth. “We lost track of your earring a while ago. What happened, did you get stuck under a rock somewhere?”
Ban slowed from a run to a jog, then a walk. He stared at her, absorbed the fact she was teasing, and replied with the truth. “Yes.”
She winced in sympathy, grimacing. “Ouch. Not pleasant. We all knew you’d come back, but we’d hoped it would have been before high summer. Come this way. Kaife shaped a shortcut stairwell into the cliffs to the east. We don’t have to go the long way around to the wadij ravine if we don’t want to, and I don’t want to, with this burden.”
Nodding, Ban followed her over the rocky ground. “I brought back lots of seeds for Rua from the jungles of the Ebrin lands. More medicinal herbs this time, along with some new food plants.”
“Good. She’s been hoping whatever happened to you didn’t ruin anything you brought back. So . . . it really was a rock?” Fali asked.
He shrugged. “Rockslide. It happened on my way north. I’d have gotten here a lot faster, but the rockfall crushed my slip-discs, as well as killed me. It also crushed my communication earring, though I managed to throw my bag to safety. It took a while to dig out all the parts. I was very close to a pass through the mountains, though, so I didn’t bother to turn back. Unfortunately, it took longer to walk everywhere than I estimated.”
“Careful, you’re getting rather loquacious these days,” the Fae teased him. She flashed him a smile. “I’m glad you’re back home. Everyone has missed you—this is the path to the new shortcut.”
“You had your latest child,” Ban observed. He was rather loquacious these days. “What is it?”
“She looks like a girl. She may turn out to be a soulboy, like Jintaya’s fifth turned out to be a soulgirl, but she might not—I do like the way how these humans put it. Soulgender. The gender your soul is.”
He grunted. There had been people like that way back on his original world, and on many other worlds. Sometimes prosecuted, but most of the time accepted. “Your child is another blond, yes?”
“Blond hair, sand-colored eyes. Round ears.” She mock-sighed. “No decent pointed ears among any of them. They all seem to have their human parents’ brown skin and average lifespan, but they make up for it with an affinity for manipulating the anima of this place. At least, the first-generation children. Éfan had to manage their magical mischief five different times while you were gone, including some rather rude sculptural changes to the columns of the great fountain.”
“. . . Rude?” Ban asked, curious.
“Sexually rude,” she replied bluntly.
He frowned in thought, trying to remember the names of the youths who might do something like that. So many names over so many years . . . “Tuki?”
“According to both him and Anuda, it was her idea,” Fali corrected.
“Anuda . . . Anuda . . .” Ban couldn’t quite place the name.
“Dark taupe eyes, wavy ash blond hair, Luti’s second-born girl, out of Adan,” Fali said, making Ban frown a little. Every single one of the Fae had begetted children with the local humans, male and female alike, including her and her mate. Fae took spouses for love and support, not for exclusivity. Not one of the children Fali’s mate Adan had begetted had ever bothered her, nor the human females he had laid with. Ban knew that the same went for Kaife’s cousin Adan, for his mate Parren—who was Fali’s cousin—or for any of the other Fae, really.
He frowned in thought merely because of the children involved, not the sexual activities. “Isn’t Anuda one of the quiet ones? Always well-behaved?”
“I know, right?” Fali chuckled, flipping the hand not carrying her bow. She had to shrug to keep her antelope on her shoulder. “When she heard about it, Jintaya just laughed and said she’d always wondered when Anuda would finally act a little wild. It’s amusing. Anuda is technically three-quarters Fae, but she merely looks like all the crossbreeds, a Fae-colored human with affinity for the local magics—maybe a little more skill and power than most half-breeds, but not to the extent of a true Fae. She has aged like a human, too, rather than slower like a Fae, from what we can tell.”
That reminded him of something. “Has Jintaya eaten anything while I’ve been gone?”
“Once a day, even if it’s just a few mouthfuls. Zuki makes sure, for your sake,” Fali added. “And she makes sure Jintaya rests.”
“Good,” he grunted. Lack of a need for eating and sleeping was an inexplicable side effect of the local aether and magics on the Fae, the anima that collected in people, plants, rocks, everything, energies that could be tapped into, pulled out, shaped, and used to create magical effects. To the local people, manipulating the anima required a sharply focused will and a great deal of study; it exhausted them, requiring as much energy as hunting or farming, so they reserved it for those tasks that were technologically difficult to handle at their current level of advancement. Ban could manipulate the local magics more easily, but then he was an outworlder, had lived a lot longer, and could focus his will quite
effectively through sheer experience.
The Fae, however, absorbed the anima without even trying. Literally, if they used any magics of their own, though they had worked out ways to shield against the phenomenon. As their chief healer, Jintaya kept a link of awareness tied to every person living in the Flame Sea region, human and Fae alike. Low-key though the magic of that link was, it fed her enough anima constantly that roughly ten years ago, she discovered she no longer needed to eat or sleep. Jintaya had gone back through the pantean’s Veilway to Faelan a few weeks after realizing it, and within just a few days had been hungry and sleepy again, so the effect was not permanent . . . but within a year of returning to this world, the sustenance effect had returned.
Eating and resting did not harm her, so she tried to keep doing both. Unfortunately, after a while, without hunger pangs or exhaustion to remind her to take a meal or a nap, she just stopped doing either. That annoyed Ban. In his mind, not even a Fae could—never mind should—live on air and anima alone.
“I will thank Zuki for her diligence,” he told Fali. “I brought a gift for her.”
“A gift?” Fali asked, glancing back at him.
“There is a tribe in the jungles that specializes in interlacing different kinds of wood as saplings and young vines,” he explained. “They revere the interweaving layers and types of life that grow all around them, and see this interweaving of plant matter as a symbol of their spirituality and belief. The interweaving I brought is small, but it has twelve different vine types woven throughout it, forming a sphere shape in three different layers . . . which thankfully is in a spell-protected case, or it would have been damaged by the few rocks that did hit my pack.”