“Why should we believe you can feel anything now?” Ari asked.
“I don’t feel anything now,” Lilith told him. “But I guess I don’t want to see what happened to Ledo happen to Taig. I couldn’t do anything for Ledo then, but I can do something for Taig now.”
Tara couldn’t control her shaking hands. “Come with us, Lilith. Get away from these horrible people. You can go back to the Avitras and find your parents.”
Lilith shook her head. “I’ll help you get away, but I won’t go. The Outliers are my people now. I’ve been with them all my life. I can’t change now.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Allen told her. “You helping us proves you’re still alive. You don’t have to stay here.”
Lilith turned away. “I can’t leave. Now come on. I’ll show you how to get away.”
“How are we going to get us past the guards?” Ari asked.
Lilith shrugged. “I drugged them. They won’t wake up any time soon.”
Before anyone could argue with her, she slipped out of the tent into the night, leaving the friends no choice but to follow her. Allen went first. He cocked his ears to hear the soft fall of her feet in the grass. Tara hung close behind him until they found the torches surrounding Taig. Sure enough, a dozen guards lay asleep on the ground. They didn’t stir when the group approached.
Taig’s chin hung down on his chest, and a bruise darkened the side of his face where Lilith hit him with her stick. Reina stepped on dry stick, and Taig’s head shot up with a start. “Who’s there?”
Tara ran to his side, but she dared not touch him. “We’re here, Taig. We’re getting out of here.”
His eyes raced from one side to the other. He yanked at his bonds when he saw Lilith. Blood trickled down his wrists. “Don’t let her come near me.”
Lilith laughed in his face. Her bright teeth shone in the torchlight. “I’m sacrificing a lot more than you think by letting you go. Don’t tempt me to keep you here after all.”
“What do you mean?” Tara asked.
“Don’t you know?” Lilith waved her hand. “I guess you wouldn’t know. The designated gets to pitch the chosen before the sacrifice.”
Tara blinked. “You’re not making sense. What are you saying?”
Lilith smacked her lips. “This is like explaining everything to children. One person gets picked to conduct the sacrificial ritual. Old Ponchy gave me the honor of designating me, and I got to choose who we would sacrifice. I chose him.” She nodded toward Taig. “If I’m going to pitch someone, I might as well pick the best one, and he looked the best to me.”
Aeifa made a disgusted face. “Are you telling us that, after you groped Taig the way you did, you’re going to finish him off before you kill him? You’re going to have sex with him.”
A groan escaped Taig, and the Ursidreans shifted from one foot to the other.
Lilith darted forward. She pressed her body against Taig and ran her tongue up the side of his face. He jerked and struggled, but he couldn’t get away. Lilith bit his ear. Then she stepped back with a cruel laugh. “You love it, don’t you? You wish I could pitch you, just once, don’t you? Wouldn’t you love to get into me, just once before you kick off for the outer stratosphere? Wouldn’t you love to die shooting your strength into me? You know you would.” She laughed at her own joke, but her voice rang hollow in the trees.
Taig fought against his bonds and whined in terror. The others stared at the two in shock. In the end, Lilith turned away. She pulled a metal dagger from her waist and slashed the thongs holding Taig’s wrists. He slumped and almost fell, but Tara ducked under his arm and held him up.
Lilith sniffed at him. “He won’t be running anywhere the way he is. The guards will catch you before the sun gets up.”
“I’ll run out of here,” Taig replied. “I’ll run ‘til I drop.”
“We’ll get him out of here,” Tara told Lilith. “Don’t you worry about that. We’ll get him out if we have to carry him the whole way.”
“You’ll have to,” Lilith replied. “You’ll have to get over that pass in a hurry if you want to get away with your lives. If the Outliers catch you, they won’t bother to bring you back for a second chance.”
“We’ll make it,” Ari exclaimed.
“What about Reina?” Aeifa asked.
“One of us could carry her,” Allen suggested.
“Who could carry her?” Aeifa asked. “You two boys can only just run fast enough to keep up. You couldn’t add a weight like that and expect them to make it out.”
“I would carry her myself,” Tara replied, “but I’ll probably have to carry Taig.”
Taig pushed her away. He took one unsteady step before he caught his balance. “No one’s carrying me. I can run. You see if I don’t keep up with the rest of you.”
Ari spoke up. “Then I’ll carry Reina. Now come on. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“We’ll be back in Ursidrean territory before sunset,” Allen exclaimed.
Lilith shook her head. “You can’t go back to Ursidrean territory. The Outliers will find you if you go that way.”
“What other way is there?” Tara asked.
Lilith pointed up the pass where they first encountered the Outliers. “When you get to the top of the pass, turn west. Follow that ridge and don’t drop down for anything. It will curve around to the south.”
Allen frowned and stroked his chin. “I noticed that curve of mountains when we passed them last time. They reminded me of something.”
“It’s the Western Divide,” Lilith replied. “It’s the border between Avitras territory and Ursidrean territory.”
Taman’s eyes lit up. “Then we’re home. Once we find the Divide, we can follow it back to Harbeiz.”
Lilith stuck her knife in her belt. “Don’t bother running away at all if you’re going to go that way. You might not trust me, but you’re as good as dead if you go anywhere near Ursidrean territory. The Outliers know you were searching for it, and that’s where they’ll look for you. Follow the Divide until it curves around to run north-south. Then drop down into Avitras territory.”
Ari stiffened. “The Avitras? We can’t go to them. They’ll kill us.”
“We don’t know that,” Tara told him.
“They’ll take you prisoner as soon as you cross the border,” Lilith went on. “They’ll take you to their Alpha.”
“Piwaka?” Aeifa asked.
“He’s an old man,” Lilith replied, “but he favors peace. He’ll listen to you, and he’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”
“You said Piwaka is your father,” Tara countered.
Lilith fixed her with a fierce stare. “He is. Tell him and my mother I sent you.”
“When we tell them where you are,” Allen told her, “they’ll want to get you back.”
She smiled. “That’s exactly why I’m not going with you. I would have to explain what happened to Ledo.”
Tara stared at her. Then she turned away. “I understand. You don’t want to face them after what you did.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Lilith replied. “I was a little child, barely able to understand what was happening. If I hadn’t taken part in the feast, the Outliers would have killed me, too. They would have left me to die in the wilderness where they found me.”
“You still haven’t explained how you wound up out here in the first place,” Ari pointed out.
“That’s because I don’t remember.” Lilith moved away. “Now get on your way. These men won’t stay asleep forever. Get running, and don’t let me see you around here again.”
No one hesitated to be told twice. Tara ran into the trees. Then she paused to make sure Taig could keep up. He trotted at her side, and they picked up speed along the path toward the stream. Taman and Allen came behind at their steady pace. Ari grinned at Reina, who gave him a playful smack on the arm. Then he hitched her up on his back and set off running with th
e others. He couldn’t run as fast as he usually did, but he kept pace with the Ursidreans, and Aeifa ran behind him in case he needed help.
Taig stumbled once in the tangled undergrowth. Then he found his footing. In a little while, he ran at Tara’s side the way they used to in their own home territory. The wind cooled Tara’s cheeks, and her nose caught the exotic scents of forest all around. She could almost believe they were back home again and none of this ever happened.
End of Book 3
Book 3: Ari and Aeifa
Chapter 1
“We’re not really going down there, are we?” Allen leaned over the escarpment and stared down into solid black forest. “I’m not going down there.”
“We have to,” Tara told him. “You heard what Lilith told us.”
Allen turned around. On the other side of the escarpment, flat sunny plains stretched away to the east. A row of magnificent mountain peaks jutted up from them to touch the sky. “Ursidrean territory is right over there. We can be there in no time. Then we’ll be safe.”
Ari shook his head. “We have to go this way. The Outliers will be searching for us on all the tracks to Ursidrean territory. We have to go this way.”
Aeifa sighed and took the first steps along the escarpment. “If we find Aimee Sandoval and Piwaka and tell them we’ve seen Lilith, they’ll take us in.”
“Aimee might know how to help us,” Tara added. “Either way, she’ll know how to get to Harbeiz. We can’t wander around this wilderness alone anymore.”
Allen frowned. “I’m not going down there.”
Tara took his hand. “The Avitras are age-old enemies of the Ursidreans. They’ve slaughtered thousands of your people. It’s understandable you don’t want to go down there, but we have no choice. Besides, our factions are working toward peace.”
“We aren’t at peace yet,” he grumbled.
Allen and Tara stayed on the escarpment while the others moved off. Aeifa fought back the urge to stare at them together, but she kept her back to them and walked away. Allen and Tara spent more and more time together with every passing day. They made no more effort to hide their growing attraction and even slept together at night. Tara hung close to Allen no matter what they did. She even neglected Taig, who needed her help now more than ever to recover from his ordeal.
Taig showed no signs of concern over his sister deserting him for an Ursidrean. He didn’t even joke about it the way he used to when they lived in the village. He got stronger and steadier on his feet until no one would notice he’d survived a nightmare at the Outliers' hands. He shunned help from everyone, including Tara.
But Aeifa couldn’t ignore it so easily. She kept her most dangerous emotions under guard, but she hated Tara and Allen more and more every time she saw them together. Couldn’t they see they were breaking the group apart with their paltry little romance? Tara was throwing away everything her and Taig and Ari and Aeifa built up over the course of their lives together. She barely knew Allen, and she cared more for him than her own brother and cousins. That at least was obvious to everybody. She didn’t even help Reina the way she used to.
Ari hurried to catch up with her. “Hey, Aeifa, wait up.”
Aeifa didn’t wait. She picked her way down the rocks toward Avitras territory. The others fell farther and farther behind, and Allen and Tara remained outlined against the dusky sky high on the escarpment.
“Hey, Aeifa,” Ari called. “What’s the matter with you?”
Aeifa waved over her shoulder. “Those two are the matter with me. I can’t stand seeing them together like that.”
Ari started. “What’s wrong with ‘em? They’re hitched up. That’s all.”
“I’ll say they’re hitched up,” Aeifa shot back. “I can’t stand the sight of them.”
Ari cast a glance over his shoulder. Allen and Tara’s silhouettes merged into one black shape with the sun going down behind them. He snorted. “They won’t catch up with us any time soon. They’ll probably spend the night up there together.”
Aeifa made a guttural sound in her throat, but she didn’t turn around again. Ari followed on her heels, down the escarpment to the trees. Taman and Reina came single file behind them. The Ursidreans didn’t need any special treatment to keep up with the Lycaon anymore, and Reina got faster every day. She didn’t run, but she didn’t hang back and moon over everything she saw, either. She’d grown accustomed to life in the forest. She did her work around camp without anybody holding her hand and explaining how to do everything, and she could carry as much wood in one arm as anyone else.
Ari didn’t say anything more to Aeifa on the way down. He knew better than to try to reason with her when she acted like this, although he couldn’t remember a time when she acted like this. Always before, she treated romance as a joke. She made crude jokes about their friends hitching up, and she generally ignored any girl Ari hitched up with. She never gave any male more than passing notice, even if she spent the night with him for a lark.
She stopped at the bottom of the hill and looked around. Enormous trees, bigger than she’d ever seen, towered above her. The canopy raked the sky so far above Aeifa couldn’t see the treetops. Ari, Taman, and Reina stood right behind her. “How far do we have to go to find the Avitras?”
Before anyone could answer, a whirlwind shook the trees. The branches thrashed in the wind, and Aeifa raised her arms to protect her face. When she put them down, a strange group of men surrounded them. They barely touched the ground with their spindly legs, and ruffles of feathers surrounded their heads. Each man held a long staff with a blade at each end.
The friends jumped into a circle with their backs together. Aeifa’s eyes darted up to the escarpment. Where were Allen and Tara? Had the Avitras captured them, too?
One young man waved his blade in Aeifa’s face. “You’ve crossed our border. This is an open act of aggression and will be treated accordingly.”
Aeifa thought fast. “We crossed your border deliberately. We’re Lycaon. This young man is Ursidrean and this girl is Felsite. We represent three factions, and our parents are the negotiators for the peace agreement. We came to find Aimee Sandoval and Piwaka. Can you take us to them?”
The young man frowned. “If you came representing the peace negotiators, you should have sent word. I should have been informed before any foreigners crossed our border.”
Ari spoke up. “We aren’t foreigners. We’re Angondran, just like you, and this young man is the son of Aimee Sandoval’s cousin in Ursidrean territory. We bring important information from the other factions, so you’ll take us to Piwaka right away if you know what’s good for you.”
The young Avitras lowered his staff so the point of his blade came within inches of Ari’s throat. “I will take you to Piwaka, but not as any peace ambassadors. I’ll take you as our prisoners, and he can decide what to do with you.”
Aeifa’s heart raced. She dared not look around for Allen and Tara. If they escaped this death trap, so much the better for them. If anything happened to the group at the hands of the Avitras, at least two people knew where they were and could work to free them.
The idea of traveling to Avitras territory and seeking out Aimee Sandoval and Piwaka sounded so simple when Lilith suggested it. None of them ever really considered the danger of crossing the border into another faction’s territory. Of course the Avitras would consider such an incursion hostile. Why didn’t they think of that before?
But there was nothing they could do about it now. There was no other way to find Piwaka and Aimee than to let these guards take them. Maybe Lilith wasn’t so far wrong after all. Maybe once Aimee found out they’d seen her daughter, she would help them and guide them to Harbeiz.
The young Avitras guard waved his hand to his comrades, who overpowered the group with their numbers and tied them up. To Aeifa’s relief, none of her friends put up any struggle, not even Ari. A measured expression lighted his face. He would reserve his strength in
case they needed it. He would wait and see if the Avitras Guard took them to Piwaka and Aimee. He had no reason to fight now if they did.
No sooner were the friends tied up than the circle of Avitras opened and another group of Guards appeared out of the trees. They shoved Allen and Tara into the circle along with their friends and tied them up, too. Aeifa smiled in relief at seeing Tara safe. Whatever happened to them, at least they would go through it together.
Then her relief evaporated. No one remained now outside their little group who knew where they were or why they came. If the Avitras killed them—or worse—no one would ever find out what happened to them. Then Aeifa remembered—her own parents, her grandmother and aunts and uncles and her other cousins and all her friends were all gone. Nothing remained for her in the world but Ari and Taig and Tara. This small circle of young travelers represented her whole family, her whole clan, her village—everything she had and ever would have. She had nothing left.
She cast her eye around the group. Ari studied the Avitras with his usual jaunty nonchalance. He handled danger and uncertainty by laughing it off. On her other side, Tara and Allen stuck close together. Reina stood behind Aeifa, out of sight. Only Taman stood by her side, and when she looked at him, she found him gazing back at her. An expression of concern clouded his face, but not for the Avitras. He didn’t look at them. He was concerned about her.
Aeifa tossed her head and led the group after their Avitras captors. She didn’t look at the others again. She held her head high and threw back her shoulders. She would show them all how to face a situation like this. The others all admired Tara, but Aeifa would show them she could be a leader, too. Tara wasn’t anything Aeifa wasn’t. She had all Tara’s hunting skill and more.
The Avitras herded them through the forest of towering trees. The wind sighed through the canopy and occasionally, one of the guard’s looked up, but they never stopped. After more than an hour of walking, Aeifa relaxed enough to wonder. What if they broke away from these guard’s and made off through the forest? They could run faster than the Avitras. They could make a decent attempt at escape.
The New Angondra Complete Series Page 8