by R. M. Meluch
And Wolf was a third of the way there.
• • •
Wolf piloted an airplane to the primitive side of the planet where rain forests grew thick and ranga hadn’t produced an aghara offspring in so long that the idea of tall blond warrior-priests wasn’t even in their memory.
For his second trial Wolf had been given a labor. All the Elders had conferred and at last bid him bring the claw of the leopard of Ma-pall-mo.
So Wolf came to the village Ma-pall-mo, the Springs, where the chameleon-skinned ranga were dark most of the day in the bright equatorial sun and white at sundown. They were afraid to venture into the jungle anymore, day or night. They gathered where Wolf came to land, awed by the flying machine and its pilot, a tall man who remained dark in the dark.
They said the gods sent him to kill the leopard.
Silly superstitious ranga.
They told Wolf, “We black our skin with coal in the dark so it does not see us. It smells us.
“We mask ourselves with jungle herbs so it does not smell us. It hears us.
“Now the gods send you dark and odd-smelling and silent as the leopard itself.”
“I was sent to kill the leopard,” Wolf said in their own tongue. “But not by the gods.”
But the ranga insisted the gods had done so, obviously, because he was here.
“I don’t even know what the leopard is,” Wolf said. “Tell me about the leopard.”
“The Claw! Watch out for the Claw!” one cried.
“What kind of claws?” Wolf asked. “How many claws?”
“One claw. Silent it comes,” another said. “It comes in the dark with its claw.”
“Sometimes you smell it come. You don’t hear it until it is upon you, then it paralyzes with its voice and then claws you to death. In a group of hunters maybe one of you will escape and tell the same tale.”
“The Claw! The Claw! Look out for the Claw!” one cried, and all the others made him be quiet.
“What does it look like?” Wolf asked.
They looked to each other. None of them could answer.
“Has it ever been seen?”
“No,” they all said. “Not by any who lived.”
“This is not helping.” Wolf’s small mouth curled in exasperation, but he couldn’t be angry with the ranga. They were like children. They plucked nervously at their red hair, seeing him displeased. There were some very thin-haired villagers in Ma-pall-mo. I must slay this leopard, or they will all be bald.
“What does it smell like?” Wolf asked.
Someone dashed away at a waddling run and came back bearing a torn rag on the end of a stick so as not to contaminate it with his own musky smell. “It smells like this.”
The scent on the rag was very faint. The short hairs rose on the back of Wolf’s neck.
He knew the smell.
• • •
The jungle was black as sundown without stars, a verdant hell, dripping heat. Darkness training let Wolf move without sight, silent and loud at intervals. He wanted the leopard to come to him.
He heard the leopard at a distance—not its footfalls nor its passage through the dense spongy vine nets of the rain forest, but its quiet panting in the heat. The leopard couldn’t sweat.
Wolf had become still. The leopard fell silent. It could neither see nor hear him but had caught his scent, and Wolf could tell it was puzzled. It had never smelled an Earthman.
Wolf crouched in an acania thicket, ready to move, holding a dagger in his left hand, waiting for the leopard to attack or flee.
Then it came, screaming an Itiri death cry, with a whistling of a double-curved sword that tore into the acania thicket.
Wolf was no longer there.
The leopard hadn’t been expecting one of his own. He was not prepared for any skill, any threat to himself. He had been very reckless. Now there was a dagger in his gut, thrusting up through his diaphragm, and he knew too late that this strange-smelling creature was an Itiri, too.
• • •
Wolf buried the warrior’s body in the jungle so the villagers couldn’t do anything abominable to it, and he took the tungsten-plastic Claw back to the Aerie.
He threw the double-curved sword at the feet of the Elders.
“What would it have cost thee to tell me what I was hunting?”
The Fendi picked up the sword and passed it to Roniva, who bowed her head. “No one told him what was hunting him,” she said.
Wolf bristled. “Was that not neat and clever—to have one distort kill another? It matters not which wins. Maybe they will kill each other if you are very lucky. You must have been very proud and pleased with that idea!”
“No joy. No satisfaction. And not lightly decided,” Roniva said, holding the flat of Claw’s blade to her cheek.
The tender gesture was alarming. Wolf’s mouth was suddenly too dry. He tried to swallow. “Who was he?” he demanded in dread.
“No concern of thine.”
Another cheela of hers? Or—but that was hardly possible.
Aghara women were almost always sterile. Aghara children were rare enough—one out of one hundred thousand births—but an aghara born of an aghara? Wolf had never heard of such a thing.
Yet Roniva wore an eternity flower at her belt. She had a mate. Sterile women did not mate.
Someone say I did not kill her child! Wolf thought wildly. But no one was answering him. “Thou hoped I would lose,” he said.
“I hoped he would not lose,” Roniva said with altered emphasis. “Thy losing was merely the other edge of the same sword.” She passed Claw back to the Fendi—it was no longer anyone’s weapon—and she sadly walked away.
• • •
And so Wolf had come to the last trial. As ever, a walk through fire.
The objection was raised. “There is a full clan this year. He must wait.”
A fire clan could be two, three, five, or seven. There were five for this clan of the carnelian serpent.
Then one died. His cave was opened after the twenty days of Shandee had passed, and the cheela was found frozen, nine days gone.
The time of fire was coming soon. A decision needed making. The would-be clan was now one short or one too many, and Wolf was waiting.
“This could be a destined thing,” the ancient Fendi said. “Ask of the carnelian serpent if they will take this cheela for their fire brother; otherwise, they must say which of them will stay behind.”
The four cheelas said they would take Wolf as their fire brother.
“He could taint your fire,” Roniva warned. “He hath already failed. You may yet be a clan of four.”
“We will be five,” said the girl cheela, at that time known as Mardeia. “Let him walk with us.”
• • •
Wolf, at the edge of the firepit, gazed through the wavering heated air and smoke to the hooded figure cloaked in brown who waited for him on the far side with a bare sword. Failure in a second attempt meant death. Roniva would make that happen. She also made certain that Wolf didn’t bathe his feet in ice before coming to this place of fire.
The other four cheelas had already walked. Now they looked back for him to come through the fire and join them, the four nameless warrior-priests of the carnelian serpent. They had shed their cheela names in the fire and had not yet been given new ones. They untied the leather thongs from around their necks and waited for Wolf to make them whole.
Go to them.
Wolf relinquished conscious control, released everything—
Let go. Let go. To win, let go.
—and cast his fate to an inner voice. The body is limited, Xanthan had said, the mind hath no limits.
Wolf set one foot into the fire.
The ring of Elders and warrior-priests rustled uncomfortably. This would be p
ainful to watch. They had seen it before. A cheela ought to have the grace to spare them from this pain. This one was putting them through it twice. The Fendi should forbid it.
Wolf stepped with the other foot onto the coals and became lost to their sight, shrouded in heat.
Into the forge. To be burned or created.
Heartbeats paced off creeping moments. Smoke curled to the sky.
Wolf reappeared on the other side as from a mist, his face visible first where the heat dissipated, icily serene. He advanced over the coals and stepped out of the pit, unscathed.
The mountaintop erupted into a clamor of war cries, crashing wind bronzes, rattling daggers, and stamping. All the warriors were on their feet at once, and the ranga echoed from down in Haven with jubilant yells and beating on metal.
The new warrior joined his brothers and sister, and he turned, not smiling, no happiness on his face, not even pride—only vindication and some kind of revenge.
He tore off the old leather circlet from his neck and threw it into the fire.
It was a clean fire, and all the others danced through it.
The brown-cloaked figure stood alone at the edge of the fire court, her eyes flashing, thin nostrils flaring. The sword trembled in her tight grip.
The rest of the mountain was in joyous uproar, the din reaching way down to Kaletani Mai. Only Roniva and one new warrior were silent—and only until white hands tugged on broad yellow-brown shoulders and beckoned him from his dark visions. “Dance, fire brother.”
The words, like an enchantment, charmed away some of the black spell that lingered about him, and he danced with the others.
A wayward breeze blew smoke through Roniva’s hair spilling from her hood, and she wished she were ranga to believe in protective spirits and to make a warding sign. She wondered what name would be given this being that had just been made from the fire. She was shaking.
What have we wrought here today?
9. Wolf at the Ramparts
5851–5856 CE
JININ-BEN-TAIRRE THEY CALLED HIM, the Feet of the Warrior Are Burned. A point of awe, the name carried a sense of overcoming the insurmountable. To a strong people with a stony will there came a point where they would break instead of springing back. This warrior had no such limit. The name was who he was.
Roniva approved of the reference to his burn scars. But Ben was a rare name, conferred on few—Warrior. There was only one other Ben alive on the mountain. This great honor seemed to her a mistake.
The girl Mardeia became known as Arilla, named for corundum, the virtuestone of strength. The other warrior-priests of the fire clan were given good names also, and the ranga foretold that one of these five would be Fendi one day.
With the glowing red tip of a firebrand they burned the dotted warrior’s lines into each other’s cheeks and pressed herbal ash into the wounds so that they would heal red. A ranga artisan fashioned their signet rings, serpent intaglios carved into polished carnelians set in platinum. The artisan chattered about Ben-Tairre’s “ranga hands,” broad and stubby fingered next to the long, tapered aghara hands. No one had ever made such a wide signet band for a warrior-priest.
Ben was given a book of law and philosophy. He vowed never to take a life without just cause, to fight only his own battles and those of his allies, which were these:
His fire kin.
The talassairi, the eagles.
And the mandesairi, the whales.
And he was given his sword. Ben Christened his Da′iku.
He shed his drab cheela garb for warrior’s finery. Warrior-priests were peacocks except during the days of restraint, the somber days between the wind Shandee and the new year’s fire.
He climbed to the top level of Aerieside to stand on the cold ramparts with his fire kin, a pride of young lions, flush with the newness of their arrival. Jinin-Ben-Tairre, once a wolf that had come to the door for warmth, took his place with them as a warrior-priest.
A thin layer of cloud brushed the top of the mountain with gray gauze. It meant the winds were calm.
Jinin-Ben-Tairre looked to his fire kin. Two familiars had appeared while his head was turned, a white binaya for Arilla, and a red snake for Aliathan. Ben muffled his own pain. He had resigned himself a long time ago to the fact that he could not have one, any more than he could ever hope to have heat vision or green eyes. Everything he could control he had won. He had walked the fire. He had a sword, a fire clan, and a name. That would have to do.
Not to be unhappy in his brothers’ and sister’s joy, he started down the terraced slope of Aerieside.
Suddenly there was a keening screee and a burst of talons and feathers in his face. He ducked down, and Da′iku flashed a cutting sweep through the air.
The bird disappeared at the advancing sword’s edge, then blinked back into view as the blade whistled through its completed arc.
A familiar.
Ben-Tairre stood up from his crouch and sheathed his sword. The little brown hawk fluttered around his head and screamed at him.
Whose?
The familiar alighted on his shoulder and squawked in his ear.
Comprehension arrived with a rush of surprise and emotion.
Mine.
• • •
“What is that supposed to be?”
Roniva blocked Ben’s path in the arcade. She appeared severe, hard, and angular as an eagle. Her black hair was pulled back and hanging straight from its topknot. Her whip-thin body was robed in plain dun but for all her bright enameled bracelets, anklets, and toques. Her black eyes narrowed critically at the bird perched on Ben-Tairre’s shoulder. “Well?”
“My familiar,” Ben answered.
Roniva’s expression soured as if to say, I know that. “What is it supposed to be?”
“A kestrel, I think,” Ben said.
“An Earth creature?” she said as if it were the ultimate insult.
Ben didn’t mind the form of the creature. At one time it would have upset him horribly that his familiar should take the form of an Earth creature. Enough now that it was a familiar and it was his. It was an indelible stamp of legitimacy. No one had expected a familiar to appear for him. Now there was no doubt that he truly was a warrior-priest. “It only appears so,” he said.
“My Xanthan’s familiar had not talons and a hooked beak,” Roniva said in reproach.
The kestrel was screeching in Ben’s ear. “Knowest thou what it sayeth?” Ben asked.
“Thou wilt need to decipher its noises for thine self,” Roniva said. She’d meant to be short with him, then decided to say more. “It is a primitive language. The first sound out of it will be a verb. The mode and tense thou knowest not and it will tell thee not. But I can tell thee it will almost always be a command. These beings are not informative. Thy familiar will spend most of its time giving thee orders.”
Screee, said the kestrel.
“Another thing,” Roniva said as the bird batted Ben’s face with its wing. “They are not known for their patience.”
Ben pursed his lower lip over his upper lip and furled his brow for a thoughtful moment. At last he said, “Can I give him back?”
It was the first time he’d expressed anything like humor.
“Certainly,” Roniva said, taking her leave of him. “Discover from where he came and thou mayest return him.”
That was a no. No one knew where familiars came from.
Ben drew his sword and turned it in the light which streamed in shafts between the pillars of the arcade.
The blade would cut stone. Handed down for countless generations, still it was honed fine.
“Thou art not my familiar,” Ben said to the kestrel.
The kestrel squawked.
“Thou belongest to my sword.”
The bird turned its head from him and preened its wi
ngs, noncommittal.
“I know I’m right,” Ben said.
Ben sheathed Da′iku. He moved swiftly to the other edge of the arcade. He leaped lightly, barefoot, onto the balustrade. He hugged a jewel-encrusted pillar, and leaned out to gaze down into the chasm cleft into the mountain between Aerie and Haven. Xanthan’s grave.
“O Xanthan, one can teach virtue to swords,” he whispered.
The kestrel bit his ear.
“Rather, swords will teach,” Ben said.
His eyes burned as he stared into the crevasse. He shrugged off a ruby-inlaid armband and hurled it down the void. He swallowed the thickness that rose in his throat, made a fist, and swung impotently at vacant space. “Wherefore is it too late to tell thee anything!” he hissed without voice. His voice failed him entirely. “Couldst thou not wait? Thou didst not know thine cheela.”
Tiny claws were digging into his shoulder. A trickle that could have been blood or sweat traced down his back.
Ben dropped into a sorrowful crouch on the stone rail, his forehead on his knees. He pointed down the abyss without looking and told the bird, “Get thee down there. Get thee down and tell him.”
Piercing talons released their hold without a rush of wingbeats. Then the kestrel was simply gone, and Ben was alone.
He doubted the kestrel would give any message to Xanthan.
Ben lifted his eyes to peer over his own knees and spoke, muffled. “Would that thou wert alive to forgive me. . . .”
• • •
In the year of the Topaz Triquetra, the Fendi sent Jinin-Ben-Tairre starward in an ancient ship called Singalai to live awhile in the world outside.
“I shall not revert to my blood,” Ben vowed, anticipating the reason he was being sent on this quest.
The Fendi patted the head of his shaggy berinx and echoed Ben’s claim. “He will not go back to them.” The words suddenly sounded overly insistent to Ben’s own ears. And the Fendi told the berinx in the next breath, “Then he shall know—for certain.”
The Fendi read hearts and minds as most people read the stars and the seasons.
Hard, glass-chip eyes of brilliant green shone eternal fire within the mortal confines of his papery translucent lids. Wispy white hair wreathed his eggshell skull. The Fendi’s physical form looked as if one day soon it would be spirited away on a dry autumn wind with the rest of the season’s ashes of transitory life.