I climbed out through the cleft, high in the trunk of my old ghanbala tree, and gazed down upon the white, frosty ground far below.
The sun wouldn’t rise fully for almost an hour and the stars were still visible. I knew all five thousand of them by name, but Cougis, the Dog Star, was my favorite. It was red, a bloodshot eye peering through the black velvet curtain that the Lord of Night casts over the sky.
I had been asleep for almost three months. I always sleep through that time—the darkest, coldest part of winter, which we call shudru. Now I was awake, and thirsty.
It was too close to dawn for taking blood from the humans in my haizda—the ones I farmed. My next preference would be to hunt, but nothing would be about yet. There was nothing to satisfy my thirst, yet there was another way. I could always go and intimidate Old Rowler and force him to trade.
I squeezed back into the tree and slipped my two sharpest blades into the scabbards on my chest. Then I pulled on my long, thick black overcoat, which has thirteen buttons made of best-quality bone. The coat comes down as far as my brown leather boots, and the sleeves are long enough to cover my hairy arms.
I’m hairy all over—and there’s something else I should mention. Something that makes me different from you.
I have a tail.
Don’t laugh. Don’t pull a face or shake your head. Be sensible and feel sorry for yourself because you don’t have one. You see, mine’s a long, powerful tail that’s better than an extra arm.
One more thing. My name is Slither, and before my tale is finished you’ll find out why.
Finally I laced up my boots and squeezed back through the cleft and onto the branch.
Then I stepped out into space.
I counted to two before flicking up my slithery tail. It coiled and tightened; the skin rasped against the lowest branch, breaking off shards of bark that fell like dark flakes of snow. I hung there by my tail for a few seconds while my keen eyes searched the ground below. There were no tracks to mark the frost. Not that I expected any. My ears are sharp and I awake at the slightest sound, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
I dropped again, landing on the cold, hard ground. Then I began to run, watching the ground speed by in a blur beneath my legs. Within minutes I’d be at Old Rowler’s farm.
I respected Old Rowler.
I respected him just enough to turn what might have been a cruel taking into a wary trade. He was very brave for a human. Brave enough to live close to my tree when many others had fled. Brave enough even to trade.
I strolled along below his wooden boundary fence, but the moment I reached the farmyard flags, I blew myself up to the size that works best with most humans. Not big enough to be too intimidating, but not small enough to give Old Rowler ideas. In fact, exactly the same size as the farmer had been before his old bones had started to weaken, his spine to bend.
I rapped on the door softly. It was my special rhythmic rap. Not loud enough to wake his three daughters, but audible enough to bring the farmer huffing and puffing down the stairs.
He opened the door no more than the width of his calloused hand. Then he held a candle to the crack so that it lit up my face.
“What is it this time?” he demanded belligerently. “I hoped I’d seen the last of you. It’s months since you last bothered me. I was hoping you’d never wake up again!”
“I’m thirsty,” I said, “and it’s too early to hunt. I need a little something to warm my belly for a few hours.” Then I smiled, showing my sharp teeth and allowing my hot breath to steam upward into the cold air.
“I’ve nothing to spare. Times are hard,” protested the farmer. “It’s been one of the hardest winters I can remember. I’ve lost cattle—even sheep.”
“How are your three daughters keeping? I hope they’re well,” I asked, opening my mouth a little wider.
The candle began to dance and shake in Old Rowler’s hands, just as I’d expected.
“You keep away from my daughters, Slither. D’ ye hear? Keep away.”
“I was only inquiring after their health.” I softened my voice. “How’s the youngest one? I hope her cough’s better now.”
“Don’t waste my time!” he snapped. “What are ye here for?”
“I need blood. Bleed a bullock for me—just a little blood to set me up. You can spare half a cup.”
“I told you, it’s been a long, hard winter,” he said. “It’s a bad time, and the surviving animals need all their strength to get through.”
Seeing that I wouldn’t get something for nothing, I drew a coin from the pocket of my coat and held it so that it gleamed in the candlelight.
Old Rowler watched as I spat onto the flank of the bullock to deaden the feeling there; so that when I made a small, precise cut in the hide, the animal wouldn’t feel a thing. The blood soon began to flow, and I caught it in the metal cup that the farmer had provided, not wasting a single drop.
“I wouldn’t really harm your daughters, you know,” I said. “They’ve become almost like a family to me.”
“Your kind know nothing about families,” he muttered. “You’d eat your own mother if you were hungry enough. What about Brian Jenson’s daughter from the farm near the river? She disappeared early last spring, never to be seen again. Too many of my neighbors have suffered at your hands.”
I didn’t bother to deny his accusation, but neither did I confirm it. Sometimes accidents happened. Mostly I control my taking, husbanding the resources of my haizda, but occasionally the urge gets the better of me and I take too much blood.
“Hey! Hang on a minute—we agreed on half a cup,” Old Rowler protested.
I smiled and pressed my fingers against the wound so that the blood immediately stopped flowing. “So we did,” I agreed. “Still, three quarters of a cup’s not too bad. It’s a good compromise.”
I took a long drink, my eyes never leaving the farmer’s face. He wore a long overcoat, and I knew that its lining concealed a wickedly sharp saber. If sufficiently threatened or provoked, the old man wouldn’t hesitate to use it. Not that Rowler, even with his saber, posed any real threat to me, but it would bring our trade to a close. And that would be a pity, because they were useful, men like him. I preferred to hunt, obviously, but the keeping of bloodstock—especially bullocks, which were my favorite—made things easier when times were hard. I wasn’t prepared to keep them myself, but I did appreciate the place of this farmer in the scheme of things. He was the only one in my haizda that I ever traded with.
Perhaps I was getting old? Once I would have ripped out the throat of a human such as Rowler—ripped it out without a moment’s thought. But I was past my first flush of youth and well advanced in the magecraft of the haizda. Already I was an adept.
But this, my two hundredth summer, was a dangerous time for a haizda mage, the time when we sometimes fall victim to what we call skaiium. You see, living so long changes the way you think. You become more mellow, more understanding of the feelings and needs of others. That’s bad for a haizda mage, and many of us don’t survive these dangerous years because they lead to a softening of the bloodlust, a dulling of the teeth.
So I knew I had to be careful.
The warm blood flowed down my throat and into my stomach, filling me with new strength. I smiled and licked my lips.
I’d no need to hunt for at least another day, so I handed the cup back to Old Rowler and headed directly for my favorite spot. It was a clearing in the small wood on the southern slopes that overlooked the farm. Then I shrank myself down, coat and boots included, to my smallest size, the one I often use for sleeping. Now I was no larger than a gray-whiskered sewer rat.
The ox blood, however, remained exactly the same size, so that my stomach now felt very full. Despite the fact that I’d only just woken up, the combination of a full stomach and the newly risen sun made me feel very sleepy indeed.
So I lay on my back and stretched out. My overcoat has a special slit, like a short sleeve, to a
llow my tail out into the air. When I’m running, hunting or fighting, it coils up my back tightly, but sometimes in summer, when the sun is shining and I’m feeling sleepy, I lie down on the warm grass and let it stretch out behind me. Happy and relaxed, I did that now, and in no time at all I was fast asleep.
Normally, with a stomach as full as that, I’d have slept soundly for a day and a night, but just before sunset, a scream cut through the air like a blade, waking me suddenly.
I sat up but then remained very still. My nostrils dilated and twitched as I began to sniff the air.
Blood . . .
I raised my tail and used it to gather more information. Things couldn’t have been better, and my mouth began to water. Ox blood was sweet and delicious, but this was the most appetizing blood of all. It was freshly spilled human blood, and it came from the direction of Old Rowler’s farm.
Instantly my thirst returned; I quickly got to my feet and began to run toward the distant fence. My long, loping strides soon brought me to the boundary and, once under the fence, I immediately grew to human size. I used my tail again, searching for the source of the blood. It came from the north pasture, and now I knew exactly whose it was.
I’d been close enough to the old man to smell it through his wrinkled skin, to hear it pounding along his knotted veins. Old blood it might be, but where human blood was concerned, I couldn’t be too choosy.
Yes, it was Old Rowler. He was bleeding.
Then I detected another source of blood, though this was far weaker. It was the scent of a young human female.
I began to run again, my heart pounding with excitement.
When I reached the north pasture, the sun was an orange globe sitting precisely upon the tip of the horizon. One glance and I understood everything.
Old Rowler lay sprawled like a broken doll close to the trunk of a yew tree. Even from this distance, I could see the blood on the grass. A figure was bending over him. It was a girl in a brown dress, a girl with long hair the color of midnight. I sensed her young blood too. It was sweeter and more enticing than Old Rowler’s.
It was Nessa, his eldest daughter. I could hear her sobs as she tended to the old man. Then I saw the bull in the next field. It was stamping its feet angrily and tossing its horns. It must have gored the farmer, who, despite his injury, had managed to stagger through the gate and close it behind him.
Suddenly the girl looked back over her shoulder and saw me. With a little cry of terror, she rose to her feet, pulled up her long skirt above her knees, and ran away to the house. I could have caught her easily, but I had all the time in the world now, so I began to walk toward the crumpled body.
At first I thought that the old man was dead, but my sharp ears detected the faltering rhythm of a failing heart. Old Rowler was dying, for sure; there was a massive hole beneath his ribs, and his blood was still bubbling out onto the grass.
As I knelt down beside him, he opened both eyes. His face was twisted with pain, but he tried to speak. I had to bend closer, until my left ear was almost touching the old man’s blood-flecked lips.
“My daughters . . . ,” he whispered.
“Don’t you go worrying about your daughters,” I said.
“But I do worry,” said the dying farmer. “Do ye remember the terms of the first trade we made?”
I didn’t reply, but I remembered them, all right. The trade had taken place seven years earlier, when Nessa had just turned ten.
“While I live, keep away from my three daughters!” he’d warned. “But if anything ever happens to me, you can have the eldest, Nessa, in return for taking the other two south to their aunt and uncle in Pwodente. They live in the village of Stoneleigh, close to the last bridge before the western sea. . . .”
“I’ll take care of them,” I’d promised, realizing that this could be the beginning of years of useful trade with the farmer. “Treat ’em like family.”
“A trade,” the old man had insisted. “Is it a trade?”
“Yes,” I’d agreed. “It’s a trade.”
It had been a good trade because, according to the law of bindos, each Kobalos citizen has to sell in the slave markets at least one purra, or human girl, every forty years, or become an outcast, shunned by his fellows and slain on sight. As a haizda mage, I did not normally dabble in the markets and did not wish to own females in the customary way. But I knew that the time would come when I must meet my next obligation or suffer the consequences. Otherwise I would become an outlaw, hunted down by my own people. Rowler was old; once he was dead I could sell Nessa.
And now here he was before me, dying, and Nessa was mine.
The farmer began to cough up a dark clot of phlegm and blood. He hadn’t long now. Within moments he’d be dead.
It would take a week at most to deliver the two younger girls to their relatives. Then Nessa would belong to me. I could force her north to the slave market, taking my time while I sampled some of her blood on the way.
Suddenly the old man began to fumble in the pocket of his overcoat. Perhaps he was searching for a weapon, I thought.
But he pulled out a little brown notebook and a pencil. With shaking hands, not even looking at the page, he began to scribble. He scribbled a lot of words for a dying man. When he’d finished, he tore out the page and held it toward me. Cautiously, I moved closer and accepted the note.
“It’s to Nessa,” Rowler whispered. “I’ve told her what she has to do. You can have everything—the farm, the animals, and Nessa. Remember what we agreed? All ye have to do is get Susan and Bryony to their aunt and uncle. Will ye keep to our trade? Will ye do it?”
I read the note quickly. When I’d finished, I folded it in two and pushed it into my overcoat pocket. Then I smiled, showing just a hint of teeth. “We made a trade, and I’m honor bound to keep to it,” I said.
Then I waited with Old Rowler until he died. It took longer than I expected. He struggled for breath and seemed reluctant to go, even though he was in great pain. The sun had sunk well below the horizon before he gave a final shudder.
I watched him very carefully, my curiosity aroused. I had traded with Old Rowler for seven years, but flesh and blood is opaque and hides the true nature of the soul within. I had often wondered about this stubborn, brave but sometimes cantankerous old farmer. Now, at last, I would finally find out exactly what he was.
I was waiting to see his soul leave his body, and I wasn’t disappointed.
A gray shape began to materialize above the crumpled overcoat. It was very faint and ever so slightly luminous. It was helical in form, a faint spiral, and much, much smaller than Old Rowler. I’d often watched human souls before, and I liked to wait and see which way they would go.
So what was Old Rowler?
Was he an up or a down?
I harvest souls and draw power from them, absorbing them into my own spirit. So I prepared myself to reach out and snatch the farmer’s soul. It was a difficult thing to do and, even with the whole force of my concentration, could only be accomplished if the soul lingered awhile. But this soul did not tarry.
With a faint whistle it began to spiral away, spinning up into the sky. Not many did that. Usually they gave a sort of groan or howl and plunged into the earth. So Old Rowler was clearly an up. I’d missed out on a new soul, but what did that matter? He was gone now, and my curiosity was satisfied.
I began to search the body. There was only one coin. Probably the same one I’d given him earlier for the ox blood. Next I pulled out the saber. The handle was a little rusty, but I liked the balance and the blade was sharp.
I swished it through the air a few times. It had a good feel to it, so I thrust it safely into the lining of my own overcoat.
That done, I was free to begin the main business of the night.
Old Rowler’s daughters . . .
CHAPTER II
NO MANNERS AT ALL
IT was getting dark when I reached the farmhouse. There’d be no moon tonight, and there was only
one light coming from the house—the faint, fitful flicker of a candle behind the tattered curtains of the front bedroom.
I loped up to the door and rapped loudly upon it three times. I used the black knocker, the one decorated with the one-eyed head of a gargoyle, which was supposed to frighten off anything threatening that approached by night. Of course, this was just superstitious nonsense and my triple rap echoed through the house.
There was no reply. Those three girls had no manners, I thought. No manners at all.
Angrily, I dropped on all fours and ran three times round the house in a widdershins direction, against the clock, and each time I passed the front door I let out a loud, intimidating howl.
Next I returned to the front of the house and blew myself up to three times human size. I placed my forehead against the cold glass of the bedroom window and closed one eye.
With my left eye, I could just see through the narrow chink where the curtains met. I spotted Nessa, my inheritance, and her two sisters, huddled together on the bed.
Nessa was in the middle, with her arms wrapped about the shoulders of her younger sisters, Susan and Bryony. I’d spied on them many times before. There wasn’t much I didn’t know about these girls.
Nessa was seventeen, Susan a year younger. Susan was plumper than Nessa, with hair the color of ripe corn. She would have fetched the best price at the slave market. As for Bryony, she was still a child, about eight summers old at the most; cooked very slowly, her flesh would be succulent, even tastier than day-old chicken—though many Kobalos would prefer such young flesh raw.
The truth was that Nessa was worth the least of all, but her sale would allow me to fulfill my duties under the law of bindos. A trade is a trade, and I always keep my word, so I shrank to human size and, with one almighty blow of my left hand, struck the front door.
The wood splintered, the house shook, the lock shattered, and with a groan, the old door swung back upon its hinges. Then, without waiting for an invitation, I stepped across the threshold and climbed the wooden stairs.
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