Vengewar

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Xar and Ari found a perch in a gnarled oak near Penda’s blanket. The sky was clear and the air crisp. Her only misery was spending the night without Adan Starfall. She tried to tell herself each day would get better, although as she rested her palm across her belly, she knew she would think the same thing every single night she was away from him.

  Hale Orr had scraped away stones and branches to clear the ground, then spread an extra blanket beneath him, but still he tossed and turned. “Cra, you’ve spoiled me with comfortable quarters in your castle, dear heart. The ground never used to be so hard.”

  “Your body has grown soft. Your own buttocks should provide ample cushioning.”

  “Very funny,” he said and rolled over.

  The next day they came upon an Utauk caravan with wagons, mules, and ponies. Hale recognized a bearded man riding a dappled horse. “Melik! We could use some company!”

  The caravan leader looked at the two riders, marking their crimson and black colors before he brightened. “Orr … Hale Orr! And is that Penda?” He nodded respectfully. “My queen.”

  Penda cautioned, “We are just two travelers now. We want no one to remember who we are or where we’ve been.”

  “Utauks are good at keeping secrets.” Melik tapped his nose. “You’re welcome to join our party. We intend to trade with the village ahead, then find a good place to camp nearby.” He drew a circle around his heart. “Do you have news to offer us?”

  Hale responded with a grave nod. “We have much to share and be shared.”

  The hill village celebrated the arrival of the caravan, a motley of colorful fabrics, good cheer, and interesting wares for trade. The Utauks sold dripping honeycombs harvested from a hollow tree, packets of dried flowers that could be made into delicious tea, and handmade scarves that the village women adored. In exchange, they purchased wooden and iron tools, needles, and silver jewelry created by local artisans.

  The caravan moved on to camp in a nearby meadow. Melik’s new wife befriended Penda, asking many questions about her pregnancy because she herself was a few months along with her first child. At the campfire, the caravan leader shared tea and pastries with his visitors. It was time to exchange news and stories.

  Melik spoke slowly, as if every word held added importance. “These are dangerous days, Hale Orr. Since you spend so much time within the city walls, you may not be aware of all the whispers around us.”

  “Cra, I hear them. And we have news of our own.”

  Melik nodded his shaggy head. “Though our tribes are dispersed, Utauks are still aware of what goes on. Our caravans cross the three kingdoms, but I am convinced that some of them have simply vanished.” He sipped his tea, then plucked out a floating flower petal in the water. “We have found empty villages, as if the people fled. Where did they go?”

  “They were taken by wreths,” Penda said. “Enslaved.” She raised a hand to call Ari. The blue reptile bird fluttered down and rested on Penda’s knee. “This is not my ska. She belongs to Glik.”

  “The orphan girl? She traveled with us several times.”

  “Glik was kidnapped, too.” Penda touched the mothertear in the ska’s collar and played the sickening images of desert canyons, the squalid camp, the hundreds of gaunt human prisoners forced to perform hard labor. Melik and his family watched in disbelief. “Even while this was happening, Queen Voo of the sandwreths came to Bannriya and spoke to my husband and me, claiming friendship, offering an alliance. But she is no friend. The sandwreths have seized and enslaved many humans.”

  Melik groaned. “That is worse than what I thought.”

  “Does Shella din Orr know?” asked the caravan leader’s wife. “We must spread a warning among all our tribes.”

  Hale grumbled. “Cra, how can any of our caravans defend against this? The wreths are powerful.”

  Penda said, “We haven’t seen Shella since we learned this news.”

  Melik said, “We passed the heart camp several days ago. We will take you there.” He clapped his hands to issue a command to the caravan. “Change of plans! Tomorrow we pack and retrace our steps!”

  Hale expressed his thanks. “And we will need Utauk help to hide and protect my daughter. I fear Queen Voo wants to find her.”

  Though Penda was proud of her family colors, Melik offered her a green and white skirt and a blue shawl, which further disguised the queen’s identity. The next day the caravan moved swiftly along the familiar road.

  On the way, several young Utauk men and women spread out on the edge of a meadow, carrying a long gossamer net woven from thin threads. Thrashers came across the meadow from the opposite direction, noisily plodding through the tall grasses, startling quail and pheasants. The net bearers rushed forward and flung their weighted nets high. Most of the birds got away, but three were trapped. The hunters extricated their prizes, while others unraveled and straightened the nets before rolling them carefully for the next hunt. Melik proudly accepted the birds. “We can share these in the heart camp. We will be there within the hour.”

  Penda smelled woodsmoke and heard the camp before they topped a rise and looked down into a dell filled with wagons, horses, and tents. Flying overhead, the two skas greeted several reptile birds that were heart-linked to Utauks in the camp. Three teenaged boys left their chores and ran to meet the approaching caravan. They knew Hale Orr on sight with his gold tooth and his missing left hand, and they soon recognized Penda, the queen of Suderra.

  Inside the old matriarch’s spacious tent, Shella din Orr sat hunched on a thick woven rug that was a tapestry of countless colors, each strand for a family line, children, nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives. Thousands of lines were woven into the pattern, and the old woman claimed to know them all. Her eyes were still bright with intelligence. Outside, her burly and bearded grandnephews, Emil and Burdon, stood watch, keeping visitors away to give the matriarch privacy with her guests.

  Hale and Penda sat with her, sharing their news. As the old woman watched the images from Ari’s collar, tears ran through the wrinkles on her face. With a gnarled finger, she drew a circle over her heart. “Sweet Glik! I knew that girl would get herself into trouble.” Her thin lips pinched together. “Is there a way to rescue her?”

  Penda shifted, trying to find a comfortable position among the cushions. She felt so ungainly. “Not yet. My Starfall has the armies of Suderra, but we could never survive a war against the sandwreths.”

  “Cra, and that’s what it would be,” Hale said. “An all-out war!”

  Penda shook her head. “We are still searching for a way. For now, Queen Voo does not know that we have discovered her treachery. I just hope my sister Glik can survive that long.”

  Shella nodded wisely. “She will survive. I know that girl.” Her expression and words were filled with sadness. “We have seen signs and received reports from across the land. Utauk travelers in the Dragonspine Mountains bring terrible stories. Mount Vada exploded and the mountains cracked. How can it be anything else but Ossus stirring?”

  “Other dragons have been seen as well, like the one the wreths hunted out in the desert.…” Penda shuddered. “They said it was only a small dragon.”

  The matriarch gave a sage nod. “Ossus is made of all the evil and violence from a god’s heart. Some portions have leaked out and manifested themselves. When Ossus himself emerges, that will be enough to break the world.”

  Hale hung his head. “Cra! The mountains are cracking like an egg about to hatch.”

  Shella said, “I expect more dragons will be loosed upon the world.”

  Outside in the camp, her nephew Emil brought out a small cask of chemical powder. The children gathered around the bonfire and listened to him sing a well-known song about stars falling from the skies, and as he reached the end of his verse, Emil scattered a small handful of the powder into the fire. Bright colors and glittering sparks whooshed up, making the children laugh with delight, although the skas were terrified.

 
“Do it again!” one girl pleaded. “Do it again!”

  Looking put-upon but secretly smiling, Emil reached in and threw another puff of powder, creating a shower of colorful sparks. When the Utauk children kept hounding him, he sealed the wooden lid back in place. “Cra, this is rare and expensive powder! You have had enough amusement for one night.”

  Penda watched with sparkling eyes. She had always enjoyed these light shows as well.

  Because it was a clear, dry night, she and her father slept outside near a small fire by Shella din Orr’s large tent. Other Utauks offered them cushions and blankets that were far more comfortable than what they had packed on their horses.

  Restless, Ari warbled and clicked as she perched on a branch above Penda’s bedroll. Xar was more relaxed, poking his snout into his green plumage. Penda lay back, listening to her father snore as she drifted off to sleep.

  She missed Adan, worried about Glik, felt the baby stir inside her. She wondered how close she was to true labor. This was her first baby, so she had no idea what to expect. The birth should come in no more than a few weeks. “The beginning is the end is the beginning,” she muttered to herself and dozed off.

  Deep in her dreams she had a vision of flying skas, thousands of them coalescing into an irregular shape, great wings covered with scales, a sinuous neck, barbed spines and sharp fangs, eyes filled with all the horror and evil ever loosed upon the world.

  Penda woke up just before dawn, covered in sweat, her heart pounding. She felt around her on the ground, not sure where she was.

  Hale Orr rolled over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “What is it, dear heart?”

  “Just a nightmare, or a vision. Glik always had dangerous visions.”

  On his perch, Xar rattled and hissed, disturbed. Through her heart link, Penda felt a strong thrumming, and she heard others in the heart camp stirring. Xar chittered insistently.

  With a gasp, she realized that Ari was gone. The blue reptile bird had sensed her frightening dream and fled, or maybe she was answering some other call. High above the camp in the predawn sky, Penda thought she could see Ari streaking away against the stars.

  “Come back!”

  But Ari flew off and vanished into the first hint of sunrise.

  30

  UTHO was ready to return to Convera. He did not like being so far from the war plans he had set in motion under the konag’s seal.

  Mandan, though, was smitten with Lord Cade’s redheaded daughter and formally announced that Lira was his betrothed. He wanted to marry as soon as possible. The girl was giddy, and Cade certainly didn’t object. Despite the grim procession he had just finished, Mandan was excited to instruct the cultural ministers and the chief legacier about planning the royal wedding. Utho was surprised at his impetuousness, but also relieved that the young konag would finally marry. He encouraged the rushed wedding date, ready to finish the matter and move on to more important things.

  On the morning before they were due to depart for home, though, Lady Almeda went missing. She had been on edge for days, snapping at servants, at her husband, and once, in a moment of distraction, she even insulted the konag. Horrified, Cade ordered his Brava to escort his wife to her private rooms, where she could rest until she “no longer felt unwell.” Utho was concerned, knowing how much damage the unstable woman could cause. When Almeda mysteriously vanished, Utho feared she had run off somewhere. Would she cause a scandal? Had she been abducted by some rival lord?

  Cade did not show sufficient alarm, though. He made a show of being worried for his missing wife, demanded to know where she had gone. He sent out searchers, but it was clear he was glad the shrew had disappeared. Suspicious, Utho met his eyes, searched the expression outlined by his razor-thin beard, but could read nothing there: no alarm, no fear, no confusion. Cade was a hard man, as he had proved with his response to the Elliel incident. Utho usually understood him.

  Had Cade done something to his wife, believing it necessary to get rid of her?

  Ugly Gant was also unreadable. The other Brava did not confess to Utho whether or not his lord had given him orders about Lady Almeda.

  Then, late in the morning, the woman’s battered body was found at the base of the saltpearl cliffs. When a rider rushed to the holding house with the news, Cade gathered a party to retrieve her corpse. He showed no apparent grief.

  Mandan and Utho rode with them out to the work area above the sea cliffs. Cade’s soldiers stood with drawn swords around the fearful Isharan captives inside the camp fence. A dozen terrified slaves were stripped down for saltpearl diving, but all work had stopped when they discovered Almeda’s body.

  Ropes dangled down the sheer rocks, where climbers worked their way to the waterline. Mandan hurried to the cliff edge, and Utho kept a hand on the young man’s shoulder to make sure he didn’t slip. They stared down at the pounding surf and watched spray gush around the black rocks. People picked their way over the seaweed-slick boulders. A woman’s pale form was caught in a sheltered elbow of tidepools. Her skin was smeared with red, her white garments torn.

  “My wife was upset and irrational,” Cade mused as he stood next to them. “Easily the type of person who would throw herself off a cliff.”

  The words sounded rehearsed. “We all saw her moods,” Utho said. The ocean breezes made his black cape flutter behind him, despite the finemail lining.

  “A shame,” Cade said.

  “A shame,” Mandan echoed. “Poor Lira’s heart will be broken. I will comfort her.”

  Cade frowned in embarrassment. “My apologies for the domestic turmoil, Sire. My wife and I did argue last night, and I’m afraid it … concerns you.” He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “As a proud father, I am overjoyed that you have chosen our daughter to be your bride, but Almeda is much more possessive. She’s the girl’s mother and didn’t want to give her up. She said … she said terrible things about you, Sire.”

  Mandan’s face darkened. “Why wouldn’t Almeda want her daughter to be my queen? The queen of the Commonwealth?”

  Cade spread his hands. “I often didn’t understand her myself. Only great love gave me the patience to live with her day by day.”

  Though Utho did not believe a word of it, he fashioned an appropriate tale that would be told. “After your argument, Lady Almeda was distraught. She fled your holding house and rode alone up to the coast in the middle of the night.” He looked at Cade, waiting for the noble to add more details, but when he didn’t respond, Utho continued. “In despair, she threw herself over the cliff.”

  Cade agreed. “Yes, that must be what happened.”

  It was a complex and inconvenient way to take one’s life, so far from the holding house, but Utho doubted others would question the story. Gant seemed troubled, but he did not speak.

  Mandan continued to stare at the crashing waves. He watched the workers gather the bashed corpse and pick their way up the cliff. As he listened to Utho’s unlikely explanation, the young man seemed distracted. Eventually, he shook his head. “No, I don’t think that is what happened.”

  Utho frowned in surprise, since Mandan rarely contradicted him. “Truly, my konag? Do you have other information about Lady Almeda?”

  “I know these Isharans.” He turned toward the scarecrowish captives. “What if Lira’s mother came out here to contemplate her decision, and these animals murdered her? What better revenge than to kill the wife of their lord and master? I think they were the ones who threw her over the cliff to the rocks below.”

  Seeing the intensity in Mandan’s eyes, Utho spoke slowly. “That is also a possibility.”

  “I’m sure that’s what happened. Justice must be served. These wretches will face the konag’s judgment.”

  When Almeda’s battered corpse was spread on the tall grasses of the headlands, Mandan stepped forward, fascinated. Her skin was torn and bruised. A pink gash washed clean of blood ran down the side of her head.

  Gant stood with his arms over his chest, while Cad
e looked down, showing no emotion. “My dear wife is gone, and now my daughter has no mother when she is about to be married.” He adopted Mandan’s story and raised his voice to the soldiers who held the Isharan workers at bay. “They murdered her! Somehow, they captured my dear wife and threw her down onto the rocks.”

  “We will find the killers,” Mandan said. “Interrogate them.”

  The terrified Isharans were all brought together, even the ones who had been harvesting saltpearls at the tide line. They stood wet and shivering. Mandan walked past each one slowly, staring at them, meeting their eyes. Some were stoic, others huddled and wept.

  Utho watched the young man, trying to fathom his thought process. When Mandan selected particular victims, he must have noted something in their demeanor or their tone of voice. Perhaps some of them reminded him of members of the empra’s Fulcor delegation … the people he believed had butchered his father.

  “This one.” Mandan paused in front of a man with thinning dark hair and a missing tooth. “He is the ringleader. He planned the murder.”

  The pathetic man recoiled in shock. “I did not! We were held in our shacks all night long. No one escaped.”

  “Then how did you kill Lady Almeda?” Mandan demanded.

  When the man continued to argue, Utho struck him across the mouth. bloodying his lip.

  The konag stepped along the line, pointing to three men who looked bruised and scraped, probably from harvesting saltpearls. “And these three helped him. See the wounds? Lady Almeda fought back, desperate to save herself.” The astonished slaves protested, but Mandan turned his back on them, his mind made up. “Bind them. They will suffer my punishment.”

  The captives moaned and wailed, but they seemed paralyzed. Utho assumed they had long ago given up hope of escape, prepared for death ever since they’d been brought here.

  The four accused were tied to posts erected in the work area. Cade watched with approval as the soldiers wrestled them into place, and Mandan could barely contain his excitement. Utho would have been disturbed to see the young man’s pleasure in such bloody torture, but knowing what the Isharan animals had done to his wife and daughters in Mirrabay, Utho felt no sympathy for them.