by Claudia King
This happened once more, maybe twice. Why could she not wake up? At one point she felt the need to pass water, and a pair of arms seemed to be holding her up as she slumped over the edge of something hard and wooden to relieve herself. She remembered once, long ago, being lost in a dream similar to this, but that one had been full of visions. She had been dying, poisoned by an enemy, full of furious determination to survive. Poison. Poison...
The next time she felt the water on her lips she tried to ignore her thirst, sipping only lightly. Afterwards—perhaps a few moments later, perhaps a whole day—she tried to summon up the sensation of being filled with nausea, her stomach contracting, bile rising. Somehow, she felt her own fingers at the back of her mouth, and she pushed. Her knees banged against wood as her muscles convulsed, shocked back to wakefulness by the demands of her body. A thin, watery pool of vomit spilled on to the ground beneath her as she retched almost silently. She tried to be quiet. No one seemed to notice.
In the hours that followed Adel's awareness slowly came back to her. She could still not feel her wolf. That poison, it seemed, was not one that could be shaken off so easily, but she had managed to weaken whatever had been keeping her asleep. Stealing a glance from beneath her eyelids, she saw that it was night time. The sound of lapping water surrounded her, along with the occasional talk of Sun People and the clonk of canoes knocking together. She was in the bottom of one of them, she realised, and the stiffness in her wrists and ankles told her that they were bound. Hunger and thirst tormented her, but the grogginess of the sleeping medicine was worse. She hated not being able to think clearly.
After listening for a while longer she surmised that she was in one of the larger canoes. There was someone else lying in here with her, apparently asleep. Their soft breath could be heard somewhere near Adel's feet. To her left and right a handful of voices murmured intermittently, but there seemed to be no one else in her own canoe besides the sleeper. Once her head had cleared a little more she opened her eyes half way and tried to examine her surroundings. Three crossbeams spanned the top of the canoe above her head, likely securing it to two more vessels on either side. That was probably where the Sun People were, close enough to keep watch, but not close enough for Adel to reach them.
Some time before dawn the breathing near her feet softened, and the faintest sound of a girl's voice reached her ears.
“Adel. Adel.”
It was Kiren.
Not trusting her parched throat, Adel pushed her feet gently against the girl's side in response. She felt Kiren shift suddenly.
“Can you speak?” Her words were almost inaudible even over the sound of the river, but anything louder might be overheard by the Sun People in the adjacent canoes. “Push me once for yes. Twice for no.”
Adel pushed twice.
“Don't drink the broth they give you. It's how they trap us. They have poison that can make you freeze, put you asleep...” The nearby splash of a paddle muffled her voice for a moment. “...and I cannot feel my wolf.”
Adel pushed once for yes.
“Can you get your hands free?”
No.
“I'm loosening my bindings, but it's slow. There's another rope tying us to the canoe as well.”
Adel peered down. In the faint moonlight she could just barely make out the knots binding her wrists together. Mother Syr had begun to show a sliver of her face in the heavens again. That meant a few days might have passed since the Sun People took them. The rope was strong and woven from several cords, but any rope could be gnawed through in time. She'd done it in the past, and she could probably work the knots loose enough to slip free if she had a whole night at them. The difficult part would be doing it without the Sun People noticing. Following the length of the rope along the side of the canoe, she saw that it was knotted through a hole at the end of the vessel just above her head. She could probably free her hands easily enough, but her feet were another matter, and the tether binding her to the canoe was tied to both.
If only she could take the shape of her wolf, then her paws would slip easily from the knots and her teeth would be able to take care of any lingering snags. But the Sun People would probably kill her the instant they saw her try, even if she managed to shake off the effects of the poison inhibiting her shift.
Swallowing a few times, she lubricated her throat with saliva and tried to speak.
“Can you hear me?”
No answer. She raised the volume of her voice as gradually as she dared, not fully trusting her parched throat to obey.
“Kiren?” She felt a twitch near her legs.
“Yes?”
“Were any others taken?” Adel croaked. “Were we the only two?”
“No others. I've tried to look when they feed me. Just Sun People. About a dozen, maybe a few more. We must have killed nearly half of them at the river.”
Adel felt her heart cramp up in her chest, and the sensation only grew worse when she remembered the map. Did Liliac have it right now? All of her hopes for peace had been shattered. The Sun People would no longer be willing to talk after this. Yet did that really make any difference? The shaman had lied to her face, coaxed her in and then had his warriors attack. He'd had no intention of making peace in the first place.
Remembering the arrow that had struck her, she tried to feel the back of her thigh. Her hands were bound in front of her, but when she moved her legs she felt a faint pinch of pain a short distance above her knee. It seemed to be mending, but when she agitated it the ache began to spread through her thigh again. That was strange. It should have healed by now. Perhaps the wound had been worse than she'd thought, or maybe she had only been asleep for a day? Yet the moon had changed too much for that.
“How long since they took us?” she whispered to Kiren.
“I don't know. Three days at least. Before then I was asleep. I think they hit me over the head in the fight.”
Three days. An arrow wound should have stopped hurting by then. Perhaps she was just weak, but that seemed unlikely. The poison might be crippling her body. The grim realisation struck Adel that she was healing as slowly as the Sun People did. Was this another symptom of the herb that had put her wolf to sleep?
Soon afterwards the sun began to come up, bringing a halt to her whispered conversation with Kiren. Their captors would be paying closer attention during daylight, and she wanted them to think she was still helpless. More voices began to sound around her as the napping Sun People awoke. Now that her head was clear Adel began to listen, focusing on singular conversations here and there in the hopes of learning as much as she could about her predicament.
The shaman Liliac was still alive and calling orders from up ahead. Some of his men complained about the dangers of having to sleep on the river rather than bringing their canoes ashore, but a more pervasive fear was that of the Moon People. Despondency about the loss of their slain brothers intermingled with an atmosphere of constant tension. Several voices swore they had seen wolves stalking them from the riverbank, while others asserted that the distant howls of animals were the sorceress's warriors chasing after them.
“Only a day more,” Liliac said. “One more night on the river and we'll have no more Moon People to worry about.”
A day more. What happened in a day? They could not be that close to the Sun People's territory already. Adel hoped the misgivings of the men were true and that Orec's warriors were tracking them. That would mean most of them had survived the fight at the river. She dreaded to think what might have happened to Netya, Orec, Caspian, Fern, and so many others.
The den mother swallowed her fear, reminding herself that it was useless right now. She had to save her own life and Kiren's before she could begin worrying over things that were presently beyond her control.
As the sun rose blistering heat began to fill the canoe, made no more bearable by the woolen gown Adel was wearing. She began to shift uncomfortably, feeling the sting of day-old sunburn on her cheek.
“Look
,” a man in one of the adjacent canoes said. “I think she needs putting over the edge. It's time to feed the pair of them anyway.”
“What about the other one?” another voice answered from the opposite side.
“One at a time. They might wake up, no matter what the shaman says.”
Adel tried to feign unconsciousness, letting her body flop lifelessly in the grip of the man who clambered over the crossbeams and hauled her upright with both arms beneath her shoulders. Keeping a firm grip around her torso, he held her in a sitting position over the edge of the canoe and waited. Realising what he was doing, Adel took the opportunity to relieve herself into the river, too focused on her surroundings to feel any sense of shame. Her captors, it seemed, were far less comfortable about it than she was.
“Not right to treat a woman like this,” the one holding her mumbled.
“You can't call a beast a woman. I'll be glad when we're home. I don't sleep well knowing these two are in the next canoe.”
Adel felt the vessel rocking beneath her as someone else clambered over the crossbeams on the opposite side, then a bowl was pressed to her lips and watery broth began to trickle down her chin. She made a show of swallowing, but this time she held the broth in her mouth for a moment before letting it spill from the corner of her lips. With a little luck the man feeding her might just think he was being clumsy.
“Don't waste so much, or we'll just have to do this again later.”
The man pouring lowered the bowl for a moment and tried to pry her jaw open. She relented slightly, swallowing just a little of the broth and trying to keep the rest of it in her mouth. The herb keeping her wolf dormant was so strong that she suspected a swallow or two was all it took for its effects to take hold, but the sleeping medicine seemed much weaker. The Sun People's medicine generally was. She could probably endure a mouthful with only a little grogginess to show for it.
Feigning a coughing fit, Adel sprayed the last of the broth over the man feeding her, prompting a curse and a sudden wobble of the canoe as he backed off. The one holding her tensed, as if expecting her to sprout fangs and bite him, but she allowed herself to go limp again in his grasp.
“If she starts moving again you're feeding her more later,” he said with a grunt, then wrestled Adel back into the canoe and set her down. She only managed to steal a quick glance from beneath her eyelids before the wooden sides of the vessel obscured her view. She saw two men in the canoe in front of her and open grassland on the riverbank. Open grassland, and the towering peaks of the mountains. They were almost at their base.
Putting aside the question of what their closeness to the eastern mountain range might mean, Adel tried to let the meagre amount of broth she had swallowed soothe her hunger and thirst. It was near pointless. The baking sun continued to beat down on her, making every moment a constant discomfort. Occasionally a tree would pass by overhead and offer some much-needed shade, but they were few and far between.
Focusing on something to do to keep herself from going mad, Adel began to work her wrists from side to side, keeping every motion of her body slow enough not to be noticed. The Sun People hauled Kiren up to be fed shortly afterwards, and Adel took the opportunity to roll over on her front as the canoe rocked. It was an uncomfortable position to be in, but it kept her hands concealed beneath the folds of her gown.
Inch by painstaking inch, she worked her hands up to her mouth. If only her gown had fallen over the bottom of her face she would have begun to gnaw at the bonds, but she didn't dare risk it when one of her captors might glance over and see. Instead she explored the base of the canoe with her fingers, trying to find some rough surface against which she might rub the cord to fray it. By noon she was almost delirious from the heat. Part of her began wishing she had swallowed her morning broth after all. At least then she would be unconscious and free from the terrible hunger and thirst that made her body feel both hot and hollow at the same time. Yet that was a weak thought, and not one she cared to indulge even in her feverish state. She would not free herself and Kiren by giving in to these Sun People, and if what Liliac had said was true she only had a day before they arrived somewhere her pack would be unable to follow.
After spending half the afternoon rubbing her bonds against the roughest patch of wood she could find, Adel heard a faint crack. The rope caught on something, and she paused in case any of the Sun People had heard. Once she was sure the noise had gone unnoticed she pressed her hands to the base of the canoe and felt about. Her fingers touched the edge of a long splinter. Suddenly tense, Adel's discomfort vanished as she worked her nails beneath the edge of the loose wood and tugged. Imagining she was driving a flake of flint off a rock, she tried to make the splinter spread as far as possible before it came loose, tugging and prying gently until her fingertips were raw. By sunset she had made it as long as her palm, hard like the rest of the canoe and wickedly sharp at the tip.
She was forced to abandon her efforts when the Sun People hauled her and Kiren up to feed them again, and this time it was even harder to resist swallowing the sweet wetness as it touched her lips. Instead, she tried something riskier. Food she could go without, but the lack of water was making Adel increasingly lightheaded, and she knew she might lose consciousness if she did not drink something soon. The man holding her from behind slackened his grip slightly once he had her in place, she noticed, expecting her not to move much once she was balanced over the edge of the canoe. As the crossbeams wobbled with the motion of the other man taking the bowl away, Adel put on another pretend coughing fit and jerked her shoulders suddenly upward, letting her torso slip out from between her captor's arms. She dropped into the gap between the canoes. The rope binding her hands snapped taut, preventing her from falling all the way overboard, but not before her head and shoulders hit the water and submerged. Knowing she only had a moment before they hauled her out, she opened her lips and gulped a huge mouthful of the river, ignoring the pain of the rushing water as it filled her upside-down nostrils. There was not nearly enough time to properly slake her thirst before the man behind her dragged her out by the wrists. Still, a few mouthfuls of water was better than nothing, and her soaked hair would help to keep her cool until the sun went down.
“Do you think she's sick?” one of the men said as they wrestled her back into the canoe. “Keeps coughing and squirming. She never did that before today.”
“Ask the shaman when he wakes. He would know.”
To Adel's relief they did not question her strange behaviour any further. They seemed eager to stay as far away from her canoe as possible. Yet still, what they had said worried her. As a shaman Liliac would probably be able to tell that she was only feigning her semi-conscious state. Sleeping medicine always brought about a particular quality of breathing and movement, and if he peeled back her eyelids he would be able to see the alertness in her pupils. Her opportunity to act was quickly narrowing.
Once they had fed Kiren and gone back to their canoes Adel found her splinter again and pulled until it snapped. She tugged the wood back and forth until the fibres pulled loose, then got a feel for it in her hand. It was about the length of a short knife. Not something she could fight with, but probably sharp enough for one dangerous thrust. With a sinking feeling she realised that she would not have time to chew through her bindings, but her squirming had loosened them enough to allow for a little motion.
“Kiren,” she whispered once the moon had come out and the Sun People were growing quiet.
“I'm awake,” the girl's voice answered.
“The next time they come to our canoe, be ready. I have—”
The boom of a man's voice next to her was so loud it almost made Adel jump. “Did one of them just talk?”
She froze, holding herself as still and silent as she could. Cursed spirits, she had spoken too loud!
“I didn't hear them,” one of those in the adjacent canoe answered. The end of a paddle dug into Adel's side and jostled her hard.
“She's n
ot moving. Maybe it was the other one?”
“They might be waking up. Tell Liliac. I don't want to get close to them if they are.”
She could hear fear in their voices. There was a scrape of wood, and she imagined a speartip hovering over her head. A susurration of noise crossed the waters as the men sent whispered messages from one canoe to the next. Adel prayed that Kiren had the good sense to stay quiet. There was still a chance to act, but it would have to be now. Hopefully the girl would not do anything rash.
Not long afterwards another canoe knocked against theirs.
“Bring the light,” she heard Liliac say, and the glow of a torch flashed past her eyelids. “Have you been giving them every bowl I've prepared?”
“Most of them. They spit some up today.”
“It should still be plenty,” Liliac murmured, his voice low with concern. “There's near enough sleeping root in each of those bowls to kill a grown woman.”
“They're not women.”
The light of the torch moved, and Adel felt her canoe wobble as someone stepped aboard. She gripped the splinter tight, trying to mentally judge how far she would be able to move within the confines of her bonds. A pair of feet wobbled their way clumsily up the length of the vessel, stepping on Adel's leg and the edge of her gown. Warm and bright, the torch came close to her face again.