by Claudia King
“Are you sure you heard them speak?” Liliac said. His voice was directly above her.
“No, but it's best to be sure, isn't it? Can't you make them more broth?”
“I told you, I'm already giving them too much of the sleeping root. If we poison them then all those deaths will have been for nothing.” The shaman sounded uncertain, tired and fearful. His act had been perfect back on the riverbank, but now that half of his warriors were dead and he had two captive Moon People to deal with he seemed less confident.
You've never used your herbs on our kind before, have you? Adel thought.
Liliac's feet shifted on either side of her. Firm hands gripped her shoulders, and the shaman rolled her over to face him. She felt his breath barely a hand span above her face. Before anyone could notice the splinter clasped in her hand, she acted. Her knees shot out to either side, slamming Liliac's ankles against the edges of the canoe and twisting them awkwardly. The shaman cried out as he lost his balance, falling forward on to Adel's chest. She threw her bound hands around his neck, pulling him in close as he tried to push away. The splinter found the side of his neck, pushing hard against the large vein that throbbed angrily against Adel's thumb.
“Move and you die,” she hissed.
Liliac froze. “Stay still, all of you,” he called in a voice that held a surprising amount of authority for a man in his predicament. Now that Adel's eyes were open she could see two spears pointing at her by the men perched on the crossbeams. Liliac's torch had sizzled out in the river when she grabbed him, but she could still make out her immediate surroundings in the moonlight. A stir of movement at the other end of the canoe told her Kiren was crouching behind them.
“Stay put, girl!” Adel said quickly in the Moon People's tongue. “I have a splinter at this one's throat. He is telling his men to hold their weapons.” To her relief Kiren obeyed, but she could feel the girl's tension like a knife hanging over her. With Kiren's thin understanding of the Sun People's tongue she might easily misinterpret something.
“They'll kill you if you hurt me,” Liliac said, his breath rushing against Adel's cheek.
“Then both of us will die for nothing,” she replied. This shaman was no fool. Unlike a warrior he would not throw his life away for the sake of pride, and he had shown just how far he was willing to go to take her captive back on the riverbank. She could sense his mind hurrying through the possibilities, searching for threats or compromises that might save his skin. She pushed the splinter against his neck harder. Denying him any time to think was her most potent weapon right now. “Cut the girl's bindings. Then cut this canoe loose and let us drift ashore. Once we are out of bowshot, we'll run, and you can keep your life.” Adel raised her voice so that the other Sun People might hear. “Have you not lost enough men on this journey?”
“What do we do, Liliac?” one of the bowmen asked fearfully.
The shaman moistened his lips, hesitating before he answered. “Point your spears at the other one. If I die, kill her, but leave this one alive. You must take her home to the high priest.”
“There'll be no one to make the sleeping broth with you dead!” Adel said through clenched teeth. The man's weight on top of her was making it difficult to breathe.
“I have other men who know herbs. Kill me if you must, Sorceress. You'll be killing your friend too.”
Adel pressed the splinter into his neck hard enough to draw blood, but Liliac barely flinched. Curse him. He was either an outstanding liar, or he truly had no fear of death.
“If you want to save your shaman's life you'll do as I say!” Adel called to the others. “You won't find your way home without him.”
“My part in this journey is done,” Liliac said. “All they need to do is follow the river. Don't be a fool, Sorceress. Put down that spike.”
“You coward,” Adel hissed. “Let us go, or you'll suffer my curse upon your children's children!”
“Our spirits are strong. They will protect us from your dark magic.” The shaman had begun to smile. “I know you're a woman of talk and reason. Don't make this a matter of death.”
Threats were not going to work. Liliac had prepared himself for this. What had made him sound so uncertain before? What could she use against him?
“I may as well slay you and take my own life,” Adel said, putting as much conviction as she could behind her words. “Those herbs in your broth will kill us soon anyway.”
The shaman twitched. It was hard to tell in the gloom, but she fancied that a flash of doubt had crossed his features.
“There's not enough root in those bowls to kill you,” he said.
“Don't play the fool with me, Shaman!” She scraped the splinter up his neck. “A medicine to your kind is a poison to us. We die either way. You will fail no matter what you do. Let us go, and you'll at least keep your life.”
Liliac fell silent. Canoes knocked against the ends of their vessel as the rest of the Sun People closed in around them. She heard the creak of a bowstring.
“You could be lying to me,” he said.
“Would you stake your life on it?”
“Would you risk your friend's?”
Adel bared her teeth up at him. They had come to a stalemate, each holding something over the other, yet not enough to tip the outcome in either direction.
“Then let the girl go,” she said, “and I will come with you peacefully. No need for your sleeping root.”
“That's a trust you've not earned. I've another bargain for you, Sorceress. You put down your spike and I'll—” Liliac's mild words cut off abruptly as he lunged with the hand he had been slowly moving toward Adel's wrist. He'd done what she'd been doing all day: gradually shifting position until his hand was exactly where he wanted it. In an instant Liliac's fingers were at the side of his neck, sliding up between the splinter and his skin. It would not have been enough to stop a sharper blade, but it bought him the moment he needed. The splinter scraped off the webbing between his fingers as he turned it aside, then his other hand struck Adel's forehead and slammed the back of her skull against the bottom of the canoe. The night sky burst with flashes of colour as her vision blurred.
“Hold your weapons,” she heard Liliac yell as he threw her hands off him. “They've no teeth on them, these wolves.”
Liliac knocked the splinter from her hand. The throbbing of Adel's head sickened her almost as much as her rising sense of failure. Her chance was gone.
Curse this shaman. Curse him.
—8—
The Tunnel
Adel's bid for freedom might have failed, but it had seeded doubt in their captor's heart. She could sense it in his muffled conversations for the rest of the night, spoken low and far away at the head of the flotilla. Liliac was questioning whether she had been telling the truth, and the broth really was poisoning them.
Though Adel was not one to wallow in misery, the feeling that she had failed Kiren still tortured her. Rather than allowing herself to become despondent, she tried to distract herself from those feelings by devising a new means of escape. It seemed a monumental challenge now, but perhaps some opportunity would present itself farther down the river.
They received no overt punishment for their misdemeanour, though the Sun People did tighten their bonds and secure additional ropes around their waists to bind them together; yet another leash they would have to shake if they wanted to get away. If the canoe overturned, Adel thought, the pair of them would surely drown.
The remainder of that night passed in sullen quiet, with the Sun People in the adjacent canoes maintaining a sleepless watch over them. They appeared to be waiting for instructions from Liliac. Adel took the opportunity to sit upright, stretching her muscles and surveying their surroundings now that there was no longer any need to feign unconsciousness. Her guards objected, but she merely stared at them in silence, daring them to do something about it. Liliac had made it clear how desperately he wanted his Moon People alive.
“You had the ch
ance to kill him,” Kiren said after a while, shifting herself upright with a grunt. The Sun People muttered something to one another, but it was clear none of them understood what she was saying.
“I'd never have put that splinter through his neck,” Adel replied.
“Why not?”
“Because that isn't my way, girl.”
After a moment Kiren said, “He threatened to kill me, didn't he?”
Adel did not reply.
“That's their way,” Kiren continued, her voice thick with contempt. “They take two of us, then threaten to kill one if the other runs. It even worked on Vaya. I wish she was here with us now.”
“You think Vaya could have succeeded where I failed?”
Kiren glowered at her. “She's a better woman than you.”
“Only one of us has ever tried to kill the other.”
“I'd rather be killed than captured and tormented.”
The pair locked eyes, Adel's frosty glare meeting Kiren's youthful anger. Despite the forced solidarity of their predicament, the moment was a keen reminder of Kiren's immense dislike for her den mother.
“Now isn't the time to speak of this,” Adel relented, fighting down the compulsions of her pride.
Kiren was not so tactful. “We have nothing to do but speak,” she said, tugging on her bonds.
“Why are you so angry at me, girl? Turn that fire on our captors instead.” As Adel watched Kiren she realised that the young woman's anger was masking something else. Fear, but not for either of them. She regarded her carefully, watching and judging the same way she had done with the people of Khelt's pack. She was good at reading the hearts of others when she tried. As Netya had shown her, it was something she should have devoted more of her time to in recent years.
The den mother's attention seemed to unnerve Kiren, but when the girl tried to look away she met the eyes of the Sun People instead. “What?” she asked with a huff of annoyance.
“Did you see what happened back at the shore?” Adel said softly. It was a question she had been dreading to hear the answer to. “Many of these Sun People are missing. Who did they take from us in exchange?”
“I don't know,” Kiren said. “Why did you make Kale come? And Netya? They're not fighters.”
“What happened to them?”
“I don't know!” Kiren shook her head tearfully. “I saw Kale with the other warriors. He was going to fight. There were so many arrows and spears. Why did you make him stand with you?”
“I will carry the burden of all the brothers and sisters we lost that day. All of the Sun People, too.”
“Why?! They did this to us! This is all they ever do. They trick you, and they turn you against yourself, and then everyone dies. If I have the chance to kill that shaman I will do it. I won't hesitate this time.”
“You won't kill him, Kiren.”
“Why not?”
“Because it isn't our way.”
Kiren was looking more distraught by the moment. “What if it has to be?”
Adel gave her a long, hard look. “Who do you think our enemy is, Kiren? No, it is not the Sun People. It is not the warriors who challenge us. It is not even this shaman, Liliac. Our enemy is the evil that makes men fight. The dark spirit of anger that seeks blood for blood. I know you can feel it in you now, burning you, turning your heart to violence. Let it go or stamp it out. I promise you, it will do you no good to keep on feeding it.”
“So I'm to forgive these people for what they've done?”
“No, but understand where your anger is going to lead you if you follow it blindly. Blindness to ourselves, Kiren, that is one of the greatest enemies of all. Meeting your friend Vaya again reminded me of that. We fight them, they fight us. It has to end somewhere. This is not a challenge between warriors that leads to honourable defeat, it is a fight that will claim the lives of everyone around us if we let it. We must be the wise ones who stop and search for another way. I wanted to frighten the shaman into letting us go, but I never meant to kill him.”
Kiren still looked restless and upset. Perhaps now was not the time for a lesson like this, but Adel wanted to cool the girl's temper and help her see past her anger.
“I don't care what you say,” Kiren said after a moment. “Evil is not just a dark spirit. Some men are wicked. The shaman is one of them. His followers might not be, but he is.”
“I think he may be a follower too,” Adel said. “All of these men serve their Dawn King, do they not? The shaman spoke of bringing us to someone. High Priest, he called them.”
“Do you think that is his alpha?”
“Perhaps.” Adel grimaced. “A man with power, at least. Power enough to throw the lives of his followers away on a quest like this.” The more Adel dwelt on it, the more she began to resent the person this “high priest” might be. The kind of man who sent out warriors to kill on his behalf, to conquer and capture and deceive, reminded her very much of her father. What was it that this high priest wanted? Living Moon People that he could present as a trophy? A gift to his Dawn King? Despite knowing next to nothing about him, Adel struggled not to hate the man. At least if Liliac succeeded in bringing them to his homeland she would have the chance to meet his master face to face.
Shortly after dawn Liliac's canoe drifted back toward them, though the shaman made sure to keep a short distance between their vessels this time. The mountains were beginning to swallow the landscape on either side of them now, turning grassland into rolling foothills strewn with dry plants and sun-withered trees. It was odd for a river to be running toward the mountains rather than away from them, but the spirits had wrought stranger things upon the world.
Rubbing the shallow cut Adel's splinter had left on his neck, Liliac made a gesture to the man paddling his canoe. He tossed a pair of waterskins into the vessel between Adel and Kiren's feet.
“I've a bargain for you, Sorceress,” the shaman said. “No more sleeping root, but those bonds stay tight. You stay sitting up where we can see you, and you drink every bit of water in those skins each morning. No more coughing or spitting.”
Adel knew without having to ask that the poison keeping her wolf dormant was in those waterskins. She wouldn't convince Liliac to stop giving them that.
“Why are you taking us with you?” she asked. “What alpha do you serve, and what do they want with us?”
“When I offered you the chance to travel with us as friends I was not lying, but the high priest was adamant; if you did not come with us by choice, we were to take you by force. What he wants with you?” Liliac sighed. “I cannot say. I only hope it will be worth the lives of all the men your warriors slew.”
“How many of mine did you kill in return?”
Liliac looked away uncomfortably, and Adel had to strain against her bonds to keep him in view as his canoe began to drift behind her.
“A few, but I've seen Moon People rise after taking enough arrows to kill half a dozen men.”
“What about the Sun People I had with me? The boy and the woman?” She held her breath, waiting for his answer.
“I couldn't say. It doesn't do a warrior good to reflect on the faces of those he's killed.”
“Only a coward tries to forget the lives he's ended,” Adel growled. Suddenly all the moral wisdom she had shared with Kiren earlier seemed foolish, and for a moment she hated Liliac with all of her heart, for he was lying to her. He'd seen something happen to Kale or Netya. Perhaps both of them. Were they dead, or just wounded?
“What is he saying?” Kiren asked.
“He's only taunting me,” Adel said, trying to regain her composure. Kiren did not need to know. Not now.
“And stop with that talk,” Liliac said. “Use our words when you speak with your friend.”
“She doesn't understand your tongue,” Adel retorted.
“Then you should start teaching her. She may need it in the days to come. Drink your water and eat. The river will be getting rough by the evening.”
�
�How long is this journey? Where will it take us?” she called after him, but Liliac was done speaking with her. He let his canoe drift out toward the middle of the river and took up a paddle to guide it back to the head of the group.
“Drink,” one of the Sun People in the adjacent canoes said. “Then we'll give you food.”
Adel stared after Liliac for a while, then bent forward to pick up one of the waterskins. It was awkward with her bound hands. Her wrists were so tightly constricted that she could barely move them, yet she managed to get the waterskin to her lips and bite out the stopper. This one had a cunning little ring of soft wood inside to form a tighter seal, requiring no cord to bind it closed each time the owner wanted to seal it. The stopper had to be twisted so that it locked into place with the ring inside. Adel was in no mood to marvel at the ingenuity of the Sun People's craftsmanship, however. She took a tiny sip, moving the water around inside her mouth as she tasted it. The flavour was identical to the drink Liliac had shared with her on the shore. No sleeping root in this one.
Though it pained her to comply with the shaman's orders it was a wonderful relief to properly quench her thirst, and after draining her waterskin she encouraged Kiren to do the same. One of the men tossed a twine-bound bundle of flat seed cakes into their canoe afterwards, and despite their lack of flavour they were dense and filling.
Adel meditated for the rest of the morning, recovering her strength and taking fresh stock of their predicament. She hushed Kiren's attempts at conversation, suggesting that the girl conserve her energy as well.
As the sun moved across the naked sky the river swept them deeper and deeper into the foothills. Adel expected it to turn at any moment, knowing that it could not maintain this course forever, yet it continued to plunge straight on toward the rocky slopes that rose up to bite the heavens above them. A very strange river indeed. Adel examined the banks more closely and saw that some of them showed raw rock poking through the dirt. Perhaps this was not a natural river, but a split formed when the earth tore itself apart at some point in the distant past. The Sun People seemed confident in their course, however, and they guided their canoes with an expert touch, staying closer to the southern side of the river so as to avoid the dangerous eddies near the middle. About half of their canoes were bound together, with crossbeams connecting two or three vessels for extra stability. Many of these were paddled by just a single man. At first Adel assumed they were simply lacking in hands after the fight with Orec's warriors, but even that did not account for the quantity of unmanned canoes. The extra ones were not empty, she realised, but packed full of hide-wrapped bundles, bound over with cords to stop them from spilling. After watching them for a while longer Adel noticed that they sat lower in the water than the others despite being of a similar size. They were not sinking, so did that mean they were heavier?