“So be it.”
* * *
He only got out from under the tempest because of his cuetzpali mount, the strong-swimming lizard resisting the shocks of lightning enough to keep its course.
Ataquixt heard the cries and shrieks from his crew, saw them flailing with every bolt of lightning, saw others simply bobbing facedown in the area of choppy water. The boat was fully on its side by then, mostly submerged, and useful only for a few who somehow managed to hold on to it in the churning, shocking waters.
Every passing heartbeat seemed like a tortured hour to Ataquixt, and, he knew, likely longer still to those caught under the magical storm.
Finally, the swirling black cloud broke apart, and Ataquixt guided his cuetzpali mount back to the boat. There, he began towing those still alive to the nearby shore. Then he brought in the bodies, a half dozen dead.
“We will find her and kill her,” a mundunugu promised through teeth still chattering, though whether from the cold, his wounds, or the residual shock of the lightning, Ataquixt could not know.
“You will carry our brethren back to the west,” Ataquixt told them. “You will give them to Pixquicauh as heroes, that they may be offered to Scathmizzane, and you will tell Tuolonatl the story of the battle and the human sorceress.”
“The cochcal will not be pleased,” a woman warned.
“Great Tuolonatl knows war,” Ataquixt replied confidently. “She will think our battle a great success.”
Many of the others looked to each other skeptically, he noted.
“We have learned much about our enemy this day,” he explained. “When we came over Tzatzini, we slaughtered them too quickly for them to reveal to us their true powers.” He looked back out to the lake, to the ruined boat floating free on its side in the waters that now seemed clear of ice.
“Now we know.”
“And I, Ataquixt, will learn much, much more.”
The scout, entrusted by the great Tuolonatl, tugged his cuetzpali’s reins and turned the beast, then padded off into the desert night.
5
WILDERLAND WANDERING
The weather and the season were with them for most of the journey. On makeshift rafts, they rode the rivers from the new lake and far to the east, to lands Talmadge and Khotai knew well. And with their magical powers, Aydrian and, particularly, Aoleyn kept the band safe from bears and great cats and any other threats in the wilds through the central regions of the continent. With only one notable accident of a capsized raft—one mitigated greatly by Aoleyn’s powers, when she levitated three children from the rushing waters and floated them to the riverbank—the journey had been as smooth and safe as any could have hoped. A hundred and fourteen people had started from the Ayamharas Plateau and a hundred and nine remained.
Five deaths in two months, out in the wilds, with threats all about.
But now the season had turned. Summer had come on with blazing heat, and the rivers had greatly thinned, meaning that the troupe would walk now almost all the time.
Two weeks, Talmadge had told them that first day away from the last river, trudging through a region sparse with trees and other shade and thick with coyotes, hyenas, and gigantic monsters called birch haunts, which could cleverly hide in a stand of small trees, only to come forth as raging giants. We will make Matinee in two weeks.
Alone, the man would have made it in ten days, easily—he had done so many times before.
But with this group, tired, haggard, blistered, and beaten by the elements, downtrodden and without a home, the two weeks passed and Matinee remained a long road away.
Another person, an elderly lakewoman with two humps on her elongated skull, gave in to her exhaustion and died in the night. The next day, a teenage girl spotted what she thought was a bird’s nest and climbed a tree in search of eggs, only to discover that it was a nest of plains wasps, which swarmed and stung her, causing her to lose her balance and crash down through twenty feet of branches. She landed hard against the lowest branch, which snapped, the jagged edge catching the skin of her side and tearing it, all the way down the side of her leg. She dropped, broken and bleeding, to the ground, her long strip of skin hanging above her like the shed skin of a large snake.
Aoleyn blew the wasp swarm away with a hot and fiery wind, but it took her the rest of that day to save the life of the poor girl, who would need to be carried on a litter the remainder of the way, for it would be weeks before she recovered enough to walk, and never again without a noticeable limp.
Three more grueling, hot days passed. The morning of the fourth found three refugees dead in their grassy bedrolls, a mystery that lasted until Aydrian found and killed a nine-foot viper.
The next day brought a terrible thunderstorm, but the battered caravan continued on. Late that afternoon, the storm blew past, building a rainbow in the east before them, and under that rainbow loomed a small settlement with a huge hall at its center.
“Matinee,” Khotai told Aoleyn and the others. “At last, Matinee.”
Aoleyn glanced back to the west with a look of concern. She knew what was coming. “Not the end of our road.”
“A short respite, and valuable allies to be found,” Khotai explained. “These are the people who know these lands better than anyone. They are skilled trackers, hunters, fighters, scouts. If the pursuit comes—”
“The xoconai have no intention of stopping,” Aoleyn interrupted.
Khotai nodded. “When they come, we will know. From any direction and in what numbers.”
Aoleyn offered a return nod, but there was nothing in her expression to show that she considered that declaration important.
“The east is powerful,” Khotai explained. “Honce-the-Bear is a kingdom of many people. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, with great warriors like Aydrian and monks with magical powers not unlike your own. They have strength and a single king. They will stop these bright-faced murderers.”
Aoleyn managed a smile and another, more decisive nod. She appreciated Khotai’s optimism, and when she thought about it, she understood the source more clearly.
A few weeks ago, this woman was barely mobile, crawling at best, and could not stand or move at all without pain. Now she had endured the long and trying journey better than any, moving with such grace that she seemed more a spirit transcending the mortal coil than a weary traveler weighed by it. While others had trudged, Khotai had leaped and floated, in complete control of the magic and of her own body in her nearly weightless form. Indeed, everything about her seemed lighter: her step, her smile, her attitude each and every day. Even her grooming had gone back to her days of freedom before her ghastly wounds, and her unique beauty, born of strength and competence and tamed by compassion, shined through her brown skin and her dark eyes.
That made Aoleyn happy, and hopeful. They would need Khotai’s optimism, she knew. The haggard and homeless survivors of the disaster at the Ayamharas Plateau would need whatever cheering they might find, and more.
Soon after, a small group of four headed down to Matinee to prepare the frontiersmen for the coming surprises. Aoleyn was surprised when Talmadge and Khotai, who knew these people, asked her to go along. She walked behind the two, with Catriona of Fasach Crann, unsure of her place here and more than happy to heed the orders of Talmadge that she speak little and listen a lot.
And she heard a lot, indeed, even before they got into the large hall, where the drinking, gaming, betting, and playing was heaviest. She heard many quiet remarks directed at her, almost all complimentary, and more than a few referring somewhat suggestively to her bare midriff and sparkling belly ring. At first, Aoleyn felt self-conscious, as she wasn’t used to such attention, but she quickly reminded herself of the gravity of the situation around her and of her own chosen role here and decided that it didn’t much matter. In that moment, perhaps more than ever before, Aoleyn felt comfortable in her skin, in who she was, and confident in her ability to make anyone and everyone respect that, whether the
y liked it or not.
She had faced the demon fossa and had won. She had not allowed herself to be intimidated by Tay Aillig or Mairen—and he was dead by Aoleyn’s hand, while Mairen was a prisoner in a faraway land.
These strangers, though some were thrice her size, would not intimidate her.
Nor was she the focus of their whispers, laughter, or gasps, and after seeing the prime target of the surprised frontier folk, Aoleyn better understood why Talmadge and Khotai had asked her to come along. She grabbed Catriona’s arm and pulled the woman close, whispering reassurances in her ear and translating some of the excited babble going on all about them.
Aoleyn thought Catriona quite beautiful, with her golden-tanned and unblemished young skin and her solid, well-muscled frame—supple, strong, and nearly half a foot taller than diminutive Aoleyn. The woman’s braided hair was thick and golden, her eyes bright and sharp, to aptly reflect her mind. Despite her youth, Catriona had been the one most of the villagers had looked toward when disaster had befallen the lake tribes.
She inspired confidence beyond her years.
And yes, to Aoleyn, the young woman was indeed beautiful, but Aoleyn had become accustomed to the head shaping of the uamhas. She was no longer shocked by it and had come to see it as nothing demeaning or ugly. In fact, in Catriona’s case and many others, quite the opposite.
But could these frontier folk even see the woman as human? They were aghast, clearly, and Aoleyn better understood the reasons that Talmadge and Khotai had chosen this specific makeup of the introduction group.
Two men, in particular, seemed to be fully intrigued by—or horrified by—Catriona’s elongated skull. They talked loudly, though their motions were similar to what Aoleyn would expect if they were whispering; they even covered their mouths as they spoke. They pretended to be looking all around, but their eyes would not turn away even when they turned their heads, both sets locked on the spectacle of the long-headed stranger. One of them even pointed at Catriona, more than once.
“They do not understand,” Aoleyn said to Catriona, when she saw that the woman had taken note of the two.
“They all look like Usgar to me,” Catriona replied steadily and disparagingly.
“We are not all bad,” Aoleyn quipped, and Catriona giggled with embarrassment, for she had obviously forgotten Aoleyn’s own heritage when delivering her insult.
The laugh was a perfect antidote to the unwanted attention.
“I am glad that you found your way with us,” Catriona said to Aoleyn. “I am glad that you stand here with me.”
The profundity of that compliment was not lost on Aoleyn. The hatred between the lake villagers and the Usgar ran deep through uncounted generations, yet the sincerity in Catriona’s voice was easy to hear.
“I am sad that it took the invading xoconai to show us that we are alike and not enemies,” Aoleyn said.
“But Aoleyn knew that all along,” Catriona replied, surprising the dark-haired woman.
“I have spoken much with Bahdlahn,” Catriona explained. “He told me of Aoleyn and of the other prisoners. Of his mother and of all that you did. He says that if the bright-faced invaders had not come, Aoleyn would have defeated the chieftain of the Usgar and would have brought peace between our tribes.”
Aoleyn shrugged. “Sometimes Bahdlahn thinks too highly of me.”
“But you would have tried?”
Aoleyn locked on to the woman’s gaze. “Yes.”
“I am glad that you found your way with us,” Catriona repeated. “I am glad that you stand here with me.”
“Would young and fierce Catriona have answered my calls for peace, I wonder?” Aoleyn asked.
Before the woman could answer, a loud communal gasp stole their attention, and the two women watched all heads in Matinee lifted to see the short flight—or rather, the long leap—of Khotai, the one-legged To-gai-ru woman who was floating wall to wall across the huge open-floored building.
“She did that?” one woman called above the others, pointing to Aoleyn.
“She did,” Khotai replied, and she bounded back the other way, to land beside Aoleyn and Catriona. “I owe my life to Aoleyn of Usgar.”
“And it is a debt we must all repay,” Talmadge said, moving to join his three companions. “For our own sakes. It is good to be back with you, my friends, but know that I will never again go to that mountain lake of which you have so often heard me speak, for that lake is no more, and no more are the people I knew about it. I did not bring back Aoleyn for your cheers—she deserves them but does not need them. And I did not bring back Catriona that you could gawk and laugh at her strange skull.”
He glanced to the three woman and nodded, offering a look to tell them that he thought this was all going well, then turned back to the room more seriously. “I ask that the drinks be withheld now, for I have a story you must hear, and at once.”
Some protests erupted at the call for the drinks to be stopped, but Talmadge and some others managed to quell that immediately, and Talmadge continued, “And I have a hundred more just like Catriona here.” He moved over and put his hand on the woman’s shoulder. “We did not come here to amuse you. We came here because there was nowhere else to go, because we are pursued by a vast army intent on dominion.”
“You led an army to us?” one woman complained.
“We could have gone straight past this place,” Talmadge told her. “And you would have died. All of you.”
Aoleyn noted that there remained no smiles in the room. They were listening. At least they were listening!
“Where are these hundred?” another man asked.
“Not far,” Talmadge replied. “They are hungry, they are homeless. Many are wounded, all are weary. Some are very old, some very young. I would not bring them into Matinee without the agreement and permission of all here.”
“You think us a monastery tending the infirm?” a woman’s voice yelled from the back of the gathering, but she was hushed quickly and loudly by many others.
“I think you good people who prefer to be alone but not from a lack of responsibility to others in need,” said Talmadge. “These people need you.”
“Are they all ugly like that one?” asked a large man, one of the two who had been joking about Catriona, Aoleyn noted.
“She looks different, and that unsettles you,” Aoleyn loudly interjected, stepping in front of Talmadge to address the man directly.
A collective gasp filled the large room.
“And where are you from, lass?” the man asked in reply, and in an accusatory tone.
“Fireach Speuer, the mountain shadowing the Loch Beag.”
“Before that.”
“There was no ‘before that.’”
“You speak—”
“I taught myself your language,” Aoleyn said to him. “I am not like you. I do not fear that which is different. I learn from it.”
“Why is your head like that and not like that?” he demanded, poking his finger at Aoleyn, then at Catriona.
“Why is your hair brown but her hair is red?” Aoleyn asked, nodding toward a red-haired woman not far from the large man. “Why is Khotai’s skin dark but your own light?”
“She is To-gai-ru,” the man answered.
“Is she the first of her kind you ever saw?”
“No!” he insisted.
“Yes,” said the man he previously had been whispering with. “First for me.”
“And what did you think when first you saw Khotai?” Aoleyn asked the second man. “Did you think her beautiful or did you think her strange?”
“Well…” He stammered a bit, and that brought some titters of laughter all about. “Aye, strange!” the man admitted.
“And now?” Aoleyn pressed him. “You were all so thrilled when Khotai entered the hall. I watched it. You thought her dead these last years, but here she is, and you welcomed her back as if a friend.”
“She is a friend!” the man insisted, and the first agreed lou
dly, as did many others.
“Well, then,” Aoleyn said, walking right up to him and staring him in the eye, “tell me—tell us all, tell Khotai—do you still think her strange looking, or beautiful?”
“Take care your answer, Marley Bruuin,” Khotai said. “I’ve but one leg left, aye, but it’s enough to kick yer fat ass.”
The hall erupted in laughter, all aimed at poor Marley Bruuin, who, along with his mate, took it in stride. He leaped forward and fell to one knee before Khotai. “She’s beautiful!” he said. “Ah, but she’s a dark-skinned beauty!”
“Huzzah!” cheered the hall.
“The people with us are beautiful,” Aoleyn said when the noise calmed. “And they’re desperate. They’ve lost their tribes, their families, their friends. They need the goodwill of the good folk of Matinee. And all the folk of all the lands need the skill of the folk of Matinee now, because the golden darkness of the xoconai is coming, do’no doubt, and led by a god of murdering light riding a dragon that swims through the air.”
“Talmadge!” shouted a man from the side of the hall, presiding over the stacks of kegs of ale and wine, which made him a very important voice in Matinee. “Go and get your … our friends and bring them in. You’ve a story to tell us in full and in haste, so it seems, and one we need to hear and hear fast.”
“I do, and I will,” Talmadge answered.
Aoleyn rejoined him and the other three, and Khotai took her hand in a warm embrace as she neared.
“Now you know why I told you to bring her,” she said to Talmadge, all the while beaming a smile of gratitude and admiration at Aoleyn.
“Now you know why I didn’t need to be told,” Talmadge replied. He put on a stern expression and turned to Aoleyn. “I thought I told you to speak little and listen a lot,” he scolded.
“I had better things to say than you were saying,” Aoleyn replied.
Song of the Risen God Page 10