Jerking a leg from under her, the thief tumbled Lady Bly across her own magic table. The old woman squawked. Pinning her hands, Knucklebones tugged down twine used to bind herbs and lashed the woman"s thumbs together, pa.s.sed the twine under the table, and lashed it to her ankles. The archwizard cursed, but the thief conceded, "You won"t lie here long. Your precious city guards-may the G.o.ds rot their livers-will come hunting us criminals. Rest easy, and be glad you survived trying to weasel out of a bargain. Come on, Sunbright!"
Knucklebones flew to the stairs and spiraled down. The barbarian clumped after, entered the cellar.
The thief dumped their satchels and weapons onto the remaining flitter and lashed them tightly. "Open the doors!" she said.
"We"re not flying again, are we? We"ve crashed twice!"
"We"ve had practice, then. Get the doors while I check these wires. The guards will break down her doors soon enough, so there"s only one way out. Besides, your tribe"s at the Narrow Sea, aren"t they?
We saw that from the air."
Sunbright was glad to be groggy, though the haze was hardening into a throbbing headache. Maybe he"d black out in flight. Shuffling, he pried open the doors, and felt his guts clench at the sight of the nothingness outside. Knucklebones yelled for him to climb in. A banging and clattering sounded from the stairwell, and an odd screeching like an animal in pain. "What"s that?" he asked.
"We don"t care! Pick up!"
Together, lugging the tubular frame and gossamer wings, they hopped forward toward the gaping hole crisscrossed by clouds. Wind blew in their faces, and Sunbright closed his eyes.
The cellar floor was suddenly gone, and the barbarian"s boots dangled. Then they plunged nose-first into naked sky.
On the top floor, Lady Bly called for help, then stopped at the smashing and crashing downstairs.
The guards had finally arrived. Good, except they should be gentler with her property. She"d sue the city for damages. And sue-someone-for the indignity of being trussed by a gutter rat in her own workshop. What did she pay taxes for? So the city could let thieves break into peoples" houses?
"Hurry up, you dimwitted nincomp.o.o.ps! Get up here and untie me! I command it!"
Silence below. No answer. Another crash, a chair tossed aside. Scuffling on the stairs. Odd sounds, scratchy and uneven, as if the walker limped. Bly had expected the tramp of boots. This animal skittering made her nerves crawl, as if rats came creeping ...
No, something far more horrible. Too awful to look at. The thing topping the stairs was tall, misshapen, rail-thin, covered in a shimmering carapace of stone that glinted with minerals. Hands were hooked claws. The bald head had eyes a startling, staring blue, quite mad.
It rasped, "Where are my enemies? I smell them! Tell me!"
Bly the Seer had lived a long time. As a scryer, she"d spent decades hunched over her magic table, seen sights from around the world and beyond, but never, in all her visions, had she beheld a monster like this one. Trembling overtook her, and a low moan escaped her lips.
The monster scuffled to the black table and touched the midnight surface with a crooked claw. "My enemy was here. What does this do? It scries!" the fiend hissed, more to itself than to the trembling mage stretched across the table. "Show me!"
Shivering as if frozen, Bly p.r.o.nounced the words that opened the vision. Bulging blue eyes watched the picture, and murmured, "The bright-haired one goes there. But far. Too far, too sunny, too open ... But I have many enemies. You will find one. Polaris is its name. And another, a fat mage . ..
Make magic!" With a claw it severed the twine binding Bly. Numb with fear, the archwizard slipped off the table to the floor. Quickly the monster caught her hair and wrenched her upright, then banged her face on the table so blood spurted from her nose.
"Scry out my enemies!"
With no physical element, like the sage and the scent of the barbarian, and with Bly clumsy with fear, the scrying went badly, but finally the monster croaked, "Yes, yes! There is one I seek! I"ll kill him, flay his flesh from his bones and suck the marrow! Yes, I go to kill, to avenge!"
Bly closed her eyes. She was banged up and near fainting, but if the monster left- Suddenly her face was caught in obsidian claws that cut her cheeks and throat. She screamed, but claws strangled her. Helpless before the monster"s crushing strength, Bly felt herself dragged into the air. Piercing, white-hot pain ripped through her hands and she swooned.
Slapping her face brought her around. Her hands felt afire. Glancing up, she saw the monster had bent open an iron hook that held herbs and-Scribe of the Doomed!-impaled her hands over the hook before crushing it shut! Writhing only ripped flesh and ground the bones, so she hung still. Her world was pain.
The monster rasped, "You aided my enemy, so you become one! All my enemies must die!"
Stepping back, the monster extended both craggy claws. Fire flickered from their tips and washed over the room. Herbs, books, papers, paint, walls, and Bly"s gown all crackled with eldritch energy.
And burned.
Bly screamed long and hard before smoke choked her. Then she fell limp, and never felt the flames around her legs. The monster disappeared, hissing of revenge. The black table went with it.
Chapter 8.
Wind rushed in their faces until their cheeks were numb and their eyelids swollen. The breeze made them thirsty, and Sunbright was hungry, for Knucklebones hadn"t let him eat before their aerial duel.
The barbarian was cramped from sitting hunched in the wicker seat under tubes and wires, and he ached from crashing in the treetop. Yet there was one consolation to all this misery. Fatigue and battering had expunged his fear of flying. In the hours they"d banked and soared, Knucklebones had even let him steer. Later he"d even dozed off, exhausted, while Knucklebones wrestled the steering bars with one good and one lame arm.
Yet he jerked awake with a cry, making Knucklebones jump. "What"s eating you?" she asked, irritated. "You"re moony as a hammer-struck calf!"
The barbarian shook his bright-blond head. "Someone"s after me, I think. Cursing my name, hound- ing my dreams. Evil, and mad, and angry."
"Not just imagination?" Knucklebones"s voice was hoa.r.s.e from shouting over the wind. Far below rolled plains with a glint of sea in the north. All were slanted with black shadows, for the sun was setting, ending the long summer day.
"It could be," Sunbright sighed. "When I"m tired, who"s to know if I dream or hallucinate? Sorting truth from fancy is hard enough in this world, never mind the next."
"We"ll have the world in our laps soon! We must land before the sun drops. We can"t land in the dark."
Sunbright hadn"t considered that even birds bedded before sundown. He squinted ahead. The Channel Mountains looked larger, tall as his hand. "Land east of the mountains," he advised. "Walking with them at our left hand, we"ll find my tribe south of Scourge."
The thief banked east, until the flitter"s nose slanted across the mountains. "We"ll fly until I think it"s too dangerous."
Sunbright felt a familiar looseness in his bowels. Launching, Knucklebones had pointed out, was simple as falling off a cliff. Landing was like diving headfirst into an eagle"s nest without cracking any eggs. Sunbright called, "Let"s get it over with. If we"re hurt, we"ll need daylight to patch up."
The small woman didn"t argue, simply tipped the bar, and pointed them down. Sunbright gulped, and clamped down on his stomach.
The plains were glossy with summer gra.s.s. As they sank, antelope and bison and skulking wolves fanned out before them. Knucklebones slowed the flitter by hauling the wings back while pointing the tail down, though the landscape swept by alarmingly fast. Finally, at spitting height, the thief called, "Hang on!" and shoved the nose down.
Sunbright gritted his teeth as the land leaped up like a tiger. But the clever thief flopped the craft on its belly skids, and they slithered over gra.s.s for seeming miles. Sunbright yanked his knees to his chin, felt chaff and gra.s.s stalks snap and tickle.
Then it was still. Gra.s.s billowed all around, except for the flattened track behind. Knucklebones pried stiff hands off the bars, ma.s.saged her scarred forearms, and chuckled, "I could get to like this!"
"You can have it!" Sunbright grabbed bars and hauled himself out of the flying coffin. Unlashing their supplies, he hung his great sword Harvester of Blood across his back. His bow and arrows were lost, but he kept the empty quiver, and hung his food satchel and both blankets around his shoulders, ready to march.
Knucklebones tossed her rucksack over one shoulder. "Shouldn"t we scavenge wires and such? You made snares last time," she said.
"I just want to get away," Sunbright began, "but you"re right." With their knives they cut away loose wires, lengths of tubing, and fabric from the wings. They never knew what might prove handy.
Looking at the wrecked flitter, Knucklebones asked, "What will the coyotes think of this?"
"A bird skeleton picked clean," he mumbled, then faced north, where a sentence of death awaited.
"Let"s get this over with, too."
They walked where the evening shadows of the Channel Mountains touched the tall gra.s.s, and, gradually, darkness overtook them.
After three days" walk-the last across rock and shale-they breasted a low hill. Sea wind carried salt to their nostrils. Sunbright stopped dead. "That"s them!" he cried. "But it can"t be them!"
Knucklebones just stared. In the distance winked the Narrow Sea, a silver so bright it shone white.
At its sh.o.r.e, and surrounding the toe of the last Channel Mountain, the peak called the Anchor, lay the villainous town whose name had become Scourge. Punished by hard winds off the sea, the town saw any steel mysteriously rust away within weeks. Since industry could not prosper, the town had fished until the fish thinned out. Good people left, the desolate stayed. Them, and plagues of rust monsters.
The idle population turned to thieving and infighting, until Scourge gained its name as a place to avoid.
And here, on the outskirts, amidst sand and rocks, where no humans would venture, Sunbright found his tribe.
The camp was lumpy huts of piled stone, or caves cut into hillsides, or mere holes in the ground covered by rotting hides. The only wooden structure was the common house, a ring of rotted aspen trees dragged from the mountainside, the roof thatched crudely with brush. The disordered camp was rife with garbage, droppings, bones, ashes, and trash. The smoke of a few fires trickled into the bra.s.sy sky. At midday it was hot here on the rocks, as it would be cold by night. A few women trudged through camp with f.a.gots or bundles of meager food. Men slept in the shade or lay with feet jutting from canted doorways. Dirty children crept at quiet games, or else turned over rocks, hunting salamanders and insects for food. Buzzards picked at garbage, unmolested.
Sunbright stood with his mouth agape. "I had a hint . . ." he said, his voice heavy with shocked disappointment, "when I glimpsed the village in the scrying table ... but how.... Where are the reindeer? Where are the dogs? How did this happen?"
Knucklebones only shook her head. She"d grown up in poverty, in the sewers of a mighty city where every sc.r.a.p was stolen or scavenged. But even she was shocked, having heard time and again of Sunbright"s proud people. This motley bunch looked like trolls.
After a long time the barbarian picked up his feet-a mighty effort, as if they were glued to the ground-and descended the slope.
At first there was no sign they"d arrived, as if the pair were ghosts. Children looked up curiously with big eyes, and retreated around rocks. A woman glanced up, for strangers never came from the south, and rubbed her eyes. Without a word she slunk into a hut. A man peeked out and frowned.
Other folk noticed the odd couple, one small and one tall, and trailed them. Sunbright kept walking, watching everywhere, but not believing his eyes. His goal was the common house. By the time he reached it, thirty ragged barbarians had trickled from shelter to see him enter.
Sunbright ducked under a reindeer hide so old it was white strings. Knucklebones slipped after, quiet as a cat. Inside hung rotted hides with faded totems, but nothing else: neither animal masks nor enemy scalps nor ancestors" skulls. The old couple seen from afar, Iceborn and Tulipgrace, huddled under thin blankets by a smoky fire. The old man turned blind eyes, demanded, "Who is it?"
His wife, Tulipgrace, woke with a start, peered at them with red eyes, and asked, "You are ..."
"Sunbright Steelshanks, son of Sevenhaunt and Monkberry," he said flatly. He almost added: of the Raven Clan of the Rengarth Barbarians, but these were the same folk, or had been.
"Sunbright.. ." Tulipgrace said, awed. "You fled, were banished in absence. You"re sentenced to death."
"Unwrap the wolf masks then, and sing the death song! Kill me if you can! I"ve yet to see a man or woman in this village bear a sword! By the Teeth of Kozah, what"s happened to my people?" The elders didn"t answer, only turned back to the fire. Knucklebones cleared her throat, an explosion in the awesome silence. She noted that once Sunbright had set foot in the camp, he walked taller and spoke more boldly, blood and thunder in his voice, but boldness seemed lost on this lost race. It was as if they"d invaded a graveyard full of tired ghosts.
"Sunbright," came a mild reproof.
The barbarian whirled, hand over his shoulder to s.n.a.t.c.h Harvester, then froze. A wizened woman peeked from the doorway.
"Mother!"
In three steps the warrior-shaman became a small boy, stumbling as he hugged his mother.
Barbarian emotions never lay deep, so he wept openly, tears streaming onto her gray hair. The woman curled arthritic fingers around his ma.s.sive, scarred arms and patted his back like a baby"s, cooing, "My boy. My man-child."
Sniffling, Monkberry led the pair from the common house to her own abode. It stood on the edge of the camp, a heap of stones roofed with branches, but round like the ancestral yurts of reindeer hide.
The roof was so low they sat, Sunbright"s head brushing dead leaves, the room so tiny their knees touched. A bed of rags was the only furniture. A fire pit let smoke through a hole in the roof.
Once seated, no one knew what to say. Monkberry"s face was seamed as a prune, her eyes deep-set but bright blue, like her son"s. Her hair was long and gray, but neatly combed. She wore a simple smock of deer hide, almost worn through at the shoulders. As the awkward silence dragged, she nodded at Knucklebones. Fl.u.s.tered, Sunbright said, "Uh, this is Knucklebones of Karsus. She"s a- rogue. Good with her hands. Clever, I mean. She"s a friend." When Knucklebones shook her dark head, he amended, "I mean, I love her."
Monkberry took the thief"s small hands, touched her scarred cheek with crooked hands, and said, "She"s lovely. Elven blood so becomes a woman."
"I"m not," Knucklebones stammered. For the first time in her life, she felt shy. "I"m just an old, scarred alley cat. A sewer rat too contrary to die."
The old woman caressed her tousled dark curls, and said, "Scars are a badge of honor in our tribe, dear. You carry enough to sit at the elder fire." Then she sighed at painful memories.
"Mother," Sunbright began. "What"s happened? How came you here? Where is everyone? Why don"t you leave this awful place?"
Another sigh. "I prayed you"d return, Sunbright," his mother said. "In my heart and dreams I knew you"d come back. I could feel your eyes on me, hear your voice, grown so deep and manly. And it"s time, for the tribe needs you desperately. Needs a miracle, or else we die out. Far worse than the G.o.ds forsaking us, we"ve forsaken our own heritage. But ask not, and let me speak ...
"I don"t know if you"ve been north, but the tundra is dying. Or sleeping. We don"t know which.
Perhaps it"s some cycle that runs centuries, beyond the memory of our tribe. Howsoever, the Earthmother could no longer sustain us. The reindeer were scrawny, calves dropped stillborn, salmon ran thin ..." She went on, listing small disasters that Sunbright already knew. Finally she came to,"...
We knew we couldn"t remain, so we moved south, to the edge of the tundra. But immediately the cycle of our lives was broken, and we felt uprooted. With nothing to hunt or gather, we were bereft of work, lacking any way to make a living.
"Owldark did not help. He recounted dream after dream, led us. .h.i.ther and yon along the southern sh.o.r.e, aimlessly. We were not welcome in the villages of south-men, so many mouths to feed and nothing to trade, and their harvests have been poor.
"Blown by the winds, whipped from place to place, we finally stopped here, where Owldark commanded. His next dream would lead us on, but food ran low. Our reindeer could not walk many miles over stone and sand, so were eaten. With nothing to feed the dogs, we had to eat them, and carry our belongings on our backs. After a while, the strongest men and women went to Scourge, seeking work. They found a few jobs, the vilest ch.o.r.es southmen refused: shoveling fish too rotted to salt, breaking up old ships for firewood, wrestling and knife-fighting for sport. The townsfolk hate us, hate everyone, and mocked our barbarous accents and superst.i.tions.
"Yet we"ve survived so far: no children have died of hunger. Yet none are born either, for our women"s wombs shrivel, like our spirits. And so have we languished for too long." She laid her hand on the rim of a redware bowl as she said, "Even the water is brackish, half salt, not fit for cattle."
Sunbright listened, stone-faced, through this sorry history, then he asked, "What of the council? Why do they allow this?"
Monkberry sighed and turned to the door, as if expecting someone, but there was only salt wind.
"The council argued with Owldark, and each other," she told him. "Some thought we must remain.
The G.o.ds drove us from the tundra, they said: our own faults and sins brought it on. So we must linger in h.e.l.l on earth as punishment. Others urge we go elsewhere, but cannot agree. Even our ancestral summer lands lie empty and fallow. Others would have us return to the tundra to die, like lemmings in the sea, or whales on the beach. Others brood over wine fetched in the village. Some wandered and didn"t return, we know not whence. Destroyed in spirit, some women married town men and no longer visit. Some youngsters have joined the emperor"s ranks as soldiers and been sent far away. Perhaps that is right, for nothing lies here for anyone."
Frustrated and raging, Sunbright raised his hands, his fingertips brushing thatch. "What of Owldark?" he asked. "If the G.o.ds haunt his dreams, surely even he can find our true destiny!"
"Owldark tried. Despite the pains in his head, he trekked the wastes, fasting, scourging himself with thorns, beseeching the G.o.ds for an answer. Any answer. Then he didn"t return, and the hunters searched. They found his bones in a ravine. Wolves had eaten him, probably after he fell. So we lost our homelands and traditions and work, and now we have no shaman to guide us."
"Not true," stated Sunbright. His mother"s eyes peered. "See."
Gently, he laid his hand atop the clouded, rank water in the redware bowl by his mother"s knee.
Quietly, crooning an ancient winding air with a steady beat, he dipped his fingers one by one, sending ripples through the bowl. At each tap the cloudiness receded, until the water was clear.
"Mother of Magic!" wheezed Monkberry. She dipped a crooked finger in the water, tasted it. "It"s sweet! You are a shaman!"