Birthright (12 page)

“He still lives. You will take him, and yourselves, out of these caves. I might not spare the next to attack me. Your entire tribe is not great enough in numbers to stop me. I am Ban. I serve Taje Jintaya-ul. Be grateful she is willing to share these canyons with your people. She will not share these particular caves.
If
you behave and are polite, you may be invited to stay, rather than be told to leave this area. If you are rude and attack . . . you will be lucky if there are enough of you left to leave.”

There was no inflection in his tone, aside from a point of emphasis on their choices in this matter. He did not stress their impending deaths if they chose unwisely. Ban didn’t bother because he did not care. It had hurt him more than enough to learn after all these years that he could still care for someone. For Jintaya.

“Pulek. Eruk,” the woman with the long spear ordered. “Grab Lutun. We will leave these caves alone. For now,” she added firmly, holding Ban’s gaze as if he were some sort of predator she had met. “Taje Halek will decide whether or not we will come back to them.”

Two of the men moved forward at her command. Ban recognized one of them, the older of the two, as the man who had first spied upon the Fae. He had a few scars here and there, and was missing the tip of his third finger. He also eyed Ban warily, gaze flicking repeatedly to the blade that had nearly punctured him. The other fellow stooped and thriftily claimed the bronze spearhead.

Waiting until the group had dragged the unconscious would-be warrior off, Ban paced slowly in their wake, making sure none were lingering to try to ambush him. Every so often, he glanced behind, and saw the work of Éfan, sealing up cave after cave in his wake with what looked like blank walls sculpted and colored to match the rest of the wind-and-water worn rock.

I will have to remind Éfan to make the walls malleable enough that I can get through them at a touch,
he thought, sighing with a touch of impatience.
Otherwise there will come a day I will have to bash my way in, and ruin whatever sculpting work they will be trying to do, reshaping these caves into a proper Fae home.

*   *   *

Deep
in the sand dunes to the south, Kuruk scowled at the coarse grains around them. They bore no traces of footsteps save the ones the five of them had made: Kuruk as leader, Charag and Tureg as fighters, Koro and his acolyte Pak. There should have been signs of the passage of over two hundred tribe members . . . but the winds of the desert, slow and sparse save at dawn and dusk, had erased all marks. “Are you
sure
the anima can track them? We haven’t seen signs of their passage in three days, now.”

Koro, their middle-aged
animadj
, made a
tsk
noise. “You know as well as I that the anima can do many things if the will is strong and sharp. My will is trained by twice as many years as you have been alive, hunt-leader.
And
 . . . what do I have in my hand?”

“A torch,” Kuruk grunted, lifting his eyes to the sky. He did not care for the teacher-prompting-the-student tone of the older man, but let it pass.

“A torch,” Koro agreed, his tone bordering somewhere between chiding and pompous. The animadj had earned the right to be proud, however. “I draw my will from the fire that named our tribe. I draw my power from the encircling energies of the flame as it consumes all that it can eat. The torch flames point firmly north, while the wind, when it stirs, travels to the southeast. The fire I have bound with my will and the anima knows where they have gone. We will find them.”

The scouting leader eyed the torch in question. “Well, it looks like it needs more dromid dung.”

“We still have another finger or two before Pak will need to make another torch,” Koro reassured him. “When we stop for that, I will use a bit of anima to pull up a little more water for us to drink.”

“Good,” Charag grunted. “Marching in sand with my battle-axe is thirsty work.” Unlike the long bladed pole Kuruk used as a walking staff, and the lightweight bow and quiver of arrows Tureg wielded, he carried a heavy axe crafted of stout hardwood for the shaft and the wealth of two thick blades made of sharpened bronze.

“Try marching with enough firewood for fifteen days,” Pak grunted. Charag gave him a disdainful look. Pak stuck out his tongue, then started to purse his lips.

“Enough, Pak. No conjuring sand devils,” Koro added. “We don’t need them to be seen.”

“Heed your master,” Kuruk agreed, chiding the young male with a jerk of his chin. “We are here to track those White Sands fools. Their animadj seemed to know of a place to settle to the north. For that many people, it would have to be a large and lush oasis. If they find such a place within half a moon’s travel . . .”

“Then we will attack and take them over as war-slaves, claim their land for our own, and crush the Water Spears from each side,” Pak recited, lifting his own eyes to the sky.

It was said that sky-anima was the rarest of all kinds that could be conjured, and thus the most powerful, for it made the lightning strike and the air boom and tremble. It caused the rains that made the landscape flood, which could kill people even on a cloudless day. Everyone implored the anima in the sky for kindness, patience, and mercy. Or mostly just for patience with others.

He eyed the torch in his teacher’s hand. “Koro . . . Kuruk is right; the wind is picking up, and devouring the torch faster than I estimated. We should stop now, or as soon as we reach the next flat stretch. Those low rocks we saw from the last dune are near; it may be over the next rise, or the next two or three.”

Grunting, Koro eyed the pitch-and-dung wrapped torch tip for a long moment, turning it a little to check how short the flames had become in the last
selijm
of travel, and nodded. The wind could and did disperse the smoke it gave off, but it was starting to smolder a bit more and burn a bit lower than it should. It would be better to prepare a fresh one. Fresh burned clean; the thin smoke from a mere torch would be lost in the wind, up until it started to gutter. Conjuring a sand devil, however, was something that could be seen for upwards of a full
selijm
, the distance a healthy person could walk in an hour.

However, when they crested the next dune . . . they found the sand rippling down into hard-packed earth, and a slight rise of rugged rocks. Hard desert, as opposed to the soft stuff they had slogged through. Squinting, all five men stared at the new terrain. Finally, Tureg spat dryly, far more sound than spittle—no need to waste saliva, even if Koro could conjure water wherever they went—and lifted his chin.

“I see cracks in the terrain ahead. Canyons,” he stated, shading his eyes from the sun’s glare. “There may be water in there, or there may be game. But mostly, there will be a lot of back-tracking as we try to follow the flames, which point straight and true regardless of what the actual trail chooses to do. This is where the anima-flame can do less for us than clear tracks would.”

Kuruk grimaced. “That may be true, but we still have a job to do. If there
is
water for two hundred or more, and game and places to grow things, it is our job to scout it and decide if it’s worth claiming, as well as continuing to pursue. Pak, start your torch-making in the valley behind us. Koro, draw upon the anima for water. We will take a dune-break behind this crest. Bury your waste, and keep an eye on all directions, just in case.”

Scattering to their tasks, the other four followed his orders in willing silence.