Bones of the Past (Arhel) (25 page)

Then, with a terrific crack, darkness descended.

* * *

Lost, all lost.
Choufa curled in a tight ball in a cranny formed by the intersecting maze of branches. She beat her fists against the tree and sobbed. The peknu were lost, gone, doomed. Food for the trees. And when they died, her hopes for escape—for herself and the rest of the sharsha, would die too.

She’d felt them coming as soon as they crossed into the Wen territory. The Keyu had alerted her, rousing from their sluggish sated state to greedy hunger in an instant, clamoring for the fresh bodies that soared in their direction. And when the peknu came within range, the Keyu reached out with their god-touch and pulled them in.

There had been an instant when Choufa thought the peknu would escape. They had fought—their own god-touch against the Keyu’s grasping, and for a brief moment, something inside the Keyu fought against itself. Dissonant voices screamed for the freedom of the peknu, put their energy with that of the peknu—until those voices were coldly and viciously silenced. And the Keyu won.

The Keyu would always win.

Choufa dried her eyes. She could not doubt anymore what would happen to her. She had no need to hope—hope was dead. She found peace in impending ruin; the future was out of her hands. It wasn’t her fault anymore. She stood and walked slowly along the branch, and down into the center of the sharsha tree. No one was visible in the main part of the tree. She didn’t wonder where the other sharsha had gone. She was simply glad they were.

Then she heard a soft cry, quickly muffled, and sharp whispers. She followed the noise, down along the maze of intertwining branches, through two of the hollow trunk-rooms, and then up into an offshoot trunk. The other sharsha looked up, frightened, when she crossed the threshold, then turned back to the focus of their attention.

Thedra crouched on the floor, her face twisted with pain, gripping her belly. She rocked back and forth, panting and crying.

“What is she doing?” Choufa whispered to Kerru, who stood by the entryway and watched.

“The baby is coming out of her belly. She said she was inside the Keyu-thoughts. She said the Keyu called more food—then all of a sudden the Keyu felt her in their thoughts, and called the baby to come out. They made her time come. The Silk People will be here soon to take her away.”

“The Silk People are busy. They caught the peknu. They used sleep smoke on them—”

“The stupid peknu won’t make any difference!” Kerru snapped. “The Keyu called Thedra’s baby because they want to eat Thedra now. They will make the Silk People come and get her.”

“I just thought maybe the peknu could help us—”

Kerru looked at her sadly. “No one is going to help us.”

Choufa nodded. Yes, it was so. There was nothing she could do, and nothing anyone else would do. She watched Thedra, and began to feel sick again. The pregnant girl quit writhing and crying for a moment and just leaned forward on her hands and knees, breathing heavily. Then her huge belly heaved under the dull gray cloth of her tunic, and she screamed and began to rock again.

It was awful. Choufa saw blood and closed her eyes.
I don’t want a baby in my belly
, she thought, and started to back away from the scene.

Two green-and-gold men shoved Choufa out of the way, walked up to Thedra, looped ropes around her wrists, and dragged her out of the room and away from the sharsha and the sharsha-tree. Choufa could hear Thedra screaming and fighting long after the older girl was out of sight—crying and begging for help—

Won’t somebody save us?!
Choufa cried inside.
Won’t someone help all of us?!

said the slimy whispers inside her head.
>

* * *

She became aware of a foul taste in her mouth, and of pain that ripped straight through her eyes to the back of her skull. Red flares flashed behind her eyelids with every beat of the bludgeoning cadence of her pulse. She was lost in darkness, lost inside as well as out. She was unsure of her name, could not remember where she was, had no idea how she came to be there.

Rumblings began softly—then became louder. Were they far away? Did they move nearer?
Storm coming?
she wondered, and “storm” felt wrong but the feeling of “storm”—of things brewing, gathering energy, waiting to explode into sudden fury—that was the feeling the rumblings gave her.

To pain and confusion, she added fear. The arrhythmic thundering noise, she felt sure, was tied to the darkness, to the hurtings of her body.

Drumbeats
, she thought.

And remembered.

Roba Morgasdotte came fully awake and forced her swollen, matter-crusted eyes open. It was dusk. She lay naked, facedown on hard-packed clay still cold and damp and slimy from the last rain. She was cold; her head hurt; her wrists and elbows and shoulders blazed with agony. She tried to roll over or sit, but couldn’t—someone had tied her wrists together behind her and strung them to a tree branch overhead. Every move she made—even something as simple as turning her head from side to side—sent fresh fire lancing from her shoulders up to her fingertips.

If she eased her head carefully from side to side, she could see Thirk to her right, and the older Wen girl to her left—both of them facedown; naked; tied. It hurt too much to twist any more, but from the groans and labored breathing all around her, she had to assume the rest of the exploration party was there.

“Anybody awake?” she whispered.

“Yah,” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl answered.

“Do you know what happened?” Roba rested her cheek on the wet clay and closed her eyes and tried to focus her attention on something besides the pain.

“Yah.” The girl’s voice was strained. “They used
evastevoffuschrom
—‘smoke to sleep the bad-beasts.’ The Wen use it to make sleep the little roshu or kellinks what get on the Path.”

Roba groaned. “You’re saying they trapped us and drugged us.”

“They not nice people,” Fat Girl said. “I tell you peknu this—you don’t think I tell you true.”

Medwind’s voice, muffled and edged with bitterness, came from Roba’s left. “We believed—we simply didn’t think there was anything the Wen could do to us.” Roba heard a brief scuffle, then Medwind’s muffled swearing. “Damn them—I can’t move at all! Lying here flat on my belly and sick as death—and I can’t even roll to my side to breathe.”

Sick
, Roba thought.
That’s certainly part of it
. Her mouth had been home to rodents while she was unconscious, she decided; unclean, unhousebroken rodents. They’d left their fur and worse coating her tongue. Her stomach churned on nothing, the world tilted and rocked like a fisherman’s boat in stormy seas. She’d never been seasick at sea—she was seasick here on dry land.

“Why will the magic not work?” Roba heard Faia’s voice. “I can feel its presence—but I cannot touch it.”

At the sound of the young woman’s voice, Kirtha wailed, “Mama! Help me!”

Roba’s aching hands tightened into fists. The misbegotten Wen had tied even the smallest of the children.

I can get out of this
, she thought.
There are tricks for tapping into magic. The magic is here—and, if it’s here, I can use it.

She forced herself to relax. She convinced her body that it was floating, free and comfortable in a sea of mud—warm mud. She imagined riding a slow spiraling current of warmth down into the mud, until it surrounded her and she became a part of it. She felt good—safe and warm and free.
Earth
, she thought.
Full of energy—

She reached out, probing through the earth for simple power, for a mere acceleration of a natural process—the process of rotting the rope that bound her. It wasn’t even really magic, what she sought to do—nothing more taxing than the spell a farmer might use to sense the character of the next day’s weather.

She sent her mind coursing, searching through the earth as far as she could stretch, quartering around her like a fanghare sniffing water in the desert. The power stayed just out of reach, palpable but inaccessible.

Air
, she thought, and in her mind re-created herself as a thing of wind and sunlight—she imagined herself drifting free of the muddy earth, free of her bonds, of the towering walls of trees—saw herself drifting formless and free among, then above, tall clouds.
Power
, she thought, and searched for it.

There was no power for her to take from the sky.

Patiently, with enormous calm, she communed with fire, and then with water—and always, the power was close enough that she could feel its presence, but untouchable.

She came back to herself then—back to her shame and her pain and her captivity. Roba let her head drop forward. The elusive, unidentifiable magic defeated her.
Ironic
, she thought.
I am surrounded by some of the greatest magical talent in Arhel, and all that talent isn’t going to be able to save my life.

The drums pounded, incessant noise without rhythm. The Wen sang and chanted. Somewhere nearby a woman screamed, and the first gasping squalls of a newborn baby tore into the air.

Then the chanting grew louder and faster, and the drums were joined by thundering booms so deep Roba felt them before she heard them.

“Now.” Medwind spoke, her voice flat and emotionless. “The biggest drums are saying ‘Now!’”

“What do they mean?” Thirk asked. “What ‘now’?”

“Now we die,” Seven-Fingered Fat Girl said. “Now they give us to the Keyu.”

The first fat drops of cold rain struck Roba’s face and stirred the mud in which she lay, and a flash of lightning and the hard crash of nearby thunder punctuated the Wen drumbeats.

* * *

A man with a knife knelt beside Medwind’s head and pressed his blade gently against the base of her throat. His green-and-gold silks brushed the ground. He spoke to someone behind her in rapid Sropt. “Beat her around a little. Let her know we’re in charge.”

“Lizard-humping tree-burner,” Medwind snarled, also in Sropt. “Your mother screw with worms—your father was one.”

Behind her, the unseen second man laughed and jerked on the rope that held her wrists. In spite of herself, Medwind gasped. Then he dug his heel into the bend at the back of her knee—and she yelled.

“Don’t break her,” the first man said. “I don’t want to have to carry her to the Keyu. She’s too heavy.” He looked down at Medwind and pressed the knife against her flesh so hard she felt it bite into her skin.

She winced, but held very still.

“So you speak the Tongue of People, hey, peknu? Well, then, you’ll take comfort in knowing that you’re going to die for a good purpose. You’re shit, and we’re going to fertilize the Keyu with you.” He grinned and with his free hand fumbled under her shoulder in the mud, until he found her breast. He pinched her nipple and twisted. “Tree-food—that’s you.”

Medwind bit her lip and kept quiet.

“Do we have time to enjoy her?” the second man asked. “I’ve never had peknu before.”

“It wouldn’t be worth the cycle of cleansing you’d have to do afterwards.” He spat in Medwind’s face. “Peknu—pah! That’s lower than dracching corpses.”

She heard the other man sigh. “Maybe so—but she looks livelier than a corpse.”

“She won’t for long.” The first man glared at Medwind. “You are going to behave. If you don’t we’ll slit your belly and pull your entrails out and feed you to the Keyu that way. The Keyu don’t care if we rip you into shreds—so long as you’re still breathing when they get you.”

The second man kept one foot braced on the back of her knee and pulled her upward by tugging on her bound wrists. The pain was incredible.

“You understand me, stinking peknu?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Medwind whispered. She glared at him through her haze of pain and added to herself,
You corpse-dracching tapeworm-abortion. I understand. And if I ever have the chance, I’ll make you understand. I’ll rip
your balls off with my bare hands and stuff them up your nose.

The second man cut the rope that bound her, while the first kept the knife in her throat. She tried to recall a Hoos grapple that would work with one man standing on her knee twisting her arms behind her and the other one trying to knife her, and she came up empty. The Hoos were not supposed to end up in those positions, she decided.

“Hurry up and retie her,” the first man snapped.

The second was fumbling with the rope. Medwind squirmed, and instantly the pressure on both her throat and the back of her knee increased.

“Do not move,” the first man said.

Medwind could feel her blood running in warm, pulsing streams down her neck. “Yes,” she said, and held her arms out behind her for the second man to bind. She clasped her palms together and interlocked her fingers.

The second man muttered, “That’s better.” He jerked the coarse vine-rope so tight Medwind gasped, and the bastard with the knife at her throat grinned.

The deepest of the drums were pounding out, “Feed us, feed us!” Medwind found this unnerving.

They pulled her to her feet and dragged her into line. Each member of the exploration team was there. Nokar looked like the very hells—frail and helpless and beaten. And older—she couldn’t believe how much older he looked. His naked body seemed to be made of nothing but paper and bones.

The rest were battered and bleeding. Fat Girl fought like one insane—or like a beast, who would rather chew off its leg and die free than face the end its captors planned. The rest struggled at intervals, or went passively. But none of them were Hoos.

As a Hoos, she had duties. The duty to rescue her friends. The duty to escape. The duty to kill her captors or die trying. She’d spent the first years of her life learning her duties and a thousand tricks for carrying those duties out.

She tried to stay calm and to wait for opportunity to present itself. She knew she would only get one chance—if she got that. Any mistake, any prematurity on her part, would be fatal. She watched, and stayed ready.