Sapient Salvation 1: The Selection (Sapient Salvation Series) (16 page)

Clutching the stick, I felt the jagged end where it had broken off and imagined how I’d jab it into a creature’s eye or snout. But I was fairly certain the dog-bears couldn’t reach me. Their muscular bodies and sharp claws might allow them to jump to a low branch, but they didn’t seem agile enough to be true climbers.

As the hours passed, my adrenaline faded and weariness seeped deep into my bones. How long had it been since I’d slept? It had been late evening on Earthenfell when we’d passed through the portal to Calisto. Was it morning yet back home? Were Mother and Lana making coffee? Maybe Lana was already in the orchard, back at work after the weekend.

I pressed my fingers to my mouth as I imagined Lana going to work without me. Who was guiding her? I hadn’t thought of that part, only of making sure her quota was met. My chest tightened at the thought of someone else taking her elbow, walking her to the orchard and settling her under a tree with her canteen and skeins of dyed thread.

Sadness pulled at me and a heavy ache settled in my stomach. This was the first time I’d ever been away from home. I’d never imagined it was possible to feel this homesick. I’d never imagined I’d have
reason
to feel this homesick. But I was too exhausted even to cry.

I tipped my head back, trying to blank my mind, and watched as night darkened the forest. After some time, a spectacular swath of stars lit the sky enough to throw faint shadows. The beauty was comforting at first, until it struck me that I did not know these stars. They were arranged in unfamiliar patterns with none of the constellations I’d been taught to pick out as a child.

It made me feel even farther away from everything and everyone I loved. I pulled my legs to my chest, closed my eyes, and rested my forehead on my knees. I kept dozing and then waking with a start, my heart pounding.

When something rustled my hair, I mumbled, swatting at whatever was trying to interrupt my dream of sunshine and bergamine trees.

A sharp stab at my shoulder brought me fully awake, my heart thumping with alarm. Faint reddish-orange light was brightening the sky. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep. Or how long the night lasted there, for that matter.

Disoriented, I swiveled around trying to see what had jabbed at me. There was a rustle of movement to my left, and I whipped that way, brandishing my stick.

I saw nothing, and for a moment wondered if I’d been hallucinating.

A soft warbling drew my attention upward. A huge black eye peered down at me, and I let out a strangled scream and tried to scramble back. Just a few feet away sat the largest bird I’d ever seen. Its beak was as long as my arm, gracefully curving down to a point. Its wickedly serrated talons gripped its perch.

I flailed for a breathtaking second, nearly losing my balance before my fingers found a handhold.

The bird hopped down a branch, coming closer, and I froze. It peered at me with one eye, seeming to size me up, and then dipped its head toward me. I gasped and jerked back. I couldn’t take my eyes off the sharp point of its beak. One peck would probably crack my skull open like an egg.

Keeping my eyes on the bird, I blindly reached for another branch, aiming to creep out of the bird’s reach and hoping it would lose interest in me. I dropped my feet to a branch below and slowly lowered myself.

The bird hopped down a level, still peering at me with avian curiosity. A string of curses streamed through my mind.

Suddenly its head darted forward, the beak snapping. I jerked back, but not fast enough. The sharp sting at my shoulder shocked me into dropping my stick. It knocked through the branches below and landed on the ground.

The bird cawed and opened its long beak, and started to fan out its wings. I flipped over onto my stomach, kicked my feet around until I found a foothold below, and started dropping down through the branches as fast as I could go.

Flapping and rustling sounds above told me the bird was in pursuit. I screamed as it swished down with a flap of wings and raked at my arm with its claws.

In my panic I lost my handholds, and for a moment I was flying. I landed with a hard thud on my left side, bruising my hip and jamming my shoulder. Scrambling, I frantically searched for my stick. There! I grabbed it and spun, swinging out blindly.

The bird had followed me to the ground, and it wasn’t alone. Another one danced near me on light feet, its enormous wings spread. I swiped, and it hopped back out of my reach.

Then two more birds alighted from the trees. They were calling to each other, surrounding me in a shrinking half-circle of terrifying feathered creatures that stood as tall as me.

My heart in my throat, I edged backward toward the nearest tree, hoping to use the trunk to shield myself from the back.

One bird hopped and flapped its wings, darting straight for me. I fell to the ground and covered my head, shrieking as white-hot pain exploded across my upper back. It came again, raking my shoulders and back with its claws, this time actually clutching me long enough to drag me forward several feet.

It wanted to carry me away, and I suddenly realized it was strong enough to do so.

I heard a voice, curses and hollering, but I was afraid if I looked up I’d get clawed across the face.

When the bird let me go, I finally dropped my arms to look. Orion, Britta, and the other boy were yelling at the birds and throwing rocks.

It seemed to be working. The birds were cawing and dancing around but had stopped their attack.

I ran in a crouch to the other Obligates, scooping up my stick and a couple of fist-sized rocks as I went.

The sun was nearly up now. My mouth went dry as I caught a clear glimpse of something through the trees. A dark shape, prowling my way.

“Orion, it’s one of those things, those creatures,” I said urgently over the noise of cawing and the Obligates’ hollering.

The birds had noticed, too. One took off with great whooshes of air as it flew away. A couple more flapped up to perch on low nearby branches, as if settling themselves to watch how we’d deal with this new threat.

I eyed the dog-bear. It was circling wide around us and sniffing the air.

“What do we do?” I whispered, my voice shaking.

“Three more, over there,” Britta said.

I heard the low growls before I saw the creatures.

Terror spiked through me. We couldn’t take refuge in the trees. We couldn’t outrun the giant dog-bears.

They circled closer now, baring their teeth at us. One of them lunged—not an attack, but just a test. I hollered and jabbed my stick at it, and it retreated.

There was a brightening point of light in my peripheral vision, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the creatures.

Another creature lunged and snapped, and again I stabbed out with my stick.

“The portal!” Orion said.

I risked a look. He was right, a portal was forming a few yards away.

“We need to hurry
,
” I said. “We don’t know how long they’ll leave it open.”

As a group, we began taking cautious steps toward the light. This seemed to agitate the creatures. One lunged and caught Britta by the ankle, and she went down hard on her side as it jerked her foot out from under her.

I lunged forward and jabbed, aiming for the creature’s face. I struck it in the snout and it whimpered and let go of Britta. Orion hauled her up by one arm and dragged her along with him.

We were almost there.

“The portal is blinking, we need to go!” hissed the boy whose name I still didn’t know.

“On three,” I said. “One, two, three!”

I turned and raced toward the light. The sounds of snarling and pounding feet drove me forward.

I leapt, throwing myself at the portal. Just as I passed through, I heard an agonizing scream.

I whipped around, trying to see who it was, but the blinding light of the portal obscured whatever was happening on the other side. Orion burst through, half-dragging and half-carrying Britta.

I stared at the portal, holding up one hand to shield my eyes. Seconds ticked by. Finally I turned to Orion, who had fallen to one knee, panting hard.

He looked up at me and shook his head. “The creatures got him.”

“Did you even know his name?” I whispered.

“His name was Anders.” Orion closed his eyes.

“You survived the first phase.”

I turned at the sound of a new voice. It was Akantha.

There were two more portals nearby, and a handful of other Obligates who looked as haggard as Orion, Britta, and me. Everyone had scratches or bleeding wounds. Some favored limbs, groaning in agony.

The portals contracted and then winked out. I did a quick count. Five men and seven women. Four Obligates had not returned.

“You will have your injuries repaired, and then you will go to your quarters to bathe and sleep,” Akantha said.

A hot wave of anger swelled up through me at her nonchalant tone. I stood, my arms tensed and my fingers clenched into trembling fists. “And how soon will you inform the families of the dead?”

She turned on me and pulled herself up to her full height, her glowering face looming over me. “That is not your concern, girl.”

I stared up at her, knowing that if I responded she’d bring out the wand she’d used to burn Larisa’s arm, but unable to back away. I bit down hard on the insides of my cheeks, struggling to keep in check the tirade that I wanted to hurl at her.

“Something else you want to say?” she asked with a smirk.

I finally lowered my gaze and shook my head.

“Line up,” she commanded. “The medics are waiting for you in the next room.”

I obediently followed Akantha along with the rest of the Obligates, but inside fury was burning me up. Iris had convinced me that the Calistans believed it was necessary to cull the unworthy Obligates—the ones who were weak. I found it abhorrent, but I understood that the Calistans believed in the practice as it was dictated by their sacred texts.

But had Anders been unworthy? Larisa, who’d fallen off the platform and been devoured by the creatures? To me, it simply appeared to be bad luck, not unworthiness or weakness. And for all I knew, the other two Obligates who died in the forest had been similarly unlucky.

It just as easily could have been me who fell off that platform or who was caught by the dog-bears as we raced to the portal. I could have been one of the unlucky ones.

It terrified me, but it also made me furious. How could the Calistans play with others’ lives this way? How could they
live
with themselves?

And what could I do about it?

This question pounded through my aching head as I sat on a hospital bed in my underclothes. A medic smeared a cool gooey substance over the deep, burning cuts on my back and shoulders, and the pain immediately began to fade. She worked on my shoulder, where the bird’s sharp beak had ripped deeply into my flesh, for several minutes with a handheld device. It was excruciating when the device first contacted the wound, but I steeled myself, sitting there like a stone and staring straight ahead. Finally she put the device aside and smeared gel on my shoulder.

After all my injuries had been attended to, she pointed at a pile of fabric and then left. I lifted it and discovered it was a simple cotton tunic dress. Seeing no clean underclothes, I left on the ones I wore and slipped the dress over my head, and then sat on my bed.

“Line up,” Akantha called several minutes later.

I stepped beyond the curtains that separated my bed from those on either side and watched as the rest of the Obligates did the same. The women wore tunics like mine, and the men wore only loose-fitting drawstring pants made of the same material.

Akantha took us through windowless corridors that felt as if they were near the bottom of the palace, maybe even underground.

I wrapped my arms around my waist as I began to wonder if we’d be locked up in cells, in some dungeon deep in the bowels of the palace.

In a quiet hallway, Akantha stopped and turned to us. “The doors are marked with your names. Use the next several hours to bathe and sleep.”

I glanced at the nearest door. It had a tile with Britta’s face on it and her name printed underneath, just like the tiles on the wall that had shown our ranks of favor. I wondered bitterly if someone had come down ahead of us to remove the names of the dead from their doors.

I found mine, and when I opened the door, I paused in surprise. The room was small, but luxurious by standards back home. There was a bed made up with crisp-looking sheets, a table with a lamp, and a simple chair. Through a doorway to the right, I spotted the rim of a soaking tub.

The medic had healed my wounds and aches, but there was no cure for the exhaustion I felt. I ran a bath in the tub, but didn’t linger in the water even though it felt wonderful. I needed sleep.

Within seconds of collapsing on the bed, my hair still wet, I was out.

The next thing I was aware of was a far-away voice calling my name.

“Mother?” I mumbled. I turned on the bed, wondering if Lana and I had overslept.

This wasn’t my bed. This wasn’t my room at home. I gasped and sat up, blinking and disoriented.

“Maya, it’s time to wake up. I’ve come to help you dress.” It was Iris.

Everything came rushing back to me and I swallowed, trying to work some moisture back into my parched mouth.

“Dress for what?” I croaked.

“The ranks of favor, and then the party,” she said. She held up a shimmering pale green gown. “To celebrate the end of the first phase of the Tournament. Lord Toric will be there.”

I stared at her a moment as I tried to process what she was saying.

Lord Toric? I swung my legs over the side of the bed. Well, it would be the perfect opportunity to tell him exactly what I thought of the way he sent Earthens to get torn apart by vicious forest creatures.

12

Toric

AS I‘D WATCHED the first challenge of the Tournament of the Offered, my eyes had been drawn again and again to Maya. Inside, I was cheering her on. My heart soared at her every move that would win favor for her in the rankings.