The Very Best of Kate Elliott Read online

  Very late a sword moon, thin and curved, rose out of the east. Soon after, the light changed, darkness lightening to gray and at last ceding victory to the pinkish tint of dawn.

  The woman roused. Picking up the pouch, she trickled water into Belek’s mouth; he gulped, obviously awake, but still he said nothing. She approached Kereka.

  As she leaned in to offer water, Kereka caught the scent of her, like hot sand and bitter root. She tried to grab at her with her teeth, any way of fighting back, but the woman jumped nimbly back and grinned mockingly. The man chuckled and spoke words in their harsh foreign tongue as he flung off the cloak and stretched to warm his muscles.

  The brilliant disc of the sun nosed above the horizon to paint the world in daylight colors.

  From the bundle of gear heaped by a stone, the bearded man unearthed a shovel and set to work digging a shallow ditch just outside the limit of the stones. It was hard work, even though he was only scraping away enough of the carpet of grass and its dense tangle of roots to reveal the black earth. The woman joined him, taking a turn. The grasslands were tough, like its people, unwilling to yield up even this much. Both soon stripped down to shirt and trousers, their shirts sticking to their backs, wet through with sweat. It was slave’s work, yet they tossed words back and forth in the manner of free men. And although the woman’s form was strikingly revealed, breasts outlined by the shirt’s fabric, nipples erect from the effort and heat, the bearded man never stared at her as men stared at women whose bodies they wanted to conquer. He just talked, and she replied, and they passed the shovel back and forth, sharing the work as the ditch steadily grew from a scar, to a curve, to a half-circle around the stones.

  Kereka waited until they had moved out of sight behind her. “Hsst! Belek? Edek?”

  Yet when there came no answer, she was afraid to speak louder lest she be overheard.

  The sun crept up off the eastern horizon as the foreigners toiled. Shadows shortened and shifted; the sloping land came clear as light swallowed the last hollows of darkness. It was a cloudless day, a scalding blue that hurt the eye. Kereka measured the sun’s slow rise between squinted eyes: two hands; four hands. A pair of vultures circled overhead but did not land. The steady scrape of the shovel and the spatter of clumps of dirt sprayed on the ground serenaded her, moving on from behind her and around to her right, closing the circle.

  The sound caught her ear first as a faint discordance beneath the noise of digging. She had heard this precious and familiar music all her life, marked it as eagerly as the ring of bells on the sheep she was set to watch as a little girl or the scuff of bare feet spinning in the dances of Festival time.

  The wind sings with the breath of battle, the flight of the winged riders, the warriors of the Quman people. It whistles like the approach of griffins whose feathers, grown out of the metals of the earth, thrum their high calls in the air.

  Kereka scrambled to get her feet under her, shoved up along the rough surface of the stone. She had to see, even if she couldn’t escape the stone’s grip. Their enemies heard Quman warriors before they saw them, and some stood in wonder, not knowing what that whirring presaged, while others froze in fear, knowing they could not run fast enough to outpace galloping horses.

  Belek struggled against the ropes that bound him but gained nothing. Edek neither moved nor spoke.

  The woman and bearded man had worked almost all the way around the stones. The woman spoke. The man stopped digging. They stood in profile, listening. She shook her head, and together, shoulders tense, they trotted back into the stones straight to Edek’s limp body. The bearded man grabbed the lad by his ankles and dragged him down to the scar. The body lay tumbled there; impossible to say if he was breathing. The woman gestured peremptorily, and the bearded man leaped away from the bare earth and ran up to the nearest stone, leaning on the haft of the shovel, panting from the exertion as he watched her through narrowed eyes.

  The obsidian blade flashed in the sun. She bent, grabbed Edek’s hair, and tugged his head back to expose his throat. With a single cut she sliced deep.

  Kereka yelped. Did the witch mean to take Edek’s head as a trophy, as Quman lads must take a head to prove themselves as men?

  Belek coughed, chin lifting, feet and hands twitching as he fought against his bonds. He could see everything but do nothing.

  Blood pumped sluggishly from Edek’s throat. The witch grabbed him by the ankles and, with his face in the dirt and his life’s blood spilling onto the black earth, dragged him along the scar away around the circle. All the while her lips moved although Kereka heard no words.

  The bearded man wiped his mustache and nose with the back of a grimy hand, shrugged his shoulders to loosen the strain of digging, and dropped the shovel beside their gear. With the casual grace of a man accustomed to fighting, he pulled on a quilted coat and over it a leather coat reinforced with overlapping metal plates. He set out two black crossbows, levering each back to hook the trigger and ready a bolt. After, he drew on gloves and strapped on a helm before gathering up a bow as tall as he was, a quiver of arrows, an axe, and his sword and trotting away out of Kereka’s line of sight, again carrying the shovel.

  The woman appeared at the other limit of the scar, still towing Edek’s body. Where they had ceased digging, a gap opened, about five paces wide. He gestured with the shovel. She shook her head, with a lift of her chin seeming to indicate the now-obvious singing of wings. The two argued, a quick and brutal exchange silenced by two emphatic words she spat out. She arranged the body to block as much of the gap as possible. With a resigned shrug, the bearded man took up a defensive position behind one of the stones to line up on the gap.

  Brushing her hands off on her trousers, the witch jogged over to the gear, hooked a quiver of bolts onto her belt, and picked up both crossbows. Women did not wear armor, of course; Kereka knew better than to expect that even this remarkable creature would ever have been fitted with a man’s accoutrements. Yet when she sauntered to take a measure of cover behind the standing stone nearest the gap, her easy pace, her lack of any outward sign of nervousness, made her seem far more powerful than her companion, who was forced to rely on leather and metal to protect himself. She propped one crossbow against the stone and, holding the other, straightened. The sun illuminated her haughty face. As she surveyed the eastern landscape and the golden hills, she smiled, a half twist of scornful amusement that woke a traitorous admiration in Kereka’s heart. Someday she, the begh’s daughter who wished to live a man’s life, would look upon her enemies with that same lazy contempt.

  A band of warriors topped a far rise, the sound of their wings fading as they pulled up behind their leader to survey the stones beyond. The captain wore the distinctive metal glitter of griffin feathers on his wings, their shine so bright it hurt the eyes. They carried a banner of deep night blue on which rose a sword moon, dawn’s herald.

  “Belek,” Kereka whispered, sure he could not see them, “it’s the Pechanek! Curse them!”

  Belek coughed and moaned; turned his head; kicked his feet in frustration.

  She, too, struggled. Bad as things were, they had just gotten worse. Belek was healed; if they could escape or talk their way free, they had a hope of riding out again to continue Kereka’s hunt, or maybe tricking their captors into a moment’s inattention that would allow Kereka to kill the bearded man. Tarkan’s bones! How had the Pechanek come to this forsaken place? Only a man who had killed a griffin had earned the right to wear griffin’s wings. The begh of the Pechanek clan was not such a man. But his son Vayek was.

  No begh’s son of a rival tribe would be out looking for three youths who must, after all, make their own way home or be judged unworthy of manhood’s privileges and a man’s respect. Had all her attempts to train herself in secret with her brother’s aid in weapons and hunting and bragging and running and wrestling and the crafts and knowledge reserved for men now come to nothing?

  A bitter anger burned in Kereka’s throat. Her
eyes stung, and for an instant she thought she might actually burst out of her bonds from sheer fury, but the magic binding her was too powerful.

  The leader raised his spear to signal the advance. They raced out, wings singing, and split to encircle the stones. Waiting at a distance, they watched as their leader trotted forward alone. He was that sure of himself. His gaze scanned the stones, the two foreigners, the corpse, and the prisoners. Spotting Kereka, he stiffened, shoulders taut. He bent slightly forward, as if after all he had not expected to find her in such a predicament.

  He absorbed the shock quickly enough. He was a man who knew how to adapt when the tide of battle turned against him; his cunning retreat in the face of superior numbers that he had twisted into a flanking ambush as the enemy galloped in reckless pursuit had defeated the Torkay, a tale everyone knew. He swung his gaze away from Kereka and addressed the bearded man, punctiliously polite.

  “Honored sir, I address you. I, who am Prince Vayek, son of the Pechanek begh, scourge of the Uzay and Torkay clans, defender of Tarkan’s honor, Festival champion, slayer of griffins. If you please, surrender. Therefore, if you do so, we will be able to allow you to live as a slave among us, treated fairly as long as you work hard. If we are forced to fight you, then unfortunately we must kill you.”

  “You are not the man who arranged to meet me here,” said the woman, her voice so resonant and clear that it seemed the wind spoke at her command. Had she always known their language? For unlike the foreigners enslaved by the clans, she spoke without accent, without mistake, as smoothly as if she had taken someone else’s voice as her own.

  Belek coughed again, and Kereka glanced his way as he opened and closed his mouth impotently. Was this the payment—or maybe only the first of many payments—the witch had ripped out of him? Had she stolen his voice?

  “Women are consulted in private, not in public among men,” Vayek continued, still looking toward the bearded man.“I do not wish to insult any woman by so boldly addressing her where any man could hear her precious words.”

  “Alas, my companion cannot speak your language, while I can. Where are my griffin feathers? For I perceive you have them with you, there, in that bundle.” She gestured with the crossbow.

  Kereka had all this time been staring at Vayek, not because the conical helm seemed shaped to magnify and enhance the shapely regularity of his features but rather as a dying person stares at the arrow of death flying to meet her. But now she looked in the direction of the gesture to see one horse whose rider was slung belly-down over the saddle, a bulky bundle of rolled-up hides strapped to his back.

  Fool of a stupid girl! How was she to free herself if she could not pay attention, observe, and react? She was still on the hunt. She wasn’t married yet.

  Vayek’s warband rode with a dead man. And it was this man, apparently, who the witch had been waiting for. Kereka and the others had merely had the bad fortune to stumble upon their meeting place.

  “I am willing to pay you the same reward I offered to the man I first dealt with. I presume that the bundle on his back is what he was obliged to deliver to me.”

  Vayek struggled; he truly did. He was famous among the clans for his exceptional courtesy and honor, and he made now no attempt to hide his feelings of embarrassment and shame, because true warriors expressed rage and joy and grief in public so that others might live their own struggles through such manly display. He looked again toward the bearded man, but the bearded man made no effort to intercede.

  “Very well.” As unseemly as it was to engage in such a conversation, he accepted the battleground, as a warrior must.“I will speak. I pray the gods will pardon me for my rudeness. I discovered a Berandai man skulking westward through the land with this bundle of griffin feathers. It is forbidden to trade the holy feathers outside the clans. He has paid the penalty.” He gestured toward the body draped over the horse. “How can it be that such a meeting transpired, between foreign people and a plainsman, even one of the lowly Berandai, who like to call themselves our cousins? How can any foreigner have convinced even one of them to dishonor himself, his clan, and the grass and sky that sustains us?”

  “Have your ancestors’ tales not reminded you of that time, long in the past, when the Quman clans as well as the Berandai and the Kerayit made an agreement with the western queen? When they sent a levy to guard her, so the sorcerers of their kind could weave paths between the stones?”

  “We clansmen do not send our warriors to serve foreigners as slaves.”

  But Kereka had seen the flash of light in the stones. Could it be true that the witch and her companion had used sorcery to weave a path into these stones from some other faraway place? That they could cross a vast distance with a single step? The old tales spoke of such sorcery, but she had never believed it because the Quman shamans said it could not be accomplished. Yet what if they had only meant that they could not weave such magic?

  “Maybe you do not remember,” the witch went on,“but some among you have not forgotten the old compact. This man had not. He was one among a levy sent into the west by his chiefs ten years ago. I saved his life, but that is another story. His debt I agreed could be repaid by him delivering to me what I need most.”

  “But I have already declared that it is forbidden! Perhaps an explanation is necessary. Griffin feathers are proof and purchase against sorcery. They are too powerful to be handled by any man except a shaman or a hero. They cannot be allowed to leave the grasslands. Long ago, griffin feathers were stolen from our ancestors, but the fabled begh Bulkezu invaded the western lands and returned the stolen feathers to their rightful place.”

  “Bulkezu the Humbled?” Her laughter cut sharply. “I see your clans do not learn from the past, as ours do in our careful keeping of records.”

  “Bulkezu was the greatest of beghs, the most honored and respected! He conquered the western lands and trampled their riders beneath his feet, and all the people living in those days knelt before him with their faces in the dirt.”

  She snorted. “He died a hunted man, killed by the bastard prince, Sanglant of Wendar. How small your world is! What tales you tell yourself! You don’t even know the truth!”

  Belek squirmed and grimaced, looking at Kereka with that excitable gaze of his, full of the hidden knowledge he had gleaned from the shamans who favored him and had shared with the sister he loved so well that he had secretly taught her how to fight.

  She was accustomed to silence in the camp, but the witch’s confident tongue emboldened her: how small your world is. Her own voice was harsh, like a crow’s, but she cawed nevertheless, just to show that not all Quman were ignorant and blind. “I heard a different tale! I heard the great begh Bulkezu was killed by a phoenix, with wings of flame!”

  Vayek’s bright gaze flashed to her, and maybe he was shocked or maybe he simply refused to contradict her publicly before his waiting men because such correcting words would shame them both. Maybe he just knew better than to reveal to his enemy that he knew their prisoners. No doubt he was waiting to attack only for fear of risking Kereka’s life. He himself need not fear the witch’s sorcery; with his griffin wings, he was protected against it.

  “Lads,” he said instead, pretending not to recognize Kereka in her male clothing,“where did the witch come from?”

  “Prince Belek was already wounded.” Kereka choose her words slowly. Through desperate and thereby incautious speech, she and her brother had already betrayed their chiefly lineage, so all that was left them was to conceal Vayek’s interest in her specifically. Yet she could not bear for Vayek to think she had given up, that she was returning meekly to the clans having failed in her hunt.“He was wounded taking a head. We had to help him reach his father the begh so he could die as a man, not a boy. Any other path would have been dishonorable. When we were riding back, we saw a flash of light like the sun rising. After that, we saw the witch standing up among the stones. We didn’t see where she came from.”

  “Prince Vayek!�
� the witch cried, laughing as would a man after victory in a wrestling bout.“And this lad, the one whose spirit is woven with magic, he too is a prince!” Her gaze skipped from Belek to Kereka, and as the woman stared, Kereka did not flinch; she met her gaze; she would not be the first one to look away! But the woman’s lips curved upward, cold and deadly: she was no fool, she could weave together the strands lying before her. She looked back toward the begh’s son. “Why are you come, Prince Vayek, son of the begh of the Pechanek clan, scourge, defender, champion? How have you stumbled across my poor comrade who so dutifully gathered griffin feathers for me? Were you out here in the western steppe looking for something else?”

  He could not answer in words: he was too intelligent to give Kereka away, too proud to show weakness in public, too honorable to reply to a charge cast into the air by a woman who by all proper custom and understanding must be deemed insane and her life therefore forfeit.

  He was a hero of the clans, seeking his bride. He had a different answer for his enemies.

  He signaled with his spear. His riders shifted from stillness to motion between one heartbeat and the next. His own horse broke forward into a charge.

  But the witch had guessed what was coming. She flung a handful of dust outward. When the first grains pattered onto the scarred earth sown with Edek’s blood, threads of twisting red fire spewed out of the ground. Their furious heat scorched the grass outside the stones, although within them the air remained cool and the breeze gentle. Within two breaths, her sorcery wove a palisade impossible to breach.

  Except for a man wearing griffin wings.

  He tossed his spear to the ground and, drawing his sword, rode for the gap, where Edek’s body, encased in white fire, did not quite seal the sorcerous palisade.