Alexandria (26 page)

They hike until the rain forces them to stop, then make a fireless camp under some crudely lashed thatching that provides meager cover from the downpour. Despite being waterlogged and uprooted, the tribe seems not the least bit inconvenienced. They chatter on in their peculiar tongue and share sun-dried meat with Jack and Lia.

With Halis and Cirune on the loose, the men arrange to guard the camp through the night, dividing into shifts and pacing anxiously along the perimeter. Jack takes up arms and tries to join them, but after much insistence that he sleep he grudgingly obliges. He and Sajiress crouch down under their makeshift awning and attempt a conversation. With silly gestures and awkward pantomimes not befitting the tone of the subject, Sajiress lays out the story of how his people came to be attacked by the Nezra.

They had separated only briefly, from what Jack and Lia can glean—a small group of adults and only several children had gone foraging on their own, and pushed farther into new territory than they had intended. Sajiress inscribes their movements on the muddy ground, using rocks and sticks as stand-ins. He points to Balazir, standing glumly in the rain, telling how they were attacked by men who rode horses, and he mimics the action foolishly.

“Denok,” he says, touching the boots that Jack and Lia wear, “kine des.”

Jack understands now why they were so leery when he and Lia first approached—they wear the boots of murderers.

A woman named Sika watches and nods along with Sajiress’s telling, for it seems she was the only living witness to the encounter. She had strayed off on her own and returned just as they were hefting the children away, leaving a burning pile of corpses behind.

Sika can barely speak when the story is finished. Sajiress sits back and folds his hands across his belly and looks keenly at Jack and Lia. He nods to them—it is their turn.

They take one deep breath apiece then launch into their tale. Though it rends old scar tissue fresh again, they tell every bloody detail, completing each other’s thoughts and acting out the details along the way. They conclude with their escape from the Temple, represented by a skull-sized rock. Jack is a small gray pebble and Lia is a little pine cone, and they puppeteer themselves across the muddy ground toward the scattering of rocks that Sajiress has designated as his tribe.

They wipe the mud on their soaked clothes and sit shivering in the cold rain. The tribe encircles them and lays their hands all about them in a strange and profound embrace.

Sajiress pitches forward, full of fire and spite, and takes up the various rocky representations of his tribe and of Jack and Lia, and arranges them in a line before the Temple rock. He advances them forward and plays out a miniature assault on the Temple.

“Tah eh lah,” he asserts, “tevra e’stranna ton, de Temple, eyah, lah sikelern d’ton.”

“No,” Jack says sternly. He lifts the Temple rock and crashes it down on Sajiress’s pebble army, splattering mud on their faces.
“No.”

Sajiress ruminates on this, staring at the mess they’ve created. “Enah? No?”

Jack shakes his head. “No. I’m sorry.”

Sajiress accepts this reluctantly and they sit in reflective silence. The patter of raindrops dwindles and slows to a stop. Lia slicks the water off her skin and scampers over to Balazir and whispers to him sweetly. He chuffs and lowers his head, eyes glistening.

“Can we fix him now?” she asks.

The arrow is still lodged in his left haunch. Jack has been dreading this—there is no good way to go about it. “I guess we better, before it gets too dark.”

He stands up on tired feet and solicits the others for help. They have several lengths of hemp rope stowed with their belongings and Jack takes these out and loops them together to make a crude kick-rope to hobble Balazir’s legs.

“Oh, he’s not gonna like this,” Jack warns, and hands the ropes to the rugged crew that has gathered to help him. They hold the lines with two or three on each strand, and Balazir begins to stir nervously. Jack grabs the flint and rod out of his pack and gets one of the pitched arrows from Sajiress, then sparks the tip and holds his hunting knife in the dull flame.

“Okay,” he tells Lia, “I’m going to work this in to give you some room, and you’re going to pull the arrow out.”

“I am?”

“You’ll be fine. He’s going to struggle, but just… go easy.”

He shoos everyone away from the back of the horse and he and Lia take up their positions by the left flank. He shimmies the tip of the blade in and widens the puncture wound just a touch, and Balazir neighs uneasily and bucks against the ropes.

“Slowly,” he says, “go ahead and pull it out.”

She rocks the arrow shaft as gently as she can manage and starts to dislodge it from the sinewy muscle. Balazir tries frantically to kicks his legs out and everyone startles for an instant before bearing down on the ropes to steady him.

“It’s okay, go again.”

Lia grasps it again and wiggles it loose, then extracts the stony tip and throws it on the ground. Jack pulls his blade back and lets the wound close up on itself. Balazir bucks a couple times then settles as everyone backs off. They let down the ropes. He clips away nervously and Jack holds crisp on his lead. He and Lia pet the horse’s broad neck and shoulders, whispering soft reassurances into his ears.

“It’ll have to do,” he says, inspecting their shoddy surgery. The arrow is gone, at least, and it could have cut much deeper. He leads him on a short walk to let him drink and graze, then ties him back up for the night.

“Think they’re watching us?” Lia asks as they walk back to the camp.

Jack sighs a heavy breath and shakes his head. “I don’t know what they’re doing.”

“Maybe we should stay with them for a while.”

“They can’t protect us forever. I don’t want to cause them more trouble.”

Lia nods and looks at the entangled pile of sleeping bodies nestled under the sloping thatchwork.

“We’ll go before sunrise,” says Jack. “Try to get ahead of them.”

They settle into the pile themselves, hoping to get some sleep before they strike out again. The rain abates for the rest of the night and the woods are quiet, save for the occasional whispering of the spearmen walking their slow circuit around the camp. In the lonesome hours of early morning, Jack rises and gets his pack in order. Lia is sleeping so still and peaceful that he hates to wake her, but he leans down and taps her shoulder anyway.

“Let’s go,” he whispers.

“Hurrama
…
hmm…”

“Lia, wake up.”

“Uhn
… oh… I’m awake.”

She unknots herself from the slumbering hive and takes dizzy, loping steps across the mud to help Jack finish saddling Balazir. Stray droplets of accumulated rainwater from the canopy drip all around and one catches Lia on the back of her neck and sends a shiver down the soft indentation of her spine.

There are no stars in the sky and the waxing moon is as faint as a sandworn etching. Sajiress walks the night shift, his feet looking like they wear shoes of mud. He breaks away when he sees the young strangers stirring in the camp and goes to see them off, taking up a bundle of provisions he’s laid for them—some food, an assortment of arrows, a fur shawl, and some hide straps to bandage their bites and scratches.

“Thank you,” they say, accepting the goods. Jack fishes out one of his knives, the kitchen knife that Lia swiped, and offers it as a gift—they have nothing else to give.

“Tanaa.” Sajiress rubs his thumb along the blade. “Lah tevra ota granlan dar’mont. Tah adanna serchess, en vei d’sonna.” He bends to the ground and draws out a jagged line, pointing off to the mountain as he does so.

Jack fishes around in the pack for their map and he unfolds it carefully and holds it before Sajiress. He points to the muddy contours drawn on the ground, then runs his finger along the matching topography on the map. Sajiress works it over with squinted eyes, then points to a fork between two rivers, just on the other side of the low ranges.

“Granlan,” he says. “Tevra diwaa?”

Jack smiles and shakes his head.

“Lah kine. E’caraan.” Sajiress repeats their names again, mostly to himself, and they manage some sort of awkward farewell. He turns and paces off to his patrol.

Jack unties Balazir then slips a muddy boot into the stirrup. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

He hoists her up and they scoot around for a moment, getting situated. Lia pulls the fur snug around her shoulders and kisses her little cosmic charm, and Jack hooks his bow onto the saddle and delivers just a touch of pressure with his heels and Balazir livens and rambles forward.

Halis slides the scope back into its pouch and creeps to the clearing off yonder where the horses are tied and his partner lay sleeping

“They’re moving. And they’ve got our horse.” His words are warbly and salivating through a half-mouth of teeth.

Cirune grumbles and rolls to his side and gets his good leg under him to stand on. He suffered his own crude operation last night—Halis digging hooked fingers into his thigh to pull out the stone fragments embedded therein. His face tightens with deep creases as he puts weight on it, and he takes a stiff and painful walk to his horse and rests against its heaving side.

“Could use a hand here.”

Halis glares back at Cirune, then throws his pack over his shoulder and goes over and shoves him up onto his saddle. He studies Cirune’s torn leg and the busted, skittish horses. They’ve no arrows and the mongrels are dead.

“Can you ride?”

“Yeah, think so,” Cirune says. “Let’s get this over quick.”

“The boy has arrows and a fast horse. There’ll be nothing quick about it.”

“What?”

“We’ll track them,” says Halis, keeping his scope at hand. “There’s better places they could’ve run. They’ve got somewhere in mind… and we’re going to find it out.”

Chapter Eleven

Arana Nezra the Second lies supine on the floor of his private terrace, arms and legs outstretched, staring listlessly at the billowing white mountains that pass above the joists of the wood beam awning. He has grown weary of watching the horizon for his searchers to return—no news arrives and day after day they do not appear.

He recalls dreamily the feelings of astral invincibility that his father instilled upon his young mind, and he reaches into his inner abyss and attempts again to conjure them, to call forth the powers he has been told since birth he possesses, and he cannot feel even a wisp of them. Prior to the intrusion five days ago he had thought that his very presence acted as deterrent enough, a stopgap against further violation, but he knows now that is not true, and he wonders what he is, far within, if he cannot make a weak man tell secrets merely by intentioning it, or control the fate of a people with the will of his own heart.

Keslin clambers unannounced up the terrace stairs, straining for breath as he reaches the top. He looks amusedly at Arana, flat on his back. There is a metal serving platter laid with pitchers of water and wine and Keslin pours a bit of each into his mug and falls back on the padded bench, looking contented.

“Anything?” Arana asks.

“Nothing yet. Give it time. He’ll talk.” Keslin swigs from his mug and throws his arm over the backrest and reclines his head like a leisure traveler who’s found the perfect spot.

“And if he doesn’t?” Arana sits up and faces him. “What if these two were just scouts clearing the way for a larger attack?”

“The thought has crossed my mind.”

“We’d be slaughtered!”

“I hardly think so.”

“They’ve… they’ve done something to me, Keslin.”

“Oh?”

“Worked some force over me… a curse.”

Keslin smiles. “What kind of curse, Arana?”

“My gift… they’ve ruined it.”

“This is why your powers have failed?”

“It must be.”

“And you’ve felt them previously… these powers?”

“I—I always thought they would come… I’ve been told my whole life…”

“You’ve protected us with your powers, with your gift from the Beyond, this is what you think?”

“Yes,” he says sharply. “Don’t you?”

Keslin sighs out a long exhalation and smoothes his hands along his thighs and rises. He comes around the low table to Arana and places a roughened hand on his shoulders. “You’re on in years, Arana. You’re not a child anymore. How have you gone all this time and not realized the truth about yourself?”

“What does that mean? What truth about myself?”

“You do not have powers, Arana. You are not a gift, not from the Beyond or anywhere else.”

“You lie.”

“I’m the only one who’s ever told you the truth.”

“My eyes, Keslin
. You can’t explain my eyes.”

“The prophet that you’re so fascinated with, he called your eyes a fluke, I believe that’s how he put it. The trait was once common, he said.”

“He told you this? A fluke?”

“He did. A trait mostly gone, he said, but not entirely by the looks of it. Stronger traits overtook it. Just before he left us, he told me these things. But I think I knew it already.”

“Stronger traits?”
Arana clasps his hand over his mouth and stinging tears well in the corners of his contentious blue eyes.