Bhotta's Tears: Book Two of the Black Bead Chronicles (20 page)

“Stew? How did you make stew?” she asked in wonder.

“All sorts of smoked, jerked, and dried stuff in the cook boxes,” he said with a tired shrug. “It may not be as tasty as Nedella’s stew, but at this point, I could eat boiled boot leather and be happy.”

They shed packs, tunics, boots, and gaiters, and returned to the dome floor to bathe in the water trough. By the time Cheobawn came back up the ladder, her hair damp, wearing only her shorts and light undershirt, the stew had turned thick and bubbly. Megan found a tin of crackers in another box, so their supper turned into a small feast. Cheobawn ate three bowls of stew and a mound of crackers before exhaustion overtook her. She was all for falling asleep where she sat but Tam nudged her awake.

“What do we do next?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said with a yawn. “Sleep?”

“What do you know?” he insisted. “Give us a clue to what is going on in your mind, even if it is just a vague hint.”

“The Lowlanders came over the lip about two clicks from here, to the east,” she said with a tired sigh.

“So close?” seethed Tam, rising to his feet. Connor made a grab for the hilt of his long knife, as if to follow him.

“That was days ago. I don’t think we need to go there. I am waiting for something.”

“What?” Tam asked.

“Shh,” Megan said, touching Tam’s hand. “She doesn’t know yet. Don’t push.”

Megan and Tam began to argue. Cheobawn nodded off.

Sometime later, Megan nudged her to her feet and led her to a sleep pallet.

Cheobawn dozed, dropping in and out of sleep as the other children talked strategy. They had to find the Lowlanders in the morning, that much was clear. Sybille and Hayrald would be here before midday if the elders traveled all night without sleep. They would arrive in a foul mood and unwilling to listen to reason. Hopefully she would have some idea what their next move would be long before then.

Chapter Sixteen

The bhotta was old, uncountably old. Only the stones of the mountain were older. He remembered so many things. He remembered the time before the two-legged creatures, when his kind covered the surface of the planet, their dominion unchallenged by anything except the great sea spiders who climbed out of the deep waters in numbers so vast the sand disappeared under the heaving mass of their bodies. The spiders would bury their eggs in the sand, high above the highest tide, staying to defend the eggs until the hatchlings scuttled into the surf and the cycle began again.

Before the two-legged beings, the sea spiders had challenged the bhotta only once every thirty cycles of the sun, just after the snows melted. Sometimes the bhottas won. Then the hatchlings crunched pleasantly between the teeth on their way down. Sometimes the sea spiders won. Then bhotta flesh fed the next generation of spiders.

But that time had long since passed. The sea spiders had disappeared from the sea. The bhotta’s lowland cousins, their numbers diminished, no longer went hunting their eggs. Life learned its lessons well, passing knowledge on to ensuing generations. Survival meant hiding the body and the mind from the two-legged ones.

The bhotta was old. He hardly needed to hunt anymore. It was just as well. The run down the mountain made his joints creak and his muscles ache. It was much easier to sit in his den and call the food to him. Once a year, as the cold sucked the green from the world, he would call a bennelk or two, fat from a summer of grazing. They would come, silent, compliant, to lay themselves across his jaws, that he might snap their necks to munch on them in peace.

He was old. He had staked out his territory long ago and few were left who could challenge him. So it came as a surprise when the dark thing slid up the cliffs and wandered the limits of his domain, killing his children and taunting him with its power. He left his den one last time and went hunting.

In the deepest, darkest part of the night, the Old Father bhotta found what he had come looking for and died for his troubles. Bear Under the Mountain wept as the giant lizard died, for with him went the last clear memories of sea spider and her children.

As Bear forgot a part of himself and the world shuddered, wounded, Cheobawn woke. She wanted to scream or cry or throw up but she did none of that. When she thought that she could be silent, she pulled her fist out of her mouth and put her fingers to the small of her back, hesitant, searching. She expecting to find a gaping wound but found herself whole. It had been just a dream.

Megan moaned in her sleep, throwing her covers off, her shirt soaked in sweat. Cheobawn froze, holding her breath. The older girl muttered, turned over, and settled back into exhausted sleep. Cheobawn waited, listening to the night. There was a silent void below her. The bennelk were awake and warding as hard as they could.

It was time. Bear Under the Mountain pressed at her mind. Star Woman called silently. The Eater of Worlds danced in the ashes of Bears grief, howling in pleasure. She sat up. Her body protested. Here was her first obstacle. She was not recovered from the long day of riding.

She stole energy from Bear Under the Mountain. She stole from Star Woman. She even stole from Eater of Worlds, though its energy made her snarl. She set it all into a spiral in the center of her body. Her pain disappeared. Her body, exhausted and depleted, burned the world instead.

Then she divided that energy in half, setting another spiral in motion in the opposite direction, creating a warding bubble. Cheobawn disappeared inside it.

Old Father Bhotta’s death hung in the air, pulsing like an angry wound in the ambient. She pushed it away, to just beyond the edges of her awareness.

She looked from Tam to Megan to Alain to Connor. She could feel their love for her tugging at her, holding her here. She smiled, reassured. No matter how far she traveled, they would always pull her back. Gathering up her tunic and belt, the hunting knife still hanging from it, she slid them on as silently as possible. Then she rose and padded barefoot across the platform, hiding herself inside the bubble of her wards.

At the bottom of the ladder she looked around. The bennelk stood frozen, watching her. She could see them but her mind kept sliding away. She would not disturb their silence by saying goodbye.

Chapter Seventeen

Eiocha hung high in the sky, her white light creating a gray twilight along the top of the cliffs. Cheobawn glanced over her shoulder, curious. The Lowlands were shrouded under clouds and mist. She could see nothing.

Turning, Cheobawn faced the place in the ambient where Old Father Bhotta lay, the agony of his last dying thoughts driven deep into his bloodstones, their dissonance tearing at the world like a wound that would not heal. She spread her bare toes across the stone under her feet, listening to the mountain, drawing in its power. It gave her a sense of the planet. With this she built a compass and a map inside her mind. Now she knew where she was, where she had to go, and the path that lay between. She ran.

There were no more walls left inside her anymore. Bear Under the Mountain came and went as he pleased. A laughing Star Woman picked up her dark skirts and danced, the stars in the hem of her skirt caught up in the rhythm of her steps. Somehow Cheobawn found herself and all she knew caught there as well. Eater of Worlds worried at Old Father’s remains, distracted by its prize, else he would have heard her coming.

She lost herself. She lost any sense of time and distance. She could only feel her body remotely, filtered through light and shadow, like sunshine reflecting off a dark pond. Perhaps it was as she feared. Perhaps Star Woman wore her like a second skin and was walking around unmindful of the damage she might cause. Perhaps it was Bear who danced her body. She hoped it was Bear. Her interests most coincided with Bear’s, both of them wanting to save the thin, fragile fabric of life that existed on this tiny bit of rock under the Eiocha’s pale light. Star Woman, she had thousands of planets, so many that she would not grieve extraordinarily much if she lost one or two. Cheobawn could not afford to be that coldly pragmatic. She had only one home. She would fight Star Woman, with everything she had, to keep it safe.

She ran.

It was like a dream. In the dream, she ran down a game trail that angled towards Badnite Creek. She remembered running across a jumble of logs, a natural bridge, her bare toes unerring on the weathered wood, the rush of white water roaring underneath her. Her feet found another game trail on the other side of the creek. She took the westerly path when it branched, repeating the process again and again, each trail leading her closer to Old Father’s body.

Cheobawn compared the dream to the map in her head. She was going west and north, the game trails following the ridge line above Badnite Creek before heading up a small tributary. Old Father’s death pulled her onward, just as it pulled at all the carrion eaters.

She stumbled to a halt, suddenly afraid of what lurked in the shadows around her. Taking back her mind from Bear Under the Mountain, she sniffed the ambient. Things paced along the game trails before and behind her; bat eared foxes, duff pigs, and little carrion lizards among the many. They paid her no mind, intent as they were on the promise of weeks of fat bellies.

Oddly comforted by such company, she ran on.

It became an endless cycle of breathing in the mountain, stealing its power to feed her tired muscles while maintaining her ward shield as Herd Mother had taught her. The hungry whisperings of a hundred little minds ran with her.

The change in the ambient began so gradually, she hardly noticed. The minds of the carrion eaters grew silent. Star Woman hung in the sky, watching with baited breath while Bear sat quietly, oddly pleased about something. Curious, she stopped to peer into the gloom of the trail before her with more than just her Ear. A red-gold light flickered high in the canopy of a dense stand of cedars, the source hidden by a shoulder of the ridge. She cast her mind down into the heart of the light and listened to what came out of the ambient.

Three unshielded minds beat loudly there, pressing at her, grinding at the bones of her face, overwriting the dissonance of Old Father’s death with their own.

Trying to breath around the pain, fighting the rising nausea, she set about building a wall around herself so tight it felt like her psi sense had gone numb. Squatting on her heels in the middle of the game trail, she tried to calculate her next move. One thing was certain. There was no way she was going anywhere near these people. Truly, did Lowlanders walk around, broadcasting every emotion into the ambient like infants in the womb? She thought about what the Coven had said, thought of a dome packed with three million of such people. Horror sucked the breath from her lungs. Mora’s face flashed in her mind; the look on her face as she stood in Amabel’s birthing room, playing a game of half truths. Mora, holder of so many secrets, secrets she refused to share, had not shared this one, either. The Coven had more than a few good reasons to keep the Lowlanders far, far away from the tribes. She could not imagine Mora tolerating even an hour of such pain nor could she begin to contemplate the damage such people would inflict on Menolly and her acolytes. Of all the Coven, only Sybille would not flinch but her knives would drink their fill of Lowlander blood.

Sybille. Bear Under the Mountain did not want Sybille or Hayrald coming here. She could feel him, there, just outside her walls, whispering things. Crazy things that tasted of revenge and retribution and sacrifice. Bear had given up so much. Old Father might have lived another thousand years had Bear not brought the old lizard down the mountain to offer him up as a sacrifice to the Lowlander appetites. It was such a small thing he wanted from Cheobawn in return.

She put her arms over her head to block out the ambient as she tried not to cry. What was she to do? She did not want to go forward yet she was unable to go back. What was done could not be undone.

The sound of snuffling nearby made her look up. A bat-eared fox stared at her, its nose quivering. It started a bit when she moved but did not retreat. She stood up and waved her arms at it. It backed away but stopped after only a few steps.

“I am not dead yet, you stupid pest,” she hissed, stamping her feet. The fox did not believe her. She did not exist in the ambient therefore she must be dead. Not obviously dead but mostly dead. The fox waited, certain that her brain would catch up with her body and remember dying. Soon, she would become still and the fox could begin to feed.

Cheobawn put all her frustration into a bubble of energy and then pushed it out as hard as she could beyond the limits of her body. Something surprisingly strong exploded out of her. The fox yipped in pain as it jumped away, disappearing into the night.

She held her breath, listening. A calmness filled the space behind the wave front of energy as it traveled away from her. Then she noticed that her head stopped aching. Just for a moment. When the pain eased stealthily back around her, it was not as intense as if it feared offending her.

“What was that, I wonder?” she muttered out loud to no one in particular. “Is that the spiral out without the spiral in? I wonder if Sybille might know. Remind yourself to talk to her after this is all done. You know you are talking to yourself, right?” She snorted, shaking her head. “Maybe I just need to be like Sybille, all snarly and sharp edged.”

She paused. That was not a bad idea. She took a deep breath and pressed her wards back in place around her. Shielded from sight and mind, she crept down the game trail. As she drew closer to the fire, she realized there was no need for stealth. The Pack of Lowlanders were making as much noise in the real world as they were in the ambient. A herd of fenelk could have come crashing down the trail and they would not have heard it.

She crept closer, trying to stay out of sight. When she thought she was close enough, she popped her head from around the trunk of a great cedar for only a second before ducking back again.

The after image of an enormous bonfire made her blind for a moment. She closed her eyes and started counting. While she waited, she tried to analyze what she had seen. A fire burned, hot and bright, its circle of light illuminating a clearing made by the spring floods. The sudden rush of snow melt had scoured out the stream bed and deposited a bar of sand and gravel at a sharp turn of the creek bed. The fire had been built at its center, wood taken from the mounds of fallen scrub trees deposited by the floods close at hand. The resinous wood crackled and spat, sparks flying up into the air, intent on setting the entire forest aflame. Did the fools not realize it was the dry season?