Pathfinder Tales: Lord of Runes (25 page)

I wondered whether Kaid shared Janneke’s idea of professionalism. And then there was Danai. She acted shy, but maybe that was just her mask. She caught me looking at her a few times, and she took a few seconds to look away.

Anyway, surrounded by so many women, I’d never liked my chances any better.

*   *   *

A few days after burying the oracle, we crossed the river and got back on the Yondabakari trail. The caravans had mostly gone through a month earlier, before wildfire season.

I wanted to ride out to scout, but I was down to my last pony scroll. The boss was busy enough without making more riffle scrolls for me. I knew how much that took out of him, and I knew he didn’t want to throw up each morning with Lady Illyria around.

The boss spent the days reading and rereading his creepy book, while Eando and Illyria took turns keeping him from eating all the supplies.

Most of the time, Kazyah sat beside Janneke on the drivers’ seat. One day she borrowed a horse from one of Kaid’s Band. She was gone so long that the mercenaries started to grumble that she’d stolen it and run off. Just after dusk, Kazyah rode back on a wild stallion she’d tamed, the mercenary’s horse following without a tether.

Another day we saw lightning in the distance. Kazyah said those sometimes meant flash floods, sometimes wildfires. As long as we stayed close to the river, we didn’t have to worry about the fires. On the other hand, near the river the floods would get us. After a while we didn’t have a choice. We ran out of river and kept riding east at the foot of the mountains.

The day after we saw the lightning, Kazyah started each day by whispering into the dirt and putting her ear to the ground. Like the oracle, she had a connection to her ancestors, but it was different. They spoke to her through the earth, she said, because that’s where they were buried. After she listened to what they said, she’d tell us what sort of weather to expect, whether we’d see a herd of aurochs or find water, things like that.

She was always right.

Once she told us to stop the carriage because some “burrowing behemoths” were nearby. We waited for the better part of an hour until she said it was safe. A couple miles later, furrows crossed the trail. They reminded me of the giant mole-sharks we saw back in Sarkoris. Even the demons didn’t mess with those things. They eat horses whole. I wondered if the bigger ones could eat the carriage in one gulp.

Kazyah and Eando took turns telling me the names of the plants and animals we passed. I recognized some from our trip to Korvosa, but then we’d been too busy staying alive to talk what the boss called “natural history.”

It was a cindersnake that bit one of the Maidens’ horses. I knew what aurochs were, and that they were tasty, but I didn’t know the hyenas were called bush tigers. I half-expected the boss to have Janneke kill one so he could stuff it and give the Katapeshi hyena in his library some company. We saw plenty of scorpions and horned lizards, which Eando said were called spirestalkers for the way they climbed up the hoodoos.

Akyraks were the giant spiders that were hard to tell apart from the galtroot bushes, so I said let’s stay the hell away from galtroot bushes. Kazyah rode out to pluck the leaves from one to show me I was chicken. They made for strong medicine, she said, and the young men of the Sun Clan mixed them with other stuff as a drug to make them brave. She offered to make some for me, which everybody else thought was very funny.

Kazyah warned us to stay away from the water-storing purple cactus called a basilisk barrel, on account of its poison would paralyze you and then an akyrak would come and eat you alive.

Arni caught scrub rats and brought them back for praise. The rats didn’t look exactly wholesome, but Kazyah said they were all right to eat. Right away I gave Arni the sign, and he gobbled them down. I didn’t want the boss to see one and order somebody to roast it for him.

At night, Kaid’s Band pitched tents and stood guard, leaving the rest of us to take it easy. After supper and a stretch, Eando and Illyria went back to the carriage to put their heads together with the boss. They had actual maps on the map table, but mostly they talked about what the boss had read that day, even though they agreed he shouldn’t oughta be reading it. You can’t get a book away from the boss. Not unless you get his sword first.

At bedtime, Illyria conjured her little cottage. She’d offered to make another, but there still wouldn’t be room for everyone. Instead, she invited Zora, Janneke, and Kazyah to share it with her. Janneke accepted, which meant Zora had no choice, since she wasn’t getting out of her sight, especially now that she was out of the manacles. Kazyah preferred to sleep under the open sky. That left a few bunks for Kaid’s Band. They drew straws to see who got to sleep in a bed each night.

When we were on the move, Eando always took a turn scouting. He said it would be better for everybody if the Sun Clan ran into him before the rest of us. Either they were roaming somewhere else in the Cinderlands or they saw us and kept hidden. After Eando’s stories of how they put young boys in front of wildfires and made them run for their lives in order to prove themselves, I was fine not meeting those mooks.

Eando didn’t go out so much once we passed into orc country. I didn’t blame him. Orc throat-cutters made his worst stories about the Sun Clan sound like schoolboy pranks. Kaid started sending her scouts in groups of six instead of two.

I started to feel left out, and finally asked the boss to make me some more pony scrolls. He said he’d think about it, but Illyria took pity on me and made one for me without a scroll. Even though she was the one that made it, it ended up looking the same as mine always do: a big red horse with a smoky mane.

It was good to ride again. I ran a big circle around the carriage. Janneke gave me a jealous look. Illyria conjured up a driver to give her a break sometimes, but the boss insisted that she remain in the driver’s seat “in case of mishap.” That’s the price of being a professional, I wanted to say. I also didn’t want a punch in the snoot, so I didn’t.

Kazyah’s stallion came when she called. She rode bareback, holding onto the wild horse’s mane while swinging that big hammer over her head like it was a switch. I decided I’d rather take a punch from Janneke than one from her.

Without a word to anybody, Kazyah rode ahead. I ran after her, in part so she wasn’t scouting alone, but mostly to find out whether my phony pony was faster than her wild stallion. When I came up beside her, the stallion screamed.

“Sorry!” I veered away. When I ride the pony, I sometimes forget real horses still hate me.

Kazyah was looking up at the eastern sky. Something glided high above the ground. It was too far for me to make out anything more than a pair of bluish wings and a long tail.

“Dragon?” I tried not to sound as worried as I felt.

“Only a wyvern.”

“Well, that’s a relief. ‘Only a wyvern.’” Looking back, I couldn’t see the carriage, but I could tell where it was by the plume of dust rising behind it. I started thinking we should stay closer.

“You have seen a wyvern before?”

“Not, you know, in the flesh.” I’d seen a picture in one of the boss’s books. Kazyah nodded in a way that made me feel small, so I added, “Mostly we’ve run into actual dragons.”

“Is that so? What sort of dragons?”

Now it was her turn to be impressed. “Well, I couldn’t see the first one, on account of I was blind at the time, but I hear it was the biggest. The green one was big as a house.”

“You escaped a green dragon?”

“Actually, we got on pretty good. You could say we’re friendly.”

“You are friends with a green dragon?” Her tone said she didn’t think much of that idea. Green dragons don’t exactly have the best reputation. I was starting to feel judged.

“Let’s just say the enemy of my enemy is a great big green dragon.”

Kazyah frowned, but she seemed to be thinking it over. I had a feeling she wasn’t going to call me chicken again.

A little while later, she jumped off her horse and put her ear to the ground. After a moment, she nodded at whatever her ancestors told her. She got back on her stallion and led me a few miles off the trail to four hoodoos that looked like old men in wide hats leaning into the wind. Stepping into the shadows between them felt like stepping out of a forge and into a beer cellar.

We found a pool. We drank, and then she let her horse drink. Mine didn’t need water, on account of not being real or from our world—something like that.

When the stallion had his fill, Kazyah whispered into his ear. He wandered the base of the wind-carved pillars, tearing out weeds and wildflowers. My pony just stood where I left it, looking ahead at nothing.

The stillness of the place reminded me of the hill where we’d buried the oracle. I’d buried the dead before, but never anyone that close to me. That thought made me think Kazyah was still mourning her old man.

“I guess this trip is harder on you than anyone else,” I said. “You wouldn’t even be with us if your father hadn’t promised your help.”

“The oracle was not my father,” she said. “He was my son.”

I took a minute to work that out in my head. The oracle had to be way over sixty years old, but Kazyah didn’t look much over forty. It was hard to tell through all those tattoos.

Considering the things I’d seen, Kazyah’s youth was no big deal. Hell, these days the boss looked younger than when I met him. It wasn’t seeing old people look like young people that threw me. The thought that rattled in my noggin was Kazyah watching her boy grow older than her—so old he died of it.

“My youngest son,” she said, “and the last to die.”

We were quiet for a time while I let that thought sink in. I’d seen pain in the eyes of a lot of parents whose kids had suffered or died. I never wanted to feel that way.

A long time ago, I bought a potion to make sure I’d never have a son of my own. It wasn’t because my father got killed on account of our evil blood. It wasn’t even because my mother sold me after that.

It was because of how everybody looked at me every day of my life. They looked into my yellow eyes and saw something that didn’t belong in this world. They hated me or feared me. Even the women who wanted me, what most of them really wanted was the little bit of Hell they smelled on me. There was only one way to be sure nobody looked at a child of mine that way.

That was never to have a kid.

That was my plan, anyway. A few years back, a devil told me the potion was a fake—not that you can trust a devil without a contract. Since then I’d been extra careful.

So I didn’t really know how Kazyah felt. Until you get hurt a particular way, you don’t know nothing. And you’ve got no way to take the hurt away from those who do. All you can do is say the thing you’re supposed to say.

“I’m sorry.”

Kazyah didn’t reply. She dropped her bear hat and spread her cloak on the ground. She stripped off her sweaty clothes and stepped into the pool. Even after she knelt, the water barely reached her round hips. She scooped handfuls of water to wet her black hair. In the shadows, her tattooed skin looked as dark as the red rocks surrounding us.

She didn’t ask me to leave or turn my back, so I watched her bathe. As she spilled each handful of water after the next, her body changed.

The heavy muscles of her arms and legs grew thinner. The wrinkles at her eyes spread across her face, visible even through all that ink. A couple of her teeth disappeared, and the rest turned brown and yellow. Her fingers thinned, and her knuckles swelled. Her dark hair grayed and whitened. Her heavy breasts sagged and flattened.

She turned to me and said, “This is how I should look without the blessing of the earth.”

She poured more water over her shoulders. Her skin smoothed. Her muscles returned, but not as heavy as they’d been before. Her long black hair spilled past her waist. She turned a soft smile on me, her teeth whiter. “I was this age when I emerged from the cave of the Night Bear.”

I was going to say something then, but my tongue got tangled.

She beckoned to me, and I didn’t need another hint. I dropped my kickers and leathers beside her bearskin cloak and joined her in the pool.

Our conversation got what the boss might call “nonverbal.” Once we were clean, she drew me over to lie on the bearskin cloak. Her kiss tasted like a penny, sharp and bright. Our bodies moved together, slow for such a long time that I couldn’t tell when it got fast.

The first time felt like the echo of thunder on the horizon. I could almost smell the lightning. Her body slipped back into the shape I’d first seen, all muscle and round turns.

The second time felt like falling down a mountain. After, I thought I’d never catch my breath again.

When she came to me in the shape she should have had, I didn’t pull away. She looked different, sure, and she didn’t feel the same. But she was the same woman she’d been when she stepped out of that bear cave.

The third time felt like the whole earth opened up. Kazyah held me so hard I thought she was dragging me down into a grave. The things she knew and the things I’d seen her do, she was a power in the world. Maybe not as mighty as an ancient green dragon, but closer to that than to me. If she wanted to die, and if she wanted me to die with her, there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop her.

But in the end we didn’t die. It only felt that way. We came back to life a little at a time. Kazyah went back to looking the way she had when we’d met. We washed ourselves in the pool, put on our clothes, and headed back to meet the carriage.

That afternoon between the hoodoos was the second thing I’ll always remember about Kazyah. And after the way things turned out, it’s the one thing I wish I could forget.

13

The Sleeper

Varian

Through the rear window, Radovan said, “Boss, you’re going to want to see this.”

I stepped out onto the running board and swung around to catch the ladder, as I had done a hundred times before. This time I slipped. Radovan grabbed my wrist before I could fall under the wheels. He guided me onto the rear ladder. I clung there for a moment to let the beating of my heart slow before climbing to the roof, where I crouched with one hand on the baggage rail.