The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (61 page)

Suddenly, from high above, the
falcon swooped downward, bleating in her shrill sharp voice and the Captain
instinctively threw a look to the Seer. The man was dismounting, his arms and
legs shaking as he did so, and he leaned into his saddle, eyes closed, panting.
The Captain felt a rush of dread.

“Sidi?”
said Kirin, beginning to take steps in the Seer’s
direction. The Major too, sprung from her desert horse, but even she wasn’t
quick enough to catch him before he hit the ground.

“No, no, not a good place for
this,” muttered Rhan Agoyian, looking around at the hills anxiously. The falcon
was swooping and crying, making tight, agitated circles over their heads.

Ursa and Kirin rolled the Seer
over, and Fallon was on the ground now, passing a water skin into their waiting
hands. His breaths were coming in short, shallow puffs and the tawny pelt on
his face was damp with sweat. The mane under the
kheffiyah
was dripping.

“He’s too hot,” growled Ursa.
“He’s like a kiln.”

“Sun-sick. I’m certain of it.” It
was Sherah now, still mounted but leaning in, one brow arched, detached. Kirin
knew she would not mourn if he died.

He turned to their guide. “What
do we do for sun-sickness?”

“We can’t make camp here. Cap.
It’s not a good place—“

“What. Do. We. Do?” Every word
bitten and precise, leaving no room for discussion.

“Cool him down.” Sherah again, a
rare tone of authority in her voice. “Strip him of some layers, keep his pelt
and clothing damp.”

Agoyian again. “But that’s all
the water we’ve got. We’ll need that for the journey. We’ve got at least two
days in the desert after the mountains.”

“Are there rivers in these
mountains?” asked Kirin, allowing the women to work and rising to his feet.
“Springs? Snow caps?”

“Further north, but here? No.”

Fallon frowned as she and the
Major began removing the many layers of light linen desert wear, discarding
them in a pile at their side. “Are you sure it’s sun-sickness, Sherah?’

“Of course it is,” the Alchemist
purred. “What else could it be?”

“Oh well, I don’t know. It’s
just…”

Hands on hips, Kirin turned to
her.
“Sidala,
what are you thinking?”

She glanced up at him, for a
moment forgetting the fact that she was supposed to be hating him. “I…I just
don’t know. But there’s something else, something more…I just, I don’t know…”

“Not helpful.”

“I’ll remember.” She nodded, and
to her own surprise, she smiled at him, and instantly felt a weight lift from
her shoulders. “I will.”

Agoyian stepped forward. “We
can’t stay here, Cap. We’ve got no defenses.
Gowrain
will have us for supper, they will.”

“Sidi,
your concern is admirable, but—“

“Oh mother…” gasped the tigress
and all eyes turned to see.

It is a most unusual thing in
cats – a sign of our creation from the Tao wheel perhaps, the opposing
yet intertwining nature of black and white – that when a cat receives a
wound, his pelt will do one of three things. If it is a flesh wound that heals
easily, there is no problem. The pelt grows back the original color, whether
tawny, spotted, marbled or striped. But if it is a deep wound, a wide one, or
one which does not heal easily, the pelt invariably grows back white. By the
time we are adults, cats have a multitude of white scars across their pelts and
most can tell you exactly when and where each was won. Our stripes chronicle
our lives, in a manner of speaking. Our histories.

But there are wounds that are so
ghastly, so severe, that the pelt is melted away, and underlying skin is all
that remains. In most cats, these scars are black, for in most cats, their
underlying skin is black. Now I do know of several cats whose skin is pink.
Pink finger pads and foot pads, pink noses, pink ears. I also know a few who
possess a browny color, which is a little more common in lions, but for the
most part, our skin is black. Why this is, is a mystery. This black scarring is
deep, not superficial, caused by very traumatic events. Burns of any kind
almost always produce such scarring.

This was the scarring that all
eyes saw on the chest and ribs and back of the Seer, causing all activity to
stop for several heartbeats. It was most unexpected, shocking even, to see such
a history on one of their own. Sherah, however, slipped from the back of her
horse, golden eyes wide, and she knelt beside him, running her hands above the
scarring as if to divine their cause. The falcon bleated in protest.

“Fire… These were made in a fire.
A very bad one…” She looked up at the Captain. “These are old.”

“So they are not causing the
sickness?”

“No.”

Fallon and Ursa resumed their
work, poring water across his brow, his throat, his chest, but to tell the
truth, it seemed to have little effect. His claws extruded through the slits in
his gloves, and he seemed to be in great discomfort.

Agoyian stepped close to the
Captain. “We can not camp here.”

“We can not leave him.”

“Well…” the jaguar resumed
chewing on the stud in his lip. “We can put him in the cart, head back out of
these foot hills a half day’s ride and make our way north…”

“But that is longer.”

“Well, by several days, yeah.”

“Do we need to enter the
mountains to meet up with the Wall?”

“The Wall is in the mountains, so
yeah, we do.”

“So, either way, we are going to
go through mountains.”

The sharp green eyes narrowed.
“Yeah. Either way.”

“Then we go through now.”

“But we have no defenses –“

“Wait.” It was Ursa now. She
stepped away from the Seer and struggled to her feet. She held out her hand and
remarkably the falcon landed, wings wide, beak open and predatory.
“Gowrain
. We need you to seek
Gowrain.
Let us know if they are close,
let us know…” She growled in frustration, tail lashing and to Kirin’s absolute
surprise, she closed her eyes.

There was silence in the
foothills for a moment, before Path the falcon chirruped and lit from her hand,
soaring in ever widening circles above them.

With a deep breath, Ursa glanced
at her Captain. “She will watch for us.”

Fallon gasped again, put a hand
over her mouth.

“Oh mother…”

Kirin was getting dizzy.
“Sidala?”

“I know what this is, Captain,”
she said, emerald eyes wide. “And to tell you the truth, I don’t know if we can
stop it…”

***

They made camp right then and
there, against Agoyian’s better judgment, and Sherah had surprised them all by
drawing several circles around themselves and the band of horses with fire
powder. She lit them with one of her many candles, and they sat in rings of
burning light. They did not set up tents. Rather, they determined to stay awake
for these few nights in these particular mountains and left the horses tacked
and ready to ride at a moment’s notice. Two leopards were patrolling during
this first watch. The third slept, ready to patrol with the Major during the
second. The falcon circled overhead, watching.

They ate the last of the milk
paste, and waited for the Scholar to speak. The Seer lay sleeping (or a form of
it), shivering and panting and they had left on him a sleeveless linen tunic,
for the sight of the blistered and blackened pelt was proving too much for them
to look upon for any length of time. The Major was obviously worried as she
sat, cradling his head in her lap and stroking his brow with a damp strip of
cloth. Such familiarity disturbed Kirin, and he made a point to speak with her
about it at a later date.

“Okay, okay,” said the Scholar,
pushing her wild hair out of her face. “Remember back in
Sha’Hadin,
how he and all the other Seers suffered from the cold?”

Ursa snorted. “How could we
forget?”

 
“I, I think this is the same, only the reverse.”

Kirin sat forward. “Why would you
say that,
sidala?”

“Remember that night? It was a
few days after
Sri’Daolath.
The night
the star changed?”

It was there, just beyond his
memory. She was onto something, he was certain of it.

“Do you remember what he said
that night?”

Kirin knit his brow, cursing his
forgetfulness. “The ‘power’ had just come on. Solomon was excited…”

“Yes, but then, what did Sireth
say? After Solomon?”

“Who is Solomon, then?” whispered
the jaguar to the cheetah.

“A wizard far, far away,” she
whispered back.

“He responsible for the star?”

She sipped her tea. “Perhaps.”

“Please tell me,
sidala,”
growled the Captain. “My mind
is not like yours.”

“He said, ‘the dragon…the metal
dragon…he’s burning up…he’s falling from the sky and he’s burning up…’”

“Yes,” said Kirin. “Yes. And
Kerris said there are no metal dragons, but…”

“I think Max is the metal dragon.
I think Max is the one responsible for waking Solomon and killing the Seers. I
think there is a metal dragon in the skyand now he’s burning up and falling
from the sky.”

Kirin frowned. He could not
understand this. It was still not making sense.

“Captain…” The Alchemist now. She
was looking at the night sky and so they all looked up.

“What in the Kingdom…?” muttered
Agoyian. It was unlike anything he had ever seen.

“Max almost killed him with the
cold…” Fallon whispered as she too stared into the night sky. “And now…”

“No,” growled Ursa, and she
refused to look anymore, but laid her hand across the Seer’s burning brow.

“And now,” said Fallon. “Max is
going to kill him with heat.”

Kirin’s heart sank.

For above them all, the star with
the brightly glowing tail had split. There were now five stars, all smaller
than the first, all with tails, lighting up the night sky. Max, the metal
dragon, the ‘saddle-light,’ was falling from the sky, breaking up and burning
up, and taking the last Seer of
Sha’Hadin
with him.

***

Now, if you have never seen
Gowrain,
you might think them as much
legend as behemoths, leviathans and dragons, but I must assure you that they
are no myth. There is also considerable debate as to whether or not they are a
‘people’, or simply large brutish animals. I, for one, consider them animals,
but there are those who think otherwise, for they attempt to dress themselves
in scraps of leather (they have not skilled fingers for sewing, weaving or embroidery)
and have what some call a language. Again, I am not convinced of this. I have
heard of birds that mimic our language and most convincingly so. Perhaps though
they are. It is a mystery.

There were no
Gowrain
that night and at first light of
dawn, the party packed up their camp, lifted the unmoving form of the Seer into
the cart and made their way into the foothills of these new mountains.

At first, it was an easy go.
Foothills are quite negotiable, and there seemed to be a wide flattened trail
that carried on through for quite a distance. Obviously, Agoyian knew it well,
so it was likely well-traveled by many a caravan, but Kirin was forced to
wonder how long it would take before the mountains themselves made it difficult
to pull a wheeled cart behind a horse. They were not big mountains, but they
were mountains nonetheless. They would then be forced to rethink their
strategy. He was not looking forward to that.

It came sooner than he’d hoped,
for by midday the trail had narrowed and grown steep in places, and the cart
was becoming dangerously unstable. Kirin himself called a halt to their
travels, and he pulled his horse up alongside the Major.

 
“This will not do,” she growled. “The barrels are tipping
first one way, then the next. And the Seer is going to slide out if this path
gets any steeper.”

“I know. I will take him on
alMassay.”

“I can take him –“

“No,” he cut her off. “’Massay is
wider of girth and shoulder, and stronger in the back. He can carry us both.
Your desert horse is too fine-boned for such a load.”

The muscles in her jaw rippled
but she nodded at his decision. He swiveled in his saddle to their guide, who
was glancing around the canyons for any sign of danger.

“Sidi,
I will need your help with the water barrels. Fashion a way
to strap them to one of the pack horses.”

“We abandoning the cart, then?”

“I can see no other alternative.”

“Fair enough.” And the man sprang
from his Mongolian horse and trudged over towards them, and together, they
emptied the cart of all its valuables, feline and otherwise, and left it on the
crooked side of a narrow mountain path, somewhere in some not-so-big mountains.

***

The
Gowrain
did not come the second night, either, and not
surprisingly, neither did Solomon. The Seer’s breathing had grown ragged and
labored, and the pauses in between breaths were growing longer. Kirin was not
sure he would make it through this next night. That would be bad, for more than
one reason.

The star was no longer a star,
but rather a set of static fireworks, a burst of color and light, sizzling and
streaking across the night sky. The five branches now were so far apart that
they looked like they were touching down in areas on five different points on
the horizon. It seemed that something was ending, and that made him feel very,
very heavy.

Again, in circles of fire powder
and flame, they sat and waited out the long night. Agoyian told a story in the
firelight, the newest tale of Kaidan and his conquest of the virgin peak,
Shagar’mathah,
tallest, proudest and
most terrible of all the Great Mountains, devourer of many a feline explorer.
How Kaidan had gone first to the ocean in the company of tigers, wrestled a
cat-eating shark, found a pearl, and on the way back, climbed
Shagar’mathah,
leaving all his tigers at
the base camp far below and forging up on his own, leaving his cloak on her
mount as a wedding present. Kirin shook his head, dropped it in his hands.
Agoyian leaned forward, sharp eyes glittering.