Chapter Eight

Year 0, Month 9, Day 13

Spring was a season with two faces: early, which meant warming up but still raining regularly; and late, growing even warmer, with the rains tapering off to rare showers that vanished with the coming of summer’s heat. Each phase lasted about a month and a half, maybe a little longer, and it was round about the splitting point when Lutun—though the young man loved spring—found himself caught twice.

The unexpected flood wasn’t bad, since the wadij was broad, but it did soak him to the hips before he could get out of it. His bowstring managed to stay dry, but the quiver got drenched, as did the hunting bag with the trio of desert hares he had shot earlier. The pouch with his travel cakes, he discovered when he settled onto a rock outcrop to spread everything out to dry, was ruined, too, along with the pouch with his tinder and striking stones for making a fire. The deluge did not spare the scabbard for his bronze knife, either, which would start turning green and dull if he didn’t let the leather sheath dry thoroughly first.

Everything would have to be dried by the sun, not by sun and fire; he was no animadj, to be able to summon a wisp to make twigs and such burn. Unfortunately, with the clouds scudding by, the sunlight and its heat weren’t as intense as they could have been. After spreading out his belongings, even his sandals and trousers, Lutun made a pillow out of his poncho top and settled back to rest. He had told Puna, the hunt mistress, what direction he had gone and how long he planned to stay out. So long as he kept his nap short, he should be able to return within the rough time span he’d given her. At least he was now on the right side of that muddy wadij to be able to get home without having to cross it a second time.

And what a home! Fancy cave-like homes that were so straight and clean and pristine, they couldn’t be called caves and certainly were not huts. Entire rooms set aside for sleeping, for cooking, for bathing and excreting, and of course entertaining guests. The Fae had called them “ah-part-mints,” and they had by now made enough that every single person could have had three, though it seemed silly and Lutun couldn’t imagine dragging his pallet and gear from bedchamber to bedchamber within just one of them, never mind three.

Population expansion was the excuse the Fae gave for the excess in housing, which was probably a good thing, because Zudu and Halek had introduced the Fae to the Laughing Feast, held at the end of five of the darkest, cloudiest, gloomiest days of winter. Even though the Fae did not partake of the palraca as before, the same free-flowing couplings happened again. The three sun-haired males had—according to Djin-taje-ul—managed to get seven more women pregnant.

He himself had been pulled into a tangle of bodies by the Fae Adan when he had finished drumming on his strange instrument. Adan had urged Lutun to help him make love to the ash blond woman, Fali, her stomach rounded, her hands talented, her lips . . .

A scraping sound, sand against stone, snapped Lutun’s eyes open. He groped for his bronze knife, set a short distance from his hand—and cried out with pain when an arrow pierced his third finger, cutting into the bone and slicing the littlest finger next to it. Rolling protectively toward the injury, he grabbed the knife in his other hand and struggled to his feet, only to stagger with another shriek when an arrow slammed into his calf.

Panting, kneeling awkwardly, he held himself very still. Only his eyes and his head moved a little as he tried to scan for where the attacks were coming from. Someone approached from his right, the direction of the sun. Squinting that way, Lutun made out a big fellow with a huge axe, its bronze head boasting two curved blades, and not the single one normally seen for chopping wood. A hand came down on his left shoulder, startling him with another cry of pain from his jostled wounds.

“I see you’re willing to kneel before your new masters,” the man on his left stated. He was tall, lean but muscled, and bore a red-painted ring on his poncho. Circle Fire Tribe. His fingers dug in hard, provoking another cry from Lutun. “But let’s see how cooperative you are in other ways. Such as telling your new masters where your tribe lives, and how many stand watch, and how well armed they might be.”

In a flash of insight, Lutun realized he had a choice. Either cooperate and hopefully live, or hold his tongue and most likely be tortured. He wanted to live, but he did not want to betray his tribe, or the Fae. The young man also did not know how much pain he could withstand before he would talk and betray them anyway. He was no coward, but neither was he the strongest-willed member of the tribe. Also, if he defied them hard enough, they could very well kill him, and he’d never see his new home again. He’d never be pulled into another mating-pile again.

A third choice opened up to him when the man shifted his weight and stepped on Lutun’s calf, making the naked youth cry out in pain—he wanted to tell them anything to get the pain to stop! Anything . . . anything could include lies . . . couldn’t it? Could he?

Licking his lips, he struggled to think, and think quickly. “We live to the southwest of here, at the southern end of the canyons!”

The man stomped, making Lutun scream. The bronze arrowhead had war-barbs, and they cut into his flesh cruelly. “Wrong answer! We know they went to the northwest. We know they still are living to the northwest. How many are left?”

“One . . . one hundred and fifty-three! The . . . the floods killed many,” Lutun panted. He could see others approaching now, a youngish man with a veritable forest of twigs in a bundle strapped to his back, and an older man carrying a torch. Its flames . . . were pointing contrary to the actual flow of the wind. Anima. They were using the anima to track his tribe? This was not good. Lutun altered his lie a little. “My group lives to the southwest. We . . . we spread out, some of us. There’s not a lot of water to all live together, so . . . so we dug lots of catch-basins for water. The . . . the grazing land is to the northwest, and the farming land.”

The man holding him down stopped stepping on his calf. The release of pressure brought its own fresh wave of pain, but thankfully a bit less intense. “Koro, use your truth-flame spell on this one. I think he’s trying to lie to us.” Lutun’s captor turned back to him. “Koro is a master animadj,” he said, gesturing with his free hand while the one on Lutun’s shoulder continued to hold him in a bruising grip. “He has a particular affinity for fire. If you tell the truth, his torch flames will stay upright and true, but if you tell a lie, they will reach toward your face. And with each lie you tell, we will bring those flames closer and closer to you.”

The man he gestured at held out his own hand toward the younger man with all the sticks, who was busy extracting one of them. It turned out to be a torch, covered in resin and oil-wrapped rags. As the animadj lit it, murmuring his spells to shape the magic, Lutun prayed he was close enough for the Fae to steal the . . . no. He wasn’t close enough. He had roamed too far in his hunting for the anima to pull out of the animadj’s hands and go flying toward the pantean.

Making up his mind to resist, to not tell them anything that could help the efforts of what had to be a scouting party for a great war band, Lutun squared his shoulders under his interrogator’s grip. “I am Lutun of the mighty Flame Sea Tribe. I serve the Taje Djin-taje-ul, she who rules over all, and she will not be happy if you torture me. She will not be happy if you kill me. And she will send her servant, Death, to deal with you if you continue to harm me!”

“Your clan name and your threats are meaningless, little sheep. I am Kuruk, warrior of the Circle Fire, a name and a tribe you will learn to fear. If you live. We are strong, and you are not. Prepare yourself to serve us or be slaughtered.” Bringing his other hand down as well onto Lutun’s shoulder, Kuruk held the grim, flinching youth firmly in place for the coming interrogation.

***

Zudu, the chief animadj, had appropriated a set of caves that went deep into the rocks, and had turned those caves into ornate chambers with the pantean’s help. Like the Fae, Zudu had decided to plan for future generations, an expansion of the tribe’s numbers, and hopefully an expansion in the number of animadjet to train and serve. Some of the best living quarters within the animadjet complex had been given balconies overlooking the valley not too far from the theater, and it was on one of those balconies that Jintaya now sat, having requested a moment of Zitta’s time.

From the look on his face, her request was not what he had expected.

“So . . . you don’t want to raise your own children?” Zitta asked, furrowing his brow in confusion. Having been gauged both trained and skilled enough, Zudu had promoted him to fully-ranked animadj and put him to work helping the tribe settle disputes and questions related to housing and territorial claims for grazing and gathering. “You want me to find parents who do want them?”

Jintaya shook her head. “No, that is not what is meant by this request,” she corrected him. “We do raise our own children, and sometimes the children of others. All children are raised with love and care. Those who are fully Fae by blood are always taken back home . . . though usually we are very careful not to procreate when we are serving on a pantean in distant lands.

“It is simply that those who are Dai-Fae often find it far more comfortable to be raised in the same place as their Shae parent. Having watched the various adults of the tribe and how they interact with each other and especially with children, we four Fae ladies are requesting that certain couples among your people adopt our offspring to be raised by you.” She carefully did not mention the possibility that these half-native, half-Fae children could wind up being a danger to her homeland and would not be allowed to cross the Veil between worlds without solid proof that they were no threat to her kind. “In a way, it is an honor for us to ask someone to raise a child; it means we trust them to be a good parent. It is a compliment. And as you have fathered a child with Rua, she would like you to accept that child into your care when the boy is born.”

“Why would you not raise them yourselves?” Zitta pressed.

“Mostly, it is because we will not have the time to . . . to . . . spare . . .” Jintaya stopped, frowning. Something was wrong. Like hearing an out-of-tune harp string being plucked in the midst of an otherwise melodic, quiet performance. The animadj started to speak. She cut him off with a swift rise of her left hand. Swirling the right one, she murmured the trigger-words for her awareness spell.

Though he had seen parts of this spell before, Zitta still sucked in a sharp breath when scores of soft-shining sparks sprang up from her fingers and spread out. “So many,” he whispered. He looked at the golden-haired Fae. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“I do not yet know . . . but someone I have a tie to is in mortal pain. I can feel it,” she murmured, and pressed the edge of her first two fingers to her forehead while she concentrated for a moment. Most of the sparks were arrayed in an odd scribble with sparks poking off here and there, some higher than the others. She murmured another triggering phrase and brought up an illusion of the sandstone and granite canyons around them. Zitta’s eyes widened at this show of magic, his attention flicking from spark to spark as they nestled into, and on top of, the three-dimensional illusion.

“What an amazing spell. Is that . . . ? Are those two sparks you and I?” he asked, pointing at the tiny curve of balcony shelf set to the left of the entrance to the animadjet halls.

“Three sparks, but the spell is not large enough at this size for you to see my child,” Jintaya dismissed. Using both hands, she spun the illusion, checking the various life forces it tracked. “No, no . . . it is not anyone close to the central valley, or I would know their name and their peril if it were that close. It must be one of the hunters.”

Choosing a direction, she shrank the valley down—the sparks remained more or less the same size, forming a bright golden squiggle—and scanned off to the north, then the northeast, to the east . . . The pain she sensed increased, and her hands started moving jerkily, rather than with their normal centuries of practiced grace. When she reached the zones to the south, Zitta reached through the spell and caught her trembling fingers.

“Easy, Djin-taje-ul,” he soothed her, stroking her hands with his. “Deep breaths. It is admittedly frightening to see you upset, but if you are upset, you cannot focus, and if you cannot focus . . .”

“I cannot master the magic, the anima,” she agreed, and managed a slight smile. Her pointed ears had twitched at the way he pronounced her name, infusing it with a different meaning than it should have borne, but it was a good reminder that she was in charge and had to remain calm, not agitated or frustrated. Drawing in the suggested deep breath, she centered herself, then grasped the thread, shifted, and examined. Just as she rotated the illusion from southwest to west, she stiffened. “Lutun! Lutun is in danger. In great pain, and . . . and it is increasing!”

“Increasing?” Zitta asked. “What could make it increase? A desert lion? A nest of scorpions? Hyenas?”

“No, I . . . I don’t . . . Ah!” she exclaimed, fingers clutching at his. Though her digits were slender and not callused, there was a great deal of strength in her grip. “There are others there, other lives—sentient, thinking lives. I think they are . . . By the stars, they are torturing him! But . . . why?”

Zitta wasted a moment in gaping at her, but only a moment. Trained to see the world beyond what was within reach of his physical eyes, his physical hands, he pushed off the bench he was sharing with their leader and braced his hands on the balcony railing. If Lutun suffered from torture, that meant a warband wanted information on his tribe’s vulnerabilities. Zitta drew in a deep breath, then hollered as strongly as he could, letting his voice echo off the stone wall behind him and out across the valley.

“Taje Halek! Puna! Eruk! Tulan—anyone! Djin-taje-ul needs you! Shorno? Shorno, get the hunt mistress and the warriors up here!”

Jintaya swayed in part from the pain she was experiencing in a foggy version of Lutun’s secondhand injuries, but also in part from the lung power on the Shae man. Righting herself, she winced a little and pressed her hand to her stomach. Like Rua, she was now the equivalent of seven months along, and her center of gravity was off-kilter.

At least this world had similar spans for its moon cycles and its gestation periods, Fae and Shae alike, so that calculating when she would be due was easy. It did nothing, however, for her sense of balance, or for the fact that this fetus, just like her previous children, had a habit of kicking now and again. Reluctantly, she eased back on her awareness of Lutun’s endangered life-spark, but doing so eased much of the nausea and disorientation.

Needing to move, to do something while she waited for helpers to arrive, Jintaya made her way down to the entry hall. The stone benches down here had no cushions stuffed with straw or wool, but they did have comfortable curves to their seats and backs, but she couldn’t stay settled for long. Not when it took several minutes to gather anyone, for it was early afternoon, hot in the midspring sunlight but still bearable for hunting, gathering, herding, and plant tending.

The handful of men and women slowed when they entered the hall, gawking at the sparks still floating in front of her, following their creator while she paced in her agitation. Zitta, joining them, hurried to explain. “These are the anima life-sparks of each member of the tribe, and this one out here is Lutun; he is being injured by several strangers, so we need to discuss how to rescue him,” he said to each one when they arrived. Grateful, Jintaya focused on keeping her awareness balanced between close enough to know Lutun’s condition and distanced enough not to be affected by his pain, while still projecting a detailed terrain map for the tribe’s handful of warriors to view.

When Halek arrived, several of the warriors were debating how to as swiftly as possible get out to the distant valley where Lutun’s spark was located. In his wake came Éfan and Adan, with Tulan trailing behind. As soon as the animadj explained the situation to her, Tulan raised her young voice, cutting through the discussions of the others.

“No! We do not send every warrior and bow wielder we have after these people.” Her hazel eyes stared hard at some of the more agitated men. “I know that valley. Lutun is nearly three selijm from here. Two if you run partway, and it is the hottest part of the day. If the taje-ul’s information is right, that they are harming him at paced intervals, then they are torturing our tribesman. Think,” Tulan ordered the others. “Why would they torture him? To get information.

“Why would they want information? To find out how rich these wadijt are, and how few warriors we can spare. They are seeking our weaknesses to plan for an invasion. Need I remind you that my uncle was a hunter like Lutun, found with many wounds upon him, tortured to death shortly before the Spider Hand warriors started raiding us in earnest?”

“Your words are a grim wisdom, but they are still wise,” Halek praised her. “Lutun is too far away for a rescue, but we may be able to find the tracks of his attackers. We will spare three . . .” He trailed off as the two male Fae whispered to each other in their own tongue.

Jintaya heard their words. Adan was asking Éfan if they could open a gate, a local portal connecting this hall with that spot near Lutun, and Éfan was replying what she already knew: no, they could not. The aether was just sufficiently strange enough in this world that it was actually easier—by no means easy, but easier—to open a tunnel between two different universes than it was to open a tunnel between two points on the same world. The anima itself would resist such a connection, like how a coil spring resisted being compressed.

Using the Fae tongue herself, she spoke. “Enough arguing. Adan, can you grab one of the others, get a pair of slip-discs, and get out there quickly?”

He gave her a guilty look. “Everyone else is gone for the day, Jintaya-ul. Kaife and Parren went north to shape more of the valleys with cistern caches, and to bring various ores up to the surface for future mining deposits. Fali and Rua are north as well, looking for more wild goats to add to the herds. Even Ban is gone; he said he was going to explore to the east to look for oases among the dunes. He took his discs to make his journey swift.”

“Then it will have to be you and I. Fetch my discs,” she ordered.

“But, Jintaya, in your condition . . .” Adan protested.

“Fetch. My discs,” she repeated, and stood with as much dignity and authority as she could. Switching to the human tongue, she stated, “Adan and I shall rescue Lutun. Éfan, you will stay here and devise a perimeter ward with warning spells, to give us advance notice of when a large group of strangers approach. If Tulan is right, then there may be a large force on its way to raid us. In order to stop it, we will need information. Adan—my discs and my armor,” Jintaya ordered him, giving the younger Fae an annoyed frown for the way he hesitated and lingered. “Do not forget my madouk.”

“Ban will never forgive me if harm comes to you,” Adan muttered in the human tongue, not Faelon, but he bowed and turned, leaping into a run that startled the humans around them with its swiftness. His soft-soled boots made only the faintest of patters on the magic-smoothed stone of the entryway.

“Forgive me, Djin-taje-ul,” Taje Halek stated, recovering from the shock of the blond man’s quick disappearance, “but you are in no condition to travel swiftly. Perhaps a few months earlier, but . . . Well, you cannot run easily, and if you were to trip and fall?”

Jintaya held up her hand, cutting him off. “The Fae have more ways of traveling than you. We can find Lutun faster than any of you, and if he is . . . still alive when we reach him, I will be able to heal him immediately. More than that, Halek. I am your taje-ul. It is my responsibility to see to the safety of our combined people. Zudu and Zitta have tested and proven that Fae magics are stronger than yours, and if magic cannot touch me, then their weapons certainly won’t.

“You will all stay here and coordinate with Tulan and Éfan on setting up sentries to watch our borders. Even if he shapes the anima to stand guard for us, a clever animadj could notice such things and find a way around them. Right, Zitta?” she asked the brown-haired former apprentice.

“That is correct. With time, Zudu can even counter some of the magics Éfan has shaped out of the anima, unless he is vigilant,” he agreed. Not many, and he knew that Jintaya knew it wasn’t many, but he was wise enough to gloss over that fact.

Shifting the map, Jintaya displayed a detailed illusion of the local canyons, valleys, and ravines. She had taken the time in past months to look at as much of it herself as she could, and as a part of her daily exercise tried to explore a bit more, up until her fifth month of pregnancy, when the roundness of her stomach started to affect her sense of balance. Linking hands and powers with Éfan, she gave him control of the terrain-map spell.

Even as he accepted it, Éfan frowned and switched to Faelon. “You are starting to feel like Kaife does when he has spent too much time absorbing and sustaining himself on the local anima. Yet you have not cast even a twentieth of the greater magics he has.”

“I have been keeping a life-link to each member of the tribe all this time. It is small, but it is constant . . . and no, I will not cease tracking all these lives,” Jintaya told him. “I accepted responsibility for these people. I also accept responsibility for the consequences of how I choose to monitor their safety.”

Sighing, Éfan moved over to the young woman, Tulan, to elicit her advice on how to monitor all the ways one could approach their settlement. Halek took his place, while the warriors moved to join the tall Fae.

“I have heard you speaking your Fae tongue before,” the stocky middle-aged male stated. “Is there a name for it?”

“We call it Faelon, which literally means Fae-tongue.” She opened her mouth and tapped the tip of her tongue. “This is a lon.”

“Then . . . the language we speak is adanjé-lon. Flame-tongue.” His mouth curved in a smirk. “It is ironic that we sound like a fierce tribe, the Flame Sea Tribe, yet our most daring ‘warrior’ is our pregnant, gentle-minded leader.”

“We are thinking beings,” she reminded him. “This means we can always be more than just a mere word or a label. I do not like violence, but I can fight. It is regrettable, but sometimes the only way to stop an attacker is to strike back. I will hope that we will not have to do so, but I will not ignore the possibility of it.”

“Your fierce shadow-man is named Death, your own name carries the title of leader within its embrace, and even Adan there, his name means fire and he deals with magics that cause things to grow hot or cold—fire and ice being opposites,” Halek observed. “It was he who showed us how to make tall towers to catch the wind and cool our homes, and that domed place he says will make ice without anima next winter. Are you certain you are not fated to—”

Something swooped into the animadjet hall, scaring and scattering the humans. Even Halek stumbled back a step, though he did place himself between Jintaya and the perceived threat until he recognized it. Adan, carrying a sack bundle on his back and bearing two gold-wrapped staves in one hand, floated a forearm’s length above the ground, his feet resting on the flat sides of golden half eggs connected by a length of stiff-looking golden chain. Jintaya reached up to steady the tribal leader as he gasped a second time, knowing the natives had never seen a floating person before.

Hopping off the contraption when it came to a stop, Adan snatched at the chain while the egg halves bounced up, no longer pressed down by his weight. A snap of his wrist, and the halves folded together, forming a seam-split egg with the stiff chains forming a loop. Tulan recovered first, licking her lips, eyes wide and wondering.

“What . . . what is that thing?”

“Fae magic. Help me get the taje-ul into her armor,” Adan stated, setting the bag on the floor.

It took a few minutes, but most of it went on easily enough with a bit of pointing and murmured instructions. Greave-covered boots for her lower legs and vambraces for her forearms, cops for her knees and elbows. The scale mail shirt had to have its side clasps loosened to fit over her belly, but it was designed to be modular, with extra layers overlapping at the seams, so in the end there were still no gaps.

With the pauldrons buckled over her shoulders, the slightly flared “horns” at the end made a perfect carrying spot for the strap of the waterskin one of the humans handed to her. “The taje-ul should not go anywhere without water,” the young man stated, his brown eyes somber. “I would go in your place, but I will follow your command and stand guard instead.”

“Good man,” Jintaya praised. Accepting the helm Adan passed to her, she muttered a spell that swept her hair up into a coil that would cushion her skull from any blows and pulled the helmet into place. Though the physical openings for mouth and eyes were narrow enough to protect from direct strikes, the moment she tightened the chin strap, the full-vision spell woven into its making activated.

Immediately, she could see everything as clearly as she had without the helm. Clearly, and then some, for the spell picked up on the emotional states of each person around her, briefly making each new face and figure glow amber for a moment, before shifting to green for friendly-toward-her. The Fae knew how to wage war properly, discerning friend from foe. The latter would glow red if they were hostile, and remain red tinted. The helms would also give their wearers the advantage of seeing in the dark, though there were still several hours to go before nightfall.

Drawing on her gauntlets, she accepted both madouk and waited while Adan was helped into his own armor. Once clad, he stooped and pulled the last item out of the sack, an egg to match his own. Tossing it at her, he caught the staff she tossed to him at the same time, and pulled his pod off its hook. Jintaya in turn caught her pod by the chain handle, and both of them snapped the devices open. Wisely, Jintaya tapped hers with her staff, nudging it down to a height where she could simply step onto it, rather than jump up as Adan did.

“Halek, you are in charge in my absence. I suggest you send runners after the other Fae. They will be vital in defending our home from any intruders,” she told him. “Adan and I will return as soon as we can with news and hopefully return with Lutun alive and well.”

With a dip of her head, she tilted the foot-pods a little and drifted forward. The others, wide-eyed, parted around her. Once free of the crowd, she pressed down with her toes a little harder, picking up speed. Adan followed.

“To the west-southwest, was it?” he asked.

She nodded and pointed at the rim of the canyon wall in that direction. “I can still sense him in that direction. Set your wind shield and fly up fast and high. I will lead the way until we get close enough to see them. Remember that we will need information. Do not attack to kill unless there is no other choice.”

“As you wish, my taje-ul,” he quipped, using the local honorific.

***

Bone cracked. The sharp sound accompanied a high-pitched, harsh scream. Kuruk ignored the still naked, bloodied youth’s agony in favor of contemplating his contradictions. His pain-babbled claims of “The féj will hurt you for this!” made little sense. Féj wasn’t a word. It was a part of several words, but it of itself was not a word. It had no meaning to Kuruk, though it clearly had a meaning to this Lutun fellow.

His pile of clothes had included the fajenz beads of the White Sands Tribe, yet he claimed to now be part of a Flame Sea Tribe. And the youth displayed a level of courage in the face of his pains that Kuruk could not match to the timid, cowering refugees who had hidden behind the defensive powers of their animadj and her apprentices when they had retreated from the Circle Fire’s oasis. Kuruk did not like these differences.

“I do not like this,” Koro said.

Kuruk started, glancing over at the animadj, who frowned at the whimpering victim. “I was just thinking that myself,” he murmured. “The new tribal name, the newfound confidence . . .”

“No, not that,” Koro dismissed. “His anima is wrong. It’s going somewhere.”

“What?” The scouting leader frowned. “What do you mean, it’s going somewhere?”

“There is something . . . like a cord, braided into his being. It is taking the pain that should have roused anima-sparks for me to capture and use and instead is sending it somewhere . . . and the strength of that sending is growing. At first it was thin, like a thong,” Koro told him. “But it has grown thicker, like a rope.”

“Yes! That is exactly it,” Pak offered, lifting his head from his fire-tending efforts. They had used burning embers to try to force the youth to tell the truth. “It thickens, because it is shrinking. Master Koro, I think whatever is on the other end is drawing close. Look, it thickens again and shifts its angle!”

The young animadj pointed, but while Koro nodded and grunted in agreement, Kuruk saw nothing. He had neither the patience nor the time to learn how to see faint emanations of anima. Still, he could act. “Charag! Stop torturing him. He hasn’t told us anything new for a bit. Tureg, keep your hawk’s eye on the horizon. Koro, point the direction this . . . rope is stretched, so he knows where to look.”

“I see . . . yes. Tiny specs on the horizon,” the archer stated after a long moment. He pointed, then frowned, shaded his eyes, and started. “My eyes! Whatever they are, they are moving fast! Faster than a stooping hawk!”

As soon as the keen-eyed man said that, Kuruk could see them, too. Golden specks that soared straight and fast, like birds stooping on prey. But instead of a steep, near-vertical dive, these two specks were moving along the ground. No, above the ground. Two golden, glittering figures, vaguely human shaped, both crouched and mostly still like statues, but each gripping what looked like a staff.

They grew steadily larger; then one of them pointed, the other nodded, and the pair split, swooping outward. Tureg quickly nocked an arrow to his string, turning to track them, but they moved too quickly for him to fire. The pair swooped around the scouting party, crossed behind them, and came back around to the front, swerving inward as they slowed down. In the span of five heartbeats, they had encircled the group, proving the pair could chase down any runners in a matter of moments.

Once again, they circled. They seemed to be human, albeit ones with winged head things made out of gold, and scaled shirts and gleaming legs and arms. Brighter than bronze, paler than actual gold, whatever the stuff was, it was a metal and would no doubt be difficult to pierce. But unlike Tureg, they carried only metal-wrapped staves, and one of them not only seemed to be female, but . . .

“A pregnant woman?” Kuruk scoffed as she drifted to a stop to one side of him. The male—or at least flat-chested—figure stopped several yards to the left. Kuruk eyed the woman and flipped his hand at her. “Is this what I am supposed to fear? You float like dandelion puffs, but you are slow and fat with child!”

“Release Lutun.” Her voice was smooth, strong, and disapproving.

“Who are you to make demands of me? I am Kuruk, master warrior of the Circle Fire, and this is our slave!” he challenged. “You’re a slow, fat, pregnant woman with a single man who does not speak. You carry staves, and we carry blades and arrows.”

“I am Taje Djin-taje-ul, leader of the Fae Rii, leader of the Flame Sea, protector of these lands. There are no slaves within the lands of the Flame Sea, and there never will be. Leave now, and take word back to your taje and your people. If you try to invade, you will not succeed. However, if you approach in peace and are willing to trade, then your people will be allowed within our lands. Choose carefully.”

“Trade? Only in your people as our slaves. Burn them,” Kuruk ordered his animadjet.

Koro and Pak shouted, hurling balls of fire . . . which collapsed into anima-sparks and struck the two golden-clad figures, vanishing instantly without any sign of harm. The older of the two tried a shielding spell . . . and gaped as his magic broke free of his control the moment the gilded male held out his hand, somehow absorbing the energies.

Tureg struck next, firing off two fast shots, as fast as an eye could blink thrice—and both arrows thunked into the air a short distance from each figure. Neither of them blinked; neither of them flinched. A crunching thwack, wet and unpleasant, got a reaction however.

“Lutun!” The armored woman swerved forward on her floating lumps of not-gold, hands flinging out as she tossed something at the corpse, something that slapped golden light on the severed flesh and kept the two halves from bleeding out.

Charag yanked his axe free, backing up from the beheaded corpse. Whirling, he grabbed Pak by the elbow and shouted, “Run!”

Kuruk backed up, staring as the woman hopped off her chained pair of half eggs and knelt by the corpse. “What did you—”

“I bought us time!” the big warrior argued, and started running. Turning, Kuruk followed him, as did Koro.

“Djin-taje, do I kill them for this?” the other figure—male by the voice—called out.

“No!”

Kuruk stumbled and turned, moving backward and wondering why such a powerful animadj would forbid it. They had all the power, all the advantages . . .

“Take the water and follow them,” the pregnant woman called out, tossing a waterskin at her companion. “Drive them out of Flame Sea lands, but do not kill them. Not this time. I must stay and save Lutun.”

Save him? When even from Kuruk’s angle, the youth’s head had clearly rolled away from the shoulders by a foot’s length? Realizing the floating male was headed his way, Kuruk turned and ran. If this was what awaited them, then the Circle Fire might not be able to take on a tribe protected by two who could float like a dust mote in a sunbeam, who could drink in the anima as the sand soaked up rain, and who could stop arrows midflight without gestures or words. That alone was far more casual magic than anything the twelve animadjet, masters and apprentices alike, could muster in his own tribe.

The unnamed male decided Kuruk was running too slow, for with a flick of his staff, he shot a ball of fire of his own at the scout leader’s heels. Feeling the heat, smelling scorched earth, Kuruk ran faster, desperate now to survive the long trek back to his home.

Their taje had to hear for himself how no open, straightforward attack could gain them what they desperately needed to know, how to defeat such powerful strangers.