Beyond the Pool of Stars Page 7

  Sylena had his interest now, naturally, so she took his hand as she rose and led him toward the door to her bedchamber. She saw him gulp in desire.

  She liked to be appreciated. She paused with one hand on the doorknob, her lips inches from his ear. “I have a magical gift that I will give you, to help keep you safe.”

  “A gift?” he repeated stupidly.

  “A ring. I will let you wear it if you promise to come back to me.” She opened the door into the darkness. “Now fetch one of those candles from the table. The heat’s been stifling, and I think I shall be far more comfortable without all this clothing. But I don’t want you to lose your way in the dark.”

  6

  The Karshnaar

  Mirian

  Mirian woke with the dawn, light streaming through the windows to reveal the walls she had painted long ago. On her right wall was a seascape, the earliest and least sophisticated of the paintings, though she was still pleased with the way she’d drawn some of the distant ships. Facing her was a complex jungle landscape. As she blinked and sat up, she remembered her father bringing her the small tinctures to add to the paints to create the vibrant violets on some of the flowers, the yellow-white of the urdan roots.

  He’d been a good father, once. Before he’d been consumed by bitterness.

  Mirian found Tokello’s little niece already awake and caring for the horses. She sent her out to round up Rendak and Gombe. Then she helped Venta pack fresh fruits and bread for the day’s journey. Or tried to—Venta grew tired of her “interference” and chased her away so she could get the job done faster.

  Rendak and Gombe hadn’t yet turned up, although little Keasha reported they’d be along presently. And that left Mirian standing in the courtyard by herself, contemplating the visit she’d been dreading.

  She trudged out to the edge of the family holdings, beyond her grandmother’s long-abandoned vegetable garden, past the shack with its sagging roof where she’d shared her first kiss with a raffish sailor. She smiled at the memory and made her way to the rough stone fence that surrounded the family plot.

  The tropic sun had aged her grandmother’s stone. After fifteen years, it was pocked and stained as though it had withstood fifty. Only her father’s was new.

  She stood looking down at it, reading the engraved name and thinking of his broad rugged face. So kind, when she was young. So often frowning in later years, brought down by the city’s prejudices and the vagaries of the family profession. It was almost as if he had deliberately chosen trouble, to spite the establishment and give him better reason to hate it.

  She knelt by the side of the stone and put her hand to it, bowing her head. “Goodbye, Father. I hope you’re in a kinder land now. I wish things hadn’t been so bad there between us, at the end.” She wished, too, that she knew what he’d done to twist Kellic, but she didn’t say that aloud. “I miss you,” she added. “And Mother misses you.” She would have said more, but she suddenly found it difficult to speak.

  After she’d left home so many years ago, she’d spent time among her mother’s people, the Bas’o. In their tongue, she asked her ancestors to welcome him into their home and asked him for forgiveness for all the worries she had given him. Then, softly, she sang the Song of Sleep. It was the same she had heard from her mother every night, save for the final stanza, which dealt specifically with final rests and long journeys.

  She rose, wiping tears from her eyes. When she turned she found Gombe and Rendak waiting solemnly on the graveyard’s edge, straw hats removed respectfully. Despite the fact that one was a trim, bald native and the other a tanned, burly colonial, at that moment they seemed almost like mirror images.

  Before long, all three were riding under the old stone arch and headed onto the cobbled roadway. Soon they left the ridge road and reached the Diomar Wall, where khaki-uniformed native soldiers stared at them from on high.

  Once she reached the main thoroughfare, Mirian might have turned north into the city, joining the long line of ox-carts laden with pineapples, lumber, sugar cane, and pelts, but her course required a southern turn onto the cobbled thoroughfare that had caused so much trouble for the baron. Miles of thatched mud huts stretched ahead of her on either side.

  A small scouting patrol, distinctive in their gray-green jackets and helms, had gathered just behind the drovers, awaiting their turn through the gate. Their colonial officer eyed her stolidly as she drew closer, and she half expected a challenge. Would he question whether the animal was her property? Ask for identification? She steeled herself for the insulting inevitability of it, and was surprised when he simply looked away.

  Perhaps she wasn’t the only woman of Bas’o heritage who rode a fine horse south. Or perhaps he simply wasn’t in the mood to harass someone this morning.

  She led her men past the soldiers and moved through the long streams of natives dressed in red, blue, and yellow cloth. Some headed toward the gate, others south toward the vast pineapple fields. These, too, looked at her with guarded curiosity and some envy.

  The colonials might lump all of Sargava’s native peoples together, but there were as many different tribes and ethnicities among the so-called “Mwangi people” as there were among the light-skinned northern races. Not only were they not all the same; they didn’t even necessarily get along. In Eleder, for instance, the Mulaa often viewed those of the more nomadic Bas’o tribe with suspicion. And even simple things like her sturdy boots, the plain bridle, and the horse itself spoke to wealth that many natives could never hope to obtain.

  Such was Eleder. And yet, even with such poverty, the folk she passed laughed and joked among themselves.

  When she passed from the slums and the end of the cobblestone, she arrived at the great sweep of pineapple fields, the plants in carefully staggered stages of growth, all tended by Mulaa workers in their bright robes, heads shielded by equally brilliant scarves or grass hats.

  Another hour’s ride took them to fields of sugarcane, scattered with stands of palm trees and tropical grasses that demarked property lines.

  They rode for hours, the sun hot on their backs, before they ventured past settled lands. Even then, the Laughing Jungle was just a smear on the southern horizon.

  During that long ride, Rendak and Gombe fell to asking her more about her time away: what it had been like wandering with the Bas’o tribe through the plains, whether she’d seen anything truly interesting as a Pathfinder, what she was working on now. The two had an easy camaraderie, and she soon discovered Gombe brought out a more playful side of Rendak. When she’d left, Gombe had been a raw but promising recruit, a close-mouthed newcomer. Now he and Rendak bantered with the ease of old friends.

  She had a harder time with her own spirits. The rings on her fingers felt like weights, and her eyes were drawn to them like lodestones. As angry as her father had been when she declared her plans to leave Eleder, he’d refused the return of the tools he’d given her. He claimed they were her birthright, even as she protested she’d never have need for them. It tuned out she had, countless times, making her way through swampland or diving in that Kalabuto cenote. Or just the other night, to save the Daughter and its crew

  Because of Rendak, she now knew her father had fully expected her homecoming. And the strange thing was that once she was back on the deck, feeling the roll of waves and breathing in the salt spray, she wondered whether she had chosen right all those years ago. It wasn’t that she regretted getting to know her mother’s side of the family or learning the secrets of the adventuring scholars who called themselves Pathfinders, but there was something invigorating about the pounding surf and the ocean breeze. She would never have admitted as much to Rendak and Gombe, but she looked forward to more time upon the waters. The thought of returning to the dusty cave she’d been exploring so far from the ocean felt like turning her back on life itself.

  And yet, to return to the sea meant to return to Eleder, and all of its ugliness.

  They stopped at noon to let the
ir horses graze. She mulled over her feelings while she fanned herself with her hat. Rendak and Gombe rooted through the supplies to arrange a meal. Only when they sat down together did she fully explain her mission.

  “The lizardfolk, eh?” Gombe said. “I wondered why we never ended up working with them.”

  “You know why,” Rendak said.

  The native glanced covertly at Mirian.

  “I know my brother’s being an ass,” she said.

  “It’s not quite like that,” Rendak said charitably. “He’s just got himself so worried about what people think that he forgot who he really is.”

  “He used to be a nice enough lad,” Gombe agreed.

  As they ate in the shade of a baobab tree, she looked for the edge of the jungle just visible through the haze to the south. Lizardfolk were rare enough anymore, at least anywhere close to Eleder. She was a little surprised that a tribe managed to live so close within the Laughing Jungle and still avoid any incidents. Humans and lizardfolk had an uneasy relationship. Either this tribe had only recently come to the Laughing Jungle, or they had learned to deal better with human encroachments than others.

  Rendak broke her reverie with a light touch on her arm. He pointed toward a cheetah lying in the shade of a bush only fifty yards off. The big cat watched them with bright green eyes.

  “She’s a beauty,” Rendak said.

  Gombe froze. “Pretty’s fine, but I hope she’s not hungry.”

  Rendak laughed at him. “Cheetahs don’t hunt humans.”

  “They don’t?”

  “Only bald ones,” Mirian said.

  Both men looked at her in surprise, then chuckled.

  Mirian nodded to the cheetah as she climbed to her feet. “Good hunting, sister.”

  The cat stared as they mounted up and rode away.

  By four bells they had left the trail and moved into the clumpy jungle grass that had grown up to replace burned-out trees. A herd of native cattle grazed only a half league west. Nearer at hand was a huge boulder. On drawing closer, Mirian saw that it did, indeed, resemble a slightly rounder version of the face in her father’s study, with pouting lips and immense closed eyes.

  Mirian slipped down from her horse and considered the jungle. It began abruptly, sharply, seemingly as impenetrable a barrier as a cliff face. Rendak and Gombe were more than a little troubled when she informed them she’d be heading in alone.

  “You brought us all this way to watch the horses?” Rendak asked.

  “I’m walking onto someone else’s tribal ground,” Mirian reminded him. “Don’t worry. I’m an old hand at this.”

  “Even old hands can get hurt,” Gombe said.

  Rendak agreed. “Why don’t you leave one of us with the horses, and the other can—”

  She shook her head. Lizardfolk were famously territorial. If something went wrong, she didn’t want it to go wrong for anyone but her. “If I don’t come out, don’t come in after me.”

  Rendak snorted.

  “That’s an order. Now if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I’ve got to get moving.” She turned her back, heard Rendak’s furtive protest die when he saw her kneeling. Praying had been a useful way to cut him off, but it was also entirely proper to ask for both Desna’s blessing and her ancestors. After the proper words, she took her shoulder pack from her horse, buckled it in an X over her chest, and started forward, machete in hand.

  “We’ll be waiting,” Gombe called.

  Mirian walked just inside the tree line for almost a quarter hour before discovering a trail. In the press of the dirt nearby she detected the print of an elongated, four-toed foot. Lizardfolk.

  She advanced into the jungle. It was dark beneath the canopy, but not the unalterable blackness those sensational pamphlet-writers led one to think. Bright orchids bloomed at face level, and tulu birds and parrots called to their flocks from branches above.

  Mirian didn’t know whether this was a trail cut by the Karshnaar or just an animal track they used for convenience. She walked for nearly half an hour, machete in hand, wondering whether she should turn back. Rendak and Gombe would be setting up camp. She could join them and head deeper into the jungle come morning.

  A branch snapped behind her. She whirled.

  A lizardfolk stood there, pointing a long, straight spear at her chest.

  “You are not wanted here, human.”

  7

  Weapons and Scales

  Mirian

  The lizardfolk’s arms rippled with muscle. Its scales were the color of palm fronds, touched here and there with spots of brown or lighter green, as a human might be dusted with freckles. Its long neck was adorned with a necklace of turquoise stones, identical to the belt that held up its loincloth. The frill that stretched from the back of its head and ran down its spine was fully erect, a sign she’d been told by fellow Pathfinders meant aggression, although the pointed spear was already a fair indicator.

  “These are the lands of the Karshnaar,” it continued in a rasping voice. “Leave.” Was its deep voice a sign of masculinity?

  Mirian hoped she sounded calmer than she felt. “I come seeking Kalina.”

  Her challenger’s head tilted a minute degree. “For what reason?”

  “I am the daughter of Leovan Raas. The man Kalina spoke with about salvaging.”

  “Salvaging,” the lizardfolk repeated, awkwardly. “I do not know that word. But the Raas man is completed, and his hatchling sent us away.”

  Hatchling? She wondered how her brother would react to that description. “I’m his other hatchling. Can we continue this talk with lowered blades?”

  “You enter our land without ceremony.”

  “I ask your pardon. I wasn’t sure where your territory began.” Again she wondered how this tribe had existed so close to human lands without coming into conflict before, especially if they challenged all human visitors.

  “Jekka!” The higher-pitched voice rang through the jungle behind Mirian.

  The lizardfolk with the spear hissed. Its long, slim red tongue flicked out to taste the air. Its snout was longer and slimmer than the lizardfolk Mirian had seen before.

  Mirian stepped to the side as another lizardfolk came trotting up. The new one was slightly smaller and wore a kind of armored disk that nearly obscured its torso, as well as a tanned loincloth that matched the other’s, held up by a similar belt decorated with stones of polished turquoise. In one hand it carried a distinctive axe with a blade almost the length of Mirian’s machete.

  The two creatures exchanged a string of vocalizations that sounded something like low-pitched bird calls. Mirian studied them and the way the skin that wasn’t a true lip pulled back to reveal sharp teeth as they spoke. She longed to break into her pack and sketch one or both of them, but settled for memorizing their features.

  The eyes in both faces were not cold and blank like a snake’s, but alive with curiosity. Their snouts projected like a hound’s muzzle rather than a bird’s beak. Some colonials called the lizardfolk “frillbacks,” but the frills on the Karshnaar were small, stretching only from the base of their spines to the backs of their heads.

  At the conclusion of their talk, the sentry lowered its spear, its head half turned so it could speak to both Mirian and the newcomer.

  The sentry’s frill had begun to droop, the way a dog’s hackles lowered. It stepped aside, its amber eyes boring into Mirian’s own as its companion stepped forward.

  “I am Kalina,” the second creature said. “You have come to our lands to speak with me?”

  So the new one was female. Mirian curtsied with a pluck at the sides of her pants. “I have. I am Mirian, daughter of Leovan Raas.”

  Kalina’s head cocked to one side, birdlike. Her own coloring had none of her companion’s freckling. Was that, too, a sexual characteristic? “Your markings are different,” she said. “More like your mother’s.”

  “I take after her.”

  Kalina blinked large golden eyes. “Your mother was ki
nd to us.”

  “She is a kind woman.”

  “But you are a warrior. I see it. You are not like your brother. Speak, daughter of Leovan Raas.”

  “I want to work with you. As my father planned.”

  “It is too late for that,” the sentry said.

  Kalina’s head whipped swiftly around on the snaky neck, and her voice was sharp. “It is not too late, Jekka.”

  “Am I, chief warrior, to take orders about safety from the chief hunter?” The sentry then lapsed into its clicking chirping language, and Kalina responded in the same.

  After a few sharp exchanges, Kalina brandished her axe-like weapon, and for a moment Mirian feared the two would come to blows.

  But the chief warrior pulled its spear to one side, and the blade snicked away so that the weapon seemed nothing more than a grayish quarterstaff ornamented with intricate markings and sigils.

  “Wait,” Kalina said. She was still looking at the sentry as she spoke, but Mirian assumed the instructions were intended for her.

  Kalina disappeared around a bend in the trail and was quickly lost behind intervening foliage.

  Jekka stood statue-still. No, Mirian reflected, lizard-still, blinking seldom, turned sideways to her.

  Mirian was left wondering how dangerous her situation was. She rested her hand on the hilt of her cutlass. Thinking about the speed she’d seen demonstrated by both lizardfolk, she flexed the hand that still held her machete. She wished that she’d undone the hook and eye clasp on the side holster where she kept her wand. She had one shot left.

  “Planning tricks, human?” Jekka asked.

  “I plan no tricks.”

  Its tongue flicked out. “You lie.”

  This one was certainly going out of its way to make things difficult. “What makes you think I lie?”

  “And you waste air with stupid questions.”

  Mirian took a slow breath. She had learned diplomacy and patience on her sojourns in the wilds. “Pretend that I’m stupid, and tell me why you think I’m lying.”