Children of the Plains

Chapter 14

It had been a restless couple of days. Amero had had to go out after dark each night and lead in party after party of stragglers from Karada’s band. The last was a particularly large and pathetic group, made up of old folks, children, and a few warriors who seemed worn out and ill-fed. Their appearance reminded Amero of the hard life that still existed outside the comfortable confines of Yala-tene.

As if these interruptions to his sleep weren’t bad enough, his days were disrupted as well. Duranix had been ceaselessly pacing and prowling the cave ever since he found himself unable to change back to dragon form. As time passed, he became more and more irritable. For long periods he would sit, motionless, staring at the cave walls. Then, in a sudden burst of action, he would circle the room over and over, muttering and gesticulating. Tiny bolts of lightning arced from his hands, and after a few hours of this, the air in the cave seemed alive with crackling energy. Everything Amero touched gave him a shock.

He tried to concentrate on his copper experiment. Men in the village had constructed an anvil to his specifications, hewn from a single block of rose granite. Amero placed the ingot he’d cast the day the tunnels collapsed on the anvil and pounded it with a sandstone maul. The spaces between the half-melted beads closed up, and the ingot gradually became a flat, thin plate.

As Amero worked in the early hours before dawn, on the second day after the arrival of Karada’s band, the mussel shell chimes at the top of the hoist rattled. Amero didn’t hear it at first and kept hammering. Duranix left the path he was wearing in the sandstone floor and went to the lower door.

“Pa’alu’s returned,” he announced. Amero kept pounding, so Duranix shouted the news. Amero looked up distractedly. Sighing, he set aside the maul and went to the opening. All he could see was the ever-present waterfall disappearing into the dark depths below.

“It’s him,” Duranix insisted, then added testily, “I may be crammed into this tiny body, but I haven’t gone blind yet!”

Amero started the counterweight down. Rope hissed over the wooden pulleys. The basket appeared. He saw Pa’alu, gazing up at him. The broad-shouldered plainsman filled the small basket completely, and his ascent was slow.

The top of the basket frame bumped the pulley and stopped. Amero tied off the hoist and Pa’alu vaulted over the side, landing lightly on his feet.

“Greetings, Amero, and to you, great Duranix.” The dragon grunted something unintelligible and resumed his angry pacing.

“What ails him?” asked Pa’alu.

Amero considered speaking the truth, then said, “Who can say? Pay him no heed.” He put aside his newly made copper sheet and sat down on the anvil. “I’m glad to see you, Pa’alu. Where have you been? Many of your comrades have arrived during your absence, including a big man who says he’s your brother.”

“Pakito’s here! That is good news!” He clapped Amero on the shoulder. The well-intentioned blow was enough to knock Amero off his perch.

“Any word of Karada?” Pa’alu asked anxiously, lending the young man a hand.

“No word as yet.”

By this time Duranix had circled the cave and come back. “What kept you?” asked the dragon. “We worried you were lost in the mountains.” Amero was curious to hear Duranix express concern about a mere human.

“That’s what I came to tell you. I was waylaid in the mountains.” Pa’alu related his encounter with the monstrous Greengall — up to a point. He carefully avoided any mention of Vedvedsica. The dragon would not knowingly give up the nugget if he knew it would go to the elf priest.

“Describe this Greengall!” Duranix said grimly. “Leave nothing out!”

Pa’alu described the weird fellow: long legs, short arms, spidery fingers, hideously oversized head and mouth. When he began to describe Greengall’s clothing, Duranix folded his arms and lowered his head.

The dragon muttered, “I should have expected this. He’s been quiet too long.”

“Do you know this creature?” asked Amero.

“Sthenn.” The name was an evil hiss. Duranix locked eyes with Pa’alu. “You met the green dragon Sthenn and lived to tell about it. How did you manage that? You’re a stout fellow for a human, but you’re no match for a dragon of any hue. Why did Sthenn let you go?”

It was Pa’alu’s turn to fold his arms and look grave. “He spared me to be a messenger,” he said. “He sent me back to tell you he wants the nugget, the gold nugget you took from the elf priest.”

The dragon was speechless for a moment. Amero, who knew little of the unusual nugget Duranix had brought back from his travels, asked, “Why does he want a mere stone? What value is it to him?”

“It’s a cache of pure spirit-power,” interjected Duranix curtly. “Sthenn must have some idea of tapping it, though I don’t understand why. We dragons have our own sources of power. What is Sthenn planning? Does he think to offer such power to his followers?”

“What is he talking about?” Pa’alu asked Amero.

“Be still,” the dragon said. He put a thumb and forefinger into his mouth and took out the nugget. He placed it on Amero’s granite anvil. All three looked at it with new curiosity.

“There is a hierarchy in the universe,” Duranix explained. “Some of your people already know of the higher beings and worship them as gods. Below them in power are dragons, who exist midway between the pure spirits and the lower animals.” Amero didn’t have to be told who the “lower animals” were. Pa’alu still looked mystified.

The dragon continued, “With proper concentration and training, elves and even humans could release the power contained in this stone.”

“Could the yevi?” Amero said under his breath.

Pa’alu reached out to grasp the dull golden nugget. His hand froze just above it.

“Go ahead, pick it up,” said the dragon. “You’ll feel nothing from it.”

Pa’alu found the stone warm to the touch — no doubt from being in Duranix’s mouth all this time. The nugget was weighty for its size, but as the dragon had said, Pa’alu could feel nothing emanating from it.

“It’s just a stone,” he said, disappointed.

“Keep thinking that,” the dragon replied. “When humans start coveting spirit-power, the world is in for more grief than it can bear.”

Pa’alu carefully replaced the nugget on the granite block. He expected Duranix to reclaim it instantly, but the disguised dragon had wandered away, a hand to his head.

“Duranix?” Amero said.

The dragon’s steps faltered. He clutched his head in both hands and stumbled through the hearth. Ashes and charred wood went skittering across the floor. Amero hurried to him, leaving Pa’alu by the anvil.

“Duranix? Duranix, what is it?” Amero called, alarmed.

The dragon-man threw his arms wide suddenly and let loose a roar of — what? Agony? Fear? Amero couldn’t tell.

As he stood there, shaking, his screams reverberating off the hard walls of the cave, Duranix’s arms began to bleed blue-green blood. The skin along the back of his arms split open. Under the tearing human skin were the red-bronze scales of Duranix’s true flesh.

The dreadful sound of skin splitting was not quite drowned out by Duranix’s continuous roaring. He doubled over and, before their eyes, his human body burst apart. His true self stretched outward and upward. The roar increased to full dragon volume. Amero fell to the floor, covering his ears with his hands while Pa’alu, trembling in amazement, ducked behind the weighty anvil. Amero thought the ceiling would surely crack apart under the terrible noise.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the transformation was complete.

“It’s good to be full size again!” Duranix shouted, extending his wings. The dragon shivered with obvious pleasure. “How do you creatures live in such small bodies?”

“We manage,” Amero grunted, as he hauled himself out from under an outstretched wing. Coming up on the dragon’s left side, he reached out and gave the great creature an affectionate thump with his clenched fist.

“Are you all right? What happened?” Amero asked as Pa’alu came crawling out from his hiding place.

“It’s hard to describe. Pressure built inside me — I thought I was going to burst!” Duranix sniffed at the shreds of his human shell lying on the floor. “It appears that I did.”

“You don’t usually shed your skin when you transform,” Amero mused.

Dragon eye met human eye in a flash of shared thought, and they turned to Pa’alu. “The stone!” they cried in unison.

Pa’alu picked up the nugget and fingered it wonderingly. “This yellow rock kept you from shapeshifting?”

The dragon clomped forward, furling his wings. “That must be it!” he said. “The stone somehow kept me in the shape I was in.”

“Then we must get rid of it,” Amero said firmly.

“I’ll do it,” said Pa’alu quickly, closing his fingers around the stone.

“I must keep it out of Sthenn’s hands,” Duranix said. “Give it to me.”

Pa’alu walked slowly under the dragon’s arching neck. He held out the nugget to Duranix.

“Are you sure you want to handle it again? Who knows what ultimate effect it may have on you? Let me destroy it. I have no sensitivity to its power. To me, it’s just a lump of rock.”

Duranix had extended two claws to take the nugget off the plainsman’s palm. He suddenly thought better of it and withdrew.

“Very well, Pa’alu,” he agreed. “You have good instincts. They saved me some trouble with Vedvedsica not long ago. Take the stone. Put it some place neither elves nor dragons can easily find — a deep lake, a bottomless cave. Take it away, and tell no one where you leave it.”

Pa’alu tucked the nugget into the pouch on his belt. “Fear not,” he said confidently “You won’t see it again.”

The cave had grown steadily lighter. A gray dawn, filtered by clouds and the waterfall, had arrived. Weary from his labors, Amero went to the water basin and tried to awaken his numb face. Duranix, his serpentine grace restored, sprang to the upper cave exit and put his head out.

“I must stretch my wings,” he stated grandly. “I’ll look around for Sthenn while I’m at it.” A rumbling sound, like a distant avalanche, filled the cave. The dragon’s keen eyes fastened on movement farther down in the valley. The eyes narrowed, and he hissed a single word. “Prey!”

With a flip of his barbed tail, the dragon vaulted through the wall of water and disappeared. Pa’alu hauled the hoist into the cavern and threw a leg over the side of the basket.

“I’d best get rid of the stone now,” he said.

The sound of many loud voices penetrated the cave — a massed shouting. Pa’alu couldn’t see through the waterfall. Amero came to the opening. “That’s coming from the nomads’ camp,” he said with a pang of foreboding.

Another shout went up. It had a feral, bloodthirsty sound, like the cry of yevi. Amero climbed in the basket with Pa’alu.

“Something’s happening,” he said, rubbing his brow tiredly. “Something bad.”

“Hold on,” Pa’alu advised. He loosened the descending counterweight, and the basket lurched free. Bowed by fatigue, his eyes shadowed by dark circles, Amero gripped the sides of the basket.

Pa’alu put two fingers into his belt pouch and touched the yellow stone. So near his moment of triumph, it wouldn’t do to let the nugget fall out and be lost.

Karada slept soundly her first two nights in Yala-tene. She spread her elkhide blanket at the foot of the high cliffs and rested better than she had in many days. On the second morning, Pakito had to shake her hard to wake from her deep slumber.

“Chief,” he whispered, “Sessan waits.”

She sat up, yawning. “Let’im. If he gets thirsty, he’ll drink more wine. The more time he has to drink, the better.” In a show of bravado, Sessan and Nacris had spent the time since the challenge drinking and gaming with their cronies. Karada had kept clear of them, eating sparingly and re-knapping her flint knife.

The whole camp was awake when Karada strolled down to the lake to wash her face and neck. The nomads were astonishingly quiet, not at all the boisterous tribe Karada had created and led for ten years. She noted with satisfaction the sight of Sessan kneeling on the shore, pressing a cold, wet piece of buckskin to his aching head. Nacris hovered over him, massaging his shoulders. If her expression was any indication, her head hurt at least as much as his.

Karada spared them only a glance as she headed for the water. When the challenge had been made, she had given the stupid man a day’s grace to recover from the effects of his drinking. If he chose to spend that time getting himself even drunker, then so be it.

She washed her neck and face, savoring the feel of the chill lake water, then donned her chiefs headband. Sessan and Nacris, pointedly ignoring her, left the lakeshore to finish their own preparations for the coming contest.

Samtu brought her horse, and Karada slung a dusty blanket over the animal’s back. Vaulting easily astride, she took the reins from Samtu and kicked the horse into a trot. She rode down the hill to an open piece of ground along the water, which was closed in on three sides by nomad tents and a growing crowd of onlookers.

Sessan appeared at the other end of the strip. His horse, a fine roan stallion, pranced and snorted at being hemmed in. Nacris was dancing around beside him, trying to give her man last-minute fighting advice. Sessan kept nodding, but his eyes were closed.

“Karada.”

She looked down as Pakito handed her a flint-headed spear. “Here,” he said. “Tarkwa and I compared weapons, and this one matches Sessan’s length.”

“Thank you, Pakito.”

“Chief, I don’t like to tell you how to do things, but…” His voice trailed off.

“But what?”

“Beat him, but don’t beat him too hard. You’ll win more by being fair than by being harsh.”

“I didn’t start this,” Karada answered. “Sessan and those who follow him need to learn who the real leader is and always will he.”

She thumped her heels against the horse’s flanks and trotted away. The big man shook his head and returned to the sidelines with Targun and Samtu.

Tarkwa stood between the combatants with his hands upraised. The rolling murmur of the crowd faded. He declaimed, “We are here to see the contest of Karada and Sessan. You all know the reasons for this fight. Do you accept it and pledge to follow the victor?”

“Yes!” the assembled nomads cried.

A flurry of wind scoured the shoreline, driving dust in the eyes of the spectators. All eyes rose skyward in time to see the dark shape of the dragon climb into the low hanging roof of white clouds. Their first glimpse of Duranix in dragon form set the nomads to chattering again, until Tarkwa shouted for their attention.

He picked up a stone from the beach. “When this stone strikes the water, the fight begins!” he said. He went to the edge of the crowd, faced the lake, and lobbed the stone into the air.

Karada wasn’t watching it. She looped a thong around her wrist and used it to tie the spear shaft securely to her hand.

Splash! The sound of the rock entering the lake was immediately followed by a clatter of hooves. Sessan had launched into a headlong gallop. Still unmoving, Karada busied herself with her weapon, her seat, her reins.

The open strip was only twenty paces long by eight wide. Sessan bore down on the motionless Karada, his spear leveled. He uttered a sharp cry. Some of his friends in the crowd cheered, but most of the nomads held their breath.

Karada turned her horse slightly to her right and rested the spear shaft against her shoulder. Only then did she look up at the horse and rider thundering toward her.

“Now, Karada!” Sessan yelled. He aimed his spear at the center of her chest. When the flint head passed the ears of Karada’s horse, she bent herself backward at the waist, twisting slightly away. Sessan’s eyes widened in surprise. His spear passed harmlessly over her shoulder. When he was past, she sprang up and swung her weapon sideways in a wide arc. The hardwood shaft, as thick as Karada’s wrist, struck Sessan at the base of the neck. Part of the crowd howled with delight at her tactic.

Sessan reeled but kept his seat and his grip on his spear. Karada swung her horse around in a tight left turn and cantered after him. He parried her first thrust and tried to maneuver away to get some fighting room. She crowded him, and when he blocked the sharp flint head, she used the butt end of her spear as a club, landing a hard blow to his ribs.

The crowd melted away as the two riders pressed against them. Sessan, bleeding from the nose, saw an opening and drove through, galloping through the water toward the center of the strip. Karada checked the thong on her wrist and rode sedately after her foe.

This was the scene when Amero and Pa’alu arrived. The first thing Pa’alu saw was his brother, towering over everyone else in the crowd. He shouted a greeting, and the big man plowed through the press to reach his elder brother. With much hugging and back-slapping Pa’alu and Pakito were reunited.

Pa’alu’s joy vanished when he saw what was happening by the lake. He thrust Pakito away and said, “Karada? Alive? Here? What is she doing?”

“It’s a duel,” said Pakito. “She’s fighting Sessan to see who’ll be chief of the band.”

“What?” The idea that anyone would challenge Karada was insanity to Pa’alu. Did Sessan truly understand what he was up against?

Amero slipped in beside him and asked, “Is that woman Karada?” Pa’alu nodded vigorously, and Amero said, “That’s the woman I led in two night’s past.”

Sessan wrenched his horse around and galloped back, again trying to impale Karada by a full charge. This time she lowered her head and urged her mount to a gallop, too. She kept her spear low, on her right side, away from Sessan’s rush.

“What’s she trying to do?” Amero asked, spellbound.

Pa’alu knew. He’d seen her maneuver before. Grimly he said, “Sessan’s a dead man.”

The gap between the riders closed fast. Karada steered left, crossing in front of Sessan. The nomads gasped with surprise.

Still she kept her spear low. Sessan let his point droop until it was aimed directly at the crouching woman.

The two horses flashed by each other. Karada raised her arm, deflecting Sessan’s spear head. At the same time, the flint tip of her weapon caught him just under the ribs. It went in until the head emerged from his back. The thong binding the weapon to her wrist should have betrayed Karada, perhaps breaking her wrist or snatching her off her speeding mount, but the leather was no longer tied to her. She opened her hand and the loose ends of the thong flew free.

Karada sat up and slowed her horse. By the time she turned around, the roan was trotting riderless toward Sessan’s tent.

A woman screamed. Nacris ran out of the crowd. She picked up a pair of stones and threw them at Karada. The chief batted one away, but the other hit her horse on the side of the head. The animal reared, and to avoid being thrown to the ground, Karada slid off his rump. A bronze elven dagger gleamed in Nacris’s hand. Karada had only a flint hunting knife.

Pa’alu had a bronze dagger of his own. He forced his way through the excited crowd until he was a few paces from where Karada and Nacris now circled each other.

“Karada!” he shouted, holding up the elven blade. She couldn’t pick out his voice amid all the others screaming her name, so he cried, “Nianki! Take this!”

Her old name reached her. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at him. That was enough for Nacris, who lunged at her. Karada grabbed Nacris’s arm and spun around, using the force of her spin to propel Nacris away.

“Nianki! Take the dagger!” Pa’alu flipped the weapon at her. It landed point first in the sand. Karada snatched it up just in time to parry another furious rush. Nacris used her blade like a short sword, slashing underhand and lunging at Karada’s belly. At one point the bronze blade scored a bloody line down the length of Karada’s right forearm. Nacris paid for her success when Karada backhanded her across the face. The furious challenger spun away, falling to her knees in the sand. With astonishing speed, Karada was on her back. She grasped Nacris by the hair and jerked her head back, baring her throat to the keen bronze blade

The yelling, milling crowd instantly fell silent. The change was so abrupt even Karada noticed. She paused, crouching over her opponent, knife pressed to Nacris’s throat just enough to crease her skin but not enough to draw blood.

“Stop!” yelled a man’s voice. “Stay your hand!”

Nacris struggled a little, but Karada pricked her to remind her how close to death she was. Karada looked this way and that, trying to see who dared give her orders.

The nomads parted ranks and a young man emerged. His short hair and tidy clothes marked him as a villager, not one of her nomads.

“Don’t kill her!” he said, horror evident on his pale face.

“Why not? She meant to kill me!” Karada snarled, panting.

“She’s mad with rage because you killed her mate,” the man insisted.

Karada looked down at Nacris. She could feel her foe trembling and see tears running off her face to the sand. Karada removed the knife, stood up, and planted a foot in middle of Nacris’s back. The latter collapsed facedown in the dirt. Karada kicked Nacris’s dagger away. It skittered to the man’s feet. He picked it up and offered it butt first to Karada.

Pa’alu ran forward and took his own knife back. Karada was sweating heavily, and blood dripped down her fingers from the cut on her arm.

Pa’alu offered her his water gourd. She took it, saying, “You made it.”

He smiled. “So did you.”

She took a long swig from the gourd. When she finally lowered it, she wiped her chin with the back of her hand and looked at the villager. “Why did you try to stop me?” she asked him.

Amero said, “You won the fight. There was no reason to kill her.”

“Maybe not, but I heard a lot of people shouting her name. There can’t be two chiefs in this band. Either I am chief, or there is no band.”

“You won. You are the chief,” said Pa’alu firmly.

Amero opened his mouth to speak but he was jostled aside as Pakito, Targun, Hatu, and Samtu worked their way to

Karada’s side. Pa’alu took his brother’s hand and raised it high. He cried, “Hail, Karada! Hail, Karada’s band!”

The nomads took up the chant with enthusiasm, repeating it so loudly the valley thundered with their cry.

Sessan’s body was cleared away, and Nacris was carried off to a shelter on the edge of the camp. Karada strode up to Sessan’s large tent and sat down on the chiefs stool. Targun set to washing and binding her wound as warriors lined up to attest their renewed loyalty to her.

Standing in a half circle behind Karada were her stalwarts, Pa’alu, Pakito, Samtu, and the rest. Amero worked his way to Pa’alu’s side. The young villager’s face reflected a jumble of emotions, impossible to read.

“Pa’alu, I must speak to you.” Amero said.

“Aye, Arkuden. What is it?”

“What was it you called Karada during the fight?”

The plainsman kept his eye on the line of warriors saluting and passing his chief. “Her true name,” he said. “Everyone was screaming ‘Karada, Karada,’ and she couldn’t hear me among the hundreds.”

“Karada is not her true name?”

Something in Amero’s tone caught Pa’alu’s attention, and he looked down at the smaller man. Shaking his head, he replied, “Ten years ago, when I first met her, she was just a wandering hunter like Pakito and me. Only later, when she was gathering the band together did she take the name Karada.”

Amero tried to calm the excitement rising in his breast. He’d heard what the plainsman had yelled, but he kept telling himself he’d heard wrong. It simply couldn’t be.

“What is it? What is her birth name?”

“Nianki.”

Amero blinked. He tried to speak, but his words came out as a croaking whisper. He cleared his throat. The noise of jostling, celebrating nomads around him seemed to grow louder in his ears. He swayed slightly. “Did you say ‘Nianki?’”

Pa’alu nodded. His eyes were on his chief and he didn’t notice the young headman’s evident distress.

Amero left the loyal circle and stepped into the chiefs line of sight. He stared at her, this stranger called Karada.

Could it be? He stared hard, trying to see past the sunburn and the scars, calling up in his mind the face of his lost sister.

His strange expression caused the chiefs smile to drop away. She returned his glance sharply and demanded, “Now what, village-man? First, you had me spare a foe who would’ve killed me. Do you want me to forego the oaths of my loyal people now?”

“What is your name?” Amero asked. His voice trembled.

“What? Can’t you hear? The sky knows my name today!” To Targun, almost done wrapping her injured arm, she said in a phony whisper, “These rockpile villagers seem a little slow-witted.”

“Is your — ” Once more Amero had to clear his throat before he could resume. “Is your name Nianki?”

Conversation around the chiefs tent died. Karada shrugged. “That was the name given me by my mother and father.”

“Were their names Oto and Kinar?”

“So they were. Who told you that?”

Amero took a step toward her. “Did you have a brother named Amero?”

Her amused expression vanished, and she frowned at him. “I did,” she said. Her hazel eyes were as hard as gemstones. “He was killed many years ago, along with my parents and another brother. How do you know his name?”

Amero’s mouth opened and closed. As Karada watched him with growing wonder, he looked straight at her and announced, “Because I am Amero, Nianki. I am your brother.”