Children of the Plains

Chapter 16

Preparations for the Moonmeet feast had been vigorous and were now nearly complete. Children had collected armloads of kindling, gleaning every fallen twig and branch from the valley of the waterfall. Loggers had supplied larger trees from the supply they’d floated upriver. The area between the dragon’s cairn and the nomads’ camp had been cleared, and a large bonfire laid. The fire was lit, allowed to burn down to a shimmering bed of coals, and whole oxen were set up to roast.

The nomads were astonished that the villagers chose to ruin good meat with fire. Karada, though she also found the idea shocking, allowed herself to be persuaded by her brother that cooked meat could be tasty. However, she approved Pakito’s quiet suggestion that the feast also include some animal flesh not seared by the villagers’ fires.

Apples and pears from the orchard were wrapped in clay and baked in the ashes, and smaller game — rabbits, fowl, and two wild boar — were spitted and cooked at the edges of the great fire.

Village women pounded a ring of stakes into the sand and rigged a large hide vat. Clay jugs were brought from the houses and storage tunnel and emptied into the vat. Before long it was brimming with scarlet wine, and the smell of the new vintage saturated the air.

Not to be outdone, the nomads brought out an array of drums, wooden flutes, and rams’ horns. Positioning themselves with their backs to the lake (so the setting sun wasn’t in their eyes), the nomads began to play. There was no structure to their music. They generally followed whoever displayed the most energy at the moment. If a pair of drummers were moved to pound a fierce rhythm, then the other drummers and pipers followed them. If a horn player stood up to sound a melancholy air, the drummers fell silent and let the lone player soar.

The valley reverberated with the sounds of the feast. Children — from both the nomads’ camp and the village — ran between the houses, shrieking with delight, chasing each other, engaging in mock fights, or capturing fireflies. Long trenchers made of white pine planks or pinned birch bark carried steaming ribs and cutlets to the hungry crowd.

Higher up the hill, just below the cliff face, an open tent had been raised. There, Amero and Nianki sat side by side, eating from a common tray. On Nianki’s left were Targun, Samtu, Pakito, and Hatu. An empty place was left for Pa’alu. No one had seen him for almost three days, but Nianki wasn’t concerned, and Amero was getting used to his strange absences.

On Amero’s right were the village elders: Konza the tanner, Valka, Farun the stonecutter, Hulami the vintner, and Menefer the master potter. Everyone was eating and talking. A steady stream of boys circled from the vat and firepit back to the tent bearing fresh supplies of food and drink.

“Great stuff, this,” Nianki exclaimed at one point, swirling her cup around. “Where did you learn to make this?”

“Some of our people knew how to make wine when they arrived,” Amero said. He didn’t care for it himself. It distressed his stomach. “Northerners, from Plains’ End. They brought vines with them in pots of dirt.”

“Sometimes we took drink like this from elves we captured. Theirs is lighter in color, almost clear. They call it ‘nectar,’” said Pakito. A huge pile of gnawed beef bones lay in front of him. “Drink enough of it and it sneaks up and hits you on top of your head!” He banged a broad fist against his own forehead to illustrate the sensation. Samtu and Targun laughed.

“Where is that brother of yours?” Hatu asked from the end of the row. “He should be here.”

“I don’t know,” the big man said, the edges of his words growing soft with wine. “He won’ stan’ still at all.”

“A true nomad,” said Targun, his face red as a berry.

“I’m old enough to remember growing up on the plain, moving every day, trying to live off roots and lizards and the odd deer now an’ then,” Valka said. “That life was hard. Why do you still do it?”

“Are you talking to me?” said Targun.

“You’re the eldest here, yes. Why keep roaming?”

“It’s what I know,” Targun declared fervently. “I feel nervy if I stay in one place too long, like a snared rabbit.”

“We’re free,” added Samtu, dark hair falling across her round face. She was leaning on Pakito’s enormous shoulder with evident contentment. “We go where we will, when we will.”

“Except to elf land,” Hatu muttered. Alone among the nomads at this table, he had made a point of refusing to sample the cooked meat.

Nianki glared. Amero cut off any awkwardness by saying, “Tell me of this warlord, Balif. What sort of fellow is he?”

Everyone fell quiet, looking expectantly at Nianki. They were all curious. She was gnawing a pheasant’s leg. Lowering the morsel she said loudly, “What are you all gawking at?”

“You know Balif well,” said Pakito impishly. “Tell your brother about him.”

“I tried to kill him a few times and failed. That doesn’t make us comrades,” Nianki said matter-of-factly.

“But what’s he like?” her brother insisted.

Nianki sighed and tossed the now clean pheasant leg over her shoulder. “He’s a clever, arrogant fellow, like most elves. A bit skinny, but made of sinew and whit-leather, and his eyes are strange.” Some of them regarded her quizzically. “Very pale blue,” she explained.

“Sounds like quite a man,” said Hulami the vintner. She’d outlived three mates herself and had an eye for capable men. “I’d like to meet him.”

“He’s not a man, he’s an elf,” Nianki retorted, annoyed. “And if I meet him again, I hope he’s on his knees, suing for peace!”

Shouts of greeting rose from the crowd. Torches were lit from the dying bonfire, and by their warm glow Amero and the others could see Pa’alu approaching up the hill. Amero rose and gave his hand to the plainsman.

“Peace be with you, Pa’alu! Welcome to the feast at last. Is everything well?”

Pa’alu nodded curtly and replied, “Very well, Arkuden. Very well.”

He half-turned and offered his hand to Nianki. As she was busy downing a cup of wine, his gesture went unnoticed. Pa’alu lowered his hand.

A boy offered the plainsman a trencher of roast. Pa’alu accepted it gratefully and took his place between Pakito and Hatu. His younger brother regaled Pa’alu with stories of the doings of the past couple of days — the bird hunts, fishing expeditions, building the bonfire, and the various reactions to the taste of roasted oxen, which Pakito declared to be far superior to raw. Pa’alu listened idly while eating.

On his left, Hatu said pointedly, “Sessan was buried yesterday.”

Everyone ignored the remark — everyone but Pa’alu. He said simply, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“Thank you,” Hatu said, his single eye gleaming.

The nomad drummers struck up a brisk rhythm. Samtu jumped up and tugged at Pakito’s unresisting arms.

“Dance with me, dance with me,” she teased.

“I dance like a bull elk,” Pakito told her, shaking his head.

“I don’t care. Come.”

He rose unsteadily, but Samtu ducked under one of his arms and braced him up. They weaved slightly as they went down the hill toward the torchlit festivities — Pakito because the wine was affecting his head, and Samtu because Pakito’s weight was affecting her balance.

Nianki leaned back in her stool, one hand patting her leg in time to the beat. Pa’alu put aside his trencher and stood, asking her to dance.

“A chief doesn’t dance,” she answered lightly. “It isn’t dignified.”

“No one will judge you, “Pa’alu said. He smiled and held out his hand. “Please.”

Amero watched this little scene unfold with great interest. Despite the many intervening years, he still had much residual affection for his sister. He worried about her. She was too hard, too much apart from the world, and he found himself wishing she’d take Pa’alu’s hand and dance.

Something glinted in the plainsman’s cupped hand, catching Amero’s eye. He looked again. A gleam like that meant metal. On second glance, he saw that Pa’alu’s hands were empty. Had he imagined it?

The tall plainsman’s hands stayed empty as Nianki rudely ignored him. He finally returned to his platter with a chastened expression and devoted himself to his food.

Hulami set her eye on Targun and dragged him away to the growing crowd of dancers. The plainsmen were dancing in large circles, men on the outside, shoulder to shoulder, and women on the inside, facing out. Most of the action consisted of stomping and kicking to the rhythm of the drummers, twists and turns punctuated by high-spirited yelps.

Into the uneven circle of torchlight came a stranger. It was Duranix, once more in human shape, but his build and coloring were different than before. Now, strangely, the dragon resembled a slightly taller, brawnier version of Amero. He paused by the end of the tent, gazing at the merrymaking.

Though the nomads didn’t recognize this newcomer as the dragon, those nearest him found themselves moving back, giving this unknown fellow room. Nianki also didn’t recognize him, but the young man they called “Dragon’s Son” did. Amero beckoned to Duranix to join them, calling his name heartily.

A stool was brought and placed between brother and sister. The serving boys brought trenchers of beef and a lengthy jack of wine. Duranix dismissed the drink but accepted the meat.

“I had an ox this afternoon,” Duranix said, “but now I’m hungry again.” Everyone except Hatu laughed. He was glaring at Duranix, Amero, and Nianki, and did so for a long time, until he realized they were paying no attention to him. The one-eyed plainsman knocked over his cup and stalked away into the darkness.

“He’s Genta’s son,” Amero explained privately to Duranix. “He’s never forgiven you for what happened.”

Duranix shrugged. “I’ve never forgiven the slayer of my mother and clutchmates.”

“He’s a whining child,” Nianki stated a little too loudly. “Ignore him!”

Duranix gestured to the ring of dancers. “What is this? Some kind of ritual?”

“This dance? They’re just feeling their blood,” said Nianki. She drained the last drops from her cup and, to everyone’s amazement, clamped a hand on her brother’s forearm.

“I’ll show you, dragon-man,” she declared merrily. “Come, brother!”

Amero allowed himself to be dragged away by his tipsy sister. He looked over his shoulder at Duranix and Pa’alu, his face showing — was it amusement or puzzlement? Duranix couldn’t tell.

The disguised dragon glanced at Pa’alu to see how he was taking Nianki’s playfulness. When Duranix asked if he was jealous of Amero or annoyed with Nianki, he denied it with remarkable calm.

“Karada makes her own choices,” Pa’alu said in a low voice. “As her loyal comrade, I accept them.” So saying, he put aside the remains of his dinner and departed in the direction of the wine vat.

As the wine level went down, the feast grew louder and the music more fevered, more ragged. A few fistfights broke out on the fringes of the crowd, but none of them lasted more than a few blows before one of the combatants went down. Once a blade flashed, but Amero was on the spot in an instant. He stopped the fight brewing between a nomad and a villager, shaming them into settling their dispute peaceably, but the incident left him uneasy. Where had Duranix gotten to?

Craning his neck, the young man saw that the dragon was standing in the center of the women’s circle. The women — both nomads and villagers — dancing in the circle had turned to face him rather than the men still moving in the outer circle. The women were whirling around the bemused dragon. Karada, very much the tallest woman there, had her arms linked with two of her nomad sisters, and her joyous face was flushed, her long, tawny hair flying.

A muscular, bearded nomad, his ropy arms sheened with sweat, called a loud cadence and resumed the beat on his goatskin drum. The others gradually joined in, slowly building the volume and tempo.

Amero spotted Nianki standing alone near the heaping embers from the ox roast. She too was sweating heavily from her wild dancing, and she was gulping down drink from a full-sized leather bucket. Amero hoped there was only water in the pail. His sister had already had too much wine.

“What a feast, eh?” he said, touching her lightly on the back. Her buckskins were sodden, her hair plastered to her head. She lowered the bucket. Thankfully, it was water.

Pa’alu appeared with three cups and a tall clay amphora brimming with wine. “You look thirsty,” he said, pouring Nianki a cup. She took it, drained it, and held it out for more. Pa’alu smiled at her.

“Hold still,” he said, reaching out toward her cup hand as though to brace it. “I don’t want to spill.”

Laughing uproariously, Pakito and Samtu came up behind Pa’alu. The cheerful giant slapped his brother on the back, a blow to rattle any man’s teeth. Pa’alu lost the amphora, which crashed to the ground and shattered, spraying them with sticky wine and clay shards. He also failed to catch hold of Nianki’s hand as she cursed the spilled wine and strode away to the lake to wash her hands and legs. Pa’alu turned on his merry brother and grasped the front of his sheepskin vest.

“Drunken idiot!” he hissed. Pakito, who could’ve flattened his brother with the back of one hand, blinked a few times and leaned back away from Pa’alu’s incomprehensible display of temper.

“Shut up,’Alu,” Samtu said genially. “There’s more wine!”

Pa’alu broke away and ran down the beach to the water’s edge. Amero too had noticed and was puzzled by the plainsman’s harsh reaction to such a minor accident. He went after Pa’alu.

The crowd was sparse by the lake. A chill rose from the water, and this discouraged most revelers from tarrying by the shore. Formidable piles of dirty trenchers lay heaped up along the shoreline. There would be much work to do in the morning, cleaning up after such a celebration.

Nianki was squatting on the sand, splashing cold water on her arms, legs, and face. Pa’alu slowed to a walk when he spotted her. Amero lingered at the edge of the crowd, anxious not to appear too intrusive.

“Karada.”

She didn’t look up. “What do you want, Pa’alu?”

“I have something to give you,” Pa’alu said softly.

“More wine? Good.”

“No, not wine.” He stood over her, one fist clenched.

She finally looked up, her sodden hair covering half her face. “Speak plainly, man. I can’t stand it when you drift around behind my back with that doe-eyed look.”

He held out his closed fist. “It’s here.”

“What is it?”

“Stand up and I’ll show you.”

Distant lightning shimmered behind her when she stood. Nianki wiped her hand on her legs, then planted her fists on her hips expectantly.

“Well, what’ve you got?”

“Something very rare…”

Over his shoulder she spied Amero watching them. Nianki let out a yell. “Hey, brother, come here! Pa’alu has something to show us!”

He jerked his hand away. “It’s not for anyone but you!” he said through clenched teeth. Pa’alu was about to flee when Duranix also appeared, walking along the shore toward him, blocking his way.

Lightning played about the western sky, and muffled peals of thunder echoed overhead, mixing with the pulsing rumble of the drums.

“What do you have?” asked the dragon. His voice was casual but plainly suspicious. “It’s the stone, isn’t it? You kept it, didn’t you?”

“No.” Pa’alu was hemmed in on three sides. The only escape was the lake.

“Show me what you have,” Duranix ordered.

“It’s not for you!”

“I can see it glowing through your foolish flesh. I smelled it on you earlier at the tent, but I thought it was just an aura, a remnant of the stone, but it’s not. You never got rid of the thing, did you? Do it now — throw it in the lake. It will poison you, as it almost poisoned me.”

“What he’s talking about?” asked a groggy Nianki.

“A nugget, charged with dangerous spirit-power,” Amero explained, his eyes watching Pa’alu with new seriousness.

“You’re wrong,” Pa’alu said, backing away from the dragon. “It’s not the yellow stone, I swear!”

Duranix closed within arm’s reach. Pa’alu drew his knife to fend him off. Nianki also advanced a step toward the pale, shivering plainsman, but Amero caught her by the arms, holding her.

A blade of elven bronze was no threat to a dragon, but Duranix didn’t want to harm the plainsman. He raised a finger near the tip of Pa’alu’s knife. A tiny arc of lightning flashed from his finger to the blade. There a was a loud snap, and Pa’alu flew backward into Nianki and Amero. All three went down in a heap on the sand.

“Get off me, you fool,” Nianki snarled, pushing the stunned Pa’alu away. Amero squirmed out from under the bigger man and saw something shiny and golden glittering on the sand.

Nianki saw it too and reached for it. Her hand brushed Amero’s, and their fingers touched the warm metal disk at the same moment.

Nianki drew in her breath sharply and flinched as if struck. She snatched her hand back and stared at it with distaste.

“Did it shock you?” asked Amero, stooping to pick up the mysterious object, but she continued to stare, saying nothing.

Amero examined it. It was a flat round piece of bronze. The light was poor, so he held it close to his face to see it, turning it over and over, examining it. Nianki was staring strangely at him, not at the disk.

“What is it?” asked Duranix, looking over Amero’s shoulder.

“A disk of metal. Bronze, I think.” The disk was blank on both sides, with no engraving or marks whatsoever. He handed it the dragon, who scrutinized it with diminishing curiosity. “He was telling the truth after all. It’s not the nugget.” Amero looked regretfully at Pa’alu, who was staring fiercely at Nianki.

Duranix flipped the disk over and over in his hands. “Strange. I could’ve sworn he was carrying the stone. I thought I sensed an aura of power hanging over him like the stink of an unwashed human.”

All of a sudden Nianki shuddered so violently she tottered into Amero. He put an arm around her to brace her up. “Too much to drink?” he asked gently.

“Uh… that must be it.”

“Let me help you back to your tent.”

Amero helped her stand. When he let go, Nianki shivered so hard she almost fell down. Amero grabbed her arm to steady her.

“What’s wrong?” Duranix asked.

The dragon folded the bronze disk in half with his powerful fingers and tossed it toward Pa’alu. The plainsman dropped to his knees, fingers scrabbling through the sand to find the disk. With a shout he stood bolt upright, staring at his empty hands.

“Where is it?” he cried hopelessly. His eyes darted between Nianki and Amero with a terror that none of them understood.

Then, with an agonized cry, Pa’alu picked up his knife, reversed the blade and raised it high to plunge into his own chest. He never made it. His hand was caught in Duranix’s unbreakable grip.

“Let me go!” Pa’alu screamed. “My life is over!”

Without a word, Duranix wrung the elf blade from the plainsman a second time and tossed it in the lake. He released Pa’alu, who stumbled backward and fell to the sand.

At that moment a fork of rose-colored lightning, bright as the moon, lanced down from the clouds and struck the mountaintop above the waterfall. A shattering thunderclap sounded, silencing the drums and pipes of the feast.

“By all my ancestors!” Pa’alu said hoarsely. “Forgive me, Karada. I never meant — ” He scrambled to his feet and started to run toward the village. Once he spun around and cried, “Forgive me! I never meant it!” Then he ran on, crashing against the revelers in his path.

Amero exchanged a puzzled look with Duranix. “Strange,” said the dragon, watching Pa’alu as he disappeared into the crowd. None of what happened had registered with Nianki, who seemed dazed.

A sheet of warm rain fell suddenly, lashing the crowd of celebrants. With much yelling and coarse laughter, the feast broke up as people sprinted for house and tent. Amero hurried through the hubbub with Nianki on his arm. Torches died in the downpour, and the stony flat above the beach became dark and confusing, with much running, falling, cursing, laughing. Steam and smoke curled up from the ashes of the bonfire, and village women struggled to get the uneaten portions of the feast into the storage tunnel.

Amero reached Nianki’s tent with some difficulty. The cowhide shelter flapped and lashed in the wind, threatening to blow away. Amero left Nianki on her bed roll and grappled with the whipping flaps. He tied them off, one by one, until the open shelter became a dark, dry, enclosed room.

Rained drummed on the roof. Amero snugged down the center flap. In the dark he could hear Nianki moving.

“I’m almost done. Feeling any better?” he asked. There was no response but her even breathing. Was she asleep? “Hulami’s wine is good, but it creeps up on you like a viper.”

With the tent secured, he wiped the rain and sweat from his face. “Sleep well, Nianki.”

“Amero.”

He paused at the door flap. “Hmm?”

“I love you.”

Though he’d always known she cared about him in her own rough way, he’d never heard his sister speak such tender words before. She sounded tired, a little lost.

“I love you, too,” Amero said before he ducked out into the storm. “Sleep well.”

Soon after the storm broke, the shore was empty, the feast over. A single towering figure remained outdoors, close to the water’s edge. Rain pelted Duranix in his true reptilian shape, running in thick streams down his massive face and off the scales on his back. He didn’t bother to unfurl his wings and use them to protect his eyes. A dragon’s vision was more acute by night than by day. He could see just fine, rain or no rain.

High above Yala-tene, at the very edge of the cliff overlooking the nomad camp, stood a solitary onlooker. To Duranix, his warm blood painted him against the night in a rose silhouette. He and the dragon stared through the night and the storm at each other.

“Vedvedsica.” Duranix’s rumbling whisper was swallowed by the wind.

Looking down, the elf cleric smiled to himself. The nugget, wrapped in fine gold wire, hung from a slender chain around his neck. He turned away, laughing.