Children of the Plains

Chapter 17

After their night of indulgence, the villagers had to rise with the new day and go about their work. Cattle had to be fed and watered, the gardens weeded, and ripe vegetables harvested. Summer was over, and cool-weather crops like cabbage and onions had to be planted. In addition to all these chores, there were pots to throw, timber to harvest, and hides to tan. Red-eyed and yawning, the villagers rose from their beds and silently went to work.

Not so the nomads. It was their custom to sleep in the remains of their revelries until thirst and hunger forced them to face the day. When they feasted a good hunt or a victory in battle, they got up only when their heads stopped throbbing, then mounted their horses and moved on. In the days after the Moonmeet feast, Karada’s band continued to carouse after dark. The only one who might have stopped them, Karada herself, was strangely absent from the scene.

Amero, like the rest of the villagers, had been busy. Three days went by before he found time to visit his sister. By then, the nomad camp resembled the scene of some terrible disaster. The thunderstorm on the night of the feast had collapsed most of their carelessly pitched tents, and the plainsmen had been too inebriated to do much about it. The most hard-drinking nomads slept where they fell, spending their nights exposed to the elements.

The only good-humored nomad Amero met was the amiable giant Pakito. He spotted the big man sitting outside his lopsided shelter, pouring rainwater out of his boots and smiling. A less violent, but no less dampening, rainstorm had rolled over the valley the night before.

“You’re in good spirits, considering,” Amero said, hailing him.

“Considering what?” asked Pakito.

“Considering your boots won’t be dry for days.”

Pakito sighed happily. “What do wet feet matter on a glorious morning like this?”

Amero was about to inquire what made it so glorious, but he was interrupted by Samtu. The dark-haired plainswoman poked her head out of the tent, squinted her eyes against the feeble morning light, and croaked, “Oh, help! Is there water? By all my ancestors, I think I’m dying.”

Still grinning, Pakito handed her a waterskin, and she ducked back into his tent. Amero had to laugh. “Now I understand. You’ve taken a mate!”

“Been taken, more like. I’ve always been a stumbling ox when it came to women, but Samtu wouldn’t let me go.” He flung a boot high in the air and yelled for the simple joy of it. The boot came down on a nearby sleeping nomad, who bounced up, cursing. From inside the tent, Samtu groaned and told Pakito to shut up.

“Sounds like love to me,” Amero said, and with a wave, moved toward Nianki’s tent.

With much groaning, coughing, and cursing, the nomads roused themselves from their latest stupor. A general cry for water went up, and this time there wasn’t enough to go round. Several blinking, stumbling plainsfolk made their way down to the lake, where they fell on their bellies and lapped up the cold water.

Reaching his sister’s tent, Amero called out to her. Nomads lying nearby cursed at him. He ignored them, saying, “Nianki, are you here?”

“Yes,” was her low reply.

He lifted the flap and squatted down to look inside. Nianki was sitting up, her back to the opening. She wore only a thigh-length doeskin shirt. Her long hair was tangled and matted.

“Nianki?”

“Amero.” She did not turn to greet him.

“Are you well?”

She hung her head. “I had a strange dream,” she murmured. “I thought it was a dream, but I’m awake and it’s still going on.” She looked over her shoulder at him. Her tanned face seemed quite pale, and he could see dark circles under her eyes, even in the dimness of the shelter.

He knelt in the opening, his back holding the flap up and letting daylight in. “Your people were at it again last night,” he said. “Are you well? I haven’t seen you since the feast.”

“Come inside, Amero. Let the flap down.”

He crawled in. It was close and steamy inside the small tent, and very dark. A few narrow beams of light penetrated through small holes in the hide.

“Something happened to me,” Nianki said. She still sat with her back to him.

“What? Are you ill?”

“Not… not in the usual way.” She drew a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. “Amero, do you believe we are brother and sister?”

A strange and surprising question. “Of course,” he said.

“Is it possible our memories are wrong, that we’re not related at all?” Her voice sounded taut, almost desperate.

He settled down on the ground and stared at her hunched shoulders, barely visible in the sultry shadows. Her questions confused him, but her tone told him this was important to her. “Our memories match,” he said. “Our experiences are the same up to the day the yevi attacked us, all those years ago.”

“But suppose we’re not really siblings — suppose you were a baby found abandoned on the savanna. What if that were true, and Oto and Kinar just the people who raised you and not the parents of your body?”

Confusion became shock. “What are you telling me? Am I not your brother?”

She turned suddenly and seized his hands in her own. Her eyes were dark and troubled as she whispered, “What if it were true?”

He looked down at her rough hands, gripping his with fervor. “I’d be very surprised,” he said lamely. “All I remember from my childhood is Oto, Kinar, Menni, and you. If I were a taken-up babe, I wouldn’t know it unless I was told.” He slowly raised his eyes to hers. She was weeping, soundlessly. He’d never seen Nianki cry before, not even as a child.

“You’re only two years older than me,” he went on. “How could you remember when I was born, much less found?”

Nianki dropped her hands and turned away again. “You weren’t found, Amero,” she muttered. “You are my brother.”

His head was spinning. He felt like the victim of a prank, only the prankster was weeping at him instead of laughing.

“What’s this all about?” he demanded. “Why are you acting so strangely?”

She scrubbed her cheeks with the backs of her hands, taking in deep draughts of air as though to clear her head. “It’s nothing,” she said, sounding stern again. “Too much wine and too many bad dreams.”

Amero got up on one knee. “I’d say the same things were afflicting your band,” he said. “All but Pakito.” He explained how the strapping warrior and Samtu had come together.

“Good,” she said, quite clearly. “A man needs a good mate.”

Shouts erupted outside, hoarse male and female voices. Amero stood and flung back the tent flap. Nomads were running past Nianki’s tent toward a small crowd gathering at the edge of the village. The loud, angry voices came from there.

Sighing, he said, “There’s been nothing but trouble between your people and mine, since the feast. If this keeps up…” He left the thought unfinished and hurried away to the disturbance. Nianki followed, still clad in the long, doeskin tunic, shading her eyes against the hazy daylight.

Amero worked his way through a hostile crowd of nomads. They were massed around the house of Hulami the vintner. At first Amero thought they were blaming Hulami’s wine for their pounding heads and raging thirst, but when he got closer, he discovered they were besieging her with requests for more wine.

Hulami was backed up against her own door. Her two apprentices stood on either side of her, stout stirring paddles held up like clubs. Amero recognized the man yelling at her as Tarkwa, one of Nianki’s leading warriors.

“Whatta ya mean, you won’t give us wine?” Tarkwa bellowed. “You gave away a vat full three days ago and now it’s gone!”

“That was a feast!” Hulami replied hotly. “I expect the villagers to send me food and goods for the wine I make. I can’t afford to give it away every day! If you smelly fools want more of my wine, you’ll have to barter for it like everyone else!”

Amero winced at the vintner’s harsh words. Karada’s band shouted insults right back. “Bloodsucking viper” was the kindest one he heard.

Tarkwa stepped forward from the crowd. The apprentices presented their paddles, pressing the grape-stained ends against Tarkwa’s chest.

Someone shouted, “Kill’em Tarkwa! We’ll take what we want over their dead bodies!”

Amero ran to the front of the mob, yelling and waving for attention. The shouts of the crowd drowned him out and no one paid him much heed until Nianki appeared and stood close beside him.

“What’s the problem?” she said loudly.

“This sour wench thinks she can fill us with wine one day and keep it back from us the next! We’re going to teach her different!” Tarkwa snarled. The mob at his back howled approval of his words.

Nianki turned and shoved the two young apprentices aside. Hulami looked to Amero for help, but before he could say anything, Nianki whispered something in her ear. Whitefaced, Hulami stood away from her door.

Tarkwa gave a rousing cry. The mob echoed his cheer and surged forward. Nianki put her hands on the doorjambs, bracing herself and blocking their way.

“What’re you doing, Karada?” Tarkwa said.

“I’ll get out of the way,” she said calmly, “and you can drink up everything you find — drain the chamber pots, if you want — but if you take away this woman’s livelihood today, there won’t be any more wine in Arku-peli. Ever.”

She dropped her arms. Her angry followers hesitated.

“It’s some kind of trick,” said a woman in the front ranks. “Karada’s playing with us.”

“No trick,” Nianki replied. “If you pick all the apples off a tree one day, you know there won’t be any apples tomorrow. If you guzzle all the wine in the village, it’ll be gone, and you’ll be just as thirsty and heavy-headed tomorrow.” She moved out of the doorway, folded her arms, and leaned against the wall. “So go ahead.”

Some of the nomads took halting steps toward the door. Nianki eyed them. “It’s not just the wine you’re giving up you know,” she told them in the same matter-of-fact tone. “You start robbing the villagers, and there won’t be so much as an ox tongue for you tomorrow.”

“But we’re thirsty!” someone cried.

“There’s a whole lake over there, or didn’t you notice?” she snapped.

Slowly, grumbling all the while, the mob of nomads receded from Hulami’s door.

“What’s the matter?” Nianki called. “Lose your taste for wine?”

The crowd broke up sullenly as the parched nomads headed for the free water of the lake. Tarkwa lingered a few steps behind. Out of the press appeared Hatu, looking surprisingly well compared to the others. He spoke to Tarkwa, and they fell to talking.

Hulami went into her house and returned with a clay jug of wine. “Karada, this is for you,” she said, beaming. “You saved my life!”

Amero joined them. “You handled that well,” he said.

Nianki set the brimful jug of wine at her feet and smiled faintly. “Fierce as they are, they’re like children. They want what they want, and they want it now. You can either beat them into obedience — which I’m too tired to do this morning — or you can try to point out what they’ll lose if they do as they want.” She shrugged. “It usually works.”

Tarkwa and Hatu watched them from twenty paces away. After a short exchange, they left, following the others to the lake.

Nianki picked up the wine jug and gave it back to Hulami. The vintner was puzzled.

“Don’t you want it?” she said.

“I’d better not. I can’t pay the price of it either.”

She walked away, slowly and rather stiffly. Amero and Hulami watched her go.

“She’s different today,” said Hulami. “She seems — I don’t know — more like a woman and less like a war chief this morning.”

The vintner’s words trailed off as she watched Nianki walk away. “What do you think it is?” Amero prompted, worried about the sister he’d so recently regained. “She’s been acting strangely this morning, even crying, and she seems so distracted. Do you think she’s ill?”

Hulami gave him an quick sideways glance. “Ill? Not exactly,” she said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Karada was in love.”

That was a notion Amero had never considered. “You really think it possible?” he asked her.

“Certainly. I’ve lived long enough to recognize that look on a woman’s face when I see it.”

Amero thought of Pa’alu and of Nianki’s strange behavior at the feast. Perhaps a few nights’ reflection, aided by Hulami’s vintage and his news about Pakito and Samtu, had caused Nianki to consider Pa’alu anew. Amero wondered where Pa’alu was. The plainsman should be told about Nianki’s change of heart.

Pa’alu woke, certain he was dead.

He’d run off from the feast just as the thunderstorm broke, fleeing headlong into the rain-swept night. His only thought was to find the elf priest and demand the spell be broken. Though he waited in the bowl-shaped canyon for two days, Vedvedsica never appeared. Despairing, his mind still reeling from what had happened, Pa’alu returned to the fringes of the nomads’ camp and was taken up by several of his reveling comrades. He accepted their repeated offers of wine.

When the wine and food had at last run out, Pa’alu had left his compatriots. A part of his benumbed, wine-sodden brain still seethed with thoughts of finding the elf priest, so he thought to search elsewhere. Late one night, he crossed the rope bridge and staggered up the logger’s path, tripping constantly on the deep ruts left by dragged logs. Exhausted at last, he collapsed on an outflow of tiny pebbles.

When Pa’alu woke, this third morning after the feast, his face and arms were numb from lying on the stones all the night before. Thinking for one crazed moment he was dead and in his grave, he swallowed hard and tried to move his lifeless limbs. When his feet twitched and tingled painfully — though his arms remained numb — he decided he might not be dead after all.

He rolled over, and the brightness of the ivory-clouded sky burned his face like a flaming brand. After an effort that brought beads of sweat to his brow, Pa’alu managed to get one limp arm over his tortured eyes. Too much wine. Far too much.

The amulet.

The thought brought him upright with such violence, his stiff muscles shrieked in protest. He sat, wavering from side to side, as his foggy mind tried to recall the events of the past — how many? — days, especially those of the feast night. Where was the amulet Vedvedsica had given him? He patted through his muddy clothing and found nothing.

Some of the fog wrapping his brain lifted. He’d already used the amulet, hadn’t he? At the feast, he’d held it out to Karada. The dragon tried to take it from him. Pa’alu drew his knife. There was a flash of lightning from the dragon. Then Pa’alu was lying on the sand, and he no longer held the amulet.

Nianki had picked it up. Nianki and Amero.

Nianki and Amero.

“Oh, my ancestors,” Pa’alu groaned, covering his face with his hands.

“Don’t the blame the dead for the faults of the living.”

Pa’alu flinched at the sudden intrusion and tried to push himself to his feet. When his bleary eyes adjusted, he saw Nacris sitting cross-legged on the ground a few steps away. Her horse was tethered to a handy pine sapling. He’d been so involved in his memories of that horrible night that he’d not heard her arrive.

“Why are you here?” he groaned, too lost in his own misery to really care.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Nacris replied. She looked well-scrubbed, her hair pulled back tightly and tied. Her buckskins had been buffed with pumice to whiten them.

“So you found me.”

Ignoring his unwelcoming tone, she handed him a full waterskin. It dangled from her hand for only an instant before the painfully parched Pa’alu grabbed it. Upending it, he drank deeply, the excess water trickling over his neck and chest.

Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he said, “Thanks.”

Nacris said nothing hut continued to watch him intently. He suddenly felt uncomfortable under her flinty gaze, and unconsciously he began to comb his hair and beard with his fingers, trying to look more presentable.

“Why are you here?” Nacris said at last.

“I drank too much and lost my way.”

“No, I mean, why are you in the band?”

He paused in his grooming. “To follow Karada,” he said.

“Is that the only reason?”

“What other reason do I need?”

“And when Karada falls in battle or dies of sickness? Will you remain with the band then?”

Feeling was returning to Pa’alu’s limbs. The sensation was agonizing — like the bites of a thousand horseflies at once — but Pa’alu hardened himself and addressed Nacris’s question. “I would stay by my brother,” he said. “I would stand with Pakito.”

She nodded slightly. “A sensible answer. Did you know Pakito has gained a mate since the feast?” Pa’alu’s expression showed his ignorance, so she added, “Samtu.”

“He’s fortunate.” His tone gave the lie to the simple pleasantry. Knowledge of his brother’s happiness, when he himself was so miserable, was like bitter ashes in his mouth.

“You’re one of the finest hunters and scouts in the band, Pa’alu,” Nacris said. “If Karada and the band part ways, who will you follow?”

He was beginning to understand the cast of her words, and he shook his head. “You can’t be trying to take the band away from Karada again. Did Sessan’s death teach you nothing?”

“It taught me no one of us is strong enough to defeat Karada. To succeed, the best of us must join together.”

Pa’alu stood up, dropping the waterskin on the pebbles in front of Nacris. “You’re a fool,” he told her flatly. “Karada is the band. There is no band without her.”

He started to walk past her, and Nacris said, “And if Karada betrays the band? What then?”

“You’re talking nonsense. Because you brought me water, I won’t mention this to Karada — ”

Nacris stood quickly, took Pa’alu by the shoulder, and whirled him around. “Karada is betraying the band right now! She sided with the mudtoes this morning!” Pa’alu recognized the derisive term for the villagers that was gaining popularity among the nomads.

“What are you talking about?” he said. Nacris related the events that had taken place outside the house of Hulami the vintner. “Karada sent her own people away thirsty then accepted a jug of wine for herself! She’s so taken with her own power, she forgets the welfare of her people!”

“Liar! How many times in the past has she gone without food so that others could eat? Gone without sleep so that others could rest? Karada cares nothing for her personal comfort. She lives like a mountain goat, guiding her flock through treacherous places, surviving on only the sparest food and water.”

Nacris folded her arms. “That was before we came to this strange valley. Now there’s meat and drink in abundance and a man for her to love.”

The last words pierced Pa’alu’s aching head. His fist knotted around the front of Nacris’s whitened buckskin shirt. He lifted her till she was swaying on her toes.

“What did you say?” he hissed.

Unresisting, she said, “Arkuden, the headman. Her brother.”

His grip slackened, and Nacris stepped back. Eyes wide in horror, Pa’alu hissed, “Why do you say that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Her long-lost brother turns up alive, offers food and comfort in abundance. Why shouldn’t she side with him against the rest of us?”

Pa’alu relaxed, realizing Nacris knew nothing about the amulet or its effect. The rage and frustration he felt over the failure of his stratagem resurfaced.

“Pa’alu, are you listening?” He looked at her and she added gravely, “Join me or not, as your spirit commands, but I have to know: Will you tell Karada what has passed between us?”

Misery welled up in his breast. Tell Karada? How could he even look upon her again?

“No,” he said. “I won’t tell her.”

Nacris regarded him warily. “Swear by your ancestors.”

His head throbbed unmercifully, and a tendon in his neck felt like it was going to jump through his skin. Compared to his current pain and anguish, the wrath of his ancestors’ spirits was as remote as the great gray sea. Without hesitation, he said, “I swear. By the spirits of my ancestors.”

He departed, leaving Nacris standing by her horse. Once he was well out of sight, two men emerged from the rocks farther down the draw and approached Nacris.

“Well?” said Hatu.

“He won’t join us, at least not yet,” Nacris reported.

“I told you he wouldn’t,” Tarkwa said.

Hatu fingered the handle of his flint knife. “But will he betray us?”

“I don’t think so,” Nacris said. “Drunk or sober, his word is still granite.”

“They say he tried to gut himself in front of Karada, Arkuden, and the dragon,” Tarkwa said with a smirk.

“If his mind is weakening, so be it,” Hatu said. “That could be a boon for us. Alive and silent, he’s still dangerous. Alive and mad, he may be the best weapon against Karada we can get.”

Duranix had left the valley only moments after seeing Vedvedsica atop the cliff at Yala-tene. Searching for the elf priest, the dragon flew south as far as the vast woodland claimed by Silvanos, yet he found no sign of Vedvedsica. The priest was probably already back in the elf city, trying to work his will with the help of the yellow stone.

The dragon flapped hard to gain height, climbing so high that even his impervious bronze hide shuddered with the extreme cold. Peering southward, he could see — very faintly — the pale, golden glow on the horizon that heralded the city of Silvanost.

Remarkable. To think there could be a gathering of the creatures so large that the combined light of their fires stained the night sky. A part of him would enjoy making the long flight to see such an amazing sight. Instead, he made a wide, sweeping turn, speeding his strokes.

Now that he’d determined Vedvedsica was beyond his reach, he wanted to get back to Yala-tene as fast as he could. It was apparent Pa’alu had made some kind of bargain with the elf priest. The bronze disk had contained so much power it glowed in the dragon’s vision, even when clenched inside the man’s hand. By the time Duranix had gotten hold of the metal, it had given up its power somewhere, for some purpose. He needed to discover exactly what had happened.

The landscape slowly unfurled below the flying dragon. The dense forest home of the elves gave way to grassy plains, which in turn began to swell and roll as he drew near the mountains that held the Lake of the Falls. Those mountains loomed larger and larger before him, clouds thickening on their slopes. Soon he was gliding in their silent heights, alone save for the tallest peaks poking up through the clouds.

It was irksome that Vedvedsica had succeeded in getting the stone, but it was much to be preferred over Sthenn or the humans having it. The elf had some limited knowledge and experience of higher powers, but he could be in for an unpleasant surprise should he try to use the stone. It was a whole order of magnitude greater in strength than any fetish or object of power he would have encountered before. It could consume him in the end.

Vedvedsica reminded Duranix of the thirsty centaur in a story Amero had told him. The centaur had stood under a thundercloud, eyes closed, mouth open, expecting a refreshing shower. Instead, he received a white-hot bolt of lightning. As the humans said, “Thought rain, got pain.” The elf priest hoped to bend the stone to his own ends; instead, he might end up being the one bent — or broken.

Duranix smelled the waterfall from twenty leagues away and descended through the clouds. He circled the mountain once, morning sunlight flashing from his scales, then dived for the cave. His hind claws caught the rim of the opening, and he hung there for an instant, shaking the water from his long face. He smelled a human in his cave. It didn’t smell like Amero.

He leaped to the floor, and his landing made the mountain shake. The cavern was dark, but his eyes noted a glimmer of body heat, far off to his left, near the small lower door.

“Come out, little mouse, come out,” Duranix rumbled, in a very undragonlike, sing-song manner.

Nianki stood away from the hoist basket, hands clasped in front of her. “Ah, no mouse after all,” said Duranix. “A wolf, more like.”

“Save your humor, dragon,” she said. “I have something important to ask you.”

He lowered his belly to the floor and folded his tree-trunk size legs under him. “Speak, Nianki,” he said.

“Karada,” she said sharply. “Nianki is an old, empty name. It only sounds right coming from my brother’s lips.”

“Speak then, Karada.”

She stepped forward, and he saw her cheeks were damp with tears, her eyes red-rimmed. His barbels twitched with surprise.

Drawing a deep breath, she said, “You’re a creature of great power, I know. I’ve seen some of it these past days. Just how great is it?”

“It’s the measure of myself, no more, no less.” Karada gave him a disgusted look, and he snapped, “I’m not being coy or poetic, woman. I don’t know how to quantify my own strength. How powerful is the sun? How forceful is the wind?” He lowered his chin to rest on the stone floor, bringing his eyes more or less to the level of her own. “Why do you ask?”

“I need your help,” she said, her voice tinged with real pain. “I… I’m going mad.”

“For most humans, a short journey.”

Karada was in no mood for levity. She whipped a flint knife from her belt waved it under the dragon’s vast eye. “I’ll not be made a fool of!” she cried, her voice ragged with emotion. “Listen to me or I’ll start that journey right now!”

It was absurd, threatening a bronze dragon with a span of sharp flint. Duranix was unmoved, and the click of his blinking eyelids was loud in the quiet cave. However, her obvious sincerity moved him to say, in a kinder tone, “Please continue, Karada, but calmly.”

She returned her knife to her belt and ran a hand through her gilded brown hair. “I have… I have a… sickness of the mind,” she faltered. “I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t know how to get rid of it.”

“What are the symptoms?”

She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Her voice was barely audible. “I think about a man, all the time. I hear his name when I draw breath. I see his face whenever I shut my eyes. If I let his image linger, my face grows hot and my legs and arms feel weak.”

“That’s not so mysterious. Humans are so afflicted all the time. You’re in love. Haven’t you ever been in love before?”

Nianki turned quickly on her heel. “No, never! There’ve been men in the band I admired — Pakito is strong and loyal, Hatu a fine tracker, even Sessan was good fighter when he wasn’t listening to the venom Nacris poured in his ear…” Her voice trailed off. “But, it’s nothing like that. I feel sick… here.” She pressed a hand to her belly. “And I have thoughts. Strange thoughts.”

“I’m sure you do,” Duranix said quickly. The last thing the dragon wanted to hear were this warrior woman’s inner thoughts. “In my years observing humans, I’ve learned love is an extremely potent feeling. It makes people happy and miserable, often at the same time.” He cocked a flaring metallic eyebrow at her and added, “You seem no different than the rest, except you’re not used to it.”

His bantering tone was lost on Nianki. Arms hanging limply at her sides, she stared dully at the floor and said, with no emotion at all, “I’m in love with Amero.”

The smoldering question in Duranix’s mind suddenly flared to brilliant life. The disk Pa’alu had been concealing the night of the feast must have caused this. He’d tried to get Karada to take his hand while he held the disk. He must have intended the spell (most certainly cast by Vedvedsica) for her and himself. This outcome had surely been an accident.

Or was this exactly what Vedvedsica had intended?

“Did you hear me?” she demanded.

Duranix pulled his attention back to her angry, worried face. “Yes, I did,” he assured her. “Humans don’t mate with their siblings, do they?”

“No!” Her eyes widened in self-loathing, and she clutched her head in both hands. “The very thought is a horror! How can I, born of the same spirit and flesh as Amero, possibly be so unnatural?”

Duranix gave no reply, but instead reared up on his haunches. Shuddering, he shrank himself into human form.

Eyes downcast, wrapped in her own misery, Nianki didn’t notice his transformation. She started when his human hand touched her shoulder. When she looked up at him, she flinched even more violently.

Duranix wore a completely new form. He was a tall, muscular plainsman with glossy, waist-length black hair and deeply tanned skin. “Be calm!” he told her. “I took on this form to make a point.”

“What point?”

“Outward appearance is an illusion. Every being is unique because his or her spirit is unique. I could, if I chose, take on the appearance of Amero, but would that make me Amero? Of course not.”

With her mind in such turmoil, Nianki could not understand the reasoning behind his demonstration. “Are you telling it me it’s all right for me to feel this way?” she said, astonished.

“No.” He sighed at the obtuseness of humans. “I believe you’re the victim of a plot, Karada.” He told her about Pa’alu and the amulet. As he watched her face redden alarmingly and her body begin to shake with anger, he chose to keep the name of Vedvedsica to himself. She was capable of any foolishness just now, even embarking on a quest for vengeance that would most likely end with her death.

When Nianki finally spoke, her voice was a hoarse, furious whisper. “Do you mean that I’m suffering this unnatural love because of Pa’alu?” Duranix nodded. She clenched her fists and said, her voice rising with each word, “Oh, the filth-eating dog! The crawling, cold-blooded, wretched — !”

Duranix held up a hand. “I don’t believe Pa’alu meant you ill. I think he traded the nugget for some kind of spirit-token, which was meant to loose its power on you and make you love him, but there was a mix-up, and the spell discharged instead on you and Amero.”

Nianki breathed hard, forcing herself to master her anger. Her deep red color faded to normal tan. She could not escape the bounds of her compulsion, so her next question was, “Does Amero feel for me the way I feel for him?”

“He does not seem so affected. We’ll have to find Pa’alu and question him on the way the token was supposed to work.”

From towering rage, Nianki fell into despair. She wept uncontrollably at the mere thought that Amero might be suffering as she was. It was unbearable, the idea the one she loved could be in pain.

Duranix watched her cry silently, but with some sympathy. He could think of nothing to say to her.

“The old question returns,” she said, sniffling and dabbing at her nose with her sleeve. “Can you help me?”

Duranix faced her, his black, more-than-human eyes sweeping her up and down. “I cannot,” he said at last. “If the power was forced into you, it would leave a spirit wound on you I could see, and I might be able to draw it out into a likely receptacle — a crystal or metal object, but I sense nothing out of place. That’s the black subtlety of it. Every human has the capacity to love. Yours has simply been directed along an unnatural course. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Can’t you use your power to change who I love, at least?” she asked wildly.

“I’m not a practitioner of such arts. If I tried blindly, I might harm you, or worse, even kill you.”

Nianki laughed bitterly. “Death couldn’t be worse than this.” Her countenance convulsed in deep anguish for a few seconds, then suddenly cleared. She strode to the lower door, bypassing the hoist basket, which was lying on its side. Standing in the opening, her long shirt rippling in the breeze from the waterfall, she cried, “I can do something a dragon can’t! I can cure a lovesick heart!”

She jumped.

Duranix’s tall human form crossed the distance to the opening in two bounds. Without pausing, he hurled himself after her. A heartbeat later he hit the wall of plunging water. As he fell, he flung his arms outward and expanded to his true shape.

The force of the torrent was driving him toward the lake below. Through the icy blast of falling water he spotted the warmth of Nianki’s tumbling body, already halfway to the foot of the falls. Duranix folded his wings tightly to his back and plummeted after her.

Head down, neck outstretched, nose pointed at his own imminent death, the dragon overtook Nianki and grasped her in one foreclaw. She was limp and did not resist. He flung out his wings to slow their descent, but the force of the waterfall was so great, it snapped his left wing bone where it was joined to his body.

Pain.

He hadn’t felt pain in a long time. Genta’s spear thrusts, even Vedvedsica’s spirit-blast, had been playful buffets compared to this. The last time the dragon had felt anything this excruciating was the day the avalanche had covered the nest. A whole mountain had fallen on him, and he’d lain there, entombed with his mother and siblings, gasping in the darkness as his bones were crushed, his body smashed.

He had to slow their fall. He threw his shoulders back, forcing his wings open. Bone scraped on bone in the broken wing, and the dragon roared in agony. The updraft around the churning falls lifted and slowed him just enough for him to put his three unencumbered claws down before he hit the ground. The shock of his landing was enough to bring blood to his mouth. Yet, through the red haze of pain, Duranix remembered what he held in his left foreclaw. He leaned to his right, put his claw down gently and opened it. Nianki rolled senseless to the ground. Duranix toppled over, trembled, and lay still.

The sound of Amero’s voice penetrated the roar of the water and the fog in the dragon’s head.

“Duranix! Duranix!”

“Don’t shout,” the dragon rasped, “you’re standing by my ear.”

He opened one eye. Amero and a score of nomads were clustered around. Several of the nomads knelt by Nianki’s limp body, working over her. Amero, his face white with concern, said angrily, “What were you trying to do, kill yourself?”

“Humans are so much trouble,” muttered Duranix. “Besides being stupid, they’re clumsy. That one missed your basket contraption in the dark and fell from the cave.”

Amero hurried to the circle where Nianki was being tended. He knelt beside her, pressing his hand to her throat. Her pulse beat strongly.

“She passed out,” said Targun, who was kneeling on the other side of her. “Let her rest a minute, and she’ll come back.”

Amero was about to rise when Nianki’s eyes snapped open. She half-rose and threw her arms around his neck.

“Amero! Amero! Don’t let me go!” she gasped.

Embarrassed and relieved at the same time, her brother pulled her trembling hands apart and lowered her back to the hide blanket Targun had brought for her.

“You’re all right,” he said soothingly. She turned her face away and wept. Misunderstanding the cause of her distress, Amero added, “It’s all right, truly. Duranix saved you. He’s had a hard landing, but you can’t kill a dragon so easily.”

As if to prove the truth of those words, Duranix had gotten to his feet. He clumped over to them, his broken wing dragging on the ground. His wide, serpentine head hovered over them, eyelids clicking open and shut.

Amero held his sister’s cold, wet hand. “You and I have something more in common now,” he said cheerfully. She said nothing, her face still turned away. “We’re the only two people to have leaped from the dragon’s cave and lived. I guess clumsiness runs in our blood, eh?” The gathered nomads chuckled. “What do you think, Duranix?”

The dragon glanced from Nianki to Amero and back to Nianki again. “I think humans make terrible pets,” he said.