Shadowkill

2

It was a nameless little world, a pretty world with nothing more than its looks to recommend it, the usual range of metals, no large deposits. No moons. There were a lot of lakes but no great, uninterrupted stretches of water. In an area with hundreds of other worlds much like it, it had been scanned a few times but mostly ignored. And it was close by-only a day off.

Autumn Rose set the ship down in the middle of a temperate long-grass prairie in the northern hemisphere, choosing a flat barren area near a large lake and one of the streams feeding into it.

Kikun wandered aimlessly about the ship as Autumn Rose settled to work. He stood behind her, watching her play with the kephalos until she swung around and snarled at him. “I loathe people looking over my shoulder. Haven’t you got SOMETHING you can do?”

Kikun shrugged his narrow shoulders, ambled to the co-seat, turned on the scanners so he could look out over the land around the ship.

Tall grass stretched to the horizon, nodding in the wind, green and silver moire silk, fading to a washed-out blue in the distance. There were scattered interruptions of a darker, stiffer green where trees grew along a stream or deep in a wash. A few kilometers off, an immense herd of horned beasts grazed, leaving a strip of shorn land half a kay wide as they passed on. Overhead, a number of feathered fliers were black specks against the ice-blue of the sky.

Kikun was hatched on a tall-grass prairie much like this one, so much like it he might almost be looking across his sept’s home range. He sat gazing at the scene and aching with a separation anguish he’d been too busy to feel since Lissorn rescued him from the stake and brought him away. Strange places, strange peoples, nothing to remind him until now.

“Kikun, do you mind…” The image vanished, the screen went gray. “I need the kephalos’ full attention for this.” She scowled at the console, then at him. “It’s going to take forever as it is. Barakaly Lak Dar, that’s the PO of our chariot, he had a mind like a snake with hiccups. Why don’t you take some lunch and a stunner and go for a walk or something?”

Kikun rode the lift to the ground and stepped onto patchy grass. The lightness of his body startled him. Autumn Rose hadn’t warned him about the lower g. Moving was a little like walking in water without, the resistance of water. A very peculiar feeling.

He held tightly to the rail of the lift and sucked in a long breath as he listened to the faint susurrus of the grass. That sound, ah that sound, it was an ache in the heart. A wound.

The morning sun was warm on his face, but the air was nippy; it smelled of pollen and grass, of fish and weed, mud and decay. Something dead a long way off added a faint pungency to the mix. It wasn’t exactly his homesmell, but near enough to evoke a stream of memories.

He closed his eyes and let them flow over him, the good and the bad.

For the past three years he’d been caught up in Ginny Seyirshi’s plots. No time to stop and think, no urge to let go and drown in memory.

Now there WAS time.

Too much time.

He panted and his fringed ears trembled, his eyes flooded with tear gel. He leaned against the railing, head down, remembering, remembering, remembering… until the spasm was finished, then he sighed and scrubbed away the gel.

After shrugging out of the backpack, he left it on the lift floor and walked cautiously across cream-colored sand to water blue as shattered sapphire.

He squatted beside the tender wavelets that lapped at the sand and scooped up a handful of the water. Lissorn would have scolded him until his ears rang: one does not eat and drink promiscuously on strange worlds; bad things can happen to one’s insides. He smiled at the memory, tasted the water. It was fresh and cold, with a clean green flavor. He spread his fingers and let the rest of the liquid run away. There was a spiky weed growing a short way out in the lake. Balancing on one hand he stretched over, broke off a branch, sniffed at it, bit into it. Not much taste but a good crunchy texture. He squatted and chewed until all he had left was a wad of strings which he spat out. He scooped up more water, swished it around to clean his mouth, spat that out also.

He knew well enough what he was risking, but a certain recklessness drove him on, a recklessness that was his by godright and a plague on his comfort more than once.

He got to his feet, ran along the beach, restless, nervous, while the day got colder instead of warmer.

The wind rose. The sky was a pale pale blue, almost white, empty now except for a few, high rat-tails of cloud that merely emphasized the blankness of the blue.

His bare foot touched a length of driftwood bleached almost white by water, wind, and sun. Wood. He stared down at the section of branch for a long moment, then bent and picked it up. Yes. Fire. I’ll build me a fire. Four fires. Fires to send a tocebai home. Yes.

Driven by a new urgency, he strode along the sand gathering pieces of wood small enough to carry. As soon as he had an armload, he took it to a long narrow spit where the feeder creek entered the lake, dumped it, and went back to hunt for more.