Shadowplay

Chapter 11. History for dinner

As the sun went down, blackflies, gnats, and other biters rose in thick clouds; with them came flocks of small, hairy fliers who went swooping through and through the swarms, sucking, in the insects like whales straining plankton out Of seawater, yet even they scarcely made a dent in the hordes; more and more of the biters appeared as if the air itself squeezed them from, the dark. Shadith scratched and slapped, then pulled a blanket around her and huddled close to the fire, privately mourning the absence of bugbombs and silentscreamers; technology might have its drawbacks, but meeting nature face to face wasn't all that great either. She waved the endbit of a dried frond back and forth before her face and squinted across the fire at Asteplikota.

"Pakoseo," she said. "What is that? I know this much, it's some kind of pilgrimage."

He looked up from the pot where he was stirring the soup he was making from the remnants of supper. "History lecture?"

"Yeh. About the Pase-something-um-wapal, something long like a river."

"Pasepawateo Mitewastewapal, from the god-tongue, the god-time. It means the time of dreaming and desire when lightning strikes the heart. Where'd you hear that?"

"About and about, I'll talk about that later." She whipped the frond fan back and forth, taking out her irritation on the bugs and air. "It's your turn, professor." She dropped the fan in her lap. "Give us your lecture, historian, tell us what's going on here."

Asteplikota moved the stirstick round and round the pot and frowned at the fire. "So. Lecture as requested."

Five thousand years ago the People came here to escape the chaos of dissolution, a thousand worlds pulling and tearing apart. The Omniskaal Empire. We were out on the edge, fair game to any warlord with the power to take and hold us. Those who could, left. There were three ships in our lot. Do I need to tell you their names? Right. Nataminaho. Opalekis-Mimo. Nikamo-Oskinin. We came here, not by choice,, we came trusting to fate which. almost killed us. We were flying on fumes when we landed.

We fled and found and thought we were safe.

It was a cold world, harsh everywhere except around the equator. We landed where we had to and marched south. It was a terrible march and only a tenth survived it. Myth tells us that Nataminaho hunted for us, OpalekisMimo found the path and led us along it, Nikamo-Oskinin sang strength and endurance into us, sang the worst of the evils away from us. It is possible this is sign for the captains of the ships, I don't know, there's very little written from that time.

For a thousand years we lived there in those high-walled fertile valleys and fiords. We prospered and spread out. And we exiled into the icy northlands anyone who disturbed the peace of the wealthy and the powerful. We sent our criminals and rebels to that high plateau with its monster glaciers. We sent them to die off where we wouldn't see them suffer. And we shot them if they came back. We lost a lot on the hard trek south, books, technology, history; sometimes I think we lost our souls.

At the end of a thousand years, everything changed. The sun kicked into a new phase, it was suddenly much brighter, much hotter. The ice began to melt off the northlands, the lowlands became unlivable even before they flooded. The powerful claimed the mountain slopes, then the mountain tops, fighting to keep their hold on the riches they saw as their right. They were not given to flexibility. As far as they were concerned, what had always been would always be.

Bit by bit the rest traveled north and tried to claim land there. The difficulty was, the northland wasn't empty any longer, the exiles were there. The Pliciks they called themselves. Yes, our present day landlords and rulers. They were nomads, hunters, trappers, herdsmen. The melting of the ice nearly destroyed them before they figured out how to change with the changing land. At first they killed the people coming north; they had centuries of hate to purge. Then some Plicik had a bright idea and-made slaves of the newcomers, used them to help him and his clan not only survive but prosper.

That first wave became the Maka caste. They were mostly landless workers whose only value was the strength of their backs and arms, kept ignorant and unlettered because they were more tractable that way and thus more valuable-until the floodtime when there was no more room for them and they were stripped of value and discarded. They are still ignorant and unlettered. The powerful may change their faces, but never their natures.

Fifty years passed. A second wave went north. These became the Tanak caste. Farmers and fishermen, miners and smiths. Skilled laborers. Like the Maka they were men who worked more with their hands than their minds; they could read and write and cipher but had little interest in book learning beyond that bare minimum. They lost their value like the Maka had, but reclaimed it in the North as slaves. The Pliciks had learned not to waste good sturdy workstock.

There were two other waves before the southland was finally abandoned to heat and flood-which happened several centuries after the change began. The third wave were the merchants, the Tawa caste, they were not made slaves, they negotiated their way in. In the fourth wave were the priests, officers, administrators, landowners, the rich and influential, the Kisar; they bought their way in.

This is how our world wags, Shadow. No slaves now, but Kisar sits on Tawa, Tawa on Tanak and Tanak on Maka, with Pliciks atop them all.

With one exception, the Islanders. The exiles created exiles of their own, banishing folk to island chains off the coasts, the remnants from the parts of the northlands that got drowned. The Islanders do not permit castes and they take in fugitives from the Pliciks and the Priests, rebels, the disappointed, the disaffected, whoever wants to come. Naturally they don't do this out of altruism, they are not saints or holymen, they do it out of a profound hatred. for the mainlanders and for profit's sake. They tolerate no one who cannot earn his way either with a skill or as a weapon against the Pliciks and the Priests. I would not say it to them because they could not hear or understand it, but in their way they are nearly as rigid and oppressive as the Pliciks and the caste system.

Don't worry, Shadow, there isn't much more, I am winding my way to the explaining of the Pakoseo Year. Rigidity has its strengths and its breaking points. Near the end of the first millennium after the Flood, a Prophet arose among the people. He called himself Oplanikamon, God's singer, and he cried out against the evils he saw around him. It was a time of famine and terrible storms and great corruption among the Pliciks and the Priests. He sang his visions so powerfully that those who heard him saw them also. Nataminaho, Opalekis-Mimo and Nikamo-Oskinin stood behind him and guarded him and set their seal on him. The people saw Visions and believed him. He sang of returning to the holy time, the first-flight time, returning to the beginning and recreating virtue. With the Three striding before him, he led the first Pakoseo to the landing place, walking across the land, going from nation to nation and gathering in the people, taking them with him to the place where the ships came down. They tended the place and made it beautiful; they sang and saw visions and went home again, and-who knows why-life was better for a while.-No more slaves, for one thing.

I'm skipping over a lot, all you need is the outline and the understanding that what happened was wholly beyond the control of either the Priests or the Pliciks. They took bitter bloody measures to stop it and they could not. The Question and the Secret Police in each of the five nations tried to stop the Pakoseo and they could not. People left their villages, their farms, their businesses, their jobs; they traveled in a great river across the land. They were shot, axed, hung, imprisoned, beaten, tortured. They suffered hunger, thirst, exhaustion. Thousands died, but more thousands, came and finally there were not enough soldiers or prisons to hold them. The Prophet walked with the Three through the five nations and brought the people to the landing place and no one could stop him.

Five nations. Wapaskwen, where you are now; we here have control, of the landing site, the Mistiko Otcha Cicip. There are also Kwamitaskwen in, the central plains, Kwamaskwen, north plains, Swamiskwen, south plains, south coast and Nakiskwen on the west coast. Except for small differences in dialect, they are much the same. The Nistams loathe each other, they're bitter rivals, but they stand together against internal and external threats. It's why the Islanders never try invading the Main. It's also why rebellions have never succeeded before now.

Let's see. What else is there?

The Pakoseo Year happens when it happens.

The Priests and the Pliciks always try to suppress it. They never succeed.

Then they try running in front of the swell and turning it to their advantage. That generally does work. Eventually. It happens in times of anger and suffering.

Three years ago there was a plague in Aina'iril and a dozen other cities. Outbreaks in all five Nations at approximately the same time. And in all five Nations, the Pliciks and their sycophants ran for the country and left the city to the dying. Which spread rage and despair among the people who couldn't get out and among the factory workers and farmers when the Priests and Pliciks brought the plague with them. Thousands died before the sickness went away as mysteriously as it came.

The signs and portents arrive with the rising rage of the people.

Prophets appear and call for atonement, poets sing subversive rhymes.

Students rebel and children go wild, destroying and killing.

People dream of the Three. Some see Them walking.

The whisper starts: Pakoseo Pakoseo Pakoseo.

Last Harvest Festival the Gospah Ayawit proclaimed the Pakoseo Year. He didn't want to, but he had no choice.

It's been three generations since the last, but our souls remember and when the time comes we know it and we walk.

The insect horde grew quieter as the night got darker and older, they weren't flying about so much; instead, they crawled into every crevice and ran on any bit of exposed skin. Out in the murk around the islet there were coughing grunts, howls, peeping cries, hoots, splashes, and other less identifiable noises. Shadith sipped at the broth from Asteplikota's pot and frowned at Rohant's back.

The Dyslaeror was standing at the edge of the islet, sniffing and hawking to clear his head and staring down the stream where Kikun had gone-not that he could see anything except the occasional glimmer of moonlight reflecting off the leaden, viscid water. He felt her watching him, coughed, spat into the water, and came back to the fire. "He's probably in the belly of some crawler." He shook his head vigorously to drive off the crawling biters. "Dio! Asteplikota! There any kind of bugoff in your gear?"

Asteplikota looked up, startled out of the unhappy memories his minilecture had provoked. "What?"

"Never mind, we couldn't be that lucky." He dug out another blanket, scrubbed it over his face and arms, snapped it through the air to shake off smashed and clinging bugs, pulled it around his shoudlers as he dropped to the ground. "Shadow, that Talent of yours, how far can you stretch it?"

"You're that worried about him?"

"He should have been back an hour ago. All he meant to do was ditch the boat soon's he found a good spot, sink hole or something like it."

"Maybe he got lost, you can't see-much of the sky and one muddy tree looks a lot like another muddy tree even in the daylight"

"He doesn't get lost, Lissorn says it's one of his Talents." He shook his head again, violently, not in negation but to send his dreadlocks flying and drive away the biters that were crawling after the moisture in his nose, eyes, mouth. "Can you find him?"

"Keep the flies off me and I'll try. I think we'd better not talk about limits, the air has ears, remember?"

"Dio." He got to his feet. "Stretch out and give me that fan."

She lay for a moment doing nothing, just enjoying the freedom from buglegs and the coolness of the dirt, then she began considering the mechanics of this operation. She was fairly sure her Talent wouldn't operate much beyond the local horizon-unless she had a mount she was specially tuned to. Sasso? He's handy and he has a raptor's eyesight…

She felt around for the hawk. Comfortably filled with fish, lizards and hairy fliers, he was asleep in the tree that arched its fronds over the fire and concealed its glow. No. He doesn't know the terrain-if you could call it terrain, being it's mostly water and muck. Horizon, hmm, I doubt Kikun went that far anyway, once he ditched the boat he'd have to walk the glop back here. He's not lazy… he's not stupid either. Local forms will have to do the job. For lagniappe, get more data about this gunge we got to travel through.

She reached without trying to touch down, just setting the direction in her mind, getting a feel for the envelope of life about her; all that practice in the ship had honed her skills until she was sharper than she'd been any time since she acquired this body and its Talent. Ginny monster's good for something. Funny, it's hard to think about him as a monster. He's so, I don't know, so commonplace. There's nothing GRAND about him, just a little man… yeah… with some weird twists in his psyche. Forget that, Shadow, you got work to do.

She touched one of the furwings, a female. Her cheekpouches were stuffed with the bodies of insects; if archetypal patterns held true here, she was taking her catch to her nest so she could feed her offspring. It was the time of year for births… or hatchings… no, births; as far as Shadith could tell, the local warmbloods weren't mammalian, but did birth live offspring. Undeveloped. Not quite marsupials, but close. She slid deeper into the brain and looked out through furry's eyes; she didn't try to control the little creature, it was going in the right direction, that was enough for the moment. Ahlahlah, I was right, one gloppy tree is just like the next. No sign of people. Aste didn't say anything about people living in here. Hmm. Plague in the cities. I know what that means, Ginny's fingers twiddling in the stew. Plague, tsoukbaraim, it hadn't got to me, not really, what he plans for this world. Rohant said. I believed him. In my head, not my gut. Gods, it's sick-making. He's using us to make it worse. We've GOT to get away from here. Lee, do I wish you were here! You and Gray and Swardheld and anyone I could dig up. If we can just get away, maybe it'll scare him off. We've got got GOT to get away.

The furry dipped toward one of the pulpy trees; she was heading for her nest. With a mindsigh Shadith slid out of her and probed about for another mount.

She brushed past a number of wispy animal souls but nothing she cared to seize on until she sniffed out a grumbling hunger sliding along beneath her. She dropped and nudged inside the slither's brain. The beast was mostly mouth with row on row of snag teeth like a slowly revolving saw, as one set wore out another marched into place. He was sinew and gristle, six tentacles rippling powerfully, driving him through the water faster than the boat had gone. His eyes were as primitive as his teeth, but his nose was extraordinarily subtle, reading scent streams as easily as she read print. She slid more firmly into that section of the brain and for the first time began picking up traces of Kikun, scent traces lingering on the surface of the water; her excitement made the slither nervous, he jerked about briefly, then sank into the mud and sulked.

Shadith swore, calmed herself, and began soothing him. Because he was hungry and hunting and anyway had the attention span of a gnat, he forgot his pique and went back to his cruising. He darted his head to one side, caught a fish, chewed it once or twice and swallowed without a pause in the beat of his tentacles.

He kept on, snatching, chewing, swallowing; the rambling stream was a soup seething with life. Kikun's scent traces were fresher with every beat of his tentacles. Fresher and fresher-and then gone.

With some difficulty Shadith disengaged from the slither, hovered until she felt her reach melting on her, the pointthrust of her mind getting set to snap back into her body. She groped about for another mind, a land mind, nothing, nothing, then a flat warty hopper like a cowpat with legs. She slipped into him, it was like trying to squeeze into a too-tight dress; that brain barely qualified as more than a switching station. The hopper had almost no long-term memory and no more than a few concepts which were on the level of this-hurts-keep-away and thistastes-bad-leave-alone. Sense data flowed through him without lingering, his very efficient because very simple instinct-sieve separating out the few elements that meant danger or food or sex and allowing the rest to drift away unacknowledged. As she was settling in, the hopper flipped out his tongue, gathered in a lacewing, crushed it against the horny roof of his mouth and gulped it down. When the tongue was out, she quivered to a doubling in the breadth and intensity of the sense data; like many reptiloids he had scent receptors in his tongue, receptors that drew in faint traces of Kikun. . While the hopper speared and crunched more insects, she left the pointthrust in him and retreated to her own brain to sort through what she'd found and decide what to do next. Kikun walked by there. When? Can't be less than an hour. More like two. When we were starting supper. Even if he crawled it wouldn't take more than twenty minutes to run the boat this far. How long does scent linger on land after the maker passes? Wonder if Rohant knows? Should I surface and ask? No. It doesn't really matter, you don't need to know. He went past there all right. Why? He's going the wrong direction. Lost? Rohant says no. Hmp. I need another mount, I can't do anything with this creature. Looks like I come back to Sassa after all.

She snapped the pointthrust loose, reorganized herself, and slid into the hawk's brain. This wasn't just a matter of riding, she had to take control and force the bird into doing something against his will and his nature. There was another distraction that made her task doubly difficult. The Ciocan was tightly linked to his hawk, he knew where Sassa was at all times, shared his tactile sensations-rode the air with him-shared his emotions, though he couldn't look through his eyes as she did. He could feel her easing into Sassa's brain and was jealous of her Talent, that came through strongly, it was rather like being whipped with nettles-though not all that unpleasant even with the scratchiness because he liked her and seemed to want to see her as a Dyslaerin (he'd said something like that once, that she reminded him of his toerfeles, Miralys), probably because he felt himself, challenged by her and had no other way of dealing with what he felt. (Courtesy of that bastard Ginny? Oh, gods.) He was managing well enough before this touching/rubbing thing, handling the (artificially imposed?) relationship by seeing her as an out-season Dyslaerin. Trouble was, she wasn't seasonal-that screwed everything up for poor old Rohant. Dyslaera females were essentially asexual when not in heat, insatiable when in; they were sleek and powerful, tough as hard rubber and apt to vent both annoyance and passion with claws that were smaller but sharper than the males'; sex among the Dyslaera tended to be a noisy combination of wrestling match and knife duel. Shadith knew enough about them to make her wary of getting involved with a male capable of satisfying a Dyslaerin, especially an alpha…

But he was a hot pressure in the hawk, powerfully sexual-in fact, the hawk acted as an amplifier as well as a transmitter of emotion and even that short time they'd rubbed against each other left them both aroused and wanting, at the same time wary of doing anything about it; their branches of the Cousin tree had diverged too far from the trunk.

And all of that was beside the point. She tried ignoring him; it wasn't, easy. Even with her attention focused on Sassa, she was intensely aware of Rohant bending over her, waving the fan across her face to keep the flies off, she could feel his heat, she could smell him, smell the rich musk rolling off him, sending her barely post-pubescent body into an uproar that made thinking the hardest thing she'd ever done; much more and she was going to forget all about size differences and the bloody habits of mating Dyslaera…

She clamped her teeth on her tongue and wrenched her mind once more from her erogenous zones, furious at herself, raging to get after Kikun, to find him and bring him out of whatever he'd fallen into. Even as she struggled, though, there was a small voice down under that turmoil saying: why all this passion, Shadow? You've known this pair three days, to speak to. They're not friends, they're barely acquaintances. That's not to say don't go after the little man, he's an odd and charming little man and doesn't deserve to be abandoned, but cool it, hmm? She ignored the voice, got Sassa under control and sent him winging north and east, hastening to the place where the hopper was, the place where Kikun had come out of the boat to walk on land.

Shadithmind rubbing uncomfortably against Rohantmind, she sent the hawk swooping low over the treetops, discovering then following a ridge of dry ground that wound through the water and the muck, the reeds and gnarled trees standing knee-deep in the wet, a ridge frequently interrupted by sections where water had eaten away stone and earth.

A faint glow seeped through the heavy canopy off to the left of the ridge, a subtle graying scarcely perceptible in the light of the largest of the three moons. She took Sassa down into the tops of trees growing thickly on an islet like theirs, let him find a perch among the fronds, then looked through his eyes at the scene below.

Kikun was tied into an inert package and thrown on the ground beside one of the several small fires, tethered neck and ankles to two trees. At the moment he was being ignored, but Sassa's eyes showed Shadith the tears, abrasions, and assorted bruises developing on the areas of flesh visible; he'd been beaten savagely. She shivered with rage, but clamped down on the reaction before she lost control of the hawk. She began scanning the rest of the camp. Four… six… seven men… What a bunch of scrags. At least three rungs down from Silvercreep's lot. Which I didn't think possible. Gods.

One of the men was kneeling beside what looked like a pile of junk. He cursed, slapped at a part of the pile, getting a wobbling shriek that went through to the bone but cut off before it did major damage. Sassa.shook his feathers, then settled to sulk as Shadith blocked all his attempts to get out of there.

"Pey, nish, nisto, Shaker. Come, come, come. Swamp-man here."

The com sputtered, broke into a low whistle; riding the whistle, a tiny, tinny voice: "Mita, sanki, niya, Swampman. Make it fast, kana swarmin all over us."

"Pass word, Shaker, we got part a what the' wan', gonna go lookin fer th' rest come mornin. Set a meet. T'morra night. Tell 'm don' push, no way the' gonna find 'em 'thout us. Nish, pay, niya, out." Swampman slapped the corn off, got to his feet. He was a tall man, bone thin with a head like a skull. He wore a profusely fringed leather shirt and leggings, a bright red loincloth, bones threaded on string, along with nuts, seeds, and bits of mirror. He strolled over to Kikun, kicked him in the ribs, not a gentle tap, but no hostility behind it or malice, Kikun was just meat, Shadith fought down another spurt of fury, then loosed Sassa and let him climb into the sky; the hawk was eager to get back, he needed to be closer to Rohant and he wanted more, sleep.

Shadith sat up, leaned against Rohant's knee and drank another cup of Asteplikota's soup. "Trouble," she said. "A band of swamprats have him, seven of them. Seems they have connections outside, the leader made a corneal! while I was watching, probably to Aina'iril. How close are we?" She set the cup beside her, drew her hand across her mouth.

Asteplikota sat on his heels, stared past her into the dark beyond the islet. "Say, forty iskals. We're in the outer edge of the Wetlands. The Fringes. You saw a comset?"

"What's so surprising about that? This world seems littered with them. He had a comset and he was talking to someone about selling Kikun. Us too, by the way. The rats are coming for us in the morning."

"Yes, yes. Of course. You heard what you heard. What's odd is comsets are bad Oteh, urn, luck, fate, something like that, to the shikwakola, the people who live in these Wetlands. They're skittish folk, they don't like drylanders and they won't have dryland Wiha, tech, in their makees, those are the clan houses in, their temporary villages, they're nomadic, pick up and move every few months, take their houses with them. Dryland Wiha puts bad Oteh on a makee. Probably some instrument shorted out in the wet and burned a house down, killed people. Even the Pariahs don't..:" His mouth twitched into a brief smile. "Sorry, Shadow, seems one is a crea ture of habit, ancient habit." He rubbed his hand along the gray/blond stubble blurring his jawline. "One supposes what you saw was a band of Pariahs."

"Pariahs?"

He looked away again, a mix of regret and amusement on his square face. He wasn't a handsome man and he wasn't young; as he himself said, he wasn't the sort you looked at twice, but the more she knew him, the more she found herself liking him. "We do seem to have a propensity for exiling our misfits. What did they look like?" When she finished, he nodded. "Yes, one could even put a name to him. Bonetalker. Not one of our finer citizens. Pariahs. Drylanders started calling them that and they adopted the name. Take a kind of perverse pride in it. They live out here on the Fringes and control the trade, what there is of it, between swamp and dryland. Raid both sides for women." He glanced at Shadith, looked quickly away. "Don't underestimate them. They're dangerous. This is their Homeplace and they know it like you know your music, child. Every third plant in here is poisonous. They know which and how to use them. There are bottomless sinkholes scattered through the Fringes, stories say they herd trespassers and raiders into them, then stand round, drink, and watch the men struggle and go down, wager on, how long before the sink eats them. There's a species of carnivorous muddaubers with stings that could drop an ox; rumors say the Pariahs have tamed the things, can set them on anyone they take a notion to kill. And they share other, even less appetizing habits." He laughed, a few harsh barks. "Which is a pun one would rather not explain."

"Oh, lovely. And you brought us in here."

"Yes, Shadow. Bad as they are, the Question is worse."

"I see."

"No. I don't think you do. I hope you never learn, I had a wife once, I had to watch them… listen while they…" He looked down at his hands; they were shaking. He pressed them against his thighs, stared at them until the shaking stopped. "That doesn't matter now. I thought the shikwakola, the tribes, or the Pariahs, they wouldn't bother me or anyone I brought with me, we have a common enemy, the kanaweh and all such. And we have a bargain, my associates and the swamp folk, unstated but generally honored. We bring the Pariahs medical care and… urn… things they couldn't otherwise get and they give us free passage and shelter when we're pressed. One hadn't quite realized how high a price the Nistam and Ayawit would set on your heads or how soon they'd get the word out. It looks like all bargains are off, for the moment anyway."

"We've got some time. From what I heard, even if his lot don't get us, he's not going to give Kikun up or hurt him until he gets his price."

"We have NO time, Shadow. As soon as that go-between opens his mouth, the Na-priests will have him and there'll be an army of kanaweh heading for the Fringes. And the Pariahs will vanish into the swamp beyond anyone's reach. Which means we get the Dancer back now or not at all."

Shadith stirred. The Ciocan's hand closed on her shoulder, the pressure comforting. "And save our own necks," she said.

"Yes. Along with heart, brain, and liver. The habit one mentioned, remember? Part of their belief system involves eating their enemies, those they can capture intact and unpoisoned. Absorbing their Hitsa, they call it. Hitsa is self-power, soul, and lifeforce combined. If they can't sell us, they'll eat us. They might even prefer that, you three have awesome Hitsa."

"Sari"

"Yes."

Rohant ran a thumbclaw along a mustache tail. "A couple of problems I can see. How do we get to them and how do we avoid spooking them?"

"We take the poleboats I told you about. You said you could use a pole."

"Can." He used a corner of the blanket to blot the-drip from his nose, sneezed suddenly into the wool, wiped his face again. "Dio! I hate this cold. Not without some noise. Especially when I don't know the layout or where the hell I'm going."

"I see. Shadow, that Talent of yours, can you provide a distraction so we can reach them without being spotted?"

"Oh, yes. But you'd better give me some idea what they'd do if the local life came swarming at them. I don't want to scare them into killing Kikun and running."

"They won't, as long as they don't see the Hand-behind. Which means we don't give them time to think about it." Asteplikota got to his feet. "We should wait till near dawn before we move, let them get settled to sleep. Anything to add, Ciocan? No? Good. Shadow, you took a little over an hour to find them and get back; did you run a straight line or turn a lot of bends? Will it take us longer poling?"

"Pretty convoluted. I don't know. Depends on how fast you pole and where the channels are. At a guess, half an hour, not much longer."

"I see. Get some sleep, both of you, one will wake you when it's time." Chapter 12. Running to the rescue, then just running

The poleboats slid across the thick black water with the soft sound of silk clad thighs rubbing together. Standing in the assymetric rear and working the pole with a minimum of drip and sweat, resolutely ignoring the ache in his head and the red misery of his nose, Rohant went first (cats riding before him), using his tie with Sassa to guide him through the labyrinthine web of channels. Shadith couldn't do both at the same time-take the expedition to the camp and organize the distraction-so she had to send Sassa ahead to mark the Pariah Camp for Rohant and give him the direction. She was in the second boat, the one Asteplikota was poling, curled by his feet as she mindrode a monster slither. No mere hitching this, she had a full lock on the brain. It had taken her a while to learn how to manage the tentacles and the rest of the swimming behavior, but now that she had these mechanics snapped in place, she forced the beast to expend energy at a punishing rate, raced him through the twisting channels, through tangles of weed and tree roots, drove him across sandy shoals, until he finally reached the deeper water about the islet.

She let him cruise around it, snatching at fish and other swimmers, crunching them and swallowing them, while she used him as a base to seek out and draw toward the islet the distraction she was constructing. She found a nest of watervipers, about twenty poisonous wrigglers long as a man's arm with stubby vestigal legs at intervals along the flat bodies; she brought them writhing across a shallow stream of clear water at the small end of the teardrop islet and into the tangle of trees and brush around the sandy glade at the big end where the Pariahs had their camp; she held them in a knot while she kept hunting. She found a pod of juvenile slithers in their amphibian phase, prodded them from their mud nests and brought them into the grass outside the circle of firelight. She collected small rodents, furwings, flying lizards,, and a swarm of muddaubers, brought them all into the dark around the sleeping Pariah shikwakola. She withdrew a portion of her attention, opened her eyes. "Ready when you are."

"Rohant, stop a minute." Asteplikota held back until the Ciocan planted his pole, then eased up beside the first boat. He brushed a hand over his long blond hair; the fogheavy nightwind was teasing at it, blowing the strands into his eyes. "How close are we? Do you know?"

The Ciocan blotted his nose on the blanket he'd thrown over one shoulder, thought about the question. "Given the channel doesn't change, maybe five minutes off. Far as I can judge." He slapped at questing biters. "Shadow?"

"Mmh?"

"What's happening?"

She struggled to pull enough of herself back so she could think and speak coherently without loosing her hold on the horde; when she answered him, she brought out the words in small units, sorting through the confusing clutter in her head from the dozens of sensory systems she was tied into "Sleepin. Two watch. Itchy.

They know some thing wrong. Noises wrong. Small lives acting funny, I think. Want to take a chance?"

Rohant smothered a sneeze in the blanket. "Where's Kikun?"

"In middle. Stretched flat. Legs neck tied to two trees."

"Can you get a ring round him to keep them off?"

"Instead of attack?"

"Along with it. No use taking them and losing him."

She frowned. Could she do it? She'd been using Sassa as a prime viewpoint so she could see the whole camp and lay out her attack; at the same time she was trying to keep track of the other viewpoints, ruffling through them like cards she was shuffling, clamping down on all those furious and rebellious brains, holding the horde in stasis until it was time to loose it on the Pariahs; she was rapidly finding out what her limits were and beginning to be frightened of what was happening inside her head. Once the attack started, though, she'd probably have more capacity available; the way her captives were churning about, even the mildest of them raging to bite something, she wouldn't have to do much prodding to turn them on the sleepers, especially when the Pariahs started hitting back. Trouble was, Rohant was all too right, there was no point in any of this if Kikun got skewered or poisoned. Her surrogates weren't going to worry about who they chewed on once they started to swarm; she had to set some kind of barrier around him that would keep them off. She reviewed her forces, made up her mind. "E-heh." she said finally. "Can do."

"Good. Pariahs could go for the hostage when the attack starts." He closed his eyes, leaned heavily on the pole. "Ante, you'd better stay with Shadow, she's going to be too busy to watch out for trouble. Shadow, fix on those sentries, the minute you see them getting really nervous or if they start moving toward Kikun, hit them with everything you've got."

She managed a few gasps of laughter, made a face at him. "Yeh papa."

The Pariah stiffened, turned to face toward the boats he still couldn't see. Before he had a chance to move or shout, Shadith sent the swarm of muddaubers bulleting toward him, turning their rage at her for slaving them into a fury at the first target available; at the same time she sent the flying lizards diving at the second watcher. She brought the vipers crawling into the camp and wound them in a deadly ring about Kikun who lay bright-eyed and smiling, who mouthed the words, Heyah, Shadow into the face of the Queen viper rearing over him. She drove the juvenile slithers out of the grass and aimed them at the sleepers and they came squealing their fury, their stubby legs whirring, their claws tearing up gouts of sand, their rows of teeth clamping on, then sawing at head, limb, torso, whatever they first closed on; she brought the horde of rodents into the ring of firelight, sent them leaping at the Pariahs, biting everything they could get their teeth into. The rest of the beasts she'd collected she let fly or crawl as they would, she had enough to do without them.

Rohant drove the blunt bow into the islet, went leaping into the chaos; using Shadith's stunner, tapping it on/off in micro-bursts and careful to keep the stunbeam off the sublife (he didn't want to flatten Shadith through her surrogates), he dropped Pariah after Pariah as the men came out of sleep into confusion and terror. Less than a minute after he hit dry ground he stood in the middle of bodies, counting them. "Seven down, Shadow. Get this zoo out of here, will you?"

Rohant kicked the comset apart and dumped it in the mud with a grunt of satisfaction.

Asteplikota rested his knife on the rope he'd been sawing at. "That won't stop them." He started cutting again; Kikun was nearly extinguished by a cocoon of ropes, all of them knotted and reknotted so he couldn't be simply unwound; it was going to take work and time to free him. "The moment the go-between opens his mouth, the Na-priests will start peeling his skin; they might not pin this islet, but they'll get the general area out of him and blanket it with sleds and searchers."

Shadith came back from poking about the unconscious Pariahs. "It's not a guess anymore, hmm? They know we weren't in the sled when it blew."

Asteplikota nodded. "If they didn't before, they do now." He pulled the last of the ropes off Kikun's torso, ' waited.

Kikun smiled amiably at him and lay without moving.

Sighing, Asteplikota started freeing the lacertine's legs. "We should get to the coast as fast as we can. The closer we are to the edge when the kanaweh swarm, the likelier we are to break loose. No one fools with the Kihcikistiliks."

Shadith laughed. "I couldn't even say it."

"The Islands in the East, if that's better."

"If we murder your langue, forgive us. We had it thrust upon us rather abruptly with no say in how it was done."

"One had wondered how you knew it." He started peeling the ropes off Kikun's legs. "If you were dumped here as you said."

"There was a bit more to it than I told you."

"I see." He got to his feet, pulling Kikun up with him. "There's no time for histories now, we've got to get moving. I'll lead since I'm the only one with an idea where to go. One had hoped to get a guide from the Pariahs. Things being as they are, that's out. Shadow, I want you in the boat with me with your harp ready to play." why.

"You three have to be The Three. Flaunt it! Loud and filled with color. We can't try sneaking along, we'd simply invite attack. We can't fight the Pariahs, even with your weapons and your talents, my friends. We have to keep them away from us. We have to confuse them, set them arguing among themselves. It's the only way we'll get out of here alive."

Rohant snorted, picked up the blanket he'd dropped in the attack, sneezed twice and wiped his streaming eyes. "Some demigod," he said, "dripping with a cold."

Kikun watched with half-closed eyes, projecting enigma and amusement.

Shadith frowned at him, irritated by that inappropriate insouciance. She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it into peaks, turned to Asteplikota. "Do all of you eat your enemies? Or should I say your victims?"

"No! Of course not. What do you mean?"

"If the Pariahs, the shikwakola, don't believe like you, why should they care about your gods, demigods, whatever they are?"

"Ah. I see. In the Five Nations, the practices differ according to caste or according to kind among the out-caste. Island or Main, God is one and his Servants are honored."

"Aren't you asking for trouble, then, playing games with your own beliefs-or don't you believe?"

"Who's to say one is playing games? More often than not the Avatar himself does not know what he is. She is. Oppalatin works as he will, he is not bound by the fallible logic of man."

She gazed at him a moment, shook her head. "One thing I learned all the long years, you don't argue a man's religion. Come on, let's get out of here."

They slid through the winding channels, poling as quickly as they could to put distance between themselves and the islet, between themselves and the sunken boat, the hunk of metal that would shout its existence if the kanaweh had metal detectors on board their sleds. Shadith knelt before Asteplikota, as she had before, this time plucking tunes from her harp, singing a while, then playing again. It was an eerie feeling, performing for those unseen ears, sensing shikwakola all around her, gliding in parallel streams, sensing their fear, their confusion, the ebb and flow of their anger.

She was beginning to understand how Ginny was using her and the others. It was clear, too clear, clear enough to make her sick when she saw it. They didn't need to do anything, they just had to exist. Everything happening down here was forcing them into the roles he'd planned for them. Everything. They couldn't escape his manipulation-except by literally escaping, getting off this world. Damn the man. I won't be his Typhoid Mary, I WILL NOT! How you going to stop it, Shadow? Look what's happening, Virgin Singer. We've got to get off this world and soon or we'll have done all the damage he wants, everything he wants from us. Pretty little petlings dancing to his jingeetune, dipping our toesies… ah no no, up to our assies in a ocean of shit. I am going to kill that monster. If I ever get my hands on his neck, I'll squeeze till his eyes pop out.

She sang Mad Mara's Lament and put all her rage and sorrow into it and felt an answering anguish from the thinning darkness on either side of them. She wanted to cry out to those hidden listeners, don't believe it, it's not true, but she wasn't about to offer herself as sacrificial victim. There didn't seem to be any middle ground, if she wanted to live, she played the role, if not, she died and what good would dying do? Just get the others killed along with her. No doubt, they'd end as martyrs anyway and that could be the spark that set the world on fire. Ahlahlah, I wish I hadn't thought of that. Martyrs, oh gods, I KNOW that's on his pea-brain agenda. He's going to see the Gospah or the Nistam or both are blamed for killing us and watch the world explode. Maybe you're wrong. Sar, I've got to be wrong. When we're out of this trap, if we get out of it, I'd better have a long talk with Aste about this; if anyone knows, he does.

The air shook and the brightening day turned suddenly dark as a vast blanket of sleds filled the sky over them, flying low enough to brush the fronds of the taller trees. Sassa came screaming down, landed on the bow of Rohant's boat; he perched there hunched over, complaining at the noise and heat with querulous squawks and beak-clashes.

Cutter beams slashed through the foliage, churned the mud, boiled the water around them, bracketing them again and again, missing them each time though they were scalded by the steam from the suddenly heated water and slapped by severed fronds. Hastily, Shadith laid the harp flat on the pouches and dropped to a crouch in the bottom of the boat. Fragmentation bombs dropped around them, missing them every time though she heard screams from the shikwakola who'd been following them, cries of rage, fear and pain. She was splattered by mud thrown up by the bombs, metal fragments went whining through the sides of both boats, inflicting a few small cuts, one ripped across her arm an inch below the pellet wound, another clipped a tuft of hair above her ear. She yelped and grabbed at her arm; a second later she heard a scream behind her and swung round.

Asteplikota clutched at the pole and screamed again, a cutter beam had sliced across the side of his head, removing scalp and hair and the tip of his ear, cutting off the end of his shoulder, she could see the bone glare white in the blackened flesh, she could smell charred hair and carbonized muscle. It wasn't a killing wound, but it was horrible and she shuddered at the pain that scraped her own mind raw as her Talent resonated to it. Cursing under her breath, she dug into her pouch, found her firstaid kit and crawled back to him. She set the kit down, twisted the pole from him as gently as she could and lowered him to the bottom of the boat. He screamed every time she touched him and moaned between the screams. Sweating and crying, she got him down, set a popper against his neck and squirted painkiller into an artery, then sprayed a temporary bandage over the burns and cuts. Asteplikota relaxed and closed his eyes. She eased him onto the pouches, took her roll of gauze and wound it about and about the wounds until they were a little better protected from contamination and unexpected jars.

The flits passed on, most of them. The worst was over here, though she could hear bombs and the hum of the cutters moving south away from them. She heard a raucous cry, looked back and saw the hawk powering into the air. Rohant was flattened out in the second boat like she was in this one, unhurt as far as she could tell, the cats beside him, nervous and upset but untouched. Kikun was standing, doing a peculiar shimmying dance. She stared, not understanding, then turned to gaze at the devastation around her. It seemed impossible they were all still alive. She twisted round and focused on Kikun again. His dance went on and on. Gouts of steam floated around him, the air shimmered as it would with heatwaves in a desert summer, but this was neither desert nor summer. His body wavered and attenuated, was solid flesh again, his edges melted into the air, were sharp and definite again, melted and were sharp… Rohant said you were a god incarnate. I don't believe that, but you're something. Maybe it's Luck, maybe it's you. I don't know.

She sat up, rubbed at her eyes. Looks like the Powers have decided there's no way they can land us, so the next best thing is ash us. And every other warmblood here in the Fringes. Gods, let's get out of here.

Sbe grabbed the pole, levered herself onto her feet. "Rohant, you all right?"

He got up slowly, the cats growling and snapping at his legs as if they resented his moving. He was suffering from feedback, standing without moving, hands pressed to his eyes; he wasn't tied as closely to the cats as he was to the hawk, but there was enough linkage to drive him to the edge of his control. He lowered his hands, blinked, blinked again, then looked hazily about for the pole. When he found it, he bent with care as if he'd break if he moved too precipitously, caught hold of it and straightened up. Still saying nothing, he dug it into the mud of the bottom and stood waiting for her to start moving.

The next hours were nightmare. They worked mechanically through a slowly lessening silence as the Wetlands woke from the shock of the attack.

Kikun stopped dancing. He huddled between the cats, face pinched, eyes squeezed shut, saying nothing, seeing nothing, doing nothing.

Asteplikota lay on the pouches moaning. She didn't dare give him too much of a painkiller; the drugs she carried were calibrated to her body and that body wasn't born here or anywhere near the homeworid of-this offshoot of the Cousin races. It worked on him, thank whatever for that, but every time she popped him, she was half afraid she was going to kill him.

After an hour of steady poling, she peeled out a stimtab and swallowed it. It hit her hard. Empty stomach. But she had no appetite and was too afraid of a repeat attack to stop and rest and eat. And she had to get Asteplikota somewhere a local doctor could look at him. The coast, that's where he said to go, that's where she was going.

She could orient as well as Kikun was supposed to do, she never got lost when she knew where she was and where she wanted to go. She didn't know either now, but she had a line, Asteplikota's line. North and east. She held that line. North and east she went, as directly as she could.

The day developed stifling and muggy, dank and cold, an adjectival misery; she worked up a sweat as she worked the pole; the thick salt film lay in a sticky ooze over' all her body, the discomfort adding another small increment to her depression. The tangle of channels was overgrown and treacherous;-time after time the channel she chose pinched out on her and she had to back up until she found a branch she could pass into and go round the blockage. The first time this happened, she mindrode Sassa for a while, but the canopy was too thick; the hawk couldn't find open channels from above the trees. Besides, she was too weary, she couldn't summon the concentration to pole and ride at the same time; things got fuzzy on her very fast.

In one of those interminable backtracings she let too much time pass and the painpop she'd given Asteplikota wore off. He started screaming and twisting his body about as he tried blindly to get AWAY from the pain. Cursing and impatient, she fumbled through the kit for the popper. The stimtabs were making her hands shake, sometimes her whole body shook; she knew she ought to eat something, there were a few tubes of concentrate in with the rest, but she ignored them, she bad the feeling she'd simply vomit the stuff up again, there was no point in wasting it. She fumbled the shot, but finally managed to hit the artery and Asteplikota settled back into his stupor. The popper was almost empty, something new to worry about.

Rohant was looking back, waiting for her. She got to her feet, took up the pole and waved. And they were off again.

A few sleds passed overhead; the kanaweh were grid-searching now, mopping up any life forms they'd missed on their first pass, but there were no more cutters, no more frag bombs around the boats. Kikun shriveled further, seemed to shrink beneath his skin; it hung in folds about his bones. What she'd suspected before, she was sure of now; he was expanding that curious "not-here" he could project, that made eyes slide off him and minds forget him the moment the eyes turned away. He was covering them and the cover worked.

Clouds gathered as the day wore on. Under the trees it was so dark it might have been midnight. Shadith peeled off the last stimtab, swallowed it, glanced at Asteplikota; his face was flushed with fever, hot and dry. She sighed and got to her feet, looked back at Rohant, sighed again and started poling. Her arms felt like mush, the shaking was worse. She dug the pole in and shoved, pulled it loose, set it again. On and on…

The trees grew smaller and sparser, there was more weed and reed. A heavy breeze lifted, licked against her face; there was no relief in it, breathing that air was like chewing leather, with about as much sustenance and flavor in it. Clouds of pinhead biters drifted aimlessly on the wind, settled on her, crawled about licking up the sweat. On and on…

She heard a croak behind her. Rohant. She planted her pole, looked back. He was crouching, tasting the water. He looked up. "Salt," he said. "The coast."