Bhotta's Tears: Book Two of the Black Bead Chronicles (28 page)

“We need to talk, La … Little Mother,” Bohea said softly, his voice breaking into her thoughts. “You must listen to the message I have been sent to deliver.”

She looked up at them both. Sam was staring at the bloodstones scattered at her feet.

“So close. No one will ever believe this,” Sam said faintly. She ignored his insanity, choosing to meet Bohea’s eyes instead.

“I do not have time. Later,” she said. “You will get your turn.”

Bear and Star Woman wanted attention. She needed to do something with the stones. They lay on the ground, their deep color consuming all the light in the world. Bear Under the Mountain wanted her to heal them of Old Father Bhotta’s death. It surprised her that Bear thought her capable of this, considering her history with tuning.

What if I fail?
 

I am in you. You cannot fail,
Bear Under the Mountain said.
 

She stared down at the stones at her feet, too tired to suss out the nature of Bear’s riddle.

OK. Just for argument’s sake, pretend I can do this. There are too many of them. Time is running out.
 

Bear said nothing, thinking the answer obvious.

She looked down at the one in her hand. An old proverb popped into her mind. How did one clean up a mess? One spot at a time.

One problem at a time, she thought, as she held the stone in her hand and began listening to its song to the exclusion of all else. It was a shame really. It was a beautiful stone, the deep color found in only the oldest of bhotta. Old Father’s death had been insignificant when compared to rest of his life. It made her sad, thinking she had to re-tune the stones and erases those memories.

Bear grinned a big toothy grin and Star Woman smiled encouragingly, wanting her to explore that thought. What was the alternative to re-tuning? She looked at her aching hand. What if the stones were only bruised and not broken? What if you could run your fingers through the matrices of the stone, pressing at them hard enough to push everything back into place, mending what was broken while leaving Old Father intact?

With that thought clear in her mind, Cheobawn began to gather energy. She needed to be stronger than the agony etched into the stones. She drank deep from the earth under her feet and began the double spirals. Bear surprised her. He surged up through her body and into the stone. She was not about to turn down help if it was offered but the spirals needed to balance. She could already feel them begin to topple.

In desperation, she flung her will out into the dark of space meaning to steal from Star Woman to shore up the opposite spiral. Star Woman had been waiting. The Dark Mother flowed through her, mirroring Bear’s energy, meeting him in the heart of the stone in her hand.

Cheobawn lost herself in the maelstrom of their union. It lasted forever but was over in less time than it took to draw in a breath. She waited patiently as the bubble faded, until her eyes could see and her ears could hear again. Then she checked the stone. Old Father still lived inside it. Not even his death memories had been forgotten. But the death was a small and distant thing compared to the vast universe in which it now hung. Even Garro was there, his life and death like a flash of a falling star at the edges of the matrix.

She froze as Old Father’s memories whispered to her out of his stone. Up until this very moment, the great lizard’s death had been the overwhelming note in his complex song. She had been focused only on that all night.

A memory surfaced, now, wanting her attention. Old Father remembered the time when humans did not inhabit this planet. The coming of humans and the end of Spider seemed to be the same event. Did Mora know? Cheobawn shuddered. She refused to imagine such a conversation.

Cheobawn found Bear in the ambient.
Why do you not hate us? Why allow us to infest your skin and take over your world?
 

Are you not the Children of my Heart?
Bear asked.
 

Cheobawn nodded. The oldma’s had a saying.
When is a thing out of place not out of place? When it belongs.
 

Cheobawn looked down at the stone in her hand and smiled, content. Now for the next stone. Reaching down for the nearest crystal, she paused. Something had changed. She touched a finger to the bloodstone closest to her toes, surprised at what she found. It was now a twin to the one in her hand. Healing one stone in the set healed them all. She looked up, excited, wanting to tell someone.

Only Bohea saw her face. He smiled slyly, knowing what she had done but twisting the truth of it inside his heart.

“You did it, didn’t you?” he said. “I no longer wonder why the Scerrons think you dangerous.”

“I am only seven,” she said, meaning she was too little to be a danger to anyone but herself and those who loved her. Again the words betrayed her, flying through the air and turning into something else in Bohea’s ears.

“That, Little Mother, terrifies me beyond all else.” he agreed without a trace of humor in his voice.

Connor returned with a cloth satchel. He gathered up the bloodstones, being careful to pick up every one. When he was done, he held the bag out to her. She shook her head.

“Give it to Megan. Ask her if they will pass her inspection.”

After Connor departed she turned back to Bohea.

“You are wrong about everything,” Cheobawn said softly.

“No, I don’t think I am,” Colonel Bohea said.

She would have argued further but Tam returned. He glared at Bohea. Bohea looked away, pretending to be content with silence, biding his time.

Tam had clothes in his hands. They were Sam’s, raided from one of his packs. Tam helped her into a pair of shorts that were too big and a shirt that fell to her knees. He retrieved her belt from the discard pile just in time. Alain was rolling the bloody clothes into a tight bundle around a large stone. Tam rinsed the plasteel webbing out before cinching up her shorts over the top of the shirt. The bloodstone she held in her good hand went into one of the many pockets in the shorts, freeing her hand up for riding.

Alain heaved his bundle into the center of the pond. It fell with a great splash and sank into the shadows in the bottom of the pond, taking the smell of death with it. She smiled at him, thinking him ever so clever for thinking up this timely alternative to digging a hole. He smiled back and tousled her damp curls as he passed her on his way to see to Sam.

An image of the bennelk moving down the trail in front of unseen followers drifted across her mind.

She looked up. The herd stood still, noses high, sniffing the uncertain wind.

She clicked her tongue in alarm. Her Pack grew instantly still, their eyes scanning the clearing.

Move,
Tam’s fingers said as he leaped to his feet. Grabbing her upper arm, he pulled her up and guided her towards the herd.
 

The bennelk knelt readily, not alarmed enough to resent presenting a vulnerable flank to the unseen threat but more than happy to allow a rider to mount if it meant moving further down the game trail. Alain shushed Sam’s complaints as he cut the bonds on his wrists and shoved his arms into another of his shirts. Tam threw Cheobawn up on Herd Mother, not waiting for the animal to kneel. Megan was already mounted, her blade at the ready. Bohea, his ties also cut, was shoved unceremoniously up onto the back of his kneeling animal by Connor and then left to his own resources as Connor mounted his own animal. Tam checked the clearing one last time and then flicked a finger.

Go, Mother,
she said silently as Tam sprang to the back of his own mount.
 

The herd, happy to comply, sorted itself out and paced single file down the game trail, their strides wide and quick.

Chapter Twenty Five

They traveled south, towards the Escarpment and Meetpoint dome. Tam’s fingers were busy
as he tried to let the rest of the Pack in on the plan, explaining as best he could with the simple concepts of fingersign. Cheobawn let him deal with the questions flying silently between the members of her Pack as she tried to listen at their backtrail for the danger Herd Mother thought might be following them. It was hard to hear anything over the noise in the ambient. Old Father whispered contentedly from her pocket and the stones in Megan’s bag whispered back.
 

Cheobawn could not resist the urge to slide her hand into her pocket and let her fingers caress the stone. When she touched it, she could feel the other stones, in the bag safely tucked away inside Megan’s tunic. Impressions flashed across her mind, intimate thoughts that were not her own. Cheobawn sent loving thoughts back down the threads of connection, smiling.

Something nagged at her. She had overlooked something, forgotten something. The herd came to the place where the game trail split, one fork heading east across Badnite Creek, the other continuing south. The herd instinctively turned east. A happy thought filled the minds of the bennelk.

Stop, stop, stop,
Cheobawn thought frantically. Herd Mother snorted in alarm and planted her feet, stopping so abruptly that the other animals knocked against her and each other. The bennelk milled about, unsure and uneasy, anxious to continue.
 

Dome full of herd and hay,
Mother repeated, reassuring her.
Safe with lost sisters.
 

“What do you mean, lost sisters?” she said out loud. Then she knew. She cursed softly.

“What?” Tam asked, not liking the desperate look on her face.

“I was so busy listening behind us, I forgot to listen to where we are going. Sybille is at the Meetpoint dome.”

“And this is bad, why?” Alain asked. “I, personally, would be glad for a few more trained warriors.”

“If Sybille gets her hands on these two, they will never be allowed to leave.” Cheobawn said.

Tam snorted. “Leave? I doubt very much they will survive the first few seconds. I don’t want to alarm you but you look like you have been rolled down a hill full of boulders. Hayrald is going skin me alive when he sees you. My only hope for survival will be that by the time he is done with those two, maybe he will be too tired to do more than yell at the rest of us.”

“Maybe we can sneak around them. You know, circle wide around the dome and then head to the drop point. We could get rid of these two and then go back to the dome before Hayrald wakes up and comes looking,” suggested Megan.

Cheobawn was willing to try anything. She was about to tell Herd Mother to move on when she caught the thoughts of the herd.

“Stop that!” Cheobawn yelled, slapping her mount’s shoulder, hoping to distract Herd Mother from what she was doing. “Stop talking to them. Oh, by all that is …“ Cheobawn looked down the trail. The bennelk in the dome were exhausted, as were their riders. Sybille had pushed them hard all night long and they had fallen into deep sleep not long after entering the dome.
 

Now, with Herd Mother gathering her lost sisters up with her mind, the bennelk in the dome were awake and anxious to be outside. All the riders were up and moving. Vinara was with them. Cheobawn could taste her through the link she shared with Herd Mother. Vinara was not stupid. She would guess correctly at the source of her animals’ unease.

Cheobawn looked up into her Pack’s eyes and shook her head in despair.

“The bennelk in the dome can hear us. They are awake and restless. Sybille is up. She will not waste daylight, waiting for us to show up. If we go east, we will meet her on the trail.”

“We can go south,” Connor suggested. They all turned to look at him.

“What good would that do? We can’t cross the creek further south,” Alain said.

“What if we brush out our tracks then get out of sight and wait. When they come looking for us they will follow our tracks and turn north. We can sneak around behind them and make a run towards the dome.” Connor said, obviously thinking out loud.

“No,” Megan said firmly.

“Why not? That was actually something of a good idea,” Alain said, sounding amazed.

“We are not sending anyone we know up that trail, back into … that, without a warning.” Megan said, nodding northward, a grim look on her face.

Tam looked back at Cheobawn.
 

“It’s up to you. I personally do not want to play Hare and Hound with Sybille, if its all the same to you,” said her Alpha.

“Nor do I,” Cheobawn agreed, shuddering at the thought. Sybille chasing them through the maze of game trails, getting more annoyed with every passing moment would be the stuff of nightmares. She chewed on her lower lip as she considered their two captives. Bohea met her gaze, knowing full well how his life hung in the balance, yet he was untouched by it. Sam looked confused but he was not so confused that he did not understand the gist of the conversation. Only now, after all that had happened, was he beginning to understand just how desperate his situation had become.

She looked back at the boys.

“Is there any way to leave a message telling Sybille which way to go? We need to tell her not to go towards the dead bhotta.”

“Sure. We can blaze the bark of a tree,” Tam said, not quite seeing the point of doing so. She sighed. Explaining things to people consumed a lot of the time they did not have.

“We go south, all the way, to the edge of the Escarpment. Then we let them climb down from there. By the time Sybille shows up, they will be long gone.”

“Wait, wait. It doesn’t work that way,” Sam said, desperation tinging his voice. “You can’t just climb anywhere you want. It may be illegal but people climb the cliffs for sport. The entire face of the Escarpment has been mapped, every crack, every ledge, every resting spot. All the viable routes have been climbed time and again, the pitons already in place. No one has blazed a new route up the cliffs for over two decades. It would be suicidal to try to descend this close to Meetpoint Falls. The stone is rotten and the handholds too wet.”