Iron Axe (24 page)

“I have more than one?” The joke, however, was a feeble one. Talfi had already seen Danr's point, but was reluctant to arrive at it himself, like a cat coming to the inescapable conclusion that the only way to cross the river involved a brisk swim.

“—but what if you also heal aging?” Danr finished. “You could have died and come back a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times, and each time you healed back to your original age. Vik, Talfi—
how old are you
?”

The wyrms slithered on, their odd gait both smooth and rocking at the same time. Behind them, a group of women burst into laughter. Talfi's fingers were white around the amulet and pouch at his throat.

“Maybe I only died that one time,” he countered, but the argument was halfhearted.

“Do you really think that's true?” Danr said, voice low.

Talfi bit his lip, then shook his head. “I think I must be—”

“Ho, Talfi!” An orc, perhaps a year younger than Talfi, pulled his tiger-striped wyrm up beside them. His name was Jaxo, and he was Kalessa's brother. “Race me! If you dare.” He flicked his wyrm's side with the ends of his reins and his wyrm bolted forward.

Talfi gave a mischievous grin. “Watch this!” He vaulted down from the saddle and sped away with the incredible speed Danr remembered from the day they fought the wyrm. Danr watched him go, wishing he could forget so easily.

*   *   *

Aisa dismounted the emerald wyrm and winced as her muscles protested. Kalessa leaped down beside her, supple as soft leather. Aisa sighed. Even the painkilling tea she brewed for herself every morning had minimal effect on riding a wyrm.

The elven hunger only made things worse. She had been hoping that the new climate of Xaron might mitigate it somewhat, but to her disappointment, the near-constant gnawing didn't abate in the slightest. Her first thought on waking every morning was of Lord Vamath's sweet and terrible touch, and her elven lord's face hovered over her when she went to sleep at night.

Alerted by Hess's fast-slithering scouts, the other nests were already arriving along with the Eighth at the council meeting place. This was at the southern edge of a network of rivers called Many Wyrms, a system of tributaries that twisted up to the warm waters of the northern ocean. Aisa had no idea how the orcs found the place—it all looked the same to her. Water and grass were plentiful for the herds, and the open space gave the wyrms room to stretch. Tents and shelters spread from horizon to horizon.

In the center of it all lay the one landmark that looked different: a crater large enough to swallow all of Skyford. Kalessa told her that a thousand years ago, the Sundering had flung up a chunk of rock. It had landed here, carving out this crater. The orcs had been using it as a central meeting place for centuries. Aisa had been expecting a dirt-filled hole, but the floor of the crater was as thick with grass and flowers as the rest of the prairie. On the north side of the crater stood an actual grove of ash trees, tall and thick and majestic. Kalessa said their seeds had been carried there by the Sundering, and the trees had sprouted the day the earth split. Far away, at the crater's very bottom, stood a great slab of a stone table, where, Aisa presumed, the Council of Wyrms actually met.

“We made good time,” Kalessa said. The rest of the nest dismounted. As the nest who had called the meeting and who had brought with them the Great and Foolish Prince Hamzu, the Eighth Nest was allotted high-status camping
space right next to the crater's edge, though what mechanism had decided this, Aisa could not determine.

“My legs will ache for years,” Aisa admitted. Her knees were shaking, partly from the ride and partly from cold desire. She worked hard to push it away. It was all in her mind, she told herself. Elves were a horror who stole lives and bodies. But she couldn't help wanting them as well.

“Bah!” Kalessa, ignorant of Aisa's internal struggle, clapped her on the shoulder. “You are a fine rider, my sister. Soon you will command the wyrms without reins, and I will be there when you receive your egg and your saddle.”

Aisa gave a small smile behind her scarf. Even after seven days together, she found it a little unnerving the way Kalessa so freely gave sisterly affection. During that awful duel, Aisa had nearly lost her water when Kalessa's sword came at her throat, and she had all but fainted with relief when Kalessa tossed the blade aside. She had taken Kalessa's offer of blood kinship without a second thought—a former slave's instinct for self-preservation. Only later in the tent they shared had she wondered if she had done the right thing. Aisa had no females in her family but her dead mother, and she didn't know how to react to a birth sister, let alone an instant sister. Kalessa, for her part, seemed unfazed.

“I saw it in your eyes,” Kalessa said one day from wyrm-back. “Your spirit is strong, and we are much alike, even if you are a human. So now we will learn how to be sisters, and our people will become strong together.”

Aisa narrowed her eyes. “Is that why you did it? Was it some sort of ritual bonding for diplomacy?”

“Ha!” Kalessa snorted. “You have spent too much time with men. You think like them. Sometimes a woman does something because she knows it is right. Now you will spend time with me and let yourself be a woman again.”

Aisa had to laugh, and it felt . . . good.

They had talked of many things while they rode together. Kalessa told of her life on the open plains, of the day she had watched her wyrm hatch, of helping her mother weave her first suit of armor, and Aisa had wondered if they had anything in common at all. But then Kalessa had spoken of the torture of growing up with five brothers and no sisters, of her secret love of swimming, of losing her aunt to coughing sickness, all things Aisa understood intimately. Shyly, Aisa mentioned how she had lost her own mother to the same disease, how she had spent days caring for her, to no avail, and Kalessa reached over from the saddle to hug her while their wyrms moved side by side.

“It is difficult to lose an elder woman,” she had said, “and even more difficult when you have no other woman to talk about it with. Who else can truly understand how it feels?”

And here, Aisa had wept. Kalessa had wept with her, unashamed, and for the first time in her life, Aisa felt the release of shared pain. It even seemed to lessen the hunger, just a little.

It was, she decided, a fine thing to have a sister.

Several wyrms over, Danr climbed down from his own wyrm and stretched. He looked over in Aisa's direction, but she was already on the other side of Kalessa's wyrm, where Danr couldn't see. Whenever he turned his eyes—his
eye
—on her, she felt utterly exposed and naked, with Farek's or Vamath's cold hands roaming over her body. Worse yet, he didn't seem to understand what he had done, how badly he had violated her body and her trust. Hamzu had reached inside her with a cold, clawed hand and pawed over her very soul, and for that she couldn't forgive him. Even if she
could
forgive him, how did she know he wouldn't do it again? Any time he liked, he could close one eye and see her true self naked before him, and she wouldn't even know he had done it.

But even through the anger and betrayal, she kept
expecting to see him next to her, and the loss was as constant as her hunger. He had effortlessly—and thoughtlessly—barged through barriers she had thought impregnable, but she had also done the same to him, hadn't she? In the privacy behind her scarves, she could admit that forcing him to speak truth had made her feel powerful, and she had done it, yes, to hurt him. As he had hurt her. Did that make it right? She did not know, and the ambiguity made her angry.

For a moment, she let herself think of living a life of her own, perhaps in a small cottage at the seashore. People would come to her for healing so she could earn her bread, but some days they would find her cottage empty, because on days when Rolk shone high and clear and the wind was light, Aisa would row out onto the light waves to find the merwomen. And swim with them.

“What is the nature of this argument you are having with Prince Hamzu?” Kalessa asked, and not for the first time. She reached under Slynd to loosen the saddle girth and he expelled a heavy breath.

“There is no argument,” Aisa replied as she always had before.

“You humans,” Kalessa said. “You hide behind your words, but your bodies betray you. Why do you bother, when it is obvious what is happening?”

“We just do,” Aisa replied shortly. “Can I help with that, sister?”

That evening, a procession formed, and a fight along with it. Two orcs from each of the nine nests, one man and one woman, dressed in glittering rainbow finery—bright feathers and singular scales, supple silks and flashing swords—arrived at the crater's edge, ready to parade around the camp. But as they lined up, Kalessa's parents, Hess and Xanda, who represented the Eighth Nest, tried to take a place at the front of the procession. The orc woman who represented the First
Nest shouted in outrage while everyone else gathered to watch.

“The Eighth Nest has no status!” the First Nest orc boomed. “Your herds are thin, your warriors are weak, and your victories are few!”

Here Kalessa looked both embarrassed and indignant. “He lies,” she snarled, but only so Aisa could hear. “He was born into a Fourth Nest and married a woman of the Third Nest, then built an alliance with the Second, and stole two herds from the First. Before they could retaliate, their chieftain died, and he challenged the new, younger chief to single combat so his nest could become First. Now he acts like he's First as if he were born to it. Bah!” She spat.

Aisa shook her head, unable to follow this dizzying path through orcish politics. “Does it matter who goes first in the procession?”

“Of course! People will talk of this meeting for generations, and every bard will recount who went first to the table.”

Hess and Xanda both slapped their wicker shields with their hands. Hess shouted, “We have with us the new emissary from the Stane, Prince Hamzu, Nephew of Queen Vesha, Emissary of the Dark Realms, and Confederate of the Kin Who Conquered Death. He has seen our worth and allied himself with our nest, and we demand promotion!”

This brought up a protest from the Second, Third, and Fourth Nests, and a great deal of shouting and shield-beating ensued. Unnerved, Aisa backed away, but Kalessa seemed unfazed. They were watching the argument near the boundary of the ash grove where the trees came up to the edge of the crater.

“Won't they kill each other?” Aisa whispered.

“Not unless someone draws a sword or says something about eggs.” Kalessa was watching, absorbed with the rest of the crowd. Hamzu stood among the representatives, looking
uncomfortable. Someone had made or lent him new clothes: a sun yellow shirt and black silk trousers and even a pair of brown boots inlaid with silver, probably the first piece of footwear he had ever worn in his life. The ridiculous felt hat was gone, and his dark hair had been washed and combed. He shifted from foot to foot next to Hess, trying to hide his uncertainty. Aisa almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Perhaps if he felt the same hungers she did, he would be more considerate.

“That Hamzu is the handsome one,” Kalessa mused aloud while Hess argued with the chief of the First Nest. “His muscles. His eyes. A strong and striking warrior. He does lend us status, and they will have to let Mother and Father descend to the crater as something higher than mere Eighth.”

“Hmm!” Aisa snorted. But even in her current unhappy mood, Aisa had to admit Kalessa was right. Hamzu was far better looking than anyone at the village had thought. Aisa had never understood how people could have called Hamzu ugly.

Well, that was untrue. She understood quite well. People saw what they wanted to, and when they saw Hamzu, they saw a troll instead of a person. Sometimes she wondered if those splinters the Three had knocked out really existed, or if the Three simply hit Hamzu so hard they changed his perspective. Perhaps they should have hit him harder.

As Kalessa predicted, the argument eventually settled. The Eighth Nest would not receive a promotion just yet, but for tonight only, its representatives and Hamzu would proceed beside the First into the crater.

The prairie sun was setting as the newly ordered procession paraded past shouting orcs—Aisa decided the orcs loved nothing so much as an excuse to shout—and trooped down the crater toward the stone table. Talfi, as the Kin who had cheated Death, was part of the procession as well, though
Aisa had no idea what he would lend to the council meeting. He knew little of events and remembered less. No one had even asked Aisa to attend. She had not wished to, not with Hamzu there, but she had been through everything Hamzu had been, and she should have been asked. It was another slight, and the more she thought about it, the angrier she became. Perhaps she should go down there anyway, force her way in, assert herself, and—

“Enough now.” The emerald-cloaked shaman, the one who had been present at the fire, slid out of the thick shadows of the grove. “How foolish do you think we are, girl?”

Aisa jumped. Kalessa spun, hand on her sword, but when she saw who it was, she relaxed and bowed instead. “Shaman.”

“You are not being ignored, girl. You merely have other responsibilities,” the shaman said, and the voice that emerged from the hood was that of an old woman. The sound stirred Aisa's blood, but she couldn't say why. “Come now. Your sister, too.”

Uncertain, Aisa glanced at Kalessa, who seemed just as nonplused.

“Honestly,” the shaman said. “Do you think everything important happens only at the council? Quickly now—the Tree tips.”

The words sent a pang through Aisa. They were the same words Bund and Vesha had used. Her breath left her. “Stop! What did you say?”

But the shaman had already withdrawn into the grove. Aisa ran after her, trailing scarves and rags. Kalessa, seeing her sister dash into shadow, didn't hesitate to follow. Branches plucked at Aisa and snatched at her clothes as she ran after the shaman through fading light. “Wait!” Aisa called. “What did you mean?”