The Feverbird's Claw (2 page)

“Come on.” The first girl folded her brown patterned fingers imploringly. “We'll be stuck inside for years.”

“Let's just go home,” Salla whimpered.

The girl continued as if Salla hadn't spoken. “I've heard that a few houses have hidden passageways to the outside. In case of siege. If anyone had such a thing, it would be your grandfather.” She glanced at Moralin with a coaxing smile.

In the fighting yard, Moralin knew she was strong and graceful and that sometimes people stopped to watch her. What if in her new life she could have something even better than admiration? She pointed to the top of the high city wall. “Meet me at my grandfather's house when the flag flaps with the wind that brings the afternoon rains.”

After a long moment the girl laughed, a high, nervous sound. “You'll really do it?”

“Of course I will.” Moralin said, now bold. No one was allowed outside the city gates, but the punishment could not be harsh for Old Tamlin's granddaughter. Could it? Anyway, Cora Linga had said she did not need to be afraid.

Salla curled and uncurled her fingers anxiously. “Won't someone see us?”

Better than admiration. What if she could have friendship? “My grandfather will be at the fighting yard. He might leave a shadow at the house—that's all.”

The girls nodded. Shadows didn't talk.

Before she even reached her house, Moralin could hear Mother scolding. Someone had tangled threads in the weaving. Or a servant had made a bad bargain at the market. If only Mother would sit and comb her daughter's hair. But the day before a ceremony was too important.

The carved front door swung open. Grandmother stepped out and bent to pull a dead blossom from a flowering moralin bush. When she straightened, purple flowers from a hanging plant cascaded over her head and shoulders like a second velee. Moralin wished she could see Grandmother's face. “What was your temple training like?” she longed to ask. But every girl took a vow not to reveal anything.

So she asked, instead, “Do you know where I can find a basket?”

“Aha.” There was a smile in Grandmother's voice. Her smile had once dazzled princes, and it still had power, power to soothe Moralin—and make her nervous. “What would my grandchild who has no love for the back-bending chore want with a basket?”

“It's just an idea I had. I want to get something for Mother … and everybody.”

For a moment Grandmother simply stood tall and calm. She had probably heard the argument with Mother this morning and Moralin's wail. “But I hate wearing a velee.” Mother, with her bone-strong training, rarely raised her own voice, and somehow her calmness made Moralin shout and flail her arms. Even the serenity stone didn't help in those moments.

By the door stood a basketful of moralin flowers—Mother's favorite—waiting for tomorrow's festivities. Mother must have proudly carried a basket just like this for the naming ceremony for her older daughter. Tomorrow she would carry it again to celebrate the start of that daughter's temple service.

Grandmother scooped the flowers out. “Don't go off and leave it somewhere. The pattern is exquisite. One of your mother's most beloved.”

“I'll be careful.” Moralin hesitated. She could hear Lan in the front room, chanting a rhyme. Lan was gentle and sweet. Sometimes Moralin's fingers itched to pinch her just so she would learn not to be soft. Lan giggled, and Moralin took a step toward the sound. Then she heard Mother's voice again. Moralin grabbed the basket and ran, yanking at the velee as it tangled around her neck.

Perhaps they wouldn't come. She leaned against a little-used door to Old Tamlin's house and glanced up at the Delagua flag—red cloth, a yellow feverbird with its great wings spread wide, a worm held protectively in its claw.

But when the flag began to flap and the people cleared the streets for the coming of the rain, even Salla was there, fingering the brown and orange handles of her basket. Light-headed with excitement, Moralin hurried them inside and down a dark staircase. Should she ask Cora Linga for help? She flushed, hearing Grandmother's voice in her mind. “Why do you assume the Great Ones' only purpose is to make you happy?”

At the bottom stood a shadow, pale in the yellow tunic his kind wore. He dropped to his knees, head to the floor. “Look up,” Moralin ordered. It was her duty as a highborn to check the red dye on his mask that showed he was in the right place. Shadows were like children, needing guidance.

Yes, this one had Old Tamlin's mark, a coiled creeper. She took the oil lamp from his hand, sent him upstairs, and started down the hall. Their secret would rest safely with him. A shadow, happy to curl in the feverbird's protection, would never betray anyone from his master's family.

The door of the small room was locked by a huge wooden bolt carved by ancient craftsmen. If a person knew how to move twelve of the ivory knobs into exactly the right positions, the bolt would slide smoothly. Old Tamlin had made her practice the secret pattern over and over. “Why must I?” she had finally cried out in frustration.

“I shall not live forever.” His voice had been more stern than usual. “But perhaps if you understand the city's secrets, the day will come when you will show people what they need to know.”

“Me?”

“Perhaps.”

There. She stepped into the dark tunnel and looked back at the three ghostly faces, allowing herself a brief smile of triumph. If they were quick, they could return long before Old Tamlin was finished with his fighting yard duties. No one would ever know what she had done.

She put the oil lamp in a little nook where a tinder purse was hanging. Parts of the tunnel were damp and might put out the flame. “Slide your fingertips along the wall as you walk,” she told them. In a few minutes the silent, thick blackness made her feel like a fish, swishing silkily through a water channel, or a flower petal, floating. Listening to the slap of their soft footsteps, she was absurdly happy. Even if she had to sit at temple looms day after day weaving tapestries, she and her new friends would whisper and laugh about this adventure.

The tall tunnel was cold. After a few minutes Salla whimpered, and Moralin felt a hand clutch her shoulder. She let it stay, remembering how she had clung to Old Tamlin the first time he brought her here. Even now the blackness was like an immense animal pressing against her eyes, but she felt comforted by the narrow tunnel, so different from the high places, the up-swoop of her stomach if she even glanced at the top of the city wall.

“You must face your fear and overcome it,” Old Tamlin often said, coaxing her to use jutting stones to try climbing a little way up. It was the only thing he had asked her to do that she never could.

Above their heads people were walking along streets. Silently she counted her footsteps until she was sure they must be under the great wall. Finally, she could feel the tunnel floor beneath her feet begin to slant up. Far ahead she could see narrow threads of dim light. The trapdoor.

By the time they all were standing in the natural cave, her blood was singing with the pleasure of the risk. She pointed to the small opening where light filtered through green branches.

The city sprawled like a giant wildcat in a fertile valley sheltered by the four sacred hills. Beyond the hills were uncivilized lands: to the south, the red forest full of savage people and snarling beasts and the yellow-brown sands that sucked all life from travelers; to the east, cliffs and a swift and dangerous river; to the north, the Great Mountains. Old Tamlin had never taken her beyond the cave, but she knew that when they crawled out, they would be on one of the hillsides that overlooked the city.

At the cave mouth she listened. Not a rustle or a whisper. She wriggled through the opening and used her hands and head to part the brush that hid it. When she was all the way out, she stood in bright sunlight beside a gnarled jamara tree.

After she stopped blinking, she saw that ten, maybe twelve men and boys from the nearby villages stood on the slope, where the ground was bright with raindrops and with purple-red starfruit that grew on creeping vines. “Come on,” the girl with the belt said, and they all started to run through the wet grass.

Moralin glanced at their baskets swinging in unison. Full of the giddy joy of the hillside and sunshine and the sweet smell of crushed fruit, she laughed with her new friends. A young man bent to pick a starfruit. He straightened, opened his mouth wide, apparently not caring that they were watching, and stuffed the fruit in. It felt good to stare right at a person's face. His open mouth became a cave of redness, and juice ran down his chin.

Without warning his laugh turned into a choking sound. He staggered one step back, pointing at … what? For the second time that day Moralin turned her head at just the right half instant to see her death coming straight at her.

G
IANT BIRDS WITH CURVED BLACK BEAKS
bounded over the hill's crest. What kind of bird had a human body? Moralin staggered down the hill, stumbling on her dress. Around her, the air exploded with shouting and screams. A whistling sound cut above the other noise. She turned and stretched out her arms to the man who had laughed so joyously, now falling forward. The weight of his body sent her sprawling backward.

Hands. Pulling her out from under the man. She fought them off, but there were more, wrapping the velee roughly over her open mouth to stop the screams. What kind of bird had hands? The creature hoisted her, kicking and twisting, onto its shoulder. The last thing she saw of the hillside was the basket tumbling slowly away.

She expected to fly, but the creature merely ran. The velee wrapped more tightly around her face, blinding her, choking her. She felt a shoulder blade jammed against her ribs, smelled sweat. These were surely no birds. After a while the one carrying her swung her down and forced her to walk. “Mercy,” she heard one of the other girls gasp.

Carry us, Moralin wanted to command. Where are your wings?

Behind her, someone began to wail. Come, Moralin cried silently in her mind to the Delagua guards standing just inside the closed gates of the city. Hurry. But by now, with the rains over for the day, the city would be full of street noise. And the gates swung open only to let soldiers in and out. Still, Old Tamlin would soon know she was gone. And then? And then he would come after her. Until then? Pay attention. Manage your fear.

Before long they were surrounded by strange and twisted trees. In temple tapestries Moralin had seen such reddish trunks and thick branches. She looked around. Only the young—three boys, four girls—had been taken. Everyone else must be dead. She saw now that their captors wore bird masks. They carried spears and sticks carved with the writhing bodies of snakes. In her dry throat, her sand breath caught. These had to be Arkera. Age-old enemies of the Delagua.

They walked and then ran and then walked some more. The Arkera warrior men pushed or hit them every time they slowed down, every time someone stumbled. One boy fell and didn't get up. A warrior bent over him, and Moralin called out the beginning of a war chant to block out the thump of the spear, the gasps of death.

The survivors had to walk faster, faster. Darkness opened its wide mouth and swallowed them. After a while the ugly moon rose to glower down with its unblinking eye—white, the color of restless and malevolent spirits. She covered her head the best she could.

They lost their shoes. Their feet bled. “Mercy.” The girl with patterned fingers raised them in a pleading gesture. She and her friend with the black and gold belt crouched like baby birds, their weeping mouths helpless and open. A warrior tried to force them up, but they refused. He raised his spear.

“No!” Moralin tried to leap at him, but hands grabbed her, dragging her on.

On and on. Churning with rage, she staggered forward, cowering under the moon's terrible gaze. One of the warriors was carrying Salla as if she were a sack of grain, but no one gave Moralin an arm to cling to. Only four prisoners left. She would have been dead already if she had been weak—if she had spent her childhood hours at the weaving loom and dye pots as her mother wanted. Thanks to Old Tamlin and praise the Great Ones, she was not weak.

When the moon was low in the western sky, they reached a clearing. A mass of Arkera swarmed out carrying flaming sticks, their naked faces horrible. In the whirlpool of sound and motion, Moralin struggled to stay on her feet. Beside her, one of the boys fell.

She tried to reach out to him, but she was swept along, and in a moment she and the two others were in the middle of a swirling circle. Salla, her dark hair plastered to her face, was weeping. A warrior man, his bird mask fierce, stepped toward her, but a man in a thick cloak made of fern green feathers lifted his hand, and a woman dragged Salla away.

Moralin grabbed the arm of the young boy who stood beside her, but he just whimpered with a look of dazed horror. She saw a smear of blood on one side of his mouth.

Arkera women began to circle. One was chanting with a high, wild sound. Every time she went by, she flicked Moralin across the legs with a whippy stick that stung through Moralin's thin dress. On the third time Moralin waited for her, listening for the voice. An instant before the woman got to her, she reached out, jerked away the stick, and threw it on the ground. The woman howled and jumped toward her.