The Last of the Ageless (5 page)

“She may use strange words, but her logic is sound.”

Korreth had to admit she’d done well. A thick braid around the hips fell into pleats, overlapping flat leaves on the front and back. She had woven dozens of leaves together in the front, which Korreth appreciated. They would hang down in all but the strongest winds.

He and Jorrim looped the braids around themselves and tied them off at the waist. They stared at each other. Jorrim looked ridiculous with the greenery dangling around his loins.

Then Jorrim clapped him on the shoulder and said with a gleam in his eye, “Let’s find a way out of this.”

Jorrim grabbed one of the sets of bladders and threw the harness across his shoulders. Together they took off toward the south. They ran with the same rolling gait that had freed them from slavery only this morning. Korreth fled with the same fear of being caught, as the trees of the oasis grew short in the distance.

A wall of wind knocked them off their feet.

Korreth sprawled to the pebbly ground, his previously scraped knees gathering new wounds. With a mouth full of dust, he groaned.

Together, he and Jorrim tried to drag themselves forward on their bellies, but the more Korreth struggled, the heavier the force pressing him down became. He gulped for air as Jorrim’s torso expanded, his mouth also agape. Their hands clawed at the hard, unforgiving earth.

Korreth’s knuckles ached with his attempts to gain even another inch. He thought he heard his ribs creak. The pressure crushed him.

He collapsed, letting his muscles relax as he took in a great gulping breath, and the weight dispelled. His face pressed into the hot earth, Korreth watched Jorrim’s fingers scrambling for freedom. At the sound of footsteps behind them, Jorrim surrendered as well, gasping.

Pressed to the hard drylands earth, their torsos heaved while they regained their breath and their strength. Jorrim reached toward him. His pale hand briefly rested on Korreth’s dark forearm before his fingers tapped a message.
Here she comes. Sorry, my friend.

Something draped across Korreth’s back, and a bladder fell to the ground beside him. The harness’s weight made pushing himself to his elbows difficult. Korreth craned his neck around toward their new mistress.

Soledad carried a smaller bladder in one hand, with two others tied to the furs covering her body. A shiver traveled up Korreth’s spine, despite the sun’s distance from the horizon.

“Get up,” she said, and they did.

Chapter 3

Dalan’s companion called an early halt to their journey the next evening and prepared a fire from the ever-present dry scrub. They had forgone a fire the night before. “To avoid an easy ambush,” she had explained.

After positioning the wood and tinder, Nyr pulled a small object from one of the pouches around her belt. Gripping the item in one hand, she used it to strike the first flame.

“What’s that?” Dalan asked.

She returned the object to the pouch as though she didn’t want him to see it. “The Ancients called it firesteel.”

Nyr’s gaze flashed his way, her pupils elongated. He assumed she was annoyed with him, but he didn’t know why.

Dalan sat down and passed her some beans and forest berries from his pack, and Nyr handed him some dried meats. He chewed with difficulty, wondering if he could transmeld his teeth without any outward sign of his Changeling abilities.

“So…” he said. “Was nearly out of water when we met. Have any extra?”

Nyr sat with her side to the fire, facing back the way they’d come. She said nothing, but lobbed a stainless steel canteen over to him. He twisted the cap, but then thought better of it.

“Is from the men you killed?”

“It’s actually from the man
you
killed.” Nyr paused in her chewing. “What’s the matter?”

“Is bad to take from the dead…”

“You’re superstitious.” She blinked. “Out here, there’s no time for that. You take what you can to survive.”

As he had the night before, Dalan spread his offerings near the fire. Nyr insisted on taking few breaks during the day, and Dalan was beginning to accept they would enter the grasslands before he found a dragonfly.

Nyr glanced down at the fan of metal discs and rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure why you think those would attract a dragonfly. You’d be better off with some food as bait.”

“The bonding ritual has nothing to do with food.”

“Maybe it should.”

Dalan shook his head. “The discs represent the iridescence of a dragonfly’s wings and the banishment of illusions. Reminds my people life isn’t always what it appears.”

Nyr’s lips parted to reply, but Dalan held up a finger, his eyes going wide at the sound of a distant buzzing.

Nyr tilted her head. “I’ll be over here answering nature’s call while you make your sacrifice or whatever it is you’re supposed to do.” She got to her feet and strode off into the twilight, her boots scuffing across the barren ground.

Dalan double-checked the offerings and then closed his eyes to meditate, something that had taken him years to master. He hoped the approaching dragonfly would catch sight of his offerings despite the fading light. He batted aside this desire, letting himself find the calm within and slip into a trance.

For some length of time, he floated in a world without sight or sound, thought or breath. When he opened his eyes, he beheld a giant mutated dragonfly hovering in the heat. Its fist-sized compound eyes unnerved him, but Dalan reminded himself they enabled the dragonfly to see the vastness of the world and to look beyond the obvious.

Bowing his head, Dalan opened his arms in the first movements of the bonding ritual, letting them imitate the dragonfly’s wings. Then he patted the ground, gathering up a handful of dust to symbolize the dragonfly’s connection with the earth and its invincibility. He split the dust into each of his palms and flung it to either side to symbolize the dragonfly’s flight through air and the purity of the wind itself.

Then he opened the canteen, tilted it, and let a few drops spill out to symbolize the dragonfly’s relationship with water, the most sacred of elements. Enacting the ritual reminded him of the dragonfly’s unique perspective and its transformative power.

A feeling of awe rose within him as the huge dragonfly settled down atop the shiny discs, its giant wings kicking up dust before going still. Its thick thorax anchored six legs and four delicate wings and then tapered back into a long, furred green body.

Dalan took a few slow, steady breaths, willing the insect not to leave.

As though it knew his thoughts, the dragonfly buzzed its filmy wings and lifted off the ground.

Dalan reached out and rearranged the offerings, each disc a different color. His heart raced—if this dragonfly considered him a suitable companion, he could complete his trials.

The dragonfly’s legs touched the earth again, the front two perched on the silver disc previously overshadowed by the others. Its transparent wings rested at a perpendicular angle to its body, and its globular eyes studied him.

Dalan closed his eyes and tried to regain the serenity of meditation. He envisioned his mother’s house perched high in the canopy, the wind caressing the leaves of his home forest, and the creeks cutting through the undergrowth below. He remembered his first lessons in flying through the tree canopy as a hawk with his oldest brother Mishnir.

His eyes still closed, Dalan kept his arms open wide and twisted his hands into arcane gestures to beckon the dragonfly into bonding. He started with a flitting hand motion to symbolize the dragonfly’s agility. Next he placed his palms together as a symbol of the dragonfly’s poise.

Then he placed a palm on the top of his head and a fist at his bellybutton, to show his hope for self-realization through the dragonfly’s guidance. Lastly, he closed both hands into fists and put them in front of his eyes, thumbs toward his face, to show his inability to see the world as only the dragonfly could.

Images entered his mind. Large rats and lizards fleeing the dragonfly’s shadow. The calm waters of a river far below. The dizzying swoop as the dragonfly initially investigated the offerings in the firelight. And finally, Dalan himself. The images blurred around the edges and had a strange quality to them, due to the insect’s multifaceted vision.

Dalan smiled. When he opened his eyes, he felt the peculiar sensation of the bond taking hold, like a smooth dive into the river on a hot day. His heart was full with the knowledge that he possessed a direct link to the divine; he was now bound to this dragonfly, and it to him.

The dragonfly rested its wings, silent in the presence of its new companion. Its antennae twitched as Dalan focused on sending a thought to the insect: his own view as he repeatedly placed the offerings on the ground over the past few days, searching for a companion. Sitting in the darkness, he repeated his name several times both mentally and audibly, “Dalan.”

Dalan met the dragonfly’s unblinking gaze. The two compound eyes touched over what Dalan would call its nose, and its relatively small antennae remained still. After studying its appearance, Dalan mentally sent an image of the dragonfly to itself through their bond and said, “Saquey.”

It was the name of Dalan’s late uncle’s dragonfly. Athegal had been killed by a pack of dingars while escorting traders between their tribe and another. The mutated animals had torn him to pieces, leaving only his partially transmelded bones as evidence of his demise. A few days later, Saquey had followed him into death. Legend had it that Ancient dragonflies had been much smaller, and their lifespans much shorter, but a mutated, post-Catastrophe dragonfly’s lifespan matched its bonded companion’s.

Dalan repeated the sound of its name a few times, both mentally and audibly. The giant insect’s wings blurred into motion, launching it into the air. Saquey hovered in front of Dalan as though memorizing his face, and then buzzed up into the air, fading to nothing more than a dot in the darkness. Images filled Dalan’s head, showing him his own body from above, growing larger as the dragonfly dove.

His vision cleared, and the dragonfly swooped up, over, and around him, as though excited. Its circles around him grew wider and wider, until Dalan couldn’t see Saquey in the darkness, though the buzzing of its wings reassured him of its presence.

Dalan leaped to his feet. “Finally!”

One moment Dalan was looking around for Nyr—the next, he seemed to black out. He turned his head, trying to make sense of the sudden darkness. It was a vision from Saquey, flying. In the vision, Dalan saw a man picking his way through the drylands scrub in the dark, not far outside a circle of firelight.

Dalan’s stomach clenched, and he shook his head to clear away the image. He hunkered down and scrambled for his pack. He’d silhouetted himself against the fire and his yell had no doubt traveled far across the open drylands.

A big, burly body crashed into him, smashing Dalan’s shoulder into the unforgiving ground, and a fist slammed into his cheekbone. Dazed, Dalan kicked and thrashed, but the man’s bulk kept him pinned.

“Don’t make trouble,” said a voice some distance away in the darkness. “Surrender, and we won’t have to hurt your friend.”

Dalan jerked both his legs to one side of the man’s body. He wriggled out from underneath and rolled. The big man punched Dalan again, but the blow glanced off his ribs as Dalan spun, one arm still pinned. Dalan struck back with his free arm, smacking the man’s face with an open palm. The burly man’s weight shifted enough to free Dalan’s arm.

Dalan regained his feet and backed away. His body churned with adrenaline. His muscles grew thicker and denser as the instinct to transmeld threatened his self-control.

Nyr had returned, and another man pointed a crossbow at her from the back of a horse. Dalan recognized the beefy man as the one he’d dismounted when he’d saved Nyr’s life. And the crossbowman had been the first to gallop away as a bloodsoaked Nyr had rushed him.

Dalan struggled to prevent the transmeld from continuing, unwilling to kill anyone else. He raised his hands to show he was unarmed. “Don’t want to make any trouble.”

“Good,” the horseman said. “Because it’s her we came to kill.”

“Maybe we could talk about this…” Dalan said, but maintained his partial jaguar transmeld just in case.

The burly man leered and pointed a short blade at Dalan. He spoke with a slight lisp. “This one here knocked out all my teeth, and I say we—”

The crossbowman interrupted Toothless, “Now—”

Nyr lunged forward, sank her claws into the crossbowman’s leg, and ripped him from his saddle before Dalan even noticed she’d changed forms. The horse whinnied and reared as Saquey circled overhead.

In the chaos, Toothless tackled Dalan again, gaining the upper hand in an instant. He raised his knife and plunged it toward Dalan’s heart.

“No!” Dalan yelled, too late.

Not so fast,
said a directionless voice. A pink glow surrounded the knife as it reached Dalan’s chest.

Dalan felt no pain. With added strength from his partial jaguar meld, he pushed the man’s knife arm aside and inspected his own torso in disbelief—no wound. With his other hand, Toothless twisted Dalan’s new necklace in an attempt to strangle him.