The Last of the Ageless (6 page)

Dalan reeled, slipping even closer to a full transmeld. Black fur erupted from his arms, and claws pushed from his fingertips. The world narrowed.

“Another—?” Toothless jumped away from him.

Dalan hadn’t completed the transmeld, but the burly man’s life was forfeit if he didn’t regain control. With all his will, Dalan forced himself back toward birth form. He groaned in pain at the sudden reversal as his muscles returned to human proportions. His claws retracted into his fingertips.

Both of them whirled as a shriek of terror followed the sound of ripping cloth. Cat’s eyes reflected eerily in the firelight.

Nyr leaped across the fire, and Toothless fled.

“Don’t kill him!” The words tore from Dalan’s throat.

Nyr gave no sign she’d heard Dalan’s plea. Sprinting, she caught up to the big man. She reached a hand over each of his shoulders and ripped out his throat.

The man collapsed with a quiet gurgle. Blood pooled around him, the hardened, parched ground unable to absorb it all. In the distance, Dalan heard hoofbeats. The horse was gone.

Nyr surveyed the area. In a gravelly voice, she asked, “Anyone else?”

Dalan took a breath. She had a point. Yesterday, four had fled, so two remained. He sent Saquey an image of men sneaking up on them. The dragonfly swung away. Blocking out the gory scene on the ground, Saquey stole Dalan’s sight. The aerial vision panned around the firelight.

“Looks clear,” Dalan said. His firelit view returned as Nyr stalked toward him, gore dripping from both hands.

“‘Don’t kill him’?” The firelight danced in her slitted eyes. “Idiot Purebred boy! You made the perfect target.”

Dalan coughed to cover his relief. She hadn’t seen him transmelding, then. “Can you turn completely into a tiger?”

“Tigress. And no. This is it.” She bent to rub some drylands dust through her blood-soaked fur.

He didn’t understand her deficiency. “Can’t turn into any other… cats?”

“I’m Tiger Clan. I did mention that.” She raised a black eyebrow.

The hair on her head grew longer while the fur on the rest of her body lay flat and was absorbed into her skin, much as his own had been moments before. Her ears, unnatural without fur, slid down the sides of her head while her tiny pink nose returned to its normal state.

She pulled the flat stone from a pouch at the bottom of her bandoleer and scraped blood and dirt off her pale skin. Afterward, she used the edge to clean under her rounded human fingernails.

Dalan smelled blood, and glanced down at the crossbowman. Deep gouges scored the body’s upper chest and neck. Dalan jerked his gaze away from the grisly sight.

Nyr crouched down to wipe the stone on the crossbowman’s shirt. She gathered all the food from his packs and added it to hers. What trinkets she found also went into her bag. She grinned and fitted a beaded cloth bracelet from Toothless around her left wrist.

Swollen and sticky, Dalan’s tongue demanded water, forcing him to take a drink from the stainless steel canteen Nyr had given him. He would need to learn better conservation of water in the drylands, since transmelding used up much of the body’s moisture.

Dalan closed his eyes and begged absolution from the All-Seeing Eye, though it wasn’t visible in tonight’s sky. Alone, he could have transmelded into a different form and escaped without killing anyone.

He opened his eyes and bent over the crossbowman to begin the death rites. Saquey landed, wings fanned, on an upraised rock.

From behind him, Nyr said, “Tell me about the first time you killed a man.”

“Why?” Dalan raised a hand to his neck and felt the cut his necklace had made during the fight.

“That was pretty stupid, standing near the fire like the perfect target. Yelling and giving away our position.” She shook her head.

Dalan didn’t answer. He finished the rite for the crossbowman and went to Toothless. He dabbed a drop of water on the dead man’s forehead, and then faced Nyr.

Raising her eyebrows, she smiled wryly. “You saved the life of someone you don’t even know. And you’re pretty timid around bodies.”

“So, what…” He paused, remembering to phrase his words carefully to this strange Changeling. “Am I supposed to revel in killing?”

From the corner of his eye, Dalan noticed the twitch of Saquey’s wings, but it remained on the rock.

Nyr’s eyes widened. Her slit pupils expanded, the only sign she wasn’t Purebred. “This world is made of violence. We must repay it in kind sooner or later, boy. Denying it just shows your weakness. A Purebreed should know that more than anyone.”

“In my tribe, we use subtler means of defending ourselves.” Dalan tensed, trying to avoid revealing too much. “We believe in the Ancient Teachings, which condone killing in only two cases. The first is in defense of life. In this situation,” he gestured to the bodies, “mine. Yesterday, yours.”

The fire’s heat plastered his pants against his legs, and he took a step back. He hoped his bait would draw her thoughts away.

“And the second reason? You said there were two.”

“The second reason for killing?” Dalan resisted a victorious smile. “Vengeance for life taken.” But his mirth faded. Vengeance had led him to his first kill, a memory he tried not to think about.

“That makes no sense.” Nyr scuffed up sand and collected it in a cup.

“Why not?” Dalan picked up his pack and slung it over his shoulder.

“Because,” she said, pouring the sand over the fire, “if they kill one of your friends, you can take vengeance on them, right? What’s to stop them from taking vengeance right back? That’s how you start blood feuds.”

“No vengeance for vengeance. Only the elders can give permission to a person seeking vengeance for a family member’s unjust murder.”

Her lips curved up in a smile. “Your tribe is foolish. You and your people may follow those rules, but no one else will. Your elders hold no sway over someone from a different tribe who seeks retribution.” Reflected in her eyes, the final flames died. “It’s better to stamp your enemies out, like we did tonight.”

Saquey’s wings buzzed again, and Dalan glanced over, wondering if the dragonfly was reacting to Nyr’s words. “Agreed, Saquey,” he murmured.

Nyr gathered her possessions—all things she’d accumulated from dead foes. Dalan’s tribe traded with all its neighbors, but he remembered the stories past generations told. How Purebreeds had brought war upon them in fear. Purebreeds hated their race because of Changelings like her.

Nyr disappeared into the darkness. Dalan didn’t want to follow, but she was headed in the right direction. As he trudged behind, he thought about how he could travel west through the grasslands toward home, if he lost Nyr. He hoped her destination was nearby so he could transmeld into a hawk and be home in a matter of hours, rather than days. Once he could no longer spot Saquey’s green body in the darkness, he heard the dragonfly’s wings rustle, as though Saquey was just as reluctant to follow Nyr.

“What horrible kind of code does your tribe follow?” Dalan said to Nyr’s back as he caught up.

“It’s called survival,” her disembodied voice floated back. “Like my ancestors before me, and the Ancients before them, we fight back, or we die out.”

Dalan took another swig from the canteen as he trailed behind. The fight had dried him out. He longed to return home, to plunge into the winding river beneath the shade. “The Ancients didn’t believe in unnecessary violence.”

Nyr chuckled. “Purebred fools. Is that what the elders of your tribe taught you? If it weren’t for the Ancients’ devotion to violence, we wouldn’t be here. The Joeys would’ve wiped us all out during the Catastrophe.”

“The Ancients tried for peace. Didn’t want to fight the Joeys at all.” Dalan’s words quickened as he defended the Ancient Teachings.

“But the Ancients did fight back. And they won. Otherwise there’d be more Joeys around and less of us.”

“Must have been condoned under the Teachings somehow, then. Defense of life. The Joeys were a threat.” He stepped over a big rock he’d almost missed in the darkness.

“Sure.”

Her easy agreement made his victory hollow, and Dalan was tired. He’d never maintained a half-meld for as long as he had tonight. They continued on in the darkness, and for a few minutes, only the sound of their boots crunching over dryland pebbles and Saquey’s buzzing broke the silence.

“So is that dragonfly going to follow us around forever now?” Nyr asked.

“Yes. We are bonded companions now. Saquey warned me. Showed me the enemies just before they attacked.”

Nyr sighed and said, “I guess we won’t be sneaking up on anyone anytime soon.”

“Bonding with the dragonfly is a sacred—”

“Save it for someone who can bond with one,” she said, holding up a hand. “Watch this cactus.” Dalan stepped aside to avoid it. “We’ll stop soon. Does your spy bug see any other potential threats?”

Without consulting Saquey, Dalan knew the answer. His companion had alerted him to threats without prompting thus far. “No. Think the remaining men will try to ambush us, too?”

“If they meant to attack, they would’ve tried to use the element of surprise along with those idiots back there. Safety in numbers.”

“Is too bad the horse bolted.”

“They tend not to like my kind.”

Dalan brushed his thumb across the surface of his necklace, too exhausted to ask anything else.

“This looks like a good spot,” Nyr said after a few minutes. She set about breaking off twigs from small nearby bushes.

“Is it really a good idea to build another fire?”

“Gather some wood, kid. We won’t bother with one again tonight, but it’ll be helpful for breakfast.”

Dalan reached toward a bush, which turned out to be a prickly-pear cactus. He yanked his hand away.

Nyr snorted. “Clearly, I’ll take first watch.”

Dalan frowned and blearily focused on Saquey. He closed his eyes and imagined the drylands at night. He envisioned Toothless leering over him with a blade in hand and then imposed Nyr’s head as a cat in place of the man’s.

He could only hope the dragonfly understood Nyr might be as much of an enemy as the men they had fought.

They spent most of the next day in silence. Dalan tried to reconcile the Ancient Teachings with the fact that he’d saved the life of a bloodthirsty monster. The elders had warned them about encountering barbaric tribes while on the trials. Perhaps this was part of the lesson they expected the initiates to absorb. Regardless, as long as their paths converged, duty bound him to escort her as he would any traveler from his tribe.

Nyr again took first watch that night, and then woke him for his watch. With his back to the fire, Dalan peered into the darkness across the flat earth, trying to remain alert. Saquey perched on some rocks nearby, sleeping with wings open, the firelight reflecting off their filmy surface.

When the sun rose over the arid land, Dalan stretched before going to wake Nyr. Her eyes cracked open as he bent to shake her.

His hand hovered over her. “Morning,” he said before retreating to his place on the other side of the dying fire.

He and Nyr trudged across the drylands, broken only by scrub and rocks, while eating a few berries and nuts. At this rate, he’d be lucky to get home in under a week, but others had taken longer to return from the trials.

About an hour after they’d broken their fast, Saquey showed him a vision of a ravine ahead. He marveled at the dragonfly’s ability to anticipate his needs.

Dalan formulated his words before calling out to Nyr. “We have to decide how to get around a ravine up ahead.”

She glanced over her shoulder, and her eyes fell to the necklace on his chest. “Your bug showed you?”

“Yes.” Dalan hoped Nyr knew these inhospitable lands better than he did, and that they carried enough water to make it to the grasslands preceding his home forest. He had trouble estimating the distance, since he’d traveled over these unforgiving lands by wing.

“What’s the best way around? North?” She sauntered north without waiting for his answer.

Over the past two days, they’d traveled deeper into the drylands, all greenery disappearing. The thirsty earth warred with itself, cracks splitting the ground. The vision showed the ravine stretching far south. “Looks like it.”

Nyr called over her shoulder, “You should really put that inside your shirt, at least at night.”

“What?” He glanced at Saquey, wondering when they’d get a chance to fly together.

“The glow of your necklace could give us away.”

“The glow…” Dalan picked the necklace off his chest and examined it. As when he had first worn it, two pink dots winked at him like eyes from its interior. “Something strange happened the other night.”

Nyr didn’t answer, so he continued, “The man I fought tried to stab me in the heart, but something deflected his blow. Checked for wounds, but not even a scratch.”

“His blade was probably deflected by the trinket.”

Dalan pulled the purple stone closer to his face. “Didn’t feel the pressure of the knife either.” No nicks or scratches marred its smooth surface.