Mistress of Animals Read online

  Penrys held her breath as she watched, not wanting to disturb this fragile communication.

  Umzakhilin showed her what he saw in flashes, all the unimportant things omitted. First there was a view of the camp, seen from the height of a man standing in the center of the oval of kazrab, the ones they had just disassembled.

  A young woman screamed, somewhere out of sight and he turned his head. The men and women he could see at the end of the oval froze in place, or fell limply to the ground. A dozen wolves or more ambled into the oval, but they ignored the people they passed. In their midst was a girl, dressed in shaggy skins, wolf skins. She paused and looked at some of the people, as if she were speaking with them, and then she turned and looked directly into his eyes.

  *You are the leader of this herd, the stallion, the herd-mare. It’s mine now.*

  Penrys could feel his refusal, his horror at what was happening, as if it were fresh again. His last sane thought—that even if he were armed, how could he fight through all those wolves to reach her? He tried to pull his knife, but found he couldn’t move.

  A stallion neighed and trotted up to her, and the wolves parted for him. He was swollen with male pride, his muscled neck curved, and he pranced away from her when she waved him at Umzakhilin. The blow from the horse’s shoulder knocked him to the ground, and he couldn’t even scream when his legs were trampled.

  The girl called the horse away and then walked over and stood over him, looking down into his face. She released him from his paralysis, but he was too terrified to make a sound. Her face filled his vision, until he shut his eyes to hide from it. Penrys saw it, too, and choked, but restrained her reaction to keep from disturbing him.

  The last part of the nightmare was lying on the ground in agony and darkness. All around him he heard movement, but no talking, no resistance. The silence afterward, nothing but the fabric of the canvas covers of the kazrab flapping occasionally in the wind, was soothing, and he gave himself up to it.

  The man on the bedroll opened his eyes fully, with understanding in them, and the first thing he saw, before she could pull back, was Penrys, leaning over him, the chain on her neck exposed, the same as the chain on the girl who had crippled him and taken his clan.

  He roared in terror, that horrifying sound of a man screaming, and Penrys stumbled to her feet and bolted out of the kazr.

  *It was a girl, Naj-sha, with a chain like mine. Make him understand it wasn’t me.*

  Penrys stopped just beyond the entrance and tried to collect herself. The screams continued from inside, and Dimghuy and the two boys fled the kazr through the open doorway. They froze when they saw Penrys, and detoured widely around her.

  The rest of the camp had gathered outside at the first sounds, and Penrys could feel their suspicion as they watched the boys avoid her.

  She was too distressed to try and explain. She turned her back on them all and took refuge in the kamah she shared with Najud.

  The screaming stopped a few moments later, and she sat on her bedroll, out of everyone’s sight, and worked on calming herself. She kept herself from trying to monitor what was going on in Hadishti’s kazr—Najud didn’t need the distraction, and perhaps Umzakhilin would be able to hear her.

  The implications of Umzakhilin’s nightmare were horrifying enough.

  She was still sitting alone, in the chilly dark, when the rustle of canvas as the flap was lifted made her raise her head.

  “Thought you might want a light in here,” Najud said carefully, and laid a lantern on the floor of the kamah.

  He picked up a blanket from the foot of his own bedroll, alongside hers, and draped it over her shoulders. Only then did she realize she was shivering, and she pulled it around herself and tucked it in.

  He sat himself down crosslegged across from her. “He’s awake, now, and talking, some. Hadishti’s taking care of him.”

  Najud cleared his throat. “I heard what you said to him, but I don’t know what happened next, just what you told me after he started screaming and you ran out.”

  “I’ll show you,” Penrys said, and swallowed.

  Directly, mind to mind, she shared with him Umzakhilin’s nightmare, and gave him a few moments to digest it.

  “If I’d been wearing that scarf from the tailor’s wife, ’round my throat…” she muttered. “That’s why she gave it to me. For him to wake at last from that vision, to another woman with a chain leaning over him…”

  Najud said, “You did the right thing, leaving. Hadishti and I calmed him down. He’s confused, but he knows it wasn’t you. We’re going to let him sleep and try to talk with him tomorrow.”

  “Yrmur!” she spat. “Where are these chained wizards coming from? This one’s a child, and no Zan.”

  “That’s not the problem to focus on, Pen-sha. The question is, what is she trying to do?”

  “The Voice didn’t do anything with animals, that I noticed. He just built a horde and recruited allies.” Her voice trailed off for a moment. “Could I control animals the way she’s doing? Maybe if that’s all I found, all I met? If she remembers nothing, like me?”

  She lifted her head and stared through the walls of the kamah in the direction of the herds, and the bray of a donkey echoed back from a distance through the stillness of the evening.

  She glanced back at Najud. Well, that surprised him.

  His eyes had widened, but he made a good recovery. “Demon, I hope?”

  In spite of herself, she chuckled. “Who else?”

  “So, is she making a herd or a horde?” Najud’s eye slid sideways to see how she would take that.

  She thumped him on his nearest knee, but the bad joke lifted her mood.

  “I’ve got to go after her now,” she said, “even if all those people are already dead.”

  Najud looked at her soberly. “Like the bikrajab gather to overcome a qahulaj, a wizard-tyrant, because if we don’t, who can?”

  “Your qahulajab are beginning to seem downright ordinary to me—at least they’re natural, not man-made. What’s making these chained wizards?”

  Najud added quietly, “And why a child?”

  “In Umzakhilin’s nightmare, she looked about thirteen, tall and leggy, but not full-grown—you know how they are.”

  He nodded, and they sat together in silence for a moment, until Penrys discarded the blanket and made a couple of attempts to stand up, careful of the low headroom.

  “Is it safe to go back out?” she asked, sardonically. “They’re not all going to pounce on me and hold me for execution come morning?”

  “No,” he said. “But I think we’re going to have to tell them everything.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Najud watched Penrys steel herself as everyone met for the morning meal. No one said anything to her referring to the night before, but he could see how conscious she was of their eyes following her. The two of them sat together to eat their warm porridge, sweetened with honey, having filled their bowls from the common pot.

  Only Hadishti and Umzakhilin were missing, and then the door of Hadishti’s kazr opened, and all heads lifted to watch their old zarawinnaj limp unsteadily out, supported strongly by Hadishti. Jirkat rose hastily to assist her, and between them they helped him cover the short distance to the fire and seat himself.

  He sat with his legs straight before him, and worked on them, one at a time, kneading the thigh and calf, bending the joints, and trying to rotate and flex his feet. His flesh was wasted and his muscles slack, but he was able to move freely above the waist.

  Najud was relieved that the joints still seemed to bend, but he thought the little bones in the feet would probably have healed badly. Still, this man was determined, and muscle could be rebuilt—it was easy to see why he would have been considered strong enough to serve as zarawinnaj.

  As if conscious of the awkward silence, Umzakhilin lifted his head and looked for the two boys. “Zabrash, Birssahr—come.”

  They stood up and approached him shyly. He pat
ted the ground next to him, and they knelt, so he wouldn’t have to look up at them.

  He bowed to them, sitting, as one adult to another, and their eyes widened. “I am in your debt, all honor to you. Hadishti has told me how you not only saved my life and tended to me, all this time, but how you did your best to find what you could and save it for the clan. That I can walk at all is… unexpected, and I am grateful. I’m hopeful that the clan can recover, with the help of everyone here.”

  Umzakhilin’s glance then fell on the rest of the company. “I know you all, and I’m not surprised that you have accomplished so much. Hadishti told me the story. It’s wonderful that you’ve driven so much of the herds with you, and salvaged the remains of the encampment, so few as you are. And I understand that is partly because of these bikrajab friends that you encountered on the High Pass.”

  His gaze turned to Penrys and Najud. Penrys wore her scarf to hide the chain, but his eyes lingered on her throat anyway.

  He nodded to her. “Lijti, I thank you for pulling me out of the darkness, out of the nightmare. I know full well I might have been trapped in it until I died.”

  Penrys flushed and dipped her head.

  “And you, Najud of the Zamjilah clan. I name you clan-kin in truth, in your own right, not just as nephew to Qizrahi. Our kazrab are yours, our food is yours, our horses are yours.”

  Najud could feel the heat rise in his cheeks. A clan-adoption outside of marriage was uncommon.

  “I fear I am an inexperienced zarawinnaj,” he said, to cover his embarrassment. “I could have done nothing without the help of everyone else.”

  Umzakhilin smiled. “I see by that you have already learned one of the secrets of the task.”

  He leaned toward Najud, and said sotto voce across the fire, “Don’t tell anyone else, or they won’t think we have mysterious powers any more.”

  The laughter around the fire broke the remainder of the tension in the atmosphere and, as easily as that, their old zarawinnaj took back the reins of his authority. Najud marveled at how well he did it.

  Umzakhilin spoke to them all. “We’ll continue on today. The plan you’ve made is good, and we’ll follow it. Time enough once we’ve reached the rest of the clan at the taridiqa to arrange our pursuit of our missing clan-kin. I will ride, myself, with Najud.”

  He waved off the concern that flashed over Hadishti’s face at that announcement. “The sooner I get my strength back, the better.”

  “But before we go,” he said, “I must know more about this qahulajti who took our people.”

  And with that, he pinned Penrys in an unwavering stare.

  Najud exchanged a long look with Penrys and then began the story.

  “About two and a half months ago, I was still in my tulqiqa, the tenth year of my wandering time as a daril, a journeyman.”

  Hadishti paused from her task of fetching Umzakhilin some of the morning’s porridge and nodded in understanding. Her older son would be doing this himself someday.

  “Word came from the Ghuzl mar-Tawirqaj in Ussha that a bikraj was wanted by the Kigali, at the Meeting of Rivers—some problem in Neshilik with Rasesdad.” He cocked his head north, back towards the High Pass.

  “I crossed at the Low Pass and joined the cavalry expedition that was being sent to deal with it, in advance of the army. While I was there…” His voice trailed off uncertainly.

  Penrys took up the thread. “I was in Ellech.”

  She waited until the murmurs of surprise faded. That was an almost legendary country to them, so far away.

  “I was working on a… wizard thing, an experiment, and it went wrong. The Rasesni were working another wizard thing in the cavalry camp, and that… pulled me from my failed working to theirs.”

  Najud supposed that was as good a way as any to explain it to those who were not bikrajab.

  “I joined Najud in his work, and we traveled together with the expedition until it reached the Gates.”

  The head nods reassured Najud that they knew where that was, the northeast corner where the Seguchi River cut its way out of the mountains surrounding Neshilik.

  Penrys cleared her throat. “Meanwhile, we… talked. I’m not from Ellech. Three years ago, they found me there, naked except for this chain.”

  She unwrapped the scarf so that they could see it again.

  “And I have no memory before that point.”

  Hadishti suggested, “A blow on the head…”

  “No, lijti,” Penrys said. “It’s not hidden from me—I have reason to know. It’s not there at all, nothing but an empty void.”

  Najud contradicted her privately. *Except for what the body knows, its own memories, embedded in the muscles.*

  She nodded in silent acknowledgment, and continued. “I am a… strange wizard, from the perspective of the Collegium of Wizards in Ellech, and so they named me hakkengenni, adept, and took me in. The wings… that’s part of the strangeness. And the chain that can’t be removed—no one had ever heard of that before. I spent three years in their library, looking for more information and I never found it.”

  She paused a moment, then shrugged. She lifted both her hands and combed her shoulder length hair back from her face, revealing her small, furry, foxlike ears, the same dark brown color as her hair, placed where human ears should be. “And this.”

  Zabrash started to rise for a closer look, than clearly thought better of it and sat down again.

  Najud resumed the story. “Rasesdad had invaded Neshilik. Again. We were sent in to see what we could find out. We heard rumors of something driving the Rasesni out of their lands, someone they called ‘the Voice,’ and we found him. He was a bikraj, with a chain—the same chain Penrys has—and he had become a terrifying qahulaj.”

  He took another mouthful of his cooling porridge as an excuse to compose himself. “This qahulaj was a stranger to the Rasesni. He collected a horde of people from the places he passed through, and bought, from plunder, an alliance with some of the hill-tribes to guard him.”

  “We discovered the Rasesni have bikrajab after all—they’ve hidden them among the priests of their many gods. These mages, as they call them, couldn’t stand against the Voice—he killed many of them, and the rest he captured and… used to increase his own strength.”

  How can I abbreviate this?

  “It’s an overlong story, but in the end two groups of Rasesni mages and the two of us stood against the Voice. Many died, but Penrys killed him.”

  Penrys broke in. “I questioned him, but got no answers. When they cut off his head…” She swallowed. “I saw the same ears as mine. Don’t know about the wings.”

  “I do know one thing,” she said. “The Rasesni first heard of him roughly three years ago. Oh, and he didn’t seem to come from Rasesdad, by his look, nor did we resemble each other.”

  She glanced at Najud. “This was how Najud earned his nayith and became a jarghal. He organized the Rasesni wizards to make them stronger and better able to fight.”

  Umzakhilin waited to see if there was more, and then said, “And this wolf-girl, who has a chain like yours and is no Zan—you think she is another of the same.”

  Penrys nodded. “I wonder if she’s been here three years, too. I wonder if she had no memory, and if animals were all she encountered, when she awoke. Did she ever speak, when you saw her?”

  “Only the mind-speech,” Umzakhilin said. “She fits your theory, what little we saw of her. Our clan-kin—they are become another ‘horde’ to accompany her?”

  “I don’t know,” Penrys said. “But she has to be found, and she has to be stopped, and the chain tells me she will be much stronger than your wizards expect, not just a wizard-tyrant to be stopped by half a dozen others.”

  She surveyed the faces around the morning fire. “You want your people back, of course you do. But how many others will she try to sweep up, in Zannib, if she isn’t stopped?”

  Jirkat said, “It will be winter soon. No one travels like that in w
inter in the khijr-Zannib, the steppe.”

  Najud answered for her. “This qahulajti won’t care. You always lose a few from the herds in wintertime.”

  No one spoke after that.

  CHAPTER 15

  Three days later, Penrys, from the air, watched the last of the herds cross through the gap in the two hills that marked their route. Umzakhilin had told her the route from the autumn camp took the same path through the hills, but there was nothing to be found on the trail to their right when they joined it, no sign of usage at all, other than the few spots worn away to rock.

  The zarawinnaj was riding much better now, sitting his horse with authority. She suspected his legs were still very weak, from their long immobility, but he was starting to regain his strength. She told no tales about the pain it caused him to walk, on his imperfectly healed feet, respecting his determination to overcome any obstacle.

  As she circled back to the front to resume her look ahead, she waved at Najud, Umzakhilin, and Hadishti as she passed them overhead, and relayed the news to Najud.

  *All the herds are through the gap.*

  Najud looked up at her as she swung by. *We’re only a day out, or less. See if you can find the camp.*

  She shrugged. *I don’t want to scare them—it’s broad daylight and what would they make of me?*

  She thought about it over the next few miles. Well, I know the direction. I should be able to pick up a concentration of sixty or seventy people easily enough.

  After about ten miles, she encountered the mind-glows she looked for, another few miles away, but far fewer than she expected. Must be herdsmen or something—it’s not enough for the winter camp itself.

  Still, the direction was right, and now she had something hopeful to tell them all, back on the march. They couldn’t push the cattle too hard. Looks like they’d be meeting up with these people tomorrow.

  After so many days in the air flying freely, it seemed strange to Penrys to be riding instead, up front with the three… elders. She smiled inwardly at the usage, since Najud was twenty-six, and she doubted Hadishti had left her mid-thirties, nor was Umzakhilin all that much older, but this was certainly a bunch of youngsters otherwise.