The wind was a wild and howling moan above the crackle of the Council fire. The bone-shivering sound of the storm, one of the murderous, early-season blizzards that roared up from the distant oceans and took two hands of days to blow themselves out again, matched the howl in Chilaili's soul. The storm raging through Chilaili was born of anger and frustration, a visible cloud as violent as the blizzard outside. The focus of Chilaili's rage stood glowering on the far side of the Council fire, a tall and gracile male whose stubbornness and refusal to see reason formed a deadly omen of things to come, of disasters the ruling Grandmothers must be made to recognize.
"We cannot make war against the humans," Chilaili said again, forcefully. "We have been more fortunate than you can possibly understand that this storm," she gestured toward the entrance to the Council cavern, blocked by thick, woven mats that kept the heat inside, but did very little to keep out the shriek of the wind, "has kept us locked in our winter nest. Let the other clans rush to destruction, if they so choose, but do not send our mates and our sons to battle against the humans. War against them will bring nothing but the death of Icewing Clan. It is stupid to fight them—stupid and unnecessary."
Across the Council fire, the clan's akule met Chilaili's gaze with a blaze of anger. Kestejoo was an outsider, even after twenty winters in Icewing Clan. He had come to them from Snowclaw Clan, so smitten by the gloriously sensual Zaltana, he had forsaken his own birth clan for love of her. Their meeting was still the stuff of legend, told to hatchlings around the winter hearth fires.
At his shoulder stood another male, Yiska, the clan's war leader. Taller by a full head than Kestejoo, Yiska was nearly two heads taller than Chilaili, and she was not the smallest of the huntresses. Yiska's eyes, unlike Kestejoo's, did not hold a glint of anger. They reflected instead the same deep thoughtfulness that had marked his many years as viho, leading them again and again to successful battle.
Kestejoo lifted his hands in a frustrated gesture, bringing Chilaili's attention back to the akule. "How can you say this war is not necessary? The Ones Above demand it. Therefore it is utterly necessary. I have deep respect for your knowledge, your insights as clan katori, but in this matter, there is no room for theorizing. No place for a healer's guesswork. Our creators have ordered it, so it must be done."
Chilaili, whose mothers before her had all been katori, healing the sick and dancing the sacred rites to heal the wounded soul—and whose only daughter, Sooleawa, would be katori after her, if they survived so long—reached desperately for her patience. "There is wisdom in your words, but we have far more to consider than orders from the Oracle. Perhaps He-Who-Looks-Up has been staring at the stars so long, he has forgotten to look at the faces of those to whom he speaks the Oracle's words? Look at our people, akule," she gestured around the Council cavern, "look at the tiny handful of us, barely three hundred in all, and tell me again how necessary it is to send our sons and our mates into battle with creatures who have never meant us any harm."
A stir ran through the assembled clan, born of surprise and uncertainty that flew like wind-driven snow. The ancient Anevay, ten times a Great-Grandmother and the eldest member of the ruling Council, spoke from her seat near Chilaili's right hand. "How can you say this with such certainty, katori, when none of us has ever spoken with one of these newcomers, to judge such matters?"
Chilaili drew breath to speak—and the words stuck in her craw like a long and pointed urka thorn, tearing at her constricted throat. She glanced into her daughter's eyes, caught Sooleawa's wide and frightened gaze . . . and time spun crazily, tilting and plunging her into a night that had changed them both, forever, a night that had challenged things they had long believed. Things they could not yet bring themselves to say aloud, except to one another, in the strictest privacy—and always carefully away from the nest.
On that fateful night, she and her daughter had left the clan's migrational summer nest for a night-hunt, Sooleawa's first, the Blooding Hunt every young female was required to make under the supervision of her Mother—or guardian, if a girl's Mother had died. The multiple moons soared across the sky like a scattered and distant flock of birds, casting crazy, crisscrossed shadows that tricked the eye, but Chilaili and Sooleawa had little trouble seeing the undergrowth beyond their carefully concealed summer nest. Chilaili always hunted by night—and so would Sooleawa, once Blooded. Most of the clan's huntresses preferred the day-stalk, but night was the time, the realm in which Chilaili's bloodline excelled. The Ones Above had made them that way, an experiment, so her Grandmothers had said, to see if a fiercesome dayhunter could be made to rule the night, as well.
The Ones Above had wrought well in that much, at least, creating Chilaili's foremothers. When the daystar vanished beneath the rim of the world, only Chilaili's bloodline—able to see far better in the darkness than any other bloodline—dared hunt the broken, fissured terrain of their clan's home range. Now it was her only daughter's turn to learn the night-stalk—and Chilaili tasted worry the moment they left the nest, armed with nothing but their own claws, as custom demanded. The empty sheath at her belt, its beautiful knife left in the hut she and her daughter shared, left Chilaili feeling naked, vulnerable, afraid. The omens had been poor all day, yet the Blooding Hunt was always performed—by clan law—on the fifteenth anniversary of a young girl's hatching, never sooner and never later.
To fail to make at least an attempt to hunt, regardless of how ill or injured a girl might be, was to be shunned, to become One Who Never Hunted, with no say in the clan's Councils and no hope of breeding, ever. Chilaili had seen Mothers carry daughters dying of fever into the deep forests of their clan's home range to give their daughters the honored status of Huntress, without which even a dying girl's sisters would be sullied and overlooked when the time for breeding came.
"What's wrong, Honored Mother?" Sooleawa asked, when Chilaili jumped at shadows for perhaps the hundredth time since leaving the nest.
"I cannot say for sure," Chilaili muttered, staring narrow-eyed into the moonlit shadows. "But I am uneasy, daughter, and mistrust the omens. Keep your wits sharp and your eyesight keen, precious one, for there is something wrong about this night."
Not the best words to give a nervous young candidate, yet Chilaili could not lie to the aspiring huntress she had so lovingly raised. Better to be blunt and ensure her child would be doubly vigilant, than to remain silent and court utter disaster. Sooleawa considered the warning for a long moment, then crouched down and broke off a young tree with a wrenching snap and stripped away long, thin needles and branches. Sticky, resinous sap smeared her claws, prompting a grimace that left Chilaili hiding a smile. Sooleawa used the sharp edges of her beak to scrape one end to a point, spitting and wiping her beak with one arm as the pungent taste of the sap drew another grimace. Her efforts left Sooleawa with a sturdy pole as thick as a foot-talon at its base. The crude spear was not the best weapon, true, but serviceable for the task.
Chilaili hummed approval at her daughter's decision to arm herself immediately upon hearing her mother's concerns. If the ancestors looked favorably upon her, Sooleawa would become a fine huntress. They traveled east, Sooleawa casting ahead for signs of prey, trying to find the spoor of some unlucky creature she could kill and carry home. They were perhaps six hours' distance from the nest when her daughter found the faint trail left by a wurpa stag—good eating, with a prized pelt, a high-status kill. They set out on the wurpa's trail, Sooleawa leading.
The spoor was growing stronger, scent and temperature and the freshness of broken twigs telling them the wurpa could not be far ahead, when Chilaili became aware of at least one reason for her uneasiness. She began to taste changes in the air which spoke of bad weather on its way, but she could not yet tell how severe the storm would become. When they heard the first distant rumble of thunder, Chilaili came to a complete halt, pupils dilating as her sense of dread turned into full-blown fright. The ominous sound rolling across the dense forest canopy was no ordinary thunder. It was a continuous, booming roar, without even a moment's pause between the individual crashes of sound. The distant, flickering strobe of lightning was a solid glare, a wild haze of killing light that turned night into hellish day.
Storms like this could take down hundred-foot trees as easily as a hatchling snapped a twig in his claws. They needed shelter—and they needed it now. Without a word spoken, she forged ahead to lead the way, despite the fact that this was supposed to be Sooleawa's night for choosing. Sooleawa followed, visibly frightened now, while Chilaili hunched forward slightly, partly in dread and partly in anger that such weather should stalk them on this most critical night in her only daughter's life. Chilaili glowered at the rumbling, grumbling threat sweeping across the sky and moved as fast as she dared, blessing whatever guardian spirit had prompted Sooleawa to head into the least treacherous part of their hunting range.
Chilaili tipped her head sideways from time to time to glance up through the forest canopy, where clouds blotted out the stars and those moons which had already risen. Already the leafy crowns high above were shaking and rattling with a hissing sound like angry hatchlings as the wind picked up. Sooleawa glanced upward as well, but said nothing, concentrating instead on not putting her feet wrong as they jogged through the darkness. Chilaili was heading for a particular valley where she had taken shelter from bad weather many times before. They had nearly reached it when lightning split the night sky in a blinding display.
Thunder cracked directly overhead—
—and the sound split the sky wide open.
Rain smashed down into the treetops, pelting them with woody debris and shredded leaves an instant before the water struck. In seconds, sight and scent were obliterated, washed out by the deluge. Sooleawa shouted above the roar, "Mother, shouldn't we go that way?" and pointed ahead and slightly to their right. She was pointing directly at the valley Chilaili had been heading toward, where it opened out from a narrow fissure to a broad, deep gouge bounded by cliffs that overhung a deep lake.
"Yes! Go!"
They ran, Chilaili now following her daughter's lead, pleased that Sooleawa's younger eyes had spotted the cooler colors where temperature changes marked abrupt drops into valleys. The girl had seen the way to safe shelter before Chilaili had, even knowing where to look. Sooleawa would do well as a huntress—if they survived this storm. Heads bent against the deluge, Chilaili and Sooleawa cautiously approached the edge of the deep gorge. Sooleawa moved her head back and forth to judge the depth of the drop, scanning the lip of the ravine for a safe way down, then followed as Chilaili moved parallel to the edge, heading for the spot where a path of sorts led downward through a side fissure that opened out into the larger valley. Far below, water glinted in the flares of lightning. Forest giants overhung the deep lake, leaning out over the edge of the bluff, their crowns seeking the sunlight which fell in stronger concentration where the deep gorge had cut a gap through the forest.
In the rain-slashed darkness, they slipped and slithered and tripped over great gnarls of tree roots and thick undergrowth. They had nearly reached the side fissure and the path down when lightning crackled and slammed into the tree just ahead of them. Blue-white light glared, actinic, blinding. The tree burst into flame, split along its entire length by the lightning bolt. Thunder crushed them flat against the mud as the immense tree broke in half and crashed down. Chilaili screamed. . . .
The ground shook under the smashing weight of the tree, shook and broke under them. An undercut ledge of rock hanging out over empty space crumbled into pieces beneath the weight of the falling tree. They all went plunging over the edge as the jutting overhang of rock cracked and gave way. Chilaili fell. Sooleawa spun away from her, dropping into the blackness just beyond the reach of her clawtips. The world windmilled as she thrashed, trying to grasp the wildly flailing branches of the fallen tree. Rough wood and long, whippy leaves slashed through her hands, slowing her fall, but didn't give her enough purchase to halt the sickening plunge. She struck water with a smashing shock, the impact driving the breath from her lungs. She went deep into the dark water, thrashing frantically. Chilaili struggled toward the surface, chest on fire from the need to breathe, and finally broke her head above water. She sucked down air—
—and screamed for her daughter.
"Sooleawa!"
Chilaili scanned the roiled surface of the lake. Rain and lightning blinded her. Half of the tree lay jammed across the broken edge and the far wall of the ravine, spanning the narrow, deep lake. The tree's bulk loomed ominously, a black bar high above her head. Then she realized that thick, black shape was shifting, its base dropping as more of the rocky lip crumbled away beneath it. She saw it falling, saw the immense shadow plunging down at the very same instant she spotted Sooleawa. Her daughter was closer to the edge of the lake than Chilaili was, treading water directly beneath the smashing weight of that huge tree.
"Sooleawa!"
Rock and wood fell in a rain of death.
Her daughter folded up and dove for the bottom in a hopeless attempt to avoid being crushed. Chilaili, stricken motionless by horror, could only watch the slow-motion fall of that killer tree, oblivious to her own danger. Then something heavy grazed her shoulder, sent her spinning into the black depths. She held her breath by instinct, stunned and unable to thrash her way back toward the surface. Long, dizzy moments passed, while the world tried to right itself inside her brain. When the fog cleared enough to realize she was deep underwater, Chilaili moved sluggish limbs, found rough wood under her clawtips, pulled herself hand over hand toward the surface. Her head broke water again and she gulped down lungfuls of air, then searched frantically for signs of her child.
The tree was completely down now, its shattered crown leaning drunkenly against the far wall of the ravine, its broken base disappearing underwater. Chilaili fought her way toward the trunk, screaming her daughter's name. "Sooleawa!" In the non-stop flares of lightning, she saw the glimmer of pale fur far below, down in the black water. She dove, fighting and clawing her way down. With shaking hands, she tugged at her daughter's arm, trying to tow the girl to the surface.
She might as well have tried to tug the tree up out of the water. She explored frantically with shaking hands and found a thick, jagged splinter of wood, thicker than Chilaili's own body. It held her daughter trapped more than a body length beneath the surface. Sooleawa was unconscious, her pulse fluttering, her lungs filling with water. Chilaili wrenched at the huge splinter with her claws, frantic. It was too thick, too massive to break—and even if she'd had her knife, she couldn't have hacked through all that wood in time. She was still wrenching at it, despairing, when a pale glimmer appeared right at the edge of Chilaili's vision.
She jerked her head around in the dark water—and her pupils dilated with shock. A wraithlike shape hovered in the water beside her. Chilaili had never seen a creature like it, not in all in her life. It was slender, fragile-looking. Its long, thin limbs were completely hairless, its face round and strange. Long, dark fur floated in a wild tangle around its head. The creature was holding something, and whatever it was, it glowed. The thing was long and narrow, like a thick stick, out of which light blazed. It held something else, too, some kind of knife blade. When the creature drove that flimsy-looking blade through the body-thick splinter pinning Sooleawa, the wood parted like fog before the wind. An instant was all it took and Sooleawa was free. Chilaili grasped her daughter's arm, pulling desperately toward the surface. The creature fumbled its knife into a carrier on its clothing and clamped the glowing thing in its teeth, then took Sooleawa's other arm and swam strongly upward. Between them, they towed the unconscious girl to the surface.
In the flare of lightning, the creature gestured unmistakably toward the rocky bank. They swam awkwardly for shore, keeping Sooleawa's head above water. Chilaili dragged her daughter onto the broken litter where the lip of the ravine had crashed down. Sooleawa wasn't breathing, wasn't moving at all. The strange creature bent, listened at her chest, then tilted Sooleawa's head back and forced open her beak. It used surprisingly strong, blunt-fingered hands to press up under her rib cage. Water trickled from Sooleawa's mouth. Chilaili saw at once what the slender creature was doing, pushing the water up and out by compressing Sooleawa's lungs. Chilaili, stronger and larger than the stranger, took over the work.
The strange creature crouched down over the girl, listening, then fastened a tiny mouth over Sooleawa's and blew air down her throat, again and again. Chilaili watched in astonishment as the creature—she couldn't call it an animal, for it was clearly intelligent—worked frantically to try and breathe life back into Chilaili's child. When Sooleawa twitched and moved, Chilaili's fur stood on end. Her daughter made a choking sound, ghastly and weak, then her rib cage heaved and she started to vomit water. The creature hastily turned Sooleawa's head, rolling her onto her side, which helped the girl bring the water up more easily. Chilaili took her daughter's head gently between her hands and steadied her when she began to tremble violently, coughing and gasping for air.
At a blur of unexpected movement, Chilaili jerked her gaze up. The creature had abandoned them—but only for a few moments. It came rapidly back along the rocky lakeshore, moving at a somewhat reckless jog, given the uneven footing, the driving rain, and the uncertain shadows and flares of the lightning. It was carrying something, a squarish, bulky thing that proved to be some sort of carrysack, and used the glowing thing in its hand to light its way along the debris-riddled shore as it ran. The creature pulled from the carrysack something lightweight, as thin as the inner bark of the seylish tree. It spread the thing across Sooleawa's shuddering frame.
It was a blanket of some kind, Chilaili realized, its surface silvery as moonlight and strange to the touch. Chilaili appreciated the effort, but it was far too thin to do much good. Sooleawa's shudders eased away almost at once, however, startling Chilaili into investigating more closely. When she slipped a hand beneath the filmy thing, she found a surprising amount of heat building up under it. What strange manner of blanket was this? And what manner of creature was its maker?
At that moment, Sooleawa's eyes opened.
Her gaze rested directly on the face of the creature which had saved her life.
Her pupils dilated in utter shock. "M-mother?" she gasped, stiffening in fright.
"Hush, dearest one," she soothed, stroking her daughter's wet head-fur. "This creature has returned your life to you, precious one. It risked itself to free you from a tangle of branches under the water, gave you breath from its own lungs."
Sooleawa stared from Chilaili to the slender creature which crouched beside them. It was watching them through strange, luminous blue eyes. Its long head-fur, as black as the night, lay plastered wetly to its pale hide, falling in a bedraggled mass past its narrow waist. It wore strange body coverings over much of that moon-pale hide, coverings that looked ruggedly sturdy, to protect its fragile-looking skin. Beneath the upper coverings, its body bulged strangely at the front, and its hips flared wide beneath the narrow waist. It even wore coverings to protect its feet. If the blunt ends of its fingers were any indication, there were no claws inside those foot coverings, just bare stubs like those at the tips of its long, thin fingers.
It was looking at the belt Chilaili wore, the belt which held an empty sheath where she normally carried her knife. And as it stared, its round and luminous eyes narrowed slightly, its expression alien and baffling.
"What is it?" Sooleawa breathed, her voice an awestruck whisper.
"I don't know," Chilaili admitted. "It's nothing like the Ones Above, is it?"
The akule had long kept sacred likenesses of the Ones Above who had created Chilaili's clan, to remind them of their duty to their makers. They brought out the likenesses for the various sacred ceremonies their clan observed during the long wheel of the year. The creature she studied so closely in the lightning flares was as unlike the Ones Above as Chilaili was. And given its reactions, the way it stared back at her, this creature had never seen any of the Tersae before, either. Where had it come from? There was only one place Chilaili could think of that made any sense at all: the sky.
Certainly, there had never been anything like this creature anywhere in the world. And since the Ones Above dwelt amongst the moons and the stars beyond, it was reasonable to believe other intelligent beings might, as well. The Ones Above had sometimes spoken through the Oracle about devils among the stars, but this creature could be no devil. It was far too fragile-looking to be a devil. Besides, the devils spoken of by the Ones Above did nothing but kill and this creature had worked frantically to save Sooleawa's life.
Its strange, glowing stick, its wondrous knife, and its gossamer-thin blanket told Chilaili that these creatures were able, like Chilaili's makers, to manufacture things far beyond her understanding. She shivered beneath the downpour, staring almost fearfully into its luminous, alien eyes. It met Chilaili's gaze squarely, then gestured carefully toward itself.
"Bessany Weyman," it said, its voice an alien ripple of sound, pausing between the two words to emphasize their separateness. "Bessany Weyman," it said again, then gestured to Chilaili and her daughter.
"Chilaili," she said slowly, touching her own chest, then touched her child's shoulder. "Sooleawa. My daughter, Sooleawa."
Bessany Weyman repeated the sounds of their names. Its accent was strange, its eyes oddly compelling as it studied them. Flares of lightning and the driving rain caused it to shiver. It spoke again, a rapid burble of sound, then gestured down the shoreline in the direction of a good, deep cave Chilaili knew existed along the base of the cliff—the shelter she had been trying to reach when the tree had come down. Chilaili nodded, pointing toward the cave, then said, "Daughter, there is a cave at the other end of this shoreline. I have used it before, when caught by bad weather. Can you stand?"
Sooleawa was desperately shaky, but managed to rise to her feet with both Chilaili and Bessany Weyman to assist her. Bessany Weyman folded up its silvery blanket and returned the thing to its carrysack, then offered a shoulder for Sooleawa to lean against. Had Sooleawa been fully grown, the alien would have been far too short to be of much practical use, for it was a small creature, but Sooleawa had just turned fifteen and would not reach her full growth for a number of years yet. The creature's shoulder was almost the perfect height for Sooleawa to lean against. Between them, Chilaili and the alien creature braced the shaken girl, helping her limp down the rocky, debris-littered shore of the lake.
Blood trickled hotly down Chilaili's side from deeper injuries her daughter had sustained. Chilaili clicked her beak in agitation, but until they got Sooleawa to shelter, there was little she could do about the wound. Sooleawa was trembling violently by the time they found the cave entrance. It lay half a Tersae length above them, where the ravine wall sloped back under a deep overhang. They climbed a scree-littered slope, then stepped into a dry shelter, out of the wind and rain.
They eased Sooleawa down and Chilaili ran careful hands over her child, searching out the extent of her injuries and peering worriedly at the deep cuts which still oozed beneath Sooleawa's fur. Bessany Weyman rummaged in the carrysack again, removing a number of fathomless items. The alien set up several shiny poles which somehow collapsed into themselves for storage, but when pulled open extended an arm span or more in length. It set the poles up carefully, angling them to its satisfaction and anchoring them against the rocky ground, then fastened to them a large, lightweight sheet of some tough fabric, similar to the silvery blanket, but made of a different substance.
It proved an effective windbreak, keeping out the gusts and occasional drifts of rain that blew into the shelter. A second item sent light flooding into every crack and crevice of their shelter, as bright as the noonday sun, yet Chilaili could feel no appreciable heat radiating from it. A third strange device looked like a squat, squarish lump of metal without any practical use at all, but when the alien fiddled with it, the thing began to glow a dull reddish color and gave off a delicious heat, warming their protected little shelter in an astonishingly short time.
It sat down, then, to watch them. Chilaili had traced the extent of her daughter's cuts and was trying to stanch the bleeding with her hands. The alien rummaged again in its carrysack, then offered a small bundle of whitish cloth which, once unrolled, the alien easily tore into smaller pieces which it used to press against the wounds, halting the flow of blood. It handed Chilaili another little bundle of the stuff, making motions with its hands. Chilaili nodded, unrolling it and winding the filmy stuff around the wound to hold the compresses in place. Sooleawa's eyes had closed. She was trembling, with faint tremors that told Chilaili shock was setting in. Terror took hold of her again, seeing that. Shock could prove just as fatal as drowning.
The instant they had bandaged Sooleawa's various wounds, the alien brought out the silvery blanket again, covering the shivering girl with it, which warmed her even more rapidly than the flameless heating device. The frightening shudders began to ease away. Chilaili hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath until she gulped down a lungful of air in sheer relief. The alien then produced a cup from the carrysack and stepped to the edge of their shelter, leaning out to fill it with clean rainwater, carefully avoiding the muddy spilloff that plunged over the edge of the ravine wall high above them.
A moment later, it knelt at Sooleawa's side and offered the cup to Chilaili, gesturing to the girl's mouth. It was awkwardly shaped, clearly designed for the alien's smaller, soft-edged mouth, but Chilaili found it functional enough when she lifted Sooleawa's head and coaxed her to swallow. "Yes, that's good, most precious one," Chilaili murmured, stroking her child's fur gently, "take a little more, now."
Her daughter finished the water slowly and gazed in wonderment at the alien beside them. It watched them silently through those eerie, water-blue eyes, by far the best feature in its strange, round face. A small protuberance which jutted out from the center must house its nostrils, Chilaili decided at length, watching it breathe. Her own nostrils were part of her beak, but some of the creatures they hunted had separate bumps to breathe through—although she'd never seen any shaped quite like the one on Bessany Weyman's ash-pale face. It was a compellingly odd face. The skin stretched and shifted into differing shapes as thoughts passed with lightning rapidity through its eyes, doubtless rendering visible its feelings, if one knew how to read the expressions.
Chilaili wondered what it made of her own face, if it felt as puzzled about how to interpret Chilaili's thoughts as she felt, trying to fathom the alien's. Chilaili had to shift her head back and forth to accurately judge the distance between them, which made trying to understand its alien expressions even more difficult. Those water-blue eyes followed the swing of Chilaili's head with a wrinkle furrowing its upper face. It was uncomfortable, Chilaili realized abruptly, cued as much by the shift in its scent as by the expression on its mobile face, uncomfortable and unused to creatures who shifted their heads more or less continuously to judge depths and distances. She handed back the cup with a low murmur of thanks and tipped her head to one side, gazing one-eyed at the alien, which appeared to reduce its level of discomfort.
Chilaili was startled when the alien parroted back the sound of her thanks. Its mouth wasn't shaped correctly, however, and the word came out hopelessly mangled. After a moment, it pointed to the cup and said a single word. Chilaili spoke it back and the skin of its face stretched upwards, turning the soft-edged mouth upward like a hunting bow.
It's an expression of pleasure, Chilaili realized slowly. It filled the cup again with rainwater, then touched the water inside and said another word. Chilaili repeated it, finding the sounds required of its language far less difficult to pronounce than it found hers. Sooleawa and Chilaili watched, wide-eyed with interest, as the creature touched and named the rocks, the cloth of its portable shelter frame, the flameless heating device, the silvery blanket, even its body coverings in a desperate attempt at communication. Then it gestured to Chilaili and Sooleawa, not separately, but inclusively. Chilaili narrowed her pupils for a moment, trying to understand, then understood the question in a sudden flash of insight. She nodded.
"Tersae," she said, naming their species as a whole. "Chilaili," she said, tapping her chest, and "Sooleawa," touching her daughter's silver-covered shoulder, then she gestured to them both and said, "Tersae."
"Tersae?"
Chilaili nodded, clicking her approval in the base of her throat.
The alien touched itself and said, "Bessany Weyman," then sketched other imaginary figures in the air, tracing the same rough shape as itself, and said, "Humans."
"Humans." The name of its species was as strange as its appearance. Chilaili pointed at the alien. "Bessany Weyman," she said, then sketched rough approximations of others of its kind in the mud at their feet, using one clawtip to scrape the rough pattern of its face and body and head-fur. "Humans."
The alien's face wrinkled again in its expression of pleasure.
Chilaili stepped to the entrance of their little shelter and gestured for the alien to join her. It rose and moved to stand beside her shoulder. It was such a little creature, really not much larger than a half-grown nestling. The top of its head barely reached Chilaili's shoulder. She marveled that its slender limbs and delicate-looking hands had been strong enough to support Sooleawa's weight, carrying the wounded girl up to this cave. As the lightning flared, Chilaili pointed to the trees and said, "Forest." The alien said another word, which Chilaili repeated. Chilaili then tapped herself, pointed to Sooleawa, and pointed to the forest, moving her hands in a broad circle, trying to convey that they lived in this area. She pointed to the alien, hesitated, then pointed questioningly to the sky. "Humans?"
The creature made a sharp sound and stared up into Chilaili's face.
Then, very slowly, it nodded, copying Chilaili's own head-bobbing gesture. Or perhaps the gesture was one the aliens used, as well? It pointed upwards and said, "Humans, sky." Then it pointed in another direction, off to the east, thankfully in the opposite direction from Icewing Clan's current, summer nest. "Humans," it said, and a word that sounded like "hohm."
They had made a nest, then, somewhere to the east.
Chilaili found herself wondering if the Ones Above knew about the arrival of the humans—and if so, what They intended to do about it. Had these aliens come here to build new nests and colonize the Tersae's world? Were there just a few humans or would more arrive? Chilaili felt uneasy posing such questions, particularly since the Ones Above had spoken of devils among the stars, dangerous devils that killed with weapons of great power.
Were the humans such devils, after all? Surely not. Chilaili could not imagine a creature of evil risking its own life to save the trapped and drowning child of another species. A devil would simply have stood on the shore, watching with pleasure as Sooleawa died, possibly even shooting Chilaili down afterward, as she struggled from the water. Chilaili stared down at the slender little alien with a troubled gaze, wanting desperately to know more of these human creatures and why they had come to Chilaili's world.
She made a good start, at least, during Sooleawa's recovery from her brush with death. They stayed with Bessany Weyman in the little lakeside cave for two full days, giving Sooleawa time to rest from the wounds in her side. While they rested, they learned a surprisingly large number of the human's words—but not nearly enough to ask the questions in Chilaili's heart or to answer those she could see flickering through the alien's luminous eyes. On the morning after Sooleawa's accident, a morning which dawned grey with rain, but without the wind and lightning of the previous night, Bessany Weyman produced a small device from its carrysack, speaking into it. Another, deeper voice answered and a lengthy conversation followed, startling Chilaili enormously. It's like a tiny Oracle, she realized with a prickle of awe.
She had considered climbing to the top of the bluff this morning, and sending out a distress call using the low, deep sounds a Tersae huntress in trouble used to call for help, sounds that covered great distances; but Chilaili now found herself wanting to keep the existence of the humans secret from her clan, at least for a while. Why she felt that way, Chilaili couldn't decide, even in her own mind. Certainly, the clan would not be worried about them, yet. Blooding Hunts sometimes took days to complete, as inexperienced huntresses learned the art of the stalk, sometimes blundering through a dozen or more attempted kills before achieving success.
When the alien finished speaking into its tiny Oracle, Chilaili pointed to the device and asked in the human's language, "What is?" then wondered if she would understand the answer.
"Radio," it said slowly.
"Radio?" Chilaili copied the strange word.
It nodded.
Chilaili thought about the best way to word her question. "Radio is human Oracle?"
It studied her with an expression that—if Chilaili were interpreting it correctly—radiated considerable surprise. "Oracle?" it repeated the word.
Chilaili tried to explain, pointing to the sky. "Oracle. From the Ones Above."
Abstract concepts were almost impossible to convey, with their painfully limited vocabulary. Chilaili pointed to Bessany Weyman's complex tools, pointed to the sky. "From the Ones Above?"
The alien seemed to understand that Chilaili knew these devices had come from the sky, and that somehow, Chilaili had seen something else that had come from the sky, but it didn't look very happy about that fact. The human asked, "What are the 'Ones Above'?"
Chilaili used one claw to sketch the general outline of the Ones Above in the mud. "The Ones Above," she said, pointing from the muddy drawing to the sky again.
It was a crude sketch, very little like the Ones Above, really, but the shape she'd drawn looked nothing like a Tersae and even less like a human. Bessany Weyman stared at it for a long time, then pulled a device from its carrysack and pointed it at the drawing. Chilaili hurriedly erased the marks, worried now, and more than a little afraid. The alien held her gaze for a long moment, then wordlessly put the device away again. It brought out another device instead, similar to the collapsible poles of the shelter frame, only this one opened into a circle at one end, then bent back around to fasten securely. To this, the alien attached a long, almost transparent net of exceedingly fine mesh.
Bessany Weyman gestured for Chilaili to follow, then led the way around the end of the lake, to a deep pool where a shelf of rock made an ideal place for fish to gather. It peered down into the water, which rippled grey-green in the cloudy morning light. Rain pocked and roiled the slate-dark surface. Chilaili could see the warm shapes of fish in the chilly depths, good-sized fish, enough of them to feed Chilaili, her daughter, and the alien. The human studied the fish for several silent moments, then dipped the net swiftly, with a sure movement, and dragged three to the surface. They struggled wildly, but the net was made of strong fiber. The alien scooped them out, killing them neatly with a sharp blow of their heads against the rock. It waited patiently for the remaining fish to lose their fear and regather, then dipped the net twice more, capturing ten fish in total. The human handed half of them to Chilaili.
She accepted with a rumble of thanks in the base of her throat.
They returned to the shelter, where the human proceeded to build an ordinary fire, although it lit the wood with a device as strange as the flameless heater. It then produced a small knife-shaped device and touched a recessed place in its end. The knife began to hum with a strange, very low sound. This, then, was the tool it had used to free Sooleawa from that underwater death trap. The blade was as long as the human's hand—and the alien took great care never to touch that blade with its fingers. It used the humming knife with great skill, gutting all ten fish, stripping off neat little fillets almost completely devoid of bones, then tossed the offal and gristly bones into the water, glancing occasionally at Chilaili as if to check whether or not it had violated some clan taboo with each new activity.
The human cut several short sticks from a nearby shrub, then did something that caused the knife to fall silent. It put away the strange tool and spitted the fillets on the sharpened sticks. Chilaili and her strange new companion held the makeshift roasting spits over the flames and soon the tantalizing scents of hot fish filled their little shelter. Sooleawa sat up, pulling the silvery blanket around her shoulders with a shiver, but ate with fair appetite—a truly hopeful sign.
They shared the meal in silence, but it was a companionable silence, born more of hunger than uneasiness or lack of vocabulary. When the last, flaky morsels had been eaten, they started another language lesson, which carried Chilaili and the human far beyond the shelter, naming everything within sight. The alien tried to convey a sense of grammar and language structure as it strung together words and attempted to communicate the concepts behind those groupings. By nightfall, Chilaili was starting to make progress. By the end of the next day, she was able to speak in crude, somewhat disjointed sentences, although somewhat seriously limited in scope and topic. That second night, she taught Sooleawa everything the human had taught her during the day. Her daughter carefully repeated back the words, glancing at Bessany Weyman to confirm that she'd said them correctly. The alien wrinkled its face in the pleasure expression again and again, saying, "Yes" and "Good" many times.
On the third morning, when it was clear Sooleawa would be able to travel again, their unlikely companion packed up its carrysack and made ready to return to its nest. The human actually invited them, with gestures and words, to accompany it. "You come my home, Chilaili, Sooleawa. You come, much happy."
Chilaili and Sooleawa exchanged a long glance, then Sooleawa said, "I would like to see the human nest, at least, Respected Mother. I want to know more about these creatures I owe my life to. If you think it safe?"
Given what it had done for them already, Chilaili couldn't imagine the human deliberately doing anything to harm them. And Chilaili, too, was curious. Moreover, as Icewing Clan's katori, it was her responsibility to learn everything she could about these newcomers, to protect the clan as best she could. So they went with the alien, walking for three full days through broken country where deep gullies and ravines slashed unpredictably through miles of forest. Stands of thick-boled conifers showed like dark streams flowing through the vast, pale-green seas of broad-leafed trees that predominated where soil and rainfall allowed them to thrive. When winter came, the broad, water-rich leaves would turn crimson and brilliant gold, then fall in a brightly colored rain, leaving the dark-needled conifers to rule the eleven long months of darkness, snow, and ice. Come winter, every other living plant would go deep into hibernation or die back to roots and seed pods.
Scattered here and there, in sheltered valleys and white-water gorges, rushing plumes of water shot out across the ragged, jagged lips of stone, falling with a perpetual misting spray. Tree ferns swayed like graceful girls and broad-spined, prickly akrati fronds rattled like whole nestfuls of warlike boys caught up in late summer's courtship dance. By winter, these gorges would be solid ice, fantastical sculptures of it, where waterfalls froze, locking away the tree ferns and the prickly akrati in a coating of solid ice up to a handsbreadth thick. Winter turned such gorges into a breathtaking wonderland—where one tiny misstep could leave a body crushed under cracked and falling tons of ice and snapped-off trees or impaled on ice swords and thorny protrusions where akrati fronds jutted out with six-foot-long points of ice.
Winter on Chilaili's homeworld had five hundred brutal ways to kill the unwary, the careless, the poorly trained. Chilaili worried about the humans. This world did not forgive ignorance or poor judgment or even one moment of inattention. When the deep cold came—all eleven, bitter, long moons of it—even native animals were pushed hard to the ragged edge of survival. The clans always lost heavily over the winters: the old ones, those who fell ill or suffered some other weakness or infirmity, the unlucky huntresses who came back maimed, if at all. How could the humans, complete strangers to winter's treacheries, possibly hope to survive, even with their magical tools?
Chilaili and her companions finally reached the edge of a large valley which Chilaili had seen before, only too many times. She stared, horrified. The humans could scarcely have chosen a more dangerous place to build, a fact she did not yet know enough vocabulary to convey. Sooleawa tipped her head to peer up at Chilaili, having caught scent of Chilaili's sudden, acute worry.
"What is it, Mother?" she asked in a low whisper while the human forged on ahead, greatly excited now. "Do you know this place?"
Chilaili turned her gaze from the long, knife-blade gouge in the ground and met her daughter's troubled eyes. "Oh, yes," she murmured in their own tongue, "I know a great deal of this place."
A long, steep-walled gorge snaked away through the badlands of cliffs and broken fissures, topped with its fringe of forest like a heavy green beard. A sparkling clear lake drowned the far end of the valley, born of the meltoff pouring down from an immense glacier that towered above. Calving ice thundered down each spring in an avalanche of debris that spilled into the far end of the lake and set its pristine waters to sloshing. The humans' hard-walled nest stood within a spear's throw of the lake. High above, water exploded in freshets and gushes, leaping down across the face of the glacier and roaring through the narrow upper fissure where this particular gorge was born.
In winter, that water would freeze across the whole top of the fissure, leaving a natural ice bridge spanning the top of the valley. It was a favorite spot for males to taunt one another for their bravery. Walk the ice bridge . . . the males goaded, gulping down fermented yacto juice to heat their blood and dull cautionary reason. If you're really a man, you'll walk the ice bridge . . .
Nor was it just the appalling ease of falling to one's death that made this place so deadly. An insane, whipping whirl of wind blasted down off the glacier to meet the warmer, moister air rising from the forest, particularly from the lush growth down in the protected gorge itself, creating dangerous twist-winds. Even after the forest had dropped its leaves, there would still be heat to stir up the troubled air, for a ring of fire mountains girdled this whole area, active volcanoes that spewed plumes of heat and smoke into the air and set the hot springs simmering like so many cookpots.
Weather in this gorge, when winter set cruel fangs into the land, was without doubt the most interesting anywhere in the whole of Icewing Clan's vast range. She wondered why the humans, who showed such sharp intelligence in other ways, had chosen so dreadfully in building their new nest? Maybe they were an afflicted species of devils, as the Ones Above insisted. Whatever the reason for it, unless they possessed tools of tremendous power indeed, they were likely to find their first winter here full of lethal surprises.
Sooleawa whispered, "Is this valley taboo, Mother? Is that why you stare so strangely?"
Chilaili roused herself with difficulty. "No . . ." She sighed. "No, it is not taboo. Perhaps it should be. I've helped bury too many fools who fell from the ice bridge that forms each winter, there at the foot of the glacier." A hideous task it was, too, scraping up the spattered mess that was left after falling more than two hundred feet onto a jagged ice field. She'd also treated shattered limbs and deep puncture wounds sustained by those who'd managed to stop the fatal slide off the edge, but only at the sacrifice of crushed arms, shattered legs, and splintered ribs that drove spikes of bone through lung tissue. She wasn't sure which was worse, fast and messy death below the ice bridge or slow death from choking on blood and the pneumonia sickness. . . .
The most surprising thing Chilaili saw, however, more shocking than the hard-walled structures of the alien nest, was a gently sloping stone incline which rose from the valley floor to the very spot where the three of them had emerged from the forest. The incline looped back on itself multiple times as it climbed up more than two hundred feet of cliff face. The rock looked as though it had been shaped, cut by some immense knife. Chilaili shivered involuntarily. Given what she'd seen of this human's miraculous belt knife, these creatures might use machines to cut solid stone as easily as Chilaili could split a softened, overripe fruit.
Down in the valley, itself, the humans had cleared a wide swath of trees, providing a broad, flattened area for the hard-walled nest. Part of that flattened area glinted whitely in the sunlight. The humans had laid down a slab of something hard, for an unfathomable reason. A collection of strangely shaped huts, made from some other hard substance, sat nearby. Chilaili hoped those huts were as strong as they looked. They were too small and too few in number to house very many of the humans. Strange objects sat beside the huts, while larger objects rested on the edges of the flat, white thing, their uses well beyond Chilaili's ability to determine.
When she spotted other humans in the distance, perhaps a dozen of them, Chilaili realized in some surprise that they came in two startlingly different shapes. There were several smallish ones like Bessany Weyman, with flared hips and chest bulges, but there were taller, broader ones as well, with flat chests and hips that did not flare at all, but dropped straight from their long torsos. Males and females, Chilaili guessed, trying to puzzle out which were which through the aliens' behavior toward one another. She could discern no apparent system of rankings or subservience, however, which frustrated her. If they followed the Tersae's pattern, the males would be larger and heavier, but with creatures from the stars, who could say whether or not that pattern would hold true?
As they watched, a dark shape in the air, tiny with distance, came arrowing in rapidly. As it came racing nearer, Chilaili realized it was too large and moved too swiftly to be any kind of bird. It approached the human nest, slowed, then settled gently down to land on the broad, white slab. It came to a rolling halt near one edge. A shiny door made of some type of metal opened in its side and a human climbed out, closing the door behind itself before jogging across the ground to join the other humans. The flying machine sat near others very similar to it, five of them, in total.
Chilaili's fur prickled, gazing down at them. How far could a human travel in such a device? Given that thing's speed, it could probably reach the hunting grounds of even the most distant clans with ease—and probably could find her summer nest within a few hours. Chilaili repressed a shiver and glanced at her daughter, who was staring in rapt fascination at the human nest and its multiple wonders. When Bessany Weyman tried to urge Chilaili and Sooleawa out into the open, to follow the alien down the sloping incline to the human nest, Chilaili quietly refused.
"No," she said firmly, using the human word. "Chilaili, Sooleawa no walk."
The human tilted its head to look up into Chilaili's nearest eye. "Home?" it asked, glancing toward the forest.
"Home," Chilaili agreed.
"I come?" it asked.
Chilaili hesitated.
"I come cave? You come cave? We talk?"
Chilaili nodded. "Yes. Cave. We talk." She pointed to the sun, made an arc over her head to symbolize the sun's path across the sky, then made four more arcs to represent five days. "You come, I come, Sooleawa come. Five sun."
Bessany Weyman sketched five arcs across the sky. "Five suns? Five days?"
"Yes. Five suns. Five days. Cave. You, not humans." She pointed toward the human nest.
Bessany Weyman nodded, although the human did not look happy about the stipulation to come alone. Those luminous blue eyes studied Chilaili and Sooleawa in turn, then the human said a word that must have been a farewell, for it turned away immediately afterward, hiking down toward its nest. It moved quickly, clearly eager to be among its own kind, again. They watched the human reach the valley floor, watched it disappear into the trees between the stone incline and the hard-walled nest, watched curiously as Bessany Weyman emerged on the other side of the trees and rejoined her own kind. The excited welcome spread as other humans came running from the hard-walled huts. From the way the others treated Bessany Weyman, it was clear that their human was held in high esteem by its fellow creatures.
"It is tiponi, among them," Sooleawa murmured.
Child of importance.
True, the human was scarcely larger than a half-grown child, although clearly an adult among its own kind. The word tiponi was usually reserved for the heirs of a clan's leaders, yet it seemed to fit this alien who was treated with obvious respect and deference by its fellows. "Yes, perhaps it is," Chilaili agreed softly. "Come, Sooleawa, they have turned their attention toward us."
The humans were staring up toward the treeline where Chilaili and Sooleawa stood. While Chilaili and her daughter had been careful to hide in the shadows of the nearest trees, they might well be visible to whatever powerful tools such creatures could make. So they melted back into the forest, moving swiftly, now, and put a great deal of distance between themselves and the human nest. Chilaili led the way, taking them along a circuitous, snaking path that would add a hand of days to their journey home, but might serve to confuse any human who tried to follow.
Chilaili later determined that no human had attempted to trail them.
And five days after they left the human at her home nest, Bessany Weyman had come alone to the little cave, as promised. For three full cycles of the moons, Chilaili and Sooleawa had met secretly with the human, determined to learn more of the strangers from the stars. Unlike the Ones Above, who had never actually shown their faces to Chilaili's little clan, sending only flat likenesses to be revered and speaking only through the Oracles, Tiponi Weyman had walked freely with them, trying to understand Chilaili's language, trying to understand what they believed and why they did things in the ways they did them.
Bessany Weyman had taught Chilaili much about the humans in the process. There was a great deal to admire, as well as fear. The human acted with honor and clearly respected Chilaili. Not once had the human made Chilaili feel inferior, despite the enormous gulf between Chilaili's knowledge and primitive tools and the human's almost magical ones. Tiponi Weyman treated Chilaili as a valued friend, one who respected Chilaili's thoughts and sought her opinions.
And now the Ones Above had ordered Chilaili to destroy every human in the world.
Chilaili blinked at the Council fire, then met the gaze of Great-Grandmother Anevay once more. Anevay—and the rest of Icewing Clan—waited for her to speak, to explain herself and her insistence that this war with the humans was not only a disaster, but unnecessary. She glanced into the eyes of every Grandmother on the council, met the viho's gaze and the akule's, knew that the Oracle Kestejoo served would be listening, weighing, judging. Speak aloud where the machine left by the Ones Above could hear her treasonous, heretical arguments? She suppressed a shudder.
Choosing her words with great care, she said, "As katori to Icewing Clan, it is my sacred duty to protect our people, to guide the clan when we must make important decisions that affect our health, our very survival. The humans are powerful creatures, able to make and use tools far beyond our comprehension. They rival the Ones Above who created all the true Tersae there are in this world—"
"No one doubts the humans' cleverness in making weapons that kill effectively," the akule interrupted, earnestly. "Of course they can. They are devils. Murderous fiends sent to destroy us. You know how deeply I love Icewing Clan, Chilaili, what I gave up to come here. Can anyone in this clan doubt my loyalty, my sincerity?"
Not even Chilaili could argue that.
Kestejoo had given up his home and blood kin for Zaltana and for Icewing Clan. When season after season passed, producing neither daughters nor sons—which left the clan without an heir to become Speaker for the Oracle—Kestejoo had learned all the rituals of Zaltana's office as akule. During the long months of her final illness, he had not left her side even to sleep and eat, grieving and vowing to accept the mantle of akule.
He had been zealous in his work, after Zaltana's death.
Too zealous, perhaps.
He took a single step forward, holding out one hand toward Chilaili, and his voice rang with the power of profound belief. "We must fight these demons from the stars. We must fight with every ounce of our strength, our determination, our courage. And yes, if necessary, our warriors must fight to the death. Such monsters cannot be allowed to draw breath under our sun. If we do not destroy them or at least drive them back to the stars, they will hunt us down and kill us all, to the last unborn hatchling still in its eggshell!"
"If we make enemies of such creatures," Chilaili snapped, "we do so at our own peril! If we attack, as the Ones Above demand, the humans' tools are quite capable of killing the clans by the thousands. There are not so many of us, anywhere in the world, that we can sustain such losses. If Icewing Clan, at least, does not make war, if we remain safely hidden in our winter nest and keep them ignorant of our presence, the humans will have no reason to attack us."
Worried murmurs buzzed like summer insects.
The war leader shook his grizzled head. "No, Chilaili, you are wrong." Yiska's voice was a low rumble, startling to hear at the Council fire, since Yiska usually remained silent, merely carrying out the will of the Grandmothers and Huntresses. "The Ones Above have warned us. The human devils can locate us by any open show of fire or heat against the snow, even the heat of our bodies. They can track us through the magical power of our Oracles, if we use them while the humans still possess their weapons. Do you really think we can remain hidden from them? No. They would find and kill us, so we must—"
"The Ones Above are killing us already! Must we rush to finish it by suiciding?"
Shocked silence fell.
Even the akule trembled. "Chilaili! Th-that's blasphemy!"
"Is it blasphemy to speak what every Mother and Grandmother of every clan already knows?" Chilaili demanded. "If so, then our entire race is guilty of it! What can you, a male, possibly know of such matters?"
Kestejoo's pupils dilated for one long, thunderstruck moment. Then naked hurt throbbed in his eyes, causing Chilaili to clamp her beak tightly, wishing she could take back the harsh words. Chilaili had often wondered if the Ones Above had been responsible, somehow, for that terrible lack of hatchlings at Kestejoo and Zaltana's hearth. Once, as recently as three turnings of the moons ago, Chilaili would have accepted such a cruel dictate as natural and right. But the time she had spent with Bessany Weyman had made Chilaili doubt many things.
Huntress Alsoomse rose to her feet, bowing deferentially to the Council members. "I would add my voice to Chilaili's."
Great-Grandmother Anevay nodded.
"I have traveled far," Alsoomse said quietly, "trading with distant clans, with my mate and often my older sons at my side to protect me. I have spoken to many Mothers and Grandmothers about such matters. I have risked much to learn what we desperately need to know. As dangerous as our own situation is, things are far worse in the other clans. Mothers and Grandmothers elsewhere hold no power, as we Huntresses do. They must bow to the dictates of their clan lords—even in matters of the eggs. Even so, the Mothers and Grandmothers of all the clans are whispering rebellion, for we all feel the same anger and terror. The Ones Above are destroying us."
The akule turned a shocked, disapproving glare on Alsoomse. The Huntress ducked her head unhappily, but she did not back down. "I am sorry, akule, but I will not deny what I have seen and heard, no matter what you tell us the Oracle has said. Chilaili speaks the truth. Mothers and Grandmothers everywhere are saying it. The blessing chambers, in which we have been so strictly commanded to place our eggs, do not bring blessings. They bring death. The chambers leave our eggs changed, akule, not just Icewing's, but the eggs of all the clans, with damage so visible, even Grandmothers with no say in their own clans' affairs have begun to hold back eggs, refusing to put all of them into the blessing chambers."
Kestejoo stared at Alsoomse in horror. "You dare—?"
"Yes, we dare!" an aging, grey-furred Grandmother snarled, coming angrily to her feet. "The eggs which are destined to become male show the greatest damage! I have watched for years as our young males have changed—and never for the better. The shells of eggs that hatch out male come out of the blessing chambers riddled with tiny holes—and each new male hatched from such eggs is more hot-tempered, more eager to die than the ones before him! They are far more violent than males hatched from eggs hidden away to mature naturally. We fear for the future of our race, akule. The Ones Above are doing something to us, to our males, and what they are doing brings nothing but death!"
Great-Grandmother Anevay hissed softly. "Then it is not my imagination, about the younger males? I have worried that perhaps I had forgotten what it was like when my mate was young."
Chilaili's precious daughter, Sooleawa, shook her head, the silver patches on her fur ruddy from the Council Cavern's fire. "No, Respected Great-Grandmother, you have not forgotten. I am the youngest Huntress in this circle and I have watched my nestmates closely these past fifteen years. My youngest brothers are far more violent and dangerous than my oldest ones. It troubles me, as well, that I am the only female born to my mother's nest. Ten nestmates I have, all male—and two of them were killed by their own brothers. How many other bloodlines can claim more than one female breaking shell? How many have lost sons to other sons? I will not put my eggs in the blessing chambers, Respected Great-Grandmother, for I desire daughters to hunt at my side and I refuse to watch my sons murder one another senselessly. I fear for the future of our race. If all the males seek nothing but crazy battles without purpose, fighting and killing one another, destroying their wiser fathers in challenge after challenge, who will be left to make us fertile? And the death toll in this new war will be disastrous. Even you, akule, have admitted this."
Several Huntresses nodded agreement, sending a low murmur through the assembly.
"The Ones Above insist on calling the humans devils," Sooleawa said quietly. "I am not so sure of that. The humans have been among us for many moons without once using their weapons against us. Would devils intent on destroying us sit quietly for cycle after cycle of the moons? They did nothing against us until we attacked them and now they are destroying the clans, using weapons the Ones Above would be hard-pressed to duplicate. And the fighting has gone on for only a handful of days! The clans cannot sustain the loss. It will be years before some of our clans recover—if they ever do. I am a newly blooded Huntress, akule, and I would very much like to take a mate before all the males are dead, fighting a war we cannot win!"
She ducked her head at that, clicking her beak in agitation for the blasphemy.
Chilaili stroked her daughter's soft fur, gentling her. "No, do not apologize for having spoken the truth, Sooleawa," she said quietly. "It is one thing to serve Those who made us, in gratitude for our making. It is quite another to die for them, to the last poisoned chick, when the creatures they would have us fight are virtually the equals of the Ones Above." She held up her hands, clawtips glinting in the firelight. "We hunt with these, and with spears and knives and bows. Do you think any Huntress at this Council fire doesn't understand how primitive our best weapons are, compared with the least weapons of the Ones Above? Or those of the humans?"
A low murmur of assent rippled through the gathered Huntresses.
The akule, tone almost pleading, said, "When the command to fight came, the Ones Above promised to send greater and greater weapons to carry on the fight, weapons more powerful than any the human devils possess."
"More weapons?" Chilaili countered sharply. "Yes, I can well believe the Ones Above are willing to give us more weapons. But they do not show themselves, for all their wondrous skill in crafting such things. I want to know why, akule, it is left to us to fight and die, when the Ones Above are so much more capable than we of carrying out such battles? They sit safely in their nests among the stars and the moons, their claws bloodless. Why don't they fight these devils, if the humans are truly so deadly?"
It was the wrong thing to say; Chilaili knew it the instant the words exploded past her beak. But she could not unsay them and she knew, in her very bones, that they were nothing but naked truth. The akule cried, "Chilaili! The Ones Above send us to battle to test our worthiness! Everyone knows this! It is the way things have always been. It is part of the great plan for our race—"
"Proving our worthiness by destroying ourselves? That aids no one! Ourselves, least of all." At the stir of fright that shivered through the gathering, beaks clicking softly in agitation like branches in the wind, Chilaili gentled her voice. "I am katori. My own Grandmother's Great-Grandmother passed down the story of the grand plan, to see which clan's ways will prove strongest, most viable. Icewing Clan is the only one in all the world ruled by Mothers and Grandmothers. While our Daughters and Mothers hunt far from the nest, our bigger and stronger males remain behind to guard the nest against all predators. Even against the males of other clans. The Grandmothers watch the hatchlings and make all critical decisions while the Grandfathers incubate the eggs. Because this is so, ours may well be the only clan of the Tersae capable of saving our race."
"How is that?" a young huntress across the Council fire asked in puzzled tones.
"Because," Chilaili said very gently, "in our clan, Grandmothers choose which males to breed with which females to strengthen the bloodlines. They are wise enough to select carefully for intelligence, for speed and endurance, skill of dexterity and resistance to illness, all the critical factors that mean survival for a clan—or death, if the choices made are poor ones."
Great-Grandmother Anevay spoke again. "I have worried about this very thing, for the clans we trade with most often have gone dangerously unstable. The males now making decisions think of nothing but food in their bellies and weapons in their enemies' entrails. There is much merit in your words, Chilaili, although they disturb me more than I would like to admit."
Chilaili bowed her head. "Your wisdom has guided us for many years, Great-Grandmother Anevay. And these are disturbing things to face, deeply disturbing decisions we are forced to make. We argue issues tonight that will be the death of our clan—perhaps the death of all the clans—if we decide wrongly."
The akule broke silence, at that. "You are more right than you begin to guess, Chilaili," he said, voice heavy with fear as he rolled one eye toward the cavern where the Oracle rested, the small cavern Kestejoo and his mate had shared for so many hatchless winters. "What you have forgotten—what all of you have forgotten—is the solemn warning we live under. The Ones Above demand obedience. Anything less is punished—severely and irrevocably. We all agree the weapons they have given us are terrifying. But you, Chilaili, have forgotten that the Ones Above can turn those weapons on us as easily and swiftly as young hotheads issue challenge."
A profound silence fell across the entire, assembled clan. The Council fire crackled ominously, portent of worse fires to come. Chilaili shivered. The fur along her spine crawled. She could make no answer to the akule's words, for there was no answer any Tersae could make. The Ones Above had created them. They could just as easily destroy.
Very softly, Chilaili said, "The akule speaks the truth in this. To our shame, we are helpless before them, helpless as unhatched nestlings. I believe attacking the human nests is profoundly wrong and more dangerous than any of you can understand. But I cannot deny the threat the Ones Above hold over us. Decide amongst yourselves what you feel is best. I will abide by the Council's edicts."
Rebellion surged in her heart, but there was nothing she could do.
The vote did not take long.
Within the hour, the warriors were packing joyously, bringing weapons out of storage, spears and swords and carefully cached weapons from the Ones Above, stored years previously in the deepest caverns of their permanent winter nest. The clan had held them for generations against future emergency, such as this current crisis. Yiska glanced at Chilaili from time to time, his expression troubled, but the Council had made its decision and he would never disobey a direct order from the Grandmothers. The younger males sang as they worked, for once not bickering and fighting amongst themselves. Ancient Grandfathers incubating eggs not yet due for another round in the blessing chambers watched with sad and dreaming eyes as others claimed the honor of battle.
"The warriors will form one war party to attack the large human nest three days' travel away," Yiska was saying. "We will bypass—for now—the smaller, closer nest. The two attacks must occur simultaneously or the nests will reinforce each other. That would make victory far more costly. The huntresses will attack the smaller nest, since we do not have enough warriors to attack both at once. The warriors must travel three times the distance, so they will leave first. The huntresses will set out two days after they leave, to time the attacks properly. We will strike both nests at dawn of the fourth day."
Chilaili felt ill, listening. To send the clan's huntresses to war was a decision lost in utter folly—and should have been a powerful argument against attacking at all. But when the Ones Above dictated the rules, logic flew out of the cavern on crippled wings. She watched her sons chanting war songs with glee in their eyes and a joyous spring in their steps, and hated her clan's helplessness.
And she hated the Ones Above. Their makers had—according to the oldest of the akule's teaching stories—raised them up from the nests of flightless, clever beasts that still roamed the deep forests. Had taken them in as pets and playthings, had doctored them with machines and with substances Chilaili would never even be able to pronounce, let alone comprehend. Then, having created them and given them language and understanding, they had taken their pets and placed them back down in the forests and set them at one another's throats, with pretty-sounding laws to live by—laws that kept the clans fighting one another without ever quite allowing the males the dreamed-of joy of ripping and rending everything in their paths.
With the humans, no such restrictions existed.
The males were now in the only version of heaven they were ever likely to know firsthand. How the Ones Above must laugh at the blind, stupid, battle-mad Tersae, the fools down in the dung and the dead leaves and the blood, obediently—joyously—dying for their creators. Chilaili watched sons she had loved to distraction singing and laughing on their way to slaughter and knew she had to do something besides sit like a feeble Grandmother in the shadowed corner of her living cavern. The semiprivate chamber reserved for the katori had never seemed so lonely, not even in the aftermath of losing her beloved mate, killed in a mindless challenge. She watched with growing despair as the little ones played amongst the star-weapons.
It is our future the Ones Above are stealing, she realized bleakly. We are toys to them, to chuckle over during conversation around an evening's cookfire. Did the Ones Above even have cookfires? They created us, but why? They care nothing about us. Our welfare, our anguish, what brings us joy through the wheel of the year means as little to them as a rotting log in the forest means to me. Less, perhaps. A rotting log at least provided an abundance of edible and medicinal fungi.
A stray blast of wind set the fires to dancing, sending sparks toward the cavern ceiling with a whoosh and a roar—and the thought that came whispering in from the night with it set Chilaili's beak to chattering. I do not want to worship creatures whose only desire is to see how well we die. I want friendship with those who delight in living.
Chilaili came to her feet, grief and indecision falling away in one blinding, clear-sighted instant, one that turned her entire world upside down. There were, indeed, devils among the stars. They had created Chilaili's race. She moved purposefully through her living cavern, filled by a great calm she could not explain, particularly as she should have been shaking with mortal terror. She prepared her hunting pack, slung it onto her back, strapped on her weapons belt, donned heavy furs usually reserved for the deepest cold of winter, and considered whether or not to take the snow-webs. No, she decided, if I try to walk in heavy wind with snow-webs strapped to my feet, the wind will catch them and I will break a leg. Or both of them. Regretfully, she left them in their place against the wall.
Chilaili covered the pack and weapons belt with the sacred katori robe, handed from mother to daughter for generations. The small oil lamp in one corner cast terrifying shadows on the walls, for the katori ceremonial cloak, massively decorated for katori ritual work, carried a misshapen profile. It turned the wearer into an awe-inspiring apparition, one with great power to intercede with spirits and unseen forces. Chilaili still remembered her own fright as a new hatchling whenever her mother had donned it for some new ceremony. Chilaili understood very well its impact on an uninitiated Tersae's mind. Tonight, she was counting on it.
It did wonders to disguise the hunting pack and weapons belt beneath it.
Satisfied, Chilaili turned to leave her semiprivate living cavern, only to find Sooleawa standing in the entrance. Her daughter's eyes glittered in the lamplight.
"Respected Mother."
Chilaili's heart thundered painfully for a long moment. "Cherished Daughter?"
"I—" Sooleawa hesitated, glanced into the raucous Council Cavern. Then she said in a low voice, "I would accompany you on this holy ritual. I, too, must learn all the teachings of the katori."
The rebellion in Sooleawa's eyes flashed an unmistakable warning. Chilaili reached for words of persuasion, rather than a direct and confrontational order that Sooleawa would probably disregard, given the enormity of the girl's life-debt. "You are old enough to know, Sooleawa, what I am about, this night. You are more precious to me than life itself. I will not rob you of your birthright and refuse you the right to go with me, but do so, child, with your eyes open and your claws sharp. It is dangerous ground I tread, far more dangerous than the fury of the blizzard I must walk through. If you go, there is a very terrible chance our bloodline will die out, in the female line. I need you here, Sooleawa—"
"To cower like a frightened child with the old ones and the newly hatched?"
She held her daughter's angry gaze until Sooleawa dipped her head in shame. "Forgive me, Respected Mother."
Chilaili gentled her voice. "When I have gone, yours will be the only voice of reason left to advise the Grandmothers. You and I are the only Tersae in all the world who have walked with humans and learned their tongue. If the battles go as disastrously as I believe they will, yours may be the only voice left to judge what the humans might do in retaliation. I need you to stay, Daughter, far more than I need your support in the task I have set myself. And if I do not return, the clan must still have a katori."
Her precious daughter chittered softly, a sound of deep distress. So young, to face such a decision. Yet she was little older than Chilaili herself had been, when the katori mantle had fallen so unexpectedly onto her own shoulders with her mother's untimely death. Sooleawa gulped air several times, then whispered, "I will obey your greater wisdom, honored katori. But . . ." Her voice shattered like a very young child's. "Please, Mother, be careful!"
Chilaili hugged her trembling daughter close, smoothed her ruffled fur gently. "Hush, most precious one. What must come will come and we will meet it bravely, yes?"
Her daughter looked up, tilting her head to gaze one-eyed up into Chilaili's face.
"Be careful?"
"Always." Chilaili held back a sigh and touched her daughter's face with one gentle hand, then headed swiftly through the bustling Council Cavern. Wide, shocked stares followed her progress. Even warriors hurried to step out of her way as she stalked past cookfires and piles of weapons. Her misshapen shadow danced across the fur of the little ones, who stared open-beaked at the katori in full ceremonial garb. A few of the Grandmothers—and Yiska—furrowed their brows in puzzlement, but remained silent. She was deeply thankful for that, since a single question would have endangered her plans before she could implement them. Perhaps they were merely granting her the right to die in the manner of her own choosing, rather than waiting to die with the other huntresses?
At the entrance to the Council Cavern, Chilaili pushed aside the woven screen lashed to a framework set snugly across the rocky opening and stepped out into a slashing wind. Driven snow stung her face. As bad as the wind was in the narrow ravine where their winter nest lay, it would be far worse in the forest above. She drew a fur hood around her face for added protection and was about to step into the howling storm when the akule appeared. He had been standing behind a huge tree close to the cavern entrance. His body pulsed with the colors of heat against the icy tones of the dark storm beyond.
"Where are you going?" Kestejoo asked, voice sharp with alarm.
"What are you doing outside the cavern?"
"Trying to get a feel for the storm, to predict when it might pass over us and allow us to march against the humans."
Chilaili grunted. Kestejoo's weather wisdom was legendary. His mother, it was said, had been Snowclaw Clan's yepa—their snow woman—scenting the weather to protect the entire clan. Kestejoo had saved Icewing Clan more than once from killer storms, including deluges of rain that sparked flash floods through narrow gorges and the first blizzards of winter, which sometimes struck weeks too early, catching a clan still busy at the harvest.
"What do your senses tell you, Kestejoo?" she asked quietly.
"Two days, at most," he said, cocking his head sideways as though listening to something only he could hear. "Two days and we can set out in clear weather. The worst of it has passed. But why are you out in such weather, Chilaili? You're wearing hunting furs beneath the katori cloak. I don't understand."
He had little reason to suspect the truth, since he didn't know of her liaisons with the human. Or did he? She narrowed her pupils thoughtfully, but there was no suspicion, no guile in his eyes, only puzzlement. Very well. Without evidence, she would give the gentle-souled akule the benefit of the doubt.
"You have declared altsoba, the all-war that sends every fighting adult into battle, jeopardizing the entire clan's future. I must protect their souls with the proper holy rites. The Oracle may transmit the will of the Ones Above, but it knows nothing of the rituals my fore-mothers have used to keep the clan safe and prosperous for as long as there have been Tersae in the world."
"But Chilaili—the storm! Can't the rituals wait for clear weather?"
She shook her head. "They require a prescribed number of days in fasting, to prepare for the vision quest that will bring the help of powerful spirits, the animals and the winds and the waters, the spirits who guide the newly dead into the afterlife. It is exacting, exhausting ritual work. If the storm clears in only two days, there will barely be enough time."
Worry darkened Kestejoo's eyes. "Will you at least be able to perform the ritual in a safe shelter?" he asked as they shivered in an icy blast of wind. "I can arrange an escort to see you there."
Chilaili shook her head. "Thank you, Kestejoo, but I must not reveal the location of the holy cavern. It is too sacred a place to profane it, even by those who mean only the best."
Regret passed visibly through his eyes. "Then you must risk it. May the Ones Above watch over you, Chilaili."
She repressed a shudder. That was exactly what terrified her most. She took perverse comfort in the brutal force of the storm. No matter how powerful their tools, Chilaili simply could not believe even the Ones Above would see her crawling along the ground through a savage blizzard.
She thanked Kestejoo for his concern, then murmured, "May the ancestors watch over you" and moved rapidly into the howling swirl of snow. When Chilaili glanced back, the akule was leaning against the tree, watching her go. The colored bands of heat that pulsed the length of his long frame shuddered in the jerky patterns of fright and cold against the darkness of the cliff. There was something profoundly pathetic about him, huddled against the tree, watching her go—perhaps to her death—believing as gospel truth everything the Oracle said. Perhaps after Zaltana's death, he'd had nothing else to believe in?
Moving in grim silence, Chilaili stalked away into the darkness, pausing to slip off her ceremonial cloak at the bottom of the path leading up to the wind-blasted forest. She folded the cloak carefully and stuffed it into her hunting pack. Now that it had served its purpose, hiding her weapons belt—which she would not have needed merely to conduct a holy ritual—she could not afford to hamper her movements. As soon as it was safely stowed, Chilaili climbed up the narrow trail and moved cautiously out through the driven snow.
The way to Tiponi Weyman's nest lay in the direction the wind was blowing, at least, so the worst of the blizzard would be at her back. If she'd had to struggle into the teeth of the storm, she might not have set out at all. One other factor gave her hope of success. Their winter nest lay less than a full day's walk from the humans' nest. With luck and caution, she might make it.
She refused to dwell on the whisper at the back of her mind that the humans now believed all Tersae to be their deadly enemies. That did not matter, could not be allowed to matter. Chilaili must warn Tiponi Weyman of the coming attack, would plead with the human to return to the safety of the stars before it was too late. Chilaili's life-debt would be repaid.
One way or another.