Fire Study - Study 03

CHAPTER 8

I RESISTED THE URGE to use magic to calm my mother. Many horrible scenarios played in my mind before she settled enough to tell me the details. My father had been expected back from an expedition yesterday and had failed to return.

“There was a clan meeting,” Perl said between sobs. “A couple of scouts had gotten lost, and he went to find them.”

“Lost scouts?”

She gave me a watery smile. “Some of the newer ones will lose their way. Esau always finds them. No one knows the jungle as well as he does.”

“Maybe one of the scouts was hurt,” I said, hoping to calm her and to stop myself from imagining Esau being a victim of the Kirakawa ritual. “Why was he expected yesterday?”

“Another clan meeting. The jungle creatures have been restless and disturbed and we can’t pinpoint why. When the two scouts failed to return, the clan decided everyone should stay close to our homestead. Each night we gather in the common room to make sure everyone is safe. Esau was only supposed to be gone a few hours.” Tears tracked down her cheeks.

Her face reflected the hours of worry and fear. Her long hair had more gray than black. I couldn’t leave her alone, yet I needed more information.

“I have to talk with the clan elders,” I said. “You can come along only if you promise not to get too upset.”

She agreed, but uncertainty filled her eyes. Her hand went to her throat. Maybe taking her with me was a bad idea. Perhaps Nutty could stay with her?

Perl stiffened as if with a sudden realization. “Wait,” she said before bolting toward the lift.

As I watched her pull the ropes and ascend to the second floor of the apartment, my heart filled with dread. Esau had invented that lift, using vines from the jungle and a pulley system. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if anything happened to him.

Panic made me fidget, and just as I was about to call out to Perl to hurry, the lift moved. My mother had splashed water on her face and had tied her hair back. She also wore my fire amulet around her neck. I smiled.

“For strength,” she said, and she met my gaze. This time only stubborn resolve radiated from her. “Let’s go.”

I thought about the fire amulet as we made our way to the homestead’s meeting room. Winning an acrobatic contest during an Ixian fire festival, I had achieved a moment of pure joy in the midst of hell. Reyad—one of my captors, the first man I’d killed—had tried to keep me from participating, and I was severely punished for my disobedience, but I knew I would do it again. I now realized the stubborn streak from both my parents had kept me fighting despite Mogkan and Reyad s efforts to control me.

Our clan name might be Zaltana, but our family name was Liana, which meant vine in the old Illiais language. Those vines grew everywhere in the jungle, pulling down trees in their search for the sun. When cut and dried, the vines turned rock hard.

Looking at the firm set of my mother’s shoulders, I knew she had reached the point where she would no longer bend to her emotions, but do what was needed to help find her husband.

The common room was the largest area of the homestead. Big enough to hold the entire clan, the round area had a stone fire pit at its center. The black ashy remains of the fire drifted in the sunlight, streaming from the smoke hole in the room’s wooden ceiling. Benches made of branches and hardened vines ringed the pit. The scent of many perfumes lingered in the air and I remembered the first time I stood here.

The entire clan had filled the room then. Curious to see the lost child returned from—according to their viewpoint—the dead, they peered at me with a mixture of hope, joy and suspicion. My hopes for an uneventful reunion dissolved when my brother declared to all that I reeked of blood.

Chestnut interrupted my reminiscence by introducing me to the clan elders. “Oran Cinchona Zaltana and Violet Rambutan Zaltana.”

They bowed in the formal Sitian greeting. Their dark faces creased with worry. These two dealt with the day-to-day problems of the clan when our clan leader, Bavol, was at the Citadel. Missing scouts plus unexpected guests equaled big problems.

“Your friends have reached the palm ladder,” Violet said. “When they climb up, they will be escorted here.” A slight smile flickered across her face.

Relieved they had arrived safely, I projected my awareness to encourage Leif to hurry. When Leif opened his mind to me, his annoyance was clear.

You should have taken me with you to search for the Vermin, he said. Leif’s muscles ached from the day-long march through the jungle. The trails tended to get overgrown quite fast in the steamy warmth, and Leif had had to cut a path for the others with his machete.

We can fight about it later, I said. Right now I need you here.

I can’t leave Tauno.

Leif and Marrok had reached the tree canopy, but through Leif’s eyes I saw Tauno frozen about halfway up the rope ladder, clutching the rungs with a death grip.

I moved my awareness to Tauno. Although he couldn’t hear my words in his mind, I sent him calming emotions, reminding him how he had climbed down from rocks in the blackness of the cave. I chased his memory of that descent and realized why he hadn’t been frightened then.

Close your eyes, I instructed.

He did. Tauno relaxed his hold and climbed the ladder.

I pulled away and reconnected to Leif. Hurry.

By the time Leif and the others joined us, I felt my desire for action pushing out, threatening to explode. I updated the clan elders on what I knew, but the only information that Oran and Violet added was the direction that the lost scouts had been assigned. South and east, and Esau had gone east first to find them.

“It has to be the Daviians,” I said. “We have to rescue them before they can do any part of the Kirakawa ritual.”

“Let’s go.” Leif held his machete tightly, a fierce countenance on his square face.

“You do not know for sure if the Vermin have your father,” Moon Man said. “Or where they are. Or how many Warpers there are. Or how well defended they may be.” The words tumbled out in a rush. Moon Man’s eyebrows pinched together, reflecting his obvious discomfort with being surrounded by walls.

“All right, Mr. Logic. How do you propose we get this information?” I asked.

“Marrok and Tauno will search for trail signs and report back.”

“Where?” I asked.

“To the east.”

“And stumble into the same ambush as my father? They’ll be caught and killed,” I countered. “It’s too risky to send people out there. The jungle is the perfect setting for ambushes. Unless—” A sudden idea circled in my mind. I thought it over, looking for any holes. If the Daviians hid behind a null shield, no magic could pierce it, but mundane physical things like sound and light would.

“Unless,” Leif prompted.

“Unless we could get a bird’s-eye view,” I said.

“They probably have men stationed in the trees,” Marrok said. “Isn’t that how the scouts would have been captured?”

“Actually I was being literal. I could link with one of the birds in the jungle and see out through its eyes.”

“You will not see much during the daytime,” Moon Man said. “The Vermin will be well camouflaged. In the night, they will need a small fire and the moon to perform even the first level of the Kirakawa ritual.”

A cold wave of dread washed over me. “The moon rose last night.”

“Too soon. They need time to properly prepare themselves.”

“For someone who claims the old rituals have been lost, you certainly know a lot about them,” Marrok said. Accusation laced his voice.

“The specifics of the ritual have been forgotten, but some knowledge about them has been included in our teaching stories,” Moon Man replied, meeting Marrok’s stare. “It keeps us from making the same mistakes over and over and over again.”

A warning to Marrok or just cryptic Story Weaver advice, I couldn’t tell. Marrok rubbed his healed cheek. He tended to stroke the spot whenever he was upset or frightened. The wounds from Cahil’s beating went deeper than shattered bone fragments. Broken trust was harder to fix than bones. I wondered if Marrok would change his opinion about Moon Man if he knew the Sandseed had helped repair his injuries.

“Can a bird see at night?” Leif asked, bringing our attention back to the problem at hand.

“There’ll be light from the fire,” Marrok said.

“But what about guards in the trees or outside the firelight?” Tauno asked. “We need to know how many Vermin are there.”

I considered the difficulties and a solution flew into my mind. “Bats.”

Tauno hunched over. “Where?”

“I’ll link with the bats to find the Vermin. Their fire should attract insects the bats like to eat,” I said.

“Can we afford to wait until dark?” Leif asked. “What if Yelena can’t locate them with the bats? Then we will have wasted time that could have been spent searching for Father.”

“Yelena will find them,” my mother said. She had kept her promise and controlled her emotions during our discussion. Her confidence in me was heart-warming, but I still worried. Three lives were at stake.

“What happens when we find the Vermin?” Marrok asked.

“An army of Zaltanas could capture them,” Leif said.

“That might or might not work,” Moon Man said. “It will depend on how many Warpers they have with them.”

“No. It’s too risky.” Oran Zaltana broke the silence he had held during our discussion. “I won’t send clan members until we know what and who we’re dealing with.”

I glanced at the floor beneath the ceiling’s smoke hole. The patch of sunlight had shifted. It would be dusk in a couple hours. “Let’s find the Vermin first and determine their strength. Everyone else should eat and rest. It might be a long night.”

When we filed out of the common room, Chestnut touched my arm. He had stood apart from our group as we talked. His dark brown eyes showed concern. “Esau is my favorite uncle. Let me know if I can help.”

“I will.” I followed Leif and Perl back to her apartment. She made us sit down on the couch Esau had built from vines. The leaves in the cushions crackled under my weight. Perl went into the kitchen and fetched a tray of food and tea. Our mother hovered over us until we ate. I pushed the fruit and cold meat past my numb lips and chewed without tasting.

Eventually fatigue from climbing through the jungle caught up to me and I dozed on the couch. Nightmares about serpents coiling around my body plagued my sleep as they hissed in my ear.

“—wake up. It’s getting dark,” Leif whispered.

I blinked in the gray light. Perl, curled in a ball, dozed on one of the armchairs. Moon Man stood near the door to the apartment.

I woke my mother. “Can you fetch the clan elders? We’ll need to make plans once I’ve found Esau.”

She hurried out the door.

“Where do you want to go?” Leif asked.

“Upstairs, to my old room,” I said and headed for the lift.

Leif and Moon Man joined me in the closet-size lift. Two thick ropes went through holes in the ceiling and floor. Moon man bent over to fit. His breath came in uneven huffs and he muttered about Sandseeds, the plains and suffocating.

Leif and I pulled on the ropes and the lift began to move. We ascended to the upper level and walked down the hallway. My room was on the right. Pulling back the cotton curtain, I let Leif and Moon Man precede me into the small clutter-filled space.

A few years after my kidnapping, Esau had started using the area for storage. Fourteen years of collecting jungle samples had resulted in rows and rows of shelves filled with glass containers of every size and shape. The only places free of the assortment were a small bed and a wooden bureau.

Wanting to focus all my energy on linking with the bats, I stretched across the bed. “Try to keep all distractions away from me and be ready to help.”

Leif and Moon Man signaled their understanding. Both had enough magical energy I could draw from if needed. I tried to keep the horrible thoughts about Esau’s plight in the back of my mind as I projected my awareness toward the mouth of the cave. The bats would soon be leaving their roost in search for food.

My mind met the dark consciousness of the bats. They didn’t perceive the world by sight, but by sensing objects and movement around them. Unable to direct them to where I wanted to go, I flew with them, my mental perception floating from one bat to another, trying to make sense of my location in the jungle. The flutter of wings and hum of insects cut through the silent night air.

Even though the bats had spread over many miles, they remained connected to each other, and I soon had a detailed mental image of the jungle. It was a bird’s-eye view without colors—just shapes, sizes and movement. In my bat mind, the trees and rocks were not visual, but in scapes of sound.

The straight walls of the Zaltana homestead felt odd to the bats. They avoided the clan’s dwellings, but I jumped over to the minds flying east of the homestead.

Frustrated because I couldn’t affect their movements, I had to wait and watch until one bat found a small campfire. I channeled my awareness on the bat as it dived and flew through the hot rising air, snatching the insects that danced above the light.

Instinctively avoiding the creatures below, the bat stayed high in the air. I used the bat’s senses to determine the number of Vermin. Three around the fire, two crouched in the trees and four stood guard outside the camp. A pair of tents were close to the fire. Three unmoving forms lay flat on the ground next to them. Alarmed, I focused my attention on them until I felt their chests rise and fall.

When I had the exact location of the Vermin’s camp in my mind, I withdrew from the bat’s consciousness.

“There are nine of them,” I said to Leif and Moon Man. “I don’t know how many are Warpers.”

“We should have enough Zaltana magicians to overpower them,” Leif said. “If we could surprise them, it would give us the advantage. Can you form a null shield?” Leif asked Moon Man.

“No. That is not one of my skills.”

I sat up. A wave of dizziness crashed into me and I hunched over until the feeling passed. Linking with the bats had used my energy. Moon Man put a steadying hand on my elbow and his strength coursed through me.

I thought about what Leif said. If we attacked with a large group, the Vermin would know we were coming, and they would either flee and hide again, or fight back. Either way they would have time to kill their prisoners. The element of surprise was key, but how to achieve that?

“Could Tauno shoot the guards with Curare-laced arrows and immobilize them?” Leif asked. “Or could we blow treated darts through reed pipes?”

“Too many trees,” Moon Man said.

“It would be hard in the dark,” I agreed. “We could get close and jab them.”

“But what about the guards in the trees? Getting close without alerting them is a difficult if not impossible maneuver,” Leif said.

If I’d had the ability to control the bats, I could use them as a distraction. We needed something else to cause a commotion. I followed the logic and found an answer.

Leif, sensing my mood, smiled. “What are you scheming, little sister?”