The Feverbird's Claw Page 10

  They were shouting, “Hai, hai.” Their whoops echoed in the silence and then dissolved.

  “We’re going to be all right,” Moralin whispered into the beastie’s ear.

  Behind her on the bluff, the bushes rustled. “Hai!”

  Moralin whirled. A man was running toward her. The painted bone quivered in his nose, and he had black teeth. She scrambled frantically for anything—a rock, a stick—and then he leaped onto her. She let herself go limp and felt his heavy body relax slightly. Then, with a quick twist, she was out from under him and on her feet. Another man tossed a net over the beastie, which growled and snapped. Three more approached and others behind them. In a moment, Moralin, too, was tangled in a net, swinging in the air. She squealed and struggled.

  Shhhh-shhhh. Calm. Be strong. The sun glinted off the sand as the men began to trot.

  She turned her breathing from rapids to a meandering river. Horrible though these people were, she might not die in the hands of strawhopper eaters if she could let them know she was Delagua. Since they had metal knives, some of them must be traders.

  Delagua soldiers never came this far from home anymore. But what if she could make these people believe someone was coming to rescue her? Maybe such barbarians even knew the way to the city. Maybe they were her salvation.

  She imagined herself kneeling at the foot of Cora Linga’s altar to give thanks. Now Lan was running from the house to leap into her arms. And then? Better not to think beyond the altar and the house.

  The men halted, talking in low, ominous murmurs. She twisted to see. A man stuck a reed into the sand and slurped noisily. If Old Tamlin were here, he’d find some way to ask questions, to get the lore and desert wisdom of these strawhopper eaters. She could almost feel the water on her cracked tongue, but when they were finished, they picked her up and rushed on.

  Once she thought she heard the beastie whimper, and she wiggled and squirmed, trying to see it, until someone hit her. Eventually she could tell they were climbing a hill. A thick smell of meat made her stomach grumble. The men stopped and dumped her out.

  She was in the middle of a camp even more uncivilized than that of the Arkera. These strawhopper eaters lived in upside-down bird nests. Moralin saw a skinny child crawl out of one. Wearing only a string of small bones around its waist, it ran off, squealing.

  Just beyond the houses, strange humped animals were tethered. They stared ahead with haughty expressions and chewed. Their faces said they would gladly bite the arm of anyone who came near.

  Where was Figt? Ah. Standing, tied, at the side of the camp. She had her eyes closed, and her face was wax and salt. “My father’s body, my mother’s body,” she had said. Perhaps Figt would be glad to die in a place where her parents had died.

  Three men grabbed Moralin and looped rope around her wrists and ankles. “I am Delagua,” she said loudly, but no one seemed to understand. She watched them secure the beastie in its net, squat around a gourd, and begin to scoop food into their mouths. A group of giggling children surrounded Moralin. One poked her arm. The others laughed.

  A woman walked over and stood leaning on a polished walking stick, watching Moralin thoughtfully, chewing on something. Moralin kept her face impassive. The woman did not wear a bone through her nose, but her hair stood out in stiff clay-red spikes. She called to two women who appeared to be grinding grain.

  The women put down their grinding stones and sauntered over. They wore strands of seeds and bones around their necks and waists. “I am Delagua,” Moralin said loudly. She knew this was probably babble to them. They made hissing sounds as they watched her. Moralin raised her tied wrists and thumped her chest. “Delagua.” Very slowly. She pointed with her chin at Figt. “Arkera.”

  “Delagua … Delagua …” Now they seemed to catch the word. Other women pushed and shoved to see her. In a few moments men’s faces, too, gaped at her.

  “Delagua,” she said again, making her mouth broad and wide. The group stood murmuring, watching her. One of the men growled a short word.

  “Uh-uh-uh.” The first woman’s earrings clinked as she bobbed her head. She pointed and muttered.

  Now they all must pinch her skin, stroke her hair. Moralin itched to slap their fingers. They ran back and forth between Figt and her. She could tell from their gestures they saw no difference. It made her want to scream.

  One by one, the eating men left their food and wandered over to lean calmly on polished sticks. What did she have to show them she was Delagua? The Arkera had taken everything.

  The first woman said something, gesturing with her walking stick. In a flash, Moralin grabbed for it with both hands. “Hai!” the woman shouted, leaping back. Putting on her most pleading face, Moralin argued, moving her hands as well as she could, that if they would just untie her, give her the stick, she would show them.

  “Come on.” She coaxed in Delagua. “What can I do against all of you? You don’t have any other entertainment out here. At least I can give you something to watch before you kill me.”

  One of the children imitated Moralin’s tone. Everyone laughed. Then a man used his teeth to loosen the knots in the ropes, and the woman gave Moralin her stick.

  They formed a circle around her, curved knives out. All right. Shake off the ropes. Step to the right, turn to the left, one knee on the sand. She touched her forehead. Lunge, retreat. Arms ready. Begin. She swung the stick this way and that, fighting an imaginary opponent.

  A whispering started that became almost a chant. She heard “Delagua” several times and hoped they were saying it would be dangerous to kill a Delagua. “Soldiers are coming for me.” She acted out the marching, made a fierce face.

  One man shrugged. What was he saying?

  The others murmured agreement.

  The man used his fingers to indicate a person walking out into the sand. His fingers showed her falling. Writhing. Lying still. Everyone laughed again.

  “Fine. I’ll die there. Give me the beastie.” Moralin pointed to show what she wanted.

  The people in the circle looked at one another. No one seemed to care. A child ran to loosen the beastie from the net. Moralin picked it up, heavy as it was, and staggered out of the circle and away from the camp.

  She couldn’t walk far with the beastie wriggling to get down. Anyway, the sun was withering hot, and why should she hurry? They had let her go. To die in the sand. She sat down in the shade of a prickly bush and put her arms around the beastie’s neck, holding it tightly. It nudged at her arm with its nose and whined.

  “I know,” Moralin told it. “But how could I have saved her?”

  The beastie looked at her with a mournful expression and thumped its tail on the ground.

  It was mud-ugly to remember those curved knives and how Figt might die. “If it makes thee feel any better,” she said, “we are going to die, too.” She patted the beastie absently, thinking about what Figt had said about her family. Moralin’s own father was someone she had never seen except distantly on ceremony days. She could recite facts about him, as about any royalborn, but she had never spoken to him.

  With the sun grinding into her face, she held the beastie with one arm and used her other hand to empty the contents of her pouch on the ground. Arkera herbs. The blue bead, which glittered and winked. Figt had been the one to find food. Moralin nudged the things this way and that. A few women in the circle had been wearing beads, but they were small and nowhere as lovely as this one.

  The beastie looked at Moralin with dark, unblinking eyes.

  “Maybe I’ll find someone else to help me,” she told it. She closed her eyes, trying to turn her thoughts to wonderful, empty blackness.

  The beastie whined again. “All right.” Moralin was suddenly scooping things into the pouch. “All right. Let’s go get Figt.”

  The beastie scrambled to its feet and barked. “Are you giving in to weakness?” Old Tamlin would say. “The Delagua are strong because they show no mercy to their enemies.”

&n
bsp; “No, the girl was useful to me,” Moralin said aloud, turning toward the camp. “I will die out here in the waste without her.”

  The beastie barked, and Moralin was struck with sharp panic that it was too late. But when she hurried back over the top of the hill, Figt had slumped to the ground. Now women and children were gathered around the food.

  Moralin strode into the camp as a Delagua should: noble, proud, the way Grandmother could walk into a room and have everyone look, just because she had entered. “Hear me.”

  She didn’t want to guess what their expressions meant. “Delagua.” She went on loudly. “I am Delagua.”

  A woman said something to the others, her mouth full. Others muttered agreement.

  Moralin looked for the man who had told her she could go and pointed to Figt. “That one comes with me.” She motioned to try to make him understand. “I want her, too.”

  A woman made a rough gesture and said a word. Moralin could easily guess its meaning. No.

  A babble of words followed.

  Moralin stepped forward, waiting, the way Grandmother would do it. When they all were looking, she stuck out her hand and opened her fingers. The bead glinted on her palm.

  She couldn’t have asked for a better response. A man shouted, “Hai!” and jumped back. Others crowded closer. Nodding and mumbling, they gaped at the bead. Someone reached out, but she quickly closed her palm.

  “Give me”—Moralin pointed—“the girl. I will give you”—she held it up—“the bead.” She closed her fist and put her hand behind her back. She walked a short distance and waited. Let them decide how much they wanted it. She hoped they were remembering the soldiers. Hoped they wouldn’t think it was worth the danger of killing a Delagua for the bead.

  As they talked, she patted the beastie. Calm. What had Cora Linga said about the bead that night in the Arkera camp? “Beware, beware of her. Use her not, the daughter of the sky.” But it was the only thing she had.

  “I wonder if any human being has ever defied the Great Ones and won,” she said softly to the beastie. “Maybe I’ll be struck dead—maybe by the hands of these strawhopper eaters.” Her voice cracked. “For my disobedience.”

  The beastie rubbed its head against her hand.

  As she watched, two men cuffed each other. Someone else whacked one of the men with a stick. Two women, their voices hard with anger, joined in. She waited, motionless, until they beckoned to her. A tall woman stuck out her palm.

  Moralin kept her voice calm. “Wait. Give us food.” It was easy to act out eating.

  One of the men stepped over to the gourd and handed it to her. It was almost empty. Someone else walked over to Figt and worked the rope off. Moralin gave the bead to the woman, who smoothed it lovingly against her palm.

  “Hai!” the others said, crowding around.

  “Hurry,” Moralin told Figt. Only when they had walked far from the camp did she stop and sniff the gourd.

  Figt scuffed her feet in the sand. “One thing I cannot understand,” she mumbled, “who would eat this thing?” She said nothing more and would not touch the food.

  Moralin shrugged. As she ate, she did her best to explain that she had decided she would take Figt to the city. What could it hurt? If Figt did somehow manage to get in and out alive, she would discover Delagua secrets were well hidden. “I give you my word,” she said.

  Figt only grunted.

  Stung, Moralin curled her fingers to keep from slapping the other girl. Was she supposed to understand someone who did not say thank you and whose face was expressionless as the sand? She felt proud of her Delagua training that would force her to keep her word even when it meant being honorable to someone who wronged her.

  Naturally, this brother wouldn’t be alive. Prisoners were brought as tribute into the city. They were killed during the great ceremonies. But maybe seeing his place of death would give Figt some kind of peace.

  Moralin would even try to get Figt out alive again. This she would do because the other girl was helping her find her way through the sand waste. And because she had given her word.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  THE LONGER THEY WALKED, THE MORE Moralin saw the strawhopper eaters were right. Someone would stumble over their bones in the sand.

  She scolded herself bitterly. Her last link to Cora Linga, the bead, was now gone, and for what? To save an Arkera. Even if she did get close enough for Cora Linga to hear her prayers again, she had proved herself unworthy. She tried to picture Lan running toward her but saw only Ooden’s face.

  Figt showed her that they could suck slimy, hot juice from the plants that stabbed their feet. They took turns letting the beastie lick slime from their fingers. When they crawled against some rocks for a little shade, they found a tiny pool of water trapped there. Moralin held her drops on her tongue as long as possible. “Any idea where we are?”

  Figt wearily held up three fingers. What did that mean? Three what? Moralin opened her mouth, but no words came out.

  In front of her, something moved in the grass. A strawhopper. She slowly stretched out her arm. Got it. Quickly, before she could think, she put it in her mouth and bit down. It crunched between her teeth and tasted slightly of salt and sand. “Come on,” she said to Figt.

  Figt shook her head with horror. But in the end they both had no choice. Even the beastie ate strawhoppers.

  They survived by crawling from one patch of coarse grass to another. “The strawhopper eaters spoke truth,” Moralin croaked in a hoarse whisper one evening.

  “We are strawhopper eaters,” Figt said, and Moralin’s cracked lips stretched into a grim smile. “But look. If we could reach that place …”

  Moralin peered at the faint outline of something rising out of the horizon.

  All that night they dragged on, lifting feet that had turned to iron. When they could not walk anymore, they crawled. The beastie licked their faces, but with a dry tongue. When morning came, the rise looked no closer.

  Moralin stopped, full of despair. She pulled herself to her feet and fumbled in her pouch. Maybe some herb could dull the pain. How good even Arkera food would taste. Or a strawhopper—even that. She looked up at the fading half-moon, daring it to swallow her. “Figt.” She had to force the word out of her dry, scratchy throat. “Know anything that can save us?”

  The other girl said nothing. Moralin could see in her eyes that she, too, was giving up.

  “I’m going to keep going,” Moralin whispered. Just then her foot caught on a root, and she was too tired to catch herself as she fell. May I stand with courage and look death in the eye. But she lay without moving.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  HANDS PULLED AT HER. SHE WAS FLOATING. Her spirit was clearly leaving her body. When would she face the judgment messengers?

  Something huge loomed, and she opened her mouth to scream, but her breath turned into a wind that bounced bits of sand across the scorched flatland. In her dream she was so dry that her tongue scraped against the roof of her mouth. Her fingertips rubbed together, gritty and cold. Her bones had turned to powder and were slowly crumbling. Of course. She had died unworthy. But the Great Ones were merciful, and she dreamed of water poured into her mouth.

  The nightmare turned to a dream haze of blacks and browns that glowed around her. She did nothing for a long time except soak up colors. Then she felt she was falling, and when she put her hands out to catch herself, they touched cloth. She opened her eyes.

  The sweet, smoky scent of burning oil was strong, but she was in the dark. She groped until she felt her pouch and waterskin beside her. Grandmother said a great man’s treasures were buried with him for the journey to the land of the afterdead. Perhaps she had brought hers along, too.

  “Ah.” Though the voice was soft, Moralin recoiled. Were there tests she could pass here in the afterworld and become worthy again?

  “Who are you?” she said loudly. “Friend or enemy of the Delagua?”

 
“We ally with everyone and no one.” It was a female spirit that spoke Delagua words with a slight accent.

  Moralin’s head ached. Was this a guard, watching over her until the judgment messengers could come?

  The voice spoke again. “We are those who walk bravely.” Had the spirit come nearer? Moralin tensed, ready to defend herself. “We aid anyone and fight no one.”

  If they didn’t fight, perhaps she could overpower this guard. But as she tried to lift her arm, it was a rock. She sank back into sleep.

  For a while she thought the music was part of her dream. The flute notes sounded like someone crying, then someone dancing. Gradually she knew she was awake. Had she reached the end of her journey to the afterworld? She opened her eyes, hoping to see dawn-golden ripples of light, hoping to see Cora Linga’s merciful face. Or at least a stern messenger. What she saw was the laughter-filled eyes of the song maker.

  “So you did die,” she whispered. Good. Wherever she was, he would be a welcome guide.

  “I’m not dead.”

  What? She tried to sit up, and he reached out to help. She was all gnawing hunger. It was the hunger that convinced her she was alive. He lifted water to her lips, and she drowned herself in its thick, cool wetness. He put bread into her hands.

  It was the best thing she had ever eaten. She chewed every sweet crumb, and he gave her more.

  “Scouts found you on our borders. Why did you go into the sand waste? How did you manage to leave deep mother?” He didn’t wait for an answer but rushed on. “Do you know that you are now only four days’ walk from the Delagua city?” He studied her face. “That doesn’t frighten you, does it?”

  She couldn’t find the words for how she felt. But frightened? That didn’t make sense. She looked at him. He was sitting in a pool of sunshine.

  “Here.” He put something into her hands. Some kind of fruit? He laughed as she sniffed it. “Yes, to eat.”

  She bit into it eagerly. It reminded her of all the fruits and sweet-tasting flowers that had ever delighted her mouth. They were in a cave but not a dark and dank one like the cave where the Arkera gathered salt. It was not small like the one where they had crouched to escape the garrag. The walls were a warm reddish color, and sunlight streamed from a hole high above her head. “I was afraid the Arkera had killed you.”