Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) (26 page)

The idea made her shudder. She could not bear to see
something so terrible happen to offspring of her own blood. What use was
birthing them, if their lives were only to be spent in torment? “I don’t want
to have them,” she decided aloud.

Kolki put a finger to her longteeth and hushed her.

Lizneth sniffed, wiping her snout with an arm. “What is it?”

“Our visitor has spotted us.”

The
calai
—or whatever he was—had stopped in his
tracks. The creatures were still prowling about his feet, but he was standing
like a statue, his face upturned toward the ridge. Kolki lifted a tentative
hand and waved. Lizneth still thought the harbinger looked very much like a
hu-man
kedozhe
, broad-shouldered and thin about the waist.

He stood and watched them for a long time, feet spread as if
to brace himself against an earthquake. Lizneth could see the sky’s strange
purple light reflected in his eyes and knew he was staring at them, unblinking.
Under his gaze, a feeling of unease took her. Whenever she tried to move or
speak, Kolki shut her down.

“Why is he staring at us?” Lizneth finally managed to blurt
out.

“Because one of us has failed to respect his need for
silence,” said Kolki. “Guess which one of us that is. Don’t guess. Hush up.”

After a short while, Lizneth’s uneasiness became too much.
She felt eyes on the back of her neck, though she could plainly see the figure
watching them from below. She wanted to go back to Molehind. Kolki, however,
remained focused on the strange, hu-man-like creature, though it was long past
dark. Still the harbinger stood motionless while his beasts danced and played
about his feet. Then, without warning, he was gone.

“Wasn’t that magnificent?” Kolki asked, a twinge of mirth in
her voice.

Lizneth blinked. She could not have said in which instant he
was there and which he wasn’t. It was as if he’d scattered into starlight, or
splintered into a thousand strands of the tall scrubland grasses surrounding
the place where he’d stood. His pets whined and circled the spot briefly before
setting off toward the low mountain pass as if in search of their master. A
chorus of crickets and desert insects rose around them, and Lizneth realized
only then that the night had been silent before. “What happened?” she asked,
now unsure whether she had really seen him there at all.

“Are you truly as unobservant as you appear to be?” Kolki
asked.

“I’m very observant,” Lizneth insisted. “I’m always noticing
things others don’t.”

“Maybe,” Kolki said with a shrug. She turned back down the
path toward the entrance to Molehind.

Lizneth followed her, defensive. “I am. I often notice things
that aren’t obvious. Subtle things, like the way
zhehn
look and move
when they speak, or tiny details about how they scent, or what their garb says
about them.”

“What have you noticed about me?”

“I could tell you were a
chabad
when I first saw you.”
Little did I know then how frustrating you are to talk to
, she thought,
but didn’t say.

“And since you are so observant, surely you have observed
other things about me.”

“Of course I have.”

“Such as?”

Lizneth was at a loss. “You wear bones in your head-fur.”

“Yes, I do. And what have you learned about me by noticing
that?”

“Well… I don’t know.”

“What good are your observations if they never lead you
toward a meaningful conclusion?”

“I don’t need conclusions. It’s just fun to watch
zhehn
do what they do.”

“And did you see what the harbinger did down there? No, you
didn’t. Although it happened before your eyes, you did not see it. Do you know
why?”

“No, but you sound like you’re about to tell me.”

“Because you hold no reverence for the things you do not
understand,” Kolki said, without missing a beat. “You are curious, but not
inquisitive. You never let your curiosity carry you beyond the outermost layer
of things. That is why you miss the important details. It is why you trust too
easily and hate too quickly. You judge everything and everyone on the way it
looks and scents and feels, rather than on what lies beneath.”

“You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

“Have you not been betrayed by those you’ve trusted? Have you
not hated those you did not understand?”

Lizneth considered this. Deequol. Blitznag. Nathak. Morish.
Curznack. Zhigdain. Artolo the Nuck. Neacal Griogan. Sniverlik. Even Mama and
Papa. All
zhehn
she had trusted or hated, often at the wrong times and
for the wrong reasons. Without understanding. Was Blitznag so mean and spiteful
because he enjoyed being that way? Or was he a scared son, so worried about
upholding the legacy of his late
kehaieh
that he would’ve done anything—perhaps
often the wrong thing—to hold onto the bazaar his father left behind?

This Kolki was making Lizneth upset; reminding her how
mixed-up and naive she was—and had always been. She couldn’t help how little
she knew of the world. She had seen so much of it, yet she had only scratched
the surface in terms of both its places and its inhabitants. Why was the
chabad
criticizing her when all she had wanted was something to take away the pain in
her belly?

A dusty wind blew over them, sudden and fierce. Kolki covered
her face with her crimson scarf and turned away to let it pass. Lizneth,
lacking any such protection, threw an arm across her snout and spent a moment
coughing to shake the debris from her lungs.

“Listen to the wind,” Kolki said, when the breeze had died
away. “See the sky. What do these things tell you about your world?”

“Those lights in the sky… they are the
yerl-pashk
?”

“Yes. The coming of the world’s anger.”

“Then these things tell me that the world is angry.”

“Why, deepling? Why is the world angry?”

“Because something isn’t right with it, and hasn’t been for a
long time.”

“Why should that be of any concern to a deepling such as
yourself? You dwell far from the light. Far from the blind-world’s influence.”

“It is the end, they say. The end of everything.”

“Many are quick to proclaim the end,” said Kolki. “Not me. I
see a beginning.”

Just then, there was a loud boom, deep and faraway. Lizneth
could feel the vibrations of it in her feet. All went silent for a moment. She
was about to speak when the ground shuddered beneath them, sending the rocks
and pebbles on the path into a shaking frenzy. The tremor ceased after a few
seconds.

“What was that?” Lizneth asked, startled. She had never felt
the whole earth move like that before. There had been tremors, yes, but they
were never so severe underground. The sensation made her dizzy. Suddenly the
cliff felt entirely too high. She began to fear it might tilt and cast her over
the side. She sat down, but even that didn’t feel low enough, so she lay on her
side and curled up into a ball, hugging the ground and wishing she could attach
herself to it.

Kolki stood over her, peering down curiously. “That,
deepling… was a beginning. A beginning, trying to bring itself into being. Now,
stop this frippery and get up. I’ll find you something for this problem of
yours, if you’re going to be dramatic about it.”

Lizneth rose to her feet, taking it slow. Every inch further
from the ground made her feel dizzier. She followed Kolki toward the entrance
to Molehind, gripping the sidewall of the cliff and stumbling along with her
eyes at her feet.

Before they arrived, another gust of wind swept over them.
The force of it sucked Lizneth away from the wall, and for an instant she was
sure she would topple over the edge.

Kolki’s hand clamped down on her upper arm. “Follow close,
and come quickly. The winds are moving in.”

By the time they reached the cave, the dust was swirling so
thickly around them it was hard to see. Lizneth choked out a few cloudy coughs,
keeping one step behind Kolki. The
chabad
shook herself before entering
her hut, spreading a fine brown mist over the platform. Lizneth did the same,
though the remaining dust was starker against the white of her fur.

Kolki pawed through her things and came up with a small glass
bottle, half full of yellow liquid. “Here we are—wait, no,” she said. She
snatched up a vial filled with clear liquid, uncorked it, and poured its
contents into the bottle. “There. That’s what we needed.” She held it out.

Lizneth took it. “What does this do?”

“It will make you sick,” said Kolki.

“But I don’t want to be sick.”

“You don’t want to be pregnant, either. So drink it.”

“This will… end my pregnancy?”

Kolki nodded. “All your worries gone.”

“Well, I don’t know…”

Kolki yanked the bottle away from her. “First you’re sick.
Then you’re pregnant. Then you don’t want to be. Now you can’t decide. I’ll
save this for someone who can.”

“No, I want it. I just—I didn’t mean what I said before. Not
that I don’t want to be… pregnant. Just that I can’t bear the thought of Mama
and Papa knowing.”

Kolki snorted. “You and every other nestling who’s ever bred
before leaving home. You think your parents don’t know what happens to a
growing young doe when she gets to be your age? They were as young as you
once.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Seems to me you could use a good reminder or three.”

“Could not. I just don’t want to disappoint them, is all.”

“Too late for that now, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so,” Lizneth said. “Why do you say that?”

Kolki held the bottle out to her. “You’ve seen something
tonight that not many in this world will ever get to see. An emblem of our
time. A harbinger. Think well on it, deepling.”

“How can I think on it if you won’t tell me what it means?”

“If you would only think as I’ve shown you, you would not
need me to tell you what it means.”

Lizneth was too frustrated to deal with the old windbag any
longer. She wasn’t getting anywhere with her, so why keep trying? She swiped
the bottle from the
chabad
’s hand and tucked it into the pocket of her
chinos. “That means nothing to me.” She made it as far as the beaded curtain
before Kolki stopped her with a sharp chitter.

“Deepling. Look further. Look deeper. Not at what you see or
scent or touch, but at what you feel. What carries you where no tangible thing
ever could.”

“Goodbye, Kolki. Thank you for the medicine.” With a resigned
huff, Lizneth pushed through the beaded curtain and left the
chabad
and
her hut behind.

On her way to the lower platform where her siblings were
playing with their cousins, Lizneth took out the bottle and turned it over in
her hands. The liquid that had been pale yellow before was a thin brown color
now, murky, with specks of something floating inside. She was so enthralled by
the change she didn’t look where she was going, and someone bumped her as they
moved past. The cylindrical bottle slipped from her fingers, rolled to the edge
of the platform, and plummeted off.

She rushed to the railing in time to see the bottle bounce
off the thick hempen rope of the handrail below and roll out of sight along the
platform, still intact. She darted to the ramp and raced down, fighting her way
through the many
ikzhehn
crowding her path. She caught sight of the
bottle rolling across the planks before an unwitting
ikzhe
kicked it in
the midst of his stride. The bottle spun end over end and skidded down a
shallow staircase to a lower platform. Lizneth swore and raced after it.

Lizneth found the bottle resting against the side of a mud
hut, snatching the tiny glass vessel before it could go any further. When she
turned back toward the platform where she’d left Mama and Auntie Pomka with the
nestlings, she found herself face to face with Papa and Uncle Enzak instead.

“Why, Lizneth,” Papa stammered. “I hardly recognized you.
Your fur is filthy. What are you up to,
cuzhe
?”

“I was just… playing hiders-finders with Malak and the
others. I got lost and wandered above. There was a dust storm, and—”

“You went into the blind-world? You mustn’t do that,
cuzhe
.”

“I know. I went too far. I didn’t realize where that path led
until I was already there.”

“It’s alright. Just stay away from that place from now on.
You’ve had enough of the blind-world already, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“What’s that you’ve found? Give it here.”

Tentatively, Lizneth handed him the bottle.

Papa held it up for closer inspection, his eye swelling to a
hideous size on the far side of the glass. “This doesn’t look very good. What
do you make of it?”

Uncle Enzak examined the bottle for himself. He gave it a
sniff. Recognition flooded him. “This belongs to Kolki, our
chabad
.”

“Kolki is still around, is she?” Papa said. “I should like to
say hello. It’s been such a long time since—”

“No,” Lizneth blurted, grabbing the bottle from Enzak’s
hands. “I mean… I saw her. This—I got this from her. I wasn’t feeling well.
Auntie Pomka told me Kolki could help.”

“You don’t feel well? Why didn’t you tell Mama?”

“I tried, but she was busy with the nestlings. I didn’t want
to bother her. I thought if I could go quickly and get something, it would be
no trouble.”

“Well, it certainly wouldn’t have been. Oh, my sweet
cuzhe
,
you can always tell your Mama and me when something ails you.”

Lizneth knew that, and well. Mama and Papa were better
parents than any child could ask for. Which was what made the thought of telling
them the bottle’s true contents so daunting. It wasn’t as if she felt guilty
for having coupled with a buck—as awkward as that would be to admit to them.
No, it was the added burden on the family she was worried about. There were too
many mouths already, and Sniverlik’s Marauders took more than their share of
what little food Tanley could produce.