Mind of the Magic (Arhel Book 3) Page 24

The third day at about midday, Edrouss declared the hilltop clear enough to serve as a landing spot for the First Folk.

  They set up the roarer at the edge of the clearing—it was a bizarre-looking device, with a giant funnel at one end and a crank at the other.

  “Shall we call them now?—or would it be better to wait until dark?” Bytoris squinted into the sun—he’d spotted Klogs flying over the day before, heading for the city in a flock.

  “They aren’t any more nocturnal than we are,” Edrouss said. “A few of them like the darkness, but not many care to fly in it. We’ll call them now.”

  He turned the crank. It grumbled and muttered and moaned softly, but didn’t roar.

  Faia held her breath, with her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands, and prayed to the Lady, and waited.

  Bytoris paled. “Please don’t say it doesn’t work.”

  Edrouss swore, stopped cranking, and pulled the funnel away from the body of the roarer. He began twisting pegs that Faia could see tightened a rawhide drumskin stretched over the narrow end of the funnel.

  He shoved the pieces back together and cranked again. The noise it made was louder—but still no roar.

  “Damnall,” he growled, and repeated the tightening process. He stopped at one peg, and ran his finger along the rawhide adjustment cords. “This one is fraying already. God send to perdition a world that doesn’t have decent mechanical equipment available!” He looked up from his roarer and gave Faia a slow, doubtful shake of the head. “We’ll be more than just lucky if this lasts long enough to draw Klogs here.”

  “Maybe we should wait and see if they fly over,” Faia suggested.

  Edrouss pursed his lips. “That might work—though you’re always better off to engage their curiosity beforehand, so they come looking for you. Surprising a flock of Klogs can be very, very dangerous.” He tightened the rest of the cords, and sighed “That’s the best we can do.” He gave his roarer a quarter crank—this time it roared with a sound like the earth splitting open.

  “At least it works,” Faia said.

  They waited, sitting in the shade of the trees at the edge of the clearing, watching the sky.

  “I should have left a message for Renina to take the children and get out of the city while she could,” Bytoris muttered at one point.

  Later, Edrouss said, “I wish I had an idea of what we could do if the Klogs won’t negotiate.” Then he laughed. I’ve been away from this for too long. I’ve forgotten—if they won’t negotiate with us, we won’t do anything else. They’ll rip us into little pieces and feed us to their young.”

  And later than that, Faia pointed at the sky and said, “There.” Nine winged shapes soared overhead in arrow formation, heading toward Bonton.

  “Right,” Edrouss said, and ran for the crank.

  The roarer bellowed. Edrouss turned the crank in a pattern of long and short roars—Faia watched the specks high overhead that had been soaring toward the city suddenly loop and circle back.

  “Yes!” Faia shouted “They heard!”

  Then, in midroar, one of the cords snapped, and Edrouss’s machine fell silent.

  “No!” he shouted. “Not yet’” He yelled at Faia and Bytoris, “Quick, into the clearing and wave your arms. Yell. Jump up and down. Maybe they’ll see you.”

  He was pulling the funnel away from the main body of the roarer when Faia and Bytoris ran out to try to catch the attention of the Klaue.

  Faia pulled her overtunic off and waved it in the air; Bytoris followed her lead with his shirt. The Klaue were circling, but not coming closer—they seemed to be trying to find the source of the noise, but they weren’t having any success.

  “Don’t quit,” Edrouss shouted “I think I’ve almost got this—”

  Faia and Bytoris kept swinging their clothing and jumping and shouting. Then their shouts were drowned out by the bellow of the roarer—and the Klaue homed in on them with swift, terrifying precision.

  “Get back into the trees,” Edrouss yelled.

  They ran for cover, and succeeded in ducking behind two sturdy banims just as the ground shook with the impact of the first Klaue’s arrival.

  Faia looked around her tree at that first nightmare creature, and found to her horror that it was studying her with a steady, curious gaze—its bright black eyes gleamed exactly as the stone eyes inset into the whitestone First Folk statues in the ruins had. These eyes, though, blinked occasionally. And this face, rich coppery gold with dun stripes, grinned at her with a mouthful of teeth like daggers. Then the creature made a chuckling, gargling sound and looked back over its shoulder as its fellows landed.

  They thudded to the ground one after the other, each moving out of the cleared center with neat efficiency so the next could follow. When all of them had landed the coppery-brown one settled onto its haunches much as a cat would, and shook its wings, pulling them in with a finicky-looking movement and curled its tail around its legs. Paws? Feet? Faia thought its forelimbs looked very much like hands, except for the long, sharp, flat black claws. The rest of the Klaue—red and black, rich iridescent blue-green, grey, solid black, brilliant yellow, gauded out in hovie patterns and hovie colors but only as much like hovies as a hawk would be like a hummingbird—found various positions of repose. Then they sat and watched.

  Edrouss stepped out of the woods and faced the Klaue leader.

  He squatted and rested his arms straight to the ground; frank imitation of the Klaue leader’s position. Then he growled and hissed and whistled. All of the Klaue had been watching him calmly, but as Edrouss talked, a transformation overcame them. The long-spined rifles that draped like curtains to either side of their faces began to stand out. Their colors grew darker and richer, their muscles tensed; then one by one they leaned forward, stretching their long necks toward Edrouss, and one by one they bared their teeth.

  Faia watched the transformation with increasing unease. “Bytoris, do you suppose that’s the way he wants them to act?” Faia asked.

  Bytoris said, “I don’t think so.”

  “Can we help him?”

  Bytoris stared at her and his eyebrows slid up his forehead. “You jest. Unless you speak whatever… language… they speak, I don’t see any way we can help.”

  “I don’t either,” Faia agreed.

  Edrouss Delmuirie’s speech had faltered, and he stood staring at the monsters before him, silent.

  One of them answered, a soft trill, two short whistles—first a rising tone, then a falling tone—another trill, a hiss, a cough.

  Edrouss seemed to freeze. He hissed and whistled again, but the sounds were slower, and less sure.

  The coppery-gold Klaue trilled and chirped and whistled.

  Faia could see the tension across Edrouss’s shoulders, and the way they sagged and his head dropped forward after a moment—in despair, or defeat. She could not be sure.

  The Klaue growled, a deep falling tone that grew louder and rougher—and that didn’t sound to Faia like any possible part of speech. It was a threat—no doubt about it. The Klaue bared its teeth and lowered its muzzle until it was face-to-face with Edrouss.

  Do something, Faia thought.

  She ran to the tablet they had left leaning against a tree, snatched it up, and raced out to face the Klaue.

  “Faia! Get back! Stay in the trees!” Edrouss shouted.

  “Don’t growl at him,” she shouted at the giant Klog, and threw the tablet at it.

  The Klaue caught the tablet with one hand, its reflexes predator-quick, predator-sure. It hissed at her, and whipped around to face her. Then, almost as an afterthought it looked at what she’d thrown.

  It gasped—the same quick intake of air a human would make—and turned and shouted to its companions. The shout was loud enough Faia felt it shake the ground beneath her feet. One of the Klogs stood and trotted over—it was a gorgeous scarlet creature with legs and wings and rilles darkening to black at the tips. Both the gold-and-dun and the black-and-red studie
d the tablet and trilled and chirruped at each other.

  Faia crouched next to Edrouss and whispered, “What happened? What are they saying now?”

  “I don’t know. Either they’re from a branch of the Klaue that doesn’t use Air Tongue, or the language has completely changed since I last used it.” He frowned. “I caught one or two words, though, so I would assume the latter.”

  “They seem to know what that is.”

  “Well, yes. It’s Stone Tongue—which is probably unchanged.”

  “You mean there’s another language you can use? One you know?”

  Edrouss Delmuirie sighed, and stood, and stretched his legs. Then he dropped back into a crouch and looked over at Faia. “There are—or were—four languages—I know all of them. The problem is, the correct language to use for working out concepts and entering into nonbinding discussion is Air Tongue. The trouble I could get us and everyone in Arhel into by using Stone Tongue defies belief. Stone Tongue is the language of things that are decided, unchangeable, and nonnegotiable.”

  Faia didn’t see the problem. “Then use one of the others.”

  “I can’t. Water Tongue is the Klaue spiritual language. Words for negotiation and discussion that we would need do not even exist in Water Tongue. And as for the fourth… if I uttered a word in Blood Tongue, yon big fellow and his friends would eat me before you could blink.”

  “A entire language for war?” Faia found the idea dreadful.

  “War and sex.” Edrouss gave her a wry grin. “Apparently the Klogs see connections between the two activities that humans do not—or do not admit to.”

  “You haven’t met the Hoos.”

  Edrouss raised an eyebrow, but Faia didn’t elaborate.

  Instead, she said, “You have to find some way to talk to them.”

  Edrouss nodded. “I know.”

  “Can you write?” Faia considered the fact that she had learned to read Old Arhelan, though she would have no idea how to speak it. She told Edrouss this, and suggested that perhaps Air Tongue would work the same way.

  Edrouss grinned at her. “That might work, love of my life. You might save us yet. Find me a stick, would you? Since I called them here, I do not dare leave or make any sign that my attention is lapsing. It would be an unforgivable—and fatal—rudeness.”

  Faia nodded, ran into the woods, and cut a long, thin branch from a sapling, then shaved the branchlets from it and took it back to Edrouss.

  He smoothed a square of dirt to one side of himself, then made a rattling noise in the back of his throat. Faia didn’t think she could reproduce if she tried for the rest of her life. Nine Klaue heads snapped around and nine pairs of cold black Klaue eyes narrowed.

  Edrouss turned to face his smoothed square, then held up one hand while he scratched marks in the dirt with the other. He spoke in the whistling, trilling Air Tongue again while he wrote. The leader’s rilles stood out, and after an instant’s hesitation, the gold-and-dun snaked his neck out, tucked his rilles back, and poked his massive head over Edrouss’s shoulder so he could see what the man was doing.

  One of the other Klaue made a questioning sound, and the leader looked back and snapped a reply that sounded rude to Faia—and apparently to the Klaue thus spoken to, for the creature tucked its head under its wing and snorted. It sulked as obviously as Kirtha when Faia told her to behave. Faia felt a thin tendril of hope grow inside her. It might be possible to understand the monstrous First Folk after all, and negotiate a peace between them and Bonton.

  It might be possible to win.

  In front of her, the Klaue flicked its tail over the message Edrouss had written, obliterating it. It nibbled thoughtfully at one knuckle on its huge fist then began pressing shapes into the dirt with its claws. It spoke at the same time as it wrote, and Edrouss gasped.

  “Faia,” he almost shouted, “this is going to work! The sounds have changed, but the written words are still almost the same.”

  Faia was elated. “What is it saying?”

  “He. This flirt is definitely male. The red hussy over there is his intended mate, too, I’d bet you.” He glanced up at her. “These are young Klaue, the whole bunch of them. They’re the Klog equivalent of human adolescents—too young to marry, but too old to stay home.”

  “What is he saying, then?”

  “He says they were out flying when a storm came up—it blew them off course, and they landed here.”

  “The storm that blew up when the Barrier came down?”

  “Probably.” Edrouss wiped the ground smooth with his stick, and wrote something else. Then he read the Klaue’s reply to Faia and Bytoris, who had walked over to join them. “He says, “We attack the city because there are no true-men there.’”

  He wrote again. “I asked him what he meant.”

  Edrouss watched the reply, then hissed. “They landed in the center of Bonton, wanting to get directions and perhaps buy drinks—and the people there killed his sister and some of his friends. These nine flew off, but when they went back to get the bodies…” He paused while the Klaue erased the first part of his message and continued writing. “Oh, no! He says they skinned and stuffed his sister, as if she were a trophy bletch!” Edrouss looked at Faia, his eyes wide. “No wonder these youngsters keep attacking. That isn’t just a terrible thing to do—that’s sacrilege of the very worst kind. They never leave their bodies to the open air—never. They burn them or bury them in catacombs.”

  “I saw a stuffed Klaue,” Faia said “The fighting men dragged it out on a wheeled cart and taunted the rest of the Klaue with it—just seeing it seemed to drive them into a rage.”

  “Why would they do such a thing?”

  Bytoris said softly, “It is a custom among the Bontonards that a hunter, having killed a dangerous beast, and one that could as easily have killed him, will stuff the beast’s skin and keep it in his home as proof of his feat.”

  Edrouss turned on him and shouted, “But these are not beasts!”

  “But how were the common Bontonards to know that?” Bytoris held his hands wide. “Klogs do not look like people, and they do not speak like people, and only within the last year have even the scholars come to accept that those who built the ancient cities were not humans…”

  Edrouss nodded. “True.” He turned and wrote in the dirt again, and at the same time said, “I’m telling them how this mistake happened I’ll see if they’ll agree to a truce, to allow us to barter for the release of this one’s sister’s body.”

  When the Klaue replied, he said, “He agrees. He says they will not attack the city again if we can do that, and they will leave this place and never return.”

  The Klaue flicked his tail over the words, then began writing again in the dirt. “He says this place shouldn’t even be here, that it is, he thinks, the… this doesn’t translate well… ghostland would be the best I can manage. The word has a second meaning, of something that has been cursed.”

  “I can imagine how he would feel that way.”

  Suddenly Faia smelled smoke. She looked up from the dirt, and saw that Thirk had appeared and was watching her from just beneath the canopy of trees—and with him were perhaps fifteen Servants, and half a hundred townspeople. The people pointed at the Klaue and whispered.

  Thirk stepped into the circle and raised his arms above him and waved his fingers at the Klaue. Fire appeared in the air, racing around the First Folk without touching them.

  They bellowed then leapt into the sky, their wings thundering in the air—and within an instant they were high above, and sailing away from Bonton.

  Thirk’s Servants and the townsfolk stepped into the clearing behind him, surrounding Faia and Bytoris and Edrouss.

  Faia felt her heart sink. This was the confrontation she had not wanted.

  Edrouss stood, and faced Thirk and the majority of the Servants. “The Klaue agreed to a truce,” he said. “They agreed to peace! Why did you chase them away? If you release the body of their sister to be burned,
they will not attack Bonton anymore, and they will leave Arhel.”

  “Will they?” Thirk asked softly. “They’ll leave?”

  “Yes,” Edrouss said. “At least, they said they would before you… before you shot fire at them. I explained how the people of Bonton misunderstood who they were, and I negotiated a truce with them. They intend you no harm anymore. If you just give them their sister back, they will leave you alone.”

  Thirk turned to his followers, and in that same flat, quiet voice, he said, “With your own eyes, you see this. These are the people who have spoken to those monsters. They say now that the monsters will not attack you… anymore; will not kill your husbands and wives and children… anymore; will not destroy your homes and businesses… anymore. That should be a good thing, shouldn’t it?”

  His people watched him silently, waiting for a cue.

  “I say, no! Anymore… that is nothing. The monsters have already attacked, have already maimed and killed and destroyed. These three have done you no kindness today! Where were they when the monsters attacked the first time?” Thirk smiled and looked at his followers one at a time. “How did they learn to speak with the beasts? Think of that. How did they learn this cursed beast tongue? I’ll tell you—they are in league with the monsters. When they flew against you and your loved ones, these are the people who commanded them. They brought the monsters to Bonton, and set them against us. Now you understand the depths of evil that I have been protecting you from.”

  “That’s a lie, Thirk, and by the Lady, you know it!” Faia shouted. “You know who Edrouss Delmuirie is, and how he knows First Folk speech! You know perfectly well that we had nothing to do with the attacks! It was their own stupid fault!” She pointed at the townsfolk. “If they hadn’t skinned one of the First Folk and stuffed her, you wouldn’t have the problems you have.”

  “By the Lady, indeed. The heretic speaks,” Thirk said. “This same heretic brought down the Delmuirie Barrier. She killed Edrouss Delmuirie, and destroyed Arhel’s magic. It is only by the grace of the One True God that we are not bereft of all magic.”

  The murmurs in the crowd grew louder, and the men and women moved closer. Faia felt doom closing in on her.