Stormrider (10 page)

Raptor folded his long legs and sat down in the coolness of the soft grasses, letting the revelation wash over him again. Oh, this was her work all right. He had no doubt. She had a mission. Assuring an exit from Nashira once she had the Amulet would be the only sensible path. And she had admitted to having no craft. Now, neither did he—or rather he was sure that now he did not and Tanith most assuredly did. The ship was gone. What had she done with it?

He channeled his mind, ratcheting back his own thoughts, to coast into the path hers must have followed. She wouldn’t have had time for any serious repairs, so she had probably scraped by with as little as possible and that meant it was certainly not very far away. Still, he could spend many hours searching this wilderness and never find it. She had a devious mind, that one.
 

She’d left him with a choice. Find the site now and leave Nashira without The Amulet of The Suonetar. Not likely. And she had known that as well. He was unlikely to spend a lot of time searching for his craft, or to leave Nashira should he stumble upon it quickly, not when he had the opportunity within his grasp to find The Amulet. No doubt she guessed too that he wouldn’t simply fold himself up and wait here until she returned with The Amulet—she would have sensed his doubts as to her ability to accomplish that feat alone. And if she did, honor would prevent him from simply ambushing her and taking it. She had piped the tune and expected him to follow like an Antarin dancer.

But Raptor had other plans. Even with his prominent jaw clenched firmly in anger, his wide mobile lips curved into a slow smile. There were a few things he knew about Nashira, which he had not told Tanith about. He wanted to be near when she found out about them. His debt to the Janissary might well prove easier to pay back than he had first anticipated.

He regained his feet in a swift sinuous movement, turning his attention to a new direction. This aloneness, this continuing silence, seemed strange after the days spent with Tanith, but it wouldn’t be long before he saw her again. And when that time came, he knew she would welcome him for the debt he owed her and because she understood Nashira from the files and reports she had read—from the viewpoint of a Janissary and her own childhood remembrances.

He, on the other hand, knew Nashira from the viewpoint of bounty hunter with sources of information the Circle Of Nine barely thought about, let alone had access to. Raptor was a chameleon—one the slavers knew and would accept, to a point. His shadowed past was his passport just as hers served her. They sought the same thing, he and Tanith. He owed her a debt. One which did not include the Amulet, for that was profit; his debt was much more personal.

He turned the facts over in his mind. Would even an all out rescue serve to square them, or should he just figure they were squared already with the theft of his craft? Who could put a price on a life?
 

Maybe he should consider herself on her own now. If he thought about it long enough he might well come to the conclusion that
she
owed
him
. The knotty problem would give him something to think about while he covered the long miles ahead. He was already walking as the twisted thoughts wove their way through his mind.

Without the extra equipment and supplies he had intended to retrieve from the craft Raptor felt a little naked, but that had never stopped him before. He broke into a smooth run.

“Ohhh, by the three faces of the Goddess, you’re going to pay for this,” Raptor snarled the words into the surrounding silence.

And silence was his answer.

Chapter 8

Following the slavers was not among her most brilliant ideas. Tanith knew that. It was more delay. And it could be worse if the slavers caught her off guard. It could well mean her death—something she no longer feared since her youthful capture by the slavers—but something which would end her mission, leaving its culmination in the hands of a bounty hunter called Raptor Simic. That thought made her shiver.

Still, something deep inside her had committed to the idea even before it had formed itself clearly in her conscious mind. So much had changed since she had returned to Nashira; so much since she and the wolves had joined, creating the pack. They would back her most hair-brained idea; back her, fight by her side, even encourage her though the grapes that had fermented this wine were beyond their understanding.

Tanith sighed. For the moment she was very much alone.

The wolves had spread out in all directions, noses to the ground or elevated, hunting some scent of those they sought. She walked along the edge of the trees, skirting the sparser areas where the trees began to lessen and more arid lands intruded. Her trail had been one of descent for some time, moving inexorably toward Nashira’s more inhospitable deserts.

But first, as if to give the traveler one last chance, there came this land of intermediates. More heat, but not insufferably so. Fewer trees and those were much more squat, bushier and closer to the ground, but trees nonetheless, with spiky green leaves. The soil grew less loamy, turning drier, sandier. Lush grasses gave way to spare tufts of softly rustling grass; dry, almost dead, but possessing that spark of life waiting to flourish again with the coming of the rains.

The wildlife changed as well. The huge, ferocious bear The People so feared was nowhere in evidence preferring cooler climes. Neither were the graceful deer and the larger ox-like creature with huge rounded horns and wild eyes. In their places were many more lizards, quick little birds, a small swift version of the horses Tanith had come to love, and a smaller cousin to Nashira’s highland wolves, equipped with sizable fangs.

Strongheart curled his lips whenever he saw them. Actually, so did Tanith. They seemed somehow dirty, but she had believed that impression to be irrational and she wondered why they seemed unclean to her until Strongheart had explained those cousins of his ate mostly carrion. They were scavengers. They had their place, but according to Strongheart, it was not around him, a fact he’d relayed to her with distaste.

Tanith smiled at the memory of his somewhat surly reply when questioned on the subject of the carrion-eaters. She had smiled, then felt terribly alone and threw herself spiraling into the pack bond.

Immediately she felt the presence of all three wolves. They were far from her and from one another, spread thin, but their presence was comfort enough. It was almost like being in two places at one time. Still in her body, running swiftly over the changing land, crushing fragile grasses underfoot, their stiffness tickling the bottoms of her feet through her moccasins, and at the same time with the wolves. She touched them and they were a part of one another. She tingled with their presence as her heartbeat accelerated. Littlefoot immediately acknowledged her entry into their shared link.
You are tired? You need to rest?

“No,” Tanith whispered and thought her reply at the same time, breathing deeply as a result of her long run.

Danger?

“No,” Tanith returned.

Then . . .
 

Tanith tried to form the correct thoughts, then gave it up, projecting only feelings of uncertainty, apprehension, and for the moment, aloneness.

Instantly, she received in reply a mental image of much low tail-wagging, head-dipping and nose-touching—reassurance and solace from a compassionate Littlefoot.

Tanith grinned, green eyes sparkling, as a feeling of deep warmth washed through her from the soles of her feet to the ends of her hair flying loose in the rising breeze. The mental caress created a truly amazing feeling, like touching the vault of heaven—like gazing into the face of the mother of creation herself.

Come.
Strongheart entered the bond with alpha wolf solemnity.
There is something.

Tanith lifted slim, golden eyebrows and turned her emerald gaze in the direction she felt Strongheart indicate, adjusting her course. The warm, pleasant feelings of only moments past were gone like fragile mists seared into nothingness before the burning rays of the sun. “The
Jaiqi
—the slavers?”

There had been little enough trace of the vile traders of human flesh to follow. Even with new slaves in tow they left almost no sign to indicate their passage. The going had been maddeningly slow. For Tanith it was a tearing of herself into two halves. There remained the amulet, and her still firm determination to complete her mission. The slavers, operating in close proximity, pierced her gut like a finely honed blade. But she remained open to the thoughts of the great wolf.

Strongheart, stronger now.
No. There is no danger, but you must see . . .
 

Tanith adjusted her direction again, responding to the urgency in Strongheart’s tone, the pull of his summons. “Explain,” she sent the request through their shared pack bond.

I cannot. It is ancient. It is of humans, not animals. Yet part of the earth of Nashira. I have not seen it before.

“Why must I see it?”

I do not know. It feels . . . strange. You must see it. You must explain. I have a need to understand it.

Another mental tug from Strongheart. An urge to hurry though no suggestion to panic. He required her presence. Leathers of her moccasins whispering softly against the bare ground, Tanith’s light-footed tread swept her easily toward her goal. Her lean, well-conditioned body flowed and flexed with the grace of an animal born of Nashira. Her blood pounded with the rhythms of this life; with the pulse of Nashira.

Gone from her body-memory were the stilted meetings at Antaris, the formalities of presentation to the Circle of Nine and the High Cudan. She was wholly herself, wholly of this place at this time. Centered and balanced, her goal remained before her, but it would be done her way. It would be accomplished in her time.

Tanith broke rhythm, misstepped and stopped a few moments, staggered by her own thoughts, losing the fragile link with the wolves. She stood still, bathed in brilliant, warming sunshine. What was she thinking? What was happening to her here? Always, in the past, as Janissary, her mission had been her first and only priority. That was the life she had chosen, the pledge she had made. The approval of the Circle of Nine had been all. But now, now she was changing. She was aware of the differences at they occurred within her. What was so different now? There was no answer to that question. Not yet. Perhaps there never would be. Another change; strange, that thought did not upset her.

The air was different, tingling as she picked up stride, continuing on. It possessed a breathless stillness, as if it draped about her in anticipation. As if something awaited her here.

“Strongheart?” Tanith felt her way back into the pack-bond seeking direction.

Here.
The mind-touch gently buffeted her into the way, drew her on, indicating to her the place where he waited.

Tanith gave herself a mental shake and pressed on, senses alert to her surroundings. Trees—of both sizes, tall and graceful, short and stubby—dotted the land she traveled. She slipped back and forth across the invisible line of demarcation, vegetation seemingly undecided as to its habitat or goals. Soil itself confused between sandy and loamy. And the air was still. So still.

She rounded a low hill, cut between two exceptionally bushy trees, and found Strongheart sitting before a sheer rock cliff, long silver and black plume of a tail wrapped tightly around his feet. But before him was no ordinary cliff. It was of incredible proportions and carved into it was a glittering city. A city of deathly quiet—an empty city.

It glistened like a cluster of huge diamonds in the warm sunlight. Tall, intricately carved columns of sparkling white stone caught the sunlight, tossing it in chaotic disarray scattering it in all directions.

Tanith blinked. She saw no movement and felt only the soft caress of a newly rising breeze disturbing the unnatural quiet she had felt at her approach. The buildings, carved out of the face of the cliff, spilling upward from the lowest level. A poetry of architecture, they flowed, one upon the other, like a river running backward. Ancient plantings clung from outcroppings, tumbling cascades, proud uprights, stark rich greens against glittering white, as if they had been planted eons ago in huge pots—and tended lovingly ever since. It remained still, quiet, and pristine.

Only the silken breeze moved with sensuous caress. It kissed. It stroked. The whiteness of the abeyant city shimmered, creating the illusion of a mirage. But it was no mirage. It was as real as the confused wolf at Tanith’s feet. She stared, certain she heard soft whispers, but it had to be no more than aberrant effect of the breeze.

“Magnificent,” Tanith ventured, “but deserted,” she informed Strongheart.
 

The silver wolf snorted.
Inhabited.

That drew her up short. “By what?” Tanith stared warily, unbelievingly, but a precognitive chill started just behind her knees and slipped upwards all the way up the length of her backbone.

Strongheart, hackles rippling, shimmering with the gleam of molten silver in the spill of sunshine.
Specter, ghost, essence . . . those at least. Maybe more. I think—feel—there is something here for you . . .
 

“What have they to do with my quest?”

Everything . . . nothing . . .
Strongheart gave his wolfish shrug, massive shoulders shifting, head cocking.
I do not know.