The Unfinished Song: Initiate Page 6

  Chapter Six

  Stone Hedge

  Dindi

  Another week’s travel brought them at last to Yellow Bear tribehold. Looking out over the valley, Dindi rocked back on her heels. She had seen this place before, through Vessia’s eyes. Perhaps the leaves crinkling beneath her feet hid the skulls stomped upon by the army of the Bone Whistler.

  Abiono pointed to five tall hills that dotted a river valley.

  “The Tors of Yellow Bear. Hertio the Mound Builder, War Chief of Yellow Bear tribe, has promised the matriarchs and patriarchs of the tribe he will build seven Tors in all. He’s been building up the tribehold for many years now. His ambition is make Yellow Bear tribehold rival the Rainbow Labyrinth.”

  “Is that possible?” asked Tamio, his pride prickled.

  Abiono shrugged. “He has added two Tors in twenty-two years, but he is old now, and was supposed to step down as War Chief already a year past. It depends if the War Chief after him wishes to complete his project.”

  Dindi shivered. Hertio the Mound Builder. She recognized the name. In Vessia’s time, there had only been three Tors: the Tor of the Sun, the Tor of the Moon, and the Tor of the Stone Hedge. The fourth and fifth hills were barely older than the Initiates.

  Atop the Tor of the Stone Hedge, there were no houses, only three circles of giant megaliths, one inside the other. At this distance it looked foreboding. And old. Even in the Vision, the Tor of the Stone Hedge had already looked dark and ancient.

  Until now, Dindi had imagined Vessia had lived long ago and far away, in the time of legends before humans and Aelfae had fought. To find herself following just twenty years behind the footsteps of the Corn Maiden unnerved Dindi.

  Vessia might still be alive. I might meet her.

  The scale of the tribehold gradually sank in as they spent half a day just crossing the folded river and its fields to reach the mound next to the incomplete one. This fourth settlement looked different too; the houses weren’t beehive domes, but longhouses that formed neat parallel rows across the round, flat hill top. Once the travelers walked up the narrow raised path and into the hold, Dindi realized why. There were no ordinary families living here. All of the people who poured out of the longhouses to meet them were other Initiates or Tavaedies.

  Hundreds of children had gathered for the Initiation. The majority of them, of course, were Yellow Bear tribesfolk, but there were a few other clans from the Rainbow Labyrinth present as well.

  The Tavaedies assigned the children to longhouses based upon age and gender. Jensi, Gwena and Kemla were all assigned to Fourth House, while Dindi and Gwenika were assigned to Ninth House. Amidst the sea of strangers, even an extra week of acquaintance felt like familiarity, so Gwenika clung to Dindi’s side as if they were clan sisters. The long houses had no sleeping platforms, just dirt floors and reed mats. Each girl staked out her spot along the north or south wall, and marked it with her own basket of things. They both contributed a few scraps of cloth to make a separate bed for Puddlepaws, but he sniffed this once, then curled up in the middle of Dindi’s mat.

  The disease yeech had left Gwenika alone during the last week of the journey, but the day after their arrival, the yeech attacked with renewed vehemence. Gwenika broke out into a rash and a fever. While the other Initiates left to explore the tribehold, Dindi stayed by her side all day, patting her head with a damp cloth and brewing her tea. Gwenika’s grandmother had fortunately packed the leaves in the travel basket.

  “I don’t know why Gwena hates me so much.”

  “Shhh,” said Dindi, dabbing Gwenika’s tear-stained and rash-red cheeks with a cloth. “Just rest as much as you’re able.”

  Thinking of Gwena reminded Dindi of the corncob doll. The thing was definitely a menace. Just touching it appeared to set off the magic Visions. But what could she do to protect herself from the doll? She couldn’t just throw it away…

  “They’re coming for me again,” Gwenika whispered. “The yeech.”

  The ugly Yellow fae rode rats that scampered in the thatch of the lodge roof. A line of them crawled furtively down a wooden post, toward the girls. Unlike most fae, they didn’t want to be seen. If she looked directly, she saw nothing but the thatch and the post, but if she cocked her head, she could see the flicker of light out of the corner of her eye. As before, the yeech were following a trail of yellow light.

  “It looks like something is leading them to you,” said Dindi.

  Gwenika bit her lip and Dindi could tell that the same thought had already occurred to her. Then she did a double take.

  “You can see them too?”

  “Just a little—like a flickering candle. Do you want more of your grandmother’s brew?”

  Dindi pored some more from the clay jar in the hearth into a bowl, but Gwenika pushed it away.

  “No, it’s too bitter.” Suddenly, Gwenika sat up. She grabbed Dindi’s wrist. “What if I’ve been wrong all along? What if it wasn’t my sister? What if it was my grandmother?”

  “Why would your grandmother hex you?”

  “She and my m other were always arguing. She thought that my mother shouldn’t push both of us to be Tavaedies. One Tavaedi in the family was enough. What if she didn’t want to kill me, only to keep me from becoming a Tavaedi?”

  Dindi considered. “Maybe we could follow the yellow rope of light to see where it leads.”

  “Yes!” Gwenika chewed her lip. “Unless it leads to a horrible troll as tall as a tree who eats us.”

  “If a troll eats a sick person, does it make the troll sick?”

  “I’d rather not find out.”

  The snakes of yellow light bit into golden aura around Gwenika’s body. Her aura, Dindi thought, recalling what she had seen in the Vision. They followed the thickest strand of light up the post and across the room. Gwenika could see it much more clearly than Dindi, who saw only a flicker. They had to climb into the rafters of the lodge.

  “Are you sure you can do this?” Dindi asked.

  “It will probably kill me,” said Gwenika. “There’s still time to talk me out of it.”

  They followed the shimmery trail of light all the way down the lodge, creeping from beam to beam in the framework. The golden rope led down again and then back across the floor to the other side, then climbed once more into the rafters, then across the room…

  “The fiend is clever,” huffed Gwenika. “She’s hiding her handiwork and leading us in circles!”

  “Gwenika!” Dindi stopped in her tracks so abrubtly the other girl bumped into her from behind. “Don’t you see what’s going on here? The strands of light are coming from you. That’s why we’re climbing in circles. Your aura is shining so brightly it’s attracting the yeech. You hexed yourself!”

  She gently reached to massage Gwenika’s shoulders and neck, the area where the cords of light seemed thickest. The aura flexed and twisted under her touch. Now Dindi saw that there were several other colors embedded in the aura, just slivers, outshone by the gold, but still there. Gentle movements of her hands over Gwenika’s back strengthened the other colors. The yellow strings fell away.

  The yeech howled in frustration. Without the path of light, they weren’t able to proceed any further. Hissing and growling, they skittered away.

  Gwenika batted her hands away. “Leave me alone! If you don’t believe how sick I am, you could have just said so. You didn’t have to pretend to believe me and then say it was all my fault. You sound just like my mother!”

  “Maybe your mother is right. You have to figure out what you’re doing to yourself and stop it. I know how terrible I would feel if anything made me miss my chance to be a Tavaedi. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you either.”

  “I hope I’m not chosen. All my life, it’s all I’ve heard, you have to be a Tavaedi, you have to be a Tavaedi, and I’m sick of it!”

  Gwenika clapped her hand over her own mouth. “Oh!”

  Brena

  “Each of you will be Tested for ma
gic upon the Tor of the Stone Hedge,” Zavaedi Brena instructed her flock. By tradition, none were the Initiates she’d arrived with, so she could not show favoritism toward her own kin. Elsewhere, in front of the longhouses, other Tavaedies gave similar instructions to other groups of adolescents. “Those of you who have magic will learn the secrets of the Tavaedies. The rest of you will learn the responsibilities of manhood and womanhood. For some lessons, all three groups will assemble together; otherwise, Tavaedies, warriors and maidens will meet separately.

  “Wear your totem doll on a cord around your neck,” she added. “You will present it after the Testing to whomever will be your new teacher, and receive a totem of adulthood in turn.”

  She shooed the Initiates into two long columns, boys and girls, to trek from the Tor of the Initiates to the Tor of the Stone Hedge. They wore their tribal colors. Also, they had to don again the blindfolds and submit to having their hands tied behind their backs.

  Though she kept sharp watch over her assigned charges, Brena also glanced from time to time at her daughters, who were in another group. Tension knotted her belly like labor cramps. She suspected she was more nervous than they were. The night of her own Initiation had been the worst and best of her life. She forced herself to take deep breaths.

  Three rings of menhirs, upright slabs of granite, formed concentric circles on the flat summit of the hill. If one looked closely, one could see strange symbols etched into the stones. No one knew what the glyphs represented or who had put them there. It was believed that the Aelfae had built the circle of stones, and inscribed them, but others said the Brundorfae had done it, and others, that the Deathsworn had built the monument. Some said all three shared in the building of the rings, one ring each.

  The Zavaedies and Tavaedies in charge of the Initiates rolled away a huge stone from a hole in the ground. They drove the blindfolded children down the hole, into the darkness. Remembering again her own Initiation, the stark fear, the chill close brush of death, then warm stroking hands, Brena’s stomach roiled. Oh, my daughters, I’m sorry. You have to face the darkness on your own.

  Once the last child had descended into the dark, the adults rolled the stone back over the hole, sealing them under the earth. They took their position just inside the innermost ring of stones, to begin their long vigil.

  Rthan

  Rthan and his men slipped the canoe into the river. He leaped in first. The warriors climbed in and crouched behind him. All were dressed in full war regalia. Meira, his daughter who was not his daughter, glowed blue from her seat in the prow, where she leaned on the graven head of the war canoe. She looked so small and out of place, like a child playing where she didn’t belong.

  As if sensing his continued reticence, she turned to him with his daughter’s solemn face. “Never forget what they did to me and mama.”

  He saw again the hideously charred bodies, burnt and twisted. He didn’t need her reminders or her faery games.

  “It wasn’t you they murdered.” He reminded himself more than her, not from disloyalty but for his sanity’s sake. Of late, he found it easier and easier to forget who she really was. “You’re immortal.”

  “I speak for her because she can never again speak for herself.” The blue faery child didn’t flinch. “Will you avenge me, Daddy?”

  He tightened his grip on the oars and maneuvered the boat into the swiftest part of the current. He could hear the water slapping the sides of other boats setting out from shore, an entire war party. The glow from her body illuminated the moonless night, highlighting ripples on the black waters.

  “I will avenge you, Meira, I swear it,” he said.

  Kavio

  Kavio noted the changes to the Tors of Yellow Bear since his first visit eight years ago. It had seemed bigger then—he’d only been ten years old—but that was the distortion of a child’s awe. He remembered running down the crazy, curvy paths between the beehive shaped houses, first in play, again after the old man tried to kill him. He recalled the jingle of gold bangles on the ankles and wrists of Hertio’s daughter Lulla and the smell of the boiling nuggets from the smelting ovens.

  Beyond the tors, across the river, the land sloped up into a forest of giant sequoias. The oaks and sycamores at their knees bowed before them like conquered warriors. His father’s army had camped on those slopes, keen to make peace but prepared to wage war. Finally, he made himself look at the Unfinished Tor, where he had killed another human being for the first time, and almost started that war.

  He could still feel the old man’s breath on his neck, stinking of beer and rotted teeth, shouting, Your father murdered my son, and I will pay his deathdebt with your blood. It was the first time Kavio had met anyone who did not regard his father as a savior, and after that terrible day, and the terrible night one moon later, upon the Tor of the Stone Hedge, he had never looked at his father the same way again.

  In Yellow Bear, Kavio had known terror, humiliation and disillusionment, he’d spilled human blood, and been abandoned to die as a slave. It felt like home. If Hertio would welcome him—by no means a certain thing—did he dare settle here? His allies expected him to appeal to Yellow Bear for assistance. His enemies no doubt expected it too. Deep in his gut, he had an uneasy premonition that if he stayed here it would cost blood; no last minute human sacrifice would stave off war this time.

  I’m sorry Yellow Bear. I must pass you by, he bid the tribehold, and turned his feet south to follow the river downstream, toward the ocean.

  The valley of the Tors was large enough that by evening, Kavio could still see the final tor, the Tor of the Stone Hedge. Along the river, bomas for lookout scouts, made from wood and branches, guarded the tribehold from strangers like him. Several of these scouts noted his progress, but did not challenge him when they saw he was alone and skirting around the edge of the valley.

  Toward midnight, they stopped watching him and looked in another direction. Following their interest, he saw two columns of tiny figures walk up the hill, the leaders holding torches against the darkness.

  The Initiation, he thought. In the Labyrinth, it was slightly different. It took place in the stone maze beneath the tribehold. Nonetheless, he recognized the ceremony. His own Initiation had not been but three years ago. Unwillingly, his thoughts skipped to the young Initiate girl, Dindi. Let it be, he warned himself. It’s no use casting nets where you can’t fish. Spurred on by that unhappy thought, he decided to press on without camping for the night.

  The new moon shed little light on the river at his side, but in the distance, other lights sparkled on the river like sapphire glitter. Coming upstream. Kavio tensed. The lights must be on boats. Who would be boating upstream in the middle of the night? Illuminated by what? Torchlights?

  No, he realized. Fae lights. That eerie blue iridescence looked nothing like the yellow-orange of ordinary fire.

  He crept closer, crouched behind river reeds for concealment. The lights were still far downstream, but he could make out the silhouettes of bark-sided boats with carved wooden prows. Blue fae perched on top of each of the prows, their phantasmagoric faces uglier than the carvings meant to represent them. Behind the fae, each boat contained one Tavaedi in blue regalia, and a handful of tattooed bare-chested, muscular warriors.

  Blue Waters tribesmen, obviously. What was their goal? What could they hope to achieve? Kavio expected to hear the ram’s horn sounded from one of the boma towers, but the lookouts appeared not to notice the boats.

  The same fae light that reveals them to me, conceals the intruders from them, Kavio realized. The Yellow Bear scouts could not see the Blue, which meant that the Blue Waters warriors could hit at least one target quickly before Yellow Bear could muster its own warriors in defense. Where? Oh. Of course. They must know that tonight is the Initiation. Two hundred vulnerable captives, perfect hostages…half of them girls just on the brink of womanhood.

  Kavio almost stumbled with relief when he saw a sept of Yellow Bear warriors rushing to m
eet him.

  “We haven’t much time,” he gasped between heavy breaths, “We must intercept them before they attain the high ground of the tor…”

  The warriors aimed their spears at him. The sept leader chewed a leaf, supremely unalarmed. “Throw down your weapons and come with us.”

  “Are you mad? I’m not your enemy. Your enemy is attacking the Tor of the Stone Hedge! They’re trying to capture the Initiates!”

  “I don’t see any enemy but you.”

  “Boats are coming up the river…”

  “Our scouts would have seen them. They saw only you. Why were you running toward our tribehold?”

  “To warn you, you squash-headed buffoons…”

  The sept-leader punched Kavio in the gut just as two warriors to either side of him grabbed his arms. He resisted the urge to fight his way free. If he bashed their skulls together, it would make his point more difficult to convey.

  “I’m on your side,” he repeated. “I’m from the Rainbow Labyrinth, I’m an ally.”

  “We’ll let Hertio decide that,” said the sept-leader.

  “There’s no time, there could be a massacre by then!”

  The sept-leader curled his lip. “Sure.” Several of the warriors snickered. “Take him. If he fights, kill him.”

  Dindi

  You never forget the night of your Initiation.

  Always, you are taken by force. By now you know the rough hands twisting your arms and blindfolding you belong to your own kinsmen, but this doesn’t reassure you, since by now, also, you have heard the other Initiates whisper legends that some children will die during the rite. The tribe has no use for the weak.

  Switches, whittled from green saplings, strong and springy, sting the back of your thighs to herd you down stone steps, into some kind of underground cavern. The stone beneath your bare feet is unhewn, too rough for a kiva. The chamber narrows, until you have to crawl, but your hands are tied behind your back, so you writhe like a worm. Gravel grirnds under your belly and cuts up your knees.

  You aren’t aware of faint light at the edges of your blindfold until even that tiny splinter of light is extinguished. The darkness that follows is so heavy it feels like a rock sitting on your chest. The breathing of the Initiates around you merges into a single rhythm of in-breath and out-breath, as if the cave itself gasped and heaved.

  They’ve put a stone over the hole, someone whimpers.

  Hush, whisper a dozen others. Initiates are not permitted to talk.

  A hiss and the pungent smell of urine. No one admits to pissing themselves, but sniggers and curses lash out against the unseen coward. Disembodied conversations turn into a competition between complainers and those trying to enforce the rule of silence.

  Hours of dark teach you to see shapes in sound. You assign faces from memory to a cough, a murmur, a hum. Like bloated rats, bodies skritch past, using one another at guideposts, and you feel the passage of someone’s long hair across your shoulder, the press of bone beads from a costume into your arm. When you find yourself squeezed too tightly between an unwashed boy and the ticklish smell of bobbing feathers from a girl’s headdress, you wriggle yourself free. By now, no one obeys the stricture against silence, so you add your voice to the coos in the darkness, seeking friends. You find Gwenika.

  You snuggle back to back against your friend, so you can untie each other’s bindings. Thereafter you stay side by side, hand in hand, despite the heat. For the cave is sweltering, not cold as you generally expect caves to be. Reaching up, you feel the ceiling right above you where you crouch; you could not stand if you tried. There are over a hundred bodies crushed into a cave no higher than a badger. The stench of urine is stronger now, but the sweat is even more overpowering. The spicy breath from someone who mangles your knee as he crawls by makes your stomach roil. It is a sign of how hungry you are that even this foul reminder brings to mind stacks of round, flat bread freshly toasted in the oven and piled with cheese, beans and onions.

  You and Gwenika exchange confidences in tones pitched low enough for just each other. For once, she doesn’t complain about all the exotic diseases she has suffered. She doesn’t whine at all. Her voice is dreamy as she describes pets she’s had over the years, a long string of frogs, gophers and sparrows. Creatures she found injured and nursed to health. She describes the sycamore trees around her clanhold, their pale trunks perfect for climbing, and the kinds of songbirds which nest there. You talk about the hills of your home, how trails wind by sudden vistas and cliffs overlook waterfalls which shower into a cloud of rainbow mist. You don’t admit to dancing with the fae because even here, even now, where the darkness spills secrets, you have secrets you don’t know how to share.

  What you would do for a jug of cool water.

  You ask if she’s ever killed or kissed anyone. No, she says. What about you? No. Would you ever? If he forced me to, you say, and she says, forced you to kiss? No, no, forced me to kill. You both giggle madly as if this is much funnier than it really is. You admit your greatest fear is to die by fire, and she says her greatest fear is to die alone, in the dark. She squeezes your hand tighter.

  The darkness is like an animal now, panting hotly against your neck, squeezing your chest. The air tastes stale. Gulping it faster doesn’t help.

  Discontent rumbles across the Initiates like a wave on a night sea. The air is running out. We will suffercate. We must free ourselves. Maybe this is the true test? Maybe this is what we must do to prove ourselves worthy of adulthood in the tribe? If we all push against the rock covering the entrance, we can lift the stone.

  The stone cannot be lifted—it cannot even be found. Hundreds of hands trace the rock walls. Hundreds of fingers scratch frantically for a crevice or a crack. It is as though the entrance never existed, entombing you all in solid rock.

  Others keep looking, but you decide it is a waste of breath, breath more precious now than bread or water. Gwenika will not let go of your hand. You don’t chide her even when you fear she might crush your knuckles into one shapeless lump. You whisper, We’ll be fine, but you are thinking about the legends of the children of Initiations past who didn’t survive. Your hand closes around the corncob doll you wear on a gut string around your neck.

  Gwenika says, once she helped a fawn that had broken its leg. She kept a splint tied to its lame leg all through the summer. When winter came, the fawn had grown into a deer and could walk again. But I will never heal another deer, adds Gwenika. Why not? My mother slit its throat and we ate it, says Gwenika. I didn’t want to, but we were very hungry that winter.

  Brena

  By the time Brena realized the shadows rushing toward her were actually men, she had no time to escape. The warriors swarmed out from behind the megaliths, overrunning the Tavaedies and Zavaedies who were standing vigil.

  Not since she’d been her daughters’ age had Brena fought in hand-to-hand combat, but she did her best to fend off the attackers. A barrel-chested thug pounded toward her, but she ducked into a roll under his feet, came up and hit him on the head from behind with her wooden mask, the only weapon she had. All around her, she could see the other Yellow Bear and Rainbow Labyrinth Tavaedies fighting overwhelming odds. Abiono killed one of his assailants, but two more bore him down and tied him up.

  Thudding steps brought her attention back to her own plight. This time she threw the mask in the attacker’s face as he neared her, then turned to run…

  …smack into another enemy warrior.

  She had a quick impression of blue eyes, tattooed cheek, black hair, a chest that was nothing but wave after wave of muscle, also tattooed, and a terrifying masculine rumble. Then the barbarian with arms like tree trunks tossed her over his shoulder and loped away. Her short hair, no longer pinned under her mask, came free in a halo of damp curls.

  He deposited her next to a megalith where the Blue Waters warriors were herding their captives. She tried to hit him, but her effort only placed her wrist in easy reach of his huge hands. He
twisted her arm behind her back, snagged her other arm without problem, and trussed her up deftly. Then he grinned at her, like a boy at mischief.

  He was no boy, however, but a warrior, probably a Zavaedi, in his prime. Scars inscribed a history of many battles across his otherwise impeccably fit physique. Like all Blue Waters warriors, his hair had been shaved close to his head everywhere except for a pony tail of braids down one side, next to his ear. The number of braids recorded the number of kills he’d made, and this man wore too many tiny, beaded braids for her to count. A tattoo of a salmon and three moons on his left cheek denoted his marital clan affiliation, which meant he had a wife and family back home.

  More captives arrived, bound and surrounded by enemies. Counting, Brena realized that no one had escaped. Nor had she heard any ram’s horn sound from the watchtowers in the valley. Yet, for some reason, the Blue Waters warriors were keeping them alive.

  It soon became clear why.

  The leader of the war party, an ugly man with a seagull clan tattoo on his cheek paced before the captives.

  “Tell us how to enter the kiva under this place,” Gull Face commanded.

  Dread scraped over her nerves like physical pain. None of the Zavaedies or Tavaedies spoke, but Gull Face had expected their resistance. He gestured to Salmon Face, Brena’s own captor.

  “You’ve earned first choice, Rthan. What about this one?” He grabbed one of the young female Tavaedies by the hair, jerking her head back.

  Salmon Face—Rthan—walked right by the young woman, to loom over Brena. He pulled her to her feet. “This one.”

  “Suit yourself,” shrugged Gull Face. He continued to distribute the captives while Rthan dragged Brena across the clearing to one of the stones in the circle. Her hands were tied in front of her body to a long rope. Rthan tossed the rope over the top of the megalith and staked it into the ground on the other side with his spear. The tension in the rope pulled her to her tip-toes, arms stretched above her head.

  He displayed a shell knife. “Don’t make me do this.”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself, murdering innocent children!”

  “Once they come out of that kiva, they won’t be children any longer. Besides, better to kill the cubs before they grow into full-fledged bears. Why not? Your people murder our children, down to the helpless babes. We only wish to wipe out those who are about to become dangerous.”

  Rthan put the knife to her throat and stroked down. Brena squeezed her eyes shut, anticipating pain; instead, a cool breeze touched her breasts. He cut away her outer Tavaedi costume piece by piece. The tatters puddled at her feet. Beneth the outer mantle, she only wore a breechcloth and bands to support her breasts.

  “You’re an animal!” she said.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, but I obey my War Chief,” Rthan said. “Look around you.”

  She peeked to either side. There were twenty-one prisoners in all, seven Zavaedies and fourteen Tavaedies, to match the number of megaliths in the inner circle. In a grotesque perversion of the ritual they had come to perform, each captive had been hoisted naked against a stone. Some of the Blue Waters warriors commenced to whip the naked captives. Cries of human suffering despoiled the sacred space.

  Gull Face strode from stone to stone, surveying his men’s grisly handiwork.

  “We’re just getting started,” Gull Face said. “This will only end when you decide to tell us what we want to know. Whoever tells us first will be spared. The rest of you will have lost your opportunity to end this torment. We will continue this until you die.” When Gull Face passed Rthan, he asked in surprise, “What are you waiting for? This is our chance to avenge Lyass.”

  Rthan flipped Brena face and belly to the stone. The cold seeped through her bare skin.

  She heard the whip snap a moment before a snake of fire slithered over her back. She couldn’t swallow her shriek. The pause lasted just long enough for her to anticipate the next blow with mounting fear. Then another agonizing sting bit her bare buttocks. Dread swelled in another long pause. By the third lash of the whip, she began to sob into her arm.

  A hand brushed her hair back from her wet cheek. A soft, deep voice. “Tell me what we need to know, so I can stop. I hate hurting you.”

  “You were eager enough to chose me to torture.” She tried to twist away from him, but only succeeded in wiggling her side to the rock.

  “It was the only way I could keep some control over your fate.” He leaned closer, whispering, “Please. Help me end this.”

  “I don’t care what you do to me, I’ll not let you take my daughters.” She twisted to glare at him, helpless in her rage and bile. Hate thawed the icy grip of terror. Gwenika was only fourteen.

  A flash of something that almost looked like empathy crossed his face.

  “Your daughters are Initiates? But no, you’re too young to be a Zavaedi and have daughters that age.”

  She had no intention of explaining her life story to this fish faced brute. She merely snarled at him.

  “If you let me in first, before the others, I will claim your daughters as my slaves,” he said. “I’ll protect them.”

  “Take them, you mean.”

  “I have no desire for the green fruit when I can have the ripe one.” He stepped closer to her side, so that his body heat radiated off her breasts.

  “Isn’t your own wife ripe enough for you?”

  The mix of compassion and desire vanished from his face, replaced by hard, cold, old rage. “My wife and child were murdered in a sneak raid by Yellow Bear warriors, slain in their sleep while all the men were fishing at sea.” He pressed himself closer, skin to skin. Lust washed into his anger. “It’s only fair turn around that I should take back something from your people.”

  He turned her face and smothered her lips with his mouth. The sensation shocked her, awakening a vivid memory of the night of her own Initiation: The sounds of keening, rustling bodies, the mold in the cave that had made her sneeze. And hands. Male hands, freed from their bindings though she herself remained tied up. The hands had stroked her without asking. She’d been too afraid to speak—they’d been told not to—she had been confused and terrified, wondering if this was part of the Initiation. And so the boy who would become her husband later that year had forced her back to the rock ground, parted her legs and wriggled himself onto her. She hadn’t protested. The whole time she was sure she would die. He took his pleasure quickly the first time, but the night dragged on many hours. He never untied her. He stayed by her side and played with her body, idly, and under his roaming, possessive fingers, she peaked. She had often dreamed of that night since, and awakened feeling aroused and guilty.

  Rthan broke off the kiss and knocked his forehead against the slab of stone. “Let me protect you and your family.” He sounded hoarse with need, almost pleading. Pulling back, he looked her in the eyes and rubbed her kiss-bruised lips with his thumb. “You have no good choices. Your people will not discover us until after we’re gone. There will be a massacre. We are avenging years of raids of your people against our tribe. But some prisoners may be spared—your daughters can be among them.

  “If any other warrior takes them, he will make them his slave girls, but I swear by the Blue Lady, I will ask only you to my bed. Your body can guarantee their safety. No one else will offer you that bargain. Take it. I beg you. Agree to surrender yourself to me.”

  She knew something that he did not. The underground chamber was not a true kiva, but a natural cave with only one opening. Once the opening was covered, the air would run out if the Initiates were not released soon. Brena shut her eyes against the turmoil she felt. “How do I know you’ll keep your word?”

  “I won’t betray you.”

  “All men betray women. I’ve learned that the hard way.”

  He leaned closer, husky and hypnotic. “Then you haven’t met real men.”

  A scream pierced the night, one of the other torture victims, followed by surprised shouts. He ign
ored the scream, but the shouts evidently disturbed him, for he turned around to identify their source.

  Kavio

  Kavio finally found the simplest way to encourage the Yellow Bear warriors to see for themselves the danger to the Tor of the Stone Hedge. He kicked his guards in the chins, shins and bellies, then raced toward the tor, with them stampeding after him. Now they blew their horns, rousing still more warriors, from the Tor of the Sun and the Tor of the Moon. A satisfactory mass of armed men followed him up the hill and burst over the rim.

  The Yellow Bear warriors had been expecting to corner one man. When they stumbled into an armed camp of enemy warriors, they slid to a stop, croaking in surprise like startled frogs.

  Fortunately, the Blue Waters tribesmen proved no more prepared. Engrossed in the task of torturing the captives they had already overwhelmed, they had no appetite for a battle between equals. The Yellow Bear warriors regained their advantage first, pushed into berserker rage by the sight of their honored Tavaedies suffering abuse. Howling in fury, they smashed the skulls of their foes with stone clubs. The grassy hilltop between the upright stones turned slick with splattered brains and spilled intestines. A critical part of Kavio’s mind noted lost opportunities that the Yellow Bear warriors might have exploited, had they better organization or strategy. Raw fury and blind slaughter, though less elegant, did begin to dent the ranks of their foes.

  Kavio wove his own patterns of mayhem. The last time he had been to the Tor of the Stone Hedge, he had been on his knees with a knife to his throat, hostage to a broken treaty, helpless human sacrifice. His father had given Hertio permission to kill him to pay the deathdebt between Rainbow Labyrinth and Yellow Bear. Kavio remembered the sweet onions he’d been given for his last meal, the coldness of the obsidian pressed to his jugular. The turf had been muddy, and his knees sank when he kneeled. A beetle had crawled up his leg while Hertio intoned the ritual farewell; he remembered thinking it would reach his thigh by the time his throat was slit. He’d desired then to do what he had no choice but to do now, slaughter every man who dared come at him with a weapon.

  The same flips and spins that aided his dancing found lethal application in the chaos of combat. Though many of the Blue Waters warriors were themselves Tavaedies, no strangers to martial acrobatics, none could match Kavio for speed and precision. The tall stone slabs created the perfect foil for him to run up and leap backwards over the heads of his opponents. He dispensed foe after foe in a few brief moves. The mud that had once caked his near naked body could no longer be seen beneath a new patina, the gore of battle.

  As he fought, he also strove to free the captives tied to the menhirs, whenever possible. Borrowing an ax from a Blue Waters warrior no longer capable of wielding it, considering his missing arm, Kavio was about to cut free a handsome, naked woman bound to a stone, when he chanced to recognize her. He missed a step. Though they’d not been formally introduced, he knew she was the Zavaedi who had told Dindi he was an exile and not to be trusted. Zavaedi Brena, he had heard her called.

  Apparently her opinion of him had not improved. Her eyes widened when she saw him, then narrowed in outrage.

  “Traitor!” she cried. “Exile! Were you working to lead our enemies here all along?”

  The absurd accusation helped clear his head. He lifted his ax, ignored her wince – did she really think he intended her harm? – and cut the cords binding her wrists.

  Brena fell into the churned up grass. She looked more confused than grateful. Yet she must have re-evaluated which side he was on, for just as Kavio bent to help her up, she pointed behind him. “Watch out!”

  He rolled out of the way just in time to avoid the blow from a huge warrior.

  Rthan.

  Not bothering to bandy words, Kavio aimed a kick for the man’s jugular. Belying his bulk, Rthan moved swiftly, without wasted movement. He grappled Kavio by the ankle, twisting his face into the mud. Kavio performed a bouncing push-up and donkey kick that sent Rthan reeling, but he recovered with a back roll, and came back up punching the air where Kavio would have been if he hadn’t spun away. Then the fight picked up pace.

  Hot, hard, and fast, blow after blow, spin and kick they exchanged, neither able to smack the other down for long before he rebounded for more action. By now they were the last two still fighting. The rest of the Blue Waters warriors were either face down in the mud, prisoners, or face up in their blood, corpses. A circle of Yellow Bear warriors surrounded the two combatants. Rthan noticed his predicament, but instead of surrendering to the inevitable, he hunkered down into the fight, faster and harder and meaner than ever. Kavio gestured to the rest to leave him his kill, which they respected.

  The tiniest bit of ill luck decided the outcome for Rthan when his ankle caught on a disconnected arm. On a roll, Kavio picked up a fallen spear and dove toward that massive chest in the final, mortal blow. Seeing his doom, Rthan spread his arms and roared a welcome to Lady Death.

  From behind, a wooden mask clubbed the Blue Waters warrior on the head, dropping him like an axed tree. The spear whizzed harmlessly overhead. Rthan was already unconscious in the mud.

  Zavaedi Brena held the mask. Kavio glanced at her curiously. “I think you saved his life.”

  “Did I?” she asked coolly.

  “Though I suspect he would have preferred death in combat to the slavery and torture that surely await him.”

  “Enough blood has been spilled,” she said in disgust. She threw down the mask. Grime streaked her cheeks like tears. “This sacred place has been defiled, and the very children we fought to protect will die because of it.”

  “But we won.”

  “Even so.” She met his eyes with such hollow despair that he recoiled. “The kiva beneath this tor is no ordinary chamber. It was crafted by the fae, and can only be opened by magic. But we cannot dance it open until the entire hill has been cleansed of blood. By then, the children will have died from lack of air.”

  Kavio, remembering his own Initiation well enough, understood. Initiation made children taste their mortality. Now, however, mock tomb would turn true tomb.

  Brena collapsed to her knees, hopeless past weeping.