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  Then he left Stillshadow with Water Chant, and began his own ascent.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  T’Cori fell asleep watching the sun paint the sky blue, and awoke again as it stood almost directly overhead. She noted that the earlier trickle of water had ceased, and she sighed. Her mouth prickled with a sour, dry taste she vanquished by licking dew from shaded rocks.

  The instant one hunger had declined, it was time to satisfy another. Leopard Eye’s hare was still in her pouch, but she decided to scavenge as long as she could, saving it for an emergency.

  Some roots she recognized and knew to be edible. Those she was uncertain of, she broke off a piece the size of her fingernail and tucked it between teeth and gums. She would leave it there for a quarter, to see if her gums itched. Her body might react with soreness, swelling, a sense of sickness. In that case, she would eat no more. She had to keep moving but remain aware of the sensation in her mouth. If her spit still tasted good in a while, and if her cheek and tongue were not sore, then if she encountered another such bush later, she would consider it safe to eat.

  She froze as a purple lizard poked its head out of a crack. Willing herself to disappear, to become part of the rock, she remained perfectly still, until it crawled within arms’ reach. T’Cori snatched it up, dashing its brains against a rock. Grinning, she ate it, bones and all, save the tiny sharp claws. Its head she crunched with her teeth like a nut filled with juicy meat.

  A little later, she was lucky enough to find a mass of grubs in the shadow of a rotting tree trunk. These she ate one at a time, crunching through legs and carapaces with relish, savoring their sweet, pulpy flesh.

  Hunger temporarily sated, she examined her surroundings more fully. The wide spot in the rocks was linked to a narrower path skirting the mountainside. She edged along it for some ways before it narrowed to the point that she had to stop again.

  The valley floor was far below her, far enough to have dizzied most. Clouds cast shadows across it, shading the vast swathe of trees, twisting game trails and lush green elephant grass. She could imagine letting go, kicking away from the rock wall with her legs, plunging down and down to a swifter, more merciful end than any she might find beneath a lion’s claws.

  And then … an angry growl behind her. She whipped around to see the white-scarred lioness approaching from behind her, no more than ten long paces distant. Her thighs tensed as she fought a sudden, almost irresistible impulse to urinate.

  So. There was another way to the ledge.

  T’Cori backed up, clambered up a series of rocks and then pitted herself against a vertical wall, climbing twice her height before reaching an overhang she could not challenge.

  If the lioness waited below, eventually T’Cori would weaken and fall.

  Why postpone the inevitable? Why not just admit that Great Mother had decided it was time for her daughter to come home? Why not return her bones to the earth and dance on the mountaintop? Why?

  Because everything inside her told her to keep trying. Keep fighting.

  Then she remembered Leopard Eye’s rabbit. Her herb pouch came next to mind, packed with the strangleweed and other herbs to create the last gift, the death potion that eased a wounded hunter’s passing. Praying to Great Mother, she stuffed the herbs down the dead rabbit’s throat.

  She hurled the carcass down to the ravening, yellow-eyed cat. The lioness sniffed, snapped it up in one bite, then kept jumping at the rock wall, seeking purchase for her claws.

  Rising on a fierce surge of triumph, T’Cori climbed. All she needed to do now was survive, unless herbs enough to send ten hunters to Father Mountain were insufficient to kill a killer.

  She braced herself against the rocks as the lioness roared and snapped at her, just out of reach. Her legs quivered, and her strained back ached. Agony flowed up her bruised and bloody fingers.

  Then the lion’s roar weakened. If the cat had been human, T’Cori would have said its voice sounded almost confused.

  The cat’s rear legs collapsed. It coughed, tried to spit twice, and made a hacking sound, as if its saliva was congealing. It slipped, stood again and seemed to wobble. Took a few halting steps, and turned in a circle, as if trying to bite its own tail. And then, one leg at a time, the strength left its legs and it fell to its right side, exposing pale skin and teats swollen from recent nursing. Under other circumstances, T’Cori might have felt a flash of guilt.

  Her mouth twisted into a triumphant snarl. T’Cori knew the signs of strangleweed: unbuffered by special herbs the weed was a swift, painful toxin. The lioness would strangle painfully to death, choking on thickened saliva and a closing throat.

  Relief, and a fierce vicious joy rushed through T’Cori, refreshing as a dip in shaded water.

  If the lioness had reached her ledge, did that mean there was a way down from above? She made her heart a stone and edged past the dying cat. It pawed at her weakly, then forgot the human and concentrated on its own struggle for breath.

  Where had the predator come from? How had it reached the shelf?

  And then T’Cori glimpsed a narrow path, as wide as her arm was long, jutting out from the cliff beneath an overhanging shelf of reddish rock low enough that she would have to crouch. She decided to crawl. Oddly, crouching on her hands and knees steadied her nerves, and, after a few nervous breaths, she was able to stand again.

  Could she go up? Yes, if she retreated a hand of paces. T’Cori was able to grip enough rocks and roots to pull herself up to a wider path along the rock. There, finally, she was able to walk again.

  This path came out in a wider, flatter place, and she stopped, surprised by what lay before her on the ground.

  A rough circle of stones, set around a heap of crumbled ashes. She knelt, feeling the flakes. They were cold. The circle was less disciplined than those made by Ibandi men. Looser somehow. And yet… it did not resemble Mk*tk fire stones, either. Whoever and whatever had left this, belonged to neither group.

  Perhaps the blunt-faced folk who had come for the child?

  Which led to another possibility. Unless the people who had left this had climbed up from the valley floor, there had to be a way down from the top, and she intended to find it.

  For the next quarter, T’Cori walked paths and climbed rocks until she neared the ridgetop. Looking down, she could see a switchback trail along the valley wall, leading down toward a much-more-inviting-looking mass of trees and grass and shrubs. Her heart lighter, she picked her way back down. From time to time she found berries, and once a kind of small orange fruit she had never seen. She did not dare eat it, but saved one, planning to tuck a portion against her cheek later.

  Almost halfway down the slope, she froze. Something was wrong. Was it the wind? For a moment the breeze shifted, and she caught a sour, meaty scent.

  Lion.

  Where? Was it merely lion spoor or the cats themselves? Hunkering down behind a bush, she watched silently for a time.

  Nothing.

  Alert now, she descended with greater care.

  Then she saw them. Two. Three. Were these the same that had killed Leopard Eye? How could they have tracked her up a rock wall?

  Her scent. She had caught theirs. How foolish of her to doubt they would detect hers in turn.

  Her fears had been justified. By sexing Leopard, she had somehow transgressed against Great Mother. Forces infinitely larger than human strength and will were in play Great Mother. Father Mountain. The jowk must have decided that this was her time.

  The three lions were clambering up the rocks, barely a spear’s throw away. T’Cori backed up, trying to stay far enough ahead of them that they might not see her.

  An angry growl behind her. There down the switchback crouched one of the big cats, tail lashing back and forth in anticipation. In that instant, their eyes meeting, predator and prey knew each other. There was no question now, and the lions were running up the switchback, one of them trying to climb directly up the side, sliding back down with a ho
wl, skidding halfway down the slope before slamming into a boulder. It shook itself with a kind of injured dignity, glaring up at her.

  Lack of food and water, the fatigue and fear all crashed down upon her at once. T’Cori’s arms and legs felt limp and devoid of strength. An exhausting series of pulls and clumsy clamberings finally brought her over a boulder as high as her waist, leading to a flat grassy knoll. The young medicine woman was quivering and spent.

  T’Cori did not doubt that if she tried to climb that way, the cats would catch up with her. What, then? What could she do?

  Attempt a direct ascent of the rock wall above her? The footholds here were not as good, and she could only get a man’s height from the ground before her escape route dead-ended. Immediately to her right, roots sprouted from the cliff face. No matter how she strained, they were out of her reach. To the left a rock jutted from the face, but no matter how she extended her foot or tried to twist and turn, she failed even to touch it. This was as far as she was going.

  Could she climb back down?

  Too late. Up over the lip, no more than ten paces distant, scrambled two lions. Once on the knoll they froze, their yellow gazes locked upon her. Then one slow step at a time, they slunk forward.

  Thought was slipping away, something beyond fear rearing itself in her heart: surrender.

  She had seen this thing before back at the Circle in the days before the Mk*tk. While on a medicine walk she and her hunt chief guides had come upon a hyena stalking a wounded deer, and waited until the drama was complete. Still alive, the deer hung limply in the hyena’s jaws, as if the leaf-eater feared that hope or struggle or any attempt to preserve life would merely prolong its agony. She had witnessed the surrender in its body, the limpness. Kill me, it seemed to say. But don’t hurt me….

  A sense of that reality wound through a hunter’s prayers, asking that an animal’s jowk return to the burning lake, surrendering the fleshly shell so that a worthy hunter might provide his family with meat.

  Deep within the pit of her stomach a sour, quiet warmth whispered: give up …

  She climbed as high as she could, looking down at the lions as they searched for a way to reach her. The killers leapt after her, the only sounds the heavy thump of their bodies against rock and their low-throated growls.

  Hunger, raw and hot, radiated from them like heat from desert sand. Leopard Eye had not satisfied them but had perhaps answered the question of whether or not these two-legged creatures were proper flesh.

  Poor Leopard Eye. No: poor T’Cori! If she could not find an answer, she would be joining him soon.

  Farther to her right a brown tangle of roots burst from the rock. T’Cori strove to work her way over there, but weak, slippery fingers betrayed her. Balance vanished in an instant, and only a desperate lunge for the roots prevented her from toppling over backward. Ten paces away the lioness licked its lips, already tasting the fresh meat.

  Then she heard another noise. A hooting call, not quite an animal sound. Not Mk*tk, certainly, but she was certain that no Ibandi throat had ever made such a sound.

  And despite the unfamiliarity, her pulse quickened. When she managed to turn her head to look, what she saw gave her pause.

  There were four of the pale, squat males who had fetched the strange child. Their jaws were wide and brows low. They were so heavily muscled that they might have been sun-bleached Mk*tk. They were shorter than the average Mk*tk, but from their proud bearing and well-fed frames, she reckoned them mighty hunters.

  Each carried a bamboo spear. The weapons had stone heads lashed to the tips, more complex than the simple spears favored by Ibandi hunters. They wielded them as if the stalks grew from their bones.

  The tallest motioned for her to remain still, and then lowered their weapons to advance on the lions.

  One of the three cats ran at the odd pale strangers, thundering its rage, coming up short as the spear points lowered to threaten its face. Another of the men lowered his weapon to address the big cat’s belly.

  The lions paced side to side in frustration, but every time they made any approach to the men at all, two or three of the spearmen faced it. One tried to disregard the flaked-rock spear points and come at the men from the side, and was gouged for his trouble. Not a mortal injury, but meat-eaters cannot afford damage that might limit their agility or speed.

  The men were slower than Ibandi, but their width of shoulder and hip, the thickness of waist proclaimed them stronger. They seemed heavy, perhaps even clumsy compared to the great hunt chiefs, but they moved in harmony one with another, as if a single mind controlled a pair of them. It was a dance such as she had never seen before. A lion dance.

  Jabbed and shouted at, the cats backed down the mountain, snarling their frustration. One of the men watched them, keeping his spear at the ready, while the others motioned for T’Cori to descend.

  Despite their superficial resemblance to Mk*tk, T’Cori felt no fear. Their eyes were yellow-blue and light brown, the limp hair on their heads a dirty yellowish hue as well. Their teeth were broad, strong and flat.

  The largest of them held his hand out to T’Cori, and as she took it she recognized him: He was the gap-toothed giant that the girl-child had run to. Her father? Uncle? Perhaps merely the leader of these strange folk and therefore someone the girl knew would protect her?

  She did not know. But her heart sang and said, You are safe.

  And she believed it.

  He grunted at her. The men surrounded her. Then, together, they descended the valley wall.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Frog and his hunters had climbed up and down the wall, seeking a sign. A torn root here, an overturned stone there … T’Cori had made no attempt to conceal her passage. When at last they found a proper switchback, Frog sent Leopard Paw down to fetch Water Chant and Stillshadow. Together they dragged the old woman’s sled up the steep grade. As the shadows shortened and then lengthened again the rescuers scouted and searched, until they lost the trail halfway up the valley wall.

  Now they stood on a shelf of rock and dirt edged with scrappy yellowish bushes, with no idea what to do next.

  “There was so much blood back by the stream,” Leopard Paw said, voice dull. “So much. Perhaps …”

  “No,” the old woman said, her voice disturbingly certain. “She still breathes.”

  How could she say such a thing when Frog’s own eyes told him there was no sign, except that which proclaimed his woman dead?

  And then …

  Uncle Snake pointed out at the dusty horizon, almost directly into the sun, now near setting along the valley’s western rim.

  Shimmering against the dying sun were four, no, five human figures. Was this, at last, the final battle he had so long feared?

  Mk*tk?

  He pushed Bat Wing behind him. Shoulder to shoulder, the four Ibandi hunters readied their spears. If their blood enemies had found them … well, perhaps all they could do was sell their lives dearly.

  Frog squinted, finally able to make out three wolf forms. They were near the humans but not attacking them, nor being attacked by them.

  “It is the strange ones,” Snake whispered. His white-speckled beard trembled as he spoke. “The foundling’s people.”

  Water Chant shaded his eyes, muttering under his breath as he peered out.

  What did they want? Could they know something? Frog tensed: could they have harmed T’Cori? Were they masters of lions, as well as wolves?

  There was someone with the male figures. It took only a moment to recognize it as an Ibandi female, heavy with child. And only another moment for his gladdened heart to realize it was his mate.

  Spears held tip high, the Ibandi walked to meet the strangers. The strangers were as pale as the grubs that burned to death when exposed to the sun. They walked two on either side of T’Cori.

  She looked exhausted and bruised, her fingers streaked with blood, her lips swollen and her braided hair clotted with dust.

  Bu
t she was alive.

  Frog began to run toward them. The men walking beside her looked at T’Cori as if to note her reaction before stopping and allowing her to walk on ahead, until Frog and T’Cori stood staring into each other’s eyes. They linked hands and leaned toward each other until their foreheads touched.

  Frog lived in a world of solid things, not spirits. And had lost the last of his hopes of another world atop Great Sky. But … now he felt as if the sun had emerged from behind a storm cloud. He felt contentment so deep, it was almost frightening. Was this all that it took to make him happy? For the woman he loved to hold his hand? To once again gaze into her eyes?

  He laid his palm against the soft warm swell of her belly. Frog imagined that he could feel the life within. His child. Their child.

  He slipped his arm around her, then looked up at the others.

  “Our friends have returned,” he said.

  “They saved me from the lions.” Her smile vanished. “They were too late to help poor Leopard Eye, but their spears saved my life.”

  Frog stepped toward them, stopped a hand of steps away. He touched his chest. “Frog Hopping,” he said.

  The second largest of the newcomers seemed to Frog to be the headman. The largest of them hovered at the headman’s right elbow. Their eyes were the girl-child’s shade of light blue. His nose was shaped like hers, broad and wide nostriled. His teeth were strong, square and gapped in front.

  Family?

  “Thal,” said the leader.

  “Frog,” said Frog. He swept his arm, indicating the search party. “Ibandi,” he said.

  The newcomer’s thick pale brows arched. “Vokka,” he said.

  The revel ranged from one end of the Ibandi camp to the other, and lasted until first light. Two of the Vokka males thumped awkwardly about, waving their arms and screaming to the sky in a shaggy dance with the Ibandi hunters. Soon after their return, another Vokka male had arrived, escorting several females. Frog noted that these females were not the subservient and docile sort favored by the bestial Mk*tk. Much of the time it seemed they were the ones giving the males direction. Men held children, and he saw one of them serve food to his woman.