Chapter 3.1

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Lunsa walked into nightmare.

The sky turned orange, then black, then crimson. Every slippery footstep hastened her destiny. Every beat raised her blood in her ears. Every ragged breath scraped an ache for those she had left. Asnul's loss throbbed like a blister on her heart, swelling with every beat.

Lunsa met the last stragglers of Deep Riverbend and of Heron Lake, too choked in their own struggles to lift their heads at her passing by, and then she was alone on the narrow trail. At the second midday, she passed the braided charms warding her village.

Men's voices echoed ahead of and behind her, evil as the devils that had once roamed these newborn lands. She slunk onto an old peccari trail to cross recent, charred burn swaths and muck. Acrid smoke obscured the trees, closing over the land like a hand over her mouth, and landmarks familiar as her skin turned strange beneath soldiers' ravaging. Was this the clearing where children raced their running sparrows, now oozing smoke like the gods' pipes? Was this the sweet maple where she and her sister hung their harvest wishes, now split and dripping sap?

Her foot sank into a beast's print and threw her onto her knees.

She scrambled up and onward.

There!

The clover field shuddered pure black under unnatural snows. On the uphill side, the Serengai seemed to pulse. Black in shadow, its breath gusted hot and red, fury howling deep within its boundary.

She waded into the garden. Overgrown brambles tugged at her clothing, threatening to tie her up and drag her into the Serengai shadow. No time for winding them. She staked one thick as her torso, knelt before the crushed feverish woodbine, and stroked its delicate leaf.

The stalks bent toward her with prickling poison.

Lunsa selected the stoutest and removed her athame. Her skin stung, red welts on her fingers where the poisoned dirt touched her scrapes. The plant's true name crossed her lips. "Ala'saal Me Asa Elia Te'salat." Fever-binding root that grows at the gates of Elia. Pungency of deep medicine responded to her mastery. Its true name removed it from the chaotic living world and bound its properties to her.

She sliced its heart.

The plant obeyed her will, uprooting as it fell over, its death graceful. She pulled out the root ball, pinched off the thread-roots, and tied the ball into her soft leather medicine pouch. She twisted the fronds into the shape of Ammen-Alet's staff, and, as was proper, buried the stalk in its place.

Men's voices echoed on the rise. They had found an animal, a companda lost in the evacuation, a peccari confused by the fires and returning to its ruin.

Or a girl . . .

"Uwah!" Noise bugled from a man's throat behind her.

She froze.

"There's a deer, see." He growled in the thick accent of the valley riverlands.

"There isn't," his companion said.

"There is, you dirty sheep's bottom, there is."

She scrambled to her feet.

Two men on the rise were looking away, to her left, but her movement drew their bloodshot eyes like notched arrows.

"A she-deer!"

She bolted. Her pack bounced hard on her back. To the road, to the Stone Bridge, to the rest of her fleeing village—

Something caught her pack.

A shout rolled over her and threw her forward. She slammed into the dirt. Soft earth mashed into her mouth and up her nose. Her pack rolled onto her head and a great weight squeezed her ribs.

She struggled to turn her face to take in a breath. Pebbles gritted against her teeth. Her lungs compressed. Breathe! She writhed, an insect beneath a god's heel. Twilight spirits, usually invisible, spun behind her eyes, their sparkling motes evoking night stars. Breathe, breathe breathe! Jealous lights trickled her spirit away from her crushed, suffocating body—

The weight lifted.

She coughed like the first people lifted from the mud by goddess Eleana. The twilight spirits receded. She slumped on hands and knees, praying over grounds she had tended as a child, in a barrow rut torn by war boots.

Around her were strewn seeds and blankets, clay and pot. Oh, her pack had split. She shook off the dazed confusion and reached out to grab the precious fever-binding root, the medicine she had put even with her life—

A beast slammed its cloven fist into the earth.

Lunsa jerked back.

Towering over her, a woodnut brown lamine stomped and snorted. Rusted metal nailed to its toes lifted the earth, and dropped it in great clods. Its round nostrils flared in its squashed face, and peccari-like tusks jutted from a flat jaw full of narrow teeth.

Thick body wool matted into armor, and its vulnerable legs and face were covered with pounded armor. Braided cord pierced its long ears and draped to the felted saddle.

The soldier seated upon it stared over her head. "You dare to desert?"

"Na! Na, na, na." One valley riverman shifted and picked at skin blackened with fire sores. "We was takin' a break, you see, and we saw this she-deer, like you see—"

"You're not allowed spoils," the man snapped. Crisp as the snow-bound edges of the ice fields from whence his people came.

Lunsa's senses returned with similar cold clarity.

She rose shakily to her feet. Clods fell from her hair, her skirt dropped to its usual resting place above her knee, and her medicine pouch swung against her waist.

"We weren't spoiling it," the other riverman whined. He bled from the temple. "We was just playing with it, you know, for a bit of morale."

"We was going to run it through," the first agreed, nodding vigorously. "And we weren't deserting. We was just resting ourselves with a bit of mountain meat."

The man's lamine shifted. "Explain it to your general."

The healthier riverman spit. "What general?"

The soldier unsheathed his sword.

"You're our general, captain-at-arms! You're our man, then . . ." They dissolved to sullen whining.

The captain-at-arms eyed Lunsa as one would regard an injured animal. Unfortunate, but needing to be put down. He shifted his grip on the blade to bring the sharp end up.

Lunsa called to the power of Surias, the brightest star in the northern sky, and Lirial, his constant companion.

But before she could speak, the captain-at-arms spurred his mount.

Lunsa stepped back and tripped on her fallen belongings, landing on her butt.

The blade passed over her head.

The earth spirit, Simma'a, clutched the beast's nailed hooves. The lamine stumbled into brambles and shrieked horribly. Blood scented the air.

Lunsa crawled away, tried to run, fell, and tried to run a second time. Oh, her leggings had ripped down to her ankles and bound her legs together like a cord. She stood and pulled the leggings up.

The captain-at-arms quieted his lamine by speaking its true name. The animal freed itself from Simma'a and stepped onto solid earth. The captain-at-arms raised his curved sword.

Lunsa backed away, one hand clenching the leggings, the other out.

He started forward.

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