Children of God

"We must walk. Wear boots," Ta’ana had told him as he struggled with the breastplate. The navigable rivers south of Mo’arl were now wholly controlled by Runa rebels. "And bring ointments for burns."

He was too befuddled to argue that his feet were used to the ground— he walked every day, collecting psychotropic herbs and the minerals that could be ground for pigment; he did not think to ask who was burned.

With brilliant color still pulsating around every solid object, Shetri Laaks had begun the trek north, nominally in command of his sister’s household while following the directions of a Runa maid, who was actually leading the way. Farce, he’d thought with every step of his first day’s travel. This is farce.

But by the end of the second full day on the road, Shetri had seen enough to recognize his elder sister’s laconic courage, for he had learned why the ointments were needed. Ta’ana had remained in her burning compound until the last moment, gathering her dependents and organizing an orderly retreat by firelight with an audacity born of desperation. The entire town had been fired—even the quarters of Runa domestics, whose goodwill and affection Ta’ana had nurtured and won, anticipating a day when war would find her. She and her children were alive only because their household Runa had smuggled them out of the burning Laaks compound in a false-bottomed wagon—prepared long ago in expectation of such a night—apparently loaded with loot, but actually packed with food and the family’s valuables, including Nra’il’s dented, blackened armor.

The half-marked path the housemaid knew passed within sight of several other smoldering towns. No male Jana’ata over the age of sixteen breathed; here and there, a wailing child or a bewildered woman was found wandering. Some were too badly burned to save; to these Shetri gave quietus, using the embers of their own compounds to light pitiably ineffective pyres. The rest he treated for burns as he had his sister, and Ta’ana made every one of them part of her migrant household, without regard to lineage or birthrank.

"We can’t feed any more," Shetri would declare as each new refugee joined their band.

"We won’t starve," Ta’ana insisted. "Hunger is not the worst thing."

But their progress was slowed, and they had gathered more people than could be fed with the provisions packed in the wagon. Nights were always broken by someone’s dream of flames; in the mornings, exhaustion fought fear to determine their pace. By the fifth day, Shetri was thinking clearly enough to realize that he could slaughter one of the draft Runa. By the ninth, they had left the wagon behind. Everyone, master and domestic, carried a child or food or a bundle of essentials.

Now, after days of flight and still far from safety, the numbers of Jana’ata and Runa in their little party were dangerously unbalanced. The more refugees Ta’ana took on, the slower they traveled and the sooner they had to butcher; two more Runa domestics had snuck off the previous night.

At this rate, we’ll never get to Inbrokar City, Shetri thought, looking up at the cliff edge where the newest girl was hiding. He turned to his sister, hoping that she hadn’t noticed the latest refugee, but Ta’ana was standing, veil off, ears cocked forward.

"Get her," Ta’ana said.

"It’ll be dark soon!"

"Then you’d best go now."

"Come down, girl!" he yelled, turning cliffward. There was no response. Shetri glanced at his sister, who stared uncompromisingly back. "Oh, all right," he muttered, flicking an ear at the valet, who came to unburden him of the armor. Ta’ana had earned obedience; Shetri, not much in the habit of leadership anyway, gave it to her.

Free of the armor’s weight, he picked his way carefully across the rocky riverbed, trying not to attract the attention of a pair of cranil snuffling and squealing in the shallows upstream, and then stood looking upward toward where this inconvenient girl had last showed herself. The escarpment was not a sheer drop. Blocks of stone had fallen toward the water, and these presented a fair approximation of a stairway for the first two-thirds of the distance before giving way to an increasingly uncongenial verticality. Mere expectation of a ludicrous death yielded twice to near certainty, so Shetri Laaks was in a thoroughly unhappy frame of mind— and in the midst of a wide — ranging and almost sincere curse calling down plague, deformity, insult, diarrhea and mange on every living creature east and west of the Pon River and all its tributaries—when he came face to face with what simply had to be a lingering effect of the Sti drugs.

"Don’t fall," the girl advised as he crested the cliff, his lungs and feet straining for air and purchase respectively.

For a time, he gazed dumbfounded at a young woman who was not merely unveiled but completely naked. Embarrassed beyond description, he finally averted his eyes from this spectacle, only to behold the noseless, tailless, oozing figment sitting woozily on the ground next to her.

"Someone’s brother is ill," the girl said.

Shetri gaped at her, ears drifting sideways, and belatedly realized that his pedal grip was begi

Slumped over, legs crossed, its skeletal arms thrust out like buttresses, the «brother» had evidently been flayed alive by some remarkably inefficient hunter. There was a tiny nose, Shetri saw now that he was closer, but like much of the rest of this monster, it was blistered and raw.

"He’s too far gone," Shetri told the girl, getting up wearily. "Someone will grant him peace."

"No!" the girl cried, as Shetri moved into position behind the poor beast and lifted its little jaw to open its throat. Shetri froze. She was not large, but she looked quite capable of biting through a man’s neck. Shetri himself had not so much as wrestled with anyone in years. "Go away," she ordered. "Leave us alone!"

What has happened to all the women in the world? Shetri asked himself. He held his position for a moment and then, with great care, removed his hands from the beast’s neck and backed off. "My lady: one can think of nothing more inexpressibly agreeable than to obey your command," he said with an elaborate obeisance to the naked little bitch, "but whatever this thing is, the wretch is dying. Would you have your ’brother’ suffer?"

Her glare remained undimmed. Shetri was begi

"Someone would not have him suffer. Someone would have him live," the girl declared with a vehemence that seemed to Shetri u

Well, choose! Shetri wanted to say. You can select one condition or the other. He looked around experimentally and noted with some satisfaction that there was still a vague pulsing aura around anything blue, which included the "brother’s" bizarre little eyes. This was exceedingly if temporarily reassuring. Maybe the brother wasn’t real! Perhaps the girl wasn’t either…

Except that Ta’ana had seen her as well. Sighing, Shetri straightened and moved cautiously from behind the poor, ski

"What’s going on?" Ta’ana called up to him.

"Why not come and see for yourself?" Shetri suggested cheerfully, no longer maintaining even a pretense of command.

Ta’ana arrived at the top of the cliff a short time later, stripped to a chemise for the climb. Shetri himself was, by then, sitting serenely a little space away from the girl and what she insisted was her brother, quietly singing a verse or two for Sti. To his beatific gratification, his sister’s face went as slack as his own must have earlier.