Skyborn

It wasn’t all her fault, she knew. The match had resulted from years of lobbying by Eulyn, seeking to lock in her family’s future position. Only males became riders, but Keshiri property descended matrilineally; now Adari and her mother had the uvak and the wooden house, while their neighbors still lived in huts of lashed-together hejarbo shoots. Eulyn was thrilled—and Adari was content to let the children be Eulyn’s domain, too.

Adari had done her duty; the Keshiri had been advanced by another generation. Now she could con-centrate on something important.

If they’d let her.

“I have to go back,” she said, lifting her younger son from his work destroying the di

“I knew you’d do something like this,” Eulyn said, her gaze piercing her daughter’s back. “I’ve always said mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1

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all that digging around in the filth would do you no good. And arguing with the Neshtovar! Why do you always have to be right?”

“I don’t know, Mother. But it’s something I’m going to have to live with,” Adari said, handing off the drip-ping toddler. A smeary imprint remained on her tunic—no time for a change. “Try to get Tona and Fi

She opened the door carefully to find that the rain had driven off the crowd. Comfort trumped belief on Kesh. But the rocks remained, dozens of ironic little statements scattered all across the stoop. If the hearings lasted any longer, she wouldn’t have to do any more field research for the season—everything she needed would be on her doorstep.

Perhaps she should offend the Skyborn every year.

“We were talking about the flamestones,” Adari reminded the chief of the Neshtovar.

“ Youwere talking,” Izri Dazh said. “I accept no such term.” The aged rider and high councilor hobbled around the edge of the Circle Eternal, a plaza where a tall column served as a massive sundial. Adari looked around. Another gorgeous evening, for a place that had no other kind. It was the same every day, inland: a brief, determined afternoon rain followed by a cool breeze that blew straight through the night. But now half the village had forgone real entertainments to watch a bald, bloodless man harangue a young woman.

“There areno flamestones,” he said, gesturing to a pair of crimson rocks on a pedestal beside the central column. “I see here only normal stones of Kesh, as you might find on any hillside.”

Adari coughed.

“You have something to say?”

“I’d better not.” Adari looked up from her seat in the mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1

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sandy clearing—and then around at the glaring listeners. What was the point? No one would listen. Why keep making it worse . . .

She took another look at Izri. This lavender wraith was the man who had eulogized Zhari. What did he know about anything? What business did the Neshtovar have telling anyonewhat to think, just for convincing a few lazy animals to take them for rides now and again?

Fine,she thought, rising. These’ll be two fewer rocks they can throw.She took a stone from the pedestal. “I have—the scholars of Kesh have collected stones from every part of this continent. We record what we find.

We compare. This rock came from the foot of the Sessal Spire, on the southern coast.”

The crowd murmured. Everyone knew the smoking Spire, rumbling and bubbling at the edge of civilization.

Someone musthave been crazy to go out there collecting rocks!

“The Spire created this stone, from the flames it holds inside. And this,” Adari said, picking up the other rock,

“was found right here outside the village, buried in the riverbed.” The stones were identical. “Now, the mountains ringing our plateau aren’t smokers—what we call volcanoes—at least, not now. But this rock being here suggests they might once have been. This whole continent, in fact, might have been created by them.”

“Heretic!”

“Is my mother here?” Adari craned her neck, scan-ning the crowd. Someone tittered.

Izri took the stones from her and rustled along the perimeter of the audience. “You say these stones came . . . from below,” he said, the horrible word drip-ping from his tongue. “And created all that is Kesh.”

“Then, and now. The smokers are building more land all the time.”

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“But you know that all that is Kesh came from the Skyborn,” Izri said, jabbing his cane in her direction.

“Nothing can be born of Kesh anew!”

She knew; every child knew. The Skyborn were the great beings above, the closest thing the Kesh had to deities. Well, there was something closer: The Neshtovar, as the self-proclaimed Sons of the Skyborn, might as well have beenthe Skyborn as far as life on Kesh was concerned. Keshiri faith was vertical; high was mighty. The elevated were venerated. It was Izri’s uvak-riding group that, ages before, had brought down from the lofty oceanside peaks the wisdom of the great battle of creation. Riding colossal uvak of crystal, the Skyborn had fought the Otherside in the stars. The battle raged for eons, with the Otherside injuring the Skyborn before being defeated. Drops of Skyborn blood fell upon the roiling black seas, forming the land that birthed the Keshiri people.

Adari wondered about the biology of a gigantic, sandy-blooded race—but the Neshtovar notion had something going for it: The Keshiri’s few maps of the land looked as if one of her kids had spilled something on them. Long ridged peninsulas spattered in all directions from a cluster of plateaus, forming enormous, often unwalkable coast-lines and fjords enough for the Keshiri to harvest marine life forever. Farther up the many rivers to the plateaus, farmers drew even more from the rich soil. The Keshiri numbers were both vast and well fed.

About the Otherside, Adari found the Neshtovar were incurious to a fault. “That which opposed the Skyborn” meant death, sickness, fire, rebellion—in no particular order—when it wasn’t taking mortal form in accordance with the storyteller’s needs. The Otherside came “from below,” another element in the message of vertical faith. And that was all there was to say. Given the elders’ devotion to the Skyborn, Adari was sur-

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prised they hadn’t hammered down who or what the Otherside was. But then, if they had, they’d have come up with a better name.

Which wasn’t stopping Izri from invoking it repeatedly as he railed at her. “Your words glorify the Otherside, Adari Vaal. It’s why you are here. You are here for preaching—”

“Teaching!”

“—telling these liesabout the Great Battle to your acolytes!”

“Acolytes? They’re students!” She searched the crowd for familiar faces. Her students had ducked out the day before when things had gotten rough, but some of their parents were here. “You, Ori Garran! You sent your son to the scholars because he wasn’t any good at the mill. And Wertram, your daughter. Everyone here in Tahv—do you think the village is going to fall into a holebecause I talked to your children about some rocks?”

“It very well could!”Izri grabbed his cane from its spot by the pedestal and shook it. “This land was a part of the living Skyborn. Do you think they do not hear you? When the ground quakes, when the smokers burn—it’s their remnant acting in sympathy with their wishes. Their wishes that we honor them, and hate the Otherside!”