Now he understands why his tribe’s ancestral talent is so potent. He could bless an entire regiment and their warmounts before he started to feel the drain on his power.
Hours after his conversation with the queen, as they trot through a light drizzle, a strong sense of unease besets him across all three tethers. Mukuni starts growling at the surrounding woodlands. Ahead of him, Wakii slows down, neighing and tossing her head nervously.
Tuksaad brings her to a complete stop and looks back at Salo and Ilapara, biting his lips like he’s fishing for the right words. “Listen,” he says, “I’m pretty sure we’re about to get ambushed, but everything will be all right if you don’t panic. Just let me take the lead, understood?”
Behind Mukuni, Ilapara reins in her buck and draws her spear from its harness by Ingacha’s side. She scowls at the woods first, then at Tuk. “What the devil are you talking about? What ambush?”
“I need you to put that away, Ilapara,” Tuk says, eyeing her weapon. “We need to be as nonthreatening as possible. That’s the only way we’ll get out of these woods in one piece.”
Salo quickly scans their immediate surroundings with his shards. The woods aren’t thick enough to form a canopy, but anything more than several hundred yards away might as well be invisible. He comes up with nothing save the vague sense that they are surrounded. “Did you know this was going to happen?” he says to Tuk, failing to keep the panic out of his voice.
“Not so soon.”
“So you knew! Why the devil didn’t you warn us?”
“I didn’t want to cause you needless worry.”
“Needless? We’re about to get ambushed, Tuksaad!”
Tuk’s expression remains serious, but his eyes turn a traitorous green. “Let me handle it, and we’ll be fine.”
“I don’t see what’s funny about this,” Salo says.
“I’m not laughing, am I?”
“Your eyes!”
“I can’t help that,” Tuk says, and this time a dimple materializes on his face. “Look, just follow my lead, all right? No spells.” He looks at Ilapara. “And put that blade away, for Ama’s sake.”
Ilapara clenches her weapon stubbornly. “I won’t be killed without a fight.”
“No one will be killed if you just hang back and let me do the talking.”
She glares at him for a long moment but then purses her lips and returns her weapon to its harness.
“Salo,” Tuk says, “keep your cat friend in line.”
Salo is too fixated on the surrounding woods to respond. They seem particularly ominous now.
With Tuk in the lead, they set off at a slower, more cautious pace. Mukuni and the other animals remain agitated, and for good reason: barely five minutes pass before frenzied howls erupt in the woods around them, followed by the emergence of husky figures in skimpy loincloths, white body paint, and layered necklaces of beads and copper. They move so quickly it’s only a matter of seconds before Salo and the others find themselves trapped inside a thicket of spears and ornate bow-like weapons with arrows that seem to be made entirely of red light.
Their assailants are not alone. They’ve come with frightful horned jackals on leashes, and the blasted things won’t stop snapping their teeth. Salo barely musters the clarity of mind to keep Mukuni from attacking.
Ilapara is a stiff presence behind him. He can tell it’s taking all her self-control not to draw her weapon. A part of him would feel better if she did.
One of their attackers—perhaps the group’s captain, since he appears to be wearing the most intricate necklace of them all—comes forward and demands something in a language Salo can’t understand.
He shares a worried glance with Ilapara, but Tuksaad surprises him yet again by replying to the demand in the captain’s language, speaking with his hands raised in a show of peace.
The captain glowers up at him and says something else. Tuk replies confidently, pointing at his gauntlet. He seems to ask for permission from the captain, which the captain grants with a nod.
All eyes watch as Tuk raises his left arm, pointing his clenched fist toward the branches up and off to the side. A hiss as a silver barrel telescopes out of the gauntlet, rapidly gathering a nimbus of moonfire. Then the branches explode with a loud crack, sending the Tuanu jackals into a snarling frenzy.
Tuk ignores them, releasing five more blasts in rapid succession. Mukuni growls, and Salo holds his breath, expecting to be attacked. But the captain and his men behold Tuk’s gauntlet with pure wonder, like they’ve come upon a yet-undiscovered vein of moongold.
A big smile breaks on the captain’s face, and he nods at Tuk. He shouts a command at his men, and the thicket of spears draws back, the bows going slack, their glowing arrows disappearing into thin air.
“We have to follow them,” Tuk says. “It’ll be a two-hour walk to the lake from here.”
Without protest, Salo and Ilapara prod their mounts into motion and follow, flanked by potentially hostile armed men and their snarling jackals.
“What on Meza just happened, Tuk?” Salo asks and flinches when one of the spearmen glares up at him.
“I have bought us passage up the lake,” Tuk says.
“How?”
“I offered them my gauntlet in exchange.”
“What? But you can’t! This is my pilgrimage, Tuksaad. I should bear any costs that need paying. And that’s a really valuable and powerful weapon!”
On his abada, Tuk sighs. “Now you know why I didn’t tell you. I had a feeling you’d react like this. Look, it’s done now, and it’s best if we limit our talking. We don’t want to make them suspicious.”
Salo cranes his neck to look behind him at Ilapara. They both shake their heads when their eyes meet.
31: The Maidservant
The Tuanu Borderlands
The Maidservant shadows her quarry from the infinite depths of the Void, spreading her flies and thus her consciousness across miles of woodland so as to evade detection.
Earlier she witnessed a most astonishing sight: the great Hunter, lieutenant of the Dark Sun himself, flung down from the skies by three youths. She felt his power extinguished from the land they both drew from like a whooshing wind, felt it become a roaring absence the Dark Sun surely sensed as it tore open. How she would have loved to watch her hated lord’s reaction.
The Yerezi mystic has become very interesting indeed.
She would have attacked him already, wrung out the secrets from his mind and destroyed his body so the Dark Sun would learn nothing from him, but there is another presence shadowing him through the Void.
So far she has kept herself concealed from the presence, drawing the thinnest stream of energy from the profane door in her mind, which she learned can shroud her footprint in the Void and make her much harder to detect. Occasionally she sends ripples through the Void like a bat using echolocation to discern the nature of its surroundings, but the presence must have superior protections since it successfully deflects her scrutiny, keeping its nature hidden.
She’ll just have to bide her time and let the presence reveal itself.
They follow the mystic and his companions northwest into the Tuanu borderlands. They watch from a distance as he is accosted by a patrol of Tuanu warriors, and though at first it seems he will have to fight his way through, for some reason the warriors lower their weapons and start guiding him deeper into their territory.