11

BROTHERS DIVIDED

Mordafey smelled honey even before he heard Goreth emerge, lips smacking, from the trees. He had tracked Goreth by following the obvious path pressed through the forest by the salvage pallet. He found the pallet alongside an abandoned ranger shack, unguarded, exposed.

Goreth returned hours later, seemingly oblivious to his failure. “Look,” he grunted. “See? Ranger house. No rangers.”

Hiding just inside, Mordafey dug his claws into the floorboards. In the two days since Jordam and Jorn were captured, his thirst for Essence had worsened. And his fury.

After the Bel Amicans had scattered the brothers, Mordafey waited as long as he could for their return. Goreth found him quickly, but only Goreth. So Mordafey decided to steal away without attempting any kind of rescue for Jordam and Jorn. Unbeknownst to his brothers, Mordafey’s Cent Regus conspirators were waiting nearby. He did not dare disappoint them. They were crucial in his plan to seize the Cent Regus throne.

But now, as appetite gnawed at his head and gullet, he hated Jordam and Jorn for complicating his plot. And he hated Goreth for failing to follow simple instructions: Take the prizes back to the dens. His brothers were careless, failing to grasp the importance of obedience and sticking together.

“Honeybee,” Goreth muttered, closer. “Honeybee stuck in my teeth.”

The brothers’ fear of Mordafey had slackened. He would remind them to be afraid. And, if necessary, he would leave them behind, take the loot, steal away to the Cent Regus lair, and claim the rewards for himself. The pieces of his strategy were almost in place. He could not afford delays, distractions, or dangerous rescues. He would have that deep drink. He would take another step toward seizure of Skell Wra’s throne.

When the first stairstep outside the shack groaned under Goreth’s weight, Mordafey froze, still as a stone.

The next step creaked. “Where’s Same Brother, Turtle? Always I talk to Same Brother. But he’s gone so long. Maybe Bel Amicans killed him.” A whimper gusted through Goreth’s nostrils, and Mordafey heard him pounding at his head to wake his failing memory. “Was it yesterday, Turtle? We hunted something big. Then Bel Amicans. And Older Brother sent me away with the prizes. Did I show you prizes, Turtle? And then I smelled honey.”

Rising suddenly to fill the small doorframe, Mordafey relished Goreth’s slack-jawed astonishment. “Found a new home, Goreth?”

Honey still dripping from his beard, Goreth dropped the tree turtle. His eyes rolled in their sockets like thrown marbles. The turtle bounced down the stairs and tumbled to rest in the ferns, retracting its head and long-fingered limbs.

“Mordafey told you, take prizes, go back to the brothers’ den.” Mordafey stalked down the steps. Goreth’s eyes slowed their spin and rested askew. Mordafey recognized this derangement; it happened when the brothers had gone too long without Essence. Unable to recognize his brother or see anything clearly, Goreth brandished the battle-scarred sword he had carried since the ambush on the Bel Amicans at Abascar.

Mordafey seized Goreth’s wrist in a crushing grip. He took the sword and swung the flat of the blade against his brother’s face. Then he plunged it into the snow-dusted soil and cuffed Goreth again, dropping him to the ground. “You leave Mordafey’s prizes out in the open? What if others find them?”

“What others?”

Mordafey clenched his teeth. If his brothers discovered he was conspiring with other Cent Regus, they would worry about their share of the eventual reward. He was determined to prepare his army in secret until the brothers had no choice but to cooperate.

Goreth clutched his head. “Good brother,” he squeaked. “Strongest brother. Smartest brother.” He gestured into the trees and offered to take Mordafey to the hives and the honey.

Mordafey grabbed the pallet’s strongshoot poles and dragged it over to drop them at Goreth’s feet. “In the Core, the Sopper Crone will feed you Essence. That will fix your thinking.”

“Head hurts.” Goreth got to his feet, riding his own private earthquake. Lumbering, he reclaimed and sheathed the sword. Then he found the tree turtle lying on its back, lifted it, and tucked it snugly into his thick, black mane between his ears. “When my head hurts, Same Brother hurts too. Where is Same Brother?”

Mordafey clutched at the air, wishing he could shake Goreth’s memory until it righted itself. He recounted for Goreth exactly what had happened the day before, and how the brothers had been separated.

“Where’s Turtle?” Goreth reached up to scratch his head and scratched the turtle’s shell. Then he laughed and leapt to seize the pallet poles and to haul the brothers’ treasure forward. Mordafey ground his knuckles into his eyes and cursed the Old Dog for fathering such a fractured creature, and they walked into the trees.

They advanced through a night of drifting snowfall, moving steadily south and westward.

Goreth endured his searing headache by talking quietly to his new hard-shell pet. The pallet slid along behind, pressing down brush and paving a trail for any Cent Regus followers. Mordafey moved haltingly, listening for signs of an ambush.

“Older Brother wants his brascle,” said Goreth to the turtle. “Bird could watch for followers. Bird could warn him.”

As cold sunlight revealed the third day since the brothers’ separation, the ground grew harder, intolerant of anything green and growing. Midmorning they emerged from the Cragavar onto chalky terrain skiffed with new snow. They kept to high ground across rolling plains of shallow-rooted scrubweed bushes, for the valleys and ravines were choked with impassable brambles.

Mordafey’s claws probed burrows trying to snag prey by a hind leg. Most warrens of scramdogs, rabbits, lurkdashers, gorrels, and thick-headed dodgers had mysteriously emptied since summer. Only scavengers, insects, parasites, and slithering things remained.

“Older Brother,” Goreth called. “Brothers should bring the Old Dog hunting. Strong and fast, the Old Dog.”

“Crolca!” Mordafey swore. “You forget everything. The Old Dog’s dead many years now. Left Mordafey to tell brothers what to do.”

Goreth hung his head. “I forget,” he whispered. “But not everything.” He could recall days when he would follow the Old Dog, father of the four brothers. He learned to hunt by watching the bearlike giant. “The Old Dog’s dead,” he remembered. “His head. Big tent spike pounded right through.”

“Yes,” said Mordafey, a note of contempt in his voice. “Remember who caught the Old Dog’s killer? Remember who killed him and ate him? Mordafey. Mordafey made things right. Then Mordafey taught brothers how to fight together, hunt together, and get strong.”

“She.” Goreth picked at the rough edge of the bone protruding from his brow. “What about She?”

“She?” Mordafey rattled a small wooden box of bones tied with a leather strap to his belt. “The Old Dog killed She. Wanted Mordafey to hunt only for him. Goreth and Jordam came from a different She. And Jorn, another.”

The story set Goreth to flinching. His memory tossed like a sea, and at times memories surfaced that had been sunken for many years. “Goreth’s She? Did the Old Dog kill her too?”

Mordafey grinned, a glittering in the shadows beneath the hood of his woodscloak. “The Old Dog killed her too.”

“Don’t say more.” Goreth held up his hands.

“Remember the Old Dog’s last She? Whipped her cubs, even Jorn. But Jorn…he bit back. First kill.” Staring intently at Goreth, Mordafey licked his lips. Goreth felt a nervous chill until he realized that his brother was looking at the turtle. He pulled up his own woodscloak hood then, covering his passenger.

Waves of dead weeds thinned as the brothers entered a labyrinth of stony ridges. Ridges grew larger, and crevasses between them narrowed and deepened. Mordafey led them in zigzag until they were deep within a canyon. Turning up a slope of layered clay, Goreth recognized stony pillars, and he began to recite what he could remember of the brothers’ secret stash.

At last they arrived on a great stone shelf. Near the perilous edge, above a seemingly bottomless chasm, a rugged blister of stone swelled, and on the side that faced the chasm it yawned open, a jagged maw.

“Secret way to brothers’ dens,” Goreth informed the turtle.

Stepping through the fanged break, he recognized a haphazard arrangement of boulders. This scattering worried him; they might be some kind of eggs. In his dreams they sometimes hatched.

Tiptoeing past, the pallet sweeping the floor behind him, Goreth joined Mordafey at the threshold to the brothers’ hidden home and pointed to a boulder propped against the back wall. “Secret door,” he said.

A blur of motion and a clopping din startled them. Goreth dropped the prize pallet and drew out his sword, but Mordafey had already cornered the rock goat. The long-haired, long-eared animal, which had probably wandered in looking for an escape from the winter winds, did not even manage a bleat of alarm before Mordafey tore out its throat.

Suddenly agitated, the tree turtle on Goreth’s head stood up, turned, and groaned as if realizing it would take months to journey back to its tree. Goreth patted the turtle until it withdrew its head and sticky feet.

The brothers made a quick meal of the goat. As Goreth gnawed into bone, Mordafey shoved aside the boulder, disappeared through the opening, and let the stone fall back into place with a hollow fummmm.

Goreth set the tree turtle down among the goat bones. “Stay here, Turtle. Guard prizes. I’m going down. More food. And sleep.” He patted the shell again. The turtle would not stick out its head. Goreth whined softly. The turtle’s silence only increased his frustration at the absence of his twin. He could not remember a time when they had been apart for so long.

Goreth woke, hot as an ember, curled beneath heavy layers of muskgrazer skins on a shelf in the den wall. The boulder that blocked the door was rocking back into place. He blinked, listening. It might be Mordafey leaving, or returning. He was not sure.

Try though he might, he couldn’t remember how long ago he had climbed into this hole to sleep. It might have been days. He did not remember Mordafey setting the fire that crackled in the pit.

A raspy crawk from the corner told Goreth that Mordafey’s brascle was still here, tethered to her perch. He crawled from beneath the skins and peered at the grand, fire-lit cavern and its ceiling of stalactites. He saw the large predator bird, and the bird stared back with enormous, lidless eyes. He saw no sign of Mordafey. But then he heard something like a scuffle on the entry ledge high above.

A massive shape hurtled down from the ledge and slammed into the ground before him.

A dead rock lizard, legs splayed and limp, stared blankly at him, tongue lolling out over yellow teeth. The impact forced a mighty blast of air through its nostrils. Goreth breathed in the scent of the lizard’s last meals—dead insects, rotten reptile eggs, and fish. The feathered shaft of a Bel Amican arrow jutted out from beneath the lizard’s jaw, and Goreth could see it continued on up through the mouth with its tip undoubtedly buried somewhere in the animal’s brain. “Time to eat,” he laughed. Looking back up to the ledge, he asked, “What else?”

While the brascle beat its wings and screeched, Goreth watched Mordafey wrestling another shape to the edge of the ledge. Whatever it was fought back. But Mordafey overpowered it, and the shape flew into the open space, landing hard in the bonfire, which exploded in sparks and ashes.

“Same Brother!” Goreth rushed to Jordam’s side, rolled him over, and pawed the glimmering embers and ashes from his cloak and fur. Jordam’s eyes were closed, and he growled through his teeth.

Jordam had suffered quite a beating—a gash in his leg, blood-crusted stripes around his limbs and chest, and bruises all about his face. His woodscloak was cut through in several places and heavy with dry blood.

“No help for Jordam,” Mordafey hissed, and he leapt down. “Not until he explains. Jordam failed. Almost ruined the plans.”

“Did. Not. Fail.” Jordam forced the words out. Clutching at his belly with one hand, he reached into the ashes with the other and flung a shower of black dust at Mordafey.

“Where’s Young Brother?” Goreth asked.

“rrCaptured.” Jordam’s eyes opened. “Bel Amicans took him. They had dogs. Arrows, poison. rrTraps. But I got away. Jorn…not smart enough.” Jordam turned his attention to Mordafey. “Must go after Jorn soon. Or give him up.”

Mordafey paced a ring around the twins, his club firmly in his grip, waiting for Jordam to say something worthy of punishment.

“Send me back,” Jordam suggested. “I get Jorn out.”

Goreth grabbed Jordam’s arm. “Same Brother, don’t leave again!”

“Jordam won’t go anywhere unless Mordafey has him on a leash,” Mordafey barked.

“rrBrothers need Jorn,” Jordam insisted. “For Mordafey’s plan.”

“Hrrmph.” Mordafey stalked away down a tunnel. He returned and tossed dry branches onto the coals, and smoke snaked into fissures high above.

“Mordafey…I’ve seen the creature.” Jordam spoke with passion, and Goreth knew he was trying to turn his older brother’s anger toward some new target. “Still there. In the trees.”

Mordafey stared into the smoke. “Brothers will hunt big creature after Essence,” he muttered, lifting a heavy battle-ax from the ashes. “After Essence and after Abascar.”

“Abascar?” Goreth laughed. “Abascar’s gone.”

Mordafey brought the ax down to cleave the rock lizard’s side. “Abascar people hide in Barnashum.” In strike after strike, he carved the dead reptile into wedges of syrupy meat, his vigor suggesting he was not just cutting out slabs to roast but imagining a siege. “After brothers get Essence, we go to surprise Abascar people. Kill them all. Take Cal-raven’s prizes.”

“House Abascar? Older Brother, you said four brothers would attack the chieftain. You change the plan?”

“Abascar”—Mordafey smiled—“is part of Mordafey’s plan. After we go to Core, after we get Essence, brothers surprise Abascar people, steal prizes, take prisoners. Take it all back to the Core, to Skell Wra.” Drool spilled down through his beard. “Skell Wra will be surprised. Four brothers back again so soon! He’ll send us to the Sopper Crone. Brothers will have so much Essence, no Cent Regus will be stronger.” He took a spear from the array of sharpened weapons set on jutting wall stones, lifted a wedge of reptile flesh, and held it over the fire. Blood and fat spat and sizzled, dripping into the flames. “Mordafey get Skell Wra’s throne. Brothers be helpers. Strongest, richest, best.”

Goreth struggled to grasp Mordafey’s implications. “Take Abascar prisoners? Take Abascar prizes?” His lower lip quivered. “Four brothers do this?”

“Mordafey has more than brothers,” he murmured. “Brothers will see. Everyone will see Mordafey’s plan.”

Goreth’s senses were sharpening now that his twin had returned to the caves. Sucking on a slab of sliced lizard tail, he watched Jordam clutch a small bundle to his chest and crawl toward his den. His tattered cape hung down around him.

Jorn’s presumed suffering amused Goreth, but something awakened when he saw Jordam hurt. Phantom jolts of pain jittered through his own body. “Same Brother, how did you get away?” he whispered.

“Remember the bloody gorrel trick?” Jordam laughed through a crimson grin, and then he made his way into his own hole in the wall to sleep.

“Bad day for Jordam,” Goreth sighed. And then he said the name again. “Jordam.” Strange—water ran from his eyes as he said it. “Jordam. My brother Jordam. Jordam is back.”

Everything hurt—the wound of the Bel Amican dart, the trap’s lash lines, the bruises from Mordafey’s beating.

Beneath the skins in his own burrow, Jordam faced the wall and wished he had stayed at the glen. Already he missed the blue light, the smell of summer. Here in rank darkness, with that maddening bird rasping in the corner, he found color only when he closed his eyes and watched flares brought on by want of Essence.

Afraid that Mordafey would come searching for him, Jordam had crawled homeward, leaving the glen behind. Painstakingly he had crept across patches of ground crowded with Bel Amican snares, for where there were traps, no guards would be walking. He would find a way to slip back to the glen on another night. Like sneaking off to O-raya’s caves, he thought.

On the stone pillow beside his head, he unfolded a large leaf and drew out two souvenirs. The golden vial of oil and the gloves that the Bel Amican woman had left beside the flower-crowned well, stained with the bitter juice of bruised flowers.

“Can’t come back,” he whispered, lifting the vial so the glass glittered in the firelight. “Not yet.”

On the hook of a claw, the cork came loose, and the vial spoke an “oh” of surprise. A wave of warm perfume wafted across his face. He shoved the cork back to stop the scent from flooding the cavern. The fragrance filled his nostrils and lungs. Suddenly he understood.

He was drawn under the surface of a deep sleep. The plunge frightened him, and he seized the woman’s gloves as if to take her hands.