9-Crystal Healer by S.L. Viehl

Author:S.L. Viehl
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780451462855
Publisher: ROC
Published: 2009-08-04T05:00:00+00:00

The two men on watch split apart to flank us on both sides. Both carried hunting and skinning blades hanging tucked into series of loops sewn along the upper sleeves of their garments, which, like those the Elphian had given us, were made of soft, cured animal hide. Each also held a spearlike weapon with a pronged end carved of wood. Embedded in the twin shafts of the prong end were dozens of blackened, sharp-looking thorns.

Although the design of it was unfamiliar to me, the sturdy fashioning of the weapon and the wide space between the prongs made sense. Its primary use was likely to pin down something and hold it in place while the tribesmen used their long, sharp claws for the kill. If thrust like a blade into a body, the prongs would inflict two deep, penetrating wounds, while the barbed thorns would inflict even more damage as the weapon was jerked free.

The tribe came out of their shelters and many light eyes watched us as we were marched over to one side of the settlement. I found it difficult to keep my head down and avoid eye contact, especially with all the attention we were drawing, so I tried instead to look at the objects in the camp. The tribe's kiafta, made of enormous purple-and-gray-striped hides stretched over a framework of poles, numbered in the hundreds. The tall, oblong shelters did not stand alone, but had been built in groups of three with covered, open-sided lattices leading to and from each shelter. Airy-looking twists of pink and gold vines grew on the lattices, but instead of flowers sprouted large, dark red globes with smooth hulls.

Intricate native symbols had been somehow carved into the darker strips of the shelter hides in long columns; as I passed close to one such hide I saw the symbols were actually carefully denuded spaces in the short, dense hair of the hide.

"What do the symbols mean?" I murmured to Jylyj.

"I don't know," he whispered back. "I cannot read their language."

In the center of the encampment stones had been stacked in a sprawling spiral, in the center of which a well-tended fire blazed. Embers lined each of the spirals curving away from the center, and stone pots hung from simple frames steepled over the coals. Thin, pale pink smoke rose from the burning heartwood, and colored the cold air with the faintly sharp but not unpleasant scent of hot resin.

I couldn't see what the tribeswomen tending the pots were cooking, but I saw one of them toss a handful of dried stalks into a pot and stir them into the contents.

Our guards stopped at an area marked off from the rest of the encampment by rows of dark stones, and enclosed by a three-sided lattice covered with the pink and green vines. A plain hide with the center cut away covered the area. I saw the reason for the hole when I spied the small fire that had been built beneath it. Around the fire were large, hide-covered, flat stones that appeared to be seats of some sort.

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