Outlaw Dragon by Steve Turnbull

Author:Steve Turnbull [Turnbull, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910342961
Publisher: Tau Press Ltd
Published: 2019-04-10T22:00:00+00:00

16

Kantees stumbled the last few steps to where Ulina was staring at her as she came yelling down the hill. Kantees grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her from the water’s edge. She stumbled over a rock and collapsed, holding the child tight.

As the echoes of her own voice fell away across the calm, motionless water with the coarse grasses and reeds poking up through them, it all became silence.

“What’s wrong, Kantees?” said Ulina. “Why are you crying?”

“It’s not safe,” said Kantees, her voice hoarse from the shouting. “It’s not safe. You have to be careful.”

“What isn’t safe?”

“What’s wrong?” echoed Levin. Kantees could hear his uncertain paces as he made his way down the hill.

“Dakasa!” she said.

“They do not live inland,” he said. “Only in the sea or nearby where the water is salty.”

His voice was calm but held a hint of strain. Whether that was the pain of his feet or concern for Kantees’ sudden panic she couldn’t be sure. But it didn’t matter, even if that were true. There were always dangers in the wild. She had seen them.

“You mustn’t run away like that,” she said to Ulina.

“I wasn’t running.”

“You can’t just wander off.”

“Why not? Will you tie my feet, Kantees? Hobble me like a kichek?”

Kantees pushed herself up into a sitting position but still held Ulina, though the girl started to squirm.

“The world is not safe.”

“I have my knife.”

“Sometimes your knife will not be enough.”

“Then I shall die.”

And there it was again: the echoes of Ulina’s life before. The place Kantees did not want to go.

With a groan of effort Levin sat down beside them on the grass. He put his hand on Kantees’ shoulder. She shrugged it off but relaxed her grip on the girl, who immediately slipped away from her and went to a boulder to sit. She was not near the water’s edge.

“The world is full of danger, Levin.”

“It is,” he said. “I only have to look at my feet.”

“In a deserted ley-circle in the middle of the Talamyrth there were abominations like men who tried to kill us,” she said. “Perhaps they had been men once but they were distorted by the power of the Mother.”

Levin said nothing.

“When I first discovered the ziri magic, I fell into the sea and might have drowned but for a giant shell as big as Jakalain that floated in the water. And even so, Sheesha was barely able to rescue me. When we reached Dakastown the dakasa in the mere, near the tower, tried to bring us down with their water spouts.” She turned to him. “But always the greatest danger is the people. White people, like you. Trying to kill me, trying to capture Sheesha, stealing children and torturing them.”

She turned and faced back across the watery wasteland. “Tell me I should not be afraid for myself and those I have become responsible for?”

She thought that perhaps he had an answer, because he was silent for a long time.

“I do not claim any great wisdom,” he said finally.

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