Lady Silva Excerpt

“These beings you’ve brought me here to meet. They want us in a place of their choosing before they appear--I want that choice to be ours.” To emphasize that, she settled to the ground. Hands on her knees, she was nevertheless ready to jump and move at any moment and in any direction.

Shrugging uneasily, Zerat settled beside her. “It’s never been done this way. We’ve always just gone in and waited for them to make themselves known.”

“Not this time.”

Silva waited, listening carefully for any change in their environment. She couldn’t see behind her, but true to his training Zerat settled at her back facing the other direction. He would have a better idea of what to look for in any case. Silva concentrated on her ears.

She heard it when the creatures moved in around the two Kin, still hidden in dense underbrush. In spite of the fact that neither of the humans had moved for some time, the animals were suddenly silent. Even the dangling trees were suddenly still as if they didn’t want to attract attention.

She had no words for the thing approaching through the trees, no words for the shape or the color, but it was well over two meters tall, and had claws. With that small familiarity, she was able to identify the things attached to the claws as limbs of some kind, although they were oddly shaped.

Lady Silva felt Lord Zerat stiffen against her back and knew that he was seeing the same thing as she--or perhaps not exactly the same. Who could tell?

It was furred--she could see that much, and it had a bump on one end that might or might not be a head. Perhaps those bulging protuberances ringing the base of the head were eyes--at least, she wanted to think of them as eyes. It helped, to find one more thing that she could identify, and if they weren’t eyes the thing had none.

It was a nightmare, a shape hidden and incomprehensible because her mind had nothing to compare it with. It stood silent, letting her look her fill. Others, smaller, appeared around it, scuttling on legs that bowed upward like a spider. The big one settled to the ground facing Lady Silva.

She turned her head, hoping not to see another, but was disappointed. The one behind was larger, and had its own attending band of large spider-shapes, each with a double-barbed tail arching over the back. The big ones had no such tail but walked on segmented, claw-tipped legs covered with a fur-like substance that wasn’t fur.

The claw-tipped arms moved aside from where they had been crossed in front of the...barrel, and Lady Silva knew that her assumptions were all wrong. The moving arms revealed a face, and it poked its head out of the body to look at her. What that swelling at the top might have been she had no idea, but because it was not swathed in fur she’d assumed it to be a head. The waste-thing studied Silva, and she saw the same hatred and disgust in this thing’s eyes--all seven of them--as had been in the eyes of the village attacker.

It’s eyes weren’t human, weren’t oval, and perhaps it was once again her mind’s insistence on finding something familiar that made her define them as eyes at all. It moved smoothly, settling to the ground a short distance away. The top bulge settled into the shoulders and the front bulge--head poked out more, giving the effect that the eyes were directly focused on Silva.

When it spoke, its voice didn’t come from the head-lump, but from under the fur on the sides of the body. The sound of human words was created by thuds and thumps of various speeds, with whistles interspersed when necessary. The words were easily comprehensible, almost unaccented.

“Have you come to make the bargain?”

Silva started to turn her head to ask Zerat what the thing meant, but remembered his statement that he couldn’t tell her. “What bargain?”

Although there was no visible change to the head-lump, she got the feeling that the thing was surprised.

“The bargain between our peoples is of long standing,” it said slowly. “Surely you know of it.”

“I don’t,” Silva said firmly. “Explain it to me.” She felt Zerat stiffen behind her and felt her anger rising.

“You do not ask questions,” the thing snapped. “You make the bargain, or you do not. Your sponsor will explain.”

“No.” Silva stared up at the thing, seeing claws and teeth. This thing could take her apart if it wanted to, and leave nothing behind to be found. “I will not make a bargain without knowing the terms.”

How many generations, she wondered, had children been brought out here to face a nightmare and been pressured into an unknown bargain? The heir was always the youngest child--the oldest she had heard of a child being taken into the waste was perhaps twelve years old, just shy of full adulthood.

With the present Keeper right there, why would any child think to question the instructions?

And those heirs who did not return from the waste--who would question the Keeper? The many Keepers who returned from the waste wounded or dead, leaving half-trained child heirs to take their places--had they objected, or angered these things in some other way?

The thing hissed, and something thumped behind Silva. She winced at Zerat’s gasp, but refused to turn her head. “So you use intimidation to get your way?”

The thing hesitated, turning the head-lump from side to side. “Intimidation.”

Silva grinned fiercely at the obvious question. “You hurt him to try to make me acquiesce, but he’s an adult and so am I. He brought me here, knowing what it might mean. I will not bargain with you.”

One furred and claw-tipped appendage extended to the side in a move that was almost graceful. “You will not?”

Silva met the thing’s eyes--if those were eyes--without letting it see either fear or anger. “I will not. I refuse to agree to an unknown bargain.” She reached back and caught Lord Zerat’s hand. His fingers moved in her palm, telling her to ignore anything that happened to him.

That, she had no intention of doing.

The thing hunched in its place, pale black bulges of eyes studying her--if those were eyes. “The bargain,” it said finally. “In the first years your people made a bargain with us. You would hold to your own territory, and we would hold to ours. The Keepers promised it, but when the forest retreated they took the land it left as if it was their own.”

The Keepers promised . She doubted that-–in the records she had access to there was no mention of creatures like this, and there would have been. “How was that territory delineated?”

The head-bulge pulled back, turning quickly from side to side. “This is meaningless. The world is ours.”

“And yet, you say that the Keepers promised that we would hold to our territory--what territory was that?”

“Make the bargain!”

“No.” She reassured herself that her son would be safe--when it came his time to go through the waste, he would be surrounded by Makers. “Tell me the words that I must agree too, first.”

“Then you agree!”

“I do not. Tell me the words that I must agree to, or there will be no bargain!” She sensed the predatory satisfaction, and brought her hand up. “Even then there will be no bargain unless I agree that the words are in the interests of both our peoples!”

The thing hissed, a sound that started quiet and got quickly louder. “Agree!” The word thundered through the large clearing where Lady Silva had chosen to stop.

“No! I will not agree to an unknown bargain! Kill me if you wish, but I will not agree!” She found herself on her feet, staring directly at the head-bulge as if it was an enemy she must defeat. “If you could kill humanity directly you would! Instead you try to kill those who protect us, and force the Keepers into a one-sided bargain.” She was shouting, to be heard over the thunderous tones of the thing that now towered over her.

“If you kill all the Makers you would have humanity defeated, and you know it! But you can’t! And you won’t! We’ll defeat you, we’ll expand until you are no more threat to us, and if you try to come into the territory we claim you’ll be killed like the animals you are!”

The thing settled to the ground suddenly, the head bulge more pronounced than before. “Suddenly you sound like a rational being. Kill or be killed. Your people have never understood this. They try to bargain with us, as if the strongest will not win in the long run.” It hissed, and she recognized the tones of a human chuckle in the sound.

“So, child of the human Keeper kind. Leave us, without the bargain, and see if you can make it back to your lands. We’ll give you a start, for the sake of sport.” The head bulge began to retreat into the thing’s midsection, and Lady Silva struck.