—A MAYANABI SAYING Chapter One First light: the between-time of Everywhen when night tarried, day still longed to be, and all Mnemlith listened for the sounds of morning. First light: the rift between worlds when dreams murmured subtle things in gray, and waking minds reached for the distinct colors of dawn. Now was the moment of renewal and eternal return. To consciousness. The Mayanabi Desert gleamed at sunrise. Amber light played across shifting sands and vanished. Silence. Three heartbeats, and the earth opened. Sound that clattered and gathered speed, hoof against stone. Like a jagged riptide, a green-cowled figure thundered from the gap, his cloak a dark undertow of roiling power that startled. The desert stirred in its sleep, a hot wind running to meet this first wave of Jinnaeon: Trickster's Improvement. The desert air crackled with the shock of the new, and the figure in green came riding into the open on the back of a blue-black mare. Faster. The man hunched forward. His name was Zendrak. He was Trickster's Emissary: Rimble's threshold of change. The mare's dark mane whipped his hidden face, and he bent lower to fill his senses with the mare's strong animal smell. Her sweat blended with his, salty and pungent-wild. This mix was a perfume that slapped the mind awake; it was the scent of Rimble's Own. Zendrak held his olive-skinned hands steady on either side of the mare's reaching, streaming neck. His fingers held no reins. There was no need of them. Nothing in civilization could control this mare. Nothing could constrain her. She was a loan from the Stables of Neath, and she ran to the rhythm of her own fierce spirit. She was the leading edge of Rimble's building crest, her hooves striking the meter for change. She travelled no roads: only the currents of coincidence. Her name was Further, and she was a Power of the Fertile Dark. Faster. The Emissary whispered his destination. The words were a hiss on the hot, dawn wind: the Yellow Springs. The mare's ears flicked backward. Her pace never faltered as she turned north toward snow-misted mountains. The thrum of her hooves, the beat of his heart, and it was on to the Yellow Springs: an ancient haven of healing. This was a four-thousand-mile journey, and they would complete it by day's end. Tonight they would position the final piece of puzzle-unasked-for but undertaken long, long ago. The mare's powerful stride lengthened. They passed through town and valley. The remains of night shattered in their relentless wake. Heads turned, but eyes saw nothing. Tale-tellers yawned over breakfast, and children stumbled out of bed. Some wondered at the sudden shift in temperature and shrugged as they unbuttoned their nightshirts. Here in the southern lands, the air was sweet and warm, and summer still lingered though the months approached Fall. In the north, however, this was not so. There, Autumn made bright festival with the trees, and the people of Suxonli already wore wool. Zendrak smiled. This was the cusp of the season when change gusted with the wind and colors were crisp. Now the weather was unpredictable. This was nature's shifttime—Trickster's Glory. A wild joy overtook the Emissary. He cried out, reckless and alive! Sparks flew, hoof against stone. And Zendrak was riding, riding. He was riding north to Suxonli to bring Summer to one of Rimble's Own. Faster. Chapter Two Crazy Kel sat motionless on a mossy, limestone ledge a few feet above the Yellow Springs of Piedmerri. Swathed in her habitual veil and robe of black, Crazy Kel lay her head against her hunched knees and sighed. Her expression remained concealed under the drape of material covering her face and broad shoulders. She opened her startling, pale green eyes slowly, her face strained by an internal turmoil that had caused her yet another sleepless night. She took a deep breath, trying to calm the ache in her chest. This ache was not a physical pain; however, it had a physical location—her heart and lungs. Crazy Kel rubbed her breastbone gingerly and winced. What was this ache? she wondered. She had felt it only once before, and that had been sixteen years ago. There had been no answer for it then, and there appeared to be no answer for it now. She shut her eyes again, listening numbly to the tumbling rush of the twenty-feet fall of water directly below her. Crazy Kel smiled sourly. Crazy Kel—born Kelandris of Suxonli—was thirty-three years old. And as far as the elders of Suxonli Village were concerned, Crazy Kel ought to be dead. It annoyed them that she wasn't. The woman in black chuckled bitterly. «Strong I am,» she whispered in a queer, sing-song monotone, «and strong shall I ever be. I have danced for the King of Deviance, and the bastard made me his he.» The ache in her chest intensified without warning. Crazy Kel swore. Gasping for breath, she pressed her forehead against her knees, her jaw clenched. «I draw the Springs roundabout. I cast this pain out and out.» When this incantation failed, Crazy Kel sidled closer to a trickle of the copper colored water of the springs diverted from the main by fallen leaves. Crazy Kel thrust her left hand into the iron laden wash, hoping to draw some strength from the minerals themselves. She sucked the taste of it off her dirty fingers, comforted by the familiar feel of the metal flavor in her mouth. «Iron Springs be my friend. Bring the pain of Suxonli to end.» Her shoulders sagged as she wondered just how many times she had prayed for this in the past sixteen years. How long would it take? How long would her internal wounds remain raw? She shrugged. The lashes on her scarred back had healed long ago. But her mind? Crazy Kel groaned. Sometimes she was very, very sane. And sometimes she wasn't. Crazy Kel watched the spray from the falls below her catch the light from the setting sun. A rainbow flickered briefly and was gone. «Don't make promises you cannot keep,» she snapped at the Springs. «What was sown in Suxonli, I forever reap.» The rainbow reappeared as if in contradiction. Crazy Kel spat at the Yellow Springs. When the rainbow remained, she bowed her head unexpectedly. She felt ashamed. The Yellow Springs had provided her safe haven since Suxonli had cast her out. She owed the Springs gratitude, she told herself angrily—even on her bad days. Crazy Kel bit her lips under her black veil, listening to the cheery splash of the water. She smiled hesitantly, as if the muscles of her face were unaccustomed to doing so. Then once again, she put her hand in the rivulet beside her, touching it as gently as if it were a lover she had inadvertently spurned. The rainbow lengthened, then vanished. Night approached. The fading rays of the sun turned dark gold, making the deposit of iron on the rocks below the surface of the Springs appear as bright as a newly minted copper. Crazy Kel inhaled the peace of the place, thanking the Springs again for the long moment of protection they had afforded her. She certainly hadn't deserved it, she thought. But then that was the nature of this place. It didn't judge. It simply gave. Even to the condemned like her; even to a person who had been branded akindo and convicted of murder. Which is the same thing, thought Crazy Kel tiredly. She shook her head. Stupid Springs—giving to a murderess. But then, I suppose that's your business, isn't it? she thought at the falls. And what do I know? I'm just an ignorant village woman. And a criminal at that. Her shoulders sagged again with a bitterness that even the Springs could not alleviate. The Yellow Springs were an ancient place of sustaining spiritual power well known to the locals yet virtually undiscovered by the rest of Mnemlith. Those few who were fortunate enough to drink from the mineral and metal laden water of this hidden place left whispering tales of miraculous cures—both physical and psychological. Lying deep in the black earth piedmont of the Western Feyborne Mountains. They lay half a mile south of Suxonli village—on the other side of the Mazemouth River and just across the border of the land called Piedmerri. Kelandris grit her teeth. She could not remember how she had come to the Yellow Springs. Or who had cared for her during those first months after the Ritual of Akindo. Mostly, she remembered feeling alone. And helpless. Crazy Kel glared at the old scars on her dirty hands, and wondered how she had gotten them. Then she wondered why she had survived the Ritual of Akindo. It was also a mystery to the elders of Suxonli why Kelandris had not died sixteen years ago when they pronounced her akindo: kinless and without soul. The Ritual of Akindo was an ordeal of harsh justice designed to destroy not only the mind but also the body. This had not been the original purpose of the ritual, but the people of Suxonli had forgotten its older significance and meaning: namely, a confrontation with death while still living and a radical release from personal history. The current Ritual of Akindo included a severe beating which was then followed by the ingestion of a toxic dose of an indigenous hallucinogenic substance called holovespa: the whole wasp. Understandably so, the elders of Suxonli had expected the beating alone to kill seventeen-year-old Kelandris, but her six-foot-four body had proved to be as strong as her stubborn, insolent spirit, and she had survived. As a result, the elders had been forced to continue the ritual, now pouring a killing dose of the drug holovespa into Kel's bloody mouth. This had been carried out by the person whom Kelandris had loved most: her fifteen-year-old brother, Yonneth. The holovespa itself was a natural substance, a kind of royal jelly manufactured internally by the Holovespa Wasp Queen—intended solely for her larvae. However, the villagers of Suxonli had been stealing this jelly for centuries, making a potent sacramental compound from it. They called it Rimble's Remedy and dispensed it during their yearly Trickster's Hallows—a late autumn carnival of euphoria. The Ritual of Akindo had turned this wild (but essentially harmless) festival of masquerade into a streaming, screaming nightmare of distortion. As per the requirements for akindo, Suxonli had given young Kelandris enough drug to synaptically unhinge her mind permanently. They had expected her to kill herself. But Kelandris had not. She had lived—not well, but she had lived. Despite Suxonli and its judgement. The Ritual of Akindo had not been without its effect, however. By the end of that particular Trickster's Hallows, Kelandris had emerged certifiably