Beneath the Canyons Page 21

  She smiled. “Yes, Pa. Tell him I’ll be right out.”

  * * *

  A FEW MOMENTS after Banfrey returned from his “few words with his daughter,” Lainie came into the dining room carrying a stuffed-full knapsack. She looked at Silas and gave him a shy smile that disappeared as quickly as it appeared. “I’m ready.”

  Silas took his hat and coat from the hook in the front hall and made sure Lainie had her hat and gunbelt. Outside, the storm had moved on south and east down the valley, leaving the air fresh and cool. The fat orange-striped, one-eared cat followed them out of the house, and the dogs came around again, barking and jumping in the mud and puddles. Lainie knelt down and hugged and petted the animals. “You all be good,” she said, her voice breaking.

  Wik brought Abenar and Lainie’s mare around from the stables. Though Lainie was perfectly capable of mounting a horse on her own, this time it seemed only fitting that Silas should help his bride into the saddle, so he gave her a hand up. As he turned to mount Abenar, Banfrey stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

  “She’s all I got, Vendine. You take good care of her.”

  “I will, Banfrey.” He looked at Lainie on her mare, and remembered the terrible feeling that had torn through him when he saw Gobby putting the noose around her neck. He would never let her come so close to harm again, he vowed. “I will. She’s all I got, too.”

  They shook hands, then Silas swung up into the saddle. With a nod at Lainie, he started Abenar at a walk, and Lainie rode beside him, looking back several times to wave at her Pa.

  “Don’t be strangers!” Banfrey called out. “You stop by when you can!”

  “We will, Pa!” Lainie shouted back.

  When they had passed the windbreak and were out of sight of the house but still a distance from the road, Silas reined Abenar to a stop and climbed down. “Lainie, darlin’.”

  Looking puzzled, she also dismounted. “What?”

  He moved over close to her and took her face gently between his hands, smoothing back the loose hair. So much to say, and none of it was anything he was much practiced at saying. “I think… I think I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you,” he said, feeling his way through the words as he went along. “But I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do anything about it. When Carden took you, and when I saw them trying to hang you, I thought I would die if anything bad happened to you. So…” He paused, fumbling for words. “I guess what I’m trying to say, darlin’, is, it did mean something.”

  She caught her breath. “Me too,” she said.

  He bent down and kissed her mouth, long and soft, and she pressed herself into the kiss, clutching the shoulders of his duster. He trailed his mouth down her jaw to her neck, gently kissing the injuries left behind by the noose. Never again, he vowed. He would guard her life and safety and happiness even more closely than his own.

  She gasped and leaned into him, her body melting against his, and he pulled away before he disgraced himself and her right there within sight of the road. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “I was heading west and south when I came this way. It’s too crowded in the east. Too many mage hunters; they’ve chased away all the good bounties. And, anyhow, things being what they are, I’d just as soon avoid running into any other hunters.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  They mounted up and rode on at an angle that would bypass the town and take them south out of the Bitterbush Valley. As they rode, Silas couldn’t tear his eyes away from Lainie. She was facing the uncertain way ahead with determination and just a trace of wistfulness on her face, but no fear. She caught him looking at her, and blushed and glanced away, her mouth curving in that shy smile.

  Silas smiled as well. He hadn’t ridden into Bitterbush Springs expecting to leave it a renegade himself, with an illegal student and unauthorized wife. But, he decided, if it meant having Lainie with him, he wouldn’t change a thing.

  The End

  Thank you for reading

  Beneath the Canyons

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  The World of Daughter of the Wildings

  Money and Measurements:

  copper bits = 3 per penny

  pennies = 3 bits

  drinas = 10 pennies

  gildings = 100 drinas

  Week: nineday. 8 gods/one day per god, All-Gods day

  Month: three ninedays plus a Darknight

  armlength = 26"

  measure = man’s arms spread out, from fingertips on one hand to fingertips on the other hand (72"/ 6 ft)

  league = 1000 measures (1.13 miles)

  The Gods:

  The Provider – giver of what's needful, provider of good crops and herds

  The Maker – creation, childbirth, creativity, growth of seeds, increase in herds

  The Joiner – bringing separate things together, marriage

  The Sunderer – violent death, separations, breaking apart

  The Defender – defends, protects

  The Gatherer – death, return to origins, harvest

  The Avenger – attacks, avenges

  The Mender – brings together things that were formerly together then separated, reconciliation, restoration. honesty, integrity, wholeness.

  The Dragon's Threes Deck and rules:

  7 suits/point multipliers: Sun (4x), Moon (3x), Stars (2x), Earth (1x), Water (2x), Air (3x), Fire (4x)

  ranks/points: Dragon (15pts), Mage (14), King (13), Queen (12), Priest (11), Demon (10), Warrior (9), Crone (8), Merchant (7), Hunter (6), Farmer (5), Harlot (4), Begger (3), Joker (2), Death (1)

  Straight: pts x 3 (3 cards in a row from same suit)

  Level: (3 cards of same rank) pts x 2

  Ranking points: number of players -1 x 10. e.g. 7 players: best combo gets 60 points, next best gets 50, etc. Worst combo gets 0 ranking points.

  The cards are dealt out evenly, extras are taken out of play and placed face-down in the center of table.

  Players lay down combinations of three cards. All chosen combos for the round are placed face down before combos are revealed.

  Points earned depend on combos, how good they are compared to other combos. Points may be kept with colored pebbles.

  Bets change during play.

  Up to 10 players can play at once.

  Rules of courtesy:

  No smoking at the card table if any of the players object to it.

  Onlookers may not discuss the cards in players’ hands (this is a shooting offense).

  For maps, character interviews, previews of the other books in the Daughter of the Wildings series, and more book extras and information, visit http://www.kyrahalland.com/daughter-of-the-wildings.html

  Read on for a preview of Bad Hunting,

  Book 2 of Daughter of the Wildings!

  The Bads. The lowest, hottest, driest part of the Wildings. After six days of traveling through the badlands, the only explanation Silas could think of for their existence was that the Maker had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed the day He made them.

  This part of the Bads was known as Onetree, because it was within sight of the only full-size tree known to grow in the Bads. From this distance, the tree looked like nothing more than a thick trunk splitting off into several crooked, bare branches. The dusty track Silas and Lainie were following stretched southwest past the tree and on endlessly into the distance through bare, rocky dirt, sparse scrubgrass, and low-growing cactuses. Eventually it would lead them to the town of Ripgap, where, according to the message the Mage Council had sent, Garis Horden would meet them. The track showed no signs that anyone had passed this way in days, if not months.

  The midafterno
on sun beat down mercilessly. The sky was empty of all but the thinnest wisps of clouds, even above the distant, scattered clusters of jagged hills, where clouds would have formed first if they were going to appear at all. Rain would have been welcome for the relief from the heat and for the water to refill their canteens, which were running low. At least the absence of clouds meant there was no chance of the giant dust storms that blew up when powerful downdrafts from summer thunderstorms swept down from the hills. Such dust storms might not be as deadly as heat or thirst, but they were pretty damned unpleasant. Silas and Lainie had already endured one storm, huddled with the horses behind a shield to keep the blowing dirt and sand from stinging their eyes, scouring their skin, and clogging their noses and lungs. Rumors said that the heaviest storms could bury a man, or even a house, two measures deep. According to Silas's sketchy map of the Wildings, Ripgap was only two more days away, and Silas had never looked forward to reaching civilization, or what passed for it out here, so badly.

  Lainie sat slumped in her saddle, looking worn down. The Bads were much hotter and dryer than the Bitterbush Valley where she had been born and lived all her life. Even beneath the shelter of her hat, her face was flushed from heat and sunburn, and her lips were dry and chapped.

  "Hey, darlin'," Silas said.

  "Yeah?"

  "We'll be in Ripgap in a few more days. There must be a well there, otherwise there wouldn't be a town, so we can get plenty to drink, and maybe sleep under a roof for a few nights. Think you'll make it?"

  She gave him a weary smile. "I'm fine." No matter the heat, no matter how hungry and thirsty and tired and dirty she got, she never complained. She was one strong woman, he thought admiringly, as he did so often, though she herself would have just put it down to stubborn practicality. No point complaining when there was nothing to be done about it, she would say.

  They approached the Onetree, following the track as it made a slight curve around the tree. As they came around the bend, Silas saw something about the size and shape of a man dangling from one of the limbs on the far side of the tree --

  "Hold on," he said, but Lainie's sharp gasp told him it was too late. She stared at the body hanging from the tree, her eyes wide with shock and sudden fear. Her hand moved to her throat, as though feeling for the noose that the hanging mob in Bitterbush Springs had put around her neck. Silas knew what she was thinking -- it could have been her, hanging dead by the neck at the end of a rope like that. If he hadn't stayed around Bitterbush Springs those extra days, trying to decide what to do with her, if he hadn't heard the commotion down on the street as the townsfolk ganged up on her and dragged her to the gallows, it would have been her.

  He reached for her hand and lowered it away from her neck. "Don't look at it. Wait here." She turned her head abruptly towards him as though startled out of the horrifying memory, then nodded.

  Silas kneed Abenar to turn towards the tree, but the big gray flattened his ears and tensed up, not wanting to go any closer to the corpse. To spare the horse's nerves, Silas climbed down from the saddle and left him with Lainie while he walked over to the tree. They had seen no other sign of human life the whole time they'd been in the Bads; the question of who the hanged man was and how he had ended up like this made an unpleasant tickle come up on the back of Silas's neck.

  He got close enough to the body to take a good look at it, and the world seemed to shift around him. In spite of the ravages of death, Silas recognized the dead man's face. It was Verl Bissom, a mage hunter he knew. They had crossed paths on a difficult hunt several years ago and teamed up briefly. While he couldn't say he and Verl had been friends, they had developed a solid respect for each other. Verl was a big man and an experienced fighter, not a man who was easy to kill. But here he was, hanging dead from the Onetree in the middle of the Bads.

  It could be a coincidence that another mage hunter was hanging dead from a tree along the road Silas had been traveling down on an unusual errand. Bissom could have been coming through this way on business of his own, and had run afoul of a group of Plain travelers who had taken advantage of the only tree in nearly two hundred leagues to solve their wizard problem. It would have to have been a pretty large and determined group of Plains to get the better of Bissom, though, and a party that large would have left plenty of tracks. The signs of their passage could have been erased by a dust storm, but the lack of an accumulation of dirt and sand in the folds of Verl's clothes told Silas there hadn't been any storms since Verl was killed.

  It could have been a rogue mage. Or, more likely, two or three. Rogue mages seldom teamed up, and when they did they were more likely to turn on each other than to successfully carry out any cooperative ventures. But it wasn't unheard of, and the presence of a team of renegades working out here would explain Garis Horden's call for assistance.

  Silas's back prickled, right between his shoulder blades. All at once, two days to Ripgap seemed far too long. He reached out with his mage senses, checking for signs of power or power-concealing shields, and found none. After Carden, though, he knew better than to assume there really were no other mages around.

  Lainie walked up behind him. "Well?"

  He didn't dare turn around and let her see his own shock and consternation. If she found out the dead man was another mage hunter, someone he knew, that might scare her more than she could bear. She had enough to deal with as it was; he didn't want to burden her with this as well. "Could be a cattle rustler," he said, trying to sound unconcerned. That was a hanging offense no matter where you were in the Wildings.

  "Maybe," she said, but it was clear from her voice that she wasn't buying his explanation for a copper bit. She looked around at the vast, empty desert surrounding them. "I don't reckon there's enough cattle in all the Bads to be worth rustling, or hanging a rustler over."

  "Or a horse thief." Another crime worthy of death, especially in a place like this, where a man's life could depend on his horse.

  "Don't lie to me, Vendine." Already he had learned that when she called him by just his last name, that meant she was dead serious. "I haven't seen no signs of cattle or horses or people for days now."

  He sighed. She was right. He shouldn't lie, not even to spare her feelings, and, for her own safety, he had to let her know what they were dealing with. "All right. It's someone I know. Verl Bissom. Another mage hunter."

  She sucked in a sharp breath and clutched at the back of his duster. "Damn."

  "Not saying his death had anything to do with him being a mage hunter. There's any number of things that could have happened. So don't worry yourself over it. I'll bury him, then we'll be on our way.

  Silas walked back to the horses and coaxed them over to the meager shade of the tree's bare branches. They snorted and fidgeted at being so close to the body, but Lainie set about watering them from the skins and giving them something to eat, and they soon settled down. Silas took his hunting knife from his saddlebags and cut the rope. Verl's body fell in a crumpled heap at his feet. "This might take a while, darlin'," Silas said as he dug into the magically expanded space in his saddlebags for his collapsible shovel. "You sit in the shade and rest."

  The horses cared for, Lainie sat down, leaning against the tree trunk on the side away from the sun and Verl's body. Silas shrugged off his duster and started digging the grave. The dirt was hard-packed, baked solid by the sun, so he used a little magic to help break up the ground. He didn't want to signal his presence to any rogue mages who might be in the area, but he also didn't want to spend the rest of the day and possibly a good part of the night in this spot. Even without magic, digging a grave big enough for Verl Bissom was going to take a while.

  "Do you think this has anything to do with what that other hunter wanted help with?" Lainie asked after a while.

  Silas took off his hat and wiped away sweat from his face. Had Bissom also been coming to help Horden? Or had Horden received a call for help from Bissom? He would have to ask Horden when he saw him, and tell him what ha
d happened to Bissom. "Maybe. Could be rogue mages at work. Or it could just be that he came across some settlers on the move and they found out he was a wizard."

  "Huh." She didn't sound any more convinced of that than he was.

  The sun had gone a considerable way down the western sky by the time Silas finished digging the grave. He rolled Verl's body into it and arranged him properly. Bissom's mage ring wasn't on his hand, but that didn't mean anything. Plain folk could have stolen as easily as a mage once he was dead. Silas covered the grave with dirt, then recited the proper prayers to the Sunderer and the Gatherer and the Avenger to appease Bissom's murdered soul, torn from his body by violence, and guide him safely to the Afterworld. He was no priest -- far from it -- but as part of the requirements for being authorized as a mage hunter, he had learned the proper burying of the dead. You kill them, you bury them, was the rule.

  His duty to the dead man carried out, Silas sat down in the shade next to Lainie to rest. A light breeze blew up, drying the sweat on his face and body, bringing a brief moment of blessed coolness. They drank sparingly from their water flasks and ate a little jerky and flatbread, then Silas got out his message kit and sent the Mage Council a message informing them of Bissom's death.

  The whole time, that prickling sensation kept running up and down his spine. He couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched. But there was nothing anywhere in the area, no big rocks, no other trees or tall brush, that would give cover to someone watching them. He checked again for shields, this time looking for the heavier shields that would hide or camouflage a person's physical presence.