Chapter 1

The Stalking Shadows

∞

Jo-Laina hung, fingers wrapped tightly, muscles straining, continuing her repetitions, from a branch that hung five feet above the ground; lifting herself up, only to lower herself again. It was her third hour of conditioning her muscles (a smart warrior’s cost of living) but also her way of remaining focused, the surrounding forest was too dangerous to ignore, and Jo-Laina remained vigilant in her awareness of every shadow that surrounded their temporary camp. She wasn’t exactly connected to her bolainin (seeing companion) but filtering its sights and sounds into her mind, keeping herself aware of what her companions were talking about (nothing important) and what they were doing (laughing, drinking and cutting jokes as usual).

“Are all human warriors so careless, Picket?” she asked her newly acquired pet. Her bolainin was a meerkin, a small, sleek animal with brown fur, no tail and a moody temperament. Picket was perched on the branch above her head, and he chattered back at her as she raised herself, lifting her chin, touching it to the branch. Picket sniffed her upper lip as it came close to him, before she began lowering herself again. “Seventy-three,” she counted.

“You still at that, sis?” Greegus called out to her. “Y’should call it a night, ye’know, sis. Come join us, I say!” Greegus lifted his wine skin toward her. His half-drunk, red-shot eyes shone bright.

Jo-Laina raised herself back up, “It isn’t safe here. We are bottled in with no escape route. It wasn’t wise to choose this as our camp. We are surrounded by shadows that would love to make us their dinner and if they were smart enough to join forces we’d all be dead already.” She lowered herself again. “Seventy-four.”

There were twelve shadows surrounding them that were within an uncomfortable range. Most of them she recognized. She had seen their shadows enough to identify them. Two of the shadows were a little more worrisome than the others. They were Shriek Bengoi and if both of them attacked at the same time (they often did) not everyone would make it out. Not with the rest of the group as drunk as they were. Jo-Laina could take one of them out easily, and Jo-Vanna would most certainly handle the other, but the Shriek Bengoi were fast, and if Jo-Vanna hesitated for even one second (something she was still prone to do when taken off guard) then a Bengoi would have at least one kill in before she did him in.

Even more worrisome than the Shriek Bengoi were the two shadows she did not recognize. The two shadows that seemed to have the ability to mask themselves from her radar like perception; the reception that soaked in the essence of a being, rather than its physical characteristics. The idea of a being capable of that was spoken of in Moog legends and those legends spoke of the Tso-Tsa-Minh (hunter of the Prim). The legends spoke of Dragon-like beings that could manipulate the fabric that existed between space and time to their advantage. If there were Minh still in existence, and close by, then their quest to attain the Pockets of the Prim, would never succeed. The Minh would never allow that.

“Come on, Prim! By my count that will be seventy-five! Ya’ve done enough for the night. You’re creepin’ me out agin, sis!”

“Everything I do creeps you out, Greegus!” Jo-Laina said with a mile as she dropped down from her branch. She brushed her hands off and stood facing the group. She did so for their benefit. Her eyes were as blind, as her ears were deaf, but she learned long ago that normal humans were made uncomfortable by a speaker that didn’t face them while she spoke to them. Everything that eyes could see and ears could hear needed to be brought to her brain through her seeing companion, her bolainin, and it was through her meerkin that she listened and saw the group of her warrior companions.

“Aye,” he said, “but ya know I love ya, sis.”

She raised an eyebrow to him, “You love me? Or are you just saying that to soften me. I’m sure you’d love it if I were to let you catch up to my number of kills. You are still down by eleven. Buttering me up won’t change that!”

“It’s creepy.” he said, “You’re what? Ten?”

The rest of them watched silently. There were ten in her group altogether. Panpar, sitting with his back against a tree, Jo-Vanna close to him, with her bolainin, Scratch, in her lap. Jerifai, the tree walker leaned against the tree, if he were naked his skin would have blended in with the bark behind him, Morifai and Canbin were half asleep by the fire, and the rest just sat quietly as they bickered playfully back and forth. Jo-Laina kept a small piece of her mind on all of them, but the rest of her mind was on the two Bengoi that stealthily approached, nearing the only exit there was from the camp. It didn’t seem like they had joined forces with each other, but it did appear that both of them were hungry enough to attract them to the camp. The large cats were on the prowl.

∞

“You know better Greegus. I may look ten, but I’m older than you!” she said.

Panpar laughed out loud. “Are you two going to keep that up all night? Some of us may actually like a little sleep, and you know that she is a Prim. You know she was born to fight, so quit teasing her about it.” he said as he tucked his diary into his sack. He leaned back, staring up at the opening in the trees that half surrounded their camp, and soaking in the stars in the night sky.

“Well, Jo-Vanna here,” Greegus said as he reached over and cupped the back of Jo-Vanna’s head, “is a Prim too. She’s just not a creepy one.”

Jo-Vanna smiled at his approval. “My sister’s not so creepy,” she said. “She’s just looking out for us, you know. Like now. She’s keeping an eye out for anyone coming.”

“And?” Panpar asked. “Is anyone approaching?”

Jo-Vanna’s eyes brightened for a moment, sharpening and becoming even more silver than they had been previously, as they always did when her mind joined with her sister’s. Then they went back to their norm for a moment, and finally, brighter again, as she joined minds with her own meerkin. “There are shadows all around us. Most of them are nothing to worry about.”

“Ah, what does she know? She’s only a girl,” Greegus said. “If we are attacked our attackers will have to enter through the bottle neck! We will pick them off easily.”

“Two of them are Prim harvesters,” Jo-Vanna added. “At least that’s what she says. I can’t see their shadows, but she says they are there.”

Jo-Vanna’s comment got Panpar’s attention. His shoulders squared and his gaze turned to the young girl who sat on the other side of his first lieutenant. “She said that there are two Tso Tsa Minh nearby?”

“That’s crazy, Pan! They only exist in...”

Panpar raised an annoying hand at Greegus and Greegus took his hint. His lips snapped shut and he uttered not another word on the subject.

Jo-Vanna nodded her head. “That’s what she says. She says that they are keeping their distance for now, but...”

“Then the stories are true!” Panpar announced, drawing the attention of everyone else. The few of them that had been on the verge of nodding off, began to stir and sit up from their laying positions. “You see!” he continued. “Our quest is not in vain like some of you have been whispering!”

“I wouldn’t get too excited, Pan,” Jo-Vanna said. “According to Jo-Laina we are being stalked. The Tso Tsa Minh are not here to assist us. She says we are being followed by them, studied by them, and she expects that when their curiosities are filled they will pounce on us and our quest will end in a pool of our blood.”

“Bah,” Greegus dismissed with the wave of one large hand. “Kids!”

Jo-Vanna’s eyes narrowed. “You keep saying that, but you also forget that you are measuring us in purely human terms. We look young to your eyes, but we age like the Prim. We were born before any of you were. Well ... except Pan, but even he was barely old enough to hold a wine skin when we were born.”

Jo-Laina stood as if she were about to weigh in on the conversation. She did not. Instead, her arms crossed in front of her and she pulled her swords from the scabbards she wore on her hips. Her silver sightless eyes glared momentarily before she turned away from them. She walked to the entrance and only exit to their camp, turned back toward them and knelt on the ground, laying her short swords in front of her as if she were studying them. She had one knee pressed into the forest bed, her other knee remained propped up. She had one wrist carefully dangled on her knee so that her hand hovered a few inches above her swords, and she kept the other one perched upon her back.

“What’s she doing?” Greegus asked.

Jo-Vanna smiled. She knew Jo-Laina as well as she knew herself, and she knew exactly what her sister was up to. “Watch and see,” she informed the group.

Greegus drew a sword, and Jo-Laina motioned toward him. He put his sword away, but did with a defiant grunt.

Jo-Laina had captured the attention of everyone in the camp and it wasn’t really necessary for Jo-Vanna to say anything to them in order to get them to watch Jo-Laina. Jo-Laina didn’t talk much, keeping to herself most of the time, sitting by herself while the rest of the group sat together in the overnight camps. During the day, when they were on the move, making their way ever onward in their quest, she also segregated herself from the group, but for an entirely different reason. During the day she either took the lead, or the rear (depending on which was more dangerous), again never saying much, but always at the ready for anything and everything that might come up. The group always knew that when Jo-Laina did move, or if and when she chose to say something, that there was a reason for it. She had moved. She had gotten up out of her position by the tree, and was crouching down near the entrance. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind, at that point, that something was about to happen.

Something did.

The action started with the meerkins that belonged to both Jo-Laina and Jo-Vanna. One second all was well. The next it wasn’t. Both of them sat perched next to their respective masters until they sensed the coming threat. Once that happened both of the meerkins bolted through the brush. They were there, and then they were gone.

“Cover your ears!” Jo-Vanna commanded, but didn’t bother to cover her own. There was no need for a Prim to cover her deaf ears, but everyone in the camp heeded her command, shoving their fingers into their ears, but watching Jo-Laina with intensity, knowing that when whatever was going to happen, happened, that it might very well be over in the blink of an eye.

A shrieking screech filled the night air, but Jo-Laina didn’t move. She remained in her crouching position, hands at the ready, but remained silent and still. Out of the seeming nowhere, the black fur of the shriek bengoi appeared in a leap, front paws extended outward, jaws open wide, teeth bared, as it flew toward its target. At the very last second, just before it pounced upon her, Jo-Laina snatched both of her swords, spun with a sweeping arc, gathering momentum as she went, and hit her mark true. One millisecond the predatory feline had its head, the next it did not. She rolled beneath it as its forward momentum carried it beyond her and landed with a dead thump into the middle of their camp.

Jo-Laina got to her feet. She walked over to the decapitated cat’s head, picked it up by grabbing the fur on the top of its head, and brought it over to where Greegus was sitting. “Seventy-two to sixty-one,” she said matter of fact. “You’re falling further and further behind old man.” She dropped the cat’s head into his lap and returned to her seat.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, as he stared at the present she had given him.

Panpar stood and walked over to the corpse. “Believe it, Greegus. You saw it for yourself and your eyes saw true. Now help me gut this thing. We might as well eat ourselves full, and thank the Gods for the bounty!” he finished with a laugh.

“Hah!” Greegus said as he stood up. “It’d take us a week to gut that thing! That’s what I can’t get through my thick skull. The fur on those retched creatures is like armor! We could sharpen our knives for a week and still have a hell of a time cutting through it.”

“Well, if she can behead the thing then we can gut it and remove its hide. Let’s get to it.”

∞

“Look at these fools, Picket,” Jo-Laina whispered to her meerkin with a smile. The meerkin was back in her lap, whiskers flaring up and down, as they both watched the men through the little furry critter’s eyes. “Do you think they’ll figure it out, boy?” she asked as she stroked its fur.

Greegus was bent before the huge cat, on his knees, brows dripping sweat, huffing and panting, as he tried to pierce the cat’s underbelly with his meaty hands and sharp knife. Panpar was holding the cat’s front paw and was holding it up to keep the cat’s underbelly exposed; and Jilkah, Greegus’ younger brother was doing the same with the cat’s large hind leg. Up until that point, the three were having no success while the rest of the group stood idly by, occasionally offering tidbits of useless advice, trying to help, but only frustrating Greegus even more than he already was.

His arms were powerful. It was the very reason that she had selected him in the first place, despite Panpar’s warnings against it. Greegus stood more than six feet tall, and he was solid from his previous work of pitting axe against the forest around him. He had spent nearly every day of his life cutting down trees, and his muscles showed it, but he had also spent every evening after it, filling his gut with fermented spirits, and that was what Panpar didn’t like about him.

At first.

They first met Greegus in Brendek, which was a small village half way between the end of the Dead Mountains, and the Black City of Messolin. It was only two weeks after they had begun their trek to the foot of the path that was supposed to exist at the other end of the mountains. They had stopped in Brendek for a meal, and sought it in the only place that they could.