Dark Benediction

She slapped him hard across the mouth. “Tokra is an impotent old dodderer. He can scarcely move for arthritis. You’re an idiot! I sat on his lap and kissed his bald pate for you.”

“Then why did he give you a ritual phrase?” he asked stiffly.

“Because he likes me.”

“You lie.” He stalked angrily on.

“Very well! Go to the vaults. I’ll tell my father, and they’ll hunt you down before you get there.”

She released his arm and stopped. Asir hesitated. She meant it. He came back to her slowly, then slipped his swollen hands to her throat. She did not back away.

“Why don’t I just choke you and leave you lying here?” he hissed.

Her face was only a shadow in darkness, but he could see her cool smirk.

“Because you love me, Asir of Franic.”

He dropped his hands and grunted a low curse. She laughed low and took his arm.

“Come on. We’ll go get the huffen,” she said.

Why not? he thought. Take her huffen, and take her too. He could dump her a few miles from the village, then circle back to the vaults. She leaned against him as they moved back toward her father’s house, then skirted it and stole back to the field behind the row of dwellings. Phobos hung low in the west, its tiny disk lending only a faint glow to the darkness.

He heard the huffen’s breathing as they approached a hulking shadow in the gloom. Its great wings snaked out slowly as it sensed their approach, and it made a low piping sound. A native Martian species, it bore no resemblance to the beasts that the ancients had brought with them from the sky. Its back was covered with a thin shell like a bettle’s, but its belly was porous and soft. It digested food by sitting on it, and absorbing it. The wings were bony—parchment stretched across a fragile frame. It was headless, and lacked a centralized brain, the nervous functions being distributed.

The great creature made no protest as they climbed up the broad flat back and strapped themselves down with the belts that had been threaded through holes cut in the huffen’s thin, tough shell. Its lungs slowly gathered a tremendous breath of air, causing the riders to rise up as the huge air-sacs became distended. The girth of an inflated huffen was nearly four times as great as when deflated. When the air was gathered, the creature began to shrink again as its muscles tightened, compressing the breath until a faint leakage-hiss came from behind. It waited, wings taut.

The girl tugged at a ring set through the flesh of its flank. There was a blast of sound and a jerk. Nature’s experiment in jet propulsion soared ahead and turned into the wind. Its first breath exhausted, it gathered another and blew itself ahead again. The ride was jerky. Each tailward belch was a rough lurch. They let the huffen choose its own heading as it gained altitude. Then Mara tugged at the wing-straps, and the creature wheeled to soar toward the dark hills in the distance.

Asir sat behind her, a sardonic smirk on his face, as the wind whipped about them. He waited until they had flown beyond screaming distance of the village. Then he took her shoulders lightly in his hands. Mistaking it for affection, she leaned back against him easily and rested her dark head on his shoulder. He kissed her while his hand felt gingerly for the knife at her belt. His fingers were numb, but he managed to clutch it, and press the blade lightly against her throat. She gasped. With his other hand, he caught her hair.

“Now guide the huffen down!” he ordered.

“Asir!”

“Quickly!” he barked.

“What are you going to do?”

“Leave you here and circle back to the vaults.”

“No! Not out here at night!”

He hesitated. There were slinking prowlers on the Cimerian plain, beasts who would regard the marooned daughter of Welkir a delicious bit of good fortune, a gustatory delight of a sort they seldom were able to enjoy. Even above the moan of the wind, he would hear an occasional howl-cry from the fanged welcoming committee that waited for its dinner beneath them.

“Very well,” he growled reluctantly. “Turn toward the vaults. But one scream and I’ll slice you.” He took the blade from her throat but kept the point touching her back.

“Please, Asir, no!” she pleaded. “Let me go on to the hills. Why do you want to go to the vaults? Because of Tokra?”

He gouged her with the point until she yelped. “Tokra be damned, and you with him!” he snarled. “Turn back.”

“Why?”

“I’m going down to kindle the Blaze of the Winds.”

“You’re mad! The spirits of the ancients live in the vaults.”

“I am going to kindle the Blaze of the Winds,” he insisted stubbornly. “Now either turn back, or go down and I’ll turn back alone.”

After a hesitant moment, she tugged at a wing rein and the huffen banked majestically. They flew a mile to the south of the village, then beyond it toward the cloister where the priests of Big Joe guarded the entrance to the vaults. The cloister was marked by a patch of faint light on the ground ahead.