Heights of the Depths (6 page)

For that matter, she had no more reason to trust them than they had her. She could no more do without sleep indefinitely than they. All that was required was one suspicious Ocular—and there were quite a few to choose from—who would take the opportunity to dispatch her while she slumbered, figuring that it was wiser to take their chances with the evils they didn’t know than with the evil they did.

Taking all that into account, Clarinda felt that at the very least it would be wise to hunt and eat separately from the rest of the pack.

“Stay here,” she said to Kerda. “I will be back.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have matters to attend to.”

“What sort of—?”

“Gods’ balls, girl, stop asking questions and learn to do as you are told! If you do not, then rest assured that I will put my back to you and you can just as easily tend to your own needs for the rest of what will assuredly be your short lives! Do you understand?”

Although she was still a child, Kerda was a head taller than Clarinda, and she was one of the shorter ones. It was a ludicrous sight, the pale Piri bellowing at creatures that towered over her as if she could somehow physically dominate them. Yet they recoiled from her and Kerda said meekly, “Yes.” The others bobbed their heads in unison.

“Good,” said Clarinda, who momentarily felt sorry for snapping at them. They had, after all, been through a hell of a lot. They had lost their parents, their homeland, everything in one stroke and were still trying to cope with it. But then her regret passed as quickly as it had come. She had her own problems to worry about: She was hungry, she was pregnant, she was tired, and she had left her people behind for an uncertain future.

She turned away from the Ocular and headed into the forest.

iii.

Hunting was a new experience
for her. As a privileged child of the Mistress, obtaining sustenance was never anything that she had needed to concern herself over. There were others in the tribe who attended to such things. But she had every confidence that she would be more than up to the task.

She penetrated deep into the forest, further and further until she felt that she had left enough distance between herself and the Ocular. She felt no need to mark the trail, confident that she would be able to find her way back.

Clarinda believed she could count on the fingers of one hand (
even my left hand,
she thought ruefully) the number of days that she had spent outside. The vast, vast majority of her existence had been underground, hiding away from the upper world with dirt just everywhere. Dirt under her fingernails, dirt permanently staining the bottoms of her feet, the smell of dirt so pervasive that she felt as if she could smell nothing else.

She stopped and looked toward the skies. The stars glittered down at her.

They made her wonder.

Her mother seemed unable to understand that Clarinda aspired to so much more than Sunara’s view allowed for. She wondered if perhaps that was because of the circumstances under which they lived. Dirt in and of itself was not the end of things, because it was possible to cultivate the dirt, grow things on it, bring life from it. But beneath the dirt was indeed the end of things. The dead were buried beneath it, and when you lived in Subterror, there was darkness and limited vision. You couldn’t look up. And when you couldn’t look up, that was somehow, in some way that Clarinda could not articulate, the end of aspirations. The skies were limitless, and represented equally limitless possibilities. They were the beginnings of dreams. They practically cried out, “What if?” and dared you to aspire to them. A perpetual roof of dirt over one’s head was antithetical to dreaming.

It was nothing short of remarkable that she had encountered another soul—Eutok—who seemed to feel the same way. Trulls were as loathe to engage the surface as Piri, although the sunlight wasn’t as damaging to the Trulls as it was to the Piri. The great burning orb in the sky was hurtful to Trulls’ eyes, whereas for the Piri it was painful head to toe. Still, Eutok likewise dreamt of more than the life that he led dwelling beneath the ground. She knew that his goal was to become leader of the Trulls so that he could in turn lead them to a greater and glorious destiny than was available to them as permanent cave dwellers.

At least that’s what he tells you. Who knows what is truly in his heart?

Suddenly a scent wafted to her, causing her to salivate and driving all other thoughts from her mind. She wasn’t accustomed to hunting, but she certainly knew the range of animal scents since hunters brought food to the colony. She quickly identified it as a creature known as a bir. It was big, covered in brown fur, and absolutely filled to the brim with blood. Birs were huge favorites of the Piri since, even when they had been dragged down into Subterror and were half dead, they still tended to put up a struggle. That naturally made the feasting all the more worthwhile.

Best of all, she was downwind of it. The breeze was bringing its scent to her, but it was unaware of her presence.

A tall tree stood nearby. It was the Piri way either to attack in numbers, or else hide below and try to pull the prey down to them. Neither option presented itself to Clarinda, and so she chose a third option: Height.

She leaped upward, light as air, gripped the lower branches of the nearest tree, and quickly gained some altitude. Then she crouched there, immobile, cloaked in shadow. She heard a distant growling and her fingers wrapped tightly around the branch. Poised in a feral crouch, she remained unmoving. Clarinda was amazed to discover just how much she was enjoying the sensation of the hunt.

She heard the bir drawing ever closer and slowed her breathing so that she wouldn’t be rushed. She knew she had to time this perfectly. Birs were big monsters with impressive strength. Once she had seen one on the edge of death, and yet a random sweep of its paw had been sufficient to crush the skull of a Piri that had gotten careless.

Closer…closer…all the time in the world. That was what she kept telling herself, and yet it was difficult to maintain that degree of levelheadedness as her growing hunger try to compel her to be precipitous. She realized her legs were shaking and she stilled them with effort.

The bir was growling low in its throat; she could hear it even from her perch. Then the bir stopped moving. She became concerned that it had caught her scent somehow, even though there was simply no way it should have been able to. There was a long pause that seemed to stretch out forever, and she was about to cry out in hunger and frustration when suddenly the bir was moving and it was there, right below her, lumbering into view. Padding forwarded on all fours, it stopped dead again, looking around, sniffing the air as if certain there was something in the vicinity that posed a danger but unable to determine precisely what.

Perfect,
she thought, and Clarinda released her hold on the branch. She descended, straight as a perfectly thrown spear. The bir must have had a second or two warning caused by the air rushing past her as she fell, but she couldn’t do anything about that. It wasn’t going to matter, though. The bir was big and slow moving and there was no way that it was going to be able to dodge her.

She was right.

Clarinda landed on the bir’s back. The bir roared and tried to claw at her, but she had her arms wrapped around its throat so that its flailing claws couldn’t reach her.

To her astonishment, the bir suddenly reared back and stood on its hind legs.
It can stand on two legs? Shit.
She hadn’t known they could do that. She had only ever seen them down in Subterror where the ceilings were so low that the bir standing upright had never been a possibility. Even as she processed this new and distressing bit of information, she dug her fingers into its fur to prevent herself from sliding off. Her legs wrapped around its midsection and then Clarinda, baring her fangs, sunk them into the creature’s throat.

The bir roared and threw itself backward against the nearest tree.

Pain ripped through Clarinda’s body, the sheer weight of the creature nearly being sufficient to crush her. Originally she had intended simply to take enough of the creature’s blood to satisfy her hunger. That was rapidly becoming no longer a possibility. If she released her hold on the bir and it was still alive, the thing was so fearsome and full of power that it would turn upon her and rip her to shreds. This was no longer simply a meal. This was Clarinda fighting for her survival.

Howling, the bir staggered forward from the tree. She braced herself for another impact, drinking quickly, greedily, blood dribbling down the sides of her mouth and onto the creature’s fur. The bir did not repeat the maneuver, however. Perhaps it was just too damned stupid to realize that it had hurt her and that repeated impacts of that nature might well be sufficient to—at the very least—shake her loose.

Instead the bir dropped to all fours and then threw itself to its side. Clarinda barely had time to yank her leg clear, repositioning herself. Had the creature landed with its full weight upon her, she would have been permanently crippled.

Even as she shifted her position atop the bir, she never lost the solid hold of her fangs in its throat. As the blood flowed from the creature and into her, the bir became weaker while Clarinda became progressively stronger. Toward the end, as the bir writhed in her grasp, it became less and less aggressive and she knew that she had it. The danger was past and she had provided sustenance not only for herself but for her unborn child.

Suddenly, with no warning at all, something grabbed her by the back of the throat and flung her clear of the bir. She sailed across the space and slammed into a tree, rebounding from it and hitting the ground. She had enough time to get her hands and feet under her and she landed, in a crouch like a wolf preparing to spring.

“Bartolemayne,” she whispered.

That was indeed who was standing in front of her. It was Bartolemayne, the most formidable and dangerous of all the Piri. He had taken advantage of her in the same manner that she had managed to catch the bir unawares; he had approached her from downwind. And she had been so engrossed in her meal that any sounds Bartolemayne might have made as he approached on foot went completely unnoticed.

Bartolemayne was rarely seen around Subterror. He was considered the right hand of the Mistress, and because of that, he best served Sunara as a ranging spy. Bartolemayne came and went as he wished. None were more adept at hunting, fighting, or accomplishing whatever Sunara Redeye required.

Unlike most of the Piri who were wiry and lean nearly to the point of desiccation, Bartolemayne was massively built. Not on par with an Ocular, but a head taller than any other Piri and as wide as three of them. His hair was long and flowing rather than a stringy mess as was the case with most males, and his eyes burned a pale green, which was a most unusual color for a Piri and an indicator at an early age that Bartolemayne was destined for achievements far beyond those of most Piri.

That, and the fact that all his teeth were fangs. Not just tucked in neatly on either side, as was typical for Piri, but every single one. When he grinned, which was often and never good news for the individual he was grinning at, they were frightening even to a Piri.

A half dozen more normal Piri were clustering in around Bartolemayne, jumping around excitedly, their knuckles dragging on the dirt. They were whispering her name, “Clarinda, Clarinda,” dodging and moving as if she were attacking them.

The bir was lying nearby, trembling. It tried to get to its feet and fell over, still too weak to move. The Piri noticed it and looked hopefully to Bartolemayne. He gave a single nod and they sprinted toward it, covering the poor suffering creature like army ants. The bir howled as the Piri bit down wherever on its body they could, seemingly not even caring if they hit veins. They just wanted to feast.

Bartolemayne did not bother to join them. He was far too superior to the rest of them to engage in such a group meal. Instead he returned his attention to Clarinda, who was frozen in the defensive position she had assumed.

“Your mother misses you, Clarinda,” he said softly. That was how he always spoke, sometimes so quietly that it was barely above a whisper. “She misses you ever so much.”

“And that’s why she sent for you.” It was all clear to her now.

He nodded slowly. “Of course. To bring her wayward child home.”

She knew it was a waste of time to try to appeal to Bartolemayne’s sense of mercy. It was well known that he had none. But she needed to do something, just to buy herself some time. “I have no future with our people. You must know that.” She had to raise her voice to hear herself above the slurping of the Piri and the dwindling and pathetic moans of the bir.

“Your future is of no interest to me. All that matters is that the Mistress warned you what would happen if you ran.”

Clarinda slowly crawled across the ground toward him. She smiled up at him with as close to a look of seduction as she could manage under the circumstances. There was blood visible on her lips, her cheeks, her chin. She hoped that would serve to make her more alluring. “Come now, Bartolemayne. That cannot be all that matters to you. Certainly there are other things of equal importance.” She drew close enough to run her hand along his bare leg, straying up to his knee. “Those others,” and she inclined her head toward the Piri who were finishing their meal, “will do as you command. Command them to return home. Then it can be just you and me, and together we can…”

“Together?” His double row of fanged teeth drew back in derision. “Together?” He lashed out with his foot and caught her on the side of the head. Clarinda fell to the side, hitting the ground heavily. “You are damned lucky that I am sworn to do you no serious harm. Not as long as you are with child. Still…do you seriously think there can be any ‘together’ with one who has defiled herself with a Trull, no less? A Trull? Or do you think your mother neglected to tell me that?”

“Lies, Bartolemayne,” she said desperately. “She lied to you. Or she was mistaken. Either way. You cannot believe that I would do such a thing.”