Sundrinker

He will come from the earth, from the deep, rich, sweet depths of the earth, and he will be mighty, and in his strength and wisdom he will teach us, and deliver us.

She had, until that moment, never believed the hopeless, superstitious mutterings of the lost. Now she sat on her haunches, ragged garment hiked up onto her thin but still muscular thighs and pondered this new thing, this— being—who seemed to be coming from the earth, growing as the trees, the grass, the shrubs, the weeds, the flowers grew.

'Master?' she repeated, and then, with a sigh, lay back to let the sun strike her full in the face. There was something about the sun. In her days of freedom she had had little food. It was past time for the berry fruits, and the nut fruits were still tiny, green buds, and she had resorted to animalism, eating the spongy mosses along the streams. Even that was forbidden. And yet, in spite of the emptiness of her stomach, she did not always hunger, and seemed to gain strength from the sun, or was it that she was merely still euphoric at being away from the pongpens, from the lash, and the endless drudgery?

She slept. She slept through the evening and the formation of dew that glistened on her skin and tattered garments, woke only once to see him there, towering over her, to hear the snick-snick of small tiny things grazing on the sweet, rich, new grass, to see overhead the lights of the sky singing down upon her.

With the morning she could not bring herself to leave him. She went down the slope to the valley and washed herself and drank deeply and nibbled on spongy moss, wondering why—since she'd been eating it for a long time without ill effect—why the Devourers so expressly forbade its intake, along with most growing things.

She whiled away most of the morning playing in the cool waters of the stream, soaking her hair, letting it dry in the sun, rinsing her ragged garment, then, in the pleasant heat of midday, she climbed the slope again and he was as before. She knew that she should be moving on. They would be after her. They punished escape with the most painful of deaths, and, to keep order in the pongpens, they spared no efforts to return an escaped pong. Yet she'd been moving through these low, forested ridges for so many days she'd lost count and there had been no sign of pursuit. She felt an urgent need to know about him.

As three more days passed, and she established a routine of going to the stream, basking in the sun, wandering the near areas, she thought she saw a decided growth in that small arm. To prove it, she tied a fragile vine tightly around the forearm and when, in just one day, it was broken and fell to the grass, she knew that a miracle was happening before her eyes and she fell to her knees, faced the northwest, the direction of the storms, and prayed to Ahtol, the du who made the lightning. She had chosen Ahtol as her personal du—for all dus were worthy—because he was, at least, visible and loud in his flashings and thunderings, even if he, like all dus, seemed utterly unconcerned with the plight of a mere pong. Next day, as she lay on her stomach drinking from the cool waters of the creek, she heard a sound that caused her to leap to her feet and look around wildly. When the sound was repeated, from a point closer to her, she did not hesitate. She ran, heedless of the pain in her left foot, a pain that grew from day to day, a pain that made the swollen, discolored foot feel as large as the rest of her body. She leaped, caught the branches of a tree, lifted herself and, tearing her already ragged garment, climbed high. The animal ambled out from dense growth to pause and sniff the air. It lumbered to the water, drank, tensed, catching her scent, cast around for a moment and then moved with frightening speed, head low, to stand below her. It was huge, standing one-and-a-half times taller than she when it reared, scratched the bole of the tree with long claws and opened its huge mouth to show discolored, deadly, sharp teeth. She could smell the feral scent of its breath as it roared up at her.

The animal was death. Omnivorous, savage, so powerful that the Devourers hunted it in groups, with the strongest of bows and iron-tipped arrows. But she was safe in the tree, although, for a moment, she considered climbing even higher.

After a long, long time, the animal went away. It disappeared downstream. She waited while the sun climbed to midday and began its descent before she climbed down and, all senses alert, scurried up the slope. He was there, unchanged. She did not like the idea of a farl being so near. If the omnivore decided to hunt the slope, if it came to the clearing, he would make a pleasant snack for the beast, and there would be no place for her to hide. She began to look around. The nearest climbable tree was too far way. However, there was a small cleft in the rocks just below the clearing, a narrow opening that was too small to admit the huge farl, but large enough for her to jam herself into and be out of the animal's reach. She tested it for size and discovered Duwan's weapons, wrapped carefully in his winter clothing. Musingly she tested the swords. They were of fine metal. She knew a bit about weapons, because her father had been a weapons maker pong before his death. The longsword was heavy. She could heft it, but wielding it was too much for her thin arms. She took the shortsword, buckled it to her small waist, and drew it, swung it. She had no illusions that she could kill a farl with a shortsword, but, if caught in the open, she could at least draw a bit of the beast's blood before dying. She took both weapons with her when she walked back to stand musingly before him. 'If you would only awaken,' she said. 'Your arms are strong and powerful.' She touched them, one by one. The left arm was as large as the right now. 'Wake up,' she whispered. 'Wake up.' She sat before him, longsword and shortsword at her side. She started from near sleep, for there was a movement, and for a moment she couldn't place it. She looked around, ready to flee for the cleft in the rocks. The movement came again and she caught it out of the corner of her eye. He was moving his left arm, flexing his fist. Muscles rippled as the arm lifted, lowered, lifted, flexed.

Eyes wide, more healthily purple than they'd been when she first encountered him, she backed away. The arm continued to flex and move, as if exercising, for the rest of the day, although his eyes did not open. She slept restlessly, for he continued to move. With the morning sun, a glory of a sunrise, golden red and bursting over the hills to the east, she examined him closely. The arm was still.

The farl came shortly after sunrise, came silently at first, so that when it gave its chilling roar and charged it was almost at the edge of the clearing. She leaped to her feet, shortsword in hand, and, taking one despairing look at him, helpless, she chose her own life and ran. The movement attracted the animal and it moved heavily but with speed to close on her while the rock cleft was still beyond her reach. She smelled its fetid, panting breath, whirled, sword high, and made one powerful sweeping slash that laid open the farl's furry cheek and brought a scream of anger and pain before its weight thrust into her, sending her flying to land heavily, the animal