The Legend of Broken

provokes him is strange: artificial, or, rather, carefully collected and placed, and confined to far too small an area. Along with which, the scent is accompanied by that of—”

Caliphestros had begun to nod his head, his expression darkening. “Of a human female,” he finished for the reluctant Keera. The anticipation that the old man had felt at watching a khotor of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard receive the punishment it so richly deserved seemed to suddenly disappear. “And, I will wager, a human female you have detected before …”

Keera glanced at the old man, as concerned by his expression as by the strange mix of emotions in his voice. “Aye, lord. Just so. The Wife of Kafra — on the strange occasion of which we have told you. Save that it was a panther’s scent with which hers was mingled that night, rather than a bear’s.”

Caliphestros nodded his head. “Well, then …”

“My lord, we should avoid this, if we can,” Keera warned. “Battles between brown bears and panthers can do grievous harm to both combatants.”

“Fear not, on that account, Keera,” Caliphestros replied. “It is not the bear that draws Stasi on.”

“What is happening, you two?” Heldo-Bah said loudly, from behind. “We have strayed from the most direct path to the rocks you spoke of, Lord Caliphestros — and you know as much, Keera.”

Before further discussion could be pursued, Keera indicated silence to her fellow foragers; and it was not very much longer before the party had reached the edge of a small clearing, where the tracker indicated to her brother and Heldo-Bah that they should take their customary positions of observation in the branches of several high trees. When Veloc questioned with his eyes why they were not being joined by the white panther and her aged rider, Keera simply held up a hand, indicating patience—

And very soon, that patience on the foragers’ part was rewarded: seemingly unaware, now, of the behavior of their three traveling companions, the old man and the panther stepped onto the edge of the clearing, in the middle of which the foragers could now see a familiar yet dreaded human woman moving in a strange, seductive manner, urging on a large male brown bear, who would ordinarily have attacked her long ago:

It was the First Wife of Kafra, once again, her robe as yet clinging to that same remarkably long-legged body, and her long strands of black hair slowly moving with the western wind while her remarkable green eyes — neither so brilliant nor so beautiful as Stasi’s, but similar in color — held the confused bear in place, just as they had done to the male panther, on a night that now seemed, to the foragers, very long ago.

From where he sat in the treetops at the southern edge of the clearing, Heldo-Bah glanced at Keera and her brother. “The old fool is mad,” he whispered. “He should get that panther up into the trees, lest that witch see him and cry out to the forward units of the Guard.”

“Heldo-Bah, when will you make up your mind?” Veloc countered. “Is he a fool or an all-knowing sorcerer?”

“He cannot be both?” the gap-toothed Bane questioned in reply.

“Quiet!” Keera commanded, softly, but in the manner that always brought immediate compliance from her fellow foragers.

In the middle of the small clearing below, the First Wife of Kafra — sister to the God-King, the very embodiment of radiance in the Broken conception of life — had begun to slip one perfect shoulder from beneath her black gown, causing Heldo-Bah, once again, to salivate almost visibly through his filed teeth. “Oh, great Moon,” he whispered.

Caliphestros had urged the white panther to continue forward, and up onto a stout rock; then the pair stopped, although their presence had evidently been noticed already by the Wife of Kafra, despite the fact that she had not turned to face them. Her green eyes remained fixed upon the black orbs of the bear, and she said calmly:

“We had heard rumors that you might have survived the Halap-stahla, Caliphestros …” Finally she turned to face the old man, and a sudden look of disappointment — even bordering on revulsion — entered her beauteous features. “Though none of those rumors had mentioned the condition you might be in — and I confess that I was not prepared for it …” She studied him more closely. “You have … changed, haven’t you?”

Keera studied Caliphestros’s reaction carefully: she knew him well enough, by that point, to see the injury that he tried to cover with pride.

“And what condition did you imagine you might find me in, Alandra? After my treatment at the hands of your priests, and so many years in the Wood?”

The Wife of Kafra shook her head slowly. “I do not know,” she replied softly; and, although Keera looked and listened for it, she could find no real trace of remorse, only of disappointment, in either the woman’s face or her words. “But not this. Not this … You have grown old. But there is more. The evil for which you were condemned has made its way out from inside your body — your demon side is loose, truly.”

Caliphestros continued to nod. “Yes. I remember well that you had to condemn me as such an absurd creature as a ‘demon’—how else to prove the equally nonsensical notion that your brother was sibling to a god? You have always required a villain in your life, Alandra, to justify the perversions into which both you and Saylal descended. And when your father — who was in fact a good man, whatever lies the pair of you told about him — died, I suppose I was the next logical choice.”

The First Wife of Kafra nodded toward the panther. “And what of this creature? You ride the great mistress of the Wood. Is that not evidence of demonic behavior?”

“I do not ride her,” Caliphestros answers. “She offers me conveyance. Just as she offered me life, after your brother agreed to condemn me to what I am sure you all thought would be death.”

Suddenly, as if she were able to weigh the emotion of the moment, Stasi issued one short but especially angry — even lethal — snarl at both the woman and the brown bear; and the bear, though not at all pleased about doing so, made a few movements from side to side, then backed out and away from the clearing, eventually moving quickly east.

“Oh,” the Wife of Kafra said in disappointment, pulling her robe back over her bared shoulder. “That was not at all kind of your — well, what do you call this creature with whom you consort, old man?”

“Her name is not for you to know, Alandra,” Caliphestros said. “Nor will any other citizen of that foul city on the mountain ever learn it.”

Suddenly, the woman called Alandra adopted a coy, almost flirtatious manner with the legless man before and just above her. “You did not always find it so foul,” she murmured with a smile.

“And you did not always find me so,” Caliphestros replied.

“True,” Alandra agreed. “But I was only a maiden, then; and you had been my tutor. An unfair advantage for you to enjoy — when I grew old enough, I came to see the truth, and to prefer … other company.”

“I assume that by that remark you mean that you came to prefer your own brother’s bed to mine.”

In the treetops above, Veloc released a slow, near-silent oath: “Hak—the old man was once the lover of such a beauty?”

“And why not?” Heldo-Bah replied. “There are women among the Tall who have endured your touch, Veloc …”

“Silence, both of you!” Keera ordered once more. “This is, although I would not expect you to know it, a terribly delicate moment …”

In the clearing below, Stasi stepped forward again, once or twice, causing a look of uncertainty even in the supremely self-confident priestess. “But let us not alter facts,” Caliphestros continued. “I may have been your tutor, and you a maiden, when we first met — but years later, when you came to me with your desire that we become more, you were a woman. Certainly enough.” With the Broken bear’s departure, the old man felt easy enough to lean forward upon the panther’s shoulders. “And well you know it, whatever tales you may have since told to make me seem more a demon to your people than they were already inclined to believe. Yet you say that you had heard rumors of my survival, Alandra,” he continued. “I take it such came from Lord Baster-kin’s torture of my acolytes?”

The First Wife of Kafra smiled in a way that Keera found most repugnant: beautiful, but nonetheless cruel. “Only in part,” she answered. “For Baster-kin has never put his full effort behind such methods. We could not be truly sure until reports reached us of Visimar’s traveling with Sentek Arnem.”

Stepping forward herself, Alandra seemed to make a point of exposing her long, enticing legs through the