with it to run a man through, but he swatted it with his own weapon. Unfortunately for him, the young woman’s spear penetrated his thigh. He moaned and fell over, holding his leg. She jumped over him and was brought up short by a grey wolf that growled at her. She stepped back as it snapped at her hand. At that moment she felt the spirits surge through her, felt a kinship with the canine--they shared a hatred and thirst for blood. She was also overwhelmed with being filled with the energy and voices of many spirits within her.
She was growing used to being a vessel for the spirits to work through, enjoyed it even. The wolf didn’t attack her, just bounded past her to spring upon one of the men. She broke her spear killing a warrior twice her size and was left with her knife when she found herself face to face with Zazel.
His piercing eyes locked with her enraged blue ones. “Now is the time,” he spoke, and his eyes glowed red. Fire leaped from his outstretched hand at her; she fell to the side just in time to miss it. Her tribe’s spirits wailed in anger and recognition.
His spirits we know, Azyu spoke to her mind. They are older than us, and their element is fire, whereas ours is air. Lilit sprang to her feet, then rushed him, heedless of the heat she felt coming off the man. He dropped his spear, grabbed the wrist of her knife-wielding arm and twisted it. Her arm burned and smoke wafted up as she cried out in sudden pain. He underestimated her strength and resolve, however--he grunted in surprise when she pushed him back. His heel scraped against a stone, making him lose his balance. He crashed to the ground on his back with her on top of him.
She finally wrenched her right arm free as he blasted her with heat and fire. The left sleeve of her tunic went up in flames but she ignored it and plunged her flint knife into his chest. “Die!” she croaked. “Die, die, die!” Each time she said that word, she punctuated it with a strike from her weapon. Her rage overcame the pain in her right wrist and the searing of her left arm. Zazel screamed in desperation, causing an invisible force to lift the pain-maddened woman bodily off of him and send her crashing through the underbrush.
The man struggled for air as his warriors were torn apart by the remaining three wolves. He pushed himself to an upright seated position and looked down at his ravaged chest and abdomen through the tattered remnants of his simple hide wrap. Blood poured from terrible gashes and he found it increasingly harder to breathe.
Lilit got slowly to her feet, shaken, burned, her face a mass of bruises. The impact had fortunately put the fire on her tunic out. Zazel. was shocked to find how regal her bearing was as she gracefully extended her hand to the huge, vicious wolves who had destroyed his hunters and had ceased their snarling as they approached the girl. One canine allowed her to touch his head. Lilit was in awe at the softness of the thick, shaggy fur and velvety ears. “Thank you,” she whispered as she stroked the animal’s head and neck.
The wolf-chieftain says his pack will feast, Azyu mind-spoke to her. We...persuaded them to help us. In return, you must never bear arms against a wolf, or else a terrible fate will follow you to the ends of the earth.
“I understand,” she murmured softly.
The wolf chuffed, sniffed her hand, then turned to converge with his pack-mates. They howled their mourning of their losses, the ululating notes rising and falling in chilling regularity. Emboldened by their strange exchange, Lilit raised her voice and joined them, which didn’t seem to offend the creatures. After she howled a few times, she turned her eyes toward Zazel, still quietly sitting and struggling for breath. “You still live,” she spoke the obvious.
“For now,” he coughed out. Bright blood came from his lips. “Might as well have done.”
“You were a shaman once, weren’t you?” she asked.
“Yes, I talked regularly to the spirits of my folk. Until my mate and children were taken from me,” he gasped.
She retrieved her knife and stepped toward him. She found it was hard, even with her rage and sense of loss, to raise her weapon. Even though he killed her. Even though he allied himself with the foul Ulln to destroy her people.
“You understand now, don’t you?” grunted the man. “You are me. Take up my place sewing discord and destruction. Own your anger. It will carry you further than anything else. Do it. DO IT.”
Tears streaming freely down her face, she sobbed, yanked his head back with her free hand, then ran the blade across his exposed throat. Bright red fluid spurted out onto her hand. Zazel gurgled and slumped back to the ground, his dark eyes staring up into the night sky. “It is done,” Lilit whispered.
She fell forward as the spirits took the man’s strength, then drained her as well, and her consciousness joined theirs. She felt Zazel’s fire spirits nearby but they fled, conceding defeat. Lilit seemed to be floating in nothingness, but faint outlines of shapes dashed to and fro, whispering things she didn’t understand. Azyu appeared before her in the shape of a man with black hair and yellow eyes clad in long robes like a shaman. “I’m sorry we sapped so much from you at once,” he said. “But we dangerously weakened ourselves with helping you.”
“Where are we?” she wondered.
“In a halfway place between our dimension and yours.”
“I don’t know what a dimension is,” she spoke, feeling stupid.
“It is a reality,” he explained. “Your reality has solid objects, like rocks and trees, and water, and time flows from moment to moment in one direction. Ours is...different. We don’t have physical bodies as you know them.”
Lilit rolled this over in her mind until she felt she understood. “Then how do you make things happen in my world?”
“Will and energy,” was his answer.
She could see colors streaking across the blackness and feel the whoosh of the other spirits as they whizzed by her. “What happens if you use too much?”
“Then we are no more. We would cease to exist altogether.”
She gasped at the thought of being erased. “What are the other spirits saying?”
“They are pleased with the outcome of this little bargain we’ve made with you, and they wish to teach you things. I wish to teach you things. Your mind is an empty slate and out of all the humans we’ve met so far, you have the most potential.”
“Yes! I want to know,” she said enthusiastically.
She plummeted into the Void, with the cold wind sucking her screams from her as soon as she uttered them, then she was hanging in front of an enormous ball of yellow light that seemed to undulate as it burned continuously. It was the Sun, the sphere that heated her world. She learned that her home was on one of the small spheres circling the huge fiery star and that there were other spheres as well. She was inundated with ideas of time and space and the fact that her mother’s mate contributed to half of her genetic makeup. She was joyful that in her, something of Venniz, her pitar, still existed. Her people had no word or concept for ‘father’ as they did for ‘mother.’ The formal term for the man who was mated to your mother and took care of you was ‘pitar.' She now knew that his essence was what made her start growing in her mother’s womb.
She lost all track of time as she was instructed by the spirits in things no shaman in her world had even discovered yet. She found that Zazel had actually lived many times the lifespan of a human being, and had been known to the northern tribes as ‘the Scourge’ and ‘Bringer of Death.‘ He had invited the spirits of his tribe into his body, the way she had done with her people’s spirits.
She wondered, would she live that long?
Lilit came to, found she was laying face down in the dirt, and rolled over. Blue sky peeking through the tree leaves greeted her. She sat up and looked around her to discover it was nearly midday. She must have been out for hours, she thought. Something stirring made her head snap around to find the lead wolf loping toward her where she sat. The canine glanced pointedly at the half-eaten remains of the dead warriors before swinging his gaze back to her. Azyu transla
ted for her.
Two-legged sister, the wolf began. You went with the Unseen Ones but I see you are back. We could use your help.
“I am grateful for what you did for me. What can I do?”
The rest of my pack are sick and hungry. We can’t get the meat there without running back and forth and disgorging the food, then coming back to eat more. We would have to avoid enemies there and back. Could you use your sharp rock or big stick to break up the meat in smaller pieces for us? We could drag it to our pack easier.
“I can do that,” she said without much enthusiasm. She really didn’t like the idea of butchering other human beings, but then she felt she owed the wolves for their aid. A wolf approached her and plopped something down at her feet. It was a plump waterfowl from a nearby pond.
I know you don’t eat your own kind. We don’t either. Here is something for you later, since you won’t be able to hunt your dinner today. The wolf pack leader padded a few dozen feet away and sat down, watching her. Lilit looked down at the bird; it was in good shape other than having its neck bitten,