Dawn of the Flame Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

do. If there
is
water for two hundred or more, and game and places to grow things, it is our job to scout it and decide if it’s worth claiming, as well as continuing to pursue. Pak, start your torch making in the valley behind us. Koro, draw upon the anima for water. We will take a dune-break behind this crest. Bury your waste, and keep an eye on all directions, just in case.”
    Scattering to their tasks, the other four followed his orders in willing silence.

Chapter Two
    Puna, chief huntress of the White Sands, waited for Taje Halek, the tribe’s leader, to digest her words. His left cheek still seeped pus occasionally, and he could not see fully out of that eye, but it was an awkward spot to place maggots to clean up the rotting flesh—unlike his thigh wound, which had finally stopped bleeding. His arm was still in its sling, held together by splints wrapped in rawhide.
    Squinting a little, he looked up at her. The sun was at her back, but the large acacia tree he had picked for shade blocked at least some of its glow. His wits were slowed a little from the pain of his wounds, but they were still sharp enough underneath the chronic pain. “It sounds . . . as if they are willing to share this place. If we do not trespass on those particular caves. There are others . . . yes?”
    â€œIn the other arms and spans of the canyons, there are a few, yes,” Puna confirmed. “A pack of sand jackals has claimed one gorge and its caves; others have scorpions and serpents. I have asked Pulek to watch the children in the use of their slings, taking aim at the latter caves to flush out those creatures. So far, the jackals are wary of us and the smoke of our torches. I have set people to watch against them, but haven’t driven them off yet.”
    He frowned a little, then grunted, nodding. “Yes, the strangers are more dangerous. Jackals, we understand. These strangers, we do not. Or rather, stranger. I only caught a glimpse of him when he chased Lutun out of the caves. I wonder if they all have colors painted on their skin . . .”
    â€œI would like to know what beast’s hide he claimed, to have leathers as black as soot and as supple as skin, rather than stiff and brown like ours,” Puna muttered.
    Taje Halek smiled with the uninjured side of his face. “Perhaps he will be willing to tell us.”
    He would have said more, but a young girl, barely into the bloom of physical maturity, ran up to them. She stopped, panted a moment with her hands on the dusty knees visible below her wrap-skirt, then said quickly, “Taje Halek, Huntress Puna, the caves are gone! In that little canyon, the caves are gone! Zudu was watching them with the water eye, and they vanished, filled in by stone!”
    Both elders stared in dismay. Zuki was one of the animadj Zudu’s three surviving acolytes and quite reliable for her young age. Unlike Lutun. Based on their expressions, most of the others felt the young hunter deserved it, having attacked the stranger without true cause, for there had been no direct physical threats aimed at them before his blow. Puna had left the young hunter with an older hunter who could hopefully calm him down . . . but the youth had been growling about how he would return blow-for-blow to the stranger and beat him with his fists, with his feet . . .
    Halek realized his wits were wandering in his pain, and focused when the hunt mistress spoke, covering his silence.
    â€œThank you, Zuki,” Puna told the girl, hiding her unease whenever the girl glanced her way. Whoever their animadj was, they were surely more powerful than even Zudu, who could shape and fire with just her mind the
fajenz
beads the White Sands Tribe had been renowned for, before being attacked by the Spider Hand people and driven off by tribe after greedy, spiteful, territorial tribe. To be able to fill in a whole cave mouth with stone was