Ketrindex   Prologue   Part One   Part Two Part Three   Part Four Part Five   Part Six Part Seven   Part Eight Part Nine   Part Ten Major Players Kipling and Ketrin and Mowgli and Me Jaskri and the Maiden Jaskri’s Child The Sculptor’s Model

Copyright © 2009 by Leem This is a preview. Complete instalment to follow. See below for details or skip to text. This story may be posted on other sites provided that all of its instalments to date are posted, that Leem is identified as the author, and that no unauthorised changes are made to the text Previously on Ketrin... In Part Nine Ral-ne-Sa claimed that he “created” Ketrin by creating the conditions that allowed a feral child to retain his human instincts. Sherinel continued to travel south with his old and new companions. Mavrida’s party encountered the evil sorcerer, who taunted Lendrin with a vision of his lupinoid-killing days. The vision was not just for Sherinel’s benefit; Suvanji ran off in distress upon seeing it. Meanwhile the sorcerer showed Mavrida a shocking sight: her husband Ruthyar, alive after all, but frozen at the very brink of death with his throat in a striagon’s jaws - and fully conscious. The sorcerer gave Mavrida the choice of either euthanizing Ruthyar or leaving him in his half-dead state. Suvanji and Lendrin were finally reconciled after learning how to transfer her telepathy via blood-sharing, and set off to save Mavrida. Before they could do so the sorcerer sent a bolt of lightning which split the cliff face, sending Suvanji and Nipper plummeting into the river gorge.

Peri-feral Thoughts
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An apology and an explanation. This is not the complete Part Ten, but I felt that since the sections I had completed formed a more-or-less coherent narrative, as well as resolving the cliffhangers from Part Nine, it would be better to post them now rather than waiting until I’d completed the rest of the instalment. So what you’re about to read is actually Part Ten-A, and I’ll post a note here and on the Index page as soon as Part Ten-B is completed.

You will recall that in the previous instalment the old sorcerer gave Mavrida a terrible dilemma: either euthanize Ruthyar or condemn him to an endless living death. Meanwhile, after being driven apart by the sorcerer’s deceptions, Suvanji and Lendrin had finally reconciled their differences only to be separated again, this time physically, and with potentially fatal consequences for Suvanji and her lupinoid friend Nipper. Now read on’t, dot dot dot dot dot dot dot

The story takes place several hundred light years from Earth in about AD 3502, give or take a century or three.

You can take the girl out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the girl.

--traditional

Mavrida
Deus Ex Machina

Mavrida’s left hand moved toward the pocket in which she kept the blue crystals, but to her surprise something seemed to be restraining her from reaching them. She felt her gaze being drawn back to Ruthyar’s.

Ruthyar? she thought. Is it you? Are you doing this?

As if in answer, his gaze moved from her eyes to her right hand. There was a growing warmth in her middle finger, and she realised to her astonishment that it was coming from her wedding ring.

The red stone, she thought. The key to Ruthyar’s hidden gold. But what else might it be a key to? Ruthyar understood its sorcery, and now I have brought it back to him...

Slowly Mavrida withdrew her left hand from her pocket. Meanwhile she reached out with her left hand and stroked Ruthyar’s face... allowing the red jewel in her ring, as if by coincidence, to brush against his forehead.

Ruthyar, she thought. You are a part of this, aren’t you? Just like the stone Maiden. You were not just an innocent victim of Borvinn and the old man. Somehow you were playing a part in trying to counter their evil.

Somehow the look in his eyes told her he knew what she was thinking.

But then you were captured, and brought here to suffer years of pain and helplessness, while believing you dead, I mourned you every single day. she thought. Or was that also part of the plan? Was your pain and my anguish part of some higher purpose?

She sighed wearily. Oh, Ruthyar, I’m so confused. If only there were some way you could tell me what to do.

Ruthyar’s eyes burned into Mavrida’s hypnotically. The warmth in her finger became an almost-painful heat and the red jewel blazed, replacing the room’s frigid light with fiery radiance.

Mavrida was vaguely aware of the old man crying out in rage. Watched by the paralysed lupinoids he leapt toward her with inhuman speed, but he was already too late. Before he could reach her she was swallowed up by a hole in nothing.

Howling like an enraged striagon, the old man turned back toward Red and Grey, ready to tear their helpless bodies to pieces... but before he could reach them two more holes appeared, and the lupinoids too fell out of his trap.

The sorcerer walked back to where Ruthyar lay helpless and knelt before him.

“This is your doing,” he snarled. “I should have known you were a pawn of that damned Maiden.”

Ruthyar could not even wince as the sorcerer’s claws raked his face.

“I will not punish you further... yet,” the sorcerer told him. “But I promise you this: once my powers are fully mature, and that will not be long now, you and all those you love will understand the true meaning of suffering.”

Ruthyar scarcely heard him, scarcely felt the sting of his claws. The fact that the sorcerer was venting his frustration upon Ruthyar meant that he could not attack Mavrida directly, at least for the moment. Ruthyar prayed that the Maiden could keep her and her companions safe until the final confrontation.

Suvanji
Going with the Flow

The shattered cliff edge fell into the gorge, taking Suvanji and Nipper with it. Over the sound of Nipper’s terrified howl she could hear herself screaming, “Lendriiiiiin!”

There would be no chance of swimming to safety. From this height, even if they managed to get clear of the cliff fragment, just hitting the water would be fatal.

Then Suvanji seemed to hear a voice in her head. It was not Lendrin.

+...anji! Suvanji, can you hea...+

The voice faded in and out as if carried by an erratic breeze. It was a woman’s voice. Could it be Mavrida? Surely that was impossible.

The next ‘voice’ Suvanji heard was clear enough, though. It was Nipper.

+Hey, two-leg, what’s happening? We’ve stopped falling!+

Suvanji couldn’t explain it. In fact they were still falling, but far more slowly than before. It was as if their bodies had become feathers drifting on the breeze.

+Suvanji!+ called the unknown voice. +Listen carefully. I am the one they call the Maiden. I don’t have much time. I’ve managed to slow down time just long enough to talk to you.+

Maiden? thought Suvanji. Are you what the two-legs call a god?

+No,+ replied the Maiden, +and neither is the old sorcerer. We just happen to have certain powers, that’s all. He uses his for evil, and I try to use mine for good. Suvanji, I don’t have enough power to get the two of you to safety, and I can’t keep up this connection for long. The best I can do is slow your fall so the impact won’t kill you. Then you’ll both have to swim to safety. It’s a long way and the current is fierce, but Ketrin and Silverpaw and even Borvinn managed it, so you should have a fighting cha...+

The Maiden’s voice faded again. Suvanji and Nipper’s fall accelerated, then slowed down once more as the Maiden’s voice returned.

+...orcerer’s trying to block me,+ she said. +All right, get ready. I’m going to lift you clear of the rock slab and drop you into the water from a safer height. Just remember one thing: whatever happens, stay on the left side of the river. If you follow the right channel you’ll be carried over the waterfall and killed. The left channel eventually flows into the Lake.+

But... Suvanji thought, Lendrin... and Mavrida, Red and Grey...

+I’ll do what I can for them,+ said the Maiden. +I’ll give them directions to find you. Now get ready to swim.+

Time sped up again. The girl and the lupinoid felt their bodies lifted clear of the cliff fragment, which impacted against the opposite cliff face somewhere behind them, and then they were plunged into the rushing water.

+...member...+ came the Maiden’s fading voice, +...eep to the left channel. The lef...+

And then she was gone.

All right, Nipper, you heard her, thought Suvanji. Swim for your life, and keep to the <<< side of the river.

The two of them had had some experience at swimming, in small forest rivers and lakes, but nothing could have prepared them for the great river. The torrent was carrying them past the cliffs at a frightening rate, and the eddying currents constantly threatened to drag them under or dash them to pieces against submerged rocks. The water was also far colder than anything they had known (it was fed by melting ice from the distant mountains) and the cold seemed to sap their strength. It took every ounce of determination and strength to hold their own against the current, but Suvanji was sustained by one overriding thought: I will not die. I will see Lendrin again, and Mavrida and Red and Grey. I need them, and they need me.

Nipper had similar thoughts, although she was not able to express them so articulately. Roughly translated, they were: Fuck this. I wanna live. I wanna be with my pack.

The light was dim and hazards hard to see, but by a combination of jungle instinct and sheer luck they managed to avoid the worst of them. Although the trees did not, for the most part, overhang the water, there were some fallen branches and even the occasional section of trunk in the river, and on more than one occasion they had to dive to avoid hitting them.

The current sped up, churning and frothing, and powerful eddies began dragging them to the right.

This must be the place where the water goes two ways, Suvanji told Nipper. We have to fight the current and stay on this side, otherwise we’ll end up at another big fall and this time there won’t be anything to stop us.

And so they fought with all their might to stay in the left channel. Up ahead they could just make out the fork in the river, where an arrowhead-shaped spur of rock divided the streams. The current almost slammed them against the point of the spur, and Nipper began drifting into the right-hand stream, but Suvanji was able to grab the lupinoid’s shoulders and drag her into the left stream, fighting the current all the way.

Finally the division was past, but the danger was not over. The current accelerated again, taking them through three or four more sets of rapids, before the channel finally began to broaden, shallow and slow down.

+We safe yet?+ thought the exhausted Nipper.

Nearly, thought Suvanji. Still can’t see a place to climb out yet.

Eventually, though, the cliffs on either side fell away to a broad plain. The current, now slowed to a ghost of its former fury, deposited them into a broad span of water, far larger than any lake they had ever known. To their right lay more rocky cliffs, over which two roaring falls merged into a huge fan of spray. The right channel would have carried them into one or other of those falls, to their certain deaths.

To their left a grassy embankment rose gently toward the treeline, and they swam toward it with the last of their strength. Weary and bedraggled but grateful to be alive, the swimmers dragged themselves onto the muddy grass and slept soundly despite the waterfall’s constant roar.

Mavrida and Lendrin
Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Rain

Mavrida felt the floor drop away from under her. The world seemed to spin, and then she found herself falling alongside raindrops onto stony ground. She landed roughly, twisting her ankle painfully, and spent some time massaging it while being drenched by the rain, as she tried to figure out what had happened, and where she was.

Obviously she was no longer in the stone ruins. She was outside somewhere, seemingly close by the edge of the gorge.

Before she could figure out how she had come to be there, a shimmering appeared in the air nearby, disgorging a furry grey figure. The figure emitted a startled yelp as it fell roughly to the ground, just as Mavrida had.

Finding that she was no longer paralysed, Grey rolled onto her feet and would have bounded over to Mavrida, except that at that moment another shimmering suddenly appeared in the air, disgorging a furry red figure which emitted a startled yelp as it fell roughly on top of Grey.

Once the lupinoids had untangled themselves they had a brief quarrel over who should have looked where they were going and who should have got out of the way. Mavrida ignored them, knowing that it wouldn’t last long.

It must have been Ruthyar that had helped them escape the old man. Somehow, she realised, he still retained power over the red crystals in their wedding rings, even while he was paralysed.

She had always known that the ring he had given her possessed some kind of power. He had shown her how to use that power to open a hole in the rock spire where his gold was stored. The hole did not lead to the interior of the spire, but to some other place entirely. Apparently the rings, under Ruthyar’s silent command, had also opened the holes through which she and the lupinoids had just escaped. It also seemed that the red crystals were able to neutralise the blue crystals, which was how Red and Grey had been freed from their paralysis.

Mavrida looked at the ring. If it was able to transport humans and lupinoids many cubits through solid rock walls, maybe it could transport them over even greater distances, could she but figure out how to use it. If only she was able to use it to transport herself to wherever Ketrin was, instead of laboriously trekking through the jungle for countless days. But if she had been able to do that from the start she would never have met her new friends.

In any case it was probably pointless to speculate about what the rings might do, when she barely understood what they did. One thing was certain, though: the red jewels contained a power that the sorcerer could not control, and that was encouraging.

Having settled their quarrel without too many additional scratches or bruises, Red and Grey loped across to greet Mavrida. Once they had done so they set their noses to the ground to search for their other packmates’ scent. It only took them a moment to find it, and they looked expectantly at Mavrida.

“All right, lead on,” she said.

Red and Grey followed the scent a few hundred cubits further up the gorge, and there they found Lendrin sitting dejectedly by himself. There was no sign of Suvanji or Nipper.

Lendrin was almost bowled over by the lupinoids’ greeting. When he finally managed to disentangle himself he embraced Mavrida fiercely.

“Thank the gods,” he moaned. “I thought I’d lost you too.”

“Lost?” replied Mavrida. “What do you mean, lost? Where is Suvanji, and Nipper?”

Lendrin sighed. “Far away by now. Fighting for their lives against the river. Even if they survive the current, they’ll be swept so far downstream we might take moons to find them, if ever.”

Lendrin moaned. “Oh, Suvanji. Just when we’d really begun to understand each other...”

“Fighting the river?” muttered Mavrida. “I don’t understand. Lendrin, take a deep breath and tell me, slowly, what happened.”

Lendrin sighed and nodded, then told Mavrida how the girl and her lupinoid had been thrown into the gorge.

“I was so distraught I was just about to throw myself in after them,” he said, “but at that moment the Maiden appeared to me. She told me she’d managed to slow their fall so it wouldn’t kill them, but she couldn’t fish them out of the river. So it’s like I said: they’re both fighting the current, somewhere far downriver by now. The Maiden told me she’s sure they’ll make it.”

Mavrida knelt beside him and put an arm around his shoulder. “So am I,” she said. “Ketrin and his lupinoid brother Silverpaw already survived the same journey, did I tell you that?”

Then another thought struck her. “You know, Suvanji and Nipper may even find Ketrin before we do. They’ll be in roughly the same part of the forest.”

“It’s just so unfair,” Lendrin sighed. “She only just taught me how to share thoughts with her, and now there’s no telling when we’ll meet again, if ever.”

Mavrida was taken aback. “She... she taught you how to...?”

Groaning, Lendrin buried his head in his hands. “I love her, Mavrida, and she loves me. I could feel it when our minds touched. She’s so fierce and protective, just like a lupinoid, but at the same time she’s all woman. I wanted to spend the rest of my life getting to know her, and now there’s no telling if I’ll ever see her again.”

“Now there you go again,” said Mavrida. “Stop talking like that. We will find her again, and we’ll find Ketrin, and maybe Sherinel too.”

That was always assuming Sherinel wasn’t on the bridge when it collapsed, but she kept that thought to herself.

“Now come on,” she told Lendrin. “We’ve got a long way to go, but with the Maiden on our side, not even the old man can stop us.”

Perhaps the sorcerer heard her. At that moment their hair stood on end as another lightning bolt struck the cliff nearby, almost immediately followed by a burst of thunder that half-deafened them and rattled the ground on which they stood.

Without hesitation the four of them ran for the forest, hoping to put as much distance as they could between the stone ruins and themselves. Once they entered the forest proper their progress was hampered by the dense vegetation, but by nightfall they reckoned they were several thousand cubits to the south west of the ruined city and its sinister occupant.

There was no telling if they really were safe from the old man’s wrath, but they were too exhausted, to go any further, so they made what camp they could in the roots of a forest giant. The lupinoids had no trouble getting to sleep, but the humans took a little longer. Fortunately the lupinoids had learned how to sleep through the two-legs’ yapping.

“Did Suvanji really teach you how to share thoughts with her?” asked Mavrida.

“Yes, it’s true,” said Lendrin, then gave a small chuckle. “When she stared at me and said ‘blood,’ I thought she was talking about shedding mine. But it turns out, all she wanted was to mingle her blood with mine.”

“Mingle her blood?”

“That’s right. It seems that whatever allows lupinoids to exchange thoughts is carried in their blood. Their cubs ingest it when they suckle lupinoid milk...”

“...And so do any human ‘cubs’ that they adopt,” concluded Mavrida.

“Right. And when Suvanji mixed her blood with mine, that something passed into me as well.”

Lendrin sighed deeply. “I could hear her thoughts, Mavrida, as clearly as I can hear my own. We could feel exactly what we meant to each other. From that moment I never wanted to be parted from her, not for a single... oh, gods damn that old bastard!”

“We’ll find her, Lendrin, I swear it, even if we have to search to the end of the world. But there’s something I have to tell you too, Lendrin, something important. I still haven’t really come to terms with it myself yet.”

“Why, what is it?” asked Lendrin. “Is it about something that happened to you in the ruined city? Does it have to do with how you escaped from the old man?”

“Yes. It... it’s about my husband, Ruthyar.”

“Ruthyar? You told me he was killed by a striagon during a hunt, many years ago.”

“That’s what Borvinn always told me,” said Mavrida. “But it turns out that Borvinn didn’t actually see the striagon kill him.”

“Then... does that mean the striagon didn’t kill him?” said Lendrin. “I don’t understand. If he was still alive, then why...”

“The striagon didn’t have a chance to kill him,” said Mavrida, “because the old man paralysed them both before it could close its jaws. All these long years I believed my husband was dead, but for all that time he was lying in the old man’s lair with the striagon’s fangs in his throat, frozen between life and death.”

“Oh, gods have mercy,” breathed Lendrin.

“The old man said I had a choice,” Mavrida continued. “Either let him continue to live in that half-dead state, or release him and let the striagon put him out of his misery.”

“So... what did you choose?” whispered Lendrin.

“I... I was going to release him,” Mavrida murmured. “Only I never got a chance because at that moment the lupinoids and I were hurled away from that place. I... I think Ruthyar freed us, though I couldn’t say how. I’m beginning to suspect he was working for the Maiden all along.”

Mavrida was careful to avoid any mention of the red crystals. She was sure Lendrin was trustworthy, but her instincts warned her that knowledge of them was best kept to herself.

“So,” she concluded, “that’s all I know. My husband is alive, but he remains helpless and in the old man’s clutches. Even if we could get to him, there’s no way we could free him from the paralysis without freeing the striagon as well, and the old man told me Ruthyar’s throat is already crushed. Ironic, isn’t it? The paralysing spell prevents him from dying, yet it also prevents him from truly living. We can only hope the Maiden is helping him to stay sane.”

“Dear gods, what a dilemma,” muttered Lendrin.

They both fell silent for a while, but neither of them was able to sleep straight away.

At length, Lendrin spoke quietly: “I know it probably isn’t your biggest priority right now... but if Ruthyar is alive, then you’re still married to him, and that means the two of us...”

Mavrida sighed. “Go to sleep, Lendrin,” she whispered. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Suvanji
The Jungle Girl Versus the Crawling Death

Nipper yawned hugely and nuzzled her furless companion. +Hey, two-leg. You awake yet?+

Suvanji opened her eyes and stretched her aching limbs. Yeah, I’m awake, she thought, hugging her lupinoid companion. We’re alive, Nipper. We made it.

But Nipper lowered her head and tail morosely. +Lost our pack,+ she thought.

We’ll find them again, Suvanji told her, or they’ll find us. Meantime, we have each other.

Taking Nipper’s face in both hands Suvanji looked her in the eyes and thought: I’ll lead. Challenge?

+No challenge,+ thought the lupinoid, abasing herself.

Good, thought the human, rising to her feet. Then let’s walk our stiffness off.

The rain had eased off a little, but the clouds remained as thick as ever. At least the rain was warmer than the river. All along the lakeshore new shoots were bursting through the soil after waiting out the long dry season.

+Not many critters about,+ thought Nipper.

Probably sheltering from the rain, thought Suvanji. Hungry?

+Yeah. Aren’t you? We’ve got to get our strength up after that long swim.+

Well, thought Suvanji, if there’s not much game on the ground, let’s see what fish we can catch.

+Wait,+ thought Nipper incredulously. +You want us to go back in the water after what we just went through?+

This’ll be different, Suvanji insisted. It isn’t fast water and we won’t be fighting to stay alive.

+I suppose,+ thought the lupinoid dubiously.

Suvanji looked out over the lake to the falls on the opposite site. Swollen by rainfall the great fan of water was an impressive sight to Suvanji’s human side.

Look at that, thought Suvanji. That’s what we would have fallen into if we’d taken the >>> channel.