Free Dawn of the Flame Sea by Jean Johnson Page B

the day had already started to warm by the time Halek gathered his tribe members outside the ravine, marked by its sandstone-turned-granite walls. He arranged them in a semicircle, warriors and hunters with bows in the middle, flanked to either side by the elderly, the young, and the mothers burdened with children, and those with spears at either end. That was a defensive tactic, as were the quintet of youths stationed so that they faced away from the ravine, their eyes scanning the cliffs, the other canyons, looking for anything and everything that might spring an ambush.
    Aside from those precautions, the taje had decided to treat this meeting as a formal occasion between potential allies. Everyone had scrubbed away what they could of the dirt of their travels and had donned what little finery remained to the White Sands—most of it portable in the form of fajenz beads and amulets strung on leather cords, but some still had other valuables. A bit of beaten gold, some actual cloth, white-dyed leather carefully wrapped against the grit and grime of the desert.
    Halek himself wore a long vest in somewhat creased white leather, decorated with patterns of fajenz beads in blue, green, reddish and brick brown, with a brown leather kilt decorated in blue, green, yellow, white, and cream. Some had worried over whether it was safe to display their beads, for fear that these new strangers would try to steal them as had the other tribes, but Halek wore his proudly. If the strangers were strong enough to steal their fajenz, then there was nothing his people could do about it. They were too weary of travel, too much in need of a new home to posture in the wrong ways.
    The sun touched the top of the ravine, the slightly taller side, as they dressed. That beam of light crept its way down through the first band to the second while they gathered and now brushed the third striation coloring the rock in shades of orange, cream, and brown. Movement drew their attention to the shadowed cleft, and the middle-aged leader strained to peer into the cool shadows. At first, he thought a strange golden mist had sprung up. Then the mist became humanoid shapes, but they still flowed as smoothly toward him as a leaf caught on the surface of a meandering stream.
    When they reached the opening of the little canyon and spread out to either side, still moving with inhuman grace, Halek found he had forgotten to breathe. Sucking in a deep breath, he focused on the figures. One by one, the eight figures were impressive; taken as a whole, they almost overwhelmed. He focused on the individuals as best he could, starting with the familiar one.
    The stranger named Ban, Death, no longer wore loose garments of black, finely spun cloth that covered all but his hands and his head. Instead, he had donned a black kilt or loin-wrap of some sort, pleated many times and buckled around his hips so that the folds just reached his knees. His feet were bound in sandals that covered the tops and sides in flaps and laced up to just below his knees but left most of his calves bare to the view. He bore no other ornaments but needed none; his hide alone, covered in intricate, colorfully painted images, some familiar and many strange, was more than decoration enough. Halek could only marvel at how long it must have taken to dye all that skin.
    Turning his attention to the others, the taje noted that some were scaled over their arms, legs, and torsos like lizards, but the scales were made out of what looked like shades of gold ranging from pale cream to a ripe yellow. Armor, he realized, not natural scales.
    Their heads bore strange pot-like things, embracing their skulls with little wings of sculpted metal. The helmets guarded all but a pair of slits for their eyes, with tiny, regularly spaced holes where their mouths and half their cheeks should have been, and their feet were encased in full metal boots. Each bore weapons also made of the golden metal. It was not bronze—he