know everything, the voice swirled around her. It was one voice out of many, coming from spirits the Khehbas had placated and fed with belief since time out of mind.
“And my will is strong. You will have others to fear you, Great Ones. Think of it. I will make these trolls and vile men fear your name and your reach. I brought this on my people, and you failed when we needed you.” She spoke insolently, but didn’t care. What else did she have to lose at this point?
You invoked us once before, you have a natural gift, the voice mused. You make an interesting proposal. If we help you, you must swear to serve us. Invite us inside so we may draw strength from you. Allow us to work through you. Swear it!
“I swear it!” she hissed as she felt her strength ebbing away. “Let me be your vessel! We shall strike down the ones who did this to our people!”
Very well, the voice accepted, and the wind whirled the dust and leaves before Val-il into a vaguely humanoid shape. Two yellowish burning lights served for eyes, which held the young woman’s own blue ones, and bored into her very soul. The shape, which also seemed to be made of darkness in between the dirt and leaves, raised its ‘arms’ and she felt an invisible force raising her up, bringing her to an upright standing position. Power surged into her, hot, raw energy that zipped through her blood vessels and nerve endings. She cried out as her damaged organs and the terrible hole in her side was shored up, with her whole body stiff and taut as she hovered inches above the hard-packed ground.
Voices then crowded her head, old voices of ethereal beings that had never had a physical body in this plane of existence, whispering things to her, thoughts and concepts that none of her people could have even dreamed. She saw the world fall away in her mind’s eye, saw it as a round sphere as it pulled back, saw the black Void dotted with stars, felt the coldness of infinity as it stretched out before her.
The force let her body go and she fell to her knees in an ungainly heap, gasping, yet alive. She looked up at the Shape standing before her with its burning eyes, for the first time truly afraid. “Rise, Lilit,” it spoke aloud this time. “Go and avenge the Khehbas and spread the fear of Us. Just remember, you are ours now. You belong to the steppes and the desert and the night.”
Lilit, which in the tongue of the Khehbas meant ‘spirit of the night,’ searched through the scorched remnants of her village as the night deepened. Dying flames provided her enough light to see by as she dug through smoldering ruins. She recovered a couple of spears, her flint knife, a water skin, and a pouch to put food in. She covered over Retta and Venniz with rocks, then did the same with her mate, Jor. She considered him her mate even though they were barely out of childhood and had never gotten to have the ceremony. She looked for Sennar the elder and her mentor but couldn’t identify him among some of the more mutilated and burnt bodies.
She said farewell to the ones she loved, sending them to the Otherworld with promises that they would be avenged. The Spirits whispered in her ear that they had nothing to fear and they wouldn’t feel pain or sorrow.
When she was done and had wiped the tears from her soot-stained face, she studied the footprints of her enemies and what direction they went. The men and trolls traveled together as they left, she found. She set off, her face hardened in determination. After some time the tracks of the Ulln turned southward and as her anger at them was the deeper, she followed those. Her long stride and speed allowed her to catch up with them, so after two days’ travel she could see their campfire in the distance. These must be going farther than the encampment Jor and her had found before. She’d counted their remaining number as ten, which made her cautious.
It didn’t make her resolve any less, however.
One of the trolls ended up on watch while the others bedded down to sleep in rough furs. She crept nearer, her movements slow, fluid and precise--the movements of a predator. The Great Ones were with her; she could feel their presence nearby. There was small brush in this area, as the steppes gave way to forest. She leapt out of her cover, yanked the Ulln’s head back and opened his throat with her blade. He dropped quickly as his lifeblood spurted out.
“Awake, wretches!” she announced. “Death is upon you!”
The sleeping trolls rolled out of their bedding and roared when they saw their guard was dead. “It’s one of the Blue-eyes! Kill her!” ordered the leader.
“She survived the fire!”
“She has died and come back.”
“She is a night-spirit!” were some examples of the exclamations given by some of the trolls.
“She is a little girl,” admonished the leader. “Shame on you!” At his goading the others picked up clubs and ran toward her.
Lilit skewered the first one to reach her on her long spear, snatched up his club, and smashed the head in of the next one. She felt the spirits on the wind, whirling about her and the dead Ulln, drawing energy from their deaths. “You are MINE,” she spoke to the three trolls that had just surrounded her, yet her voice was amplified with many other unearthly voices. She had opened herself up to the spirits she made her bargain with and they worked spells through her. The campfire blazed forth, enveloped the troll standing closest to it. He ran to and fro, a burning inferno of searing pain and strangled screams, until at last he dropped. The second one Lilith put out her hand to as if in greeting, but particles of dirt, twigs and pebbles encircled him. The wind carrying them grew faster and faster, blotting out his sight and making it hard for him to breathe. He continued trying to move forward but could not, then he began to bellow when the fast-moving particles began to raze his flesh. “Faster,” Lilit exhorted, and laughed as great gashes opened up all over the pain-stricken Ulln. He was soon reduced to tattered strips of flesh hanging on oversized bones, with his blood soaking the hard ground.
“Yellow-haired little bitch, you will die slowly,” the troll leader vowed. He lobbed a fist-sized stone her way, which caught her square in the chest. The force sent her backward to land heavily on her backside. It robbed her of breath a good half minute which gave him the opportunity to get to her and yank her up by her long, blonde hair. He grasped handfuls of her tunic and shook her like a rat. “Think you have big magick, girl? It is nothing compared to my strength. I eat those I defeat and gain their powers, I take what I want!”
Lilit called to the spirits to push him back, to blind him, but was surprised when they were unable to do so. He had some sort of defense against arcane attack, it seemed. He grunted, then laughed at her attempts. He ripped her tunic down to her waist and exposed her breasts, then chuckled again. “You will wish for death before this night is through,” he told her. He pulled her to him, and tore at her breeches.
Pure anger surged within her, but she was unable to reach the knife on her belt. In desperation she opened her mouth wide and sank her teeth into the troll’s neck. Lilit bit down as hard as she could, hard enough so that she thought she would tear her jaw muscles, then she jerked her head back with all her might. Warm, salty liquid got instinctively swallowed, along with some flesh.
The troll gasped and released her, then turned toward the four remaining Ulln. When the firelight shined on him, they saw his throat was missing a three inch round chunk of tissue. He groaned and staggered, went down to his knees as Lilit put her spear through his belly from his back. She yanked it free and glared at the trolls. Her eyes burned yellow, full of age, of hatred, of a thirst for violence. Blood spattered her bare chest and torso and dripped from her lips and chin. She let fall the remnants of her leather tunic and smiled at them.
“I am the Woman of the Night,” she told them. “You will not see the dawn.”
III
Morning broke across the primeval landscape, heralding a new summer day. The early sun shone upon a lone figure trudging stiffly along with golden hair stirring in the breeze. She leaned on the large wooden spear with the shaved, fire-hardened point for support. Her leather tunic was tied closed w
ith strips of leather threaded through holes she had punched through with her knife, though it was stained with dried blood. She reached into the pouch she had slung across her body then absently ate the dried meat and fruit as she walked.
Lilit was heading north, following the cooling trail of the humans who had destroyed her tribe and family. Her limbs were stiff, her lips were cracked and parched, and there was an aching, blackening bruise forming on her chest from being hit with a large stone thrown by that troll. The familiar steppes were fading into sparse forest again as she made her way north.
“Child,” hissed a well-known voice to her. “You need to rest.”
“I cannot,” she croaked. “I’m losing them.”
“You will find them, and deal with them as they deserve,” the disembodied voice echoed to her. “There is a stream up ahead, stop there and quench your thirst.”
The young woman didn’t answer but did as the spirit suggested. She found the running water and plopped down beside it. She dipped her hand into the cool liquid and drank