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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Sean Kells comes to the backwater planet Alkas as a merchant, not a crusader. But, when his actions inadvertently doom a young Cloud Walker, an acolyte to the mysterious Sisterhood of the Stone, he finds himself obsessed by her fate. Is it only his conscience that plagues him, or something darker, something more ancient that drives him to make the long trek to watch her face the ultimate test? Unable to stop what is happening, he becomes an unwilling player in the dangerous ceremony known as Festival, a ceremony that may lead him to his own death. (From the author of the highly acclaimed Trader Pig).

eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine), Published: Far Sector SFFH, 2004
Fictionwise Release Date: February 2004

18 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [44 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [60 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [28 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [128 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [30 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [89 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [101 KB] , hiebook (KML) [107 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [86 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [25 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [32 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [72 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [44 KB]
Words: 8900
Reading time: 25-35 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

No wind shook the wispy, crimson-hued trees that ringed the mud-brick town. Overhead, a blue-white sun rolled lazily toward the jagged skyline while thunderheads shadowed the summits, black against the pale sky. Sean Kells watched the shifting dance of lightning beneath their purple bellies. Bored, he took a sip from the brown-clay tumbler the arthritic barman had placed on the sun-faded table. Fire ripped down his throat. Across the table his drinking companion, an enormous man with a beard as red as the vines creeping up the tavern walls, laughed.

"I should have warned you," Diese Ammons said. "The local brew can be a bit potent."

"Potent? Gods, man. Is there anything on Alkas that doesn't have peppers in it?"

Ammons shrugged. "I thought peppers were the reason you came here?"

"They are," Kells said sullenly. He lifted the tumbler again, a little too fast, unused to the planet's light gravity. A few drops sloshed over the rim. He took another, more cautious sip of the peppered voka. "But I would trade a ship-load of them right now for a cold beer."

His gaze drifted down the crowded street that wound past the open-air café, drawn by a commotion outside a cloth vendor's stall. A line of women in robes so blindingly white they burned the eye, danced toward them. They seemed to flow, graceful as they accepted the coins and bits of tightly rolled paper people dropped in the simple brass bowls they carried. At the head of the dancers a girl, younger than the rest and robed in blue, her copper-colored hair loose around her slim shoulders, swirled in mad patterns. Her feet scarcely brushed the dusty street.

"Set your sights lower, my friend." Ammons took a long drink from his own tumbler and wiped the oily drops from his mustache with the back of his hand. "I've seen that look before."

"She's beautiful." Kells watched as the girl danced closer. "Who is she?"

"Cloud Walker. Part of the Sisterhood of the Stone. They are as close as this wretched world has to religion." The barman returned with a platter heaped high with fried peppers, their red and yellow skins gleaming. He set it in front of Ammons, then shuffled out to meet the dancers. He pressed his hand reverently against his chest as the girl in blue skipped past, then dropped a handful of coins wrapped in crude brown paper into one of the other dancer's bowls. Ammons lifted a pepper as long as his finger from the platter and bit it in half. He pointed with the stub toward the distant mountains. "They live on top of that black butte, in the temple the Old Ones left. Every season, just before festival, they come to town to take our sins away." He nodded at the line of women. "Plus a few cartloads of donations."

"The Old Ones?" Kells snorted, eyes locked on the girl in blue as she whirled up the street. "You've been here too long. I think you've gone native."

"Maybe so." Ammons pushed away from the table and hopped over the low stone wall around the café. He dropped a few coins in the last dancer's bowl then returned. He grinned sheepishly. "I have a lot of sins to answer for this year. Now, about those peppers?"

Kells nodded absently. "I'll take six hundred kilos of the dried, and another six of the fresh, if you can stasis pack them." He paused. "It's the medicinal ones I'm most interested in."

"Ahh, the Death Tips." Ammons selected another pepper from the bowl. "For those, we're going to have to take a little trip. The Sisterhood are the only ones who grow them." He pointed again at the steep-sided butte. Streamers of silvery virga swept across its flat top. "Hope you don't mind riding slipper-back. It's a three day journey from Kenalla, and that's only if the trail isn't washed out."

The girl in blue was little more than a speck now. She flitted bird-like around the bend, the others trailing behind. Kells watched until they were lost from sight, then turned and looked at the towering black butte. Lightning forked against it, and for a moment he swore he saw a tower, needle-thin, backlit by the flash. Despite the afternoon's heat, he shivered.

"When would we leave?"

"Tonight, if you want. I'll arrange it at the stables."

"Fine." He looked again up the street, hoping to catch another glimpse of the girl in blue. "Why do they call them Cloud Walkers?"

"Why?" Ammons finished his drink. "That girl in the lead? Come Festival next week, she'll step to the edge of the cliff and jump. And if that isn't cloud walking, then I'll jump with her."