1. The Gokyo Ri

Lanoire

A group of snow white Leonen jogged through the village clutching elaborate spears in their handpaws, while high on the ridge a small gray figure in hooded robes stopped to watch.

Her fur was still dark and dappled with a juveniles spots, but she imagined herself among the tribe’s hunters all the same, appearing and disappearing through the swirling mists of the Black Forest like the Panthera of old.

“Lanoire!”

She’d lingered too long.

Her mother turned back down the steps leading to Temple of Bast to pinch her ear. “No one has been late in generations, and no daughter of mine will be the first. Come.”

“Is it the herds?” she asked.

A shadow crossed over her mothers face. “The river Oyo is still locked in ice, it will be weeks before they descend. You should know this.”

Lanoire should have known this — but why else would the tribe’s warriors be going into the Black Forest?

According to her mother, spring was still more than a month away — a sense she had developed studying the Panthera all her life, and one Lanoire was supposed to have by now, too. But even after all her mornings studying in the temple, it seemed to her that spring was just around the corner. The snow was turning to slush in places, and Lanoire couldn’t help picturing the lower valley flooded with wildlife, signaling the start of the Tian Ma’s short hunting season.

Lanoire risked another glance at the disappearing spear tips, searching for her father. Under the shifting wolf pelts and markhorein skull-masks she couldn’t find his face, but she knew he was among them.

“Lanoire, if I have to tell you again-” her mothers voice interrupted, and she was forced to look away.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” she bit back, her tufted ears flattening against her long black hair as she jogged to catch up.

She’d tripped on her robes more than once already and the bracelets she wore around her wrists and ankles did not make things any easier. The trek to the Temple of Bast threaded up a narrow trail etched into the mountainside, one she’d walked many times before, but which now felt impossibly distant dressed in heavy robes.

“Perhaps if I wasn’t wearing this old blanket,” Lanoire began, but was quickly cut short.

“If you’d gotten up on time, you could’ve dressed in the temple,” came her mother’s low growl.

Lanoire made a face, and they walked the rest of the way in silence, not reaching the end of the trail until the sun was at their backs and the village below them lost to an ocean of pink and white clouds. To those on the ground, the temple was little more than speck, visible only in glimpses through the parting clouds — but up close, Lanoire could see the sparkling blue glacier, cut into bricks and formed into a spectacular palace of ice.

Carved with huge statues of Panthera, the ice gleamed in the morning sunlight. Lanoire walked with her eyes downcast, eager to be past them. Even after all these years, she’d never been able to shake the old fear that she was being watched.

Her mother had once told her that the Panthera of old were watching over them all, but Lanoire had never come to appreciate the distinction. From a young age, the statues in the temple loomed in the back of her mind, the towering faces of Bast’s daughters even following her in dreams.

She was glad when at last they entered the gloom of the temple itself, its deep-blue walls rising around them like an ocean wave. Lanoire hesitated as her mother rapped her staff on a crack in the ground and blue flames sprang up from beneath it, racing toward the edges of the temple.

Producing no heat, the blaze bathed everything in a shade of pale underwater blue. She’d seen her mother do this many times, but couldn’t help the shiver that ran through her each time cold air rushed through the glacier. When she was much younger she’d been incessantly curious about the staff, but as she got older, she realized it merely created a spark, which ignited the fire-beds at the edge of the temple.

The mechanism only seemed magical.

In a rectangular pool of water at the temples heart, Lanoire could see her reflection, and frowned at how formal she looked. The sare she wore had belonged to her mother when she was her age, but it was still far too big on her, and draped off her shoulders like a curtain, making her look even smaller than she was.

She’d been told she’d grow into it, but it was taking an awfully long time. Spring had crossed the mountains twelve times already, but the watercolor of black spots she’d been born with still covered her stubbornly from ear to tailtip. Her brothers, who were only a few minutes older than she was, had grown into their adult fur two years ago, yet she still had the countenance of a dark mountain sheep.

With the thirteenth spring of Lanoire’s life right around the corner, she studied her reflection at any opportunity, eager to see the same change in herself.

“Set the tea,” came her mothers low command.

“I know,” she huffed.

The routine never changed. In fact, it seemed somehow inescapable. Each morning, she endured a grueling hike to the temple to read from old books and stone tablets that she barely understood, only to hike back down at dusk to help with chores until she was exhausted. All while her brothers sharpened their claws hunting in the Black Forest.

It wasn’t fair.

She’d long suspected that her mind was just not cut out for such learning. She craved the thrill of the wind in her fur, the sound of prey creeping through the darkness of the woods. Even now, she could not focus on her chores or the serenity of the dripping glacier. Her mind wandered, searching for a distraction.

She dragged the samovar across the ice with a clatter, earning her a glare from her mother, but Lanoire ignored it. Her mother was dressed in a matching silver robe, called a Sare, but her fur had long ago turned the same off-white as the rest of their clade, with only the faintest gray ringlets of spots still visible on her forehead.

On her the sare seemed regal — fitting for the tribes matron. At nearly sixty years old, and with three surviving children, her mother was a rarity among their clade. The punishing winters of the Tian Ma made it nearly impossible to raise young, but in spite of that, the entire litter survived, growing older and stronger each year.

Lanoire and her two brothers were born during a lucky burst of warm weather, and they’d been well-looked after by the tribe ever since. Even now, the memory of three infant leonen hiding under their mothers robes seemed to tug at the villagers collective heartstrings. It had been so long since there were children in the village, their every antic was seen as endearing.

Nowadays, they were constantly supervised — or as Nasir liked to joke, guarded. Although the Tian Ma were a vast range of mountains, they’d been warned since birth to stick to the safety of the upper peaks of Nehenya and the Goy Oyo. The forests below were Dogan territory and viciously guarded, but her brothers had snuck off more than once, regailing her with tales of dense greenery and mists as thick as snow.

A loud crack somewhere deep in the glacier made Lanoire startle, sloshing the tea over the rim of the cup. She was suddenly glad for her dark fur — at least the dark blue liquid did not leave a stain. When the noise came again the glacier cracked and rattled, like it was going to split in two straight on top of them.

A moment later, a young male leonen appeared at the entrance. His footpaws had been so loud and clumsy, it sounded like an avalanche. Breathless from racing up the trail on his own, he struggled to find his words while he leaned on the temple’s columns.

“Alena,” he breathed.

The name traveled like a gust of wind through the still air. Her mother was momentarily stunned, unable to register the sight of another creature standing there, until she composed herself enough to stalk toward him, radiating barely-contained fury.

“Did you follow us?” she hissed, suddenly seeming much younger than her years. A pair of curved white teeth were exposed when she growled. “None are allowed in the Temple of Bast but the daughters of-”

“Forgive me, please, Alena,” he cut in.

Lanoire recognized him as one of the tribes warriors, a red Dogan longbow strapped to his shoulders and a wolf’s pelt covering most of his torso. He saw Lanoire standing there with the tea and hastily averted his eyes, as if he’d caught her undressing.

Lanoire didn’t know what to make of it. Nobody had ever interrupted her lessons before.

“Part seven and eight, the Firstborns and Polynasium,” said her mother as she reached the heavy columns of ice that lined the temples entrance. “I’ll just be a moment dealing with this fool.”

Lanoire’s ears strained to catch the conversation outside as she reached for a set of heavy stone tablets. Chiseled with many years of clawmarks, her family had added to the writings of Panthera every generation, and one day, it would be Lanoire’s job to do the same. Each morning since she was strong enough to climb the six thousand steps to the peak of Nehenya, she’d followed in the pawsteps of her mother, and her mothers’ mother to study, memorizing Starmaps and reciting Panteran grammar until she could hardly think.

A flutter of excitement made Lanoire’s stomach turn at this sudden change of events. What could possibly be so important as to follow them all the way up here? Lanoire was surprised he’d made the trek at all, as the sheer ice was punishing, even for their own clade. Lanoire could only do it because she’d always done it, the routine turning her thighs to hard, steely sinew.

“Slow down, breathe,” her mother was saying. “Tell me what you saw. How far into the Gokyo Ri were they?”

They momentarily switched to Pantaren, the language of Animalkind, which Lanoire only knew a little of. Filled with snarls and growls, it sounded more like a fight than a conversation. Lanoire still couldn’t understand very much of it, but the mention of the Gokyo Ri made her prick her ears.

Not a moment later, her mother reentered the temple looking flustered. Lanoire tried to look like she’d been reading, but she couldn’t stop herself from peering curiously around the columns where the warrior still waited, breathing clouds of white vapor into the air. Noticing this, her mother moved to block her line of sight.

Lanoire looked up at her quizzically. Surely, the day wasn’t going to continue as normal after such an interruption?

“You’ll be studying by yourself until I return,” she said seriously.

“What?”

Lanoire’s voice bounced back off the ice so loudly, the water in the pool vibrated. She lowered her ears, mollified by the echo. “But why?”

“Shh,” hissed her mother, her eyes cutting toward the ceiling. The morning light made thin yellow beams in the air, where a single droplet of snowmelt could be seen spiraling off an icicle and into the pool below, causing rings to radiate across the still water.

Her mother frowned, looking at her imploringly. “Lanoire, a small change in routine does not excuse you from your responsibilities. Consider your studies before yourself, for a change.”

Lanoire stared down the slate tablets as if they were opponents in a fight. At the door, her mother held her gaze, the blue of the temple refracting off her steely gray eyes.

“I’ll be back soon enough, and’ll be expecting a summary with emphasis on the many functions of Polynasium when I return.”

Lanoire didn’t even know what that word meant, but her mother disappeared before she could argue, and the temple quickly settled into it’s all-encompassing silence. It was still early in the morning, and who knew when her mother would return? Lanoire sighed. There was little else to do but read.

Studying the Panthera was almost as grueling as the walk to the temple. The tablets had been compiled by many generations of handpaws, the oldest stones so smooth that the inscriptions were barely legible. All clades of Animalkind had their own such texts; words of law, territory and culture.

The clade of Canidae had their Dogan Ra, most Avian lived according to the commandments in their Stardex, but even though her parents had inscribed some of the more recent inserts of the Panthera themselves, the writing was archaic and difficult to understand. A whole hour passed and the words still swam in front of her eyes, the drawings of the clades blurring together.

Leonen, Tigren, Jaguarn, Caraclene.

She knew some of the others, but not well. Canidae had their Dogan, Cyrote, and Wolf, while the Avian were made up of long-feathered Strigine and colorful Sitisine, and according to her parents, had once been made up of many others.

There was a deep groan of ice from the glacier, followed by a resounding crack that made her jump. Except this time, instead of the usual quiet that resumed after the ice shifted, the sound was accompanied by whispers and clumsy footfalls. She stiffened in disbelief — two interruptions in one day? Was nothing sacred anymore? Her green eyes appeared bright blue as she searched the echoing chamber.

“Noire,” said a voice.

“Mother?” she said, but even as she said it, she knew the voices didn’t match. It was too high, too wavering.

She turned to see two faces peering around the columns of the Temple of Bast. Her brothers, Sabin and Nasir, both looking around in amazement.

“What are you two doing here?” she growled, unable to hide her surprise. Puffs of ice evaporated on her breath.

Sabin, who was younger than Nasir, but still older than Lanoire by several minutes was the first to speak.

“It’s the herds,” he blurted, his voice echoing through the temple like a gunshot. He was short and stout compared to her oldest brother, with a subtle tint of red to his fur that made his spots appear like rings left behind on a table from creamed tea. “They’re descending the Gokyo Ri.”

Lanoire pinned her ears at this news, crossing her arms. She looked to her eldest brother, who was usually the more trustworthy.

“Now? But it isn’t late enough into the season,” she responded. Even her mother had said the same, and Lanoire couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever been wrong.

Nasir only shrugged. “Suppose spring came early this year.”

Lanoire searched his face for some crease of a lie. At this altitude, anything larger than rabbits were a rarity, and even those were hard to come by. The herds of Markhorein that lived in the mountains were elusive and kept to the highest, steepest cliffs of the Gokyo Ri, where they could easily disappear.

A flash of speartips swam through her memory, Leonen jogging side-by-side through the snow. So she’d been right about the herds. The prospect of such a spectacular hunt made Lanoire’s heart thrill, but skepticism still gripped her.

It was too good to be true.

“I saw them,” Nasir continued. “Two of the biggest bulls I’ve ever seen, and a whole bunch of those golden kids. So little, I bet even you could catch one, Noire.”

Lanoire pinned her ears at the jibe, but looked between her brothers all the same. She was supposed to be studying, but even if she wanted to, how could she stay indoors now? The mountains called to her like wind to a bird. She barely cast a look over the cool blue walls of the temple before slipping out of her robes and casting aside as many of the traditional crystals she wore as she could before running for the slender beams of daylight at the temples entrance, the slates of the discarded Panthera still scattered across the ice.

Against a near-obliterating backdrop of powdery white snow, it was easy to miss the outlines of three young leonen slinking along the ridgeline.

Between the gray-brown streaks of rock and the spindly white birch and aspen trees that still clung on at this altitude, they were practically invisible. The air was thin as a razor blade, but Lanoire was glad to be running. Like her brothers, she relished in her own natural strength, and leapt down narrow crevasses in the mountain without as much as a second glance.

Although her brothers were only a few minutes older than she was, they were much larger. Their dark gray baby fur replaced by the same glossy off-white coat shared by rest of her clade two springs ago. Against the snow they were invisible, while Lanoire was forced to hesitate at each clearing.

Unlike them, she was easy to spot out in the open, and could easily spook the herd if she moved too quickly. She dashed from boulder to boulder, crouching low against the rough rock face as sweeping gusts of wind threatened to toss her right over the edge.

“Shouldn’t we go down?” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. She was never allowed this far from the village, and could feel her handpaws trembling in the wind. “If the Markhorein have gone into the valley, we wont run into them from way up here.”

Nasir merely scented the air, flattening himself low against the snow as he picked up something on the breeze.

“Don’t need to run into them,” he said, his voice tremulous with excitement. “They need to run into us. If we stay above them, we have the element of surprise.”

“What do you mean?” said Lanoire.

“The herd wont stay late in the valley, they’ll come back up eventually,” he said quietly. “And when they do, we’ll be ready.”

They edged along the rim, carefully picking out a path down the near-vertical grade of the canyon. If they could catch sight of the herd down below, it would merely be a matter of finding a good spot to hide.

But with little vegetation able to conceal them as they struck out further on the cliffs, Lanoire felt every hair on the back of her neck standing up. In some places, there was nothing but snow, and what little cover she could find was hunched into narrow gaps in the rock.

Suddenly, Nasir stopped, ducking low on a ledge only a little bigger than he was. Lanoire and Sabin followed suit as he pointed to a shady crease in the mountains where a herd of some ten Markhorein stood pulling thick yellow reeds from the still knee-deep snow. They were guarded by a large male with a rack of spiraling black antlers and a tan mane, flit with gray, running down his throat.

Nasir licked his lips. “Look at the size of that bull.”

Lanoire frowned. The male was larger than the wild horses that roamed the edges of the Black Forest, with a huge rack of spiraling antlers nearly as large as the animal itself. She put a handpaw on her brothers shoulder.

“How will we get him out of here with just the three of us?”

He seemed annoyed by her interjection, but willing to compromise. “Which one, then?”

Lanoire scanned the herd thoughtfully. There were two females with young kids by their side and a gang of scrawny yearlings hemming around in the shadows. Lanoire pointed at one of the older females, a hash of silver scars already emblazoned on her shoulder.

“That one.”

Nasir considered her choice, then said, “Fine,” and they struck out again, moving with agonizing slowness as they watched the herd graze in the distance. They were completely unaware of the approaching danger. One of them looked up abruptly, making them all freeze, but its head swiveled around in the opposite direction, its round ears twitching at a sound carrying on the wind.

Just as they got close enough to the ledge to make out the herd in detail, a loud bang ricocheted off the Gokyo Ri and the snow under Lanoire’s footpaws give way. Before she could do anything to stop it, she went careening over the cliff in a spray of snow. She thought she saw something glinting on the other side of the canyon, but then her head hit a rock and she went crashing into the ravine, her brothers startled faces the last thing she remembered as the world disappeared behind her.

Thank you so much for reading!

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