The Gem

by Gary Kloster

Chapter Four: Great Beasts

The grootslang coiled in the ruins of its egg and hissed. Its body was thick and muscular, like a snake's, armored with red and dull golden scales and supported at one end by two legs. Each leg was as wide as Jiri, and ended in thick claws. From the heavy chest between those legs a long neck stretched, ending in a blunt, triangular head. It looked like a viper's head, with slitted yellow eyes and a wide mouth lined with fangs, but from either side of that mouth grew three sharp tusks, six in all. A forked tongue flickered out of the grootslang's mouth, tasting the air before sliding back over one of the tusks, stripping the blood and tissue from it.

The grootslang blinked at them, then reached out with one claw, pinning Taba's broken corpse. Its head dipped and it bit into the remains and pulled back, tearing the body apart. Jiri shuddered at the terrible ripping sound, but she forced herself to watch, to not take her eyes off the beast, to not turn and run.

"Dahren. Do something!" Khair had drawn his sword, a thin thing that looked like a pretty toy compared to the grootslang's tusks.

"What?" Dahren asked, his eyes wide, darting from Khair, to Jiri, then back to the beast.

"You're a mage, cast something!"

"What?"

"Something that will get us out of your stupid idea alive!"

The grootslang gathered up the rest of Taba and bolted him down as Jiri watched, her stomach clenching. A man turned to nothing but meat in a moment, and now that meat was gone too.

Fire blossomed in Jiri's hand, bright and hot, and the monster looked at her, tilting its head. Then it moved.

It shot like a dart from a blowgun, moving too fast for something that was the size of a crocodile, and it was in the water, its scaled body splitting the river, and when Jiri threw her fire it only hissed against the splashing surface, doing nothing to the beast.

"Is it gone?" Khair said, his sword still up.

"Gone. Gone, and all that coin, all that time spent wading through this miserable jungle, that's gone too." Dahren spat at the river. "Curse this place and everything that lives in it. The gods should burn it all."

Jiri ignored him, her clenched hands still hot. For once, the fire that she had so much trouble containing felt insufficient. "It's not gone," she said, watching the river, listening. The jungle had gone too quiet around them, birds and monkeys silent, the only sounds the hum of insects and the rush of the water.

"Where is it?" Dahren said, stepping back from the river, toward her. His hands moved, and he spoke, the words slurred and sibilant, and Jiri felt the air near Dahren grow prickly as he gathered his magic.

"I don't—" Jiri started, then she heard it, the sound of mud shifting behind her, and spun.

The grootslang was there, rearing up out of a shallow pool that stretched across the mud behind her. Far too shallow to hide the beast, but Jiri remembered what Oza had taught her: water was a door to the grootslang, one it could pass through, vanishing and reappearing where it willed. The beast reared up over Jiri, balancing on its coils, its tusks shining white as bone, white as the fangs of its gaping mouth. Without thinking, Jiri threw her fire at it, striking the monster in its broad chest.

The flames hissed across the grootslang's scales, barely marking them.

"Ah, heat. Pain." The words hissed free from the grootslang's mouth, though its jaws didn't move and its tongue flickered, tasting the air. "I had expected... more."

"It talks?" Khair was moving back, his sword up, his eyes wide.

"Grootslangs are cunning," Jiri said. Fire filled her hand again, but its heat felt useless.

"It just hatched," Dahren said from close behind her.

"My mother shared her thoughts. My father his voice." The grootslang tilted its head, staring down at them. "I've been listening to you speak for weeks as I chipped my way out of my shell. Stupid, greedy words, but they comforted me. Because I knew you were out there, and I was so hungry."

Jiri stepped back, putting worthless space between her and the beast, but Dahren was there. The man grabbed her and she felt his hand, crackling with the threat of magic, pressed against her back.

"No! Dahren shouted. "Not us. Not me or my companion."

Baby's hungry.

"Why not?" Dark amusement filled the grootslang's words. "Because of you, human flesh was my first food. I found it very satisfying."

"And we can give you more." Dahren shook Jiri. "Take her. A morsel, I know, but her village is close. We'll lead you there to eat your fill."

"You—" Jiri started, but Dahren cut her curse off with a wrench of her arm.

"A whole village," the grootslang hissed. "That's what you offer, for your lives?" The beast lowered its head, staring at Jiri, at Dahren. "A sweet gift. Would you lead them to me? Would you portion out their flesh with your own hands and offer it to me, like a sacrifice?"

"Yes," Dahren said. "Just let me live."

The grootslang blinked once, slow, and laughter spilled from its jaws, low and terrible. "I think you would, you miserable creature. I think you would."

"Me too," Jiri growled, and she spun. She ignored the pain as he pulled at her arm, and the mud splattered across her made her slick. Ripping herself out of Dahren's grip, Jiri pulled away from the man. She could see the blue glow that limned his fingers, bright even in the sunlight, and she threw herself back, raising her own hand as she did, and threw her fire.

The flames caught the man in his beard and the oiled hair flared up. Dahren's lunge after her faltered, his hands flailing as he beat at the fire racing across his chest and up toward his face. Jiri lurched through the mud as fast as she could, dimly aware of Dahren shrieking curses, of Khair turning and running, splashing through mud and water as he raced downstream, his sword flashing as his arms pumped. What she was watching, though, was the grootslang.

The beast laughed again, reared up and then drove itself down. Its tusks slammed into Dahren's back, pinning him to the ground. Jiri's hair rose as magic and electricity flared out of the man, tiny bolts of lighting forking through the mud. The grootslang barely seemed to notice, and lifted its head.

Dahren came up with it, screaming. His clothes were soaked in blood, and the spear-sharp tusks of the beast jutted from his belly and chest. He writhed on them, trying to get away, and then jerked when the grootslang's jaws clenched shut on his back with an awful tearing sound. The grootslang bit again, and Dahren fell, legs to one side, chest and head to the other.

The grootslang looked at Jiri, blood dripping from its tusks. "If you're to scream and run, you best start now. It won't take me long to finish this." It dropped its jaws down, plucking flesh bone from the mud, but Jiri had already turned away.

Where?

Thoughts flared through her, desperate, useless. The grootslang was faster than her, and with its ability to pass through water there was almost no chance she could get away. There was only one thing she could do.

Jiri ran for the river, dove in and started swimming. For once, she didn't look for crocodiles. There was something worse behind her now, and she expected that at any moment it would appear under her, rising out of the water, snapping her down. When she reached the far bank, she stumbled out, shocked to still be alive. The other side of the river was empty now, the place where the beast had been marked only with its tracks in the mud and Dahren's blood.

Maybe—but she cut off that thought.

She couldn't escape.

"Useless, ugly, snake-thing! Stupid, scaly, animal! Eater of idiots! You'll never catch me!" Jiri started forward, running as fast as she could, gasping for the spirits to help her. In answer, the brush and vines parted around her, opening a space in the green wall of the jungle, letting her run. And maybe it was an answer to her prayers, too, that she heard a low laugh coming from the water behind her.

∗ ∗ ∗

Jiri didn't make it far.

She stopped, breathing hard, staring at the lake in front of her. It was thin and curved, probably an old loop of the river that had been cut off. Now it stood before her, water still as a mirror. She started moving down its bank, trying to get around it, but she hadn't gone five steps before the beast found her.

"Eater of idiots." The grootslang reared up from the lake, its blunt claws digging into the soft red dirt of the bank. Its eyes stared down at her over the thicket of its tusks. "I like that name. I like that idea."

Jiri raised her hands, fire gathering in them. Maybe if she caught the thing in an eye, it would blind it, slow it. Let her get away, so she could lead it farther. She threw the fire, and it struck the beast square in its face.

The grootslang shook its head, its low laugh a hiss. "And you called me useless," it said, rearing up, its tusks flashing in the sunlight. Jiri whispered to the ancestors she was about to meet, gathering her fire one last time.

Because of that, she missed the water moving behind the beast. Pulling in, rising into a column thicker than the grootslang. She saw it rear up behind the monster, a huge liquid shape, something like a snake but with a vaguely human face and a thousand shifting tendrils that constantly rose and fell from its surface. Those tendrils lashed out at the grootslang, wrapped around its scaly body and pulled it up, away from Jiri.

The beast hissed and writhed, its tail smashing through the column of water, splashing, but the elemental held it close, kept its tusks and jaws and claws away. The grootslang fought, trying to twist like a snake in the elemental's grip, and it didn't notice the massive tiger racing out of the trees toward it until the cat's claws were digging furrows through the scales of the grootslang's belly.

The grootslang shrieked, its writhing struggle scattering the dark-red blood that flowed from its wounds. It whipped its head around, glaring with hate at the great cat that stood on the bank in front of it, and its tail slapped out. The tiger snarled, its gray-shot muzzle pulling back from huge teeth as it ducked the blow, then reared up and slapped at the grootslang's belly again. The cat fell back, and as it moved it changed, drew in on itself, fur and fang swallowed by skin and mud cloth.

"Eater of idiots," Oza growled. "Start with your own tail then, grootslang."

The grootslang stopped moving, hung limp in the water elemental's constantly shifting embrace. "Who are you?" it hissed.

"I'm the one who claims this territory, and all in it. I'm the one that will tear you open and leave your guts for the gars if I ever find you near here again." Oza glared up at the beast, his brown eyes shifting yellow, his hands twisting toward claws. "Do you understand that?"

The grootslang hissed, but its head dipped.

"Go. Find a hunting ground far from here. And if you ever see a human again, think carefully before you strike. We are not all easy meals."

The grootslang's tongue flickered, but it said nothing as the elemental shifted around it, placing its liquid body in front of Oza and Jiri as it let the beast go. The grootslang slipped into the water and vanished, gone, leaving only the reek of its blood behind.

Jiri stood shaking in the mud, staring at her teacher.

"Hadzi couldn't have reached you that fast."

"I never saw Hadzi. The wara sent for me, after hearing that you and the boy and his father were swept away. I came back as fast as I could. Just fast enough, it seems." Oza raised his hand, touched it to the necklace of carved fetishes that he wore, and bowed his head to the elemental. The shifting column of water bobbed in acknowledgment of his thanks and slowly collapsed back into the lake, leaving barely a ripple behind.

Oza held out his hand, and Jiri took it, felt his skin cool against her palm, still hot with the fire she had been ready to throw before she died.

"I—" Jiri shuddered, and made herself breathe. She wanted to collapse, or to throw herself into Oza's arms, but she made herself stand still, straight. "I didn't catch Thirty Trees on fire. But I'm not sure this went well."

"You're not?" Oza said. "Boro is well, along with all of those that had gathered around the wreck. Fumo and Hadzi are safe. And you." Oza looked around at the jungle that surrounded them. "I almost didn't make it, almost didn't find you. Because you didn't run toward the village, or toward the city where I was. You ran to nowhere. You were leading that thing away, weren't you? From the village, from the city."

"I wasn't strong enough to stop it," Jiri said. "I couldn't do anything else."

"You did all that you could."

"All that I could," Jiri said. "And it wasn't enough."

"Jiri," Oza said. "The beast is gone. Thirty Trees is safe. And you're still alive. All that you could was just exactly enough."

"Oh," she said, and the vast, sudden relief she felt at his words made her legs weak. She gripped his hand tighter. "Can we go home, then?"

"Yes." Oza began to walk back, the jungle bending around him, the spirits of the plants honoring him with a clear path.

Jiri followed, suddenly very, very tired. But a thought snagged at her. "Are you angry at Fumo?"

"We will have words," Oza said, his voice suddenly ominous, traced, it seemed, with a tiger's growl.

"Good," Jiri said. "Can I watch?"

Coming Next Week: A sample chapter from Josh Vogt's brand-new Pathfinder Tales novel, Forge of Ashes.

Gary Kloster is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel Firesoul, featuring the further adventures of Jiri. His short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Apex, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Writers of the Future 25. Find him online at garykloster.com.

Illustration by Jasper Sandner.

The Gem

by Gary Kloster

Chapter Three: Taba's Hunt

"It's not really Dahren's boat." Khair was slimmer than his companion, and a little taller, but with their beards and clothes they looked similar. Related, or just foreign, Jiri wasn't sure and didn't really care. She sat with Fumo and Hadzi in the cracked prow of the ship, under the watchful eye of half a dozen hunters. The hunters were Jall tribe, Jiri knew, from their short, dyed braids and the pattern of their mud cloth, but they hadn't introduced themselves. They were far from their lands in the east, working for foreigners and being rude.

"He was renting the boat from some village we found upriver. It was taking us to Kibwe, before that storm washed it away." Khair smiled at them, and he almost seemed sincere. "Thank you for finding it for us."

"What's he saying?" Hadzi whispered to Jiri. The men from Nex used only Taldane, the common trade tongue, except when they whispered together in Kelish. Jiri understood Taldane fine, but while Oza had taught her a little Kelish she could barely make out a word of the men's whispers.

"He thanks us for finding their treasure," Jiri said.

"Are they going to reward us for that?" Fumo muttered. The man had seemed to age twenty years the moment the foreigners had showed up.

"I think that thanks was their reward," Jiri said, then turned her attention back to Khair.

The man was waiting patiently, his fingers combing through his tightly curled beard. "We could use a new boat, now. Does your village have one?"

"No," Jiri said.

"Ah," Khair sighed. "I suppose we'll just have to patch this one up then. More days lost in this stinking, leech-infested jungle." He shook his head and turned away, still stroking his beard, and Jiri had a sudden, fervent hope that at least a few leeches would someday find their way into that carefully tended garden of hair.

"Nexians." Fumo's fists drummed against the ships ribs. "A Nexian trader cheated my brother-in-law's youngest sister once, in Kibwe. You can't trust them."

Because they won't let you take their lost property?

Jiri didn't bother to say the words. The Nexians and their Jall hirelings were rude, but they hadn't treated them badly otherwise, and the fact that they were going to be hauling that great gem away from Thirty Trees didn't bother Jiri a bit.

Whatever that thing is, treasure or not, it's trouble. She watched Khair and Dahren come together in the center of the boat and leaned forward as they spoke, straining her ears. They spoke too fast, but she picked out the words for boat and trade, daylight and... baby? Child? That didn't seem right. Jiri sighed and wished she had studied harder when Oza had taught her languages.

It's not my fault that there are so many. She wondered when the Nexians would finally let them go. When they think their gem is safe, I suppose. Dahren had opened up the broken crate to carefully examine the stone, revealing it to be a huge oval, like a seed made of glass that gleamed in the steady glow of his spell-light. She watched them stare at it as they talked, Dahren's face calculating, Khair's frowning, anxious but trying to hide it, and wondered again what it was.

They're certainly acting like it's a treasure. But Khair seems almost afraid of it. A gem. A hippo-sized gem. What is it? The question buzzed in Jiri's head, almost making a connection but not quite, almost... What did Dahren say about a child? No, it wasn't that, or baby, the word was—

"Hatchling." Jiri whispered the word, and she was on her feet, staring at the great gem in horror. Oza had told her about something like this. He had told her about all the things that lived in the jungle around them, small and great. The size of it, though—that had tricked her. Not even the mokele-mbembe laid eggs this great.

"Khair." Jiri walked toward the trader, ignoring the Jall. They looked down at her, at the muddy medicine pouch that hung on her hip and proclaimed her a shaman, and let her by. "Do you know what that is?"

"I know what Dahren thinks it is. And what it's worth to the fleshforges back home, if he's right."

When profit awaits, Dahren is willing to take any risk.

"You'll never get it there," Jiri said. "Touch it. You can feel something moving inside. It's close to hatching."

"Jiri, what are you—" Fumo started, but Dahren cut him off.

"If it hatches, we'll cage it."

Jiri stared at the foreigner, stunned by his idiocy. "You think you can cage a grootslang?"

"Grootslang?" Hadzi said behind her. "What are you saying about a groot—"

"One fresh-hatched? Yes." Dahren stared down at Jiri as if she were something he had found crawling across his skin. "We've put together a cage, a wagon, a whole caravan for this beast. It's taken me almost seven years to find something of value in this green hell, and I will make my fortune from it, mosquitoes, snakes, sickness, storms, sinking boats, and short, bothersome natives be damned. Now shut up and leave me alone, so I can take this beast that scares you so much far from your fetid home."

"A caravan," Jiri said. "You're taking this thing to Kibwe."

"Only for a little while," Khair said, trying to sound soothing. "We'll be moving on as soon as we can."

"You can't take a monster like that to a city," Jiri snapped. "How many will die when that thing hatches out, hungry?"

"It won't get free!" Dahren shouted, his face twisting into anger. "Gods, I've had this argument enough with him." He jabbed his finger at Khair. "I don't need to have it with you, girl. Now shut up before I gag you."

Jiri watched him stomp away, then looked over at the Jall hunter who stood closest to her. "Did you know what you were helping them do?"

The woman pushed her yellow braids back and shrugged. "Our shaman told us what they had found. We decided that if they wanted to take it far from our lands, we wouldn't argue. And they pay well."

"And if that thing hatches here? Or in Kibwe?"

"Then that's their problem." The voice came from Jiri's other side, from a man who stood taller and broader than any of the other Jall. The skin of his chest was marked with the rough, twisting scars of leopard claws. "Or yours, I suppose, if they can't hold it."

"You're a blessing to your ancestors," Jiri growled and sat down beside Hadzi again, staring at the huge egg. The light caught in its rough facets shimmered, as if the whole huge thing had trembled.

"A grootslang?" Hadzi said. "Like in the stories?"

Jiri nodded. Oza had told them all the legend of the grootslang. How the gods had made them too powerful, and how they had taken them apart, separating their forms into serpents and elephants. But some had escaped the gods, and stayed what they were.

Deadly.

From her other side, she heard Fumo. "I— Why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you know?"

Blocking Fumo out, Jiri stared at the egg, and watched as it shook again.

∗ ∗ ∗

When morning came, the river had dropped enough to reveal that the boat was thoroughly stranded, wedged into the trees that had caught it in a mud bank yards away from the river's normal edge.

Dahren had cursed, then told the Jall to start pulling apart the boat to make a raft, which they had done after he had offered up enough coin. Fumo and Hadzi, with nothing else to do, had taken some of that coin and gone to work, too.

Jiri just stood near the boat, exhausted from a sleepless night, and watched the gemlike egg.

"How long do you think we have?" Khair stood next to her, his boots almost swallowed by the mud.

"How long has it been shaking like that?" Jiri asked.

"Since we found it. About three weeks. Dahren says it will take it a long time for it to crack that shell."

"Three weeks is a long time," Jiri said.

Khair swore softly. "I've put too much money into this. If that thing gets away..."

"My village is nearby, along with everyone I know and love," Jiri said. "Your coin—"

There was a sound, a brittle pop that brought Jiri up short. "Gods and crocodiles," she hissed, and ran forward. The crack didn't take long to find, a thing as long as her arm and wide as her smallest finger, running across the top of the egg. She tore her eyes away from it, saw the Nexians and the Jall, Fumo and Hadzi, all standing still and staring at the stone.

"Gods damn me." Dahren came forward, staring at the crack. "I'll not lose this thing now."

"You have no cage here," Jiri said.

Dahren spared a glare for her, then shouted. "Taba!" The tall, scarred Jall came through the mud to him. "You're always bragging about your hunting. Well, here's a chance to demonstrate your skill. When that thing breaks free, kill it and I'll fill your palm with gold."

"Dahren!" Khair shouted. "It's worth so much more alive!"

"It's worth nothing if it gets away!" Dahren backed off as Taba took up a spear and found a position beside the stone.

"This is a bad idea, Taba," Jiri told him, but the man shrugged.

"I killed a leopard with just a knife once. I can kill a newborn monster with a spear."

Jiri backed away, until she reached Fumo and Hadzi. "Go," she told them.

Fumo looked at her, his eyes wide with fear, and started to back away. None of the Jall cared. But Hadzi hesitated. "What are you doing?"

"I have to see what happens. You have to go." From the wreckage of the boat came another sharp pop, and even from here Jiri could see the cracks running across the surface of the egg. "Go. Get to Kibwe. Get Oza. Go!"

Fumo reached out, caught Hadzi's arm and pulled him after. "May all the spirits be with you, shaman," he said, his farewell sounding formal, final. Then they were gone into the jungle.

Clenching her fists, Jiri turned back toward the boat and started walking forward. In her hands, she could feel heat building, could feel the fire that came so easily to her when she was angry or scared, and she welcomed it. The egg trembled again, and this time a plate of clear gemstone the size of Jiri's head cracked free, sliding down from the top of the stone. Something flickered behind it, and Taba raised his spear, the heavy muscles of his back tightening. Everyone else was silent, still, watching.

The attack came fast as a lightning stroke.

Something whipped out of the hole that had been broken in the egg, something thin and flexible, like a rope of scale and muscle. It wrapped around Taba's waist, catching him and then slamming him forward into the egg. Jiri could hear the wet snap of bone breaking beneath flesh, and then there came another sound, a sharp, liquid noise, like branches cracking in mud, and Taba's body jerked. The smooth skin of his back broke, and there were six points jutting out of it, white things covered in red gore, needle sharp and long as speartips. Then they vanished, and Taba fell, crashing down at the base of the egg, flopping limply back like a broken doll.

The scars the leopard claws had left on him were gone, lost in the red ruin of what had been his chest.

The Jall ran then. Jiri barely noticed their flight, silent and panicked through the mud and into the jungle, gone. She was too focused on the egg, its shining surface now coated crimson.

Not here. Not here, no, not here.

But the gleaming eggshell crumbled, falling apart as the beast pulled its way out into the sun.

Coming Next Week: An angry hatchling in Chapter Four of Gary Kloster's "The Gem."

Gary Kloster is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel Firesoul, featuring the further adventures of Jiri. His short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Apex, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Writers of the Future 25. Find him online at garykloster.com.

Illustration by Jasper Sandner.

The Gem

by Gary Kloster

Chapter Two: Thirty Trees' Treasure

The crocodile's jaws looked as big as Jiri. Its huge tail pushed it with the flooded river's current, angling toward the drift of brush that Jiri clung to. It would slam into that loose pile of logs and knock Jiri, Fumo, and Boro into the water.

Where they would all get to see exactly how big the crocodile's jaws were.

"Girl, are you as useless as you are cursed?" Fumo shouted. "Use your fire!"

Jiri could feel the fire in her hands, and the logs she clung to were beginning to steam with its heat, but she ignored it, ignored Fumo.

I don't think I'd hit it. I don't think it would turn it if I did.

Turn it.

Jiri held the fire inside her and reached instead for another spirit, tangling her soul in its magic, calling for its aid. In the river beside the crocodile, a fin broke through, bright pink against the dull-red water. The river dolphin Jiri's magic had summoned was barely a third the size of the crocodile, and Jiri doubted the armored reptile was hurt when the dolphin rammed into it, but that didn't matter. The charging attack, and then the crocodile's twisting reaction to it, was enough. The flood current caught the reptile and swept it away from the snag, rushing the animal downstream.

"Thank you," Jiri shouted to the dolphin as it jumped up out of the water and disappeared. She clambered to Boro and drove her hand underwater, reaching for his caught foot. Her head almost went under before she found it, jammed into the crook of a branch. Boro's muscles tightened in pain under her hand as she pulled at it, but it wouldn't come loose.

"Hold him," she told Fumo. Jiri stopped pulling and shoved against Boro's stuck foot instead, twisting it hard. Boro shouted, and his hand tore at Jiri's braids, but she fought away and pushed until Boro's ankle popped beneath her hand and his foot came free. Jiri almost fell between the logs as Fumo jerked his son up, out of the water, safe.

∗ ∗ ∗

"You broke his ankle." Fumo frowned down at his son's twisted, swollen leg as Hadzi laid him out on the stone outcrop.

"I had to," Jiri said, bending over the young man. "To get him free."

"I know that," Fumo said, shaking his head. "But I thought you could have done some kind of magic. I could have popped his ankle."

"You should have," Jiri said.

"I—" Fumo started, but Jiri raised her voice over his protest.

"Hold him still."

"I can hold still," Boro said through clenched teeth.

"Of course," Jiri said, her scalp still aching from where Boro had tried to rip out her braids, and looked at Fumo. The man frowned at her, but he bent to grab his son and held him down, ignoring his curses. Those curses turned incoherent when Jiri took Boro's injured foot by the big toe, pulling up until the bones slid into place and his foot was no longer twisted at an angle. Then Jiri called on the spirits, asking them to help, to heal.

Boro relaxed suddenly. Below Jiri's hands, his swollen ankle shrank to its normal size, marked only with the mottling of old bruises.

Happy now, Fumo? Could you have done that? Jiri kept her thoughts quiet this time, though.

"Oh, thank all my ancestors," Boro groaned. "And you, shaman. You saved my life."

Jiri shrugged, embarrassed and unsure, especially when she realized that everyone was staring at her. "It's—I— We should go back. It's dangerous near this water."

"Two can take Boro back," Fumo said. "I need the others."

"For what?" Jiri stood, acutely aware that Fumo wouldn't have spoken to Oza like that. "That snag could tear apart at any moment. Nothing's worth the risk of being out there when that happens."

"This is."

Jiri frowned at Fumo. The man was second only to the wara in the village. And Oza, of course. But he liked to act like he owned Kibwe. "Show me."

∗ ∗ ∗

The boat lay at an angle in the snag. Jiri moved carefully across the tilted wood planks that made a deck over the back half of the boat. The front was open, and she could see bits of cargo and debris floating on the water that swirled around the ship's ribs.

"Here," Fumo said, dropping down from the deck. Jiri followed, and stared at the dark hollow beneath the deck. A single crate filled the space, taller than Fumo and wider than both of them together, its wood so raw it still bled sap. Thick ropes lashed it in place, but the crate was scarred from where other cargo had slammed into it. Fumo pointed to a broken gap in its side.

Jiri plucked a stick out of the water splashing around her feet and called to the spirits as her hand swept through the air. Shadows flickered and vanished behind her fingers as she gathered sunlight and shaped it into a glowing golden ball that she fixed to the end of the stick.

In her spell-wrought light, the rough facets of the gem that filled that huge crate gleamed like a hundred thousand stars.

Hadzi hopes to one day become the wara himself.

∗ ∗ ∗

"That thing is worth a thousand mango harvests." Fumo's hands worked, splicing broken ropes together. "We'll all be rich."

"It's not ours," Jiri said.

"It is now," Hadzi said. "We found it. A diamond almost as big as a hippo!"

"A diamond," Jiri said. She reached through the broken crate and rested her hand lightly on the huge gem. It felt hard and cool beneath her palm, like rough glass. Then a shudder ran through it, as if some unseen blow had struck the shining stone. The whole boat was shaking as the river rolled around it, and it might have been just that, but...

"Can gems even be this big?" Jiri said.

"They are in stories," Hadzi said. His smile lit his face, making him even more handsome, but that wasn't enough to pull Jiri's thoughts out of the spiral that they were caught in.

Oza told me something, once, about a great jewel. A story? Some legend about lost treasures, like he told to the village children sometimes? Jiri pulled her hand away from the rough surface of the gem. No. Something else.

A warning?

She couldn't remember.

"Hadzi, take this." Fumo handed his son one end of the rope he'd spliced together. "Tie it to those braces. We'll anchor the ship to those trees, and move the gem as soon as the water drops."

If this whole boat isn't battered to pieces before then.

Jiri didn't say anything. She had her misgivings, but Fumo didn't, and she didn't think Fumo was going to listen to her. Best to let them finish, then get them off this wreck before it sank.

They would have listened to Oza.

Jiri frowned at the water rushing past, and she saw it. A dark shape in the water, twisting in the current. Her heart quickened, but it wasn't another crocodile. No, she could see the twisted ball of roots at one end, the ragged, broken crown of branches at the other. A whole tree, washed out by the storm. It caught in an eddy and spun in a slow circle, out away from the terrible current of the river's center, spinning away, spinning toward—

"Off the boat!" Jiri whipped around, and Hadzi was staring up at her curiously from the knots he was tying, while Fumo was shouting at a woman on the rock, telling her to tie off a line. "Off!" Jiri shouted. "Now!" She started to scramble up the slanted ribs of the boat, but she was already too late. She heard the splintering crash as the broken roots of the downed tree slammed into the ragged edge of the logjam the boat was caught in. Fumo looked back, his eyes wide, as the boat jumped beneath them like a guinea hen taking flight.

The side of the boat rose up and slapped Jiri. For a moment the world was just swirling color, bleeding toward darkness, but she wrenched her senses back. She was tumbling with the tilting boat, heading toward the water. Lashing out, her hand closed on the edge of a broken rail. The rough wood tore at her palm but she held on tight, stopping her slide. Then something smashed into her.

Heavy, it rolled over her, almost ripping her from her grip. She cursed, and the thing cursed back, and her free hand reached out and caught a handful of cloth. Hands grabbed her back, and she looked down to see Fumo gripping her leg.

"Can you hold?" he shouted.

Jiri's hand was in agony, splinters driving into it as Fumo's weight pulled at her. "Yes," she hissed between gritted teeth. Throwing her head back, she saw Hadzi clinging tightly to the ropes he had been knotting into the boat's bracing. "Help," she grated as the boat spun in sickening circles, its wood groaning and popping.

Hadzi took his rope and started crawling down the tilted hull toward them. When he moved, the boat tipped more, the edge of the hull dipping toward the swirling water.

"No!" Jiri shouted.

"Keep still, idiot boy, you'll sink us!" Fumo yelled. "Throw the rope!"

Hadzi shifted back up, the boat shifting a fraction with him, and threw the rope. It landed across Jiri's face, but with both hands full there was nothing she could do about it but curse. Then the agony in her hand diminished. Fumo had caught the rope and let go of her. Gasping in relief, Jiri almost let go, but that would still kill her, and she made her fingers hold on until Fumo pulled himself past her. He caught the collar of her shirt, jerking on it, and Jiri let go then.

Jiri slid enough to choke on the collar of her shirt, but she didn't fight. She let Fumo haul her up to where Hadzi was, and the boat tilted back a little more toward even as their weight counterbalanced some of the weight of the gem's crate, which had shifted when the tree had struck them.

"What do we do now?" Hadzi said, clinging to the braces that held up the boat's half-deck.

Jiri took hold of a brace beside him with aching arms, trying to wedge herself into place with her legs. The boat was jumping and jerking, spinning in wide circles, and over its side Jiri could see the jungle rushing past. The collision had knocked them free of the rest of the brush and out into the river, and now—

"Hold on," she gasped. The boat lurched again, the whole thing groaning, and then its spinning slowed. We're coming out of the current. Maybe we'll—

With a crunch the ship slammed to a halt. Jiri found herself tumbling again, but this time she landed on something softer. Hadzi cursed beneath her, but they weren't moving anymore. Jiri pulled herself up off him and stared over the rail.

The boat had been swept into a backwater, where it had crashed into a stand of gaboon trees, wedging its prow between their trunks. The water around them was moving slowly now, and not far away Jiri could see hummocks of earth rising out of it.

"Thank you, all my laughing ancestors," Jiri sighed.

"This is good." Fumo had climbed up onto the half-deck and was staring around. "I know this place. We're only a little farther from the village, and the boat's secure. We'll be able to get the gem back once the water's gone down."

"Is that what matters?" Jiri stared down at her hand, the palm rubbed raw and stubbled with splinters. "What about the others?"

Fumo frowned at her. "They were safe on the stone, out of the river."

"Safe, if one of your ropes didn't knock them in when it tore free. If that happened, then they're probably dead."

"What is wrong with you, girl?" Fumo pointed at the crate. The wood had split, and the gem was easy to see now, flashing in the sun like clear water. "Don't you think that's worth a little risk?"

"I don't know," Jiri said. "Because I don't know what that thing is."

"It's our treasure. Thirty Trees' treasure. We just need to wait for the others to come downstream and find us, and we can take it home." Fumo settled himself down on the deck, rubbing at the great bruise that was blossoming on his side. "It will be good, Jiri. Imagine what Oza will say."

Imagine. Jiri kept that to herself, and started to pull the splinters out of her palm.

∗ ∗ ∗

It was almost night before they finally heard voices. They drifted in from the shadows beneath the trees and echoed off the water that was slowly draining away as the river gradually shrank beside them.

"Finally," Fumo said.

Jiri peered too into the twilight-dark trees and caught a flash of light—not the flickering of a torch, but the steady glow of spell-caught light.

Is Oza back already? Can I turn this mess over to him?

The light rounded the edge of the stand of gaboons and Jiri stared at the man who held it. A heavier man than Oza, with short hair and a long beard, skin the color of sand, and the strange, layered clothes of a foreigner.

"Who are you," the man called out. "And what are you doing on my boat?"

Coming Next Week: Unexpected visitors in Chapter Three of Gary Kloster's "The Gem."

Gary Kloster is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel Firesoul, featuring the further adventures of Jiri. His short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Apex, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Writers of the Future 25. Find him online at garykloster.com.

Illustration by Jasper Sandner.

The Gem

by Gary Kloster

Chapter One: Gods and Crocodiles

Outside, the children of Thirty Trees laughed and their parents talked, monkeys chattered in the canopy and birds sang to the morning sun. But inside the little house that Jiri shared with Oza, the only sound that mattered was the muted clicks of the clay pots her teacher was packing into his bag.

"They think I'll burn the village down." Jiri swung her feet and her hammock stirred beneath her, an unsteady motion that matched her mood.

"They don't think that." Oza, shaman of Thirty Trees, pulled the ties of his bag tight. "Well, not all of them."

"Most of them." Jiri's feet kicked too hard, and her hammock tipped. Used to its treachery, she dropped out before it could dump her. "They don't trust me. They only made me a Mosa because you wanted them to, and they love you. But I'm not you, Oza."

"Thank the spirits." Oza stood, the short braids of his graying hair brushing against the baskets of dried herbs and roots that hung overhead. "If there were two of me, we'd need a bigger house."`

Jiri frowned up at her teacher. She didn't like being reminded that her growth had stopped well before she had wanted it to, leaving her shorter than any other adult in Thirty Trees. "You'd have to make it bigger, or you'd choke on all the old-man farts," she grumbled.

Oza laughed, and Jiri smiled a little at the sound, but inside...

They don't trust me. Her eyes rose to the cone of their roof. They had replaced the thatch that had burned, but she could still see the charred beams from that night. One nightmare, and I almost killed us.

Oza's laughter faded when he saw her gaze shift, and his face grew serious. "It's been almost a year, Jiri, and that was the last time."

Oza was right. Almost a year had passed since that night Jiri had woken in terror from her dream of being trapped somewhere dark, somewhere deep, and seen the flames birthed by her anger and fear dancing overhead. But she still remembered that surge of joy, of triumph, that had flooded through her at the sight of the fire twisting like red and yellow vines through the thatch. She also remembered how that triumph and joy had crumbled into horror when she realized what she had done.

If it hadn't been raining, if Oza hadn't been ready with his magic, the whole house would have burned. Maybe the whole village.

Jiri had worked so hard since then. Practicing the meditations that Oza had taught her, walking the spirit world with him, learning to control her magic and her ability to call the spirits to her, to bargain with them for their power. She had learned control. The water bucket no longer sat full beside Oza's hammock. But...

The spirit of fire is always there, waiting, so eager for me to call it, so eager to serve. To burn, and destroy. Jiri rubbed her hands together, hands that should have been marked with scars from all the times she had burned herself with her magic as a child. Oza had always been there to heal her, though, to fix the damage that she had caused. And now he was going, leaving her alone for the first time that she could remember. Jiri realized heat was gathering in the fists her hands had made, and the feel of it was comforting and terrifying all at once.

She breathed, in and out, focusing on herself, separating her spirit from the fire, putting its bright magic to the side. When she had control again, she looked up and found Oza's eyes on her, serious and patient.

"Mosa Jiri Maju," he said. "There will always be those who don't trust you. What matters is that you trust yourself. Like I trust you." Oza brushed back Jiri's long braids with a calloused hand. "You are strong in magic. You may be stronger than me someday. That's a dangerous blessing, and there will be times it feels like a curse. But your spirit is good. You will be a great shaman for your people."

"Even if they're not sure they want to be my people?" Jiri asked.

"They may not have that choice," Oza said. He smiled again, though his eyes stayed serious. "You may be shaman to more than this one village, this one tribe, someday. But for the next two days, you are the shaman of Thirty Trees. Which I'm sure will still be standing when I come back from Kibwe."

"Unless that giant crocodile we had three years ago comes back. Or that band of charau-ka that tried to raid us last harvest."

"Why worry small?" Oza said. "Why not both at once?"

"Because then we'd just feed the charau-ka to the crocodile and poison it." Jiri frowned at her teacher. "But what if—"

"What if dragons, or kongamato, or inkanyamba, or any other of the great beasts I've taught you about? What if demons or the Gorilla King himself? Then you can send someone to fetch me. Kibwe's less than a day away. But I think what you need to be ready for is spider-bites, fireweed itch, and arguments over how often you should bless the mango trees. Those are things I know you can handle." Oza hoisted his bag to his shoulder and reached out his hand. Jiri touched his palm with hers, and they gripped fingers for a long moment. Then Jiri let go with a sigh.

"Gods, spirits, and ancestors, may they watch, protect, and guide," Oza said in farewell. But he had barely stepped out the door before a thickset older man stopped him. It was Mazi, the wara of Thirty Trees.

Everyone in Thirty Trees respects Oza's wisdom.

"Shaman! Thank all my ancestors that you have not left yet. I need to speak to you about something urgent."

Jiri twitched, fear flooding into her, and relief that Oza was still there.

"What is it?" Oza asked.

"It is a matter that is best kept quiet," Mazi said. The village's leader stepped close to Oza, and Jiri had to strain to hear him. "Something bit me. In a very, ah, tender place. The itch is unbearable."

"Ah." Oza turned back toward his house, catching Jiri's eye. His face was serious, but his eyes weren't. "Jiri will be able to help with that."

"Yes. Jiri. Well." Mazi shifted uncomfortably, and Jiri noticed how the wara was carefully holding the loose cotton of his mud cloth away from his skin. "Couldn't you—"

"I follow the spirits, Wara," Oza said solemnly. "And they say I must be off. Jiri will heal you." Oza looked once more at Jiri, the corner of his mouth barely crooked into a smile. She frowned back at him, but smoothed her face carefully as she stepped out into the morning sun.

"Wara. Please, let me help. Or would you rather wait until Oza returns?"

Mazi watched the older shaman stride away and sighed. "No. Just... no fire," he said as he shuffled past her, into her house.

Jiri turned her back on all the other villagers who happened to be standing around outside, hiding their smiles with varying degrees of success.

"No fire," she said.

Maybe the giant crocodile wouldn't have been so bad.

∗ ∗ ∗

"I'm sorry," Jiri said. "She's dead."

"Ancestors cry." Dama shifted her baby on her hip and sighed. "White Ear was my best milker, but she was never the smartest goat. Drowning in a puddle, though? I didn't think she was that stupid."

Jiri pulled her feet with some difficulty out of the deep mud and splashed out of the pool that her neighbor had found White Ear bobbing in. "It's surprisingly deep," she said, wringing out the bottom of her shirt. Yesterday, after Oza had left, it had started raining. This was not unusual in the Mwangi, where rained most days this time of year. But this rain had been heavy, and had lasted through the night, only clearing after dawn. Now the jungle steamed and dripped in the morning sun, and the children were sliding through the red mud and playing in the little streams that ran between, and sometimes through, Thirty Trees' houses.

Their parents seemed less amused.

"Neh." Dama shook her head. "Mud everywhere, and now I have to butcher a goat. At least we'll eat well tonight. Join us?"

"Thank you. I—"

"Jiri! Where's Oza?"

Jiri spun when she heard her name and saw the young man running up. Hadzi. The boy that Oza had been teasing her about for the past year, the boy that she had such trouble looking at when he was looking at her, but whom she could stare at quite happily when he was doing anything else. For a moment Jiri was acutely aware that she was covered in mud and goat hair, her braids an unruly tangle around her face. That feeling flashed away, though, when Hadzi splashed to a stop in front of her. He was breathing hard, covered in mud and soaked in water and sweat, and his eyes were wide in his handsome face.

"Oza's still in Kibwe. What's happened?"

"Boro." Hadzi gasped his brother's name. "In trouble. At the river."

"Take me," Jiri said, and she followed when he turned and started to run again.

∗ ∗ ∗

They reached the river too early.

Rain-swollen, the dirt-red water had spread far beyond its usual banks. Jiri splashed through it behind Hadzi, stumbling over hidden brush, hoping not to fall into a hole, eyes searching for crocodiles.

"Here," Hadzi said, rounding the big gaboon tree that marked where the trail they were trying to follow turned toward the river's usual banks. "Oza's gone! I brought Jiri!" he shouted as he disappeared behind the tree's buttress roots.

Jiri thought she might have heard a curse answer Hadzi's shout, but she was too distracted to worry about it when she came around the tree. Below her, the jungle opened up and she could see the river proper. Normally narrow and placid, it had become a red-brown monster, its center churning with foam and drifting debris as it rushed by. Close to them, a great pile of branches and small trees had caught against the massive, moss-covered stone that normally stood at the river's edge. Tangled in that wrack of limbs and roots was a boat, one of the big river ships that ran cargo between Kibwe and the outer villages. Clustered on the stone over the wreck was a group from the village, young men and women mostly. Out on the snag, Jiri spotted Fumo, Hadzi's father, balanced on a tree trunk beside the boat, holding something that lay half in the water.

Boro.

Jiri splashed her way down toward the stone. The water rose rapidly, over her knees, to her waist, almost up to her arms, and she cursed her shortness as the current shoved at her and she had to half-swim to reach the outcrop. Hands grabbed her when she got close, yanking her out of the dangerous water, but she didn't feel much safer perched on the moss-covered rock. Still, the stone was much more certain than the unsteady wrack of logs. Carefully, Jiri stepped out onto a broken tree trunk. Then she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled forward, moving from trunk to branch to trunk toward Fumo, ignoring the constant shaking of the brush beneath her.

The man clung to a thick log, arms wrapped around Boro, holding him up. Boro's teeth were locked in pain, and he was twisted at a strange angle, his right leg under the water. Caught, Jiri realized, trapped by some shifting branch. Without his father's hold, he would be jerked down and crushed between the logs or drowned.

Fumo looked at her, his arms shaking. "I can't hold him like this much longer."

Gods and crocodiles, Jiri thought, staring at Boro. What would Oza do?

What can I do?

Then one of the women crouching on the stone behind them shouted.

"Look out!"

Jiri looked up and saw it, a black-green shape being swept along by the river's current, but angling toward them. It could have been a fallen tree—it was big enough—but she knew what it was immediately.

"Gods and crocodiles," she swore again, watching the massive reptile swim toward them.

Coming Next Week: River dangers in Chapter Two of Gary Kloster's "The Gem."

Gary Kloster is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel Firesoul, featuring the further adventures of Jiri. His short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Apex, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Writers of the Future 25. Find him online at garykloster.com.

Illustration by Davi Blight.