Daine looked at the water image in front of her, and shivered. It showed Corus, the Tortallan capital, with its crowds, rich marketplaces, and temples. A giant, ghostly rat crept through the streets, thrusting his nose into windows and doorways. He licked a man who was making a speech in front of the stocks: The man began to cough. A woman brought him a dipper of water; he could barely drink it. Two men helped him to sit. The ghosts of tiny rats flowed from his mouth, landing on those who had gathered around him.
“Slaughter has been out since May,” Broad Foot said. “Malady, though, and Starvation—what you heard were the gates to their dwellings being opened.”
“The Three Sorrows,” whispered Numair, making the Sign against evil on his chest.
Daine copied him in the Sign; her skin prickled. Leaf curled around her neck to see. Now it rubbed its tiny head, with its green hat, against her cheek. Jelly had vanished into Daine’s pocket when the three images had appeared in the water.
“They are the siblings of the gods,” the duckmole explained. “Their appearance causes great changes, many for the good—”
“I doubt the ones they kill think so,” murmured Daine. She looked at the duckmole, thinking hard. It was one thing to ask the badger for help, another to ask the duckmole. Broad Foot had nothing to do with her, really, or with humankind—there were no two-leggers in the lands where his mortal children lived.
“You know,” said the mage casually, “the more disorder that is created in the mortal realms, the more power that Uusoae will have to use. Or so it appears to me.”
Daine took her cue from the man. “I bet that Chaos will feed on this. How can she not, when all three Sorrows are wandering loose?”
The duckmole sighed. “So that’s it. You want me to halt the Sorrows.” He scratched himself. “I can’t stop them all,” he warned them. “They are strong. They ought to be, with humans feeding them for centuries. I can only hold one, and I’ll have to remain in the mortal realms to keep it from breaking loose. The Great Gods themselves could do no better. Some powers cannot be ruled, even by the mightiest.”
Daine and Numair traded worried looks. Choose between Slaughter, Malady, and Starvation?
“Who are we to say which roams free?” whispered the girl. “If we ask to hold Slaughter, Malady and Starvation will kill hoards of folk—but if we hold Starvation, which kills slow, the other two will wipe out large numbers. . . .” Her throat closed.
“Armed humans can defend themselves,” Numair said, thinking aloud. “Hopefully Starvation can be held at bay through food imports. But Malady. . . .” He shuddered. “Malady doesn’t care who it takes, or how many. Malady can wipe out armies and leave no one in the Yamani Islands or Carthak to farm the land.”
“And it’s just out,” added the duckmole. “It’s weak still.”
Daine shivered and tried not to think of friends killed in battle, or dying slowly of hunger. “Malady,” she whispered. “If it can be only one, let it be that.”
Broad Foot rocked from side to side, muttering. At last he stopped. “Stay on the path,” he ordered. “It is a fixed thing, even on the Sea of Sand. It will lead you to the Dragonlands. Getting in, of course, is your affair.”
“Of course,” murmured Numair.
Daine knelt to face him. “I’ll owe you for this, Broad Foot.”
“So will I,” added the man.
“It is only fair. If you can force Uusoae to reveal herself, and save the divine and mortal realms, we ought to do some things for you. Be careful, then.” Silver fire gathered around his small body, and he vanished.
“What will we do if the dragons refuse?” Daine asked Numair.
“Fret about them later,” he said, gathering their things as she quickly finished her lunch. “I’m worried about crossing the Sea of Sand, if Rikash doesn’t help us.”
Daine stowed her pack and quiver on her back. “What’s wrong with the Sea of Sand?”
“I keep forgetting that we haven’t both made a study of myths and legends,” remarked Numair, shrugging into his own pack. “The Sea of Sand is more than a desert. It’s said the Great Gods take mortal heroes there—though Alanna the Champion never mentioned such an experience. If the hero survives, it is a sign that his—or her—mortal impurities have been seared away.”
Daine winced. “Please, Goddess,” she said, looking up. “Send Rikash with help.” She led the way to the path. “I’m fair confused,” she told Numair. “If I’m in the Divine Realms, why do I look up to pray to the gods? Shouldn’t I be looking somewhere else?”
“Thinking about things like that will give us both headaches,” he replied. “Although I believe that Shuiliya Chiman had visions of the dead praying by looking down. Now, in the lost books of Ekallatum . . .”
Daine smiled. As long as he could talk of learning, Numair would forget anything else, including future dangers. At her belt and on her shoulder, two heads craned toward the mage: The darkings were fascinated.
The path ahead climbed; they stopped often both to rest and to get out of the sun. To the east, the ground fell to a broad river with a sea of grass on its far bank. To the west, the thinning forest gave way bit by bit to scrub and short grasses. Finally, as the afternoon sun beat down without mercy, they stopped near a spring tucked in a rocky cleft. First they ate a meal of bread and fruit, then curled up to sleep until the sun went down.
“What do you mean, ‘no reports’?” The voice was young, male, with the accent of the Copper Isles. “All through this campaign you have been able to say exactly where the enemy is! Now, suddenly, you have no information from your spies? There is a Yamani fleet north of us—what if it is coming here?”
“I have but two spies there, as you know! If there is some way that they have been detected— Put your own idle mages to the task!” Ozorne’s voice was twisted by fury. “You want everything handed you as a gift. But for me, you would have neither courage nor allies to take on Tortall, for all your vows of death to King Jonathan’s line! If you want news, scry for it!”
A hoarse voice added, “General Valmar—if you think perhaps to take your fleet and slip away tonight, or tomorrow, or ever, know this.” From a childhood spent too close to that harsh land for comfort, Daine recognized a Scanran voice. “Every skin of liquid fire that you possess will burn, should I touch it with my Gift. If you throw them overboard, our allies among the merfolk will fasten those skins to your hulls, and I will burn them then. We will not have the Copper Islanders act as they have so often, and forget their vows of allegiance.”
Footsteps—hurried ones—receded. Daine heard metal claws digging into wood.
“The centaurs, too, grow restless,” the Scanran remarked.
“I have hairs from every tail among them, to bind them to me. They’ll sing a very different tune, should I scorch even one.” Ozorne’s voice was sullen.
“Sometime you must tell me how you first had information so detailed that one might think you perched on the shoulders of the northern defenders, and now you have nothing. I look forward to hearing.”
Daine opened her eyes and smiled. The badger and Gold-streak had visited the darkings in northern Tortall, then, and talked them into breaking contact with their creator.
Wanting Numair to sleep a bit more, she wandered over to the spring. On its glittering surface, she looked for news of home. An image formed immediately. In it, Broad Foot clung to one of Malady’s feet. The rat-Sorrow tried to shake him off; the duckmole jammed venomous spurs into Malady’s transparent flesh. Malady stiffened; his reddened eyes went blank. He froze.
Daine blinked. Now she was over Port Legann, so high that men and the ships that blockaded the harbor looked like toys. In the distance to the southwest—the direction of the Copper Isles—she saw the bright flare of torches. The image moved closer and brightened, so that even though it was night, she saw the shapes of ten ships. With the strange, clear sight granted by the water image, she easily read the flags that crowned the masts.
/> Numair asked softly, “Daine?” He was sitting up, frowning.
She began to stuff things into her pack. “The Copper Isles is sending ten ships—they’re flying battle flags—north. I think they’re making for Legann.”
The sun had set. Quickly they packed; before they set out, Jelly changed its seat from Daine’s pocket to Numair’s shoulder.
The land was changing, turning to desert in the west. The path headed that way, gleaming silver under war light and the light of the newly risen moon, sloping down through huge clusters of rock. In the distance a bird leaped from a pinnacle, flying as if it meant to reach the moon. When it pulled in its wings and tail, Daine grabbed Numair’s arm and pointed.
The bird opened itself, spinning on its tail. Lances of silver, blue, and gold light shot from its feathers, an explosion of color over the desert. Within seconds, more dark forms took wing. Each opened itself to the light in a shimmering dance of colors. Unlike the sunbirds, these did not drop back to earth. They spiraled around one another, winding like a river across the scrublands, more of their kind falling in behind them.
“Beau-ti-full,” whispered Leaf beside Daine’s ear. She had been holding her breath. Releasing it, she sighed. “Beautiful,” she agreed, stealing a look at Numair.
Petting Jelly with a finger, he watched the spectacle, eyes glowing with awe. “I wish I could stay, or come back,” he whispered. “So many wonders.”
The way grew steep. Lizards that glowed pale blue or yellow darted across the path, or crouched in stone hollows, tongues flicking out to taste the air as the two mortals went by. The path led among stone formations that looked like cracked and broken pillars tightly jammed together. Wind and grit had cut the soft rock into laddered, fantastic shapes. They made Daine nervous: She had an odd feeling that some hollows in the columns were eyes that tracked her.
She tried to meet one pillar’s gaze. Half hypnotized by it, she searched for the flash of intelligence that she knew was there. Numair and Jelly, far up the trail before they realized she wasn’t behind them, returned for her. “I feel it, too,” the man said quietly, drawing her away from the stone. “I don’t know if this place is dangerous, but I will be happy to get out of here all the same.”
For the next two miles the path followed a narrow slot between deep rock cliffs. Numair’s crystal blazed with light, creating shadows within shadows, turning long hollows into mouths that screamed. The sense of eyes on her was almost unbearable. The hairs at the nape of her neck stood on end.
“Can you—put the staff out?” she asked. “I—I think it makes things worse.”
He nodded. The crystal went dark. She took the lead, making bat ears and cat eyes for herself. Numair saw well in the dark; he also had the moon and the rippling battle flares to light the path.
A fresh breeze hit their faces, air from an open place being funneled into a narrow one. Looking up, Daine could see the edges of rock formations. It was nearly dawn. Just ahead, a stone pedestal rose into the air. On top of it, a massive boulder had been cut by the elements into the shape of a question mark.
“Well, that’s fitting,” Numair remarked.
Daine grinned, her mood lightening. Behind the question rock lay open air and, she hoped, an end to those frozen screams.
To their right, at the edge of a cliff, lay a drop; to their left, stone heights reared. They were on the side of a mountain. Sage clung to the pale soil of the shelf; junipers thrust twisted limbs into the sky from rock clefts above their heads. Across the path, in a swath too wide for them to jump, a Chaos vent had overflowed, its shifting yellow, green, and gray liquid a yard from the cliff’s edge. To get around it and back onto the path, they would have to walk that narrow strip of bare earth between rim and air, then pass a massive clump of odd gray stones.
“Now that’s curious.” Numair frowned. “The indigenous stone is lava rock of the brown variety. These are different. They could be granite.” He walked closer, eyebrows knit, halting a few yards from the spill.
Daine strung her bow and put an arrow to the string, then trailed him. “Indi—what?”
“Indigenous,” he replied quietly. “Local.”
“Why you couldn’t just say local . . .?”
He chuckled as the black, sparkling fire of his Gift flowed out of his hand to wind around the gray rocks. “I’m sorry. I’d meant to do better than my university friends, and not upset people by talking in that abstruse fashion. Then my father complained. He asked how did he know that I even went to those expensive teachers when I spoke just as I always had?”
Daine grinned. “You never told me that. I s’pose once you get used to doing it at home, you forget the rest of the time.”
His magical Gift returned to him. “Those rocks seem all right.”
Impulsively, she cast her magic over the stones. A chasm tore through her magical self, just as it had done with the Skinners. At the edges of her perceptions, the world shifted and rolled; she was drowned in odors and sounds like nothing that could, or should, exist in the natural world. She tried to cry out, but dripping hands closed her mouth.
A sharp pain lanced through her ear. The magical assault ended. It was her own hands that had closed her mouth. Tears ran down her cheeks.
“What happened?” Numair had one arm around her as he fumbled for his handkerchief. She took it with gratitude. “You’re white, you’re—”
“They’re touched with chaos, those stones,” she replied, wiping her eyes. “If I try to use my wild magic to look at something like that, it—it pulls me in.”
“You shouldn’t generalize from one experience—”
“But it wasn’t just one. This made me remember the last time!” She finished wiping her face—particularly her mouth, where she’d felt oozing fingers—and told him what had taken place with the Skinners.
“Then how did you break free this time?” Numair demanded.
“Leaf, you bit me, didn’t you?” she asked, raising a hand to her right ear. Tiny spots of blood came off on her fingers.
“Sorry,” the leaf-wearing blot replied, hanging its head.
“Don’t apologize,” she told it. “Do that whenever you think it’s needful. You just saved me from maybe walking off a cliff.” The darking rubbed its head on her finger.
“For now, we shall delay the question of where it got teeth,” Numair remarked. “Let’s get away from here. Can you walk by those rocks, Daine?”
“Chaos mostly gets me through my magic. I just won’t use it. And it’s not like they’re alive, after all.” She looked at the way around the Chaos vent and rocks, and gulped. Three feet was a small margin between her and the long drop. “You go—I’ll come after.”
Resettling his pack, Numair took the lead as confidently as if he had ten yards, not one, in which to move. Once he cleared the vent’s spill, before he passed out of sight behind the rocks, Daine followed. Watching her feet, she skirted the vent, backing away an inch or two as the shifting-colored substance threw a tentacle in her direction.
Numair cried out. She looked up: A gray stone arm was wrapped around him, lifting him off his feet. Rocky, grinding sounds filled the air as the other stones began to move. Fumbling to get her bow up, Daine stepped back to get a cleaner shot.
The rim of the canyon broke under her weight. With a shriek, she dropped, bow tumbling out of her grip.
SEVEN
FALLING
The first tree didn’t even slow Daine down. Branches, gnarled by the fight to get their share of sun in the narrow canyon below, snapped easily when she hit them. She pulled Leaf from her shoulder and tucked it into her middle, curling into a ball around the darking. Panic swamped her; she could think of nothing but the rush of air and the sickening drop.
The second and third trees that she struck held her a bit longer as they raked her back and legs. The quiver caught on something, nearly dislocating her shoulder. She screamed, and hauled her arm out of the strap. The fourth tree was full of thorns. It kept
her for almost a full breath, and ripped her skin.
She clutched at the branches of the fifth tree, thorns or no, missed her grip, and fell into deep, ice-cold water. Down she and Leaf plummeted, dragged by the pack. Yanked along by a heavy current, she dumped her belongings and shot to the surface, choking.
White water swept her along. Battered against the stony riverbed, she fought to reach the shore. At last she was swept into a calm pool, out of the undertow. Gasping and cursing, she dragged herself and Leaf into the shallows, and looked up.
The sky was a distant blue strip. Earth and rock soared on either side of the canyon. Nowhere in those forbidding walls did she see the trail of broken trees that would mark where she’d come down.
“Not a problem,” she told Leaf, slogging for the rocky shore. “I’ll just take hawk shape and find him—once I catch my breath. Are you all right?”
The darking’s leaf hat was soaked; Leaf itself trembled as devoutly as Jelly had. “No,” it told her flatly.
“Me neither. At least we’re alive.” Daine waded onto dry land.
Had she been herself, she would have seen the odd, regular pattern under scattered dirt and stone. Instead, the trap closed on her the moment that she stepped into it.
Heavy, sticky ropes clamped around her. One strand fell over her eyes; when she opened her mouth to cry out, two more dropped over her lips and nose. Suffocating, she tried to claw at them, only to find that her hands and legs were bound. She tossed her head, fighting to breathe.
Whatever covered her nose peeled back. She sucked in air, ordering her lungs to be happy with what came through her nostrils alone. Her instinct was to feel the gag in her mouth and panic. Sweating, she forced herself to calm down, and breathe slowly.
The Realms of the Gods Page 11