by J. E. Holmes
Days in, Ediline was blood-stained, every inch muddy, every minute sore and tired, and still carrying a mystical ancient weapon that she hated with her whole heart. She was stricken with grief and despair at her failure, at her flight, at everything she had left behind. It was difficult to keep moving, to keep from lying down in the river and letting it carry her until she was apprehended or drowned. But she kept on.
More than the despair and grief at the loss of the only relationships that mattered to her, she was plagued by guilt, because she had been forced to leave Marv behind, the poor little animal. Her best friend. Who would bother to take care of him? Who would know to look?
She was lucky to be alive. Her wounds at the mercy of the river were mostly superficial bruises. No broken bones. Her wounds from Wien and her taibuo was also shallow, and healed well. For once, good fortune had shined on Ediline the Accident.
It rained only intermittently, and that was a relief. She was beyond any territory that was familiar to her, but she kept moving south and east. That would take her away from Tithelk, also away from the mountains, and hopefully she wouldn’t inadvertently veer toward the sea. The last thing she wanted was to stumble upon a bridgetown, but it was also the only thing she wanted. No one would recognize Ediline, but she wouldn’t be able to hide the bloodsword. Even if she had a sheath for it, carrying a sword was enough to stand out.
The air was hot and humid, and she was hungry. She had collected some fruit and nuts and edible leaves but ate sparingly because she didn’t know when it would run out. Wulfgar’s knife proved an invaluable tool, cutting carving and shaving with deft accuracy that the bloodsword couldn’t hope for. Water was abundant, in tiny streams and pools and calm shallows. And several emblems were hers thanks to her careful scouring: nearly twenty deadfish reeds, two fistfuls of windsurge moss, a pocketful of sageleaf, and—best of all—a full clove of obscurant. If she burned it, she could seem to disappear from sight and sound from someone who discovered her. It was a rare, incredibly valuable emblem. Any sources near towns were coveted and protected.
The eighth night after the disaster, heavy clouds shrouded the stars. Soon, it was dark, and the Everquiet set in. She couldn’t light a fire. Too easy to find on a dark night. So she curled in on herself, and when she shut her eyes she pulled memories to her, of her skin aflame, of Javras all around her, of bliss and belonging that she’d held for so brief an instant.
Water as big as a mountain crashed with the intensity of an avalanche, roared with a ferocity no beast could match, and then trickled to a serene stillness. Slowly approaching, there were voices, whispers at first, and then a laugh.
“Get to it,” said a voice opposite the laugh. A man’s, smooth and layered.
“To what?” The laugh became the voice of a woman, rich and full.
“The real issue.”
“More important than your wellbeing? Than your contentment?” The water roared more distantly, just behind the gentle rush of a wide river, an endless sigh. “How you achieve that should not be our concern.”
“They will make it their concern, and you know it. It has happened before.”
“Hm,” said the woman.
“Is that all?”
“It was a concern, before. But it isn’t this time. They will trust my judgment on this.”
“No,” said the man, sadly, disappointed, “they will not.”
“No,” the woman repeated, resigned, “they will not. But I will argue for you to my last.”
There was a long silence, a passage of time when there was only water, only movement among tranquility, and an endless expanse around two people so close that they could simply coexist, and meaning would pass from one to the other without words. The roar of the water began to rise, and small among the cacophony were three words: “I hope not.”
Ediline groaned and rolled onto her back. Pain crunched upon her head from every direction. She blinked at the sunlight and shivered away a brief chill. “Well,” she said to herself, “you slept through the night that time, or something like it.”
Except she didn’t feel rested, and the dreams in the dark had brought her nothing but this fierce headache. She still didn’t trust them, such weird twisted things with no images, just words. Just tricks of the shadows on her mind.
“Time to move,” she reminded herself. After getting back to her feet, she stretched and drank and ate a little. Her stomach begged for more, but she ate only what would soon spoil and kept the rest carefully in her satchel.
Even though there were streams aplenty, and she so hated being covered in mud, the mud would help to conceal her. So, she forced herself not to bathe—well, not to bathe too well. Still a princess, Ediline could only tolerate a stench on herself for so long.
At her own urging, she moved on, traveling south and south more, day after day, surviving and eating scarcely. Her thoughts went to Korv. Her father was dead, killed predictably by Ashwin the Endbearer. Javras’s father was dead, killed less predictably by his own son’s hired assassin. Rule of Tithelk would fall now to Ancil. With fear in her stomach like a fat worm, she worried—had King Maxen had time enough to transform Ancil into a younger more capable version of himself, or was Ancil still enough of the brother she’d loved growing up to bring their kingdom to a better place? She had no answer, only worry to chew.
She wondered whether Javras and his keepers had escaped Ancil’s soldiers and judgment. Surely they would have come up with something. He’d had a plan the whole time—which made her clench her fists and bite down hard—and surely the plan had come with some sort of escape attached to it, she had to tell herself.
But of one thing she was certain: she had gotten away from Sladt, from Korv, but she would not be allowed to remain free while she carried the bloodsword. There were people coming after her. She could feel it. It was just a matter of evading them until she figured out what to do next.
The sky darkened overhead. Ediline had passed yet another night on the run—thirteen of them now—but the stars had been plenty, the sky clear, and her sleep had been sound. She actually felt well-rested for the first time since her escape. Now the darkening sky worried her. It wasn’t simply stormclouds.
It was a dark-rain.
Her immediate reaction was a frustrating mix of fear and curiosity, as she thought back to the last dark-rain, with Isbeil. The thing in the dark, the marks on the door—what were they? But also, the closeness she’d experienced just that one time with her sister, and a deep sadness. She hadn’t gotten a chance to ask her sister what else she’d learned. Now, would she ever even see Isbeil again?
She pressed her luck as long as she could, the growing darkness in the sky pulling more and more anxiety out of her. But she came across a candletwig shrub and snapped off a bundle of the pointed branches. The buds at the ends would give off light when she broke them. It would be plenty to keep her safe in the dark-rain, provided she had good cover, and she thanked the Lords for that, too.
Finally she decided she’d pressed her luck long enough. The shadows would begin to fall soon, and she needed cover. She settled under a tree with long branches, put her back to the trunk, and gripped the candletwigs. Some of the darkness would trickle down the tree and reach her, but she could ward it off with enough of the candletwigs.
But reassurance wasn’t enough. She had never been caught outside in a dark-rain before, not truly alone, and the dreams she’d been having had made her only more and more uneasy around the dark. Always strange voices, coming and going; sometimes a piece of a conversation, sometimes just snippets of words.
Drop by drop, it began. Little motes of black shadow slipped through the air and hit the ground, spreading like slow running sap. They bunched together, almost moved toward each other, and soon the ground beyond her guardian tree was a blanket of black shadows. The darkness crowded around her, and the Everquiet closed in.
She forced herself to steady her breathing. “You still have the candletwigs,” she said aloud,
barely audible, “you are going to be okay.” Still she held the stupid sword in her other hand. As if the darkness would attack her. She just couldn’t persuade herself to let go of it.
Some animals joined her in her haven, though timidly kept away from her. A squirrel, a small snake, some frogs, a few birds. It was actually reassuring, having someone to experience this with. She tried not to frighten them.
It stretched on and on. After the darkness had covered the ground, and much of the branches above her, it was hard to know whether it was still falling. When droplets of shadow fell from the tree, she snapped the end off a candletwig and warded them away. It was like rubbing out a spot on her shirt. Show enough light at it and the shadow reluctantly faded, like drying water.
She set her head against the tree and looked up. Being nearly blinded and deafened to the world could have a harmful effect on the mind. So she focused on the bark against her scalp, the soreness of her butt against the ground. Things were still real. Not all of her senses had gone. She could smell the tree, moss, dirt, damp pockets of earth thick with sludge.
Then she heard something.
The animals were gone. She was alone under her guardian tree. There was another sound, out there in the dark. A scurry, a shuffle. Oh Lords save her. Whatever had happened during the last dark-rain was back.
A shape slithered by.
She screamed and jumped backward against the tree. A vibration ran up it, into the branches, and shook drops of darkness free from leaves and buds. Darkness fell all around her in a torrent, and all at once she was plunged into a blank blackness so deep she couldn’t hear her own scream. She could only see her own body above the knee.
Her breath was caught somewhere in her chest. She didn’t even know if she was still screaming. Her lungs and throat ached.
The shape slinked past again, a rapid motion of thin limbs. Some kind of creature, violet-colored.
Then two spots in the dark, two points of light. The light spread outward from those spots to reveal an ethereal shape. She could see it, could see through it. A smooth violet snout, a lipless mouth lined with jagged uneven teeth. Unfurling uneven wings, like a bat’s but with unnatural-looking joints. Forelimbs, thin like a beetle’s legs, tipped with long claws. It crawled on four legs, but the hindquarters of the beast faded into the dark.
Again she heard the shuffle, and this time it came in time with this creature’s movement. How could she see it, in the dark-rain? How could she hear it, in the Everquiet? How was it even there? What in the name of the desolation was it? She had no breath.
Its glowing eyes were set upon her, and a noise came from that face, from behind those teeth, a chittering sound, a slurping growl, an angry hiss, somehow all these things at once.
She tried to shout at it, but she was paralyzed by fear. Her lips didn’t move. Her jaw was clamped shut. Frantic, she looked down at herself. Her legs were mostly shadow. Her hands were empty. She must have dropped the candletwigs when she’d thrown herself against the tree.
Except her hands weren’t empty. Her right hand was still curled around a shape that couldn’t be seen. The bloodsword, so black it gave no reflection.
The creature in front of her was big, bigger than her, but lanky and skeletal. It growled again, a chittering sound like bone drums.
It reared back and lunged.
Ediline gripped the bloodsword’s hilt in both hands and thrust it out. The black blade split the creature’s skull down the center, the two dots of light falling to different sides. Instead of blood, violet-gray mist hissed and spat out of the wound. The lunging body didn’t hit her. It leapt through her and seemed to strike the tree and slump there, motionless. But she felt none of it. Only a cold, writhing, nasty shiver.
She scrambled away from the body, tripping on a ground she couldn’t see, and when she fell she didn’t find the strength to get back up. She just rolled onto her back, propped up by her elbows, and stared in horror at the body of the thing. And then, slowly, it began to fade.
The dark-rain had stopped. Her upper half remained visible, and no new darkness fell on her. When the creature’s body faded entirely, she crawled around after her candletwigs. She found them, put her back against the tree again, and methodically rid her body of clinging shadows. Then she stared, wide-eyed, into the blank darkness, seeing nothing.
She didn’t move. She didn’t dare move.
— Chapter 16 —
“In a shadowy corner of Yun, Loethe the Shadowalker vanished for a year. During this exile, the Tyrants drew steel and struck out at their own people out of frustration and pitiful fury that they could not uncover him.”
—The Chronicle of Tyrants, ed. xiv
“Okay,” Ediline said, “it was just a hideous shadow monster. It only tried to kill you—ha! like that’s never happened before—and you just killed it with an evil sword. Then it vanished. No big deal.”
Walking through the jungle was more like pacing now, with the same dedicated rhythm of steps and carelessness of direction but without the actual back-and-forth that really distinguished pacing from other types of walking. More than once she tripped on a root she didn’t notice, and more than once she was seized by fear as she absolutely expected to fall on the black blade of the bloodsword and accidentally kill herself. She didn’t, and was thankful no one was around to see her fall.
What was that thing? Could it have followed her from Korv? Maybe it was everywhere, in all dark-rains, part of the rains themselves. Maybe there was more than just one it, many its, all creeping within the falling darkness. But someone would have seen them, said something. Unless they were silenced. Or unless no one who saw the monster survived.
After that, sleep became nearly impossible.
No part of her body lacked soreness. After the encounter in the dark-rain, she was blasted by a clear-rain that bore the coming chill of the fore-autumn. It lasted three days. Memories of not being wet were distant and joyous in their taunting, and she struggled to stay warm enough not to shiver. The air was not cold, but when the wind picked up it sliced right through her clothes and stung her skin. All her food was miserably wet. Every step through the mud was followed by a struggle to get her boot back out. Damn mud and damn her boots.
She began to cough, her lungs feeling wet and tight. Her eyes itched, her nose did reprehensible things, and her face and neck felt hot, despite her constant urge to shiver. And with every step, with each moment feeling like this, she grew afraid. Alone in the jungle, if she fell ill, she could die. She didn’t have hot tea or a bed to rest in. She had no knowledge of medicinal plants. She barely had enough jungler training to survive like this.
Her fingers hurt from carrying the bloodsword. Though it still seemed to weigh nothing, she often found herself gripping it more tightly than she needed to, shivering and clutching it as if she might lose it.
More than once she was tempted just to bury it in the dirt. Hurl it into a river and be rid of it. But when she thought of doing any of that, she felt ill, and more than once she immediately vomited. It was unpleasant, painful, and—worst of all—a waste of food.
For a while she thought it was just her own integrity—if she buried it, it would be dug up eventually; if she threw it away, it would be found. Then, one night as she tried desperately to sleep, she replayed the events that had brought her here in her head, for the eighth time at least. And when she came to a certain phrase, certain words spoken, she rolled them over in her half-asleep mind a time or two.
I made a pact with the sword, Javras had said. It will not harm me.
By my own blood, Ediline herself had said, this sword will not leave me until I am dead.
She jolted upright, and she stared at the sword in the intense grip of her nearly unconscious fist. Even as the rest of her body went slack and tried to sleep, the hand around the sword clutched it.
No. No no no no no NO.
“Lords save me from my own stupid mouth,” she said as cold realization came up from her stomac
h. She thought she might be sick again, gagged and spat.
She had made a pact with the sword, just as Javras had.
He couldn’t be harmed by it.
She couldn’t be rid of it.
In her head she screamed curse after curse. Lords damn this thing, she didn’t know the rules! She could set it down. It could leave her hands, if she needed it to. But she always went back and picked it up, gripped by a nervous panic that she might have lost it. Even if she could see it. She still worried that she might have lost it, even though she hated it.
After several moments of sitting upright in the dirt, staring at her knuckles going pale around the completely black hilt of the sword, she sighed and let her head sag back to the earth. There was nothing she could do about it now. The sword was hers, and she was bound to it as much as it was bound to her. There was nothing she could do but continue to move on.
After the clear-rain stopped, Ediline came abruptly to a cliff. From the precipice she saw a village below. A shallow river ran through, a single plank bridge spanning it in the center of the village. Since leaving Korv, she had been careful to avoid signs of civilization near her path, detouring away from trodden paths or plants that had been harvested. These were the first people she’d seen in weeks. And they weren’t Tithelken.
She’d made it to Saiyoe.
Only, they didn’t look like Saiyoens she’d seen before. They had similar physical features to Wien—straight dark hair, olive-to-brown skin—but their clothing was different, their structures were different. The men and women she saw below wore furs or skins, with only a handful wearing anything made of cloth. It didn’t make them look primitive; the skins and furs were elegantly tailored. And the buildings were squat and low, with the bottoms of the walls made of laid stones, and the rest made of wood set in the foundation.