Syrah yelled again as Krehnt’s fingers dug into her hair, pulling her back up into a kneeling position. When he let go, she half slumped, shivering in pain, her right hand still feeling as though it had been lit afire. She did her best to calm herself, did her best to draw out the magics within to heal what damage she could.
The pain began to subside.
“Let’s try something else,” Grahst was saying, leaning back and running a hand through his beaded beard in false pensiveness. “Something simple… Ah! I know. Why don’t you tell me what sort of stores you’ve gathered up in your keep? How long can your faithful sustain themselves holed up within their walls? A month, a year?”
Syrah was fighting to calm her breathing. The throbbing in her hand was tempered enough now to allow her to think straight, and she prepared herself, drawing the spell into her palms in anticipation.
When Krehnt went for another finger, she would make sure to leave him with a scar he’d never forget her by.
“Long enough for Laor’s wrath to wipe you and your friends from this life and the next,” she finally answered, baring her teeth at Grahst.
Once more there was a pause in which Grahst grew momentarily still. Then, again, he nodded to Krehnt, and Syrah readied a blast of fire from her good hand.
Only Krehnt didn’t go for her fingers. Instead, quick as a flash, he drew a knife from his belt, grabbed the bottom of Syrah’s right ear, and preceded to cut off the better part of the flesh he had pinched between his fingers.
This time Syrah only heard herself scream from some far-off place. The pain and shock snaked into her mind, devouring every sense as metal sawed through tissue, and within seconds everything went black and she knew herself to be falling.
She couldn’t have been out very long, because she felt Krehnt’s hand in her hair once more, and she was already on her knees again before she came fully to. She didn’t have any more sound to give the pain, instead losing herself in a sort of numbness that enveloped her body, mind, and soul.
Only when a gentle finger tilted her chin up did Syrah lift her eyes from the ground.
Grahst had moved from his place on the stump, and was on one knee before her. If that wasn’t terrifying enough, the other men around the fire had moved closer, surrounding them in a dark, seething huddle. She could smell them, now, could make out the stench of weeks of hard road on unwashed bodies.
It made Syrah feel ill.
“I tell you for your own sake,” Grahst said, almost kindly, keen blue eyes cruelly soft as they met hers, “that this will be your last chance. My King will take your Citadel, with or without your help. It is your last opportunity to save yourself many days in which you will wish very desperately that you had made a different choice. Do you understand?”
Syrah only stared numbly back at him, and again he took this as a sign of her grasp on the situation.
He nodded. “Very well. I’ll ask the same question again. What sort of stores do your Priests have in reserve?”
For a long time Syrah continued to stare at him, half lost to the pain in her hand, head, and body, and half preparing herself, conquering the cold and fear with thoughts of Talo, Carro, Jofrey, Reyn, and every other person she had ever loved or cared for high up above them, safe in the Citadel.
Then she drew in a quick breath, and spit in Kareth Grahst’s face.
Instantly there was a seething roar, and Syrah felt a dozen hands make to reach for her, their owners howling in rage.
Once more, though, Grahst stopped them.
“NO!”
The hands froze and retreated, and Syrah glared defiantly at the man kneeling before her, watching him wipe the spittle from his nose and cheek with the back of his hand.
“I admit to disappointment, Witch. I had hoped you wouldn’t turn out to be the same type of fool as my father. As it stands, though, you’ve made your choice. Now… you have another.”
In a blur Grahst’s right hand plucked the knife Krehnt had used to cut off the lower half of her ear from her torturer’s grasp. In the same motion, Grahst’s left hand wrapped around her throat, swinging her bodily down and slamming her sideways to the ground before twisting her painfully onto her back.
Syrah had just enough time to gasp in pain when she realized the tip of the bloody knife was suspended over her right eye.
“Your choice, Witch, is this: your eye, or your virtues. Choose.”
Cold fire rushed through Syrah, a pure wash of terror and desperation. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think. All of a sudden the only thing Syrah was capable of was reliving the last time she had felt such fear, under the hungry gazes of a band of slavers in a dirty little abandoned hut at the edge of hot market road.
It was all she could do, and Syrah Brahnt would regret this hesitation for the rest of her life.
“Another silence?” Grahst asked harshly. “Very well. Then I’ll have both.”
And then Syrah felt the blade dig into the jagged cut above her eye, scraping against the bone as Grahst dragged it downward in quick precision.
She had just enough time to become aware of the explosion of inexplicable agony, just enough time to become aware that half of her vision had gone suddenly dark, when she felt innumerable fingers tearing at her already shredded robes.
Despite this, Syrah only started to scream when she felt the sting of the cool air against her bare breasts, and the wrenching of her legs as they were forced apart by strong, unyielding hands.
XIII
“It saddens me to this day, her terror of the forests. Some have been fool enough to call her agitation ‘irrational’ in my presence, even ‘juvenile.’ They refuse to see the pain in her, as she cowers there beneath the trees. They refuse to see the torment reliving certain memories forces her to experience once again. It has often taken her own hand on my arm to keep me from teaching those ignorant men a hard and harsh lesson. Still… despite my own understanding, it saddens me. For—when all the lands of the world are there to be judged—is there really any place more wondrous than the grand woodlands of the Northern ranges?”
—THE DRAGON OF THE NORTH
AS HE’D stood upon that hill, overlooking the magnificence of the Dehn Plains, the place had done something to Raz. He’d been given a glimpse of an old life, a life of sands and family, of heat—despite the bitter cold—and Sun. It had been a breathtaking experience, and one he knew he would often revisit when in need of a good memory to draw warmth from.
Not as often, though, Raz told himself, the first coherent thought he’d had in a full minute, as I’ll revisit this.
It had started to snow again, the flurries growing steadily heavier since they’d left their camp that morning. Now, three or four hours later, the Sun was little more than a distinct patch of mild brightness against a darkened sky, and the air was thick with tumbling white. Behind them the rolling land of the Dehn was swallowed up by the building storm, the horizon blurred as land melded with snow and sky.
And before them, towering with a sort of menacing welcome, the Arocklen Woods drew Raz’s eyes as though he’d been enchanted.
The tree line started abruptly, marked by barely fifty paces of steadily thickening trunks before the darkness beneath the canopy became so dense even Raz couldn’t make out a thing from this distance. Most of the forest consisted of evergreens, of firs and pines of various kinds mixed with the towering outlines of larger cedars and bulky hollies. The right halves of their bluish and green foliage were caked with snow as the winds blew hard from the east, giving them an almost painted look as they swayed. While the staggered runts at the very edges of the Woods weren’t much bigger than the scattered trees they’d seen over the course of the morning—their lowest branches barely high enough for Raz to crouch under comfortably—the forest built itself up like the angle of a mountain, and by the time the Sun became blocked beneath the canopy Raz doubted he could have reached the bottom branches of the shortest pines even with Ahna held to her extent.
The tallest, it looked like, had trunks that towered twenty or thirty feet before whatever god had crafted the Arocklen even thought of branches.
The ground too, changed rather abruptly. Whereas Gale—snorting and stomping impatiently beneath Raz—stood now in a solid foot-and-a-half of fresh powder and packed ice, as the trees thickened so too did the snows thin. Not fifty yards ahead of where he and the Priests sat mounted at the very edge of the Woods, Raz was almost positive he could make out undergrowth, browned in the cold, and clear, hard earth. The terrain was abruptly different as well. For the last half-mile of their trek they’d left the hills of the Dehn behind—as well as whatever relative shelter had been offered from the wind—and moved onto nearly flat land. Within the trees, though, the earth started to take on a carved, jagged appearance, rolling and jutting up and down and out in patches of rocky outcroppings, grassy inclines and dips, and moss-covered, earthen walls.
“Told you it was a sight.”
Raz blinked and turned to look over his shoulder. Brahnt was gazing at the tree line as well, blue eyes taking in the Woods from beneath the raised hood of his High Priest’s robe. On his other side, al’Dor was doing the same, even raising a big gloved hand to block the flurries from his face. Both men’s beards were caked with snow, their noses red from the wind and cold. Raz, too, felt numbness across his protruding snout, but the ride had kept him otherwise warm and he was getting slowly used to the icy temperament of the freeze.
“That you did,” he responded, looking back around at the Woods. “I admit, I don’t know what I’m keener on doing: plunging headfirst in, or turning tail to run.”
al’Dor, overhearing this, snorted.
“You’re a braver man then I if you’re even considering the former!” he shouted as the wind picked up momentarily. “The Arocklen in the summer is one thing. All greenery and warmth and sunlight pouring through the canopy overhead. This, though—” he waved a hand at the foreboding mouth of the forest before them “—this makes me feel like I’m about to step willfully into the belly of the beast.”
Brahnt, for his part, became unusually somber at the words, and Raz glanced at him.
“He’s not so far off the mark, is he?” he asked quietly, so that only the High Priest could hear.
Brahnt gave a small shake of his head as he heeled his mare forward. “No, he’s not. This forest isn’t somewhere I would really ever wish to be, this time of year. Stay vigilant, Arro.”
“Was planning on it,” Raz replied, pressing Gale forward to keep up with the man. “Your ‘Kayle’ is somewhere about in there. What are the chances we come across him, or his men?”
“Hopefully slim. Baoill entered the woods far to the north, and even farther west. If his goal is to make for Ystréd then Azbar, pushing east into the trees would slow him down significantly given the breadth of his army. He’s probably keeping to the western edge of the Woods, using it for cover so he can make some progress south over the course of the winter and push out into the Dehn as soon as the snows clear.”
Brahnt frowned, then, pulling his horse around so as not to collide with the branches of the first of the trees. “Still… We’ll take the trails east a bit, before making for Cyurgi’ Di.”
“Just in case?” Raz muttered just as they reached the shade of the true Woods.
Brahnt nodded. “Just in case.”
“What are you two mumbling about over there?” al’Dor asked them, his words taking on a suddenly crisp tenor that almost irritated Raz’s sensitive ears after so many days in the muffling snow.
“Nothing, handsome,” Brahnt said quickly, throwing him a smile. “Arro is asking me about Syrah again.”
Raz rolled his eyes. It had become a running joke all morning between the two men. Apparently he’d revealed more interest than he’d intended as they’d spoken the afternoon before, and the Priests had taken it in full stride, making suggestive comments and teasing winks whenever they had the opportunity. Privately, Raz didn’t mind. He’d grown fond of the pair very much despite his initial reservations, and he thought they were due their amusement. It made it hard, though, to question them about the woman.
And Raz certainly wanted to.
He had yet to pin down exactly from where his curiosity—no, Raz admitted to himself—his interest, bloomed. He’d always wondered, on the occasions he’d dwelled on that fateful day, what her name was, and what business she’d been about to be wandering Karth’s markets on her own. He’d always pondered if she’d ever made it back home to the North, or even out of Karth. That, though, had been just about the extent of his concerns.
Now… Now there was something else bouncing about inside his mind, and Raz couldn’t put his finger on it.
He suspected that his intrigue had much to do with the way he had met Syrah Brahnt, and the way they had parted. He suspected, too, that it had much to do with the events that had followed in quick succession. Syrah—if the title could be truly given to any one thing—had been the catalyst of the eruption that had torn his life apart, turned it upside down and inside out. She had been the trigger. She had been both the fuse and the lighting spark.
And yet, not a single ounce of Raz could cast the blame on her.
That, in and of itself, had been curious to him. All his adult life he had been quick to lay the blame on those responsible for the cruelties of the world, placing it at his own feet and at the feet of others in equal measure. When one drove towards madness and murder, Raz had always found it simple to shape his understanding of a man—or woman—by the sins that rested upon their shoulders. It made it easy for him to do what he had to do, to wipe the filth from the face of the earth.
But Syrah Brahnt, he’d found, could bear no such outline in his mind. He’d tried, just out of curiosity. He’d tried to get angry, tried to blame and to hate her, tried to destroy the notion of the woman that the Priests were building for him.
He’d failed abysmally.
A shadow caught his eye, darting between the trunks of two trees to his left. Raz glanced in its direction, but found it only to be a trick of the limited light against the underbrush. Still, the motion made him think of the shades that had dogged his steps to Ystréd, and Lueski Koyt leapt suddenly to the forefront of his mind.
In the bright blue of her eyes, hidden beneath a waterfall of black hair, Raz suddenly found the answer.
I care.
The realization slipped across Raz’s thoughts like a breeze. Perhaps it was just the fact that the concept was unfamiliar to him, or at least long removed and sequestered to another life. Whatever it was, he was surprised by how long it had taken the understanding to fall into place. He remembered again the first time he had met Syrah, then the first time he had learned her name, in the Koyts’ little home in Azbar. He had fallen asleep that night thinking of that name.
As he had fallen asleep last night to dreams of the woman she had become.
I care, he thought again.
And of course he cared. Syrah Brahnt was perhaps the only bright thing to have come from the darkness that was the end of that part of Raz’s life. The death of the Arros, the loss of his mother and father and sister… For the first time—the idea striking Raz like a punch in the chin—he realized that it had not been for nothing.
Something had come from that loss. Something had come from that sacrifice. From the outside, it might not seem like much, but to Raz it meant everything.
Syrah had survived.
Of course he cared.
The clarity didn’t bear with it any joy, but it did bring a sort of peace to Raz. As though some tiny part of the fires that burned within him had winked out, their angry heat no longer needed. For some inexplicable reason, Raz felt suddenly less alone in the world. It turned out he hadn’t lost everything that night, as he’d always thought. He’d lost much, yes, but not everything. The girl had lived. She had survived and thrived, growing into a woman that her adopted father was proud of and her people seemed to have great love and r
espect for.
Syrah was what he had sacrificed for. Syrah was what was left to him.
And in that moment, as the light of the sky faded into blackness through the trees behind him, Raz decided he would tell her that, give her that knowledge—that honor—if it was the last thing he did in this world.
Crack.
Raz jerked out of his reverie, right hand flying to the handle of the gladius over his shoulder, looking around with teeth bared as his crest flared instinctively against the back of his hood. To his right Brahnt and al’Dor stared, just as surprised by his response as he had been by the sound.
In al’Dor’s hand was a thick length of dead wood, torn from the upward jutting skeleton of a fallen branch they had ridden by.
“Easy, lad,” the Priest said with a nervous smile, raising his other hand in a calming sign. “No need to get all worked up.”
Raz stared at the splintered wood for another second.
Then he released the sword.
“Sorry,” he said, returning the hand to Ahna’s shaft, making sure she was still balanced over his thighs. “I was… elsewhere.”
“Well don’t fall asleep on us just yet,” al’Dor said, examining the branch in his hand for splinters. “This may be the one part of the trip I’ll be happy to have those blades of yours with us. Wolves are scared of two things. Steel—” he grabbed the shattered end of the wood with his other hand “—and fire.”
There was a flash of white light, and the end of the branch was suddenly engulfed in a layer of flickering ivory flames that emanated a soft, gentle glow which nonetheless penetrated the darkness for twenty paces in every direction.
Raz blinked in momentary blindness as his eyes adjusted to this new source of light, and when he’d regained his vision he saw that al’Dor had passed the makeshift torch along to Brahnt, who was now holding it out for him to take.
“Are we sure that’s smart?” he asked. “Fire is going to make us easy enough to track in this dark.”
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