Voice of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  03

  “Daria!”

  Alanka echoed Adrek’s call for his two-year old daughter as they ran through the dim forest. She added the names of other Kalindon children, the memory of each face stabbing her with regret. Her father had started it all, collaborating with the Descendants in their attack on Asermos. How could he have known it would bring so much pain to the village he loved?

  No. How could he not have known?

  Her ears strained for signs of others, but heard nothing over the sounds of their feet and the blood pumping through her head.

  She grabbed Adrek’s arm and pulled him to a halt. “Let me listen.”

  He obeyed, panting hard. Cats were sprinters, she reminded herself, and placed her palm over his mouth. “Shh.”

  Alanka closed her eyes to listen. Her pulse, accustomed to long runs, slowed and quieted. In a few moments, the world of scent and sound opened up to her.

  She filtered out the background hum of the distant river and whispering pine branches. A squirrel shook the branches of a tree, claws scrabbling over bark in its haste to hide. From its scent she knew it was a female who had recently given birth.

  She knelt on the forest floor and put her face near the ground. The damp dirt held the scent of people—so many, she couldn’t pick out any individual. Many wore deerskin shoes, but some had been taken barefoot.

  “They came this way.” She sat back on her haunches and drew a deep breath. “But the scent is hours old.”

  “We already know they came this way. We need to know if they’re here now.”

  “Not in that direction.” She pointed to their right, off the path, toward the south, from which the wind blew.

  “I’ll climb.” Adrek removed his moccasins and took off, racing for a pine tree whose lowest branch hung more than three times his own height.

  She watched his lithe form speed up, long legs devouring the distance in less time than she could blink. With a graceful leap, he launched himself at the branch. Alanka gasped, certain he would miss and crash to the ground, but his hands seized the branch as deftly if he had been standing next to it. Adrek arced his body to align his hips with the branch. He planted a foot on the limb, then stood up straight, with only a finger on the trunk to steady himself.

  He surveyed the area, then shouted, “Nothing yet. I’ll go higher.”

  He leaped to grasp the stub of a branch Alanka couldn’t see, then used his bare feet to push himself farther up the trunk where he could get his arm around a longer limb. She watched him repeat the process until her neck ached.

  She picked up Adrek’s shoes and moved closer to the tree, hoping to glimpse his diminishing figure in the forest canopy. The breeze shifted to blow from the east, from the river itself.

  A human scent struck her, too strong to be a lingering footstep. She closed her eyes again to isolate it. It was a child. Female?

  As she turned to tell Adrek, he shouted, “I see something!”

  He ran out on a branch too small for his weight, and Alanka tensed. Just before it snapped, he leaped to the limb of an adjoining fir. He slid down the smooth trunk, then hung from the lowest branch. Adrek let go and slammed to the ground beside Alanka. “I saw pink.” He pointed toward the river, then grabbed his moccasins from her and shoved them on his feet. “The mountain laurel’s stopped blooming, so it must be someone’s clothes.” His own face was pink from the exertion.

  “I smelled a person in that direction,” she said, “maybe a girl.”

  “Daria!” Adrek took off.

  When Alanka caught up to him at the side of the path, he was kneeling over a small patch of pink. Her sweat turned cold.

  She ran to join him and realized he was holding only a nightshirt. Its front was smeared brown in the center.

  “It’s hers. The stain is just mud.” He heaved a wheezing breath and stood. “She could be anywhere.”

  “Give it to me.” Alanka held the shirt to her face and inhaled the same scent as before. She shoved the shirt back into Adrek’s hands and trotted off the left side of the path, to the north. As he followed, she said, “This is the one direction I couldn’t smell before, because of the wind. Stay off to the side so I don’t pick up the scent of the shirt.”

  But after a hundred or so paces, she knew it was futile. “Not this way. And not south.” She looked at Adrek’s face, taut with desperate hope. “We’ll keep moving toward the river, and I’ll track back and forth to see if she left the path, but—”

  “She must have. She’s always running off.” His words tumbled over one another. “Turn your head for two blinks and she’s gone. That’s how they are at that age, right?” He twisted the pink cloth between his fingers. “She probably got hot and cranky in her shirt and made her mother take it off, then saw a rabbit or—or a flower or—”

  Alanka put a hand on Adrek’s arm. “We’ll find her.”

  They ran. Alanka veered to both sides of the path, staying within the cone of scent the girl had created. Now that she had smelled the shirt, it was easy to pick out one person’s trail among the others.

  But the center of the cone never left the path. Alanka knew Adrek’s labored breathing wasn’t only due to the strain of the cross-country run. His anguish held an acrid scent of its own.

  The light ahead brightened as the trees thinned. Her legs pumped harder, and in a few moments she burst from the trees into the blinding sunshine. She trotted up and down the riverbank, searching for a scent leading off to the side, some sign of a last-minute escape.

  Nothing.

  Adrek stumbled out of the woods and sank to his hands and knees in the mud. He coughed several times, then raised his head to look at Alanka.

  She went to him. “I’m sorry.”

  “No…” His muddy hands grasped his hair as if to tear it from its roots. Alanka slipped her arm around his shoulders, slick with sweat and tree mist. He called his daughter’s name again and again as if his voice could reach down the river and yank the child back to him.

  “We’ll get her back,” Alanka murmured. “We beat them before—we can do it again.”

  “Not on their land. We don’t even know if they’ll keep her in the city. She could be—” He spit out the words. “She could be sold.”

  Alanka’s grip on him tightened at the thought. “I swear on my Spirit, Adrek, someday we’ll make them sorry they ever met us.”

  Rhia laid a blanket over the body of the last Kalindon elder they had removed from the paddock posts. Her chest ached at the sight of the woman’s pale, wrinkled face. Though Rhia had seen people she’d known since childhood fall on the Asermon battlefield, these deaths somehow cut her more. So much wisdom and power, gone forever.

  The voices of the dead still whispered. Now she knew they belonged to those who had perished here. She was almost glad she couldn’t hear their words—surely they were accusing her.

  Marek brought her a skin of water and placed a hand on her back. “How are you?”

  She wiped the sweat from under her eyes with a clean cloth. “I feel responsible.”

  “You were protecting your home. It was the Descendants’ choice to kill. You didn’t put the swords in their hands.”

  “I put the targets in front of them.”

  Marek’s gaze shot to the right, and his nostrils flared. “They’re coming!”

  Panic streamed down her spine. “The Descendants? Again?”

  “No.” His face broke into a near smile.

  With a rustle of undergrowth, the forest gave birth to Wolves, stumbling under the weight of weariness and small children.

  Rhia ran with the others to embrace the men and women—all second-phase Wolves like Marek, able to cloak another person with their nighttime invisibility. Ten had escaped, as Kerza had, when the Descendants invaded. Each had carried off a child to shield.

  Rhia helped Elora deliver food and water to the returning Wolves and the children. The adults tried to muffle their mourning for the sake of the young ones, who se
emed more dazed than frightened. Most were too small to grasp what had happened. Rhia almost envied them.

  Not long after the Wolves’ return, her mentor, Coranna, and the other nonwounded Kalindons arrived on foot. Coranna approached Rhia at the paddock gate, her pale blue eyes blank with shock. Most of her long silver hair had come loose from its braid, and her graceful gait had turned into a near stagger.

  Rhia embraced her. Coranna’s thin arms trembled against Rhia’s back, then she drew away and blinked hard. “Have you done the prayers of passage?”

  Rhia nodded.

  Coranna stumbled past her to sink onto a nearby log. After a moment, she sat up straighter and drew the heels of her hands over her temples. “I’ll just rest a moment, then we’ll get help moving the bodies to the pyre.”

  Good, Rhia thought. Keep moving, be useful. “How will we burn so many?” she asked Coranna. “There isn’t enough dry wood for twelve funerals.”

  “We’ll burn several at a time and have separate ceremonies away from the pyre. Each person should have their own tribute, especially since they—” Her voice caught, and Rhia waited to see if her composure would crack. These people were Coranna’s closest friends. She and Kerza were the only remaining elders.

  Coranna drew in a breath and pressed her lips together, as if trapping the onrush of emotion inside. “We’ll hold the rituals as soon as the rest have arrived from Asermos.”

  Rhia had almost forgotten about the wounded and their caretakers. The scene of sorrow and discovery would repeat. The thought made the skin around her eyes feel tight and heavy.

  “Why do they hate us so much?” she heard herself say. When Coranna didn’t answer, she continued. “I can almost understand their invasion of Asermos. The lands there are rich. But here—” She lifted a shaky hand toward the line of shrouded bodies. “What they did to these men and women, it’s—” She fell silent. Any attempt to describe the atrocity sounded feeble.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Coranna said. “Never imagined.”

  “Where were the Spirits? Why didn’t They protect Kalindos?”

  “I understand your bitterness,” Coranna said, “but it’s not up to the Spirits to solve human problems. You’re old enough to know that.”

  “I don’t want Them to solve our problems. But a little help would be nice.”

  “Perhaps it’s all part of a plan.”

  “Then it’s a bad plan.”

  Coranna sighed. “Tell that to Crow.”

  “I will.” She wished she could communicate with Him right here, right now, without waiting for a vision or dream. But the Spirits couldn’t be beckoned like dogs.

  A low croak came from the tree overhead. Rhia looked up to see a raven gazing down at them. She stood, ready to shoo the bird away from the bodies if it came any closer.

  Coranna touched her elbow. “It has something.”

  The raven cocked its head, revealing a shiny silver object in its beak. It stretched its neck and opened its mouth. The thing fell to the ground in front of Rhia.

  She picked up the object, which appeared to be a large flat button. It held an insignia in the shape of the sun, with tiny marks on either side.

  “Must have come from one of the soldiers,” Coranna said.

  An idea dawned in Rhia’s mind. She clutched the button in her fist and looked up at the raven. “Thank you.”

  Someone called her name. Alanka walked toward her, skirting the rows of bodies. The bitter set of her jaw told Rhia the unwelcome news: no Kalindons had been found on the way to the river.

  She approached Alanka quickly. “I have an idea.”

  “Our boats are gone, even the canoes, so we can’t follow them. Adrek and I are going to Asermos to gather a rescue party.”

  “You’re a step ahead of me already.” Rhia showed Alanka the button. “Use this. It belongs to the invaders, so maybe it can be traced to a certain part of Leukos. Maybe that’s where the prisoners will go first. It’s not much, but it’s a start.”

  Alanka examined the button. “Better than going in blind.”

  Rhia thought of the dead Descendant in the woods whose soul she had delivered to Crow. “Let’s have everyone scour the village for pieces of the invaders’ uniforms. The more clues, the better.”

  “And it’ll give us something to do besides cry.” Alanka put the button in her pocket. “We’ll leave as soon as the horses are ready, before nightfall at the latest. Drenis and Ladek want to come. Maybe Morran, too.”

  The shing-shing of a sharpening knife drew their attention to Morran and Adrek, who knelt side-by-side at the feet of their fathers’ corpses. The Cats stared straight ahead, fists clenched, as Endrus prepared to shear their hair in mourning.

  “Now we’re all orphans.” Alanka fingered the ends of her own short black locks. “Time to grow up.”

  Whether we’re ready or not, Rhia thought.

  04

  The darkness broke when he heard the screams.

  Filip surfaced from a dense gray mind mist. A man was dying. Lights bobbed into the room and fixed themselves near the screamer, on the wall to his right. Pain and fear infused the shrieks, but Filip found neither of these feelings in himself. The gods had blessed him with fog.

  Other voices mingled with the screamer’s, shouting something about breathing or not breathing. A yellow glow flared like a ball of sunshine in the middle of the night.

  The fog enveloped him, dimming the noise to a distant, meaningless cacophony.

  When Filip woke again, light sifted through a nearby window. Birds chattered. He wanted to go back to sleep but couldn’t remember why. Something waited for him there. Something good.

  The sound of labored breathing came from his right. The man hadn’t died, not yet. They were alone.

  “Awake?” Filip whispered with dry, tight lips. No response. “Who are you?”

  The breath changed rhythm and turned into a wheeze. “G-G—” The man’s throat choked on his own name.

  “Never mind. Sleep.”

  Filip tried to move his fingers. As they brushed the blanket to touch his hip, the light pressure sparked an itch that lay all over, everywhere and nowhere. When he scratched his nose, the skin felt rubbery, as if the nerves lay far beneath it.

  Numb. Good.

  Dark again.

  In his dreams he ran—sometimes across fields, but more often in back alleys, through markets, dashing home in time for dinner to avoid the lash or racing his brother from one side of Letus Park to the other. Loser gets a punch in the arm.

  Before the fog, what was there? Fire, he remembered. A fever inside him, raging up the left side of his body. Then came the sweet, damp cloth that held blissful release, and now…

  He was awake, knew his name and knew he was staring at a white stucco ceiling with wooden rafters. He knew his older brother had died facedown in a flood of blood and bile, yet the memory did not skewer him today as it had before. A cloak of what must be opium cushioned his feelings.

  His left foot itched. A great weight seemed to sit on his chest, keeping him from reaching down to scratch, so he tilted his right foot to rub the itchy spot.

  Which wasn’t there. Why? Curiosity followed him into his dreams. He ran.

  That night the other man died in his sleep. One moment he was breathing—the next, not. Filip knew he should call out to alert someone, but his throat was too dry and sticky to utter more than a whisper. Instead he lay there, marveling that one who had struggled so fiercely should end his life so peacefully, like an old horse lying down in the pasture.

  Sleep again, and when he woke the man was gone. Filip’s stomach growled, a protest itself against death.

  “Awake, I see,” said a woman’s voice from what appeared to be a door. He remembered now; this was Zelia, the Asermon healer who had treated him after the battle.

  The battle.

  “I’ll bring you breakfast in a moment,” she said, “but first there’s something I need to tell you. Somet
hing hard.”

  Filip’s mind flooded with memories of pain and fever—and the place they came from.

  “No…” he said, in a voice too much like a child’s.

  “You’re going to live.” A blurry face appeared over him, framed by loose strands of brown-gray hair.

  With effort he bent his right leg, angling his foot into the space in his bed where it should be.

  He began to quake. “You should have let me die.” He clutched at the blanket, wanting to tear it in half. “Why didn’t you let me die?”

  “You wouldn’t be alive if your Spirit didn’t want to stay. I’ve seen stronger men than you give up.”

  “Like him?” He jerked his chin to the right. “Why couldn’t you save him?”

  “He’d taken a sword to the stomach. Things inside were too mixed up to ever be put right again. It was a matter of time.”

  “Why couldn’t you use your precious magic to save him? Why couldn’t you use magic to save this?” He hurled off his blanket to see a scarred stump, all that remained of his left leg below the knee. He stared at the blunt monstrosity, laced with hideous black stitches that looked like sleeping spiders. He stared at it as if it belonged to someone else, someone he would spit upon in the street. “Where were your Spirits?” he whispered.

  Zelia picked his blanket off the floor and held it in her hands. “I assure you, I did all I could, with Otter’s help.” She clasped the small carved otter hanging around her neck.

  “Not as much as you would have done for one of your own.” He couldn’t blame her; an enemy’s life wasn’t worth much. “Your Otter Spirit is either weak or vindictive. Or both.” Just like our gods, he thought.

  “Otter loves all people under Her care equally.” Zelia’s brow lowered. “If only the same could be said for me.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, though he could guess.

  “Your people killed my nephew, my first cousin on my mother’s side, my second cousin on my father’s side, my brother-in-law, my neighbor two doors down, my best friend’s oldest son—shall I go on?”

  He tore his gaze from her harsh face. “I didn’t kill anyone in that battle. It wasn’t me.”