The Reawakened

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  He sat up. No. This doesn’t happen. She was supposed to be like a sister to him.

  Dravek drew both hands through his hair, rubbing his temples with the insides of his wrists. Maybe Sura wasn’t really a Snake. That would explain it. If a different Spirit claimed her at the Bestowing, he’d deal with these feelings then. If Snake claimed her, he’d marry Kara and leave for Tiros. By the time he returned, either Sura or this bizarre attraction would be gone.

  Anything to avoid hurting Kara. If he ever saw those beautiful blue eyes fill with tears on his account again…no, he’d felt like a monster long enough.

  Dravek lay down facing the wall, determined to sleep. He closed his eyes and forced his mind to think of stones, trees, birds—anything but the image of Sura standing straight and strong before him, long black curls streaming across her face, over her neck, then falling to caress her breasts.

  He shifted his body to ease the new ache in his groin, but kept his hands under the pillow. He wouldn’t touch himself and think of Sura.

  That way lay a path more treacherous than any he’d ever walked. It dizzied him, like looking out over a great height, one from which he’d surely fall like a stone.

  05

  Tiros

  Rhia woke suddenly, as if yanked from sleep by a rope tied around her mind. She turned to look for Marek, but he wasn’t there. The morning light was brighter than when she usually woke.

  She tottered into the kitchen, rubbing her sticky eyes. Jula was sitting at the table with a mug of tea that was no longer steaming. Her mud-brown hair draped over the parchment she was writing on.

  “Where’s your father?”

  “Chickens,” Jula said without looking up.

  Rhia shuffled to the stove and picked up the teakettle. Some chicory would banish her yawns. “Nilik’s still in bed?”

  “No.”

  “He left early?”

  “Yes.”

  “To go to work?”

  Jula hesitated, then quietly set down her quill pen. “To go to Velekos.”

  A cold sensation dribbled down Rhia’s spine. “That’s not funny.”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “He followed your uncle?”

  “Yes.”

  Rhia swept a hand over her clammy forehead and fought to catch her breath. “Lycas will turn him back. He promised, unless Nilik knew the password.”

  “You mean, ‘Hector’?”

  Rhia dropped the teakettle. It bounced off the edge of the stove and clanged against the wooden floor. “What did you say?”

  “I saw you and Papa talking about it, here last night.”

  “I never told him the password.”

  “No, but while you were telling him about the password, you picked up Hector and cuddled him. Did I guess right?”

  Rhia stared at her daughter’s satisfied face as the vision of Nilik’s death flared in her mind. “You have no idea what you’ve done,” she whispered.

  “Yes, I do.” Jula turned back to her paper. “I made Nilik happy. I let him fulfill his destiny.”

  “That’s just it.” Rhia grabbed Jula’s shoulder and made her look up. “You don’t know what that destiny is.”

  Jula shifted out of Rhia’s grip. “And you do?”

  “Yes!”

  The color drained from Jula’s face.

  “I mean, no.” Rhia gritted her teeth. “I don’t know his destiny. I’m just afraid, that’s all.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you knew?” Jula slid out of her chair and backed away. “Why would you let me send him away to die?” Her voice pitched higher. “How could you be so cruel?”

  “You know I can’t break Crow’s sacred law.”

  “Even to save your own son?”

  “I tried to save him!” She advanced on Jula. “I tried to keep him here. But you had to spite me, didn’t you? You had to prove how clever you are. You don’t care about Nilik’s destiny, you only care about yourself.”

  Jula’s eyes narrowed slowly. “Somebody has to care about me, because you sure don’t.”

  “That’s not true.” Rhia laid a hand on her daughter’s arm as gently as her anger would allow. “I love you.”

  Jula turned away. “I don’t want the love of a freak like you.”

  Rhia’s stomach dropped. She watched her daughter march toward the stairs to make her usual dramatic exit to her room.

  The front door slammed open, and Marek strode in, blocking Jula’s path. “I heard what you said to her.” He jutted his thumb at the open window. “Apologize. Now.”

  Jula backed up and bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Papa.”

  “To her!” Marek roared. “If you ever speak to your mother like that again, don’t bother speaking to me at all.”

  Jula gasped and raised wet eyes to meet his. Her lower lip trembled, and she slowly turned to Rhia. “I’m sorry, Mother. I ruined everything.”

  Marek’s expression and voice softened. “What are you talking about, ruined everything?”

  Jula looked at Rhia, who shook her head.

  “Tell your father what you did.”

  Jula stared at the floor. “I gave Nilik the password so he could join Uncle Lycas.”

  Marek’s face grayed as he looked at Rhia. “How did she know the password? I don’t even know the password.”

  “She guessed.”

  “But—he can’t go to Velekos, right? Because of—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Rhia, you’re the one who hates keeping secrets.” He looked at Jula, then back at her. “Nilik will die there, won’t he?”

  Rhia closed her eyes. The word “Yes” wouldn’t come. Every bit of Crow in her kept it in. But her silence seemed to satisfy Marek.

  He strode to the closet and pulled out their traveling packs. “Let’s go get our son.”

  06

  Sangian Hills

  Nilik ran through the night.

  His legs raced with unprecedented strength and speed, devouring the dusty miles. His arms pumped to drive him along, and he wished he could run on all four limbs like his Spirit’s real-life counterpart.

  He let his lungs expand, savoring the new Wolverine power. He’d never felt weak or fragile, but compared to now, the man of just ten days ago was little more than a mouse. So what if Raven had passed him by? He wouldn’t trade this feeling for anything.

  Especially now. When his legs began to ache from the hours of running, he only had to think of Lania’s face lit with laughter, or her long red curls blazing in the sunset. And then think of how her killers’ necks would feel, shattered between his hands.

  They’d called her a Wasp, said she’d turned on them in a fury. But Nilik knew from the beauty she molded out of scraps of cloth and clay that Lania was—would have been—a Spider woman, an artist. She’d felt the unmistakable calling since they were children.

  Trees blocked the bright moonlight as he entered a steeply sloped ravine. The tracks of Lycas’s team led down a gentle trail to his left, no doubt because of the pack horses, which meant Nilik could make up ground by climbing straight down and up the other side of the ravine. Maybe he’d even catch them before the end of the night. Then on to Velekos, and vengeance.

  He clambered down the steep wall, grasping rocks and shrubs to keep from falling into the streambed. By the time he reached the bottom, his knees ached from the strain, and his strength was beginning to ebb. Wolverines weren’t made for climbing, he reminded himself.

  The stream was nearly dry, unusual even for this time of year. Everything seemed to be dying. It was as if the presence of the Ilions had made the land lose its will to live.

  A short hop took him over the stream, and after a moment to catch his breath, Nilik climbed, letting the memories stoke his strength.

  He’d wrangled every detail of Lania’s death out of his uncle, horrors Lycas hadn’t told the rest of the family. The Descendant monsters had strewn parts of her body all around Velekos, displaying them on street corne
rs. At the entrance to her own neighborhood, the Acrosia, the place where the revolution was coming to a boil, her head had been placed on a pike.

  Nilik’s foot slipped. His hands scrabbled for a grip but seized only loose soil. He slid several feet before a jutting stone knocked him off balance, backward into nothing.

  He yelped, anticipating the bone-crushing impact on the streambed. But as he fell, his body took over, twisting and bending by instinct, then relaxing just before the ground slammed into him.

  Nilik stared at the damp soil beneath his face. Nothing hurt. Last month such a fall would have broken his limbs, maybe even killed him.

  Kneeling on all fours, struggling for breath, he thought of Lania. No one knew what they’d meant to each other. No one knew how a year ago, on her family’s last visit, they’d stolen three hours alone in the drafty tent of one of his friends. No one knew how Nilik had begged her to stay in Tiros where it was safe, how he’d sworn to marry her after their Bestowings.

  He pressed his forehead into the mud. They hadn’t made love, though they’d come close. Now he regretted stopping, regretted his stupid assumption that someday they’d have another chance, another time when he could make it perfect for her.

  He thought of the pale, freckled skin on Lania’s shoulders, the gleam in her green eyes as she’d touched him and held him with the urgency of the besieged. The Descendants had carved that skin and extinguished that gleam forever.

  Nilik’s fingers dug deep into the soil, and he swallowed a shriek of anguish. They would pay. If it took his last breath, they would pay.

  He got to his feet, stretching cautiously, feeling for sprains or wounds from the fall. Nothing. He checked his dagger belt to make sure his weapons were fastened into their sheaths.

  As he passed his hand over the hilt of each blade, a surge of power coursed through him. Wolverine had altered more than Nilik’s body. His mind was now calmed only by thoughts of cutting, twisting, ripping. The bloodlust was like a constant tang on the back of his tongue.

  This time instead of climbing the rocks, he loped up the path, following the trail of Lycas’s troupe.

  Hundreds of steps later, he reached the top of the ravine, panting. He stumbled as he stepped onto the flat land, and he longed to sink down and rest his screaming legs.

  “Halt!”

  Nilik froze at the sound of the unfamiliar voice from above.

  “Put your hands over your head,” the voice boomed. “Now!”

  Nilik hesitated. With his new strength, he could take on several Descendant soldiers, but not without his weapons. He raised one hand over his head, while letting the other drift past his dagger belt. His thumb opened the clasp that held his favorite blade, the one Lycas had given him last year, as if he’d known they would someday be Spirit-brothers.

  One thing was for certain: he wouldn’t be taken alive.

  Standing in the tree’s shadow, he could hide his movement from weak Descendant eyes. His fingers slipped around the hilt.

  “I saw that.” The voice took on a new edge. “Step forward, hands up—both of them—or you’ll be shot.”

  Shot? Descendants didn’t use bows and arrows; they thought the weapons were cowardly, womanly, without honor.

  Nilik raised his other palm and walked out from under the trees. A rocky ridge loomed before him, a dark mass against the starry sky.

  “Nilik?” came another, older voice. “What are you doing here?”

  He let out a breath. Uncle Lycas.

  “Hector!” Nilik shouted, hoping Jula had guessed the password correctly.

  A short silence followed, then Lycas called, “Stay. I’ll come down.”

  While he waited for his uncle to appear, Nilik fought to steady his breath. If his sister had misled him, he’d be in for a long, possibly unconscious ride home to Tiros. At the top of the ridge, two archers stood with their arrows trained upon him, no doubt suspecting him of being a decoy.

  Finally Lycas appeared from a hidden trail at the bottom of the ridge. Behind him strode a slightly younger man with a dark, thick beard and the same carved wolverine claw that hung around Lycas’s and Nilik’s necks.

  “I thought your mother wouldn’t let you go.” Lycas handed Nilik a water skin.

  Nilik took a deep draught and wiped the sweat from his face. “I knew the password, didn’t I?”

  Lycas grinned and raised his arms as if to embrace Nilik, then seemed to reconsider. He turned to the other man. “This is Sirin, my executive officer and second-in-command.”

  Nilik bowed, feeling his calves and hamstrings quiver at the strain. “It’s an honor.”

  Sirin examined him, then nodded and returned the bow. “Welcome to our band of bandits.”

  “Bandits?” Nilik furrowed his brow at Lycas. “What’s he mean?”

  “It’s what the Ilions call us. They won’t recognize a rebellion, because that would admit weakness, so they treat us like criminals, even though we’ve never attacked a civilian.”

  “Thugs, they also call us.” Sirin scratched his chin. “What’s the other one I like?”

  “Hooligans,” Lycas added. “Ruffians.”

  “Brigands.” Sirin snapped his fingers. “That’s my favorite. I’d never even heard that word before I found out I was one.”

  Lycas gestured for them to follow him up the ridge. “It serves us well,” he said to Nilik. “They won’t deploy enough soldiers against us to do the job right, because that would mean we were a threat. They send just enough men to donate arms and horses to our cause.”

  “And uniforms,” Sirin added. “Which make good disguises once the blood’s washed out.”

  Nilik chuckled, then realized Sirin wasn’t joking. He feigned a cough to cover his embarrassment.

  Lycas glanced back at them. “Now it’s to the point where even if they tried a major military operation to stop us, we’d still likely win. We fight on uneven terrain where their horses are useless, we wait in ambush instead of marching in the open like idiots, we fight at night or in bad weather whenever possible. Above all, we’re not afraid to retreat.”

  “I don’t understand,” Nilik admitted, his mind as tired as his legs.

  Lycas paused on a level part of the trail and waited for them to catch up. “We’re not fighting the same kind of war as the Ilions. They’re still locked into notions of a warrior’s honor and glory. We have no honor except loyalty to the cause, no glory other than survival.”

  Nilik made a frustrated noise in his throat. “Then how are we ever going to win?”

  “Listen to me.” Lycas put his hands on Nilik’s shoulders. “We don’t need to win. We need to not lose.” He cut off Nilik’s scoff with a light shake. “Let me finish.”

  Chastised, Nilik sobered his face. “Sorry. Go on.”

  “Imagine a dog. That dog has one flea. Is it in any danger?” Nilik shook his head, and Lycas continued. “Now imagine that same dog with a hundred fleas.” He tightened his grip on Nilik’s shoulders. “A thousand fleas.”

  Nilik resisted the urge to scratch his own arms at the thought.

  “A dog with a thousand fleas,” Lycas said, “is bleeding to death, little by little. The fleas can’t kill it directly, but they can drive it mad. It thinks about nothing but scratching and biting its own skin. Can a dog kill a flea by scratching?”

  Nilik shrugged. “No. The flea just jumps to another part of the dog.”

  “Exactly.” Lycas let go of him. “We’re the fleas. Not a glorious image, but it’s the only way we can stand against their superior numbers and arms.”

  “So we just annoy them into ending the occupation?” Nilik tried to sound sincere instead of obnoxious.

  “Even a thousand fleas can’t kill a dog,” Lycas said patiently. “But one day, when it has a disease, or a wound, it’ll be too weak to survive.” He smiled. “We will have sucked too much blood.”

  “So what’s the disease?” Nilik asked. “What’s the wound?”

  “The disea
se is in Asermos, where our people have resisted the occupation since its first days. They’ve turned the Ilions into unwilling tyrants. Martial law is expensive, not to mention a political disaster.” He turned back to the path. “The wound, I hope, will be in Velekos.”

  They continued up the ridge in silence. Nilik burned to inflict that wound, and a thousand others, on the Ilion army who had taken his home, enslaved his father and murdered the woman he loved.

  Lycas watched Nilik across the campfire and wished the boy were anywhere else. Anything else.

  He didn’t care so much that Raven hadn’t come for his nephew—Lycas had never put much stock in prophecies, or anything else he couldn’t see and touch. But why not Hawk or Horse or Fox? Lycas would have been happy for any other Guardian Spirit to claim Nilik, as long as it wasn’t one of the warriors, Bear or his own Wolverine. The thought of watching his nephew die in battle made the blood pound behind Lycas’s eyes.

  His fingers twitched at the memory of his own twin’s death and the moments afterward. The look of agony on Nilo’s face, fading to blank. Then a skull crumbling in Lycas’s hands like an eggshell, brains oozing between his knuckles onto the blood-slicked battleground. The scream of Nilo’s killer rising to a higher pitch than a man should be capable of, only to be cut short when his throat left his body. Lycas’s sole regret was that he could only kill the Descendant soldier once.

  He couldn’t remember the rest of that afternoon, but others said he’d gone mad with grief and fury, savaging the enemy, both the living and the dead. He wished he could remember. It would have been a good memory.

  Lycas studied Nilik’s face as the young man focused on the words and plans of his new platoon leader, a first-phase but battle-tested Bear from Velekos. In the old days, Bears tended to be in charge of strategy, while Wolverines made up the masses of troops. But in this sort of warfare, a Wolverine’s wiliness could take a man further in the army than a Bear’s meticulous planning.

  Lycas sighed. Though he wished it weren’t so, Nilik had all the attributes of a Wolverine—intelligence, discipline and courage that teetered just on the sane side of recklessness. Spirits knew he had the will to fight—maybe too much.