“Something I learned from my mother.”
Lorth lowered himself by the pool and draped his arms over his knees. “You’re going to water cast? Tricky, that.”
“It’s more likely to follow the Old One’s paths.”
“That’s the trouble. Can’t trust it.”
Eaglin shot him a blunt look. “An interesting comment, coming from you. I’ll take my chances.”
“Have you ever considered becoming an assassin?” It was an old joke between them.
Eaglin held his hand over the water. “I don’t have the stomach for it.”
“You get used to that.”
Eaglin cleared his mind, drew a deep breath and focused on the space between his eyes. His palm tingled as it pressed on solid air over the surface of the pool. His forehead grew numb. After another moment, the water, his head and his hand merged. He spoke a word in the Dark Tongue, the language of formlessness. From beneath the fabric of structural expression, he uttered the sound of an image within an image, and focused it like a crystal on his heart’s shadow.
“That’s cheating,” Lorth said quietly.
“No such thing,” Eaglin returned, just as quietly.
“You’d make a good assassin.”
“I’ll cut my teeth on you, if you don’t be quiet and let me focus.” He drew his hand away and leaned over the water. The space between his eyes felt like a rippling subterranean current. In the reflection of the forest, a deeper pattern appeared.
“This is a bad idea,” Lorth whispered suddenly from the darkness between the lines.
Eaglin’s forehead shifted with a snap; the water vanished.
*
Eaglin stepped into another forest, his airy body shimmering. He noted the angle of the sun, the temperature and scent of the air, the kinds of trees and foliage and the shapes of the hills to the north and east.
Loralin.
Something fled by him. He whirled around as the trees swayed in its wake. It moved very swiftly, like a fear, an imaginary event, or something he might see from the corner of his eye.
“Moridrun fore sarumn,” he said, to reveal its nature.
The water rippled as if stirred by a breath. Innocence... Black wings arced from the sky in a mighty pulse, settled and stilled. The sioros turned around, his lips parted, and pale eyes narrowed. With the heightened senses of a wizard and a man, Eaglin perceived the lust in him, building, aching for blood and completion.
In the Dark Tongue, Eaglin asked, “Are you not bound?”
The sioros flew at him in a cacophony of wings and limbs and struck him in the chest, shattering his focus.
*
Eaglin sailed through an angry blur of water, ferns, and brush. He struck a tree, a rock, and then landed with a heavy, bouncing thump on the ground some distance from the pool, utterly stunned.
Lorth shouted something in Aenspeak. His steps pounded the earth as he ran to Eaglin’s side and knelt, his gold-green wolf eyes wild with concern. “Maern! Are you all right?”
Groaning, Eaglin managed to sit up. He didn’t feel any major broken bones, but he suspected the sioros’ bear slap had wounded him at other levels. “Son of a bitch blasted me. We’re in trouble, Lorth. The sioros is loose, he is on the hunt, and we’d better get there before he...” His heart raced as he sifted through the jumble of impressions in his mind, a raging sea of lust rising with ferocious laughter from the depths of the world.
“Before he what?”
“I don’t know what Aradia promised Maern, but the sioros isn’t looking for his voidstone anymore. It’s something else he wants, now, and it appears the Old One is no longer binding him from hunting it.” He tried to get up, but a hot, sharp pain shot through his ribcage, causing him to gasp and gingerly return to his original position.
Lorth helped him to his feet by putting a shoulder under his armpit to support him. “What are you talking about?”
“Innocence,” Eaglin choked as they hobbled back in the direction of the pool. “My rib is broken—innocence—he wants—”
“Tansel,” the hunter concluded.
A dizzy spell swept over Eaglin. “Put me down.” Lorth stopped and lowered him to the ground, where he curled into a fetal position. Weakness crushed him; cold sweat covered his forehead. His subtler bodies didn’t align with his physical one, as if the sioros had rattled them loose with the blow. “Lorth,” he breathed. “I have to go into the dark to recover from this. Warn Caelfar. Tell him to throw a Formation Pentacle.”
“Caelfar came to me in mindspeak and told me Tansel fled the castle. He had to go after her. They’re probably out in the woods somewhere.”
“He can cast a Pentacle anywhere, but if the sioros comes on him, he’ll need help. I’m too weak to project to them; you’ll have to. Make sure they’re safe.”
“Aye.” Lorth spun around, then knelt and settled himself nearby. He moved his hand deftly into a spiral, to clear his mind.
“Lorth,” Eaglin stopped him. “How’s your Dark Tongue?”
“Not half as good as yours. Why?”
“That’s all a sioros speaks.”
“I wasn’t planning to have a conversation with him, Eaglin.”
“You may have to. As an apparition, you can no more get through the Pentacle than the sioros can. It blocks conscious awareness in certain dimensions beyond the physical. You’ll be exposed.”
The hunter took that in with a pale countenance. “What would you have me say?”
“Use your imagination.” He gasped as a sensation of extreme weight descended on his chest. “Destroyer has blessed you. Do not...” fear.
The last thing Eaglin heard before the darkness took him was the hunter growling an invective that would have embarrassed a god.
The Immortal Hunter
Early morning brightened the forest as Tansel and the Raven of Muin rode back to the hall. She rode behind him, holding onto his belt to keep her seat. As his horse clopped over the uneven terrain, she looked repeatedly at the ground moving beneath her. She had never been on a horse before. A skittish horse, at that.
The wizard had risen and waked Tansel very early, when only a feeling of light brushed the sky. He gave her no fire, no tea and only a bit of breakfast from his saddlebag: dried fruit and some heavy bread full of sunflower seeds. He gave her no privacy to care for her personal needs, but insisted on standing nearby, within a glance. He hadn’t given her even the time it took for a blush to fade before lifting her onto his horse, mounting and heading south in a brisk, thigh-bruising trot with Mushroom skulking behind.
As before, the wizard scanned the trees with visible agitation as they passed through the dappled shadows of the wood. But unlike before, he actually talked to her. He explained the secret names of the trees in the forest; the magical properties of bark and leaf; why dryads appeared in dreams; and how each kind of tree grew seeds and flowers or turned a certain color in autumn. He told her the names of constellations that appeared at different times of the year and how their names were actually those of gods who lived in the stars. He talked about birds, why they flew away when the seasons changed, where they went and how wintering birds ate and stayed warm. He described the mating rituals of deer, wildcats and snakes. There didn’t seem to be anything about the forest the Raven of Muin didn’t know.
And yet, furtive, alert, and seemingly on guard for some hidden danger, the wizard hadn’t curbed his cryptic manner. While talking, he would often stop, fall silent and raise his hand as if to listen for something, and then continue. The horse grew agitated at these times; twice, Tansel had nearly fallen from the saddle.
Tansel forgave the wizard his idiosyncrasies—he had come back for her, after all—but his hunted manner wore on her. She had begun to notice odd things: shadows that moved independently of the forms that cast them, brush or boughs stirred by wind when no wind blew, and shapes that vanished when she looked directly at them. Even Mushroom had gone strange, appearing in places out of nowhere, or di
sappearing altogether for longer than Tansel could bear.
She had asked the wizard what he looked for, as she had before. But he would not answer that, for all of his knowledge.
He checked their horse as they entered a small, shaded clearing carpeted with ferns. Weariness hung on him as he helped her to the ground. He took a flask of water from the saddle and pressed it into her hands, then looked up into the trees. Tansel didn’t bother. She had given up on that.
Until his expression changed.
She lowered the flask from her lips. “What is it?”
“Hush.” His eyes darkened as they focused inward. He grew very still, as if listening. Then, he turned pale as a dove. He snapped from his trance and looked wildly around them. “Don’t move.”
Tansel looked up at the treetops that time, but saw nothing except leaves moved by breezes that belonged. She remained rooted in place as the wizard walked to the far edge of the clearing, his black cloak swaying around him. He moved his hands and spoke strange words. Suddenly, a column of wind rose up from the clearing. The horse lifted its head and stomped a hoof on the ground; amazingly, the beast didn’t seem alarmed. Wind ruffled the ferns, and swift, perfect lines raced over the clearing to five connected points, one after the other. The wizard spoke another word, and a circle blew around the star. When the wind ceased, a tangible, glowing force surrounded the space.
Mushroom emerged from the forest, entered the invisible ring and sat by Tansel’s feet.
“Stay in the circle,” the Raven said. Then he sat down on a mossy boulder near the center of the star and lowered his face into his hands.
“Master, are you well?” Tansel went to him and held out the water.
He took the flask with a shaking hand and drank deeply. As he lowered it and wiped his mouth, he looked up with a stormy expression. “I am fine. And you don’t need to keep calling me ‘Master.’ I am your master of nothing whatsoever.”
Tansel didn’t know how to respond to that. But she couldn’t bring herself to use his name, Caelfar, as he had told her. No one used a high wizard’s name.
“I have a question,” she said to the ground, evading any sort of address at all, though she did wonder if using his name might lure him to answer her one last time. “Why do you keep looking into the trees, what do you listen for, when you stop—and what did you just do?” It was really three questions. Actually, it was about a hundred questions. “Are we in danger?” She tried to get a grappling hook up over the stones in his eyes, but he had changed from a safe old man into a night sky with no constellations, no moon, nothing but darkness troubled by itself.
Tansel went to the horse and placed her hand upon its ruddy neck. As she turned again to the wizard, she half expected to see empty space on the rock where he had been sitting with the flask in his hand.
“You are innocent,” he said at last. “The forest, the universe,” he glanced up at the sky, bright with ivory clouds tinged by a morning blush, “they are not.”
“What do you mean?”
He gestured. “Come here, Tansel.”
She dropped her hand from the horse and went to him. The wizard stood and guided to her to sit on the rock.
“Have you ever heard of a crowharrow?” he asked quietly.
She looked up at him, then at the trees. A chill swept over her. “Are you—”
“You have, then.”
“A legend. Something old that no longer troubles the world.”
The Raven stared down at her. “Old by mortal reckoning. Not by his. A human life is but a breath, to him.” Behind his eyes, a sea of unspoken knowledge threatened to flood the land, a sea he held back single-handedly with the last of an old man’s strength.
“I don’t understand.”
He reached out and touched her face. “Your mother didn’t abandon you, Tansel. A crowharrow took her.”
“No, that—” What?
“The same crowharrow is loose in Loralin,” the wizard continued. “That black stone your aunt gave you belongs to him. When your mother died, your aunt found it and took it. He wants it back.” He released a long breath. “She told you to hide it and cast a spell to protect you from him. But something has changed, Tansel. He is no longer held.”
Until you are ready to know the darkness.
Now Tansel wished she hadn’t pressed this terrible wizard with a single question these two long days. She stood up from the rock and stumbled back, dizzy, her emotions blurring into an opaque fog. With a jolt, she remembered her dream of a winged creature as beautiful as to awaken spring from the frozen earth—and she knew what he was.
Mother.
She didn’t know what else to do but run.
“Tansel!” shouted the wizard.
A force snapped through her chest as she leapt over the line and fled into the woods. She hadn’t realized until this moment how deeply she believed that one day her mother would return as mysteriously as she had gone. All the water, blood and flotsam of her life tangled together in thyme and cucumber vines, stinking tansy thickets, ivies running everywhere, spiders, frozen toads and flipped up rocks— The wizard’s voice boomed through the forest. Above, the trees shifted with wing beats.
Something appeared in front of her: a man, tall, dressed as a warrior in shades of brown and black beneath a silvery green cloak. He had long braided hair and gold-green eyes like an animal’s. Tansel screamed. He caught her in his arms as a man might grab a fleeing cat, and then strode back in the direction of the circle. Tansel shrieked like a wild thing; she tried to claw and kick at him, bite him, punch him, but to no avail. Impossibly, his touch felt like light and yet he gripped her with iron force.
The warrior strode, unmoved, until he reached the circle. The Raven of Muin paced back and forth within the lines, muttering, bent and wringing his hands. “Caelfar!” Tansel cried, struggling in her captor’s grip. But when the wizard looked up at the sound of his name, his face flooded with relief, and not with whatever vengeful emotion she had hoped to see.
“Lorth,” he said. “Silin en Maern tali.” The warrior set Tansel down on the edge of the circle and then stepped back as if he couldn’t enter it. Caelfar pulled Tansel into his arms and held her close. Far from comforted, she put the entrails of her anguish back from where they had sprung out.
“How is Eaglin?” Caelfar asked in a different tone.
“He went into the Void,” the warrior replied. He strode around the edge of the circle. “He’ll be all right.”
“Where are your bodies?”
“Hidden.”
Tansel didn’t understand their talk, but based on what Caelfar had taught her, she guessed that the warrior was an apparition. She withdrew from the old wizard’s embrace, thinking she should have been crying for her mother’s death. But survival had made her too accustomed to checking that.
“Tansel,” Caelfar said, holding her shoulders. “You need to listen to me.”
“He’s here,” said the warrior. He gazed intently to the north.
Caelfar turned, and then put Tansel behind him with startling strength and insistence. “Maern help us.”
The horse made a high-pitched sound of alarm, backed up and then pounded wildly into the forest. Mushroom was nowhere in sight. As Tansel followed the men’s gazes up into the trees, she lost her breath.
On the thick branch of a maple tree, the crowharrow flexed his wings and then floated to the ground before the circle, folding his feathers into a pool of soft, shimmering black. He stepped forward, his thighs rippling. Some kind of thin, clingy moss covered his body. He smelled of rosemary, oak, and something musky that only Tansel’s body recognized. The immortal didn’t look at the men; he looked at Tansel, straight into her, with eyes the color of ice. He uttered a soft command, and then held out his hand, claws gleaming. Something silvery twined around his wrist.
Tansel dropped to her knees. Her body burned with desire, a warm, aching river of need that mixed with blood and tears, washing them into the soot
hing earth and scattering her sense and reason like ashes to the wind.
The Raven of Muin turned to her in horror. “Tansel?” Then he faced the crowharrow and cried, in a voice that rent the air, “Begone! You will not take another from me.”
Tansel paid that no mind. She wanted to crawl low to the ground and press her hips into it, stalking, yowling with lust. The crowharrow tilted his face back, bared his fangs and made an incredibly fascinating sound of yearning.
Tansel moved.
The warrior whirled around and took a step in her direction, though he didn’t enter the circle. “Don’t let her go, Caelfar.” His voice was quiet but alarmingly firm.
“He cannot enter a Formation Pentacle,” the older wizard returned.
“By Code, she can choose to leave it.”
The crowharrow reached out. Black, oily sparks flew into the air as he touched the invisible wall of the circle. He roared with enough force to drive a gale through the forest. The ground shook.
The warrior vanished.
Caelfar leapt forward and grabbed Tansel in mid-creep, drew her back and put his arms around her. She fought against him, seeing only the eyes of the crowharrow, his lips, his thighs, flesh and water, roses, falling petals of pink and velvet need. She reached past the wizard’s shoulder with a cry.
The warrior appeared again on the edge of the ring between Tansel and the crowharrow—she shrieked with wrath as he blocked her view—and spoke in some kind of tongue that sounded like forest sounds, dark earth and moving water. The crowharrow responded with a dreadful laugh.
Tansel broke from Caelfar’s grip and stumbled to the edge of the circle. With surprising speed, the Raven snatched her up in a tangle of aching limbs and cries and returned her to the center. He held her in a ferocious grip and forced her to look at him. Tears streaked his face, and the love in his eyes stood in blinding contrast to the crowharrow’s call. She tried to look away into the beautiful sky, but he wouldn’t let her.
“Tansel,” he panted. “Listen to me. Whatever you think he’s offering you, death is all he will give you. Resist him! If you leave this circle, you are his and nothing we do can protect you. Do you understand?”
The Winged Hunter Page 7