Raveler: The Dark God Book 3

by John D. Brown

  Her misgivings about her choice to stay and fight this fight had not gone away. If anything, her doubts had increased. She knew if she failed, she would lose Legs. And it wouldn’t be just to death.

  In death, the soul separated from the flesh and was then free to find one of the Ways that led to the brightness of the Creators. Such a soul would face all manner of peril. But if that soul could overcome or elude the dangers it encountered in that new world, it would be gathered into the company of the ancestors.

  With death there was possibility. But she was not walking toward death. She’d seen the skir collect the souls for their masters. She’d heard the horn. She’d felt it call to her. She knew what awaited her in Blue Towers if she did not come back alive. She was walking toward oblivion. They all were.

  “It’s just my luck,” Legs said, “to lose the one man who can help me precisely when I need him the most.”

  “There might be others who have similar wisdom.”

  “I wanted to walk,” Leg said. “If I die, how will I even know what you look like to find you? How will I find Mother and Da?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But we know one thing: there will be no finding anybody if Mokad is allowed to continue its harvest of the land.” The image of the souls trapped like flies in the hair along the bellies of the horrible golden skir rose in her.

  She picked the weave up off the floor. “Don’t give up. I’m sure it just takes some practice.”

  “Maybe Flax knows,” Legs said. “Maybe Withers isn’t the only one who can help.”

  “Maybe,” Sugar said.

  Next to them, one of the ferrets woke and yawned, showing its sharp fangs.

  Sugar yawned as well. “I need a little bit of a nap,” she said. “Will you make sure I’m not disturbed?”

  Legs rose. “I’ll slay anyone who tries to enter with my vast wit and charm.”

  Sugar slipped her candidate’s weave over her arm to multiply her rest and fell asleep as soon as she hit the pillow.

  5

  Spiderhawks

  ABOUT A MILE from the white ridge beyond the wurm vale, Harnock halted at a rock face that wept clear water. Talen slurped a number of mouthfuls of the sweet and cold water off the rock, then found a spot where the water dripped off a ledge, unstopped his waterskin, and began to fill it.

  Harnock retrieved more of his cooked grubs. He didn’t eat them one by one, but took a handful and tossed them in his mouth, chewing them, bead heads and all, like a normal person might eat a handful of nuts. “This was Moon’s recipe,” he said. “Nobody made them better.”

  Talen was going to say that was because nobody else made them at all, but he kept his mouth shut.

  “What about the crows?” asked River.

  “If those two pests find us, the woodikin have birds that can deal with them,” said Harnock. His fur was damp with sweat, and Talen could smell him in the breeze. He was pungent. He didn’t smell as strongly as a wet dog or horse, but he smelled. Talen wondered if Harnock bathed like a man or a cat. The ridiculous image of Harnock licking himself with that rough tongue made Talen smile.

  “What’s so funny?” Harnock asked.

  “Nothing,” Talen said. “I’m just in shock. Here I am in the Wilds, eating grubs with a sleth who stirs up wurms for entertainment.”

  Harnock grunted. “You keep that smile off your face when we meet with the woodikin. There’s more than grubs they like to eat.”

  “I’ll be sober as a cow,” said Talen. “And when we’re done, even if you don’t want our gratitude, we will repay your efforts.”

  “You’ll bring back my peace and solitude, will you?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Harnock looked at River and shook his head. “If anyone gets us killed,” he said, “it’ll be that one.”

  “Give him a chance,” said River.

  “He’s hopeless,” Harnock said. “But you”—he reached out and took her gently by the jaw as if appreciating a flower—“you’re another matter.”

  River politely, but firmly moved his hand away. “We should get moving,” she said.

  Harnock grunted, then turned to his pack. “Indeed.”

  Talen said, “I don’t understand why we’re running from them. You’re more powerful than any dreadman. More powerful than that Divine.”

  Harnock shook his head. “You know nothing, Hogan’s son.”

  “Then educate me.”

  In the distance a squirrel chittered.

  Harnock batted a horsefly away from the back of his arm. “The lion is strong. He’s changed everything. My skin, my eyes, the power of my nostrils. He turned my muscles and sinews into iron. I can do things no man, no dreadman could ever dream of. Lumen wanted brawn and brains, cunning and ruthlessness. And he got it. He figured it out, something few Divines have managed, although he killed plenty of us before he twisted me. But as strong as this twist is, I was his creature. The Divines always work something into a thrall to bind what they’ve wrought, to keep it in their control. Which is why I cannot fight this Nashrud. He’ll know my weakness. He’ll know how to pick up my chain. And then it won’t matter—man or lion, I will not be my own. And neither will you.”

  “Nashrud didn’t enthrall me.”

  “He didn’t have to. Where were you going to run? What were you going to do? He was probably forbidden to make you his thrall. In fact, I’m sure of it. You were destined to be at the end of someone else’s chain.”

  “Can’t you fight a thrall?”

  “I’ve tried closing my doors, but there’s something in the weave of the tattoos.” He pulled back the fur at his neck to reveal a tattoo there. He held out his wrist. “Neck, chest, wrist—it doesn’t matter. They enter the flesh there. That’s what a thrall does. It comes in, inserts itself into you, mind and soul, and takes command.”

  Harnock’s wrists were tattooed in the normal Koramite fashion, but there were scars all over them. “Are those scars part of your thrall?”

  “When Lumen had me, I thought if I could break the pattern of the tattoo, I could break his control, but the tattoo is not just ink. The thrall weave grows deep, all the way down to the bone. You can’t just cut it out. I’ve tried.”

  Talen looked down at his own wrists. Harnock was right. The tattoos weren’t just brands—they were living things. And his had been changing, growing.

  River spoke. “You have to wonder why the Divines seed every child with them. We’re not all thralls. So what other purpose do they serve?”

  Harnock shrugged. “There are insects like the weem that lay their eggs in the bodies of their prey. Is that what the Divines are doing for their masters? Or is it something else? I don’t know.”

  “Surely, there has to be a way to diminish a thrall’s power,” Talen said.

  “Distance,” said Harnock. “For some reason, the pull lessens when the distance between the master and thrall increases, but it doesn’t disappear altogether.”

  “But you broke Lumen’s thrall upon you.”

  “Lumen wasn’t my direct master. Mine was a lazy-eyed priest Lumen had chosen. One day he choked on a hard bit of bread. Choked good and died. When he did, the link broke, and I ran. And because Lumen could not catch me, he could not shackle me with his own fetter.”

  “But the Devourer said I was not a thrall. She said thralls were only good to be used and then devoured.”

  “And you believed that creature? Why create a blend if you cannot control it? Do not deceive yourself. You’re a horse, all bridled and saddled up, waiting for a rider. Somewhere, something wants to take hold of the reins to your soul. And the best thing to do is avoid them.”

  Talen and River finished filling their waterskins. When he hung his over his shoulder, a bird’s shadow passed over the rock. Talen looked up, expecting to see the crows, but saw a vulture
high up instead.

  “We’re getting close now to some woodikin orchards,” Harnock said. “Don’t take anything. Don’t say or do anything unless I tell you. Do you understand?”

  Talen and River nodded.

  “This tribe owes me. I’ll get you through their lands, and then you’re on your own.”

  “Why don’t you come back with us, back to the settlements?” River asked.

  Harnock looked at her. “Why don’t you stay with me instead?”

  “This is the Grove’s moment,” River replied.

  “No man will make you happier,” Harnock said.

  “War is not the time to wed.”

  Harnock shook his head. “Come on, then. Time to meet some grub-eating friends.”

  They set off at a pace that was fast, but Talen’s Fire was responding better now, and he was able to keep up.

  Talen had never seen a woodikin. Decades ago, woodikin and humans had spilled much of each other’s blood when the first settlers came to the New Lands. It was said that when you killed one woodikin, you obligated whole tribes and families to come after you. But they never really fought in open formal battle. Instead, the woodikin loved to ambush. They’d surprise a company of men, attacking from tree tops, sending in swarms of hornets and wasps. They’d sneak in at night with their poison darts and stone knives and murder you as you slept. But they’d mostly destroyed farms and crops, killed cattle, absconded with chickens, and sometimes children. There was a two-year stretch in that long war when the early settlers, having been starved nearly to death, had almost lost.

  But with the coming of a Divine, the woodikin were beaten back, and the hostilities ceased. A line had been drawn and marked with the giant border obelisks. Woodikin and humans were to have no contact unless approved by the Divine. Only a few families were given charters to trade, and most of these were temporary. Furthermore, the families were allowed to trade only with the Orange Slayer woodikin, the most powerful tribe.

  Talen and River followed Harnock for perhaps another mile or three, but Talen couldn’t tell for sure because the Wilds were nothing more than an endless puzzle of hills, ravines, and hollows. Distance was hard to gauge. As they ran, his anticipation grew. He was about to be one of the few humans to ever see the woodikin in their tree villages.

  They crossed yet another creek, walked partway up a gentle wooded slope, and then Harnock stopped. “We’re here,” he said.

  Talen looked around. This didn’t look like any orchard. “I thought the woodikin ate bugs.”

  “They eat a lot of things,” said Harnock, “but they love tango nuts. They farm them just as we farm carrots or apples.”

  Talen had been expecting neat rows, but this didn’t look any different than the rest of the woods. Then he saw a regularity of one type of tree growing among all the others.

  Harnock pointed. “The woodikin have paths up there. You see the other trees between the tango nuts. They use the branches as walkways.”

  Now that he’d pointed it out, Talen did see them. The closer Talen looked, the more signs he saw of cultivation. He even saw ropes and a platform up in one of the bridge trees. A number of wooden collars ringed some of the trees’ trunks. Talen asked what they were for, and was told they were there to keep other animals from climbing up and getting the fruit.

  Talen remembered River saying that Moon was a smuggler. “You trade with them despite the restrictions, don’t you?”

  “You think I’m going to follow the law set down by some Mokaddian Divine?”

  “That’s how you made a living with your wife, smuggling woodikin goods outside.”

  Harnock gave him a look and said nothing.

  Talen continued, “Which means you’ve got a contact out on the coast. But I thought you didn’t want to get close to the settlements. I thought you said that was dangerous.”

  Harnock looked at River. “Does he always talk this much?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Harnock grunted, then said, “Follow me, and keep quiet.” Then he began to walk up through the orchard.

  As they walked, Talen spotted many more ropes and platforms in the distance and realized the orchard was large, even if it wasn’t kept in the fashion of the clans. And they didn’t have to walk far before Talen saw his first woodikin. The creature sat high up in a tree, watching them. It was hairy, but wore some kind of tunic and carried a small bow. It had a mane of white fur.

  Harnock shouted up to it in a language Talen did not understand. The woodikin blew a whistle of sorts, then continued to watch them.

  “What do we do now?” asked Talen.

  “We wait. There will be some discussion and barter, but this tribe of Orange Slayers owes me. They’ll give us passage through the borders of their tanglewood and out to the other side.”

  The woodikin tribes and nations named themselves for various things. There were the Long-bodies, Bear Eaters, Toadmen, and dozens of others. The Orange Slayers were named after a giant hornet with an orange head. The hornet sometimes grew as long as a man’s palm and had a wing span of almost five inches. They looked like sparrows when they flew. Everyone knew about orange slayers and their dagger stings—it’s what the woodikin had sent against the humans in the old wars.

  Which was why the clans destroyed their nests whenever they were found. In the old wars, some of the Koramite settlers had died from the stings, but in battle the woodikin wasp lords had used them more to strike fear in the hearts of their enemies, distracting them, injuring them, breaking their lines, making it easy for the woodikin warriors to pick them off. How the woodikin controlled the wasps, nobody knew.

  Talen himself had seen the bodies of a small nest of wild orange slayers. A farmer had destroyed the nest at night by knocking it into a large barrel of water, putting a lid on it, and drowning the creatures. Afterwards, the farmer had cooked some up for eating and sold others for a fine price. At the time, the sight of the wasps’ large bodies and stingers and powerful-looking jaws had filled Talen with dread. He couldn’t imagine facing a swarm of thousands of the creatures. The old settlers had worn thick clothing and special hats with netting as defenses, but even those sometimes failed. Talen had nothing of the sort here—just his tunic and trousers. Furthermore, his head, neck, arms, and feet were bare. He began to feel very exposed.

  “What do we do if they send their hornets at us?” Talen asked.

  “We run,” said Harnock.

  Talen looked at River in alarm.

  “Relax,” River said. “I doubt they use wasp lords to protect orchards.”

  “Not unless they’re expecting a raid from an enemy tribe,” said Harnock. “We’re very close to Spiderhawk territory.”

  “Spiderhawks?” Talen asked.

  “Another tribe, named after the black wasps that attack large spiders and drag them down into their holes.”

  An insect flew by, and Talen jumped, but it was just a plain old fly.

  Above them the woodikin made more calls. Flute-like whistles responded from deeper within the forest. A look of concern crossed Harnock’s face. He yelled up to the woodikin watching them from above. His voice seemed full of anger.

  The woodikin yelled back down.

  “He says we’re thieves, and that we are now property of their queen,” said Harnock.

  “We didn’t touch anything,” said Talen.

  “Of course, we didn’t,” said Harnock.

  In the tops of the branches in the distance, a troop of woodikin moved into view. They were carrying sticks. Then Talen realized they weren’t sticks. They were blow pipes. The woodikin were famous for their poison darts.

  Talen increased his Fire.

  Harnock yelled up at the woodikin again. They exchanged a number of words. Then Harnock grimaced. All the while, the troop of armed woodikin came closer. “He says to give up the boy, an
d our debt will be paid.”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Talen.

  “It’s tempting,” Harnock said.

  “What would woodikin want with Talen?” asked River.

  “Woodikin like human slaves,” said Harnock. “It’s a status thing. They might put him to work on the ground in their orchards. Or turn him into a pack animal and make him haul things about. But my bet is they’d use him in their weapons practice. They’d pit their ring warriors against him in a spectacle. He’d be released when he was dead.”

  “Ring warriors?” Talen asked.

  “You ever wonder why the woodikin stay out of our lands? It’s not just the threat of Skir Masters blowing their hornets away. Mokad buys them off with weaves of might.”

  “They have dreadmen?” Talen asked.

  “Some, but they also use the weaves for healing.”

  “Do they give weaves to all the tribes?”

  “Oh, no. Just the Orange Slayers. It’s what keeps the Orange Slayers in power, and the other tribes in submission.”

  The woodikin above them yelled down again.

  “They want the boy,” Harnock said.

  River said, “This isn’t about slaves and spectacles, is it? Could they know about Talen? Could they have been sent word?”

  “How would they have gotten word?”

  “The crows?” River offered. “A patrol?”

  “Gah,” Harnock said and sighed in frustration.

  “That troop is getting close,” Talen said.

  “You think I can’t see?” Harnock growled.

  The woodikin yelled down at them again.

  Harnock replied with a strange arm gesture.

  “What was that?” asked Talen.

  “That’s how woodikin say ‘I’m going to eat your grandmother’s brain you worthless bird-copulator.’”

  “That’s a lot for one gesture,” Talen said.

  The woodikin in the tree answered by bringing up its small bow and letting loose one if its shafts.

  They all scrambled for cover. Talen darted behind a tree. Harnock behind another. The short arrow thocked into the tree a few inches from Harnock’s hand.