by Jenna Rhodes
“Well and good.” Tressandre kicked the garments off and Heroma caught them, tucked them under her arm and left with a nod of her head. Tressandre waited until the seamstress left, her soft-soled boots walking slowly yet firmly down the hallway, and then leaned for a bell rope, yanking it. She did not have to wait long.
Alton, eyes still a bit crusted from sleep and face slack from being pressed against a mattress, appeared at the door. He lifted an eyebrow at the pieces of fabric lying about the room as his sister stepped down off her cushion. “How is old Heroma? Bossy, as usual?”
“I want her dead. As soon as you can arrange it.”
“What?”
Tressandre wound a stray bit of her hair about her finger. “I believe you heard.”
“Heard but did not believe.”
“Dead. By tomorrow evening. Make it quick, I won’t have Heroma suffer. A broken neck, perhaps, suffered during a fall down the stairs. See to it.”
“Lady sister, she’s been with us for untold years. She might as well be our grandmother.” He rubbed the corner of one eye and flicked a bit of crystal from his finger.
“All the more reason she should not suffer.” Tressandre lifted her chin, daring Alton to get off another word, but he closed his mouth on it. She smiled briefly. “When our enemies investigate the word of my pregnancy, and they will investigate, she is our weakest link. She is old and frail though she admits it not, and they’ll break her like a twig. I want her spared that.”
“A certain death stacked against an uncertain torture?”
“Do you not agree with me?”
He traded looks with her before dropping his gaze. “I always agree with you, sooner or later.” He smothered a yawn on the back of his hand. “Tonight, then.”
Tressandre looked at him over her shoulder. “No. Tomorrow night. She has some work to finish for me, first.”
“Ah, good. Then I can finish my sleep. The ride from Ashenbrook to Larandaril and then home is a hard one without the Ferryman to give quick passage.” He scrubbed at his eyes again, looking for a moment like the tousled boy, handsome and carefree, that she remembered from her own early days when she used to watch him whenever she could. “If that is all right with you?”
She turned away from him with a languid move. “As long as you finish it in my bed.” She put her hand behind her, stretching it out to him, and he reached forward to take it.
Ceyla
At first she was uncertain she heard the hounds. Their voices rose and fell with the thin whistling of the wind through the evergreens as night began to fall and the branches moved restlessly. Needles and limbs whipped at her as Ceyla moved through them, running when she could and stumbling more often as both the lack of light and the roughness of ground tripped her up. She had half a day on her pursuers, but they were used to the hunt. If she went to water, the still icy and swift flowing river would kill her before her hunters did. If she did not, her scent would linger for the hounds to pick up. She’d hoped being in the dog pens, her odor might be muddled, but the noise growing on the wind told her that her ruse had not worked. She might not live the night, despite her earlier belief that she would. One never set out to fail, she told herself, ducking her head further, her palms raw as she propelled herself forward, holding her hands out to shield herself. Going back was not an option, for there would be no mercy. They would flay the skin off her body and the armor from her mind, use her up and leave her lying exposed to die a lingering death. This, she knew. This, she had seen far more than she’d seen her success.
But she had seen her success. More than once. Enough to give her the courage to try. Never trying or giving up ensured her failure, and so she had screwed up her courage to do whatever she could.
Her breath whistled through her throat like the wind in the trees, cold and chill and scraping her inside out. She stumbled into tree trunks more than once, left shoulder aching and both elbows smarting. Her feet had stung, but now they were numb. Ceyla thought she could feel the soles of her shoes part, flapping about her ankles but she couldn’t be sure. It would be better to be running on raw pain rather than stumps that she could not feel or maneuver upon at all. She lurched and skidded across dirt and needle-glossed pathways unseen where only animals traveled and heard the hounds grow inexorably closer.
The river sounded in her ears. There would be no soft banks to ease down, the river in these mountains cut deep through sharp and towering cliffs. She had to take one of the suspension bridges if she wished to cross and if the ild Fallyn hunted truly, they already had guards there alerted. She had planned to travel underneath the bridge, skittering along its belly like some ceiling spider after arriving unnoticed. Now . . . what chance? The river itself, dark and deep and fierce, rushed through the gully. And, too, the river, if she survived it, would carry her back, back toward the fortress and its escarpment footing near the sea. Backward in her flight and hopes. Always back.
Unless she just let the river take her down and drown her and everything would cease. Her hopes, her fears, her . . . dreams.
Ceyla plowed to a halt and shook herself. Blood roared hotly through her head. Her ears tingled, her throat tightened. And her feet managed an answering throb of life. If this were only for herself, she could falter. She could consider defeat.
But it had never been just about herself, and her dreams would never let it be. So. She gathered herself with a long, scorching breath that seared its way into her throat and lungs and sighed out softly again. No turning back. She would find a way.
As she staggered back into motion, her wish to feel her feet flared into jagged, tearing pain and she gasped, tears running unbidden down her face. What folly that had been! Raggedly, she stayed in motion, lurching this way and that, stabbing flashes of agony driving her across the ground. Then, along with the howling, came the smell.
Ceyla scrubbed the back of her hand across her nose, wiping away tears and snot and the noxious odor. She blinked. There was no possible way she could smell the hounds at this distance, not even with her preternatural skill. Nor had any hound she ever winded stunk like this . . . never.
Then her face broke into a smile, a wide, gaping, gasping for breath smile, but one nonetheless. Some stinkdog had made its den nearby, leagues and leagues away from its normal habitat, but slimed the ground and bed with its scent and the mucus that it shed to coat and protect its skin. There wasn’t a hunting dog who could wind her own scent through the detritus of a stinkdog!
Ceyla clawed her way through the bush and when she was certain, how could she not be, of the den’s location, fell to her hands and knees and crept forward.
The animal could be vicious. It was, under any circumstances, unpleasant. But she would approach unthreatening, not weak if different, and unchallenging. Ceyla calmed her breathing and moved, slowly, bit by bit, her eyes watering as the odor grew more and more vile. She could hear the rustle of the harsh grasses and needles and a grunt. She could feel the body heat rolling off the roused beast and hesitated a moment, savoring the warmth. The howling behind her grew louder, and she could now hear the individual barks and bays of the pack tracking her. She hadn’t much time.
Her palm slipped on a glob of mucus. Repelled, she snatched her hand back and the stinkdog growled deeply in warning. She wanted to shake her hand clean, but this was what she’d come for! Teeth clenched, she wiped her hand over her scarf and hair. Then she crawled forward into more of the disgusting stuff, until she found a patch she could lower herself into and roll. Gods. She shuddered as she did so and her throat clenched, holding back her desire to vomit. The stinkdog opened its eyes. They caught the glow of the barely revealed moon in the sky as it looked toward her. Ceyla froze.
It opened and closed its jaws as if yawning or chewing. It moved about on its bed to face her. She could hear it snuffle.
Did her eyes reflect a stare back into its own? She held her face st
eady, crouched on the ground, lower than the head of the beast, tensing to get to her feet and run if it decided to charge.
The stinkdog chomped and slurped its jaws again, then put its muzzle down and closed its eyes to mere slits. Not a welcome, exactly, but not hostility either.
Ceyla finished coating herself, in quick, sure movements. The mucus stuck to her from head to toe until even her nose eventually gave up and refused to function, overcome by the stench. She would, she thought, smell it in her dreams until the day she died.
Which, hopefully, would now be a long way off.
She did not get to her feet and leave the den until the glowing, slit eyes closed and she could hear the creature’s deep breathing. Then she moved off, careful not to slough off any of the coating as she went, and when she had gotten downslope, she turned in guilt. The hounds would scent her this far, if no farther. She could not leave the animal on its own.
Tired, weaving on her feet, the bridge within sprinting distance, she closed her eyes. Ceyla let herself sink, sink, and sink until she found the edge of sleep in her exhaustion. And on that edge, she found the rhythm of the stinkdog in its sleep and she sent it a picture of peril, of dogs baying in killing excitement as they charged toward it.
Then she opened her eyes and ran.
Behind her, she could hear the animal get to its feet with a muffled bellow as it prepared its defense instinctively. She could do no more than give it warning and let it choose its fight.
The rest, short as it had been, gave her a last jolt of stamina. She sprinted toward the suspension bridge, torches placed upon its length to illuminate it in the darkness, its base well buried into the side of the mountain, its scalloped sides an artistic rendering of cable and steel. Only the ild Fallyn Talent could have built such a structure, for they had the inherent ability to levitate, making the building of such possible. She had crossed it once, many, many years ago, young and small and fighting her captors, but she had made note with her sharp eyes and memory of this eventual road to freedom.
Unfortunately, the very slime and scum that disguised her scent would impede her ability to climb. Couldn’t be helped. Her hands were already raw. Ceyla ducked in under the foot of the bridge and pulled loose some well-woven rope and stout but pliable leather she had been secreting for seasons. When she had prepared herself, she reached up. The underside of the bridge was as she remembered . . . she having thrown herself off the wagon bed and tumbled down the hill to nearly fall off the cliff’s edge into the river, so that she could lie underneath the structure and spy on its construction. Then, the span between hand and footholds were beyond a child’s reach. Then, the structure had seemed insurmountable, yet another obstacle she could not hope to defeat.
Now she had hopes.
Far behind her, the howling of the hounds broke up. Faltered. Faded and then regathered strongly, then stuttered again. Fighting? Scattering? Confused? She could only surmise.
Once under the bridge, they had little hope of tracking her.
Ceyla tightened her harness and took hold of the rough metal and wood that was the underside of the soaring structure. Night had fallen deeply and, under the shadowed bridge, she could see little even as her eyes adapted. She lay back on a strut and shut out the sounds around her: the foaming river below, the baying hounds in the distance, the creak and sway of the bridge itself as it moved in the wind. She concentrated instead on the structure, on the rough surface with its many angles and joints, places that might be climbed and swung from, caught and crossed by . . . if only she could see. If only she knew what she faced. Or had faced.
Ceyla brushed her hand across her pack and liberated her herb pouch. She could not see the small bags tied within, but each had been wrapped and knotted differently so that she could identify them by touch alone, if she had to. A slim bag came open reluctantly as she undid it, and the faint, musky smell of the cured leaves within stained the air. She drew a pinch, only the merest of a pinch to her lips. Dare she? She did. The crumbling herb left a smoky and bitter taste behind as she retied the bag and secured it back in her pack. A sip of water did little to dispel it. More water would dilute it and wash it out of her system quicker, so she had to endure the bitterness. Better if she had taken a flint and set it alight so that she could inhale the smoke, but that might draw attention when she could not afford it. So, instead, Ceyla wrapped her arms tightly about her strut and waited for her mind to catch the bit of dreamspark she’d ingested. It grew in her. She could feel it uncoiling and reaching, stretching throughout her body, hot and sharp, and then it hit her mind.
She could let it carry her off into dreams unwanted, but Ceyla had no intention of closing her eyes to unhampered power. She curled the herb like smoke through her vision, twisting it, until she stood, sun dappling her body, murmuring voices behind her, the restless stamp of horses, the smell of fall leaves crushed underfoot, and she made her way down the embankment carefully.
“Take care, m’lady.”
The words, male-voiced, so far away behind her as barely to be heard at all, filled with concern and—what? Authority. She must take care. She had been given no choice, but neither did she have time. Only the briefest of moments to look back under the bridge, to look back at the way she had traversed in the dead of night, and see what she had accomplished. Only a breath or two in which to examine the feat and to know, to remember, what it was she had done. Ceyla slid to the bottommost anchor of the span, wrapping an arm about a bit of shrub that stubbornly split the rocky foundation and grew, as spindly as an old garden rope—and as strong.
She narrowed her eyes and put her free hand up for shade. She could see the underneath of the span now. Where handholds and footholds might be gotten. How long the swing out must be in the dead center of the underbelly, right over the frothing, raging river down below. It made her breathless to look at it, to think that she had crossed it at night, how perilous it had been, and how she could only have made it because of this moment, looking back.
She examined it for every breath she could manage, aware of the male figure coming up behind her and putting an arm about her waist as if to steady her . . . or reclaim her. The ild Fallyn who’d built this had used magic to do it. Ordinary craftsmen could not have accomplished it. But once built, one did not need levitation to scale its underside. This she knew. She stood here, did she not? Stood and looked back? But in a hundred other visions, she did not finish her journey. The hunters and dogs found her, pulling her from her perch. Or the river claimed her falling body. Or the harness she’d wrought so cleverly had tangled and she died, dangling there, hanged. But in this moment, in this vision, she examined the bridge and sent her thoughts backward, ever backward, so that a slave running for her freedom might catch them.
All it took was one vision seen rightfully.
In the heat of the day, in the cold of the night, Ceyla shivered and sweated. The dreamspark boiled from her body, from her pores, her skin stinking of its odor and then, in another breath, all had faded.
Ceyla dragged her hand across her forehead, and then scrubbed her hand dry on the seat of her pants. She could hear again, from far away, the sound of the hounds. They were on the trail once more. Her whole body shook as she clenched her eyes shut for a moment, could feel the sweat even from her eyelids; moisture poured from her body as the dreamspark violently burned its way out. And then it was gone, leaving her shaking like a newborn thing, about to mewl in distress, helpless and weak, the price of the seeing she’d done. In this moment, it might serve her, or she might yet fail. In another moment, somewhen else, she would gather the strength to go on. Or she could muster it now. In this self.
Ceyla tried to swallow, but she nearly choked on the dryness in her throat, left behind by the quick ravage of the dreamspark through her system. She could hear a hound bell, not so far now, a pack leader telling his mates that here, here, here, he’d found a scent despite the slime, despite
the stink of the beast, here was the trail.
Ceyla fastened her harness and pushed off, swinging through the night. She’d done it, once. She’d come back to look at what she’d done, so that she might remember it when she looked forward. A tangled vision but true. Only once.
That would have to be enough to carry her through.
EVEN IN THE DARK OF NIGHT, Bistane saw shadows. A warlord, son of a warlord, he could not discount nerves but neither could he afford to court them. Yet, he felt the quickening of movement, sensed more by the stirring of air and leaf and gravel around him than by sight, and even this had begun to change. He could see things others couldn’t, not the threads of the physical, but what he feared was not physical. He reined his horse in as they drew near Lariel’s stables. This was not his home, but Bistane had been here often enough that he knew it well and it mattered little that he did not walk on his own ground. The feeling of oddness, of a presence where there should be none, stalked him whether he was astride, as he rode now, or walked in the light of day where shadows ought to be expected. In those times when the eerie sense followed him, he thought he saw his father, Bistel Vantane, pacing with a warlord’s marked confidence next to him and then marching away, off on some ghostly business that Bistane could neither detect nor decipher.
It was only habit and imagination, he told himself. His father’s death was but recent and his presence such a strong one that it was difficult to perceive a world without him. For what reason would he be haunted than by sheer familiarity of his father’s authority and advice in his life? No other that he could think of. He had been a good son, a strong and temperate son, and there had been little strife between them once he had grown “into his boots” as the elder Vantane liked to put it. Bistane had little regret with reference to his father. Their only contention had been when Vantane sired another son and brought him to the hold, but even then, there was no doubting that the warlord held enough love for them both. And, Bistane had been grown by then. Matured. He held no shame that he had a Dweller-blooded half brother although his father thought it best to keep the relationship quiet. Verdayne had been raised somewhat like a frolicking puppy until he grew sturdy legs and a love of the land that all Vantanes held. The aryn trees seemed to listen to him. He filled a hole that neither Bistel nor Bistane had known existed until Verdayne occupied it proudly. Bistel liked to say that Verdayne held the best of the Dwellers within himself, but Bistane knew only that his younger brother held a consistent joy he did not, and he shared it.