by Jenna Rhodes
Or the blood sign could mean that an attack had occurred nearby, for an altogether different reason. Her hobbled horse . . . anything. She stayed frozen in indecision. She needed water. Without the horse, she needed boots or shoes. She would not get far on bare feet. She needed help. Or a plan. Or . . .
She heard a groan. A low, from the gut groan that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Ceyla turned on one heel, preparing to run. But she did not. Whatever it was that groaned needed help. She knew that. It might or might not have anything to do with the blood scent, but chances were it did. She didn’t have to be a seer to make that connection. It could even be her horse, mortally wounded, and needing a merciful ending, if nothing else. She owed it that much. She pushed a foot forward, and then had to follow it. One halting, pushing footstep at a time, she moved closer to the noise and the smell. Before she broke through the shelter of the brush and saplings, she could see it: her horse’s carcass, exsanguinated and ripped to pieces, in a bruised patch of grass and dirt. She bit the inside of her cheek sharply to keep from crying out or being sick. It had been torn down and then shredded apart, although the blood loss was far less than she would have imagined. Limbs had been ripped off and then gnawed upon. The entrails bulged out of the stomach’s cavern, piling onto the forest floor. The face of the animal was ripped to tatters as if that and the tender area under the throat were where it had been attacked first.
Ceyla turned her face away. Had she crippled it so much with the hobble that it couldn’t have fought back, couldn’t have run? She didn’t think so. She didn’t know. All she knew was that it was dead. Perhaps one day a vision would show her how and why, but she couldn’t depend on that. Her visions did not exist to make her life easier.
She shoved a fist into her mouth to keep herself quiet, and began to skirt the death scene. There was still the matter of water. Still the matter of the groan.
Ceyla eased through the undergrowth as quietly as she could, hunching over to hide herself within it, gnawing on her fingers anxiously as she moved. She had nothing, nothing except her wits and she wasn’t even sure about them at this point. A noise like . . . like a shower of gravel and dirt cascading upon ground halted her in her tracks again.
She had no idea what would make a sound like that. Or why. She knew the where of it by this time, in a break just beyond the canopy of trees and brush, out in the open. Exactly where she did not want to be. She put her hand out to the trunk of the nearest sizable tree. The feel of rough bark biting into her palm calmed her a bit. This, she knew. This pain was familiar.
As quickly and quietly as she could, she scaled the tree. Up and up until the branches could barely hold her weight before lying down on one to see what she could see. She inched as far out on it as she dared before coming to a halt, slowing down her breathing, hoping her pulse would follow, concentrating on being nothing more than a leaf upon the waving bough. Moments slowed. Her panic ebbed. She blinked a few times to clear her vision and looked down. At first Ceyla did not see what could possibly have made the noises she’d heard, particularly the shifting of rock and pebble, and then she saw, half-shadowed, what looked to be a shallow grave. It made no sense to her until she heard the low groan again, rising in both agony and decibels, as the grave rippled and then heaved upward. A shower of dirt and gravel fell off the hump to either side, raining upon the ground.
Something that was not dead had been buried down below. It had not stayed there. It had erupted, desperately. It looked as if it had returned, more than once, hollowing a den from its grave.
Her first instinct shook her. He needed help, surely. She should go see how badly injured he was, find out what had happened, see what she could do. But the shock of seeing him—it—rise from the ground froze her in her perch. Blood and gore covered his ragged clothing, but it was fresh, glistening under the dirt and grime, not the rusty brown color of old blood. The wet shine of it caught the glare of the sun like a crimson mirror. Ceyla flinched, her gaze darting away from what she watched. Whatever it was or wherever it came from, she felt certain it was a principal player in the death scene she’d just skirted and that whatever foresight had kept her from rushing to help, she thanked prayerfully. Its odor rose with it, a miasma of fetid odors that forced her hand to her nose and mouth to keep from spitting it back out and giving herself away. She didn’t know if it could climb, but she certainly knew that it could kill.
As for who or what had buried it, there seemed to be a good possibility that it had buried itself for the sun filtering through the surroundings bothered it. It groaned and mumbled, hunched over and shambled forward in whatever shadows it could find. Ceyla watched it stumble out of her sight and when it had completely disappeared, she found her fist remaining in her mouth to keep silence. She wanted to stay in the tree a very long time to keep safe, but as the sun would eventually fall in the sky and the shadows lengthen, she would become more and more unsafe. Better to run now, while she could stay with the sun shining full upon her.
Ceyla sprinted.
A scream like that of a mountain bobcat split the air behind her, a shout and a growl swallowing it up and Ceyla sobbed, certain that whatever it was, was on her. She stumbled and went down, somersaulting through the bushes and shrubbery, stopping only when coming up hard against a sapling that bent as it bore her weight.
Only then did she realize that nothing chased her, that the battle sounded behind her, that the thing had found a different target. Ceyla rolled upward to one knee, branches stabbing at her and her body aching, but knelt, alert, like an animal sensing whatever it could.
She could hear the furious battle muted only by distance and the forest itself, limbs twitching in the wind and animals scurrying away from the furor. Hoofbeats drummed her way and Ceyla leaped to her feet into the pathway of a tashya horse, head up and eyes wild, reins flapping about its neck and chest. It slowed at the sight of her, and she grabbed for the leathers, thinking the horse would pull her arm out of her shoulder as it dragged her along before abruptly stopping. It let out a low, sobbing snort, and rolled its near eye at her, the whites blazing. Ceyla put her hand on its muzzle and murmured comforting sounds to it, even as she listened to the noise of a far-off fight. The noise stopped after a handful of breaths. She pulled the horse’s head down to her chest and held it very still, not wanting it to whicker or whinny, alerting the survivor of the battle.
No more sound reached her, though she strained to hear. The tashya’s ears flickered forward and back, and it stomped a foot at being held in such a confined way. Ceyla kneed it in the chest and bit out a discouraging sound. The horse stilled.
The smell of smoke reached her. That comforted her more than the silence. Whoever survived was burning the body, and she doubted the half-alive, shambling thing she’d seen could think to do such a thing. She cheered the victor and his actions. Burning it was the only smart thing to do. Leaving the body could only spread the contagion and for all she knew, it could come alive yet again.
Ceyla’s hand closed on the horse’s reins. A distant whicker hung on the air, and her horse trembled in its need to answer it. She pinched its nostrils tight with her free hand until she was certain the horse relaxed. Then, and only then, she swung the horse around, put her foot in the stirrup, grabbed the saddle, and mounted.
Whoever the victor was, he had a horse or pony at hand, and would not need this one. She did. Ceyla sat for a moment, casting through her scattered thoughts, before finding the one, the singular need, that drove her. She turned the horse, put a heel to its flank, and continued on her journey. Tree branches grabbed at her sleeves and whipped at her face as she took the tashya winding through the groves, lit by an unquenchable desire to reach her destination, a thirst that would kill her if she could not slake it.
She rode for two days. Not running but without stop. Both she and the horse were drenched with sweat and tottering with exhaustion when she reached the outskirts of a
vast encampment, one heralded by the scent of its campfires and the aroma of its horse lines. Its people were golden-skinned, and they put their hands up eagerly to lift her off her mount, which promptly dropped to the ground with a shuddering sigh of relief. She staggered away from the fallen horse. They stared at her for a long moment.
“A Vaelinar is come to us!” they shouted, and they brought her to their king.
VERDAYNE STAYED ON ONE KNEE, catching his breath and studying the remains of the creature he’d just dispatched. He could not count it human now, but it had been once. He would burn its remains the way he and his father burned aryns corrupted with black thread—using fire and salt—for there was no way he wanted to see this thing rise yet again. Even as he watched it, he thought he saw a quivering in the fingers of one detached hand, lying among chunks of flesh hacked apart which had bled only when his sword had finally pierced the thing’s guts. As if it had no blood in its body save that which it had drunk from an earlier kill.
He got up, sword in hand. His tashya had run after dumping him unceremoniously when the thing had attacked, but his cart ponies had stayed, quivering in their harness and rolling eyes that showed far too much white in their fright. He rubbed both muzzles with his free hand and murmured words of praise to them. Not relinquishing his sword, he gathered his bag of salt, his flint, and tossed them near the remains, slowing only to pitch dry kindling across the battleground as well.
The salt he scattered first, and then lit a fire over it, a pyre of sorts, for a being who did not deserve an honorable burial but got one of sorts anyway. Through the flickering flames, he studied what was left of the body. A soldier, though a poor enough one. Mercenary. And, around here, that meant a man who rode under Quendius.
Verdayne spat to one side. That knowledge meant that he would have to look for black thread as he made his way to Calcort, for he knew that Quendius had murdered Magdan while they were bringing in saplings to replace the great aryns corrupted by the blight that had seemingly come out of nowhere, with devastating effectiveness. He could not prove Quendius had spread the blight as well, any more than Magdan could, but the old man had muttered epithets about it often enough. He looked to the north, a tug deep in his heart to follow after, to see if he could catch the weaponmaster’s trail. Quendius moved in shadow and his domain in the badlands had never been found, at least not by anyone who lived to tell the tale. He was as close now as anyone had been to a warm lead in decades—and he couldn’t take it.
He rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. Revenge wasn’t his charge. The black thread among the aryns was. His family had laid that burden on him, and he’d accepted it. It was the same blight on the books he carried for Tolby’s examination. From tree to page to . . . where? His father would have cut, salted, and burned whole groves to prevent the contagion from raging across the land. Could he be so bold as to do the same? Destroy the great library lest one unaffected book held the seeds to corrupt another? He didn’t think he had it in him to lay waste without more proof. Certainly Bistane had not thought destruction an answer. With any hope, Tolby Farbranch could tell him what they must—what he must—do when he showed Dayne what his tinctures could do. Page by page they could save a book. He did not know if that would help at all in the larger scheme of things.
When the fire had burned, an evening mist drew its cooling arm into the forest, and he dared to shovel dirt over the ashes, thinking furiously as he worked.
If he had his tashya, he’d cut his ponies loose and send them to Pepper Straightplow, a Dweller farmer who lived within two days’ ride of this grove, but he’d not found a sign of the hot-blooded Vaelinar steed, so cart travel was all that was left to him. He whistled them up and fed both a ration of grain and spoke to them, low but commanding, telling them what he expected of them. They would take him to Calcort at the fastest pace they could manage until their tendons bowed and their wind broke, if he asked it of them. He was not quite that demanding.
Not quite.
SAND CRACKLED OVER HIS EYELIDS as Sevryn opened his eyes. It husked its way through his throat as he inhaled to take a breath and speak. It rattled at the bottom of his rib cage as he sat up. A Kobrir leaned over him. He felt the presence of others watching him in the shadows ringing him.
“Might you be the king of assassins?” He got the words out and then had to spit off to the side to clear his aching throat.
The Kobrir tilted his head to let out a barking laugh, a laugh similar to one Sevryn had once heard from a man who’d survived a knife to the throat. He had never heard a Kobrir laugh, but he thought perhaps this one carried similar scars.
“Do you think,” and the being wrapped all in dark clothing, with even his face veiled in black, leaned close. “Do you think we would bring you all this way and save you the work of your quest?”
From the harshness and growl of his words, Sevryn thought his assessment of a badly scarred windpipe correct. He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “I did not ask to be abducted.”
“Perhaps you would rather we’d killed you.”
“If you could have.”
Another barking laugh. “You’re not as invincible as you might think.”
“True. Your drugs brought me down.” Sevryn stood cautiously, stretching his limbs as he did, gauging his balance and strength. Besides the feeling that he was half made of grit, he seemed to have no detrimental side effects. Water would cure his ills . . . he hoped. The drugs used might have an ill effect entirely the other way. He would be cautious drinking at first.
As if reading his thoughts, the Kobrir offered him a waterskin. Sevryn bowed and took it, wet his mouth, spat out the water, and then took two cautious sips before handing it back. The Kobrir’s face, what could be seen behind the masking and veil, gave away a raised eyebrow. “Not thirsty?”
“All in good time.”
“Careful. That is good. Always take care among your enemies, and be even more careful among your friends.” He tossed the waterskin at Sevryn’s boots. “We gave you a journey, but circumstances have changed, and we find ourselves now in a race against time. We cannot wait for you to find your way.”
“Not to mention that I have side trips planned.” Where was Grace now? Did Lara hold her? Did she think he hated her for sending him on without her? There was a distance between them he dared not let grow, or they might never find their way back to each other.
“True. To your best interests, perhaps, but not ours.” The Kobrir beckoned over one shoulder. “When you are ready, your trial begins. Perhaps you are worthy of the quest we gave you, and perhaps not. We would have ascertained this more slowly, but as I said—”
“You’re in a hurry.”
“Indeed.”
Sevryn bent slightly to pick up the waterskin. He took a full drink this time, and waited as it coursed through him, rinsing away the gritty aftereffects of whatever drug they’d given him. An inhalant. He would have to learn and remember it as it could come in handy. He drank another mouthful, before fastening the skin to his belt. He was far from hydrated, but he could function. He and the Kobrir watching him traded nods.
The speaker pointed at the shadows and said: “Begin.” He faded back into the gray edges of the shadows where he could be both seen and unseen, his silhouette blurring. Sevryn looked up. He stood in a rock formation that was more cave than not, its ceiling wide open to the sky and elements, a jagged bowl. He marked the speaker’s position by a rock formation before turning to the opponent who seemed to appear out of nowhere.
This Kobrir was incredibly slender and wiry. Corded muscles showed under his wrappings, but none of it bulky. Sevryn noted that this man would be fast and could probably outleap him, if it came to it. He passed the back of his wrist over his eyes again, clearing the last of the clouds from them. Then he patted himself down. They’d left him with his weapons. He smiled at that. The Kobrir answered hi
s smile with a wide one of his own.
“You will use one of our weapons.”
“This is an ithrel,” the wiry Kobrir told him. “It is used thusly.” He opened the wicked looking blade and handle with a hard flick of his wrist, sliced through the air at its greatest extension, and then closed it down to its shortest length, filling his hand with it to make a cut by Sevryn’s head. So close, it left a tang behind of metal shavings and oil, the scent of its recent sharpening filling Sevryn’s nostrils. He pulled his chin in with a blink. The Kobrir looked at him intently. “Understand?”
Others in the shadows stirred at his back wordlessly.
“Best me, and you may pass.” The Kobrir tossed the weapon at him, taking a step backward to fall into a stance, filling his empty hands with another ithrel in the time between one breath and another as Sevryn caught it up.
The warmth behind fell back hastily, freeing him to move as he must. He flicked the ithrel open. It took a strong wrist flick to make the weapon answer, and by the time he had it positioned, the Kobrir had stepped in and shaved the air by his face with the whispering blade. Sevryn pivoted out of range before the other could test him again. The danger here would be to assume he knew anything of the weapon, its balance and even its range. He swung back, found it parried, and the force of the blow vibrated heavily down, almost numbing his fingers. An unexpected aspect of the fight. He swapped it from hand to hand and back again, settling it tighter, settling the grip deep into his palm. He thought he saw a ghost of a smile flash across the other’s half-masked face.
Yes, the ithrel held undoubted advantages to one used to handling it.
Within seconds, he realized the advantages and disadvantages of the weapon. If he took the time to think about it, he would find himself dropped in his tracks. No. This is where his innate abilities and his decades of training told him, telegraphed instinctively through his muscles, his nerves, his frame, what he need to know to handle the ithrel. To think about it, to reason, to do anything but react would take far too long to be able to defend himself. Turning the ithrel in his hands, he took his measure not of the weapon but of the being facing him, one of the elusive Kobrir who might—or might not—be human.