“Why did you say I was different?” Ilvani asked.
The witch smiled. “It’s not something that’s easily explained. You either feel it or you don’t.”
Ilvani considered this. What had changed about her since she’d begun the caravan journey? “The storm passed,” she said.
The witch’s expression turned sad. “No. It’s still here, waiting. But it’s content to wait, for now, so we’re safe.”
Ilvani stood up. She moved restlessly, wanting to comprehend this new awareness of herself that the witch seemed to possess. Her hand touched the green bag tied at her waist. She gripped the drawstrings tightly.
The Rashemi woman saw the movement and smiled in approval. “You feel it, don’t you? Don’t be afraid.”
Ilvani wasn’t afraid. She fingered the drawstrings and considered the implications of what she felt. She’d been days on the road and never once had she opened the bag to draw out her memories. Nor had she added new ones to the boxes. Panic gripped her as she considered the potential loss, but no, there they were. She found she could look back and remember the events of the past days with near-perfect clarity. When was the last time she’d gone away to that sanctuary in her mind? When was the last gap in her memories?
“It won’t last,” Ilvani said, more to herself than to the snow rabbit. “The shadows will start to talk again, and it will all get jumbled together.” She looked out across the lake. “The wolf will turn on me.”
“Not if you tame the wolf,” the witch said. “You can silence the voices. I have to believe it’s possible. Not everyone fails …” Her voice faltered.
Ilvani held herself, her arms pressed to her stomach against a sudden wave of sickness. This is when the storm comes, she thought. It’s going to swallow us again.
But nothing happened. The day remained peaceful and sunny. Water insects skipped across the surface of the lake. The fish chased after them eagerly.
“Do you remember your childhood?” the snow rabbit asked her. Her voice was steady again, though she seemed sadder than before.
“Sometimes,” Ilvani said. She hadn’t kept boxes, back then. The memories were vague and half-formed, except the ones that blazed brightly, like images of Natan.
“The spirits used to come to me when I was a child. I’d see whole worlds that no one else could see,” the Rashemi witch said. “The snow rabbit took me to the Feywild. I slept with my head against his fur, beneath trees with leaves that looked like bluebells. I felt safe. Did you ever feel safe like that, Ilvani?”
Ilvani tried to remember if she’d ever felt truly safe. Only in that place where no memories were made. But if she couldn’t remember what safe was, how could she claim the emotion?
“Natan,” she said finally. “I felt … better … with Natan, my brother. But he’s gone now.”
The witch sighed. “I wish it weren’t so. It’s going to make things that much more difficult for you. Isn’t there anyone else?”
“No.”
The snow rabbit gave Ilvani a strange look, then, as if she knew she was lying.
“Oh, look.” The witch pointed to the lake. It had frozen over. “Winter’s here.”
Ilvani opened her eyes and saw the clouds moving above her head in a heavy gray mass. The wagon dipped and jostled beneath her, yet she’d still managed to fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon. She hadn’t fallen asleep so carelessly since she’d been in Darnae’s shop.
The nightmares stayed away. The snow rabbit had become a tame creature.
Moisture falling on her face had wakened her. She looked around, expecting the falling rain to blind her.
Snow covered her black cloak.
She raised both hands to catch the white flakes and watched them melt away into tiny puddles in her palms. The wagon rolled to a stop to give the horses a brief rest. They’d been traveling steadily for several days now, with no weather delays or brigand attacks.
Ilvani stood up and looked over the side of the wagon into a cold white vastness. Snow blanketed the ground, and the horses shook white flakes from their manes. The wind had died. Silence and stillness reigned across the plain. In the distance, she beheld a vertical stone marker and a beaten down, muddied path that wound to the east.
It was the trade route, the Golden Way.
A murmur of excitement threaded through the caravan as the crew saw the marker. They’d finally reached the trade route, and they would have a measure of civilization and security, at least until they started the climb into the Sunrise Mountains.
Climbing down from the wagon, Ilvani shook the snow from her hair and pulled up the hood of her cloak. She’d thought they were just going to rest here, but she noticed that the caravan was already setting up a camp. The cook grumbled about trying to light a fire in the snow, and the passengers stood in groups, shivering and stomping their feet.
There was a small pinewood just off the trade route to the west. Trees grew alongside the road in sparse patches, their snow-crusted needles bowing close to the ground. She remembered Tatigan, the merchant, describing the trees to Ashok and naming them. Mixed in with these were a few bare deciduous trees, but they were small and stunted.
She walked over to where Ashok, Skagi, and Cree were tethering their horses to these trees. “Why are we making camp here?” she asked.
Skagi looked at her with some surprise, as if he hadn’t expected her to ask such a direct question. Had she never done that before? Or had they never understood her questions? She scowled at not knowing the answer to this riddle of herself.
Ashok answered her. “Tuva thinks the wind’s going to pick up in the next day or two and make us snow blind. Tatigan wants to make a quick expedition into Uzbeg and back before nightfall to avoid the weather, so we’re stopping here while he and a few others take goods into the village.”
“Are you going with them?” Ilvani asked, looking at the three of them.
This time even Ashok looked a little perplexed. “No. Vlahna wants us here to hunt in the woods and guard the caravan.”
“Too bad Tatigan won’t take the Beshabans into Uzbeg with him,” Cree said. “Your friend Mareyn’s going, though,” he told Ilvani.
“Would you like to come into the woods with us?” Ashok said. “We’re going on foot. It won’t be far.”
Ilvani looked toward the dense pines. She nodded. “I’ll come.”
When they’d secured the camp and placed watch guards about the perimeter, the four of them set off for the woods. Their boots crunched in the snow and brittle brown needles scattered about the ground. Ilvani bent and picked up a large cylindrical cone that had fallen from one of the trees. She ran her fingers along its scales and listened to the sound her nails made on the woody ridges. The stillness magnified every footstep and breath. When snow slid off a bowed branch and fell to the ground, they heard the impact.
Cree kneeled to examine a set of closely spaced tracks. “Rabbit,” he said, indicating the two-inch-long depressions in the snow.
“Have to catch a lot of those to make a decent meal for everyone,” Skagi said.
“If we could find another deer herd, we’d have enough fresh meat for days,” Ashok said.
Curious, Ilvani followed the rabbit tracks. They cut a twisting path through the trees, unhurried, as if the small creature had been foraging.
“Don’t stray too far, Ilvani,” Ashok called to her.
Ilvani raised a hand to show she’d heard him, but she didn’t take her eyes off the tracks. They led deeper into the woods, where the trees grew tall enough to block much of the dim sunlight penetrating the cloud cover. At last they stopped near a small hole at the base of a tree. Ilvani paused to listen for the sound of the rabbit. She kneeled and pressed her ear to the earth, but she heard only the silence. The snow rabbit slept, just as the earth slept.
Above her, she heard the sudden rush of flapping wings. Ilvani lifted her head and saw a bird’s wing. Though she couldn’t see it clearly, she had an impression of ligh
t brown plumage and darker spots on the animal’s body. It landed in the tree above the rabbit’s den. Ilvani lay on her back on the pine needles so that she could see the bird clearly.
It was an owl-a brown-plumed owl with eyes like garnets. The bird turned on its perch and surveyed the area. When it saw the shadar-kai woman sprawled across its hunting ground, the bird cocked its head, questioning, Ilvani thought. What was this thing, this spot in the snow? How did it come to be here? How long will it stay?
Ilvani closed her eyes. She didn’t know the answer to any of those questions. Then she heard again the swish of wings, and when she opened her eyes, there were two more owls perched beside the first. She stared up at the sky and saw the shadows of more birds circling. They glided down in a slow spiral and landed in the pine tree, five, six, ten owls all looking down at her. She’d never seen such beautiful feathers.
“Ilvani?”
The sound of Ashok’s voice broke the stillness and made the birds tense. Ilvani expected them to fly away, but they stayed on their branches, silent watchers in the snow.
Ashok’s face came into view above her, blocking out the birds and the pale sun. His long gray hair hung about his face in tangles, and his black eyes watched her with the same questions swimming in them as in the owls’.
“I don’t know the answers,” she said.
He sat down next to her. “Aren’t you cold, lying on the ground?”
She thought about it and discovered she was actually very cold. Until he said it, she hadn’t noticed.
He took his cloak off and held it out to her. The gesture, so vivid an echo of another time he’d done this, made Ilvani’s breath catch in her throat. Hearing her soft gasp, Ashok stiffened. He realized it, too, but it was too late now to take it back. Cautiously, Ilvani reached out and took the cloak. She spread it over herself. Her body warmed immediately from the latent heat of his, but now she felt a different kind of cold, a remoteness that made her want to retreat into her mind.
The owls made her stay. Their beautiful feathers and calm eyes-there was no threat here. If there were, the owls would cry out in warning and fly away. She was safe here, as safe as any person could be.
She looked at Ashok. He sat quietly waiting, expecting nothing from her. He was the only one who did that, now that Natan was gone. She wondered, if she said nothing, just lay there in the snow, would he stay beside her until the snow covered them both?
“It’s not a good idea. We’d have to dig ourselves out eventually,” she said, resigned.
He smiled faintly. “You were making much more sense earlier,” he said. “I knew it couldn’t last.”
“My fault. It’s because I say only half of what I think and half of what I see,” Ilvani said. “You can’t see the owls, can you?”
He tilted his head. “Did you see some in the trees?” He looked around at the wood. “I’d like to see what one looks like outside the Shadowfell.”
Ilvani glanced up. There were thirteen owls now. “So would I,” she said.
“Do you want to go back to the camp?” Ashok asked.
She shook her head. “I’m fine. I’m not afraid to dream,” she said.
That got his attention. “The woman from your dreams-she’s gone?”
“Not gone. But she’s different. She’s not being hunted. She’s at peace, so I can be at peace.”
“The nightmare hasn’t reacted to you the way he did on the Shadowfell plain,” Ashok said. He made a gesture toward her as if to lift the cloak, but he stopped himself and let his hand rest on the spiked chain hanging from his belt. “Your arms are healing?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ilvani said. “But there will be scars, and I won’t know what they mean.”
“The symbols,” Ashok said. “Don’t worry, when we get to Rashemen, the witches will explain why you were seeing them in your dreams. Or maybe …”
“What?”
“Couldn’t you ask … Him? Surely Tempus could give you some hint as to what the dreams mean?”
Ilvani sighed. “He might, but I haven’t talked to Him since that night-you know when.”
“I know.”
She scowled. “I’m not afraid. But I haven’t decided what I think or feel about Him.”
“Neither have I,” Ashok said.
They sat in silence after that. Ilvani heard Skagi and Cree moving through the trees. There was the sound of a blade, a heavy thud-in that instant she felt the pulse of life quicken and fade. The owls rustled their wings and made soft keening sounds that caused Ilvani’s heart to quiver in her chest.
The soul’s flight-tonight there will be another long journey, Ilvani thought. Another creature will have to find its way home.
“Cree killed a deer,” she said.
Ashok nodded. He didn’t ask her how she knew. “Cree is doing well without his eye,” he said.
Ilvani sat up and shook the snow out of her hair. “Your words don’t match your face,” she said.
He fingered the spiked chain, heedless of the sharp edges waiting to bite his skin. Ilvani sensed new magic crawling along the links, magic that smelled like smoke. “You told me once that I should value my companions and keep them safe,” he said. “I failed in that.”
“You didn’t understand what I was asking you,” Ilvani said.
“That’s not truly surprising.”
“You’re not ready to understand.”
The snow had stopped falling. Skagi and Cree came trotting through the trees, carrying a deer carcass between them.
“Not to worry, you two,” Skagi said dryly. “You just keep on sitting there. We can handle this hunt. It was no effort at all, really.”
Ashok grinned. “Skagi and his great enemy, the woodland doe.”
“He needs the training,” Cree said.
Skagi dropped his end of the deer, which caused Cree to stumble and curse. “Can we go back now? If those brigands return, I don’t want to miss any of the fun. We haven’t had a good fight in days.”
“We’re all feeling it,” Cree said. He flexed his gloved fingers. Ilvani knew he was holding back a tremor. When he could no longer control it, he would need satisfaction, in one form or another. Their shadow selves had been too long at peace on the road. She could see them, the shadows clawing restlessly at their skin. She saw the thing they feared, she heard the whisper they tried to ignore. But she could never put a name to the things she saw, or tell Cree, Skagi, or Ashok that the menace was so close all the time. It would make them afraid of her.
She was not always aware of her world or the workings of the people in it, but Ilvani knew enough to know that she would rather the shadar-kai thought she was crazy than fear her.
“We’ll spar tonight,” Ashok said, “the three of us. Maybe we can talk the Beshabans into joining us. They have to be hurting too.”
“So long as they know ‘spar’ means you stop short of ‘kill,’ ” Cree said, but there was a spark in his black eye, a hint of excitement at the possibility of challenging the other shadar-kai.
Ashok knows what to say to them, Ilvani thought. Maybe he is beginning to understand. She looked up at the tree, but the owls were gone. They had fled the shadows too.
When they got back to camp-the brothers had made Ashok carry the deer-he deposited the meat with the cook, who’d managed to get several fires going, some for cooking and some for warmth. The presence of the invigorating flames and their arrival at the trade route more or less on schedule had put the camp into an almost-festive mood. Tatigan, the Martucks, and the dwarf merchant-Tatigan had referred to him only as Thorm-sat around one of the fires and discussed their expedition into Uzbeg. Ashok couldn’t hear what they said, but by their expressions, the trip must have gone well. Even the boy, sitting close to his parents, seemed at ease.
Ashok saw the bard, Daruk, sitting on a rock before the largest fire. He had his eyes closed in meditation. Ashok wondered if tonight was the night they would finally get to hear the man sing.
Eveni
ngfeast was spitted venison and more trail rations. Ashok took the bowl the cook handed to him and went to sit with Ilvani and the brothers by one of the fires. A few minutes later, Mareyn came over with her own meal and sat down on Ilvani’s other side. She said nothing to the witch, just went about eating. Ashok couldn’t tell if the woman’s presence unsettled Ilvani or not. She’d been unusually coherent in the woods earlier that day. In fact, looking at her now across the fire, Ashok sensed a flicker of vitality in her thin face. Maybe it was just false hope on his part, but Ashok thought that removing Ilvani from the oppressive Shadowfell had brought her some peace.
He wished he could understand her better-see some of the things she saw. He knew too well what it was like to feel isolated and helpless, with shadows all around.
Ilvani turned and said something to Mareyn then that Ashok couldn’t hear. Mareyn gave a delighted laugh and nodded her head. Ashok wanted to move closer so he could hear their conversation, but he noticed the bard, Daruk, coming toward them.
“Well met,” the man said.
His wide smile showed excitement but too many teeth. The expression didn’t look friendly. Ashok and the brothers nodded a greeting. Ilvani and Mareyn were still talking and did not notice the bard.
“I feel I’ve been unspeakably rude for not introducing myself before now, especially since Tatigan has told me so much about all of you,” the bard continued, though his gaze rested on Ashok as he spoke. “I am Daruk the singer, Daruk the rhymer, Daruk the traveler.”
“Lot of names for one human,” Skagi said. He licked meat juice off his fingers. “You get along better having more names than anyone else?”
“It certainly never hurts to have advantages no one else can claim,” Daruk said. “I also call myself Daruk the collector, but only at certain times. I’ve collected tales on many fascinating subjects, Skagi-almost scion of Tareff the Mad, weren’t you? That would have been quite a name, had you been able to claim it.”
Ashok saw Skagi’s gray face go rigid in a heartbeat. By the time Ashok registered a similar reaction in Cree, Skagi was on his feet, bowl thrown aside so he could get his hands on his falchion hilt.
Unbroken Chain: The Darker Road (single books) Page 13