Fortune's Blight
Page 38
She had started to pull Lord Denar out of his cloak when a man in a Garrador tabard came at her. His imperial sword was writhing in his grasp and he was drooling and twitching with madness. She kicked him in the stomach before he could land a blow and turned back to her patient, setting Valor’s Storm down and stripping the general of as much of his clothing as she could. Then just as she had done for Eofar, she grabbed handfuls of snow and pressed them into the wound.
As soon as she finished, she took up Valor’s Storm and looked for her next patient and saw three without even turning her head. She raced to the nearest one, only to have an Eotan guard jump out to block her.
Lahlil commanded.
Lahlil gripped Valor’s Storm a little harder. No one would stop trying to kill her long enough for her to explain the cure and at this rate the infection would spread completely out of control. She needed some kind of distraction: something dramatic that would stop everything, just for a few moments.
The next instant, every imperial sword on the Front flew up into the air. She watched them hang there, spinning, and then burst into dust. Even before the empty hilts came crashing back down she had rushed to the nearest sick person and started packing the seeping wounds with the cleanest snow she could find.
The uninfected people around her began coming out of their daze. Lahlil found the next person who needed her help, only this time she grabbed an Eotan soldier and at sword-point made him do it instead. She repeated that over and over until her back ached, but finally the information was spreading across the Front, and everywhere she looked she saw people stripping others and snow being applied to silvery wounds. She even saw people trying to prevent those in the violent stage from hurting anyone until the mania wore off instead of killing them.
She was trying to get the tabard off a man determined to fight her even though he could barely sit upright when a woman in a lagramor coat knelt down next to her. Lahlil knew she had seen that bruised face somewhere, but she couldn’t place it.
Lahlil followed her gaze out to the western horizon, and then lifted to her feet without any conscious volition, wonder swirling around her like a cyclone. Someone had rolled up the bottom of the gray Norland sky like a blanket and color was pouring in from the other side like a waterfall of red lava and melted gold. The clouds took on broad swathes of orange, pink and purple behind the snow, and the gentle curve of the sun itself—the sun that had never shone in Norland, since time immemorial—stretched from one end of her vision to the other. She felt its warmth on her face. Everything shimmered.
Sunset had come without her knowing, because she had felt no pain.
She laid her hand against her shirt where the medallion hung over her heart and pressed down until she felt the points of the golden sun mark her flesh. Then she pulled the eye-patch down around her neck. The world spread out before her, clear and whole.
Chapter 42
Isa pulled the reins again, turning the triffon back toward the harbor, even as he tried to fly back to land. The colors down below blurred together as they wheeled around. She checked behind her to make sure that Ani’s harness had not come loose. The old woman’s head bobbed along with the beating of the triffon’s wings as if she was asleep. Isa screwed her eyes up as she tried to remember how she had got her in the saddle and strapped in by herself, but she couldn’t do it; all of her memories had a thick haze around them now.
People had hurt and betrayed her: she remembered that. She needed to remember who—not Jachad, who was dying, or Cyrrin, who had devoted her life to helping people like her. Isa didn’t know what had happened to either of them. She knew Trey was dead: she had seen his body on the terrace when they were flying away. She had seen Eofar too, but he was alive. She remembered how angry he had been to find her in Norland. No, it was Lahlil who had betrayed her, and Dramash, and Rho. Rho had tried to kill Ani. She would never forgive him for that.
She looked over an expanse of dark green water dotted with bobbing ice floes, merging in the distance with a blurred horizon with just the faintest suggestion of blue. The harbor bristled with masts, but many of the ships were sailing away on the tide. A steady breeze kept the flags waving and she soon found the silver moon flag of the Argent far out past the point where the green line of the shallower water shifted to black. A few of the women were up in the rigging, unfurling the sails; they waved to her as she circled the mast.
A chill ran across her shoulders and down through her missing arm, followed by a hot flush: not pain, but the memory of pain.
Women crowded back against the rails as she brought the triffon down on deck. A few familiar faces smiled into hers, but she couldn’t remember any names. They spoke to her in Shadari, but their voices sounded strange and she knew she was answering their simple questions too slowly. She explained about Ani as best she could while they helped the frail old woman down from the saddle and whisked her off to some place warm, but afterward Isa wasn’t sure exactly what she’d said.
A door opened on the upper deck and Captain Nisha ran to the railing. Cyrrin came behind her, dragging herself along, her steps small, painful.
Another woman came out of the cabin and called them back in. “Come quick. Something’s happening—I don’t know— Please, come.”
Nisha helped Cyrrin back into the cabin and Isa followed after them, drawn by something. She could feel Jachad through the walls the way she never had before, not even the way she could feel other Norlanders. She didn’t know if he was reaching out to her, or she to him, but her connection was pure and clear while everything else receded.
A dozen people crowded into the little room, but they were all shadows next to Jachad.
His mind locked into hers and she felt like she was being shoved over a cliff. She could feel herself falling, and she could do nothing to save herself. Chunks of her broke off as she fell, and all she could do was watch those precious and irretrievable pieces disintegrate into smaller and smaller bits until they floated away and disappeared. Part of her understood that this was Jachad’s experience,
not her own.
She grew lighter as she went down, as if she had been trapped inside a clay shell, and the more that fell away, the lighter she became. Her descent from the cliff slowed and then stopped. She wasn’t falling any more; she was floating, and whatever she had lost no longer felt important. She was glad to be rid of it, because it meant she could float this way—and she wasn’t only floating, she was expanding. The brightness that had been pressed down into a tight little ball deep inside her churned up, pushing past boundaries that toppled like blocks and then reached out, further and further, finding nothing to stop it.
A scream brought Isa back to herself and she opened her eyes to find Jachad’s blanket smoldering on the floor with one of the sailors stomping on it. Little tongues of flame zipped all over his body, twining around his limbs, darting over his chest, wrapping around his neck, covering his face like a mask until they finally died away.
“Jachi?” Nisha whispered, both hands covering her mouth and her eyes spilling tears. Everyone began talking at once and the noise drove Isa back out onto the deck. No one noticed her. Sailors bustled all over the ship, getting the Argent out to sea. Isa climbed up to the stern deck and looked up at Ravindal.
She had done everything she had set out to do. She had rescued Ani and found the elixir and she was bringing both home to Daryan. She wondered if she felt happy. She couldn’t remember what “happy” felt like any more, or “sad,” or “angry.” All emotions were the same.
Down below her, Nisha and Jachad came out of the cabin together and walked to the closest rail. Nisha kept fussing with the blanket around her son’s shoulders, but Isa didn’t think he really needed it, judging by the way the snow melted under his feet as he walked across the wooden planks.
“It’s not too late to turn back,” Nisha informed him. “Do you want to go back for her?”
“Who?”
A strange expression twisted across Nisha’s face. “Lahlil.”
“Oh,” said Jachad. He looked back up at Ravindal like he could see Isa’s sister there—but then, perhaps he could. He could see everything: the curve of the horizon; the tiny dot the Argent’s sails made in the vast sea; a single loose thread in the sail billowing over their heads. “There’s no reason to go back.”
“Are you sure?”
Even as the snow continued to fall, the impenetrable Norland sky split open and ripples of light in every fiery hue streamed across the water, sparkling so that Isa had to raise her hand against the glare.
“Take me to the desert,” Jachad said. “Take me home to the sun.”
Epilogue
When Rho woke in his old room in Arregador House, the first thing he saw was a small form huddled up under a blanket in front of the fire, as if a boy was lying there, sound asleep. He closed his eyes, telling himself it was just his fur cloak on the floor.
“You’re awake!” cried Dramash, jumping up and sprinting for the door.
Rho spent a moment prevaricating, and then slid his hand down to his side. A fresh bandage covered the spot where Gannon had punched him, where Dramash’s father had cut him.
The boy came back with Eofar in tow, then hopped up on the chair and sat cross-legged, pulling his neck down into the collar of his fur coat like a turtle. He still had circles under his eyes, but his cheeks were pink with cold. Rho wondered if anyone had thought to give him a bath.
Eofar slumped back in the chair a little and tapped the carved wood with his knuckles.
Rho fell back onto the bed feeling like he’d taken another punch. The grief that had been waiting for him had found its moment and it siphoned into him like water through a funnel.
He didn’t have an answer, so he didn’t give one.
Rho had another question, but he wasn’t sure he could accept the answer yet.
Rho threw off the blankets and sat up, surprised to find himself in far less pain than he had anticipated.
Eofar’s apology lacked the sloppy remorse that had been weighing him down since Harotha’s death, bleeding out every time he’d spoken. Rho realized that for the first time in months he was neither drunk nor hung-over.
said Rho.
* * *
Kira gave the signal to the two waiting stonemasons and they slid the lid back over Trey’s tomb, then left her alone to her grieving. Her belief in the After-realm had died three years ago along with her belief in the cursed, but she desperately tried to make herself believe it now so she wouldn’t have to accept the fact that she had just seen her husband’s face for the last time.
He moved past her and looked down at the effigy.
He pulled her into his embrace, clutching her to him, sagging down and burying his face in her hair, and then she held him just as tightly in return. They stood together that way for a long, long time. But they couldn’t stay there forever.
said Kira. mash very well in the last two days. He refused to leave your room, you know. He insisted we bring all his meals in to him. Oh, and he likes the sweet pickles, but not the sour ones. Don’t forget that: he was very stern with Aline the last time—he quite frightened her.>
Rho said,
The weight on her heart lifted for a moment, giving her just a hint of hope that she wouldn’t feel like this always. She leaned over and kissed his cheek.
* * *
Lahlil climbed to the highest point of the headland, near the skull of the old sea monster, and looked out at the waves. They reminded her of the desert in the very early morning when the dunes rippled away in waves of gray and purple. Two days of sunrises and sunsets with no pain had finally convinced her that her attacks were really over. She wrapped her arms around her chest as a gust blew over the headland: the wind had changed direction, and she could taste the sea.
She felt her brother calling to her, but she didn’t turn away from the waves until she heard his footsteps right behind her.