by Helen Lowe
The vision’s implication could be that the shield’s loss was irrevocable and she needed to focus on salvaging Hylcarian—and discovering whether any more of the entities that collectively formed the Golden Fire had survived the Night of Death. “Right now, though,” Malian said, shying the apple core through a gap in the wall, “I need to clear my head.”
She donned Nhenir, currently disguised as the tinker’s greasy leather cap, before knotting an equally grimy kerchief over the top and leading the gray from the ruin. Initially, she rode north to see if she could discern any sign of the Hedeld fort, but like the trading post it must lie farther toward the Wild Lands than she had realized. When she reached a high point on the road and saw nothing but trees interspersed with water courses and bog country, Malian knew that the River truly had given way to wilderness.
She studied the wild terrain for some time while the late autumn sun climbed to its zenith. When she had held still long enough, she began to hear the deep, wordless song of Haarth, which she had first encountered on Emer’s Northern March. That first time, it had manifested as the call of a hidden path beside the river known as the Rindle. Later, Malian had heard it again through the singing green of Maraval forest, and the quiet of southern Aralorn with its chestnut woods and sleepy villages. The voice of this land, bordering wilderness, was more somber. The song of the wildfire and the flood, she thought. And because she was wearing Nhenir, she also heard another sound far beneath it: the faint, distant rumble of rocks, grinding deep in the earth.
Jaransor, the Hills of the Hawk, might lie well beyond the horizon, but Malian knew she would never forget the anger that smoldered beneath their tors. Hearing that savage grumble now, however muted by distance, she realized that the Rindle might not have been her first encounter with the song of Haarth, after all. Briefly, Malian felt as though the sun were an eye, gazing back at her from the noon sky. She also detected what might have been a flicker of power use to the southwest, but it vanished too swiftly to be sure.
Malian turned the gray south, both to increase her chance of detecting the anomaly again, but also to look for Raven on the road. Bypassing the ruin, she continued on to a woodcutters’ village she had skirted the previous day. Studying it from concealment, she could see nothing out of place, although the smell of food reminded her that she had not eaten since early morning. Trading for a hot meal was an option, but she knew the villagers would regard Ash askance. Rightly, she thought, grinning, and headed back toward the chapel.
Despite the sun being well into its westward descent, Malian still drew rein when she spotted a large rock rising above the forest canopy. She had noticed it the day before but been intent on finding the ruin before nightfall. Now it struck her again that it would make an ideal vantage point for spying out this part of the forest, as well as being an interesting climb. She had to dismount to reach it, following a small, tumultuous watercourse that foamed around the rock’s base, and concealed the gray in a nearby thicket.
The rock was steep, but the surface firm to climb, and the summit allowed Malian to study the terrain while remaining unseen herself. Threads of smoke, already distant, rose from the woodcutters’ village, while birds were flocking back to the forest ahead of the coming night. When she lowered Nhenir’s visor, Malian could detect sounds as soft as the pad of paws over damp earth, and the rustle of feathers among the treetops. She could hear a band of hunters, too, pitching camp in the deep woods beyond the creek, but otherwise the forest seemed unrelentingly peaceful.
“Bucolic,” Nhenir supplied.
“That, too.” Malian was about to raise the visor when she caught the dissonance. Concentrating, she made out the intermittent snap of broken stems accompanying a slow, heavy drag through nearby undergrowth. She could also hear the suppressed rasp that marked a wounded creature trying to keep silence, but finding every breath, let alone movement, a challenge. Soon, she had isolated the pattern: a lurch and drag forward, punctuated by a brief halt and labored breath.
The next stop was longer, and this time Malian heard a moan of pain, quickly cut off. Through Nhenir, she listened for any sound of pursuit, but could detect none. All the same, she was careful as she descended the rock and reentered the gray’s thicket. The tinker’s horse chanced a sly nip, but remained quiet as Malian studied the dense understory, using Nhenir to enhance her seeking after anything hidden between leaf and branch, light and shadow. The helm also sifted sounds: wind and water, falling leaves—and a very shallow, very faint, rise and fall of breath.
Sliding into the gloom beneath the trees, Malian stalked the flutter of breath through tangled undergrowth and gathering dusk. Even with Nhenir’s visor lowered, she had to look hard to find her quarry, who had taken cover beneath a fallen tree. A curtain of brambles and vines protected the crawl space, and Malian had to snake through both to confirm that the prone figure was a woman and that she was still breathing.
Only just, Malian thought, dragging off a glove to be sure of the pulse. The woman was wearing the uniform of a Patrol river pilot, and between the deep gashes across her back and the quantity of blood staining her gambeson, it was a miracle she had survived this long. As gently as possible, Malian eased the wounded Patroler over, compressing her lips at the burn seared across chin and neck beneath a heat-twisted visor.
First things first, she told herself, and lay close beside the wounded woman, sharing her body’s warmth while she considered options. The surest course would be to use a gate to reach the Band’s headquarters in Ar, where there were skilled healers. If she took care, the unexpected arrival might not generate questions, although the wounded pilot undoubtedly would. But given how badly the woman was injured, Malian doubted she would survive exposure to the portal’s power. Setting aside her habitual caution around gate use, opening one now also risked alerting the pilot’s attackers. “When the fact I can detect no pursuit suggests they believe their victim dead. Which she soon will be,” Malian added, “from cold and shock if not her wounds, if I don’t get her to shelter.”
“You could just let her die.” Nhenir was dispassionate.
“No. Derai don’t abandon their own, and I’ve accepted Fire as mine. And the ruin’s not far—but I’ll have to get her onto the gray or carry her myself.” Malian also had to extract the unconscious pilot from her hiding place, which she did by first extricating herself and then using the frost-fire sword to sheer through bramble and vine. Pulling the last of the tangle aside, she raised the pilot torso-to-torso with herself and prepared to lift the unconscious body across her shoulders. “I just hope she survives this, let alone whatever healing I can dredge up once we reach the chapel.”
Nhenir did not respond, but the woman groaned, her eyelids fluttering. Her heartbeat was little more than a flutter, too, and Malian held her close, willing her own strength into the fragile pulse. The pilot’s eyes had opened, but Malian was not sure how much she saw through the buckled visor—which could, she realized, have melted into the skin. Suppressing nausea, she continued supporting the woman’s body and allowed the hand that wavered up to settle onto her own face.
“Mind’s eye . . .” The pilot was wearing a glove, but Malian felt the brush of her mind as soon as the hand touched. She could also feel the woman’s physical agony as the mindvoice whispered again. “Take . . .”
The flow of memories that accompanied the word was soft as an evening breeze, slipping through an open casement, and after a moment’s initial startlement, Malian strengthened her mental defenses but allowed the transfer. “Yris,” she acknowledged, accepting the name that came with the memories. Closing her own hand over the pilot’s, she held it in place to facilitate the exchange, but the connection between them was already faltering as the heart beating against hers grew fainter.
“You must close off the link,” Nhenir cautioned. “You must not be caught in her death.”
“Let me go . . .” Yris’s murmur was simultaneous with the helm’s warning, and Malian separated herself as
gently as she could. The link was so weak now that it felt like brushing away a cobweb, and Yris’s pulse, too, was almost gone. It fluttered again—once more, twice—before her body slumped. As soon as Malian lifted her palm clear, the pilot’s hand fell away from her face.
“She’s gone,” Malian said, mostly to ease the moment, since Nhenir already knew.
“But she died well.” Now the helm’s coolness was all steel. “With our help, she will take her enemy with her, down into the dark.”
36
The Language of Blood
The daylight had faded by the time Malian fetched the gray and got Yris’s body across the saddle. She led the horse slowly through the gloom, but Raven still had not arrived when they reentered the ruin. An owl hooted from the forest as Malian laid Yris’s body on a slab of rock rising out of the floor, which she guessed had been an altar. In the dim light, the pilot could have been one of the stone knights of Emer, carved upon a tomb, and the chapel seemed a fitting enough resting place. Tethering the gray to a sapling growing from a gap in the wall, Malian extracted a short-handled shovel from her baggage and cast around for a suitable grave site.
“So this is where the bitch got to.” A vertical shimmer appeared in the blackness of the main door as a woodsman stepped through—but Malian recognized the voice, rough as gravel, from the Aeris fair. “Who’d have thought she’d open a gate on me, fleeing before I could steal her face?”
“I’ve been expecting you,” Malian told him.
Emuun cocked his head as though listening for concealed meaning. “Have you now?” Malian tensed as he raised his left hand, but rather than a weapon, a greenish-white light flared against his palm, dispelling the shadows. The light came from a tiny cone lamp, similar to those that Night’s initiates had carried on the Old Keep expedition. Emuun remained by the doorway, but the vertical shimmer kept moving, drifting further into the ruin. “You’ve changed your calling since Aeris, I see.” Calculation colored the facestealer’s tone. “Not, given your little display there, that I think you ever were a sword-for-hire.”
He’s trying to flush out answers, Malian thought, as the owl—or another of its kind—hooted again, closer to the chapel. She said nothing, simply waited while he studied her, and the line that appeared as part shimmer, part a flaw in the air, continued to float her way.
“In fact, you put me in mind of what our former Ijiri allies would call a Dancer of Kan.” The face Emuun wore now was pockmarked and square-jawed, but the dark, hard eyes, like his voice, were unchanged from the night fair. “Except, that is, for the reek of power.” He inhaled, a wolf absorbing scent. “With a Derai taint, too. Now why didn’t I sniff that out in Aeris?”
Let him speculate, Malian thought, keeping her demeanor calm as he stepped forward. Her peripheral vision showed the flaw in the air still moving her way, and she imagined Emuun’s current purpose was distraction. She was also aware that the flaw was using concealing magic. If she had not kept Nhenir’s visor lowered, her seeking might detect its presence, but she would not be able to see it. As Yris, she thought, drawing on the memories the pilot had bequeathed her, had not become aware of it until too late.
Being immune, Emuun would know if she used power to investigate his familiar, so for the moment Malian focused on monitoring the information filtering to her through Nhenir. Beyond that, she was aware of the surrounding vastness of the forest and the sounds of night drawing in, with the song of Haarth’s low note beneath it all. Pretending ignorance of his companion, she kept her eyes on the Darksworn as he studied her, his hard gaze intent.
“Nothing to say? Like what has become of your immune fellow traveler, for instance?” He paused. “Although you may prove more interesting. I resumed this hunt by doubling back on my original trail, enough to learn something of the agent Nindorith was pursuing when Ilkerineth’s whelp died: a spy with an adept’s power, using Haarth assassin’s tricks, but with a taint of the Derai.” His smile, too, was pure wolf. “I think perhaps I should gift you to the Prince of Lightning.”
“If you can,” Malian said softly.
An owl called again from almost overhead, and the second bird answered, a mournful echo from the wood. The drifting shimmer grew still as Emuun’s wolf smile thinned. “Yes, whatever you are may be too dangerous to take chances with.”
“Perceptive.” Raven detached himself from the gap where the gray was tethered. He had resumed the hedge knight’s amulets and shabby armor, and his visor was raised as he halted a few paces clear of Malian. “But as for the rest . . . Not this time, Emuun.”
Emuun was staring, the last remnant of his wolf’s smile wiped away. “It’s not possible,” he said slowly, as though struggling to accept the evidence of his senses. “You’re dead. You all died with Amaliannarath, when she suicided in the void.”
“Yet here I am.” Raven was ironic. “You broke your own rule, Emuun. Didn’t you always say that you only accepted a death once you’d seen the body?”
The Darksworn was motionless, silent—then Malian swallowed back revulsion as she realized that his form was shifting, the woodsman’s stocky build transforming into a height and muscular grace that mirrored Raven’s. The stolen face rippled, before transforming into a visage that could have been cast from one of the ancient hero masks that were said to be as old as the Derai. Or, Malian thought, chilled, those masks could have been molded from a face like this.
“I really should have guessed from Thanir’s tale of an immune thwarting our work. But I’ll confess I didn’t.” Emuun laughed, a bark of self-mockery. “You’re right, too, I did break my own rule. Not a mistake I’ll make again.” His eyes narrowed. “But better if you had died, before sinking so low you’d put a dirty native adept, possibly even a Derai half-breed by her whiff, ahead of blood kinship and your Sworn heritage.”
“All bonds, including my Sworn allegiance, were severed when Sun slew the Blood of Fire, my betrothed and all my kin among them.” Raven’s voice was the one he had used outside Aeris, speaking of Thanir. Hearing it, the hairs on Malian’s arms and nape lifted, and she saw an answering muscle jump in Emuun’s jaw. Energy glimmered along the vertical rift between light and air, and very slowly, it began moving again.
“So here you are, bent on interference—which always was one of your less attractive qualities, as I recall. But this—” Briefly, the hard stare flicked toward Malian. “It demeans you, First Kinsman.”
If Sworn attitudes to outsiders were anything like the Derai’s, he might well mean it. But mostly, Malian guessed, Emuun was trying to provoke Raven. She did not need Nhenir to read the subtle shift toward action in his stance, even as Raven regarded him with the hedge knight’s most sardonic expression. “I see you’ve been consorting with natives yourself. When did the Great Djinn gift you one of their fire elementals?”
The rift swirled into life as Emuun’s hand snapped closed, dousing the palm light, and Malian sprang sideways as a flung knife cleaved the space where she had been. She heard the ring of another blade, clearing its scabbard, and felt the flare of the elemental’s magic, preparing to unleash the same fire that had seared Yris. Not this time, she thought—and spoke a phrase in the speech she had absorbed at midsummer, walking the path of earth and moon. The Jhainarian language of blood reverberated through the ruin, and the air around the elemental hardened, walling it in place.
Lifting her arm high, Malian let Yorindesarinen’s armband blaze into silver-white life as Emuun cursed and hurled himself toward the trapped elemental. Being immune, he would pass her wall of power with impunity, and if he escaped into his freed familiar’s warp of fire and air—No, Malian thought, and sprang to intercept, but before she could cast her Shadow Band throwing stars, Raven had brought Emuun down. Both warriors were gouging and grappling as they fell, much as the elemental was straining to throw off Malian’s containment spell.
The energy within its rift was sluggish but slowly rebuilding momentum, and if it gained sufficient impetus might well
breach her wall. But the language of blood was not just the speech the priestess-queens had wielded against Malian at midsummer. It was also the tongue that Zharaan and Kiyan had used to shut Salar’s children out of Jhaine, and their predecessors had called on to still the Cataclysm. Now, Malian delved deep into its ancient structure and breathed out a profound exhalation of air and magic that coiled about the rift. The elemental within it fought back, twisting first one way then another as it struggled to transform into fire. A flame ignited, but wavered as Malian’s incantation tightened, before disintegrating into sparks.
One by one the sparks snuffed out, but their initial snap had panicked the gray horse into a half rear, fighting his tether as the struggling warriors rolled toward him. The gray’s forefeet struck the ground beside Emuun’s head, and the Darksworn threw himself aside, tearing free of Raven’s grip as the gray plunged again. The horse’s shoulder caught Emuun as he started to rise, knocking him through the gap in the wall. The facestealer was staggering clear of it before Malian or Raven could reach him, although a second later they were both racing in pursuit.
Too much was at stake to let the Darksworn escape, regardless of whether he chose to come after them again himself or carried news of Raven, as well as Malian’s blend of Haarth and the Derai, back to the Sworn. And Emuun would escape if they lost sight of him for a moment amid forest and night, his immunity eluding both Nhenir and Malian’s seeking. So Malian willed herself on and let the armband blaze more brightly, illuminating their quarry as he dodged between its dazzle and the blackness of the undergrowth.
She snatched a glance toward Raven, who was keeping up despite running in mail, and realized that he was angling away from her on a trajectory designed to intersect Emuun’s current direction. Malian’s breath tore in her lungs as she urged her legs faster and cast her seeking wide, searching for terrain that might aid them. Instead she found a circle of warriors, at sufficient distance to escape her detection before now, but closing in—and she cursed herself for relying on the fact that Emuun had been alone, except for the elemental, in Yris’s memories.