* * *
She woke to the sound of wood being laid for a fire. Opening her eyes, Wendra saw Penit fussing over kindling and flint. Beyond the cave entrance, the day had already grown strong in the sky. Her attention returned to Penit, who began quietly singing to himself, though his efforts were not so practiced and squeaked in his adolsecent throat. Wendra sat up, several drops of sweat falling from her nose and forehead. The fever was worse. She had lost a great deal of blood. Even without standing she knew her leg would be of little use to her.
Propping herself up, she wiped her face and sat a moment as Penit finished relighting the fire. The boy had stripped a green switch and sharpened one end, threading several pieces of dried meat onto it for their endfast. He sat with his knees up close to his chest, heating the meat over the fire. Wendra smiled weakly through her fever at his innocence. What she must ask of him was too much. At what cost would it come for a boy who believed all the old stories enough to stand up to a league captain in his own defense to play the tales? But she knew she must ask. Merely propping herself up had exhausted all her energy; she couldn’t even reach the entrance to the cave without help, and Penit could not carry her. He certainly couldn’t help her reach Recityv.
“Penit, I need your help.”
“Sure. What can I do?” He turned over the roasting meat and looked at her.
“I cannot stand.” Wendra swallowed hard to keep her emotions from welling up. “I will need help if I am to make it to Recityv. I need you to find that help for me.” She paused, looking into the boy’s large blue eyes. “Can you do that for me?”
The boy did not hesitate. “I will.” Then he surprised Wendra. “It was hard for you to ask me that, wasn’t it?” He put his meat down on the saddlebag. “I am young, and I have been without parents for as long as I can remember. And,” he said, hesitating, “I don’t want to meet the Bar’dyn again.” He smiled nervously. “But I can do it. I can follow the stream. Deleira always said water leads to people. He was the troupe leader.”
“You must be careful. Even if the Bar’dyn are gone, a child … a young man alone is not safe in the world of men.”
Penit smirked knowingly. “I’ve seen my share of scalawags. They’re always close to the wagon pot or spinning a tale to see your pocket stitching.” His smile faded and he looked distantly into the fire. “I will be careful. I don’t want to see any more of the darkness in the clouds.”
He offered no explanation, and Wendra chose to hold her questions for another time. “You’ll be all right, Penit.” Her voice broke with emotion. She wiped her brow and eyes with the hem of her cloak.
“You, too,” the boy said.
Penit gathered a great stack of wood for her, and refilled the waterskin. He took four strips of meat and a slice of cheese and put the rest in the saddlebag. When he finished, he knelt beside her.
“You’re sick because of me, because you came after me and got hurt. I won’t fail. I will come back.”
Wendra put her arms around him and kissed his cheek. “Go safely, Penit.”
Then he rose and walked to the mouth of the cave, where he stopped and looked back. “I lied before. I did care about the pageant wagon, the troupe. And I miss them.” He stopped, reflecting. “But I had to get away. I saw what happens after a life on the boards.”
He left off there, and jogged from the cave. She heard him mount Ildico and pass briefly across the mouth of the cave, heading east. “And come back to me again, son,” she said to herself and lay her head back down on the cool loam of the cavern floor.
* * *
Wendra drifted in and out of consciousness. Too weak to even lift herself up, she lay on the ground inside her cave and watched the last dances of fire-shadow on the uneven surface of the rocky ceiling. Fever sweat drenched her back, and her lips were dry and cracked from panting and dehydration. The food Penit had left was beyond her reach, but the thought of it nauseated her anyway, so she gave up on eating.
As the fire died, the cave grew quiet and cold. Dim light shone from the entrance as the day came fast to a close. Chills shook her violently, alternating with hot waves of fever. She managed to pull her blanket up over her shoulders and listen to the sound of her own heart in her ears.
Perhaps the Sheason or the Far would find her before Penit could return with help. But she had been here more than a day. If they hadn’t come to her yet, they had likely turned east toward Recityv.
When Penit tore from her grasp in the mists, she had reacted without thinking, chasing him, hoping to catch him before whatever darkness groaned in the clouds could destroy him. Her thoughts grew darker still. She would probably have failed if Mira had not come after her. The Bar’dyn had put its sharp, powerful nails into her and she had crawled into this large tomb to die.
Wendra pushed back the morbid thoughts. There was still hope. Hope that she would live … a hope her own child had lost at the hands of the same brutal beasts. Her throat tightened with weak anger at the thought of what they had cost her: her home, her child, and now possibly her life. Wendra started to cough from the thick emotion. The convulsions from the coughing tore at the wound in her hip that was trying to heal.
Lying on her back, the coughing worsened, each fit reopening her wound. She summoned all her strength and rolled onto her side to try and calm the spasms. Her coughs now stirred the fire ash into small clouds that settled and clung to her sweat-slickened face. The smell of spent alder and soot nauseated her, but the wracking convulsions stopped, and she breathed easier. Lying still, Wendra felt an uncomfortable lump protruding into her side. She reached into the folds of her cloak and removed the box she had brought with her from beneath her bed back home.
Carefully, she placed the songbox beside her head. A wan smile touched her lips at the memories the box’s cedar smell evoked, and the gulf that seemed to separate her from her life when the box had been so important. Then her thoughts turned bitter, and she considered how much better this token might serve as wood for her fire than to remind her of what was no more. Salty tears stung her eyes and ran over her nose and cheeks. She liked the feel of them and did not wipe them away, tasting them as they ran onto her lips.
The songbox reminded her of home, the Hollows. The thought of it raised the question to her mind again: Why had the Sheason brought her? Was she supposed to support Tahn? Would she have been in danger if she’d remained behind? Something told her there was more to it than simply keeping siblings together. But no matter how she concentrated or reasoned, she could find no good answer. And now she was alone; left to try to make it to Rectiyv with only the help of a boy.
Wendra fingered open the box’s clasp and lifted its lid. Softly, its melody began, small gears turning the roll inside, which plucked a tune through the tiny tone prongs. The delicate song was too soft to ring as high as the cave’s ceiling, but it fell on the fire pit, the cavern floor around her, and her own tired ears like a memory, and she closed her eyes. The gentle notes called out their tune like a wounded bird, and Wendra felt herself falling into a fevered sleep.
Suddenly, Wendra had the feeling that she was not alone. Opening her eyes, she saw seated across from her a kindly looking man in a brilliant white robe. Between them, the fire had been rekindled. Distantly, like wind causing chimes to jangle, she could hear the melody of her box.
A fever vision?
Maybe. But despite not feeling any immediate fear, she sensed that her life had just irrevocably changed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Rushing of Je’holta
Braethen lay on the ground staring up through the great hole in the mist. His chest still heaved from exertion. He clutched in his left hand the sword Vendanj had given him. The Sheason remained still, his eyes shut, one hand to his chest, the other extended. Not far from either of them, the ashy heap that had been the Maere still smoked in the bright shaft of light that broke through the gloom. Sometime later, the Sheason opened his eyes.
The sound of hurrie
d footsteps could be heard in the mist, vague sounds that were retreating from him. The cries and moans deep within the fog bank slowly faded, leaving the sodalist and the Sheason in a pervasive silence. The hole torn in the mist began slowly to close, but for several moments the two sat in the sunlight, catching their breath.
“Do we wait, or do we continue on?” Braethen asked.
“The Maere likely means Bar’dyn are close by,” Vendanj said. “I believe I heard their heavy strides chasing the others when the line broke. The Quietgiven will feel the death of the Maere, gather quickly, and come for us. We will wait for Mira to return, then we will try to find Tahn and the rest.”
“What of the sounds in the mists?”
“Always a threat, sodalist, but they are no longer alive in the flesh. The mist gives them shape to the eye: their influence is in the mind. Their voices belong to souls lost while serving the One. They cry from beyond death, their hollow voices audible within Je’holta, like corrupted remembrance.”
“You said the Bar’dyn were here in the mist,” Braethen said. “Are they not affected by it?”
“Not as you or I. The Bar’dyn and other lost races that serve the Artificer no longer feel hope. Abandonment is what they know, and so the taint of Male’Siriptus has no hold over them. It is said that all the Bourne is Je’holta. For them,” the Sheason said mournfully, “it is like home.”
The Sheason’s words drew Braethen’s thoughts back to the black world that had enveloped him as he’d taken the sword he now held. In stark contrast, the brightness of the sun above him made his eyes water, but he did not turn away. He decided it was some kind of test.
“When you gave me the sword,” he asked Vendanj, “darkness swallowed me…”
Vendanj looked first at him, then at the encroaching wall of mist. Cautious footsteps could be heard approaching. The Sheason put a finger to his lips to silence the sodalist, stood, and turned in the direction of the sound. From the bank of darkness, Mira slowly emerged, her swords drawn, her face flushed.
“The girl?” he asked.
“Bar’dyn found her and the boy deep in the mist. She fled while I fought them back.”
Vendanj nodded. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Out of patience with the beasts out of the Hand,” she said sternly.
The mists followed her as she approached, and quickly Je’holta filled in the large hole above, occluding the sun. She stopped near Braethen and appraised him carefully, her gaze alternating between him and the sword in his hand. Under her scrutiny, Braethen got to his feet and replaced the sword in its sheath. Around them, plumes of mist rose and fell, their touch feeling as a willow bud might in early spring.
“We will go north to the edge of the mist,” Vendanj said. “Perhaps the others have reached safety beyond its grip.” The Sheason extended a hand. “The power of Male’Siriptus still exists around us. If even one of the Velle came with Je’holta, we are far from safe.”
Braethen took the renderer’s hand, and put his own out to Mira. The Far sheathed one sword, and took the sodalist’s hand in a firm grip. Together they walked on through the mist.
It took time, but eventually they emerged from the low, dark cloud, into the light of day beyond. Braethen raised his arms and turned to face the sun.
“I’ll find the horses,” Mira said. “The Je’holta cloud will not go quietly.”
“I know,” Vendanj replied. “It will rage soon.”
Mira left at a run, covering ground at great speed, scanning the terrain she passed. In a moment she disappeared from sight. Braethen had not seen her move thus. He gaped openly at her rapid departure.
“We must find shelter,” Vendanj said. “The rushing of Je’holta is painful to the point of death. It will howl and blow like a storm dropping off the slopes of the Pall. The despair and loss of those that inhabit Male’Siriptus race over the body in torrents and tear at the mind like daggers. Come.”
Vendanj hastened up a low hill. A dense copse stood halfway down the lee slope, the rain and weather having hollowed a space beneath the gnarled root system on the downhill side. Braethen and the Sheason ducked under the cover.
They sat silently in the protection of the hollow, looking out on the day and watching cloud shadows move across the land. Then a wind rose up, mild at first, nothing more than the breeze that precedes a summer shower. But soon it became a gale, carrying leaves and dust in streams down the hill below them. The trees swayed, low oak and sage rippling in the fierceness. Above them, the sky darkened, and the wind screamed in horrible gusts. Braethen squinted at the mists that rushed past them at incredible speed. Branches were torn from their trunks and smaller plants uprooted entirely. Small sticks wheeled into the sky like feathers, and the dark cloud rushed out. The gale raged for several minutes, the tree roots around them groaning and straining against the onslaught of wind. The noise was deafening, like standing beneath a waterfall during spring thaw. Braethen grasped a root nearby to anchor himself, and hoped the Far had found cover. The Sheason sat with his cowl drawn up, a shadow in the rooted hollow, patiently waiting out the rushing of the winds.
The angry cloud expanded outward, dissipating to nothing. Soon, the howling died and the wind grew still. Light filtered through, replacing the darkness, and revealed the terrain around them, ravaged in the passing of Je’holta.
“Will and Sky,” Braethen muttered.
“Let’s go,” Vendanj said, and stepped out from under the trees.
They hiked back to the top of the hill, and watched as Mira appeared over the rise to the west, leading four horses. Moments later, the Far arrived with their mounts, and Penit’s besides. Her hair had blown free of its band and fell in long, silken strands about her face and neck. Braethen had not seen Mira like this; the difference surprised him.
“We may find them traveling east toward Recityv,” Mira said. “But the rushing winds have erased any trail we might have followed for leagues in any direction. The boy is either on foot, or with Wendra. They should be easy to find.”
The Far did not mention Tahn and Sutter.
They mounted and rode east, Mira taking the lead, constantly scanning the ground and horizon. All the rest of that day they rode, stopping finally when the light became too dim to see any further.
Mira secured the horses, then started a fire. Braethen helped her gather wood before sitting near the blaze and placing his sword in his lap to look it over. The blade bore the mark of a craftsman’s care, but had not yet seen its polish and finish. The metal was unyielding though. It glowed in the night, but so imperceptibly that Braethen half doubted any glow at all. Yet, when he looked closely, he could see the metal held a faint white cast, as though lit somehow from within.
Vendanj took a seat near the fire and removed his small wooden case from his cloak. Opening it, he took two leaves from a stem and placed them in his mouth, then, without once looking at Braethen, settled in, clearly exhausted, to savor the fire’s warmth.
Mira left for some time, returning without a sound. She seated herself on the trunk of a fallen tree. “There is no sign of them. But there is also no sign of Quietgiven, either,” she reported. “We are beyond the land affected by the rushing. Perhaps they moved farther north before turning east.” Mira shifted her attention to Braethen. “We need to continue your training.”
“And you asked me of the darkness, sodalist,” said Vendanj. “I have not forgotten. But that must be left for another time.” The Sheason drew back his cowl and looked at Braethen. “There are things from your books that you must know the truth behind if you are to fulfill your oath as sodalist. I know your heart now, but your inexperience and lack of understanding are more dangerous to us than the boy, Penit.”
“Why?”
“Because you are aware of the histories and the truths they offer us, but you haven’t comprehended them. To hold that sword, to lift your arm with others as your emblem suggests, you must have an understanding of the power of the Will, its
meaning and purpose.”
Braethen listened intently.
“The Will is the power of creation, sodalist,” Vendanj declared. “You’ve read this countless times. It is what moves us, the wellspring of all life. The Will is without beginning or end. It is the power that resides in all matter, and the matter that resides in all power. It gives purpose to each age, those past and all those that will ever be.” The Sheason lifted the symbol fastened to his necklace, three rings, one inside the next, all joined at one point. “Each age is a part of the one before it, its consequences spreading, resonating, outward like ripples on a pond. But you may also read the emblem in its opposite, focusing inward.” Vendanj ran his finger across the circles toward the point where they were joined. “An inner resonance reducing forever to a single, perfect point.” He traced the woven figure of the rings thoughtfully. “The Will is both these things. Indeed, its meaning is forever dual.”
“And Forda I’Forza?” Braethen asked.
“Yes,” Vendanj answered. “Called also Ars and Arsa in the Language of the Covenant. Its true meaning is ‘energy and matter.’ All things are a marriage of the two, or one that becomes the other through transformation or growth or offering. Matter and energy have always been and will always be. They can be neither created nor destroyed. They list and heave under pressure from each other, becoming new, sometimes refining each other into beauty and balance, sometimes becoming discordant and unstable in a struggle to reach harmony. The Will is the union of these separate and everlasting elements.”
The Sheason spoke with deep reverence. Braethen thought that it must be because he invoked the power of the Will, taking it inside himself to cause change in the way of things, the cost of its use evident in the sunken cheeks of his face.
The Unremembered: Book One of The Vault of Heaven Page 25