She looked up at him, but he stared at the horizon, solemn. “Is it?” she asked in a small voice?
“It has to be,” he said softly.
“Why?”
“Because otherwise there’s nothing. And we’re evil just for existing. I can’t believe that.”
“Maybe I could have given him most of my life,” she whispered. “Maybe I could have saved just enough, but I got scared.” She didn’t tell him why. She didn’t tell him the GodSpill was alive, and that it wanted her to become one with it.
“Maybe. Remember this. You can’t change it. Do it better next time.”
“It’s cold comfort.”
“Yes.”
She let out a long breath, shook away the thoughts. He was right. The best way to serve that poor dead boy was to make sure the next person who needed healing stayed alive.
“Come on.” He extended his hand. She took it, and he lifted her to her feet. She looked him up and down.
“You know, you’re naked,” she said.
“Yeah. I thought it was more important to get away from there than get clothes. I have experience with mobs, and that one was close to making a stupid decision.” He shrugged. “I’ve ridden naked before.”
“Have you?”
“Crossed the entire Red Desert.”
“Without clothes?”
“It’s a story.”
“I’ll bet.” She unlaced her short skirt, worn over her tight riding breeches, and handed it to him. “Here,” she said.
He wrapped it around his waist. “Thank you.”
They rode west to Pindish in silence, where they got clothes for him, supplies for the road, and saddles for the horses, then started south on the Old Sea Road towards the Bracer.
They made camp that night in the forest, far enough from the road that no one could hear or see them. They slept close, but not together. Mirolah didn’t want to be touched, and he seemed to understand.
When he fell asleep, she stared at the stars overhead. Despite the day, she was wide-awake. After another hour of simply lying there, she rose and walked into the woods. The whispers of the trees, the grass, and the ground were a constant babble in the back of her mind, though the voice from Daylan’s Fountain hadn’t spoken again.
I failed. I could have saved the boy, but I didn’t. I won’t make that mistake twice. I won’t save myself at the expense of another.
She knelt on the ground and put her fists against the soft, wet leaves.
Take me to Orem and Stavark, she thought, speaking to the voice from Daylan’s Fountain. Whoever you are, heed me. I don’t know how to find them, but you could. You’re everywhere. Show me where they are.
Whenever she had manipulated the threads before, she saw what she wanted in her mind’s eye, and she crafted it step by step. She looked deeply, analyzed exactly, and twisted or colored specific threads to a specific effect. But this time, she didn’t know what to do. How could she bring something to her that she couldn’t see? How could she grab hold of something that wasn’t there? She didn’t know how to start looking for Stavark and Orem except by going back to the last place she’d seen them—Denema’s Valley. She didn’t even know if they were dead or alive. So she sent her demand into the GodSpill as a plea. The GodSpill was everywhere. If she could send her message into it, perhaps it could find what she was looking for.
Show me! She pushed her will into the threads like she had when fighting Ethiel, when she’d infected the Red Weaver with her own colors.
A ripple radiated outward on the threads like she was a stone thrown into a pool. The air shimmered, then the shimmer was gone.
Perhaps a lighted pathway would lead to Orem like the bright bridge opened her threadweaver’s sight. Perhaps a ghostly string, invisible to all but her, would wind through the trees or even across the Inland Ocean, eventually linking to one or both of her companions at the far side. Perhaps it would just be a compulsion, a driving need to walk in one direction over another.
Nothing happened.
Please, she sent again. Tell me what I need to know. Help me find them!
The voice didn’t answer her, and this time there wasn’t even a ripple in the threads.
She fell to her knees, pushed her face into her hands, and cried. She cried for the little boy in Rith, burned to death. She cried for her mentor, Orem, who was almost certainly a corpse lying face down on the streets of Denema’s Valley. She cried for Stavark. She cried for those she couldn’t help, and because, even with her newfound power, there would be others in the future she would fail. She felt that horror and wept.
When she had spent her tears, she went back to their little camp. Medophae slept peacefully, curled into his blanket. She lay down and stared up at the starry sky. It was a long time before she closed her eyes.
She awoke with a start. Clarity brightened her mind, like she’d never been asleep, like her brain had been working while she was unconscious. The last time she’d snapped out of a sleep like this, it was because Ethiel had mind-warped her and bid her to sleepwalk into a pack of darklings.
A tentative touch brushed across the threads of her mind, bidding them to change color, just a subtle shift. Panic blossomed inside her. The touch hadn’t tried to dominate her, not yet. It was almost ephemeral.
The threadweaver probed her long enough that followed it back to the source. The being was close, hidden in the nearby trees.
Not this time.
She took hold of those seeking feelers and saturated them with her own colors.
Her domination was quick and complete. The threadweaver’s defenses were glass and she was a hammer. A yelp came from the nearby trees. This threadweaver was nowhere near as powerful as Ethiel. The fight was over in an instant, and she had control of the creature.
She pushed her blanket away and stood up. “Come out,” she said.
The creature slinked out of the dark. It was no threadweaver at all, but a giant, impossibly skinny yellow dog. He did not wish to come into the clearing, but she made him.
He was perhaps five feet tall at the shoulder and as hairless as a human. His ribs stood out starkly along his side. His sallow skin was so thin as to be transparent. She could see blue veins beneath and every strand of muscle strapped from hip to knee, knee to ankle, neck to shoulder, and along its bony spine. The dog’s shoulders rippled as it moved closer. He had thin eyes and an incredibly long muzzle. While his ribcage was large and round, his waist was barely the width of a pole. He looked starved almost to death, and yet the way he moved was lithe, graceful.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
He opened his long jaws, lined with crooked, pointy teeth, and he whined. Miraculously, there were words in that sound.
“This one felt you near,” the dog said. “This one looked for you.”
“You tried to bend me to your will,” she said. “I felt you invade my threads.”
The dog cringed, trying to withdraw, but she commanded its body to halt. The wretched thing’s bony tail curled between its legs.
“No,” it whined. “This one did not.”
At the second whine, Medophae woke and rolled to his feet. Golden fire crackled lightly about his sword arm. The skinny dog whined louder, straining against Mirolah’s control, trying to get back to the safety of the forest.
“What’s going on?” Medophae asked.
“We have a visitor,” she said. “I have it in hand.”
Medophae crossed his arms over his chest.
“You tried to take control of me as I have now taken control of you,” she said to the dog. “I want to know why. Were you looking for a meal?”
“No!” The words mixed with the whine. “This one was sniffing you, only. The land points to you. The land breathes of you. This one came to see the truth. Was only sniffing. Only sniffing.” The dog had buried itself in the long grass, it was so low to the ground.
“You sniff with GodSpill?” Mirolah asked.
The whine wa
s just a whine this time. There were no words. Mirolah cocked her head and listened closer. “What?” she asked.
“Don’t you? Don’t you sniff the GodSpill?” The dog whined more clearly.
“You’re saying you followed me here because I’m a threadweaver?”
“Yes.” The word was a bark.
“Okay. I’m going to release you. If you run, I’ll have to stop you again.”
“Yes.” Another bark.
She released him. He shook, then shoved the side of his muzzle against the grass and pushed himself along, as though he were trying to rub a bad smell from his nose. Standing up, he shook again, then repeated the same with the other side of its muzzle. Finally, he stood before her, his bony tail up and wagging.
“The land whispers of you,” the dog said with a yip.
“What does it whisper?” she asked.
“That you are the Thread. The Threadwoman.”
“What does that mean?”
“This one came looking for the Threadwoman,” the dog barked again.
“I don’t know what that means,” she pressed.
“The Threadwoman,” he yipped quietly.
“That doesn’t tell me anything,” she said, annoyed.
The dog’s happy posture contracted. His tail stopped wagging and dipped between his legs. He crouched low, as though she was raising a club over his head. “The Threadwoman... The Thread...” he whined. He eyed the forest, prepared for flight.
“It’s all right,” she waved a hand. “I’m not angry. I just...don’t understand.”
“Do you know what that is?” Medophae asked her, watching their exchange.
“A big skinny dog?” she said.
“It’s a vyrkiz,” he said. “That’s the quicksilver word, anyway. They’re also called skin dogs. Don’t be deceived by its emaciated look. That thing is strong enough to bring down a bear, or a trained war horse. They’re vicious hunters. In the Age of Ascendance, they were trained for war by those who could manage it. Only certain handlers could get them to submit. They’re highly intelligent.”
The skin dog did not protest its innocence. It looked at Medophae as though it could not understand what he was saying.
“Like darklings?” she asked.
“No. Skin dogs are not children of Dervon, though they were...made. Much like the quicksilvers or the spine horses or the darklings. They were often used to sniff out traps in the GodSpill Wars.”
“But you think he’s dangerous?”
“Oh, I know he’s dangerous. But not duplicitous. They’re very much like actual dogs in most respects. You’ve cowed him. From what I remember, that’s not easy to do. But once they submit, they’re loyal. They’re pack animals, and they’ll follow their pack leader, even if it’s a human.”
“Must go,” the skin dog barked. “This one is hungry,” he yipped, turning a brief glance to the nervous horses. “Must hunt.”
“No. Those horses are under my protection,” she said sternly.
He whined again and lowered himself to the ground as though she was about to strike him. “No. No. They are yours. They are pack. Cannot hunt pack.”
“Okay, then.”
The skin dog rose, his tail wagging. He gave one last glance to Medophae, then to her, then sprang into the forest, clearing ten feet with one leap and vanishing into the dark.
Medophae stared where the skin dog had gone, then looked over at her. “You just keep the surprises coming,” he said.
“How so?”
“You were talking to it.”
“Yes.”
“Well, when did you learn skin dog speak?”
A chill scampered across her arms. “You didn’t hear? He was talking out loud.”
“No, he was whining and barking out loud.”
Her heart thundered. “He spoke in words,” she murmured. “To me.” She sat down on her rumpled blanket. “I thought he just... I thought he could speak.”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
No, I’m not okay.
She remembered feeling like she was dying in Daylan’s Glass, tossed about, then unraveled by the tempest of GodSpill. But she’d convinced it to let her live. It had reconstructed her and put her back in her body. She thought that meant she would be normal again, but more unusual things happened to her with every day that passed.
Animals talked to her. The GodSpill hungered for her, as though it owned her.
What would it be tomorrow? And at the end, would there be anything left of the girl named Mirolah?
12
Medophae
Medophae couldn’t stop thinking about the dream.
Going with Mirolah to Denema’s Valley was the right thing to do. He knew that. He couldn’t just forget about Orem and Stavark. He couldn’t just pick up where he had left off a hundred years ago, searching the countryside for clues to rescue his beloved, but ever since Avakketh had so casually given him the answer to the riddle, ever since Medophae had realized what a perfect torture device Ethiel had crafted if love really was the answer, he couldn’t stop thinking about Bands.
He tried to believe she was dead. He tried to make himself believe that was the end of it.
But if she was out there... Somewhere...
He thought about the magistrate in Rith, about how close Medophae had been to killing the man. Oedandus had raged through him, had wanted violence against an unjust ruler.
Bands had always tempered that rage in him. It was she who reminded Medophae to stay human, even as he slowly grew beyond humanity. It was always Bands’s voice in his head when he tamed the raging god.
During his days in that cave near Belshra, Medophae had lost himself in memories of his times with Bands. It had been the only salve to his raw soul, and he’d lived in the past in his mind.
He hadn’t done that intentionally since Orem pulled him back into the world of humans, but he had to feel her again.
So, as Mirolah slept peacefully, Medophae closed his eyes and took himself back. He indulged in a reminiscence, just one. Only one...
Medophae shaved another hank of hair from his scalp and nicked himself again, this time badly. A trickle of blood ran down his ear. Oedandus awoke, sending a rush of prickles to the site. The wound vanished.
“By Thalius, it’s like you’ve been in a battle,” Bands said, holding out a white cloth for him to wipe the blood. “Let me do it.”
“I never get to shave,” he said. The last time he’d needed to shave was the morning Oedandus found him. From that moment forward, Medophae’s physical form hadn’t changed; Oedandus kept reconstructing him exactly as he had been.
“She’s dead,” Bands said softly, serious this time. If someone had been standing in the little room with them, they might have assumed Bands was reminding him why they were here in Korvander, but she wasn’t. She was reminding Medophae to keep his temper.
“They killed her,” he said.
King Horonid of Korvander and his advisors had created an elaborate list of laws in the last year, from the lowest type of law—such as meting out consequences for spitting on the street near the palace—to the increasingly popular champion challenges, where one could prove one’s innocence—even of a serious crime—through trial by combat. Those accused by the crown could utilize a champion to prove their innocence and, if their champion won, they would be absolved of the accusation.
In fact, any of the king’s subjects could accuse another of breaking the law. If you had a sword and a grievance, you could gain “justice” in the king’s dueling arena.
King Horonid’s champion was said to be unbeatable, and the king was using that power to bludgeon his subjects. The duels were becoming more frequent, sometimes as many as six in a day. They had transformed into a grisly kind of entertainment for the noble classes.
Oedandus bubbled up, heightening Medophae’s anger. He wanted to run straight to the palace and tear Horonid apart.
He nicked himself again on the other side of his head
.
Bands’s hand closed over his. “Give me that. You’re missing spots all over the place, and we’re running out of cloths to mop up your blood. They’re going to think you killed a cat in here.” She took the straight razor. Smoothly and methodically, she finished the job without a single nick.
“He killed her because she was a quicksilver,” Medophae said. “No other reason.”
“It is against the law for a Korvandish noble to consort with someone so far below his caste.”
“Caste is crap,” Medophae said.
She didn’t say anything. She never talked when he let his anger speak for him.
“If he loves her,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”
“It would still be against the law.”
“I want to kill him.”
She smoothed her hands across his shoulders. “You could be a tyrant so easily, Medophae,” she said. “So much power. Such passion when you believe you are right. Mix them together, and who could stop you?”
“You could,” he said.
“Not if you saw me as an enemy. You would walk right through me.”
Whenever they came to a kingdom to try to see justice done, Bands advocated for the other side. It was a frustrating dance they did. She’d come with him because she thought he was right. She helped him because she thought he was right. But she always did this.
He sighed. “Stop it.”
“What are you here to do?” she asked.
“End this king.”
“And this will prove your point.”
“He won’t kill any more innocent...” He sighed. “They just wanted to love each other.”
He ran a hand over his smooth scalp and raised the mirror. His telltale golden mane was gone, and his head looked tiny with no hair.
He had wanted to charge into Korvander and remove King Horonid by force, but Bands had prevailed upon him to legally remove the king using his own laws—such that they were—with everyone else looking on.
The GodSpill Page 10