A Dark Sacrifice

by Madeline Howard

  And that was why she never guessed that Prince Tyr was taking them by a different route. Not until a door in the cavern wall swung open, letting in a draft of fresh air, and they came out in a glen on the lower slopes of the mountain, to find their horses already saddled and waiting for them.

  Sindérian looked around her, trying to gain her bearings. The sun was low in a sky the color of pearl. A few faint stars bloomed near the opposite horizon where it was darker. Never, she thought, had a glimpse of the stars been more welcome. “The day is new,” said Prince Tyr. “You will be able to ride a long way before nightfall.” And with a brief farewell, he and the other dwarves disappeared back into the tunnel.

  The door had already closed behind them, melting back into the mountainside so thoroughly that there was no evidence it had ever been there, before she grasped the meaning of his words. If the sun was in the east and Penadamin at her back—“We are south of the Fenéille Galadan—on the far side of the mountains.”

  The faces of the others brightened immediately. “Then we are days, not weeks, behind the Furiádhin,” said Kivik. “Our encounter with the dwarves was more fortunate than we knew!”

  Sindérian nodded. It was far more than she had ever expected. Even at her most optimistic, the most she had dared hope for was to be shown some hidden path known only to the Corridon. “I think that King Yri meant to help us all along—though whatever happens as a result, he means it to take place far away from his own country.” He had been kind, but he had also been canny.

  He had been generous as well, as they quickly discovered once they examined the packs strapped to the horses. The supplies of food they had carried before had not only been restored but replenished, and there were other items as well which had not been there before: knives with the sharpest of edges for the men; a store of herbal medicines in neatly labeled packets, phials, and pots for Sindérian; lightweight but tightly woven cloaks for them all, against the cold weather ahead. And at the bottom of one of her saddlebags Sindérian found something that surprised, moved, and disturbed her all at once.

  It was a silver bracelet, incised with scrollwork and set with amber like drops of honey. A cold shiver passed from the back of her head down her spine. “Amber for a princess.” It was a delicate compliment but—if she remembered Prince Tyr’s words aright—it was also a grave gift.

  What has King Yri foreseen? How much has he guessed? She was beginning to understand why he had taken more interest in her than anyone else, why he had been at such pains to draw her out. She slipped the bracelet back into the saddlebag without showing it to any of the others. There would be a time to wear King Yri’s gift, but that time had not yet come.

  They mounted up and rode for many hours. By nightfall, they found themselves in the foothills, following a road of sorts through what was otherwise a tangled wilderness.

  “Once we descend from the foothills we will be in Lünerion, which was a principality of Alluinn. After a few days more we will come into what was once the heart of the Empire.” Sindérian relayed this information to the others as it came from Faolein. “No men have lived in these lands since the world was Changed. Ahead of us there are forests, marshes, lakelands, and the remains of great cities lying in ruins—but not a single town, village, or farm. There will, possibly, be abundant game for hunting, but otherwise we will have to make our food supplies last.”

  “No men live in Alluinn,” said Prince Ruan with a grim look, “but the Ni-Féa do, in the southeastern part. I was born there and I know something of the country between. Besides the game you mention, there will be bears, mountain lions, lynxes, and wolves that hunt in great packs. Worse than wolves, one may occasionally meet creatures that have wandered in from the wastelands to the east: Tirhénian basilisks, manticores, griffons, snakes that are almost the size of dragons—”

  “We may meet any or all of those things,” Sindérian interrupted him, “but not all of them at once.”

  “No,” the Prince admitted, “not all of them at once. We may even travel for days without meeting anything.”

  Luck was with them during the next few days, for they reached the lowlands without seeing anything more daunting than a bear loping along on all fours in the rain, and a lynx that snarled at them and retreated into the bushes. It was only after they left the hills behind that a monstrous snake crawled into their camp one evening. It would have killed one of the horses had not Aell, who was keeping the first watch, whipped out his sword and sliced the serpent in half just as it was rearing its head to strike.

  But that wolves inhabited that region in great numbers there could be no doubt. They filled the nights with their wailing cries, first from one direction and then another. And when the travellers came upon a road heading more directly south, Sindérian began to notice, with increasing frequency, tracks of wolves printed in the road after the latest rain shower: dozens and dozens of paw prints, great and small, as if the road were not a road at all, but a trail the wolves had made for themselves. Such numbers of them travelling in the same direction, like a great migration, struck her as ominous and improbable. After crossing the wild parts of Mistlewald without meeting any of the werewolves which she knew infested those lands, she fervently hoped they would not encounter them now.

  The road eventually turned east, but by then they had come into a region of wide meadows and occasional woodlands and were able to set out cross-country. The mountains caught the worst of the weather; yet even though they were heading almost due south, winter would overtake them in the end—and all the sooner if they did not make haste. Once, Sindérian caught a glimpse of the river Glasillient shining in the distance. Sometimes they passed heaps of weed-covered masonry on either side of the road, all that remained of towns and villages crushed by the tidal wave of power that had swept across Alluinn, levelling the entire kingdom in less than a day. Tens of thousands had died in that disaster, and their bones would still be there under the rubble.

  Then one clear morning Faolein returned from a nighttime scouting expedition and Sindérian could tell immediately that something had occurred to disturb the even tenor of his mind.

  There is something southwest of here I think you should see.

  He led them in the direction of the river. Before they had gone far, the horses began to balk, throwing up their heads and snorting. Urging them forward, they soon found evidence of a recent campsite: the sodden, ashy remains of a campfire, some trampled grass, and that which put the horses into a sidling, eye-rolling sweat—the bodies of three unnaturally long-legged wolves, as well as the body of something midway between man and beast. The air was rank with the foul, musky odor of the skinchangers. That men with steel had killed them was immediately evident, for one head had been lopped off as if by a sword or an axe, and Sindérian could see by a wound in the belly of the man-beast that he had been impaled by the blade of a sword.

  “Not many days past,” said Prince Ruan, curbing his roan gelding with a firm hand, “else even in this cool weather the bodies would be more decomposed.”

  But Sindérian had already noticed an ominous cairn of stones not far from the campsite. When she pointed it out to the men, the Skyrran princes both turned a ghastly shade of pale. “You don’t think…?” said Skerry.

  “No, I don’t.” Nevertheless, there was a cold, heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach, because Winloki had so narrowly missed total annihilation of soul and spirit in the catacombs, and she had never guessed it. “But let us shift those stones anyway, to put our minds at rest.”

  The horses would not stand still within sight or scent of the dead skinchangers, so it was necessary to lead them a short distance away. That task fell to her and Aell, while the other men set to work on the pile of heavy stones. When they reached the riverbank Aell left her alone to mind the still-restive horses and returned to assist the others at the cairn.

  Their grisly task uncovered the corpses of two black-robed acolytes, but nothing worse. A gesture from Prince Ruan reass
ured Sindérian that Winloki was not there.

  “How many of them?” she asked, when the stones had been replaced and the others had joined her beside the river.

  “Two men,” replied Kivik. “But no telling how many of the Pharaxions might have been injured.”

  Prince Ruan swung back into the saddle. “There were injuries on both sides, men and wolves alike. Besides the stink of skinchangers the site reeked of blood. But you’ll already have guessed as much.”

  Indeed, the residue of anguish and desperation had still been strong enough to sense. And as they resumed the journey south, Sindérian had much to think about. She felt as though she had been wandering a long time through a maze of possibilities, most of them fearful—but now there was the dawning of a tentative hope.

  “Something is on your mind.” Skerry interrupted her reverie a while later, bringing his horse up beside hers.

  “Until we reached the mountains,” she said, “the Furiádhin seemed to have everything their own way—any mischances were ours. But ever since they entered the tombs, they’ve had their share of misfortunes. King Yri said they lost men in the catacombs, and now there is this. And I’ve been feeling changes in the world around us for many weeks now: an energy along the ley lines, a shifting of probabilities…” She shook her head. “I wish I knew what was happening in the west, in the south.”

  “You believe the probabilities you mention may be shifting in our favor?” asked Prince Ruan, bringing his horse abreast of theirs. “In favor of all who serve my grandfather and the alliance?”

  “Perhaps. But it may also be that there is no safety for anyone, anywhere. You remember the conversation we had long ago on the Balaquendor, before the sea dragon attacked us?”

  “You said that Ouriána had been tampering with things she had better have left alone. You said that she was unleashing forces she would ultimately be unable to control.”

  “Yes,” said Sindérian. They turned the horses’ heads away from the river toward higher ground. The ground below was growing muddy; there were trickles of water and a smell of marshes was in the air. “And I also said there are things—like sea dragons—that are friends to no one. And when we were nearly drowned in the Necke on our way to Skyrra, I saw things under the water….” She hesitated, for there were parts of that experience she did not choose to share with anybody.

  “Tell us plainly what you fear,” Ruan prompted her.

  “It may be as you say,” she replied. And because Kivik and Aell had drawn closer, too, in order to hear what was being said, she raised her voice to include them in the conversation. “Or it may be that we are all of us—Phaôrax, Thäerie, Leal, Skyrra, everyone—heading toward some world-altering disaster. Like Alluinn and Otöi before us, we might be on the verge of mutual destruction.”

  “How would we know?” asked Aell in a subdued voice.

  “We can’t know, not until it overtakes us,” she said wearily. “That is, we can’t know it all, the doom of the entire world or its salvation. But we may know the answers to more immediate questions very soon.”

  Days earlier, just after the battle with the skinchangers, Winloki had been numb and heart-bruised, staring at the cairn of stones the other men had piled over the bodies of Adfhail and Rivanon.

  She felt Camhóinhann’s presence beside her at the gravesite, even before she turned to face him. “This was my fault,” she said, blinking back tears.

  He did not attempt to deny it. “Why should that grieve you? You were kidnapped, snatched away from the people you call your own. Our land is not your land; you have made it quite clear that you do not and will not consider Phaôrax your home.”

  Winloki could not find the words to answer him. But he seemed to know what she would have said. “Your abilities as an empath are growing very rapidly, along with your other gifts. It is a dangerous time—for you as much as others.”

  “Teach me what I need to know,” she said passionately. “Teach me how to prevent something like this from happening again.”

  Camhóinhann shook his head. “That I cannot promise. The world is full of many hazards. It may even be that you are not responsible for attracting this one.”

  “But the men who died in the catacombs,” she insisted, “I must bear some responsibility for that.”

  “No more than I,” he said. “If I had known the ancient power slumbering there was already awake, I would never have brought you there. At least not as you are now. There are many things that I might teach you, but…”

  She bit her lip. “Perhaps you don’t trust me enough?”

  For the first time in all their long journey she saw the ghost of a smile cross his face, and she suddenly felt a fool for thinking she could possibly threaten him. “I will teach you to use your power not as a weapon but as a shield—and how to shield it in turn. But I caution you to think very carefully before you agree to this. Some decisions, once made, are irrevocable.”

  “To do nothing, that is a choice, too,” she said fiercely. “And the deaths of these men, that is irrevocable too.”

  They moved away from the cairn, toward the campsite. Already, the tents and other supplies had been packed away and men were saddling the horses. “Then if you are not already tired from the healings you have performed, we will begin your lessons as we ride.”

  “Now?” she said breathlessly. “We can begin…so soon?”

  His face had resumed its usual austere expression. “Are you, after all, having second thoughts?”

  “I was merely surprised,” said Winloki. “I am ready to begin whenever you wish.”

  A short while later they were in the saddle, following along the course of the river.

  “I should start by telling you something of your own gifts and of those from whom you have inherited them.” A slight breeze lifted Camhóinhann’s long white hair as he rode. Afoot or on horseback, he was more than a head taller than any of the other men; yet it was more than his imposing stature that always made the Princess feel dwarfed beside him.

  “Your mother,” he went on, “had great gifts for healing and warding, though her other talents were impressive, too. Your father, on the other hand, had no such abilities, though he came of a line that had produced many wizards and minor magicians over the centuries. Queen Elüari, who wore the ring of bone before your mother did, had a deeper knowledge of elemental magic than anyone I have ever met.”

  “You knew these people?” Again Winloki tried to remember, if she had ever known, how long Thäerie and Phaôrax had been at war. She tried to calculate how old he might be, but the effort defeated her.

  “I knew them,” he said. “Like yourself, I was born on Thäerie. In truth, we are distantly related, you and I.”

  Startled, she turned to look up at him. “You never told me this before. Not even when you explained to me about my mother and my father.”

  “It seemed irrelevant,” he said, “And I did not think the information would be welcome.”

  Winloki tried to think whether it was welcome or not. She dearly loved her adopted relations in the north, yet there had always been a sense that she was…somehow alien to them. Oh, not in their behavior to her; it was merely something she felt in herself. At the same time, her recently discovered tie to Ouriána terrified her.

  And now this, so unexpected—and yet, in some deep part of her soul, had she not known it all along? Blood called to blood. Had it not been some instinct of kinship that drew her to him, albeit reluctantly, from the very beginning? “I know so little about you,” she said, staring straight ahead between the ears of her horse—because suddenly she was afraid to look at him again.

  “My own history would make unpleasant telling,” he answered. “I do not think you are ready to hear it just yet.”

  27

  Leaves were falling in the woodlands and gusting across the road in clouds on the autumn winds. Now the great peaks of the Cadmin Aernan reared skyward far to the west, their upper slopes crowned with silvery snows. I
n the evenings, Sindérian brewed a bittersweet green tea from among the packets the dwarves had put into her saddlebags. When the stars came out, the sky was alive with fiery signs. There were times when she could feel the world shifting around her, currents of change more potent than the winds; but of these she spoke to no one but her father.

  Many nights she sat up late staring into the fire, searching for portents until her eyes ached. You are trying too hard, said Faolein. Yet along with much that was distant and obscure she had seen what she was looking for: runes brighter than the flames, burning in the heart of the fire. Caet—battle. Eirëo—destiny. And the rune she both hoped and feared to see: the dark rune, the nameless rune.

  One morning, before they broke camp, she sketched a map in a patch of soft earth. “This is the Fenéille Galadan, this the Cadmin Aernan,” she said, drawing two lines with the point of her knife. She drew a curving line representing the Glasillient. “This, I believe, is where we are just now. You seem to know more of this country than any of us, Prince Ruan. Can you tell us what lies ahead of us?”

  “The Whathig Wood is here.” He added something to the sketch. “Not a place we would ordinarily want to visit, but to go around would take too long. And here is the ruined city of Ceir Eldig, where the Emperor had his palace. If I am not mistaken in my bearings, it is almost directly south of us. East of that, on the lower slopes of the Cadmin Aernan, is the realm of the Ni-Féa. If the Furiádhin are heading for Rhüadllyn, as we suppose, we will come very close to Queen Gäiä’s borders.”

  “And because of this estrangement you mentioned,” said Skerry, “you would be reluctant to ask for her aid? But are there not great magicians and warriors among the Faey?”

  “Not magicians as you think of them. And I would have thought you had enough of that sort of thing at Tirfang. The place reeked of Faey enchantments.”

  The Skyrran princes exchanged a glance. “You are saying that the witch-lords—” Skerry began.