by Sarah Remy
So lost was he in thought, Everin almost missed the moment Faolan stepped off the path. The sidhe clicked his tongue in warning; the ground fell away sharply toward the river, the slope hidden by brush. Loose stone rattled when Everin stumbled. Nearby a horse nickered in response. Everin turned toward the sound and saw Faolan disappearing into a copse of oak and gorse bush. He followed, moving less swiftly than he would have liked, cursing the dark and a myriad of hidden tree roots.
He discovered four horses hobbled in a small clearing by the river, obscured by a copse of shade trees, guarded by two lesser sidhe and a carefully set perimeter spell. Faolan broke the concealing magic by overturning a simmering bowl of viscous black liquid with a bare foot. The mixture smoked as it spilled back into the earth. The horses, woken from sleep, snorted nervously.
“Fill your waterskins and mount up,” Faolan said, snatching the overturned bowl from the ground and wiping it clean with the edge of his robe. Two lesser sidhe, each clothed in an eccentric motley of animal skins and pieces of florid, stolen human fabrics, eyed Everin coldly. “We’ve several hours of darkness still left before we rest.”
“I’m weary of walking in the dark,” Everin said, moving from horse to horse, giving each a pat on the withers as he ran a knowing eye over their backs and a calculating hand down their legs. They were sturdy animals, coastal ponies, the largest barely tall enough to keep Everin’s feet from scraping the ground—but they would do.
“Fortunately we’re done with walking for the nonce.” Faolan retrieved a leather bag from beneath an oak, slipped the bowl inside, and strapped the bag across his back.
“Riding in the dark is equally perilous. Have you become so leery of daylight? Do you truly fear the sun?” Everin demanded. Everin had worked alongside the aes si in Stonehill’s vegetable garden, tilling soil and tending delicate spring shoots dawn to dusk. Faolan’s pale skin had burned and peeled in the face of too much time spent in the sun, but he’d taken no lasting harm and had appeared to enjoy the labor—certainly he hadn’t felt the need to wrap himself head to toe in robes and scarf and shun the dawn.
The lesser sidhe hissed in the face of his challenge, but Faolan bid them quiet with a sharp word.
“No more than I fear unfriendly attention,” he retorted. “Some things are better done in the dark, in secret.” He switched to the language of his people, the tongue Everin had learned before any other, “Cut the horses free and mount up! Everin, take the spotted gelding. Your sword is there on the saddle.”
The spotted pony was the largest of the small herd, and the most ill-favored. The gelding whipped a stubby, flea-bitten tail when the sidhe cut the hobbles from around its pastern, pinning long, notched ears. When Everin approached, the pony danced sideways, but he settled it with a hand again to the withers and a soft whistle. He didn’t have Liam’s way with animals, but he wasn’t as innately frightening as the predatory barrowman. The gelding quieted beneath his pats, standing still as he unknotted the rope reins from the pommel of the saddle and then checked the girth.
The sword hung from a leather loop above the right stirrup. Everin didn’t need daylight to recognize the weapon for what it was. Long, narrow-bladed, and light in the hand, it was remarkable only for the gossamer etchings on the silver hilt, the old sapphire cabochon set into the sword’s peen block and worn almost smooth by use, and for the fact that it had once been favored by the young prince-in-waiting who would later rule Wilhaiim as the Aug. The sword had gone down into the barrows with Everin on the day of his birth. By all rights it belonged to Wilhaiim’s throne and whosoever sat upon it but sidhe considered the sword—and the babe who had grown into manhood amongst them—their own.
“H’up!” Ignoring the sword, Everin set a toe in the closest stirrup and pulled himself into the saddle. It was coastal tack to go with the coastal horses, the leather sticky even away from the sea. The mare tensed, blowing through her nostrils at shadows. Everin dug his heels into her rib, guiding her in tight, excited circles as his unnatural companions tended to their own mounts. Faolan climbed aboard a stocky chestnut gelding with his usual grace. The two lesser sidhe had more difficulty subduing their uneasy mounts long enough to leap astride. Once in the tack they worked the reins with surprising competence.
“We leave the road here,” Faolan said. “Stay close behind me and you’ll avoid mishap; the horses are used to close contact.”
With that they were off, up the bank, stones flying from beneath pounding hooves, over the road, and away across scrubland. Air rushed loudly past Everin’s ears, a false wind kicked up by the mare’s eager gallop. He kept her nose firmly to the chestnut’s tail, Faolan’s straight back always in sight. By the pull of her she would have preferred to lead the race; she was sure-footed even in the dark, braver than he in the night. Everin had heard of strings of ponies used by pirates to raid coastal cities on starless nights. It appeared Faolan had somehow laid his hands on six.
The lesser sidhe brought up the rear. They sat their mounts with alarming expertise, crouched low in the saddle, ignoring stirrups and rein completely, using heel and body weight to steer as skillfully as any cavalryman. Their ponies were lathered and steaming, the whites of their eyes showing like half-moons in the night, but they did not try to lose their unwelcome burden. Everin, watching the silent, corpse-pale riders, felt a seed of unease take root in his gut. History said it was man’s dominion over animals and iron that had eventually turned the tides of war and banished the sidhe underground.
Almost two generations in the mounds and Everin had never seen any indication that the barrowman had learned anything other than certain hatred of man from their defeat, but what if he’d been wrong? Sidhe on horseback were sidhe who had recognized their shortcoming and were attempting change. And change was something even the most self-aware aes si abhorred.
Everin knew from experience the sidhe were clever mimics. Many could take on human form whenever they so pleased. Was it possible after so long impersonation might become understanding?
When the sun came up on Everin’s second day away from the Downs he’d left river and trees behind for sandy red soil and scrub brush. They set camp where they pulled up; the road turned goat track was now little more than a suggestion in the copper dust. The ponies hung their heads, exhausted, but Faolan still ordered their front feet hobbled. Everin pulled their tack and squeezed precious water between their teeth. They drank what he offered then nibbled at thin brown weeds on the ground.
Faolan wrapped his face against the sun before lying down in the dust. The lesser sidhe curled together in the scant shade beneath a thorny bush. While one slept the other would keep watch. The heat came up out of the ground, creeping through the soles of Everin’s boots and up his legs until a fine sheen of sweat popped on his neck and cheeks.
Everin dropped his pack in the sand. He turned in a circle. West, the greener band that was the Mors had receded into a suggestion. East, the dividing mountains loomed on the horizon, still indistinct. South, a man would eventually come to the sea. And far, far north the mountains became great snowcapped peaks even the most daring of armies didn’t dare attempt.
Resigned to the loss of his beard for comfort’s sake, he squatted at last on the dirt and sifted his best knife, an old leather strop, and a stoppered vial of oil from his pack. He checked the blade for sharpness then, satisfied, shook oil from the vial onto the fingers of one hand, massaging the slick into his beard. The oil was one of Avani’s concoctions. It stank of rosemary and aloe but it did a fine job of keeping the knife from nicking his flesh as he scraped hair from his face.
He didn’t need a looking glass to do the job well. He’d learned his face by feel in the darkest days of his imprisonment. Then, the sidhe had lent him an ancient bronze dirk for a brief time daily and bade him keep his face and skull clean-shaven. The bronze blade had been dull as a stone, the hair had pulled and his flesh had bled. More than once he’d considered slitting his throat in protest, but even so ea
rly in his time underground he’d already guessed what was dead didn’t always remain so, and he had a horror of coming back a much lesser man.
Now he had to pause twice to strop the blade and reapply oil. When he was finished his cheeks stung pleasantly and his nose had grown used to the stink of Avani’s oil. He wiped the excess from his face and fingers with a rag from his pack.
An undulating snake, disturbed from its hole by one of the ponies, slithered into the morning, still sluggish. Everin’s knife took it through the head, pinning it to the sand. The snake writhed as it died. Everin rose and helped it along by stamping hard on its head.
“Sand snake,” he told the lesser sidhe. “Not poisonous. Good for eating. They grow big on the other side of the divide.”
The sidhe watched without speaking as Everin skinned the corpse, first cutting off the head and the barbed rattle on the snake’s split tail. Small snakes were difficult to eat—too little flesh for the abundance of bone—but a man with a long spear or a quick knife in the desert didn’t turn away a meal. Eaten raw or roasted over a hasty flame, a fine, fat sand snake could be the difference between life and death on the dunes.
Everin sucked meat from between delicate bones. It tasted as he remembered, bland but for the tang of blood.
“Raw is better, if you’re low on water.” On a hunch he lifted his prize in offering, dangling meat in front of the sidhe. “Hungry?”
In one fluid motion the sidhe rose and snatched the remains of the snake from Everin’s hand. Without waiting to see if its companion would wake and demand a share, the sidhe shoved meat and bones both into its mouth, chewing voraciously. Blood stained the tips of its sharp claws red; it licked the fluid away with a pale, wormlike tongue.
Faolan slept on, unaware.
“As the sun comes up more will wriggle out of the ground to bask,” Everin said. “I’ll catch another for your friend, aye? But until then I need sleep. Touch anything you shouldn’t, try anything you shouldn’t,” he warned, “and I’ll break your neck.”
The sidhe smiled.
Everin dozed only fitfully in the heat. He rose with a crick in his neck. The lesser sidhe were entwined, sleeping deeply. Faolan sat upright, face and eyes obscured by his scarf, body swallowed by his robe. The horses had given up on grazing and instead napped where they stood.
“I’m going hunting,” Everin said, flicking a finger at the dead snake’s remains where they dried the sand. “We’ve hours still and your two friends here act like they haven’t eaten in weeks.”
“I did not lie when I said we are starving,” Faolan said from beneath folds of colorful silk. “Wake them and take them with you. Teach them. Moles, rats, and rabbits we can catch, but there are no moles, rats, or rabbits in this desolate place.”
“Knives are better than hands for hunting snakes.” Everin shook his head.
Faolan laughed. “They have learned knives,” he said. “Wake them and teach them snakes.”
The two lesser sidhe did indeed have knives, simple bronze, bone-handled blades they kept hidden somewhere in their motley dress. From their sighs and groans they were not pleased to be stirred from rest, but Faolan exhorted them with threats and soon enough they were trailing Everin over rusty ground, checking beneath scrub and rock for snakes.
The two were quick studies. Soon they had a string of long corpses each on their belts. They were not graceful with the knives as they were everywhere else—their talons made their grip on the bone handle awkward—but neither were they inept. They were quick to sight their prey even where ruddy scales blended with sand, and quick to strike. They had no fear of snakebite, nor did they show any distress on those occasions when they missed their aim.
But they grew quickly lethargic and often stopped to drink from the skins they carried. Cognizant of the mountains ahead and the river left behind, Everin warned the sidhe to be sparing of their water supply, but if they understood his concern they paid it no heed.
They all feasted on raw snake as the sun dropped over the horizon, and Faolan expressed pleasure in his sidhe’s hunting successes.
“Not so pleasant as rabbit,” the aes si proclaimed, “but filling nonetheless. Well-done.”
The lesser sidhe did not respond. They ate greedily, occasionally flicking glances Everin’s way.
“Those knives they carry,” Everin mused. “Man-made, I think, but sized to fit a sidhe’s hand.”
“Or a human child’s,” Faolan said mildly. He’d removed his scarf for the feasting.
“A human child would carry steel or silver, not bronze,” retorted Everin. Then: “It’s a daring thing you do, arming them so. And with blades forged by mortals.”
“One of many daring things I have lately come to do,” Faolan agreed. “It seems my audacity knows no bounds.”
“Is contest brewing beneath the mounds?” It was not uncommon, the discontent between sidhe factions, but of late things had been quiet.
Faolan shrugged, the folds of his robes shifting. “Above or below, it makes no difference. Mankind does not have a monopoly on strife.”
“Better amongst yourselves, I suppose, than sowing mischief between earth and sky.”
Faolan’s mouth turned up at the corners. “Above or below,” he repeated. “There is no difference. All of it belongs to us.”
They rode more slowly on the third night. The horses, unlike man or sidhe, could not survive on snake meat or hardtack and were beginning to falter. Everin fed them what remained of the apples in his pack but there were not enough to go around, certainly not enough to do more than whet an unhappy appetite. But they were bred for hardiness and salt air, and although they lost the spring in their step and wore froth continuously on their bellies and between their legs, they did not fail.
By the fourth dawn red scrubland sloped gently upward into sandstone foothills. The mountains loomed, sheer-faced and sharp-edged. Spiny cactus grew in fantastic shapes out of the ground and in some places, out of fissures in the rock. Everin was heartily sick of sand snake for breakfast and supper. Faolan had gone so quiet as to be little more than one of Mal’s useless ghosts. All three of the sidhe wilted in the heat, so eloquently miserable Everin was tempted into pity. While they sat mute, watching the white sunrise, he scuffed about the near hillside until he found a sand-choked spring behind a nest of flowering cactus. Both sidhe and ponies brightened at the sight of fresh water in the barren land. Everyone drank their fill despite the gritty texture.
Afterward Faolan and Everin stood shoulder-to-shoulder, regarding inhospitable pinnacles with equal stoicism.
“You recall the way up, I suppose,” said Faolan, resigned. His lips were cracking, the skin around his eyes peeling. Everin’s own skin had darkened considerably over the past four days.
Everin could still feel the dullahan’s knotted muscle and bone between his thighs, see the black-feathered wings as they beat back the wind, hear the snap of the monster’s whip as it coiled and uncoiled in the moonlight.
“Bits and pieces.” He hesitated before pointing. “The old trailhead is there, I wager. See the soot on the cliff face? That’s tinker sign. They’ll have camped there before beginning the climb up.” He wrinkled his brow, glanced sidelong. “I assumed you’d been here more recently than I.”
“Halfway up the pass, yes. Here? No. There are other ways up the mountain, for one such as I, unfettered by one such as you.” He made a moue of distaste. “And without horses.”
“Neither of us, then,” Everin ventured, “have made the climb from top to bottom—”
“Halfway, I said.”
“Halfway is far enough.” The foothills were gradual, the mountains were not. Everin could imagine a thousand flinty misadventures on the climb upward. While not as impenetrable as icy northern pinnacles, the slick-as-glass stone beneath an ever-shifting layer of sand made for a perilous combination.
Only the desert wolves, Everin thought, would be mad enough to even consider sending an army overland into an unfrie
ndly kingdom.
“Worse even than the Downs,” he ventured in his driest tones. “It better be worth the effort, Faolan, whatever it is you’ve got to show me.”
The aes si licked flaking lips. “I promise you,” he said. “It is.”
Chapter 8
Avani knew from the way Liam held himself upright that he was angry. Color suffused the lad’s face, turning the scars on his cheeks stark. He looked her way briefly before turning to the Kingsmen. Mal he didn’t acknowledge at all.
“Your page came through the gates like she’d a water-mad wolf pack at her heels,” the senior-most soldier said. He’d introduced himself to Avani as Captain Beaumont, and he’d been none too pleased when she had bade him hurry. “’Twas as fine a piece of horsemanship as I’ve witnessed in a long time, but the lass’s hysterics were none too welcome. She caused a right commotion in the middle of the bailey, insisting we ride out at once, squawking about barrowmen in the Farrows’ fields. Left a bad taste in my mouth, I won’t pretend otherwise.” The last was directed at Avani, who had caused her own ruckus in the king’s stables when she’d found the man dithering about in the heat.
“Farrow’s killed and his wife missing,” Liam said through gritted teeth. “Laid out in his cellar, all over blood. Parsnip was right to chivvy you along, but you’ve come too late. We all of us did.”
Captain Beaumont’s hooded stare grew sharp. He opened his mouth on a question, signaling his two men forward toward the low stone outbuilding, but Mal slid expertly between Liam and the soldiers.
“Go and search the house,” the vocent ordered. “Walk the fields in case fright sent the woman into hiding. Your provenance is the living, Captain; I’ll handle the dead.”