Hunter and Fox

by Philippa Ballantine

  The Witch was staring at him. “You have similar eyes, but yours are full of something else…is it light? You must not die; it is the agreement Talyn and I made.”

  The kindness in her voice was unexpected and strange from a Blood Witch. He thought of his sister's face and that one brief moment when they had sought each other out. He recalled the broken bodies of his foster parents hung out to rot for the crime of taking in a Vaerli child. He remembered the moments in the torture cell when he had touched for a second the Gifts of his people, and felt all their despair and agony wash over him.

  Like every creature that drew breath, Byre did not want to die, but neither did he want to go back to the existence of nothingness where he floated through his life and it was always so hard. If there were a way to find his people again, to talk to them, to hold their hands, then he would risk his immortality for it. He didn't know what the Phaerkorn saw in his eyes, but it was not hopelessness anymore.

  Byre shook his head, looking toward the passage his father had disappeared down. Talyn still cared, which was good for her, but what he had learned from Retira meant he could not care about his own safety any more than Ellyria had.

  The Blood Witch had made a Pact with his sister, and he would be unable to get past her if it came to that; no Vaerli without the Gifts could. So he took the chance of taking the Witch's hands in his own. They were warm with Talyn's blood. “I can't leave my father now…not when we are so close. Surely you have someone you would not abandon?”

  He squeezed her fingertips, praying she knew what he meant. Pelanor's smooth brow furrowed and the corner of one of her teeth bit her lip. Byre was certain he was about to end up face down on the cold stone floor, but then she laughed. “You obviously have more winning ways than your sister. You do remind me of someone most precious. Go, I will watch.”

  He didn't know what she meant, or what she would do at the Cleft. It was just another complication, thanks to his sister. One he really didn't need.

  Finn was staring at her, and it was quite unnerving. But Talyn was not about to tell him that.

  The fact was, most breathing prisoners avoided looking at her. Finnbarr the Fox, though, watched her: sometimes out of the corner of one eye, sometimes brazenly over the fire as they traveled north toward the Bastion.

  Perhaps the problem was that he didn't fully realize he was her prisoner. Maybe he thought that she'd saved him from the Named for some heroic purpose. Or maybe he was just full of foolish romantic notions—thinking he could influence her after that kiss.

  Talyn put him right on that score on the second day. “I'm taking you directly to the Caisah as soon as we've been to the Bastion.”

  “I thought you were supposed to take me straight to Perilous.” Right then, Talyn knew how much trouble he really was. Finnbarr the Fox was grinning. No one had ever talked to her like this. She should have stepped over the fire and backhanded his smile into the sand. That's what she should have done.

  The sad reality was, she was weak. Whenever Finn's hands touched Talyn, or his breath tickled her neck as they rode, her skin warmed. The Hunter could only be glad he couldn't see the blood rush to her cheeks.

  Talyn did not reply but glared at him menacingly. He looked back steadily.

  Finn was a hard man to resist because his charm was the subtle kind that did not assault directly. A small smile, a little laugh, and somehow she could feel herself defusing. It was so strange—this gentle a man in a world of violence. Talyn had never met the like before.

  Even now, with bitter words lying between them, there was no vinegar in his voice or accusation in those eyes.

  Talyn flung the remains of her too-hard bread into the fire and tried not to think about what it might mean.

  Finn shrugged and took out the curious length of string he'd been playing with for days.

  Although he plainly expected no justification from her, Talyn still found herself giving some. “There is a place I must visit before I hand you over—the Bastion. I have business to attend.”

  He stared at her over the fire. “You're taking me there? It's sacred to the Vaerli. Only they can walk the Salt.”

  It was annoying to be told her own people's history. “I must go, therefore you must go.”

  She'd made a mistake. Finn was frowning; he knew that as the Caisah's Hunter she'd never failed to deliver her bounty.

  “Don't worry,” Talyn snapped. “I will still get you to V'nae Rae.”

  She turned away, rolled into her blankets, and pretended to sleep. Not long after, she heard Finn curl up. She lay there listening to his breathing for what felt like hours before finding any rest herself.

  It took another day riding fast into the Chaos before they reached the edge of the Salt Plains, and from there all speed ceased. Even a nykur like Syris could not blur into the plains.

  It was the second most sacred site to the Vaerli, gifted to them by the Kindred as eternal. From its outmost limits, it was four days of arduous walking and a journey Talyn had never imagined making again.

  She slipped down from Syris' back and looked calmly over the gleaming white plain where she had last seen her mother. The wind blew hard and sharp from the innermost reaches, and somewhere out there many bones would be gleaming on the Salt.

  Finn drew a ragged breath and shaded his eyes to see past the glare. However, there was nothing to see—only a desolate expanse of white, cracked and pitted.

  “Once,” Talyn found herself speaking, “you would have never been able to set foot on that plain. To even touch it was to endure painful death for anyone not Vaerli…but the Caisah crossed it and the power was broken. Now anyone can walk the Salt.”

  “Not anyone. Even now it doesn't look that friendly.”

  “It isn't. You'd be blind within a day unprotected.” She tore off the ragged hem of her tunic and held it out to him. “Bind your eyes with this. You should still be able to see enough to manage, but hopefully the glare won't wreck your vision.”

  “I'm sure the Caisah will appreciate that.” He trusted her, taking the fabric without question. “You will still have to lead me.”

  Talyn dropped her eyes before Finn did. “There are other things on the plain, too.” She pressed one of his hunting knives into his hand. “Just in case.”

  “You're only letting me have this because you're arrogant enough to think I am no danger, but what happens when you are asleep?”

  “Vaerli sleep little, but lightly,” she said with a smile, “and besides, even with my eyes closed I can bring you down.”

  Most men would have grumbled at that, their honor pricked, but Finn simply shrugged and put the knife into his boot without further comment.

  “We leave Syris here.” She was already removing the slim saddlebags from the nykur's back. “Some things on the Salt are drawn to his kind, and we don't need the attention.”

  Syris smashed his foot contemptuously into the fringes of the Salt, making her laugh. Rubbing his cheek, Talyn blew gently into his nostrils, sharing breath, reassuring him. As always, there was no need for words between them; he would wait until the sun burned out of the sky for her to return.

  With that somewhat melancholy thought, Talyn turned and nudged Finnbarr the Fox out into the white plain.

  Her Vaerli eyes darkened and adjusted, narrowing to tiny slits, adapting to the conditions as her kind always had.

  The walk to Bastion was a test in itself. It was always taken on foot and was always hard. It was traditional to travel without food, thus exposing the Vaerli to the elements, bringing their usual proud nature low. Reaching the Bastion was supposed to be a humbling experience, but looking at Finn, she just hoped this time to make it alive. Before the Harrowing, crossing the plain was tiring but not dangerous when the Seven Gifts protected the Vaerli. Times had changed.

  The first day was the worst. Nothing rose against the horizon to break the monotony; there was only the thick white glare and a remorseless sky of blue. Talyn could already feel parts o
f her beginning to burn away under it. If it were not for the ever-constant need to lead Finn, she might have even enjoyed the sensation.

  The truth of the matter was, with his eyes bound, he was reliant on the Hunter. In fact, even if his eyes were as well equipped as her own, he would still have been at her mercy. Only her people's memory could lead them through the featureless white.

  At first she was callous and let Finn trail stumbling in her wake. His feet caught on the cracked earth and he fell, cursing, several times. Each time Talyn did not pause, though she listened to hear his complaints. None came.

  The fifth time she swung around in exasperation and pulled Finn to his feet. He clenched his fingers tightly on hers. “I apologize. I don't make a very good blind person.”

  Talyn caught the twitch of a smile in the corner of his lips, and despite her annoyance she could only admire a man who, while being a prisoner, blindfolded and in deadly peril, could still find something amusing in the situation.

  “I doubt if I was in your place I would be laughing,” she said.

  He tugged the protective cloth down farther about his eyes. “I don't know, mistress Vaerli. When you're at the bottom, sometimes the only comfort is a little laughter.”

  She suspected he was trying to tell her something about her own situation, but she let him get away with it for now. Instead, Talyn pulled him closer. “Well, much as it amuses me to see you fall every three steps, it will slow us down.” Tucking his hand into her sword belt, she challenged him, “Keep pace with me, or I'll drag you on your belly all the way to the Bastion.”

  And Finn did, matching her stride for stride so easily that she almost was tempted to break into a run just to test him. What was even stranger was that he decided to talk to her.

  Undaunted by neither her silence nor her reputation, Finn began to tell her stories. He recited tales of her own people—which was an uncomfortable sensation. She'd not heard those tales for three hundred years, and never from a person not Vaerli. After she got over her irritation, it was soothing to hear stories of the Pact, the Kindred, and the Seers of the past. When he got to the tale of the Harrowing, Talyn drew the line. “Not that story…not here.”

  He didn't comment, instead telling her his own tale. Slowly she was drawn into Finn's past, his world of stories and hope and frustration. He opened up his experiences, that of a mortal man in the Caisah's domain. He took her into the frightened underbelly of inns and farms, where people were uncertain and terrified of the land they lived in. She could smell their sweat and hear their cries when the Chaos storms roared. He also talked about the hope: not just hope for them, hope for her own people too.

  “You…you have met other Vaerli?” Talyn found her throat was tight about the words.

  “Yes. I wanted to find out their stories. Everyone says they are a proud race, short on words. I think since the Harrowing they have changed—for they seemed eager enough to share them with me.”

  “There is no law against it,” she whispered.

  “I'm glad. It was good to hear their tales.”

  Talyn cleared her throat. “How did they look?”

  “Haunted and very sad; like they are waiting for something but don't know what.”

  “You would know that better than I. In fact I have not seen a Vaerli in centuries…except…” She caught herself before she could tell Finn about seeing her brother or her father.

  Under the blindfold it was hard to read his expression. He quickly filled in the awkward gap, pattering out stories of his childhood by the sea, miles of slippery seaweed and rock pools, seahorses and adventures on boats. It sounded idyllic and rather unreal.

  Reality, though, had its own way of intruding; not all the guardians of the Bastion slept during the day. The perfect white salt began to ripple, almost imperceptibly at first. Talyn halted, eyes scanning the surface, straining all her senses. At her side, Finn was still talking, unaware under his blindfold of anything untoward.

  “Quiet!” Talyn clamped down on his arm. Immediately he was silent, tilting his head and trying to hear what had got her attention.

  It was no sound. It was a tickling sensation on the back of the neck, the faintest of tremors up through the soles of her boots. Her mind raced, recalling all the guardians and weighing up which it could possibly be.

  The Salt exploded around them with an almighty bang. White spears as tall as a man erupted from the ground. A dozen or so surrounded them both in a threatening semicircle.

  Finn had pushed his blindfold off and was squinting around him. The salt pillars shuddered, thin streams pouring off them, revealing faces of pure white malevolence carved like ancient warding masks. They were all teeth and rolling eyes.

  Feeling rather than seeing Finn reach for that dagger in his boot, Talyn stayed his hand. “Don't move. They are the Old Souls of the Vaerli, ancestor-spirits, they are only here to see me. They won't attack one of their own. Stay near. It will be all right.”

  The talespinner shifted close until his length was pressed against her and his breath was right on her ear. Taking his hand, Talyn drew him toward a path between the pillars. Barely had they taken a step before the gap was closed by another springing up there. The snarling faces turned toward them.

  “Tell me again they know you,” Finn whispered with an edge of urgency.

  Talyn was genuinely surprised. She was Vaerli, and they were meant to be guardians of the Salt. They should not have barred her way. None of her people's stories explained this, nor told her what to do next.

  The faintest of tremors warned her just a moment before they would have been killed. Pushing Finn away, Talyn stepped back, but only enough to allow the sharp spear to pass in front of her toes. Drawing her pistol, she blew the face into a stinging rain of salt.

  The rest of the pillars dropped, collapsing with the sound of thousands of crystals and a distant ominous rumble.

  “Move,” she yelled and pulled Finn to his feet.

  “But they're gone…” He staggered, for the ground was beginning to shake strongly enough for even the fool of a talespinner to feel.

  If she'd been by herself, Talyn knew there would have been little danger. Her reflexes could have kept her ahead of the emerging pillars. It might have even been fun. Yet she wasn't—and left alone, Finn would have been dead in an instant.

  They ran hard, ducking and rolling according to Talyn's before-sense. Her throat became raw from yelling directions at the hapless man, her eyes stung with salt, and she was suddenly soaked in sweat under her armor. If she let go of his arm, things would be much easier.

  However, that would be failure. Talyn couldn't spare a second to glance at Finn, too busy listening to her Gift and trying to keep them both alive.

  Unbelievably, Talyn saw a rocky outcrop rising from the plain. It stood out against the horizon and offered hope against all reason. She could be fairly sure it had not been there the last time she came this way, and absolutely positive it hadn't been there a few moments before.

  Talyn hesitated for a heartbeat, trying to find a path, and tugged too slowly on Finn. A pillar speared up and the talespinner was suddenly down, while ruby blood stained the Salt in shocking contrast. Finn was going to be impaled as another rumbled up from below.

  Forced to dive atop him, she rolled desperately to the left. Finn yelled into her ear a mangled expletive.

  She ignored him, tumbling them both narrowly past more pillars. Then, pulling Finn to his feet and tugging his arm over her shoulder, she dragged him the rest of the way to the relative safety of the outcrop.

  The pillars for a moment danced like white daggers across the surface of the plain, almost in frustration, before subsiding out of sight. Convinced that at least for now they were not in danger, Talyn dropped Finn onto one of the rocks.

  After his initial shock, he'd stopped yelling and instead had turned very pale. For once, he was silent.

  “A pity I wasn't fast enough.” Talyn got down on one knee and proceeded to cut t
he leather of his pants from his injured leg.

  “If that's an apology, I accept,” Finn muttered through clenched teeth.

  “I confess I am not much practiced at using my Gift to help others.”

  “Not much call for it in your line of work.”

  Suppressing a twitch in her mouth, Talyn probed gently around the wound on his leg. It was a real mess. A sharpened length of salt did not cut like a blade, it ripped like rock. Finn's wound was on his inner calf, as long as her forearm and encrusted with salt crystals.

  “I bet that hurts. Salting wounds is sometimes used as torture.”

  His lips were clenched and very white. So there was nothing for it; tearing up one of her spare shirts and wetting it with some of their precious water, she cleaned and bound it as best she could. “A pity the Third Gift is still denied me.” A touch of healing for him would have been easier on them both.

  “Yes, I'll have to take that oversight up with the Caisah when I see him.”

  Finn shifted himself on the rock, trying to get comfortable.

  Talyn sat back on her haunches and looked at him. His eyes were streaming and every inch of exposed skin was red and painful from friction, with unforgiving salt or burns from the sun. He was going to be difficult to move, and even harder to keep alive.

  Going to the edge of their fortunate island of stone, she looked out over the salt flat and considered her options. If she left him here, she would probably make it. The pillars were not insurmountable with the Sixth Gift, but he would surely die even if she left him water. But then, perhaps she had been foolish to think the guardians would not be affronted by bringing a stranger to the plain.

  If he died she could still get her bounty. It was all perfectly logical.

  Talyn rubbed the back of her neck, shifting uncomfortably. No, it would be better to keep him alive. But how? If they stayed here, they'd both eventually die.