“I’m up here!” she called.
The crashing sounds changed direction, veering toward her. When he caught up to her she proceeded more slowly. They continued on until she found a spot deep in a thicket of trees where the ground underfoot was carpeted with pine needles and dead leaves. No one would be able to sneak up on them here. She didn’t light a fire. She wanted to be alone in the darkness with her thoughts.
Shorn sat down nearby, his bulk just dimly visible in the blackness. His amber eyes seemed to glow slightly. It seemed to Netra that he was looking at her, but it was a long while before he spoke.
“I do not understand. What is happening?”
“Only the end of the world,” Netra replied, surprised at his question. She thought it was the first question he’d asked her.
Shorn made no response. Netra thought about it and realized she hadn’t given him much of an answer. He was following her around in the midst of a war without having any idea what the fighting was about. Surely he at least deserved to know more.
“Should I give you the short answer or the long answer?” she asked. He did not reply. After a minute she said, “We really need to work on your conversation skills.”
“I do not think so.”
Something about the way he said it, so solemn and serious, struck her as funny and she started laughing.
“What is funny?” he asked, and she laughed harder.
When she finished laughing, she wiped her eyes. “Thanks. I needed that. I almost forgot I could still laugh. I’ve been through so much lately, seen so many awful things.”
She grew sober, trying to figure out where to start. “Thousands of years ago Xochitl led seven other gods in a great war against Melekath and his Children.” She paused, thinking. “You probably don’t know who Xochitl or Melekath are, do you?”
Shorn said nothing.
“Okay, let’s go further back, then. Long ago, Xochitl, greatest of the gods, created life, including her greatest creation, humans. But one of the other gods, Melekath, hated and envied Xochitl and so he began to plot against her. In time, he was able to subvert a number of her people and lead them away from her. Xochitl summoned the other gods and raised an army to march against Melekath, all the time hoping he would repent. But he chose to fight and so she had no choice but to raise a prison from the earth, and seal Melekath and his Children away forever.”
She remembered that day she and Siena left the Haven for Nelton, when she’d first thought about how terrifying it must have been for the Children as the prison sealed shut over them, blotting out the sky forever. Siena had claimed that they had chosen evil and so deserved what happened to them, but that explanation hadn’t sit well with Netra then and it didn’t sit well now. Maybe the choice those people had been given was the same choice the burned man gave her. Join or die. What kind of choice was that? Why couldn’t Xochitl have found some way to only imprison Melekath?
“Now that prison is breaking. Kasai and the other Guardians are already free. Those people with the burned mark on their foreheads are part of the army Kasai is raising. Melekath will soon be free and when he is he will destroy everything, maybe break the Circle of Life itself.”
Silence descended once again. Netra was thinking about going to sleep when Shorn finally spoke again. “What kind of beings are these, who can live for thousands of years?”
“They’re gods.”
“Your gods walk among you?”
“They used to. Xochitl has been gone for a very long time. None of the other gods have been seen for a long time either.”
“Are you sure they are gods?”
“What? Of course I’m sure they’re gods.” But then she wondered. Dorn, the Windcaller she and Siena met on the way to Nelton, the man she thought might be her father, had said that “god” was only a word for something beyond human understanding.
“How will you fight this god Melekath?”
Netra sighed. “I don’t know. Our only real hope is that Xochitl returns and once again defeats Melekath.”
“It is not much to fight a war on,” he said.
“I know.” She touched the sonkrill—the rock lion claw she’d found at the end of her Songquest—hanging around her neck, remembering how her spirit guide appeared to her when she was held prisoner by the burned man, how it felt like it helped her see how to drain Song from those men and use it to free herself. That was the third time her spirit guide had helped her against a Guardian and afterwards she’d believed that maybe the reason Xochitl hadn’t appeared yet was because she was trapped or imprisoned somehow and was just waiting for the right person to free her. She’d even had the audacity to think that maybe that person was her, that she was the chosen one.
Now all that felt foolish and far away. She was only one tiny piece in a vast puzzle. She just wanted to go home and see her family.
“I don’t know what’s going on. I wish I did. It would make everything a lot easier.”
She sat there in silence for a while, her arms wrapped around her legs, trying to see the stars through the branches of the trees overhead. Finally, in a small voice, she said, “It’s hopeless, isn’t it?”
Shorn spoke bluntly. “Probably.”
“Well, thanks for that,” she said, her tone as cutting as she could make it. “I feel a lot better now.”
“You still breathe. Your enemy has not won yet.”
She stared at his still form for a long time, but he did not move or say anything else. “I guess that’s something,” she said at last.
“It is the only thing.”
Thirty
They were awake early the next morning. Netra went through the food they had scavenged in the town before they left. There wasn’t much for her. A few potatoes, some carrots and a bag of beans. The beans were rock hard, completely inedible unless she could cook them for several hours, something she couldn’t imagine having the time to do.
Shorn was slicing pieces from a smoked ham with his dagger. Wordlessly, he offered one to her.
Netra recoiled, shaking her head.
“You will not last long, eating…” He frowned at the food she held in her hand. “Leaves? Is this the word?”
“Vegetables. They are vegetables.”
“Why do you not eat this?” he asked, holding out the meat again.
Why, indeed? she wondered. Her stomach growled suddenly and she was aware of how weak she was. She had been getting by on so little for so long. She was always hungry. If only she could take the time to cook properly.
“I don’t eat meat,” she said at last. “I am…uh, I was a Tender of the Arc of Animals. We…they don’t eat animals. Tenders value life above all else. They vow never to kill, not for any reason.”
His heavy brows drew together. “You are no longer this…Tender?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I broke my vows when I…when I killed.” She thought of the Tender in Nelton that she’d pushed in front of Gulagh’s attack.
“Then you have no reason to eat only those.” He pointed at the vegetables.
“No. I guess I don’t,” she admitted. “But I still don’t want any.”
He looked at her curiously, unspoken questions in his eyes. Then he shrugged and went back to eating.
“Tell me more of these Tenders,” Shorn said later, when they had stopped to rest. “There is nothing like this on…where I am from.”
She shot him a look, surprised. He had said the words casually, but she sensed this was something very important to him. Despite his distant demeanor, he seemed poised on the edge, waiting for her answer.
“The Tenders are dedicated to Xochitl, the Mother of Life. Their job is to protect and nurture life. There are Tenders for all the Arcs of the Circle of Life: Man, animals, plants, and so on. At one time there were Tenders of the Arcs of Birds and Insects also, though there have been none for centuries, as far as anyone knows. The Tenders of each Arc are dedicated to preserving the life within their Arc. When the Mother create
d the Tenders, Xochitl gave them power, the power to control LifeSong, which is the energy that runs through all life. They were to use this power to help the life under their care, healing it when sick or injured.”
“Tenders are respected among your people?”
Netra snorted. “At one time, yes. The Tenders were revered for their healing. There were Havens everywhere. But during the time of the Empire the Tenders grew too powerful and lost their way. They abused their power and Xochitl turned away from them and took their power away. After the Empire fell…well, people don’t like us…them too much anymore.”
Shorn asked no more questions, but she could see him thinking. She had a feeling that the things she had said were alien to him and found herself wondering about his people.
“Your people have no such beliefs?” she asked him.
His massive head swiveled toward her, then turned away. He did not speak for several minutes and she thought their brief conversation had come to an end when he said, “We believe in war. There is nothing else.” There was such doom in his voice that it frightened Netra. His words were choked in ashes and her heart went out to him.
“Is that why you left?” she asked impulsively.
“I did not leave,” he said harshly.
Netra felt the pain in his words and she wanted to reach out to him, but already he was standing and walking away, the doors around him slamming shut. “I’m sorry,” she said, and the words felt small and pathetic in her mouth so that she wished she had never said them.
“It’s taking too long, walking up here,” Netra said a few hours later. “It will be easier walking down in the valley.” Shorn said nothing, merely looking in the direction she pointed with his flat, impassive gaze. “It’s riskier down there, but we can move faster and hopefully we’ll get out of the area controlled by Kasai’s followers before they find us.”
Then she stood there, unable to take that first step down. The memory of being chased by the burned man and Bloodhound was still raw and painful. She shot a sideways glance at Shorn, seeking reassurance. It was different now, she told herself. She was no longer alone.
“They chased me for days after I escaped them. It didn’t matter how fast I ran. They were always there.” She realized her hands were shaking and she tried to stop them but couldn’t. “The worst of all was Bloodhound. He never lost my trail, no matter what I did. If he hadn’t fallen on the slopes of the plateau, he would have caught me. I have nightmares about him every night. I know it’s silly. I know he’s not waiting for me down there and even if he was, well, you’re here now. I guess you’d just kill him like you kill everyone else. But I can’t shake the feeling.”
Shorn gave her a quizzical look, unsure what she was talking about, but he said nothing. Netra clenched her fists and forced herself to start walking down the slope. She was sick of running, sick of being afraid. She had to face her fear or she would never overcome it.
The first day was easy. They saw no more refugees, encountered no bands of killers wearing the mark of Kasai on their foreheads. Netra found a trail that snaked through the rolling, grassy hills and they made good time. Game scurried through the grass and the water whispered sleepily to itself in numerous small streams. Here and there stands of trees, some kind of oak she wasn’t familiar with, dotted the hills. The trail wound more west than south, but she thought it would turn south before too long. If it didn’t, it would be easy enough to cut across the hills.
By the next morning she was beginning to relax. Probably they had already traveled far enough south to be free of Kasai. There was no way Bloodhound would be out in this area. The trail began to head south and the weather was nice. She was actually feeling pretty good when far to the north, just for a moment, she heard a howl. She knew instantly what it was.
Bloodhound.
Netra spun toward the north and stopped dead. Suddenly the air was too thick. It was hard to breathe. Her heart was pounding. She pulled her hair back away from her ears, straining to hear every sound.
There it was again. It was unmistakably Bloodhound. She heard that howl every night in her nightmares.
Netra stared off into the distance, her eyes blurring with tears. “Not again,” she moaned, the days of running suddenly washing over her, drowning her. She turned to Shorn, clutching his arm like a drowning woman. “He was…he fell and he was injured. Badly. He should need months to heal.” She seemed to be imploring him to believe her, as if then he could convince her that she was imagining things. “It can’t be him.”
The howl came again and it was closer.
Netra started to tighten the straps on her pack. “We’re going to have to run,” she whispered, as if Bloodhound might already be close enough to hear her.
But Shorn was already moving. Not south, the way she wanted to go, but north. Straight towards the howl. Netra stood and watched as he crested the next rolling hill, then dropped down the other side, disappearing from sight. She looked around, suddenly feeling very vulnerable and exposed.
With a small cry, Netra ran after him. He was moving swiftly and by the time she got to the top of the rolling hill, he had already crested the next one. She paused there for a moment, unsure what to do, then took off after him again.
Over the next half hour Bloodhound’s howl became much louder and closer. From the top of one small hill Netra thought she saw bunched figures in the distance, one figure leading them. She knew him immediately. Knew him by the odd, hunched over way he ran, nose down as if sniffing the earth for clues.
Then she could go no further. She found a small copse of trees and hid in them, waiting. Was there a burned man with them? she wondered. Would Shorn be able to defeat him? What if there were too many of them and they killed him? He wasn’t invincible, no matter how powerful he was. Should she just run, put as much distance as possible between herself and them?
But she didn’t run. She told herself over and over that Shorn would defeat them and he would return. Bloodhound would be dead and she would finally be free of him. It occurred to her at one point that she hadn’t heard Bloodhound’s howl for some time. Maybe that meant that Shorn had already killed him. If she tried hard, she thought she could hear shouts and cries in the distance, which meant that Shorn had—
“Caught you.”
An arm closed around her neck, squeezing hard. Netra knew instantly that it was Bloodhound, though it seemed impossible that he had snuck up on her. Choking, she clawed at his arm, trying to free herself, but he was cruelly strong and she could do nothing against him.
His hold tightened and now she couldn’t breathe at all. For a few more panicked moments she fought wildly, with no more thought than a wild animal. Already her vision was growing dark. Bloodhound was saying something, but she couldn’t tell what it was over the roaring in her ears.
She was dying. She knew this now. Her fingers fell nervelessly away from his arm. Oddly, she felt herself slipping beyond.
She seemed to slip sideways and all at once she was outside herself, looking back at her own akirma. Pressed up close behind her was Bloodhound’s akirma, which was covered with what looked like a gray cobweb. The web shifted and something like red sparks erupted from inside him.
Superimposed over the scene was the normal world. She could see herself hanging limply in Bloodhound’s arms. His lips were pulled back, baring his teeth, and it looked like he was laughing.
Laughing.
Suddenly, she was enraged. This creature, this monster, had chased her for days. He’d tormented her and why? She’d done nothing to him.
She would tear him to pieces. She would make sure he never came after her again.
Summoned by her rage, a half dozen tendrils of will sprouted from her akirma simultaneously and stabbed into Bloodhound’s akirma. As if from a great distance she heard him scream, but it only drove her to a greater frenzy.
In a heartbeat, his Song rushed into her. Swollen with power, she grabbed the arm wrapped around her neck and snapped it like
kindling. He screamed again and she laughed. Still holding onto his broken arm, she jerked him over her shoulder and slammed him to the ground. She heard bones breaking and welcomed the sound.
“Never again!” she screamed, throwing herself on him and pounding him with her fists.
She knew he was dead then, but still she kept beating on him, all her fear and desperation pouring out of her in a flood she couldn’t control.
How long she kept it up she didn’t know, but at one point she felt a hand on her shoulder, pulling her away and lifting her to her feet. Shorn was there, his eyes wide with concern.
“I killed him,” she gasped, her words as raw as her throat. “He’s dead. He’ll never chase me again.”
She almost started crying then but her own weakness disgusted her and she pulled herself away from him and stalked away without a glance at the broken form of Bloodhound lying on the ground, his blood seeping into the dirt.
After that Netra thought only of flight, running from what she had just done, what she felt within her. But at length she slowed her pace and allowed Shorn to catch up with her.
She expected guilt, but when she looked inside, she found none. She tried to summon it, but it was not there. What she did find was anger and a savage joy that was troubling and wonderful at the same time. A man was dead. Some part of her cried out that she should feel sorrow for this, but it was very far away and she would not listen to it.
She faced Shorn as he caught up to her, crossing her arms over her chest. “He deserved it. He chased me and he would have given me to that thing to be burned. I am glad he is dead.”
Shorn looked at her and she thought she saw something in his eyes that she didn’t like. He looked troubled. It made her unsure and she wanted more than anything else to be sure.
“You were right, you know,” she said. “This is war and mercy is only weakness.”
Shorn seemed almost to wince as she flung the words at him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Guardians Watch Page 23