Do we really need them? she wondered. Will the Red Hand help, or just make things worse? She already knew the answer, even if she didn’t want to admit it. Gilder had told her about the Jlantrian mercenaries on her trail, and she knew now that one of them was the man who’d put a blade in her back the night she’d stolen the thar’koon. The night she’d met Kath.
“They’re Bloodspeakers,” she said.
Kath looked at her with fear and surprise.
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
“How many?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Probably a dozen.”
Kath watched her for a moment, calculating, then handed her a bowl of beans.
“A dozen…” he repeated.
“Maybe more. I’m really not sure.”
Kath nodded. He set his bowl down. It seemed he was no longer hungry.
“So they’re…Bloodspeakers. Who just wander around the Bonelands.” The look he gave her was stern, and full of anger. “Something your friends do for fun?”
“Kath…listen…the people we’re meeting are part of a larger group called the Red Hand. They…”
His eyes went wide, and before Ijanna could react he jumped to his feet and took both of her arms in his powerful hands. His grip was frighteningly strong. He was a giant compared to her, easily a foot-and-a-half taller than she was and twice as wide, and when she looked up into his face she saw a terrifying mixture of fear and rage.
“That’s the group led by Malath Zayne!” he said. “You’re an ally of Malath?”
Ijanna pulled away.
“We’ve met,” she said. “He saved my life, and I saved his. If not for him I wouldn’t have survived the death camps.”
“If not for him my mother would still be alive!” Kath shouted, his voice echoing loud across the wastes. He turned his back to her. For a moment he just stood there, his broad shoulders shaking. He wept quietly. When Kath spoke again his voice was weak. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?” he asked. “You were just going to let me walk in there blind.”
“Kath…” she said. Her chest ached. “I’m sorry. I was going to tell you…I just couldn’t find a way…” He was still as a stone. “We need their help,” she said. “I need their help.”
“And what about me?” he asked. “Aren’t I here to help you?” He turned and faced her, and her heart sank. His eyes looked hollow, and it seemed all the life had been leeched from his body. Sand-stained tears ran down his cheeks. “Isn’t that what the Veil chose me for? Isn’t that why my…family had to die…?”
Kath sank to his knees, overcome by grief. Ijanna went to him and put her hands on his shoulder, and when she was sure he wasn’t going to push her away she took him in her arms.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Kath, I’m so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen.” Kath cried uncontrollably in violent bursts. “I don’t know why the Veil chose you,” she said, “but it did. It chose you for something. It has some reason, something you have to do.” She drew a shuddering breath. “But if I could take it back I would,” she said. “I swear it.”
She said nothing more, just held him. Desert wind peeled at their bodies, but she stayed there, standing with his head against her chest as he wept. Her body ached with fatigue and sorrow, but she wasn’t about to let him go.
They resumed their trek some time later. Kath was quiet, his face grim. He’d stopped crying but remained sullen and distant.
“I want to kill him,” he said after they’d walked for a while. They passed the skeletons of black trees and brackish pools of boiling tar.
“I know,” she said.
“Did you plan this?” he asked. “To meet with them?”
“No,” she said. “But now that I know they’re here I have no intention of turning down their help. They’re no friends of the Chul, and I’m hoping they’ve already made contact with Kala. They might be able to sway her to my cause…”
“Kala?” he asked. “The Skullborn?”
“Yes,” Ijanna said. She hesitated, but then decided there was no point in holding back the truth. “Kala Azaean.”
Kath didn’t say anything, but she practically felt his shoulders slump.
They stepped slow through the shifting sands. The dry wind whipped around them. Ijanna felt hollow inside.
“I don’t understand,” Kath said. His voice was just barely loud enough for her to hear him. He walked a good ten paces behind her and didn’t take his eyes off the ground. His axe was slung across his back, and his skin was so stained with desert grime he could have been a part of the landscape. “Why are we here? So you can live? Is your life worth more than Julei’s?”
Ijanna clenched her teeth. She wouldn’t be angry with him, not after all he’d been through.
“I’ve lost just as much as you have,” she said. She kept walking, and didn’t look back. “This is bigger than you or me. I’m not just searching for the Skullborn so I can save my own skin. If I’m going to sacrifice myself I need to make sure it’s the right thing to do, and in spite of what the mystics of Allaj Mohrter believed I need to find out more. I need to make sure my death won’t be in vain.” She bit back tears. “Ever since I was a little girl they told me I was supposed to die so others can live, and that knowledge has hung over me my entire life. If I’m supposed to die, I’m going to make damn sure there are no other options.” She stopped, turned and faced him. “But if you don’t think I’d take things back and sacrifice myself if it meant your family and my son could still be alive…then you don’t know me at all, Kath.”
Kath stared at her.
“You said I’d die if I don’t help you,” he said. “What do I have to live for, Ijanna? Why should I even bother to carry on? I said I wanted to help…and maybe I still do…or maybe it’s just the Veil telling me to help you.” He shook his head. “None of this seems real. They’re gone…Goddess, my sisters…they never hurt anyone…”
His eyes locked on the horizon. He seemed so lost, so weak.
“I should have told you who Gilder and his men were the moment I knew,” she said. “I’m sorry. But you need to understand something, Kath, and I know this will be hard for you to accept – Malath didn’t mean for your mother to die.” Kath’s gaze sharpened, and his jaw clenched. “I don’t believe he’s capable of that sort of malice. I know that doesn’t make things any easier, but…”
“No,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t.” He took a deep breath. “I can’t promise I won’t try to kill him,” he said. “Even if it means I’ll die.”
“Kath, listen to me…I didn’t choose for the Veil to bond you to me. It picked you, and I have to believe it had a reason.”
“Like what?” he croaked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “And that’s the truth. But you’re as much a part of this as I am. Of all of the hundreds of people the Veil could have chosen to bond me to, it chose you.” She took a breath. “It chose you. Just like it chose me.” Kath watched her for a moment, then nodded grimly. “It looks like neither one of us has a choice,” she said, and she turned and started walking. After a moment she heard him follow.
Forty-Three
They crossed stone shelves and fields of battered rock. The landscape grew more treacherous. Open plains of ruddy dirt gradually turned to narrow canyons, and tall ledges dropped into perilous ravines. Ijanna’s eyes were sore from peering through the murky light and shifting dark mists. A ruined city sprawled across miles of desert beyond the distant spires.
Jarringly cold ebon vapors swept over her and Kath, a stark contrast to the dull Galladorian heat, and before long their vision was almost entirely obscured by brume the color of grave soil. Kath held his axe ready, and Ijanna drew the thar’koon. She felt presences in the maze of smoke and sand.
“Are you okay?” Kath asked.
“It’s just fog,” Ijanna said, trying to sound confident and knowing she was doing a terrible job of it.
“If you say so,” he said with a wry laugh.
They slowed their pace. Kath occasionally turned to make sure nothing was sneaking up on them from behind.
“This is ridiculous,” Kath said. “We’re not going to make any headway in this.”
“I agree,” she said. “It’s unnatural. I can disperse it, but it will take time. The last thing we want is to tumble into a hole because we can’t see two feet ahead of us.”
Kath nodded and walked a quick perimeter, watching the fog like he expected it to pounce. The dark smoke matched the shadowy clouds above.
Ijanna went down to a cross-legged position in the dirt – she tried not to think too hard about the fact that the dust she sat on consisted of ground-up bones and Dragian ashes – and breathed deep. She closed her eyes, sensed her own heartbeat, tasted the scalding wind. She Breathed the Veil, and blood smoke rolled off her black tongue.
She felt the fumes of the Bonelands fill her like a cloud of glass. The atmosphere had been tainted by thirty years of exposure to broken Vossian war machines, but each time she breathed out she became more attenuated to that vile air, and she shaped her bloody breath to match the roiling fumes. Soon she felt she could control the unnatural desert fog.
Ijanna opened her eyes and the mist started to dissipate, revealing soiled plains and clefts of shadow-stained rock.
“Some of the things you can do are truly incredible,” Kath said. “Ijanna?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know why I chose to stay?” he asked.
She was still tremulous at the thought of how she’d hurt him, how she’d deceived him.
He deserves better than that…and so do you. Your bond may have been made against your will, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the company of a friend. There have been precious few of those.
“I think so,” she said with a soft smile. “But why don’t you tell me anyway?”
She felt Kath’s eyes on her, sensed the beating of his heart.
“No,” he said. His tone was friendly, much more like the Kath she’d known back in Ebonmark, the man from the time before the Chul had ripped his world apart. “No, if you already know…chances are you’re right. But there is something I should say out loud, just so we’re clear: I’ll work with the Red Hand so long as they’re helping you, but not a moment longer.” She heard him bite back something else he’d wanted to say. “Not a moment longer,” he repeated.
Ijanna took a deep breath and nodded. The mists continued to uncoil, and soon they could see the burning black sky.
“I understand,” she said.
A blood-curdling screech pierced the air, so sudden and jarring Ijanna nearly jumped out of her skin. She rose with the thar’koon in hand, and Kath wheeled around with his axe. They turned just in time to face an enormous dark cat, some six feet tall at the shoulder, all knife fangs and razored fur, black and smoking skin and eyes like glass pools. It bounded out of the dissipating fog with alarming speed and brought down Kath.
Foul-smelling saliva splashed from the misshapen maw. Thick talons pushed Kath against the ground and broke the desert crust beneath him. He managed to wedge his axe beneath the feline’s ungainly head, and the creature roared with a sound like tearing metal. The body thrashed violently, a blur of shadows and tail.
Ijanna Breathed the Veil and wrapped herself in a shield of edged force before she leaped forward. Steel and teeth flashed. She brought the thar’koon down with a cry and sliced the creature’s head from its torso. Kath grimaced beneath a flow of sickly grey blood before he shoved the lashing corpse away and rolled onto his feet. The cat’s claws had dented his shoulder plates and he was covered in ooze that looked and smelled like swamp muck, but he appeared uninjured.
“What in the One Goddess’s name was that thing?” he asked.
“A Razorcat,” Ijanna said. “They’re common to the Bonelands. I’m surprised we haven’t met any before now.”
Ijanna froze. The air was utterly silent aside from Kath’s breathing. Thick pockets of black smoke still partially obscured the jagged rocks and hills to the north and east. The stretch of wastes they’d crossed was littered with low stones and shattered pieces of granite and quartz. The Razorcat’s musk hung heavy in the air, a sour smell like urine and sweat.
“Kath, be ready,” she said. She separated the thar’koon halves and hooked them together at the base, forming a double-sword with the bone hilt at the center. Blood-red smoke curled across putrid pools, and as the fog collapsed she realized what had created it in the first place, and cursed herself for not recognizing it sooner.
“What’s wrong?” Kath asked.
“Razorcats hunt in packs,” she said. “They bend the shadows to conceal themselves, but if the pack is strong enough they can generate their own camouflage.” She looked at him. “Like dark mist.”
“Oh, Goddess...” Kath cursed.
The moments stretched on. They stood back to back, Kath easily towering over Ijanna, their blades held ready and their feet planted firm. More of the blasted wastes came into view as the smoke cleared. Ijanna’s heart pounded in her chest.
Glistening purple-black fur and midnight fangs slithered out of the fog. The flesh beneath the unnatural quills seemed almost scale-like, and the creature’s head was as large as Ijanna’s torso. The beast came at them lightning fast, and it was all Ijanna could do to twist away from its attack and deflect its talons with her double blade. It raced by, gathered itself and snarled, its knifed tail lashing the ground like a serpent.
Two more of the creatures emerged from the shrinking fog, and then another. Within moments six of the monsters surrounded she and Kath from a hundred paces out, eyes gleaming like broken blades, teeth flashing. Their smoking bodies shifted in and out of focus. Claws tore dirt and stone from the ground as they circled, and their purrs sounded like blades being sharpened.
“What do we do?” Kath asked quietly.
Ijanna tensed and readied herself. Fear flowed through her veins. She was shaking, and though she knew it was ridiculous she didn’t want Kath to know how terrified she was.
“The best we can,” she said, and she readied to Breathe when a flash of red and white light burned through the mists. Beams of crimson and ivory flame enveloped two of the Razorcats. The air burned with sulfur, and the high-pitched screech of dying Razorcats echoed into the sky. Nauseating black smoke poured from the bodies as several of the creatures fell writhing and screeching to the ground, their flesh and fur melting away beneath the touch of molten lances.
The surviving Razorcats conjured swirls of mist to cover their escape, and within moments they vanished into the shadows.
“Nasty things,” a voice said from behind them.
Three figures emerged from the last vestiges of fog to the west. All of them were cloaked, and they drew back their heavy hoods as they approached. One was a short black-haired woman with large and expressive eyes and a rich purple cloak, while another was a stocky man cloaked in green, his thick face covered with a short white beard.
Their leader stepped forward. His cloak was charcoal black, and the bracers on his forearms were rune-carved silver. His boots were hard leather capped with steel toe plates, and the lower half of his face was covered by a piece of cloth that left only his eyes and blonde hair exposed. Even from a distance his flesh looked ghastly, like he’d been badly cut or burned, or both.
Each of the three held slender rods made of black steel and wood; the heads were made to resemble open dragon’s mouths churning streams of dark smoke, doubtless the source of the fire beams that had driven off the Razorcats.
“I presume you’re Ijanna,” the shrouded leader said in a bold tone. He had a ring of a Den’nari accent, but his pale skin and fair hair marked him as having Allaji blood.
Ijanna looked at Kath and took a step back, still holding her blades ready.
“You’d be correct.”
“Good,” he said.
The leader’s boots crushed
smoldered stones and freshly charred Razorcat flesh. When he came to within a few feet of Ijanna and Kath he bowed deeply. In addition to the injuries on his face his hands also looked malformed, like the flesh had been peeled away and forced to grow back incorrectly. His eyes were pale grey, nearly white.
“My name is Gilder,” he said. “And I welcome you into the company of the Red Hand.”
Forty-Four
The Red Hand party was thirteen strong. Gilder explained that was the traditional size for their expeditionary parties, as that number was specifically needed to perform rituals which allowed them to pool their efforts and keep the amount of life-force lost by any individual Bloodspeaker to a minimum. The specifics were well beyond Kath’s understanding.
Gilder and his lieutenants led Kath and Ijanna toward the distant spires. The Bloodspeaker told them how the Red Hand had recovered from the blow dealt by the death camps, and that in fact their ranks had swelled to nearly three hundred under the direction of Malath Zayne, the most wanted man in all of Jlantria. The thought of that many Bloodspeakers banded together made Kath’s blood run cold.
He watched the Red Hand carefully as the group marched towards their camp. He was grateful to them for saving his life, but that did little to assuage his worry or anger. Kath had been raised believing Bloodspeakers were evil – they were the Unmaker’s children, creatures of darkness and deceit. And while he’d accepted that Ijanna was meant for something more, her magic still tainted their relationship.
What am I meant to do? he asked Corvinia when he silently prayed at night, but she had yet to answer, and he hadn’t seen any signs. Was he supposed to protect Ijanna so she could find a better path, one that didn’t involve bringing the Blood Queen back to life? Or was that truly what was meant to happen?
He thought about his family. He saw Julei carrying her cat around the house with a terrified expression on its face, heard Calestra reading him The Dragons of Blacklake. Drogan and Illistra smiled as they sat out on the porch, the sun setting in the distance. He smelled hot roasted chicken, baked beans and fresh rolls as the family sat around the table and held hands to pray to the One Goddess before dinner.
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