Huh. Interesting way to think of it. Was Talfi’s resurrection related to his memory loss? Or did it have something to do with Death being chained up? Or both? He wanted to ask Aisa about it, but she was talking to Kalessa near the fire amid a pile of food and drink, and Kalessa wasn’t letting anyone get close during their “sister time.”
In the meantime, the orcs continually asked Danr himself to relate the story of Talfi’s death and resurrection between congratulations and back-poundings for winning his battle with Hess. They didn’t seem to care in the slightest whether he was human or troll, Stane or Kin, and that was a strangely warm feeling, indeed it was, and now that Talfi wasn’t dead after all, Danr’s earlier mistrust and dislike for them was fading.
Surrounding the orcs was a great fence of wyrms. They tangled themselves into an enormous barrier that wove all the way around the camp. It was like watching a living version of certain carvings the Kin put on cups or tables, carvings of branches or serpents that wound around each other with no beginning or end. Danr wondered what would happen if anyone or anything tried to breach that fence.
Overhead near the waxing half-moon, the two stars that made up Urko were still drifting together. They were twenty-five days apart now. Twenty-four, if you didn’t count today. Had Death known Danr would ask Grandmother Bund to Twist him to Xaron? Perhaps Death and Bund were talking about it right now. The thought made Danr reach for more drink.
After a couple of hours, he found himself drooping at one of the smaller fires with his stomach full and his head a little muzzy from the strange-tasting orcish ale. Unexpectedly, Aisa dropped down next to him.
“You look tired,” she said. “Hess has a tent near his for you and Talfi to share. If you don’t mind sleeping next to a regi, that is.”
Danr sighed. “Not now, Aisa.”
“The truth-teller has a difficult time seeing the truth within himself,” she observed. “Have you ever looked at yourself with that new vision of yours?”
“I said not—no,” he said, interrupting himself as the truth forced itself out of him.
“Did you look at Talfi when he came back? It might tell us something of how he did it or why it happened.”
“I did.” Danr realized that, tired or not, he was hungry to talk about it to someone. Around them, the celebration was winding down. The drums had stopped. Orcs were drifting off to their tents alone or in groups, their children long since asleep. Some curled up near the fires, content to drop off with the wyrms on guard.
“And what did you see?”
“Nothing at all. It was like he wasn’t there.” Danr shook his head. “I don’t understand a thing. Maybe we should ask Death about it.”
“Ha!” Aisa put a hand to her scarved mouth. “I suppose she might know the answer. And she wasn’t at all frightening. Though I wonder if she appeared to us in a kindly aspect so we would help her.”
“It would be difficult to help a skeleton dressed in black,” Danr agreed, “especially if it waved a scythe at me.”
“Everything has happened so quickly,” she mused. “You stepped in when White Halli attacked me and set all this into motion. We both ran to the trolls and met your Stane family, and then your grandmother sent us to see the Three, and—what is it? What is wrong?”
He didn’t want to answer right away, but her question tore the truth out of him. “My grandmother is dead,” he choked. “The spell that Twisted us here killed her. My left eye saw it coming. It’s the monster’s fault she died.”
“Oh.” She touched his arm. Like a friend and not a lover.
That made him ache again, and for a moment he saw himself with her, sharing a table in a long house together, milking cows together, tending hearth and heart together. Sharing bodies together. His groin tightened a little, and he became uncomfortable.
“I’m so sorry, my strong one. I liked her, and it is unfair that she died so soon after you met her.”
“Thank you.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know why I’m so upset. I barely knew her. Vik, I barely knew the trolls. They abandoned me to the humans. Why should I care?”
“They are your past,” Aisa said. “Even if you did not know them. It was not their fault they were not part of your life, after all. The Stane were unable to come down the mountain. Your mother could have taken you up to see them, I suppose, but she never did. Perhaps it was a mistake for her to keep you away from—”
“My mother did the best she could,” Danr shot back with unexpected heat. “Everyone hated her because she told the truth and because she had me for a son. It wasn’t her fault.”
“Yes, of course,” Aisa said. “I only meant—”
“I know what you meant,” he snapped. “You’re very clear.”
Strain hung in the air between them like smoke. Danr knew he was tired, knew the drink and his tangled emotions pushed him into a snappish mood. He should apologize and say good night, but the monster inside wouldn’t let him speak. Instead he stared at the fire, half hoping Talfi or one of the orcs would come by and say something to break the tension.
“Hamzu,” Aisa said suddenly, “have you looked at me with your true eye?”
Damn it. “Yes,” he was forced to answer.
She looked taken aback, and Danr’s face burned. Now that she had asked him, he understood how she might see it—an invasion of her privacy, a way for someone else to burrow through the protective scarves she wrapped around herself. The tension grew tighter, like a net around a great fish.
Aisa pulled her rags closer. Her voice grew both soft and hard. “Why did you do this?”
Danr didn’t want to answer this, either, but the words came. “I wanted to know what I would see.”
“And what—”
“No!” Danr snapped up a hand to interrupt her. “Just no. You’re going to ask what I saw. But, Aisa—the truth always comes out bad. Don’t ask for it. Truth hurts.”
“But still you looked at me,” Aisa said. “Why do you think I wrap myself up, Hamzu?”
The words shot out of Danr like wasps from a hive. “Everyone knows it’s to hide the bruises from Farek’s rape and Frida’s beatings, and because you’re always cold.”
“So I am,” Aisa said in a flat voice. “Your country freezes me. But it is also because this”—she gestured at herself—“is all I have that belongs to me alone. This is the only thing I have that no one can see.”
And he had violated it. He hadn’t seen her body, but he had touched something much deeper than simple flesh. A sick feeling slid over him, mingling with the tension. But why should he be unhappy? Aisa had asked, and he had answered. It shouldn’t be his fault that she asked for truth and became upset about the answer.
“My mother was right,” he said. “No one likes the truth.”
“It is not your place to decide if I will like the truth or not!” Aisa shot back. “It is wrong of you to keep these things from me. I am no longer a slave or a toy.”
“And I’m not a troll’s bastard to be kicked around, and insulted, and yanked from one end of the world to the other,” Danr snarled. “I’m not your personal prophet who’s forced to cough up answers when you demand them.”
Aisa stared hard at him. “What. Did. You. See?”
And Danr had to answer. “Hunger. You want the elves in the worst way. You’re afraid that if one stood here right now, you’d fall into his arms and weep for joy. I saw pain. You relive what Farek did to you at night and now you can’t fully trust a man in the day. Not even me. I saw fear. You’re afraid of me. You hope no man will ever touch you like a woman again. Not even me.”
“Do you want to touch me that way?” Her words came out in a harsh whisper. “Do you want me in your bed?”
Now Danr fought. He clamped his mouth shut. He chewed his lips until salty blood flowed across his tongue. But truth pricked behind his eyes and pushed forward. He tried to scramble to his feet to run away, but the answer burst out before he could manage it.
“Yes,�
�� he gasped. “Just a moment ago I was thinking how I wanted you in my bed.”
And then Aisa was gone, leaving an empty hole next to him at the fire. Danr slumped into himself and stared into the flames. His stomach was cold. Shit. Why did she have to ask him that? Why couldn’t she have asked him something else, like how he felt about her or why he wanted her in his bed?
“Because I never stop thinking about you,” he whispered to the dying fire.
But no—just like everyone else, she had to ask the foolish question, the one that got a bald-faced, painful answer, and like everyone else, she blamed Danr for what she herself had asked to hear.
Maybe he should run after and explain. She knew he couldn’t lie. But even now his face burned with anger and shame. She had forced him to speak, pulled words out of him when she had known he wanted to remain silent. He felt violated and sick, as if icy Halza herself had run her hands over his soul.
And Aisa had said his mother had made a mistake in not bringing him to see the Stane. Aisa had no idea. Having a troll for a son had destroyed his mother’s hope for a normal life, and being a truth-teller on top of it had only made things worse. Vik’s balls, if Danr hadn’t been born, she might have found a husband and lived her life in a warm house with human children on a prosperous farm. Instead she was doomed to cough her lungs out with animals in a stable. And Aisa claimed it was her fault for not taking Danr to see the other Stane?
He cut his eyes toward her. She was talking to Kalessa again with her back pointedly toward him. Well, fine. She could go off with her new blood sister, or whatever it was the orcs called it.
Talfi had forgotten him. Aisa spoke against his mother and all but called him a rapist. The victory he had felt earlier that day was burning to ash at his feet along with the fire.
“Ah! Here you are!” Hess hauled Danr to his feet despite the height difference between them. “I have sent night riders ahead of us to summon the other nests to a Council of Wyrms. It is a journey of nearly two weeks to the meeting place.”
“Two weeks?”
“The wyrms are quick,” Hess said, “but the herds slow us down.”
“Herds,” Danr repeated. He was tired and upset, and he was finding it hard to follow everything now, but he didn’t feel he should say so.
“Herds, yes. The plains don’t provide enough to feed ourselves and these ravenous beasts both.” Hess gestured at the wyrm fence. “We rushed down here when we saw the wyrm smoke and left the herds behind with our herders, but tomorrow we will catch them up and leave for the council.”
“Who is the council, sir?” Danr asked.
“Each nest chooses one man and one woman to sit on the Council of Wyrms. In the days before the Sundering, we orcs fought one another all the time over grazing lands and herds and eggs. After the Sundering, we created the council.”
“What happens now?”
“We still fight over grazing lands and herds and eggs, but now the losers can complain to the council.”
“Ah.” The Sundering. The Axe. He kept getting distracted. The haft or the power was supposed to be in Xaron, while the elves kept the head in Palana, the capital city of Alfhame. “Sir, have you heard of the Iron Axe?”
Hess raised his eyebrows. “Of course! It was lost during the Sundering. What a weapon that would be!”
“I want to find it,” Danr said, and explained, though since Hess hadn’t actually asked about it, he was able to leave out the parts about Death and the Three. Instead he let Hess think Danr was only looking for it to ensure that the Kin could win the war against the Fae.
“Well!” Hess looked Danr up and down. Mostly up. “There’s more and more and more to you, Prince Hamzu from under the mountain. This is a quest worthy of Fell himself, and your songs will speed across the grasslands long after you’re gone.”
“I don’t want songs,” Danr said. “Just the Axe. Do you know where the haft or the power might be?”
“Hmm. In the songs, this is the verse when the wise old man tells the young warrior where to find the weapon he seeks.” Hess drummed his fingers on his thigh. “I must not be old or wise enough, because I have no idea.”
Danr sighed. Of course not. When had anything been that simple?
“But perhaps someone at the council will know,” Hess continued. “Many orcs there are much, much older than I.” And before Danr could say more, Hess strode away.
Exhausted now, Danr turned his back on Aisa and the orcs and crawled into his tent, barely noticing that Talfi was already asleep inside.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It took a solid fortnight of riding to reach the Council of Wyrms meeting place. Danr had thought he was strong, but those two weeks nearly destroyed him. It wasn’t the riding. It was Aisa.
Wyrm riding itself was a unique experience, both challenging and exhilarating. Danr had never been on the back of so much as a plow-horse, and he found the saddle, with its scent of leather and the strange smell of wyrm, intimidating. One orc held the wyrm’s bridle for him while Hess himself showed Danr how to swing himself up into the seat. The saddle creaked, and Danr abruptly found himself high as a tree. The wyrm, which was easily long enough for three riders, dipped slightly under his weight, and Danr, feeling off balance, clutched at the saddle with both hands.
“Nix will not run off with you,” Hess said. “He will follow wherever the nest goes. Hold yourself in place with knees and thighs. Here are the reins. It is much like a horse—pull gently in the direction you wish to go, and pull back to slow or stop.”
And with those minimal instructions, they were off. Wyrms slithered ahead with both a forward and a side-to-side rocking motion that made Danr a little dizzy until he adapted to it. Then it became a little more fun. Once the nest got going and Danr felt more sure of himself, he urged Nix to go faster, then faster still, and the speed took his breath away. Wind rushed past his ears, and the grass turned into a blur beneath his feet. Faster and faster he flew across the green plain with the azure sky above, and for a moment, the wind blew away Aisa and the Iron Axe and Talfi’s resurrection. He even managed to half stand in the saddle, feeling tall and strong and fast with the wyrm beneath him, flying breathlessly across the prairie. He could run, slide, fly forever, never stop, leave all his troubles behind him. He was light and air and glory all at once.
But then he felt Nix’s movements change. The wyrm was laboring, and his mouth was open, half panting. Guiltily Danr reined him in. They had outpaced the nest, and he slowed Nix to a bare crawl until first the scouts, and then the main group caught up with them. The enormous herds of sheep brought up the rear. The Eighth Nest consisted of about three hundred orcs of all ages, and they flattened the green prairie grass in a mile-wide swath wherever they went. Hess gave him a silent nod of understanding and rode past. Danr flushed a little and settled into a regular ride that lasted days and days.
He learned a great deal during those days. Riding the great wyrms wasn’t a matter of simply clutching a saddle. It involved balance and thigh muscles and shoulders. Unlike the orcs, Danr was forced to use reins, which added even more difficulty. The orcs gave him only cursory guidance—they simply expected he could keep up. Danr had seen how they treated people who couldn’t keep up, so he did his best to move ahead, even in the mornings, when his muscles screamed and his bones begged him not to get into the saddle. After the first agonizing hour, however, his stiff body warmed up and he was able to enjoy the ride again.
Talfi, another honored guest, had a wyrm as well. Most days, he and Danr rode side by side as the nest slithered forward, with scouts in the lead and the enormous herds of sheep bringing up the rear. Now that Danr had a chance to watch it at length, he found the prairie quite beautiful. A rumpled plain spread in all directions, covered with both emerald grass and carpets of sweet-smelling flowers—yellow roses and purple violets and sunny daisies and scarlet hyacinth and a rainbow of others Danr couldn’t name. Few trees broke the landscape, but rich flocks of birds—geese and du
cks and swans and pheasants and quail—rushed overhead, and the orcs brought them down with arrows and slings, letting them hang from saddles as they rode for later roasting. A relentless sun burned in the clear sky and threatened to crush Danr’s head and eyes until one of the orcs, noticing his discomfort, gave him a wide hat of heavy felt. It was the thickest, finest hat Danr had ever owned, and it blocked the sun so well he barely noticed it was light out. He hadn’t noticed how much sunlight headaches had been a part of his life until they stopped, and the difference lent a little exhilaration to balance out the body aches.
Anyway, it wasn’t the aches that threatened to break him. Aisa avoided Danr with great proficiency. Wherever Danr was, Aisa simply was not. He suspected she had learned that skill as a slave. On the rare incidences he caught sight of her, she was with Kalessa. She rode daily beside Kalessa, also on a borrowed wyrm, and the two of them often ran ahead of the nest. Jealousy flared whenever he saw them together. He knew it was irrational, but he couldn’t help it. And when he wasn’t jealous, a strange mix of guilt and anger over his argument with Aisa’s rejection pulled him down. She was angry at him for using his true eye on her, but he hadn’t done it out of malice or cruelty. All right, he had been thoughtless, that much was true, but he would never hurt Aisa on purpose. And she had said bad things about his mother, the only person who had ever loved him, then forced—forced—him to speak when he had begged her to let him stay silent. How was that different from what he had done to her? She was being cruel and unfair in her own way, and the injustice of it simmered a slow anger in him.
At the same time, he felt the loss next to him where she usually walked, and he missed her voice and her sharp, sarcastic tongue with a pain that hurt more than sunlight. He lost weight, and it was difficult to crawl out of his tent every morning.
Talfi, on the other hand, thrived with a cheer that Danr half envied, half admired. He made several friends among the orcs, who still treated him with a certain amount of awe, and didn’t seem overly bothered by his own death. Of course, he didn’t remember it.
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