by Tom Deitz
And then she made her way around one of the random rocks that thrust up here and there, and saw, not five spans ahead, at the crest of a low hill, a carefully laid pile of stones. A stick had been set at one end, and upon that stick sat a helm; while below it a swath of fabric flapped in a rising wind: a tabard of Warcraft crimson, differenced with two arrows in saltire.
Which could only belong to one person.
She looked on the grave of the former Hold-Warden. Lorvinn, who was Strynn's aunt and almost Merryn's friend. A woman in the prime of her life who'd trusted her enough to entrust her with the secrets of her hold—to her doom.
For Merryn had built this cairn as surely as if she'd set each stone with her own hands. Another heart-wound stabbed with guilt's dagger.
For a long time she sat there, silent at first, but eventually she began to talk, in a low voice that yet was not a whisper. She didn't apologize—it was too late for that—nor did she make excuses. Rather she spoke of what Lorvinn had meant to her, and what she'd learned under her tutelage, and how being asked to join the Night Guard had been the biggest thrill and greatest honor of her life, and how much she regretted the fact that Lorvinn would never be able to see the new Eron that her brother, in spite of himself, was building. She spoke, too, of her friend Krynneth, and how he'd ridden north like a madman to discharge his last promise to Lorvinn, and how he'd served so well in the war, for all he'd gone strange afterward. And finally she spoke of how the greatest regret in her life was that any children she might bear would not get to meet War-Hold's greatest Warden and how—for one could speak frankly to the dead without risking offense—they would only know Lorvinn as the person who'd cost War-Hold its one defeat, and never grasp the complexity of the woman.
“I'm going on a quest now,” she concluded, rising to her feet and feeling automatically for the hilt of her sword. “I've decided to head west—but I might change my mind in the morning. You've met Kraxxi; you know how charming he can be. And maybe the light of day will make me remember that charm, and I'll go south just to see him one more time, in spite of the risks that entails. I need you to send me a sign, if you can, while I'm close enough to be tempted. I need you to use whatever influence you have with the dead and The Eight and any other powers to which you have access, to keep me from going south. This is my chance to redeem myself, and already I find myself tempted, and I can't let that happen. I have to do right for Eron.”
A pause, then, as she found herself walking away. “They haven't found you yet, have they? They've been too busy looking to the future to seek the past, and I guess that's good. I think you'd like this place, too—for your cairn. But you deserve better than a pile of rocks, for all they probably consigned your body to ashes. So this will be my last gift to you. Tomorrow when those folk arise, one of them will find a message in a stranger's hand directing them to this place. It's as much as I can risk for now. I'm sure you understand. But risk is what makes life worth living—and I'm sure you understand that, too.”
And with that, Merryn marched into the night.
The next morning a young man from Wood named Baylyn syn Mozz found a sealed scroll addressed to the acting Hold-Warden outside his tent door. Footprints were found where expected. But she who had left them was gone.
CHAPTER XVII:
CAUGHT IN THE ACT
(NORTHWESTERN ERON: MOSS ROCK STATION— HIGH SUMMER: DAY LIX—AFTER SUNSET)
“What're you doing?”
Rann's voice made Avall start violently, coming as it did without warning from the silent shadows of the darkened room. He twisted around where he sat cross-legged on the floor with a chest full of secrets open before him. For a moment he debated closing it, but he'd already been found out, and if Rann knew this much, he wouldn't stop until he knew everything. There'd be a row, he supposed, but then there'd be peace between them. In any case, it was too late to worry about that now, for Rann was already standing in the only exit, with a lantern in one hand and a gaping darkness behind.
“How'd you find me?” Avall growled.
Rann swept his free hand around to indicate the room. “This is the only real privacy for shots; it wasn't hard to figure out.”
Avall quirked a brow upward. “You saw me leave?”
Rann took a step into the room, then paused and relaxed against the rough log wall beside the door. The lantern made his features look pale, but did nothing to disguise the irritation that rode on them. He started to speak, but a noise sounded from the darkness beyond the door. He scowled in that direction, as did Avall.
“Tell Lyk to come in, too,” Avall grumbled, rising only far enough to claim a seat on what remained of a desktop in this, the warden's quarters of an abandoned way station he'd found half a shot from the nice, clean new one around which the army was bivouacked.
Rann chuckled wryly, then stepped to the door and called out, “Lyk, it's okay, we've been found out.”
Avall chuckled in turn—in spite of himself. He'd come here for secrecy, but part of him acknowledged that he did not want to face what he was about to undertake alone.
Rann rounded on him, a little angrily. “What's funny?”
“That a moment ago you were claiming you caught me, and now I've caught you instead.”
At which point Lykkon appeared in the corridor beyond the door. “Close that,” Avall told them. “Extinguish that thing, and sit down.”
They did as commanded, blowing out the lantern before setting it by the door. They didn't need it anyway; the moons were all but full and shed a fair bit of light through a considerable rent in the roof of the room's southern corner. The shutters were sound, however, which was what really concerned Avall.
Rann exhaled explosively. “You can't hide from me, Vall. After all that linking we've done—all that prowling about in your brain one time and another—if I don't actually sense where you've gone, it's easy enough to second-guess you.”
“Then you don't have to ask what I'm doing.”
“I'm not that good,” Rann shot back. “But logic says the only reasons for you to sneak off would be to commune with Rrath, work with the gem, or both. And since Rrath's nowhere near here …”
“Veen's on guard,” Lykkon supplied, before Avall could ask.
“Which brings us back to the original question: What are you doing here?”
Avall shook his head. “I suppose you'd consider it an evasion if I said I was trying to ensure my survival?”
“I'd ask for specifics,” Rann retorted through a yawn. “I'm tired, Vall. Whatever you were doing, do it and let's all go to bed for the night. I'd still like a hot bath, if that can be arranged.”
“I'm not stopping you.”
“No, but if whatever you're up to got you killed, I'd lose many a night's sleep. It's worth the trade.”
Avall rolled his eyes. “All right, then, I'll come clean. You were right, dammit—I've come here to work with the gem.”
“That's still a rather large topic,” Lykkon muttered.
Avall glared at him. “I had a reason for wanting to work alone, beyond not having to explain everything to you two.”
“We're listening.”
Avall squatted before the small wooden chest he'd brought with him and withdrew a ceramic jar no larger than his hand. “You won't have seen this before.”
Rann shook his head, as did Lykkon.
Avall passed it to Rann, who accepted it with the care with which it had been bestowed. “Open it and sniff.”
Rann did, grimacing when he caught the odor issuing from inside. Avall caught it, too, or maybe his memory did. “Blood,” Rann spat, passing the jar to Lykkon.
“My blood,” Avall corrected. “A few drops a day since we set out, diluted with water.”
Lykkon stared at him. “For what possible purpose?”
Avall retrieved the jar but didn't reseal it. “Because I had an idea I wanted to try, and since it involved no threat to me, there was no reason to tell you until I had results.”
<
br /> “Which you were hoping to have tonight?” From Rann.
“Maybe. I intended to add another dose of blood, then decide.”
“Decide what?”
“I bet I know!” Lykkon broke in excitedly. “You've been feeding the gem blood.”
“Smart lad,” Avall acknowledged sourly. “The presence of blood clearly has some effect on the way the gems work. Something from the user's bloodstream activates something in them, and they, in turn, activate something in the user, generally to his or her benefit—which is also, I might add, generally to the benefit of the gem.”
Lykkon puffed his cheeks. “You mean like we protect food animals?”
“More like animals we use for wool and other renewable resources. It's to our advantage to keep our sheep well and happy—and to their advantage, if they only knew it, to keep us happy, since we're the ones who stave off predators and so on.”
Rann shook his head, scowling. “So you think the gems are … animals?”
A shrug. “I think they display properties that are consistent with that idea. In any case, I knew that when I've fed that one blood, it's always been blood that was in direct contact with my bloodstream. Trouble was, anytime I did that, I was subject to those horrible memories of Barrax's death. I thought if I fed it blood that wasn't in contact with my self, it might … heal itself.”
“And has it?” Rann inquired archly.
Another shrug. “I don't know. All I know is that when I touch it with my bare skin—being careful that I don't allow it access to my blood—it seems to feel … better.”
“And tonight?”
“If it still felt better tonight, I was going to try bonding with it again. If I could cure it—if I could use it like I once did—it would solve a number of problems, not the least being allowing me to contact Merry, optimally to bring her here, along with the regalia.”
“A reasonable thing to want,” Rann agreed. “But why here? Why not do what you've done before? Let us watch and observe.”
“Yes,” Lykkon broke in, as angry as Avall had ever seen him. “I'm supposed to be compiling a precise record of how the gems work. I can't do that if you withhold information.”
“But having you here means I might not be able to do what I was going to do.”
“Which is?”
“Fine,” Avall sighed. “To tell it from the beginning, it's this way. We all three know that the thing works, in part, on strong emotions—strong desires, one might say—and the strongest of those we can imagine is self-preservation. When it jumped me out of the Ri-Eron into Eron Tower, it probably knew it couldn't sustain my body in the cold much longer, that letting me die there would be bad for the gem as well, and that the only way to prevent that was to send me where I could get help. But it needed me for that: my desire, down there in the bottom of my brain, to survive, and my knowledge of where help could be located.”
“You think it knew all that?”
“I'm not sure. We know so little about jumping. We can't even make it happen when we want it to, most of the time. But I know that the desire has to be really strong. Too, I think one has to have been at the place to which one jumps. As far as I know, no one has ever jumped anywhere he hasn't been before, though we have had some luck jumping to a person at a place we've been.”
Rann shook his head. “But if you're hoping to contact Merry, and you don't know where she is …”
“I'm hoping to find her mind with mine,” Avall replied. “Then get her to tell me where she is, or establish a meeting place where I've been.”
“But again,” Rann persisted, “why here?”
“Because it scares me to death to work with the thing!” Avall flared, rising and starting to pace. “But every time I have worked with it, I've had the security of you or Lyk or Merry or Strynn nearby to save me if things got out of hand. I was thinking that the fact that help was close by might be preventing me from doing more with it. In other words, that if I bonded with it alone, and it dragged and dragged at me, and I got really scared—I might get scared enough to jump somewhere else, with or without it.”
“How do you figure that?”
“It would be in the best interest of the gem to have me sane.”
“And you're also thinking this might help cure the stone?”
“I don't think it would hurt it. In any case, my assumption was that it would read my desire for escape and jump me to where you two were.”
Rann folded his arms across his chest. “So why not tell us?”
Avall spun around to face him. “Because I was afraid that the fact that I know I can get help might keep me from wanting help as badly as I'd need to in order to produce the effect I want.”
“So you came here—”
“—Hoping that, about now, if things had gone as they should, I'd be appearing wherever you lads were, optimally, in my quarters.”
Rann scowled darkly. “I don't like it, Vall, yet it makes a perverse kind of sense.”
“Good, because I'm not going to let you stop me.”
“How can we help?” From Lykkon.
“By leaving.”
“That's not an option.”
Avall gnawed his lip. Time was wasting; that was a fact. And he had no energy for this. Rann and Lykkon had no idea how much discipline it took to make himself do even as much as he did. Bleeding oneself hurt, dammit—which people tended to forget. And every time he tried to bond with the gem—well, that was absolutely the most frightening thing in the world. Didn't they realize that? Maybe he should yield to Rann's suggestion and let him bond with it. Maybe the shock would do the gem good—as Rann had more than once proposed. Or maybe it would do Rann good—by making him see, once and for all, why Avall felt as he did.
Or maybe Rann did know. Their emotions tended to slop over on each other these days, especially when they were in close quarters.
In any case, it didn't matter. And since it was taking all the discipline Avall possessed not to bolt, he had none left for arguing. Besides, a solution had just occurred to him.
“I have to do this my way,” he said. “It won't work if I know you can step in and save me if things get bad. And a lot of what I plan is contingent upon me having an all-encompassing desire either to get away from the gem or to reach someone who will help me. So what I want you two to do is to sit in the common hall of this place. And wait. If I don't appear there within a hand, come get me.”
“That long?” Rann cried incredulously. “It's never taken that long before.”
“We've never let it,” Lykkon retorted. “We've always interceded.”
“I've noticed,” Avall drawled.
Rann and Lykkon exchanged glances. “I presume it'll draw on us,” Lykkon mused. “I guess we'll feel the chill if it works. That'll be some kind of sign.”
Avall nodded. “But remember that time runs strangely when I'm bonded with the gem. That's why I said you should wait a hand.”
“You could die!”
“I don't think the gem will let me,” Avall countered. “Frankly, I don't really think it'll let me go mad—in spite of how it acts—but I'm not eager to test that theory.”
Rann snorted but stood away from his place by the door. “You owe us after this.”
“Yes,” Lykkon agreed, with atypical candor, “you do.”
“The best wine you have on this trek.”
“Chilled, and drunk in the hottest bath we can find.”
Rann chuckled grimly. “Something tells me we'll need it, too.”
“None of which you'll get if you don't leave,” Avall told them, shooing them out.
Abruptly, he was alone with his fears.
A deep breath and he returned to where he'd been sitting, pausing to loosen his belt, lest even that constriction provide an unneeded distraction. That accomplished, he set the jar of blood on the floor between his knees and reached for the chest, from which he produced the sharp paring knife that he and Strynn typically used when working with their ge
ms. Only one more thing was required.
He tried not to think about the actuality of what he was about to attempt as he fished the gem from within his tunic and freed the stone onto his unscarred right hand, where he pondered it briefly before setting it on the scrap of figured velvet atop which the jar already sat.
Setting his jaw in anticipation of pain that was familiar, but no more pleasant for all that, he drew the knife along his other palm, opening the scar that was always healing there courtesy of this very rite. Another pause, a prayer to The Eight, and he grasped the gem in his right hand and clasped both gem and hand atop his left.
It seized him like a thwarted lover intent on rape or revenge in lieu of pleasure or satisfaction. It was like a pack of ravening birkits invading his body, and he could feel every dire thought they possessed as they roared into him in their millions. And every one savaged some part of him, tearing it free from his self and dragging it back to the gem so the greater madness there could dine.
Then came the warning, where before the warning had come first. He ignored it, as he'd always done. The falling followed. And fall he did, into the expected madness, the expected pain, and—worst of all—the expected fear. But this time the warning went with him; this time he was not completely alone as he fell. Rather, there were presences with him that shielded him from the worst of the fear, the worst of the darkness. Better yet, for the first time he could tell what were Barrax's fears and what were his, where before they'd seemed to mingle. Or perhaps to resonate: Barrax's anguish rousing an equivalent, if hidden, anguish of his own.
In spite of that, it was terrible beyond description.
And, as always, he found himself beginning to dissolve: parts of himself slowly winking out as memories dispersed. But this time he tried to watch those memories, and he realized it was not Strynn's face that was fading into oblivion, but the face of some unknown, dark-skinned woman who could only be Barrax's wife.
Or perhaps his concubine, something supplied.
And then a name: Etall.
And then other names flashed across his thought before they winked out like sparks from a winter fire.