CHAPTER
TWELVE
BY THE TIME THE CARAVAN GOT UNDERWAY, IT HAD STARTED snowing again, and the wind had changed direction, blowing directly into their faces. The horses and drovers bent their heads into the gale and pushed ahead, but by midday, their pace slowed to a crawl. The Golden Way, while not an actual road, was marked at intervals by the huge vertical stones, one always within sight of the next. But with the fierce wind and snow, the caravan crew was soon blind to even these markers. Rather than stop, Vlahna rode ahead with a torch and served as a marker between the stones to keep the caravan from straying off the route.
The snow and the wind harried them steadily for the next three days.
During those long hours of slow plodding on horseback, Ashok felt as if he’d fallen into a white void. The wind filled his ears with a hollow, painful whistling only barely broken by his cloak hood. He welcomed the icy needles of pain on his face, but all too quickly, the pain turned to numbness. To keep the frostbite at bay, the crew would have to wrap their heads with extra blankets, leaving nothing but the eyes exposed. Buried in darkness and numbing cold, Ashok felt real fear for the first time since he’d begun the caravan journey. The shadows of his soul stirred restlessly, even as his heartbeat slowed and his thoughts became sluggish.
A part of him railed against this, viciously berating his own weakness. He should be stronger than this. He’d spent a tenday in a dark cell in the caves of Ikemmu. This should not test him. But somehow it made the experience worse. He kept expecting to look into the snowbound wilderness and see his father and brothers beckoning to him with their corpse grins.
Another part of him—and this most frightening of all—welcomed the peace and solitude. At these times, his own body betrayed him. His mind drifted, floating in a dreamlike fog, and he had to resist the urge to slump forward against the nightmare’s neck and sleep. Even the jostling motion of the beast beneath him and the rutted, uneven ground couldn’t keep that sense of peaceful longing at bay. Absorbed by it, Ashok felt his fears start to ebb.
This was truly the most dangerous time. When he no longer felt afraid for his soul, he was the most in danger of it fleeing his body. Slowly, mechanically, he peeled his glove off his hand. The cold bit into his flesh immediately, and with it a bit of clarity returned. Ashok lifted his hand to his mouth, but he couldn’t make himself bite his flesh. He didn’t have the strength. What would it accomplish? Why break the peaceful stillness with blood? All he had to do was close his eyes and give in to the arms of the wind.…
In the distance, Ashok heard a loud pop and an explosive hiss like a fire suddenly doused. A breath later, a blast of pure energy hit him in the chest.
The force blew Ashok off his horse. The nightmare reared and screamed, but Ashok couldn’t move out of the way. He gasped at the sudden pain and awareness that flooded his mind. He looked down at his chest and saw a sunburst of black scorch marks on his bone scale breastplate.
Beside him, a similar blast knocked Skagi and Cree off their horses. The caravan halted as horses and passengers screamed. The drovers fought to control the beasts, but there was mass confusion as everyone tried to sort out where the attack came from.
Tuva broke through the mass of rearing horses to get to Ashok and the brothers. “What did you see?” he cried. His eyes, when he got close to them, looked glassy. He shook himself as if waking up from a long sleep. “Where are they?”
Ashok shook his head. He pulled himself to his feet using Tuva’s stirrup. It wasn’t the energy blast, but his own weakness, that slowed him. “I couldn’t see; it came from nowhere.”
Cree and Skagi pulled themselves together. Their wounds were identical to Ashok’s.
“Did you see anything?” Tuva asked them. “What direction—”
“I’ve got her!” cried one of the guards. Tuva wheeled his horse away from Ashok. In the open space, Ashok caught a glimpse of Ilvani standing up in the back of the wagon ahead of them. One of Kaibeth’s sellswords had a dagger pressed to her throat.
Ashok pulled his chain off his belt.
“Let her go,” he said in a dead voice.
“She attacked you!” the sellsword cried. “I saw her hurl the magic at all three of them,” he told Tuva.
Kaibeth and Vlahna rode up from the front of the caravan, their faces swaddled in cloaks and masks. Kaibeth pulled hers down and barked at the sellsword. “Vertan, explain this.”
“She’s the traitor,” Vertan exclaimed. “Tuva said someone in the caravan was working with the brigands. It’s her—she sabotaged us from within.”
Some of the guards came to the back to see what was going on. When they heard Vertan’s words, they tightened their grips on their weapons. Ashok saw all this, but he ignored it. He took a step forward, then another. He couldn’t attack with his chain without the possibility of hitting Ilvani. But he could kill the shadar-kai with his own dagger if it came to that. He just needed to get close enough.
Tuva saw him and wrenched his horse around to get between Ashok and the wagon. “Everyone, stay back,” he barked at the other onlookers.
For her part, Ilvani appeared detached from the proceedings. She remained perfectly still. Her eyes skimmed over Ashok’s and the brothers’ wounds, but otherwise she seemed at ease.
“Explain your actions, Ilvani,” Vlahna said. “Is Vertan speaking the truth?”
“Yes, I attacked them,” Ilvani said without looking at Vlahna.
The guards around them tensed, but Tuva snarled, “If anyone makes a move to violence, I’ll cut off his hands. Is that clear?”
Ashok’s body remained rigid to the point of trembling. He stood poised to strike if anyone so much as flinched.
“Why did you do it?” Vlahna asked Ilvani. “You knew someone would see you.”
“There wasn’t time to ask permission,” Ilvani said. Her gaze turned inward. “I felt the raven fly, and I couldn’t trap it. The wind was too strong.”
Uneasy murmurs went through the gathered crowd.
“You’re crazy,” Vertan said, “just like they said. You and your brother—you’re no prophets of Tempus—you’re just insane.”
Ashok prepared to make a jump for the wagon, but Ilvani spoke again.
“His soul was at rest too long,” she said. She spoke slowly, as if trying to sort out the words. “I felt it go, and there was nothing left to save. The shadows rose around the rest.” She met Ashok’s eyes. “I knew it wasn’t real, but the danger was real. I had to call you back.”
And suddenly, shaking off the rage and battle tension so he could think clearly, Ashok understood.
“Let her go,” he said again, but this time he was in control of himself. “She did it to save us. We were starting to fade. She brought us back from the edge.” He looked at Skagi and Cree, who nodded.
“I didn’t even know my own name,” Skagi admitted. “I was lost.”
“They’re lying to protect her,” Vertan insisted. “They’re all traitors—”
“You should look to your own,” Ashok said, addressing Kaibeth. “You heard the witch. A soul flew.”
Kaibeth’s black eyes widened as comprehension dawned. She wheeled her horse around and rode out from the caravan to find the rest of her sellswords. Ashok saw Tuva and Vlahna exchange grim looks. Vertan kept the dagger at Ilvani’s throat until Kaibeth returned, galloping into their midst with her hood thrown back and a haunted expression on her face. Her breeches were soaked, as if she’d been kneeling in the snow.
“Arveck’s dead,” she said. “It looks as if he fell off his horse about a mile back. No one … I didn’t even see him fall.” She looked up at Vertan and said wearily, “Let her go, you fool, and come help me retrieve Arveck’s body.”
Vertan’s arm went slack. He dropped his dagger and stepped around Ilvani to get down from the wagon. He caught her eye and quickly looked away.
“Accept my apologies for Vertan,” Kaibeth said to Ilvani before she rode away. “You likely sav
ed us all.”
The words were hard for her, but she’d said them. Ashok watched Tuva ride away with Kaibeth to help with Arveck. Vlahna went to get the rest of the crew back in line.
Ashok, Skagi, and Cree went to Ilvani’s wagon. The witch sat down and rubbed her neck where the dagger blade had been. Ashok saw the tremor in her hand, and she murmured something under her breath.
“… were just useless again,” he heard her say. “Cut them off.”
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
She looked at him and the brothers, their scorched chests, and the snow in Ashok’s hair. “You’re back,” she said, sounding satisfied.
“Thanks to you,” Cree said.
“Did he hurt you?” Skagi said. In his own grumbling way, he sounded more solicitous than usual.
“It burns my skin where they touch,” Ilvani said. “It always does.”
Skagi nodded. His manner toward the witch had subtly altered, and not just because of what had happened here. Ashok sensed a connection, however tenuous, between Ilvani and the people around her, which hadn’t existed before, even in her most coherent moments. She was starting to be able to gaze into one world and communicate what she saw to this one. And as Ilvani’s hold on this world tightened, the connection between herself and others grew stronger. Ashok wondered if she was beginning to separate what was real and what wasn’t. She hadn’t found this level of clarity since she’d received her vision from Tempus about Natan’s death and communicated it to the rest of Ikemmu.
Vlahna rode back to them. “We’re camping for the night,” she said. “There are some ruins up ahead, an old caravansary that should give us defensibility and enough shelter from the snow for fires. We’re going to lose another full day’s travel, but there’s no use trying to go any farther in this weather. It could get more of us killed.”
“So could staying in one place,” Cree said.
Vlahna nodded grimly. “At least this way we can keep an eye on one another.”
She rode off, and Ashok and the brothers helped the rest of the crew make camp at the ruins. The rundown stone structures, skeletons of an old trading post, provided enough cover to shut out some of the constant wind, and there were fire pits already dug that just needed the snow cleared away.
Ashok saw Tuva speaking with Tatigan and some of the drovers. He assumed they were making arrangements to bury Arveck.
Daruk walked through the camp sometime later, whistling to himself. “Music we’ll have tonight, another tale, another song,” he said. “Come join me and dance, friends! We have to give the shadar-kai something to chase away the gloom and cold. We want their spirits here with us, don’t we, friends?”
It was difficult for Ashok to tell if the bard was serious or if he was mocking them all with his encouragement. But the thought of music and movement, anything to keep the numbing cold at bay, seemed to cheer the whole crew, and they worked quickly to get tents set up and cookfires going.
He finished securing the nightmare and several of the other horses when Mareyn came over to him with two bowls of stew. She handed him one of the bowls and tossed him a chunk of bread to go with it. Ashok caught it and nodded his thanks.
“I was sorry to hear about your friend,” Mareyn said. “Arveck.”
“He wasn’t a friend,” Ashok said. “He was one of Kaibeth’s men.”
“I see.” She pointed with her bread at the scorch marks on Ashok’s bone scales. “Looks like the witch hit you with a nasty spell.”
“Nasty enough to keep me alive.” He took a bite of stew. The meat in it was on the verge of spoiling, but they needed to use as much of it as they could in case they lost more time on the road. He dipped his bread in the broth and took a bite. The meat would give him energy, but the flavors did nothing to stimulate his senses.
“Gods, this is horrid.” Mareyn dumped the contents of her bowl on the ground and ate the rest of her bread. “Oh and look—more good news approaches.”
Thorm, the black-bearded dwarf, stalked toward them. Ashok had seen little of the merchant during their journey, and he was more surprised to see the look of anger on his normally emotionless face.
“Where’s your little dog, Mareyn?” the dwarf demanded. “He’s always the first one by the fires at night, so why isn’t he there now?”
“I left him with his mother and father,” Mareyn said patiently.
The dwarf grunted in what Ashok supposed was appeasement, but he still glanced around the camp as if searching for the boy. “He has no business rooting through my wagons. Spell components, potions—the boy could get hurt.”
“I gave you my word he wouldn’t be a bother again, and he hasn’t been, has he?” Mareyn said. “Go away, Thorm. You’re souring my stomach, and that’s saying something, after this meal. I tell you it won’t happen again.”
The dwarf nodded, satisfied, but he still walked away grumbling. Mareyn rolled her eyes and wiped her hands on her breeches.
“Les really doesn’t mean to be a pest,” she said. “But he has no place in a caravan crew—any fool except his parents can see that. It’s not the life for him, so what can he do but go poking about in other lives to see if any of them fits?”
“How did you come to be his guardian?” Ashok asked. They went to sit near one of the fires while Ashok finished his stew.
“Luck, of course,” Mareyn said with a grin. “I came to Ikemmu with a caravan because I wanted to train in katar fighting, and I knew there were warriors in the city I could learn from. What I didn’t know was that the shadar-kai are reluctant to share their knowledge with humans. I didn’t have enough coin to buy training from the sellswords, so I took up work with the caravans again until I could afford it. By that time I was in love with the traveling, and then I met the Martucks.”
“This is a hard country to love,” Ashok said, looking around at the bleak white landscape, “almost as hard as the Shadowfell.”
“The harder the journey, the more interesting the people you meet along the way,” Mareyn said. She caught his skeptical expression and laughed. “I know that sounds like something you say to comfort yourself on the nights when you’re freezing and wondering why you ever signed up for this job—and I’ve had my share of those nights—but I found it’s true almost every time. Speaking of interesting,” she added, and her voice lost some of its cheerfulness, “Thorm is a strange one. I don’t know him well, but something about him doesn’t feel right.”
“Because of what happened with the boy?” Ashok asked.
“Partly. It’s what Les isn’t telling me about rummaging through Thorm’s wagon that worries me,” Mareyn said. “I wasn’t there when it happened—Thorm brought the boy to me afterward. And I know the dwarf has a temper, but whatever he said to Les when he caught him put the fear of the gods in that boy. When I talked to him later, he wouldn’t say a word about what happened or what he saw in Thorm’s merchandise. It makes me think he has something to hide.”
“Maybe, but if he was truly worried the boy might expose something, he would have killed him when he caught him at the wagon,” Ashok reasoned. He saw Mareyn’s face tighten, and he added quickly, “I don’t think there’s any danger to him now, but I’d keep a tight rein on the boy just to make sure.”
Mareyn nodded. “In the meantime, will you and your companions help me watch Thorm to see if he does anything suspicious?”
Ashok nodded. He noticed Daruk over by the main fire. The bard’s eyes were alight—he was preparing his tale. What song would he sing? Would it recall the ghosts of the Tuigan warriors? A rush of feeling flowed through Ashok at the memory of that night. He would never forget riding with the spirits of the warriors.
“Have you traveled much with Daruk?” Ashok asked Mareyn.
Mareyn shot a glance at the bard. “Enough that I should know his life story—the man loves to talk, and if you get him going, he won’t stop, but I don’t know a single thing about his past before he came to Ikemmu.”
&nbs
p; “Yet he seems to know everything about the people of Ikemmu, especially its shadar-kai,” Ashok said.
“He’s up to mischief tonight,” Mareyn said. “I can see it in his eyes. Usually means trouble for the rest of us.” She glanced up at the sky. “Tymora, you’re making my skin tingle. Do you have a game going that I don’t know about?”
She spoke to her goddess in a conversational tone, with none of the reverence that filled Uwan’s voice when he addressed Tempus. Ashok found himself growing more curious about Mareyn. “Your prayers sound like banter with a companion,” he said. “Won’t Tymora be offended by that informality?”
“Why should she be offended?” Mareyn said. “She is my companion, the one who walks with me always.”
“And that doesn’t disturb you,” Ashok said, “the thought of your goddess always watching?”
“Not at all—I find comfort and joy in her presence.”
“Hovering, controlling …”
“Guiding, protecting …” She grinned at his expression. “Our relationship with the gods is as much about how we see them, as how they truly are. They are what we need them to be.”
“What if all we want is for them to leave us be?” Ashok asked.
“Then maybe you look to the wrong god,” Mareyn said.
Ashok started to reply, when across the camp, Daruk stood up, circled the fire, and clapped his hands to draw the people’s attention.
“What have you got for us, Daruk?” one of the drovers asked. “Tales of a warm, soft bed filled with warm, soft women?”
“Don’t be crude, Ceylis.” The bard shook a finger at him and grinned. “In the cold, cold night, when we breathe the frozen rain, what relief is there for us to find? We are men and women of the road. Where does our solace lie? Only in this: our camaraderie, our fellowship, and a little theatricality.” He spoke in a playful, singsong rhythm, his voice as smooth as a glass of wine. “What have I got for you? Be careful what you wish for, friends. I’m going to sing to you a bit and speak to you a bit. I’m going to chew my words and make you swallow this bitter cold tale told to me by my father and his father before him. The more I sing, the more I whisper this sticky story, the closer I get to freeing myself of its bitter saver. This is how I work my magic—this is how it all starts.”
Unbroken Chain: The Darker Road Page 17