“Heavy losses,” Fess repeated. “The forest is fighting back.”
“Enough,” she said. Striding quickly across the camp, she positioned herself in front of the tent where Lelwin and the rest would spend the day, hiding from the sun. “Stop,” she commanded. “You cannot continue to fight in this way.” Wag, his coat spattered with blood, trotted around to stand beside her, his ears pointed forward.
Lelwin stood at the forefront of her men, waving her away. “We need rest and food, Toria Deel, and you’re keeping us from both.”
“This is finished,” Toria said. “You lost half of what remained of your command this night. You must retreat.” Lelwin’s mouth set in a line, her refusal plain.
Before she could speak, Toria stepped to the side to address the veiled men and women who waited to enter the tent’s darkness. “I’m going to give you two reasons why you must retreat.”
She circled the group, working to her right toward the embers of one of the few fires in the camp. “First, from this minute forward, you will no longer have the sentinel to fight with you.” A buzz of angry mutters rose from the camp, from those veiled and unveiled, until Fess appeared at her side, his sword drawn.
Lelwin shrugged her indifference. “We held the outpost before the sentinel’s arrival, Toria Deel. We can hold it again.”
Toria leaned forward, pretending surprise. “Can you? With no reinforcements?” She continued to circle toward the fire. “How many more nights like this last can you endure?”
“If we must, we will reduce the area we patrol around our camp,” Lelwin said. “We will hold, Toria Deel, and if we do not, we will strike a blow against the evil of the forest that you would not.” Beneath her veil, Lelwin smiled. “I will not abandon those with me to evil, as you did.”
Toria stifled her reply. Defending herself against Lelwin’s accusations would avail her nothing. “A military campaign runs according to a chain of command,” she said. “While you are in command of this outpost—in fact, if not in name—I have been given authority by King Rymark to command this and every other outpost.”
Lelwin laughed. “I will not obey your orders, Toria Deel, nor will any of those who fight with me.”
Toria dipped her head. “Perhaps, but there is another reason you must retreat.” She bent, pulling a half-burned branch from the dying fire and threw. Spinning, the branch soared toward the heavy canvas tent, the air bringing the ember to life. It fell atop the heavy fabric, and the tent erupted in flames.
Lelwin wheeled on her, screaming. “You dare! Do you know what you’ve done?”
She nodded, working to keep her face placid. “Yes. Like any good commander, I’ve ensured that my orders will be followed.”
Her face mottled with rage, Lelwin yanked a dagger from her belt and threw in a single motion. Toria watched the blade streak toward her chest, striving to move and knowing she would fail.
The ring of steel pierced the air, and Lelwin’s knife fell to the ground, knocked aside by Fess’s sword. Toria stared, disbelieving as Lelwin moved to throw again.
But Fess, gifted and unsurprised, was quicker. “Wag!”
A blur of muscle and fur streaked across her vision, and Lelwin was down, Wag’s jaws around her throat. “Hold her,” Toria ordered. “The rest of you, take off your veils. It’s time you reacquainted yourselves with the light.”
“And if we refuse?” a man behind Lelwin asked.
Toria nodded toward Fess. “Then you’ve rejected a direct order from a superior, and my guard will kill you where you stand.”
Slowly, starting with the men and women in back, the soldiers removed their heavy veils, squinting against the predawn light that Toria found barely sufficient. Behind her, the crackle of fire grew.
“No!” Lelwin screamed within Wag’s grip. “We must fight.”
Toria’s heart wrenched within her with the need to fold Lelwin in her arms, but she pushed the impulse aside. “Wag, bring her to me.”
With Lelwin screaming the entire way, the sentinel dragged her across the ground. At the last, Lelwin lay before Toria, her hands covering her veil, striving to keep it in place. Toria bent to rip the cloth loose.”
The first hint of sunlight broke above the horizon as the veil tore and fell away. Lelwin’s brokenhearted wail filled the camp, breaking the dawn into splinters of jagged sound. She screamed until her breath died, then curled into a ball, her head tucked between her knees. Toria slipped a hand free and delved her for less than the space of a heartbeat, just long enough to confirm the suspicion she’d held for the past three days.
Toria called to the man who had stood silent, paces away, through the entire exchange. “Lieutenant, get your men moving south. You can’t hold your outpost any longer.”
The lieutenant eyed the men and women who stood staring at Lelwin, still curled on the ground. “You’re not coming with us?” He stepped closer. “What if they refuse to follow?”
Toria shrugged. “Then leave them or kill them. The decision is yours.” She nodded toward the picket line, where the horses snorted, nervous. “You have a number of spare mounts now. I’ll need one.”
“Are you going to kill her?” the lieutenant asked.
“Kill who?” Threads of emotions she couldn’t identify were woven into the question, but she had no desire to explain her guilt.
“Brekana,” he said. Then after a pause, “Lelwin.”
“One, hopefully not the other,” she said.
Fess lifted Lelwin into the saddle and forced her legs to straighten enough to place her feet in the stirrups, but his attempts to force her to hold the reins proved futile. She simply let them fall. In the end, he tied the reins to his saddle. “I’ll have to lead her, Lady Deel.”
She nodded. “Watch her. We’ll be in the saddle most of the day.”
“Where are we going?” Fess asked.
“Back to King Rymark, but first I want to see how the other outposts have fared.”
Eight hours later Toria gazed on the fourth outpost they’d checked that day. Smoke drifted upward from portions of the stockade, where fire and embers still burned, their glow hidden by the harsh light of the sun. The same could not be said of the tents. All that remained were bits of charred canvas and rope.
And bodies.
“Like the others,” Fess said. “Completely overwhelmed.”
As before, she sent Wag to search the surrounding area before she spoke to Fess. “Check for survivors.”
He dismounted, moving toward the gate where men and women lay dead and scattered, the extremity of their defense obvious even at a distance. Toria contemplated suspicions and actions she preferred to ignore. “I could have been a sculptor’s apprentice,” she said to Lelwin, but the girl hadn’t stirred on the ride to the outposts, and she didn’t move now. “I could have lived a simple life. I could have loved and married and had children and died a score of years ago.”
With a mental shrug, she pushed those thoughts aside. She would have to delay any attempt to heal Lelwin until later. For the moment the girl’s illness served the Vigil better. Toria ignored the voice in her head that accused her. There would be time later for her to wallow in her revulsions. Reaching out, she touched Lelwin’s bare arm, dropped into the girl’s mind just long enough to confirm that the vault—gray but not black—lay still and closed beneath the river of thoughts that rushed like a torrent through her, a river composed almost entirely of darkest hues.
Fess returned, but she didn’t need to see his expression to know none of the defenders of the outpost had survived. The fact that his arms were empty, told her as much. “I need you to make a veil.”
His face stiffened. “And then protect you?”
Toria closed herself to his unspoken condemnations. She had too many of her own. “Yes.”
He stood unmoving. “You told me that I should let the Vigil love me. Is this how you show that love to others?”
Stung, she wheeled on him. “Delve her! Look in her
mind and tell me what you see, apprentice!”
He met her passion with the rock-like stoicism of any Vigil guard, but he peeled a glove and touched the curled figure on horseback. “She has a vault.”
“Brilliant,” Toria said. “You still know how to use your gift. What color was it?”
“Gray.”
“Excellent,” she drawled. “Now tell me, what does such color in a vault signify?” When he didn’t answer, she continued, lashing at him with her voice. “Come now, surely Bronwyn told you what it meant.”
He shook his head. “She did not.”
She let her eyes go wide in feigned surprise. “Do you mean you don’t know? Perhaps an apprentice to the Vigil should accompany his accusations with knowledge.”
“That stroke was well laid,” he said. “How well did you know Willet Dura when you tried to kill him?”
The fire of her anger disappeared as if Fess had dumped ice on it. “That’s unfair.”
Breath burst from him. “Unfair? What about any of this is fair?”
“None of it,” she said, then gestured at Lelwin. “What was done to her, least of all. You noticed her vault wasn’t black. Did you also note the lack of writing on it?”
“I did,” he said, his voice neutral once more.
“If you were to go back to Bunard with your gift, you would doubtless find any number of vaults such as Lelwin’s among the urchins,” she said. “It’s the mind’s last defense against memories that cannot be suffered any longer.”
Fess’s expression turned stricken. “Because she never made it to the healers.”
“Or refused to stay,” Toria answered. “Regardless, at some point she wrapped herself in darkness and ceased to be Lelwin, becoming Brekana. We need to know as much as we can about Cesla’s plans. Brekana fought him to a standstill until last night, Fess. Any knowledge we can give Rymark will help him. Lelwin doesn’t know anything of the battle.”
“But Brekana does,” Fess said. He left her then, returning a moment later with a blanket that had escaped the ravages of the fire mostly unscathed. Methodically, he began ripping it into long, wide strips. “If we open Lelwin’s vault, will we be able to close it again?”
“I believe so, but if I guaranteed it, I’d be lying,” she said. “The mind is at once stronger and more fragile than we know. Of a certainty, it is far more complex than we can imagine.”
He lifted Lelwin’s curled body from the back of her horse and laid her on the ground, his motions gentle. Then he searched her, his hands probing, thorough, until every hiding place for a weapon had been emptied. With long pauses in between, he wrapped the strips of blanket around Lelwin’s eyes.
After the third, she jerked, taking her weight from Fess’s arms to sit on her own. “Where are we?”
“Four outposts east of yours, Brekana,” Toria said.
Brekana smiled, wolfish, beneath her veil. “So you’ve decided to call me by my name.” Her hands shifted. “But you’ve taken my weapons.”
Toria nodded. “I thought it best, since you tried to kill me.”
She inched closer, but Lelwin stood and moved back. “What do you want?”
“The same thing as you, to fight those that come from the Darkwater,” Toria said.
Brekana laughed. “You think that’s what I want? So old and so ignorant. I don’t want to just fight, I want to bathe in the blood of men until I can paint the world with it.”
Toria had expected no less. “All men? What of Fess or Mark or Rory?”
“Boys,” Brekana said. “It would be a mercy to kill them before time and opportunity turn them into men.”
There would be no reasoning with Brekana, and every moment they allowed her personality ascendancy, Lelwin suffered. “What happened last night?” Toria asked.
But Lelwin shook her head. “If you want knowledge, Toria Deel, you must be prepared to pay for it.”
Toria took a step closer, but Lelwin retreated, maintaining their distance. “Every moment you are free is by my sufferance, Brekana.”
“You let them have me,” Brekana snarled. “They forced themselves on me, and you gave me useless mind tricks. When I close my eyes, I can hear them. I can smell them.” She lifted her hands toward her veil. “The men of the forest are coming for you, Toria Deel, as they did for me. I would rather return Lelwin to you than help you.”
Brekana paused, her smile of triumph still baring her teeth.
“Now, Fess.”
Brekana lifted her hands to remove her veil, but Fess closed the distance, moving so quickly from one moment to the next that he seemed to disappear then reappear at Brekana’s side, his hands holding hers, keeping her veiled and her vault open.
She flailed, kicking, working to scratch or bite him, but he dodged, keeping her at bay. “Hurry, Toria Deel,” he said.
She ran, her hands extended as Brekana threw her head back and forth, working to shed the strips of cloth that bound her eyes. Toria reached out, her hand covering Brekana’s as Fess held it still. The world disappeared as she fell into the open vault that defined Brekana’s personality.
Memories of nights filled with darkness and blood flooded through her. She hunted by the dimmest light of the moon, killing the unsuspecting from the forest, reveling in their surprise and death as they died, pierced by arrows they never saw.
Light flared in Toria’s vision, and the sun canted wildly until she hit the ground, retching.
A few feet away from her, Lelwin sobbed softly, her brown hair once more unbound. Fess stood, holding the ruins of the veil he’d used to open her vault.
“My apologies, Toria Deel,” he said. “Her kicks had been aimed at me, and I failed to prevent her from striking at you.”
Toria clutched at her stomach, fighting the urge to vomit. Gingerly, she waved his concerns away with one hand. “It’s alright.”
She replayed Brekana’s most recent hunt in her mind, counting, and found herself echoing Timbriend’s disbelief. She worked to sit up, then fumbled through her cloak for a shard of diamond wrapped in cloth. “I have to contact Rymark.” She looked at Fess. “The inner cordon has been wiped out, and the timing is beyond coincidence.”
Chapter 44
We traveled to the farm where Gehata had hidden the witnesses. It was four days away—far enough to keep them secluded, but close enough for him to visit if he needed additional information. Mirren filled the journey’s silences with questions about the Vigil. Custos would answer first, drawing on the information he’d gleaned from the Vigil library. Mirren would pause, her gaze fixed on a spot somewhere just over the top of her horse’s head, before asking me the same question.
After two days of travel, during which she endured my confessions of ignorance more than half the time, she turned to me wearing an expression of disbelief. “You don’t really know much.”
I glanced at Gael, but she showed no inclination to come to my defense. “I’ve been a little busy for the traditional apprenticeship.”
“That’s one possibility,” Bolt muttered.
My answer didn’t seem to satisfy her. “The implications of domere are beyond imagining. How did you survive?”
I winced, certain there was no way Bolt would let a question like that pass without comment. I wasn’t disappointed.
“Luck,” he said. “Lots of it.”
Rory gaped at him. “Luck is a roll of fives a few times in a row. This is divine intervention, yah?”
“You and your companions are strange to me, Lord Dura,” Mirren said. “Do they jest?”
I shrugged. “They think so.”
On the fourth day, we rode through fields filled with orchards and well-tended vegetable gardens, where we saw men and women of the church watching over those whose penance mandated labor and seclusion.
“I need to delve the witnesses to the attack on Chora,” I said, “but I think I’m starting to understand what’s happening.”
Bolt shook his head in disgust. “But you’re not goi
ng to tell us just yet, of course.”
From Gehata’s mind I knew what the witnesses looked like, but dozens, even hundreds of people worked the fields. “I hadn’t counted on so many,” I said as our horses plodded through an orchard of orange trees heavy with fruit.
We came to the top of a gentle rise, the walled quarters of the farm still five hundred paces distant. Rory turned his horse, searching, his gaze clear and intent. “There,” he said, pointing to four people near the southern wall.
“Your eyes must be better than mine,” Bolt said. “What makes you think that’s them?”
“They’re the only ones out here who have a guard for each,” Rory said. “They’re being kept close to the keep so that they can’t escape, and the guards watching over them are probably cosp. They move like gifted.”
Bolt sighed. “I’m really not in the mood to kill anybody today. I hope they have sense enough to surrender.” He shot a look of disgust at me. “You didn’t think to mention that Gehata had put cosp here?”
I held up my hands. “I assumed you knew. He’s not exactly the sort of man to trust anyone he doesn’t have under his thumb.”
“Do they have bows with them?” Bolt asked Rory.
Our apprentice shook his head.
We let our horses approach at a walk. Rory’s hands looked as if they were simply resting on his saddle as he held the reins, but there was a dagger in each. If the guards attacked, they would be dead before they realized it. When we were twenty paces away, they snapped some order to the two girls they were guarding, and one of them came out to warn us off.
I told Mirren to fall in behind me. Bolt, Rory, and Gael fanned out, making no effort to conceal just how gifted they were. “Gehata is dead,” I said, “and cosp loyal to him are in prison. You can walk away, die, or join them. Don’t take too much time deciding.”
The guard who had approached us wore a scar that ran the length of his face, which I took to mean either he was experienced enough to see how high the stakes were or he was too stupid to appreciate them. At his signal, the guard behind him stepped behind the girls and pulled his dagger “What proof do you have to offer?” he asked.
The Wounded Shadow Page 33