A pair of hands gripped her arms, and she lurched to a halt.
No. No, no, no.
But it wasn’t who she’d feared it was. “Lady Shona, you must be careful. It’s very steep here.” She recognized Duke Dasson’s voice immediately; there was no mistaking that note of pious rapture. He held her fast, and his thin lips curled into an ecstatic smile. “I’m so glad you could come. The last Windwalker! I never thought I would live to see such a miracle. Can you believe it?”
“I… really can’t,” she said between pants, trying to calm herself and fill her spent lungs. A greater miracle would be you leaving me alone right now. I don’t have time for this.
“And to think, I was among the first to see him,” Dasson prattled on. “The boy I told you about! Not a novice at all. I understand why they wished to keep it secret, of course, but I do wish the high chastor had felt he could trust me. Still, an honor just to have come so near.”
If you knew what I knew about the boy, you wouldn’t be so pleased, I think. If only she could tell him—it would make things so much easier. But then… why not? She glanced around; plenty of listeners, men and women already watching her after her rushed descent. Why be silent? If Castar is going to make rumor and word of mouth his game, I can play it as well as anyone. And my rumor happens to be the truth.
“A great honor, to be sure, Duke Dasson,” she said. “But… don’t you think there is something strange about the timing of all this?” She raised her voice just a bit, enough to carry. There would be no shortage of eavesdroppers—when the lowborn heard two highborn nobles speaking loudly enough to hear, they listened.
“I’m not certain I take your meaning.” His frown was more confused than dismayed. That will change soon enough.
“I’m speaking of Prince Josen, of course. The last Windwalker is meant to present himself to a ruler, and Josen was soon to be king. Instead, the boy chooses one of the few witnesses to his death, so soon afterward? It’s enough to make one wonder what really happened in the Swamp.”
Dasson’s mouth gaped open. “You are suggesting… Lady Shona, I hardly think Duke Castar would… I mean to say, Prince Josen was—”
“The first to find this Windwalker child, perhaps? The one who was meant to find him? But then… that would mean the boy was never from Goldstone at all, wouldn’t it?” She stole another glance at the crowd nearby, saw more than one pair of eyes dart away when they met hers. They heard that. “Just a silly fancy, I suppose. But I find it hard to believe that my friend was a traitor; less so to believe he was betrayed. I suppose we’ll never know.”
The duke’s eyes threatened to bulge out of his head, and he peered nervously over his shoulder. “A fancy, yes. I… I’m afraid I have to… my wife is waiting. Excuse me.” He hurried away from her nearly as fast as she’d sprinted into him, and Shona couldn’t help but smile. Maybe her little rumor would spread wide enough to hurt Castar’s credibility—the lowborn had always liked to believe the best about Josen—but if all she’d accomplished was scaring Dasson away, she’d count it a job well done.
The basket launch was just below the High Eyrie, and she took the path down as quickly as she could without losing control again. Rounding the first switchback, she saw the white-green dome of a lightworm silk balloon.
Relief washed over her. The basket was inflated and ready to launch. She’d consulted an aviator on his wind maps before leaving the Plateaus, and she knew there wouldn’t be a Greenwall-bound wind for a few days, but anywhere that wasn’t Goldstone or Skysreach would do. She just had to get away before Castar and Benedern could stop her. And they didn’t seem to be trying very hard. She’d expected to be chased, but no one seemed to be following her at all.
Maybe he didn’t see me. How could he have? Eroh’s grandfather had clearly been blind—it made more sense that he hadn’t seen her than that he had. She’d just felt so certain that he’d been looking at her, and she’d panicked. It seemed foolish, looking back. Either way, I made it. That’s what matters.
But now that she approached the launch, she couldn’t find her mother or father among those waiting for a basket. She couldn’t even see Eian, and his snow-white hair usually drew the eye. Did they leave already? If a basket had been waiting when they’d first arrived, it might have gone by now—she had told Eian to take the first one out. But even so, she couldn’t shed the feeling that something had gone terribly awry and she just hadn’t noticed what it was yet.
She cast her eyes over the crowd as she drew nearer, looking for signs of danger, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. There was no other way out of Skysreach. I shouldn’t have put us in Castar’s grasp like this. If I’d known what he was planning, I’d never have come. But she suspected that she was lying to herself. These last few turns, she’d proven herself more than capable of just that kind of recklessness—the same kind she’d scolded Josen for so many times.
The big balloon towered above her now like the head of a pale giant, and with every step closer she became more certain that something was wrong. She kept looking for Eian, for her parents, praying that she’d find their faces. Praying that her fears were groundless, that they were waiting for her, that they could all just step into a basket together and fly away.
Instead, as she pushed through the crowd, she found a half-dozen men waiting at the foot of the boarding ramp, all draped in cloudy grey. Knights of the Storm.
She could have run; she certainly wanted to. But what would be the point? Instead, she halted a half-dozen yards from the knights and stood her ground, her head held high. The knights parted, and from their center a tall, handsome man with a close-cropped beard stepped forward to meet her.
“Hello, Shona,” said Lenoden Castar. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
24. Through the Swamp
Josen
It was hard to judge the passage of time in the perpetual night of the Swamp. Sometimes the darkness lessened, just a bit, and Josen guessed that meant it was daytime above, but in the east the mist was so thick overhead that he mostly didn’t notice the difference at all. So he didn’t know how long he’d been following Zerill and Verik; how many days or turns he’d spent huddled in muddy holes and damp caves while swampling bands scoured through the marshes nearby.
What he did know was that for a long time, he’d been useless.
In the first days after the escape, he’d been too weak to walk unaided, too blind to follow a guide even if he could stand without help. Zerill and Verik had risked everything to save him, and every day he put them in more danger. They could only move as quickly as he could, or as quietly, but still they led him through the dark, found him shelter, tried to restore his strength. When Zerill managed to hunt or scavenge a meal, the largest portion always ended up in front of Josen. He didn’t notice that right away, and when he finally did, he was ashamed—but too hungry to refuse. If I get my strength back, I won’t be such a burden, he told himself again and again, trying not to look at the meagre portions the swamplings kept for themselves.
Zerill led them down secret paths and into clever hiding places, and she knew a hundred ways to cover their trail, but it wasn’t enough. The hunters following them knew all the same tricks. Verik’s power was all that kept them from being found immediately. The same deepcraft that had ruined Josen’s body erased signs of their passage, opened paths where there were none before, dug hollows and raised mounds to shelter them when they had nowhere else to hide. Still, there were times when swampling search parties passed so close that even Josen could hear. Could hear their soft boot soles padding near-silently against the ground while he huddled in a hole, covered in wet leaves, struggling to hold the breath in his injured lungs. Struggling not to give all three of them away with his weakness.
But as days passed, he watched, and he learned, and he grew stronger.
He began to notice the benefits of the extra food—he could walk on his own a bit longer every day. Whenever they stopped to rest, Zerill made him lift ro
cks with his bad arm until he couldn’t anymore. He protested at first, could barely take the tearing pain in his side, but she wouldn’t let him quit. The pain never stopped, but each day he could lift a little more weight, hold it for a little longer.
Simple tasks he’d taken for granted before became possible again. Soon he could dress himself—his padded gambeson and the hide robe Zerill had given him were easy enough to pull over his head—and even brace a full waterskin while he drank without spilling most of it down his chest.
As they moved farther west, the mist thinned and the witchmoss grew less sparse, giving the darkness a pale green tint that was almost enough to see by. Josen’s eyes adjusted to the point that he could, on occasion, walk more than a few steps without tripping over something. Zerill showed him how to dig and tend the underground firepits swamplings used to hide their flames from sight; he gathered what wood they needed from the ever taller and thicker boggrove trees, and even with one arm he could hold meat over a fire well enough, freeing the others for more important tasks.
When he had the chance, he studied the head movements and one-handed signs that Zerill and Verik used to speak to each other, even picked up on some of the simpler ones: the surprisingly familiar nod for yes and head-shake for no, the intuitive gestures for stop and move and quiet, among others. None of it amounted to much, but at least he didn’t feel like quite so heavy a burden.
The only thing he couldn’t get used to, as much as he tried, was the silence. He remained utterly lost when the swamplings started rapidly flicking through more complex signs, and though he knew Zerill could speak to him if she chose, she rarely did. Instead, she spent much of the time out hunting and scouting, leaving him with Verik—which was worse than being alone. Josen still couldn’t look at the man’s dark eyes without seeing the monster from his dreams, the creature that had sunk its claws into his side and torn him apart.
Verik never spoke. He hardly seemed able to even look at Josen, and he spent most of his time sitting crosslegged with his eyes closed and his palms against the earth in some kind of meditation. Whatever tasks Zerill gave him, he carried them out without a sound. Mundane chores mostly, but sometimes more. His deepcraft helped them to hide and to clear blocked paths, but it could also mend tools and garments, no matter how ruined and torn. Once, Zerill returned to camp with her spear broken into three pieces—she wouldn’t say what had done it, but Josen shuddered to think what it might have been. Verik simply held the haft together in his fists, and when he opened them, the weapon was whole again. Incredible, but never less than unsettling. Like everything else about the man.
Still, though, after so many days trudging through the Swamp in silence, Josen would gladly have confessed all his deepest secrets if he’d thought Verik would talk back. He missed talking. He missed joking, laughing, being the center of a crowd that hung on his every word. In the quiet, all he had were his own thoughts, and they weren’t good for much but reminding him of things he preferred to forget.
And finally, the day came when he couldn’t take it anymore.
They’d been waiting for Zerill to return for hours, utterly silent, sitting beside one another in a shallow recess set into the rocky slope behind them. It wasn’t a very good hiding spot, but it was the best they’d been able to find, and Verik had deepened it enough to provide moderate cover if they kept their backs pressed against the stone.
The effort had left Verik hardly able to stand. He sat in his meditation pose with his hands flat on the ground, but his head kept lolling down between his shoulders, and his arms trembled as if he was struggling to prop his body up. Fever-heat radiated from his body.
“What’s wrong with you?” Josen hadn’t said a word to Verik since they’d left the swamplings’ Kinhome, but the man looked like he might drop dead at any moment.
And besides that, Josen needed to hear a voice. Any voice. His own would do.
Verik’s dark eyes were half-sunk in their sockets, and he only opened them a sliver. He made a weak sign with his hand. Josen could just barely make it out in the dark, but it wasn’t one he knew.
“I don’t know what that means,” he said. His voice sounded too loud, after so long; he lowered it to a whisper. “It’s the… the deepcraft, isn’t it?”
This time, Verik just nodded, and Josen didn’t need to understand signs to know what that meant.
“Because you ran out of…” He gestured at the dark-stained skin on Verik’s belt. “Whatever was in there.” The skin had held a thick black fluid of some kind—after using his power, Verik would often cut his palm with a knife and drip the liquid over the wound. It seemed to give him strength when the deepcraft weakened him, but the skin had been empty for days now. Josen could guess what had filled it, but he preferred not to think about it.
Another hand-sign he didn’t recognize, but before Josen could protest, Verik croaked, “Blood.”
A chill ran across Josen’s neck, and the ache in his side seemed to throb more fiercely. I’m going to have to think about it after all, then. “Deepling blood. You have the blood-curse. That’s… that’s where your power comes from?” Now that he was letting himself ask, too many questions crowded in his head. Best start with what I know. “That’s why… why they summoned the beetleback, before? For its blood.”
Verik nodded.
“Where I come from they say that the blood-curse drives a man mad. I’ve never heard of it giving people any kind of power.”
“Can…” Verik signed something, a frustrated look on his face. “Control? Yes.” He tapped his temple. “Power comes from control. We learn, teach others. Never abandon.”
Can that be true? Josen had been taught to fear the deepcraft. It was an easy thing to fear. But if it was born of the swamplings’ refusal to give up on the blood-cursed…
“Never abandon,” he said softly. “I wish we… highlanders could say the same.” He couldn’t help but think of Rudol turning away from him; of Shona’s face on their wedding day. “We abandon each other too easily, I think. When Storm Knights are blood-cursed, we send them into the Swamp to die. Nobody says that—they call it the last pilgrimage, like it was some sacred duty—but it’s true. They’re supposed to kill as many—” Abruptly, he realized what he was saying, and swallowed the rest of it. Verik already knew what they sent knights into the Swamp to do. “But it’s really just an excuse to be rid of them.” He tipped his head at Verik’s blood-skin. “If you had more of it… would that make you better?”
Verik nodded again, and gestured vaguely in the direction Zerill had gone hours before.
She’s hunting Deeplings for him. God Above, they really do stand by each other. “And if she comes back with some—when you’re stronger—can you fix this? What you did to me?” Josen lifted his left arm, knots of flesh and muscle tightening and pulsing along his side. He winced as the dull ache coalesced into stabbing pain.
And now Verik looked away, but Josen knew what the answer was even before the swampling shook his head. He can’t help me.
“I don’t… I don’t understand.” It was hard to speak past the thickness in his throat. He wished he’d never asked. At least I could lie to myself when I didn’t know. “You did it. Why can’t you undo it?”
“Forbidden.” Verik’s voice was a low rasp; he looked worse than before, as if every word sapped his strength more. “Only hurt more. Break more.”
“No. That can’t be. I’ve seen you shape stone, wood. Why not flesh?”
Verik sighed, gestured helplessly with one hand. “Meant for… dead things. No spirit.” He picked a thin shard of stone from the ground beside him. “Stone.” He placed the stone on the ground, picked up a larger one, and brought it down, shattering the thinner stone in two. Taking a piece in each hand, he held them up. “Still stone. Shape doesn’t matter. Knows no difference. Same for earth, steel, dead wood.” He pointed at Josen’s heart, tapped his own chest. “Life. Knows difference. Can shape, but spirit fights. Hurts.”
“You’re talking about… the soul?” The living soul knows its shape. That was another thing his mother had memorized and often cited from the Word of the Wind. “It fights the deepcraft? Reacts”—he glanced down at his side—“like this?”
Another nod.
“So I’ll always be like this. Broken.” He clenched his left hand into a fist, felt the ache in his side crystallize into cold, stabbing pain. “Will… will the pain go away, at least?”
“No,” Verik breathed, sad and weak. “I am sorry. No.”
A strangled noise escaped Josen’s throat; he didn’t know if he was trying to laugh or cry or scream. “You’re sorry? I’m going to be in pain for the rest of my life! Why would you do this to someone?”
“Because I asked him to.”
Josen hadn’t seen or heard Zerill approaching; when he heard her voice behind him, he rose into a squat and half-whirled to face her on sheer instinct. Pain tore up and down his side from the movement, and he gripped his ribs with his right hand, grimacing.
“If you must blame someone for your pain, blame me,” she said, her black eyes devoid of sympathy. “It is my fault that you are alive to feel it.” She brushed past him to sign something at Verik; Verik signed back a short reply.
A few hours before, Josen would have given anything to hear her speak aloud, but now he had no answer. She was right. Whatever pain came with it, he was alive. He might just as easily have died in the Swamp, his soul swallowed by the earth, but she’d saved him. He owed her for that. Broken or not, he owed her.
Not that it’s a debt I can pay. No one is going to listen to me about the boy… God Above, the boy! Eroh bore the mark of the Windwalkers, and the Windwalkers had been great healers—all the old stories said so. When Elica Braveheart died defending the City of Glass, Luthas the Bright had used the Highcraft to restore her life, if the Convocation could be believed. And Josen didn’t need anything so miraculous as a resurrection. If Verik can’t heal me, maybe the boy can. It was a child’s hope, rooted in storybooks and legends, but it was something. More than he’d had for turns.
The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1) Page 38