“That’s exactly what I need you to do. You’re going to put down the Instarya rebellion. I need you to crush the revolt.”
“You’re in luck then.”
“Luck is only a word. If you act according to your nature, which you can’t avoid, that will trigger it.”
“Trigger what?”
Trilos shifted to face him better. “Do you know what started the Belgric War?”
“Greed on the part of King Mideon.”
“Yes, but more precisely, Mideon was convinced that inside”—Trilos pointed at the Door—“was The First Tree, and that eating its fruit would bestow eternal life. Because Fane Ghika refused to grant the Dherg king access—something she couldn’t do because she couldn’t open the Door any more than you or I—the Children of Drome attacked the Children of Ferrol. That was partially my fault. You see, I was the one who told Mideon about the tree.”
Gryndal narrowed his eyes. “No offense intended, Trilos, but while you’re not a beauty, you don’t look anywhere near that old.”
“Appearances are usually deceiving.”
“And you expect me to believe that you started the Belgric War with a lie? A war that—”
“What makes you think it was a lie?”
Gryndal glanced at the Door. “Because no one knows what’s really in there. Or are you going to claim common knowledge?”
Trilos scowled.
“What does any of that have to do with me going to Rhulyn?”
“I gave Fenelyus a gift. To be honest, she already had it. I just showed her how to use it. Fane Alon Rhist was dead, and the Fhrey were losing the war. I was angry with the Dherg, so I intervened.”
Trilos did give Fenelyus the Art!
“That should have been the end of it. The Dherg had murdered thousands of Fhrey out of greed. Fenelyus had just cause and more than enough power to erase the Dherg from existence.”
“But she didn’t,” Gryndal said.
“No. She chased them to Drumindor. Everyone expected her to rip it apart and throw the remains into the sea. So did I. Instead, she spared them. The story goes that she left the Fhrey army camped around the base of the Dherg fortress for weeks, and when she returned, she met with King Mideon and offered peace.”
Gryndal nodded. “And you think while she was gone, she came here and went inside the Door?”
“Yes. And that saved the Dherg from extinction.”
Gryndal stared at the Door with new interest.
“I had set a boulder rolling when I gave the Children of Ferrol the Art, knowing your people would wipe out the Children of Drome, but something stopped it. You might call it luck, but could random chance stop such a thing? What could have prevented a boulder that big from rolling? What unlikely occurrence could forestall the sun from rising? Who opened that Door for Fenelyus, and, more important, where might that person be? That’s why you’re going to Rhulyn, to separate luck from intent, and this time I’ll be watching.”
“Watching for what?”
“For an invisible hand to open that Door and once again stop the boulder. You, dear Gryndal, are my boulder.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Healing the Injured
It was like waiting for the sunrise and a chicken to hatch—if the sun marked the end of the world and the chicken was an all-devouring demon.
—THE BOOK OF BRIN
The light intensified the throbbing behind Arion’s eyes. Both her hands and feet felt numb, and when she tried to move, a sharp pain exploded from the back of her head as if a chisel had been slammed through her skull. She might have cried out, impossible to tell. Between winces and despite the pain, Arion had managed to discern she was inside a crude hut of some sort; the walls were made from thick, untreated wood and the ceiling from bundles of yellowed grass. She was on a bed of sorts—rough wool over straw, stiff and itchy.
What in Ferrol’s name has happened to me?
Working that single thought and trying to use her eyes was all she was capable of. Everything else went toward enduring the pain. She felt as if she were drowning in anguish. Panic welled up, but mercifully she drifted off again.
Arion fought to consciousness several more times but never stayed awake for long. Always she was in the same bed, beneath the same grass roof, flooded by the same awful pain. In her haze-filled agony, she sensed the presence of others around her. Conversations in a language she didn’t understand. Occasionally hands touched her, mostly around the head. When she was moved, she passed out again. How long this went on was impossible to tell. Time became a vague tangle of dreams, visions, and reality mixed in equal measures and degrees of importance. When she wasn’t in the hut, she was talking with Fenelyus about the importance of teaching more than the Art to the next generation of leaders and how power without compassion would destroy them all. On occasion, a wolf would enter her visions, or an old shriveled female Rhune whose head was wrapped in a cloth. Once, she found herself sitting on a bench in the Garden across from the Door with an irresistible urge to try the latch.
“Go on,” Trilos told her from where he sat on the other bench. “You know you want to. Everyone wants to know what’s on the other side.”
Arion stood up and walked to the Door. She placed her hand on the latch, knowing it would do nothing, but what if it—
She lifted. The latch clicked.
Arion’s heart raced as she felt the Door give, felt it start to open.
“So you’re the one I’m looking for!” Trilos exclaimed.
With Trilos’s voice still in her head, Arion woke.
She was once more in the hut, on the straw bed with wool covers. The numbness in her extremities was gone, and though her head still throbbed, the stabbing pain behind her eyes had taken a break. She looked around. Sunlight came through a window. Birds sang, and she felt a gentle breeze brush her face, the only part not covered by a wool blanket. A moment later, Arion noticed she wasn’t alone. Across the room, caught in a shaft of mote-filled sunlight, was a Rhune girl.
She sat sideways, legs hanging over one arm of a stiff chair, bare feet moving back and forth, forming little circles in the air. The girl had markings, tattoos that curled symmetrically around the sides of her face like vines. The child was filthy, her hair a ratted mess, the bottoms of her bare feet blackened. Over her shoulders, she wore a tattered woolen cloth the color of clay. Her legs were covered in baked-on mud, stained from splashes of dirty water. Every fingernail was outlined in dirt as if she’d just come from digging with bare hands.
Do Rhunes do that? Burrow underground like moles?
The girl’s attention was focused on something in her fingers while a huge white wolf lay at the foot of the chair, its muzzle resting between its forepaws.
The Rhune girl was disgusting, the animal disturbing.
Arion didn’t move. Instead, she tried to remember, to think how she had gotten where she was. The last thing she recalled was being in the Garden with Trilos and opening the—
No. That wasn’t real…was it?
It couldn’t be. She had left Estramnadon in search of the rebel Nyphron. She remembered arriving at Alon Rhist and meeting with Petragar.
Yes, I definitely remember doing that—him and his servant. What was his name? Vert, something.
She remembered arriving at a Rhune village and—
Yes! I found Nyphron!
After that, the trail went cold.
The girl noticed her and smiled. She spoke some brutish language that sounded like barking.
Rhunes are animals, Arion thought. Animals that merely resemble Fhrey.
She lifted her head, but pushing up to her elbows made her instantly dizzy.
The girl barked once more, but within the beastly yelps she caught what sounded like Arion.
“You know my name?” she asked in the Fhrey language.
The girl nodded.
Arion was stunned. “You understand me?”
The girl nodded again. Arion saw the full measure of
her face: homely, inelegant, and misshapen, no doubt the result of a godling left unattended to play with a pile of clay.
“Tura,” the girl said. “She teach divine words.”
“Who are you?” Arion asked.
“Me is Suri.”
“Where are we, Suri?”
“Dahl Rhen.” The girl continued to sit sidelong across the arms of the chair, feet still making circles in the shaft of sunlight. Lothian had said that the Rhunes were terrified of the Fhrey, that they considered them to be gods and would cower in their presence. In Estramnadon, no one except those in the palace would remain so casual in Arion’s presence.
The Rhune girl pointed at the ceiling. “This is a…ah…wooden cave. Call it…” She hesitated, then shrugged. “Place where Rhune leader sleeps.”
“How did I get here?”
“Carried after.”
“After? After what?”
Suri pointed at Arion’s head.
Arion reached up and noticed something there. A cloth wrapped everything above her eyes.
The girl swung her legs off the chair’s arm and onto the wolf, which didn’t seem to mind. “Best leave on or insides fall out.”
“What…?” Arion froze. “What happened to me?”
Suri mimicked hitting herself on the head and made a bursting sound as she did. “Hit with rock. Fixed now. You don’t die.” The girl grinned.
“You did this? Wrapped my head, I mean.”
Suri nodded. “Yes. Others help, too. Many help. Keep insides in.”
“Ah…thank you for that. But why did someone hit me?”
Suri stood up, detangled her fingers from a loop of string she had been playing with, and placed it around her neck. “Wait. Me get Persephone.”
The girl said something to the wolf, which got to its feet and moved to Arion’s bedside. The huge beast with long white fangs hovered over Arion while the girl scampered off.
Arion instinctively made a ward with her fingers—a simple physical defense—but nothing happened. She hummed, going back to the basics to harmonize with the energy around her, but still nothing, no vibration or even an echo. Her ability to perform the Art was gone. Unconnected and disconcerted, she looked into the eyes of the wolf, and for the first time in centuries she felt mortal fear.
What have they done to me?
Arion pushed away from the animal, at least as far as the wall allowed, a bad idea. The sharp pain returned along with a dash of nausea, but the wolf kept her attention. It didn’t growl or bare its teeth, but that hardly mattered. A large, fanged beast standing less than five feet away took precedence over pain. This one appeared to be watching her.
But watching for what? If I try to get up, will it kill me? If it attacks, what can I do?
At that moment, the best she came up with was scream.
The sound of footsteps approached, and then Suri and a new female entered. Arion was disappointed to see it was another Rhune. The wolf drew back when Suri called to it. The two Rhunes spoke to each other in the same guttural language. Arion caught the word Nyphron. And the girl left the room.
“Nyphron?” Arion asked.
The new Rhune nodded, then spoke in Fhrey. “I speak your language, not well, but some.”
She was older and wore some type of disgusting dress made of crudely woven black-dyed wool. She had long hair and a lot of it.
“I sent Suri to bring Nyphron,” the Rhune told her, keeping a distance and standing against the doorframe.
“You’re Persephone?”
“Yes.” She nodded many times.
“The other one, Suri, said that people have been taking care of me.” Her hand came up and touched her bandages.
More nods. “You suffered serious injury. Afraid you might die. We knitted you. Stopped bleeding.”
“Knitted? Do you mean sewed? I was bleeding?” Arion felt her nausea grow.
“Yes. Very much.”
Arion inched down off her elbows and closed her eyes. That felt much better. Her head was growing fuzzy again. Already she was exhausted and wanted to sleep, but she couldn’t. She had to stay awake. She had to find out what was going on.
“Who hit me and why?”
Persephone didn’t respond.
Slowly Arion turned to look at her. “Did you hit me?”
“No!”
“Well, who, then?”
The Rhune looked terrified. “Please not to kill us. Rhune people do no wrong. We people of Dahl Rhen good people, very, very good. Never harmed you or yours. Lived long years by treaty signed in Alon Rhist. Never broke it. Not once. Done nothing wrong. Very peaceful we people be.”
The Rhune’s mastery of the Fhrey language suffered when she was nervous.
“Wait. Was it a Rhune that hit me, then?” She saw in Persephone’s eyes that it was. More docile than inebriated sheep, Vertumus had told her. Rhunes think Fhrey are gods, everyone had said. They had left out the Rhunes’ odd quirk of worshipping their gods by battering them senseless with rocks. “Why would a Rhune hit me?”
“You were fighting with Nyphron. Nyphron good to us…ah…Nyphron has been good to us.”
Arion’s eyes went wide. She remembered it now. She had confronted Nyphron. He resisted. The others, the Galantians, tried to interfere, and then—
Once again, the sound of feet on wood approached, and Persephone dodged out of the way as Nyphron entered. He approached hesitantly, shield on his left arm. Behind him came another Fhrey, his arms crossed over his body, gripping the handles of two short swords.
“You live,” Nyphron said, his tone decidedly disappointed.
“Your concern is overwhelming,” she replied.
“I’m just a bit surprised. I didn’t think I would need to be told when you woke. I sort of expected the news to be apparent when the sun went dark and the ground swallowed us. There’s not even lightning or thunder. Isn’t that what you Miralyith do just before you murder people?”
They didn’t do anything to me, she thought. He doesn’t know.
“Sorry to disappoint,” she said. “But I have a headache. It seems someone hit me with a rock.”
“Not hard enough, apparently.”
If you only knew, Arion thought.
Her best hope was to make sure he didn’t. She’d never heard of anyone losing the Art, but then again, head injuries weren’t a common occurrence among the Miralyith. The injury had to be responsible. If she had a day or two to heal, then maybe—
“For what it’s worth, the Rhunes saved you. You were leaking blood like a punctured wineskin.” He pointed at Persephone. “It was her idea to sew you up. Why, I don’t know.”
“And what did you do?”
“Not a thing. I watched you bleed in the dirt and did nothing at all. No, that’s not true. I smiled a good deal.”
His sword-gripping friend shifted uncomfortably.
“I don’t like you,” Nyphron went on, his tone simmering between contempt and rage, but his hand didn’t go near his sword, which Arion was exceedingly happy about.
Arion had never been scared of swords any more than she’d been afraid of wolves. Yet at that moment, both worried her, and the long metal weapons kept drawing her attention.
“I don’t like your kind,” Nyphron told her. “You act cowardly—without honor.”
“And it was a Miralyith who killed your father.” She pointed this out in the hope that her understanding might calm him, but she didn’t see a marked difference. If anything, it made him angrier. She wasn’t thinking clearly. She couldn’t; her head was too fuzzy.
“My father had hoped to restore the Instarya’s rights as Fhrey. Rights your people stole.” Nyphron paused, then after a breath said, “You came here to arrest me, to haul me back so I could also be humiliated and murdered before an audience of asica-wearing Miralyith—more entertainment for the fane. I could have let you die. All I had to do was stop her. Just keep the Rhune away.” He glanced at Persephone, who stood frozen against the doorfram
e as if she’d been nailed there. “You would have bled to death facedown in the dirt—and it still would have been with more dignity than your fane granted my father. So to answer your question, I did nothing, and you’re alive because of it.” He leaned closer. “You owe me and everyone in this village your life. Maybe you should think about that while you dream up whatever destruction you have planned.”
Arion didn’t have any plans for destruction. She was still trying to piece together what had happened and wondering if the two swords Nyphron’s friend was keeping warm with his palms would come out anytime soon. The only positive thing was that she didn’t have an opportunity to dwell on the throbbing of her head, which hurt so badly that her eyes watered.
“You might also consider that there is an alternative to slaughtering everyone,” Nyphron said. “You could let us go. The Galantians and I will live out our days in the wilds. You won’t hear from us again. We’ll disappear. If you have to, you could tell the fane you found and killed us. Problem solved, ego served, page turned. I think you owe me that much for letting you wake up.”
“I’ll consider it.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. The pain in her head was reasserting itself with a fury.
“Since each breath you take is a gift we gave you when your head was dangling from your neck like a dead goose, I hope you’ll be considerate enough to at least inform me of any decision you make before ripping the sky apart.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she managed to say as the pain forced her teeth to clench. She held his stare as long as she could, the pain hammering hard with each second. Arion was relieved when he broke first.
“Anything can I get you?” Persephone asked. She grimaced nervously. “Is—there—anything—I—can—get—for—you?”
“I want to sleep. I just need to rest, and I’ll be better.”
She hoped that was true.
—
The room was dark the next time Arion woke. Outside the window, stars shone. Inside the room, a single lamp—a hollowed-out block of chalk stuffed with animal fat—revealed the same girl she had awakened to before. This time the girl lay on the floor. Her head was propped against the side of the wolf, which lay sprawled across the wooden floor. Once more, Suri played with a loop of string.
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