Fifth Quarter

by Tanya Huff

  “Isn’t it?” Vree asked the bard.

  Karlene hadn’t actually considered it. Worry about His Highness mixed liberally with worry about Vree had kept her thoughts in turmoil since they left the riverbank. But—as much as she hated to admit it—Gyhard was right, they needed a plan. Two of the dead were from the fishing village, and she had to assume that any others—two more at least but possibly three—were from the tombs of the Capital. “Once they’re out of their bodies,” she replied, “I can Sing them all away at once, but to get them out …” She glanced over at Vree and shook her head. “I’m afraid that may take some time.”

  “All right.” Vree shifted in the saddle, eyes narrowed. “We catch up. We wait until they stop. We go in and slit Kars’ throat. Solves everything.”

  “We go in?” Gyhard asked.

  “Bannon and I.”

  “No.”

  Vree turned enough to look him full in the face. “Slaughter you, too,” Bannon snarled.

  “It’s too dangerous. The dead don’t sleep. I’m not sure Kars does anymore.”

  “So?”

  Gyhard sighed explosively and threw up his hands—an older man’s gesture at odds with the body he wore. “What happens if you get killed?” he demanded, snatching up the reins again as his horse headed off the track.

  One shoulder lifted and fell. “You get to keep Bannon’s body and Karlene Sings one more Song.”

  *I don’t want to die!*

  *You think I do?*

  *Yes.*

  She ignored him.

  * * * *

  “Do you see them there, coming up the track?”

  Had her eyelids functioned, Kait would have squinted; as it was she could only lean toward the three tiny figures down below. “Yesss, Fa … ther.”

  He parted her shoulder proudly. “Of course you do. When they get to that tree …” Kait swayed so she could look along the line of his outstretched arm to where a squat and gnarled trunk lifted twisted, nearly leafless branches to the sky. “… I want you to pull this branch away and then follow us as quickly as you can.”

  “Yesss, Fa … ther.”

  He hugged her close, oblivious to the smell. “That’s my girl.”

  Had she been able, she would have smiled.

  “Old bones move slowly,” he told her as he released her. “We won’t have gone far.” Leaning heavily on his staff, he began the steep climb back to the top of the bluff where the others waited with his heart.

  “Fa … ther?”

  Balanced carefully on the loose rock, he half-turned.

  “Be care …” Kait worked her mouth but the “f” was beyond her. “… ul.”

  Rheumy eyes filled. “I will, child.”

  * * * *

  “Before you decide to die nobly,” Gyhard announced caustically, “I want to talk to Kars.” And say? He didn’t know. I’m sorry I drove you insane. Don’t you think it’s time you were dead? Then what?

  Bannon snorted. “You think he wants to talk to you after what you did to him? Do you think he’ll just hand you the prince?” Vree finished.

  *If he gets the prince, then I get my body back!*

  *We’re not letting him have the prince, Bannon.*

  *I want my body back!*

  Two spots of color burned high on Karlene’s cheeks. “Rescuing His Highness has to be our first priority.”

  “Our first priority?” Gyhard shook his head. “You presume, Lady Bard, that my priorities are yours. That is not necessarily so.”

  “But Prince Otavas is alive!”

  “So is Kars.”

  “He’s crazy. You said so yourself.”

  “And therefore deserves to die? I don’t think so. Not for that.” He reached out and touched Vree lightly, fleetingly on the arm. “If you can go in and slit Kars’ throat, can you go in and get the prince out instead?”

  She slapped at a biting fly and wiped her palm clean with a handful of mane. “We don’t owe you any favors.”

  “I know. Can you do it?”

  “Not if the old man’s put him to sleep.”

  “If he’s awake.”

  “Yeah. We could.”

  “Will you?”

  Vree glanced over at him out of the corner of one eye. Bannon’s body…

  *I want it back, Vree!*

  His desperation clawed at her, but she’d been trained to ignore pain she could do nothing about. “I’ll think about it,” she said at last and kicked her horse into a trot.

  “If His Highness dies because of you,” Karlene ground out through clenched teeth, “I’ll make you sorry you were ever born!”

  Gyhard smiled at her, Bannon’s features adding a feral savagery to the expression. “It won’t be the first time,” he said and sent his horse after Vree’s.

  * * * *

  Hands wrapped around the branch, bone beginning to show through rotting fingertips, Kait watched the three riders come closer and closer to the tree.

  They would not all arrive at the tree at the same time.

  What would Father want her to do?

  By the time the question had been sluggishly considered, the first rider had nearly passed the tree. Long before she found an answer, the second rider was approaching.

  Kait surrendered. She leaned back against the splintered end of the branch and levered it free.

  Loaded with rock, the cart began to roll. Shafts dragging behind, it quickly began to pick up speed on the steep slope.

  * * * *

  The rumble of the cart whipped Vree’s head around and up. Less aware of her surroundings than usual, it took her a moment to find the source of the noise. The next moment she drove her heels into the gelding’s sides and bent low over its mane as it leaped forward. The cart, heading directly for the one tree of any size, would pass behind her. The chunks of hillside accompanying it, would not.

  * * * *

  Still some distance from the tree, Karlene saw the cart crashing down toward the track, half the steep, rocky bluff falling with it. Time seemed to stop as one of the narrow wheels shattered. The cart twisted, splintered, but the fragments continued to lead the swelling wave of destruction.

  Yanking back on the reins, she realized that Gyhard was directly in the path of the grinding, wedge-shaped mass. She hesitated while the bay fought the bit and tried to run, then finally screamed a warning.

  * * * *

  He couldn’t outrun it. His only chance was to get the bulk of the ancient tree between him and the crushing avalanche of rock. Jerking his panicked horse off the track, he dove from the saddle, pressed his back up against the gnarled trunk and grabbed on to the gelding’s cheek straps with both hands just as the first impact shook the tree.

  Whites showing all around its eyes, the gelding fought his hold. With a scream of terror, it tore itself free and disappeared into the rising cloud of dust and debris.

  The noise was deafening. Gyhard squeezed his eyes shut, swore as a rock glanced off his thigh, and prayed to gods he’d forgotten for four lifetimes. He lost himself in the roar and reverberation, unable to tell where he left off and the cataclysm began.

  Then a sudden, dry shriek wrenched his eyes open.

  One of the tree’s massive limbs, dead from trunk to tip, dropped toward the ground.

  Gyhard barely had time to get an arm up over his head.

  * * * *

  Vree left her shaken horse at the edge of the rockfall and clambered back toward the tree. Bannon wailed in the depths of her mind, but it was a sound without words and easy to push into the background. Climbing nimbly over and through the treacherous fan of debris, she swung off the track and down to where Gyhard lay, half buried in rock.

  If he’s dead …

  Bannon’s wail grew louder, but Vree hadn’t actually been thinking of her brother at all. If he’s dead kept repeating over and over, circling the inside of her head, patrolling the perimeter. She couldn’t get past it.

  There were few rocks directly behind the tree alt
hough the area between it and the bluff had been filled to waist level in places. A smashed board from the cart had been flung high into a splintered fork.

  Straddling Gyhard’s waist, Vree squatted and slid a hand under the branch that pinned him to the ground. Her heart started beating in time to his.

  “He’s alive,” she said as Karlene lowered herself carefully down off the track. A small ripple of dislodged rock bounced away. Both women ignored it.

  Karlene had never heard two words spoken with so many layers of emotion. “Is Bannon’s body all right?” she asked gently. When Vree turned to face her, the bard wished she’d held her tongue. Vree hadn’t forgotten whose body Gyhard wore—couldn’t forget—and the last thing she needed was yet another jealous reminder. “I’m sorry, Vree.”

  The shrug clearly dismissed both question and apology. “We’ll have to lift this branch straight off. We’ll only do more damage if we drag it.”

  The branch had done damage enough. Midway between wrist and elbow, Gyhard’s left forearm bent where it never had before.

  “This is broken.”

  *My body!*

  Karlene leaned forward. “Anything else?”

  *That’s enough!*

  “Cuts and bruises. Nothing big.” Vree felt the arm move under the gentle pressure of her fingers and looked up to see Gyhard staring at her through bloodshot eyes. Almost without realizing she did it, she blocked Bannon’s frantic leap.

  *VREE!* Bannon’s shriek flayed her with her name. *I could’ve had him!*

  *And a broken arm,* Vree told him, desperately searching for an excuse acceptable to them both. *Do you want that kind of pain?*

  *I want my body.* But the shriek had become a sob, and she knew he’d clutched at the chance to believe she still thought of him first. It hadn’t taken much effort; she’d spent her life protecting him from pain.

  “I’m going to have to set this,” she muttered, needing to fill the silence.

  Gyhard—who more than anything in the world wanted to know why Vree had stopped her brother from killing him—dragged his tongue over dry lips. “You sure you know how?”

  Vree snorted. “No. If we get injured in the middle of an enemy camp, we go looking for a healer. Karlene hold his elbow. Brace yourself,” she added as the bard grabbed on where she indicated.

  Gyhard swallowed. Hard. “Aren’t you supposed to say you won’t hurt me?”

  “No.” And she pulled the bones straight.

  “Better him than me,” Bannon snarled as Gyhard paled, moaned, and fainted.

  Vree lightly brushed the backs of her fingers over the dark bristles that delineated her brother’s jaw. *Do you remember when you took that quarrel in the leg and I had to threaten to carry you before you’d stop telling me to go on alone because you’d only slow me down.*

  *You took the quarrel, Vree.*

  *No, I …*

  A scream from farther down the hill ended the argument.

  * * * *

  Gyhard’s horse lay panting on its side, unable to rise. A gash deep enough to show bone over one eye explained why it had remained quiet for so long. As Vree and Karlene approached, it began to thrash, as much in terror as pain.

  “That front leg’s smashed,” Karlene said softly, trying not to cry. “We can’t leave it like that.”

  Vree turned to stare at her in horror. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll have to kill it.”

  “No.” Vree backed up a step and nearly fell on the uneven slope. “I can’t.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t.”

  Karlene couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The horse screamed again. “You just killed your own father!” The accusation carried the shrill edge of hysteria.

  “He was going to kill me. I had to survive.” Her voice held the echo of a hundred lessons then it broke. “But I can’t kill a helpless animal. I can’t. I can’t.” She sank down to her knees and covered her face with her hands. “I just can’t.”

  “It’s all right.” Karlene touched the younger woman gently on the shoulder. If Vree needed to react to this when she’d reacted to almost nothing else, the bard wasn’t going to stop her. “Give me your dagger and tell me what to do.”

  * * * *

  There was a great deal of blood on the ground before the injured animal finally stilled. Karlene kept one hand pressed against its side and Sang comfort in time to its failing heartbeat. She didn’t know if it helped—bardic theory was split over animal reaction to Song—but she figured it couldn’t hurt. When the last heartbeat faded away, she Sang the horse into the ever-green pastures of the Circle and slowly stood.

  Vree still knelt where she’d left her, staring blankly at the crimson puddle and thinking … or possibly, not thinking. Karlene wanted to help but didn’t have the first idea of what to do or say. She was afraid Vree would have to find her own Song.

  From where she stood, she couldn’t tell if Gyhard had regained consciousness nor did she much care one way or the other.

  They’d be walking now. But with the destruction of the cart, so would the old man and Prince Otavas.

  The prince could no longer be kept asleep.

  Would he be walking, or walking dead?

  * * * *

  As the sun moved down the sky and the shadows lengthened, the old man gently woke the young man sleeping by his side.

  Otavas pushed himself into a sitting position and stared around him in confusion. The brilliant eyes that one besotted courtier had compared to onyx in moonlight were dull and ringed with shadow, the thick fringe of lash broke into crusted clumps. “Where … where are the cousins?” he asked as he did his best not to see Kait and Wheyra, Hestia and Iban.

  “They left us long ago, my heart.”

  “They did?” Otavas frowned, trying to remember. Why was it so hard?

  The old man pushed a rough wooden bowl into his hands. “I have made you mush, my heart.”

  Fighting to shove aside the hours of Commanded sleep, Otavas scooped the warm mush up on two fingers and wondered when he’d learned to eat like a peasant. Or had he always known? He couldn’t seem to reach the memories of his old life—his life before the old man and the dead.

  “Eat it quickly, my heart,” the old man told him. “For we must flee.”

  “Flee? Flee what?” When the old man hesitated, Otavas grabbed at a skinny arm. “You have to tell me.”

  “Demons.” The ancient eyes locked onto the young ones. “I never meant to bring you into such danger, my heart, but I will protect you. I swear it.”

  Demons. Otavas shuddered. Had they brought the darkness that haunted his dreams?

  “I will protect you,” the old man said again. “You must believe me.”

  Otavas nodded. The old man was the only thing that stood between him and the darkness.

  Sixteen

  “They rested here.” Vree straightened, one hand curled around the dagger at her hip, the other curled into a fist—both hands positioned so that her companions couldn’t see the fingers tremble. They trembled nearly all the time. She couldn’t seem to make them stop. With the side of one foot, she kicked more dirt over the small fire pit. “And not very long ago.”

  “Then we’re close.”

  “Very close,” Vree amended, squinting up the narrow canyon. They’d lost time by following the cart’s trail to the top of the bluff for Kars and the dead and the prince had doubled back nearly to the track.

  “It goes to an old Imperial mine and smelter,” Karlene declared, falling into a light recall trance. “It played out during the reign of the last Emperor although a few families are still scraping a living out of it.”

  “I don’t see how,” Gyhard muttered. “The area’s been destroyed. There aren’t two trees standing next to each other for miles.”

  To Vree, it merely looked like the southern parts of the Empire; only without the lizards. There were plenty of trees in other places; she couldn’t understand what both Karl
ene and Gyhard had been so upset about. “Between the dead and Kars, they’ll be moving slowly cross-country,” she said. “And without the cart, they’ll have to stop to sleep.”

  “Can we watch them?” Unable to remain still, Karlene twisted her hair into an impossibly tight braid.

  Vree nodded.

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “If they sleep,” Gyhard reminded them.

  Karlene drew herself up to her full height, which was considerably taller than either of the Southerners. “The prince was alive at the way station.”

  “A lot has happened since then,” Gyhard remarked mildly.

  “He’s alive,” the bard ground out through clenched teeth, “or your Kars wouldn’t be trying to stop us.”

  “She’s right.” Vree forced her gaze up off the rough sling that bound Gyhard’s broken arm to his chest. Bannon kept her eyes on it as much as he could, terrified he would have to watch helplessly while his body died. Vree could do nothing about his fear because if it became the only way she could save the prince, that was exactly what would happen. Her own fear, she kept where she always had.

  An honorable death.

  And maybe Karlene would Sing her to rest.

  *You. You. Always you! What about me?*

  If Gyhard stayed away from the prince … She didn’t know what she’d do. Nothing? But Bannon had to have his body back.

  “Come on,” she said suddenly. “We’re wasting time.”

  * * * *

  He listened for the demons at dusk. Long ago they’d come to him as the sun set, dancing on the evening breeze. They didn’t come this night as they hadn’t come for thousands and thousands of nights.