by Barb Hendee
“It appears she was successful,” he whispered.
“Do we take it?” Dänvârfij asked in a weak voice, though she gripped her bow firmly in hand.
“Not here,” he answered. “When they are farther from this place . . . and its guardian.”
He did not see the white woman, but it was better to wait. He did not care to risk dealing with her again.
“We wait until they are out of sight,” he said.
When the procession had passed halfway across the white plain, he crawled back to Dänvârfij.
Her tan face was drawn and pale, and beneath the cloak’s hood, strands of her hair had turned brittle with frost. Her pupils were small.
“Are you well?” he asked.
“Of course,” she whispered.
He still opened his cloak and pulled her in against his body. She did not resist, and in truth he did not feel much better than she looked.
“Not long now,” he said.
She leaned against him in silence. By the time the procession reached the distant rocky slope, the falling snow had thickened and the wind was blowing harder.
“They cannot travel far in this,” he said. “They will remain at camp.”
Dänvârfij said nothing as he got up. When she tried to do the same, the bow slipped from her fingers. It sank in the fresh snow an instant before she fell.
Hkuan’duv quickly dropped, rolling her over, and brushed clinging snow from her face.
Dänvârfij eyes were closed. Her breathing was shallow, barely leaking any vapor between her lips.
The wind sharpened as he disassembled her bow and stowed it behind his own back beneath his cloak. When he hoisted her over his shoulder and took his first step, his legs shook. The long night had taken more from him than he had realized. He stumbled across the white plain.
By the time he crested the rocky slope, he no longer heard Dänvârfij’s breaths over the harsh wind. He climbed down with one hand clawing for holds on the loose, cold stones.
With their purpose so close to an end, he should have left her behind and finished what they had started—but he could not. Perhaps he had grown too old in service, and his dedication now faltered. But she would never survive alone in the coming storm.
And Hkuan’duv could not survive the loss of Dänvârfij.
He tilted his head down and pressed onward. Even when he passed through the chute, he barely glanced at Kurhkâge’s snow-dusted corpse. When he reached their campsite, the tent was half-buried. He laid Dänvârfij down to knock off the caked snow, then quickly pulled her inside and found the bag of dung.
He built a smoldering fire at the tent’s mouth, hoping it would keep going for a while, and then crawled beneath the layered cloaks beside Dänvârfij. He pressed in against her, and between the smoky fire and her closeness, a hint of warmth grew between them.
Hkuan’duv closed his eyes for a moment, trying not to let exhaustion take him.
He opened them again and raised his head. He heard no wind, and it was dark inside the tent. Dänvârfij shifted beside him.
“Where are we?” she murmured.
He crawled to the tent’s opening. Snow pinned the tent’s flap shut. He began digging to free it, and then emerged into a silent dark world covered in a fresh blanket of snow.
The blizzard had passed. In exhaustion and the welcome warmth of Dänvârfij’s body, he had fallen asleep. The day was gone.
Hkuan’duv crouched to find Dänvârfij staring out of the tent. Her wide eyes mirrored his panic.
“Stay here!” he ordered, and he hurried out through the drifts.
When he reached a vantage point, and saw the canvas-covered depression, he knew he was too late. No light filtered out through the crusted fabric, and he closed quickly, not bothering with stealth. Why had they left the canvas behind?
He stepped forward, pulling the canvas back.
The bodies of Kurhkâge and A’harhk’nis lay inside the stone depression. With their hands upon their chests, Hkuan’duv did not need to look further.
Sgäilsheilleache had performed rites for their fallen brethren.
At least their spirits, if not their flesh, would return to their people and the ancestors. Without a way to bring home the bodies, the next choice would be to burn their remains and carry the ashes back. With no way to accomplish even that much, Sgäilsheilleache had done the best he could for them.
Hkuan’duv crawled out of the depression to scan the craggy mountainside, but he found no hint of a trail in the pure unbroken snow. The storm must have weakened after he fell asleep. His quarry had moved on, their trail covered by the day’s lighter snowfall. He hurried back to his own camp to find Dänvârfij gathering their gear.
“I have lost their trail,” he said flatly, crouching beside her.
She still looked pale and drawn. Her hood down, her thick hair fell around her shoulders. She leaned on her hands, close to his face.
“If they wish to deliver the artifact in Belaski, they will head straight across this range, trying to reach the western coast. Even if we cannot find them in these mountains, we can track them once they leave the snowy heights. They must come out above the Everfen, and I know that region well.”
Hkuan’duv calmed at her words.
“Of course,” he answered. “It is only a delay.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Magiere lost track of the days and nights as their supplies rapidly dwindled. By the time they reached the range’s western side, Chap spent nearly half of each day hunting with Sgäile or Osha for anything to eat. Roasting mice and squirrels ferreted from hibernation became the low point in their scant and meager meals. But as the air grew warmer and any snowfall became rain in the foothills, they fared a little better each following day.
One day, spouts of light green wild grass appeared along a muddy path. And then spring greeted them as they stood upon a high crest looking down over the Everfen.
The marshlands stretched west beyond sight. Magiere began descending quickly, until Wynn took a step, and her boot was sucked off in the deep mud. Leesil helped retrieve it, as Wynn teetered on the other foot, and then everyone trod more carefully.
Even when the rain broke for a short spell, the constant drip from the trees soaked them. But the air was no longer frigid.
“If it was not so wet, I would leave my coat behind,” Wynn joked.
Magiere was glad to see her in better spirits. The journey down through sharp foothills had been grueling for little Wynn. At one point, her limp was so severe that Sgäile suggested carrying her on his back. Wynn adamantly refused, though Osha took away her pack, slinging her heavy bundle of books over his shoulder.
Sgäile had changed since the night he and Osha had placed the dead anmaglâhk in the cave. He would have preferred to cremate the bodies and carry their ashes home. But Magiere felt that something else was troubling him. He’d become cautious in covering their trail whenever possible, and often looked anxiously back along their way.
She asked him about his strange behavior, but he only said she read too much into his vigilance. Perhaps this was true, and in any case Magiere had other concerns.
Her dreams had ceased completely—a relief on one hand, and yet disturbing on the other.
She never wanted to hear that hissing voice again, but felt this was only a reprieve—it might come again. And having reached the Everfen, they would soon have to find a way to cross it.
So far, they’d found adequate solid ground, but Magiere had heard accounts of this region. As they crossed its eastern end toward Droevinka, the dry islands and ridges would grow sparse, and then vanish for leagues beneath the swamps.
Sgäile led with Leesil, Chap trotting beside them, until the day grew late. Magiere wasn’t sure why, but Sgäile had become even more laconic than before, had been withdrawn and preoccupied since they’d come out of the foothills. She knew she’d never get an answer out of him and didn’t try.
Chap pulled up and barked
once.
Leesil stumbled under the orb’s swinging weight as Sgäile halted. “There is a dwelling up ahead.”
“Who would live out here?” Leesil asked.
Wading through the last few yards of mucky water, they stepped up a dry knoll to a small, thatched shack. Its hint of a garden had long gone fallow and an empty chicken coop rotted away along its side. One soggy, aging willow tree stretched up over the roof.
Chap sniffed about the chicken coop as Leesil knocked on the door.
“Hallo?” he called halfheartedly.
Barely waiting for an answer, he shoved the door open, dragging Sgäile along as he entered. Magiere followed and quickly covered her nose and mouth. A fetid stench filled the shack’s one room.
“What is that smell?” Wynn said.
Leesil pointed. “Over there.”
An old man lay in a ramshackle bed beneath burlap blankets pulled to his chin. He was clearly dead, and his sallow skin had shriveled upon his face beneath thinned, straggly hair.
“He must have died here alone, in his sleep,” Wynn said, gasping for air. “A sad thing.”
Magiere guessed the man had been dead less than a moon, and she agreed—it would be sad to die alone.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Wynn exclaimed.
Magiere spun about. The little sage looked upward in exhausted relief.
Burlap sacks hung from the rafters and down the walls to keep them free of excess moisture and scavengers. One high shelf above the hearth held tin canisters and an unglazed clay jar. Wynn went straight for the hearth and began digging through the odds and ends. Her brow wrinkled as she inspected a blackened iron pot.
“No rust that I can see,” she reported. “Let us hope there are oats and grains or dried peas in those sacks.”
She set down the pot, grabbed the clay jar, and lifted its lid.
“Oh,” she groaned as if finding a lost treasure. “Honey . . . honey for biscuits!”
Leesil shook his head. “Just get some water boiling, while we find a better place for the owner to rest.”
Magiere looked over at the old man. “We’d better scrap the bedding as well.”
Though it felt wrong to invade a dead man’s home, no one balked at the prospect of sleeping inside and eating something besides wild game. Leesil and Sgäile rolled the old man up in his bedding and carried him out back to bury him. Magiere shifted the orb to the back corner, then sat on the floor while Osha played assistant to Wynn.
“Go look for rain barrels outside,” Wynn told him pointedly. “And do not bring swamp water in its place.”
A scowl spread down Osha’s long face. He looked thoroughly snubbed as he headed out the door, pot in hand. After some time, Sgäile and Leesil returned, but Sgäile hesitated in the doorway.
“I should scout the area,” he said. “So we may choose a final path.”
“Forget it,” Leesil said, settling beside Magiere. “Just rest, and we’ll do that in the morning.”
But when Magiere looked back, Sgäile was gone.
Most Aged Father lay deeply troubled in the bower of his great oak. Half a moon past, he had received word from Hkuan’duv, the first in a long while. But the report was worse than expected—beyond displeasing.
Magiere had indeed acquired the artifact.
But A’harhk’nis and Kurhkâge were dead, and Hkuan’duv and Dänvârfij had lost her trail. The Greimasg’äh and his favored student guessed at Magiere’s most likely route and were in pursuit. There had been no further word from Hkuan’duv, and Most Aged Father was left wondering. How did a reckless human woman and her companions continue to elude two of his best anmaglâhk?
Perhaps it was Sgäilsheilleache’s intervention.
Not that Most Aged Father blamed him. He only held to his oath of guardianship and sense of honor. No, the blame lay with the deceitful Brot’ân’duivé—not the misled Sgäilsheilleache.
If Magiere reached these human “sages,” it would be harder to retrieve the artifact, and the consequences could be dire. Something so ancient had no place in human hands.
Most Aged Father grew agitated in anticipation of better news.
A soft hum rose in the oak’s heart-root surrounding his bower chamber, and he leaned back, closing his eyes in relief. Hkuan’duv had finally called to report.
Father?
The voice threading through the oak into Most Aged Father’s mind did not bear Hkuan’duv’s cool dispassion. Lyrical but strained, it made Most Aged Father’s frail heart quicken.
“Sgäilsheilleache?”
A brief pause followed. He had not heard from Sgäilsheilleache since the ship had sailed from Ghoivne Ajhâjhe.
Father, forgive my long silence . . . much has happened.
Most Aged Father’s first instinct was to rebuke him for his lack of contact. His second was to order Sgäilsheilleache to seize the artifact and return. But this was a precarious situation, and he heard pain and doubt in Sgäilsheilleache’s voice. Whatever had kept him from contact, the dilemma clearly troubled him.
This anmaglâhk was balanced on the edge of a knife. He needed reassurance.
“How do you fare, my son? Are you well?”
I am well, Father. . . . His voice broke off and then returned. I still travel with Léshil and the humans. Brot’ân’duivé felt they would fare better on our ship with an interpreter, and I have . . . continued my guardianship. But so much has happened . . . now my thoughts turn circles.
In the mountain peaks, I found A’harhk’nis and Kurhkâge slain. I could neither transport nor burn their bodies. I could only ask that the ancestors reach out and guide their spirits home.
Another pause, and a strange edge filled Sgäilsheilleache’s words when he spoke again.
Do you have knowledge of their mission in that region?
Most Aged Father took his own moment of hesitation. He preferred not to lie outright to one of his own.
“Your news will bring mourning to Crijheäiche. My heart is heavy at their loss. Perhaps your brothers tried to pass over the range and veered off. Kurhkâge often coordinated efforts with Urhkarasiférin. They had discussed plans to scout the Ylladon States for potential ways to complicate the Droevinkan civil war. I will speak with Urhkarasiférin, as he may be able to enlighten us.”
Yes, Father. Relief filled Sgäilsheilleache’s voice. That would be appreciated.
“How does your journey fare?”
Magiere has succeeded . . . but a good distance remains before we can deliver her find to its destination.
Most Aged Father stifled frustration.
Osha and I will travel on to Bela. I will contact you then, on the chance that one of our ships might be near. If not, it will take us longer to return home.
“Ah yes, you have taken young Osha as your student. I was surprised, but you often see promise and potential where others do not. How goes his training?”
He has faced harsh times but remains unwavering in duty and purpose. What he lacks in aptitude, he counters with devotion. I believe, in the end, he may find a place of value among us.