by Court Ellyn
The naeni made a slow, intense study of him, turning Andy’s face from side to side, even grunting on occasion as if urging Andy to say something. The tickle grew in his chest, rose unbearably higher and sharper, until the cough bubbled through his lips.
Lohg drew Guardian from the baldric across his chest.
Bethyn shrieked through clenched teeth and dived toward Andy with open hands, but the ropes held her out of reach. Lesha grabbed Andy’s arm and tried to pull him free. “No, please! He’s healthy. He can walk. Don’t hurt him!”
Her pleas moved Lohg less than the buzzing of a fly. He cut the rope that bound Andy to his sister. The meat wagon! He’s gonna cut my throat and toss me in the meat wagon! Fast as a rabbit, Andy darted away, but Lohg’s arm was long. Claws hooked the collar of his doublet. The naeni flung Andy under his arm like a sack of potatoes and carried him toward the edge of the cliff. Wailing spread along the line of captives. Whips popped. The river roared white, and far below, a raven took wing. This was worse. He preferred to have his throat cut than be chucked off a mountainside. Andy kicked his legs and squealed, “No! Eat me instead.”
Under a spruce tree, Lohg dropped to a knee and set Andy on his feet. Astonished, he gawked at the naeni, at the gorge. Lohg’s hand pressed his scrawny shoulder. “Runt, stay.”
“I’m not a runt—!”
The hand laid over his mouth. “Stay.” The stink of dead flesh coming from under the yellow claws was enough to gag him. He coughed instead. Andy knew what happened to runts. The pigkeepers, the shepherds, the kennel masters, all made short work of the runts, popping their necks or drowning them in a trough—or gave them to little girls as pets.
Lohg tore a scraggly weed from the rocks, stripped the leaves off the stem, and rolled them between his palms. They gave off a minty, sweet fragrance. From a belt that was as broad as Andy’s shoulders, the naeni freed a waterskin and stuffed the leaves inside. He shook the skin for a long time, never taking his eyes off the boy. The tickle began to grow in his chest again. Don’t cough, don’t you dare. But he had to. He gave in to the spasm and glared at Lohg, daring the naeni to think him a weakling.
Iron fingers pinched his jaw and propped his head back. “Runt, drink.” The flood of liquid in his mouth left him no choice. The infusion tasted bitter and gritty, but Lohg made him drink every drop. A finger scooped the leaves from the skin’s nozzle and shoved those into Andy’s mouth too. “Suck dis leaf.” Andy chewed them and swallowed the juice. Lohg nodded approval, then watched closely, waiting.
On the roadway, Mum and Lesha watched too, fear ripe on their faces.
Warm fingers spread through Andy’s stomach, his chest, his throat. The tickling tried to surge again but grew less and less insistent. Andy inhaled deeply through his mouth and felt his lungs release, heard no wheezing. He smiled.
Lohg grunted.
Andy grunted back.
The naeni reared up to his full height, snatching Andy off the ground at the same time. Rather than bring him back to his mother and sister and tie him to the train again, Lohg carried him fast and easy past the curious captives, past the whipmasters popping their whips, and far ahead to the front of the train.
Andy tried to feel grateful. But there was no denying it: he was a runt. Even his enemies coddled him.
~~~~
11
At dawn, the Elarion burned their dead. Ashes billowed into the towering trees as the sun rose. Long shafts of light gilded the forest floor, and flames from the pyre heated the stone walls of the burning yard. The Regulars, with their fierce red stripes, stood at attention, while the troops of dranithion linked arms, leaning on each other. High notes of keening, gruff notes of ragged sobbing shivered under the trees.
The dead lay in rows inside a shallow pit, upon a bed of perfumed wood. Thorn kept the pyre burning himself. He stood with his eyes shut, his arms outstretched, hour after hour.
I don’t belong here, Carah thought. What did she know of these people that she should stand witness to their sorrow? She hovered at her uncle’s side, her head bowed, her mouth shut tight. Words were feeble. Who wanted comfort from her anyway? The blackening bones belonged to all those warriors she couldn’t save. Did the Elarion blame her?
She kept an eye out for Rhian, but he never turned up. Elliona didn’t arrive until midmorning. She shouldered through the ranks to link arms with her aunt, Captain Evriah.
Sometime later, Carah felt the weight of a glare and found Elliona’s eyes raking her from head to toe. Nothing colder than an elf’s eye, went the proverb, nothing hotter than the human heart. Carah repressed a shudder and raised her chin, defiant. What had Rhian told his lover? Carah almost peered into the woman’s thoughts, then decided she didn’t really want to know what Elliona thought of her. She hadn’t the spirit for confrontation today. With one small shuffling step at a time, she sidled around a company of Regulars, out of Elliona’s line of sight.
The funeral proceeded differently from those she had attended in the past. There was no shaddra to offer words of comfort or to beseech the Mother-Father to care for the souls of the departed. The Elarion, it seemed, did not require a holy one to intercede for them; they provided their own blessing upon the dead. When the sun was at its highest, a flute began to play, slow and somber. The Elarion must have been waiting for this moment, as if the final, most important guest had arrived. They raised their hands toward the sun and chanted, “Lethryn bi’ev hai duina, laithyah hai shanna,” they sang. The earth is darker, the heavens brighter, their thoughts cried. “May the Light shine on your face. May she heal you and hold you, now and forever.”
A wordless moan hummed under the crackle of the flames. Quickly, it grew in pitch and strength, a flood of sorrow set free. Even this ritual keening was sung in harmony, wave after wave of it, so haunting, so full of longing, that Carah broke into sobs. She bit her lip to keep the sound of it to herself.
In the afternoon, the flames settled down against the ashes. There was nothing left for them to consume. Uncle Thorn lowered his arms and remained so still that Carah thought he was resting. But the tops of the great andyr trees began to rustle. Soon they swayed in a wild wind. The motion of Thorn’s hands started small, his left making a circular gesture over the right. Their momentum grew until both his arms swirled around and around, calling down the wind. A cyclone of ash danced inside the burning yard, white and gray and black streaked with dying embers. The ashes rose over the battlements and swept far out over the forest the Elarion loved so well.
When only charred earth remained, the wind subsided. Thorn sagged and let out a great, weary breath. He glanced at the angle of the sun, then found Carah sheltered in the shadow under the wall and beckoned her to him. “Is it over?” she asked.
How worn and pale he was. Sweat beaded on his face. The heat of the pyre had reddened his forehead, and his hands looked raw. “It is for us. I’ll rest for an hour, then we must go. Say your farewells.”
They walked back to the tower, skirting the ranks of keening Elarion. Thorn retired upstairs; Carah checked on her patients one last time. She was examining Lassarien’s legs when Elliona entered the tower and approached. Carah saw no way to escape gracefully, so she tucked the blanket tighter around Lassarien’s shoulders and braced herself for whatever might come.
“I must speak with you, avedra.” Better words than a slap or a blade.
“Your brother is doing fine. Don’t let him drink too much poppy wine, though. It’s addicting, you know.”
The narrowing of Elliona’s eyes implied, Drop the heap of dragon shit.
Carah raised her nose and stepped away from the rows of convalescing warriors. Her expertise in stubborn, condescending silence forced Elliona to speak first. “Last night, Rhian told me he was sorry. ‘For what,’ I asked, but all I had to do was look at him to know. There’s nothing quite as obvious as a man with a tortured heart.”
Carah balled her fists at her sides, forbidding herself the dimmest ray of hope. �
�Stop. Please. Tortured Rhian may be, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t have him.”
Elliona cocked her head. “You humans are funny. You divide yourselves into classes as if there’s a smidgeon of difference between you and pretend that solves everything. But it doesn’t, does it.”
“It’s supposed to help us keep order.”
“In our opinion, order is kept through unity, not division. But I’m not here to argue whose way is better.”
“Yes, but our ways define everything. Rhian is torturing himself over something that cannot be.”
“Are you saying you do not love him?”
Carah’s face flushed unbearably hot. Her throat tightened, and her voice, damn the thing, came out sounding strangled. “I’m saying … it doesn’t matter if I do.”
Elliona shook her head slowly. “Silly duinóvion. You make no sense at all.” She clucked her tongue. “Poor Rhian. Whatever is that boy to do? He can’t have you, and … I’m not the pursuing type. I have better things to do with my time. But I know one thing: it will be memory of you—not of me—that will haunt him. Now, do excuse me.” Elliona’s brusque dismissal screamed volumes: Do not test my tolerance. Go away.
Where was she to go? Carah hovered beside the smoldering hearth, wringing her hands, furious and humiliated. She couldn’t afford to take comfort in the fact that Rhian had spilled his heart to his lover and that Elliona was too angry to take him back. Hope would do her no favors. The keep was stifling. She wandered into the greensward, where the air was full of anguish. The ritual keening had come to an end. Sentries had returned to the walls and the treetops. But other Elarion clustered on the green, rocking, sobbing, hiding their faces, holding onto each other. Carah was watching this profound and prolonged grieving when she felt her uncle at her elbow. He pressed sleep from his eyes with the heels of his hands and squinted in the afternoon sunlight.
Carah gestured at the mourners. “They’re inconsolable. I wouldn’t have thought it of soldiers. Dranithion are as close as family, then?”
Thorn stifled a yawn. “Many are family. Cousins of cousins of cousins. But it’s more than that. You and I, we know one day we’ll die. For us, there’s no escaping it. But to Elarion, death is unnatural. They don’t get sick, they don’t grow old. If it weren’t for war, for accidents and other tragedies, they would go on living. And for those who live, theirs is a long wait before they see loved ones again. They don’t even have a word for ‘die.’ To slay, to murder, yes, these they have, but not to die. A flower withers, a fawn starves, but they do not merely die.”
Carah tried to comprehend such a mindset.
Thorn nudged her to stop staring. “Come, we have many miles to go.”
They were down to one horse. Amyrith had sent Záradel home. Carah assumed that ‘home’ was wherever Uncle Thorn kept himself when he wasn’t at Ilswythe. Haredi Tower had no stable. Carah’s gray was tethered near the smithy. Uncle Thorn saddled him up.
Carah handed him the bridle. “I don’t suppose you know where Rhian is.”
“I heard he left in the middle of the night. Headed to Linndun ahead of us, I believe. I guess we’ll see when we get there.”
“He shouldn’t have ridden out alone.” Carah let her concern show. Why fake casual curiosity? Pretending with her uncle was a waste of breath.
“I agree. But he’s a big boy. I can’t tell him what to do as often as I’d like.”
Laniel and Azhien were waiting for them at the gate. The spring was gone from their step. Azhien’s face was ashen, his eyes flat with sorrow. Hadn’t he lost friends or family before? Carah found that possibility unimaginable.
“My troop and I are headed to Linndun as well,” Falconeye said. “We have reports to deliver. You won’t wait and go to the ritual bath with us?”
“We’re more than a day behind as it is,” Thorn replied, slapping the reins across his hand in an impatient fashion. “This was never a casual visit. We’re here to beg for allies, and now you know why.”
Falconeye nodded, grim. “I didn’t think you’d come just to give Carah the tour.”
“Yes, and my brother needs us at Ilswythe as soon as possible.”
“Listen, nethai, whatever the Elders decide, you have my aid.”
They gripped forearms. “I know,” Thorn said.
“And about … Lothiar. Tell Lyrienn gently. Her heart is tender. She adored him.”
“I will.”
“And I still mean to rip off your arms, by the way.”
Caught off guard, Thorn sputtered, “Over what? Over … Lyrienn? You’re more than a decade too late to settle that score.” His glance darted toward his niece. “And I’ll tear out your tongue with my toes if I have to. You talk too much.” He flung himself into the saddle, then lowered a hand for Carah to climb up behind him and be quick about it.
Instead, she grunted in disgust. “What is it with you avedra men? I shall have to find an Elaran lover just to keep up.”
Laniel’s face brightened conspicuously. Thorn jabbed a finger at him. “Don’t even think it!”
Laughter sang across the greensward and the sounds of weeping. “That’s highly unfair. But you have my word, nethai, I won’t touch wee Carah. She’s just a baby.”
“I beg your pardon—?” she snapped.
Thorn aimed that sharp finger at her, shutting her up. He rounded on Azhien, too. Laniel’s cousin tossed his hands up between them and slunk backward.
Carah grabbed her uncle’s wrist and let him hoist her up behind the saddle. He barely waited for her to get settled before putting his heels to the gray’s flanks. Off they cantered through the gate. Grief and the discomfort of awkward encounters faded behind them. The flagged road meandered through trunks as broad as houses, and the great andyr trees soon swallowed the stronghold from sight. Uncle Thorn pushed the gray at a quick pace, as if he raced the sun west or fled fatherly fears.
Carah hugged him tight around the waist. “Don’t worry, Uncle Thorn. You’ll always be my first love.”
He chuckled at that, reassured as to his place in her world.
The rhythm of the horse’s gait soon lulled like a lullaby. Carah hadn’t slept well on the open road, nor last night in the tower. She’d worried about her patients and paced among the cots three or four times before dawn. She nestled a cheek between Thorn’s shoulder blades and drifted.
Birdsong took the shape of words:
Danger is past is past is past
Sing to Ana-Forah
Rest rest rest.
Comes a stranger to our wood our wood our wood
Ana-Forah rejoices.
Joy joy joy.
The words became shadows swathed in light. Vast wings opened with a rustle of thunder. She had seen them before, those wings, but she couldn’t recall when or where. She stretched out a hand to touch them, then remembered they weren’t hers to touch. A face appeared in the light, fierce, reptilian, then it was gone, obscured by the intense glow. Carah was glad. She feared that if she looked into this creature’s eyes, she might die of wonder.
A gate, high and wide, appeared amid the light. The bars were wrought from silver and moonlight. From the other side, the creature asked, “Are you the one?” The ground shook beneath Carah’s feet, and somewhere far away a horse whinnied in terror.
The one? Was she? Carah knew that if she spoke the command, the gate would open for her. She opened her mouth …
And suddenly she was falling. Flagstones rose underneath her. A hand seized her arm. Saved from a breakneck tumble, she half rolled, half slipped off the gray’s rump.
Thorn’s fingers bruised her wrist. He let go when she gained her feet. His eyes had gone wide with alarm. “What the hell was that?”
“I fell asleep, I’m sorry—”
“You dreamed. What did you see?”
His urgency frightened her. The last thing she wanted was to share another vision that portended mass slaughter. This dream hadn’t been like that, though. It felt … warm, inv
iting, adventurous, like standing on a precipice and knowing she could fly, if she dared. “Did … did you see it?”
“I saw nothing, heard nothing, but … even the horse felt it. A wind that wasn’t a wind. Avë. Breathed out like a breath.”
“It was real?” She turned slowly, looking for a bright, fierce face hiding among the trees. “What was it, Uncle Thorn?”
“I don’t know.” He offered his hand. Carah mounted up again, shaky in the legs. “But I have a suspicion. If you have the dream again, tell me, will you?”
She nodded. “It asked if I was the one. The one what?”
He glanced over his shoulder, a sparkle in the one blue eye she could see. “You mean, someone besides me thinks you’re special?”
She laughed and hugged him in delight, feeling six years old again. “Oh, Uncle Thorn.”
“The Duke of Ilswythe needed to wake up anyway. We’re almost there.” The road climbed a hill between mossy cliffs. Trees grew from the rock-face, roots like hands clutching the stone. Their arching trunks shaped a long, shadowed tunnel, then at the top of the hill they curled back to reveal the mighty Avidan slicing through a valley. Upon an island in the middle of the lashing water a palace reared up, white and gleaming. At its feet, a strange forest shimmered as if shaped from colored glass. Among the odd trees sprouted towers as graceful as swans’ necks, capped with crystal turrets. And encircling the entire city was the tallest wall Carah had ever seen. Gold and russet and violet hues twisted in the stone, and as the horse carried them closer she recognized dragons carved beneath the crenellations. Dragons in flight spread wide wings, racing one another around the circumference of the wall.
“Look, Uncle Thorn,” she said, pointing at the wings.
“Yes,” he said, grave.
“Do you think—?”
“Yes.”
Carah said no more but pondered her dream until they arrived at the gate.
Elarion hailed them from the watchtowers. Silver-leafed doors inscribed with cavorting dragons swung open for them. Carah hoped to proceed slowly through the streets, so she could pry into the city’s secrets, but Thorn again urged the gray to a canter. The thoroughfare was wide but crowded. Elarion scurried from their path. Some called to Thorn by name; he answered in their own language, but he did not pause to provide lengthy answers. All Carah understood was his urgency. Over his shoulder he told her, “They want to know if it’s true.”