by NS Dolkart
His mind went back to what Hunter had told him, so many years ago. You’re going to die, Narky. Sooner or later, you’re going to die. Wouldn’t you rather die a decent person? This was his test. Would he let his fear of death, his fear of the unknown, prevent him from saving the afterlife – from saving his God?
No. He would not.
“Phaedra,” Narky said. “You know how much I respect you. You’re brilliant, and you’ve always been good to me even when no one else was. I’ll pray for Ravennis to reward you in the World Below. You deserve it more than anyone I know.”
With that, he pulled up his sleeve and advanced on his friend with the sacrificial knife. Phaedra might back away from him now, screaming and begging for her life, but she would thank him when they met again, in the World Below.
She would thank him.
36
Vella
Goodweather couldn’t be expected to return from town for a good while longer, so Vella and Bandu took full advantage of her absence to make love. Afterwards they lay together for a time, smiling. Vella hadn’t felt this happy in ages. The cloud of her fears and resentments had lifted, replaced by a deep calm. They talked about unimportant things, feeling happy and normal. Vella thanked God Most High that Bandu had made the choice she had.
Eventually, judging that Goodweather would be home soon, they rose and worked together on the day’s meal. Vella started one of her quick soups – she loved soup – and she and Bandu argued playfully about what to include. Life was good.
But Goodweather hadn’t returned by the time the soup was ready to eat. It had been too long already – far too long. Vella took the soup off the fire and they rushed outside, looking down the path that led to the village. There was no one on it, as far as the eye could see.
“Oh God,” Vella breathed. “Where is she? Where is she, Bandu?”
She knew the answer before Bandu said it. “Gone.”
They forgot about eating and raced, both of them, toward the village. They were almost there before Vella even thought to worry about the house burning down. The fire had been small, and she didn’t think she’d left anything near it besides the cooking irons. All she could do now was hope.
Vella outran Bandu and reached the village first. She saw the cooper drawing water from the well and ran to him, panting, “Goodweather – where is she? Have you seen my daughter?”
“Oh, sure I did. Her father came for her, with your brother and some forty or fifty soldiers on horseback. I thought you knew.”
Vella stared. “You. Thought. I knew? No one came to tell us!”
“Oh. I’m real sorry.”
Vella turned away from him, reeling. Bandu had only been a few paces behind and now caught up, having heard their exchange. “Criton takes her.”
“And my brother too. What are they up to?”
“The soldiers,” Bandu said, turning to the cobbler. “They have axes?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
Vella and her wife exchanged a glance. The Yarek. Criton had kidnapped their daughter and taken her with him to chop down the Yarek. How dare he bring her into such danger? How could Malkon have gone along with it?
How could Vella and Bandu catch up to them?
“We need a horse,” Bandu said.
“We have no money for a horse.”
“We have a house.”
Vella nodded. Hopefully it hadn’t burnt down. It was the only home they had ever shared, but it was worthless next to Goodweather’s safety. “Parash might sell us his mare.”
But when they found Parash, he wasn’t interested in a trade. “Take the horse,” he said. “Your house and lands are yours.”
“We’ll never be able to pay back a loan,” Vella protested.
“The high priest is your father,” Parash answered. “I’ll have double the horse’s value back by next week. Just write your father a letter saying what I gave you, and I can loan you some money for your journey too.”
Vella nodded dumbly, too focused on retrieving Goodweather to feel embarrassed. Normally, she’d have cringed to think that she was taking advantage of her family’s station and getting better treatment than she’d have received on her own merits. Now, she only felt grateful.
So she took her neighbor’s money and his horse, and wrote an accounting of the “gift” for Parash to bring to her father in Salemica. She didn’t even know how to ride, but Parash boosted her up to sit behind Bandu so that all she had to do was cling to her wife as they rode in pursuit of Criton and his company.
Her mood darkened as they rode – even the terror of falling off a galloping horse couldn’t overshadow her anger at Criton and her brother. How dare they take her daughter from her? Criton hadn’t even raised the girl, only showered her with attention a few weeks a year. Vella and Bandu were her real parents, and he’d stolen her away from them.
Bandu drove the mare onward until the poor thing was completely spent, stopping at a farmstead on the border of Ardisian territory. There they exchanged the mare for an older gelding, Bandu thanking the horse for her service, and rode on. They were hours behind the men who had stolen their daughter, and they could not afford to stop.
They went on like this for days, making worse and worse bargains just to keep moving. Criton and his men had proper warhorses, they knew, not these poor creatures used to dragging plows across muddy fields. The two of them slept on floors and shared people’s meals, first relying on respect for Vella’s father and then, deeper in Ardisian territory, on the money Parash had given them. There were those who wouldn’t deal with them even then – one man actually rode out to chase them off his land, cursing them and the riders who came before them. He was carrying a spear, and Vella was afraid he would attack them with it.
Bandu must have thought something similar, but she was in no mood to back down. Instead, she locked eyes with the man’s horse and said, “Throw him.”
The horse obeyed, and as the man lay cursing and moaning on the ground the women climbed down from their own tired nag and onto his. Vella wondered if he had seriously injured himself, but they didn’t stay to find out.
Bandu said they were catching up to Criton, but Vella couldn’t see how she knew. There were two more skyquakes as they rode, violent and terrifying, dropping knuckle-sized hailstones despite the summer heat, spooking livestock, shaking broken birds from the sky.
“I hope Phaedra’s hurrying,” Vella said.
“I think we pass her already somewhere.”
Bandu was probably right. Vella prayed to God Most High that she’d still make it on time.
The Yarek grew from a line on the horizon to a towering mass that seemed at times to be half the horizon. They were only a few miles away now, and they still hadn’t caught up. At least the trail of horse droppings before them was fresh. Their timing would be a close thing. Vella prayed they wouldn’t be too late to save their daughter.
At long last, they crested the final hill and saw Criton’s company gathered just outside a thicket of vines that surrounded the Yarek’s massive trunk.
“They’re still alive,” Vella breathed. “They haven’t attacked yet – we might be in time, Bandu!”
She could not see Bandu’s face, but when she heard her voice, she knew her wife was gritting her teeth. “Have to get there first,” she said, barely audible over the thundering of their horse’s hooves and the wind whistling in Vella’s ears. “They can’t hear us here. Close isn’t close enough.”
She was right, of course. The men and horses did not sit still waiting for them. Goodweather’s mothers had barely closed half the distance to their daughter before the horsemen began wading into the thicket.
“Faster,” Bandu urged their horse. “This is bad. So bad.”
Vella clung to her and hoped.
37
Goodweather
The journey south hadn’t been an easy one, but the joy and excitement of riding with her father and uncle to save the world was indescribable. T
o save the world! She was so lucky to be a part of this, so proud that Father thought she was worthy.
She felt good around these men, with their beards and their big arms; she loved being part of their company. She wondered what her father would think if she grew up to be like them. Would Myma be upset? Would Ma even care? She could do it, she thought, if she decided she wanted to. She’d always been good at transformations.
Goodweather had never seen the Yarek except on the distant horizon, and she could hardly believe the way it kept growing and growing as the days went on. It looked so huge now – surely any moment they’d be reaching it already? And yet each night they made camp without having arrived at its trunk, and with every mile of travel it seemed to grow even bigger.
The axmen commented on it one night, when Father said they were only a day or two away. “How are we supposed to cut down a tree that size?” Pitra asked. “We’ll be burying our axes past the hilt before we get halfway into it!”
“God Most High will help us,” Uncle Malkon said. “We don’t have to finish the job ourselves, but that doesn’t mean we can skip the work. We’re asking for divine intervention – we won’t get it the lazy way, without putting our bodies and souls into it.”
“Did you hear that from Grandpa a lot?”
Malkon scowled at first, but when he saw the grin on Goodweather’s face he couldn’t help but laugh. “We should have left you at home, you little monster.”
The closer they came to the Yarek, the more nervous Father became about having passed Phaedra without knowing it. He’d expected his to be the backup plan in case she failed, but as time went by it became more and more obvious that Phaedra was behind them somewhere, not ahead. Goodweather heard him discussing the problem with her uncle the night before they arrived, murmuring in the darkness after all the others had gone to sleep.
“We’ve had two skyquakes in three weeks now – we can’t have much longer before the Yarek brings the skies down on our heads. How long can we wait for her if she’s behind us? I want to give her the chance to do this the peaceful way, I really do, but what if she’s been delayed somehow?”
“Then we have no choice,” Malkon answered. “Patience is all well and good, but not when the difference between success and the world’s destruction could be as little as a few hours. We don’t know how long we have left. It would be too stupid if the world ended while we were still waiting.”
Her father’s voice was resigned. “You’re right. And if she was still ahead of us and the Yarek killed her, I don’t think we’d even know. It’d bring her body down to where the roots are. Where the underworld begins.”
Oh yes, this was where Ma had gone to bring him back, when Goodweather was just a baby. Now that she saw the size of that tree, she could easily believe that its roots went all the way down to the underworld.
Goodweather couldn’t believe that the Yarek had killed Phaedra, no matter what Father feared. She wouldn’t believe that. Phaedra had always been so kind and generous to her, and she was glamorous and powerful – Goodweather couldn’t believe that a wizard like her would let herself be killed by an old tree, no matter how big and ancient it was. No, something must have delayed her. Maybe she’d still been visiting with Goodweather’s mothers when Father’s company rode out. Maybe she’d always been behind them. Or maybe they’d taken slightly different routes at the beginning, and their horses were faster than hers. She easily could have fallen behind at some point.
This whole thing was getting realer now. They were riding toward an enemy that Father clearly thought could kill Phaedra, and they had nothing but axes and prayers to fight it with. Come to think of it, Goodweather didn’t even have that. Why did he need her again?
They rode out late the next day, giving Phaedra an extra hour or two to catch up. It made no difference – she was nowhere on the horizon. When they finally came to the base of the Yarek, Goodweather gasped at its sheer majesty. The Yarek was bigger than anything she had ever imagined, and it wasn’t defenseless. Its trunk was surrounded by dense spiny thornbushes and thick vines with red, angry-looking leaves. A few of these were draped from branches far, far above, but most lay along the ground like feathered snakes waiting to strike. Goodweather wondered if they could.
Just outside this thicket, Father reined in their horse. “Goodweather,” he said, his voice low. “See if you can find out whether Phaedra has been here or not.”
“How?” She couldn’t see any sign that the thorns or vines had been disturbed, but maybe she wouldn’t have anyway.
Her father twisted around the saddle. “Ask it, sweetheart. I can’t do it myself – I’ve never understood the Yarek.”
Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. Was this why Father wanted her here – so she could talk to the Yarek and be his interpreter? How was she supposed to do that? Ma was the one who could speak with plants and animals and understand their responses, not Goodweather! She’d barely even tried! Father must have assumed that Ma had taught her. Why hadn’t he asked Goodweather if she could do this before he asked her to come?
She was going to let him down. God, why hadn’t she asked him what he wanted her for? Here she’d been, all proud that her father had invited her on this great adventure, that he needed her help on a mission, and she hadn’t even asked him what her job would be! This was all her fault.
There was nothing left to do but try, though. Goodweather couldn’t be useless, not now when her father needed her.
“Um,” she said. “Yarek? Can you hear me?”
Oh, help! Was it trying to answer back somehow? All she could feel was a light breeze blowing from one side – was that the Yarek’s response?
“Has – has Phaedra been here already?”
Nothing. No response.
“I…” Goodweather said to her father, to her uncle, to all these men who were relying on her to do something she didn’t know how to do, “I don’t think it wants to tell me. I can’t make it.”
Her father and Uncle Malkon shared a look with each other, and Goodweather cringed.
“Let’s get closer,” Malkon said. “Maybe it’ll hear you better if we’re up by the trunk.”
So they rode in among the vines and brambles, the axmen leaving their weapons in their holsters. It wouldn’t do to make the tree suspicious, not now. Not before it was too late.
The ground shifted; their horses stumbled. A giant root burst from the ground and struck Pitra from his mount. He barely had time to scream: when he hit the ground, the vines enveloped him so fast that within moments all she could see of him were thrashing leaves.
“Go!” Malkon shouted. “The Yarek is attacking!”
He spurred his horse and went crashing ahead, letting the straps that held his axe to his back drop off his shoulders and deftly catching its haft behind him with one hand while the other still held his reins. The others followed suit and soon they were all racing through the murderous brambles toward the trunk.
Pitra had been the first to fall, but he wasn’t the last. One after another, men were torn from their saddles and devoured by roots and vines. Nor were their horses spared: though the poor animals screamed and turned away from the great tree, the grasping roots soon caught them too.
“Hold on tight,” Father called back to her. “We’re going to have to–”
Their horse went down just as he said it, but the two of them did not go down with it. Goodweather clung to her father, terrified, as they rose into the air and continued onward. Father’s axe, still strapped to his back as Malkon’s had been, remained stuck between their bodies, hard and painful against Goodweather’s chest.
“Can you pull that out?” he asked her. “I’m going to need it.”
She couldn’t; she could barely stay on his back as he dodged whipping vines and sweeping branches, assaulting them from seemingly all directions.
What if he dropped her? She chanced a look below and found half of Father’s men already gone, swallowed by the vegetation.
&nb
sp; Uncle Malkon was at the front of the pack, swinging his axe one-handed at any thornbush or snake-vine that got in his path. She gasped when his horse got entangled at the legs and fell, but he leapt from its back and kept running, dodging roots and vines as he went. Goodweather had never seen him move so quickly.
Father suddenly plunged downward, and Goodweather screamed, but he had only been dodging another attack from the Yarek. It assaulted the two of them with branches swooshing through the air and vines whipping toward them from below.
“You’ve got to get that axe for me,” he panted. “I’m holding your legs – you won’t fall. Just get me that axe.”
It was terrifying, but she did as he said, leaning back far enough to grip the haft and lift it out of its bindings. As soon as she had her arms around his shoulders again he let go of her legs and took the weapon, and it was all Goodweather could do to keep from accidentally strangling him.
She could hear her uncle on the ground, shouting a prayer as he ran onward. “You who defeated the Yarek of old…”
He reached the trunk and began chopping at it furiously, praying as he struck it over and over again. The axe looked so puny compared to the trunk, like trying to knock down a house with a reed. Would God Most High come to his aid as he had suggested? He was certainly giving this his whole effort.
The vines snuck up on him from behind. They caught him around the chest just as he struck another blow against the trunk and yanked him back into the thicket with his axe still stuck in the Yarek. Goodweather cried out, but he was already gone.
Her voice was not the only one screaming, though.
Father heard it too. He spun in the air to see who had made the noise, and there was Vella, floating like the two of them in the air, crying for her lost brother.