Wendra nodded. She was done with laments.
“And one more thing besides,” Solaena added. “Those songs don’t always need to be brayed out. We do it for crowds because they’re noisy.” She looked around the broad plain. “But what I’m sharing with you here can come with the same power and meaning in a lullaby. If you doubt it, listen to a mother singing the hope of her heart for a child born into a dangerous world.”
She stared back at the woman, whose words struck Wendra. Her own recent melodies were, in fact, lullabies for a child that would never hear them. But she thought she might still put them away. And sing louder this bottom of her pain.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Partings
Some say the Quiet’s only real power is to show you what you hate most about yourself. But those are sophists who haven’t seen the working end of a Bar’dyn flail.
—Interview taken by a League recorder of a footman in the forward waypoint of Northwatch
Countless points of light glinted as sun reflected off the dew along the plain. The horses stood nearby, shiftless. Tahn was closest to the cliff’s edge, where he could see the cloud like a broad grey sea surrounding the plateau.
Vendanj had been quietly talking to Jamis for several moments. He turned toward them. “The North Face of the High Plains is a difficult descent under the best of conditions.… We have many leagues to cross before reaching the Scar. Save your strength because we’ll be moving fast.”
With that, the Sheason motioned them to mount.
“Any idea why we need this Grant fellow’s help, Braethen?” Sutter asked. “He sounds like a lot of fun, for sure. But you know, details would be great.”
Braethen shook his head. “Don’t know. Sounds like he knows his way around an argument. And he was Emerit. Training for that takes more years than you’ve been alive.”
Sutter rolled his eyes.
Before they got under way, Jamis wheeled to face them. “It’s been my privilege to have you here.” He nodded to Vendanj, who nodded in return. Clearly a signal. “Sutter, will you come forward?”
Sutter put a hand to his chest in question. Jamis waited while Nails rode forward, casting a skeptical look back at Tahn.
The man retrieved his longblade and flipped it into the air, catching it by the edge of its shaft. “Last night, Tylan made a present to you of our hand.”
Sutter looked at the glove he still wore.
“Now I make a present to you of our arm.” Jamis extended the sword to Sutter. “Faced with a challenge to fight, you spoke the truth of the First Promise. We haven’t heard that from a lowlander in a long while.”
Sutter didn’t reach for the blade, appearing confused.
Jamis sidled closer. “Please take it,” he said in a respectful tone. “It’s as much a blessing to give as it is to receive.”
Jamis held the blade out so that Sutter would have to reach out to claim it. Hesitantly extending his arm, Sutter grasped the blade by its hilt. Before letting go, Jamis maneuvered the blade so that the point pierced the tip of his own middle finger. He kept it there as Sutter continued to hold the blade, connecting the two men in a precarious position.
The sword had to be heavy, and Sutter’s arm soon began to tremble. Jamis didn’t remove his finger, but pressed more firmly to steady Sutter’s hold. As he did, blood welled up over the tip of his finger and dripped to the plain below. For several moments Jamis helped Sutter hold aloft the blade. Sutter’s arm began to shake more violently, and he started to sweat. When Tahn thought his friend was about to drop the weapon, Jamis pulled back his hand, and the sword swooped down harmlessly.
“Thank you,” Jamis said, and bowed his head.
Sutter opened his mouth to speak, but found no words. He managed to bow as well. Vendanj watched closely, seeming pleased. Admiration shone in Mira’s eyes, too.
Jamis turned to Vendanj. “If there are changes…”
“Thank you,” Vendanj replied. Then he turned to the others. “Remember that we’ve been pursued by a Quietgiven tracker. It can feel the connection of Forda I’Forza in the land and air—your Forda I’Forza.” He pointed at each of them. “It’s how it tracks. Now that it knows of us, we won’t be free of it until it lies dead.”
The Sheason turned to start down the path.
At the cliff’s edge, they each saw the dense mist enshrouding the lowlands.
“Lovely,” Sutter said.
The path wound more narrowly than the one they’d ascended on the south side of the High Plain. Switching back on itself at sharp angles, the route became more circuitous, dropping hundreds of strides in a short distance. Before long, they dismounted and walked the horses down.
Tahn watched his feet, but found it difficult to look away from the roiling mists below. The mists bore the look of a storm cloud, charcoal and pregnant with thunder and sleet, except they moved in silence, as if patient.
Vendanj stopped several strides above the fogs. Tahn looked out across the tops of the clouds, feeling like he stood at the shore of a vast dark sea. He kicked a rock from the edge of the path. It tumbled downward, and Tahn jumped when a number of tendrils rose like tongues and licked at the rock as it disappeared into its folds.
“Empty your minds,” Vendanj said. “Find a single, pleasant thought and fix upon it.” He stopped and looked away at the menacing bank of dark clouds. “It is Je’holta. The caress of the Male’Siriptus. Be focused on whatever brings you comfort. Anything else will tear at your reason. Je’holta will inspire panic and madness by exaggerating your own fears. Mira, tie the horses together in a line. Slipknots, so we can get them free quickly. Braethen, you’ll lead the animals; they’ll be unaffected by the mists. Each of you will hold the hands of those next to you. The mists don’t have the power to separate you.”
Sutter shook his head and muttered, “Here we go, come Quiet or chorus.”
While they waited for Mira to secure the horses, Tahn noted Vendanj. The Sheason looked tired. His cheeks sunken, his eyes rimmed with dark circles. Like one who hadn’t slept. It was all his rendering of the Will. They’d not had time to really rest since leaving the Hollows. And now they were dropping into a Quiet cloud.
Mira finished linking the horses, and Vendanj took her hand, each of the others joining in turn. Together they walked into the darkness.
The mists folded around them, thin streamers reaching out to wrap them and draw them in. The sun became a pale disk in the sky. The damp and cold instantly chilled Tahn’s skin. The mist touched his cheeks and fingers like icy velvet. Mira’s hand firmly gripped Tahn’s own, while Wendra’s grasp tightened painfully on his other. Vendanj led them slowly, peering into the depths around them.
Tahn could see Penit on the other side of Wendra. But Sutter blurred to shadow. And Braethen appeared as nothing more than a figure that might have been mists shifting and shaping themselves. The hoofbeats of the horses came as muted, dull clops. The horses themselves completely lost to sight.
Noises echoed in the depths of the dark cloud, faint sounds that Tahn felt more than heard—echoes like cries or laments, or death-side prayer offerings. Desperation began to seize him, manic and wild. He fought an almost irresistible need to turn and race up from the dark cellar, though he’d seen nothing. He’d go mad if he stayed long in these velvet folds.
The shadows deepened as they descended the North Face. Soon, the sun disappeared completely. Charcoal-hued light encircled them, and Tahn began to feel like part of the mist itself.
The Sheason didn’t waver or slow—their progress cautious but steady. Mira constantly searched the fogs, seeming uncomfortable without a free hand to hold a sword.
Gradually, pressure built, constricting Tahn’s chest and making it difficult to breathe. The mists plumed in successive shadows, pushing in on them as soft as cottonseed, but as oppressive and suffocating as a dozen wet blankets.
Tahn gasped, drawing in gulps of the dark mist. From the blackness, he heard others coughing and fig
hting for breath. Suddenly, a wave of warmth coursed through him, entering from Mira’s hand and passing to Wendra in an instant. His lungs expanded, and he breathed more easily. The Sheason had sent something through them, from hand to hand. The coughing stopped.
Vendanj pressed forward.
Tahn had no idea how long they’d been in the mists. His hands cramped from clutching Mira’s and Wendra’s fingers. His eyes ached from the strain of trying to peer through the clouds that enveloped them. Finally, the path leveled out. They had returned to the lowlands.
In moments they were encircled by the mists on every side. Tahn lost all orientation.
The languid calls from deep in the mists grew louder, more urgent. Tahn thought he heard voices calling his name. Then again. The words were shapeless and vague and sounded as though uttered from lips too pained to form them completely. Finally, the mists fell utterly quiet and calm.
Then distantly, a sound like tree roots pulling free from the ground rose on the mist. Deep, thunderous tones, like the splitting of bedrock, resounded all about them.
“What is it?” Sutter asked.
“Silence,” Vendanj ordered. Under his breath the Sheason added, “Je’holta’s gotten stronger.”
The sounds grew louder, accompanied by wretched cries in a cacophonous din. The chorus was somehow visible in the mists around them. It began to swirl in tight, angry eddies. Through the dim light, Tahn saw forms darting at the edges of his vision, moving in every direction and vanishing as quickly as they came.
“Do you see them?” Sutter called out, his voice desperate.
“Quickly!” Vendanj commanded.
The Sheason pulled them forward into a jog. Something like saplings whipped at their feet, the mists swirling in a frenzy as they rushed blindly ahead.
“Hold on!” Vendanj called back. But his words scarcely reached Tahn over the sibilant rush of the wind and the dark song of rending earth and tortured cries.
Then came the beat of a drum, struck only once, but with a sound so deep and resonant that some god might have struck the very land they rushed to escape. The air throbbed with the beat, which echoed out and back from the North Face. The pulse came at them from above and below, like a quake disrupting the fabric of things. The Sheason abruptly stopped. Again everything was still. Tahn could see mist frozen in the air before his face, unmoving.
Then the mist began to take form.
The darkness swirled in front of him, coalescing into an image of … himself. The disembodied mask mouthed words. Its eyeless sockets looked nowhere, but also inside Tahn. Then its features were gone, and the face hung before him like a canvas to be written upon. Tahn averted his eyes, turning to Wendra for reassurance.
Before he could find her eyes, a scream erupted in the mist. Penit’s high, shrill voice pierced the cloud banks. The boy pulled his hands free and raced into the dark fog. Without hesitation, Wendra took off after him.
“No!” Vendanj commanded.
Wendra didn’t listen.
“Find her,” the Sheason said to Mira.
The Far jumped into the roiling clouds and was gone.
A flurry of movement exploded in front of Tahn, as the misty face before him found its own voice. “Draw and release as you choose, dead man.” The words came without inflection.
In his mind, Tahn suddenly saw sunrise after sunrise, but the sun was moving backward, retracing its arc back into the east, time and time again. It was as though a thousand days were being taken back, and each time the sky became blacker, more blurred. He saw a desert wasteland, where children walked on dry ground in endless loops. He saw crags and dried roots, and himself standing at the mouth of a stone canyon, tearing at its walls with his bare fingers. He saw a young girl falling into the canyon. Burning pages floated in the wind, becoming cinders and sparks that winked out against a violet sky. He saw himself speaking, but the toneless words lived only in his mind. He saw broken swords lying like kindling. And bodies. So many bodies. Under a double moon. He saw a great white mountain thrumming and quaking. Then he saw the face of a man, the same face that twisted and writhed in the mists before him. And the face was his own. But somehow different this time. Tahn screamed.
“Don’t betray yourselves!” Vendanj yelled.
But it was too late.
Tahn bolted from the line to escape the image. He rushed through the mists, branches whipping, black clouds licking at him as he raced aimlessly. He could hear Sutter chasing after him. Holding his arms over his face, he thrashed through the foliage and undergrowth. He stumbled and went down hard, smashing his leg against a rock. He clambered back to his feet and rushed on, unsure which direction to go, only trying to escape the face.
“You can’t outrun the consequence of another’s choice.” The words resonated in the mists around him, throaty and hushed. “Or your own…”
Tahn screamed again and pushed his pace. The mists grabbed at him. He ran, careening off trees and falling over boles. Images became stronger and more searing.
Finally, the darkness began to break. The charcoal light softened to grey, and soon Tahn could see the faded disk of the sun through the mists. He lost his footing again, but scrambled on hands and knees toward the light, the pull of the cloud strong in his mind. But he began to break free. A rushing scream of failure grew behind him, and with a cacophony of rushing noise, he leapt from the mists into the full light of day. And collapsed.
Distantly he heard Vendanj call: “To Recityv!”
Gasping, Tahn touched his head and pulled away bloody fingers. The world turned and his eyes filled with blackness.
* * *
Wendra chased after Penit. Dark grey clouds swirled and thickened, obscuring her sight. She crouched as she ran, and could just make out his feet as he sprinted through the mists. The boy dodged in and out of low alders and lunged through tight stands of bottlebrush. Images and forms moved maddeningly at the edges of her vision. Masses of dark fog leapt, tendrils trying to wrap her arms. They lacked the substance to hold her, but their touch filled her mind with thoughts of failure, of never catching Penit, of losing him as she had lost her own child.
“Penit, wait, it’s me!”
The rush of wind and distant anguished voices rose and swallowed her pleas, their cries indistinguishable from her own. Penit pushed on at a manic pace. Then from the left two huge hulking shapes materialized out of the mists. They weren’t like the other shapes constantly rising and dissipating in the fogs around her.
These were Bar’dyn.
The first dove, launching its huge body in a powerful arc to intercept her. She jumped forward to avoid the attack. The Bar’dyn crashed into the trees behind her and rolled to its feet. The second closed in fast.
The mists thinned to a lighter shade of grey. She could see the boy now. “Run, Penit!”
He didn’t turn, pushing at breakneck pace through the mists. She was gaining on him, but the Bar’dyn was now only two strides behind her. It stretched a massive arm toward her. The heavy footfalls stopped, and she turned in time to see the Bar’dyn diving at her legs. She tried to push herself faster, but she had little left. The Bar’dyn’s large hand clipped her hip and ankle and sent her tumbling into the grass and brush. It landed with a heavy thud, but quickly regained its feet and bore down on her.
She rolled over, pulling a small knife from her belt. She’d never fend it off with this!
A moment later, the Bar’dyn’s back arched. Its broad features pinched, the mists churning as though themselves wounded.
The Bar’dyn fell, and there was Mira standing close behind, a blade in each hand. She whirled, setting her feet as the second Bar’dyn emerged from the mists at a frightening pace.
Mira lunged so quickly the fogs appeared to pass through her rather than around her. In a crosswise motion, she pulled her blades through the Bar’dyn’s neck. Her swords scarcely pierced its thick skin. She backed away as the Bar’dyn drew a pair of axes and started for her.
; “Go!” Mira yelled. “Find the boy! We’ll look for you beyond the mist. But you know our destination, if we don’t find you.”
The Bar’dyn lunged forward, aiming with one ax at the crown of Mira’s head. She easily sidestepped the blow and brought her right sword down on the Bar’dyn’s shoulder. It let out only a sigh of pain. A moment later, the sound of many feet were pounding through the mists toward them.
Wendra didn’t want to leave Mira to fight alone, but she’d be little help with her knife. She stood, wincing from the gash in her ankle, and hobbled as quickly as she could in the direction she’d seen Penit go.
She heard a clash of steel, muted by the mists behind her. She pushed on. The sound of battle faded and the mists receded until the sun penetrated the darkness. Wendra caught sight of several broken stems and followed them. Her entire leg began to throb, and she slowed as the pain washed over her in nauseating waves.
She limped ahead, the mists growing lighter. She could see several strides ahead of her now. A few limping steps further, and she saw Penit, crouched near the base of a large elm, shivering. She fell to her knees beside him. His hair and clothes were drenched with sweat. He clung to the tree like a child holding his mother’s leg.
“It’s all right, Penit. I’m here.”
The boy didn’t respond, didn’t even look at Wendra. He trembled more violently, spittle falling from his lips. She removed her cloak and wrapped it around him. Distantly, the sound of footsteps thrashing through the undergrowth cut through the thinner fog.
“We have to go,” Wendra whispered, trying to help Penit to his feet.
The boy resisted, his small arms bulging with the effort to remain rooted to the spot.
“Please, Penit, trust me,” Wendra pleaded. She knelt again, coming face-to-face with him. “I will protect you.” As she spoke the words, she silently wondered how she’d do such a thing. I wasn’t even able to protect my own child. But in that moment, she vowed she would do so, or die trying.
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