by Kaden, John
Jack sighs a heavy breath and shakes his head. “I don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Maybe we should stay with them for a while.”
“They can’t protect us forever. I don’t want to cause them more trouble.”
Lia nods and looks at the entangled pile of sleeping bodies nestled under the sloping thatchwork.
“We’ll go before sunrise,” says Jack. “Try to get ahead of them.”
They settle into the pile themselves, hoping to get some sleep before they strike out again. The rain abates for the rest of the night and the woods are quiet, save for the occasional whispering of the spearmen walking their slow circuit around the camp. In the lonesome hours of early morning, Jack rises and gets his pack in order. Lia is sleeping so still and peaceful that he hates to wake her, but he leans down and taps her shoulder anyway.
“Let’s go,” he whispers.
“Hurrama… hmm…”
“Lia, wake up.”
“Uhn… oh… I’m awake.”
She unknots herself from the slumbering hive and takes dizzy, loping steps across the mud to help Jack finish saddling Balazir. Stray droplets of accumulated rainwater from the canopy drip all around and one catches Lia on the back of her neck and sends a shiver down the soft indentation of her spine.
There are no stars in the sky and the waxing moon is as faint as a sandworn etching. Sajiress walks the night shift, his feet looking like they wear shoes of mud. He breaks away when he sees the young strangers stirring in the camp and goes to see them off, taking up a bundle of provisions he’s laid for them—some food, an assortment of arrows, a fur shawl, and some hide straps to bandage their bites and scratches.
“Thank you,” they say, accepting the goods. Jack fishes out one of his knives, the kitchen knife that Lia swiped, and offers it as a gift—they have nothing else to give.
“Tanaa.” Sajiress rubs his thumb along the blade. “Lah tevra ota granlan dar’mont. Tah adanna serchess, en vei d’sonna.” He bends to the ground and draws out a jagged line, pointing off to the mountain as he does so.
Jack fishes around in the pack for their map and he unfolds it carefully and holds it before Sajiress. He points to the muddy contours drawn on the ground, then runs his finger along the matching topography on the map. Sajiress works it over with squinted eyes, then points to a fork between two rivers, just on the other side of the low ranges.
“Granlan,” he says. “Tevra diwaa?”
Jack smiles and shakes his head.
“Lah kine. E’caraan.” Sajiress repeats their names again, mostly to himself, and they manage some sort of awkward farewell. He turns and paces off to his patrol.
Jack unties Balazir then slips a muddy boot into the stirrup. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
He hoists her up and they scoot around for a moment, getting situated. Lia pulls the fur snug around her shoulders and kisses her little cosmic charm, and Jack hooks his bow onto the saddle and delivers just a touch of pressure with his heels and Balazir livens and rambles forward.
Halis slides the scope back into its pouch and creeps to the clearing off yonder where the horses are tied and his partner lay sleeping
“They’re moving. And they’ve got our horse.” His words are warbly and salivating through a half-mouth of teeth.
Cirune grumbles and rolls to his side and gets his good leg under him to stand on. He suffered his own crude operation last night—Halis digging hooked fingers into his thigh to pull out the stone fragments embedded therein. His face tightens with deep creases as he puts weight on it, and he takes a stiff and painful walk to his horse and rests against its heaving side.
“Could use a hand here.”
Halis glares back at Cirune, then throws his pack over his shoulder and goes over and shoves him up onto his saddle. He studies Cirune’s torn leg and the busted, skittish horses. They’ve no arrows and the mongrels are dead.
“Can you ride?”
“Yeah, think so,” Cirune says. “Let’s get this over quick.”
“The boy has arrows and a fast horse. There’ll be nothing quick about it.”
“What?”
“We’ll track them,” says Halis, keeping his scope at hand. “There’s better places they could’ve run. They’ve got somewhere in mind… and we’re going to find it out.”
Chapter Eleven
Arana Nezra the Second lies supine on the floor of his private terrace, arms and legs outstretched, staring listlessly at the billowing white mountains that pass above the joists of the wood beam awning. He has grown weary of watching the horizon for his searchers to return—no news arrives and day after day they do not appear.
He recalls dreamily the feelings of astral invincibility that his father instilled upon his young mind, and he reaches into his inner abyss and attempts again to conjure them, to call forth the powers he has been told since birth he possesses, and he cannot feel even a wisp of them. Prior to the intrusion five days ago he had thought that his very presence acted as deterrent enough, a stopgap against further violation, but he knows now that is not true, and he wonders what he is, far within, if he cannot make a weak man tell secrets merely by intentioning it, or control the fate of a people with the will of his own heart.
Keslin clambers unannounced up the terrace stairs, straining for breath as he reaches the top. He looks amusedly at Arana, flat on his back. There is a metal serving platter laid with pitchers of water and wine and Keslin pours a bit of each into his mug and falls back on the padded bench, looking contented.
“Anything?” Arana asks.
“Nothing yet. Give it time. He’ll talk.” Keslin swigs from his mug and throws his arm over the backrest and reclines his head like a leisure traveler who’s found the perfect spot.
“And if he doesn’t?” Arana sits up and faces him. “What if these two were just scouts clearing the way for a larger attack?”
“The thought has crossed my mind.”
“We’d be slaughtered!”
“I hardly think so.”
“They’ve… they’ve done something to me, Keslin.”
“Oh?”
“Worked some force over me… a curse.”
Keslin smiles. “What kind of curse, Arana?”
“My gift… they’ve ruined it.”
“This is why your powers have failed?”
“It must be.”
“And you’ve felt them previously… these powers?”
“I—I always thought they would come… I’ve been told my whole life…”
“You’ve protected us with your powers, with your gift from the Beyond, this is what you think?”
“Yes,” he says sharply. “Don’t you?”
Keslin sighs out a long exhalation and smoothes his hands along his thighs and rises. He comes around the low table to Arana and places a roughened hand on his shoulders. “You’re on in years, Arana. You’re not a child anymore. How have you gone all this time and not realized the truth about yourself?”
“What does that mean? What truth about myself?”
“You do not have powers, Arana. You are not a gift, not from the Beyond or anywhere else.”
“You lie.”
“I’m the only one who’s ever told you the truth.”
“My eyes, Keslin. You can’t explain my eyes.”
“The prophet that you’re so fascinated with, he called your eyes a fluke, I believe that’s how he put it. The trait was once common, he said.”
“He told you this? A fluke?”
“He did. A trait mostly gone, he said, but not entirely by the looks of it. Stronger traits overtook it. Just before he left us, he told me these things. But I think I knew it already.”
“Stronger traits?” Arana clasps his hand over his mouth and stinging tears well in the corners of his contentious blue eyes.
“It’s true. I’m sorry. You are a man, Arana. Nothing more.”
“No.”
“Then conjure magic. Possess
me with your mind control.”
“It can’t be,” Arana says. “My father—”
“Your father has done you wrong, I fear.”
“He loved me…”
“I’m not saying he didn’t. He loved you deeply, more than anything. And he didn’t lie—he believed. Until the day he died he believed, and so does your family. I think you know I’m right on this. I’m surprised you’re only now questioning yourself.”
“It’s a curse.”
Keslin places his hands on him and whispers softly and with great sincerity. “It’s not a curse. You do not have powers. But it’s going to be all right. There are other ways,” he says, a broad smile spreading across his craggy face. “We do not need magic. I know far more effective methods.”
Balazir’s brisk gait carries them southward, his sturdy hooves kicking up clods of mud as he trots through the soggy woodlands. Lia wraps her arms around Jack’s waist and the two of them pulse with the rhythm of the horse’s stride, checking constantly over their shoulders for any sign of their pursuers.
“That was lucky,” Lia says flatly.
“What?”
“Finding those people like that. They would’ve gotten us if we hadn’t found them.”
“I know.”
“What if it’s gone?”
“Huh?”
“Our luck. What if it’s gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jack, they’re still out there. And what if they send more?”
“Just keep watching.”
“I am… but there’s more out here than just them.”
“I know. Don’t let it get to you.”
“Okay, it’s just… we’ve got so far to go. Are you sure the map’s right?”
“It hasn’t been wrong yet.”
Lia takes it out and unrolls it. She furrows her brow and looks at the map, and then at the terrain. She doesn’t even know where they are, it all looks the same, and she worries that Jack is only guessing when he shows her their progress.
“Jack…”
“Yes?”
“If we don’t make it…”
“We’re going to be fine, Lia.”
He speaks it so sincerely that she wants to believe him, but she knows his subtle ways and she can hear the hint of uncertainty in his voice.
“I knew you’d come for me,” she says. Her breath tickles the back of his neck when she speaks.
“We should have left when they first stole us.”
“They would have killed us for sure. We were so small then, Jack.”
“I don’t like it that you had to go through any of that. It never should have happened, anyway. We should have… I don’t know… but we should have done something.”
“There was nothing you could have done. I thought they’d kill us the night we ran. I was almost sure we’d die, Jack, but I still wanted to go. We made it further than I ever thought we could, and if this is it…”
“Lia, it’s okay.”
“If these are the last days we’ll spend together… I’m okay with that, and you shouldn’t blame yourself if anything happens. I know how you are sometimes. I want to be here, and I wouldn’t ever give this up for anything.”
Jack feels one of her hot tears drop on the back of his shirt and soak through.
“Me either,” he says.
He guides them to a languid creek and Balazir dips his head and drinks. They fill their waterskin and set out rations from the food Sajiress gifted them. Lia pulls her oversized boots off and sits on a rock and soaks her sore feet in the cool water, and Jack makes a visor of his hand and looks back over the ground they’ve just covered.
“Where are you, Halis?”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” Even with a good horse, the two of them in this enormous landscape leaves a small and helpless feeling in the back of his mind, and between the reassurances he gives Lia he has to fight off his own growing sense of doom. “Let’s go. We can eat while we ride.”
Lia pets Balazir’s long face and kisses his cheek, then hooks her foot in the stirrup and swings herself up behind Jack and they surge forward.
The narrow cut on Balazir’s hindquarters has been drawing flies all day and he swats constantly at them with his tail. Lia covers the wound up as best she can with a scrap of cloth that refuses to stay put. As she fusses with it again, Balazir swishes his tail around and lashes her across the face, and she yelps and gives him a playful slap on his hind and he bursts into a gallop that catches Jack off guard.
“What are you doing back there?”
“Nothing.” She stifles a laugh, then jerks her head around to make sure nothing is following them, recalling harshly the last time they let their guard down. “How’s your chest?”
“Itchy. Your shoulder?”
“It’s okay.”
The sun finally manages to poke through the simmering gray mantle that stretches to the furthest horizons, and the yellow light shines down in distinct angled rays that spotlight the far off hills with patches of glowing brilliance. They emerge into an open meadow and Jack gives Balazir a sharp, quick heel-spur. Lia braces her arms tighter around his waist and they rumble across the rolling country with the damp wind buffeting against their faces.
“He’s fast.”
“He’s one of the best.”
They barrel south along the coast for most of the afternoon, watching the scenery glide by and feeling more thankful than ever that they aren’t hiking the distance on foot. Balazir is quick to respond to the lightest of touch and he runs more powerful than Jack could have hoped. Lia keeps vigil, and out of the corner of her eye, blurry in the distance, she sees a glint of something shiny. It flashes just for a moment, in a random beam of sunshine, and is gone before she’s even sure it was there at all.
“Jack…”
“Yeah?”
“I think I saw something.”
He slows and trots to the side. “Where?”
“Over there, on top of that hill.”
He squints and peers off. All looks peaceful and still, save for the darkening skies, which stir with the threat of more thunderstorms. “What did you see?”
“Something shiny, I don’t know.”
He surveys the entire ridge with slack eyes, then pulls Balazir to the left and sets him running again. Nature gives way to more man-made rubble and they meander through the relics of old homesteads and residential streets. Most are piles of compost, but some of the larger manors were poured in stone and still stand against the onslaught of years, gothic looking in the midst of thorny vines and lazily sagging boughs. The stone looks old, yet unwizened by fire and heat, and Jack and Lia are absorbed by some of the most intact sites they’ve ever happened upon.
“It almost looks pretty,” she says in wonderment.
Jack keeps quiet and looks into the darkened recesses and collapsed living rooms, leery of the abundance of hiding places the neighborhood affords. They round a bend and saunter down a main street, structures leaning on either side of them.
“People have been here,” he says, “recently…” He points off to a row of buildings where the brush and vines have been pulled clear, leaving behind a tarnished and veiny silhouette. Footpaths are worn down through the undergrowth and a few stone pits bear the mark of recent fire. “Don’t seem to be here now, though.”
In the center of a jumbled, overgrown roundabout stands a thickset stone building, official looking, with columns and a stately entrance that spills down into the verdant, once-groomed circular park that surrounds it. One entire facade, running the length of the building’s side, has been cleared of all vegetation and words have been painted crazily, with curlicues and flourishes and letters that stand as tall as a man. Time Gets Everything, it says.
“What is this?” Jack says, and ambles closer to investigate.
Lia’s hands seize around his midsection. “What if they’re still in here? What if they’re not friendly?”
“I think…
I think everyone is gone.”
He rides a slow circuit around the quaint and decaying municipal building, and they see everywhere the evidence of recent human handiwork. Clutter is cleared away and arranged in neat piles, abandoned ruins are shored up and fortified with scrap metal and hewn lumber, and in a secluded arbor in back there are the makings of a small garden. The ground was cleared and the earth turned, but the effort looks to have been forsaken, for already the weeds and bracken have begun their steady reclamation of the land.
Lia gasps. “Look.”
He sees it too and starts for his bow, then stops himself. Embedded before them in small mounds of stone are several upright poles, fastened with crosspieces that form makeshift arms, and the whole constructions are covered with tattered hides, with rotten bulbous heads fastened crooked on top.
“Do you think Sajiress did this?”
“I don’t think so,” says Jack. “It's in our words. Some group, though… wanderers, maybe.”
“I don’t like this,” she says, and moves closer.
They ride a wide path around the clan of cadaverous scarecrows and wind their way through the central district, past more hopelessly wasted residences and grassy side streets.
“Why would they all just leave?” he wonders aloud.
“Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they’re hiding… watching us.”
Jack looks at her apprehensively and quickens Balazir’s gait.
“I mean… a long time ago,” he says, “in the old days. This is all just falling apart, like everything else. It wasn’t burned, not recent, not ever, from the looks of it. It looks like all the people just left, went away, but why?”
“Olen said the sickness got everybody that didn’t burn. Maybe they all got sick and died.”
“Maybe.” It’s the likeliest explanation, but Jack still feels an odd pit in his stomach as they ride through the last of the ruins.
“It’s gone, though,” she says, “all the sickness.”
“Supposed to be.”
“If we’re alive today, that means it can’t kill us.”
“That’s what they say.”
“It must have been scary.”