by Holly Lisle
Faia, sitting on a flat, cold stone, jumped; Delmuirie turned and snarled something about moving when he was good and ready; and Bytoris threw a tiny scrap of smoked fish on the ground in disgust and stalked off.
Only Geos remained outwardly unmoved. He ate the rest of his dried meat without saying anything, though the look he gave Gyels when the hunter turned away was murderous.
Gyels glanced back at Geos in time to catch the look, and his expression became thoughtful. He said nothing about it, though. Instead, he turned back to Faia. “You want to capture Thirk, don’t you?”
“We’re never going to find him,” Faia said. She pressed her hands to her face and sagged forward. “This is hopeless and it’s horrible. If he does something that is going to destroy the world, I suppose he is just going to have to do it.”
“You want to turn back?” Gyels smiled—but his smile was cold and mocking. “Silly creature, we’re almost to Bonton—surely you realize that’s where he’s been leading us.”
“Leading us?” Bytoris snarled. “He’s been wandering in circles in the mountains for gods only know how long. We’ve been following—but only a fool would say he’s been leading.”
Faia nodded agreement.
They loaded up in unhappy silence and started off. Gyels’s promise that they were near civilization meant nothing to Faia, for she couldn’t bring herself to believe it. She was doomed to wander in darkness until she died. Doomed to the wilderness, and the cold, and unending night.
She felt that way for nearly an hour—and then the Tide Mother rose from behind the mountains, and the sky began to pale and grow pink. Faia saw the sliver of the sun peeking out from behind the Tide Mother’s vast bulk. She and the Bontonards and Delmuirie stopped right where they were, on a shale-covered downslope, and hugged each other and wept. Daylight! It became possible to hope for a nearby city, for more food, for their success in catching Thirk and rescuing the chalice—for anything, with the Month of Ghosts truly past.
Only Gyels didn’t celebrate. He glanced in the direction of the sun, and frowned, and moved on. When they stopped at a spring to fill their waterskins, Faia asked him why he hadn’t been as happy as the rest of them about the return of daylight.
“Night is the time of the hunter,” he told her shortly.
Delmuirie waited until Gyels was well in the lead again, then whispered to Faia, “I would think he’d be thrilled. It has to have been near-impossible to track in darkness, and at the speed he’s been going. Daylight could only make it easier.”
“Well, at least in daylight, I’ll be able to see some of the signs he’s been following,” Geos said. “I’ve never been a great tracker, but I’ve read a lot about it.”
“You wonder how he’s been doing it?” Bytoris asked.
Geos said, “The question crossed my mind.”
Faia had wondered at Gyels’s abilities in tracking, too—but he had successfully hunted down game animals in the darkness, and had gotten them safely through passes she would never have found, in spite of having grown up in mountain country. He was more than competent—and she had come to trust his ability as much as she’d come to dislike him personally.
She had put concern about Gyels out of her thoughts, because she had been focused, instead, on the larger worry—Thirk and what he would choose to make of the world if he had the power of all magic in his hands. She had not mentioned to Bytoris, Geos, or Delmuirie her early suspicion that Gyels was Witte, disguised in a new form. In light of Gyels’s exemplary behavior, she had been glad she’d kept such silly thoughts to herself. But with Geos’s question fresh in her mind, she was forced to reconsider Gyels. He had not joined in the storytelling with his fellow travelers. He had told nothing about himself. He kept to himself and kept his own counsel, and if he pursued her affection with single-minded intensity, or the escaping Thirk with the same sort of resolve, he had never given anyone a sign of the motives that drove him.
It was something else to worry about.
Late that day, they reached a river that crashed through the valley in front of them, swollen with snowmelt. The reappearance of the sun was bringing the world quickly back to the summer it had abandoned for the Month of Ghosts. The air grew steadily warmer, especially as they worked their way down to the lower altitudes.
“Wait or traverse now?” Bytoris shouted over the roar of the water.
Gyels stood studying the raging whitewater. He yelled back, “Cross now. Tomorrow will only be hotter, and the day after that hotter still. The current will grow steadily worse if we wait.”
The river was not very wide, but it was fast. Slippery boulders, worn round by ages of rushing water, jutted out like balls thrown by a giant. Gyels found a few boulders close enough together that someone strong and graceful could jump from one to the other—and he tied a rope tightly around his waist and did just that.
He made it look so easy—but Faia could see that the surfaces of the rocks were slippery—some were covered with moss, and all were wet.
She and Bytoris and Geos and Edrouss Delmuirie made quick counsel, and after looking at those mossy, slick rocks, decided to pass their belongings over the rope first, so that their burdens would not unbalance them as they crossed.
Delmuirie and Bytoris went down to stand on the riverbank and pass their packs across. Geos stood beside her, well back from the banks, holding his pack in one hand, waiting.
“You’re quite beautiful in firelight,” he leaned over and told her. “I have all this while admired the fineness of your face and the grace of your walk. Still, this is the first time I’ve really seen you in daylight, and now I see that you are even more beautiful in the light of the sun.”
He rested a hand on her arm and said,
“The sweetest touch is woman’s touch
Nor can mind grasp her loveliness.
There is no winter ‘neath her gaze,
Nor sorrow in her soft embrace.”
“Terrfaire?” she asked.
“No! Me. I just made it up.”
Faia laughed, delighted at the scene—a charming man creating poetry for her in the fierce mountains near a raging river. “I like it,” she told him.
He took a deep breath, and blushed bright red as he started to say something.
“Geos!” Gyels shouted from across the river. His voice, Faia noted, carried remarkably well. “I’m ready for your things now!”
Faia grinned at Geos and put a finger to her lips. She told him, “Tell me later.”
Geos’s pack went across without difficulty, as did Faia’s.
With the packs across the river, the people had to cross. Faia was the lightest of all of them—she went first because the men decided Gyels would be able to pull her out of the river on his own should she slip from a rock and fall in.
She made a loop in the center of the rope, knotted it, stepped into the cinch she’d formed, and began picking her way across the wet boulders. Gyels held the rope on one end, while Delmuirie and Geos anchored her on the other. They gave her plenty of slack, so she ended up feeling very safe. The crossing wasn’t as difficult as she’d expected, either—although the rocks were slick, she had a good sense of balance. The only really frightening part of the procedure was seeing that roaring water rushing past, slipping by under her feet as she jumped from rock to rock; that gave her a dizzy feeling, and she had to make an effort not to look at it at all.
“Careful, girl!” Delmuirie shouted. Geos shouted similar encouragements.
Then she was across; she landed on the solid ground of the far bank, laughing and exhilarated. “My mother always used to say I was half goat,” she told Gyels.
He nodded politely as she untied the rope from around her waist, but did not smile. The men on the other side reeled the rope back. Faia looked from them to him; the look in Gyels’s eyes as he studied the three men still waiting across the river was disquieting.
Faia shivered, realizing she was completely alone with him for the first tim
e—and abruptly she wished she weren’t.
Bytoris, though, didn’t waste time. He came next, moving as easily as Faia had. Delmuirie stopped for a moment before he came across. He had a quick conversation with Geos, and Faia saw Delmuirie demonstrating the tying of the knot he was using to the other man. Then Edrouss Delmuirie crossed. He slipped once, and got his foot wet, but Geos on one side and Gyels and Bytoris on the other pulled the rope taut in an instant, and that supported him while he got his feet back under him and somewhat unsteadily completed the crossing. Geos didn’t worry about pulling the rope back—he had no one to anchor him on that side of the river. But he waved and grinned, and wrapped the end of rope around his own waist. He tied the knot and jumped up onto the first rock.
He was as agile as she had been, Faia thought. She was surprised to see a man of his size move with such grace. He frowned, his concentration evident on his face, and jumped to the next rock—again, it was a lovely jump. He looked up, and directed his smile straight to Faia. She smiled back.
He jumped to the next boulder, still watching her—and he missed.
Time seemed to her to slow down. Faia tightened her grip on the rope, and felt the others do the same. Geos bobbed up once, screamed something, and went under. The current and the rope acted together to drag him below the surface of the water. He struggled up for air. Faia dug her heels against the rocky ground, fighting for purchase; the rope bit deeply into her palms, and the muscles of her thighs and along the backs of her arms began to burn.
“Harder!” Bytoris shouted.
The rest were shouting to Geos, screaming, “Swim! Swim!” and pulling for all they were worth. They made headway. He was more than halfway across the river, out of danger from most of the boulders that could pulverize him.
He burst to the surface again, arms flailing, spitting water, gasping for air—
And the rope around his waist unknotted, and the four would-be rescuers on the shore crashed backwards and landed on the ground in a tangled heap.
With a scream of anguish and dismay, Geos vanished beneath the torrents of icy water.
Faia scrambled to her feet and began running along the riverbank, trying to catch up to the vanishing pale form as the water swept him away. She heard other running feet behind her. The little level space where they were crossing soon gave way to another steep cliff—and the river to a steep, many-layered falls. She saw Geos go over the edge; saw his body crash against boulder after boulder, arms and legs splayed and flopping as he tumbled through the air; she saw him wash into the back eddy of a pool a hundred feet below—then his limp body washed out of the pool in the current and floated, facedown, into the deep channel of the river.
She stared after him until he vanished from her sight.
Then she turned away, and fought back tears.
If he hadn’t been looking at me, he wouldn’t have fallen in, she thought. He’d still be alive.
“Should we see if we can retrieve his body?” Delmuirie asked.
Bytoris looked grim.
At last he said, “There is no need. His body will go back to the All-Mother this way as much as if we found him and built a cairn over him.”
He looked down over the cliff, watching the water crashing over its course. He began to recite, his voice lifted over the noise of the falls:
“The sun is gone from out the sky,
And will not rise; the sun is dead.
Laughter bury, bathe in tears.
Beloved Brodatio breathes no more.”
Terrfaire again, Faia thought. With those two, it was always Terrfaire.
He was silent for a moment, then he added,
“… exists not
His equal. Ne’er man was born,
Who, truer friend, did walk these streets,
Or set his hand to any task.
I owe my life; I greatly owe.”
Faia looked down at the falls. She had no lovely words for her thoughts—nothing poetic came to mind as she considered Geos. She hadn’t known him well, but she’d liked him. She said, “He made up a poem for me,” and felt quick, hot tears burn at the corners of her eyes. There was nothing else she could think to say.
She walked away, avoiding looking at the three surviving men. She tried to remember the poem he’d created for her, but all she could think of was the rope around Geos’s waist, and Edrouss Delmuirie showing him how to tie the knot.
Chapter 19
THE sun set with a flourish that splashed colors across the sky and set to gleaming something golden on a far distant peak.
Bytoris, walking just ahead of Faia, stopped and stared. He pointed to the gleam.
Faia nodded. “I see it.”
“That’s the Temple of Horse-Dancers. It’s just on the other side of the Wen Tribes Treaty Line, and about a day’s hard walk from Bonton.”
“We really are almost to the city, then?”
It should have been a moment of triumph. They stood, looking at the faraway point, and Faia felt no elation; she felt only weariness. One of their number was dead, Thirk was still ahead, her nerves insisted that something lurked behind, still watching, and now she discovered that she didn’t trust any of the men with whom she traveled. Bytoris watched Delmuirie with eyes that grew increasingly more hate-filled—and if he was her blood kin, he was blood kin she didn’t know; she had no idea if he would consider murdering Delmuirie, whom he blamed for Geos’s death. Faia could not deny, either, that Delmuirie might have been responsible, though she could not think of a possible reason why he might have wanted Geos to die. She could not help but wonder that a knot tied in a wet rope would untie itself, when such knots tended, in her experience, to become so tight almost nothing could free them. Then there was Gyels, who made Faia’s heart race every time she looked at him even though she didn’t like him.
As true night fell for the first time in a month, the quartet set up camp beneath a few thin conifers on a grass-covered slope at the base of the next mountain they would have to pass. They hung their packs in the trees when they were done and pitched their tarps singly around an outdoor fire; they seemed to have come to silent agreement that they needed as much space away from each other as they could get. Faia studied the way they all watched each other warily as they ate. The tension around their little campfire became almost unbearable. And when the food was gone, they watched each other some more, but pretended not to, wrapped in their bedrolls and unwilling to sleep in spite of their exhaustion.
Bytoris sharpened his knife, spitting from time to time on the blade and working the edge carefully at an angle along the bit of rock he’d found. He held the knife up, studied its edge by firelight, snorted, and went back to his methodical scrape, scrape, scrape.
Gyels got up and walked away from the camp. Faia listened as he paced through the darkness, beyond the range where she could hear his footfalls, then, not too much later, picked up his heavy steps as he returned. He settled back onto the deadwood seat he’d vacated and sat glaring at the fire, until he decided instead to glower at Bytoris and Edrouss. His eyes narrowed and his lips thinned. When at last he stared at Faia, his eyes were full of longing and anger. She lifted her chin and looked at him defiantly. He frowned and got up—and walked out again.
Edrouss Delmuirie waited until Gyels’s footsteps had faded into the distance the second time. Then he huffed out a quick breath and said, “I know you both think I had something to do with Geos’s death—”
Bytoris cut him off. “No one accused you of anything.”
“No one had to accuse me. I am not stupid. I saw the knot untie, just as you did, and saw the rope slip off from around his chest, and I was the one who showed him how to tie the damned rope.” Delmuirie sighed heavily. “You have to believe me. I showed him the best, strongest, easiest knot I knew—he said he was a city boy, and did not know knotwork well.”
“You could have tied it for him,” Bytoris said. “Sent him over before you.”
“I suggested that, but he
wanted to go last.”
Bytoris looked momentarily startled. “He did?” he blurted—and then his countenance became grim again, and he said, “Well, yes, you can say that, can’t you?” He went back to sharpening his knife.
Faia thought Edrouss Delmuirie sounded sincere. She didn’t particularly want to believe him—there was a part of her that still blamed him for the Barrier, and for his delusions of godhood while in the emeshest, and it would have fit her preferred picture of the man to think he’d also done something that had caused Geos’s death. In spite of herself, however, and the grudge she bore against him, she felt he was telling the truth. “Geos tied the knot himself,” Faia said at last. “If Edrouss had tied it, and it had come undone, it would have been easier to believe his death wasn’t an accident.”
“So?” Bytoris raised an eyebrow. “You think this man did nothing wrong?”
Faia took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I think Geos’s death was an accident.”
Bytoris nodded stiffly and slipped his knife into the sheath at his waist. “You are entitled to your opinion.” He rose and walked to his tarp, and before he ducked inside, made a show of wrapping one hand around the knife hilt. “I hope you and your opinions sleep well.”
She and her opinions dreamed ugly dreams, of drowned men and waterfalls and something that watched, waiting. Once, she woke from a sound sleep to hear someone out in the packs, but when she looked out, she saw nothing.