“Madam, your speculations are ludicrous. Meylnara commands the creatures; we must go to her Lair at once!”
“Why would she take her, when she already had her and let her go?”
“Clearly she changed her mind. Perhaps she needs a reservoir for herself.”
“Think! If that were true, she would have kept her the first time. Bethniel told me Meylnara recognized what she was right away.” She took a deep breath and loosened her grip. “You just stopped me from doing something stupid. Let me stop you from the same. Let’s both stop and think, follow the Kragnashians’ trail, and see where it leads.”
* * *
“Did you find her?” Lillem pounced as Vic alighted outside her tent.
“Get your gear and meet me at the battle site, sergeant. I think the Kragnashians took her.”
He sprinted away and she hobbled inside. Ankle and head throbbed in an alternating drumbeat, and the baby had wedged himself against her bladder. Sighing, Vic sank onto the commode. “So much for staying off the foot,” she muttered.
“Madam,” Gustave panted from the doorway. “May I come in?”
“Wait outside while I change.” She yanked the laces loose and shed the remains of the silk robe, donned a loose tunic and trousers, pulled on a single boot, and collapsed into a chair—she’d rest while she could.
Calling Gustave in, she asked what he was doing with Nelchior.
“The commodore was arguing your case to him.”
“Did you run here?” His hair and shirt were plastered to his skin.
He slid a pack off his back and dropped it on the table. “First to my quarters, then here.”
“Why? What do you care about the princess?”
Pink flesh poked through the gap in his teeth. “I am still under Etien’s orders to assist you, and you will not regret my presence at your side. I speak Kragnashian.”
Her stomach growled, hunger mixed with the stirrings of Woern-borne queasiness. “Any food in that pack?”
His hand dove under the flap and tossed a pome to her. “As you please.”
Snatching it, she bit into the flesh. Sweet juices ran down her chin. “I suppose you’ll be useful. Let’s get to the moat.”
At the perimeter, the air was hot as a furnace and stinking of tar and burnt hay. Flames climbed up columns of smoke that spun away into the night, slowly consuming the carcasses dumped onto the molten earth. The deceased troopers lay in neat rows, enveloped in canvas and waiting to be interred in the morning.
“More funerals,” Thabean said, his boots striking the earth.
“I will find her, so you can stay for them. Gustave is here, and Lillem is coming.”
His lips twitched toward a sneer, then sank into a frown. “Madam, as Nelchior said, your sister is under my protection. Also, if you should not return, the Council may withdraw the reprieve you’ve been given. Finally, if your ankle troubles you, you may need more assistance than can be given by a seaman and a soldier who despise one another.”
Lillem strode up, wearing a pack and carrying a pike. “I will do my duty, sir, regardless of the company.”
Vic peered through the flames at the towering black silhouettes of the trees. A new wave of fear washed over her as she thought of Bethniel in the vast forest, in the dark, alone. “I’ll take Lillem over, if you can take Gustave, sir.”
They veered around the smoke columns and landed on the opposite side of the ford. Light globes bobbing behind the wizards, torches flaring in the hands of the soldier and seaman, they scattered along the forest edge, hunting for signs. After the battle, the Kragnashians had disappeared here and there along the line of trees, yet no trace lingered. As they moved deeper into the woods, they called to one another:
“There’s a riffling of the soil here—slight, but—no, it’s snealaern tracks.”
“A smear here, could be dew; it tastes . . . doesn’t taste like them; it’s sap.”
“There’s a break in the bracken . . .. It’s undisturbed on the other side.”
Thabean’s light globes stopped moving. Vic wound through the undergrowth and found him kneeling, head bowed, a hand pressed into freshly turned earth. Grunting, he straightened. “Any sign of them?”
“None.” She nodded at Dealn’s grave. “He was an admirable soldier and was always fair and kind to me.”
He chuckled. “He liked you; he thought you deserving of a place on the Council.”
Her cheeks warmed, and an unexpected tear slipped down her cheek. Swiping it away, she spotted a path diving into the forest. “Shrine.”
Thabean’s spine sprang erect. “That was not there.”
“Perhaps the Kragnashians made it as they retreated,” Gustave said as he and Lillem joined them.
Vic walked a few steps down a path swept clear of leaves and roots, clean as any trail made by Fembrosh. “The trees want us to go this way.”
“The Kia.” Lillem dropped to his knees, his gaze swinging from grave to path.
“A moment, madam!” Thabean backed away. “Do you mean to suggest this forest is enchanted?”
She blinked at him. “Enchanted? Aware, perhaps, like the Kiareinoll.”
“Kiareinoll Fembrosh is an abomination!” Thabean looked around wildly, as if seeing the forest for the first time. “We have been in the midst of . . .”
“The Kiareinoll is home to the old mothers, sir,” Lillem said. “You sang your brother to the trees today, and the forest is showing its gratitude.”
“Dealn was not sacrificed to trees!”
Gustave rolled his eyes, and Vic resisted the urge to do the same. “This is not the place or time to debate religion,” she said. “Bethniel is missing, and the only lead we have is this path.”
Cheeks flushing, Thabean nodded. A knot coiled in her belly, she started down the path, wary of the tension behind her, wondering if her foster sister was better off away from these squabbling men.
The trail turned east, away from Meylnara’s keep. Leagues passed as the route climbed steadily; boulder-strewn ravines sapped breath from lungs and strength from thighs and calves. Vic skimmed the ground until the pounding in her head drowned the throbbing in her ankle, then hobbled until the reverse had her using the Woern again. The path was rife with smears of Kragnashian blood, leg segments, filigreed wingscales, the swept look of the forest floor. Whether the forest laid the trail out so plainly to acknowledge Dealn’s burial or for other inscrutable reasons, she didn’t know or care, so long as it led them to Bethniel.
They rarely spoke, except to confer over signs. Gustave kept her fed with a steady supply of fruit and flatcakes, cheese and jerky. Lillem dashed forward and back to prove he could out-track the Blade. Thabean’s face creased into something old. Vic kept her attention on the path, wedging her thoughts into the narrow focus of the Blade on a mission, knowing if she let her mind wander into the morass of emotion and motivation around her, she’d be paralyzed.
It rained. The track descended, broken by tree roots and stones, a staircase for giants, slippery with mud. Resting her Woern and fearful of turning her ankle, Vic often slid forward on her arse, dangled her legs over the edge of a rock, and swung down, clinging to a root or limb. She let Gustave lift her down the very large steps, while Thabean and Lillem pushed ahead, the soldier anxious to outpace the wizard, the wizard eager to show he didn’t need the Woern to equal the soldier’s endurance.
“Men behave stupidly when a woman waits for them,” Gustave said, as the others argued over a fork in the path.
Gnawing on a hunk of cheese, Vic gave the pirate a sidelong glance. “Anyone waiting for you back home?”
His sneer melted. “Yes.” His chest rose and fell, and he bowed his head. “Yes.”
Sympathy washed over her disdain, and she clasped his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
His teeth glowed softly in the dim light, a faint whistle hissing through the gap. “How fares your ankle, madam?”
> Her foot had become a throbbing hunk of lead. Prenlin would give her an earful. “It’s still attached. Gentlemen,” she said loudly, “I vote for the left fork.”
In the last darkness before dawn, the trail abruptly ended at the edge of a cliff. Trembling with exhaustion, Vic eyed a stretch of moss as if it were a featherbed and gobbled down the dried pome Gustave handed her. Eyes sparkling, his lips played round the edge of a smile.
Thabean stared into the black chasm ahead of them, eyes hard. Clouds covered the stars, and they could see nothing, as if another wizard had created a black hole through space and time and bound it here. The trees rustled in the rain.
“Everyone,” Vic said, “put out your lights.” Her globes and Thabean’s popped out; torches flared and sizzled as they were snuffed into damp soil. She walked to the cliff’s edge and crouched, waiting for her night vision. Elesendar peeped above the forest behind them, rising between a hood of clouds and the land, the light lasting long enough to reveal a caldera, miles across, with a massive white dome in the center.
“Did you know that was here?” she asked.
“No,” Thabean muttered.
“And you,” she said to Gustave. “Did you know?”
The pirate chuckled softly, his voice oily in the dark. “The People are not one, madam. They never have been.”
“Is there a Device there?”
“I don’t know. Possibly.”
That prospect quickened her heart. If they could leave . . . but who knew what the consequences would be if she left without killing Meylnara? A few of the fictions preserved in the Logs speculated about time travel and history, whether one could change it, and whenever it was changed, the outcome was always dreadful and full of paradox. The baby shifted; she did not care to risk unraveling the thread of his destiny to escape her own. Gazing at the Kragnashian’s keep, Vic acknowledged her fate. Meylnara would die.
“Can we be sure this is where they took her?” Lillem asked.
“We must ask to find the answer,” Gustave said.
“Victoria and I will investigate,” Thabean said. “If she is there, we will bring her out and kill all who stand in our way.”
“No,” Vic replied. “Gustave speaks Kragnashian, and Lillem . . . is coming too.”
“We can proceed much quicker without them,” Thabean insisted. “Two foot soldiers will be a hindrance, not a help, in the battle ahead.”
She felt the wizard’s eyes on her, though she could not see his face in the dark. “I want to avoid a battle if we can. Lillem, you’re with me.” An arm around his waist, she rose into the air. “Enough scrambling; let’s fly down.”
Grumbling that it was almost dawn, Thabean took Gustave. “We could have her by now,” the wizard muttered.
They descended into the abyss, the rain tapering off as they settled onto stiff grass at the base of the caldera. Above, lavender diluted the darkness, revealing a grassy plain between them and the dome. Vic peered at the structure, hoping Beth was there, hoping she was safe. “They went to a lot of trouble to get her. They won’t have harmed her. The forest brought us here to talk to them, I think.”
“You think! You speak of enchantments and miracles—you, an Oreseeker!” Thabean jabbed his finger at Elesendar, peeping out of thinning clouds, its light even brighter in the dawn. “That is a satellite, madam, not a god. It has no more influence over us than this rock.” He kicked at a stone.
Air paling, the brush hugging the cliff’s edge emerged out of shadows. Vic glanced at Gustave, wondering who he’d left behind in their own time. Thabean wanted to rush ahead and rescue Bethniel, as she’d once rushed to save Ashel. And failed. A wave of sadness surged, and tears streamed to her chin. Thabean stared at her, nostrils flaring with every breath. She would not abandon Ashel, not again. “It doesn’t matter whether that wandering star is god or spacecraft. We were brought here, Thabean. I will get my sister back, but I don’t think a wizard’s attack is the way to do it.”
Still fuming, he paced the edge of the grass. It would be another hour before the sun crossed the cliff behind them, but already the sky blanched toward azure. “There is no way we can cross this expanse unseen. All chance of surprise is lost.”
“I know.” The grass ahead grew short, like the grass on the steppes and tundra of her homeland. “But I think they were expecting us anyway.”
“So let us go forth,” Thabean grumbled. Pirate and soldier three paces behind, they trudged across the grass, leaving footprints of crushed stems that slowly bent back toward the coming light. The dome grew larger, resolving into the familiar pattern of yellow-white hexagonal cells Vic remembered from Direiellene of the future. A Kragnashian crawled along the side of the structure, a larva held in its jaws. The party shrank to a crouch, but the creature ignored them and scuttled to a gray patch. Dropping the grub, it tore the gray material away, opening a black hole in the facade. They resumed walking. The Kragnashian finished its demolition, picked up the larva, and squeezed out a thick netting of silk, filling in the hole. The grub had to be Vic’s size. Swallowing bile, she tried to convince herself it was no different from wearing leather boots.
Finishing, the Kragnashian disappeared round the other side of the structure, and they arrived at a ditch circling the dome, wide and deep and filled with obsidian-tipped spikes. Vic and Thabean nodded at each other, lifted the others into the air, and flew across.
“The entrance is probably on the other side of the building,” Vic said.
They crunched along a gravel path that wound round the dome. The flesh of Vic’s calf and foot swelled against the wrappings, the nerves numb and drowned in fluid. Thabean’s jaw jutted forward, his eyes pinched, his face frozen into a furious mask. Today he would learn once and for all that the Kragnashians’ intelligence matched humanity’s, while their technology far outstripped anything humans possessed. For Bethniel’s sake, she hoped he took it well.
A fiery orange lit the western rim of the caldera as they found the entrance. A ramp composed of glistening white fibers wound out of a doorway high up in the dome’s side, like a long white tongue lolling out of a gaping maw. Two Kragnashian sentries watched the party approach the incline.
Lillem stepped on it and slipped, nearly falling. “Damn thing’s slick as ice.”
Vic flew up and hovered above a level platform before the entrance; floating, Thabean joined her. Boots and socks tucked under an arm, Gustave climbed nimbly on bare feet. Lillem copied the pirate but still struggled, clawing the fibers with his hands and spewing curses under his breath.
The sentries’ eyes glittered in the dawn. Antennae circled slowly.
Vic bowed to the creatures. “Gustave, ask about Bethniel.”
Bowing, the pirate clapped and snapped, not bothering to translate for the rest of them. Thabean muttered about the show of nonsense. One of the sentries responded to Gustave’s greeting; the other headed inside the dome.
“They’re fetching the princess,” Gustave said.
While the pirate and remaining Kragnashian conversed, Vic turned to Thabean. “It’s time you acknowledge these are people, not dumb animals. They are very different from us, but they know us for what we are.” She touched him, letting a tingle of the Woern pass to him. “And they gave me this, so they could send me here to do what I must. You have accepted that we come from the future—is the agency of these People so much harder to believe?”
His gaze bored into the black passage beyond the doorway. The clouds broke behind the dome, the sky aglow with yellow and a blue nearly white. The air dimmed as the emerging sun cast this side of the dome into a deep shadow.
Vic floated to Gustave’s side. “Why did they take her?”
“It evades that question.”
“He’s made it all up,” Thabean spat.
A Kragnashian, half a head taller than the others, wearing a stole woven from leaves and flowers, glided out of the doorway. Behind it, an attendant carried Beth
niel. Eyes closed, she lay slack within its grasp. Thabean uttered a gurgling howl, and Vic grabbed him mid-leap. Pike raised, Lillem charged forward; Gustave tackled him, and Vic had to restrain him and the wizard until the pirate could wrest the pike away.
“Sit on him,” she barked at Gustave. Holding Thabean still, she flew to Bethniel, found her drenched with slotaen. “She’s just asleep.” The Kragnashian laid the princess down, and Vic wiped orange goo out of her eyes and away from her nose.
As the salve evaporated, Bethniel’s eyes fluttered, and Thabean’s struggles eased. “Will you be calm?” Vic asked. He nodded, and she released him. Gustave stood and offered a hand to Lillem, who spat at him and struggled, slipping on the slick surface, to his feet.
Bethniel yelped and sat up, staring about her. “They got you too? All of you?”
With a guffaw, Vic handed her up. “We followed them here. Did they tell you anything?”
The princess shook her head, clawing her hands through her hair and shaking the gel off. “I’ll be sticky for days.” She sniffed her hands. “Smells good, at least.”
“Good for the skin too.”
The princess beamed, and for a hint of a moment, they were giggling girls again. But only a moment. Sobering, Beth turned and clapped at the Kragnashians.
Dipping its head, the one with the stole clicked a response. “It welcomes us,” Bethniel translated.
“You can understand them now?”
“It’s speaking slowly, and the language is more formal, more familiar. It says it is the Center of this Hive, the eldest of this lineage. It has been expecting us to come and wondered why we had not. It brought me here to show you the way.”
An invitation, at such cost? A nauseating cold pushed the breath out of Vic’s lungs. Hundreds of its people had died.
“A price worth it, Victoria of Ourtown.”
Her gaze jerked to Gustave, and she suddenly wanted to shove his pink tongue back down his throat. “What do you know about this?”
“We are approaching a Concordance, in which all choices we make—each of us, any of us—will together determine the path of history. There are many paths. The Archipelago would like to ensure the path we know is the one chosen now.”
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