Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  Until he died, she had never realized how much a part of her he had become.

  The trees, slender birches and mighty oaks, suddenly seemed menacing as they towered above her. If she went a few feet inside the forest, the darkness would overwhelm her. The darkness and whatever had spooked the birds.

  No wind, no rustlings of small animals, no sound except the Cardidas half a mile behind the cabin, burbling its way to Jahn. The river never quieted for anyone.

  The river. She turned toward it. Sunlight reflected off the brown water, sending ripple lights like stars into the sky. During the night she had awakened, cold and damp on her side of the pallet, arms reaching toward Drew, who was no longer there. The rain had been falling steadily. Through its persistent patter she had thought she’d heard voices on the wind. She had sat up, straining to hear if one of the voices was Drew’s, hoping that perhaps he was coming back for her. But they had sounded far away and unfamiliar, and after a while she’d convinced herself that they were simply a trick of the rain.

  Perhaps they hadn’t been.

  She shuddered. No sense in making anything up. She needed to see for herself.

  She grabbed her shawl off the peg, then left the cabin and closed the door behind her. The mud sucked at her shoes, seeping into the holes in the soles. She walked around the crumbs—the birds might want them if they came back—and headed deep into the forest.

  No one had walked the path in days, and the mud flowed like a river. After a few yards she tried walking on the grass, but discovered that it was mostly marsh. Her luck was better with the mud. At least its depth was consistent.

  The trees towered over her, blocking the sun, dripping water as if the rain had never stopped. The sound of drops hitting the ground and of her own feet squishing through the muck were the only sign of life. It was as if she had awakened to an empty world.

  She passed the lean-to Drew had built as a blind. All the neighbors used it in the fall and winter when game was scarce, even though hunting in those woods was strictly forbidden by the King. The King never traveled out this far. He didn’t suspect that his own people were poaching his deer, or if he did suspect, he didn’t seem to care.

  She had never walked this far into the woods before without startling some animal.

  Her legs were tired, even though she had walked only half the distance to Coulter’s cabin. She was in poorer health than she had thought, being unable to walk even a short way without losing her wind.

  She suspected her discomfort came from more than old age. The chill she had awakened with that morning had settled in her bones, and she rubbed her hands over her brittle arms as she walked.

  When she reached the fork in the trail, her skirts were wet and heavy. She stopped and leaned on the damp bark of a birch tree, bumping it just enough to send a spray of water down on her head. In the distance she heard voices. She frowned. They were as faint as the voices she had heard during the night, the words unintelligible. Then she heard a man shouting. Coulter, telling someone to go away. His words ended in half a cry.

  She picked up her skirts to run back to her own cabin when she heard the woman’s scream. She recognized it. The same scream had come from her own throat when she’d seen Drew’s lifeless body, white and bloated from the river.

  By the Sword, she couldn’t abandon that. She had no reason to save herself. She had nothing left. But Coulter and his wife, Mehan, had a baby. They had a vegetable garden and weaving and a small flock of sheep. They were young. They had everything Eleanora did not.

  She made herself turn and run toward the sound instead of away from it. Her legs wobbled, and she had to go slower than she wanted. Her bones were fragile; all she needed to do was trip and break something. She would be able to help no one then.

  As if she could help now. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as she thought. Perhaps Coulter had merely injured himself and his wife was too young to understand the difference.

  Mehan’s wails were growing. So were the voices. A male voice, speaking Nye, dominated.

  She reached the edge of the clearing and stopped. Her face was flushed and she was shaking. She had to grab a tree to keep from falling over.

  The Coulter cabin was before her. In the yard stood over a dozen men, slender, tall, almost willowy, wearing pants and a thick leather shirt of a style she had never seen before. They were all dark and had faces that were beautiful and terrible at the same time. They were standing over the body of Coulter, his skin stripped as if it were a dress being torn up for rags, his blood seeping into the muddy earth.

  His wife, Mehan, was on her knees beside him, holding his head, which was yet untouched, and wailing at the top of her lungs. Eleanora clung to the tree, her gorge rising. She made herself take small breaths to settle her stomach. She would deal with her distress later when she had a moment alone. When she had time to think.

  One of the men stepped forward and grabbed Mehan by the hair. He spoke in a soft voice, and Eleanora caught her lower lip. That was not a man, but a woman. A tall woman who dressed like a man. Eleanora glanced at the remaining strangers with new eyes and realized over half of them were women.

  Her stomach turned, and the meager breakfast she had eaten came back up. She tried to retch quietly, using the tree to block herself from the group, hoping that they hadn’t heard. Women. Women never participated in war. In the uprisings and revolts of her childhood—even in the Peasant Uprising in which her father had fought—the women had tended the homes, suffered with the wounded, but had never, ever turned weapons upon another being. She had not thought it within a woman’s nature.

  She ripped a leaf off a nearby bush and used it to wipe her mouth. She was light-headed; the image of Coulter’s destroyed body appeared before her each time she closed her eyes. If she wasn’t quiet, she would end up like that. She might, even now.

  She peered around the tree again. Some of the strangers were pointing in her direction, but the leader was shaking her head. They were having a serious discussion in a guttural language she did not recognize, and the discussion concerned her.

  Eleanora waited until they looked away, then slid sideways into deeper brush. Her years in the forest had taught her silence. She could move without cracking a twig or disturbing a bush. Another skill she owed to Drew. She thanked him under her breath.

  Mehan was still sobbing, her hands resting on her husband’s body. She was repeating his name over and over as if it would bring him back. The woman holding her hair yanked it, and Mehan’s head jerked back. The strangers continued to argue, and finally a small one came forward, his features coarser than the others, flatter somehow and shorter. He was dressed in brown, and his face was smeared with blood.

  The woman holding Mehan spoke to him, and he chuckled. Then the woman ran her hands down Mehan’s arms, and Mehan screamed as the flesh pulled away. The small man caught it as if it were a special treat and stuffed it into an oversize pouch that hung from his belt.

  Eleanora watched in stunned fascination. They had special powers. The woman had no weapon, and yet she pulled the skin from Mehan’s bones as if she had used a flaying knife. They hadn’t got to the cabin yet, but when they did go inside, they would find the baby and, poor innocent thing, he would die as his parents had, a slow, excruciating death.

  She could do nothing for Mehan. She was an old woman with barely enough strength to walk through a forest. But she might be able to hide an infant, even for a short while, even until the bloodlust faded.

  Only she had little time. Mehan’s screams might save her child. Eleanora hurried through the woods to the back of the cabin. Coulter’s cabin was big enough to have three rooms, and two springs ago he had added the luxury of a second door. He had done that so the summer breeze could cool the hot kitchen, never foreseeing that it might save his child’s life.

  She hoped it would.

  She prayed as she had never prayed before, making a compact with the Holy One. She had never much believed in God—she had seen too m
uch in her long life to find the promises of the Words Written and Unwritten to be anything more than hope—but at this moment she needed the hope. She needed all the help she could get.

  Mehan’s screams were long and bloodcurdling. Coulter’s had not been like that. What was the point of such torture when the victim would die anyway? Did these strangers get a perverse sort of pleasure from it? Or did they know Eleanora was listening? Were they using it as a lesson for her?

  The yard behind the cabin was dark. The sun’s rays didn’t touch there until afternoon. It still held the cool damp of early morning. No strangers were there; no footprints touched the muck. She damned the mud. When the strangers finally found the back door, they would find her prints and be able to chase her through the woods.

  She would have to find a way around that.

  She gave the problem to the back of her mind while she concentrated on the cabin. Mehan’s screams had turned into moans, which were somehow more hideous in their passiveness. She was losing, but she wasn’t passing out.

  Eleanora walked through the muck, and as she did, she had her plan. It was meager, but it was a start.

  She pushed open the door and stepped inside. The cabin smelled of fresh bread. She couldn’t help herself. She had to take a loaf. If she were to help the child survive, she had to eat. She took the warm loaf from the small table. Then she heard the whimpering.

  The baby’s cries were lost in his mother’s sounds of agony. Perhaps the Holy One had heard Eleanora. Perhaps the Words were right when they claimed that Roca loved children above all else.

  But she hadn’t saved the boy yet. She still had a lot to do. Being in the cabin was only the first step.

  She followed the whimpers into the small side room. Coulter had built the baby a cradle, and Mehan had filled it with woven blankets so soft, the baby was being reared like a tiny King. Eleanora stuffed the loaf into the pocket of her skirt, then picked up the baby, blankets and all. His whimpers turned to wails as she touched him.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I wish I were your mama.”

  Her voice soothed him. She put him on her shoulder, remembering all the nights she had wished for someone like him, someone she and Drew had made, tiny and warm and loving.

  Outside, his mother’s cries ended abruptly, as Coulter’s had. Terror froze Eleanora. If they found her, they would kill her the same way—and then what would happen to the child?

  She wrapped him in the blankets carefully so that he wouldn’t suffocate but so that any cries would be muffled, then hurried to the door with him. Once she reached it, she stopped. She would have to move slowly there. Caution now would save them later. She turned her back and looked over her shoulder, carefully stepping in the footprints she had made before.

  The voices continued to argue out front. The small man cackled again, sending shivers down Eleanora’s back. The strangers hadn’t found her yet. Clearly their magick wasn’t all-seeing.

  She reached the woods more quickly than she’d thought she would. The footprints looked as if someone had gone into the cabin and was still there. They would spend precious time searching for her in the nooks and crannies Coulter had built for his wife. Then, and only then, would they come to the woods and try to find her.

  The baby made quiet sobs against her, his little body quivering. He could sense her fear. She ran her hand over his warmth. They wouldn’t make him bleed. No one would as long as she breathed.

  She retraced her steps all the way to the bend in the path. Then she stepped off the trail and walked in the marshy grass, cutting across country. She ran as quickly as her ancient body and sodden skirts would let her. The baby whimpered as he bounced, protesting the violent motion, but doing no more.

  For all she knew, these strangers were marauding across the countryside. If they had come from the river, and had gone to Coulter’s first, then they had come from Jahn. She could only hope that they hadn’t reached her other neighbors yet.

  She would go to Helter’s cabin. They were on Daisy Stream, as far from the Cardidas and from Jahn as she could get by foot.

  Helter was a good man. He would know what to do.

  ELEVEN

  Jewel wiped the sweat from her brow. Her sword felt heavy and useless against her hips. She was standing in the middle of the road, surveying the scene. The troop, a hundred strong, under the command of Shima, were scouting the parameters of the wall surrounding the palace as well as harassing the peasants who dared interfere with them. Three Islanders were dead, their bodies trampled on the streets for the others to see. Already the murders had made some courageous souls lose their willingness to stand up to the Fey.

  The problem had become obvious the minute they’d arrived. The Islanders did not follow traditional wall design. This palace had four gates—one on each expanse of wall.

  Jewel was half-afraid that Shima would order them to find three more rams. Each moment they took would allow the Islanders to organize. So far, the Fey had met with no real resistance at all.

  Shima was standing near the first gate. She was too thin, her body almost curled in on itself, her long hair white, and her face marked with scars from all the battles in which she had fought. She was a minor Visionary but had no other skills, and had long preferred to lead the Infantry, claiming that an army’s strength was in its youth.

  She was discussing the problem with one of her lieutenants rather heatedly, her voice occasionally carrying over the dust and haze. Jewel rubbed her arms. She had always thought idleness the scourge of war-making.

  Burden brushed against her, his hand cupping her elbow protectively. He was a year younger than she was, but they had always been close. He had joined the Infantry when his family had turned him out at the age of twelve for not yet developing any magick. No matter how much talk the Shamans did, his family would not take him back. Jewel had watched over him from that point, little thinking that he would grow taller and stronger than she. His face still bore a deep tan from the Nye campaigns, and in the last few months his smile had gained a confidence it had never had before.

  He was not smiling now. “She’s pissing away our advantage.” His voice was low, conspiratorial.

  “I know.” Jewel answered him in the same tone. She glanced around. The other members of the troop were restless as well. If Shima didn’t take action soon, the Infantry would take it on their own, and that would be disaster. Most of the Infantry were in their teens—too young to have magick or sense.

  “You should talk to her.”

  “And say what?”

  His grip on her elbow tightened and he pulled her closer, as if they were lovers, embracing. The tactic wouldn’t fool Shima, but Shima was still arguing with her lieutenant. “You already have a plan. I can tell.”

  Jewel glanced up at him sideways. He had trimmed down since the Nye campaigns. The thinness accented his high cheekbones and made his eyes more prominent. “What makes you think that?”

  “Your impatience. You chafe when someone else misses the obvious.”

  Well, Burden hadn’t missed the obvious. He saw how annoyed she was. And she had Seen what to do as clearly as if the battle had already been fought. They didn’t need four rams. They needed reinforcements to guard the other gates while they broke into one.

  “If I speak to her, she’ll think I’m pulling rank.”

  Burden shrugged. “What she thinks won’t matter.”

  “She’s my commander.”

  “You are the Black King’s granddaughter. In the end we will all answer to you.”

  Jewel sighed. Part of the point of serving in the lower divisions was to learn humility. And humility didn’t come naturally to her. She wiped the sweat from her forehead. It was gritty. Even after a rain the air there had a level of dirt she had never felt before.

  A group of soldiers stood in front of one of the shop doors, playing with the people within as cats played with mice. The soldiers’ laughter filtered over the road. Shima didn’t seem to hear. She
was gesturing at the gate, then at the ram. The troops were splitting off, wandering down the road to see what kind of loot they could find.

  Jewel pushed past her other comrades, touching an arm here, a shoulder there, noting their relative calmness. Even though they were about to go into battle, they didn’t seem worried. Fighting there was different from fighting in Nye. The Nyeians had an army that had defended their northeastern border countless times against raiders—and had not lost, until the arrival of the Fey.

  These people, on the other hand, seemed to have no idea what defense was about.

  Sunlight fell on the wall, making the damp gray stone almost bright. If she squinted just right, she thought she saw lookouts hidden in tiny towers behind the gate. Another thing to plan for.

  As she approached Shima, the words of the argument grew clearer. “. . . say we rip apart one of the buildings and use the lumber as rams,” the lieutenant was saying.