by L. W. Jacobs
He was right. She knew he was right. But no one could actually live like that. “What other way is there? We wouldn’t even be feeling this way if he was still a stranger.”
“Not knowing wouldn’t change the truth about him.”
“It would have made it easier. Like LeTwi said, better to swim in a sea of unknowing than drown in truth.” She shifted, realizing he had probably never read LeTwi. Or any Councilate scholarship. “Why did you ask him to join us? Wouldn’t it have been best for everyone if they kept him in Califf?”
“He would have gotten through. He’s too motivated not to. Too scared. I asked him because I want to believe there’s a way to stop him without killing him.”
Ella was out of breath from climbing the hill, but had enough left for a snort. “Like what?”
“Like talking to him. Treating him as a human being instead of an enemy.”
“Talking to him. How far do you think we would have gotten if we’d tried talking to Semeca? Or the shamans that attacked us in Yatiland?”
“But that’s the thing,” he said, taking on new passion. “I did talk to them. And I saw into their minds. That’s how I beat Semeca, in the end. I saw that she was only fighting because she was afraid to die. I found the moment in her life when she’d stopped wanting to live. And then I talked to her about it.”
He’d told her the story. “And that gave you the opening you needed to kill her.”
He nodded. “Same thing with the second shaman that attacked us on the road, the one with the furs? I found the person in his past that had given him such a lust for power, and reminded him of it. Shocked him enough that he lost control for a second.”
Ella cleared her throat. “I believe I’m the one who killed him?”
“With the help of some fatewalking. And yes, I know, it might not work. But isn’t it worth trying, before we start killing and making revenants and all that?”
“It is. It probably is. But there isn’t always time for that. If there are other shamans at the stone in Aran, are you going to try to convince them our cause is more just? Bribe them like you did the guards today? If they’re anything like Credelen or Ollen, I don’t think it’s going to work.”
They crested the hill and Tai sighed. “I don’t know. I’m still figuring this out. If it comes down to it, I’m still going to kill them to protect you, to protect our friends. Of course I am. But I need a reason to do it, something better than just protecting my own people. That’s what everyone’s doing. That’s all the Councilate is, all the shamans are doing, probably all the archrevenants see themselves as doing too. And it’s always a justification to make more suffering for other people, to give them their own reasons to fight and kill and die.”
Ella didn’t know what to say to that. He wasn’t wrong. He was just—too good.
The stone at the top was flat and mossy, and they took a seat looking eastward toward Aran, the scattered lights of Galven twinkling below. “So, what’s your plan for Eyadin? To talk him out of it?”
Tai put an arm around her waist, and she could feel the tension in his stiff back. “If I can.”
“And if you can’t? You’re not going to let him deliver the message, right?”
“No. I just need to try talking first, because I can, because he deserves a chance. Because in a different life any of us could have been him, or Marea’s parents, and I would have defended them to the death.”
She gave his leg a squeeze. “When did you get so noble, anyway?”
He shrugged. “I assumed it was all your Councilate morality civilizing me.”
“Hardly. The most moral person I found in the Councilate was someone who denied morality existed at all.”
He glanced at her. “Guess I’m not enough of a philosopher to get that one.”
She leaned in close. “How about this one? It’s an old debate among philosophers: two people madly in love finally get some time alone, after weeks aboard a ship pining for each other. Would the most pleasant way to spend their time be discussing ethics, or more… intimate pursuits?”
He grinned. “I just figured I’d try talking first.”
“Well, it didn’t work.”
He put his other arm around her, drawing her in. “Then I’d better try again.”
He did, and this time he got it right.
46
Theories on the origins of the waystone are as common in Aran as hanging gardens and back-alley teahouses. Of course the official version is that the Ascending God left it in her wake when she ascended, but you will find the Aranese surprisingly tolerant of alternate notions. A few of these: the stone is the weathered remains of an ancient feline statue; the stone was built of clay then fused using a technique lost to time; the stone is the last of a ring said to surround the true site of the god’s ascension; and the stone is the offal of the old Ealan serpents. Take your pick.
—Arenia Melthesan, A Walking History of Aran
Marea woke in her lover’s arms. And though they had fought most of the night, though they still hadn’t really resolved what was wrong, it still felt like heaven. Like coming home, for the first time in too long. She snuggled in closer, Avery’s chest wide and deep. In the end it had hurt too much to stay angry, and they had agreed they cared about each other too much to let it keep them apart.
And then they’d made love, actually done what they’d been easing towards the entire journey, and it had been… intense. Something beyond just pleasure and pain. She felt deeper this morning, more like a woman. A woman who had a man. Her worries about him leaving her were gone—he loved her, and he wasn’t going to leave her even if they disagreed sometimes.
It sounded stupid, when she thought it so plainly, but living it was a lot different than reading it in books.
Oh, my pepper. I hate to have to say this to you, but what happened last night doesn’t mean anything. Do you think you’re the first woman he’s bedded that way?
Marea shook her head, angry at the voice for intruding. She needed to get Ella to help her overcome the voice today, even if Eyadin saw. The sooner the better.
Avery stirred beside her and she pressed herself against him, not wanting to get dressed, not wanting to leave the mess they’d made of the bed, the warmth of their bodies intertwined. Not wanting to see Ella and Tai and get back on the road and face whatever waited for them in Aran. Now more than ever she hated the idea of any harm coming to Avery.
What would she do without him?
A knock sounded at the door. “Marea?” Ella’s voice came. “Avery? We’re headed out soon.”
Avery opened his eyes, and Marea cursed the woman and her vainglorious quest. She could have laid here all day.
“Morning,” Avery croaked. “Time to go, already?”
“Or we could stay,” she whispered, running her hand down his stomach, feeling bold but also entitled. His body was hers.
It is no such thing.
He smiled, and kissed her like he was going to agree, then sat up. “Got a world to save first, I guess,” he said, then rolled out. One flash of pale, perfectly formed cheeks, and the intimacy they’d shared disappeared beneath linens and furs.
Well, there was still tonight. One more evening together before they faced Aran.
She rolled out too, and dressed, and found the rest of the party waiting for them. Most of their eyes looked elsewhere a little too obviously. Feynrick gave her a wide grin.
Marea blushed like a child caught with one hand in the candy jar. The walls of this inn were entirely too thin.
The road that day looked much like it had the last, but it felt a hundred times better with Avery beside her, Feynrick filling the empty hours walking with more exaggerated tales of his conquests in the Councilate army. He added winks in her direction, every time some unlikely romantic dalliance was part of the story, and she blushed anew each time.
Gods, all she had wanted was privacy. And now that she’d gotten a taste of it, all she wanted was more. No wonder it was tra
ditional for newlyweds to sleep their first night alone in their new home. She would have that home with Avery someday, even if the sleeping would already feel familiar.
They passed a few more checkpoints that morning, with none of the drama of yesterday. What did change was the number of people on the road. What started as a few more patrons sitting in front of inns and bakeries swelled to overflowing taverns and tents pitched alongside guesthouses by midday. The road filled up too, pilgrims carrying bags and farmers pushing carts and even squadrons of whitecoats, advising people to turn back, to stay where they were, that the rebels were dangerous.
No one paid them heed, and everyone traveled the same direction: east, toward Aran.
“Pissing curs,” Feynrick said, after they’d had to wait to cross a bridge so glutted with travelers others had taken to fording the stream. “What do they all hope to find?”
That was answered soon enough, as Ella worked her conversational magic with the travelers they passed. “Can’t you feel it?” asked one woman, an infant tied to her back. “We were in close, almost to the city, but Henle was hungry. Soon as I find food, we’re going back.”
There was a light in her eyes, a shine like Marea had seen in marketpool preachers, proclaiming the next coming of the Prophet or the return of the Descending God.
Only this time, half the pilgrims weren’t even talking of Eschatology or the kind of faithful nonsense they’d heard nearer Califf. They were talking about the stone.
“Got right to it, I did,” one shoeless man confided, leaning in with breath that stank of decay. “Can’t get there now, they got soldiers all around it, but I got there before, gods guiding. Put my hand up against it and,” he shuddered like Avery would at the height of sensation. “Like I was young again. Could do anything. Be anything!”
“And are you headed back there now?” Ella asked. They were waiting in line for a peasant family selling loaves of seeded bread.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Got me wife to think of. Things were getting rough in there when I left. Feeling young again’s not worth dying for, you ask me. I got mine.”
“Rough from rebels?” Tai asked, one hand firmly on the pack that held their money.
“Rebels they mighta been,” the man said. “Weren’t no friends of the whitecoats, that’s for sure. Nor anyone like me taking my time with the stone.” He shook his head. “I’ll make it back someday.”
The group exchanged glances then, Tai to Ella to Feynrick and Avery. Marea would have been annoyed she wasn’t worth the troubled glances, except they ignored Eyadin too. At least she had company now.
The messenger cleared his throat. “What could these men be, if not rebels?”
Eyadin didn’t know about shamans. Probably had no idea the one who’d sent him with such haste was an archrevenant. Marea was seized with an urge to tell him, to warn him. Much as he might think he was bringing death to Aran, the city might be his death just as easily, if the shamans discovered what message he carried.
They continued walking once they’d gotten their bread, at a whopping fifty marks per loaf, the pace slower with so many people on the road.
“It appears there may be opportunity for your House after all,” Eyadin said to Ella, “if this situation extends all the way to the city.”
“Aye,” Ella said, “mayhap there is.”
Did the woman feel as bad as Marea, about not being able to warn Eyadin? But the man was not warning them of his message either. More untrustworthy travel companions. She would be glad when they were out of this and it was just her and Avery.
If they made it out.
The crowd thickened on the road as the day wore on, with as many coming from Aran as heading to it. Some looked starved, and many spoke of food shortages, others of violence, of people dying if they approached too close to the stone.
“Rebels,” one hirsute farmer confided in them. “But not like they have in the south. These are more like… Titans gone wrong. Whitecoats are going to have problems, they try taking back the Old City.”
More significant glances were exchanged at this, including one from Avery to Marea, but of course they couldn’t talk about anything with Eyadin there. Even with their lives in danger. It was so stupid.
They began walking to the side of the road, making better time weaving through encampments and clumps of people sitting by the side of the road than actually walking on it. Most of them seemed torn between finding safety or food and the shine-eyed reverence with which they spoke of the stone.
No doubt they were going to the right place, then, curse it. Would that this was another dead end and she had more weeks on the road with Avery before any true danger faced them.
You do not have to follow this man into danger, my pepper. He is in league with your mother’s murderer.
“Ella,” Marea snapped, for once not giving a scat about all their secrecy, “any chance we can get a harmony going some time today? I’m really getting tired of this voice.”
Ella’s tone was sweet and her look was pure daggers. “Kidtalk again? Afraid I can’t help with that one, love.”
Eyadin did give her a strange look, but damn the woman. What was the good of knowing how to oust revenants if they didn’t use it?
Ella continued fishing for information as the pastures and even fields to the sides of the road filled, hearing more of the same stories: no food to be found, dangerous rebels in the old city, whitecoats arresting people on trivial charges, and a stone so wondrous that it was all worth it.
“Pity no one can get in, though,” a woman said to them, eying them from the far side of a smoldering fire. “They don’t know the old ways.”
“The old ways?” Ella asked, making a shushing motion with her free hand to slow them down.
The woman grinned, revealing a perfect set of white teeth. “The old emperor never died,” she said. “The last true emperor, when Shatterbrook came and overran the city. Had his own ways in and out of the city. Few know of them now.”
“Precious good it would do you,” said the man next her, eyes bright but sunken. “Nothing but hunger and death in there now.”
“Do you know these ways?” Ella asked, casually though Marea had traveled with her long enough to know the woman had piqued her interest.
The woman cleared her throat, glancing at the other travelers around the fire. “I have a camp, a few thousandpace off the road,” she said. “Somewhere we can talk without being overheard.”
“Lead on,” Ella said, at a subtle nod from Tai.
The woman led them away from the fire, following a cart track back from the road past a bow-roofed farmhouse with a scattering of tents in the yard. As she did, Marea noticed Eyadin falling behind, one hand holding Tai’s sleeve. Senses suddenly alert, Marea slowed too, wanting to hear.
“She’s dangerous,” Eyadin said, almost too low to hear.
Tai glanced at him sharply. “What?”
“She’s like Avery,” he said. “A… witch doctor.”
Marea stared at the man, just as Tai was doing. Witch doctors? Avery?
“How do you know that?” Tai asked in a fierce whisper, keeping his eyes ahead. Ella glanced back at them, a question in her eyes.
Did the man mean shamans? But how would Eyadin know about shamans? Only shamans knew about shamans. Marea unfocused her eyes—there was no trace of revenants about him.
“I just do,” Eyadin said. “We need to turn back.”
Tai looked to the front again, and his resonance hit like a struck bell. Marea’s stomach dropped: if the woman leading them was a shaman, they were in danger. A lot of danger.
“Very astute, Eyadin,” the woman said, not slowing, “but you should have turned back long ago. Brayliegh?”
The ground erupted in fire.
47
Tai screamed, his clothes burning, his skin burning, hair in flames on his head. All thought of fighting vanished in pure pain.
No, came a voice inside, calm and steady. Avery’s voice
. This is not real. It is a shamanic attack. Touch your body. You are not on fire.
In the middle of the flames, Tai touched one hand to his other forearm. And instead of cracked and charred flesh, he touched the sleeve of his shirt, fabric rough under his fingers.
This is an attack of the mind. Don’t believe in it. They will target me, to thrall my revenants. Help me. Fight back.
Flames still roaring, Tai ran his hands over his face, his jacket, his hair still bound behind his head. They all felt normal. This was not real. An attack of the mind.
It still hurt, his heart still beat like the heart of battle, but the more he checked himself the less pain he felt, real as it all seemed. It’s an attack of the mind, he repeated to himself, pushing up from where he’d fallen. Don’t believe it.
Through the flames he could see the pasture, see his friends rolling in the grass as two men approached from the far hillside, Avery facing them alone. Ella lay a few paces ahead, hands clawing at her face, screaming.
No. Whatever this was it was not real, but the danger to Ella was. And all philosophy aside, anyone who threatened her deserved to die.
Tai struck resonance, flames growing less distinct with each moment. The resonance felt good, the power he’d had to hide the past few weeks flooding into him, the strength, the raw ability.
He shot forward, but flying wasn’t fast enough, so he struck out with air too, sending wedges of wind at each of the three shamans’ throats.
Then the resonance left his bones and he was falling, plummeting from the sky, even as a scream ripped through his mind. A revenant. Someone sicced a revenant on him like Ydilwen and Sablo but had.
But he’d practiced for this, prepared for it, and in the heat of battle all his training came back. Not real, he thought, striking resonance again, momentum carrying him over the attacking trio and toward the far hillside. Just a revenant. My uai is mine.
He struck again, the uai responded this time, buoying him up a few paces from slamming into the ground.