“Is this another of the maker’s games?” the man said.
Then he fell silent.
The wolf stood there for a long time, even after those silvered eyes had closed. It knew it should go—leave these people to their madness, to their murderous designs.
But the Great Spirit lay imprisoned somewhere, and these people would lead the way.
Reluctantly, the wolf lowered itself to the cool stones on the far side of the fire. It rested its head on its paws, neither gaze nor nose nor ears ever shifting from the corrupted man. Perhaps it would sleep, in fits and starts, but it did not expect to.
No time to hunt, no time to rest, while the Great Spirit was shackled.
*****
In the morning, Lark made porridge with beans and dried things that turned out to be peas, and if it was terrible she could not tell; she ate it too hot to taste and Trevere never mentioned it.
Likewise he did not mention the wolf, which lingered just inside the doorway and skittered away any time they moved toward it, but did not flee. Rian tried to approach it once, spider-crawling across the floor in his long-limbed way, and the wolf had tucked itself so far under one of the old benches that Lark had taken pity and called the goblin back.
Never mind that it far outsized the goblin, and probably outweighed Lark and Trevere combined. Never mind that she had been petrified of it the night before. She had been afraid of a lot of things then.
They were on the road shortly after dawn. Pastel clouds veiled the sky but could not entirely mask the Chain of Ydgys rising in the east, and the fine snowflakes that drifted down melted on the stones but stuck to the limbs of the evergreens. Their horses moved cautiously at first, uncomfortable with the proximity of the wolf, but soon they warmed up and fell into a loose trot. The wolf, after herding them for a while, drifted into the woods again—just a greyish shadow, sometimes there and sometimes gone.
The swift change of seasons had given Lark the sniffles, and after a while of riding in the wind-corridor of the road, she called on Trevere to halt. They both still wore Illanic clothes, the lightweight stuff that the people south of Bahlaer wore year-round, and blankets were not sufficient to cut the chill. He stared at her strangely through her whole diatribe against the weather, then led her up a side-road to one of the towns hidden in the woods.
Not really hidden, just fond of their privacy, Lark thought as they drew up to the open gate in the wall that surrounded the town. The trees and bushes had been cut back for several yards, leaving a clear route around the whole of the place, and the wall itself looked wide enough to serve as a walkway. There were even guards stationed by the gate, though by their uncoordinated garb she figured they were militiamen.
Trevere rode past them with the barest of nods, and though they gave him hard looks, they did not stop him. With the blanket shrouding her and the goblin tucked under her shirt again, Lark drew more attention. She was amused to think she must look pregnant. But she kept her horse right at Trevere’s heels and the guards did not stop her either.
The town beyond was what she would come to think of as Wyndish-typical. Longhouses and cabins of wood and stone with high, pitched roofs; smaller huts or sheds or animal hutches or outbuildings, circular, with roofs like tall cones; trellis-frames running between buildings, some wrapped with dead vines and some covered by sheets to become enclosed walkways just beginning to shoulder the snow; and trees. Trees rising between buildings and around the stone-lipped well on the central green; trees planted to either side of the road by each gate, like sentinels. Ribbons and charms hung from the lower branches of each, glimmering with frost.
Not a large place. Cozy. The road ran to two more gates that led deeper into the wintering forest.
Trevere led the way to the central green and swung off before a porch-fronted cabin with a sign of a spool and a cup. “Stay,” he told Lark without looking, and headed in while she sputtered with annoyance.
Against her belly, Rian stirred. She rested a hand over his head and peered around warily, not liking to be alone here. A few shutters on nearby buildings were cracked open, their inhabitants invisible beyond, but like the guards, she knew they were watching.
Probably had weapons too.
What little she knew of Wyndon said this: That Wynds were recluses, close-mouthed, not cowardly but wary. Not aggressive but vindictive. They were trappers, loggers, miners—forest peasants loosely governed by an equally reclusive noble class and a shaky ‘protectorate’ monarchy. The Corvish raided them regularly; they guarded, then struck back.
Maybe they’ll have crossbows for sale. Curse Trevere, making me sit out here in the cold.
It was practical; up close, the goblin’s shape under her shirt was obviously not that of a pregnant belly, and her skin gave her away as a person of interest. But with the streets empty and the watchers invisible and her breath turning to frost on her lips, she did not appreciate his forethought.
Idly she tapped her heels to the horse’s sides and steered it over toward the green, and the charm-hung trees.
The glittering things pleased her eyes. Polished stones, little oddments of metal and glass, they caught the light and spun at her touch. She resisted the urge to nick a few. A display like this would be impossible in Bahlaer or any Shadow territory; the eiyets were incorrigible thieves, so most people kept their shinies locked up tight when not in use, or offered them as eiyetakri for favors from the little shadows. Certainly they never just left them dangling around.
Her fingers trailed from charm to charm, until suddenly a spark jumped to her hand. She snatched it back, blinking as her fingertips buzzed and the last-touched object spun slowly on its thread. It looked like a shard of pink quartz, glossy and simple, but from the metallic tang in her mouth, she was sure it was not.
She put her hand out again, carefully, and felt the thrum in the air around it.
A little unnerved, she nudged her horse back toward the shop. The tingle in her fingers died away soon, and nothing seemed wrong—not even a mark—but she peered around at the houses, touched by an odd suspicion.
There!
Near the foundation of a longhouse, almost hidden by dead grass: a block among the wall-stones that was not grey, but weather-worn pink.
And there!
A small shim under a window-ledge, cobalt blue.
And…
A dull citrine-colored block, the keystone above a nearby door.
Curious. Like the spirit-face bricks back home, she guessed. Wards against trouble. Smidges of pastel like spring flowers peeking from frozen earth, all but hidden.
I wonder where they come from.
A door clacked shut, and she looked up in time to catch the bundle pitched at her. Trevere swung onto his horse without a word and shoved a second bundle into his saddlebag. Lark unrolled hers quickly to find a big hide coat with fur on the inside that looked like it had been made from a bear. Or perhaps for a bear, or a big lumberjack. It was easy to shrug on, but though she was quite tall, she swam in it. With it came a scarf, mittens and a furry hat.
“They just had this?” she asked Trevere incredulously.
“I showed my coin. They gave me what they had.”
He turned his horse immediately and she nudged hers after him, trying to tie the coat shut over the lump of Rian now squirming in her shirt. She hissed at him to be still; they could adjust themselves once out of sight.
The guards did not stop them, only watched them go with expressionless, cold-roughened faces. As they rode, though, she kept glancing over her shoulder, half-expecting to see an angry trapper on their heels.
*****
Lark mandated their stops more often after that, and sometimes Trevere complied but mostly he ignored her. She argued; he ignored her more fervently. She kept her eyes open when they passed towns or old ruins in the woods—and there were quite a few ruins to see as the land around them grew rockier. Crumbled walls half-glimpsed among the trees, overgrown clearings where villages had once
stood. It reminded her of the way the Illanites had withdrawn from the merchant road when the Crimson Army had marched through.
At each stop, and in the caravan-shelters they visited—since she could not convince Trevere to let them sleep in an actual inn—she sought those pastel shards of stone. Sometimes they gleamed bright in the wan, cold sunlight, like the honed edges of ancient knives; sometimes they were little more than weathered lumps, frosted by age.
But they all had that feeling of energy: the thrum in the air and sometimes the spark. No stone sparked at her twice, though, and after noting a few dozen of them, she began to consider them just part of the landscape. An oddity to be sure, but a common oddity.
She noticed that the wolf kept to the road when they passed the ruins, though.
*****
On the morning of their fourth day out, she stirred on her own, which was a surprise. Usually she was awakened by the toe of Trevere’s boot at the first wisp of dawn. The wolf—which had edged progressively closer to her and Rian each night, though never close to Trevere—was curled up by her feet, its flanks rising and falling rhythmically, its tail folded across its muzzle.
She sat up slowly, stiff and sore despite her coat and swaddle of blankets. They had stopped earlier than usual because of the thick, damp snow that had begun to fall, and now through the half-open door she saw the silver slush on the road and groaned inwardly. Another long, unpleasant day in the saddle.
Trevere appeared in the gap, silhouetted by the cold light. He pulled the door shut behind him.
“We’re still about two days from Thynbell,” he said. “Poor time for the weather to turn, but the haelhene won’t be out. Their flyers hate the cold.”
Lark nodded warily. Once or twice a day, she had spotted dark specks in the sky over the forest—patrolling flyers, ever watchful but never close. The few people they had passed on the road gave them no attention, but kept their heads down, Wynds and foreign travelers alike.
“A good time to split up,” he added.
“What? Are you insane?”
He paced to the dying fire and stirred up the embers with a stick. In the ebbing light, he looked exhausted but resolved. “We’ve discussed this. I go to Thynbell, you go to the Corvish and make the request on my behalf. Aid for intelligence and the release of their ‘Great Spirit’.”
Lark sighed. It had sounded fine and dandy when they had agreed on it, but now, with the wet snow filling the woods… “How am I supposed to find them?”
“Summon your shadows. They should know.”
Biting her lip, Lark shook her head. “I’ve seen the summoning but I’ve never done it. I don’t even know if they’d answer. They wanted me to—“
She stopped, realizing she had been about to confess her mission. There had been relative candor between them on the ride, but she in no way trusted him. And his anger, though not in evidence recently, still frightened her.
He did not respond, but drew back from the fire, one hand slipping to the pouches on his belt. Lark stiffened, wondering what he had gleaned. In her lap, the goblin blinked muzzily, sluggish from the cold weather, and she put a protective hand over his head.
Something flicked across the fire at her. She flinched back and caught it automatically, her hand closing on cool metal. When she turned it to the fire, it gleamed gold.
Her heart skipped a beat. Real gold: a coin hardly thicker than a fingernail, stamped with the Imperial tower crest. Even this miniscule amount could buy a townhouse in Bahlaer.
No wonder he can just buy other people’s stuff. How much is he carrying?
She resisted the urge to lick the coin. That would be weird.
Looking up to him, she said, “You’re offering this? Are you serious?”
“What would you pay for your goblin’s life?”
She looked down at Rian’s sleepy face and closed her fingers around the coin. It wasn’t the same—Trevere wanted Cob dead—but she had to concede the point. Money lost its meaning.
“Just…they don’t give back change, y’know. The eiyets.”
“Summon them. Request their guidance to the nearest Corvish stronghold. Tell them anything you want—I don’t care. But get there and have the Corvish send me their servitor spirits.”
Lark swallowed and nodded. For a moment the words that rose to her lips were a warning--a worry that he was in over his head, that he was mad. That he should give up and go back to his kind before it was too late.
Sympathy. She did not welcome it. Neither did she speak.
Instead she scooted Rian from her lap and cast around for materials to mock-up the ceremony. Rian toddled away like an unhappily rousted cat and approached the wolf, which drew its pewtery head back in surprise as the goblin burrowed into the bristly fur of its flank. Lark blinked at the wolf, and the wolf blinked at her, then huffed a sound of amusement as the goblin dropped right back to sleep.
The wolf settled its muzzle on its paws, tail laid over the goblin’s side, and watched her with its odd pale eyes as she prepared.
A folded blanket made the holy space. In the center she set a bowl from the traveling kit, with the gold coin resting at the bottom. Between it and the fire, she rigged up a screen from another blanket, cutting holes in it with a little knife while Trevere built up the flames. With the ‘screen’ draped between two upright logs, the light flickered through the cuts in a shifting chiaroscuro, good enough for summoning.
“Get on the fire-side,” she told Trevere as he eyed her preparations. With a nod, he stepped back, scratching his left arm idly.
Settling cross-legged, Lark focused on the coin, running over the ceremony in her head. She could not speak it in eiyenriu, the shadows’ tongue; she did not know enough to say it right. It seemed insulting to call upon them in Imperial, but it was that or insult them by spouting gibberish.
Licking dry lips, she set the little blade against the tip of her finger and began.
“O ye who watch, O thousand thousands of ancient eyes, hearken to me. I, named in shadow Lark of Bah-kai, call to the heart of the City of Dusk. I call with the voice of a servant and sister of soul, and offer a grand token of the world of the sun. Come, O hungering ones, to the call of blood.”
With that, she jabbed the blade into her fingertip and, grimacing, watched the ensuing droplet gather at her nail and spatter down on the coin.
Instantly the blood began to sizzle. Lark sat back and put the knife aside, squeezing her finger amongst its neighbors as the air around her darkened. Trevere’s face, well-lit by the risen fire, vanished suddenly; beside her, the wolf and goblin were swallowed by the blackness that rose to sward her on all sides. Only the gouges in the blanket still leaked light, a faint interplay that looked more and more like burning eyes as the sizzle became a whisper, then a hissing chorus.
They didn’t vanish, I did, she told herself as tiny pinching fingers began their exploration of her back and shoulders. She had seen this many times from the outside--the black cloak drawn tight around Cayer, the impenetrable sphere of darkness.
But from the inside it was not a sphere, not an oppressive cloak. It was endless.
She hung in the void, cross-legged upon nothing, the coin spinning in the air before the eye-shaped slits of light. Her nostrils filled with the scent of deep corridors and vastness, of emptiness that was nevertheless not empty. The fingers that plucked at her were phantoms, just prickles on her skin.
Slowly, the light from the fiery gashes delineated a single shadow from the mass of darkness, the coin twirling between its hands, two tiny shiny beads hovering in its darkness like eyes.
Ask, it hissed. The word reverberated in the sibilant tongue of eiyenriu, but she understood it; the hollow vastness had drilled into her ears the same way it drove into her lungs, and the air itself vibrated with understanding. Intangible but everywhere, like being suspended in some cool, clear fluid.
I seek our allies among the spirit-speakers of Fox and Crow, she said, the words an answering hi
ss on her lips. Those closest to us in the world of the sun, without treading upon the shadowpaths. I need to see where I must go.
We show, it whispered, and suddenly, streaming through the darkness, came broad banners of light. Silver-white, they wafted above her like clouds, gorgeous and hallucinatory and incomprehensible.
Lark leaned back, staring as the light unfurled over her head. Striations of darkness struck up through it—vertical black lances that splintered at the tops, spreading to vanish in the white—and she realized suddenly that she was watching from beneath the road, beneath the silver coating of sleet, up at the trees with their burdens of new snow.
The landscape reeled by overhead, shining almost painfully, until the broad ribbon of the sky wove aside and the black branches interlaced to shade the view. Now the light descended around her in scraps and tatters and she was no longer beneath the sleet; she was among the trees, passing from shadow to shadow, a thin footpath unreeling beside her as it led deeper into the northern forest. Phantasmal animals passed in flickers of darkness and heat—a bear, a scattering of deer—and the trees thickened, the darkness deepening as the land sloped upward. She felt the hollows in the rocky earth beneath her, the caverns and tunnels, the places of true darkness, but the wisps of silver light kept her on the surface. One footpath became another, became a game trail, became an icy streambed.
And then a great darkness rose before her: a cliffside, its base ringed with wooden walls, its belly hollow and speckled with cook-fires. A cavern, a campsite. A Corvish stronghold.
The fires became eyes, and the silver ribbons evaporated into darkness. She stared down at the tiny shadow that held the coin. Despite her return to the void, she felt something tugging at her gently: not the fingers of the eiyets but like a cord around her chest, pulling toward those distant fires.
Thank you, she said, and the tiny creature bowed. The coin vanished with a last golden gleam.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 39