by May, K. C.
She climbed to her feet, though every movement hurt, from hips to fingertips. Perhaps she was close enough now that she could make it the rest of the way to Kaild on foot and still reach it before the assassins did. Rowing across the water was quicker than riding on land, even at her pace, for the route was more direct.
Then again, a longer journey meant more time before her next meal. And there was the Point to consider, a long stretch of land that she would have to either row around or walk across, but there was a village on that point, people who’d done enough trading with Kaild that she might recognize one or two. She could trade the dinghy for a meal and perhaps borrow a fleet-footed horse.
Rowing it was, then.
Summoning all her strength and will, she rowed out past the waves, groaning through gritted teeth with the effort burning in her back and shoulders. If she got far enough out into the sea, the rowing would become easier, and the promise of a rest spurred her on.
At last, she tilted the oars up out of the water. They were so heavy, she had to lean on them with the weight of her upper body to get them over the sides of the dinghy. God’s Challenger, she was tired. If she made it to Kaild in time, she would sleep for three days.
When. She would make it in time.
The sound of blowing water caught her attention. To her left, a dorsal fin glided in an arc under the surface. Sundancer? She fumbled for the bag, hooking it with her foot and dragging it closer, and dug inside for the flute. She could barely summon the strength to lift it to her mouth, let alone blow into it with dry and sunburned lips.
Sun Dancer friend, was all she had the strength to play.
Please, hear me. She bent her head over the flute, held up only by her weak arms resting on her knees. Sun Dancer friend.
From a distance she heard a reply: “Autumn Rain is Sun Dancer friend.”
The dorsal fin broke the surface and approached the dinghy slowly.
“Sundancer,” Jora said weakly. She could do little more than weep with joy and relief. “Please help me.”
The dolphin’s smiling face rose up out of the water, and she twittered enthusiastically.
“I’m so glad to see you, friend,” Jora croaked, her throat as dry as her burned skin. “I need help.”
She stumbled to the boat’s pointed bow and tossed the rope over the side. After collapsing back onto the seat, she played, “Pull?”
“You are not well?”
“Hungry,” she played back. “Tired.”
“I bring fish.”
Jora didn’t think she would ever be hungry enough to bite into a live fish, but she appreciate the thought. “I not eat fish,” she answered. It was easier than explaining that she didn’t have a knife to scale and gut a fish, let alone the strength to gather wood, build a fire, and cook it.
“I pull. You want go home?”
“Yes.”
The boat sailed through the water at such a remarkable speed, her hat flew off her head before she could lift her hand to stop it. Though she regretted the loss of her sister’s gift, the wind felt good against Jora’s sunburned skin. She closed her eyes, grateful for Sundancer’s help.
“Not take long,” Sundancer whistled. She sped along inches below the surface, breaking now and then to get a breath. “You return to big city after?”
“No.” As much as she wanted to converse with her dolphin friend, she didn’t have the strength in her arms to lift the flute to her mouth.
“You saw singing stones?”
Jora sat up. Sundancer knew about the Spirit Stone? Was the fact that it was shaped like a dolphin more than a coincidence? “Saw,” she replied. “Felt. Heard. Beautiful.”
“Good,” Sundancer replied. And that was all she said until early afternoon, when she released the rope in the shallow water near the shoal where she and Jora had first met.
But there was something disturbing about the unusual quiet.
“Caution, Autumn Rain.”
A shiver ran down her spine. Whatever it was Sundancer felt, Jora felt it, too.
He felt himself screaming. Felt it in his throat, in his chest, in the muscles of his arms and legs. It was a raw scream that bled from the inside as it stretched and grew like a pitch-black blanket over his vision. He tried reaching for the trees, hoping that if he held on tightly enough to that final image of the world, it wouldn’t fade away completely. But eventually, darkness engulfed everything.
It went on for what seemed like hours, that blackness, that sense of being nowhere. He didn’t know when he stopped screaming, or if he ever did, but he couldn’t hear it anymore. Couldn’t feel the ground beneath his body or his fingers rubbing together or whether his mouth was open or closed. All he had were his thoughts. All he knew was that this was death.
Remember, he thought. If he could remember his life, it wouldn’t be over. He thought of Jora and Micah, his mother and father, his friends Korlan and Rasmus and Voster and Joh. He even remembered Turounce, the man who’d been his worst nightmare.
Eventually, a glow appeared in the blackness. He turned toward it, hoping it would rescue him from this lonely existence. As it grew brighter, he felt himself being drawn toward it like being sucked into a tornado.
He saw a sky form above, not the pretty blue under which he’d died but gray and speckled. Feeling returned to his fingers, his mouth, but it was different now. He was becoming... something else. His body was changing. His thoughts were changing.
Remember, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut. Remember.
There were three of them. Three men. Three blades. Three sharp pains.
He remembered thinking he had to save someone. Who? Who did he have to save?
Her. He had to save her.
Jora.
He had to save Jora.
He opened his eyes and struggled to his feet, certain he’d been here before. If only he could remember. He had to get back to save her. Back... where? He looked around. This place was different. This wasn’t where he’d been... killed.
Killed. Yes, that was right. He’d died once.
That man had killed him. That man with the goatee and the foul, foul breath and the sharp pain in his chest. No. That wasn’t right. It was so long ago. Another lifetime ago.
Remember. He looked around again.
He was back in that place, the place where he’d gone before. Where there’d once been misshapen monsters reaching for him, pulling him under, drowning him in their vileness, now were just... others, both familiar and strange. He knew them and yet he couldn’t remember where or when they’d met. These weren’t those nightmare beings that had tried to keep him in the dead place.
And yet, they were.
Except now, he was no longer afraid. Now, he was among friends. Now, he was one of them.
He looked down at his body, at the tree limbs he had for arms, the trunks for legs, the branches for fingers, and he was pleased. He tried to take in the warm, soft air and found he no longer needed to breathe. The air seeped into his bark-like skin.
The first thing Jora noticed as she headed through the trees to Kaild was the silence. It crept across the back of her neck and down her spine, and she stopped, listening harder. No children were laughing, no people were talking. The smell of meat roasting had been replaced by something foul, like... death.
She wanted to run into the center of Kaild, to call for her mother and father, for Briana and Tearna and Cacie, but her body stiffened like a cold corpse, refusing to move. Something was horribly wrong.
With one hand on a tree trunk to steady herself, she opened the Mindstream and searched for her mother... and found nothing.
No.
She searched for her father, sister Cacie, and brother Loel—all of them gone.
Gunnar, too, and Briana and Tearna and Nuri and Anika. All gone. She was too late.
She stumbled, her legs giving out from under her, and she fell to her knees onto the forest floor. Despair filled her heart, her thoughts. How could they all be gone?
Using her own thread to go backward in time, to observe events of the previous night, she found her mother’s thread first, saw her dress for bed, crawl under the covers, and settle quietly into sleep. In the deepest part of the night, someone moved. Then, someone was choking, gurgling. Jora’s stomach lurched. No, please let this not be real.
Jora glimpsed movement and jumped to that person—a man. A stranger. He moved silently into another room, but all Jora could sense were darker shadows among lighter ones.
And a glint of wet steel.
No.
Her stomach convulsed, but she hadn’t eaten anything for it to purge.
He entered another home where a lamp was burning. A woman was asleep in a rocker, an infant in her arms. Jora watched him, a shaven-headed soldier covered in blood, creep toward them.
No, Jora thought. Please don’t.
She couldn’t bear to watch what he did to them, but she saw his face as he did it. It was filled with madness and rage, and a perverse pleasure gleamed in his eyes.
Why had a madman come to Kaild to slaughter women and children? Where were the men who stood watch at night?
She reversed the stream and witnessed him and four companions cross the land bridge onto the Kaild peninsula, dismount, gesture to each other, and separate. She witnessed him sneak through the darkness on foot, snap a twig in two to draw the attention of a guard, and then slip up behind him and slit his throat. He threw meat to the dogs, and when they were busy eating, shot them with arrows.
Unable to bear witnessing anymore of the slaughter, unwilling to look upon the result of it with her eyes, Jora lumbered back to the beach. Every step was heavier than the one before. Her chest ached, her throat felt too thick to swallow, her eyes burned. Who’d done this? Who’d sent assassins to slay all the wonderful people of Kaild? Was this retribution for taking back her books? Had Boden’s commander done this because of what he knew?
“Is someone out there?”
The man’s voice behind her made her freeze. The killers were still there.
And she would be their next victim.
He wandered, unsure where he was supposed to go but feeling a pull to the north. Home. No, this was home. The other home. The old home, where she was.
Jora.
His thick, tree trunk legs moved far more sluggishly than he thought they should, but he moved swiftly, as if each step covered miles. He felt her growing closer, warming him in a way. She wasn’t one of them like he was, but he was still drawn to her. He’d promised.
Promised.
Yes, the promise. He must honor that long-ago promise. She wouldn’t be alone. He would be with her.
Jora.
Something separated them. He couldn’t reach her. With his tree branch fingers, he tried to claw through the darkness, through the barrier that kept him from her. She needed him. He felt it like he felt the inky, soft air fill him. She needed him, and he would help her. He would find a way to help her.
Time passed, though he didn’t understand how much time, but he saw the glow of daylight shine through the air, illuminating a gate he hadn’t noticed before. A gate between the worlds.
He went to it, wrapped his gnarled fingers around its bars, and shook. Others did as well. They wanted to let in those creatures on the other side. Those creatures like the ones he used to be, the ones who stayed only for a moment, struggling and reaching and trying to escape. They were welcome here, those beings of fear. But there was nothing to fear.
But the gate didn’t open. No one came through. And so he waited.
Waited for her.
Jora fled to the safety of the water and hid in the boat. Sundancer, waiting in the shallow water for her, pulled it around the shoal and farther up the coast, though Jora was certain whoever had come looking for her had seen the boat being pulled swiftly through the water. If she were lucky, he’d not seen her and didn’t know whether she was male or female. Perhaps if he’d seen her duck down, he would assume from her bald head that she was a fellow soldier and let her go.
Of course, that hadn’t been Boden’s fortune. He’d been slain by his own kind.
Her stomach rumbled and groaned from both hunger and distress. She considered asking Sundancer to take her to the town of Three Waters, which sat nestled between two rivers to the north where they emptied into the sea. A few of her relatives lived there, and she could beg for food and a bed. But then they would inquire about Kaild, about why she hadn’t gone there instead, and when she told them what she’d witnessed, they would want to go investigate.
How long would the assassins stay? And then another awful thought struck her. Would they move north to Three Waters and slaughter those people as well? Maybe she could find out.
With a quick look through the Mindstream, she found them relaxing in the center of Kaild, eating the bread and meat cooked by the women they’d murdered. Two of them laughed and joked while two others sat pensively. They’d washed up, but she could still see blood caked under their fingernails.
“After we enjoy the labor of these formerly fine people,” one man said, “let’s set the houses afire and then head back.” He had big mouse-like ears that stuck out from his head.
“Is Zokor still asleep?” asked one with thick, dark eyebrows that met in the middle.
“No, he thought he heard something and went to make sure we didn’t miss one.”
If their fifth companion hadn’t returned yet, then that meant he was still out looking for her. Jora closed the Mindstream and peered over the side of the boat. A tall man was scurrying along the shore behind the tree line, as if trying to remain unseen. He was looking out toward the water directly at the boat. “Sundancer,” she whispered, ducking down again. Jora was afraid to call her with the flute. Then the man would hear her and know for certain she was there.
She peeked over the side again. Now he was wading into the water, thigh-deep and getting deeper. When it reached his waist, he began to swim. To hell with being heard. He was coming. She sat up and lifted the flute to her lips. “Sun Dancer, help. Man is coming.”
Jora watched the man swim closer, her terror growing with every smooth stroke. She picked up an oar to use as a weapon and knelt on the dingy’s angled bottom with her knees apart. As he neared, she gripped it in both hands, ready to beat him over the head until he drowned. Her own movement caused the boat to wobble, and she hoped it wouldn’t tip so much that she fell out once the murderer arrived.
Then the man slipped below the surface. No! She couldn’t see him swimming underwater. He would try to come up on the side of the boat she wasn’t watching.
Quickly, she entered the Mindstream and found his thread, observing him. He was under the boat. With his hands on the boat’s hull, he inched toward the surface. As his head broke, he reached up and grabbed the side of the boat, silently. The boat tipped. Jora flailed and gripped the side to steady herself, losing her grip on the oar. She witnessed herself, crouched in the boat, facing the opposite direction.
And then the man was going under again, but this time, he was being pulled by the ankle. Sundancer dragged him down as he squirmed and struggled to get free. Bubbles poured from his nose and mouth, and he made gurgling sounds in his throat as if desperate to get a breath. He reached for the knife in a sheath strapped to his calf, but Sundancer was pulling him too fast through the water. His struggles weakened, and after a moment, his body went limp and the Mindstream closed.
“Thank you, my friend,” Jora played.
“I not let man hurt you, Autumn Rain.”
When Sundancer’s gray face broke the surface, Jora flinched, even though she knew her pursuer was dead. But there were four others who would want to know where their friend was. They would come looking for him. She entered the Mindstream once more to observe the mouse-eared cuss again.
“Hand me another one of those chops,” Mouse Ears said.
“Even left over, they’re pretty tasty,” said the one with the eyebrows as he plucked a
chop out of the pan. He tossed it to the other.
“That’s because we’re hungry from laboring all night,” Mouse Ears replied. “I’ll bet my own shit would taste good right now.”
The others laughed.
Another man, one with small, hard eyes said, “That was hard work. There must’ve been a couple thousand of them. I wasn’t sure we’d get it done before sunrise.”
“No matter what,” said one who looked not much older than Jora, “the children and babies are the hardest.”
The other men agreed. At least they had a shred of humanity left in them.
“Don’t you wonder why they all had to die?” asked the youngest. “Why not just the adults? Take the children to one of the orphanages.”
“Like they’re not already overfull,” said Mouse Ears. “It’s best not to think about it. It’ll drive you mad, and you won’t get answers anyway. Follow orders, serve your time, and you’ll go home to your wife and child.”
Jora closed the Mindstream, remembering to put up the barring hood as she did, and shuddered. It disturbed and terrified her that they could talk so callously about slaughtering an entire town of people. These were the kinds of men the Legion used. She couldn’t imagine her father or Gunnar or the other men of Kaild doing such a thing, killing innocent Serocians because they were ordered to, without knowing why.
And who ordered this massacre? She would find out and... well, she didn’t know what she would do. What could she do? She was already fleeing from the Justice Bureau, so she couldn’t take her concerns there.
This was her life now—fleeing and hiding. What had her mother done to deserve death? What had her young nephews and nieces done, or Tearna or anyone else in Kaild? Was this her fault for fleeing? Had Boden done something beyond writing in his journal? Something that warranted this bloodshed? She had no one now. No family, no friends, except for Adriel.
Just as Elder Sonnis had wanted.
“Why Autumn Rain is sad?” Sundancer asked.
“All my people are dead,” she replied. Had Sonnis done this? These were soldiers of the Legion, not enforcers. He didn’t command soldiers.