From somewhere in the distant dark beyond the water, she thought she heard a voice. She almost caught the words. Just enough to stoke the memory of what Gleed had told her.
Tomorrow you will meet Kesh Naan, and it will be most dangerous if she smells blood on you.
And here she was, smeared in her own blood and leaking more with every heartbeat.
Hweilan looked around. No one in sight. The cavern had no real walls. The ceiling simply lowered and the floor rose until they met, forming a great domed chamber. But across from her, framed by two of the columns, a cave broke through the rock. The red glow of the cavern did not penetrate there.
She couldn’t bring herself to brave the water again, and there didn’t seem to be any other way to go. She took a step forward.
And then she heard singing.
At first she thought it was just a trick of her mind, but when she stopped and listened, she heard it even clearer. A woman’s voice, coming from the darkness of the cave. There were words in the music, but in no tongue she’d ever heard before. Still, something in the cadence and melody reminded her of the songs her mother had sung to her when she was small. It called to her and repulsed her at the same time. She imagined that was how a moth must feel at the sight of the candle’s flame.
“Wh-who’s there?” she called. Hearing the tremor in her voice, Hweilan realized she was shivering again.
“Alet, kweshta.”
Hweilan gasped. Those words she knew from her mother. Come here, dear one in the tongue of the Vil Adanrath.
The singing had stopped, but the voice called again, “Alet …” followed by a long string of words that Hweilan could not understand.
Hweilan’s skin seemed to tighten around her, and every hair stood on end. There was a tone to the voice now that she didn’t trust. No malevolence or threat, but something—
Coaxing.
“Alet, kweshta. Alet.”
A woman emerged from the cave. At first, she was nothing more than a pale something amidst the darkness, then she stepped fully into the light of the cavern.
She was tall, elf lithe, her skin pale as old bone, her face ageless. Her nose was little more than a slight bump on her face with two slits of nostrils to either side. Her eyes, both browless, had no whites, but seemed to swirl with a half-dozen colors, like a thin sheen of oil over black water. Silver hair hung past her waist, and she dressed in a gown of what Hweilan first thought was black silk. But as the woman moved, threads of it floated in the air around her, finer than pollen on summer breezes.
“Hweilan, is it?” said the woman. “She who knows her name.” The woman’s voice held no warmth, but neither was it particularly cold. Simply dryly curious.
“Yes,” said Hweilan, and she found herself taking a step back for every step the woman took toward her until her heel touched the edge of the water. She stopped. “Are you … Kesh Naan?”
The woman gave a tight smile, revealing no teeth, just a curve of her lips. “And you know my name.”
Hweilan didn’t understand, so she said, “Gleed sent me.”
The woman’s smile melted away and she stopped a few paces in front of Hweilan. She watched Hweilan a long time. Hweilan was suddenly very conscious of her nakedness, though she no longer felt cold. On the contrary, the blood suddenly felt very hot under her skin.
Kesh Naan closed her eyes, bent her head back, and took in a deep breath through her open mouth, almost as if she were tasting the air.
It would be most dangerous if she smells blood on you.
Gleed’s words. Hweilan looked down and saw the blood streaking her side, running down her hip and leg to mix with the mud.
Kesh Naan lowered her head, and when she opened her eyes, the look in them had changed. She had the gaze of a hungry beast, the leader of the wolf pack who has just caught sight of the straggler in the herd.
Hweilan swallowed and said, “I—”
Kesh Naan struck, a lunge so swift that there was nothing Hweilan could have done had she tried. The pale woman seized her. Kicking and clawing and screaming, Hweilan could not break free, could not even loosen the woman’s steel grip. Kesh Naan pulled her in close. A black tongue emerged from between her pale lips, and Hweilan felt the cold flesh slide along the wounds on her shoulder, licking at the blood.
Hweilan screamed.
Kesh Naan held her at arm’s length and sighed, like a destitute drunkard enjoying his first taste of a truly fine wine. But then, as Hweilan watched, the look froze on Kesh Naan’s face. Her upper lip curled into a snarl, and Kesh Naan threw Hweilan away—so hard that she flew across the cavern, slammed into one of the stone columns, then hit the ground, dirt and grit raining down upon her.
She heard Kesh Naan spitting. “Blood burns and bites—gah!”
Almost paralyzed with fear and confusion, Hweilan managed to look up. Kesh Naan was staring at her—studying her—through eyes narrow as the slash of a razor. Very slowly, she wiped her lips with the back of one hand.
“What are you?” Kesh Naan said.
“I … I—”
“What are you?” Kesh Naan’s voice came out more the roar of a beast than that of a woman. Each word brought her a step closer.
“I—”
“What are you, girl?” This last came out a whisper, but she was so close that Hweilan could feel her breath against her cheek.
Hweilan squeezed her eyes shut and tried to crawl away. But she came up against the stone column and could go no farther. She felt the strong hands grab her again, lift her, and when she dared to open her eyes, all was darkness. They were in the cave.
Blind panic seized Hweilan. She knew they were moving, could feel the steady rhythm of Kesh Naan’s tread and the slight movement of air against her bare skin. Kesh Naan had a grip like steel chains, and one arm held her chest so tight that it was all she could do to draw shallow breath after shallow breath. The dark was utter and complete. The only sound that of Kesh Naan’s heavy breathing and the slap of her feet against the tunnel floor.
Hweilan bucked and thrashed, but Kesh Naan only held her tighter. Hweilan tried to scream, but Kesh Naan’s grip was too tight. Every movement made seemed to find the crack in her rib and grind it. She could not gather breath. Lights danced before her eyes.
Just when the play of light and darkness was about to overwhelm her senses, she heard Kesh Naan scream—almost in disgust, she thought—and the crushing grip was gone. Hweilan felt cool air rushing over her naked skin and knew she was again flying through the air.
She landed on one shoulder, then tumbled and slid across gritty stone. For a long while she could do nothing but lay there, desperate for air, each breath sending a lance of agony through her side.
When she opened her eyes, she saw that the lights were still there—but farther away. She was in a huge cavern, far larger than the one from which she’d come. It was devoid of any sun- or starlight, yet it sparkled with a thousand colors. Lying on her back, she watched them. Thousands had been too timid an estimate. By far. Looking up, she saw what were probably millions of tiny lights, all constantly on the move, some on a ceiling that sloped into a deeper darkness where the lights would not go, some scuttling across the walls and floor, and some hanging in midair—a few close enough that had she reached out she could have touched them.
They were tiny spiders, transparent as crystal, their plump bodies pulsing with colors—reds, greens, blues, yellows, silver, gold, and purples of every shade. The lights they cast sparkled off webs strung around the cavern. Terrified as she was, every breath a stab of pain, still Hweilan could not help but feel overwhelmed at the beauty of it all.
As her heart began to slow and her breathing to calm, Hweilan could hear them moving—the susurrus of millions of minuscule legs moving over stone and soil and each other. It sounded like the rustle of a summer breeze on the grass of the high steppe. Soothing. One of the spiders dropped from its web and landed on her shoulder. It felt soft as goosedown.
But
then she heard something else. Something scuttling in that impenetrable darkness far above. No, not something. Some things. Her eyes were adjusting to the new light, and she saw that amidst the millions of small spiders, dozens of larger spiders moved. She hadn’t seen them at first, because unlike their smaller cousins, they were black as moonless night, visible only because of the other lights reflecting off their hard carapaces.
“K-Kesh Naan?” she tried to call out, but it sounded no more than a whisper. Hweilan swallowed, winced as she gathered a full breath, then tried again, louder. “Kesh Naan?”
The black spiders dropped, a dozen or more striking the ground around her. The smallest of them was big as a cat, and the largest was almost the size of a hound. They turned to face her, the mandibles on their faces click-click-clicking together, in a horrible rhythm. Something about the sound seemed on the verge of forming words.
Hweilan forced herself to her feet, but the spiders surrounded her. She didn’t dare try to rush between them, and she knew she wasn’t strong enough to leap over.
“Kesh Naan!” she screamed. Her side screamed at the movement, but she bit back a scream and forced herself to stay put. “Please. Gleed sent me to you.”
A sharp hiss from the nearest and largest spider. Nothing remotely human in it. Hweilan swallowed and decided to try another tactic.
“The Master sent me,” she said.
Hweilan held her breath. Silence.
“You must teach me!”
The spiders surged into movement, so quickly that Hweilan screamed. But they weren’t coming for her. All of the giant black monsters leaped onto each other, their legs scrambling in a writhing mass, faster and faster until they blurred together into a swirl of blackness. Before her eyes, the blackness took shape.
Kesh Naan stood before her, clothed in the gossamer-fine threads of darkness. “You wish to Know, girl?” she said.
Had Kesh Naan moved toward her, Hweilan might have scrambled away. But the woman just stood there, looking at her, the slightest curve of a smile on her lips.
“You desire … en-light-en-ment?” She broke the last word into pieces, emphasizing each syllable. “You ask for Lore. Ahwen in the sacred speech. Say it.”
“Ahwen.”
“And why do you desire this?”
Truth be told, Hweilan didn’t. The only thing she desired at this moment was to be far away. Even Gleed’s dank tower seemed a paradise compared to this nightmare. So she said the only thing she could think of. “Th-the Master sent me. Nendawen.”
“Yes,” said Kesh Naan. “But why are you here?”
“I … I don’t know.”
Kesh Naan smiled—fully this time, revealing gums pale as her skin and teeth black as onyx. She raised both hands, palm outward. “I smell the lie in that, girl.”
“I—”
“Truth now. Has fear so clouded your mind that you forget? Let me help you. What is the one thing you desire most? If you could have only one thing right now, what would that be?”
“Vengeance,” she said it without thinking.
“Truth at last. But know this: The Master is not one to bargain. You do not make demands of the Master of the Hunt. Obey him, or do not. There is no middle ground.”
“My family—”
“Vengeance will not bring them back. It will not ease your pain.”
“Jagun Ghen killed my family!”
“Ah,” said Kesh Naan. “Now we come to it. Jagun Ghen killed your family. Do you know why?”
Hweilan could not look away. The woman’s eyes … depthless. But they held her. Hweilan opened her mouth, but before she could speak—
“The truth now,” said Kesh Naan. “Only the truth.”
And so she spoke the truth: “I don’t know.”
“You will,” said Kesh Naan. She clapped her hands. Just once, but it filled the air like the crack of a whip.
And the spiders came. Thousands of them. Millions. Dropping from the ceiling and running across the floor, covering Hweilan’s skin, crawling into her ears and nose. She rolled and thrashed, crushing hundreds, desperate to shake them off. But for every dozen she managed to smash or shake loose, a hundred more took their place. Their tiny legs did no more than tickle, but their fangs—
They bit, again and again and again. One of them surely would have done no harm, been no more than an irritation. But thousands biting her at once—
Hweilan screamed.
Spiders swarmed into her mouth, biting and biting and biting …
Lights exploded in Hweilan’s mind. Each tiny bite bringing a spark, every flicker its own unique color, every one trying to swallow all her other senses.
She let them.
CHAPTER FIVE
ON THE NORTHERN ICE THE WINTER DARK LASTED for months, and even high summer could not melt the frost. Yet still people managed not only to survive there, but to thrive in their own way. It was a hard land, and the people harder still, but even so, Jatara could remember a time when she’d been allowed to be a little girl. Pampered by the elders. Fed the choicest meats from every hunt. Given the softest, warmest clothes. She’d even had a little doll, made from baby-soft sealskin. In the darkest winter nights when the wind howled over the ice and the elders made sacrifices to keep demons at bay, Jatara had huddled in her blankets near the fire, the doll cradled against her chest, and with her free hand she would stroke the soft sealskin over and over, imagining that she was her mother, and the doll little Jatara. No matter how the wind howled or the priests shrieked their blood rites, that little doll had helped Jatara feel safe. As an adult, when she thought home, it was not her clan’s faces she saw, not her mother or father, but the scent of a fire, and the feel of that little doll against her palm.
“Home …” she said. It came out a croak. Her throat felt raw. The pain jolted her out of her reverie. She held the doll close and stroked it.
But something was wrong. Felt wrong. Not the softness of sealskin. She could feel the doll’s skin, yes, but it was not seal soft. No. It was rough, torn, and—
Wet.
Warm, yes, but that was quickly fading.
And the smell … no. Smell was the wrong word. The stench was tangy, coppery, and foul.
Jatara stroked the doll again, grasping for that reassurance of home, but the ragged wetness under her palm only drove it farther away.
With a very great effort, Jatara opened her eyes.
And remembered.
Home was far away. Not separated from her by hundreds of miles, but years upon years. She was not a little girl anymore. The doll long gone. Under her hand—
A man’s head lay in her lap. It was still loosely attached to the body by a mangled web of skin, flesh, and tendon. His jaw was gone, as were both eyes and an ear.
“What—?” she said.
Then her eyes saw the wet blackness under her nails, and she could feel more of the same in her teeth and gums.
A small part of Jatara—a very small part—screamed at the memory of what she had done. But the scream was very faint, like the final cry of a drowning man. Something else filled her. Immersed her. Like rich dye permeating old cloth.
Jatara laughed at that image. How fitting. The new presence within her was not her, but it filled every pore. She had no word for it.
“How do you feel?”
The voice came from behind her. She recognized it at once. Argalath … and something else. Something like her. Like flame is both heat and light, two separate things combined into one vibrant … power.
Jatara stood, and the corpse fell off her lap onto the blood-soaked grass. The sun was up, but hidden behind a curtain of thick cloud. The wind cut over the steppe, making a sound like a saw through dry wood. It still held the bite of winter, but she didn’t flinch. The cold of Narfell was a kiss compared to the land where she’d been born. Swaths of snow still clung in the shadowed places of the hills or in the gullies, but dun-colored grass had broken through on the high ground where they had performed the
rites. Where Jatara had been reborn.
She looked down at her hand and bare arm, black up to her elbow in blood and gore. It was like seeing it for the first time.
“I feel … alive,” she said. “More than alive, I feel … there are no words.”
“I know,” said Argalath.
He stood nearby, his robes around him, his deep cowl pulled down so that she could see only his chin. But she heard the pleasure in his voice. And more, she could sense his mood, and his thoughts seemed just beyond her reach, almost as if there was some invisible string between them, vibrating with life, and together they formed a beautiful chord. Jatara was awestruck at the power she felt there, just below the surface. She was amazed that the man’s skin didn’t vibrate at containing such power.
Over Argalath’s shoulder, she could see Vazhad standing atop the next rise, holding the reins of their horses. He was almost a quarter mile away as the crow flies, but even with only her one remaining eye she could count the stitches on the horses’ saddles and see the few strands of hair that had come loose from Vazhad’s topknot and wafted in the breeze. She could even smell the leather and sweat, and in the lulls of the breeze she thought she could hear Vazhad’s heart beating. Something inside her stirred, and an urge struck her. For a moment, she wanted nothing in the world more than to bound over Argalath, use the raw power in her limbs to run over the grass, then seize Vazhad, throw him to the ground, and ever so slowly burrow her finger between his ribs until she could feel his heart thrumming. How he would scream … even Vazhad, who never laughed, who never cried out even in battle. He would scream if she did that.
Jatara swallowed and buried the urge.
“It worked,” she said, and looked around. Carnage—the remains of the three Creel guards and one horse, the gore and torn earth obliterating all but a few traces of the pact circle Argalath had burned into the grass. She remembered the rite. The words of Argalath’s incantation that had seemed so strange to her the previous night had a comfortable, even familiar flavor. She remembered the blade flashing in the firelight, the pain of the cut, and then the thing that had come, rising from the pact circle like a lover creeping through her bedroom window. For a moment, the old Jatara had recoiled. Sensing the mind of the other, she had wanted nothing more than to run. But she’d held one thing firm in her mind.
Hand of the Hunter: Chosen of Nendawen, Book II Page 6