by Holly Lisle
Roba couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Weren’t you listening, Thirk? There is no ‘Delmuirie’s final resting place’—certainly not here, and probably not anywhere. That theory we put together was worthless. Just do First Folk research here with the rest of us. You can come out of this with extra funding for your department, recognition by your colleagues; gods, man, this place can make your career. You could be Saje Primus of Faulea by next year.”
Thirk gave her a strange little smile. “I can be anyway—but on my terms. You discredit your theory.
I don’t. I believe the gods who guide all things bring Truth to the fore in their own time and their own way. I believe the gods have worked through you—in spite of you.” His voice got louder and took on a ringing quality. “And when I go back to Faulea, it will be to restore Edrouss Delmuirie to his rightful place in history. I’ll change Arhel.” He stopped, and his face grew pale, and suddenly he hung his head. In a softer voice, he said, “No. That is boasting. Through me, Edrouss Delmuirie will change Arhel. Remember, when that time comes, that you could have been at my side. That will be punishment enough for your faithlessness.”
Roba stared at Thirk. Then she gave him a little half-smile and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “I guess it will be,” she said. She stood and slowly walked back to the directory, where the rest of her colleagues were still hard at work.
That man, she thought, has transported body without brain. She shoved her thumbs into her belt and looked back to where the saje sat and stared off into nothing. He’s communing with the Mocking God. He’s drunk from the Well of Delusion. He’s insane, she decided as she reached Kirgen. Of all the ways she had thought Thirk might take her news, going mad hadn’t even occurred to her as a possibility.
She knelt beside her young saje and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Come see something,” she whispered. “And tell me what you think.”
* * *
It had been an exhausting day, and Medwind felt drained. Worry about Nokar took most of the pleasure out of the discovery of the library. Other concerns combined to distract her, too, until at last she found herself not cataloging numbers and headings, but simply staring at the directory and tracing the First Folk symbols with one finger.
When she realized she was in the way of people getting real work done, she excused herself and climbed up the side of the mountain back to the airbox. Once there, she rummaged around through the back storage compartment until she located the large padded leather bag that held her dearest possessions. She removed the bag along with a bedroll that held the rest of her gear, and carried her things to the nearest of the First Folk buildings.
The building she chose was large—round, two-storied, and domed. The central room was bright and covered with charming mosaics. But a bright room wouldn’t meet her needs. She went through the rounded doorway into the adjoining room. There, too, the walls were covered with mosaics—but the room itself was suitably dark.
She made herself a place to sit and an altar, unpacked her vha’attaye and reverently set them out. Then, following the ancient ritual, she began to call forth the waking dead. Incense smoke coiled out from the painted skulls’ nose holes and grinning mouths. Her tiny travel drum pittered like rain on a b’dabba. She hummed and stared into the light of her two little candles, and began to sing. And as she sang, the darkness that surrounded her grew darker, and the hair rose on her arms and the back of her neck, and cold walked through her body and ached in her bones. Thick emerald tendrils of light began to coalesce around first one skull, and then all but one of the rest. Joy filled her. Most of her vha’attaye had found their way home. The file-toothed skull of Troggar Raveneye, best enemy, remained dark and empty. Medwind channeled more of her magic into the summoning—to no effect.
Perhaps he is still lost, she thought. Perhaps he will soon return, as the others have returned.
The ghostflesh finished forming over the bones of the vha’attaye, and the ghosteyes lit with their uncanny fire, and the ghostmouths opened and closed, clicked and skritched. But though they muttered among themselves, the dead gave her no greeting.
Medwind pressed her forehead to the floor, then rose slowly.
“I come to honor you,” she whispered to the impassive faces of the waking dead. “I come to cherish you, and to give you my love.”
Still the vha’attaye withheld their greetings.
“Please speak with me,” Medwind pled. “I have longed for the voices of my loved ones.”
“Don’t waste your love on the dead,” Rakell Ingasdotte whispered. Her bonevoice scraped like claws on dry wood—a cold parody of the warm, vibrant voice Medwind remembered. “We are greedy, but not for love—only for life. The little driblets you feed us when you call us forth make us hungrier for what we cannot have. We dried bones have forgotten love.”
Medwind stared into the ghostly eyes of her dead friend and colleague and said, “That isn’t true. You remember our friendship as well as I.”
“The place between the worlds is a poor place for remembering friendship,” the vha’attaye said. “It is a better place for learning want.” The ghosteyes narrowed while ghostflesh twisted into a semblance of a leer. “I want more life. If I can’t have mine, I’ll take yours!”
The green glow around the skull blazed brighter; it grew, like a well-fed flame; it pulled and drew energy and life from the Hoos warrior.
Medwind hadn’t been prepared for an attack. She’d trusted Rakell, and it took her an instant to realize what was happening, and another instant to shield herself. When her shield went up, the Mottemage’s attack stopped, but Medwind could feel the toll Rakell’s assault had taken from her flesh and her bones and her breath. She was exhausted; her strength was gone. The attack had been powerful—with a shudder, she realized she could have died.
She stared into the glowing eyes of her dead friend. “Why did you do that?”
The Mottemage laughed—a hideous sound. “I want life. Or death. Not this horror in between.”
Medwind clenched her hands into fists. “You wouldn’t have killed me—not really.”
“No. Of course not. So why don’t you put down your shield? We’re friends, after all.”
The mocking in the vha’atta’s voice felt like a knife in Medwind’s heart. “You are my friend,” she whispered.
The other vha’attaye laughed—hissing, scraping dead-thing laughter. “Friends,” they hissed. “We are all friends.”
Rakell’s eyesockets gleamed brighter in the darkness. “I was your friend,” she whispered. “But you treated me the same way you treated your enemy—look what happened to him.”
Medwind looked at Troggar Raveneye’s dark, empty skull. “What happened? Where is he? I believed he was still lost—”
The Mottemage laughed again. “Not so. He was devoured by the things that hunt between the worlds. His soul was ripped to shreds. There is nothing left of him now. Any hope he might have had—of another life, another chance—is gone.”
Medwind remembered the pitiless cold thing born of void and hatred that had come bearing down on her out of nowhere. She remembered her fear—and she felt anguish for Troggar Raveneye, best enemy. She felt a grief at news of this passing that she had not even felt at his death. She pressed her face to the floor and wept.
Living, he’d been so young—so beautiful, with muscles that flowed beneath smooth copper skin, eyes black as night. He had not conceded defeat when she cornered him in battle, had not consented to be her husband to buy his life. He’d fought on, and nearly won. She’d been enchanted by his courage and his grace—and she had not meant to kill him. To the last, she meant to spare him—for her b’dabba and her bed. She would have loved him; for those few minutes, she did. But he got through her guard and wounded her. She parried, an instinctive move that she followed with a stop thrust—
—he fell, dying, and smiled at her, and touched his forehead once—
—honor among warriors, the co
ncession of defeat by a superior—
—then he died.
She did vha’atta—Huong Hoos honor, reverence for skill and knowledge worth saving. Yet she had failed to save him after all. She had cost him instead—cost him his life, and then his soul. Twice he had paid her, and paid too much.
Above her bent neck, the voices of the dead mocked her, mocked her tears and her weakness, mocked her love. They were her past, her family, her memories—they were the part of her that made her Hoos. Yet they hated her; they despised her. She was imperfect, and they—distant and unchanging—had no tolerance for her imperfections. She was living—and they envied her life.
She banished them, then—blew out the candles and scattered them away from her; chased them back into the cold and the dark and the emptiness. She heard the echoes of their sobbing cries, soft hisses, high screeches as they fled down the path that led between the worlds. She sat and stared at the hollow bones, cold bones, bones with the smoke of incense still curling out of the nose holes and the grinning jaws.
How could she send Nokar to such a fate? How could she stand to hear hate and envy in his voice, where now she heard only love?
But how could she let him die? How could she say goodbye, knowing she could hold back the moment of final goodbye—perhaps forever?
The memories of the Wen Godtrees rushed back to her, unbidden. She relived the moment she first saw the struggling forms pinned to the tree-flesh and recognized them for what they were—and she felt again her revulsion. But at that moment, her mind drew an ugly parallel, one she hadn’t seen before. The Wen worshipped trees animated by the trapped souls of their undead children—and the Hoos communed with the caged spirits of their long-dead parents. No matter that the Wen sacrificed their living offspring where the Hoos preserved the souls of those who had died. At that moment, she could not see where one sacred rite was any less hideous than the other.
She had never thought of vha’atta as something wrong before. She stared into the darkness, into the bony faces of her ancestors. Was vha’atta wrong?
And if it was—how could she save Nokar?
She stretched out on her bedroll then, grateful for the darkness that swallowed her, and sought the temporary oblivion of sleep.
Chapter 11
A SOFT voice outside the doorway called, “Please come to the library as soon as you can. Some of the children are missing.”
Seven-Fingered Fat Girl had been lying with Dog Nose on a shared blanket, holding him close in drowsy contentment. The past with all its horrors was behind her and could not hurt her ever again. The future waited, full of work and probable hardship. But the present—that had seemed perfect.
Some of the children are missing.
She was on her feet, fists clenched, her stomach twisting in a frightened knot before the echoes of that soft voice died away. She was weaponless—the Silk People had stolen her dartstick and her darts along with her peknu clothes. Dog Nose, beside her, pulling his myr on, had suffered the same fate. His hurlsticks were burning in the Silk People village too.
No matter. The two of them would go and help search, and if they could not kill whatever had stolen the children, at least they might distract it while the peknu did.
But how could the children be missing?
As she considered, a handful of ways sprang to mind. They could have climbed over the wall—some doori might have picked them off the top of it, or kellinks could have caught them on the other side. They could have wandered into one of the many caves that dotted the cliffside of the city. They could have fallen into the lake, they could have become trapped in a ruined building—
“Which children?” Dog Nose asked as they ran toward the library.
“Don’t know.” Fat Girl was hoping, however, that the missing children were all sharsha. She wouldn’t say that out loud, and she didn’t wish the sharsha any ill—she would feel sorrow at the loss of any of the little strangers. But she never wanted to lose another friend.
They met up with the peknu in the library. Faia sat, covered by a ball of blue light that sank into the library floor, her eyes closed. Medwind Song, her face red and puffy, sat at some distance from her and stared into a black bowl filled with water. Nokar leaned on his staff between the two of them and watched them both. Everyone else waited in silence.
Fat Girl inventoried the watchers, and her pulse sped. One of the sharsha kids was missing—but so was Kirtha. And worst of all, so was Runs Slow. She looked over at Dog Nose. From his horrified expression, she knew he had reached the same conclusion she’d reached.
“We promised Roshi we’d take care of her,” Dog Nose whispered.
“We weren’t watching her. We didn’t keep her with us.” Fat Girl hung her head. “If she is lost, how do we repay our broken promise?”
Dog Nose whispered, “Broken promises cannot be repaid.”
“Shhh!” Kirgen glared at them, and she and Dog Nose fell silent.
Faia lifted her head and opened her eyes. “They are that way,” she said, and pointed toward the back of the library, and down. Down? Fat Girl, bewildered, thought something must be wrong with the peknu magic. The mountain went up.
At almost the same instant Medwind said, “I can see them—but only barely. Only enough to know that they are still alive. They seem safe enough. They are in a large open space, and there is a—a well of a sort—a source of enormous power.”
Medwind pulled her gaze away from the bowl. “Unexpected.”
“What is?” Nokar asked.
“The power well—I know of no magic that could make it—its power hides its nature—some form of magic disguises its location—”
“How do we find the littlest ones?” Dog Nose asked.
Faia drew in the sphere of light that surrounded her, and for the briefest instant, she glowed. Then the glow vanished, and she stood. “I sense them beyond the back of the library.”
At the back of the library, Fat Girl explored the four rooms filled with monster statues—she and Dog Nose had not ventured back that for their first time in the library. She touched some of the brightly colored beasts and shuddered. They looked too much like kellinks with wings to suit her. She could imagine them racing down out of the sky and snatching her up in their toothy jaws and swallowing her whole. They frightened her.
I don’t need to be afraid, she told herself suddenly. They are stone. They are nothing. She smacked one in the nose and made a face at it—she would have spit in its eye, but the peknu might have noticed and laughed at her. Feeling better, though, she continued her search.
Everyone went through the rooms quickly the first time, then more slowly the second.
“We need to start looking through the other buildings,” Kirgen said. “Outside, along the walls—there are so many places they could be—”
“I said from the beginning this was no sort of trip for children,” Thirk announced. “Perhaps now you can see the Delmuirie scholar is right again.”
Fat Girl looked at the rest of the peknu to see what they would say. They ignored the man.
“The children are here,” Faia insisted after they’d finished the second tour of the rooms. “They are here.”
Medwind said, “Perhaps if we went outside the library, we could find something that would tell us why your Searching indicates they are in here—when it’s obvious they aren’t. Maybe they’ve gotten into a building or a cave behind the library.”
Faia sighed. “That isn’t the feel I get but you might be right. Searching for my daughter is much more frightening than Searching for sheep ever was.”
Thirk had been wandering around the room, studying the monster statues. He spoke up. “I’ll wait in here, and let you know if they somehow show up.”
Medwind’s face showed her annoyance. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and search for the children with the rest of us? You can admire the statues later.”
“Let him stay,” Faia said. “There is some important part I’m missing. Pe
rhaps he’ll find it.”
Seven-Fingered Fat Girl didn’t like Thirk. He reminded her of the man who stole her tablet in the marketplace. He dressed the same, he looked very much the same, and at that moment, she sensed a similar lying tone in his voice. She made a tagnu hand-signal to Dog Nose—the one for “quiet and hide,” and he nodded slightly and carefully drifted out of the room. The peknu and the sharsha headed toward the front of the library.
Fat Girl ducked behind a statue and crouched out of sight.
* * *
Something about Thirk’s attitude struck Roba as strange. She didn’t think for an instant he intended to wait for the children—he’d made it clear all along how he felt about them. No—he was up to something, and she intended to find out what it was. She told Kirgen to go along, that she’d catch up with him in a minute. Then she pressed herself against the wall just outside the door and hoped Thirk at least intended to stay in that room.
For a moment, the only sounds she heard were those of the rest of the team and the sharsha kids going outside—talking, occasionally calling for one or another of the missing children—and then she heard nothing at all.
Dog Nose appeared by her side, fingers to his lips. She nodded. Apparently she wasn’t the only one suspicious of Thirk. The two of them waited together. Then she heard the scuffling of feet in the other room and Thirk’s mutter.
“Fine,” he whispered, and the whisper echoed through the room and out into the corridor, “now let’s see what you do.”
She heard a brief, scraping sound—and then a heavy, rolling grinding—stone against stone. At the same time, she heard Thirk’s delighted “Aha!” She peeked carefully around the edge of the doorway, and saw one panel of the back stone wall rising up into the ceiling high overhead. Incredible, she thought. She held her breath. Another corridor appeared behind the moving stone slab, leading down.
That’s where the kids are, she thought. Down that corridor somewhere. She waited. She wanted to run out and shout. “Thirk found where they went,” but something about the man’s actions stopped her. He was staring down the dark passage. The stone panel came to rest near the ceiling, held its position for an instant and began to return to its initial place. Suddenly, Thirk conjured a faeriefire and sent it down the secret tunnel, and hurried after it. The heavy stone door slid shut behind him.