Ishe focused on the second figure. The current whipped him toward the teeth that jutted from the water. Ishe squinted and saw that he clung to a single fat log about five feet long. He gave up pushing for the wall and focused on turning the log perpendicular to the flow of the water.
The teeth were aligned in staggered rows, and Ishe immediately saw Catter’s plan. The logs were longer than the gaps between the teeth. Catter hit the first row of teeth perfectly positioned, but instead of stopping, the log snapped, sending him spinning into the current. Ishe thrust out her pole and fell short, but not by much.
“Help!” Catter cried, reaching for the pole before the current rammed him against a pillar of stone a few feet out of reach. The log fragment popped free of his arms, but Catter managed to wrap his arms around one of the maw’s teeth.
To Ishe’s right, Drosa bent, hauling Stag out of the water. Sparrow stood, pole outstretched and just as useless as hers. Alone, it was useless. An idea sparked in the cold of her brain. “Sparrow! Hang on!” was all the warning she had time to give him. Ishe leapt, grabbing hold of Sparrow’s pole at the midpoint. His eyes started to widen, horror breaking through his glazed eyes as Ishe swung herself out into the river, the pole sweeping out an arc through the air and cracking onto the stone above Catter’s head.
Cold hit Ishe as if she’d been dropped onto a bed of nails from a great height, penetrating so intensely that the ice turned to fire. Her body spasmed as she dimly heard shouts. A jerk on her shoulders pulled her head above the water, and she saw Sparrow’s face of rage.
“Drowned Otter take you, Ishe! You stupid girl!” He’d been pulled prone, his chin inches from the water as he bared a mouthful of crooked teeth at her. Only Blinky’s line had prevented him from being pulled in with her. “I said stay out of the water! Stay out of the water!” Spittle frothed up onto his mustache as he clung to the pole.
Drosa threw herself on top of Sparrow, her own hands joining his, and Stag seized a fistful of each of their jackets; together, they began to haul Ishe back in. Looking the other way, Catter clung to the other pole, his face a mask of grim determination.
The babble of the Grief swelled into the void of thoughts left by the ice flowing through Ishe. They were all so warm-looking. Why should she be so cold? How could that be fair? They should give that warmth to her. She needed it. She needed all of that. Steadying herself, Ishe waited as Sparrow and Drosa began to pull her in.
What did I teach you, Little Rhino? What have I beaten into your thick skull since I pushed you into this world? Mother’s voice shot across the empty expanse of her mind like a cannon shot.
“The world is unfair and I can’t make it fair,” Ishe mumbled as hands grabbed her shoulders and hauled her from the water. In her mind, her mother loomed with yellow eyes, and Ishe’s mouth filled with the grit of bone dust, tasting Coyote’s sea of bones once again.
Then it was Sparrow, above her, shaking her, face contorted in a way that misfolded the laugh lines. “I told you not to touch that water! And what do you do? Three times, Ishe! She died for you! You are not allowed to throw your life away! Do you and your black god understand that?” A coughing fit seized him and he drew back, shielding his mouth with the back of his hand. He was straddling her stomach, his body leaching blessed heat into her. He spat a gob onto the rock and the fight left him, arms clutching at his chest as if they could hold his tortured lungs together. “Please be more careful,” he wheezed. “You can’t save everyone.”
Shifting, he put a hand on his knee and begun to push himself up. Ishe tried to swing an arm up at him but nothing moved. Turning her head, she found Drosa’s boot on her wrist, pinning it to the floor. “Almost there. Sunlight soon,” Drosa said.
“I’m so c-c-cold. Just a little heat, p-p-please,” Ishe heard herself beg.
Drosa shook her head. “You need sun now. Only thing or you suck us dry.” Drosa’s serious face broke into a radiant grin. “You stupid brave. Too brave for the black ones to take. Like Eyah and me. Hang on little longer.” She released Ishe’s arm and walked over to the alcove in the wall. Stag stood beside it, showing all his teeth, with a manic shine to his eyes. He and Drosa spoke, but whatever they said was lost to the river’s constant rage against the rocks and Catter’s loud proclamations that he would never touch a river for as long as he lived. Still, Drosa’s body language told Ishe that she wasn’t buying whatever Stag was selling. She jabbed her finger at the platform on the opposite side of the river. He huffed once and then headed up to the stairway. Once he made it halfway across, she knelt and placed her forearm into the alcove, mouth set in the anticipation of pain. “Tell me when he reaches the other side.”
Ishe pulled herself up and watched Stag climb the stairway. Her frozen heart skipped a beat when he disappeared into the upper chamber. Yet in a moment, he returned, bearing a blazing torch. It lit his way as he walked to the opposite side of the cavern where an identical alcove waited him. He knelt in the same position Drosa held, placing his arm into the opening.
“He’s there,” Ishe said.
Drosa nodded her head and prayed. The stone closed down on her arm like a mouth, and a hiss like the searing of meat cut through the water’s roar. Drosa sucked air through her teeth as Ishe felt the rock beneath her first tremble, then shake.
An eerie blue light slowly filled the chamber, and it took a moment for Ishe to find the source: a bright spot beneath the water. The ground under them gave a final shiver, and the river became a wall of water. Ishe lifted a hand to protect herself from the oncoming water. Yet it didn’t move; it stayed there, rushing through the air in front of her, the wall growing taller and taller until she was seeing under it. Stag still knelt on the other side, one arm still gripped by stone, the other beating his thigh with a fist. In the now-empty riverbed, a fourth stone Watcher stood holding a water crystal the size of Ishe’s head. The river continued to rise until it flowed entirely along the ceiling of the chamber. From each platform, a stairway led down to the riverbed.
The stone let go of Drosa’s arm with an exhalation of smoke and the scent of seared pork. Angry red lines covered the surface of her arm. Hissing with pain, she waved her arm, attempting to cool it. “Get going. The way is open.”
On the other side, Stag was already hurrying down the steps to bottom of the river.
“Oh, you have to be kidding me,” Catter groaned, but he followed swiftly down the steps. At the bottom, Ishe looked back to see that the effect of the crystal extended far beyond the chamber. The river had had lifted from the bed as far as she could see.
“May the horned one guide your path.” Stag put his hands together and bowed, Golden Hills style, to the group. He then set off upriver at a brisk jog.
“Where’s he going?” Catter asked before Ishe could get her mouth to move.
Drosa’s words were bitter. “He going back to tell them good news.” She turned away and began to walk toward the path. Everyone shuffled, or scuttled in Blinky’s case, after her. So complete was the lifting of the river that the sand on which they walked was bone-dry.
“Tell who what?” Sparrow asked.
“The tribe that She Who Shatters Iron has come and gone. They will kill him before he speaks.” Drosa held up her arm branded with the blistering markings. “Until all tribe passes this way, this mark of exile.” She didn’t stop moving, didn’t look back. “I hope there something good in this world of yours, Ishe.”
“It will be w-w-warmer than here,” Ishe managed to say. As the group approached a wide stairway, her steps quickened. Still, her shuffling proved slow compared to the others as they spotted the glow of sunlight ahead. Warmth.
A part of her recoiled as the glow increased, but she kept walking, kept moving, until the gaze of Daylight shone on her in all his glory. Blazing pain lanced through her being, as the ice that had rooted in her began to boil away. Step back, step back! Get back to water! the Grief screamed at her, and she almost obeyed, but a small hand placed itself in
the small of her back and prevented her. Ice broke inside her and warmth flooded in.
“Eyah say welcome back.”
Ishe blinked to find the woman who had attempted to kill her two days earlier stepping next to her and looking on the forest beyond filled with trees as tall as fifty men stacked together. Sparrow had been right; this was High Tree valley.
Drosa gave a nervous laugh. “Everything bigger on this side of mountains or only trees?”
As they stood, admiring the view, the others were scrambling down the slope of the mountain they had emerged from. Ishe and Drosa began to follow. Below sat a lake that was fed by a waterfall. On its bank lay a strange lump, a lump that Sparrow raced toward. When he reached it, Ishe’s heart, which had been through a lot that day, between being frozen, boiled, and warmed by Drosa, nearly gave up once she made sense of Sparrow’s shouts:
“Hawk! Great All-Father, it’s Hawk!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
While exploring the ruins of an ancient mine, a human servant asked the Great Wyrm why the ancients had never dug up his slumbering form. This amused the dragon and he answered, “I was not there to found.”
Rictus Hana, Author of The Great Wyrm, the Known History
Ishe didn’t recall breaking into a run, hadn’t thought she had any energy left at all. Yet she found herself traversing the path downward at a far greater speed than was wise, given the incline. For vast stretches, she merely braced her legs and let her boots slide down between the levels of the zigzagging path. She made it and skidded to a stop in front of the figure that Sparrow knelt by.
But it couldn’t be Hawk. The figure was missing three limbs. Charred stumps protruded from the torso. Her right arm was incinerated to the elbow, right leg to mid-thigh and left leg below the knee. Sparrow clutched at the figure’s one huge hand. Catter stood to the side, hand over his mouth as if to keep something vital inside him.
Sparrow stifled a cough. “Help me move her.” He looked at Ishe and then at her black arms. “You go and gather firewood. Ask for permission first before you cross into the living forest. Everyone else help me pull her.” Ishe gave a small nod and turned away, purposely not getting close enough to peer at the figure’s face. Not Hawk, she lied to herself as she strode toward the green. The dead area wasn’t very thick, maybe thirty paces between the shore of the lake to the first green leaf. A barrier of bristling saplings formed an obvious wall, and Ishe stopped in front of it. Talking to spirits had always felt silly to her in the past, Yaki’s domain. Ishe herself had never heard a spirit speak until Coyote had walked into Yaz’noth’s lair. How things changed.
“Please grant me passage,” she asked the trees. “My friend is injured and we need to shelter among the forest tonight.” She flexed her fingers and felt the bones move in the rubbery flesh. Once the sun went down, she’d hear the Grief again. “And I need shelter from the Grief,” she added.
No response. The trees hadn’t parted. A distant bird tweeted halfheartedly. Had that been a sign? Ishe remembered how the Grief they’d fought in the river was skewered by the rapid growth of branches. Would the trees attack her, too?
“I’m taking that as assent,” Ishe told the silent forest, and took a couple of steps forward and made to push a branch from her path. It bowed out of the way of her black fingers, avoiding her touch.
“Thank you.” Ishe pushed through the wall and found herself at the foot of a massive tree that would take at least five people to encircle. It exuded a pressure that made it very clear that Ishe was not a welcome guest. At least there were a considerable number of branches lying on the forest floor. She bent to retrieve a stick.
A rumble shook the ground beneath her feet. “Move her! Now!” Drosa’s voice rang out as Ishe looked up the mountain.
Small stones began to roll down the side of the mountain like spooked animals. The passage Ishe had exited the Maw by and a second passage to its right began to dribble water, a stream of tears. Then they burst into torrential jets of rushing foam. The streams arced into the middle of pool and sent waves rushing for the shore.
Drosa and Catter pulled Hawk up from the edge of the pool as Sparrow flitted after them. “Careful. Careful,” he urged. Catter was hauling her via the wrist and elbow of her good arm, while Drosa fought to keep Hawk on her side to avoid getting hung up on the close-together trees. The wall of saplings had seemed to have shuffled out of the way. Hawk was pulled into the living forest without a challenge.
Hawk made no sound as her rescuers groaned with the effort to prop her up against the tree trunk. In the sunlight, she looked gray as granite, yet there was no denying this fallen titan was indeed Hawk. Her chest rose and fell irregularly. Ishe redoubled her wood-finding efforts. Sparrow stood by, sucking on one end of his whiskers. Drosa began clearing debris to create a shallow fire pit. Taking what little wood Ishe had gathered already, she started building the base of a fire.
“Do we risk a fire?” Catter asked.
Ishe paused and glanced up at the mountain. If Yaz’noth had been the only dragon they needed to worry about she’d build a fire, but he had other dragons, including Hammer. After a moment of consideration, she grabbed another stick. “We build the fire for her, and then I go find the High Tree tribe. If I’m not here, then they might not attack.”
“Then Ishe melt into goo in dark. You not go anyway tonight.” Drosa had cleared out a fire pit and knelt by a pile of pine needles and twigs. Her hair changed from the color of the auburn sunset to the shine of a noonday sun. In the space of a second, a small flame kindled to life.
Ishe frowned at the flame, looked at Hawk, and then at the sinking sun. If they were caught, Hawk’s bravery would be for naught. Ishe let the dead wood fall from her grasp. “Nothing that smokes too much, and we put it out at sundown.”
Drosa squinted at the sun. It was getting close to the peaks of the Spine. “Gives us time. You need it too.”
Ishe nodded. They had about an hour before the sun kissed those mountains. “After dark, everyone lie with Hawk to keep her warm,” Ishe said.
“Don’t we have to worry about the Grief?” Catter asked, looking directly at Ishe’s hands.
“Yes. We always must worry about the Grief.” Sparrow pulled up his own patch of infection, a blotch of gray on his ankle. “But this shouldn’t give me any trouble. Ishe will be in for a rough night.”
Ishe opened her mouth to say something, but Drosa beat her to the words. “Ishe be fine. I help her tonight.”
Sparrow raised an eyebrow but simply nodded as he sat down next to Hawk. He took her uninjured hand with two of his own and held it to his chest. He appeared to fall asleep within the span of a single breath.
Ishe turned a questioning look at Drosa, who busied herself digging their waterlogged rations out of her pack. “Food will help,” she said. “Light fire inside you.” She laid out on a flat rock the mush that the food had become and pushed it almost into the flames. It looked worse than the common house gruel back in the Golden Hills. Yet the fire soon had the mixture of meat and nuts bubbling, and the scent had her stomach doing far more than growling. Drosa chuckled before handing her a metal spoon. “Use this or I feed you like baby.”
Once again, the mixture’s taste surprised Ishe, and it took willpower to use the spoon and not shovel the stuff into her mouth with her hands. Something warm in her stomach invoked its own groans of pleasure. Ishe had thought the sun had returned her to life, but the warm food thawed all the places the sun couldn’t reach.
Drosa saved a small portion of the gruel from Ishe for herself and Catter before smothering the fire with dirt. “Thank you,” Ishe said as the sun began to disappear, “That will make the night much easier.” Food consumed and light fading, Ishe could feel a chill creeping back into her chest. With Drosa busy smothering the fire with dirt, Ishe decided it would be a good time to find a place for the coming battle.
Circling around to far side of the tree they sheltered under, she found a natural seat among
its tangled roots and leaned against the trunk. The tree, however, made certain that she would not rest against it. Its bark jabbed at her back, and even when she used her shirt as a pillow, the roots she sat on got in on the fun. Taking the hint, she shuffled herself away from it, crossed her legs, and prepared to wait for morning’s dawn.
In the final minutes of sunlight, the babbling voices of the Grief rose in her mind like a tide. Their resentments filled her world and flowed like ice water through her chest. Unlike the Grief of the Valley, the swarm seemed to take no notice of her mind bobbing at its edges. Ishe contented herself with that. As the chill passed through numbness to biting pain, she had to focus on keeping her tongue from straying between her chattering teeth. Instincts whispered that there was so much warmth in the others. She only had to reach for it. Teach the tree a lesson. And Hawk, she was so close to dead. She’d be thankful to Ishe for finishing the job. She’d never wake up, not with burns like that.
Ishe gritted her teeth for a moment and dug her fingers into the soil, trying to trap them there.
Warmth. Blessed warmth blossomed in two spots on her back. “Your teeth are too loud.” Drosa laughed in her ear.
“W-w-what?” Ishe’s scheming thoughts ground to a halt as she heard a whisper of fabric behind her.
“Told you, I will help you. Thought food be enough, clearly I wrong. Now keep your arms still.” Thin arms reached beneath Ishe’s breasts and warm flesh pressed against her back. Drosa gasped. “Oh, goat’s blood! It shoving my tits in snow.”
“Drosa, what are—” Ishe began.
“Keep you alive. You need warmth. I have warmth. No need to steal it. I give it.” Drosa pressed her cheek against Ishe’s shoulder and moved it up along her neck, pushing Ishe’s short black hair aside to nuzzle the back of her ear. It caused Ishe to shiver in a way that had nothing to do with her corrupted arms. Drosa chuckled and somehow pressed herself even harder against Ishe’s back.
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