“But I have also sworn to obey your orders until we reach safety. I will honor that oath. Still, I must tell you that I am bound to report to my lord all that I know.”
“Then I would have you tell him something, if you will bear the burden,” Khara said. “His son, Luca, is dead. It was not by my hand, nor by my will.”
Norbert looked grave and seemed to age ten years before our eyes. “I will carry this terrible news to my lord.”
“Tell him this, as well. That we Donatis . . .” She stopped and frowned again, as if frustrated by her own words. “Tell him that I, Kharassande Donati, would offer him my hand in friendship, and bring an end to this feud between our families.”
Norbert nodded. “I shall.”
I was relieved to find Khara alone in the bow a few minutes later. I had many questions to ask, and few answers. “You have changed, Khara,” I began.
She did not disagree.
“You hesitate to speak for your father. Now you speak more boldly for yourself. When we first met . . . when you captured me”—I smiled to show it was said in jest—“you appeared to be a poacher and a guide. Slowly it became clear that you were more, that you were the scion of the Donatis. That you carried the Light of Nedarra.”
Khara pursed her lips. “Do you have a question for me, Byx?”
“More like a request. Tell me your dream.”
“My dreams?” She looked puzzled.
“No, Khara, not your dreams. Not the fancies of your sleeping mind. I mean your dream. You come from a once-great family. You carry a sword wreathed in magic and myth. I believe that when we started this journey, you wished only—or at least mostly—to help me find others of my own kind. But I no longer believe that is your only goal.”
Khara was silent for a long time. “I have no siblings,” she began. “As you can imagine, that was a great disappointment to my father.”
I frowned.
“Oh, I forgot that dairnes do not assume that only males can lead.” Khara gave a small laugh. “We humans are not all so enlightened. There has never been a female head of the Donatis. There has never been a female warrior in our clan, aside from figures of myth and legend.”
“But you are a warrior,” I objected. “And you have led us over hundreds of perilous leagues. These rowers have accepted your leadership. For that matter, even Renzo acknowledges that you lead us.”
Khara looked pained. “Ah, but the rowers accept me because I freed them. Gambler seems to follow me, but in truth, Gambler follows no one.” She smiled wistfully. “As for Renzo . . .” She shrugged. “Well, he is a puzzle.”
I kept my face carefully neutral. Poor Khara actually did not know why Renzo followed her. His feelings seemed plain enough to me, and to Gambler and Tobble as well, I suspected—and we weren’t even human.
Still, it was not my place to explain such things to Khara. She would have to figure that on her own.
“You still have not told me your dream,” I pressed.
“My dream? It’s a fantasy, an absurd fantasy. I sometimes imagine returning home and uniting the dispossessed families against the Murdano.” She winced, as if expecting me to laugh, and seemed surprised when I only nodded. “But for now, it’s not about uniting to overthrow the Murdano. Now my fantasy—my dream, as you call it—is of stopping this war.” She threw up her hands. “Beyond that, Byx, I do not know. There is a great deal I do not know.”
“Then I will tell you what I know,” I said. “I trust you. I believe in you. And I will follow you. So will Tobble and Gambler and Renzo.” I glanced back at Maxyn. He was sleeping, propped against the mast. “I don’t know about Maxyn.”
“He has no reason to follow me,” Khara said. “If he follows anyone, it will be you, Byx.”
I laughed out loud at the thought of me leading anyone. I’d had my brief taste of that. And I had not enjoyed it.
Khara leaned close and said, “Remember, Byx: you are all Maxyn has in the world. He puts on a brave face, but you know all too well what he’s been through.”
“Too much death,” I whispered, not even intending for Khara to hear it.
“Far too much,” Khara agreed grimly. “And there will be more. Much more.”
34
Return to Nedarra
It was the dead of night when we ghosted along the Nedarran coast and passed Landfail, the peninsula where I’d first glimpsed Tarok and felt a thrill of hope that I might not be the endling of my species. Once past Landfail, a great bay called Rebit’s Sound opened on our right, and Tobble ordered the sail to be taken in.
“Norbert,” Tobble called, “wake your men. We’ve lost the breeze.”
We glided into the sound to the soft shushing of oars in water. The darkness was so complete that as we crunched ashore, I could barely see my hand before my face. Norbert and some of his men leapt out and ran a rope to a stunted tree. The rest of us followed, feeling the strange reassurance of solid land after so much time on a moving, tilting deck.
Khara spoke to the rowers. “Men, you have all fulfilled your oaths to me. Go with our gratitude.”
“We owe our freedom to you, Khara,” Norbert said, clearing his throat, “to you and to your companions. We serve various masters, and each of us will now make his way home to rediscover wives and children. But we shall not forget.”
“Go in peace,” Khara said. One by one, the rowers went to Khara, bending their knees and lowering their heads, before disappearing into the night.
Khara turned to Maxyn. “Maxyn, you have been dragged unwillingly into our party. Your father was killed—not by us, no, but in part because of us. You have no reason to follow me as the others have chosen to do. You are free to go, or to stay with us.”
Maxyn started to look at me, but caught himself. “Do you still intend to reach this supposed dairne colony on the Pellago?”
“I do,” Khara said. “But . . .” She paused and looked at me with a question in her eyes. “I had a talk with Byx.”
I was surprised to hear my name and wondered where Khara’s words were heading.
“She forced me to admit my”—Khara managed a self-conscious smile—“my ‘dream,’ I guess you’d call it.”
“Dream?” Renzo repeated, one brow raised, leaning closer.
“My dream to stop this looming war,” Khara said, and Renzo looked a bit disappointed.
She shrugged. “I know. It’s insane to think that I could change the future of Nedarra. But I must try. And before I can decide what my next steps should be, I should first see my father. His will may be different from mine.” She sent me a pained gaze. “There is an urgency to this I cannot ignore, Byx. I’d like to see him as soon as possible. But if my plans change after speaking to my father, I might not be able to—”
“If necessary,” Gambler interrupted, “I will undertake to guide Byx to the dairne colony.”
“And I will be right by their side,” Tobble added. I gave them both a grateful smile.
“I understand, Khara,” I said, although secretly I felt crushed that we might have to delay our plans to find the colony—or even go on without Khara. “You have to follow your heart in this matter.”
Renzo didn’t speak and looked as if he hoped no one would ask his plans. But I had no doubt that his first loyalty was to Khara.
Maxyn seemed to be considering his options. “I have no great love for Dreyland, nor do I care what happens to Nedarra. I want no part of anyone’s war. I saw what taking sides did to my father.”
“Sometimes taking sides is necessary,” Gambler said, his pale blue eyes sizing up Maxyn carefully.
“Perhaps,” said Maxyn. “But sometimes taking sides gets you killed. For now, I will stay with Byx and help her search for more dairnes. That seems to me to be the best choice in a world of bad choices.”
“All right, then,” said Khara. “We shall connect with my father and his followers. And from there, we’ll decide where our futures lie.”
The uncertainty and dan
ger hiding in Khara’s words worried me deeply. But what choice did I have? She was our leader.
It will all be fine, I told myself. We would find her father. We would decide our next steps. And eventually we would find more dairnes.
We had to.
We spent the rest of the night near the beach in a small grove of dendro trees. I went in search of wood for a fire, as the serrated yellow dendro fronds create too much smoke when they burn. The snow was gone, now that we were south of the mountains. But it was still chilly and damp.
It was not easy to find anything, let alone fallen branches, in the dark. I heard someone moving near me and called out, “Who is it?”
“Me,” Maxyn said.
“Oh. Good.”
“It would be easy to get lost out here.”
“Yes, it would,” I agreed.
After that, our conversation was limited to things like “Can you give me a hand with this branch? I need to break it,” and other exchanges on the topic of firewood. Still, it was sweet to have a fellow dairne by my side.
Together, Maxyn and I were finally able to cajole the fire into burning. But by then it was so late, and we were all so weary, that it was a race between fire making and rest. The fire was small and sputtering, and I fell asleep as soon as it was going.
The next day we set out at dawn and walked along the beach, hoping to find a fishing outpost. When that proved futile, we headed inland. We soon spied a prosperous-looking village, where we exchanged another jewel from the crown for supplies.
Two days later, the weather had warmed, and we found ourselves walking through a league-long path lined by vivid purple nossit trees, their boughs twining overhead to create a breathtaking, sweet-scented tunnel. We were well away from any true roads and hadn’t seen a soul in days, so we soon were singing—the echo created by the tunnel proving irresistible.
We taught Maxyn Tobble’s worm song and shared our harrowing tale of the Crimson Forest. Gambler sang a lovely felivet ballad about lost love—surprising, given the solitary nature of his species. His gorgeous baritone vibrated the very boughs above us.
Khara and Renzo attempted a human song, harmonizing nicely at the outset. It seemed to be about a man who exploded after eating too many strawberry pies, but I couldn’t be sure. Despite several attempts, they kept dissolving into laughter before they could reach the end of the chorus.
When they’d given up, breathless and flushed, Maxyn began singing an old dairne song about an obstinate pup. I remembered my parents singing it to my siblings and me—over and over and over again, as we begged for one more chorus. Together, Maxyn and I translated the lyrics from Dairnish so that our companions could join in:
Tiny pups, please sleep, we pray.
Tomorrow there’ll be time for play.
Slumber in your leafy nest,
and let your parents get some rest!
Maxyn, I learned, often built and slept in tree nests on Tarok, the way dairnes had done in the time of our ancestors. My parents had taught me and my siblings how to construct a nest, as they felt it was important for us to be familiar with our heritage. But in the past few years, with dairnes constantly hunted, tree nests had been abandoned in favor of hidden places on the ground. The nests left us far too vulnerable and easy to spot.
We continued to stay off main roads, hewing instead to cattle paths, and guided only by the sun. Day followed day, and though we had to hide more than once to avoid soldiers marching north, it was a blessedly uneventful hike across gently rolling hills.
Again and again we were saddened to see forests that had been cut down, reduced to fields of oozing stumps. The wood, Khara suspected, was being sent southeast to Saguria to build the Murdano’s invasion navy. What would happen, I wondered, to the birds, animals, insects, and reptiles who’d called those woods home? Where would they go? Were they wandering the world like I was, in search of someplace to begin again?
One evening, we stopped near a small creek bordered by gnarled gray trees with thick trunks and cascades of threadlike dark blue leaves on pliable branches. “I’ll bet we could rig up a nest with those branches,” Maxyn said. “Willows are best, but we could make do.”
I looked at Khara. “Would it be safe?”
“Those are botwort elms,” Khara said. “Sturdy as they come. The branches could hold you, no doubt. But a tree nest could be seen from a long distance. It would be a dangerous signal that we have dairnes in our presence.”
“Perhaps we could just make one on the ground, then,” I suggested. “And we could take it apart before we decamp tomorrow morning.”
For the next hour, we gathered orb webs, moss, thistledown, and long branches. Once our collection was complete, we set to work.
My job was to strip the branches bare, while Max wove them into a circle that kept growing in size. Together, we pressed the softer items, like moss, into the crevices between the branches.
I noticed Tobble watching from a distance and motioned for him to join us.
“Come help, Tobble!” I called.
He held up his round paws. They looked like the tiny mittens I’d seen human children wear on cold days. “You forget that I lack opposable thumbs. You dairnes are lucky.”
“Yes, but your paws are small and nimble,” I said.
Tobble stepped closer, watching us work. “Remember when we first met, Byx?” he said. “We joked about your having thumbs.”
I grimaced as I tried to bend a too-thick branch to my will, then gave up and tossed it aside. “And then you showed me your wobbyk ear trick.”
Maxyn looked intrigued. “May I see it?”
Tobble set his giant ears spinning like tornadoes, then untwisted them just as quickly.
Maxyn laughed. “All things considered, I think I’ll stick with thumbs,” he said.
The night fire was dying by the time we finished our nest. It was a work of art, I thought, strong and spacious. I stood back to admire our handiwork, and a memory of the nests I’d practiced building with my siblings tightened my heart. One glance at Maxyn told me he was feeling just as melancholy.
“Khara,” Renzo said, “I’ll bet they could fit their nest in the crook of that largest tree. See where the bottom branches split? I doubt it would be visible, except perhaps to a resident squirrel or cotchet.”
“Now who’s going soft?” Khara teased. But she nodded to Maxyn and me, and with Gambler’s aid, we managed to wedge the big nest in the arms of the tree, just the way dairnes would have done in the old days.
We clambered up easily—dairnes have large, sharp claws—and found ourselves surrounded by a whispering curtain of leaves. It was almost impossible to see past the interlaced branches, which meant, of course, that it would be equally difficult for anyone to sight us, especially at night.
“Tobble,” I called down, “come up and see! It’s wonderful up here!”
“I believe you,” he said. “But a wobbyk is more tunneler than tree dweller.”
“It’s incredibly soft,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want to join us?”
“I’m quite sure.”
“Khara,” Maxyn yelled down, “do you suppose Byx and I could stay in the nest all night?”
Khara looked at Renzo, who gave her a sheepish grin. “I suppose,” she said, “but you need to take it down well before daylight.”
“We promise,” Maxyn said.
“Tobble”—I tried again—“are you sure you won’t come up?” It felt wrong not to have him there with us, like a song out of tune. And I wanted to be certain that he felt included.
“I’m sure. Sleep well, Byx,” he called.
Eventually, we would reach the Cruacan Pass, the gap between the two converging mountain chains. The pass, Khara warned, would be guarded, and we would not be able to rely on bluffing our way past.
But that was still days in our future. For now, for tonight, I was going to sleep in a tree nest with another dairne, the way my ancestors had done for endless generations. I w
ould feel the soft warmth of our fur, listen to a lullaby of creaking branches, and feel, for once, what it must have been like to be a dairne, free and hopeful, before the world forever turned against us.
35
The Pass
“Getting through the Cruacan Pass,” said Khara a few days later, “will not be easy. It’s the old dividing line between the more densely populated east and the wilder west of Northern Nedarra. In the old days it was guarded lightly, and only brigands were stopped. Lately, though, the Cruacan has been more heavily fortified. When last I passed through, the Murdano’s men were building a fort on a cliff ledge that looks down over the pass.”
Tobble groaned. “Then how do we get through?”
“Yes, that is the question,” Khara said. “There are four approaches. You can be an innocent farmer or miner, transporting goods under an imperial license.”
“Not us,” Renzo said.
“Then there is armed attack.”
“Also not us,” I said.
“There is stealth,” Khara offered.
Renzo nodded slowly, allowing that this was a possibility.
“And then there is bribery.”
“Ah,” Renzo said. “Pry more stones from the crown?”
Khara shook her head. “These are not villagers. These are hard men and eagle-eyed officials. The sudden appearance of a ruby or emerald will only convince them to search us closely and take all we have.”
“So it’s stealth, is it?” I asked.
“Or a different type of bribery,” Khara said. “Just this side of the Cruacan is the land of the Belthassans. They’re a rich, greedy family, dishonest and unscrupulous. And firm allies of the Murdano.”
“Indeed?” Renzo said. “And what business are these Belthassans engaged in?”
“They are ranchers, mostly. Struzzi.”
“What are struzzi?” Maxyn asked.
“A type of large bird that walks on three legs and provides delicious meat,” Renzo said. “They’re very valuable. A single struzzi can fetch as much as three horses.”
“True,” Khara said. “Even a small handful of the creatures would constitute a fine bribe. But one not likely to stir up too much attention.”
Endling #2 Page 14