by Val Gunn
It had been a long trek. The suns were invisible in the gray sky, and the passing hours seemed endless. Damp wind and spits of drizzle soaked and chilled Marin as she made her way across rough, wild country. But, as she told herself again and again, she had seen worse.
She would never stop hunting.
4
“WE ARE wasting time,”Marin said.
She measured Lavvann‘s reaction to her words and saw he was no longer amused.
Still, despite his silence, she stood strong, her tone quiet but firm. “Yes, I was wrong. But let me make it right by finding our ghost, if our voices have not already spooked the thing.”
She glanced toward the dark openings in the wall of trees just ahead. “This kayal is alone and very near. We should make haste or we‘ll lose it in the dark,” she said, looking up at Lavvann‘s face.
Behind her captain she noticed six of her fellow riders scanning the landscape. She knew what they were thinking. Weathered hills, wild woods, and cold streams at nightfall added up to a place of extreme danger. Here the conditions favored the kayal.
“We will follow your lead, Marin,” Lavvann said at last. “We have little choice in the matter.”
Marin moved onto the road. At a signal from their captain, the riders closed in and flanked her. She knelt to study the crumbling stones
and sprouting weeds beneath her feet—all that remained of the ancient road. Hunched over on her knees, studying the ground while her companions peered into the shadows, she smiled discreetly at having forced Lavvann‘s hand.
She shook her head, unable to find anything of use to their mission. She rose, pushed past the horses, and hopped over the low wall of rough-hewn rock into the field that bordered the trees. Here she found some hope: faint claw marks gouged into the soil, and a flake of that ashy dander which the kayal often left behind. Though it was only the smallest of traces, Marin knew the thing had recently passed here.
Their prey was still nearby.
Lavvann raised two fingers to his eyes, a signal commanding two riders to join him. Both nodded and guided their horses closer.
“Speak your thoughts, and make them quick,” said Lavvann.
“It is too risky if we continue from here,” murmured the first rider. “We have encroached on territory beyond our control. I fear an ambush.”
“It will be pitch black very soon, and night favors the kayal,” said the second. “If they are out in force, then their powers will be greater than our strength.”
Marin glanced back at Lavvann to observe his reaction. Slowly he shook his head at the others. “Valid complaints. I too fear an assault in the dark. Still, I doubt that they are out in numbers. We shall not let the Prince‘s killer slip through our fingers as we close in on it. Marin has done good work.” Turning to her, Lavvann said, “The matter is settled, for now. Lead on, but be wary. I sense a trap.”
At his signal the riders fanned out once more.
“Stay alert,” Lavvann whispered to Marin.
She moved forward with a grin of triumph, away from the company of riders toward the shadowy tree line.
The steady rain soaked the hard, rough ground, and Marin had to search long and hard in the gloom for another sign of the kayal. She noticed a few more claw scrapes where the kayal had pivoted and crossed to the other side of the road. But there the tracks were once again lost in the ground cover. She turned back toward Lavvann and
motioned him forward.
“It has run into woods here,” she said, pointing to the dense stand of bay trees to the north.
“I will take the company to the far edge and wait there.” Lavvann‘s hand swept in a broad curve. “You will flush it out into the open. We will decide then whether to kill the thing or spare it.”
Marin wondered why her captain would consider sparing the life of something so nefarious, but she nodded silently as Lavvann signaled to the riders. The rain had stopped falling, and here under the forest canopy, she could hear only muffled snorting as the horses cleared water from their nostrils.
She moved away quickly, slipping into the darkness.
5
MARIN RAN.
Her long strides covered the ground quickly and silently, but she remained cautious as she moved across the damp mulch of the forest floor. She held her breath as she listened to the stillness, and swept her gaze steadily, watching for the slightest movement in the shadows. The bay trees were closer and thicker than the eucalyptus had been, and it was dryer here. Steam rose from her cloak as her body‘s heat warmed it. The kayal‘s footprints and dander would be impossible to find here without striking a light, so Marin had to rely on other tracking skills.
The ground sloped gradually downward. She ducked beneath a fallen bough that she sensed rather than saw, and the soft crunch of dry leaves beneath it echoed far too loudly in the still air. The ground then leveled into a stretch of mud that sucked at her boots before it began another gentle upward slope.
Moving from tree to tree, she crept along, bow in hand. Each step surely brought her closer to the kayal. And—was that it? Just ahead she glimpsed a black figure moving in the same direction—away from her—but not as quickly as she.
Making no sound, she closed on the figure, drawing an arrow from her quiver and nocking it to the bowstring by touch.
Marin was only ten paces behind the fleeing kayal. She braced herself against a tree, feeling behind her to make sure its wide, solid trunk would be adequate cover if she needed to fall back. She raised her bow, drew back the string and took aim. Yes, it was still there, pausing as it sniffed the air.
Marin doubted one arrow would kill the dark thing. Although she wanted it dead, she would force it to run, not turn to fight. Lavvann’s company beyond the trees should be in position by now.
Her fingers tightened as she steadied her aim. Abruptly the figure half-turned and raised its hand as if signaling her to halt. What—Marin paused, unsure whether to heed the signal, wondering if this hesitation was a trap that would kill her.
The figure slowly drew back a hooded cloak, revealing no demonic creature but a man. Even in the darkness she could see the outline of a man’s face, not the horrid countenance of a kayal. That one simple motion resembled the grace and efficiency of one of Torre Lavvann’s silent signals, not the jagged, unpredictable movements of a vile entity on the wrong side of the veil. This person, whoever it was, turned his head toward her without hesitation, and Marin felt he was looking directly at her in the darkness. Wait.
She froze, heart pounding, as the stranger beckoned her closer. Drawn in by something she couldn’t explain, Marin lowered her bow, the arrow drooping in her hand. She stepped around the tree trunk and moved forward, apprehensive but fascinated—and feeling curiously safe.
“You have mistaken me for the enemy, my lady,” said a soft male voice as she approached. There was something familiar about it. “What you seek is just ahead,” he went on, voice falling to a whisper as she approached. “But beware—the creature is not alone. Your captain and the others are riding into a trap.”
Was this man accusing her of something? Did he somehow know that she had planned to take this kayal single-handedly, or at least send
it stumbling into Lavvann’s ambush with her arrow between its foul shoulders? “How… how can you know this?” She kept her voice low but fierce. “Who are you?”
His voice carried an echo, like a song from a distant shore. “I once was with the Four Banners as you are now. My duties and allegiances lie elsewhere, but on this day we have a common purpose.”
He offered his hand, and now Marin was close enough to see him better. Waves of light-colored hair reached nearly to his shoulders, his teeth were white, and his eyes had a sapphire glint, even in deep shadow. They shone with a light too wise, too bold and intimate for a man she was seeing for the first time. Then her hand was in his, and the touch felt so… familiar.
“I know why you are here, and I am not your enemy. I am a siri fo
r the Rassan Majalis. My name is Hiril Altaïr, and I stand with you, Marin Hanani.”
His words rang like truth itself. She trembled inside. “But… how do you know of me?”
He looked deep into her eyes and answered, “I have always known your name… my wife.”
6
MARIN’S EYES snapped open.
The ship lurched in the rough waves and almost threw her off the bench. It was dawn at sea, and she’d spent the night on deck remembering. Or, it would now seem, slumped and dreaming. She had never seen Hiril’s face in the shadows of the bay wood. That would have been impossible. She had only trusted his voice and the experience it carried. He’d known her name because he was a siri—information was his job. But he’d never called her his wife until much later. That had been the dream, speaking in his voice.
Marin stood and stretched away the ache in her muscles,bracing her legs against the rolling deck. The night had been calm enough for her to drowse on this bench while trying to read her future in the stars. But now the sea grew choppy as a stiffer wind filled the sails, and her cloak was damp with spray, a dampness that seeped into her skin. She shivered a little, thinking of her warm bunk below, only to hear a familiar voice inside—her own voice—saying, “I’ve seen worse.”
But had she? That was her old self speaking from a different time, much as Hiril had in her dream. Had she truly ever seen anything worse than this? The man she loved was gone from the world, and his ashes in her cabin provided no comfort. If anything, they reminded her of tracking the kayal, of those brittle scales that fell to the ground, eventually becoming one with the soil. Was that what lay beyond the curtain in the world of the Jnoun? Nothing but ashes?
The spray from another wave made it hard for Marin to think of dry, brittle things. The power of wind and sea hurled the little ship westward across Baïr al-Zumr, the Emerald Sea. She herself was a flake of ash, floating or sinking at the pleasure of the elements. Had she seen worse? Had she seen better? None of this mattered when she had no more purpose in the world, when the elements would decide her cruel fortunes.
Oh, but she did have one more purpose. Her year of mourning was ending, and she was on a pilgrimage in Hiril’s name. She owed him this much.
After all, it was her fault he had died.
7
“FOLLOW ME,” Hiril said.
Marin had just met this man, yet she knew there were no lies in his voice. He crept down the wooded knoll into darkness, and she followed.
The land guided their feet, leading them to a small southboundstream. They moved along its bank, navigating by the faint light of a dying sunset somewhere above the canopy of trees and clouds.
Her eyes alert for kayal, Marin followed Hiril closely enough to reach out and touch him. Everything about this man marked him as an expert tracker; still, this was her hunt, and her body remained tensed for a fight.
Deeper into the darkness they trekked. The woods formed a slender, crooked finger running much farther south than she had expected. Positioning the company at the other side of the trees would take considerable time.
Marin and Hiril moved in silent unison, focusing on the faint path. The trees thickened around the stream, forcing them away from the water and down into a shallow depression blanketed with fallen leaves. Both stepped carefully. Kayal had keen ears, and they were especially on the alert when they knew something was closing in on them.
The two trackers struggled up an incline to find the stream again. Here the banks were muddy and the channel deep. They bridged it with a fallen bough and began a steep climb. The trees thinned and the clouded sky seemed bright after the forest of shadows. The rain had stopped.
Then Hiril froze—except for the hand creeping to his shoulder for his bow. Marin crouched and did the same. They crawled forward, keeping behind ancient brambles at the edge of the tree line. Before them was a meadow some hundred yards across. Hiril pointed at a pine tree standing alone in the center.
The tree shimmered with a silver-white light, revealing several gaunt figures standing beneath its branches. At least two more stood guard with bows drawn at the opposite edge of the glade.
“It is an úathir ritual: The black arcana of burning and binding a tree spirit,” Hiril whispered urgently. “We are too late to stop it.”
Marin’s heart hammered, nearly drowning out his soft voice. She knew enough about dark things to comprehend what an úathir meant for her company—a forest demon of terrible power, huge and vicious, ready to kill everything in its path.
“Look!” Hiril breathed in her ear. “They have already shaped it.”
Marin’s scalp prickled as an eerie crackling swelled into a deep, sustained cry. Pale green fire ignited the pine in the clearing, magical flames licking high, throwing the kayal’s shapes into relief. The mournful wail pulsed against the clouds, echoing through the trees. A sweet-sick smell of burning wood and something else, something charnel, choked her breath and made her eyes tear.
The sound faded, taking the light with it. The celadon inferno left the tallest branches and retreated, stopping on the trunk a few feet off the ground. In the darkness after the dazzle of light, Marin saw a gray shape approaching the tree. The kayal-witch intoned a hideous chant as it thrust two V-shaped pieces of metal—monstrous arrow points longer than a man’s leg—into the tree trunk where the green fire still burned. Amber sap poured out like blood from a wound, flowing down the arrow points into a stone basin nestled between the roots.
Marin’s heart pounded. This demonic ritual must stop now. It was the only way to save her company. But even as the thought came to her, a hand fell on her shoulder. She looked at Hiril; he gestured for stillness. How dare he! But of course, he was right. Attacking now would accomplish nothing.
The stench of scorched flesh hung in the air. The kayal-witch lifted white, mutilated fingers, the ones torn from Maeros’s hand, out of the stone basin as the sap-blood glowed and writhed. A fleshy shape emerged from the basin, points of bone ripping through it, sprouting into an immense crown of antlers. The kayal-witch leaped forward, slapping a mask of bark into place below the antlers, and two red embers sparked to life in the mask’s eye sockets.
The other kayal took axes to the pine’s lower branches and set two of them in the rising column of molten amber, forming a pair of arms. The kayal wrenched the spears from the trunk and jammed them into the column to serve as legs. They attached the Prince’s severed half-feet to the ends so that the thing could stand. Then they threw animal hides, rags, and forest soil at the demon, covering it with sorcerous armor.
Towering over the kayal, the úathir sprang to life with a growl of feral laughter. The kayal-witch embraced the demon and stepped back
to shriek a command. The úathir turned and loped southward out of the clearing, branches snapping and smoldering in its wake.
Marin knew the demon was racing toward the riders.
Hiril turned to her, whispering, “You must warn the others.” He pulled an arrow from his quiver and handed it to her. “Take this as I give chase. The kayal will flee when I attack. They will follow the úathir to the riders and choose to fight there.” Hiril brushed his hand against Marin’s fist as she clutched the arrow. “Fire it into the sky. The powder in the shaft burns red once the arrow leaves the bow. The company will see it as a warning beacon. After that, get to them as quickly as possible. We will meet there.” Hiril placed a hand on her shoulder, urging her to go.
“But… the witch is the one I was hunting.” Turning to him, Marin looked into his eyes and felt his strength flowing into her. “I know it,” she insisted. “I can feel it was the one that took Maeros’ fingers and feet.”
He smiled grimly.
“I will go after the kayal-witch.”
8
MARIN TREMBLED with rage.
Who was Hiril Altaïr to go after her prey? It was hers. She had tracked the kayal across the miles of Aeíx, followed it through the long, miserable day to this spot, sworn to
her duty as a rider with the Four Banners. Who was he to take her prey instead? Just who was this man—he who had darted into the night to single-handedly ambush a kayal company still powerful with the dark magic they had conjured?
She couldn’t see his arrows fly, but she heard the evil creatures shriek as one of their number fell, its head shattered by a powerful bowshot from her right. TWO more of the things toppled, and the rest swarmed toward the far side of the glade, where branches still smoldered from the úathir’s passing.
They were following the forest demon straight to Torre Lavvann’s company.
Marin nocked Hiril’s fire arrow, pointed it skyward, and loosed the bowstring. She rolled to the ground as a streak of brilliant red shot upward, coming up in a crouch and running around the clearing’s edge as kayal arrows tore at the brambles that had concealed her.
Hiril had been mistaken. Some of the dark creatures had stayed behind to fight. And neither of the two coming to search for her body had fallen to friendly bowshots.
She faced them alone.
Marin forced away all thoughts of her company. Surely they had seen the fiery arrow. Indeed, she would be surprised if they hadn’t been alerted by the úathir’s piercing scream.
She was already moving to her left as she fired two quick arrows into the backs of the kayal who had come searching for her. Then she threw herself flat and rolled; the red flash of her warning signal had revealed glinting eyes in the branches of the lone pine tree, and as she’d expected, answering shots came from that quarter. They thudded into tree trunks a comfortable distance away as Marin continued to circle the glade.
She lined up her target in the dark, found the likely angle, aimed high, and released one powerful shot into the branches of the pine. Two kayal plummeted through the darkness and crashed to the ground, both pierced by the single arrow. She caught herself wondering if Hiril Altaïr had seen her skill. She also noticed there were no answering bowshots. Was it possible she had finished off the enemy in this place?
Sounds of battle drew nearer through the trees: the shouts and shrieks of men and kayal, the clash of steel, the thud of hooves. Had her company defeated the úathir? Were the creatures fleeing back this way? Marin doubted that a single wound would prove mortal to the kayal, and she would not have the injured rising again to join their dark kind in battle.