A slant of sunlight found its way down to the moss beside Harric. The beam danced about crazily, pushed about by the wind above. He squinted up in the beam to see a cloud of moths high up where the light pierced the canopy. They flittered down from the gap as if dislodged by the wind from their roosts, and the sunlight lit them up like fireflies. At first it seemed they stayed strictly in the slant of light, as if they wanted to stay warm as they descended. Then he realized the moths were everywhere in the canopy, and everywhere dropping to find less windy havens.
He stood, head tilted back to look straight up. The canopy snowed moths. The air teemed with them. He thought of his small frog friend, and how it would fill its little belly with them tonight.
“Father, come see,” he said, without looking away from the scene above. “It’s snowing moths.”
Kogan let out a wet belch from the back end of Geraldine. “Huh?”
Harric stuck out his hand to let the creatures land, but as a few fluttered by, he realized they weren’t moths at all. Capturing one in his hand, he held it between two fingers before his eyes. “Oh, no…” It felt like ice water pooled in his stomach.
It hadn’t been thunder. It hadn’t been a rock slide. And the wind wasn’t a storm.
“Fire-cone seeds.” Kogan exhaled roughly. “Gods take that mad-brained son of a jack. He did it. He burned the whole thing.”
Harric’s mind went to Caris. Caris loved Abellia as a mother. Abellia had taken Caris in when she first ran away to the frontier. She’d taken care of her until Caris could strike out on her own in search of a knight mentor. There would be nothing he could do to comfort Caris for this loss, but he wanted to be with her. If he couldn’t offer comfort, at least he brought companionship, if she wanted it.
But maybe Abellia had survived. She was a white witch, after all. Her whole purpose there was to prevent fire in the fire-cones. Surely she could keep herself safe from fire. But if so, why wouldn’t she have prevented the fire in the first place?
A whisper of doubt set his mind winging back through his last moments with her. Her depression. Her misery. The last image he had of her, as she watched them leave, and the sense that she’d been eager to be left alone. Was this the reason why? Had she been planning her own pyre? A pyre that could burn half the northlands?
In the next moment, he was running, taking leaping steps down the far side of the hill toward the river.
“Where you going?” Kogan said. “Can’t help her now!”
“The fire! If there’s a fire marching down that hill—” He didn’t bother finishing the thought. Kogan knew enough to know if a wildfire came down into their valley, they’d be on the run from more than just Sir Bannus. And if Caris and Willard didn’t get clear of it before it marched down into the valley, they’d be cut off. Either way, they had to know if a fire chased them.
“Watch for Willard!” Harric called back, and he ran.
*
Caris found Willard asleep where she had left him, strapped to the tree like a man sentenced to burn at the stake. As she walked into the clearing, she kept an eye on Molly, who lifted her head at her approach and glared with murder in her eyes. Nothing new there. If Molly moved, it would be a problem. She could glare all she wanted.
Holly and Rag were picketed well out of sight, and downwind.
Stopping several paces short of the sleeping Willard, Caris examined him. Gods leave him, he hardly looked like himself any more. He looked like a burly young knight wearing Willard’s mustachio. It gave her a queasy feeling to see the transformation. It was happening so fast. At least he wasn’t blue any longer, and the rage seemed to have passed.
Willard stirred. Or it seemed he did, but she hadn’t seen him move. After a moment of reflection, she realized that she’d felt it with her horse-touched senses, and cautiously opened the senses to him. She had no idea how much he might feel—or how much of the god she might encounter—so she hovered her senses gently around his consciousness, waiting to feel the stirring again.
And there it was. A flitting presence, just beneath the surface of his consciousness, as a fish basking at the surface of a pond.
Surprised, she focused her attention more keenly, and the instant she did, the presence vanished below. She blinked, scanning for it again, in vain.
But in those short moments, she sensed very clearly that it was a being separate from Willard, though not Krato. Krato’s presence was violent and fiery and unsubtle. What she’d sensed was elusive and…intelligent? No. Not intelligent. Cunning. A fierce cunning, like a fox. She smiled, suddenly giddy and swelling with excitement for no reason. The feeling passed as abruptly as it came, leaving her in a shock of recognition: she’d felt the same lightheaded gleefulness when Willard’s hex had struck in Gallows Ferry. That night, it had overwhelmed her mind with such irresistible force that she barely knew what was happening. What she’d just felt was the merest echo of it, but there was no mistaking it.
Gods leave me, did I just see his night-hex? The notion came unbidden, as a recognition, not a thought. But the sensation had coincided with touching Willard’s mind and sensing the other presence there. Holding her breath, she brushed the surface of his consciousness again, searching, but whatever it was—the hex-presence—had not returned.
Withdrawing her mind, she stared down at Willard in awe. Kogan had called the hex jealous. Yes. That was part of its cunning. A jealous, cunning thing inside him. But could a hex be a living thing?
The roar of a distant yoab sent a flurry of little brown birds up from concealment in the undergrowth into the branches of the larger trees. The sun had dropped behind the west ridge. Behind Abellia’s tower.
The question of the hex-presence would wait. Darkness would not.
Crouching at the hobbles, she unlocked one of the chains and let it fall slack at Willard’s side. His neckerchief now hung limply from his neck; he’d gnawed through it, and the sweat-rag now lay in a sodden wad between his feet. Beside it, Willard-Krato had etched letters in the dirt with the heel of his boot.
A knot of dread squeezed her gut as she read it.
BROOD HORE.
Her lip curled. He referred to the brood halls of the West Isle. The dungeons where women were bred until they died.
But HORE?
The knot of dread dissolved as her chest began to shake with quiet laughter.
Oh, gods leave her. HORE.
The Mad God couldn’t spell.
She clapped a hand over her mouth. Tears wet her eyes, and the crude letters blurred.
After wiping her eyes, she read it again to be sure. Her own learning in letters had come in secret from her brother’s tutor, so she didn’t have as much as Harric. But she could read most tracts she encountered, and she certainly knew her father’s pet name for her, whore. Willard couldn’t write it, because in ten lifetimes he’d never learned more than the letters of his name.
HORE! She laughed. Kogan was right: the gods were unworthy of regard.
“What’s so funny, girl?” Willard’s head rose. He looked at her groggily, and a wry smile twisted his mustachio. “Your mentor look that foolish?”
“No sir, I’m sorry.”
“Well, something’s damned funny.”
Turning away, she stepped to the side where he couldn’t see her, and fiddled with his manacle. “Let me get your chains off.”
“Don’t be a fool. How do you know I’m back to myself?”
Caris stopped. She stepped back to look at him, feeling sheepish. “I guess because Krato wouldn’t stop me from releasing him?”
Willard gave a grim nod. “Next time, don’t be so hasty. Now what’s that, you say?” He jerked his chin toward the words in the dirt.
She hid her mouth with her hand again. “Nothing. A threat.”
His eyebrows rose. “Something funny about it?”
“A little. You wouldn’t think so.” She wiped it out with her foot and set back to work on the manacle. “Are you feeling well? Can you s
till feel your arms?”
Willard watched her a moment as if he’d pursue the question, but then he looked away. “More or less. I can feel the edge of the rage growing with each new draught. Soon, in the next days, I must begin the meditations that control it.”
“The Blue Meditations.”
“The same.” A weariness tugged at the edges of his eyes as he craned his head back to look into her face. “And you?”
She smiled, the laughter threatening again.
“Guess it couldn’t be too bad, then.” He snorted. “Then let me up before Sir Bannus finds us.”
Removing the manacles was easier than putting them on. Soon Willard paced about, massaging the blood back into his hands. As soon as he packed the chains back in Molly’s bags, he mounted and followed Caris to the stony stream bed where she’d left Rag and Holly. Trailing Holly behind Rag, she followed Willard down the stream bed to the river, and up the shallows toward the bend where Harric and the others had gone.
Sir Bannus did not appear, and they crossed the river without incident. As Rag splashed out of the shallows and up another stony draw, thunder rolled down the mountain behind her. She turned Rag to look, expecting to see a storm cloud rising over the ridge.
What she saw pulled the air from her lungs.
High in the sky above Abellia’s ridge, a column of smoke as big as a mountain mushroomed upward like it would pierce the dome of the sky. From its widening eaves fell sheets and curtains of glittering seeds.
Caris’s mouth moved mutely. It felt as if something had knocked the wind out of her. She was unable to look away, unable to draw breath.
Tears filled her eyes. Sucking a shuddering breath, she screamed, “No! No! Abellia!” She watched, desperate to find her eyes had deceived her, that it was just an ordinary forest fire. But she could not mistake the sun-bright blaze of burning resin. The white-hot conflagration seared her vision. Ordinary trees along the ridge burst into orange flames in a wave moving outward, like ripples in a pond.
Caris’s vision blurred. She spurred Rag back into the river.
“Girl!” Willard shouted. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“We have to help her!” She looked over her shoulder at him, and through her tears saw that pain and sympathy lined his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We cannot help her. Only her stone can protect her.”
Caris slumped over her saddle, and Rag stopped in the middle of the stream. A silent sob racked her. Willard was right. There could be no rescue. Even if they could reach Abellia without meeting Sir Bannus, there would be nothing they could do. The damage was done. Either she lived, or she did not. And Sir Bannus was coming. Caris wondered if any of the fort men had escaped, if Farley had survived.
Numbly, she looked up again at the rising cloud above the burning ridge. She’d never seen anything so enormous. So mighty. So final. An abyss had opened beneath her heart, and the roar started between her ears. She turned Rag to follow Willard, and fled into the mare’s senses.
*
Panting, Harric leaned against a boulder at the edge of the forest and looked across the valley to the burning ridge. “Gods leave you, Mistress Abellia,” he murmured. It was the closest thing to a prayer any Arkendian had. Abellia’s people would have blessed her in the name of one of a dozen Bright Mother divinities, none of which Harric could even name.
Far to the south, a column of smoke rose in the shape of a mushroom. It rose so high above the ridge that it would have towered over most clouds. Glittering sheets of white seeds wafted from under its outstretched cap to drift like ribbons in the winds. Some fell in the valley like snow. Most seemed to have been carried so high that Harric strained to see them at all.
A rustling and a crackling of twigs came from the forest behind. Harric turned to see Brolli knuckle-loping toward him through the brush.
When he saw the fire and the smoke, Brolli sucked a short breath. There was nothing to say. They both stared, stunned by the scale of the disaster.
“This is my fault,” Brolli said, his voice scarcely above a whisper.
“It’s Sir Bannus’s fault,” said Harric. “Don’t take this on yourself.”
The ridge blazed with orange fire. Harric guessed that because the wind was racing west up the side of the valley that sparks hadn’t jumped east down the cliffs into the trees of the valley. But flames spread north along the rocky spine of the ridge, and he imagined it also spread down the west side, which had a gentler slope and no barren cliffs to act as a barrier.
“How could he set fire to them?” Brolli said. “Will this not burn him, too?”
Harric nodded. “I would have thought so. Maybe something went wrong. Maybe he didn’t expect this to happen.”
Brolli frowned. “Or maybe he does it on purpose, to destroy the queen’s resin. Maybe he comes down the valley now to find us.”
Harric sighed. “Well, he either burned up in the fire, he fled back toward the pass, or he’s coming down the trail into the valley.”
Studying the sunlit cliffs below the fire, Harric pointed to a landmark from Mudruffle’s map: a tall, sun-bleached snag that Mudruffle had noted as White Fang. “Remember that snag? The White Fang?”
Brolli nodded. “Yes. I think I see it.”
“The trail from the ridge passes right below that. If Bannus or his men pass there, this sun will shine off them like a beacon.”
Brolli nodded.
Holding his breath, Harric watched the forest around the snag. If Bannus got to this side of the ridge before the fire ignited, he would descend that trail. And if he got down the trail to the river before Caris and Willard could cross the river and disappear on the opposite shore…
“If you have any Kwendi prayers,” he said, “this would be a good time for them.”
Brolli grunted. “I say the prayer already.” The lenses of his daylids reflected fire and expanding plumes of smoke. “This fire is not also a problem?”
“Not as long as this westerly wind holds. Fires go where the wind blows them, and so far the wind is blowing west and away from us. Cliffs tend to stop fires, too. Back in Gallows Ferry, we never had to worry because of the cliffs.”
“Are those cliffs big enough?” Brolli nodded to the rocky spine of the ridge.
“Won’t stop Bannus, that’s for sure.”
Together they watched the trees around the white snag as the fire raged on the ridge above. The green mantle of trees rippled with the wind rising from the valley, but no shard of sun flashed from spear tips, no spark of colored banners flickered between trees. Harric let out a sigh and climbed to the top of the boulder, making himself as comfortable there as one could while watching for a monster.
“I say another prayer for winds,” Brolli said. “But I wonder how do you ask I pray? I think Arkendians deny the help of gods.”
Harric smiled. “We do. But as long as you’re praying—not me—I commit no heresy.”
Brolli’s head cocked to the side. Harric glanced his way as the Kwendi flipped his daylids up on his forehead and peered back with thoughtful golden eyes. “This is why Willard mistrusts you, yes? You do not follow rules of your people. I wonder why so?”
Harric puffed a little laugh from his nose. He let his eyes travel up and down the trail below the snag. After a while, he said, “Part of the reason is that I was born a bastard, Brolli. In Arkendia, that means something. Actually, to a bastard, it means everything. I realized at a young age that the moment people saw my bastard belt, they thought themselves my better. Grownups, especially, treated me like a slave, even though the Queen had freed bastards before I was born. That’s when I learned their rules were like weapons, and if I followed their rules it would hurt me and diminished my chances of living.”
“Why wear the belt, then, if you’re freed of it? Surely that lowers your chances.”
Harric’s jaw clenched. “I am not ashamed to be a bastard. I’m proud. I won’t take it off for anyone, and I’ll prove myself th
eir better.”
Brolli grinned his feral grin. “Pride. Stubbornness. I understand that. But Willard does not call you bastard, yet you resist his rules.”
Harric took a deep breath, thinking. He was a bit reflexive in his resistance to the old knight. He didn’t know why. Yet it wasn’t all reflex. “It isn’t that I think his rules are there to hurt me. It’s just that…” He frowned. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s second nature for me to question rules. It’s innate for me to examine rules and dodge or find alternatives to bad ones.”
“You mean you dodge rules that are not pleasant to you.”
Harric heard the teasing humor in the Kwendi’s tone, but he returned his gaze seriously. “No. Those who follow no rules but their own end up hanged. As a general rule, I try to avoid hanging. But rules used to keep me down…those I avoid and undermine when I can.”
Brolli chuckled. “You and Willard have what my people call the difference in philosophy. Yours is the bastard survival philosophy, yes?”
Harric joined Brolli in laughing. “That’ll be the title for the ballad of my life.”
Together they watched the sun set beyond the western ridge and turn the smoke plumes from the fire to a vivid orange and red. When the sun sank too low to light any but the highest tops of the billows, the fires glowed gold against their undersides.
Brolli let out a long sigh. “We will see no gleams on spear tips now. But this is good. Maybe the fire keeps Bannus from this valley.”
A muffled crack like a horse stepping on a thick branch sounded in the forest back toward the camp.
Brolli’s eyes widened. He whispered, “Or maybe not.”
Together they ran across the moss as quietly as they could, hunched low behind seedling logs as they picked way back to their camp. Brolli glided along beside Harric in his rolling, knuckle-walking lope.
“It has to be Willard and Caris,” Harric said. “If it were Bannus, there would be horns.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. And come to think of it, yoab don’t sound horns either. So we might be cobbed.”
Brolli flashed a wry smile. “If it is Bannus, we are fools who run to their deaths.”
The Jack of Ruin Page 28