by Kim Wedlock
"Earth. From the mountains." Despite the knife-sharp edge to her voice, she lowered the chieftain's head from her lap with the utmost care, taking a moment to brush aside the matted hair that had slipped over his face from his ruined braid, and gently removed a pendant from around his neck. She whispered as she clutched it - only Petra caught the words, but she didn't know the tongue - then rose silently to her feet and approached the foot of the longhouse's steps. She lifted something from the sand, a wind chime of the grandest design, with intricately carven wooden tubes, magnificent feathers and dyed and braided animal hairs.
They watched her in silence as she stared down at it, and as a mournful wind blew, softly enough to offer its own unintrusive comfort, the tubes rattled a hollow canticle.
Then she turned. "You should leave. It isn't safe for you here. Return only when you can restore Ut'hala."
Everyone stared aghast as she strode away, stepping so lightly through the bodies it was as if she didn't see them, and vanished behind a semi-shattered building.
Garon straightened. "She's right. We should leave."
Those stares then fell onto him.
"And leave her here?!" Rathen demanded in a strangled whisper.
"This is her home."
"Her home--look around yourself!"
"Her home is dead, Garon," Petra agreed in a similar hiss. "She has nothing left!"
But he shook his head, his grey eyes resolute. "She will draw too much attention. The Arana will be able to follow us all too easily with her in tow. We won't be able to go near any towns or cities without catching someone's eye, and it's as hard to mistake bronze skin as it is to completely conceal it. If anyone spots her even outside of the walls, people will assume the tribes are finally attacking."
While Petra began to argue, Rathen stepped in front of Anthis, barring his way, and shoved his palm firmly against his chest, eyeing him with unrestrained suspicion. "Where the hell are you going?"
"To make sure she's all right," he replied just as vehemently, wrenching away from his hand.
"No, you keep away from her. I'll go."
Anthis's fair eyebrows rose high above his incredulous eyes. "You? What makes you think she'll listen to you?"
"But she'll listen to you?!"
His green eyes were as sharp as daggers, and though Rathen saw the menace within them, he was less than underwhelmed. "You don't trust me anymore," Anthis told him levelly. "I get it. And do you know what? I don't care. I've done nothing wrong. I've picked apart my morals for years and acted in the best way I know how to, and I can walk with my head held high because of it. But if you would prefer to overlook the facts and focus on your own misinterpretation, fine. I really don't care. Regardless, someone needs to go after her." He turned to Garon. "She can't stay here. What about when this tribe comes back?"
"They've killed everyone--"
"And they surely know they haven't killed her. Every village has a healer, that's what she's told me, and they are taught how to use their magic for attack and defence. Not to the level of the Order, but enough to put up a fight, and enough to exact vengeance. They know they didn't get her, and if they've killed every single person here, every child here, they're not going to let her slip by." The edge in his eyes had softened imploringly. "You cannot, under good conscience, leave her here alone!"
Anthis whirled while Rathen scoffed quietly behind him. "Yes," he hissed dangerously, "I know the meaning of 'good conscience'. As, some how, do you." But he pressed it no further. He straightened and squared his shoulders without a trace of the shame everyone else felt he should bear, and stepped to one side. "Go on. If you think she'd rather listen to you, go."
Rathen glowered at him a moment longer before shifting a tamer gaze onto Petra. "Go to Aria," he told her, "and wait there. Don't let her in the village, no matter what happens. And keep a close eye--"
"I know, Rathen. She'll be safe with me. These people were taken by surprise. I won't be."
He nodded. "I have no doubt."
The two then moved off, sparing neither Anthis nor the bodies another glance.
Anthis growled under his voice. The intolerance, the hatred - it was nothing he couldn't get used to. But at least Garon's ears weren't closed to him. "I hesitate to point it out," he began with a distinct lack of care as he folded his arms over his chest, "but you realise that, with the Arana possibly on our tail, her healing abilities could be needed at some point...?"
"I do," he sighed, "but I also know we're less likely to cross paths with them if we don't stand out at all."
"Ghosts see everything, Garon. They'll know where we are whether she's with us or not. Even if we changed our faces."
Garon cast him a sidelong look, one that would almost have been amused had there been any light in his eyes. "They're not seers, Anthis. They track, they watch, they listen, that's how they gather their intel. They don't have crystal balls."
"All I'm saying is that we could be better off with her than without. From a tactical perspective. Especially if Rathen has another of his turns." He shook his head and sneered in the direction the mage had gone. "We're lucky he's only had the one. But if that self-important git reacts like that to being out of control of a situation, then we're going to be more at risk of him than anyone else before too much longer."
"Mm..."
Anthis shifted uncomfortably at the inquisitor's hesitant tone, having hoped he might refute the point as he usually did, and absently followed his downward gaze in the hope of some visual reassurance instead. Instead he watched him repeatedly flex two fingers at his side. He frowned. "What's wrong with your hand?"
Rathen found her at the very edge of the village, sorting through a pile of wind-worn stones the size of dinner plates. They were shattered, raised and dropped with intentional force, but she was collecting even the tiniest fragments and diligently grouping them back together, giving them her absolute attention.
He approached her quietly, relieved that there were no corpses here to try in vain to ignore. She certainly heard him - sand was soft but far from silent beneath unpractised feet - but she didn't look around, and neither did he attempt to win her attention.
The stones, he saw as he stopped behind her, each bore carven patterns. They had surely once been intricate in design, but following years of the wind's assault, they'd been buffed away beyond recognition - though with the tribe's art so stylised, he was sure he wouldn't have understood them in such a small scale even had they been freshly etched. But two other details, at least, laid bare the significance of this odd collection: the number engraved with nothing more than swirling lines of wind, and the delicacy with which Eyila handled them.
It had, as Garon had guessed, been a religious assault, and the village's shrine to their wind goddess would have been a high priority for vandals.
He sighed to himself at her devotion to the task, unwaning even as she struggled to lift the largest stones which had survived unharmed due to their very size, but he didn't offer to help. Instead, he knelt down beside her, wondering what the shrine had looked like in its prime, and if it really had been as unimpressive as he imagined.
The silence soon became unbearable. "What do you do with your dead?" He asked softly, unable to think of anything else, and wished even before he'd finished that he hadn't.
"It has nothing to do with you. Leave."
But despite the acidic order, he didn't move, and despite his ongoing presence, she didn't ask again.
"The chief...he was your father, wasn't he?"
She pieced together five fragments with a particularly degraded image and set the collection aside. She seemed to be deciding whether or not to reply. "My uncle," she said eventually. "He raised me after my father died on a hunt. My mother in child birth."
"I'm so sorry."
She shrugged, and he didn't like it. "It's the fate of us all to die."
"Yes, but...not like this." His eyes burned into her with growing concern for her dispassion. "You can't s
tay here, Eyila."
"This is my home."
"Was." He watched her knuckles turn white as she clenched another fragment in her hands, and despite the emptiness he could see in her eyes as he leaned forwards, that subtle act eased him slightly. He challenged her carefully. "What will you do? Tidy up and rebuild by yourself? A healer with no one to heal? Or will you leave your home and find another tribe?"
Her head finally snapped towards him, and the emptiness in her eyes was overrun with rage. "I will never leave my home," she growled, "nor these sands. I will live here and survive as my people always have. I can hunt, I can trade with the caravans, I can--"
"You're being foolish. If you stay here, you'll die, either killed by the same people who killed everyone else, or through grief."
"I will not die through grief."
He watched her eyes as she spoke through her teeth. "Are you sure? Are you certain? Grief can only be cured by the people around you, no matter how few they might be. But if you're alone, your mind will betray you, you'll succumb to the darkest thoughts and doubts and you'll be torn apart by them. Believe me, I know. So I cannot, under good conscience, let you remain here by yourself." He suppressed the slightest snarl at that final choice of words.
But she laughed bitterly, again through barred teeth. "You know nothing. I am not grieving. Everyone I've ever known and loved has risen to join the Winds. The world is safer for their passing, and they will protect me for as long as it takes to reach the Frozen Gates." Her sour smile saddened him. "This is a good thing. A good thing. And you corrupted cityfolk could never understand that, not if you had one hundred moons to devote to trying. I am not grieving!"
He watched as she dropped the stone she had clutched so dearly, breaking in two as it struck another, and the tears finally began to fall in spite of her. He made no attempt to smile in comfort. He had enough experience with Aria to know when it would be taken as condescension. "Eyila," he said firmly instead, "trust me: you're grieving. And that is a good thing, too. If you were truly pleased for this, you would be a monster."
Her eyes pierced him. "Like you, you mean?"
They stared at one another for a moment, but Rathen made no outward show of his insult. He sighed instead and rose calmly to his feet. "Collect what we need for their last rites."
"I told you, it has nothing to do with you."
"I heard you. And I'm ignoring you. Get what we need."
"It has nothing to do with you!"
"Eyila--"
"Get out!"
He felt the brief rush of her magic the moment she raised her hands, but easily deflected the meagre attack she flung towards him, one which could have been stronger - though not strong enough - had she not been so frantic. She immediately prepared another, but he was much faster, and stepped forwards to catch her as she lost consciousness.
Garon and Anthis hadn't moved far from where Rathen had left them, but when Anthis, who had evidently been watching the path he'd taken very closely, saw him return with the white haired girl in his arms, he released an indelicate string of curses.
"Wonderful job," he drawled as Garon frowned in bewilderment. "She listened attentively then, did she?"
Rathen sent him a brief but sharp sneer. "I really don't think you would have fared any better." He found the nearest clearing away from the bodies and lowered her carefully to the ground. "We're seeing to the dead."
"B-but it's another culture's customs," Anthis stammered in a sudden panic, "if we--"
"Yes, yes, insult, wrath of gods, restless dead. It will be fine."
"He's right, Rathen."
The mage sighed. "I know that, which is why we will do our best. That has to count for something."
Anthis straightened defiantly. "No. You might not hold any respect for faith--"
"Oh I do hope you're not referring to that murderous club of yours as a 'faith'."
"You may not hold any respect for faith," he repeated loudly over him, "but this matters to her. And that does mean something."
"Then what do you propose we do?! Leave them here and drag her off kicking and screaming?"
"It seems like you're already half way there."
"What--"
"She's told me about her people's beliefs," he said, finally disregarding him. "They're similar to pre-magic elves, but only the earthen tribes bury their dead. She said her people give their bodies back to nature in another way..." He thought for a moment while Rathen's furious eyes sought to set him alight. "Where's their shrine? A monument, a statue or something?"
"Back there--"
Anthis ran off, leaving Rathen to make a tart remark he chose not to hear, and shortly found the broken stones. He paid little attention to the disorganisation and spared no mind to wonder at its prior state. Instead he filtered through them deftly, lifting every piece without once spoiling the fragments, looking closely at every etching with a practised, speculative eye. It didn't take him long to find what he sought; as he'd expected, the act was engraved into the rock.
But a grimace soon edged over his face as the images took shape, though he admitted, reluctantly, that it made sense. The desert was a harsh place and its creatures had to travel far to find a meal...
He looked over the rest of the stones for certainty, then glanced around for anything else that might contradict it, but beyond stories of the winds and the typical tales of spirits and benevolent acts of Aya'u, there was nothing else that could be construed as funerary rites. It wasn't something he wanted to get wrong - in fact, it mattered greatly that he got it right - but there was simply no other way to interpret this single stone.
He took a deep breath and yielded himself to the matter, and when he returned, they looked dubiously upon his resigned expression. "There's not much we have to do."
After immediate and absolute refusals, he soon had them both helping him to unpile the bodies and lay them neatly side by side. They braced themselves as best they could against the smell that followed every disturbance, and kept their eyes fixed between the bodies or on the surrounding buildings to avoid the equally foul sights of stomachs and chests rent open. But they didn't cover the wounds. To do so, Anthis claimed, would be disrespectful. Coming from him, Rathen didn't trust it, but he slowly, sickly and secretly understood the connection. He just hoped that that perspective had been shared by the village as a whole...
By the time they'd finished the air had grown heavy, the sun was grazing the highest dunes, and no one had any desire to speak. Petra had come to find out what was taking so long, and after choking at the sight, even more excruciating now the scene was organised and the bodies countable, she had taken Eyila back to the edge of the village and became even stricter with how far she allowed Aria to pace.
After Anthis had shared some words - elven rather than Ivaean or the tribe's modified dialect, which he failed to translate to the emotionally exhausted - they left the village to the beaks and claws of the desert, walking back out into the wild sands under a heavy silence with the last of the Ikaheka in tow. What she would say when she awoke was anyone's guess, but with the threat of a roaming and evidently violent tribe, one fiery-tempered girl's protests were the least of their concerns.
But as they made their way unguided towards the coast, bidden or not, they solemnly remembered Anthis's words. This was her darkness. Her life had become as murky as theirs. She had no one left. For now, at least, she belonged with them.
Chapter 49
Salus wiggled his fingers, marvelling again at the range of complex, tangled movements involved in even the simplest spells, and yet at just how fast Erran could infallibly form them. His own hadn't managed even half that speed all afternoon - but, as Teagan's mage had very delicately reminded him, he had only been trying for a few hours. Apparently it took 'time, practise and feeling' to reach such a level of competence and apply it in immediate situations, and though his lip curled again at the condescension he had surely imagined in the phidipan mage's words, he supposed he understo
od. Though he still resented the fact that he was being starting at a novicial level.
But despite his frustrating inadequacies, that small, smug smile he'd been trying to fight away since leaving the cells began once more to creep across his lips, and this time, he let it. He sighed in satisfaction and pressed his palms into the desk, ignoring the surrounding papers he should have been working on, and sat back in his seat, making himself quite comfortable.
He felt confident. Powerful. Even despite Teagan's apparent doubts and mistrust of the situation--
'No,' he reminded himself quite quickly, 'it wasn't mistrust.' He was making the mistake of personifying a portian. Teagan was merely being rational, unbiased - rightly pointing out the things Salus had missed because he wasn't so pure-minded anymore. He hadn't been since he'd taken the position of Keliceran - something else he was indebted to Teagan for. He realised, not for the first time, how lucky he was to have him at his side, and as his eyes drew back to his splayed fingers, itching to twist them into the signs of spells, he knew Teagan understood that the country was in even safer hands.
Yes, he was lucky to have an advisor like him. An advisor...and a friend? He liked to think so, but in truth he had little idea what that meant. Two people who were often together, talking, doing business...joking? There were jokes, occasionally, and drinks. Sort of. Except only he seemed to supply the jokes, and the drinks were in his own home or celebratory in the office, all of which were occasions few and far between. He wondered absently if one could even befriend a portian. Though Teagan had only been phidipan when they'd met...
A knock against the door shook him out of his pointless musings, and he frowned towards it in puzzlement. It was late - but it was always late these days. He was barely sleeping thanks to those awful dreams, and rather than try, he preferred to work for as long as he could rather than subject himself to their torment.
"Come in."
Perhaps it was that very lack of sleep which prevented him from seeing things as easily as Teagan did. Perhaps, if he was well-rested, he might be more level-headed, less distracted.