Aron felt himself drawn to a distant spot in the clouds, a spot his instincts told him lay north and east from Triune, near the midway point of the Scry. He headed toward it. What happens to them, the Stregans who fly too long on the other side of the Veil?
The energy they shared surged with a tingling warmth, moving Aron faster toward the clouds below him. Much like those who grow overly fond of mead, they gradually cease to live normal lives. They lose the people close to them and ultimately waste away until they die.
Aron contemplated this, easily understanding how such a thing could happen, as they once more plunged into the gray fields of moisture, then emerged into the gray and sullen weather below the clouds. A vast stretch of plains seemed to reach endlessly as far as Aron could see in any direction. Dyn Cobb, he said, to himself and aloud as well. The southern portion. There were scattered villages instead of clusters of towns like he would have found in Dyn Brailing, no natural stone formations to suggest they were above Dyn Altar, not enough rock to be Dyn Ross, and too much open, treeless space to be Dyn Vagrat or Dyn Mab.
Aron searched the rainy landscape below, looking for what had snagged his instincts so thoroughly. His mind—his legacy—told him to go closer, to take a more narrow view of the ground, so he moved their awareness lower, lower, until individual clumps of trees began to take shape.
Clumps of trees and… there. A small village, with a few people out and milling about the streets.
In fact, Aron counted four people, two in a slow-moving wagon and two on horseback. All four were slumped forward against the rain. They were moving toward what looked like an inn.
Dari remained silent as Aron focused on the people, trying to understand why they had drawn his attention. It took some time, but eventually he saw a flash of energy playing about the edges of the wagon. Red energy. A crystalline sort of ruby from the boy in the back—and in the front, from the woman guiding the two ice-crusted oxen, an occasional flash of silver that seemed like something he had seen before. The woman felt… familiar, somehow, yet utterly strange to him, too.
Who are those people? Dari asked, and Aron almost shouted from the surprise.
I—I don’t know, he answered when he had gathered himself enough to be certain only Dari would hear him. But I’ve seen the boy in the back of that wagon before. And the woman—there’s something about her I should recognize. At least I think I should.
He didn’t really want to remember, not anything from that terrible night he went after the Brailing Guard. This was important, though. Aron knew enough about legacies now to understand that his mind wouldn’t have led him here for no reason.
He tried to go lower, get closer.
At the instant he drew close enough to make out the details of the people below, the silvery energy from the front of the wagon lashed upward and exploded—into the form of a huge hood snake straight from the hot, gritty sands of Dyn Altar.
The essence of Aron’s heart went completely still.
The image of the impossible creature filled his awareness. He could see its black head, its huge fangs dripping terrible, stinking venom, even the emerald wickedness of its slitted eyes. Every child in Eyrie knew about hood snakes, at least enough to recognize one if they came across it—and run away as fast as they could.
The snake danced for one second, two seconds, its hood expanding like the wings of some vicious mocker.
We should leave, Dari said in that oh-so-quiet voice, not reflecting an ounce of the terror Aron felt gripping his nonexistent body. Her energy tugged at his. We should go now, Aron.
Aron couldn’t tear his eyes from the snake’s. His energy and essence seemed immobile, as if he had turned to rock on the spot. Fear drained away from him. All emotion. He was nothing now. Just a rock hanging in the sky, waiting to fall. Some part of his mind knew he had felt like this before. The confusion blossoming in his mind felt too frightening. The sense that he would die here, that he might not even care, that was familiar, too.
The snake’s red tongue whipped outward as it weaved, seeming to take up the sky, the entire countryside, blocking any view of the people below.
Were there people below?
Aron thought he might have been confused about that. Maybe he had imagined the boy with the ruby legacy, since he had seen such a boy before on the other side of the Veil.
Aron! Dari pulled at him so hard the essence of his shoulder ached from the force.
The snake struck.
Fangs swept toward the essence of Aron’s face.
Hundreds of colors blasted across his vision.
Black nothingness swallowed him as he tumbled backward.
A void. The huge darkness he had seen before when he fought the manes the night his family died, and again the night he tried to kill the Brailing Guard. So dark. So cold. And he was falling, shooting downward into nothingness until—
His eyes opened, and he found his awareness once more in his body, as gently as if his own mother had reached down from the heavens and set him back inside his own skin. There was no pain, no confusion, no nothing. Just… he was in Dari’s bedchamber, and awake, and staring at her, and she was smiling.
Aron didn’t know what to say, what to feel, so he just sat where he was, stunned by the warmth of the fireplace and battling a sense of numb unreality.
“Some trick, wasn’t it?” Dari’s eyes sparkled. “Many of my people couldn’t have managed such an image on the other side of the Veil.”
Aron just stared at Dari, waiting for her to make sense, hoping he would eventually grasp her meaning.
When she spoke again, she sounded not only admiring, but delighted. “Make no mistake. If I hadn’t been with you, she could have killed you, and been within her rights, since she was protecting the weak in her care.”
The sudden, dreamy look on Dari’s face lit a taper inside Aron, that slow burn of anger he felt more days than not—though he couldn’t have said why if Lord Baldric himself were standing over him with swords drawn. “Who? She—who? Dari, I don’t understand.”
“Couldn’t you sense it?” Dari clapped her hands together and stood, letting her gray robe swirl around her ankles. “That was Stormbreaker’s sister. That was Tia Snakekiller. He’ll be so happy and grateful to know she’s alive.”
For a moment, Aron was swept up in realizing why the woman in the wagon seemed so familiar yet so strange. Stormbreaker’s sister. Of course. Her legacy was somewhat like his in color and force, the sense of her—and yet Aron had never met her in person.
“Blath, get your wrap and mine.” Dari gestured toward the trunk at the foot of her bed. “We’ll need to hurry to reach Stormbreaker before he’s swallowed up by the training day.”
The joy on Dari’s face stirred a nameless darkness inside Aron. His awe at understanding why Snakekiller had drawn his attention on the other side of the Veil swept out of him, replaced by the bleak bitterness of how much Dari wanted to go to Stormbreaker. It was obvious that all she could think about was being close to Stormbreaker, giving him good news, making him happy.
If she hadn’t been standing right in front of him, Aron might have smacked his own head with his fists. Why did he keep letting himself forget the truth where Dari was concerned? Wasn’t his stupid legacy supposed to be all about truth?
“How do you know for sure it was Snakekiller we saw?” he grumbled. “We might have been mistaken.”
Dari took her wrap from Blath’s outstretched hand as Aron got slowly to his feet. “Tonight I want you to meditate on musical notes played together, two notes that match, that have a resonance together. Harmony.”
He glared at her, failing to grasp the connection. He wished he could turn himself into the image of a great snake and strike at her happiness over going to Stormbreaker.
“Discerning truth from illusion, prophecy from reality, instinct from the urgings of legacy—this is an advanced skill of graal work, one most Fae never achieve.” Dari pulled on her wrap but left the hood down
. “I believe with work, you could. It’s like the feel of two notes harmonizing, the music of sounds blending. Do you understand?”
“Prophecy?” Aron knew he was being surly and picking at small points, knew in fact that he had seen a few visions of the future, but he couldn’t help himself. She was speaking to him like he was a little boy again. “You know seeing the future is not my talent.”
“Seeing bits of what was, what is, what will be—that afflicts everyone with any legacy, though of course those with the Mab mind-talent and the old Lek abilities much worse than others.” She was getting impatient now. Aron could tell because she was pulling at the sides of her wrap. “I’ll tell you again, we can all do bits and pieces of what another with a legacy can do—a legacy is the ability to perform one talent very, very well. Your legacy is about truth, and you would know for sure that we just saw Tia Snakekiller if you could learn to feel the truth, that harmony. There’s a sensation, here.”
She put her hand on her belly.
Aron stared at her long fingers and the way they pressed into the soft folds of her robe. “Or here.” She moved her hand to her chest. “Or maybe even here.” She lifted her fingers to the side of her head. “Or all of them, all at once. A resonance, like two notes played perfectly together on a lyre or lute. Like stars forming a line beside the moons. Think about it.”
She smiled anew, and this time, Aron felt the smile was for him. It was enough to ease some of the burning pain forming in his depths, and he suddenly wished he could see the future, at least enough to help her find her sister this night, right now, before she suffered another moment of pain.
But if she finds Kate, she might leave.
More than once, he had considered this possibility, then worried he might unintentionally use his legacy to keep Dari from learning Kate’s location. Yet if he was the one who brought Kate safely home to Dari, or led Dari to her sister’s hiding place, she would have to realize he was more than some little boy she was tutoring, wouldn’t she?
“You should hurry to the horsemen’s armory,” Dari said. “Time grows short.”
And before he could move, she was out the door, Blath trailing silently behind her.
Iko stood in the open doorway, gazing in at Aron with his typical implacable expression.
It took all of Aron’s strength not to pound the boy right in his blue face as he stalked out of Dari’s bedchamber, just to have something to hit that might feel his punch.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
DARI
When winter finally eased completely, Dari found herself glad for the growing warmth, even as tidings of the war worsened. Brailing and Altar soldiers now commanded almost half of Dyn Mab, with no end to the conflict in sight. Canus the Bandit and his forces raged across Dyn Cobb and Dyn Ross, attacking Brailing and Altar Dynast Guard, but also pillaging and looting seemingly at will—if reports from messengers and guardsmen could be believed. With most Cobb and Ross forces committed to defending dynast boundaries, there was little to stand in the way of outlaws, robbers, and Eyrie’s most base opportunists.
Spring came and went, with its thaws and endless rains, and Dari’s days felt just as endless and gray. She had been at Stone almost two years now, and she had absorbed their rhythms of life almost against her will. She rose with the sun, danced the fael’feis in the courtyard of the Den, worked to train Aron, then spent the remainder of her day assisting in the infirmary, the quarters for the sheltered, or the farming quarters. Guild members who could no longer serve in their full capacity transferred into the agricultural section of the compound, so many of Stone’s farmers were elderly or disabled, or even dying. At least once every week or two, Dari was called upon to dispatch the spirit of a guildsman or guildswoman who had succumbed to age or illness. Three nights a week, she and Stormbreaker combed the countryside, searching for any sign of Kate. They had covered most of Dyn Brailing and Dyn Altar, and they had begun to traverse the skies of Dyn Cobb.
By the dull, gray morning after the first full moons of summer, she had fallen into a misery even Blath’s gentle ministrations could not relieve.
“Get up from that bench and put on your robe.” Blath finished working oil through Dari’s braids and curled the loose wisps against the side of her face. “You’ll be late for Judgment Day.”
Dari closed her eyes and remained on the bench positioned before the modest mirror Stormbreaker had hung for her, where it caught the light of the window behind it. Despair worked deep inside her essence, surging and receding like the clouds so common late in Eyrie’s rainy season. It seemed to her anguished mind that all the land must be captured in those oppressive clouds. “I don’t want to go to the arena.” She breathed deeply of the sweet-pepper oil Blath was using, then opened her eyes. She didn’t focus on Blath, or the window and weather outside, or even the glass in front of her. Her chamber robes felt tight and uncomfortable, though they were well fitted and spun with the softest thread available inside the walls of Triune. “I don’t wish to see anyone. Not today. The air—my thoughts—something feels wrong.”
Blath made a noise of understanding, and Dari studied her companion’s solemn face in the mirror. Blath’s skin had tinted a darker blue, as if she, too, felt the unrest hovering above Eyrie. “We could return,” she said after a telling pause. “I could take you over the borders myself, with ease.”
Dari didn’t even bother to refuse the offer. She looked away from the intensity of Blath’s dark eyes, unreduced by reflection in the mirror.
“I know you stay for Kate,” Blath continued, “but do you also stay for Stormbreaker?”
Studying every stone on the wall beside the mirror, Dari ground her teeth. The question hurt her, though it was fair enough. She spent what little spare time left to her with Stormbreaker, and he didn’t send her away. Sometimes they shared a touch or an embrace, even a few more kisses, but in many ways, he remained as strange and unknown as the day she met him.
Blath cleared her throat, bringing Dari’s eyes back to her reflection in the mirror. Her brown short-sleeved robes seemed to hang a bit looser, as if their stay at the Stone stronghold was taking some unnamed toll on her physical essence.
“Stormbreaker spoke his truth to you,” Blath said.
Such a gentle voice, but such harsh words. Dari wished she could shut out those truths, but knew, in the end, she could not.
“You told me so yourself.” Blath’s look was as soft as her voice. “His heart lies elsewhere.”
“Where?” Dari murmured, finally forcing herself to take stock of her own drawn, worried face. “With whom?”
Of course, Blath had no answer for those questions.
The bells along the castle battlements began to ring, shattering Dari’s thoughts and what little calmness she had managed to establish as she spoke with Blath. She didn’t hold back her groan. “Another bunch of messengers? Will they never understand that Stone won’t take part in this conflict—in any fashion?”
“Not messengers.” Blath turned away from her to stare out the window, as if she could see each bell along the battlement. Her posture grew more rigid, and the blue in her cheeks darkened yet another shade. “A dynast lord has come to Triune.”
Dari stood, her own muscles tightening until rising felt like moving against rock.
A dynast lord. Gods.
She gripped the edges of her sleeping robe and wished she had changed already, after all.
Was this the doom she had been feeling for so many days? Was Lord Brailing mad enough to bring the fight to the gates of Stone?
She joined Blath at the window, and the two of them stared intently into the gray morning light.
“No massing of guildsmen,” Blath said, as if taking stock of the threat just as Dari was doing.
Dari gestured to the nearest of the outer walls. “No Stone Sisters taking to the battlements to work their treachery. Perhaps it’s no attack. Just a visit.”
“We will find out soon enough, if we head to the
Arena.” Blath’s tone of triumph was hard to miss, but Dari knew she was right. Now they would have to go to Judgment Day. Dari couldn’t surrender any opportunity to gain information that might lead her to her sister, or a better understanding of the danger and doom that seemed to stalk all of Eyrie.
She was relieved, at least, that there was no visible panic inside Triune. Below them, apprentices, Stone Brothers, Stone Sisters, and some of the sheltered milled about, preparing for Judgment Day. Dari saw stable hands heading toward the gates, and cooks with wagons laden with breads and sweets and treats for both the Judged and spectators.
At Stone, no one met death, or even watched death, with an empty belly.
Her gaze drifted eastward, closer to the Den, and fixed on the road between Endurance House and the Shrine of the Mother. Dari narrowed her eyes, then felt them widen with surprise.
Aron was standing with Zed and Iko, directly in front of the Shrine. Beside them stood the little redheaded boy Raaf, the rescued child who often tagged behind Aron. The younger boy had recently gotten word that his father had succumbed to drink and died in the worst of the winter, and she had feared he would take vows at Stone out of sheer grief and hero-worship. This day, though, Raaf looked the calmest in the group.
Iko stood stiff as a blue plank behind Aron, and Zed was pacing.
As for Aron, he seemed unsteady on his feet, lurching forward toward the Shrine, then stumbling back again, letting Iko right him. When she checked, his graal was almost fully visible, a blinding halo of sapphire making him a target for any who chose to look through the Veil.
“Something’s wrong,” Dari murmured.
Blath moved in front of her so quickly Dari felt a sharp breeze across her cheeks. She moved to the side to keep her own view as Blath’s lips drew back, revealing whiter-than-white teeth, already getting longer and sharper. A low growl rose in her throat until she saw the source of Dari’s additional disquiet.
“Aron, yes,” Dari confirmed, and immediately, the signs of Blath’s change began to ease.
A Prince Among Killers Page 5