by Tia Reed
His hands dropped. She opened her eyes to the rhythm of Kaztyne’s chant. Druce was staring at a rowboat that sailed upon Lake Tejolin. He blinked, and took a deep breath. “The dealer is inside a dark place. The walls and floor are rough stone. Porrin is stashed in all corners and he is counting coin by candlelight. I can tell you no more.
A rustle drew their attention to Santesh. Kaztyne changed his chant until focus returned to the young man’s eyes. The inexperienced mage blinked to orientate himself, and he swayed as he tried to get up.
“Steady now,” Drucilamere said, rising, as Kaztyne placed a hand on Santesh’s shoulder to forestall him.
“Brailen is on a plain. There are hills to the south.”
“So, he hides beyond The Slopes.” Drucilamere turned to Matisse. The request was a given, understood and accepted without the need for a word, but Drucilamere, in his sense of office, would make it formal. He preceded it with a bow.
“I don’t think so,” Santesh said before Druce could voice his appeal. “These hills are higher, wilder. I think he’s past the Olono Range. I think he’s in Verdaan.”
That led them all to silence. Jordayne watched the boat glide south. This was a development with the potential for nasty consequences. She forbore to ask Santesh how certain he might be. For as long as they had existed, travels formed a crucial part of the mages’ training for just this reason.
“Will he attempt to reach Pengari? Or even cross into Terlaan?” she asked.
“He knows we will hound him to the end of his days if he remains in Myklaan. He is a coward. He will not face the consequences like a man,” Drucilamere replied.
“How much does he know?” she asked. The boat had passed out of sight, leaving a vast expanse of nothing. The sun was not high enough to add a sparkle to the water and heavy clouds were gathering, dulling the intensity of its blue.
It was Kaztyne who answered. “He has talent but not the discipline to hone his skills. He accomplished little in his time here.”
“And of our plans?”
“He did not have our trust,” Kaztyne said.
Calm and assured, Drucilamere met her eye. For the first time that evening, he put his personal dilemmas aside. “He was present when we interrogated Raj.”
His reminder was sobering. “For refuge or out of spite he may betray us.”
“He will trip himself to oblivion before he can do any real harm,” Santesh said.
“The harm is already done,” Matisse said, and the young mage dropped his head, wishing, no doubt, he had not spoken. He would learn. Drucilamere had high expectations of him for all his inexperience.
“Do we allow him to get away with it?” Kaztyne asked.
“No, we do not,” Drucilamere replied.
“Vae’oeldin hear me,” Matisse vowed, standing, his hand once again around the hilt of his sword. “Soldiers will pursue that traitorous wretch. If he means to hide in the hills, we will track him down and drag him to face whatever justice the mages decree.”
Drucilamere sank onto a chair and closed his eyes as he fought to master the grief that was contorting his face. There was her action, scandalous and wicked if Drucilamere was to be believed, to add to his burden. But regret was not an emotion she could afford to entertain. Far too much was at stake here.
With a keen desire for reconciliation she climbed upon his lap, one knee on either side of his thighs. Placing the back of her hands to the side of her neck, she flicked her ash blonde hair, a deliberate, provocative gesture. The others scattered in all directions, leaving her alone with Drucilamere. It was unfair, really. The porrin was dulling the edge of his senses. But fair, like regret, was not a game she played.
“Are you so very critical of my morals?” she asked.
“You have none, for all your compassion. And I do. It leads us to where we stand. I do not think we can go on, Jordayne.”
Her close lip smile had seduced many a man, this one included. Raising her chin, she shook her hair.
His large hands on her neck took her by surprise. “What is this?” he asked, his thumb rubbing the clotted prick at its hollow.
“An unsuccessful threat.”
With one hand, he cupped her head. A moment he held, and then he kissed her lips, dropped his mouth to her neck and kissed the wound. Took her arms and searched every inch of her skin. Worked his hands to the low neckline of her bodice, over the concealed cleft in her breasts. Found the tear at the bottom of her bodice where Prahak had slid up his knife. Brushed lower to the scratch around her waist. And the nick at her belly button.
“He hurt you.” He seized her and pulled her to him, kissing her with fierce passion.
“Not nearly so deeply as you.” She pressed close against him, brushing her hands through his hair, kissing his face, his neck, his shoulder.
His breath quickened. He stood, holding her tight against him as he repaid her in kind. “You kill me Jordayne.”
She clung tight, craving to love away the horrors of the night. “Let it be a pleasurable death.”
Arms and mouths and legs entwined, they stumbled to his room.
Chapter 21
SIAN WOKE TO the carol of the forest birds, the chatter of monkeys and the more distant murmur of a crowd. It felt so secure to be home. Stretching out on the furs, she allowed herself the luxury of lying awake. The cave was quiet. She rolled onto her side, and wished she hadn’t. The box of bones sat near her head. It was not part of what home was meant to be. She got up so she could distance herself from it.
Ishoa was not in the cave but someone had left a bowl of honey-drizzled oatcakes and poached peaches near the fire, and a blue skirt and white blouse embroidered with the leaves and pods of the Ho’akerin among the bright geometric design of the greater Tribe. Sian would have loved to dally over the bundles of herbs and baskets of seeds, but the day was long begun. She gobbled her breakfast down, dressed and combed her fair hair. It felt so strange that she had pretty, new clothes instead of her brother’s boyish hand-me-downs. She skipped barefoot all the way down the path, around the hollow bole and along the leaf-strewn path to the village.
The log longhouses stood silent on their short legs. Old Farina was the only one there. She was sitting on a log and rocking exiled Esa’s vacant baby against her sagging breasts, a haunted look of sorrow in her eyes. And Lutham, muttering and scratching at his hollow face as he wove between the smouldering, smokey cooking hearths, dragging a twisted, swollen leg which would never come good. It felt so empty, without Grandmam Vila to scold her, or Mam or Pah to remind her how worthless she was. She trod a wide circle around Lutham, who the tribe would return to exile for porrin addiction once his ogre-mangled leg was healed, and went to sit with Farina. The old woman let her snuggle into her flab and, with a tear in her eye, told her stories of when Grandmam Vila was a girl.
“Do you think Mam will come back?” Sian asked. Her heart suffered pangs to think how her mam had left, two days after the hunters had driven Pah and the other porrin addicts out of the village at the end of their spears. Mam had not even said goodbye, but what could an afflicted girl who had just burned her arm expect? She had been too heavy a burden on her family, and now they were gone. She bowed her head and watched a beetle air its wings. The spirits had given her Ishoa, who was ready with a smile and her fearful lore, and Erok, if he still wanted to talk to her now they were back in the village where the children would shun the girl with half a brain.
“We will ask the spirits to guide Larpa,” Farina replied in her thin voice. She patted Sian’s hand. “You should go to the Meeting Field.”
Sian went to the wash trough at the edge of the little village and splashed water over her face. She took some leaves to her stick insect, who crawled down the ill-fitting planks of the girls’ longhouse onto her dusty pallet and waved his front legs in greeting. She blew him a kiss as she left. It was strange to dawdle through the village, listening to the ghosts of memory rise from the rustling of the leaves and cli
cking of the insects. The clamour of the tribe would drown them soon, and maybe that was good.
“You slept the sleep of a bear.” Erok lumbered down the creaky steps of the hunter’s longhouse, a reed between his lips. He looked as strange as she felt in a clean shirt with embroidery to match hers, and trousers with spiralling squares on the cuffs. He ran a tousling hand through his hair, as fair as hers now it was clean. Her tongue tied itself in a knot. Her mouth, she realised, was open. She felt stupid.
“Everyone is on the Meeting Field. They are waiting for you,” Erok said.
For her? “Why?”
Erok rolled the reed across his lips and looked at her like she was a puzzle. “They need to hear about the ogres.”
“I think,” she said. “I think I might go, after.”
“Go where?”
A monkey squeaked as it bounced on a branch above her head.
“On a wander.”
He bit the reed so it bent down, scratched his head, and looked truly puzzled. “Do the spirits demand it?”
All her words were stuck in her throat.
Erok shrugged. “They’re waiting for you,” he said again.
She followed him out of the village, beyond the trees, to the gentle, rocky slope beneath the hill with the ridge that led to the pond. So many Akerin crowded on the bright, dry field, beneath a scattering of goat-tail clouds: leadsman and tribespeople of the Pa’akerin, with animals stitched on their hem; the Te’akerin with their embroidered feathers; and the Su’akerin with their suns, moons and stars. They mixed and chatted with her diminished tribe, and had built so many lean-tos on the field she feared a city might grow right here in the forest.
As she tried to slip into the middle of the crowd, Erok took her elbow. “We go there,” he said, nodding at the front, at the speaking rock. She pulled because he could not mean it. But he was already walking, her elbow still in his hand, and she trotted at his side.
The blind soothsayers stood all in a line before the speaking rock, faces striped with ochre, and feathers poking out in all directions in their hair. Leadsman Draykan had a warm welcome hug for her, and looked like he was proud to have her in his tribe, though he would soon change his mind. The leadsman had a little more grey in his hair, a few more lines on his broad face, but he climbed upon the rock with the ease of youth, the ceremonial gold-tipped spear of his rank in his hand. When he held his spear high, the soothsayers let forth an ululating cry. Ishoa broke into the spirit dance, swaying and spinning and crouching, so her grass skirts rustled to the rhythm of the leaves. The older soothsayers praised Earth, and Water, and Forest, and Sky, their voices joining in a harmony that thrummed through the air and vibrated through the trees. The notes tossed Sian up to clouds. From their heights, she gazed down on the forest and the lakes, at the Akerin all assembled on the field, and an ogre crashing through the forest with his club.
The chanting stopped. The silence dropped Sian to earth. Her soul hit her body hard. She staggered, began to fall. Erok caught her. When he righted her, Ishoa was staring right at her with her white, sightless eyes. Maybe now the soothsayer would know she had made a mistake. Sian was weak, and her vision was wrong. Ogres could not travel by day.
“Akerin, be welcome,” Draykan began, when thanks was given. The spirits carried his voice across the field. “I called a gathering because the Ho’akerin face a crisis.” He talked about the drug, about the destruction it had caused. He spoke about Esa’s babe. He explained the decree that had turned her father from the tribe, and sent her mother after him. The pang in her heart doubled when she thought she might never see them again.
“Our youth suffer a similar affliction,” the plump leadsman of the Su’akerin said. His tribe lived close to the land her elders named Verdaan. Leadsman Draykan said that was where the porrin was grown. “Many do not return from their wander. Those that do stare at the fire all day instead of honing the skills they need for the hunt.”
“The drug has not infected our tribe,” the leadsman of the north-eastern Te’akerin said. “But Ho’akerin outcasts wandering the hills have raided our grain stores.”
“The problem is so bad the lowlanders believe we covet this curse. They bring it to our door,” Erok’s friend, Brax, said. He spoke of how the Terlaani leadsman’s daughter had tried to bribe him to take her to Myklaan.
Sian scuffed her foot along the dry grass as the tribes talked. No tale was good, and the tribes had many to tell. When they finished, Leadsman Draykan repeated his decree. Sian held her breath, but no one stood to debate or challenge. Of one accord, the three visiting leadsmen stabbed the butt of their ceremonial spears to the ground.
“It is law,” Draykan said, entitled to declare it since he had called the gathering. “From this day forth, no Akerin is permitted the drug unless by the decree of a soothsayer.” With a grunt of satisfaction Draykan left the speaking rock. Erok leapt up in his place.
“This is not our only problem,” her hunter said. She sighed at how confident he was. “Ogres are overrunning the hills. Their numbers are greater than I have ever seen before.”
“They chased us here,” one of the Te’akerin said.
“We spent every night on our journey in a tree,” a Su’akerin man called.
“They have infested our range,” the Te’akerin leadsman continued.
“And ours. They run rampant through the west of the Olono Range,” the leadsman of the Su’akerin added.
“And near spirit lake,” the Pa’akerin leadsman confirmed.
This time a debate did break out, about what it might mean, and what they might do.
“Soothsayers?” the Pa’akerin leadsman enquired when it was clear the Tribe could not explain.
They stood silent, Ishoa in her grass dress, the blind, old men with leaves and rushes tacked to their long grey shirts.
“There is worse,” Erok interrupted, commanding immediate quiet because he still stood upon the rock. The sun added colour to his cheeks. “Where once they were solitary, now they band together. They organise themselves, disguise their lairs, and take orders from a leader.”
Sian edged closer to the broad, straight trunks of the forest. She had never wanted to think of Gor again.
“There is one thing more,” Erok continued.
No one would miss her if she ran to the village. Except Draykan was kneeling in front of her, blocking her way. He held her as he might his own child. “You must speak,” he said.
Her heart nearly stopped. He could not ask that. Sian shook her head. What if she fitted, right here in front of all these people?
Ishoa ambled over, leaning on her staff. “Faradil chose you for a reason. If you keep what you learned to yourself, your journey was in vain.”
Erok was telling the Tribe about mystic, broody Faradil Forest. He was telling them no one could enter unharmed, but she had, because she was Chosen, and the Forest had returned her with a message to bear.
Sian swallowed. She wanted to tell him he had got it wrong. Her heart was hammering like a woodpecker and her palms were cold, but she let Draykan help her onto the rock. All those eyes on her made her feel small. She dropped her head so she did not have to see. The warm air hung still but the canopy shook.
The Forest is with you, Ishoa’s voice sounded in her mind.
“The Forest was angry,” she whispered. The leadsman repeated her words so all could hear. They waited so quiet that she felt compelled to say more. “People do not respect it. They forget to give thanks.” Denials burst forth. Her cheeks hot, Sian bowed her head lower. “Something from the Spirit Realm approaches.” She waited for Draykan’s strong voice to relay the message. “Something bad. Something that might kill people. We will need the Forest’s help but it no longer counts our people its friend.”
Now the crowd was in an uproar.
“She speaks of the lowlanders.”
“The Akerin have always respected the land.”
“Why should we suffer for the greed of others
?”
Sian looked up. The mixed tribes of the Akerin were distracted, accusing one another and the lowlanders of hurting the land. She might have slipped off the rock had a large form skulking at the edge of the restless forest not caught her eye. The goats on the slope bleated, and trotted along the ridge to the safety of the far hill.
“What’s wrong?” Erok asked as a scream formed in her throat
Gor loped from the trees brandishing his club before she could find her voice.
“Gi-ive Gor gir-erl.”
Erok swung her from the rock and behind him. The soothsayers all turned to the intruder. Screams rebounded off the trees as women and children scattered. Mun and Joser tottered like the blind old men they were until women came to guide them. It was so peculiar that Orin and Ishoa turned to meet the other’s white eyes. The two of them stood stone still as Gor bashed his club onto a young Te’akerin warrior’s head. Sian shrieked as the lad collapsed in a mess of blood and broken bone. Other men circled the ogre, spears and slingshots raised. They dodged the wild swings of his club. It broke the shafts of their spears as though they were dry twigs.
“Take him alive,” Draykan called, striding forward.
Sian shuddered. Erok raised his arm to keep her behind him. A hunter poked Gor in the hip. The ogre whirled, grabbed the spear and dragged the hunter within range of his club. He brought it down again and again, breaking the poor man’s body as the other men jabbed their spears into his arms and legs. Shafts stuck out of his flesh, but the ogre stomped towards her, bleeding and enraged. She sucked in a single sob. Erok kept pushing her on.