by Jenna Rhodes
To his soft, nonsensical inquiry, she answered, “Rain and hail,” before returning to the cot. He protested at the chill of her body but pulled her close anyway, his eyes shut before she could say anything else and his breathing dropping back into deep sleep. He rarely slept that way, she knew, having learned the art of observant rest from the Kobrir, so she let him gain what slumber he could. His sounds drew her back into sleep herself and she did not even dream.
• • •
Morning rushed in, gray sunlight flooding the opened doorway as Ifandra entered. “Rise, rise, we have work to do. Beware of ice patches,” and the headwoman was gone before either of them could answer. With stifled yawns and scrubbing at eyes itchy with sleep, they emerged to be handed bowls of cooked grain with a splash of milk and what looked to be honey over it and joined the others in hurriedly finishing their meal.
Sevryn finished first and went to corner a few of the men, concern creasing his face, but he looked less worried when he rejoined her. “They’re pleased with the weather last night. It bodes well for one of their major crops, and we leave to help with setting up for harvest.”
“Here? On the mountain?”
“So I’m told. This,” and he swiped a fingertip through the topping of her cereal, “is not honey. It’s a syrup made from tree sap. They tap the trees for sap in the winter, and now that you’ve helped with the river water, they’re confident of a good harvest. So we go out today to learn how the taps are put in the trees, which trees, and to hang buckets to catch the sap.”
“Trees’ blood.”
“Sssssh.” He put two fingers over her lips. “They know we’re different. How different, we can’t let them suspect.”
Rivergrace set her lips together tightly. He released her after a lingering moment. After a stubborn pause, she said to him, “But how can trees exist through such a process? Would it not weaken or damage them?”
“You would know better than I.”
She trailed a step after him. “Perhaps,” she considered. “If they’re not a fruiting tree.”
“You tasted the syrup yourself.”
“Yes. Like honey almost but distinctive.” She added reluctantly, “I liked it.”
By then they’d caught up with the others. Aprons with vast numbers of pockets were passed out, each pocket filled with a small but simple faucet and handle. Poles with buckets hanging on either end, carrying loads of other buckets, were shouldered quickly. Eyes flashed with excitement although voices became muted. Rimple said to them, “Voices carry in a cold snap. The trees we tap for our syrups are down a way, out of the evergreens. It’s a journey, but worth it, and our camp stays safe for being a distance.” He patted Rivergrace’s bare head. “You’ll need a cap, both of you, against the winter. I imagine there are some knitting supplies in the hut, or maybe not. We’ll find you something.” He broke into a jog to catch up with his own dumpling-shaped wife who made her way down the faint forest trail with a good bit of speed.
By the time they reached the lower groves, she felt exposed among barren trees whose leaves had been stripped by the heavy rain and hail. Her boots slipped now and then on the muddy ground and fallen leaves. They spent the day learning one from another, a painstaking process for neither of them were familiar with many of the species of trees on the mountain, even in its lower groves. Rivergrace had finally gotten a tap into the tree she’d picked and stepped back to look in satisfaction on it when Ifandra swooped in and promptly removed it.
Her jaw dropped. “Why—”
“Because the sap of that one would pucker up your lips and give you the sours for a week.” Ifandra smiled at her. “Look at the bark. That’s how we know one from the other. See? It has sun-colored patches where it peels away. Sour! Often you can tell if we’ve tapped a tree from past seasons and know that one is safe to use.”
By the time their long day finished, her hands had gone numb and her apron pockets emptied of the equipment. Sevryn came to pick her up, his pole barren of buckets. “Ready?”
“More than.” She fell in behind him on the narrow trail. “What happens now?”
“They pick up the buckets every few weeks, consolidate them and bring the sap up to be processed. I gathered they have barrels they fill and send down to traders in the spring. This is a winter harvest.”
“Actually,” she countered. “I was thinking of this evening.”
“Oh. Oh! I have no idea. No one has seen fit to tell me, and I haven’t had a thought to ask.” He swung about. “What do you think?”
“I think I need to make caps and gloves.”
He dropped back to her side with a soft growl and tugged on a handful of her hair. He found easier purchase on the somewhat slippery ground so led her up the mountainside by one hand and dark had fallen before they straggled into the camp.
Ifandra met them just outside the lantern lights’ soft yellow glow. She held a steaming plate in each hand. “For tonight, your dinner is prepared.”
Rivergrace took the offering slowly, baffled, before remembering that their ceremony had been promised that evening. She smiled. “Smells delicious.”
Sevryn bumped shoulders gently with her as he took his dinner. Ifandra nodded. “It’s a simple porridge, with nutmeats and jerky, cooked long enough that the jerky becomes moist and soft. It’s a staple.” She winked. “You may become quite tired of it by spring.” She motioned for them to have a seat at the circle.
The lanterns threw a little heat as well as light, but the muted bonfire at the center sent out the most warmth as Grace folded her legs and sank gratefully to the ground. Someone passed her a spoon and she dug into the porridge which managed to be hot, savory, and sweet and felt wonderful going down her throat. Beside her, Sevryn ate even faster, although he stopped suddenly, nearly finished, and made an odd sound at the back of his throat. He knocked the plate from her hands, his eyes gone wide and frantic. She looked in dismay at her dinner on the ground as he began to curl over, trying to speak.
They’d been drugged. Her own thoughts began to curl up in her mind and disappear in puffs of useless smoke. She fell as if every cord in her body had been severed and nothing obeyed her.
Sevryn rolled onto his knees. “Kedant and . . . what else?” The palm of his hand went to his boot top, the current holster for his best throwing knife.
Everyone scattered except for Ifandra and, behind her, Cort.
“Tell me now. I have a tolerance for kedant but none for betrayal.”
“I don’t know what this kedant is, but what you’ve been given is traditional. We call it desert rose, named for the small coral-hued snake that lies curled on barren rocks, looking as though the barren lands itself bloomed a small rose.”
“That would be what we call kedant. Its effect on those of our bloodline is considerable, Ifandra, and I doubt you aren’t aware.”
“Too much can kill, yes. A little frees the senses, allows truth and passion to arise. We consider it an aphrodisiac.” She spread her hands.
He swayed a bit. Rivergrace could not will her body to do more than turn her head to watch and listen to the battle of words over her. Her stomach roiled in protest and her mouth dried to sand. A dozen heartbeats and more drummed in her ears.
“That isn’t all you fed to us.” The blade made a noise as he drew it halfway from his boot.
“No, it’s not.” Ifandra moved a step closer, presenting herself as the target in front of her husband as if she thought Sevryn might hesitate to strike a woman. “I added some powder of a flower we call Truthbringer.”
“Because it loosens the tongue.” Sevryn spat to one side, bitterly. “If you wanted to know more of us, why not ask us?”
“Because you seem to be two people who have much to hide.” She looked down at Rivergrace who fought to keep her eyes open and alert. “Who has not heard of honey sap trees? Their syrup and candies are l
egendary. Our industry here is small, but there are vast groves to the north famous for their sweetness. Children line up for boiled bits of their chewy candy, yet the two of you knew nothing of it. We asked ourselves then, where you could possibly have come from that you could be so ignorant? We barely survive here. What have we decided to harbor?”
Rivergrace found her voice. “You can’t begin to imagine.”
“Which makes whoever you are and whatever your purposes sound that much worse.”
“You’re better off not knowing.”
She swung from Grace to Sevryn. “Never tell me that not knowing is better. I can’t make sound judgments on my ignorance.”
“I think it’s enough to tell you that Trevilara is our sworn enemy, but she does not know our names or that she should be hunting us.” Sevryn stood then, his blade freed and in his hand.
“When she learns them, will she come hunting?”
“If she does, perhaps. Our trail won’t lead here, when she does.”
“You can promise that.”
Fingers curled tighter about the handle of his weapon. “Promises like that can be foolish. We would do our best to leave our friends in the shadows.”
Cort murmured, “All that we can ask.” His wife glanced back at him, her lips tightened.
“Having been here at all, the damage is done. How much damage remains to be seen.” She put the toe of her boot out to nudge Rivergrace who, slowly, managed to leverage herself off the ground and onto her knees. “I’ve taken the Truthbringer as well, for it opens eyes. Tell me why I see a cage of fine wires about you. We know what it can mean and it is despicable.”
“You ask me if I enslave others to me?” Rivergrace pushed a cascade of auburn hair from the side of her face as she tilted it to look up at Ifandra.
“And if I asked that, what would my answer be?”
“That I am the anchor to tens upon tens of souls, in hopes of keeping darkness from devouring them. I am no parasite, living on the souls of others.” Rivergrace looked aside and added softly, “if anything, they live on me.”
Their audience had crept back, close enough to hear, and now their murmurs of disbelief broke louder. Ifandra raised an eyebrow across the fire at them as if that alone could silence them, and it did.
“We all face darkness. Sometimes you cannot help but let another pass into it if they will not save themselves.”
“I can’t. It’s not in me to let someone drift away, if they can be helped or protected. Not to the darkness and not to Trevilara. As to the why—you’re a healer. Would you let an insidious disease you could cure lay waste to your patient? Your village?”
Ifandra shifted her weight, not answering, but Grace knew she’d made a point. The woman raised her chin again. “What, if anything, has this to do with Trevilara?”
Sevryn looked down on Grace, and she up at him, as if they could trade their thoughts. Grace shook her head ever so slightly as he said, “It has all and nothing to do with the queen. I won’t be like her. I can’t let her try to swallow me up as well.”
From out of the shadows came a tenor-voiced suggestion: “Kill them now, and be done with it.”
Grace looked in the general direction of the shadow which spoke. “Kill me, and the darkness is that much closer to cloaking Trevalka.” She wouldn’t speak of Quendius or the demon Cerat he used. These people would turn on her, inevitably, if they knew, good people turned cold with fear.
“You speak of it as if it could be slain.”
She shook her head again. “A foolish hope,” and she paused to lock her gaze with Sevryn again before amending, “that darkness has a purpose now, if we can keep it banked. It hides us even as it searches for us.”
“Make yourself clear. You have a use for it, or it has a use for you?”
Rivergrace flushed. “We use it, cautiously, and it is unknowing.”
Sevryn gestured. “We are all better curtained, because of what is rumored to prowl the roads. We’ve heard of a dread army, its soldiers being neither alive nor dead. They would hunt that darkness and make it their own.”
Rimple came out of the shadows to stand, trembling, by the fireside. The light and shadows made harsh outlines of his face. “They don’t lie about that, Ifandra. I heard tales last time I went to meet with the traders. Most unnatural and unsettling. Men that can’t be killed. We have no home left, and I won’t ask Rivergrace to find quarter on that road. We don’t want to fall prey to that army.”
Ifandra bowed her head. “You’re asking a lot of us.”
“Shelter for the winter. That’s all.”
“And you can wait until spring before you must act against this darkness? To keep the Undead from finding and claiming it?”
“I believe so.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Nothing is for certain.”
“But death. Yes, we know, all too well.” Ifandra turned about to her husband. “It is your choice.”
“Mine?”
“I have the truth and can’t offer anything more than that. You’re the one who minds the trails, the sign we leave upon the mountain. If you think they will expose us, it’s your decision. Until spring.” She passed him by to go stand in the shadows with the rest of her community.
Cort put his shoulders back as he considered them. The weathered creases at the corners of his eyes deepened in thought and worry, as did the knife-sharp lines alongside his mouth. Sevryn kept his silence under that regard and signed at Grace she should hold her quiet as well. He would not force the issue of their staying, and if they were going to go, he wanted to be quit of the mountains before winter closed its hard hand on them.
Cort shifted his rangy frame uneasily, betraying the war inside him. He lifted one hand and then the other, looking into his open palms as he took a deep, steadying breath. Finally, he looked at Sevryn.
“You are welcome for the season. But when that time comes that you must accomplish what you came for, you leave. And you take all the care that you can not to leave a trail back to us.”
“I can do that.” Sevryn inclined his head graciously.
“Done. And now, I believe we have a bonding to perform.” He bowed to his wife who came forward with a scarf in one hand and a small stone knife in the other.
Sevryn helped Rivergrace stand, whispering in her ear, “Are you all right?”
She answered back, “The sooner we’re in bed, the better I will be. I need you.” Her hold on him tightened, and he could feel the fire in her blood. Sevryn smiled crookedly.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Kerith
“I CAN’T DECIPHER his conduct. His tutors tell me he is unmanageable.” Diort paced the canvas floor of his traveling pavilion, hands clasped behind his back, his face heavily etched. “One moment he is childlike; the next, his thoughts are knotted up, secretive, and suspect.”
“You don’t trust him.”
“He does not leave room for that, anymore.” Abayan stopped pacing long enough to look Ceyla in the eyes, by putting a gentle finger under her chin and lifting her until her gaze met his. “I need you to dream for me.”
“I can’t—you know I can’t dream on demand. It doesn’t work that way, not with me, not with my . . . gift.”
“Bregan’s life depends on it. If I can’t gain some sort of perspective on him, I will execute him.”
“What?”
“He’s dangerous as he is. I haven’t a hold on him, can’t persuade him to give me his trust—”
“No wonder if you’re thinking about killing him!”
“He deals with Gods that are as undependable and unfathomable as he is.”
“You’re his guardian. You accepted that burden, but beyond that, your entire people were created to serve the Mageborn, to be their guides and protectors.”
“And perhaps the Mageborn would exist today if one
of us had had the sense to end the lives of a few of the murderous bastards. Even just one. There might have been no escalation of egos and power, no devastating war.”
“You can’t judge that.”
“No, not now, not from where I stand. I didn’t live then, it wasn’t my burden centuries ago. I can only act as I perceive this Mageborn, here and now.” He took a deep breath. “He is as he was when a Master Trader, egocentric, self-indulgent, arrogant. The only difference is that he was a man then. Now he’s like a child.”
“Whom you promised to teach.”
“A promise I made without knowing him! He’s unteachable. He listens to no one. He hadn’t room in that Kernan head of his; the Gods have thrown everything out, including his common sense. These Gods . . . They’re not mere Gods we might perceive as images of ourselves grown lofty. No. The Gods of Kerith are primal elementals and if they react, they will tear this world apart.”
“You made a promise.”
“One which I cannot, in good conscience, keep. Every day, he learns to be more dangerous. The Gods offer me no hope.”
“I didn’t know you were a religious philosopher.”
“I’m not. But I have some understanding. I held Rakka in my war hammer, Earth Shaker, a God that could move mountains. Strike rivers into the earth. Send city walls into bits of gravel. A sliver of that God, the slightest thought of Rakka, had been imprisoned in my weapon. I don’t know how Quendius put it there, but I do know that the weaponmaster thought it would bond me to him. It had the opposite effect. I used it as I needed to, but I turned from the master, the demon, who would attempt such an atrocity. Unlike Quendius, I had the ability to be afraid, to imagine what it could do if truly aroused. I was relieved when the hammer struck a blow that finally spent it and released the demon spark back where it came. I can’t see my ward doing that.”
“So you would kill Bregan.”