by Jenna Rhodes
A sharp knock on the door called her out. She grabbed her scarf, coat, and gloves from hooks and shoved her arms into sleeves as she went.
She shut the door firmly behind her. He had only reached for her intimately once in his recovery, and that the moment had been brief and violent, signed to her that the man for whom she waited might be far beyond her reach. The man inside their hut had no real idea what aderro or love might mean.
Their boots whispered down the side of the mountain, through melting snow and puddles of bone-cold water as they walked. The others talked amongst themselves, having little heed for Rivergrace despite the days they had spent together. Grace thumbed the hilt of her hunting knife at her belt and listened to the wind snaking through the evergreens and rattling the bare branches of the other trees as they passed through them. The trappers’ camaraderie toward her amounted to little more than the cooperation they needed to hunt successfully. The realization pricked at her, reminding her always that she did not belong here. Not in this world, not in this time, and even sharper because it told her she had nowhere else to go, not until that final moment when everything would end.
Her arm hurt where Sevryn’s iron grip left marks and she rubbed it now and then, until she saw Leyle casting a look over her shoulder at her and frowning. She didn’t want the healer’s aid and took care to stop drawing attention to herself, but Leyle dropped back to keep pace with her anyway.
“Did you anchor him to yourself?” the girl asked, watching the ground carefully to see where she walked, unwilling to look Grace in the face. “After the healing, I mean. I told you how far away he’d gone. Did it help? Did he come back to you?”
Rivergrace considered her answer before she spoke. “No, he didn’t return to me, not entirely, so I’m not sure if catching his soul helped.”
“I’m sure it must have.” And Leyle nodded her head, agreeing with her own statement. “I saw where he wandered, very dark and cold. I wouldn’t want to live with anyone that close to the cold hells. He would scarcely be mortal. And I’ve seen him out and about in the last weeks, getting stronger. He’s healed, I think, yes? He’s not the same, but he’s not lost to us. Not yet.” She lifted her head long enough to throw Grace an encouraging smile.
“Do you think so?” Rivergrace knew that Sevryn got up and about when he thought she wasn’t aware or would find out later, slogging through snow and ice, building back his strength and stamina. The strength he had, she could attest to that. As to the rest of his healing, she could not gauge.
“I do. I know you worry. I should have told you sooner!” She linked her arm through Grace’s. “I’ve seen him watching you when he thinks no one else is looking. He struggles with his love for you. It comes and goes with him, unfamiliar to his lost side, and very much wanted and valued on his other side.”
“You see that.”
“In his eyes. I can feel it a bit, too, I think.” Leyle had reverted to watching the ground for exposed roots and stones, but she tilted her head to one side as she thought. “I think he is trapped. So, mind you this. He may pretend there is no love so that he can do what he has to, without warring with himself. Both of you have great foes to face.” Leyle stopped in her tracks altogether and tightened the arm she had slipped in with Grace’s. “The others don’t like to mention it, don’t want to face it, fear being exposed to Trevilara. We are safe in these mountains, but they don’t think so, and they worry and they shun.” She tapped her other hand on their braided arms. “I hope you don’t mind me talking.”
“I don’t mind at all.” Rivergrace found a smile, quick and then gone, still genuine for all that. “You bring me a bit of peace.”
“Good!” The group up ahead stopped and began to separate, to follow the various trapping lines. “Let’s hope we find some game. I hate this time of the winter, when stores get lean and I get hungry.”
Hunger pangs gnawed at Grace as well and she split away from the group, following a snare line that led deeper down the mountain, into its shaded side, where snow drifts still glistened. The wind whispered low to her, but she’d no way of understanding its words and wished that Sevryn were here, her friend and love, Sevryn, with his Talent of Voice that could often hear and know what the wind and sea and stone tried to sing to them. If she had to guess, what she heard now would be a bit of a warning, a revelation that the days were not what they seemed, not yet, for winter still lay upon them despite what it seemed. As she wove between the evergreens, snow caught on their branches fell and plopped wetly to the ground, splashing as it fell. She brushed off the knees of her pants as she followed the line and caught up with the first snare, still coiled and empty, beneath an overhanging limb. There were tracks about it, though, and it appeared some of the bait had been carried off.
Rivergrace opened the bait pouch and bent to scatter another tidbit. Though the emptiness of this snare seemed discouraging, the sight of activity was not. She hurried to the next on the line and found, as she’d hoped, an inhabitant. The little furry body lay frozen on the ground, having fought to be freed and death catching it in the icy night. She untied it and began putting it into the game bag. Its eyes flew open to sparkle at her. A voice filled her head, a sound not from a single throat but many, saying, “We are not dead and we are coming for you.”
The rodent fell from her hands to the ground, eyes now shut again, whiskers and paws still and iced over. She toed it with her boot. It did not move or speak again. Grace took a deep breath before bending again to pick it up and stow it away.
It did not move in the game pouch, its brief spark of unlife spent and gone. She brushed the back of her glove against her mouth, steadying herself as she realized what she had truly heard.
She plucked at the cage she wore, soul strings quivering in agitation. They were awake again, every single one of them. Awake, their winter-imposed sleep banished by the temporary thaw. Or, perhaps, in the lowlands, spring had come awake, sluggishly, reluctantly, but enough that the ground thawed. The buds of new life struggled through the dirt to make themselves known. And the Undead had awakened, hungry and rampant.
Rivergrace hurried down the trapping line, finding two live and exhausted strugglers. She chose the fattest for the cooking pot and released the other, unsettled by the thought of slicing them open and dressing them, warm blood and the smell rising about her. She and Sevryn would have to be quick and merciless before they had caught enough to feed themselves. Stuffing the skinned carcass into her game pouch, she rebaited the snares and hurried back to the point where they’d all separated.
Sevryn met her in the glen. He was dressed too lightly for the snowy mountain but rather for the quickness and agility he needed for combat. He carried her weaponry in his free hand.
“They call me. Did you hear as well?”
She nodded. Then, to match his gear, she shed her overcoat, game and bait bags, and outer trousers, stripping down to the green-and-russet leathers underneath and taking what he offered her, placing sheaths and bow and quiver where they belonged. The sun, not quite overhead, slanted down at them. She patted herself down a second time, assessing what she had and what she might need, a slight tremble in her hands. She looked to him.
“Do they anticipate us?”
He shook his head. “All they feel now is the need for meat and blood. It rises like a flood tide in them, a yearning that can’t be denied.” A hand crept to his throat and he swallowed, and she realized he felt the hunger, too. “But he waits for a woman on the road. He waits for Trevilara to return to him.”
Return. That meant that they had met and allied. Rivergrace closed her eyes for a moment, warding off the fear that swept her. “If they fight together . . .”
“She hasn’t reached him yet.”
“We have to run.”
“We have some help.”
She opened her eyes, steeling herself, and saw the huge russet crown horn that walked ou
t of the forest into place at his elbow. “What—”
“A mount to carry us, faster and stronger than we are afoot.” Sevryn reached for her, putting his hands about her waist and tossing her aboard the massive stag.
It held a natural warmth, breathing gustily as she settled on its withers. Whatever it was, or where it had come from, she accepted the beast for divinity. Sevryn leaped aboard behind her and she reached for the small hump of mane decorating the base of its proud curved neck.
It was both spring and not as they rode to meet that which was both dead and not.
Chapter
Fifty-Eight
THE CROWN HORN raced down the mountain in springy leaps yet Rivergrace kept her balance on its back without effort. She gave up breathing for a few moments as they sprinted downward, before accepting that the stag would get them to the road. By the time she began breathing again, Rivergrace knew that she rode upon a God. Which one she could not be sure, nor had she any idea how Sevryn had made its acquaintance, but she thought it would be the God of forests and animals, the hunter God who had not held a seat at the council she’d first met. That seat had been empty, yet it was not because the God had ceased to exist but because it did not believe and act in concert with the others. It had also, apparently, thrown its lot in with them against Trevilara.
She wanted to ask Sevryn how they had met and what, if any bargain, Sevryn had made, but it occurred to her that it might be crucial whether he’d met this God before Quendius had taken him . . . or after. The kind of bargain he’d be willing to make or accept might be markedly different. How different was something she didn’t want to consider. She leaned into the wind, feeling Sevryn at her back and then, with a jerk and a jolt that nearly unseated her, the ties binding her to the Undead yanked at her, filling her with a blood rage and lust that turned the world around her crimson and tried to tear her heart from her chest. The air about her crackled and snapped in violence, stinging both her and Sevryn who breathed raggedly at her back. She thought she’d had control, but that assumption ripped away from her, leaving her defenseless and overwhelmed. She managed a sound, a whimper, at the back of her throat.
The stag leaped sideways, over a fallen log, its cloven hooves raking the decayed sides and exploding the bark like seeds from a thistle. Rivergrace squeezed her eyes tight against the onslaught of thirst from the others. She knew, she could not help that she knew, that they boiled out of their barrows, ravening like animals after hibernation and anything breathing and with blood in its veins attracted them. Fur and hide, flesh and blood, flew in chunks over the muddied landscape, and they fought amongst themselves for whatever scraps might remain. She knotted her hands until her nails bit into her palms, staving off the sensation that she ate and drank with them. Sevryn growled angrily.
“Hang on,” she whispered. “Hang on!”
His arm tightened about her waist. His chin dug into the top of her shoulder, hoarsely breathing at the curve of her ear. He said something she could not hear over the thrashing of the flight downhill, the crackling of brush and limb and hooves over uneven ground. She wasn’t sure if she wished to know what he said or thought, gripped as he must be. Could she trust him at ride’s end?
Forest bled away before them as she opened her eyes again, the road a ribbon through the bleeding horizon that grew closer with every leap and bound. The soul strings pulled on her, dragging her down that road, and she leaned close to the crown horn’s bowed neck.
“To the north,” she cried, and it flicked a russet ear at her, and its direction turned slightly, as the stag leaned toward the northern road. She did not want to go—dared not—but to hunt, she had to. Her hunt would be different, Grace told herself over and over. Her hunt would stop the bloodshed and hunger, a righteous kill. Her voice coursed through her body: kill, kill, kill.
“Stop it, Rivergrace.” Sevryn’s voice, husking at her ear. “Stop thinking.” He pressed his jaw against the side of her head tightly.
As the stag hit the flats, more or less, its speed doubled, the wind in her eyes bringing blinding tears; whatever thoughts she had seemed to be snatched out of her mind. Sevryn settled behind her with a muffled groan. She held no help for him. Whatever she might have given him would be lost, carried away, in the floodtide of speed. Her fingers cramped as she curled them deep into the thatch of mane as the crown horn put his head down and the ground blurred beneath them.
The crimson wash over her sight faded. The blood rage faded. Quenched? She feared and yet hoped it might be. Would the Undead be slow and sluggish now, a well-fed beast? Or, with their thirst fulfilled, did the battle rage now begin to rear up in them, the clash and slash for the sheer joy and power of it? Rivergrace’s head throbbed, and she should be afraid, deathly afraid, but a kind of calm settled over her, like a cloak. She knew what she had to do.
Suddenly, the stag began to slow until he was pacing in little more than a trot and she could see it clearly ahead, the army on the road. She could scent it as well, the flesh beginning to putrefy at last, the clothes mildewed and musty, the horses flecked with manure and blood and gore. Fewer horses, and she imagined without wanting to how many of them had been torn apart alive and devoured, fresh gobbets of warm flesh. Behind the army, a great and open eye watched over them, the portal that Quendius did not seem to realize followed them. He did not seem to either see or sense it, riding to the fore of his ghastly army, a massive sword resting on the pommel of his saddle, catching the sun as if he held a lightning bolt. She knew a sword of that ilk; she had once carried its brother, imbued with Cerat. That had been her first acquaintance with the demon and she’d destroyed that sword, but the weaponmaster had forged another to carry in its stead, a formidable blade even without Cerat caged in its metal. The sword stood in place of striking the colors, meant to strike fear in the hearts of those he would encounter.
And almost as if they were expected.
But the stag had them among the tall growth and the shadows of a few sparse trees as they paced to a halt, its flanks heaving with exertion, heat rising from it as if it were on fire. She didn’t think they could be seen. Sevryn took one arm away from her waist, and she sensed he patted himself down, checking his weapons.
She relaxed her own hold on the stag’s mane, opening her hands and flexing them. The heat grew hotter and hotter. When she looked up, she could see a ball of fire curving from the north, a falling sun heading their way. Like a falling star across a night-dark sky it blazed until it burst over the road.
She put her arm up to shield herself; when she could bear to look out again from their meager shelter, a woman had stepped down from the fire, alighting as if from a carriage, herself on fire—not with a white-orange heat but a cooler, red blaze. Trevilara put her foot down on the road and patted her gown into place, its hem a corona of fire.
The fireball re-formed into a torch behind her, as she turned her head. “My thanks, Dhuriel. I’ll be calling on you again as we move down the road. We have kingdoms to conquer.”
“Your wishes are always heard,” the torch answered without words which Rivergrace heard as a wash of heat and emotion across her mind. She ducked away from the exchange, not wanting to be singed or have her presence felt. Still the God’s answer sizzled and danced in her thoughts.
The torch grew smaller and smaller until little more than the size of a candle’s light which Trevilara reached up and pinched out. In a swirl of hem and fabric, she started toward Quendius.
She called joyfully to him, and he put a heel to his horse to hurry and meet her. As they touched, the Eye behind them opened wider, pulsing. It responded to her, and a secret of it opened suddenly to Rivergrace’s awareness.
“No,” whispered Rivergrace. “No, no.”
“What is it?” Sevryn asked, sounding somewhat recovered.
“We thought it keyed to him, because it followed him, since Daravan is gone and can’t command it. But Darava
n had anchored it to her, because he had created it that way. He was more trusting of Trevilara than I bargained.”
“We knew they intended to cross over.”
“But I had hoped that they couldn’t. That we could corner them here and bring a stop to it. Now . . .”
“Now we do what we must. Have you a plan?” and he ran his fingers across the cage of soul strings that surrounded her. She felt the fiery tingle of his touch on every one: a plink, plink, plink of sensation that sparked. He hissed with the pain as if enjoying it somewhat.
A plan. Her father’s Undead whisper in her memory, one of the last times they spoke before Quendius destroyed him: “Remember this,” he said. “Cerat is never diminished no matter how many times he is divided.”
The demon who ruled the Undead, whose God sparks anchored them to both her and Quendius, the demon she’d faced before and could quell but never destroy, the great corruptor who licked at her soul. She hadn’t understood Narskap’s statement. He’d shaken her as if he could sift his words into her very soul.
“What are you telling me?”
“What I must. He lives to corrupt. Innocence is the most perfect bait to catch him. He is most powerful whole.” Narskap shook her lightly. “Will you remember?”
And she did, although she still did not quite understand what he meant. She kicked her foot over the stag’s shoulders and jumped to the ground, putting a hand on the warm flank. The beast had slowed its panting as it recovered from the run. “What would make the Gods of Trevalka fight?”
The stag lowered its great antlered head and shifted to look at her. Its wise eyes widened a bit. It spoke within her. Jealousy. Territory. Power.
“Would they fight against that from another world?”
Gods from another world could not transit here. Although you . . .
“My life is braided with the essence of another, yes, but she is not in possession of me; she is not even a second skin, yet she exists within me.” This forest God knew that, as well as she did, but she thought she might find another truth within it as she said it. Rivergrace watched the road thoughtfully as Quendius dismounted, dropped rein, and held a free hand out to Trevilara. The crossing had nearly ripped her apart. What had Narskap been telling her? Now she hoped she understood why.