It wasn’t by request.
I pressed on the wound again. More blood came. As it trailed over the scars, they seemed to move and shudder.
The swirling marks flared brightly. When their glow faded, the blood was gone.
Not gone, I thought. Absorbed.
The scars had pulled the blood back into my body. They were healing me, protecting me.
No, they’re protecting themselves.
Burned away, they came back. Pierced, they kept me comfortable and alive. No doubt, they would reform over my skin once the hole was closed. The question was: why? Why would the eldring spell suddenly be intent on preserving my body? Did it want me intact for the coming change? Had I passed some kind of threshold? Would the spell progress faster now?
The latter gave me a chill.
Gods don’t let me change before I finish this.
I wrapped my hand around the sliver of wood. I considered pulling it out. But blocked, the blood flow was minimal. Once I uncorked the bottle, it would be a flood.
Or would it? Would the scars stop me from bleeding to death? Badly, I wanted to find out. Yet releasing the mouth-watering scent of my blood onto the air, when I was stuck in a hole with a ravenous eldring, wasn’t smart. “Guess you’re staying in.” I let go of the wood. I started to get up, and the eldring scurried closer.
I scooted back.
It moved again, gaining more ground. I retreated.
Hitting the wall, I gripped my dagger and held position. The eldring neared the bit of daylight I’d vacated and its body became more defined. It was male, though less bulky than many I’d faced. His head was on the small side. His back less bowed. He wasn’t like Lirih. There was nothing about the creature to suggest he was in any way a man. The eldring hauling his body through the mud, throwing his weight forward and dragging his legs behind him, was not yet fully grown.
He stopped beneath the hole. Storm-dampened light poured in, revealing the patchiness of his pelt. Multiple streaks cut through, revealing a layer of barely healed, rutted hide.
“You’ve been whipped.”
The eldring turned his head, but not in response to my observation. His gaze was trained upward. As he watched the circle of rain-drenched sky, a woeful sound fled his fang-laden maw. He closed his eyes. Drops pattered down. They wet his upturned face, disappeared into his thick pelt, darkening the metal collar fastened about his neck.
Giving a ravenous lick at the moisture gathering on his lips, the eldring swung his gaze around. We locked eyes. He stared, not moving, not blinking. The beast’s nocturnal gaze was shining with the distinct light of recognition.
So was mine.
“Son of a bitch,” I breathed. “It’s you.”
The eldring youth I’d bound souls with under duress in a cave in Langor, was here.
“How the hell did you get all the way to Kabri?”
He cocked his head. His nose twitched. I took a chance and moved closer.
A warning rolled up from his throat. He lifted onto all fours with a whimper of pain and revealed a mud-caked wound traversing his chest. The blade had cut diagonally, leaving behind a wound that was now bloated and pus-ridden. A second wide gouge cut across one hind leg. His other leg was broken, with a nasty amount of bone protruding.
Death was in the corner, salivating with how soon he would claim this one.
I shook my head. “And after all I went through to save you.”
Neck straining, his head cocked further.
“You remember me, don’t you?”
He responded with a slow trill.
“I cut your hand. I saw your memories. You sang to me.”
Limbs shaking too hard to hold him, the eldring collapsed. He curled into an awkward ball with his shattered leg sticking out.
“Let me help. I can take away the pain, like I did before. We can get out of here. Together.” I crept closer. “Did Draken’s men find your den?” I wondered aloud. “Is that what happened? Or did you have cause to leave it?”
I was at the edge of the light. We were inches apart.
He bared fangs, and I stopped.
“I’m sorry for what they did to you. They don’t understand. But we can teach them. We can make them see the truth of what you are.”
He started crawling again. Adjusting my shaky, blood-wet grip on the dagger, I studied the eldring’s movements as he ate up the space between us. I didn’t want to hurt him. But I wouldn’t hesitate if hunger overcame him. And it was a definite possibility. The suggestion of danger already had the crown stirring. As it filled my veins, I resisted the urge to push it back. If the youth lashed out, magic was my quickest defense.
Reaching me, he raised his head. I raised the dagger. I was ready to strike quick and hard to the back of his neck as I cast. But instead of attacking, the eldring dropped his head forward and rested it on my lap. A long, deep sigh rattled in his throat. Shocked, I let one out myself. His body was trembling. I dropped the blade and put an arm around him. As the eldring shifted his weight to nestle closer, my hand made contact with his torn chest. The blood from my wound was still on my fingers. It met what was seeping out of him. And with a sudden, unasked-for burst of magic, the world went white.
Brisk air moved fast through my lungs. Yet it wasn’t fast enough to cool the burn as my swift pace chewed up the ground. Claw tips struck and disrupted the ice, showering tiny shards into the air. I heard each clink as they landed on the plateau. It was an easy feat; distinguishing their pure sound from the clamor of my pursuers. Their sweat-stink was close. The animals they rode, with their own ripe smell, were fast and strong. Yet, if I kept going, they would never catch me. Not out here, in the open, where I could run forever. Here, only the sky would stop me.
The yellow was rising to fill it even now. I had little time before its brightness began to burn.
I scanned the terrain for shelter. Splits were visible in the mountain walls, possible caves to provide cover. Nearing one, I glanced back at those that followed, marking their distance.
It was far less than I hoped.
Turning back around, too late my eye caught the solid mass exiting a break in the mountain wall. My claws dug in, but the frozen terrain betrayed me, throwing me into the towering frame of pink hide. I bounced off with a howl of shock and hit the ground.
The bear rearing up on its hind legs wasn’t the one that had hurt me in the forest. That bear was dead. But others lurked in the caves and the woods, abandoned by their masters, left to starve and scavenge. It was a past we shared. But that didn’t mean kinship.
The bear loomed over me. I couldn’t get by him. The mountain pass was too narrow. Back; and my pursuers would be upon me. That left only one direction.
I swung my head, side to side, surveying the slopes that flanked us. Both were steep. But I didn’t need to climb far, only enough to clear the bear’s head. Then I could ricochet off the mountain wall and drop behind him. There had to be a crack in the great stones. Somewhere I could duck inside. Some place too small for him to follow.
Pushing claws into the ice-covered ground, I hunkered down for a leap. I was a breath from springing up when the horse smell spiked. Voices of men and the jangle of metal overlapped.
A whistling movement disrupted the air, and I dropped flat. Arrows sailed over me to strike the bear. Staggering, he swiped as the shafts piercing his hide. His growl pained my ears, but the great beast had a new target.
He no longer cared where I might go.
I crouched. With the full force of power in my hind legs, I pushed off. My feet left the ground. They connected with the slope. My claws gripped and I scrambled above the reach of the bear. I was nearly free when the nets fell. Thick and heavy, their sudden weight dragged me down to strike the icy ground. Tangles held my limbs, tightening the harder I tried to break free.
I shouldn�
�t have come, I thought, as the men’s clubs pounded down.
I shouldn’t have left the den.
But he has to know.
I yanked my hand back with a gasp. My startled stare shifted from the mingled blood on my fingers to the eldring’s orange-red eyes. They were half closed. His breathing was shallow. Mine was way too fast. My whole body was hurting from the memory of his beating. My mind was fuzzy from interpreting the young eldring’s memories into something it could process. Now, it was working to understand.
Magic still pulsed within me. I never had a chance to cast it. There was no healing spell, no new bond between us. Yet, I’d vividly experienced his memory as if it were one of Jarryd’s.
The temporary binding I’d created in Langor to heal the beast was evidently less temporary than I thought. It’s the hive mind. It has to be. The memory of our connection was trapped in their shared consciousness. “No, not the memory,” I realized, “the connection itself.”
I recalled what the young beast had shown me. His last thought had translated as: he had to know. “You meant me, didn’t you? You followed me from Langor. You’ve been aware of me this whole time. But my senses aren’t as strong as yours. The link went dormant when we separated.” But the same ingredients that created our bond renewed it: blood and magic. I eyed the young eldring, trying to comprehend. “What is it you want me to know?”
Mud plopped onto my shoulder. It was followed by a familiar, gruff voice. “Wake up, Shinree!” Krillos bellowed from above. “Move your ass out of the way. I’ve got another ladder.”
I dropped my head back and looked up. The fall of rain was barely a mist. Krillos was blocking most of it. He was crouched at the edge of the hole, peering down.
I yelled at him. “Not now!”
“What do you mean not now?” he blasted back. “I’m soaked. Kane’s gone to fetch Sienn. It’s getting dark. Fuck your not now, Shinree. We’re coming to get you out.”
“I need more time.”
Amid a flurry of grumbled curses, his face left the circle. I put my hand on the eldring’s weak moving, blood-soaked chest again, and fell back into his mind.
Voices bounced. Images spun round and round. Others flashed and were sucked into the vortex: leafy trees, buildings, deafening city streets, warm lakes and icy streams, flowing seas of grass, rocky peaks and corridors wrapped in ice. Faces whirled past; some animal, some not. Magic swam and overlay it all in sparkling coils of color.
Nine colors, I thought; not surprised as I counted them.
Their energy shined through my eyes. It darted through my body, caressing nerves and making them purr as I stood in front of the maelstrom of images, watching the memory of an entire species whirl faster and faster around itself.
The vortex was manifestation only. It wasn’t real. A visual display created by the combined force of my magic and the eldring’s collective mind to help me comprehend—except I couldn’t. The rotating stream was moving too fast. It was impossible to perceive one moment clearly, let alone all. Yet, contained within the tempest was something the young eldring wanted me to see, something he’d traveled very far to show me.
Now, here we were, and I didn’t know what to do. Because he could deftly pluck a single memory from the whole, he thought I could, too. Even if it was possible to learn, the amount of time I had to practice such a feat was equaled to the amount of blood remaining in the eldring’s body. It wasn’t much. I didn’t have long before I’d have to leave and heal him.
I watched the distorted wind of memories churn in front of me.
If accessing a single recollection from outside their communal mind wasn’t possible, I had to go in.
TWENTY NINE
Jarryd’s weight held me still. Krillos tugged the wood from my shoulder. Beside him, Sienn’s empathic gaze betrayed how badly my insides were tearing. I felt nothing. The scar’s magic was blocking my pain. Though, I wouldn’t have objected to a good jolt. It might do my sluggish mind some good, I thought, staring past my friends to the emaciated body of the eldring. Torso hollowed and stretched thinly over his ribcage, his pelt was gray and brittle. In places, his hide had turned to ash. Flakes of him speckled my clothes like snow. I brushed at them in disgust.
Krillos barked at me. “Stop moving, damn it.”
“Why?” I replied in defiance. “I can’t feel it.”
He grunted something foul and Langorian. It was followed by a wet, squishy sucking sound, then a hiss from Krillos as he tossed the piece of plank over his shoulder. He and Jarryd moved back. I expected Sienn to rush in to tend my wound, but her stare was tight and rapt as she watched the blood disappearing into the designs on my body.
When it was done, Sienn swept the skirt of her blue dress aside and scooted closer. She removed a roll of cloth from her bag, but the hole in my shoulder closed before she could wrap it. Scars reformed over the top of my mended skin.
With an uneasy flick of her eyes to mine, Sienn released an exasperated breath and put the unused cloth away. “Tell me about the eldring, Ian. You were bound to him?”
“I was.”
“You were awake when we came down the ladder, no longer magic-blind. Your spell was done. Yet, it took several moments for you to recognize us and your surroundings.”
Feeling was returning to my previously skewered arm. As I stretched it without even a twinge of discomfort, I thought back to my exit from the eldring mind. Ripples of pleasure and pain had circulated through me. The sudden overload of smells and sounds, the endless tangled groundswell of sensation, had made breathing a challenge. Thinking past the death smell had been even more difficult. Thinking like a man, near impossible. “I couldn’t shake it. Their senses, their behaviors…they’re so instinctual. Their awareness is stronger than ours. At the same time, they’re less aware of other things.” All three of them were staring at me. “Am I not making any sense?”
“Not in the least,” Krillos muttered as he hovered behind Sienn.
Jarryd squatted beside me. “Open the link. I’ll give you the strength to climb out of here.”
I shook my head. “You don’t want what’s in me, Nef’taali. Not right now.”
Sienn picked up my hands and turned them over. “If you bound with the beast, where are the runes? Did they close of their own accord as well?”
“I didn’t carve any. We were already connected.” Again, my eyes fixed on the wilted body. “That’s the eldring I healed in Langor.”
Sienn recoiled like she’d suffered a blow. “How can that be?”
“It can’t,” Krillos said; black curls whipping as he shook his head.
Jarryd agreed. “It does seem far-fetched. Are you sure it’s him?”
“Positive,” I said. “Their shared consciousness reinforced our bond. It never faded for him. He never lost his grasp of me.”
“But you couldn’t feel him,” Sienn said.
“That’s….not exactly true. My sensory abilities are weaker, so distance was a factor. But when he left the den and traveled into Rella, as the distance between us lessened, it revived my perception of him.”
“He came here on purpose?” Jarryd said. “I thought eldring only traveled to hunt.”
“He left his home to find me. I suppose, to him it was a hunt. But he was captured by Draken’s men near Rella’s border. They trained him and gave him to a patrol. He didn’t try to escape when they brought him to Kabri because he felt me getting closer. When my father’s eldring attacked, he was swept up in the chaos.”
“Hold on,” Krillos broke in. “You’re telling me, this thing tracked you from Langor?”
“Not in the traditional sense. When a link is blocked you can get a loose idea of your other’s whereabouts. When it’s active, the closer you get, the stronger it becomes.”
“So he followed his nose like a lost dog searching for his master?” Krillos igno
red my frown at his analogy. “What the hell did he expect, a tearful reunion? A big hug?”
“Doesn’t matter, does it?” I snapped. “My magic killed him. I got caught in their memories and couldn’t get out. I tried to find Jem’s compulsion spell and see what lies at the heart of it. I tried reaching Lirih. But I couldn’t distinguish one mind from another. I couldn’t even find my own. I cast for clarity and calm, but I kept falling deeper. I knew it was taking too long. I knew he was dying. I tried to heal him, but it wasn’t working. The eldring feel their memories acutely—like we do coming off Kayn’l,” I said with a glance at Sienn. “And being magic-blind with their heightened senses, feeling the sensations bounce through their minds and back to me… I couldn’t find a way out. Not until he died. Then the link shattered and threw me out.” I stared up at Jarryd. “Being bound to me didn’t protect him like it does you. My spells were draining his life. Instead of healing him, I was killing him.”
Krillos backed up, nodding to himself like he finally had confirmation that I’d lost it.
Sienn tried to be gentle. “By his wounds it seems Death had already laid claim to the beast. It was only a matter of time.”
“Sienn’s right,” Jarryd said. “He would have died with or without you.”
They were trying to soothe my guilt, so I didn’t argue. Neither did I let them see how angry I was. How much I hated that some of his memories had come back with me. I didn’t want to hear his mother singing that same damn song he sang to me in their den. I didn’t want to feel the stinging lash of the Langorian whip on his back. Or the Rellan sword that sliced him open, sending him falling through the planks and into the cellar. The pain, as his leg struck the ground and broke, ripped up the center of mine.
It’ll ease, I thought. It’ll fade.
But I wasn’t sure about the connection. Even if my ‘other’ was gone, I was part of the eldring consciousness now. What exactly that meant, I wasn’t sure, but it helped me understand why he was here. “The eldring didn’t follow me like a dog with a scent, Krillos. He recognized something in me. An irregularity, something he thought I needed to know.”
The Crown of Stones: Magic-Borne Page 25