by Holly Lisle
“What is it like where you’re from?” he asked me.
“It was a small, warm island with high stone walls, temperate in the summer, cold enough in the winter. The place was lovely, but the life was restricted, and I detested confinement and wished to avoid the future the oracles had planned for me.”
“Did you?”
“No,” I said. “I wear the Eyes.”
“And before you were an … oracle … what were you?”
“A slave. Then a student.”
“And before that?”
“Too young to remember,” I told him.
We ate in silence for a while, and then he asked me, “So were you in Gerstaggen in time to hear about the uproar they had there?”
“I might have been, but if I was, I missed the excitement. What sort of uproar?”
“I wish I knew,” he said. He sounded disappointed. “I heard some Tonk were captured who then escaped. And some traitor Greton who they paid to free them died.”
“Ah,” I said. “I wish I’d heard something of that. It sounds interesting. Who are the Tonk?”
“You don’t know the Tonk?” he asked. “They’re a funny sort. Just about everywhere, it seems. You have to be one of them to know them. It isn’t that they keep to themselves—they show up around the shipping yards where I pick up goods for Beckgert from time to time, and if you speak to them, they’ll give you good day. But they aren’t … I don’t even know how to put this.”
While he thought about it, he took a bite of food, then, when his mouth was full, decided that would be the time to explain. “You see them and they’re always in their funny-looking clothes, with these horses that you’d give your off n—um … your off hand to get one of, and they’re polite enough, but you always know that you aren’t them. And that they don’t have any particular interest in seeing you become one of them.”
“Why were they captured?” I asked.
“I don’t know. They seem an inoffensive enough sort if you don’t cross them. But I hear the Feegash have taken a dislike to them.”
“Ah. The Feegash. Not the best people to anger.”
“That’s naught but God’s truth,” he said with startling fervor.
41
Hawkspar
The next day started early. Weggnrad was banging on my door with a fist when I shook off sleep. All around us, I heard men’s feet hitting the floor as they jumped out of their bunks, and I heard them running along the corridor and clattering down the stairs. I yawned and stretched and Weggnrad opened the door just a bit, and said, “Put this on your legs.”
He’d thrown in the powder he’d suggested I use. I was grateful, and said so. I hated to admit it, but Weggnrad had been right. I hurt. I was sore in places that I didn’t even know I had. I could just imagine how I would fare after five hard days of riding, and not riding just for the space from sundown to dark, but from first light to last.
I powdered my legs, put on the fleeces, and dressed.
We ate lightly and from the first rode hard. The horses were well gaited, and I sat them well enough, but each time we rode up to a new station and one set of grooms raced out to take our tired, sweating horses, and another set came running up leading a set of fresh, dry horses, I struggled more to dismount, and twice as hard to remount.
We were nearing the third station at midday, and even through the veil, my mouth was full of grit and I was tired of the stink of my sweat mixed with road dirt and horse sweat. I ached everywhere. Weggnrad seemed to be having none of the problems I had. He was happy to talk, happy to pace himself to my horse, which seemed the slower beast, or else was merely the less well-ridden, and he was full of stories. If he suffered from dust from the hard-packed, dry clay trail, he didn’t show evidence of it.
“ … and then we had to fight off a whole crew of scoundrels from the south,” he said, and laughed.
And an arrow lodged itself in his chest, and he went off the horse in one slithering, sickening drop, and dragged along the trail with his head banging on the ground. I fought to find my way into the Hagedwar, to catch my moment. And on a galloping horse, in pain and trying with all my might just to keep my balance, I could not. I could not find the peace and quiet I needed, for around me the trees rained men, and branches slapped and stung me.
And I was afraid.
I had not seen the men, so well had the dense branches of the copse into which we’d ridden hidden their less-dense forms. The brigands blocked our passage and when the horses skidded to a stop to avoid the barrier they’d formed, one man grabbed Weggnrad’s horse, and one mine.
I could hear no sound from Weggnrad; I had to guess him dead. Which meant I was alone, with at least ten men. When one of the brigands grabbed me and yanked me from the saddle, I slumped against him and pretended to faint.
Other men were digging through the saddlebags, shouting angrily about us having nothing of value with us.
“A bit of gold in the man’s bags. Nothing but clothing in the woman’s and it’s man’s clothing at that.”
On the ground, though, and supported by my enemy, I could find stillness.
“So the only thing of value is her?”
“Appears to be.”
Could retreat into time’s waters, could spin the Hagedwar, could slide into it, away from my captor passing me off to some other man.
“Get her pants off her then. Is she dead?”
“I can’t find any blood on the bitch, but she isn’t moving.”
I reached out and caught my moment as the men around me started to tear my clothes off. I struggled to hold it as the breeches came down, as the shirt slid up, as I heard one bandit say, “Yeah, yeah, oh God, yeah, she’ll do.”
And held it as the cold came, as the stillness descended, as my would-be rapists and probable murderers froze into stillness.
I managed to struggle free from them. They had not been holding me tightly because I had not struggled. Nonetheless, frozen, their hands turned to iron, and it was all I could do to break free.
I fought my way to my feet, pulled up my clothes. They were not innocents in this, nor would Weggnrad be the first man they’d murdered, nor I the first woman they’d attempted to rape. I could have bound them and left them in the middle of the Courier Road for the next man along to find. But I was not in a mood to be generous. A good man lay dead on the ground.
I cut their throats, wondering a little that I had become so easy with death. I thought for a moment that I was wrong to use the advantage that I held over them; that moving among them with the twin knives strapped to my wrists, slashing and stabbing, I took unfair advantage. But that was only a momentary stupidity on my part.
There were ten of them. One of me. Any weapon I had, I had to use.
I didn’t let go of my moment until I was sure I’d killed them all—I knew I was too tired to fight my way back into the still places and struggle through the leaden cold again. I feared weakening myself enough that the mad wizard would find his way back through the Eyes to push me into his hell again.
I got myself to the horses, and looped their reins around tree branches; I couldn’t afford to go chasing after them. That took the last of the strength I could muster. I had to let control slide through my fingertips. The warmth of the spring day and the sunlight seeped into the cold that had consumed me, sound rolled over me, a breeze that had caught the first green scents of new growth blew around me. I breathed easier. And I made my way to Weggnrad, who lay on the ground, his foot still caught in his stirrup. I put my cheek to his nose and mouth, but he did not breathe, put my ear over his heart, but it did not beat.
I crouched over his body, angry. My benefactor’s daughter was a widow for Beckgert’s generosity, and the man who had done his best to be kind to me was dead. I worked his foot lose from the stirrup. He was a big man, I a small woman. I would have put him back across the saddle if I could have. I tried. I tried until I wept, but his body kept sliding down against me. I hadn’t the strengt
h to lift him so high. I envied men their strength.
I leaned against the horse, and that was when I heard hoofbeats on the Courier Road, coming fast.
I stood there surrounded by dead bandits, mostly dressed still—I hoped—in the green culappe, with my guardian dead at my feet, a brigand arrow through his chest.
One rider approached from the east.
And I did not know if I should hide or show myself.
His keen eyesight decided the situation for me. “Woman!” he shouted. “Need you assistance?”
“You arrive too late,” I shouted back. I knew I was not supposed to speak, but I also was without the guardian who was supposed to speak for me. I hadn’t the faintest clue what the etiquette in this situation would call for. These were not my people. This was not my place.
He galloped up and stopped, his face aimed toward the bodies scattered across the ground. He whistled softly, then said, “What in the name of God happened here?”
Which was an obvious and relevant question. And not one I’d prepared myself to answer.
“Ah … I … I …” I hadn’t the faintest idea what to say.
That, in fact, seemed to be the right approach, for he dismounted, dropped his reins to the ground, and walked over to me. “Your husband to be?” he asked me.
“No. He … was taking me to my husband.”
The man turned away from me, facing again toward the bodies that littered the ground like autumn leaves. “He was a hell of a fighter. How did he do this? Each of them with one slash across the throat deep as the devil’s road, all of them fallen with no other mark on them, and him with an arrow to the heart. And no blood on his hands.” He paused, his face turned toward me, and I knew he was staring at me. I had blood on my hands. I could feel the stickiness of it as it dried. It was Weggnrad’s blood, but all blood is red. “How did he do this?” I could not miss the suspicion in his voice.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I fainted when a man dropped out of the trees onto my horse and grabbed me.”
The courier’s face stayed turned toward mine for what felt like a long time. Then, at last, he sighed. “Yes, of course. You’re a woman; you would faint. The only explanation I can find, then, is that some man or men arrived to save you and your guardian from certain death, but left before he—or they—could be rewarded.”
“That must have been what happened,” I agreed.
He walked over to Weggnrad and me, and said, “I know him. This is the son-in-law of Master Beckgert. He’ll be crushed at this news; he loved this man as a son.”
I hung my head. The weight of death is sometimes too much to bear. I did not know how I might have saved him—this event did not show as a possibility in the waters of time that had flowed around me that morning. His death might have been, like the Tonk chances of survival before I ran back to kill the traitor, an event caused by the actions of a single man’s choice at the moment. Something that could not show in the rivers of events, but that could change everything.
Had I seen, I could have acted. There had been nothing to see.
The actions of one man, or one woman, could alter everything. That thought terrified me even as it had uplifted me before. I could see more clearly than most those events that had the weight of numbers behind them, of men moving in unison with shared goals and shared dreams. I could track how those events would unfold, how they could be moved, how they might be bettered or made failures by other masses of men. But the individual with vision and heart was proof against my gaze. Was capable of surprise, and devastating effectiveness. I had been that lone individual, and now I had been made to suffer by that lone individual.
I held a future painted in broad strokes. But the miracles and the nightmares would happen or be prevented between those strokes, in threads too small to see.
I seemed have at my disposal the most valuable knowledge in the universe—the answer to the question “What next?” And yet, I knew nothing.
“Help me get him on his horse, will you? We’ll get him and you to the next station, and I’ll see if the couriers can give you another guardian to get you to your destination.” He turned to me. “And of course, officially, you and I never spoke. Officially.”
“Of course.” I paused, and moved to help him with the body. “My thanks for that.”
42
Aaran
“Make sure the points of the yellow and gold don’t extend beyond the red cube into the blue sphere,” Aaran said. “I trained with a man who trained with none other than Talyn herself.”
“Talyn?”
“She was the first Tonk to realize the Feegash were trouble, and to discover what kind of trouble, and she was the first to defeat them. And she discovered how to use the Feegash Hagedwar.”
Redbird struggled to hold her Hagedwar in place. She said from time to time shadows intruded, and she was distracted. She would not tell him what sort of shadows, and he could not see them.
But overall she did well.
“How long will it be until I can use this thing to talk to the Oracle Hawkspar?” she asked him.
“I don’t know. I can’t reach her. The Communicators can’t reach her. Something about the Eyes, they say, blocks them.”
“So I have to learn to use this thing with the Eyes, which none of you can teach me.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” she told him. “It’s a chance. She’s still alive, and this is a chance. It does not break my heart,” she said grimly, “that you need me, Captain. It would not have broken my heart had you left me behind to find her. I would have found her. And now she would not be alone.”
Redbird was not going to forgive him, he knew. But he had to concede she had every right not to. The Ker Nagile had already been well out to sea when the Obsidians discovered Hawkspar was not aboard. He hadn’t been thinking about them when he gave the order to cast off. He hadn’t been thinking at all; he’d just been doing what Hawkspar had told him to do.
“When, then,” Redbird persisted, “will I be ready to go to the Communicators and learn from them?”
“When you’re able to track her on your own,” he said. “Because you won’t be trying to reach someone at a set point who will then be able to receive your coordinates and your direction and establish a back connection to you. You’ll have to find her, with her a moving target, and you one as well. Only once you’ve found her and put your own marker on her will you be able to reliably reach her.”
Redbird’s obsidian-eyed face was remarkably expressive, Aaran noted. She would be damned glad to be done with him.
He sighed and took her back through the exercises. Form the Hagedwar, move through it, settle in the proper quadrant, locate the practice marker, track the marker. Over and over and over. She might not like him, she might suffer from odd distractions, but she had the patience of stone itself, and she was tireless, and focused with a ferocity that he found almost frightening. He was grateful she and the rest of the Obsidians were on the side of the Tonk. He would hate to be against them.
When at last he ended their training session, Aaran spent a time tracking Hawkspar across his chart, marking her location after two days of travel. She was making tremendous time. Impossible time. He could not understand how she was crossing Greton at such a pace. In spite of stopping during the hours of darkness, she would actually reach the first of the hiding places he and the other captains had chosen at about the same time the fleet, hampered by unfavorable winds and their run against the hard, fast currents of the Gold Channel, would reach them.
All the ships of the fleet had celebrated her. She had won the Ker Nagile its freedom, she had somehow survived, and she was racing to rejoin them. They saw her as their good luck charm, their magical figurehead. He did not know how they would react to her if they fought the Ba’afeegash and lost. To him, they seemed to be ascribing too much power to her.
He heard a knock at his door, and when he shouted, “Enter,” the marine guarding h
is door stepped into the door frame and said, “Keeper Tuua and his apprentice, and Communicator Waandar to see you.”
“Let them in,” Aaran said. He checked his log and made a series of little marks on the chart, showing the progression of the Taag into the channel at each bell.
They would make better headway after they were past the narrows, he told himself. The currents were worst there. Where the Gold Channel widened out into the Brindle Sea, currents would cease to be a real issue. Then the only question would be the winds.
“Good morning, Tuua, Waandar, Eban,” he said, standing to greet them. “Have seats. We can have a meal brought in; I’m hungry enough to eat the full moose, you know?”
“Eban has news,” Tuua said. He looked grim. He took one seat at the table, and motioned Eban into another one. “About his father.”
Aaran raised an eyebrow. “Eban does?” He turned to the boy. “What is your news, then?”
“I’ve gotten good with the Hagedwar,” he said. “Waandar has been teaching me to communicate—listening only, for now.”
“Eban is a quick student,” Waandar said.
“Considering who the boy’s father and uncle are, that may not have been the best of plans.”
“He taught me how to use the Hagedwar so I could spy on my father.”
“That’s risky,” Aaran said. He gave Tuua a questioning look, trying to not let the boy see.
“It would be if we didn’t have Eban back-shielded with Tonk magic,”Tuua said. “We thought about that before we even began training him. Waandar knew how to teach the boy to focus on the ties he shared with his father; events that they’d experienced together. And Eban has been very brave about going into the pain his father cost him to hunt the bastard down.”
What Tuua was describing was essentially the process of Eban trailing a torturer using the blood the bastard had spilled from Eban’s body. Aaran couldn’t imagine doing such a thing himself; he was amazed at the guts the kid had to have displayed to put himself back in the middle of the torture.