“Thank you. You can go,” he said. “Tell Lord Hatch what we’ve found here.”
Both men bowed and hurried out.
“We should get back too,” Alastair said.
I followed him to the door. His logic made sense, but it still felt like we were leaving something important unfinished, though with Tully gone there really was nothing more we could do. While he might’ve paid off the Watch and the magistrate to turn a blind eye to his business dealings, I doubted they knew anything about a coming war or carried more greetings from the Shadow Minister of Els. I hoped.
Just as I reached the threshold, movement from the hearth caught my eye. My heart leapt into my throat. “Alastair. Wait.”
The fireplace at the far end of the shop was cold and dead as it had been that morning, but the stool on the hearth had been righted and the bread and beggar’s balm disposed of. My shawl and satchel sat folded on the stool. Above it, my dagger twisted slowly on a length of cord threaded through its hilt. The other end hung from the four-faced statuette on the mantelpiece, the cord wrapped tight around the outstretched arms of Thell.
Chapter 10
Troll Bridge
We flew from Harborough Hatch at dawn the next morning. Lord and Lady Hatch saw us off, our luggage filled to bursting with bread, hard cheese, dried fruit, and beggar’s balm from their kitchens.
“The least we can do, truly,” Lord Hatch said as he bowed farewell. “Safe journeys.”
Once we cleared the city Akarra turned into the wind, following the path of destruction leading from Hatch Ford into the hills of northern Harborough Hatch. We flew for a while in silence as my muscles grew reaccustomed to the saddle and my stomach to the business of not rebelling at every little dip and descent.
“What was it you said to Lady Hatch before we left?” Alastair asked as the roofs of Hatch Ford disappeared behind us.
I spat out the well-chewed beggar’s balm beneath my tongue. “I suggested she have a word with Margrey about working at Hatch House.” Suggested was a kinder term for what had actually transpired; I’d asked Lady Hatch after any open positions in the household and, on her affirmation, gently but firmly put forth Margrey’s name. If I also mentioned it was the particular wish of House Daired, and that my husband and I would consider it a personal kindness to the woman who had sheltered his wife from their corrupt City Watch . . . well, it was household business, after all. Alastair didn’t need to know the details.
“You mean that blond girl with the baby?” he asked.
“Aye. She wanted to thank you, by the way. You saved her and her daughter in the Battle of Hatch Ford.”
He pulled me close. “She kept you safe. I should be thanking her.”
“Alastair, Aliza.” Akarra’s wind-battered voice drifted up to us. “Look.”
She swooped low over the forested ridge. Below us spread the ruined field where the Worm had broken ground. The pit yawned in the sunlight like the mouth of the earth itself, still vomiting trickles of muddy water. I wondered when someone would be brave enough to try and close the hole, or if it even could be closed. No one knew how far beneath the surface the Greater Lindworm had slumbered and I doubted anyone was in a hurry to find out. The Worm had been the stuff of myth for generations. With its passing still fresh in our minds, people weren’t about to start poking and prodding the dark places in the earth, tempting more legendary creatures to come ravening into the daylight. Old, deep things . . .
I fixed my eyes on the horizon. It did no good to dwell on questions without answers, to waste time fretting over riddles meant to madden. Harborough Hatch and everything that had happened there was behind us: let it stay there. No matter how much the creature within Tully wished otherwise, the war was over, and we had other monsters to hunt now. Ahead lay new adventures, and new mysteries, and—
Rain clouds.
The sky grew gray as midday approached, and not long after we’d eaten lunch it began to rain. First only a faint drizzle, it strengthened to a downpour within hours, lashing my face and turning my cloak into a soggy second skin. Akarra landed at the first sign of shelter, the lights of the village on the northern border of Harborough Hatch hardly visible through the rain. The townsfolk were welcoming, and though our plans to fly across the Widdermere in the morning met with raised eyebrows, they didn’t try to dissuade us. A few of the older folk pointed out the settlements scattered around the edge of the Marshes on a map that hung on the wall of the public house, recommending we find lodging there if we couldn’t make it across the Widdermere in a single day.
The next day the rain had stopped, replaced by thick, wet fog. Akarra’s wings churned it like cream as we took to the sky and I was glad of her warmth. Hunkered close to the saddle, with my fire-dried cloak pulled tight around me and Alastair’s arms wrapped even tighter around that, it was bearable. Not pleasant—it could never be pleasant—but for the first time in a long time I was no longer consumed with daydreams of solid ground. It helped that I couldn’t see the ground even if I wanted to. We flew over a sea of white pierced every once in a while by the tops of tall pines. Watching grew dull after the first few hours, so we gave conversation a valiant effort, though we had to shout.
“Your mother met your father how?”
“He saw her theater troupe performing in Edonarle,” I yelled, the wind whipping my words over my shoulder. “Mama said he asked her to marry him that same night.”
Akarra shook beneath us and it took me a moment to realize she was laughing. Alastair held out a little longer. “What play?”
“The Lay of Saint Ellia.”
“She must’ve made a lovely Ellia.”
“She was the sea-serpent.”
This time he laughed too. “Next time we visit Merybourne Manor we’ll have to ask for a performance.”
Are you sure you’re ready for that? I wanted to say, but just then Akarra’s wings billowed like sails as she caught an updraft and rose, then nosed sharply downward, wingtips slicing through the tendrils of fog as we plunged toward the earth. My stomach lurched. Her wings shot out and we came to a hover. The ground swam into view only a few hundred feet beneath us.
“What is it?” Alastair asked.
“The wind changed,” Akarra said. “And khela, I smell something up ahead.”
“Danger?”
“I don’t know.”
“It must be close to noon. Reqet.”
Three minutes later I stood on damp earth, one hand on Akarra’s foreleg, one pressed over my mouth, willing myself not to be sick. Alastair rubbed my back and said a few sharp words to Akarra in Eth, but she wasn’t listening. She stared hard into the mist.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Really. It just took me by surprise. What was it you smelled, Akarra?”
“I can’t tell yet, but I’m going to find out.” She rose into the air, and the fog swallowed her in minutes.
I looked around. The ground underfoot was spongy and the grass stems poking through the lichen-covered sod were rough and reedy. Sedges grew in clumps and on low hillocks as far as I could see, which wasn’t far. Clouds hung heavy over the marshlands, filtering the late afternoon sun into a flat, gray light. The shadow of a bird drifted through the lowest clouds, vanishing and reappearing every few minutes with the rasping caw of a crow. I smelled rot and damp peat. Unpleasant, but nothing about that was alarming. Water gurgled somewhere ahead of us. “Where are we?” I asked.
“The southern stretch of the Widdermere,” Alastair said. “That water you hear is the River Rushless.”
I tried to conjure up a map of Arle in my mind as he dug out a loaf of bread and a slice of cheese from the panniers. Most maps at Merybourne Manor showed everything north of Harborough Hatch as a vague greenish-gray patch, crossed by the blue line of the River Rushless and a dark, forbidding scribble that was Rushless Wood. I took the bread and cheese from Alastair and started toward the sound of water.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for the
river,” I said.
“We shouldn’t wander.”
“Just to the bank. I need to stretch my legs.”
He peered one last time in the direction Akarra had disappeared before releasing his scabbard from its harness and joining me. “Just to the bank.”
It was farther than I expected. The sound of the river took on an odd quality in the dead air. We arrived at the Rushless a few minutes later, our boots muddy and my knees damp from an encounter with a patch of slippery moss.
“There. We found your river.” Alastair planted one foot on the bank and the other on a boulder sticking out from the shallows. “Not much to look at.”
True to its name, the River Rushless flowed sluggishly in its weed-choked bed. It didn’t look deeper than my shoulder, but it was very wide. I was glad we wouldn’t have to ford it. I plucked a flat stone from the ground and tried skimming it along the surface. It skipped once before sinking with a half-hearted plop.
“Alastair, Aliza,” Akarra called from somewhere to our left. “Come. Quickly!”
My skin prickled at the urgency in her tone. We followed her voice along the bank and found her perched on the arch of an ancient bridge, its paving stones crumbling, its pilings trailing long strands of green waterweed. With one wingtip she pointed to the opposite bank, where a boulder blocked the mouth of the bridge.
“There.”
Alastair edged toward the boulder. I came behind him, feeling for my dagger as he tapped the rock-like thing with the point of his sword. Nothing happened. He stepped back.
The troll had fallen backward, its head facing the northeast bank. Akarra snaked the tip of her tail beneath its shoulders and lifted it up. The creature’s tusked face bore a look of stupid surprise. A gash ran along its neck, slicing its throat open from ear to ear, and thick, brownish-green blood covered its shoulders and stained the ground beneath. Not fresh, but not very old either. Whatever had killed the troll had done it within the last day or two. And they’d left another mark. The troll’s chest was cut open, ribs like shards of granite sticking out at broken angles. Nausea roiled inside me as I realized what had happened. The killer or killers had removed the creature’s heart.
I thought suddenly of Master Trennan, of his feeling that something had followed him from Lake Meera, and goose bumps rose along my arms. I moved closer to Alastair and looked around. There was no sign of a battle. There was hardly the sign of a struggle. “Could a ghastradi have done this?” I whispered. For some reason it felt wrong to speak louder.
“You’re thinking of Tully?” Alastair asked, and I nodded. “He couldn’t have gotten here in time. This troll has only been dead a day.”
“Did this Tully say anything specifically about Idar, Aliza?” Akarra asked.
I racked my brain, fighting through the shadow fear had cast over my memory of the lithosmith’s shop. I saw the glint of yellow, the twist of his smile, felt the smooth stone head of the statue in my hand. “He said war is coming and the—” I looked down at the troll. “And that the Oldkind are already choosing sides.”
Alastair bent down and closed the troll’s eyes. “Perhaps it chose wrong.” His voice was flat and grim as the river.
There was a splash from the mists to our left. Akarra’s head jerked toward the sound, a growl in her throat. “There’s something else,” she hissed. Dragonfire accented each syllable as she extended her wing. “Myet av-bakhan, Alastair,” she said. “And you too, Aliza.”
We stepped around the dead troll, avoiding the blood-slicked stones. Beyond the bridge the hummocks grew higher and the sedges grew thicker. Rivulets of muddy water braided through the grasses on their way to meet the Rushless. I looked closer. Not muddy water. Bloody water. Alarm sang through me like ten thousand lute strings pulled too tight.
We heard it before we saw it: the wet, labored sound of a creature close to death. A centaur sprawled in a mossy pool of water beyond the last hill, her foreleg badly broken. An arrow protruded from her flank and another from her chest, right above a bell-shaped patch of white hair. One of her horns had been snapped off near the root and more blood stained what would’ve once been a magnificent mane of chestnut hair. She raised her head as we approached. Brown as her coat, with a horizontal pupil like a goat’s, her eyes leapt from Alastair’s sword to the crest on his shoulder, then to Akarra, then to me. Her head sank onto the peat.
“Ket,” she said.
It was the Eth name of Thell-Unmaker. Alastair and Akarra looked at each other.
“Ket!” the centaur said again.
Akarra replied in a strange language; Cymrog, I guessed, the centaur tongue. The centaur’s lips pulled backward into a sneer, but she nodded.
“Your Daired. He is a good son of Thell?” the centaur asked Akarra in labored Arlean. “Tell him to kill me.”
“Who did this to you?” Alastair asked.
“Serve your bloody god, hwe-ha-drach. Kill me.”
“I serve Mikla before Thell, centaur. Tell us who did this,” he said, wading into the pool with sword drawn, “and I’ll end your pain.”
A dreadful sound bubbled up from the centaur’s throat. “Your mate does not share your gods, hwe-ha-drach.” Her gaze turned to me, and I saw neither malice nor hatred in those eyes, but only a deep, lasting bitterness. “A daughter of Janna, I think. She is afraid.” Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. “She is wise to fear.”
“Help us find who did this to you,” I said hoarsely. “We can avenge you.”
Once more that wet, whinnying laugh. “Mate of the hwe-ha-drach, mirth hurts me. Do not make me laugh again. You want to find what creature took my life? Two humans and a drachgma avenge one of the Cymroi?”
“The troll too,” Alastair said. “Whatever killed it removed its heartstone.”
The centaur looked away. “The stone-son was dead before I came.”
“Was it Tekari?” I asked.
“Neither Tekari nor Idar nor Shani did this.”
Alastair and I looked at each other. “A human?” he said. “Or ghastradi?”
Her eyes grew wide at the word, her sides working like bellows to keep life in her broken body. “You speak of what you do not know. This was something old, old, so old it has no name in your tongue or mine. I do not know it. Ket take me, I do not know!”
Alastair made a motion and Akarra moved closer, resting one wingtip on my shoulder. “Is it nearby?” he asked.
“It may be beyond the next hill. It may be in Edonarle by now,” she said, her voice growing weaker with each word. “I faced the creature when the sun rose this morning. We fought, and I saw it as it struck me, flashing like lightning in the darkness: hatred, hunger, a great void yearning to be filled, and then—nothing. I saw nothing more. I knew nothing more.” The centaur’s eyes wandered to the far edge of the pool, where a crossbow lay in the sedge. Again her lips drew back, and in that shattered smile was a touch of pride. “It killed me, but first it felt my arrow’s sting. I die whole.” Her breathing grew shallow. “Ket.”
Alastair placed the point of his sword on her blood-matted side, just above her heart. “Aliza, look away.”
He didn’t need to ask twice.
We flew from the troll bridge in silence. A column of smoke twisted into the mists behind us, turning the light the evil yellow of an old bruise. Akarra had laid the troll’s corpse out next to the centaur and burned the Idar together. They weren’t Shani, but they weren’t Tekari either, and after coming to such an end we couldn’t deny them the dignity of a pyre. There was little else we could do.
Questions clawed at me as we plunged into the sea of mist that stood over the Widdermere Marshes, dark questions with even darker answers. If it was neither human nor Oldkind, what else could it be?
“I’m sorry, Aliza,” Alastair said, his lips close to my ear.
I reeled myself back from my dreadful calculations. “For what?”
He rested his chin on my shoulder, his cheek warming mine where his words could not. �
�The centaur. I’m sorry you had to see that.”
I’d turned away from the actual deathblow, but I’d seen the results. I’d expected an expression of peace, or perhaps relief, but she’d died with eyes and mouth open, teeth baring a challenge to the world. Alastair had seen it too, I knew. His movements while cleaning his sword had been slower than usual, as if weighed down by what he had done. I leaned into him. “She was in pain and you couldn’t have saved her. You did the right thing.”
“I hope so.”
“When we return from Lake Meera, we must tell the Nestmothers what we saw.” Akarra’s voice drifted up to us. “The Vehryshi too. They may know something the Cymroi do not.”
“Or they may only have more questions,” Alastair said. “Akarra, do you remember how far it is to the nearest town?”
“No.”
More pressing fears lurched to life at the word, drowning out the general unease our encounter with the Idar had inspired. It would be dark soon, and if we couldn’t find a village to spend the night, we’d have to keep flying. No one suggested we make camp. In the dark and damp of the Widdermere Marshes, with something that was neither human nor Oldkind hunting in the mists, I doubted even Akarra could rest easy.
Silence wrapped around us once again, broken only by the rushing wind, the steady beat of her wings, and the cry of the occasional crow. As the mists above us grew rosy, then purple with the sunset, I began watching the ground, sifting the islets and hillocks for signs of a human dwelling: a lantern, a plume of smoke, anything. Once I nearly cheered at a flash of blue flame between the reeds, but it dimmed and went out before bobbing to life a few hundred feet away, dancing out of reach of a dog-like creature. My heart sank. It was a fox chasing a will-o’-the-wisp and its marshlight, nothing more.
A dark shape skimmed the marsh below us. Another followed it, then a third, black-plumed and glossy. For a second I thought they were birds; ravens, perhaps, or the crows I’d been hearing all day, but they were larger than any bird I’d ever seen. Another shape flapped into my peripheral vision. I turned to look. Alastair’s hand tightened around my arm.
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