Girik hadn’t stopped petting his skin, and Tas’s willpower leeched away with each gentle stroke. Though it pained him greatly, he finally captured Girik’s hand and stilled it. “I need you to get dressed now, before I forget what needs to be done.”
“Should I take that as a compliment?”
“You know it is.” Tas grimaced as he moved a hand between them to tuck his erection back into his trousers. “You’re very distracting.”
Bayor groaned and flopped onto his side in the dirt by the opening, and Tas took that as a sign. Before Girik could distract him any further, Tas managed to lever himself into a sitting position. His shirt lay on the straw only a couple of feet away, so he grabbed it and tugged it on for one more layer between him and temptation.
Girik sighed before he sat up and moved to the fire. He turned the rabbits on their makeshift spits, and Tas noticed the smell of cooking meat for the first time. His stomach rumbled.
“They won’t be well-cooked, but they’re fresh and they’ll fill our bellies,” Girik said, his deep voice tinged with regret.
“I’m sure they’ll be fine. You’ve done so much more than anyone could have asked. Thank you.” Tas meant more than just that morning, but the words had an air of finality to them that he didn’t like, so he changed the subject as he climbed slowly to his feet and bent to collect his rumpled robes. “You would have made a superb brother.”
The look Girik threw over his shoulder was not at all pleased, and Tas got a little defensive. “They’re not all bad, you know. I mean it. You’re bright, brave, resourceful. You care about the people in your life. The Thirty-Six are only a small portion of what the Brotherhood does. Surely Brother Lijen has been a benefit to your village.”
Girik’s lip curled in a sneer. “Aye. But I’ve heard a few rumors of what the rest of the Brotherhood does, and it isn’t all sermon-making and singing.”
Tas deflated a little and nodded. “I’ve heard things too. A few months ago, I would have dismissed it all as complete nonsense and vicious lies.”
“And now?”
Shaking his head sadly, Tas lifted his hands helplessly. “I just don’t know anymore. I don’t want to believe it. I want to believe the Brotherhood and Harot chose the path they did because it was best for Rassa. Harot was chosen by the gods to bring the sacred stones back. It would be the pinnacle of hubris to think I knew better than them or him.”
“Harot’s not here anymore, though. The Brotherhood has acted on its own for centuries with only his texts. He’s not here to ask about what goes on now.”
Tas sighed and rubbed his aching temples. “Come on. Like you said before, we have more important things to deal with right this second, and I can’t put it off any longer.”
Girik let out a grunt that Tas had to assume was agreement, because the man fetched his stained clothes from the ground and tugged them on. The huge hound in the doorway sprung to its feet, obviously eager for them to do something other than chatter, and Tas tried to absorb some of the dog’s enthusiasm. It had the right idea. They had to get going.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Girik murmured as he belted on a knife. “Was I right? Did it work better this time?”
Tas pushed his reservations and fear aside long enough to give Girik a smile of real gratitude and affection. “You were right. Just like before. I know you don’t take it as a compliment, but you would have made an exceptional brother.”
Girik’s lip quirked in what seemed more of a grimace, but his blue eyes warmed. “I’ll take it as the compliment it was meant. Is it enough, though? The energy, is it enough to destroy the monster without destroying you at the same time?”
“I think so.”
He didn’t want to lie to Girik anymore.
After yesterday’s disaster, his confidence in himself wasn’t particularly high. He could think of a dozen things he could have done better, but his whole world had been rattled, and he was completely off-center. A Hunt required a brother to think on his feet. Nothing ever went completely according to plan, and the brother in charge of it had to react quickly. Tas had too many doubts eating away at his center. Pride was something Harot and the gods discouraged, but that confidence was necessary to go out and face something so terrifying, and to inspire others to do the same.
His answer didn’t seem to reassure Girik, but the man only grunted and moved to tend to the rabbits, leaving Tas to finish knotting the closures on his robe and buckle on his own belt and knife in peace.
Chapter Fifteen
THEY ATE their meal in silence. Tas was starving and practically inhaled his rabbit, even going so far as to crack open the bones and suck out the marrow. Girik stared pensively into the fire, mostly. Tas had the choice of either doing the same, staring at Girik while he ate, or meeting the very focused and unsettling gaze of Girik’s dog as it eyed both of them avidly and drooled. In the end, Tas chose the fire. Watching Girik was the more pleasant choice, but it made his mind and heart travel down paths he couldn’t follow.
When the last bit of marrow and grease were gone, Tas sighed and climbed to his feet. Their little interlude was over. The Hunt had to begin again.
“It’s time. I must go.”
Girik stood without a word and reached for the bow and quiver propped in a corner of the shelter.
“You don’t have to come with me, you know,” Tas said. “You’ve certainly done more than your fair share.”
Girik gave him an exasperated look. “Don’t be stupid. I’m not just going to scamper on home and let you go off and try to throw your life away again. That’s not going to happen.”
Selfishly pleased that he wouldn’t have to do this alone, Tas decided not to waste time arguing and strode purposefully out into the late-morning sunshine. He would do everything in his power to make sure Girik came to no harm. That was the best he could promise himself.
The fog had lifted, leaving nothing but golden light filtering through the trees. He hoped that was a good omen.
Shoulders back and head held high, Tas marched toward battle, but only made it a few steps before he realized Girik had gone in the opposite direction. Tas frowned until he spotted Girik heading for the creek. Rolling his eyes at himself, Tas followed. He’d been about to run off into the woods without a thought for such practicalities.
While Girik filled the water skin from his belt, Tas knelt by the creek and drank. Who knew when he’d get another chance, and he had no guarantee the Spawn would stay put and wait for him to get there. Splashing some water on his face, he ordered himself to focus.
Quanna, Moc, and Chytel, protect us and guide us. I cannot sing the morning hymns to you without alerting the Spawn to our presence, so I will only pray you know my intent and my gratitude for all your blessings without it. Be with us today. Let Girik come to no harm. Even if he does not say the words or sing the hymns, his faith is in his deeds. He deserves better than what the Brotherhood has given him.
Tas stood and took a deep, cleansing breath. He wasn’t as exhausted as he’d thought he might be after yesterday’s failed attempt, but he wouldn’t be running any races. A quick glance sideways in the bright sunlight told him Girik wasn’t exactly at his most hail and healthy either. The man moved slowly and stiffly, favoring his injured side, and dark rings circled his eyes.
“We’re certainly a pair of heroes, aren’t we?” Tas said with a rueful smile.
Girik gave him a puzzled frown before his lips twisted upward. “Stuff of legends,” he agreed.
Tas snorted and brushed ineffectually at his disgracefully dirty robes. “I suppose we should get going.”
“Lead the way,” Girik replied as his smile disappeared.
Tas closed his eyes and focused on the hum of the stone. It seemed louder in his head than he ever remembered before, but he was so rattled these days, he could be imagining it. The vibrations pulled him west toward the mountains. They were already in the foothills, and Tas really hoped the thing didn’t go deeper. The thought of having to
climb hills any steeper than the ones he had already, made him want to cry with exhaustion.
Girik and his hound trotted silently behind him as Tas led them in as direct a line as he possibly could. His legs felt like lead, and visions of a nice soft bed with someone big and warm lying next to him kept crowding his mind, no matter how many times he willed them away.
Soon. Soon enough, I’ll be able to rest. Hopefully, that rest won’t be permanent.
To give himself strength and distract him from how tired he was, he began to sing every hymn he knew, silently inside his head, starting with the very first one he’d ever learned. He’d reached the second verse of the Hymn of Fire he’d been taught his fifth year at Blagos Keep when the hum from Tasnerek in the back of his mind suddenly changed to a loud buzzing. Tas stumbled and had to catch himself on a tree.
“Are you all right?” Girik said, closing the gap between them and placing a hand on Tas’s shoulder.
Tas shook his head, trying to make sense of what the stone was telling him. When realization dawned, his stomach plummeted. “Oh shit.”
Girik gaped at him, and Tas would have chuckled at his expression if disaster weren’t breathing down their necks.
“What is it?” Girik pushed, when Tas didn’t say anything else.
Swallowing against a suddenly dry throat, Tas reluctantly forced the words out, as if not saying them would have made any difference. “There’s another Spawn. I couldn’t believe what Tasnerek was telling me, but it’s clear now. There’s another Spawn in the area. And I’ll hazard to guess this one isn’t near death like the other.” Tas slumped to the ground between the tree’s roots and stared blindly out into the forest. “There’s no way I can defeat two together. Not as I am.”
“Are they? Together, I mean.”
Tas closed his eyes and sorted through Tasnerek’s excited signals. “Not yet. Spawn are mostly mindless creatures. But all of the holy texts say they can sense each other. Tasnerek says the new one is moving toward the other one, and quickly. Damn it to the seven hells, we were so close.”
“What do we do?” Girik asked, nervously scanning the trees around them.
“I don’t know. There was one documented incident where villagers said two Spawn actually fought each other, but it’s never been heard of since. I have no idea what they’ll do if and when they come together. All I know is, I don’t have the power to defeat two, and we’re completely exposed out here. We could try running, but I don’t know how far I’ll get. I could key Tasnerek and hope it’s enough to scare them into running, but that leaves us even worse off than before.”
It was the fear in Girik’s eyes that smacked Tas’s thoughts out of their panicked tailspin. Taking a deep breath, he pushed Tasnerek’s excited buzzing to the back of his mind again. The injured Spawn still hadn’t moved, but the new one was going to pass very close to them in its journey toward the other and might stop for a snack along the way.
“You need to go,” Tas said as calmly as he could while a cold knot of resignation settled in his stomach.
Girik frowned. “What do you mean, I need to go?”
“You can still run. I can’t. You need to go and tell the village what happened. I’ll do what I can here. With luck, I’ll destroy at least one of them.”
“No.” Girik’s expression was thunderous as he stubbornly crossed his arms over his chest.
“We don’t have time to fight about this. This is the best solution, and you know it. If I can take out at least one, that’s one less monster to threaten your village. But if you stay and get killed, there’s no one to warn them. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for your mother. She’ll be in danger. Even if you stayed to help, I don’t have enough power to take both of them out. You know I’m right. You might get killed for absolutely nothing. That’s stupid.”
Girik’s nostrils flared as his jaw worked. Tas pulled himself to his feet and started off in the direction of the injured and hopefully immobile Spawn. Maybe he could get to it first and finish it off before the other arrived.
“Go, Girik. This way you protect your village from the Spawn and the Brotherhood from finding out the truth. Hells, I’ll probably be chronicled as a hero, and you as well.”
“What if you just scare them away?” Girik pleaded as he followed. “You said that might work, and stopping a Hunt because another Spawn showed up is perfectly reasonable, like you said. You scare them away. We go back to the village and tell them what happened. And they send more help to do a bigger Hunt. That has to be a better plan than getting yourself killed.”
Tas stopped and turned to give him a sad smile. “And what happens when I can’t perform the ritual with another member of the Thirty-Six to witness it, when they realize you and I have been lying to them? What happens to your village? Will they believe the rest of the village wasn’t in on it? That they don’t know what’s going on and can spread the rumors far and wide? Are you willing to take that chance with your mother’s life? With all their lives?”
At Girik’s stricken look, Tas hurried back to him and put a hand on his chest. “You have a good heart, Girik of Comun. But there are some battles we can’t win. This was never going to end with me going back to the village or to Blagos Keep. I know that now. Please go. Protect your mother and the rest of the village. Do it for her, if you won’t for yourself. Do it for me. That was all I ever wanted. That is the duty and privilege the gods gave me. I—I care about you too, you know. Don’t let me fail to protect you. Don’t make me take that with me to the Beyond. Please.”
“Go. Now. Hunt!”
The shout in his head was almost painful, and Tas turned and started jogging away from Girik before he even realized his legs were moving. He had a slight moment of panic at that, feeling like he’d somehow lost control of his body, but once he was headed in the right direction, the push and the shouting subsided. He stumbled a little, but somehow kept his feet.
What in the hells was that?
He grasped the stone around his neck, but Tasnerek’s insistent buzzing became almost unbearable with the contact, and he dropped it like it had burned him. Tasnerek was behaving strangely, and Tas was almost certain the voice had come from it. Were the gods answering his prayers through Tasnerek, or was it some new calamity all of his questions and lack of faith had caused? Was Tasnerek damaged by all he had done?
Pushed beyond exhaustion by Tasnerek’s urgency, the rest of Tas’s run went by in a blur of rocks and moss, roots and the scent of pine. He heard nothing but the pounding of his own heart and labored breaths. He saw nothing but the path directly in front of his boots. The stone didn’t even give him a second to spare to worry about Girik and whether he would make it home safe.
He burst through the trees into a rock-strewn clearing at the base of a sheer cliff. The Spawn from the day before lay in the middle, struggling to stand. It must have sensed Tasnerek, because its red-glowing eyes were wide as it frantically swung its massive tusked head to and fro, searching the tree line. Tas knew the second it spotted him, because the thing let out one of its ear-splitting shrieks and threw itself in the opposite direction. Its raw and weeping sides heaved with the effort, but apparently it still had enough strength to make a run for it.
Damn!
Unthinking, Tas threw up a hand and half sang, half yelled, “Stop!”
A blast of energy came from the stone and slammed into the Spawn’s side, knocking it off-balance but not stopping its retreat.
Tas was dizzy with fatigue. His legs wobbled alarmingly. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could continue to stand, let alone how far he could chase the thing, and he had no breath left for the hymn anyway.
“You will sing, son of man. Now.”
Real panic flared in his chest as the command reverberated in his mind.
“Who is that?”
“You know who it is.”
“How?”
“There is no time. It is getting away. Sing.”
“Dear gods, wha
t have I done?”
The words stopped, leaving only an angry buzzing in his head. But a moment later, Tas’s legs began to take him toward the Spawn without his willing them to.
“No.”
Tas wrestled control of his body back from Tasnerek and fell to his knees. Movement at the other side of the clearing distracted him from the battle raging within him, and Tasnerek abruptly ceased its attempts to force him to his feet again. The Spawn had stopped dead at the tree line, and an oddly robed figure stepped out of the shadows. A twig snapped behind Tas, accompanied by a growl, but Tas couldn’t take his eyes off the tableau in front of him.
While Tas gaped like an idiot, another figure stepped out of the woods, except this one wasn’t wearing any clothes at all, and Tasnerek shrieked angrily in his head at it. The injured Spawn seemed to hesitate for a moment, shifting its weight from hoof to hoof. But when the robed figure lifted his hands in the air, the Spawn screamed and spun on its hind legs… and charged directly toward Tas.
“Sing, fool!”
Tas’s mouth was as dry as a desert. He swallowed twice before he could even manage the first few words of the hymn. Tasnerek hummed triumphantly on his chest and glowed brighter than it had ever done before. Without Tas’s control, it took the energy Girik had given the night before and then began to siphon Tas’s life energy again too. A large body blocked Tas’s view of the monster barreling down on him, but Tas was lost to what the stone was doing and barely noticed.
“That’s enough!” a gruff voice shouted.
Tas had a moment to register Tasnerek’s surprise before the drain on his life stopped. As he toppled to the ground, he heard the Spawn squeal, Girik’s voice shouting, a dog barking and growling, and an unfamiliar ululating cry that almost sounded joyful. Tas’s head thumped against the hard ground as he collapsed. Something viscous, warm, and foul-smelling splattered across his face. The last thing he felt before blackness swamped him was Tasnerek being ripped from his neck.
Chapter Sixteen
The Priest Page 14