Sacrament of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 3)

by Kathrin Hutson

  Inside the room, a large fire crackled in the hearth, two fraying armchairs turned slightly toward each other to face the flames. Two sprawling rugs stretched across the floors, obviously poorly kept and with the first signs of worn holes, and two other doors on conjoining walls led toward what Zerod could only assume were actual sleeping quarters. This here looked very much like a receiving room.

  “It gladdens me to see you here,” Torrahs said, stepping into the room toward the long bar on the opposite wall. He uncorked the decanter on its surface and poured two glasses of wine, though they were not overly healthy. Zerod rather thought they shared the same desire to keep their wits about them. “So long, Zerod. I thought you’d submitted yourself to isolation and decline.” Of course, the man did not openly mention the fact that it had been Torrahs himself who’d stopped replying to Zerod’s correspondences and not the other way around.

  When he approached his guest again and offered a swirling glass, Zerod accepted with a patient smile and a nod of thanks. “My life in Hephorai was not modeled after what has been done here at Deeprock Spire. What is still being done. There is nothing wrong with an old man preferring the peace and comfort of his own home to the vagaries of travel and adventure.”

  Torrahs smirked, but it was not unkind. “Indeed.” He nodded toward the armchairs in front of the fire, and Zerod joined him in the pursuit of just a little more comfort. They sipped at the wine—which Zerod found very good indeed—and then the Wanderer raised his glass toward his suddenly appeared friend. “Your amarach makes a farce of traveling on foot, though. I’ve never seen one appear like that with a man.”

  Zerod knew what he was about to say next would serve as a direct offense for Torrahs regarding both the work he performed here and his failure to have elicited the desired results thus far. But the man from Hephorai could no more stop his words than he could prevent the inevitable that was, in fact, coming. “There are many secrets to be revealed. Fortunately, I did not destroy the amarach I bonded.”

  The Wanderer’s eyes flickered quickly from the fire to his friend once more. Torrahs’ nostrils flared, and his lip curled up in a restrained grimace of disgust and something rather like regret. “No. I imagine you use her for other things.”

  Glancing down into the wineglass nestled between his hands in his lap, Zerod chose to ignore the insinuating insult; it truly did not matter. He would have rejoiced to see his old friend regain some measure of peace in his later years. But he’d realized long ago that Torrahs had grown so firmly set in his opinions, especially this close to the end, that there remained little room yet for clarity or change. This didn’t mean Zerod would not try. “Many things changed quite quickly when you added Rofaer and Haela to the list of sacrifices made to achieve your goals.” While Torrahs had always been skilled in masking his emotions, he could not hide his surprise at Zerod’s words—not from this man, who’d known him like a brother for so very long. “Yes, I know their names.” Zerod nodded. “I also know exactly what you did to them, and I know why. But I cannot say I see all ripples of that decision or where they might lead. I do not know how things stand now, in this place.”

  He didn’t need to ask the question; Torrahs’ lips pressed together into a firm, grim line, as if he begrudged his old friend for making this conversation impossible to ignore. “The vessel has not returned for over half a fortnight.”

  “Was she taken?”

  Torrahs’ eyebrows lifted, as if he did not at first understand the question. “No. But it is only now the child inside that body and never the amarach vessel I seek to pry open. Her guardian has not appeared even once to retrieve her since I set the two amarach to their most effective purpose.” He said that last bit like an entreaty, perhaps to convince himself as much as Zerod that what he’d done had not been in vain—that it had been productive, despite the fact that the direct results remained unclear.

  This offered Zerod some small measure of hope for what was now so close at hand. If the Unclaimed had not resumed her human form in that long, especially without the presence of her new guardian, perhaps the amarach resistance seeking to protect the vessel from the hands that would break her open—the hands of the man sitting beside him now—had found a way to forestall the inevitable. None of them now could turn the future down a different path; it had been chosen and set long ago. But there was always more than one way to arrive at a single destination. He might not be too late. “He’s almost upon you.”

  “Kherron?” Torrahs asked. He didn’t need the answer to that, but the men nodded together in unison. “I suspected as much.”

  “And when he’s here, this will come to an end.”

  Torrahs snorted and took a long draught of his wine. “Oh, I’m quite aware of that.”

  Zerod steeled himself to deliver the request he’d come all this way to make; the fulfillment of it was still possible and yet highly unlikely, but he pressed on. “There may yet be time to avoid the worst of it. You can withdraw your pursuit of this thing. Hand the vessel over to the boy when he arrives, even if only the child within her remains. Torrahs, I implore you to consider—”

  “No.” The Wanderer gently placed his empty wineglass on the high round table beside his armchair. “I will not relent, old friend. I’ve come too far and sacrificed too much to merely deliver my final moment into someone else’s eager hands.”

  “And yet you cannot know what the final sacrifice will require of you.”

  Torrahs’ eyes widened briefly, and a flicker of amusement lifted the corner of his mouth. “Nothing.” Zerod merely frowned at him, lost to his friend’s meaning. “It will cost me nothing, Zerod. The vessel told me herself that Kherron would be the one to offer and freely give what is required to unleash her from her immortal constraints. I will be there when he does so, and I will seize what I have fought this long to attain.”

  Zerod took a deep breath, feeling the possibilities draining from the moment like water from a sieve. He leaned forward just a little to capture his old friend’s attention. “Did she tell you this before you split the world with your magical tinkering?”

  For a moment, only the crackle of the fire before them broke the silence. Then, his voice low and without compassion, Torrahs said, “Do not make the mistake of thinking you mean more to me than this.” The Wanderer did not look at him when he rose abruptly from his chair and stepped around it toward the center of the receiving room.

  Zerod had only solidified Torrahs’ resistance to him with that final biting remark, but he hadn’t been able to contain it. And he knew now he’d deployed the use of perhaps the only thing for which Torrahs might have still held some measure of care and respect—their friendship. That too had been spent. It was over now. He rose from his own chair and limped around it.

  Torrahs stood beside the door, which he’d opened and now held ajar for his aged comrade who might have just become his adversary. “Your presence here was a brief but pleasant balm for me today,” the man said. Zerod nodded and continued toward the open door. “As will be your departure, though I believe the enjoyment of it will last just a little longer.”

  The harshness of such words made Zerod pause, but it went unnoticed, so masked by the pronounced limp. He did stop in front of Torrahs, though, to study the man for any glimmer of what might remain of the Wanderer’s heart.

  “I suggest you remember our conversation today,” Torrahs said, gazing down at his lifelong friend. “The next time we meet, you will see exactly why I’ve done these things. You will know their worth.”

  Zerod tilted his head away from the man he’d once called brother. “I do not intend to ever see you again, Wanderer.” A flicker of something that might have been pain moved across Torrahs’ brow, but Zerod merely pushed past him and headed out into the cold stone hallway on his own.

  He did not hear the door close behind him, but he dared not turn around. And he did not slow until he reached the main hall where Mirahl awaited his return. Tears spilled from his eyes and
filled the crevices of his wrinkled face, pooling in places he could no longer feel with the same acuity.

  This truly was the end. So be it.

  Chapter 26

  Kayu had told him they had but two days now.

  When they reached the edge of the mountain pass, they’d only traveled another two days within the shadow of the Bladeshales themselves and another day on level ground within the forest. Then the trees had ended quite abruptly, thrusting them into a sprawling landscape of damp, soft sand mixed with black clay, across which were scattered short, twisted, leafless trees that looked like bones protruding from the earth. The abruptness with which the forested mountainsides ended to become this had surprised Kherron, and he did not expect very much to enjoy this new clime of sand, clay, stone, and stubborn bark that seemed it could have become salt marshes if the air were not so violently cold.

  Now, they’d traversed this open, flattened terrain for two days already, and two more now lay ahead of them. But the closer they came to Kherron’s destination and the things he could not fathom he’d find within the walls of Deeprock Spire, the more an overwhelming sense of disappointed pervaded him. It was not that he didn’t want to do this thing—to protect Dehlyn as his old vow had dictated despite him having broken it and as his new vow to the woman within Aelis’ bear now required. The feeling merely grew within him as an understanding that, while nothing and no one forced him to take this path now, he would have to do something he very much did not want to do when the time came. Kherron had no idea what that was, of course, but he’d learned quickly to trust his instincts explicitly. He’d learned to listen.

  CONVERSATION GREW PARTICULARLY sparse as his party moved southeast, and on the third day within the new, barren landscape—when the ground of sandy clay was punctured now by dull, black rock rising in scattered formations from the inhospitable soil—they could no longer see the sun during the day. The sky had shed its uplifting shades of blue, which had boasted white, trailing clouds when they’d still been in the mountains. Even within the cold at such elevations and amidst the scattered snow showers greeting them, the sky had managed to clear every now and then, casting warm rays of sunshine through the trees and onto their faces with the promise of warmer days yet to come when the long nights of winter had run their course. Now, there was no blue above them amongst the white. There were no clouds. The sun barely pierced through the thick, cold, damp blanket of grey stretching onward in every direction with no hint now as to clearer days ahead. It filled Kherron with an expectation of drawling monotony without end—not until he completed this unknown pursuit at Deeprock Spire and left the Amneas coast to move on with his life.

  The available game here, despite Kherron’s unusual methods of capturing it, had dwindled to scrawny, twitchy rabbits and the tiny brown birds who seemed highly capable of surviving the cold, damp air and the lifeless ground but not much more. The meals he shared now only with Lorraii—as Kayu had recently begun to refuse the food Kherron prepared, and Aelis had not once eaten with them as her bear—were small, painfully quick, marginally satisfying, but sufficient.

  That night, supposedly their last before reaching Deeprock Spire, Kherron summoned a small fire beside the narrow, loosely packed dirt road that would lead them into the Brotherhood’s waiting grasp. They’d come upon it earlier in the day, and it seemed to finalize the understanding that this would soon be finished. Kherron lay on his back, wishing he could actually see the stars now that there was no forest to hide it from his view—only endless grey, now. The fire was small, the gnarled wood making little sound as it burned; he had not wanted to draw any more unwanted attention than was necessary by announcing their presence with a raging fire.

  “I will not fight Torrahs.” Lorraii’s voice was low, subdued, and wary.

  Kherron shifted onto his side, supported by his forearm, and looked at her. “I don’t expect you to.”

  Her scowl danced in the flickering shadows of the small flames. “Why not?”

  For a moment, he wondered if she wanted him to command her into such a thing; she seemed highly disappointed in his answer. “I don’t mean to make you my slave, Lorraii. I don’t mean to make you anything. You’ve answered my questions to what I believe is the best of your ability, and you haven’t yet tried to kill me in my sleep. As far as I’m concerned, as long as you don’t try to stop me or work against me in some way, you’re free to do or not do whatever you wish.” The fire cracked, and the shadows made it impossible to tell whether the tattooed woman was looking at him or something far, far away, invisible to the naked eye. Perhaps it was both. After several minutes, he thought she’d dismissed him completely, and he shifted back over onto his back to attempt some measure of sleep.

  “I did not chose this,” she said.

  Kherron made the choice to count that as the closest thing he would ever come to receiving both an apology and a form of thanks from the last Ouroke. “I know,” he replied, but he didn’t get up to look at her again. “Neither did I.”

  DAWN WAS COLD, DAMP, and muted. They’d rubbed the vestiges of sleep from their eyes, Kherron had released the fire, and Aelis’ form lumbered toward them from where she’d spent the night behind some massive rise of black, porous rock a fair distance away. The grey jay sped toward them from the east, then Kayu appeared in his grey jacket and oddly skewed cap. “Midday, at the soonest,” he told Kherron.

  They’d long since disposed of menial greetings and small talk, as it now had no meaning and none of Kherron’s party had much to say unless it heralded something new for their journey. Kherron nodded at the Nateru, then turned to face the final hours of so many days and weeks that had taken him east and farther east, ever onward toward the purpose he would not fulfill and the burden he could not escape until he himself finished it.

  He’d taken no more than two steps when the greyness wrapping around them filled with a blazing flash of white light, unnatural here without the clarity of sunshine yet no less dampened by the heavy skies. It had been quite some time since Kherron stood face to solemn face with an amarach; the last had tried to whisk him away from the clearing and the spirit of the river before the Roaming People had converged upon that sacred place—before he’d been pushed across the doorway into the void and left there to endure his own eternal torment.

  This immortal being was clad in the same harsh, glinting silver armor, impeccably forged with staggering detail. He was not visibly armed, though Kherron had seen more than one amarach call their weapons seemingly from thin air. This one’s dull grey hair, pulled back along the sides of his head into so many long plaits falling over his shoulders, and massive, similarly slate-colored wings did nothing to particularly distinguish him from the others. His eyes, however, glowed a fierce, threatening orange-brown that Kherron recognized and had seen on only one other. But Wohl had long since been slain.

  He felt more than heard or saw Lorraii draw the Sky Metal dagger from its loop at her vest, and a low hiss of warning disapproval escaped her. Kherron assumed her response was more of a personal reaction to this amarach now in their presence and not as an act of defending Kherron himself, though he had to admit the ensuing result of feeling somewhat protected was a welcomed sensation. He did not turn to look at her but merely reached behind him with a steady hand, signaling for her to wait.

  The amarach’s brows drew together as he took in the sight of one broad-shouldered former blacksmith, one singular Ouroke, and two dwindling Nateru, one in the form of a man and the other relegated to a massive brown bear. Then his gaze settled on Kherron. “I am Fehl.”

  Kherron briefly thought the immortal had come to tell him of some form of defeat, twisting the description of having fallen in battle with an odd grammatical presentation. But the amarach lifted a hand to his own breast, and Kherron understood this was the immortal’s name. So Kherron nodded silently. If Fehl had known enough of Kherron’s location to come to him now, no doubt the amarach also knew his name.

  “I believe
you knew the one who came before me,” Fehl continued. “The shield of the Unclaimed.”

  “Wohl,” Kherron said, and the name itself seemed painful both for him to say and apparently for the grey amarach to hear. So this new being was the one who had stepped up to take Wohl’s place—the one who every night now came for the green-eyed Dehlyn to take her to a realm Kherron would never understand.

  “The laws have been unbound,” Fehl said. “We thought it best to protect her within the vessel itself until you came for her.”

  Kherron frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “The Unclaimed has not emerged now for almost a fortnight in this world. I have not seen her since the unbinding.” His glowing orange eyes flickered across the faces in Kherron’s party again, as if he meant to indicate what inexplicable things had been done to them in consequence.

  He had to be referring to the day the clanning had shattered into chaos, the day Lorraii had coined as the darkening of the world. If the ancient, green-eyed Dehlyn had not appeared within the woman-child for that long, the term seemed quite fitting.

  Fehl’s massive wings twitched slightly outward. “I came to tell you, Kherron, that those of us who wish to end this age of suffering, for ourselves and for the Unclaimed, stand behind you. We will not seek to sway you from the final choice you must make.” An unexpected flicker of pain darkened the amarach’s face, and Kherron rather thought it the only wince of which such immortal creatures were capable. “I also came to warn you. The Aetherius comes. They will do what they can to see that you fail. We will do what we can to prevent that.”

  Kherron had no idea what the Aetherius was, but given all he knew of this immortal war—everything he’d gathered in bits and pieces atop the wild tale Zerod Ophad had spun for him in Hephorai, which had revealed itself to be entirely true—he assumed this was the amarach faction that did not wish to end either their own exile from this world or the dwindling faculties it had been forced to endure for ages in their absence. “Thank you,” he said, fully aware there was not much more he could offer Dehlyn’s newest guardian.