Munayair and Mehan scrambled to follow, Chanda like a white scrap of mist drifting after. The next instant, the mages swept inside with white cloaks flowing, shadowed by guards. A scowl drew Taichar-Mage’s face into long lines. He stomped across the dirt floor, twisting the amulet on his wrist. Trailing after, Shivne-Mage’s expression remained vaguely pleasant. His eyes passed over them crouching against the wall, paused, then returned. Munayair’s heart lurched into her throat as his black eyes met hers. Fifty chouloi swayed mindlessly between, but his gaze snapped right to her.
And not only his.
Over Shivne-Mage’s shoulders draped a serpent as thick around as a woman’s waist. It trailed down his back and through the door out of sight. A head as large as a crocodile’s tilted to regard Munayair with eyes as black and depthless as a cavern. A forked tongue flickered. Munayair jolted backward, colliding with Bast. He put a trembling finger to her lips.
“Never look in his eyes,” he breathed in her ear.
Chapter 28: The Maze
Munayair blinked.
The apparition was gone. Shivne shuddered, forehead creasing, and strode out. Bast released her and she shrank back, gasping.
Taichar-Mage touched an amulet dangling from his wrist. “Search the woods for the Night Watcher and his creatures,” he said in a slow, clear voice. “Bring him alive, if possible, but dead will suffice.” The chouloi raised their heads in unnerving silence. Taichar stormed out and the chouloi began to lurch after.
Still caught in the strange vision of the snake, Munayair scanned the ground where she had seen the thick body dragging. No mark—nothing to prove what she had seen. Might it still be there, hanging invisibly around Shivne-Mage’s shoulders?
Avlingai, she thought slowly, as if he were still somewhere in her mind and could hear her, is this what you meant when you said the magic smelled familiar? Is this snake spirit someone you know?
“We have to leave with them.” Mehan spoke in Munayair’s ear, and she jumped. “Keep your head down and stay in the middle.”
“Are we going to help Shivne-Mage?” Anjita grabbed Munayair’s hand like they were girls going to the market together.
Munayair did her best to disguise her wince. “Yes. This is your chance to serve him.”
They joined the chouloi, mimicking the shuffling walk. Munayair let her hair fall like a curtain and dangled her arms. The chouloi set a slow but relentless pace, and soon they had streamed from the palisade into the camp. Mercenaries stepped aside to let them pass, whispering. Sneaking glances as she walked, Munayair tried to determine what kind of attack had taken place. She could see no bodies, no fallen enemies or wounded mercenaries. Only terrified horses with frayed tethers, like something had gnawed them loose. Fouled tents, broken weapons, supplies trampled into the ground. But she hadn’t seen a single injured mercenary. Her confusion mounted.
Bast shook, limping worse than ever, and Mehan took Chanda’s body by the hand, pulling her next to him. Judging by her breathy grunts and slack mouth, Anjita had gotten into character. Munayair couldn’t decide if she should be horrified or grateful. Shivne’s thrall wielded such obedience, even to imaginary commands.
They wound their way to the edge of camp. Blockades of overturned carts and barrels had been erected and bonfires lit. Packs of mercenaries waited there, tense and harried, weapons at the ready. When the chouloi approached, they scurried to drag the barricades back, opening a way into the dark forest. Munayair, searching for injuries among the border guards as they approached the barricade, saw a familiar face. She realized too late she had met the eyes of their guard, Nastaran, who was speaking urgently to a captain. Her eyes widened, mouth dropped open, and she gawked, pointing a quivering finger.
“Trouble.” Munayair grabbed Anjita’s arm.
“Oh gods,” Anjita grumbled, as shouts started behind them. “They spotted us. Does that mean we lose?”
“Not yet,” Bast said between his teeth. “Only if Shivne sees us himself.”
Anjita nodded and quickened her pace. They had almost reached the barrier. Desperate to pass the wall of wood and fire, they began elbowing their way forward. Their pursuers were yelling, but the mercenaries at the border hesitated to approach the mass of soulless bodies. Within moments, they were through, and humid, green-smelling darkness closed around them. The problem was the chouloi began to spread out, disappearing in every direction.
Mehan walked ahead, dragging Chanda’s dead-eyed body by the hand. Bast clung closer to Munayair than her own shadow, much to Anjita’s irritation. Several chouloi wandered with them—somehow the silent, lurching forms had become comforting.
Glancing back, Munayair glimpsed eyes glittering at her from among the trees. Av? she cried inwardly, turning towards the sight, hope and relief mingling. But when she looked again it was only the white cat with her tail curled around her. She saw Munayair watching and trotted away through the dusky trees.
“Five gods, I thought for sure we were about to lose,” Anjita gasped, leaning against a tree. “This is a fun game—exciting.”
Bast turned to the others. “We’re not in the clear yet. You saw how easily Taichar-Mage set them on the Night Watcher. Soon they’ll be on our tails, too.” He looked at Mehan. “You have to lose your amulet.”
“Not yet.” Mehan was pale beneath the freckles. Bast hissed under his breath but didn’t press the issue.
Anjita shook her head. “Are we going to the execution now?” A line had appeared between her eyebrows as she looked from person to person.
“We’re in the maze now, right? What’s the plan?” Munayair asked.
“Phase two,” Mehan said. He held out a hand. “Your chelka?”
Munayair hesitated before pulling Tel from her pocket. His weight was familiar and comforting in her hands. “If you needed him,” she said, “you could have asked. There was no need for all these theatrics.”
“Basic strategy—never show all your cards.” Mehan shrugged. His eyes were fixed on Tel—if this was still a trick, he was a good actor. “This way, I help you, you help me.”
Munayair peered towards the sky with aching eyes. Howler loomed above the trees, grinning with hunger. Bader’s eye had nearly opened, a flat silver disc suspended in the sky. She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Chelka can usually solve a maze, it’s true,” she said shortly. “But without knowledge of how to command and power them, they’re useless piles of scrap.”
Mehan was getting fidgety. “What do you want, then?”
“I want you to answer a question.” She held Tel out so his ceramic face glinted in the moonslight. “You found Tel in the woods that night and realized he was mine. You needed a way to escape from the mages, but you have no knowledge of chelka glyphs.”
He nodded. “Yes, yes, to all of it. What’s your question?”
“Why send the Night Watcher to bring him back to me?”
This was not the question Mehan expected. He frowned, eyebrows lowering until his eye sockets were dark smudges. “I didn’t,” he muttered. “The man thinks he’s my dad or something. He took the chelka away and went to warn you—he thought I was being reckless. But I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?” A knife edge of anger sliced through Munayair. “You put Anjita’s name on the list, right?”
Now she had asked the question he had been anticipating. “I’m sorry.” He avoided her gaze. “It was the only way I could think of to get you here. They’ll only take adepts or people with old surnames from the village.”
“Boy,” Bast warned as orange torchlight began to follow them into the trees. He was ignored.
Curious, Munayair narrowed her eyes at Mehan. “Why is that?”
He shrugged. “Something to do with the Great Cypress. They test every villager before turning them into chouloi. The adepts they sent straight to Tsai-chuul.” His eyes shifted away from hers, and she felt a sinking feeling in her stomach.
Av, he’s not telling the truth. Or at least not all
of it. How am I supposed to get him to trust me before he gets us all killed?
For a child who grew without love, she imagined Avlingai’s soft voice replying, the best way to earn his trust is to show your trust in him first.
With the sinking feeling she might be dooming them all, Munayair bent over Tel. She sketched a pair of glyphs—Solve Puzzle.
“Naya,” Anjita gasped, grabbing Munayair’s hand, “I think the plant I just touched was poisonous.”
Munayair turned. Sure enough, there was a rash on her hands, swelling as Munayair looked. It was already spreading to Munayair’s hand where she had touched it. She hissed through her teeth, glancing up at the quickly-approaching torches. “Hold him.” She shoved Tel into Anjita’s hands and searched the spells on her upper left arm until she found the one she was looking for. When she touched it, the stinging inflammation on her and Anjita’s hands began to go down. They both let out a sigh of relief.
“That was silly,” Munayair scolded. “You should know your poisonous plants from Adept Pakdel’s class!” Anjita hung her head and said nothing, handing Tel back. When Munayair touched the animation spell, his glyphs flashed, and he jumped up. Stretching, he looked around, then trotted away. “Come on, Jita,” she said, grabbing Anjita’s hand and tugging. “It’s time for another game. Tel is taking us to the boat!”
“Wait—we’re following a chelka?” Anjita muttered.
“Come on, we’ll lose him,” Munayair said, pulling harder. After a moment, Anjita followed, but her expression was still uncertain.
Tel led them around tree trunks the size of houses, through waist-high ferns, over streams trickling from under mossy boulders. His ceramic face flashed back at them every so often, but he showed no other sign of impatience. The two moons cast confusing shadows, depthless and deceptive. They lit their witchlights, but those sparks only threw more shifting shadows. The chouloi drifted away, shuffling footsteps echoing from the trees. One of Mehan’s hands towed Chanda’s body, while to his other clung a faint misty shape. If he felt icy fingers curling around his, he said nothing and kept his gaze forward. Although the chouloi body tugged against his grip, her face betrayed no impatience.
“Ow!” Anjita’s sharp cry rang through the trees. “Naya—ugh—I twisted my ankle.”
Her foot was bent at a strange angle, down among the cypress knees. She grunted with pain when Munayair tugged it free and turned it from side to side. Munayair looked up at her. “Can you walk?”
Anjita nodded with a grimace. “I’ll need someone to hold onto.”
“Lean on me,” Bast said immediately, stepping forward. To Munayair he said, “You need your hands free, kid.”
She hesitated, then stepped back, acknowledging the wisdom in his words. Anjita’s lip curled, but she laid an arm over the boatman’s shoulders without further complaint. Her limping walk slowed their progress to a crawl.
The further they went, the quieter the jungle became. Mist rose around them, brilliant and impenetrable in the moonslight. The hairs on the back of Munayair’s neck stood up as she realized half of the mist was tachoul, hundreds of them. She shivered before she could gather the courage to continue walking, casting her gaze towards the ground. As before, the spirits paid them no heed, attention fixed on something in the distance. They eddied around Chanda’s ghost, curious but not attracted—yet. Chanda kept her gaze high, and her jaw jutted.
“Where has that mudman led us?” Anjita muttered, arm tightening around Bast’s neck until he grimaced. “I don’t like this place.”
None of the others could see the tachoul, but judging from their fearful glances and shivers, something other than their physical senses warned of the danger. They walked near the edge of a cliff, the ground underfoot ropey with vines. Muddy water trickled from somewhere higher up.
“He’s led us to the barrier,” Munayair realized. “The one around the Great Cypress.”
“Five gods.” Bast stopped in his tracks. “I thought we were getting out of the fire, not diving further in!”
When Munayair called to Tel, he ran back to take hold of her skirt with one hand, and she bent to stroke his head. “It’s not your fault, little bold one,” she whispered. “It’s mine, for setting you a puzzle too difficult to solve.”
“It didn’t work.” Mehan shivered as tachoul passed by. “I don’t understand. It should have worked!” He let out a cry and kicked a tree root. Chanda’s ghost hurried to his side, but he didn’t feel her comforting hands on his shoulders. Sensing his agitation, a few of the tachoul drifted closer.
There was a sudden clatter from behind them, and a scream. They turned in time to see Bast disappearing over the edge of the cliff. Munayair’s mind went blank and she screamed as well. A moment later they were all crouched on the edge, looking down. Luckily the cliff wasn’t very tall there, only about twenty spans. Bast looked up at them, scraped up and wild-eyed, but uninjured. “She pushed me!” he cried, jabbing a finger.
Anjita rolled her eyes, supporting herself on a nearby tree trunk. “Don’t blame your clumsiness on me, Goodman Boatman.”
Mehan began calling directions on how best to climb up using the tangled vines. With a gasp of relief, Munayair sat back among the muddy roots. She stroked the wax on Tel’s forehead and focused on controlling her thundering heartbeat. Halfway through the breathing exercise, she realized something was wrong. That’s odd, she thought with a frown. Squinting at his face, she raised him closer to the light of the moons. The glyphs, which had once read Solve Puzzle, had been smeared until they now seemed to be saying Find Safety. Bast was struggling over the edge of the cliff, with Mehan hauling at his armpits.
“What is it, Naya?” Anjita asked.
“Something’s wrong with Tel’s glyphs,” she muttered. “I think they’ve been deliberately smeared. No wonder he led us wrong. But who would do that—and why? No one else has touched him except—” She froze, staring at the chelka in her hand, not daring to raise her eyes. The only person other than herself who had touched Tel was Anjita herself.
But Anjita would never betray me … she thought.
Bast’s eyes shifted. “Munayair!” His shout echoed as he leaped. His momentum knocked her back and sent him sprawling among the knobbly vines. A spear arced through the air where she had been sitting. It crashed through the undergrowth and stuck, quivering, into a tree trunk. Mehan and Anjita whirled. Bast lay grunting curses and rubbing his shoulder.
“Well, well,” a voice said from the shadows. “If it isn’t the mages’ favorite. I said he would turn traitor one day, didn’t I, Sabri?”
Dagger in hand and triumph lighting her eyes, Nastaran stepped into the moonslight. Right behind came Sakihan, eyes restless and hand tight around another spear. At the same moment, Anjita walked forward with hands raised. Munayair’s stomach swooped in anticipation.
“Five gods, you’re finally here. I thought you’d never make it.”
Chapter 29: Truth and Lies
“Jita?” Munayair croaked.
Anjita didn’t look at her, still talking as she stood beside the mercenaries. “I thought youse were clever woodsmen, but it took you this long. Even with all the clues I’ve been dropping …”
Chanda’s ghost stepped in front of Mehan, eyes glinting. Lips tightening, Mehan stood with eyes downcast. Chanda’s body tugged against his grip, trying to continue searching.
“Five gods, how precious.” Nastaran barked a laugh. “Taichar’s cherished prime candidate brought his sister along to hold his hand.”
Mehan froze. “You knew about Chanda?”
“Everyone does,” she taunted. “What a joke, watching you swan about like a prince. Meanwhile, your sister was ripping out throats for the mages.”
Munayair reached into her pocket to touch her two remaining chelka. Those and Tel, with his smeared Find Safety glyphs, were all she had—even Avlingai was missing. She did have the bottle of golden wine and a handful of fine grey ash, if she could think of a way to use th
em. And the skin spells tattooed all over her body that she almost never used.
She looked up to find Anjita watching her from beside the mercenaries. When their eyes met, Anjita’s expression hardened and she looked away.
“You should have told me.” Mehan’s hands had tightened into fists as he glared at Nastaran. “I would have, if he had taken something away from you.”
Nastaran burst into laughter. “What good would that have done? There’s no trust wasted between us.”
As they talked, Munayair watched Bast slip away into the trees out of the corner of her eye. Anjita saw too, and she rolled her eyes but said nothing.
“Stay back, lad,” Sakihan murmured. “Don’t make this hard on yourself.”
“Stay back,” Nastaran echoed, hard-edged and eager. She pulled out a dagger and advanced. “We’re meant to keep you alive, but the others we can bring back in pieces.”
“They don’t dare hurt me, Munayair!” Mehan yelled. “Run!”
“It’s all right, Mehan,” Munayair said. “I can handle this.” She threw down a chelka stone and a shield flared to life around her.
Pulling Chanda behind him, Mehan stepped further away. Reaching over his shoulder for another spear, Sakihan took a long step back. Braying laughter, Nastaran stepped forward only to ricochet off the shield. She pressed against it, and the power fluctuated as her amulet flashed. Munayair dropped the shield before it could break and Nastaran charged, dagger flashing. Anjita intercepted her, deflecting the first jab with an impatient wave of her arm.
Munayair froze, hardly able to believe her eyes. “Jita?”
“Not like this, without a trial,” Anjita snapped. “Try that again and I’ll break your head.”
Snarling, Nastaran turned to look at Sakihan, who nodded. With an expressive eye roll, she turned back to Munayair. “Well?” she said. “I brought you in once—do you want to experience that humiliation again? Come quietly, there’s a good witch.”
Ink Adept Page 29