A Trail of Embers

by C A Kinnee

  Kieran stiffened at the sound of the voice so near his back. The soft mud beneath his feet slid. He dug his heels into the edge of the sinkhole trying to find solid ground.

  “Here. Wait. I’ll help,” Rahdon said, rushing towards him.

  “No, stay back. I’m fine. You’ll only loosen more mud.” Kieran’s foot found solid ground and his heart settled to a steady thump.

  “Grab the bow, you say?” Metreo called from the depths of the pit.

  “No, wait—” Kieran shouted, back-peddling away from the edge.

  Metreo’s weight caught the end of the bow. Off balance, Kieran teetered at the edge of the pit. The mud broke apart as Rahdon blundered into him. Gravity took over. Kieran tumbled into the pit, landing hard as the stinking mud closed over his head. He fought his way to the surface, sputtering and spitting the foul-tasting muck from his mouth. A massive hand closed over the neck of his cloak and pushed him from the pit as effortlessly as a mother cat lifting a kitten.

  Chapter 4

  Shadows cover me,

  coldness surrounds me.

  I miss the beating of your heart.

  Where are you?

  Translated from the Chronicles of the Egg

  Kieran blinked and the foreign stink of the town washed the past from his head. Around him the air was ripe with the odor of too many people living in close proximity. He breathed shallowly, wrinkling his nose. The town smelled worse than a holding pen for pigs. His opinion of Vendonne dropped another notch. Why live here when the great forest beckoned just outside the gates? Obviously, the rain was to blame for the thick gooey mud, and the garbage generated by so many people created the stink, but why were the people so fearful of the outside world that they hid behind wooden walls?

  He shook his head in disgust, toeing a broken board from his path. The feel of the cloying muck sucking at the soles of his boots made his skin crawl. Angry squeaks and the scuttle of tiny feet serenaded every step he took. Something under his boot imploded with a meaty splat. He jumped back, his face freezing in a scowl of disgust.

  The alley opened abruptly onto a narrow dirt road churned to thick pudding by the wheels of passing wagons. As darkness dropped over the town, its citizens headed homeward, their furtive steps eerily similar to the scurry of the rats in the alley.

  Kieran lingered, watching them pass. Why were they so afraid? They kept to the center of the road, watching the shadows while holding their possessions tight. He frowned. It had been the same in the forest. The tough guardsmen of the caravan had watched the sky, badgering the wagon drivers to move faster, anxious to be within the walls of the town before night fell. Was their fear a result of the endless winter, or had it always walked these streets?

  He rested a broad shoulder against the wall and pushed a strand of long black hair aside. The feel of eyes watching from the dark had him looking over his shoulder at the shadows. In the forest, whispers of strange happenings had taken over the campfire talks. Last week the elders had banned hunts to the southern forest, judging them too dangerous after what had happened to Rensaar and his hunting party.

  Rensaar . . . Kieran stared blindly into the gloom thinking of the big scout. Rensaar was a legend amongst his people. He feared nothing and no one. He’d taught Kieran the difference between fighting and fighting to win. No one was bigger or tougher than Rensaar, yet Rensaar had stumbled into camp alone and collapsed by the fire. Kieran remembered the sense of darkness that had passed through him when Rensaar’s gaze touched him. Rensaar’s eyes had been dead—empty pits—his face drawn in a mask of horror. He’d said nothing to the circle of watching men, instead, he’d rolled into a rocking ball and turned his back to the flames. When the healers tried to move him, he’d responded with lightning speed, slashing his hunting knife in a murderous arc. After that, they’d left him to his rocking.

  It had taken the healers all night to bring him back from wherever his mind had wandered. Once healed, he’d told his tale of the last hunt.

  “Beasts in the forest.” Rensaar’s cracked whisper drew all eyes. He took a gulp from the cup of rumor berry wine he held in shaking hands and choked on the fiery liquid. Coughing, he buried his face in the cup, drinking deeply. A healer stepped forward and gently pulled it from his hands.

  “Creatures—you’d see ’em from the corner of your eye, but when you looked again, they weren’t there. Vanished. Gone . . . making you think your brain was addled. It was nightfall when they came for us.” Rensaar laughed brokenly, stopped and looked wildly at the watching men. “I weren’t no coward. You have to see, there was nothing we could do. Shendar fell first. He called us fools and went into the forest alone. I heard him scream . . .”

  Rensaar stopped. In the long quiet, Kieran had wondered if he would speak again.

  He did, softly at first, searching for words, and then with growing intensity.

  “Denon and Clyde were next. We begged them to see reason, stay together, wait for daybreak. When their screams started, Jovan and I ran and hid. It found Jovan. . . I should have died with my men. I was in charge.”

  Tears tracked through his scrubby beard. He rubbed them away with fisted hands.

  “I should have died,” he repeated and fell silent as his shoulders shook under great racking sobs.

  Kieran stared out at the shadowed street. Until now, he had put the story of Rensaar behind him. He didn’t believe Rensaar a coward, but hiding while the thing tore Jovan apart . . . Kieran slumped against the wall. What would he have done? Would it have been different?

  Rensaar answered every question the elders put to him, but each answer brought more questions. The elders and wizards withdrew to their circle to debate the tale. In the end, they’d pronounced what everyone knew—the First Council spoke true. Evil grew with every breath of wind. Kieran believed that more with every step he took from the forest.

  A horse and rider trotted past the alley. The rider was slumped deep in his saddle, head swiveling as he passed, inspecting the shadows. Kieran stepped back, then scowled at the disappearing horse. Fear was contagious. Giving in to it would get him nowhere. He had to find Metreo, Rahdon . . . and the Harmony egg. It all came back to finding the egg. The sooner he accomplished that, the sooner he could leave this place.

  “Brother,” a voice whispered in his head. “Where are you?”

  Kieran stopped in mid-stride. A smile loosened the frozen set of his face. The touch of his twin’s mind against his own shattered his sense of isolation. Twins shared special gifts—his and Orlan’s was the gift of mind link. The elders had tested their link and declared it the strongest they had ever seen. Kieran closed his eyes and cleared his thoughts, opening his mind to Orlan.

  “I’m here,” he said.

  “You’re in danger.” Orlan’s voice washed through his head.

  “I feel it.” Kieran hesitated. He wanted to ask if the First was angry. If he knew that heartvine had spread this far south. Dozens of questions flowed through his brain, but the link felt tenuous, like feathers sifting through his fingers. He concentrated on passing on the sense that the egg was near. Orlan’s touch was fading, fracturing into meaningless bits.

  “. . . coming . . .” Orlan whispered and was gone.

  “What’s coming? Who is coming?” Kieran muttered. His hands clenched into fists. Orlan grew more vague and mysterious with each passing day.

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes. As usual, the link’s touch left him with a headache. He worked his shoulders to loosen his neck. He would worry about the First’s anger later, for now, he would think of the egg. It was close, he was sure of it. He would concentrate on that.

  His stomach rumbled, reminding him that for the last three days, he had subsisted on berries snatched from blighted bushes. Fear of losing the trail had kept him moving. Before he went further, he must eat, or his strength would ebb like the days of winter. Normal winters, he corrected himself.

  But where would he find food? He stared blankly at the scattered buildi
ngs and considered what he knew about towns. Some of the more travelled scouts spoke of inns—places where you could buy a meal. Inn doors were marked with swinging signs bearing the inn’s name—weird exotic names for the most part—names that conjured images of strange creatures or foolish people.

  The men said that the inns were dangerous places where a man could get his throat cut for no greater crime than meeting the eyes of a rich merchant. Dare he risk it? Kieran reached into his pocket and fingered the gold coin he carried, a souvenir of his meeting with Metreo and Rahdon—payment for information. His fingers burned at the contact.

  A blast of wind whipped his wet cloak against his body, bringing with it a bone-shaking shiver. He’d better find an inn before he froze to death. Once his belly was full, he would plan his next move.

  The fat raindrops fell harder as he stepped from the alley. They spiraled past the opening of his hood and flooded his eyes. Tucking his head down, he pushed through the murk, cursing the darkness shading his footsteps and hiding the deep puddles in his path.

  “The inn had best be close,” he muttered, stumbling over a rock. “If it’s not, I won’t have to worry about freezing to death, I’ll drown first.”

  Somewhere ahead a door opened sending a wave of raucous laughter into the street. The wind caught the edge of the inn’s battered wooden sign, and it rocked restlessly on its rusty hinges. On the front of the sign a fat rooster crowed at a faded sun. From the looks of the sign, the Waking Rooster had seen better days. Kieran stopped outside the door. He knew nothing of what waited on the other side. Slowly he swiped his damp palms over the thighs of his pants. He tried to ignore the heavy thud of his heart. He could do this. Doggedly pulling a deep breath into his lungs, he touched the hilt of the knife tucked into his belt. Before he could change his mind, he took a step and shouldered the door open.

  The stink of humanity descended on him in a rush of noise and smoke. He hesitated in the entrance, holding the edge of the heavy oaken door. A gust of wind snatched the door from his grasp, and it crashed against the wall with a resounding thud. Silence fell. All eyes turned in his direction.

  “Shut the door, lad, before the stink of rain drowns us!” a balding man bellowed.

  A shouted chorus of agreement followed.

  Red-faced, Kieran jumped to pull the door closed. The last thing he wanted was attention. If word reached Metreo and Rahdon he was hunting them . . . He scanned the faces of the surrounding people searching for a sign that anyone had shown more than a passing interest in him. His hands clenched at his side as he waited, ready to defend himself. No one looked his way. The inn’s patrons settled back to their conversations or contemplation of their ale.

  More confident, Kieran pushed through the crowd. A din of voices assaulted him from every side. The warmth emanating from the massive blackened river rock hearth drew him to a heavy chair placed against the rock. He settled into the chair, feeling the heat wrap around his frozen limbs, melting away the ice. In the open mouth of the pit, flames ate at soaking wood, belching out eye-stinging clouds of smoke. He followed the course of the smoke upwards. Great wooden rafters stretched the length of the room—giant branches closing off the sky.

  “Ale, lad?” A barmaid approached and winked merrily at him.

  His stomach answered, growling loudly.

  “Some medino pie?” she asked, smiling at the rumbling.

  Kieran nodded. The woman sauntered toward the kitchen, rolling her hips as she passed a table of wagon masters. Their shouts of appreciation made Kieran’s cheeks redden. He sagged deeper in the heavy chair and tried to tune out their calls by focusing on the great room.

  Heavy boards, stained dark by the passage of time, crisscrossed the length of the walls. Their ragged design was hidden by a press of people that would fill his peoples’ meeting square to overflowing. Awestruck, he listened to the loud voices arguing and shouting in a mix of languages. He had picked well. The inn appeared to be a favorite for traders visiting the walled town. Strangers here were probably as common as leaves on a tree.

  “Good trip, Jaran par Vionn?” asked a lean man of a wagon master seated at a nearby table.

  “Fair. Brought all safely through the forest. A few worries though,” answered the wagon master.

  “Worries? What type of worries?” The thin man leaned forward.

  Kieran leaned forward listening as hard as the other man.

  The wagon master glanced at him and raised his voice slightly, including Kieran in his conversation.

  “It was the last night after we’d bedded down, that trouble found us. We’d just posted our watch and found our bedrolls, when out in the forest there arose such a screeching we thought we were under attack. We went to arms and waited, but attack never came.”

  The wagon master shook his gray head as his rough face wrinkled in puzzlement. “We stayed that way all night. Not one of us got a wink of sleep. Some of the guards wanted to search the trees, but others argued that whatever was out there wanted to lure us in. I be thinking that whatever waited wanted to take us one by one. Daron par Fennon swears he saw something at the edge of the tree line. Something like a cross between man and beast. We broke camp at first light and hauled wagon out of there.”

  The other man snorted in disbelief. “You lads must have tapped the kegs.”

  “No, I swear . . .” The words were lost in the clank of glasses.

  “Here! Some music to celebrate the end of winter! A hand here, lads. Help me move these tables!” called a fiddler pushing his way through the crowd.

  Rough hands heaved the lanky musician onto his makeshift stage. The strings on his fiddle wailed as he drew a bow across them.

  “Play the Journey of Russo par Shannon!” called a barmaid.

  “No, the Courting of Shanae par Donan!” A bull-like guard from the wagon train shouted down a graybeard at the edge of the crowd. His heavy arm waved, sending a shower of ale over his companions.

  “Easy, lads, we’ve got all night. My fiddle is just warming up!” The musician dropped bow to strings once more and scratched out the opening notes of a tune that soon had the guests stomping in unison.

  Two women, skirts swirling above their knees, kicked off their heavy clogs and skipped a wild May dance. To Kieran, the people of Vendonne were trying too hard to forget spring’s failure to arrive. Their desperation gave a heavy weight to their merriment.

  “Here, boy, eat.” The barmaid slid a plate of medino pie and a pint of warm ale onto the scarred table in front of him.

  “I thank you,” he said formally.

  She smiled and accepted his coin, dropping a handful of smaller ones onto the table. Hips swaying, she passed the wagon masters’ table to another round of compliments.

  Kieran broke the crust of pie and watched steam curl upward. Now that it was here, could he eat it? His stomach churned. The last time he had accepted food he didn’t prepare, he’d landed in trouble. He frowned down at the pie—deep trouble. The crowded room faded as he remembered the scene in the forest. He’d been as stupid and easy to trick as a child. The memory left a lump in his throat, and his cheeks flushed with color.

  ***

  Metreo half-flung him out of the sinkhole, laughing at his mud-streaked face.

  “You be looking like you’ve wallowed with pigs, lad. We’d best be finding the nearest creek. A pretty picture, eh, Rahdon?” Metreo said.

  Rahdon wrinkled his nose and sniffed. “I be thinking you should toss him back,” he muttered.

  “Come now, Rahdon. We caused this mess, so I think we should fix it. Build up a fire. The lad and I will scrub away this misbegotten muck,” Metreo chided.

  Metreo’s massive arm closed companionably over Kieran’s shoulders and dragged him protesting to the creek where frigid water made short work of the mud. They returned to camp soaking wet, but free of the slimy reek of the hole. Rahdon had built a blazing fire, one sure to attract the attention of any four-legged—or worse—two-legged creature for
miles. Disgust flickered across Metreo’s face and vanished in a blink.

  “Well, what’s for food?” demanded Metreo.

  “I don’t need anything,” Kieran began stiffly. “Thank you for your aid, but now I must continue to my camp.” If Metreo hadn’t pulled him into the pit, he wouldn’t be in this mess, he thought sourly.

  “No. Rahdon has stew. Come eat with us. Then you can make your way home,” Metreo said.

  Rahdon pulled a pot from the fire and a whiff of fragrant stew wafted towards Kieran. His mouth watered. Perhaps it would be rude to turn down their offering.

  “Rabbit,” Rahdon said, nodding at the pot. “We trapped some fat hares this morning. Your forest has good hunting.” He pulled a handful of herbs from a small bag and stirred them into the stew.

  Kieran, staring at the pot, missed the glance that passed between the men. Trapped between courtesy and a growing need to recheck the wards, he decided to eat and escape their kindness. He accepted the dish of steaming stew and a chunky wooden spoon.

  “Wild onions and parsnips,” he said in surprise after the first taste. He took another bite, trying to identify the underlying flavor.

  “Aye, Rahdon is a good cook. He knows his herbs,” said Metreo as he stretched and reached for the pot. Rahdon chose that moment to bend forward and their hands collided. The pot tipped, spewing its contents into the flames.

  Rahdon leapt back cursing as the stew boiled into the fire. A plume of thick black smoke spiraled upward.

  Kieran guiltily surveyed his empty bowl. Unruffled, Metreo reached into his pack and pulled out some sticks of dried meat.

  “Trail rations, Rahdon. They’ll toughen you up if they don’t break your teeth first,” he said.

  “I must be going,” Kieran said and stood. The ground dipped beneath him. His head felt heavy, as though compressed by the surrounding air. He took a step and staggered. His legs buckled. “You’ve poisoned . . . me.” His words were slurred and breathy. Blackness closed his eyes.

  ***