"You can't be serious. Sister Maren will not do that."
"I'm not leaving this spot unless she does."
"Richard, we'll go back and see if Sister Maren will discuss this, but you can't stay here. It is not worth dying for!"
He regarded her with a cool expression. "It is to me."
Her tongue wet her lips. "Richard, you don't know what you're doing. This is a dangerous place. I'm responsible for you. I cannot allow you to stay here!
"If you won't come away with me, then I will have to use the collar and make you come with me, and I know you don't want that."
Richard's grip tightened on the sword's hilt. "Sister Verna is being punished in retaliation against me. I have made a vow to myself to restore Verna to Sister. I can't allow the sanction to stand. I'll do whatever I must, die here if I have to.
"If you use the collar to hurt me, or drag me off, I'll fight you, with everything I have. I don't know who will win, but if that happens, I am sure of one thing: one of us will die. If it's you, then the war will have started. If I die, then your test to become a Sister will end on the first day. Sister Verna will still be a novice, but that is where she stands now. At least I will have done my best."
"You would be willing to die? For this?"
"Yes. It is that important to me. I will not allow Sister Verna to be punished because of what I have done. It was unjust."
Her brow wrinkled. "But... Sister Maren is the headmistress of the novices. I am a novice. I can't go to her and tell her she must reverse the order—she will skin me alive!"
"I am the cause of the trouble; you are simply the messenger. If she punishes you, I would not stand for it, any more than I will stand for what was done to Sister Verna. If Sister Maren wishes to start a war, then let it start. If she wishes to keep my truce, then she will have to come to me, here, and agree to my terms."
Pasha stared at him. "Richard, if you are here when the sun goes down, you will die."
"Then I would suggest you hurry."
She turned, holding her arm out toward the city. "But... I must go all the way back. It took me hours to get here. It will take me hours to go back, and then I must find Sister Maren, and then convince her that you are serious, and even if I could get her to agree to return with me, we must still get back here."
"You should have ridden a horse."
"But I ran here as soon as I realized where you were! I wasn't thinking about a horse, or anything else! I knew there was trouble and just came after you!"
He gave her an even look. "Then you made a mistake, Pasha. You should have thought before you acted. Next time, maybe you will think first."
Pasha put a hand to her chest as she gulped air. "Richard, there is hardly time..."
"Then you had better hurry, or your new charge will be sitting here, in Hagen Woods, when the sun goes down."
Her eyes moistened with frustration. "Richard, please, you don't understand. This is no game. This place is dangerous."
He turned a little and pointed with the sword. "Yes, I know."
Pasha peered around him, to the shadows, and gasped. Hesitantly, she stepped to the thing by the trees. Richard didn't follow. He knew what was there; two halves of a creature from a nightmare, its guts spilled across the ground.
Its sinuous head, like a man's half melted into a snake, or lizard, was a picture of wickedness itself; covered in a glossy, tight, black skin, smooth down to the base of the thick neck where it began welting up into pliable scales. The lithe body was shaped much like a man's. The whole of the creature seemed made for fluid speed, deadly quick grace.
It wore hides covered with short, black hair, and a full-length, black, hooded cape. What Richard had taken for claws were not claws, but three bladed knives, one in each webbed hand, with crosswise handles held in the fist. Steel extensions went up each side of the wrist for support when a strike was made.
Pasha stood dumbstruck. Richard finally went to stand by her, looking down at the two halves of the thing. Whatever it was, it bled, the same as any other creature. And, it smelled, like fish guts rotting in the hot sun.
Pasha stood trembling as she stared at the thing. "Dear Creator," she whispered. "It's a mriswith." She took a step back. "What happened to it?"
"What happened to it? I killed it, that's what happened to it. What sort of thing is a mriswith?"
Her big brown eyes came to his. "What do you mean you killed it? You can't kill a mriswith. No one has ever killed a mriswith."
Her face was a picture of consternation.
"Well, someone has killed one now."
"You killed it at night, didn't you."
"Yes." Richard frowned. "How do you know that?"
"Mriswith are rarely seen outside Hagen Woods, but there have been reports over the last few thousand years. Reports given by people who somehow managed to live long enough to tell what they saw. The mriswith always take on the color of what is around them. In one report, one rose up in the tidal flats, and was the color of mud. One time in the sand dunes, it was the color of the sand. One report noted that in the light of a golden sunset, the mriswith was golden. When they kill at night, they're never seen, because they are black, like the night. We think they have the ability, maybe the magic, to assume the color of their surroundings. Since this one is black, I guessed that you killed it at night."
Richard took her arm, gently pulling her away. She seemed transfixed by the creature. He could feel her trembling under his hand.
"Pasha, what are they?"
"Things that live in the Hagen Woods. I don't know what they are. I've heard it said that in the war that separated the New World from the Old, the wizards created armies of the mriswith. Some people believe the mriswith are sent by the Nameless One.
"But the Hagen Woods are their home. And the home of other things. They are why no one lives out in the country on this side of the river. Sometimes, they come out of the woods, and hunt people. They never devour their kills, they seem simply to kill for the sake of killing. Mriswith disembowel their victims. Some live long enough to tell what got them; that is how we know as much as we know."
"How long have the Hagen Woods, the creatures, been here?"
"As far as I know, at least as long as the Palace of the Prophets, nearly three thousand years."
She took a fistful of his shirt. "In all that time, no one, not once, has ever killed a mriswith. Every victim said that they never saw it until after it slashed them open. Some of those victims have been Sisters, and wizards, and not even their Han warned them. They said they were blind to its coming, as if they were born without the gift. How is it you were able to kill a mriswith?"
Richard remembered seeing it coming in his mind. He took her hand from his shirt. "Maybe I was just lucky. Someone was bound to get one sooner or later. Maybe this one was just a half-wit."
"Richard, please, come away with me. This is not the way to have a test of wills with the Palace. This could get you killed."
"I'm not testing anyone's will, I'm taking responsibility for my actions. It's my fault Sister Verna was demoted; I've got to set it straight. I'm taking a stand for what's right. If I don't do that, then I am nothing."
"Richard, if the sun sets on you in the Hagen Woods—"
"You are wasting precious time, Pasha."
52
It was late afternoon when he heard them coming. He heard the sound of only one horse, and Pasha's voice calling out the direction. At last they broke into the clearing.
Richard sheathed his sword. "Bonnie!" He gave the horse's neck a scratch. "How you doing, girl?"
Bonnie nuzzled his chest. Richard pushed his fingers in the side of her mouth and felt the bit while Sister Maren frowned at him.
"I'm glad to see you use a snaffle bit, Sister."
"The stable boys said they couldn't find the spade bits." She glared down at him suspiciously. "Seems they vanished. Mysteriously."
"That so?" Richard shrugged. "Can't say I'm sorry."
"So, Richard," Sister Maren said, as she dismounted, "I am here, as you requested. What is it you want."
She knew very well what he wanted, but Richard decided to restate it in a pleasant tone. "It's quite simple. Sister Verna is to be restored to Sister. At once. And you are also to return her dacra to her."
She gestured dismissively. "And here I thought you would want something unreasonable. This is simple. It is done. Verna is returned to Sister. It makes no difference to me."
"And when she asks why, I don't want you to tell her about this business with me. Just say you reconsidered, or something, and decided to reinstate her. If you want, you can tell her you prayed for guidance from your Creator, and it came to you that she should remain a Sister."
She brushed some of her fine, sandy hair back from her face. "That would suit me. Are you satisfied? Is everything to your liking?"
"That would end it, and keep our truce."
"Good. Now that the trifling matters are dispensed with, show me this dead bear. Pasha has half the Palace in an uproar with some babble about you killing a mriswith." Pasha furiously studied the ground as Sister Maren directed a scolding frown in her direction. "The foolish child never sets her slippered foot on anything that hasn't been swept, scrubbed, or polished. The only time she sticks her head out of doors is go see the latest bolt of lace to come to Tanimura. She wouldn't know a rabbit from an ox, and she certainly wouldn't know a. ...What is that smell?"
"Bear guts," Richard said.
He held out his arm, showing her the way. Pasha deferentially stepped aside. Sister Maren straightened her dress at her hips and marched toward the trees. Pasha peeked up at him, and when they heard Sister Maren gasp, her head came the rest of the way up and she smiled.
When Sister Maren stepped backwards to them, her face white as bed sheets, Pasha resumed her study of the ground.
Sister Maren's trembling fingers lifted Pasha's chin. "You have spoken the truth," she whispered. "Forgive me, child."
Pasha curtsied. "Of course, Sister Maren. Thank you for taking the time to witness my report."
Sister Maren's haughty attitude had vanished, to be replaced by sincere concern. She turned to Richard. "How did this creature die?" Richard lifted the sword clear of its scabbard a half foot and then slid it home. "Then what Pasha said is true? You killed it?"
Richard shrugged. "I spend quite a lot of my time out of doors. I knew it was no rabbit."
Sister Maren returned to the creature, mumbling to herself. "I must study it. This is an unprecedented opportunity."
Pasha looked to Richard and wrinkled her nose in disgust as the Sister ran her finger over the lipless slit of a mouth, touched the ear holes, and ran her hand across the glossy black skin. She tugged at the hide clothes, pulling them this way and that as she inspected them.
She rose to her feet, peering down at the entrails. Finally, she turned to Richard.
"Where is the cape? Pasha said it had a cape."
When the mriswith had lunged, and he had sliced it in two, the cape had been billowed open and so it was undamaged. While Richard had been waiting for Pasha to return with the Sister, he had accidentally learned the astonishing thing the cape could do. After that, he had washed it clean of blood, hung it over branches to dry, and then stuffed it away in his pack. He had no intention of giving that cape away.
"It's mine. It is a prize of battle. I'm keeping it."
She looked perplexed. "But, the knives... don't men fancy things like that as prizes of battle? Why would you want a cape instead of the knives?"
Richard tapped the hilt. "I have my sword. Why would I want knives that have proven inferior to my sword? I've always wanted a long black cape, and its a fine one, so I'm keeping it."
The furrows of her scowl stole back onto her face. "Is this another condition of your truce?"
"If need be."
The furrows softened. She sighed. "I guess it doesn't matter. It is the creature that is important, not its cape." She turned back to the reeking corpse. "I must study this."
While she bent back to the mriswith, Richard hooked his bow, quiver of arrows, and pack to the front of the saddle. He put his foot in the stirrup and sprang up onto Bonnie.
"Don't stay after the sun goes down, Sister Maren."
She glanced over her shoulder. "My horse. You can't have my horse."
Richard smiled apologetically. "I twisted my ankle fighting the mriswith. I'm sure you wouldn't want the Palace's newest pupil limping all the way home, now would you? I might fall and crack my skull."
"But..."
Richard reached down and gripped Pasha's arm. She gave a surprised gasp as he yanked her up, sitting her behind him on Bonnie. "Please don't let the sun set on you here, Sister. I hear it's dangerous in the Hagen Woods after dark."
Pasha hid her face from the Sister, and he could feel her giggling softly against his back.
"Yes, yes," Sister Maren said, her eyes already lost to the mriswith, "all right. You two go on back. You have done well, both of you. I must study this creature before the animals get to it."
Pasha held him so tight that he could hardly breathe. It was distracting to feel her firm breasts mashed against his back. Her fingers gripped his chest, trying to get a better hold on him, as if she was afraid she might fall at any moment.
When they were clear of the woods, and into the open hills, he slowed Bonnie to a walk and pried Pasha's hands off.
She clamped them right back. "Richard! I might fall!"
He pulled her hands loose again. "You're not going to fall. Just hold on easy, and let your hips move with the horse. Use your balance; you don't need to cling for dear life."
She gripped his sides. "Well, I'll try."
The sky was turning golden as they descended the rounded hills toward the city. Richard swayed with Bonnie's steps as she went over rocks and across shallow ravines, and thought about the mriswith, and his hunger to fight it. The craving to go back into the Hagen Woods still burned in the back of his mind.
"Your ankle isn't really twisted, is it?" Pasha asked after a long ride in silence.
"No."
"You lied to a Sister. Richard, you must learn that lying is wrong. The Creator hates lies."
"So Sister Verna has told me."
He decided he didn't want to ride anymore with her holding on to him, so he dismounted and lead Bonnie by the reins. Pasha scooted forward into the saddle.
"Then why did you do it if you know it is wrong?"
"Because I wanted to make Sister Maren walk back. She made you walk all the way out there again as punishment for something that was not your fault."
Pasha slid off Bonnie and came up to walk beside him. She raked her fingers through her hair, trying to arrange it to her satisfaction.
"That was very nice of you." She put a hand on his arm. "I think we are going to become good friends."
Richard pretended to turn and look around as he walked so that her arm fell away. "Can you get this collar off me?"
"The Rada'Han? Well, no. Only a full Sister is able to remove a Rada'Han. I don't know how."
"Then we are not going to be friends. I have no use for you."
"You have gone to great risk for Sister Verna. She must be your friend. A person only does such things for friends. You went out of your way to see that I had a horse to ride back. You must hope we can become friends."
Richard watched the country ahead as he walked. "Sister Verna is not my friend. I did as I did only because what was done to her was my fault and was unjust. That is the only reason.
"When I decide to get this collar off, only those who help me will be my friends. Sister
Verna has made it clear that she will not help me get the collar off. She intends that it remain on me. When the time comes, if she stands in my way, I will kill her, the same as I will kill any other Sister who tries to stop me. The same as I will kill you, if you stand in my way."
"Richard," she scoffed, "you are a mere student; you should not brag about your powers so. It's unbecoming to a young man. You should not even joke about such things." She took his arm again. "I don't believe you would ever hurt a woman..."
"Then you believe wrong."
"Most young men have trouble adjusting at first, but you will come to trust in me. We will become friends, I'm sure of it."
Richard yanked his arm away and spun to her. "This is no game, Pasha. If you get it my way when I decide the time has come, I will cut your pretty little throat."
She peered up at him with a coy smile. "Do you really think I have a pretty neck?"
"It's a figure of speech," he growled.
He moved on, tugging Bonnie ahead. Pasha hastened her step to keep up. She walked in silence for a time, busying herself with pulling little knots and burrs from her hair.
Richard was in no mood to be pleasant. Killing the mriswith had brought him a strange feeling of fulfillment, but it was fading now, and his frustration with his situation was returning, and it brought with it the anger.
Pasha's face brightened. She put on a pleasant smile.
"I don't know anything about you, Richard. Why don't you tell me about yourself?"
"What do you want to know?"
"Well, what did you do... before you came to the Palace? Did you have some kind of skill? A profession you worked at?"
Richard scuffed his boots through the dirt. "I was a woods guide."
"Where?"
"Where I grew up, in Hartland, in Westland."
Pasha pulled the white blouse away from her chest, trying to dry it. "I'm afraid I don't know where that is. I don't know about the New World. Someday, when I'm a Sister, maybe I'll be called upon to go there, and help a boy."
Richard didn't say anything, so she went on. "So you were a woods guide. That must have been scary, being out in the woods all the time. Weren't you afraid of the animals? I'd be afraid of the animals."
Stone of Tears Page 87