“Keep a wide perimeter,” she decided. “Do not be seen.”
“More prisoners? They come out often, usually singularly or in pairs.”
“No,” she replied, clearly surprising him.
“We can whittle down their numbers.”
“Their numbers will be irrelevant when the legions catch up to us in but a few days.”
“That is the place Scathmizzane told us to go,” the scout reminded. “A hundred miles a day, he commanded, and so we have done over these two weeks. Will he tolerate our hesitation?”
“He named me as cochcal,” Tuolonatl reminded. “If he is angered, it will fall on me.”
Ataquixt gave her a look that sent shivers through her, a look of great concern. “I would not like that,” he admitted.
She returned a smile to comfort the man. “We need no more prisoners. We need not worry about diminishing their numbers—we will overrun them with ease as our ranks grow. Take the three prisoners back to the augurs at the mirrors. Bid the augurs to bring forth Pixquicauh, that we might learn this new language the children of Cizinfozza use.”
Ataquixt seemed perplexed.
“Do you think we should simply burn down their building and their tents, with them inside? Kill them all?” Tuolonatl asked.
The man’s expression barely changed.
“We have many weeks ahead of us, with tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Cizinfozza’s children standing between us and the eastern sea. We will not kill them all. We will not even battle them all, and fewer still if we can speak with them and coax subservience without too much blood. To build the greater kingdom of Tonoloya does not mean eradicating the children of Cizinfozza, my young mundunugu. It means subjugating them. And who knows? They are not stupid beings. Perhaps we will coax them to see the light of Scathmizzane.”
“Steal them from Cizinfozza?” asked Ataquixt, and he seemed quite intrigued.
“Cizinfozza is destroyed. So Kithkukulikhan showed us, when he ate and vomited the sun. Cizinfozza’s children are orphaned. Glorious Gold is great.”
“Tonoloya will need slaves,” Ataquixt mumbled, nodding as he regarded the distant building and tents.
Tuolonatl didn’t disagree, though she wasn’t really thinking along those lines. Not slaves, she silently considered.
She looked more carefully at Ataquixt, and had a notion that he, too, wasn’t pleased by his last declaration.
Tuolonatl was glad of that.
* * *
She clutched Talmadge’s lens tightly, but she wasn’t looking through the item as she had before. Using the power of the quartz gemstone set within it, Aoleyn was casting her vision farther than the lens had ever before shown her. She looked to the south and saw the mountains so clearly, running east and west beyond her sight. She looked to the mountains in the north, the beginning of the range that ran straight north from her position and again out of sight.
She looked to the east and saw the next village in line, and then some northeast, some southeast, many more scattered about, larger and more impressive than all the lake villages she had known, most containing more people than all of those lake villages combined. And these were the Wilderland towns, according to Talmadge and Aydrian—tiny villages compared to those farther to the east in the kingdom known as Honce-the-Bear.
Aoleyn couldn’t resist, and she cast her vision farther still, glimpsing vast areas. In one such glance, she noted the high walls and towers of a city, on a scale beyond anything she had ever seen before. She went there with her sight, but only briefly, for it was far, far away, and the magic taxed her.
And she hadn’t yet even used it in the most important way.
Still, she did go there, and she saw the towering walls, the huge docks on a great and wide river, the castle, and another massive stone structure that could have housed all of the Usgar and more, with ease—perhaps all of the uamhas as well. A single structure!
The young witch blew out her breath and let the magic expire, then took a few deep breaths to collect her thoughts and focus.
She grasped the quartz again, tightly, but took still more steadying breaths. She was afraid now, as she faced the west.
With a growl of defiance, Aoleyn sent forth her magical sight, looking back along the trail that had brought the caravan to this point. Three blinks showed her the structure called Matinee and the tents around it, and Aoleyn breathed a sigh of relief to see that it seemed as it had been when they had left. Men and women mulled about peacefully and at ease, with no bright-faced enemies to be seen.
She pushed farther, but just beyond Matinee her vision blurred and became a haze of light, as if she was looking at the sun itself through a dense fog. Aoleyn pressed with all her magical strength, but to no avail.
She let go of the quartz magic and found herself gasping as she tried to hold her balance.
She looked to the west again, but not with the magic, wondering what had blocked her way. Perhaps it was her own exhaustion, she mused, and she muttered curses at herself for not having had the courage to look to the west at first. Even in that mind-set, though, the woman held doubts. How curious, she thought, that her power and sight should reach its end precisely at Matinee.
Determined, she spun back to the east and called upon the magic, and soon she again glimpsed the great city on the river.
That city was much farther away than Matinee.
She turned, growled, and threw all her power into the quartz, and she managed again to see Matinee—and nothing beyond it.
Aoleyn found herself trembling when she stepped out of the magic once more. Something strange was happening in the west, and she feared that she knew the source.
“Aoleyn?”
The call caught her by surprise. She jumped a bit and turned quickly to see the approach of Bahdlahn.
“You frightened me.”
“It is open ground,” the young man said, looking around. “I called to you over and over.”
Aoleyn gave a sheepish laugh and shook her hair, then pulled it back from her face. “I was busy,” she explained and held up Talmadge’s magical lens. She noted Bahdlahn’s movements and realized that he seemed somewhat unsure of himself here, nervous even.
“What did you see?”
“Matinee,” she told him, but paused there, before recounting the wall of light that had stopped her at that place. No need to get him uneasy, she figured, until she knew more about what had happened. “Oh, and I looked east, Bahdlahn, to the villages we will pass, and a city, a great city! Greater than anything you could imagine, with tall walls and more people than we could count if we had years to do it!”
“Aydrian has told me,” he said.
“Oh, but hearing about it is not the same,” Aoleyn promised. “Wait until you see it, Bahdlahn. The world is bigger than we thought, than we dreamed. There is so much for us out there—I know it.”
Bahdlahn nodded but didn’t seem nearly as enthusiastic as Aoleyn would have expected. She hid her wince well enough, fearing that she had brought on this apparent melancholy.
“We will learn so much in that place,” she said, trying to bring him up emotionally beside her. “You will grow, I will grow. We will—”
“I’m not going there,” he interrupted. “Not now, at least.”
“It will be weeks still, yes.”
“No,” he said with a suddenness that surprised her. “The next village is called Appleby.”
“Appleby-in-Wilderland, yes.”
“Talmadge and Khotai have a friend there they will introduce to Aydrian,” Bahdlahn explained. “That friend will guide Aydrian beyond Appleby, and will lead you and the caravan.”
“Bahdlahn?”
He stared into her eyes and she saw the sorrow there, but also a determination.
“Guide us where?” she quietly asked.
“East?” the young man asked as much as answered. “To that city you saw, maybe.”
“What are you sa
ying? Speak it plainly.”
“I’m going south with Talmadge and Khotai,” he replied, his voice strong and confident. “They agreed. South to the mountains, and over the mountains, to the land Khotai called home.”
“Why?”
“She would warn her people, as Aydrian wishes to warn his.”
Aoleyn wanted to argue, and she almost said that the caravan, too, would then go south, before realizing how foolish that would be. The mountains to the south towered great and tall, snow-capped, though summer was upon the land. The journey would be difficult, much more so than traveling the flat grounds toward the east, with villages all along the way.
“Khotai’s people are protected by a wall of mountains,” she argued instead.
“The bright-faced enemies crossed mountains to get to us,” Bahdlahn reminded.
Aoleyn had no counter. She felt like her world was melting away before her. She wanted Bahdlahn to invite her along—why hadn’t he done so immediately? Why would he leave her? She had known him since the day he was born, had grown up beside him, had become his only friend, his dearest friend, even his lover.
“Bahdlahn, oh Bahdlahn, you don’t have to go away.”
“I do,” he said softly, the strength and confidence in his voice beginning to crack.
“I … I didn’t mean…” the woman stuttered.
“I know,” he said. “I know what you meant, and why.”
“Do’no hate me,” she begged.
“I could’no,” he said. “I could’no do anything but love you.”
“But you’re leaving.”
“I have to,” he said.
“The world is too big,” she whispered, trying as much to make sense of all this as to convince Bahdlahn. “I’ll not ever see you again.”
Bahdlahn came forward and hugged her, and whispered in her ear, “You will. My word, you will. And maybe…”
He stopped and stepped back, staring at her, trying to talk but unable to force any sound from his trembling jaw.
Aoleyn fought back her tears and once again reconsidered her choice, that night on the lake. She was surprised at how terrifying she found the thought of Bahdlahn leaving her side, and this would not be happening if she had—
But no. She put that thought aside. She remembered Aydrian’s words and remembered the other side to her decision, the emotions and needs that had led her to realize that she had no room at that time for holding Bahdlahn so close to her. It wouldn’t have been fair to him. This journey with Talmadge and Khotai would show him marvelous things, she expected. He needed to learn about himself through his own eyes and not hers. She didn’t doubt that he loved her. How could he not?
That was part of the problem. Aoleyn had been his dearest friend, along with his mother, for all of his life. Aoleyn had been his strength and his salvation—she had saved him from death on more than one occasion. Everything he knew about love and trust and intimacy he knew from her. Of course he loved her.
Did she love him? On so many levels, that answer was a screamed yes in her heart and mind, but, as with Bahdlahn, what choice did she have? She was Bahdlahn’s only friend, and he, hers. They were two entwined by harsh circumstance as much as by anything else, and yet here was a wide world, full of so many mysteries and wonders, suddenly spread before them.
Aoleyn didn’t have the answer, as she hadn’t found any answer that night on the lakeshore. She didn’t know what she didn’t know, and that, she understood so clearly, was very much about the world and about herself.
“I go back to fight with Catriona,” Bahdlahn said after a long silence. “Would you join us?”
Aoleyn shook her head.
Bahdlahn accepted that with a nod, turned, and started away.
“I don’t want you to go,” Aoleyn whispered, but under her breath so that he could not hear.
“Bahdlahn!” she called then, more loudly, stopping him and turning him about.
“I’ll never let go of the memory of our night on the mountain,” she told him.
His jaw moved as if he meant to respond, but he just made some weird gesture—part shrug, part head shake, part throwing his arms up in surrender—and spun about, walking more briskly away from her.
Aoleyn thought that it shouldn’t hurt this much.
But it did.
8
REVELATIONS
Connebragh opened her eyes, then jumped up in panic, only relaxing when she realized that her darkness barricade was still in place. She had dozed only briefly. The witch rested back against the stone wall of the shallow cave and took a deep breath, trying to come to terms with the hopelessness and the horror. She admitted to herself her moral failure of the previous night: she had been glad when she heard the other voices, terrified screams of men and women being chased down by the ruthless, bright-faced invaders—glad that it was them and not her.
None of the trio had gotten much sleep, for patrols had been all about their little hiding place all through the night. Connebragh had used her diamond to keep their hole darker, but the flip side of that magic was that they couldn’t know if the bright-faced sidhe were lingering right outside.
“How many more nights?” Asba said from across the small floor, barely three strides from Connebragh but invisible to her in the darkness of the cave.
“Is the night even over?” Tamilee whispered in reply.
“I think it is,” said Connebragh.
“Have you heard anything?
“No.”
“Release your magic?” Tamilee offered.
Connebragh took another deep breath and clutched her crystals closer. For all she knew, the sidhe could be right outside, ready and waiting. Still, the three certainly couldn’t stay in here for much longer.
She called to the diamond-flecked crystal, ending the song. The darkness diminished quickly and sunlight streamed in. It was late morning, for the bright sun was obviously already over the peaks of Fireach Speuer.
Connebragh looked to her uamhas companions, lying in each other’s arms, naked under a flimsy fur that barely covered their torsos. When the immediate danger of patrolling sidhe had passed them by, the two had fallen together for comfort. Connebragh understood, surely, and wished that she had someone, anyone, to clutch.
Asba sat up and reached for his clothes. Tamilee crawled to the entrance of the cave and peered out. She looked back at Connebragh. “Clear.”
Connebragh pulled herself from the wall and crept up beside Tamilee, even rested her head on the woman’s bare shoulder for a moment to take yet another deep breath, this one of relief. She was the first out of the cave, with the other two joining her after they had dressed.
It wasn’t hard to find evidence of last night’s commotion. They were still among the willows on the southwestern reaches of what had been the shoreline of Loch Beag, and the ground was soft enough to show the passage of booted sidhe, of their clawing lizard mounts, of running lakemen.
By the time Asba and Tamilee caught up to Connebragh, she was able to point out a stretch of muddy ground where a person had been dragged, heels dug in determinedly but futilely.
“Another group caught,” Asba muttered, anger thick in his voice, his fists clenched in frustration. “We should have come out to help.”
The two women exchanged looks, both understanding and neither believing a word of it. They couldn’t fight the bright-faced invaders, and even if they did, and somehow won a skirmish, the area would soon flood with warriors. They had seen it before, after the fight that had brought the two refugees and their dying friend from Carrachan Shoal to Connebragh.
Two weeks after that, from afar, they had watched a group of refugees, probably from Car Seileach, the town nearest their position, chase off a band of sidhe. Before the three could get near those victorious humans—indeed, before the villagers had even lowered their hands from cheering—the sidhe had returned with a hundred reinforcements.
“How long can we do this?” Connebragh asked, as much to herself
as the others.
“What choice?” Asba replied. “There is nowhere to go.”
“I was glad to hear others caught last night,” Connebragh admitted, looking down in shame. She sniffled back a sob and looked up sharply, expecting consternation, but to her relief, and also her resigned horror, she found Asba and Tamilee nodding their agreement.
“What is this doing to us?” Connebragh asked. “What is left of us?”
“Were you glad because they were just uamhas?” Tamilee asked.
“No!” Connebragh blurted. “No … even if it was Usgar … I was glad it wasn’t us.”
Tamilee came over, nodding, and gave the witch a much-needed hug.
“We have to get out of here,” Connebragh whispered.
“There is nowhere to go,” said Tamilee.
To the south, along the rim of the gorge that now held a glittering city of gold and bright colors, a gong sounded, followed by a blast of many horns.
The three moved cautiously through the willows, heading that way, carefully picking their way along smaller paths they had come to know well in the weeks since the invasion. They slowed as they neared some high ground that they knew bordered Car Seileach on the north. Strangely, no sidhe seemed to be about.
They crept closer, compelled. They heard crying, a plea for mercy, another blowing of horns.
Asba led the way, belly-crawling up to the top of a nearby ridge, daring it, though it was a place they had often seen sidhe sentinels.
From the top, they could see the ruins of the lakeside village, though many structures had been rebuilt and many of the bright-faced invaders now milled about, gathering about a long and sparse structure consisting of a raised platform covered by a series of posts and pillars, with many crossbeams, from which hung many ropes.
A sidhe in robes stood atop the platform, preaching to the gathering, rousing them. He spun about, and Connebragh gasped, then planted her face in the grass, in a panic that she had been too loud.
“Shh,” Asba whispered in her ear, but she could tell from his touch that the sight of that one had unnerved him as well, for the priest’s face was a skull, and seemed little more than that!
Song of the Risen God Page 14