“Hmm? Oh, no, I don’t think so. Not with Dexia there, and who knows how long it will take before Quinn realizes that Idril has no interest in him. He might come wandering back just as we were enjoying ourselves. Plus, I don’t have a lot of faith in two blankets keeping prying eyes from seeing me ravish you the way I wish to. I didn’t feel Kiriah, Hallow. When we landed. Not at all.”
He told his libido to take the night off, and gravely considered her obvious distress, taking her hand to rub a thumb over her fingers. They were calloused and had occasional faded marks of old scars, but he loved her hands almost as much as she claimed she loved his crow’s feet. Her hands could dance in the air, weaving together the most complex patterns of light, and a moment later wield swords and bow with deadly accuracy. “You fill my heart, my soul, my life,” he said, overcome with emotion, no doubt due to their close brush with death. “And if you never again feel Kiriah’s touch, you will continue to do so, but it is deep night here. More than deep night, yet I can barely feel Bellias’s presence.”
“But to not feel Kiriah here at all…” She stopped for a few seconds, her voice thick when she continued. “Hallow, what if I never again feel her presence? What if she is done with me? Utterly, completely done with me?”
“I doubt that would happen.”
“But what if it does?” Her lovely dark eyes searched his, and he felt the depths of her pain.
He could have assured her that she would never be stripped of Kiriah’s blessing, but he disliked lying, especially to her. So he said the only thing he could. “There is time enough to worry when we know that Kiriah is utterly out of your reach. In the meantime, you have your swords and bow. You are not helpless, my heart—far from it. You are an able and deadly warrior even without your magic.”
“But if we have no magic, how are we to fight the Harborym?” she asked, her gaze still searching his, looking for answers he feared he did not have. “You know how powerful they are, and here, surrounded as they are by chaos magic…I shudder to think how much stronger they will have become.”
“We, too, have grown stronger since the battle of Starfall City,” he pointed out. “You have practiced swordplay, and I have learned much from the arcanists and Thorn, not to mention the documents that Exodius obviously left behind for my edification. We are a formidable pair, Allegria. The Harborym will not best us.”
Allegria was silent again, obviously working through her doubts and worries. He held her, breathing in the pleasant combination of her flowery scent and that of the ocean, until she relaxed against him, her breathing deepening as she slipped into sleep.
Without wakening her, he lifted one hand and tried to summon a ball of arcany, pulling from the sky the light he knew glittered from star to star.
His palm remained empty.
Chapter 14
“In general,” I told Buttercup as I ran a somewhat bent currycomb over her glossy hide, “I am not the sort of person who keeps her feelings to herself. I don’t suffer in silence, something that used to get me in a lot of trouble back at the temple, but that’s not really of concern now. What does matter is the fact that it’s evidently dawn, and I can’t feel Kiriah Sunbringer.”
Buttercup, chomping happily from a battered tin bucket, swished her tail. I looked into the distance, not seeing the dense foliage that ran along the shore, my gaze turned inward as once again, I reached for the familiar warmth that always filled me with its golden presence.
I stretched out a hand, trying to summon Kiriah’s strength. Heat tickled my palm, and I opened my eyes in delight, only to feel my joy fade.
“This is disappointing,” I said, cupping my hand around where Buttercup was breathing on it. “I can’t even summon up so much as a small light rabbit, and never, since the time I was six summers old, have I been unable to summon up light animals. This is a dire warning of what lies ahead for me, indeed.”
I looked over Buttercup’s bobbing head. Hallow had gone to fetch Idril while Quinn and Dexia gathered up their packs. By our best guess, the sun had risen beyond the dense cloud cover, and we needed to be on our way. After expressing my concerns the night before, I didn’t want to beat Hallow over the head with my worry, but it sat within me like a hard kernel of pain and sorrow.
“And I dislike keeping anything from him…but on the other hand, he’ll just tell me how able I am without my lightweaving, and that’s frustrating on all levels. Here. Eat this.” I dumped another handful of grain into Buttercup’s bucket, and before she could protest, had a saddle on her back, and the cinch tightened as far as she’d let it go.
“Are you ready?” Quinn asked, approaching a few minutes later. He gave Buttercup’s rear quarters a wide berth, eyeing her in a manner that bespoke someone who’d been within range of her back hooves. “Dexia has gone off to feed, but she will return any minute.”
“Feed? Feed on what?” I asked, then immediately regretted the question when I remembered her sharp little teeth. “Never mind. Pretend I didn’t ask.”
“It’s really better if you don’t.” He nodded his agreement, his gaze straying down over my chest, but for once the leer that he usually seemed to wear whenever he looked at those parts was not present. He looked confused by my old black Bane of Eris tunic embroidered with gold and silver. “You bear a sun and moon insignia, and yet I know of no one else who has both the blessing of Kiriah and Bellias.”
“That’s because you haven’t met Deo.” I traced the symbol, the memory of my time as a Bane of Eris strong in my mind. “I was so hopeful then,” I murmured, feeling as if I’d aged a hundred years instead of just one. “I was so sure that with Deo, I could bring peace to Alba, and yet all that we did was slow down the Harborym…”
“That is no small feat,” Quinn said lightly.
I shook away the shadows that accompanied memories of that time and busied myself strapping my bow and what remained of my possessions to Buttercup’s saddle. “It came at a great cost, though,” I answered, and slid my swords into place, crossed over my back.
Quinn said nothing, just turned when Hallow called out a question while running toward us along the beach.
“Not since last night,” Quinn answered. “When I went to check that she was comfortable, she told me that she preferred her own company, so I left her. I thought it might be her woman’s time,” he added in a confiding voice as Hallow, breathless, stopped in front of us. “My third wife—or was it the fourth?—one of them turned into a demon when it was her woman’s time unless I brought her plentiful sweets and the syrup of the moonflower. That made her sleep, but it was a blessing considering the way she could tear the hide off a man with just her tongue.”
Hallow, panting, caught his breath enough to stop Quinn’s reminiscences. He turned to me. “Have you seen Idril?”
“No. Is she not at her camp?”
“She is not. And her things are gone.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Again, I find myself wishing I had Thorn…or a spell to find a missing woman. Kiriah blast her, she’s gone off alone to find Deo. Or the queen. Or both.”
“She wouldn’t be that foolish, would she?” I asked, watching as he hurriedly filled his saddlebags, one with the book that had made it through the ship’s breakup, while the other was stuffed with clothing and a few weapons. “We told her how dangerous it was to try to make her way while it was dark, and we had no knowledge of where we were.”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Do you honestly think that would stop her from doing exactly what she wanted to do?”
I had to admit he had a point. Which was why, ten minutes later, we set out following what tracks Hallow could discover. Her footprints led inland, as we expected, along a game trail that wound through dense foliage for a good mile before the path started to climb, and the squat, broadleaf plants became sparser and sparser, replaced by thick-trunked short trees with short, stabbing needles.
Dexia caught up to us shortly after we set off, but said nothing, although at one point when I glanced behind me, I saw her talking with great animation to Quinn, her little hands flying as she spoke.
A few hours later we reached what had once clearly been a road. It had been paved, but was now nothing but broken stones pushed up and aside by clumps of grass and weeds.
“And here ends Idril’s trail. Which way do you think she would have gone? Dexia, do you know this area?” Hallow asked, looking up and down the road. “I don’t see any signs of her passing.”
Dexia shook her head. “I’m a vanth. My home is in the Bleeding Woods in the far north. I haven’t been anywhere in the south except Skystead itself.”
I wanted to ask her what bled in the woods of her homeland, but decided it was better not to know. Instead, I dismounted and handed Hallow Buttercup’s reins. For a short while I followed the road that curved southward, my eyes on the weeds and grass. Shaking my head, I retraced my steps and went in the opposite direction, where the road twisted around to the northwest. “There,” I said, pointing where a small weed had been crushed. “And there. It may have been someone else, but this looks like a fairly fresh break. Someone went this way.”
“I can’t imagine there are many travelers here,” Hallow said, his voice soft. The vegetation had given way to a few trees, many of which appeared to be scorched, and scrubby shrubs and grasses that clearly had undergone a long drought. The whole area had a hushed feel to it, as if the land itself was holding its breath to see who we were, and what we intended to do.
“Which doesn’t explain the feeling I have that we’re being watched.” I rubbed the back of my neck, searching the horizon, but saw no reason for the unwelcome sensation. I took the reins and proceeded to lead Buttercup, letting her have a break from the task of carrying me around. Since Quinn and Dexia had no mount, I felt somewhat guilty riding while they trudged behind us.
But it was the sense of something about to happen that kept my bow within reach. I was painfully aware of just how quickly the Harborym could attack, and we knew nothing about how the native Shadowborn people would view our intrusion. We walked for another hour before cresting a hill. Below us lay what must have once been a fertile valley, but now appeared brown and yellow in the dim light. A town spilled down the foot of the hill…or what remained of it.
“That looks abandoned,” I said, quickly scanning the twisted and burned remains of buildings. Only a few walls stood upright, and those were badly damaged. “I wonder what happened here. An attack, do you think?”
“Possibly. Probably. Does that…is that what I think it is?” He pointed at the base of the largest building. We approached it, my eyes first narrowing, then widening as I saw the red stain that seemed to leach through the one standing wall.
I recognized it immediately. Hallow clutched a long, wickedly sharp dagger while I pulled my swords from the sheaths.
“Why are you arming yourselves?” Quinn asked in a harsh whisper, glancing around us wildly. One hand was on the scimitar that was always at his side. “Do you see someone?”
“Something,” I said, pointing at the red seeping through the wall of the building.
“Blood?” he asked, looking around nervously. “Are we about to be attacked? Does the arcanist have more of those protective bubbles? Because my death going through the storm was prolonged and painful, and just once I’d like to live through a death without it hurting so much.”
“Not blood, chaos magic,” I corrected, and quickly tied Buttercup’s reins to Penn’s saddlebags. Penn, unlike my obstinate mule, was well trained, and would not budge from a spot where Hallow let the reins drop. “Maybe you should stay here,” I told Dexia when Quinn and Hallow disappeared around the standing wall.
“Why?” she asked, looking curious.
I was about to tell her that she was too small to fight in case there were Harborym within the destroyed village, but the memory of her attacking soldiers in Jalas’s keep rose to mind. “To protect the animals and our things,” I said quickly, and before she could protest, hurried off after the two men, my swords gripped tightly.
I found Hallow squatting on a bit of floor that was still intact, touching a stain on the floor with one finger. He snatched his hand back as soon as he’d done so, muttering an oath under his breath. “It’s definitely chaos magic. And it’s still very potent.”
All three of us turned to examine the blackened remains of the buildings. This had evidently been a small village, with a cluster of four houses, one larger structure that must have been a mill since it straddled a broad stream, and another two-storey building that was now utterly reduced to rubble. There were no sounds but the crying of a few distant gulls.
“There are no chickens, no dogs, nothing,” I said softly. “Everyone must have been killed.”
“Not everyone,” Hallow said in a pleasantly bland tone, turning to face the left. “There are at least two people behind the last building on the right. No, don’t look. We’ll stroll this way and see if we can’t lure them into the open. Put away your swords, my heart. Whoever it is would have to be insane to approach you armed, and I very much want to talk to them.”
“Not Harborym, then,” Quinn said, but with a studied air of nonchalance, sheathed his sword, and puffing out his cheeks in a tuneless whistle, sauntered to the left toward a fallow field.
“No. I only had a quick glimpse, but it looked like two women.”
Hallow and I followed Quinn, pausing to examine the burned houses just as if we were only mildly interested in what had happened. By the time we reached the last structure, we disappeared behind a blackened bit of wall that stuck upward as if it was an accusatory finger pointing to the twin goddesses.
Two minutes later, a shadow fell across us, and before the woman had a chance to do more than gasp, Hallow grasped one of her arms, pulling her forward. A smaller form followed, and Quinn grabbed her as well, but quickly released her when the woman cried out.
“It’s all right, no one is going to hurt you or… your daughter?” Hallow asked, keeping a firm grip on the woman lest she run away. She’d shrunk against the wall, clutching the slighter form of a girl of about twelve. Both females had the bronze hair that Hallow had told me was common to the Shadowborn, but while the older female had skin so pale it was almost bluish, her child’s complexion had a reddish tint that reminded me of the Harborym.
“You’re not…you’re not priests?” the woman gasped, her eyes dilated with fear as she looked from Hallow to me.
“A priest?” Hallow’s brows pulled together. “You have priests here? For the god Nezu?”
“No, blood priests. They honor the old magic. You’re not priests?” the woman asked again.
“I’m a priest, but I honor the goddess Kiriah Sunbringer,” I said in a soothing voice, smiling in order to show them we meant no harm. “My name is Allegria. This is Hallow, who leads a group of arcanists, and the other man is Quinn, the captain who brought us here.”
“Captain?” The woman’s look of fear turned to amazement. “You sailed here? To Eris?”
“Quinn is a very capable man, and Hallow has many skills,” I said, giving her another friendly smile.
The woman turned from me to Hallow, studying him for a minute; then she nodded. “I can see now you have not been tainted by the red magic. You look…different.”
“We are from other lands,” Hallow told her. “Allegria and I come from Aryia, while Quinn hails from Genora, land of the Starborn.”
“There are other lands?” She was back to looking amazed again, then shook her head, and said softly to herself, “I thought I must have imagined the other.”
“The other? You’ve seen someone like us?” I asked, hopeful that Idril had stopped here.
“Not like you,” she said, eyeing me, her gaze resting for a moment on my forehead before nodding to Hallow. “But
there was a woman at dawn with hair the same color as yours. Old Gerald said she asked for directions to Skystead, but I thought he was wandering again.” She tapped her head. “In his mind.”
“Old Gerald has many fancies.” The girl spoke for the first time. “He sees faces in the trees, and says that one day, the blood on the moon will bring salvation. I’ve never seen the moon. Mama says she saw it once a long time past, when she was very small, before the coming of…them.”
“The blood priests?” Hallow asked, letting go of the woman’s arm in order to make notes in a small notebook.
“Harborym,” the girl whispered, her worried gaze on her mother.
“Is Old Gerald about the place?” Quinn asked, glancing around. “The woman you saw was a friend of ours. A very lovely, if extremely stubborn, friend, and we’d very much like to make sure she hasn’t been harmed by going off on her own.”
“He is likely drunk, sleeping it off in the old mill,” the woman said, jerking her head toward the remains of a once large structure. “Ave, run home while I escort this lady and the men to the mill.”
“You live here?” I asked when the girl hesitated. “It looks like the whole village was burned to the ground.”
“Aye.” The lines in the woman’s face stood out starkly despite her pale skin. “They came hunting for us.”
“For what purpose? An army?” Hallow asked, tucking away his notebook.
The woman shook her head and moved past him toward the stream. A narrow plank had been thrown across the sluggish, brown water, which she quickly crossed. “It is said Lord Racin sought men and women for a special honor, to become part of an elite fighting force, but no one has ever remembered seeing such a force. When the men of our village objected, Racin’s forces attacked, destroying everything. Ave and I escaped by hiding in the root cellar, but my husband…”
Without thinking about it, I drew a blessing over her when her voice choked to a halt, but despite knowing Kiriah was above the dense clouds that blocked her from us, the blessing refused to materialize.
Starborn Page 18
