by K. M. Hade
Fuck. He recoils from the memory her soft words invoke. She’s wrong, but he’ll let her think that. “Something like that.”
“And even now it’s hard to talk about, and it’s been years.” Her voice is gentle, and a cool caress touches the wound inside him.
He flinches, almost sends his horse off balance, and yanks around in the saddle to glare at her.
“What?” she asks.
She hadn’t touched him.
The fuck.
He’s looking at her, but she’s not touching him, even though it sure as shit feels like she is.
The memories are still fucking with him.
He growls in his mind, annoyed at the strange feeling like she’s playing with the little hairs at the back of his neck and he’s just listening to her breathing and inhaling the soft, strange scent of her Aether.
Except none of those things are happening.
Their horses step off the path onto the flat plains. She sighs with relief and drags her hand across her brow. They move forward so the others can file down behind them.
Blood suppresses a flinch as she stands at his shoulder. She smiles softly, eyes sad, and brushes her arm against his. The nerves in his elbow throb like he’s been tapped with a hammer, and a painful jolt goes through his Fell thread. She doesn’t seem to notice any of it. Instead, for the briefest moment, her attention darts to Atrament still riding down the hillside. “Promise me that you won’t let me be used again. I don’t want to hurt anyone else ever again. I don’t want to be what the Warden says I am.”
He moves his lips to shape I will, but finds it impossible to say. Like a limb that has fallen asleep and now tingles too painfully to move, his mouth cannot obey.
8
CRYSTAL
I’ve always been told that the ruined lands are a vast deserted valley of dust, fouled water, and brambly bushes, plus the occasional warped creature, vagrant, or ruins where it never rains, the sun does not shine, and lightening spears the sky. It is a place devoid of magic, but the scars left warped whatever managed to survive.
It’s sort of true… and sort of not.
The valley isn’t really a valley at all. It’s more like a whole part of the world dropped a few hundred feet. There aren’t any maps of the lands, and even the shoreline hasn’t been officially mapped, so nobody knows exactly what the shape of the world is out this way, except that it’s probably a crescent.
The ground is swirling, fine, reddish dust that instantly gets into everything. Under the layer of dust is parched clay. The sky is covered with low-hanging clouds that block the sunlight, but it is hot and smothering. Lightening bounces from cloud to cloud and thunder occasionally rumbles, and in the distance lightening strikes the ground.
There are, in fact, brambly, prickly, painful-looking bushes and vines, and a tough, gray-looking prairie grass that sprouts from the rock-hard soil in very determined clumps.
Blood takes point and heads north. The sun is just a sort of brighter-than-the-sky orb through the haze, but it’s hard to make out what’s the sun and what’s just thinner clouds. It’s hard to gauge how much time is passing or which way we’re actually going.
I hope the Fells aren’t nearly as lost as I am.
“There.” Smoke points.
There’s a pillar made of bricks stacked to man-height sitting in the middle of the ruined lands. The pillar’s a bit cracked and weathered, but overall in good shape. Put into the bricks (when they were being shaped) are small pebbles in assorted bright colors arranged like an arrow, with the arrows pointing various directions.
“What do the arrows mean?” I ask.
“What do arrows usually mean?” Blood inquires, consulting the pillar.
“Kill this,” I say dryly. We use arrows conjured of smoke, clouds, or flame to mark targets on the field.
“Pebbles, you murderous little fiend, you. Not everything is about how someone dies.”
Rot takes pity on me. “The arrows point towards towns or roads. The color of the pebbles tells you how far it is.”
“Usually points to roads,” Smoke says. “As towns come and go, and no one updates these pillars unless they build a new one.”
We head off in a slightly different direction.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“North-west to one of the roads. We can follow it looking for creeping lotus and we won’t risk getting lost.”
Roads? What roads?
Blood twists in his saddle towards Atrament. “Stay close. Like reach out and touch someone close.”
About an hour later, Blood’s horse strikes stone. The wind blows and sweeps dust to the side, revealing an ancient stone road embedded into the rock-like clay soil. It’s chipped, pitted, broken in places, but it is a road. That has survived from the First Wars, or at least some time around it. It is at least twenty horses wide: that’s why I didn’t notice it coming up onto it.
“Holy…” I rein my horse around to get a look. A huge, wide road intended to move massive amounts of troops, wagons… or something else entirely. “How far does this go?”
“About halfway across, I guess, then you find the remains of it cracked more towards the east. There are a few other major roadways, or what’s left of them, and then other, smaller roads that might go a few miles to twenty or thirty.”
“As long as you stick to the roads, you won’t really get lost,” Rot explains. “One will eventually lead you somewhere and you can figure your way from there.”
“So are there actually maps?”
Rot shrugs. The dust doesn’t seem to cling to his armor like it clumps on Atrament and I. Imperial armor is a hell of a thing. “Sort of, if you can find someone who will let you copy theirs. If you can trust them. There are scammers who will sell ‘maps’ to treasure-hunters.”
“And the locals don’t share their maps with the Empire,” Smoke murmurs.
Blood nods. “Maps are valuable. You trade map information here. Maps are water, food, forage, hunting, whatever else. But you can get around if you stick to the pillars and the roads.”
We head west, which confuses me—there are two easy ways in or out of the ruined lands. The first being the way we’d just come, the other being where something had blasted a gap in the mountains about thirty horses across and you could just walk in or out easy enough. That one is far from the Pit. I’d actually seen that one. Never crossed into the lands, but I’d ridden up to get a look at it.
I keep my mouth shut. Which isn’t that bad, because the hot breeze swirls the dust into everything, and opening your mouth just gets you a mouthful of sand. I pull one of the cut-up grain sacks we’ve managed to filch around my face as a scarf. It’s not going to keep the dust out of my mouth, but it’s better than nothing.
Smoke sends up his familiar to scout for creeping lotus, water, and forage for the horses. The sides of the road are plucked clean of anything that isn’t dust. The daylight grows dim and sooty. The wind picks up, and the sound of the dust sliding over everything becomes like a low, breathy moan.
“This way,” Smoke raises his voice over the wind’s soft moan. In the fading light, with the wind tearing at his cloak and halo of hair, pointing into the darkness not far away, he looks like a God I’d Rather Not Name.
His bird wings in behind him and roosts on his outstretched arm. It mantles shadowy black wings, a formless silhouette.
Blood, his own hair filthy pale, is the brightest spot. He heads in the direction Smoke indicated. “Nose to flank!”
I look back at Rot, and cannot see Atrament. “Where’s Atrament? He doesn’t know this, does he?”
Rot, little more than a silhouette in what’s left of the dusk, holds up a shadowy string. “Got him on a rein.”
What’s left of the light fades red and remote, then it is completely dark.
As dark as my solitary cell.
My magic crackles and seems to strike at the darkness, like an angry snake. I’m imagining that. I have to be.
/> I twist my hands into my horse’s mane. He’s got better night vision than I do, and Smoke’s bird of prey probably does as well. I breathe, tasting the dust. My familiar shifts and twists itself up my forearm, squeezing and tapping me with the point of its tail.
“You okay, Pebbles?” Rot calls up to me.
“Yes.” I manage to keep my voice from shaking. My mind keeps reminding me of the cell while my magic strikes at the darkness that offends it.
My familiar squeezes my wrist like it’s decided it’s a constrictor.
Solitary had just been a box. That bedroom I’d been locked in had just been a room. They don’t have power over me. They don’t because I say they don’t.
My familiar squeezes.
“Stop!”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding.
“We’ll make camp here,” Blood says, “wherever here is.”
Here being the middle of the massive road.
Rot gets started making a fire from the handful of pellets we filched from a farm. It’s just a small glowing ember on the dusty road.
“I’ll deal with the horses.” Reins are passed into my hands, and the horses press together in the oppressive, cold dark as the last of the heat radiates up from the road. I work on getting a handful of ration pellets into their feedbags and hobbling them by feel. I can do that drunk out of my mind, in the dark, blindfolded, with my eyeballs removed.
Atrament slides against me, his shadowy hair soft and coiling like ribbons. His darkness is different from the landscape. It’s tactile and silky and dense.
We haven’t exchanged more than five words since that night on the barn roof. I feel bad about lashing out at him, but all his talk about the God-Forged is unnerving, and does he really think he is at all close to a God-Forged? But who is to say he isn’t God-Forged, or close to one?
It’s not that he entertains the idea, it’s that he’s remotely curious to see the outcome of the Warden’s sick experiments.
He wasn’t even appalled or on board with the idea of escaping until I pointed out how our child would be raised. The idea of the child hadn’t really horrified him.
Blood might be right: we shouldn’t be quick to trust Atrament. Not because Atrament has bad intentions, but I’m not sure what Atrament’s intentions are. Am I just a lab rat to him?
I speak first. “This place is strange. Can you feel it?”
“Yes.”
“What is it? There’s Blight here, but it’s different.” There is so much Blight here, but it’s nothing like the Pit or the front or anything else.
“The shape it all left behind.”
He’s barely visible in the pitiful light of the fire, but we’re so close our bodies touch, and the wind blows tendrils of his hair against my cheek. “I don’t understand.”
He picks up my hand and flips it over. He traces his fingertip along my palm, following the lines and creases. “Think of the world as a body, with many veins and tissues and sinews and fibers and blood. The ruined lands are where that body was broken. Now it is desiccated, what remains of its tissues and bones permeated with the diseases and poisons that devastated it, but it cannot die.”
His touch is like silk. I want him to caress my palm forever, but I pull my hand back.
Blood materializes out of the darkness, a faint specter-like creature. “Are you saying that the ruined lands are a place of refuge from the Blight? Because I assure you, there are many ways this place will try to kill you.”
“I never said that.” There is a thin strip of steel sliding through Atrament’s silky, soft tone.
Blood’s eyes narrow to liquid, dark pools. They’re glossy in the flickering light, just dark points in his otherwise alabaster face. “I’m glad we understand each other.”
I’m glad they do, because I sure don’t.
“You are very protective for a man who wants her to believe she does not matter to him.”
“Okay, okay, that’s enough.” I step between them and push them apart.
Blood just chuckles. “If the horses are settled, it’s time to eat.”
After months of drinking the pure water of the Pit, the fetid-tasting water of the ruined lands is especially foul, and washing down the dried, rough jerky and meat is an unpleasant experience. The Pit knows how to leave its mark. Only ScatheFire—who Rot feeds one bite at a time—seems to enjoy the food. My heart breaks to see him like this, and how the green sparks in his eyes are like little dancing embers, except there’s no soul there.
No soul. No change. Not a flicker or twitch or reaction to anything.
I huddle into a little ball as the fire starts to die. Darkness creeps up on all of us, and Atrament seems to disappear completely. “Is it always this dark?”
“Yep.” Rot’s voice drifts in the darkness. “I’ll take first watch.”
My familiar drapes itself around my shoulders like a necklace. I hesitate, then touch its head, feeling the soft spot right between its eyes. It makes a soundless purr. I stroke it again and close my eyes. I focus on the pattern of its scales, the texture, the way it’s warm, the little bumps over its eyes, the shape of its snoot, the way its sides move as it breathes.
It’s nice to not be alone.
9
CRYSTAL
We ride for three days, plodding along the stretch of road the seems to go due west. Water is surprisingly easy to find, except it is all foul, and there is some grass for the horses, and Rot shows me how the ever-present brambles that grow in clump-shaped shrubs waist-high all over, like determined little dirt-pimples, can be hacked, then stomped under a boot to separate into something that can be fed to livestock as forage.
“They don’t like it,” he says as we give the clumps to the horses to preserve our limited grain supplies, “but it’ll keep them fed.”
As for feeding us, that is a little more challenging. Anything resembling food has been eaten. Smoke keeps his familiar in the air from dawn until dusk hunting creeping lotus and anything we can eat. It’s a useful little hunter and most days brings back a few rabbits or large rat-looking creatures.
Smoke’s familiar swoops in and alights on Smoke’s upraised hand. It squawks and flaps its wings.
“Brigands,” Smoke reports. “They’ve spotted us and are riding this way.”
“Must have a glass.” Blood reins his palfrey around. “Everyone knows what to do. Atrament, hang back. Crystal, cloak over your head, sword out. Let’s make this quick. Keep the smartest one alive and don’t destroy their gear.”
“Old school it is.” Rot cracks his knuckles. His familiar paws at the dirt and tosses its head.
“How do we know which one is smart?” I ask.
“Oh, you’ll know.”
My familiar twists down my arm and practically shoves itself into my hand before it shifts into sword form.
Within ten minutes they’re on us: eight cloaked riders on horses.
Smoke’s familiar dives at one of them with a screech, talons extended, and grabs at his head. The brigand flails in the saddle. I put my heels into my confused palfrey and he lumbers towards that one while the familiar flaps and claws and pecks. Rot’s familiar charges right up the middle.
The brigand’s eyes, peeking out from the dirty fabric tied around his mouth and nose, meet mine just as I swing at him with my sword. There’s no resistance at all as the god-honed blade’s edge slides first through his clothes, then through his skin, then through muscle and organs. I instinctively cue the palfrey to pivot out on his forehand, but he doesn’t know that cue (he’s confused at what his life has become) and just sort of keeps going. I wrench my sword free and the brigand topples out of the saddle onto the ground.
It happens in a blink.
The brigand group is a scattered, panicked mess. Chains of blood droplets whip through the air as Blood drains one body and strangles another with his companion’s blood. Rot has grabbed two—one in each hand—and is bashing their heads together while his familiar stomps a third
. Smoke’s familiar and Smoke are making quick work of another. It’s dusty and confusing and hazy.
And over fast.
Things reek of blood and organs. I’m a gory mess. My palfrey is sprayed with blood and trembles, snorting and eyes rolling. All of our horses (except Rot’s) are freaked out, while the brigands’ mounts mill around in confusion.
The last remaining brigand cowers on his knees, hands upraised, begging in a dialect I don’t understand.
Smoke’s familiar caws at him and makes a few pecking motions with its wicked beak.
“I found the smart one,” Smoke states.
“How fortunate there was a smart one,” Atrament murmurs.
“There’s always a smart one.” Rot kicks one of the now-corpses to the side as he approaches. His familiar goes around to each body and stomps on each skull a few times to be sure. The noise doesn’t bear mentioning.
Blood looks at the half-dozen dead bodies and the milling horses, then cups the brigand’s chin in his hand, forcing the man to look up at him. “Tell me you speak common.”
The man stammers, “Y-yes.”
He’s about thirty, although he could be younger. The ruined lands have tanned his skin into a wrinkled leather, and his hair has fallen out to expose a circle of scalp at his crown, with the rest a long, unwashed mess crudely hacked to shoulder-length. His beard is just as filthy and unkept. His clothes are a patchwork of rags and leather worn to a patina and pelts. His boots are recognizable as boots, although they seem to have been patched a few times, and he has a knife on his belt.
Blood takes all this in. “I suppose your crew was used to taking what they want. You look fed enough. But stupid move picking a fight with Imperial Mages.”
He stammers.
Blood tugs on his chin. “But the gods have smiled on you. You should speak Their names in praise. You see, we are here on a mission. We’re looking for something, and you look like you’re smart enough you might just know where to find it.”
“Doubtful,” Smoke murmurs. His familiar flaps its wings a few times and screeches.
