Lorth didn’t know how long he stooped there shoveling on the edge of the forest near the tree Icaros loved most, an old maple that turned three colors in the fall. In spring, wild columbines grew around the base of the tree amid the emerald ferns. He dug into the emptiness, into the Void he knew but had never known until now. Into the darkness of memory.
“Mother?” She lay by the garden, crumpled up like an old cat whose time to die had come and gone. He ran into the forest, hoping the wolves didn’t see him. He ran and ran until he found the emptiness. A man with graying auburn hair and gray eyes stood over him.
“Come, child,” the wizard said.
“She is gone.”
“Yes. I am here.”
Lorth broke from trance. He imagined closing Leaf’s eyes, blue as that same spring sky. Gone in the wake of a tactical mistake.
Nothin’ means that much to you.
The Void never changed no matter where it came, whom it took, or how. Lorth knew the Void as he knew his own heart, and yet something had changed. A fresh chasm yawned in him now. He tossed one shovelful after another of icy dirt onto the snow. He had to dig around the roots of the maple tree, causing the hole to get big and strangely shaped. Finally, he reached over the edge, brought Icaros down through the rooty tangle, and laid the wizard in the depths. He gazed up at the deepening night with snow in his face and eyes. Then he climbed out of the hole and filled it.
Death is life.
Lorth threw the shovel down, knelt one last time in the dark by the grave of his friend and bowed his head, seeing nothing, inside or out. No words came to him.
He rose and slogged towards the light shining faintly from the windows. From the shed by the back door, he gathered an armful of wood, which he took into the house and dropped in a clamor by the stove in the kitchen. He removed his cloak and shook off the snow. Leaving his bow and quiver on the table, he walked to the cupboard and grabbed the bread the mouse had earlier inspected. It was cold and stale, but still edible. When he had done, he took up his belongings, some wood and the lamp, and returned to the hearth. He knelt in the place where Icaros had died to rebuild the fire from the coals.
Shortly, it came to life, bright and warm, illuminating the gloomy interior of the house: old worn furniture, walls of books, an old clock in the shape of a moon, the stairwell in the corner. He found a blanket folded on the back of a chair. He put out the lamp, placed a dry log on the flames and sat down, pulling the blanket around his body to calm the shivering.
The cat entered the room warily, and sidled up to him. He caressed her with his fingers, which were numb with cold. She circled herself for a moment or two, then plopped down and curled up next to him.
The hunter lay down, drew his tired, empty body into a fetal position and gave himself to the hollow, releasing the very last of his strength with no thoughts, no feelings but the silence of the grave outside, collecting snow.
~ * ~
Lorth snapped his eyes open with a breath. Sunlight filled the room. The fire had died to ashes, and the cat had left him.
Voices filled the woods outside. Lorth rolled up and breathed a cloaking command, grabbed his things and moved into the shelter of the stairwell by the front door.
The door to the kitchen opened and men came into the house, talking and stomping snow from their boots. One of them made a comment about the cold stove. Another told him to light it. Northmen, by their talk. The door opened and closed again, followed by the sound of clattering wood.
Another entered. “One of the sheep was dragged off,” he said, closing the door. “Found a carcass in the woods.”
“Wolves,” one of them replied with a yawn.
“Look here.” The cat food tin rattled as someone picked it up off the floor. Lorth remembered he had left it open on the cupboard. The cat had apparently raided it.
“Where is the Master?”
“In the forest. Found some tracks. He’s coming.”
Lorth stealthily opened the door.
“Whose bow is this?” one of them said, in a low voice.
Lorth paused. In his grief, he had forgotten about the bow on the table.
“Not ours,” a second answered. “Has an elm leaf on it.”
“Och! No bloody Faerins this far north.”
“There are now.”
The hunter slipped through the heavy door and closed it behind him, then pressed himself into the thick stone frame outside. One man stood on the edge of the yard, glancing around. He wore a black cloak trimmed with deep blue.
Lorth spoke a word. A gust of wind rose and blew the snow into a fog in which he moved swiftly into the forest. He hoped no one looked out a window and noticed his tracks. He disguised his steps in the brush and hollows of the tumbled terrain until he was out of sight of the house. Then he circled around to the southeast.
He found a spot high in an old oak tree and settled in, still as an owl in the dappled light. Beyond the south side of the barn, Icaros’s house loomed through the snow-laden trees. Twenty or so men tromped around the yard, tending their horses, talking casually and moving in and out of the house and barn. They wore the gray and white livery of Eusiron, with the wolf standard on their tunics. Many of them bore white, interlacing patterns on the edges of their black cloaks, marking them as the Mistress’s High Guard, an elite order of warriors who served the rulers of Eusiron.
With longing in his heart, Lorth briefly considered revealing himself to them, but his circumstance and the timing of his presence here made that a bad idea.
Freya was not in sight. If he called her, she would try to come to him. He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. If he hadn’t been so scattered by Icaros’s death, he might have seen this coming. Now he would have to wait for nightfall so he could fetch the horse and move on.
As the hunter sat in the tree, hungry, cold and studying the scene below, something changed. His hunter’s sense lit up like a blaze.
A man rode into the yard, wearing a pure black cloak of the same style and cut as the one Icaros had worn in Lorth’s last dream. The weave of energy around Lorth’s body bent and blew as energy spread into the forest like moonlight emerging from a cloud. It reminded him of Icaros.
One of the warriors, a tall man with braided red-blond hair, called out to the others. He wore the twilight-blue tunic of a captain. The men moved into formation; others came from the house and barn and joined them. They stood tense and ready, not from fear, but from some immediate, unquestionable respect for the one who had just arrived.
The newcomer dismounted with masterful grace, and handed off his horse to one of the men. The captain came forth. put his fist to his heart and bowed his head. Curious. The High Guards Lorth remembered honored few this way, besides the Mistress. Master, they had called him. Lorth couldn’t recall anyone in Eusiron with that title. The Mistress ruled alone, and was said to be wild and untamed by men, unless they were immortal.
Who was this man?
The two men spoke in low tones. The captain gestured to the house, to Freya, and then cast his gaze around into the forest. As the black-cloaked man listened to him, Lorth felt suddenly hot beneath his cloak. The man made a strange motion with his hand and looked into the trees. Lorth tightened his shields with every grain of skill he possessed as energy swept over the forest and grounds like a towering wave stripping the surf from a rocky shore.
A wizard—and a right serious one, this time. Next to this, the sweep of the Osprey Lorth had fought in Os had been no more than a summer breeze ruffling a daisy. It explained how these men knew to come here in the wake of Icaros’s death. Lorth saw his path narrow to a thread. For all he knew, the wizard had seen him.
I am unseen, breathed the Shade of Attention, almost mockingly.
The wizard stepped back and lifted his chin towards the house. The captain dropped his head in understanding and turned, strode back to the company and barked an order Lorth didn’t understand. The men complied quickly. Some of them moved out to the
perimeters of the yard; others rounded up the horses and put them inside the fence. The rest went into the house.
The wizard strode to the far side of the house and disappeared from view. After an uncomfortably long time—enough time to have found Lorth’s tracks—he came around the south side, his cloak dragging in the snow. Not that he would need tracks. His gaze swept the woods as wind touching every living thing. As he passed by the barn, Lorth saw his back. Stitched upon the void was a pattern of leafy oak boughs that framed a sun and moon, shining rays of gold and silver light, and a hexagram. From the center of the star gazed the Eye.
Shit. No bird on that standard. This man belonged to the Order of Raven, the highest order of the Keepers of the Eye.
The wizard stopped just past the edge of the fence, in the center of the yard. Lorth saw part of his cloak and the edge of his hand as he casually raised his arm to the sky, as if to call a beloved and familiar pet. He said something unintelligible.
Lorth nearly pitched from the tree as a bolt of energy burned into his abdomen. Fire rose into his solar plexus and up to his heart, causing it to race as if from extreme terror. Every hair on his body stood on end. As the sensation intensified, he perceived a wave of light flood down from the sky and into the woods, including the area around him. He doubled over with a strangled cry, and then fell to the ground as the oak tree vanished from beneath him.
He quickly wiped the snow from his face and rolled over. His body felt as if an anchor had dropped on his shoulders and chest. The forest around him had changed into a different forest, a thicker, more dangerous one that had a decidedly creepy feel to it. He got up and crouched behind the nearest tree, staring wildly through the shadowy tangle for the house and barn. Even in this thicket, he should have seen them—but they were gone.
“Moridrun fore sarumn,” he said, to reveal the truth behind the illusion. The forest shimmered before his eyes, wavering like heat on a stone. After a moment, he saw the darker shape of the barn, and the house beyond, in a ray of sun. He blinked, thinking it had been there all along and he had only then noticed it. But the structures stood much farther away than before, as if the distance itself had changed.
He crept closer. Warriors moved around in the hoary wood. A sheep released a low, rippling sound. A horse snorted. Someone laughed. The men didn’t appear to feel discomfort or alarm. And the Raven was nowhere in sight—
“You see like a wizard,” said a quiet voice somewhere behind him.
Lorth spun like a fisher cat, crouched and pulled the knife from his boot. The black-cloaked Keeper stood in a snowy hollow formed by the roots of a tree that looked like the oak from which Lorth had fallen, but not quite. Lorth slammed his knife into the frozen ground to release the tension in his body and thought, I am not a wizard.
The Keeper pushed back his hood. He had shoulder-length black hair, shell-pale skin and penetrating eyes of grayish green. He looked young, but he didn’t act young. He didn’t feel young. His power tingled in Lorth’s solar plexus like a gathering storm.
“Who are you?” the man asked.
No vague response would be lost, here. What could be? Icaros had once told him: Don’t ever try lying to a wizard. But Lorth didn’t intend to tell this Keeper anything. He was in enough trouble, and Keepers had driven him from Os, after all. Keepers consorting with Tarthians. Keepers consorting with Faerins—even the Sanctuary warden. Things were not as they used to be. The only wizard he ever cared about lay in a grave.
Lorth sheathed the blade in his boot and stood. Beneath his thoughts, he slipped into the calm, dark waters in the center of his gut like a frog, and said nothing. On the edge of his awareness, he noticed men gathering in the surrounding trees.
“A quiet wizard, at that,” the Raven said. His eyes held something faint and inscrutable. The fire in Lorth’s solar plexus cooled into a ghost moving around in his body. He didn’t feel pain, or pressure; this man didn’t need to resort to primitive methods of interrogation. He simply moved through the structures of Lorth’s energy like a spider, his strength disguised by artistry. A wizard cannot see what you don’t wish him to, Icaros had once told him. But he’ll see you in the places you are vulnerable—the places where you hurt.
Lorth didn’t have the strength and power he had had before invoking the Destroyer, and he knew it. And Icaros’s death bled deeply, out of reach. The last thing he needed was this Raven picking his bones. He decided it was time to reveal the only thing he had that might shelter him from this man’s mind.
“I was summoned by the Mistress of Eusiron,” he replied with a steady gaze. “I stopped here to find shelter from the storm. There was no one here.”
The wizard looked off into the trees as if responding to a voice. Then he turned to the captain, who had drawn close enough to hear the exchange. “Regin, I’ll need a fresh mount.” He cast Lorth a chilling glance. “Disarm and bring him.”
~ * ~
Lorth didn’t bother to fight as the guardsmen stripped his weapons, supplies and purse and hustled him towards the house. He came out of the woods, squinting as the sunlight on the snow blinded him. The warriors had let their horses out of the barnyard, and left Icaros’s animals to mill around inside the fence. Lorth wondered if anyone had bothered to feed them.
Men stood silently amid the trees, eyes stone hard and hands on their sword hilts. It gave Lorth a renewed sense of his shrinking options. Giving this lot the slip—in the mountains, in winter—wouldn’t happen as easily as with the Faerins. These men knew this country. A Northman could sink an arrow from astonishing distances, even in deep woods.
No doubt, the wizard planned to take him to Eusiron. Lorth decided his best course would be to go along with this. After all, he had received a summons. Once he got to the palace and discovered the nature of it, then he could go about finding out who had murdered Icaros. But for now, his friend would have to rest.
As he passed the barnyard, he looked for Freya. He focused on the light around her heart, the connection between them. Freya. Just then, he spotted her, half-hidden in the shadow of the barn door. She bolted across the dirty, trampled snow, scattering goats and chickens and nearly running down a man in her path. As the warrior got up from the snow where she had knocked him, he swore at her. Still saddled, she tossed her head, whinnied and trotted back and forth along the fence.
A younger guardsman with curly blond hair called out, “Master, we could use your help with this one.” Two more men entered the enclosure and surrounded the mare. “She’s crazy.”
Lorth stopped. “Freya.” Don’t do this. The mare calmed at the sound of his voice, but as one of the warriors tried to take the reins, she jumped sidelong and tore a rope burn into his hand, and then reared up against him. Lorth realized she hadn’t been unsaddled and brushed down because she wouldn’t let anyone touch her.
Someone shoved Lorth from behind and said, “Move along.” Lorth turned around with a look that would have frozen a pool. A burly warrior with flaming red hair and bright blue eyes drew his blade; so did three others. “I said—”
“Cael,” the wizard said. “Stand down.” He waved the other men to do the same. The sounds of swords slamming into sheaths rattled around them. The wizard approached Lorth and said, “She seems to know you.”
“She has a Faerin brand,” Regin put in. The captain had a scruffy red beard stippled with white and blue-gray eyes surrounded by wind-burned creases.
Lorth gazed at Freya, and said nothing. She reared up and hit the bottom board of the fence on her way down, splintering it.
“Go to her,” the wizard said.
Lorth strode to the gate and entered. As the mare trotted by her would-be captors, they jumped out of her way with their hands in the air. She approached Lorth, lowered her face against his chest and nickered. “There now,” he soothed, moving his hands over her body. She was damp with sweat. He picked up her reins, frayed and soaked from dragging on the ground. “Don’t fret. We’ll be away soon.”
> One of the men muttered, “Bloody warlock.”
The Raven leaned on the fence, gazing at Lorth intently. Regin said something to him in a low voice.
“Bring her,” he said to Lorth.
A short time later, the hunter sat astride his stolen horse, stripped of his belongings, starved and contemplating the state of the wounds under his shirt. He took deep, even breaths. It was crisp and cold, the sun shone brightly and breezes drew sparkling curtains of snow through the air. The guardsman named Cael held the wizard’s horse, a big gray with white fetlocks.
They hadn’t bothered to bind Lorth, and only Cael was to accompany him and the wizard. Possibly, they didn’t see him as a threat, but he didn’t assume that. No man would be a threat under a Raven’s watch. The wizard gave orders to close up the house and barn, and then gathered a small company and sent them south on some errand. To the others, he said something about getting on the road before the storm. Lorth looked up at the sky, but saw no evidence of a coming storm.
The wizard mounted, gathered the reins and swung his horse around. Lorth glanced at the barn. “Will you leave these animals to the wolves?”
Cael snorted. “What do you care?” He stomped off to fetch his horse.
“We aren’t leaving them,” the wizard said quietly.
An alien emotion, grief; it left the hunter feeling fragile around odd things. He turned Freya around and cast his senses into the strange forest, the house and the barn, to search for the cat that had shared his grief with him. The house had become a whirlpool of shadows that would consume him if he didn’t get far enough away. Whatever the Raven had done to this place, it defied any simplistic means of discernment.
“What are you sweeping for?” said the wizard at his side.
Lorth broke from his trance with a start. “There was a cat.”
“We found her.”
As Cael joined them, the Raven pressed his thighs into his horse and moved out in a heavy pace, heading north. Lorth fell in behind him, with Cael bringing up the rear.
The Hunter's Rede Page 7
