by JA Andrews
It burned for only a handful of breaths, but the heatstone began to glow with a rich, yellow light. Heat poured out of it and Will backed up.
“Why didn’t you tell Killien about my magic finger the night you met me?”
“I don’t know.”
She rigged the rabbit up to hang over the heatstone and offered no further answer.
There was something different about her. She didn’t smile, but her face was…content, her movements relaxed. She was comfortable here, in a way she’d never been on the Sweep.
He leaned against the wall, his body heavy with exhaustion. Sora’s eyes were shadowed, and for the first time it occurred to him that she had been up all night as well, and probably hadn’t had the luxury of sleeping all morning.
“Any chance you have anything useful in your bag?” she asked.
He dragged his pack over. “I think it’s useful, but you’re going to be disappointed. I have some clothes, some avak pits I’m taking back to Queensland, and I have books.”
“Books. How shocking.” She picked up the second rabbit, pulled out her knife and sliced into its skin.
“That is both disgusting and fascinating.”
She answered him by yanking off the rabbit fur in one, quick wrench.
Outside the cave, Rass laid her head against a wide boulder next to her and hummed a catchy little tune.
“Your hawk brought me a clump of grass,” Sora said.
“Of course he did. Because what people need on the Sweep is more grass. Although grass is better than dead mice.”
“You didn’t send him to me?”
“No. Why wou—” He sat up straight. “When did he come to you?”
“Just before I saw you in the rift.”
Will’s mind spun. He pointed at Rass. “Talen found her while I was there, too.”
“Maybe he’s in the market for a better owner.”
“Or maybe,” he said, “he listened to me.
“The first day I told him it’d be useful if he could bring me something with energy, like a tree.” Will leaned forward. “And he did. It was barely a shoot, but the roots still had dirt in them. I’d thought it was for his nest—but he didn’t take it to his nest, he brought it to me.”
“I’m not sure a shoot counts as a tree.”
“A very small tree for a very small hawk. But then I asked him for what I really needed—you.”
She drew back slightly.
He gave her a wide smile. “Although it turns out all I needed was Rass.”
The hint of a smile appeared on her face. “I hadn’t decided yet whether you were worth rescuing.”
Will sank back against the wall. The sky was a bright, clear blue, without a single speck of hawk to be seen. “I can’t believe Talen did what I asked.”
“How’d you get him to?”
“Emotions resonate.” Was it really that simple? “I think I…shared my emotions with him. My need to find you.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“I think I am,” he said slowly, sitting back and unwrapping his bundle of books. Had Talen really found Sora? And the tree? And Rass?
“What is that?” Sora pointed at the blue book.
“Killien’s book. It’s about fairly horrific magic by Kachig the Bloodless. And Killien is probably very angry that I have it.” He opened one of his own books, starting his usual check for dampness and mites.
Sora watched him. “What could you possibly have to write down that takes up that many pages?”
“Mostly stories I’ve learned on the Sweep. This one’s from the Temur Clan about an old woman who lives in a cave, chases the ripples of grass across the hills. And sends bats to terrorize the clan.”
“What is the point of recording something like that?”
Her tone was so sharp that Will glanced up at her.
“Why write down useless, harsh things about a woman who has probably suffered her whole life as an outcast? Do you know what story might actually be worth writing down?” She leaned toward him, pointing her knife at the book. “That woman’s story. She was someone’s daughter. What happened to her that she ended up banished and shunned? That”—she sliced the knife viciously into the rabbit—“would be a story worth writing down.”
Her face was furious and she sliced strips of rabbit meat off the creature with a frightening efficiency.
Will flipped to the next page. “It’s right here.”
Sora’s knife stopped and she lifted her glare from the rabbit to Will’s face.
“It took me three days to find her.” The stench had been awful. The wind had blown past, hollow and uncaring.
Sora sat utterly still, leaning as though she might explode off the ground toward him at any moment.
“She was dead.” The woman’s body had been curled up in the corner of the cave. Grey hair wild and matted, gaunt cheeks, bone-thin wrists.
Sora leaned closer and Will shifted it so she could see his sketch. The cave had been scattered with clay tools and dishes. There had been goat droppings everywhere and a rickety cage along the back wall with a chicken, also dead.
“She’d had a goat, and a chicken, a small bucket, a cup, and an assortment of things made out of woven grass.”
“Any bats?”
“No sign of them. The cave was covered in filth.” He stared at the page unseeing. “Except for the basket her body was curled around.” Her arms had held it so tightly, he’d had trouble removing it. “The rim of it was woven with withered flowers, and inside lay a set of neatly folded clothes, small enough for a young child.”
Sora ran her hand over the drawing, looking at Will’s notes, silent for a long time.
“But why write it down?” She spoke so quietly Will had to lean closer to hear her. “There’s nothing left to do.”
“I buried her.” She’d been so light Will could have carried her all the way back to the Temur village. “And then I made a copy of what I’d found, describing as much of her life as I could figure out, and delivered it to the biggest gossip in the Temur clan.”
Sora looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“The entire clan must have known about it in a matter of days.” He paused and flipped back to the story the clan had told him about the woman, with all its meanness and fear. “I also copied this, word for word as I’d heard it, on the same sheet of paper.”
A small smile curled up the edge of Sora’s mouth. She nodded in approval before busying herself with the rabbit again.
“But in some ways,” she said, “your story is just as bad as theirs. You wanted them to feel something about the woman. So you made your story to fit it.” She looked up at him. “How you tell a story changes everything about it.”
Will nodded. “There are all sorts of stories in the world. Theirs was full of fear and contempt. My story was a reminder of her humanity. Of her weakness and struggles and isolation. And ultimately of her death, neglected and shunned by them.” Will stopped and flipped through the book again, phrases of fear or hope or pain jumping out from each page. “We tell stories about everything. We can’t escape them. It’s how we interact with each other, it’s how we keep the things we value close. It’s the fearful stories, the ones that strip the humanity from everyone but ourselves that cost us nothing to spread. It takes a lot of searching to find the true stories, the ones that reveal people’s humanity instead of crushing them beneath the weight of hatred.”
Sora was silent for a long time. “Stories are too powerful. The ones people told about that woman defined her life.”
“Which is why they’re important.” He flipped back to the page with the sketch of the cave. “Her name was Zarvart.”
“Zarvart,” Sora said quietly.
Will nodded. “Names are important too.”
She considered the picture for a long moment, then piled strips of rabbit onto a piece of leather. Pulling another small heatstone out of her bag, she set it next to the rest of the pine needles. She wi
ggled her finger in the air and looked expectantly at Will.
Leaning forward, he lit the needles. The heatstone glowed and Sora used her knife to roll it up on top of the rabbit meat. The meat sizzled as she wrapped up the leather, trapping the meat against the hot stone. She bound it with some twine, soaked the entire bundle with water, and tied it to the top of her pack.
The other rabbit cooked over the first heatstone, little drops of fat sizzling onto the stone and the hot floor of the cave next to it. Sora lay down and Will traded places with Rass at the entrance to the cave who then curled up in a corner and went straight to sleep. The next several hours passed in boredom watching nothing at all happen in the forest below.
It was late afternoon when Sora came and sat next to him. “Let me see your hands.”
His bandages were grimy and shifted out of place, showing the angry red edges of his palms. Sora pulled out a small bottle from her pack and a ball of bandages.
He raised an eyebrow. “You put a lot of thought into rescuing me.”
“Remembering food and medicine isn’t exactly high level planning.”
Will looked up at the wide blue sky. It was unaccountably comfortable here. The floor was hard, there wasn’t much to eat, and if he stayed too long, Killien would find him and kill him. But somehow in the midst of all that, it felt homey.
The sky was a rich blue like home, and Queensland felt almost within reach. The Keepers’ Stronghold, book after book after book, stories that made sense and had all the right feelings. A place where being comfortable wasn’t restricted to one small cave, a ranger, and a grass elf.
Sora unwound a dirty bandage slowly, revealing the ugly burn on his palm.
“Do you think Killien will hurt Ilsa?” Will pushed the question out quickly before the fear behind it overpowered him.
It took her a moment to answer. “I don’t.”
“Are you just saying that to make me feel better? Or do you really think Killien is that decent of a man?”
“No and no. I used to think Killien was a decent man. And maybe he is, but lately he’s so angry. He’s done savage things when he thinks the clan is in danger. But Ilsa is the only leverage he has against you. I don’t think he’d give that up. He was certain we’d find you and he needs something to control you with.” She let out a long, slow breath. “It’s my guess he’ll do what he can to ingratiate himself to her. Because the more loyal she is to him, the more it will hurt you.” Sora finished unwinding the bandage and he stretched his hand a little. She bent over his hand, inspecting the burn.
Will looked up again at the patch of right-color-blue sky outside the cave and let it call to the deepest parts of himself. The parts he’d been trying not to think about for a year. He wanted to go back home so much he almost couldn’t breathe.
“I can’t leave her there. You need to take me back to Killien.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sora’s head snapped up.
“If you take me back,” Will said before she could argue, “Killien will still trust you. He probably expects you to be the one to find me anyway. Maybe you’d get a chance to help Ilsa escape.”
“I’m not taking you back.” She dribbled some water on his palm and rubbed at the dirty ridge of crustiness along the edge of his burn.
“There’s no other way that Ilsa’s ever going to get out of there.”
Sora dropped his hand and looked up at him in exasperation. “If you go back, he’ll kill you. Then he’ll have no reason to keep her alive.” She picked up the jar of salve and spread some across his palm and wrapped a new bandage around it before starting on his other hand.
She was right. He stared across the forest. There had to be a way.
Sora worked quietly, and he was struck again with how comfortable she was. He tried to pinpoint what was different. She wore the same leathers she’d been wearing ever since he met her. Her arms were bare of anything but the wide cloth band around her upper arm. The long white claw was still there, tied on by strips of thin leather, and the long puckered scar beneath it ran from her shoulder to her elbow. Her boots were worn leather, her hair hung over her shoulder in its thick braid. And every bit of it looked…at home.
“You love the mountains, don’t you?”
She looked up at him sharply, as though expecting some sort of teasing. “I do.”
“Why did you leave?”
Her face hardened and she picked up the salve to put on his palm. “I’m not interested in talking about my life with someone I know almost nothing about.”
Will felt a flash of irritation at the return of her coldness, but his retort died on his lips. He deserved that. “You’re right, you don’t know much about me. What do you want to know?”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Alright, I’ll start at the beginning. I was born outside a small town a half day’s ride south of Queenstown. You already know I have a younger sister Ilsa, although I haven’t seen her since she was a baby. My mother’s name is Marlin. My father’s name was Tell.”
“Was?”
He nodded. “We lived on a small farm. I wasn’t much help, I’m sure. Neither the chicken nor the cow was much trouble, but we had this goat, Tussy, who was the bane of my existence.”
Will flexed his fingers slightly and saw the puckered red and white outline of his old scar, almost covered up by the new burn. “The first time I ever did magic it was because of that stupid goat.”
Sora sat perfectly still, her eyes wide, searching his face. He dropped his gaze back to his hand. It had been twenty years since he’d told this story to the Keepers when he’d first joined them. But now that he started, the words pressed up inside him, and after only a short struggle, he let them out, telling her everything about Vahe and Ilsa.
“How old was she?”
Will pressed his eyes shut against the image of Ilsa’s terrified face. “Two.”
He felt a touch on the edge of his palm. Sora’s finger brushed over it, feather light on the edge of his healthy skin, blanking out to nothing over the scar.
“All I wanted was to stop him, but after everything, he still killed my father and took my sister. And I almost killed my mother.”
Sora set her hand across his palm, blocking the scar with her own long fingers.
“How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
Sora said nothing, but picked up the jar of salve and began to spread it across Will’s palm.
“When I was born,” she said quietly, “stars flew across the sky.”
The memory of his parents dissolved at her words. She focused on his hand, spreading the cool cream over the blisters, filling the air with the scent of mint and sulphur.
“A star shower?”
She nodded. “Not unusual, except this one came from the mouth of the Serpent Queen.”
“Do the mountain clans think of her the same way the Roven do?”
Sora shook her head. “Among the Roven the Serpent Queen is a shadow that is devouring the heavens. But to my people she is Tanith, a serpent moving thorough the stars, giving meaning to the blackness between them. She searches out paths in the darkness and leads those lost in the night.”
“I like your version better.”
Sora didn’t look up at him. Her face was distant as she picked up a new strip of bandage and wrapped it around his hand. “But she is not all good. She is still full of darkness, and when dark things must be done, she is the one to do it.
“The night I was born they say a hundred stars flew out from her mouth, scattering across the sky.” Her hands paused for a moment. “And one gave life to a child.”
“They think you came from the Serpent Queen?” Will let the idea take root and grow, seeing the effects of such a belief rippling outward, shaping all of Sora’s life.
Her expression, when she looked up, had a tinge of desperation. “Everything I did,” she continued in a whisper, “they said was a sign from the Serpent Queen. If I was near a sick
man and he recovered, Tanith had deemed him worthy to live. If I passed a man who died soon after, I had brought the queen’s judgement on him.
“For as long as I can remember, they brought people to me. Wanted me to touch the sick, bless pregnant women and hunters. And whatever happened, they claimed it was because I had doled out the will of the Serpent Queen.”
“Did they blame you?” Will asked. “When things went wrong?”
“Never to my face. To speak out against me was the same as speaking out against Tanith. But they kept their distance, unless they were desperate. The other children stayed away, afraid they might anger me.” She twisted the last bit of bandage in her fingers.
“It wasn’t you,” he said, reaching forward to set his hand on hers, stilling them. “None of it was you.”
Her eyes flicked up toward him, a hollow bright green. “It didn’t matter. Everyone believed it. The story shaped everything.”
His hand tightened on hers. “And that’s why you hate stories.”
She dropped her eyes again, brushed his hand away and finished tying his bandage. Her next words were so quiet Will had to lean forward to hear her. “My mother tried to protect me from it, but the clan was relentless. I witnessed births. I sat by sick beds. The dying, in an effort to seek Tanith’s mercy, confessed to me.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Terrible things. Things a child shouldn’t hear.”
Sora sat silent, and Will felt a deep anger growing at the thought of the small girl alone, wading through the darkest parts of people’s hearts.
“The cave system we lived in was enormous. I had free range of it all. No one dared upset me, never mind hurt me. But wherever I went, I was watched. So I learned to sneak out.
“I learned to stay quiet in the woods for hours at a time so that none of the rangers or hunters would find me. I learned what sorts of things the animals did. Where they lived, what they ate.
“That’s when I realized I could sense them before I saw them.” She glanced up at Will. “I didn’t know other people couldn’t until I watched hunters walk right by some brush with a hidden deer.
