A Home in the Hills

by Robert J. Crane

  A spike of horror drove itself through Jasen’s chest at that. He’d been about to say, “Of course she will,” before Huanatha’s clarification. Now he stared at her, heart suddenly in his throat, the words dead on his lips.

  But of course she knew. Scourgey knew it, and Huanatha could read Scourgey.

  Jasen swallowed. The lump in his throat was dry and stayed where it had lodged itself. “How long have you known?”

  “Long enough,” she said.

  His heart drummed.

  He could ask her so much.

  “And … and how long,” he began, careful, fighting back the tremor that threatened his voice now he was addressing it head on. “How long do I …?”

  “Not long.”

  Only two words. And Jasen could have guessed as much himself. The onset of those headaches, the spots in his vision, his growing weakness … it was all happening much more frequently now. Death was racing ever closer, picking up speed like a pebble falling down a mountainside.

  But to hear it spoken aloud … it hollowed his chest.

  “Baraghosa …” he began.

  “Will be ended,” said Huanatha, “and you will see his end, one way or another, before we see yours.”

  His heart skipped again. “You’re certain?”

  Huanatha nodded. “I think so.”

  So he would see Baraghosa die. The fear that he wouldn’t, that the pursuit of the sorcerer alone would outlast him, had weighed him down like an invisible weight this past week. Now it lifted—but only slightly, for new questions came. How would Baraghosa be defeated? And would Jasen—that was to say, would it be Baraghosa who …?

  He swallowed again. That infernal lump, so dry, refusing to move.

  “How will it end?” he croaked at last.

  “That I cannot say,” said Huanatha quietly. “No one can. To know would mean your choices mean nothing. And this life is not meaningless. We make our decisions … and our decisions then make us.”

  He felt hollow again, at that. It would be easier to know, surely it would.

  “But I have no decisions left to make,” he said.

  Huanatha frowned. “You have nothing but decisions to make.” Straightening again, a mad look glinted in her eyes. “You could follow your cousin to these Emerald Fields she is so dead set upon. You could sail to the ends of the earth, away from Baraghosa and all of us, to forget him and let him do his will. And when you die—and die you shall—you may choose whether to do it on your back, with your arms thrown over your head … or you may do it standing tall, fighting to vanquish an evil greater than you have ever known.” She shook her head. “You say that you have no choices left, but the truth is that you have chosen not to do these things. You have chosen this path every day until now, and you will choose it every day until Baraghosa is defeated. You are … chosen.”

  Jasen stared. “I’m … chosen?”

  “You have chosen. The chosen one—not in the sense that some specialness has fallen upon you. If anything at all, the fates have been especially cruel to you. You are chosen in that you have chosen to be here. Your choices led you away from your village before its end, and your choices have led you to challenge Baraghosa when you saw him do evil. Those choices will lead you farther still, Jasen. That is,” she said, her expression suddenly dark, “if you continue to act with courage, and do not choose to run. We are all chosen, all of us here. Not just you and I, and Longwell, but your cousin too, the shipmaster, Kuura …”

  “But they will not fight,” said Jasen weakly. “They have said so themselves—they wish to be clear of this battle.”

  “They may yet reconsider.”

  “Is that your answer for everything?” he blurted. “They have had their time to think, and they have chosen not to continue, just as Alixa has done. For all the pain Baraghosa has wrought, we three appear to be the only ones willing to stand against him. Hoping that those people will reconsider is like … is like hoping that your people will just give you your throne back.”

  Huanatha appraised Jasen for a long, long moment. He’d offended her, he was sure—the issue of her throne was undoubtedly a sore subject—but he had to make her see how dire their situation was.

  “My throne,” she said at last, “is a debt that I will settle with Baraghosa, and the usurper he put there. I will take it back, with their blood upon my hands.”

  There was rage in her face now, but it was a different one than Jasen usually saw. She did not bare her teeth, like a snarling wolf. Nor were her eyes wide and deranged, her eyebrows arched so high they almost touched her hairline. This anger was a quieter sort, more contained. But she seethed—oh, yes, she seethed. It boiled behind her eyes, a blazing inferno a hundred thousand times more powerful than the meager candle that reflected, flickering, in her iris.

  “What happened?” Jasen asked. “You said Baraghosa turned your people against you—like Longwell’s?”

  “He spent long years worming his way into our people,” Huanatha spat. “He brought gifts, made trades; he advised; our council consulted him. He was useful, it has to be said, although he pushed, relentlessly in later years, for Muratam to go to war.”

  “With who?”

  “The Prenasians,” said Huanatha.

  Jasen’s eyebrows drew together. “Why?”

  She shook her head. “I do not know. His reasons were vague. Said they posed too much of a threat, that we should unite against the enemy.” She pursed her lips. “I resisted for a long time.” She took a steadying breath. “And then, when I was on a royal visit elsewhere, he goaded my cousin, Trattorias, into killing my relatives while they slept and assuming the throne himself.” Her jaw was tight. “They came to me in spirit, one by one, as he slit their throats. Their cries …” She shook her head. “I will never forget their cries. They pleaded for me to intervene, but I was too far away. By the time it was done, I had hardly unfurled my sails.”

  Her eyes had glazed at the memory. Now they came back to Jasen, in the room, Scourgey resting upon his legs.

  “You know how this feels,” she said. “You know the pain of losing your loved ones, the pain of being unable to prevent their deaths.”

  And it came back as an echo: the sight of the mountain split open, spilling molten rock over Terreas. Scorching rock, ash pouring down upon the village in a second, burying every man, woman and child alive under it—if they had been alive in the seconds after it happened. He hoped they were not. He hoped, again, that his father had just been sleeping, hadn’t had even the time to rouse as magma demolished the walls of the Weltans’ house and encased him in it …

  “It is no coincidence we are drawn together in this,” said Huanatha. “The dead guide us.”

  “The ancestors,” Jasen murmured.

  “Yes. Our forebears. They watch. The veil grows thin between you and them, the closer you get to your end. You see it—as I do, all the time.”

  Jasen’s gaze had fallen somewhere past Scourgey, out into a far infinity, as he thought of all the awful things he fought so hard not to think of—those last moments of everyone he had ever known, before this. Now, though, he found himself staring at Huanatha.

  The veil grows thin. You see it.

  Flashes came to him: his mother, looming behind the rocks on the isle of Baraghosa; the spectral silhouettes flickering, for just a few seconds, in the cabin with Longwell and Huanatha before the mutiny; and this morning, the old Nonthen on top of the ruined crater that it had become, all its people—

  “You will hear them, too,” said Huanatha, “as it comes closer.”

  So that screaming noise …

  Those were the people here.

  Those were the souls who Baraghosa’s attack had ripped from their bodies, thousands of them.

  “They guide us,” said Huanatha. “They can do little … but a little can be enough. A ship a few degrees off course, over the period of days and weeks, gets farther from its destination by many miles. Their pushes, so subtle, from beyond t
he veil … over great spans of time, they bring us together. And now, here we are. Together, we are chosen. And we have chosen for ourselves.”

  Chosen? But how, if they were pushed?

  Could you be pushed and still choose?

  “Something is happening,” said Huanatha. “I, and the dead, do not know what Baraghosa is planning. But it will shake the foundations of the world—that much is certain. So we choose. And now you must, again, decide: whether to let it go, as the shipmaster wishes to, as your cousin wishes to. Or do you fight, with what little time and strength you have left?”

  And here she rose. Stepping forward, she ran an idle hand across Scourgey’s haunch; then she bowed low over Jasen, and pressed her lips to his forehead.

  “It is your choice that will see us through,” she said, “or see us gone. It is in your hands, a big fate—the fate of all of us in this world, perhaps.”

  She left.

  The door closed with a soft click, and but for the scourge resting softly on his shins, watching him through black eyes, he was alone once more.

  He lifted his hands.

  In the dim light of the candle, they looked so terribly pale.

  His hands shook.

  Whatever was killing him … whatever illness … its roots penetrated deeper all the time. Today, they had found a great cleft inside of him which they could burrow into—and now, like the roots of a tree through stone, it would grow and grow until it finally broke him into pieces.

  A white spot, in the corner of his right eye, opened. It lowered, like ash falling through the skies—and he saw, again, for just the shortest moment, a flash of people. A man, a woman—his father? Mother? They were gone before he could be sure.

  He was tired again. And he’d not moved—only talked.

  His hands quivered.

  It is in your hands, a big fate—the fate of all of us in this world, perhaps.

  But how, when he was so weak, could Jasen carry the fate of anything … let alone an entire world?

  19

  A knock at the door brought him out of the dark place once more.

  He blinked, confused. The lamp had gone out, the small pillar candle poked into it had burned down. There was just enough light coming from the hall outside, under the door, that he could make out the very edge of the bed where he lay, Scourgey upon him still.

  A shadow broke the narrow beam of light.

  “Come in,” he said, trying to push himself up. He had more strength for it now, and he rose to sitting easily … at least, more easily than before.

  The door opened.

  Alixa stood beyond.

  She was past weary. Dark circles hung under her eyes, and her whole body was limp. Almost every inch of skin and her clothes was coated in a thick layer of reddish-black clay, soot, and congealed blood, none of it her own.

  She hesitated a moment, and Jasen hesitated with her. Then he was pushing to stand—

  “Don’t,” said Alixa, rushing in to still him with her grip on his shoulders. “Huanatha said you should rest.”

  “I have been resting.”

  “No, would you—would you bloody stay still?” Alixa cried, pushing him down. “You hit your head. You’re supposed to be recovering.”

  Hit his head? But he’d been lying upon the ground already before blacking out, hadn’t he?

  “I thought I passed out,” he said.

  “You did,” Alixa confirmed, taking a seat at his hip, and resting a hand on Scourgey’s head. “But you were staggering around before that, going on about—screaming noises, people dying …” She shuddered. “It frightened me. Even more when you fell.”

  He touched his head, rooting his fingers through unruly black hair, looking for scabbed-over wounds.

  “You didn’t bleed,” said Alixa. “Medleigh said you didn’t crack your skull open or anything. But you just—you went out like a snuffed candle, and nothing I could do would wake you.” She added in a small voice, “I was scared you were gone.”

  So he’d been conscious for longer than he recalled. Strange—he could have sworn he lost consciousness before rising. Had the impact to his head stopped the memory from being recalled? Possible. Medleigh might know, at any rate.

  Then again, it was hardly important now, was it?

  Nevertheless, he was curious: “How did I get back to the ship?”

  “Scourgey carried you.” Alixa looked at her fondly, gently running her fingers across the few wiry hairs atop the beast’s head. “She just sort of shuffled herself under you and picked you up, and she ran, before I could go to pieces in my panic. Good girl,” she said gently. “She took you to Longwell first. He was just leaving, to go find out … where he has gone, I suppose. Longwell took you to Medleigh, who checked you over, and Huanatha brought you back to the ship. Both of you. I would’ve come too, but she said I would be more use in Nonthen.” Rolling her shoulders, either in a shrug or to banish some ache, she finished, “That was yesterday morning.”

  Yesterday—he’d been out almost the entire day, and much of the night too, after Huanatha’s conversation.

  “What time is it now?” he asked.

  “Just after dawn.”

  “Have you been there all night?”

  Alixa nodded. “They’ve set up camps now, with fires. Aid is starting to trickle in—real aid, more than we could give. But some of us are still out there.” Suppressing a sudden yawn, she said, “Shipmaster Burund relieved me.”

  “How is it?” Jasen asked. “Nonthen.”

  “You saw it,” said Alixa. “There are still bodies being dragged out of the water—too many to deal with. I don’t know how many I pulled out myself …” Closing her eyes, likely to blot out the images seared into her brain, she went on, “Help has been flowing in all night from the nearest settlements, but with so many injured … it’s going to be weeks before anyone can even think about rebuilding. If they think of it. I don’t suppose they will, now—not the shape it’s in. More shore keeps falling into the water. Last I saw, boards were being put down to create more solid walkways, but … the whole thing is a wreck, Jasen.”

  The ghostly image of Nonthen as it had once stood came back to him. Nowhere near as majestic as the Aiger Cliffs had been, it was still a bustling city, full of so much life. What was left now was more completely destroyed than any army or even the passage of centuries could have managed. Now the clay layer had been revealed, the two, three, maybe even five meters of solid soil above it washed away; Jasen doubted anything could be built here ever again. It would be just a bay, shallow, perhaps totally dry when the tide was at its farthest out—and littered with the rotting detritus of what once had been.

  “It was Baraghosa,” Alixa said quietly.

  Jasen nodded. “I know.”

  “I doubted it—all the way until maybe midnight. But the more I heard, especially as others came from the neighboring villages … his description came back again and again, his name. It was him, Jasen—he destroyed Nonthen.”

  “Why, though? And how?”

  “The city’s council … ‘resisted his overtures,’ someone said. He’d been pressuring them for a long time, wanting some kind of pact against the Prenasians. They refused, and so he unleashed a storm upon them—and this is what he wrought. All because they wished to maintain their independence.”

  “A pact against the Prenasians? That’s what Huanatha said too,” Jasen murmured. “He wanted Muratam as some kind of ally.”

  Alixa hugged one knee to her chest and leaned her head on it. “Any idea why?”

  Jasen shook his head. “No. But it cannot be for good.”

  “No,” Alixa conceded sadly.

  “I have to know what he’s doing, Alixa,” said Jasen. “And I have to stop it from happening.”

  She sighed. “I know.” Closing her eyes, she rested her forehead on her knee where her chin had just been. “Is there no way to talk you out of this?”

  “No,” Jasen answered, as kindly as he could—bec
ause now there would be no argument, and whether or not Alixa would come along with him or forge her own path to the Emerald Fields, this was the point where finally she would understand. It had to be, with his time running short.

  “I have chosen this, Alixa,” he said. “I have chosen this because stopping Baraghosa is right … and because, even if he had nothing to do with the mountain destroying Terreas, he did meddle in our village, the same way he meddled in others the world over. He took children from among us, took them off to die.”

  “Pityr,” Alixa whispered.

  And as she spoke his name, Jasen saw him: that boyish face again, smiling—here in this very room with them. He was ghostly, faint—but it was him. Jasen would remember his face clearly even if he lived another eighty or a hundred years, he would remember it. Pityr was here. Pityr was with them.

  He was gone as soon as he’d appeared, before Jasen’s heart gave a mighty thump in shocked acknowledgment.

  But he’d seen him. He’d seen their friend, beyond the veil.

  “Yes,” said Jasen, “Pityr. And others like him. Baraghosa destroyed families, year after year.”

  “But why?” Alixa peered at him again, over the top of her knee. Sadness and confusion warred in her eyes. “Why take children?”

  “Why usurp Longwell and Huanatha?” Jasen asked. “Why destroy Nonthen? Why seek pacts against the Prenasians? I don’t know. I suspect the only person who knows the answer to those questions is Baraghosa himself.”

  “And you intend to ask.” It was not a question, but a statement.

  “I will ask if I must. Maybe I will only have to listen. Whatever the case, I will know.”

  “You think he’ll just tell you?”

  Jasen’s conversation with Rakon the morning of the mutiny came back to him. He’d spilled much, so easily, simply for the sake of talking. And Baraghosa had done the same—he’d told Jasen more than he needed to. Why else would he reveal that he was dying?

  “He likes the sound of his own voice too much,” said Jasen. “He will talk.”

  “And then?”

  The resolve ran heavily through Jasen. “And then I’ll kill him.”