Secret of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 2)

by Kathrin Hutson

  ‘We merely tried to warn you, to commune in the only way available to us. Then the Unclaimed gave you a gift, and that opened an understanding in you that we could not.’

  Dehlyn’s kiss. The memory of it bloomed in his mind as if he were there again, holding the green-eyed Dehlyn in his arms and seeing the whole of existence flash in a moment—within his mind, within his very core. For the life of him, he couldn’t find anything to say.

  ‘The vessel gave you more than we could have managed in what little time remains before the end. The rest, dear one, is for you to embrace.’

  He raised a hand to his forehead and rubbed vigorously, pushing himself to try to decipher the meaningless hints buried within the woman’s new revelation. “I still don’t know how to do this,” he said, then cleared his throat; he felt like a whining babe trying to learn something as simple and necessary as walking.

  ‘You must forget yourself. Let go of what you try so hard to be. Then listen, and you will hear.’ The woman blinked patiently at him, and her smile hinted at a bitter-sweet longing. ‘There are very few mortals left in this world who can call you brethren. Perhaps one day you will find them.’ She lifted both hands to her shimmering breast. ‘Perhaps one day, when the amarach return to share with us their knowledge once again, there will be more.’

  He stared at the woman, searching her gaze and finding only one answer. “That’s all you can tell me, isn’t it?” he asked, recognizing the same barrier in language he’d encountered with every other being he had not known existed. The woman inclined her head. “And I can’t walk away from any of this.”

  ‘You always have a choice, dear one,’ she said. ‘You must live with the ripples of whatever path you choose, but it is your own. Before the amarach, before their Unclaimed vessel, we were here. We have watched the world and all its creatures, and even fate foretold does not always come to pass.’

  Kherron’s stomach clenched at these words. What was a prophecy if not certainty in the fate it proclaimed? He couldn’t understand why his knees buckled beneath him until he knelt on the bank, why the pulling urge he’d felt since making his vow to Dehlyn seemed stronger now. Then he realized, with both surprised agony and a fierce awareness, that its strength battled with his vigorously renewed desire to say no to all of it. Until this moment, no one had given him a choice. No one had said he would not be to blame if he ignored his promise and the consequences of stepping aside. His burden, from the very moment Dehlyn had asked him to protect her, had not been one he’d lifted willingly. That was as clear to him now as the vivid glare of the sun on the glittering pebbles at his knees.

  “What—” He swallowed hard, feeling as if he might topple over a precipice with no ability to return. “What would happen if I don’t go to her?”

  The woman’s eyelids fluttered; Kherron thought she attempted to hold back her smile, as if he’d finally asked the right question. ‘The world will move on. It always does. Time changes many things, dear one, but we are always here.’ Kherron gazed up at her glistening face, hair billowing behind her in the still air. When he wondered if it could really be that easy—to turn from his supposed duty and finally seize his life as his own—the woman bowed her head and continued. ‘If that is your decision, the amarach will not return. The creatures who once lived in harmony among us will dwindle and fade. New forces will rise to take their place, as they have since the Unclaimed came into being.’

  That moniker stuck in his mind, and Kherron felt a pull of memory tickling in the back of his consciousness. The woman had said the Unclaimed, and he had immediately known she referred to Dehlyn—the green-eyed Dehlyn, the secret, ancient being holding all the knowledge of the amarach and the life of the world itself. But he’d heard someone else use the term before, and he closed his eyes, frowning in an attempt to remember.

  May the Unclaimed watch over your journey.

  Joreth, the owner of the Wayward Traveler, had bidden them farewell with those words. Kherron’s unwitting presence had broken the man’s fence—he knew that now without a doubt. Nor did it seem impossible now that he’d heard the horse telling him to turn back when he’d thought the warning had come from the boy Jayk. Siobhas had scoffed at the man’s words, calling them a stupid saying and that the people who offered such parting words knew nothing of what it really meant. But people did still say it; they believed in the sentiment behind such an appeal for grace and protection. Even though they’d never met Dehlyn, had never seen her and did not understand the delicate balance maintained by her existence, the idea of her meant something to them.

  Siobhas, perhaps, had known far more. The man could transform himself from human to feline at will—a form he seemed to resent despite his acceptance of it. But he’d also told Kherron he once had the capacity for more. I used tae be everything, once, he’d said. And before Kherron left Hephorai, the cat-man had confessed there were others of his kind in the world, those who once could shift to any form as they wished but who’d found themselves losing their freedom to choose. Just as Siobhas had. Just as Kherron felt he had. He thought of the deer and her fawns following him along the Watcher’s Road, acting more boldly and unafraid than any wild creature had a right. They’d seemed to know him, though he’d dismissed the premise then.

  Kherron knew the truth of Siobhas’ existence and believed his parting words. He knelt here before this woman made of the stream and accepted that he had been conceived by the spirits of this world. He understood he could learn to listen and therefore learn to use the strange abilities he’d previously called his curse. If these things were true, he could not fool himself into thinking that either the creatures who had put their trust in him or those who still relied on the saving grace of the being they called the Unclaimed—known to them or not—would be unaffected by his choices.

  He could turn away from everything, fight the urging of his vow to Dehlyn, reject the prophecy and carve his own fate. But he would also forsake Siobhas’ brethren, the people who’d helped him on his journey, Zerod and the amarach Mirahl. He would leave those like Cor and Mattheus, Nina and Sid to fend for themselves against the ominous rise of attacks and disappearances they could not explain. Men like Torrahs would step gladly into the void of Kherron’s refusal. He would be free, and while it would cost him nothing, the rest of the world would pay with war and terror, forgotten truths, lost pieces of themselves. And Dehlyn would remain abandoned, as she had been for longer than he cared to admit.

  With a heavy breath, he looked up at the woman before him, torn in two between the possibilities. “What will happen to Dehlyn? The... the Unclaimed?”

  The woman nodded. ‘She will be—’

  A cry rose in the distance, and Kherron thought it was a scream until he recognized the many voices within the flock of startled birds. The woman’s face turned toward the sky, and when she opened her mouth, a crackling roar of rushing water rose from her throat. The waterfall burst to life again, adding to the chaotic din; the glasslike pool moved once more in natural, foaming whorls, and the stream reversed its movement to flow like any other stream in the direction from which he’d come. Kherron thought he felt the bank quiver beneath him, and the woman’s gaze flashed back to settle upon him. The sparkling, watery orbs of her colorless eyes swirled like roiling storm clouds.

  ‘Our time together is ended, dear one,’ she said. The calm, welcoming serenity she’d offered had all but disappeared, replaced by a churning violence that reminded Kherron very much of the raging river from which he’d plucked a nearly drowned Dehlyn. ‘We brought you here for a moment’s peace, but we cannot stop what hunts you.’

  “What—” Kherron turned toward the direction of the birds’ cries and groaned. The dark cloud of the Roaming People swarmed in the distance, barreling through the sky; if they moved as they had when they’d come for him aboard the Honalei, they would be here far sooner than it seemed.

  Then he remembered Uishen—his last image of the ferryman’s barge tipping on its side as
the Sylthurst heaved beneath it—and instantly felt selfish and cruel. He had not once asked after the man who had strangely and quickly become his friend, whom he’d endangered just by traveling upon the man’s vessel. Kherron pushed himself to his feet, intending to ask what had happened to Uishen, when a bright flash shot toward him from the ground.

  The amarach standing before him was so viciously armored, so intent upon its mission, that he could not at first discern its gender. The creature frowned at him above piercing silver eyes, sterling hair pulled wildly back in a tangle of braids and metal cuffs. “Come with me.”

  The female voice gave Kherron a fact he could grasp amidst the confused terror the words struck in him. Whoever this being was—fiercer and more prepared for battle than any other he’d seen—her purpose was clear; she meant to take him with her, to steal him from this place. The waterfall raged with far more power than it should have, and Kherron glanced at the spirit of the stream, the creature who had embraced him and called him her own. Only then did the amarach seem to notice the third presence. The immortal slowly turned her head to gaze at the woman standing on the pool’s churning surface, lips drawn thin in a scowl of disapproval. Kherron saw recognition there, and warning. The woman who had revealed so much to him abandoned her form, falling into the pool as if she were no more than the emptied dregs of a kettle.

  “Wait,” Kherron called, reaching out toward her before he understood she was entirely gone.

  “There is no time,” the amarach hissed. She spread her silver wings to their full span, startling Kherron with their weight and the force of air whipping around them. The creature jerked her arm downward, and a brutal Sky Metal spear appeared in her fist, striking the ground with a sharp thud. The sight of that weapon served as the more powerful warning; it glinted in the sun, and he understood the danger. Then she offered him her hand, fingers outstretched with sinuous strength.

  Two more flashes fell from the sky, bright even against the midday sun, and the amarach was joined by her brethren. They stared at Kherron in surprise, clad head to toe in the same hardened metal armor. One of them, his wings glistening black with streaks of red, pounded a sturdy vambrace against his breastplate, the Sky Metal forged in intricate design. “Why is he still here?”

  The first amarach growled. “They mean to—”

  A grating howl rose just beyond the grove and the waterfall, and Kherron felt the trees behind him shudder all the way down to their roots. The buzzing whine filled his head again, and the black swarm of the Roaming People’s host barreled toward them through the forest. The silver-haired amarach raised her spear, but before the others could brandish their own weapons, the black cloud was upon them.

  Kherron had not thought he would live to see another battle like the one that had flashed above the Sylthurst and the Honalei in the late hours of the night. But he could not call this a battle. The amarach had come for him, not to fight, and there were only three. The third immortal, her blonde hair flying behind her as she whirled, stepped toward Kherron and grasped wildly at his shoulder. Before she could touch him, she was pushed back by a snarling tendril of the black cloud. A crack like thunder echoed at the contact, and a rising shout of multiple voices resounded through the clearing.

  The amarach vanished and reappeared, moving too quickly to follow, their brilliant flashes once more illuminating the furious, hungry faces within the dark cloud. Kherron felt a hand clutching at the back of his tunic, and he lurched backward at the Roaming People’s pull. A streak of silver blurred past him, ruffling his hair with the force of its speed, and the disembodied claw released its hold on him.

  Another amarach—he could no longer distinguish them—reached out toward him before being pummeled aside. Frenzied slivers of the black host ripped at his clothes, his hair, but it could not find purchase on his body before being forced aside by the immortals’ brilliant presence. The whine intensified in Kherron’s head, making him dizzy, and he whirled around and around, trying to anticipate the next hand that reached for him, the next pull of each creature trying to claim him as their own prize of victory. He tried to run but stumbled upon the bank, unable to see where he placed his feet. Something knocked him to the ground, forcing the air from his lungs, and he sprawled across the soft grass, arms outstretched in their failed attempt to catch him.

  In that moment, some pressure locked down on each of his wrists; one of them made his right arm pleasantly numb, while the other filled his left arm with a tingling buzz, as if he’d slept too long in one position and woken to the pain of a deadened limb. Kherron had just enough time to acknowledge the sensations before all the sounds of attack and combat vanished, and everything stopped.

  Breathing heavily into the grass, he looked up to see the amarach with the black and red wings crouched on the ground beside him. The immortal’s hand was wrapped firmly around his right wrist, but the creature was frozen, teeth bared in a grimace of desperate concentration. Looking up, he found the amarach with the silver wings in the air, thrusting her spear into a portion of the black host, mouth open in a battle cry. But no sound rose from her lips as she hung suspended above him, rendered immobile by whatever force had frozen him here.

  Time had not stopped, he realized—not completely. The immortal above him still moved forward, though agonizingly slow. The third celestial being, locked in a struggle with a barely discernable face in the Roaming People’s attack, descended almost too slowly to perceive; when time returned to its natural rhythm, her back would hit the ground. But not yet. Not now.

  The burning rush in his left arm grew almost unbearable, and Kherron glanced behind to see a disembodied claw, stretched from the black host, wrapped around his wrist. A low, menacing chuckle rose in the deafening silence, composed of hundreds of different tones all clamoring at once. Kherron scrambled up from the ground, grabbed his dagger, and yanked it from its sheath. Only when he spun to face the source of the sound did he realize how easily he had removed himself from the forces holding his arms. Both the swarming claw and the crouching amarach remained where they had been, tense and straining as if they still held him in their grasps.

  “They cannot find you here,” the many voices said as one.

  Kherron raised his dagger before him, feeling entirely unequipped to use it, his present circumstances notwithstanding. From the suspended cloud of the Roaming People, each tiny particle nearly frozen in place, something moved. A form approached from the darkness, and then the woman with the red streaks upon her cheeks stood before him. This same woman had danced with him in the Roaming People’s vanishing village, had pressed her skin to his burning body before the face had risen in their bonfire and he’d left the celebration. Besoran had offered this woman to him more than once, trying to lure Kherron into some trap he did not understand. But he understood now that she was not a real woman at all, merely one part of a whole, chosen to speak with him here.

  “What is this?” he hissed, surprised by the assuredness in his voice.

  “Merely a doorway,” the woman said, her voice echoing in countless discordant tones. “The Roaming Lord has given us the key. We use another to move through this world, but this will do for now. We wish to make you an offer.”

  “I want nothing from you,” Kherron spat, taking in the sight of the beads and bones strung through her dark, wild hair and hanging from the loose collar around her neck, barely concealing her nakedness. The implication of those bones was no less macabre now that he’d seen more of the Roaming People’s true nature.

  The woman tilted her head. “Are you so certain?” She eyed him with a feral amusement, and Kherron tightened his grip on the Sky Metal blade. “Every man harbors desire.” She continued toward him as she spoke, capturing his gaze with smoldering eyes. Her body moved as it had when Kherron first met her, when he’d thought her people were nothing more than a village they’d stumbled upon in the forest. The beads swayed and clacked against each other with each sensual step, her bare feet moving across the gr
ound yet leaving the grass beneath them as undisturbed as the ethereal creatures battling above. Then she stood mere inches from Kherron and gave a mischievous half-smile. “You desire to be free. That is what we offer you.”

  The combination of her words and the almost nonexistent space between them made Kherron’s face burn. He’d only just realized himself how many choices remained to him—how difficult they were to make. And whether the Roaming People truly knew what he might have wanted or had merely guessed correctly, this woman had voiced one more option he’d not yet considered.

  “We can take you wherever you wish to go,” she said, shifting toward him until Kherron felt the heat radiating from her bare skin. He had to remind himself she was not entirely human and that they were not, in fact, alone. “Solitude in the mountains of the north. Crystal-clear waters and simple living on the shores of the Teriborus. Companionship and work among your peers in any port or city you can imagine.” Kherron felt his breath moving heavy and fast in his chest; the more she spoke, the more he wanted to seize whatever opportunity came his way, as long as he did it of his own volition. Then the woman stopped, a small frown of realization creasing her brow. “Or perhaps you wish us to take you to the Unclaimed.” Her small, bronzed hand lifted to rest upon his arm, and even through the fabric of his tunic, he felt the heat of her flesh. “Anywhere you desire. The choice is yours.”

  Kherron forced himself to swallow, flexing his jaw as he struggled to compose himself. In that moment, he thought all he wanted was to shout a destination. But the things he knew about the Roaming People, few though they were, made him pause. They did not give gifts or fulfill desires without some recompense. “And what would you require of me?” He sounded so calm, even to his own ears, though he’d thought his voice would have wavered in his uncertainty. He felt like a beast of prey coiling to pounce, every inch of him rigid with quivering tension.