Kaiya nodded. Illindria smiled, Her eyes knowing. “But you are afraid. You think that seeing it will change it and new futures will unravel. You’re afraid that once you fall into that hole you might never be able to climb back out.”
Kaiya nodded again, her face grey as the enormity hit her. This time, the Goddess put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Now you understand. That is why you have been selected as one of my Weavers, Faoii-Kaiya. Because you, of all people, know that looking at it one moment at a time is the only way to keep your sanity. No being in existence could look upon that Weave alone for long without losing themselves in its many threads.”
Kaiya opened her mouth to speak again, but the Goddess shook Her head. “Not now. You must return to your world. There is someone there who will help you reach this place again, should you so choose.” She smiled thoughtfully. “I suppose you may not like where I put you back, Faoii-Kaiya, but it will be the easiest place for your first journey. My power is strongest there, and I will help you do what so few others have achieved.”
Kaiya wanted to ask what She meant, but suddenly she was falling, hurtling away from the white room and the cloudlike softness that enveloped it.
Illindria’s bright smile followed her into oblivion.
*~*
Kaiya woke up suddenly, her body screaming in pain. Her mind strained under the weight of infinity. Was scattered and pulled apart like taffy. At first a soft voice helped her pull the strained pieces of herself back from that looming void, but it grew distant as the seconds passed. Kaiya clung to it, and the dizzying effect lessened by degrees until only agony and silence remained. Kaiya reached out for the soft warmth of Goddess’s embrace, but there was nothing—only grime and chill. The smell of vomit and death. She cried out in frustration and anguish for the Goddess, for Mollie, for anyone.
“Mollie . . .” she finally sobbed. “Help . . .”
Her plea was answered, but in a voice that was decidedly not Mollie’s.
“Oh. You’re alive.”
33
The remaining Faoii were already weary of this battlefield and its thousand cut-off screams. Broken by the Croeli and enslaved by desolation at the sight of their tortured, maimed sisters, much of the Faoii will had shattered with the previous dawn, carried with the pyre smoke into the marshy darkness of morning. Amaenel’s soldiers fell upon them eagerly.
Lyn tried to rally those around her, her voice ringing high, mixing with Eili’s in the dawn. Their songs danced across the field in ribbons, twisting around each other in an unbroken hymn of rage and glory. Upon hearing the sound, the faintest hint of hope sparked in the eyes of those girls that were still left, and they raised their short swords higher to meet the oncoming horde. Lyn smiled as she pushed forward, raising her fantoii at the front of the charge, Eili close behind. Together, they screamed into the face of their enemy and into the night that plagued them. Into the death that chittered at their pain.
Eili’s battle song cut off suddenly. Death’s mocking laughter echoed hollowly in its place. The air around Lyn grew chill in the sudden stillness.
When time started again, it was faster than before and heated with a battle rage that sprouted in Lyn’s heart and shot forward from her outstretched arm, into the fantoii that still led the charge. Lyn spurred her horse, her eyes set on the dark, cruel helmet that glinted in the mist ahead. Somewhere behind her, she heard Emery scream in pain. She clenched her teeth and brought her head down, glaring at the leader as she urged her horse faster.
The horned helmet turned, ever so slowly, to face her, the eyes beneath it filled with madness. He watched her approach with a wild stare. Lyn’s blade let loose a cry of a thousand demons.
The cry was cut short with violent efficiency.
The Croeli warriors appeared from everywhere at once, oozing from the mist to surround her in a semicircle, clawing at her arms and legs, pulling her from the horse with an unexpected force.
Lyn fought against her adversaries despite her surprise, cutting down two even as she slid from her saddle, her arms and legs lashing out in all directions as she fought to gain her feet. Then they were on her, pinning her arms and legs as she struggled against them, spittle and curses spraying from her mouth. The fantoii fell from her hand, dropping dully onto the bloody plain.
Lyn quieted by degrees, raising her chin defiantly and barring her teeth as the helmeted leader of the Croeli approached, leading his—no, not his, that is Kaiya’s gelding!—horse by the reins. He stopped a few strides away, bending from the waist to retrieve the fallen fantoii. It looked deformed and tarnished in his calloused mitt of a hand.
“She has more fight than the rest, hasn’t she?” Amaenel said with a laugh.
Lyn snarled and pulled against her captors, gnashing her teeth in unbridled fury. The Croeli leader looked over her fantoii with lazy apathy.
“Put her with whatever other survivors there are. I think we have enough. Oh, and bring me any other witch blades you find. We’ll show them to our children when they ask what the Faoii were.”
Lyn was dragged back to the tree line, where a ramshackle circle had been constructed, ringed by a handful of Croeli warriors. She spat on one of the guards’ feet. There is no reason we should have been beaten by so few. It should have taken no less than an army to bring us down. She was more disgusted, however, by the obvious lack of Faoii survivors. Of the thousands of warriors that had walked onto this field a week ago, only a few hundred remained, their faces downcast and their spirits broken. We were not prepared for another battle. Not so soon. Lyn was pushed roughly into the group, but she walked forward with a sure step, scanning those that were left alive. Too few. Far too few.
Emery was there, white as death. His bound hands pulled his injured shoulder at an uncomfortable angle, the stitches stretching against his torn, bloody skin. He struggled up to one knee when he saw her, but Lyn only laid a hand on his good shoulder and knelt in front of him. She searched him over for new injuries but saw none.
“Harkins, report.”
He said crisply, “I haven’t gotten a full count, ma’am. There are at least a hundred of our warriors here, two hundred at most. I have not seen the other ascended.” He dropped his gaze.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. They got me early. I didn’t give them as much of a fight as I should have.”
Lyn rolled her eyes. “You were already injured, Emery. There is no failure in what you’ve done.”
He cracked a wicked smile at her. “I killed three of them as they came for me. I couldn’t nock the next arrow in time, but I got three.”
Lyn smiled and squeezed his shoulder. “You’ve done well, Faoli.” Lyn glanced around. None of the surrounding women were bound. Emery seemed to be the only exception. With an angry growl, Lyn fished a dagger from her boot. The Croeli had done well in stripping her of the fantoii and her throwing disks, but they had missed the simple, almost useless boot knife. Not that it mattered. It would do little good against the Croeli now. But she could use it to assist her friend.
Carefully, she extricated Emery from his bonds. He sucked air in through his nose in pained gasps as he shifted his shoulder to bring his arms to the front again. After a moment, he nodded, and Lyn helped him to stand. Together, they moved through the huddled masses of the surviving Faoii, searching for familiar faces and hope in a crowd that spoke only of sorrow and defeat.
Eili was not well off. Her already-scarred face was bloodied with a deep wound on one side of her head, her blonde hair soaked crimson. Asanali was with her, using strands of long copper hair to stitch the skin back in place like a demented rag doll with a ripped seam.
Eili closed her eyes in relief when she saw the others approach, and Asanali even offered her dazzling smile to the pair. It seemed out of place next to the desolate faces of those that surrounded them.
“Eternal blade! Ya made it, girl!” Eili laughed as they approached. “I watched ya charge on ahead, crazy thing. But it did my heart good to see a Faoii
hold tha line like that.” Eili rose shakily, her disfigured face dripping with blood as she fisted her hands in front of her. “Goddess bless ya, girl. And you too, Faoli. Even with a hole in yer arm, ya fought like a true warrior.”
Emery gave a smart salute, clicking his heels together. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Faoii-Eili, have you seen Tendaji?” Lyn asked.
The hints of a smile melted from Eili’s face as she sat back down. Asanali went back to work on her torn cheek.
“He wasn’t prepared for a fight. You saw ’im. Barely able to stand. They musta been lookin’ for him specifically, ’cuz a group of the bastards flowed ‘round our girls like water around a rock to get ta him. He fell pretty quick, and they moved on.” Her single blue eye misted a tiny bit. “I’m sorry, girl.”
Lyn was about to respond when Asanali cut her off. “Worry not for the carver of the shackled tree. He remains on this side of the life pool’s many shores. His roots are deep, and they spread wide.” She smiled softly. “A Croeli found him nearing the pool and pulled him back, whispering songs from the winds and skies. I saw the blood on that one’s hands, the hatred in his heart. But those eyes held fear for the Goddess’s light-eyed warrior. Even here, Tendaji is not alone.”
Lyn frowned, not sure what to make of that. As she pondered, Emery settled next to her and glanced around.
“So what do we do now?” he whispered under his breath. “Regroup from here and try to take out the guards?” Asanali’s shoulders tensed, and she stopped working just long enough to glance over her shoulder at Lyn. Even Eili regarded her warily through one bloodshot eye.
Lyn shook her head. “No. Look around. These girls couldn’t defeat them when they were armed. Now they’re exhausted, and the will’s been beat out of them. It would be a bloodbath.” She popped her knuckles compulsively. “There must be a reason that these Croeli bastards are keeping us alive.”
“They’re goin’ against Thinir. They might just be plannin’ to use us as fleshy shields. Even unarmed, we could serve ’em that much.”
Lyn narrowed her eyes. “We have to convince them that we’re worth more than that, then.” She leaned in, her eyes glinting. “I’ll be damned if we made it this far just so that we can die unarmed in the last battle. We need these Croeli scum to think of us as something more than battle trophies. Convince them that we make better allies than shields. Give us a sword, and we’ll double his fighting force, no matter what the numbers are.”
Eili frowned. “We’re prisoners of war right now. There’s no reason for this leader to trust us.”
“War prisoners are only a drain on rations and resources. Any sane man would be willing to switch them out for something useful. We can be useful.”
Emery glanced around at the broken girls nearby. Lyn caught his chin and pulled his eyes back to hers. “I know what it looks like. But we are Faoii. This isn’t over yet.”
Eili grinned. “If ya think ya can pull it off, girl, we’ll follow yer lead.”
“Good. Rest while you can. The girls are going to be busy soon.”
34
Two days passed before the Croeli suddenly packed up camp and herded their prisoners back onto the road. With most of the Croeli on horseback, the pace was faster than Lyn would have preferred and grueling to the war-sick women that had been given only a tiny portion of the rations left. But she set her jaw and urged them on, watching her captors with a trained eye, listening to their conversations when she could.
It did not take long to learn that they were heading east, toward the mountains that bordered her own home and long-abandoned monastery. She knew of the forests on those mountains. She knew of their shadowy underbrush and chilled airs. And now she knew of its darkest and most dangerous inhabitant.
We are coming, Croeli-Thinir. You will pay for every death that was guided by your hand.
Weeks passed, and Lyn worked tirelessly. Kaiya had taught her how to be a leader, and Lyn still remembered her ever-present determination in the enclave. But this was different. Kaiya, I love you, but even you couldn’t have prepared our army for this particular battleplan. Watch how the Monastery of the Unbroken Weave works when behind enemy lines.
The air began to change. Slowly—oh, so slowly—she guided her girls. First they began to feel hope again. Then she led them farther, training them in subterfuge that she knew would come easier than even swordplay had. Like water grinding down stones in a stream, the women of Cailivale gradually began weakening the Croeli resolve with soft smiles and warm eyes. It did not surprise Lyn to see the guards disarmed by women who had spent a lifetime learning how to get close to men when it was profitable. In fact, she had depended on it.
Slowly, it worked. The Faoii began to regain their spirit when they saw what they were looking for in their captors’ eyes—a need. A longing. They heard it in the guards’ strained laughter. They felt it when they batted their long lashes and gave their soft smiles. The air in the camp began to change. When the men practiced their swordsmanship, it was fierce and jagged with unreleased tension. Fights broke out more often.
Soon the women knew the men almost as well as the men knew themselves, and Lyn smiled in the background. She wanted these warriors to at least see her girls’ usefulness—on or off the battlefield. She wanted them to consider her girls an asset rather than a liability. Maybe they did not want them as allies in war. Maybe they didn’t yet trust them. But there were many ways to gain trust. And there were always needs to be fulfilled.
Apparently, their new leader saw it too, and it displeased him. His glower deepened as the women became more alluring and the men more lustful with each passing day. Lyn did what she could to use that to their advantage, training her girls to act willing and loving at first, only to pull away in “fear” if the Croeli got too close.
“The captain will punish us,” they whispered, casting frightened glances at Amaenel’s tent. “He’s forbidden it. We can’t.”
Dejected, the Croeli would then cast dark glares in the direction of their leader and storm off to participate in their increasingly frequent sparring duels.
The Faoii drifted through the prisoners’ circle like moths, plotting together as they chose their next targets. There was a fire in their eyes as they stalked their prey, but they buried it under sweet glances and soft lips when the Croeli looked their way. Over time, the wedge between the ascended and unascended Croeli grew.
Lyn could taste the coming revolt in the air before it happened. There was an unseen force between the captors and their alluring prisoners, an unspoken war cry that stemmed from the most bestial and primitive part of man.
It was a lithe, young Croeli that finally broke and reached up to stroke a fair Faoii’s breasts beneath her dingy leathers. The girl responded immediately, letting out a shriek and pushing him off her with the full strength of a Faoii warrior. The others fanned out behind her immediately, encircling the Croeli like wolves around a wounded hind.
Lyn hung back and laughed to herself while she and Eili watched the women shriek like wildcats. The men wanted them. They needed them. But they could not have them. Croeli-Amaenel himself stormed up to the offending Croeli before dragging him away from the prisoners and publicly breaking his nose. The other Croeli watched from beneath furrowed brows, but Lyn still felt the need. The desire.
Everything was unfolding exactly as she had planned.
Lyn was not surprised when Croeli-Amaenel summoned her to his tent the next evening. Eili clapped her on the back as she rose gracefully to saunter after the guard that had brought the summons. “Good luck, girl. Let’s see whether all this sickenin’ work has paid off.” Lyn only smiled over her shoulder and followed the guard to his general’s tent.
Amaenel was pacing when she entered, and he looked up angrily at her approach. She responded with a sweet smile and sultry eyes. Amaenel growled and gestured angrily toward one of the chairs positioned on either side of a low table.
“What do you want from me?
” Lyn purred as she lowered herself into the seat. Amaenel tensed. His scowl was almost as dark as the one on his horned mask.
“I want you to get your little whores to do what they do best.”
“Aw. Been away from home for that long, have you?” Lyn cocked a smile at him and leaned back in her chair, bouncing her crossed leg. Amaenel pursed his lips.
“My men are holding off now because I have demanded it. One of my soldiers has crossed the line and paid for it, but the others have not been as deterred as they should have been. Your women have been leading them on behind my back, and I know it.”
“You can’t blame your men for wanting a woman’s touch, Croeli.” Lyn leaned forward and plucked a date from the bowl on the table. “I’ve noticed that there are no women in your army. No concubines brought from home or taken from our monasteries. You could have had any number of women by now, but it was your decision to put forbidden fruit within reach of starving men.”
The Last Faoii Page 27
