Down and down they went. A hundred steps. Two hundred. Reisil counted to help keep her mind focused. But soon she found herself eagerly anticipating reaching the bottom, reaching a place to rest. But they didn’t. On and on they went, always down. She gave up counting, holding back sobs of frustration and fear.
She almost couldn’t believe it when the stairs gave out. They stepped joltingly out onto a path, perhaps five feet wide, and flat. It ran away in either direction, girdling the mountain. Reisil stared back and forth, her mind sluggish. The push of the water from above eased here, swirling gently around her ankles. But the rain continued to pummel them mercilessly. She turned to Yohuac, her silent question written on her face: Where now?
He jerked his head for her to follow and set off on the left-hand path. Baku came alongside her, guarding her from the precipice. They stumbled on until they came to a small basin carved in the rock and hanging out over the vast emptiness below. It was filled with water. Opposite it, on the mountain’s wall, was a small shrine. It was little more than an arched hollow carved in the rock, with bands of the jagged-shaped rinda carved in intricate lacings and bands around the entrance and in the interior. It was empty.
Yohuac stopped, pulling at the ties on his pack with one hand, hampered by his grip on Saljane.
“Have to make an offering!” he yelled when Reisil touched his arm.
An offering? What kind of offering? Reisil watched him struggle a moment, a thought trying to coalesce in her muddled mind. It came to her at last, and she reached out and grasped Yohuac’s hands. His dark gaze was heavy on her, his own movements becoming ponderous with exhaustion.
Reisil dug in the side of her pack and pulled out her rosemary candle. She rarely burned it anymore. Only when she stayed anywhere long enough. The last time she’d lit it was . . . She couldn’t remember. She banished the pang of sorrow that thrust through her. She’d made her choice to be ahalad-kaaslane long ago.
She turned the candle in her fingers, smelling the sharp, woody scent of rosemary. Lit by a tark, it would burn endlessly. At least in Kodu Riik. Here, she didn’t know. But it didn’t matter. It would send a message to the gods of Cemanahuatl, to the Teotl: She had come to help heal their land.
She set the candle on the flat, carved bottom of the shrine’s niche. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself, tensing every muscle. Then she drew on her magic, touching her finger to the candle’s wick. It flared to light, filling the hollow of the shrine with a rich yellow glow. Reisil let go of her magic and a wave of fatigue swamped her. She swayed and her knees buckled. Yohuac caught her around the waist before she fell.
A glance at the tight concern in his face told her that they still had a long way to go. She fought against her sudden urge to slump to the ground and give up. Instead she straightened, holding herself erect by will alone.
She nodded to Yohuac and then turned to the shrine and gave it a slight bow.
“We have come. We will not give up. So long as we breathe and blood flows in our veins, we will not give up.”
The words were as much to convince herself as a promise to the gods who’d sent Yohuac to find her. Suddenly the flame of the candle flared. The rinda around the shrine flickered with green light. Reisil stepped back, bumping against Baku.
“What’s happening?” she shouted at Yohuac.
“I don’t know!”
The hollow opening of the shrine distorted. It stretched and grew. Taller and wider it expanded, the interior become a shallow cave, the bottom lined with golden sand. Reisil’s rosemary candle suddenly burned at the center of a crackling fire, the wax unmelting despite the heat.
Yohuac’s lips curved in a shaky smile as the green light flickered and dimmed and then vanished altogether. He went inside and she followed, Baku bringing up the rear. Instantly the sound of the rain quieted.
“Quite a welcome,” Reisil murmured. She looked around, becoming aware of the warmth emanating up through her sodden boots. “Thank you,” she said to the air, to whoever had created their shelter. “Thank you.”
The flame of her candle shot up high into the air like a streamer of sunshine, and then subsided.
“You are welcome here,” Yohuac said, his weary voice full of wonder. “The Teotl welcomes you to Cemanahuatl.”
Chapter 21
Soka touched the ward Reisil had given him where it lumped beneath his shirt. Would he need it? Would it work if he did? He drew a long, unobtrusive breath and let it out soundlessly, flicking the poison bead in his mouth against his teeth with a click. He scowled. Didn’t matter. He had his own solution.
With an effort, he schooled his features into an expression of boredom and glanced at his four companions. Clano and Temles both looked nervous, twitching back and forth at every sound or flit of a bird. Ferro and Slatts were alert, but relaxed, uncowed by the shadowy Old Forest, or by its rumored strangeness.
A streak of inky shadow caught Soka’s attention. He looked at it from the corner of his eye. Yes, there it was. A crumpled shape, like a discarded rag, gathered in a heap in the crook of a great elm tree. It suddenly gathered itself, thrusting stiffly out over the road like a diseased limb. Its attention was fixed on the balding Slatts about to ride below. The soldier had removed his leather helm, and his long gray hair dangled down his shoulders in a thin tail. Soka turned, staring hard at the tattered shadow. Instantly the thing shifted, rippling as if caught by a breeze. Soka knew better. It was seeking. It froze, awareness of Soka’s attention making it fade to a sickly gray. Suddenly it leaped away into the shadows.
Soka raked the trees, searching for more kivis. One of the many creatures that inhabited the Old Forest, they were mostly harmless, though a nuisance. They would fling themselves over the head of an unsuspecting man or woman, casting illusions over all their senses. Once attached, they became invisible. Kivis feasted on emotions, and their illusions drove their victims to the extremes of those emotions until they passed out or they dropped off on their own, sated.
Mostly they hunted alone, dropping out of trees onto their unsuspecting prey, as this one had been about to do to Slatts. They were easy enough to drive off, if you noticed them. Another story entirely from the ravenous delgeskes that had swarmed their camp the night before. The crab-like creatures had overrun them in a slow-moving mass. With Clano’s warning, there had been ample time to collect their gear and escape. Delgeskes were dangerous only to the unwary and slow. However, neither Clano nor Temles had yet recovered from seeing the chittering family horde rolling and tumbling into the camp like an errant tumble-weed.
Soka’s lips quirked. The delgeskes made an appropriate appetizer for the bitter meal of Bro-heyek.
They’d kept riding through the night, the men too unnerved to camp. Now it was approaching noon and they had just crossed into the boundaries of Bro-heyek, marked by a stone lintel supported by two rough-carved plinths. The lintel was square-shaped. In the center was carved a set of twisting antlers tipped with wicked points, and woven together by a winding of bull-thistle.
Soka didn’t pause as he rode beneath it. But immediately he felt a chill roll down his back, followed by a spurt of hot anger in his belly. He straightened, his thin lips pinching together as he wrestled with his fury. Honor couldn’t afford for him to lose control. Metyein was counting on him.
They’d not gone more than half a league when he became aware that they were being watched. The birds and insects went silent, and his skin prickled warning. Slatts and Ferro noticed at the same time.
“Got company,” Slatts said softly out the side of his mouth, reaching up in a nonchalant stretch.
Ferro nodded and laughed as if Slatts had said something funny and looked over his shoulder at Soka.
“Friends or foes?” he said, just as quietly as Slatts, his gaze sweeping the great boles of the gray-skinned trees promenading beside the road.
Soka smoothed a hand over his jaws and mouth. Either. Neither. Both. “Let’s find out,” he murmured. Then in
a loud voice, “Ho, there! In the trees! If you be friends, let’s see you.”
Behind him he could hear Temles and Clano shifting in their saddles. Temles lifted his bow from his lap, the arrow already nocked. Clano swung his over his shoulder and followed suit.
The five travelers stood thus for several moments. They were perfect targets, if those watching had a mind to shoot at them. Soka suddenly rushed back to the winter afternoon in the Jarrah Gardens and the arrows that had pounded into him from unseen hands. His shoulder and ribs ached with the memory of the wounds. Sweat trickled down his back and over his belly. He gathered his reins tighter, preparing to bolt to safety.
A crackle of underbrush to the right and a jingle of a bridle to the left warned them that they were surrounded. Slowly a necklace of twelve men emerged from the forest, their faces hard and suspicious. Each carried a longbow, arrows pointed squarely at the five intruders.
“Quite a welcome,” Soka said sardonically, fear draining away in a surge of emotion he couldn’t quite identify. He rolled the poison bead on his tongue.
“Name yourself and your purpose,” came a gruff voice from behind Soka.
He turned. The speaker was a hale man, twice as wide as Soka in the shoulders and boasting a robust paunch. He was near to forty summers, dressed in the grays and greens of the forest, the antlered Bro-heyek coat of arms stitched over his heart. His black beard bristled from a thick jaw, and his eyes were flat and hard. His nose had been broken at least once, and a pink scar slashed his face from his left temple to the corner of his lip, lending him the false appearance of good humor.
Soka stared at the man, sorting through his memories. His face was not familiar.
“Bright day to you,” he said, his nostrils flaring as he reeled in hard on the recklessness pushing at him. “We are on our way to Bro-heyek.”
“And who be you?” the bearded giant demanded, raking them with a suspicious gaze. “What be you wanting in Bro-heyek?”
They’d been riding hard for weeks. The five of them didn’t look like much. Shaggy and ragged, dirty and rough. More like highwaymen than not. Soka smiled inwardly. If his father expected his eldest and heir to have turned out a court fop—or worse, a weakling with no skills—then Thevul Bro-heyek was in for a rude surprise. Thanks to Metyein. And if his father thought Soka would have forgotten who was responsible for the loss of his eye . . .
The fingers of Soka’s right hand curled into a hard ball. He cocked his head. He’d been told he looked like his father. They had the same blue eyes. Or rather, his father had one extra. He touched his crimson eye patch, one eyebrow flicking up. “I am Soka cas Raakin. I’ve come to see my father.”
The other man remained still for a long moment, studying Soka from head to foot, his face expressionless. Then he nodded.
“I’ll escort you then.”
“As you wish. Though I know the way.” His fingers brushed his eye patch again, touching the gold threads that picked out a map of Bro-heyek. It matched the network of scars on his eyelid. Aare’s handiwork.
The other man stared at the eye patch. Soka saw him swallow hard.
“Name’s Prefiil,” the other man said. “Huntmaster. Any of you be sick?” The question was asked matter-of-factly, but there was a biting chill to his tone.
Soka looked over his shoulder at his men. “Feeling all right?”
They nodded. Temles and Clano continued to aim their arrows at their besieging challengers.
Soka turned back to Prefiil. “Nothing a bath and a woman wouldn’t cure.”
The Huntmaster’s lips turned slightly, but his expression remained dour.
“Is my father in residence?” Soka asked, suddenly remembering his father’s habit of roaming. It might be they had to hunt farther than Bro-heyek to find him.
“Certes he is. Celebration begins tomorrow. Nelle is going to be married.”
Nelle? Soka felt the muscle in his cheek spasm. His sister. Younger by two years. They had not been close. It was the habit of the household to keep the girls separate from the boys except at meals and family gatherings. And even then they rarely spoke. But he remembered she had auburn hair with pale green eyes and freckles. She looked like the portrait of their mother that hung in the morning salon. Mellisaan cas Bro-heyek had died while giving birth to Anliv, who had been four when Soka was taken to Koduteel. He had almost forgotten he had a sister and a brother. He wondered if they had forgotten him.
While Soka digested the news, Prefiil called out orders to his men, sending four back into the forest, no doubt to collect the bounty of their interrupted hunt. The rest fell in behind Soka’s party—at a distance—with the burly giant riding beside Soka.
They were a silent group as they rode through the dappled afternoon. The trees rustled and soughed in the breeze, a mixture of black spruce, sugar maple, aspen, elm, and white cedar. The undergrowth was dense, lending the road a tunnel-like quality. The sense of being underground was oppressive, further darkening Soka’s bleak mood.
The sun was drifting down to rest when they arrived at the gates of Bro-heyek. The massive portals were made of fire-hardened oak and banded with iron hung between two flanking towers. An enormous coat of arms wrought in copper was riveted to the outside of the great slabs. It flamed forebodingly in the lowering sun.
The walls were of kelamite stone from the Tornaat Mountains. The cream-colored stone was streaked with pink and red minerals and glimmered here and there with metal ores. The walls were fifteen feet thick and twenty-five feet high, with a cleared field of fire fifty yards around—an island in the trees. Square bartizans were spaced every thirty feet along the wall, with machicoulis in between and arrow loops interspersed along the top third. A dry moat filled with brambles, stinging nettles, and sharpened stakes was sunk deep around its base. Thevul Bro-heyek always expected an attack.
The riders stopped before the bridge on the other side of the moat, and Prefiil called a greeting to the guards on the walls.
“We got guests.”
There was a pause.
“They clean?”
“Appear so.”
There was silence. Soka eyed the walls with receding patience. Every hall, every town—it was necessary to be sure of visitors, to be careful of plague. But it gritted anyhow. To return at last, and to be left waiting outside like a beggar.
There was a sudden bustle of activity on the walls and the gates were swung open, the great coat of arms dividing down the middle. The inner portculis was raised with the measured creaking of a capstan. Prefiil led the way inside.
As the Huntmaster and his men dismounted, Soka examined the castle. The place was the same. Smaller than he remembered. Not as grand. But then, he’d lived the last twelve years in the palace of Koduteel. There he’d witnessed a kind of luxury and decadence that Bro-heyek had never seen. Had never wanted to see. His father had always eschewed such things as vanity and foppishness.
The castle was laid out in a square, with tall towers anchoring the corners. The bailey was an open, grassy square, with room enough for the entire garrison to assemble. Near the gates were the barracks, kennels, and stables. Beside it on the eastern wall were the servants’ quarters. Next to it were the kitchens and granary, and on the north wall were the hall and family living quarters. On the western wall were the visitor quarters, steward and household offices, blacksmith, and saddlery. Cellars beneath the hall stored provisions. Cisterns were located along the interior of the buildings to supplement the well. In the center of the bailey was a firepit and a small stone altar to the Lady. A flame burned low on the top.
Had that been there before? Soka’s brow furrowed as he searched his memories. He didn’t remember his father being devout. But yes, the altar had been there.
Stable hands came to claim the horses. Soka stepped slowly down out of his saddle. He was stiff and covered with grime. Guardsmen in brown livery and polished mail watched the visitors with hard suspicion.
“I’ll take you in. B
exten’ll see to your men,” the Huntmaster said, nodding toward a grizzled man, a head shorter than Soka and four times as wide, the buttons on his shirt straining.
Soka motioned for his companions to follow Bexten, and then accompanied Prefiil across the grassy bailey. The smells of roasting meats drifted on the air, and his stomach clutched painfully. They arrived at the wide steps leading up to the entry of the Great Hall. It was imposing and martial, designed for defense and intimidation. The only ornament was the coat of arms carved in relief above the doorway. Soka passed beneath, feeling his bladder tighten, and he was disgusted at the nervousness that quaked his muscles.
An iron chandelier filled with smoky candles cast a dull shine on the brilliant streaks in the kelamite stone. The walls were hung with tapestries depicting battles and hunts and interspersed with a variety of weaponry. From inside the Great Hall, Soka heard merry music, laughter, and a jumble of voices. Prefiil paused outside the heavy doors to speak to the two guards outside. Soka faltered a moment before forcing himself to follow.
He remembered this place as if it were a potent dream. He remembered chasing through the hallways while the scullery maids scrubbed the floors. He’d slipped and slid and shouted with laughter, accompanied by a pack of boys he’d befriended. He remembered romping with his father’s hunting dogs, learning to shoot his child-sized bow, swimming in the river and ocean, galloping swiftly on his pony. . . .
He caught himself short, his expression flattening into a death mask. Once, everything about Bro-heyek had been limned with a halo of gold. It had been a perfect place—an idyll for the child he had been. And then his father had let him be taken hostage. Now the memories were steeped in the bitter juices of betrayal, loneliness, and hatred. Returning here at last, where once he’d imagined himself happy beyond words, was a grinding ache. A pain too deep and vast to speak.
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