Eyes of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “No…” Rhia had lost one brother already today. Her knees buckled.

  Marek caught her arm and whispered, “When I say, ‘now,’ climb on my back.”

  She looked at him in amazement. Did he have the strength to climb the fence supporting her weight, much less while conjuring his power?

  All but two of the soldiers dispersed to look for Alanka and Lycas. Soon they would find two of their comrades dead outside the camp entrance and another wandering in the woods after a bumbling crow.

  As soon as the pair of soldiers lowered their weapons to climb the fence, Marek bent his knees, whispered, “Now!” and vanished. Rhia clambered on his back and locked her arms around his neck. The outlines of her own body shimmered into nothing.

  To the bewildered shouts of the soldiers, Marek vaulted the fence. Rhia nearly lost her grip and slipped several inches before climbing back up. He dodged around Descendants who were flailing the air with sword or knife in search of their captives. His legs began to falter; the Descendants’ abuse had taken a toll on his body. He wouldn’t be able to remain unseen much longer, and someone would strike them down.

  “Behind the colonel’s tent,” she whispered.

  He stumbled past the tent. They came face-to-face with the stallion, who stamped his feet in fear at the smell of invisible humans. Rhia let go of Marek and untied the halter from the hitching post. She let the horse sniff her now-visible hand.

  “Come with me,” she whispered to the beautiful beast.

  Marek boosted her onto the stallion’s back, then she reached out her good arm to help him up. From the near-miss of his leap she could tell he was weakening. Marek pressed his body against hers to make her invisible, but it didn’t work. Any moment the soldiers would find them.

  Rhia convinced the horse to move with a soft click of her tongue. He walked calmly between the tents toward the outskirts of the camp. She bent low over his neck to hide her profile and wished that Marek could lend his stealth to cover the thump of hoofbeats beneath them.

  The colonel’s voice rang out. “Where’s my horse?” He called even louder. “Keleos!”

  The stallion stopped and turned his head toward his master’s voice. Rhia urged him on with a whisper.

  “You’ll never have to fight again.” She gave him a light nudge with her heel. “Please.”

  “Enough of this.” Marek grabbed the lead from her and slapped the horse’s hindquarters with it. “Go!”

  The stallion lurched forward. Rhia steered him toward the opening in the woods using only the halter lead, her legs and her balance. Fortunately, Keleos was as elegant in training as in appearance, and responded to her guidance.

  Shouts turned in their direction. Just as they reached the edge of the camp, a soldier leaped from behind the last tent. His sword slashed at Rhia, and she wheeled the horse just in time to avoid the blow.

  Marek screamed and became visible again. Blood poured from behind his right knee, where the sword had struck him.

  “Hold on!” she begged him, then urged Keleos to gallop into the woods. Leaves from low branches whipped their faces as they careened among the trees. Her hands twisted in the horse’s silver mane, and her injured shoulder throbbed from the effort to stay on the zigzagging horse.

  When the cover of trees hid them from the camp, Rhia slowed their pace to a trot. She would ride out a little farther, then circle toward Asermos. If Lycas and Alanka had seen their escape, they would head home as well, she hoped.

  She looked back and gasped at the rivulet of blood seeping down the horse’s side from Marek’s wound. He groaned behind her. With what little power she still possessed, she listened for Crow’s wings and heard nothing.

  “You’ll be all right,” she told him. “Just try to stay conscious until we get to—”

  Steel whispered against leather on the path ahead of them. The stallion reeled as someone on the ground grabbed for his halter. Marek toppled off with a roar of pain, yanking Rhia with him. They fell to the forest floor with a breath-stealing thud.

  Rhia lifted herself on an aching elbow to see one of the soldiers advancing on her, sword drawn. It must have been the one the crow had lured away from the camp. If so, he was alone. She looked at Marek, whose eyes grew wide.

  A few steps away now, the soldier halted. “You again.”

  Though the darkness obscured his face, she would never forget that voice: Razvin’s murderer.

  The Descendant stepped forward, face set in a snarl. “Thanks to you I was demoted, left behind on the day of battle to guard vermin like him.” His sword pointed to Marek, who tried in vain to stand. “I prayed this day would come.” The Descendant smiled slowly. “I guess that means my gods are real.”

  As long as he was talking, he wasn’t killing. “Did you doubt it?” she asked him.

  “We all have doubts. Except perhaps you people. You’re too simple-minded to ask questions. You might as well expect a dog to ask his master why he should hunt, or lie down or drive the sheep to the left or right.”

  “I’ve asked questions,” she said. “I’ve wondered why Crow comes for all people, even those who reject the Spirits.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you believe in them. They still watch over you. Someday Crow will come for you.” A movement behind him caught her eye. Maybe sooner than you think.

  Lycas leaped from the bushes and lunged for the soldier, who turned just in time to deflect his dagger’s blow. The clash was so strong, both weapons clattered to the ground. As they fought hand-to-hand, Rhia stepped over the heavy sword to retrieve her brother’s knife. It was nearly the length of her forearm, but at least she could lift it, unlike the sword.

  At his best, Lycas would have defeated the soldier easily, but his body was worn from battle, while the Descendant had spent the day guarding Marek. Rhia waited for an opportunity to return the knife to her brother.

  The soldier slammed the heel of his hand against Lycas’s jaw, then gouged a knee into his groin. Lycas dropped to the ground, paralyzed with pain.

  The Descendant scanned the ground for his weapon and saw Rhia holding the dagger. His sword lay just behind her feet. He leaped. She raised her hands to protect herself and plunged the knife into the Descendant’s gut.

  Blood gushed over her hand as she tried to withdraw the weapon. She needed to strike again and again, for he wasn’t dead. His eyes grew wide with pain and surprise, but the light in them burned strong and bright.

  His hands encircled her neck. She let go of the knife and tried to push him away, but his grip was too tight.

  Black spots danced before her eyes. His look of defeat changed to triumph.

  “Beast,” he whispered as he squeezed.

  Steel plunged between them, and the Descendant’s hands tightened, then released in a spasm. She backed out of his grip to see Marek materialize beside her. He stood on one foot, the sword in both hands. He twisted it into the chest of the Descendant, who no longer looked superior, only bewildered.

  His face pure fury, Marek shoved the sword deeper.

  Crow’s wings rushed through Rhia’s mind, sucking her into blackness.

  42

  The Great Mourning began.

  Asermos filled with chants for the dead, sung by anyone with breath to spare. Word of the Descendant defeat overtook the Asermon refugees on their way to Tiros, and within two days they returned. The wheat field had become a mass burial ground, with no individual graves, for the heat and humidity required immediate internment. Though Rhia understood the reasoning, she longed to know exactly where her brother Nilo lay.

  Two evenings after Marek’s rescue, she walked through her village, down the main road by the riverside. Nearly every person she passed wore their hair short. With a twinge of guilt, she felt thankful that her mother had not lived to see this day. On the distant shores of the Other Side, Mayra would see Asermos through a thick veil and understand how this battle fit into the Spirits’ plan.
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  Right now it seemed like a terrible plan. But perhaps the Descendants, having witnessed the power of her people’s magic, would regain their respect for the Spirits. Perhaps they could all be one people again someday.

  Hah, she thought. The dreams of a fool.

  She entered Sura the Otter healer’s large house, part of which doubled as a hospital. The rooms were jammed with patients, lying side by side on the floor, cushioned by blankets donated by the local villagers, blankets that would likely be ruined by the blood and other fluids that spilled upon them here. She wrinkled her nose at the smells and thought how much worse it must be for a Wolf like Marek.

  Sure enough, he sat with his back to the far wall and a piece of cloth tied tightly over his nose and mouth. His eyebrows popped up when he saw her, and he beckoned her over with a bandaged hand.

  She picked her way among the sleeping, moaning patients, and tried to cast a soothing glance upon each of them, conveying compassion she was now too numb to feel. Crow’s wings were silent; all of these patients would live, despite their suffering.

  Marek mumbled something when she stood beside him. She pulled his gag down around his neck. He made a disgusted face. “I said, get me out of here.”

  She squatted beside him. “How’s your leg tonight?”

  “Like I need a drink.” His mischievous glance quickly faded into soberness. “How are you?”

  She looked away. Even he wouldn’t understand the wooden despair that lay within her heart.

  With the help of a crutch and Rhia’s good shoulder, he limped from the healer’s house.

  “Ah, air,” he said when they were outside. “I love air.”

  He went quiet suddenly and rubbed his neck. For the first time she noticed the red welts across his throat. When she had seen him before, blood or bandages had covered most of his neck. The angry marks must have been caused by the rope with which they had bound him—and probably choked him as well. She wondered if he would ever tell her about his ordeal in the Descendants’ camp. Right now it would only stoke the rage that gnawed her inside, devouring her ability to feel anything else.

  That night Rhia and Marek slept on the first floor of her home. Tereus gave Elora and Alanka his bed and took the hayloft himself, since Marek’s leg prevented him from climbing.

  Marek trembled and flinched in his sleep, emitting small cries of protest. He had always slept quietly; she wondered what dreams or memories plagued his slumber now.

  At least he could sleep. Rhia lay staring at the ceiling for hours, waiting for the short summer night to pass. As it did, a certainty within her grew: She could not perform tomorrow’s funeral ritual. All feeling—tenderness, sorrow, love—had abandoned her. There was only the numbing, soothing balm of death. She was little more than a shell now, and no one wanted to see a shell perform their people’s most sacred ritual. Her friends and family—all of Asermos—needed her comfort, needed her to be whole, which she would never be again.

  All the deaths had left her as barren as…

  As the second tree.

  They rose before her, so vivid, it was as if she were in the glade again with Crow on the night of her Bestowing, but now she stood between the two trees, on the other side of the pool from the Spirit. He watched her across the water, waiting.

  The breeze swished through the leaves of the lush tree and rattled the twigs of the barren one. She smelled the green tree’s flowers and the black tree’s oozing sap. The bitter and sweet scents mixed in the air until she couldn’t separate them. She looked across the pool to Crow.

  “You must choose,” he said.

  She put out her hand to the dry branches of the barren tree. Pity coursed through her. No one else understood its pain.

  It reached for her. She jerked back her hand and studied the brittle branches. They would clutch her and never let go. But perhaps she would find peace in their dark embrace.

  The green tree rustled behind her, whispering of the love that waited in her life to come, if only she would turn toward it. She closed her eyes and heard undertones of the loss that accompanied such love. They reached her ears like a song’s faintest harmony, hinting of a tune to come, one whose mournful notes she could not yet imagine.

  Crow’s deep voice echoed. “It should be a difficult choice. Those who leap easily into the light will quail in the face of darkness.”

  He was next to her now. “Choose for yourself. Not for Asermos. Not for Marek. Not even for—” His voice cut off. “Not for anyone else.”

  Her heart felt encased in the bitter wood that tempted her. Inside such a fortress it would remain impenetrable. Yet there it would also wither and die, long before the end of her days.

  For herself, then, if no one else, she would choose the living tree.

  For now.

  She curled herself around Marek’s body, careful to avoid his wounds, and slept without dreams.

  The Asermons and Kalindons met in what was once the wheat field under a periwinkle dawn sky. No Descendants would roar out of the far woods today; scouts reported the enemy had departed—how far and for how long, no one knew. Several of their wounded had remained behind. Rhia was curious to see what would happen if they stayed—would they gain magic if they came to believe in the Spirits, or was it lost to them forever because of their ancestors’ mistakes?

  When she entered the field with Marek, Tereus, Lycas and Alanka, the assembled villagers rose to their feet. Coranna and Galen, along with Berilla, Galen’s young Hawk apprentice, waited upon the small hill where they would preside. She joined them as her family took their places near the hill, next to Arcas, who helped Alanka bear Marek’s unsteady weight. A look of understanding passed between the two men. Behind them, a mournful Perra stood with her two sons, grieving for Dorius.

  Galen and Berilla recited the names of the dead. By the time they finished, the sun had risen, shedding an orange glow across the fresh ruddy soil of the burial ground.

  The Hawks stepped aside, and Coranna then began the chant of the body, low and soothing. Rhia joined in with a soft high harmony. Their voices floated on the thick morning mist. Rhia closed her eyes and slipped into a state of near-trance. Her lingering pains, of both body and spirit, dissolved and dissipated, and she felt the Other Side’s sweet beckoning.

  “You’re off-key, little bird,” Lycas said.

  Her eyes flew open. Even he couldn’t be so unconscionable as to interrupt the chant.

  She looked around. No one else had heard him, yet to her the voice of her brother was as loud as if he had been standing next to her. I imagined it, she thought, and kept chanting.

  “You’re still off-key.”

  Rhia watched Lycas as the voice continued: “Luckily they’re too upset to notice.”

  Her brother had not spoken. He stood with his arm around Mali, weeping into her hair, all traces of the tough warrior washed away.

  “Rhia, I’m insulted. You could always tell us apart. And you said I was your favorite.”

  Her voice failed. Nilo?

  “That’s better.”

  But you’re dead.

  “Which makes you…”

  Oh.

  Pregnant.

  “Thank you for singing me home when I died,” Nilo said.

  I’m sorry I couldn’t stop crying.

  “It meant more because you did. Besides, brothers love making little sisters cry.”

  When the chant was finished, everyone sat. One by one, the people of Asermos praised their fallen heroes. When it was Lycas’s turn, he slowly stood and faced the crowd.

  “Nilo and I shared a womb, a home, a Guardian Spirit. We always hoped we’d share a grave.” His voice shook with bitterness. “That dream was stolen from us, and I—I feel like I’ve lost the biggest part of me, and the only way to get it back is to kill again and again. But the enemy stole that, too, when they ran away.”

  Nilo spoke in Rhia’s internal ear. “Revenge won’t satisfy him. No matter how many he kills, it’ll never
be enough.”

  How do you know?

  “I have infinite wisdom now.”

  Then what should he do to fill the space you left behind?

  Nilo hesitated. “Perhaps my wisdom’s not quite infinite.”

  Maybe after an infinite amount of time.

  “Time. That’s it. Only time can ease the pain of grief. Time, and many mugs of ale.”

  Ale, is that part of the Other Side’s infinite wisdom?

  “No, it’s left over from life. Tell him. But find a more eloquent way to say it.”

  Rhia spoke her living brother’s name. Lycas turned to her.

  “Nilo says—” she held his gaze “—not to avenge his death. Only the passing of days and years will ease your sorrow—our sorrow. We will shoulder each other’s burdens of grief.”

  Lycas stared at her. “Are you speaking to him?”

  Rhia looked at Coranna to see if she were breaking an unknown code. Her mentor gestured to Lycas.

  “Mostly he’s speaking to me,” Rhia told him.

  His eyes widened. “Ask him—ask him if—” He seemed to search for the right words, any words. “Just ask if he’s happy.”

  “Yes,” Nilo said.

  Rhia nodded. Lycas’s face twisted into a smile that was almost a grimace.

  “I wish he were as happy now as I am,” Nilo said, “but one day he will be. When we’re together again on the Other Side.”

  She repeated her brother’s words as they came to her. Lycas staggered back to their family and sat, head in his hands.

  Nilo spoke again. “There’s a bird here that says I need to leave.”

  She repressed a plea for him to stay. I love you.

  “Good luck. Crow tells me you’ll need it.”

  What does that mean?

  “I love you, too.”

  Then he was gone.

  She finally gathered the courage to look at Marek. His face bore a quiet smile that held no fear.

  Coranna began the calling of the crows, and Rhia joined in a few notes later. From a distance she heard them, as one hears a waterfall—roaring, rushing in the background of the mind. Such a commotion could not be one crow.