Farther out, the men and women looked more familiar, mostly dressed in tan tunics, often carrying tools—this was obviously the laborers’ section of the city. They passed through it, and the living quarters became smaller and seedier. Instead of houses, the homes were platforms lashed together with tarps, boards—sometimes even a door hammered on as a roof. Laundry was strung between them, and there were a few kids draped over a branch, passing a jar back and forth between them. “Don’t make eye contact,” Champion Ven told her.
She swung her head to stare just at Ven’s shoulder blades. He strode quickly through the area and then he climbed another ladder. She followed him up to an empty platform with a tarp. “Where are we?” she asked.
“My place, for the week. I rented it.”
“We’re staying here?” She tried, and failed, to keep the judgment out of her voice. She’d pictured them heading much farther out, into the forest.
“I paid for it, but since I won’t be using it as a home . . .” He drew out a knife and sliced the tarp from the roof. He rolled it up, tied it with a rope, and slung it on his back. “Our portable camp. Consider it your first and last luxury, at least until we reach a village.” He then began to climb up, beyond the end of the ladder. “Let me show you the other reason I chose this place: location.”
She opened her mouth to ask where they were going next and then shut it. She’d find out soon enough. It didn’t matter, as long as he trained her. Higher, they reached the canopy, and she found him looking at her. She wondered if she’d done something wrong.
“You aren’t afraid of heights, are you?”
“I don’t think so.” She’d climbed the spiral stairs daily, and she’d never blinked at it. He pulled a rope with a clip out of his pack.
“You wrap this around your wrists, attach the clip to the wire, and then you kick off. Whatever you do, don’t let go.” He handed the clip to her, and then he got out his own, wrapped it fast around his wrist, reached up, clipped it to a wire, and then without another word, he kicked off. Dangling from the clip, he sailed through the branches, breaking through the leaves, with the whoosh of wind in his wake.
“Wait! I . . .” She stared down at the clip in her hands and then swallowed. No wonder traveling the wire paths was considered insane. “Don’t let go. All right.” She’d wanted this, she reminded herself. She’d taken plenty of survival classes, though they’d always been either on the ground or very close to it. None of them had involved hurtling through the tops of trees. She took a deep breath and then another, and she wished she were traveling the forest floor with Bayn.
She hooked the clip onto the wire, and she wrapped the rope three times around her wrist. Testing its strength, she lifted her feet. It held. She couldn’t see where the wire led. It disappeared into the leaves only a few feet from her. She didn’t see any motion and had no idea how far the champion had gone. She couldn’t let him get too far ahead of her.
Kicking off the tree, she held on tight. She gritted her teeth so she wouldn’t scream as she soared down the wire. Wind whistled in her ears, and branches slapped at her arms. One sliced her cheek. She turned her face away and closed her eyes, then forced them open again.
Ahead was a tree and a platform. The champion was waiting for her. It was almost over! But how to stop? She clung to the rope and felt as if she were increasing speed. She lifted her knees up to her chest, trying to protect her body, and she tensed for impact. She squeezed her eyes shut again—she couldn’t help it—and then she slammed into something soft.
The champion grunted as he caught her, and she felt him take a step, only one, backward, then he steadied himself and her. Slowly, she lowered her legs down. She didn’t stop clutching the rope.
“Unclip yourself.”
Shakily, she unclenched her hand and unclipped from the wire. “Are we going down?”
“Hardly. Next lesson.” He pulled a second clip with a rope out of his pack. “To travel from wire to wire, you need to clip on to the next wire at the same time—or more accurately, an instant before—you unclip from the prior wire. Try not to lose momentum.”
“What?”
She saw where a second wire came into the tree. He reached over and clipped on to it. “You hang on with one hand, and you ready the second clip with the other. Think of a monkey swinging from vine to vine. It’s like that.”
But I’m not a monkey, she wanted to say, but didn’t. More important, she’d never even seen a monkey. All she knew of them was that they were native to the islands of Belene and liked to throw rotten fruit and feces at intruders. Charming creatures.
She was starting to have the same feeling about Champion Ven.
Regardless, he was her teacher, her only one now, and she knew better than to argue. “Will you . . .” She licked her lips. Her mouth felt dry. “. . . go first?”
He grinned. “Stay close. And remember: this is the fun part.” Clipping on, he kicked off and hung from the rope by one arm. He held the other ready.
“Right. Fun part.” She clipped on and followed. In her other hand, she held the other clip. Up ahead, she saw him make the switch, clipping on to the next wire and sailing smoothly onto it. “You can do this, Daleina,” she told herself. “Ready . . . one, two . . .”
On two, she hit the end of the wire. Her feet swung up and bashed into a limb, and the force jerked her arm. She felt as if it were going to pull out of her shoulder. Wincing, she dangled, and then she clipped on to the next wire. Slowly, she slid down it, gathering speed.
She shook her arm out as she flew down the wire, and she readied the clip. She kept her eyes focused ahead of her. Ready, ready, ready . . . There! Now! She clipped on to the next wire and soared on.
Again and again, she switched wires, following behind Ven, catching glimpses of him through the branches. Wind whooshed past her, and she felt as if the world had narrowed to just this area of forest. All her focus was on the next branch, the next switch, the next tree trunk. By the third switch, she was smiling. By the fifth, she was laughing.
At last, she saw the champion ahead, waiting for her on a platform. She raised her legs up, feetfirst, as she’d seen him do. She tensed her arms, ready. He hadn’t mentioned how to stop. The trunk came at her fast, and she saw the champion was leaning against it idly, no intention of catching her. And an instant later, she was there, feetfirst, hitting the trunk. She bent her knees, absorbing the impact as best she could, though it shuddered through her.
She lowered her feet to the platform. For a minute, she could not make her hands open to release the rope, but then her muscles obeyed. She unclipped. Her arms ached in a way they never had before. Wincing, she swung them around in a circle.
“How good are you with a knife?” he asked.
“I did well in survival class. But not with shaking arms.”
“You’ll learn. Get out your knife. Next lesson.” He pointed to the next tree, at a crook between two branches. “Hit that.”
She pulled her knife out of her pack, wrapped a charm around the hilt so the spirits wouldn’t object, and then held it up, aiming at the tree. Her arms were shaking. She tried to calm the muscles. “Can I wait until—”
“Throw.”
Deep breath. Steady. She threw.
The hilt hit the trunk, and the knife plummeted. It bounced off a branch, then another, then lower, before it landed on a wider branch.
“Get it, climb back, and try again.”
She obeyed, even though her arms ached. Climbing down from branch to branch, she lowered herself down to where the knife had landed, and then she crawled to it. Reclaiming it, she climbed back up to the champion. Her arms were shaking worse now, and her cheek stung from where a branch had nicked it. She wondered if there was blood. Later, she’d deal with it. In the meantime, though . . . She took another breath, focused on the crook in the branch, and threw.
This time, it embedded itself in the tree, three feet down from the crook. She looked at him. “Get it, clim
b back, and try again,” he repeated.
She climbed again.
And again.
And again.
“Enough,” Ven declared. “We’ll camp here.”
“Here? As in, right here?” She felt him watching her, judging her. “Here is fine.” He handed her the canvas, and together they set up camp, creating a nest of ropes.
Suspended between trees, Daleina tried to sleep. After so long closeted inside the academy, she’d forgotten what the open forest sounded like at night. The owls called to one another in long, low notes, while the wolves howled far below, echoing the howls of other packs. Insects clicked, buzzed, and hummed, and the wind whispered through the leaves. It was extremely irritating. Plus she couldn’t get comfortable. The makeshift rope hammock wasn’t woven evenly, and every time she shifted, she accidentally stuck an arm or a leg through a too-wide hole.
“You need to rest,” Champion Ven said, his voice much too awake for this late at night. She supposed he was keeping watch, another thing she hadn’t had to worry about inside the academy. She missed her walls, and she wondered if Bayn had found a comfortable place to sleep on the forest floor. She wished they could have camped down with the wolf.
“I know.”
“Relax,” he said. “Think soothing thoughts. I know the academy teachers taught you control and focus. Use that to coax your body to sleep.”
Daleina didn’t answer. She didn’t want to sound disrespectful, but she couldn’t force herself to sleep. The more she ordered her body to relax, the more it tensed.
“Or you could summon a few spirits to sing you a lullaby.”
“Is that a joke or an order?” She wasn’t sure champions were allowed to have a sense of humor. She’d never pictured them ever laughing. Lifting her head, she tried to see him in the darkness. They were tucked in the shadows, and he was only a shape, sitting on a nearby branch. She thought she saw a sword balanced on his knees.
“There are several nearby. Can you sense them?” He was looking out, and his profile made her think of a hawk, alert, ready to hunt, or maybe he was more like an owl, watching the trees for any hint of movement.
She stretched out her awareness. It felt like straining one’s ears to hear a muffled whisper, except it was more closely linked to the sense of touch. She concentrated first on the feel of the rope hammock, biting into her skin, and the feel of the air that moved beneath the tarp they’d stretched as a roof. She then “felt” beyond her, to the sturdy trunks of the trees, the empty air between them, the thin life of the branches . . . Her mind brushed over an owl and then a few crickets before she encountered the first spirit.
It felt like a small one, huddled in a nearby tree. She reached farther and touched two more. “What are they doing?” she whispered.
“Watching us,” he answered.
“Do you think they’ll attack?”
“Only if we do something stupid.”
“Like what?”
“Like this,” he said, and swung his sword and lopped off a branch. “Did your teachers ever tell you about the most important ability that champions possess?” he continued conversationally.
Struggling to sit up, Daleina scrambled out of the ropes. “What are you doing?” He hadn’t taken any precautions—no charms on him or the blade.
He hacked at another branch, and then another. “The ability to”—hack—“thoroughly”—hack—“piss off”—hack—“spirits.”
“Champion Ven!”
He stopped and said in a calm voice, “Your turn. Keep them from killing us.” Sitting on an unchopped branch, the champion propped his legs up and leaned back, his hands behind his head.
Daleina heard the spirits shrieking. Leaves rustled as they ran along the branches and flew through the trees. Three wood spirits. One looked like a raccoon skeleton, draped with leaves, with a face made of bark. Its eyes were like black rocks embedded in mud. Another looked like a beautiful green girl with hair of leaves. The third looked like an insect, with a hard, glistening shell for a body and many legs. She could feel their rage shivering in the air. Stop, she tried. But the spirits weren’t listening, and Champion Ven pursed his lips together and began to whistle, breaking her concentration.
Focus, Daleina, she told herself. Four years of training. You can do this. A first-year could do this. All she had to do was make them leave.
Casually, the champion reached over his head and plucked a leaf from the tree.
These spirits were larger, stronger, and wilder than the ones in the city. Go, she told them.
They fought her command. She felt them fighting—their strength was like the core of a tree, solid and deep, and like the steady rain. She felt the press of their minds against hers.
And she had an idea.
She changed the command: Grow.
She invited them closer. Picturing in her mind an image of the broken branches, healed and growing, sprouting, spreading, thickening . . . she pushed the image toward them, layering it with leaves and blossoms.
Crying in triumph, the spirits soared closer. Out of the corner of her eye, Daleina saw the champion tense. His hand closed around the hilt of his sword, but otherwise, he didn’t move.
The wood spirits circled around the broken branches, and the tree began to grow. New branches shot out from the broken wood. They split and spread, sprouting leaves, and the branches thickened. The spirits rode them upward, circling around, and Daleina felt her soul flying with them, reveling in the tree as it strengthened and grew.
When the spirits finished, Daleina realized her cheeks were wet. She wiped them with the back of her hand as the three spirits dispersed into the leaves.
“Since you’re wide-awake now,” Champion Ven said, “how about you take first watch?” He then curled up against the newly grown branch and, as near as Daleina could tell, fell instantly asleep.
CHAPTER 15
Dawn came with new sounds: birds that trilled, chittered, and warbled. Daleina felt stiffness in all of her muscles. Rubbing her neck, she sat up. Ven was already awake, having taken the second shift. He handed her a hunk of cheese and cold, leftover squirrel meat. “Champion Ven? Those spirits last night . . .” she said, unsure if she should be saying this or not. She decided she’d already started, though, so finished, “I didn’t expect them to be so strong.”
“The academy shelters its students. You were never asked to control a spirit stronger than what your teacher could control, and the teachers actively monitor which spirits are in the vicinity. Out here, there aren’t any restrictions like that. Any spirit can swing by for a visit. Also, you can drop the ‘Champion.’ Just call me Ven. I’m out of practice with the title.”
She considered his words. “Then they weren’t really preparing us.”
“Their job is to teach you the basic techniques; it’s my job to give you a chance to apply them in the real world.” He efficiently rolled up their tarp roof and unraveled their rope hammock. She helped him squeeze the supplies into their packs. “In other words, I’m going to push you until you break.”
“I won’t break.” She added his name: “Ven.” Daleina didn’t know if she was lying or not. She suspected she was, but she was never going to admit that. Especially not to him.
All he said was, “We’ll see.”
And from there it began: they traveled eastward, away from the capital. Every few hours, whether they’d stopped or not, he deliberately irritated the nearby spirits, and she was forced to find ways to deflect them. She let a rain spirit drench them and encouraged an air spirit to blow them onto the next bridge. She guided an earth spirit into shifting some rocks, and she left another flock of tree spirits in a grove, coaxing new saplings to sprout. A few times, she slipped: one wood spirit sliced her arm before she was able to shift its anger away from her, and another weakened the branch they were on, causing them to fall to the next branch. Over the course of a few days, she encountered a wider variety of spirits than she’d ever seen.
Out in the forest, the spirits ranged in size, strength, and intelligence. She saw tiny air spirits, the size of dandelion fluff, drawn to their camp and then distracted by rustling leaves. Others tracked them for days, working together to coordinate clever, vicious attacks. Once, a beaver-size earth spirit created a sinkhole to try to trap them while a fire spirit deliberately danced flames on their supplies. Another time, three air spirits held a broken bridge in the air, releasing it only when Daleina and Ven were halfway across. Even with all her history and theory classes, she hadn’t fully grasped the breadth, variety, and viciousness of the forest spirits.
In between irritating the spirits, her champion also worked with her on her knife skills. He had her practice hitting targets, in between fending off spirits. Eventually, he combined the two, removing the charm from her knife hilt so that a spirit would come investigate every time she impaled a tree.
She lost her knife in that training exercise.
By the fifth day, Daleina and Ven had a trail of spirits, six or seven that kept just out of sight, watching them from the trees. Ven told her to stay aware of them as he hunted for dinner.
Waiting for him on the forest floor, Daleina kept her senses open as she extracted a burr from Bayn’s paw. The wolf had had a run-in with a pricker bush. He’d been chewing the burrs out, but when Daleina started helping, Bayn had sat and lifted up the offended paw. “You seem to be doing well, other than the prickers,” Daleina said to him. The wolf’s pelt was still soft, and he’d clearly been finding food.
In response, the wolf let his tongue hang out like a happy dog.
“You’re having fun?”
He thumped his tail.
“Want to know a secret?” Daleina leaned toward the wolf’s ear. “Me too.”
Ven didn’t ever criticize her technique. He cared about results and didn’t demand that she channel her power in specific ways or use particular commands. He acted like he didn’t regret his decision to pick her, and she had no intention of ever making him regret it. She scratched behind Bayn’s ears. “It’s nice to feel like I’m doing well.”
The Queen of Blood Page 17
