“Bloody lucky we had you then, huh?” al’Dor said with a strained, wheezing laugh. “Lifegiver’s balls. Lifegiver’s balls!”
“Calm down, Carro,” Brahnt told him quietly. “You’re in shock. It’s to be expected. Breathe. Breathe. There you go…” He looked up at Raz as some color started to return to al’Dor’s face. “Are we sure they’re gone? Can you hear anything else?”
Raz turned his head back to the trees, ears spreading to their fullest extent. After a few seconds, he shook his head.
“Nothing, but we should get moving all the same.” He frowned down at the carcasses of the wolves, then up the path to where al’Dor’s horse lay, still now against the swaying of the trees. “Something is bound to come along, and we should be well clear of this place when it does.”
Brahnt nodded, holding al’Dor up.
“We only have two horses now, though,” he said. “How are we—?”
“I can walk.” Raz indicated the blond Priest. “Get him onto Gale. I’ll help you onto your mare. Quickly, though. It’s not safe here.”
And he meant it, too. The stink of the wolves was rapidly becoming overpowered by the rich scent of blood and charred meat. The Priests probably didn’t notice, but Raz did, and it put him on edge. His mind started playing tricks on him, twisting the sound of the wind into the faint snuffling of some larger animal…
Nothing moved in the woods, though, and he brushed the sensation aside.
Still, they had to get going.
Slipping the war-ax into its loop on his belt, Raz moved to help Brahnt get al’Dor up into Gale’s saddle. The black stallion didn’t like having the unfamiliar weight on its back, and made it known, but a few reassuring words from Raz were enough to make the animal tolerate his new rider, at least for a time. After that, Raz took a knee to boost Brahnt and his bad leg up onto his own mount, hefting the Priest’s staff up after him.
Lastly, once both men were settled, Raz picked one of the still-burning torches up from the ground and held it aloft, peering down the hill for the glint of steel. Finding it, he eased himself carefully down the incline.
Dislodging Ahna from where she’d gotten tangled in a thick patch of damp roots, he returned to the Laorin.
As he crested the hill for the last time, Raz thought again that he could make out a low sniffing of some kind, almost like the snorting the horses made when they were impatient. He paused, listening hard. When nothing came of it, though, he pushed the sensation off again as a product of his own anxiety and desire to get moving again as soon as possible.
Setting Ahna over one shoulder, he took hold of Gale’s bridle and started off, heading north again, leading their party up the path, around the body of the dead horse, and through the trees once more.
Had he not been in such a rush to leave, Raz might have noticed something odd about the scene they were leaving behind. For one thing, he might have found it strange that the wolf he had kicked down the hill, the one who’s ribs he had broken, was utterly silent, no longer whimpering in pain. Perhaps he might have let this go, crediting it to shock or death from internal bleeding and injury.
Still, had Raz noticed this, it’s likely he would have at least paused to look down the hill, to see if the wolf had perhaps made its escape and should be watched for, in case it wanted to try its luck again.
And if Raz had looked down the hill, he might have noticed that the moss-covered bolder—the one he’d sent the wolf sailing into—had shifted slightly, turning to silence the whimpering animal as it lay helpless on the ground nearby.
But Raz didn’t look down the hill, and so Raz didn’t see the thing he’d assumed to be made of stone and moss become roused from its winter slumber by the scent of blood. He didn’t see the creature rise onto four great paws, pale teeth reddened as they dragged the dead wolf up by its throat.
And he didn’t see the thing as it started to move, lumbering its way to the top of the hill to sniff at the air and peer with black eyes northward, up the path.
XVI
IT TOOK the better part of two hours before Raz was able to shed the anxiety that had dogged their little group. The attack had left al’Dor understandably shaken, and the man’s fear-filled silence had done nothing to help Raz and Brahnt forgo their own concerns as they traveled, the two of them conversing in quiet tones all the while.
“We’re not far, now,” Brahnt had said in an attempt to reassure them, shortly after they’d escaped the hill. “A day, if that. We’ll manage without one horse.”
“We can make it less if we travel through the night,” Raz had replied. “Would we be able to get there by morning?”
“Possibly,” the High Priest had told him without hesitation, seeing the wisdom in the concept. “Mid-day at the latest.”
“Then we’ll do that.” Raz had nodded. “I won’t have us making camp so close to that mess.”
Brahnt hadn’t raised a concern, and al’Dor was in no state to do so, and so the matter had been considered settled. Now, though, two hours later, Raz was starting to question the decision. For a time the Woods around them had taken on a sinister air, a creeping gloom that had turned the dark beauty of the place into a foreboding ocean of unknown dangers and wicked secrets. He had been reminded again of tombstones, looking at the great pines and firs and cedars that curled up over the trail like the ribs of some dead giant, and he wondered abruptly how many bones of how many travelers were scattered among these trees, fallen prey to the wolves, or to the cold, or to any other number of perils the place hid behind its thick veil of wonder.
But slowly, as they put mile after mile of distance between themselves and the bloody hill, Raz walking quickly along between the horses, his reality shifted back to a level place. Fear was replaced by calm, doubt by relief, and the pounding of his heart by acute, sudden fatigue.
Raz’s pace began to slow, and within twenty minutes he was leading Gale along the path at a plodding cadence, the rhythmic bobbing of the stallion’s head in his left hand doing nothing to help the weariness. Brahnt had long since replaced the torches they’d abandoned with the bodies of the wolves, but the bouncing light was dim, and it wasn’t long before Raz found himself hard-pressed to keep his eyes on the trees. He wouldn’t fall asleep, he knew that. Raz had spent too many late nights out on the roofs of Miropa, tracking and hunting his marks, to believe he could actually nod off.
Still, being tired meant he wasn’t alert.
“al’Dor,” Raz said suddenly, intent on striking up a conversation in an attempt to keep himself awake as he shrugged his hood off to let the cold air bite at his ears and face for a bit.
The Priest, slumped in the saddle over Raz’s left shoulder, didn’t respond. Looking around, Raz saw with some amusement that the older man had himself fallen fast asleep, swaying gently with the rocking of Gale’s body, his torch held slack in one hand.
“Let him be, lad.”
Turning to his right, Raz watched Brahnt bring his mare up alongside them, his own torch held high, eyes bright in the faded light. They were turned now on al’Dor, and Raz was almost embarrassed to see the fondness in that gaze.
“He’s had a rough experience,” Brahnt continued. “As long as I’ve known him, Carro has never been one for fighting. He’s a gentle man, more inclined to books than bloodshed.”
Raz nodded, having deduced as much some time ago.
“He held his own, all the same,” he said, shifting Ahna more comfortably on his shoulder before glancing back around at the Priest.
“I think you’ll find the Laorin a strange breed, Raz,” Brahnt said, and Raz didn’t miss the familiarity he used. “Most are a docile people, having sought out Laor and His gifts in the hopes of leading a peaceful life in the service of His light. They aren’t quick to strike, aren’t quick to raise the sword, or to cry for blood.” Brahnt smiled, looking forward, above the trail, as though he could see the mountains through the trees. “They are kind. Hardworking. They live for others, and live to
love others. There are exceptions, of course, individuals whose integrity I have questioned, as well as their place in His plan, but at the end of the day the Laorin as a whole are a people for the people. A chalice from which we strive to let other people draw strength from.”
He reached out, without looking down from the trees, to rest a big hand gently on the forearm of his sleeping partner.
“To manage that, though,” he continued, “they have to be strong. They have to be that source of power, of light and warmth. The Laorin are gentle Raz, but they are capable of great, great things.”
Raz didn’t say anything. Brahnt’s words were making him recall, once again, a pale skinned girl, her white hair falling out of its braids to tumble about her shoulders between the torn fabrics of her gown. She had stood so tall, so fiercely, as she brought him back from the edge.
And she had fallen, so fragile and so light, into his arms when the moment for greatness had passed.
“I think they’ll like you.”
At that, Raz blinked and looked around. Brahnt was smiling down on him, taking him in with piercing eyes, as though sizing him up for some task or another.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Raz asked. Behind him, al’Dor snorted in his sleep.
“It means,” Brahnt said, “that I have a feeling I won’t regret having dragged you along on this little adventure, lad. There’s something in you, some fire I wouldn’t even begin to know how to put out. I’m not fool enough to try to convince you that it’s Laor’s light that makes you burn so bright. I know you wouldn’t believe it, and I’m not sure I do either.”
He paused, frowning a little, his eyes suddenly taking on a perplexed expression. “Truth be told, there’s something darker, fiercer, about the fire inside you. Something consuming. Something—”
“Demented,” Raz finished for him quietly. “Don’t go too far down that road, Brahnt. Puzzle out what my soul looks like, and you won’t like what you find.”
To his surprise, the older man laughed.
“You’re a fool, Raz, and I’m glad for it,” Brahnt said, still chuckling. “You still think it’s evil, this weight you carry around with you?”
“Shouldn’t I?” Raz was suddenly irritated. “You’ve been down my road. You’ve been where I stand. You’ve lived with blood on your hands and you—”
“I have never been where you stand, boy.”
The calmness of the words took Raz by surprise.
“I have never been where you stand,” Brahnt said, quietly, and his eyes once again rose to look up the path, “and I don’t think I could ever be where you stand. What do you see, when you look at me, Raz?”
Raz paused at that, confused.
How was he supposed to answer that?
“What do you see?” Brahnt repeated, his tone suddenly firm, as though Raz were one of his acolytes and he was expected to answer promptly.
Raz hesitated.
Then he spoke.
“Goodness,” he told the man, turning to look at the trail too. “Purity. A wall, incapable of being swayed, no matter the force set upon it.”
Talo chuckled. “And how,” he asked, “do you think Carro sees me?” He waved a hand at the sleeping Priest. “Or Syrah? Or the rest of the Laorin under my care.”
“The same,” Raz told him, this time immediately.
“And you’d be right.” Talo sighed. “And yet… You are all so, so wrong…”
Raz frowned, but didn’t turn to look at Brahnt as the man continued.
“You give me far too much credit, boy,” he said. “You honor me far too greatly by telling me I have been where you have been, that I have stood in your shoes. We’ve both seen blood, I’ll grant you that, but there are types of violence in this world, Raz, variations of cruelty, with equally varying results.”
He paused, then brought a hand up and, with a short flash of white, conjured a handful of flames of the kind he had used to battle the wolves.
“You see yourself as evil? And I as good? You see yourself as a demented creature, and I as a wall? Tell me, Raz… what did you take from the world?”
Again, Raz said nothing, perplexed once more by the question.
“No answer? I didn’t think so, because you have no answer to give. You’re not even sure what I’m talking about. I’ll give you the answer, though: nothing. You took nothing from the world, even as you fell, Raz. You shed no blood that did not need to be spilt, took no life that should have been spared. And when you fell it was not because you took too much, but because something was taken from you. You fell when your family burned, when your life was turned to ash and ruin. You fell when beasts dressed in the skins of men came out of the night to steal from you everything that made you an Arro.”
Raz bristled at the mention of his family, but as he looked back, he saw that Brahnt’s eyes were on the ivory flames cupped in one hand.
And the look they held told Raz that the man was far, far away…
“I took, Raz,” Brahnt kept on quietly. “I took, and never gave. I killed, and never spared. I was literally known for it, knows as the Lifetaker. It brought me joy, brought me fame, brought me wealth. I took and I took and I took and I never, ever gave. I laughed and spat in the faces of men who tried to tell me what I was. I chased them out of town when they called me ‘monster.’ Those that wouldn’t leave, I killed, to the great amusement of a bloodthirsty crowd.”
“They called you ‘monster’?”
Raz couldn’t help but ask the question. It had chilled him, hearing it.
“Aye, they did, though not of the fashion they call you the same. They called me ‘monster,’ and I relished it, bathed in it. And took from it everything I could.”
Brahnt closed his eyes, and Raz thought he saw a wetness shine along the lashes of his eyes.
“I rose, eventually. I saved myself from the creature I had become, through much help from people I had once threatened and shunned. I have since done my best to atone, done my best to replace what was destroyed. But I took much, Raz, much. But you—” he looked down to meet Raz’s amber eyes “—you have only ever tried to give. So… never tell me I have stood where you have stood.”
Raz thought that was an exaggeration. He had, after all, spent more years than he cared to consider doing nothing but taking, nothing but killing and murdering.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Brahnt said with a chuckle at Raz’s silence.
“Do you?” Raz asked him doubtfully.
“You think I’m giving you too much credit. You think I don’t know where you have been, or what you have done.”
“It’s possible.”
“Perhaps,” Brahnt conceded with a shrug. “And you are a killer, boy. I won’t pretend it’s otherwise. But if you think it’s impossible to be a killer without sacrificing the heart, than you are a fool just as much. Do you remember the story of the dahgün?”
“‘There are those that fight to end the fight,’” Raz quoted with a nod. “Or something like that. I remember.”
“Then you will figure out what I mean by ‘take’—and what I mean by ‘give’—eventually,” Brahnt said with a shrug.
Raz grimaced in queer amusement. “Maybe. Still don’t know what it has to do with the Laorin liking me, though.”
For a time, Brahnt just looked down at the flames in his hands.
Then he bent down, and held them out to Raz.
“Here,” he said simply. “Take them.”
Raz blinked. “Huh?”
“Take them,” Brahnt said again, sounding as though he were hard pressed not to roll his eyes. “They won’t hurt you.”
“How do you know?” Raz grumbled, taking a small step sideways, closer to Gale and away from the flames.
“They won’t,” was all Brahnt said.
Raz looked between the man and his magic, hesitating for a long time. He felt stupid, his primal, human fear of fire mixing with the obvious reality that the High Priest clearly had control over the
flames.
Essentially, it came down to whether or not he trusted the man.
At that thought, Raz held out his hand.
Brahnt was about to give them to him, making to pour the magic into Raz’s outstretched palm like one might pour water from one hand to the other, when Raz’s ears twitched.
He spun around, Ahna flying into his grasp. Behind him the flames tumbling to the forest floor. They winked out in spattered blinks of white light as the horses kept walking, leaving Raz to stand along the trail.
“What is it?” Brahnt asked in an urgent whisper, suddenly alert. Beside him al’Dor stirred, rising from his slumber as Gale stopped suddenly beneath him.
“What-What’s happened?” he mumbled loudly, blinking away sleep and looking around. “What’s going—?”
Brahnt shut him up with a hand over his mouth, muffling the question.
“Raz?” the High Priest asked, barely loud enough to hear.
Raz didn’t answer him. He was listening, sifting through the sounds of the Woods, trying to make the noise out again. He was sure he had heard it this time. It wasn’t a figment of his imagination, no trick played on him by his own mind while amongst the blood and stench of the dead wolves. He had heard it this time.
And he heard it again.
A snuffling, grumbling noise, from somewhere off to their left.
And it was getting closer.
“Raz,” Brahnt said insistently. “What is it? Do you need more light?”
Raz was about to answer him, telling him to brighten the flames again, when another noise came. From the depths of the darkness, rising like an angry storm from the shadows, a deep, throaty grumble broke through the quiet of the night. Slowly it grew louder, and as it did Raz made out another sound, steady at first, then coming fast and faster.
The thump of earth, coupled with the crunch of ice and leaves.
The grumble built into a huffing growl, staggered with the steps, and then into a thunderous, bellowing roar that made Raz’s ears ring as—for the first time in his life—he began to fall back.
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