The Tattered Lands

by Barbara Ann Wright

  By the time the sun was going down, he was long gone. Vandra and the twins reached the Seelie Forest, and Fieta turned north, but Pietyr stopped her.

  “What?” she asked. “Burani told us he’d meet us to the north.”

  Pietyr shook his head. “That’s exactly why we should camp here, in the southern part of the forest. Then we head north tomorrow and find Lilani and the other seelie.”

  Fieta rolled her eyes. “You’re always so suspicious. Burani’s all right.”

  “You say that about every cute guy, Watch Officer Singh.”

  “And I’ve never been wrong!”

  “Because I’ve always been there to arrest the bad ones!”

  “Enough!” Vandra said. “We’re camping here in the south because I’m too tired to keep going.” She really wanted to see Lilani again, but she doubted the seelie would venture out at night to find her. Everyone would be waiting until morning, and Vandra’s feet were overruling even her heart.

  * * *

  Lilani, Faelyn, and Lucian walked through the night. Lucian had to travel slowly, his hand pressed to the wound in his chest even after Faelyn bandaged it as best he could. By dawn, Lilani had never felt so tired and knew the others felt the same. She’d thought she’d known what fatigue was. Now her head swam, her thoughts scattered, and her feet hurt. Her back ached even though she carried nothing, and she was beyond thirsty. She hadn’t had enough water in the past few days, and they’d had to leave what they’d taken from the barracks.

  She’d given up shrouding, not able to hold her magic. Faelyn and Lucian had dropped theirs, too, and Lucian had bled through his bandages.

  “Lucian,” Faelyn said. “Stop. I want to look at your wound.”

  Lucian shook his head, probably too tired to speak.

  Lilani stumbled to a halt. “None of us can shroud,” she said, the words coming out in fits and starts. “And any murderers must be as tired as we are. We have to stop.”

  Lucian frowned but stopped. In the dim light, Lilani spotted a human village in the distance, but they couldn’t seek shelter there. Where were they? At the first hint of dawn, Lucian had led them out of sight of the road.

  “Let’s keep as close to that village as we dare,” Faelyn said. “Let our tracks mingle with theirs.”

  Lilani nodded, but she barely noted his logic as she looked for a place to sleep. If some murderer caught her right then, she might welcome death.

  The only cover within stumbling distance proved to be a clump of bushes. The center had been dug out by some creature, but it had abandoned its den. Lilani desperately wanted to take her boots off, but Faelyn and Lucian didn’t remove theirs. The only reason they had footwear at the moment was because they’d fallen asleep fully clothed the night before. They might have to flee again, and she didn’t want to go trekking in her stocking feet.

  Lucian glared at nothing. Faelyn shifted through the dirt. Lilani hoped he wasn’t planning to eat whatever he found. They weren’t that desperate.

  Yet.

  “So.” Lilani’s voice was a wheeze. She licked her lips with a dry tongue and tried to swallow.

  “Here.” Faelyn handed her a leaf and placed another in his mouth. “This will help.”

  She did as he suggested, grateful he knew about plants. The leaf was almost sweet against her tongue, but the edges felt sharp enough to cut her dry mouth. She bit down gently, and the feel of the fresh-tasting liquid oozing from the leaf was like concentrated happiness. Lucian took one, too, and after a long moment of silence, Lilani spoke again.

  “Who do you think killed Selgwyn?”

  Lucian glanced at her with an ugly look. She couldn’t blame him for being bitter. Alonse or Carisse could have killed her, and they’d been under his command, people he thought he could trust. Like Burani. Deception lurked in every corner.

  Or maybe everyone in the world besides them was a murderer. No, if that was so, she would have been murdered long before now. The bleak thought nearly made her chuckle…or scream.

  “I don’t know,” Lucian said at last. The words sounded rusty, and she didn’t know if that was from thirst or if he had trouble getting them past his lips. “I trusted them.”

  “You did not,” Faelyn said. “I saw the way you watched them.”

  The two of them turned dark looks on each other, but Lilani kept herself from snapping at them. They couldn’t fight amongst themselves on top of everything. “Did you notice that feeling of dread when you were wrestling with the person who hurt you?”

  Lucian nodded. “But how could an outsider have gotten past our perimeter without anyone knowing? I…suppose it could have been Carisse. She never socialized like the rest of us.”

  “And you didn’t mention that before we left the Court?” Faelyn asked.

  “Being quiet is not a crime.” Lucian looked away, jaw tight.

  “None of us can read minds,” Lilani said, hating that she had to play peacekeeper when she wanted to knock their heads together. Her mother would quip about how resisting the urge to punch people was what being a leader was all about. “There’s some group at work here, and there are unknown seelie among them. We would have noticed anyone with that…miasma hanging around them in the Court. And who knows how long they’ve been planning? Our people can afford to wait centuries for a conspiracy to come to fruition.”

  “But how could they hide such a thing?” Faelyn said loudly. Lilani touched his arm, and he brought his voice down. “We don’t hide from one another.”

  She would have agreed before the whole mess had started. “There are more seelie than your enclave from the north and the original Court,” Lilani said. “Some might have been planning before they even fled the tattered lands.” Her mind raced, trying to recall all the ancestral groups, but no one brought up those differences anymore, not wanting to create factions within the seelie.

  Faelyn and Lucian listed old enclaves. Some had retreated to the Court before Lilani was born. Not all had been rousted by the tattered lands. Some had gotten into conflict with their human neighbors and fled south. One had been driven out of their homes by a volcano. And not all came south immediately. Some went to other colonies. They’d been moving among one another for thousands of years. And some had been left behind in their old enclaves, elders who’d shrouded, their locations forgotten. They might still be alive in the tattered lands, their magical fields protecting them.

  “Did any of the enclaves try to live beside the tattered lands or among them?” she asked. “Could they have been…twisted in some way even through their magical fields?”

  Lucian and Faelyn frowned, each consulting his own long memory.

  “There was an enclave to the southeast of mine,” Faelyn said. “They had to march through the tattered lands on their way here. My own enclave skirted large portions of it.”

  “There was an enclave who lived near the sea,” Lucian said. “They refused to leave their home at first. They’d formed a kind of symbiotic relationship with the creatures of the waves.”

  Faelyn nodded slowly. Lilani thought over her lessons. She remembered learning about them. Nothing stopped the spread of the tattered lands, but water and cold slowed it down. The seelie near the sea had retreated to an island, but the tattered lands eventually reached ugly fingers out to them, corrupting the sea creatures and the waves themselves. The enclave couldn’t find enough food to sustain them, so they’d fled in canoes, hoping to find a new place to settle on the southern coast, but those waters were deeper and more tempestuous. Few survived to reach the Court. They’d never struck Lilani as unfriendly or murderous, merely sad.

  “Why would anyone want to taint the last place left to live?” she asked.

  “And why wait all this time?” Faelyn asked. “They could have disrupted the pylons long before now.”

  “Unless they just discovered how,” Lucian said. “And they had to wait until all the humans were gathered in one area.”

  “But the humans didn’t drive
all the seelie away from their homes,” Lilani said. “Most fled the tattered lands!” This time, Faelyn had to remind her to be quiet.

  “Many seelie believe the humans caused the tattered lands,” Faelyn said. “Though they don’t know how.”

  That sounded crazy to Lilani. Who would design their own demise? Unless it was an accident. Humans were endlessly curious, and from what she’d seen, they didn’t care about what they did to their surroundings as long as they got what they wanted. She admired their spontaneity, but it could get them into trouble, too.

  A seelie set on revenge might not care about the truth, anyway. And they had plenty of time to nurse a grudge, imaginary or not. No wonder Lilani’s mother insisted on every problem being talked about in the open. Arguing until they achieved a solution was better than dark feelings festering for hundreds of years.

  “What about that feeling of dread?” Lilani asked. “I’ve never felt it from anyone in the Court.”

  They shook their heads. Maybe that feeling was new, and it only enveloped a seelie when they turned murderous. Then why had she never read about it? No murders had happened in her lifetime, but there were some in seelie history, and no one had mentioned a miasma of dread surrounding the killer.

  Lilani pressed a hand over her mouth and imagined that pall of misery settling over the whole Court. Maybe even with the pylons, the Seelie Forest was too close to the tattered lands, and it had infected some of them. Maybe she’d return home to find the Court in chaos. The cabal could have murdered her mother, maybe more of the Guard.

  Maybe everyone.

  Faelyn wrapped an arm around her shoulders, but he looked as sick as she felt. “We’ll figure it out when we get home,” he said. “Your mother is smart; she won’t let anything catastrophic happen.”

  “And the taint of dread gives the murderers away,” Lucian said. “People can feel when they’re nearby and be on guard.”

  If anyone figured out what that awful feeling meant before they were murdered.

  And Burani hadn’t had it. There could be more like him.

  “Sleep,” Lucian said. “I’ll take first watch.”

  “You need sleep more than us,” Faelyn said.

  Lucian frowned as if he might argue, but Faelyn had years of staring down unruly students. He matched him glare for glare.

  “You’re the fighter among us, Lucian, and you’re wounded. We need you at your best.” His expression softened. “If you promise to sleep for four hours, I promise to wake you and let you take the next watch.”

  Lucian sighed, but Faelyn’s commanding tone coupled with his sensible kindness cracked many an opponent. With a nod, he lay down. Lilani squeezed Faelyn’s leg and gave him a grateful smile. He nodded for her to join Lucian. She half hoped he would wake her in four hours so Lucian could rest longer, but he never broke his word.

  Lilani closed her eyes. So many dark thoughts whirled in her mind that she didn’t know if sleep would come, but the ground was strangely comfortable, and all the fear in the world couldn’t keep sleep from her exhausted body.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lilani awoke with a shiver. The shadows in the den were on the other side from before, and she realized the sun had moved all the way across the sky. Lucian peered through the breaks in the bushes, and Faelyn lay by Lilani’s side, one arm flung across his eyes.

  When she sat up, Lucian nodded to her. She smiled and shifted away from Faelyn, not knowing if he’d gotten his fair share of sleep. Or maybe Lucian intended to hide until dark. If Lilani didn’t return to the Court before Burani, what would he say? That she’d turned on her people? Her mother would never believe it. He might tell everyone she’d been killed, then he’d send someone to turn fiction into fact.

  But she knew the Seelie Forest well. If she could get there, she could avoid any attack long enough to reach her mother. Then the cabal’s plans would come undone, and Burani and his cronies would be arrested. If Lilani could figure out exactly who those cronies were.

  Faelyn woke at dusk. He checked Lucian’s wound, which had slowed considerably. The three of them shrouded before they crept out of the bushes. With Lucian guiding her, Lilani hurried from one batch of cover to another. She didn’t want a repeat of yesterday’s exhaustion, so she dropped her shroud whenever possible. Faelyn followed suit, but Lucian seemed content to stay hidden.

  At one copse, they stopped to rest, Lucian blinking into sight. Faelyn rooted around and found edible plants as well as a few more leaves that held unexpected water. Lilani had never thought she’d use the nature lore Faelyn had tried in vain to teach her. Now she was more than grateful for his knowledge.

  As they hurried on, her anxiety rose. It felt as if the whole world held its breath, poised for an attack. Instead of being a beacon, the rising moon and stars threw a spotlight over them and created more places for danger to hide. The wind picked up, dragging in clouds from the north. Lilani pulled her filthy coat tighter around her. Lucian kept a brisk pace, and even while shrouded, Lilani could feel Faelyn pulling at him to slow down.

  “If you push too hard, your wound will reopen,” Faelyn said.

  “It’s getting colder,” Lucian said. “Keep moving.”

  Dawn couldn’t have been far off, though the clouds made it seem a lifetime away. With the meager light came a slight drizzle, and fog lifted from the ground like the fingers of a hungry ghost.

  Lilani shivered and wiped the mist from her face. She could see the hazy outlines of the others as the rain slid over them, making shrouds useless.

  “We might as well give our magic a rest,” Faelyn said. “Anyone can see us.”

  Lilani was happy to do so. As her shroud lifted, she sighed with relief. The cramps had begun, though they were far less painful than the day before. Maybe she was building her shrouding muscles. At least the trip to Parbeh had yielded one good result.

  Besides seeing Vandra again.

  Lilani let thoughts of Vandra warm her. When a gust of wind parted the fog and revealed the dark wall of the Seelie Forest, she was tempted to believe that warm thoughts could affect reality. She picked up speed, reaching for Lucian and Faelyn, urging them on. They were almost home!

  Something whistled past Lilani’s ear. She turned with the others, searching. A bird? An arrow? Common sense came to her slowly, fighting through exhaustion. “We should run.”

  Her feet had barely begun to stumble toward the forest when a crack from her left made her world explode into brilliant, white-hot agony. Her legs gave way, but she barely felt the fall. Pain shot through her skull with a roar that nearly drowned out Faelyn’s and Lucian’s cries. Streaks of color stabbed across her vision, and her stomach rebelled.

  “Faelyn?” Her words were a slur.

  She heard him close. Her mouth tasted foul. Vomit or blood? She felt over the ground, looking for Faelyn, but the world wouldn’t stop spinning. Her magic had blown away like cobwebs in the wind. She could sense a taste of it hanging limply around her, but it fell apart as she tried to pull at it.

  Someone seized her arm. “Faelyn?” The brightness faded, and she glimpsed a shadow. “Lucian?”

  Agony bounced from her shoulder up her neck as someone wrenched her arm behind her back. Her stomach twisted again, but this wasn’t pain. She’d felt it in the forest, and this close, it carried an echo of the border near the pylons. This was the taint of the tattered lands.

  “Welcome home,” a voice breathed in her ear.

  * * *

  A foreign sound roused Vandra from sleep. She thought that the shouts had followed from her dreams, but as she heard another, she realized they came from outside. She scrambled for the tent flap, trying to blink away the fog of sleep. When she poked her head outside, someone hauled her roughly into darkness. She twisted, flailing blindly, fatigue blown away by fear. A hand clapped over her mouth, but before she could sink her teeth into it, Pietyr whispered, “Stay down.”

  Vandra let him lower them both to the ground. He took his h
and away, and she breathed hard, her heart pounding. “What’s happening?”

  Beyond the trees, someone shouted. Leaves rustled, and someone yelped in pain. A dark shape stepped over Vandra and Pietyr: Fieta, barely visible in the gloom as she hurried through the trees toward the sounds.

  Someone cried out, a woman’s voice, Lilani’s voice. Vandra tried to stand, but Pietyr held her tight. “Stay here!” he whispered. Then his shadowy form followed their sister.

  Vandra ground her teeth. All the gods in the world couldn’t have gotten her to stay. She pushed up and hurried toward a gap in the trees. In the clearing between the trees and the road, several dark shapes wrestled on the ground. Vandra squinted, trying to make certain it was Lilani before she hurled herself into danger. One of the wrestlers broke away, dashing for the trees. They sprinted past Vandra’s hiding spot, and she caught a flash of blond hair and a face that could have been Faelyn’s. When another of the combatants tried to follow, Pietyr leaped from the darkness and tackled them.

  The unknown combatant cried out, and Vandra shuffled away. A nauseating feeling roiled off the newcomer, a gut-punch of despair and putrescence that reminded her of the creature from the tattered lands: Face-mouth. She’d barely gotten a taste of it at the ball in Parbeh, but it was unmistakable now.

  And it had her brother in its grip.

  What could she do? Hit it with a stick? She looked around for one, but Fieta dashed from the shadows and joined Pietyr’s fight. No one could match the two of them together, and Lilani still needed help. Vandra looked back to the field.

  Empty.

  She stepped closer, scanning the road, the trees. Everyone had vanished. That made them seelie, but why would the people they’d attacked disappear with them? She hurried to the camp and lit a lantern as fast as she could. Holding it high, she ran back for the twins.

  Fieta stood with her hands on her hips, breathing hard. At her feet, Pietyr knelt over a still body. Vandra came closer, the light picking out the body’s slender limbs, and his pale, gaunt face; the bones stood out like blades beneath slightly shimmery skin. His silver-white hair had been pulled back from his pointed ears, and the face was spotted by crimson stains. One large red pool covered a bright blue eye. He was seelie, though different from any other she’d seen, much paler and thin enough to have led a hard life. A red-stained rock lay under his temple.