“You will stay,” the troop leader said.
Harnock barked some comment back in woodikin, but he sat down. The troop leader lingered a bit longer at the door, his spear ready and said something to the woodikin outside. It sounded like there were at least twenty of them out there. They scampered about, some taking positions on the roof of the hut, others spread out along the limbs.
Talen wasn’t sure they’d be able to stop Harnock if he wanted to leave. But he had no doubt they’d fill him and River full of poisoned darts should they try anything.
Harnock sat down, then lay on his back.
“What was that all about?” Talen asked.
River said, “Moon told us that a number of times she found him miles away from the house still caught in some awful dream.”
“Not a dream,” said Harnock. “A reality. Lords, but I hate the Divines.”
There wasn’t much to say after that. River and Harnock eventually slept. The woodikin stood guard outside. And Talen thought about his own new reality.
* * *
It was still dark when a woodikin arrived and talked to the troop leader outside their hut. When that woodikin left, the troop leader gave orders, then squatted at the broken door. “You will get up,” he said and poked Harnock with the butt end of his spear.
The troop leader poked at Harnock again, but Harnock caught the spear in his hand and growled. River rolled up.
“You will go through these lands,” the troop leader said. “We will take you back to your skinmen. Then the female will return. The queen has agreed.”
Harnock shoved the spear away.
They exited the hut out into the cool night air. Stars shone above. Talen stretched and rubbed his weary eyes.
“I can barely see to walk,” River said.
It was dark, and one wrong step would send them falling to their deaths. Despite his reservation, Talen sent one roamling out to see with. “Give me your hand,” he said. He didn’t want to touch her, but what else could he do?
She took it, and the smell of her soul filled him. He gritted his teeth, but held on. And soon they were moving out. He found it interesting that neither the woodikin nor Harnock seemed to be having any trouble seeing in the darkness. They easily made their way through the tanglewood, down branches, along a wide road, over bridges. River stumbled once, but Talen caught her.
The tanglewood was quiet except for a small breeze blowing through the boughs. At one point, some woodikin cried out in the night, but then the cry stilled. As they moved, Talen’s night vision improved until he was able to make out the rough shapes of the light-colored tree limbs with his natural eyes, and he pulled his roamling back in. Not much later River let go of his hand.
He sighed in relief, and they proceeded forward. He’d been thinking all night long, weighing his options, and all of them ran to one place: sooner or later, he’d have to be destroyed.
He leaned over to River. “How are blends made?”
“I don’t know the specifics,” she said.
Harnock cut in. “You graft one soul onto the other. You start with an animal and graft in the soul of a man. Or vice versa. But you can’t do bits. That just leads to odd manifestations. A patch of skin, some fingernails turning into claws. You have to take the whole animal. There are some that try to do it in the womb or with babes. Lumen did it with full-grown men. He tried it first by putting the souls of men into animals. But the animals only panicked, and the blends died. Then he tried putting the beasts into humans.”
“What did Lumen use for blends?” Talen asked.
“Bears, stags, sharks,” Harnock said. “Whatever took his fancy. Frogs.”
River shook her head. “The Divines are monsters.”
“How many of you survived?” Talen asked.
“Only one. Another might have made it—good old Amak—but he killed himself to spite Lumen. I suppose I would have done the same, but I wanted revenge.”
“Which was impossible,” Talen said. “Because you can’t get close.”
“No,” Harnock replied, “Regret rot them.”
They stopped to fill their water bladders with tree water and then at some wide stalls with holes in the floor that stretched out away from the limb to relieve themselves. When the troop finished, he said, “I pity the woodikin below.”
“It drops straight to the forest floor,” said Harnock. “Sooner or later, a gang of their dungers collect it to use in the mushroom beds or dig into the earth about the tanglewood to fertilize the trees. The trees give to them, and they give right back.”
Talen nodded. The trees were so massive the ground must become barren without some form of replenishment. Then he realized the tanglewood probably could not grow as large as it did without the woodikin living in it.
A few minutes later they passed by a smaller road that was half grown, the limbs still reaching to meet each other from the parallel lines of trees. Not long after that they came to the edge of the tanglewood. The woodikin lowered ropes and descended. Talen and the others followed. A few more woodikin brought up the rear, carrying weapons and packs and wearing their odd segmented armor.
By this time the sky had lightened just a bit in the east. When Talen reached the forest floor, the troop leader gave them their knives and bows and arrows. Then two more woodikin joined them. One wore black silks and a mantle of gray and white feathers. Over his shoulder he held a short pole. At the end of the pole hung a medium-sized basket woven of grass. The other woodikin was clearly a servant. The troop leader bowed to the woodikin in black silks. They exchanged a few words, and then the troop set out—twenty-two woodikin and three humans.
Talen motioned at the woodikin with the pole and basket. “They’ve sent a wasp lord with us?”
“It appears the queen wants to protect her investment,” Harnock said and motioned at River.
Talen was fascinated with the basket. He was also horrified it would come loose or be knocked off the pole and the wasps would fly out, angry and looking for something to sting. But the basket only swayed gently with the woodikin’s gait.
As they walked, Harnock instructed them to call the troop leader “Chot,” for that was his title in woodikin. He also tried to teach them some basics of the language. “Twa” meant “yes.” “Zim” meant “no.” The word for food was “hala.” If they saw danger or wanted to alert the others, they should say “toom.” Eventually, the troop leader told them to be quiet.
As they walked, Talen looked back at the massive and towering tanglewood in the early morning light. He could not believe he’d been in one and lived to tell about it. Legs and Sugar would be jealous. He could lord this over Ke. Then his thoughts turned to Nettle, the best friend he supposed anyone might have. Nettle would have loved this, back when he was whole. Maybe he might yet enjoy it. Perhaps there was something in the book of Hismayas that would help him. Once they got the book back, he would make Uncle Argoth try to open it again. Surely there would be something in there for Nettle. He looked down at his wrists. There might even be something for him.
* * *
They walked many miles through the woods before they stopped for lunch. Talen removed his pack and sat beside it. He felt brittle, weary all the way to his bones.
Chot walked back to him. “No sitting, Skinman.” He pointed at a number of bushes around them. “You will pick plenty massal.”
“What is massal?” asked Talen.
“Massal,” Chot said and pointed around himself. “Massal.” And he grabbed the stem of a bush and brought it down for Talen to see. Massal was some type of small fruit that looked like currants. “You will pick plenty.”
Talen nodded, and Chot walked off.
Talen picked one berry and ate it. It was very bitter. “Which ones are ripe?”
“They’re all ripe,” said Harnock. “But we’re not picking them for u
s. They’re for our woodikin escort. You and I eat too many of these, and we’ll be doing nothing but hanging our bums out over the river.”
“I fancy the weevil anyway,” said Talen.
“We’re getting down to the last of that,” Harnock said. “We’re going to need some flesh.”
River looked over at Talen. “You look awful,” she said.
“I didn’t sleep much.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“He’s not,” said Harnock. “You don’t run a whole day on Fire and not sleep.”
Talen took the bottom hem of his tunic and brought it up to form a make-shift basket.
“I know why you didn’t sleep, Hogan’s son.”
Talen ignored him and picked a cluster of massal berries and dropped them in his tunic.
Harnock said, “It was you poking around my doors last night, wasn’t it?”
Talen picked another handful of berries and realized there was no point in lying. Sooner or later, all his paths led to one place. He needed to stand up in the sunlight and face the day. “I sent my roamlings out of the hut to get away from the temptation I felt there. But it didn’t help. Down in the bottoms of the tanglewood, I . . .”
“You what?”
Talen screwed up his courage. “I raveled a weem and devoured its Fire, maybe some of its soul.”
Harnock whistled lightly and shook his head.
River’s face filled with dismay. “Oh, Talen. Why didn’t you wake us?”
“What could you have done?”
Harnock said, “Sometimes Moon would talk to me. Sometimes that’s all that was needed.”
River said, “It takes large quantities of soul to turn someone into true sleth. I’m sure this won’t do much damage.”
“You’d be surprised,” Harnock said.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Talen said. He looked at Harnock. “Maybe it’s time for your mercy.”
“Maybe,” Harnock said.
“Stop that,” River said. “One mistake does not cast a man’s future in iron.”
“But the consequences—I ate soul. I’m turning into the very blackness we fight against.”
“You’re turning, or you’re choosing?”
“I can’t just wish this blend away.”
“I never said you could.”
Talen shook his head. Nobody knew what this was like. Even Harnock wasn’t dealing with the same thing.
“Maybe you should put a thrall on me,” Talen said. “That way we can be sure—”
“No,” Harnock said. “You fool. You might as well give yourself over to Mokad. And who would hold your thrall? Your sister? Think what it would do to her. A thrall is not something that only grows just into the slave.”
“But what if I lose control?”
“You can always die. But you can’t always be free. Put on a thrall, and you hand over your freedom. Every day you wear a thrall, it eats at your will until one day you find you have no will whatsoever.”
“My blend is not like yours.”
“You have no idea what my blend is. Stand up and fight, Hogan’s son. Be a man like your father.”
Talen’s anger rose. “What do you think I’ve been doing?”
“Whining,” Harnock said.
Talen bristled.
“You pick plenty massal,” Harnock said. “I’m going to go catch us some fish.” Then he walked off toward the stream.
Talen had not been whining. That rotted halfbeast whoreson. That pus brain. That—
“Don’t say it,” River said.
“He—”
“He saved my life. Saved yours. You’ve got a mountain in front of you, Talen. I think he wants to see that you’re committed to climbing it.”
“Committed?” Talen grumbled. “What does he know about commitment?”
River smiled wryly and said, “Chot’s going to be back soon. Let’s get these berries picked.” Then she brought up the hem of her own tunic and grabbed a cluster of massal.
Talen sighed and joined her, and as he picked, he calmed down and thought about Da. Thought about Da teaching him to shoot a bow. He’d made many mistakes in the beginning. He supposed it was unreasonable to expect he wouldn’t make mistakes now. It was just that the mistakes he made now had tremendous consequences.
“You might fail in the end,” River said. “But Harnock is right: you won’t have a chance to succeed if you don’t stand back up to fight every time you’re knocked down.”
“I hate the Divines,” Talen said.
“Maybe they are blends as well,” River said.
“Then I hate their masters.”
* * *
Harnock came back with a load of fish that made Talen salivate, and the meal might have been delicious, but Harnock made a point to sit right next to Talen. And that wouldn’t have been such a problem, but Harnock liked to suck the eyes out of his raw fish and chomp them. He sucked yet another eye out, gave it a chomp, and let out a sigh of satisfaction. He pointed at the head of Talen’s fish. “Are you going to eat that?”
Talen said, “I’ll give it to you if you promise to move about twenty yards away.”
Harnock plucked the head up, put it in his mouth, and began to munch. “The brain is the best part.”
Talen groaned.
Across the way, the wasp lord sat next to the basket that housed his wasps and laid out an array of pouches. He chewed something, spat it out, then rolled it in some powder he poured out of one pouch. He masticated something from another pouch and added it to his mixture.
Chot noticed Talen watching. “Hala,” Chot said.
The wasp lord said something to Chot. The other woodikin grunted their laughter. Chot turned to Talen. “He wants to know if the skinman wants a taste.”
Talen didn’t know if this was a joke or a real offer. He looked at Harnock who was grinning at him. River shook her head.
“No thank you,” said Talen. “But tell him I’m honored he asked.”
Chot said something, supposedly a translation of Talen’s words, and the other woodikin laughed again. The wasp lord carefully opened the side of the basket, revealing a large wasp comb inside with hundreds of little cells and wasps crawling over them. A number of wasps clung to the open basket door.
He’d expected the wasps to be the big orange slayers, but these wasps were long and thin and moved in a jerky way. The wasp lord made a clicking sound, then rolled a pea-sized ball of his mixture and stuck it on the point of a tiny stick built into the inside of the basket. A few wasps buzzed over to the mixture. One moved to the outside of the basket, flexed its amber wings. The wasp lord made another sound and herded it back into the interior with one finger. Then he rolled two more peas and stuck them on other sticks.
The wasps began to flit to the meal. One clung to the lord’s finger. The wasp lord held his finger up and watched as the insect ate the residue of the meal that was there.
“They feed them different things depending on the need,” said Harnock.
“What do you mean?”
Chot spoke. “War, heal, pleasure—all are hala.”
“You use wasps for medicine?”
“These are not small browns,” Chot said. He pointed at the long-bodied wasps in the basket. “These are huk. These are for war. One sting. Skinman dies.”
“Hardly,” said Harnock.
“You want a sting? You want to try?”
“Not today,” said Harnock.
Chot shook his head in disgust. He held up his hand. “Thirty-three stings, I did not die. Come try, Skinman.”
“To become warriors,” said Harnock, “woodikin youths subject themselves to stings. They smear some paste on their hands and stick them into a basket of wasps. I’ve seen it. Their hands swell up an
d turn black. But they don’t do it with these huk. Not those that have eaten war hala.”
Chot motioned for Talen to try.
Talen wasn’t going to prove anything to that little hairy man. But he was curious. “How do the wasps know who to sting? How do they know enemy?”
“Wasp lord knows enemy,” said Chot. “The wasps will obey.”
Talen turned to Harnock. “Do they use a thrall?”
Harnock shrugged. “Probably, but only the woodikin know that lore. And their control is amazing. I was trading once. A huge commotion arose. A woodikin thief had been discovered. The woodikin soldiers chased after him, but one of the wasp lords was also there. He opened his basket, coaxed three insects onto his fingers and sent them after the thief. The enemy woodikin was already many yards away and running fast, running into the wind because he knew what was coming. The wasps sped past all the other warriors. Ignored them. They caught the thief and began to sting him in the face. The distraction was all the warriors needed to catch him.”
Talen shook his head. “That’s amazing. How can you fight that? It makes me want to bundle up in thick clothing.”
“No good,” said Chot. “Wasps will get you when you pee.” He laughed and told his joke to the others. This time even the wasp lord chuckled.
“Funny,” Talen said and remembered that all of these little men had sworn to eat his liver. “But there still must be some defense.”
Harnock said, “Some wasps fight other wasps. And there are birds. The tanglewoods maintain what’s called a queen’s flock. They’re pale red birds with blue heads and long black beaks. They’re murder on insects.”
“Bee-eaters,” said River.
“Exactly,” said Harnock.
“Birds to eat birds,” said Chot.
Talen thought about that. A bird to attack the birds that ate the wasps. He wondered: were there yet other animals to attack those attacking birds?
Chot gave Talen a sly look, then went back to his eating.
When they finished, Talen looped his quiver over his back, then took his knife and bowstave and went down to the stream to wash his hands. The breeze coming off the sparkling water was cool. Talen plunged his hands in the water, grabbed up a handful of sandy dirt, and began to scrub his hands and lower arms. Harnock followed him and washed his hands as well, but he also licked a spot on his upper arm with his great tongue.
Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 Page 13
