by Lena Coakley
Ryder skewered the purple mass of rabbit on a long stick and handed it to Falpian. “Here. Can you at least roast this?”
Falpian grasped the stick clumsily. His hands were still tied, and he was barely able to move his fingers from the cold. “Where are you going?”
Ryder was already walking away toward a stand of bare zanthias. “More wood,” he grunted. “And don’t get any ideas. There’s nowhere to run.”
Falpian leaned the stick over the crackling fire, enjoying the warmth that was beginning to thaw the front half of his body. Beside him, Bo looked up lovingly, his gray tail sweeping the snow back and forth.
“I don’t suppose you want to chew these ropes so I can get free,” Falpian said. Bo’s tail swept harder, sending a spray of snow hissing into the fire. “I didn’t think so.”
The rabbit was just starting to drip fat, giving off a mouthwatering scent, when Falpian was hit with the revelation of Ryder’s mistake. The pack. Ryder’s leather pack was sitting right there in the snow. And the humming stone was inside it.
Carefully he set down the half-cooked rabbit, eyes darting toward the stand of trees. His fingers were still numb and clumsy, but it wasn’t hard to pull the pack open, even with his hands tied. There it was, the humming stone.
He kneeled down and blew a hurried breath. Nothing—the stone made no sound. Nervously he looked behind him, trying to ignore Bo’s big, staring eyes. He regretted what he had to do. But he’d already determined that Ryder was stronger and faster, and there was no way to put him to sleep for a while, or transport him far away—this wasn’t a nursery tale where magic did exactly what you wanted. His only option was to stop Ryder’s heart. Falpian blew another breath across the face of the stone, and this time he heard a low rumble. Bo was growling at him.
“Stop that,” Falpian hissed, but when he held up the stone to try again, the dog’s growling turned to a snarl. “This has gone far enough. You’re a dreadhound. My dreadhound. The witches will kill you, too. We’ve got to get away. We’ve got to get back to Stonehouse and . . .” Falpian hesitated. “And then . . .” He lowered his hands. What exactly were they going to do after that?
He glanced again toward the trees, but Ryder was still nowhere to be seen. The zanthias were bare now, but Falpian remembered how they had turned the mountains scarlet, how he had wished on one of their feathery pods on his first day at Stonehouse. Don’t let me disappoint my father again. I’d rather die than disappoint him again. When he thought of returning home, Falpian could only imagine disappointment on his father’s face. A realization swept over him.
“Oh,” he said aloud. “I was wrong.”
He should have seen it before. Just because the scroll was blank didn’t mean there was no mission. His father hadn’t given him a blank scroll out of cruelty—or to make sure Falpian stayed on the mountain. It was a gift. His father had given it to him so Falpian would know, in the last days of his life, that he would play a part in the coming war. His father would be proud of him. All he had to do was die.
His mission was to die.
When Ryder returned, Falpian and Bo were just where he’d left them. Falpian stared into the fire. He didn’t look up as Ryder took the stone from the white ground and quietly slipped it back into the pack.
“Will you make sure the witches do not bury me?” Falpian said, his voice strangely calm. “My people believe that a man cannot reach the afterlife unless his body is burned and his smoke rises up to Kar.”
“It won’t come to that,” Ryder said. But Falpian heard the doubt in his voice.
The cold. Falpian hadn’t known how deeply it could get inside you. How it could own you. He and Ryder lay back to back in the dark of the snow shelter, their packs for pillows, evergreen branches for bedding. Outside the wind howled for their blood. Falpian’s hands were tied behind him now, a precaution he couldn’t really blame Ryder for, but one that made it impossible to get comfortable.
“Didn’t you almost freeze to death the last time you made a snow shelter?” he said, his teeth chattering.
“I wasn’t careful,” Ryder said curtly. “I didn’t stop soon enough, and I let my boots get damp. We’ll be fine.”
Ryder was obsessed with damp clothes. He’d insisted that he and Falpian dry theirs in front of the fire before they went to sleep, but Falpian wasn’t sure that toasting his socks on sticks was really going to help him now.
“I almost wish I was in the coven,” he muttered. “Boiling in the witches’ cooking pot.” A short burst of laughter escaped him. It wasn’t the least bit funny, but he couldn’t help it.
The mission was on course, he tried to tell himself firmly. His father wanted him to die, and he was going to do it. His father wanted to make it look as if Falpian had been killed by witches, and now he really was going to be killed by witches. Missions weren’t supposed to be easy, after all.
He laughed again, mirthlessly, shivering at the same time.
In the dark, Falpian heard Bo give a great yawn. Ryder had made him an evergreen bed too. It wasn’t necessary—a dreadhound could bury himself in snow with only his nostrils showing and survive the coldest weather—but Ryder probably didn’t know that. Falpian had to admit it was kind of him. He tried to push aside the idea that there were things he liked about Ryder, in spite of his ignorance. Someone who lived so close to the border would be quick to die when the war came.
“You might not believe this, but I’m sorry,” Ryder said.
“What?” Falpian wasn’t sure he’d heard right.
“This morning when we were talking about the war, about your people—I probably said things I shouldn’t have.”
“Oh.” He didn’t want Ryder to apologize; it only made him more human than he already was, even harder to view as an enemy.
“The truth is, I never thought much about the Baen. My father told a lot of stories about the war, but they never changed. You’d ask him a question, and instead of answering he’d just start in again on one of the stories you’d heard a hundred times before. After a while you just stop asking. My mother wouldn’t talk about it at all, but . . . I think there were things about the war she wasn’t proud of.”
Ryder had a father too, and a mother. Falpian told himself he didn’t want to know, but he wriggled around to face Ryder, curious in spite of himself. “Was she a witch like Skyla and Pima?”
“How did you know my sister’s names?”
“You told me this afternoon—when you said they lived in the coven.’”
“I did?” Ryder asked sharply. “I don’t remember. . . .”
“How else would I know them?”
Ryder didn’t answer.
“It’s different with us,” Falpian told him. “My people don’t allow women to practice magic. They’re too . . . delicate.”
Ryder made a sound that was almost a laugh. “How can you stop them?”
“Oh, they just know they shouldn’t, I suppose. My mother wouldn’t dream of doing anything so unladylike. In the old days there used to be terrible punishments for women who tried to sing—tongues cut out and things like that.”
“That’s horrible!”
“Yes. I suppose.” It seemed like ancient history, not something that could ever happen to anyone he knew.
“Listen,” said Ryder. “There’s something I want to ask you. This morning at Stonehouse, you were talking about your brother.”
“My brother?” Falpian said.
“You said something about dreaming someone’s dreams. You used a word.”
He hesitated. “Talat-sa?”
“Yes, tally-sa. Tell me about tally-sa.”
Why that of all things? It was as if Ryder wanted to find all his tender spots. But it wasn’t a secret, after all. At home, when a black magician came to seek his father’s counsel, the conversation would inevitably turn to their talat-sa, how powerful they would be if only they could find him. When Falpian was younger, these men would look at him with awe or envy and tell him h
ow lucky he was. How pleasant a Witchlander’s life must be, not to even know the word.
“My people believe that everyone in the world has a talat-sa, a twin in spirit. In the Bitterlands, men go on long quests to find theirs, and usually never do. My father never found his.”
“And you say your brother was yours?”
“Yes,” Falpian said. “It’s different when you have a true twin. When my brother and I were born, there was great rejoicing in my family. Farien and I would never have to look for each other. We’d grow up dreaming the same dreams, finishing each other’s sentences—that sort of thing. We were supposed to make the leaves fall from the trees with the sound of our voices and know when the other was in trouble from a long way away. . . .” His voice trailed off. Of course, none of these things had happened with his brother. When Farien drowned, Falpian was reading in his bedchamber. If only he had looked out the window, he might have seen his boat. But he didn’t look. There was no warning in his head. He never knew his talat-sa was in trouble.
In the dark Bo gave a whistling whine, as if he understood the conversation. He had failed too that day. Dreadhounds were supposed to be special dogs, attuned to their master and their master’s talat-sa, but while Farien drowned, Bo had slept peacefully at the foot of Falpian’s bed.
“Is that the only reason two people would dream the same dreams?” Ryder asked. “If they are . . . twins in spirit?”
Falpian wondered why Ryder was so interested. “Yes,” he said. “For a while I thought my brother was sending me visions even after his death.” Falpian shifted position on his evergreen bed. He wasn’t so sure about that now. He’d been assuming that his strange dreams came from Farien, that their connection had finally been made but too late, and that the dreams were some sort of twisted vision of the afterlife. Now he wondered if he had imagined it all.
Beside him, Falpian could feel Ryder’s body shaking. It took a moment to realize that he was laughing.
“What is it? What’s so funny?”
Ryder’s laugh was audible now, a snorting chortle that was clearly trying to stop. Falpian found himself laughing too.
“Twins in spirit,” Ryder managed to say.
Falpian laughed harder, though he didn’t get the joke. He tried to stop, but something inside him had broken, spilling out high-pitched cackles. “What’s so funny about twins in spirit?”
“Nothing,” Ryder said. “Nothing. I’m sorry. I just . . . I just had a funny idea about a Baen and a Witchlander. . . .”
Falpian took a deep breath, tried to calm himself. “That wouldn’t be possible,” he said seriously. “It would be like a Baen having a talat-sa who was a . . .” Another peal of laughter spilled out. “A goat.”
“Yes, I suppose it would.”
Falpian turned away from Ryder then, realizing that in another moment, his laughter could turn to sobs.
* * *
In his dream, there was laughter too. Falpian was standing on the marble floor of a magnificent dining hall. In front of him was a long table, every seat filled with well-dressed men and boys. It was the feast of Kar, he realized in wonder, the afterlife, the place where the righteous went when they died. Falpian craned his neck, trying to see the head of the table. It was said the great God Kar sat there, singing the world into being, but he didn’t hear anything, and in either direction, all he could see were more diners, more table, stretching to infinity. Maybe he didn’t want to meet a God with a thousand eyes and tongues, anyway.
He followed the sound of laughter past the feasting and carousing. There were no women, but that didn’t surprise him. Women had no souls and couldn’t reach the feast of Kar.
He found his brother holding a big joint of meat. It was Farien who was laughing—laughing and laughing with bits of food coming out of his mouth. The men around him were laughing too. Some pointed at Falpian.
“Am I some joke?” he asked. He recognized some of the diners from the portrait gallery back home. His Caraxus family ancestors. “I’m going to die for all of you—for the Baen people—what more do you want?”
They laughed harder. And someone bleated like a goat. Beside Farien there was an empty chair, but Falpian didn’t want to sit in it.
“You’re such a muttonhead,” Farien said, tears streaming out of his eyes. “Even your dog gets it.”
Muttonhead. Falpian had forgotten that one. Seeing Farien reminded him of how annoying his brother used to be sometimes.
Then, to Falpian’s horror, a piece of Farien’s face came off—though he kept on laughing. There was a hole in his cheek now, something brown showing through. Someone pulled at Falpian’s sleeve, but he couldn’t take his eyes away. Pieces of his brother’s face were flaking off, coming away like mosaic tiles. His brother was disappearing, being replaced by someone else.
Someone pulled his sleeve again, and this time he looked. Standing beside him were his own two sisters, their eyes like black stones.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said.
They smiled at him and cupped their hands to tell a secret. Falpian bent toward them. “It is the great God Kar who plays the best jokes,” they whispered.
CHAPTER 16
THE GODDESS HAS STAINED YOUR EYES
Ryder knew things about Falpian. Pictures came into his mind as he climbed. A house. A stable. A courtyard shaded by an old blisterberry tree. A woman in blue silk throwing petals into the ocean—Falpian’s mother performing some ritual for her dead son.
Not long after they’d started out, it came to Ryder that the wind sweeping toward them from the mountain’s summit was whistling in the key of torn clouds. What in Aata’s name did that mean? All his life Ryder had wanted to explore, to see sights that were foreign and strange; now they were coming to his mind unbidden, more vivid than his own memories. He and Falpian had some sort of connection, that was certain, but Ryder didn’t want it. Skyla and Pima were in trouble; that was all that mattered. He didn’t want a talat-sa.
“We’ll have to hurry if we want to make the coven today,” he said. A scarf was wound around most of Falpian’s face, and yet Ryder could see dread in the Baen’s dark eyes. “Just tell the witches what you know, and I will escort you back to the border myself.” The words were swallowed up by the frigid wind. “They don’t really put people in cooking pots, you know!”
When the path got too steep for Falpian to climb without stumbling, Ryder untied his hands and cut him a staff. The Baen didn’t run away, only looked at him woefully, as if resigned to his fate. Ryder almost wished he would run. They trekked up the mountain, hardly stopping to rest, as the dim glow of the sun arced purple over their heads. Ryder tied evergreen branches to their boots for snowshoes. They ate lump from their pockets and melted snow in their mouths for water. As they neared the top of the mountain, Ryder noticed that the zanthia trees had become squat and stunted, bent backward by an ever-present wind into gnarled poses, like witches bending to the sun.
It was midafternoon when they reached the border. The path didn’t go all the way to the summit, but came to rest at a flat place on the shoulder of the mountain. At their feet a plain black stone pushed its way out of the snow, only its rounded top showing.
“Is this it?” Falpian asked. “Just this stone? I expected the border to be—I don’t know—more dramatic somehow.”
“Just this,” Ryder said quietly. He looked down on the bare trees and the drab snow-covered valley, and his heart swelled. Home. His family. For two days he had kept up a fierce pace, but now that he was so close he found himself hesitating, dreading what he might find. Bo, sensing his mood, leaned his great head against Ryder’s thigh.
“Firecall’s gone out,” Falpian said, pulling the scarf from his face as he came up beside him. Ryder nodded. He had been searching for any sign of the red smoke, but saw none. “I hope your sisters are all right.” Ryder eyed Falpian suspiciously, but the Baen seemed to have meant what he said. “It’s . . . odd, I almost feel like I know them, like
I’d recognize them if I saw them. . . .” Falpian shook his head as if to shake off the thought and looked out to the valley again. “They say the prophet Aayse is buried somewhere in these mountains.”
Ryder was taken aback. “How would you know about her?”
Falpian gave him an arch look. “I have been educated.” He began to recite in a soft singsong voice: “‘When the great witch died, the skies were dark for days. Her sister Aata tore her hair and wept. She begged the Goddess to send her sister back across the river of sorrow, back into the land of the living. For nine days she stayed in Aayse’s tomb, neither eating nor sleeping.’”
Ryder gaped. It was from “The Life of Aata and Aayse,” the story his mother had been telling on the last day he saw her. How very strange to be here now, listening to it on the lips of a Baen.
“‘And then the Goddess came,’” Ryder murmured. “‘She spoke to Aata in a language without words, comforting her, teaching her the magic that lies in silence, the magic her sister had tried to show her. When Aata left her sister’s tomb, she had been changed.’”
“My mother liked to read me that passage,” Falpian said, then added with a hint of bitterness, “Grief is her hobby. She’s made a study of it.”
Ryder thought again of the dark-haired woman casting petals into the sea. She’d already lost one son. “Is it true what you’ve been saying?” he asked curtly. “Do you really know nothing about an attack on the coven?”
