The first two guards closed in, heartened by the arrival of their fellows. Mershayn saw two more guards sprint through the door into the hallway. Now it was seven to one.
“Dervon grind your bones in his teeth!” he shouted. He would not wait for them to come to him. He lunged forward, blocking a sword strike with his stolen dagger. The point of the man’s blade shot past his ear, and Mershayn shoved his short sword into the nearest man’s stomach, punching through the thick leather. He gurgled and slumped over, dragging Mershayn off balance. The second guard swung at Mershayn’s head. The blade cracked into his cheek, and his right eye went blurry.
Mershayn shouted anew, screaming at them. Another sword came down. He threw himself to the side, barely caring whether it hit him or not. Somehow, it missed. One of the guards howled in pain.
He found himself in the center of a throng of bodies, and he struck out in one direction at a time, methodically seeking the soft spots. His blade found a meaty thigh. The guard cried out and fell. He spun, blocking another blade and getting inside the man’s parry. He plunged his dagger into the guard’s armpit. The guard screamed and fell backward.
Mershayn slipped on the blood-slicked stones and went down. He rolled to the side, knowing that a blade must be descending upon him. He heard it clang on the stones. He lashed out, but only hit the ground.
Another guard screamed. Mershayn turned in time to see him fall. He blinked his good eye and tried to bring the fallen guard into focus. That was a hatchet in his chest.
He pushed on the slick stones, scrambling jerkily to his knees, trying to get to his feet. There were two guards left. He managed to get upright and lunged at the woman. She hastily blocked him and backed up.
“Mershayn, don’t!” she said. Blood began to run into his good eye. He blinked it away and pressed his attack, but it was too late. The final guard stepped in and batted his blade down.
Mershayn turned on him, bringing his sword up and attacking, but his vision was fading. His arms were full of sand. And the guard he now fought was good. Mershayn pressed him with every ounce of strength he could muster, but the guard’s blade was there again and again. The man backed up smoothly one step at a time, drawing out the attack, dictating the terms, wearing Mershayn out. But he wasn’t attacking. Why wasn’t he attacking...?
Suddenly, Mershayn realized that the man was talking to him.
“My lord...” he said in a steady, coaxing voice. “Mershayn, listen to me. We haven’t much time. The king is hurt. Mershayn—”
Mershayn stumbled back, somehow managing to keep his feet. He lowered his sword. The guard did not attack. Neither did the other guard, the woman, who stood behind him. He suddenly realized that she could have spitted him at any time. He peered intently through his blood-covered eye at the man. “Lo’gan?”
Captain Lo’gan let out a quiet breath. “Yes. Thank the gods, Mershayn. I thought they’d chopped into your brain.”
“They might have,” he said, staggering. The woman behind him moved forward and supported his weight.
“Deni’tri?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“You went for help. I told you not to... Not to...tell anyone.”
“Lo’gan would never betray the true king,” she said simply. “And we arrived just in time.”
Mershayn suddenly remembered Collus.
“Collus!” He spun about, but his legs gave out. Deni’tri groaned as she took his weight and hauled him upright. “Enough of that, my lord. Hold still.”
“I will help the king,” Lo’gan said, kneeling before Collus. He paused for a long time.
Mershayn felt his consciousness ebbing, but he held onto it fiercely. “Is he alive?” he demanded.
Lo’gan had never been one to mince words. He turned, and with that same stoic expression he always wore, said, “Barely. I hesitate to move him, but we cannot stay here. We don’t know how deep this betrayal goes. Others may arrive shortly.”
Lo’gan let out a brief sigh, then hefted Collus onto his shoulders. The king groaned, as if in his sleep, but made no other sound. “Come,” Lo’gan said, stepping carefully among the dead bodies and slick stones. “This way.”
Mershayn began to feel the pain of his wounds. His head felt like it was being slowly crushed between two great stones. He sagged in Deni’tri’s arms.
“No,” she said sternly. “Stay awake, my lord. I cannot carry you. I have not the strength.”
“Gods, the pain!” he whispered, trying to control it. But it overwhelmed him. All he wanted to do was lie down and fade into unconsciousness.
“Up, my lord!” she barked, dragging him after the retreating Lo’gan. “If you fall, you are a dead man. Help me.”
Mershayn reached down for his dagger, but he could not find it.
“Give me your dagger!”
She hesitated, then unsheathed her dirk and handed it to him. With shaky fingers, he put the leather-bound handle between his teeth and bit down. He nodded. Pain fired through his head, and he almost fell again, but he recovered just in time to be dragged forward.
Deni’tri followed Lo’gan down the hall. He staggered along with her, fighting to stay awake.
22
Stavark
Stavark paused on the ridge above of Denema’s Valley. It was still the greenest valley he had ever seen. Even before GodSpill returned to the lands, the greenery of Denema’s Valley had seemed unnatural, as though a small bit of the Age of Ascendance had remained.
He saw the cluster of shops surrounding the city circle and the fountain, where the darklings had taken the Rabasyvihrk and the Maehka vik Kalik, where they’d nearly killed him, and where...
He could not find his calm when thinking about what the darklings had done to Orem.
This moment...cut short by violence, the end unknown, it must be returned to. It must, or it will hold my spirit prisoner forever.
Elekkena came up behind him. She was as much an enigma now as she had been before they left Sylikkayrn, but she was a good companion. She did not speak, except when there was something important to say, and she was a superlative hunter, even better than Stavark himself. They traded nights where one would hunt and the other would make the fire and forage for vegetables. She always brought back meat, and quickly. He would like to have gone with her on one of her hunts, but to travel fast, it was best to alternate hunting duties.
Elekkena never offered anything about her past, specifically about her two-year journey, and Stavark did not pry.
“Have you been to the human lands before?” he said to her.
“Yes,” she said, but did not say more.
“Have you been to Denema’s Valley?” Stavark asked, surprised.
“Yes.” He continued to watch her, and she raised an eyebrow. “Did you think you were the only syvihrk to travel the human lands, Stavark, son of Sallark?”
He searched within himself. Why was it surprising she had been here? Was he so judgmental that he assumed all of the syvihrk were like his mother, enclosed by fear, unwilling to venture into the human lands? That was a shortcoming. He must be wary. Wisdom was found in resilience.
He spoke the truth. “Yes, I did.”
She smiled. Another surprise. He had never seen her smile before.
“It appears that you do not know everything,” she said.
He didn’t answer that. “Come,” he said. “This city is where it happened.”
He slipped around the boulder and down the trail. Elekkena fell in silently behind him. He hadn’t gone more than twenty paces when he heard something to their right near the cliff face of the ridge. With a quick signal, he dropped to a squat. Elekkena did the same.
There were people in that direction, a flash of light between the trees, the sound of horses. He felt the air ripple, as though someone was using GodSpill. This was not something every syvihrk could do, but Stavark tried to be at one with the land. He could tell when a threadweaver was working.
He nodded to Elekkena
and triggered that place deep within himself that was the birthright of all syvihrk. He flicked his gaze to a specific tree.
Silver burst within him. It began in his eyes, expanding outward through his head and body. He could taste it, smell it, feel it in his skin. It lit up his arms and legs like dry leaves touched by a torch. The forest around him became silver. The slope became silver. The rocks and the grass and the sky, all of it. The lands stopped moving, as though they had been cast in molten silver.
He did not have time to ponder it. He could not stay long within the silverland. His people told stories of unwary syvihrk who did. They never returned, living on only as flickering glimmers of silver light in the real world.
Within the silverland, Stavark scampered to the tree he had chosen before triggering his gift, hid behind it, then left the silverland. Everything around him began to move again. A breeze whispered through the forest, leaves rustled, and the noise ahead returned.
Elekkena stood beside him, her head hung low, and she breathed as though she’d run all the way from the True Ocean. Stavark knew that feeling, but the gift of the syvihrk flowed strongly in him. Even without maehka in the lands, he had been able to use it, something almost no one else in Sylikkayrn could do. During that time, he reacted exactly as she was reacting now, exhausted just by the smallest use of his power.
But since the Maehka vik Kalik had freed the maehka, it was as though Stavark was a bird whose wings had finally been unbound. He could enter and leave the silverland at will. It still tired him, but not nearly as much as before. He could go further, last longer, than ever before.
“What is it?” Elekkena asked.
Stavark held up a hand. “Threadweaver,” he mouthed, and his heart caught between hope and dread. The Maehka vik Kalik wasn’t the only threadweaver who’d returned with the destruction of Daylan’s Fountain. So far as Stavark could tell, all of the others were creatures of nightmare.
He took a moment to release his fear. Fear was the knife whose handle was a blade. Useless and damaging.
“We must wait,” he whispered. “We must be ready to run.”
Between the shadows of the trees, leading horses, were two people. One man, tall and powerful with golden hair. One woman, shorter, wearing breeches and a short skirt.
For the first time in weeks, Stavark smiled.
23
Mirolah
Just as the previous two times Mirolah traveled through the teleportation gates, she felt like she was walking through a vertical lake. The surface was like water closing about her face, except there was no wetness, no heat or cold. Reality rippled for an abrupt, threadless moment outside the tapestry.
Then she was through. The gate delivered them to the leafy slope near Denema’s Valley, descending steeply away from the rock face where the gate had been built.
She shook her head, bewildered, and the soft light of the gate faded behind them. The skin dog, just ahead of her, lunged sideways and dove into the tall brush. She barely caught a glimpse of him before he vanished.
Medophae shook away his disorientation, then looked at her.
“He followed us?” he asked.
She stared where the skin dog had gone, though there was no sight of him. She thought of the cobble birds in Lawdon’s tile yard, the weasel, and the squirrels. They’d all watched her intently. She had thought the skin dog was the same, but none of the others had followed her, or not far, at least. She remembered a fox that had paced her from the tree line as she approached the city of Rith, but he hadn’t followed her into the city, nor when she left.
“He wants to be close to me,” she said.
“Did you bond with him?”
“Bond? No.”
“Did you name him?”
“I didn’t ‘bond’ with him. He’s just following me.”
“Maybe you bonded with him and you didn’t know it. You should name him, if he’s going to be your anchor.”
“Anchor? Like Zilok Morth?” she asked sharply. She hated the idea of what Zilok did, enslaving Sef to serve his needs. “That’s ridiculous!”
“Calm down. Not like Zilok Morth. That’s not what I mean. Zilok’s anchor keeps his spirit bound to life. A threadweaver’s anchor is about binding her attention to her body, like a string that always leads home. It’s similar, but not the same. You see, before the Age of Ascendance when threadweaving became easy enough for everyone to do, threadweavers would sometimes bind themselves to an animal to anchor them while threadweaving. Nearly every threadweaver I ever met had some kind of affectation like that, an object that served as their anchor: a staff or wand they carried, fancy robes with symbols stitched into the cuffs. One threadweaver constantly stroked his long beard every time he threadweaved. Piercing was also used, an earring or nose ring. The physical weight of the object through their flesh reminded them of their physical body while their mind was working in the threads. Others used throwaway components, attaching the significance of the threadweaving to the components, rather than seeing themselves as the spell. Some would talk while they threadweaved, letting the words flow into the GodSpill like verbal components. Threadweaving requires so much focus. It’s why most people couldn’t do it before Daylan’s Fountain. Bands said...” He trailed off at her name, then cleared his throat. “That it’s easy to get lost in the GodSpill.”
Lost in the GodSpill.
“Did you ever know anyone who did?” she asked, her heart in her throat.
“Got lost? A few. I actually visited an infirmary in Belshra once—”
“What happened to them?” she demanded, cutting off his sentence. She calmed herself, breathing deeply.
“Mirolah, is something wrong?” He cocked his head, concerned.
“I just want to know,” she said.
“Did you lose your focus with the boy? Is that what happened—?”
“Just tell me,” she said.
“Well, they sat there. Their focus, their...minds, never returned to their bodies.”
“They died.”
“Starved to death. You could get them to drink. They’d swallow reflexively if forced. But you couldn’t get them to chew food. Their minds were lost somewhere in the GodSpill.”
By the Gods...
“I’ll never bind anyone to me,” she whispered. “Not a person and not an animal, either.”
“The dog seems to want to serve you. You’re not enslaving him if he wants to be your familiar. He would make an intimidating ally. Most familiars are small animals. I’ve never seen one as big as a skin dog.”
“Familiar?”
“That’s what they called them, the animal anchors. Something familiar to guide you back to your body, in case you got lost.”
“I don’t need one,” she said adamantly.
He paused. “Mirolah, did you lose focus in Rith—?”
“No,” she stopped him. “I’m fine.” But the GodSpill had lifted her out of her body and stolen her away. She had almost died. Except it wasn’t the same. She knew where her body was. She knew how to get back. She hadn’t been lost, she’d been...everything. It was more that she hadn’t wanted to come back. Or that she had become part of something larger that didn’t want her to come back.
“Mirolah—”
“Please,” she said. “Just...give me time to think about it.” She didn’t want to tell him about the voice. She didn’t...want him to know.
“Okay.”
“Let’s just go.”
He hesitated, then nodded and led his horse down the slope. She followed.
She let the thought of anchors, components, and familiars flow out of her mind. That wasn’t her. She didn’t need to lean on such things. She hadn’t flowed into the GodSpill because she was weak. She’d gone because it yanked her away. It wasn’t incompetence. She didn’t need a crutch. It was a fight. The GodSpill was her ally...and maybe her enemy.
We are one....
They descended into Denema’s Valley, the city where Stavark and Orem had f
aced their fate, where Ethiel had stolen Medophae and Mirolah and left her companions to die, torn apart by darklings. They might have been devoured seconds after Kikirian took her, or they might have somehow escaped.
Please let them be alive. Somehow, please. This was my fault. When the challenge came, I wasn’t ready. And my companions suffered for it.
But her spell in Pindish, her appeal to the GodSpill to find them, had done nothing. Obviously begging the voice was useless—
She sensed movement in the threads, someone hiding close by. Was it the skin dog, trailing them? She opened the bright bridge, feeling the threads, feeling—
“Stavark!” She let out a joyful squeak, dropped the reins of her horse and ran down the slope.
“Mirolah!” Medophae called.
Stavark and another quicksilver girl emerged from the trees. Stavark smiled. He bowed his head to her respectfully, but she slid to her knees and threw her arms around him, hugging him. Stunned, he was stiff for a moment, then slowly closed his arms about her back. She held on for a long time. She didn’t want to let go.
“My heart is joyous to find you well, Maehka vik Kalik,” he said calmly.
“‘Your heart is joyous?’” she mimicked him, drawing back to look at his silver eyes, then laughed and hugged him again. “By the gods, Stavark, we thought you were dead! All we found was your blood on the door of a shop near the attack.”
“Yes.”
She finally let go of him, and he stood with his hands at his sides, watching her with his eternally serious little-boy expression. What in the lands made him so serious? “But you survived,” she said.
“And you brought Orem’s dream to life,” he said. “You freed the maehka to live in the lands again.”
“We all did,” she said. “Now it’s time to make sure we all can celebrate together. Is Orem with you?”
The GodSpill Page 17
