Ashara reached out, intending to grasp her arm and steady her, but when she tried to step in that direction, she couldn’t lift her leg. An alarmed gasp escaped her own lips. The gurgle of the stream had stopped, the forest growing silent. Not so much as an insect buzzed.
She leaned back to give herself leverage and tugged, but her foot did not budge. The water had somehow sealed around her ankle. What magic could have taken root so quickly? She tried to lift her back foot, which was still on the bank. That one rose easily enough. When she reached down to see what had gripped her, her knuckles bashed against something hard. And cold.
“Ice.” Ashara drew her dagger and poked at the hard substance all around her ankle, experimentally at first, but then she hacked, trying to break it. “Solid ice,” she added. The stream might only be four or five inches deep, but in an instant, it had frozen all the way through.
“My brother could do something like this,” Mahliki said quietly as she shifted her weight and removed her pack. Both of her feet were locked in the stream, so she was doubly trapped. Not that having one foot free encouraged Ashara. It wasn’t as if she planned to cut the other off so she could escape. “But not from far away,” Mahliki added.
Ashara knew there were limits to a practitioner’s range and shivered in reluctant agreement. A powerful shaman might be able to sense their movements—such as when they entered the stream—and attack them like this from up to a mile away, but she feared this kind of accuracy meant Tladik was watching them from some nearby hill. She hadn’t heard anyone yet, but she doubted they would have much time alone.
“Why is he after us?” Ashara growled, hacking harder.
The tip of her dagger bit into the ice, but it did nothing to crack it or loosen her foot. She risked poking closer to her moccasin, but worried she would cut herself, especially if the limb went numb and she couldn’t feel anything. Right now, her foot burned from the cold, her nerves alive with the sensation, but with the appendage encased in ice, that wouldn’t last for long. A new fear rushed into her heart, one that irrationally worried her more than the approach of a dangerous enemy. What if she couldn’t get free soon enough, and she lost her foot to frostbite? Everything she loved to do, roaming the world and seeing new places and collecting herbs and plants, required walking.
“Basilard is the one who blew up their stuff,” she added, frustration making her words harsh. She didn’t want anyone after Basilard, either, but she couldn’t understand why Tladik had singled out her and Mahliki.
“Maybe.” Mahliki dropped her pack, glass clinking slightly. “But I’m the one who gave the Mangdorians a way to fight the blight.” She sniffed something in her hand. “I’m not sure if this is my calcium chloride or not. Nor am I sure I have enough to do anything. Do you have any alcohol, by chance?” Mahliki bent down, touching the ice.
“Sorry, I forgot my vodka. Or apple brandy. That’s what Turgonians drink, right? Does being drunk make losing your foot easier?” Ashara leaned back, annoyed that her dagger wasn’t proving useful. She knew her frustration was making her words harsh, but she couldn’t help it, not with fear fueling the emotion.
“I was thinking of something stronger, actually. Like rubbing alcohol. Don’t you clean wounds with something like that before you smear your salve on?”
“Oh. Yes, I have a little.” Ashara sheathed her dagger and shifted her bow and her pack from her shoulders.
A branch snapped in the distance, in the direction from which they had come. It was followed by the sound of footsteps crunching on dry leaf litter. Lots of footsteps. The shaman had a platoon—wasn’t that what Sicarius had said?
“Hurry,” Mahliki whispered. “I think this is the calcium chloride.”
“Should I be cheering?” Ashara thrust her hand past a change of clothing and dried food rations until she found her first-aid kit and potions at the bottom. “Here’s the rubbing alcohol.”
“Good. Dribble some around your foot, then hand it to me. I’ll trade you the calcium. It’s melting my ice.”
Torches had come into view, a line of them weaving through the trees and heading toward the stream, but a surge of hope filled Ashara’s breast. “Like salt?” she whispered.
“Yes, but better. It’s hygroscopic.”
Ashara had no idea what that meant, but she was too busy dribbling alcohol around her ankle and above her foot to care. Careful to leave some for Mahliki, she capped it, said, “Here,” and handed the small bottle to her.
Mahliki handed an even smaller container back. “Use the rest of it. Apply it and smear it around. We’ll have to hope it works quickly enough.”
“What’s hygroscopic?” Ashara asked as she dumped crystals onto the ice. She tried not to worry that she could not feel—or move—her toes. The ice grew moist beneath her fingers, and more hope thrummed through her body. It was melting, but would it be fast enough?
“In this case, it means the substance draws moisture from the air and creates heat to accelerate the melting process.”
“I see someone,” an excited voice called out in Kendorian.
Ashara cursed. Were they going to free their feet only to have the platoon already surrounding them? She tugged, hoping the ice had weakened enough to escape. Before, she had been locked down, unable to move her foot even a hair. Now, her ankle shifted from side to side.
Mahliki grunted softly, her body jerking. “One foot is out.”
The soldiers’ faces were visible now, their long braids of hair bouncing on their chests as they strode through the underbrush. Ashara could not see Tladik yet, but he had to be among them. She lifted her bow and nocked an arrow.
“Run downstream,” she whispered. “Not through the water. And be careful not to let your foot pause. He might have ways of grasping us with roots and other plants.”
“Yes, my brother does that too.” Mahliki grunted again, and Ashara hoped she had freed her other foot. Her own was looser, but she couldn’t lift it out yet.
Though she knew she would be vulnerable to return fire, she targeted one of the men in the lead. She couldn’t let them get close enough to surround her and Mahliki. They pressed forward, their torchlight flickering about their faces. Since Ashara was still in the dark, they couldn’t tell that she was aiming at them.
An image popped into her head, one of herself raising the bow to shoot the lead Kendorian only to have an owl swoop in and claw her eyes out. From somewhere outside of her body, she then saw Tladik striding in, plucking up Mahliki, and carrying her off. Right away, she knew her own mind had not made up those images. That recognition did not make the situation any more tolerable; Tladik was monitoring her thoughts and trying to influence her.
She tried to pinpoint his location, tracking him via the intangible trail he had left by touching her mind. It wasn’t the same as tracking prints in the mud, but she did get a sense of his direction. She shifted her bow toward a clump of bushes, bushes where he might be hiding. She wanted him to know she was not intimidated, but mostly, she wanted an opportunity to shoot him. He might have been a part of her training long ago, but she felt no loyalty to him.
Before she could verify she had found his hiding spot, an icy hand seemed to grip her heart. Pain crept into her chest, along with fresh fear.
Aware of the soldiers marching closer, Ashara tugged at her leg one more time. Her foot came free. She leaped onto the bank, nearly stumbling because the limb was entirely numb. The pain in her chest grew sharper, but she kept her balance and loosed her arrow. Instead of targeting the soldiers, she aimed for the bushes where she guessed Tladik hid.
The foliage stirred, but nobody cried out in agony.
“I’m free,” Mahliki whispered.
“Go.” Ashara pushed her back, trying to point her downstream. She did not want to voice directions, not with the Kendorians close enough to hear.
Mahliki took off, crossing the stream with a leap. A rifle cracked.
“Not that one, you idiot,” someone ordered.
Mahliki did not slow down, so she must not have been hit. Ashara sprinted away in the same direction as Mahliki, fearing they would not be able to outrun these men. Normally, she would scramble up a tree, seeming to disappear, while her pursuers ran past below, but she could not trick these men while Tladik guided them. He would be like a magical bloodhound, impossible to lose.
More rifle shots rang out, and arrows whizzed through the air around them. Ashara kept her shoulders hunched and her head tucked. She doubted anyone back there could see them, but blind luck could kill a person as effectively as skill.
Mahliki tripped, going down hard with a grunt. Ashara helped her to her feet.
“You should leave your pack,” she whispered.
“Too much useful stuff,” Mahliki panted. Then her voice turned plaintive as she added, “And all my research notes for my paper.” She surged into a faster run than before, as if to prove that her gear wasn’t slowing her down.
Ashara had to sprint to keep up. It was hard to argue with the usefulness of Mahliki’s gear, not when her chemicals had just helped them out of that ice, but she worried it could make the difference in them being caught—or not. Not that the Kendorians seemed to want to catch Ashara. They wanted Mahliki—the shaman’s vision had shown her that much. They seemed content to shoot Ashara.
The sound of water came from ahead, the roar drowning out the gurgle of the stream they followed. It soon drowned out the crashing of boots and the yells of their pursuers too. That didn’t mean those pursuers weren’t still closing in, and if Ashara and Mahliki ran into a river that was too wide to ford, they could be trapped. Ashara wished she knew this terrain better.
When they reached the river, they were forced to stop. Their stream poured into it, the two waterways joining and continuing downhill. Mahliki glanced about, then grabbed a sapling. Ashara thought they could ford the stream—it didn’t look to be more than three feet deep in the middle and about twelve feet across, but the memory of the ice made her halt, her toes scant inches from the water. Wood snapped as Mahliki broke the sapling off at the base.
“Sorry tree,” she muttered, scooting back several steps from the river.
Before Ashara could ask what she was doing, Mahliki ran straight for the water. She leaped into the air while thrusting the slender tree into the river. Her new staff stuck in the bottom of the waterway, and Mahliki pushed off, the extra boost carrying her to the other side. Her pack almost made her lose her balance, but she managed to twist and keep hold of the top of the sapling.
Ashara watched the dark water, expecting it to turn to ice. She could hear the shouts of the Kendorians again, closer than ever. Their torches were visible in the woods behind them. The water continued to rush past. Ashara did not know whether this river was too deep for Tladik to freeze, or if he was watching them so closely that he could tell that they had not entered it.
Mahliki pulled out the sapling and threw it back toward Ashara. The young branches shooting from its core did not make it quite as aerodynamic as a spear, and Ashara had to lunge to catch it before it fell into the water and was carried away.
“Up ahead,” someone yelled. “There they are.”
Ashara backed up, then emulated Mahliki’s leap over the river. While she was in the air over the water, an arrow sliced into the side of her shoulder, and agony tore through her body. Though the pain unbalanced her, she managed to land on both feet. She released the sapling and gritted her teeth, saying nothing about the wound. They couldn’t afford to slow down, and the injury would not bother her legs. She patted behind her shoulder and found the shaft of the arrow sticking out right away. Touching it sent a fresh rush of pain through her. It needed to be pulled out or broken off, but she was afraid she might pass out if she tried that here.
“Go,” she whispered, aware of the swarm of lanterns closing on the far bank.
Mahliki took off, following the now combined waterways. As they slipped over wet rocks and squished through mud, Ashara tried to come up with something that they could do. The fresh pain in her shoulder, along with branches and thorny briar plants clawing at her face, made it hard to think of anything except running. Roots and rocks rose, tripping them both, and Ashara could hear her own pained breaths wheezing in her throat. She could hear Mahliki’s gasps too. It wouldn’t take an expert tracker—or a magical one—to follow them now.
More streams joined the larger one, and the ground sloped downward. Up ahead, the night sky came into view, the trees thinning.
“We’re coming to a drop off,” Ashara warned. She imagined leaping off the edge of a cliff, soaring like an eagle, until she splashed down in a pool far below. The thought of plunging into cold water to cool off sounded appealing.
The edge came up more quickly and sharply than she expected. Mahliki grabbed her arm, planting a hand on her chest. It was a good thing, because Ashara might have jumped, thanks to that appealing image in her mind. But there was no inviting pool far below. The water tumbled over the edge of a thirty-foot drop, then flowed away, dancing around boulders, boulders that wouldn’t be at all appealing to land on. With an alarmed start, Ashara realized that thought—that image—had not been her own. Tladik had been trying to get her to leap to her death.
Mahliki said something in a language Ashara did not know—it sounded like a curse—then added, “You’ve got an arrow sticking out of your back.”
“I noticed.” Ashara spun in a circle, trying to figure out which way would be best to run. The river had grown too wide to ford—or vault across. They would have to follow the cliff. And if that cliff turned inward, they might be forced to backtrack toward the Kendorians where they would be trapped. “Pull it out. I need that arm to hold my bow when I shoot.”
She thought Mahliki might protest or prove squeamish. “I’ll cut the shaft off,” she said around heavy breaths as she tried to gather enough air to fill weary lungs. “I would do more damage trying to pull it out.”
Before Ashara could object, Mahliki sliced through the shaft with a knife. Even that simple motion hurt, and Ashara was secretly relieved she hadn’t tried to pull it out.
“They’re coming,” Mahliki whispered, as if Ashara wasn’t all too aware of the boots crashing through the woods or the lanterns closing in. “Any idea about the terrain? Is there a way to circle back to the others?”
“Go that way.” Ashara pointed along the cliff. It would take them in the opposite direction from the canyon and the others, but it was the only possible way. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Mahliki took off, moving quietly through ferns and brambles growing right up to the cliff’s edge.
Instead of following, Ashara peered into the dark depths below. A half moon had risen during their flight, and it provided enough illumination to make out the bottom. She touched her shirt, half tempted to take it off and fling it below, in the hope of tricking the men into believing she had fallen. But Tladik would never be fooled. His presence stacked the odds, made the hunt unfair.
Grimacing at the pain in her shoulder, Ashara slung off her bow and strode several paces into the ferns. She didn’t try to catch up with Mahliki. Mahliki was who these people wanted, either because of her role in fighting the blight or because she was President Starcrest’s daughter and could be used as a hostage. This may not have been Ashara’s fight in the beginning, but she had agreed to protect Mahliki when they had gone to the meeting place, and she couldn’t now imagine going back to explain to Basilard that she had lost his charge. Besides, Ashara doubted Tladik would let her go, even if she gave up the fight.
She would try to slow him down and hope to give Mahliki a chance to escape.
Ashara chose a position with the cliff to one side and a pine tree to the other, then turned to face the waterfall. She pulled her remaining arrows out of her quiver and laid them at her feet. She dropped to one knee, making herself as small of a target as she could while still being able to shoot.
The first Kendorian came close eno
ugh for her to see through the fronds and leaves. Close enough for her to target.
She waited for three more to run into view before shooting. They charged up to the drop off and peered over. She took the first soldier in the shoulder, and he crumpled, grasping at the arrow.
“She didn’t go down there,” came an irritated shout from farther upriver. Tladik.
As Ashara calmly launched more arrows, in the back of her mind, she allowed herself a hint of satisfaction at the fact that Tladik sounded tired and miserable. Maybe she would find her opportunity to shoot him. Maybe he would be too weary to raise a shield to protect himself.
Three soldiers fell before they realized where she was shooting from. Ashara expected them to swarm over her then, to rush her with swords and hack her down.
Instead, a great roar came from behind her, the source only a few feet away. She leaped to her feet and spun toward it, nocking another arrow. She was too late. The cougar sprang and slammed into her chest. Claws bit into her abdomen, and she tumbled backward, toward the drop. She released her bow and grabbed at ferns and grass, trying to find a way to catch herself. But the weight of the cougar took her over the edge. She toppled through the air, falling toward the sharp rocks below, her fate sealed.
Chapter 17
Basilard avoided the patrols and made his way down one of the trails and into the canyon without being spotted, but halfway down, a zing of energy raced up his spine. It was like static electricity except much stronger. The charge took his breath away. He dropped into a crouch with his back to the cliff and drew a dagger. He didn’t think it had been a booby trap—that would have done more damage—but the shaman probably now knew an intruder was on the way down. Basilard hoped Sicarius had been correct in saying that the shaman had been in the hunting party up above. Then, he shouldn’t be close enough to come deal with his alarm. But it was possible more practitioners had come on those wagon trains and that one of them waited in the canyon.
Diplomats and Fugitives (The Emperor's Edge Book 9) Page 33
