by Don McQuinn
Without Clas no place was any less lonely than any other.
Torchlight slipped under her door, a sinister blazon that grew brighter as the source progressed down the hall toward her. The fiery glow licked the stone floor, searched all the way to her feet.
This section of the castle was empty, waiting for a new group of girls to be trained as War Healers. No one would hear if she screamed.
A man whispered something indistinguishable, the words rapid and hoarse. Suppressed laughter followed, more frightening than the hushed words. Quick footsteps retreated. The torchlight remained.
The latch crept slowly upward. There was no way to bar the entry. The door’s heavy timbers were falsely impressive. King Altanar had decreed that no rooms inside his walls, except his own, could ever be barred against himself and those called his protectors.
Sylah drew herself erect. Her right hand sought the comforting shape of the shortknife up her sleeve. She reminded herself that she was Church, and holy. Anyone who deliberately killed her became the required victim of every soul who owed allegiance to Church.
But there were those whose need for power outstripped fear of death or eternal damnation.
They tried to kill her before. Clas saved her. If she must fight alone now, so be it. She would not plead.
“I know you’re there,” she said warningly, and the movement of the latch stopped. Then it jerked upward. The door flew open to boom against the opposite wall with a force that set it to shivering like a chilled hand. The man who’d done it stood bent forward, the torch raised above his head so his face was in shadow.
Sylah needed no closer look. “Clas!” The voice that had firmly rejected fear moments before squeaked embarrassingly, then babbled, “It’s you! What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be with your tribe! The pass. The snows. It’s too dangerous.”
He stepped in and pitched the torch at the fireplace. It spun away, the flames making a low ruffle until it landed on the grate. Scooping her lightly into his arms, he kicked the door shut behind him and carried her farther into the room. He kissed her, and she responded wildly, half crying, half laughing, then pulled away. Interrupting her inchoate, tumbling questions, he said, “No. Tonight we speak only of tonight. Tomorrow Church can have you back—for this cursed search you will have that takes you from me. Tomorrow we can talk of that or passes and snows, or anything else. Tonight is ours. Mine. Your husband’s.”
The assurance of it, the self-certain possession, jolted her. No one spoke to her like that. No one claimed her, called her mine. She felt the involuntary stiffening of her muscles, the coldness welling deep inside.
He put his mouth to her hair, caressed it with his lips. He said, “I had to come. I had to see you once more before you leave. Life’s only another duty for me until you finish this thing you must do and come back to me. I love you, Sylah. My Sylah.”
Her head sagged forward to rest in the space between his jaw and chest. A pulse in his neck throbbed against her cheek, mimicked the sudden racing of her heart. She bit him gently, teasing the skin between her teeth, then said, “And I love you. My Clas.”
Chapter 2
Sylah automatically rose at her accustomed time the next morning. Squinting sleepily, wrapping her nakedness in a heavy robe, she was pushing open the shutters to a brittle gray dawn before she was truly awake. Below her, the bleak surface of the Inland Sea stretched away to the forested base of the Whale Coast Mountains. Clouds the color of raw iron masked the snowy peaks.
A flicker of movement on the water caught her eye. Flashing oars stroked a slim, low-slung hull vessel toward Ola’s docks. Its sail was furled in the still air. Sylah grimaced. The design was unmistakable. A sharker, the notorious craft of the Skan people from the far north, men who were raiders by choice, traders if outnumbered. They roamed and ravaged wherever the Great Sea allowed. Some people bought slaves to row similar ships, hoping they could outrun the Skan if attacked. Few managed.
No Skans had come to Ola since Gan Moondark conquered it just the previous summer.
She shivered, only partly from the cold.
Gan Moondark. Last summer. Sometimes it seemed a thousand years ago.
His destiny had snared them all. They’d benefited. At a cost.
Clas na Bale had been the honored fighting instructor of the Dog tribe, and Gan was one of his students, a Nightwatcher. Then Faldar Yan had tried to usurp the position of War Chief from Gan’s father. In the ensuing turmoil, Gan killed Faldar Yan in a duel. More treachery made it look as though Gan had violated the tribe’s code of honor. With the Moondarks forced to flee, Clas joined in the escape. Faldar Yan’s successor was his son, Bay. He died suspiciously, leaving a man named Likat to become War Chief. He tried to ally the Dog People with King Altanar in an attempt to conquer the nation of Harbundai. When the Dog People realized Gan had fought his way to leadership of Harbundai’s army, they rejected Likat. Now Clas was War Chief, at Gan’s request, freeing Gan to consolidate the Three Territories.
The last point reminded her of the peculiar foreigners who’d also been pulled into Gan’s fate.
What would have become of her—or Gan and Clas—without those strange people? Such good fortune could attract equally bad luck.
Bad luck, she thought in a flash of bitterness; that would fall to others, not Gan.
Hadn’t she lived without Clas through an entire fall and winter, preparing for a quest that couldn’t include him because of Gan? And who could guess how long the journey would keep her separated from Clas?
Gan. For all the challenges facing him, he was together with his wife, Neela. He had her support and comfort. He had their child. Their son.
Grim depression pushed at her.
She reminded herself that because she’d been caught up in Gan’s destiny, she was within striking distance of her obsession with Church’s deepest secret, the fabled Door.
But it wasn’t obsession. Something called her. She didn’t know exactly what she sought, wasn’t even certain of its existence. She only knew she must go.
Turning, she looked at her husband. He was still facedown, an arm flung across the bed where she’d just been. She thought of the harsh discipline of her childhood that still jerked her from sleep every morning whether she was rested or exhausted. Oddly, this morning she was physically quite tired, although her mind sparkled with secret happiness. Remembrances of the night churned in her thoughts. Her face warmed alarmingly.
She threw her robe aside to burrow under the quilted down cover. Clas rolled onto his side. She pressed against his back, savoring the play of muscle and bone when he sighed deeply.
A sense of completion filled her. We are one, she thought, surprised and then amused by her own sudden, unexpected fierceness.
Or was desperation the more accurate word?
There were things they should discuss. When she pulled back to study him, he was so relaxed she couldn’t bring herself to disturb him. Her mind wandered. She thought of how he must have struggled to cross the mountains this early in the spring. So dangerous. And he’d be on the return trip that afternoon.
Once he was gone, time would be measured in terms of returning to him.
Her eyes traced the slope of his shoulder, stopping at the grooved scar just where the muscle curved up to connect with his neck. It always made her think of a plowed furrow.
How could she have fallen so totally in love with a man whose life was combat? How could she separate herself from him?
Power. If it existed, the Door was power. The acknowledgment that she needed it so terribly shamed her. Why couldn’t she be satisfied with what she’d accomplished? Why did she need more than Clas’ love?
Could the need for power have driven the Teachers? Church history said that generations ago, the branch of Church calling themselves Teachers had claimed to have discovered the secret of the Door. They offered to share it with all who accepted Church, in exchange for sexual equality. For their presumption, men exterminate
d them. And all knowledge of the Door.
Sylah willed her fists to relax and open. She thought of them cradling whatever secret warranted the Teachers’ bold bid.
Clas would never understand.
He was a warrior. He knew fighting and killing. Risk. He knew what it was to be tortured.
He knew nothing of being property.
She was a Chosen, and Chosens were Church things. Owned.
That was being too harsh, she thought: Church’s women fought constantly for independence. Without male protection, a non-Church woman was no more than a child-bearing utensil.
I will be free. There is no truth so strong it allows one person to possess another.
The words rang so loudly in her mind she started, afraid she’d actually spoken.
Calming herself, she told herself she would make it true. With the Door’s power no one could threaten her, ever again. All women would rise to their proper place.
Clas stirred, half turning. He frowned darkly, then settled. She ran her fingertips across his bristled, close-cropped hair. It was a new trim. The realization he’d had it done just for this trip, for her, touched her.
Suddenly, so swiftly she had no time to react, he spun to face her, grabbing her wrist. She gasped her surprise, and when she got her breath, her words came in a sputter. “You were awake all along!”
His laughter rumbled. “How could I sleep? You think too loudly.”
It was a small joke, but the coincidence was a shock. She tried to push him back as he hovered over her, braced on one elbow. It was like pushing the wall.
“Get away.” She feigned indignation. “Look, it’s near full sunrise. We have many things to do, and…”
He clamped his hands on her at the bottom of her rib cage and rolled onto his back. Effortlessly, he lifted her. The covers draped over her created a small, dark tent for them. Her pretended anger broke against his sheer pleasure in her, in his own strength, in the joy of being. She laughed down at him, cupping his face in her hands, covering the black square tattoo over the welted scar on his cheek.
Even though he continued to smile, his eyes took on an intensity that made them glass bright. His voice thickened. He said, “Let the sun rise as it will. There’s only one thing in the world we have to do.” Slowly, as he might bring a fruit-laden branch within reach, he lowered her to him, burying his face between her breasts.
Her breath caught in her throat. She had no thoughts for the day. The moment was the world.
* * *
Hours later the cloud cover was broken into scattered white heaps that bumbled across the sky like fat puppies. Bright sunshine warmed the rutted road leading to the docks. Beyond the stone jetties shielding the small harbor, it struck dazzling bursts of light from the tops of chopping waves.
Sylah held Clas’ arm as they walked. When she glanced up at him, her idle comment died unspoken, checked by the severity of his frown. She asked what troubled him.
Uncharacteristically, he hesitated. More, his answer had a defensive note. “Conway. Tate. There on the dock. You said no one would come to the docks to make these Skan raiders welcome, but there they are. I wish you had Dog warriors traveling with you instead of those strangers.”
It startled her so greatly she stopped. His momentum pulled her arm free before he turned to face her. She said, “Strangers? They’ve fought beside you and Gan. Since the day you left they’ve worked to make my quest theirs. They’ve learned to ride and handle a murdat well. And they have the lightning weapons; that alone makes them invaluable companions.”
“Lightning weapons. Faw! That’s the sort of thing that bothers me.” His jaw jutted stubbornly. “It’s not natural to kill a man so far away you can’t recognize him. That thing they call a wipe—the long tube that uses those little copper darts—is bad enough. The fat tube under it, the boop—that’ll kill a dozen men with one loud bang. I’m grateful for their help. I like them. But…” He floundered for words, then burst out, “You should’ve seen them in that Devil ambush. You know, when Gan and I saved them. They acted like they’d never seen a real fight. Aside from Tate—and Conway, I guess—they still do. They’re not just strangers, they’re strange.”
He stopped to glare at the Whale Coast Mountains as if blaming them for his uncertainty.
Sylah opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again. There was nothing anyone could say to him when he was in this mood.
It wasn’t as if there was anything actually troublesome about the strangers. Of course, one kept coming back to the point that no one had any idea where they came from. Even the Peddlers, those tribeless ones who wandered everywhere, never heard of them. Further, the strangers steadfastly claimed they’d traveled between their homeland and the Enemy Mountains without ever being observed until the Devil ambush. That was simply unbelievable.
And no one seeing the woman named Donnacee Tate was likely to forget her. Not only was she black, she’d impressed Gan and the other warriors enough to rise to be one of the army’s senior leaders. Legends said some of the giants who ruled the world before the beginning were black. Or yellow, like the Nion traders from across the Great Sea. It disturbed Sylah that she’d never heard of anyone who’d seen another black person, be they giant or anything else.
Then there was the matter of the man called Jones.
Eight strangers survived the Devil ambush Clas referred to. One, named Falconer, died in Ola’s castle while Altanar still ruled. Jones betrayed them all. Moondancer. He knew when the Jalail barons meant to kidnap her and Gan’s wife, Neela. He allowed it to happen. Her hand went to her stomach in an unconscious gesture as a wave of mourning and loss tried to drown her. Almost imperceptibly, she bent forward, as though she could turn back time and still shelter the child that had died within her because of Jones’ treachery.
Clas was staring at her, his face like something carved of glacier ice. “Were you thinking of them? Of the Jones one? He’s why I worry about them all. Even Tate, though we shared blood.”
She attempted to speak, and he cut her off with a gesture. “You won’t change my mind.” He reached to stroke her cheek, and she marveled that such hardness could permit so tender a touch. He said, “Nor will I change yours, my Priestess. I know I can’t hold you by force. That means I must trust your judgment.”
She covered his hand with hers. He looked away, made a noise in his throat. “I didn’t say I like your judgment. Don’t look at me that way. It’s not fair.”
“Like the strangers’ weapons?” She turned his hand, kissed the palm, teased him with her eyes.
“Exactly.” He laughed, pulling her to him.
Linking an arm through his again, she resumed their walk down toward the dock and the tied-up sharker. She felt his ongoing suspicion, and determined not to let it erode her confidence in her friends. They were honest, helpful people. The man called Louis Leclerc, who everyone said understood tools the way warriors understood their weapons, was a perfect example: He created the black, smelly powder stuff that knocked down the gates of Altanar’s castle, didn’t he? Without that, her own life would have been ended. If the other three women—Kate Bernhardt, Sue Anspach, and Janet Carter—were afraid to fight like Tate, and knew practically nothing of Healing or Church, that was only because they were from a different place, wasn’t it?
She swallowed a smile. Different place, indeed. They read. And wrote. They’d actually had the courage to show young Chosens how to do it, and, wonder of wonders, let the children display their ability to Gan. Because they convinced him such skill could help him direct his warriors more effectively, he directed the women to show all Chosens. For the first time anywhere, someone besides the most favored males and Church women were being shown letters and numbers.
This time she did smile, embarrassed at her fear of even thinking the word teach.
The three foreign women wore Church clothes, did what they did for the benefit of all, she told herself, then made a surreptitious three-sign to ward off dan
ger. For safety’s sake.
Clothes. That made her think of Conway. He was the one who suffered visibly at the loss of even the smallest piece of anything he’d brought from his homeland. Some sorrow was natural; their possessions were marvelous—outerwear that shed water like duck feathers without stewing the person wearing it, boots made of material that wore like iron and dried out while leather still squished with each step. But it was just clothing, after all. Ugly brown and green splotches without any pattern. Superb craftsmanship, but no concept of design or ornamentation or dramatic effect. Why would a man be emotional about stuff like that?
Clas was right, after all. They were strange.
* * *
On the dock Conway told Tate, “I don’t look forward to talking to this captain. He’s got a rotten mouth.”
Tate nodded. “I understand. I knew a colonel like him once. Dumb. Never learned the difference between tough and nasty.”
Conway pulled a face, pretending great surprise. “An incompetent Marine? You admit it?”
“Oh, sure. Thing is, in the Corps, he stood out. In the Army, who’d have noticed?”
“You never quit, do you?” He laughed easily. “I wonder what your leaders would say if they knew their indoctrination survived five centuries of cryogenic life suspension?”
“They’d be on me like a coat of paint if they thought it didn’t. They’d say if any part of me made it through, it better be the esprit de corps.”
Both fell quiet after their exchange, and Conway was sure Tate’s silence was filled with the same bittersweet tang as his.
They lived. The world they knew was gone.
Political determination in it had degenerated to nothing more than constant, escalating terrorism. Ever-increasing populations crowded themselves into madness. The same expansion destroyed forests, polluted rivers, seas. Climate skewed, became as insane as the thrashing humans. Inevitably, with no one precisely sure how it started or with any ability to stop it, war crept across the globe.
Every nation, ethnic group, or association of any description demanded room. At any cost. Neutrality was interpreted as covert support for one enemy or another. Everyone literally struck out at everyone with gas, germs, radiation, nuclear weapons.
