by Rachel Dunne
“The cappo sent you to kill the Ventallo,” the witch said heavily. “He sent me to kill someone else, if I could.” In a sudden rush of movement, he pushed the horse into the boy’s arms, and Etarro held it just as tight.
Rora looked back and forth between them. It was hard to think of anything else with freedom so close. “You mean Etarro?”
“If you kill me—” the boy near whispered it “—the Fallen will have no twins.” He reached out, his fingers touching against Anddyr’s hand. “They’ll have no hope. It . . . would be the smart thing to do.” A shiver rolled through him, and Rora remembered how he’d shook in her arms back in that cell, colder’n she’d been. “So long as I live, they’ll use me against you.” She remembered how he’d laughed at the story of Belora Blue-eye, pure and happy. “There’ll be peace, if you kill me.” Maybe it was because she’d hit her head on the dead pig, but for just a second, Etarro’s face twisted, changed, looked just like her own face mirrored back at her.
“Shit on that,” Rora said, and she grabbed Anddyr’s ankle. She hauled him into the tunnel, dragged him behind her, and through the choking noises he made, she thought maybe she heard him say, “Thank you.”
She heard that horrible grinding noise again, and when she looked over her shoulder the wall was melting, the tunnel sealing back up just like it’d been before. Etarro was kneeling in front of the shrinking hole, his face pressed close, and his voice drifted down the tunnel over the shaking sound of moving stone: “You have to come back for her, Anddyr.” He waved the stuffed horse like it was a flag. “I’ll forgive you. Just come ba—”
And then the stone under Rora’s hands turned to dead grass dusted with snow, and the sun stabbed into her eyes, and she was free.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They should have been back already.”
It was the fourth time that day Aro had said the same words, and each time they seeped out of his mouth, Joros grew closer to strangling the younger man.
“They’ll be out soon,” the merra sighed.
“That’s what you said all yesterday.” Aro was growing more restless with each hour that went by, pacing more often than not, and usually twitching when he wasn’t pacing. “Something’s gone wrong. We should go in after—”
“No,” Joros said firmly.
“But something must have happened. They should have been back by now, and since they’re not—”
“They’re likely just being thorough.” Don’t engage, Joros told himself, but the twin had a tendency to work himself into a frenzy. “Or being patient. As you should be. Why don’t you go back to throwing sticks at birds?”
“’Cause I can’t hit ’em anyway,” Aro muttered.
“Patience and practice fix any problem.”
He huffed, dropped down next to Joros, nudged a few stones with a few sticks, tried to talk to one of the silent fists who just shrugged back at him, then returned to his pacing.
Joros was keeping a careful eye on the fists. They were starting to become restless as well; they were just better at hiding it. Still, it probably wouldn’t be long before they were demanding answers, too, answers he didn’t have . . .
A crash from the surrounding forest had everyone on their feet. Hidden weapons suddenly flashed in the fists’ hands, and Joros scrambled to pull out his own short sword. Vatri, the fool, moved to huddle behind Joros, and Aro was close to her heels. He could understand why the twin thought Joros would protect him, but if the merra thought he wouldn’t sacrifice her first chance he got . . .
The crash came again, loud enough that the fists could determine its direction and spun that way, waiting. A few broke away, drifting into the trees, disappearing rather effectively, and Joros cursed them for cowards, though he was tempted to follow their lead.
The source of the crashing quickly revealed itself to be a rather disheveled Rora, dragging a very battered Anddyr. Relief flooded her face, and a high laugh escaped the mage.
One of the fists stepped forward, tension written in every line of his body. “Where’s the others?” he demanded
Rora shook her head. “It was a trap. They didn’t make it.”
The fist’s face twisted. “Tare was right.” He turned toward Joros, raised a hand, and Joros saw the dagger after it had already been thrown.
Joros flung himself at the ground, heard Anddyr give a wordless screech as Rora cried out her brother’s name, and then the dagger thumped to the ground near Joros’s head.
“Kill him,” the fist said, not loud, but there was no mistaking the authority in his voice.
Lifting his head, Joros saw the fist pointing, but he was pointing at Aro. “If every last knife doesn’t come out of that mountain,” Tare had told the fists, told Joros, “you kill the boy.”
Joros couldn’t follow all the screaming—Rora and Aro, Anddyr, the fists, the merra. Everyone had lost their damned minds. He scrambled back as all the fists rushed forward, only to pause when they ran into the barrier of a mage-shield. They battered themselves against it, cudgels and hands, daggers and heavy bodies.
Joros smirked at them; they could throw themselves at the shield as long as they liked, Anddyr would hold until he died. He could certainly hold long enough for the fists to come to their senses so they could talk things through like they were better than mindless beasts.
He’d forgotten about the fists who’d melted into the trees.
Anddyr cried out, and Joros saw the mage twisting around a dagger planted in his back. Rora was busy grappling with one of the fists, both of her hands engaged so that she couldn’t reach the daggers at her hip. Anddyr writhed and, horrifyingly, one of the fists stepped slowly closer to Joros, moved sluggishly through the shield.
“Parents preserve us,” the merra whispered.
“Anddyr,” Joros shouted over the rising fury of the fists, “hold!”
The fists pressed forward, moving like they were wading through deep water, but moving forward nonetheless. The air grew strangely heavy, charged, the hairs on Joros’s arms standing straight.
“—have to keep them safe!” he heard Rora shouting. He didn’t have a glance to spare for her or the mage, too fixed on shuffling backward, away from the approaching fists—who, abruptly, stopped as if their feet had fixed to the ground.
The merra was chanting behind his shoulder, an obnoxious litany. She paused when the fists did, as though prayers were no longer necessary if the fists weren’t actively trying to kill them. That did seem to be her thinking, since she started the chanting again when one of the fists fought two steps forward. The air grew warmer, brighter somehow, and there was a metallic taste growing in Joros’s mouth.
“Rora!” Aro shouted, and his voice was as thick as though he were speaking through mud, or tears.
Joros, edging slowly backward, bumped against legs, twisted to see the merra and the twin both with their backs to a thick tree, as though they planned on making some foolish stand. The fists were still advancing, slowly, but they didn’t need to move fast if their quarry wasn’t trying to escape. They reached with clawing hands, with sharp daggers and heavy cudgels and hard rocks.
“Rora!” Aro shouted it again like it was the last sound he’d make, shouted it like tearing the world in half. Heat burned against Joros’s scalp, his vision filling with white, and there was only the sound of mindless screaming pain. And then there was silence, save for a weeping over Joros’s shoulder.
When Joros’s vision cleared, the fists were gone—no, not gone, just down, sprawled . . . burned, bloody, torn, a wreckage made of their forms. Joros stared at them, took in the pieces that had moments ago been attached to other pieces, all the blood that must have escaped when the various pieces broke free, the burned flesh and charred meat that had been left behind by whatever tearing had occurred. The four wagons were similarly torn and scattered, and what big pieces were left were busy burning. He couldn’t see the donkeys, but maybe pieces of them were mixed in with everything else. Joros took it al
l in, but couldn’t find any reactions with which to connect the sight. The best he could do was think of how he hadn’t believed the merra, not the slightest bit, when she’d claimed she could call on the Parents and they’d answer her call; hadn’t even entertained the thought that she could be speaking truth when she boasted of killing all the Northmen in that lonely pit. Simple lies to exaggerate her own importance, to keep Joros from chucking her into a fire when she annoyed him . . .
It seemed he had been very wrong.
The sobbing was replaced by retching. Aro dropped to the ground near Joros and emptied his stomach. Across the swathe of destruction, Rora stumbled forward, trying to run and slipping over pieces of the fists. She fell next to Aro, threw her arms around him as he vomited liquid. “I’m sorry,” he wept between heaves. “I’m so sorry, Rora.”
“Shh,” she murmured, and when Joros looked at her, there was a deep terror written across her face. “Shh, it’s okay, little bird. Shh.”
“Monster,” a voice croaked above Joros, and that seemed a mighty harsh judgment coming from the woman who’d just killed a handful of fists.
Handful of fists. That was funny.
“Shut up,” Rora snarled.
“Monster!” The merra said it louder, with more feeling, and kept shouting it as she backed away.
A delirious laugh rose over the carnage, a terribly jarring sound, like a kick between the legs. “He’s not a monster,” Anddyr said between spasms of laughter. He blended in very well with the dead fists, the only thing to mark him apart being that all his pieces were still mostly attached. He seemed determined, though, to see what he could shake loose as laughter rolled through him. “He’s a mage.”
Aro had done this? Useless, sniveling Aro, who was the toll Joros paid for his competent sister? Joros looked around at the mess, at death in its most gruesome form. He marveled—as much as he could through the cotton in his brain—at the two points in the clearing that hadn’t been torn into their component parts: one point centered where Rora had been over Anddyr, and the other point centered on . . . Aro, truly a mage?
Joros thought of the village where they’d first found the twins, where Anddyr had wrought a similar carnage. Anddyr had had years of training to turn him into such an efficient killer; gods only knew what Aro could do with some training . . .
“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Rora said. “They . . . we’re too close to the mountain, they’ll come looking for us . . .”
“He’s doubly cursed,” the merra spat. “His blood runs foul.”
“Shut up!” Rora said.
“Monster and murderer,” the merra went on. “You two truly are the Twins made manifest. I do not know your plans, Joros . . . but if they involve these two, I cannot be a part of them. I will not.”
Rora spat toward the priestess. “Then go! No one wants you here anyway.”
The merra spat back at the twins. “Parents curse you, all of you. Whatever dark pursuits you’re following . . . I’ll not be a part of them.”
Anddyr’s laughter still rang, shivering out across the red clearing in the forest, beneath the shadow of the mountain. The sound of footsteps, leaving, was loud amid so much death.
“You said you’d help,” Joros called after her. He’d spent so much time trying to get her to leave, but now, with the rest of his plans fallen to pieces, her leaving felt like dropping a spear before a charging boar. “All the Parents’ power. That’s what you said.”
The footsteps stopped, leaving only the mage’s hysteria to fill the space. “I would have paid the price,” the merra finally said. “I would have paid all it cost and more, if your cause had proved worthy. But I was wrong about you. I didn’t listen when I should have, closed my eyes and ears to reason. You are not worthy. There is nothing I will give to you.” Footsteps again, and this time they did not stop. Joros didn’t have any words to stop them.
For a long while, it was only the laughter, the high and wild sounds of the mage’s madness. Even that sound died, after a time. Joros wondered, dimly, if Anddyr had died as well.
“We have to go,” Rora said softly, but there was little conviction in her voice. She still sat wrapped around her brother, but his cheeks had gone dry, his eyes fixed resolutely at the treetops.
“Yes,” Joros agreed, and used the tree at his back to pull himself to his feet.
Anddyr wasn’t dead, or at least not obviously dead. He was certainly bleeding, and he’d stopped moving or laughing, but his breath wheezed out through his open mouth. That seemed a good sign. Rora grabbed the mage’s wrists, and then stared back and forth between Joros and her brother. Joros stared back. Aro eventually took the mage’s feet.
They made an awkward procession, bumping frequently into trees, stumbling and falling on occasion. Joros trailed after the other three, thoughts wandering around his mind like drunkards, crashing occasionally into each other and reeling away. It occurred to him that this was not his normal state, that there was some sort of distance between the world and his thoughts, some kind of fog. He could recognize that. Didn’t have the bloodiest idea what to do about it, but he could recognize it. He could recognize, too, that the distance was probably a good thing. It made it easier, when a frightening sort of thought came crashing through his mind, to feel only a small twinge of panic.
He was growing steadily more fucked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
You’re daft!” Berno shouted. The heavy flesh of his arms shook within his robes as his hands flew to the air.
“And you’re fat.” Zenora’s voice was sharp as ever. Face pinched as though she tasted something sour.
“At least I’ve a reason for being fat. Food tastes good. You’ve no reason to be so stupid.”
“You could stand to enjoy food a little less.”
“After so many decades oozing across the earth, one would think you’d have managed to pick up a little common knowledge—”
Herrit’s elbow tapped against Scal’s. “What are they arguing about now?” the boy asked softly. He had a way of speaking so that his mentors would not hear him over their own heated voices. He had a skill, too, for reading as he walked. Most often, the boy had his nose pressed between the pages of a book. He let his ears guide him, following the sound of bickering as he read without looking from the words. Some days ago, with winks and broad smiles, Berno and Zenora had carefully argued their way off the road and let their arguing guide Herrit straight into a small pond. The boy had dropped his book into the water and still not forgiven them the wet pages, or their laughter. Still, it had not stopped him continuing to read as they walked.
Scal shook his head. “Zenora saw a bird.”
“Ah,” was all Herrit said, a small smile on his lips.
“What do you read?” Scal tapped a finger against the creased and faded leather that held together the pages of Herrit’s newest book. He had three books, always. Each time they came to a town, the boy would go trade one of his books for a new one. Though most of the villages looked at the preachers with hard eyes, business was business. It helped that they only passed through, that they did not stop to preach.
Herrit glanced inside the pages as though he had forgotten. Scal could not imagine how he kept so many words in his head. “Banquero’s treatise on peace.” He looked up to Berno and Zenora, whose voices were growing steadily louder. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
Scal nodded. He liked the boy, but Herrit was not always easy to talk to. He spent too much time inside his own head. He was kind, and gentle, but seemed most often to not be much like a boy. Older than the years on his skin.
“Have you decided yet where you’re going?” Herrit asked.
There were times, too, when he seemed every one of his few years. “I have not,” Scal said softly.
“It’s only . . . well, we’ll be to the Forest Voro soon . . .”
Together, their eyes lifted. They were days away, but the shape of Mount Raturo loomed above the shape of the land. A distant thing
, but sharp. Dangerous. A thing to be feared.
“I know,” Scal said softly, turning back to the road. Ahead, Berno and Zenora had settled to grumbling. They would mutter for a time, until they found a new thing to argue about. After a moment, Herrit returned his nose into his book.
That day, as their feet pressed the road and the mountain swept closer, their path merged with another’s. It was a woman, though Scal did not know it until she lowered her black hood. Long hair, and soft features, and smooth dents where eyes once had been long ago. “Greetings to you, sister!” Berno boomed, and the woman gave him a soft smile.
“You are returning, brother?” She had a voice like distant music. Her head swayed, ever so slightly, tipping and tilting as she searched for a response.
Zenora looped her arm through the younger woman’s and said, “We are. And you?”
“Of course.” She was lovely, somehow, when she smiled full. In spite of the eyes that were not there. Lovely, and broken. Her name was Anelle.
They walked together through the rest of the day. Feet following their shadows that stretched ahead in the moonlight. The great Forest Voro reached to meet them, scattered stands of trees growing closer, thicker, broader.
Herrit had told him in whispers that preachers were supposed to sleep in the day and travel through the night, but it was a hard thing to do. There was a silent agreement among the wandering preachers, he said, that it was a fine thing to hold to the ideals. But reality could not be ignored. As the sun set, light spreading like blood into snow, they stopped among the trees. Weaving, wending between trunks, to the heart of the copse. Anelle stumbled over a twisted root and nearly fell. Scal was not so far behind, and caught her arm, raised her up. She gave a nervous laugh, turning her eyeless face to him for the first time. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t see you.” There was no joking to the words, only sincerity. Her head bobbed gently, twisting one ear toward him and then the other. “Are you always so quiet?”
Scal nodded. Realized. “Yes,” he said, and his voice felt too loud, too deep. As though too many words might shake her to pieces.
