by Rachel Dunne
Her hand touched his arm, gentle. Not fear, nor hesitation. The touch given to a wild thing that needed taming. Her head tilted. “Where are you bound?” She did not name him “brother.” Sightless, she perhaps saw him for what he was. Still, there was no disapproval in her voice, no reproach. Only curiosity.
“I do not know,” Scal said truthfully.
They sat in the shade of tall trees. Tired from walking, but none of them ready for sleep.
“Would you mind,” Anelle asked, voice soft as falling snow, “if I told a story?”
Berno wrapped his arms around his big belly, and Zenora clasped her shaking hands beneath her chin, and Herrit gently closed his book. “Please,” Zenora said. “None of these louts could tell a story to save their own lives.”
“Oh ho,” Berno said, “and you’re always eager to tell a story, are you? At least I—”
“Hush,” Herrit said, leaning toward Anelle. The surprise of being silenced by his apprentice closed Berno’s mouth.
Anelle turned her face to the sky, and a smile turned her lips. “Long ago,” she began, “in the time when Sororra and Fratarro still walked beside our ancestors, there was a young man named Birro. He was a walker, his feet and his heart full of restlessness. He walked all the corners of the world, and still he found no place that pleased him, no place that reached to his heart, no place to rest his feet.
“Do not feel sad for Birro, no—for he loved the walking, and he found joy in each wonder he saw, in each new place his feet took him, and the kindness of his fellow men touched his soul. Many doors opened to him, and countless hearths became his bed; he never hungered and never grew cold, for men would share their bread and women would spread cloaks over Birro’s shoulders. He was welcomed in each place his feet touched. Yet, still, Birro would lie before a warm hearth wrapped in a borrowed blanket, belly full of freely given food, and he would see things that made his restless heart ache.
“A man brushing the hair from his wife’s face. A mother rocking her child to sleep. A boy feeding his ailing father. A woman so old she couldn’t move without shaking, caring for a flock of abandoned children. Strangers, all, with so much love in their hearts, and in their homes.
“Always, Birro would leave the warm hearth before the sun rose, before the kind strangers would wake. He would leave his borrowed blanket folded on the warm hearth, and atop it a small trinket, something picked up and carried from one corner of the world to another. A leaf or a rock, a bit of bone, or some gift that had been pressed into his hand by another kind stranger, in another kind place. Birro would leave his small offering, and walk through the door that had so readily opened to him, and he would walk again. Searching, always searching for a place where he could plant his roots, a place where he could grow, and flourish.
“In all his wandering, Birro came to a place of great beauty, where trees soared taller than twenty men and rivers sang with gentle voices and everything was painted with bright colors. For all that he loved the place, it did not pull at Birro’s heart, did not grab at his feet. It was not home.
“Birro sat beside a broad lake that was a perfect blue, fed by a tumbling waterfall like a lullaby, and sadness touched on his soul. If this place, this paradise, could not grant him happiness, surely he was broken.
“A voice spoke to him then, in the same lilting voice as the water: ‘A thing is not broken that has not found its proper place.’ Birro raised his eyes, and in the sweeping colors of paradise stood a piece of the night sky fallen and given breath.
“It was a mravigi, though Birro didn’t know it; he saw only a winged creature every bit as magnificent as the land he had found, though in a darker way. Beautiful, for all the possibilities that swirled beneath its surface.
“‘Come with me,’ the mravigi said, ‘and we shall find your place.’ It bent one great wing in invitation, and moving like a dream, Birro climbed upon the mravigi’s back. Those great wings flexed and flapped, and Birro’s feet left the ground, and his heart soared at his side.
“They flew, Birro and the mravigi named Iele, flew high as high, until they touched the very moon. Birro laughed, and wept, and grinned, and learned that his heart had simply been seeking out the sky, his feet searching for the moon.
“Birro has made the moon his home, and made of it a kind place, a place where he cooks and cleans and smiles. A place where roots can sink into the ground and grow deep. Yet, there’s still a restless streak in him, and Iele loves to fly. They travel together to all the stars, a new one each night, resting in the warm fire and sharing stories, taking the simple joys there are to be taken.
“Always, when they leave, Birro leaves a gift—an old habit of his. He leaves something, picked up and carried from one end of the sky to the other: a piece of the moon, small and careful, laid gentle upon the fire of the star who hosted him. And so the moon shrinks as he travels, grows smaller as its pieces are scattered wide among the stars, dwindling slowly to nothing . . . until Birro returns, his hands full of small gifts brought from all across the sky, and builds the moon whole once more, a thing made of love, and joy, and a little bit of adventure.”
The sun was well and truly gone when Anelle finished her tale, only moonlight twisting through the tree branches. Anelle sat, still, smiling into the light. If she felt their eyes on her, she did not show it.
“Well told, sister,” Berno finally said. “I do not think I have heard that tale.”
Anelle turned her smile down to him. “It’s one of my favorites.”
There was a deep sense of peace, laid over them each like a blanket by her words. They lay down upon the ground, wrapped in blankets and cloaks. Scal could not say if the others slept. He did not—or, at least, not right away. He lay staring to the sky, wondering if flying would make his heart sing. If his feet would thrill to touch the moon. If there was a place for him, anywhere, at all.
Two more preachers found them the next day. A man and a woman, passing a wailing child back and forth. They were welcomed as Anelle had been. Named “brother” and “sister.” Found more sets of hands willing to pass the wailing babe. They looked at Scal with curiosity, but with the same lack of judgment Anelle’s voice had held. They let Scal hold their child for a time, but the baby grew no quieter in his big hands than it had in the others’, and so he passed it along.
Scal nudged Herrit, and the boy raised his eyes from his book. “Are there always so many of you?” Scal asked.
Herrit’s gaze flicked to Berno, to Zenora, to the others who had joined them and talked easily over the baby’s squalling. His fingers touched a pendant hanging at his throat, dropped quickly. “It’s . . . not for me to say. Ask Berno,” he finally said, and quickly returned to his book.
Scal lengthened his legs to walk beside Berno. “A fine day, m’boy!” he boomed, hands clapping his round belly. “A fine day indeed, and those don’t come often.”
Voice low, much lower than Berno’s, Scal asked, “Are there always so many of you?”
“There are scores and hundreds and thousands of preachers, m’boy! More than anyone thinks.”
Scal waved his hand, fingers flicking to Anelle, the newcomers with their babe, Zenora, Berno himself. “So many at once?”
“Ahhhh,” Berno rumbled. “That. Well, you see, you’ve found us at an interesting time.” Berno looked to the mountain, visible still over the treetops, though the spreading pines had grown closer, taller, fuller. The fat man touched his fingers to his throat. A stone hung there, nearly identical to Herrit’s. Scal, who was so conscious of the pendants hanging at his own throat, had not noticed the stones before. “We have been summoned,” Berno said, “all of us. Every man, woman, and child, called home.” He turned to Scal. “I don’t know why, m’boy, and I can’t say that I’d tell you even if I did—no offense, of course. But I do know there are likely to be important things happening. You’ll be having some choices to make, m’boy, and sooner than not.”
Scal looked to the mountain, and to his f
eet. Lifted his hand, dropped it before his fingers could touch the flamedisk and the snowbear claw beneath his shirt. “I know.”
The trees grew thicker around them, branches reaching to block out the sun’s light. The great mountain disappeared behind their screen, but a path was worn into the forest floor. The way made clear by countless feet through countless years. Shadows stretched and danced, and joy thrilled through the group. The baby, finally, stopped crying. They walked through the thick trees that spread without end, and though their feet crunched on needles and leaves untouched by snow, they did not seem to be moving at all. Each tree so like the others, and nothing but forest for the eye to see.
For that reason alone—the way time passed with no progress made, the stillness in movement—Scal felt once more as though he were walking through the swirling grayness of the far North. Walking, and going nowhere. Each step a meaningless thing, made against the vastness of the place. It was strange, but Scal felt as though he were waiting for the killing cold to reach out its hand. Fingers of ice wrapping around him. Pressing. Holding. A patient thing, for it did not have to devour. It had only to wait. He knew, truly knew, that it was not possible . . . and still. A shiver rolled through him, though his blood ran warm and the southern cold did not touch him.
The trees broke, fell away as though a god’s hand had swept them aside. Perhaps it had. The clearing was broad, and made larger by the rough stone that broke free from the earth. Mount Raturo. Raised by Fratarro, seat of a god, home of the Fallen. It seemed a sheer cliff, curving away to either side. They were still many lengths from the mountain, far enough that it would take minutes even running to press his hands to its face. Scal did not have the words to describe it. Perhaps Herrit, with all his books and all his words, could do it justice. The only thing Scal could do was stare.
A hand touched his shoulder. Berno’s eyes were on him again, blue and honest. “It’s time, m’boy. No point in dancing around it anymore. If you’d like to join us, I can show you where to start the climb. I don’t doubt you’d make it to the top, and mayhap you’d give the Sentinels a good scare along the way. It’d be a fine thing.” Berno reached with both hands, and Scal let the fat man turn him. Standing chest to chest, eye to eye. Hands firm around Scal’s arms. “You’re welcome here, Scal. If you’d like.”
He could feel them staring. Berno’s gaze heavy, for all the lightness that flowed through him. Zenora’s sharp as claws, steady, though the rest of her might shake. Herrit’s with the wisdom of a man and the hope of a child. Anelle, who had no eyes, and yet he felt her gaze still.
He did not know if the mountain was the place for him. But Birro had not known the moon was his true home until he set his feet upon it.
Scal opened his mouth to accept. To find his place at their sides, feet taking well-walked paths. To sit once again at the feet of a wise man, to learn, to be better than he was. To ask for the home they offered. “It is not the moon,” his lips said instead.
They understood. Their lives were built of rejection, of dismissal. They clasped his arm, touched his shoulder, offered smiles that no longer reached their eyes. Anelle’s touch lingered, and her smooth face seemed to stare. Yet she, too, left. Left him at the edge of the trees, the edge of a life.
There was a hollowness in him, and he had no name for it. The whispering, bear-deep voice in his mind—the only thing left of the red-robed priest with his gentle wise words—sighed, and fell silent. Something in him broke and fell away.
Scal turned his back to the mountain, to the black-robed men and women walking from him. Not his brothers, not his sisters. Just people, like any others. And he could not keep people. It was not a skill he had.
He walked once more into the deep trees. Turned his feet from the worn path, took them through the crunching undergrowth, where the ground was thick with hard, desperate life, fighting for sunlight. Did not know where his feet were walking. Did not care. There was no moon for his feet to touch, and so it did not matter where they went.
Words fluttered slow through his mind. Forgotten words, pushed away. Words he did not want to remember. The words of a woman who had worn a robe in a different color. I need you. He had made her leave, too. Had not wanted her to stay. She had grown too close, pieces of himself beginning to tie around pieces of her. Beginning to reshape him, to make him a different person. Please, don’t leave me, she had said as she left. As Scal cut away the pieces of himself.
He had wanted this life to be a bloodless one. But there did not need to be blood for there to be pain.
“Scal?” a voice said, and it did not speak in his mind.
She stepped through the branches like a star, yellow robe glowing bright in the tight-treed gloom. He watched her come, not trusting his own eyes until she touched a hand to his chest.
Once, long ago, red-robed Parro Kerrus had given purpose to his second life, shaped him into a person that was strong and good and who knew his own path. He had wanted to be the man who the priest had tried to shape. Tried, and failed, and the priest’s bear-rumble voice was gone from his mind. His words of guidance vanished, lost, and Scal felt adrift without them.
Perhaps the words could be replaced with another voice, and a new hand to guide him. A new hand, light and scar-seamed, to shape his life. A yellow-robed priestess, to give him purpose once more.
Scal did not know he moved, but his arms were wrapped around her, solid as hope. Maybe there was no moon for him. But a star, perhaps, would do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Anddyr was fairly certain that he’d died. Everything felt like fire, and his God promised an eternal afterlife in the glow of His cleansing flames, so that was one point in favor of death. The problem, though, was that this fire hurt, and the whole point of cleansing flames was to wipe away all those silly mortal concerns like hurt and hunger and fear. That was a point against death, which left Anddyr no closer to knowing the truth.
Something nudged his ribs, hard. “He still breathing?”
“Don’t do that,” another voice snapped.
Anddyr turned his head and groaned, which had the effect of moving his eyes away from the dirt to which they’d been pressed. He saw that he was certainly not cradled in the gentle flames of a loving God, but was, in fact, lying facedown on a dirty patch of snow that was heavily colored by his own blood.
“Oh, good,” a voice drawled. “He’s alive.”
A hand touched the side of his head, and Anddyr looked up. He allowed himself a wistful moment to think that perhaps he had died, considering the vision kneeling above him. God had never said anything about angels, but that meant he hadn’t said there weren’t angels either.
Rora patted his cheek quite forcefully—more two quick slaps than anything comforting. “You should probably get to healing yourself.” She stood and walked away, going instead to sit at her brother’s side, their backs to a thick tree.
“She’s right,” the cappo said mildly. “We’ll have to move again soon, and I don’t get the impression she’ll drag you much farther.”
“Where?” Anddyr croaked. It was the best he could manage, but he was already reaching out with mental fingers to inspect the damage to his body. It was . . . rather extensive. There were the lingering wounds from his mad race through Raturo, at least one leg broken and the other badly twisted at best, various scrapes and gashes, a throbbing lump on the side of his head. That was all before the two stabs to his back, which had somehow mercifully missed anything vital, and were already beginning to knit—that was the wonderful thing about the magic pulsing through his veins. Even unconscious, a mage was a hard thing to kill. He pulled on his stores of power, slowly refilling from his earlier, wanton use, and encouraged the healing along in his back, as well as in his legs—there was a terrifying undercurrent of truth to the cappo’s claim that Rora wouldn’t help carry him along anymore.
The cappo waved a lazy hand, and Anddyr had to twist his neck around to see what the cappo gestured to: the mountain, Raturo,
always visible from a distance, but they weren’t at a distance. They were still terrifyingly close, close enough that Raturo’s shadow would likely swallow them when the sun sank. Anddyr gaped, his heart pounding erratically in his chest. His head felt clear as it ever did, but still, specters of black-robed preachers swept down from the mountain’s peak, shuddered through the surrounding trees, reached black-clawed hands out toward him . . .
“Anddyr,” the cappo said, drawing back his eyes and mind. Joros held a little round-bellied jar in his palm. Anddyr’s guts split in two at the sight of the jar, half twisting into knots as the other half flew up to lodge in his throat. “I couldn’t find your skura on you, Anddyr.”
“I . . . I lost it, cappo,” Anddyr choked out. The storms were swirling at his margins, summoned by the sight of the jar, the thought of its sweet taste, the bright smell of it.
“Lost it,” Joros repeated. His eyes bored into Anddyr.
Anddyr could only nod, his throat too heavy to speak. Still the cappo stared, and the truth hung on Anddyr’s tongue—I’m strong now, I’m free of you, I’m better—but his mouth watered, and the storms of madness swung closer, and the words in his mouth began to taste more of false truths.
The cappo finally smiled one of those brittle smiles, and he gave a studied shrug. “Well, then.” He leaned forward, hand twisting and turning, skin sloughing away and regrowing as leaves, fingers releasing the little jar on the cold, muddy, bloody ground before Anddyr’s face. “I don’t doubt you’re overdue for your dosage. Go on.”
Anddyr’s hand shook, weak thing that it was, as he reached out to wrap his fingers around the smooth, turned clay. Touching it sent fire down his spine, made his wounds scream, his legs spasm, but it was a sweet sort of pain. I’m free now, he told himself, but the words fell like stones into an empty well, touching nothing, causing no ripples. Etarro had freed him from Joros, given him the chance to fight free of all of it. He had to keep fighting, for the rest of his short life, fighting the temptation, because even one dose would destroy everything. If he took this skura, he’d be lost again, trapped, enslaved, Joros’s pet mage, no better than he had been—worse than he had been, because it meant knowing he had his freedom, knowing he could be better, and tossing it away because he really was too weak. I have to be strong . . . be better . . .
