by J L Forrest
After a few minutes, yw Sabi stretched, her face lit by the golden-green of the sunshine through the trees. She set her scepter across her lap, making herself more comfortable, looking across the whole of the valley. After retrieving her compass, she marked some far-distant point, and her eyes narrowed.
“Mistress, you see something?”
“Nothing, girl.”
She does not call me girl very often anymore, Nyahri thought. She means me to drop the question, that the answer is not meant for Dhaos’s ears.
“The plums are quite good,” Dhaos said. “You should try one. Delicious.”
Yw Sabi folded her cloak, set it among Nyahri’s possessions, and stood. “I’m not hungry,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Nyahri’s heart lurched.
She is leaving me with him? “Yw Sabi?”
“I’ll be right back, Nyahri.”
The Atreiani walked through the underbrush, in the direction of the mesa’s edge. Her footsteps grew quieter until only the sounds of singing birds and the wind remained. Nyahri frowned, sighed, and set her back to a wide apple tree, keeping Dhaos in sight.
He picked another plum from a low-hanging branch and took a bite. “I checked the histories,” he said, mouth full.
“Oh?”
“The Betrayer—you said I should ask the Templarii. I asked Kepler, then found the early annals myself.”
“And?”
He took another bite, chewed, and swallowed. “There were so many conflicting versions, and the Templarii were loathe to share everything. With them, I agree, it is difficult to say what is true and what is merely half true.”
“What do you think true?”
“She was the Betrayer, there is no doubt of it. She denounced her own kind, the Atreianii.” Dhaos glanced in the direction yw Sabi had gone. Lifting his shoulder, he affected a slight tilt of his head, as if dismissing his own argument. “Yet you are right too. Sultah yw Sabi betrayed the Atreianii on behalf of humans, and for someone she loved, most of all. That is what I could glean. The Templarii would not say so, not so directly, but I will say this—the matter was more complex than they say.”
Nyahri responded with a derisive grunt. “I told you as much, Oudwni.”
“So you did.”
“I am impressed you bothered to look, to check those smelly books yourself. You are a scholar.”
“Me? Nay, never. I hate books.”
“I am not so fond of them either.”
She laughed, and his laugh followed.
“I like you, Nyahri. I would like to learn more about the E’cwnii. Would you tell me?”
“Ask.”
“Your father,” he said, “what is he like?”
She folded her arms. “An excellent leader, not in a hurry over much of anything.”
“Then you are nothing like him.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “You seem to be in a hurry over everything.” Again, he gestured toward wherever the Atreiani had disappeared.
“I have met your father,” she said. “He explains nothing about you.”
Dhaos chuckled. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean it as a compliment.” She smiled wide, despite herself. “He is a disgusting old lecher.”
“Well, at least I am not old.” His laugh grew bolder. “Good to know.”
She fidgeted, picking at a patch of grass. Her gaze wandered along the horizon.
Dhaos leaned back. “You know, my father had another family before I was born. As I understand it, your father killed them.”
“I have heard that too.” She drew her lips together. “I would it had never happened.”
“Other than the gods, who is to say what should happen or not happen? If my grandfather had not tried to claim Abswyn? If your grandfather had not retaliated, sent your father raiding? I would never have been born. Shwn Jhon Oudwn has had five wives. Two are living, including my mother. My father had five other sons before me, all dead. I have seven sisters, six under the age of twelve, and not one living brother.”
“You have a nephew.”
“Yea, Tohmas.”
“I saw him in Orÿs, along with his sister.”
“Niki.”
“Beautiful children. You love them?”
He nodded once.
“Dhaos, do you know what your father requested of yw Sabi?”
“He sent me to guide you, but his order to me was to be certain you returned with medicine, at any cost. As the Templarii tell it, every moment the Atreiani delays her descent, you are killing those I love.”
Nyahri lowered her eyes. “Yw Sabi cannot descend yet.” She hoped he would not ask why. “But the cure exists.”
“She told you so?”
Nyahri raised her eyes again, looking into his.
Pretty hazel eyes, she thought, genuine worry in them, even pain.
She imagined how she’d feel if her family—her father, sister, many loved ones—died the way Dhaos’s people were dying.
“I asked her,” Nyahri said, “to deliver these gifts to your people.”
His smile returned. “Thank you. Please, Nyahri, persuade the Atreiani to descend. Tonight, tomorrow, as soon as possible.”
For a moment the grove settled, no breeze at all, the sweet smell of ripe plums permeating the air, coupled with the fresh green of ferns.
Peaceful, Nyahri thought. If only it could remain so, if only I might enjoy this with him, as we might have many times, as if it ever could have been.
Nyahri breathed deeply. She stood, stepped to where Dhaos sat, and knelt beside him, leaning forward with her fingertips splayed in the grass. She studied his strong face, lined by worry, and she remembered yw Sabi’s words to her that morning. With her fingernail she brushed a lock of his hair from his eyes, and she kissed his lips.
They taste divine, she thought.
Dhaos blinked at her, then rediscovered his composure.
“That was unexpected,” he said.
“You wanted to for weeks now.”
“That is the truth. Can I again?”
Again, they kissed. This time, she lingered on it, closing her eyes, closing them against the weight of inevitability, knowing the foolishness of the kiss.
What else did yw Sabi say? Something about frolicking with people whose cities you were about to destroy.
“You never intended to inherit?” she asked. “You thought there would be others to take your father’s place?”
“Yea.”
“Me too.”
“Eh?”
“My brother,” she said. “He died in the springtime.”
“How?”
“A wasteful death.”
“What happened?” Dhaos asked.
“He drowned, a simple thing. His skin—I had never seen such a shade of blue.”
“You loved him?”
“Adored him.”
“I am sorry.” Dhaos frowned, a deep and genuine expression.
She sniffled. “Not any fault in it.”
“Ah! You are going to cry!” His boyish grin returned, his eyes flashing. “You are not so difficult—I will find a woman in you yet, eh?”
She stood, turned away, and walked to the edge of the clearing. Dhaos followed.
“You would have me fall in love with you,” she said, startled by the razor in her own voice. “All this sharing, only so I will have feelings for you.”
“Well, not only.”
“Beware, Dhaos Shwn Oudwn, men have died trying to love me.”
His brow creased. “Oh? What did these brave men do to deserve that?”
“The trying of it was enough.”
“You killed them?”
“Yea.”
Not so simple as that, she thought, but you should stay away from me, Oudwni. I will be the death of you.
Dhaos drew his knife and rolled it in his palm, its tempered iron glittering in the leaf light. He th
rew it aside, far from reach. Stepping forward, closing the distance to Nyahri, he spread his arms wide.
“Peace,” he said, all seriousness.
She narrowed her eyes. “What?”
“Between you, me, E’cwnii, Oudwnii. My father has held the lower valleys for forty years, a pain in your ass, but I know I can be twice the man he is when I get my chance. I have the respect of the Oudwn council too. I can bring peace.”
She shook her head, her heart thumping, and took a step backward.
“At what cost?” she asked.
“No cost.” He held out his hand to her, the second time he had done so. “I mean it—peace.”
She took his hand. He stepped against her, slipping his other arm behind her back, drawing her to him.
This time, Dhaos kissed her. His lips felt rougher than the Atreiani’s; his fingertips, courser. He smelled like the earth, like the oil of a whetstone, like iron. The flutter he raised inside her reached deep.
“Leave the Atreiani,” he said.
Gods!
Nyahri shoved him, all her strength in it. For a moment he lost his balance but, as quickly, he moved forward, his arms spread, his face still open and full of desire.
Nyahri flinched, drawing her longknife from its scabbard and pointing it at him. He stepped against it, its point indenting his tunic, threatening to pierce his flesh. Dhaos winced, looking into her eyes.
“You will not kill me,” he said.
“Nay?”
A rosette of blood appeared through Dhaos’s tunic.
“Peace?” Dhaos asked. “Or would you rather follow the devil who has so obviously seduced you?”
Her hand trembled, her knees wanting to buckle.
“I could love you however you wish,” he said. “The Atreiani, she will love you how she wishes.”
“Do not say that! How could you know anything of what she would do?”
“I am right.”
“Nay.”
He pushed forward, forcing the knife to cut, and she pulled it from him, falling back a step. Dhaos stumbled away, catching his breath, drawing one hand across his chest. Blood smeared his fingertips.
“Dhaos,” she said, “I am sorry.”
He laughed, throwing back his head and holding his belly. A meander of blood crossed his stomach, staining his shirt. Nyahri curled her lip, and she sheathed her longknife, then tightened her fists at her sides.
“You joke!” she said. “You play me for a fool?”
“Gods, nay! I meant every word—every one.”
“Then what?”
“I thought for certain—” He took another breath, laughing again.
“Thought what?”
“—you were going to gut me like a fish!” He almost giggled. “But I think maybe, maybe—”
“What?”
“—you might like me as much as I think I like you.”
Her fist landed across his upturned jaw. He fell onto his back, clutching his face. Dhaos grumbled, then laughed more.
“Gods!” he said. “Eh! I think you do, you crazy woman.”
“Idiot.”
Nyahri left him and crashed through the ferns, following a trail of leaves bent by yw Sabi. After a few paces the verge opened onto the mesa edge. Below it, the valley broadened into farmlands interlaced by forests, irrigation ditches choked by sycamore and willow.
Cohltos nestled in the valley’s cradle. Its hedge-lined paths crisscrossed between buildings, framing clusters of tightly packed homes with thatched roofs and wooden lapboards. The rivers sliced Cohltos in three parts. Cottonwoods spread their limbs over the main roads, their golden leaves clinging to the branches. Near the township’s heart, the Swyn Templr pillar jutted upward, its pinnacle still far higher than the mesa. Around its base grew S’Eret Fortress, its rusticated, floret-patterned spirals centered on the invisible Citadel beneath.
Nyahri thought of the chamber of skulls which lay hidden at its center.
Yw Sabi leaned at the mesa’s edge, her foot propped against a stone, her wrists crossed on her knee. Her loosened hair blew in a brisk wind.
“Dhaos is courting you,” she said.
“As recklessly as you do.”
Yw Sabi glanced at her. “Given some time with him, I wanted to know what you would do.”
“You test me?”
“Test? No.” The Atreiani smiled, looking back across the valley. “A test is something you can fail. There was no way for you to fail the last fifteen minutes.”
Nyahri grumbled, but stepped beside her mistress. Yw Sabi continued her survey, studying every detail.
“What do you see, yw Sabi?”
“Opportunity.” The Atreiani pointed. “The low ground is there, and the drainages come together above it—all that tinder will be the place to begin.”
“So it will be fire?”
Yw Sabi nodded. Nyahri’s heart clenched.
“We will need to funnel the Oudwn retreat,” she said. “If we drive them south, might we trap them on the opposite side of the river?” She pointed along the two waterways, emphasizing the bridges.
“My thought exactly. We use the bridges. What you suggest would save a lot of lives, if we could do it. Say they do flee to the south bank. Then what? They stay there, only to be killed by the explosion?”
“We would need to keep them moving.”
“Look at the channels to the southeast.” The Atreiani drew Nyahri’s attention to the widespread copses which followed the drainages. “There’s no water in them.”
“Has not been, I would guess, since late summer.” Nyahri surmised the Atreiani’s designs, the enormous risk in such a plan. “We give them time before sparking a second fire to the east. Your magic could do this?”
“It could.”
“We need a slow fire. Give them space to march.”
“We can do our best to plan—prevailing winds, upslopes, contours—but it’ll do as it pleases once begun.”
“Fire, then.”
“And water,” yw Sabi said. “I can think of no other way. Can you? We can’t play any more games here, because before long we’ll start losing.” She looked at Nyahri. “This morning, when I called for our breakfast, Kepler asked me if I had seen a certain librarian—”
Behind them, leaves rustled. Dhaos approached through the thick, his shirt tucked into his belt again, fabric stained by blood. He grinned.
“Can you not,” Nyahri said to him, “be by yourself even a short while?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Seems not. I am like a child. Always needing attention.”
“Child? More like an ass.” Nyahri ran her fingers through her hair, a nervous gesture, overcome by a moment’s guilt. “I am sorry, Dhaos, I should not have cut you.”
“Or punched me, but think nothing of it,” he said, rubbing his face. “My father used to give me much worse.”
“This is beautiful land,” yw Sabi said to him, her focus on the valley.
“Yea,” Dhaos said, “but too many mouths to feed and too long a wintertime. We have a lot of challenges here, a dungheap of work ahead of us.”
Below, an iron bell tolled and, from a cluster of houses, a procession plodded toward the fortress. Nyahri strained to distinguish any details from such a distance, discerning only slow figures dressed in white and red.
“What is happening?” she asked.
“A funeral,” Dhaos said. “Common this time of year, and they will stay common till spring. I get tired of the keening.”
“They wrapped the body in white fabric,” yw Sabi said.
Nyahri started. Yw Sabi can see that far?
“What is it they used?” the Atreiani asked. “It’s not wool.”
“Southern flax and cotton,” he said. “We import as much of it as we can, at great expense.”
“Will this corpse be burned as—” She glanced at him with a passing sympathy. “—as we burned your cousin Erwln?”
“Nay,” he said, his thumb massaging his bruise
d jaw. “This person did not die in combat. Looks to be a young man by the colors. Notice the red flags? They will inter him in S’Eret.”
Nyahri remembered the many sealed chambers she passed in the fortress’s depths. Filled with corpses, she now imagined.
“Your people,” yw Sabi began, “give so many of their deceased to the Templarii?”
“Most everyone,” he said.
“The Templarii didn’t used to be undertakers. They must’ve adopted the practice out of necessity. They don’t always entomb the bodies, do they?” She said this more as a statement than a question.
“Nay,” he said, “sometimes S’Eret’s doors open and an unfamiliar Templari greets us with the face of a man or woman we thought we knew before. They sometimes use the corpses.”
“I know,” Nyahri said.
He looked at her with some surprise.
“Nyahri,” yw Sabi said, “recently witnessed a Templarin rehousing firsthand.”
“You saw them take one?” Dhaos asked Nyahri.
“Yea,” she said.
“What was it like?”
She shook her head.
“Let’s talk of pleasanter things,” yw Sabi said, “shall we? Tell me, Dhaos, has your father or any of the chieftains developed the habit of storing food? Are there granaries?”
He hesitated, as if surprised by the question. “Many west of this valley, some at Aukensis, others elsewhere, mostly in the south.”
“Wise.”
“The chieftains’ council built them when I was a boy.”
“How are they? Full?”
“Not so much as we prefer—it has taken many years of saving—but neither are they empty. A year’s worth, at least.”
“Good,” she said, “for a people to have a long-term view.”
Yw Sabi watched the landscape once more, and Dhaos waited in silence for the conversation to continue. Nyahri smiled at his awkwardness, then matched her mistress’s coldness. She too leaned forward, studying the valley, her back turned to him.
The sun slipped beneath the topmost mountaintops, and a few lamplights twinkled in the city and farms. As the sky darkened, the ghost-fire rhythm of Swyn Templr shone more clearly, dark and bright, dark and bright. In the east, the full moons of Lwn and Stashwn arose, reddened on the horizon. Little Trwl reached its zenith height, a mere quarter moon, blue-silver in the evening sky.
