by J L Forrest
A beautiful land, Nyahri thought. What will remain when we finish?
“Dhaos,” she said, remembering something else entirely, “I hope you had the good sense to tether the horses before you came out here?”
He gave her a dumb look. She looked heavenward and cursed.
“Come,” she said, “let us discover how far they have wandered.”
Nyahri whistled for the horses, walking back through the grove. Dhaos trailed behind her.
{29}
When they returned to the city gates, Dhaos’s men met them, and they provided a much-needed escort through the burgeoning crowds. At the fortress, the Templarii unlocked the gates, and yw Sabi rode into the darkness without a backwards glance. Nyahri hesitated, neither relishing another night in S’Eret nor wanting to leave Dhaos to his fate. She smiled softly at him.
“Why look so sad?” he asked her.
“Dhaos, take care of the Oudwnii.”
He stared at her, and unspoken question in him. “I will.”
She turned Kwlko’s head and heeled him inside, raising the witch-light to guide her way. The doors clanged shut behind her, the Templarii driving the bolts home.
◆◆◆
That night, sitting at the library, yw Sabi and Nyahri studied the valley map. The candles burned low.
“You’ve never seen explosives, have you?” the Atreiani asked.
“Nay, mistress. What are they?”
“Force on demand, and they come in many forms. I’ve a handful, recovered from Abswyn. They’re not military—made for civil engineering—but they’ll do.”
“I think I understand.” Nyahri pointed to the bridges. “We use them here?”
Yw Sabi nodded. “We’ll give the Oudwnii ample time but, once they cross south, we’ll take down the bridges. The river’s deep and cold enough to keep all but the most foolish from coming back north.”
“Once we have finished our task?”
“By dawn we’ll be over the pass which the Oudwnii call the Hwsehr. While we were out with Dhaos, I confirmed the route by compass.” Yw Sabi traced the map with her fingertip, and Nyahri remembered the moment, on their outing, when yw Sabi marked the direction. “We’ll follow the Blue River downward across the range. The Wyst will take us back to the plains.”
“The plan is clear.”
Yw Sabi rapped her knuckles on the tabletop. “Very.”
“Mistress, what did we see today? The crone—”
“Not an Atreiani, that’s certain, but it wasn’t human either.”
“How could you tell?”
“Wrong temperature,” yw Sabi said. “Wrong spectra.”
“Wrong spectra?”
“My eyes catch things yours don’t.”
As well Nyahri knew. “A Templari?” she guessed. “Spying on us?”
“No,” yw Sabi said, “not a human, not a Templari. Something else. My gut tells me, as it has from the beginning, there’re other forces at work here, still hiding from us. The crone might’ve been a first reveal.”
“What do we do about it?”
“For now, nothing we can do.” The Atreiani took Nyahri’s hand in her own. “We follow our plan through, and we hope for the best.”
◆◆◆
Yw Sabi and Nyahri restored and packed their food supplies. They locked their bedchamber door behind them and left a note which read:
Nyahri is riding today. I am working. Do not disturb me.—S
A simple trickery, yes, but Nyahri disliked lies.
Long before sunrise they departed S’Eret Fortress, opening and closing the gates themselves, and by horseback they followed the riverbank from Cohltos. Lwn and Stashwn still shined, absolutely full, near the western horizon and the edges of those far mountains. Nyahri led her mistress close to the rivers, avoided the sleeping roadside crowds, passing only a few waterside early- morning laundresses who wondered, perhaps, what they saw by such an eerie moonslight.
Along the way, Yw Sabi stopped at every bridge. She drew canisters from her supplies, each filled with thin, silvered discs which she affixed to the stone piers. Nyahri remembered seeing them on the first day she regained consciousness, in yw Sabi’s care, almost six weeks before.
Such small things, Nyahri thought, will turn granite into nothing but sand. Yw Sabi may not think it sorcery, but I know better.
Afterward, Nyahri led the Atreiani along a meandering route back to the mesa-top orchards. By first light, clouds covered the sky, wreathing the mountaintops, and snow appeared on the far western peaks.
As they had before, the women let the horses graze amongst the old fruit trees. Kwlko and Turo tossed their heads, wandering contentedly, eating fallen plumbs and apples and sweet grasses.
The groves blocked the wintry wind, while the rising sun warmed the day. They ate a late breakfast of cured meats, fresh vegetables, and bread. Nyahri and yw Sabi waited an hour, watching the slopes below for any pursuers.
“No one is following,” yw Sabi said at last.
“I worried Dhaos might have tried.”
“Agreed, especially if he thought you were alone.”
Nyahri looked sidelong at her mistress, then rolled her eyes. If Dhaos followed them, he remained unseen.
In the early afternoon, they laid blankets on the grass and sat cross-legged, knee to knee. The midday gusts blew icily, and Nyahri pulled a wool blanket around her shoulders. She breathed fully, enlivened by the fruit trees, the frosty air, the horses, the sweetness of late-autumn wildflowers on the hillsides.
“The wildfire must rise,” yw Sabi said, gesturing to the land, “from down valley. The slope is gentle where it meets the rivers. If we’re lucky, tonight’s downslope winds will check the flames.”
“I understand the plan,” Nyahri said.
While still in the library, they had reviewed it repeatedly, counting their resources, estimating the minutes as they followed the flames. Yw Sabi smiled, nodded, and took Nyahri’s hand. Her voice softened.
“In my time,” she said, “the Exemplarii enjoyed privileges unheard of among humans—access to the Citadels, many immunities, legal rights, and other gifts—elevated above all, they alone. For you, now, I can only offer a lifetime of difficulty.”
“Leisure or difficulty,” Nyahri said, “makes no difference to me, yw Sabi.”
The Atreiani withdrew the collar from its hiding place, the length of fragile-seeming fabric glinting in the sunlight. “I am grateful for you. You’re an unexpected gift.”
Nyahri kissed yw Sabi’s cheek.
“The collar,” the Atreiani said, “will know you, your mind. If a man or woman takes a collar intent on deceit, the collar rejects the wearer. Deceit means death, a failsafe against humans using the collars for dishonest ends. We’ve no worry about that with you, do we?”
“Nay, yw Sabi.”
Yw Sabi nodded and smiled. “An Atreiani’s scepter and an Exemplari’s collar, these bind their keepers to each other. Once given, neither can rescind the bond. For centuries these contrivances—our Declarat—kept the order.”
“Yea, I understand.”
“If a collar is forced from its wearer, the wearer dies. We intended no easy way out.”
The gusts whipped the trees, growing angry and thrashing the branches. Leaves fell in a torrent.
“Since waking, I’ve felt untethered,” yw Sabi said. “Your presence—not retribution or ambition or a desire to set things right—is what’s preserved me. You’re my anchor.” She stopped short, looking aside. “What we’re about to do to Cohltos is, truth be told, unforgivable.”
“If the Atreianii awaken, though,” Nyahri said, “they will kill you?”
“Probably.”
“Kill my family?”
“Certainly. Kepler lied. My brothers and sisters will never forget, never forgive.” She scoffed. “You they will kill, or worse. However many humans now live on the Earth, the Atreianii would kill the majority of them too.”
“They were all
your enemies?”
“Most, by the end.”
Yw Sabi placed her palms against Nyahri’s cheeks, fingertips in her hair, and she drew her forward, kissing her. A brush of the lips and Nyahri returned it, setting her hands against the Atreiani’s hips. Nyahri’s head swam with the taste of yw Sabi’s mouth, the caress of her tongue.
“Please,” Nyahri said, “no more waiting.”
Yw Sabi untied the serape, letting it slip from Nyahri’s shoulders. She kissed Nyahri’s neck, trailing her lips along her collarbones, over her breasts, kissing her stomach, caressing her sides. Nyahri delighted in yw Sabi’s fingernails, their edges traipsing over her skin, tearing her breath away, the lightest caress as sharp and hard as iron. All the while, Nyahri coursed her fingers through the Atreiani’s hair, over her shoulders, exploring the corded strength in her mistress’s slender arms.
As Nyahri lay down, her mistress kissed lower. Yw Sabi sometimes circled back, licking some discovered treasure—a birthmark or the faint trace of an old scar—before moving down again. She untied Nyahri’s breeches, tugging them over Nyahri’s raised hips, off her toes, casting them aside, yw Sabi’s mouth traveling lower still as Nyahri opened her legs. The Atreiani’s lips pressed upon Nyahri’s mound, then covered her, tongue warm and strong.
Nyahri smiled, her face a picture of joy and perfect, blissful anguish. Her fingers grasped yw Sabi’s hair and clenched the lightless strands.
Sultah yw Sabi Atreian took her time, making Nyahri cry out many times over the hour, both their voices echoing together through the orchard. Whenever Nyahri thought it would end, yw Sabi found some new way to bring her to a shudder.
◆◆◆
Afterward, they lay against each other, Nyahri on her back and yw Sabi on her side, her right hand idly tracing patterns over Nyahri’s bare stomach.
“It will color everything you are,” yw Sabi said.
“I will take what comes.”
Nyahri remembered her mother, her obsession with the Atreianii. The old tribal rites now seemed like children’s games.
The Atreiani reached across Nyahri to grab her own clothes, crumpled nearby. From a sealed pocket she withdrew the collar. It glinted with the gilded translucency of glass, pliable as cloth, draping yw Sabi’s hand. Nyahri touched it, first caressing the Atreiani’s hand. The fabric possessed weight and strength, though softer than lambskin.
“So beautiful, simple,” Nyahri said.
“I fear there might be some pain,” yw Sabi said.
“You mean Ekaterina’s last moments? I am not afraid,” she said. Then she thought better. “I am afraid, but my fear stops nothing.”
Yw Sabi leaned over her, her charoite eyes glinting, flecks of gray and violet deep beneath the charcoal black of her irises. The Atreiani’s lightless hair fell around their faces like a curtain, and she slipped her hand beneath Nyahri’s head, drawing the fabric until it stretched against her throat.
“Deep breath,” yw Sabi said.
Nyahri obeyed and yw Sabi gently encircled the golden mesh around her neck. The collar tightened itself, the fabric self-knitting into a seamless choker. For a moment its warmth became an extension of yw Sabi’s caress.
Then lances skewered Nyahri’s mind. Daggers pierced her ears, needles into her eyes, glass down her throat. Distantly her body screamed, muffled screams, only a quiet aftereffect of the insects chewing her spine or the agony of her boiling blood. It went on, and on, and on. Her breath left her, her lungs unable to fill. Nyahri attempted another scream, but nothing, then nothing, until warm arms embraced her again, a gentle hand at the back of her head, stroking her hair, yw Sabi kissing her forehead.
“Shh, lovely one,” said the Atreiani, “it’s over.”
“Yw Sabi, yw Sabi, you’re crying,” Nyahri said in unhesitant Englisce. She tried to touch yw Sabi’s face, but she trembled too much, her nerves unshakably afire.
“Be still, the collar has met you, accepted you. The deed’s done, but let it settle.”
“Da, it is done,” Nyahri said in some other tongue entirely, “sdelano.”
She lay on the blankets, her senses ringing and sharp, every sound a chorus, every color a kaleidoscope, every taste a pleasure, every touch a passion, every grass blade and wind-borne leaf and late-season flower containing the whole beauty of nature. Every sensation came to her twice. Everything hummed with newness.
“We’re no longer two, you and I,” yw Sabi said. “Now rest, catch your breath.”
Yw Sabi wrapped the heavy blankets around them, and Nyahri closed her eyes. She lost consciousness in her mistress’s arms, dreaming of a scorched world and a collapsing sky and lakes of flesh where carrion birds feasted. A new voice spoke to her.
What is this place and what beauty is this! she asked. Moe puteshestvie syuda bylo tseluyu vechnost´. Who are you, Nyahri E’cwn, now that we are one?
{Interim: Graffiti}
My heart fails. My chisel and hammer do their last work not on blessed wood but on merciless stone. I leave my epitaph. In my youth, my wife and daughter passed into dust and I forsook Love. The Watcher of the Wood took my brother, took my sight, and I spit on Love.
Then the E’cwn Nyahri reminded me—my aged heart Loved her at once. Love poured from her like spring water, but not for me, nay! Nor for the Oudwni who rode with her. Her heart burned for her claimèd collar’s owner. O bright passion, Love. To remember you, I die happy. To remember you, I see again.
Bone Cairn heel stone,
Upper Missouri Valley
{30}
Nyahri opened her eyes in the late afternoon, her senses humming, and the sun kissed the far-western ranges. Yw Sabi’s scepter drew her gaze, singing to her, sonorous and fay, though it made no sound at all. It glowed, only to her, and she knew its precise location, though she closed her eyes.
She swept aside the blankets and sat up, drawing her fingertips along her new adornment, the light choker high on her throat. Its gossamer delighted her skin.
“Strong as iron,” Nyahri said.
“Much stronger.” Already dressed, the Atreiani was adjusting the horses’ saddles, girths, billet straps, and stirrup buckles.
“Ay,” Nyahri said, “Kwlko’s is too tight.”
Yw Sabi smiled at her. “I’ll loosen it. How’re you feeling?”
Nyahri closed her eyes, lightheaded but alert. “I feel well. I—”
I had a sense of Ekaterina, but she is gone now. Kat, are you there?
No answer came.
“I’ll give you as long as you need,” yw Sabi said. “You’re a shade too pale.”
“Passing dizzy.”
Yw Sabi leaned against Kwlko, situating Nyahri’s weapons. “You were speaking late-era Rosian, did you know?”
Rosian, Nyahri thought, an ancient tongue—Ekaterina’s speech.
“In your sleep,” yw Sabi added.
“What was I saying?”
“You were talking rather lovingly about horses—”
“I often do.”
“—which your father, the Griffon—” The Atreiani paused on these words. “—raised and bred in the Laplands.”
“The Laplands?” Nyahri questioned, then realized, “Not my father—Ekaterina’s father?”
“Your father. You have two fathers now. It was a wonder, though, to hear Kat’s words with any love of horses. Beyond something pretty to look at, she cared nothing for them.”
“So it is begun.”
“Her qualities will take months, maybe, to emerge. They’ll come in fits and starts, yet you’re already one person. ” Yw Sabi patted Kwlko’s neck. “I brushed the horses and checked the gear. It was best you slept.”
Already one person.
“Not much daylight left,” Nyahri said. “We should leave soon.”
After yw Sabi readjusted Kwlko’s girth, she knelt on the blankets, looking into Nyahri’s eyes. “Nyahri E’cwn et Sultah.”
Nyahri smiled, brushing back her mussed hair. “Sultah yw
Sabi et Nyahri.”
They lingered in a kiss, then yw Sabi returned to the horses to double-check the packs. “We’ll go when you’re ready.”
“I will get dressed.”
“We’ll follow the draws first, down into the fields. We’ll cover the width of the valley, and the fire will spread swiftly. The incendiaries flare at thirty-one hundred degrees.”
Nyahri frowned. She didn’t yet understand thirty-one hundred degrees, but she knew how it sounded.
“We’ll lay them to both sides of the river,” yw Sabi said. “The north’ll burn first. We’ll ride behind the fire to the fortress. Most of the Oudwnii will be smart enough to cross the river, the surest way to escape the flames. They won’t have long to rest, though, because we’ll light the southern incendiaries when the masses have gone south, after we’ve destroyed the bridges.”
The E’cwnii sometimes used fire in warfare, driving their enemies before it, but never at this scale. “What if it is we who burn to death?” Nyahri asked.
Yw Sabi hefted her scepter, as if in explanation. “We won’t.”
“Mistress, I am also worried the Oudwnii archers will be wise to us, as soon as they notice the fires—”
“Let’s hope, for Dhaos’s sake, they’re too busy guiding the masses to safety.”
“They are fighters, not herdsmen.”
“I’m hoping they’re leaders.” Yw Sabi shrugged. “If not, they’ll die too.”
She climbed to the saddle and adjusted the reins. Nyahri dressed, placed her longknife where she could more easily draw it, and mounted the stallion.
The Atreiani leaned over Turo, patting his neck.
She recited, “His form is visible, but I am formless. I am concentrated, but he is divided.”
“What is that?” Nyahri asked.
“Who is that. Sun-Tzu. We are two against many, lovely one. When you are weak, you must play your opponent into weakness.”
Nyahri understood this idea from tribal skirmishes with northern Bk’ferii, the raids of southeastern Wildmen. This is the way of it. There could be no such thing as an honest act of war.
