The woman patted her shoulder. “You brought him to where he could get help. That was enough. The past is the past. You are the best friend he could have.”
Ellinca studied Pascolli’s sleeping face. “Thank you.”
“Ah! I see.” She smiled again. “You would like to be more than a best friend.”
She blushed.
“Are you done with the talk?” Dayna sauntered over. “Food here. We should go over. Eat.” She mimed eating.
The clanking, scraping and slurping of food being ladled out and eaten came to her ears. Tracc and two others stood over a variety of pots with long handles, supervising as stew was piled onto people’s plates and bowls. He waved in their direction. “Come, or you will get nothing to eat! We have a long walk ahead of us tomorrow!”
“You go,” Ellinca told the others. Dost shook his head. She supposed he did not need to eat but it made her nervous to have him behind her. “I’ll be there soon.”
Krueger, torn between duty and food, tried to look both ways at once. Dayna said something. He shrugged and left them.
“I wait, for you.” Dayna folded her arms then drummed her fingers impatiently.
It was clear Pascolli was still too ill to come to Carstelan with her. She hoped he would somehow find a way to meet up with her again. Though it saddened her, perhaps it would be best for him if he did not.
“Take good care of him, please,” she said. “I must go.”
“He’s in good hands,” Garmea assured her.
“Thank you.” Blushing again, she quickly kissed Pascolli.
She rose and walked away as steadily as she could and almost stood on the food platters before she noticed them. The meal passed like a dream, her eyelids drooping lower and lower as she ate. When finished, she was given a stained and ragged blanket roll. Despite the awkwardness of the manacles digging into her wrists, she fell away into a dreamless sleep as soon as she pulled the blanket round her and closed her eyes.
Someone was roughly rocking her awake – with their foot, Ellinca gathered from the shape of it. A murky memory of a dream of floating seemed at the edges of her mind – a pleasant sort of dream, yet the more she concentrated, the more it drifted away. She blinked and yawned, wincing at the aches that stirred. The person hurried away. The place was like an ant heap. People strapped on packs, readied weapons or squatted on their heels scooping at food. A bowl containing some sort of spiced potato pancake was shoved into her hands. The warm sweet smell of it tantalized her senses and she busied herself with eating.
A few minutes later, the food gone, the bowl was whisked away. She managed to roll and tie the blanket and fasten it atop the haversack. Dayna strolled over with her long strides, took up the pack and escorted her to the far end of the tunnel where some were already disappearing into the left-hand exit.
“What time is it? Where does this go?”
“Morning time. Up,” Dayna said. “Up, to the sky.”
Krueger appeared by her side and gave a broad, lopsided grin.
Before she went into the smaller tunnel she looked about for Dost, Gangar or Pascolli, but was dismayed to not see any of them.
The woman’s words from last night echoed through her thoughts. The caves were to be cleared out and so somewhere, behind, tagging along, might be the healer and Pascolli, and her other patients. If possible she would find Pascolli later and check on him.
The tunnel came out on the side of the mountain, higher up but within a dense stand of trees. After the echoing lifelessness of the caves and tunnels it was glorious to once more hear the sounds of life. Birds called across the sides of mountainside ravines, the wind scurried through the long grass and leaves, a frightened lizard fled across their path into a clump of flowers. She breathed in through her nose, savoring the fragrant air.
For hours they climbed, always staying among the cover of the trees. Did the Burgla’le army come this far into Grakk territory? Perhaps they were only being cautious. Sometimes, where the trees thinned out she could see across to the other side of steep ravines. Animals moved with quick graceful leaps about the rocky terrain and she guessed they must be the duraviandes, the sheep-like animal the Grakks kept.
Dayna came back down the column of people, stopping beside Ellinca.
“Here.” She held out a thick folded cloth. “I must tie this round your eyes for a while.”
Ellinca pulled her head away. “Why?” At the right spot it would be so easy to fall into one of these chasms, by tripping or, she warily eyed Dayna, by being pushed.
“Sheesh! We will not hurt you. It is needed.” Dayna lowered her arms. “Please. I promise no harm will come to you.”
A shard of light struck Ellinca’s eyes, glinting in mid-air, thousands of yards above the canyon floor. “Wait. What’s that? A homing fly?” Ellinca pointed. The object darted closer in quick spurts, purring quietly like a paper windmill on a stick.
“Do not try – ” Puzzled, Dayna turned about. A man pushed past them on the side closest to the drop-off into space. Like most of the Grakks he blithely ignored the possibility of falling, carrying on as if he were out for a morning stroll.
And, for a second, his body hid the thing.
The purring swelled to a roar, the man jerked, screamed, and flung up a hand as if he’d suddenly remembered something. Blood scored in a broad line across the back of his gray shirt. The bloody material screwed round and round then tore, and the tip of a spinning silver cone nosed out, spewing shreds of flesh and shirt in all directions.
“Back!” Dayna snapped, her arm thrust out, fending Ellinca off. The man fell to his knees and crawled away.
Ellinca stumbled. The cone twitched like a questing nose to aim straight at her. It shot forward and Dayna side-stepped. There was a soft phut that became a metal-grinding shriek as it bore into the scales of Dayna’s armor. Dayna coughed, winded.
It wanted me, thought Ellinca, and will bore a tunnel through Dayna to get me. There wasn’t any time for finesse, for finding out its origins, its machinery. No harm will come to you, she had been promised
The screech of metal bored into her ears. She had given in to fear too often. Exactly why it was she couldn’t say, but this time she needed to do something. She grasped Dayna’s shoulder and flipped her around then stepped back. She held out her manacled hands, as if she could catch the thing, clamped her teeth shut and waited for the impact. The whining ceased, the thing reversed and turned in a flurry of scraped metal.
Dayna’s hands were held wide, fingers splayed, as if to grasp, yet not daring to.
This was going to hurt. Silver flitted toward Ellinca but something sliced through the air an inch from her nose and slammed the silver thing into the ground.
Krueger lifted his sword from the fractured remains and knelt. With his sword tip he poked at it.
Ellinca put a hand to her nose – still there, blood, but not hers. She knelt and picked up one squashed metal fragment. Inside, something clattered intermittently, like a wasp caught within its nest. Lime-green insect blood leaked out. She dropped the thing to the earth then straightened, put the whole weight of her foot upon it and ground the metal fragment into a deep hole with her heel.
Krueger grunted. He considered Ellinca with eyes as colorless as glass, lifting an eyebrow before rising to push his way out through the gathering onlookers.
“Thank you!” she called after him.
The wounded man was already being tended to and, though his back wept blood, he was well enough to curse as they stripped away his shirt. Another man with a shaven scalp like Garmea, the healer, tipped a tiny bottle to the wounded man’s mouth.
“Ellinca, we thank you,” said Dayna. While absentmindedly fingering the hole chewed in the front of her fishscale hauberk, she stared at the hole Ellinca had dug with her heel. “That was bad thing.”
“Not a homing fly?” Ellinca said weakly.
“No. Is homing...killing trinketton.” She pretended she held it in her hands. “Her
e, is place for people’s spit, hair. There, is little engine, und it flys to person hair comes from. It kills.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“Frope,” she whispered. It could only have been him or the lieutenant. No one else would hate her this much. “Hilas Frope.” How far would he go to catch her? The strength drained from her legs and she slumped back onto a waist-high boulder. She eyed Dayna. “More of these? More come?”
Dayna seemed to consider this then shook her head. “No. Is not many of these. Very old. One maker only, I think. Long dead.”
The damage that thing had done in such a short time... Any other trinketton would be unlikely to still work. Once their maker died, after one last use their power leaked away, but she guessed something like this would be one-time-only. How much money had Frope thrown away just to try to get her? It was yet another black stone piled on top of the all the others weighing her down since the day he had turned up.
The cloth blindfold lay on the path. Dayna picked it up, rolled it in her hand and tucked it into a pocket. “This Burgla’le weapon... Your enemy is now our enemy. So. You help me. Now I help you. I will trust you. Hold out arms, please.”
“My arms?” Hesitantly Ellinca held out her wrists. Dayna unlocked the manacles then clasped her hand firmly.
“We shake. Good. Yus?”
“Thank you.” Dayna’s palms and fingers were bumpy with thick calluses that didn’t seem likely to be the result of hoeing fields. The Grakks might not have a standing army like the Burgla’le but it was clear Dayna and Krueger were professional warriors, not shepherds.
Fifteen minutes later everyone hoisted their packs and they started off again. The wounded man was without a burden but otherwise he walked unaided. They continued until midday when they rested. A few children appeared from another path and joined the group, attaching themselves to those who might be their parents. Soon smoke and delicious aromas began to drift through the air from cooking fires.
Ellinca’s eyes stung and she rubbed at them.
“Thank you again,” she said to Dayna when the woman stopped next to her, momentarily distracted from directing people to tasks. Even standing still she seemed to brim with energy in every muscle, like a tigress surveying her territory.
“You thank me?” She turned her head to look at Ellinca. Dayna smiled. “You are welcome. No one comes to harm when I mind them. Yus?”
Ellinca couldn’t help grinning back. “Yes.”
She found a warm rock to sit on near a solitary eucalypt and someone passed her a hot meat and applesauce sandwich, so thick she could barely get her hands around it. It was a good time to do some thinking but there were so many questions.
Where was Dost and where was the Finder? Would Frope give up after this? Why were they still heading up the mountain when they should have been going to Carstelan? Perhaps it was all a lie and they had “disposed” of Dost after all. How much easier for them to get her over the mountain to the Bheulakks if she thought they were helping her. Although she trusted Dayna, Krueger was another matter entirely – maybe it was one big awful lie... Maybe. She sighed and took another bite.
After she finished eating she sat cross-legged looking out across the mountains. The clouds drifted apart with the wind, shredding into the thinnest veils of white. She could see for miles to the distant peaks. The nearest wore dark green mantles from the trees covering their slopes while the more distant mountains blurred into a pale blue.
Something cheeped faintly nearby. She swung her gaze downward. There, among some rocks, was a fledgling pug-nosed friarbird. It flapped its tiny wings wildly. Their bald heads, red eyes and strange knobs on their beaks made these friarbirds favorite targets for rocks thrown by jeering children. Hungry ants already headed for the little bird. Too young to fly properly but old enough to try, it had fallen from the nest. This one would be dead within the hour if left on the ground.
She looked up the eucalypt tree and spotted a nest among its upper branches. Unfolding her tired legs, Ellinca levered herself to her feet and headed to the baby bird. A boy, ten or eleven years old, ran up, reached it before her, and picked it up. It rested in his hand, cheeping weakly.
“May I see it?” she asked.
“Oh!” He smiled at her through his fringe of curly hair, a broad, welcoming smile, as though she were his very best friend. On one temple a tumbling streak of black ran through his otherwise buttery yellow locks.
“I might be able to help it.”
Cautiously, as if afraid he might drop the bird, he held out his hands and gently tipped the fledgling into her cupped palms.
She brushed away a few ants. It was still warm but one wing hung at an awkward angle.
“Justen!” A woman beckoned to the boy from the far side of the camp.
“You...feex,” he whispered. “Feex bird?”
She nodded slowly and he sprinted away.
Krueger watched her silently from where he squatted packing away some utensils.
“What have you?” asked a passing man, frowning at her.
“A bird. It must have fallen from the nest up there.”
He peered closer. “Ah! Those ugly and useless. Leave it. It will die anyway.”
Krueger stood and stretched his legs. He said something curtly to the man then grinned at him. The man snorted and chuckled before stalking away.
While they were speaking Dayna returned. “He is right,” she said. “Bird will die. Can’t fly. No mother.”
Everyone wanted to tell her what to do.
When she received no answer Dayna shrugged and sat. Taking out a whetstone, she settled down to sharpen her sword.
Ellinca cupped the bird and blew warm air into her hands. The little thing cheeped at her even more indignantly. It cocked one shiny eye at her then the other. She stroked the bird’s bald head until it calmed.
In the past she had healed many such broken wings by lightly strapping them to the bird’s body but some of the birds were unable to fly afterward. This time she could not nurse and feed the baby bird while it mended. If she couldn’t return it to its mother she may as well leave it in the dirt for the ants or, she grimaced at the thought, end its life by wringing its neck.
Ellinca chewed on her lip. It would take so little, if she could do it at all. She had done something that time with the tuskdog.
She went and sat on a rock facing away from everyone, waiting until all had lost interest in what she did.
With the finger and thumb of her right hand she felt around the broken wing. She closed her eyes. In her mind she remembered the feel of a healthy wing. That was how this one had been. How it would be. The very tips of her fingers pulsed with warmth then with cold, until they grew numb. Ellinca opened her eyes, felt the shift as they cleared and focused again, slowly opening her fingers.
It was done. Gently, she felt the wing all along its length. Perfect. There was an odd brown speck of color on her wrist that she thought was new but her fingers were already back to normal. A smile crept across her lips. Somehow it had worked.
She managed to climb up the tree with the fledgling tucked in a pocket and place it back into the nest. Some said mother birds would reject a nestling handled by humans but she had never found it to be so. The bird would live.
Such a little thought but it brought back memories of her mother.
When she had first trapped her ghost Ellinca had only meant to save her mother from harm and now, instead, was sure she had caused it. She prayed for forgiveness. Perhaps each time she helped an animal that would count for her on the good side.
Air fluttered cool against her face. Ellinca stared out at the intense blue sky. One could see forever up here, see the whole world, maybe, if one climbed up high enough.
Somewhere out there was Hilas Frope and he hadn’t seemed the sort of man to give up easily.
Chapter 13
The Whistling Mountains
For three more days they continued, up Skysplitter
Mountain, across a ridge to another mountain, climbed again then across to a valley wreathed in clouds and on, and on. Where they were became ever more uncertain – west surely, but how far north or south? And where were they going? Carstelan was at sea level, not up in the clouds. A chill suspicion crept over her that they might be crossing over to Bheulakk territory.
Ellinca couldn’t be sure. The trust she had gifted to Dayna dwindled with every step they took. No matter how she asked her where they were going the answer was, “Wait and you will see,” or simply, “To Carstelan,” as if the place was just farther up the mountain.
Their route followed mostly a mountain-hugging, precipice-treading path and, where it widened, there was always some small village tucked away from the winds, swarming with Grakkurds. Curious children would come out to stare at her or wander at her heels – a tantalizing foreigner to their eyes, she supposed.
When they slept she was invariably in the center of the camp, surrounded by people who snored with one ear to the ground and one hand on their weapons. As if she hadn’t enough to occupy her mind, her sleep continued to be plagued by dreams of the man floating on an endless sea. Each dream left her with a strange ache...a yearning to reach out and touch him. She’d woken this morning and found herself wondering how his lips would feel on hers, how his skin would feel beneath her fingers. It shook her. The nearest she’d ever come to kissing a man was Pascolli – and her chances of ever doing that were zero.
Odd how it almost seemed as if she were betraying Pascolli.
Some of the Grakks knew La’le, she discovered, and were willing – happy even – to talk with her. It made her realize how sure they were that she could not escape. Nevertheless she decided to question them about everything that might help her, and more.
As they ascended farther, the reason behind the name of the Whistling Mountain Range became clear. The stronger the gusting of the winds, the louder the moaning past their ears and, occasionally from above, a long and plaintive whistling would float down. It made her very bones feel cold, as if somewhere up on the mountain peaks a gargantuan beast were suffering a sad, if somewhat musical, death.
Magience: second edition Page 13
