by J. V. Jones
There had been no moon that night either.
Muscles in Ash’s arms jumped. She dropped the lamp.
Behind her the ghost drew his swords. Snick. Snick. Light reflecting off the blades ran ahead of him like ill intent. Ash thought, I am dead. She held on to her breath. Why didn’t people realize how close everything was? Life, death, the forces of creation and destruction. Suddenly they were all there, inside of her.
Reach.
She had to. She had more to protect than just herself.
Ahead of her Lan Fallstar raised his hands. Ash froze. She didn’t understand what was happening and why she wasn’t dead. Fallstar’s mouth opened and he spoke. She was so confused it took her a moment to translate the Sull.
“I mean no harm,” he lied. “I am here paying respects to our dead.”
He was speaking to her but she realized his words were meant for the ghost. She glanced over her shoulder.
Mor Xana was five feet behind her. He held both swords from his body at arm’s length, cradling her in steel. He had moved to protect, not harm, her. If Lan Fallstar had taken another step he would be dead.
Lan Fallstar feared the ghost. She could see it in his eyes.
“Leave,” she told him. She understood by now that ghosts did not speak. “Keep your distance from us. You will not be warned twice.”
Lan Fallstar edged backward, his gaze upon the ghost. His hard, beautiful face seemed made out of edges; she noticed he had new scars on both cheeks. As he rounded the milky wall of the dome, he threw her a look filled with contempt.
How could she ever have found him attractive?
After he disappeared she counted to five and then sank to the ground. She was shaking and had forgotten to breathe. Where was her peace? She had thought that once she arrived at the Heart Fires the hounding would end. Now she was beginning to realize she would be hounded as long as she was perceived as weak.
I must be strong then.
Mor Xana’s count was longer than her own and he stood there, forming a shield around her as she sat with her face in her hands and tried not to feel despair. The ghost could only protect her against so much. She did not think his blades would stop a concerted attack, or a lone arrow fired at distance. Lan Fallstar was an excellent shot.
Ash stood. There was nothing else to do. She could hardly stay on the bank for the rest of the night, and she knew she would be safer within Khal Blackdragon’s tent circle. Tomorrow she would need to show He Who Leads that Mountain Born was a force to be reckoned with. She needed a good night’s sleep for that.
As she turned, she saw the ghost couch his weapons; two hands, two swords simultaneously. It was a remarkable sight.
She did not look Mor Xana in the eye as she passed him. Between the goose charge and the sudden appearance of Fallstar she wondered whether he had noticed her arm muscles jump.
As she returned to her tent the Sull were stirring. Heart Fires were being stoked and fed, horses saddled, water hauled from the river. She was surprised when some Sull greeted her with short but not unwelcoming nods. It was confusing.
She was confused. It was a relief to slip inside her tent. She tied down the tent flap so that anyone seeking casual entry would know she wanted peace, and then dropped onto the bed and slept. She dreamed of a future where she was no longer alone.
Half a day passed before she woke. She called for food and water, relieved herself, washed, and then ate a fine meal of roast hare, bastard celery and wine. She was clearheaded now and decisions were easy to make. With some care she prepared herself, brushing her silver-gold hair so it shone and rubbing wine into her lips to make them red. Someone had thought to bring her a hand mirror and she angled it to view her face and body. Her reflection confirmed she had changed.
The ghost was waiting when she exited the tent. He trailed her as she crossed to the tent circle’s Heart Fire. One of He Who Leads’ servants was loading fresh pieces of heartwood onto the coals. She spoke to him.
“Tell Blackdragon the Reach wants to see him.”
Nodding quickly several times, the Trenchlander set down his fuel basket and ran to do her bidding. He almost dove into the rayskin tent.
Ash waited a moment and then followed him. Now she had set this in motion she was eager to have it done.
She had made mistakes. The first was waiting upon a summons from Blackdragon. He had asked a question and told her to answer it when she was ready. By leaving it so long she was practically handing him an answer. If she was sure she could control herself wouldn’t she have told him before now? What had made her think he would call her into his presence?
The second mistake was in not answering straightaway.
The rayskin canvas switched from green to blue in the late day sunlight. Edges of the tent caught air, whumping softly as they pulled against their ropes. After less than a minute the Trenchlander emerged and muttered something. He would not look her in the eye. Deciding she had been granted permission to enter, Ash ducked under the tent flap. The ghost followed.
Inside all was cool and dim. Khal Blackdragon was standing with such stillness that she did not see him at first. Again there was the shock of his coloring: iron skin and amber eyes. He looked so far from human he might have dropped from another world. The space around him was empty of adornment, with only a lamp to light the interior and carpets to soften the hard ground: Nothing more.
He spoke no greeting, and although she had been prepared for this she felt her resolve waver on the simple fact of having to speak first.
She made an effort. “I am sorry for your dead.”
Blackdragon looked at her a long time. His attention made her feel small and young. It set her in her place. The Sull had existed long before Man. They had lost more, seen more, learned the names of the real things to fear. She was a tiny part of that history. The Sull would continue with or without her.
“You know the clansman, Raif Sevrance?”
As always when Khal Blackdragon spoke, Ash had difficulty translating the words. Nothing in his tone or manner aided his listener’s comprehension. The fact he had asked about Raif was so surprising Ash doubted her own ears.
Blackdragon waited. He was tall and lean, dressed in simple black skins. His pride was fierce but not quite all-consuming. It left enough space for fear.
Ash nodded.
“What kind of man is he?”
She thought about Raif, about the first time she’d seen him outside of Vaingate when he’d sent arrows through the gate’s grille and into men’s hearts. Later when they were alone on the journey to the Cavern of Black Ice, he had done everything he could to keep her safe. She recalled the deep brown, almost purple, color of Raif’s eyes. It would have been easy to stay and accept his unwavering protection.
“He’s a good man,” Ash said softly. “He’s lonely.”
Khal Blackdragon’s shoulders bowed as if they were accepting weight. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again his shoulders were once more upright and straight. “This Sull wishes some things had not happened.”
Ash didn’t understand what he meant, but she heard the regret in his voice. It made her sad for both Raif and the Sull.
“Did you harm him?” She was surprised at the sharpness of her voice.
Blackdragon did not react. When he spoke it was as if she wasn’t there. “I did not intervene. That was this Sull’s mistake.”
“Is he hurt?”
“He is alive and on my land.”
The amethyst lamp that was set on the floor near the tent’s central pole buzzed as if something had been caught inside it.
Knowing she had to speak and sensing Blackdragon’s distraction might be to her advantage, Ash cleared her throat. “Fourteen days ago you asked me a question. I am here to answer it.”
Blackdragon turned the full force of his attention toward her, the amber eyes flickering to life.
So much for an advantage. Ash met his gaze. “You asked if the Reach can control herself an
d I’m here to tell you I can.”
It was a lie, but it arrived with so much force behind it that it sounded like truth. She would almost have believed it herself if she hadn’t begun to reach earlier today by the river. Ash was counting on the fact that Blackdragon and his ghost did not know about that, did not know that she had already come close to losing control.
She held her head level as he inspected her. She was filled with purpose, and she hoped that he sensed the strength of it but not its true cause.
Khal Blackdragon, the leader of the Sull, watched the Reach. Time passed. Sunlight ceased hitting the rayskin canvas and the tent darkened. Scents of woodsmoke and cookery drifted from outside.
Finally Blackdragon spoke. “The Sull accept your word, Ash Mountain Born. Do not fail us.”
I will, she knew instantly. I will fail the Sull.
She acknowledged his words with a deep and formal bow. As she rose upright she said, “Lan Fallstar surprised me at the river this morning. I would wish it not to happen again.”
“He will be sent away.”
Ash exhaled. That was a large part of what she wanted.
Khal Blackdragon said, “You will not be harmed by the Sull.”
As long as you keep your word. Ash heard what went unsaid. She nodded. He was He Who Leads and he had to do what he had to do. She was Ash Mountain Born, and there was a child growing inside her, and she had to do what she had to do.
Perhaps for a while their purposes could be joined.
She left him, proud and deceived in the darkness. Any shame she felt fell away as she walked through the warm night air.
She was pregnant. Keeping herself and her unborn child safe were more important than any contract with the Sull.
CHAPTER 38
Stripping Outer Bark
WATCHER HAD TWO rules. Only bring down what he could eat and stay away from the Sull. They were good rules. They simplified his actions and made it possible to live a peaceful life.
He hunted for small game: wild turkey, opossum, ground squirrel, hare. When he needed fat he fished for salmon in one of the streams that forked from the big river. He wasn’t a good fisherman and could spend half a day catching nothing, but he was learning. He had time.
He built and tested fish traps, whittling wood and knotting strips of hide to form lattices. While he waited to see if the traps would work he gathered plants, tender new leaves of dock, fiddlehead and chicory. Most of the time he ate them raw, folding them into his mouth and letting the sweet greenness rest on his tongue before he chewed them. Food tasted good. On the rare occasions he lit a fire and roasted his game, he relished the tender juices and crispy skin.
Most nights he slept out in the open. He made beds of spruce, balsam and cedar and fell asleep drawing their rich and soothing fragrances into his lungs. When it rained he raised the simplest shelters, lean-tos and bivouacs. The nights were cool but not cold. Even this far north, the snows had passed.
He seldom camped in the same place more than two nights. He did not question whether it was restlessness or caution. It felt right to be moving. The forest was large and contained many things; some were worth seeing, some worth avoiding. He left it at that.
He knew he was in Sull territory but saw no reason to leave. He had earned a right to be here. They had made him who he was.
They had created what they feared.
Most days Watcher put effort into avoiding them—their fires, their horse tracks, the stone circles where they erected their tents, their heavily used trails—but he would not be gentle if they tried to take him.
He no longer feared them. It was not possible to fear a people after watching so many of them die.
Reaching a fork in the trail, Watcher turned north. He was heading along a deer path through a section of forest that looked as if it had been thinned. Elderberries and bearberries were in bloom and bumble-bees buzzed from plant to plant. Sun touched Watcher’s face. His pack was heavy with the remains of the turkey he had killed and smoked last night, and that meant he would not have to hunt for two days. This pleased him. Later, when he’d settled on a place to camp, he might work on another fish trap. He had some ideas about modifying the design. He was pretty sure his last one had caught, and then released, a trout. Scales left on one of the interior posts had been his clue.
He grinned at his own stupidity, and words from another life sounded in his head.
Us Sevrances were never made to fish.
Watcher’s heart leapt.
He continued walking, and after a while holding himself separate from the familiar voice, the memory faded. It was for the best.
No good would come from remembering his dead.
He spent the rest of the morning moving north, more or less following the course of a swift-running creek. Boulders on the creekbed made the water froth. He didn’t think it would be a good place to test traps. He had an idea he might might whittle a pole, fix the head from one of the queen’s arrows to the tip, see if he could he could spear some frogs. When he arrived at a small spill pond fed by the stream he thought he might as well stop and do a few things. There was a strip of dry bank on its north shore that seemed as good a place as any to spend the night.
It was his habit to prepare the camp early and then spend the rest of the day doing as he pleased. Before he left the Sull camp he had stripped the queen and her den mates of some belongings, and he now possessed a fine Sull hand knife. He used it to cut-and-strip spruce and cedar needles from nearby trees to form a bed. The trick was to use only the soft tips of the branches. He had woken up the first few nights with sticks in his back. Now he knew what he was doing, he worked quickly, raising a mound of soft needles above the bank.
Afterward he cleaned the sticky resin from the knife with a scrap of hareskin and some fat he’d pressed from the liver of the last salmon he’d caught. He would have preferred to use tung oil but it would do.
Later he sat on the edge of the water and whittled hardwood. It was almost warm so he took off his cloak—also Sull—and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Scars from his many fights made his arms look like maps. They were healing, the skin dry, the edges paling to white. Looking at them, he knew he would never speak of the fight circle to anyone. He hoped it would pass into the area of his mind where memories floated away.
Finished with shaping the oak sucker into a spear shaft, he went to find some twine. Earlier he’d spotted a basswood by the oak. Now he retraced his steps downstream. The inner bark of basswood made good cordage and he needed something to bind the arrowhead to the pole.
He would never understand how the girl slipped into the camp while he was away. He had thought himself vigilant. He was wrong. He had thought himself prepared to deal with anything that happened to him.
He was wrong about that too.
The work of removing the outer bark was hard but not unpleasant. Some bit of a song came to him and he hummed as he cut and stripped the tree. Deciding it was a good policy to have extra cordage on hand, he took more than was needed to bind the spear. Arms full of basswood bark, he returned to the camp.
The girl was standing waist-deep in the water, washing her hair and face. She turned her head at his approach, acknowledging him with a single look, then returned to her task. Her long dark hair glinted with oil in the sunlight. The fine linen shift she was wearing was soaked and pressed against her skin.
As Watcher walked through the camp he noted the sturdy little pony pulling dandelions from the shore. He saw the boots, dress and wool stockings the girl had discarded to enter the water. He spied two saddlebags in a nearby sumac bush and decided that they, and he, shared something in common. All three had been inexpertly hidden.
Because there was nothing else to do, Watcher set down the load of bark. Although he had not planned on a fire, he set about building one from unusable pieces of bark, stripped cedar branches and discarded oak suckers. He tried, unsuccessfully, not to watch the girl as he worked.
She seemed in no
hurry to leave the water. Arms stretched out, she walked deeper into the pond. Her hair floated behind her, fanning out on the surface. Watcher was dimly aware of the calm, strong beats of her heart.
He shredded inner bark for kindling. Using the Sull queen’s shortbow and one of her arrows with the head removed, he drilled into a piece of oak. The oak was damp and he had to work the bow hard to generate heat. He raised some smoke, but when he threw kindling on the hot spot it didn’t catch. As he repositioned the bow and arrow for a second attempt at firelighting, the girl spoke up from the water.
“There’s a flint and striker in one of my packs. They’re in the bushes.”
He looked at her and could not think.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked, wading toward him.
He did and did not. It was no kind of answer so he remained silent.
“Mallia Argola,” she said, emerging from the water. “I’ve come a long way to find you.”
She was the most lovely thing he had ever seen. Her skin was the color of raw honey and her eyes were deeply, greenly brown. The wet linen shift revealed her round high breasts and the dark down between between her legs. Watcher set down the bow and went to her. She waited for him, sure of her own worth.
She smelled of spicy ferns. Her lips were soft; they opened quickly when he kissed them. The pond water drying on her skin was a shocking coolness that had to be penetrated to reach her warmth. Her breasts and buttocks filled his hands. When she pulled off her shift and showed herself to him he wept.
She was that alive and that beautiful.
They lay down on the bank. She bit his shoulder as he entered her and called out a name he had left behind.
Afterward they dozed under a fading sun as dragonflies skimmed the water. She woke him by taking his hand. “Come on,” she said, smiling as she pulled him up. “Let’s swim.”
They ran into the water. It made him catch his breath. Diving, he went under. She didn’t follow him down but swam to him when he surfaced. Wrapping her legs around his waist, she kissed him and laughed. “I’m so happy,” she said.
