Guardians Watch

by Eric T Knight

  “You sound like you speak from experience,” Quyloc said.

  T’sim inclined his head slightly. “I do.”

  “So what is it like?”

  “Dull. The world loses its flavor.”

  Quyloc considered this. “I guess I never thought about it that way.” He turned to face him. “Who—or what—are you?”

  “Only harmless T’sim, Advisor. I assure you.”

  Quyloc started to press him for more information, then gave it up. What difference did it make anyway? “For what it’s worth, I believe you. But mostly I don’t care. If you are done asking me questions, I have matters to attend to.”

  “Ah, your problem,” T’sim said. “Have you decided which choice you will make then?”

  Quyloc hesitated. “I think so.”

  “If you could drain the venom away, would you still choose death?”

  “If I could…” Quyloc started, then it hit him. An idea. It wasn’t much, but it was a possibility. It just might work. How did he not see it earlier? Had he completely lost his ability to reason?

  “You have just had an idea.”

  “I did.”

  “Would you share it?”

  “I’ll tell you what. If I survive, I’ll tell you. Now go.”

  “As you wish. I will see myself out.”

  Quyloc locked the door behind him, then went to his bed and lay down, the spear gripped tightly in both hands. He closed his eyes and concentrated. A moment later he was standing in the borderland before the Veil.

  Where should he go? At least this time he was choosing the spot, so he should have some time and not be attacked right away. He visualized the ledge he’d stood on to kill the rend, then walked through the Veil.

  He was standing on the ledge overlooking the jungle. Below him lay the huge carcass of the rend. Most of the flesh had been stripped from its bones, leaving only its huge skeleton. Its ribcage was large enough that he could have stood upright within it.

  He unbuttoned his shirt. In the sulfur-yellow light of the Pente Akka the bite was a lump the size of his fist. The black lines coming from it went down to his waist and disappeared around his back. Reversing the spear, he held the blade against the lump, then cut a quick X in it, just like he’d seen the stablemaster do with the snake-bit horse.

  When he squeezed the lump black ichor came out, thick and dark. He leaned over, careful not to get any of it on himself. He kept squeezing until there was nothing left, then stepped back. Most of the lump was gone, but the black lines looked no better.

  Movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention and he looked down at the ground, was stunned by what he saw.

  The black ichor was moving.

  Quyloc started to summon the Veil, but it was too late.

  Something rubbery and shapeless rose up from the spot and leapt at him. By luck more than anything he got the spear up and deflected the thing, ducking as it flew over his head.

  It hit the ground and leapt at him again, but this time he was ready. He slashed with the spear, the thing squealed and fell to the ground in two pieces.

  He backed away from it. Had that thing been living inside him?

  Then he realized it was still moving, writhing on the ground, reforming. He stepped forward and stabbed it, once, twice. The thing went still.

  He looked back at his wound. The source was gone, but the infection remained. He might have slowed the end, but he hadn’t stopped it.

  He summoned the Veil, cut it and stepped through. Once on the other side, he visualized the river, then stepped back through. Now he was on the banks of the river, the bronze water flowing slowly by.

  He dipped the blade of the spear in the river, then pressed it against the wound.

  The pain was so bad he screamed. The blade felt like it was red hot. He could feel burning fiery lines coursing down the black lines. He doubled over, biting back the screams, afraid he would summon the hunter.

  But in time it passed. He straightened and looked down at his torso. The black lines were gone.

  Hurriedly he summoned the Veil, slashed it, and jumped through. A moment in the borderland and then he went back to his quarters.

  Quyloc sat up in bed, his heart still beating fast. Holding the spear, he went to the mirror and pulled his shirt collar down.

  The enlarged veins were gone, as was the lump.

  Quyloc went to a chair and sat down. After a moment he laid the spear down on the table and took his hand away. Nothing happened. Was it possible? Was he finally free?

  He needed sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a long day, as were all of the ones to come. He started to go to his bed, then stopped and went back to the table and picked up the spear. Then he lay down, the spear resting on his chest.

  It was best to be sure.

  Twenty-five

  The Landsend Plateau was tearing itself apart. The earth groaned and shrieked underfoot. Cracks crisscrossed the land. Smoke from the burning forests filled the air. Animals and birds fled the Plateau en masse, predator and prey alike ignoring the small band of Takare in their desperation to flee. The Takare, led by Rehobim, had been fighting their way north all morning, trying to make it back to Bent Tree Shelter, to find those they had left behind when they pursued the outsiders who attacked their village. Over and over again they had been forced to veer off their chosen path as their way was blocked by rents in the earth or burning forests.

  Now they found their way blocked by a large barren. Barrens were areas of bare stone dotted with hot, sulfurous pools. Other than the tani and the occasional poisonwood, nothing lived on the barrens. Even during the best of times, crossing one was unpleasant, as if the very stone were leaching one’s Life-energy away.

  Rehobim hesitated for only a moment before setting foot on the barren.

  “Wait!” Shakre called. “I don’t think we should cross this.”

  “Why?” he asked, his head turning as he scanned the barren. “Do you see something?” Mist from the hot pools blanketed the barren, limiting vision.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then what is it?” Rehobim made no attempt to hide his dislike for Shakre.

  “I don’t know. It’s just…I can sense something.” As she spoke, she stepped onto the barren and the feeling of approaching wrongness suddenly grew stronger. She pulled her foot back. “We have to go around.”

  “We don’t have time for your imaginings,” Rehobim said. “Going around will cost us too much time.”

  So saying, he continued on, and the rest followed him. A few gave Shakre worried looks—over the years she had demonstrated her abilities a number of times—but they did not gainsay their leader.

  Only Werthin stopped. “Can I help you, Windfollower?” Since leaving Bent Tree Shelter a couple days before Werthin had been keeping an eye on her, trying to help when he could.

  “No, but thank you,” she replied. She was truly grateful for his concern. More and more she felt like an outsider amongst her adopted people, a lone voice crying out warnings that none of the rest of them seemed to want to hear. Only Werthin seemed to actually hear what she was saying.

  Not wanting to fall behind any more than she already was, Shakre hurried after the rest, Werthin right behind her. But every step she took deeper into the heart of the barren only increased her unease. There was something here, something that had recently awakened. It was like hearing heavy footsteps approaching, though she did not actually hear anything. She had no idea what it was, other than that it wasn’t a living creature. She could hear no Song at all on the barren.

  Whatever it was, it was getting closer quickly.

  She scanned the sulfurous mist, trying in vain to see what it was, to figure out what direction it was coming from. But there was nothing moving except the water in the pools, which gurgled and bubbled, moved by currents from below. Ahead and to the left was a twisted rock formation that seemed to have grown straight out of the stone. Something could be hiding there, but, as hard as she tr
ied, she couldn’t determine if what she sensed was in that direction.

  They walked for a few more minutes, sticking close together by unspoken agreement. Shakre’s fear grew stronger with every step, but when she tried to call out to Rehobim to stop, he ignored her and hurried on.

  Then, without warning, several of the sulfurous pools erupted at once. Steaming water shot high into the air. Out of the pools climbed creatures from a nightmare.

  They were short and blocky and appeared to be made out of stone. They looked like creatures made by a small child. Their limbs were irregular lengths, their torsos squat and shapeless. They moved awkwardly, as if wearing bodies they were unfamiliar with.

  In a terrible voice that was rough and difficult to understand, one of them cried out. “You failed! You didn’t protect him and now he dies!”

  The Takare fell back from them, weapons held up uneasily.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Rehobim yelled back.

  “You were supposed to keep the Plateau inviolate for your god.” The creatures, arrayed in a semicircle before the Takare, began to move forward. “For your failure, you will die.”

  One of them ran at Rehobim and he swung his sword at it. When the weapon hit the thing it shattered. Rehobim barely managed to sidestep the thing.

  “Go back!” he yelled, flinging the useless weapon down.

  They ran. Fortunately, the stone creatures could not move fast enough to pursue them. A few minutes later they were off the barren. They paused and looked back. There was no sign of the creatures, but the mist was thicker now so it was impossible to see more than twenty paces.

  “What are those things?” Rehobim growled at Shakre.

  “I don’t know for sure,” she said tiredly. She thought back to when she went to the Godstooth, on the day she found Shorn. She remembered the creatures frozen in the stone along the river, and her sense that they were there to guard Tu Sinar, but had fallen asleep. “I think they are here to protect Tu Sinar.”

  “Well, it’s clear we can’t go that way now,” Rehobim snapped. He seemed to blame her for this, as he did for so many things. “Come on. We have no choice now. We have to go around.”

  He spun on his heel and headed off to the west at a run. The rest fell in behind him, Shakre, with Werthin behind her, once again bringing up the rear. She was older than the rest of them and the truth was that she was finding the pace harder and harder to maintain. They had been running most of the day and she didn’t know how long she could keep it up.

  As they circled around the barren the land rose in a gentle slope that was only sparsely wooded. The fire had not spread this far yet and the air was clearer. Shakre allowed herself to hope that they would be able to find an open path. But when she got to the top of the slope, she saw the rest of them standing there, staring down the other side, and she knew it was an empty hope.

  The slope dropped off more steeply on the other side and it afforded them a good view to the north and the west. Shakre could see that the barren ended just ahead, but that wasn’t what everyone was looking at.

  The forest that bordered the barren was burning fiercely. The fire extended west for as far as they could see. For a moment they all just stood there stunned. Shakre felt sick. They weren’t going to make it in time. They had no idea which way to go. What was going to happen to the ones they’d left behind, who were mostly elderly or children? Without help, many of them would perish before they made it off the Plateau.

  When Shakre turned to look at the others, she was surprised to see that all of them were looking at her. Even Rehobim. Their need struck her with an almost physical sensation. She could see in their eyes an almost childlike hope. She was the Windfollower. Couldn’t she do something? The words came to her mouth unbidden.

  “There may be a way that I can find us a clear path to them.”

  “How?” Rehobim asked roughly.

  “Spirit-walking.”

  “What is that?”

  “It’s a way of leaving the body and traveling on in your spirit. But it takes a lot of strength to break the bond, to wrest the spirit away from the body, and I don’t have it. I’m too tired. I don’t have enough Selfsong.”

  “Then use mine,” Werthin said. “Can you do that?”

  “I could, but I would probably kill you.” The Tenders of the Empire kept stables of young, healthy people to use as sources of accessible Song, bleeding off Life-energy when they needed to do something that required a lot of power. And those people often died. It was why those in their stables were slaves, and not free people. Since she’d never done this, she was almost certain to kill someone.

  “Then why do you waste our time on this?” Rehobim sneered.

  “Because I have done it before.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You just said it would kill.”

  “When I did it before, I used the wind.” It was the night when she had first met the Takare, when she followed Elihu to the poisonwood. But the truth was that she didn’t use the wind. It used her. It knocked her out of herself.

  Would she be able to recreate that? She’d never tried. The idea of it frightened her. The wind was too wild, too uncontrollable.

  Except that there were no other options. No matter how great the risk was, she had to take it.

  “Do it,” Rehobim said roughly. “Quickly.”

  “Can you do such a thing?” Youlin asked. The young Pastwalker fixed her with her intense gaze. A survivor of Mad River Shelter, she had only been with them for a few days, but already she had made a big impact on them, bringing memories of lost martial skills to the surface.

  Shakre hesitated. “I think so. I hope so. It may just tear me apart though.”

  Werthin said, “If anyone can do it, Windfollower, it is you.”

  Shakre thought of how many years she had tried to shed that title, to be free of the wind, to go back to the time before she drew the wind’s notice. Now she must do the opposite and embrace the wind. Now she would never be free. But all this she would do and so much more to save the lives of those who were dear to her.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try.”

  “Are you sure there is nothing I can do to help?” Werthin asked.

  She started to say no, then reconsidered. The wind would supply the power to pull her from her body, but she also needed strength to help her hold onto it.

  “Actually, there is. I will need help hanging onto the wind and I am already tired. But you should know that when I take LifeSong from you, it will leave you weakened.”

  “I do not care,” the young man said stoutly. “There is no sacrifice if it helps our people.”

  Shakre sat down cross legged on the ground. The ground rumbled and smoke drifted around her. They were running out of time. Werthin sat beside her and she took his hand. “Just relax,” she told him. “Don’t fight me. Also, concentrate on me as much as you can. When I am finished, I will need your help to find my way back here.” He nodded and she looked up at the Takare. “If I do not return soon, if I do not respond to whatever you say or do, leave me here.” She looked at Rehobim as she said this and he nodded grimly. The others might protest, but he would do it. “It will mean I have lost myself in the wind. There won’t be anything you can do and I will only hold you back.”

  All at once Youlin sat down on the other side of her and offered her hand. She had pulled her hood back, revealing her short-cropped black hair. “Draw from me as well,” she said curtly. At that moment she looked very young. “I do not know exactly what it is you do now, but I am feeling that this is much more treacherous than you would have us believe. I am strong. I can help.”

  Shakre took her hand as well, then closed her eyes. She blocked everything from her mind, shutting out the roar of the nearby fire, the periodic cracking of the earth, the fear and desperation that kept rising within her. She shut it all out and allowed herself to fall into the mists of beyond.

  There was no need to call the aranti, the creatur
es in the wind. They were everywhere, appearing as pale blue streaks that shot here and there, never still. At times they coalesced into something that looked like clouds, but clouds made up of amorphous masses of blue light, within which white light periodically flashed, like lightning within a thundercloud. There were faces within those clouds of light, appearing only briefly, then disappearing and reappearing elsewhere. The faces looked frightened.

  One of the ethereal creatures seemed familiar, though Shakre could not have said how. Briefly she wondered if it had not been the wind bothering her all these years, but instead a single aranti. Why had the idea never occurred to her?

  Shakre focused on it and lowered her inner walls.

  Come.

  The aranti raced to her, others crowding behind it. She kept the opening very small, knowing she would never be able to manage more than one of the creatures. Small as the opening was, the aranti noticed it immediately and crowded in.

  As soon as it was within her she clamped down on it. It began fighting immediately. It was like clinging to a wild animal. Now was when she was glad for Werthin and Youlin. She drew heavily on them, hoping she was not hurting them, but knowing she had no real choice. They did not really know the risk, but they accepted it, as did she, to save those they loved.

  The wind was slippery. It thrashed harder, trying to escape the very place it had so long tried to gain entrance to. Shakre clamped down harder, knowing she was losing her grip, but unwilling to give up. Mentally she shouted at it.

  For so long I have done as you wished. I have followed your whims. Now you will serve my wishes!

  It screamed back at her in its unintelligible, myriad voices, but she had no way of knowing if it understood her or cared.

  It seemed not, because she felt her hold slipping and knew she was losing.

  All the Takare watched as Shakre closed her eyes and went beyond. A short time later she began to twitch. The twitching grew more pronounced. Her hands tightened on Werthin and Youlin and the shaking eased. Then it grew stronger again. Meanwhile, Werthin and Youlin’s faces paled and they seemed to droop.