"Are you casting?" Tirith demanded, recoiling as if expecting something to leap out of the table at him. Iceblade reached out and lay a hand on top of Vankyar's, halting the movement of her hands. She laughed, tossing her head back.
"She only fidgets," Iceblade rasped at his brother. "She is no sorcerer, and you know it. Attend your fear and stop being so foolish." He pushed a piece of blank paper under his aunt's hands and released her. She began tracing patterns on the paper with her fingertips. The painted soldier without an eye patched covertly placed a piece of charcoal within her reach. Iceblade caught the movement but said nothing. Vankyar pulled the charcoal toward herself and began using it on the paper.
"Spider," said Iceblade. "Tell me what you've learned of my bride."
The patched man shrugged uneasily. "I have no trace of her, aside from the knowledge that two groups of backward scouts have not returned. The bodies of the first group were found in some little town you'd already destroyed. Also, no more soldiers come from the Vansheen pass. It seems likely she's up there somewhere, but there is no way for us to get up there now."
I shivered, moving closer to the table.
"Well," Tirith began impatiently. "How did our soldiers get down?"
"There was a hidden path, my lord," Spider said. "That path has disappeared, where it was now only a wall of snow stands, as hard as if it were made of stone."
"Avalanche?" Tirk asked.
"That doesn't seem possible," Spider said. "Maybe farther up in the mountains, but this is at the base, through a forest. There wasn't enough snow for an avalanche. In my opinion."
Tirith snorted, waving a disinterested hand.
Spider ignored the younger brother. "The path just closed itself, as far as I can tell. We still have soldiers coming through the more unknown passes and also those who come to us from Dragon's Tooth itself. Also, the Harborlands passes have been dealt with, and new soldiers come through there as well."
"She's not on the mountain," Vankyar whispered. Her hands paused in her drawing and she looked up at me, her shadowed eyes meeting mine. Without a word, she turned back to her charcoal and paper.
"Can you dowse for her, Vankyar?" Iceblade asked, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair and interlacing his hands before him. He seemed relaxed, but his eyes were intense. I shivered again, feeling a flush sweep up my neck and across my face.
"If I dowse for her tonight, I will not find her," Vankyar sang, her attention on her drawing. "I will dowse in the daylight, perhaps, when she will not wander."
Iceblade looked at the unpatched soldier. "Deaward, when Vankyar finds her, I expect you and at least half your company to be ready to move immediately to bring her to me. Half your company will be perfect, in fact – you will be able to move faster that way."
"I am ready now, my Prince," Deaward said. "We could move within minutes of your order."
Iceblade nodded his favor.
Tirith sighed, shifting in his chair like a child who has been asked to sit still for too long. "You can't be that hard up, brother," he said. "Just do as I do, there's plenty of women to be found in this backwater of a country."
Iceblade leveled a glacial stare on his brother. "Unwilling women do not please me, and forcing them is the domain of the weak." Tirith flushed angrily. "Besides that fact, there are women aplenty who have offered themselves since this campaign began. This woman I search for, my bride, is intended for no quick rutting. If I hold her, nothing may stand against us. Please attempt to keep that in mind, difficult as the task may be for you, brother."
"You may not just hold her," Vankyar reminded him, grinning. "You must take her and fill her belly with child." I glared at her, denying the heat that filled my flesh at the carnal images her words brought. She turned her grin on me.
Tirith snickered. "For all you know, Iceblade, she is half again your age and ugly as Deaward's backside. Do you really think you can fill her womb then?"
Cur laughed, a deep, rumbling sound that left me uneasy. "If you don't want her," it growled. "I will take her." It laughed again. I felt my stomach twist in revulsion.
Iceblade stared at his brother without speaking for long moments, until Tirith dropped his eyes with a forced sneer. "She is five years younger than me, and should she have two heads, I will do as I must. If you cannot keep your asinine tongue still on this matter, I will cut it out of your head." Tirith nodded his head, not looking at his brother. Spider and Deaward shared a silent smirk.
Vankyar finished drawing and pushed her picture across the table toward me, turning it so it faced me right side up. "Is this you?" she whispered to me. I looked down at it. There was an intricate pattern traced on the paper, twisting and intertwined. At first glance that was all the paper contained, but looking closer I saw my face hidden inside the pattern, disguised by perfectly symmetrical loops. It almost appeared as if I was being held prisoner within the pattern. Horrified, I stared back up at Vankyar. She laughed.
"Who do you speak to, Vankyar?" Iceblade asked.
"Your bride," she said. Iceblade came to his feet, the other men following him. I backed away from the table.
"Where is she?" Iceblade hissed, his rough voice taut.
"She sleeps far from here," Vankyar said. "And in her sleep she has found herself among us."
Tirith rolled his eyes, flopping back into his chair. With a curt gesture and a hand on his aunt's shoulder, Iceblade dismissed everyone but Vankyar from his presence. Tirith and the others filed from the room, Spider giving his master a backwards glance. In his glance I read worshipping, and some sort of jealousy at not being chosen to stay. Cur hauled itself to its feet. As it passed me, it chuckled, then walked a circle around me before leaving the room. My hand pressed against my chest, again I felt revulsion, this time tinged with fear.
Iceblade pulled the drawing toward him with one finger, turning it so he could inspect it. Still, looking at the drawing, tracing the intertwined lines with an index finger, he spoke to his aunt. "Do you see her now, Vankyar?"
"No," she said, turning her face from me. She reached out a thin finger to trace her drawing in mimicry of her nephew, and I saw that she deliberately smudged the drawing as she did. For whatever reason, she was protecting me for the moment, though what harm Iceblade could do me when I was in spirit form, I did not know.
"I have felt the presence of a spirit beside me from time to time," he said with obvious reluctance. "Is this spirit her?"
"I cannot know that," she sang. "I was not there."
"You cannot See if she is the watching spirit?"
Vankyar stopped smudging the drawing and studied Iceblade's face gravely. He too stopped tracing the picture, and sat down to face her, holding her gaze. She took his hand gently, and he made no move to stop her. "Nephew, I would give you anything you asked of me that an aunt may give. I do not keep you from your bride, but it is not for me to explain the whole of the unseen world to you. When the time is right, you will know her, and your questions laid to rest, as it was told. I counsel only patience."
He sighed with something near pain, and the sound tore at me. "I will do as I must," he said. "If you are tired, Aunt, I will see you to your chamber."
"I grow more tired every day," she murmured. They stood, she placed her hand in the crook of his arm, and he led her from the room.
I moved to look at the drawing, and saw that Vankyar had smudged out only the lines making up my face.
I awoke to an overcast and bitterly cold morning. The others were already up and gathered closely around the breakfast fire.
"We're going to have to move quickly," Nefen said. "We may outrun the coming storm."
"More likely we'll need to take shelter in one of the wrecked villages," Selas said, packing up camp and ignoring the biscuits and tea offered by Daltorn. Wyntan, Nefen and Samar bolted theirs back and began to help pack. Daltorn and I cleaned up after breakfast and put the fire out. We all packed biscuits into our belt pouches.
"If we hea
d west and a bit north, there used to be a small village about half a day from here," Selas said. "It was right on the source of the Beal River. We'll make it if we go fast enough."
"I'd say it could still be there, but if the dark army will go out of their way to destroy a family settlement, there's little enough hope of that," Nefen said. "I've seen two small family settlements completely obliterated, near my father's home."
We would have moved faster if it hadn't been for the donkey. It seemed frightened by the snow, and Selas nearly had to drag it. The snow flirted with us for about an hour before deciding to beat us into the ground. The wind picked up, carrying sharp little bits of ice, and the snow grew so thick I couldn't see more than five feet in any direction. Selas lashed us together in a line with a good length of rope. He and Daltorn took the front, followed by me and Samar. Wyntan and Nefen were next, and last of all, the stubborn donkey.
The wind was so harsh and strong it knocked me off my feet more than once as we fought our way along. Snow blew up inside my cloak and sifted down into my boots. It sealed my nose and froze my hair in a long, braided icicle. The air froze in my lungs. We struggled along, but soon there was no way to tell which way we were going, I couldn't even see Daltorn in front of me.
Time passed, but without the sun I couldn't tell how much. Each step became a battle for my trembling legs, each breath burned with cold. My feet disappeared into numbness. The whole of my life revolved around the rope around my waist, that it was still taut and moving along on both sides of me told me that my companions yet lived.
After some time, I realized that we had turned around somehow, and were now following the donkey. I had no objection left in me. It was clear the others felt the same.
We came to a sudden halt. I felt the rope jerking and pulling me about as Selas trudged through deep snow to reach the head of the line and the donkey. Over the shrill and eerie howl of the wind, I heard his shout.
The donkey had found a building. After Daltorn and Wyntan forced open the door, we stumbled in, donkey and all, and worked together to shove the door closed against the storm. The donkey snorted and stamped its feet in relief.
We all stood close, stamping and shaking off the snow and ice. Though the building was unheated, it was a good deal warmer than the winds outside, and with a little chafing my numb hands came painfully back to life. When I was done, I looked around.
Our fine donkey had found a building unburned by Iceblade's army. It was a good size farm cottage, with a cooking fireplace at one end and a couple animal pens at the other. In between was a rough table with three legged stools and a ragged looking bed, and several different storage bins and cabinets. Selas whistled his pleasure – a tall stack of wood stood near the fireplace.
He set Daltorn and Wyntan to building up a fire. Nefen and Samar checked the packs to see what could be salvaged of our supplies. I looked over the bins and cabinets to see if anything useful could be found, and came across stores of flour, dried meat, grease, and dried fruits and vegetables, as well as cooking utensils and clay dishes. Selas led the donkey down to the animal pen and cared for it. There was hay and a barrel filled with oats.
Daltorn brought in a kettle full of snow to melt over the fire, and I set to cooking us a stew with the dried meat and vegetables, with a little flour as a thickener and some dried savory herbs to give it a better flavor. I swung the stew over the fire on the cooking arm, and set to making biscuits. There was a deeply pleasant sense of purpose in feeding a group.
While the food cooked, we changed out of our wet clothes into whatever we had among us that was dry, supplemented by dusty clothes found on a shelf above the bed. I ended up in long woolen underwear from the shelf and a way too large shirt from Daltorn's pack, everything in mine was soaked. Samar changed without thought of modesty, I turned my back to the men, unable to muster her lack of concern. Banning tumbled out of my tunic and slithered to lay on the hearthstone of the fireplace. He had been too cold around my wrist out in the storm, and was afraid he'd fall asleep and fall off. With a mental apology to me, he had found his way up the arm of the tunic and came to rest against my belly, just above my sash. I was grateful he'd found a way to make it through the storm with us.
We hung our wet things wherever we found a spot around the cottage, mostly on the rails around the animal pens. Selas sternly ordered the donkey not to eat any of our things. When we were done, the food was ready. With a group sigh of thankfulness, for the warmth, the shelter, the food – we sat down to eat. There were only four stools on the dirt floor, so Samar and I sat on the comfortable wide bed, each of us with a bowl of food on our knee.
Nefen and Samar cleaned up after supper. Daltorn and Wyntan brought in buckets of snow to melt for water. I sat at the table with Selas. We were all exhausted, but we needed to figure out where we were going after the storm ended.
"I don't know where we are," Selas said, looking over the map he laid on the table. "This is where we were this morning, and this here" he poked the map with a gnarled finger – "Is where we were headed."
I pointed to the west of where we started. An unlabeled heart-city was marked there, distinguished from a regular town by a tiny shield within its circle. "This is where we need to be next. There may be a survivor left there. There's something there we're meant to have. Then from there we can go straight to Reckonwood."
Banning called out from the hearth. "We may be able to find out where we are!" I lifted him onto the table.
"I see you've been fed," I said, indicated his bulging neck.
"Samar gave me some stew," the snake said, with a hint of smugness, as if Samar were a would-be girlfriend. "She took care of me while you were gone and then unconscious as well."
I looked at her, smiling. "Thank you," I said.
No big task, she signed back, with an affectionate glance at the small serpent.
"Enough chatter. What needs to be done?" Selas snapped.
"Dowsing. We need a key on a string," Banning said. Selas dug in his pack and pulled out one small, partly rusty iron key on a leather thong. "Perfect!" Banning exclaimed. "Or nearly so – obviously quite a bit hard used, but there's no saying we need to have a pristine..." The snake fell silent at Selas' glare. "Ahem. Well then. Ada must hold the key over the map by the string, and give it a bit of a swing, like a pendulum. If she closes her eyes, and concentrates on where we are, the key may stop over our location. Maybe. If dowsing is one of her gifts."
I held the key by the leather thong over the map as ordered. My eyes closed, I thought hard about this cottage, the sights and smells of it, the dirt floor, the stone walls. I could feel myself pulling away from my physical body, pulling toward the map. Without thinking I dropped the key, my first finger lowering to touch the map. As my finger passed over the cities and villages marked there, images flooded my mind. Villages burned, like Berowalt. Villages that survived, but whose lords and judges had been executed, replaced by flunkies of Iceblade. Greater cities subjugated overnight. To the west, a ruling city of a low kingdom, I saw the Queen and her teenage daughter huddling behind a locked door while someone beat on the other side. The door shook and fell, and behind it was Tirith, a bloody sword in his hand and a grin on his face, a grin both pleased and vile. He stepped in to the room with anticipation. My vision went dark and I flew back from the table.
I opened my eyes and sat up. Samar was stabbing at the map, her movements enraged, tears streaking her face, her mouth opening in eerie soundless screams of wrath and anguish. She stabbed furiously hard, over and over, until half the map was gone, until chunks of the table flew out at us, until her dagger broke in her hands.
She sank onto the floor. I wrapped my arms around her and was overwhelmed with images again. Tirith's face. He was pouring something that burned, seared, down Samar's throat and I felt it in my own, something that stole away her voice and stopped the sound of her screams. Rough hands held her still for this torture and I felt them on me as well. Tirith's laughter was loud an
d jarring. Blankness – then his face again – the sky above him, his body moving within Samar's as he violated her, his face contorted with hatred and pleasure. When he finished, he pulled a slim dagger from his boot, I felt it pierce me/Samar between my legs, then blankness again.
I felt male hands pulling me away from Samar and sitting me up on the bed. With a start of terror, I opened my eyes, hitting out with my hands. Wyntan and Nefen were helping me sit up, Wyntan gripped my flailing hand and cradled it against his chest. Daltorn had picked up Samar and was holding her like a kitten, she was so small compared to him. She was hitting him in the face and chest, clawing and kicking. He just held her gently, accepting her fury, his face a mask of grief. At long last she fell against him, her shoulders shaking, taking the comfort and safety he offered.
We all sat in silence. I looked around, every one of us were stunned and haggard. Even Selas' hand was shaking.
"You were... sharing your visions," Nefen said finally, his voice cracking.
"So, do you know where we are?" Selas barked, then flushed at the unnatural loudness.
I stood up and looked at what was left of the map. The key lay near a river whose name was lost in the damage. "The key fell where we stand," I said. "Look to the point of it."
Selas gave a short nod. "Well, the donkey didn't lead us far off then – that's the Beal. The city you pointed at earlier, Remanil, is just up around the other bank. When the storm ends, we'll go there, look around, then head almost due west to Reckonwood. Now everyone, bed down."
I obeyed without question, and so did everyone else. Samar and I took the bed, and the others rolled out their bedding on the floor. Next to me, the scarred woman trembled in her sleep. I couldn't comfort her, I was afraid my touch would either panic her or bring the visions back. My heart felt badly dented.
Iceblade Page 9
