Unbroken Chain: The Darker Road

by Jaleigh Johnson

  “What about the mountains?” Baelthis said. “There are dangers enough up there to kill us all without the monsters’ help. Crevasses to bury whole wagons, avalanches, storms—”

  “And the spirits,” Ilvani said. “The spirits of Rashemen claim that land. We walk in their footsteps.”

  “The monsters and the brigands will face those same dangers if they follow us,” Vlahna said.

  “Which means we can use them,” Tuva said. A fit of violent coughing overtook him then, and he spat more blood on the snow. Kaibeth and Vlahna exchanged grim looks.

  Skagi came forward and spread his cloak on a clear patch near the ruins of a stone hut. “Put him down here. He needs to take the weight off his feet so he can breathe.”

  “I’m fine,” Tuva barked. “Gods, I haven’t been this clearheaded in a tenday.” But he allowed the women to lower him to the makeshift bed.

  “We’ll need that clearheadedness to make a plan of attack,” Vlahna said. “Drovers, you’ll come with me to collect the gear and get the wagons in order. Guards, collect the horses. You know what to do with the injured beasts.” She looked at Kaibeth. “Will you help me?”

  Kaibeth nodded. She instructed her sellswords to help with the wounded. Skagi, Cree, and Ilvani went with them.

  The crowd slowly dispersed. Each had their task to focus on, so that fear would not overtake them. Tatigan motioned to Ashok. Ashok got down off the nightmare’s back and went to where he, Daruk, and the Martucks stood near Tuva’s pallet. Mareyn shadowed the boy and kept watch. She still clutched her ribs from where she’d hit the stones, but she walked steadily and looked clear-eyed. They all looked uneasy at seeing the nightmare so close among them. The stallion’s aura of fear and evil was impossible to ignore, but no one remarked on it so long as the beast kept silent.

  “Baelthis isn’t a coward,” Tatigan said. “If he says our chances are bad, he means it. You three need to devise a strategy to get us through the mountains.” He pointed at Ashok, Tuva, and Daruk. Ashok was surprised to find the bard included in the group.

  The bard caught Ashok’s look and smiled. “Don’t worry, fire bringer. I may not be shadar-kai, but I know how to compose a play. You all get to be my actors.”

  “I could make a jest about this turning from a farce to a tragedy,” Mareyn said dryly, “but I won’t.”

  Tatigan and the Martucks chuckled, which eased a bit of the tension.

  “Let’s get to work, then,” Tuva said. “However the story ends, it begins at first light.”

  They reached the foothills of the Sunrise Mountains by midday. The snow held off for most of the morning, though the clouds were heavy and ominous the whole way. When they reached the last stone marker before the mountain pass, thick flakes began to fall, but the hills gave them a respite from the wind. The going was slow enough, but not impossible.

  Ashok trailed behind the caravan, keeping only Skagi and Cree in sight ahead of him. The brothers rode their horses back as close as they dared every hour or so to check on him. They worried he would lose sight of the caravan and risk fading in the blank whiteness, but Ashok’s senses were alert.

  The deeper they forged into the mountains, the higher the rock walls. There were many places for an ambush, many cracks and crevices for enemies to hide. They were walking into the mouth of the beast, and all of them knew it. Ashok was ready.

  Cree rode back to him an hour later. “See anything?” he asked.

  Ashok shook his head. “It will come soon,” he said.

  “I feel it too,” Cree said. “Skagi’s about to jump out of his skin.”

  “And Ilvani?”

  Cree’s brow furrowed. Ashok felt a surge of trepidation.

  “She doesn’t look well,” Cree said. “She tried to sleep earlier, but she’s having dreams, bad ones. I asked her about them, but she’s not making sense. Skagi thinks it might be the nightmare tormenting her—revenge for what happened out on the plain. What do you think?”

  “It’s the spirits,” Ashok said. “Whatever got into her head before is back again, and it’s drawing in all the monsters.” He clenched his hands into fists. “We should have turned away from Rashemen before we got too deep in the spirit land. She was fine when it was only this world she had to worry about.”

  Cree listened, but Ashok could tell the warrior didn’t fully understand. Neither did Ashok. He wasn’t convinced the witches would understand Ilvani’s affliction, either, or choose to help someone who wasn’t one of their own people, but now it was their only choice.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  AGNY HAS ARRIVED,” REINA SAID.

  “I know.” Standing with her back to the healer, Sree gazed across the lake. She felt the presence of the other hathran as she felt the movement of the water. She buried her face in her cloak hood for a breath to warm her skin.

  “Shall I fetch Elina?” the ethran asked.

  “Yes, but don’t tell her anything. I don’t want to frighten her.”

  When Sree turned, she saw Agny dismount at the inn. A stable boy immediately came out, bowed to the hathran, and took charge of her horse. The woman patted his shoulder.

  Agny was on the grayer side of fifty winters, with leathery hands and a mask carved with symbols of water: hands cupping it, rain falling from the sky, a water spirit crouching by her left eye. She wore a gray and red wool dress, frayed and muddied around the edges from travel. The hathran walked stiff-jointed and carried a gnarled wood staff whose power Sree could feel even from this distance.

  “Well met, Sister.” Sree held out her hands, and Agny clasped them tightly. Her eyes behind the mask were unreadable, but Sree sensed affection in the old woman’s grip.

  “You look as if you’ve seen dark days,” Agny said. Her voice rang out clipped and strong. Age and toil had not dulled her mind, not even a bit.

  “You feel it, don’t you?” Sree said. “The telthors are shaking the earth.”

  “I feel the fear in the villagers, as well. That boy was drowning in it. You must not let this continue,” Agny chided. “Come.” She folded Sree’s arm through her own, and together they walked beside the lake. “If the spirits are displeased, we must act to set right whatever wrong called forth their ire. It’s the only way you will find peace in Tinnir again.”

  “What of the child?” Sree asked. “She is innocent in all this, yet the disturbances seem to happen whenever she is near. What if the spirits hurt her?”

  “They will not. I’m sure of that. She is the vessel,” Agny said. “The spirits are angry that Yaraella took her own life. They punish us, they remind us, by surrounding her child with violence.”

  “They should punish me,” Sree said. “I failed Yaraella by not teaching her properly. If I had done my duty, she would have embraced the path of the wychlaran instead of shunning her talents. She would have become a powerful hathran, a link to the spirits—”

  “Do not torment yourself with things that can never be,” Agny said. “You honor Yaraella’s memory by protecting her child. We must look to the child now to guide us. Tell me, where is she now?”

  “Reina is bringing her here,” Sree said. “She is calmest by the lake.”

  Agny’s sharp eyes bored into Sree. “Now I hear the fear in your voice, Sister. What are you not telling me? What is the child like when she is not calm?”

  Sree dropped her gaze. “Yesterday at dawn I caught her with a knife. She’d cut herself up and down her arms. I got to her before she did irreparable harm, but it could have been much worse. When I asked her why she’d done it …”

  “Yes?” Agny prompted. “Did the spirits speak to her? I cannot believe they would have told her to do this to herself—”

  “No,” Sree said. “No, it wasn’t the spirits, Elina said. She said it was the shadow people.”

  “Shadow people?” Agny said. “But if she wasn’t speaking of spirits, what manner of creature did she see?” Agny stiffened, as if she’d felt a shift in the wind. She
turned. “Never mind. I’ll ask her myself.”

  Reina walked toward them. She led Elina by the hand. The child stepped clumsily, trying to put her own small feet in the footprints left in the snow by Sree and Agny. Sree hung back as Agny approached the child and went down on her knees in the snow. She laid her staff on the ground beside her and held out her arms to the child, just as she’d done to Sree.

  Elina froze with one foot held in the air. She stumbled, and only Reina’s hands kept her from falling. When the ethran tried to nudge her forward, the child clung to her skirt and hid her face from Agny.

  “Don’t be afraid, Elina,” the hathran said. Her voice was gentle. “I was a friend to your mother. I knew her when she was your age.” She reached inside the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a fist-sized wooden box with blue waves painted on the outside. “She made this box for me.”

  Hearing the word “box,” Elina turned her face to look. Her hair hung down in her eyes, but she followed Agny’s movements as the hathran lifted the box lid to reveal a tiny painting of a waterfall that spilled from the lid to the bottom of the box in a cloud of white foam.

  “She painted this for me, so I would always remember the waterfalls I saw on my dajemma. It was the only journey I ever made beyond Rashemen.” She closed the lid and held out the box. “I think your mother would want you to have it. It would make me happy to give it to you.”

  Tentatively—though Sree could see the desire in her eyes—the child took a step away from Reina, then another and another until she was just within reach of the box. She reached up her hand and took it, her fingers barely brushing the hathran’s.

  It was enough. Sree watched Agny’s eyes widen. She wondered what the old woman had sensed from the contact, but she dared not question her in front of the child. Elina took the box and walked up to Sree with her arms outstretched. Sree obligingly picked her up.

  “Elina,” she said, “Agny has come a long way to visit us. She wants to know more about what happened the day you fell asleep behind the woodpile.”

  The child shook her head fiercely, but Agny laid a hand on her arm. “I won’t make you speak of it, little one. All I want is for you and I, and Reina and Sree—the four of us—to join together to think of your mother and the spirits. We will remember her and comfort one another. Will you join me in this, Elina?”

  Elina hesitated and glanced at Sree. Sree nodded encouragement and patted her on the back. The little girl finally nodded and then shyly buried her face in Sree’s neck.

  “My deepest thanks, Elina. You are a brave girl,” Agny said. The hathran looked to Sree, and her expression turned resolute. “Will you take me to Yaraella’s resting place?”

  “I thought it best if we communed here,” Sree said, gesturing to the lake. “I’ve a boat prepared for our use, so that you may be on the water during the joining.”

  Agny looked surprised. “But surely, Sister, the connection will be strongest around Yaraella. That is the place the spirits will gather.”

  “It may,” Sree allowed. She hated to speak of this in front of Elina, but Agny’s sharp eyes looked expectantly to her for an answer. “But we already have a strong center for this joining”—she hoped Agny would take her meaning without her having to frighten Elina by referring to her as a pawn in a ritual—“and to add the sacred ground of Yaraella’s spirit to this. I fear the power might be too much for some of us.”

  “Very well,” Agny said. “I defer to your judgment in this, Sister. Lead on.”

  Sree breathed a silent sigh of relief. Carrying Elina, she led the witches down the lakeshore to a small dock. Moored to one of the pilings was a boat, the bow carved with symbols of mountain peaks and flames. It was an odd grouping, when seen in that light: fire, mountain, water. But just as the symbols also represented hearth and home to Sree, so, too, did the water represent home to Agny. She’d been born on this lake and rocked to her first sleep by the motion of a fisherman’s felucca. No matter how frigid the waters became in the deep winter, Agny would rather swim than walk; she would rather be on a boat than on land. Sree often thought the water spirits had helped bring Agny into the world that long-ago day on the ship. Now they claimed part of her soul.

  Agny stepped onto the boat first, then Sree and the child. Reina untied the mooring rope, and the four of them settled down on wooden plank benches. Agny closed her eyes and touched her mask with both hands. The wind lifted her gray hair. Sree breathed in deeply and caught the scent of Agny’s magic surrounding the boat. It nudged the craft away from the dock and pushed it toward the middle of the lake.

  The few other craft they encountered gave way immediately when the fishermen saw the two hathrans. They bowed their heads as the witches drifted silently past.

  It was colder out here where there was nothing to stop the wind. Sree held Elina close so the child could share her body heat, but Elina did not shiver. She didn’t speak either. Her unnatural silence had always troubled Sree. What feelings might she be concealing?

  She had not spoken about the incident with the sheep and the stillborn child. Sree knew there was some malignant force at work, a force strong enough to kill. If Elina knew what it was, she wasn’t telling, and her silence struck Sree with fear.

  The boat stopped within sight of the shore. Agny’s power wrapped around the craft and sent up restless jets of water. A wet, frigid breeze blew in Sree’s face, but her mask shielded her from the worst of the cold. Behind her, Reina pulled her cloak close around herself and moved so that they were sitting in a loose circle with Elina in the center. Sree joined hands with Agny and Reina. Agny’s flesh was warm despite the frigid air—a measure of her great power and connection to the lake and its spirits.

  Elina sat quietly within their circle, watching each of the witches. The ethran closed her eyes and dropped into a meditative state. The healer’s place was to support, not direct, the ritual. Sree understood that support would be her task as well. She was also a hathran, equal in the ranks of the wychlaran to Agny, but Agny had been born here, in Tinnir, on the same waters that were the village’s lifeblood. Sree had not lived here as long. She was a teacher; she went where her sisters needed her to help other potential witches embrace their powers.

  Until her failure with Yaraella, Sree had considered herself a very good teacher.

  Sree tried to put these thoughts from her mind. Self-doubt had no place here in this circle. They gathered now for Elina, and for the people of the village who looked to them for guidance and protection. For their sake, she must not waver.

  Sree closed her eyes and cleared her mind. She felt Agny’s power rise up over the sides of the boat and envelop them. Suddenly she was warm, very warm. Her skin tingled with renewed vitality. She felt her cloak, her dress, and Elina’s small, cold hands gripping her skirt. Every sensation heightened, until Sree gasped with the force of it.

  What was this experience? She could hear her heartbeat, long, slow thuds that moved the blood in hot strokes through her veins.

  “We feel you, spirits.” Agny’s breath sounded as labored as Sree’s own. Reina gripped her hand and uttered a soft whimper. “We are one with you. Tell us your will. We ask you to speak to us on behalf of this child, who is in our hearts and minds. Look into her soul, and tell us why this evil force haunts her. Spirits, tell us why on behalf of her mother, Yaraella, who departed from us by her own hand. Will you protect Yaraella’s child? Will you show us the way to earn forgiveness for our sins?”

  The vision broke over Sree in a rush. She heard Reina’s sharp cry, and Agny abruptly stopped speaking. Distantly, Sree became aware that Elina had crawled into her lap and held her tightly around the waist, but these details were secondary to what she was seeing in her inner reality.

  Four figures—three men and a woman by their shapes—stood on a mountain. More than that Sree couldn’t make out. The vision came at the four from a wide, soaring angle, like a bird diving down to capture prey. Were they telthors? Or perhaps Sree and her siste
rs rode on the wings of the spirits to a place the telthors wanted them to see. Sree waited impatiently for the vision to resolve itself.

  As they flew closer, Sree realized that her heartbeat, the surge in her blood intensified. She felt as if her veins were on fire. Was this an attack from the four? She saw them plainly now. They had the faces and forms of humans, but their skin was the color of ashes, and their eyes were flat black, with no whites or color visible. One of them was missing an eye, and they were all terribly scarred—their spirits as well as their flesh. Inky black shadows surrounded the four of them, though the biggest concentration seemed to center on a man with long, matted gray hair. He carried a spiked chain in his hand and guided the others.

  Sree turned her gaze to the woman. She wanted to memorize all the faces before the vision soared past the four figures. Her skin and eyes were exactly like the others, but she had pale red hair and a skeletal slenderness that made Sree think she would break in a harsh wind. She seemed unafraid of the mountain, the howling wind, or the blowing snow that filled the air.

  The mountain—Sree hadn’t realized it until now, but she knew the mountains in the vision. Of course she did. The symbols carved on her mask were imitations of those majestic peaks, the Sunrise Mountains.

  They were close to Rashemen’s border. Surely, they could have nothing to do with Elina or the disturbances in the village. Yet why would the spirits show them this unless they were important? Unless they were a threat?

  Sree started to shift her gaze to the other two men, when suddenly the woman turned and looked directly at her. Sree was so shocked, she almost pulled back and lost the connection to her sisters. She told herself it was just a coincidence—there was no way the woman could see them, not when the vision existed by the spirits’ will—but the way the woman’s piercing black eyes seemed to bore into Sree was deeply unsettling. Then, the woman raised her hand and made a shooing motion toward Sree.