by Kate Elliott
An old-fashioned name, in keeping with this gods-forsaken isolated wilderness. “Where did this eagle come from?”
“I don’t know.”
“How does it happen that she jessed you?”
“I couldn’t bear to leave even after they were dead. She just flew out of the sky one day. She’d been left behind, like me, I guess. We’ve been together ever since. I fish. There’s plenty of game for one eagle.”
She asked more questions, but he knew nothing of the world beyond his humble fishing village south of here. In truth, he was hard to understand, even after the assizes had accustomed her to the northern way of talking.
“Clan Hall must be told that an entire reeve hall fled here and was betrayed and massacred.”
“What is Clan Hall?” He sat up cautiously, glancing toward his eagle, who had opened her wings to sun. “I know the tales. Clan Hall isn’t one of the six reeve halls.”
“They are the seventh hall. They supervise the other six halls.”
“That’s not in the tales. Maybe they’re the ones who did the murder. If my reeves trusted them, they’d have gone there, wouldn’t they?”
It was a good question. Why hadn’t Horn Hall gone for help to Clan Hall? Why flee here?
“Anyhow,” he added, “if we leave here, them ones who killed the rest might see us and kill us, too.”
“You’ve already been seen. They’re already coming for you. I came to warn you.”
He frowned, a simple lad forced to comprehend twisted minds. “You might be luring me away to kill me. Best I stay where I know the land. I have hiding spots. No one will find me.”
“I found you.”
“I swore I’d watch over this place, for it’s their Sorrowing Tower, isn’t it? The gods have scoured them clean. Their spirits have passed the gate. I’m the watchman. It’s a holy obligation. I have to stay, and you can’t make me go. Why should I trust you, anyhow?”
She rose. Why should he trust anyone? Yet the folk at that assizes had trusted her, because they still trusted the old ways. As he might.
“Badinen, have you not yet recognized what I am? I am a Guardian. I’ve come to take you where you need to go, for the sake of those who died.”
• • •
THE VAST FOREST known as the Wild breathed with a hidden heart. Born and raised in the desert, Shai choked on the thick green canopy that surrounded him. Vines tangled on every trail, and even so the deer tracks were the only way to get around if you were stuck walking, as he was, scraping his way through branches, leaves, ferns, and the trailing threads of barbed vine the wildings jokingly called “oo!-aa!” He wiped his brow clean of the moisture that dripped from leaves above, then thrust the tip of his staff into a curtain of dangling vines as thick as a woman’s arms. His probe rousted no snakes or stinging wasps or biting lizards.
He wiped his brow again, more from nerves than moisture. Had they actually lost track of him this time?
With the staff angled to part a way, he plunged forward through the ropy vines, their smell as cloying as rotting pears. The vines began writhing along his back, and one leaped as might living creature and looped once twice thrice around his shoulders until he was trapped.
Whoop! Whoop!
Chortling and hooting, Brah and Sis slithered down from above and slapped Shai on the ass as they untangled him. Resigned, he allowed them to escort him back the way he had come.
Today’s attempt to flee had ended, as usual, in failure.
They were so cursed good-natured about it.
They chattered in their way, oo aa ee ai eh, gesturing with their hands, and he could no more fathom what it all meant than understand the forest’s complex net of life.
Go home, he signed to Brah. I want go home.
You wait, Brah replied in that patient way he had, like talking down to a child. More come. We talk.
They drank from a stream, hands cupped in the cold water. They threw stones at a gourd-fruit dangling high above although either of the wildings could have shimmied up the trunk and fetched it, but Shai’s aim was getting cursed good, almost as good as theirs, and when his cast stone brought it down, they whooped and shoved him to show what a good job he’d done. Sis slipped her flute out of its sheath on her back and, as they walked on, played a tune that ran like water, as an afternoon breeze rolled through the high canopy and the blue sky flashed in and out of view as branches swayed. Birds fluttered in the canopy; butterflies flared bright colors; insects hummed and lizards chirred as they leaped from bole to bole. His left shoulder still bore a scar from his first encounter with one of the lizards, and he had been stung by wasps several times. As for snakes, those he’d only seen lying in a stupor at the wilding village, glands being pumped for the milky liquid the wildings used to poison their darts.
The wildings placed no fetters on Shai. The forest imprisoned him more effectively than chains.
They came to the margin of a rocky hollow deep in the breathing heart of the Wild where the stately crowns of grandmother trees rose above the cliffs. Home was a complex structure of nets and roofs and platforms strung together throughout the hollow’s glades that it seemed the wildings were constantly constructing and reconstructing.
In the third glade, he had shaped a platform in the crook of a tree using deadwood lashed together with rope. He hadn’t any privacy, of course. He set his staff against the crossbeam he’d wedged in place for a ladder and scrambled up. A swarm of young ones followed. They brought scrips and scraps of deadfall—never greenwood—for him to carve with the fine iron knife they’d given him to replace the ones he’d lost. Everyone wanted a figure. As he began carving, the children settled respectfully to watch and a few elders with coats going silver dropped in. With ears flattened in greeting, they gestured to ask permission to sit while he worked. He could carve for the rest of his life and not satisfy them.
It was odd to be treated something like family and something like a hostage and something like a captive. He’d been all these things, but he wasn’t sure what he was to them, nor could he figure who the “more” were who were coming. As for the message he so desperately needed to get to Anji, it was certainly too late to prevent Hari tracking down the captain, yet he had much to report about Wedrewe and the Guardians. Day after day he fretted over the ambush in which the rebels had been killed. Had Hari betrayed them in a selfish and vain attempt to save Shai, or had he meant all along to betray Shai? Had Marit freed him for Hari’s sake, or his own? Where had she gone afterward? He wished there’d been time for her to seduce him!
Smiling, he sat, shaping a horse with the stocky frame of the Qin horses, creatures with little beauty but immeasurable toughness. The wildings had the gift of stillness and patience, just as he did, and the afternoon passed as he shaped the muzzle and flanks with particular care, recalling the horses he had ridden when he had traveled with Captain Anji’s troop from Kartu Town into the Mariha princedoms and thence over the border along the northwestern borderlands of the Sirniakan Empire and over the high Kandaran Pass into the Hundred.
So much had happened in the Hundred that it was difficult to recall his colorless life in Kartu Town. How had Vali and Judit and the other children fared, the ones he’d struggled to save? Would he see Tohon again? Was Zubaidit still alive? Was Mai happy? How strange it was to think of her in a peaceful house with a doting husband, given how Father Mei and his married brothers had treated their wives. Had she birthed a healthy baby?
Without warning, the wildings leaped into the trees. He set down the carving in its nest of wood flakes. The clearing lay half in shadow stretching from the west over cropped ground cover of springy dense leaves and tussocks of grass. A pair of redbirds scratching for insects on a sparse patch took wing. Not a single wilding was in sight.
He rose, knife in hand, and abruptly two older wildings dropped out of the trees and pulled him firmly behind a shield of leaves. A winged horse cantered down out of the sky as if following a track visible only to its
eyes and solid only under its hooves. The cloak, a rust-orange-brown color, rippled in the lazy wind, and where it parted it revealed a woman so very old Shai was amazed she had the strength to ride. Yet when she dismounted, she moved with remarkable agility for one so aged. She wore a thick brown-colored neck piece wrapped at her shoulders. The horse furled its wings and moved away.
As the shadows overtook her, the colors within her cloak changed subtly, turning deeper and richer in hue. She sketched the subtle gestures known to the wildings. These gestures, Shai thought, were those copied in less complex form in the tale-telling of the Hundred. What she spoke with her hands was far too complicated for him to follow, but a trio of elderly silver-haired wildings ambled into the clearing and replied with an elaborate greeting. They did not bow their heads or avert their eyes. Like Shai, wildings could face a cloak directly.
Even the incessant forest voices had fallen silent, only the wind speaking. They finished by displaying their hands, palms open, and raising eyes toward the forest canopy. A sturdy basket dropped from one of the grandmother trees, and she nodded, acquiescing, and climbed into it. As she was pulled up, the wildings climbed so swiftly after her it was as if the foliage swallowed them.
The two wildings released him and sped away into the gloom as night-watch fires were lit under the trees in stone hearths. Shai cautiously stepped into the glade. The mare, now cropping at the grass, bore a faint gleam as if its coat were burnished with sparks. In the corner of his eye, he caught the suggestion of a glimmering path, a road in the air, a tracery visible because of the contrast between its misty light and the coming night. Footsteps whispered on the earth, and Brah padded up to stand beside him and pat him companionably on the arm: Here I am.
“She’s a Guardian,” said Shai, knowing Brah could understand every word Shai spoke, even if Shai could understand so little of the wildings.
Yes. The gesture was accompanied by a roll of the eyes as if to add: Isn’t that obvious?
“Why has a Guardian come to the Wild? Why didn’t they want her to see me?”
Brah mimed a knife drawn across a throat.
“Because cloak of Night and her allies kill the gods-touched?”
Brah gave a little jump, a silent whoop, as if after all this time Shai had finally shown signs of intelligence.
“They’re afraid this one who came here will kill me?”
Brah shrugged, looking skyward. A conclave had taken life in the highest reaches of the nets, an assembly lit by the tapers woven out of wood litter and soaked in oil that were used around camp. The lights made constellations within the trees, and beyond them, as in a dark mirror, stars kindled. Shai glanced at Brah, who was shaped in some manner like humankind but in other ways was entirely unlike. He breathed as Shai breathed. He stared overhead at the lights of the conclave and at the spray of stars, just as Shai did. He licked his lips as though tasting the night.
“The Hundred is a strange place,” said Shai in a low voice. “In Kartu Town, where I came from, folk would have named you wildings or the lendings as demons, but here it seems demons have a human face.”
Brah indicated Shai and circled the oval of his face.
“A human face like mine?” said Shai. “Except I’m not a demon.”
Brah nodded. Yes. You.
“I’m not a demon!”
Sis trotted out of the darkness and grabbed Shai’s arm, swinging him around. A taper was descending from the canopy. A mature wilding appeared in its aura and indicated a basket. Brah and Sis, much subdued now, led Shai over and watched as he settled in. He was lifted, the basket swaying as it rose higher and higher until he wondered if he would reach the stars. Fortunately it was too dark for him to see the ground, but the night-watch fires were growing frighteningly small.
The basket lurched to a halt and strong wilding hands helped him clamber onto a net. His right foot slipped through the netting and he caught himself on his knees, gulping. There was nothing below him but air. He murmured a prayer to the Merciful One and slowly his racing heart calmed and he raised his eyes. The conclave flowed away along the net like a festival of lights. He crawled to get away from that horrifying edge before settling cross-legged. The wildings appeared as smudges against the canopy, but the old woman was clearly lit by tapers hung from even higher branches, as if they wanted to keep her well in sight.
Her voice, like her frame, was thin but her gaze was bright in the manner of a crow’s. “Outlander, I journeyed a long way in desperate circumstances to ask my cousins the wildings for aid in finding a safe haven for innocent folk who are in danger. But they refuse to hear me or heed me. Instead, these cousins have accused me of coming to kill you. Is it true you witnessed a woman wearing a Guardian’s cloak give the order for a demon to be killed?”
“A demon? I don’t know about that, but I’ve seen a Guardian order the deaths of many people, most innocent and some criminals. As for the gods-touched, with my own eyes I saw her captain kill a young gods-touched woman named Navita. With my ears, trapped in a cell, I heard her order soldiers to kill others whose only crime in her eyes was in being gods-touched.”
“So besides inflicting harm on humankind, this cloaked one has ordered the death of demons. Ones like you.”
“I’m not a demon! Among my people, demons are—” The word in his grandmother’s tongue, the old speech of Kartu Town that had been outlawed in favor of the trade speech Kartu’s conquerors preferred, had no corresponding word: evil. “Demons are beings who are corrupt in their heart, in their flesh, in their spirit.”
Her frown cut him. That quickly, he disliked her. “Outlanders have a perilous and imperfect understanding of the world, it is true. I suppose that is why the Four Mothers did their best to protect the Hundred against the flood of unwanted humanity that must continually wash in on the tide of years. Eight varieties of children were born to the Mothers: firelings, wildings, delvings, merlings, lendings, dragonlings, demons, and humankind. Once they were equal in numbers, and each had their role to play in the life of the Hundred: humankind, with their busy hands; the merlings in the sea and the delvings in the stone; the lendings to walk the boundary between earth and sky, and the wildings to tend the net that binds the Hundred, all that lives and grows and changes. The firelings, who are the thread that binds spirit and flesh, the keepers of the Spirit Gate. The dragonlings have vanished and are seen no more, while demons are rarest of all. It’s true demons are often born to humans, and like humans may be bold or timid, cruel or kind, silent or talkative, hungry or satiated. They even look like humans. But you are veiled to my Guardian’s sight. Therefore you are a demon. Has no one told you?” Her smile mocked him.
He said nothing.
“Do you even know the tales of the Hundred, outlander?”
“One of Hasibal’s pilgrims taught me a few refrains,” he said, thinking of Eridit.
“Why do youths like you blush when thinking of sex?” she said with a snort.
His flush deepened as heat scalded his cheeks. “How did—?”
She was a sarcastic old woman, the worst kind. “Easy to know such signs when you have lived as long as I have. Listen, boy, the wildings recognize a demon when they see one.”
“Is that why they rescued me?” He gestured more broadly, to show the conclave that he was addressing them, not the cloak. “Were Brah and Sis out looking for demons to rescue?”
He waited as the old woman talked in gestures to the conclave.
She laughed curtly. “It seems that, like many youthful ones, they ranged out to have a little fun. An adventure. Instead, they discovered humans up to worse trouble even than usual. And they discovered Guardians killing demons, which runs quite against what the gods intended. The justice of the Guardians was meant only for humankind. That’s why they brought you back. To save a cousin. They would have saved others, had they been able to do so. The elders tell me they are curious as to why you—an outlander—were spared when other demons were killed.”
&n
bsp; The stars burned, distant lamps illuminating the mercy of the Merciful One, which is infinite. The wildings moved closer, more of them coming into view within the aura of the tapers.
“My brother Harishil is a Guardian. He wears the cloak of Twilight. Night kept me as a hostage, because Hari does not cooperate with her as she wishes him to do. Otherwise, she would have killed me as she did the others. I came to the north to find him, and he tried to get me out of the camp of Lord Radas’s army before one of the other cloaks caught me. He knew they were killing those who are veiled to their sight. Hari got me smuggled out. How the rebels who took me in got ambushed I don’t know. I really don’t. But Night and her soldiers caught me. They took me to Wedrewe. Brah and Sis found me there.”
“How did you escape Wedrewe?”
“In the back of a wagon of corpses.”
“They say you wish to go to a reeve hall. What will you do, if they convey you to a reeve hall? Where will you go? Back to the land you came from?”
He shook his head. “Kartu Town is no longer my home. Maybe that’s the secret of demons, that they have no true home, always wandering.”
She laughed. “Not so witless after all. Why do you want to go to the reeves? Where do you expect the reeves to take you?”
He folded his hands in his lap, thinking of the demon who had taken the form of Cornflower and murdered Qin soldiers. Thinking of angry Yordenas, and that pervert Bevard. Thinking of Lord Radas’s poisonous voice, and Night’s terrible, twisted heart. Even Hari, torn between honor and fear. “I cannot trust you, because you are a Guardian.”
On her lap a snake raised its hooded head and hissed softly, but a rustling sounded among the branches as the wildings objected, and the snake subsided at the touch of her hand.
“You say so, to me? I, who am the last true Guardian?”
“That means nothing to me,” said Shai. “I’m just an outlander. All I can judge is by what I have seen the cloaks do.”
“Enough!” She spoke past Shai, addressing the conclave. “I came in respect and in humility, cousins, and now I am to be subjected to this outlander’s insults? What do you want of me? I beg you, you who know the map of the Hundred better than any others can, all its forgotten caves and old ruins and secret glades and hidden valleys, grant me at least this much, that you tell me of some haven where the people I have sheltered can live in peace.”
