She gasped. “I c-cannot go back there! They . . . he . . .”
“You can, and you will,” said Terrek. “You owe it to Camron. It’s the least you can do. Tomorrow you will walk unfettered, and Avalar will keep watch. If you try to run, we’ll revisit the topic of Roth and his sword, and I don’t think that’s something you want.”
With an effort, Felrina forced back her terror as she thought of Mens. “I can’t go b-back there, Terrek, after . . . what I . . .”
There was a tense pause, a shiver of rage in the air. Felrina held her breath, regretting her words.
“You won’t be alone this time,” Terrek answered at last. “You’re my prisoner and my responsibility. As long as you are with me, I won’t let him touch you. The others know. I’ve instructed them not to discuss this with you, not even Roth, who might try. And you. If you want to live, you are not to speak my brother’s name in my presence. Understood?”
“Yes,” she said. “Anything! Terrek, I . . .”
“Good,” he said. “If we get through all this, I promise there will be no mob lying in wait for you when we get home. I’ll get you to Heartwood, where you’ll be treated fairly. Perhaps Ponu is right and Erebos did affect your mind. If that’s the case, the Seekers will heal you.”
“That wouldn’t be fair,” Felrina protested. “I deserve to be—”
He wheeled toward the door.
“Terrek?” she spoke softly into the darkness he left behind. He caught his breath as he stopped. “Do you . . . hate me?”
She heard his slow breathing while he mulled it over. All his life he had pondered things first. Too bad I couldn’t have—
“Don’t you think you’re suffering enough?” his response broke through her thoughts. Again he paused. “Hate and rage are two separate things. What I hate is Erebos. For you, Felrina, I feel . . . pity, among other things. I know what you hoped for at the start because you shared it with me. I know it wasn’t this.
“Don’t use my name anymore, either,” he said. “You’re a stranger to me now; you have forfeited the right to be familiar.”
Felrina shoved her fist between her teeth, sobs racking her body as, with a whisper of fabric, the door-flap fell shut.
Chapter 46
GAELIN ROUSED AT the sound of battle, the sight of a dach tearing through the door-flap of the tent he shared with Vyergin and Terrek, its saber raised to strike at his throat. He blinked upward, dismayed as the entire front wall of the shelter caved in abruptly behind his assailant. A wide, scaly muzzle jutted into view, its nearest tusk skewering the warped human. Lifting the dach and the ceiling high, the creature whipped its enormous head, flipping the canvas back and forth.
Gaelin, cowering on his mat, stared at the beast’s massive shoulders and neck. He recoiled as the creature’s clawed forefeet straddled his bed. The canvas tore from its leather floor as the animal reared, flinging the fabric over its shaggy back. The impaled dach dropped like a stone, the severed halves of its body landing with bloody splats on his bed.
He sprang to his feet and seized his staff, striking the beast sharply across its flank. Screaming, the behemoth bolted, the tent covering its head and upper body flapping in rhythm with its lumbering strides as it crashed among the trees.
“Terrek!” Gaelin staggered. The camp was in chaos, with one beast catching a winged dach in midair between its fangs—to dash it to pieces against a tree. Four other monsters wheeled and collided in a frenzy of slashing tusks and teeth, lashing whiplike tails that coiled around bodies and ripped them apart.
A wing protruded from a branch above Gaelin, its vaguely human hand still twitching. A creature loped past, its withers higher than Avalar, taller even than the giant who was her father. The monstrous beast dragged a tent cut in half, with a body caught inside. Gaelin stumbled out of her way as Avalar stepped past him; with a sweep of her sword, she cut the fabric loose.
“Ward my back!” the giant shouted. She whirled as he leapt to obey. He spied his companions standing frozen behind the trees, their faces anxious as they watched.
“What are these—” he started to ask.
“Shh!” she hissed, yanking him close as another monster charged. The tents were gone, he realized, the fire scattered.
“The shan!” Avalar whispered. Carefully she crouched, pulling the form tangled in the fabric beneath the protection of her sword.
There was silence, punctuated by distant bugles as the shan pursued their prey. Bits of fabric and gore pattered down through the branches.
Vyergin ventured from the refuge of a tree. “The dachs woke them up,” he said. “The shan—”
“You’re not supposed to rouse them until dawn,” Roth explained matter-of-factly, poking his head out from behind a second trunk. “That’s what the elves said.”
“What in Hades’s blazes?” Vyergin exclaimed. “You mean they throw fits if you wake them early?” He scowled at the ruins of his fire, his cooking pot broken in half.
“Or if you kick them, or pull on their reins!” said Roth.
“That is absurd!” Vyergin glowered.
“They chased off the dachs,” Terrek was quick to point out. “I am pretty sure they saved our lives, Captain. He approached the place where the tents had been, inspecting the debris. “At least we still have the spare shelter Avalar brought. “Though I have no idea how six humans and a giant will all fit inside.”
“We’ll make do, Commander,” Vyergin said. “I have my twine. I can piece together something. But the rest of you will need to help.”
Avalar unrolled the canvas at her feet, uncovering Felrina’s limp form. “Still asleep,” Avalar muttered in amazement. “How can this be?”
“They ate my deer!” Roth picked up the broken spit and shook it. “But I thought—”
“Apparently,” drawled Vyergin, “these creatures become carnivorous when they change.”
“Among other things,” Terrek agreed, eyeing a leg severed at the thigh lying in a pool of blood. “Where are all the dachs who attacked the camp? Did the shan eat them, too?”
“Some of the dachs ran away.” Gaelin clenched his jaw, feeling Holram stir inside him, outraged at so much death. “It’s too late,” he thought to the warder. “There’s nothing you can do.”
Terrek whistled as he glanced at the cracked and blighted trees marking the place where the shan had gone. “I finally see why the Eris value these creatures so much. When they shift, they really—”
“Shift?” echoed Vyergin. “Is that what you call this?”
Gaelin struggled to visualize the pampered little beasts with their stout, long-haired bodies and finicky habits.
“They’ll be back,” Roth said. He kicked at the charred pieces of wood near Vyergin, drawing the ashes together to attempt to revive the little blaze. “The Eris told me it takes a while. Their blood heats up; that’s all.”
“That is all,” Avalar repeated, rolling her eyes. “The same thing happens to male giants who are not laori.” Sighing, she squatted by Felrina. “How is it possible for this woman to stay asleep through all this? Could she be ill?”
Kneeling by the woman, Gaelin touched her brow, feeling Holram’s interest bubbling to the surface. The warder probed with his fingers. “Something,” Holram said, taking control of his mouth. “Terrek Florne, you must know there is—”
“Here they come,” Silva exclaimed, holding his sword at the ready. Wren Neche stepped in quickly to follow his lead. A shout came from the trees where Roth had gone in search of his deer. Then a line of five shapes shuffled toward them, the colorful creatures dripping gore from their woolly fur, bits of fabric clinging to their manes as they bugled and huffed. They were shrinking as they strutted, their razor-like tails shortening, the tufts at the ends jutting straight up. The tusks shriveled to large, flat teeth, and the elongated claws were hooves again, cloven and harmless.
Vyergin grunted as the creatures stopped where their tethers had been. He poked at the campfire’s
remains, coaxing a small curl of flame to grow.
“There’s no point in that, Captain,” Terrek said. “We’re leaving. They know we’re here.” He glared at the sleeping Felrina. “And I suspect I know how. We must locate those mines!”
“Good,” said Roth. “I’ll be glad to get away from this snow.”
Terrek motioned to Felrina. “Avalar, wake her.”
Gaelin jostled him to get his attention. “Terrek, there is something Holram needs to tell—”
“Enough!” Terrek said, watching as Avalar lifted the prisoner and then held a sliver of ice to her cheek. Moaning, Felrina thrashed.
“I don’t blame her,” Vyergin said. “I wouldn’t want to wake up either if I were her.”
Terrek raised his hand. “Forget it, Giant,” he said gruffly. “Leave her be. If she’s that exhausted, let her sleep.”
Gaelin shivered. Whatever Holram had wanted to say was gone from his thoughts—the warder had retreated again so that his flesh might recover. Resolutely he gripped his staff as Vyergin sorted through the foodstuffs they had left, and Terrek and Roth saddled the shan. The guards hurried to salvage what useable items they could find.
Avalar, still holding Felrina, stood beside Gaelin. As the prisoner’s guard, she had new responsibilities now, and so she waited as Gaelin did, watching while her gear was being stowed. “The mines must be near,” he told her.
She nodded. “They are close.”
Gaelin held out his hand, displaying his tremor for the giant to see. “I’m not getting better,” he whispered. “I’m trying to rest, but this thing is . . . I think we need to hurry before—” He broke off at her stare.
“When my stepfather slew my mother,” he ventured, “I felt like you do. I knew what it was to hate. It’s happening to you with your memories. All the things they did. Like you’re reliving it. And you despise what you’re forced to watch. You’re burning with that hate all the time. I can feel it.”
Frowning, Avalar turned toward him, her blue eyes intense below her tangled blond hair. “You beheld your own mother’s—” She bent to regard his face. “Why have you never told me?”
Gaelin hugged his staff to his chest. “It was a long time ago,” he said. “Seth Lavahl had discovered that I wasn’t his. So he killed my mother, and he—”
“Hush.” Avalar pressed a finger to his lips.
“Gaelin!” Terrek called. Both Roth and Vyergin had mounted, while everyone else remained on foot with their swords drawn. At the commander’s firm gesture, Gaelin hastened to his calico.
For a time, he rode in silence with his staff across his lap, his grasp even looser on the reins than before. Avalar walked beside him with Felrina’s limp body in her arms, flinching as though something dived at her from above, or perhaps, he guessed from her posture, she moved beneath a ceiling as she babbled softly in her native tongue. Only the prisoner she held linked her to the present, he realized. As long as Felrina tossed and fretted, Avalar stayed connected with her surroundings.
Gaelin squinted as the new sun, a tapestry of pink and violet streaks giving way to a sliver of gold, rose from behind the mountains. The branches above him glittered silver. Beyond them, he caught glimpses of Chesna’s gray rock through the fog. To the north sprawled a shattered expanse of hills. It was a scar that would never heal, the slash of destruction that marked Erebos’s frenetic dash from where he and Holram had landed on the world to his refuge within Mount Chesna.
Fire mountain. That was what Avalar had called it. Filled with darkness and water, its flames snuffed out long ago by the currents of the Shukaia cutting through it. He saw the collapsed peak clearly now under the newborn sun, small and misshapen amid the splendor of the Skywhites. The mountain was warped, like everything else Erebos had touched.
He leaned back, and his calico stopped, while his companions rode on, oblivious to the fact that Avalar was laying Felrina at her feet. The woman flailed in childlike protest, her eyelids fluttering. Ignoring her, Avalar stood with her legs braced, her glare fixed on the glimpse of a meadow through the trees.
“Avalar?” Gaelin dismounted. Terrek looked back and shouted, commanding the others to stop.
“Sails,” Avalar whispered. Drawing her sword, she charged forward. Her voice rose to a yell. “Redeemer, slay them!”
“Avalar!” Terrek’s voice cracked, but deep in the giant’s troubled gaze Gaelin saw something break—a flash like steel severing her awareness. With Holram’s perceptions rising swiftly to heighten his own, Gaelin experienced it, too—the here and now shattering like glass. The memories, rising out of the wounded ground, crowded around her. She saw her ghosts’ peril as they did, and knew the agony of their deaths, each and every one.
“Avalar, no!” Gaelin cried as she stumbled into a run. She invoked the names of the dead as she plunged through the snowy branches, identifying the ghosts who gathered around her to urge her on. The specters pleaded with her to flee before the whips and the magic burned her skin, to run from the slavers, always the slavers, their hateful hands ready and eager to deliver pain.
She won’t hear you, Terrek, Gaelin thought when the larger man roared at her to stop. Leaving his shan, Gaelin followed the giant, panting while he struggled to step where she did, his legs too short to reach—tipping him onto his face. “Sails!” he shouted. It was a giantkin curse, one she had uttered so many times, and he would thunder it now, for the giant who was his friend. He scrambled back up. They can’t have her! He tried to run, pumping his arms as hard as he could.
The giant raised her blade when she reached the little clearing and then abruptly vanished from his sight.
“No!” He sobbed in frustration, holding his staff like a spear while he thrashed on. Terrek raced past him, his stronger legs surging through the snow. Silva and Roth floundered by as well, followed quickly by Wren, their expressions grim as they braced for combat.
When Avalar began to scream, Gaelin howled. He would never reach her. Holram’s fire had weakened him. All the progress he had made on Mount Desheya to build up his strength was gone. He was useless, powerless to save his friend. Gasping hoarsely, he pulled to a stop where the giant had gone, an impenetrable patch of midnight surrounded by white.
Deep in the pit, the giant was wailing as she clawed at the dirt. He could almost see through her eyes as she struck at her unseen foes. With each passing moment, she unraveled more, her identity fraying, her sanity along with it.
“Avalar!” Gaelin shouted. Unfocused power tore from his fingers, flashing quicksilver swift across the snow. Terrek seized his shoulders, shaking him until he stopped.
“No!” said Terrek. “If we’re going to regain her trust, she must not feel your magic!”
“Govorian, wait!” Avalar shrieked from the blackness below. “Great Leader, do not leave us!”
Gaelin pulled himself free. “But that leader she speaks of, Terrek! If she goes with him, I don’t know how I know this, but that will be the end! We’ll never get her back!”
“Summon Ponu!” Vyergin called from behind them. He approached through the trees, the still-groggy Felrina stumbling at his side. “Remember what the winged elf said. We won’t get her back if she loses herself! Well, I’m pretty sure she’s lost, Commander!”
“Not yet, she isn’t.” Terrek knelt next to Gaelin beside the pit and peered into a tunnel’s murky depths. “And we’re not going to let her.” He unbuckled his sword.
“Terrek, you can’t!” Gaelin cried. “She’ll mistake you as a slaver from the past! She’ll tear you apart!”
“She will not,” Terrek said. “You underestimate her.” Deliberately he laid his weapon in the snow.
Chapter 47
SCREAMING, SHE WHIRLED as the tide of her desperate people surged around her, buffeting her before continuing at a run down the tunnel. In rags and filth, she crouched over her sword as they pounded from her sight around a bend. Her chest aching, she struggled for breath, clutching at her wounded side.
Tangled roots hung from the ceiling, their gray cobwebby tendrils speckled with blue mold. On the floor insects crawled, scuttling from nests wedged deep in the crevices along the walls of stone.
A light shone from above, scattering droplets of water on her head. She glimpsed through her fingers a dazzling view of open sky—the first slice of freedom she had ever beheld.
She flinched at a gentle touch on her leg and glanced down. “Mother,” moaned a little girl’s voice.
Her daughter and son sat beside her. She had battled for them, fatally injuring herself in her desire to rip apart the ones who had taken her babies at birth. Now they squatted next to her, gazing at her face imploringly.
“Govorian, wait!” she shrieked into the empty passage. “Great Leader, do not leave us!”
The echo of her plea rebounded, emphasizing her abandonment, for she knew Thresher Govorian would not return. To keep the Bloodsword singing—kindling newfound courage in the slaves’ crippled hearts—her leader was obliged to obey the blade’s commands.
She crouched low, embracing her babes with her free arm as she gripped her weapon. This temptation of sky is a trick, she thought. They are baiting me; it is naught but delusion! She had suffered this cruel game of the slavers before. Somewhere close and out of her sight, the cowards were laughing at her, spying on her through the ravenous bloodstones in their staves.
This sword feels real, she thought. The heft of it was familiar, yet she could not recall ever possessing such a weapon. With care, she lifted its tip to the light, eyeing the trickle of water along its edge.
“Mother, let us go,” her son said as he fretfully clasped her knee. “Come, Mother, we need to catch up!”
“No,” she said. “Something is wrong!” She gasped, seeing the child’s hand on her thigh turn to mist. Two tiny skeletons slumped against the wall beside her, their empty sockets staring, yearning for the lives they had lost. Unending child-tears fell glistening down their cheeks of pitted bone.
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