The prayer did little to still his troubled conscience.
“It belongs with the Order,”he muttered to himself.“He had no right to claim it for himself.”
“Talking to yourself, Chosen? Is that not one of the signs of corruption according to Aielan?”
Lotaern’s heart juddered in his chest at the familiar voice and he grimaced. He did not open his eyes and turn until it had calmed and he’d smoothed the lines of his face.
“Some of the most revered acolytes within the Order over the ages talked to themselves,” he said to the cloaked and hooded lord who stood at his back. “Even Cortaemall was said to rage within his own chambers.”
“So it is said.”Lord Orraen hesitated,then added,“What is it you wish to speak of?”
“We are waiting for another.”
Orraen shifted stances, tense now, wary, hand drifting toward the cattan Lotaern assumed was hidden beneath the cloak. His hood turned to one side, as if he were scanning the distance. “Who? I thought this meeting private. We should not be seen together. It is too soon to be revealed.”
Lotaern frowned. “You are too paranoid. The other will come cloaked and hooded, as you are. In fact, he has already arrived.”
Orraen turned as another figure appeared farther down one of the twisted paths, joining them, his boots crunching in the crushed stone of the walkway. He halted on the far side of the circular stone table, hood shifting back and forth between Lotaern and Orraen. Perhaps a hand taller than Lotaern, he carried himself with utter confidence, and when he spoke, his voice growled with age and unquestioned authority.
Lotaern wondered briefly if Orraen would recognize Lord Peloroun’s voice. He should. He’d heard it used often enough on the floor of the Hall of the Evant.
“You have news? Something worth risking our presence in Caercaern so early?”
“I do.”
“Did you know that Lord Aeren has also arrived early? If he discovers us here, weeks before our scheduled arrival, it will raise his suspicions. We have managed to keep our alliance secret thus far. I would hate to have it compromised for something trivial.”
Lotaern did not acknowledge the threat in the deep voice, nor the lacing of contempt. “This is not trivial. I believe we may finally have something to use against the Wraiths.”
He reached into his left pocket and pulled out the small leather pouch. Releasing the drawstrings, he removed the fine metal mesh wrapping the object inside and set it on the stone table. Unfolding the mesh, he revealed the wooden-bladed knife.
Both lords leaned forward for a closer look.
“What is it?” the younger Lord Orraen asked.
“A knife forged of heartwood, soaked in the ruanavriell, and tempered in the fires of Aielan. It was created with the sole intent to kill the sukrael and the Wraiths.”
“Does it work?”
Lotaern tried not to react to the doubt in Peloroun’s voice. “It was forged by Shaeveran, and it has killed. I can provide witnesses to attest to this fact, members of the Order of the Flame.”
“And Shaeveran gave this to you willingly? We all know where his loyalties lie.”
“Its sole purpose is to fight the sukrael and the Wraiths,” Lotaern said harshly, “and that battle falls to the Chosen, not Lord Aeren.”
Peloroun leaned back from the knife, his gaze falling on Lotaern. The Chosen could feel it, even though the lord’s face was hidden. He wondered if the lord could read the guilt inside him, if he could see how Lotaern had started at the slightest sound for days after Vaeren returned with the knife in hand. He’d expected Shaeveran to arrive, unannounced, at every waking moment since then, the human’s figure blurring into existence before him, demanding the return of the blade. He’d been so afraid that Shaeveran would take it that he’d kept it on his person ever since, even sleeping with it, starting awake at odd hours of the night, his heart pounding in his chest, terrified, until his hands closed on the fine mesh beneath his pillow.
But Shaeveran hadn’t come. Not yet. He’d begun to believe that the sukrael-tainted human wouldn’t come, that he’d finally seen the logic behind allowing the Order control of it.
Lotaern simply didn’t believe it completely.
“With this,” he said, swallowing back his doubts, “and with the Order of the Flame, we can bring the Wraiths to heel. Once they realize that they are not invulnerable, that they can die at our hands, we can control them. They will not be able to threaten Alvritshai lands again.”
“But we need them,” Orraen protested. “We can’t gain power in the Evant without them.”
“Agreed,” Peloroun said. “But what the Chosen is offering us is a way to limit their power once they have helped us achieve our goals.That has always been what has stopped us before. We’ve needed their strength, to break the Evant and drive the Alvritshai to us, but that strength has never had a leash.
“The knife, along with what the Chosen has promised his Order of the Flame can accomplish, may be that leash. A thin leash, granted, but a leash.”
“We need only trick the Wraiths into donning the collar,” Lotaern said.
“Leave that to me,” Peloroun said, his voice soft.
JAYSON FREEHOLT SPAT a curse when he heard the fifty-pound bag of barley grain slung across his shoulder begin to rip. He spun and swung the bulk toward the wall of the mill, but the burlap tore even as he moved. The weight of the half of the sack pressed against his back suddenly lifted as grain sloughed to the wooden floor with a hideous hiss and scattered, the small seeds skittering into cracks and crevices and pattering against his legs. He stood stock-still for a long moment, listening to a last few escaping grains as they fell and bounced across the floor, then his shoulders slumped, the weight of the front half of the barley still heavy against his chest. It had been one of those days. “Corim!” he bellowed, letting anger tinge his voice. “Corim, where in Diermani’s bloody Hands are you?” “I’m on the meal fl oor!” The shout was muted by the grinding of the stones of the grist mill on the floor that separated them. “I’m tying off th—” The rest of the young boy’s sentence was lost, but Jayson didn’t care.“Leave it and get the hells up here!And stop the bloody mill on your way up. We’re done for the day!” Spitting another curse, he carefully shifted the remaining weight of the bag clutched to his chest, wincing as more grain escaped. The barley crunched beneath his feet as he hauled the half sack to the wall, grabbed a length of twine from a hook, and tied it off for tomorrow. As he snatched up a broom and wide metal pan from the back wall of tools and bent to sweep up the grain, he heard the steady drone of the two stones fade and grunted to himself. Corim must have lifted the stone nut that halted the milling.
A moment later, Jayson heard Corim’s feet pounding up the stairs from the stone floor to the sack floor. He poured the first pan full of grain into the bin of the hopper when Corim appeared.
“Why are we stopping?” Corim asked, then halted, mouth a wide O, eyes even wider as he saw Jayson standing in the middle of the scattered grain.
“Because I’ve had enough.” Jayson tried not to smile at the look on Corim’s face. His apprentice was barely twelve years old, but was already as tall as Jayson, all gangly legs and arms. Jayson expected the boy would outgrow him in the next year or two. But Corim still had the face of someone younger and the look of shock was too comical.
“But we haven’t even gotten Harlson’s order ground yet—”
“I don’t care. We had problems with the sluice gate this morning, Harlson delivered his sacks of grain late, someone—” he shot a glare toward Corim, who winced, “—dropped an acorn into the hopper that took forever to fish out, and now this. Holy Diermani has cursed this day and I’ve had enough. Besides, by the time we get this cleaned up it’ll be dark, so grab a broom.”
Corim scurried off to find a second broom, and Jayson wiped the gritty sweat from his brow with the back of his arm.The motion became a long stretch,his lower back tight. With the grist mill stoppe
d, the groan of the giant water wheel and the rush of the water from the sluice and the stream filled the building; he’d always found those sounds soothing.
Sighing, he began sweeping the loose grain into a single heap near the center of the room, trying to keep the grains from falling through the cracks to the floor below. Corim returned a moment later to help.
By the time they fi nished, night had fallen completely and they were working by the soft glow of two lanterns. Jayson’s back ached from bending over and he had a mild headache. But the sack room floor was as clean as he’d ever seen it since the mill had been built.
He squeezed Corim’s shoulder once, then pushed him gently toward the stairs. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
They went through the mill, Jayson closing the sluice gate to shut off the wheel, Corim gathering their things into satchels and readying the mill for their arrival tomorrow morning. They both grabbed a lantern and exited through the wide wooden doors at the back of the mill, away from the stream. Corim held Jayson’s lantern as he pulled the door closed behind them with a grunt.
When Jayson turned around to take his lantern back, Corim stood rigid, muscles tensed, one of the lanterns held out before him. The boy’s gaze was locked on the edge of the forest beside the narrow dirt lane that led to the village.
“What is it?”
Corim jumped at his voice, turned frightened eyes toward him. “I thought I saw something on the lane.”
Jayson shot a glance toward the empty roadway. The trees were dark to either side, the lanterns’ glow illuminating only a small grassy area around the mill, the ground rutted from wagon wheels and carts delivering grain. Overhead, the sky was clear, stars like pinpricks, the moon hidden behind the trees and the surrounding hills.
Jayson frowned into the darkness. “What did you see?”
Corim shook his head. “Something ran across the road, at the edge of the light. Low to the ground. But—”
“But what?”
Corim swallowed. “It had eyes. Yellow eyes, like cat’s eyes.But it didn’t move like a cat.I think it saw me.And ... I think it hissed at me.”
Jayson’s frown deepened. He hadn’t heard anything, but he’d been struggling with the door. “It probably was a cat,” he said, straightening. He tried to shrug his sudden unease aside as he took his lantern, but he found the back of his shoulders prickling and itching as he moved toward the lane, Corim a step behind. One hand slid into the satchel slung across his chest, rooted around at the contents inside until he found the handle of his sheathed knife. Without taking his eyes off the lane, he unhooked the clasp and drew the blade free, keeping it close to his side. The village wasn’t far—a short stretch along the lane to the main road, and then a half mile to the center square. The mill would have been in the center of the village if the founders hadn’t built near where the river widened and the current was sluggish. He needed the swifter currents upriver to work the grist stones.
They entered the lane, trees to either side, low underbrush coming up to the road’s edge. Branches arched overhead, leaves rustling in a light breeze. Otherwise, the forest was silent, with none of its usual sounds—the hoot of an owl or the rustle of something passing through the underbrush. Jayson shivered.
They’d made it halfway to the main road that led to Gray’s Kill when Jayson heard the hiss, low and scratchy and nothing like a cat. It crawled up beneath his skin and set the hairs on the back of his arms and neck on end.
He halted. Corim bounced into his side from behind as he scanned the shadows thrown by their lanterns.
Then Corim cried out, pointed, and even as Jayson turned, knife raised defensively, he saw the eyes—pale luminescent yellow, wider than a cat’s, set in a malformed, black face, above a mouth opened wide and riddled with teeth.
The creature leaped from the underbrush, straight at Jayson. He barked out a yell of horrified surprise, tripped over a rut in the road, and stumbled as the thing latched onto the forearm of his knife hand, teeth sinking in deep. He screamed, landed hard on his back, air whooshing from his lungs, the light from the lantern dancing wildly. He flung his arm to the side, trying to shake the creature off, and felt its growl shuddering through his arm. Claws shredded the sleeves of his shirt, scored his flesh, and he slammed it into the ground, once, twice, then dropped his lantern, switched his knife to his free hand and swung at the thing wildly.The blade struck the creature across the back and it released him with a piercing shriek, falling away. Jayson kicked back, scraping along the dirt as the creature scrambled to right itself, moving unlike anything he’d seen before, all leathery muscle and sinew and tendon. It glared at him, the malevolence in its eyes, in its stance, palpable. It hissed again, tensed itself to leap toward him—
And then Corim appeared from the forest, a large branch in one hand. He raised it overhead and with a panicked cry brought it down on the thing’s back so hard the branch cracked and split.
The creature yelped like a beaten dog and scuttled away from them both, but turned with another hiss before dodging into the underbrush of the forest.
Jayson gasped into the night’s silence, Corim shifting closer to him.
“What was that thing?” Corim asked. His voice was raw and cracked, shaking.
Jayson sat up, winced as he tried to use his mangled arm, then brought it closer to the lantern light. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Blood stained his sleeve, seeping sluggishly from several ragged cuts and the jagged curve of the bite mark, but none of the cuts were dangerous. They stung when he moved his arm, but he’d recover.
Something darker stained one side of his shirt though. He frowned down at it, touched it with one finger and felt his skin burn at the touch.
“What is it?”
“Blood,” Jayson said, wiping it off on the bottom of his shirt.“From that thing.I must have cut it when I swung at it with the knife.”
The undergrowth rustled and they both lurched upright, Corim brandishing his branch, Jayson the knife. But the noise receded. Jayson scrambled to his feet as something skittered across the lane just outside the light of the lanterns, followed by two more on the other side.
“Holy Diermani preserve us,” Jayson muttered, eyes wide, his gut clenching so tight he thought he’d piss his pants. “There’s more of them.”
“And they’re headed toward the village.”
Jayson stared at Corim in shocked silence, then whispered. “Lianne.”
He snatched up the lantern and began to run. Corim’s harsh breath followed him. Jayson’s feet pounded into the earth, his own breath tight and constricted in his chest as the forest of the lane flashed past, shadows and trees juddering wildly in the swinging light. A chittering sound surrounded them, punctuated by harsh hisses, a few shapes darting in and out of the light through the underbrush, as if tracking them, but Jayson didn’t pause. He burst from the lane onto the hard-packed, flatter roadway, tripped, and fell to the ground with a curse. Corim caught up to him as he regained his feet.
Then a gust of wind brought the thick stench of smoke and he stilled.
Ahead, lurid against the black silhouette of the trees, a fire raged.A horse’s scream pierced the air and abruptly cut off, but in the stillness that followed he picked out different sounds: faint shouts, the harsh baying of a dog, the clash of weapons, and as a backdrop to it all, the low, rushing sound of flames roaring into the night.
The wind shifted again, blowing black smoke across the road. He choked on it, on the oily soot and hot ash that stung the skin of his face. Coughing, he hunched forward, his wounded arm coming up in a vain attempt to shield himself.
Beside him, he heard Corim suck in a ragged breath. “Ma!” he cried out.
The youth leaped forward, but Jayson snagged him by the arm and jerked him back. Corim nearly slipped from his grasp, but Jayson tightened his grip, hard enough to bruise. “Corim!” he growled, and shook the boy. “Corim, stop! Look!”
Corim turned on him, the look of panic and horror sending a dagger into Jayson’s heart.The same sick nausea roiled in his own stomach as he thought of Lianne, of her silver-shot brown hair, hazel eyes, and smooth cheeks that dimpled when she laughed. But he swallowed the taste of bile at the back of his throat and forced Corim to meet his eyes.
“Look,” he repeated, and nodded toward the road in the direction of the fires.
Corim twisted in Jayson’s grip to look back over his shoulder.
At the horse’s scream—Holy Diermani, Jayson prayed it had been a horse—the chittering in the forest had fallen silent. But the creatures hadn’t left. In the shadows beneath the trees, made pitch-black by the red-orange blaze where Gray’s Kill burned, pale yellow eyes glowed in the reflected light of their lanterns. He counted half a dozen pairs between them and the village. But even as he watched, more shifted to the edge of the road.
A pack. They had been tracking them, and calling in the rest of their group.
In his grip, Corim tensed and a small whimper escaped the boy. Jayson’s gaze flicked toward the burning village, his mouth suddenly dry with fear, but he couldn’t risk Corim. The boy had been entrusted to him by the youth’s parents.
A dozen of the creatures now gathered at the edge of the road, and they were moving closer. Jayson didn’t know what held them back—the light from their lantern or if they were waiting for greater numbers—but he didn’t want to linger to find out.
“The barge,” he murmured, backing up, drawing Corim withhim.Theboy resistedamoment,strainingtowardGray’s Kill, toward his home, as Jayson’s heart yearned to seek out Lianne, but then the boy relented. Jayson nearly choked with relief.Voice thick,he said,“We’re going to run for it,straight to the river, no stopping, no matter what. Understand?”
Without taking his eyes off the creatures in the forest, Corim nodded. Another shift in the wind and a hot blast of smoke skated across the road, obscuring the creatures from sight.
Leaves of Flame Page 23
