Voth waved him on. “I . . . I just . . . need . . . a moment . . .”
The ring twinged, but Tyvian ignored it and pressed on. She would be all right. Eddereon would help her, if it came to it. One of them had to get across first—everything depended on that. He gulped down more thin air and tried to keep the world from spinning, placing one foot in front of the other on the thick rope. Concentrate . . . concentrate . . . one wrong step . . .
Eddereon and Artus arrived next. Tyvian was too far away to hear clearly what was discussed, but it wound up with Artus being left to rest while Eddereon began to make the crossing with Voth just behind him, one hand on the rope, the other presumably on his back or gripping his belt to steady herself.
Tyvian made it to the other side. The sense of vertigo inflicted by the bridge did not immediately pass, and he leaned against a boulder for a moment to get his balance. When at last the world stopped spinning, he looked back. Voth and Eddereon were almost across. Artus was about halfway, moving hesitantly. On the other side, a trio of big wolfhounds paced back and forth, baying at their quarry. They had outrun their masters, but by how far? Tyvian waved to Eddereon and Voth. “Hurry!”
Eddereon made the end. Voth followed immediately after, standing between the two anchor posts. “Reldamar—give me a sword!”
Tyvian hesitated only a moment before he tossed her his broadsword. “Wait until Artus is across.” He knew he didn’t need to say it—the ring would keep her from trying anything.
Then Voth laid her ring finger atop the anchor post and, holding the broadsword in her left hand, brought it down hard. There was a streak of blood. Voth screamed.
Tyvian caught a glimpse of her finger, iron ring still affixed, tumbling into the void.
“No!” Tyvian yelled.
Eddereon turned to face her. “Voth!”
Voth’s face was suddenly alight, a broad grin spilling out from between thin lips. She drove the sword into Eddereon’s stomach, angled upward. Tyvian saw the tip tent the back of the big Northron’s hauberk. Then she yanked it out again with a savage twist, and Eddereon fell to his knees.
Tyvian tried to charge her, but Eddereon was in the way, cupping his stomach as blood and organs spilled out.
Voth turned, sword held high. Halfway across the ravine, Artus had frozen in place. Tyvian saw him open his mouth to say something, but Voth didn’t give him the chance. She brought the blade down on one of the thick ropes, cutting through it cleanly.
Artus stumbled on the bridge, almost falling, but grabbed the foot rope in time and hooked his arms over it, his legs kicking in space.
Tyvian got past Eddereon and tried to grab Voth around the waist, but she was too quick, delivering a back-kick to his groin, perfectly aimed. Tyvian fell on his side, gasping for air.
Laughing, Voth slashed one of his hamstrings. “Stay with me, Tyvian,” she said. “I want you to watch this.”
Artus struggled to get on top of the rope, he tried to reach the second one—too far. “Help!” he shouted.
Voth pressed the edge against the foot rope and began to saw, slowly, deliberately. “Bye-bye, your highness!”
“Adatha,” Tyvian groaned, rolling to his knees and crawling toward her. “Don’t!”
“Or what?”
“I’ll kill you.”
Voth mimed a kiss. “Promises, promises.”
The rope snapped. With a scream, Artus vanished into the abyss.
Tyvian surged to his feet and lunged at Voth, a dagger in his hand. She knocked it away with the sword, but they wound up in a violent embrace and rolled along the ledge, Voth’s head hanging over the edge. She lost the sword and had only one good hand, but Tyvian was still dizzy, still reeling from the groin hit, and had only one good leg. Voth wound up on top, the blood from her amputated finger raining down on Tyvian’s face as they struggled.
She was laughing. “It feels so good to have that thing off, Tyvian. Oh, gods, I can’t believe you never did that! It’s like I’m free—I’m finally free!”
Tyvian could see her good eye, and could see madness there. Everything that had been good in her had just been sheared off in one stroke, and what was left was something less than a whole. This wasn’t Adatha Voth—this was a lunatic, a splintered husk where the woman had once been. “I would have had it off, Adatha! You idiot! Why do this?”
Voth worked on Tyvian’s hand, trying to twist his dagger around to stab him. His hand trembled with the effort of resisting her. “Poor Tyvian Reldamar,” she snickered. “Always looking for some damsel to rescue. Is that what you thought was going to happen? You’d swoop in, remove the ring, and I’d fall in love with you?”
Tyvian worked his good leg up so the knee was pressed against Voth’s hips. She abandoned the hold before he pushed her off and rolled to her feet. Tyvian staggered up, knife out.
Voth swayed in the breeze, blood still pouring from her hand. She drew out a stiletto. Tyvian knew it was poisoned just by looking at the groove down the center.
He limped toward her anyway, trying to shake off the dizziness. “You don’t know what you’ve done, Adatha. You have no idea the . . . the damage you’ve done to yourself.”
“Damage? You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Voth laughed, almost hysterical. “I’m better now. I’m fixed! What’s a finger compared to a clean soul?”
“You just murdered two men!” Tyvian screamed. He wanted to lunge at her again, but his injured leg wouldn’t allow it. Voth danced close to him and offered two quick slashes. Tyvian retreated, but tripped over a rock and tumbled down a steep slope. The world spun.
Voth scrambled after him, cackling with glee. “My tears, Tyvian—remember my tears? Remember me blubbering at night like a fool? You know what caused that?” She stabbed down at Tyvian, but he rolled aside. She pinned his cloak to the ground instead.
Tyvian yanked at it—it wouldn’t come loose. He tried to get out of it. “How the hell should I know? Your father taking your eye? Some past trauma?”
Voth drew a leaf-bladed throwing knife and threw, hitting Tyvian in the palm of his off-hand. “It was you, Reldamar! You! Each and every night you were close, I felt this terrible falling sensation—as though I had lost control of myself. As though I was going mad. And I couldn’t fight it! I wanted you, come what may. I wanted to be with you! I lived in desperate fear that you might learn that and use it!”
Tyvian left the knife in his palm—if it was poisoned, it was too late anyway. He slashed with his own knife, forcing Voth to retreat up the slope. Around him, the wind howled. Flakes of snow drifted through Voth’s hair. “What you’re describing is love, Voth. You’re falling in love with me!”
Voth grinned, holding up her mangled hand. “Not anymore.”
Tyvian held his knife high, pointed at Voth’s face. “I don’t want to kill you.”
“You won’t have to.” She pulled a pair of needle-thin daggers from her sleeve. Holding them both in her off hand, she jumped. One she threw, forcing Tyvian to duck. The other she plunged into him, just above his collarbone.
Tyvian countered with a horizontal slash across her stomach, the well-honed blade parting leather and flesh easily.
They fell backward together, Voth screaming as she twisted herself to straddle his neck, one leg pinning his knife arm down. She held the poisoned stiletto up, ready to plunge it into his eye. “Good-bye, you miserable fool of a man!”
But Tyvian was already working his off hand—his unpinned off-hand. The one with the throwing knife embedded in it. He plucked it out with the tips of his fingers and spun it around with a little flick.
And then he thrust it into Voth’s kidney.
And twisted.
Voth’s mouth fused into an open O as what little color was in her face drained away. The stiletto tumbled from her hand as she struggled to pull the blade from her back.
Tyvian rolled, throwing her off. She smacked her head against a rock, tried to rise, blood pouring from her temple. She
lost her balance.
She fell.
Crawling, Tyvian peered over the edge. Voth’s body lay crumpled in a heap, seventy feet below. Blood was everywhere, staining the snow crimson.
Slowly, Tyvian worked his way up the slope he’d tumbled down until he was on the narrow ledge where Eddereon lay. It was snowing in earnest now, a storm rolling in. Snowflakes already flecked his thick beard. Tyvian lifted the man’s head into his lap. “Eddereon! Wake up! Gods, don’t make me kiss you. Wake up!”
Eddereon’s eyes flickered open, but he didn’t move. “Fat lot of good . . . this . . . this mail did me . . .”
Tyvian found himself laughing even as tears began to blind him. “That’s what you get if you spend all your time sharpening swords, you fat oaf. Now get up!”
Eddereon grasped his hand. “Do you think I . . . I did you . . . a wrong by giving you . . . you the ring?”
“Dammit, Eddereon—I am not interested in deathbed confessions. Get your sorry arse up!”
“I think . . . I think that maybe I did.” Eddereon looked off into the sky, where the snowflakes swirled and fell. “But it was worth it. It was worth it.”
Eddereon’s eyes closed. Tyvian grabbed him by the sideburns. “No it wasn’t! You hear me? No it bloody wasn’t! You still owe me big-time, you great hairy fool! Wake up! I’ll not lose two friends in the same day, understand?” Tyvian shook him, slapped his face.
He may as well have been slapping a boulder.
Eddereon was dead. Artus was dead. The grief was like a physical pain—another knife, twisting inside him. A knife he couldn’t pluck out.
And Voth . . . Voth, too. The pain she must have felt, the fear. He had never spared himself the luxury of imagining a future with her, but now that she was gone, it was all he could think about—what else might they have been? What could they have become? If only he had done more. If only he had had more time. To have driven her to this pass . . .
No, not him.
The ring was still, heavy on his hand. And cold as the wind that blew.
Tyvian slammed his ring-hand against a rock twice, three times. “You miserable piece of garbage! You Kroth-spawned shit! Is this what you think I wanted? Is this what the world needs?”
The horn—Rodall’s horn—blasted out from across the canyon. Tyvian couldn’t see the other side anymore—the growing storm obscured it. But he knew he couldn’t stay. It was time to go. By Carlo’s map, the Vale was only about ten miles away. So close.
He tried to stand, but couldn’t walk. He resorted to crawling on hands and knees, as the snow poured down around him, favoring his injured hand until the cold made it numb. The ring did nothing to help. Tyvian was convinced it never had.
Chapter 31
The Keeper of the Vale
As the storm grew and the snow fell faster and faster, Tyvian found himself not so much crawling as swimming in icy white powder. He was able to take a drink of hearthcider from his canteen, which prevented him from freezing to death in the near term, but it did nothing to stem the pain of his injuries, the numbness of his fingers and toes, or his complete loss of direction.
He could see barely a few inches in front of his face. As night fell, he could see less than even that—he blindly flopped through snow banks and over ledges, he rolled down steep ravines and had to claw his way out of icy crevasses. He had no idea whatsoever where he was or where he was going. He just kept going.
Tyvian expected to die at any moment—to put his numb hand forward and lean, only to find a bottomless gorge yawning in front of him. It struck him as fitting an end as any. It was how Artus had died—how was he deserving of any better? He clawed his way forward, waiting for that sense of free fall.
It never happened.
The snow was over his head now. He could scarcely move. The ring, of course, was cold and inert—he had no “good” intentions to trick it with, no heroic farce to encourage its intervention. If he continued to live, it was only out of spite—to see the ring excised and melted down. The notion of what to do afterward was no longer clear to him. He couldn’t even remember. This—this mountainside, this storm, and this slow freezing death was what he had been marching toward all that time. It was what he deserved.
The hallucinations began as sounds—someone calling his name? Myreon? Voth? His mother? He couldn’t tell. He shook snow from his beard and called out, his voice raw and hoarse. He imagined the gardens of Glamourvine, the sound of the songbirds in the hedges, the softness of the wet, black earth. He imagined hugging that ground, so warm and humid it seemed to sweat beneath the sun. Why did I leave? he wondered. Could have stayed, entered the Arcanostrum, earned my staff, coasted on my family money. Married some pretty rich girl. Done nothing.
It didn’t sound so bad now. Boring, but painless. Xahlven probably would still have plunged the world into darkness for his own crazy reasons. Tyvian reasoned, though, that when he died in that other life—that fictional, illusory past he was now constructing—he would have died fat and satisfied. Perhaps he would have married Myreon, popped out a few children. Tyvian wasn’t fond of children, but he was considering that a failing at the moment. As he died here, alone on a mountaintop, having somebody out there in the world who might miss him seemed an advantage, however slight.
He tried to move. He found he couldn’t. The snow was up around his shoulders, covering his back. He tossed his head blearily from side to side. Snow fell over his face and into his mouth.
Fine, then, he thought. This will do.
He slept. Or perhaps he died. In any event, he found himself dreaming of Myreon’s laugh—that rarest of things—and of Artus. And Hool. And little Brana.
And of his mother hugging him that last time they had spoken.
Tyvian knew he was dying, now, because it didn’t even bother him to realize that she had been right.
And then a strong, rough hand had him by the back of his cloak, hauling him upward. “Right—there you are!” The voice was deep, like the rumbling of distant thunder.
“Eddereon?” Tyvian muttered, but whoever it was—not Eddereon—was throwing him over his shoulders and trudging through the snowstorm.
Tyvian drifted in and out of consciousness as this happened, and could see really nothing but white and felt nothing but cold and the vaguely dizzying sensation of dangling over someone’s shoulder. Then, suddenly, it all stopped. There was light and warmth and quiet—just the crackling of a fire. He was being laid down on a bed. “There,” his rescuer said. “Just sleep, Tyvian. Sleep.”
Tyvian slept. He didn’t even have it in him to wonder how this person knew his name.
Tyvian woke up under some thick fur pelt in some rustic cabin. For the third time in his life.
He threw the fur off of him. “Kroth’s bloody teeth, can’t a man succumb to death without some imbecile interfering?”
But he was alone. The cabin was small—only one room, with a stone fireplace dominating one wall and a thick wooden door opposite. A cheery blaze flickered in the hearth, and the low beams of the steepled roof were hung with dried herbs and cured meats. From what he could see, there were no weapons apart from a wood axe, and that had a rusted head that was likely so blunt, the axe had to be downgraded to “cudgel” in terms of its purpose. No doubt the sharp one had been relocated, since something had to be cutting the firewood around here.
Tyvian’s wounds were expertly bound and, though not entirely healed, were certainly much better. They didn’t even especially hurt. The ring throbbed at the thought of bashing the person who saved him over the head and diving once more into the storm, so Tyvian seriously doubted this was a dream.
He got up and found that he was naked. The cabin was so warm that it scarcely mattered, and if his savior could handle stuffing a nude Tyvian under a pile of furs, he could bloody well handle a nude Tyvian poking through his belongings.
He found a wedge of cheese and ate it. It was hard and old, but good enough. He found a barrel of ale, too, and pour
ed out a bit into a pewter mug. It was warm and weak, but it would do. He had only to wait until his savior returned.
Tyvian had been awake for about an hour or so when there was a stomping on some kind of porch outside the door—knocking the snow off boots—and then the door swung open. The man beyond was a compact sort of fellow—wide as he was tall, like a wrestler. His hair was pure white, spilling over his broad shoulders, as was his beard, which was so long it was tucked into his rope belt. He wore a patchwork cloak of fur, all caked in snow. Once the door was closed, he threw it off of him and onto one of the roof beams. Beneath, he had a thin shirt, so ancient it was practically transparent, and a pair of patched canvas pants. Of everything he wore, only his boots looked worth anything—black, polished, and heavy, they were the kind of thing that would cost twenty-five marks in a Galaspin outfitter’s shop.
“How are you feeling, Tyvian?” the man asked, grinning. His teeth were white and perfectly even.
“I’m going to skip the part where I wonder how you know my name and get right to the ‘Who the hell are you and where am I?’ questions.”
The man nodded as though this were expected. “My name is Abrahann. I found you in the snow and brought you here. I would tell you where you are, but the mountain and the pass where my cabin rests have no name. I will say instead that you are above the Hidden Vale of the Oracle, and so your journey is very nearly complete.”
Tyvian shook his head. “All right, I’ll bite—how the hell do you know so much about me?”
“I am an augur.” The man pointed toward a basin of water on a table—something Tyvian had taken to be a washbasin and used as such. “I’ve been scrying your future for some time now. Ever since Eddereon saw fit to gift you with the ring.”
Tyvian’s eyes darted to Abrahann’s hands. Sure enough, there on his right hand was nestled an iron ring just like his. The man saw his expression of surprise and held it up. “Yes. I have one, too.”
“Then you must have asked the Oracle how to take it off!” Tyvian said, standing up. “Can you? Is it possible?”
The Far Far Better Thing Page 31
