by Alec Hutson
The boy stopped beside an occupied stall, his hand falling from her arm. “You horse,” he said, and as if it knew it was being discussed her old mount snorted and stamped its hooves.
“My horse,” Cho Lin said quietly, slipping inside the stall. She laid her hand upon its flank, and the horse bumped its head into her shoulder, as if in greeting. Verrigan had told her that this wasn’t a good horse, and that he had thrown his previous master in a fight. But he’d been nothing but sweetness to Cho Lin during their ride to Nes Vaneth, and she’d come to suspect that there was a very good reason why the horse had disliked his old rider. Cho Lin stroked the horse’s shaggy mane, unable to keep from smiling as tears prickled her eyes.
“Thank you,” Cho Lin told the boy, hurriedly wiping at her face. Why was she becoming so foolishly sentimental?
“Come,” the boy said, and she heard his footsteps moving towards the back of the stable.
“Wait,” she replied, casting about for the horse’s saddle and tack. She found it in the corner of the stall and as quick as she could she secured it on the horse, fumbling with the leather straps and buckles in the dark. The horse remained patient as she worked, and Cho Lin gave him another friendly pat.
“Good boy,” she murmured, and the horse snorted in reply.
“Quickly,” the boy said, materializing from the dark. “Follow.”
Gripping the bridle, she guided the horse from the stall, falling in behind the shadow of the boy. He led her deeper into the stable, the blackness thickening around them.
She was just about to call out and make sure the boy was still in front of her when she walked into his back.
“Here,” the boy said, and she peered into the shadows, looking for what he had brought her to see.
After a moment she noticed the patch of grayness in the black – part of the wall had collapsed here, a large enough gap that her horse could slip through. She stepped closer, squinting into the gloom. The hole was opposite the side of the stables that faced the Bhalavan, and some of the clouds must have cleared, as she could see the white stone ruins of Nes Vaneth glowing faintly in the starlight.
“Go,” the boy said simply.
Cho Lin turned back to him. “Thank you,” she said, and she thought the shadow ducked its head, as if embarrassed. “Your uncle would be proud.”
She reached out and touched his arm lightly, and then she led the horse through the collapsed section of the wall. The night had gotten brighter, but there were no guards here and they passed unmolested across the empty field. When she reached the edge of the tumbled buildings she turned back and raised her arm in farewell. She saw nothing in the darkness, but she knew the boy was watching her.
Snow began to fall as Cho Lin passed through the dead city, for which she gave thanks, as it would hide their passing. She tried to keep the great avenue that sliced through Nes Vaneth in sight, wending her way through a tangle of side streets, since she knew it eventually reached the ruined gates. That was the way she had entered the city, and it was the way she wished to leave. Since it was so well trafficked, there likely weren’t any beasts prowling about in the forests.
Through the gaps between buildings she saw several points of light flickering in the distance. That must be the gate, and of course it was guarded. It was not the only way out, however – the walls girdling Nes Vaneth were as ruined as the rest of the city.
The first section she came to was surprisingly intact, but as she followed its meandering length she soon arrived at a segment that was just great blocks of tumbled stone. She threaded her way through the debris, checking the ground carefully as she went so that the horse she was leading would not wedge a hoof between rocks or stumble over anything in the dark.
Then she was beyond the city, facing a dark swell of pine trees. She looked to her right, down the long sweep of the walls; the clouds had dwindled to tattered strips, and the pale moon painted the snowy ground and white walls with a ghostly sheen. In the distance she could see the bulge of the gate house, but it was so far away that there was no chance any guards could glimpse her. She turned back to the slice of Nes Vaneth visible through the gap in the walls. The city gleamed in the moonlight, partially obscured by falling snow; a dead place, but still inhabited by the ghosts of a lost people. Was the Pale Lady out there, drifting among the ruins, starlight in her hair and unmelted snowflakes collecting on her cold skin?
She shook herself, finally tearing her gaze from the lost city. As if in imitation of Cho Lin, her horse tossed its head, shaking loose the snow that had gathered in its mane. Cho Lin stroked its flank, murmuring nonsense to try and comfort the animal. She squinted into the falling snow. If they entered the forest, she could build a simple shelter once they were far enough from the city that a fire could be risked. They needed food, though. The few strips of meat she’d scavenged from the dead Skein wouldn’t last very long, and she doubted very much that she’d find anything for her horse to eat once they entered the wilds.
She remembered the settlement just outside the gates of Nes Vaneth. When she’d approached the city with Verrigan and his war band, the longhouses had been in the process of being looted by the victorious Skein. It had been where the women and children of the Bear lived while the menfolk drank and feasted in the Bhalavan with their thane. The usurpers had looted the houses of furs and treasure and well-made furniture, but perhaps they had left whatever stores the Bear kept for the winter months untouched.
Cho Lin licked her lips, tasting the cold purity of the melting snowflakes. The longhouses should be abandoned, what with the bulk of the Skein army having gone south. The temple of the Stormforger where she had given up her swords might still be inhabited, so she must still be careful. But likely the priests would be asleep, and she could move as quiet as a shadow when she wanted to.
That was her plan, then. Scavenge what she could from the Bear longhouses, then put as much distance as she could between her and Nes Vaneth. With any luck, the Skein would never even notice that she had returned for her horse and left the city.
Cho Lin led her horse into the forest, heading in the direction she thought would take her to the abandoned Skein settlement. Only a thin trickle of moonlight filtered down through the trees, and there was utter silence except for the crunch of hooves in the snow and the jangle of her horse’s tack. She jumped and nearly drew her sword when snow sloughed off a branch and thumped to the ground. The forest, she decided, was even more frightening than the haunted city.
Her instincts were true, and eventually the trees thinned and she found herself staring at the darkened longhouses. She was closer to the ruined gate now, but still she thought it unlikely that any guard would be alert enough to catch her skulking in the darkness. After casting about for a moment, she found a sturdy low-hanging branch and tied her horse’s reins around it. The horse grumbled and stamped its feet, and Cho Lin scratched it behind the ear to try and calm it.
“I’ll be back soon. You want to eat tomorrow, yes? Be quiet. Be good.”
Then she slipped from the cover of the trees, dashing across the field to the closest of the longhouses. When she reached it, she pressed herself against the wooden wall, trying to sink into the pooled darkness.
Nothing. No shouts, no alarm. Best get to it, then.
The door of this longhouse was a splintered ruin. Inside was pitch black, but her eyes had adjusted somewhat from moving through the forest, and the saw shapes swelling in the darkness. She moved forward cautiously, things crunching beneath her boots. She crouched, feeling chips of wood and shards of broken crockery. Her questing fingers brushed something soft and cold and smooth; there was a body here, and she suspected it was a young child. She sighed, remembering the dead women and children strewn about in the snow that she’d stumbled across far to the south – they had tried to escape, but in the end they had met the same fate as those who had stayed behind.
A fre
sh hatred of the Skein rose in her. They were little better than beasts, murdering the helpless families of their enemies. But there was still goodness, such as Verrigan and his nephew. Although, Cho Lin admitted grudgingly, Verrigan had led the warriors who had fallen upon the fleeing Bear. A complicated people.
In her fumbling explorations of the darkened longhouse she nearly tripped over another corpse. She also discovered barrels pushed against one wall, and after prying off the lid of the largest of them she found it half-full of some grain – barley, she suspected, to her great excitement. At least her horse would not starve. After rooting around some more she gathered a few sacks that seemed to be free of holes, and she scooped as much of the grain into one as it could hold. When she opened another of the barrels she was assailed by the smell of fish, and to her delight she found it packed with salted and dried trout. Her mouth watered, and she had to restrain herself from tearing into the fish right there and then. She stuffed another of the sacks full, sending a quick thanks to the spirits of those who had lived in this house. Further investigations yielded a length of twine, a fur blanket, an assortment of dried mushrooms and tubers, and a shard of what she hoped was flint. A tool to easily make fires would improve her chances of surviving the Frostlands as much as her horse or the provisions she’d found.
Satisfied, Cho Lin exited the longhouse through the shattered door. Glancing at the other darkened longhouses, she couldn’t help but wonder what useful things she might find inside. She shook her head, though, adjusting her grip on the heavy sacks she’d slung over her shoulders. She didn’t want to weigh her horse down too much, and she shouldn’t linger much longer.
She was just about to run – or perhaps waddle, given how laden down she was – back to where she’d tied up her horse when she saw a glimmer of light from deeper in the settlement. Against her better judgement, she quietly put down the sacks she’d been carrying and crept closer, keeping to the deeper shadows beneath the eaves of the longhouses. If there were already men searching for her, she should know this.
The light was not from a torch, though. A flame burned in a wide, curved brazier outside of a circular building. A Skein temple, she knew, as it resembled the place where the priests of the Stormforger had confiscated her weapons. This one looked smaller and more slipshod, as if it had been erected recently and quickly. The flap of hide covering the entrance was mottled and patchwork, and it reminded her of . . .
Cho Lin shivered. She knew what god was worshipped here.
The brazier had been placed before a thick wooden pole, and the dancing fire illuminated the dangling legs of a naked man. His arms were outstretched, his wrists tied to a crosspiece. His face . . . at first she thought the flames simply weren’t high enough to reveal what he looked like, but then she realized that the skin of his face had been stripped away. She knew who it was from the long yellow braids hanging down.
Choking back a sob, Cho Lin turned away from Verrigan and made her way stumbling back to where she’d left what she’d scavenged. Shouldering the sacks, she hurried towards the trees and her waiting horse, tears burning her cold cheeks.
As the sky began to darken, Alyanna brought the chavenix down at a rest stop along the Wending Way. It was a cleared area just off from the road and bounded by a trickling stream, the blackened remnants of many fires attesting to the spot’s popularity among the caravans that plied the Way. When the disc settled on the grass Alyanna stood, grimacing as she stretched and her limbs unkinked. Keilan also couldn’t wait to get up and walk around. They had been sitting all day as they flew over the forests of the Kingdoms and the middlelands, and he had lost most of the feeling in his legs long ago.
It wasn’t just Alyanna’s body that had apparently grown uncomfortable during the journey – the sorceress’s eyes were shadowed, and faint lines had appeared on her brow, as if she suffered from a headache. Keilan assumed this was from the stress of keeping the chavenix aloft for so long; the sorceress had mentioned that the artifact had only been used for short flights in the past because of the strain it inflicted on its users.
“Get a fire going,” Alyanna said as Keilan hopped off the disc and began to pace back and forth, trying to make the tingling numbness fade away.
“Why don’t you just use your sorcery to keep us warm?” Nel asked, dragging one of the packs from the chavenix.
Alyanna looked at her like she was a simpleton. “Do you want to freeze? It’s difficult to maintain such sorceries while sleeping, and if the strands slip away from me in the night, you might just wake up with blackened toes. Also, I need rest. I’d forgotten how draining keeping this thing in the air is.”
“I’ll find some kindling,” Keilan said quickly when he saw Nel’s mouth opening for what he assumed would be a tart response.
Alyanna nodded, then settled herself beside one of the firepits, leaning against a rock with her eyes closed. Nel clearly thought better about saying whatever it was she’d been poised to say and instead turned away from the sorceress with a snort and a shake of her head, reaching for another of the packs they’d brought.
“Not that one,” Alyanna said without opening her eyes, and Nel froze, her hand hovering over the sack from which the sorceress had first pulled the chavenix.
With a flick of her wrist, Alyanna made the sack float over to where she was resting and settled it beside her. “Touch the wrong thing in here and you’ll get something much worse than frostbitten toes.”
Keilan remembered the flail of living darkness with which Alyanna had scourged the genthyaki. What else was in that bag?
“Let me gather the kindling,” Nel said, brushing past him as he stared at the unassuming sack. “I need some space from this one.”
Alyanna cracked her eye open, smirking as she watched Nel disappear into the stunted growth near the road. Then she reached inside the sack and pulled out a small, tattered book bound in black leather. A flicker of excitement sparked inside Keilan when he noticed that the faded title was written in High Kalyuni, like his mother’s books and the ancient tomes he had found in the Barrow of Vis.
Alyanna noticed him studying the book she held. “Don’t bother, Keilan. This was scribed by the ninth High Gendern of Kashkana in a language that has been dead for a thousand years.”
“The Shadow of a Waning Moon. Is that right?”
“You can read High Kalyuni.”
“My mother taught me.”
Alyanna expression turned more thoughtful. “You are just full of surprises, Keilan. You truly do have potential.”
The praise was unexpected, and he felt color rising in his face. He quickly tried to change the topic. “What is that book about?”
Alyanna brushed the cracked and ancient cover reverently. “It is concerned with the great mysteries of the world. I’ve always been fascinated by the unknown. There’s a large section devoted to the Ancients – or the Ashenagi, as the sorcerer who wrote this called them. There are some secrets to be gleaned, but he writes in a frustratingly oblique manner. It’s hard to tell sometimes if he truly has any insights, or is merely leading the reader down a path to nowhere. I’ve always wished I could ask the one who wrote the damn thing directly.”
“The book demands to be heard, but it cannot listen. It desires to communicate, yet it refuses conversation.”
The sorceress paled. “Where did you get that from?” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She looked like she’d glimpsed a ghost.
“I read it in a book.”
Her eyes narrowed, and as quickly as her control had slipped, she mastered herself again. There was nothing in her face to suggest that she had just been shaken by what he had said, though she was now staring at him intently.
“There are depths to you, Keilan. You are truly Niara’s grandson.”
A clatter rose up nearby, and he glanced away from Alyanna to see that Nel had returned and dumped a pile of wood on the grou
nd. She looked concerned, her gaze flicking from Keilan to Alyanna and back again, clearly aware that had something had passed between them in the short time she’d been gone.
“What’s going on?”
Two days later, they found the battlefield.
Keilan knew they were approaching something, as for the first time since they had passed into the Frostlands the unblemished blue sky ahead of them was now stained by a greasy haze. The source of the smoke became apparent when they came close enough to see the bloody aftermath of the great battle that had been fought here. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of corpses were scattered about in the snow, while even more had been heaped into mounds and set aflame. Those fires had long since gone out, though threads of black still trickled from the charred bodies. The sight of so much death sickened Keilan.
Alyanna said nothing as she guided the chavenix down to settle in the churned snow near where the bulk of the fighting had taken place. Ravens lifted from the dead warriors in a flurry of wings, shrieking indignantly at the disturbance. The sprawled bodies were all Skein, Keilan realized, most feathered with arrows or blackened by what he assumed was sorcery. There was a smell here, beyond simply the stench of so many corpses. It was like what lingered in the air after a thunderstorm, and his skin prickled. It smelled like sorcery.
Nel stepped from the Chavenix, gazing around at the devastation with her lips pursed. She looked nervous, Keilan thought. Something was bothering her. And he could guess what that was.
“I don’t see any Dymorians,” she said.
“They are the ones that were burned,” Alyanna said, still sitting cross-legged on the disc. She at least seemed unfazed by the horror spread around them.
