Were they human? Ghosts, perhaps, of the thousands of soldiers that Viro had slaughtered on the day the Rift was born? Or were they the remnants of others who’d died in the Rift more recently?
What would her voice sound like, if she died here and lingered to haunt future travelers foolish enough to cross this desolation?
It ought to be well into morning, she guessed; there’d been a glimmer of dawn above the crown of the tree, as Toril had spoken to her. She remembered color in the palm of his hands, color in the turquoise gleam of his heartstone.
No color reached her eyes now. Just a charcoal murk so dim that her own body was invisible.
Toril’s heartstone had been beautiful, she realized. She thought of its heft, its smoothness and symmetry; she remembered the gloss between her fingers. It was a fit emblem of the man she’d married. In her mind’s eye she saw the solid straightforwardness of his rooms where she’d slept for a night—worn leather boots, well oiled; the relaxed spine of scripture on Toril’s desk; meticulous sketches on vellum near his telescope—and the heart that revealed truths about people leapt in Malena’s chest. She had a sudden vision of Toril working the stone day after day, polishing, preparing it for her… She recalled the look in his face as he held it out to her, palms cupped…
Malena shook her head and suppressed a sob. She hadn’t knelt and burned incense since the attack, but now she thought of prayer.
“Sarezha jilal, Jurivna!” she whispered. “Help me! I’m so lost.”
The heartstone her mother wore was a gaudy ruby, Malena knew. She’d never seen it, of course, but her mother had dropped hints. “Your father’s treasure box holds only half our net worth, Malena,” she’d said. “I only know one jewel finer,” she’d said. “A man shows his priorities by what kind of stone he hangs,” she’d said. “Your father mortgaged an entire estate to buy it. Nobody could believe his extravagance.”
As a girl, Malena had been impressed. The biggest, most precious gemstone in all the Sumago Mountains hung at her mother’s heart.
Later she heard loneliness and self-doubt in her mother’s proud whispers, and Malena grieved for it. She allowed herself to hope for a better tenderness from the man who hung his heartstone around her neck.
Yet when she’d found exactly that, she’d thrown it away.
Malena pushed a forearm across her cheek, then prayed until she ran out of words.
How long had she been huddled on the sand in the dark? Hours?
She became aware that since sitting, she’d been pressing a hand into her stomach. She removed it now, and sensed a surge of nausea.
For the thousandth time, she wondered if she was diagnosing its source correctly.
Her parents would be humiliated if she bore a child, and it wasn’t the child of this young prince of a husband they’d been so delighted to snag for her.
So much for cementing ties to a family with money and reputation and political pull.
Malena shook her head. Her parents were probably dead. And if not, they were hardly the ones who mattered most in this equation, anyway. Their reaction paled in importance next to the one her husband might have.
Maybe she was wrong. Might healing have altered her body’s schedule?
She needed to tell Toril.
But… how? Whatever she said would break his heart. He could disown the child and disavow their marriage, try to salvage his own reputation and start over with a wife that people considered “unsullied.” Or he could brazen his way past the rumors, claim the child as his own, live embittered by the cruelty of the thieves who had stolen not only his bride, but the birthright of any true children he sired.
Either way was misery. No matter how good his intentions, he couldn’t help but end up hating her…
She shook her head again. Shivi had urged her to face her own pain; now Malena saw how she’d been hiding from it by obsessing over others’ reactions.
What about her reaction?
Ever since her fosterage, she’d clung to dreams of learning, of seeing the world, of breaking free from controlling parents and charting her own course. Despite a growing hunger for emotional connection, she’d come to dread marriage—not the status itself, but the risk it represented. She could die in childbirth, like her aunt, or she could end up just as trapped and unfulfilled as her mother. So much could go wrong in an arrangement she did not control…
And now, so much had gone wrong. No matter how Toril reacted, bearing a child left those dreams in ashes. Maybe dying in childbirth was better. If he cast her off, she’d have a life of poverty and humiliation. If he kept her, the child would consume all life between them. She foresaw years of joylessness, not warm interdependence.
Either way, could she find it in her heart to care for a child conceived in cruelty and terror?
After the initial surprise of Toril’s overtures, she’d sorted and filtered the gossip from her friends, and allowed a spark to glow in her heart. Folk said he was genuine and friendly. She’d seen hints of humility and kindness in his letters, too.
Maybe that’s why his urgency to have a wife now offended so much; she wanted—needed!—to be seen as a person, not just a role.
Instead, she felt used. Her parents wanted a daughter that they could trade for profit. They wanted an heir. Toril wanted a wife. The bandits wanted an instrument for their violence and perversion.
Was usefulness her measure?
She analyzed the bitterness triggered by that idea of being sullied, stained, damaged. Toril had never expressed such an attitude, and neither had Shivi, or Paka. Yet she knew it was lurking in their minds.
It had to be.
Maybe the real problem wasn’t whether Toril believed she was damaged; maybe the problem was that she believed it.
Hadn’t she said she wanted to die?
Shivi said she still had happy days to look forward to. Right now that assurance seemed ridiculous; she might not even see sunlight again. But a part of her understood the old woman. The hurt from the stable ran soul-deep, and it might have altered her emotions in ways that she’d never fix—but she was still the same person, wasn’t she? She still longed to learn, still loved her sister, still aspired to kindness and meaning, still responded to beauty…
Wasn’t that worth something?
Didn’t that matter more than whether she wore a stone around her neck?
She heard Paka first.
It was hours later—was it even the same day?—and for a moment she wondered if she’d willed herself to hallucinate. But his voice came again, floating out of the dimness, distorted but real.
“I’m here!” she shouted back, scrambling to her feet. She’d become quiet as she huddled—to hear better, and to give no hint of solo prey if predatory ears were listening. Now she screamed, throat burning. “Here!”
Voices called back.
She heard footsteps.
The gray seemed to soften and fold. Then Toril materialized, staff in hand, with Shivi holding tight to his belt, and the others chained behind.
Malena’s immediate impulse was to run forward and hug her husband. He’d come! He’d found her! Fear and shame and pride gave her pause, but she pushed past it and stepped forward anyway.
Then she flinched as a spear-shaped shadow arced out of the haze. It struck Paka in the ribs. He gasped and stumbled.
Shapes boiled from the dark, multi-armed and beetle-like. Snorts and squeals assaulted Malena’s ears. The disembodied voices that had haunted Malena seemed to swell and snarl and gloat.
Toril whirled with the staff, shouting fiercely.
Oji seized her hand and jerked Malena into the center of the group. She tripped over Paka’s scissoring legs and went down on one knee. A blur of fur and tusk resolved; Malena lashed out with the rock she still carried as a crude weapon. She felt something fleshy tear as her grip ripped apart.
Shivi grunted, then groaned.
Malena elbowed an attacker. She heard the staff whistle over her head and smash som
ething solid—something that shrieked. She felt Oji vault across her back, kicking at something she couldn’t see. A projectile of some sort flew past her ear and thudded nearby. Sand sprayed her face; she blinked and spat.
A terrific blow threw her sideways and forward. She felt the shaft of the spear that had hit Paka gouge the bones of her hand as she reached out to catch herself.
Without warning, hooves and footfalls faded, leaving in their wake only the sound of human breathing.
“Are they gone?” she whispered.
49
canvas ~ Kinora
Through the crack at her eye, Kinora stared at the riverbank slipping past their gunwale.
She felt numb with despair. Perhaps someone had followed the children and their captors as far as the place where they’d taken to the river. If she was lucky, that someone had found Cricket and rescued him. But she was certain that no help—whether on river, horseback, or foot—had kept up with them since. Gorumim had summoned a wave, or a series of them, and the queer rolling surge had carried their barge forward faster than a horse could trot, these past few days. Any rescuers—and any hope they represented—lay far, far behind.
She’d felt this hopelessness yesterday, and the day before. But this morning, a queasy feeling in her stomach had told her that as bad as things had been, they were about to get worse. She’d roused the two little ones lying dazed on her lap, overwhelmed with an urge to hide—hide! Together, they’d crept along the edge of the deck, and wormed their way beneath a scrap of canvas when none of the men were paying attention.
They’d lain there for hours, too weak and terrified to move.
Hiding wouldn’t save them, Kinora knew. They were still captives on the barge, and if their absence were noticed, the sharp senses of the golden men would in the end ferret them out. She’d seen them sniff out the stash of bacco that one of the soldiers had hid so carefully, seen one flick a knife across the deck and laugh at the squeak of the rat he’d impaled in a crack beside the wine barrel.
They’d be found, eventually.
But maybe, not for a while.
An hour ago, White Hair—Gorumim—had emerged to pace the deck in the lowering sun. His tread was steady, energetic. From time to time he looked up, checking for something among the foothills and forest.
Now, his feet stilled. He stared for a moment, chin lifted, then raised one arm.
Kinora felt the deck settle, saw their motion slow. The bulge of water beneath them faded with a gurgle.
One of the younger children at her elbow sniffled and moaned. Kinora’s hand shot out, quick as thought, and clapped across the girl’s mouth to muffle the sound. Her sense of danger had just climbed another notch.
“We stopping, then?” asked one of the osipi.
Gorumim nodded and rubbed his forehead as if with weariness. “Just around this bend the river gets wide and shallow for a stretch before it curves north. Current’s gentle, and there’s a backwater with some big, smooth rocks where we can tie off. Naknar Kirte, folk call it—the southern gate, in the old tongue. First fordable spot along the border of the capital province.”
“We’ve come so far, already?”
Gorumim nodded.
The osipi whistled through his teeth.
“Why stop at all?” asked one of the Royal Guard, joining the conversation as he emerged from the cabin below deck. “We’re not exactly worn out from hard marching.”
Gorumim blinked at the soldier. The man, who had smiled at the humor in his question, seemed to wilt.
“Sorry, sir,” he added in haste. He opened his mouth to babble more apology, saw the hardness in his commander’s eyes, and gulped.
“You are not weary,” the general replied, his tone dripping with acid, “because I have been pushing us along. Do you think that’s an easy feat?”
The soldier shook his head in disagreement.
“No,” White Hair whispered. He walked over and stood beside the soldier, hand resting on his shoulder, gazing out at the shoreline as though enjoying a companionable moment. Though Gorumim’s posture was relaxed, Kinora saw the other man’s voice box drop as he swallowed hard.
“In fact,” Gorumim continued, “it’s beyond all but the most gifted magic wielders to do such a thing, even for an hour. How do you think I’ve kept it up for days on end?”
The soldier shook his head.
“No guesses?” Gorumim murmured, sounding surprised. He turned back to the osipi, who stood observing, and raised his eyebrows. “How about you?”
The osipi shrugged.
Slowly, Gorumim lifted his hand from the soldier’s shoulder, extended a finger, and laid its tip, almost tenderly, underneath the other man’s jaw.
The soldier flinched.
“Feel that pulse?” he whispered, leaning toward the man as if imparting a secret. “There’s power in that. So… much… power…”
Kinora heard the osipi snicker, and saw the soldier swallow again.
Gorumim held the pose for a dozen heartbeats, then relaxed and stepped away, allowing his arm to drop. “You’ve served me well,” he said, nodding at the soldier. “I know that. And I don’t forget my friends, any more than I forget my enemies.”
The soldier nodded, still very tense. Behind them, footsteps thudded as more men clambered up to the deck.
Gorumim stretched his arms and yawned, his body language casual and friendly now. “I could keep this up a bit longer, if I had to—but our need for haste is past, I think.”
“Time to go ashore?” asked a new voice. It was the rasp of the senior osipi warrior—the only man on board who didn’t seem afraid of White Hair. He had trotted up silently from the stern, and now stood almost within arm’s reach of the hiding children. Kinora suppressed a start.
Gorumim grunted. “The outermost enchantment around the tyrant is a sort of tripwire; if we pass Kirte without countering it, he will know an enemy approaches, and from where. Fifty leagues farther, and another enchantment will tell him our numbers, and the general nature of our plans. I’ve cursed The Five more times than I can count, as I’ve cloaked my heart here on homeward travels.”
“How many enchantments are you dismantling?” Luim responded.
Gorumim exhaled.
“Not dismantling. Just confusing, twisting, ever so carefully.” He turned to face Luim. “What would the raja think if, a day from now, he heard that I was riding into the city with a score of osipi prisoners, and his enchantments had not already warned of your arrival?”
Luim’s eyes narrowed.
“We want him to be warned… about you and your men. But we want him to sense that you’re in the custody of his trusted and loyal general, that you’re approaching as captives.” Gorumim placed long, white fingers on the smaller man’s shoulder, and his lips curved into a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “The soothsayers who built this shield were clever and powerful. But they were not, I think, careful enough to withstand fresh blood from the Crown. Shall we see?”
50
despair ~ Toril
Toril sagged to a stop and looked up at last, hands and forearms trembling with fatigue. It felt like an eternity had passed since he’d lifted a knotted corner of blanket in the gloom, providing half the support for Paka’s makeshift stretcher. Oji and Malena had been shouldering the staff with the other end of the blanket tied at a midpoint between them. They, too, were stumbling with weariness; it was Oji who’d called a halt.
Relying on the small warrior’s sense of direction, they had reached the north rim of the Rift not long ago, and crossed into morning, fresh air, and safety in a flood of relief. Even if some pishachas had escaped the battle and alerted kindred, it seemed unlikely that they would leave their murky haunts in pursuit. The sense of freedom and light was palpable, and it had grown as they followed game trails and eroded gullies down the mountainside. Birds sang. He’d caught glimpses of the river, broad and welcoming.
The exit from the Rift was much lower than the entranc
e; soon after leaving the mist behind, they were passing from foothills to lowlands. The river was just a few bowshots away, now.
They’d done it.
He rested his elbows on his knees and allowed his head to drop.
As they’d marched, Toril’s mind had cycled endlessly over what had happened with the heartstone—and then later, his failures with the staff. He’d tried to use it to find Malena almost as soon as she disappeared, but the totem didn’t seem willing or able to grant him the vision he’d enjoyed on their earlier march. Not at first, anyway; how many hours had they crept through darkness, sweeping back and forth, looking for Malena, with the staff stubbornly inert?
He’d been so furious and wounded, at first, that he was barely rational. Had that made the staff useless? Had he somehow offended Gitám the same way he’d offended Malena?
How could his anger offend? It was no more than Malena deserved. That stone had been precious—a sincere gesture of trust and esteem, a proxy for his soul. Malena’s reaction hurt beyond words.
Yet he’d shuddered with relief when, finally, the rod had lit up the darkness again. He’d been standing, listening, wondering if he had room in his heart to reconcile, feeling helpless—and then, suddenly, the glow he’d prayed for had bled through his fingertips, and the rod came alive. He saw his wife, huddled in the distance—even caught a glimpse of the tear tracks in the dust on her cheeks.
And in that instant, he had seen what was stalking her, as well, and his doubts had fled.
They had reached Malena just in time.
Had she smiled, maybe even moved toward him in welcome, as he emerged from the haze?
In the aftermath of their fight with the pishachas, they’d assessed injuries as best they could without light or tools. Paka was wounded, but he’d been able to talk coherently, and he claimed the bleeding wasn’t bad—that the bones of the rib cage had taken the worst of the spear. “We have to go!” he’d urged, again and again. “We can’t stay here, or they’ll be back.” So they’d rigged the stretcher and set off, worrying mostly about speed and distance.
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