by L. W. Jacobs
Then the rest of the pack noticed and slowed, shouting to each other while he shot up to a treetop above.
Good. The whole point was to slow them down.
And bad. Because the non-brawlers were starting to perk up, which probably meant shamanic attacks.
Which meant losing all his resonance if he wasn’t careful.
Tai unfocused his eyes, straining at the peripheries, the star’s blue light dim among the trees. Shimmering shapes appeared, elongated, smoky—yes. Revenants.
One of them was streaming for him, and he dropped under it, then struck his higher resonance and slammed a boulder of air down into the center of their pack.
Clever, Tai. But don’t get caught. I may not be able to help you from here.
Nauro’s voice sounded strained, but there was no time to think about that. The boulder attack had scattered them and Tai swooped in, straining his eyes for revenants, smashing about him with fists of air.
Focus on the shamans. You can handle the rest.
Right. Tai shot up at the faintest hint of something shimmering off to his right, then righted himself a few paces above the trees and shot back down, locking his legs to slam into the nearer non-brawler with a crunch.
Tai felt the impact, though wafting seemed to strengthen the body nearly as much as brawling did. He shot back up, narrowly dodging a pair of revenants that came at him from both sides. Lose his uai now and he’d been dead or worse.
Still at least one more shaman then—and not easy to pick out who, as the surviving fighters crowded together. That they hadn’t kept going meant they’d figured out who he was.
Well. Brawlers who were standing and defending didn’t get much chasing done. Tai shot higher up, hoping they couldn’t see him through the trees, and sped west following the trail Feynrick and Avery were breaking through the snow. Found them a few thousandpace on, as his back was starting to ache.
They were alive, and safe. Good. As much as he wanted to go down and reassure them, Tai knew it would do no good. They should be able to keep ahead of the brawlers for a while now. But if Nauro didn’t stop Ollen’s main force, they would be in serious trouble.
So Tai crunched down dried mavensytm blossoms and sped back the other way, swinging around the brawlers to head for the waystone.
There was no mistaking it in the night: fire jetted up from the clearing, and claps of thunder sounded from below.
Tai slowed, the first real pangs of fear pushing through the rush of battle. Whatever was happening there, it was beyond anything he’d seen. But what had Nauro said? They would try to flank him. Meaning powerful as he was, he couldn’t handle a flank attack.
Not that Tai could either, if the attackers were all shamans. But surprise counted for a lot, and according to how the first party of brawlers had acted, he would guess they spent more time reading old volumes of ninespear lore than training in drills.
He hadn’t done those things either, but you didn’t defeat an army of Councilate soldiers, and then another one of Broken resonators, without picking up a few tricks.
Tai circled around the clearing, some of the trees ringing it burning despite the cold. What he saw in the shallow bowl almost made him lose resonance: a single man, illuminated in firelight, facing down a pack of shamans. Jets of flame roared and lightning crackled and stones flew through the air. Nauro stood like in the heart of the maelstrom, arms raised, deflecting every attack, sending out waves of his own, the area around him littered with bodies.
Gods. He was doing it.
For now. Concentrate on those near the stone, if you can.
Nauro sounded breathless, even in mindsight. Maybe he wasn’t doing it as well as Tai thought. He wafted the canopies around the clearing, some of them burning, waves of heat and smoke rolling through the trees. There—a cluster of shamans near the stone. They appeared to be the ones calling forth lightning, raising arms to the sky to call down blinding blue-white streaks.
How was that even possible?
No matter. Nauro needed help, and the shamans wouldn’t be expecting any. He could do this. At least one attack. And every shaman he stopped here was one less than would come after him later. Come after his friends, and after his city.
But this needed a different approach than battling soldiers or Broken. Attract the attention of the whole party and he’d be incapacitated in moments. No. He needed to be careful, subtle.
Tai dropped to the forest floor on the far side of the stone, its shadow flickering and moving with the flashes of fire and lightning on the far side. For a crazy moment he thought the stone was burning, that he could see the spear hanging buried inside. But no. It was as solid as ever.
He crept across the empty side of the bowl, dropping resonance, sticking to the shadows, until he was hard up against the stone, opposite the shamans and the rest of the battle.
Then he struck resonance—not wafting but mindsight. Struck it and peered through the stone, seeking the minds of the men on the other side. There. They were predictable muddles of anger and fear and determination, battle minds, but one among them stood out as calmer than the rest. He would be the most dangerous.
Tai crept around the side of the stone, seeking the body that fit the mind. Heat washed over him as he peered around the side of the massive stone. This would all end fast if any of the shamans looked his way. He had to count on Nauro keeping their attention, on seeing a revenant attack coming if they did, though the air was awash in spirits. He sought deeper with mindsight.
There. Ollen’s mind was the most calm. No surprises there. Tai struck his higher wafting.
And this is where you kill him? Ydilwen asked, silent this whole time.
Tai ignored him. There was no time for questions of right or wrong in battle. Survival was right. And the survival of your friends.
He struck, focusing all his resonance on two tiny blades, closing in around Ollen’s throat. Air was not solid, could not be solid, but a wind had force. Enough force to choke a man, if you did it right.
Ollen doubled over, calm shattering as his airway crushed. Tai kept on him, adjusting the blades, pressing in harder, until he felt something break, somewhere between mindsight and his wafter’s push. Ollen fell and Tai moved to the next one, his companions too caught in the battle to notice.
A battle Nauro was losing, Tai saw from the corner of his eye. The sphere of protection around him was getting smaller, the projectiles flying closer to their mark, his clothes smoking from the heat of a near-constant gout of flame from a red-haired man on the far side of the shallow bowl.
Ancestors. Was this what true shamans could do?
The second shaman fell to more blades of air. Before Tai could move to the third the man’s head snapped over, taking in Tai and his fallen companions in one quick motion.
He raised his hands, and a cloud of revenants rushed in.
25
Ella called a break as Feynrick stumbled a third time under her weight.
“Pissing whoredogs,” the thick brawler wheezed once he’d set her down, “you think we’ve come far enough yet?”
Ella looked to Avery, the young man breathing heavy too. She felt bad for needing to be carried, but her slip wouldn’t take her nearly as far as brawling did, and they needed to stick together.
Besides, that feel-bad was pretty much drowned out in worry for Tai, who still wasn’t back. What was he doing?
“Did Ollen find out what Tai looked like?” she asked Avery, dread gnawing at her stomach.
“Yes,” he said. “I don’t know how, but he knew. They all did.”
Marea pursed her lips. “Could have been a lucky mindread, a failure of Nauro’s screening, someone who’d seen a sketch of him.”
The girl looked pale, her eyes a little wide, but still holding together. She was strong, for sixteen.
Ella glanced between the men. “Do you think they could follow us this far?”
“Some of them,” Avery said. “Ollen, Credelen, a few of the other
s. The brawlers and journeymen.”
“And how many journeymen among you?”
“Among them,” Avery said, already catching his breath. “I was never part of their cell, I just joined at Yatiport.”
“But you are a shaman?” Marea asked, face shadowed under double hoods.
“Well, a journeyman. But yes,” he said. “I will be a shaman.”
There was something in the simplicity of his speech and gaze that made you want to trust him. Ella did not like having a stranger in their party, but then, Nauro had been that at the beginning too.
And now he was dying for them, or at least putting himself in serious danger. Prophets. She had misjudged the man.
“How much farther to the river?” Marea asked.
“I haven’t been since we came up,” Avery said, “but maybe another eight thousandpace?”
They were more than halfway there, then. Good. “Can we arrange passage from there?” Ella asked.
“Just the five of us?” Feynrick said, breathing less heavily but hands still on his knees. “Oh aye, some jackal will want to make some change from us, visit the pleasure houses in Yatiport. Trouble’s going to be finding a worthy boat.”
“And Nauro,” Marea said. “We’ll have to wait for him, right?”
Ella hesitated, not wanting to admit Nauro might not be coming. Because Tai was with him.
Marea’s chin stuck out. “What, we’re just going to abandon him? After what he did for us?”
“He did it so we could get out,” Feynrick said gently. “We can’t waste that by waiting for Ollen and the rest to catch up.”
“And our tracks are easy to follow,” Avery said, gesturing at the snow. “We need to get on a boat and get downstream.”
“We’ll still be easy to follow,” Marea said. “Isn’t it obvious? If we were interested in that stone, we’ll be interested in the next one. They’ll just follow us there, if they don’t catch us first.”
“Problems for later,” Ella said, hollow. What did later matter when Tai wasn’t coming to them now? “Avery is right. We need to go.”
Though just as much of her screamed they needed to go back, needed to find Tai, needed to do something to make sure he survived. What was the point of all this without him?
26
Tai shot backwards, rolling, knowing any one of the revenants screaming toward him would mean death, or worse. He hooked through the trees, shot through the canopy, unsure if losing revenants was like losing regular people. Could they still follow after their shamans lost visual sight?
Apparently not—he hung a few hundred paces back from the bowl, night flashing with the battle there, and saw no revenants.
He should leave. If he was smart, he’d accept Nauro’s sacrifice and go. But the man was dying for them down there. For him. And there were still things he could do to help.
Tai dropped below the crackling branches and circled back the way he’d come, checking the woods for anyone trying to flank Nauro. Nothing here—watching through the trees Tai could see the subtle way Nauro was shifting, moving himself like a Ninekings piece and deflecting attacks in certain directions to keep his attackers on one side of him. Whatever he was doing to defend himself must get a lot more difficult if he couldn’t physically see his attackers. Tai worked his way around the far side, fresh lightning crackling across the bowl. One caught a tree a few paces ahead, and in its bonfire burst Tai caught movement to his deeper in—yes. A man there, creeping through the woods.
Tai dropped lower, striking his higher resonance. He was about to strike when the firelight revealed a second man a few paces beyond him. And a third.
Stains. He couldn’t attack one without the others seeing and turning on him.
Nauro, he said inside, hoping the man was listening. Shamans coming to flank you here. More than I can handle.
In the clearing Nauro dodged boulders and deflected lightning and strode through pillars of flame, apparently untouched, but the boulders came closer, the hair was burned from his head, and no response came to his thoughts.
Tai tried again, as the three shamans crept closer to the edge of the clearing, and closer to him. Nauro. If you can distract them I can take one or two at least.
Still nothing, though he got a sense of exhaustion, of stress, of danger. Then one of the three in the woods summoned lightning from his hands, a blue-white bolt that left a red afterimage in Tai’s eyes. It stretched from the shaman’s hands to Nauro’s back.
Nauro stumbled and Tai screamed, even as two more bolts flew from the other shamans, one of them again striking Nauro, who’d fallen to his knees with the first.
Tai struck and shot out, burying his knife in the throat of the first even as a fresh bolt flew from him. The thunderclap was deafening, but Tai was already coming around for the other two.
Who were turning to him, arms raised, the periphery of his vision starting to blur with revenants.
Go, came Nauro’s voice, weak and pained but unmistakable. Go now.
Tai took one anguished look back at the bowl, where Nauro lay under a hailstorm of rock and fire. Looked back to the revenants rushing at him like the floodwaters of a broken dam. Death on all sides. Nothing he could do.
With a roar of frustration Tai shot up and out, lightning cracking after him, blood roaring and back aching. Stay and die with Nauro or go and live.
He shot out into the night. Behind him the waystone stood from the burning bowl like a tombstone in a grave of flame and death.
27
They found the river around the time the star was rising again, and a few thousandpace downstream a cluster of huts along the bank. Feynrick went first, negotiating passage in rapidfire Yati while they shivered in the cold. He managed to get passage, rations and a promise of silence in exchange for a single ball of yura.
The value of moss had gone up.
There was no sign of Tai or their pursuers, though they had walked most of the rest of the way to conserve uai. Ella was exhausted, worried sick, and frozen to the bone, climbing into the narrow wooden boat mainly through force of will.
No one spoke, but the same question was on all their lips: where was Tai? Could he find them if they left without him?
Was he alive?
“Shall we go, then?” Feynrick asked, avoiding her eyes. Their meager gear was loaded and he held the oars.
Ella knew what she needed to say, knew it was only practical, only making the best of what he and Nauro had done for them, but her was lead. Stone.
“I’m staying,” she started to say. Marea gasped.
Ella’s head cracked around, stone heart racing. She didn’t see it at first, then Marea pointed, saying “There.”
But there was no need—she felt the thrum, the sweet, familiar bone-shaking resonance of her lover, as he dropped from the sky a few feet from the boat.
Ella leapt from it and pulled him close. He smelled of smoke and ozone and she shoved him back, looking him up and down. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” he said, “but we should go.”
“Nauro?” Feynrick asked, but the sorrow in Tai’s eyes was enough of an answer. He shook his head.
“He sacrificed himself for us,” Ella said, her voice dropping.
Tai nodded though it wasn’t really a question. “He really was what he said he was. He held back Ollen’s entire camp, Ella. The things he did—” he shook his head. “But we should go. I can waft faster than they can run, but they will still be after us.”
“Where are we going to?” Marea asked as they climbed back in the boat, carefully avoiding the frigid waters.
“Downstream,” Tai said, looking as exhausted as she felt. “Yatiport. The next stone, though you can—you can book passage wherever you want from there.”
Ella shook her head, Nauro’s loss sinking in. “How will we even know which stone to go to? Nauro was the only one who knew what to look for.”
Avery cleared his throat. “I might be able to help with that. I know some
people in Yatiport.”
“And you know something about the stones,” Tai said, nodding to Feynrick, who shoved them off the shore. “The information Ollen was using.”
“Yes,” Avery said. “That too.”
Tai just nodded, shoulders slumped. “We’ll talk more when we get down the river some. For now, Feynrick, if you’ll watch the boat?”
“I’m a Yatiman,” he said. “I could do this in my sleep.”
“Let’s not test that one out,” Marea said, though there was a note of affection in her voice Ella hadn’t noticed before. She would miss the girl when she left.
Ella laid her head into Tai’s side as the current took them, Yanu’s waters dark and tree-lined shore darker in the star’s pale light. She hated this life of constant danger, that as much danger likely lay ahead as behind. But she loved Tai for being the one who cared about it, and the chance they had to start something new, to discover old secrets and live their lives to the fullest. This was she’d always wanted, what she thought she’d never have, locked up in her parent’s house in Worldsmouth.
She just hoped they lived long enough to enjoy it.
28
The hilltop settlements are for more than aesthetic beauty, though: they allow for the careful channeling of rainwater, the natural distribution of waste among terrace gardens, and successive walls of defense against invaders. Because invasions are like blizzards in the warring counties: you can count on a few every year.
—Markels, Travels Among the Yati
Marea fell asleep leaned against Avery’s solid shoulders, which made it possibly the best sleep she’d ever had despite the noise of the water, the frigid cold, and the images that kept coming up of those men running at Nauro and getting crushed, blood gouting from ripped skin in the chaotic firelight. Against all that Avery was solid, and real, and warm.
