Francisco’s eyes flew open. Digging his right hand into the ground, he tried to sit up, gasping. Pain dragged him down again. He panted desperately, glaring at his surroundings. He was in the Woods again. A screen of new elm leaves was above him, a soft breeze tickled his face, and birds were calling to each other.
He hadn’t expected to wake again. Then… maybe he was dead, gone to the underworld to be with his ancestors, as the Tarhians believed. He was disappointed; he had hoped there was no pain beyond death. Death was a waste of time.
Voices were discussing something quietly nearby and Francisco strained to hear them. None of them were the voices he expected, which was comforting.
“We simply mustn’t stop, Robert,” a girl said. “He will come after us. He doesn’t rest.”
“He looked pretty well aimless though, Robert,” a man said in a particularly crisp Sianian accent. “I wonder where it went.”
“It was a miracle,” the third person said. Robert’s voice was deeper than the other man’s, low, yet keen. “Zion Himself has saved us. Yet I agree with Etana; we can’t stay for long, though we must see to Rafen. He looks very ill.”
Francisco felt tears sting his eyes. The relief was almost unbearable. He was with friends of his brother. He did not deserve this.
“I can’t believe we survived that,” the other man said. “Jolly decent. Wait till we tell Father. Say, is that a wild turkey?”
“We’re not safe yet, Kasper,” Robert said. “For all we know, he may be twenty minutes away.”
The girl sucked in her breath sharply.
“I know, Etana. But we must take a chance. Will you see how he is?”
“Yes,” Etana said.
Etana. Francisco realized these were the children of the former Sianian king. Etana Calista Selson was his heir. Although Francisco had been told they were murdered, he had long suspected they were only supposed to be dead.
Etana’s footsteps came closer, until her head was within sight. She leaned over Francisco, her vivid blue eyes perturbed, but her mouth partially open in a semblance of restrained relief. She placed a petite hand on his chest. “Steady, Rafen. Breathe deeply.”
Francisco realized his breathing was still jumpy, like he had a terrible case of hiccups.
“Is he awake?” Robert asked. His footfalls sounded nearby.
“Yes,” Etana said. Her eyes had shifted from Francisco’s face to his left arm, lying limply at his side. “This is the main cause of his pain,” she said. “Though he has a number of cuts from the glass… here, and here, and these little ones on his face.”
Robert’s skinny visage appeared above Etana’s. He had high cheekbones, a large pointy nose, and his eyes were pale blue. His chestnut hair was disheveled from running. He pursed his thin lips into a line.
Etana stooped gracefully and rustled around with Francisco’s arm and sleeve. Francisco felt nothing; surprisingly, it was the rest of his body that was in agony.
“How are you feeling, Rafen?” Robert said, articulating each word with care.
“I am all right,” Francisco croaked. “My brother—”
“Yes, yes,” Robert said tenderly. “It has been some time, my brother.”
Francisco’s head was swimming. By Carn, why was this man calling him his brother?
“I do not know what you are talking about,” Francisco said. At the thought of Rafen, he remembered something and his inhalations quickened again. “My brother—”
“Yes? Whatever do you mean?” Robert said.
Another tall, thin youth appeared next to Robert. His boyish face was traced with faint stubble, and his eyes were soft green. Messy red-brown hair covered his ears.
“Rafen, I say!” Kasper said. “You have looked better, but it’s awfully nice to see you again!”
Francisco was ready to explode with frustration.
“I am not Rafen,” he said, still in the same infuriating, hoarse voice. He couldn’t believe how stupid these people were. Didn’t they hear his Tarhian accent?
Robert and Kasper looked at each other blankly.
“He is much worse than I thought, Etana,” Robert said.
Etana’s concerned face reappeared in Francisco’s vision. Francisco looked at her with the desperation of someone who has found themselves amid insane people.
“Etana, please,” he said rapidly, “Rafen, my brother, he is in trouble; they are going to find him and kill him; you must help—”
“Ah, old chum,” Kasper said, reaching down and ruffling his hair, “but you are Rafen.”
“Don’t you think his accent is odd?” Etana asked. “And his clothes are—”
“Please don’t encourage this, Etana,” Robert told her. “He fell. He is suffering memory loss. It will come back to him. Rafen, you are Rafen, do you understand?”
“No, no,” Francisco gasped. His chest hurt. “Rafen, my brother – my twin – I am Francisco.”
Kasper started laughing helplessly. Robert kicked him before bending down, his forehead furrowed. “Rafen, you are very ill…”
“Stop it!” Etana said shrilly. “You’re only making him worse, can’t you see he is short of breath? He might be right after all.”
“Etana,” Robert said, staring at her as if she were crazy.
Etana glowered at Robert and disappeared out of Francisco’s sight. Francisco’s mouth was too dry and his breathing too shallow
for him to say anything else. He tried to inhale slower and gain control of himself. At a burst of ringing pain, Francisco groaned. Etana had pulled off his boot.
“Etana, what are you doing?” Robert said.
Suddenly interested, Kasper stared down at Etana. She pulled at Francisco’s stocking and garter and then said shakily, “Look.”
“There is nothing to see,” Robert said.
“Precisely,” Etana said. “Rafen had a slave number branded on his right ankle.”
Etana thrust her hand under Francisco and slipped it up his back, raising searing protests all along his spine. Francisco cried out. She removed her hand abruptly.
“I can’t feel his lash scars either,” she said. She stared up at her brothers, frightened. “This isn’t Rafen. It’s a completely different person.”
There was stunned silence, except for Francisco’s rasping.
“Who did he say he was?” Kasper said.
“Francisco,” Francisco managed. “My twin… Rafen… they are going to trap him…”
“They won’t,” Robert said. “Not if any of us can help it. You must tell us where to find him, Francisco. We have the Secra with us. We will save him.”
“Allow him to catch his breath,” Etana said. “I’m going to see if I can do anything for his arm. Give me ten minutes, and then we’ll leave this place.”
“To think,” Kasper said, as if trying to understand a difficult equation, “up until now we thought Rafen was dead, and now there’s two of him.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Trapped
Sounds in the night disturbed Rafen’s vigil. He straightened against his laurel oak. The fire in the center of the clearing was burning low. Rafen flicked his fingers, and the flames leapt up again. By the flickering light, Rafen saw Roger across from him. His face was like marble, and his chest rose and fell almost too shallowly to be perceived. Ahain had slipped off for food, and Rafen missed him.
He rose slowly. Sherwin was leaning against a holly next to him, grunting occasionally in his sleep. His bruised forehead was furrowed as if he were trying to solve a problem in his dreams. Beside Roger, Elizabeth and Wynne were huddled together, slumbering peacefully. Above, an owl called.
Tarhian voices rang out, perhaps five minutes away. Rafen gritted his teeth, breathing heavily. As he prepared to sit down again, a blood-chilling scream rose in the air, hung there for a second, and fell to Earth like a dead bird. Rafen froze.
It was a woman.
I’m going to ignore it, he told himself.
In his heart
, he knew he never would. He hadn’t been able to ignore such a scream since the dream he had had in Tarhia. His identity as Fledgling and Wolf really only translated to one thing for him: he couldn’t leave people to die.
His hand had gone to his sword hilt, and now the scream rose again, louder and more piercing. In the trees, the cooing night birds paused to listen. Rafen inwardly cursed all Tarhians everywhere as he loosened his sword in its sheath and pushed through the leaves. The woman cried out once more, and then her voice was strangely muffled. Rafen’s heart thundered. They were suffocating her.
He transformed and rushed through the Woods, the trees flashing by with the silver line of the river occasionally visible through them. He paused once to sniff the air before following the Tarhian scent like a map.
At last he broke through some beech trees into a large clearing. Two tall, thin Tarhian men stooped over a Sianian woman, one stifling her cries, the other squeezing her throat with both hands. The woman lay on the ground, struggling feebly. Her eyes were glazed like a corpse’s.
Rafen lunged toward the taller Tarhian’s back, his jaws agape. His teeth sank into giving flesh. The Tarhian screamed, whirling around and clawing at Rafen. Rafen released his hold and dropped to the ground nimbly, blood dripping from his fangs. When the Tarhian faced him in wide-eyed shock, Rafen pounced upward, his eyes fixed on the thick veins within the open blue collar. The Tarhian screamed again, covering his throat
and staggering backward into his companion, who fell across the woman, relinquishing his grip on her. The Tarhians landed on the ground, and Rafen glimpsed movement in the broomsedge grass and blackroots. He twisted mid-air and landed left of the tumbled heap of people.
Shadows emerged from the surrounding greenery. Silently, seven long-robed philosophers surrounded him, each bearing a weapon – a long knife, a staff, a dagger… Asiel stood next to Frankston, his tattered gray robe whispering in the soft night breezes.
Rafen’s heart twanged nervously. He realized he had left the others in their clearing without a watch. At this moment, they might be surrounded too. He skittered a little way from the Tarhians, his head lowered and his tongue hanging out.
The philosophers’ heads turned to watch him, their eyes glistening in the pale moonlight. Rafen realized the Tarhians must
have tortured the woman in numerous clearings before they had come close enough for Rafen to hear them. Their trap had worked in the end, however. It was inexplicable that these two men had come so far into the Woods without getting lost when Talmon’s party of reinforcements had failed to do so earlier in the day while hunting the Wolf. These Tarhians must have had a Sianian to guide them, someone who knew the paths of the Woods.
In answer to his thoughts, the tight circle opened fractionally before him for someone else. A woman approached. Her long hair hung past her shoulders. She wore a knee-length dress that was ferociously tight around her thighs. Despite the dim light, Rafen instantly recognized her.
“Come now,” Annette said. “Why don’t you show us your face, Rafen?”
She knew. Had Francisco told?
Rafen would fight with kesmal better in his usual form anyway. He rose to his feet as a boy, the metallic taste of blood sickening in his mouth. A murmur went around the circle.
“Ha!” Annette said hysterically. “I knew it! Rafen, I am so pleased to see you.”
Rafen’s heart sank. He had given himself away. His phoenix feather burned beneath his shirt. Rafen clutched it, wildly glancing around for the Lashki. He felt that injury in the king’s bedchamber once more – a tremendous blow, with the force of a cannonball, to his chest.
Annette simply smiled, her white teeth glittering. One of her hands was behind her back, and she brought it out now. Jerking in her grasp, the copper rod shimmered in the moonlight. A black speck of kesmal shone like coal at its tip.
Rafen’s pulse fluttered. What did this mean? He remained rooted to the ground. The Tarhians stood near him, eyeing him suspiciously. One held his back with a bloodied hand.
“Rafen,” Annette said, “Nazt has been calling for you. It wants you very much. It has known all this time that you were not dead, and Master was hunting… yet he was not looking in the right place.”
Rafen’s left hand dropped from his phoenix feather to his sword hilt. Annette drew closer as she spoke.
“I would not draw the sword,” she said. “You will only make it harder for yourself. Rafen, surrender to Nazt is quick and easy. It will not hurt.”
“I don’t think so,” Rafen said hoarsely. Voices were slipping into his head, whispering words he didn’t understand.
Annette opened her mouth to speak again, when the copper rod in her hand shot toward Rafen. Annette lurched forward; Rafen leapt backward into the arms of a philosopher who grabbed him roughly, hurling him into the path of the rod. The sharp tip struck Rafen’s collarbone, and immediately the voices became louder, a million people screaming in his ears. The ground was whipped away from Rafen’s feet, and the world spiraled around him, a mess of shadowy colors. The air roared past him, driving the breath from his lungs. Momentarily, he thought he would appear in Sherwin’s world again. He hit the ground. An oddly quiet thump before him told him he had company.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Nazt
The copper rod rested gently against Rafen’s collarbone. A trickle of warm blood seeped into the hem of his shirt, where his phoenix feather was.
Rafen was huddled on the dusty ground of a very high cliff. Far away beneath, the ocean waves rose and fell with a muted roar. Directly before him, Annette lay face down, the copper rod still in her outstretched arm. Her eyes were closed, and her face was twitching.
Rafen tried to push the copper rod away, yet it was like he was dreaming. His limbs were too heavy, and the air resisted him. His breath was thick and smoky in his mouth. An age later he managed to move a finger. But he still hadn’t lifted his hand, which was pressed against the ground.
He realized why he couldn’t move. He looked up slowly, past Annette. Beyond the crumbling ground at the cliff’s edge, a huge black wall pulsated, filled with misty, eyeless faces he had seen in a previous lifetime. It was a crowd of the spirits of the air and the dead, yet they had naked bodies, vaporous gray and black with smooth limbs. Tangled and grotesque, a thousand hands reached out for him, a thousand million people at once screeching his name:
“Rafen! Rafen!”
Rafen stared at them, transfixed. At first, he had thought they were insubstantial. However, as he watched their hands grasping and clutching with distended fingers, he realized they were solid, able to be touched and felt. The forms, suspended in the air, writhed in a knotted mass before him, a mass that stretched for leagues and leagues, blotting out the entire Eastern horizon.
The cacophony crushed any sane thoughts Rafen might have had. The faces opened toothless mouths and screamed with a unified sound that was a vibrating sensation to him:
“RAFEN! RAFEN! RAFEN!”
Rafen was too far back on the cliff to reach. He tried moving the copper rod again, only to find both his hands were stuck to the ground on either side of him. The screaming of Nazt grew more insane. The thousands of voices cursed him as one, commanding him to stay where he was. Excepting his name, Rafen couldn’t make sense of the words they yelled. Still, he knew what they wanted, and it was easy to remain frozen.
Annette shivered before him, and Rafen had the vague idea she was fighting the voices. Her head snapped up. The struggle was over. Withdrawing the copper rod from Rafen’s collarbone, she rose. Rafen stared up at her, awestruck. She was very tall. The voices had resumed chanting his name madly, and Rafen felt popular, stupidly happy. It was like the peasants shouting “Wolf, Wolf, Wolf!” And why shouldn’t he be worshipped? He was the Fledgling, after all.
A flash before him brought him to his senses. The copper rod had slashed across his throat, and Rafen was himself again, terrified that he was bleeding or dead. His hands moved up
to feel his neck.
His hands. He could move his hands. The voices around him were wild now, and their volume made his surroundings shimmer and undulate. Rafen had instinctively thrown himself backward from the rod. It had sliced the air before his throat, and he was not dead. With a titanic effort, he stood, recoiling from Annette.
Her pale green eyes strangely lit, Annette lunged toward him and grabbed his hair, jerking him forward. Rafen tried to throw himself back, but the air was a wall against him. The copper rod flicked to his throat again. Though everything in Rafen shrieked to pull back, his muscles wouldn’t obey. He watched helplessly as the tip settled on his larynx. Annette paused, listening. She had had another idea. Her grip on his hair tightened and she dragged him toward the cliff edge.
“Zion! Please!” Rafen screamed, trying with all his might to break away.
His body wasn’t working. Annette had thrust him before her, and she steered him toward Nazt by his shoulders. The ground was soft beneath his feet. Particles broke away and fell fathoms below
into the frothing white sea. He was right before Nazt now, staring into the empty eye sockets of the churning, nude forms. Smooth gray hands reached out for him, flapping in the air, snatching. Rafen desperately tried to break the spell over his limbs.
Annette was laughing. Her voice was cracked and hysterical. “Rafen, Rafen!” she screeched in his ear, united with the voices.
Then she shoved him forward and Rafen screamed again. Everything around him was obliterated except for hundreds of eyeless faces and limbs. He was suffocating. Cold, clammy hands grasped his body; a cascading sensation answered their touch. A layer of his skin was sliding away. He was being stripped to become like them. He felt a drunken lightness, a willingness and reeling joy…
A burst of orange before his eyes. He had buffeted himself back onto the dry, crumbling cliff with an explosion of flame. When he landed, widening cracks spread through the soft earth beneath, and Rafen scrambled further onto the land. His body was still his, and he felt cheated. Every movement sapped his energy.
The Sianian Wolf Page 29
