The Barbed Coil

by J. V. Jones

  As she moved forward, Tessa was overcome with the feeling that she was walking into familiar territory after all. She knew this place, or at least the feel of it. The darkness was as warm as her belly and as soft as her skin. On the vellum, her hand worked its magic, drawing a warren of predatory lines. Another dip into the ink, one final knotted X, and Tessa found herself at the pool’s edge. Taking a deep breath, she leaned forward and looked into its black, glassy depths.

  She saw nothing but her own face staring back.

  She should have been surprised. But she wasn’t. Some small part of her had already guessed the truth. She hadn’t stepped into some fantastic otherworld, summoned up by sorcery or sleight of hand. She had withdrawn inside herself.

  Slowly Tessa’s head began to shake. Deveric had used tinnitus not only to manipulate her, he had used it to mask who she was. By preventing her from concentrating, from thinking too deeply and going too far, he had kept a portion of her mind locked away. Something inside of her had been cordoned off: out of sight, out of use. Out of mind.

  “No,” she murmured, not knowing if the words were thought or spoken. “No.” Slamming her palm upon the vellum, she stamped her fingerprints in the ink. What had given Deveric the right to interfere with her life? What?

  “Miss! Miss! Are you all right? Please speak to me. Please.” Even though Emith’s voice seemed to come from far away, Tessa could tell he was genuinely distressed. Hearing the concern in his voice helped calm her down. Emith and his mother cared about her, and she cared about them. Deveric and his patterns may have robbed something from her, but his assistant had given something back.

  “I’m fine, Emith,” she said slowly, her tongue almost a stranger in her mouth.

  Emith’s hand brushed her shoulder. “I think you should stop now, miss. Come and sit by the fire and rest.”

  Tessa shook her head. The brush was already back in her hand. She had to return to the place she’d just found. Follow the stench of the harras and the clashing of their knives, and discover why she had been brought here.

  Running the brush along the page, she said, “Pass me the blood red pigment, Emith. This pattern isn’t finished yet.”

  S I X T E E N

  T he harrar’s gold-cast eyes appraised him. Saliva dripped from its dog-toothed maw as it swept closer with the pack. Back bent, shoulders crouched, it swayed from side to side as it moved. A thin knife held at chest height projected from its leather body armor like a spike. It was no longer recognizable as a man. Its nose was flattened and streamlined like a snout. Its cheeks were bone-hard hollows, and its eyes were slits. It didn’t blink. As it padded over ridges of rock and twisted fists of brushwood, its gaze never left Camron for an instant.

  It smelled like a butchered carcass, the gamy odor of blood no longer fresh, mixed with the harsh ammonia tang of stale urine and the cloying ripeness of fecal matter.

  The knife it held was unclean. A dark stain ran along the edge, and something white and loose, like a gob of animal fat, clung to the blade near the hilt.

  As Camron watched, the harrar let out a low, yelping sound. Others responded, and within seconds the Valley of Broken Stones rang with the sounds of their calls. The air bristled. The sun rose. Golden eyes glinted with hunger and need. Camron swallowed hard. The sword in his hand—the twice-fired, lead-weighted steel falchion his father had given him as a naming gift—felt as light and flimsy as a bamboo cane.

  By his side the troop held their circle, waiting for the harras to approach. Lured, trapped, and surrounded: there was nothing else they could do.

  Smoke from the harras’ torches formed a swirling, noxious haze around the rocks. Camron felt his eyes watering. Behind him, one of his men began to cough. Paces away now, the harras didn’t move as much as spill over the remaining space. Cloaks cracking behind them like bullwhips, they drew a writhing black ring around the troop. Camron watched the face of the harrar whom he knew without question had come to kill him. There were many things he had expected to see shining in the creature’s eyes, yet cunning wasn’t one of them. It was there, though: cold, calculated cunning.

  Camron shuddered. The harras weren’t animals after all.

  Even as Camron forced his body to still, the harras fell on the troop. Blades hacking downward, teeth bared and dripping, they shot forward as a single, unified mass.

  Camron sucked in air. Swinging his sword in a mighty half circle around his chest, he stepped forward to meet the monsters who had slaughtered his father.

  His blade glanced against the first harrar’s knife. Metal screeched. The gob of animal fat on the creature’s blade was sliced in two. Before Camron had a chance to draw back his sword for a second blow, the harrar’s knife was already on its way down again. As a reflex action, Camron raised his left forearm to protect his face. The harrar’s blade blistered down on the steel gauntlet, puncturing the plate with a soft-metal hiss. Serrated edges of steel gouged Camron’s flesh. The blade tip jabbed against his wrist bone. Grinding his teeth together, Camron forced himself to swallow the pain.

  In the half second it took the harrar to free his knife from the metal trap of the gauntlet, Camron sent his sword hacking into the soft flesh of the creature’s side. The harrar’s eyes widened. Its jaw unclenched and its spiked yellow teeth sprang apart. A breath of foul air escaped from its mouth as it let out an explosive sigh. Springing forward, it threw its entire body against Camron.

  Blood sprayed Camron’s hands and cheeks. The harrar’s knife was like a machine: up and down it went in a single hacking line. The hairs on the back of Camron’s neck prickled. His skin felt like a heavy cloak weighing his body down. He was so close to the harrar, he could smell its breath, see the gray cast of its skin, and feel the terrible, unnatural heat from its body.

  It wasn’t going to stop until it was dead.

  Weighing his sword across his chest, Camron used it as a shield. To either side of him, he heard the grunts and ragged breaths of his men. The dark forms of the harras bore down upon the troop, always moving forward, never back. Ahead, he could see more still coming. Cloaks snapping, knives raised, wasp eyes glinting black and gold, they poured down the valley’s slope toward the rocks. There was no end of them.

  Briefly Camron wondered what had happened to the three dozen men who had been left on the other side of the rocks. Not liking what his mind showed him, he pushed the thought aside.

  A second harrar came to back up the one Camron was fighting. Covering his partner’s wounded flank, he slashed at Camron’s sword arm, rib cage, and thighs. A low growl sounded deep in his throat as he fought, and his buckled maw clenched and unclenched as if he were crunching invisible bones between his teeth.

  Camron was forced to step back. Making quick sweeping motions with his blade, he moved side on to the two harras, giving them less of a target to aim for. There was blood in his eye—he didn’t know whether it was the harrar’s or his own. His left wrist felt as if scalding water had been poured on it. Blood pumped through the puncture hole in the gauntlet, spilling down his arm and onto the rocks below.

  The sun slanted upward through the trees. Camron could feel its warmth on his shoulders and the back of his neck. The smell of burning grass was carried on the breeze. Grass and something else. Camron switched his mind back to the fight. It was yet another thing that didn’t bear thinking about.

  The long, thin knives of the harras were no match in size or weight for the troops’ broadswords, yet that hardly seemed to matter. The harras were fast—faster than any fighters Camron had ever known—and their leather armor kept them light on their feet. They lashed out with deadly, unstoppable focus. They wanted blood, and nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to stop them from getting it.

  To Camron’s left, a man went down. A harrar’s blade punctured his breastplate above his heart, and he stumbled forward, breaking the circle formed by the troop. As Camron sent his sword glancing in a series of defensive broadstrokes, he watched as half a dozen harr
as fell on the wounded knight. Saliva frothed between their teeth, spilling down their jaws in thick, viscous strings. Long knives flashed in the sunlight as they hacked away at the downed man. Arm raised above his face to shield himself, the man was helpless to stop them slicing away at the exposed flesh of his forearm, neck, and throat.

  “Get up,” Camron willed him between gritted teeth. “Get up.”

  The knight didn’t respond.

  Ravis’ words filtered through Camron’s mind: “I’ve seen too many men die because they were wearing full armor and couldn’t right themselves after a fall. . . .”

  A wave of anger swept over Camron and he lashed out with his sword. The blow caught the wounded harrar in the center of his flank, slicing through muscle and kidney tissue. Even before the creature could react, Camron switched his grip on the leather-bound hilt, adjusting it so the blade was facing inward toward himself, and sent the pommel of his sword smashing into the second harrar’s snout. Bone cracked, teeth caved, blood spilled down from its nostrils. As the creature stumbled back, Camron switched his attention to the wounded harrar. Sword whirling in his hand, he regained his grip on the hilt, and using the built-up momentum of the blade to add power to the blow, he hacked at the harrar’s throat. He felt the blade go in, yanked it out, and then moved swiftly sideways toward the downed knight.

  By all the gods, he was going to make him get up!

  Blood stung his eyes. Trapped sweat steamed beneath his armor. The muscles in his sword arm ached with the strain of wielding his sword. All around him, he was aware of the changing nature of the battle. His troop was tiring. No longer grunting, thrusting, and parrying; breaths came quick and shallow as they held their swords close to their chest. Faces were red and dripping sweat. Slowly, step by step, they backed inward in an ever-decreasing circle toward Rhif of Hanister’s body.

  Hacking a path toward the downed man, Camron risked casting a glance over the dark, mewling forms of the harras. Teeth glinting, chests pumping: they were just getting started.

  Sword slashing Xs in the air around his torso, Camron approached the pack that had fallen on the wounded knight. The man’s armor straps had been cut, and the harras were busy tearing off his breastplate. The leather ailettes over his shoulders and upper arms, and the cuisses protecting his thighs had been sliced to ribbons. The harras clawed at the remaining armor, tearing at the padded undershirt beneath in their eagerness to get at flesh.

  There was a lot of blood. The knight’s helmet had come off, and two harras were stabbing at his head, ears, and throat. The knight’s arm was still up, protecting what he could of his face. The arm itself was a bloodied mass of raw meat, the gauntlet long since cut away.

  Camron bore down on the pack. He saw them through a red haze of blood and anger. That could have been any one of the Thorn villagers lying there, defenseless, unable to stand against the savage frenzy of the harras. It could have been his father, that night in Castle Bess.

  Not caring anymore about protecting his back and sides, Camron took swings at anything that was in front of him. Again and again his sword came down, on limbs, shoulders blades, skulls, and breastbones. The harras were monsters. Monsters.

  If blades cut into his flesh, he didn’t feel them. If the harras cried out to each other in warning or support, he no longer heard their calls. All that mattered was getting to the downed man and pulling him away from their black, nightmare clutches. His sword was an angel in his hand: flashing silver in the sunlight, it formed a protective halo of steel around his chest. Cutting a path through razored teeth and spiked blades, he stepped through blood and viscera toward the clearing where the injured knight lay. Keeping the wall of lashing, furious harras at bay with his sword, he held out his left hand toward the man.

  “Come,” he said, the words stinging the raw flesh of his throat. “Fall in behind me. I’ll keep you safe as long as I can.”

  The knight grasped Camron’s hand. His flesh was hot, sticky with blood, yet never had a single touch meant so much or felt so good. With one mighty tug, Camron pulled the man to his feet. Even before he was fully upright, Camron stepped in front of him, shielding him from the harras’ blades.

  “Step back into the circle,” Camron murmured, eyes aching, lungs burning.

  The knight didn’t move.

  Puzzled, Camron glanced over his shoulder to the circle at his rear.

  A fist of lead twisted in his stomach. The steam in his armor turned to ice.

  There was no circle. The troop was gone. The harras were everywhere he looked: dark, eager, triumphant. A high-pitched cry rippled through the pack as they moved forward for the kill.

  The paintbrush became a dead weight in Tessa’s hand. All the silver ink was used up. There was no more left: not on the brush, or in the shell, or in the glazed pot Emith used for mixing.

  A band of pain ringed Tessa’s forehead. She felt as if metal plates were being pushed against her temples, only they weren’t really her temples at all.

  She was there. With Camron amid the rocks. She could smell his sweat, taste the blood in his mouth, feel the pressure building in his temples. Her stomach churned with his. The wet-fur stench of the harras was all around her, yet at the same time it was nowhere at all. Her hands, which had stayed so steady through everything, through what seemed like hours of painting and concentration, shook for the first time against the page. She felt drop-dead tired.

  Then again, perhaps she wasn’t tired at all. Perhaps she was feeling Camron’s exhaustion as if it were her own.

  She had drawn herself to this battle. To a valley she had never seen before in her life, to a forest of broken stones. The harras’ smell and the ringing of their blades had been her paper trail. She had followed their tracks on the vellum, sent ink curling into the imprints left by their footsteps, painted an interlace of keywork tiles to pave herself a road.

  She had even drawn the harras themselves. Carbon and gallic acid ink, dimmed minutely with sulfur, then thinned once more with stale urine, had been their medium. The black pigment had a yellow cast where it caught the tallow’s light. Its fumes stung Tessa’s eyes. Even though she knew in her mind the harras were men, she painted them as four-legged creatures with dog’s snouts, claws, and thick, muscular tails.

  “Quadrupeds,” Emith had called them, his voice sounding oddly strained.

  The pattern was not pretty. A graveyard of bleak colors ran across the page: grays, charcoals, blacks, deep reds, and cold, fleshless blues. It was almost as if the colors weren’t really colors at all, more shadows cast by pigments after dark. Looking at them, Tessa felt her mouth go dry. What had Deveric drawn her into? What was she, Tessa McCamfrey, doing sitting here creating these monstrous designs?

  All of a sudden she wanted very much to go home.

  Running a finger along the edge of the vellum, Tessa sighed. The breath ached in her throat as it came out. How could she return home, though? Even if the ring could take her back, how could she leave Camron among the rocks, with the harras closing in on him and the man whose life he had just saved?

  Tessa turned the paintbrush in her hands. She had drawn the pattern in search of answers, yet it had only raised more questions instead. She knew how she’d got here; how she had drawn herself a path along the vellum; and how the path didn’t really lead outward at all, but rather inward toward herself. Yet she didn’t know how to affect anything. She was just an observer, that was all. She couldn’t change anything. She didn’t know how to.

  A bead of sweat trickled down Tessa’s temple. Curving inward with the line of her cheek, it ran into her mouth. It tasted of bad things. Tessa shivered. Her vision of Camron was already beginning to fade away. She could hold on to it only as long as the brush pushed pigment across the page.

  “What can I do, Emith?” she asked, not really sure how much Emith knew of what she was doing or where she had been. “How can I change what the pattern shows me?”

  The air above her left shoulder shifted as Emit
h shook his head. “I don’t know, miss. I don’t know.”

  The bone brush snapped in Tessa’s hand. Splinters punctured the meat of her thumb muscle. “There has to be something. Think. Think!”

  Emith’s hand brushed her shoulder. “Come away, miss. Leave the pattern now while you’re—”

  “While I’m what?” Tessa cried. “While I’m still safe?”

  With every second that passed, Camron and the battle were sliding away from her. She felt as though she were deserting him. Even though Emith was busy explaining what he had really meant to say, Tessa cut him short. “I need a new brush—and more pigment. I’ll use whatever colors you have left.” Knowing her words sounded harsh, she added, “Emith, someone is in great danger. I can’t leave the pattern now. I can’t.”

  Emith made a soft sound in his throat. She could tell he didn’t approve of what she was doing, yet he handed her a new brush all the same. Tessa felt bad—she knew he was worried because he cared about her—but she had to carry on. All her life she had shirked involvements and responsibility, but she couldn’t go on doing that anymore. Things were different now. She was different.

  There was no walking away this time.

  “This is the only pigment I have left,” Emith said, sliding a shell of gold ink along the tabletop. “I’ll mix up some more while you work.”

  Tessa nodded. She wasn’t surprised at the color of the pigment: everything in this world began and ended with gold. After dipping her brush into the ink, she trailed the loaded tip onto the page. This time when the pigment touched the vellum it didn’t hiss, it sizzled.

  Ederius stopped in midbrushstroke. A sharp pain raked along his brow bone, just above his eyes. His vision blurred. The ink on his brush pooled onto the page.