As it was, he felt like he had been wandering for weeks. Initially, his headache had intensified despite water and food, to the point that he had thrown away the last quarter of the leaf-wrapped packet, sure he had been poisoned. Dizzy, half-blind and delirious, he had followed dancing lights through the thorn-thick undergrowth—lights that had spoken to him with Lerien’s voice.
At other times, dark things with bright eyes chased him. Hunters; Crimsons. Darilan and Erevard. A great antlered beast whose hoofbeats shook the earth.
Then, like a fever, the hallucinations broke. The headache ebbed, and he regained a tremulous grasp on his mind. Strangely, his return to lucidity found him among old ruins—a long-dead village hemmed thickly by the woods, with trees growing up from moss-eaten floors and fallen pillars defining short, destinationless paths. Though the growth of vines and roots and shrubs had toppled all the walls, they had still protected the stones from most weathering. Cob could not read the marks on the pillars—could not read at all—but knew they had to be old.
No human had lived in the Mist Forest since the rise of the Rift. Either the woods had crept up on that place, or it was older than the cracking of the world.
But it had been a mystery he did not care to solve, because the stones impeded tree-growth just enough to let him see the sky. As soon as he had discerned which way was west, he had set out, sick of shadows and silence and hunger. He dared not touch any of the mushrooms he spotted along the way, and even if he had been a knowledgeable woodsman, there seemed no animals here. Nothing to trap, nothing to fight, just the rocks and thorns that had made him finally put his boots back on.
He still saw things, just not with the gripping veracity of full delusion. Dark shapes—never grey, though he was certain the grey thing was watching him, or following him. It had to be. But sometimes something would snag his clothes and he would lurch into a run, feeling gauntlets reaching for him and cold breath on his neck.
Now, in the sunlight, none of it felt real, and so he folded up the dark dreams and pushed them into the cellar of his mind to be forgotten. His lips were cracked, his nerves twitchy; he craved salt above all else, and could not stop thinking about food. But at least he had water, and now that he was free, he could strike out through the grassland. Eventually he would find a road.
And from that road…
Two options. South and the Army; north and Kerrindryr.
He did not want to choose.
Part 1
Abnegation
Chapter 3 – The Way of the Hearth
Mid-afternoon, perhaps.
Cob blinked in the light that slanted through the gaps in the bridge. Against his back was the dry wall of the wash, above the bleached wooden slats and the pale sky, the tips of dry grasses bending into view with the breeze.
And a face. A boy.
For a moment Cob could imagine he was looking at himself—dark-eyed, rough-haired, deep-tanned by the sun, the way he might have appeared before everything had gone wrong.
“Sir?” called the boy, and that was not his voice. His was trapped in his parched throat, rusty from disuse, and he did not know how long he had been down here under the bridge. Only marks, or days? The quick nap he had intended to take in the bridge’s shade had done nothing for him.
He blinked and sand grated in his eyelashes. Small rivulets of it slid down his neck, down the back of his tunic when he sat forward, and for a dizzy moment he imagined the black void opening at his back, like in the cave in Varaku.
Then the boy said, “Sir, are you all right?” and the sound of concern in a real human voice brought him back to his senses, made him fumble at the dirt wall and try to find his legs. The stick tumbled from his lap and he stared at it, then clasped his hand around its barkless end. He needed it, in case of…
Trouble.
His fingers tightened on the wood, then relaxed. He looked to the boy. No trees around, just grasses. No hills, no cliffs, just flat land up there, the Rift a distant blue shadow. Where am I? he wanted to say, but his tongue was like a leather fob and he could not get it to work.
Crouched at the edge of the wash, the boy squinted, then said seriously, “You look lost. Mother says we should look after the lost ‘cause that’s the Way of the Hearth. What’s your name?”
“Cob,” he rasped.
“I’m Aedin. Come on, it’s bad to be out here like this.”
I’m fine, Cob wanted to say. As he rose slowly, he felt the slosh of water in his canteen. He could move on. Go…
Where?
“Sir?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “’M comin’.”
Grudgingly, like an errant child being called home, he pulled himself from the pit to follow the boy through the trackless field.
*****
The cottage seemed innocuous as they approached it. Squat and steep-roofed, it hunched in the midst of raised garden plots that spread like skirts, with a cluster of shabby outbuildings at its back and a line of fruit-trees—plum and rince and olive and dwarf peach—serving as a windbreak to the north. Domesticated red gartos, smaller and chubbier than their wild cousins, pecked busily among the pepper plants or oversaw the grounds from atop triangular frames covered in vegetable-vines. As far from the road as it was, it appeared a bastion of civilization among the endless waves of wild grass and weeds.
Beyond rose the dry yellow hills, and then the Mist Forest, several miles distant.
Cob pretended not to see the forest. Traveling through it had not been as bad as he had anticipated, but now that he had escaped, he did not like to acknowledge it there, lurking like a predator at the base of the Rift. It made his breath constrict. He had admitted to Aedin that he had come from there, and recently, but had no desire to consider that place and its denizens any further, no matter what the boy asked.
He found his steps slowing as the grass shortened, then turned to a dirt path between garden plots. His hands knotted on the stick he carried as if at any moment some lynch mob or dire monster might lurch out of nowhere.
Ridiculous, he knew. But these were the Heretic Lands, and he did not belong here.
Aedin pushed open the cottage door and vanished inside. Trailing him, Cob hesitated. It looked shady and cool in there, but around the inner edge of the door-frame ran a line of red paint like some kind of magic circle, and immediately the voices crowded up: the priests, the officers, the campmates who had told him stories about this land. Witchery, they murmured. Dark magic.
Something moved at the corner of his vision.
He glanced there and felt his stomach sink. Strung from the edge of the roof was a little rag doll dressed in old garment-scraps, with a red cord wrapped around its neck. It twisted gently in the breeze. Hand suddenly shaking, he reached out to stop its spin.
“Hoodlum!” shrieked a horrid voice from the doorway.
Cob turned in time to take a cane to the arm instead of upside the head. The black-garbed, withered old woman who wielded it bared her crooked teeth and swung again, and he let his stick fall reflexively and caught the cane near the base, holding tight as she tried to wrestle it away.
“Hoi, lay off—“ was as far as he got before she launched herself at him, nails seeking his eyes.
Startled, he barely managed to drop the cane and grab her skinny arms before she could scratch his face off. She howled like a mad cat and slammed her wooden clog into his shin, and it was all he could do to keep from pitching her bodily into the garden.
“Imperial!” she screeched. “Brigand! Murderer!”
“Nana!”
The sharp voice cut off the crone’s tirade, and she immediately ceased struggling, instead sagging bonelessly in Cob’s grip. He glanced toward the voice to see an aproned woman standing at the corner of the house, muscular farmwife’s arms bared beneath rolled-up sleeves and a trowel brandished dangerously in one hand. Sturdily built, she stared at him with such baleful eyes that he winced and let go of the crone, who dropped like a sack of potatoes.
The farmwife pressed fists to her hips and narrowed her eyes at Cob. He stood still, shoulders hunched and hands raised non-threateningly, all too aware of his torn and dirtied clothing, his scraggly beard and scratched-up forearms. After so much time in the woods, he must look like a wild man.
Finally she turned her attention to the wide-eyed boy in the doorway. “Aedin,” she said sternly, “did this man follow you home?”
The boy shrugged uncomfortably. “I kinda invited him? He looked lost.”
With the farmwife’s attention off him, Cob tentatively offered the old woman his arm. Rattled nerves or not, he had no desire to anger these people. Even hostile human interaction felt like a relief.
The old woman glowered up at him from her puddle of black skirts but reluctantly clasped his arm, and he hoisted her up then bent to retrieve her cane. When she shuffled one clog as if to kick, he flinched back, only to hear her chortle like a frog.
“Nana. Please fix the tea,” said the farmwife. The old woman lifted her chin haughtily, then snatched the cane from Cob’s hand and hobbled inside.
The farmwife watched her go, then turned a critical eye on Cob. She was a buxom woman, dark of hair and eye, sun-browned of skin like most Illanites, and garbed as one in a plain apron over a work-dress patterned in bright colors. A few silver threads touched her thick hair, half-hidden under a straw hat; her only accessory was a simple braided necklace, two red strands and one grey. “So. You are lost.”
Cob looked down at the dirt. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Where were you headed?”
“Um… South.”
“Ah.”
Hearing the frost in her voice, he tried not to wince. It had been stupid to say that. He did not know how far north he had come in his confused flight, but he doubted he was much past Fellen—which meant ‘south’ was there or the Army camp.
He did not even know if it was true.
“And where have you come from?” she asked, as if giving him the opportunity to confess before she accused.
He opened his mouth, but the boy said, “He came from the forest, Ma. He’s even seen wraiths!”
Cob glanced sidelong to see the boy in the doorway, his mother’s frown turned upon him now. “Has he, Aedin,” she said. “And you found him in the forest?”
“No, Ma, he was under a bridge. I saw him when I was going to the Targams’ western fields.”
A frown creased her features. “Who else has seen him?”
“Ma’am, no one,” Cob interjected. “Not that I remember. Been in the woods for days, and not long out of it.”
The woman turned her frown on him again. “And the wraiths let you be?”
“I’m alive, ma’am.”
She glanced over her shoulder toward the hunched hills and the forest, disbelief plain on her face. He did not blame her. His encounter with the grey creature had been far less dangerous than with the shining wraiths, but he would not dare that place again and could not imagine what it must be like to live at its edge.
“And what do you call yourself?” she said.
“Cob, ma’am.”
“Just Cob?”
“Uh...Cobrin. But jus’ Cob.”
“Well. ‘Cob’.” Crossing her arms under her bosom, she gave him one more long look, then seemed to come to a decision, the frown on her round face decreasing marginally. “I am Ammala Cray,” she said. “You have already met my mother-in-law and my son Aedin. As it seems he has offered you hospitality, I extend it along with the shelter of our hearth—though I wonder what you’ve done to so swiftly rile Nana.”
The offer sounded almost ritualized, which made him nervous, but he nodded toward the doll at the corner of the cottage. “Went to stop that from spinnin’, ma’am. It bothered me.”
She followed his gaze, and for a moment he saw a clench of emotion in her features, complicated and painful. “It is a blessing for my elder son, Paol. He is away.”
“But…why you gotta hang it by the neck?” Cob said, hating to even voice the words.
Ammala gave him a long look. “If you would know, the cord is stitched to his back. He is not ‘hanged by the neck’.”
Cob winced again, but shot another look at the doll. With the blinders of shock down, he saw that she was right, and that the red thread was not only around its neck but around each wrist and its waist as well. Some kind of magic charm.
Witchery! the fear screamed. Wickedness!
He looked back to see Ammala plant the trowel in the garden and enter the cottage, indifferent to his unease.
Warily, he approached the threshold. After the red thread, the red line around the door-frame seemed even more ominous, and he wondered if he really needed rest or food or shelter. Or company. After all, he could press on southward with nothing but his canteen. ‘South’ was what had come from his mouth, so it must be what he was meant to do, and what did it matter the shape he was in when he reached the Army’s doorstep?
“Come along, Cob,” said the woman from inside.
Steeling himself, he stepped in over the red line.
Nothing happened.
He looked around, puzzled, and caught a glimpse of relief on Ammala’s face before she turned away. The cottage was tiny: a single room divided in half by curtains and lit by the shuttered western windows, its open half crammed full of workaday women’s tools—loom, wool-baskets, churn—and a small table beside the big brick hearth. Clogs and sandals and cushions cluttered the corner by the door. The floor was clay tile, a surprising luxury for such an isolated place, and on the rack beside the hearth stood a few old books among the spices, just as jarring. In the Imperial lands, it was illegal for commoners to own books.
A teakettle steamed on the warming stones beside a stew-pot. The old woman—Nana Cray—sat at the table, sipping broodingly from her cup, and Aedin perched in the other seat, swinging his feet. When Ammala fixed him with a look, he hopped down and affected innocence.
“Young man, I believe you were headed to the Targams’ fields,” she said. Aedin made a mutinous noise, but scampered around her and past Cob before she could nab him. She frowned after him, then at Cob as if just realizing he was still there, standing awkwardly at the door.
“You,” she said. “What do you do?”
Cob shrugged loosely. He had done many things in his time. “Build. Dig. Cut wood.”
“Can you patch a roof?”
He looked up at the open rafters, at the boards and wooden shingles above. “Yeah.”
“Then you can make yourself useful. I’ll show you the tools.”
He backed up as she approached, and she gave him an amused look, then led the way out and around the cottage. In the rear, among further garden beds and wooden frames covered in slip-grape and flowering eggvine, were the outbuildings: the coop where the gartos had retreated from the yelling, the firewood crib and hay shed, a goat-pen with a shelter and an empty horse-stall, and a tool shed built beneath the overhanging branches of an aging yellow rince tree. All were weathered almost to breakdown, and Cob furrowed his brows thoughtfully, but before he could ask, she pulled back the bolt on the shed door.
“You’ll stay a few days and do some work for me,” she said. “I’ll pay in meals and old clothing, since yours look torn to shreds. Acceptable?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“After that, you can run off to your business in the south.”
The shed door came open with a creak of hinges, revealing shelves stacked with horse-tack, saws and hammers hanging from pegs, buckets, shovels and picks, an old plowshare and other tools all liberally coated in yellow dust. Ammala brushed at her face then pulled items out and handed them to him. “Mallet. Froe. Take that ladder. I hope you know how to split shakes.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You can use the logs from the woodpile, I’ll get more cut later. Been at this long?”
“
Back in the— Uh.”
She looked at him over her shoulder and he turned away, pretending to struggle with the ladder. “Jus’ a year or so,” he finished lamely. “Back where I came from.”
When she did not pursue it, he maneuvered the ladder out and was about to turn when he spotted the creature on the shed roof and froze in his tracks.
It stared at him through slit-pupiled eyes, a sleek sand-colored animal with darker markings along the fur on its back. Its ears were pricked forward despite its indolent lounge, ringed tail flicking idly, and he retreated a few slow steps, not sure if that would provoke it. Peripherally he noted Ammala staring at him but he refused to take his eyes off the thing.
“Cobrin, don’t bother the cat,” she said.
“But it’s—“
“Here. Get to work. I’ll bring you something to eat soon.”
She forced the handle of the bucket into his grip and he reluctantly took it, still not daring to look away from the cat. It was a witchbeast, after all. A consort to the worst type of heretics, a spy for the Dark itself, and the sworn enemy of the Risen Phoenix Empire. Its presence here under Ammala’s protection meant—
I shouldn’t be here. I should run, get away, before—
The cat stretched out and closed its eyes, purring faintly in the strong sun.
For a moment he stared at it, baffled that it had not leapt upon him in a clawed, yowling fury. That was what they were supposed to do; that or creep up on you in the night and pin you down to help the Dark get in. Maybe it’s that old woman’s, he thought. If it’s her witchbeast, and Ammala’s already scolded her for going after me, maybe it won’t either, while Ammala’s watching.
Or it’s Ammala’s witchbeast…
He edged away, then turned to find Ammala regarding him with annoyed exasperation. Flushing crimson, he leaned the ladder against the wall then took up the bucket of nails and tools and headed for the splitting-stump by the firewood crib, where a logging axe rose from the scarred wood like a handle on a pump.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 6
