His magic exploded and the beast vanished in the burst of blue light that roared from Ran’s hands. The energy from the blast hurled Ran backwards, slamming him onto the hard snow and cracking collected pools of ice. His body screamed and pain lanced from his chest down to his left ankle, burning a path through his bones like lightning.
Somehow, he found the strength to pull himself to his feet, staggering and stumbling back to the clearing around the tree. Several feet away, at the edge of the woods, the creature lay struggling, howling with frustration as its legs and one arm refused to respond. Ran limped past Sasha, still as stone on the ground and refused to look at her face.
He would not be distracted.
The beast spat at him as he neared and it received his boot in its face for its efforts. It snarled, helpless in the snow but unbowed, unwilling or unable to back down even when its defeat seemed inevitable.
‘What are you?’ Ran managed to growl between heaving breaths.
The creature slashed at him with its hand, the steel claws ripping into his trousers and slicing his skin. He cried out and staggered away, cursing and clutching his injured leg, pausing only to watch his blood run to the snow and stain it crimson.
‘Fuck, that’s it.’
Powered by rage, pain and magic, Ranoth leapt forwards and kicked the creature in the cavity under its chin. Its head snapped back and the neck split in half, the head and some of the attached spine skidding away across the ground in a spray of pus and mucus. The stuff oozed from the wound like gravy, fluorescent blue against the pristine white carpet of snow.
He stood and roared at the corpse, howling his victory to make sure it knew to stay dead. He half expected it to move again, somehow finding its head and reattaching it, but the beast remained still. After a good minute, Ran decided it was in fact dead, and turned away.
Only then did he look at Sasha’s face.
*
She lay there draped in blood, her hair a darker red for all the crimson around her head. By some blessing of the gods her eyes were closed, spared the sight of his tears as he fell to the ground beside her. His hands hovered over the wound at her temple, a ragged gaping thing with a gash splitting across her forehead. Gentle fingers touched her face and turned her head to reveal the impact site of the creature’s jaws on her shoulder. There was a crater in her flesh the width of a fist and shaped like a star burst; tears in her skin running away from it at all angles.
The bleeding had slowed now, the blood still warm despite the cold…
Still warm?
His hands slid to her neck and pressed under her chin, searching for the one sign he needed to keep his hope alive. He leaned closer to her face, and listened, scanning her body for movement.
A single breath whispered against his cheek.
Under the pads of his fingers, two beats thumped. Faint and slow, they were followed eventually by more.
‘You’re alive?’ he murmured.
He searched her face. Her lips hung loose; her jaw was slack. There was no sign at all that she heard him. Only the slow, faint beat of her pulse under his fingers told him that somehow life lingered within her shattered body.
Across the snow, something drew his eyes and he snapped around to confront it. Instead of the creature he expected, he saw his ghost standing in a translucent shift, her bare feet unaffected by the ice and blood sprayed around the clearing. His heart nearly stopped when their eyes met, a shiver of recognition turning his stomach to a basket of angry snakes.
Her icy gaze held him still, while his heart thumped wildly against his cracked ribs. He felt every frantic beat and every quick, shallow breath.
‘Now,’ she said flatly.
‘Now, what?’ his voice cracked with emotion and the fatigue of too many weeks running, too many nights spent sleeping with one eye open and too many days hoping the next might be the morning he found sanctuary.
‘Now will you open the scroll?’
Chapter Thirty-seven
The Southern Reaches, Orthia
‘She’s dying and you want me to open the scroll?’
‘If you want her to live, I suggest you do.’ She disappeared in a flurry of snow and left Ran cradling Sasha. Already his ribs hurt less, his breathing returning to a normal, painless rhythm, and the torn skin on his leg had stopped bleeding. Magic throbbed through his body, healing him from the inside despite the beating handed to him by the creature.
With as much care as his clumsy hands could muster, he collected Sasha’s limp body and carried her back to the blankets and bags under the tree. If she were to die, it wouldn’t be from his lack of trying. The bags yielded another blanket and among her healing supplies he found clean strips of cloth and some sort of rubbing alcohol. He applied those to her wounds, wrapping dressings tightly to stem the bleeding and encourage the skin to knit. The best he could do was keep them clean—he didn’t dare use any of the poultices or creams she had hidden in the bottom of the bag. Without knowing what they were, he was likely to make her worse rather than better.
Rummaging for something to clean the gash on his jaw, his fingers brushed against metal and he paused. It was warm when it should have been ice cold, and it responded to his touch with a gentle vibration. His senses, heightened by magic and adrenaline, caught the faint hum of the scroll tube calling him from the depths of his bag, unseen but not forgotten.
He drew it out and held it to the light. The brass was as perfect and unmarked as the night Tutor Perce shoved it in his hand and urged him along the escape tunnels. Months of hard living and running for his life had left him broken and weary, but the scroll remained untouched, a stark reminder of the life he’d left behind.
With Sasha wrapped in all their blankets and continuing her slow, laboured breathing, Ran sat back on his heels, his fingers trembling as he unscrewed the cap on the tube. It turned easily for such an old thing, the filigree design on the metal distorting as the end of the tube spun and fell away. He tipped it up and let a vellum scroll slip into his hand, hard after many years but still supple enough to unroll. As his shaking fingers unwound the sheet, the message inked on the hide became clear.
A map, drawn with a fine hand in black and red ink, opened up before him. Several long paragraphs in a script he could barely decipher preceded and followed the map, centering it on the sheet that stretched from his fingertips to his chest. It was a long, detailed document, but one feature stood out.
In the mountains to the far south of Usmein, where the Ruken met the Morgen Ranges, was a keep, drawn in red. Given how far they had travelled, it was likely to be somewhere near where he and Sasha were now. His heart hammered harder.
Above the tiny image of the keep, a label read: The Exiled.
‘Exiled?’ he murmured.
He scanned the rest of the scroll, searching for the term in the text. He found it in a paragraph dedicated to the problem of those young children found to be cursed with magic, not old enough to be derramentis but deemed a threat nonetheless. He read the words once, then again to be sure.
It couldn’t say what he thought it did… Surely there had to be a double meaning?
Letting the scroll fall into his lap, he looked up and blinked to clear his vision of rising anger and saw the ghost sitting beside Sasha’s head.
‘They send the children to a keep in the mountains?’ he demanded.
She nodded. ‘Any under the age of fifteen.’
‘And the older ones?’ He knew the answer, but he wanted her to say it. He wanted to hear the words.
‘They are executed.’
‘I told you; I already knew what this fucking thing said! I told you reading it was a waste of time!’ Ran threw the scroll at the ghost and it sailed right through her translucent form. ‘How is this going to help her?’
The ghost’s eyes met his. There was no sympathy there, no understanding or patience. They were cold and they stared at him with unwavering precision.
‘Your wounds have all but healed,
Ranoth Olseta. Why?’
‘Magic,’ he spat and stood up, touching the wound along his jaw to find a scab where there should have been a gash and exposed bone.
‘If you can heal yourself with magic, do you suppose magic can heal others?’
Her question hit him like a kick to the stomach through the fog of his anger. He turned and stared at her, now standing beside Sasha as pale and beautiful as the night he first saw her in the abandoned cottage of bones.
‘I can’t use my magic to heal her,’ he growled. ‘I can barely light a fire without burning down half the forest!’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I didn’t mean you.’
Now Ran frowned and stepped towards her, the pieces of her puzzle falling in to place. ‘Then who? Where could I possibly hope to find a magic-weaver who can—’
She opened her hand towards the discarded scroll and the map.
‘The keep?’ Ran asked, a shiver of realisation washing over him.
‘The keep,’ she repeated. ‘A nation’s magic-weavers, all exiled as children to a place far from the eyes or ears of anyone who might care. They remain there, imprisoned, but not alone. They have teachers dedicated to training them to control their power. They also have healers.’
‘They might send word to my father…’
The ghost shook her head. ‘They are bound to secrecy. Even your father doesn’t know of their location. That’s why your tutor made you take the scroll. Can you imagine what your father would do if he discovered an entire keep of cursed children?’
Ran’s blood turned to ice in his veins and visions of a massacre flashed in his mind. If Duke Ronart was willing to execute his own son, what punishment would he deliver to those not of his blood? ‘What if she doesn’t make it?’
The ghost glanced at Sasha. ‘If you’d opened the scroll sooner, you might have gone to the keep instead of the farm…’
Her gaze met his again and the weight of his failure fell hard on his shoulders. She was right—had he listened to her, he would have known about the keep and the exiled children. He would have realised there was a safe place for him to hide. Driven by a sudden need to move, he stooped to collect the things scattered around the base of the tree and stowed them in their bags.
‘You don’t have time for that…’
He stopped and looked to where she stood, in the daylight beside the corpse of the dead creature. She looked at it, then at her hand, then at him.
‘You need to get there before sunset.’
‘Why?’
‘The smell will draw them here and they will track you. You don’t have time to carry her and the bags.’ The wind began to blow and her form faltered, fading as a breeze gusted through the clearing.
‘Them? Shit, who?’ he demanded, desperate now. He needed his ghost more than ever; he needed her knowledge and her counsel. He needed her voice… ‘My father? His soldiers?’
Her head shook slightly and her blue eyes stayed on him as she faded. ‘Not them. Make haste, Ranoth.’
He sprinted forwards as if to catch her by the shoulders, not realising the futility of the idea until his hands passed through her like they would mist. ‘If not him, then who?’
‘The others…’
Chapter Thirty-eight
The Corron, Namjin Range, the South Lands
Lidan sat outside her father’s tent and watched the shadows lengthen as night approached. She pulled her coat tighter, shivering despite the braziers to her left and right, and tried to ignore the chill in her bones. Siman sat nearby, fletching arrow shafts in an effort to look busy. She watched him and found she missed the feeling of her bow in her hand. It remained at Hummel, left behind in the rush to leave and replaced too readily by her knives, new and shiny and a sight more impressive. She hadn’t realised the true value of the blades until she stepped into the Corron to see the four most powerful men in the South Lands wielding stone and flint.
By rights, her father’s metal axe should make him a kaardi, higher in status and power than any of the daaris, and the rightful leader of all the southern clans. Yet, he didn’t lord his wealth over the others. He treated them with respect—expecting the same in return, she was sure—but did they feel the same?
Daari Yorrell’s proposal left her with the sense that he was the man with the real power. He hosted the Corron and chaired the meetings but more than that, the other leaders followed his example in almost everything. They ate and drank when and as he did, they dressed to match his fashion and at least two of the assembled sons had begun to wear their hair in a similar style. They looked to him for leadership and the idea made Lidan ill. If the most powerful and formidable men in the South Lands bent to the will of Daari Yorrell, what hope did she have of avoiding his proposal? What chance did she have of returning to Hummel with her family, instead of remaining here under the lingering gaze of those wandering eyes?
For almost two hours her parents had remained in the tent at her back, whispering and hissing at each other. They were discussing Yorrell’s offer as discreetly as they could manage, which was a welcome change to the open-air quarrels they’d taken a liking to of late. Among their own people, they were free to spit and snarl, but surrounded on all sides by the other four clans, their words were carefully guarded and not to be overheard.
Lidan waited and bit her nails, her foot bouncing up and down to the beat of her anxiety. She hoped her father might ask her opinion though he did not legally need to. She hoped he might give her a chance to speak and lay her concerns before him. That he might give her a chance to change his mind…
There was little that begging and sobbing could do if he’d already decided. A man with ten daughters became quickly immune to the wailing of girls when they didn’t get their way, deaf to the pitch of their voices and blind to their tears. There were four women in his life who might have a chance at talking him around, and the most powerful of them seemed to be struggling to plead her case.
Scanning the paths to the right, Lidan bit her lip and clenched her jaw. She waited.
Where are they?
‘Sellan, it’s a good match—’ Her father’s voice broke from the confines of the tent and her heart skipped.
Lidan sprang to her feet and slipped through the doorway before Siman could stop her. Her appearance startled her parents, arresting their conversation and turning their eyes to stare at her in shock.
She held up a hand to her father. ‘Please, Da; you can’t mean that?’
Erlon sighed and put his large hands on his hips, taking a moment to stare at his boots and collect his thoughts.
‘Yes, I do,’ he said finally.
‘You hardly know the boy!’ Sellan countered, pouring herself a berry wine and draining it quickly. She pointed the cup at her husband. ‘You’ve got no idea what you’re agreeing to.’
‘I know Yorrell well enough, and I’m matched to his cousin. Cole has a good bloodline.’ His hand opened towards Lidan. ‘The match will strengthen our alliance.’
‘Because your matching to Farah isn’t enough?’ Sellan spat the words, refilling her cup before Erlon snatched the wine urn away.
‘It’s an insult on his family that she hasn’t borne me a son.’ The urn slammed into the table and Lidan jumped. ‘One of his younger boys will come home with us.’
Sellan grew still and placed her cup carefully on the table before crossing her arms. ‘Why?’
‘I… because…’ Erlon faltered, frustration reddening his cheeks. ‘To be an heir for me, that’s why!’
‘You’d hand your people over to the Namjin, just like that?’
Lidan had never heard her mother’s voice so quiet, yet so full of rage. She stood fixed to the spot, regretting her intrusion into the argument and wishing she could slip away again without them noticing.
‘You don’t give a shit about my people!’
‘I give a shit about my daughters, and yours, and what happens to them once you’re dead!’ Sellan hissed and strode up to his face.
‘If you name a Namjin boy as your heir, your body won’t be cold before Yorrell rides through the valley and claims the range for himself. What do you think will happen to the girls then? Think he will find them good matches before his own kin? More likely they’ll become tine-women and spend their days shovelling shit and scrubbing linens.’
Erlon glared at his first wife but didn’t respond, his eyes wide with anger and his chest heaving. Then the dana looked at Lidan and nodded.
‘You defied me with that horse and those knives. She doesn’t need to do any of that to be a successful heir. If anything, it’s an excellent way to get her killed. You won’t defy me with her matching. I say no.’
‘I thought you wanted me to match?’ The words escaped Lidan’s mouth before she could slam her teeth shut to stop them.
‘Oh, I do, petal. When you’re old enough and the right man is found, you’ll be matched. You’re the Tolak heir after all—your hand is worth a thousand horses and more besides.’ She glared up at her husband as if to reinforce her point. ‘But I will not leave my thirteen-year-old daughter with a clan I do not know, on the promise that she will be safe and whole on the day she turns eighteen. Not a chance.’
Lidan barely began to breathe a sigh of relief when her father shook his head.
‘Times have changed, Sellan. I need to solidify the alliance with Yorrell. I need to match one of the girls to one of his sons. Why not his heir to mine?’
‘Why not strip her naked yourself and send her up to him now?’ A faint, hoarse voice spoke from beside the door.
In the arguing, no one had noticed Kelill enter with Farah, the pregnant woman’s arm draped over her sister-wife’s shoulders for support. Lidan’s heart sparked with hope—her message had gotten through and her half-mother had come.
Erlon turned and staggered back, shocked to see his frail wife standing in the doorway, her distended belly illuminated by braziers and candles.
‘Pardon?’ he whispered.
‘I said, why don’t you just strip her naked and send her up there now?’
Blood of Heirs Page 31
