And so she went back to the one place where she’d last had a strong sense of her brother—the collection of crystal standing stones.
There, she waited and watched. For days and nights she waited, sustaining herself on whatever beasts and vermin she found. The stones were quiet in the daytime. They still had an awareness about them, but it was dulled, sleeping. Still, she kept a half-hearted watch, but mostly she spent days crouched in some deep shadow of rock, where she stared into the empty sockets of Kadrigul’s skull. All she had left of her brother. Empty bone. It fueled her rage while the stones slept.
But at night, under the stars … Jatara the watcher felt watched. She could not determine who was watching or from where, but the stones seemed to draw her. Whether they had their own sort of cold, distant intelligence or were just a window through which some power looked, Jatara could not decide. But she knew that whatever they were, they would come to her eventually.
One moonless night when the stars shone bright as lamps over the peaks, a mist rose in the valley. Even had Jatara not seen that—it was far too cold for any natural mist—she would have known. She could feel the power building in the stones. Her natural sight saw nothing, for soon the entire field of stones was hidden in the murk. But Jatara had gained other senses, and her new eye could see things she had never imagined. And so she saw the power surge in the very center of standing stones, like the hot core of a live ember. It flashed, then died away. And then she heard them.
A band of hunters emerged from the tangle of giant crystals. Eladrin, all wearing enchantments like lords of the south wore their finest clothes to court. They led fierce little hunters, who rode on the backs of tundra tigers. Jatara had heard of such things, but never had she seen them with her own eyes.
The band headed into the high mountains. Jatara let them go, watching them long after lesser beings would have lost sight of them. She wasn’t interested in them. But they had come out of the place where her brother had gone, very much alive. He’d emerged and been killed not long after. So these hunters … what might they be hunting? That interested her very much. And so she left her hiding place and found another one down in the valley. She would wait.
Kovannon watched the last of the uldra hunters disappear into the crystals, dragging their captives on the snow behind them. Tonight’s hunt had done for an evening’s entertainment. They had found a particularly foul-tempered troll skulking about and had their fun before finishing him off. The local hobgoblin tribes were growing harder and harder to find. Foul brutes that they were, they weren’t entirely stupid and had learned to give the area a wide berth. Kovannon would have to begin hunting out of the other portals soon. But they had managed to track down a few half-starved stragglers. They hadn’t known anything—had, in fact, babbled on and on about things for which Kovannon had no interest—but perhaps the queen could glean something from their minds.
Still …
Something wasn’t right. Something beyond the melancholy mood that a poor hunt always put him in. It nagged at the raw edge of his mind, patting and pawing like a cat playing with a wounded bird.
His two other eladrin companions lingered with him.
“You feel it?” said Ulender, his voice scarcely above a whisper.
“Yes,” Kovannon said.
“It’s like …” Ulender didn’t finish.
“I know.”
Durel looked around, shuddered, and said, “Should I recall the Ujaiyen?”
Kovannon was about to answer when he heard it. Footsteps crunching through the snow. The others heard it as well, for they all turned to stare in the direction from which the sounds came.
The figure had apparently been lying on the ground under the snow, for fine white crystals still lay in clumps on its shoulders and head, and frosted the entire figure, making the bright starlight sparkle off its frame. There was no grace in the thing’s gait, but it came on with a terrible willfulness, as if the movement of every muscle were carefully considered. Even Kovannon’s sharp eyes could make out no distinct features under the covering of frost, but the thing’s eyes gave back a light that did not come from the stars but from some inner fire.
Seeing that, he knew what they faced. He could feel it in his bones. Everyone in Kunin Gatar’s realm knew of the thing that had invaded, killing many of their people and even managing to hurt the queen before she killed it. What approached them … it could not be the same one. Kunin Gatar had killed that one. But Kovannon knew that where you found one fly, more were soon to follow. If one of these things had been killed by their queen, then it seemed that one of its kin had come looking for revenge.
Kovannon heard the steel of Durel’s sword sliding out of its scabbard and the first syllables of an incantation upon Ulender’s lips.
“What is it?” said Durel.
Kovannon sidestepped to give them room to fight. “Durel,” Kovannon said in their native tongue. “Ulender and I will hold it off. You go for help.”
“What?” said Durel. “Whom shall I bring?”
“Everyone,” said Ulender, and by the tone of his voice, Kovannon knew that the wizard knew what they were up against. “Bring everyone.”
“Stop!” Kovannon called out. “Name yourself.”
The thing kept coming, neither slowing nor increasing its pace.
Kovannon tried the same phrase once more in Damaran and Nar. The thing stopped a dozen paces away, its breath sending up a cloud. The heat from its body had melted all but the thickest snow, and, close as it was, Kovannon saw that the figure was not an “it” at all. A woman. A hard woman, obviously used to long treks and hard living, but there was no mistaking the feminine curves. Yet there was nothing womanlike in the way she moved. In fact, there was very little human in her posture.
She shook her head, as if shooing a fly, then fixed her right eye on Kovannon. He took an involuntary step back as if an adder had just struck at him.
“Name yourself,” Kovannon said in Damaran.
She cocked her head, birdlike, and said, “Why?”
Durel still had not moved. Kovannon waved at him. “Durel, get moving!”
Durel began to sidestep away, though he kept his sword raised and his eyes on the woman.
The woman cocked her head the other way. “Give me what I want, and I will go away.”
“Go away?” said Kovannon. “I’m afraid that choice is beyond you now. You come to the queen’s threshold uninvited … for that, there are consequences.”
“Queen?”
“Enough,” said Ulender. “Durel, go! Now!”
“Very well,” said the woman.
She lunged—startlingly fast, taking to the air in a single leap. Durel had been moving away, but slowly and carefully, unwilling to take his eyes off the danger. That caution killed him.
Durel saw the attack in time, sidestepping and bringing his blade around in a graceful flourish so that the woman impaled herself on the yard of steel when she hit the ground. Kovannon heard the sharp snap of the point piercing through hard muscle, going in just under her ribs and coming out dark and wet from her back.
The weight of her landing forced Durel back a step, but he kept his grip on the sword. Later, looking back, Kovannon wondered if Durel might have lived had he let it go, letting the momentum of her leap carry her away. But he didn’t.
The woman reached out with both hands, wrapped one hand around the side of Durel’s head, and gripped the back of his neck with the other. He had time to open his mouth and draw breath to scream, but that was all. She yanked him forward, bringing his face into her open mouth.
One clear, high scream, and then the scream itself drowned as the woman ripped away his jaw.
Ulender’s incantation rose to a final shout, and lightning split the clear night sky—a blinding blue arc that struck the steel protruding from the woman’s back, filled her body, and shot outward in a hundred smaller tongues of blue wisps of light. Her back spasmed into an arch and she fell back into the snow, pul
ling a writhing Durel down on top of her. Hitting the ground forced the sword partway out of her.
Even as the thunder from Ulender’s lightning faded and the final echo died off the mountainside, Kovannon heard the woman growling. Not in pain. Not even in fury like an animal. But in pleasure, like a starving mongrel worrying the first bite of flesh off the bone.
Ulender’s magic had stunned Durel as much as the woman—Kovannon prayed it might have knocked him unconscious. They might be able to get him through the portal and to healing in time. But no, his wet screams resumed, louder than ever, and his hands and feet hammered at the ground as he struggled to get free.
Kovannon heard Ulender beginning another spell.
“No!” he shouted. “You’ll kill Durel!”
“He’s dead already!” Ulender said.
Or as good as, Kovannon realized. Moving forward, he drew his own weapon. An axe, crafted especially for chopping bones, not wood, and bound in many spells by the finest smiths of Ellestharn.
The woman pushed herself to her feet. In one hand, she held Durel up by his scalp. He was still trembling, but the fight had gone out of him. With her other hand, she reached forward, grabbed the sword’s hilt, and pulled it out of her.
“Stand back!” Ulender called, and began the final words that would release the spell.
Kovannon shuffled sideways through the snow.
The woman brought the sword around, almost nonchalantly, and cut Durel’s head from his shoulders. A gout of blood shot up from the gap between his shoulders, spraying the woman, then the body hit the ground.
Ulender was pronouncing the last word of the spell when the woman took one step forward and hurled Durel’s head at him. It struck Ulender in the chest, knocking him back. The gathered power of his magic sparked and fizzled out of his fingers, falling on the snow where it steamed.
She threw the sword next. It tumbled end over end one full revolution before burying itself in Ulender’s gut. His eyes went wide and he sat heavily in the snow. He looked down at the steel protruding from his body, opened his mouth, and a stream of dark blood ran out over his chin.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” said the woman, and she turned her gaze on Kovannon.
He raised his axe and stood his ground.
“Tell me of this … queen,” she said.
Kovannon just stared back at her.
“No?” said the woman. “Why? Aren’t you afraid of what I will do to you if you don’t tell me?”
Kovannon swallowed and then spoke the wholehearted truth. “I am more afraid of what she’ll do to me if I do. Death at your hands would seem a relief by comparison.”
The woman cocked her head, again reminding Kovannon of some strange bird. And not in many, many years had he felt more like a helpless worm.
“I believe you,” said the woman. “If she is the type of queen you say, then she will understand this. Tell your queen that nothing this side of Toril is safe. Her people come out, I kill them. She comes herself, I kill her. These lands are closed to her and all her people. Unless she gives me what I want.”
Kovannon could scarcely believe it. Tell your queen, she said. That meant she was going to let him live.
“What is it you want?” he said.
“Give me the girl, and I’ll go away.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DO BETTER TOMORROW, OR I KILL YOU.
And Hweilan had done better. She’d still taken a beating. In fact, on the second day of training Ashiin broke Hweilan’s right arm. But Gleed had set the bone and given her the foulest-tasting concoctions to speed the healing.
“Let the right arm heal,” Ashiin told her the next day. “Until it does, you fight with your left. You do as I tell you, or I break the left. Then you’ll fight with your feet. Disappoint me there, and I break your neck.”
Hweilan learned to fight with her left. At first with nothing more than her naked fist. Then a blade. Then with whatever came readily to hand.
She preferred the blade. By the time her right arm had healed, Hweilan knew a dozen ways to kill with the sharp edge, fifty with the point, and several with the pommel. Once, her determination and fury got the better of her, and she gave Ashiin a deep gash down her forearm. She was so shocked that she froze, eyes wide, and—
Ashiin might have punched her. But it could just as easily have been a kick or a swipe of the elbow. Hweilan could never remember. But she did remember waking to see Ashiin standing over her, completely undisturbed by the steady stream of blood running down her arm, and drip-drip-dripping off her middle finger and onto Hweilan’s face.
“You never apologize for doing as I tell you,” said Ashiin. “And you never let go your guard. Now get up.”
Hweilan got up.
For the first time since Hweilan had known her, Ashiin smiled. “That was a good strike. You’re learning. Well done.”
And so it continued. Day after day. In the deep woods, learning to use tree trunks and boughs and the uncertain ground to her advantage. In the streams, learning to swim and fight despite the cold water, the constantly shifting rocks, and the current ever pushing at her.
Once Hweilan had learned to defend herself and learned to strike to kill, then she learned to hunt. Not like Scith had taught her. He had taught her to track, how the animals used the landscape to their advantage, and how to use it against them. He told her that in ancient days, men learned to hunt by watching wolves, by hunting as pack and exploiting their prey’s weaknesses. Ashiin taught her to stalk, to use her enemies’ fear against them, and to hunt as the fox, by choosing her prey, getting in close and quiet, and striking before the prey even knew she was there.
“Every enemy has a weakness,” said Ashiin. “Find it. Use it. And the strongest foe will fall before you.”
But no matter how strong she grew, how fast, how agile … still she was no match for Ashiin. The woman moved quick as an adder and hit harder than a bull.
One evening, after a particularly rough beating from her teacher, Hweilan’s spirits were so low that she actually confided in Gleed.
The old goblin had already set a cold, clammy poultice on her swollen right eye. He was setting another concoction to simmer on the fire before he set about the work of pulling her right arm back into its socket.
“H-how?” said Hweilan. Her jaw was trembling so badly that she had to close her eyes a moment and gather the strength to speak. It wasn’t pain. She had long since passed beyond the pain. But the very last threads of her body’s strength were fraying and about to snap. “How c-can I ever pass her tests?”
Gleed stood behind her, set a gentle hand on her hanging shoulder, and placed the flat of his other palm on her back. “Ready?” he said.
She nodded.
He pulled.
She screamed.
But she did not pass out. That was something. Last time, she had passed out.
“Fighting,” said Gleed, “killing … it’s more than knowing how. It’s about how far you are willing to go. And you, Hweilan, you are still holding back. When you hunt Jagun Ghen and his minions, you cannot hesitate. You must strike without pity, without remorse, no matter the face they wear.”
Hweilan moved her arm tentatively. It sent a glass-edge of pain sliding down her spine, but it still wasn’t as bad as last time.
“She’s trying to make me into a beast,” said Hweilan. She couldn’t help the tone of petulance in her voice. She’d been raised in a household of knights, to whom honor was more precious than life. To them, battle was an art, could even be a sacred act of devotion. To Ashiin, killing seemed a primal instinct, a need, no different than hunger or fear. To Ashiin, being a killer was not a matter of doing, but being, and Hweilan feared that she could never become that.
“She is not.” Gleed turned away from the iron cauldron he had been stirring. “A beast cannot be made, stupid girl. A beast is woken. No. Ashiin is not making you into a beast. She is trying to beat the scared, spoiled little girl out of you so that when the b
east does come—and it will; it will—a little of the woman might survive.”
Three days later, when it was time for her lesson with Ashiin, Gleed followed her out of the tower, a bundle on his back. He saw the inquiring look she cast in his direction as she climbed out of the tower and into the gray morning.
“I go with you today,” he said.
“But Ashiin said—”
“Today, you will learn from us both.”
“Oh, this can’t be good.”
He summoned the bridge and they crossed into the woods. Mist still curled around their ankles as they walked, and the remnants of last night’s rain dripped from the boughs. Hweilan watched every shadow, and her ears strained at every sound. Most days she walked to the woods Ashiin haunted, but on several occasions her teacher had ambushed her. It had been a while since that last happened, which made Hweilan think she was due for another.
Less than half a mile from Gleed’s lake, the woods thinned around a scattering of lichen-covered boulders. They were taller than they were wide, and set deeply into the soil. Mostly featureless, there were still enough irregular curves and grooves to them that Hweilan suspected they might have once been sculptures. It was there that she usually followed the slope upward to the drier woods. But Gleed kept going straight ahead, keeping the heights to their right.
“Where are we going?” she asked him.
Gleed talked while they walked. “You remember when we spoke of the skin between worlds?”
Hweilan did. One of Gleed’s lessons from many days ago. He’d told her that Toril and the Feywild were not the only worlds. There were many—some almost mirror-images of this one, with only the slightest variations. Some so different that the very air was poison, the light fire. And the barriers between them—Gleed used the word dehwek, meaning “skin”—ran thin in some places.
But the concept … it was not unlike what the shade of her father had said that day on the height. Thin is the veil that separates us, and it can be lifted.
“Portals you mean?” she’d asked.
Gleed had merely shrugged. He had his Lore, and when the names by which she knew things differed from his own, he simply ignored them.
Hand of the Hunter: Chosen of Nendawen, Book II Page 11
