“Going somewhere?” said Ashiin.
Hweilan opened her mouth to say, I was going that way, but thought better of it, and instead asked, “What do you want?”
Ashiin blinked. Had Hweilan ever spoken to Scith with such an insolent tone, he would have told her he had no time for ungrateful little girls and left her to spend the day on her own. Her mother would have given her a tongue-lashing to make her ears bleed.
“Defiance,” said Ashiin. “It can be a good thing. When you are in the right and your opponent in the wrong. When death is preferable to your opponent letting you live. Which are you now, girl?”
“You won’t kill me,” said Hweilan. “I am the Hand of the Hunter. Chosen of Nendawen. He needs me.”
“If I can kill you, then you are not the Hand he needs.”
“The day is not over,” said Hweilan. It was one of Ashiin’s favorite sayings. It meant that just because you couldn’t do something, it didn’t mean that you couldn’t learn how to do it.
Ashiin stood there a moment, impassive. Then a grin broke her face. And finally she threw back her head and laughed.
“Defiance can also be a bad thing,” she said, “because little girls use it simply for spite, to no good reason. That is you, O Hand of the Hunter.” A hardness, ever so slight, entered her eyes, though the smile stayed on her lips. “There is still much of that in you: the little girl who wants her own way and damn the consequences.”
Hweilan scowled. “Is that why you came to find me? To lecture?”
“You want a lecture, go back to the old goblin.”
“Then why—?”
“Your father’s bow.”
For a moment, the world spun around Hweilan. Even though she could not string the bow—could barely even bend it—she had carried it with her out of Highwatch and through the days of horror that followed. She had risked her life to retrieve it and convinced Menduarthis to risk his. It was the last thing she had of her father.
And she had not seen it since coming here.
“What about my father’s bow?” said Hweilan, and all the defiance and then some was back in her voice.
“You want it back.”
It was not a question, but still Hweilan said, “Yes.”
“Such a fine weapon—a master’s work for a master’s hand—is not a relic. It is a weapon, meant to be used.”
Hweilan took in a breath to speak, but Ashiin cut her off.
“Time you learned to use it.”
Hweilan’s jaw snapped shut, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. “Wh-what?”
The smile melted from Ashiin’s face, but the hardness stayed in her eyes. Hardened even further. She turned, stepped away a few paces, then turned to face Hweilan again. She sat crosslegged, almost on the very spot where Nendawen’s spear had once rested, her staff across her lap.
“Sit,” said Ashiin.
Hweilan’s feet were moving before she knew it. She sat across from Ashiin.
“The old goblin has taught you the uwethla,” said Ashiin. “Has taught you how to craft them into your weapons to capture the demons of Jagun Ghen.”
“He has.”
“The uwethla the old goblin has taught you are of two kinds.” Ashiin reached across the distance between them and traced Hweilan’s uwethla that began with the spider just over her left breast, then continued with the webbing and sacred words over her shoulder and onto a portion of her neck until it ended just below her jaw. “Tunaheth, the uwethla that sleeps, like memory, waiting to be woken. And there are hrayeh, the uwethla that bind, that capture, like those etched into your arrows. But there is the third kind, rarest and most powerful of all. The shesteh.”
Hweilan knew the word. “Home,” she said.
“Yes. Like the hrayeh, they contain a spirit, but where the hrayeh contain a spirit against its will, the shesteh invites a willing servant, an ally. And your father’s people, Hweilan, these knights on their flying beasts, even they knew of this, though they had their own words and rituals for them. Those symbols etched into your father’s bow?”
“Shesteh,” said Hweilan. She had always wondered at them. They so resembled the runes on the robes of the priests of Torm and on the knights’ armor that she had always assumed they were merely part of the faith. And no knight would ever speak of them, not even Ardan to his daughter.
“Yes,” said Ashiin. “You think your grandfather’s knights could plant an arrow in an enemy’s eye from three hundred feet away simply because their weapons were well made? No. They had help.”
“But … but the Knights of Ondrahar knew nothing of Nendawen, of uwethla, of—”
“Truth is truth, girl. What the servants of Nendawen can know and use, so can the servants of Torm. Words may change, but Truth is immutable.”
“You mean my father’s bow is—”
“No,” said Ashiin. “No longer. Remember: I said that the spirit the shesteh contains is an ally. I’ll go further: It is a friend. A sister. I do not know the sacred rites of your father’s people, but I do know that somehow their bows contained a sacred spirit. Some lesser spirit servant of their Torm?” Ashiin shrugged. “Perhaps. But I do know that its connection to the wielder was … intimate. When your father died, the spirit in his bow joined him with his god. The bow is now an empty vessel. But an empty vessel can be filled again.”
Hweilan looked down, and her gaze turned inward. “But …”
She could not find the words. If the runes were sacred to Torm … well, she had been raised in her father’s faith. She had never been what even the most magnanimous would call devout, but she had honored the faith. But with her oaths and service to Nendawen … where did that leave her? She had not consciously forsaken Torm. Had he forsaken her?
“You will craft new uwethla into the bow,” said Ashiin, as if reading her thoughts. “Shesteh into which Nendawen will send one of his own spirits.”
Hweilan did not understand. But again words came to her out of the past, words spoken to her in a dream—
You do not need understanding. You need to choose. Understanding will come later … if you survive.
“What must I do?” she said.
Ashiin smiled. Not one of good humor or kindness. This one showed every pointed tooth in her jaw.
“So glad you asked,” she said. She reached behind her back and produced a stake—a shaft of white wood no more than a foot long, sharpened to a lethal point on one end. “Into this you will craft hrayeh. To call forth your ally, to waken the bow, Nendawen requires sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice?”
“We’re going hunting.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THIDREK WAS NOT THE SAME MAN WHO HAD RIDDEN out of Helgabal some tendays ago. His family had been noble for only three generations, but unlike many young aristocrats, Thidrek had never grown soft. He knew power came to those who seized it, and once attained, he could never let his guard down. In the conflict that brought Yarin to the throne, Thidrek’s father had backed the usurper. That gamble had paid off, and Thidrek had become one of the king’s most favored advisors.
And so when word arrived that Highwatch had fallen, that the High Warden, who had never loved Yarin nor received any love in return, lay dead, the king wasted no time. Thidrek led a delegation out of Helgabal two days later. He rode with forty warriors—a healthy mix of men loyal to the king and mercenaries loyal to the king’s gold.
Thidrek had almost felt a king himself. He carried power and authority, and every man and woman in his company answered to him. Thidrek bore the king’s good will and offer of friendship to the new rulers of Highwatch. Securing that relationship would help to solidify Yarin’s precarious power. But more importantly, securing this alliance would forge Thidrek’s own future in the Damaran court.
The Gap had been the first sign of trouble. Its reputation was grim even in the best of years, and it was the first time Thidrek had been more than a few miles in. But with forty armed horsemen around him and the authority
of the king in his hands, he had not feared any real trouble. Yarin had given them plenty for the “tax”—silver coins and the cast-off weapons no longer fit for Damaran knights. Four days inside the Gap they had seen their first hobgoblins—scouts watching them, bold as you please, from distant heights. On the sixth morning, they had woken to find their night watch in the hands of hobgoblins.
Thidrek had not been particularly worried. Concerned, yes. But such was not atypical behavior for the more aggressive mountain tribes. And so he came forward and addressed the foremost hobgoblin, offering the usual tax.
The goblin grabbed the hand of the watchman being held between two of his fellows. As the Damarans watched, the goblin cut off one of the man’s fingers, tossed it to Thidrek, and said, “He loses one each time you insult me.”
In the end, the goblins left after taking four times the usual tax and two of their pack horses. For just a moment, Thidrek considered fighting—it galled him to give in to such foul creatures—but a quick count showed a score of hobgoblins, all armed. And if he could see twenty, there were probably fifty. He knew his seasoned fighters would probably make short work of the rabble, but they still had many miles of hard country to cross, and he didn’t want to fend off attacks the whole way. So he’d paid.
There had been three more such incidents—each one costing more. Thidrek knew that if Highwatch did not resupply them, they would not have enough food to make it back to Damara. His advisors sensed his worry, and one day one of them did something one rarely did in Yarin’s court: he spoke the truth.
“The mountain tribes always feared Highwatch more than they feared anyone in Damara,” he said. “Yarin negotiated the tax, but it was Highwatch that kept the goblins in line. If the knights in Highwatch are truly gone … we might do well to choose another way home, my lord.”
When they left the Gap, Thidrek hoped the worst of their troubles were behind them. But then they met the first Creel.
The Nar barbarians did not attack or attempt to “tax” them, but they greeted the Damaran delegation with an attitude just shy of disdain. Thidrek could not understand their uncouth tongue, but he still knew an insult when he heard one, and his face flushed when he heard the Creel snickering at him and his men.
Their leader looked down his nose at Thidrek and said, “Ride to Nar-sek Qu’istrade. Leave the road at your peril.”
And then they’d ridden away, leaving the Damarans to ride through their dust.
“They aren’t going to escort us?” said Almar, who was Thidrek’s second.
“You really want their stench the whole way?” said Thidrek. But he shared Almar’s offense. To greet a royal delegation with nothing more than an order to watch their step …
They saw more Nar at a distance as they rode for Nar-sek Qu’istrade, but none approached. The half-dozen guards who kept the gate at the entrance to the valley, the so-called Shadowed Path, let them pass without incident. But Thidrek could feel their eyes on his back, and when the gates shut and locked behind the last of his men … that was when the first true fear hit Thidrek.
His initial excitement in Damara had given way to unease in his first days in the Gap. Their encounters with the hobgoblins had filled him with confusion and—truth be told—a fair amount of shame. The Creel had shamed him further. But hearing the tall iron-shod doors clang shut and the crossbars being dragged into place …
Thidrek was afraid. The grassy valley through which they rode was miles wide, but he still felt as if the door to his cell had been slammed behind him.
Hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Creel held the valley, lounging around in filthy camps or riding around and sparring. A few stopped and watched the Damarans ride past, but none spoke a word, and there was not a hint of deference even in the gazes of warriors who were scarcely more than boys.
The mountain height on which Highwatch rested rose before them. It was not elegant, but it did have a functional beauty to it. Perched on the heights, turrets jutting out from cliffs hundreds of feet high, it looked like a castle out of a bard’s tale. Still, Thidrek felt repulsed by it. He could put no name to it, could see nothing particularly repellant about the castle, but he could feel it. The sight of it pushed at him. It was like walking against the current of a river.
About halfway across the valley, the horses began to feel it too. At first it was merely a few mounts tossing their heads. But soon there was not a rider among them who wasn’t struggling to keep his or her horse under control. The beasts’ eyes rolled in their heads, and Thidrek even saw one horse do its best to wrench its head around far enough to bite its rider.
“My lord, this is pointless!” Almar said. Then his horse kicked up its rear legs, and the man had to fight to keep his saddle.
“Withdraw!” Thidrek called out. “Withdraw!”
He wrenched his own horse around. Once turned away from Highwatch, the beast set off in a gallop. Thidrek gave the horse its head for a hundred yards or so, then wrenched back the reins. The rest of the company soon gathered around him.
“What’s gotten into them?” Almar said.
One of the men whom Thidrek didn’t know answered, “Could be some enchantment to keep horses back. Gods know if I lived among all these damned Nar, I’d want just such a thing.”
Thidrek forced a smile that he in no way felt. “Almar, choose twenty men to stay here with the horses. Order them to make camp. The rest of us will walk.”
“What is this place?” one of the men said as they passed the first of the buildings.
“Kistrad,” Almar answered.
It was a ghost town. Most of the buildings still stood, though here and there they passed the scorched skeleton of a house’s frame still standing amidst the ashes. Some of the stone buildings bore marks of fire, and no one had bothered to repair any of the season’s storm damage. Thidrek thought he could hear rats scuttling in the late afternoon shadows, but he saw not a soul.
“Not even a stray dog.”
“My lord?” said Almar, and it wasn’t until then that Thidrek realized he had spoken aloud.
“Nothing.”
“Nar don’t keep dogs,” said one of the other men.
“Yes,” said Thidrek. “That must be it.”
They walked on, staying to the main thoroughfare—the widest path through the village, and the only one paved. The sun sank behind the mountains before them, and the shadows grew thick and cold.
The road led to Highwatch’s main gate—though it was hardly a gate as Thidrek understood them. Castles had walls, and castle walls had gates. Highwatch’s main defenses were the heights themselves, and her main gate was twice the size of any Thidrek had ever seen. But it was not a passage through a bailey wall. It was an entrance into the mountain itself. One gate was open wide. Its timbers scorched, all but two of the massive hinges broken, it hung loose, resting against the stones of the road. All that was left of its mate were shards of blackened wood and twisted metal littering the ground around the arch. Thidrek could see a half-dozen paces or so into the tunnel, but beyond that all was darkness.
“Well,” said Almar, “what do we—”
“Quiet,” said Thidrek, who was staring into the darkness. “Something’s coming.”
Every man’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, and Almar drew his half out of the scabbard.
Shapes that were slightly less darkness than the blackness beyond moved toward them. Thidrek could hear their feet shuffling over the dust and grit on the ground, and with each step, the shapes grew more distinct.
Four men. All obviously Damarans by the cuts of their hair and their clothes. But their clothes were filthy, fraying at the seams, and hung loose on their frames. In the last moment before the nearest of them stepped fully into the light, Thidrek thought he saw red fire, like sunset through stained glass, glint deep in their eyes. Thidrek gasped and took a step back.
“Did we startle you, my lord?” said the nearest of them, and then all four men bowed. “Forgive me. You are Lord
Thidrek of Goliad, are you not?”
Thidrek swallowed hard. Something in the man’s voice set Thidrek’s teeth on edge. But he managed to say, “I am. And you are …?”
“Morev,” said the man. “We have come to welcome you in the name of Lord Guric of Highwatch. And to bring you to him.”
Almar slammed his blade back into its scabbard. “You are our escort?”
Morev kept his eyes fixed on Thidrek. “We are.”
“Lords of Damara are more accustomed to being escorted through their host’s gate,” said Almar. “And not having to walk through a dusty ruin before being greeted.”
“My most profound apologies, Almar of Brotha. Our forces are, sadly, much reduced of late. I trust our Nar servants did not offend you.”
Almar opened his mouth to retort, but Thidrek cut him off.
“How do you know our names?”
Morev smiled, and Thidrek shivered at the sight. There was no mirth in it. Not even the feigned obsequiousness one might expect from a high-minded servant. Thidrek had once seen a jackal, brought by some southern trader to his father’s court. He remembered that jackal and how it had seemed to grin just before it pounced on the hare that was its dinner.
“Your reputations precede you, my lords,” said Morev. “Come. You are most welcome.”
Highwatch proved to be even more of a ghost town that Kistrad. Although something deep in Thidrek’s brain thought perhaps the ghosts might be real in the fortress. They saw not a soul in the halls. No guards posted at any of the dozens of gates and doors through which they passed. No servants sweeping halls or courtyards that were in desperate need of it. No one lighting the evening lamps, for there were no lamps, and their escorts carried no torches. They walked in darkness, ever upward into the heart of Highwatch. Even when they passed through courtyards or avenues open to the sky, there was not so much as a raven or a sparrow. Highwatch was barren.
Despite the seeming emptiness, Thidrek could feel eyes on him, watching from heights above that he could only guess at, or staring from the shadows that faded to absolute black as evening gave way to night.
Hand of the Hunter: Chosen of Nendawen, Book II Page 15
