Krea started to ask how his claim was possible, but he held up a hand and stopped her. “Look, the kyrni are a long-lived race, and when we are linked with them the callers share that magic. We live much longer than normal men because of our connection to the kyrni.”
“So you are linked?” Krea searched the sky. “Where is he?”
Sorin’s smile disappeared. “My link is gone.”
“Gone where? Oh,” Krea added after a second. “He’s dead. I’m sorry. I remember the proth saying that. I didn’t mean to bring up a bad memory.”
“He’s not dead. At least, I don’t think he is. He lone-shifted.”
Every part of her wanted to pursue Sorin’s comment, but she could see that the topic was a painful one. She had just decided to ask about lone-shifting another time, when she realized Sorin was watching her.
“He shifted into his counter without me there to bring him back,” Sorin said, still focusing on Krea.
“So he is stuck as a dragon? Forever?”
Sorin turned his attention back to the path. “Tormismir countered with a rukh, but aye, his human form is lost forever.”
“A rukh? One of the massive birds with giant claws that can carry away an ox? I didn’t know they were real. He’s stuck like that?”
“Well they aren’t as big as that, but aye. He is stuck like that. And that’s what will happen to you if you change without your caller present; that is why I must get you to the Royal City as soon as possible.”
A thousand questions churned in her head, but she held them all inside. She could tell from the set of his jaw that her guide was through with the conversation.
As she followed the road, she imagined what the Royal City might look like. Would kyrni be as numerous as the merchants of Trasdaak? Maybe she would be treated with respect, even feared, since she was apparently one of these sacred people.
She was just imagining how fun it would be to swoop down over the horrible captain of the guard with her dragon talons extended, ready to snatch him from the ground, when she realized that her horse had stopped. Sorin was mounting up again. “When do we stop for lunch?” she asked Sorin as he rode past her.
“We don’t.”
Krea frowned, finished tightening the straps, and pulled herself up into the saddle. They had eaten their morning meal on horseback as well, and she was ready for something besides dried meat and crunchy biscuits. Of course, it was better than going without, but still. “If we’re in such a hurry, why are we keeping the horses to a walk?”
“Two reasons,” he said without looking back. “First of all, I want to be well away from Trasdaak and over the Marlean River before I start calling any more attention to myself than absolutely necessary. Secondly, these two horses have to get us halfway across the Empire and get me back. I have no desire to contend with injuries caused by overextending them on the second day of this journey. After a run like you and Caldir had yesterday, he should have been stabled today. It is very hard on a horse to run them out like that.”
Krea scowled. She wanted to protest, but knew she couldn’t. Her tantrum yesterday had been foolish, to say the least, and now they were both paying for it. She had to at least try to save her dignity, though, so she pressed on. “How will we call attention to ourselves if we go faster?”
“Krea, think. Why would we have need to go faster?”
He wasn’t making sense. Krea knew she should be catching something, but his point eluded her. She remained silent.
Sorin finally looked at her. “Okay, think of it this way. If you saw a couple of people galloping down a road a long way from any town, what would you think?”
“Well, I’d think they wanted to get to the next town before nightfall.” She paused and smiled as the truth dawned on her. “I’d think they had something that someone else might want, which was why they wanted to be off the road by nightfall.”
“Now you’re thinking. We are much better off taking our time, at least until we cross the river, maybe even until we reach Ryth. Hopefully we can make up the time once we leave the trade route. Truth be told, our best option is actually to cut through the forest.”
“What forest?” Krea demanded, clicking Caldir up even with him.
“The Nayli.”
Krea checked to be sure the noble was serious. “Are you insane? We can’t go through the Nayli Forest. I’ve heard traders talk about that forest for as long as I can remember. People who enter it are never seen again.”
Sorin smirked. “Well, if that’s the case, then where do these traders get their information?”
“From the dying words of the people who come crawling out just before they turn to dust! You don’t really intend to cut through the Nayli?”
“We’d probably be fine, but no, I don’t. Well, I’m mostly sure I don’t. Going around that forest will add a month to my trip. I’d rather cut through it.” He looked hard at her as he continued, talking more to himself than to her. “Probably not a great idea, cutting through the forest with you, but it would really help.”
“Oh, blessed goddess,” Krea said, looking up into the clouds and drawing the sacred triple spiral in the air before her. “I am going to die soon. My thanks for getting me out of that little situation with the guards, and I’m really sorry I didn’t live long enough to show you that I was sincere.”
Sorin’s belly laugh interrupted her prayer.
“I’m being serious,” Krea chastised. “If you cut through the forest, you’ll get us killed or eaten or turned into proth, and then eaten or something worse than being eaten. I want to be sure my life is in order before I meet the goddess.”
Sorin was still laughing when he answered. “You’ll be needing to give that money purse back then, won’t you?”
“I was thinking of that as a gift from the goddess,” Krea said quietly.
“I bet you were.” Still chuckling, Sorin turned to her. “We are not going to die. I’m not planning on it, anyway. And we aren’t going through the forest. Probably. The only reason people have trouble in the Nayli is because they don’t understand her. That forest is a living thing, and she is protective of her treasures. As long as we respect her, she will leave us alone.”
“How do you know? Have you ever been through there before?”
“Many times,” he assured her.
“What are you?” Krea asked. “How is it that you have been to all of these places? Aren’t nobles supposed to just travel back and forth between their summer manor and their wintering house?”
“I’m not a noble.”
Krea cocked her head and stared at the man with one eyebrow raised, expressing the absurdity of his statement.
“Okay, I am a noble, but not the kind you’re thinking of. I’m a steward of the Lady. I go where she bids me to go. It has only been in recent years that I’ve had land to call home. You could say that I came into your idea of nobility late.”
Krea adjusted her feet in the stirrups and shook her head in protest. “I don’t know who you’re trying to convince, but it isn’t working on me. You were born into nobility. I’d be surprised if you even had to gather wood as a child. I can spot wealth as well as the next person, but there is a huge difference between just having money and being bred into it. You have privilege coursing through your veins.”
The caller started to answer, but the sound of a rider coming up the road forestalled his comment. He didn’t have to say a word this time; Krea knew just what to do. Slowly, so as not to have Caldir’s hoofprints leave too sharp an indentation, Krea eased her mount off the road between two large pines. She then doubled back into the brush so that she could see the road. If the rider stopped to follow their trail, they would see him and could ambush him from behind, if need be.
In silence, they waited.
When the two riders finally rounded the curve, Krea knew right away that something about them wasn’t right. One at Sorin’s grim frown confirmed her suspicion. They rode too straight in their saddles. They move
d too much like trained horsemen; their horses glistened too much in the filtered sunlight. These were no traders. Though they rode at an easy pace carrying on a casual conversation, even from her hiding spot she could see how they constantly glanced around. The dark-skinned man let his right hand dangle against his thigh, conveniently close to his sword. The other man, whose long blond hair fell from his head in thin, twisted cords, kept his riding cloak pulled away from his knife.
Krea strained to make out their words, but the men were too far away when they suddenly stopped and spun their horses around. A shadow too large for a bird crossed overhead. Caldir snorted, and Krea hurried to quiet him. The shadow crossed again, and this time she heard the familiar thump of a proth’s wings.
Sorin already had one glove off, but the faerie flew right by their hiding place and landed just beyond where the men waited. Although their horses danced in alarm at the arrival of the beast, the riders appeared untroubled. Unfortunately, since the proth dropped on the opposite side of the riders, it was now well out of sight.
“Can you hear what it is saying?” Sorin asked.
Krea shook her head. “Only that the faerie is speaking. They sound like they’re talking through a mouth full of stones. I can barely understand them when they are right in front of me.”
“Those would be teeth, not rocks. Stay here.” He quietly slid off Drindoc and dropped his gloves across the saddle.
“Hey, wait.” Krea dropped down behind him, noting with some pride that she was just as quiet. “I can hear better than you can.”
Sorin spared her the briefest glance before nodding and heading back through the trees. After a thought to Caldir telling him to stay where he was, she hurried to join him.
They made it halfway to the riders before Sorin stopped them. Her breathing sounded like thunder in her ears, and every snapped twig may as well have been lightning. The proth raised its humanlike head once, but when they stopped and waited, it started its screechy conversation again. She could almost make out the words. Something about traders and Trasdaak. She just needed to sneak a little bit closer.
With great care, Krea placed each foot on the leaf-littered ground. Ahead was a small cluster of rocks. If she could just get to them. Every step seemed so loud. She was sure the proth would leap into the trees after her any second, but it didn’t. By the time Krea reached the rocks, she was making sense out of the conversation.
The faerie’s tail snaked back and forth as it spoke, and it kept its wings partly spread as if it were ready to take to the air at any moment. The creature’s mouth, not intended for speech but for ripping things apart, sprayed saliva as it spoke. Someone was paying a reward for something, and the creature wanted the riders to find it. No. They would be rewarded if they found it. The stench of rotting flesh wafted past her as the faerie snarled and whipped its head at a question asked by one of the riders.
“Mashter wantsher. You no ashk of Mashter.”
Well, that wasn’t good. The dark-skinned rider slid his sword partway out of the sheath in response to the proth’s reaction, but the blond man continued. “Does Master want her alive?”
“Caller to die. Other treatsh for Mashter.”
“Mother Goddess!” Krea slapped her hand over her mouth, but too late. The proth spun around, its tail flipping around behind it. Its head swung back and forth as it sniffed the air, searching for the source of the sound. It took a step toward where she had left Sorin, then turned and headed directly for the rocks.
Krea scrambled for something to save herself with and cursed Sorin again for not letting her keep that knife. The proth tucked its wings tight to its back and began winding through the trees to get to the outcrop she was hiding in. On the road, one of the men yelled, and then she heard the clash of metal. In a burst of light, the proth vanished; then the clashing started again. Krea peered over the rocks and saw Sorin locked in battle with the two riders.
She didn’t have a sword or knife, but what she did have was her mind. She reached out to the blond man’s horse. The instant she made contact, she sent him the most powerful need to run she could. To her surprise, it worked. The horse leaped forward, nearly unseating the blond rider. When the man tried to check his horse, the animal reared in panic, lost its balance, and fell over backward.
Krea turned her attention to the bay horse, but she was too late. The dark-skinned man had apparently seen enough. He turned his horse into the forest opposite her rock and ran. The blond man’s horse struggled to his feet and fled the way they had come. His rider was not as lucky. Blood spilled out in a pool around his head. The blond cords of hair soaked it up, turning a sickly shade of orange as they lay splayed in the dirt. The man’s head twisted at an unnatural angle, his eyes staring blindly at the rock that had ended his life.
“Let’s go,” Sorin yelled, already running back toward the horses.
She reached down and unhooked the man’s belt. The sheath was nearly off when Sorin grabbed her arm and yanked her sideways. “I said let’s go, and I meant now!”
“I need a knife!” Krea jerked her arm free and wrestled the sheath the rest of the way off the belt. Maybe it wasn’t a proth-killing knife, but it was certainly better than nothing. A soft whistling sound came at her from somewhere to her left. She started to turn around, but a stronger instinct made her drop to the ground. Everything seemed to slow down as a crossbow arrow sailed over her head. She watched it fly by as if it were moving through ice. Saw the stripes on the feathers. Watched as they shivered in the air. Jumped as the steel point buried into a tree with an eerie thump.
She was already on her feet and running for the horses when something else that she saw connected in her head. Sorin called again. Goddess, she was going to get herself killed, but what could she do? Ripping her new knife from its sheath, she scrambled back to the body. In one smooth motion, she slid down beside the dead man, cut his purse strings, and was running back to the cover of trees before the arrow thumped into the man’s shoulder where she had just been.
“Nordu, have mercy! I swear on my life I should just let them have you.” Drindoc ripped through the underbrush. Sorin had Caldir in tow. “You are going to get both of us killed. Get on this horse, or I’ll do the killing!”
Krea didn’t have time to grab the stirrup before Sorin had her under the arm and thrown across the saddle. She very nearly bounced right back off as Caldir started running after Drindoc, but with a final heave, she managed to swing into the saddle and bury one hand in his mane to hold on. The trick hadn’t been swinging onto the horse so much as doing it with the knife clutched in one hand and the money bag in the other. However, as Caldir followed Drindoc through the forest, leaping over fallen logs and jumping across narrow ravines, she nearly dropped both.
Their run through the forest led them deep into the trees. When Sorin finally pulled the horses to a walk, Krea saw no trails or paths of any kind. As the horses caught their breath, Sorin studied the ground as he picked their way through the woods, but what he was looking for was anybody’s guess.
After several meandering circles and a few reverses, he finally found a location that suited his needs. He had been following a deer trail that headed around an outcropping of rocks, but rather than follow it around, Sorin reined Drindoc right up the slippery boulders to a narrow opening between several large, weedy shrubs. After several more turns, he finally stopped.
They dismounted, but didn’t loosen the saddles as Sorin surveyed his surroundings. Much to Krea’s surprise, they were on a hill overlooking the forest they had just ridden through.
“Aren’t you worried he’ll shoot us if he’s out there?”
“He couldn’t hit us at this distance, but I don’t think he’s out there. Has anyone tried to kill you before the proth?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“The kind I need an answer to. Has anyone tried to kill you?”
Krea nodded. “Plenty of people, but I don't think they really wanted to. I think
they were just mad because I took their food.”
“I don't think they're mad anymore. I think you’re marked.”
“What? Why would I be marked? No one even knows who I am.”
Sorin turned to her. His expression was grim, and when he caught sight of the knife sticking out of her waistband, he turned outright hostile. At that moment, she was glad she had already shoved the purse into her saddlebag.
“Apparently someone knows who you are. Those proth knew where to find you. Don’t ask me how, but they did. What did you overhear?”
Part of her didn’t want to tell him. After his comment about letting them have her, he was going to be even less excited when he heard they wanted to kill him too, but the other part of her knew she needed his help if she was going to survive this. “They said something about Trasdaak and traders and a reward. They wanted those men to find someone…to find me, I think. And...”
Sorin waited, his frown deepening the longer she stayed silent.
“And they said the Master wants me. The Master wants you dead and wants me, but it didn’t say why or who the Master is.”
When she finished, Sorin only nodded and looked back over the forest again.
They sat in silence awhile longer. Birds swooped in and out of the trees around them. Squirrels chattered. Nothing large moved. The air smelled sweet, like wet bark and wild onions, making her stomach growl.
“Can we eat while we wait?” she asked.
Sorin shook his head. “No. You can’t hear as well when you’re chewing. Better to sit it out. Drink some water, if you’re hungry.”
Water didn’t excite her, so Krea found a spot that was mostly dry and joined Sorin on the ground. “How long do you plan to wait?” she asked after a couple of minutes had gone by.
Her companion turned to her, his irritation written on his brow. “Could be several hours, maybe longer. Just keep your ears open and your mouth closed, and we’ll be all right.”
Krea glared back at him. “Why do you hate me?”
At first, she didn’t think Sorin would answer. He just peered at her with those birdlike eyes, trying to find something that apparently wasn’t there. Then his expression changed. The hard lines of his face relaxed, and the sadness she had seen the day before by the creek washed over him. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer, distant.
Hand and Talon (World of Kyrni Book 1) Page 9
