Harbinger

by Shae Ford

  Kael made no mention of it to Amos. He chewed on herbs as he worked to keep his stomach from growling too loudly, and tried to keep himself busy. Just when he’d resigned himself to a slow death of starvation, Roland showed up with dinner.

  "I hope you know the trouble you caused, dumping that stew on Marc," he said as he handed the bowl over.

  Kael didn't even mind that it was fish and dandelion — he dug right in.

  "Don't worry, I got yours from the clean pot."

  The food stuck to the roof of his mouth. "The clean pot?"

  "Yeah, your hogshead of a grandfather put blackroot in the others."

  Stew nearly came out his nose. Dried and powdered, blackroot was useful for all sorts of stomach ailments. But more than a pinch of it, and a man would likely spend his whole night in the latrine. And knowing Amos, there'd probably been a good deal more than a pinch.

  "It'll be extra work for him, but he says everyone'll just blame it on the cooking." Roland slung his pack onto the ground and began digging through it. When he found what he wanted, he glanced over his shoulder before he tugged it free. "Here."

  In his hand was a bow. It was a simple short bow, well worn and made of yew. "Roland, you know I can't —"

  "Oh, sure you can. What the elders don't know won't kill them. Or better yet, maybe it will." He grinned and thrust it at him again. "Go on, take it. It was my great grandfather's — brought it with him from the lowlands when the King's men chased him up here. I put a new string and grip on it, but the wood ought to bend nicely."

  Kael couldn't help himself — he took it. The bow was sturdy and felt good in his hand. Just above the new grip a number of shallow marks cut into the wood like rungs on a ladder. He grinned when he saw them.

  Roland’s ancestors were bandits: wild men who made their living raiding villages all throughout the Grandforest. Though he refused to talk much about it, Kael figured out the markings from some of the drawings in the Atlas. A score that was a single line meant his great grandfather had killed an enemy. The ones cut into an X meant he'd lopped off his head as a souvenir.

  It was funny to think a man as kind as Roland had come from such a bloodthirsty family. And Kael was surprised at how well the bow was made: he pulled on the string and marveled when it slid easily back to his chin.

  "It's different having one that's broke in, eh?" Roland was watching him, his voice getting gruffer by the second. "I was going to give it to ole Tad, but …"

  But he'd been killed.

  Both of Roland's sons had been hunters. Tad was the eldest, and Hammon the youngest. The same bear had slaughtered them both: a seven-foot tall monster with teeth as long as a man's finger. Roland was heartbroken when he discovered their mangled bodies, but he never wept. Instead, he spent five seasons tracking the beast through the woods, waiting for the perfect shot. And when it came, he struck the bear in the heart with an arrow.

  Roland later said that he thought it was the animal in him that gave him strength. He believed that men once knew the forests as well as the animals, and a little of that wild spirit was left in every one of them. As the bear lay dying, he said he saw blood before his eyes and felt nothing as he flung himself upon the beast.

  He drew his dagger and in pure rage, sawed off the bear’s head while it yet lived. Only after the anger faded and he collapsed, did he realize that the beast had slashed his back to ribbons.

  Amos healed him, and months later he was able to walk again, but the angry red and white lines never went away. He showed them to Kael once because he begged to see them, and bile rose in his throat when he saw there was more scar than skin.

  The bear’s head sat on a stake out in Roland's yard. Though the fur was long gone and the bone bleached white, Roland spat on it every time he came home. He said once that he could spit on it every day for a thousand years and the score would never be settled.

  "If Tad can't have it, then I think you ought to. A man shouldn't be left alone with no way to defend himself." Roland pulled out a quiver and handed it to Kael. It was so packed full of arrows that he wondered if he'd be able to get one out. "Yeah, you ought to have it," Roland said again, and then he smiled. "Especially since I'm so close to taking the walk —"

  "I don't want to think about that," Kael said. He felt a wall go up in his heart at the very thought of it. "Can't you just stay here with us? We'll take good care of you."

  Roland laughed from his belly and slapped his knees. "I know you would — and keep me alive a lot longer than I ever should be. No, I want the woodsman's death. I know you don't agree, but that's what I want."

  In Tinnark’s earliest days, a man who was too old to provide for his village would often choose to die rather than continue eating out of the pot. He'd take his bow and a quiver of arrows and walk out into the woods alone, prepared to accept whatever death the mountains gave him. They called it the woodsman's death.

  But those were the old days. Now Tinnark had a healer, now the pots were full. There was no reason that a man shouldn't be allowed to die in the comfort of his own home. But Roland refused to listen.

  "Let's find a place to hide that," he said quickly when he saw the set to Kael's chin. "There's probably a loose plank around here that'll do the trick."

  They found one under a cot and stuffed the bow and quiver into the hollow space beneath it. "Thank you —"

  "No, don't even." Roland pulled the hood of his cloak up and prepared to step outside. "Amos told me you were planning to leave in the spring and I just thought you ought to have a proper bow, is all. Good night."

  *******

  The Day of the Last Leaf came in early morning, when the elders stepped outside and declared that every tree in sight was bare-limbed to the roots. That afternoon, the air froze over and the clouds turned a heavy, ominous gray.

  Roland came late with dinner, his cloak tangled about him and his beard stiff with cold. "We're in for it now, boy," he said as he set the stew on the table.

  There were two bowls: one for Kael, and one for the girl who refused to wake up. Both were stone cold, so he dumped their murky contents into a pot and hung it over the fire to warm. Since he was bound to the hospital anyways, Amos had tasked him with the responsibility of feeding the girl every evening, coaxing the broth down her throat by the spoonful. It was a tedious duty, and it was beginning to wear on his patience.

  “Why are we in for it?” he said as he stirred the broth around.

  “Well, I left the sacrifice this morning in the same spot as always. But when I checked it just now," Roland’s eyes went wide, "it was still there. Not a bite taken out of it. What sort of under-realm omen do you think that is, eh?"

  Another reason the people of Tinnark hated him was because the year Kael was born, a monster moved into the woods. It would leave deer carcasses strung around the village — picked clean, and not a bone had been broken. Every skeleton was perfectly intact.

  The hunters thought it must have come from the summit. Everybody knew that monsters lived at the top of the mountains — and the great clans of summit people often chased them downwards. The elders wanted to hunt and kill it before it started feasting on people, but Roland didn't think it meant them any harm. So as a sign of good faith, he killed a deer and left it a mile outside of Tinnark.

  “If it’s a beast of any thought,” he reasoned, “it’ll understand that we don’t want it hunting on our grounds.”

  The next morning, a whole group of men went out to inspect the offering and found it'd been picked clean in the same bizarre way. After that, the carcasses stopped appearing, and it became a tradition for Roland to leave a deer for the monster every year on the Day of the Last Leaf.

  "What do you think it means?" Kael asked, trying to keep the lumps of meat from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

  Roland shrugged. "Kingdom if I know. It can't be good, I'll tell you that. Maybe our truce with the monster is up."

  "Maybe it's gone back to the summit."

  "Ma
ybe …" Roland stared into the flames for a moment, the hot embers reflecting back in the dark of his eyes. "I had a dream last night, Kael. And it was a bad one."

  "What was it about?"

  "Wolves," his voice was barely a whisper, "wolves with iron teeth. They tore us up, they ate the entire village.”

  Chills rose unbidden across Kael’s arms. Some of Roland's dreams were nothing, but some came true. Kael had long suspected that he had a bit of Seer in his bloodline. “It was probably only a dream,” he said, more to convince himself than anybody.

  Roland’s smile didn’t quite reach his troubled eyes. “Yeah, probably.” He stood stiffly. “I ought to get back to the Hall. And before I go — do you have a spare oilskin around here? Amos swears the snows aren’t coming tonight, but I know they are. I can feel it in the crick of my toes.”

  Kael fought back a smile as he tossed him a cloak. They always wagered over when the first snows would fall. While the rest of the village wrung their hands, Amos and Roland made a game of it.

  When he was gone, Kael stirred the pot a few more times before he went to check on the girl. They were alone in the hospital that night, which meant he could talk all he wanted to without getting in trouble.

  They’d wedged her cot between the wall and the front side of Amos’s desk. If Kael turned sideways, he could edge his way back to the chair in the corner — which he’d situated right by her head. Amos insisted that lowlanders weren’t used to the cold. So even though her skin was warm, they had a mountain of pelts draped over her body.

  “The stew should be ready in a few minutes,” he said as he sat. He knew she couldn’t hear him, but it was still nice to have someone his own age to talk to.

  Her face was smooth as she slept, her full lips bent almost into a smile. He wished he knew what she was dreaming about. What sort of dreams did lowlanders have? Most likely they were good ones. He doubted that she dreamt of wolves chasing her, or bears ripping her limb from limb. She’d probably never even had a nightmare.

  “Do you want to hear a story while we wait?” He pulled the Atlas out of his pocket and flipped it to a random page. “Scarn Who Wouldn’t Die, this is one of my favorites …”

  He read far too long, and soon the potent scent of burning meat wafted in from the main room. Swearing, he dashed out to save the stew. But it was too late.

  About three inches of it was caked completely onto the bottom. He scooped up a spoonful of what was still liquid and grimaced as the horrible flavor burned his nose. Perhaps if he added a little water to it, and maybe some herbs …

  His body knew before he did. The spoon froze halfway to his lips and his teeth stuck together. Every little sound magnified itself in his ears: the low whistle of the wind, the scratching of trees on the roof, the creaks and moans of the walls around him. The noise made his heart beat faster — but what he felt stopped it short:

  Someone was standing behind him. Watching him. Waiting.

  And he was fairly certain they meant him harm.

  Chapter 6

  The Singing Sword

  He felt a breath of air leave the room as the predator inhaled. If Roland were there, he’d say to listen to the animal part of him. And right now it whispered to remain perfectly and completely still.

  But his mind knew it wasn’t a monster behind him; nothing that waited to rip his innards out and string them across the floor as his body might have him believe. No, he knew the thing behind him was probably only Marc, perhaps even Laemoth.

  While the rest of the village ate supper, they must’ve snuck out to the hospital to teach him a lesson. They’d made a habit of showing up during the day and tormenting him every chance they got. They tripped him and then laughed as he smashed several bottles of haywart ointment on the ground. But their laughter fizzled out when he cleaned the mess without a word, and their faces went dark. Blows came next: carefully-placed kicks in the shins and elbows to the ribs. They wanted to hear him grunt in pain, cry out or curse — any sound that might give them an excuse to haul him before the elders and have him banished. Kael’s shins were swollen and bruised, it hurt to breathe, but thus far he’d not made so much as a moan.

  And now he was going to pay for it.

  He fought against the instincts that screamed for him to freeze and instead got to his feet. His knees were hardly bent straight before the sharp edge of a knife touched his throat. It pushed against his skin, digging at the vein below his chin but not breaking.

  So this was it. They were finally going to kill him. He supposed the elders wouldn’t defend the death of a Bow-Breaker. And whatever fear they had for Amos was dwarfed in comparison to their hatred for Kael.

  He would not moan, he would not cry. He’d straighten his shoulders and meet death with honor —

  “Where am I?”

  He didn’t recognize the voice at his ear. Though it wasn’t the high-pitch shrill he was used to, it was decidedly female. The voice was rough, low, almost like a growl. And it caught him off guard.

  “Where am I?” it said again.

  He swallowed and felt his throat slide uncomfortably against the edge of the knife. “Tinnark.”

  A sharp exhale. “The village in the middle of the mountains?”

  “Yes.”

  His body spun around, forced by a strong hand. He blinked, and the next thing he knew, he was staring into the face of the girl.

  He’d gotten so used to the smooth calm of her sleeping features that he wasn’t prepared for the dark arches of her brows to be bent so low, or for her full lips to be stuck in a serious frown. The wisps of hair that fell across her face cast shadows over her skin, drawing every gentle line into one heart-stopping picture. But for all her face surprised him, her eyes knocked the wind straight out of his lungs.

  They were the color of spring: that blink of time when everything in the mountains turned an astonishing shade of green. They were wild, dangerous. And they snared him.

  She caught the look on his face and her frown deepened. “What is your name? Tell me quickly.”

  She seemed on the verge of releasing him. All he had to do was answer this one question, and she would let him go. She’d disappear into the night and take those deadly eyes with her.

  He forced his lips to form the word, forced his lungs to push it out: “Kael.”

  And the next thing he knew, his feet left the ground.

  He felt his back pop and his ribs cry out in protest as she shoved him against the wall. She held him there, using the weight of her body to pin him. He flailed his arms and kicked his legs, but the knife slid back into place: a warning, a promise.

  He froze.

  With the other hand, she tore at his shirt. He felt the cold air glance his chest as the fibers split open, heard the clatter of his buttons as they struck the ground, and the fight surged back into his limbs.

  With a roar, he shoved her back. She stumbled and he tried to dart past her, but he only got two steps in before she had him wrangled by his collar and hurled back into the wall. The arm that held the knife clamped across his chest like an iron bar and he knew there was no escape.

  At any second she would see — and then she’d drag that knife across his throat and head to Midlan for her reward.

  When a second came and passed and she still hadn’t killed him, he cracked an eye. He watched her stare at the patch of chest exposed by his torn shirt. He flinched under the pressure of her fingertips. He felt her trace the mark up and down: the red, raised line that extended from below his collarbone and nearly to his stomach.

  Amos told him to hide it at all costs, even from Roland. His powers could be explained away but there was no denying the mark. Once anyone saw it, they would know what he was.

  She took him under the chin and he braced himself for the moment when she would snap his neck — but it never came. She turned his head, gently, towards the fire. He looked away as those strange eyes locked onto his.

  All at once, the pressure of the knife relent
ed and she took a step backwards. She watched him for a moment with the same wide-eyed shock that he watched her. “You are him,” she breathed, so quietly it was almost a whisper.

  “I am who, exactly?” he said. Now that the knife hung loosely in her hand, his temper came back with a vengeance.

  “Kael of the Unforgivable Mountains.”

  “Yes, I am. Didn’t I just say that?”

  “Kael the Wright.”

  He laughed. The nerves, the stress of being very nearly skewered, the sheer ridiculousness of what she’d just said all came bursting out his lungs. “You’ve got the wrong Kael. I’m no Wright.”

  Her frown was back. She crossed her arms and the knife stuck menacingly out from the crook of her elbow. “Don’t tell me I’m wrong. You know nothing about it.”

  “I think I do, considering I’m the one living in my skin,” he retorted. “I’m a whisperer, yes. But I’m only a healer. Don’t worry — I’m sure I’ll still fetch some gold.”

  “I’m not going to turn you in. I just can’t believe you’ve been here the whole time, right under my nose.” Her gaze drifted to the fire, as if she had a sudden thought, then her eyes turned back to him. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been searching for you?”

  “Me?” The fumes from the burning stew made his head stuffy. He ripped the pot off the fire and set it on the ground to cool. “Then you’ve wasted your time. Do I look like a Wright to you?” He stood and spread his arms wide so she could see how very bony he was, how his skin was so white it was practically transparent. He blushed as her eyes wandered the length of him, but stood firm.

  She tapped the hilt of the knife thoughtfully against her chin. “Well, when you put it that way … yes.”

  Either the blow to her head knocked something loose, or they’d rescued a mule by mistake. He strongly suspected the latter.

  He was no Wright — one glance and that would’ve been obvious to anybody. Wrights were the most powerful of all whisperers: men fated with all three gifts. They were master craftsmen, healers impervious to disease and unbeatable warriors. The last Wright, Setheran, had singlehandedly won the Whispering War. He shattered a cliff side with his bare fist, burying himself and all the rebels in the debris. It was his sacrifice that saved the Kingdom.