Breaking the Suun

by J. A. Culican

  He left, and I dressed quickly. The skirt left my legs feeling bare and strange. I knew that in many parts of the world, women were practically forbidden to wear trousers, but the Western March was not one of them. In fact, women were more likely to carry an ax or a sword in Bor’sur than wear a skirt. My boots, at least, provided some protection to my feet and lower legs.

  When I opened the door, Arun was leaning against the wall, picking under his nails with a small knife. He looked up and smiled, genuinely happy to see me. It stopped me in my tracks. Was he there just as a friendly gesture? Or was it something more? Something I’d brought on by my behavior last night.

  “I have it on good authority that Ravyn is out hunting this morning,” he said, tucking his knife away inside his vest. “I thought we could help her.”

  “Why?” I asked cautiously.

  “Well, helping Lunla got us this far, maybe helping Ravyn can convince her of our good intentions.”

  To be frank, I didn't know that my intentions were all that good. I would do whatever it took to keep my family safe and to be able to return home. Even if that meant sacrificing the heir, who'd been so willing to sacrifice me and my mother all those years ago.

  But I didn't have a problem lying to get what I wanted. “Sure.”

  I wasn’t much of a hunter, but Arun seemed excited, grabbing his bow and a quiver of arrows on our way out of the temple. With everything super-sized in this part of the forest, I couldn’t imagine what we were hunting. How big were rabbits and wild boar in these parts, anyway? Did I really want to find out? I guessed I did if I wanted to eat something other than vegetable stew.

  Arun paused outside the temple, looked around, and then headed south. The veil was thick, casting the forest in eerie shadows. There was no sound except for the crunching of the leaves under our feet.

  A gentle gust of wind ruffled my skirts and I pushed them down with my hands, regretting the decision to surrender my pants. “How did you know to come this way?”

  “The wind,” Arun answered. “She wouldn’t want to be upwind from her prey.”

  Great, so we’d be going into the wind the whole time. I just hoped I wouldn’t give Arun a show if the wind picked up.

  After walking for just a few more minutes, Arun knelt and brushed his fingers on the base of a tree where the bark had scraped away. “Boar.” Then he touched a section of leaves that had been pressed down by a heavy boot. “Priest.”

  We followed the trail until we came to an oversized oak tree on the bank of a small, winding creek and Arun pulled me down beside it. Without speaking, he pointed across the creek to a small clearing. It took me a minute to find her, but I eventually spotted Ravyn squatting behind a bush, her bow raised and an arrow ready to fly. Across from her was a wild boar rooting through the undergrowth.

  Ravyn shifted and when she did, a branch cracked loud enough we heard it from where we were across the creek. The boar looked up, white tusks glinting as it turned its gaze on her. Ravyn released her arrow.

  Arun gave a sharp intake of breath as the priest’s arrow whizzed past the animal and it charged right for her. He stood, nocked his own arrow, and released it, barely taking the time to aim. The boar squealed, took two more steps, and collapsed at Ravyn’s feet, an arrow protruding from just above its shoulder.

  The priest turned around and saw us there. She gave a small nod before kneeling beside the body.

  I followed Arun, splashing through the creek. “You’re pretty good at saving these priests’ lives.”

  He chuckled. “Right place, right time, I guess.” Then he handed me his bow and approached Ravyn. “How can we help?”

  She looked at him over her shoulder before turning back to the boar. “You already have. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m glad for it.”

  Blood gurgled out of the wound and soaked the boar’s shiny black coat. She used a knife to make holes in the back legs and then the three of us hoisted the body up on a rope so that it hung from a tree. Then Ravyn made a long cut from the head to the tail and began skinning the boar.

  “I was not sure you would still be here … after last night.”

  This, I knew, was directed at me. “Why would I leave when you have what I want?”

  Arun shot me a warning glance behind Ravyn’s back.

  She peeled off another strip of skin and discarded it. Her hands were stained red with blood. “I already told you, I don’t know where the heir is.”

  Arun sidled up to her and took his own knife to the boar’s skin. “But I’m guessing you know how to find her.”

  I stood back, my arms crossed over my chest.

  “Even if I could—”

  “You wouldn’t, I know.” Arun sheathed his knife and held a hand out to me.

  Rolling my eyes, I pulled my ax from my belt and handed it to him. He made a cut to the back of the boar’s neck and then began to saw through the spine to remove the head. Once it was off, the corpse would be light enough to carry back to the temple.

  But we didn’t get that far. Before he could finish removing the head, another priest burst out of the forest and splashed across the creek.

  “Thank Onen I found you.” She leaned against a tree, panting. She was older, her dark hair streaked with grey.

  Ravyn had already gone to her and taken her hands. “What is it?”

  “The ur’gels. They’re back.”

  I snatched my ax from Arun. “Where are they?” But the forest around us was still silent.

  “No, they haven’t attacked yet. They’ve gathered in the valley. They’re coming. We have to leave.”

  “Leave?” Ravyn drew back from the other priest.

  Looking at the shock on her face, I realized what I could do for her in exchange for the information I needed. We didn’t need to help her. We needed to save her temple.

  I turned to her, ignoring Arun’s warning looks. The ur’gels weren’t here because they cared about Ravyn or the temple. They wanted me because they thought I was the Suun heir. “I can draw them away. But I won’t leave until I know where to find the heir. She’s been hiding long enough. If she’s supposed to save the world, this is the time.”

  Ravyn hesitated, and I could see how it was tearing her apart. She wanted to protect her temple, but also the Suun heir. “What choice do I really have?”

  I remembered her own words from earlier. “There’s always a choice.”

  “Will you help her? Can you promise me that?”

  My first instinct was to say no. I didn’t know if I could promise that. But then I caught Arun’s eye over her shoulder. If ever there was a lost cause, this was it. I’d been afraid to step into the Lake of Light because of the darkness inside of me. Maybe this was my chance to redeem myself. “Yes. We will help her.”

  Ravyn turned to the other priest. “We’ll require your assistance.”

  She seemed to know exactly what it was that Ravyn was asking of her. “Of course. This way.”

  We followed her back toward the temple but veered off the path onto a small, hidden game trail.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Ravyn.

  “The scrying pool. Typhna is a seer.”

  “A seer?” Arun sounded impressed.

  I was less so. “We’re supposed to trust a seer?”

  “It’s that or go on information that’s almost twenty years old. Take your pick.”

  The scrying pool was really just a basin of water contained in the sawed-off trunk of a tree at waist level. It seemed more like a puddle than a magical pool, but knowing how they loved their trees, I kept my mouth shut.

  The other priest, Typhna, stood before the tree, her hands hovering over the still water within. The rest of us gathered around and stared into the pool. All I saw was my reflection looking back at me.

  “We’re looking for the Sisters of Light who are guarding the Suun heir,” Ravyn explained to Typhna.

  Typhna nodded and stared intently at the water.

  “Wha
t does she see?” Arun whispered to Ravyn.

  “It depends on what we ask of her. Sometimes she can see over great distances, sometimes she can see the future. Sometimes, she sees nothing at all.”

  “Doesn’t sound that impressive to me,” I scoffed. I couldn’t believe I was going to go chasing down a girl based on a maybe-vision from a second-rate seer.

  Arun rolled his eyes at me.

  Ravyn, though, smiled at me. “You’ll see.”

  Finally, Typhna, who’d been quiet this whole time, touched one finger to the center of the pool. The touch rippled out in circular rings, and my reflection began to change.

  I held my breath and watched, trying to decide if it was a trick of my eyes as my face became someone else’s, though the star beside my eye remained. My skin and hair grew darker, and my features morphed into those of a beautiful girl with a round face and delicate features.

  But when I blinked, she was gone, and in her place was an old woman’s body lying prone on the forest floor. She wore the orange robes of a priest, and her grey hair was in a cloud around her head. Her dull, grey eyes were open, and I realized they were reflecting the ever-present veil of clouds that hung over Bruhier.

  Typhna touched the water again, and as quickly as she’d come, the woman was gone.

  Chapter 20

  “What?” I looked at each face gathered around the scrying pool. Arun looked just as confused as I did. Typhna looked slightly apologetic. And Ravyn looked grave, her mouth drawn down in a frown. “Who was that? Where was that?”

  “That was one of my sisters,” Ravyn answered, her eyes still on the water.

  “Is she dead now? Or was that a future vision?”

  Typhna bit her lip. “It’s hard to say, but I believe the woman’s death is yet to come.”

  I opened my mouth to yell at her, but Arun’s hand came down on my shoulder and I kept my frustration to myself. It was a good thing, too, I realized. She had to be frustrated too, being able to see someone’s future and not being able to do anything about it.

  Ravyn stooped and picked up a rock from the ground. She held it in one fist for a moment, her eyes closed. Then, she held it out to me across the scrying pool. “Here.”

  I took it by reflex. “What do you want me to do with this?”

  “In your hands, and only your hands, it will guide you to the Suun heir.

  I turned it over in my hand. It was a grey rock, smooth and round and completely normal.

  “Remember your promise to me. Help her. You must get to her before the ur’gels do.” She came around the pool and closed my hand around the rock. “They will kill her, unless you can stop them. Her life is in your hands. It always has been.”

  “But what will the rock do?”

  “You and the heir are forever linked. The rock has been enchanted to give you the guidance you need to find your way back to her.”

  We made our way back to the temple, Ravyn and Typhna walking ahead of Arun and me.

  I took the opportunity to ask Arun what he thought about the vision in the pool. “Who do you think that first girl was?”

  “What first girl?”

  My skirt got caught on a branch and I jerked it free. I couldn’t wait to get out of this thing. “The one who appeared in the pool before the old woman.”

  His brows drew together. “There was no one before the old woman.”

  He seemed to certain about it that I dropped the subject.

  Frida and Erik met us outside the temple, already wearing their clean clothes and armor, weapons in their hands.

  “The ur’gels are coming,” Erik announced.

  “We know.” I held up the rock as if it would offer some kind of explanation. “We’re leaving. We’ll draw them away.”

  “Is that really a good idea?” Estrid asked. Then, she looked me up and down. “Why are you wearing a skirt?”

  I rolled my eyes at her, foregoing a response.

  We ducked inside the temple where we were met by Eoghan. The tree offered me my clean, folded clothes, which I took gratefully.

  Arun turned off toward the kitchen. “I’ll get supplies. You get changed. Meet me out front.”

  It was with great relief I donned my pants, tunic, and leather armor. I strapped on my weapons belts, Estrid handing me my ax and sword as we ran for the door.

  I filled her in as we went.

  “A seer and a magic stone?” Estrid looked as dubious as I felt.

  “We’ve seen stranger things,” I said with a shrug.

  Back outside, things still seemed normal. Arun and Erik had bags of supplies slung over their shoulders.

  Arun shrugged me off when I offered to take one. “Do you have the stone?” he asked.

  I pulled it from an inner pocket of my vest and showed it to him.

  “Your only job is to make sure you and that stone make it onto the ship.”

  Ravyn rounded the tree then on the back of her horse-beast. To my surprise, a handful of other priests followed her, also mounted. The horses pranced restlessly as they drew near us.

  Estrid grunted and took a step back. “One man’s monster is another man’s pet, I suppose.”

  “I’m not so sure those horses are anyone’s pets.”

  As if to prove my point, Ravyn’s horse snorted, sending a plume of smoke into the sky. Ravyn wheeled him around. “We’ll take you to the ship and make sure you get on board. The rest is up to you.”

  Eoghan was there too, the only trehand present, but I felt eyes on us from all around and wondered how many were watching us from their places in the forest. He led the way, weaving in and out of the trees skillfully. Ravyn and her priests brought up the rear.

  I was right behind Eoghan, so when an ur’gel bounded out of the trees and leapt on his back, I was on him in just a few seconds. The ur’gel had his black claws dug deep under the bark of what seemed to be Eoghan’s shoulders. The trehand thrashed wildly, reaching his branches over his head and behind him to try to shake the ur’gel off.

  It wasn’t working. I heard Ravyn galloping up behind us, but I didn’t know if she would make it on time or what she could even do against the monster. Instead, I drew my ax, pulled it back over my shoulder, and let it fly without missing a step. There was always the risk I would hit Eoghan, but I trusted myself in this, at least. I’d been throwing axes for practically as long as I’d been holding one.

  The ax hit the ur’gel square between the shoulder blades and he fell into a screaming pile on the ground. Estrid was there first, driving her sword into the monster’s neck. I stopped to scoop up the ax and we kept running.

  But more ur’gels were coming out of hiding. I dropped two with my ax but three more emerged from the shadows, all of them converging on me. I was fighting them off when something sharp grabbed my shoulders and lifted me off the ground. In my shock, I dropped my ax and could only watch as one of the horrible, blue-skinned beasts picked it up and laughed.

  It was impossible to say what else was happening around us. The pain in my shoulder was intense and all-consuming. My fingers pried at the claws there as I tried to extricate myself from their grasp. I ground my teeth together and tried not to scream as the ur’gel lifted me higher and higher into the air.

  A hand around my ankle stopped our climb and tugged me back down until my feet touched the ground. There was a grunt, and a thud, and I was free, falling into a heap on the forest floor. Blood trickled out of the small puncture wounds in my shoulders, but it wasn’t as bad as when the ur’gel had speared me in Barepost. When I looked up, Arun was standing over me, my ax in his hand and the supplies still slung over his shoulder.

  “I believe this belongs to you.” He offered it to me hilt first.

  Standing, I took it from him, wiping the black ur’gel blood on my pants. “Thanks. And you didn’t even drop the food.”

  He smiled and winked, then grabbed my hand and dragged me forward to join the others who had already reached the tree where the ship was docked. Shadeb
ig blood still speckled the ground around it, but the bodies were mostly gone, save for a few random, gruesome body parts still scattered about. I didn’t want to think about what had happened to them, what had eaten them or stolen them away.

  The ur’gels were also closing in. We could hear them crashing through the underbrush. Ravyn and her priests made a circle around us on their horses.

  “Go,” Ravyn said. “We’ll hold them off.”

  As if on cue, an ur’gel burst forward, claws reaching for her horse. The horse-beast reared back, baring its fangs, and bit into the ur’gels neck, ripping its head from its body in a spray of black blood.

  I turned away from the carnage and took the boost that Arun offered, scrambling for the lowest branch, and pulled myself up. Once I was there, I turned back and offered him my hand. He took it and joined me, then stood and boosted me to the next branch.

  Estrid and Erik were already halfway up the tree and urging us on, while below, Ravyn and the priests kept the ur’gels from following us. Thankfully, there did not seem to be any other fliers among them, so we were safe, at least for now.

  Stiarna met us as we scaled the ship’s side, clucking at us angrily. I scratched behind her ears in an attempt to console her.

  At the helm, Arun took the wheel and gently raised the lever. Erik, Estrid, and I unfurled the sails and prepared for takeoff. The Iron Duchess groaned and rocked as she freed herself from the treetops and took to the air. I stood at the railing, watching the forest grow smaller as we rose.

  The wind caught the sails and carried us away from the trees and back to the south, until we were over the valley where we’d first encountered the horses. It was now where the ur’gels camped. Crude tents had been erected, the largest right beside the river. I watched as the flap opened and a woman stepped out, the sun glinting off of her golden curls. Savarah turned her face skyward and watched the ship sail over her head. Another figure emerged from the tent, this one a winged ur’gel with a bandage over his chest. It had to be the same one I’d fought on the back of the tusker.

  He and Savarah conferred and then he launched himself into the air, black, leathery wings flapping powerfully. Arun had left his bow and quiver on the deck, so I snatched up the bow and plucked an arrow from the quiver.