by Glenda Larke
They did not speak until the walled city was behind them and they were on the open road. Mihei was the first to break the silence. “When we stop for the night, I have gifts for you in my bag.”
“Oh?” Jair asked, curious. “From whom?”
Mihei smiled. “Kenver—and his mother. Kenver chased me down the road to make sure I’d packed the gifts he made for you. Cheira Talwyn didn’t chase us, but I wouldn’t care to face her displeasure if I were remiss in making sure you received your welcoming gift.”
Jair smiled broadly, knowing that he had packed several such gifts for his wife and son in his bags as well. “Are they well?”
Emil laughed. “Kenver is a hand’s breadth taller than when you left, and begging for a pony to ride with the guards. Talwyn’s driven us all mad these past few weeks with her wishing for time to pass more quickly.”
“Tell me, where do we join the tribe?”
Mihei’s smile faded. “The Ride’s taken longer this year than in any season for many years.”
“Why?”
“Many times, we’ve found the barrows desecrated. Cheira Talwyn says the spirits are unhappy. We’ll join the others just across the river, below the Ruune Vidaya forest,” Mihei replied.
Jair didn’t say anything as he thought about Mihei’s news. The Sworn were a nomadic people, consecrated thousands of years ago to the service of the Lady. They were the guardians of the barrows, the large mounds that dotted the landscape from the Northern Sea down through Margolan into Dhasson and to the border of Nargi. Legend said that long ago, the barrows had continued, down into Nargi and beyond, to the Southern Plains. But when the Nargi took up the worship of the Crone Aspect of the Lady, they destroyed the barrows and fought any of the Sworn who dared cross into their lands. The Sworn had left them to their folly, and the legends said that the Nargi had paid dearly for destroying the barrows.
Within the barrows were the Dread. What, exactly, the Dread were, Jair did not know. No one had seen the Dread in over a thousand years. Only the shamans of the Sworn, the cheira, ever communicated with their spirits, and then only through ritual and visions. But it was said that as the Sworn were the guardians of the barrows of the Dread, so the Dread were guardians of the deep places, and it was their burden to make sure that a powerful evil remained buried.
The three men rode single file, and Jair noted that both Emil and Mihei seemed unusually alert for danger on this leg of the trip. Normally, the two-day journey from Valiquet to meet up with the Sworn was uneventful. Now, Jair realized that the others’ heightened vigilance had affected him, and he found himself scanning the horizon.
“Look there,” Jair said as a small hamlet came into view late in the afternoon. Any other year, the fields would have been full of men, women, and children working. Instead, even from a distance, Jair could see that the fields lay untended, although it was only weeks until harvest. As they drew nearer, an overpowering stench filled the air, and Jair saw shifting gray clouds hovering over the village and the pastures.
“Dark Lady take my soul, what’s happened?” Jair breathed as they drew nearer. The air stank of decay, and it was clear that the gray clouds were swarms of flies. The sunken, half-rotted corpses of cows, sheep, and horses lay in the pasture. There was no noise, except for the buzzing of flies, so many that it sounded like the hum of a distant waterfall.
“It’s the plague,” Mihei said, as they passed the turn to the lane that led into the village. The smell was overpowering in the late-summer heat. He began to chant quietly to himself, and Jair recognized it as the passing-over ritual the Sworn said for the bodies of the dead. Jair made the sign of the Lady, adding his own fervent prayer for safe travel.
“What have you seen of plague?”
Emil shook his head. “Rarely have I been so glad to avoid cities as this season. Most of what we hear comes from the news of the travelers and tinkers we pass on the road. But it’s bad enough in some of the larger towns that the dead lie stacked like cordwood because there isn’t time to bury them, and the living have abandoned their sick and fled.”
“Sweet Chenne,” Jair murmured. “What of the other kingdoms? Have you heard?”
“There’s a rumor that Principality has closed its border to Margolan refugees. It’s said that Nargi is patrolling the river more frequently, as if anyone would think about sneaking into that rats’ nest. Has your father closed Dhasson’s borders?”
“Not yet. But it may come to that.”
“Watch out!” Mihei’s shouted warning came as figures crashed through the underbrush toward the road. Jair’s eyes widened as he drew his stelian. Four creatures burst from the forest, dressed in rags, moving in a frenzy of rage. They had been men once, but there was no reasoning in their eyes, nor sanity. They stank of waste and sweat and were covered in filth and dried blood. Three of the madmen swung tree limbs that looked to have been ripped from their trunks. One of the men wielded a large branch with finger-length thorns, heedless of the blood that flowed from his hands as the thorns tore at his discolored flesh. Their faces and arms were covered with large, red pustules and bleeding open sores. The sight of three well-armed men on horseback should have deterred even the most determined thieves. Instead, the four howled with rage and ran at them, swinging their makeshift weapons.
“What are they?” Jair shouted as his horse reared.
“Ashtenerath,” Mihei replied, slashing down with his stelian as one of the madmen tried to lame his mount with the branch it swung. Mihei’s weapon cleaved the man from shoulder to hip, but the remaining attackers pressed forward, paying no attention to their companion’s fate.
Two of the madmen circled Jair, yammering and howling in their rage. The third launched himself toward Emil, and his thorny club scored a gash across the flank of Emil’s horse before Emil sank his blade deep into the man’s chest. The ashtenerath collapsed to his knees with a gurgle as blood began to pour from his mouth. Still, he swung at Emil’s horse with his club until Emil’s stelian connected once more, severing his head from his shoulders.
Jair struck at the ashtenerath that ventured the closest, slicing through the madman’s shoulder and severing the arm that swung the club. The thing pressed on, paying no attention to the pain or to the rush of blood that soaked his tattered rags. Aghast, Jair brought his stelian down, slicing from the bloody stump of his attacker’s shoulder through his ribs until the body lay severed in two.
With a cry, Mihei engaged the fourth man, who had advanced on Jair’s horse from the left. Mihei’s horse reared, and a well-placed kick tore the ashtenerath’s club from its hands. Blind with rage, the berserker hurled himself toward Mihei. The horse reared again, knocking the attacker to the ground and crushing him beneath its hooves as its full weight landed on the berserker’s chest, spattering gore and soaking the horse’s front legs to the knees in blood.
Silence filled the clearing as Jair and the others watched the tree line for another attack.
“By the Crone! What spawns those things?” Jair asked as he wiped his stelian clean and resheathed his weapons.
Emil and Mihei looked around the bloodied roadway. “Usually, ashtenerath are created by potions and blood magic, men pushed past sanity by torture and drugged into a bloodlust,” Mihei replied. “They’re expendable fighters, just a breath removed from walking corpses, and it’s a kindness to put them out of their misery.”
“A blood mage did this?” Jair asked.
Emil shook his head. “In a way. The plague began in Margolan, and it was the traitor Curane’s blood mages who created it, as a way to stop King Martris’s army. Only it got away from them, and it spread beyond the battlefield. Maybe it’s the nature of the sickness, or maybe it’s because it was magicked up, but a handful of the ones who catch the plague don’t die right away. The madness takes them and they become ashtenerath. We’ve heard of attacks before, but this is the first time we’ve been set upon ourselves.”
Jair looked down at the mangled bodies on
the roadway and repressed a shiver. He’d fought skirmishes against raiders and seen men die in battle. In the eyes of his opponents, he’d seen determination and unwillingness to yield, but never complete madness.
“Come now. We’ve got to purify ourselves and the horses to make sure we don’t spread the sickness,” Emil urged.
They rode another candlemark before they found a clearing near the road with a well. Emil signaled for them to stop. They dismounted, warily watching the underbrush for signs of danger. Mihei stood silently, staring into the forest, but his hands were moving in a complicated series of gestures that Jair knew worked the warding magic of the Sworn. As Mihei set the wardings, Emil built a fire and began to take a variety of items from his saddlebags. Jair drew a bucket of cold water from the depths of the well, and Mihei gestured for him to set the bucket near the fire. Mihei took pinches of dried plants from pouches on his belt and ground them together in his fist, then released them into the fire.
Smoke rose from the fire, heavily scented with camphor, thyme, and sage. Mihei bade them enter into the thick smoke that billowed from the fire and to draw the horses near as well. “Breathe deeply,” he instructed, and Jair closed his eyes, taking in a deep breath of the fragrant smoke. “The smoke wards off fever and strengthens the body’s humours.”
Next, Mihei took a flask from his bags and uncorked it. Jair immediately recognized the smell of vass, the strong drink favored by the Sworn, made from fermented honey, hawthorn, and juniper. Mihei poured a liberal draught into the bucket of water, then added crushed handfuls of fetherfew and elder leaves, finally dropping in two gemstone disks, one of emerald and one of bright blue lapis. Mihei began to chant, his fingers tracing complex runes in the air over the mixture. He gestured for each man to unfasten the cups that hung at their belts and fill their tankards with the brew. Jair tossed the noxious-tasting concoction back, stifling the urge to choke on the strong bite of the vass. He was gratified to note that Emil also seemed to be catching his breath.
Mihei finished his drink in a coughing fit, but held up a hand to wave off help. When he had recovered, he took three dried apples and a handful of dried fruit from his bags and soaked them for a few moments in the liquid, then offered a handful of the fruit to each of the horses, which they took greedily. Then he moved from Jair to Emil, using a rag to wipe away any blood from the ashtenerath that had spattered their cloaks or clothing, tending at the last to his own cloak. Next, he bathed the horses’ legs and underbellies to assure that any splattered gore was wiped away, and made a paste of the liquid and some herbs from his pouches to tend the gash on Emil’s horse. Finally, he walked around the others, chanting as he went, spilling out the liquid to make a wide circle in which both men and horses could spend the night.
“And you know this works, how?” Jair asked as the wind caught the scented smoke and carried it away.
Mihei shook the last of the liquid from his hands and sat down beside the fire. “Talwyn said our great-grandfathers used these mixtures the last time a plague swept across the Winter Kingdoms. Few among the Sworn died, even though many others perished.”
They settled down around the fire and Emil took lengths of hard sausage, goat cheese, and crusty bread from his saddlebags, enough for all of them. Jair rinsed the bucket well and drew up another bucket full of icy water. When they had eaten, Emil took two pouches bound in cloth and leather strips from his bag and handed them to Jair. “I promised I’d give these to you just as soon as I could,” he said with a grin.
Jair smiled and took the packages, carefully unwrapping them. On the inside of the piece of bleached linen was a berry-stained handprint, just the size that might belong to a three-year-old boy. Beside it was a charcoal drawing of a horse and a man standing next to the stick figure of a smaller person, and Jair had no doubt it was Kenver’s image of his homecoming. Wrapped in the middle of the linen was a disk of finely polished hematite, wound with four strings of colored leather plaited with strands of Talwyn’s long, dark hair. Though Jair possessed no magic of his own, he knew it to be a powerful amulet, imbued with Talwyn’s shamanic magic.
“Talwyn said it would heighten your awareness of the unseen, and guide your dreams,” Emil said with a smile as Jair raised both the linen and the charm to his lips and held them tightly in his hand.
“Thank you,” Jair replied, tucking the linen safely into his pack and tying the charm around his neck. It lay against another amulet, this one forged of silver and bronze set with amethyst, a token Talwyn had given him at their wedding. She had told him then that the charm would allow her to enter his dreams, and although Jair spoke of it to no one at the palace, it was only that contact, at the border between wakefulness and sleep, that made it possible for him to endure their separation.
“We’d best get some sleep,” Emil said. “We’ve got another day’s ride to meet up with the others.” He spread out his cloak beneath him, using his saddlebag as a pillow, and took his blanket from the roll behind his saddle. Jair and Mihei did the same, and Mihei shook his head when Jair moved to sit by the fire to take the first watch.
“Get some rest. I’ll take this watch. Don’t worry—I’ll be happy to rouse you when your turn comes.”
Despite the amulet, Jair’s dreams were dark. The afternoon’s battle replayed itself, but in his dream, throngs of ashtenerath pursued them, undeterred until hacked to bits. He woke with a start, relieved to find the campsite peaceful. Mihei had put another log on the fire, and from the smell of the smoke, more warding leaves. Jair settled himself back into his blanket and tried to sleep once more.
As he balanced between waking and slumber, Jair saw Talwyn’s image in the distance. She smiled and beckoned for him to come closer. She was singing, and the sound of her voice cheered his heart. Finally, he stood next to her, and Talwyn welcomed him with a kiss. Then she placed a hand over the pendants at his throat. “Watch carefully, my love. The roads are filled with danger.” Her eyes widened. “Wake now. Take your sword. The shadows are moving.”
Jair jolted awake an instant before Mihei cried out in alarm. Jair and Emil were on their feet in an instant, swords in hand.
“What do you see?” Emil said, scanning the night. Jair could just make out a trace of movement in the shadows.
“Spirits. Dimonns. Don’t know which, but whatever’s out there isn’t friendly,” Mihei replied. “I strengthened the wardings.”
Jair looked down, and where Mihei had traced a large circle around them and their horses with the cleansing elixir, a ring of stones now marked the area.
“There! Can you see?” Emil pointed into the darkness where darker shapes moved swiftly across the tall grass of the clearing. Mihei nodded, raising his hands as he began to chant. As Jair watched, a phosphorescent mist rose in the clearing, first just ankle-high, then suffusing the night with an eerie green glow. In the glowing mist, the shapes became clearer. Disembodied shadows slipped back and forth in the mist, but their outlines looked nothing like men. Some were misshapen hulks with wide, empty maws. Others were wraiths with thin, grasping arms and impossibly long, taloned fingers that stretched toward the living men and horses within the wardings.
The horses shied and Jair feared they might bolt. Mihei spared the animals a moment of his attention, looking each of the horses in the eyes and murmuring words Jair did not catch. Immediately, the horses quieted.
The black shapes rushed toward the stone circle, and a curtain of light flared between the three men and the advancing shadows. The shadows howled and shrieked, spreading themselves across the glowing barrier until they blotted out the moonlight. Jair glanced at Mihei. The land mage’s forehead was beaded with sweat and he was biting his lip with the effort to reinforce the strained wardings.
“Tell us what you need and we’ll do it,” Jair urged.
“Keep me awake,” Mihei said. “My guess is that someone used this forest as a killing field, and the spirits have never left. Their anger could have drawn the dimonns. The deaths i
n the village could also make the dimonns stronger.”
“What do they want?” Jair asked.
“Blood.”
“If they’re drawn by the wronged dead, can you appease their spirits, reduce the dimonns’ power?” Jair had drawn his stelian, even though it was clear that it would be little protection against the shadows that wailed and tore at the gossamer-thin veil of the warding.
“I’m no summoner,” Mihei replied. “I can’t help the spirits pass over to the Lady. But if we survive the night, I can find where their bodies were dumped and consecrate the ground. That should satisfy the spirits, and without them and the ashtenerath, the dimonns should leave.”
“Should,” Emil repeated doubtfully.
Mihei looked to Jair. “I need some things from my bag.” Jair listened as Mihei recited a list of powders and dried plants, and he went to gather them from the vials in Mihei’s bag as Emil stood guard, weapon at the ready.
“Mix them with my mortar and pestle,” Mihei instructed. “Then make a paste of it with some water.” Jair did as Mihei requested, dripping water into the mortar’s rough bowl until a gray, gumlike paste stuck to the pestle.
“Bring me a small wad—save the rest, we’ll need it.”
Jair rolled a coin-sized wad of the gum between thumb and forefinger and brought it to Mihei, who placed it under his tongue. “That should help. When I trained with the mages, there were all-night workings where we didn’t dare fall asleep. The muttar gum will keep me wide awake, although I’ll pay for it tomorrow.”
“Anything else we can do?” Emil asked.
Mihei nodded. “The dimonns will try to reach my mind. They’ll send visions and nightmares. If I begin to lose my focus, you have to bring me back. All our lives depend on it.”
“How should we wake you?”
