“Soon,” he said, as if reading her thoughts, which was something he did with enough regularity to make her wonder if he had that talent. “This war can’t last forever, Dari. We’ll do what we must, then locate your sister and plan the shape of our future.”
“I like the sound of that,” she said, imagining how it would be when she had Kate with her again, and the rest of her family. When she could reach for a new future and shape it as she wanted it to be—as she and Nic wanted it to be, and as it should be—full of love and joy and the normal trials of life instead of the madness they had both survived in these last years.
Madness that continued, even as they rode away from the Stone Guild stronghold.
They traveled at the center of a column of fighters, with Aron and Stormbreaker forming the front guard on their talons and Snakekiller and another Stone Sister taking up the rear. A dozen more Stone Brothers filled out these first ranks, talon-riders on the left and horse riders on the right. Lord Cobb and his personal guard formed a second layer of human shields. Lord Ross and his personal guard made for a third ring, completing the wall of warriors on the ground. In the air, Blath, Iko, and a silent group of Sabor more than twenty strong flew in challenge formation, letting any who saw know that those who traveled beneath them were under their protection.
These defenses might not stand up to an army, but no simple contingent or fighting group would dare to start a conflict with them. They would travel this way until they reached the open plains near the border of Dyn Brailing and Dyn Cobb; then more Sabor would meet them and transport them to the main strength of the Cobb and Ross armies, camped in the grasslands above the Scry and the Cobb-Ross border.
Dari hoped Nic could make the journey, and resolved to lend him whatever energy he would accept. From sunrise to moonsrise, they had to move, or they’d never reach safety before they were attacked.
• • •
The second morning of their ride, Dari helped Nic pack their tent as Stone Brothers and Sisters and soldiers tamped out tallow rings that had been protecting their encampment. The scent of oiled smoke made Dari’s eyes water, but Nic didn’t seem to notice the stench.
Dari marveled that Nic was holding up despite his damaged, twisted body. His bravery touched her, and once more, she felt blessed to have been given time with him, even in the midst of a war and a forced ride into danger they might not survive.
They mounted quickly, and moved out before the mists of morning had cleared from the byways. As the ride grew longer, Dari’s thoughts shifted from Nic to Aron and Stormbreaker. They had taken her news and her decision about Nic as well as could be expected, and Dari found she didn’t worry about Stormbreaker at all. Aron, however, was a constant cause for concern.
Nic nodded toward Aron. “Do you think we’re the source of his tension, or is it the trial he thinks he failed—or the drawing his first stone on Canus the Bandit?”
Dari’s heart grew heavy. “I don’t know, Nic. The world always weighs painfully on Aron’s shoulders.”
Nic’s frown held no jealousy or reproach. He showed only concern for Aron, which was nothing less than Dari expected, and one of the reasons she adored him. “Maybe he would talk to you.”
Dari shook her head. “I think it’s more likely he’d talk to you, Nic. You didn’t reject him and hurt his pride.”
Nic steadied himself in his saddle, and his response was quiet, but direct. “No. I only married the woman he loves.”
Dari glanced at her band-mate to see if he was joking, then realized he was serious. She also realized he was right. She probably had the better chance of getting through to Aron. She maneuvered her stallion close enough to Nic to lean over and kiss his cheek, then urged her mount forward, until she drew even with Aron.
He looked down at her from his position high on Tek’s back, and his smile of greeting seemed genuine enough.
“Are you well?” Dari asked, studying his face to judge his truthfulness, but when he responded, she knew there was no need.
“Do you mean am I grieving myself into illness over your marriage? No.” Aron smiled again, and when he exhaled, he sounded relieved. “I had a vision of the two of you together, that last graal lesson between the three of us. I wasn’t sure—but, then again, I was. My mind-talent leaves me less and less room for self-delusion. If I don’t tell the truth, if I don’t accept it, I can’t relax at all.”
“A vision. That’s why you pushed me away so abruptly. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Aron kept his gaze forward, but his hands visibly tightened on Tek’s reins. “Would you have believed me?”
The talon snorted.
“Probably not,” Dari admitted. “I’m sorry for that.”
Aron relaxed, as did his mount. “No apologies necessary. I assure you, I didn’t want to believe it.”
Dari’s surprise expanded until it became something like awe. “Aron, do you have any idea how much you’ve grown—how much you’ve changed since I met you? There was a time when your anger and jealousy would have destroyed you, and possibly me as well.”
“Life demands change, Dari.” Aron stroked the scales just above Tek’s battle ring. “Look at my runt talon. Even she has grown to her potential with the proper challenge and care.”
Tek whistled from the attention, then blew a load of excretions in Stormbreaker’s general direction. Stormbreaker deftly steered his bull to the right to avoid it.
Dari moved her stallion closer to Aron and Tek to ask her next question, so she wouldn’t cause Aron embarrassment if one of the other Stone Brothers overheard. “Will Canus the Bandit be another one of those challenges that changes you?”
“Perhaps.” Aron immediately seemed distant again. “I—I don’t know.”
Dari kept her mount on a steady course. “Are you afraid to face him?”
Aron’s posture relaxed again, and she knew she’d asked the right question. “Yes, but I think what I fear is failing my responsibilities to Stone.”
“Will you use your graal to survive the fight with him, if it comes to that?”
That inquiry drew an instant frown. “Not unless he attacks me in that fashion.”
Dari frowned in return. “Is that wise?”
“It’s honorable.” Aron shifted in his saddle to look at her more directly. “That will have to be enough.”
Dari didn’t like the answer, even though she understood it. “You took down four Altar hunters and the Lord Provost of Thorn—and they were the ones who ambushed you. I think you can manage one bandit who won’t see you coming.”
Aron didn’t smile at the compliment, as she had hoped he might. Instead, his brow furrowed, and he seemed to be digging through something in his mind—something painful, or very confusing. “Dari, why didn’t you let me thank you for helping me during my trial? Were you afraid Stone would look poorly on my return, knowing that I had to have assistance?”
“I really didn’t help you.” Dari felt her own brows drawing closer together as this question arose yet again. “I never went through the Veil that night. I spent some time with Stormbreaker, then accidentally punched Nic, then went to meet my grandfather. There was nothing out of the ordinary, except my concern for you.”
“You punched Nic?” Aron’s shock was almost comical.
“He startled me,” Dari said. “I thought I saw something at the Shrine of the Mother, and—”
She stopped herself, and considered her own words. “There was a light that night at the Shrine, Aron. Like you used to see. Nic said it was visible to him as well. We never went to explore it because my grandfather and Lord Cobb arrived.”
“In the Keep, after Falconer drugged me, I thought I saw you twice.” Aron steered Tek around a crevice in the road. “The first time you were standing with that false goddess creature I’ve told you about, and she seemed to be drawing all the color out of your graal. The second time, you came to heal me and free me, and you said something strange.”
Dari was havin
g difficulty keeping her hands steady on the reins of her stallion, but she trusted the horse to keep a true course. Aron’s vision of her with the false goddess. The goddess draining away her energy. The light in the Shrine of the Mother. All of this seemed to add together, though she couldn’t see how.
She asked Aron to wait until Nic could catch up to them, and Aron agreed.
As soon as Nic had joined them, Dari asked Aron to repeat the vision he’d had at the Keep, and Aron obliged. Nic listened to each detail, weighing them as carefully as Dari had done.
“I think we have to consider your visions anew, Aron,” Dari said. “All the things you’ve dreamed since you arrived at Stone. You don’t see the future, but you do see the truth, at levels the rest of us may never comprehend.”
“I already have reconsidered my visions.” Aron guided Tek carefully, keeping her between Dari and Nic. On all sides of them, and in the bright morning sky as well, their escorts pressed ahead, pushing the pace as much as they dared. Dust rose at the edges of the traveling party, and the air grew heavy with the scent of horse sweat and talon oil.
Aron kept his focus on the road, but Dari could tell he was also steeped in thought. “I believe that in my visions, the Brother—the illusion that looked like the Brother—that was Falconer. Falconer masqueraded as a god to see what he wished to see, learn what he wished to learn, without me or anyone else being the wiser.”
“And the false goddess.” Dari remembered Aron as a younger boy, sobbing out his terrible dreams. “Do you believe that was Lady Thorn?”
“I’m certain of it.” Aron’s response was calm, but Dari heard the undertone of anger at how many times he had been duped.
“The light in the Shrine of the Mother would be their graal energy.” Nic’s speech was more slurred, and he seemed to be having more difficulty keeping himself steady on his horse. “I’m sure when Aron and I have projected our legacy over distance, when we’ve observed people from the other side of the Veil, we’ve left some residue that trained eyes could see.”
“The Shrine would be a perfect place for that energy to be contained.” Dari was beginning to share Aron’s anger at how deeply and how often they had been fooled. “Most of Triune never went to the Shrine, and believers in the Mother would take visions of light as a reward for their faith.”
“Who is Cayn?” Nic slouched forward in his saddle, then righted himself.
Dari stared at him, concerned. At first she took his question literally, but as she put her hand on his shoulder to help him regain his balance, she understood what Nic meant.
“The god of death in my visions.” Aron adjusted the reins at the base of Tek’s scaly neck. “Another illusion, no more real than Snakekiller’s hood snake. If I had my guess, I’d say Cayn was Lord Brailing or Lord Altar—take your pick.”
Nic gripped the pommel of his saddle with both hands. “Cayn might be a stranger. Someone we don’t know.”
Aron shook his head. “Cayn was familiar to me. I know the person, or I’ve met him. If I could just see him again—but that’s probably not something I should wish for.”
Dari didn’t respond because she was too distracted by her sense that she should understand more, realize more. “Aron, what did I say to you in your vision at the Ruined Keep, after I helped you?”
“I’m not sure I heard you correctly, but I could have sworn you asked me to kill you.” Aron frowned before she could ask him if he had gone mad. “Kill me. Those were your words, but I knew you must have meant Falconer, that I’d have to kill him to get out of the Ruined Keep alive and free.”
Dari wrestled with the strangeness of Aron’s vision, and she had ridden some distance when she realized Nic was no longer keeping pace beside Aron and Tek.
She reined her stallion hard and turned her mount, and Aron did the same with Tek. Their sudden reversal sent a ripple of concern through their escort, and with a great bunch of snorting and pawing, the procession ground to an awkward halt. Above them, the Sabor overflew, then wheeled back, and a few peeled toward the ground, shifting even as their paws struck the grasslands.
Nic was still on his horse, but he was holding the reins too tightly, seemingly frozen in his saddle.
“He’s going to have a fit,” Aron said, throwing Tek’s reins to the nearest Stone Brother as he leaped down from his saddle. Stormbreaker was already off his bull and running.
Dari dismounted, dropping her reins to the ground and trusting her stallion’s battle training. She dashed toward Nic, worry charging through her chest as she cursed herself for not keeping a closer watch on him.
Stormbreaker and Snakekiller got to Nic first, and Dari was relieved to see him wave off their concern as if he still had his full wits about him.
When Dari reached Nic, Snakekiller was calling for a supply wagon, and grumbling mightily to her brother that she knew Nic couldn’t cover much ground on horseback.
“I can,” he argued. “That’s not it. That’s not the problem. Dari. Dari, listen to me.” His blue eyes glittered with a wild excitement she hadn’t seen from him before, and something in his expression disturbed her even more deeply than the fear Nic was about to topple from his mount, senseless and seizing from his old injuries.
When he spoke again, his voice had a new depth and resonance. “Aron saw Kate, Dari. He saw your sister.”
Dari gazed at her husband, wondering if he was about to fall into a fit after all. “What?”
“It was Kate who came to Aron at the Ruined Keep.” Nic straightened himself until he no longer seemed on the edge of collapse. “And I think Aron has seen her before.”
Dari’s heart began a strange, uneven beating as she glanced from Nic to Aron to Stormbreaker and Snakekiller. Lord Ross and Lord Cobb were making their way between ranks of soldiers and guild fighters, leading their mounts behind them. Close behind them came Blath and Iko, still dotted with vanishing golden fur and feathers from their flight. Swords and shields rattled as they pushed their way through, and the two lords and two Sabor finally came to a halt beside Stormbreaker and Snakekiller just as Aron put his palm on Nic’s knee. “I’ve never seen Kate,” Aron said. “You’re confused. I saw—”
Nic grabbed Aron’s hand. “You saw Dari, asking you to kill her. What kind of sense does that make, Aron?”
“None, but—”
“Kill me,” Nic repeated, once more studying Dari with his unnaturally bright eyes. A soft red glow seeped around his shoulders, arms, and neck, his graal energy coming to life as if he wanted to join with her on the other side of the Veil, so she might see what he saw, feel what he felt, and understand him. “That’s the plea of someone who’s trapped, someone hopeless and in so much pain she can’t see any other salvation.”
He spoke with such conviction that Dari felt the agony of his memories as her own. Her hand rose to her throat, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Snakekiller fold her arms and look away from Nic.
Dear Gods.
I wonder how many times he begged her for Mercy, and she refused to grant it because she knew who he was.
“I never had the courage to face death outright,” Nic said, as if to vindicate Snakekiller, but he was speaking only to Dari. “Your twin sister would. Kate’s begging for release—and she’s been begging for it since the first time she appeared to Aron.”
“But I’ve never seen her before.” Aron moved back from Nic and opened his arms like he was pleading his case to Lord Baldric and Lord Cobb. “I can accept that the vision I had at the Ruined Keep was Kate, that it might have been Kate who helped me, but that was the only time.”
“If Nic is correct, it wasn’t.” Stormbreaker reached for Snakekiller, but she wouldn’t accept his comfort. “You reported another vision, from earlier that night, Aron.” Thunder rumbled in the distance, and a flash of lightning played off Stormbreaker’s free hand and bounced between the crossed hilts of his swords. “You thought you saw Dari with the false goddess, and you said the goddess was bleeding away the c
olor of Dari’s essence.”
Kill me….
Aron’s arms drifted to his sides even as Dari’s hand moved upward, until her fingers covered her mouth. It was the only way she could keep from screaming.
“The Lady Provost of Thorn has Kate,” Nic said. “You haven’t been able to find her because she hasn’t remained in one location. Lady Pravda is traveling with her—and she’s using Kate’s energy to increase her own abilities.” Nic’s tone remained gentle, but his words beat at Dari like brutal punches. “Kate’s mind-talents have allowed Lady Pravda to travel over distance and spy on Triune at will. You caught her the day you came to Stone, Aron—but you and anyone who could see Lady Pravda could have seen Kate, too. Lady Pravda would have forced to her to assume a disguise.”
Aron tensed as he seemed to grasp the reality that Dari was still fighting. “Kate took the form of another god. A religious figure that I wouldn’t question.”
“You, or anyone else.” Snakekiller’s voice came out in a low growl, and she still refused to look at Nic or let her brother get a step closer to her. “Kate chose to present herself as Cayn, the god of her people, and the harbinger of death. It was the only message she could send without Lady Pravda being aware.”
“Kill me,” Dari said, her words soft against her own palm as her heart seemed to tear in half.
Kate hadn’t been trying to fool Aron into believing she was Cayn.
Kate had been doing everything she could to communicate her location to Dari, and to plead for someone to free her from such torture—even if freedom meant death.
“You can’t sense her because she’s drugged.” Aron’s face was now as red as Stormbreaker’s and Snakekiller’s. “When she’s not being used for her energy, they’re probably keeping her drunk on bullroot, and maybe something like the wine Falconer used to paralyze me.”
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