As Vendanj led them off the road and they disappeared into the trees, the shriek of a night raptor pierced the quiet of the plain.
They came to an escarpment, a fifty-foot vertical wall that extended in both directions. Vendanj had already dismounted, and chose a shallow cave at the base of the cliff to rest in for the night. Braethen came last. Just after he had tethered his horse, Mira returned from a brief scout of the area and immediately began gathering wood for a fire. Tahn and Sutter hastily began to help. Soon, a bright, warm fire pushed back the cold and cast a softer light on the harried face of the Sheason.
Tahn expected Vendanj to speak. Surely something must be important if he allowed real fire to brighten their camp. But the Sheason said nothing, and Tahn liked it even less when the tall renderer kept his silence.
But he still wanted answers to his questions. Why did they go to Recityv? Why had he allowed Wendra to come along, when his leaving the Hollows was supposed to make their town and families safe? One question, in particular, though, he meant to ask again tonight—he needed to know. Drawing close to speak privately, Tahn asked, “Can you tell me now why the Quiet are coming for me?”
The Sheason did not reply, his eyes wide in the dark, searching Tahn’s face yet again. Briefly, his gaze reminded Tahn of the way Balatin would look at him late in the evening when they all sat sipping juniper tea and eating roasted hazelnuts—a kind of knowing and not knowing. It was the only time that Tahn’s persistent questions found favor with his father, though some questions he’d never asked: about the words he spoke when he fired his bow, or the dreams of a man he could not see.
Sitting so close, Tahn saw the thin, stern lines that framed Vendanj’s mouth. Lines like Balatin’s, though Balatin had earned them through a life of good humor. Tahn wondered what expression had produced them in Vendanj. He thought the weight of great worry all by itself could be the cause, such was the burden the man seemed to carry.
Finally, looking into the flames with a somewhat kinder expression, Vendanj said only, “Rest,” and closed his eyes. The others soon spread their bedrolls near the fire and drifted toward sleep. All save Mira, who stood near a tree fifty strides away. Tahn only knew where she was because he had watched her take position. Now, the shadows claimed her.
Sleep came fast upon them all. The deep, slow cadence of breath taken in and let out marked their descent into slumber. Just when Tahn was giving over to it, low, hushed voices whispered in the background like a rumor. He kept his eyes closed, but listened as the voices spoke.
“You test the patience of the melura. They fear you more than you’ve won their confidence.”
The Sheason said nothing to that.
“Do they convene?” Mira asked, slipping her blade back into its sheath.
“Yes.”
“Who is invited?”
“All those given seat at the First Promise.”
“Then why must it go before the High Council?”
“Because the land fails. Because reports of creatures out of the Bourne grow every day. History must first mark our efforts to reconcile ourselves.”
“The Exigents sit at High Council. They will never endorse anything the Sheason put before the regent.”
“It won’t matter.”
“And what of us? Why are children from the Hallows driven before the Quiet?”
The Sheason’s voice shifted direction then, and spoke directly to Tahn. “Sleep, Tahn,” the deep voice said. And with that, Tahn began to lose himself to his dreams. Falling downward toward sleep, he heard yet a little more, but would not remember. “We go ultimately to the Heights of Restoration, to know if these children from the Hallows have hope against the Quiet.”
* * *
The sun burned hot in an azure sky. Tahn walked a dusty path over barren stretches covered only with sagebrush. Dust plumed beneath his feet where the sun had not baked the ground into a cracked hardpan surface. On the horizon, heat shimmered and rose off the plain. In some places, even the sage would not grow.
Tahn paused in mid-stride and raised his head to the intermittent breezes that drew the clean, enduring smell of the hardy foliage across the waste. Something new called for caution. He unshouldered his bow and silently nocked an arrow, pivoting on his toes to survey all around. He saw nothing, but a growing feeling of conflict rose in him.
The wind died, leaving him alone. The plain stretched out before him. It rolled to a mild descent several hundred strides up the path, and somehow he knew that was where he must go. Slowly he moved forward, crouching and holding his arrow at half pull.
A distant shrieking grew suddenly loud. Tahn dove to the ground as something whistled higher and passed through the air above him—an arrow. Staying low, he crawled forward into a denser growth of sage. Dust filled his nose and throat, and the sweat on his dirty brow ran into his eyes, stinging with salt and grit.
Turning in the direction of the attack, Tahn removed two arrows from his quiver and placed them in his mouth. He crouched and pulled his shot, holding the bow perfectly level. Then swiftly he stood, scanning the field for his attacker. Behind him a bowstring hummed and he jumped to the side, whirling. A second arrow shot through the air beside him. A low cloud of dust rose from his shifting feet. He saw a figure in the distance trying to nock another arrow.
“I pull with the strength of my arms, but release as the Will allows,” he said in the heat. Instantly he let the arrow fly, nocking a second arrow behind it while his string still vibrated. Another figure bolted to the right toward a small hill. Tahn led the man, and spoke the words again, letting fly as his target raced for cover. Before he knew if his aim was true, footfalls were pounding the hardened ground behind him. Tahn brought his bow around in a sweeping arc and knocked a long spear from the hands of a tall, dark man. The assailant ran into him, lowering a shoulder into Tahn’s gut. Tahn rolled backward, lifting his legs into the other’s waist and using his own momentum to catapult the man into a large, sprawling cactus.
Tahn ran his hand down his bowstring to check for gouges, and quickly inventoried his quiver. Then he sprinted up the trail. The taste of dust in his mouth was familiar—the taste of soil that had forgotten the harvest. As he ran, dark clouds rushed into the parched sky, filling it with the threat of a storm. A cooler breeze touched his hot skin, but did nothing to ease the troubling thoughts twisting in his head. He thought he should know where this path led, but he could not remember it. Was it a place he wanted to return to? Far behind him, the chase had begun, and Tahn imagined his feet bare, touching the soil, no heavy boot leather weighing him down.
His pace quickened.
Without warning, rain fell from the roiling clouds, tinged red and orange from an occluded sun. Rolling thunder echoed deep in the sky. Tahn watched the trail to guide his feet in the mud that the rain would surely cause. But the ground repulsed the rain, soaking in not a whit. Each drop simply added to the one before it, rapidly creating a vast shallow pool. His boots caused a succession of splashes, and black flashes began to erupt from the ground, forming dark glass rings upon which the rain pattered in high-pitched pings.
As Tahn began to descend the path, he saw the frame of a small house, alone but for a solitary tree, stunted and clinging to life, at the bottom of a long gradual hill. Tahn pushed himself harder, the rain fell in heavier drops. As he ran, arrows flew by, harrowed by the wind. He lowered his shoulder against the strengthening wind and pushed on. Rain pelted his face and hands like small stones. The path became a small river, but the land still refused to drink.
On Tahn strode, drawing closer to the structure, which showed dark windows and looked altogether abandoned. Another arrow sped past, striking the house and protruding from the wall beside the door. Reflexively ducking, Tahn looked back, but could not see his attackers through the rain.
He reached the door and threw it wide, holding his bow before him like a sword and stepping inside. Beside a low bed sat a man, his face cradled in his hands, which appeare
d callused at every joint. From between his fingers he spoke. “Why have you come back, Tahn?”
Tahn knew the voice. As the man started to look up …
* * *
Tahn awoke.
Briefly, he looked deep into the night. High above, the stars shone like bits of ice. By the position of the constellations, dawn would be coming soon.
He thought of morning, of the sun’s warm rays, and remembered Balatin mixing oats and honey over their fire. He wished he had someone to talk to who had the wisdom of many years.
Tahn got up and stepped away from the rest to think, drawn as he always was to consider night and day, near and far, the land and sky. The urgency always built in him, growing often in dreams until his mind overflowed and he awoke. Other times he lay awake, anticipating the feelings that came unbidden. But always he had to stand outside and allow his thoughts to turn outward. Closing his eyes, he imagined the eastern horizon, the farthest reaches of the land, and considered the dawn, considered the growing warmth and subtle change in color as light filled the day. As he did, the urgency left him, the anxious need to pause and simply listen to his own heartbeat, and reflect on the largest, steadiest rhythms, melted away.
Tahn opened his eyes, seeing the faint shades of violet and blue touching the night and signaling another day. Suddenly he heard behind him the sound of breathing.
He turned to find Mira also watching the dawn. She couldn’t know what he was doing, but seemed to possess the wisdom not to clutter the moment with words. Somehow, always in this instant, Tahn felt like a witness, a lone observer to the coming of morning each new day.
As he watched on this day, the bluish hues of morning lit Mira’s face, giving her clear, grey eyes the color of winter ice. And he was glad this morning that he was not alone.
Moments later, she went to her preparations. And just then, a phrase overheard last night swirled into Tahn’s mind: the Hallows. Something about the words felt comfortable to Tahn, felt right. He would ask Braethen about it later.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Myrr
For two more days they rode north and east.
The storms they’d ridden through did not reappear in their same severity. The black clouds seemed to linger over the woods of the Hollows, leaving to the rest of the world bright cold skies and a high, grey haze. Or so it appeared as, just after dusk on the second day since leaving Bollogh, they emerged from the vast forest that had been Tahn’s home.
They cleared a rise, where Vendanj stopped and stared into the shallow vale below. “Myrr,” he said as Tahn and the rest came abreast of the Sheason.
It was like nothing Tahn had ever seen. Men in the Hollows told tales when the fire ebbed low and the night had gone to several cups of bitter, tales of grand cities, places where you never saw the same face twice. For Tahn, the stories were always little more than waking dreams, places he believed might exist, but which could never equal the teller’s rendition.
“Bless my roots, who could travel its length in a day?” Sutter stared slack-jawed, realizing the fulfillment of a wish.
Vendanj turned back to them. “Everything from this point forward, every choice, will affect the end. See that none of you blackens the path with foolishness.” He then leveled his eyes on Sutter. “There are paths whose courses are more important than those who travel them.”
The Sheason let his words linger.
“Meet no one’s gaze,” the Far cautioned.
“You aren’t to engage in conversation with anyone,” Vendanj added. “And when you speak, never speak about yourselves or our destination. The people of Myrr have two sets of ears.”
“How long will we stay here?” Braethen asked. “I’d like to meet with the—”
Vendanj cut him off. “You and I have business, sodalist.”
Tahn and Sutter looked at each other, their mouths agape. The Sheason had never knowingly called Braethen “sodalist” before. Something had changed. After the slapping, the humiliation, the endless drills Braethen had struggled so hard with … Vendanj now acknowledged their friend by the title he’d sought all his life. For Tahn’s part, hearing the sound of it in the Sheason’s clear, resonant voice stirred something inside him. Looking at the author’s son—a lifelong scholar—Tahn saw a new kind of resolve and confidence in the set of Braethen’s jaw. Not arrogance or conceit. More like the true strength of his convictions.
To the others, he said, “We will take rooms, but our stay will be brief. Make rest your aim here, all of you. Tahn, you will remain with Mira at all times.”
The Sheason then turned a kinder eye on Wendra. “Anais, I must ask you not to make your music in the company of others. They will misunderstand.”
Wendra looked perplexed, but she did not contend with Vendanj.
Tahn opened his mouth to speak.
“Later for your questions, Tahn,” the Sheason said. “Let us get food in our stomachs and rest for our eyes. Tomorrow is soon enough.” Tahn shut his mouth.
A moment later, Vendanj nodded, pulled his reins about, and led them down the road to Myrr.
“That’s telling him, Woodchuck,” Sutter teased. He clapped Tahn on the back, and rode to catch Wendra.
For several hundred strides along the road into Myrr, small, ramshackle huts and market carts cluttered the highway. A few more permanent-looking structures were erected a stone’s throw from the road. The roadside itself swarmed with merchants calling for customers to attend their wares. Children played wherever water pooled; young dogs barked and ran alongside their owners.
The smell of human waste was overpowering. It emanated from a large hole dug too close to the food vendors, who ladled stew into bowls, a copper a serving.
The closer to the city gates they came, the denser the crowd grew. Soon they were forced to ride a circuitous route through the milling masses. Rough torches set atop poles near the road gave light to the street, but left the faces all in shadow. Great gouts of laughter erupted from some of the larger buildings erected nearest the city walls. Tahn guessed these were taverns.
Thirty strides from the gates, the chaos ended. A low stone wall topped with rusted spikes mortared into the stone jutted straight out on either side of the entrance. A shallow ramp the height of a man’s ankles rose from the earthen road, becoming a cobbled pavement. There were no outer guards. Braziers fixed to the low wall burned brightly, casting shadows upon the entrance. Iron barred gates, appearing to swing outward when opened, fronted heavy wooden gates.
“This is our welcome?” Sutter jested. “They must not have known we were coming.”
“Quiet,” Vendanj said brusquely. The Sheason dismounted and quickly crossed to the left side of the entrance. He rapped on the wood there in the same manner a man would knock at the home of a friend. A moment later, a small door cut into the larger inner gate drew back and a man appeared wearing a tight leather jerkin and a green cape.
The man started to protest until Vendanj gently placed one hand through the blackened iron and touched the sentry’s wrist.
“What’s he doing?” Sutter asked.
“Vagrants aren’t allowed inside the gates at night,” Mira explained, some ire in her voice. “The call for occupancy is always at last hour, before the heart of night. With such constant change in the citizenry, no census exists, only property holders or inn-residing travelers may stay. Property holders vote, merchants and travelers drink.”
“Surely there are poor and homeless in such a vast city?” Braethen asked, incredulous.
Mira spared a look at the makeshift outer town they’d just passed. “Those poor who do survive within its walls are treacherous. Be wary of anyone you meet who has no place to call home. It surely means he sees you as a meal and a bath.” She trailed off, watching as Vendanj concluded his instructions to the man at the gate. In a hushed voice, Mira added, “But these too must live.”
The inner left gate pulled back just a few feet.
As Vendanj mounted, Tahn saw him cast
his gaze one last time over the vagrant town that lived outside the great walls of Myrr. Looking out at the homeless masses, the Sheason spoke low to Mira, but Tahn overheard his words. “It’s begun. The rumors of the Quiet are driving them from their homes.”
Then the Sheason whispered something that Tahn alone heard: “These poor people.” The utter empathy he heard in the man’s voice startled him. But it also gave him a kind of hope he hadn’t felt in a long time, perhaps because he sensed the single-mindness and vigor with which the Sheason would defend and advance his cause.
The party followed Vendanj through the narrow opening in the gate and immediately into a byway to the left, where they were enveloped in shadow.
One central corridor toward the city’s center remained paved, but elsewhere the roads and alleys were earthen and strewn with straw to make the footing less treacherous on muddy streets. Pedestrians milled in the main thoroughfares, so Vendanj wove through narrow alleys close to the outer city wall. Clutter of barrels, broken handcarts, piled waste, and discarded articles of clothing lay near the base of exterior walls and alley doorways. Occasionally, they passed what looked like a beggar or what Mira described as “alley traders.” But these human animals did not petition or accost passersby. Their eyes followed Tahn and the others as they crossed the narrow terrain these individuals called home, a hint of contempt playing upon their lips. Human waste fouled the air, and rats and carrion birds searched the straw for food, the latter as though they had forgotten their lofty capability of flight.
Distantly, the major causeways thrummed with activity. But here, on the city periphery, the streets were quiet, skulked by figures with forgotten scruples, plying secretive trades. Sutter clutched his knife as they passed appraising eyes.
Wendra looked long upon those who sat against the walls, and more than once Tahn heard Braethen mutter, “Is nothing to be done for them?” Tahn considered the question, but found himself wondering if these people, too, served a purpose. The thought surprised him and held him in its grip. But he had no answer.
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