“You cannot outrun the consequence of another’s choice.” The menacing communication resonated in the mists around him, throaty and hushed. Tahn screamed again and redoubled his pace. The darkness descended upon him and still he ran, careening off trees and falling over boles. Forever he seemed to run, the images becoming stronger and more searing to his battered mind. His pursuer seemed to grow closer, to home in on the sound Tahn made in his flight through the wild.
Finally, the darkness began to break. The charcoal light softened to grey, and soon Tahn could see the faded disk of the sun through the mists. He lost his footing again, but scrambled on hands and knees toward the light, the pull of the mists strong in his mind and on his body. But he began to break free from the mists. A rushing scream of failure grew behind him, and suddenly with a cacophony of jarring thunder, he leapt from the mists into the full light of day. And collapsed.
Through the mists Tahn heard the voice of the Sheason call: “To Recityv!” Or did the cry sound only in his mind?
Gasping, Tahn touched his head and pulled away bloody fingers. The world turned and his eyes filled with blackness.
* * *
The mists rushed in, hindering Wendra’s pursuit of Penit, the dark grey clouds swirling and thickening to obscure her sight. She crouched as she ran, and could just make out Penit’s feet as he sprinted away from her. The boy dodged in and out of low alders and lunged through tight stands of bottlebrush. Images and forms moved maddeningly at the edges of her vision. Masses of dark fog leapt, encircling her arms, tendrils clawing at her. They lacked the substance to hold her, but their touch impeded her progress, filling her mind with thoughts of failure, of never catching Penit, of losing him as she had lost her own child.
“Penit, wait, it’s me!”
The dinsome rush of wind and distant, anguished voices rose to swallow her pleas, making their cries indistinguishable from her own. The lad pushed on as though manic and rabid and terrified that stopping meant death. Then, from the left, two huge hulking shapes materialized out of the mists. Wendra ignored them for only a single moment before something told her that they were not insubstantial like the other shapes constantly rising and dissipating in the mists around her.
These were Bar’dyn.
The first dove at her, launching its huge body in a powerful arc to intercept her. Wendra found a reserve of strength and jumped forward to avoid the attack. The Bar’dyn crashed into the trees behind her and howled its fury. The second closed in from behind her, waving massive arms through the air in deadly arcs. It would be upon her soon; she could not hope to outrun it.
The mists thinned to a lighter shade of grey, and Wendra could see Penit clearly now.
“Run, Penit! Faster!” she cried.
The boy still did not acknowledge her, continuing to run at a breakneck pace through the mists. She was gaining on him, but the Bar’dyn was only two strides behind her. Its huge, powerful arms whistled through the fog as it tried to strike her down. Wendra heard a guttural grunt, and turned her head in time to see the Bar’dyn dive at her legs. She tried to push herself faster, but her muscles would not obey. One of the Bar’dyn’s large hands clipped her ankle, the other her hip, sending her tumbling into the grass and brush. The Quietgiven’s body landed with a heavy thud, but the beast quickly regained its feet and bore down upon her.
Wendra rolled over, pulling a small knife from her belt. She instantly knew the futility of her own defense, and saw a sudden rush of images stream through her mind: Balatin and the warm fires and brambleberry tea they used to share on winter nights; Tahn and the way he had cared for her, she in turn sitting at his side to soothe him during many nights of restless sleep; the child that had so recently been in her belly, and the Bar’dyn that had ripped it from her and carried its lifeless body into the night. With the cascade of memories, something happened deep inside her. It began in her bosom, a warmth like fire, reminding her of Balatin’s anger the day he had driven the merchants away from the house when they came with bags of silver to trade for human flesh, but soft like tears of joy at seeing an infant learn to walk. The feeling shot through her and rose into her lungs and throat, needing someplace to go. As a thought occurred to her of where and how to release that feeling, the Bar’dyn arched its back and hissed, breaking her concentration. The Given’s broad features pinched tightly, the mists seeming to recoil as though they, too, were wounded.
The beast fell, revealing Mira standing close behind. With a blade in each hand, she took a step back, setting her feet and extending one sword, holding the other in front of her breast in a defensive posture. The Bar’dyn jumped up and whirled around, issuing a guttural curse Wendra could not understand. The warmth in her chest abated, and she forgot the thoughts of a moment before as the Far lunged again, this time so quickly that the mists appeared to pass through her rather than around her. In a crosswise motion, she pulled down her blades upon the Bar’dyn’s neck. The creature could not avoid the attack, but this time Mira’s swords scarcely pierced the beast’s thick skin. She backed up again as the Bar’dyn drew a pair of axes and started for her.
“Go!” Mira yelled. “Find the boy! We will look for you beyond the mist. But you know our goal, should we fail to find you.”
The Bar’dyn seemed to take Mira’s words for a lack of concentration and lunged forward, aiming with one ax at the crown of her head. Mira easily sidestepped the blow and brought her right sword down on the Bar’dyn’s shoulder. The beast howled again. As if in response, the sound of many feet could be heard beating through the mists toward them.
Wendra did not want to leave the Far to fight alone, but she was little help with her knife. She stood, wincing from the pain of the gash in her ankle where the Bar’dyn had clipped her, and hobbled on as quickly as she could in the direction she had seen Penit go.
She heard the clash of steel muted by the mists behind her, and the sound of heavy feet grew louder, bearing down on the scene of the fight. Slowly, the sound of battle faded and the mists receded until the sun penetrated the darkness. Wendra caught sight of several broken stems and branches and followed them, hoping they led to Penit. Her entire leg began to throb, and she slowed against the onslaught of pain that washed over her in nauseating waves.
As she limped onward, the mists grew lighter still, until she could see several strides ahead of her. A few limping steps farther, Wendra spied Penit, crouched near the base of a large elm, shivering. She fell to her knees beside him. His hair and clothes were drenched with sweat, and he clung to the tree like a child holding his mother.
“It’s all right, Penit. You are safe.”
The boy did not respond, did not even look at Wendra. He trembled more violently, spittle falling from his lips. Wendra removed her cloak and wrapped it around him. Distantly, the sound of footsteps thrashing through the undergrowth cut through the thinner fog.
“We must go,” Wendra urged, trying to help Penit to his feet.
The boy resisted, his small arms bulging with his effort to remain rooted to the spot.
“Please, Penit, trust me,” Wendra pleaded. She knelt again, coming face-to-face with him. “I will protect you.” As she spoke the words, she silently wondered how she would do such a thing, having not been able to protect even her own child. But in that moment, she vowed that she would do so, or die in the attempt.
The sound of voices came, accompanying the footsteps. Wendra looked over her shoulder and saw the mists enlivened and frantic, appearing to part in anticipation of the passage of one it did not care to touch.
Wendra looked back at Penit. “You must play the part of someone brave.”
At that, Penit’s eyes focused upon her. He seemed to suddenly be aware of who and where he was. He released the tree. His inner arms were marked with the pattern of the tree’s bark. He blinked away the tears in his eyes and nodded.
Ignoring the wound in her leg, Wendra helped him up, and nearly fell as she placed her weight upon it. Penit put his arm aro
und her waist, and together they started toward the lightest break in the mist. The dark fogs stilled, and in an unexpected moment, they stepped into the light of day, leaving the darkness behind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Escaping the Darkness
The horses broke free from Braethen’s grip, scattering into the mists. He tried to keep control of the one closest to him as it reared and whinnied and kicked its forelegs. Braethen stepped away, trying to flank the steed, but the horse went to ground and was gone before he could grasp the reins.
“Forget the mounts,” Vendanj said. “They will find the light. Stay close.”
Braethen ran to the Sheason’s side, drawing his short sword and looking about them. “What happened?”
“The boy saw the face of Male’Siriptus,” Vendanj said.
“I did not see it.”
“The child sees with simpler, truer eyes, and his feelings are close to his skin. The mist laid hold of these things and used them.”
“What now?” Braethen asked.
“We will hope that an entire collough does not await us at the edge of Je’holta.”
The mists continued to form strange shapes, but Braethen paid them little attention, focusing on the words of A’Posian to keep his mind clear of fretful thoughts. He could hear the simple admonition as clearly as the day he’d first heard his father speak it: “Mind that your path is to be a creator. You may yet become an author. But creation of any kind serves the Will and those who bear it.”
Braethen still believed in those words, but his sword was unskilled and weak in the defense of Vendanj or Wendra or Tahn. The root-digger, of all people, had saved Braethen’s life in their first encounter with the Bar’dyn.
The mists began to solidify in front of him, forming deep, wide holes where eyes might have been looking into him, and a slack jaw gaping in a frozen scream: his doubts given form.
“Hold now, sodalist!” Vendanj commanded, putting his hand on Braethen’s shoulder.
Braethen recoiled, blinked, and the face was gone.
As if in answer, the mists began to list and heave, moving first one way, then another, but slowly, as though dancing to a silent, mournful dirge. Vendanj put a hand to Braethen’s chest and cautioned him to step back. The mists began to part like a curtain, creating a clear, dark path out of the obscurity before them. He heard the approach of soft steps over the dank ground, and Braethen suddenly felt a terrible chill. A shape made its slow way toward them, draped in shadow, but with hatred clear in the simple inclination of its head.
Vendanj turned to Braethen. “Sodalist, are you completely sworn to the oath you accepted?” His eyes were stern, searching. “It is too late for guessing in this. Either you are in it marrow, blood, and sinew, or you are but a well-intentioned fool.”
Braethen looked past Vendanj as the shadow came on, the mists undulating in a series of waves at its passage. How many nights had he sat at his table reading, rehearsing the words, the genealogies, the Covenant to the First Order? His elbows had worn thin the varnish at the table’s edge, and the smell of candle wax had become his closest friend. In the small Hollows home he had dreamed of adding his arm to the Sodality, to defend all he knew against the changes men thought to write or cause in the land. Was he to go into the breach, or was he merely a reader of tales?
The image of himself seated as a child in the oversized chair of A’Posian, with a book wider than the span of his own arms in his lap, crystallized in his head. Then he immediately saw himself vowing an oath offered by a sodalist taking his dying breaths.
He was decided.
Gently he pushed Vendanj’s arm down. “I am truly sworn, Sheason,” Braethen said with conviction.
The renderer reached within his cloak and withdrew a sword. He handed the weapon to Braethen. “Then stand with me now.”
Braethen took the blade, casting his other sword aside. Then the mists erupted in a din of snapping wood and rustling leaves and the roar of a thousand whispered voices from the dust of the earth.
The Quietgiven emerged completely, and pointed at Braethen and Vendanj. Just as it did, the world turned black in a heartbeat and Braethen could see nothing.
Struggling to see, the sodalist turned in circles. He began to feel weightless, having no idea which way was up or down. In his hand he still held the sword Vendanj had just given him, but he could see neither it nor his hand. He reached out, hoping to feel the Sheason, but felt nothing. Quickly, he crouched, sure he would find the ground beneath his feet … but it too was gone.
Braethen’s mind reeled, and he wondered if he had been cast down that black tunnel in the mist. Or perhaps this was death, perhaps the stories of an eternal walk of life were a delusion created by the early storytellers to give men hope. He tried to speak; no sound came. He shouted; still nothing. He pressed his fingers to his lips to be sure he was opening his mouth. The only thing real, touchable, was his own flesh.
And the sword.
In his hand the solid feel of the hilt reassured him. Inside the blackness, he and the sword were all that remained. Its weight comforted him, and though he still could not see it, he lifted it before his face.
What is happening? Vendanj gave me the sword just as the darkness parted and the shape came upon us. Am I still in the mist? Did the creature destroy us? He squeezed the sword. No. The sword would not exist in death.
Then Braethen began to fall. He could not see the passing of clouds or rocks or birds, but his gut wrenched as though he were plummeting from the heights of the north face into the lowlands below. A feeling grew violently in him that he was rushing toward his own end, and must complete the riddle of his imprisonment in this stygian nightmare or be dashed against whatever came at the end of the darkness. His heart hammered in his chest. He gripped the hilt of the sword with both hands.
What am I meant to learn here? The question seemed to hasten his fall.
The Sheason asked if I was sworn to my oath. With that thought, an elusive awareness danced at the edge of his understanding. He reached for it, trying to bend his mind around the hope it represented. But it evaded him. His shoulders and legs began to cramp, and quickly the pain became exquisite in its intensity; he despaired of escaping it. Then he realized what the rushing was, the fall; it was him becoming one with the darkness. If he did not find the puzzle’s answer, he would be swallowed by the endlessness of the blight around him, forever a part of it.
Then the awareness, the understanding, danced in again, closer now, and he reached out for it somehow, knowing there would not be a third opportunity. And the smallest, surest knowledge of it took hold in him.
“It is I!” he screamed, the sound bursting into the darkness like a horn blown from the heights of Jedgwick Ridge. “I am Forda. I am Forza!” He looked at the sword, which now glowed a brilliant white in the darkness. “We are here! Now!”
With his words, the world rushed in, the darkness retreating, and the ache and cramps were gone. He was back in the mist beside Vendanj; the creature stood before them in the same place, as though not a moment had passed.
The Sheason gave Braethen an approving look, and turned to meet the Quietgiven. Braethen lifted the sword before his eyes. Its blade no longer glowed as it had in the dark world he had just escaped, but he held it with a new purpose.
Before he could look up again, the being attacked. It lifted its tattered cloak like an evil bird preparing to take flight. A pulse of darkness rushed forward in a thick wave, cutting a path through the mists and knocking him and Vendanj off their feet.
A withering laugh escaped its cowl. “Mal i’mente, Therus.” Braethen suddenly felt cold. Behind his eyes he saw the memories of his youth being rewritten and unwritten. As the changes continued, he recognized the creature: Maere. Unlike the stuff of cautionary tales, the hate and fright that beset him began to steal the memory of those events that made him who he was. He was being undone. In his mind he saw flashes of the past, many of his most cherished and formative
memories being taken from him or reformed into painful scenes he would never want to revisit.
Braethen howled at the loss, and jumped to his feet. Unbidden, something rose in his throat. “I am I!” he screamed. The cry repelled the darkness and the shifting in his own mind.
He turned to see the Sheason regain his feet, a violet light growing in his hands. The Maere whipped its cloak back from its broad shoulders, its entire body seeming to rear as might a horse. But before it could do more, a series of bright pulses shot from Vendanj’s hands into its chest. It yawped an unearthly scream.
Braethen did not hesitate. As the Maere screeched, he lunged forward and brought his sword around with all his strength. The blade tore into the beast and its clamoring intensified, shaking the very mist. One muscled arm flew with lightning speed at Braethen’s head and sent him sprawling. He landed hard on the ground, his head ringing. But he did not let go of the sword. Hot blood ran from his ear down his neck. He tried to stand, but the world turned at dizzying speed, the force of it pulling him down. Braethen lost his balance and collapsed back to the soil.
Vendanj took advantage of the Maere’s distraction with Braethen and reached into the folds of his cloak. He retrieved the small wooden case and withdrew one of the leaves Braethen had seen him eat. He held one between the second and third fingers of his left hand and placed the hand on his chest. His other hand he extended, palm down, and said something in low, quick words.
Instantly, the mists withdrew from around him, and a rush of light descended from the sky. Braethen looked up and saw a long, wide opening through the dark mists. The sun streamed down, returning natural, vibrant color. Radiance grew from below, even as the sunlight coursed down from above. The Maere began to thrash to and fro. Steam rose from its body and holes opened in its flesh as though it were completely insubstantial, a construct of their minds.
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