On they went. Tahn remained awake, but felt like little more than a field suit in his saddle. The rain did not let up, and the thunder shook the forest floor as though the lightning shot up from the ground. Flood pools accumulated in low areas, and Jole trod through them, casting his head about, seeking direction in the absence of a path. The wind soughed in the trees, stirring wet leaves and dropping rain in sheets over them. Tahn hoped Sutter would not be thrown off the stretcher because neither of them would ever know.
After what seemed like an endless number of hours, like stepping from behind a curtain, Jole emerged from the trees. Less than four strides from them the northern rim rose up into the blackness. Jole paused for direction, and got none. Tahn made a thick sound deep in his throat to urge him on, and Jole turned right, following the rock wall. Shortly, the wall opened on the left into a narrow canyon like the Canyon of Choruses. Rainwater ran in a shallow river from the mouth of the narrow aperture into the wilds. Tahn moaned again, and Jole turned into the canyon and took them away from Stonemount.
The sound of the rushing water reverberated endlessly up the high stone walls along the narrow road. The shadows were impenetrable in the canyon, leaving the rushing of water to guide them. The roar of the rain and current blotted out thought, and only the constant ache in Tahn’s head remained. Each pulse of his heart reminded him that he was alive, and soon the fevered ache became a grateful prayer to him.
But would Sutter live?
The night stretched on, and Tahn wondered how long Jole could keep going.
Finally, the canyon ended. Tahn moaned again, and Jole understood to stop. The storm had abated a bit, the heaviness of the drops lighter and their fall less pounding. Tahn turned his head as high as he could and looked east. He imagined the sun burning away the clouds, touching the treetops with orange light and steam rising from the soil as the rain evaporated in the early morning sun. He imagined the smell of green things and the stirring of bird wings. The familiar image might have warmed him in a time before the Bar’dyn came to the Hollows. Sitting on Jole’s back without feeling in his body, he now hoped to live only because Sutter would need his help.
Tahn found himself glad for the cloud cover. Somehow today he had no need of the sun. Whatever beginning it intended for him, for the land around them, could lay cloaked as far as he was concerned behind the veil of dreary light that passed through the thickness of the storm. He wanted the sun to come, but not with the same earnestness as in days past. He simply cared less.
He needed to get Sutter to shelter, but if his own arms did not regain feeling, he would need someone’s help. Atop Jole’s back, he fell asleep thinking of Wendra, and was glad he could not feel the wind that began to riffle his sodden hair.
* * *
“Ho, there, do you need help?” a voice said. “It is night soon. Do you intend to sleep in a ditch?”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Fever Dreams
Tahn opened his eyes. Jole stood close by, the walk gone out of his legs; his head bowed the way Tahn knew it did when his old friend was tired. Evidently, Tahn had finally fallen from his saddle, the rope he’d fastened around the saddle horn slipping its mooring and leaving him to tumble to the ground. Above, the sky remained dark with rain clouds, but Tahn noticed the leaves of trees sprouting delicately on thick branches. Wherever this was, Jole had worked long to bring them here.
A set of legs strode into his field of vision. Tahn tried to raise his head, but the numbness remained complete, leaving only his eyes useful. The boots were hard leather, lashed with black cords that had been tipped with silver links to prevent fraying. Rolling his eyes, Tahn looked up into a rotund face.
“Do I look like an angel, my friend?” the man said, his voice gentle but crisp. “Because you have the look of death in your cheeks. I daresay you’re not capable of assisting in your own rescue. No man sleeps in the mud when he has power to avoid it.”
Tahn rasped something out.
“And coherent, too,” the man replied. “Never mind, you’ll be wanting to know about your friend. He’s in bad shape, but no worse than you. I’m going to assume you’ll be glad of some help. Now you may grunt some protest, but I’ll live with your hatred better than the thought of you dying here, picked clean by highwaymen and catching shivers deep to the bone.”
The man hunkered down beside him, and Tahn followed him with his eyes. The gentleman’s rich, russet cloak parted as he squatted, and Tahn saw the emblem of the League clearly over the man’s left breast, and likewise fashioned in the pin that closed the man’s cloak at the hollow of his neck. The stranger put a hand to Tahn’s brow. A worried expression touched his eyes. “I’ve no interest in alarming you, my friend. But I’ve pulled up children from the river who feel more alive than you.” He smiled, seeming to think better of verbal diagnosis. “Grunt if you understand.”
Tahn heard none of it. He could only stare at the insignia on the pin that closed the man’s top garment. Did he know that Tahn had challenged the League at Myrr over the boy Penit? Would word have gotten to him this quickly? Could he know Vendanj had taken him out of the Hollows just ahead of the Quietgiven? Anything the Quietgiven sought so relentlessly was something the League would want destroyed. But the stranger’s face did not convey concealment, nor did he appear to recognize Tahn. The suspicion he’d seen in the eyes of Exigents before was not mirrored in this man’s gaze. But the thought lessened his concern only slightly. He lay powerless against the man’s any whim. He might discover the sticks in Tahn’s cloak, misuse them in any manner, turn them over to a higher league authority.
“I am Gehone.” He withdrew his hand but stayed there, his elbows on his knees. “When you’re dry, warm, and able to speak, I’ll be interested to hear how you came to travel north on a road that goes through the mountains.” One eye cocked. “This will give you time to construct a lie, so craft it carefully.” He smiled wryly. “And think while you’re doing it that either you’ll pass this world attempting to deceive, or you’ll live and make a mockery of the fellow who saved you from your final earth.” The smile turned to a chuckle and the big man lifted Tahn as though he was a scarecrow. He put Tahn in the back of a wagon and tethered Jole to the rear axle. With his left ear pressed to the wagon boards, Tahn listened to the creak and roll of the wheels, wondering how he had ended up paralyzed and in the hands of the League.
Gehone drove them for some time, eventually passing into a town. He steered from the light of the main streets to a darkened rear alley. Bats flitted in the air, swooping near the wagon and away again. Gehone pulled to a stop, and shortly scooped Tahn up and took him inside, directly to a bed. Tahn watched him depart and promptly return with Sutter, whom he laid in a second bed on the opposite wall. With fatherly disinterest, the man from the League stripped Tahn and Sutter bare and covered them over with thick wool blankets.
From a pouch at his belt, Gehone produced a small jar. With one thick finger he took at a generous portion of a green salve. “Hold this under your tongue,” he said, and deposited the goop in Tahn’s mouth. He then took another fingerful and gently applied it to Tahn’s lips. He did the same to Sutter, opening Nails’s mouth for him and setting the paste beneath his tongue.
Gehone wasted no time, but stood and left the room, taking the lantern with him. Tahn waited in the dark, expecting someone to crash through the door and point accusing fingers at him and Sutter. Instead, he heard only the thin rasp of his friend’s breathing. Peppermint and parsley cooled his tongue, and a mellow feeling crept over him, inviting him to sleep once more. Before he succumbed to weariness, he looked around for his cloak and saw it hanging on a peg beside the door. He couldn’t see if the sticks were still there, but he hadn’t seen Gehone rummage through his things. Hoping his movement would return by morning, Tahn distantly wondered if he would wake before the sun as he always had, or if this time he would simply continue to sleep, lost in the darkness behind his eyes as the numbness climbed inside him and stopped h
is heart.
* * *
“What they’ve told you are lies.” The disembodied voice came to him like whispers echoing from the sweating stone of sealed caves. “Flee us, and flee yourselves.”
“Lies?” Tahn asked. “What lies?”
“Every record you possess bleeds from the pens of historians and authors who forget or ignore the abomination of the Whiting.” The voice rasped with anger, rising to a growl. “It is you who are imprisoned, bound by manacles you cannot see. And still you walk in chains, even to the ledge—which is where they always go—to discard the life you treasure.” Howls of laughter followed, brittle, pained sounds like falling crystal.
“I don’t understand,” Tahn said, and started to run. Blindly, he forced himself to lift his legs. He held his hands out in front of him and moved faster through the darkness.
“Is this the Will you claim? Running toward nothing? From nothing?” The voice fell low again. “And this because you are nothing. Nothing to the Will. Nothing that belongs to, returns to, the Quiet.” The last word came so softly that Tahn thought he did not hear it.
“No!” Tahn screamed. He dropped his arms to his sides and pumped his legs, forgetting the possibility of running into anything, sprinting faster into the absence of light.
“How many more suns, Quillescent? How many until the pages burn, the song is ended, and the throats of Leiholan shriek because the covenant is broken, and all promises of men are silly, unkept things, just like the betrayal of the One by the Many? Sleep, Quillescent. Like the sleep of the Bourne. This is where you belong. We are you.”
Tahn tried to scream; no sound came.
The darkness seeped inside him and closed his throat. He ran harder, feeling the sweat run down his face and neck. In the distance, brilliant pools of darkness gave life to crisp shadows that glimmered darkly as he ran onward: words floating in the air, parchment spiraling on gusts of hot air from burning rocks and rents in the earth that vented heat in gouts and spumes. Birds fell to the ground as the air itself seemed to catch fire. Broad, dark shapes scrabbled from cracks in the mountains beneath a lowering grey sky. Armies were trampled under by terrible waves of hoary, powerful creatures, the metal in their blades snapping like brittle winter twigs. And tall men, Sheason, knelt, producing feeble light that dissipated in the air like so much dust from an uncultivated field.
Suddenly, all these things were past him, and Tahn ran directly through the image of a sullen creature seated in a low cage in a carnival tent. The image surprised him. It did not feel like part of the others. He looked back over his shoulder to be sure of what he’d seen.
“Leave that be!” the voice commanded. But Tahn saw nothing. The darkness now wrapped around everything, yet glimmered as though alive. Tahn ran up a mountainside toward a pinpoint of light, his body drenched in sweat, his nose running freely. His feet stabbed at paving stones he could not see, becoming raw, but he pushed on, flailing toward a goal that seemed to come no closer despite his pursuit. A chorus followed him, dismal sounds like the unheeded petitions of a street fellow and the sob of a mother over a fresh grave. He could hear the resigned voices of men, creatures, standing in the shadows of a cell. And the din of it all ran out flat across stony ground, flint and ash too hard and dire to embrace these lost souls in the sleep of death. Tahn tried to hum the melodies of story songs to replace the sounds of the dreadful chorus. His own voice failed, swallowed by the dark. Ahead, the pinpoint of light flickered, growing even more distant as his legs tired. He could run no more. With a great leap, Tahn dove toward the single point of light, wherefrom a single voice seemed to emanate, directing him as much as the ray of light could.
* * *
Tahn gasped and opened his eyes to a darkened room. In the small bedchamber, shadows seemed to move. The smell of drying wool and pine floorboards reassured him that this darkness was real. Across from him, the window showed night beyond, but not so deep with shadow as his room. It was sometime before dawn. Tahn managed to envision the break of rays over the lips of a desert plain and consider it appropriate enough before falling to dreamless sleep.
The sound of boots on the floor roused him sometime later. Tentatively, he opened his eyes, half-expecting to see Jole, rainy sky, and treetops, or perhaps the stiflingly low knit of wilds branches overhead. Instead, he found the rough carpentry of a small room bathed in sunlight.
“It’s about time, Woodchuck.” The voice was feeble, but only one person called Tahn that.
He tried to raise his head, and was relieved that he could do so, even if just a little.
“Don’t strain yourself. Heroes always push themselves too hard,” Sutter said from across the room. “But don’t go thinking this means I owe you. Hero or not, I’m still a naked man who chafed all night beneath itchy wool blankets.”
Tahn licked his lips and attempted to speak. His voice cracked. He swallowed, beginning again more slowly. “Did you say man?” Tahn laughed weakly. “You sound better, Nails.”
His friend chuckled in return. “I feel like one of your arrow tips is lodged inside my chest. Just talking is sending little spikes of pain into my neck. But I think I like the pain. Means I’m alive and away from Stonemount.” Tahn heard Sutter shift in his bed. “By the Sky, what happened to you? Some large fellow walked in this morning and spread some disgusting goop on my lips. I meant to know the reason, but he put a hand over my mouth and said you needed to sleep.”
Tahn let his head drop back onto the pillow. “It’s all hazy. After Sevilla left, I started going numb. Before my arms went, I built a litter and hitched it to Jole. Eventually we found the rim and canyon. Somewhere along the way I passed out. I woke up when Gehone found us and brought us here.”
“Where is here?” Sutter interjected.
“I don’t know.”
They fell silent. Beyond the door, the occasional sound of boots over wood reminded them that they were not alone.
“You said you went numb? Did Sevilla poison you?”
Tahn considered the question. Perhaps he did at that. He might have had the opportunity while Tahn was sleeping. But somehow it didn’t ring true. He shook his head, still happy to have some movement back. “Maybe,” he concluded. “But whatever happened, you should know we are now guests in the home of a member of the League.”
Tahn heard a quick intake of air. “Does he know about us? We’ve got to go, Tahn, come.” The rigging under Sutter’s bed creaked as his friend tried to rise. Tahn listened to the pained effort, Sutter taking shallow breaths and holding them long before grunting them out and continuing to try to hoist himself from his bed. Finally, Tahn heard Sutter flop down as he gave up. “All this way,” Sutter said, “and it ends like this.”
“Nonsense,” Tahn said. His lips still worked slowly. “It’s all a blur, but Gehone seems decent. And if he’d known, we might have spent last night in a less comfortable bed.”
“You’re delirious. Do you hear what you’re saying?” Sutter’s voice became simultaneously vehement and quiet, as he attempted not to be overheard. “Vendanj told us to beware of the League. I’m grateful for a warm bed, but how many stories do you remember in which the accused are nursed to health so that they may walk the gallows?”
Tahn raised his head again. “And what of your mistrust for the Sheason? Suddenly you believe Vendanj? When did he ever tell us enough of any story that we could decide what to believe? Did you ever consider that he is the reason the Bar’dyn came into the Hollows? They may have been chasing Vendanj and Mira—” The words caught in Tahn’s throat at her name. The image of her clear grey eyes rose in his mind with terrific force. Suddenly, he recalled seeing her seated in a rocker beside a window in an abandoned cabin deep in the Hollows. Even in that dark he had seen her eyes.
“Is that what you think?” Sutter replied. “Have you forgotten the Bar’dyn came to your house, came to Wendra…”
Sutter trailed off, and quiet returned to the room. As they held a companionable silence, light
ebbed and returned as clouds passed over the sun. Then down the outer hall, someone began to approach the door.
Tahn spoke quickly. “You’re right. We will leave here as soon as we are able. Don’t let Gehone know you’ve regained your strength.”
“What strength?” Sutter laughed, sending him into a coughing spasm. But the absurdity of their condition kept him laughing through the wracking convulsions.
Tahn smiled. He and Sutter had always been able to make peace easily.
The door opened and Gehone entered, carrying a tray with two small bowls and two narrow mugs. Steam rose from them all. He put the tray down on a dresser and crossed to Sutter, propping him up with his pillow until his coughing subsided.
“You’re a winsome lad,” Gehone said, retrieving the tray. “But I’d save the humor until your lungs can withstand the pressure.” He put a bowl and cup at the stand beside Sutter’s bed. “Don’t waste a drop,” he admonished. “The blend of herbs will give you strength and the broth will heal whatever ails you.”
Gehone came to Tahn and sat at his side. “Any movement in these arms of yours?” Tahn shook his head. “Ah, but your neck has returned. Good.” Gehone lifted Tahn easily and propped his back against the headboard. He lifted the bowl and spooned out some broth. “Are you ready to tell me what business you had in Stonemount? And don’t deny you’ve been there. Your boots are caked with soil that belongs to that place.” Gehone put a spoonful of the broth in Tahn’s mouth. The savory potage soured on Tahn’s tongue.
“Adventure,” Sutter said around a mouthful of the hot broth. Gehone turned a questioning look on Sutter. Under the leagueman’s gaze, Sutter pulled back a bit. “Accident, really,” he added.
Gehone turned again toward Tahn. “That the truth of it, lad?”
Tahn simply nodded.
“Indeed.” The man spooned another bite into Tahn’s mouth. “Well you’re lucky to be out of it alive, then. Lore holds that Stonemount has belonged to the walkers since the hour its residents abandoned it. If it is so, you two must certainly have gone unnoticed there.” Gehone watched Tahn closely.
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