“What are you—?”
“Run, girl!”
A bone-shaking roar came out of the woods behind them, followed by another off to the side.
“Run!”
She ran. Behind her, she heard the twang of Lendri’s bow, followed by a sharp cry, then the sounds of Lendri following.
The woods around them erupted in a riot of sound—many shapes blundering through the brush, high-pitched cries, and above her on the left, the roar of a tiger. The sound washed over her, a physical force, and for three steps her knees weakened, threatening to buckle beneath her.
Lendri grabbed her above the elbow, pulled her back up, and dragged her behind him. A huge shape hit the ground several paces in front of them, stirring up a cloud of snow and spraying branches everywhere. Though she couldn’t see it clearly through the snow, she knew it was a tiger.
Lendri pulled her to the right, but too quickly. Her feet tangled over an exposed root or branch, and she went down, breaking Lendri’s grip. She scrambled to her feet. Several feet away, Lendri was standing still again, one hand reaching over his shoulder, fingering the nock of another arrow in his quiver.
In front of them crouched two tigers.
And one of them bore a rider. A small rider, to be sure, child-sized, but the long spear it held looked lethal. In the dim light, the rider’s eyes gave off a pale luminescence.
That was when the smell hit her. Flowery almost. But not quite. It had the sharp tinge of cold, like the autumn winds off the Giantspires—the breezes that promised the first storm of the season, bringing days of howling winds, bitter cold, and darkness even at midday.
Another tiger had come in behind them, and in the woods all around, more glowing eyes watched them. The nearest was no more than five or six paces away—two pale diamonds seeming to float in the air. But even as Hweilan watched, a form materialized around the eyes—whatever magic had hidden the creature dismissed. This one held a sword, but not like any she had ever seen. It drank in the little light off the snow and seemed to amplify it, so that the cold steel seemed a shard of ice. Jagged edges and protrusions angled off the blade near the hilt, giving it a thorny appearance. And although the creature would have had to stretch up on tiptoes to reach Hweilan’s head, it held the sword with an easy confidence.
“Lendri,” Hweilan rasped, “what do we do?”
“Do not reach for a weapon,” he said. “Don’t even move.”
“Very good advice,” said a voice from the darkness, “coming from a fool such as you, Lendri.”
A fierce gust swept down the hillside, rattling branches and snow into a stinging tide that washed over them. The air caught and swirled next to the little swordsman, forming a small cyclone of snow and shadow. When it settled, another figure stood there, much taller than the hunter, snow and frost wafting off his armor like tiny cataracts. The armor itself was more elegant than anything Hweilan had seen—a breastplate, spaulders, and tassets made of many layers of fitted metal, which gave off their own unearthly sheen. A long cloak hung from the spaulders, and in the dark it rippled like a living shadow as the wind died away. The man wore no helmet, and his long hair played in the breeze. He rested one hand on the head of a tundra tiger and scratched it between the ears, as if it were a favorite lap cat.
Lendri still hadn’t lowered his hand from his quiver. “Your skills have improved, Menduarthis.”
“Your sense has not.” The man spoke in Common, though with enough of an accent that Hweilan could tell it was not his native tongue. “I always hoped you’d come back. But I never actually believed you so stupid. I must say, I am most pleased to have been proven wrong. You and your friend are going to surrender your weapons now.” He motioned to the little warriors all around them. “Valdi sinyolen.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HWEILAN STOOD DUMBFOUNDED. HAD LENDRI JUST called the man by name? The man had definitely called Lendri by name. But was he a man? His skin was pale as Lendri’s, but his breath wasn’t steaming in the frigid air, and he seemed quite comfortable in the cold, with no cloak, coat, or hood.
Two of the little hunters came toward her, weapons held ready in one hand, the other reaching out to take her bow.
She pulled back. “No!”
The hunters stepped back, and a dozen spears lowered in her direction.
“Voi!” Lendri shouted. “Ele vahat sun!” He had already been disarmed. Even his quiver was gone.
“Now, now, Lendri, you don’t give orders to the Ujaiyen,” said the armored man. He sounded amused. “Not anymore.”
He walked off the slope, pushing his way through the brush and past the hunters to approach Hweilan. She stiffened and stood her ground.
The man looked her up and down, and reached one gloved hand toward her.
She stepped back, raising the bow before her and reaching for her knife.
“Easy, easy,” said the man. “Don’t be skittish. You’ve got nowhere to skit.”
Hweilan risked a glance over her shoulder and saw two of the little hunters behind her, both holding spears.
“Menduarthis, please—” said Lendri.
“I’m not going to hurt your friend,” Menduarthis told Lendri, though he kept his eyes fixed on Hweilan. He smiled. “Not yet, anyway.”
Before Hweilan could react, Menduarthis’s hand shot forward and pushed down her hood.
“Well!” His eyebrows shot upward and he smiled. “I go out for a night of hunting beasts and instead happen upon a rare flower.”
He stroked her cheek with the back of one finger. Hweilan stepped back and brought her knife out and forward in a quick swipe. Menduarthis pulled back in time, her blade barely missing his finger.
“Ho!” Menduarthis laughed. “This flower has thorns, I see! Don’t worry, little one. I’m not out to peel your petals.”
“Leave me alone,” she said.
Menduarthis chuckled. “Not tonight. Why so unfriendly?”
“Menduarthis, please!” Lendri called. “Allow me to explain!”
Still watching Hweilan—she couldn’t tell if his gaze was lecherous, curious, or simply amused; a little of all three she suspected—he called out something in a tongue she didn’t recognize. Two hunters lowered their spears at Lendri, and all around her Hweilan heard many blades leaving their scabbards.
“Know what I told them?” said Menduarthis.
“No,” Hweilan replied.
“I told them that if your friend over there opens his mouth again, my friends are to kill him.” He pushed at the inside of one cheek with his tongue, thinking, then said, “A shame, really. Truth be told I always liked Lendri. I don’t suppose you’ve seen his little wolf friend around, have you? What’s its name? “Itching’?”
Hweilan glared at him. “Hechin.”
“No matter. Let’s talk about you. What’s your name?”
Hweilan’s glare deepened to a scowl. She didn’t lower the knife.
“Not very friendly, is she, Lendri?” Menduarthis called out. When Lendri didn’t answer, he looked over his shoulder at the elf and said, “Oh, yes. You aren’t to speak. So glad you’re paying attention.”
When Menduarthis turned back to Hweilan, his gaze had hardened. The hint of lechery and curiosity was gone. The amusement was still there, but it was peeking from behind a very dark curtain.
“Let me tell you something, little flower,” he said. “The world is not a nice place. Fools say it’s unforgiving, but that’s why they’re fools. The world doesn’t forgive because it doesn’t blame. And the world doesn’t blame because it doesn’t care. So here’s my little lesson for you tonight: You can name yourself, or others will name you. And you might not like what they call you. So I’ll ask you one more time.” He leaned in closer, just beyond the point of her knife. “What’s your name?”
Hweilan’s grip tightened around her knife, but her hand was shaking. Something about the tone in Menduarthis’s voice—she felt as if Kelemvor had just placed her in his scale, and her ne
xt words would decide which way she swung.
She licked her lips and said, “H-Hweilan. My name is Hweilan.”
Menduarthis straightened, closed his eyes, and breathed in deep through his nose. “Ah … Hweilan,” he said, pronouncing it very carefully, savoring each syllable. “A flower indeed. And I even like the thorns.” He bowed. “Well met. My hunters tell me that a band of frantic Nar ride not a half-mile from here, and one of the Frost Folk leads them. Friends of yours?”
“No! They attacked us.”
“And what do you know of the thing that rides with them? Big brute with black eyes.”
“I know it attacked us.”
“And the ravens? A whole murder of them coming to your rescue?”
She shuddered at the memory. “I don’t know.”
Menduarthis held her gaze. “Don’t know or won’t tell?”
“Ravens hit the man. I ran. We ran. Lendri and me. We thought we’d lost them, and then you arrived.”
“And here we are, yes?”
Hweilan shrugged.
“Back to the matter at hand, then,” said Menduarthis. “You were about to hand over your weapons.”
Hweilan looked to Lendri. The elf kept his jaw clenched, but he gave her a careful nod.
“No,” she said.
“No?” said Menduarthis.
“I’ll surrender the knife,” she said. “But the bow belonged to my father. It’s all I have left of him. I’ll give my life before I give the bow.”
“Hm.” Menduarthis peeled off his gloves with his teeth, then tucked them into his belt. “Dear Father is dead, I take it?”
Hweilan’s scowl deepened.
“Don’t take offense,” said Menduarthis, his tone light and mocking again. “My father is dead too. At least I think he is. But I assure you, Hweilan, I am no thief. I don’t even want to keep your little steel thorn there, though I do appreciate the offer. I simply don’t want you causing any trouble on the way. The Ujaiyen’s tigers can be a bit … ill-tempered.”
“On the way to where?”
“To where we’re taking you.”
She waited for more explanation. It didn’t come, and she knew it wouldn’t. “I promise I won’t cause any trouble,” she said.
“Well, I do appreciate that. But we hardly know each other. How do I know I can trust you?”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“What makes you think you have a choice?” He waved his fingers at the hunters surrounding them. “Unless you have more ravens up your sleeve … well, I’m afraid I have the advantage, yes?”
“I don’t have any arrows,” said Hweilan. “I can’t even bend the thing enough to string it—much less use it!”
“Then why hang on to it?”
“Because it was my father’s!”
“Anything else of his you’d like to hang on to?”
“J-just the bow.”
“Hm.” Menduarthis folded his hands in front of his face and hummed while he considered it. He looked around at the little hunters, then back to Hweilan and said, “No.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, and his voice went hard and cold again, “although you do seem like a most trustworthy little flower, right now, you need to understand who is in command here. Me. Hand over the bow.”
“No. You’ll have to kill me first.”
“Will I?” Menduarthis laughed and looked to Lendri. “Is she really that foolish?”
Lendri said nothing.
“Oh, yes,” said Menduarthis. “Can’t speak.” He let out an exaggerated sigh—Hweilan noticed that his breath still didn’t steam, even in the cold. He raised his voice and said, “The elf can answer this question. Nobody kill him.”
Lendri fixed him with a cold glare, then looked around at the hunters.
“Ah, yes,” said Menduarthis. “They don’t speak the language. Can’t understand what I just said. You are paying attention! I guess you’d better keep quiet after all.” He turned back to Hweilan. “Last chance. Give me the bow and knife, or I take them.”
“No.”
He clucked his tongue inside his cheek. “You like magic, Hweilan?”
“Not really.”
“Hm. Pity.” Menduarthis planted both his heels together, stood very straight, and waved both hands in an intricate pattern. “You probably aren’t going to like this, then.”
Menduarthis’s hands shot forward, and with them came a wind with the force of a dozen winter gales—but focused in one thick stream that flowed around him. His cape billowed out like a pennant. Storm and darkness hit Hweilan, then swallowed her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HOWLS HAUNTED HWEILAN’S DREAMS. PAIN TINGED these howls. Remorse. Fear.
Everything around her was cold. Cold and hard. Mountains covered with snow and ice that had not melted in a thousand generations of men. Jagged, broken peaks that bit through gray clouds lined by moonlight. At the mountains’ feet, forests of pine older than the kingdoms of men filled valleys—some so deep that they never saw sun or moonlight.
Cold as it was, still the land felt alive. Not merely filled with living things—though that was true; thousands of animals and birds singing, playing, sleeping, waking, hunting and being hunted … dying; even flowers bloomed amid the frost—the land itself and the air around it possessed … a …
Livingness. A steady pulse ran through everything. A breathing. Almost like a song, though one not so much heard with the ears as felt in the blood.
But that blood ran cold.
Her eyes opened, the memory of the dream already fading. She couldn’t see. Shadows masked everything.
She tried to sit up, but something held her back. For an instant, she panicked, but then she found she’d been wrapped—more snug than tight—in blankets, then lain upon a thick fur and wrapped again, some of the outer fur blanket folded over her head like a hood.
Wriggling like a caterpillar escaping its cocoon, Hweilan managed to free her arms, sit up, and pull the blanket off her face.
She was surrounded by bones.
She was in a sort of domed tent, made from bent poles of wood—some so green that leaves and verdant moss still clung to them. A small fire in the center of the room cast everything in orange light. Hanging from the tent frame were dozens and dozens of bones. Leg bones, ribs, sections of backbone strung through braided thread like the macabre necklace of a giant. But worst were the skulls. Swiftstags, some with antlers and some without. Tundra tigers, their daggerlike teeth painted in swirls of red and yellow. Many smaller animals—badgers, squirrels, voles—and many birds. And here and there were even a few human skulls, some bare and yellowed with age, painted in many curved and branched patterns, and others still brown and glistening fresh.
The last thing she remembered was Menduarthis on the mountain, then a great gust of wind, hitting her like a felled tree. Her body still ached from the impact, but it was a dull ache. Either a healer had seen to her, or she had slept for many days while her body healed. Perhaps both.
Her stomach felt empty and her throat dry enough to make her believe she had slept for a day at least.
Feeling her body and looking down inside the blankets, she saw that her own clothes were gone. She had been washed and now wore a sort of shift. It felt soft and warm as doeskin but looked fibrous. Someone had washed and clothed her. Hweilan shivered.
She looked down at her right hand. The bandages were gone, and the skin almost healed. The new skin had a too-smooth sheen, but the scabs were gone. The letters were still there, though, a puffy scar: KAN. “Death.” She wiggled her fingers, then clenched her hand in a tight fist. The new skin felt tender, but there was no pain.
The flap of the tent opened, admitting a breath of frigid air and one of the little hunters. He ducked inside, pulled the door shut, and his eyes widened at seeing her awake.
They locked gazes for a long moment, then he placed one hand to his chest and said, “Nikle.”
In the
light of the fire, Hweilan got her first good look at one of these strange hunters.
Her first impression of a halfling had not been far off, at least in height. But there the resemblance ended. He was very thin, and his skin had the tint of a cloudless winter sky. And so much skin showing for such cold weather! It made Hweilan shiver even in her blankets. The little hunter wore a sleeveless tunic of some cured animal hide, belted at the waist. Its fur fringe hung just above his bare knees. He wore no boots, gloves, or coat. Just a very strange hat. It, too, was made from some sort of animal skin, fur around the edge of the cap, tied around a rim of dark wood, or perhaps horn. On the left side, a single antler spike protruded from the rim, and bits of leather lacing tied it to the long cap, so that the hat rose to sort of a curved cone over his head. A tiny skull—from a squirrel or small badger perhaps—dangled from a tassel attached to the top of the hat. The ears protruding from under the rim of the hat were very pointed—sharper and taller than even Lendri’s—and the green eyes had the look of elfkind. By the warm light of the fire, they did not quite glow, but they seemed very bright, like flawless emeralds.
Hweilan shook her head. “Nikle?”
The hunter nodded and motioned to her with one hand. “Nu thrastulet?”
The door opened again, letting in more cold air, and Menduarthis entered.
“He’s telling you his name,” said Menduarthis, “and asking for yours.” He rattled off something in the same language she’d heard them speak on the mountainside. Nikle smiled and shuffled out of the way.
Menduarthis shut the flap and sat across the fire from her.
“He knows your name already,” he said. “But the uldrainsist on propriety and good manners to a guest.”
Hweilan looked to Nikle, who was watching them both. If he understood Menduarthis’s words or sensed his flippant tone, the little hunter gave no sign.
“Uldra?” Hweilan asked.
Menduarthis waved one hand at the little hunter. “Nikle here. He’s an uldra.”
Hweilan took in her first good look at Menduarthis. She’d only been able to get a few details on the dark mountainside. He wore no armor now—trousers and shirt of a simple cut, an unbuttoned coat that fell to his knees, and boots laced up to his knees. Nothing unusual in his manner of dress, but his physical appearance was something else. His skin was not simply pale. It was bone white. Which made his hair seem all the darker—the blackest black she had ever seen. It scarcely reflected the firelight. He wore it long, well past his shoulders, and it didn’t look as if a brush had visited it in many days. Her first thought was that his eyes were silver, but upon closer inspection she saw that they were very light blue flecked with many darker shades, and he had no pupils.
The Fall of Highwatch Page 13
