by Hilari Bell
“You need me to open the gate for the death wielders,” Makenna said swiftly. “And bring them to the gate. And convince them to ride through. Why settle for killing me, when you could kill thousands?” Her heart was pounding, but she had to keep calm, keep them focused on the main point—these spirits were too cursed distractible!
“She speaks the truth,” said a creature made of pale, dusty stone. “You must smell it on her as clearly as I do.”
Did that mean they could sense . . . smell it if she lied? Makenna was suddenly very glad she’d never tried to lie to a spirit.
“Yes,” the tree spirit said. “The truth, as this Tobin human tells it. A human who, by her account, has been living among the death wielders for months! Suppose he’s become one of them? Suppose he seeks to bring us back in order to obtain the death that will give him their power?”
“If you’ll remember back to my original request,” said Makenna, “I asked that you allow us to open a gate so we could send the barbarians into this world. You can stay and fight them, or return to the Realm and leave them here. It doesn’t matter to me.”
According to Tobin’s letter, the barbarian shamans had no idea how to make a gate, or they’d have invaded the Spiritworld long ago. If they hated the spirits as much as the spirits hated them, they’d probably be willing to take any risk to come to grips with their enemy. She had no desire to see anyone die—but if two enemies wanted to fight to the death, that was no problem of hers. As long as they didn’t destroy the world where her goblins lived in the process.
“So what it comes to,” said the tree creature, “is whether we trust this Tobin human. And we have no way to know if he tells the truth or not. I don’t trust any human. I think the promise breaker deserves to die.”
“I can tell you that Tobin would never take power from the death of others,” said Makenna. The real-world moon would reverse its direction across the sky before that happened. If they could scent the truth, they’d be smelling it now. Even those bloodthirsty trees!
“But can you swear that he is not deceived?” a grass woman asked. “I didn’t think so. All we know is that you believe he wouldn’t betray us. Can you tell us your judgment has never been at fault?”
Makenna frowned, for of course she couldn’t. “Look, I know Tobin well. Betraying anyone to their death, he just wouldn’t!”
“So you believe,” the tree spirit growled, waving a number of limbs for emphasis. “Suppose you’re wrong? Suppose when we go out, their spells are laid to trap us? Why should we trust this Tobin, who none of us knows?”
A silence followed. Makenna was losing them, but she had no way to prove Tobin’s honesty. And her life was slipping away with their trust.
Then a new spirit welled out of the stream before her. It looked tired and tattered, barely able to hold the shape of a human youth.
“This Tobin.” The bubbling voice was ragged too. “He is now among the death wielders, in the dry lands at the desert’s edge?”
“Aye,” Makenna said cautiously. “As far as I know.”
The left side of the spirit’s face crumpled and reformed as he held out his hands, and a globe of water began to grow between them.
The other spirits were silent, and Makenna sensed pity for this exhausted stranger—if a spirit could be wounded, he surely was. But the globe between his hands became rounder and firm, and light flickered in its center.
“Is this Tobin?” the spirit asked.
The light in the water began to shift and move, and Makenna gasped when an image of Tobin appeared.
He was still too thin, and his hair was longer and a dark brown—had he dyed it, to resemble the barbarians? He looked better than when she’d seen him last, but his shoulders were tense, his face set with determination. He was moving around in the sandy bed of a stream, kicking at things she couldn’t see and scuffing the dirt. It was night there too.
“Is this where he is now?” Makenna asked. It would be nice to know that the barbarians weren’t on to him yet. “What’s he doing?”
The spirits exchanged a look she couldn’t read.
“Is this the human Tobin?” the water spirit repeated.
“It is. But what he’s doing I don’t know,” Makenna admitted. The image was crouching now, making marks in the damp earth.
The spirit pulled his hands apart and the globe collapsed, splashing into the stream.
“We can trust him,” the ragged voice said.
Chapter 14
Tobin
COGSWHALLOP CAME AT DUSK, WHEN Tobin led the mules down to drink. And it took Tobin far too long to realize that the small green scraps floating past on the current were birch leaves and not some plant that grew in the dry Southlands.
Even when he noticed, he’d had to wade out into the stream to pick one up and examine it—and then stagger back out, with his sandals and the bottom of his loose britches wet. He cursed the goblin’s blithe assertion that “You’ll recognize the signal when you see it.” But he had recognized it . . . or had he? Maybe this was their third, or fourth, or eighth attempt to get his attention.
However, they must have seen him wade out to pick up the leaf, so they’d be waiting tonight.
Tobin fought down a surge of dread so intense, his stomach began to churn. There was no other way. Living among the barbarians had taught him that there were worse things than taking a few blows.
He could do this. He had to.
He let the mules drink their fill before starting back to camp, then curried and tethered them for the night, acting just as usual.
He thought he looked normal too, but Vruud took one look at him and said, “Tonight, eh?”
Tobin had been forced to let the storyteller in on his plans. And then he spent the better part of a night convincing the man that fleeing to the Realm wouldn’t do him any good if the Duri immediately conquered it. Eventually the storyteller had to admit that Tobin was right, and Vruud had spent the last few weeks making a round of all the Duri camps. Ostensibly he went to convey the sad news that the spirit had fled, and that everyone should keep an eye out for it in their own territory. But he’d then gone on to sit beside other clans’ campfires, to entertain in their men’s gathering tents, spinning tale after tale of the glory and power that existed in the Spiritworld. Theirs for the taking, if only they could reach it.
For the barbarians it was more compelling than a story of some lost hoard of gold and jewels. As far as Tobin could see, their ancient myth of the ultimate conquest hardly needed Vruud to fan it. To invade the Spiritworld, to absorb all the power bound up in their enemies’ lives, was the fantasy these men had been put to bed with from the time they were children. All they needed was a chance.
“It’s a good plan,” Vruud told him, echoing his own thoughts. “As long as your nerve holds.”
Tobin’s mouth was dry, his palms sweating, but the contemptuous tone still stung. No doubt it was meant to. “I’m going to try. What more do you want?”
“A bit of common sense,” Vruud said. “But I suppose that’s too much to expect. Take these leaves and hide them in your clothing. They’ll be searching for weapons, so they shouldn’t find them. Assuming you’ve got the brains to hide them well.”
“What are these for?” The dried leaves Vruud handed him didn’t look like much, but Tobin could hide them easily.
“They’re a pain suppressor,” said the storyteller. “Chew them up thoroughly, then spit them out—if you swallow them, they’ll make you sick. Not that you won’t be sicking up from nerves alone, by the look of you.”
For a man raised in a culture that placed no value on kindness, this was the equivalent of a warm hug and a tearful blessing—and a lot more practical.
“Thank you,” said Tobin. “For all you’ve done. I won’t forget.”
The storyteller snorted. “If you don’t succeed, your memory, or lack thereof, won’t matter. And if you do, I won’t need your gratitude. Just make sure your army doesn’t sweep i
n and wipe out the rest of us once the Duri are gone.”
“I can promise you that,” said Tobin. “At least, Cogswhallop said Jeriah would make sure of it.”
Vruud grimaced. “Do Softer children play a game where one person whispers a message to another, who whispers it to the next person, all around the campfire?”
“Yes.” Some games were universal, it seemed.
“Well, to my mind, adding one or two more people to your Cogswhallop-to-Jeriah chain is all that’s needed to guarantee disaster. Go to bed. I don’t suppose you’ll sleep, but I intend to.”
Tobin doubted that at the time—but if the snores the storyteller was emitting when he finally crept out of the tent were fake, they were a very good fake.
It was harder sneaking out of camp now. The Duri didn’t set sentries, relying on their patrols to keep their camps safe. But there had been more night patrols lately; after they’d realized the spirit had fled, the Duri had been increasingly restless.
Several messengers had come to the camp lately, and Vruud said it looked like they were preparing for another big attack. Tobin had been terrified that attack would come before he could get his plan in place.
Now it was falling into place, and he was even more terrified.
Tobin made only one stop on his way to the meeting, to wash the dye out of his hair with an acrid solution Hesida had made for him. Vruud wasn’t the only one to communicate with other Duri camps. Hesida had sent word to all her kinswomen that if “something disturbing” happened, they were to keep the chan of their camps quiet, and respect the Duris’ orders. Tobin had been afraid that even so innocuous a message might warn the Duri something was up, but Hesida swore that the women would hold their tongues—and keep their camps from doing anything rash if . . . when all their warriors vanished.
Washing out the dye was time-consuming, even using Hesida’s stinky solvent. The moon was waning when Tobin finally approached the tumble of rocks. Cogswhallop was waiting for him.
“It’s set. And I’ve got the clothes here for you. They can cast the gate anytime you say. In fact, they won’t be casting it till our lad’s scouts see the barbarian army coming toward the trap. The gen’ral says that opening lots of gates and then closing them up might make the spirit folk nervous.”
“Good.” Tobin took the bundle from Cogswhallop’s hands. “Then the spirits consented?”
Lightweight sturdy clothes, the kind worn by Realm knights in the Southlands—minus the church’s tabard, since most spies were smart enough not to sneak around the desert clad in red and gold. The cloth was slightly worn. Tobin hoped the goblins had purchased the clothing from its previous owner, instead of just taking it and doing him some favor in return. But knowing them as he did, Tobin doubted it.
“Aye, the spirits consented,” Cogswhallop told him. “More or less. Enough for our purposes, anyway.”
That didn’t sound reassuring, but whatever it meant, Tobin couldn’t do anything about it. He’d been wearing the loose clothing of the chanduri so long, Realm clothes felt stiff and tight—particularly the boots. He was deeply curious about how the spirits had been talked into cooperating. He wanted to know what Makenna and Jeriah had been doing for the last long month and a half, and to see his family.
Soon. Or never? No, he had to believe he would survive this, or his nerve would fail. This wasn’t for the Realm, not really; it was for Rovanscourt, and his chance to build a peaceful future there. For all of them.
“Do all our troops know what’s going on?” Tobin buckled on the belt that held a Realm knight’s dagger. “They won’t go storming the camps, killing the chanduri once the Duri are gone?”
“They know,” Cogswhallop confirmed. “It took an order from the Hierarch himself, but if our plan works, the Realm’s army will hold its hand. Commander Sower wasn’t best pleased to learn . . . Well, that’s not important now, and with the Hierarch’s orders in front of him, he can’t go foxing it. All the commanders have agreed that if you can make the whole barbarian army vanish, they don’t care what happens to women and servants. The common soldiers, who’d be doing the killing if you succeed and the dying if you fail, will be even happier to see the whole problem disappear. They won’t be committing any massacres.”
Tobin drew a breath. “Then we’ll do it the day after tomorrow. Tell them to be ready to cast the gate from dawn onward.”
Cogswhallop scowled. “Two days, soldier? Better make it tomorrow. Give ’em less time.”
“They’ll need some time to get organized,” Tobin said. “If it’s too fast, if only a handful of camps go haring through that gate, we’ll barely weaken them. I want them all. I want to end it. Now. With no more lives lost.”
Cogswhallop considered this. “Will they be able to set their whole army in motion on two days’ notice? I hadn’t thought they were that well organized.”
“They manage better than you’d think,” Tobin told him. “In some ways, their looser command structure makes them more flexible. If one of our commanders wanted to gather the whole army and set them to attack a specific place, he’d have to send orders to each unit telling them where to go, when to get there, and what to do after they arrive. The Duri will simply send a runner telling everyone where to gather—getting there is up to them. And they’ll do it, too. I think the reason they’ve been so restless is that they’ve seen our troops moving away from the trap. They’re ready to move.”
He’d been praying they wouldn’t strike at the weakened section of the border too soon, taking the bait before the trap was set. And pulling back the jaws and setting the lever was his job. Tonight. He didn’t dare flinch from it.
Tobin had Cogswhallop trim his shaggy hair in the style of the Realm, and the goblin gave him information on recent troop movements and positions—the things Tobin would need to know to play his part.
He was ready to leave far too quickly, but Cogswhallop had a question of his own.
“What’s to stop those barbarian shamans from figuring out how to cast their own gates once they get to the Spiritworld? You’re likely right they can’t do it now, but it seems to me that passing through one will give them some clues. The Spiritworld is made of magic. What’s to keep them from figuring it out?”
“Nothing,” said Tobin. “If the spirits let them survive long enough. The shamans are the ones who create the blood trusts. They trap the spirits, force them into a human body, and then wield the knife. They’re going to be the spirits’ first targets. And once they’re gone . . .”
Cogswhallop sighed, then shrugged.
It was more mercy, more regret, than the Duri shamans granted their victims, but Tobin felt the same.
Even though he was about to become one of those victims.
He set off, moving farther into the desert. All Tobin really needed was to be captured by another camp. No one outside the Morovda camp had seen enough of the storyteller’s servant to recognize Tobin in his Realm clothes and neatly cut hair. But the farther off he could get, the smaller the chance that anyone would connect a captured “Realm spy” with a runaway servant at all.
Most patrols worked closer to the Realm’s lines, but they were out in force. Tobin spotted one off in the distance and managed to swing wide enough to prevent them from detecting the amulet that would keep him alive long enough to tell his tale. Hopefully long enough that he’d still be alive when, with their masters dead, the chanduri realized that they’d need to make peace with the Realm. Tobin had every intention of pointing out to them that restoring a captive knight would be a good way to start negotiations.
The desert nights were warm now, and he was sweating in his new clothes. The boots rubbed a blister on his right heel, but Tobin didn’t slow down. Blisters were the least of his worries.
The moon was nearing the horizon, the night more than half over, when Tobin spotted a pocket of the dense vegetation that promised water. It was still early enough in the year that most springs reached the surface, and he’d underestima
ted how thirsty this long walk would make him.
Listening carefully, keeping his eyes open for patrols, Tobin made his way into the rustling bushes. He located the small seep more by its scent than by sight and bent to cup the water in his hands.
The sharp prick below his left shoulder blade told him how foolish he’d been, even before the voice spoke.
“It’s always good to stake out a water hole. We hadn’t expected anything larger than a deer, but the first rule of hunting is that you take what comes.”
Fight or surrender? Half a dozen Duri had emerged from the brush. A hunting party, not a patrol, but still enough to take him. Having the Duri hold him in contempt was part of his plan—and Tobin figured he’d end up with plenty of bruises anyway. He held out his hands, away from his knife hilt, and felt the jerk as it was yanked from its sheath.
“Where’s your sword?”
The pressure of the spear point in his back hadn’t diminished.
“It was broken when my horse fell.” Tobin had had plenty of time to work out the details. “Put his hoof in a rabbit burrow and shattered the bone. I had to put him down. I’ve been walking for almost two days now. I was beginning to think I was going to make it out.”
They’d surrounded him, a fence of spears pointed at his chest.
“But I still have this.” He pulled the blood trust out of his shirt, gleaming in the moonlight. “It means you can’t kill me, right?”
“Another cursed spy!” one of them exclaimed. “I’d think they’d have given that up by now. We may not be able to kill you, Softer. At least, not immediately. But we don’t have to let you go.”
“Not much point in keeping him,” another grumbled. “Not since those clumsy fools in the Heron Clan let that spirit escape.”
So this was a whole different clan? Excellent. They probably wouldn’t even hear about another clan’s missing servant. And if they did, they wouldn’t care.
