by Tammy Salyer
Through dry lips, Isemay said, “I thought you were going to wait for Salukis.”
Mura sighed again and put a comforting hand on Isemay’s forearm. From the corner of her eye, Isemay saw the hand change colors to match her own pink-tinged walnut-brown skin. If she hadn’t been so upset, and so deeply tired, she would have been astonished. Yet instead she noticed how warm Mura’s hand was, and the way she somehow felt a bit of her worry and fear evaporating, as if she’d received news that all would be well. It was a distraction from her distracted state, and she gave in to it, if only briefly.
“He’s late,” Mura said, “but he’ll be on his way. He’s too hardheaded to get caught.”
“I’m not moving until I know what’s happened to my mum.”
Mura was silent for a few moments, then said, “I understand. I’ll wait with you. Just a moment.” She rose and walked back to the children. “Young ones, you should get back to Maerria. I’m going to wait with Isemay a little bit longer for Salukis. Get to the Churss Circle and tell Deespora what we’ve seen. If you start to get lost, ask the Churss and they will guide you. We’ll return by nightfall. Neeka, Ballion, you’re in charge. Watch the younger ones.”
There was rustling as the children gathered their things, and quiet feet once again approached Isemay. The little girl, Neeka, stood beside her without speaking until Isemay turned her face to look at her.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” the little girl said, and the hue of her face, which had been a light, pale tone, shifted like Mura’s hand had to match Isemay’s own. “You can have my nightcaps.” She held out a sisal-like pouch, and Isemay took it.
“My thanks,” she mumbled.
The child gave her a sad smile and rushed off to catch up with the rest, who had begun to walk deeper into the stone forest.
Curious, Isemay opened the pouch’s flap and reached inside. She pulled out a handful of button-sized bulbs that smelled unlike anything she’d ever come across. Not bad, maybe a bit musty, but with a hint of a spice similar to what the Vinnrics used in sweets.
Mura sat beside her again, and Isemay asked, “What are these?”
“They’re nightcaps, and delicious. They only grow by the river we found you and your mother at, and only during the vernal season. That’s what we were doing there, though it’s forbidden. My people, the Zhallahs, are never to leave the Churss. But we didn’t think anyone would see us in the middle of the night. Usually the Minothians don’t leave their gatehouse at the entrance of the Tyrn Mountains unless they see someone in the valley. But when the starpath opened, it must have drawn them out, and we were there. So stupid. Deespora is going to have me and Salukis weaving textiles until the next Equifulcrum for this…”
Isemay’s stomach rumbled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten since the day prior, before everything had gone wrong. “So, do you just eat them raw?” she asked.
Mura nodded, and Isemay popped one in her mouth, chewing cautiously. After a moment, she said, “It’s like a mushroom, but sweet.”
Mura’s expression said she didn’t understand exactly what Isemay had said—they must not have had the word “mushroom”—but she nodded again. “See? Delicious. You see why I let the children talk me into risking coming down here.”
Isemay wouldn’t have called them delicious, but they were edible and took the edge off her hunger. As she ate more, she asked, “What happens if Salukis doesn’t come back?”
Mura’s eyes, a brilliant green and large like a nocturnal cat’s, grew hard, and she didn’t look at Isemay. “Deespora will know what to do.”
“Mura, why are the Minothians taking your people? Where do they take them?” Isemay was trying to think like her parents, ask strategic questions that would lead her to the answers she needed to find them.
Staring into the distance, Mura reached for a pendant hanging from a fiber band around her neck and began to fiddle with it. “It is complicated, and I’m not sure Deespora would approve of me talking of it. Maybe a story for another time.”
Isemay couldn’t very well force her host to tell her, and besides, she was too spent to be angry. They returned to silence and she looked closer at Mura’s pendant. It was made of stone, the same kind as the Churss towers all around them, with a naturally occurring hole through the center. The edges of the stone had been carved into a delicate design similar to scrollwork.
“That’s like mine,” she said and drew the memory keeper Ulfric had given her from inside her white, though now very dirty, tunic and over her head.
Mura looked at her own pendant, then to Isemay’s. “A Churss talisman. We treasure them here. They bond us with the Churss and remind us of Mithlí’s gifts.”
“Mine reminds me of my da,” Isemay said miserably.
“It’s very pretty,” Mura offered. “What is that creature it’s carved to look like?”
“We call them dragørflies. They are favored by our Verity, Vaka Aster.”
“And that crystal in the center, what’s it for?”
“My da is a lens maker. He made this for me to show me my memories.”
Mura looked confused. “Your people can’t remember things without a crystal talisman?”
Isemay half smiled. “No, I mean, it shows me whatever I want to remember if I think about it and focus my thoughts. See these two stones?” She pointed to the klinkí stones, one from each of her parents, that made up the eyes of the dragørfly. “These were my parents’ and contain a bit of their Verity spark. It’s what we call wysticism.”
Mura nodded. “That is very like the Churss. The stones of this forest share Mithlí’s vitality, her ‘spark,’ I think you called it. They protect those who are devoted to her and keep out those who have forgotten or denied her.”
Isemay looked sideways at the towering formations and considered this. “Do you mean they can…think?”
“I don’t know if that’s the right word. They can understand and they can act.”
“But I am not of this realm. Or devoted to your Verity. Why am I able to enter the Churss?”
The ridge of bare skin above one of Mura’s eyes went up, as if she were cocking an eyebrow. “I don’t know. Perhaps they sense something in you they approve of.”
Isemay let her gaze fall back on the meadow below them, to the last spot she’d seen her mother. Stone trees that could feel and defend their residents. Men with wings and women with skin that shifted in hue according to either whim or emotion. A sky with three moons and mushrooms that tasted more like sweet bread than plant. It was all so different from her home. Yet one thing was the same. There was still enmity between different peoples. And Isemay and her mother were now part of that strife, like it or not.
She turned the memory keeper over in her hand. Looking into the crystal, she thought about calling up some memory of her family to make her feel better. As she considered it, a light suddenly flared within it, brilliantly blue and yellow, swirling.
“Huh?” she squeaked. She’d said no focusing charm nor called up any memory.
The crystal’s inner light began to brighten. Then, as clearly as if he stood before her, she saw her father’s face. Isemay shot to her feet.
“Isemay?” he said, looking directly at her.
“Da! Is that you?” she cried. “Is it really you? Not a memory? How…where are you? I was so worried you were—” But she couldn’t give voice to that fear, the fear he might have been dead. Because he wasn’t. He was safe! He could help her and Mum!
She saw his hand reaching toward her, so tiny in the crystal, yet she almost reached back just to feel the safety of his rough fingers and hardened palms holding her own hand.
“Are you safe, Crumb? Where is Symvalline?”
“I-I don’t know. Mum and I are in Arc Rheunos. There are people here who’ve helped me, but Da, Mum was-was taken.” But the face of the crystal grew cloudy, and he was fading. “Da!” she cried, but he was gone, and the light inside the memory keeper vanished.
S
he held the pendant tightly and shook it, hoping somehow it would bring him back. She could feel tears welling in her eyes, her heart seeming to swell into a hot, painful stone in her chest that threatened to drag her to the ground. Gritting her teeth, she promised herself she would not cry, not in front of this stranger in this strange realm. She became like her heart, stone, still burning but resolute.
“Salukis! Thank Mithlí, he made it back.”
Mura’s voice cut through the tenuous control Isemay wrestled with, pulling her from her pain. She looked out over the meadow and saw his form coming toward them, his wings making him look uncannily like a bruhawk. He landed beside them moments later.
After a brief quizzical look at Isemay, he spoke to Mura. “Is she okay?”
Mura shook her head faintly, and after a moment, Salukis went on. “We need to get to Deespora. I overheard Archon Tuzhazu speaking with the Vinnric woman. Deespora is right, after the Equifulcrum the Minothians are going to attack us.”
“You saw my mother?” Isemay jumped in. “Is she hurt? Is she in danger?”
“She was unharmed, but the Archon did not seem to like her much. They’re taking her to Everlight Hall to meet Akeeva.”
“Don’t worry too much, Isemay,” Mura tried reassuring her. “Arc Rheunosians, even the people of Minoth, do not believe in harming other living things. Your mother may be held captive, but they won’t hurt her.”
She saw the uncertain look Mura shot Salukis. “Then why,” she asked, “did he just say they were going to attack you?”
Both the Zhallahs’ faces grew uncertain then.
Without answering her, Salukis said, “Let’s get home, Mura.”
Chapter Five
The light outside had brightened and darkened twice while Symvalline was carted by wagon toward her next place of imprisonment, Everlight Hall, which lay somewhere within the mountain range. She could see very little through the narrow cracks between the planks of the wooden sides, back, and roof of the wagon bed. Locked away tight, her time was occupied by nothing but waiting to arrive.
For nearly the entire journey, the rolling of the wagon wheels and murmur of voices when her captors spoke outside had sounded closed in, as if they were traveling along a narrow tunnel. A ravine that led deeper into the mountain range, perhaps, though it had seemed endless. She’d overheard her Minothian captors call them the Tyrn Mountains.
Only one thing distracted her from the tedium of her captivity. She wasn’t alone. Her two companions, also prisoners, were a woman and her little girl. On occasion, she heard the Minothian guards speaking of another prison wagon as well. These mountain-dwelling Arc Rheunosians seemed to be quite adept at taking others captive. Tuzhazu had been vague when she’d fished for information about the Zhallahs she’d met in the valley. Had some of them been caught after all?
The woman and child with Symvalline had spent most of the first day and night huddled as far away from her in the wagon bed as they could get, as if she would infect them with the plague everyone in this realm was so clearly terrified of. Symvalline, too troubled by circumstances, had not tried to speak to them before, but as the ordeal went on, she decided there was no reason to let the silence continue.
“Lady Rheunosian, please understand, I am not going to harm you,” she said, trying to reassure them, troubled to be anyone’s source of fear. “I’m just a traveler from Vinnr, and a Knight Corporealis, duty-bound to serve the Verities and makers of our different worlds. Long before that, I was a healer. I don’t know what our captors have told you, but I am not a plague-bringer or anything like that. You don’t need to be afraid of me.”
She caught the woman’s eyes beneath the hood of the cloak she wore. They shone brightly, studying Symvalline, though she clasped her child a bit more tightly. After a moment, she said, “You’re a healer?”
“I am, trained by the Resplendolent Conservatum, though you probably don’t know what that is.”
The woman pushed her hood back, giving Symvalline a better look at her. Her skin was sallow, the same brown hue as the wood of the wagon, but tinged with a pale yellow. Even her irises shared the sickly color.
“Are you ill?” Symvalline asked.
The woman shook her head, then pulled the wrap that covered her child from the child’s head and shoulders. “Tulla is feverish. I fear she has…” She trailed off, but Symvalline knew exactly what the woman feared.
“May I?” she asked, beginning to scoot toward them.
The woman hesitated, then nodded assent. Symvalline put her wrist to the child’s forehead, then checked her breathing, looked into her eyes, and even had the child show her the inside of her mouth. The lighting was bad, but there was no doubt the child was ill. Her skin was yellowish as well, flushing red wherever Symvalline laid her hands. Unusually, different colors cycled along her body, too, from a weak blue to an orange-white, as if the child’s skin were a prism through which light was refracting into its many unique colors, though the little girl seemed to have no control of it. Along her cheekbones and in the hollows below her eyes, a redness that didn’t change color even when her hue shifted elsewhere was blooming, the edges becoming scabbed. Symvalline guessed this symptom would manifest on other parts of her body too.
“How long has she been like this?” she asked.
“Since just after the Deathless caught us outside the Aktoktos Gate. Three days ago. I’ve tried to tender her, but it doesn’t last. I took Tulla away from Minoth because…” She stopped herself, glancing guiltily at Symvalline, then went on. “Archon Tuzhazu questioned us about whether we’d had any contact with the Zhallahs, and Tulla grew sick shortly after that. They would have brought us back to Minoth sooner, but you arrived.” The woman gently caressed her child’s head, worry creasing the skin around her eyes and mouth. “I swear, we never saw a single one of those plague-bringers. I don’t know how Tulla could have caught it. And I haven’t got it.”
“Do you mean that the Zhallah people are the ones who spread this illness?” she asked.
“They are cursed. That’s why they’re exiled beyond the Aktoktos Gate.”
“I don’t understand,” Symvalline said kindly. “If the Zhallah can make you sick, why did you leave your home and make for theirs?” And why did the Zhallahs think Isemay and I were these plague-bringers?
“I wasn’t going to Maerria, where they live inside the Churss. I would have gone north, away from Minoth and the Zhallahs to raise Tulla myself.”
“Why can’t you raise her in your own city?”
That guilty look passed over her face again. “Because Mithlí the Everlight takes all the children to raise herself. Maybe I deserve to be punished for breaking the Everlight’s law, but I just wanted to be Tulla’s mother forever.” She grimaced sorrowfully. “Instead I’ve condemned her to death.”
The woman began to sniff, hiding her tears and hugging her listless daughter. Symvalline sat back, giving the woman room for her grief. She badly wanted to do something for the little girl, but there was nothing she could do without her medicines or a Fenestros. She watched the two for a moment, then decided she had to try something and began banging on the wagon’s wall.
“Guards. Guards!”
The wagon came to a slow stop, and a small round port in the wooden walls of their cage was opened in the front. A Minothian woman looked at her. “What is it?”
“This child is sick. She needs water and I need my medicine bag to try to give her ease.”
The woman eyed her for a moment, then slid the portal cover closed with a snap. The wagon bounced a bit as the guard stepped down from the front, and footsteps trailed away. Symvalline couldn’t make out the words but heard the murmurs of a nearby conversation. Soon, two sets of booted feet approached, and the lock and bar holding the rear wagon door were removed. The mother pulled her child forward to sit beside Symvalline. She seemed less afraid than cautious of her captors.
The Archon stood there, his face in full sunlight, making the dark
umber lines crossing his skin contrast starkly against his lighter complexion. His eyes gleamed at them, their color a silvery green unlike any Symvalline had seen beyond the hue that sometimes swirled in the bruhawks’ eyes when under Safran’s sway. His stare drilled into her, and despite herself, she was intimidated by the cruelty she could see in their depths. Or was it something worse, like a twisted and insatiable hunger?
“You want this, Vinnric?” he asked, holding up her herb pouch.
“This woman’s child needs treatment, she’s very unwell. I have things in my bag that could help her.”
“So, you’re a healer and a Verity servant?”
“I am. Please, there is nothing in that pouch that can harm anyone.” This was altogether untrue. Many of the powders and herbs, if properly mixed, could create effects that would lead to all sorts of unwanted outcomes—unwanted to the recipient. Such as the poison that tipped the darts of her arm-mounted crossbow. But they wouldn’t know that.
“That child has the Waste and is as good as Cosmos dust. Her mother”—he looked pointedly at the woman—“should have known better than to travel outside the safety of our boundaries. The Zhallahs are crafty and spread their disease in hidden ways.” He beckoned to someone unseen. “You can have water.”
“Please—” she tried, but the Archon had already paced away. She looked to the child’s mother. “I’m sorry. They are taking me to see Mithlí when we reach our destination. I will beg the Verity to remedy her. You have my word.”
Two small wooden drums of water were passed to them and the wagon door closed and barred. As Symvalline helped the woman pour a cup, she heard another conversation outside, held in quiet tones. The wagon jounced as the driver mounted the bench, then they began moving again. A short time later, the port to the driver slid open. A woman’s hand reached through, holding a stoppered container about the size of Symvalline’s finger.
The driver’s voice slid to Symvalline’s ears like a secret. “Give the girl a few shakes of this in water. It will make her sleepy but should help her suffering some. And say nothing about it. Nothing, understand?”
