The Company of Glass
Page 24
‘It is a haunted road,’ he whispered.
Pallo started to mutter something about a haunted road being preferable to an unhaunted mountainside, but Kassien spoke over him. ‘I knew we should not have set foot on it. The Seahawks are not an imaginative people, and if they say a thing is magical, they usually have evidence to support their claim.’
Xiriel frowned and straightened. ‘Are you saying those riders were only visions? I felt the wind they made. The Knowledge is never so vivid.’
Anatar gave a cry. ‘Don’t speak of it!’
They turned their attention to him. He was clutching his shoulder where the arm had been and rocking from side to side.
‘You’re feverish,’ said Pentar, and removed his rucksack to search for medicine.
‘The standard they carried,’ Anatar said, teeth chattering. ‘It was furled, but I could see part of it. There was a rose. I’m sure of it.’
No one said anything for a minute.
‘Quintar’s Company …’ Xiriel tried to catch Istar’s eye, but she was staring off into space, trying to re-envision the riders and pick out which one among them had been her father. It had all happened so fast.
‘Ghosts!’ Pentar’s voice became a whisper. ‘Those men are all dead!’
‘Not all,’ amended Istar grimly. For it was not her father’s face that had registered in her memory but the face of the leader. She tried and failed to equate the ferocious warrior with the gloomy man she’d seen on the tower roof at Jai Khalar. Again she went through each of the riders in her memory, looking for the one that must have been her father. But she’d had only a glimpse – not enough to say she’d identified Chyko. She set her jaw. ‘I’m going back up there.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Kassien said firmly, grabbing her arm. ‘Show a little sense. Your own kinsfolk who occupy this region avoid it like a curse.’
‘That was Quintar’s Company. My father was among them. And it leads us to Jai Pendu. Why should we tramp through this forest when it could carry us straight to our destination?’
‘No,’ Xiriel said. ‘It’s not that simple. You might end up anywhere, at any point in time. The White Road is not an ordinary road.’
‘I don’t care!’ Istar cried, turning in Kassien’s grip and leaning back towards the road. Kassien shook her. ‘Istar, stop it.’
‘Shut up, Kassien. You’re just afraid of the Knowledge.’
‘No, Istar.’ Xiriel was insistent. ‘Think for a minute. If that was Quintar’s Company that just rode by, we might have stepped into another time.’
‘Exactly!’ Istar said. ‘Let’s go back. Let’s help them. Let’s find out what happened to them …’
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she knew they were foolish.
‘It’s far too dangerous,’ Xiriel said. ‘Besides, they were going the other way! Our mission is to go to Jai Pendu. You cannot follow your father and fulfil your goal at the same time.’
Angry and frustrated, Istar fell silent. She knew she was being childish, but the thought that Chyko’s ghost had just ridden past her and there was nothing she could do about it – it ripped up what little self-composure she’d retained after the long march in the rain.
Still holding her arm, Kassien said, ‘We’ll look for somewhere to camp. Anatar can’t go on like this. Tomorrow we’ll find our way down to the plateau.’
‘Why were they riding the other way?’ Istar mused, ignoring his attempt to distract her. ‘They never rode back towards Jai Khalar, did they? Tarquin said they were all lost at Jai Pendu.’
Xiriel adopted a patient tone. ‘That’s what I’m trying to say to you, Istar. You must understand that the White Road isn’t a road at all, it’s a piece of the Liminal. It doesn’t go in a straight line, and it doesn’t make sense. We know from experience that when it appears in Jai Khalar you can take it to Jai Pendu, but we have no idea what might happen if we stepped on it in the middle. And Istar – hey! Istar, look at me!’
Glowering, she did.
‘The riders didn’t see us, Istar. Pentar was flagging them down, but they didn’t even notice we were there. So we couldn’t have spoken with them if we tried.’
Istar turned away, her throat full of tears, struggling to master her emotions. When Kassien led them away, she didn’t resist this time.
Silent and a bit unnerved, they picked their way along the valley for another mile, until the road was well out of sight and the sound of falls could be heard not far downstream. There was a dip in the slope where several large boulders had come to rest in some landslide long ago, now surrounded by a dense growth of hemlocks. It was the closest approximation of shelter they had seen since leaving the Sekk’s cave, but even so it was a miserable place to camp.
Kassien set himself to looking after Anatar, and Xiriel crawled into the depths of the hemlock grove, where the ground was miraculously dry. He took out his axes and began chopping dead wood.
‘Should you use your weapons to such purpose?’ Istar queried, surprised.
‘They were not meant as weapons in the beginning,’ Xiriel stated matter-of-factly.
‘It’s just that you Wolves are usually so proud of your iron. I’ve known Wolves to give their axes names and treat them as sacred.’
Xiriel continued hacking at the branches neatly and efficiently.
‘I’ve never given much credence to Clan superstitions. I’ll sharpen these when I’m finished. They will be as good as ever for battle. I’m not afraid of offending the Wolf spirits.’
‘Don’t you practise the Animal Magic?’ said Istar, and then bit back her words. Clans never discussed their magic with each other. She had been startled into the question by Xiriel’s cavalier attitude towards what she had expected him to revere.
He replied, ‘No, I don’t believe in the Animal Magic. I am a man, not a Wolf; I practise pursuit of the Knowledge.’
Istar hesitated. She realized that in all the time she’d known Xiriel, she had never spoken of personal matters with him; they only ever spoke of the Knowledge, and even that rather dryly. Because he was so reserved, she had come to take Xiriel as a font of information independent of people and society. Besides, Wolves were notoriously proud and aloof, secretive about their ancestral practices and protective of tradition. You didn’t simply approach a Wolf and ask him, for example, about the intricacies of his Clan’s death rituals or refer to his sacred feasts – unless you had a death wish, that is. To hear him dismiss the traditions of his own Clan came as a shock, and Istar wondered what else she didn’t know about Xiriel.
‘You must not have been very happy growing up among Wolves,’ she ventured. ‘It’s said that your Clan has more Animal Magic than any other in Everien.’
‘I have heard it said. But I have never experienced anything that convinced me the Animal Magic is anything more than men’s wishes and fears. Whereas the Knowledge can be seen and touched; it is provable.’
Because she had been adopted into the Seahawk Clan by Quintar, Istar had no Seahawk blood in her, and therefore no Animal Magic. Yet she believed it existed, and wished she did have some capacity for it.
‘If I’d been born a full-blooded Wolf, I’d never have turned my back on the Wolf magic,’ she averred.
Xiriel tossed a last piece of wood on to the pile and slid the axes into his belt. ‘You can’t turn your back on what isn’t there.’
The wood Xiriel had cut provided them with too poor a fire for cooking, but the space he’d cleared let them crawl under the lowest branches of the dense trees, where the ground was slightly drier. There they huddled together in two groups. Istar found herself with Pallo and Xiriel, who took from his pocket the lump of glass he’d found that morning and examined it furtively. She knew he was thinking of Jai Khalar, and the light on the towers, and his beloved documents and artifacts. They leaned against each other for warmth.
‘Have some nuts,’ Pallo said amiably, chewing. ‘We can pretend it’s roast duck and herb butter.’
‘What else do you know about the desert, Xiriel?’ she asked with her mouth full. ‘I need something to think about while I’m drowning on watch.’
But as it turned out, her watch was never called.
‘Istar!’ Kassien’s voice brought her upright even before she was awake. Blearily she took in the fact that it was morning.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
His face was a scant six inches from hers, and she batted him away. There was a nasty cramp in her middle back from being curled against Pallo’s pack.
‘I fell asleep on watch, and now Pentar’s gone.’
‘Shit.’ Istar unrolled herself carefully. ‘How much time do you reckon’s gone by?’
‘Two hours, I guess. Maybe three.’
‘What about the other one?’
‘Fevered.’
Istar searched his face for signs of reproach that she’d insisted they press on, but found none. ‘I’ll find Pentar,’ she sighed. ‘Start thinking about geography. We need to find a village or something and unload these two. They’re slowing us down.’
‘I’m making a fire,’ Kassien said in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘Our equipment will rot if we don’t get it dried out.’
‘Fine, whatever,’ she groaned, standing and stretching. Xiriel mumbled in his sleep and pulled his cloak over his eyes.
Istar left the camp and cast about for some sign of Pentar, brushing midges away from her head as she passed through a static cloud of them. It didn’t take long to pick up his trail: he’d left slide marks in the mud, and after that she was able to trace him through the flattened vegetation. The thick bed of pine needles released water like a sponge as she picked her way down the steep decline, and the morning was loud with dripping leaves, bird calls, and the crash of water. The blended sound of many freshets and newborn brooks racing down the valley sides had eased her into sleep last night, and her ears were conditioned now to accept the constant noise. But as she descended through waist-high brakes of brilliant fern, the sound of water deepened and seemed to fill every cavity of her head, numbing her. She rounded a curve in the valley and the roar assaulted her straight on. Here the river descended into an ever-deepening chasm in a series of cascades that would have been impressive under any circumstances but now, swollen with rain, overwhelmed the senses. The air itself was full of water, and bird calls became feeble overtones unable to compete with the falls, which appeared in flashes of white movement through the lush growth of forest. Trees had fallen across the chasm and made stark cruxes against the white background of water. The opposite side of the valley was all but invisible behind its wall of green; Istar, trained to think tactically, automatically indexed hiding places and ambush points as she considered the advantages and disadvantages of moving in such a landscape, where it was difficult both to see and to be seen. On the whole, she decided that she would rather be concealed here than exposed on the mountain, even if it was difficult to be sure they were alone. If they couldn’t use the road, they could at least follow the watercourse all the way to the lowlands.
She spotted Pentar standing and looking over the falls with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t hear her coming, and when his peripheral vision picked her up, he jumped in his skin. He seemed different today, she thought. Older. Beaten.
‘Go back to camp,’ she said. ‘You should not be wandering this way.’
‘You don’t trust me.’
‘No. I don’t.’
‘I have remembered some of what happened,’ he said. ‘You know. When the Sekk caught us. You asked me about it.’
She shifted uneasily. There was something odd and eager about his manner.
‘Have you been standing here since the nighttime?’ she asked.
‘No.’ He waved a hand up the slope. ‘I went back to the road. At night it seems to glow. I wondered if it was really haunted.’
‘And?’
‘I saw no more riders, or anything like that. But I remembered the Sekk who caught us. She was just a small girl. She sang to us.’
Istar didn’t like his faraway expression. ‘Go back to camp,’ she said again. ‘Shall I escort you?’
He gave her that pained look again. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ he blurted. ‘I couldn’t help it. I tried to resist, but Istar, you can’t understand.’
‘Yes, I can. You have to be strong, Pentar. The Sekk know your weak points. I can’t excuse you for falling victim to them. If you aren’t careful, it could happen again.’
He searched her face. ‘Strong. But you’re female, Istar. Don’t you understand that there are more things in the world than raw strength of will? No, don’t glare at me. I understand you have lived as a man since your father … you know. Since he was lost. I have heard of you. But surely you want to let it go, sometimes. Surely you understand how it’s possible to surrender?’
She looked at him pitilessly, unable to disguise the fact that she despised him. ‘If you surrender when the Sekk are around, you deserve to die. Your life is forfeit, Pentar. That’s how it is. Your weakness is a danger to us all.’
His eyes smouldered. ‘Kill me, then. Push me off the edge. I don’t object. Honour won’t let you, will it? But you want to. You want to. I can see it on your face. Aren’t you meant to create life, not destroy it?’
‘I’m meant,’ she told him with a tone of finality, ‘to see out Jai Pendu and bring back an Artifact for the war against the Sekk. You’re meant to go back to camp, like the prisoner you are. Anatar is sick. He needs you. Kinsman.’
She said the last word with a depth of hostility that surprised her. She didn’t know exactly why she was so wary around Pentar, but she kept her eyes on him as he turned and resignedly started back toward camp. She waited until he had disappeared in the foliage before beginning her descent to the river.
A quarter of an hour, she told herself. She needed that much time to herself, to think, to be alone, to let down her guard. This need for solitude must explain her attitude towards Pentar – that and her general level of physical discomfort. Her arm still ached. She had slept in wet clothes and though her body heat had dried the innermost of them, Kassien was right about all the leather gear being soaked. She felt clammy and unkempt and cold, and looked forward to partaking of Kassien’s fire. She wanted to get clean, and dry, and then to eat; after all of that, maybe, she’d be able to think clearly about their next move.
She picked her way down to a quiet backwater near the foot of the waterfall. Deer shot away through the forest as she approached, and insects touched the water and left silvery concentric circles on its black surface. Stripping off her gear, she plunged in headlong. The cold was shattering: she gasped, kicked, and felt her heartbeat triple. She swam across the pool, favouring her injured arm, submerged, and came up with head pounding, shuddering as the air hit her bare skin. The air was hot by comparison. She dragged herself on to a flat, sunlit rock, breathing hard as she squeezed the water out of her hair. She combed her fingers through her matted locks and refashioned the braids. She stretched out and closed her eyes, thinking of nothing until her internal clock warned her that a quarter of an hour was past. She sighed.
A snip of movement from the cliff above caught her eye and she leaped to her feet. She could hear nothing over the water, but she could see some kind of scuffle happening in the bushes near where she’d stood with Pentar. She reached for her knife. Kassien appeared above. He had Pentar in an armlock and was cuffing him lightly about the head and shoulders. Alarmed, Istar got dressed and climbed back up to the top of the falls.
‘What’s going on?’
By this time, Pentar was sitting on the ground, hands tied behind his back, blindfolded. He turned his face away when he heard her voice. Kassien was grinning lopsidedly. ‘I thought you said you went to look for our little friend,’ he greeted her.
‘I sent him back to camp.’
‘Oh? You were gone so long I came to see what had happened to you, and who do you think I found having some fun at your expense? So to speak.’
Istar cursed and blushed, and Kassien burst out laughing. He pointed at her and clutched his sides. ‘You should see your face!’ he crowed.
‘What was he doing? What did he see?’ It was all Istar could do to stop herself kicking the miserable Pentar where he sat.
‘He saw enough,’ Kassien said, still laughing. ‘He’ll think of nothing else all day and most of tomorrow. But I knocked him down a couple of times for you.’
‘I would rather have done it myself,’ Istar growled.
‘Ah, don’t be such a prude. He and Anatar have had a bad time of it. You can’t begrudge him a lucky glimpse or a bit of a—’
‘That’s enough,’ she snapped, and then laughed in spite of herself and shrugged. It was obvious that the more she made of the incident, the more Kassien would laugh.
Kassien managed to compose himself. He turned to Pentar and said sternly, ‘You haven’t appreciated the freedom we’ve given you, Pentar. Now you will be treated as a prisoner.’
Her kinsman said nothing, and Kassien pulled him to his feet and pushed him in the direction of camp. Kassien flashed her a warm look and a conspiratorial smile, which she didn’t return. Instead, Istar sighed and trailed after them at a distance. She didn’t know whether to be angry or flattered; and then she wondered why she should have to be either. It wasn’t fair. If she’d only been born male, she would never have to deal with any of this.
By the time she got back, Pallo and Xiriel were giggling as they dried their equipment over the fire, and Kassien eluded her gaze. Istar joined them without acknowledging their mirth, and after a while they desisted. But Istar spent the day in a foul mood, even though the walking was the easiest they’d done since leaving Jai Khalar. She had every reason to be in high spirits: the forest made them feel safe, and Pallo shot a pigeon every few hours, until he had a bundle of them dangling down his back.