Hearthfire, page 17
She read and reread Lyah’s scroll, but found little of use for her present situation. Carin ignored the fear that spread through her with the twinges of heat in her palm. She hadn’t meant to do what she did to the tinder, whatever it was. She had no control over it, yet it had happened, and Carin felt sure she could do it again.
Carin began breaking down camp before dawn had fully arrived. By the time Ryd woke, she had caught and cooked three fish. Her eyes felt sandy from lack of sleep, but she doubted even then that she would be able to rest if she were to close her eyes and lay down.
The hum in her body did not abate.
The next moon took them into the foothills of the Mad Mountains, leaving the Bemin behind to follow one of its tributaries northward away from the river and away from any possibility that they might encounter villagers from Bemin’s Fan venturing upriver to fish. Each night when it rained, Carin lit a fire with her newfound ability. When the ground was dry and no rain fell, she let Ryd do it, and each time they stopped on those nights, she made sure to replenish their stash of tinder. She didn’t think he ever noticed that on those rainy evenings, she managed to light their fire with little effort. If he did, he gave her no indication. The sense of being followed at a distance never waned, and when Gather Moon became Cultivate and then Sustain, they found themselves in the cooler air of early autumn, the trees in the distance beginning to turn yellow and orange and white.
For those long turns and the waxing and waning of the moons, neither Ryd nor Carin spoke of where they would winter. Neither had ever spent the cold months in the mountains, nor had they spent them without solid walls and hearth to warm them. They would need some form of shelter, and they would need it soon.
They passed an Early Bird apple tree covered in buds one day in the late days of Sustain, and both stopped beneath its branches, looking up. Dyupahsy, Carin thought, wondering which of the buds would bear fruit and which would be blown off by the wind to die.
“First frost is coming,” Ryd said. The buds would open on that first frost. The Early Bird trees were the best indication of when the day of first frost would arrive; their buds quickened over the turns before, finally flowering with snow-bright petals that glistened and sparkled with frost crystals. If Carin had to guess, she’d say these buds had maybe one turn, maybe two, before they opened to the sun.
For the past two moons, they had set aside a third of what they caught, be it fish or small game, tuber roots or berries. They had dried things when possible and stored it in their packs. Carin guessed that they had enough food to last them for one moon, which she knew wasn’t enough. Their rucksacks could hold more, but as they moved into the mountains, Carin wasn’t sure how much weight they could bear. The saiga would dissipate the higher they climbed into the mountains, and even if Carin were to shoot one of them per turn, there was no way they would be able to carry whole sides of saiga up the mountains.
“We will need to find a shelter for the winter,” she said softly. “Soon, before the snows, so we can hunt during the animals’ fall forage.”
Or we will starve.
The words hung in the air unsaid, but Carin knew Ryd knew them just as she did.
“I don’t know what lies ahead,” Carin said. She pointed north. “We could find a glen like Haver’s, though I have never seen one like it on a map. We could also find nothing and have to build a hut ourselves. There will be heavy snowfall here.”
When she said the words, she felt their weight like the feet upon feet of snow that would soon bury these mountains.
Ryd was quiet for a long moment. “Are we going to survive?”
“I don’t know.” Perhaps that was why there was never any tell of Nameless returning to villages. They couldn’t survive their first winter in the mountains. Mountains to the north or mountains to the south—it would make little difference.
A man stepped out from behind a maha tree, an arrow drawn in his longbow. “I don’t think you have to worry about surviving the winter.”
High above their heads, a hawk screamed and winged its way southeast.
LYARI FELT cold. Beyond the chill of the autumn air, deeper than the numbness in her bare toes on the wooden floor of Merin’s roundhome, she felt a seed of ice take up residence in her chest. Merin spoke, her words calm and measured, but Lyari wasn’t listening.
For the first time since accepting Merin’s invitation to become her apprentice, Lyari thought she had made the wrong choice.
The older woman had spread out scrolls all over the trestle table, weighted down by geodes that sparkled in the firelight from the hearth. The scrolls told a story Lyari had already heard, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at them. Beyond the old soothsayer at the table, Jenin sat in a rocking chair, hys eyes closed, body still.
Hys presence had become a constant for Lyari, something she could count on. She knew her lover was dead, and yet seeing hyr was welcome, wanted. A reminder.
Merin was telling her about the spell, the Hearthland spell that had given their land such bounty. It wasn’t new information, but Lyari knew she ought to be listening. The spell was meant to last five hundred cycles, and if Merin’s calculations were correct, it would only last perhaps three more now. It would be their job to reinvoke the spell, to find the sacrifices necessary to ensure the bounty of the Hearthland for five hundred more.
When Lyari had told Merin that she could do no magic, Merin had waved her hand and said she needn’t fret about it. That if Lyari could not find her catalyst in time for the reinvocation of the spell, the sacrifices would serve as the necessary catalyst. Because of that, Lyari had spent the past two moons studying all the magical theory Merin could teach her. Like now, where Merin sat droning on about the balance of forces and the drawing of will from within oneself.
Lyari traced a design on parchment with her charcoal stick. The rune for the Sustain Moon, a single vertical line with two horizontal crosspieces, the upper crossbar less wide than the lower. Even. Steady. Sustain. She traced over it again, then once again until the black line seemed to devour all light from the fire like a hole.
“You should be listening, Lyari.”
Lyari started from her introspection, sheepishly meeting Merin’s gaze. “I’m sorry, Merin.”
The older woman harrumphed and rapped her knuckles on a scroll on the table. “Magic is useful even if you cannot apply it just yet,” she said. “Even being able to recognize it for what it is can be the difference between life and death.”
Any mention of death brought Jenin to Lyari’s mind, and she looked past Merin at Jenin where sy still sat in the chair, hys eyes fluttering open to meet hers. Sy raised hys finger to hys lips, as if to say, “Ahsh.”
Whatever magic brought hyr back to Lyari, Merin clearly could not see.
“Do you know who killed Jenin?” Lyari asked suddenly.
Merin’s gaze turned cloudy, and she looked at the hearth, where the dancing flames reflected off a row of glass bottles on the stone. Cordials, Lyari knew, of hibiscus and iceberry and sweet honey mead. “We would all like to know who killed Jenin,” Merin said.
Lyari took that answer for what it was—not an answer at all. She knew, somewhere deep inside her, that Merin knew who had killed her lover, but she knew just as deeply that Merin would only tell her once she thought Lyari was ready.
Which was why Lyari would have to find out for herself.
She turned back to Merin to ask a question, but the old woman’s eyes had gone distant, her pupils contracting to black points. A moment later, they resumed their normal size, and she started, a look of satisfaction creeping across her face.
“What is it?” Lyari knew soothsayers had ways of getting information; she had, after all, overheard Merin’s conversation with Harag, who had been in Bemin’s Fan at the time. But these were not secrets Merin had yet shared with her.
“Just a bit of good news,” Merin said. “Now. Concentrate. I’d like you to tell me the necessary steps for restoring the hearthstone spell.”
Two hours later, Lyari entered her—formerly Carin’s—roundhome with an aching head and a sore back from sitting up on Merin’s bench all evening. Jenin walked at her side, as usual, but did not touch her. As Lyari readied herself for bed, Jenin sat on the edge of the mattress to watch her.
“Why did you ask who killed me?” sy asked, curiosity lighting hys face in the flickering lamplight.
“I want to know.”
“Did you ever think to ask me?”
Lyari looked at hyr, frowning. “I have asked you.”
“I didn’t say I’d tell you.”
Jenin’s smirk was infuriating, but Lyari couldn’t help the futile chuckle that escaped her throat. “I need to know who it was,” Lyari said.
“You’ll find out.”
“Will you help me?”
Jenin was silent for a long moment, then sy patted the mattress beside hyr. Lyari went to hyr and sat, meeting hys gaze with eyes that filled with tears unbidden.
“Merin is teaching me magic,” Lyari said.
“I know. I see your lessons.”
“I will use it to find your killer.”
“Magic has many more uses than simply that.”
“It’s not simply anything,” Lyari told hyr. “I need to know.”
“You have hardly even spoken to my brother,” Jenin said.
“Dyava?” Lyari’s eyes widened. “Did he—”
“Of course not,” Jenin said, hys face an ever-changing sky.
Jenin’s fingers brushed Lyari’s chin, a flicker of consternation in hys eyes. Lyari knew that look. Jenin had often looked that way when Lyari had missed the point of something sy was saying. Just then, though, Lyari didn’t care. She felt only that touch.
Simple, tiny touches were all she ever got from hyr now, like the kiss of a ghost. Lyari remembered the long afternoons they had spent on the Bemin’s banks fishing or simply lounging about talking about the future. Their future. It had been too much to ask to get that future, it turned out. She missed those days, back when Jenin’s chest was solid beneath her head, when hys arms were solid around her shoulders, when hys lips were solid against hers. Lyari wanted to cry, wanted to bury her face in Jenin’s shoulder, but she had tried that before to no avail. She had found only empty air, and she needed so much more than that. Looking into Jenin’s eyes, she could not bear the thought of speaking to Dyava and seeing his, much the same, alive.
“I will find your killer,” she said aloud again.
But Jenin was already gone.
RYD FROZE at the sound of the man’s voice cutting through the stillness of the foothills. The hawk’s loud cry still echoed in his mind, and for some reason, that sound had given him even more terror than the sight of an armed man with an arrow pointed directly at his heart. Four more people stepped out from behind trees, and suddenly Ryd wanted to apologize to Carin for not believing her when she said they were being watched.
She reacted before he did, nocking and drawing an arrow and loosing it toward a woman to her left. Ryd dived to the ground at the dual twang of bowstrings, and he felt an arrow whistle by his face even as he heard a scream. Another one of Carin’s arrows sprouted from a man’s throat, blood spurting. A woman came running at Carin, and she loosed another arrow into the woman’s chest, then a third arrow that sank into the woman’s stomach. The attacker fell to her knees, and Carin kicked her in the face.
The first archer had another arrow nocked and aimed at Ryd, but seeing two of his people down, he turned it toward Carin. Ryd rushed him, darting back and forth the way he’d seen rabbits try to avoid a predator. The man’s bowstring twanged again, and Ryd threw himself to the side. The arrow caught his tunic, and a flash of hot pain traced the outside of his arm. One step to the left and the arrow would have punctured his heart.
Carin got to the bowman before Ryd could, knocking him backward with her hands about his throat. Ryd unsheathed his belt knife and hurried to her side, not sure what to do. His tongue tasted of bile, and his vision swam. The cut on his arm burned, and he looked wildly around. Someone grabbed him from behind. His knife skittered from his grasp, landing with a thud on the ground.
“Carin!” He gasped her name as his attacker dragged him backward. Spots swam in front of his eyes, and even though he knew he ought to be feeling fear, fear for his life and fear for Carin, what he felt was shame. He couldn’t fight off a swarm of sweaty children; what made him think he would ever be able to fight grown adults?
Carin released the throat of the first archer and stalked toward him. Ryd’s feet dragged in the dirt, and the blade pressed up against his throat.
“Don’t move,” said a voice behind him, breath hot against his ear.
The blade dented the sensitive skin of Ryd’s neck. Panic filled him. Was this what Jenin felt just before sy died?
When I say move, move.
It sounded like Carin’s voice, but her lips weren’t moving. She suddenly dropped to the ground, her hand closing around something. Ryd’s knife.
Move!
Her voice bellowed through Ryd’s mind, and he threw his weight backward into the body of his attacker. A loud thump sounded by his head, somehow wet. When the pressure at his neck fell away, Ryd fell backward onto the ground, breathing hard. His knife protruded from the forehead of a woman, a trickle of blood falling sideways over her eyebrow.
Something wet dribbled down his neck. He raised his hand to the skin, and it came away red.
Carin’s face drained of color, and she launched herself past the dead body to his right, slamming into someone. Ryd scrambled to the side, gasping as Carin rained down blows on a man half again her size. The air seemed to grow colder.
A flurry of motion caught his eyes, and Ryd tried to snatch his knife from the woman’s forehead beside him as Carin grappled with the larger man. The knife was stuck fast, and whoever it was wasn’t running toward them; he was running away.
The final man Carin was hitting didn’t hit back, but he put his hands up to cover his face. “I yield!” he yelled.
Just like that, and as quickly as it had begun, it was over.
Four bodies littered the ground around them. The two Carin had downed with her bow—one of them took his last breath as Ryd watched—and the third lay still by the maha tree, his neck the wrong color, almost blue-black like an old bruise. His hand was curled in a tight claw, a densely woven leather cuff on his wrist, intricate and well-formed. Ryd stared at that detail, then looked to Carin.
“How did you do that?” Ryd asked Carin.
Her chest heaving from the exertion, she scrambled to her feet, placing one foot on the mouth of the woman she’d killed with Ryd’s knife and jerking the hilt. It popped free with a sickening squelch, and she fell to her knees beside the final attacker, pressing the blade against his throat.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Why are you trying to kill us? We’re not anyone.”
“You’re Nameless,” he said.
Ryd felt as though he had wandered into a conversation he didn’t understand. “How did you know that?”
The man’s gaze flickered toward Ryd, contempt showing as clearly as the sun on water.
“Who are you?” Carin said again. She gave the blade a push, leaving a smear of the dead woman’s blood on the brown skin of the man’s throat.
“I am Ras va Cantoranth,” he said. His eyes looked beyond Carin, in the direction the final attacker had fled. “Or I was.”
“What do you mean, you were?” Ryd felt as though the world had begun spinning around him, and he couldn’t stay upright. He pulled himself over to a doubloon tree and leaned against its silvery bark.
The man didn’t answer for a long moment, but then Ryd saw him swallow, making the knife blade bob at his throat. “I was Ras va Cantoranth, but with my companion’s speedy…exit…I have just become Nameless, just as you are Nameless.”
“What are you talking about?” Carin still held the knife to Ras’s throat, but her hand shook on its hilt.
“If you take that blade away from my neck, I will tell you. Unless you would rather kill me; it may be a mercy.”
Carin blinked, and Ryd sucked in a breath. The dribble of wetness still flowed down the side of his neck, and this time he raised his hand to it again, tracing it upward. His fingers touched his ear and something stung. Something there…dangled. When he brushed at it, he felt a plucking sensation and something fell onto the ground.
“Ryd?” Carin looked at him, alarmed.
Ryd pointed at the hunk of flesh, then held out his hand, his fingers covered in blood. He felt sick.
Carin’s eyes widened, and she turned back to Ras va Cantoranth. “If I remove this knife from your throat to tend to my friend, will you guarantee our safety?”
“Killing you now would accomplish nothing,” he said. “Jahd will return to Bemin’s Fan before I could catch him, and he will get news to the soothsayers. I am already Nameless. I can either choose to die now, or live a little longer and die later. We are on equal footing, you and me.”
Carin laughed, a quiet, empty sound.
Ryd got the impression that Ras va Cantoranth was speaking only to Carin, but he couldn’t bring himself to think that smarted any more than the ear that had been partially lobbed off.
Carin removed the blade, wiping it on the tunic of the woman she had killed with it. She then knelt in front of Ryd, pushing his hair back from his face with rough fingers.
“Your ear,” she said.
“It’s on the ground,” Ryd said stupidly, pointing.
She looked at the lump of flesh, now coated in dirt and blood, then she pushed his chin to turn his head sideways. “The bleeding is already slowing. It was just the lobe and a bit of cartilage,” she said.
“Just the lobe.”
“Are you expecting to walk in circles now?” Ras asked, tone snide.
“Shut your mouth, or I will sew your lips closed,” Carin said absently. Ryd trembled. She couldn’t actually mean that. Over her shoulder, Ryd saw Ras blanch, and Carin met Ryd’s gaze. A small smirk appeared on her face, and he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. She joked.
