Pillar of Ash, page 16
“We’ll have it as soon as we reach a Hask village,” he promised, still stretched on the ground. Reaching out, he scratched at Nui’s spine. She let her head flop over to look at him, and began to sleepily lick his ear. “Ugh. Not long now.”
Days crawled by, each night more uncomfortable than the last. By the time we reached the path down into the ravine, I was almost grateful. No more wind or blowing rain beating us from all sides. Just a jagged path, switchbacking toward a swift-flowing river.
One by one, my companions stepped down onto the path. Nui stayed close to me, picking her way with a surety rivaled only by the goats I glimpsed on the other side of the ravine, watching us blithely through a veil of drifting mist.
Berin went just ahead of me, shield slung on one shoulder. I eyed its stylized lynx design when I paused to catch my breath, walking stick braced and cool mist prickling across my cheeks.
The shield made me think of my mother and home and the vast space between this world and that. My heart contorted, longing for the quiet safety of my little house on the mountain, the simplicity of my days, and… Isik. He stepped out from the quiet corner of my mind where he always lingered, and I found myself combing through memories of our days—and nights—together.
Berin offered me a hand at a particularly narrow part of the path and I took it, feeling the damp and grit between his warm skin and mine. Thoughts of Isik retreated, and I smiled at my brother.
“Thank you.”
He ruffled my hair, which immediately stole my smile. I tsked and tried to bat his hand away.
Between lifting my hand and opening my mouth to rebuke him, I teetered backward over the foggy abyss.
Someone shouted. I planted my walking stick and balanced out at the same time as Berin grabbed my belt, pulling me into his arms. On the path below us Bara looked up through a veil of mist, mouth crooked in a breathless laugh.
The ground below him gave way. Sedi screamed. She lunged, reaching futilely over the edge after her husband. Ittrid and Askir closed on her from opposite sides, hauling her back to the ravine wall and pinning her there as she shrieked. I heard a crash off in the miasma, half-drowned by the shouts and Nui’s startled barks.
The hound took off, baying and scrambling. She nearly knocked Ursk into the ravine after Bara as she leapt from one switchback to another and vanished from sight.
I did not breathe. Did not move. Berin too was frozen, one hand iron on my belt.
Sedi quietened her cries with the back of one hand. Silence swirled around us in the thickening mist. Then, from just below in the fog, I heard Bara laugh—hysterical and relieved.
Sedi shrugged off Askir, desperation and hope written in her eyes. She shoved the priest aside and darted down the next switchback, then she too vanished.
We hastened after her. The trail switched one more time before the path abruptly leveled out. There, not three paces below the ledge he’d toppled from, Bara lay belly-up on his pack like an overturned beetle. Sedi was draped over him, scolding him while he laughed.
“I’m all right!” Bara flailed, and with Sedi and Askir’s help he sat up and disentangled from his pack. He put a hand on his chest, still battling to breathe between his laughs. “Gods below, I think I pissed myself.”
Sedi cursed and pushed her hair back from her face with pale, trembling hands. “You terrified me!”
“I’m sorry,” Bara returned. “I’ll never fall off a cliff again, I promise.”
She kicked him, and I closed in. “Let me look at you.”
Bara submitted to inspection, but proved to have no worse injuries than a bruised hand and winded lungs. “Still, we should rest for a time,” I told the company. “To make sure no new pains come, once the shock has passed.”
No one complained, and we dropped our packs.
We’d reached the bottom of the ravine. Leaving Bara under Sedi’s watchful eye, I picked my way down shifting scree to the water’s edge. The fog closed in behind me, but I saw Ittrid follow and could still hear the voices of our companions.
The river was deep and swift, sluicing through the canyon far too quietly for its obvious power. Its current disturbed the mist, causing it to billow back in eddies from the opposite bank—here revealing a jutting boulder, there a water-darkened ledge.
Ittrid elbowed me. Her eyes were wide and she looked upriver, toward the opposite shore.
There, across six paces of roaring, raging water, stood a… figure. Swaths of mist curled tightly about them, obscuring all features save pale, windblown hair, gathered back at the temples, and a strong frame. They perched on the top of a huge boulder, darkened by moisture and frothed with spray.
For an instant I thought they were Isik, but though the figure was tall, they were not distinctly male or female. No beard. No broad shoulders. No curve of the hip or rise of breasts.
I heard a choking noise and realized it had come from my own throat. I reached for the horn at my belt.
Before I could put it to my lips, the wind gusted and the mist cleared. We were left staring not at a person but an odd outcropping of rock, tall and vaguely human-shaped.
Ittrid let out a gasping laugh and pushed her hair back from her face. “Gods, I thought… I don’t know what I thought. It didn’t look like one of those creatures.”
Mist wafted back in, shrouding the scene once more. I shook my head, looking sheepishly at the Soulderni. “Maybe we’re a little skittish.”
Ittrid grinned wryly.
“Yske!” Berin’s voice called. “Where are you?”
We regrouped and, half an hour later, set off along the river. Ursk led the way down a discernible path, though whoever had built the way left no waymarkers. That was, until the road ended at a triangular doorway in the rock. The path turned into it and mist trailed across its darkened maw. At our backs, the river rushed under a lip of rock and vanished underground, this arm of the canyon at an end.
“Do you recognize these?” Askir asked me. I made out a series of runes in the stone, set in a row across the top of the triangle. “There’s magic in them.”
I paused. Since our conflict over the supposed rivermen and his questions about my newfound magic, we’d rarely spoken. Perhaps this deference was his way of apologizing. Or testing me.
I glanced at Ursk. “Has Fate shown you this?”
The Duamel examined the doorway without recognition. “No. But I knew there would be a tunnel.”
“You never mentioned that,” Askir said.
Ursk shrugged. “I thought nothing of it. It’s… simply the way.”
I wasn’t sure I shared Ursk’s blind trust of his visions. I raised my eyes to the doorway and glanced over the runes, inching closer. They were not easy to see—lichen grew on the stone and years of rain and floodwaters had smoothed and shallowed the markings.
I touched my Sight. Power sparked to life upon the stone, golden with a forest-green taint, dark as autumn pines. It outlined shapes that time and weather had obscured, bringing the characters into sharp relief.
They were a mixture of soft lines and gentle curves, natural shapes that made me think more of the forested world above than the harsh, rocky terrain of the ravines.
It took another moment, a few seconds of tracing my fingers along the lines, but I recognized them.
“These are woodmaiden runes,” I said to Askir. “I’ve seen them before.”
“Where?”
“Woodmaidens paint them on protected trees, or use them to mark paths through their forests,” I said. “Aita once took me to such a wood, in the High Halls. Thvynder allows some to live in the Upper Realms.”
“Woodmaidens?” Ursk looked curious. He glanced around, but the mist still obscured our surroundings. “There are woodmaidens here?”
“Were, I’d say,” Askir interjected. “This looks very old. What do the runes say, Yske?”
“They mark a way.” I shrugged. “That’s all I can recognize. But woodmaidens are not like rivermen. They only do harm when harm is given, and like you said, these are very old.”
Askir eyed the doorway for another long moment, then looked back to Berin.
“Into the tunnel it is,” Berin said and waved us ahead. “Does anyone have a torch?”
Ursk and Berin went first, the guide holding a Duamel oil lamp while my twin loomed behind him, one hand on the wall and the other on his sword.
After the triangular doorway, the shape of the passage changed. It became natural, though still high with angled sides—a divide in the rock, pried apart by time and water. It was silent but for the retreating rush of the river, the crunch of our feet on the stone, and the tap of Nui’s claws as she wove between us.
“This must flood… perhaps in spring?” Askir murmured, half to me, half to himself. He lingered at my shoulder, though whether that was out of convenience or comradery, I couldn’t be sure. He ran the tips of his fingers across the smooth stone as he walked. “Why would woodmaidens be down here?”
“They must have needed to cross the chasms, like anyone else,” I reasoned.
Askir was quiet for a moment, deep in thought. “Then they built this after the Miri road collapsed? I’ve been wondering how long ago that was. Aita gave you no clue?”
I shook my head. “She didn’t know about the collapse. The Miri have ignored the east for a very long time. Perhaps the Hask will be able to tell us more, once we arrive?”
“I’m not convinced we will arrive,” Askir murmured, so low I barely heard it, despite the confined space. “Not with rivermen and woodmaidens loose upon the world.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him, but the shadows were too thick to make out his expression. We’d discussed the creatures who killed Ovir enough for me to know there was no point in trying to convince him they hadn’t been rivermen. “You think they’re both still here?”
He shrugged. “We saw the rivermen. It would be foolish to assume the woodmaidens are gone too.”
The priest’s words settled on me like stones. “Aita should have warned me of all this,” I protested, only realizing I’d spoken when the words left my mouth.
Askir gave a soft huff, between laughter and disbelief. “If she didn’t know the road had collapsed, how would she know what’s living in these forests?”
* * *
The tunnel ended in another ravine, this one broader and brighter. A scattering of trees stretched toward a band of late-afternoon sky, and creeks and waterfalls wove their way through moss-thick rubble. Streams of birds poured in and out of the cliffs beyond the treetops and there was a gentle breeze, still cool and damp but not so invasive as the cold in the tunnel.
Deep in the night, I awoke to light on my cheeks, pale and soft. I cracked open an eye to see the light of a full moon shining down upon my bed of moss, oilskin, and blankets between Berin and the fire. Nui lay near Bara some way away, her shaggy chest rising and falling in steady time.
Slowly, my eyes adjusted. I stared up at the moon, round and whole. The gap between the sides of the canyon wasn’t broad from down here—soon, the moonlight would be blocked again.
Pain struck me like a wall of water from the dark, smashing the breath from my lungs and the thoughts from my mind. I felt a garrotte around my throat, hands raking my body, claws piercing my flesh.
Aita’s voice whispered on the wind, thin and distant in memory.
You will pay the price for your magic, at each turn of the moon. Blood will replenish it. Blood will stay the hand of death.
Still thoughtless, blind in agony, I pawed for my belt knife. There was no hesitation, no awareness of what this act meant—only the desperate need to save myself.
I slit my palm. Blood welled, but I was already in too much pain to feel it. I squeezed my hand, letting red droplets drain into the moss as I rattled out the name of a single rune. Healing.
My blood welled and the well of power within me refilled in a rush. No longer could I only feel its edges, hollow and empty. Now it brimmed, amber and warm and suffused with the scent of lavender and the taste of pine. My heart hammered, and my senses swam with the headiness of it.
With the barest effort of will, the magic overflowed. I felt it rush through my veins, gathering every source of phantom pain, and extinguishing them.
Slowly, the pain retreated—and with it, the well of power emptied again, every scrap given to the effort of keeping me alive. Blinking tears from my eyes, I stared listlessly at the half of the moon as it disappeared over the other canyon wall. Those on guard hadn’t noticed my distress— they prowled the edge of the firelight, and Berin was fast asleep.
Blood will stay the hand of death.
Ovir’s healing had truly come at a cost, one that had wracked my own body. Would it have killed me, if I hadn’t bled myself?
Carefully, I reached into my pack, pulled out a clean cloth, and started to wrap my hand. But it had healed too. In its place I had a new scar, fine and thin and terribly familiar. It looked like the scars on my parents’ hands and forearms. Symbols of a forgotten time. The scars from the river creature’s teeth on my fingertips faded in comparison.
The reality of what I’d done crashed over me. I’d just shed my blood for Aita, gained her power, and used it to save myself. In my panic to live, I’d done what none but the Iskiri Devoted had dared to do for decades. I’d acted as a priestess of the days before Thvynder, when my mother had bled herself for Eang and my father for Frir.
It was all terribly clear to me now. If I shed my blood, Aita’s magic would return to me. I could heal myself. I could heal others and snatch them from the jaws of death.
But I could never, ever use it again. If I did, come the next moon, I’d have to relive every wound I healed. To survive it I would bleed myself again, and the cycle would continue. I would willingly place myself back into the shackles the old Miri had forged and Thvynder had broken.
It did not matter that Aita had been reluctant to give me this power. It didn’t matter that she refused the title of my goddess, and I her priestess.
I could not use her power again.
But I knew I would.
Twenty-Two
Time skewed in the damp and cool of the ravines. We found a trail heading east down a long arm of the canyon, and though it was old and scattered with debris from rockfalls, it showed signs of recent tending. Smaller boulders and rocks were rolled to the sides, and we found the remnants of fire pits, seasons out of use.
“The Hask?” Berin ventured, toeing the rocks lining the edge of one fire pit.
Ursk only shrugged. We kept our guard up and continued on.
Soon, however, the way became more treacherous. We scrambled through crevices and topped boulders the height of Albor’s Morning Hall. Our progress was painstaking and slow, punctuated by slips and falls that kept me on edge. I fell into a sleep of pure exhaustion the first night, but by the second my muscles were too sore and the rock too hard. I dozed fitfully, and was so tired the next day that I almost cried when we faced clambering over another enormous boulder. But I grabbed the rope Esan tossed down, the same as everyone else, and made the climb. I descended the other side with equal grudging determination, clattering down onto loose rubble to join Berin, Esan, and Sedi. Nui emerged smeared with damp and lichen from her own more subterranean route, and flopped down at my side to pant.
“Look!”
I cast my gaze back up to the top of the boulder, some ten paces above where Seera was partially silhouetted against the gray sky. She pointed down the canyon as the others still on the rock gathered round, their voices distorted with the distance. But whatever they saw clearly encouraged them.
Seera looked down at us, smiled a rare, bright smile, and cupped her hands around her mouth. “We’re almost out!”
An arrow tore past her head. She jerked back just in time, nearly sending Ittrid toppling. Someone shouted a warning, I grabbed Berin’s arm, and an arrow slammed into my thigh.
I gasped and staggered, but was otherwise too stunned to make a sound. More arrows flew, clattering off rock and sinking into flesh. Nui bolted, barking wildly. Berin dropped his pack and jerked his shield free, its boss glinting dully in the meager light.
The shield came over our heads and Berin’s arm slipped around my waist, holding me up—though I couldn’t think why. I was wavering, my left leg threatening to buckle. Why? It was just an arrow, just a short span of wood pinning my tunic to my leg. Surely I could still move. Surely…
Another arrow clipped the rocks at our feet, and my haze broke.
“Berin,” I wheezed, mind filled with blistering awareness. I couldn’t run. I still felt no pain, at least not in the stabbing, screaming sense I expected—but waves of heat began to build inside me, a brooding, pulsing agony that, once it broke, would consume me.
Voices shouted, echoing and bouncing off the rocks—Esan and Seera, trying to coordinate. Bara, screaming Sedi’s name. The savage, roaring bark Nui reserved for rivals and predators.
“I know.” Berin’s arm was a vice around my waist, his other hand keeping the shield between us and the arrows. He tried to shift in front of me, but another arrow clattered off the stone at our feet. “Get behind me.”
“Where are they?” I could barely find my footing on the rubble and with each small movement, the wave of pain reared closer.
“I don’t know,” Berin said. “Stay behind me!”
Two more arrows thunked into the wood. I shifted as much as I could, placing my lower body in front of Berin’s unprotected legs.
“No,” I panted. My breath was coming short now, and my wounded leg trembled. But one thought was clear, simple and unyielding—I’d rather take a dozen more arrows than see Berin take one.
Berin hefted the shield higher over our heads. Light angled over my face and I squinted, taking in our surroundings in that brief moment— Bara and Sedi struggling through a narrow cleft, Ittrid streaking across the top of a massive boulder, Ursk scrambling down the side of another.
