Pillar of Ash, page 9
The forest seemed to hold its breath as we entered, Nui bursting ahead of us in ecstatic leaps. Songbirds trilled in the distance, swooping and rising with the rush of wind in the leaves. Despite the thickness of the forest there was still enough breeze here, near the edge, to chase away the humidity, leaving us in a sanctuary of mottled sunlight.
For those first few paces, my heart rose. I thought that, perhaps, this journey would not be so challenging as I’d expected. Then the trees closed in, the canopy clotted, and the wind choked out. The warning drone of mosquitoes rose from the forest floor on a wave of moisture, and the heat wrapped around us like a sodden blanket.
I sighed—short and brusque, so as not to inhale the insects—and reached into a pouch on my pack. I pulled out nine bundles of herbs on leather cords and held one out to Ovir, the closest of the companions.
“Here,” I said as he flattened a mosquito against his bare, muscled forearm and tugged his sleeve down. “This will keep them away.”
“Thank you?” the man said, looking confused, and sniffed the bundle. He made a face. “Gods, this smells terrible.”
“To you and the insects,” I said with a smile and put my own around my neck, then picked up my pace to pass them to the others.
In a few moments, the buzzing of mosquitoes retreated to a threatening hum. The sickly-sweet smell of the herbs followed us in a cloud, mingling with the sharp musk of sweat and damp earth.
I caught Seera glancing at me, hard eyes hiding a begrudging gratitude. I suppressed a satisfied smile.
* * *
Bara offered me a steaming cup of tea and sat beside me in the entrance to one of our three tents. Around us our companions slept soundly, their breathing interrupted by occasional snores. The forest itself was restless, rife with the repetitive call of a night whirl, the distant brush of wind against the canopy and the drip of moisture.
A misty rain had come and gone during the late hours of the day, leaving the forest even more damp and humid than it had been in the daylight. Mosquitoes continued to assault us in whining clouds, but I’d set a bowl of more herbs in the edge of the fire. Between the scent and the smoke, I hoped we would not be exsanguinated in our sleep.
“I promise it’s only a little chicory and dandelion in the tea.” Bara nudged me good-naturedly with his shoulder. He spoke low so as not to wake the others. “No sweet tear.”
I suppressed a wry smile and took the cup. Settling back against my pack and Nui’s sleeping bulk, I said, “Your wife hasn’t spoken to me today.”
Bara shrugged, puffing steam from the surface of his own tea. “Berin’s threat to send us back terrified her. She’s grateful to you, but she won’t admit her failure. She’s too proud. And she believes in this venture too much.”
I cradled my cup between my hands and watched his expression. The company had dismissed my pondering that the bear had been Aegr, though Ittrid and I still had our doubts.
“What does she believe about it?” I asked.
“That opening up the east can only benefit our people,” Bara replied. “We’re all too young to remember what life was like before peace with the south, but we know the stories. Our people are healthier now. We live longer and the world is unfolding around us, full of new stories and new traditions, new skills and languages. Gods below, even the color of our skin is changing.” He held out a hand, showing off the light brown of his skin, bronze in the light of the fire. His mother had been Soulderni, and his father half Algatt, half Eangen. “We’re becoming a new people, in a way, and we—Sedi and I—want to be part of that change. It’s a new age. We’d like to be remembered in the next.”
“What if you don’t come home?” I pried gently, trying to find the edges of his resolve. “Do you have children?”
“No. And we’ve made our peace with that. All of us here know that we might die. But it’s worth the risk. The adventure.” He looked at me across the space between us and searched my face. “Why are you here?”
“Berin,” I said simply. I raised my cup to take a sip and, finding it still too hot, set it aside—out of the reach of Nui’s dream-twitching paws.
Bara looked genuinely startled. “That’s all? Not even a little curiosity?”
A great tree. Shadows in the black. Movement in the Unmade, beyond the edge of the world.
“I am curious,” I admitted. “But I’m more determined to get Berin home alive. I’ll do the same for all of you.”
Bara gave a small smile. “I appreciate that. Perhaps you could start by recommending a tea that keeps sleepy husbands awake.”
“I suppose I could do that,” I smiled, a little smugly, and glanced out at the night. “I need to find a bush.”
“Scream if something tries to eat you. I’ll do what I can.”
“That’s all I ask.”
I disentangled from Nui and slipped out of the camp into the night. Moss cushioned my feet as I searched for a spot close enough to see the firelight but far enough to claim some solitude, and saw to my needs.
I tied my trousers and resettled my tunic, along with the horn my father had given me. Other than my movements, all I heard was the occasional drip of drying leaves.
I relished the solitude. It wasn’t that I was uncomfortable sitting watch with Bara. He was kind and his company pleasant. But I was used to a life alone and undisturbed; the constant interaction with others drained me, and the tension of the day and the group’s overall disapproval had yet to fade. I needed to be alone for longer than a moment in the bushes, but doubted I’d have the opportunity for months to come.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I picked out more detail—twigs bobbing with lingering moisture, a patch of ferns glistening with damp, and a vine of pale flowers lacing up a tree patterned with soft white light.
That light was growing stronger, and with it many more sources appeared among the trees. They clung to roots and branches and laced up trunks like veins. It was white foxfire like I’d glimpsed with Isik in the High Halls, though here it was interspersed with more normal shades of blue and green. The longer I looked the more I saw, until the entire forest around me seemed to glow. It reminded me of my dream of the woman by the Headwaters, how the foxfire had entwined the living trees around her head.
But the former had been a dream, and Isik had been unconcerned in the High Halls. Yet there was something uncanny about this moment. And there seemed to be a pattern to the light: a direction. It flowed, ever so slowly, toward a singular source.
That source, I discovered when I crept forward, was a dead tree. Here the light condensed, tracing each crack and crevice of the ancient, peeling bark in fine lines. It pooled in carvings, outlining runes I instinctively understood. They were Soulderni and Arpa. I knew neither well, but these specific ones were etched into my stifled mind— runes for binding and suppression, warning and protection. They and the foxfire laced almost the entire tree, right up to its lofty branches and down to the tangled roots that tripped my feet.
A Binding Tree. My heart labored in my chest, struggling for each beat. This was Nisien’s Binding Tree. It looked whole, unbroken, so there should be no need to fear an unbound demon. But why hadn’t Askir noticed it?
“Yske?”
I whirled. A shadow moved, then a familiar face materialized, barely illuminated by the foxfire—a handsome face with a short beard, tanned skin, and eyes like Esach, Miri of Storms.
“Isik?” I stared at him, stunned. My nerves still sang from the presence of the tree, and the sight of my friend failed to calm them. “What are you doing here?”
Isik approached, unfastening a pouch from his belt as he did. The short sword I’d given him was at his thigh and he looked as travelworn as I did.
“Did you follow us?” My words were more accusation than question.
“I suppose?” He held out the pouch, his eyes traveling over my shoulder to the tree. “Aita sent me with a gift… Is that a Binding Tree?”
“Yes, I just found it. But it looks whole.” The thought of Aita sending me a gift was just enough to distract me from the tree, and even from Isik’s unexpected arrival. I took the pouch slowly. It was so light, it felt empty. “What is this?”
He shrugged, still looking at the tree. I pressed up onto my toes and leaned into his line of sight. “Isik, what’s in here?”
His eyes tracked to my face. Whatever expression I wore made him crack a smile, fondness filling his eyes. My earlier disgruntlement couldn’t withstand that look. I dropped back down into my heels and relaxed.
“It’s a leaf,” he said, unhelpfully.
“There are a lot of leaves in this world.” I gave him a flat look and opened the pouch. Inside was a fold of cloth, smelling strongly of beeswax. Inside that was a single leaf, as Isik as said, stained dark with something I couldn’t identify.
He peered with equal curiosity. “Aita said to tell you it’s the same gift she gave Liv to heal the Great Bear, and she wanted you to have it.”
Excitement was my first reaction, swift and bright. But: “Aita didn’t give Liv a gift.” I lifted the leaf so I could look at it more closely. “Liv stole it.”
Isik startled. “I didn’t know that.”
I shrugged, maintaining a calm exterior, but my heart pounded. “That just makes this a greater honor, I suppose?” An understatement if there ever was one.
Uncertainty entered Isik’s eyes now, but he wasn’t used to Aita forcing him to consume mysterious concoctions, placating him with vagaries. I was. Aita would always explain eventually, guiding me through the properties of a given thing as it affected my body—usually as I threw up or stared at my tingling hands, or watched non-existent butterflies cavort around my cot.
I picked up the leaf and put it on my tongue, as I knew Aita would intend. It tasted acrid and I was tempted to spit it out, but resisted. I swallowed the leaf and bore the bitter aftertaste on my tongue.
Isik grimaced, and I laughed.
“Don’t be so worried,” I chided, trying not to screw up my nose at the taste. “I trust Aita with my life.”
He frowned at me. “Perhaps I’m more concerned that you just ate a mysterious medicine, given to you by a man in a dark forest, in the shadow of a Binding Tree. What if I’d come out of that tree to trick you?”
I snorted. “You don’t look like a demon. Demons are hideous and desiccated. You are…” I reached out to poke at his bicep, then squeezed it. It was soft at first, beneath the damp fabric of his tunic, then he flexed and my fingers found themselves stretched over a knot of hard, lean muscle. I met his eyes, pretending there wasn’t a flush creeping across my cheeks. “Well, you are not.”
“Thank you,” he said graciously. I dropped my hand and we watched one another for a moment, then a thought seemed to distract him. “I thought you had a priest with you. Why didn’t he warn you about the tree?”
I brushed a hand across my face, half to clear it of sweaty hair and half to erase the feeling of Isik’s muscle beneath my palm. That was a good question. It was Askir’s job to manage threats of a more spiritual nature, but he hadn’t found the Binding Tree. It was moments from our camp and he hadn’t even sensed it was here.
First Sedi and Bara had fallen asleep on watch, then our priest hadn’t sensed a bound demon.
“We’re going to die out here,” I muttered.
That alarmed him. “Don’t say that.”
I waved him off with a hand. “It’s all right. Aita gave me a leaf.” I grinned. “We’ll be safe now.”
He stared down at me, incredulous, until I laughed and he sighed. “All right. You should go back to your fire.”
“No, wait,” I protested. “What else did Aita say?”
He shrugged and looked toward the camp, but I could tell that his nonchalance was forced. Isik was too easily read. “She said it was the same one she gave to Liv, and that you’d know how it worked. That’s all. Why haven’t your companions come looking for you yet? I don’t like this, Yske.”
I pushed thoughts of Aita and Liv aside for now, though I continued to worry at them in the back of my mind. “Our company of heroes isn’t as sharp as they could be, I’m realizing. Come sit by our fire?”
Isik slowly shook his head. “I need to catch up to the rain if I’m to get home in good time. And I… I realize there would be questions about me if I showed up in your camp.”
He was right, I knew. He could summon rain and control the wind under most circumstances, but his power also came from those elements. Once the earlier rain got too far away, his power would go with it, and he could be stranded in his physical form.
Besides, a Miri would cause a stir in our camp, and there would be questions I couldn’t or didn’t wish to answer.
“I understand,” I said, disappointed.
Isik took a step back, mirroring my change in mood. His low voice was a rumble in the dark as he added, “I do wish I could stay. This is… unwise. Humans, traveling alone in a place like this.”
In his words, I heard an echo of long-held Miri sentiments. Miri’s long lives and great power often led to abuses, but in some it overflowed into a sense of duty to weaker beings. Esach was one of these, lofty and removed and yet pouring out her strength into the harvest each autumn. Estavius was another, giving up his very self to protect and stabilize the Arpa.
This Miri mentality didn’t precisely chafe me—there was a practicality and usefulness to it that I couldn’t deny, not after so long at Aita’s side. But when it came from Isik, it made the distance between us feel too broad. It made me feel not like a friend, but a duty. It reminded me why our romance had died, and it tainted the warmth in my heart.
Thankfully, Isik didn’t dwell on the topic. He said, “Whatever Aita’s gift was, she was discreet. Perhaps it’s something your mother and the priesthood would not approve of. I would not mention it to the others.”
I nodded slowly. I could feel his departure looming and it made my throat tighten. “Thank you, Isik. Please send my thanks to Aita, and my regards to your mother.”
He watched me for a long moment, thoughts hidden behind his eyes, then stepped forward and embraced me. I let myself be enveloped in him, in the scent of wind and sweat and rain, in the press of muscle and the solid warmth of his frame.
Then he let go, stepped back, and vanished into the forest night.
Twelve
The following weeks passed with little interruption, save for a pack of wolves pressing too close to camp and Esan nearly being gored by an angry boar. The wolves fled when we banked our fire and the boar we butchered, the night’s watches smoking the meat to preserve it for the hot days to come. I tended Esan’s wounds, and he healed with remarkable speed.
The heat was intense. We sweated through our clothing, but didn’t dare shed it in the clouds of mosquitoes. I ran out of herbs and couldn’t find opportunities to replenish them, so we soon became mottled with welts.
Still, we forged ahead, uncovering mossy milestones, skirting swaths of marsh, and fording murky rivers.
I did not speak of the Binding Tree Askir had missed, though I feared that might be a grave error. Covering for a sleeping watchman was one thing, but ignoring a deficiency in our priest might be even more deadly. Yet the further we trekked, the less relevant it felt—Askir proved his capabilities several times, warning us off an ancient burial mound and a seemingly natural spring that turned out to be rune-cursed. So I added the missed Binding Tree to my cache of secrets, and plodded on.
Most of my thoughts were occupied by the unknown potential of the gift Aita had given me. Would my wounds heal faster now? Could I heal with a touch? I considered experimenting on my companions when they brought me their ailments, but that seemed unwise. I could cut myself, but the memory of the scars on my mother’s hands and arms stopped me. Shedding blood to test Aita’s gift felt far too much like a sacrifice to a Miri, and that I could not stomach. I would simply wait and see.
The month waned and the weather became more consistently overcast. The rain never fell hard, but its frequency ensured both us and the forest remained in a constant, miserable state of damp. I pulled burrowing insects from my companions’ flesh, treated a passing fever and made salves for Ittrid, whose skin broke out in a terrible rash.
I did not complain, no matter how difficult the foraging became, how terribly my back ached, or how badly the veins burst across my shoulders from the straps of my pack. I grumbled only to Nui and the trees as I gathered firewood, seeking the consolation and solitude of the forest before dusk. I hunted for wild carrots, berries, and mushrooms, and filled my folded tunic with burdock and lily roots. I replenished my herbs whenever I could, and hung them to dry beside my sweat-soaked tunic each night.
Finally, we topped a ridge to see a clear, bright river, toppling over shoulders of rock smoothed by time and plunging into shallow pools. The trees gave way, permitting the river and falls to sparkle in the light of the sun.
“Gods below, I’m having a proper bath,” Seera declared, already starting down the hill with a skidding, balancing step. “Leave me behind if you have to!”
Berin glanced at the sun overhead, but there was a smile on his sweaty face. “We’ll stop for the day,” he decided, though Seera was already out of earshot, dumping her pack on a sunny expanse of rock and pulling her tunics over her head.
Cheers and laughter accompanied the rest of the party down the hill and onto the rocks. Nui bounded after them, knocking a half-naked Ovir into the pool before joining him with a great splash.
Berin and I descended more slowly, he holding out his hand to steady me as I skidded through last year’s deadfall and emerged from the shade of the trees. On the sides of my pack, bundles of herbs and wild carrots swung.
“You look like a bush,” he told me fondly. “And you smell like a sickbed.”
“It’s a sacrifice,” I informed him with a weary grin.
We shrugged off our packs a little away from the others. All our companions save Askir were in the water already. I watched the priest leap a narrow arm of the river and vanish back into the trees to scout.
