Blood and Ember, page 5
“Wise. I would do so when you reach the mountains and not before,” Gwarill said. “Physical distance is less…distant…where matters of the gods are concerned, but it still can have influence. The closer to the Battlefield you are, the more likely it is to work, and the farther from Thyran you get, the safer you’re likely to be.”
Olvir bowed. “I hear and treasure Sitha’s wisdom.”
“I have faith in your valor, Sir Yoralth. Sentinel, stay behind a moment.”
After Olvir left, Gwarill remained silent until they heard his footsteps growing fainter. Then he picked an object up off one of the cots and handed it to Vivian. “This is from Mourner Dale, chiefly, though I contributed as well.”
It was a carving the size of her palm, made of smooth-sanded pale wood: yew, Vivian thought, though she was no expert. A woman’s weeping face had taken shape under the carver’s knife. Painted tears ran down her cheeks, black and red alternating.
Powerfully enchanted, said Ulamir, or as much so as human arts can manage on short notice.
“He’ll need to touch it,” said Gwarill, “and swear to his identity. Neither of us can be certain what it will do if that oath is false in any sense, but there will be some reaction. You understand.”
“I do,” she said.
She had knives in her boots and up her sleeves, Ulamir by her side, and the gods’ gifts in her speed and strength. In addition, she knew Olvir both in and out of battle. That was all the advantage any of them were likely to get.
“His death serves no purpose unless we’re desperate,” said Gwarill. There was a consolation in the reminder, but then he went on, stripping even that away. “But the nearer you get to the Battlefield, the more likely that the fragment will simply return there rather than going to Thyran. I can’t tell you the moment when the risk balances toward one course of action or another, Sentinel, or the signs that his potential for destruction outweighs his use. We must all trust your judgment.”
Duty had been heavy at times. Command had weighed the world. There was no comparison for this.
Vivian only nodded and found all the words she had. “If the need arises, I won’t hesitate.”
Chapter 8
The palisade faced the forest with a rough but almost seamless front studded by makeshift towers. Large forces had to approach from the back, since rock outcroppings blocked the side, but small parties could use a door beneath the rightmost tower.
Wind stirred Vivian’s hair as she waited there, watching the sky for Emeth’s messenger. Olvir stood by her, and near them Kev, the soldier who hadn’t been wounded during the assassination attempt. All of them were trying to act as if this was no different from any other hunting expedition. Vivian hoped she was succeeding. The others weren’t.
If the twistedmen can read your countenances, you have a great deal more to be concerned about, said Ulamir.
There was that. Her father had used to say that such-and-so flaw in appearance would never be noticed from a trotting horse. Vivian supposed it was the same thing, only likely to be more lethal.
Olvir was the first to spot the speck in the blue sky. “There,” he said, pointing as it grew bigger. “Is that what I think?”
“Likely,” said Emeth. She held out her arm. The spot soared downward, taking on wings, a long tail, and a head with a high crest. Up close, it was lavender-blue above and white below, with black markings. It regarded all of them with an expression that Vivian thought was derisive as well as suspicious.
The twilight wren landed on Emeth’s wrist, emitted sounds like a rusty gate swinging back and forth, then waited, head cocked sideways.
“Thyran’s keeping his creatures an hour or so away,” she told her human companions. “Building siege ladders, it looks like, which means trouble for us soon. I’ll spread the word once we’re back. But this is our moment.”
“Then let’s use it to best effect,” said Olvir. He opened the door.
Vivian and Emeth went out first, not running but moving briskly over the plantless swath of ground between the palisade and the forest.
The land was dark, bare, empty except for the four of them. Their feet pattered across the packed earth. No voices escaped the wall. Noises from the forest were still distant. It was an alien feeling, but an advantageous one—any attacker would give them plenty of warning.
Slowly the fortress, Vivian’s home for the past year, receded. The trees loomed up ahead. Darkness spread under their leaves. That was a point in their favor, too, but Vivian had to remind herself of the advantage.
“Head left,” said Emeth quietly. “There’s a game trail. Takes us through some underbrush.”
They veered to one side, passing beneath the first branches that the defenders had left intact. Vivian spotted the trail Emeth had mentioned, which was barely more than a slightly worn spot in the undergrowth. Most animals had stopped coming so far out months before.
She took the lead, Olvir falling in behind her. Branches were their greatest danger at first, and Vivian used Ulamir to great effect, slicing off any bit that threatened to put an eye out or snag on their clothing.
As they went on, alert for movement on any side, their passage did get easier. Game was scarce here, so close to both humanity and the twistedmen, but elk, bear, and larger beasts had roamed freely once. The path still bore the tracks of their passage. Moreover, the deeper shade farther into the forest killed off most of the underbrush.
It would have been a pleasant walk in other circumstances. Leaves were unfurling on the trees that weren’t evergreens, blue sky occasionally showed through the cracks above, and sunlight filtered down in small patches. Alert as Vivian was, her body responded favorably to new sights and sounds, to freedom from the same walls and people she’d been looking at for weeks, and to the chance to stretch her legs without actively being in danger of losing them.
The body was fundamentally illogical. There were many times when this was unfortunate, but a few when it came in handy. Trouble would be in good supply in the future. For the moment, there was the forest, the day, and for some variety of last time, her friends.
Vivian kept her sword out, kept watching the trees for movement and listening for sounds, but let her chest ease and her breathing deepen. When a smile snuck onto her face, she let it linger there.
All was not well. It never was. She’d learned, over the years, that it didn’t have to be.
* * *
Vivian’s shoulders had a slightly jaunty set to them as the group went onward, Olvir noticed. He wasn’t observing her most of the time, trying to scan the forest for threats instead, but she was ahead of him. Forming an impression or two was inevitable.
Therefore Olvir noticed that Vivian walked as though she were really on a hunting party on some noble estate rather than the middle of hostile territory. He also noticed the firm roundness of her backside and the length of her pleasantly curving legs, clearly outlined by tight gray deerskin, but quickly brought his attention back above her waist, doing his best to be respectful.
They hadn’t had to travel much when they’d worked together before, so Vivian’s long, light stride hadn’t made an impression on Olvir. Now he took note. Emeth had something of the same pace she did, which meant it was likely part of the Order of the Dawn’s training, but Emeth was shorter, her body more angular and her motions choppier. She darted from one spot to the next, while Vivian glided.
Granted, Emeth also had a shorter journey in front of her.
It wasn’t very long, in fact, before she stopped and held up a hand, bringing the other three to a halt. They stood in a small bare patch, not quite big enough to be a clearing worth the name, with spots of dark-green moss and yellow-green celandine breaking up the brown of the dirt.
Emeth reached into a pouch at her waist and came out with a palm full of wheat kernels. Looking up into the trees, she pursed her lips. The sound that emerged was exactly like the calls of greenwings that Olvir had been hearing every spring of his life. A young member of that species promptly flew down, ate a few of the kernels, and sat on Emeth’s wrist.
The Sentinel let out another series of chirps and trills. Vivian chuckled. “Sure, she can talk to every creature but the nobility,” she told Olvir and Kev.
“Why would I want to?” Emeth asked, not taking her eyes from the bird until it flew off, its feathers matching the celandine almost perfectly as it rose against the forest’s shadows. “With luck, this won’t be long. They’re some of the quickest around by day.”
“We must seem very ponderous to them,” said Olvir.
“Oh, yes. I’m a slug to most of the creatures I talk to.”
“Do you talk to slugs, Sentinel?” Kev asked.
“Tried a few times but didn’t get much of a response. Birds and bats are easiest of the wild things. Wolves aren’t bad either, but not useful right now and probably asleep.”
“I wouldn’t mind a wolf or two for company,” said Vivian.
“You know they wouldn’t go with you.”
“No?” Kev asked, though he hadn’t looked like he liked the idea at all when Vivian mentioned it.
“Beasts don’t understand about Thyran. His Twisted hunt them for sport when they can catch them, so wolves might attack the bastards when they encounter one another, but leaders far away make no sense to them. They wouldn’t come fight beside humans or seek out Twisted to kill. And I can’t make animals—or anyone—do what I want against their will. That’d be Gizath’s arts,” Emeth added and spat through her fingers in a gesture of aversion. Kev did the same.
Vivian made the fourfold sign instead, and so did Olvir. It was a reflex after twenty-odd years. He was more than halfway through before he thought, and then hesitating would have drawn attention.
He went on, alert for any odd sensation, then felt foolish when none occurred.
Naturally. He’d been making warding signs almost his whole life, and all that time he’d been…
Possessed? Infested?
A variety of words had suggested themselves to him over the last day or so. He’d never quite managed to distract himself from them, no matter how much he tried to concentrate on preparation instead.
Silence was all but impossible in a forest, even one as inhabited as the woods near the Serpentspine Range were these days. All four of the people standing there stopped talking, though, stifled not just by awkwardness but by mention of the enemy behind Thyran—the enemy that, Vivian and Olvir knew, was partly among the four of them.
The woods provided refuge, as they often had for Olvir, with a patch of gold-streaked blue mushrooms at the bottom of a tree. Gathering them was a straightforward task, one that kept him from trying to tell if Vivian was watching him. “Coins-in-the-ocean,” he said, because the quiet had taken on too much weight. “They let you go a little longer without water.”
“You should take them, then,” said Emeth. “No wells where you’re going.”
“We don’t know that,” said Vivian.
“None that I’d want to drink from. I talk to frogs, but I don’t want to be one… Ah,” Emeth said. Olvir heard the motion of wings in the air, then chirping.
When he rose, with the mushrooms wrapped in a cloth, the greenwing was just taking flight from Emeth’s arm again.
“Keep on the path a little longer,” she said. “It’ll split around a big dead oak. You’ll go right. He doesn’t see Thyran’s forces out there. Doesn’t mean a few might not wander that direction for sport.”
“Thank you,” Olvir said and bowed.
“Keep your nose clean, Sir Paragon,” said Emeth. “Stay out of the bars and the brothels if you can manage it. Ember, come back before Kat gets used to bossing me around.”
“I doubt I can manage that turn of speed,” said Vivian with a small smile and a suspicious shine in her eyes, “but I’ll do my best. Be safe, both of you.”
That was all they had time for. The bird’s report had been true in the moment it had flown over Thyran’s army, but gods knew how long it would stay so. Without another word, Emeth and Kev turned back toward the camp, continuing to watch the undergrowth along their path.
Only Olvir and Vivian remained.
Part II
Our losses in the fire are naturally a setback. The fire itself, nonetheless, bodes very well indeed. If the Heart, newly incarnate and in a feeble infant’s body, could cause so great an effect, what may He not be capable of when properly grown and trained? Surely those present fulfilled the roles our god gave them by allowing this demonstration of His might—the might of but a fragment. We should not mourn them but rather honor their sacrifice.
The treachery of our servant is another matter. Even now we seek to find him. We will retrieve the Heart and its host. We already have taken steps to ensure no further such defections—and our manservant will learn correction at our hands.
—Janayal Verengir, Notes (In the Custody of Tinival’s Temple, Heliodar)
Those peoples in the forest beyond Klaishil are warlike and vigorous, for so their lands do make them. Sundrie creatures inhabit those woods, and many are fierce and will prey on man as readily as other game. My guide speaks of the greycat, nine feet long, which slips between shadows to seek its meals. It fears no fire, and its coat in most places is dense enough to turn all blades but those wielded with extraordinary strength.
He tells of other beasts as well…
—Bestiarie of the North, Author Unknown
Chapter 9
They took the path as silently as possible. Vivian found the need for quiet a relief. Conversation had been fine while they’d been with the others, but too much awareness had swiftly filled the space Emeth and Kev had left. All she could have come up with to say in the first moments of their absence was either Fine day for a suicide mission, isn’t it? or So, if you were to measure it from one to ten, how treacherous are you feeling today?
It was better to stride along, listening to birds calling to one another, making sure that the rustling in the trees came from nothing larger than squirrels, and covering as much ground as she could at a step without putting herself in danger of tripping. Sentinels healed far faster than normal people, but a broken ankle would be a hindrance.
The oak Emeth had described loomed ahead before long. To the left, the path they’d been on kept going, as narrow as always. It widened on the right. Vivian could spot the remnants of flat stones beneath the ground cover. A hundred years ago, a road had been there.
That gave them better footing but almost certainly meant increased danger. Packs of twistedmen often strayed from Thyran’s main forces, seeking food or amusement. The road would be as convenient for them as it was for Vivian and Olvir.
She watched the gaps in the trees carefully, alert for a glimpse of red, skinned flesh that would signal Thyran’s normal forces or the rot-bleached white that meant his scouts. Ulamir’s hilt was solid in her grip, the sword’s balance a comforting known as it had been since nearly childhood.
In life, I was wont to travel this road, said Ulamir. We remember each other yet. I cannot say how far out I would sense the presence of the Twisted, but I suspect it would stand out to my senses before even your vision, O Fireshaped.
Vivian sent silent thanks. Communication through that method was never complete from the Sentinel’s side, but it got easier the longer a bond with a soulsword lasted. There were some rewards to being old.
The Heart-Host travels well, said Ulamir, making Olvir sound like a type of dried fruit. A relief.
It was. Once, he and Vivian had worked together when undead were attacking a village, and they’d joined forces again when a man had summoned demons to kill off his family’s other heirs. Neither had involved travel, and the knights were generally less mobile than the Sentinels. How Olvir would manage on the road had been one of her many concerns.
He didn’t tromp, despite his size and armor, and he kept pace with her easily. It was an excellent start.
No few years have passed since we’ve traveled with companions. Never have we taken them from outside the Order.
It was a novel experience, Vivian agreed. Olvir could defend himself as well or better than she could, depending on the foe. He’d been at war as long as she had. Despite acknowledging that, she kept wanting to make sure that he was all right. The knights aided those in distress, which meant fighting as often as not, but they weren’t the hunters the Sentinels were, nor were they as used to Gizath’s monsters.
His nature would sorely tax any who bore it.
And then there was that.
The road split again. The path they didn’t take was broader and in better shape, though that was a relative term. It went to Klaishil—the city where Thyran had made his then-final stand and been caught out of time, the city where Darya had found Amris a hundred years later, the city from which the whole damned mess had started again.
For Vivian, Olvir, and Ulamir, the trail led away, much further into the past.
* * *
Sticks crunched between Olvir’s boots and ancient paving stones, giving forth sounds that had made him flinch the first few times he’d made them. He walked as quietly as he could, but he was a large man in armor. He could only help so much—and so, as he went on, he’d put what he couldn’t control out of his head, breathing in the steady four-count that he used during temple services until his footsteps blended into the forest’s general noise.
The walls of his new world were mixed shades of green: lighter shades of unfurling leaves against the jagged darkness of pine and fir, dull lichen hanging from the trunks and deep-green moss coating rocks. Brown and gray appeared in patches, with the brighter colors of flowers or birds occasionally flitting through, then vanishing as Olvir or what he was seeing moved on.
