Curse: The Dark God Book 2 (16 page)

Eventually, he told her it was time to take a rest and broke contact. She could still feel where he had held her, and she could still feel the workings of her soul. It was like suddenly finding you had a new limb.

“You will practice that until it’s as natural to you as breathing,” he said. “That one skill alone will save your life many times over.”

“Why don’t they teach that earlier?”

“Because the Grove follows the techniques used by the Divines, and the Divines don’t want their dreadmen learning much lore. But we’re not tools of the Divines, are we?”

“I think you’d be hard put to accuse the Creek Widow of being a tool.”

“True enough,” he said.

She looked at him. “So if you’re not of Hismayas, then what are you?”

“We can talk about that another time. You just remember that the closing defense not only protects you with weaves in general, but it’s required to use your mother’s weave safely. When you walk, you open your doors, and you must be able to shut them again. Now, I think you need to begin to learn one more thing. I want you to put the weave on. Have you learned how to give and take Fire?”

“We were just beginning that.”

“There are a number of ways to quicken weaves. Some require one method, some another. This weave, if I’m not mistaken, just needs you to feed it Fire.”

Sugar put the necklace on.

“Can you feel the weave’s pattern?”

“River’s tried to help me with this, but the patterns make no sense.”

“Just be calm. Open your doors.”

“There’s nothing.”

“Feel.”

Sugar concentrated on the weave. “It’s a tangle.”

“Focus on the tangle,” he said. “See if you can’t follow one thread.”

Sugar focused. She found a thread, lost it, found another. She tried to follow this one, but it kept slipping from her just as it had every time River tried to help her in these last few weeks. She sighed heavily. “I can’t do this.”

“If you say you can’t, you never will. Why do you think you should be able to do this hard thing on the very first try?”

Above them the moon had come out. A wind had also picked up, and she felt a chill. “It’s not my first attempt.”

“Why should you expect to succeed on the tenth, fourteenth, or even twentieth try? Where is that written? Keep at it. If you can find a thread, you can learn to feel the pattern. Once you do that, you will find the weave’s mouth. And then it’s just a matter of sharing your Fire.”

Sugar concentrated one last time, but the threads slipped away. “I’ll try,” she said.

“Good,” he said and stood, his eyes glittering in the moonlight. “Very good. I will tell Argoth it appears Shim’s army will soon have itself a ferret.”

* * *

Sugar walked with Urban back to her cellar. At the doors, he bid her goodnight. Then she hurried inside to get out of the chill and shut the door behind her. The cellar was pitch dark. She listened for a moment and heard the slight snore of the Mistress. She also heard the patter of small feet somewhere off to the left behind the barrels, which meant Legs must have opened the cage to let the ferrets out to do their work.

She tiptoed over to her bunk and sat down on it, holding the weave in her hand. She couldn’t quite believe she was going to walk in the world of souls. She thought of her mother and father—would she be able to find them there? She sat up straight. Was that possible?

Something stirred in her bed. “Talen was by,” Legs whispered.

“I saw,” she whispered back.

“Left you some wine.”

That was thoughtful of him. There were a number of other girls who talked about him. He’d certainly been enjoying himself with that sailor’s daughter a few days ago.

“I think the Mistress drank half of it,” Legs said.

“Figures,” she said.

“So?” Legs whispered.

“You should be sleeping,” she whispered.

“What did your foreigner want?”

She took a breath. “He wants me in his crew.”

“The crew nobody sees?”

“I saw them.”

“I don’t know if you should trust this Urban. I overheard River and Ke talking about him. They themselves don’t know what to think.”

“Argoth agreed to his idea. So even if he is a bit dangerous, I’m not going to protest. Besides, there’s more to it than that.” She found Legs’s hand and pressed the necklace into it. For some reason he picked up on patterns faster than anyone. “Feel this,” she said.

Legs ran his fingers over the segments of the necklace. “It’s a weave.”

She envied his quick ability. “It’s Mother’s.”

Legs was feeling each of the figurines, running each of the segments through his fingers. “This pattern is strange.”

“Oh, is that what the great Kain Legs says?”

“Well, it doesn’t feel like one of the weaves of might.”

“That’s because it does something very different. And it’s made differently. This one has a guardian of sorts in it.”

“I’ve heard of that,” whispered Legs.

Sugar sighed in exasperation. Did everyone know more than she? “Were they taking you out for special lessons as well?”

“I can’t help it if I hear things,” said Legs. “River was talking.”

“The point is, well, who do you think it might be?”

“How should I know?”

“Think,” she said and waited.

Legs kept fingering the weave and then suddenly stopped. He grabbed her hand. “Mother?”

“It could be,” she said. “But even if it’s not, this weave lets you walk in the world of souls.”

“You could talk to Mother and Da,” he said, his voice full of excitement and wonder.

“Maybe. Of course, that’s not what my job will be.” She told him about Urban’s offer to spy behind enemy lines.

“Do you think Mokad will bring soul walkers here?”

She hadn’t thought of that frightening prospect. “I suppose so.”

“They could be here now, watching us this very moment.”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

“I could be a Walker,” said Legs. “I could fight as a Walker.”

“I don’t know—”

“You’d bar me from the one thing that would make me useful?”

“We only have one weave.”

“We can make another.”

She sighed. “We can ask, although you’d think Argoth and the others would have done so if they knew the lore. But we’ll see. In the meantime, they’re expecting me to learn.”

“But you’ll ask,” he said.

“I promise.”

He felt along the segments a bit longer. Then she told him to scoot over, and she climbed in bed next to him. When she was in the bed, Legs snuggled up. His feet were warm. She put her arm around him, and soon his breathing changed to match the breathing of the women sleeping about them.

She took the necklace from him and again tried to follow a thread, listening to the ferrets scamper and patter in the darkness over and between the stacked barrels.

16

Yellow Dream

TALEN LAY ON his bunk thinking of the events of the day, listening to the members of his fist in their beds and the wind whistling along the door and window of the front room. He’d been able to gather some wood for Sugar’s box, but now wondered if the idea was silly. She’d seemed very content holding Urban’s hand under that apple tree. Blasted foreigners—what was it about them that fascinated all the ladies?

Out on the balcony, a fist of men moved past the front window. They were going to the great hall to be quickened. Talen still remembered the day Da had put the weave of godsweed about his arm. Not knowing what it was or what Da was doing, he’d worn it. Da had wanted to begin Talen’s awakening to the power. And it had awakened him. It had multiplied him like a dreadman and almost killed him.

Every person had different capabilities. Some were of a breed that could multiply themselves more than others. Some, with even the most powerful of weaves upon them, might feel no effect at all. Talen multiplied with only the slightest touch of power. That’s why his Da’s weave had almost killed him. He hoped these candidates fared better than he did that first time. And may the Six preserve them from his maddening lust. He could feel the desire gnawing at him even now, but put it out of his mind and thought about how he was going to join the edges of Sugar’s skull box.

Outside, the wind gusted and blew along the walls. The grogginess of sleep descended upon him more quickly than usual, and suddenly he was dreaming of the Apple Dance, of succulent meat pies, and dancing with Sugar and the girl who sold vegetables in Stag Horn. Then his mind turned to the Sourwood River that ran past the fortress. He dreamt he was with Ke, fighting a tentacled creature. One of its arms shot out of the water and wrapped around Talen’s leg. He felt the tug, the sharp pricks of its barbs. Ke fought the creature, tried to save Talen, but the creature yanked him under the water.

And then Talen was back in his fist’s bunkroom. He could see the faces and exposed arms of the members of his fist as they slept. There was a yellow cast to the room. In it the skin of his fistmates shone as if there was a light within. He hungered for that light.

He moved like smoke from his bunk to the one below, flowing over Black Knee. He flowed to the others in turn. He dreamed he was the creature in the river, sending out a long smoky tentacle to taste the candidates in the room.

The oldest member of their fist was of the Vargon clan. He wore a withy weave about his wrist. A small tendril of Fire, thinner than a spider’s thread, rose from the weave and dissipated into the air.

Talen-as-smoke swallowed the Fire up. But when the small thread was gone, he was not satisfied, and so he sent his shadowy self out of the room and onto the balcony, slipping through the cracks of the shutters of the adjacent quarters, tasting the men in their sleep and finding nothing. One man lay on his back awake, fingering a knife.

Talen had dreamed this dream before. It the last few weeks it had come with increasing frequency. He’d leave his chamber, like a smoke, and travel about the fortress. Tonight he wanted to see the river, and so he slipped his long and twisting self up to the battlements. The world of his dream was cast in yellow twilight. About him the towers rose into the night, repair platforms still hanging down their lengths. He moved unnoticed among the soldiers keeping watch and rose above the battlements.Just a little ways away, the Sourwood River flowed like a shining black ribbon out to the bay.

He thought about dipping into that river to see what lay beneath the surface but something caught his eye on the outside of the fortress wall. Something dark. It was a man scaling the sheer stone face with a rope, moving as quick as a dreadman. Talen flowed down the side of the fortress to get a better look at him.

The man was clad in dark cloth, but did not wear the clothes of Shim’s army. His wrists and honors were exposed, showing he was not of any clan in the New Lands. An intruder then. On his neck clung a small thing, all gray and twisted. Talen looked closer and saw it was a fright the size of a large grasshopper.

Talen pulled back in disgust, but the man seemed not to notice and continued to climb. Was he a spy or an assassin? Or one of Argoth’s visitors? Either way, a warning needed to be sounded. Talen raced back up the wall to the guards and tried to alert them, but they couldn’t hear. One man put a finger to his nose and blew a snotty discharge out and over the wall into the night.

Talen raced back down the battlement to where the rope had been thrown over the wall and peered over only to find the man right there—an inch from Talen’s face!

In his bunk, Talen started awake, his breath catching in his throat. He saw double, the man on the wall in the yellow dream world and the darkness of the bunk room. It was disorienting, frightening. Then his dream flowed back from the wall, down and back into his room, and he was left lying on his back, looking at the dark ceiling with the longing for Fire still coursing through him.

He blew out a breath and became annoyed. This awakening to the power was like a burr in his small clothes. He tried to fall back to sleep, but the image of his dream was still too vivid in his mind. Besides, Black Knee and another one of his fist mates were snoring. So Talen silently got out of bed and dropped to the floor. He slipped to the front room, thought about dressing, but decided not to. He opened the front door and stepped out onto the balcony in nothing but his underwear. He shouldn’t technically be here with the curfew, but it was only for a moment to clear his mind. The cold wind stole along his belly. The stones beneath his bare feet were chill, but he welcomed the cold. He crossed to the stone railing and leaned on it to look out over the bailey below.

The wind gusted strongly. A flash of lightning briefly lit the inner walls of the fortress, but the sound took a few seconds to arrive. He looked up at the night sky and realized the storm must still be some distance away because the sky here was still clear enough to see the stars.

He listened to the wind and watched the empty bailey and movement of sentries upon the far walls. And a man cried out. At least, that’s what it sounded like over the wind.

Talen cocked his head. The wind had masked it, but he was sure he’d heard something.

He poked his head out of one of the wide arched openings along the balcony and looked down, but nobody was there in the windy shadows of the night. When he pulled himself back in, a dark figure swung through one of the arched openings farther down the balcony on a rope and dropped to the floor.

Talen froze.

It was the man from his dream. The one with the fright clinging to his neck.

17

Slayer

THIS WAS IMPOSSIBLE. Was he still in a dream?

“Who goes there?” Talen asked. His voice rang loud and clear along the balcony. He was most assuredly
not
in a dream.

The man said nothing. Instead, he sprang from his crouch toward Talen. He was fast. Too fast. And Talen knew he didn’t have time to fetch a weapon from his quarters.

“Breach!” Talen shouted, hoping the wind didn’t drown out his cries. “On the balcony!” Then he turned and sped toward the stairs, pulling the governor weave from his arm.

The man sprinted after him with terrifying speed. Talen flared his Fire, but knew it would take a moment to build. Knew it wasn’t going to come quickly enough for him to outrun the man. He looked at the bailey below. He could lead the man out into the open there. Talen leapt up to the lip of the balcony’s stone railing. With the next step he soared out over the bailey.

He yelled as he jumped, trying to maintain the right body position for landing. Surely somebody would hear him! He sailed over a cart, hoping his training would pay off and he wouldn’t twist his ankle. When he landed, he collapsed into a roll that flung him back to his feet, and ran toward the gates where someone would be on watch.

But the dark form of the attacker flew over Talen’s head and beyond. The man landed and rolled, and was on his feet in front of Talen, blocking his escape.

“Guards!” Talen shouted. “Intruder!” He turned and sprinted back toward the barracks and the stair that led up to the battlements. He needed a weapon.

Upon the walls, a number of soldiers called out.

“Behind me!” Talen shouted. “Somebody shoot!”

The man was silent and quick, and if the guards above didn’t move, Talen would soon be bleeding his life out into the cobblestones of the bailey.

Barrack doors opened. Three candidates rushed into the bailey wearing nothing but their small clothes. Two more exited from a room father down, but at least they had weapons.

“Here!” Talen shouted.

The candidates charged. Talen flew past them trying to get his own weapon.

One of the candidates behind him grunted. Another cried out in pain. Talen glanced back and saw the candidates fall to the ground.

Talen fled to the stairs. His Fire had finally built, and the vigor coursed through him, multiplying his strength and speed. He took the stairs five at a time.

Behind him the dreadman reached the stairs and began to follow him up. Talen sped higher, but the dreadman was quicker. He caught Talen just as he reached the second story.

Talen turned to fight, expected to feel a sword run him through. Instead the man bore him to the ground. Talen tried to strike out, but the dreadman punched him twice. Once in the gut, stealing all breath from him. Then in the forehead with the palm of his hand, bouncing the back of Talen’s head off the stone floor, dazing him. While Talen tried to regain his senses, the dreadman hefted Talen over his shoulder like a sack of turnips and stood.

And that’s when Talen knew the dreadman wasn’t an assassin or spy.

Shouts and calls of alarm rose around the bailey. Out on the balcony, candidates began to pour out of their rooms. The dreadman paid them no mind. He raced up the stairs.

Flax’s words rang in Talen’s mind—there were no coincidences with Divines.

Fear shot up Talen’s back. He was not going to be taken! Not back to some Divine. Not back to one of the Devourers.

He tried to twist from the man’s grasp. He kicked, but the man held him fast. Then he saw how he could strike. He arched up as far as he could, then curled himself down, slamming his elbow into the man’s kidneys.

The man grunted, but did not loosen his grip. Talen rose up to do it again, but the man slammed Talen to his feet. He punched Talen in the gut so hard it knocked the breath out of him. Then the dreadman pulled out a cord and began to tie Talen’s wrists.

Talen regained his breath and tried to headbutt the man in the face, but the dark dreadman turned to the side, and Talen headbutted the man’s shoulder instead.

At that moment guards from the battlements above came rushing down the dark stairs with axes and swords.

“Here!” Talen shouted.

The dreadman moved down two steps and drew his sword. More candidates entered the stairway below, blocking the dreadman’s retreat.

Talen saw his chance and shot up the stairway. “He’s a full dreadman,” he shouted.

The men charging down the stair recognized him, and they let Talen push through.He needed a weapon. An axe or sword would be best in these close quarters. Even a staff would be good. He ran to the top of the stair and out onto the battlement, but there was nothing here except bundles of stones and arrows. But there were weapons in the tower. He sprinted down the wall walk to find one.

Shouts rose from behind, and the dreadman emerged from the stairway.

Regrets eyes! Talen didn’t need a weapon, he needed an army!

The wind gusted. Lightning flickered, illuminating a large storm blowing in. All about the fortress men yelled shouts of alarm. Bows twanged and Talen hoped they weren’t shooting at his attacker from directly behind.

The dreadman sprinted after Talen, and Talen knew he wasn’t going to make the tower door. He looked down the wall at the dark shadow of the bailey below. He’d already tried jumping. What he needed to do was go somewhere that would slow the dreadman down. Expose him so the archers might be able to aim.

The moonlight shone on a work platform with repairs materials on it. Men had been assigned to repair the mortar there, removing any plants that had been growing and applying a coat of limewash to make the surface smooth. The platform hung against the outer wall of the tower in front of him, suspended on ropes that ran from a two-armed crane erected at the top.

The platform was a precarious distance away, but Talen didn’t see that he had any other choice. Hoardings were being erected over the battlement. He could leap from the hoarding to the platform.

Talen dashed forward, jumped to the top of an uncovered merlon and then up to the plank roof of the hoarding. He ran across the roof to its very edge and leapt for the hanging platform. He sailed out over the wall. The drop to the outer bailey yawned below him. Then he slammed into the platform. The platform swung out with the force of his momentum, moving the crane arms above, and swinging him farther around the tower. The wild swing sent the bucket flying off the platform, and Talen would have followed, but he caught one of the ropes, pulled himself up, and turned.

Behind him, the dreadman raced across the wall walk. Talen had hoped to see a number of candidates chasing him, but there were none. Farther down the battlement was another attacker, keeping a number of candidates busy. A third cluster of candidates fought yet another intruder down in the inner bailey.

“Here!” Talen shouted into the wind, hoping to draw someone’s attention.

The dreadman leapt to the hoarding.

Talen had seen this dreadman jump, and this platform wasn’t nearly far enough away. There was another platform a little farther around the tower. It was smaller, big enough for only one man to sit upon, and hung a little higher. Talen took a step and leapt for it. But the platform he leapt from was not a sturdy launch. It swung back, stealing part of the power of his jump.

Talen careened through the air toward the other platform. He slammed into it with his side, almost fell the neck-breaking forty feet to the ground, but caught one of the platform’s guide ropes. Then instead of climbing up, he used what momentum he had left to run a bit around the tower face, swinging the crane that suspended this platform farther around the tower.

Behind him, the larger platform swung back toward the dreadman. Below, the dreadman leapt from the roof of the hoarding. His jump was astonishing. He sailed up to the first platform and landed on it squarely.

And Talen realized that if the dreadman had caught him in his barracks, he would have had no problem dispatching Talen’s fistmates and subduing Talen. He would have done it in the blink of an eye with hardly a sound.

Talen climbed up to stand on the small seat of his platform and immediately saw he wasn’t far enough away to escape.

“Holy One,” said the dreadman. “One way or the other, we’ll have you. It is best come now.”

In answer, Talen yanked his main support rope, trying to swing the wooden crane still father away, but the crane arm had moved as far as it was going to go.

The dreadman did not jump for Talen. Instead he stood at one end of his platform and, like a child standing on a tree swing, pushed. He swung forward, swung back, then gave it another push with more power, and this time when he swung forward, the crane swung around and moved the dreadman closer.

Talen looked up. He could climb his ropes. But the dreadman had ropes to climb as well, and that blackheart would reach the top well before Talen did.

Shouts rose from the fortress bailey. Lightning flashed again, illuminating the storm that was almost upon them. Thunder boomed.

“Here!” Talen shouted into the wind. “On the tower!” But the other candidates were too busy. Or they didn’t hear him. Or worse, now that he had swung his platform around, they didn’t even see him. The first scattered drops of rain kissed Talen’s face. Clouds began to scuttle across the face of the moon.

The dreadman pushed his platform again. This was it, Talen thought: the crane holding the dreadman’s platform would swing father around, and then it would be but a hop for that dreadman from his platform to Talen’s.

There was only one way out. Talen looked down and prepared to drop to the ground that lay much too far below. But the dreadman’s platform suddenly lurched and swung back.

There were voices above. Then someone up there grabbed onto one of the ropes, leapt over the battlement, and dropped from the top of the tower above, using the rope to guide his fall.

He was a big man who dropped quickly and landed on the platform with a heavy thud. The platform shuddered. Part of the rope fastened to one corner loosened, and the platform sagged sideways a bit.

Talen recognized the man’s big silhouette. He’d recognize it anywhere.

“He’s quick!” Talen yelled to warn his brother.

The dreadman struck at Ke, but Ke countered the attack and slammed his fist into the dreadman’s face. The dreadman staggered back a step, then drew a knife that flashed in the pale moonlight. He thrust, but Ke grabbed the wrist of his knife hand. The two men held onto a rope with one hand and struggled for the knife with the other.

Men shouted from above. Talen looked up and saw archers leaning out over the edge. But there was no way they could get a good target with Ke and the dreadman struggling in their current grip.

The platform under Ke and the dreadman sagged further, and then the ropes supporting one end gave out altogether. A brush and other repair materials that had been with the bucket all fell, bouncing once off the sloping side of the tower. Moments later, both the dreadman and Ke followed. The two men plummeted, striking the tower wall where it widened. The collision knocked them apart, and they disappeared into the night shadows below.

The wind gusted, howling about the edges of the battlements. If Ke had broken a leg or his back in the fall, he’d be no match for the dreadman.

“Give me slack!” Talen yelled up to the men above. “Drop me down!”

Moments later his platform began to drop, but not quickly enough. When Talen thought he was about twenty feet from the ground, he jumped. It was a foolish thing to do because the exact location of the ground was hidden in the deep moon shadow, and, sure enough, Talen landed just slightly after he expected to and was leaning too far forward. Instead of rolling, he smacked into the ground. It was like being hit with a board. He lay there for a moment, stunned.

A number of yards to his left, in the deep shadows of the wall, there was a grunt, a snarl, the sounds of a struggle.

Back up on the tower the guards yelled for a mark.

“Hold your shots!” Talen shouted.

On the far side of the moonlit outer bailey, a group of soldiers ran to help, but they were headed the wrong way. Talen pushed himself up, and felt around for a rock. But it was all hard dirt and goat-chewed grass. In the darkness a few paces away, Ke and the dreadman wrestled upon the ground. The dreadman broke free and tried to scramble away. Ke lunged after him and caught his foot.

Talen rushed forward and prepared to do damage with a flying kick, but the dreadmen yanked himself free of Ke’s grasp. One moment he was there, and the next he was racing away, sprinting for the outer wall.

“There!” someone shouted from the battlement.

Bows twanged. But it was dark, and gusting, and the dreadman was moving fast. The arrows were blown wide. Ke raced after the dreadman. Talen followed.

The bows above thrummed again, but the dreadman was speed itself, a shadow fleeing across the bailey in the dappled moonlight. Ke ran much faster than Talen, but even he could not match the speed of their attacker.

They weren’t even halfway across the bailey when the dreadman reached the outer defenses. Lightning exploded in the sky. Deafening thundered blasted the bailey and the stone walls around them. When the flash passed, the dreadman had already gained the top of the outer wall. Lightning cracked again, and the dreadman leapt away in a great arc over the wall and disappeared. A moment later the belly of the sky split open, and the rain poured down.

Ke slowed, then stopped. “Where, by Regret, do they get such speed?”

“Goh,” said Talen. “What was he?”

“He wasn’t some backwater scum, I can tell you that.” Ke held his hand up and looked at it. The two small fingers of his left hand were twisted at odd angles, obviously broken.

The rain fell in sheets, but within the fortress a cry rose above its sound.

At first Talen thought it was another alarm, but then realized it was a cheer.

“Find out what’s going on,” Ke said.

“What are you going to do?”

“I knocked our visitor’s knife out of his hand. I’m going to find it to see if it has any stories to tell.”