Exile (24 page)

Yiloch got to his feet. The hot sun became a significant concern as breathing got easier. They needed to start moving now if they were going to figure out where they were. Walking over to his adept Captain, Yiloch offered a hand, holding it by the man’s face so he would see it. Ferin waved him away and sat back on his heels. Staring at his hands, he brushed them together to clear away the sand then looked up at Yiloch, squinting in the bright sunlight. There was a gray cast to his skin and his eyelids swelled with the recent passage of many tears.

“I guess it’s good to see you, my lord.”

Since he seemed in no hurry to rise, Yiloch knelt before him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “What’s happened, Ferin?”

Ferin met his eyes, and then he looked back at his hands and sighed, brushing at more sand. “King Jerrin and his wife and son were assassinated. They arrested Galyn, Kade, Sine, and I as suspects before the bodies had time to get cold. They got all three of the others to sign confessions admitting their parts in the assassinations and stating that the orders came from you. After that, they were put to death.”

Ferin looked up again, eyes brimming with liquid misery. Yiloch cringed inwardly. Galyn had meant everything to Ferin. Her execution explained the depths of his sorrow.

“I’m sorry, Ferin,” he offered, but he couldn’t allow time for grieving when there were so many questions in need of answers. “Why would they have confessed?”

“Caithin has many adepts in their employ. They must have at least one who specializes in mental manipulation to have convinced them of their guilt. Sine was the last to give in. Since she dabbled in that skill herself, she would have been hard to manipulate.”

Yiloch regarded him with some surprise. Ferin had never mentioned working with mental manipulation, but it was implied. An odd secret to keep from one’s emperor. “And you?”

Ferin shrugged. “It is one of many skills I developed further before I decided to focus on greater variety in order to train others. That in combination with the protections I put up as a precaution while in Demin was apparently enough to thwart them. I believe they were about ready to settle for sentencing me on grounds of association.”

Yiloch sat in the sand beside his captain and put considerable focus into keeping his rage at a distance so he could consider the situation rationally. Molten fury boiled in the background, but their current predicament called for a clear head.

Ferin stood, finally recovered from the transitions, and walked a few feet away, bending over to pick something up from the sand.

“This is the ring you always wear, the one you got from Indigo.” He held up the chain so the ring with its large blue center stone dangled in front of Yiloch, glinting bright in the extreme sunlight.

Yiloch’s composure snapped and he sneered at the item. “Yes. Indigo, the miserable whore who put me in that prison. I have no need of it.”

Ferin’s hand sank to his side, the chain dangling from loose fingers. “Indigo? But why would she have done that? She was so ecstatic when I gave her your ring. Bursting with joy I would say. I can’t imagine her doing anything to ever hurt you.”

“She’s an exceptional performer, it would seem.”

Ferin slid the ring and chain into a pocket despite Yiloch’s warning glare. “There must be another explanation. She wouldn’t have betrayed you.”

“Suac Chozai said I would be betrayed three times, by ally, by family, and by love. It appears that I have been betrayed by ally and by love in one grand strike. She knew what she was doing.”

As he spoke, the anguish of her betrayal struck him like a hammer blow and he struggled to hide that pain from Ferin. He needed to be a leader now. Ferin’s sympathetic look showed him how successful that effort wasn’t. Jumping to his feet, he stared out into the desert, pretending to contemplate the way on while he composed himself.

“There has to be more to it. She set us free, didn’t she? That’s how it appeared to me.”

“Set us free?” Yiloch gave a bitter laugh. “We don’t even know where we are. We could be in another prison?”

“I don’t think so, my lord,” Ferin commented, his tone turning wary as he focused past Yiloch.

Yiloch followed his gaze, spotting figures in the distance. There were three people on foot, leading some kind of lean, long-legged pack animals. Dark faces peered out at them from under pale hoods, designed to shield from the sun and still be cool. He recognized the animals as well. They were tall, leggy beasts with long necks, broad feet suited to the sandy terrain, and flat, small heads. The Kudaness called them skek.

He shook his head in disbelief. “We’re in southern Kudan,” he murmured.

“So it would seem,” Ferin replied.

If they were in Kudan, then they were somewhere in the long narrow stretch of inhospitable sand flats that cut through the region in the lower, southern half. The appearance of the trio of Kudaness was a comfort, in that it suggested that they were probably close to an edge of the sand flats. If they had any luck at all, it would be the northern edge. He could almost make out the details of the patterns on their clothes that would tell him their tribe and how friendly, or not, they were going to be toward Lyran people. Rather than wait, he took hold of ascard as a precaution and started toward them. Ferin fell into step, flanking him on the right out of habit and Yiloch could feel him working ascard as well.

The two walking ahead were an older man and a youth, both tattooed with the mark of the warrior under their right eyes and the mark of their tribe on their left cheek. Behind them was an older woman with the tribal mark tattooed on her forehead, the tattoo pattern of the Denilik tribe. They were one of the less aggressive tribes, which might be beneficial in one way, but Denilik was on the far southeastern edge of Kudan, almost as far as they could get from Yiroth on the known continent.

The trio stopped several yards away and let Yiloch and Ferin close the remaining distance, watching them with more curiosity than concern.

“Ilikah smile on you,” Yiloch offered a traditional greeting in Kudaness, hoping the dialect he had chosen would be close enough to what they spoke.

The woman cocked her head, regarding him with open curiosity. The young man looked at first surprised by his greeting then suspicious, his grip on his spear tightening. The elder man, his narrow face heavily lined with age and exposure, offered a tentative smile, though his hand lingered near the wide knife at his waist. He considered them for a minute or more, then handed the lead for his skek to the youth and stepped closer. Despite being of a rather small stature that required him to look up at Yiloch, the man exuded confidence and amusement.

“Did Ilikah drop you?” he asked with a broad grin.

Yiloch couldn’t stop a return smile. Given his choice of greeting, it made some sense that the man would think the sky-travelling god of the Kudaness might have deposited them here. How else did two well-dressed Lyran men end up in the middle of the desert on the southeastern edge of Kudan?

“It is certainly possible,” he replied. “However we got here, we would like to make our way back to Lyra. Can you point us in the right direction?”

The man laughed then, a long hearty laugh that doubled him over holding his gut. The youth watched with a disapproving frown and the woman looked away, an amused smile curving her lips. Yiloch waited, forcing himself to be patient, though recent events had shortened his temper. When the man had regained control of himself, he looked over his shoulder at the woman and quickly rattled off something in a dialect different enough from those Yiloch knew that he had trouble following. The woman began to dig into the packs on her skek and he turned back to them.

“There must be great need in your spirit for you to be presented with such a journey,” he said to them. “The gods will provide for the needs of your spirit, but you will need sustenance for your bodies. We will give you what we can spare and point you to where you go.”

The man walked back to help the woman. Uncertain how to respond, Yiloch waited in curious silence, noting Ferin’s carefully neutral expression. This wasn’t an expected response, even from a traditionally impartial tribe, but then, he knew little of the southern Kudaness beyond the fact that they were generally smaller in stature than their northern brethren and not as quick to violence. The younger man continued to scowl at them until the elder scolded him for his rudeness. Then he proceeded to study his hands, the sand, the skek, anything to avoid looking at Yiloch and Ferin. The woman folded all of the items they had gathered into a light robe and the man carried it back to where they waited.

“You must head that way for many days,” The man pointed behind them as he offered the bundle to Yiloch. “Be watchful. A great storm comes from the east beyond Kudan and the Rhuakine.”

Yiloch accepted the bundle, a chill touching him as he remembered Suac Chozai’s warning. “A storm?”

The man nodded, solemn and certain. “A storm of death, bristling with bladed spears and profane power.”

A fresh sense of urgency pressed him to get moving. The prophecy Suac Chozai brought him was no longer something he could bring himself to scoff at. “How can we repay you?”

“I am Korik of Denilik. It is my honor to assist a wandering soul upon their spirit journey. If you must repay me, I ask only this, when the Gods come close, speak of me favorably to them.”

Yiloch hoped no Kudaness Gods would come that close, but he nodded agreement, offering a respectful bow to the small man. “I will do so.”

“It is dangerous to delay a spirit journey,” the man said then, shooing them on with his hands. “May Ilikah watch over you both.”

“And you,” Yiloch replied, as eager to be moving on as Korik was to see them moving.

Korik was already returning to his family, so Yiloch turned, giving a slight nod to Ferin to indicate that they were done here. Slinging the bundle over his shoulder, he started walking in the direction indicated.

“I should carry that.” Ferin reached toward the bundle.

Yiloch sidestepped away from his hand. “Why?”

“You’re the emperor.”

He managed a dry chuckle though there was only cynical humor left in him. “Out here, I don’t think that matters much.”

“It’s a long walk.”

He laughed at the understatement. He had to laugh because the other tempting options, such as screaming his frustration, would serve little purpose. “I’ll let you carry it later if you insist.”

“We have no weapons,” Ferin commented.

Yiloch nodded. He wanted for his sword as most men would want for water in this inhospitable place. Most of his ascard ability was focused into skills that enhanced his fighting techniques. Without a sword, many of those skills served little purpose. Ferin had a stronger ascard connection, though he spread it thinly across a wide variety of skills. He would have some defenses at least because of that and would no doubt need them in time. Not all tribes were as easygoing as the Denilik. There was also the concern over whatever threat was coming across the Rhuakine. After recent events, he couldn’t help beginning to believe in the suac’s prophecy.

As they walked, he felt the absence of his sword and the absence of Indigo’s ring both. For a short time, he considered asking Ferin for the ring back so he could ease one of those aches, but he couldn’t forgive what she had done. Whatever her reasons, she knew how deeply he resented his first captivity. She had spent the last few days of a miserable seven-month stay in that first prison with him. Knowing what he had gone through before and professing to love him as she did, how could she have played a hand in imprisoning him again? Did she really believe he had something to do with the death of her king? After all they had gone through together, how could she doubt him?

He struggled to push aside those thoughts. Heartache and anger weren’t going to help him get back to Lyra any faster. Turning his attention to the barren miles ahead of them, he noticed then that he no longer felt the heat of the sun on his face and glanced over at Ferin in question.

“We won’t burn or overheat this way,” the adept answered.

“How long can you maintain it?”

Ferin shrugged. “It isn’t a significant drain on my ability, though I could maintain it far longer if I didn’t have to expend so much energy walking in this wretched sand.”

Yiloch nodded sympathy. They needed to find mounts, both for the ability to travel faster and for the conservation of their own energy. There weren’t many horses in Kudan. Many of the tribes didn’t keep horses because they used up precious resources needed to maintain food animals. The hardy skek could live with little food and water, but weren’t suited to carrying a man’s weight. If they did find a village with any horses, bartering for them would certainly require something more than they had to offer in trade.

He scanned the barren horizon. Sand stretched on for miles, nothing but sand. This was a rotten place to end up.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Indigo leaned on the doorjamb, closing her eyes to the late afternoon light. Captain Murchadh had let her use his cabin for the duration of the trip, leaving her undisturbed to do her work. As promised, she got them to the port in the Lyran capital of Yiroth in a day. It took less than a day in truth. After everything she had done in the last twenty-four hours, she had no reserves left. If Myac appeared now, she would be helpless to fight him.

A hand rested on her shoulder and she forced her eyes open again, surprised to see Murchadh regarding her with concern. She smiled, wearily amused that the ship’s captain should show such care for a woman he had only just met.

“Are you well enough, Lady Indigo? You could take rest on the cot in my cabin while we unload.”

She shook her head and the resulting dizziness made her wary of doing so again. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’ve seen ships moved across the Straight this way before, but never by a single adept and with such speed. I am very much in your debt. You saved me considerable cost by getting my cargo here on time. If there is anything at all I can do…” He let the words trail off as an open offer.