Thom was smiling and bright-eyed—remarkably so with one of them painted on—and Shisa was typically grim. “I’m bringing Thom along. Four gate-guards murdered last night alone. I’m not prepared to leave him here.” She eyed Draken as he donned his cloak with the green stripes. “Brînians are no favorites of Va Khlar, especially ones in Elena’s employ. Best be careful, Night Lord.”
Draken refused to rise to the bait, or enlighten her on his new alliance. “Best be off, then.”
Quickened by Osias’ magic, the currents had them out of sight of the docks within a few moments. The river, busy with shouting rafters and passengers with business at Reschan, cleared as they gained distance. But as they went on, movement in the thick trees along the banks drew Draken’s attention. It was a quick thing, a glittering flash and subsequent shadow which suggested someone was running along the shore, keeping speed with the swiftly moving raft. Bruche had seen it as well; Draken felt the cold rise of ethereal apprehension under his skin.
Set the Gadye lad to watching
, Bruche advised.
If there’s anything amiss, he’ll spot it.
He’s only got one eye,
Draken thought.
Bruche chuckled.
Haven’t you yet caught on it’s more than a
picture
of an eye painted on his mask?
“Thom?” Draken called in a low voice.
“My lord?” Thom sat at the rear of the raft next to his sister.
“Watch the woods for some lengths, will you?”
Thom turned his eyes, the shining hazel one and its painted twin, toward the woods where Draken gestured. “What do I seek, my lord?”
“Just...anything out of the usual.” But as the sun climbed the sky and Thom reported he’d seen nothing, Draken dismissed his worries. Likely it had been an animal.
The river banks gradually rose, straight and smooth but for old scars from drought and flood. A distinct separation grew between the water and land down-river, as if they fought over a long-disputed boundary. The red soil on the banks turned to dull, gray dirt, hard as stone and cracked from drought, and the trees thinned until there were almost none. The pathetic, spindly few managing to scavenge a life from the harsh ground did so between rocks and hard places. Freed from the disruption of the forest, the terrain disappeared into a concealing vapor of daytime heat.
“Bloody hot,” Draken commented. Sweat ran down their backs in a constant stream, soaking their tunics and stinking beneath their armor.
“We’ll soon be in the shadows of Eidola’s mountains,” Osias said.
Draken stared where Osias indicated, thinking of his wife and the puzzle pieces he had to sort through to find his opportunity for revenge. Was the Mance King working blood sorcery? Had a King of mages actually killed his wife? He stared himself blind into the mist and shook his head. Surely not. And how could he take revenge against a Mance anyway? He didn’t know, and he didn’t fathom Osias helping him to do it, either.
When the peaks did rise from the mists, they were so abruptly monolithic Draken could do nothing but stare. He had the odd suspicion they only appeared because he was anticipating them, tall as the rising moons without the suggestion of a hill beforehand. Few trees and shrubs dared the bleak terrain. Draken did spot an abandoned structure on a high ledge, an old fort of crumbling stone which glowed gray-white against a sheer, blackened face.
“They don’t appear as they are,” Draken said slowly, still staring. “So much as they are what they should be, like a wall.”
“You’ve hit upon it most cleverly,” Osias said. “Only Mance are meant to cross them, and the unclaimed dead.”
“Why did your people cross back?” Draken asked.
“Aye, a question for the ages,” Tyrolean said, eyeing the Mance.
Osias didn’t answer right away. He curled a finger, and though Setia had been resting with her eyes closed, she immediately rose and came to lean against him. Osias lit the pipe from Va Khlar, and the smoke floated on the gentle draft in the still air hanging over the river. The sun was dropping behind the mountains, and Draken understood now why daylight was so short the closer they got to Brîn. Day must be very long indeed behind the great range.
“It’s nothing so romantic. We’re mostly gate-guards,” Osias said at last. “And so when banes cross, we must follow.”
“So what is Bruche, then? He’s not a bane.”
“No. He is not a bane, but he is unable to leave life behind. He has unfinished business here.”
Draken nodded as if he understood, which he did not. He’d detected no unfinished business among Bruche’s memories, only regret that he’d been unable to protect his king at the last.
Nothing to fear from me,
Bruche said, chuckling in Draken’s throat.
I’d be hard pressed to defeat you.
In a fair fight,
Draken retorted. He couldn’t help but think Osias and Bruche had ganged up on him during the attack at the Inn.
We still didn’t win,
Bruche replied, sobering.
It was only by beating your horse I was able to get you out at all.
“Perhaps the dead carry some wisdom for us in these trying times,” Tyrolean suggested.
“It is lost to them, for the living hold all the wisdom of the ages.” Despite Tyrolean’s attention, Osias’ gaze lingered on Draken. “The Akrasians own it presently, though perhaps the time comes for another.”
Draken looked away from his scrutiny.
“Wisdom? Ha! The Akrasians make war worse than any,” Aarinnaie said. “They are living enemies to Brîn, not simply cradle tales like banes.”
Draken drew a breath, willing himself to stay calm. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“And you have no idea what I’m capable of,” she retorted.
Tyrolean gave her a savage grin. “Best tread lightly with Lord Draken. I’ve kept his blood lust in mind since he spoke of hunting his wife’s killer. Can’t quite trust a man who will kill for revenge.”
“From the shadows, if you recall.” Draken and he exchanged grins; Ty was only teasing.
Aarinnaie’s chains clinked as she shifted.
“You’ve something to add, princess?” Tyrolean asked, still in good humor.
“There are worthy reasons to take a life,” Aarinnaie said to him, her lip curled in her all too familiar sneer. “And they’ve nothing to do with coin or revenge, but honor. That, Captain, is something I’m sure you know nothing about, having nothing but common blood in your veins.”
“Your air of entitlement might work on your father, and it might’ve worked on Urian, but it won’t work on us,” Draken said.
“Leave it, my lord.” Tyrolean waved a lazy hand. “The Princess hates me, but I’ll live with it somehow.”
Shisa held her pole like a staff, crosswise against her body, fingers whitened on the wood. Before Draken could assure her they would remain diplomatic, something jarred the bottom of the raft. Shisa turned to look. Thom leapt from his knees to his feet, causing the raft to sway.
Draken’s arm went numb with cold. He heard rather than felt his sword drawn.
Wait
, he told Bruche irritably.
Listen first.
They stayed very still for several seconds, staring around at the black, hushed water. The river was wide and quiet in this spot, though Shisa had warned of coming rapids. The raft began to turn a bit in the pull of the current because Shisa was no longer keeping it straight with her pole.
Tyrolean sighed and moved to rise. “I suppose—”
“Shh!” Shisa gave a negative twitch of her head. The raft jolted again and Thom had to drop back down to his knees to keep from being knocked overboard.
“Get us to shore,” Draken said, but his words were drowned out by a sudden churning in the water. Sleek, gray heads surfaced all around and the small company stared in horror.
“Gods, they’re errings!” Tyrolean shouted.
Bruche acted quickest. Draken watched his sword slice through an erring’s limb as it tried to gain purchase on the tightly fitted raft deck, and then he plunged the sword into its back. The body slid back into the water, but another came right behind it.
Its blood runs as red as mine, Draken thought, watching his sword take another, which had turned its unblinking, flat gaze on him.
He felt a surge of helplessness as Bruche fought alongside the others. Shisa speared another erring with the sharp end of her pole. Though impaled and spurting blood, it struggled until Thom leapt in to finish it off with his knife. Tyrolean had drawn his dual swords and was battling two of them. The raft keeled dangerously from the weight of the assault. Dread began to eat away at Bruche’s numbing cold, spurred by the scent of something revolting and spoilt.
On her feet, Aarinnaie stood at the end of her chain. “Seven damnations, give me a sword!”
But there was no time, even had Draken been willing to arm her. As far as he could see, up-river and down, the water roiled with the hateful things. And then Bruche jerked Draken’s attention toward Shisa.
She was embroiled with an erring that refused to die; it thrust itself from side to side in a vain attempt to rid itself of the pole in its guts. Her thin muscles corded against the weight of the creature. Draken was the only one aware of her battle; everyone else was much too involved in their own to pay her mind.
The erring suddenly threw itself at her, a death-blow for itself as her pole pierced the scales of its back from the inside. But it got close enough to sink its needle teeth into her neck. Shisa’s scream ended in a gurgle. Thom’s cry chased Shisa’s as hers ended, and he scrambled toward her. He was a step too late. Slipping in her blood, the gored creature and the limp Shisa splashed into the water and several of the creatures followed them. A swirling cloud of crimson stained the surface of the river. Draken instinctively spun to look toward the rear of the raft, which still moved down-river as they fought. The red blemish spread and reappeared in its wake.
Bruche didn’t allow a moment’s shock to slow their blade but spun to see if any others had climbed aboard.
Aarinnaie stood at the end of her chain, helpless, feet spread to keep from falling over on the roiling raft. It might have been Draken who noticed her peril, but Bruche leapt toward her. A creature had gained a claw-hold on the smooth wood of the deck, and it slithered wetly toward her, mouth open in a famished grin. Draken, or Bruche—they seemed joined so completely in the moment it was hard to tell who was operating Draken’s muscles—slammed the sword down. The head rolled away, and the severed throat pulsed a bucket of foul blood onto Aarinnaie. She screamed as if it burned her. Draken kicked at the body to send it back into the water with its fellows.
His foot went straight through the erring as if it were a shadow instead of a real, recently alive creature, and he fell back.
Chapter Twenty
B
ruche performed the impressive trick of half-flipping Draken from his back to his feet, and then instantly withdrew, leaving only his sword arm cold. Draken looked at his companions—the only living things in the vaporous, motionless, silent world. His mind refused to accept what his eyes saw, so he stubbornly kicked at the erring again. Nothing.
“Elegant in its simplicity,” Osias said.
The ends of his cloak were soaked with blood and river water. He held the pipe in his hand, and it crackled with flame and smoke, sugary Gadye leaf the only smell in a scentless, soundless world. “We’ve long suspected they could do it, and they fair can.”
Draken was able to sputter one word, and he wasn’t even sure it was the right question to ask. “Who?”
Osias swept his arm out toward the shore behind Draken. “Them.”
Draken turned to look. On the shore was a mass of people, armed with spears and clad in furs. Childlike in size, they stood watching with gazes as fierce and old as the ages.
“It wasn’t you then, Lord Mance, who did this?” Tyrolean said, breathing hard. He lowered his bloodied swords.
“They came when I called, but I do not think they come for me,” Osias said. “This is a sight few have seen, a war company of Moonlings out from cover of trees and darkness. Be honored, and be wary.”
“Come to us,” one called out, stepping forward from the group. Her cohorts shifted and closed ranks tight behind her, spears at the ready.
Her voice was musical and light and small, just like Draken’s immediate impression of her. The merest thin coil of moon-metal graced her short, dark curls and maybe designated her as the leader.
“How do we reach you, my lady?” Draken called back. “We’ll soak ourselves in the river.”
“This is the Abeyance.” A breath of smile touched her features. “You are outside the water, and all these creatures, and all Life and Death. You may walk where you will.”
Setia was the first to take a tentative step. “It’s like air and clouds,” she said wonderingly.
The others followed Setia to the shore as Draken knelt to release Aarinnaie. Erring blood dripped down her body, and she opened her mouth to speak as soon as his fingers touched her shackle.
Draken didn’t give her a chance. “Are you unhurt?”
She closed her mouth and gave him a curt nod.
“Then do us all a favor and say nothing.”
He led her across the river toward their rescuers and the rest of his party. Setia was right. Walking on the water and the land felt somehow cloudy, as if he were wading through ankle-high mist. When Draken tested the theory, he stepped right through the back of an erring but stopped at some mysterious point below the surface of the water.
When they reached shore, the Moonling knelt briefly on one knee, which made her seem even tinier, and then she rose again. The top of her head barely broached Draken’s chest. Thick curls reflected strands of dark gold in the fading sun, though her hair was as dark as her eyes. Her skin was dappled more intensely than Setia’s, the paler spots making her seem as if she were in leafy shade even out in the bright light. Though she was tiny, everything about her seemed, simply,
more
.
“Draken of the Brîn and Akrasia and...otherwise. Greetings and welcome from my people. I am Oklai and it is my great honor to meet you.”