Huntress (9 page)
They sat up late telling stories, and by the time Taisin rolled into her blankets by the fire, she was so tired she fell asleep immediately. She didn’t know how much later the vision came, but when it began, she could still feel the hard ground beneath her body, softened only slightly by the blankets she had folded into a thin pallet. But she could also feel the cold breath of winter on her face, and she could see the fortress of ice again. This time, she had left the beach behind entirely; she was floating, hovering up high, ascending toward the glass windows set into thick, frozen walls. She had never known that ice could take on so many shades of blue: sharp lines of indigo like the deepest sea, aquamarine shadows, even the glint of blue-green where the sun struck just so.
For the first time, she realized the significance of that. The sun shone here. Wherever
here
was, it was not locked in the unchanging clouded gray that blanketed the Kingdom. She wanted to look up at the sky, to gaze into the sun’s brilliant white-gold eye, but she had no control over her movements, and she had arrived at one of the windows. The glass was like a mirror reflecting the light, and what she saw in the window made her jerk in surprise. A tiny person was hovering there on little feathered wings, like a hummingbird, and Taisin heard the creature speaking some kind of language she did not understand.
A moment later the window opened, and the creature fluttered inside. Taisin was pulled along with her, as if riding in the draft of her wings. The creature flew so quickly that all Taisin could do was follow. She only caught glimpses of what passed: walls of white, glacial floors, and every once in a while, a torch burning with a cold blue flame. She became aware, slowly, that the flying creature’s heart was beating as quickly as a tiny war drum, urgent with some kind of duty. And then all of a sudden the way opened wide, and Taisin now understood that they had been flying down a corridor and had just emerged into a great, echoing space. She heard more sounds like the words that the winged creature had spoken. She could not make out the distinct syllables, but they made her heart ache, for they were all sounds of yearning—each being who cried out was crying out for freedom.
Taisin saw the creature’s bright orange and emerald wings flutter as she twisted in midair to look down, and Taisin reeled at the sight below her. There were cages, hundreds of them, stacked like crates. She saw golden bars; she saw eyes of different colors peering up at her. The voices she had heard came from within those cages.
The flying creature turned to look back, but she did not seem to see Taisin. She had a tiny, delicate, girl’s face, and she wore an expression of dread. Her glittering golden eyes widened with alarm, and then Taisin was thrust out of the vision as though someone had pushed her aside, and she was lying on her back on the hard ground beside a fire that sent golden sparks up into the black night sky. She saw Pol sitting up nearby; he had taken the second watch that night.
Her breath came as quick as that creature’s wings had been beating. She knew she had been close to seeing something important. What had pushed her aside? Who was trapped in those cages? The memory of the imprisoned voices made her shiver. Who, she wondered, was their jailer?
Dragons battle on the plain:
Yellow and black blood spills.
Where frost is underfoot,
Ice cannot be far.
—
Book of Changes
T
heir first glimpse of the Great Wood came nearly three weeks after leaving Cathair. It was a dark smudge against the distant hills that blinked in and out of sight as the road curved. And then one afternoon as they rounded another bend, there it was, spreading its fingers out into the valley below, brushing up close to the river, extending to the horizon in waves of brown and green. Kaede had never before seen so many trees.
They camped within a copse of oaks that night. The weather had turned the leaves brown, even though it was midsummer, and a cold wind gusted through the gnarled branches, making the dried leaves rattle.
“We should get to Jilin sometime tomorrow,” Shae said, squatting down to warm her hands at the fire while Tali cooked the rice. “Hopefully before dark.”
“When was the last time you were there?” Con asked, sitting down beside her.
“Two years, one month ago,” Shae answered. “It’s been too long.”
Shae’s eagerness to reach Jilin caused them to push the horses hard the next day. The road took them through the outer reaches of the Great Wood, winding through clumps of oaks and bay trees. As dusk fell, shadows deepened beneath the branches. The road widened ahead, but the murky twilight made it difficult to see.
Shae, who was riding in the lead, called them to a halt. “Something’s wrong,” she said in a low voice. Beside her, Tali drew his sword.
Kaede felt a prickle of apprehension run down the back of her neck. It was too quiet; they couldn’t even hear the sound of insects.
Suddenly a torch flared twenty feet ahead of them, and behind that torch, a half-dozen more burned into life. In the smoky light, Kaede saw men and women approaching with weapons in their hands; some held swords, while others carried long wooden staffs or axes. Fear raced through her. She heard the loud, ringing scrape as Con drew his sword, and she reached for her own iron dagger.
A man stepped out of the crowd of torchbearers, his black beard obscuring half his face, his eyes glittering in the torchlight. “Who goes there?” he called out in a harsh voice.
Shae had drawn her sword as well, and Tali and Pol flanked her. “Noa, is that you?” Shae called out. “What is going on? It’s me, Shae.”
The bearded man took a step forward, but he still brandished his sword before him. “Shae? Niran’s sister?”
“Yes! Don’t you recognize me?” She dismounted and sheathed her sword, approaching him with her hands outstretched. “Noa, I’m back. It’s me.”
For a long, tense moment, Kaede was sure the man was going to deny that he had any idea who Shae was and strike her down, but then he lowered his sword and closed the gap between them, crushing Shae into an embrace. “Shae,” he said, his voice heavy with relief. “Why didn’t you send word in advance?”
The other torchbearers gathered around Noa and Shae, their voices rising as they pelted Shae with questions about why she was back. She answered with rising concern in her voice: “I will tell you all—I will tell you everything, but where is Niran? Where is my brother? Why isn’t he with you?” The crowd fell silent, and Shae turned to Noa and demanded, “Tell me, Noa. What has happened?”
“Your brother, Niran, is fine,” he said, but his tone suggested that he was holding something back.
“Noa,” Shae said. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll take you to him. He’s fine,” Noa said again.
“Now,” Shae said firmly, and Noa nodded.
The village of Jilin was surrounded by trees, and trees marched down Jilin’s few streets. The buildings seemed to have been situated to make room for giant trunks and root systems, and in the wavering torchlight, they looked almost as if they had grown out of the trees themselves.
Noa led them to a massive oak outside a long dark building and said, “You should leave your horses here. It’ll be easier.”
Shae knew the village of Jilin intimately, and she knew immediately that Noa was not taking her to her brother’s home. “Where are we going?” she asked him.
“Into the Wood.” Most of the other villagers had returned to their homes, but two remained behind, carrying torches. “Let’s go,” Noa said, and struck off down a small trail.
In the daylight, the path would have been an easy walk, but in the dusk—brightened only by the flickering torches—it was an obstacle course. Even Tali tripped once, cursing under his breath. Kaede kept her eyes on Noa’s torch ahead, trying to ignore the strange sensation that there was something out in the dark, watching her. It made the hairs on her neck stand on end, but she told herself she was imagining things.
After they had walked for about a quarter of an hour, Noa paused and called out, “Niran!”
Moments later a man came running down the path; behind him someone followed more slowly, bearing a torch. “Shae?” the man cried. “Is that you?” Niran was a tall man with a closely cropped black beard; his hands and face were streaked with dirt, but it could not disguise his surprise and joy at seeing Shae. He crushed her in an embrace, asking, “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?”
“I’ll tell you everything later,” Shae said. “But why are you out here? What’s going on?”
“We’ve found something,” Niran said.
The torchbearer who had followed Niran came forward; she was a woman, her black hair hanging in a long braid over her shoulder. “Shae?”
“Parsa,” Shae said, and threw her arms around her brother’s wife. When they parted, Shae asked, “What have you found?”
“Come and see for yourself,” Niran said, and stood aside. There was a clearing just past him, and a long rectangular hole gaped open in the ground. Shovels were leaning against a nearby pine tree, and Kaede realized that she was looking at a grave. A chill ran through her. Beside the grave was a shape wrapped in a sheet. A body.
Niran bent down and pulled back the sheet. They saw the corpse of an inhuman creature, its arms wrapped around bended knees, its head lolling sideways onto the ground. It had long hair that resembled hundreds of tiny vines, some of them smashed and brown. The eyes had been covered by a torn piece of cloth, like a blindfold, and the mouth was stuffed with a black stone. From its fingertips, nails like long green blades of grass extended, curling over mottled, barklike skin. They were the only living things on the creature: It was as if the grasslike nails had sprouted out of a seed and were determined to make a new life out of what had already expired.
Taisin edged past Niran to take a closer look, curiosity vying with aversion. She wondered if it was some kind of fay. There were fay races other than the Xi—she thought the winged girl she saw in her vision must be fay—but she knew little about them. This one looked like it could have grown from a tree. She asked, “When did you find it?”
“Yesterday morning,” Niran said.
“Did you place the stone in its mouth?” Taisin asked. It was traditional to put a stone in the mouth of a person who had been murdered, to prevent him from speaking to the living if he returned as a ghost.
“I did,” Parsa said. “It is marked with the sign for peaceful rest.”
Taisin couldn’t see the mark; the stone was wedged in too deeply. The creature’s lips were cracked and dry, reminding her of parched earth after a drought. “You were going to bury it?”
“Yes,” Niran said.
“It should—it would be better if it were burned,” Taisin said.
“We can’t burn it,” Niran objected. “We would set the Wood on fire.”
“And we won’t carry it into Jilin; it is polluted with death,” Parsa said. Her eyes narrowed on Taisin. “Who are you? What would you know about this?”
Taisin shrank back, feeling stung. Shae said quickly, “We’re here for a reason. I didn’t send word because, well, our reasons mustn’t become widely known. But I will tell you the truth.” She glanced uneasily from the body to Taisin. “First, though, I think we should finish what you have started here.”
Shae’s brother looked them over skeptically, but he nodded. “All right.”
He bent down to pull the shroud over the face of the dead creature again. Taisin said nothing. She hoped that the stone and the blindfold would do their jobs and take the place of a funeral pyre. She told herself that if the ghost of the creature could not speak or see, then no real harm could be done. But still, she was uneasy. She had no idea if those traditions would work on something so clearly inhuman. She wanted to know more about it: How had it died? And where had it come from?
Niran and Parsa picked up their shovels, levered them under the body, and tipped it over the edge of the grave, where it fell with a dull thump. Taisin flinched. Beneath her breath, she muttered a blessing ritual meant to keep a body in its grave.
Niran, like his father and grandfather before him, was a blacksmith, and his family’s home had been built adjacent to the smithy over the course of many generations. Kaede had the impression that additional wings had been added at random, creating a maze of connecting rooms that opened here and there into sky wells and broader courtyards. Niran led them through the main gate and past the smithy, the forge still smoldering, and then into the main hall, next to a kitchen where a fire burned in an open pit.
Shae’s older sister, Raesa, who had heard news of Shae’s arrival, greeted them warmly. “The children are asleep,” she said. “You must come and eat.”
Raesa’s husband, Tulan, had brought back two hares from his traps that afternoon, and the rich fragrance of braised meat made Kaede’s mouth water. They gathered together in the hall, sitting around two square tables pushed together, and ate salty flat bread and rabbit stewed with aromatic spices. A brown-and-black hound nosed his way around their feet, sniffing for fallen scraps. Raesa poured them hot, bitter tea in small earthenware cups, and Shae told her brother and sister why she had brought five strangers with her to Jilin.
“Please, don’t tell anyone else what I’ve told you,” Shae said when she finished.
Niran nodded, and glanced around the table at her companions. “How long do you plan to stay?”
“Not long,” Tali answered. “I’m sorry.”
“Stay through tomorrow,” Parsa insisted. “You have to at least give us time to welcome you back.”
“All right,” Shae assented with a smile. “As long as nobody else objects.”
“I’m happy to have a roof over my head for one more night,” Con said, and no one disagreed with him.
“You’re traveling into the Wood?” Raesa asked.
“Yes,” Tali said. “We’re headed north of the river Kell.”
Raesa glanced at her husband, who had been mostly silent. But now he said, “When I was a boy, my uncle said he traveled that far, but when he returned there was something off about him. I never could get the whole story out of him.”
Tali had brought their map case inside, and now he opened it, pushing aside empty bowls to unroll a map of the Wood onto the table. Kaede scooted her chair closer, wanting to get a better look. Tali had never shared them with her, though she had heard him discussing their route with Pol and Shae. Jilin was clearly noted on the map, and trails splintered off from the village and led into the Wood. Some of them ended abruptly only a few miles in; the longest followed the river Nir north, and then ended just south of where the Nir intersected with the Kell, which flowed east. Above the Kell, the Great Wood continued unabated to the northernmost edge of the map, which was marked with mountains: the Northerness. Tali looked at Tulan and asked, “Is there a way to cross the Kell? A bridge? It is unmarked.”
Tulan leaned over the map to examine it, but he shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard of. I suppose there are stories of folks who have crossed the Kell.”
“Where did they cross it?” Tali asked.
“They’re stories, not directions,” he said mildly.
Tali seemed disappointed.
“I think this map is as good as you’re going to get,” Tulan said. “It’s accurate enough around here. I don’t know about the northern part; I imagine that’s all a guessing game.”
“So how would you advise that we find our way to the Kell?” Shae asked.
“Follow the Nir. I’m fairly certain it does meet the Kell. You’ll find it that way. That’s as best as I can tell you.” Tulan frowned, tugging at his beard. “You’re going off the map. No one knows what’s up there.”