Kingmaker's Sword (Rune Blades of Celi) (29 page)

Drakon stepped back quickly, his face paling. He gestured to the guards behind him. “Bind his hands,” he told them. “Then bring him along.”

The last glow of sunset dazzled my eyes after so long in the dark cell, but the fresh air revived me and I felt a little stronger. I allowed myself to stumble and stagger as the guards pulled me along, each with a hand on one of my arms.

They led me out through a small gate in the wall past two sentries armed with bows held ready. Ahead, near the bank of the river, stood a long, low open shed facing onto a pen ringed around with a rail fence. The pen was empty save for one man dressed only in a pair of trews and a leather apron that covered most of his chest and hung to his knees. He barely glanced our way as we came out through the gate into the meadow.

The only entrance to the pen was on the side nearest the shed, close to the river bank. The path was narrow and my guards had to walk in the grass alongside it to maintain their grip on my arms. We were nearly to the pen when the guard nearest the bank tripped on something hidden in the grass and went sprawling onto his face. He lost his grip on my arm as he fell, swearing, and pulled me away from the other guard. The second guard made a startled exclamation and instinctively turned toward the fallen guard.

I stood there, confused only for the instant it took me to realize I was free. Instinct took over. I was less than five strides from the river. I whirled and began running  clumsily. I heard a whirring rush of air, like the slither of an animal in dry grass, then something struck me a hard blow on the shoulder. The point of an arrow penetrated deep enough to pierce my shoulder and protrude through my shirt just below my collar bone.

Even as I began to fall, I hurled myself desperately toward the bank, muttering a prayer to all the seven gods and goddesses.  I dived forward and gave myself to the river. The last thing I heard before I hit the water was Drakon shouting incoherently at the guards in rage, demanding they plunge into the river after me.

The shock of the cold water made me gasp. I swallowed a double handful of the muddy water, coughed and choked, then rolled onto my back in an effort to keep my face above the water. Air trapped in my filthy shirt and plaid helped but probably wouldn’t for long.

Tentatively, hesitantly, I reached for the healing power, afraid of what I would find—or not find. At the first touch of that vast, chilling void, I drew back, shuddering.

The current swept me quickly past the tree-lined bank, westward to the sea. I fought only to keep my face above the bubbling surface. I lay on my back in the water, watching the stars slowly appear one by one against the black curtain of the sky. The trees along the riverbank became only darker black shadows against the faint glow of the sky, moving with incredible speed. I had not realized the current was so swift.

Then, caught in a wide sweep of a bend, the river spun me like a fallen autumn leaf. Even as I struggled to right myself, the current slammed me into something hard and unyielding. A dead tree, half submerged, stripped of all but a few sharp stumps of branches. One of the stubs stabbed into my chest and caught me there . Even as I struggled to free myself, the force of the water slammed my shoulder against the solid wood of the trunk and the arrow shaft broke. Pain tore through my shoulder, blinding in its intensity, and I lost consciousness.

I stared
directly into the face of the oddest apparition I ever remembered seeing. Grizzled, unkempt hair spiked out in all directions around the sharp-featured face. He looked like a silver northland owl, bushed out in its winter plumage. Black eyes, deep-set beneath shaggy white eyebrows, yet bright and inquisitive as a wren’s, held cheerful amusement and avid interest. The skin around his eyes and covering the wide brow was curiously unlined and smooth, making a startling contrast of youth and age between it and the flaring halo of wild, grey hair. A wide, gap-toothed grin beamed from behind the bush of frizzy beard. I gaped in amazement for a moment, then shuddered and closed my eyes, hoping that if this were another nightmare, it would go away quietly and leave me to die in peace. Or if I were dead and this was Hellas, that it would let me be and allow me to suffer my due torments in solitude.

The apparition cackled merrily. “Ye can open yer eyes, lad,” it said. “I be no wraith from Hellas come to carry ye off. Just old Jeriad, I be. Old mad Jeriad, they calls me. Mostly harmless, they says.”

I opened my eyes again. With something close to bemusement I saw that the face had not gone away, nor had it changed. Only vaguely curious, I looked around. I lay between two layers of furs and skins on what might have been a pile of bracken in a semicircular room walled in undressed stone. Dim natural light filtered in from somewhere, and a single guttering torch giving off more smoke than light cast writhing shadows around the room.

The strange man crouched on the packed earth floor, sitting on his bare heels beside my pallet. He wore a one-piece garment of tanned and stitched deerhide that covered him from throat to ankles but left his arms bare. Those arms looked as if they were made of skin, bone and gristle, thin as birch twigs. They looked withered and wasted with age and went with the wild grey hair only thinly streaked with black.

He thrust a crudely made earthenware cup at me, its contents steaming gently.

“Drink this, boy,” he said and cackled again. “It be bitter as sin and death, but it be making you feel alive again.” He pushed the cup with surprising strength into my hands and nodded eagerly as I lifted it to my mouth. “Drink up. Drink up. It be naught but snowberry root, willow bark and chalery leaf.”

I took an experimental sip. He was right. Vile tasting as swamp water. I made a wry face and tried to give back the cup.

“Nae, nae,” he insisted, pushing it back. The toothy skull of a tiny rodent dangling from one ear, half hidden by the untamed thatch of hair, swayed and danced with his movement. “Drink. Ye’ve lost blood from the shoulder. That be helping to build more.”

I held my breath and gulped it down in one long swallow, trying it to get it through my mouth fast enough to avoid tasting it. My stomach contracted sharply as the drink arrived with a hard splash, but I held the revolting stuff down and lay back against the furs, gasping.

The old man clapped his hands in glee, then took the cup. “Good lad. Good lad. If ye can keep it down, it be working quick and lively for ye. Feel better soon, ye will.” He set the cup aside and squatted there, his head cocked to one side like a bird, studying me with unabashed curiosity. “Quite a size, ye be,” he said in delight. “Quite a size, indeed. It be’d a good time I had to drag ye up from the river, boy. The river, it be sending me gifts now and then, but never something like yerself. Ye be ill-used, lad. Ill-used. Be ye on the run from the Ephir’s guardsmen, then? Hounds from Hellas, they be, for sure, and the old Ephir be the chiefest hound.”

Keeping up with his jackrabbit conversation was making me dizzy. The old man grinned and reached out to pat my shoulder. As the gnarled hand touched me, I noticed for the first time my shoulder was wrapped in a poultice made of leaves and grass, secured by a strip torn from the hem of my shirt. It didn’t hurt at all. And neither did my chest. Or my head. Whatever else he was, he was knowledgeable in the arts of healing.

“There be’d poppy in the drink, too, lad,” he said. “It takes away pain and gives sleep. Ye be needing sleep to heal yerself. Go off wi’ ye now. Ye be safe wi’ old mad Jeriad. Ye be safe.”

I believed him. My eyelids sagged of their own accord, and I gave in to sleep without a struggle.

***

I knelt, head bowed, in the midst of the featureless, blighted landscape, ash caked around my nose and mouth. Beneath my knees, the gritty cinders bit deeply into my skin. My blood, lurid red against the colourless ground, made small lumps of clotted grit that crumbled to dust at a touch. A wind I did not feel moaned and howled, sifting clouds of ash like drifting rain from the grey of the sky.

This was a dreamscape of my enemy’s making. His hand, the darkness he carried with him, had sculpted these dunes of ash and cinder. He drew me here against my waking will just as surely as the Watcher on the Hill drew me into his own dreamscape. I had neither the strength nor the skill to resist either of them.

Pain rasped through my chest with each choking breath I drew. Hollow urgency pounded in my blood. My enemy was near. I had to get away. Every heartbeat brought him closer and I could not let him find me. I had no sword, no weapon of any kind. Here in this dead, burnt land, he could kill me as easily as he breathed and there was no way I could oppose him.

I staggered to my feet. The effort made me dizzy, but I forced myself to stumble forward. The ash dragged at my boots as I sank to the ankles in the fine, powdery stuff. Pain wracked my whole body. I had to drag each foot free of the clinging grit, willing the muscles of my leg to swing the foot forward. One foot after the other in slow, aching progression. Too slow. Too slow. The struggle left me exhausted after only a few dozen steps. But I had to go on. I had to. He was behind me and his sinister laughter, ringing with triumph, carried on the wind. Sobbing in frustration and defeat, I fell again to my knees.

Another sound rode the wind, thin and sweet as a cool trickle of clear water in a desert. A woman’s voice? In my delirium of exhaustion and pain, I thought I heard my name. I listened, not breathing, concentrating on the sound.

Yes! A woman’s voice. Kerri’s voice! And she called to me. Called my name.

I rubbed the grit from my sore, crusted eyes. I saw nothing but the bleak, grey land. Ash clogged my throat when I tried to call out to her, and I could not manage even a hoarse croak.

“I’m here,” I thought desperately. “I’m here,
sheyala
!” But the link between us was barren and empty.

And my enemy was nearly upon me.

I threw back my head and opened my mouth to shout defiance at him. No sound came out. Ashes filled my throat, strangling my voice, choking me, and I could not breathe.

***

The knowledge that Cullin was dead swept over me as soon as I opened my eyes, and submerged me in a wave of grief and loss. Cullin and Kerri. Both gone. This business with Mendor and Drakon was none of their fight, but they were dead because of it, and I was alive. Through some quirk of the gods’ humour, I was alive, dragged out of the river by a half-mad bird of a man. I could not remember freeing myself from the dead tree. It seemed unlikely the old man could have extricated me from that himself. But surely I would have drowned had I not been impaled upon the sharp stub of branch that kept my head out of the water. Mayhap old mad Jeriad was stronger and more spry than he looked.

I owed him my life. For whatever reason he had been down searching along the riverbank, I owed him thanks and I owed him my life.

And I owed Drakon and Mendor a death—three times over. The debt would be paid. And soon.

Old Jeriad scuttled into the half-circular room, carrying a brace of skinned rabbits in one hand. “Ah, look at ye,” he cried happily. “Look at ye, boy. Ye be awake and colour be in yer face. Ye be not the half-drowned near corpse I dragged from the river. The drink always works. Always. Be ye hungry now?”

“Aye, verra hungry,” I admitted.

He chuckled. “Young men be naught but walking appetites,” he said. “I remember. I remember well.” He brandished the rabbits. “These be sizzling quick now, and there be fresh greens and bread. Good for you. Be making you strong. Healthy again. Wait you here. Dinner be soon. Wait you here.” He vanished through the hide that served as a door. Moments later, he was back, carrying a cup which he thrust at me. When I drew back in distaste, remembering the foul taste of the last concoction, he cackled in amusement. “It be only water, boy,” he said. “Just sweet water from my own spring behind the dun. Drink it. Ye be needing it. Drink up. Drink up.”

I thanked him and took the cup. He sat on his heels beside me, knuckles of one hand on the earthen floor between callused feet for balance, and watched me closely. “Ye lost people,” he said suddenly. He put one gnarled finger on my chest just below my breastbone. “There be a darkness in ye, boy. A darkness. Not of yer own making, but it be there nonetheless. Have ye run afoul of them, then? The black sorcerers?” He shook his head. “Bitter bad, they be, lad. Bitter bad.” A troubled expression flitted across his face. “They be out there now. Searching all up and down the river and along the water meadow. Searching well. They not be seeing old mad Jeriad, but I watched them. They be gone now. Gone upriver.” He cocked his head to one side and fixed me with that raptor’s sharp gaze. “Be it you they search for, boy?”

“I think so,” I said. I described Mendor and Drakon to him, and he nodded eagerly.

“Aye, lad,” he said. “Those two be’d with the black sorcerer’s men. Bitter bad, they be. After ye, be they?”

“They killed the man who was the only father I knew,” I said. “My friend and my kinsman. And they killed a young woman who had asked me for help.”

“Wicked bad,” he mourned. “Wicked, they be. I know them. Wicked men, all.”

I looked at him. The black eyes, strands of midnight black among the yellowish grey hair. “You’re Maeduni yourself,” I blurted in sudden recognition.

He held up a hand, waving it in negation and shaking his head vigorously. “Nae, nae,” he sputtered. “I be nothing. Just old mad Jeriad. Once, I be Maeduni. Mongrel, they called me. None of their own. None of their own.” The black eyes glinted. “Mother be Celae. You know Celi, boy? Nemeara it be once. Celi now. You know the Fair Island?”