We did not stop; there was nothing we could do for her now.
Genna’s doomed assault had delayed the Burnt just slightly, and I felt a moment of hope as I watched them fall behind. When I turned my eyes forward, that hope evaporated. Ahead of us, more rebels rushed from the hills, hundreds more, blocking the road completely. There was nowhere to go.
I heard a terrible shriek as my left eye burst from the heat of the flames; a moment later I realized it was my own voice. Clinging desperately to my senses through the pain, I craned my head around, looking for some way out, some respite from almost certain death. Two hundred yards north of the road, there was a fireleaf tree, its branches nearly bare save for a handful of red leaves. It was the last thing I saw. My other eye split open like an overripe fruit, spilling its innards down my cheek, and my vision went black.
But in that darkness, I saw an image from my dreams. “The fireleaf,” I gasped to Bryndine. “Tell them you’ll burn—”
Flame poured into my mouth, burning away my voice. I felt the soft flesh of my throat sear, heard the crackle as it blackened and split. I could not even scream as I lost consciousness.
* * *
When I awoke, the Burnt were gone.
Like the last time, there was no evidence of burning anywhere on my body. I felt no pain, and the eyes that had failed me could now see perfectly well. I glanced around to get my bearings.
The company clustered around the fireleaf tree I had seen before fainting. Dusk was falling, but most of the women held torches, and a small campfire burned a few feet from where I lay, casting a flickering orange light around the foot of the tree.
Wynne sat beside me, and when she saw that my eyes were open, she called out, “He’s awake, Captain.”
I groaned and sat up. “What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Scriber Dennon.” Wynne’s features creased with concern. “Are you all right?”
“Not particularly.” Her eyes widened, and I clarified quickly, “But I’m not injured.”
As Wynne fussed over me, Bryndine approached with Tenille and Sylla at her side, Deanyn following closely behind.
Deanyn gave me a small smile. “Well, you’re alive. That’s something.”
“Genna,” I said, remembering the woman’s brave charge. “Is she…”
Bryndine bowed her head. “She is gone. We went back for her once the Burners left, but we found nothing, not even the men she killed. The rebels cover their tracks well.”
“I’m sorry.” I lowered my eyes. I had liked Genna, despite her shyness around me; she was a gentle soul. “But… why did they leave?”
“I hoped you could tell us, Scriber,” replied Bryndine. “We did as you told—we threatened to burn this tree, and the Burners retreated. How did you know they would do that?
Why
would they do that?”
I hesitated to answer. They had seen the lightning and felt the ground shake, but would they believe me? Whatever I told them, it would not sound sane.
Wynne filled the silence with a guess of her own. “Could it be religious? Trees are holy to the Mother and Father.”
Tenille shook her head. “The Book of the Divide says the plants were put here for us to use; they’re holy, but not protected. But the rebels may be some sort of fanatics, I suppose.”
“It’s nothing like that.” I climbed to my feet, leaning against the trunk of the tree for support. “Or rather, I wouldn’t know if it was.” I did not want to continue; they would think me mad. But I knew now that I was not. The danger was real, and I could not hide the truth from them any longer. “I… I hear voices. Voices no one else seems to hear. They call themselves the Burnt, not the Burners. I—”
“This is insanity.” Sylla’s voice cut through my stammered explanation. “The man is out of his mind.”
“He’s just had some sort of fit,” Wynne said, crossing her arms and glaring at Sylla. “He’s disoriented, that’s all.”
“And yet, he knew they were coming, and he knew how to escape them.” Bryndine looked at me with searching eyes. “And we all saw the lightning, and felt the tremors. Fyrril’s message said something about the whispers of sorcery. Scriber, are you suggesting…” She paused, clearly struggling with the idea. “Some sort of magick? Some Wyddin trick?”
“I cannot explain it any other way.” I spread my hands. “I have heard the voices ever since Waymark. I don’t know what it is, or how they do it. But surely you’ve noticed the strangeness about the rebels. They can’t be caught. They appear without warning all over the Kingsland. They called lightning down on us, you all saw it; lightning struck in Waymark as well, out of a clear sky.”
“There is some truth to that, Captain,” said Tenille, though she did not seem comfortable admitting it. “I noticed strange things as well. In Waymark, they never spoke out loud, and some of them kept fighting when I was convinced I’d killed them. They barely even bled. I… thought it was just the heat of battle, or my imagination, but…”
Sylla crossed her arms. “I saw them bleed plenty.”
“Not while they still fought,” Tenille said with growing conviction. “Only after they died.”
“But why did you not speak of this before, Scriber?” Bryndine still did not look convinced, and she was not the only one—even Wynne, usually my greatest supporter, looked sceptical.
I narrowed my eyes in annoyance. “Would you have believed me? Look at their faces.” I gestured at the other women. “They barely believe me now, after everything we just saw. I only just believe it myself, and only because I can’t think of an alternative.”
Bryndine nodded slowly. “You are right, I suppose. But what do the rebels want? Have you heard anything of importance in these whispers?”
I could only shake my head. “I know nothing about their motives. But they attacked because they do not want us to recover Fyrril’s research, I am certain of that. I hope that if we find those books, it might explain some of this. I need to understand why I am hearing these voices, why they can make me have these… fits.”
“What of the fireleaf?” Bryndine asked. “What significance does it have to them?”
“I honestly don’t know. I had a dream, in Waymark. The Burnt surrounded a burning fireleaf tree, and they… did not seem pleased.”
Bryndine raised an eyebrow. “A slim thing to hazard our lives on.”
“Positively fat, I’d say, compared to the alternatives we had,” Deanyn remarked.
Bryndine nodded without speaking, turning her eyes up towards the flame-colored foliage of the tree that towered over us.
After a moment, Wynne asked, “What about the rest of Fyrril’s note, the spell on his father? Can they really control minds?”
“I can think of nothing else that would lead men of the King’s Army to ride us down,” I said.
“My cousin.” There was no doubt in Bryndine’s voice. “That is why he has been acting strangely, why he was so eager to be rid of me after Waymark. I might have recognized something was wrong, and told my father. You suspected this when you warned the King about him, didn’t you Scriber?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “And they likely made Josia Kellen attack you for the same reason—so that you could not expose Ord.” I braced myself for her anger—she would not be pleased that I had hidden my suspicions about the High Commander.
But she only said, “You did well, then. Your warning and Uran’s display when we left the city will surely see to his removal.” There was a distant look in her eye; she was already thinking about what this new information meant, about our next step.
“
If
we are to believe this,” Sylla said, “what do we do about it? I know how to fight against a sword, not… whatever this is.”
Determination flashed in Bryndine’s eyes. “We go on. If these Burnt seek to stop us, then they must fear what Fyrril knew. I do not understand how any of this can be, but our path is clear. We cannot waste this chance. We will send word of what we know to the King when we reach Ryndport.”
“Shouldn’t we turn back?” I asked. “They will come after us again as soon as we move. We’re only safe as long as we have a fireleaf to threaten, we can’t possibly make it to Ryndport.”
She smiled slightly. “They cannot attack if they cannot find us. We will not go by the road.”
Chapter Twenty-one
The ride to Ryndport has thus far been the most harrowing experience of my life. I do not know if my sanity will survive the trip.
— From the personal journals of Dennon Lark
The next day, Bryndine led us north off the Searoad and into the hills. Perhaps ten leagues from the road, we cut back west towards Ryndport. We rode in the shallow valleys between hills, staying out of sight, sending Selvi and Elene out periodically to scout our surroundings from atop whatever rise was nearby. The twins often saw the Burnt searching for us; small bands roaming the countryside in the distance, or sometimes dangerously near. Even divided to cover the area, each group outnumbered us badly.
Small villages dotted the hillsides, but we saw none that were not burned or abandoned, a testament to the danger of the rebels who sought us. Any settlement too small to defend itself had been laid waste weeks before. We avoided even the ruins; it was tempting to take shelter in an abandoned building for a night, but too obvious. They would be looking for us there. There were fireleafs in the hills too, but we kept our distance from those as well. Bryndine suspected that the threat of burning would not work so well a second time, and if the Burnt thought we might try it again, they would be searching near the trees.
I could hear the whispers at all times. They sought me relentlessly, and they were never far off. It was a terrible sensation, being stalked by a hunter I could hear but not see. The voices had only ever noticed me in the past when I was terribly afraid, as I had been the day before, or the first night I heard them in Waymark, so I tried to distract myself from my fear by talking to the others. I shared jokes with Deanyn and spoke of history and philosophy with Wynne; sang with Nalla and let Varrie try to teach me to juggle; and whenever idleness threatened, I studied Adello’s songs, looking for clues to the location of Fyrril’s books. But through it all, I was always conscious of the whispers. I could not banish the creeping tide of unease; I could only try to keep from drowning in it.
In my dreams, I had no such defense.
The first night after we left the Searoad, when Deanyn shook me awake from a nightmare of fire and pain, I knew that the Burnt had found me, and that they were coming. It was sometime before midnight; no one had slept for more than a few hours. I had no choice but to wake them. We had to leave before the Burnt arrived.
“You are sure it was more than a normal dream?” Bryndine asked when I had explained myself.
“They know where we are. We need to go.”
She sighed, but acquiesced. “You would know better than I, Scriber. We will move on.”
From that night forth, the women took shifts watching over me at night and waking me every hour. If my dreams were of the Burnt, the company was roused and we rode on. And I dreamed of the Burnt more often than I did not.
After two days, I could barely stay awake in my saddle—and we were still at least ten days from Ryndport. The more tired I became, the more difficult it was to distract myself from my fears, and though I could not be sure, I strongly suspected that succumbing to terror would give away our position.
Several times, we were nearly caught. Selvi or Elene would rush down from a hilltop to report that the Burnt were approaching, and we would force the horses to run for all they were worth, though our mounts were no better rested than we were. We always put the rebels behind us; the Burnt were mostly on foot, and those with horses were not skilled riders. They could not match our speed as long as we kept moving.
Ten days after we left Three Rivers, we fell prey to the second ambush.
We had crossed the border into the Ryndport barony earlier that day, by my estimate, and it felt like a victory, like we had finally outrun the rebels. It made us complacent. I woke from a long, terrible dream of the Burnt to find Hylda asleep; it had been her turn to wake me. I did not know how long I had slept, but it was more than an hour, and already I could feel the voices screaming in my head, terribly near.
“Wake up! They’re here!” In a state of near-panic, I roused the others, praying to the Mother and the Father that it was not too late.
They were light sleepers, Bryndine’s women, trained to be on their feet at the first sound of danger, but still they were too slow. By the time the entire company was awake and mounted, the Burnt were nearly upon us. They marched between the nearby hills in two groups, each of at least two dozen rebels, flanking us from the north and south.
“Stay together, and do not stop for anything,” Bryndine ordered. “Ride!”
We rode. Pushing the horses as hard as we could, we put some distance between us and the rebels, just enough that I dared to think we might escape.
But the Burnt were cleverer than I had thought. The hills to either side grew steeper as we rode; too steep for the horses to climb. They had driven us into a ravine. And then I saw the rest of them, some thirty strong, blocking the path forward while our pursuers rushed in from behind. It was the same trick they used on the road, but this time there was no way out, no fireleaf to threaten, just sheer bluffs on both sides.
“
All will burn
,” the voices screeched, echoing the words they had spoken the day we left Three Rivers, the rage-filled warcry I had heard so many times.
“Do not stop!” Bryndine repeated her order. “Our only chance is to break through. Ride them down!” She kicked her horse forward and drew her sword.
For once, I was too distracted to be properly terrified. I am no great horseman; it took all my concentration to stay in my saddle as we surged forward. I kept to the middle of the group, counting on the women to protect me.
The company met the Burnt in a screeching crash of metal and hooves. The noise was terrible, and yet our foes were silent—only I could hear their voices screaming in rage.