Warautumn (15 page)

A final shift—while he prayed that Rann would not
awaken and that Bingg wouldn’t notice his movements—and he managed to maneuver himself so that Kylin’s head was in his lap, supported by Avall’s crossed legs.

This was it, then. Closing his eyes, Avall found the chosen shard by feel and held it lightly between his fingers while he fumbled for Kylin’s blooded hand with the other. The rest was a deliberate rush of movement, done as much from reflex as anything, as he strove for all he was worth to lock his mind away from the worst effects of the gem.

Yet his hand still closed around it, even as his fingers laced with Kylin’s, trapping the gem between.

Reality slowed—but not as it usually did.
This
was more gradual, and seemed to take the form of a slow synchronization of breathing and heartbeats. He tried to focus on the latter: on the purely instinctive. Not on his own fear or desires, or the madness he could sense yammering around the edge of his consciousness.

And succeeded! Found, for once, a place that was
of
the gem, but not tainted by its more horrific aspects.

And with that discovery, he sensed a recognition, as though countless severed parts of Kylin were flowing out of the gem and returning to the mind of which they had been a part. Avall flowed with them, but as passenger, not commander; his strength was only needed when the flow threatened to cease, or seemed … 
blocked
was the only term Avall could find to even remotely define the sensation.

But it was working!
He touched the heart of Kylin’s thought, even shrouded as it was by a massive clot of pain and fear—for Kylin would have seen Barrax’s death and Rrath’s destruction as forcefully as Avall had, but in nowise been prepared to meet them.

And then, quite suddenly, something ruptured—or broke—or collapsed—and a vast flood of healing poured through. Avall went with it—and met, to his relief, a true spark of recognition from a Kylin that was
all
Kylin and still in command of his faculties. It was like awakening a friend from
a deep sleep: a slight, uncertain grogginess that quickly solidified into a warm, comfortable joy.

Avall was sorely tempted to remain there, for Kylin’s mind was unexpectedly strong and cleanly made; the paths to his desires well-defined; his convictions set solidly in place. He was strong, too: strong enough to join his will with Avall’s and force away the last of the gibbering dark from the edge of their common awareness.

And then Avall lost himself utterly in a joining that was closer than friendship or sex, for all that it was not as close as the bondings he and Rann had shared. But it
could
have been, he realized. It was he that drew back from it, not Kylin. Though whether that desperate desire for prolongation was because Kylin had simply been lonely for so long, or was born of a genuine liking for Avall in particular, he dared not try to discover.

Instead, very gently, and not without regret, Avall eased himself out of Kylin’s mind. If not healed, at least it was better than it had been. And if he were lucky, Kylin would not even know how his healing had been accomplished. No one need ever know, in fact, for Avall knew with absolute conviction that Rann would rake him over the coals for being so rash and reckless.

But Rann didn’t know everything, though he often acted as if he wanted people to think that he did. Avall wondered if he should tell him about dreaming that he was a geen who carried the Lightning Sword and what he feared that portended. Probably not. Not now, when survival was uppermost and any distraction a danger.

As carefully as he could, he eased his legs from beneath Kylin’s head. It took but a moment to restore the shard to the pouch, and the pouch to where it had lain.

So what did he do now?

Well, he could return to his place beside Rann and hope sleep found him again—without odd dreams this time. But he was awake now, and that seemed a pointless endeavor, so close
to dawn. Without truly deciding as much, he rose and steered a course among his sleeping comrades to where Bingg still sat guard by the nominal entrance. The boy had also awakened, to judge by the way he was sitting up, gazing out into nothing. Avall made no move to approach silently. No need to alarm the lad.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he volunteered, squatting down beside his kinsman.

“Not for a while,” Bingg replied softly. Then: “I won’t say a thing.”

Avall regarded him keenly, but Bingg only smiled a sly, secret, little-boy smile.

“Get some sleep,” Avall told him. “I’ll finish your watch. I seem to be wide-awake.”

Bingg rose gratefully and slipped back into the shadows in the back of the cave.

Dawn found Avall still in the same place, but with the false Lightning Sword lying across his knees. He’d retrieved it half a hand earlier, for comfort—or security; both of which he’d discovered that he needed.

He wondered where the real one was.

But that concern vanished when Kylin’s eyes opened, along with everyone else’s, at the sounds of Myx making breakfast.

“I had the strangest dream,” Kylin announced. And then would say no more.

Nor did anyone ask him to explain, caught up as they were by a flurry of questions and counter-questions: their own about what had happened back at Gem-Hold, and Kylin’s queries about where they were, how they had got there, and why.

“Thank you,” Avall remembered to say eventually.

“And thank you,” Kylin replied cryptically. Avall hoped no one besides him saw young Bingg’s grin.

Merryn awoke to the scent of cauf boiling and camp-bread being baked.

And thought she must be dreaming.

Then, almost as quickly, she recalled that there should be only one other person anywhere about who could possibly be cooking if she was in fact awake—and was on her feet in an instant, her pleasant drowse falling away like ice from flexing timber.

“Krynneth!” she bellowed, even as she checked herself lest she have somehow been hobbled in the night—even as she strode toward the open door between the windowless inner chamber the two of them had shared and what had been the hold-house’s weather-gate—which was the source of what light existed as well as that heavenly odor and not a little noise, some of which seemed to be Krynneth humming.

At which point she recalled that she had left him restrained when they had gone to bed the previous night. Not heavily bound—not enough to hurt him—but sufficient, so she had supposed, to preclude any nocturnal activities of which she was not aware. Like trussing her up again. Like wandering off
somewhere. Like—Eight forbid—making away with the remainder of the regalia, or—worse—trying to make it work.

But there he stood: three spans beyond the farther door, with his wrists still manacled and connected by half a span of soft chains. Which apparently hadn’t stopped him from rising silently and pilfering what remained of the hold’s larder for items that had survived nineteen years of storage, including cauf (very
good
cauf, it smelled like; then again the stuff got better as it aged), and grain meal and flour.

He had also made a fire in what remained of the forge, which was close enough to the house for the cooking smells to find her. At her soft cough, he turned to look at her, fixing her with a disarming and rather silly grin that made her glad she had gone to bed fully clothed except for boots.

“Eat,”
he announced brightly.

“Eat,” she acknowledged gamely, relaxing against the door-jamb. “And drink.”

He pointed to a small, oak-bound cask by the step.
“Ale.”

She nodded and reached for it; breached it, and poured herself a portion into one of three intact mugs they’d found in the kitchen the previous evening. A swallow, and she finally allowed herself to speculate about this place in which she had found herself.

As best they’d been able to determine, Inon’s crew had happened on the hold fairly recently, though the place had been abandoned shortly after the plague, nineteen years before. Whether it had been founded before the plague—during the last period anyone had time, energy, the urge, or the impetus to explore beyond the Spine—or during it, by folk fleeing that contagion, she had no idea. The compound looked well built and decently stocked, but also somewhat threadbare—as though whoever had established it had run low on resources halfway through construction. The stonework was good, however, as were the tiles that comprised the roof, though the ones she had examined had been heavily suffused with the local sand—which made sense. The woodwork was competent, but
that was all; and the iron bars on the windows showed no more skill at forging than was typical of someone who had navigated the study cycle of all the clans and crafts.

All of which suggested that the builders had been from Stone or one of its allies, with a smattering of other craftsmen brought along for the initial construction or else through marriage or other legal bond. Alternatively, just possibly, the place had been built by clanless folk who had spent some elective time at Stone, since no clan sigils were anywhere to be found.

But where were they now?
She had seen no sign of funeral markers; then again, she hadn’t really taken time to look. Confounding speculation was the fact that the former inhabitants had not taken their trek-wagon when they departed (either that, or they had abandoned a surplus one), yet the stables seemed to have been closed up properly. On the other hand, the house had not been stripped, which would surely have been the case if its occupants had vacated permanently—though granted, the kitchen equipment and what little furniture and bedding survived was all of the simplest kind: the sort made by Common Clan or clanless under license by the High-Clan Craft Chiefs, which could easily have rendered it disposable. To further compound the enigma, there were no personal items about at all. No outgrown clothes, no broken toys. Nothing.

If only the bath had been intact …

It wasn’t. This was near-desert, and the presence of free-flowing water not a given. Oh, there
was
a well in the yard and assorted hand pumps about, including the one in the stable, all of which spoke of some deep spring; and there was a river half a shot away. But though her people prized luxurious bathing as much as anything in their lives, such facilities were not easily contrived in places like this. Eventually the builders of this hold would have added a complete bathhouse, but it would have taken a while, by the look of things.

As for other functions, a garderobe with one of those hand
pumps sufficed. Merryn had seen worse, but she had certainly seen better.

By the time she returned from dealing with necessities, Krynneth had finished breakfast, having added salt pork from the Ixtian’s stash to the camp-bread, cauf, and ale.

They ate in silence on a side arcade out of sight of the carnage in the stable court. Which reminded Merryn that they really did have to attend to the bodies, and that such things were better accomplished before a bath than after. Sighing, she motioned Krynneth to his feet. “Fetch firewood,” she told him. “I’ll strip them and see if I can locate some fire oil. They practice cremation just like we do, though I have to say that it’s more than some of them deserve.

“Not all of them,” she amended quickly, gazing at the corpse of the boy, Ivk. “The lad was a good sort, as was Tahlone. Inon had delusions, but they made sense from his point of view. And he treated his men as well as he could, and us better than he had to.”

Krynneth merely nodded and ambled toward the dwindling stash of fuel.

Two hands later—with a column of oily smoke rising behind them, and with her own sword back in her hand, courtesy of a tour through Inon’s saddlebags—Merryn and Krynneth pushed through the remains of the outer gate and started toward the river. The geen tracks preceded them halfway to the shore, then veered north. No change there, as if she’d expected any.

She felt a twinge of guilt at that. She was wasting time, and that was a fact. She was also behaving irresponsibly, and that was very, very unlike her. Perhaps it was the magnitude of the task before her that gave her pause and made her procrastinate. Perhaps her lifelong hatred of futility and lost causes had reared its ugly head. Or perhaps she was merely trying to second-guess Fate by
not
rushing recklessly onward when more practical affairs—affairs that might slow her now but speed her journey later—needed tending.

To keep from rehearsing those doubts indefinitely, she paused to get her bearings. South, behind her, was mostly desert, easing into the more forbidding expanse of the Flat itself. East was the hold, with, beyond it, the dark masses of Angen’s Spine, which seemed to flank more desert to the north, though a glimpse at Inon’s map indicated that sand should give way to grassland not too much farther in that direction. The western horizon was obscured by swaths of greenery on either side of the so-far-unseen river. All in all, it seemed safe—for the present. As safe as it was likely to be, anyway.