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Chapter Forty-Eight



Whether it was a result of the swiftly executed escape plan or luck, Druadaen never spotted any pursuers behind the group. More significantly, neither did S’ythreni.

However, it was certainly sheer good fortune when, just a day into their flight northeast toward the border of Kar Krathau, light rains set in: enough to wipe away any tracks their horses may have left on the increasingly rough ground.

The third day of their flight from the Serpent River dawned clear and fresh. Without a single cloud in the sky, the steep massifs of the Thelkrag Kar loomed gray and stolid to the north. After a few minutes with the Kar Krathaun patrol map, Druadaen confirmed that they had crossed the frontier early the previous day. This meant that the time had come to head directly north, orienting on the peaks that would guide them to their destination: the Final Talon.

The change in weather also meant it was safe for Elweyr to begin studying the code with which the Sanslovan mantic had labeled his various vials and powders. Rain was a threat to all but press-struck tomes, so he was reluctant to expose the small, leather-bound codex to the elements.

The only worrying part of the countryside that rolled out before them was that it wasn’t as unpopulated as they had expected. Although there were no roads, every new vale and stretch of grassland seemed to reveal a steading of settlers from Kar Krathau. Some were as small as a pair of cabins, some much larger, but without fail, their buildings reminded Druadaen of what he had seen among the bordering communities of Connæar: heavy construction, overhanging second stories, and windows that were as narrow and tall as archery slits in a fortified tower. Clearly, intrusions by Bent were part of life on this frontier, too.

Although steering clear of the settlements, they came close enough to catch occasional glimpses of the inhabitants. Their dress was unusually long beneath the waist, usually covering the leg down to the ankle. Women and men wore much the same garb: typically some variation of heavy worsted or hide breeches and equally heavy and rugged tunics. Dyes were either not abundant or unwanted, since most of their garments had only the natural colors of their source materials.

The soil was stony and did not favor farming, so herding and hunting seemed to be the primary livelihoods, both of which demanded the excellent riding skills that the group witnessed among them. And although the inhabitants were not exactly dour, it was difficult to imagine any of them indulging in a lively country reel. However, despite the challenges of the terrain and location, they nonetheless appeared healthy, prosperous and determined: the very picture of somber Kar Krathaun industry.

As they left behind a steading large enough to be deemed a village, Ahearn recited the axiomatic simile, “As gray as Kar Krathau.” He shook his head. “And all this time, I thought they meant the mountains.”

S’ythreni chuckled, glanced back at the inhabitants toiling in their drab garb. “I must give credit where credit is due, Dunarran. Your quest has shown me yet another impossibility.”

Druadaen gamely played the straight man. As usual. “And what might that be?”

“That there can indeed be a hell on earth. If it were possible to die of dullness, it would be epidemic here.”

Ahearn shrugged. “Yet, they all seem well fed. And I’ve yet to hear the sound of a child being beaten.” Umkhira started and stared at his addition.

S’ythreni’s rejoinder was a dismissive sigh.

Ahearn was not deterred. “And we’ve not seen a single burnt building or ruined steading. So despite the wildness of the area, it seems they are safe here.”

S’ythreni shrugged. “Eshfeth ana so’u alva.”

Ahearn stared.

Druadaen leaned toward him. “‘Every bird to its own nest.’”

“Ah. Well, maybe so, but you have to admit they’re born of hardy stock. Tough fighters that ask no quarter.”

Umkhira frowned. “Do you so respect Kar Krathauans?” When Ahearn nodded, her frown deepened. “Then why did you not treat the warrior you defeated with honor?”

“He spat on me boot!”

She shrugged. “You attempted to use threats to compel him to break his oaths to his people.”

Ahearn considered. “A bad business, that. Because no matter what I did or said, it was always going to come to that same end. He simply knew it before me. And hastened the inevitable.” He turned back and looked at the low, dark buildings. “Whatever you might say about ’em, you can’t claim they’re without honor.”

“No,” agreed Druadaen, “you certainly cannot. But let’s not tarry here. I suspect their eyes are as keen as their swords.”

* * *

At dusk, they topped a rise and spied a gnarled tip of black rock scraping its way above the closer peaks of the Thelkrag Kar: the Final Talon.

“Doesn’t look like horse country ahead,” Ahearn observed soberly.

Druadaen shook his head. “No, it doesn’t, but we’ll travel mounted as far as we may.”

Elweyr was already off his horse, eager to use the last of daylight to continue his attempts to crack the Sanslovan’s cipher. He had done the same thing the prior night, explaining that he was getting close, very close.

Druadaen and the others were happy to leave the mantic to his work. Some of the philters and draughts were likely to prove useful, and, as Ahearn observed, one wanted all the advantages and options possible when preparing to meet a dragon.

So Druadaen and the other three set up their camp in a small copse. It was the last one before the land flattened into the great plain that ran northward until rising to become the foothills of the Thelkrag Kar. The nightly routines—scouting their surroundings, making and tending a cookfire, readying food, arranging watches—all went past without Elweyr ever rising or even looking up. Perhaps, Druadaen reasoned, Elweyr would at least stop to sup from the plate they’d left for him.

Not a morsel had been touched when, three hours later, Druadaen walked wearily to Ahearn and shook him: change of watch. As the swordsman rose slowly, Druadaen removed his baldric, laid his weapons within reach, and spent a moment wondering how the mantic could go almost a whole day without eating. Then he lay down and waited for sleep to arrive, hoping it would not be accompanied by dreams when it did.

* * *

As they often did, the nightmares of the Wildscape only beset him after his body’s thirst for rest had been slaked. In them, he was lost in mountains that were made of fossilized shadows, where dragons with the heads of tigers fought against tigers with the heads of dragons. Which, it turned out, was all taking place in an immense terrarium, ringed by faces of such great age that Druadaen could not tell if they were looking into it from a tomb or the terrifying reaches of infinite space.

He was in the middle of wondering if there was actually any material difference between those two vantage points, when the entire scene vanished. It did not transmogrify or fade; it was simply gone…and in its place was their camp.

Once again, just as he’d experienced the night before they’d reached Heela’s cave, the sights and sounds were unusually crisp and real—and he could see himself asleep below, as if staring down from the top of a tree. Umkhira was sleeping to one side of him and Elweyr to the other. As he watched, Elweyr rolled over slowly, spent a moment watching the other two figures, then rose quietly and passed into the surrounding trees: the very trees in which they had made camp. But there was no sign of Ahearn or S’ythreni standing their watch.

As before, Druadaen felt like a ghost tethered slightly behind and above Elweyr until the mantic emerged into a small clearing; two large trees had fallen at right angles to each other, crushing everything that had been beneath and between them. Ahearn and S’ythreni were already there, both carrying their weapons at the ready, but without any sense of urgency. Just watchfulness.

“You’re late,” S’ythreni muttered through a suppressed smile. “As usual.”

“It’s part of my charm,” the mantic countered. “Anything moving out here?”

“Not that we’ve seen,” Ahearn commented.

“Or heard,” S’ythreni added before hefting her crossbow. “Still, better safe than sorry.”

There was a long silence. Each of the three seemed to be studying the others.

“Well, here we are,” Ahearn said gamely. “In sight of a dragon’s aerie, if legends hold truth. So: Do we go on or not?”

Elweyr sat on the bole of the larger of the fallen trees. “Is there really any question? Druadaen has been as good as his word from the moment he joined us. I’m not sure I’d like what it says about us, or at least me, to split away from him now.”

“It would say that you—that all three of us—are sane.” She sighed and sat on the other fallen trees. “But we’re not, are we?”

Openly surprised, then openly relieved, Ahearn leaned back into a muted laugh. “Why, High-Ears, are you taking a shine to the Dunarran?” Her outraged stare wrung an emendation from him. “In a sisterly sense, that is.”

She rolled her eyes but smiled. “I suppose I have ‘taken a shine’ to him. As much as I can to any human. And I have to admit that he does ask interesting, if totally unprofitable, questions.”

Elweyr nodded. “I can tell you the moment I realized that he and his quest might not be entirely insane.”

“Aye?” said Ahearn, smiling. “And when was that?”

“It was one of those long days on our voyage to Far Amitryea. We were nearing the end, already between its north and south halves, and had just started crossing the Sea of Marthanlar. So foggy you could barely see the end of the yardarms. We were on deck together and I asked him why he didn’t just accept what the rest of us do: that the world’s contradictions were put here intentionally by the gods. Either to test or tease us or maybe as thought puzzles.”

S’ythreni leaned her chin into her hand. “And what did he say?”

Elweyr looked up, remembering. “‘Such a design is not simply inelegant; it is inconsistent and arbitrary.’”

“Er, yes, I remember him saying something similar to that,” Ahearn acknowledged with a frown. “But I confess I may have, er, missed some of the finer implications.”

Elweyr smiled. “Almost every mantic or sacrist worth their manas has detected the inelegance he was referring to. There’s the natural order that governs almost everything in this world, but then there’s the supernatural order that we traffic in. And the point at which those two ‘orders’ overlap is…well, it’s orderly, but it’s not logical. That’s what Druadaen meant when he was calling the design of the universe inconsistent and inelegant. Because while the supernatural order has rules, they don’t really follow any pattern or paradigm other than it requires more power and concentration to generate greater effects.”

S’ythreni nodded. “Unlike the natural world, where one principle leads to the next.”

“Ah,” Ahearn said, brightening. “Such as the way species are shaped by their surroundings and continue to be so as circumstances change.”

Elweyr nodded. “It’s a dividing line that we alchemists encounter early in our training. The first compounds we learn to create are called ‘natural formulations.’ They require no mantic skill or command of manas whatsoever. Gathering the ingredients and processing them into draughts can be carried out by anyone who has been taught what to look for and what steps to take. And there is an underlying logic to the transformations and the interactions of the different agents and reagents. It is often very subtle, but it is there, and the more you learn about natural formulations, the more you become aware of the consistent patterns that exist among them.

“But alchemical formulations are an entirely different matter. There are specific rules for creating all the philters and draughts. And if you follow them correctly, they always produce the same results. But nothing from any one formula provides much insight into any other formula. The substances and procedures for each are…well, like Druadaen says, they are arbitrary. Unlike natural formulations, there’s no underlying logic to them, so discovering them is dependent upon trial and error…and maybe the instincts of a gifted master. But there’s no point to using consistent methods of observation and hypothesis, because that won’t give you any understanding of how and why the ingredients work together.” He stared up into the star-strewn sky. “I have to admit, it always bothered me a little.”

Ahearn frowned. “You mean, that there’s just no way to learn what makes them occur?”

“Well, that too, but I mean the bigger issue behind it. One part of our existence obeys laws that make increasingly more sense the more you learn. But the other part is…well, it just is. It never changes and we have no way of learning how or why it trumps the natural order. It’s…it’s not accountable.” He sighed, lifted a helpless palm. “But who has the time to wonder about such things? Particularly when you’re a starving apprentice with a craft to hone, a living to make, new thaumates to learn? And then, once my circumstances became even more, well, ‘lean’…” He finished with a shrug. “Questions about the nature of the universe seem very extraneous when all one’s energies and focus must remain upon paying for day-to-day survival.”

“Temples and tarts,” Ahearn muttered through a smile, “you almost sound like the Dunarran, when he’s holding forth about his quest!”

Elweyr shrugged. “As S’ythreni says, he asks interesting questions. But I think we have a more pressing one that needs answering as quickly as possible.”

Ahearn nodded. “The river ambush?”

Elweyr nodded. “I find it hard to believe that the Sanslovan from Treve is behind it. Or, at least, that he’s the only one.”

“It’s a fair question, I’ll grant you—but you said it yourself: they have long memories and a taste for revenge.”

“So they do, but the more I think about it the more implausible it seems. I mean, even if that Sanslovan is the one who set it all in motion, how did he gather all that detailed information about our group?”

S’ythreni leaned forward in mock terror. “Maybe there’s a traitor among us!”

The mantic shot her a hard glare that took the aeosti aback. “If I thought that was possible, I would already have acted upon it.”

Ahearn shook his head. “And consider our only three suspects: an honor-obsessed ur zhog, a sacrist of Thyeru, and an earnest Dunarran on a quest.” He shrugged. “So let’s be frank; the three people in our group most likely to bend the rules for their own purposes are us. Or at least, we were.”

S’ythreni smirked. “Your words are a great comfort.”

“Well, you can choose which is the greater comfort: that the other two in our group are not turncoats because they’re plainly more trustworthy than we are, or that we have managed to attract the attention of enemies who are as dogged as they are shadowy.” He shrugged. “Me, I’ll take the secret enemies. New foes are a daily likelihood in our line of work, but faithful mates? They’re a real rarity.”

Elweyr nodded, but was frowning, too. “But none of that answers how and why one Caottaluran’s grudge could grow to involve so many people: the nephew who was suborned; the people he bribed in Marshakerra to recommend his ‘uncle’s’ boat; and the Kar Krathauans who helped the mantic and his haideqs ambush us. Beyond the expense, that requires a great deal of very troublesome coordination. Something’s missing.”

S’ythreni tilted her head. “I wonder…could it be that the Sanslovan we shamed back in Crimatha is some kind of princeling?”

Ahearn shook his head. “The Kar Krathauan in charge of the ship’s troops was not a man to be trifled with, nor would he have agreed to babysit an aristocrat’s spoiled spawn. He spoke hard words to that mantic and was ready to leave the prat to his fate if he flung more insults or spells.”

“Well, tried to fling more spells,” added Elweyr with a hint of slighted pride.

S’ythreni had been nodding at each of Ahearn’s assertions. “So if the Sanslovan in Crimatha hasn’t the personal or familial power to carry it off from half the world away, then what do you think set it in motion?”

Ahearn sighed. “Druadaen.”

The other two blinked.

“Impossible,” S’ythreni scoffed.

Ahearn held up a hand. “Peace, High-Ears; you didn’t ask who set the ambush in motion, but what. And I’ll answer your question with one of my own: What is it about our merry band that could make it such a target?”

“Ah,” said S’ythreni. “Yes. Druadaen. As I’ve said from the start.”

Ahearn nodded vigorously. “I would bet silver against salt fish that he, his high-placed connections, or his questions have brought us close to something larger than we bargained for.”

S’ythreni and Elweyr looked at him. “Larger than we bargained for?” she asked.

“Oh, very well; yes, you were right in your misgivings, High-Ears. All the things that made it potentially profitable to travel with him also made it dangerous to travel with him. And it seems we got all latter and none of the former.”

Mollified, S’ythreni asked, “But still, how would trading harsh words with one Sanslovan lead to such an expensive and carefully crafted ambush half a world away?”

Ahearn’s head tilted forward toward his folded arms. “I’m thinking that the problem with Druadaen’s travels isn’t that he’s on a fool’s errand so much as it’s opened up old, forgotten caves that should have been left that way. Because in one or t’other of ’em, we brushed against the web of a very large spider. And now that spider has become interested in us.”

“Interested enough to find out if we’d make a good meal,” S’ythreni added.

“Perhaps, but I’m thinking that the interest isn’t coming from its belly but its brain. That it’s not hunting us out of hunger but precaution. Maybe even protection.”

“From us?” S’ythreni’s laugh threatened to break through her incredulousness.

“No: protection from Druadaen.” Seeing their looks, he held up a hand. “I don’t mean him, personally. I mean what he knows. Or maybe what he’s searching for.”

Elweyr sat straighter. “You mean that someone, or something, doesn’t like the questions he’s asking. If that’s true, then—”

A long warbling cry seemed to wind out of the trees behind them.

Their weapons were up in an instant. Ahearn glanced at S’ythreni. “See anything?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m not sure it even knows we’re here.”

“What do you think it is?” Elweyr whispered.

She smiled. “Only one way to find out.” She leaned her crossbow carefully against the trunk she’d been sitting upon, then started for the trees.

“Might need that!” Ahearn hissed after her.

“Snags on the undergrowth.” She muttered something else about staying fast, silent, and alive as she disappeared into the fronds and bushes between the trees. A moment later, a second warbling cry arose, closer and much, much louder.

So loud that Druadaen jerked out of the dream, suddenly awake…just in time to hear the warbling cry from his dream dying out.

Dying out in the waking world.

He pushed away the shock and nausea, grabbed his weapons, saw Umkhira had already unsheathed hers…and that they were the only two left in the camp. No sign of Ahearn or S’ythreni, who shared the late watch. And Elweyr’s sleeping roll was empty.

No. It’s just a dream. It has to be. How could I see and hear—?

And then the warbling cry sounded again, and he was bounding after Umkhira into the bush.

Except she had veered toward a game trail that would lead them away from the clearing with the two downed trees. “This way,” he hissed after her, thinking, Please let me be wrong. Please let it have just been a dream—

But when he emerged into the clearing, Ahearn and Elweyr were just where they’d last been in his…dream?…crouched and weapons ready. And then, hitting him like a blow from an invisible and soundless maul, he saw the final, impossibly specific proof that his dream was not, in fact, a dream:

—S’ythreni’s crossbow, leaning just as she’d left it, propped up and ready against the fallen tree trunk on which she’d been sitting.

Druadaen’s body pulsed with a flash of fever. Sweat suddenly sprang from almost every square inch of his body, clammy and slick. S’ythreni slipped out of the bushes, shortsword black with blood, saw them all, but her wondering eyes went to Druadaen. And they seemed to be asking, Why are you here? What do you know?

“Well,” whispered Ahearn, “what was it?”

She wiped dark, nonreflective ichor off on a nearby plant. “A giireyza.” She glanced at Umkhira. “But just a small one.” Her gaze went back to Druadaen. “Are you…well?” Ahearn and Elweyr turned, startled to see him, the color suddenly draining out of their faces.

“I—I am well. But the creature’s calls—they alarmed me.” He licked dry lips. “I was dreaming,” he said. And realized that he had simultaneously lied and told the truth.

He nodded reassurance to the others, turned, and hastened back to his sleeping roll. He pulled it up to his chin, closed his eyes, and resolved to sleep—to just sleep: that and nothing else.

Except when the dawn came, he hadn’t slept at all. And it was a distinct possibility that, during all those hours, he hadn’t even blinked.


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