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Chapter Thirty-Seven



The next day, after a night of listening to the Bent winding horns, the hyek faded back toward their warrens in the southern hills. Whether they left because they had taken all that they wished or were unnerved by the unexpected silence of the horn of one of their larger groups, would never be known.

However, as was their wont before withdrawing, they put the torch to everything that would burn. But because both crops and roofs had been gently soaked by rains the prior week, their efforts were only moderately successful. Still, smoky smudges hanging above the steadings of Aswyth Plain announced their departure to all who’d survived their attacks.

So it was no surprise that, shortly after breakfast, S’ythreni spotted another group of refugees moving from east to west, just beyond the small river that marked the northern border of the despoiled farmlands. Hoping that someone in that group would know the girl or how to return her to any surviving family members, Ahearn, Elweyr, and Padrajisse mounted and rode after the refugees, the little girl seated in front of the swordsman.

Before they did, Umkhira said her farewells to the child, who touched the Lightstrider’s wide, pronounced brow with gentle fingers. As her escort cantered northward, she waved a spread-fingered goodbye from around Ahearn’s broad torso. After that, Umkhira seemed weary or melancholy or both. Druadaen suggested more rest might be in order, and, for the first time in his knowledge of her, she admitted that she did not feel as strong as usual. She went into the dark of the unspoiled root cellar and, if snoring was any indication, was asleep within five minutes. Druadaen remained on guard at their camp while S’ythreni vanished into the fields to find the trail of the giant that the first group of refugees had reported.

She was back within half an hour. Not surprisingly, the giant’s movements around the farm were easily found and followed. It had smashed a wide swath through the corn and had done much the same to the surrounding vegetation when it reascended the slopes from which it had come.

Druadaen had not been looking forward to his next duty. Because S’ythreni had far better eyes, her new job was comparatively easy: sit atop what was left of the roof and keep watch. Lacking her keen vision but possessing a great deal more strength, Druadaen’s task was to gather the bodies. Moving the hyek corpses was physically taxing, whereas finding and recovering those of the farm family was heartrending. Still, it had to be done and had he been a Legior, it would have been a frequent task—assuming he would have ever seen war at all.

He was about to get the furthest of the hyek corpses, when S’ythreni called out to him. “Dunarran.”

He turned. “Yes?”

“Yesterday…what made…I mean, why…?” She shook her head angrily. “You lied to the sacrista. You told her that I knew to look for the poison scabbard, that I found it. I didn’t ask you to lie for me.” She became angry. “I don’t want anything from you.”

Or from anyone else, he seemed to hear like an echo following her words. “Actually,” he pointed out calmly, “I did not lie at all. Nor did you. You simply handed her the scabbard. It was she who assumed that you were the person who found it.”

“Well, yes…but it was a reasonable assumption.”

Druadaen shrugged. “It was an assumption, nonetheless.”

“But why do that? I don’t need your—”

“Yes: as you made explicitly clear just now and over the months before, you need nothing from me. But Padrajisse knows you used poisoned bolts on the kaghab. Of which she disapproved. Powerfully.”

“I neither court nor care about her approval.”

“Which you have made equally clear. But all of us must work together, must trust each other, must feel ourselves part of a fellowship. Having you help her save a life through your knowledge of poison seemed likely to balance her judgment against your using it.”

“That hardly means she’s ‘forgiven’ me.”

“True. But it means she must also consider this: if you were not acquainted with the use of poison, Umkhira might have died.” Druadaen shrugged. “I believe that has tempered her feelings toward you. At any rate, it was worth a try.” He started away to begin the exhausting work of dragging bodies.

“Dunarran!”

He turned back to her. “Yes?”

“I…I understand you were trying to be helpful. I appreciate that.”

Druadaen managed to hide his surprise. “I was happy to help; I expected no thanks.”

“And you won’t get any next time!” S’ythreni snapped. “Your good intentions are no excuse for meddling in my affairs.” She stamped up the ladder to the roof.

Druadaen watched her do so, wondering if she realized that, despite her denials, she had just obliquely admitted to thanking him.

Somehow, that made the prospect of dragging around fallen hyek slightly less onerous.

* * *

Ahearn and the others did not return until the sun was well progressed toward the western horizon. After being sent from one group of encamped refugees to another, they ultimately found some of the child’s relatives: the family of her maternal aunt. There was no word on the child’s own mother, but the three riders had the unpleasant task of describing the four human corpses they’d found scattered about the farm but had refrained from showing her. The aunt’s family listened and confirmed that the dead were the little girl’s father, maternal grandfather, and two oldest brothers. Saddle-sore and melancholy at having had to transfer such terrible news in the same act as restoring the child to what might be her closest remaining family, Ahearn and the others were quiet upon their return and remained so for most of that evening. As night fell, two other relatives of the little girl’s family returned to survey the farmstead, deemed it salvageable, professed regret at having nothing with which to pay the fellowship for their help.

Druadaen waved off their concern, inquired if they meant to remain there for the foreseeable future. When they responded in the affirmative, he explained that they would be doing the group a great service to mind their horses while they tracked the giant into the hills. Eyes wide, the two men agreed and left abruptly.

“Careful now,” murmured Ahearn with a smile once they were out of earshot, “you’ll scare off all the farmers with that wild talk.”

Druadaen shrugged and smiled back. “And still, they accepted the request.”

“Yes,” S’ythreni said, “since they have every expectation that we won’t be coming back for those horses. We’ll be too busy getting digested by giants.”

They set out upon the giant’s trail before dawn, proving in practice what S’ythreni had suggested: that anyone could follow its progress even on a moonless night. Shortly after leaving the croplands, the giant had entered the light woods near the base of the hills that led up to the Thurial mountain range.

As the trees and low undergrowth became thicker, it became just that much easier to track the immense creature. It wasn’t even essential to be able to see its yard-long footprints and the crushed fronds on the forest floor; bent saplings and snapped low-hanging branches produced a gap in the canopy that shone down upon them like a road fashioned from twilight.

Shortly after dawn, the path ended at the base of a stream that cascaded down from rocky heights. It was the work of a moment to see why: the giant had ascended here, using the boulders in and around the cataract as if they had been a stone staircase. It also became apparent that the giant could not leave the side of the watercourse without leaving clear marks. Where it had stopped to eat a meal, the hooves and horns of a sizeable goat were strewn about a flattened patch of stream-hugging grasses. The ram’s well-gnawed skull had been perched on a rock, looking downhill at them with empty sockets as they ascended. Umkhira inspected the remains and announced that they were about a week old. The group pressed on.

They didn’t come across another departure from the winding stone stairs until the sun was beginning to set. Several trees had been pushed over in a clump which had the distinctive shape of a large biped crushed into its center. “Sleeping mat,” Umkhira commented confidently as the shadows lengthened. “This giant is traveling much faster than we are.” That simply reinforced their tentative conclusion that despite their quarry’s apparently casual progress, it had still covered as much ground in a few hours as they had in the course of a daylong forced march that left all of them spent.

Ahearn strolled about the site, finding a few more bones tossed into nearby bushes. “Seems as good a place as any to make camp. These fallen trees will provide an extra brake against the wind.”

Umkhira frowned. “Druadaen’s readings suggest that giants may be followed by Bent, or other creatures that mean to feed upon their leavings.”

Ahearn smiled. “Aye, and they are ahead of us, too.” He held up a cracked bone. “Split with a blade. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find some of their scat about.”

“Who could tell?” S’ythreni said, raising the back of her hand to her nose and pointing deeper into the woods. When the others looked at her, puzzled, she explained. “Don’t go in that direction…not unless you want to conduct a detailed study of a giant’s digestive leavings.” She stared at their lack of reaction. “Really? None of you can smell that?” When the others shrugged, she shook her head and pulled her sleeping roll free of her pack.

Although Umkhira assured them that the Bent who’d sifted through the giant’s leavings had not been at the site for several days, they nonetheless decided against having a fire. No reason to take the chance that the Bent might see it and return. Or worse yet, that they might warn the giant, although Umkhira and Druadaen both agreed that was unlikely. Both the folklore of the ur zhog and the accounts in the Archive Recondite asserted that whatever cooperation occurred between the Bent and the giants was opportunistic rather than planned.

Ahearn nodded approval. “Well, if a Dunarran and a Lightstrider come to the same conclusion, that’s as close to a certainty as one gets in this world. Now, then, let’s remedy something that got us in hot water the other day.”

“Such as?” Padrajisse drawled.

“I’m glad you asked! I’ve spent the better part of our hike thinking how useful it would be if you, eh, ‘bonded’ with all of us. I think that was what you called it, but whether that’s the right term or no, it certainly would have helped our battle plans go more smoothly!”

“It is the correct term, but I cannot create so many bonds.”

“Why not?”

Elweyr nudged him. “Hssst. Enough of that. Don’t put a sacrist on the spot.”

“I’m not!”

“You are when what you’re really asking is, ‘Why won’t your god give you more power?’”

Padrajisse waved what might have been dismissive gratitude at the thaumantic. “The answer, Master Ahearn, is that many factors bear upon how much we may impose upon our deities. Once established, any bond to another entity remains a constant, albeit small, drain upon a deity’s attention and beneficence. If any consecrant overreaches for such favor, the deity usually reminds us of our place by withdrawing what blessings exist and turning their face from us for several days.”

“Well then, how many can you give us, do you think?”

“Gods and garters,” Elweyr almost growled, “do you think you’re ordering eggs, Ahearn?”

The swordsman stared at his friend in both confusion and surprise. He seemed about to say something but then turned back to Padrajisse and waited.

Who shrugged. “I think I can risk two. I will start immediately. Do not disturb me until I am done.” She turned toward Druadaen, closed her eyes, and held her hands out in his direction, palms up. Almost immediately, she frowned, then her eyes opened sharply. “That is very strange.”

S’ythreni rested the tip of her long, fine index finger upon her chin. “Told you.”

“So you did,” Padrajisse allowed. She frowned at Druadaen. “And you have no idea what causes this…this disruption of miracles and mancery alike?”

Druadaen shook his head. “None,” he admitted. “Unless…could it be some kind of, well, curse?”

She started. “A permanent curse? Put upon you by what powerful foe?”

“Not by a foe.” Druadaen felt old fears rise. “I have wondered if it could be connected to my rejection at the epiphanium.”

Padrajisse’s eyebrows rose. “It sounds as though you have a story to tell me.”

Druadaen looked uncomfortably around the group, all of whom leaned closer. “To date, I have left this as a…private matter.”

Padrajisse nodded. “Understandable. But if these companions are willing to join you in your search for giants, perhaps you owe them an accounting of this part of your past. It seems a reasonable way of honoring their willingness to travel with you out of loyalty.”

That’s not why they’re doing it, but…And so Druadaen told them the very abbreviated version of his invitation to, and baffling rejection at, the epiphanium of Amarseker.

Padrajisse sat silently for several long seconds after he was done telling the tale.

“Well?” he asked. The others leaned toward the sacrista, interested, attentive.

“I do not think your nullification of miracles or mancery is the act of any god of the pantheons you sought. And of them all, Amarseker is the one least likely to act in such a contrary and capricious manner. Even more so than my own lord and Creedgiver, Thyeru. But what causes the phenomenon—that I cannot say. Now, I would have you answer a mystery for me. This velene of yours: Is it living or not?”

“It is not mine,” Druadaen averred.

“How do you know?”

He shrugged. “In addition to being told as much by those who would know, it is unresponsive to me.”

“Unresponsive? In what way?”

Druadaen leaned back. “When I think, or voice, requests, it always ignores them. Or does not hear them. Either way, if it does not respond to my will, how could it be called ‘mine’?”

Padrajisse turned toward S’ythreni. “You seem to have deeper knowledge of it, so I shall put the same question to you: Is it a living creature or otherwise?”

The aeosti shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure Shaananca did.”

Padrajisse straightened. “Shaananca, Mentor of the Ar?”

Druadaen managed not to react to the fact that the sacrist knew of his guardian not in her role as the Consentium’s Senior Archivist, but as a Mentor—rather than a Guide—of the Ar. Whatever that was.

“Ay-eh, that’s the Shaananca he knows,” Ahearn confirmed with a smile. “You’re acquainted with her?”

Padrajisse shook her head. “I have never met her. My familiarity with her is restricted to her name—and position—alone.” She glanced at Druadaen out of the corner of her eye. “Why did you not say from the first that you are on a mission for her?”

“Because I am not.”

“Y’see, now,” Ahearn said through a widening grin, “Shaananca’s too wise a magic auntie to send her nephew off looking for giants to kill ’im. That’s all his doing.”

Padrajisse never even turned her eyes toward the swordsman. She leaned toward Druadaen, as if closer study would solve his mysterious origins and intents. “And how did you assume such a strange quest?”

“With respect, I’m not sure I’ve assumed a ‘quest.’ I’m just trying to answer questions. An increasing number of them, it seems.”

Padrajisse seemed both mollified and disappointed. “Questions regarding what?”

Druadaen drew in a breath, took a moment to consider how to give the most coherent and yet concise explanation of the strange inconsistencies he’d found regarding the urzh and their recovery and impossible resilience to staggering casualties, the fossils which sages said could not have formed in the time that the world had existed and, just now, the apparent physiological impossibilities of the species known as giants.

He had just begun enumerating the confounding details of their anatomy when Padrajisse sliced her hand, edge first, through the air between them. “I have heard enough. You seek to explain the will of the gods. It cannot be done. You would be wise to put your faculties to a better purpose.” She considered him solemnly and perhaps with a hint of sympathy. “Of course, being denied epiphanesis might put any active mind on such a path as yours. You no doubt hunger for answers to so many of the questions that the embrace of a deity and its creedland renders moot.”

Umkhira nodded. S’ythreni seemed to be trying very hard not to roll her eyes. But Ahearn and Elweyr exchanged brief uncomfortable glances. Druadaen never asked other people about the creeds to which they belonged; his own disappointments had schooled him in why others might wish to keep such matters private. But there was something in the two men’s reactions which suggested that they were not in complete agreement with Padrajisse’s assertion.

Perhaps she sensed the generally tepid reaction to her words because she added even more emphatically, “Each creedland provides answers. I am told that even the Great Tract does. And who may say that any of them are entirely correct or entirely incorrect in the lens they hold up to reality?”

Umkhira started. “I am surprised to hear a thinski…er, human say that. Seen from without, your society’s temples all seem convinced that they are the sole possessors of the truth of the world around us.”

Padrajisse shrugged. “Many claim just that. And those which do are often at war with others who make equally absolute claims. Yet even that is part of the greater equilibrium between the gods.”

S’ythreni raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Is it not obvious? Creation itself reflects the properties of its creators—the deities—naturally enough. So the wars between, and also within, thinking creatures must correspond to similar variations among and within the individual gods. Some are absolute and unyielding; others are flexible and tolerant. Some espouse altruism and modesty; others encourage gain and vainglory. Such contending forces exist within each species and within the heart of each individual. How could it be otherwise, since we are but the ripples of the creation which arose from their power, and so, took its shape from their spirits?”

Umkhira frowned. “This is a strange speaking from a human priest. Most only pronounce, declare, and declaim, regardless of what they value.”

S’ythreni smiled at her. “We may not have much in common, Lightstrider, but we share this experience when it comes to human temples. But, in fairness, Padrajisse is a sacrista of a Helper deity; you will hear temperate words much more frequently among them than others. And some would say Thyeru’s consecrants are among the most open-minded and just.” She turned toward Druadaen. “Others would say it is Amarseker.”

Umkhira’s frown had not lessened. “Yet they are not among the greatest deities of that pantheon, are they?”

Padrajisse shook her head—sadly, Druadaen thought. “No. We of Thyeru consider those in the Creedlands of Amarseker to be close kin because we both walk a very hard path. We follow precepts rather than laws, must measure and decide upon our deeds. In other temples, there is more reliance upon universal rules than personal reflection.

“Still, there are many commonalities which run through all creeds. Indeed, even those who choose to rove rootless in the Great Tract”—Ahearn shifted uncomfortably at the forced toleration in her tone—“show their common origins with all others. Similar observances are always on the same days of the same moonphases. All have a rite that we call epiphanesis. And in all, if a transgression is great enough, an offender is—” She stopped, eyes wide as she realized the conclusion toward which she was headed.

“An offender is banished to the Wildscape.” Druadaen finished for her. He shrugged. “You do me no injury saying this. It is simple truth, and every night reminds me of it. So that is why I cannot help but wonder if my disruption of both the mancery and miracles is a curse.”

She shook her head sharply. “No. I cannot believe it. Not of Amarseker, anyway.” Her eyes fell. “But what it might be? That I cannot say any better than you.”

Ahearn rose and stretched. He looked up into the deep blue dusk from which stars were beginning to emerge. “There’s more mystery than certainty in this world, I always say. Not much comfort in that, except that you can rely on it being true.” He rubbed his arms against the upland chill. “Time for a warm bedroll. If it’s all the same with you, I’ll take the middle watch.”


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