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Chapter Thirty-Six



In a moment, the group had gathered around Umkhira, who was barely conscious. Ahearn was asking her what was wrong, more loudly and slowly with every subsequent query. Elweyr stood and began scanning the horizon. S’ythreni, like Druadaen, was inspecting her for wounds.

They found the probable cause at the same moment: a puncture on the side of her right thigh. It was leaking a clear serum rather than bleeding, and the sides were not merely raw and swollen: they were ringed with what looked like blisters or pustules.

Padrajisse pushed between them, glanced at what they had found, and looked at Ahearn and Elweyr. Discovering that the latter was presumably scanning the horizon for potential foes, she focused her inquiry on Ahearn. “Where is the blade that struck this blow?”

Ahearn stared at her as if she might be more than a bit mad. “Sacrista, we were a bit busy, y’know.”

“Be that as it may, she will be dead if you cannot find the weapon. Of the three poisons this might be, none give us much time.”

“Well, what kind of weapon am I looking for?”

“The wound is from a dagger thrust,” Druadaen told him. “Or maybe a sword point.”

“Dagger,” S’ythreni and Padrajisse chorused in similarly certain tones. Druadaen stepped back from Padrajisse and Umkhira and hurried back to the site of the Lightstrider’s desperate melee against the hyek. S’ythreni was a moment behind him.

The ground was a tangled mess of stomped and crushed corn, hyek corpses so filled with arrows that they resembled grotesque pin cushions, and pieces of shattered weapons and gear. Still, the pattern of debris told the story of the engagement.

The hyek had come within a dozen yards of the three defenders when the tracks of their charge—indicated by the long stride between each footprint—became a close shuffle. That was the point at which Elweyr had completed the thaumate with which he had so profoundly slowed them.

But beyond there, it was harder to reconstruct the course of the melee. The tracks of the attackers resumed on a crisscross course that made no sense until Druadaen realized that they had not all been freed at once from whatever burden had slowed them; they had been released one or two at a time. And they had run in different directions because, in the intervals, the defenders had changed position.

That change of position had routinely included falling back and at the last site of combat, it appeared that three had been released—or the mancery had faded—all at once. The resulting tracks were unreadable; not only did it become impossible to sort out individual paths from the multiple overlapping footprints, but the dodging and feinting of the melee had obliterated a large portion of them.

“What are you doing?” S’ythreni muttered.

“Looking at how the battle unfolded.”

“What? Why?”

“In order to determine where that wound was inflicted upon Umkhira.”

Ahearn barked out a bitter laugh from where he’d started searching among the rows of corn. “Half philosopher, half fool, just as the saying has it.”

Druadaen kneeled down at what looked like the rearmost limit of Umkhira’s fighting retreat. Her prints were thick there, and fortunately, her boots left distinctive marks. They were not so well-made as those belonging to the humans, but not so crude and irregular as the ones worn by the hyek. There were broken Bent weapons and a riven shield—Umkhira’s—on the ground. He scanned the enemy bodies. Of the two that were close enough to have fallen fighting the Lightstrider, one still held a crude, heavy sword. The other one’s weapon—an axe—had broken, the haft riven almost its entire length. That hyek would have needed to draw a new weapon. And sure enough, just a foot into the flattened corn, Druadaen saw a dull glint of low-quality iron.

He fished it out of the saw-toothed stalks carefully; some poisons were able to pass directly through the skin. He stood. Ahearn and S’ythreni were staring at him.

“Is that—?” began the swordsman.

“I think so,” Druadaen answered, holding it out. “Here: take it to Padrajisse. Run.”

“You’re not coming?”

“I’m not done.”

“Why? What are you—?”

“Go. Time is short.”

Ahearn ran off. But S’ythreni was in a squat, scanning the ground. “What are we looking for?” she asked.

He smiled at her. “The best way to flip this dead hyek on to his back.”

She joined him at the blood-slick corpse. “And why are we doing that?”

“You’ll see. For now, just get a good grip on his arm.”

* * *

As Druadaen and S’ythreni approached, Padrajisse looked up. “The dagger must only have been tainted at the tip. There is no longer any sign of it. So I remain unsure which poison this is. I fear that—”

S’ythreni held out her hand. “Try this.” It was the dagger’s scabbard, taken from the dead hyek’s belt.

Padrajisse’s eyes widened as she grabbed it and looked inside. In a moment, she had her own blade out and was sawing through the surprisingly well-made sheath. As it opened like a rent peapod, a light green dusting was revealed at the very end of its inner surface.

The sacrista began rummaging hastily through the shoulder bag Elweyr had fetched from her horse. She glanced at him. “You are an alchemist. Can you help?”

He shook his head. “I am not so familiar with antidotes as I am with other…compounds.”

Padrajisse, who selected a small vial from among dozens of others, turned her head toward S’ythreni. “Do you have knowledge of the poison?” When the aeosti shook her head, surprised at the question, the sacrista explained. “You knew where to look for this: that it would be compounded as powder kept from the open air, rather than mixed into an oil.”

S’ythreni just shrugged.

Padrajisse seemed to forget her in the same instant, her focus narrowed to careful application of the antidote.

Ahearn leaned sideways. “I thought there was a…a miracle for poisons,” Ahearn whispered toward Elweyr.

The thaumantic nodded. “Yes, but I don’t think it works on all poisons. Besides, while the three of you were off searching for the dagger, she invoked something that slowed Umkhira’s breath and heartbeat.”

Druadaen had seen that bestowal used during the most hair-raising of his assignments as a Courier. “It slows the body’s processes. It gives a physician—or other sacrist—more time to intervene. But while that miracle is functioning, the sacrist who invoked it may call for no other.”

“You know more than most, Outrider,” Padrajisse muttered, leaning back, her eyes closing for a moment. The wound started bleeding more profusely, but Umkhira’s eyes opened. “I…what happened?”

“You were poisoned,” Padrajisse said flatly as she repacked her physician’s bag. “You may thank the graces of Thyeru for your return to health…as well as your sharp-eyed and quick-witted aeosti friend.”

“Companion,” corrected S’ythreni.

Padrajisse rose; by her lack of reaction, it seemed she either had not heard the aeosti’s emendation or simply did not care. “If you can, Lightstrider, you should walk about. It will speed the spread of the curative, eliminate the last vestiges of the poison more rapidly.”

Elweyr, waiting with bindings in hand, looked at the wound. “It’s bleeding more heavily.”

Padrajisse waved a dismissive hand. “It is more important that she start walking, but she may hold wadding to staunch the flow as she moves.” She bent down and picked up the remains of the small scabbard.

Ahearn looked over her shoulder at it. “That’s too small and too fine to be Bent-made.”

She nodded. “This is not their manufacture. It is Caottaluran. Very sophisticated, very expensive. There is a small reservoir near the bottom. When the blade is sheathed, it slips past that reservoir: closes it more tightly, in fact. But when drawn, the movement of the blade opens the reservoir, causing its tip to be lightly dusted. The poison remains inert there until in contact with blood or some other fluid of a living creature, or is washed off.”

As Umkhira took a wad of wrappings from Elweyr with a nod, Ahearn frowned and folded his arms. “And what in the name of every avatar do the Caottalurans mean to achieve out here?”

“I don’t know,” Elweyr muttered, “but we should report this to Talshane.”

Padrajisse shrugged. “I suspect he already knows. We encountered similar signs of their meddling when we rode to the aid of the Outriders in the unclaimed lands between Crimatha and Landskye.”

Druadaen frowned. “Could it be that these are all pieces of some greater plot?”

“Not as you mean it. The Caottalurans are certainly known for sophisticated and intricate scheming, but they also understand the more general value of spreading terror and dread among one’s enemies.” She glanced at the dagger. “Imagine farmers reporting magically lethal blades…and the panic that would ensue.”

S’ythreni rolled her eyes. “Would anyone be so gullible?”

She shot a hard stare at the aeosti. “It seems that you had no more precise knowledge of this poison than anyone else. And farmers have neither eyes trained by close combat, nor experience of tainted blades, and so may not even imagine that poison is at work—particularly not a poison that is so swift and invisible as this one.

“So it does not require gullibility to attribute this to mancery. Indeed, many of the borderers who suffered along with the Outriders were halfway to that very assumption.”

S’ythreni’s slightly open mouth closed sharply.

Umkhira, who had started walking a slow circuit around the others, bowed her head in Padrajisse’s direction. “I thank you and your god, Priestess. Indeed, I thank you twice.”

Padrajisse looked perplexed. “Twice?”

The Lightstrider nodded. “For saving me from the venom, and earlier, for saving all of us.”

Padrajisse frowned. “I do not understand.”

Elweyr shrugged. “If it wasn’t for you or your god communicating your location just before the attack, who knows how it would have turned out?”

“But I did not pray to Thyeru for the succor of a summons. Indeed, Druadaen asked if I could, but that is not possible unless a bond of summons has been created beforehand.”

Umkhira stopped. “Then how did I know where to look, to see the group of hyek that had appeared to our right?”

Elweyr was nodding slowly, carefully. “For me, it was a sudden awareness of your location. And not a vague, general sense that you’d arrived at the anticipated position; I knew exactly where you were.”

“Well, Sacrista,” reasoned Ahearn none too confidently, “it seems that either your god saw fit to smile upon us unasked or we have been the beneficiaries of yet another of the universe’s unanswerable mysteries.”

S’ythreni stared at him, then at the general nodding his summation evoked. “Really? You consider this a mystery?”

“And do you have the answer?” asked Padrajisse, who had been one of those nodding.

“I might.”

Umkhira crossed her formidable arms. “And it is?”

S’ythreni pointed at Druadaen.

“Him?” squawked Ahearn.

“Me?” exclaimed Druadaen.

“No, fools.” S’ythreni jabbed her index finger at his wrist with precise intent. “The velene. That’s just the kind of thing legend says they can do.”

Ahearn looked wonderingly at Druadaen. “Did the metal beastie come alive, then?

He shook his head. “No.”

Ahearn shook his head. “Then how in the hundred hells do you know—?”

“Stop,” ordered S’ythreni. She waited until all their eyes were on her. “You all understand that I keep using the word ‘legend’ for a reason, yes? Because no one really knows that much about the velene. I suspect we’ve never known much about them at all. Not even the Uulamantre, the eldest of the Iavarain.” Looking suddenly away, she sheathed her shortsword. “At least none that I get to speak with.”

Druadaen was convinced that behind her final mumbled qualifier lay an Archive worth of revelations about S’ythreni and the Iavarain in general.

Her head snapped up. “Movement,” she muttered, pointing into the rows of corn through which the first group of hyek had been making such uneven progress.

“One of their wounded?” Ahearn asked, bastard sword suddenly in both hands again.

“Possible,” Umkhira muttered. “I shall see.”

“Why you?” S’ythreni hissed.

“Because,” the Lightstrider hissed back, “I am ‘Bent,’ am I not? And wounded. I may be able to approach where you would not.” And she was gone, the blood-clotted wadding dropped behind her.

Ahearn cursed silently, stared when Druadaen took a knee. “What’re yeh doing?”

“Umkhira is our eyes out there,” he answered. Then he pointed at S’ythreni. “And she’s our ears right here. We humans, standing, trying to detect something they haven’t?” He shook his head. “All we are doing is helping our enemies find us.”

Ahearn fretted, but ultimately crouched down along with the rest. Padrajisse smiled grimly.

A minute passed, perhaps two…

S’ythreni tilted her head, then turned a worried look back at the sacrist. “That poison, or the antidote: Could it cause the victim to become, well, deranged?”

Padrajisse frowned. “I do not believe so. Why?”

“Because Umkhira is…I think she’s singing.”

Either because the aeosti mentioned it, or the Lightstrider’s voice became louder, Druadaen could now hear it: a faint, melancholy melody.

Even Padrajisse joined in the unanimous exchange of surprised looks.

The singing stopped.

Ahearn held his sword ready. “Do you think we should—?”

Druadaen held up a hand a moment before S’ythreni shook her head. “Someone coming.”

“Umkhira?” Ahearn asked.

“I’d say if I knew,” the aeosti snapped. “Maybe, but the tread sounds heavier.” She drew her shortsword. Ahearn was poised to lunge.

Druadaen nodded to Padrajisse, who readied herself. Then he met Elweyr’s eyes and glanced toward the crop rows behind them. The thaumantic nodded and turned to watch their rear.

“We are coming to you,” Umkhira said in a very slow, calm voice.

“We understand,” Druadaen answered before Ahearn could reply with something both tense and jocular.

S’ythreni used her shortsword to indicate a particular point in the wall of corn.

Crackling of green shoots emanated from that area. Deeper in, half-formed ears waved and rustled. “We approach,” said Umkhira.

The tall green stems parted and she emerged, carrying a very young girl in her arms. The child’s knees, elbows, and hands were covered with dirt and what might have been dung. So was her face, but there, tears had cut clear rivulets down to the bottom of her full cheeks. Her eyes were wide as she looked around at the group, shrank back as she saw the weapons, but in her eyes was recognition: the armed people were of her own kind.

Druadaen heard Padrajisse release a long, shuddering sigh. He glanced over, saw her eyes brightening, her mouth working to make the words. “You hold her as would a mother,” she choked out.

Umkhira smiled. “Among ur zhog, children are the responsibility of one hearth, but welcome and cared for at all of them. And shall I tell you how we know if another species can be reasoned with, appealed to?”

Padrajisse nodded.

“That they sing sleep-songs—lullabies, I think you call them.” She put her nose against the child’s ear; the little girl visibly relaxed. “I let that speak for me before I showed myself. And she understood. Even though I am what she has been taught to fear.”

Druadaen swallowed, stood.

The little girl’s eyes followed him. They were hazel: the color Heyna’s had been. He smiled and she smiled back, fear and hope vying in her face. Probably the look that had been on his own face when Varcaxtan had lifted him out of the root cellar in Connæar so many years ago.

He turned toward S’ythreni, waited until she noticed and met his eyes, surprised.

“This,” he said.

“This…what?” she asked.

“This is the answer to your question.”

“My—?”

“This is why fighting here was the right thing to do.”

Ahearn drew in a long breath, clapped a hand down on Druadaen’s shoulder, was about to say something. But eyes suddenly wet, he only nodded, turned, and walked away.


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